After killing my first play partner, another three volunteer themselves by pouncing toward me. Now that I know controlling ethereal flame influences my separate physical flames, I can dodge by adjusting the amount my jet thrusts. Each Viisin get a ball of flames to the face.

If they were capable of thought, I’m sure they would be relieved that their faces aren’t scorched off on the spot. Unfortunately… or rather, fortunately, they do nothing but shriek in incoherent rage as they fall back to the earth.

A small flare stays attached to each of their bodies, even in their incorporeal state. Two of the volunteers find their bodies shrouded in flame before they even hit the ground. The other is fortunate enough to get to wait a dozen seconds before it’s their turn. I can only cover so much area with my white flames, so I’m limited to killing two at a time.

The two with flames burning right through their core must have some level of self preservation remaining within them, as they jump up without delay, desperate to kill the one inflicting damage upon them. Of course, they don’t come close. They even get another leap in before the heat is finally too much for them and my flames overpower their recovery. I have to wait a few more seconds after they are immobilised to actually kill them. If I were to let go early, they would likely recover within moments.

With the first two done, I focus on the other Viisin I tagged and spread the flame across their body. Grímr must have distracted them, as they now chase after him. As soon as the flames eat into its body, it shrieks and mystically turns its attention to me again. Strange. Maybe beneath the mindless fury, there’s still some intelligence hidden within.

Well, nothing will change even if there is some remnant of themselves remaining. If anything, it’s probably better to put them out of their misery.

While that Viisin burns, I fly low enough to spread the rest of my inner flame. I have to let my fires revert to their yellow heat to cover a wide enough area, but as I swoop over the heads of the remaining mermineae, the ethereal wisps cling to their bodies.

Not a minute passes before I’m back high in the air out of their range, watching as the creatures burn away two at a time. As soon as a pair fall to my flames, I incite the tiny lingering flares to consume their bodies and grow to the intense white flame.

Up here, they cannot reach me. There is nothing they can do except scream, flail, and die under my guided blaze. Never would I have believed I could control my flames from so far away, but here I am, manually spreading my fire from five hundred metres above.

It’s definitely not easy; my control is pushed to the limit to do so, but it makes fighting the Viisin near leisurely. Not long ago, taking on a Viisin was far beyond my capabilities. Now, I believe I’d be able to take on an intelligent one without difficulty. Unless they have a way to stop my ethereal flame from attaching to them, they won’t be able to defend themselves against me, regardless of how tactically they approach the fight.

Below, Grímr picks Remus up and carries him out of the range of the Viisin swarm. I burn through two at the front of the pack, having them stumble before they throw themselves on Grímr’s wings. With the speed he’s moving, it’s unlikely they could catch up, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t be careful.

Remus and Jav no longer throw the centzon bombs. Whether they’ve run out, or are saving the rest, I don’t know. Now, they spend their time distracting the Viisin so Grímr and I can clear through them with ease.

Between the initial salvo of explosions and both Grímr and my efforts, we are now down to only a couple dozen remaining Viisin. Despite the initial kills from the bombs, I’m certain I’ve taken down the most Viisin now, but I’ll need to wait until they are all dealt with to gloat.

“Remus, I’m ready!” Ankor’s voice echoes across the land despite the thousands of metres separating us, intense like a war-horn.

I’m immediately reminded that our purpose here wasn’t to kill the Viisin. It seems whatever preparations Ankor needed to set up are complete, but we still haven’t finished clearing out the Viisin.

I fly toward Remus, intending to help my team clear through the last before heading over to help Ankor, but the dohrni has a differing plan. “Solvei, we can deal with the last of these. You get that inscription working.” His eyes turn my way as Grímr drops him to the earth again. “Be careful and don’t get too close.”

With reluctance, I nod. I’d rather not leave them to fight the Viisin themselves, but I know they can take care of themselves. Before I’ve even turned to fly toward Ankor and the superior Viisin he’s fighting, I’ve begun weaving the complex pattern of flame through the air before me.

I have to sacrifice all the flares I have attached to the mermineae around here, as this inscription requires all my focus to make sure I don’t mess it up at such an important time. The flight toward the massive dust storm is short, mostly spent troubling over the perfection of the inscription.

“Are you ready?” the voice carries from within the cloud.

I can’t tell exactly where they are, so I spread the inscription wide over the top of the dust. With myself flying over the centre point, the weave of flames spread as far as I can reach, yet it still isn’t enough to cover the entire area out of my view.

“Yes,” I shout down, adding my presence to my voice, hoping it will reach Ankor through the rough wind and consistent explosions within the dust.

Near as soon as I do, a roaring chorus of chains echoes out of the dust. Heavy grinding, followed by loud clanks, is the only signal that Ankor is acting. A guttural shriek wails through the air before the world falls quiet. The quiet remains for a few long moments as the dust finally disperses.

Stolen novel; please report.

Within the clearing dust is a bundle of chains pulled taut toward a dozen points where the chains dig through the earth. The superior Viisin has been bound so tight that not even its dust can escape the confines created by the cage of chains.

I don’t need Ankor to tell me to start. Without delay, the inscription activates. I guide it through the initial process before the components take over and enact the design’s effects almost all on their own. With the smallest of alterations, I direct the inscription to target the creature within Ankor’s chains. I have to manually filter out the hyle running through the inscriptions lining the chains and focus only on the Viisin.

It takes nearly thirty seconds for it to lock-on, and by the time it does, dust is rapidly escaping from the binding of chains. I wait for the inscription to pull the energy from the Viisin, but it doesn’t happen. We have a problem; while the inscription binds to the creature’s energy, it isn’t strong enough to pull it out of its body.

“I have a lock, but the energy won’t come.” I’m not sure what to do. If the inscription can’t pull the hyle from their body, then what are we supposed to do?

“You’ve done fine,” Ankor says, far closer to me than I expected.

I turn to my side to see him still rising through the air not a few metres away. As he climbs higher, the chains reaching into the earth become taut. Right before the chains halt him from rising any higher, he flicks his arms and many of his antlers upward. The motion breaks his upward momentum and shoots all the dangling chains through the air, up past him.

It takes a moment for the force to ripple down the long chains. As one, they combine their force on the imprisoned Viisin, shredding every fibre from existence.

Without a body to hold it, there is nothing to stop the energy from flowing into my inscription. As soon as the section of the inscription that holds the energy takes on Kalma’s hyle, I pull my own energy away. I needed mine there to keep the quarantined path from falling apart, but now that it is flowing in, I don’t need to be concerned.

The amount of energy is immense. Likely far too much for me to handle, which makes it fortunate that the inscription does the work for me. It flows in slowly but steadily, wrapped within my woven flames.

Eventually, the last of the lingering decay hyle is absorbed. The energy compresses within the storage section of the inscription and gives off a transparent grey glow as it moves along its lines.

As soon as no more energy enters the inscription, it enters the next phase and immediately searches for the matching energy. I know where it’s pointing long before a flame materialises to visually represent the direction of the energy link it has found.

The inscription points east. Not the direction I’d assume her to be, but it doesn’t change that we now know where Kalma is. Once we gather the rest of Remus’ contacts, we can follow her, and challenge her.

I take my time to compress the inscription down to a far more manageable size while keeping its functionality intact. The small flame rising from the centre continues to point east, remaining steady and straight in its heading. In no time, I have the inscription down to about a metre wide, and even that is almost too much for me. The decay energy stored within glows with a brightness that’s hard to look at, but it stays contained without issue.

Slowly, I allow my focus to spread away from the inscription. Remus, Jav and Grímr have clearly finished the last of the lesser Viisin, and now rest besides Ankor. The large khirig himself seems to have wasted no time tying his chains and their attached weapons over his extending antlers. He’s quite the daunting figure with all his weapons tied around him like that.

“Any issues?” Remus asks as I fall beside them.

“No. It worked better than I expected,” I say. “I can feel where Kalma is right now.”

Immediately, the dohrni’s eyes harden. “Then we best get moving. Ankor, do you know where any of the other inner circle are?”

Ankor hums, or at least I think he hums. It’s hard to tell through the constant jingling of chains. “South. El was sent to defend the west of Vanguard.”

Looks like I’ll be holding this tracing inscription for a while. I don’t know enough about the inscription to isolate the contained energy and hold it for later. It shouldn’t be an issue, but it will take a fair amount of my focus while we travel.

“So what can we expect from El?” Grímr asks as we move out together. Our team together, and Ankor somehow keeping up with some odd movements with his chain weapons. Can he alter the weights of his chains and weapons? It’d be the only way I could think of that would allow such movement.

“She’s a skank. A genuine pleasure,” Ankor says without hesitation. “But she’s also my wife, so say nothing bad about her.”

“Uh…” Grímr hesitates. “That’s good to know, but I meant how does she fight?”

Ankor gives us a side eye glance. “You know I’m not supposed to say, right?”

“Should I, then?” Remus asks.

“No, no.” Ankor waves him off. “I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

Before they can continue their talk about this El person, a major reaction occurs from my inscription. The directing flame all but snuffs out. With my direct connection, I can feel what minimal remains of the tracer suddenly switch, going from east to west. It’s as if Kalma’s energy simply disappeared from the world, only to appear again somewhere completely different.

The brightness of the guiding flare doesn’t return, and yet I feel as though Kalma is closer than she was before. Is she suppressing her energy now? Did she notice she was being tracked?

“Hey,” I say. “We have a problem.”

Remus seems to already know what’s happening. “Pick up the pace. Ankor, I’ll need you to be ready.”

The khirig simply nods, but doesn’t make any motion to prepare.

I can feel Kalma clearly through the inscription now. She’s closing in. I try to focus on what the inscription is telling me, but before I can get a read on how far she actually is, Ankor flings his chains outward.

A web of chains forms in the air with an unbelievable amount of skill, and yet it’s not enough to stop the wave of decay. Many of the chain links simply disappear. The same glowing metal that could stand up to the superior Viisin’s power without issue.

The wave continues unabated, eating away much of Ankor’s antlers and leaving many of the remaining chains smoking. The dust that rises from the decayed weapons suddenly re-materialises above our heads. We have no time to react as a wide plate of the same metal that once made Ankor’s chains now falls on us from above.

I try to burn through the large metal disc, but even my hottest flames are slow to melt through. The plate of metal slams into all of us, dragging us down to the earth. I try to burn the metal and breach the top, but the ground reaches us far too soon.

Hitting the ground so hard stuns me a bit, but it doesn’t take me longer than a moment to recover. Ankor, despite having lost many of the antlers covering one side of his body, recovers quicker, and is already in the motion of tossing the heavy metal away from us.

My team is relatively unharmed by the fall. The earth itself seeming to have come out in far worse shape after having Grímr collide with it.

“Okay, it was entertaining while it lasted.” Kalma walks up to us with a casual air that belies her words. “But this has become annoying.”