Getting Luna to level ten was fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things. Just hunting down a bunch of Undead, letting her help by using her ivy vines to restrain them, before either Lia, Silva or I finished them off. She didn’t get the full amount of EXP, something we expected given that she wasn’t in any danger at all, but with the Mother’s Guidance Trait she had received from Lady Hecate, she gained levels fairly quickly.

Once she reached level ten, she spoke a prayer to Lady Hecate and gained her first real class, starting her journey on the Divine Path as an Acolyte of the Maiden. From what she described, she could have picked a class that would be part of the Arcane Path, but doing so would cause problems, likely the loss of the blessings she had been given, maybe even the loss of the blessings I had been given by Hecate. In addition, the class on the Divine Path was, from what she described, the better option anyway, giving her a few fairly interesting abilities.

Amusingly, those abilities focused on the teaching of magic and supporting those wandering the Arcane Path, skills that allowed her to perform a small ceremony that allowed people to delve into the Astral River, similar to the way I had helped a few people delve into it with a combination of Astral Meditation and Mind Magic. All of her abilities worked in a similar vein, not really suited for combat, nor for general living, they were all designed to support Arcane Casters. Sure, some had combat applications, like one that transferred some Astral Power, or even Divine Power, to another, though for a transfer of Divine Power the other had to be at least blessed by Hecate, but there was nothing that was pure combat on that list. Not even Healing Magic, which was normally a staple of Divine Spellcasting, simply because there were few things people prayed for more often than help for the ailing.

In addition, it was a nearly universal plea, used by everyone from the youngest, who might pray that their elders were healed from some sickness, to those very elders who might pray that their descendants remained healthy. Similarly, soldiers, midwives, everyone and, literally, their grandmother had reason to pray for healing and health, while other common prayers, such as fertility, both personal and agricultural, fortune in battle or success in an endeavour, had a lesser spread across the population. Soldiers, those who needed fortune in battle, might dedicate themselves to a War God, while farmers would likely have a shrine of some sort for a deity of fertility, as they’d need the blessing repeatedly. Healing, on the other hand, was needed irregularly enough that a shrine or dedication to a specific deity wouldn’t really work but important enough to be prayed or sacrificed for anyway. Thus, almost all deities offered it as part of the divine kit, so to speak, simply to keep their flock following them. At least that had been the case on Mundus and I doubted things would turn out too differently on Terra, not with the same players organising the game. Though, the lack of Healing Magic might be why there hadn’t been a real church of Hecate, that, and possibly apathy on the part of the patron.

Not that it truly mattered. Luna had the affinity to Life Magic she gained thanks to the Grandmother’s gift and we had been working together to improve her control so that her healing wouldn’t be a literal touch of death. For now, she could grow plants and I had high hopes for her divinely granted abilities. When she applied them to me, the effect was relatively minor but given the sheer difference in attribute points and levels between us, everything else would have massively shocked me. In time, she would undoubtedly grow into a formidable ally, especially if I kept guiding her growth and directing her efforts.

For now, I had a ritual to prepare. The plan was to set up on top of a relatively large building with decent escape routes during the night, retreat for the day before returning as early in the next night as possible, making as much of the darkness as we could. Once the ritual was fully set up, and I started to channel power into it, Lia, Silva and Alex, would defend the rooftop from all attackers, most likely Withered hoping to stop the ritual, while I would solely focus on performing my ritual. Luna’s job would be to mostly use her divine abilities to support me in my endeavour, though she might be needed in the defence, even if her vines were somewhat limited.

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During these last few days, I had done my best to store as much magically infused blood as possible, draining as many enemies as I could and even creating a few small marbles filled with blood myself. While I could use the Astral Power stored in my hair to make the process relatively painless, there was a sense of discomfort when doing so. I didn’t enjoy shedding parts of myself, the lack of pain almost made it worse. As if I could see a knife going into my arm, but was numb to it, the lack of sensation wasn’t a pleasant experience. But I knew that I could use every drop of Astral Power to smack the Withered around, especially given that the attack targeted their primary location, a place they undoubtedly fortified and defended to the best of their ability. With the distances involved, getting enough of my power into the air to rain down havoc was difficult enough, limiting myself would only make it worse.

And thus, I bled, filling my blood into small orbs of Ice before sealing them to the best of my ability. They wouldn’t last long, just a few days before the power infused into the blood drained back into the Astral River, but it didn’t have to last long. Just until I unleashed Hel upon the Withered.

Knowing what we had learned about the Withered, I had no doubt that any large ritual near their territory would garner their attention and that the reaction to the amount of power I was planning to unleash would be either proportional or an overreaction. In either case, I had no doubt that the numbers they’d send against us would be enough to overpower the defenders we had, unless we made damn sure that their numbers didn’t really mean anything.

In other words, we had to set the battlefield up in such a way that made sure they only had a single avenue of attack, an avenue we had to tighten to the point that they could only come at us individually, maybe in pairs.

Everything else would see us overwhelmed in short order and, unless there was some sort of miracle involved, dead shortly after. The Withered didn’t appear to be the type to take prisoners, not that I would want to be the prisoner of some fungoid hivemind.

One of the first things to make their access to the roof as difficult as possible was, amusingly, maintenance of the building. It took quite a bit of effort, and a lot of Earth Magic, to smooth out the wall about two metres below the roof, breaking off all soft material that the Withered might sink their claws into so they had temporary support and fixing all the cracks that time and the change had caused. By the end of it, the only entire strip of wall was a smooth and drab expanse of grey rock, with nothing to latch onto. Afterwards, I let some Ice flow down those walls, making them slick and perfectly even, with the added bonus that the Ice was incredibly thin and brittle. Trying to use it to climb would see a Withered tumble down as soon as they tried to push against it with any real force.

Above that smooth expanse, I added a few spikes, some of them made from thin, spiky metal, others from Ice. Both sets shared their sharpness, but the Ice variant was fairly long, providing an initial deterrence while the metal spikes were shorter, with the idea that they’d make it impossible to drag yourself up that last bit of wall. Unless you wanted to disembowel yourself on the spikes, that was what they were there for.

While I made it difficult, if not impossible, to climb the walls, Alex and Lia did their best to turn the only stairwell into a deadly gauntlet. They tried to incorporate as many lasting traps, things that would create a hazard instead of one-shot things that shot their load, killing a few Withered before turning useless. The primary idea behind their traps was to weaken, to hinder and slow down, not necessarily to kill outright. Every weakened body that made it up to the position they’d take up was one they could use to create a wall of bodies the Withered had to wade through, while a dead body in the stairwell could simply be ignored and climbed over.

Lastly, Luna did her best in a different manner. She worked on the lower parts of the facade, using her vines to make climbing the wall harder, adding weak spots that would crumble and creepers that looked sturdy and invited a climber to try using them, only for them to break immediately. She lacked both power and variety but she did her best and that was all that counted.

Finally, the preparation was complete and I could bring the pain to the Withered. Even as summer was starting all around us, Winter was coming for them.