Palimpsest tried to kill me in much the way I would have expected: they tried to surround me with their insect-soldiers, attacking from all sides to overwhelm me. A few of the giant longflies that had gotten through our defenses descended upon me as more mantises joined the fray.

I didn’t want to spend all my time dodging and weaving, and so I resorted to surging my [Aegis] as they came for me so as to kill them quickly. A mantis would strike, and I’d briefly stop launching arrows to block its claws with my forearms, the force of its blow driving my legs deep into the ground.

But getting so close to me would prove lethal, and as the hulk reared back it would be stricken with a bolt of red lightning and fall dead. The torn skin on my bare arms would heal moments later as I tore my legs free from the earth to turn and face my next attacker.

I was too fast. I collected my greatsword, tightened my windsleeve, and launched myself across hundreds of meters of field just to intercept their mantis hulks and fight them far from where their tunnels were belching out new spellcasters.

There I I scoured the boon spells from their bodies with small strokes of my [Fray]-enhanced lightning, setting the whole of their bodies aflame. They ignored whatever pain was brought by the fire, but without the [Aegis] granted by their boon spells, my follow-up lightning burst their heads open, its many claws leaving them no escape from the lethal blow.

As I did this, my bow never fell silent. Every beetle that I could see casting a spell was felled within moments, multiple arrows striking at them from different angles so as to confound their conjured barriers.

While I fought, I set my attention on organizing the defense.

Ranival, I said, contacting our head white necromancer. Get back to the walls and get ready to make fuel for the firedancers. Next I sent orders to the flying firedancers that I’d had hang back at the keep, telling them to be ready. I also had Larash organize all the elves on the walls who could throw lightning: it was crucial that we use a certain form of the spell, and that would take some small amount of preparation.

Then, all at once, the mantises and longflies that had converged on me peeled away and began to run for the keep. Having failed to overwhelm me in the field, Palimpsest was sending them to try the keep, spending their troops where they would matter before we could completely wipe then out.

I took a quick glance around me and sifted through the bond. There were still more beetles emerging from the tunnels, still more mantises arriving each moment from along the riverbed.

But the skies were clearing. The force that Palimpsest had intended to drop on our keep from above had mostly been successfully intercepted. Many of the guardian drones had made it past our loose formation of windcallers, but very few longflies had—their spellcasting skills had made them too slow, too frail. They were large, easy targets for our windcallers.

I recalled the first windborne to the keep. With the forces on the ground attacking now, any aerial enemies that got through because of their absence would be out of step with the main force anyway—right now I wanted them for dealing with the mantises.

The windcallers needed a little more time and they could finish with the last of Palimpsest’s aerial swarm and set to the task of blocking the tunnels and punishing the oncoming mantises. The pressure that our enemy would put on the walls now was the worst we’d have to bear for the foreseeable future.

Just a little time.

I launched myself into the air, but I didn’t chase down the insects that had left me to charge the walls. Instead I launched myself over them, soaring past them to approach the keep within mere moments, my high [Channel] allowing me to fly faster than any other elf.

Some carcasses heaped at the base of one side of the wall showed me where Palimpsest had made a tentative first try against our defenses by committing some of their boon-assisted hulks to see if they could break us easily. Likewise, some more fallen corpses of the giant longflies and guardian drones littered the ground here and there, but these were only the ones that had gotten through our intercepting aerial force.

All in all the walls had gone mostly unassailed since Palimpsest’s first, drone-fueled assault.

I landed, then reached into the bond and found that preparations had mostly gone the way I expected, then found all the stormcallers that I’d ordered to organize. Behind me, the gathering swarm of insects charged.

I want to clear the lightcaster beetles, I said. We’ll be doing it before the first windborne arrives to assist us. Mana-seeking lighting, all of you. Aim in concert and end your bolts high above them. It won’t matter that this will spent half the mana we use just to shape the spell. Our lightning will be weaker, but the beetles’ only real defense is their camouflage.

Once all the mana in a lightning-bolt had been ignited, the spell naturally sought the closest high-density patch of mana. We were modifying the spell, structuring the thought-based component of it in such a way as to greatly enhance this effect.

Those of us who couldn’t cast the spell by skill alone would be using the tablets, but there weren’t many of us. Lightning already took so much skill that learning the various simple, useful affectations that one could apply to the spell was only a matter of time.

Our bolts would be a little slower, and a little weaker, but neither of those things would matter much, here.

Ahead of us, the beetles came on—a sparser collection than had first assaulted the walls, though now the massive, almost skeletal form of the huge mantis-creatures loomed among their numbers, most charging just behind the initial wave of beetles.

Break to strike down the mantises only when you need to, I said, watching the oncoming horde.

Mana filled the space before us as the channelers moved it from our trough of mana-dense water and blood and into the air, leaving it at the ready so that our casters could use it to power their spells.

Arrows flew as the beetles came closer and closer, striking with greater accuracy as some of them approached the ditch. The first of the mantises leapt up toward the walls and was stricken from the air—first by a mage-thrown spell that dispelled whatever boons it might have benefited from, and then by a lightning bolt as thick as a tree trunk.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

But as all this happened, I kept my eyes on the mana in the air before us, weighing it. It was mostly for the firedancers, not for our stormcallers. The enemy’s forces below the wall thickened, the tougher beetles filling the fields at the base of the wall and moving into the moat while their spellcasters shielded them with conjured barriers of light.

Then I judged the mana to be plentiful enough.

Now, I said. I extended a line of lightning as all around me, other stormcallers did the same—a long, thin line that ended high above the oncoming swarm of beetles. But as I did so I focused on tailoring the spell’s consumption of the mana, modifying it.

I ignited two bolts that flashed a bright white, each of them sacrificing some of the power of lightning to extend the grasp of their mana-seeking ends. The bolts, which ended above the swarm below, each bent suddenly as the built-up power found the nearest high density of mana—the spellcaster beetles, and veered toward them, cooking them alive.

The rest of the stormcallers followed my lead, striking down the spellcasters at an alarming rate with flash after flash of thin, angular lightning. Some of them diverted to strike at the massive mantises that tried to fly over our walls, but mostly these were brought down by our icebinders and our strongest, greatbow-wielding warriors.

Within moments, hundreds of lightning bolts had flashed from our walls, each bolt another dead spellcaster. Finally I watched my own bolts twisting to strike one of the beetles that they’d previously ignored and smiled.

Fire, I said.

At my command, every elf who could fly and conjure flames soared over the wall, but there were many more flyers with them. Almost every elf who could fly, but hadn’t been assigned to any aerial fighting force because their skills hadn’t made them fast or tough enough went with them. They were the main reason that we had to kill so many of their spellcasters—our force would move slowly, compared to most of our windcallers. We had to keep it protected.

Almost fifty elves took to the air, flying low, many of them wearing skysails. They formed a line

Most of them handled the mana: taking that which had already been pushed out just outside the walls and drawing it out further above the swarm, creating a thick ring of mana around the keep that began some distance away from our moat.

And as they flew, the fire dancers pushed their claim into the ground below and ignited the ring of mana behind them. A wall of mana-fueled flames leapt into existence, rising nearly as high as the walls of the keep itself. It incinerated the bugs beneath us, their carapaces cracking audibly within the heat.

I rushed ahead of them to make sure that none of the mantis-hulks that had already arrived could interfere with the maneuver, striking them down with hasty lightning and powerful, surge-fuel strikes of my greatsword. Twice I didn’t kill my targets, instead severing or blasting their wings until I was sufficiently satisfied they wouldn’t be able to take the air.

Behind me, the mages and earthshapers worked to shield the flyers from any spare conjured light and thrown stones. We moved slow for flyers, but fast enough that we’d circled the keep in a little less than half a minute, wreathing in flames that blazed so intens we had to have our icebinders and windcallers work to keep the heat at bay.

I landed on the walls and looked out at our enemies with grim satisfaction.

The remainder of Palimpsest’s charge could come no further. A few of the mantises tried, but we were ready for this, too: the mantis hulk would leap, wings chopping at the air, and our people would launch a well timed spell at it, dispelling the boon that granted them the [Aegis] they needed to survive, at which point their wings would shrivel in the air and they’d fall into the flames to die.

A few moments of this was all Palimpsest needed to choose to retreat… but it did them little good. Arrows harried their forces as they fell back across the body-strewn clearing, greatbows bringing down even the mantis hulks.

Before they were even out of the range of our arrows, the first windborne descended upon them, having returned from the battle in the air. They brought down what little beetles remained with arrows and destroyed the mantises with well-coordinated lightning, chasing them far up the riverbank and attacking with impunity from the air.

I flew to the point on the walls where Larash was overseeing the battle and giving orders. To my surprise, I found Galenni, the head psychic, standing beside him—Mirio was gone.

“Mirio switched?” I said. “I wanted to speak with him. I….”

But I faltered as I looked for the archdruid in the bond, I found that I couldn’t find him. Not anywhere.

“He’s unconscious,” Galenni said, his face grave. “He overextended. Palimpsest almost killed him.”

“I see.”

Galenni’s face was stony and pale. When they’d said that Mirio had overextended, the phrase had been a clear criticism of the archdruid. But even if they believed him to be inexperienced or unskilled enough to make that mistake, they had to know both that they were neither equal to Mirio’s raw talent and that the archdruid had been wielding better skills than they did.

If Mirio had only lasted this long, how long were they to last?

Who would be our psychic vanguard when they needed to step down? Valir would be back soon, and could do it if we replaced some of his skills. With my high [Aegis], I could do it, though not while fighting. Luthiel could do it, but only as a last resort—he was working on the tracking spell that, with Mirio out of the picture, was our only hope of finding this thing.

I didn’t let my dismay show on my face. We had all manner of psychic defenses in place at the keep, and yet still Palimpsest could bear down on us with such incredible power as to bring Mirio down in little more than ten minutes.

“If Valir isn’t back by the time you need to switch, call Fireesha, then call me,” I said. “My [Aegis] will help make up for the fact that I don’t have the skills.”

“Lux Irovex.”

I nodded to him, then left, confident that our people could hold the walls and skies—at least until something changed drastically. Palimpsest might be able to throw many more waves at us, but they had any more tricks prepared here then the time to use them had long passed.

More beetles were already gathering outside their tunnels, and a larger portion of the aerial attackers was on its way on account of my spreading our windcallers thin, but the forces at the keep could handle them now that they weren’t worried about ground assaults.

We’d successfully carved our enemy’s forces up, forcing the attack on the ground by depleting their aerial swarm and threatening to seize full dominion of the skies before they could attack in concert. But the assault from below, which their forces had surely been meant to attack in concert with, was just beginning.

Still, Palimpsest’s tactics didn’t bode well for our long-term odds. As far as I could see, they’d converged on the keep and burnt their remaining minions not because they saw victory at hand, but to put the optimal amount of pressure on us and see what it revealed—how we’d defend the walls, how far they’d get underground, and the force they’d need to bring to bear to either harm our windcallers or push their way past them. They were fighting in a way that to me suggested they were still only fielding a fraction of their overall strength.

As I took the steps down toward the lower levels of the keep, I felt a cold pressure on my mind, the sensation clear and striking but not unwelcome. It was a feeling like stepping outside into fresh, clear air.

It was Luthiel. He wanted to speak with me. But at present, I needed to take directions from Zirilla.

Be quick, I told him. I’m joining our underground defenses.

It’s Mirio, Aziriel, Luthiel said. He found them. He found Palimpsest.

For a moment I froze on the stairway. Then I grinned. Good, I said. Very good.