Between the firing of the mortal instruments and the first blossoms of death, Gwen bathed in the glowing caress of the phantasmal spellfire.

Beneath her claw-tipped boots, attended by the stench of hot ozone and the stink of Undeath permeating every inch of the soot-clad snowscape, the Royal Raven's surface-to-air batteries made the ship a carnival float celebrating obliteration. At the foredeck of her battle barge, her Void and Lightning Dogs awaited, each horse-sized beast commanded to act as living shielding for the Golem units.

Superior to the range and scope of the Mageocracy's Spellsword units, her Dwarven crew wielded Runic sorcery, which delivered physical payloads with relative accuracy to almost two kilometres away. Once the shells struck the flock, these aerodynamic carvings manifested into localised Runic Mandalas. From these, latent energies from the "spell shells" were released, transforming into concussive, explosive force, simultaneously creating shards of red-hot metal and obsidian, piercing leather and armour alike with ease.

Each runic "firework" took artisans hours to compile. However, with the Protestant work ethic of the Dwarves, Gwen had been assured that there would be no longitudinal shortage of munitions so long as the Fabricator Engine remained operational.

With thunderous applause, the flaming flowers bloomed.

The first volley took the Wyrmbats entirely by surprise, for few dodged or dived, trusting their toughed exteriors of tempered scales.

Their arrogance was a costly mistake, for a direct hit was enough to shred a car-sized bat-creature wing-from-body, while a side impact could snap bones or break their finger-wings, sending them tumbling into the soot-clad snowmelt.

"Six… Eight… Ten…" Gwen heard the body count from her Message Device as she readied her crew for close encounters of the ashen kind. Lulan was already firing away, her flying swords pealing as a choir of death-dealing shards from their innate sonic vibrations.

To the aft, Richard, together with Petra and a half-dozen Abjurers and Enchanters from Charlene's retinue, reinforced protections around the ship. Somewhere above, Ariel and Caliban perched near the ship's elevated bridge with instructions to keep the Captain, Charlene, and the ship's navigational instruments clear of Wyrmbats.

"Rear defences have been deployed… Resonator at eighty per cent." Charlene's commanding voice pierced through the comm channels. "All forward defences deployed. Gwen, you have command of your Flights. I will support your needs from the bridge as much as possible."

"Roger that, Commander. Engaging in thirty seconds." She replied in kind.

For assurance, Gwen touched a hand to a thickly padded section of her battle suit, where the Ilias Leaf sat snug against her bosom.

Sensing its inertness, Gwen reminded herself of the promise from Tryfan that there would be means to contact the Frost Elves once they were deep inside Erebus' shadow—then redoubled her focus for the battle ahead.

The survivors of the minute-long barrage were now emerging. Much to her chagrin, there was little to indicate that the slaughter of their vanguard cowed the Wyrmbat "Tide".

"Ariel, get ready." She called to mind the invocations for a Maelstrom. "Cali, don't stray from the bridge."

"EE—EE!"

"Shaa—!"

_BOOM—!_ Gwen's sides lit up; her silhouette made silver by hysterical spellfire as the volleys closed in for the last few hundred meters.

_BUNG—! BU-BUNG—BOOM—!_

Cobalt and phosphorus flowers, the former possessed of purifying plasma of the smelting caskets, the latter the purifying heat of the Heart Forge, ate into the bone and sinew of the lanky Wyrmbats. As creatures of Negative Energy, they were paradoxically weak toward, yet resilient to heat, meaning a certain threshold had to be crossed.

" _SKAARRRRRK!_ " The returned cries from the victims of Dwarven artillery were shrill threats tugging at Gwen's Astral Body, promising a measure of agony far worse than death.

Lulan skewered the largest bat without blinking—only for the bat to continue its course without the slightest hint of discomfort until she expended the mana to "Shatter" her projectiles.

Still, Gwen remained patient, forcing her molten-lead adrenaline to cool. She was a veteran now, and a veteran either acted with foresight or reacted with wisdom.

Now wary, the flock that descended invaded the ship's resonating barrier, slowing their ascent as their cores shuddered under the influence of invisible arcane wavelengths. Those closest to the ship's bow coughed white ash as their Cores lost control of the latent energies, erupting into fantastic bursts of necrotic cloudbursts. Others, slipping through the expended barrier, opened up their throats to unleash torrents of what looked to be white-hot, corrosive flames.

Richard and Petra immediately invoked their abjuring sorcery, diverting the destructive spray to the ship's side to eat into the dark slush. The ship's crew also opened up with Wands of various Elements, adding to the pyrotechnical display raging over the shimmering shell of the Royal Raven.

Gwen watched the swirling cloud of bats, feeling the time was ripe.

"Ariel— Maelstrom!" She allowed her conduits to conduct their magnificent choir, feeling more powerful than her pre-Auckland self. Bolstered by lightning and Almudj's Blessing, she tore the heavens asunder, inviting into the world a swirling vortex of blue-green lightning that quickly transformed into a kilometre-wide pancake hurricane.

Those closest to the Maelstrom were sucked almost instantly into the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Lightning. Others who fought to get away were castigated by lashing bolts of destructive electricity, whipped into submission and stunned by the sudden Positive Energy so that they could only be obediently carried off into the gaping gash Gwen made in the Prime Material.

Yet, despite their incredible effort, the fortitude of the Wyrmbats, their red-hot charcoal eyes livid with madness, still pierced the ship's perimetre. Fighting off both resonance and destructive wards, dozens landed on the ship's deck or came close enough to scale the Royal Raven's tower and turrets to wreak havoc.

There, they met Gwen's Faithful Hounds, together Commonwealth Mages armed with some of the most exorbitant implements HDMs could afford, and well-fed Shadow Mages from Manipur who threw themselves upon the creatures without fear.

"Cali! Keep the Alpha away from the bridge castle!" Gwen called out, both eyes rapidly scanning her surroundings while her mind's eye drew a topographic map from Ariel's Link Sight. Her Familiar responded by bodily mounting the Alpha Wyrmbat. Compared to its brethren, this was a magnificent beastie with a white mane the colour of superheated flame with more Draconic features adorning its face than a bat's. Caliban's Big Bird guise crushed it against the castle's Wall of Force and clamped its maw around the creature's neck. The Wyrmbat's response was to crane its neck at an impossible angle to gnash Caliban's belly—only to be met with a maw-full of corrosive secretions. As both were Negatively-aligned beings, neither bat nor fiend seemed to show agony or passion, resulting in the strange spectacle of two beasts methodologically picking each other apart even as they fell from the ten-storey bridge.

With a fantastic furore, the pair crashed, with the bat fighting through immunity to pain while Caliban's Big Bird fingers tore out its guts and innards.

Compared to their leader, the other Wyrmbats had better luck. Having survived the shielding and the wards, they lunged at the artillery Golems, stopped only by the combined force of shadowy sinews from the Manipuri Mages and the bodily blockade of Gwen's Hounds. Where the Wyrmbats penetrated both, enormous destruction ensued, with the destroyed machinery burnt white by the smouldering ash.

Even in the chaos, Gwen heard her over-inquisitive mind cry out in woe. For creatures of such absurd elemental purity to survive for long in the Prime Material, there was little doubt that the Elemental balance was shattered, and various portals akin to the Sea of Flames now dominated the landscape around Erebus' howling, flame-spewing lava lakes.

"Zengraff Unit! Ejecting!" An orange Message spell blossomed.

A Golem too close to the fray was caught by a Wyrmbat, who tore through the upper armour with brute strength and corrosive ash-tipped claws, leaving the pilot no choice but to pop the rear and make a haste retreat.

Victorious, the Wyrmbat made a half-howl before Buck, Gwen's leading Familiar Hound, took it by the neck, holding it down for the six-odd seconds necessary for the skeletal bat to become engulfed by spellfire from a dozen Mages and surviving Golems.

Each mature Wyrmbat, Gwen acknowledged, would have possessed enough of a challenge rating for the Mageocracy to field a Flight of seasoned Mages. Only thanks to their floating fortress—and the power of her Dwarven Iron Guards—could they repel the onslaught of these ashen monstrosities to achieve their next objective.

_Ding! Ding! Ding!_

Blood red blossoms from her Message spells exploded beside her ear.

"Magister Song! Captain Hanmoul! Hostile readings in the water! We may be surrounded! Prepare for maximum repulsion!"

"Roger! Evaluating a breakthrough!" With her confirmation, Gwen sent a silent message to Lulan, informing her that her bodyguard should prioritise their Dwarven allies.

Gwen took flight even as her torrent of spells continued, wielding Lightning Bolts on her right while her left hand completed the invocations for Void Bolt. With the ardour of a blazing Yue Bai, she leapt into the air to levitate above the Royal Raven.

Unconsciously, she focused her Essence upon her eyes to compensate for the flashing light and dark.

Below, where the ship was grinding through the soot ice, the black masses building up against the ship's exterior had come alive, sprouting limbs to scale the Royal Raven. Upon closer inspection, Gwen realised that it wasn't the soot that was alive.

These were Mermen—dead ones with grey eyes and mouths full of green bile and brown scum, using their suctioned feet and slimy limbs to clamber up the smooth sides of the ship.

_VREEEEEE—_

The thrum of the Dwarven-made Runes lit up the darkness with the pale glow of Abjuration, building to a brief crescendo.

With a resounding _TWHACK—_ , the Walls of Force shuddered, retracting before expanding rapidly, throwing off the stowaways with such a violent force that they instantly disintegrated. Others were thrown dozens of meters from the ship to land back in the water or to roll across the choking wet soot.

"Be wary, men! These are no ordinary Undead Mermen!" Charlene's warning blasted across the comms. "Earlier, we couldn't detect them because of the noise from the Elemental Ash! By her Grace. I haven't heard of the Ashen Undead in living memory! That category of Necromancy was a relic of the Great War!"

As usual, Charlene was right. The Ash Wrights, Gwen recalled from her history lessons from Cambridge, involved rare Ash-aligned Mages who, in an attempt to stave away the death-apathy of Ash, steered their path of Spellcraft toward Necromancy. Assuming the caster could even survive the double burden of possessing both Ash and using magic derived from Negative Energy, these Flesh Grafters could create hordes of ravenous Undead with high resistance to Elemental Fire—the fundamental offensive magic in the war against Undeath.

Buoyed by the flow of mana bloating her conduits, the same train of thought also brought the familiar face of her Uncle Jun to mind, filling her chest with sudden, desperate yearning. Uncle Jun, the _father_ she wished she had, a man whose back was broad enough for her to rest all her burdens, who also dabbled in Necromancy—or whatever the Song family's secretive magic could afford under the Communists. His was the creation of a Soul Well using the Kirin Amulet as a medium, acting as both filter and storage to stave away the worst aspects of Elemental Ash. With its blessing, he had survived the apathy of high-Affinity Ash, and those who benefited from her uncle's sacrifice had remained willingly ignorant. For a while, Gwen had been afraid that the other shoe would drop and "Captain Jun, Hero of the North", would suddenly become a pariah—though now, there was Ayxin to ensure that the CCP had nothing but praise for Jun.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

And then there's Percy. How was her brother doing? Would he, too, learn the Song's secretive art?

Her sentimentality lasted only a few more seconds—enough to conjure Ayxin's flawless face mocking her mental weakness—then she was back in the heat and frigidity of lightning, ice, Void and the moaning Undead.

"I'll purge the starboard flank!" She informed her troops as she looped to the right, cutting the cross-wind. "Keep an eye on the port!"

Fracturing arches of electricity danced from her fingertips. Her mastery over the basic Lighting Bolt was now so complete that a token syllable was enough to complete both invocation and the circuit. With Ariel's growth, her Affinity for Lightning had also grown, allowing the power to flow from her hands with the natural ease of the conductor of an electric orchestra.

The other Mages soon joined her efforts. Like old rust oxidised by raw plasma, sheets of Undead, roasted to cinders by lightning, fire and assorted arcanistry, fell from the Royal Raven's sides.

The battle was going well—but Gwen knew as a veteran of an Undead campaign that longevity marked the measure of success against the un-living horde, not spell power.

"Charlene, rest our men if able," she informed the crew, mindfully filling the power gap for those commanded to ease their use of high-tier spells. Taking a deep breath, she drew upon Caliban's stowed vitality, then opened up a new Maelstrom nearer the ship's forward passage.

With the sound of shifting snow and soot, a two-hundred-meter-wide vortex opened, drawing all movable mass toward its all-consuming centre even as something tentacled and hungry sought to escape the tear to enter the Prime Material.

A moment later, Gwen regretted the move.

As a result of her spell, a revelation was made for what lay beneath the black snow. There weren't just thousands of the Undead Mermen, but hundreds of thousands, thick enough to form a blockade of bodies which would have impeded the passage of any ship lesser than a Cruiser Class breaker barge.

To make matters worse, the island upon which the Undead rested was also moving.

"KRAKEN!" Gwen gave the warning as soon as she spotted the lazily writhing limbs. Unlike the slick red of the Krakens from their voyage, these were stark and sickly, with mangled bits of rubbery meat and randomly placed sucker mouthes lining the tendrils.

Quickly doing the maths in her head, Gwen chose to conserve her vitality.

"Hanmoul! How are we looking?" She requested heavy artillery. "Charlene, I need help with the squid."

"The flyers are THINNING, Lassie! Give us another cog-cycle, and we aught ta bring the big guns to bear _soon_!"

" _Not soon enough!_ HARD TO STARBOARD!" To coordinate, Charlene gave the command. "Hanmoul—bring our reserve batteries online. Bertie—route the mana to the Golems! Don't let that thing grapple the ship!"

The Royal Raven's internal mechanisms whirled, though Gwen was only vaguely aware of the mechanical changes below her. She instead rose into the air with a brilliant challenge for the Kraken and its murk-eyed Shoal of carcasses.

Caught between the whirling bats going into a frenzy and the swarming Undead below, she was beginning to wonder if fighting further was a matter of the frying pan and the fire.

"Ariel!" She gave her command the less, materialising her Kirin from its invisibility as Ariel's horns grew white-hot with Essence.

The pair waited until the Kraken had turned enough of its body to bring its limbs to bear, revealing an eye as large as Gwen and Ariel stacked head to paw. If such a colossus could grab hold of the battle barge, the Royal Raven may ground to a halt—a fatal consequence, considering the sheer volume of rotten fish inundating the waters.

Hardening her senses against the cognitive torment of borrowing the Rainbow Serpent's otherwordly power, she unleashed the castigation of one who did not like strangers.

"BARBAGINY!"

Twin streaks of Chain Lightning, her strongest spell, connected the distance between herself and the Kraken some two hundred meters away, turning the polluted ice-scape a brilliant emerald.

Just as the bolts were about to strike, Gwen felt the incredible sensation of her attack slowing—seeing the light becoming warped by the innate resistance of the Kraken's magical Core.

Then, like twin needles piercing through a veil, her spells slipped past the creature's Sea God-given protection against invasive elemental assaults, surging forward until both became volatile balls of trapped lightning.

"Oh, dear…" Gwen instantly confirmed that the spell lacked the energy to jump to its secondary targets—but was attempting to expel its collated energies. Unsurprisingly, her anxious anticipation was backed by pings and needles from her Divination Sigil.

"EVERYONE—BRACE!" She howled out her warning with a Clarion Call, knowing what happened the last time a Barbanginy was confined in a tiny space.

The trapped spell on the Undead Kraken grew momentarily brilliant—and then burst with a thunderous roar, expelling its energies so violently that it drove the giant squid's body into a U shape, punching it back under the sea. The rippling shockwaves and superheated air were enough to dispel the soot and ice, shatter the ice sheets within several hundred meters and rock the Royal Raven as its gyroscopic stabilisers thrummed.

As the shockwave passed, the shielding erected by the ship's Abjurers grew instantly white, then rapidly dimmed to reveal an enormous crater, around the edges of which decaying squid flesh by the tonnage lay splayed and spread like an exit wound.

Still, the Kraken came on.

"Alright, lads! Let 'em have it!" Hanmoul's fire order came without delay, sending a hundred streams of spellfire from the Royal Raven's starboard.

Compared to the bustling Flights of Mages, the Dwarves had been focused almost entirely on keeping the circling swarm of Wyrmbats at bay. By now, the bats strong enough to penetrate the resonance shielding had already perished, while those who remained—some hundred or more—were either biding their opportunity or too wary of risking their Cores. Compared to the wholesale Purge of the Undead, their battle was a tug-of-war, see-sawing between the ranged assault of the Dwarven guns and the gobs of flaming ash that rained from the white-skinned skeleton bats.

Using the momentary window, Hanmoul's Golems adjusted their Spellwords, with the lower implements sweeping the sea for Undead while their upper mounts continued to harass the darting Wyrmbats.

Hundreds of eruptions exploded across the Kraken, driving it further into the water and leaving enormous tendrils, now severed, to linger on the surface like huge sea snakes.

But as the creature was already "dead", it would be back. Even in victory, the Royal Raven had to keep its shield, speed, and breaker capabilities at certain expenditure rates to avoid the squid's death grapple.

"How long has it been?" Wiping the sooty snow from her Raven mask, Gwen asked the aide from Charlene's command bridge. After that Barbanginy, even the Devourer had to take a breather.

"Almost thirty minutes, Magister." Came the reply.

"How are our men?" Gwen had felt like they were fighting for hours.

"Lord Hanmoul reports sixteen disabled units, no fatalities. Our forces have twenty-four casualties, six with serious conditions. No fatalities. Mana levels are holding steady."

"SHAA—!"

"EE-EE!" Her Familiars also reported that they were in good condition, though without victims brimming with vitality, Caliban's long-term capability was of significant concern.

"Continue pushing to our base camp, and keep our Diviners on the lookout for the Kraken." Charlene's command concurred with Gwen's anticipations.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Gwen?" Chalene enquired. "How about you?"

"I am fine." Gwen narrowly deflected a glob of ash fire with a double-glazed shield, then glided back into the thick of battle as Lulan took care of the offending Wyrmbat with three pairs of skewering Falling Star Swords.

"Lulu, conserve your energy!" she scolded her bodyguard even as the sword blossomed into metal flowers, sending the bat plummeting downwards like a rock. "Keep your cool. I said I am fine."

Her guard nodded, though Gwen suspected the battle-hardened Sword Mage might still fall under the spell of the berserker that came with her sorcery. Even with Ryxi's restoration of the lost arts, the fact that the magic was made for men—and that women were forbidden from its practice, did not change. The main difference now was that Lulan had access to the best healthcare HDMs could afford and a genuine instructor, a far cry from her battered past as a notched blade left to rust.

The dead sea grew bright, and the starboard roared again, clearing whole swathes of slimy things from the deep.

"The ice sheets are thinning. We're increasing our speed," Charlene told them through the communication device. "Our Diviners report that the Undead Mermen have limited mobility. We should be able to outrun the Shoal and wear them down from range."

Gwen checked on her followers from Manipur, then checked in again with Hanmoul, Richard and Petra.

"Then we hold the line!" She encouraged the others by releasing dozens of highly visible Ball Lightning to bombard their foe, tearing a literal hole in the cloud of swarming bats. "FORWARD UNTO EREBUS!"

Six hours.

Gwen was seriously beginning to see why mechanisation was such an explicit focus of the United States compared to the Mageocracy's preference for talented manpower. By the end of the second hour, even the rested veteran Mages were reporting to be on their alchemical limits, and even the noblemen officers from Charlene's corps lost their appetites.

Richard had done marginally better thanks to Lea taking the brunt of the work, while Petra had been drawing energy from the Royal Raven's Core, supplemented by Dwarven Runes. Amazingly, Lulan's breathing techniques and Affinity were enough to keep up with Gwen. This fact made the Sword Mage even more worshipped among the starry-eyed Brits, who had already considered the Draconic Disciple exotic beyond comprehension.

Then there were the tireless Dwarves, whose bodies and machines tired only when their Spellswords grew too hot. Even then, a maintenance crew in Golem Suits would emerge from the ship's belly, clank toward the units demanding replacements, and then mount and dismount their crystal matrix within minutes, allowing a refreshed rate of continuous fire for several more hours.

True to Charlene's anticipations, the Undead were numerous, but the ice sheets around Erebus's island shelf were also vast beyond comprehension.

In theory, the Ashen Undead drew sustenance from the Negative Energy of Ash—meaning there was a limitation to the range and scope of their operations. The furtherer way from Erebus' burning ash lakes, the Elemental Flame gave way to water and ice, growing increasingly hostile to creatures "out of their Element".

Thankfully, true to the textbooks, the Wyrmbats gave up their pursuit once the Royal Raven fled some twenty nautical miles from where they first encountered resistance, skirting around the lava side of Erebus for the western fringe of the mountain's slope.

As soon as the Wyrmbats lost sufficient motivation to pursue, the Undead rapidly thinned, leaving only the Kraken to trail them for the next dozen nautical mile until it grew too languished to continue its harassment of the Royal Raven.

When finally, only the plinking of hot mana engines rapidly cooling against the dark, sooty ice remained, the ship entered a fatigued calm.

"How long until we reach our waypoint in Sector Three?" Gwen, still on patrol, enquired from their Navigator, the kudos-accruing Viscount Able Burton. "And any signs of the Grove of Illhîweth? If it's anything like Tryfan, it should have a signature like a perpetually falling meteor."

"Nothing on the Divination charts, Magister," the man replied through the comms. "We're adjusting our course according to your Divination Orb."

Gwen once again touched a finger to the Ilias Leaf, affirming her singular desire to meet and speak with the Frost Flower of Illhîweth. Ever since the Fire Sea, she had deeply suspected the Elementals had something substantial planned, with or without the help of Spectre—and now her suspicion was affirmed by what she saw.

At the same time, Gwen didn't know how grand such an "elemental shift of the Planes " really was. On paper, the unreliable map of Meister Shackleton boasted that Antarctica was five thousand kilometres across, meaning that the ice sheets exceeded an albatross' flight from Santiago to Nova Scotia.

Even if Erebus painted five hundred kilometres of ice black with soot—would that _truly_ destabilise the Planar Pillars of the Spiritus Mundi? That was the _scepticism_ almost every scholar of her present world shared.

But then again, she was a child from a world where even the tiniest degree of change had sown unfathomable destruction, from hurricanes to floods to droughts to super-sized forest fires.

For this world—a freakish hurricane on the Florida coast might knock out enough Shielding Stations for the trading stations to fall to the reptilian Theocracies of the Everglades.

A longer and stronger Moonsoon might awaken more Elemental monstrosities than Human cities like Bangkok or Kolkata were equipped to handle.

Long-standing alliances built on balance, such as the Israelites and their precarious neighbours, might fall into sudden chaos if crops fail and the Jackal tribes' numbers swell or burst with the ensuing civil wars.

Humanity, the Mageocracy, and their Kingdoms were like fragile porcelain, full of cracks constantly mended by hand, stopping just enough water from seeping that the entire vessel remained filled and whole.

And finally, another dread loomed over her with the weight of the perpetual dusk hanging over the Royal Raven's bow.

As an accountant, her wonderment at what they've accomplished as explorers and saviours was compromised by the grim knowledge that the Dwarves were firing solid chunks of HDMs and that the ship was burning HDMs.

They had used enough funds in six hours to offer Blackwattle full scholarships for every student for the next hundred years. There were enough materials expended, both precious and mundane, to build a skyscraper to rival her best on the Isle of Dogs. Their expenditure was enough for Auckland Tower to defend itself against the Shoal for a week.

She knew the costs well before the trip, but a reflexive, cynical part of her had to ask.

_Where was the profit?_

And without profit—even if she were to rescue the world today— _how could she motivate the world to save itself tomorrow?_


"LAND AHOY—!"

Gwen rested her arms on the poop's rails, flanked by their reticent officers, a contemplative Hamoul, and her patient companions. After a moment's thought, she requested clarification from the very embarrassed Marley, their talented Diviner, inexperienced sailor. "Do you mean land-ho? But we're surrounded by soot, slush and darkness. What's there to _ho_?"

"It isn't visible in this eternal dusk, but there's solid ground yonder," Bertie, their navigator, spoke while holding a handkerchief to his nose, one enchanted to dispel loathsome smells, such as the stink of perpetual death lingering over every inch of the once-snowscape. "The cove we're in now is Shackleton's Rest, where presumably the Endurance was trapped. We'll suffer the same once the dead of winter arrives, though we're far better provisioned, and our ship, not the wilderness, will be our supply base."

Gwen reassuringly allowed her memory to sweep over the multi-ton rations of SPAM in the cargo hold and knew that her crewmen were spared from finding food in this land of fresh Undeath.

Presently, she was overseeing the landing itself. Charlene, who had left them earlier to check the manifests, was far too busy a woman to make talk with the combat crew. As the expedition's commander, her duties were tiresome and unending, making Gwen glad for the delegation of responsibility.

"Marley, how's it looking out there?" Gwen asked after their Diviner again. Beside her, as an eager bumble bee, Ruxin's Omniscient Orb hovered toward the east, egging her onward.

"The mana signature is extremely polluted," their Diviner replied after drawing a series of mid-air incantations visible only to herself. "However, the orb seems to have the right direction, as triangulating my predictions against Bertie's chart, I'd confidently say that way lies woe—and thus the Pillar Grove of Illhîweth."

"Good enough." Gwen nodded. "Alright then. Per our discussion on the bridge, I shall take Magus Huang and Lulu and venture out to find Illhîweth. We need to make contact as soon as possible."

"Acknowledged, Magister. Meanwhile, Commander Ravenport and our allies will set up a beachhead and initiate a deep probe of the region," the Diviner replied, mindful that their Dwarven ally was also surveying the land with a critical eye. "I'll send Kuznetsova and Harrington to man the Divination Tower. We will need to test the effective range of our mobile towers and where to deploy them if we are to create a viable defence matrix. Master Hanmoul, is there anything I've missed?"

"Aye, the lads will need ta build the base ON the bedrock fer the Fabricator to draw mana," the Dwarven Iron Guard reminded the humans. "Bring her a-ground, Mister Navigator. We'll break the ice and nest her right and proper, then offload the Golems and establish a perimeter."

"Right you are, Master Hanmoul," Bertie promised with a bow of his head. "Will you leave now?"

"I shall."

"And a final reminder for your Flight, Magister." Marley tapped her rings to remind Gwen and the others. "This far from the Commonwealth Towers, your Contingency Rings will only bring you back to the ship. Until we can safely broadcast the Divination signals, there will likely be delays or an outright failure if you are caught in a Pocket Dimension. So please be very careful."

"We will," Gwen assured them by lifting into the air. "Lulu? Richard? Are your mana levels sufficiently recovered?"

"Yes, Magister!" Lulan snapped to attention. After discarding her Ash-eaten combat robe, her new garb was one of Charlene's gifts, a light combat garb that marked the best London's Enchanters had to offer.

Her cousin also responded with a snappy salute, with Lea mirroring her Summoner's action.

"Marley, inform Magus Kutznetsova that we're ready and that I would like her assistance in bringing Golos," Gwen finalised another minute the crew had marked on their final meeting. If they were to intrude upon the land of both the Dragon _Illaelitharian_ and _Illhîwenthiel's_ Enclave, it was probably safer to have representatives that could speak for both. Golos was close enough to Draconic royalty that the Frost Wyrm would give six seconds of consideration before nixing the Yinglong's toddler, enough for her to whip out the Ilias Leaf. "After that… then let's hope there's an end to this ash and dust..."

East of Erebus, Gwen's team meandered in the limbless dark with only sparks shed from Golos' passage lighting up the perpetual dusk like a prison's searchlight.

"Should I be worried," Richard asked while trailing behind the wind-breaking Wyvern. "That the air is temperate here? Quite nice for early winter in the Antarctic."

"We are travelling TOWARD the dome of Erebus." Lulan gave her two yuan. "So it goes to reason that it's warmer, yes? The close we get to the fire, the hotter it becomes."

"I don't think that's how it works if we're also flying toward the Seat of Frost, my dearest bludgeon." Richard's perchance for turning to humour to hide his dismay was on full display. "The Grove is meant to keep the Elemental Fire subdued and repressed, so we are undoubtedly travelling into interesting times."

"Yeah, there was nothing like this in the journals of Shackleton," Gwen informed them. "Erebus is a naturally occurring phenomenon, a balancing force of the Prime Material. Usually, it's a node of flame set against an entire region of Elemental Ice. Assuming it's been like this for months or more, this climate is unquestionably out of season and out of the norm. Usually, there should be permafrost."

"Permafrost?" Lulan drifted closer.

"Permanently frozen ground," Gwen pointed out the obvious by sweeping her hand over the darkness, where they could spy strange rockeries and slushy streams. "Nothing here is natural. All of this shouldn't be visible if ice is filling the gaps and snow is capping the ice. I mean, do you think it's supposed to be this dark? Even Gogo is feeling the challenge."

"Calamity, cease speaking in tongues," Golos complained from below. "Why is it so dark? Is it sorcery? I can see very well even when it's lightless and stormy."

"Usually, Radiance reflects from snow," Gwen explained simply so that the avatar of brute strength could understand. "Even a smidgen of light, once refracted, makes the perpetual dusk possible for low-light navigation. With the snow gone, and the soot we see everywhere, there's no refraction or reflection. That's why we're travelling through this blackness, even though there's starlight—"

"—Hush! We've foes!" Golos hissed, banking to the right so sharply that Gwen and her crew almost ran into the turning Wyvern. "I smell birds…"

Compared to their compromised vision, Golos' mana-scenting nose proved a far more capable radar. Within a minute, the slow hovering crew saw the approach of a trio of flaming avians, first as embers, then as flapping fireflies tossed against a matt black screen.

Gwen squinted. "Looks like Ember Rocs, the pure fire variant. Patrols, you think? Or would this be a genuinely random encounter?"

"Either way, we can't hide." Richard cocked a thumb toward Golos. "There's no cover and hardly enough Elemental Ice for me to form a membrane that'll convincingly camouflage all of us. Even if we detour, neither you nor Golo can achieve velocity AND subtlety."

Six swords materialised beside Lulan, each an enormous, rotating skewer.

"No need for subtlety—I shall lure them toward us." Golos grinned cruelly, likely drooling at the prospect of pruning the pretty feathers from the Roc's breasts. Though her understanding remained vague, Gwen knew that most _Big Birds_ and the Dragonkin were competitors from before Men, hence her Wyvern's eagerness. "We can't let them escape or return to their nests."

"Agreed… Caliban!" Gwen called forth her lightless fiend in its Da-peng form. As for Ariel, the Kirin was far too conspicuous a creature for an ambush. "Cali, hide… and strike when Golos gives the signal."

"SHAA—!" Caliban dutifully tucked its white-fingered claws back into its feathered underbody, making it near-invisible thanks to Golos' eye-catching juxtaposition.

"And remember, Gogo," Gwen gave another piece of advice in case Golos lost himself in the passion. "We need their Cores intact."

With three Roc Cores safely nestled in the bellies of Golos and Caliban, the group travelled east for another hour, following the directions of the Omni-orb before it slowed to a halt—then steered northward.

"Are we too late?" Richard's eyes followed the orb. "It would be a shame if we arrived to find a stump."

"Not to worry, Dick," Gwen mentally commanded Golos to adjust his course. "From what I've seen from Almudj, a Great Tree can be felled, but the effort and time required are usually measured in centuries. Likewise, since Illhîweth is well-rooted and native to the Seat of Frost, our invaders require immense volumes of mana to thrive against the push from its role as a Planar Pillar."

"Meaning—" Richard followed without question but not without curiosity. "The thing you proposed back in March?"

"Yes, I truly believe our allies—either the Dragon Illaelitharian or Lady Illhîwenthiel—are suffering but safe. Back in Cambridge, the faculty and I theorised that the battles for Elemental preeminence in both the north and south should have reached an existential equilibrium—assuming my suspicions of a dual-pole Elemental invasion are correct. Tipping said scales further would require magnitudes more power and mana than unfriendly Elementals can afford to bring to the south. That's the rationale behind our expedition and its overabundance of firepower—to tip that balance in the right direction."

"I don't understand," her soldierly Swordmage confessed to her incomprehension of the macrocosmic consequences of exploding birds with metal shards. "But I know that whenever Dragons are involved, the landscape changes."

"And in our case, a Dragon is likely soaking up the damage to both itself AND the landscape," Gwen hypothesised. "But we'll find out soon, I wager… Yes, Gogo? What's wrong?"

"Calamity, I think we have arrived… I can smell it." Golos slowed to a crawl. "The stench has grown. AND I dare say it's alive."

"What's alive?" Gwen touched the tips of her fingers to her rebreather. The Dwarven design was extremely robust in dispelling the various gasses and stenches of the underground caverns, equally viable for sulphurous lava as it was for toxic methane.

"Can you not smell our foe's hostility?" The Wyvern mocked her. "How foolish to abandon one of the five senses to your _Magitech_! Do you not know that our Draconic body is impervious to mortal perils?"

Seeing sense in her Wyvern's unusual wisdom, Gwen depressed a button on her head unit and allowed one of the filtration capsules to pop. In the next moment, she was nearly balled over by something akin to concentrated Surströmming collated in a pot and slowly simmered by warming weather until every microbe and bacteria participated in an orgy of stench.

"DON'T—Dear God—Don't REMOVE your masks!" She quickly replaced the filtration tablet, then sternly admonished her Wyvern. "Gogo, that was deliberate, wasn't it?"

The Wyvern's cackle indicated it knew what it had done. Ignoring her admonition, her Wyvern replied by condensing the circulating lightning around itself into a Daylight Orb.

Gwen saw and knew then that they did indeed arrive.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Thanks to Golos' disembodied, frazzling bulb, they could now make out the landscape below and a little more in the distance.

Only a few hundred meters away, a shadowy forest of fumaroles began.

Without the snow cover, Gwen found it difficult to encapsulate what she saw. From the ghostly silhouettes in the dark, the _Grove_ seemed an utterly alien landscape, constructed not of trees but enormous calcite deposits, some hundreds of meters tall and so wide that the skyscrapers she had financed on the Isle of Dogs felt miniscule.

A forest of ice?

Or perhaps, a stone forest, now uncovered?

But where were the trees? The famous Rime Oaks promised by Shackleton?

Whatever had once thrived was now at the mercy of the Negative Energy oil slick that permeated the base of every "construct".

"Golos, can you sense Illhîweth?" she asked her Wyvern as they glided closer. "Also, is anything down there… alive in the animated sense?"

What Gwen referred to, now that they were close enough to feel the clammy cling of rot and decay like wet fingers clambering upon their Positively-aligned souls, was the liquified bodies.

_A hundred thousand carcasses?_ A _million_ cadavers?

It was impossible to tell, for the warming air had stripped scale from skin and flesh from bone, creating something of a dark, putrid soup congealed into a dead-fish jelly lake. Countless eyes, their glassy membranes still intact but their pupils white or vomit-green, refracted the pulsing light from Golos' light sphere, animating the dead.

"I sense hostility." Golos' perception navigated the impossible mass with ease, making Gwen glad. "I could Lightning Breath a path and see what hails us."

"No, no." Gwen swallowed. "Don't do that. Knowing our encounters on the sea, I have a good inkling there's probably something large and tentacled hiding in all that muck."

"There must be a whole Shoal here…" Lulan repositioned her iron slabs to act as shield and sword.

"A GREAT SHOAL," Richard considered the scene. Lea, a creature of water and life, hugged her Master tightly, loathing the death below but unwilling to leave her Summoner alone. "Assuming the thickness of a single storey—likely more—there are as many Mermen down there as there were in Auckland, if not more."

"How did they all get here?" Lulan asked. "Mermen can't travel far from the water. Nor survive the ice."

"Necromancy, of course." Richard pointed toward what seemed like a small island making up the upper body of a mountainous turtle creature. "Someone transported them here… Maybe an ancient Juche Summoner?"

"According to my Master's notes." Gwen had been pondering the same thing. "Even Lich-like Necromancers muster no more than a dozen elite companions, paired with a hundred or more disposable troops and thousands of temporary fodder. What's here looks like the work of a conspiracy of Necromancers, with the sole purpose of polluting the land with Negative Energy."

"Aye, it's not easy—but it IS a common enough tactic," Richard explained to their vanguard, whose education of history under the CCP was limited by magnitudes. "The fallow land fuels the generation of more powerful Undead. During the Great War, the first sign of an Undead incursion was the zombie waves, whose remains would turn the land into putrid fields of Undeath to support the awaiting army of skeletons and Death Knights. The "No-Man's Land," as the popular vernacular went, both demoralised us and made our ground operations impossible, while Undead forces were both energised and bolstered. It was a perfect stratagem."

"How did the Mageocracy win against such a force?" Lulan enquired, likely pondering what her swords could do against such a wall of unfeeling flesh.

"The Mageocracy hunted the Necromancers with Hunter Killer Flights." Richard grinned.

"I am not sure these isolated Elves know to clean up after every battle..." Gwen pointed out a presumed naivety of the Frost Elves. "Which could be why this disquieting aftermath is still here and why it's so… richly laid out."

"True enough," Richard concurred with a smirk. "Necromancy is, after all, the most capable of magics. Don't you agree?"

Rather than replying, Gwen urged her Wyvern forward, ignoring the slithering something below, trying to bait their curiosity.

"How much further do you think this stone forest will go?" Lulan asked a little timidly.

"No idea." Gwen pondered with some seriousness. "Which is why we need to keep Ruxin's Orb handy. Once we're in deep, it's safe to assume we'll be no longer entirely in the Prime Material."

It wasn't often that Gwen felt validated—though this time, she would have preferred to err.

There _was_ a reason why the atmosphere outside was so supernaturally calm, and that was because, like Tryfan, the _true_ Grove of Illhîweth did not begin until an hour's flight into a Planar Distortion.

At first, Gwen was sure they were trapped within the spatial folds of some strange dimension, for their Message devices were all dead, and her Divination clued nothing to indicate weal or woe. Even Golos, who could navigate by instinct, felt disorientated and confused.

Yet, Ruxin's orb triumphed—conceivably, its operations fed on principles far more mystical than instinct and thus directed them in zig-zags until, like a pin piercing a veil, the foursome emerged into the fable snowscape of Illhîweth.

"My god…" Gwen held her breath as the fabrics aligning the Planar tapestry unwrinkled, turning dusk to dawn.

"Lea, cover us with a refraction barrier. Make sure we're invisible," Richard instructed Lea to shield the party as they adjusted to their shaken mental state. "Well, well. You've found your tree, Boss. It _is_ happening just as you predicted. How about _that_ , eh? _"_

The _that_ which Richard referred to with feigned nonchalance was the very thing stealing the hope from Gwen's gaping lips.

Ahead, in the uncertain, immeasurable distance, rose the gnarly visage of the Great Tree of Illhîweth, an enormous fumarole enchased in crystalline ice, branching out at the highest peak into a semi-dome display of sparkling, translucent, surreal magnificence.

And around the base of this immeasurable pillar of Para-Elemental Ice slept the great serpent Illaelitharian, the Ice Wyrm of Illhîweth, its body somehow coiling around the circumference of the tree, forming a protective barrier against the putrid forces laying siege.

A besieged World Tree—Gwen's heart shuddered with horror.

As a Mage of tenure, Gwen had seen plenty of spectacles by her twentieth year. Yet, the notion that something akin to a Pillar of the Spiritus Mundi could be _sieged_ was as novel a notion as seeing Illhîweth itself.

With her Essence-enhanced eyes, she could make out the milling-millions—whole cohorts of half-frozen bodies, some moving, some still as statues, roving across the disturbed fumarole pillars to clamber upon the torso of the Great Wyrm, which laid still as the landscape.

Great gashes were visible upon the magnificent creature's elongated length, for many of its sleek segments were besotted with craters of smoking flesh like dormant volcanos, around which the ice-white scales had turned green-black with disease and rot. From these festering sores, Gwen's learned eyes saw the seeping signs of a Necromancy that drained not only vitality but diminished the Dragon's Essence.

It wasn't her Master's sorcery—but she had seen it performed first hand, many years ago, in a more innocent time when all she wanted was to escape poverty and mediocrity. It was the Necromancy used on Almudj's Egg, or at least, possessed the same potent purpose and design.

Below the unmoving Wyrm, she could spy with her eyes the marshalled Rime Wardens of the tree, few in number but superior in prowess, sweeping away the encroaching tide with Elemental sorcery beyond the ken of Humanity. True to Shackleton's memoirs, the majority were the male spider-Centaurs exercising destruction through their upper arms and fore-limbs, slashing and tearing through the Undead Tide, perhaps searching for the Masters of the foetid horde. As for their tools of war, Gwen noted that many wielded complex sculptures of ice that were half-glaive, half-bow, capable of both close and ranged combat—with a capability no less than Hanmoul's Golems.

Comparatively, the female Elves were few and dispersed, hovering over their glaive-wielding guardians. These Rime Witches reminded Gwen of Solana, for they shared the same air of effortless grace, their svelte figures stark white and wreathed with frost as they hindered the tide. Whatever assailed these maidens of frost were instantly slowed and frozen solid or were blown apart by unseens tendrils of wind that seemed to fill their surroundings, visible only by the dark ichor.

From their vantage near the edge of the Pocket Plane, Gwen could see tracts—enormous furrows and burrows carved by some unknown arcane force, criss-crossing the root-scape of the World Tree as valley-sized scars. Cobalt sap froze into jiggered shards of eldritch ice where the cuts were still fresh. Other sections, long worn or repeatedly assailed, had turned dark and sodden, with the trunk becoming spongy, puffed like stubborn mould.

Closer to where the Frost Wyrm Illhîwenthiel laid, a solid carpet of diced Mermen spread in every direction. In the parlance of Gwen's urban-minded observation, if the Great Tree itself were a city's glimmering Tower and Illhîwenthiel its glittering suburbia, then the Undead were a solid, multi-kilometre band of slums, abandoned and neglected until the sewers overflowed and streets turned to rot.

"By the Nazarene, for how long have they been fighting?" Richard inhaled a breath of frigid air.

"Weeks, perhaps a month or more, from the looks of those wounds in the tree. The worst of it seems over, though." Gwen took in their new circumstances with a learned eye from the Fire Sea. "Whatever made Illaelitharian into that state is thankfully spent—else they would have toppled the tree's defences long ago and invaded its inner roots. What we're seeing, I am guessing, would be the equilibrium—meant to keep the tree from recovering and the weather patterns of the Prime Material off-skelter for the next phase of their operations."

"Gwen, are we going to help them?" Lulan's voice came across their localised Comm-devices. "Without support from Master Hanmoul, I cannot condone committing our limited forces."

Below them, a deeply disgruntled Wyvern made a disapproving snort.

"Nonsense! Calamity, as a fellow Drake, we ought to attack!" Much to Gwen's surprise, Golos's tone lacked its usual flippancy. "What's happening here isn't fighting among ourselves to strengthen our flights. We need to put an end to this calamity. As Ryxi's pet, you should know better."

For a few brief breaths, all felt Lulan's Elemental Iron flare red-hot.

"I concur—BUT—" Richard cut in before Lulan proved herself by dashing forward with a berserker howl. "But let's also acknowledge that we're in no rush. The Necromancers down there are human. _We're human._ They're Mages, more or less. _We're Mages_ —if we rush into to aid the Elves, how do we present ourselves as allies? Gwen's magic is hardly... aesthetic. Nor is Caliban. Did you see that Warden with four arms? That damned thing burst a Corpse Hulk at a thousand paces with his centaur bow. And those Rime Wardens are throwing Hail Strikes like Magic Missiles!"

Gwen could not deny that, as wondrous as it would be to ride into the siege like the Riders of Rohan, carving their way through the Necromancer's blockade of the tree, this wasn't Gondor, and they were not the Elves' friends, and she wasn't Gandalf.

But she also knew what to do. With an understanding as natural as photosynthesis, prompted by the flawless face of Solana nodding in approval from a Plane away, Gwen's fingers wandered to her breast.

Deftly, she retrieved the Ilias Leaf, removed both her gauntlets and then held the eternally vibrant Elven device against the flesh of her palm. With all her concentration, she bathed the leaf with Almudj's Essence while focusing her mind on transmitting the scene below, relaying every ounce of horror and every mote of urgency.

Before she had even finished, the Ilias Leaf pulsed in turn, speaking clearly and with utter clarity as though it knew it precise second she would call.

"Take the seeds…" the declaration came. "…Plant them where the land still thrives. The woes of the Hvítálfar... should be solved by the Hvítálfar."

In her hands, the Ilias Leaf grew bulbous, as though the hundreds of seeds within were sorting themselves into regimented order. When she tipped the leaf pocket's opening against her palm, two pods, each bulging at the seams with seed, slid from the slick folds.

" _This time, My dearest Child of Kilroy._ " the impressionistic vision of the Bloom in White flashed against her frontal lobe, making Gwen feel as though the woman was a Force Ghost. She also sensed a smidgen of mischievousness in Solana's tone, even if the overall message had an air of command. " _Do not impede the tree's growth, else you would truly upset our rarely impatient Arch-Warden Eldrin._ "

"I shall," Gwen acknowledged her next task. She wondered at Solana's prophesy but also knew that this much interference was already beyond the scope of Tryfan's Credo, the consequences of which were only acceptable because to do nothing would be more catastrophic. "And just you know, it was neither cheap nor easy getting here..."

What answered her was Solana's emotionless, polite mirth, then silence.

The leaf was replaced.

The gauntlets were slipped back on.

The seeds sat in the palm of her glove.

She met Richard's smirk with dignity.

"So… The Elves simply lacked the means to migrate from Tryfan to The Grove of Illhîweth." Richard touched a thoughtful finger to his chin. "I guess they knew we would get here?"

"You guessed correctly." Gwen felt used, but to stymy whatever the Necromancers, Spectre and the Elements planned, she was willing to fund a multi-million HDM blackhole. Whatever the case, she hoped the world would be a little more united after news of it hits The METRO's front page. "You're right, of course. We're merely couriers of Tryfan's will. But… you know what?"

"Go on?" Her cousin appeared keen to see how she'd react to her latest indignity.

"International freight, my dear Dick," Gwen spoke as she rolled the seeds back and forth between her fingers, calmer now that the solution to her sunk cost AND the Great Tree was on hand. "Is calculated by weight and distance! After which, compounded with labour costs, shall make for an _extensive_ invoice."


True to her promise to the Bloom in White, Gwen allowed no rats to gnaw Tryfan's magical beanstalk.

Under the shelter of Lea's invisibility membrane, the foursome landed away from their entry point, found a fumarole where snow and ice remained clear, and then dug into what was left of the permafrost. Ten seconds later, tired of the almost impossible progress, Golos tore the earth a new one with his mace-tail, excavating the icy calcite until finally, something akin to soil emerged.

Gwen tossed a pod in each ditch.

The seedlings proved beyond eager, for the second they kissed the virgin soil, roots as thick as Gwen's arms sprouted from seeds no larger than her thumbnail, growing so fast that she and the other had to vacate the vicinity.

Up and up, the trellises climbed, effortlessly finding purchase in the air, forming the foundation, inscription and gate in a long-drawn, spontaneous burst of fecundity.

The Trellis Portal, the same phenomenon she had witnessed in the Fire Sea, soon built a monolith in the linen snow. One by one, the vine-wrought inscriptions thrummed with vital mana, flooding the surrounding space with a sudden onset of spring, melting the slush and cleansing the foetid air. Like the spiral shell of a snail, the entwining bowers unfurled, rending geometry and space as they blossomed outwards, reaching higher as ambitious brown fingers until, from every knot and cuticle, white flowers burst into being.

"Gardenias?" Gwen's nose wrinkled as she decoupled her mask to take in the thankful scent of life. "How very English countryside."

"I am hungry." Golos, whose element was bolstered by Positive Energy, eyed the dew-dripping Trellis Gate. "Is Hierophant Sanari joining us? I like her scent. _Hee-hee._ "

Lulan, seeing that Golos was her Master-Uncle, said nothing of their Drake's impertinence.

Richard, however, cracked an off-colour joke to steer the Wyvern's interest.

A dozen breaths later, a humanoid warrior emerged from the shade of the flowering bower.

Arch-Warden Eldrin, beetle-black since the dawn of the World Tree's first blush, hovered across the muddy snowmelt, held aloft by currents of unseen mana. Without regard, the man pierced Lea's veil, his golden eyes drinking in the traumatic scene of Illhîweth's abuse.

" _Necromancy…_ " the Warden spoke the Elven word for Humanity's unique magic in the same tone Gwen would swear after a bad day of stock trades. " _Will the blight brought by your kind never end?_ "

"… Is he talking to me?" Gwen spoke to Richard, who was closest to her.

"I don't see any other Necromancers around here…" her cousin joked.

"A true Calamity." Golos, as usual, delighted in Gwen's awkward self-awareness.

The next row of Wardens to emerge from the Trellis portal were more akin to the army Gwen had in mind. Row upon rows of Elves, each clad in their scarab-shell carapaces, looking near identical in their shimmer garbs. These came on quickly. Within minutes, she counted seventy-odd of the professed pruners of the World Tree.

Curiously, despite the petrol-sheen colouration of their plates, Gwen could distinctly feel the unique mana of the Prime and Para Elementals among the men.

"Elementalists." Richard's face was pink from the excitement of seeing a scene recorded only in history books. "They're all Elementalists…"

"And their mana is at least at the tier of Magisters." Lulan, as well, was enjoying the stickybeaking. "Seventy-two Magisters through a single Portal… that'll drive the CCP up the wall."

"Oh, they're far more capable than our so-called Magisters." Richard pointed to the implements strapped to the Warden's bodies. Some had wands carved from the branches of Tryfan's World Tree. Others had insectile implements that resembled glaives and curved swords, many as long as their already elongated bodies. "What's the chance one of our Magisters could take on one of theirs in ranged or close combat?"

"I want to fight one," Lulan professed.

"You can ask Eldrin to spare a body to satiate our curiosity," the Water Mage joked. "Call it a cultural exchange program."

"Oh— There's Sanari!" Gwen interjected when finally, another familiar face emerged. Unlike her usual, gossamer-attired self, the Druidic Hierophant wore a dour leather mantle with highlights in the colours of autumn. Two more women followed, their long limbs aesthetic and svelte, their faces serene, until one's gaze met the unfeeling reflection of their jewel-scarab pupils, looking upon the world with haughty apathy.

_Sanari… as the junior of the trio?_ Gwen's mind mulled over the scene of the emerging women in what must be Tryfan's druidic battledress. If her friend followed the others as a Hierophant of the Sixth Circle under Arch-Druid Isilynor, what marked the others' seniority? With Elves, it was never as simple as looking for the wrinkles of experience—for all were ageless and expressionless. Nor did their uniforms offer distinctions of rank since all Elves cycled their duties over the aeons. An Inscriber might have been an Arch Warden; a Hierophant of yesteryear might be a senior cultivator of Ilias Leaves.

Whatever the case, the Elves were wasting no time in making good their promise of a resolution.

Even as the elemental commotion of spring in their corner of Illhîweth exposed their position, Sanari and her triplet sisters strode on sprouting carpets of flowering clover, turning the land underfoot into the same biome Gwen had experienced in Wales.

As she passed, the Druid nodded an acknowledgement of thanks, to which Gwen answered with a wave.

"How do you think they'll fight the Undead?" Richard pssst to her. "Regular magic isn't going to fare much better than what the Snow Elves are doing."

"Not sure…" Lulan appeared torn between awe and jealousy as the ageless women glided past. "But we'll be seeing it first hand in a moment."

In the distance, dozens of black silhouettes rose into the air, wreathed in viscous miasma, some skeletal, others dripping flesh from bone. These, Gwen could see, would be the recently "risen" Draconids spawned originally by the Frost Wyrm Illaelitharian, now converted by the sword to the forces of Undeath. Their prowess, Gwen suspected, was likely bolstered by the necrotic river swamping the space outside Illhîwenthiel's Pocket Plane domain, the source of the Necromancers' confidence against the Southern Seat of Frost.

The cabal of Druids paid no need to the approaching threats, allowing their Wardens to fan out into arcane positions in a wide semi-circle radius.

Sanari, the "youngest," coaxed an elongated root from the Trellis portal to distend around her feet, penetrate the weakened permafrost, and expand into a mystic-looking vessel akin to a Grecian urn.

The Wardens, meanwhile, casually took up positions both on the ground and in the air, seemingly preoccupied only with their secret work and not the impending threat of what looked like a mishmash of Wyverns and Drakes, including one specimen as large as Golos itself.

“Calamity… should we…” Golos' battle blood was up.

"Hold your position," Gwen gave her command. "If Eldrin wanted our help, they would have asked for a quote. Let's hang back and look for where the Necromancers might be holed up. If anything… I have an idea of how we will deal with those pits of necrotic energy the Undead are swarming around..."

From the fight given by the Frost Elves, Gwen had deduced that the Rime Wardens weren't at all experienced in fighting the Undead. Their main focus was on rebuffing—or incapacitating the Mermen, which eventually allowed the battlefield miasma to revive the bits and pieces still glued enough to crawl, creep, or slither back to the trench pits dug by the Undead.

These "Corpse Pits", Gwen could see, were something akin to battlefield waypoints for the Necromancers, nodes where their sorcery could be channelled, where their minions could recombobulate. Assailing one was both tedious and hard-won, for the density of collated Undeath was magnitudes higher than on the open field, reminding Gwen of Shielding Stations both in their tenacity and near-imperviousness.

Closer to home, the battle between the intercepting aerial forces of the Necromancers and the scions of Tryfan erupted as spectacularly as Erebus. With a cohesion that would make the Royal Griffin Knights blush for shame, the Wardens drew their bows, woven into place strings of elemental sorcery, then unleashed their rebuke of Undeath. From a range of over two kilometres, Eldrin's warrior-peers wove spells of Elemental Air, Ice and Lightning, some even tapping into the pure force of Positive Energy, to discharge a barrage that would make Hanmoul quake in his armoured boots.

As an uninterrupted orison, the released bolts from the Tryfanian bows materialised a hailing cloud of shrieking, screaming spell bolts, each racing its neighbour as their heading magically adjusted to the will of the caster.

When the volley reached the climax of their crested arch, the Frost Arrows erupted, transforming into seeking streams of elemental destruction. These were followed by the thunderous howling of rapidly discharging Lightning, scattering among the Undead Drakes as rampaging masses of ball lightning.

Those that survived suffered the most indignant defeat, for the invisible Gale Arrows, capable of puncturing Golem Plating, were one of Tryfan's more infamous exports. Caught unaware, spontaneous orifices with exit wounds the size of car tires opened up where chitin had fallen away or where the membranes of wings and sinew were unprotected.

Lulan's blood was boiling. "Damn… they tore them to shreds."

Golos nodded, nudging the girl's shoulder thoughtfully with his spikey chin, perhaps putting himself in the Undead's place. "… _To shreds_."

Gwen, comparatively, was more cognisant of the magic now brought to life by Sanari and her sisters. Utilising Tryfan's lifeforce, the trio concocted something unimaginable to mortal eyes, detectable only by those who had experienced the majesty of a Land God like Almudj.

Sensing the raw, vital elixir pool in the vine-wrought receptacle the Druids had coaxed into place, Gwen felt goosebumps all over her skin.

_Surely they're not thinking of conjuring Tyfanevius?_ Her mind reeled at seeing an ancient Wyrm, potentially as ancient as Almudj, manifest on the other side of the world. She wasn't sure what consequences such an occurrence might bring, though the Beast Tide of the Seventies, attributed to Vynssarion the Black, came to mind.

Whatever was brewing inside that vessel—Gwen understood instinctively—was something anathema to her particular constitution, especially toward Caliban.

" _Timeless Tyfanevius!_ " the deep, resonant voice of Eldrin addressed the vessel held between the three Druids. " _Unnatural befoulment, O'Lord protector of the Waking Realm, has pervaded these sacred Groves of Illhîweth. We who art the Tree's children beseech thee, bring back balance!_ "

Eldrin's ceremonial request was answered by an empathic "wrath" so volatile that the three women had to step back from the now levitating vessel.

" _Sanari—_ "

"Yes, Lord Warden…" The Hierophant bowed her head.

" _Ilyana—_ "

"Yes, Lord Warden…" Another answered the mystic rite.

" _Seldanari—_ "

"Yes, Lord Warden…" The final Druid bowed her head.

" _As Arch-Warden under her eternal white bloom, I release the Elxir of our Lord Protector to thee_." Eldrin stepped up as he spoke, his body brimming with what could only be the Essence of Tyfanevius, the "Serpent" of Tryfan.

With an unseen stroke of a blade Gwen could not see, the Arch-Warden allowed the shallow wound on his palm to drip an admixture of semi-clear, ichorous blood and the golden-sap Essence of Tyfanevius to infuse the strange cocktail laying dormant in the wooden vessel.

The conservative part of Gwen desired to watch as an audience—though her inner cat soon sought suicide.

Like a charmed feline, she edged a bit closer to see the true contents of the vessel. Inside the man-sized jug, she saw not a seed pod but…

"… IS THAT MOULD?" Every strand of her lovely hair stood on end even as she retreated, feeling as though the black specs were already invading her nostrils and nesting in her lungs. "Er… we're not going to summon an army of Treants to stomp down Isengard—er… I mean, the Necromancers?"

"Treants? I suppose this is a Treant of sorts. Yes, child, these are spores of the Great Shambler, our Lady's _Moss Beast of Saelethil._ " Eldrin did not rebuke her Gwenism, for he appeared no fonder of the furry mass of rotting wool than she did. "The Moss Beast is a strange kin, even for Treants. Once energised, it feeds on Necrotic energy and perpetuates with the single-mindedness of a Void-conjured glutton like yourself—until exhaustion, where it perishes, completing the cycle of life by becoming an enriching nourishment for the fallow lands."

"Does er..." Gwen kept herself at a respectful distance, for her Divination Sigil was screaming like Edward Munch's infamous masterpiece. "Does Mossy identify friend and foe?"

"Without recourse." Eldrin grinned, inviting her to come closer. "The Moss Shambler knows its Necrotic foe."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Of course." Gwen willed Golos closer to provide her with some surety while she circulated Almudj's blessing through her conduits.

The Warden wiped his hands with a suddenly appearing silk cloth, erasing his palm wound like a whiteboard checkmark. A slight susurration followed, re-gloving his exposed hand with a new carapace.

"Behold the Wrath of Tryfan, Lost Child. Let the Shambler of Saelethil cleanse the Grove where Illaelitharian has been wounded, and the Undead Hordes lie thickest." Eldrin said seriously. "But recall our Bloom's request—that your employment is not yet ending. In the aftermath, you must commune with the Rime Wardens and Illaelitharian."

"Me? I am not familiar with these Frost Elves," Gwen clarified. "And why should the Wyrm, or its Mistress, listen to us and you? Are you not their kin?"

"It is no secret that Tryfan is unlike the other Groves." Eldrin gave her an impatient look. "Merely accept that The Rime Flower Illhîwenthiel does not bow her haughty head to the Bloom in White, though it does nod when saviours of a neutral Faction come to their aid, especially the _Vessel of a Primordial lineage_."

"Aye." Golos bobbed his chin sagely as he sniffed the vessel, his neck feathers flaring in eye-catching colours. "This 'Moss' isn't so bad, Calamity. Looks almost edible, like the black mushrooms Ryxi cultivates for Father."

Eldrin gave the Wyvern an expression that unquestioningly questioned its intelligence quotient.

Gwen pushed Golos' thunder-breath mouth away from her face. "So, how does Mossy _work_?" She gestured to the vessel, thinking of Michelin Man's march through Manhattan, which would be tremendous. "Shall we be expecting a colossal mushroom?"

"Work?" Eldrin's gaze swept across the vast planes sprinkled with white snow and a plague of Undeath. "The Shambler is working as we speak..."

In Gwen's mind, the Elven Column should have moved forward with the mechanical precision of a Roman Legion, erasing swaths of fishy carcasses as they approached the unmoving Undead Corps, pun intended.

Instead, Eldrin's revelation that they would not be marching any closer to the Grove of Illhîweth provided an unwelcome insight into Druidic biological warfare.

As three separate "Shoals", the Undead horde making up the masses had sent its despoiled tendrils toward the newly arrived Hvítálfar, slithering across the blasted landscape like the tentacles of some oily, ink-stained Kraken.

Armoured shock troops in the form of white-eyed crustaceans formed the frontal column, tirelessly barging through the snow, skittering on limbs no longer sensible to fear or fatigue.

But unlike the flying monsters, these were not repelled by spellfire.

Instead, the approaching Undead grew more languished the closer they came until about two football fields from Tryfan's phalanx…. they fell apart like mud idols caught by a sudden squall.

Gwen immediately upped the Essence residing in her ocular organs. Unlike Human-oriented Zombies or Skeleton Soldiers, the seafood Undead were a mishmash of strange beings from oozing jellies to van-sized crabs, slithering, flopping, walking or hopping their way across the darkened snow.

Yet, where the horde now halted, Gwen saw a brilliant garden of fungi—some pink, some blue, others vibrant and green, looking exactly like the aftermath of one of her lazy weekends where the rice cooker was left unattended.

Colonies—countless colonies of mould—and what looked like sinuous strands of mushrooms were rapidly taking over the Undead, feasting upon the Necrotic energies that drove them mindlessly onward. A good portion of the Undead collapsed where they stood, becoming masses of soil-like substance interlaced by strands of living slime.

"That's…" Gwen licked her lips nervously, pondering what Dystopian horror might emerge should such a spore cloud be unleashed in a human city. "Highly efficient…"

"It was no easy feat to gift your kind a time to pant during its darkest hour." Eldrin's tone remained characteristically arrogant. "Though many judged that your kind should have been left to wipe itself off the Prime Material, the Bloom had felt great compassion for the mortal races. For her mercy to strangers, Tryfan's distance from our kin had grown immeasurably. Were it not for her obligations to Kilroy…"

Eldrin, perhaps noting his lack of stoicism, said nothing more.

"Master sure liked to meddle, eh?" Gwen tried to map the chronology of the Great War and what she now knew of Henry Kilroy's pre-industrial origins. "Did Master—Whoa! _They're moving?!_ Did you animate them?"

Her thoughts of Henry were instantly banished when, against all expectation, the spore-smothered Undead made a gangly about-face, then started to march back from wherever they emerged.

"That's incredible," she voiced her wonder. "Is this a variant of Necromancy?"

"That would be Biomancy," Richard, who had been keeping an eye on her and the Warden, cut in from beside them. "Very different to our Faith Magic. True Biomancy… the type your Master wielded if I had to guess."

"He coined it as Prime Magic," Gwen concurred. "Had my Master mastered such a trick, Warden?"

Eldrin paid no heed to his mortal wards, gesturing only to the trio of Druids behind them who appeared in a trance. In the distance, the roving bands of fungi-infested Undead grew from hundreds to thousands until a counter tide of shambling formations began to surge back toward the darkened plains with its oil fields of foetid fish.

From what she could see, unless the Necromancers hidden within that horizon-to-horizon battlefield made a personal appearance and began to lay down direct damage to the spore-zombies, their forces would eventually—be it days, weeks or a month, be converted unto fertiliser.

After a dozen more clashes, more Undead tendrils stopped in their tracks, turned to fungi—then began a slow-motion counter-revolution.

Be it might or magic, there was no stopping the slow spread of spores. From the near-silent chants of the Elven Wardens, Gwen could feel the flow of Elemental Air altering where they stood, falling into a depression so that the wind bore more and more of Sanari's fungi spores toward the awaiting lines of moaning Undead.

Meanwhile, the distraction was enough of a disturbance for the skittering Rime Wardens to regroup and retreat, closing enough of their ranks to begin clearing a _no-dead_ land between the resting body of Illaelitharian and the sieging horde.

"Scion of Kilroy." Eldrin's voice once more sounded amid the droning chants. Following the Warden's extended finger, she saw the bulging, festering node of one of the Corpse Pits regurgitating more Undead, reconstituted from the ichorous soup of Necrotic energy at its centre, a pulsing, revolting gash of Negative Energy. "It is not our duty nor our will to punish the transgressors of your race. _There_ you will find your foe."

"That specific pit?" Gwen followed the man's directions. "You're saying the Necromancers are there? Under that unassuming spot? _Really?_ "

"The spores are drawn to the source. The Shambler's hunt is instinctual and primordial and cannot be fooled or perplexed." Eldrin's golden gaze could chill cocktails. "As for your prize, the practitioners of unsanctioned Necromancy are the object of bounties within your Queendom and your Central Continents. Before you accost our soft-petalled Bloom out of jaw-clenching greed, would it not be proper for Kilroy's child to engage in honest labour?"

The corner of Gwen's lips twitched. "I suppose that be proper and within my duty."

"Then sally forth." Eldrin looked down on her stiletto-heeled self from the lofty height of his arrogant nostrils. "Go, Lost Child of Kilroy. Be as your Master's design. Purge the Unclean, as you were made to do."

"If that's the case." Gwen gathered her trio of cousins and Drake, already having a general notion of how she would like to resolve Illhîweth's infestation. "I'll do my dues, Warden. But promise me, Ed. If a Lich pops out of that box, I'll be right back here, and you better payout..."

Though Gwen had made her promise, she possessed no interest in risking another IIUC exchange with the Soul Reaver and the Lich. She already knew that a Cabal of Necromancers had to be responsible for an Undead Tide of this size—what she couldn't know was their exact makeup.

As she had previously observed, the pits were arguably unassailable so long as the Necrotic mana supplying them did not fail.

Much like a Shielding Station, these world wounds connecting the Negative Energy Plane drew power from energies far more powerful than any individual Mage could muster. Thereby, Richard's localised tsunami would not move such a structure, Lulan's swords could not demolish such a blight, and neither could her Lightning pierce deep enough to disperse its core Enchantments.

But who was she? The Saviour of Shalkar! Faced with such a dilemma, she could only respond with a devious ploy, one unorthodox enough that few would ever plan to ward against such an underhanded method.

As soon as they landed south of Erebus, Hanmoul had informed her that the land of the Frost Wyrm Illaelitharian lay on permafrost as old as the formation of Terra.

The Dwarve's confidence in establishing a Royal Raven Fortress lay in the fact that tunnelling through hardened igneous stone was an impossible feat for beings not native to the Plane of Earth, be it a fiery prince of Elemental Primacy or an eldritch Lich-fiend of Undeath. Once past the surface layer with its broken snow, not even Golos could brute-force aeon-old mudbanks compressed by stratum of ice into impervious deposits. Perhaps if they were outside the Pocket Dimension, there would be Purple Wyrms, half-centipede, half-Draconids, that plague the Murk—but no such aberrant monsters could exist in the sacred soil housing the Frost Tree, neither as a scion of Illaelitharian nor a carcass for the Necromancers to raise.

Thereby, Gwen hypothesised with confidence that the Necromancers would not have provisioned for an underground assault—and even if they did—they would not be ready for one at the scale she envisioned.

Caliban, whom she had withheld from expanding too much of the vital forces stowed since Auckland, was promptly sent underground to slowly and silently transformed into a void-empowered _Garp_.

Then silently, over several hours, it slithered toward the particular Corpse Pit Eldrin had hand-picked.

Mayhap there was a Shrodinger's Lich in there.

Or not.

But there would certainly be a run-of-the-mill cadre of senior Necromancers and their Apprentices.

And if a Lich popped out, pissed as a trodden cat, she could bolt back to Eldrin. In any case, Her un-voidable vantage lay in that Caliban was remotely operated and required no need for herself to step in harm's way…

_Yes..._ Gwen persuaded herself and then the others as the Moss Shambler fed. _The plan should work._

Visually, the slow corrosion of the Undead army was going slowly but swimmingly. Nonetheless, she could see that the Necromancers had drawn more energy into their pits to counter the effect with varying degrees of success.

With or without her aid, Tryfan will eventually breach the equilibrium, and Illhîweth shall free itself from the Undead mire—only as Eldrin had said, Solana had gifted her an opportunity for profit—and it was up to her to make good of it.

And so, Gwen readied herself and her peers.

With the Necromancers lacking in flying forces, her Flight had complete initiative—a testament to the importance of aerial superiority.

"Shaa—Shaa—" Caliban informed her that it was close. In addition to the hardness of the ice and mud, the coldness would have also killed any mortal tunneler—though that was no problem for Caliban.

Gwen filled her lungs with frigid air—whispered a prayer to St Evee—then began her one-sided ploy.

"MAELSTROM!"

Her opening volley was an enormous whirlpool, unfurling as an indifferent lightning vortex, sucking from the ground any Undead not anchored enough to the soot and slush. From Ariel's position above the Maelstrom, bolts of unending electricity randomly rained down upon the Corpse Pit and its defences, causing its semi-dome of dark matter to glow white and emerald.

Together with Lulan's bombardments, Gwen channelled elemental destruction onto the pit—appearing to give their all even as the umbral powers of the pit's shielding took their assault in stride.

As her mana slowly drained, Gwen sought hypothetical empathy with her trapped victims.

Would the acolytes now be begrudging their Masters?

Would there be a possibility of surrender?

Or were they already abandoned by the command of a higher being? Of that, she was certain. Eventually, ageless Illaelitharian would recover, after which its foes would eat their words.

Or was _extinction_ something the adherents of _Juche_ had already made peace with?

Were there, perhaps, an agent of Spectre watching over the pawns? Someone like Ravenport's youngest roped or fooled into a thankless task?

And if there indeed was a Lich, would it perish here, only to be reborn near its phylactery?

Whatever the case, the bombardment she affected was drawing Undead by the tens of thousands toward the pit, shambling and rolling their fishy forms to supplement the depleting energy.

While she worked her magic, Richard remained on high alert, having created dozens of layers of protection in every direction so that the slightest disturbance would trigger Lea's Watery Tombs—which was expected to achieve only the half-seconds necessary for Eldrin to answer.

"Get ready..." Gwen redoubled her focus.

A moment of weakness would soon come upon them when Caliban displaced the ice and stones, taking its pound of flesh from her. She would recover, but there would be no more Void sorcery until Almudj's Blessing restored itself.

Thankfully, even as the group counted down Caliban's arrival, no retaliation came. When a battle force had remained bogged down for months, a _change_ of strategy was an intellectual impossibility.

At the two-minute mark, Caliban's Life Sense ascertained that the space below the pit was a target-rich environment that showed faint signs of life some twenty-odd meters deep.

Eldrin had not lied—or Solana had divined their foes with sorcery beyond mortal ken, and now her fiend was ready.

"BARBANGINY!" Gwen released her final spell, a Thundering Shatter worthy of the wrath of Almudj's disdain for strangers.

Like the supersonic _CRACK_ of a stockman's bullwhip, her spell struck.

The Corpse Pit, its swollen dome of miasma shuddering and shaking, shook on its foundations, its magic circles cracking the ground as the Undead perished by the droves, first glowing white-hot, then disappearing with the flashing lightning as though snowmelt meeting the new dawn.

Then, amid the cacophonic din, Caliban surged upward, and Gwen's senses grew deathly numb.

"SHAAAAAAAA—"

A grotesque maw, lined from edge to interior with a hundred thousand upon a thousand tiny teeth made for rapid excavation, opened below the Corpse Pit, stretching until it appeared like an inverted, circular swimming pool swallowing the land. The air momentarily filled with the distinct drone of a Sand Wyrm's whale breach over the sands of the Fire Sea, and then the entirety of the pit suddenly buckled as the ground underneath gave way, falling rapidly into the indistinct space of Caliban's gullet.

With a shivering, shaking grunt of effort, Gwen closed her fists.

Below, the circular lamprey mouth of Caliban shifted to a close, forming its featherless face like the closing aperture of a camera lens.

"CALI!" the shrill voice of the triumphant girl-Magister pierced the air like a clarion. "RETURN TO THE VOID—NOW!"

A second of uncertainty passed—one in which Gwen anticipated a dozen angry Necromancers to displace from Caliban's gullet to pepper her with Bone Spears—then Caliban winked out of existence—shunted by her will into the hungering Void.

For several more seconds, Gwen doubted they had achieved anything, even knowing she had commanded Caliban to digest its spoils and not "share".

Then—the Undead horde began to meander—not in the orderly, purposeful fashion they had demonstrated only seconds ago—but moving as demented geriatrics, no longer possessing purpose or intent.

From her lofty height, Gwen stumbled, only to be caught by her cousin and Lulan, who held her arms to keep her afloat. Despite her best efforts, her indigestion would keep her occupied for some time.

"Ryxi's beard… you did it!" Lulan was in a state of shock. "The Necromancers, where did they go?"

Richard rudely rubbed Gwen's taut tummy by hovering a hand above her stomach, winking at a blushing Lulan.

Lulan's eyes flittered between the giant hole bored into the space where the Corpse Pit used to be and the hyperbolic eight-pack some Dwarf had engraved onto the feathered carapace framing Gwen's abdomen. "So… Do we keep fighting?"

Gwen shook her head, still too winded to speak.

She wasn't sure exactly what would happen when she once more conjured Caliban back into the Prime Material—only that she should wait to be in good company, preferably Elvia and Sen-sen, and Inquisitors, in case something angry survived.

"Naw, now we wait, Lulu." Richard thankfully read her mind. "And after Gwen can stand... I guess we have a meeting with the Frost Flower of Illhîweth."