“Yes,” Princess Kristie agreed. “Those who think they are immortal do not like suddenly realizing they can die like any mortal, and that the Land will feed on them most happily.”

“You are certain this vivic fire would kill me?” he asked, inclining his head towards her Blade and the spirals of Lost Light about it.

“No, actually. If your link to the Singularity is powerful enough, you might be able to survive with a permanent loss of life levels, as it burns away part of your soul as you cling to your connection. That is how powerful demons and the like can survive it, sacrificing part of themselves.

“It means we would either have to kill you by slaying you multiple times, or reduce you to a level of power where you are no longer a threat.”

“I see. And if I… walk away from my thankless task here?” he asked, gesturing at the borders of the flames he stood within.

“I am not here to kill you, so that would be your own choice. You have no duty save your own conscience to do what you are doing… but likely you are the only one alive who could do this, save perhaps Nuhmudira. Abandoning your position, with all the consequences to Dereth that are likely to happen… well, perhaps the undead might be able to stop what is coming, they have the knowledge. But Gaerlan does not hate them nearly as much as he despises Isparians, I’ve been told.”

He glanced at her sharply. “That woman still lives, as well?”

“We have correspondence from the undead that confirms it, yes. Nuhmudira set up another assassin’s guild which we’ve been folding up, courtesy of Master Oswald and his knife. She’s proven quite elusive, which should come as no surprise for someone who has mastered at least some of the Empyrean magic.”

“She deals in blood magic and souls, her patrons are no more friendly to mortal life than the Harbinger!” he spat. “I, at least, underwent the tortures of the virindi and was made into what I am! That one, she walked into her corruption with her arms wide open!”

“I am not going to defend her. She was nowhere to be seen during the Fall, and her actions afterwards include mass recruitment of orphaned children to become her pet assassins. Any moral high ground she claims was revealed as the sham it was. If we have the chance to end her, that is what we are going to do.”

He grunted once, looking away, back at her, away again. She could tell it was a reaction to suddenly being judged by another, lesser being, something he doubtless thought he’d grown past, and found irritating and annoying that he might have to put up with such nonsense again.

At last he partially turned away, bringing his legs up and resuming his meditative position. “I will know when you kill Gaerlan and banish the Harbinger again, and I can contain the four Essences until that time. Return when you are strong enough to do so. Your Highness,” he added belatedly.

Kris smiled thinly and turned back around. The roused Fire Essence was regarding her closely as she strode towards the Circles containing herself and it. Flames billowing about it, the ring-shaped creature prepared to stop her-

And she jumped clear over it, outside its reach and over ten feet above it, as fires blew by below her and dispersed harmlessly against the bounds of the Binding Circle.

She actually landed outside its Circle and Skated leisurely away above the ground, absolutely certain Candeth Martine was watching her from behind, and adding some proper Night Rose hipswing just for him.

If there was a sputtering discharge in the central plume, she serenely ignored it.

Ryin just watched her with her usual tolerance for Rantha antics, completely unmoved by a lightfoot jump spanning a hundred feet and reaching nearly thirty feet in the air. “Hey, you are supposed to be impressed by my athletic ability!” she complained to her bondmage.

“Handles ninety percent of the combat load for four hours, burns through her stamina pool three times over, is completely fresh and ready to go for more, and I’m supposed to be impressed by you bouncing over a burning doughnut.” Ryin’s head tilted in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

Kris had to laugh. “Well, when you put it like thaaat…” she admitted, rolling her eyes and hopping over the edge of the external Circle. The magical field closed behind her without ever acknowledging there’d been a breach, something she was sure Martine was pondering almost as seriously as her ass. “Pretty serious magic here, Ryin,” she observed as she squatted down.

Ryin looked at the angle, and rolled her eyes. “He needs to get laid?” she asked with a sigh.

“Oh, so bad I could smell it on him, if the air weren’t burning four ways right there,” Kris grinned, not bothering to look back and see if the mask was fixed on her, as she was sure it was.

“Poor guy. What’s the word?” The Marklink was broken by the Circles as readily as it would be by a Protection from Evil spell, anything that severed telepathic contact or control able to do the job.

“Gaerlan’s over in Asheron’s Castle, held there by the Harbinger, who can’t kill him until it’s free. Martine wants us to kill the guy, then get rid of the Harbinger, then he’ll be able to handle the Essences and clean up this Elemental infestation.”

“Hey, look at that, we got a killquest marker! Should I lodge it in my Visual File and ask for the particulars of the Glory Award and what phat lewt we’re going to get out of it?” Ryin wondered aloud, clearly not impressed.

“Well, if that guy was responsible for loosing the olthoi on the planet, he’s a mass-murderer unrivaled in planetary history and definitely deserves to get aced. Repeatedly, if needed.”

“You’re going to have to go ask Oswald for the secret of severing the unwanted from their system resurrections. You can be sure Gaerlan has one, and the Harbinger is probably forcing him to not use it, or maybe killing and resurrecting him, or close to it.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Think I’ll be able to do that?” Kris asked, intrigued by the idea.

“Not his way. But a Forsaken way? Sure. It’s nulling some form of magical binding to a magical field or construct. He’ll tell you his way, and you’ll figure out how to do it the wrong way.”

Kris nodded. “True, true,” she agreed, completely serious. Powered had their way of doing things, and Forsaken had others. “However, I really don’t think I can make it up to the twat over there quite yet, given some of the shit guarding the way, and that’s if I bother to climb and don’t kill everything on the way up.”

“The probable meteors descending from on high is likely a thing to take into consideration, too.”

“Hmm, yes. Wise Warlord maketh calculations and say, No Fuckingeth Way.” Kris glanced at the Palace in the distance. “Just how badly would we fuck everything up if we started a Wisp Cascade here?” she asked, speculating.

Ryin’s instant reply was enough to show that she’d been thinking about it the instant Quaver had been drawn. “The Wisps are materializations of Corruption in the manafield, the Elementals of uncontrolled mana. The Elementals would win early, then the Wisp numbers would overwhelm them, then the Elementals would just keep coming, even if the vivus slowed down their materialization, while the Wisps themselves would eventually end.

“We could probably warn Martine to stay in that plume and not fight, but everything else here is going to die under a tidal wave of Wisps, the place will reach vivic saturation, the Wisps will stop spawning, and the Elementals will slowly grind them down.

“Importantly, Gaerlan would get away, and likely the Harbinger, too. They’d be among the last to be reached, and no vivic saturation would be in place up there by then.”

“Well, that would just be cheating, then,” Kris huffed. Letting both the extraplanar Entity with malevolent designs get away, as well as the total fucktard who’d brought it here, just was not part of her mindset. “Still, if we set up a vivic blaze and feed oh so many Elementals and Wisps to it, do a good job of calming down that ley line, right?”

“Should do about ninety percent of the work, yes. Give a bunch of archers a LOT of shooting practice, too.”

“Place will be just about covered in Wisps, with Elementals popping out the crevasse, right?”

“Basically, yes.”

“Free Wisps, not Summons.” Meaning more Karma.

“Correct.”

“I could probably practice Cleave Trains for hours and hours.”

“An unusual metric, but likely.”

“Plus it would be really cool to see.”

“See, yes. Get in spell range of, likely not.”

Kris whistled as she pictured just how many spells going off that might be. “Damn. Someone is going to have to take a picture of me going through that on a Cleave Train. It’s going to be hotter than Midsummer Festival!”

“That is absolute truth, I agree.”

“Huh.” She turned her attention towards the slope. “How do you want to go down?”

“Well, there’s the Rantha-tagalong way, there’s the-let’s-test-our-lightfoot way, and then there’s the exciting way.”

The drab and conservative-not Imperial Princess promptly smiled excitedly. “I vote for the third way!” she declared instantly.

“That’s you hauling me on a Disk dodging fireballs from the sky at top speed while I Spellflare the things to irritate the piss out of it for annoying me by not being able to Cast while I’m here.”

Kris’s smile grew even wider. “We’re five miles away!” she pointed out.

“And likely they’ll be following us out to sea,” was the calm reply.

Dancing pale violet eyes met serene silver, her Stupidity Stat flaring brightly, indeed. “DEFINITELY option three!” Kris repeated eagerly. “How do we go about this?”

Ryin’s Disk-leaves came lotusing out of her Masspack, formed into the standard concave shape of a Disk, Runes glowing and ready to take her weight.

“It should activate with the first spell that I Cast,” Ryin said, standing up and sliding aboard the Disk. “So, whenever you want to get started.”

Princess Kristie rose to her feet, stretching fully to the left long and slow, fully to the right… No, no, Ryin was not smirking as she glanced over Kris’s shoulder, back at the staring Candeth Martine.

Kris went up on her toes, doing a full overhead extension, touching one foot all the way up, then the other… “Okay, I see a rough route down, but the bigger ones can really move, so we’re going to be trucking it to outrun them. Probably have quite a train of them chasing us…”

“Good. Perfect for Chains.”

-----

I Cast a spell to eliminate my muscle fatigue, and the manafield went abruptly still.

Even Kris noticed it, the brushing against her Null all gone absolutely still.

All the Elementals down below suddenly looked up this way, in all their energetic multi-colored glory.

“Fuck!” she shouted, grinning as she did, and bolted into motion.

Up on the hill behind us, someone’s eyes were definitely following her.

Let it ride, let it ride, I repeated to myself, ignoring the fact I definitely should’ve just received some whiplash by how fast Kris had burst into motion.

Five miles in the distance, the first fireball shot into the air, incandescently white-hot, arcing and bending this way.

Kris saw it, and immediately juked. We both watched it shift course, neither of us surprised it was tracking us.

It crossed the intervening distance in under ten seconds, so it was really moving as it came down at us, huge and massive and full of Primal energies that were going to take a chunk out of this hill.

Kris was running, jumping, dodging, juking, sliding, veering, and generally being a superhumanly fast gnat darting around. I repeated ‘Let it ride, let it ride’ as gyrations that should have sent me flying, inertial jukes and rotations that should have sent anyone daring to stand on one of these things whipping off, were utterly ignored by the mechanics of the Disk.

If you maintained contact with it, you ignored inertia and gravity, if not the wind whipping at you. If you were stupid enough to jump and lose contact, well, that was on you, good luck!

I lifted up Crown and set off the Spellflare.