The Cult of the Ardent Wildfyre, perhaps predictably, made its home in a blackened wasteland. The charcoal corpses of the forest made for good cover as they approached the fortress that the cult had carved out of the mountainous terrain. The small group managing to get within a couple hundred metres of the granite hewn bastion.

Erebus’ mournful gaze swept over the trees. The forest had been too small to have a great dryad, too out of the way to have a name. If it weren’t for the elemental that had burst into existence amongst the flames its passing would have gone entirely unnoticed.

They’d waited for daybreak, destination side, before teleporting in. There’d been some debate on that one, given they were going up against pyromancers there had been a question about using nightfall to take some of the pressure off of Amara but the vampire had been insistent she wanted the literal firepower that daylight would give her.

The going was slow, wildfires did not typically get hot enough for rock to run and flow but with an elemental in the mix things had gotten to the point where stone didn’t just melt but boil and black glass razors now littered the once-forest floor.

That had created some small problems for the group, Alice had probably left her bodyweight in blood behind on the walk here, the warshifter adamantly refusing to wear shoes, claiming she hated the feeling of being confined. Holly on the other hand was currently being carried by Erebus.

It was even less dignified than it sounded, the necromancer had her under one arm like a particularly uncooperative sack of flour, still the dryad had been glad of it. Anything to avoid having to stand on that ground and hear the dying screams of the forest that had been trapped in the briquettes that were all that remained of her fellow dryads.

The fortress was a stark, roughly hewn and grey stoned affair, there had been no thought of artistry, and little thought to practicality beyond ‘a place to live’. That, in Erebus’ experience, wasn’t a good sign. The Cult of the Ardent Wildfyre had been around for close to three centuries, to have such bleak living conditions after that much time spoke to a terrible militancy combined with a total lack of concern for the cult members, every resource earned being funnelled to their elemental.

In fire elementals it tended to be doubly bad, it spoke to an urgent need to consume everything in their path. Even wildfire elementals weren’t necessarily malevolent, a forest fire could be a force of renewal as much as a force of destruction and there had been such elementals that were renowned for their skill with the healing arts, even more so than hearthfire elementals – though given such arts involved being burned the wound had to be a desperate one indeed.

This elemental, which the book they’d grabbed said was called Charigris, clearly wasn’t one of them.

With a deep breath to brace himself for the battle to come Erebus

“Okay. Remember once the elemental is out in the open we hit it with everything, as long as we buy enough time for Alice to shapeshift this should be a fight we can’t lose. Al, don’t shift before the elemental reveals itself, hide if you have to, we don’t want it running away.

“Holly, I’m going to put you down now. Try and keep your senses on the ground, make sure we aren’t being outflanked. Alec, if someone tries to close with us use one of Sato’s vials, it’s doesn’t matter which one, they’re all lethal.

“’Mar, you’ve got the cult leader, Nat, you thin their numbers. Lana, cover my back while I blast open the fortress. Weaver, targets of opportunity at your discretion. Any questions?”

“How many are we expecting?” Natalya asked, indicating the book Erebus had been leafing through.

“Official records say fifty mages, no stand out talents. Given they’re on the verge of a coup I’m going to guess the official record is bunkum.” Their leader said, unstrapping his battlestaff and putting his pack down where he stood and packing away his travel staff.

His trusty travel staff, the ebony worn smooth from use, had been a near peerless tool. But that’s what it was a tool. For all the obsidian skull topped wood could focus any spell imaginable, it made a poor weapon. Too generic, too geared towards utility. The staff he was now holding could never be anything but a weapon.

Lady Yew’s gift had undergone a few changes in the last few hours. Two slim bands of rune-scribed metal, gold and silver, had been pushed up to the top. Bound spells Erebus had called them. A single spell of great power that could be used just once.

That wasn’t what drew the eye. Where the branches had curled near the top they now were curled around a lavender orb. Almost nothing could withstand the touch of annihilation but Yew’s staff, filled with the powers of life and undeath, was, for now, up to the task.

“Any other questions?” The necromancer asked as he began to channel mana into the staff, the lavender orb slowly growing luminous with green light.

“What about prisoners?” Weaver asked gently, even less at home on a battlefield than even Alec.

“If they surrender once Charigris is dead then we take prisoners. Until then it’s a risk we simply can’t afford.”

“How big are we expecting this elemental to be?” Natalya inquired, tone one of professional interest rather than concern or urgency.

It was Amara who answered, “A large fire elemental is the size of a human. There’s records of ones as big as a small house but they don’t last long where they struggle to burn enough fuel. The reason Qrilotesh is huge is she’s a volcano elemental – earth-aspected elementals tend to be big - so I’d say no bigger than the third floor of that fortress where they’ve been deliberately boosting it. There’s probably a throne room or something in there where it makes its lair.”

“If it’s so much smaller how can it hope to kill Qrilotesh?” Alec asked the vampire curiously.

“Qrilotesh is a volcano, one of the more constructive aspects of fire. This one’s about as destructive as it gets. It might not be a match in raw energy but it’s a lot better at using it to destroy.” The pyromancer explained.

“Is that everything?” Erebus inquired, hurrying things along. “Good.”

He stepped out from behind his tree to unleash a blast of green lightning, the spell bursting into a dozen tendrils of ruinous energy as it impacted upon the warded stone.

Amped up by annihilation itself the entropy spell tore through the magical protections, collapsing the work of decades in but a moment then tore through the walls and outer gate for good measure.

There was a moment of silence as they stared into the courtyard where the cult’s battlemages were conducting their morning drills. The battlemages stared back, some of their jaws hanging limply in pure disbelief that something had just obliterated their home’s defences in a single blow.

There was a rumbling of stone and the section of outer wall collapsed entirely, the resultant rubble obscuring the pyromancers from view.

“Well that’s less than ideal.” Nat noted as she stepped forwards to join Erebus, who was already charging his second strike. From atop the wall guards were taking aim, but from this sort of distance they could manage little more than fireballs, or in one advanced case a blast of lightning that redirected itself a few feet from either necromancer to ground harmlessly on Lana’s armour.

Erebus couldn’t disagree with her, though a cynical part of him said they should have expected most of the cult to already be up and about. Plotters tended to be fairly fastidious and organised people.

It certainly confirmed that the official records were a work of fiction of such quality that authors and playwrights for generations to come would weep at the sight of them. There had been more than fifty mages in that square alone.

There wasn’t time for those sorts of considerations, Erebus’ second strike took down a second, even larger section of the wall. With the wards down the blast of entropic annihilation was able to carve through the rock with ease.

It was a common error with warding. Not even an error really, by using the wards on the stone to create a single shield rather than a more piecemeal approach with each brick carrying its own separate enchantment, the resultant shield could hold up against spells that could turn an entire town into a smoking crater without being any the worse for wear. But they were awful against entropy spells, which wasn’t an issue people tended to plan for. Almost no-one used entropomancy.

Almost no-one’s third strike took down the last of the outer wall and began lining up a shot on what was either a dormitory or an armoury given the stream of crimson robed mages pouring from it, only to unleash it into the sky instead as a white-hot ball of flame came crashing down towards them out of the sun.

The spell hadn’t actually come from the sun. From somewhere deep in the fort a siege class fireball had been cast and teleported into position to blindside them, potentially wiping them all out in a single blow. It very nearly succeeded, if it weren’t for the crackle and roar of so much heat in one place roasting the very air no one would have known it was coming until the flames spread their ashes evenly over several miles.

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As it was Erebus’ entropy spell disrupted the woven mana of the fireball, the glowing orb blinking out of existance in a moment as it struck, revealing the molten core of lava within it in time for what remained of the necromancer’s spell to splatter the liquid rock all over them.

It was Amara that saved them. Even Erebus couldn’t put a shield up for all of them in the split second they had before the deadly fluid began searing its way into their bones but the pyromancer, with supernatural senses and superior reactions, was up to the task, drawing the heat out of rock so it fell as little more than gravel and small stones and then blasting that same heat back towards the fort to admittedly little effect.

That, Erebus decided, was a lot closer than he was comfortable with. The sole good news was that there was no way they’d stored enough power to fire whatever weapon that was more than a few times. Unless, a treacherous voice whispered, they were using Charigris to power it, in which case they could expect a strike like that every couple of minutes.

Looking around he noted the position of his comrades, Natalya was stood besides him, waiting for battle to be properly joined to unleash her ghoul cascade, or some other horror of battlefield necromancy. Lana was just a step behind him, reading to bodyblock anything that was thrown at her, trusting to her armour to keep them both safe.

Weaver was already missing, doubtless lying in wait somewhere inside the fortress, better off acting as the predator her form dictated rather than treating it as a fight.

Amara was standing in the open, all but daring the pyromancer of the cult to target her, the vampire utterly confident in her mastery of flame over their own, and given how she’d handled their magma cannon it seemed like a confidence well earned. That just left Alec and Holly, both still sheltered against one of the ruined trees as they waited to deal with whatever surprise assault the cult brought to bear. Alec already had a phial in each hand, just waiting for a target.

He'd likely be waiting for some time. For all the destruction already done, battle had not really been joined yet. Nonetheless the sight caused a deep pain in his chest, he hadn’t wanted or intended to turn Alec into a warrior, it had just happened.

It was debatable whether he should even have brought the teens with him. They weren’t useless, Alec had in just a few short months become a skilled enough swordsman that the Paladin Order would have likely knighted him on the spot. Admittedly more a testament to the quality of his teachers than any natural talent but the boy’s tenacity certainly deserved some of the credit.

Holly too was rapidly growing into a veritable terror of natural magic, if not a particularly ordered one, leaning heavily into her natural talents as a dryad rather than the structured spellwork of mages.

Still they were little more than children and he’d dragged them with him into a war. He wanted to blame that damn prophecy, he wanted to blame the cultists upon whom he was now venting his considerable spleen. Both had certainly done a lot to limit his options, of course neither were the real reason.

It all came down to agency in the end. As much as he wished it was still the case, Alec wasn’t some naïve kid, he’d seen some of the worst this world had to offer. He’d suffered. He’d been ripped from his home. He’d nearly died. And that was nothing compared to the trials Holly had been through.

Directly placing null stone on a magical creature was the kind of order most torturers would have refused outright for being too cruel. Lutan had never employed torturers, if there was something foul to be done he would do it himself. It was somewhat tragic that this counted as a virtue.

The point was they weren’t unaware of the danger they were throwing themselves into. If they wanted to fight then he’d have been little more than a tyrant to deny them. That was the problem with power, get enough of it and it was hard not to be a tyrant.

“Behind us!” Alec shouted, the urgent yell snapping Erebus from his introspection. Perhaps he should have been continuing to lay waste to the fortress but even with the orb it was a taxing spell and he wanted to save his strength.

Specifically he’d wanted to save his strength for the second magma cannon that had just placed its shot behind them. This time he didn’t put half so much power into the green bolt that tore the fireball apart, careful not to splatter the lava as he hit it with a teleport of his own.

There were mercifully short screams as the ball of superheated rock crashed down in the cult’s courtyard. Erebus nodded in satisfaction.

There was no way that had been the same cannon as last time, way, way too soon and the shot itself had been informative. What they should have done was fired the two shots simultaneously. It was very unlikely they’d have stopped both of them when caught unawares.

Which told him two things: they’d never had to use the cannons in anger before and that they’d been drilled to fight a large army – a full Council combined arms response for example – where the continuous barrage would have been the right tactic.

Some things remained constant. No army was ever prepared to be attacked by a handful of people. It just wasn’t the kind of thing people trained for. Sure there’d be a handful of elites who’s sole job was to take out any supernatural heavyweight, but the rank and file just weren’t ready for it.

Speaking of elites… five pyromancers descended from the sky, using the kinetic force of their flames to slow their descent.

Erebus glanced at Amara, who shook her head. Fine then, it looked like this fight was his.

“Lana, my back please. I don’t want to be fielding potshots when the rest of them get their act together.” He ordered, stepping forwards to greet his fellow magi in the traditional manner.

Which was to hit each of them with a bolt of lightning, actual lightning, not the much slower entropic kind, from his warstaff. Their shields all held. Bubble shields he noted, kept a couple feet away from the body.

Classic pyromancer defences where the residual heat from spells could diffuse and air fry an opponent without the spell ever breaching the shield.

They stared back at him. Four in crimson robes and one in a vermillion suit of armour. Again classic tactics, the mages would keep him locked down while the spellblade would close the gap, able to wade through his comrades’ fire and bring the excessively large maul he was carrying down on Erebus’ shield. Even money there was some kind of shield breaker on the flanges of the oversized weapon.

A faint trickle of unease rolled down his spine. While he hadn’t put his all into those strikes their shields had barely even rippled and he’d put very good money that the shields were being powered by artifacts to free up the mages’ concentration.

This fight was going to be tricky. The important thing was not to look like he was enjoying himself.

*

This fight, Natalya mused, was far too easy.

The big problem the enemy was having was one of space. In the few minutes since Erebus had begun his assault the Cult of the Argent Wildfyre had managed to get its act together. Everyone was awake, armed and angry but that mattered very little when, apart from the magma cannons, no one was able to bring any of the anger to bear upon them.

The fortress had been designed to be defensible, a single elevated narrow path to the gates, forcing anyone trying to get in to traverse a dirt road barely wide enough for a wagon to breach the defences. Doubtless the road was mined as well, the mines activatable by an artifact within its buttressed walls.

With the fortress literally built into the mountain there were no other avenues of attack that wouldn’t involve moving thousands of tonnes of rock, though to Natalya’s mind that in itself was a weakness. There were enemies that determined; a force of geomancers could likely bore their way in in a matter of days.

It was an exceptionally good defence, and Erebus had turned it against the defenders in just a couple of blasts of the green lightning the necromancer favoured. With the walls fallen and no battlements to man they’d lost their ability to rain down fire on their attackers with impunity, trusting to their wards.

A few were laying prone in the rubble but most of the thin streams of fire were missing them entirely. With their battlestaves so close to their faces in the more cramped conditions the fire was blinding them.

Which wasn’t to say that all the flames were missing, they weren’t, but it was far from the overwhelming heat that should have burst shields even as it turned the rock beneath Nat’s feet to lava. And the flames weren’t lasting long, to project the spell hundreds of metres was already a feat in itself, to maintain it for any length of time a near impossibility.

Amara could have done it but even Erebus would have gone for a different option rather than waste the energy, but these were pyromancers, and everything looked like a nail. She could already feel the ambient mana in the air dropping like a stone.

The smarter ones were forming up by what had been the gatehouse, combining their shields together so they could weather the storm of spellwork they expected to fall upon them the moment they braved the path. They were right of course but it was still irritating to see.

While famed duellists like Amara and living legends like Erebus might delight in skilled opponents, Natalya detested them. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the youngest living archmage grinning like a maniac as he dodged, ducked and weaved away from an enchanted maul that was heavier than he was, all the while managing to get in strikes upon the four battlemages who hadn’t let up their streams of cerulean fire for even a moment. Infuriating.

With a shake of her head she dismissed Erebus from her mind, focusing on her own task. Harvesting the chaff.

What she wanted to do was pop a shield and hit one of them with the ghoul cascade that had been so terribly effectively against the Avalonian arach. There was nothing better for sowing confusion, discord and despair than having ones allies turn upon each other.

After that the hardest part would be making sure she killed all the ghouls once the battle was done. Something she hadn’t done in Avalon; Erebus wasn’t the only one who held a great antipathy towards the Sidhe.

Alas the opposition was competent so she instead settled for reanimating those that had died when the battlements fells.

Zombies were noone’s first choice of undead. They were slow, they were clumsy, they stank and they had no great magical powers. What they also were was easy and quick to make, even from a distance, and, above all else, durable. And that durability translated into a terrible strength.

There was a terrified scream as a hand burst through the rabble to grab one of the valiant defenders by the throat though Natalya was too far away to hear as the scream became a gurgle as the woman’s neck was crushed beneath undead fingers. She wasn’t too far away to sense the death though, and seconds later, the pyromancer too began to move once more.

The group on the bridge hesitated, the enemy now behind them as well as ahead. Again competence reared its ugly head as a sonorous and sorcerous voice rang out, “Press on. If we dally here they’ll pick us apart. In the name of Charigris, kill these necromancers. Let their foul magics be cleansed by the fires of our Lord.”

Sometimes Natalya forgot that even amongst mages necromancy was not seen as a universal good.

The speaker was almost certainly the Cult’s Speaker. And by the sight of him he was also a Chosen, and his elemental was way, way too strong for him.

He wore no robe, presumably because no cloth could have withstood the heat of his flesh which looked like it had run like molten wax, the few parts of it that were not blackened and crisp, ash falling from him whenever he moved. Where his skin had split from the heat orange light glowed and roiled.

For Charigris to abuse their own Speaker so… it spoke volumes of the creature’s priorities, and of the man’s foolishness, to devote himself to a being that held so little love for him.

As Natalya focused on the man, there was a feral hiss behind her as Amara uttered a single word. “Mine.”

What happened next was too fast for her to see as anything other a blur, the mages around the speaker fell down as nothing more than ash, and a dark shape surged forwards to hit the Speaker, carrying them both into the courtyard with such an impact that she could hear it even from there.

There was nothing pleasant about Natalya’s smile as she focused on the remaining mages, their shield broken and their leader missing.

This battle really was all too easy.