A Bones with anger issues pushed on his shield, its bony arms scrambling at the edges, trying to pull the shield off Frank. If he was just holding it, the Bones might have succeed, but the strap gave Frank all the leverage he needed. He smashed his staff into another Bones skull, shattering it, pushed the third one back into the waiting arms of a Snow Shade/Warrior?

Whatever its name, the two dead occupied each other, which gave Frank a moment to look around while keeping his shield up.

The lines were falling apart. In places, the dead were jumping the defences, or just forcing their way through with their newfound Strength. With Snow forces coming up behind them, the whole battle was turning into a wild, chaotic mess. Frank could already hear the other Leaders calling out, realising the same thing he did: the formations couldn’t hold.

It was turning into a general melee.

“Parties, form up! On me!” Frank called out.

Lilijah already had the good sense to stay with him. Brar had been forced to wade into the dead, to guard Deli’s back. For while the young Axe Breaker was a whirling dervish of broken Bones, she couldn’t watch her own back. His voice snapped Deli out of her reckless charge, before she could get too far, or get bogged down on her own among the dead.

For while she’d carved a line into the dead, the sides were pressing in.

Deli and Brar pulled back, taking a few blows in the retreat. Given a moment to breathe, Frank realised another fact: his staff was pulsing in beat with the regeneration. Unlike his body, it pulsed with mana. Wood, nature mana, as best he could tell. What little he had managed to glean from stories told Frank he should be able to…

He set it on fire. Sure, he could have used to weapon blessing to hurt the dead directly, like some of the others were doing. But Frank was a mageling. “I can’t Channel that wooden thing, but my own fire and smoke?”

As a clump of five Bones got between the two pairs of his party, Frank blasted them with a single mote fireball. One he hadn’t needed to pull on his own mana pool for.

It left his staff smouldering, so he’d have to be cautious not to actually damage it, but Frank had access to a lot more mana now. “Probably by-product of the other spells or the Aura.”

There was no way a single Aura was doing all that Frank was feeling. Wide area buff spells had to be involved, which meant they could and would run out.

The party met in the middle of a general brawl. If not for the colour coding, it would be hard to tell the enemies apart. The frost blue/white dead were ignoring the living, focused wholly on the purple/black corrupt dead.

Frank decided to return the favour, for now.

“Ignore the cold ones, all arms on the Betrayers. Deli, centre. Break and Sweep everyone. Brar and Lilijah, take the sides. I’ll watch our backs and blast as able.” Frank rapidly ordered, forming the party up into a diamond formation.

The thing about a melee was that you shouldn’t stay still. Unlike the push and pull of two lines facing each other, a general melee meant enemies could come from any side. Which meant that advancing, moving forward, in whatever direction, was better than standing still. Anyone coming behind them would need to catch them, and flankers would have to chase or fall behind.

Meanwhile, they’d be the ones with a charge and momentum on their side, coming behind their enemies. The goal wasn’t to kill anyone they came across. It was to hurt and disrupt every battle they passed. Be a finger on the scales. Their rapid arrival and reinforcement should shift odds, win local fights and free up more warriors for the fighting.

They pushed through the general brawl until Frank spotted their first real target: a slowly disintegrating shield wall, that was struggling to fight foes both forward and back. The parties in it didn’t have a moment to switch from formation to party fighting under the constant pressure.

Frank’s party slammed into the backs of the Bones attacking the back of the shield wall and when more Bones came after them? He blasted them back for long enough for the pincer to break the back attack, before they peeled off. By climbing the roofs. Only Brar needed help for that, but with three of them, it wasn’t hard. He came up with a passenger, one of the Bones attached to his feet.

By the time they’d dealt with that, more reinforced Bones made it onto the roof and charged them, trying to push the party back over the ledge, back into the mess below.

They met them with shield, axe and staff, fighting for their lives.

***

Frank had found another way to use his magic attack, in that battle. Hunker down behind his shield, and only swing once the staff was charged. The reinforced burst of life wasn’t strong enough to end the Aura backed Bones in one hit anymore. They had a shadowy aura around them now, like Health but for the dead. It made them much more bothersome to finish off.

The burst of green light did still weaken the Bones pushing on him, which allowed Frank to push it back, tripping it up with his staff. Once on the ground and weakened, finishing the skeletal dead off was a matter of wailing on the thing until it broke.

In exchange, Frank took long bloody scratches along his legs. If not for the regeneration, he’d be nearly critical by now. As it was, he was holding on, letting the others with better Health take the brunt of the fighting.

Deli and Brar were the stars of the show. While Lilijah held her own, she fought on her own, holding one side. Brar and Deli did what Shield Guards and Axe Breakers had done for centuries. Hammer and anvil tactics.

Brar pushed into the group of Bones, getting surrounded on purpose, giving the Bones clear shots at his sides and back. He’d bunker down, fighting defensively against all three in his Heavy Armour, only taking the occasional swing. It left Deli free and clear to come from the side, take them one by one. With Agility four, Strength three, a two-handed axestaff and near limitless Stamina, she made short work of each Bones, ending fights in two to three swings. Which all flowed into one another.

With Lilijah finishing another, that was five more Bones to add to the tally for all four of them.

“How many of them are there?” Frank had to ask. They had to be running low, by now. Given a moment to breathe, he threw another fireball into the scrum below, trusting his staff’s ability not to hurt the living. Even so, he threw into a clump of purple dead and living warriors, and away from the blues. Just in case.

Fighting in the warring auras was surreal. Even focused on the Bones before him, Frank was viscerally aware of all three aura sources. It was like he had another set of eyes that watched just them, within him. The experience was distracting, making Frank wonder how the others were coping with this.

He didn’t get to ask.

While they were fighting, the Snow King had advanced on the ritual circle with his army of the dead. They were met by another larger army, digging themselves out of the ground and snow. Filled with Bones, Skeletons, and a smattering of Greater Dead, they kept the army of the Snow King occupied while the corruption spread. The Snow King himself waded through them, breaching the lines, only to be faced with an open gate.

Above the Hooked Horror, the leader of the dead had formed a large gate with its appendages, of corrupted metal and profane bones. Out of it, some kind of shadow beast emerged, a blob of darkness that flung itself at the Snow King. It couldn’t stop his advance, tearing at his windy, icy flesh, but it tangled with him, wrestled him back.

The living shadow slowed him down, buying more time for the ritual to corrupt the lake.

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Frank remembered a detail Deli had told him: the Snow King would reform endlessly so long as his frozen heart hid inside the lake of snow. But if the corruption forced it to the surface…

While they’d fought, despite the obstacles, the Snow King had made it to the malevolent circle. Its club fell like an avalanche and the ritual bubble popped as if it was made of soap. The cold winter winds rushed in. Two of the Stillwalkers turned into mist and managed to flee underground. The other two, closer to the impact, were not as quick. The winds raced past and through them and with an ear-splitting scream, both of them were hurled far up into the night sky, where pale, gloving Winter Winds picked them up and carried them away north.

The night sky momentarily lip up as the two Stillwalkers reached it, as if Frank was seeing the Aurora Borealis, but in blue and white.

Their loss was not entirely one-sided. Freed of holding up the bubble, the Hooked Horror dove right into the Snow King, its claws and hooks slowed not at all by the body of the other leader of the dead. The Horror ripped him apart from within and called on what corruption it had gathered in the breaking circle.

Like oil spilled into clean water, the dark and purple corruption suddenly became a wave. Driven by an ocean of power coming from the Hooked Horror as the Snow King's body fell apart, it used both a beam of its own and the gathered and spilled corruption to cut the snow lake in half, end to end. Waves of snow splashed outwards and purple corruption mixed with pure white and dark blue cold.

A star of frozen ice leapt from the churning snows towards the forest, trying to find some uncorrupted cover. A second dark beam of the Horror followed it, but not quickly enough.

It was stopped by a large figure, just a bit smaller than the Snow King, three stories to its five, clad in verdant green and golden sunlight.

For while the Hooked Horror and the Snow King had been fighting and Frank and his party were battling in the melee, the conjuration high above the gates had lit up like a firework.

Eight signs, eight symbol it called forth, one for each of the Gods. An octagon drawn in the sky, all in Trade. Phirra’s dancing, graceful A, Ir-karlak’s steady B, all of the Gods were represented at the points of the formation, linked it lines of rainbow light.

Four of the lights went dark as high above the falling droplets split. One half growing ever larger, the other turning, falling to some distant place.

Ir-karlak’s steady B was one of the signs still lit up and it shifted into the seal of the Eternal Tree. Its green verdant light falling on the snow covered forest the Snow King was retreating to.

Out of it stepped forth a living tree, youthful and young, as if some massive sapling had uprooted itself and decide to go for a walk. Nor was it alone, as lesser shapes, walking trees like Sticks, but living, not dead, ran out of the open portal, charging into the fray. They lacked some of the inevitable weight of a Sticks, but moved much faster than their dead counterparts.

And unlike the dead trees, they had almost human faces, somewhat elliptical and elongated, but recognizably faces. Faces set in grim casts as they marched to war, armed and armoured, with spears, shields and clubs made from some strange, exotic pale wood that shined with soft inner light.

The tree giant intercepted the ocean of shadow sent after the Snow King, shielding the retreating monarch of snow with his lively golden light. In one hand he held a massive short spear. In the other, a shield spilling liquid radiance onto the field, as if someone had plucked the sun from the sky and placed it on the living tree’s arm. It was this sun shield that took the shadow blast sent by the Hooked Horror, and it took it without dimming.

He and his people were not the only new arrivals.

Endurance called forth its army of tree folk and their prince, under the seal of the Eternal Tree.

Presence summoned more elves, two squads of them: archers adorned in silver shining Moonlight and shielded spears clad in the burning radiance of the Stars, under an unfamiliar seal that looked like a clear night’s sky.

They were led by a sword staff woman, wielding a shining silver two handed weapon that reminded Frank of some Japanese polearms, adopted into so many games and movies. Her Presence was such that the valley was cut in two. On one side, the dead piled on, growing in the shadow of the Hooked Horror, massing among the corrupted snows.

On the other, which included Blighttown, a mix of Moon and Starlight fell like rain on the battle lines, burning away the gathered lesser dead. They fled or they died.

More than twenty such spears fell from the night sky, obliterating any of the shadow purple dead around Frank and his party. The cold ones, in turn, all retreated. Presumably, going to their King.

The lights spared them.

The furious unholy screech of the Hooked Horror when faced with that light nearly brought Frank to his knees, despite all the help the friendly Auras were giving them. It did drive most of his party prone and all of them bled from their ears.

More than eight kilometres away, a single furious screamed spell, or an aura trick, had hit Frank for 10 Health, the blast of magical death rolling over Blighttown and everyone in it.

In response, under the cold grey hammer and anvil of Logic surrounded by sharp, angled runes, a column of dwarves marched out of the very walls of the town. Resplendent in enchanted gear, they were led by a much smaller Presence, among the other greats. But Frank could hardly miss the short in stature but long of beard dwarf that led them, as he raised his shield and rang it with his sparking hammer. The very walls answered, and it was almost like a mountain was speaking, his drumbeat voice an avalanche.

A glowing dome covered in sharp angled and foreign but not eldritch runes covered Blighttown, finally ending the pressure from all the Auras, stopping it on the walls.

The green elf who’d called them all leapt from the ramparts as the seals high above fell apart, running towards the treefolk and finally, all the auras retreated.

Frank was left panting and groaning from all the back and forth. Most of his team wasn’t much better.

As he tried to regain his faculties, in multiple places around town, buildings shattered as the earth and snow erupted into the air. Ten, twenty Greater Dead dug themselves out of the long buried tunnels of Blighttown.

As if in response, around the town bell, near the barracks, there were flashes of light. The Greater Dead boiled out of the ground surrounded by an entire army of the lesser dead, gathering themselves to kill everyone in town. Their hateful cries broadcast this baleful intent to everyone in hearing.

To oppose them, shouts sounded, from warrior and servant alike, coming from the heart of the human territory:

“The Landkarls! The Landkarls have come to our aid!”

Frank gave a last glance to the walls, robbed of his otherworldly Presence sight. Whatever was going on out there, it was beyond them, beyond him. Others would deal with it, or not. He and the people of the north would deal with the dead coming up from below their very feet.

But as he turned his focus to his party and the newly revealed threat, Frank couldn’t forget what he’d seen. For in place of Strength, the last active seal had morphed into that of the pillars of the Empire.

A memory from the Academy rang in his mind, insistent:

“If you distinguish yourselves, you may be allowed to join the Noble forces sent to help deal with an occurring Void Bloom, should the ancient pacts call on the Empire and its Heroes to do their part.”

In a way, Frank was grateful. The dwarven lord had slammed the dome shut on the Aura War before Frank could find out which of the Imperials was here. Or which Heroes had come with them.

But all that was a concern for tomorrow. “If we live to see it.”

Frank gave them about even odds. That was, historically, how Void Blooms went. Either they were stopped at the start, or it turned into a bloody suppression campaign that took a few years. In which few of the ordinary people caught in the initial fight survived.

“We’ll just have to win this one then.”

Frank helped a sickened Lilijah back to her feet. Brar was helping Deli up. He’d been closer.

“Like I was saying;” Frank continued with a jaunty grin, as if completely unworried about it all: “all that out there isn’t our problem. We have a town to defend.” His high Will must have been helping, as despite the threats and madness all around them, Frank simply refused to panic. With his Command up to about a two, his party could share in his steady attitude.

Seeing how Deli and Lilijah were recovering their wits with a little bit of help, Frank ordered: “Fall in. We’re falling back to the rally point to see what the plan is.”

Brar had been just as disturbed as the two young women, but both more resilient, experienced, and better at hiding it.

A glance at the gathering dead told Frank they didn’t have much time. “Everyone good on Stamina?”

“Yes/Aye/I’m good Frank.”

Frank nodded, feeling his heart beat like an EDM bass. “Double time it, then. We’ve no time to lose.”

Suiting words to action, Frank started running. At about the rate Brar could sustain. Even after everything, he still looked mostly fresh. Frank kind of hated him for that.

The constant fighting had sent his Health rising and falling like a roller-coaster.

Health = 21/50

Mana = 5

They needed to figure out what next, take stock. Ready themselves. “This night is far from over.”

Frank wasn’t sure what kind of advantage ridding Blighttown of the living would give the Hooked Horror, but seeing how many dead it had left for them, he figured it was at least somewhat important.

Anything he could do to irritate or inconvenience the accursed thing was a plus in his books.

“Just as long as we survive the experience.”

Frank was just starting to get used to working with a party again. He didn’t want to lose any of them.

Even Lilijah.

For all the trouble she was causing him and her prickly personality, she was a talented young woman. He’d hate to be the party leader to lose such a talent before it could fully bloom.

“Or have to face Klar to give him my condolences.”

Frank was already tired of all the dead on his conscience. He did not need another added to that grim burden.

Especially not a promising young woman like Lilijah. Call him old fashioned or a chauvinist, but the women that died under his command still bothered him more than the men.

They were just as dead, but to Frank, it was worse.

Maybe it was the German, the Earth in him, but to Frank? Growing up without a mother felt like a worse fate than growing up without a father.

It just was.