Rising Kite - A story from the world of HWFWM

“That should do it director. Thank you.” Braid said, causing the leonid beside him to cease his channeled sonic attack. At this time, the cloth-covered bronze-ranker had over a hundred glowing threads leading from the sleeves of his robes, attaching to different points on the barrier in front of them.

Rupert, having kept up the directed attack for over a minute, popped a mana-restoring pill into his mouth as he continued to scan the surroundings with both aura perception and supernatural hearing.

Sending out two more threads, Braid looked to Rupert for permission to proceed. At the leonid’s nod, he started forming the ritual circle between his fingers even as he intoned the incantation for the ritual. Rupert could see the threads lighting up further, their glow leaking into an emerging pattern which spread across the shimmering surface of the barrier.

When the pattern had become stable, some quick motions caused the ritual circle of threads between Braid’s fingers to become even more complex. With the final syllable, a visible pulse went through the threads, causing the pattern to flash painfully bright once before part of the dome dissolved, leaving an asymmetrical hole in its side. It was like someone had taken a glass cutter and cut out an angular, irregular pattern from the middle of the pane while leaving the rest undisturbed.

As it opened, a bright purple light spilled out through the hole, surprising Rupert as it had not been visible from the outside even as the dome had looked only semi-opaque.

“Heavens, they have overloaded the ritual. We need to- aaaah!” Braid began, but his words of alarm turned into a shout as a vaguely humanoid silhouette came charging out at him, backlit by the eerie purple as it swung a bone sword toward Braid. But Rupert was faster, already in motion as he had heard the familiar steps of not one but two of the bone-clad wraiths, apparently left behind by the ritualists.

Even as he tackled the wraith to the side, allowing Braid to fall back a few meters, Rupert was already turning toward the other one which was exiting as well.

“You said something about the ritual overloading?” he asked Braid, even as he began exchanging blows with the two undead monsters.

“Ehm- Yes, the ritual. From what my magical perception tells me, this ritual and all the remaining fuel has been set to detonate.”

“How bad will that be?”

“Well, I will need thorough calculations to-”

“How bad, Braid?” Rupert pressed, tone clipped as he took great care not to let any of the pair get by him and reach the bronze-ranker.

“An estimate? I will need to look closer.”

“Then do it. I will keep these at bay.” Rupert growled, unleashing his siege-roar which threw the two undead backwards, leaving a path for Braid to enter the dome. He began talking aloud almost instantly, knowing that Rupert would hear him.

“Several matrices have been sent into feedback loops… Multiple points of exomagical eruption… Fuel only medium grade… Complexity - high, but that is both good and bad…

“Any time, now Braid.”

“Sorry, director. Early estimates are that the blast would be a threat to all of bronze-rank and below within two to three kilometers, the danger lessening with distance. Silver-ranked individuals should be fine unless they were already extremely injured.”

“Given the amount of our people that should still be within the area, I wouldn’t call that acceptable consequences.”

“I am glad you feel that way, director.”

“Can you handle it?” Rupert asked, grasping a blade in one hand at the same time that he delivered a sonic roar in the face of the other wraith, still keeping the combat outside of the ritual circle he assumed was in there.

“I- I think so. But I need time. Time that I am unsure if we have.”

“Then go for it, Braid. We can’t just leave our people to such a fate.”

Braid was silent for a short while before Rupert heard his response. “Yes, director. We will see it done.”

Even though the large ritual circle below was hard to look at due to the bright light, sight was not the sense Braid would rely on the most anyway. The multitudes of miniscule spiritual threads suffusing his aura had already begun to feel their way across interlinked diagrams, mapping and analyzing, their controller thankful for his bronze-ranked spirit attribute to help process it all. Doing this kind of analysis under stress had been exhausting at iron-rank.

“Disrupt and redistribute the flow from here into the auxiliary loop. Vent the buildup here into- no, that didn’t work. Ah, laying down a new proxy-circuit here should ease the pressurized mana over there.” Braid mumbled as he worked, his magical threads darting around the ritual, plunging down into parts of the magical circuitry and even acting as new parts of it in places, sometimes causing small bursts and crackling discharge.

The work of just under two minutes felt like hours to him, even as his magical senses prickled and tingled with the increasing pressure, which made the air itself feel cloying and oppressive. And even as he made headway, Braid had to admit the truth to himself; he was not going to make it. The ritual was already too far along, and too powerful.

Taking a shuddering breath, Braid swallowed. There was at least something he could do. His threads continued their work even as he spoke.

“Director, we were too late. I will not be able to deactivate the ritual. It is too far gone already.”

The sounds of struggle were still heard outside, another roar echoing out before Braid felt Rupert’s presence near the opening in the barrier.

“Then you have to go, Braid. From what you said, I should be able to weather the detonation.”

“It- it is too late for that as well, director. Barring a portal, not even you would make it out of the radius in time.” Braid said, voice shaking slightly, continuing before Rupert could make any more objections. “But I can do something, director. I should be able to change the scope, directing the discharge more upwards than outwards. It should- it should keep our people safe. Or at least safer.” he finished, the implications for himself clear in his shaking voice.

Rupert’s answer was slightly delayed as he had to fend off another assault from the wraiths, sonic howl meeting sprays of the black ectoplasm they had a tendency to use as a kind of range attack.

“Then do what you can, Braid. And know that I will do all within my power to see you through.”

The cloth-wrapped bronze-ranker gave only a grim nod in response, resuming his work. His glowing threads wove a magical, billowing mesh around the ritual site as Braid’s mind went into overdrive, doing work which felt like trying to build a dam of twigs and mud in a stream whose pressure was only increasing.

Sparks of mana and crackling discharges raged around him in chaotic bursts and explosions, some searing his flesh during short moments of contact, and Braid realized that it was now or never, should he wish to make a final push. Even as his magical threads were fraying and severing due to the magical turbulence, Braid reached up with his hand to pull his cloth mask up just a bit, enough to put a silver spirit coin into his mouth.

Power and focus surged through him, like he had suddenly taken a leap towards the heavens which left the world smaller and more simple around him. Graspable. His threads, renewed in strength and purpose, went into overdrive even as the diagram started cracking. A few seconds later, it was as if the world slowed down as his magical perception saw it. The first spark breaching one of the many points where the mana had built up to catastrophic degrees. As soon as the chaotic mote of unstable magic emerged, the rest of the diagram followed in an instant, like a pane of glass shattering all at once.

Braid’s vision went white, and his world went completely silent.

River inwardly cursed her weakness, of not having become stronger in time for this conflict. Even with her speed and grace, her iron rank had forced her to take detours around areas of more intense fighting, even passing groups of enemies by as she had also been forced to shed her group of thralls for ease of movement.

She even sensed the presence of her father’s aura, once more embroiled in conflict. Even though she couldn’t see their battle, the feeling of icy inevitability and oppressive domination was clear to her aura-senses. Would that she could one day match, or even surpass him. But for now, she could only carry out his order, even delayed as she was.

Even in the final stretch, she had to be very cautious. It seemed that the main ritual site had been compromised, a silver-ranker battling two of the wraiths outside the barrier. Even though the leonid seemed disinterested in her moving around the barrier while keeping a respectable distance, River still thought that their sect’s temporary outpost not far from the ritual site felt woefully inadequate should the adventurer come knocking.

But she kept such doubts out of her aura as she entered the rows of tents and other temporary lodging, the outpost almost empty except for a bare minimum number of warriors remaining to guard it. Apparently, their reserves had long since been deployed. It did not take much more than to reveal her aura for the guards to allow her through, and River took a direct path towards her father’s pavilion, jumping over tents and other obstacles.

As she entered the regal silk pavilion, enchanted to allow for comfortable living even out in the field, River sent the servant-thralls scurrying out of her way with her projected aura. Walking into one of the wings of the spacious tent, River ignored her father’s tools of unmaking and other belongings to walk up to a construction of wood and enchanted steel which stood against one of the silk walls.

The construction was akin to a cage standing upright, the rune-covered bands of metal vaguely tracing out a humanoid silhouette, almost like that of a sarcophagus. Inside, tightly confined, stood a bronze-ranked elven man, his eyes distant and his body unmoving. It was one of their sect’s prize catches, an early bronze-ranked portal user which her father had been able to catch during the initial counter-attack against their enemies. The cage would suppress any of his personal powers of movement or teleportation, leaving him trapped to be worked on even in the field.

Due to the rather hectic conflict which followed, she knew that her father hadn’t been able to work on the thrall-to-be for as long as he would have preferred, but long enough for him to be usable as a tactical asset should the circumstances be dire. And apparently, they were, or River would not be here.

“Thrall, open a portal to our domain.” River ordered as she drew closer. The elf’s eyes flickered towards her, seeming only half-aware of her presence. She responded by channeling some mana into one of the runes on the contraption, causing it to light up with the purple-red light that was ever familiar to her. Other similar runes lit up along the bands, their magic causing the captive to shake uncontrollably without uttering more sounds than the occasional gasp.

It didn’t take long for his eyes to clear, now bloodshot as they turned toward River in recognition. And fear, especially when seeing her white, almost translucent hair.

“Thrall, open a portal to our domain.” she repeated, her eyes not leaving his. She only received a whimpering response, but this time a series of stylized stars started appearing in the air to form a circle almost two meters across, a shimmering surface forming in between them.

“Keep it open, as I will soon return.” River said, walking towards the shimmering gate. “Expect to-”

She had only begun the other part of the sentence when her senses registered something behind her, barely making sense of it before the tent around them were ripped apart, the sound of a deep explosion reaching her at the same time that a wave of force impacted her body and sent her flying straight into the portal.

A searing pain beneath her right knee was soon followed by more as her face, arms and torso impacted something hard before scraping across a solid surface, the sensation both acute and at the same time dulled by her stunned mind.

As the stars, spots of light and other flashing phenomena started clearing from her vision, River realized that she recognized the table which lay toppled over next to her, as well as the polished wood floor her cheek rested against. Sitting up caused waves of pain to emanate through her body, the pain of her right leg remaining the most acute.

The thrall had indeed opened the portal to their domain, in the middle of the common area of her father’s complex in the underground sect headquarters. But where the portal should be, only empty air greeted her. Starting abruptly from its previous location was a trail of blood, leading up to her, and where half of her lower leg and foot should have been, blood pooling even as the pain intensified upon watching the stump of her severed limb.

River’s training quickly took over, her meditation putting the pain at the back of her mind even as she conjured a chain and having it wrap tightly around her leg as an improvised tourniquet, then eating one of the bronze-ranked healing pills she had been provided. Her peak iron-ranked recovery assisted the restorative medicine, and it did not take long before the bleeding had stopped.

By this time, some of the servant-thralls had arrived to investigate the commotion, but River waved them off with curt gestures as she rose unsteadily to her one foot.

“The portal must have vanished just as I was passing through.” her logical mind counseled her, giving a reason for her missing appendage. “Whatever tore father’s pavilion apart it had to have killed the captive thrall. Had it been the silver-ranker coming after me?”

Conjuring more floating chains, River wound them around her and used them to assist in moving around, lashing them around objects in the environment to steady herself as she began moving out from the small estate built beneath the mountain, the familiar lacquered wood and gravel paths turning into the more simplistic tunnels.

“But shouldn’t I have noticed if he had broken down the walls to come after me? Heard something? No, it does not seem likely that it was him. But what else could it have been? Our allies in the church of Undeath should have had their ritual site secured.”

Her mind wandering in circles, she was snapped out of her reverie as the twin doors into the chamber of the elders stood before her. No guards were present. After all, the most powerful people in the sect wouldn’t need lower-rankers for protection.

Taking a deep breath, River braced her chains around the nearby scones which held glow crystals and pushed open the heavy doors. The room looked like it always did; fine wooden panels covering the windowless walls, the interior meticulously kept clean and neat. The opposite end of the room was dominated by the slightly raised wooden stage with the wall of paper screens, lit from behind by the steady light.

Hopping through the room, River knelt before the stage as she had seen her father do when addressing the sect leader. Even though her silhouette was not visible, River knew that it didn’t mean that she wasn’t there.

“Honored sect leader. I, Dancer on the Broken River, come bearing a message from Unmaker of the White Seal. He humbly begs you to assist in the war, as the situation has become less than optimal. Our allies have proven unreliable, and even his path is challenged when faced with too many enemies. Even rats may chew through a grand wooden gate given enough time and numbers.”

In the silence that followed, River remained on her knees, gingerly steadying herself on her good leg, and kept her head down. After a full five minutes had passed, she asked again.

“Sect leader?”

Looking up at the screen, it remained unchanged.

“Sect leader, my father humbly requests your assistance.”

Once more, silence.

River did not know if it was the strain of her wounds, exhaustion or something else which caused her next words to spill out, but she knew that they were true. And foolish.

“Sect leader, you would be a fool to abandon your grand elder! My father has carried this sect ever since our escape a decade ago. He has done enough for you to assist him. He deserves something for all that he has done for this sect. For you.”

Even as the words rang out, River knew that she might just have doomed herself with such insolence. But still nothing happened. No words of rebuke or even a response. It was as if there was no other person in the room. As if River was alone.

Ignoring the pit that had formed in her stomach, River conjured another chain. It was long and thin, immediately lashing out diagonally across the paper screen and thin wood latticework. The barrier was all but torn in half, spraying splinters and groaning as it collapsed in a clattering heap on the stage. And behind it was… nothing.

An empty nook of the room greeted River, not even any furniture or other signs that someone would have been there. She knew that the sect-leader did not actually live in that space, but that had been the place that she had always been when someone had come seeking her, at least according to what River’s father had told her.

Even as her eyes and aura scanned the space, searching for something like a hidden alcove, a message, anything. Anything that might contradict the suspicion that had grown in her mind over the last weeks, the cognitive weed that had taken root in her otherwise orderly garden of thoughts. The suspicion that the sect leader had abandoned them. Or worse.

River was unsure how long she sat there or when she walked from the room, the double door left ajar behind her. Of all the people she asked, none had heard of the sect leader leaving. The enigmatic figure had never been one for announcing her actions, though, and a sliver of hope remained in River’s heart that she had already left for the battlefield, to salvage what had become a desperate struggle.

As she found herself standing close to the entrance of the underground compound, gazing eastward toward the battlefield far away, River felt uncomfortably and uncharacteristically small and lonely. Her injury meant that she would not be able to get back to the battlefield, the trip taking days on foot for one of her rank even with both feet intact. She was effectively stranded here for the time being, unable to take part in the grander events. Left with only her doubts as company.

“No.” she thought. “This will not do.” One of River’s chains loosened from a nearby pillar, lashing out to strike her on the cheek, the pain jolting through her body. Years of conditioning had it respond in an instant, her back straightening and mind clearing as doubt was shoved to the side by necessity and action. She was the daughter of Unmaker of the White Seal, and would not remain idle. Her first step was recovery. Her second, gather information and then act accordingly.

Even should the rest of her sect fall, River would survive. To let her path take her to the heavens, and uncover the truths behind all these veils of uncertainty. And so, she turned back towards the tunnels and made her way back. Dancer on the Broken River would not remain idle and let the world pass her by.

Another flurry of strikes from the entwined lengths of chains assaulted Dew, most being deflected by her frozen armaments while a few made it through to gouge large chunks out of her large conjured armor. A downward strike was made in retaliation, grand elder White leaping backwards to avoid it while a few loose chains sundered the ice spikes which rose from the ground in the wake of the attack.

Dew’s armor was barely holding together, large chunks of ice missing and being whittled down a lot faster than she could hope to restore it. Her muscles were trembling and twitching with exhaustion and the pain-inducing afflictions which had started to accumulate faster than she was able to cleanse them, and she sported multiple injuries from some of the grand elder’s strikes which had pierced her armor. One of them had been very powerful, only her own defensive trump card allowing her to survive.

The resulting moment of stillness from her opponent, as he had been frozen still like a statue, had allowed Dew to inflict some payback. Had he not been able to control those heaven’s damned conjured chains even as he was himself unable to move, she might even have been able to behead him, but the intervention of the metal lengths had forced her to go for an arm instead, severing his right one next to the shoulder even as he was breaking free from the frozen confinement.

As they both seemed to have spent some of their strongest attacks and defenses, the battle had turned even more fierce between them as resources dwindled, but so far they had remained too evenly matched for one of them to actually gain an advantage even in their ragged states. But Dew had to admit that the creeping afflictions were trouble, and could only hope that her mounting frost was as great a hindrance to him.

Compensating for his lost arm concerningly well, White once more went on the offensive, the motions of both himself and his chains feeling just a bit more frantic even as his demeanor and aura gave nothing away. Dew deflected a pair of attacks with dual blades, sidestepped another one while having to accept the next as a glancing hit to her armor, shards of ice spraying into the air behind her. But as another strike from a chained appendage was closing in, Dew saw her opportunity.

A sudden shift in her stance turned a sidestep into a half-step forward, her defensive blades suddenly replaced with the thickest and heaviest of the two-handed greatswords she could muster. The single edged, square blade was boosted by one of her special attacks for additional cutting capabilities and actually managed to slice through the braided chain in one sweep, its trajectory continuing towards grand elder White just as he was in the middle of a step while none of his other chains was close enough to assist in his escape.

Her blade was but a few decimeters away when it was revealed why none of his other chains were ready to help him. They had all buried beneath the frozen ground, suddenly bursting up around her. From one breath to the next, Dew went from delivering a decisive swing to being completely locked in place by myriads of constricting links, not even the might of her Subjugator of Autumn being enough to power through.

Her one saving grace was that the move seemed to put great strain on her opponent as well. White was standing rigidly, his one arm held out towards her in order to assist with controlling the chain, putting his whole focus at curtailing her motion. To her chagrin, Dew found out that the chains, once locked around her, even hindered her short-range teleport as she could not move through the icy landscape. Instead, she focused all her intent on bringing her blade closer, the great cleaver visibly quivering against its restraints as frost started creeping up the grand elder’s legs from the icy ground. But at the same time, she could feel the chains gradually cracking her armor where they were squeezing ever tighter.

Their eyes were locked through the standstill, gazes as intent as their auras which were still viciously clashing. Even with their silver-ranked spirit attribute, there was not enough focus remaining for either of them to make an attempt at words. To an observer, it felt like just a leaf falling on either of them would decide this struggle.

But in the end, what tipped the scales was no leaf or other force of nature. It was a sudden ripple in the air, like a slash along two of the chains winding around Dew’s armored torso. A ripple carrying the dispelling force of the negation confluence.

The attack was weak, laughably so to a silver ranker. But it broke through a single link in each of the two chains, the conjured metal dissolving to the sound of an ephemeral mirror breaking. And like a dam breaking, mistress Dew fell upon grand elder White, releasing her sword and simply bearing him to the ground with a gauntleted hand, her greater mass toppling the injured silver ranker.

Before her foe had even hit the ground, her other hand spread its fingers wide as five huge conjured greatswords made from purest ice formed a circle in the air around them, plunging down as the hand closed into a fist. They pierced through parts of her armor where she knelt above her foe, shearing off a leg, both arms and piercing through part of its torso. Going through herself to reach what lay beneath.

Dew still met grand elder White’s gaze as it lost its focus, severed from the body by the same blade which had pierced through her great armor’s torso, its frozen edge sliding along her cheek to draw a thin trickling line of blood. Then, her conjured armor finally crumbled, dissolving into snow which never landed on the ground.

Frost among Morning Dew fell the remaining meter to the icy surface beneath, barely catching herself on her hands and knees. In front of her, the five blades remained, like a grizzly monument to her victory. While one had missed its target, the rest had not, severing her foe’s head, remaining arm, one leg and half-bisecting him across his waist. His blood painted the ice and snow beneath, and she let her gaze linger on his remains as she rose to her feet while her mind still lingered on the familiar aura she had felt when the chains broke, only to be thrown to the ground by a shockwave which suddenly swept over the entire area.

Had Dew still had lungs, she would surely have had the air knocked out of them by the violent fall. But as she did not, and that the fall was more an inconvenience than harmful to her silver-ranked body even in its exhausted state, she saw a purple and white pillar of energy fading away above the trees in the distance. As there was only one thing she could think of which could create such a detonation, Dew knew that she should go there and investigate.

Popping an expensive rejuvenating pill into her mouth, she took a couple of seconds to look southward, to the edge of the artificial clearing now spreading wide around her where a young man was just rising to his feet while apparently having trouble breathing, the air having been knocked out of his lungs.

Blue lips curved upward in a slight smile, Frost among Morning Dew turned in the direction of the now almost faded magical explosion and set off. For every step, her strength returned. As did her purposeful stride grow steadier. Her path had prevailed again this time, not having been pushed so in years. Admittedly with a little nudge in her favor.

“Winds of Fortune, indeed.”

“There now, little Kite. Steady yourself. Trying to breathe harder won’t make it easier.” uncle Walker counseled the young man who was trying to regain his feet, offering him a helpful hand. While he had also been rocked by the detonation, helpful vines had assured that he remained on his feet.

“Thank you- *cough* uncle.” Kite wheezed where he stood, a bit unsteady both by the shockwave and the aftermath of the bronze spirit coin he had swallowed just a little bit earlier.

“Kite! What happened?” came the voice of Dragonfly, as the rest of their group joined them on top of the slight rise which bordered the silver-rankers’ battlefield.

“Our young Kite here decided to intervene, if only slightly, in the battle between the two silver-rankers.” uncle Walker answered as Kite still had trouble finding his words. “It was one of those heroic moments that was teetering on the brink of foolishness had it failed.

A small part of me wants to slap any further ideas of such risk-taking from your head, boy. But the greater part is very proud of you. I said earlier that situations such as this can help define what kind of adventurer we become. And Kite, I am very proud of what I see in you.” he finished, putting an arm around the young man.

Kite’s head was still swimming slightly, but he was coherent enough to both feel the warmth his uncle’s praise lit in his chest as well as the slight heating of his face.

As he had witnessed the fierce battle between mistress Dew and the, to him, unknown silver-ranker, in awe of their power which literally shook the land and demolished their surroundings. And as they had ended up in that terrifying deadlock, it had felt like his heart was threatening to jump out of his chest. The frustration of being unable to do something, to intervene in some way, had given over to the desperate idea that there was indeed maybe, just maybe something that he could do.

Before realizing exactly what he was doing, the bronze spirit coin had been in his mouth, sharpening his senses to actually let him see across the distance and discern the chains which bound his mentor. Then his greatsword had descended, appearing in his hands the moment before. The swing carried his dispelling special attack and his intent and hope that it would reach the battling pair. That he could make a difference.

And then her five blades had descended, the motions almost too fast to follow. And the duel had been over. Kite had thought he met mistress Dew’s eyes before his vision lost its enhanced focus, the effects of the coins leaving him as she went off towards the location of the explosion.

“Kite, it seems that you have already begun forging a legend for yourself. I am in awe, and will ever strive to emulate your resolve and courage!” Will exclaimed as he clapped a hand onto Kite’s shoulder.

“Please, young master. Please do not.” Grim groaned from behind, still recovering from his earlier injuries. It was clear that the words of his young charge caused him a lot more pain than his wounds at the moment.

“We should remain here for a while to let Kite and Grim recover some more.” Walker stated, looking around the forest. “I sense no other movement, and therefore would assume that the silver-rankers behind us took their fight elsewhere. Still, I will camouflage us to the best of my abilities. Let’s leave as little as possible to chance.”

As Kite found himself sitting against a tree in their impromptu camp, the underbrush of the forest weaving itself around them like a shielding canopy, he felt good. Exhausted, but good. He had made a difference, and protected one of those he had forged a bond with, even though she was leagues beyond him in power.

He knew that had it not been for the spirit coin and the fact that his target had been basically stationary, he would have never been able to make that strike, evolved racial gift or not. But Fortune had been kind, and he had made it. Made a difference. And making a difference for those he cared about; now that was a cause worthy of an adventurer.

“And thus, the scene has been played out. It is always disappointing when hard work does not turn out the way one hopes. At least I got some important observations out of this trial, and some tools that will work even closer to the heartlands. It should be enough to satisfy the others.” a woman mused from where she sat on the top of one of the cliff spires dotting the forested landscape, taking a long draught from her slender pipe.

From up there, she could see everything yet no one, not even the silver-rankers in the conflict below, could sense her. Instead, they saw only each other and their enmity.

Had someone actually been able to gaze upon their observer, they would have seen a breathtakingly beautiful celestine woman sitting comfortably on a small cloud of smoke which bore her aloft like a wispy cushion. Her hair and eyes shimmered like bismuth, the former gathered into an elaborate arrangement held in place by glittering combs and hairpins while the latter were languidly half-closed. Clad in multiple layers of silk robes, she looked like a queen presiding over her court. And for a high priestess of Discord, the conflict below was as close to that as one might come.

“Yes, you are correct, my god. Patience remains our greatest virtue.” she said after being silent for a time, as if listening to a voice only she could hear. “But I can’t help but be slightly peeved. Had not the Victorious Sunset sect suddenly shown some discipline, this might have played out very differently. Even poor grand elder White fell. It was unfortunate for him that I never did find a moment where my intervention would have been worth it.

If irony was a god, they would have appreciated it too. An iron-ranker being the mote of dust to tip the scales. Sometimes, life surprises even those as old as me.” She finished, puffing out a shimmering cloud of smoke.

“Thank you, my god. I am pleased that you still found this venture to your liking. I will aim to perfect some of the methods in future endeavors. And at least there have been plenty of your seeds sown here, not least by the clergy of Undeath. I suspect that what remains of the Unbreakable Chains sect will not be overly enthused by them detonating their ritual site.”

The woman lapsed back into silent observation, smiling slightly as she saw a group of blood cultists arguing with some adherents of the so-called path of pleasure, the group soon coming to blows. Even as the former allies fought, she finally rose and disappeared, deciding not to tarry any longer. After all, there were other projects to plan and set in motion.