“You really think this is going to work, mageling?” Khagnio asked.

  I couldn’t recall if this was his first time at the Sun Cult temple. It sure felt like it, with the way he was looking around and eyeing everything. In truth, part of the fascination was obviously at the way we were all preparing, taking care of our last-minute prep before the Blight Swarm fell on us again. Sure, we had received over a day for a reprieve, but we were not going to let ourselves be lulled into a false sense of security.

  To prevent that, we remained vigilant. We remained active. We busied ourselves on and on with training, with making sure the weapons and armour were ready, with ensuring that the routes we had prepared remained open.

  Oh, and we also got busy gathering a decent amount of blood. Mine and Khagnio’s blood, that was. Since we had to draw in the bugs, we’d need to prepare actual lure to do so.

  I got busy as well. Had to, with everything there was to take care of in such a short time. And while ensuring the plan went perfectly was the main goal, the side-effect of distracting me from my Path Evolution was also greatly appreciated.

  It was maddening, annoying, constantly present without being actually demanding like a buzzing mosquito only occasionally deciding my blood tasted great.

  All the work to stop the Blight Swarm stopped me from staring too long at how the darkness leaching from me seemed to be coagulating to one point. All the things I had to do as the de facto leader of Ring Four’s resistance against the Blight Swarm prevented me from paying attention to how the amorphous black blob was growing less and less shapeless with every passing moment, slowly taking on a form that disquieted me for some reason.

  Even Sacrifice didn’t recognize it. I had thought the Weave would consider whatever it was as something belonging to me, considering it was leaching out of my body. But nope. Sacrifice didn’t even see it. Just like everybody else.

  “You listening, mageling?” Khagnio asked. “Your plan’s crap, you’re crap—”

  “Hey!” I said. “That’s uncalled for.”

  “Oh, so now you listen. When your itsy-bitsy pride is wounded.”

  I cursed Khagnio silently, though I didn’t really blame him. We were all on edge. Especially when half his tail was leaking darkness too.

  “It’s almost time,” I said, nodding at a wave from Vandre. The signal indicating we were ready.

  Khagnio looked unconvinced. “You haven’t even checked if this is going to work!”

  “That’s why we’re going first. Let’s go, Khagnio.”

  The Scalekin rogue grumbled but followed quickly.

  “I’m heading out,” I told Lujean and Atholaine. Sreketh had bounded along with them to apparently wish me off. “Stick to the plan, please. Well, as best as you can.”

  “We’ll meet you on the way, Cultist Ross.”

  I nodded, gave them all an encouraging smile, then got going.

  The plan was to head towards Ring Three. That wasn’t going to be a problem from the Zairgon side of things. After all, the Se-Targa Councillor had at least enough faith in me to ensure that no one standing against the Blight Swarm stood against me too.

  It was the Swarm itself that would present the greatest threat. We weren’t abandoning the temple so much as leading the enemy to where they could be permanently stopped. To that end, we’d need to meaningfully engage them to some extent. Simply running away would just incentivize them to target others. The reverse side of that careful balance was fatal danger.

  “Try not to die ahead of time,” Earth Cult girl said.

  The other cults were joining us in the plan. Half of my last day had been spent on convincing them that I wasn’t just spewing crazy-talk out of my ass. Unless they wanted to commit to a combined effort to take down the Blight Swarm for good, we’d be facing these monsters until we were wiped out.

  “Will do,” I said pleasantly.

  She frowned at my response, probably expecting me to be snippy in return. I just grinned. Part of it was the nerves, while the other part was due to the amorphous blob of darkness invisible to everyone else. Oh, and my Path Evolution too.

  [ Path Evolution

  Path of Burning Starlight is evolving... ]

  It was building up to something. I could feel it. My skin felt stretched like a balloon one decent poke away from bursting, my spine constantly trying to turn rod-rigid. The weird dark energy clawed at me with the ferocity of a cyclone raging in my soul. All this was what I had been trying to ignore.

  “How long will we need to wait?” Khagnio asked. It was just polite enough for me to not call it petulant, which in and of itself was just another way the Scalekin was purposefully being annoying.

  “I don’t know.” I paused. “Well, I’ve got some idea that it’s going to happen soonish, according to everything everybody else said.” We had conferred with the Councillors, with the people in charge of spying on and scouting the Blight Swarm. “But the exact time is impossible to determine.”

  Khagnio hissed a little in displeasure. “Just wait. We’re going to be here for hours. Also, why can’t we just use the blood that we gathered and start on Ring Three?”

  “Because,” I said, possibly for the dozenth time. “The blood isn’t as effective on its own. We’re just going to leave it as a trail for the bugs that we don’t lure in by ourselves.”

  If we left the blood by itself, I had a bad feeling a majority of the monsters would end up getting distracted from it and start targeting the people who were still on Ring Four.

  Khagnio’s earlier statement turned out to be unfortunately prophetic. Time passed by in a gelatinous crawl, and I really did suspect we’d need to measure the duration we spent slowly trawling through Ring Four in hours by the time the Blight Swarm arrived.

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  At least it shut up Khagnio. His impatience had given way to grim awe as he stood witness to the destruction all around us. Ring Three’s defenders had managed to prevent the bugs from infiltrating deep enough to leave a mark everywhere, but that wasn’t the case here. To survive, the people of Ring Four had more or less been forced to withdraw to specific redoubts, abandoning the rest.

  We now stood witness to the fallout.

  Khagnio froze all of a sudden. His nostrils were twitching. “It’s time.”

  “Finally,” I said.

  The invasion process was familiar. A horde of little bugs nullifying our senses took to the air and droned in with terrific power and potency. They tried to lash at Khagnio and me, but we were prepared. I had been channelling Flare with Concentration since leaving the temple, drawing the little heat pockets along with Gravity. Now, as the Swarm’s preliminary forces raged at us, my Aspect burned them all.

  Khagnio had taken out his knives, but he held them only loosely. “You keep learning new tricks too fast, mageling.”

  I was too busy scorching our chitinous guests to even grin at that. Heat blazed out in lashing waves and fiery curls, filling the whole area with floating ash and tingly smoke. Even after all this time, the stench of roasted bugs threatened to make me gag.

  There was something strange about the insects, though. Something different I couldn’t quite place.

  It wasn’t the viciousness. I had already stood witness to it before. Even if their ferocity felt greater than normal, I took it in stride.

  No, what I felt was even more intense now was the targeting. It wasn’t just the nearby little flying critters that were attacking us. More and more from all around, even the ones that had been headed in a completely different direction, were all charging at us now.

  Still. They all fell victim to my burning heat.

  Khagnio’s grip on his knives tightened. “And now, the real party begins.”

  The next group of monsters—the next step of the Swarm’s second invasion—was fast arriving. I hadn’t seen those ones before. They reminded me of dragons. A centipede’s body was bisected in half by that of a bulky, chitin-armoured beetle on all sixes, several enormous wings buzzing at a tremendously rapid pace to keep the monster afloat and moving fast.

  They weren’t the only ones, of course. Elsewhere, different species of the Swarm tore through the air and over the ground to get to their real destination. Familiar ones I had seen and fought before, as well as brand new creatures that no doubt held their own surprises.

  I focused on my obstacle here.

  Just like dragons, the centipede’s maw opened wide and belched out a blast. It wasn’t fire. More like a stream of the same dark energy I kept seeing on all the bugs.

  The same dark energy that was now connecting them somehow.

  But the point was that I could deal with those blasts. I channelled Illumination, turning my body glowing and reflective. The black energy struck me with more impact than I was expecting, and I wondered if I should have tried using my new Power Augmentation to assist me. As it was, I was sent staggering back a little, but the returning shots of power struck true.

  The monster screeched out as its onrushing charge was halted. My reflected spears of light and darkness pierced through its wings, its neck, even its thick armoured body. It dropped with an earth-shaking crash, and then bullishly continued onwards.

  Khagnio whistled appreciatively. “Nice one, mageling. Cerea said you were capable of fancy stuff now.” He hefted his daggers. “Don’t worry, let the real adventurer handle the rest.”

  I wished I had my Silver-ranked badge to flash in his face—which wasn’t even accurate anymore since I was more or less Gold-ranked now—but he was already dashing off. His Stealth had made him disappear as he arrowed straight for the wounded monster.

  A second later, he landed right on top of his unaware target, the glowing red blades punching through the thick chitin on the monster’s back as Khagnio reappeared.

  There was no time to celebrate Khagnio’s success. For one, I had to keep concentrating on Flare, on burning away the smaller bugs before they became too big of a problem. If the Feeders didn’t bite us to death, the Seeders presented an even worse alternative with their parasitic eggs. I had to remain wary.

  There was also the issue of the other draconic monsters ramming in from other directions. A whole horde of them, all with yawning jaws readying to belch out more dark blasts.

  I yelled, trying my best to draw their attention. That, plus the way I had continued channelling Illumination and Khagnio was once again disappearing with Stealth meant that I was the sole target of the draconic bug monsters. Perfect.

  Half a dozen black shots of energy rocketed towards me. I made sure to concentrate on Reflection. The impacts hit hard just as they had last time, and the numerous blasts hitting at once meant I almost lost my footing. But I was safe. The dark power hit me in ricocheting bolts that bounded back the way they had come.

  I didn’t let them go just yet, however. The speed of the attacks and the reflections meant I couldn’t get a hold of them all. Some speared out to crash into the monsters that had fired them.

  But the ones I caught? They got Sacrificed.

  [ Sacrifice

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Affixed Reflection of an Aspect. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward: Reflected Affix categorized as Lightshade. 10 casts of a temporary Affix—Lightshade—assigned under Illumination Aspect.

  Casts remaining: 10 ]

  Another temporary Affix as a Sacrifice reward. I got a hefty amount of trepidation at seeing it, but there was no accompanying warning about incompatibility or physiological penalties or anything like that. Small blessings. I supposed Lightshade was sort of related to light and illumination, so it wasn’t exactly an unrelated Affix.

  Lightshade, the Weave called it. I couldn’t even begin to decipher what it meant. Maybe there was some relation to the fact I had Sacrificed reflections of magical dark blasts to obtain it, but if there was, I couldn’t begin to make any connections.

  Not in the middle of the fight. Not when more monsters were joining the battle.

  Khagnio had leaped onto another monster. The first one he had attacked now lay dead, bleeding out from a dozen wounds that had left red cracks on its back. “Good work, mageling! Now I can rip into the rest.”

  He spoke with easy bravado, but I wasn’t so confident. Even if my reflections had downed most of the flying monstrosities, several were getting up. A few were still airborne too.

  Which meant I needed to dive into the fray.

  The farther monsters roared and fired off more of their dark blasts, clearly not caring that they weren’t working. Oh, well. Free reflections for me. I channelled my Affix to send them spearing back at their owners, suffering only minor discomfort at the exchange, then slammed my mace into a fallen bug-dragon as it roared.

  It wasn’t just Reflection that I had channelled, but the new one too. Lightshade. I had to see what it was capable of.

  While the monsters reeled from getting their own powers smacked back into their faces, I took a second to observe what Lightshade was doing.

  I had dashed away from my original location to get closer to the fallen bug-dragons. Khagnio couldn’t kill them all, so I thought I’d join in. But as I had moved, I had left behind a projection of myself in my original spot, a version of me made up entirely with swathes of light and shadow. A projection that glowed with the same reflective coating of light that I myself had created to send back the monsters’ dark blasts.

  It took a few seconds for me to register that that was the effect of Lightshade. At first, I had interpreted the shade part of the name to mean shadows. But no. This was shade in the sense of a ghost.

  The best part about it was that the shade was doing exactly what I was doing. It was almost like a temporal afterimage. The shade reflected blasts that didn’t come, then rushed in to slam its mace into the dead monster at my feet. And that slam had a powerful effect too! The beast’s chest cratered at the blow.

  Only then did the afterimage merge back with me. I blinked as my body glowed even brighter, tiny motes of light bursting from every pore of my skin like they did whenever I used Imbuement, just a lot stronger.

  With a grin, I smashed into the monsters like a glowing comet, wondering if and how I could make this Affix permanent instead of temporary.