Somewhere in the Ash Heaps

It took a week to recover from the loss of life that had heralded their journey into the interior. In that time, thousands had flocked to their banner, and many more that went unseen were galvanized to rebellion. None of them could truly do anything, as they were far weaker than the forces of Granath, but it would be helpful to have some sort of network set up for if they managed to liberate the circle. It would hardly be efficient to go from one tyrant to another.

They had taken their anger out upon the soldiers that stood in their way, butchering them in revenge for their own losses. Eva actually managed to gain levels from all this, seeing as she was a lot weaker than the others. It was a hollow consolation, but it was a consolation nonetheless.

Eventually, they came to the next of the roads, and repeated their long march, clearing away the supply lines to the Ashen Citadel. Nothing much could stand in their way anymore, so they went basically unopposed. Jonathan was starting to get sick of the monotonous ash. He couldn’t wait to finally break free and ascend to the next plane.

Their march across the plane could not go unopposed forever through, and eventually they were met with stiffer resistance. Granath’s elite forces manned the roads that stood between them and the capital, having moved there over the last few days. There were between ten and thirty thousand Tier 2s in the realm, and almost half of them had been assigned to be some sort of mobile task force, made to deter Jonathan and his crack team of allies from going after the roads, which were vital to the survival of the city.

Jonathan peered out from behind an ash drift as he watched a platoon of low Tier 2s march along the side of the force field that guarded the supply route, trying to gauge their strength. He knew that he could probably defeat them with ease, but now that he knew of the existence of powerful combination attacks, which Edgar had said was called ritual magic, he was a bit more wary of charging into danger.

Ritual magic was a way of breaking past individual limits, drawing upon the power of a whole group to cast powerful workings that had much wider reaching effects than anyone could achieve on their own. The only problem was that this usually required some sort of sacrifice, whether in the form of materials, or in blood. The latter were the most powerful, but were understandably hard to find volunteers for. It was this difficulty that had made the topic slip Edgar’s mind in the past.

Stolen story; please report.

A few moments later, Jonathan spotted what he had been looking for. A Crimson Sect mage lounged at the back of the enemy lines, gazing out into the ash. One hand clutched a long wand that looked like it was made of bone. On a hunch, Jonathan used Truesight. He cursed as soon as he did so.

“Motherfu- Bastards are using another ritual array,” he said.

“What kind?” Edgar asked. His vision was not as good as Jonathan’s, so he usually used him as his spyglass in situations like this. “Somatic? Corporeal?”

“Looks like a Corporeal Working. The mage is connected to a bunch of tendrils that are connected in turn to the Tier 2s around us. Looks like some sort of power concentration array. However, there is only one mage, as far as I can tell.”

“I still don’t understand all of this ritual magic stuff,” Bordeg complained. The Uthraki rarely spoke, but it seemed that his confusion had eclipsed his taciturn nature for once.

“It’s just another form of magic,” Edgar said. “Mages can work together to cast spells far more powerful than they could ever make alone. Some of them simply use the mages’ mana pools and connection to cast. Those are called Somatic Workings, because all they need is an incantation, or a certain gesture. Meanwhile, Corporeal Workings use things that cannot willingly contribute to the ritual, such as the energy of a large scale sacrifice, or valuable materials. This one is Corporeal because it is drawing upon the energy of non mages.”

“Ah. I should have just stayed in Tartarus,” the Uthraki said grouchily. His life had changed a lot since coming to the Ash Heaps.

“Anyway, I’ll try to take out the mage first,” Edgar said. “My long range abilities are better than the rest of yours. Any objections?”

Nobody spoke, and Edgar headed up to the top of the ash drift, creating a telescope out of compressed air. With the right angles and proportions, one could make a magnifying glass out of the atmospheric gasses around them. Edgar peered through the telescope, building up a spear of wind in his other hand. A moment later, the attack streaked across the ground, moving at thousands of miles per hour. It crossed the dozen or so miles in a few seconds, heading straight for the mage. Because air had little to no mass, projectiles made from it tended to travel on a straight line.

The mage looked up at the last moment, and a shield of scarlet energy snapped into being around her. However, Edgar was a true elite, at the peak of what this realm had to offer. His bolt of wind shattered the shield without any resistance, blasting apart the mage a moment later. A sullen red glow rose up from the corpse, drifting across the ash. A few seconds later, the soldiers around the mage began to seize, vomiting up vast drifts of reddish vapor. The vapor was sucked into the mouth of the mage’s corpse, and suddenly, the corpse rose.

“What the hell was that, Edgar?” Jonathan exclaimed.

“Shit! Goddamn death triggers. That mage had the ritual set up around her own death. Almost impossible to sense, seeing as the trigger is indistinguishable from the ritual core itself. Granath’s minions have some tricks, it seems.”