Harvestfall Mine 2. After Adelle had attacked Mine 1, it was the next most southern mine still functioning at full capacity. The soldiers of the army let Eca and his posse through without resistance, and the resistance began setting up for the summon.

"Make sure all the cryst wires are connected," Eca instructed to the men and women carrying the bundles of leather-covered wires off the carts. "Anyone that can still be rescued, pull them out and get them treated for mist poisoning. Those who can't, euthanize." He spoke of the mercy killing so matter-of-factly that it sent a chill down Adelle's spine.

Still relying on his staff to walk, Eca then proceeded down the mines with Adelle, Josh, and Arnold following closely behind. His followers quickly began their work, running the wires up to any large crystal deposit and wrapping cryst wiring around as many of the crystals as possible. Medics in patchleather scrubs headed to the nearest victim stuck within the ground. Adelle watched as one medic near her placed a hand on a harvest-man's neck to check for a pulse, then lifting the head up and forcing open the eyes to look for any signs of consciousness. The medic gave a defeated sigh before pulling out a glass bottle from her bag. A copper syringe was stabbed through the cork and a portion of the liquid within extracted. The medic then injected her patient with the poison, gently lowering the man's head to the ground as the poison took effect, his chest slowly deflating until every breath ended with stopped movements.

Adelle bit her tongue and looked away. It was a mercy killing for most of the victims, but she still could not bear to look. In all her years of hunting animals and murdering mortals that trespassed in her forest, she had never killed as cruelly or slowly as the method of Harvestfall.

As they proceeded down the mines to the most concentrated centre, two medics carried a stretcher with one of the harvest victims. Her skin was in two states. Either wrinkled and pale from the humidity of being buried, or abraded to bloody tears from trying to escape the gravelled earth. She moaned painfully, her weak hands trying to yank a piece of tiny crystal growing out of her waist.

A visibly shaken Arnold tried to take his mind off the scene by asking Eca, "You said... mist poisoning. I've never heard of that before."

"It's overexposure to highly concentrated seither," Eca explained. "The blood in the body crystallises around our magic circuits."

Josh asked, "Isn't that just crystals forming when the body decomposes?"

"We don't exactly have the research data on it, but crystallisation can happen when a person is alive, as you see, and it's a form of infection. Most of the time, no one would be unlucky enough to be exposed to such extreme conditions, but a war isn't most of the time."

Josh asked, "Is there a cure?"

The palpable sigh that followed Eca answered him. "This is very new science, Joashden. All we can really do is ease their pain and prolong their lives. It's honestly luck that we even know this much thanks to The Watcher sharing his knowledge on the subject."

Adelle scoffed. "Of course he did. Couldn't be bothered coming here to help out though."

"He's busy with his own end of the world. Something about split in time causing monsters to be tear through the fabric of reality. We all are stretched thin these few years," Eca admitted before looking at her seriously. "Everyone who can stop Exodus right now is here. This is all we've got."

They made it to the bottom and centre of the mine, the quarry spiralling up around them. The leather-bound cryst wires were being thrown off ledges and rolled down to the bottom. Soon after, the ground had the conducting lines untangled like tentacles. Josh and Arnold got to work, helping the others with gathering the ends together to form larger wiring tubes. Eca stood in the middle of it all and began drawing a summoning circle into the ground around him. It resembled a circuitry, clocking outward with dozens of second hands extending toward each arc of the circle.

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It didn't take long for them to have the wirings set up. Each end of the cryst wires were placed at somewhat equidistant intervals on the rim of the summoning circle. Now, they simply waited for the last harvest victim to be dug out from the pit. Adelle understood the humane reason for doing so but could not help but tap her feet impatiently. Every minute waiting was a minute further away Lachesis got. But finally, the last man was pulled out and placed onto a stretcher to be carried out.

As he passed by Adelle, their eyes met. He mouthed something which Adelle could not hear but somehow understood.

She promised, "I'll stop her."

The man peacefully closed his eyes as the medics carried the stretcher up the slope.

Eca then asked, "Are you ready, Miss Demon Eyes?"

She stepped up south of him and just outside of the circle. "That's Adelaide Wiltkins to you. Let's get this over with."

The white mage laughed wryly. He held out his staff which began fading into wisps of light. The little bright spheres floated together and coalesced into a large tome. The spine and cover were marble braided gold. The binding was strings of silvers. An ellipse signet much like the summoning circle they stood on was imprinted on the front and back. Eca held the spine in the palm of his hand and the book naturally opened to the centre-most page which held a complex drawing of interconnected magic circuitry.

He took a deep breath. "Exseed."

The pages of the book spewed out its paper innards in a fountain of white and ink. Instead of falling or being picked up by the wind, the papers whirled around Eca, quickly forming a ring of pages that orbited the white mage. Each page had drawings of summoned creatures and spells alongside the magic circle required to cast them imbued in gold dust. Eca held out his right index finger which followed the satellites of the ring. At first, it seemed as if he was tracing the path of the papers but he retracted it and scrolled through the catalogue again, spinning the selection faster much like the touch screens she had experienced in Citi.

Suddenly, he stopped, and the ring stopped it's twirl along with him. He raised a second finger and turned his hand sideways, pointing at a single page. As he telekinetically brought the paper forward, the remainder of the pages spun in the opposite direction.

He pointed the page at Adelle. "Ready?" He asked.

She nodded.

He raised his hand up and the piece of paper followed. As he did so, the crystals all around the quarry began to glow. The ground began to vibrate ever so slightly as the energy flowed from stone to sigil. The wires danced on the ground but the ends were magically magnetised to summoning ring akin to snakes held by the head. The white mage held his left hand behind his back as a stream of white energy coiled from the circle up to it. Then, he brought his left fingers to his right, taking a forward stance as if he was about to fire an arrow into the sky. He drew his right arm back as one would do a bowstring, the line of bright energy stretching from finger to finger.

Floating in midair, the summoning page began to spin, turning, then bursting into golden dust that sparkled, taking the neon shape of the summoning circle for Vayngue. The crystals in the mine were practically bonfires, gleaming torches of white that bathed the entire quarry in light.

"Come forth. Vayngue." He closed his right fist and the energy stream snapped and fired into Vayngue's summoning circle.

From the other side, the energy stream took shape. At first, a white beak made of pure hard light formed to the easily tower over all of them within the manes. Then, a mane that circled its neck with the form of lightning. Then, like a bullet exiting a barrel, the remaining body shot out in a straight spiral, quickly filling the remaining space in the quarry as the creature flew into the sky.

Quickly, Adelle teleported into the air and grabbed onto what would otherwise be the feathery mane of the bird. But all she felt was what she could only describe as her hand gripping onto hardened air. Dexterously though, she managed to find footings on its wings' joints and wrapped her other arm around what would be the neck.

Without another word to those below, Vayngue shot off into the atmosphere, flapping its hard light wings the size of houses as it climbed. Adelle brought her scarf up to cover her mouth as the creature began building momentum. Once it reached a height and slowed, Adelle looked back to see a stream of white energy leading all the way down to the mine which crystals shone like a lighthouse.

Vayngue twisted its body and began falling, twirling itself to face straight down as it gained the speed of gravity. Then, just before hitting the ground, it opened its giant wings and with one last powerful flap, jettisoned off to the burning south.