Matabar

Book II. Chapter 70 - Old memory

Chapter 70

As they descended into the hollow, Klementiy and Parela immediately busied themselves with the heavy, crudely-hewn crate being dragged on a sled by two draft horses, which in turn were being closely watched by a separate squad of Cloaks.

How did Ard realize that these four operatives were concerned exclusively with the crate? First, they weren’t leaving its side for even a moment, and second—hands never straying far from their revolver grips—they were keeping a vigilant eye on anyone who came within a few meters of their precious cargo.

Only after Mshisty gave a meaningful nod to his subordinates did they step away from the crate. Klementiy broke its simple seal and they discovered yet another protective layer inside—this time, it was a steel box, the walls of which were a few millimeters thick.

It wouldn’t save it from an explosion, but it would stop a couple of bullets. No wonder it took two muscular draft horses to haul it. There was no lock on the metal box—at least not one that was visible to the naked eye.

Klementiy, after donning his Ley-goggles, which, upon closer inspection, resembled a miniaturized, more portable version of his Ley-binoculars, set to work with his grimoire, conjuring a very small seal.

“We have fifteen minutes before they detect our presence,” the lieutenant commented absently.

Ard had been wondering why one of the Puppeteers’ laboratories hadn’t posted any lookouts… But apparently, with generators in play, they could rig up an alarm seal that would cover even such monstrous distances.

“Prepare yourselves,” the major commanded, denying Ardan the chance to muse over how he might have solved that engineering puzzle himself. “Captain, bring the Corporal up to speed.”

As always, while on a field assignment, the Cloaks—whether due to Black House tradition or out of a genuine need for secrecy—avoided any unnecessary use of their names. Apparently, that didn’t apply to Yonatan Kornosskiy’s squad, though even Gleb Davos had seldom addressed anyone by name…

Either way, Parela approached Ardan, none too pleased at this development. Her eagle eye latched onto him with invisible talons coated in the venom of contempt and a long-standing grudge. Ardi felt a prick of curiosity at that, wondering what had happened in the Yellow Star Mage’s life to turn a scholarly woman like her into a military mage steeped in loathing for those versed in the art of the Aean’Hane.

While the rest of the Cloaks checked their weapons, loaded their rifles, and hung hand grenades and spare “moons” for their revolvers on their belts, the captain gave Ardi a brief rundown.

“Listen carefully and remember everything, Corporal. I won’t repeat myself,” Parela said in a tone so dry it made Ardan’s own throat feel parched. (Hers remained perfectly fine.) “When the Lieutenant is finished, you’ll need to take up your position in the third sector.”

“But-”

“Save your questions for the end,” the captain snapped, cutting him off, and Ard promptly closed his mouth, failing to utter anything beyond the first sound of the avalanche of questions that had been trying to escape. “You haven’t got many Stars under your belt, so we’ll have to use a strategic accumulator. Its effects on your brain may prove more serious than usual. Mages below the Blue Star are rarely involved in strategic magic.”

Ardan knew that already thanks to Edward, may the Eternal Angels receive him. A Star Mage, on their own, even if they were a Black Star Mage three times over, with nine rays in each Star, had no way to wield strategic magic. And the issue wasn’t so much the rays themselves, but the sheer strain inflicted upon their brain.

Strategic magic involved such complex constructs, hundreds of parameters, thousands of runic connections, and an entire array of nested seals, that no single brain, not even if it belonged to the world’s foremost genius, could process such a torrent of information in so short a time. Naturally, attempts to overcome that barrier were being made in every country. It would be hard to overstate the military potential of enabling a single mage to manifest a seal that ordinarily required the efforts of at least four participants—and for the most dreadful creations of Star Magic, it could be as many as a dozen.

In the end, all such ambitions ended, at best, with the Broken Seal effect, which invariably led to a very spectacular and very bloody demise for the tester. And at worst… Things would end up just as spectacular and just as bloody, but they’d affect far more people.

“You’ll have to endure it, Corporal,” the captain went on. “If you break the link, the safety circuit will contain the Broken Seal effect, but you in particular might get doused pretty badly in raw Ley. So… have you ever suffered from a migraine?”

Ardan shook his head no.

“Too bad…” Parela hissed through her teeth. “Alright. I’ll try to explain it, then. First, you’ll get a blind spot in your vision. Like when you stare at a lamp for too long. Try not to track it. That only makes it worse… Then you’ll feel nauseous, or maybe the opposite—you’ll feel like you haven’t eaten in a day. You might notice certain smells. Whispering. Voices. It’s different for everyone, depending on which part of the brain takes the main hit.”

Ardan nodded. He had also heard about this from Edward before.

“Then a pain will appear at the back of your head, and it will slowly flow to your forehead,” Parela continued, indicating each area on her own head with her fingers. “When it begins hurting so much that everything starts swimming before your eyes, that’s the critical moment. Under no circumstances should you break your link with the seal. Endure it for as long as we need you to. Remember that we have only one shot because we don’t have a second strategic accumulator. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Captain,” Ardan affirmed.

“Excellent. Now give me your questions.”

“What is the third sector?” Ard finally asked since he already knew everything else thanks to the late Grand Magister.

Parela sighed and gestured with an open palm toward the mechanism Klementiy had already set up. At the center of the contraption stood a pyramid bristling with a tangle of copper tubes, gears, levers, and even a few gas bulbs. Resting at its apex was a crystal of Ertalain that was black as pitch.

Ardan had never really seen Black Star accumulators before—even Edward hadn’t possessed any. The only time he’d worn something similar had been during the capture of Lea Mortimer. This was because his Black Star level magic could have wiped out a few city blocks of the Metropolis on its own. And with accumulators on top of that…

Moreover, thanks to his General Knowledge lectures, Ardan also knew that the newer the Star, the greater the strain on the brain would be when restoring its rays not from the Paarlax field, which happens naturally, but from a crystal or something similar.

Ardan had felt that even at the Green Star level. Using accumulators wasn’t exactly harder, it was just a bit tiring. Hardly noticeable, in fact. It was like carrying something in your arms for an extended period of time. But the Black Star was surely different.

But even in those cases, they were still talking about standard nine-ray models. Here, judging by its size, the pyramid contained something closer to two dozen, at least. No mage could use that—it was too high a concentration. Their brain might not literally burn, but their Star would sustain irreversible damage.

Ard briefly wondered how much a thing like this cost, but immediately dismissed the thought.

No one would name a price anyway, because aside from the state itself, no one would be allowed to possess such a treasure.

Strange Ley-cables snaked out from the pyramid, their lengths studded with technical ports that gleamed in the faint starlight, each ringed with a clamp that had likely been made from an Ertalain alloy.

Coiling into circles, the cables formed four sectors. The third turned out to be the one facing east. And the first was the one pointing west, directly toward the shore of Angel’s Tear that was hidden beneath the dome of the magic shield.

“Quickly, quickly,” Klementiy urged.

Mshisty took up position in the first sector, the second and fourth were taken by Parela and Klementiy respectively, and into the third, with some trepidation, stepped Ardan. The moment he crossed the threshold of that peculiar circle, he felt as though Guta had laid his heavy paws on his shoulders.

“Three!” Mshisty barked, raising his staff above the ground.

Ardan’s knees bent slightly, his teeth clenching of their own accord, and he barely stifled the groan rising in his throat. Pressure from an unseen source crushed him from all sides, and the young man had to force himself to breathe.

What was it the captain had said about a blind spot appearing before his eyes? Right now, Ardan could barely make out the silhouettes of the Cloaks who had taken up a circular, defensive formation around the strategic magic station. Aiming their weapons into the emptiness of the cold night, they watched the surrounding hills closely—hills that had become a natural barrier concealing the seal being prepared.

He tried not to pay attention to any of it because the ground underfoot had begun to glow with a carpet of unthinkably numerous runes, vectors and contours. They fused with one another into systems and structures beyond the grasp of any single mind. They spread and multiplied, growing relentlessly until their radiance covered an area spanning dozens of meters.

“Two!” came a distant shout from somewhere far away.

The pressure suddenly doubled, growing so intense that Ardan barely remained upright. His knees quivered like slender stalks of grass bowing under a gale. His spine groaned like a dry plank of wood living out its final days in a rotting shed.

And then, just as Captain Parela had warned him, spots began to dance before his eyes. They were like sunspots burned onto his retinas. At times murky, at times bright, they gradually drew the reality around Ardi into a whirl of blinding light.

The back of his head felt like it had been plunged into boiling water, then struck with all the force of a hammer. Then again. And again. And again. The blows came faster and faster, until the individual bursts merged into one solid, viscous tapestry of agony that blanketed his entire head. This thick, syrupy substance sank closer and closer toward Ardan’s eyes.

His head was being crushed from all sides, like something was trying to compress it into a single point—one that didn’t exist in material reality, and was only possible in mathematical theory: a sphere with a diameter of zero.

“Em…bo…di…ment!” The words rang out at the threshold of his hearing.

A blast of energy, razor-sharp and scorching, biting into his flesh with searing fangs, shot through Ard’s body.

***

A face that was both human and feline, baring long, curved fangs, snarled above him. A fur-covered hand gripped something gleaming and long, pressing it against the throat of someone who looked like snow, and also like an old oak that was about to wither away under the onslaught of time.

He did not know what any of it meant. He didn’t even know how to speak. He only heard things. Voices and whispers. They were always around him, lulling him to sleep. They were rocking him in unseen arms, telling him things. Things he did not understand because he didn’t know their language.

But he knew that the face of the cat-man (even though he didn’t know what a “cat” was) belonged to his father. And his grandfather stood nearby. And they were hissing at each other because they didn’t want his mother to hear. She had gone out to the stream to wash clothes.

Granted, he didn’t know what a stream was, or clothes, or washing. But that was what the voices were whispering as they gently, tenderly tousled his hair—just as Mother would. And what were hair and tenderness? He didn’t know about those, either.

“I always knew you were a Listener, Hector,” the old oak said in a creaky, rustling voice. “I know that ever since your childhood, you’ve heard the whispers of the Alcade wind. Or did you think that you hid the fact that Skusty offered to teach you from the tribe?”

“Don’t speak to me, Aror,” the hissing cat answered. “Don’t talk to me about tribes, Guardian Spirits and—in fact—don’t ever open your mouth under my roof!”

“This is my land, pup,” the once mighty but now withered tree whispered threateningly. “I built this shrine upon which you raised walls and a roof.”

“It stopped being yours the instant you remained in the City on the Hill. While we were being beaten. Cut down… and burned.”

“And where were you, runt? Hm? Couldn’t throw off Ergar’s spells in time?”

“I fought him! And I won!”

“As did dozens of our ancestors! Your fang is nothing more than a part of the rite—just like Skusty’s nuts, Lenos’ flowers, Kaishas’ feathers, Guta’s river pebbles, and Shali’s blooms! It’s merely proof of your coming-of-age!”

“No, old man,” the cat bared his teeth. “I left before my time. And I fought him not for the right to become a hunter, but for the right to live.”

The cat lifted the thing that was called a shirt and ran a hand over his body. And where his hand passed along his mighty torso, deep, horrific scars that had been made by claws and fangs were revealed.

“So that’s why Ergar listens to you… I expected nothing less from my grandson.”

“Shut your mouth, traitor of our peoples,” the cat snarled, pronouncing the last two words in another language he had never heard before, though the whispers supplied their meaning. “Don’t you dare even think that I value so much as a drop of kinship between you and me.”

“You were brainwashed by Imperial propaganda, Hector. Your service in the human army-”

The cat cut off the rustling voice with a booming laugh.

“Is the Dark Lord’s tutor really saying that to me? The one who served for almost a decade in the Black House?”

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“So, you do know,” the old oak said, a sadness passing through its roots.

“You’d be surprised, Aror, at how much you can find out if you have loyal friends and a major’s rank. Though you likely have no idea about either. Neither friendship, nor service, or even…”

The cat broke off, choking, a white foam appearing on his lips.

“Watch yourself, pup,” spring thunder crackled through the oak’s crown. “I’ve buried more friends than you’ve known people in that fleeting moment you call a life. And I’ve served for longer than the country for the sake of which you forgot who you are has even existed.”

“You have… no… power… over me… old man…” The forest cat gasped and something gleaming and sharp sang in his paw, slicing through the oak’s bark and releasing thick sap that oozed out.

“Come to your senses, Hector! You’re spilling a kinsman’s blood over a two-month-old child’s cradle!”

“Get out of my head, Aror,” the cat replied. “Those times when I lacked the strength to resist your whispers are gone. Believe me, if you provoke me, I’ll cut out your lying tongue, gouge out your foul eyes, break every bone in your body, and throw you into the deepest chasm so you die in agony, slowly and surely. And then I’ll let the beasts scatter your body. After that, I’ll go home. I’ll hold my wife. Kiss my son. And sleep more peacefully and sweetly than Ardan is sleeping now.”

“Do not dare utter his full name!”

“Do not dare give me orders in my own house, traitor of our peoples!”

They fell silent for a time, both glaring at each other like, at any moment, something terrible might happen.

“No matter what you do, Hector, no matter what you say, you are still the son of the Chieftain of Clan Egobar. The son of my daughter. That cannot be changed. You cannot renounce it or escape it. And your son, Ardi, he, too, will always be the Chieftain’s son. And when you are gone, that title will pass to him. As will the Right.”

“Oh shut up already, old man!” The cat finally roared. “Shut up before I really cut your throat. You senile fool…” Suddenly, the cat drew himself up, eyes flashing ferally. “Since I am Chieftain by birthright, old man, I forbid you from telling my child anything and-”

“Very well, Chieftain,” the old oak interjected, offering up a resonant thump with a branch against its brother tree. “While Ardi is a child, he will hear no words from me. And when he grows up, he will be able to read them.”

The cat hissed.

“And if you truly care about him, Hector, then you will also write them—your words,” continued the withered crowns. “He has the right to know the history of his family.”

“The history of his family? The history of blood-soaked murderers, you mean? Why would he need any of that, old man? He doesn’t need those stories, nor the meaningless title of Chieftain, nor anything else from your legacy. None of it will help him in the world you so fear and avoid. Look around, you withered fool,” the cat growled, spreading his arms and gesturing toward the window. “Your time has passed. Both yours and the time of all those who cling to Ectassus. This is a different era. The era of men.”

“You’re blind if you truly think that everything that happened… happened just because it was the dream of the Sleeping Spirits, Hector. Beyond your doorstep lies darkness. And that darkness will not stop until it destroys everything dear to you and me alike.”

“Darkness… I heard enough about that from my mother, whose mind you poisoned. Your own daughter! Our Chieftain! Maybe if it hadn’t been for you, she would have rallied the packs, and together, we’d have stood our ground!”

“When a body is tainted by gangrene, grandson, sometimes—in order to survive—you must cut off a piece. Even if it’s the most precious piece.”

“Enough riddles! Stop acting like you know everything! Enough! As long as memory lasts, you’ll be remembered as Aror the Betrayer. By both sides. The Firstborn and the humans alike. You somehow managed to befoul everything. Maybe that’s just your path in the dream of the Sleeping Spirits? You are meant to break and ruin everything you touch. Everyone you loved is dead, Aror. Everyone you cared for suffered and died. And I curse the Sleeping Spirits for never taking you. They took everyone else, but for some reason, not you!”

“You still live-”

“And trust me, I’ve regretted that fact far more often than I’ve rejoiced in it.”

They fell silent again. The silence circled above them. It sometimes reached out to touch them, but it flinched back in fear every time.

“You always thought only of yourself, Aror. Of yourself and your art of the Aean’Hane. Pride and vanity guided you—nothing more.”

“You’re right, Hector. For many years… my life was empty and futile. But the truth revealed itself to me.”

“The truth?” the cat sneered. “About that precious darkness of yours?”

“Exactly,” the oak’s crowns bent in a nod.

“You’re simply mad… There is no darkness. Except maybe your overblown ego, whose shadow we lived under for more than five centuries.”

“Because that is one of its goals, Hector. To pretend it doesn’t exist. To make it seem like nothing threatens us. But believe me, its plan nears completion. And if we lose—if we falter in the coming final battle—then nothing will remain.”

“Nothing will remain of what?”

“Of everything, grandson. There will be no Firstborn. No humans. No Gales, no Ectassus. Only pain will remain. A pain you cannot even fathom.”

“What utter nonsense you’re spewing, old man…” The cat sighed, wearily lowering that shining, sharp object. “I’ve met all sorts of bastards in my life, Aror. Including you. And all of you have taught me that there’s no one out there trying to destroy everything for the mere sake of destruction. That’s unimaginable madness.”

“How can I possibly explain to you, Hector, the delusions that someone who once lived in the City on the Hill harbors in their very soul?”

“More riddles… you really have lost your mind. And you’re trying to drive me mad, too. Just like you drove my mother mad. And your wife. You understand? She—my own grandmother—killed herself because of you. And because of you alone.”

For an instant, it seemed like the thunder lurking in the branches would erupt in an uncontrollable blaze and consume them both—the cat and the ancient tree—but the crowns only sagged sullenly.

“I beg you, Hector. I beg you as Chieftain. Withdraw your words from Ergar. Ardi needs to train with the Guardian Spirits. It has to happen.”

“Why? For his sake?” The cat pointed at the one lying in the warm bed. “Or for yours?”

“How can you not understand… Ardi was born into the bloodline of the most powerful Aean’Hane in mortal history! Even you, a mere hunter, were endowed by my blood with the ability to Hear, and it gave you the strength to defeat a Guardian Spirit! And when did you first Hear the wind? When you were already studying under Ergar? At seven? Eight, maybe? And you only Heard the wind! And yet Ardi Hears already, even now! He Hears as much as I did! And you know what that means. Ardi, if he’s taught by the she-wolf, will become just as strong I am in time—perhaps he will even surpass me!”

The cat laughed.

“There it is again… So it is all about your pride, after all. Your art. You just don’t want your legacy, whatever you fancy it might be, to disappear with you. Well, you know what? It will rot. Decay. Molder away and vanish. Just like your bones. I won’t even bother to bury you, you crazy old fool. In honor of all those you’ve ruined, I’ll find the farthest swamp and toss you in there so no one will even know where your rotten-from-birth bones lie.”

“You are consumed by malice-”

“Malice?! Malice, old man?! That’s far too gentle of a word! Every day, I have to find a new reason not to strangle you with my own two hands! You took away everything I held dear! You destroyed everything we were! You killed your own wife, you killed my mother! Through your inaction! Your idiotic magic! And those stupid tales of darkness! About how you’re trying to save us all! About some great purpose that’s bigger than all of us! You dreamed that up just to justify how your selfishness poisons everything around you! Everything you touch! And for what? So that you can do the same to my son now? No, Aror. As long as I’m alive, as long as I’m Chieftain, not a single Guardian Spirit will come here. Ergar will see to that. And if something does happen to me, he’ll take him away, hide him from the rest, and Ardan will live his life among the mountain paths. He’ll become a snow leopard, and his span will be short. Because I’ve forbidden Ergar from training Ardan as well.”

“You’ll take your own son away from his mother? Hide him among the beasts?”

“No, you fool, I’ll take him away from you. I’ll hide him from you. Because if there is any darkness in this world—this absolute evil that you drone on about—then, ironically enough, it’s you. Aror Egobar. You are the most terrible, evil thing that could have happened to this world. May that day be cursed and forgotten—the day our pack spawned you.”

“Then kill me, Hector,” the crowns whispered. “Right here and now.”

The cat hissed again, and something flashed once more in his paw.

“Don’t tempt me, old man… Don’t tempt fate.”

“Why? Why hold yourself back?”

The cat narrowed his eyes and smiled again. This time, the expression was rather satisfied and triumphant.

“Because, for the sake of all of us whom you’ve poisoned with your existence, I want you to suffer. I want you to see all your attempts to make my son your heir come to nothing. I want to watch you grow old and wither. I want to see you grasping for the last sparks of your magic that keep you in this world. You will wither away, day by day. And Ardan will grow stronger. And freer. And when you let out your final, rattling breath, you cursed wretch, he’ll be a man free to choose his own fate, not another one of your puppets.”

“How are you any different from me, Hector, if you want to use your own son to spite a dying old man?”

“You seriously think Skusty’s mind games will work on me, Aror? That you can shake my resolve?” The cat laughed again. “I love Ardan. I love him so much that I never even knew such a feeling was possible.”

“Like all parents do, grandson…”

“Perhaps…” For the first time, the cat agreed with something the tree had said. “Except for you.”

“I loved you. I loved you, Hector. Always. Every moment of my life. Even when I believed otherwise.”

“And isn’t that funny, Aror,” the cat smirked. “Everyone you ever loved died in agony. And everyone you hated either just died peacefully, or is alive to this day. Sleeping Spirits… Why am I even wasting my time on you? Go, old man. Occupy your mind not with my son’s fate, which you will have no part in, but with whatever makes you cling to this world even now. You are a pathetic parody of an Egobar, so afraid of death that you keep hiding from it. You are a disgrace to your forebears. It hurts me to look at you.”

The crowns sighed, and the old oak shuddered slightly.

“I hope that I can persuade you over the next six years, Hector.”

“Hope all you want. Even if you persuade me, you won’t be able to deal with Ergar. You don’t have the kind of power you once did. You can’t bewitch a Guardian Spirit anymore, old man. Now leave. I want to hold my son.”

“As you say, Chieftain.”

***

Ardan opened his eyes. The memory that had surfaced in his Ley-scorched consciousness burned no less intensely than a red-hot poker pressed to his flesh. This was a memory born not of his own mind, but of something deeper. Not of intellect, but something else entirely.

Ard tried to seize it, to hold on to it, but it thinned out, crumbled away, disintegrating into scraps of words and meaning. All the young man managed to retain was the knowledge that Aror had warned them of some danger. And also the fact that it had been Hector who had ordered Ergar to hide Ardan away from the other Guardian Spirits.

Perhaps that was why Aror had summoned Ergar only at the very last second, when there’d no longer been any time to spare.

“Thoughts for tomorrow,” Ard reminded himself sharply.

He flexed his hand open and then closed it, watching what was happening around him. Above the mechanical pyramid, the spinning Black Star accumulator whirled like mad, radiating iridescent light. That light—a thick cloud filled with multicolored flashes—had enveloped the four mages, hiding them from the outside world, though not from each other.

Klementiy and Parela had bent back into ghastly, unnatural positions, as if invisible strings were yanking their bodies taut. They were up on the tips of their toes, shaking with spasmodic convulsions. Their eyes had rolled back, revealing only the whites, and foaming saliva bubbled on their lips.

Mshisty, from whose ears two thick, viscous streams of blood were trickling, struck his staff against the ground. And Ardan… To his surprise, he realized that the pain was gone.

Nothing was crushing or clamping his head in a vise anymore, and the spots had faded from his vision. The only reminder that he had been part of this casting was the barely-contained pressure still trying to press him to the ground—but Ardan held firm. It took all his might to do so, but he held.

And then, just like when he’d lain trapped in a crevice in his childhood, a chorus of voices began to swirl around him. But this time, they didn’t belong to shadows or unseen figures, but to fragments. Fragments of Names. An immense multitude of them. It was as if someone had reached out with their mind and will to an entire host of Names all at once, trying to grasp their secret essence in one go.

Ardan nearly drowned in that ringing chorus, and then everything went quiet in an instant. Parela and Klementiy dropped back down and, apparently coming to their senses, wiped their mouths clean.

At the same time, the Black Star accumulator crumbled to dust, and the cloud of Ley it had spawned flowed into Mshisty’s staff. Under the feet of the four mages and the group of operatives, a gigantic seal flared to life for a split second—it was about as big as half a city block—and then the sky above their heads began to tremble.

Seized by convulsions similar to the ones the mages had endured, the nocturnal veil that had scattered the stars over the barren valley frothed with milky clouds. It growled like a gray, toothless old crone, one that was resentful of her own advanced age and jealous to the bone of another’s beauty.

And that pain, piercing through the roiling, seething clouds, began to seep out. It bled forth in the scarlet hues of a rusted dawn, stubbornly pushing through a haze as thick as factory smoke. It tore outward, rending the bars of an invisible cage, until at last, it reached its goal.

From within the gray clouds shrouding the horizon, a colossal maw slowly crawled forth. It was so huge that it could have swallowed half the Treasury Tower. Gradually, the outline emerged—fur that resembled horns, or horns that looked like tufts of long, blade-like fur. A snout protruded, and it had black pits for nostrils, which were snorting smoke. They hung like grim ovals above the whirling tornadoes that served as its fangs.

In a blinding, silent flash, eye sockets blazed to life with yellow fire. A heartbeat later, just as silently, a beam of that same bright yellow light erupted from the gaping maw. This was light itself, not blazing gas or flame. And yet, it was so dense that it seemed tangible.

Without making a single sound—as if every melody had vanished from the world and even the briefest notes had hidden in the hush of the grass—the pillar of light set fire to the clouds it had sheared apart. And all of this happened in utter silence, which was more terrifying than any thunderous sound could ever be.

The gigantic maw of the creature, which was unlike anything Ardan had ever seen, spewed a column of solid light from its throat. It crashed into the shore of Angel’s Tear that was hidden behind the hills. Nearby, despite the fact that they were standing nearly half a kilometer away, the grass, which had bowed like rows of weary old men, began to smoke, blacken and smolder.

Ard’s eyes burned with a sandy dryness, and his tongue went numb from the heat clinging to his face.

It was frightening to even imagine what was happening at ground zero, where that strategic war magic had actually struck.

After a few seconds, everything stilled, though the word still hardly fit the mute tableau of horror unfolding before Ardan’s eyes. He couldn’t shake one gnawing thought: what had the final, decisive battle between Ectassus and Gales looked like, where not only armies of mortals and Firstborn had clashed, but also hundreds of Aean’Hane and thousands of Star Mages?

It was astonishing that chimeras, Anomalies, ghastly dungeons, and abandoned shrines weren’t an order of magnitude more numerous across the western continent after such a battle. Then again, half a millennium has passed since then…

Ardan didn’t really know what to call the feeling that had completely overtaken him. Was it awe at what Star Magic could do? Or horror at the destructive might lurking behind those rows of figures and calculations—might capable of reducing half of Evergale to a blackened ruin and charred earth in mere moments? Or perhaps it was both at once?

Mshisty exhaled and straightened back up, and the burning clouds in the sky melted into a morning mist, a haze that drew itself into the tip of his staff.

“The barrier is destroyed,” the major reported, wiping the blood off his face with his sleeve. “Move out.”

Leaving the mechanical tower behind, the dozen Cloaks climbed the hill, where an unobstructed view of the lakeshore opened up before them. Where sandy wings had once stretched, murky, coppery glass now gleamed under the light of the moon and stars. The narrow grove had completely vanished—not even stumps remained. There were only coals glinting with crimson flickers across a warped, cracked earth. They glimmered amid the steam of the still-bubbling, boiling lake that was flinging sprays of water at the blackened valley.

Ardi didn’t want to imagine what would happen if such a spell struck not a barrier, but one of those frontline fortifications he’d seen on the Fatian border. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t banish the thought.

Would it be just as silent as the seal took shape? Would the air smell only of char and the mustiness of recent fire afterwards?

Those questions required no special insight to answer…

Ardan now understood with perfect clarity what Edward had meant when he’d said that in war, there are almost no instances when mages fight one-on-one duels or join in infantry assaults. They had their own special, and no less important, task—ensuring that such spells don’t strike not only themselves, but hundreds of their fellow soldiers as well.

“Light preserve and protect us…” One of the Cloaks breathed.

“Eternal Angels, have mercy on our souls…” Another seconded.

And once again, Ardan would have liked to believe that the words, spoken from the depths of troubled hearts, were referring to the aftermath of the strategic magic, but… something told him that wasn’t entirely the case.

There, amid the ancient ruins, dozens of people bustled about, and complex equipment clanged and crackled. In the center, between stone statues that looked truly fearsome, an underground excavation was underway, and a single man stood there.

He was tall by the standards of the western continent, and had broad shoulders. Far too broad. His shoulders were so massive and powerful that he looked like he was capable of hoisting a young calf onto his back with ease. Ardan had only seen their like in miners and lumberjacks before.

However, this gentleman wasn’t holding an axe or a pickaxe in his hands, but two long, curved swords. He brought them together, and along his body, visible even beneath his clothing, magical tattoos flared to life.

In the middle of last winter, on the train carrying the Staff of Demons, Ardan had fought Darton—a Mage Knight of Selkado. This was a branch of war magic that had been devised in Selkado specifically to counter the classic Star Mages of the Empire, Castilia and most of the world.

Back then, his foe had been a Squire. A bearer of the Blue Star. But now…

Around the Mage Knight, a flaming silhouette blazed to life, resembling a suit of plate armor from the days of the War of the Empire’s Founding.

“A Heavy Knight,” Parela managed to mutter, paralyzed by terror. “Fuck.”

“Watch your language, Captain,” Mshisty rumbled, sounding like a common street thug spoiling for a fight. “Ladies shouldn’t use such words.”

It seemed like he was the only one among all the Cloaks who actually wanted to face a Pink Star Mage of Selkado and not turn around and run for the hills.

“I’ll hang his fucking swords above my fireplace… Hah! Now I finally have a reason to finish building it,” Mshisty growled as he stepped forward.