182 – Jane, 1/2

The sky was bright with sunlight and [True Sunlight Rifts].

The land was dark with shadows and monsters.

Brilliant as the sky but a monster herself, Jane descended, her prismatic sword following in her wake like the dorsal fin of a sailfish. Black moon reacher amalgams scrambled up the smoky crystal towers at the edge of the Brightwater, but they were only one type of the many monsters out there. A horde of ten thousand beasts, each one a horrible amalgam of several other monsters, crawled or flew or floated out of the black ocean below. They were the heralds of a soul ooze that would overflow the world…

Or something like that.

Teressa’s prophecy wasn’t real clear. But whatever!

They were monsters, and Jane was the bigger monster… And there was some sort of joke in there that caused Jane to laugh out loud as she fell to meet her enemy. She wasn’t sure of the exact wording she was trying to find, but there was humor in this situation—

Ah!

Being the bigger person meant moving on and not engaging!

But being the bigger monster meant eating the smaller monster!

… Not very humorous, but Jane took what she could get.

Her body sang with prismatic light as Jane angled her descent to meet the first many-armed black moon reacher. It had five arms and three legs and a mattress-like body that opened up as Jane neared, revealing a blender-mouth full of bright white teeth. Tiny hands on deceptively strong arms reached for her.

But she was too fast for the pitiful thing. This mockery of an enemy. The original versions had made Jane feel so awful when she realized she had almost died to them in her first real adventure out on her own. She had thought she had worked through this particular trauma and fear when she had helped her father eradicate the moon reachers of the Forest of Glaquin. Ten thousand reachers she had killed!…

… Maybe not that many, but whatever. Apparently Jane wasn’t over it as much as she had thought.

This particular moon reacher was an amalgam of a new type of reacher; one that could reach through magic. It was much more deadly than the first type, by far. Theoretically, it could even grab her through her [Prismatic Body]. That is what the reachers had done to Scallion, back in the unicorn hunts. Ripped his leg clean off! And he didn’t even know he was missing a leg until later!

Jane twisted her ten-meter wide spider body into threads of prismatic light and slipped through every single grasping hand. Her sword followed in her wake, spinning around as she went through the blender-mouth of the creature, bursting out of its back like dynamite exploding a whale carcass.

Arms and tiny hands and big teeth and hairy legs, all briefly ignited with prismatic fire. Prismatic fire turned to simple blue fire rather fast. Hunks of burning, half-[Cleanse]d meat rained like gore—

‘I’m helping you with targeting, but since I have to do many things at once, I’m just going to hand over some of my senses,’ Poi sent, ‘Mission: Kill moon reachers and disrupt their offensive before they can reach the base.’

Jane had no idea what the first half of Poi’s statement meant, but the second was very understandable—

She suddenly gained another sense. It wasn’t sight or sound or smell. It wasn’t anything she had ever experienced before. Somehow, she could just tell where living things were.

Some monsters were more apparent than others.

Jane focused on the weaker ones first, to see if she was understanding this new sense correctly.

Most of the monsters were the same; like someone had taken a saturation slider on a monitor and turned it up. It was a halo around their body, sort of, but mostly concentrated around the head. Some monsters ‘felt’ more saturated than others, with the weakest minds out there —Yes, that’s what they were. Minds.— looking almost like nothing at all. And all of them were pointed upward, toward Forward Base. It was like the small edges of their halos were dragging them forward, toward Anhelia’s protected space.

Jane turned toward the larger threats.

The larger monsters were more than a simple saturation. They were like someone had taken a hammer to the very fabric of reality, shattering the world into color. This mind sense didn’t interfere with Jane’s normal sight, because what Jane actually saw with her real eyes was a whole lot of smoky crystal towers all around her. This sense allowed her to see through the crystal in every direction, all around, to see the locations of the most dangerous mental monsters.

It wasn’t [Greater Lightwalk], and it certainly wasn’t mana sense, but it was something similar and yet so much different.

Jane checked out her targets.

The crystal over there had two reachers crawling up the backside, out of sight of most people, but Jane saw them just fine. They were like sickly stained glass, crawling up the crystal, spilling noxious fumes out into the world as they went. Looking around, Jane saw ten more about a kilometer down. They were swinging between the smoky crystal towers like monkeys on vines, headed toward a soul ooze waterfall. Jane wasn’t sure how she knew what she knew in that moment, but she absolutely knew those reachers were going to go inside that waterfall, swim up through the ooze on the other side, and angle for a pincer angle on Anhelia’s base—

And then she realized she couldn’t actually see the ones down there at all. They were way too far out of sight, but she could ‘see’ them, and more importantly, she could hear their thoughts. How was Poi doing this? Was this how he saw the world all the time?

Poi answered her, ‘This is what Mind Mages do, Jane. We can hear mental monster thoughts more clearly than all other thoughts. I apologize for doing this to you without your permission, but desperate needs demand commensurate responses, and I can tell you’re not mad about this violation. Thank you for that, by the way. Once you’re done with those targets, I will step back from your mind and hand you off to Olirio, and then we need you to kill the soul casters. If you get rid of enough of them then Kiri and the archmages can come in with reinforcements. The mages will not deploy their large scale spells until they are clear to do so.’

Jane was already headed toward the hidden pair of moon reachers the second Poi started explaining. By the time she got to his apology she had already twisted through both of those first targets. Scattered, blue burning gore fell down through the bright, gloomy air. She moved on. She aimed at the group of reachers headed toward the waterfall of soul ooze.

By the time Poi told her of her secondary targets, Jane had raced through that second collection of moon reachers. The many-armed monsters didn’t know what hit them as Jane blendered them with her sword, spinning through the lot of them, turning them temporarily into prismatic flaming debris that rapidly calmed down to simple blue fire.

Flaming blue gore fell through the air, and Jane pivoted to the right.

Another minute passed in rapid flight through another twenty moon reachers, sending even more flaming blue gore to the soul ooze far below. Almost none of them were close to each other, but that didn’t matter right now. Jane moved without impediment and killed without mercy.

In two more minutes, she had zipped through the crystal towers, full bore through the next group of thirty amalgamized black moon reachers half a kilometer away.

She burned Mana to keep her Health high, and she burned Health because Blood Mana ensured she got a lot more mileage out of her resources that way. She would have used her Blood Weaver Ability to pull out more resources from the reachers, to gather more resources for more killing, but there was very little blood inside any of these skinny, horrible monsters. Only the largest amalgams had anything resembling blood inside them, but that blood was more ooze than blood these days—

‘Resources.’ Poi sent, ‘Check resources. And Rest, dammit! You’re going too fast!’

Jane slammed into the side of a wall, out of range of many monsters, and cut her spellwork.

Ah.

Oh. Shit.

She was down more than 4000 Health, sitting at 1550 Health out of nearly 5.8k. Her maximum Mana was almost 9.4k, but she was currently at 3500. The numbers suggested she had only spent maybe 60% of her resources. But she had spent more than that. A lot more. Maybe 40,000 Health? Most of her mana had gone into Health…

Jane had no idea. Actually.

Okay. Time to go slower.

… She was very much not over these moon reachers at all!

Jane just sat there, clinging to the side of a crystal tower, not exactly breathing because she couldn’t breathe with this body, but if she wasn’t moving or expending mana she could go for an hour without needing to actually ‘breathe’ by using [Greater Shadowalk].

She was too far down on resources for much of that, though, so she cast another [Rejuvenation] on herself in order to get more resources. Health was easy to regain, but Mana was not. Mana regenerated at 5-6 mana per second. But with [Rejuvenation], every second the spell ran she gained another 195 Health.

Ten seconds passed and Jane regained almost 2000 Health. She cast another [Rejuvenation] and used her Blood Mana Ability to run [Greater Shadowalk] so she could breathe. She had Favored that spell long ago, which brought the mana costs down to 2-3 mana per second. But since she was running it off of Health, it cost 5 Health per second. This was fine. Health came back quickly. Mana was her truly limiting resource… She had already thought that.

Okay. Her thoughts were spinning in circles. She was thinking about math.

This was fine.

She breathed now, and everything was good.

Net gains all around, really.

‘Don’t let it get that low ever again, Jane.’ Poi sent, ‘Wait there. You killed the main offense. We’re clearing minds. Look up, and see.’

Jane was already looking up.

A kilometer above, spellwork lit up the sky, turning the space at the tower tops into fire and explosions, killing monsters by the hundreds. It was not enough. Jane looked down, at her own level, and saw a hundred thousand more monsters. More kept climbing out of the ooze all the time.

All around her, in the smoky crystal towers, were monsters.

Most climbed, with too many long legs or arms or long, grasping claws, finding or creating purchase on the crystal, as they ascended. Some flew. All were headed in the same direction. None of the amalgams fought with each other, and they didn’t actually pay Jane much mind. They were still all focused on the target. Jane watched as a few of them glanced her way, both with their eyes and partially with their minds. But Jane wasn’t worried. She could tell that they didn’t care about her. She was a giant monster, after all. She was one of them?

Or something?

Why were they ignoring her like this? Amalgams usually did not ignore her? What the fu—

A freight-train centipede rose up from the muck far below Jane, headed up the same crystal tower she clung to. Its segmented body was made of giant screaming heads, and it tore up and around the crystal tower like a moving spiral staircase. All those heads for a body marked it as a dispelling amalgam. Ah. The amalgams in the other towers were under the direct control of the soul ooze, or something, weren’t they? Maybe. Maybe not. The slime had seen Jane, and was sending something to deal with her. The dispeller centipede had eyes and mind only for Jane.

Resource check.

She was good.

Shadows lightened and turned prismatic. Thick air poured off of every surface near Jane, even clearing some of the smoky crystal under where she stood. A flicker of [Rejuvenation] flowed across her, and she turned that Health into action—

She suddenly realized that the vague sense inside her head was very much telling her that there were more mental-ish monsters out there, and they were how the horde was being controlled. The dispeller centipede had some sort of large tendril coming off of its backside that led off to somewhere else. That was where the control was coming from.

This was a very useful ability, Poi!

She would get to the controlling monster problem later. The centipede needed to die, first.

The centipede screamed directly at Jane as it raced at her.

Jane descended onto the centipede, her sword flashing brightly as waves of dispelling power washed out of the freight train monster like the screams of the dead. At the last moment Jane pulled her sword behind her, protecting it from the waves of power pulsing from the black centipede. Those dispelling waves washed across her body, but she had pulled her [Prismatic Body] and [Cleansing Aura] inward; all the [Dispel] managed to catch was her [Rejuvenation].

Not too bad of a trade.

The dispelling song passed Jane by, either bouncing off of her or doing nothing, and then she reached the head of the centipede. An amalgamation of crushing jaws and chittering mouths lunged at her, but she released a small bit of her [Prismatic Body] out into the world and controlled the light and air around her to twist to the side, dragging her brightly glowing and now spinning sword behind her as she raced across the back of the centipede, chopping the monster into flaming bits. It screamed again, more dispelling power. Jane pulled her sword to her own back, protecting it with her body, and then she went back to chopping up the target.

She raced down the staircase made by the monster, slicing it apart as she went, turning most of the greater amalgam into fire and thick air that sailed down all around Jane, further evaporating in the presence of her [Cleansing Aura]. It was well and truly dead by the time she got to the end of it.

Jane took a small breather and then she focused forward. Poi hadn’t retracted his ability or handed her off, yet, so Jane was going to use it while she could, and she had noticed something else out there in the gloom. Something that needed to die. Which was probably why Poi let her keep this ability.

Like a fiery blue comet, Jane trailed thick air all around her as she followed the trail of smaller tendrils at the backside of every nearby monster. She hadn’t noticed them at first, but she certainly noticed them now—

She found it.

Visually, the target looked like a small bundle of eyes and tails and paws and calico fur that was latched to the back of a lizard. This lizard was in turn latched to the side of a crystal tower. They were actually separate creatures, too; not one single amalgam, for whatever reason. To Jane’s normal eyes, the target and the target’s ‘vehicle’ were nothing important; just another tiny pair of monsters in the middle of a thousand larger, more dangerous looking threats, all climbing or flying up together. But to her Eyes of Magic, and to Poi’s mind sense, the cat-like amalgam was the center of a knot of behavioral controls.

The smaller monster’s tails turned ethereal a meter away from the creature, becoming strands of invisible intent that burrowed into the bodies of every single monster within a kilometer. Every single one of those monsters was under the control of this small one. It was a minor general in a very large battlefield.

One of those tendrils tried to poke into Jane, too.

Jane introduced the amalgamated shadowcat —for that’s what it had to be— to her shining sword. Snicker snack! Click clack. Jane turned the cat and its mount into flaming, evaporating gore. Suddenly, the nearby horde fell into chaos. Every monster had been moving up, toward the target. Now, though, some amalgams fell out of the air as they lost the ability to control their magic. Some fell from the sides of the smoky crystal as they lost the ability to climb. Some jumped from the crystal, as they were not willing to be out in the daylight. Jane imagined those ones fell to their death, but if people could survive a sky high fall, amalgams certainly could.

Many monsters remained dedicated to attacking Forward Base, but Jane had done a lot by killing that shadowcat.

Jane moved on, finding the tiny targets among all the rest, and ending them.

The monsters that continued the assault were a bit slower. They were a bit dumber. Less organized and more prone to stupid tactics. Like they normally were, every single night.

It was enough, for now.

Poi sent something about how Jane’s actions were directly weakening the soul ooze’s assault on Forward Base, which was good, but Jane concentrated on killing. She dodged when something sought to harm her, and killed when she got a clear shot, and then she made sure she had actually killed whatever she had struck.

Jane was pretty sure that all the small bits of gore that she had scattered to the sky would fall down into the ooze where it would recombine into something else, later. But hopefully her flames and her [Cleansing Aura] would make the next battle that much easier.

After Jane killed shadowcat number 21 and random-monster-that-thought-to-attack-her number 45, she had to rest. Blood Mana was more painful the longer she used it; she would never complain, though. So far, it was a good kind of pain. But she had burned through another 40,000 Health of her 116k daily limit—

‘Moon reachers dead. Lesser mind magic targets dead. Target change after your rest,’ Poi sent, ‘Do not move until I finish telling you your new goal. Repeat to me that you understand this.’

Jane had been ready to move out even while Poi spoke, but she held herself back. ‘I understand.’

‘Good. Okay.’ Poi sent, ‘Your new goal is to kill the soul casters, but do it safely. There are at least 500 down there. Killzone and others will join you when they can, but the archmages and Kiri can’t move in to stop the flood of monsters coming out of the ooze until the soul casters are gone. We can hold off that flood up top for a while, but we will have to retreat again if air support can’t support us. Singer Nirzir is here at Forward Base ready to deploy some Undertows as soon as we know they won’t be corrupted away from her, like all of Kiri’s Sun Rifts were.’

Jane glanced toward the open area above the Brightwater.

All of Kiri’s rifts were turned to shadowy things, radiating protective gloom, or else simply gone. When did that happen?

‘Don’t worry about when that happened.’ Poi sent, ‘You were busy, and you’re still panicking slightly. You got all the moon reachers, Jane. If more get sent out I will tell you to take care of them. You and the Mind Mages and a few top rankers were the only ones not affected. New Frontier was hit worse than us, by far, but they’re recovering fast, too. Shade Farix is still a Shade so he was fine, and he has one real Mind Mage over there with him. They actually recovered faster than us, because they only have about 20 people over there, total. We have around 500.’

20 people! That was it!? Jane briefly felt the need to go help them, but then she realized that she did not want to be in that position, and those 20 people were probably each at the level of Mog, or something.

Poi sent, ‘If they need assistance, I will tell you.’

‘… Okay.’

Poi continued, ‘When you’re done with the soul casters, we want you to seek out whatever actually cast that large [Mind Fog] spell, and end it. Whatever did that was not the black moon reachers. They carried their own power, though, in full, and it is good that they are dead, but the soul ooze is displaying the power to mix and match monster abilities, so whatever actually cast that large spell is still out there. Maybe it’s the soul ooze itself, but it’s more likely something that the soul ooze made.’

Jane really needed to work on her lesser rivergrieve. Maybe up it to a true rivergrieve, though she wasn’t sure how. That Familiar Form had the innate ability Slick Scales, which deflected lesser spellwork and gave the creature a modicum of protection against lesser physical attacks, but that was it. Theoretically, she could combine those scales with the innate reflection from the nacreous weaver’s Radiant Presence, but in actuality, she had failed that bit of magical understanding and implementation; going from theory to fact.

If she had managed to do all of that before today, she would likely be perfectly safe swimming around in the soul ooze, hunting for the fog pulsers, or the singular fog pulser, wherever it might be. But right now? Here in the middle of battle?

Probably a bad idea.

Poi sighed. ‘Please, Jane. No experimenting right now. On task. I’m pulling back my senses now. I fear I would take the rebound attack from those Soul Bolts if I were to stick around.’

Jane’s world dimmed.

She saw the gloom in the air, and death all around, and she felt lesser, as though she had lost track of every single monster all around her. Which she had. Now she had to use her eyes and Surround Sight to see and to fight, and Surround Sight had never felt more inadequate than at this moment.

‘Work on your mana sense and most of that might come back. You’ll have time when this is over.’ Poi sent, ‘I need to coordinate Nirzir and Kiri. Switching you to Olirio now.’

The switch was instant.

Olirio sent, ‘Greetings, Miss Flatt. I will also be leaving you when you engage the soul casters, but I will return at a moment’s notice, as soon as you are clear of them. Do you need mana?’

‘Heard and understood.’ Jane pivoted around the crystal under her feet, aiming herself toward the Brightwater. She activated [Greater Shadowalk] to get clear of the smoky crystal towers, which she did through a bunch of small hops that barely cost more than her natural mana regeneration. ‘I’m good for a few…’ And then she reached the edge of the smoky crystal. She saw the Brightwater in all its horrible glory. Her hearts beat hard. Hundreds— No. Thousands upon thousands of targets, only some of which were bloated corpse soul casters. Still too many for her, for now. ‘I do not have the mana for this. I’m coming in. Where should I go?’

Olirio sent, ‘Secondary fallback. Also, Lady Alandria wishes to apologize for screaming like that.’

Jane dove into the shadows all around and ascended back into the sky over the Brightwater. As she transitioned to [Greater Lightwalk] she saw the battle of Temporary Forward Base, unobstructed. The fight was going… Chaotically.

Forward Base was the top hundred meters of the tallest red-purple kendrithyst tower directly past the wall of the Brightwater. There were no shadows inside that spire because Anhelia’s [Domain of Light] had forced the shadows away, revealing balconies and houses and other assorted physical structures inside the crystal. That was the last line of defense; the edge of Anhelia’s Domain. From that edge, three hundred and forty mages, the number of mages brought to the battle, were lined up and spending [Fireball]s and [Decay Rain] and [Chain Lightning] and a hundred other long range spells out of their relatively safe space.

Those spells then passed through a second layer of defense that was like a whole bubble cast around the entire temporary defensive area. That bubble shimmered with an opalescent mana signature, for it was the work of Archmage Opal. And because it was the work of an expert Warder, all of the Army’s spellwork was able to exit the sphere without worry, to strike the horde of amalgams coming their way, but the amalgams were not able to enter the space.

The enemy had gotten close, though. They must have.

Jane had heard the plan before now, and the defensive plan was for a triple sphere of Solid Ward. Since there was only one sphere, and every single nearby tower was either gone or still falling down all around, Jane suspected that they had seen some rough shit in the last ten minutes. And still, spellwork flew out of the base, concentrating on every monster that raced at them under the sunlight.

Fire washed over twisted people-sized amalgams, as those amalgams flew at the base. A sudden dispelling centipede rushed up from down below, only to be met with a [Luminous Beam] from a Sunny, positioned just outside of the Solid Ward. She probably had to attack from outside the space, for [Luminous Beam], while able to exit the sphere, would likely just end up tearing a hole through the sphere, and that was no good. Kiri’s [Familiar]s were far enough away from the front line that they weren’t in danger of being corrupted, but it was still dangerous for her to be out here right now.

It was dangerous for Jane to be out here, too. Some of the monsters had seen her, and like proper amalgams, they switched targets to her… Those that could fly, anyway.

Jane turned left and zipped through the bright sky, to land twenty kilometers away at a temporary hospital where a mess of broken kendrithyst crystal had clogged up the skyline, forming an angled, yet open area. The space had been reinforced with some [Stoneshape]ing to prevent further collapse and set with defensive [Force Wall]s and otherwise before the battle, in case it was needed, but it was not meant to hold the hundred people it now held. It was too crowded. Most people looked to be healing others, or simply resting from what was likely a very harsh mental magic purge. Some people rested with ice towels over their faces, while some people got healed by a Mind Mage and then promptly vomited up their last meals onto the ground. The Mind Mage moved on.

The Army must have switched to a protracted campaign model.

Jane spotted Orilio up at the top of the angled base, exactly where he said he would be, alongside Nirzir and several other Fonts. They were all transferring mana to other people, or, in Nirzir’s case, simply projecting an air of power to keep everyone else calm. There was plenty of space for Jane on their makeshift dais, but she didn’t want to accidentally get any potential ooze on them, or frighten anyone who hadn’t been cleared yet. So Jane brightened herself to make sure people saw her coming, so they wouldn’t freak, and then she descended to the side, to hold onto the edge of a tower that was not actually connected to the secondary base. She was about five meters from them.

Nirzir stood strong in armored white robes, but she gave a heartfelt sigh as she saw Jane come in for a landing on the nearby crystal tower. She projected her voice, “Thank the gods you’re okay. How much mana are you down?”

“8000 mana down.” Jane’s horrible voice made people cringe, but not Nirzir. “You should be able to do it from there, right? I don’t want to get any ooze on you.”

Nirzir gestured to Olirio and two others. “You’re up.”

Olirio and two more people dressed in white robes came forward and shot a link of power to Jane, which promptly bounced off of her carapace. They instantly stopped channeling and the scent of fear trickled into the air. Jane thought this might happen. From Nirzir’s and Olirio’s expression, they thought this might happen, too.

Jane angled upward and showed them her open mouth, morphing it at the same time so that she had an open passageway to her interior. It should be enough to let them overcome her reflection. “Try aiming there. If you hit deep enough, it might actually stick.”

One of the Fonts on the platform smelled like he would have to [Cleanse] himself after Jane left, but he mustered the courage to do as Jane asked. A beam of soft light shot from the man’s hand, into Jane’s mouth, where it bounced around a bit before finally soaking in. Once he made the connection the rest was easy; the tether of light moved to Jane’s side. Olirio and the other two fonts had much the same experience, and in under thirty seconds Jane was back up to full mana. With a bit of [Rejuvenation] she was back up to full Health, too.

Their channels naturally cut off once Jane was full.

Jane joked, “Hopefully you get some levels out of this!”

And then she sealed up the vulnerability she had created in herself, running her [Cleansing Aura] just in case. The cleaning shouldn’t be necessary, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

The smelly Font gave a bright, hearty laugh that was way too forced to be anything but nerves talking. Jane and everyone else ignored it, and then Jane turned to light and went right back to the Brightwater. The Fonts had needed to aim deep, and their tether had needed to bounce around a few times in order to stick, so not only was Jane’s reflection stronger than even she thought it was, but they had probably wasted mana… Which was probably not good.

She sent, ‘You guys have mana potions, right?’

‘Yes. If you need one we have extra. But that shouldn’t be necessary.’ Olirio sent, ‘We can take the potions ourselves and give you full mana whenever you need it, which we’ve already been doing for whoever needs it.’

Jane felt a twinge of worry for them. ‘What about core generation?’

‘We’ve all had nascent cores removed before and we’re all trained on self-surgery, too. Don’t worry about us.’

Jane decided not to worry about them.

She reentered the airspace over the Brightwater, directly over the center and wondered what to kill next. Her targets were the soul casters, but…

Kiri had not been able to reestablish any Sun Rifts, to drive back the gloom below, but the actual sun was still a thing, and that kept right on working all this time. Now where was Killzone—

Ah. There he was. He was… Headed back to Forward Base? Yes. He was. Jane watched as Killzone streaked through the sky, racing away from the Brightwater, headed toward Forward Base. He veered off target to punch through the chest of a shadow-spewing giant made of giant heads, but he was very much headed away from the main fight. He had been down there for a little bit, though, Jane was sure—

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Ah! There was Mog, too. And all the other elite forces, actually. Everywhere Jane looked, someone was either flying toward Forward Base, racing to get there, or flying up and directly away from Forward Base away like rats escaping a sinking … Ship? Huh?

Wonder why—

Olirio’s voice came suddenly, ‘Don’t approach Forward Base or the sky! Get away! Further instructions to come later!’

Jane was already far away from both—

Kra-KOOOOW!

Temporary blindness lingered in Jane’s eyes and she had taken some sort of Thunder-based damage, making her entire body feel temporarily numb, but a quick flush of [Greater Lightwalk] pushed away both of those ailments. As her eyesight returned, she hovered in awe.

An Yggdrasil-sized bolt of lightning lingered in the sky, and all around the intact [Grand Shield] surrounding Forward Base. The Army and everyone in it seemed fine, but the bolt had come from the blue, and passed all around, touching everything alive and washing down every single tower in a kilometer radius. As seconds passed, writhing cables of lightning skittered across a several kilometer wide section of Ar’Kendrithyst, before vanishing into the gloom down below. That lightning had to have touched upon every single monster, frying them utterly, before passing down through the kendrithyst crystal to reach even more targets.

‘That’s exactly what happened,’ Olirio sent, sounding relieved. ‘Took Archmage Obsidian a while to get that up and running, but he did it. The soul ooze’s first assault has been broken. Your archmages are impressive, Miss Flatt!’

Jane giggled a bit to herself, almost involuntarily. She had no idea why she had that reaction, but there it was. She asked, ‘Can he do that again?’

‘… I’m being told ‘no’ but not being given a reason for that denial. We believe it might have cost too much mana, and so we have offered Font assistance but we have been denied. Security issues. Ah. Yes. Recluse archmages. I should have—’ Olirio cut himself off, then continued, ‘Apologies. Uh. I am being told that Miss Flamecrash and the others will be able to assist with the soul ooze now that Forward Base is once again secure. We will resume the original plan, after all the soul casters are dead.’

And that was Jane’s job, right there. Kill the soul casters.

Jane turned her attention back to the land directly below.

Far, far below.

As far as her eyes could see, the bowl of this once bright land was filled with gloom from edge to edge. It was less thick than it had been before the assault started, but it was still gloomy. The sun was doing a lot to clear away that mist, for the parts that were in shadow were deep in the gloom, but the sun itself was not enough.

For now there were monsters bobbing in the black ocean, casting spellwork to ensure the safety of the soul ooze far below. Jane didn’t see the monsters at first, but now, as she looked, she saw flying monsters floating through the gloom, like half-invisible disturbances in the black mist. It was almost as though they were on patrol. Which was different than normal. They were being controlled, obviously.

There were more oddities besides those flying monsters, though. To the north, and to the south, a great many amalgamated monsters continued to pull out of the fog and race toward Forward Base, and whatever structures Shade Farix had put in place for his own people. The ooze’s counter assault was still ongoing, though on a much less frantic timetable than before. The smaller monsters were not Jane’s problems, though. She had larger targets to kill.

‘I will be leaving you now.’ Olirio sent, ‘Please do not use your Health overmuch. It is the only true defense you have against the soul ooze.’

Jane sent, ‘See you soon!’

She felt as Olirio left her.

Suddenly, it was her against the world, and her hearts beat hard as she fell in love with this life all over again. Her sword held next to her left pedipalp, and she released it into the wind as she dove downward; a comet of blue light and a tracer of radiance with a dark, adamantium core. Thick air burst away from her as she began running [Cleansing Aura] off of health and [Prismatic Body] off of mana, transforming into a rainbow splash.

Jane struck the edge of the gloom and the gloom exploded away from her in a tidal wave of thick air.

She ignored the dispeller giants, who were made mostly from the bodies of the giants who used to live in Ar’Kendrithyst, under the auspices of the Shades. Now they floated in the air, hovering on wings from a thousand birds and the magic necessary to keep their mutated bodies alive. They were easy to go around; slow and ponderous, though full of power that she didn’t need to tangle with.

She raced around a patrol of flying humanoids that looked like old victims of amalgamization; orcol legs and dragonkin scales and human arms and incani horns, or some other combination on the very next one, all flying in sequence. They were controlled by another shadowcat amalgam, but this time the shadowcat was ready for her, and managed to dodge as Jane came in to murder it. Jane decided to ignore this battle, too, as the shadowcat’s entire squadron seemed ready for her. They regrouped and kept the shadowcat safe while they harried her with [Gloom Ball]s and [Shadow Lightning].