I climbed pretty high in mere seconds. My Power was in Gold I. Of course I wasn’t going to have any trouble jumping straight up in no time at all.

  Revayne had asked me to take a look because the angle was all wrong. The dust cloud was concentrated in front of the approaching force, which obscured typical observation methods. Fortunately, my method was hardly typical. If I could go high enough, if I could reach a really steep angle, then I should theoretically be able to see over the dust cloud.

  Unless, of course, the entire approach was obscured by the dust cloud. I wasn’t sure why, but that felt unlikely.

  A few seconds later, I realized that I had never tested climbing this high with Gravity before. It should have been taxing me more. Normally, the higher I climbed, the more I needed to channel Gravity to keep myself afloat. But maybe I had ranked it up high enough that this sort of height no longer mattered.

  Maybe I’d need to hit much higher up the atmosphere before I started feeling a significant pull on my mana channelling capacity. Although, I’d probably run out of breath long before I reached such a height. The thin, chill air was already hard to pull into my lungs.

  I focused on my task at hand. Now that I finally had the right angle, I noted that our earlier assumption was correct. The dust cloud was indeed gathered up front. From this height, there was a significant trail of inscrutable beings behind it.

  Swallowing, I put the telescope against my eye. Then I swallowed again.

  “You heard the man,” Revayne said in the most commanding voice I had heard from her yet.

  I had just finished reporting everything I had seen through the telescope. There had been a crap ton of bugs, ranging from monstrous versions of critters I was familiar with to twisted creatures that I couldn’t even begin to describe properly, much less actually recognize.

  Scythe-bladed mantises, roaches with armour, worms that ate through and crushed the ground with maws like that of lampreys’, and more besides that I hadn’t recognized—I had seen them all. But the strange thing was that the dust cloud wasn’t actually dust. It was just a crap ton of smaller, regular-sized flying insects concentrated into an obscuring obstacle in front.

  The most surprising fact hadn’t been the army heading our way. Rather, it was the fact that Revayne heard what I said and immediately judged that it was merely an advance force.

  “An advance force big enough to wipe out Ring Four entirely,” I muttered.

  Speaking of Ring Four, I should have been hurrying there, but a new development had stayed my restless body for the moment. A Councillor had finally appeared in the middle of Ring Three, and the residents were gathering around him like moths drawn to a flame.

  I recognized him. The air seemed to thicken and pulse as I looked over. That was the draconic Scalekin who had been at the court during the Kalnislaws’ trial.

  “Good folk of Zairgon,” he said. He didn’t act like he was shouting, but his voice carried everywhere. “Naught is there for thee to dread. Those that doth invade us are but a meagre and paltry rabble of witless beasts. Behold, our defences stand ready to meet and to destroy them. All that is required of thee is to hearken unto the guards and soldiers, and to abide safe within thy homes.”

  He again sounded so terribly Shakespearean, my first, very temporary impulse was to laugh. Almost.

  The imposing figure he presented, the sheer force that he was emanating, not dissimilar to the aura the Kalnislaws had displayed, cut off said impulse. I could almost literally feel his power. Instead of ridiculous, his old-school words lent him a surprisingly regal air.

  “We’ll be there as soon as we can,” Revayne said, dragging my attention back to her, and it took a second for me to understand what she meant.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “That reminds me that I should get going. Wish we got more time to prepare, but…”

  “Oh, we will. This is merely a probe by the advance elements of the Blight Swarm. We will suffer much worse before this is actually over.”

  “Yeah,” I grumbled. “I got that part.”

  Ring Four lit up with golden glows as en-magicked catapult shots arced overhead as I headed over to the temple. A part of me wished this was an invasion of vampires or something like that. At least then I could use my Aspect of Illumination to trivialize our opposition.

  “Cultist Ross!” Atholaine said as I reached the temple. She saluted me, fist to chest and then a bow. “We’re all ready for the big invasion!”

  I smiled at her and the rest of them as encouragingly as I could. I had to raise my voice over the explosive thump of the city’s defences. “I’m glad to see that you are.”

  They really were ready. The Scarthralls had taken charge of the defence, just as I had trained them to do. Right that moment, they were busy handing out weapons and organizing the defenders. A lot of them were Scarthralls like the cultists I had put in charge, but several were regular folk from Ring Four who were prepared to fight for what they held dear.

  But it wasn’t just the warriors taking stations. There were others drawing the non-combatants to shelters that were better protected.

  Some were busy setting up supply lines while others tended to the secondary sources of fighting against the bugs such as the braziers, the incense, and all other such measures. I had Aqrea making sure the field hospital was well tended while Aurier was in charge of ensuring everyone was supplied with weapons and armour.

  “We’ll be fine, Ross,” Hamsik said. He had shown up just as he had promised he would.

  I nodded. “We will. We’ll survive.”

  Together, we got everything ready. I ensured that we had some of the kill zones prepared, as well as the corridors of least resistance ready to draw the bug monsters into the funnels where we could counterattack en masse.

  I did one last checkup to give everybody some encouragement and handed buffing runes and some potions to people who would need them the most. We even managed to squeeze in Rituals of both Precaution and Growth before the invasion began properly. It wasn’t enough to simply survive this. If possible, I wanted to ensure that we all grew from it too.

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  Then I heard a shout. It was Lujean. My heart thudded with the expectation that the bugs were incoming, but instead, I found him pointing skywards.

  I blinked. The Swarm was coming, but not in the way we had expected. They were taking to the air. All of them. I didn’t recall seeing every single monstrous bug possessing wings, but they didn’t need to. The “dust cloud” of smaller insects were forming a strange, flying platform bearing the entire little army higher and higher up.

  They were going to sail right over Ring Four to land on Ring Three. Maybe even bypass Ring Three to attack Ring Two.

  “Cursed Pits!” someone growled. “They can do that?”

  The Blight Swarm was a Monumental Opus, one of the Works of the Ascendants. It could probably do a lot more we had yet to see.

  “What do we do?” Vandre asked.

  “Stand ready!” I shouted.

  It was weird. I didn’t feel like a battlefield commander. My spine was too tense and rigid, my hands clenched into fists as I prepared for the impending violence. I wouldn’t even say I had the physical presence necessary to be effective at improving morale and making people want to follow my lead.

  But my words were steady. My goal was clear. My heart belonged in the right place. My strength was the tiniest trigger away from baring its full might.

  I was going to fight. Soon.

  They had to stop using the catapults now that the bugs were too close to the city. The shots they had fired had missed the target easily. Bastard bugs manoeuvred easily mid-air.

  That was, until a living catapult slammed into the army.

  I was surprised that I could actually tell what happened. Everybody else around me, save Hamsik, was just gawking in shocked confusion as a bolt of glowing, fiery energy crashed into the huge insects with zero warning. But I had seen what had happened.

  The Councillor. The draconic Scalekin. He had personally attacked the entire Swarm by himself, his body wreathed in brilliant orange-gold flames. And now the bugs were scattering.

  Several had been shot right out of the air. The extreme heat around his body had fried a good chunk of the monsters, both big and small, and several had lost their platforms entirely to get away.

  Lost their platforms only to drop down to Ring Four.

  “There we go,” I said, raising my voice once again. “It’s almost our turn!”

  The problem with insects falling out of the sky was that the move ignored some of the strategy we had come up with. A lot of the zoning was based on considering the paths the Swarm would take once they hit the boundaries of Ring Four. Now that they were in Ring Four already, those sorts of considerations flew out the window. Well, somewhat.

  “Try to lure it to where it needs to be,” I said to Lujean, who was basically acting as my second-in-command. My eyes were focused completely on the giant, beetle-like monster that somehow carried a huge shield and club—clearly made from a fallen companion’s carapace and horn—in its spindly little arms. “And then engage it!”

  For a moment, the defenders seemed mesmerized by the monster before them. Not that I blamed them. Seeing a gigantic bug like that, one clearly intelligent and bent on their murder, was doing a number on their psyche just a bit. It screeched at them too, just to add to the effect.

  Even I would have taken a little bit of time to absorb the sight before me. But then the warriors remembered their duties and engaged the monster with their own roar.

  I was so tempted to go in myself. My muscles itched to jump into the fray, my feet trying to carry me into battle on their own and send the monsters packing, make them fear ever thinking of attacking Zairgon. Stupid bravado and instincts.

  We had decided earlier that Hamsik and I would hold ourselves back to deal with the threats no one else could. The giant beetle didn’t exactly qualify.

  As was proven by the way the defenders were safely maintaining their distance while drawing the monster towards one of the kill zones.

  “We’ve got this, Cultist Ross,” Lujean said. He himself was struggling against rushing into the fight, but as the primary person relaying my commands, we couldn’t have him getting too involved in the fray just yet. Not until—“There!”

  The defenders had successfully drawn the huge bug monster into an abandoned, demolished, and flattened house. An instant later, the trap fired.

  Lines of glowing mana emerged from the ground. Threads of white-blue power wrapped around the beetle-monster and locked it to the ground, even as it struggled and screeched to break free. The trap wasn’t going to last long, not with how powerful the monster was. A few threads had already snapped, though not without exploding and leaving little wounds.

  Sreketh had Painted a trap with Runes of Binding, and now it came alive with terrific effect, just as I had planned.

  But the time it lay trapped was enough. From nearby, the people of Ring Four emerged with bloodcurdling roars and stabbed in with furious charges. Several were armed with burning torch-poles, some with scythes and harpoons.

  Basically, polearms they could use to kill the monster at a distance while taking advantage of their charging momentum.

  The classic move of trapping a gigantic beast before stabbing it to death.

  It was effective. Brutally so. While the beetle-monster’s carapace resisted the initial attacks, it did eventually give way, the monster crying out as it was pierced in over a dozen locations, unable to resist as it was hacked, burned, and gored to death.

  The people cheered, though they had to draw back immediately as corrosive black blood seeped out from the dead monster.

  I frowned. There was something familiar about the blackness in the blood, in the way it swirled. Where had I seen that before?

  My musings were cut short as the sounds of battle erupted elsewhere. More of the monster bugs had landed, and not all of them in our neighbourhood. I saw one shooting far over to the northeast, in the direction of the Earth Cult grounds. Good luck to whichever bugs landed there.

  Most of the insects were fleeing the Councillor up top. He was still holding himself aloft in the air, still cloaked in his burning aura. One of the largest bugs, one that looked like a cross between an ant and a mantis with gunmetal grey chitin, was conducting a furious battle with him. It was getting battered, but the fact that it had lasted that long against someone who was Onyx- if not Jade-ranked spoke of its own power.

  I was glad it hadn’t landed on the ground.

  “Wings!” someone shouted.

  My body fired up. That was my signal.

  While we had counters for most things that would travel on foot, it would be a lot harder to execute our plans if the bugs just chose to fly right over us.

  Which was where I came in.

  “I’ll go,” Hamsik said.

  I shot him a glare. “You know I’m supposed to be handling this, Hamsik. Just keep an eye out for any spot that looks like it’s going to need backup.”

  There were a bunch of other fights popping up everywhere. I had already lost Lujean, who was ferociously engaging one of the armoured roaches with a few other Scarthralls. But I couldn’t worry about them. The weird flying centipede the size of a small bus was bypassing all our defences and I wasn’t about to let it get away.

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Fervour Attribute has risen by one Rank.

  Your Path of the Archon Apostle has risen by one Rank.

  Fervour: Silver VII

  Path of the Archon Apostle: Silver VII ]

  I couldn’t remember the last time either my cultist Path or Fervour had ranked up, so this was a welcome little boost.

  The monster was flying so fast, I didn’t reach it in time to intercept it directly. But that was fine. I had been using Gravity and Sacrifice constantly, boosting and empowering every subsequent cast. So when I was finally in position, I channelled Field Manipulation and Infusion at as far a distance as I could manage.

  A wide circle of deep violet threads writhed to life almost fifty feet from me, its radius almost half as long again. Easily big enough to catch the giant bug trying to fly over it.

  The winged centipede screeched out as it got caught in my artificial field of Gravity and went down.

  I hefted my mace, then charged in to attack.