I stood upon the wall and looked out over a field of Palimpsest’s dead minions. Once the attack had been crushed, the wall of fire had been suppressed, leaving a ring of scorched earth that ran the circumference of the keep.

Some of the guardian drones still descended on the keep from above, but these were quickly stricken down with arrows. Beyond that, the second attack had largely been fought off. The tunnels they had dug were now blocked with ice, and the few beetle drones that had survived had moved back to gather with the mantis hulks, then been beset by our windborne elves and slain by endless arrows.

Valir had departed with the greater half of the elves that I intended to assault Palimpsest’s location with. They were running along the upper cliff’s edge, would be at Mirio’s designated spot within moments. Nothing had come to intercept them yet, though surely Palimpsest could sense them coming.

Of course, Mirio had apparently been addled when he’d given us the position—there was always the chance that something about this whole situation was wrong. It was a possibility that added more value in sending Valir out first, on foot: if something had gone wrong, if Mirio had somehow been tricked into giving us the wrong position, they might reach the site and learn as much without me ever having to leave the keep.

True to my suspicions, our seers reported that the drones were burrowing upward to make several exits that looked like they would emerge near the banks of the river.

It was a bad sign. The fact that Palimpsest hadn’t tried to sue for peace likely meant that they not only had minions to spare, but even more tactics to employ against us. Most of all, they had to have some plan for fighting us in the air that they hadn’t yet revealed: if we were left unchecked in the skies, then it wasn’t just the approach along the river banks be nothing but a killing ground, the greater distance between their tunnels and the keep would give us more space to fight them from as well.

I had Ranival and the other white necromancers work to continue preparing the deadvault. Luthiel was now on the walls coordinating icebinders to spend the bulk of our mana in the next defense: the assumption was that since we’d shown Palimpsest our wall of fire, we could no longer rely on it. Whatever form their next attack took, it would have to account for the defenses we’d already shown, a fact that obliged us to get creative now, in our preparations.

I handpicked several of our fastest windcallers and had them fly up the banks of the river, stretching our network of psychics thin to defend them—but in my mind it was worth the risk. I wanted to see where the mantis-hulks were coming from. Palimpsest had to keep their soldiers somewhere, and it might be a place we could attack.

More than that, I wanted to know how far away it was. As far as any of us knew, Palimpsest had to be reasonably close to their minions to command them—their own skillset would likely include the many [Sight] skills they’d need to extend their gaze across many kilometers to psychically command these subjugated creatures. Wherever these insects were coming from, it couldn’t be far.

Ultimately, I hoped that all our plans and precautions were unnecessary. We’d found Palimpsest, after all—it should have been over soon.

I was only on the wall for a minute or so before Valir contacted me.

They’re here, Aziriel, said Valir. We started sensing them and then they attacked.

From Valir, I got a psychic impression of the landscape at the base of the cliff, where the foliage-covered hills of limestone rose out of the lower mist layer, which now shone white. Many of the flying guardian insects were rising up out of the mist to converge on Valir and the dozen people he’d taken with him.

I almost felt relieved. Certainly I was happier than I ever had been at the sight of a swarm of hostile insects.

Let’s go, I said to everyone who could fly. I rose into the air and we joined into a formation to speed along the cliffside while keeping watch on Valir and the others through the bond.

We’ll fight to take position by the stream, Valir said, sending me the impression of a tiny brook that ran out over the side of the cliff.

Good, I told him.

I think we found where they are, said Valir. Cave in the cliffs before us. Has a lot of defenders.

He send me another impression through the bond, though this one wasn’t visual: it was an impression of gaze, of one of the seer’s senses detecting many beetles spilling out of a crevice in the side of the basalt cliffs that overlooked the white hills.

We’ll be there to check soon, I said.

It was surprisingly close, and we flew fast. Valir and his team came into view within less than a minute, a small group of elves that had already engaged some of the flying insects that were converging on their position.

Zirilla, let’s you and I take the cliffside and see what we can do about those oncoming beetles.

Aye.

We landed near Valir, almost doubling the number of elves on the cliffside.

Zirilla and I took up positions on the cliff’s edge to shoot at the beetles that were crawling up towards us. Our view of the oncoming insects was blocked by the layer of mist, but it didn’t matter: I could see them with the wild bond and Zirilla could feel their feet on the rock beneath them. To the naked eye, it looked as if we were attacking the mist itself, our arrows burrowing into the ethereally glowing substance, their wind sleeves parting the mist around them before they disappeared.

But out of sight, our arrows were bending to strike their targets from all angles, setting the dead beetles to falling down the cliff and often knocking into their comrades.

As we worked our bows, both of us channeled into the air behind us, giving mana to the icebinders we’d brought so that they could do their work and form temporary fortifications, building a small bastion of conjured ice atop the cliff. We weren’t the only ones: Valir had picked a half-dozen archers who had the [Blood Magick] to convert the fallen into more mana, granting our icebinders abundant power for their spells.

They used water that they pulled from the nearby stream, creating permanent ice rather than conjuring it so as to keep their [Focus] free and build something of unlimited size.

Around them, everyone else that we’d brought wielded their own bows and magic to keep the greater ground forces—and the airborne swarm—at bay. Palimpsest’s forces hadn’t been concentrated on our location, and they weren’t converging fast enough to overwhelm us.

I had to wonder about what sorts of creatures they must have fought before. It was easy to see how swarming behemoths or primeval convergences could prove a legitimate strategy, but against our bows these creatures were fodder.

Very soon everyone save Zirilla and I was standing on a house-sized battlement of white frost, one that continued to grow outward as rows of icy spikes were put into place along the stone around it.

The creatures that were crawling up the cliffside, meanwhile, were obviously more of the lightcasters that Palimpsest had hidden in their second wave. They were fast when it came to conjuring light to block our arrows, but they had the exact sort of defensive instincts that we trained to overcome in enemy spellcasters, and soon Zirilla and I were sharing our targets, bending our windborne arrows to strike each beetle from multiple sides, launching some arrows on wider arcs so as to ensure that four of our missiles would converge on our enemies at once.

Still, the beetles advanced to the point that Zirilla stopped channeling her mana to our icebinders and instead began to break away portions of the cliff beneath us, dropping two dozen heavy stones in a heartbeat. The stones fell in a cascade, spinning and bouncing down the slope.

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Then, with what must have been a hundred minute pushes and pulls across dozens of stones each second, Zirilla guided the falling rocks into the beetles, where their gathered force knocked our enemies from the cliffside. I grinned as I watched her work: she was as good at finessing the stones as I was at gathering mana for lightning, her skills as miraculous as those of a grandmaster musician with their favorite instrument.

As we fought, Varalos, our seer and one of the psychics we’d be using to shield ourselves from Palimpsest, put his hand against the rock.

It is a simple cavern that opens into an irregular gallery, he said. The creature within has hidden themselves in the bond quite perfectly, but now that we’re close I can see them. There is an abundance of… dead flesh, a great coil of something that is rotting. And there is a plant, a large vine coating the walls that sprouts one very strange flower. But what you must know is that there are eleven of the beetles sequestered in cavities in the ceiling, each of them awake. And there are cracks and fissure in the rock which I expect are intentional.

An unsurprising plan for defense—drop the roof of the entranceway on any intruders as a last resort.

I want to go in, if we can manage it, I said. The keep isn’t under much of a threat right now, so we can take our time and collect some samples for the mages—it will be safer in the long run to learn everything we can.

Zirilla, Varalos, and I can kill those beetles, said Seriana.

They might collapse the entrance anyway, Zirilla said. Even if your spell will kill them all in one moment, we are rather conspicuously waiting to enter the cave.

Aziriel said we have time, Seriana said. With this much blood, we can get you all the mana you need to get us back inside.

Soon the beetles emerging from the cave began to thin. It seemed to me that what had happened was obvious. Palimpsest hadn’t know we were coming, and their defenses for this place were mainly their beetle casters, the ones that they levelled and gave stronger skills. Shortly after they stopped emerging from the cave entirely.

I turned my attention to the skies. The drones there were still plentiful, but we’d seen none of the longflies. It seemed that Palimpsest didn’t keep their stock of minions at this site.

I only need another minute, Seriana informed me. She was standing outside our icy bastion, marking the stone beneath her with chalk, seemingly totally oblivious to the arrows flying over her head and the bodies falling around her.

When she’s done, I want Varalos to do another check and be absolutely certain we’re safe to enter.

Valir, Seriana Zirilla and I go deepest into the cavern. If you can’t fly, you stay on the cliff. If you can, you’re spread along the length of the cavern to keep our claim in the stone and sense anything coming from any direction.

Aziriel, you’re far too worried about getting buried alive, Zirilla said.

Beside me, Valir let out a booming laugh.

The cavern seems mostly empty of any more defenders, Varalos said.

I nodded. At this point, the most likely trap is that our enemy pins us inside with a surprising amount of sudden reinforcements. I paused, then added: Varalos, go high and keep a lookout.

Aye, Lux Irovex.

It was only a few more moments before Seriana said: finished.

Let’s go.

We leapt from the cliffside, me with Valir’s arm linked in my own. The others flew gracefully into the crevice and lit it with magelight; I pushed myself and Valir in with a forceful gust of air, then dropped him onto the hard stone beneath us and landed beside him as he rolled and came to his feet.

We wasted no time rushing into the depths of the cavern. Past the gash in the rock, the walls had been cut away by the beetles into more of the rounded, grooved surfaces that they seemed to like so much. Many coffin-like cavities in the walls around us marked the places where they’d been woken from as we attacked.

The stench of rot was omnipresent, overpowering, made the air feel filthy against my skin, made my mouth water in anticipation of a bout of vomiting. It grew worse and worse as we moved deeper.

The four of us moved quickly, our gazes enough to map the uneven terrain ahead of us, and very soon we came to the large chamber that Varalos had spoken of and saw the source of the stench. It was a massive worm, its body thick enough to fill one of the tunnels carved by the beetle drones.

It was also dead. It corpse had bloated, and its thick hide was blotched and darkened like it had been bruised all over. Holes covered its skin, ranging in size from as big around as my fist to being as big around as a tree trunk. Translucent white roots or vines grew out of all of these holes, stretching to cover the walls and floors of the cavern in a thick mat of tendrils.

Rising up out of the center of the worm’s corpse was an object that looked almost like a mussel, two halves of a smooth, ovoid shell that were barely split open. Inside I saw a thick mass of thinner, smoother vines, knotted up like a tight ball of yarn.

Even with the stench of death around me and the urgency of the moment driving me onward, I felt a flash of curiosity. True, the way the vine had grown out of the hole-pocked corpse of the worm was hideous—but many things in nature were unsightly. More corpses lay around the vines along the floor of the cave, along with an assortment of bones. The plant apparently needed no light and was carnivorous. Palimpsest had seemingly brought it here in the worm, which was both transportation and fertilizer.

But beyond revulsion and curiosity I was stricken with a more powerful emotion when I saw the shell-and-vines structure that was growing out of the worm’s corpse: anxiety. Anxiety coupled with disappointment.

This wasn’t Palimpsest. By my guess was just another one of their agents.

“Is this the source of the psychic power that’s controlling the swarm?” I asked.

“Yes,” Seriana said. Her expression was distant, but her voice was firm.

“You think it’s a kind of relay that conveys the power of the true mind?”

“Yes.”

I stared at the shell-coated bundle of vines, devoid of all defenses except psychic ones. It wasn’t pulsating or glowing in any way—like most plants, it was completely still, gave no indication that it was trying to destroy us even in that moment.

And yet I knew, by glimpsing into the bond, that it was lashing out at Valir with all the mental power it could muster, attacking him with spike after spike of malevolent psychic energy. The thing before me was fighting like a caged animal.

“And do you need me to keep it alive to help you find the others?” I asked, assuming Seriana knew what our next move would be.

“No.”

“The claim, then,” I said. Seriana and I moved closer together, then pushed toward it with our claims as I filled the air between myself and the shelled plant with more than two thousand mana.

It took both of us to even get close to the thing: Palimpsest’s high [Focus] meant that they could push against my claim with incredible force.

This defense was ultimately meaningless, however. The bolt was so strong that it connected with the shelled creature even though the line of my mana couldn’t get closer than ten meters.

The lightning lit the cave and filled it with a sound that would have burst everyone’s eardrums were it not for our [Aegis]. The blast incinerated the wad of plant material in the shell and raised the temperature in the air around us considerably. One half of the shell fell away, then slid off the corpse of the worm to be caught by some of the vines.

“Did that do it?”

“Yes,” said Valir. “The tendrils are still alive, but the psychic component is gone. My guess is that if we leave things this way, they’ll grow that part back.”

Seriana moved forward and drew a knife, cutting away at some of the vines before moving to take a piece of the shell.

“It’s impossible to tell just at a glance,” she said. “But my guess is that the worm conveyed it here only recently, when Palimpsest decided it was time to attack.”

I was staring at the smoking ruin of our enemy, dissatisfied. A quick check with Larash on the keep walls told me that the beetles underground near the keep were still digging much as they had before. We hadn’t even interrupted our enemy’s connection to their minions.

Palimpsest had likely set up more than one of these nodes neary enough to our keep that they could stand losing one of them. It was the obvious way to go about it, rather than suffer the massive vulnerability.

It also explained why the defenses at this one had been so meagre. The anxiety that I’d first felt in this place had grown to form a pit in my stomach. My hopes of scoring a sweeping, final victory before another attack on the keep were fading fast.

We’d taken an important step, of course: but compared to my best expectations, this step forward felt like a step back.

Worst of all, Palimpsest had to know beyond a shadow of a doubt now that we were searching them out.

When we did find them, they’d almost certainly be heavily guarded.