The city of Boko was gohe ions had bee as little more than rubble whe tai zone gave out, and the space within the zone was just a hole carved out of the ground. All that remained were floating temples, shielded by their gods, and a cloud of darkness in the middle.

  In the wake of the destru, numerous massive portals had opened, high above the ruins. Sheets of gold, silver and blue light, they disged an army of messengers into the sky. This was no heavenly host, however, as they desded from the sky in the dire of the city’s survivors. Most of Boko’s housand people had been evacuated.

  Jason had used aura trol to bodily lift them out of the city. His aura had been overcharged with a flood of power from his astral kingdom, making the astoundi possible. But as the power had grown, and Jason’s avatar further degraded, his trol over than power had slipped. His aura became a spiritual wildfire, beyond his ability to tain or direct.

  Local essence users did their best to protect the low rankers around them from it, but they were weak and poorly traihemselves. Many normal-rank evacuees, mostly the very old and the very young, were ht killed. Brain haemes a attacks took those too weak to survive the stress the aura pced on them.

  The came, and the aura was gohere was an eerie stillness, like the calm before the storm, as the messengers desded in silence. Adventurers prepared to fend off the assault, but the messengers kept gushing from the portals by the thousand. Boko was not a strong adventuring city, and even with visiting gold rankers, the battle ahead was a grim proposition.

  Then the aura came back. It was just as powerful now, if not more so, but no longer harmful to the people of Boko. It was pletely stable and in trol, calming those previously traumatised by it, eveling some of the panic that set in from the evacuation. It romise to shield them from those who had taken their homes and were even now desding from the sky. A promise to make their attackers pay, and to make them pay in torment. It was the benevolence of a nightmare god, filled with wrath at the transgression against his chosen. Those it protected, the fused and despairing, gained fresh hope. More than that, they gained a shared certainty that it was about to bee a very bad day to be a messenger.

  System Alert: Sacred Phoenix

  [System Administrator] assassihe Hegemon has arisen. Beware his wrath.A dark shape rose from the hole in the ground that was ohe city of Boko and asded towards the messengers. A vast, dark bird, speckled with lights like a starry night, limned ihereal silver fmes. It made no sound, yet the same aura that offered hope to the people below resounded like thuo the messengers.

  It erupted amongst them like an explosion, battering them into one another. Wings and limbs taurning diving attacks into untrolled falls. The messengers fell into chaos, their formations falling apart as they were knocked around like undry in a tumble dryer.

  The adventurers on the ground had been steeling their resolve for the battle ahead. Now they watched as the bird of fme-wreathed darkness rose to meet the messenger army. It flew into the host, not crashing into them but passing through like a ghost. Every messe touched began a process of slow, miserable death. Their skin bed with necrosis ahers fell from shrivelled wings. Ethereal fire fred on their bodies, the ghost fme not burning but accelerating the rot.

  From the dying messengers, butterflies of blue and e started to emerge and spread to others not yet affected. Eae that reached a messenger put them on the same path to a torturous demise. More butterflies spread from them in turn, as their flesh decayed and their bodies lit up with ethereal silver fmes.

  The messengers attacked the butterflies to stave them off but, oru, the butterflies turned into clouds of sparks. The clouds moved slowly, but the messengers were thi the air and still being battered by the aura. The sparks didn’t spread more butterflies, but anything they touched still decayed.

  The ghost fire phoenix arced a graceful path through the messenger host. The heart of the invading army had bee a realm of misery ah. On the periphery, messengers gave up oad were fleeing as fast as their wings would carry them. Their wings cast shadows onto their bodies from the sun overhead, and from those shadows came their doom.

  Shadowy arms, thrust out of the shadows on their bodies, like spiders digging their way out of egg sacks. The dark limbs were angur and macabre, and each held an ornate bd red dagger. Those daggers stabbed into the messengers again and again, the wounds swiftly turning bck as the flesh around it died.

  ***

  Danielle Geller looked up in the sky as the dark bird rose from the ruins of Boko to meet the messengers head on. She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the power on dispy. It was immediately apparent that her greatest fear, an atta the evacuated popuce, had been forestalled.

  System Alert: Ambient Magic ge

  The Hegemon’s mortal form has been fatally promised. While it is being restituted, the Hegemon has entered a liminal state in which his power is not limited by a mortal form. [Ghost Fire Phoenix] draws power from the Hegemon’s astral kingdom and is not subject to external power limitations.High levels of magic are being introduced to the area from the Hegemon’s astral kingdom. Magical density and magical saturation of the region are being temporarily increased. Stability of the dimensional membrane in this region is promised.The Hegemon has chosen to limit his power to prevent a localised rupture in this reality’s dimensional membrane. Presence of the Hegemon is reinf dimensional stability. The performance of dimensional magic may be insistent until ditiourn to normal.She frow the system message. This was god-level business, and that was when i people got killed. Colteral damage in the wars of giants. She turned her attention back to the scattered people of Boko, milling in an uandable panic. She did hat the rise of the bird and the aura that came with it had a blessedly calming effe the people, as reflected in their own auras.

  She saw immediately that the biggest threat after the messengers would be the sun. The locals were used to the climate, but that included making thh preparations before heading out into the desert. Being ripped from their homes and dropped amongst the empty dunes was the opposite of being prepared; as the early afternoo intensified, things were only going to get worse.

  Of tens of thousands of evacuated citizens, most were normal rank, and would die without water and shelter. They were also traumatised by exposure to Jason’s unstable aura, ma incapacitated and some even killed. Those ostensibly in charge were struggling to find one another, let alone bring any kind of order of the chaos. People were doing their best, be they adventurers, Adventure Society officials, civic administrators or simply anyone else able to keep their heads.

  Small groups were doing what they could on their own. A local Magic Society official had mao get some of his people together and start distributing a simple climate trol ritual that would set up small zohat cooled the people within. While each zone could only aodate a few families, the ritual only required spirit s as a material po. It was also simple enough that ah a basiowledge of ritual magic could enact.

  It was a race against time as the desert heat ramped up. Fortunately, the increased level of magic Jason had created made rger and more powerful rituals an option. The efforts to implement those were being led by ritual magic experts like Clive, Farrah and Belinda. Clive had even put aside his s for the Magic Society to take charge of their people.

  The Magic Society branch director let the higher rank Clive take charge of the magic, fog instead on finding and anising his people. He was issuing directives as Clive drew out a massive ritual diagram nearby. He looked at the lines of golden light, a match for the ones he’d seen drawn in the air during the evacuation.

  “Were you the one who put up that tai dome?” he asked.

  “Not just me, but yes.”

  “How did you use magi that scale when the magic level is so low?”

  “The tai dome fed off the magic it was taining.”

  “And you just happeo have a perfectly calibrated ritual desigo do that over such a rge area, in these specifiditions, with that specifid of energy?”

  “Of course not, but I was already familiar with the energy iion. The rest we figured out as we went.”

  “Are you saying you improvised a city-scale, off-rank ritual magic off the top of your head?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t do it by myself.”

  “Even so, that’s madness.”

  “Look around, Director. When you get days like these, only madness will do.”

  “You say that like you’ve seen things like this before.”

  “Not many times, but yes.”

  “Who are you people?”

  Belinda ducked in front of the director and shook his hand.

  “Team Biscuit, pleased to meet you. Clive, you done? We need you.”

  “Give me thirty seds.”

  ***

  The messenger army had departed from a shared staging area inside a region on the far side of the p. Massive portal gates floated in the air, through which the army had departed, leaving behind only a fra of the forces belonging to the four astral kings who owhem.

  Inside a nearby room, four Voices of the Will were the far side of the portal gates through a viewing pool. They watched as the ghost fire phoenix ravaged their army. Although none of them would ever voice the se, each were happy that their portals only operated one way. They were startled when they sensed a new portal open iaging area, but a small one, sized for a person.

  The messenger who emerged could have passed for a very tall human. His wings were o be seen aood only seveall, short for a messenger. His clothes, brown and dark red, were more fitted than the loose apparel most messengers favoured. He also walked on the ground in boots, rather than floating over it in bare feet or sandals.

  He strode across the staging area, a furious expression on his face. Every messenger who looked his way fell to the ground and had a seizure. He reached the room taining the four Voices, and instead of flying in through the entrance above, he tore a hole in the wall with his aura. Ihe Voices lined up like soldiers under iion.

  “I have no i in dealing with minions,” the newer said, his fury caged inside his curt tone. “Get out here. Now.”

  The four Voices floated to the ground and dropped to one knee. Above each, a ghostly image of their astral king appeared. The astral kings all bowed their heads before the man who had called on them.

  “We pay respeis Fran Muskar,” one of them said.

  “Respect?” Jamis snarled. “You directly defied the explicit instrus of the cil of Kings, and then have the mind-bogglingly inprehensible GALL to utter the word ‘respect’ to me?”

  “We felt—”

  “It doesn’t matter what you felt. It matters what you were told.”

  “We are all astral kings, Jamis Fran Muskar. The cil of Kings may guide us, but you do not rule us.”

  Jamis stared at him, the anger in his expression repced with ption.

  “We let you think that,” he said, “so you wouldn’t go off and do something stupid out of misguided rebellion. But since you’ve gone and do for the sake of stupidity, let me make it clear: yes, we rule you. And you will pay for your defiance.”

  “Jason Asano—”

  “Matters a lot more than you. How old are you all? A few turies? A millennium? What have you aplished, beyond treading the path that was id out for you? We are the ones who allowed you to bee astral kings, and what have you doh that opportunity? Walked the most well-trodden road you could find. Never deviating. Never innovating. Never setting your own course. Asano has aplished more in half a tury than all of you put together.”

  “Many of those aplishments e at our cost!”

  “So? Which of us has not fought against another of our kind? We are kings, with few true sins to be itted, yet you seem i on itting them all. Let us start listing them with your loss of trol. Your diamond rankers refused to take part in this debacle. That is what we call a hint that you may want to resider your approach.”

  “Mah Go Schaat vinced our diamond rao abstain.”

  “Wisely,” Jamis said, gesturing at the viewing pool. “That is ic power he’s wielding out there. He’s holding back so he doesn’t blow a hole in the side of the universe. If they had faced Asano like that, they’d have died, just as Mah Go Schaat did. And, in the absence of your diamond rankers, you itted the sed sin: debasing yourself by making a deal with lesser beings. A deal that I am now obligated to honour, despite the disaster you’ve made of it. Which brings us to your final and greatest sin: failure.”

  “Who could have anticipated something like this?”

  “THE CIL OF KINGS!” Jamis roared, as if shouting could drill his words through a wall of obstiupidity.

  “The cil expins nothing.”

  “Because the cil does not ao you. You ao it, and when you decided not to, you made a grahat I now have to up.”

  “What would you have us do? Is Asano is allowed to strike at us, without our striking back?”

  “Yes. He is of my kind, not yours.”

  “We are all astral kings.”

  “But we are not all relevant. I don’t know your names, and after today, you should be very careful about my not needing to find them out. You are insequential, when I’d offer him a seat on the cil of Kings today. If he’d take it.”

  “He is our enemy.”

  “For now, yes. But he is fighting us in passing. Proteg his nds and his people, as any of us would. What you have done here will echh time. Asano is one of us, and will be forever. You’re trying to kill him why? To deny him a prime avatar for a quarter of a tury? Let’s put aside the fact that he will certainly find a way to shave most, if not all of that time away. The real point is that it leaves ay for him to remember.”

  “We are immortal. He ot kill us, however much he wants it.”

  “And he won’t. But a millennium from now, someone is going to tell you that every birthing p you own just got destroyed. We need him tet the s of his mortal life, and you are searing them into his mind.”

  “Is your iion to try and punish us?”

  “I don’t have to,” Jamis said. “I already told you that he’s one of us. Your failure to grasp the ramifications of that only pounds your failure.”

  “Ramifications?”

  Jamis grinned.

  “There are many, but what should yht now is one of the most fual. It apparently never occurred to you that, as an astral king, he has an astral gate.”

  That was when they sehe shift in the portals outside. The sheets of gold, silver and blue energy trembled like a pond during ahquake. Then the one-ortals were suddenly two-way, and dark tentacles burst through. Heading straight for the building, some passed through the hole Jamis had made, while others made holes of their own.

  The images of the astral kings vaheir fused Voices of the Will ing to their senses just in time to get grabbed. A tentacle went after Jamis, throwing off sparks like an arc welder as it met an invisible barrier and was stopped dead. Jamis stood casually, hands in his pockets as the voices were dragged away.