If you ever wish to kill a man, speak to a doctor. For in the process of mastering the art of healing, they have memorized the endless manner in which men die.

  -Silas Norgard, Fall of a Nation, pg 121

  The guards milled about the ramparts, staring out into the city and pointing out threats. A lull had arrived after the gates had slammed shut. In the fighting at least. The keep was a hive of activity, with guards and volunteers running around, preparing weapons, or finding more able bodied people to stand upon the walls.

  And I! Their great leader and overseer, standing tall upon the balcony and projecting an air of calm and poise. Truly, I was a paragon of our people. Bravely overlooking their efforts from the safety of my inner sanctum. The bugs didn't stand a chance with me at the helm. In fact. I didn't even need to do anything. The problem would resolve itself without me lifting a finger!

  I snorted.

  Why was I feeling so sorry for myself again?

  The morass of emotions that had plagued me recently turned dark. Self-recrimination turned to anger. Not at the bugs or even at the situation. This wasn't an issue of perceived responsibility or regret. But rather at the damning truth that for some unexplainable reason, I was hiding behind excuses.

  Compromised judgement? Really? That was just another excuse to remain passive. Comfortable. Assigning all responsibility over all the people of the city during a freak crisis was ridiculous.

  My world treated me as a child, and in some way had turned me into one. It had left me directionless. Like an aimless raft lost upon stormy waves. I didn't like where the currents had taken me or how it seemed as if I'd lost my oars somewhere along the way. But none of that mattered.

  It didn't matter if the heading was wrong if the boat was sinking. I would have time for regret later. More than enough. Now was the time for action.

  I turned, my gaze falling on the three young girls watching the activities with me. Akira glared, though her nervous fidgeting betrayed her insecurity. She was frightened and shaken by the fighting. I could tell.

  The twins, on the other hand, had adopted a relaxed pose; hands behind their back and watching me with hopeful eyes. As if awaiting orders. It would be ideal if they didn't have to participate in this. Witness the gore. They were children and deserving of protection.

  All true, but... somehow, I found that I didn't care. So what if they saw some blood? This was the reality of this world. So long as they didn't come to any permanent harm, I wasn't against using any and all resources to end this threat. And that went for every person in the city. Including me. Time healed all wounds. Especially in children.

  In fact, they might even grow from the experience.

  Of course, I didn't think they could assist much in any case. Despite Akira's relative mastery, she was still a child. Naturally, I would do everything in my power to guard them from trauma. Both physical and mental.

  I sucked in a deep breath, then released it in a rush.

  Enough waffling.

  I was decided. Calm.

  A few facts jumped out to me:

  There were bugs to kill.

  I was magically capable of killing.

  It really was that simple.

  "What?" Akira jabbed me with a bony finger. My random huff of air drew her attention.

  "Nothing," I eyed her. "I'm simply done feeling sorry for myself."

  It felt good to say it out loud.

  "Good!" Akira nodded firmly. "Because we totally should do something!"

  I hummed an agreement. While we were technically safe behind the walls, many of the guard were injured or exhausted by the retreat. They'd thrown around a lot of magic in a very short time and were understaffed to boot. It was why they hadn't stormed off into the city to clear out the infestation already.

  Though, Akira's enthusiasm was slightly troubling. Despite my grandiose resolution, a battlefield was no place for a child.

  "They are more capable than you think, Akira," I said. She gave me a mutinous expression. "But yes. I think it is actually true that we are one of the strongest mages here. Near the top at the very least. I'm sure they will appreciate our help."

  "You will do no such thing."

  A heavy hand settled on my shoulder. Mom glared down at me with the weight only a mother could convey. Akira opened her mouth to argue, but was interrupted.

  "Zip it, young lady. We will all remain here."

  That wouldn't do at all.

  "Yes we will, Lira," I said calmly. Mom flinched at hearing her name. A flash of uncertainty mixing with her concern. "Or I will. There are lives at stake. That trumps everything else. I am stronger than you realize and I'm done hiding."

  Oblivious to Mom's reaction, Akira grabbed my shoulder and shook it with a massive grin.

  "Yes! Let's go Silas. Do your thing!"

  I blinked. "My thing?"

  "Yeah! You know. Your thing," Akira beamed. "The dance, Silas. Make it awesome!"

  I paused, eyeing the fortification. It wasn't like I was going to go out and kill the bugs right this second. We had to wait regardless. Either for the bugs to crash uselessly against the walls, or for Milo to finish organizing the expedition to clear the streets.

  Why not? There was something to Akira's suggestion. It was worth looking into at the very least. She had been harping about weaponizing the Dance of the Dragon's Descent for a while now. I just hadn't put much thought into it. It wasn't even hard—on the contrary, anything with that much mana was inherently dangerous.

  The problem with the Dance of the Dragon's Descent was that the protective membrane containing the supersaturated mana cloud was fragile. It had to contain the mana, which by necessity made it susceptible to it. Any form of energy projection—or even excessive turbulence from spellcasting—destabilized the technique.

  There wasn't a solution really.

  Theoretically, designing a valve that could accommodate launching attacks might be possible, but such a complicated setup would invariably leak. But that wasn't even considering the mechanical complexity of a device that could enable the lethal velocities necessary for attack spells.

  The funny thing was, I already knew of a mana membrane capable of holding back such pressures. My aura—or anyone's really—was more than capable of such a feat and could become selectively permeable.

  Not that forming combat spells within the core was advisable. Doing so was a grade-A bad idea for a variety of reasons.

  But self empowerment? That was doable. In fact, most simple strength enhancements were just spells that were injected straight into the mana channels. They lacked the physical and propulsion elements that attack spells possessed, and so were inherently safer. Though, they still put a massive amount of stress on a user's mana channels.

  That, more than raw magical power, was the limitation on physical empowerment. And what I planned to do was going to stress the system to the gills. Not only was I going to be dumping an inordinate amount of strengthening matrices into the mana streams, but I wanted to massively engorge them to increase the thaumic flux of the technique.

  Not that any of that would stop me. Step, the first: Mana density.

  I flared my core, mana coalescing like rain droplets out of the hyper dense nucleus. I formed the supersaturated environment necessary for the dance in an instant and spooled it up. I scrapped the cosmetic 'stars' of mana designed to assist in visualization, changing them for the basic form of physical enhancement common among the guard.

  The river of mana burned under my skin, seeping into my bones, but simultaneously spawning thousands of pins and needles across my extremities. My eyes narrowed as the diffuse cloud formed damaging vortices.

  Annoyingly, the efficiency was also terrible.

  I needed a way to bring the mana closer to my core, and to reduce the damaging turbulence. Mana behaved like a fluid, so...

  Wasn't there a convenient property of fluids that solved this very problem?

  Laminar flow.

  I clamped down on the currents of mana, adjusting velocity, thickness, rotation until I manhandled the streams into perfectly smooth rivers that hugged my mana channels. Like a set of clothes on the ethereal veins. So smooth that the flow seemed to still to my senses. As if the mana had become stationary.

  The spell's efficiency spiked. My artificially expanded mana channels enabled a truly staggering amount of thaumic flux. The half-dozen empowerment spells flared, burning like miniature stars as they guzzled my mana down at an unprecedented rate.

  Only for the efficiency to drop precipitously. I blinked, not understanding for a second, until a closer look at my channels revealed that the cycling had slowed to a crawl.

  Right.

  My aura naturally turned mana inside of it to treacle. It wasn't just a fluid, but almost... sticky. I gave the flow another hard shove, and once again my muscles visibly swelled with power, only for the whole thing to fizzle a few seconds later.

  Hmm...

  This technique—this laminar channel augmentation. It worked... but was completely unusable for me or any alten.

  Slowly, my eyes opened and settled on the yawm twins. An idea crept up. One I was hesitant to acknowledge.

  Hadn't their auras been surprisingly lax?

  I'd thought it merely a byproduct of their inexperience and age, but the spells I'd tossed into their cores hadn't slowed much, if at all. In fact, they'd persisted, bouncing around like hockey pucks on freshly resurfaced ice. It was only them actively shredding the spells that provided the illusion of drag.

  They were perfect for this technique.

  Neither twin was skilled enough to maintain the effect, but I could do it for them. In fact, laminar channel augmentation required very little strength. I could probably bypass their natural defenses and avoid the auric damage by being subtle enough.

  The question was: how subtle could I be?

  I reached into myself and narrowed my control. All across my channels, the numerous strands I'd constructed to guide the supercritical fluid thinned. The back of my skull shivered pleasantly as I pushed myself, but I easily passed below either yawm's sensitivity threshold.

  Well. That was easy.

  I stopped. A burst of humor bubbled up from my gut. I barked out a laugh, surprising the girls.

  Hadn't I resolved not to get the children involved less than five minutes ago. Truly, there was something wrong with me.

  "What?" Akira asked. "Did you do it?"

  "Ya," I said, shaking my head in self-exasperation. "Though it'll only work on yawm."

  "What! Why?" Akira pouted.

  I shrugged.

  "Uhm," Kemi said, her fingers fidgeting. "Does it hurt?"

  I frowned. "Shouldn't. No."

  "Then I'm ready."

  I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at the determination in her expression. Or how Yuna joined her sister, her tendrils curling in nervous excitement.

  Hmm...

  Ideally, I would find some adult yawm to test this on.

  But, to be honest, I was kind of sick of doubting myself.

  "Alright, who wants to go first?" I asked. Both girls stepped forward at the same time then stared at each other. I laughed, beckoning both closer.

  I formed a tether of mana, as thin and unobtrusive as I could make it and pushed it into their core. Neither felt it, eyeing me excitedly as I ponderously wove the laminar reinforcement array atop their channels. It was fairly tricky, working with such a small amount of mana inside of their aura, but I managed. While the girls weren't smaller than me, their yawm physiology tended toward fewer, larger channels.

  Even before I finished, both girls started bleeding mana into the pathways. I frowned as the pair naturally started accelerating the flow. Neither seemed aware of it, almost as if their bodies had detected the change and accepted it as natural.

  "Control yourselves, girls," I said. "It's not stable yet."

  It took a bit, but the twins managed to clamp down on their auras until I completed the structural scaffolding of the technique. Then, as they naturally filled the pathways, I started sprinkling in low-level physical empowerment spells.

  Which was a step too far. I'd been careful to use only trace amounts of mana for everything, but the spells directly within their currents was too much. The twins flinched as their bodies started cannibalizing my spells.

  Thankfully, the scaffolding was too delicate for them to detect and was left alone.

  "You are going to have to strengthen yourselves," I pursed my lips.

  "Okay," Kemi said. She hesitated. "How?"

  "Imagine yourselves stronger," I said. "But in general the spell looks like..."

  I trailed off as a frankly dizzying array of empowerment spells flooded into the twins' expanded channels. The diversity was staggering. Whereas I generally created dozens of identical copies, the girls formed specific spells for each purpose as naturally as breathing.

  Huh. I supposed this is where the yawm reputation for body empowerment came from.

  "Whoa! I'm strong!" Yuna beamed. She gave a little hop which sent her body rocketing up into the ceiling. The girl gave a belated scream as she bumped her head, which morphed into mad giggles as she landed atop her sister. A rain of plaster dust rained down on us.

  I glanced up at the head-sized dent in the artful stucco of the ceiling.

  "Supernaturally tough, too," I said dryly.

  "Sorry," Yuna tucked her chin, contrite. Despite that, both twins were vibrating with barely contained energy. I eyed them skeptically, examining the integrity of the spell but it seemed stable. I shared a look with Mom. Her expression had closed off, conflicted. As if she were contemplating something.

  Before any of us could test out the technique further, a faint rumble of earth propagated through the castle. We jolted up in fright, only for our alarm to escalate as a klaxon horn blared across the keep.

  People rushed to the walls, where guards were already tossing spells straight down.

  A second later, a massive bug crested the crenellations. It hadn't climbed the enchanted walls—such an act was impossible given the spelled surface—but rather walked up a ramp of bodies composed of its brethren. Its mandibles chittered as more and more monstrous bugs joined it. They slammed into the air barrier extending above the stone walls. The air shimmered and warped, some spots tearing before rapidly recovering.

  Guards rushed to the site. Lances of fire streaked out, passing harmlessly through the physical barrier and leaving cauterized holes in hard chitinous flesh. The dead mounted and tumbled off the ramp of bodies, only to be replaced in an instant. But those bodies were met with more guards with every second that passed.

  Suddenly, the writhing sea of black shapes split and a huge, bulbous monster rose. Like it was climbing an escalator. Its aura was enormous and exuded power. A queen among drones.

  The guards unleashed a salvo on it, but the lesser drones dove before the blasts to protect the new monster. The big monster's will shot out.

  And tore the air barrier to shreds.

  I was almost annoyed with how easily the creature had torn the air, but logically I understood that empowerment magic functioned off of its base substance. Stone was already hard, but there was only so much you could strengthen and reinforce air.

  Bugs swarmed to hold back the rapidly healing barrier as a metaphysical ripple thrummed outward from the breach. It almost concealed the hypersonic screech of breaking air a moment later. A flash of pure black slammed into the queen. Morag stood in the courtyard, his arm extended as the very air around him contorted as if he had torn asunder the fabric of reality.

  The queen writhed in agony, black veins sprouting across her carapace. She fell through her platform of drones, vanishing beneath a sea of chitin and severing the connection. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. The mass of bodies pushed through the gap, rending the edges and preventing the enchantment on the walls from repairing itself.

  People screamed, retreating as the flood of insects breached the walls and tumbled down to the central courtyard. Several heartbeats later, the flow thinned as guards and enchantments worked furiously to reconstruct the damaged section.

  I had only a fraction of a second to register the change in the twins. I was still connected to them through the tether and noticed as a frankly absurd amount of enhancement spells flood their mana channels at the sight of the breach. Their pupils contracted to pinpricks as their scleras turned a steadily darkening pink.

  Then they lunged off the balcony with a whistling hiss.

  I hurked as the tether connecting me to them stretched violently. It took everything I possibly had to unspool more mana and prevent it from breaking catastrophically and likely converting their souls into rudimentary frag grenades.

  The twins landed two stories below with no apparent harm. Their eyes locked on the bugs, and I suddenly realized that they were planning on charging. I rapidly extended the tether, but there was no shot I could maintain the spell from that far away.

  "Mom! I need to get down there or the tether will snap!" I shouted.

  Lira hesitated, her expression flickering as she took in the situation.

  She sucked in a breath, then nodded and scooped me up. My shoulder twinged as she jumped down, her own enhancement magic absorbing the impact as she brought me closer to the twins.

  Akira remained on the balcony. Frozen with eyes and locked on the encroaching horde of black chitin. I didn't have time to process that. Before the dust even settled from Mom's landing, the bugs charged.

  The twins met their charge with a level of fearlessness that shocked me. They jumped into the fray, muscles bulging as the Dance of the Dragon's Descent flared beneath their skin.

  Kemi slammed into the leading bug. Her fist crashed into its mandibles. Chitin cracked as the cobbles beneath the little girl's feet groaned. She forced her fist in and up, deflecting the huge bug off to the side. At the moment of impact, her mana flared, sending thousands of threads to anchor her to the ground and make up for her diminutive size.

  The bug crashed into a disoriented slump, but there were more where it came from. Plenty more. Another bug crashed into Yuna. It bit her torso, tearing her shirt, but barely dimpling her skin.

  A warbling hiss erupted from Yuna's tendrils, and she headbutted the beast.

  Yuna broke the creature's grapple through sheer, brute force and lunged at another. A dizzying kaleidoscope of fragmentary enhancement spells blurred through the twin's channels. Strength. Speed. Toughness. Dimensional stability. Each one perfectly timed and focused on a specific site to maximize power.

  It was completely instinctive. Intuitive wild magic that left me amazed. But there seemed to be a cost. Somehow, the Dance I maintained in their veins had stolen their judgement. They fought with wild abandon, oddly mirroring the suicidal charge of the formican drones.

  Not that it wasn't effective. Their brutality even shocked the guards rushing to the scene. The guard recovered quickly, naturally adapting and surrounding the twins as the core of the defense force.

  Neither twin noticed. Or if they did, they gave no indication. They simply jumped into the maw of the next monster only to pummel it into the dirt with brutal violence. Completely ignoring the spell enhanced mandibles ineffectually biting down on them. During all of this, the torrent of mana in their souls spun faster and faster.

  Now, I may have the mind of an adult, but the yawm twin's violence sort of shocked me. I watched in horror as the two sweet little girls bathed in viscera. Mom carried me behind the pair, out of danger, but close enough to maintain the tether I didn't dare drop.

  That was why I almost missed how quickly the girls were burning through mana. Less than a minute in, their cores were already dulling. The drain didn't look to be slowing.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "I should have known this would happen," Mom murmured, almost to herself.

  "What?!" I asked, holding on for dear life as most of my attention remained on maintaining the tether on the girls.

  "You induced the yawm rage," Mom yelled into my ear. "I've never actually seen it myself, but it was common during the war two hundred years ago. They're going to burn out soon."

  Mom's words sank in just as Yuna's core dimmed dramatically. She staggered back, eyes unfocused and limbs trembling. Despite that, she hiss-screamed again and lunged right back into the fray.

  "Bring them to me! I'll stop them," I shouted.

  Mom's mouth opened as if to ask me how, then she eyed the ethereal tether pulsing in my grip. She nodded firmly, and barked a command at a nearby guard. Thankfully, the command echoed through the beleaguered defenses and someone managed to restrain the twins and bring them to me.

  They struggled weakly, eyes glazed. The torrent in their soul accelerated, like a diesel engine running without a spark. Every rotation siphoned more life-giving mana and strained the reinforcement I was maintaining.

  I needed to slow them down. Choke the flow somehow. I knew how to do this in my own core; my earliest experiments in invisibility had occurred as an infant. Additionally, I knew my alten aura naturally thickened mana.

  So without another thought, I expanded my Domain.

  My aura swallowed both girls and decreed they cease. Flashes of alien perspective tickled my mind where our auras clashed. Phantom aches and pains blossomed across my body, as if my mind was confused as to which body was mine. I saw through seven eyes. Felt through four hands. But I ignored everything in favor of my core sense which remained implacable and mine.

  Their aura's instantly clashed with mine, but unlike every other time, I refused to allow them their wild, self-flagellating flailing. I gripped down, vise-like and implacable. Freezing the very core of their being.

  The twins seized up. Breath frozen. Bodies stiff.

  Then I gently released, nudging their internal cycling just enough to restart the flow. Then, I was gone before either girl's immune system could register my interference.

  Yuna's breath rattled out as her eyes slowly found mine. Kemi shivered at her side, eyes rolling up as she fell unconscious. I took Yuna's hand, ignoring the sounds of violence as I checked Kemi's pulse.

  "Oh, uhm..." Yuna mumbled, groggy. "I didn't mean to do... that?"

  "Shh," I said, resting a palm on her forehead.

  Her tendrils curled in what I had learned was a faint smile. "Did we... help?"

  "Rest." I cupped her cheek. "You did well."

  A cacophony of battle noise drew my gaze. The bugs had given one final charge, nearly overwhelming the guards by combining their force. The line buckled, nearly breaking.

  But then the rest of the reinforcement arrived. Civilians erupted from the underground bunker, reinforcing the guard with a wave of fire and force. They were individually weak, but the bugs had already broken. Especially since by now the breach in the walls had sealed.

  I glanced down at my two maids, assured that the fighting was over. They were in excellent shape, oddly enough. Not a single scratch or bruise on them. Truthfully, their clothes had suffered more than anything. That, and their cores, whose cycling seemed slightly bruised to my senses.

  It was a good outcome. I refused to be upset at the turn of events. I hadn't meant to enrage the girls, but I had no context for the odd alien physiological response.

  And that wasn't even mentioning how effective they had been. Their mad assault had broken the formican's charge with comical ease, without which more people would have died.

  Eyeing the courtyard, it was clear that no one had perished from the breach. And nearly fifty black formican bodies littered the grounds and the walls above.

  But that didn't mean that the fighting was over. I'd seen the blobby monster that had breached the walls. It was a queen of sorts. A hive mind capable of breeding more of the worker drone caste. As long as it—she—still lived, this wasn't over.

  It wasn't long before Milo began roaring instructions. The shell shocked milling of the courtyard slowly organized at the stewards words. Those injured were carried off by those unnecessary to the proceedings. The rest organized.

  Morag appeared out of nowhere, standing grimly at Milo's side. He leaned into Milo's ear, and a few whispered words were shared. Milo's outlook immediately changed. From damage control and organization, the drider began organizing a strike team.

  Every able bodied guard or civilian willing to wield spell or blade assembled.

  The reasoning was simple: The queen was injured. It was time to strike.

  "Let's get them comfortable," Mom said softly at my side. I helped her pick up the twins, and followed after her into the keep. We returned to the second floor sitting room overlooking the courtyard, and Lira lay the twins down on the couch. Yuna murmured softly as she was jostled, but didn't wake.

  I examined myself after finishing making sure the twins were comfortable. I was in surprisingly good condition. Beside my aching bandaged shoulder, and my unruly braid, I'd barely used any magic during the fighting. Mom had even carried me during much of the excitement.

  "Oh, uh, hey, guys..." Akira shuffled in with a forced grin. "What a fight, huh?"

  "Indeed," I said. I raised an eyebrow. "You stayed on the balcony."

  "Well, yeah!" Akira sputtered, stumbling over her next words. "That wasn't even that interesting. You guys didn't need me on the ground."

  "Sure," I said easily, ignoring her jittery relief and forced indignation. She was trying to hide it, but the girl really wasn't made for spycraft. Likely, seeing dead children and adults had shocked her out of her wild enthusiasm for violence. In short, she was scared.

  But, I was not.

  It didn't come as much of a surprise. I'd never had trouble acting decisively during dangerous situations. It was the in between times where my mind tied itself into knots. I recognized the danger but the threat of pain didn't eat at me. Akira was clearly chewing on the memories like a dog with a bone. But me? It seemed so utterly simple to me. I'd already died once, after all.

  I was joining whatever expedition Milo was preparing.

  If anything, the twins' contribution firmed my resolve. If even they could shift the odds, my strength was definitely valuable.

  But it would be even more valuable if I managed to somehow fix my braid. I left Mom and Akira in the solar and idly walked to the balcony. I didn't notice Akira's nervous glance as my hand prodded the back of my skull.

  My two principal braids hung long and sinuous down my back. The tips trailed across the ground, kissing my ankles with each of my steps. The third strand, and the source of my trouble, lay thick and bulbous at the back of my skull. The inflamed lump was as long as my hand and tender to the touch.

  I manifested my will, simply staring at the mana as I pulled a looping strand of energy from my core. The act was as easy as breathing. By now, it was almost as intuitive as moving any of my other limbs.

  But as always, a headache filtered in to ruin the simple joy of mastery. I tried to focus my spiritual senses on the site to identify the problem, but clearly I wasn't quite good enough yet.

  If only I could see the problem. Then everything would be ridiculously easy. My mana manipulation skills were unparalleled and I was confident I had the skills to fix this.

  I just needed to figure out a way to pierce the ever present glare of the alten aura to directly view the secrets beneath. You know. Only break one of the constants of magic and biology that I was taught years ago.

  I snorted. Faintly amused by the supposed impossibility of my task. It paled in comparison to reincarnation or the feats of engineering that I knew would truly baffle my family should I show them.

  "Akira?" I called, still looking out of the balcony. From the shuffling of guards and urgency of sprinting messengers, I likely had a half hour to work. "Could you come help me with something please?"

  Akira joined me and I explained my plan. As always, Akira was enthusiastic. It probably completely escaped her the danger of the plan. Unfortunately, she wasn't good enough to expand her own domain for my purposes. Which... might not be a good idea either.

  Whatever. I'd do this the hard way.

  I took a calming breath and began.

  My will clamped down on my third braid and meticulously ripped out the shreds of my domain from the spaces between my mana channels.

  The pain was exquisite each time I slipped. My mana channels did not appreciate being outside of my domain. They sublimated rapidly at the lack of aura and it felt like having my skin flayed from me.

  But I persevered and methodically stripped the blinding aura from the space around my braid. While I couldn't point my myliria at the spot, Akira was plenty perceptive enough to serve as my eyes.

  "I see it! It's beautiful!" Akira gasped, grabbing my shoulders as she leaned in.

  It better be, I groused silently. I was basically magically skinning myself so she could examine my still pumping cardiovascular system.

  "I'm going to cast some extremely low flux spells now. I want you to tell me what you see," I said instead of complaining. Even now, I had to rapidly adjust the bounds of my aura lest one of my channels slip outside and erupt in the magical equivalent of an aneurism.

  "Why are you casting low flux spells?" Akira asked, though my attention was pulled elsewhere. The difficulty of maintaining my domain spiked and I was forced to go slow.

  "Oh, I get it," Akira answered her own question. By now, she was basically pressing her throat to my braid.

  "What do you see?" I gritted out.

  Akira explained how my small mana channels were reacting to the exercise. Unfortunately, this wasn't anything I wasn't already aware of. It was my large mana channels that rippled and moved when I cast. The interference and rapid shifting of flows was what caused the pain. Theoretically, enough small channels might stabilize the large ones, but I didn't have the patience to wait for months or years for them to grow naturally.

  I rolled my jaw. I was tempted to excise a bunch of mana channels for Akira to look deeper, but that was a phenomenally terrible idea. Those tiny channels were the only thing that was allowing me to cast magic at all.

  I wasn't that desperate.

  "Hold on," Akira mumbled. "I think I see something else. Can I try..."

  "Go ahead," I replied, then immediately jolted almost a foot in the air as Akira pushed her will into the back of my skull. I shuddered, shivering violently. It felt like she had stuck a freezing wet q-tip into my ear and pushed it into my brain.

  I forcefully held back the desire to crush the invader, waiting patiently as the girl rooted deeper into my skull with her will.

  "Silas! Silas!" Akira slapped me violently three times on the shoulder. "You don't have one braid!"

  I refrained from scowling at her as my injured shoulder sent a lightning bolt of pain into my brain that nearly destroyed my concentration.

  "What in the world are you talking about?" I grunted. It may have come out a little testier than I initially wanted. But come on. The girl had the memory of a gnat.

  "Can I..." Akira said, but didn't wait for me to respond.

  White agony.

  My concentration slipped and my aura snapped back into place. It ejected Akira's probe with the force of a cruise missile. The pain vanished barely a second later. Replaced by a dull euphoria that left me reeling and blinking owlishly. The rapid shift left me faintly dizzy.

  "Ow! Silas! Why'd you doooo that!?" Akira groaned from the ground. She rolled over clutching her head with a pout. "That hurt!"

  "I—" I started, then something hot and wet dripped onto my neck. A second later the smell hit me. It was putrid and earthy. Like a swamp during the hottest parts of summer.

  My hand shot to my braid and sank into the inflamed flesh. I felt no pain. In fact. I felt nothing at all. Slightly horrified, I pressed deeper.

  Then I ripped the rotten flesh off my head.

  It came off easily, sliding off with a disgusting wetness. My hands were coated in a yellowish phlegm tinged with blood.

  Behind my back, three new strands unfurled and tumbled down my back to join my two mature strands. They glistened wetly, slightly wrinkly, but just as long and elegant as my first two strands. I naturally curled them, twisting them together to form a more cohesive whole.

  Instantly, my magic snapped into place. It felt right and I couldn't help but channel my mana into a great orb of energy. Ten thaum. A hundred thaum. A thousand thaum. More. More! My braid vibrated on my back, the five strands reinforcing each other perfectly. Every resonance was absorbed by the other strands and reflected internally until a balance was achieved.

  I couldn't help it. I laughed. A brilliant, tinkling sound of bone deep relief.

  I was whole once more.

  I turned slowly. Akira gaped at me from her spot on the floor, a mix of amazement and jealousy tinging her expression as she stared at my braid. I beamed at her, only remembering to twist my aura into a matching expression a second later. Akira blinked, then her lip curled in disgust.

  "What is that smell!" she said, scrambling to her feet and examining herself. "And, you sprayed me! Eeww!"

  Another laugh burst out of me as she leveled a devastating pout in my direction. With some effort I tabled the mirth as I spotted Mom standing in the doorway to the balcony.

  Mom stood at the entranceway, her hand to her mouth with eyes glistening as if fighting to hold back tears. I blinked, my wide smile shrinking.

  "What's wrong, Mom?"

  "N-nothing," Mom shook her head, sniffing. "Nothing. I'm so happy for you. Come along now, let's get you both cleaned up."

  She ushered us quickly to the bath where she filled a wide bucket with water and quickly cleaned up the spots of rot dotting Akira's blouse. Then she had me lean back against her knee as she gently washed my braid and the back of my head. It tingled something fierce—my scales there were soft and wrinkled—but I held my tongue.

  "Mom—" I started.

  "Silas, you..." Mom swallowed thickly. "You do know that you can rely on me, right?"

  "Of course," I tilted my head in confusion.

  "I might not be a genius at magic like Akira or Lady Sakra," Mom continued. "I might be just a farmer. But I am your mother. You can ask me for help with... with anything." She seemed to steel herself. "You can rely on me, my son."

  "Oh," I replied, feeling dumb as a brick. It hadn't been my intention at all to make Mom feel this way. I'd called to Akira on instinct. Not for any other practical purpose. "I'm sorry, Mom."

  "It's alright, Silas," Mom smiled weakly. Then more quietly said. "Everything turned out, alright." She wiped my braid down with a towel, spending extra time at the sensitive root. "So!" Mom exclaimed suddenly. "You are going to go fight the formicans with the guard?"

  "That's the plan," I responded slowly, suspicious.

  "May I come with you?" Mom patted me down, seemingly satisfied with the state of my dress. "I would like to. If you will have me."

  "Uhm... sure." I said, slightly unnerved at the shift in her demeanor. "That would be awesome... Mom."

  Mom hugged me, seemingly unperturbed when I reminded her of our relationship, and we set out, with me firmly in the lead. Perhaps it was a good thing that Mom decided to join me, because by the scorching glare Akira shot at us as she followed, I had little doubt that the little girl would have thrown the mother of all tantrums if we'd left her behind. Mom didn't tell Akira off, so I didn't either. Truthfully, I doubted she would be in any danger at my side.

  We exited the keep and made our way to Milo and an unfamiliar man at his side shouting orders from a raised platform. A hush followed us, eyes locked on my waving braid. Despite myself, I tucked the strands over my shoulder.

  "Mistress Akria, Master Silas, Madam Lira," Milo greeted. He eyed my braid. "I see there have been developments."

  "Yes," I said simply. "I figured something out. I would like to join the campaign to clear the city."

  For a second I thought Milo would deny me, but it was the alten at his side who spoke up.

  "Was it you holding the leash for those two yawm dogs?"

  As if in slow motion, I turned to face him. "Excuse me?"

  "You heard me kid," the man leaned forward, baring his teeth. Disconcertingly, his auric expression was locked in a sneer that looked fabricated. Not a shred of real emotions filtered under the surface.

  "Who are you, again?" my eyes narrowed, not at all intimidated.

  "Who knows," the man smirked.

  "Agent Blackadder!" Morag barked, joining our little gathering. "Stand down."

  "Yessir," Blackadder drawled. He gave a lazy salute and stepped back. "Just making sure the kid's got the spine for what he's askin' is all."

  "That is not for you to judge," Morag said evenly. He turned to me. "I see you discovered something new."

  "It's not that important," I said. "In short, I can use mana without pain. I'll tell you the details after. After we rescue the civilians that were taken."

  "And... judged too soon," Blackadder snorted.

  I turned to the haughty man again, meeting his smirk with an implacable stare of my own. Truly, I didn't care for his personality, but that didn't mean he couldn't be useful.

  "What are you... a spy?" I asked.

  "I prefer the term assassin," Blackadder grinned.

  Right. Good enough.

  "I believe that the monsters are a hive mind," I said, turning back to the driders. "If we kill the queen, they will crumble. Agent Blackadder can help with that."

  "That is precisely why I unearthed him," Morag said. "My team and I will do what we can to hamstring our foes once the troops are ready."

  "We will be ready in five minutes," Milo added. His voice slipped between the gaps in the conversation such that I barely registered his input. "We have isolated the hive of beasts to Fields Cemetery. A tracking marker on the queen will guide us directly to her where Morag and his team will remove the threat."

  "All I need is for you to distract her drones. Even a short engagement should be sufficient for us to approach."

  "I would be happy to be in the front line." I said. Mom's hand tensed on my shoulder, though she said nothing as the two driders nodded along.

  "Y'all can't be seriously considering taking this squirt into battle," Blackadder blinked, as if suddenly realizing that there was a practical joke he wasn't in on. His cultivated expression faded to a placid nothingness with just a hint of surprise visible beneath the surface.

  "Mind your tongue, Agent," Morag said softly. "You are in the presence of Lordling Silas, ward of house Norgard. You are useful, but you are not that useful."

  Agent Blackadder flinched, showing for the first time a measure of humanity, then he scowled. His sharp gaze scanned me, hitching on my cool gaze and five-point braid. Then to my surprise, he jabbed me with a thread of mana.

  I annihilated his probe with a flick of will.

  "I would like to dedicate some extra manpower toward rescue operations if possible," I said. Morag nodded easily enough.

  "You're still on about that?" Blackadder leaned forward. Somehow, I'd garnered his interest instead of rebuffing it with my little demonstration. "You do realize they are probably all dead by now. Munched on like little snacks. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch."

  I raised a hand, silencing the three separate people who opened their mouths at that. A dozen ways to put down this agent filtered through my thoughts. I wasn't unfamiliar with intentionally abrasive people, and had handled many of them in my time.

  But to be honest, I didn't particularly care.

  Plus. It was rude to punch down.

  "Morag," I said calmly, ignoring Blackadder. "I expect a higher level of decorum from those in your employ. It is unbefitting and more importantly it wastes time while we are sorely lacking such a resource."

  "Of course, Master Silas," Morag nodded minutely. "You are dismissed, Agent Blackadder. Reconvene at moveout."

  "Ah, yessir," Blackadder saluted. He shot me a curious look, then disappeared into the crowd. I watched him go, idly examining our people as I did so. A good chunk of them weren't formal guards, but rather brave civilians recruited to protect their home during a time of crisis.

  I wasn't blind to the point Blackadder brought up. Rescuing anyone during an active battle was going to be stupidly hard. But thankfully, that wasn't going to be my job. I simply had to trust in Morag and Milo to handle that aspect of the battle. They were both competent enough. If they said they only needed a distraction. A distraction is what they would receive.

  "Perhaps, master Silas, you may use this opportunity to demonstrate to me your true capabilities?" Morag offered, the corner of his lip uplifted in humor.

  "Is that truly wise, Morag?" Milo asked, "You know of the Lady's decree."

  "Silas' cover is already blown. His reputation would be far better served by the renown of a successful battle. If spies are already going to be swarming Chikarun in the coming months, then we may as well drown their reports in absurdity."

  I pursed my lips as the pair continued speaking softly. This really wasn't my wheelhouse. All I really heard was encouragement to make as big of a splash as I could. It was just a bonus that showcasing my power during the campaign was also beneficial to Morag in the future. Which was fine by me. Like I'd decided earlier. I was done hiding.

  I emptied my mind of all irrelevant details as the final details were sorted out. Civilians poured out of the underground bunker as the troops assembled.

  To my immense discomfort, Milo urged me to wave at the crowd. They seemed to like that; apparently the fact the supposed heir of the house was heading out was comforting. Thankfully, Mom stayed at my side during the entire uncomfortable event. Her presence, a warm bulwark to my back.

  Then before I knew it, we marched into the abandoned city.

  Walking through Chikarun was an odd experience. With the roads abandoned, the streets were quiet. And yet, nothing was overtly wrong. No bodies littered the streets, nor were doors violently broken in on any of the homes. All in all, the bugs had been surprisingly gentle during their assault. Only occasionally did we come across evidence of the invaders in the form of a blood stain on cobbles, or abandoned personal possessions.

  Milo had organized us into some semblance of order. I had a commanding officer, Rikara as it so happened. There were other minutiae associated with the assault, but I didn't bother with it. Not that they weren't important. I simply had bigger things on my mind.

  Our group entered the cemetery with little fanfare. We spread out, beholding the foes arrayed before us. A wall of insectoid mandibles and claws greeted us. Shifting side to side with an almost hypnotic rhythm.

  Not all of the bugs behaved the same. Some—perhaps as much as half—possessed an eerie analytical calm. Watching us with what I could only guess was abject curiosity. The rest were jittery, nervous things that appeared to twitch at every movement of their queen.

  She rested in a heap near the back of the collective, practically buried under the bodies of her brood, as she heaved gasping breaths while a still-oozing gash across her abdomen bled. Arrayed before her were a set of eight young children. Bound and gagged by an off-white solidified phlegm that almost completely encased their bodies.

  How odd that an insect breathed.

  The idle thought flitted in and out of my mind like a moth dancing in the moonlight. It didn't matter, exactly the same as the near-blinding intensity of the queen's soul. No amount of magic power would save her.

  Not from me.

  "Shield wall!"

  Someone shouted out a command, and people moved. A double line formed in front of me, facing outward. A spell rippled out, some form of self-referential fractal that the others in the formation took up and powered. Within moments, a hazy triple layer shield of compressed force manifested in a bubble around our impromptu militia.

  A susurration rippled across the bugs. The air tasted like bile for a moment. Then, with the same inevitable silence of the coming of night, they charged.

  Rikara's grip on my shoulder tensed.

  "It's time," she said.

  I nodded, and allowed her to pick me to give me a better vantage. I ignored the unearthly crash as the first line impacted the shield wall, or the high pitched shrieking of battle magics tearing spell and flesh apart with equal impunity.

  I dedicated my entire focus inward, channeling five deceptively simple threads of energy from my core. I wove them together, cycling them in a spiral and progressively compressing the magic further.

  I held the working high above my head and moved slowly. Intentionally. Despite the size of my spell, so much compressed mana possessed a metaphysical weight. Ominous and almost painful to those sensitive to it. Though... were formicans sensitive to mana in that way?

  I probably would never know, as my spell ignited a second later.

  A massive fireball taller than a man bloomed above my head and every single bug attacking the struggling defenders turned toward me in unison.

  Mom gasped from her spot behind us while Rikara stiffened. Though a quick look at the latter revealed a frankly disturbing expression of glee on my normally taciturn guard's face. I blinked, dismissing the sight, before returning my attention to my fireball.

  It swirled like a sun above us, bathing us in heat, as it struggled to escape the confines of my will. At its core, it was just a basic fireball, and as such was unstable. Glowing plumes of fire as thick as my arm spat out from its core, only to get sucked back in by my iron will.

  I launched the projectile.

  I would like to say it shot forward at the speed of a bullet, but again. That wasn't the goal. Instead, I controlled the giant globe of flame with brute force. I floated the orb forward at a walking pace before dropping it down to engulf the leading bugs.

  Black smoke and the nauseating odor of burning meat immediately filled the battlefield.

  The attack seemed super effective despite how silent our aggressors were. Almost immediately, the unnatural coordination the bugs had displayed up until now dwindled. Between one moment and the next, as the black smoke obscured the skies and made my eyes sting, the bugs went from intelligent tacticians to simply violent bugs.

  Our forces surged forward, additional spells and chopping swords arced out. Taking a bloody toll on the bugs in their moment of disorganization. More shouts rang out, and I spotted the special squad of Morag's chosen vanish under a veil of twisted mana and sprint around to flank the bugs.

  A spear of mana shot out and impaled my fireball. The swirling energies wobbled, threatening to destabilize as I traced the harpoon of mana to the downed queen.

  My braid vibrated as I clamped down on my spell like a vise. Absolutely refusing to allow it to destabilize. The action didn't cause any pain. In fact. I felt alive.

  Grinning. I pushed.

  The queen's spellbreaker shattered like overstressed glass. She recoiled, antennae twitching as, in my excitement, I squeezed down on my sphere of fire a little too hard.

  It shrank ten fold. Morphing in an instant from a man sized sun, to a fist-sized marble of blindingly bright blue-white plasma. Men and beast recoiled as one from the agonizingly bright point-source. Even I flinched slightly as the spell rebounded, causing my braid to twinge slightly from the force I was putting through it.

  Oops.

  I instantly analyzed my mistake and realized I would never be able to repair my distraction. The stabilization matrices had entirely collapsed which was putting undue strain on my will. The whole thing was a bomb seconds from exploding.

  Well...

  Didn't I have a perfect target for this?

  With a grunt, I manifested a few other threads, creating in an instant a rudimentary force bolt. I attached the tiny star to the very same spell that my father used to hunt as a payload. Then before, my will failed catastrophically, I pointed the force bolt at the queen, and unleashed.

  What launched across the space was nothing like the clumsy bumblings I'd created five years ago on the floor of my parent's bedroom. My force bolt screamed as it rocketed over the battlefield.

  The queen immediately summoned a pane of crude force along its path. At the same time, formican drones jumped into the path of the projectile, literally climbing over each other to block the attack with their bodies.

  It did them little good. The superheated sphere of mana had acquired a life of its own. It punched through their bodies and the queen's magic with equal ease.

  Then in a stroke of cruelty, the queen lunged forward and grabbed a small yawm kid and held it up in front of her.

  Jerry's scared eyes met mine and I felt my stomach drop. I didn't have time for any form of rational thought. Only instinct moved fast enough. And my instinct was to transform the containment sphere around the plasma into a pane of force akin to the Queens. Then I pulled with all my strength to prevent it from impacting the young kid.

  Unlike the queen's spell, mine held. I felt as if my soul was leaving my body with how hard I strained. The edges of my vision darkened and I distantly noticed the air twist and warp around me as if I stood within a heat haze.

  The ball of plasma impacted the backside of my distant shield, spreading out and immolating every single honor guard protecting the queen in an eyebrow melting inferno. The flame travelled backward, washing over the rest of the formican drones and our defenses with far less lethality.

  Then the magical fire dissipated, revealing a blackened battleground that seemed to swim bob as raging currents of my soul violently tried to rip me a new one.

  To my immense relief, the hostages were unharmed. Jerry was safe.

  Though he was still clutched in the injured queen's mandibles. Which, in all honesty, wasn't a very good definition of safe, all things considered. But then a new detail revealed itself to me.

  The other hostages were gone. Or rather. They were all safely sequestered two-dozen feet to my right where a dour group of black cloaked individuals were overseeing a group of healers tending to the captives. How—when?

  I'd been staring at the captives the entire time!

  Unfortunately, that seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back, and the queen decided to cut her losses.

  By biting down on Jerry.

  "Noo!" I screamed, too far and with my will still reeling, I could do nothing but watch as—

  Black chains that glowed with light that made my neck itch enveloped Jerry in macabre armor. Blood spurted as chitin pierced skin, but I had no time to see the damage. A spider silhouette appeared on the queen's back, the smoke lending the figure an ominous cast. Even from a distance, I recognized Morag's gaunt and hunched form.

  He slammed a blade down into the queen's back, and more inscrutable black mana flashed.

  The queen died. She twitched. Then grew still as a corpse. Blood leaked out of various orifices on her body, as if every blood vessel in her body had suddenly acquired an unhealthy desire to vacation the world.

  Now, I'd seen plenty of death during my time in this world. Not due to over much time spent killing or other such nonsense. But rather, because my parents were farmers who ate primarily meat.

  Typically, the bright gleaming core of the person or animal dims over the course of minutes, then gently dissipates into the night. During more violent deaths—like during this invasion—the soul sometimes winked out, like a candle flame in a hurricane.

  None of that happened when the queen died.

  That massive, overly large, bloated soul that the formican queen carried around within its corpulent bulk grew. It pulsed outward. Once. Twice. Then imploded inward in some sick reenactment of the normally gentle affair.

  I flinched proactively, but instead of the huge explosion I'd kinda sorta expected. The queen's core vanished only to split a hundred ways to precisely half of the still living, strangely dim-souled formican drones.

  They reared up on their legs, standing taller as magic burned in suicidally high-flux self-empowerment rituals. A madness filled their black eyes. It burned within them. Literally cooking their insides as they all turned toward the killer of their progenitor.