“Is that…” Kalvia was staring around just as Rieren had done a second ago. “More of them?”

The thing with Banishedborn was that they were quite powerful. Enough that, if they so chose, they could let their elixir fields spread out to their fullest extents. In fact, Rieren wouldn’t be surprised if they were standing within one or more Banishedborns’ elixir fields. That would explain why it was difficult to pinpoint their exact location in that manner.

“Keep your presence lowered,” Rieren said. “We should move.”

Kalvia followed her lead. With greater power came a greater ability to control just how much of that power was on display. Rieren was thus able to mute her presence as much as she wanted, such that none of the Banishedborns’ questing senses would find her. She crept forward at a rapid pace, passing between nearby trees as she tried to determine where to go.

The light helped direct her. Of course. Unlike her, the Banishedborn weren’t interested in keeping their presences hidden. They had come here to win, and that would mean using the full extent of their powers.

Because she was certain these new ones had been holding themselves back just in case a trap like the one Starloper had erected sprung up.

“Look.” Kalvia pointed to a spire of light glowing in the distance.

Rieren came to a stop. She didn’t recognize that power. Despite knowing the majority of the Banishedborn from her previous experiences, there were still some who remained unfamiliar to her. Mostly because she had never ended up facing them in battle.

Thankfully, the two others accompanying the first Banishedborn were familiar.

Seykyll of the Depths and Vindir Cloudborne. Among Banishedborn, they were of middling strength. They belonged neither to the highest echelons of the Banishedborn, but they weren’t the weakest of them either. Just… unremarkable.

Of course, when compared to the mortals they were no doubt about to crush, they were still invincibly strong.

In fact, as Rieren noted with a grimace, Seykyll was standing in the middle of several bodies. They were all half buried into the ground, though the ground was no longer plain earth it had instead turned into a murky blue surface, rippling like it was partially liquified.

Seykyll had grabbed up a man by his neck, raising him high. They were clearly speaking something, but Rieren was too far away to tell what.

The problem was that he clearly wasn’t from the imperial court. Rieren would have recognized the robes if he had been one of them. Which meant that he was from her side. She grimaced. A large part of her wanted to charge in and free the man before he suffered the same fate as his companions. But even with Call of the Past, she wasn’t strong enough.

Rieren bit down on a curse.

The other two Banishedborn looked on passively. Vindir’s cloudlike cape floated behind him, occasionally sparking with electricity. The Banishedborn Rieren didn’t recognize held on to a strange, innate glow over her entire form, like she was made of moonlight or something along those lines. Her dark hair and her silver robes all glowed as well.

None of that helped Rieren identify the Banishedborn at all. Who was she, and what was she doing here?

“What do we do?” Kalvia asked. “They’ll tear us apart at this rate.”

“We can try to lead them away,” Rieren said. “Straight to where the other Banishedborn are.”

“You mean the trap?”

Rieren nodded. It was the only thing she could think of. Although, it wasn’t foolproof. After all, the Banishedborn could have landed there directly, interrupting whatever trap Starloper had erected. But instead, they had chosen to land in the thick of the mortal battle.

Still. It was worth a shot.

“I will do the leading,” Rieren said. She silently apologized to Starloper. Unfortunately, there were no other options. “You need to go around and inform the others that we might have some trouble on our hands.”

Kalvia looked like she wanted to protest that decision, but she raised no dissent. Now wasn’t the time for it. Not when she likely didn’t have any better ideas.

Just as they separated, however, another transformation rocked the land. Another sudden surge of power—no, several surges all at once—thundered through the air. Rieren’s heart thumped. Something major had occurred.

She and Kalvia weren’t the only ones who had sensed it. The other Banishedborn had twisted around to face the same direction Rieren had glanced. They too were staring avidly at the column of golden light rising higher and higher in the distance, at the blood-red lighting and spiral of shadows that twisted around it.

Rieren’s heart skipped a beat. “The trap,” she said. “It has been released.”

She didn’t understand what for. Didn’t know why Starloper would let go of it just then. But she didn’t need to wonder about it for long. The Banishedborn in question appeared a second later, landing right before the three new ones to leave a crater where he touched down.

“Welcome!” Starloper said, raising both of his maroon, claw-tipped arms high in greeting. It was a strange gesture that came from where he had been raised. “I was expecting more guests when this all began. But I was not prepared for said guests to be so late to our humble little gathering.”

Seykyll stepped forward, while the other two Banishedborn tensed at Starloper’s arrival. It was always strange to Rieren to see even beings like the Banishedborn have such human reactions.

“What happened to your little trap, Starloper?” Seykyll asked. His voice was like a mass of waves crashing into each other. “Foiled already?”

“Oh, I just felt I didn’t have enough guests in it. So here I am, hoping to entice you all to join us in our revelries over yonder.”

“Well, it certainly looks and sounds like there are some festivities going on.”

Rieren had to agree. The sound of furious battle had begun emanating from the distance, where Starloper’s trap had been not that long ago. She could only surmise that the old Emperor was free, somehow having broken his fate binds, just as the Banishedborn were. They were all fighting it out. But how long would be able to keep it up?

She shook her head. Starloper’s careful trap that had taken ages to prepare had been crumbled so easily by one small pre-emptive action by the other Banishedborn. Not acting together.

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It would almost have been dismaying if Rieren didn’t have their ultimate goal in mind. For her and her comrades, this battle was about winning against the imperial court. About driving out the divine corruption that had taken root in Vanharron. Just the fact that all the Banishedborn had been forced out of hiding was a great accomplishment.

“We need to move,” Rieren said.

Kalvia nodded. “Agreed. Let’s go.”

It wasn’t just the fact they had other things to see to. The Banishedborn near them were preparing to unleash their powers, and staying this close would be dangerous. Already, Rieren could see Starloper charging one of his techniques, a spear of glinting light forming in his grip. Liquid darkness frothed and swirled around Seykyll, while Vindir was summoning a storm.

Fast as Rieren and Kalvia tried to move, they weren’t fast enough. The Banishedborns’ powers collided like a detonating volcanic eruption. It was the noise that struck Rieren first, the impact pounding her ears so hard that she lost all hearing for a fraction of a second.

A second later, the shockwave ripped through her and took her off her feet. It rattled her head and set off a spiking headache. She bit down on a groan as she got to her feet. That blast would have hit her so much harder had she not been at the Late-Ascendant realm thanks to Batcat’s Call of the Past.

“Kalvia,” Rieren called out. She couldn’t see her companion anywhere in the dust claiming the land. “Are you there?”

A cough alerted her to Kalvia’s location. She pushed her way there, found her friend, and dragged the other woman to her feet.

“I’m alright,” Kalvia said, staggering a little but managing to stay on her feet.

Rieren nodded. “Then we best keep moving. We have more Avatars to kill.”

They set off. She was tempted to look back at the vicious impacts threading their way through the cloud of dust. It wasn’t often one got to see Banishedborn fighting. But Rieren had a task to fulfill. She could indulge herself afterwards.

But finding their way through the veil of dirt proved to be more challenging than Rieren had originally thought. The initial impact of the clash of the Banishedborns’ powers had travelled farther than Rieren had thought. It had ripped through the battlefield, sending all the combatants either scrambling or flying.

So it wasn’t surprising at all that the first group they came across were three enemy cultivators.

It was a good thing Rieren was more than strong enough now to deal with them rather easily. Her Domain acted quicker than any of them could react. She sent them all flying into the air with a powerful, wide geyser. Rieren followed it up with another Swordwing sending burning swords streaking through the air.

All that rained down was blood and bits of flesh and bones. Oh, and some fabric and metal too, but those seemed less consequential to note.

Rieren’s little display had no doubt attracted some attention from nearby, so they moved on again. Next, they came across another Avatar. This one was harrying a contingent that belonged to Silvas. Rieren recognized the insignias on their robes.

She would have jumped in and ended the Avatar with no fuss, but Kalvia held up a hand.

“Let me deal with this one,” she said.

Rieren nodded, and her friend loped off. She kept a careful watch on Kalvia. Rieren would be ready to act if anything started to go wrong.

But nothing of the sort occurred. Or rather, everything did go wrong, but only for the Masked Avatar. Kalvia sneaked in close enough to place her hands on the Domain Summons tree. The Avatar was high up in its canopy, raining destruction upon her hapless targets. But a second later, the tree started quavering, threatening to fall.

Then, instead of falling, it simply split. The Avatar fell into the new hollow within it.

There was obviously some struggle going on. Kalvia’s face was flushed, sweat beading her brow and running rivulets through the dust caking her face. But slowly, she began to relax. The tree started collapsing and compressing, the wood contracting in upon itself. It took only mere moments before the gigantic tree had become a sphere of highly compressed wood.

There was certainly no need to ask if the Avatar was alive inside it any longer.

Rieren barked an order at Silvas’s contingent to go and rejoin the rest of the battle. They saluted her—actually saluted, hands pressed against their chest—before running off.

With that encounter taken care of, Rieren was prepared to face down more enemies. The next person they came across, however, was quite the opposite.

“You’re alive!” Amalyse appeared out of the dusty gloom like a shadowy spectre. “I thought you were too close to the blast and it had gotten you.”

“We were too close,” Kalvia said. “But never mind that. I’m glad we found you. We need information on what’s going on. How’s the battle proceeding?”

“You haven’t seen?”

Rieren shook her head. “We were a bit busy. How are things looking here, Amalyse?”

She gave them a brief but thorough rundown. They were winning. The combination of the Shatterlands’ forces, Silvas Fraile and his contingent, and other odds and ends ensured they had a serious advantage over the imperial court’s forces. Their enemies were being pushed back. In fact, they were moments away from a complete rout.

Much of it was thanks to Rieren’s and Kalvia’s efforts. The Masked Avatars would have been a pain in their behinds, but enough of them had already been dealt with.

“What happened at the ritual?” Amalyse asked.

“Do we have time to explain?” Kalvia asked.

Amalyse crossed her arms. “I just explained, didn’t I? It’s your turn to return the favour.”

She had a point. Rieren gave her a very condensed version of the events of the ritual. Mostly, she highlighted how Starloper had trapped the Banishedborn originally, and how they were now all free, including the old Forborne Emperor. She also mentioned that the current Emperor had been killed…

They all stared at each other. The Emperor was dead. That meant there was a vacuum. A hollow in the tapestry of power in Vanharron.

The exact hollow that Kalvia had been waiting for all this while.

“Looks like we’ve got a new goal,” Kalvia said. She swallowed. Her eyes were roving over everything and nothing, like she couldn’t settle on any single thought. “A new goal… to be Empress.”

Rieren’s thoughts whirled too. So far, they had been aiming to win the battle. That meant taking out enough of the Avatars that the imperial court’s forces no longer posed a problem. But according to Amalyse, it had been taken care of already. They had done enough.

Which meant they could focus on their next goal. A newer, more important target. Coronating Kalvia.

“I don’t think they’re retreating, now that I think about it,” Amalyse said. “They’re just consolidating their forces, probably already trying to make a move to set up their new puppet.”

Kalvia frowned off into the distance. “I wouldn’t put it past them, yes. If they somehow found out that—that the Emperor is dead.”

“But hold on, you said the old Emperor was here again, right? And he’s free now too?”

“He will not be able to remain here much longer,” Rieren said.

That was a given. No one in the Primordial realm could remain in the Mortal Realm. The old Emperor had only been pulled down here against his will. Once this was over, he would no doubt be forced to move on. Or worse, considering he was now free to act.

Which meant someone new would need to take the throne of the Elderlands.

“We need to get to the imperial clan’s grounds,” Kalvia said. “As quickly as we can.” She cursed. “The court might already have tried to take control of things there. That fool Zhalen might just end up getting killed.”

Rieren nodded. The first step to securing the throne lay in getting “approval” from the imperial clan. “Amalyse, can you head to the others and make sure they know what we’re attempting. Once the battle is won, they need to come reinforce us at the imperial clan’s tents.”

She nodded. Wishing them fair fortune, she bounded off. Rieren and Kalvia wasted no time rerouting their trek to head to the location of the imperial clan’s grounds. As the major battles around them continued, the air thrummed, the ground trembled, and harsh booms clanged discordantly all around them.

But despite the murk of all the dust, despite the distracting battle between the Banishedborn not far off, Kalvia’s steps were sure.

It wasn’t long before they found themselves at the imperial clan’s little island in the swamp. There was almost no dust here, which made seeing much easier. But Rieren didn’t need to see. Not when she could sense the powerful Essence signatures awaiting them.

And in reverse, she was certain they had sensed her too. There would be no hiding or sneaking.

“Be vigilant,” Rieren said as they neared the tents.

No opposition appeared before them. Rieren’s tension started to decrease marginally. What was going on?

The truth, it turned out, was that they were late. Members of the imperial clan, including Zhalen, weren’t in their campground any longer. They were standing outside, wary and tense, weapons in their hands. Staring at a single figure in the centre standing tall over them all.

A Clanmaster. Rieren frowned. It was the Markand Clanmaster.

“Ah, the precipitous one finally arrives,” he said, baring his teeth at Kalvia in a predatory smile. “We can now finish this farce.”

“Farce?” Kalvia wasn’t daunted. She stepped past all her clanmates, most of whom looked rather relieved to see her among them. “What business do you have here, Lord Markand?”

“Simple. I am here to claim the throne of the Elderlands.”