I took the lead, rushing along the trajectory that Zirilla indicated, following her directions instinctively without trying to navigate through the dark using my own senses.

  Fleeting impressions of things that I felt with my gaze flowed through my mind, each seeming inconsequential against Palimpsest’s constant psychic assault. The walls of the tunnel were coated with more of the pink moss and swarming with the tiny insects from earlier, and the air grew warmer as we wound downward through the rock to emerge through another opening….

  We broke out into another chamber, one much like the first albeit at a larger scale. The pale vines that coated the floor were thicker, now, so that the glow of the fungus beneath them was seen in dim, long streaks of pink. Pillars supported the ceiling, which was covered not in moss or vines but a strange, smooth material that looked almost like a spider’s webbing had been transmuted to bone or shell. Holes covered the walls and floor.

  There was only one of the shelled, seedlike plants we’d encountered, and it was easily thirty times the size of any of those we’d seen so far. It rose up in the center of the cavern, encircled by the pillars, its shell sealed closed.

  Palimpsest.

  They were surrounded by more of the massive, pale arachnids that we’d met in the other chamber: a few of lay dead or dying near the exit of our tunnel, coated in frost. More surged toward us across the vine-blanked ground. Even more were grouped near the great shell at the center of the chamber, and still more flooded out of seemingly every hole in the walls and floor.

  To me, Aziriel, Luthiel said. I let him put himself forward, psychically, and take the burden of Palimpsest’s psychic assault. Free of the overbearing pressure of our enemy’s mind, I could take the situation in with a little more lucidity.

  The first thing I saw was the elemental: An asymmetrical figure made of interlocking crystals, each of them with the pure clarity of created quartz. It hovered in the air above us, its shape almost a cross between that of the mantis-hulks and the arachnid soldiers around it, but smaller, so that it was barely taller than I was.

  It was a curious sight to see. The small earth elemental was likely extremely difficult for Palimpsest to control, psychically, but that would mean little, here: they were now backed into a corner and fighting for their life with no options but to win. They were limited in what they could control not by their [Focus], but by what they could get into the room with us. Apportioning excess [Focus] to the control of this creature made sense.

  The elemental rushed toward us as soon as we came into the room, flying through the air by moving its own body with the power of [Earth Magick].

  I made several decisions:

  First, Luthiel and I rapidly passed Palimpsest’s mental assault between ourselves, essentially flickering which one of us was in the psychic vanguard at a rapid pace

  It was a bizarre maneuver to perform. It didn’t help us defend against Palimpsest: in fact, the brief moment that we bounced him between ourselves was more taxing on both of us than simply bearing his assault would have been.

  Even just performing the psychic maneuver was difficult under the load of our enemy’s mind: without Zirilla there to help us manage the effort by directing us from second to second, we likely wouldn’t have been able to do it so quickly.

  But Luthiel and I had different minds, and we each resisted Palimpsest with different strengths and methods. I was fluid like a river, or the wind, but Luthiel’s mind was a faultless citadel.

  Each moment, our enemy had to re-adjust its attack just slightly… and that meant that many kilometers away, our sky-bound allies, who were on the offensive, would notice the fluctuations in Palimpsest’s defenses.

  Essentially, we were sending them a signal.

  If Galenni was still the psychic vanguard at the settlement, he’d likely realize what we’d done, especially if our enemy had abandoned the control of some of the attacking insects. If it were Valir instead of Galenni, he would definitely realize it.

  It wasn’t much of a stretch to hope that they’d know what it meant:

  Now is the time. Put forth every ounce of power you have.

  We only juggled Palimpsest’s attack for a few moments—long enough to be sure it would be noticed by our allies at the settlement, no more. But that was all we needed.

  Palimpsest had watched us stop and fight every army of creatures they’d sent our way. We’d dug in our heels, strengthened our position, and slowly seized the upper hand in our all engagements. Even in our rapid assault on this, their stronghold, we’d rushed past their aerial defenses, broken through their stone walls, and quickly fortified ourselves in one of their inner chambers.

  Palimpsest would have nothing but psychic skills, on their own. It was the minions around them who would bring every other capability they had to the fight. Hypothetically, we could strip them of all their strength by killing their minions and blocking their entrances, leaving them with nothing but their inadequate psychic assault to defend themselves with before freezing them to death.

  It was certainly a viable plan… hence why I expected them to expect it of us.

  I decided that our best chance lay in a very sudden shift in tactics.

  We would act as if we meant to fight this swarm much like we had all the others, with measured, reserved violence that carefully and skilfully countered everything our foe brought to bear.

  But this would be deception: our best move was to strike and end it all—as quickly as we could make an opening to do so.

  I put the wind at my back and rushed forward to meet the elemental that was charging toward me.

  Behind me, Luthiel and Zirilla sealed themselves in another hemisphere of ice, seemingly beginning to store more frigid air just as we had done in the previous chamber.

  It was a doomed plan: even without this potent elemental before me, the arachnid army outnumbered the one we’d just fought two to one and the chamber was far more spacious. We wouldn’t be able to freeze it all before they brought us down.

  I brought up my arm, surging my [Aegis] as the elemental’s body blurred with speed and slammed into me, driving my heels downward to crush the vine-carpet beneath them and dig into the soil. The force behind its crystal forelimb set my bones shaking and filled the cavern with a dull boom.

  It struck out with a rapid series of blows, and I used the wind to throw myself backward out of its reach, then pressed myself low to the ground to avoid the descending forelimbs of one of the insects as I swept my blade around and severed its legs from under it.

  At the same time, I stretched a line of mana between myself and the elemental, then ignited it into a quick, thin flash of lightning.

  The elemental tore a head-sized chunk of stone from the ground beneath it and hurled it at me, and I raised my blade, bracing it with one arm as the stone broke against it and peppered my face with shrapnel.

  The elemental surged forward toward me, following their missile, and I backed away, again striking it with a near-harmless bolt of lightning before leaping up onto one of the hardened backs of the arachnids.

  I hissed. It didn’t even matter that crystal, unlike stone or glass, was a strong conduit for lightning to pass through. This creature was an elemental made of quartz: its body would be far harder to destroy than a creature of flesh that had equal [Aegis]. Only burning away that dense mana that composed it would finish the job, and it so powerful that it might take multiple times my mana pool to do as much.

  Meanwhile it moved and fought with unnatural precision and power—it had no muscles, instead using [Earth Magick] to propel its weight. With a high level, high [Channel], and many skills to increase its power and efficiency, the elemental was moving as fast as I could and striking with blows that would pulverize stone.

  But even through the relentless pulse of Palimpsest’s psychic assault, my training held. I was liquid and smoke, tangible and visible but impossible to grasp. I danced across the backs of the arachnids as they harried me with bolts of hardlight and tried to drag me to the ground. I flowed through the space around the elemental as it assaulted me with heavy blows and a hail of stones that it tore from the earth beneath us to launch my way.

  It wouldn’t last forever. I couldn’t evade everything; often I turned to take blows on my back, my legs, or my shoulders. I spent mana to push myself around with air so much that I couldn’t devote much time to absorbing blood and replenishing my [Blood Pool]. And I was conscious, all the while, that one good hit might pin me to the ground and leave me vulnerable enough that Palimpsest’s minions could end it all in a moment.

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  My mind wasn’t on the plan, or the need to keep going. It was on the moments, the lightning-fast succession of impressions and the movements that came without thinking. I just had to fight, to keep fighting….

  Now, Aziriel.

  I sensed the sphere of ice near the entrance burst into shards, only now there was no blast of deathly-cold air to go with it. My allies had prepared a different spell.

  I heard Luthiel speak a command word in a language he’d once been taught by the elementals of Maia, all mellifluous syllables that ran into one another. A circle of runes appeared around him in light, and the mana he’d channeled into the air around him quickly collapsed into a glowing white javelin of ice that he launched at the crystal elemental.

  It threw itself to one side, dodging, but this was to no avail: the javelin adjusted its path perfectly. It didn’t curve in its trajectory, but rather changed course suddenly as if it had ricocheted, moving to strike exactly where the elemental would be.

  The elemental glowed, and frost gathered on its every surface, drawn out of the air around it. At the same time it fell onto its side, suddenly paralyzed: Luthiel’s spell had not only bound it momentarily, but coated it in ice that he could more easily extend his claim into, ice which would bear the runes he needed to sustain the binding.

  It was my opening. I would have mere moments, and that was all.

  I leapt into the air at the same time that Palimpsest must have realized what was going on. The entire ground between me and the central seed-shell heaved, throwing the insects that stood on it aside as a wall of earth seemed to rise up to block my path.

  It was worm, I realized: one much like the dead burrower we’d seen at the first seed-relay. Palimpsest had buried it beneath the floor of their inner chamber, and now it made a defense simply by lifting its body. Soil cascaded off of it, and the translucent gray vines that carpeted the chamber snapped and fell away as it rose before me.

  My mind reeled through options.

  Cut through it? No time.

  Lighting? Won’t work.

  Fly over? Too late.

  I felt the pressure on my mind ease for a moment as Luthiel stepped in and bore Palimpsest’s constant psychic assault….

  Then I hissed and reached out, striking the worm’s mind with everything I had, knowing that our enemy would not anticipate a psychic assault. Surprise was my greatest ally: the only time I’d seized one of Palimpsest’s minions had been when I’d briefly stolen the beetle-caster in their second wave. An insect’s mind was simple, simple enough that I could steal it for a moment as long as I could our enemy off balance.

  My mind was like a spike driving its way into the subverted worm, an attack fueled by desperation, fury, and a dominating will that had been hardened over countless centuries….

  I stole the worm from Palimpsest for a brief moment. I didn’t simply make it fall limp, but rather made it throw itself to one side, so that it fell toward me, off-balance so that it would require time to right itself before becoming a proper barrier once more.

  Palimpsest seized its minion a moment later, but it was too late: with all my prodigious power of channeling, I hurled myself forward over the falling worm, through the dust and toward its massive shell.

  Then I saw the mana forming into panes and bars ahead of me, knew that they were about to conjure hard light barricades between myself and their shell….

  I pushed some mana into the air ahead of me, then forced it forward as a chaotic, roiling gust of wind. I had to slow my own flight a little to do it, and as it left my claim it entered Palimpsest’s, the mana becoming their own.

  But it didn’t matter: the chaos that the mana-infused wind introduced was enough to disrupt the rigid and precise arrangement of mana needed to form hard light. I may have flown more slowly, but I’d bought myself another split-second’s worth of time to make up for it.

  My eyes caught the faintest line running vertically along the shell that was closed around Palimpsest: the seam by which its two halves would open.

  I cut through the churning air a moment later and landed amidst the insects crowding the edge of the shell in the center of the cavern. It had only been a second or two since Luthiel had thrown his binding, but I knew I had only a short while more.

  The arachnids came at me from every side and I surged my [Strength] and lay about me with my greatsword, simultaneously pushing my windsleeve out around me in a wave of forceful air that pushed them back.

  I rushed forward, grabbed the foreleg of one of the insects pressed against Palimpsest’s shell and forcibly tore them away from it, moving forward to reach the shell before the insects around me could recover and bury me under their bodies.

  I saw bands of hard light encircle the shell, binding it shut in an effort to keep me out. I knew that I had only moments….

  As I drew near to the shell, I felt Palimpsest reaching out and pressing against my claim with tremendous force, doing everything they could to perform the impossible feat of gaining magical control of my own body.

  The power with which they pushed against me was tremendous, and with a brief flash of terrified panic I thought they might succeed. But old memories came to me then, memories that were nothing but a confused mess of images and sensations to my assault-addled mind: blood-slick claws, scales black as volcanic stone, fangs with meat cooked onto their enamel, a mind filled with cruel laughter….

  I felt an overwhelming, unnamable feeling take hold of me.

  And I shared it all with Palimpsest:

  The screams of a city, rising as the great wave descended; why?

  A crinkled letter from my daughter’s commander, the stains of dried tears clear upon it; no….

  My sister’s arms around me as I shuddered in her embrace; don’t go.

  A blankness filling me, steadying me as I looked into the gleaming red eyes of my enemy most hated; at last.

  A fire-streaked wall of roiling black clouds, as wide as the horizon and as tall as the sky; not again….

  My instincts ran deep. I didn’t need to know what was happening or how, didn’t need to understand why I was doing as I did. I let it all flow through me. Hate and rage, terror and anguish: all were woven together and forged into a perfect alloy that formed both psychic sword and shield.

  I lashed out, and for a brief moment I felt my enemy recoil.

  Having dealt Palimpsest a momentary psychic shock, I pushed my threshold into the air around me. Mana flowed out of me in a dozen undulating tendrils, each only extending as far as my claim could extend in that single moment of startling victory.

  The moment faded and Palimpsest’s claim flooded back into the space around me, but it was too late for them: I surged [Aegis] and ignited the mana, my many tendrils bursting into thin fingers of red lightning.

  Some of them struck me, and my body blazed with searing heat, pain screaming through what felt like every fibre of my body.

  But some of them struck the bands of light which circumscribed the shell before me, fraying the magic that made them and igniting the mana inside them, dispersing the hard light and wreathing my enemy in mana-fueled flames.

  I spent the last of my surge pool on [Aegis], intent on keeping the point of my sword as sharp as possible, then drove it forward with all my might, pressing it through the crack, prying the shell apart by an inch, and thrusting the blade deep inside.

  The assault on my mind seemed to double in strength, but my own resolve leapt as I saw the blade enter and knew that the end was nigh.

  For my blade was a part of my body, a part of me: all weapons were, when I held them. I channeled mana along it, pushing it out into the air in the dark internals of the shell, then ignited it in a flash of lightning that ran from my palms down the length of steel to seek the dense mana of the creature inside.

  Then I did it again and again. Lightning flashed from the small crack in the shell’s seam, and my own [Aegis] wasn’t enough to keep the steel of the sword from blackening and beginning to smoke.

  I saw what would happen before it did, reached forward and thrust my hand into the crack between the shell-pieces, pushed it deep through Palimpsest’s armor.

  The sword snapped, weakened by the heat, but I began to use my hand instead, pushing mana out only a foot or so into the air beyond it and then igniting it.

  I screamed as my lightning split itself between my own hand and my enemy, both of us too close to each other for it to cleanly seek only one creature’s mana. The skin of my fingers split and cooked, the feeling leaving them a moment later.

  The insect-guards reached me then, but it didn’t matter. I threw another stunted bolt of lightning, then another, collapsing against the shell and using my free arm to shield the back of my head from their claws. They tried to tear me away, but my arm was locked tight in the grip of the closing shell, the blood flow pinched closed.

  Another bolt, and then another: I couldn’t feel my arm at all, but still I poured mana into the shell with a grim intent as I felt some hulking weight bear down upon me, teeth sinking in my good arm and trying to tear it away from my head.

  But I held on. Another bolt: the line of red light that flashed from the inside of the shell was my only satisfaction.

  Another bolt. The pain of Palimpsest’s psychic assault was like a blanket of fuzz on my mind, prickles and tingles covering my body….

  Another bolt. I could barely feel the teeth in my arm now, or the weight on my body.

  Another bolt. My mind was filled with rushing voices, memories of my siblings, one sibling….

  Aziriel.

  I realized it was the voice of Luthiel, my brother.

  Aziriel!

  And I realized that the blanket of fuzz wasn’t Palimpsest’s assault, but the absence of it. I stood in what felt like a sea of stillness.

  Our enemy was dead.

  It was over.