Wind rushed past my body as I hurled toward my next opponent. I projected what I’d seen of their exoskeletal structure to the windborne squads around me and warned them that for some reason they were conjuring hard light.

Another of the longflies loomed ahead of me, its distant shape growing larger as it came toward me at a startling pace. I flew to ensure that its path would intercept my current location, then swerved rapidly and channeled a line of mana into the air. A moment later I ignited a lightning bolt that tore through its barrier of conjured light and cooked its head, sending it spinning away toward the ground.

Another nearby longfly launched a few slivers of light toward me, which I twisted to avoid in the air. A few of the first windborne took advantage of the longfly’s diverted attention and filled its head with arrows and I watched it fall, satisfied.

We moved fast, our formation a loose oval that all of us rotated around, keeping ourselves exposed to our enemy while our speed protected us from their launched stingers.

And yet I had to wonder about the light it had conjured. It was an unusual choice of skill for a fighting insect drone.

Unease crept into me as I grew more and more suspicious of what the conjured light might mean.

I contacted Larash. Have the wildhearts search for irregularities in the beetles, I said.

I returned my attentions to the battle in the air. There were a startling number of the giant longflies that had emerged, stealthed from the sight of our psychics, from the upper mists. Once it was clear to me that our windcallers were unthreatened by the stingers of the thousands of guardian drones, we focused on these, spreading our formation wider and rising through the air to form engage any that tried to fly past us to the keep.

We wouldn’t be able to intercept them all, but their exoskeletons weren’t hard enough to stop our arrows, and so most of the ones that tried to fly by us were stricken from the air quickly.

It wasn’t long before I heard another voice in my mind. Lux Irovex, It was no-one I recognized immediately—one of the wildhearts or seers. Some beetles are protecting some others—they’re not all the same!

Show me.

They sent me a brief flash of an impression, one of several beetles throwing themselves over the body of an identical-looking comrade before being bombarded with wave after wave of arrows. It was a haphazardly assembled impression—they were an inexperienced wildheart—but I got what I needed.

Good, I said back, scanning the ground below me and reaching out with my [Wild Bond] to find a living corpse sheltering behind several dead ones.

I informed the head of the first windborne that I was leaving them, then dove toward it as fast as I could.

As the air rushed past my face and the ground, teeming with the swarm, rushed up to meet me, I thought about what I’d seen in the air—and I thought fast.

The longflies used hard light, but not often: they were using small, simple applications of it when the aerial fighters, especially me, drew close.

[Light] was one of the most versatile aspects, and one of the reasons for this was that it allowed the conjuring of hard light: solid, luminous substance that could be shaped as the caster desired.

It was somewhat surprising to see the longflies using it. Some smaller predatory insects used minor light magic to lure their prey. Sometimes, in the way of many natural creatures, their ability to instinctually cast one or two spells rivaled that of practiced elves spellcasters.

But gigantic flying insects would need to have skills that supported their ability to fly. Their instincts wouldn’t lend themselves to conjuring hard light because the common class that they began with would have to be geared toward flying. Not only was their initial class core unlikely to support light magic, but they’d also need physical attributes to keep themselves in the air.

All this meant that it was highly unlikely, in my mind, that these longflies were born to naturally grow into using light magic once they reached a high enough class tier and a high enough level to support it.

If Palimpsest was raising these creatures just to have an army on hand, they shouldn’t have powerful classes. Gaining a higher-tier class required that one’s deeds and thoughts slowly build up the sophisticated aspect required to support it.

How would that work for creatures whose minds had been crushed so that their bodies could be puppeteered? Palimpsest would have to cultivate them directly, guide them into repeating the actions that might gain them a class. Their reach had to cover a vast territory for them to steal a broad sampling of insects in the first place, and their enormous psychic power would more than suffice to maintain the control they’d need to.

But it wouldn’t be easy. Some of these creatures, like the beetle-drones and the flying guardians, they could simply breed and leave with whatever common class they were born to. But the longflies were gigantic, and without skills to bolster them they wouldn’t be able to take to the air. That meant that Palimpsest had controlled them until they’d been able to take higher-rarity classes—it was the only way they could both be flying, and conjuring hard light.

Still I had to wonder: why hard light? I felt I knew the answer… but I didn’t want it to be true.

Hard light was versatile, but its versatility came with heavy drawbacks. First, it cost as much mana as conjured ice. Second, it cost much more [Focus] to create, maintain, and manipulate than any other substance.

Hence why primeval spellcasters, with our [Primeval Resonance] boosting our [Channel], preferred to throw ice around. It was mages, with their [Arcane Resonance] boosting the efficacy of their [Focus], who fought with hard light.

Hard light was useful, but not so useful as to be worth the commitment that Palimpsest had seemingly made. Raising up portions of their army to conjure hard light would not just cost them valuable skill cores from their soldiers, but require those soldiers to be built with high [Focus] as well.

Hence the answer that I felt was obvious, but didn’t want to be true: Palimpsest could use their own [Focus] to maintain the spells cast by their minions.

The minions still needed [Source] and [Channel] of their own, of course—but [Focus] handled the internal component of spellcasting. It was entirely possible that Palimpsest knew methods to handle the spells of the drones they commandeered.

They were a sort of creature I had never seen before. I’d seen psychic hives of insects, of course, but not ones that subverted other insects into their ranks to be commanded in battle.

In fact, if they were nothing but a giant brain somewhere, or some throbbing coat of neural moss that filled a massive cavern deep in the earth… one that not only had a very high [Focus] to maintain control over their minions, but an uncanny talent for emulating the thoughts required to structure magic without the attribute… then it would all make perfect sense.

I’d sensed their mind, after all. I was a grandmaster spellcaster and could emulate hundreds of [Focus] with just my concentration when it came to hurling lightning bolts, casting certain rituals, and using surge magic. What would this alien being be capable of, if it’s entire existence involved growing and spreading, subverting new insects?

And another question, one that twisted at my gut: just how big were they? How many soldiers could they command at once, and how many could they field in total?

It would take them [Focus] to command each of their troops. If my theory was right, they had an upper limit on how many of their bodies they could awake from stasis at once. But as that limit went down, they’d have more and more [Focus] to devote to spellcasting—and with many mana pools and their enslaved bodies’ natural channeling speed to limit their ability to spellcast, hardened light would be the most powerful magic available to them.

These thoughts rushed through me in mere moments as I sped toward the ground where the younger wildheart had indicated. I thought I had a glimpse of their strategy: seed the army with creatures capable of spellcasting, and each attacking wave would grow stronger as more of them were killed and Palimpsest’s [Focus] grew more concentrated.

But it was time to check. I landed hard, leaving an impression in the earth below me as I struck the ground in the middle of the swarm of drones. Arrows rained down around me, but with 300 [Aegis] an arrow whose only momentum came from gravity could barely scratch my skin.

Before me was a small heap of their bodies, but I could sense a living creature beneath it with my [Wild Bond]. Around me there were more beetles in every direction—and as soon as I landed, all of them began to converge on my position.

I rushed forward, wind at my back, and grabbed two carcasses, tossing them away with a surge of strength. The pile shifted, and I saw my living prey moving beneath them, scrambling to tear itself free from its armor of the dead.

I lunged, reaching out and gripping the two hard horns that protruded from either side of its face, wrenching them so that my eyes were locked with its own.

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Then I pushed out into it with my [Wild Bond], psychically assaulting it even as I momentarily committed my [Focus] into assaulting its threshold.

“Mine,” I hissed.

Palimpsest’s mind was split across all their soldiers, but I was only focusing on this one—which I had an easier time invading because we were touching.

I felt our enemy’s mind for a brief flash, its vibrating thoughts repulsing me. Then, for a split second, the beetle in my hands was mine.

I saw everything I had feared.

It was a much higher level than its peers. Its skills and attributes were more angled toward spellcasting than physical combat. It didn’t have [*Earth] skill cores, but [*Light]—and it hadn’t increased its [Focus], confirming for me that it could use Palimpsest’s.

A moment later I surged my [Aegis] as an enormous spike of psychic force ripped me from the beetle’s mind. Palimpsest had borne down on me with everything they had once they’d realized what I was doing.

But it didn’t matter now, I’d seen their hidden tactic.

These creatures didn’t follow the rules of a typical psychic insect hive, where all of them would have similar classes, skills, and levels.

Just as we had used Palimpsest’s first wave to cloak our true power, so had they: their spellcasters were hidden within the swarm, likely all taking cover from our falling arrows under the bodies of their comrades.

When Mirio had first looked out at this new wave of drones, Palimpsest had very likely made chinks and cracks in their own psychic armor, allowing Mirio to glimpse only those beetle-drones who were like the ones that had come before.

I reached out for Larash. It’s the beetles! I said. Everything is a distraction for the beetles. Some of them are higher-level spellcasters, and they’ll grow stronger the more of these soldiers we kill.

I stepped back from the spellcaster beetle, drew my sword, and swept it in an arc as the insects closed in around me, slicing clean through half a dozen of them. I spent another second dispatching the rest of the nearby enemies, their armor no match for my strength.

Then I reached out, stretching my gaze far and using the sense granted to me by my [Wild Bond] and [Earthen Might] to glimpse the battlefield and its occupants in my near proximity. I found another beetle hiding under the corpses of its comrades, then leapt through the air and dispatched it by plunging my sword clean through one of the bodies it was using to shield itself and into its brain.

Waves of them were emerging from the nearby tunnel, all of them headed toward me. An arrow struck my skull, scraping along my scalp and setting my ears to ringing—but it was nothing more than an unpleasant experience, and I was glad that the commanders hadn’t ordered their archers to stop.

I lay about me, cutting down another dozen of the drones with a few lightning-fast slashes of my sword, looking all the while for more of the spellcasting beetles.

Another beetle emerged from under some corpses of its fellows, then launched a volley of many splinters of light my way—but I slapped myself backward with a wall of wind, avoiding them, then rushed forward to slash my blade through its face, making a deep cut through its surrounding carapace as I did so.

I whirled, cutting down more of the beetles, then making use of the added [Channel] Fireesha had granted me to reach out and slay another emerging spellcaster beetle with a thin but powerful stroke of lightning.

Before it had fallen I was half-leaping, half-flying through the air to my next target, again pushing the blade of my sword through the corpses of its fallen brethren to pierce its tiny, armor-encased brain.

Palimpsest had another trick on account of their ability to distribute [Focus]. Just as Fireesha had increased my [Channel] by casting a boon spell upon me, Palimpsest’s minions would no doubt be able to strengthen one another with similar such spells.

The difference would be one of magnitude: with multiple creatures to provide the mana, Palimpsest could likely bestow truly stupendous attribute bonuses on their soldiers, most likely their mantis-hulks, who would even be able to fly if their attributes got high enough.

With me, it would make no difference. [Fray] lightning would dispel such spells. But our defenses on the walls hadn’t prepared much for breaking the boon spells of potential attackers. Our primary threat model had been behemoths and elementals, neither of which tended to come with their own support spellcasters. But I knew our capabilities: we could be ready in just a minute or two.

And so as I fought, I gave orders. I told Larash to have the mages be ready to dispel boon spells on any of the insects, but most likely the incoming mantis hulks. I was demanding, insistent—we needed to be ready to dispel their boons as soon as possible, to curse them and keep the spells from being reapplied.

I warned our flyers that some of the longflies might suddenly become faster, stronger, more powerful overall, and that they were to prioritize killing any insect they saw landing on their larger kin—touch was required to bestow an attribute boon.

Rocks thrown by the drones struck my flesh and shattered, leaving little more than bruises which I healed with my [Blood Magick]. Insects swarmed me, but to little end: my sword flashed about me, blood streaking off its blade and through the air. Carcasses fell in circles around me, and I danced across them, moving my blade with strength and precision to kill them by the dozens.

I could have taken flight and left, but I had seen a chance. Killing Palimpsest’s spellcasters in the field here would only do a little—there were many other tunnels for them to emerge from. I couldn’t upend our enemy’s tactic by myself, but that wasn’t what I was trying to do.

I couldn’t understand Palimpsest’s mind or feelings enough to manipulate them, but there were still guesses I could make. I was the leader. It only made sense that something like Palimpsest would overvalue me.

Above, the windcallers signalled that a substantial portion of the swarm had diverted toward me. From the wall, Larash indicated that many of the mantis-hulks were now coming my way.

I grinned. A few seconds of dancing about the battlefield uselessly had been all I’d needed to spend to buy a serious tactical blunder from our enemy.

Protect me, Mirio, I told him. I’d need to concentrate for this: Mirio could protect me from Palimpsest’s psychic attacks.

Around me, I saw many of the beetle-spellcasters emerge from under their hiding places, joining what I expected would be a concerted effort to bring me down. I threw my greatsword blade-first into the nearest of them so that I could pull free my bow, then leapt into the air and surged my [Agility].

If the archers on the wall had impressed Palimpsest with their speed, I had to wonder what our enemy would think of me as I conjured and launched my windborne arrows, stilling the vibrating string with a motion of my palm between each shot.

I began with the casters emerging on the fringes of my vision, my arrows flying out over hundreds of their kin to curve downward, bent by their windsleeves, and pierce their carapace from any angle before destroying their brains with explosive force. I aimed with my gaze, not my eyes, my arrows reaching insects that I couldn’t even see.

At 300 [Aegis], the draw of my bow was so strong that my arrows didn’t just pierce armor, but made craters where they’d once had faces. With my [Air Magick], I both extended my leap and turned myself to get the best angle on my shots, so that by the time I’d hit the ground I’d killed dozens of the enemy spellcasters only a few seconds after they’d begun emerging.

The first of the mantises arrived only a few moments later. It was a glorious, terrible sight: its wings chopping at the air in a flurry behind it, long limbs dangling as it soared toward me. The speed of its flight suggested to me that it was either a high level, or had already received one of the boon spells I’d been so worried about.

But I’d been worried for the sake of the defenders on the wall, not myself. The motion of my hands and the violent sound of my snapping bowstring never ceased as it approached. I leapt toward it to keep myself from being buried by the drones, another elven arrow bouncing off my skull mid-air.

Even as I sent more arrows into the guardian drones filling the air around me, I channeled a thick line of mana into the air toward the mantis, then forked the line into three thinner paths. Palimpsest, no doubt sensing my mana and knowing what it meant, had the mantis dive to one side—and I extended only that path of the fork, forking it again into a grasping set of mana-claws so that no matter how the mantis moved, one finger of mana would come near its face.

I ignited the lightning a moment later, sending more than a thousand mana into the mantis’s head and bathing the battlefield with a flash of red light.

The bolt didn’t just burst the mantis’s head. The [Fray] aspect in my lighting ignited the boon spell that Palimpsest had granted their massive predator, wreathing its entire body in flash of momentary fire—the boon spell had been nothing more than fuel to me.

All the while, I worked my bow, dropping guardian drones out of the air around me. I leapt back to a place where I’d cut many of them down with my greatsword and began to craft another bolt as more of the mantises began to arrive.

Blood ran across the carcasses and through the soil at my feet, drenching the heavy fur cloak that swept behind me and coloring it a deep red. Because I wasn’t in the air, almost all my [Focus] was solely set to the task of replenishing my [Blood Pool], and every moment that I wasn’t channeling mana to form lightning I would be converting my blood into more mana or healing whatever small wounds I sustained.

The enchanted teeth around my neck, [Aziriel’s Pale Fangs], also made my lightning more mana-efficient. Combined with the cloak on my back and the field of corpses around me, I’d have as many lightning bolts as I could throw.

Within a few moments, two more of the mantises had been destroyed before they could touch me, their bodies burning where they fell. The air still filled with the lashing of my bowstring, a sound like a whipping cable. Stones, slivers of light, insectile stingers, and elven arrows sped through the air toward me, but the very few that struck me did only mild damage: the way they jostled me was more of a problem than the wounds they caused, which I healed easily.

I glanced upward and saw some of the giant longflies descending upon me. A few of them had already fallen from the sky: when they’d diverted to come for me, some of the windborne elves had taken advantage of their hasty descent to strike from above and gain some easy kills.

I surged [Strength] and launched several arrows through the closest longfly’s eyes, arcing them so as to bend them around the barrier of hard light that I knew it would conjure. Then I launched myself into the air with a mighty leap, shot a few more arrows at the spellcasting beetles below me, and re-oriented myself toward more of the oncoming mantises, channeling mana to throw another lightning bolt.

Just a little more time. The more of our enemy’s forces I could divert, the more the keep would be ready to defend against their magic.

Let me speak to them, Mirio, I asked our archdruid. Just a moment.

I could feel how frayed and weathered Mirio’s mind was as he put me before Palimpsest once again, but I didn’t spare a second thought for the archdruid, not now.

I had to goad our enemy.

Tell me, Palimpsest, I said to their pulsing, vibrating mind. Are you mortal? Do you age and perish like the beasts around us?

A sliver of hard light buried itself in my thigh, and I turned and snapped a shot at the insect that had thrown it, the arrow piercing its carapace, sending cracks through the natural armor as it flung the insect backward and excavated its brain.

Or did you think, perhaps, that you would live forever?