Cattle, Palimpsest said after I’d given them their messages. Slaves. Bodies. Yours. Yours if we both cease violence.

  You did, didn’t you? I asked. You thought you’d live forever.

  You must cease, they said. You will fail. All elves will die.

  Then we’ll cease, I said. But what do you offer? Give me real numbers, Palimpsest.

  Leave, they said. Leave and then we bargain.

  I glanced behind me, and the heap of collapsed stone that was buttressed by Luthiel’s conjured light. We’ll be gone soon.

  I was lying, of course, but it still felt nice to feel Palimpsest’s attack cease a few moments later. I doubted we’d have seconds, if that, before our enemy saw that Zirilla was still breaking into their stronghold. Still, I had a few moments of lucidity that wouldn’t last long—best to savor them.

  If I had any determinations to make, now was the time. I doubted there was anything important I’d notice that Luthiel and Zirilla would not.

  Before us was a wall that doubtless functioned as a defensive installation: food was carried through the holes by the tiny insects, and water was likely absorbed by the vines that we’d seen outside.

  Whatever creatures lay beyond this barrier were likely sealed inside the cavern. Perhaps Palimpsest occasionally made openings to admit the strongest creatures they’d ever cultivated, then sealed them in once more. If they had specialized guards beyond those we’d already seen, we were about to meet them.

  I took a moment to appreciate our enemy’s defenses, even if we’d circumvented much of them. Without sophisticated spellcraft, Palimpsest had relied on geography to test any attackers. To strike at them, one needed to descend a kilometer-long chasm, find them in the depths of a cavern large enough to hold a city even as portions of it were collapsed overtop of them, cut through a wall of near-solid rock, then deal with whatever lay beyond. When I considered the wyverns, the spiders, the army of insects, and the fact that there were likely innumerable reinforcements even in this one stronghold, I felt a certain appreciation for their defenses.

  The scale of our enemy was astounding. It was just another way that I’d never seen anything like them.

  My thoughts briefly flashed to the something I hadn’t considered at all since we’d been attacked: gods above, what we gain from all of this? I’d been ignoring the Verse and focusing on the battle all the while—but how much essence, what kind of keys would we reap from slaughtering our enemy?

  When they died, what would happen of their minions, their psychic relays? Would they lie dormant, waiting for our windcallers to track them down and kill them?

  I shook my head to clear it. It wasn’t worth considering, now.

  Die, then, Palimpsest said suddenly. They attacked Zirilla the next moment, though I intercepted with my bond and bore the attack myself, taking the spike of mental energy and distributing it through my body so that all my muscles seemed both to crave movement and to shudder with pain.

  Luthiel spoke. “Your threshold, Aziriel.”

  “Right,” I said. I relinquished my claim on my own body to Luthiel, and a moment later I felt incredibly fine lines being frozen into my skin by his [Frost Magick]—runes that would help him keep the cold that he summoned from entering my body. My high [Aegis] might protect from intense temperatures already, but Luthiel’s magic was strong: he’d be limited only by how much he could protect us.

  Then I stood against the wall, channeling the mana around us toward them as I gritted my teeth and fought of Palimpsest’s constant psychic assault, a pressure that felt like it had to ease at any moment—but never did.

  “Ready?” Zirilla asked.

  I moved to stand in front of them, facing the wall.

  “Go,” said Zirilla. Psychically, she signalled me to create a blast of wind.

  The sound of fracturing stone filled our tiny chamber, and the cracks that she’d been making in the stone suddenly grew to cover the whole of the wall.

  Then the earth around me shook and I heard a tremendous noise, the wall bursting out in front of me.

  With my eyes, I got the faint impression of what I witnessed better with my gaze: many hulking insects that had been tightly packed against the wall were blasted backwards as Zirilla blew away a portion of the rock and I joined in by pushing out with a heavy blast of air.

  A volley of javelins of hard light shot into the opening, but Luthiel had extended his vast magical claim, and had the mental agility to disperse into a cloud of glittering fragments them before they ever reached us.

  Zirilla parted the dust with a breeze, and I got a good look at the chamber beyond the wall.

  We stood in a circular cavern the size of our keep. The infection-pink moss was everywhere, glowing with its faint inner light. It was a warren: clusters of tunnels had been dug in the rock all around us, burrowed into the curved floor, walls, and ceiling.

  By the light of the moss, I saw more of the arachnid insects that we’d seen outside: pale, translucent-fleshed creatures of all sizes that crawled over every surface, many of them already converging toward us.

  But most of all I saw more of the knotted vine-shells: dozens of them sticking, all sticking out from the walls and ceiling of the cavern like mussels or fungal growths, their translucent vines reaching over every surface.

  Our enemy, at last. It was Palimpsest.

  A psychic plant, then, as we’d seen before? Plants relied on animals to spread their seeds, insects to pollinate them. Perhaps Palimpsest was a breed of plant that used mental magic to guide the wildlife of its environment and spread itself: one who, much like Palefang, had developed intelligence.

  It was a theory that explained little, all in all, but I couldn’t help but wonder as I saw them.

  I charged out into the fray before the insects could fill the space at the cavern’s entrance, pulling my greatsword into my hands. My enemy’s mind beat against my own, and my brain throbbed with pain and desperate anger.

  More of the pale, crablike arachnids rushed forward, and I put the wind at my back to charge them, speeding into the fray and shearing off the forelimbs of the one nearest me before thrusting the end of my sword into its clustered eyes. I rolled past the descending forelimbs of one of its fellows, then came to my feet in the midst of a group of them and surged my [Strength] to lay about me with two powerful strokes that cut a half-dozen of them down.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Their carapaces were hard despite my attributes—Palimpsest had indeed made sure these defenders were powerful. But with my windsleeve tight against my body and my [Surge of Might] to flare my attributes when I needed it, I was a blur in their midst, blood following my blade in arcs and spatters.

  I used my magic as little as possible, instead channeling my mana backward into Luthiel and Zirilla even as I drank the blood of the fallen with my cloak to make more. I saw their own mana dimming occasionally, losing density as they loosed their spells, but I paid no attention to them. My mind throbbed with Palimpsest’s assault, my thoughts muddled so that only training and instincts drove me.

  Then Luthiel’s mind touched my own, drawing my attention to a set of mid-sized arachnids at the far end of the cavern. These ones, he said simply.

  I leapt high, then pushed myself forward with a blast of air, raising my sword. The space before many of the arachnids glinted as they conjured dozens of needles of hard light, then launched them at me.

  I twisted myself in the air to minimize the number of impacts as I tore my way through the volley, feeling their spells bite into my body, even through my [Aegis] in a half-dozen places. I hissed, pressing my claim into the conjured missiles that jutted from my body and dispersing them.

  Then I struck the ground beside my targets, skidding to a halt as my knees scraped furrows in the glowing moss, moving my sword through a slash that scratched across the armored leg of my first target. Despite being Palimpsest’s spellcasters, these ones had even higher [Aegis].

  But I was disconnected from my allies, no longer able to channel my mana into them—which meant that I kept it for myself. I surged my strength, lashing out with a mighty blow that smashed through a conjured barrier of light and bisected the head of the nearest arachnid.

  I fought, and hard light seemed to pierce into me from every direction, each bolt digging an inch or so into my flesh, few of them strong enough to scrape bone. My wounds would heal with [Blood Magick] a moment later, but the missiles still jarred and jostled my body, throwing me off-balance. The insects close in, and soon I was using my sword to keep them at bay more than kill them.

  Then I finished absorbing the blood of the fallen, filling my [Blood Pool] and converting a little bit of it to many. As the insects around me closed in, I reached out and sent lines of mana running in every direction, then loosed ignited them in a blast of forked lightning that tore its way through hard light their conjured hard light constructs to cook and burst the flesh beneath their carapaces.

  Not only did the blast kill several of my enemies at once, but I could tell that their eyes weren’t used to flashes of light: even if Palimpsest could sense me using their gaze, their mental puppets still suffered the pain of blinding light.

  I smiled as I kept fighting, converting only a little of my [Blood Pool] into mana at a time so that I could easily lash out at close quarters with my lightning, the bolts never seeking me as their target. The bugs fell around me, and all the while Luthiel’s psychic presence threaded its way into my mind amidst the cruel, overbearing presence of Palimpsest, telling me again and again: that one. Now kill that one….

  But the teeming mass of insects never ceased. Soon the massive, shelled bugs were crawling over my location on the ceiling and then dropping themselves on me, hoping to pin me with their body weight long enough for their allies to land a more decisive blow.

  It was a good plan: I had to sense them falling and then bat myself out of the way with my [Air Magick], often-times into the clawed forelimbs of another soldier. The upper hand that I’d momentarily bought by cutting loose with my lightning was soon lost as the demands on my [Blood Magick] grew to be too great. I began to heal only the deepest parts of my wounds, leaving the torn skin open, blood running down my body in rivulets only to be absorbed by my deep-red cloak.

  Then I felt Zirilla’s mind brush against my own, bidding me to return to the center. I wondered with a flash whether they had pushed me as hard as they could, or rather reached some threshold of their own even as I approached mine—my mind was too distracted, too frayed by Palimpsest’s constant hateful presence.

  I surged my [Strength] to throw myself clear of the swarm, then put the wind at my back to send me flying the short distance back toward my allies, taking in their situation at a glance.

  Luthiel and Zirilla were sheltered under a semisphere of frost, insects crawling all over it and beating at its outsides.

  But as I looked through their eyes with the bond, I saw something curious: another wall of frost cut the inside of the icy dome into two parts, with Luthiel and Zirilla in only one half.

  Even as I watched, icy splinters were being broken away from the dome and launched, with startling accuracy, into the swarm of insects around it.

  The half without my allies broke first, and I immediately saw why: it was filled with extremely cold air. Luthiel began to convert his shield into missiles at the same time as Zirilla let loose a blast of icy wind.

  The wind didn’t cease. Drawn on the ground in glowing runes that revealed themselves as the dome broke away was a spell that spent mana to destroy heat: with time, they’d freeze this whole cavern—starting with whichever parts Zirilla directed the air into.

  Zirilla even indicated where I should stand, and so I landed, driving the point of my blade through the midsection of one of the arachnids and then standing on its twitching corpse as icy shards sped past me to bury themselves in our enemies. Arrows soon joined these fragments:

  I began to channel mana into Luthiel’s spell, and within moments the whole battle in the cavern had shifted. Frost lined every surface, even the wall that was most distant from us. The pink moss dimmed, its illumination ceasing as all its tissues died from exposure to the freezing air.

  Even through my [Aegis] and Luthiel’s protective spell I could feel the cold gnawing at my skin and numbing my fingers. The chill had grown deadly very quickly—an unprotected elf would die in moments, here. Palimpsest’s soldiers fared better: most of them were still moving, if more erratically. But I expected this wouldn’t last long: insects were more often ectotherms.

  Luthiel directed me to begin channeling my mana into the many warren-like tunnels that lined every surface of the cave, and one by one he sealed them off with frost. Our cooperative effort was extraordinarily fast, and soon half of the holes had been stoppered shut, with more icy constructs glittering in the space between us and the far side of the cavern.

  I let out a satisfied sigh as I advanced across the cavern, whose floor was almost entirely carpeted in heaps and mounds of the dead arachnids.

  They’re trying to collapse the chamber from outside, Zirilla said suddenly. They’re struggling against Luthiel’s claim now that there’s all this ice, but we should move on.

  This isn’t all? I asked.

  This seed-things we’ve killed are Palimpsest, Luthiel said, indicating the shelled vine-creatures. But they’re our enemy’s fingers, not their brain. They’re sympathetic, in fact: each one connects to a node outside.

  Huh? I asked, rolling my shoulders as I advanced and searched for more enemies.

  Luthiel reached out and momentarily took the burden of Palimpsest’s psychic assault from me.

  If we could find those nodes which connect to the ones near our settlement, we could sever Palimpsest’s ability to control its minions near our home. But I can think of no way to make that determination quickly: caverns like these radiate around the main mind like petals of a flower, and—gods above, Aziriel. This, the whole time?

  Heh, I said. Luthiel had never been easy to impress, but of course he was impressed now: the constant re-orientation toward bodily sensations and the outside world that I needed to maintain a high [Primeval Resonance], something I had trained for my entire life, was also the crux of a potent psychic defense.

  With the bond, I put myself before Palimpsest’s assault once more, grinning. The short reprieve had been wonderful: like getting into a hot bath might feel, after a day’s hard labor.

  Besides, a moment of purer lucidity had more or less made it clear what we were going to do.

  They’re likely too strong to freeze to death from here, said Luthiel. But their army isn’t, and neither are their nodes. Zirilla has our route if we need to push forward—until then, we flood each of these tunnels with freezing air. Starting with the one that leads to their lair.

  I nodded, drawing more blood into my cloak. Palimpsest had already been given as much time as they needed to bolster their inner chamber with defenders—there was no need to rush it now.

  With luck, we could freeze the whole thing from this chamber. Without luck, we’d be charging forward as soon as the roof collapsed.

  The sound of cracking stone filled the chamber above me.

  I contacted Palimpsest. So eager? I said. So be it.

  Together we launched ourselves toward the tunnel that Zirilla indicated, Luthiel’s conjured ice vanishing to admit us as the ceiling behind us came tumbling down.