Metaworld Chronicles

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."

"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."