Cyra responded in a blink. Elrhain saw a burst of water, and the faediaga eldress was standing in front of the group with wary eyes.

Glistening blue manna from her body permeated throughout the cavern. Part of it turned into tendrils that crisscrossed in open space. It filled the whole cavern like molecular threads, ready to ensnare and dismember any foe that appeared.

The rest gathered around the children in a half-spherical barrier that rotated gently. Cyra’s eyes didn’t move from the clearing. She took out a sapphire medallion and shattered it. A bird of blue light, like the one Agwyn summoned from her talisman near the seven pearl lakes, flew out from the cracks. It released a shallow cry, then split into five, each travelling down one pathway leading away from the cavern. Including the one from which they had just exited.

Tudor hoisted a gnarly staff. He ruffled his beard while showing Agwyn a reassuring smile. The staff bottom tapped the cavern floor with each of his steps. Pulses of blue manna spread out in circular waves where the staff tapped the mossy stone, then encompassed the barrier as a second line of defence.

Alorakana fidgeted nervously to the side as she bit her lips, mumbling, “By the voids. T-This is not what we agreed on.”

Elrhain gave her a stinky glance. The witch genuinely looked terrified. He patted her legs, saying, “I bet you have a bunch of talismans lying around. I think this is the time to use them- “

Two changes happened simultaneously, interrupting his well-intentioned advice.

A roar echoed from many of the passageways honeycombed into the cavern. It came… from below? Followed by a low rumbling of the earth. Another roar followed, then another. Soon, it was like the cacophony of Earthloch’s primordial forest. The cries of beasts, the flutter of wings, and the distinct sound of chitinous appendage on stone.

But the first roar was distinctly different from the others. It had… intent?

Elrhain looked at his feet and saw the specks of gravel vibrate. He looked up at Cyra. Her face tensed, but for a split second it looked relieved before morphing into worry. Thinking about it, the first roar resembled Cyra when she was in her draconic form.

「Reinforcements. Or there’s a battle breaking out elsewhere.」

Agwyn nodded. She scuttled up beside him and pointed her finger towards a lone ruined pillar.

「I hope they get here soon. The last roars sounded like gheistrums. More frenzied.」

The second change, the pillar with murals of lost ages carved upon its body wobbled as if it was a reflection on troubled water. Tiny blue crystals jutted out from the cracks on the pillar, simmering the anomaly in dim cyan light.

A horizontal line cut through the pillar’s vertical axis and split open like a beast opening its mouth.

But the pillar didn’t break. The space around the cut pushed apart like a rubber sheet, the murals on both sides of the pillar stretched like drawings on an inflating balloon. The cut soon turned into a full circle, behind which lay a gaping white void.

A noise broke like a thousand critters and skitters of teeth upon teeth and claws upon glass. Elrhain’s ears rang, but the sheer force of Cyra’s manna soon overwhelmed the sound.

The faediaga eldress didn’t give whatever was on the other side a chance.

BOOM!

Elrhain only saw her raising a hand, and the mural, along with the gap in space, exploded as though a hundred-ton truck full of water had crashed into it. Vapour rose and the dusty mist spread, but Cyra didn’t stop.

She cast spell after spell while Tudor readied his own offence. Alorakana darted back, taking out a parchment scroll from her cleavage.

Cyra scrunched her brows, her slug-like lower body tensed. The faediaga eldress halted her spell casting with an annoyed click of her tongue.

「That can’t be good.」

The water-webbed skirt around Cyra’s slug tail drew back on the floor before she vaulted out like a catapult. Manna gathered upon her open palms, forming spell matrices.

She pulled her hands back and formed fists to punch out, but a shadow shaped like a spear forced her to hastily block in front.

“The woman in white!” Agwyn shouted, pointing towards the familiar assassin with more rage than her mother. It was the culprit who messed up her dear Alleigh and Captain Anouk.

Cyra knocked aside the spear and went straight for the interloper, but from behind the woman in white came seven more spears, stopping her in her charge again. The impact blew away the screen of mist and dust, so now everyone had a clear view of their enemies.

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She stood there, no sign of the injuries she had sustained not even a day prior. A dozen more white spears inlaid with complex engravings and glimmering gheist cores hung on her back. She was covered in full body armour.

It was clear she did not come here for a chat.

Elrhain gulped.

The woman in white wasn’t alone. Behind her, seven more dhionne stepped out from the gap. No, portal. Each cladded white armour, decked with an arsenal of manna enchanted equipment with spears aplenty.

But they weren’t what spooked Elrhain.

Thousands upon thousands of black rats with humongous ears and bulbous eyes poured out from the portal like a waterfall, bringing along a foul smell and purple smog. They only parted when they met the assassins like the wave upon rocks.

The rats scampered and cried in a tsunami of ear-splitting screeches, then crashed onto Cyra and the barrier protecting the children with blood lighted eyes.

******

Ten hours ago, in a grotto in a mountain a few kilometres away from the seven pearl lakes.

The woman in white stood before a pool of sparkling water. Beside her, a similarly draped girl healed her with the best recovery magic from the Impelakty. Two giant men stood a step behind, their eyes fixed upon the pool.

After a few quick minutes of wait, the water in the pool swirled. Specks of manna flowed up and formed a humanoid shadow.

The dhionne kneeled.

““We greet the Impelakt, the holy light upon the exalted disc.””

“Stand.” A voice sounding like the echo of a hundred bells spoke. “Speak. Did you confirm the tether, Reconer Galina?”

The woman in white, Reconer Galina, spoke after showing the Impelakt rite for deference. “Yes, holy light. There is an unbreakable tether connecting the Earthloch princess and her betrothed boy. It is…. Similar to the records detailing the founders. I could only see it after casting a sky ranked [Astral Sight] spell with the help of a talisman.”

A few silent minutes passed, then a tired sigh escaped from the humanoid shadow. The other reconers were all kneeling, so their faces were unseen. But many among them had shocked expressions.

Not at the prospect of their target being like their founders… but at the Impelakt’s show of, even if subtle, weakness.

The Impelakt cared not for their musings, knowing he would see none of these reconers again. The ending task he would order had little chance of them returning alive.

“The four here will halt all other activities. This holy one will inform the second team under the Fractured Tundra Peninsula. They will join you within the hour. Use all the remaining Ancillary Riogh-hearts. Tomorrow, you will have the two royals’ heads.”

“Yes, we hear and listen!” The four reconers displayed no wavering even as the Impelakt tasked them with a suicide mission.

“Holy light, permission to speak.” Reconer Galina knelt lower.

“Granted.”

“Would it not be optimal to recover the two tethered children? I do not mean to undermine the light’s decree. Still, they might be the founder and his Impelaktess reincarnated if the records of the Imperial archives are true. There was the collapse as well. Records tell of a similar event when the founder and the first Impelaktess performed their blessing ceremony.”

“That may be so. All the more reason they must die.”

“Apologies. This foolish one doesn’t understand.”

“If they are reincarnated souls, they could possess knowledge of the ancients unheard of in the past hundreds of thousands of cycles. The knowledge they use even as we speak to empower the northern savages. Fishing poles, the cure for the swampling’s curse spread by the Mutant Plague Rats, and who knows what else. I will NOT tolerate this. Not when we are so close to unifying the mainland under the rule of this holy one. Not when we cannot invade these savages directly because of the collapse. And besides…”

Reconer Galina, as with everyone else, perked up their ears.

“Well, this isn’t really a secret. Every main bloodline noble of the high noble clans knows of this. The first Impelaktess, she was the blood elder sister of Earthloch’s founder.”

There was an intake of breath. But the four trained reconers corrected their expressions in a heartbeat.

******

Reconer Galina observed the barrier protecting the two tethered children. The torrents of water on its surface dismembered the horde of mutant plague rats as though they were made of leaves.

A short mage, one of the Earthlochian shamans, cast spell upon spell in brief intervals. But they were not aimed at her colleagues or the rat horde. His spells reinforced the barrier by the breath, forming layers of elemental defence.

Even a full-powered strike from a sky realmer would do no damage to that judging by the intensity of swirling manna.

‘Good.’ Reconer Galina thought. She watched the spectacle of her seven colleagues, each mid or high oceanic, as they struggle to fend off the strikes of the unleashed faediaga eldress.

“Impelakty Reconers? Has that unholy lecherous scum finally lost his mind?! War will not be the end of this!” Cyra, in her dragon form, roared in umbrage. She whipped another of the white-clad bastards aside. But the man stood up in less than two breaths, screeching as he rejoined the fight.

Reconer Galina steadied her mind, trying not to react to the insults toward their holy light. She would not deign the savage Siorraktess with a reply.

Her hand held a fist-sized orb of murky blackness. It pulsed with partial life but no will of its own. The mysterious congregation of aspects that made a manna-riogh heart so special also remained, ready to be used for the Impelakt’s grand design.

An ancillary riogh heart. The Impelakty’s latest creation, the fruit of a thousand cycles of effort by their knowledgeable scholars.

It could change an area into an artificial manna-riogh as the spells upon it activated. It would then link this secondary manna-riogh with the primary manna back in the Impelakty capital even with a thousand kilometres between them, transporting unending streams of gheistrums at comparatively little manna cost. Reconer Galina had used that to bring the millions of plague rats here and what she had used to trigger the gheistrum wave yesterday. And many of the manna-rioghs in the abyss under this very cavern.

Though it pained her she would not see the bright future, her fellow reconers back home will also use these devices as gateways for the Impelakty’s war efforts. She and her colleagues used another ancillary riogh-heart earlier for the same purpose. It was one made out of the remains of a riogh-heart taken from the Dim Subterranean Abyss under these Earthloch caverns to open a gateway here without triggering a single Earthlochian shamanic ward.

But this talisman had more mystical functions, truly an all-encompassing wonder of wisdom.

Galina looked down, ignoring the pain as the ancillary riogh-heart melded into her palms.

They would not need to break any unbreakable barrier nor defeat the enraged faediaga eldress to complete their task.

All they would need was time and distance.