The plains before the southern outer wall of Helstein teemed with an endless, roiling horde of monsters. They stretched out as far as the eye could see, even with a high Perception Virtue. Under the light of both Elys above and the massive bonfires that the Uprising forces had built on the wall, strange shadows played out into the killing fields.

Impossible to individually count, the monsters must have numbered well into the hundreds of thousands.

Greycton of Hollow Hill leaned upon the staff his beloved had gifted him all those years ago, and frowned.

Gods, what a mess.

The retreating Army of the Uprising had reached the city only yesterday and had promptly collapsed into its walls. The battle to enter the city itself had been the fiercest fighting of the entire grinding, horrendous week-long retreat back to the safety of the walls. Greycton would even place the chaos of trying to usher every last surviving Uprising soldier through the gates of Helstein as one of the…top three most difficult battles of his long life?

Well.

Perhaps top five.

Luckily, they had succeeded in slamming the enormous, sturdy doors of Helstein behind them without flooding the terrified city with the damned monsters the Loyalists had spun into being. Afterward, he, Leopold, and the boy prince had agreed to grant the exhausted soldiery at least a day's rest. After how hard they had been pushed when quite a distressing number of his warriors had simply laid down and died?

They deserved that much.

The division left to guard Helstein in their absence had picked up the slack. While nobody dared to actually enter into those fields, there were thousands of soldiers who were even now manning the walls around him. Whoever was capable was firing down ranged skills in the mass was doing so, not even bothering to aim as they’d surely hit something. There were just as many all over the walls using ridiculously long spears to thrust down at the monsters that were trying to scrabble up it. So many monsters were down below that a distressing amount were trying to clamber over each other. They had formed several large wedges at the base of the wall that threatened to form ramps to the very top.

Obviously, that couldn’t be allowed.

Anti-siege weaponry meant to repel human invaders was instead being turned on masses of monsters. Vats of boiling oil were poured onto screeching beasts, while alchemical explosives were thrown into the wedges to disrupt them. Catapults and ballistas were endlessly repeating, throwing out boulders and bolts at as fast of a rate as they could manage.

Hell, some people weren’t even bothering with the catapults. They were just dropping boulders into the mass.

It would probably crush something.

But…

They were handling it. For as endless as the horde of monsters appeared to be, they were thankfully unintelligent. While they had been birthed into a relatively high Aether zone for Vereden, they were just too young to have developed any semblance of guile. The best they could do was charge and scramble at the walls uselessly.

The Uprising could handle this.

Eventually.

However, Greycton couldn’t enjoy their inevitable victory.

Because both his daughter and his apprentice had been separated from him, far beyond his reach by now. From his understanding, they could even be inside the walls of Elderwyck at this very moment, risking their lives to bring it down from the inside.

Greycton tightened his grip on Elarux as he glowered out at the horde standing between him and those two children. He would have said it had been a long time since he’d felt this powerless, but well.

He had just been branded as a slave of all things, only a few months ago.

Truly, this was shaping up to be a horrible year. It was only thanks to the cool light of Elys shining down upon him from the heavens that he wasn’t doing something…rash, right about now. For a moment, as the silver glow of his beloved illuminated his brooding form, the radiance thickened. Briefly, Greycton felt an ethereal hand caress his cheek in a wordless gesture of comfort.

He raised his free hand to cup its gleam in thanks, raising his eyes from the field to gaze upon Elys instead. The rocky surface of his dear one seemed to pulse at his regard, though Greycton knew that he would be the only one to see such a thing. He let out a long, slow sigh, letting the tension ease somewhat from his increasingly creaky form. He smiled slightly. “Thank you, my love,” He whispered into the night air.

Elys twinkled one last time, almost playfully, before Greycton felt her attention shift away from him. He didn’t blame her for it. She was busy, after all.

They both were.

Always, endlessly busy.

Greycton heard a pair of sandaled feet tromp up the stairs behind him, in a rhythm he had long since grown accustomed to. He didn’t need to turn to see to know who it was. He would recognize the gait of the person approaching him better than any other in the world.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Wordlessly, Honoka appeared at his side to gaze out at the plains filled to the brim with monsters. She spat rather indelicately off to the side after a moment of shared silence. “What a shitshow,” She finally said.

A brief smile touched Greycton’s lips at the familiar crudeness of his oldest surviving friend. “Indeed,” He said dryly, before finally turning to face her. He paused at her appearance, a tad taken aback.

Honoka hadn’t even bothered to change out of her surgeon's whites. The typically pristine white of the Healing robes was caked with the blood and gore of the no doubt countless patients she’d been treating. Greycton felt a pang of shame. While he had been up here, uselessly brooding about Sylvia and Nathan, no doubt Honoka had been busy saving lives.

It was a familiar regret. He had long since hated how inept he was at the Healing arts, no matter how hard he studied and practiced. Alas, that field of Mysticality was barred from him.

Honoka didn’t turn to face him, but he did see her eyes shift his way. “You going to do something about it?” She asked bluntly.

“Do something, hmm?” Greycton murmured, with the slightest of laughs. Nevertheless, he nodded. “I was…considering it. There are other factors in play.”

Honoka scoffed. “Other factors my ass. You know as well I do that we both could wipe out most of this trash in a matter of days. It’s nothing but a bunch of garbage monsters meant to hassle the weak. The only reason we didn’t already do it was because it would have taken out the Army as well.”

Greycton finally turned to face her with a raised eyebrow. “The only reason, eh?”

A scowl was his answer, his oldest friend already understanding the reasons why he hadn’t stepped in and dealt with this rabble.

Still, the both of them knew that he liked to hear himself talk. Otherwise, or he wouldn’t have become a teacher.

“As much as I wish otherwise, this is an unprecedented opportunity for the forces of the Uprising,” Greycton lectured patiently, causing Honoka to roll her eyes. “Neither of us have ever seen such a ludicrous amount of ‘trash’ monsters, as you so eloquently put it. They’re so conveniently bunched up in one place, waiting to be fed to my-our forces,” He corrected himself. “It would be such a monumental waste for us to steal this from them.”

Still, the way Honoka hadn’t already started sweeping the fields with waves of fire told him all he needed to know. She agreed with him, albeit begrudgingly. With a sigh, the Kawamaran woman leaned her forearms against the top of the wall and looked out over the fields. “I’m…a bit jealous of them, actually,” She admitted quietly. “We sure as hell never had an opportunity like this. The closest thing we got was the damned Sea Beast and its spawn.”

Setting Elarux up against the wall, Greycton turned and leaned up against it as well and looked out over the city of Helstein. The Citadel in the distance loomed large and imposing. Well, at least to some.

Greycton just thought it was impossibly ugly. He felt a pang of homesickness for his much more aesthetically pleasing Academy. He pushed it away.

“Still,” Honoka frowned at him. “We should at least thin the herd a little. Don’t think I can’t tell that you’re antsy to get out from behind these walls again. We both know that the children are going to need help eventually.”

Greycton nodded slightly, sighing. “Perhaps…just a little,” He paused for a moment, an idea occurring. He smirked at Honoka, suddenly feeling surprisingly playful. “You know…there’s a certain combination SpellArt that we haven’t done in some time. It’s not too powerful. It would work to soften this horde up enough that we should be out of here shortly.”

Honoka tilted her head in thought for a moment, before a smile stole across her face. To some, it would just look vicious.

To him, though, it was almost nostalgic.

“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” Honoka replied, surprisingly impishly. She straightened up from her slouching position and looked around for a moment. Eventually, her gaze fell on a nearby flat-topped tower not far from their position, where a group of burly soldiers were hurling boulders down at the horde. “There. Nothing up there that’ll be missed. Let’s go.” With an empowered leap, the woman bounded away immediately, always willing to enact a little destruction.

Greycton shook his head with a fond smile and followed after her. He wasn’t the type to go bounding around like that, though. He had his own method of getting around short distances, that he had quite missed in his disempowered state.

Picking up Elarux, with a brief flicker of concentration, Greycton stepped…

Out.

From one moment to the next, he found himself in a pitch-black void, filled with the distance specks of light that denoted far-away stars.

He felt a ghostly figure embrace him from behind, so similar to the hand he had felt earlier.

Always happy to see you, lover, an ethereally beautiful voice whispered in his ears.

Greycton twisted his head slightly to meet the shining silver eyes he loved so dearly, already starting to feel the strain of merely existing in this realm.

He winked at the ghostly form of Elys.

She winked back.

With another step, Greycton found himself standing next to Honoka on top of the tower.

Not even a second had passed since his translocation.

The soldiers occupying the tower were startled to see them but were more than happy to take a break from their work when asked to. By the time the last of the mixed humans and Sculpted had cleared off down the ladder, he and Honoka were standing on the edge looking out.

“You ready for this, you geezer?” Honoka asked him, almost breathless in anticipation. He didn’t blame her. It wasn’t often that they could really cut loose like this. And with how they had been so recently depowered, Greycton thought they both needed the reassurance that a flex of their might would bring.

Plus, this world needed a reminder of just what Greycton of the Shadowed Sun and Scarlet Empress Honoka could do.

Greycton took a deep breath and allowed a vicious smile to cross his face as he employed a familiar mental Skill. His mind spun up first into two and then three and more and more and more trains of thought, all bent to bending reality to his will. The shadowy silver core at the heart of his soul flared brighter and brighter, as he felt the manifestation of his Mantle flare into being around him.

The world darkened, the night growing deeper in a murk that could not be pierced by most mortal eyes.

He was already feeling centuries younger.

“More than, you walking fossil,” He bantered back.

Honoka threw back her head and laughed as she loosened the reins on her own Mantle. She flared into brilliance next to him, three sets of two fiery scarlet wings erupting from her back. The woman shone like a star, blazing through the gloom of his soul. She drew Kasai from its ever-present place on her back, the blade blazing into being with a white-hot radiance held before her.

He had always thought it appropriate how their own unique brands of Mysticality complimented each other like this.

In a moment of concentration of countless thought cycles, the spell matrix that he had crafted so long ago to work with Honoka sprang to being. Elarux began to glow in a cold dark light.

He raised it and crossed his staff with Honoka’s sword.

At the point that they met, a spark.

Far out into the battlefield, a star bloomed into being, nearly as large as the Citadel itself. Pulses of searing hot silver flames pulsed out from it, turning uncountable monsters into so much ash.

Night turned into day from the combination of their might.

Honoka started laughing in exhilaration, and Greycton joined her.