Low over the shattered subterranean battlefield, the glowing runes of the Fireside Ascent carried them toward a dense cluster of wrecked assault drones. FDR eased the platform to a smooth halt beside the debris, and from between collapsed frames and scorched mechanical limbs, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Monroe emerged through the ash before climbing silently aboard.
"Did you guys manage to secure any loot off Azzemude?" Roy asked, leaning against the magical railing as he looked over the returning Presidroids.
"Unfortunately, no," Eisenhower answered. "The monster disintegrated into ash the exact second his internal resonance failed. We were unable to retrieve whatever items he might have dropped."
From the darkness above came a heavy impact that shuddered through the platform. Eryndra had dropped directly onto the deck, vents along her armor hissing as her boots settled against the magical surface, and FDR brought the Ascent back up to speed almost as soon as she landed, driving them toward the chaotic lightning storm raging in the distance.
"Here!" Eryndra said, smiling wide.
Once they reached the edge of the immediate blast radius, the platform slowed beneath a cavern sky already breaking into layers. High above, the Sixth Witch swept two fingers sideways and peeled a broad section of empty space apart, stretching the distance between Zehrina and the cavern wall until the gap became hundreds of feet wider than it had been a second before. Before Zehrina could exploit the opening, the witch closed her fist. The stolen distance collapsed all at once, driving a wall of compressed air toward the rotating Navi'N dust with enough force to buckle the stone below. Zehrina caught the pressure on the forward arc of her shield, rolled with it, and sent a crescent of iced lightning back through the wake. A lazy turn of the witch's wrist bent the bolt ninety degrees and sent it carving harmlessly into the cavern roof.
Without waiting for the falling stone, the Sixth Witch pressed both palms together and bowed her head in a brief, almost prayerful motion. A ring of pale symbols ignited around her, each one rotating at a different speed, and from their crossing points came narrow lances of white heat that struck from staggered angles instead of a single front. Zehrina widened the sphere of black dust, caught three, let two pass through deliberate gaps, then snapped those openings shut before the beams could correct. The witch was already chanting by then. Each syllable thickened the air around Zehrina until her next movement dragged against invisible resistance, while a second spell gathered beneath her in the shape of a dark red circle. Zehrina dropped half the dust downward, ripped the circle apart before it could finish, and barely recovered in time to stop a descending column of blue fire that turned the broken fragments into glass.
Then the Sixth Witch abandoned words entirely. One hand traced a hooked pattern through the air while the other opened toward the cavern floor, and the next attack arrived as three different spells layered into the same instant. Gravity lurched sideways. A cluster of black needles erupted from the warped direction of "down." Behind them, a translucent sphere expanded around Zehrina and began shrinking the space inside it by inches. She twisted the Navi'N dust into a narrow spinning shell, let the false gravity drag the needles past her shoulder, and drove a burst of iced lightning into the contracting sphere until its surface fractured into luminous seams. The sphere burst and the backlash threw Zehrina dozens of feet through the air. Already waiting above on her swirling pillar of corrupted mana, the Sixth Witch's hands lifted for the next sequence before the last spell finished dying.
Around Zehrina, the air began to darken and condense into a tightening storm ring, ribbons of cloud spiraling into existence from bare space until they formed a rotating wall around her shield. Violet lightning crawled through the vapor without striking, feeding points of light that swelled into distinct spell cores and began orbiting at different heights. One condensed into a spear of white fire, another into a jagged mass of blackened ice, a third into a pulsing sphere of compressed wind, while smaller formations continued to gather between them. As the entire ring closed inward, the first spells broke from orbit and hammered against the Navi'N dust in staggered succession, each impact arriving from a different angle while the remaining cores kept circling, waiting for their turn.
"Your defense is truly incredible," the Sixth Witch proclaimed, her voice carrying through the unnatural storm. "It is a barrier unlike any I have ever encountered. Furthermore, your inner power is too concentrated for me to simply dissipate you into smoke. It seems I must employ a different approach."
Suspended inside the rapid spherical rotation of her Navi'N dust, Zehrina keyed her earpiece while another series of spells broke against the shield. "Okay, this is getting a little bit hard to manage up here. Roy, I might need to use the Squall."
"I do not have the reserves to sustain that form right now," Roy answered immediately, searching for another option until a thought finally caught. "Hold on. If this is the Sixth Witch, we happen to harbor another...witch... who might actually be able to help us."
"I do not know if relying on 'her' is going to work out so well," Zehrina replied as a heavy bolt of lightning spread harmlessly across the black dust surrounding her. "She can barely see straight on a good day. I am fairly certain that interrupting her cartoons to ask for tactical advice will not make her very happy."
"Well, who knows," Roy muttered, gesturing toward the edge of the platform. "Let us find out."
At the very edge of the Fireside Ascent, Roy positioned himself between the crew and the space in front of him, then tore open a portal directly into the Nightshatter's brig.
"Andri, Rava, Orin, looking over here will be considered treason. So keep your eyes on the battle," Roy ordered, his voice as stern as he could make it.
Beyond the dimensional tear stretched a long metallic corridor lined with reinforced cells. Roy scanned the hallway once, then stopped in disbelief at the sight of Kaelor seated peacefully on the floor of his cell with a handful of brightly colored plastic action figures spread around him. Father Skeleton sat across from him, equally absorbed in whatever tiny adventure they had invented.
A laugh nearly escaped Roy before he managed to choke it down. "Guys, where is 'Mama'?"
Still holding one of the figures, Father Skeleton glanced up from the floor, his brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt somehow making the scene even worse. "Mama? Oh, her. She is currently occupying the back area of the brig near the prisoner showers."
Roy collapsed the first tear and opened another portal directly into the rear shower area. In front of a reinforced mirror stood Skelly Mom, motionless except for the faint drift of her pink pigeon themed robe as she stared into her own glowing, hollow eyes. Without warning, her skull snapped upward and a deafening screech tore through the compartment hard enough to rattle the surrounding bulkheads, only to collapse a second later into manic, breathless laughter.
"Mama!" Roy hissed through the portal. "Mama, listen!"
No recognition touched her as she seized both edges of the mirror and stared frantically into her own reflection. "Roy? No! No, what have I done to my sweet boy!? Have I accidentally integrated him into my own consciousness? Why can I hear his voice inside my head?" Another scream ripped out of her before Roy could answer.
"I am standing right behind you, you freaking idiot!" Roy yelled through the dimensional tear.
Whirling toward him, Skelly Mom sent her robe flaring around her body until her glowing eyes found the portal. The panic disappeared at once beneath a huge maternal grin. "Roy! My precious boy! I have watched absolutely all of the incredible cartoons you have recommended to me. Do you have any new ones?"
"Can we please save the television recommendations for a bit later?" Roy pleaded. "I actually need your help with something."
At once, Skelly Mom floated closer to the portal, one sleeve of her pink pigeon-themed robe hanging crookedly from her arm. "I also have a wonderful, brilliant idea for a movie. I desperately wish for you to make this movie come true. You possess such incredible powers, yes?"
"Listen to me and pay attention, please," Roy commanded, dropping his voice into a sharper register. "We are fighting someone right now, and she actively calls herself the Sixth Witch."
At the mention of the title, every trace of manic excitement disappeared. The loose drift of Skelly Mom's robe settled against her body, her skull lowered by a fraction, and even the restless light burning inside her hollow eyes seemed to narrow into something colder. When she spoke again, the shrill instability had vanished from her voice.
"Excuse me," Skelly Mom said slowly. "Who did you say you are fighting?"
"Look for yourself," Roy instructed, shifting aside enough to give her a clear view through the portal. "She is the one floating above the battlefield."
Through the dimensional tear, Skelly Mom studied the storm in silence. Her gaze followed the tightening ring around Zehrina, then climbed past the orbiting spell cores to the woman standing above them on a pillar of corrupted mana. For several seconds she said nothing, watching the Sixth Witch's hands, the angle of her shoulders, and the sequence of magical formations gathering around her target.
Recognition arrived slowly enough to make it worse. "What truly awful spellwork... I believe I have seen that girl before," Skelly Mom murmured. "She was very young. One of the little strays running through a rising nation my husband and I put down several thousand years ago." Her head tilted farther as she searched the old memory. "If that is truly the same child, then I have already seen her. Which means I should still possess the right to call her to me."
"I would love to... educate her on what real magic is," she continued, the last words descending into a quiet satisfaction that made Roy instinctively lean farther from the portal. "This should only take a moment."
"If you can bring her to the brig and subdue her, that solves a lot of problems," Roy said, lifting both hands as Skelly Mom's attention sharpened on the distant witch. "Just try not to wreck half the Nightshatter trying to prove you can. If it does not work, we have other options."
Without answering him, Skelly Mom fixed her hollow eyes on the distant witch and invoked the old soul mark. Nothing happened. The Sixth Witch remained above the battlefield, still circling Zehrina with her storm of unfinished spells, while Skelly Mom stood perfectly motionless in the shower compartment with one hand slowly tightening against the front of her pigeon-covered robe.
For several seconds, Skelly Mom remained fixed on the distant witch. Confusion gave way to offense as her fingers loosened from the robe, and this time she raised one hand toward the portal with deliberate care, narrowing her attention until the light inside her hollow eyes contracted to two hard points.
Across the brig, the overhead lights dimmed beneath the pressure gathering around her soul. A second invocation followed, stripped of the casual assumption of the first, and the invisible claim she had laid upon the Sixth Witch thousands of years ago tightened with enough force to make the reinforced mirror behind her tremble in its frame. Still, nothing came. Far beyond the portal, the Sixth Witch continued floating above Zehrina as though no summons had been issued at all.
"She is not resisting me," Skelly Mom said, and somehow the certainty in her voice carried more anger than the screaming had. "The inscription remains. I can feel it exactly where I left it. Yet the soul surrounding that mark has been twisted so badly that my spell can no longer resolve what she is." Her gaze hardened on the distant figure. "Whatever sick little thing that girl became, it has malformed her beyond the person I once saw."
"So you cannot bring her to the brig?" Roy asked, keeping his voice careful.
"No." The answer came without embarrassment, only contempt. "But if she insists upon displaying this filth as witchcraft, I can help you crush her where she floats. I may even enjoy correcting her."
"That works too," Roy said. "Grab your comm piece and speak directly to Zehrina. Just keep off the open network. We have enough problems without everyone learning who is sitting in my brig."
Already turning away from the mirror, Skelly Mom conjured the small earpiece from wherever she kept it. "I know. You need not explain secrecy to me twice." Once the comm floated into place, her voice entered the active network with the cold precision of a teacher who had already decided her student would either improve or suffer. "Zehrina. Listen carefully. I will tell you what to do, and you will do it when I tell you."
Floating inside the rapid rotation of her Navi'N dust, Zehrina let a smirk creep across her face. "Ooh, what a tremendous honor. I feel so exceptionally fortunate to be addressed directly by the cartoon addict herself. Whatever do you need, Mama?"
"Silence," Skelly Mom snapped. "That whelp has wrapped herself in the title of Sixth Witch while performing magic that would shame a half-trained child. You are going to help me demonstrate why she had no right to carry it."
With another sequence of spell cores tightening around Zehrina, Skelly Mom's attention shifted back to the Sixth Witch's hands. "Understand this first. She possesses access to the First Tome, the inherited archive containing all ten thousand spells formally created by the First Witch, along with the successive editions and appended works of the Second, Third, and Fourth Witches. But, do remember that access is not mastery."
"So I-" Zehrina began before a short and sharp screech from Skelly Mom startled her into silence.
"Shush," Skelly Mom interrupted. "Watch her shoulders before the mana gathers. Watch the angle of her wrists before the structure forms. She announces every decision through her body because she has never learned how to conceal the transition between thought and spell. Pay attention, and I will tell you exactly where to break her work."
"What manner of anti-magic are you wielding?" The Sixth Witch let her unfinished spell dissolve and studied the robed elf standing across from her. "None of it exists in my archive. Who exactly are you?"
"Me?" Lynder asked brightly. "Just a simple, humble guildmaster of the Umbral Consortium. I'm here to learn from such an incredible witch and hopefully study your devastating abilities."
Roy keyed his comm from the Fireside Ascent below. "Alright, Mama. He's up. Go ahead and teach him how to fight her."
"Let us desperately hope this one is capable of following basic instructions better than a rat in a rainstorm," Skelly Mom replied.
"I..." Zehrina began somewhere lower in the cavern, only to let the thought die unfinished.
Lynder watched the Sixth Witch weave her fingers together. A faint yellow geometry appeared between her palms, and confidence got the better of him before Skelly Mom could speak. He thrust one hand forward and began assembling a heavy light-based ward meant to catch the incoming structure head-on.
"No, you arrogant fool!" Skelly Mom screamed into his ear. "Drop it! That is not an attack spell, and your amateur ward is about to give her exactly what she needs!"
Across the face of Lynder's newly completed octagonal barrier, the Sixth Witch's yellow geometry flattened into a thin multicolored sheet. Contact transformed both spells at once. Every line in the ward brightened beyond its intended limit, folded inward, and hurled the trapped energy back through the gaps between Lynder's own defensive layers. Corrupted sparks tore across his robes while the remainder burst behind him in a fan of searing light.
A second exchange followed before he had fully recovered. The Sixth Witch drew one thumb across her opposite palm, and Lynder answered with three rotating rings of False Void meant to strip the next spell apart as it formed. Skelly Mom shouted for him to sever the upper ring and invert the lowest instead. He hesitated just long enough for a pale thread to pass harmlessly through the anti-magic, touch the central ring, and reproduce itself along every curve of the formation. The entire defense became a cage of white filament around him.
"May Loe bless my poor ears," Lynder groaned as he collapsed the infected rings and forced up a shield of True Void before the cage could close. "I am the foremost living mage on this entire planet, yet within the span of several seconds you and the Sixth Witch have managed to make that title feel deeply discouraging."
"Stop trying to prove that you recognize the spell before I finish speaking," Skelly Mom snapped. "She is lifting her right elbow. That means the visible formation is bait. Ignore it and strike three feet above her left shoulder."
Above the Sixth Witch, a loose crown of blue sigils had already begun rotating into place. Lynder obeyed this time and sent a narrow blade of False Void through the empty air beside them. Something hidden screamed into visibility at the point of impact, revealing a second spell nested outside the crown, and the entire formation collapsed before the decoy could finish drawing his attention.
Lynder smiled despite himself. "Oh, that was clever."
Before his satisfaction could settle, the Sixth Witch dragged one heel backward across her pillar and opened both hands toward him. Skelly Mom's voice struck his ear at once. "Do not counter the flame. Let the first layer pass through your outer defense, then invert the current behind it."
"What first layer?" Lynder asked, already raising his guard as a broad wave of crimson fire rolled toward him.
"The one you have just failed to notice, you overpraised museum exhibit!"
What followed looked harmless for less than a second. A transparent film reached Lynder ahead of the fire and passed through the edge of his False Void without resistance, only to cling to the magic behind him. When the crimson wave struck, every scrap of heat bent around his defense and raced toward the film instead, wrapping him from the rear in a tightening sphere of fire that forced him to tear open a passage with True Void.
By the third exchange, even Lynder's grin had faded. The Sixth Witch snapped two fingers against her palm, and he waited rather than answering on instinct. "Now?" he asked.
"Now," Skelly Mom replied. "Break the lowest anchor, rotate your upper defense clockwise, and leave the center open."
Lynder followed each instruction in order. A descending lattice of black spears struck the gap he had deliberately left, curved through the rotating defense, and buried themselves harmlessly into one another as the broken anchor dragged the entire spell off balance. For several quiet seconds afterward, he hovered beneath the storm without attempting anything of his own.
"You are the absolute master," Lynder said at last, lowering his head toward the concealed voice in his comm. "And I am merely a first-time learner. Please continue."
For a moment after Lynder's admission, the Sixth Witch made no attempt to attack. Her pillar of corrupted mana drifted backward several dozen feet, carrying her beyond the immediate reach of his False Void while she watched him through narrowed eyes. One hand rose toward her mouth, and the other disappeared into the folds of her robe as she considered the elf who had dismantled so much of her arsenal.
A delighted laugh crackled through Lynder's earpiece. "Look at her. She requires a private little moment to think of something new. What a whelp. Still suckling from the teat of the First Witch after all these years. What a shame."
"That sounds somewhat personal," Lynder replied. "Do you have history with this woman?"
"History with her?" Skelly Mom laughed, clearly playing dumb. "She is thousands of years old. What business would such a hag be of mine? I simply find it funny. I admired the First Witch greatly, and it is embarrassing to see her inheritance carried by someone who must rummage through it whenever her first answer fails."
Across the battlefield, the Sixth Witch lowered her hand from her mouth. Her attention moved from the spirals inside Lynder's eyes to the True Void beneath his feet, then lingered on the remnants of several spells he had already dismantled.
"Oh, she has finally remembered something useful," Skelly Mom said. "Anbokal."
Lynder's amusement disappeared. "You're speaking words I haven't heard in more than eight hundred years. Please pronounce them slowly."
"An-bo-kal," Skelly Mom repeated with exaggerated patience. "A branch designed specifically to destroy the undead mage armies of the Immortal Family. Most of those mages carried one spell, perhaps two if their corpses had been preserved particularly well. Anbokal structures several spells through one another so that breaking the first merely exposes the second, and breaking the second releases the third. Some formations contain four."
Already the Sixth Witch's posture had begun to change. Her arms relaxed at her sides, and tiny points of mismatched color appeared around the fingers of her right hand.
"She hasn't cast anything yet," Lynder observed.
"She will," Skelly Mom replied. "And unless you intend to hide behind your tricksy little True Void until she exhausts herself, you'll need Zanandrian magic to answer it. Do you know the counter to her counter or not?"
"Zanandrian..." Lynder repeated, searching the word. "It has been a very long time. That branch was reorganized centuries ago, and most of its older forms were absorbed into a newer counter-method. We were still taught the original names, though."
Silence held on the comm for barely a second. "You have new names for the spells?"
"Well... yes."
"What was wrong with the old names?"
Lynder glanced toward Roy on the distant Fireside Ascent as though help might somehow arrive from that direction. "They were strongly associated with the Immortal Family. Scholars considered continued use of the terminology inappropriate, given that the spells were supposedly created by unholy monsters."
"And not one of you stopped to consider how the Immortal Family might feel about you changing their names?"
"Hey, listen, I didn't do it," Lynder said quickly. "Take that up with the Academy of Sa'il. They're the ones who standardized the new classifications."
"The Academy of Sa'il?" Skelly Mom's voice dropped. "That little runt of the Empress's?"
"Excuse me? Who?"
"Ah."
From the Fireside Ascent came Roy's immediate warning. "Calm down."
Several seconds passed before Skelly Mom spoke again. "Long ago, or so one story claims, and you needn't take my word for any of this, the Noonshade Empress once took pity upon a kingdom of men. Among them she found a lovely, innocent young boy whom she simply could not bear to kill. For whatever reason, she taught him."
She paused for a long moment, but, despite the awkwardness, Lynder said nothing.
"Tremendously talented boy," Skelly Mom continued. "After only ten years, he likely exceeded you."
Lynder's head lowered by several inches.
"Of course, the little creature repeatedly tried to murder his teacher. The Noonshade Empress eventually granted him one hundred attempts. She promised that upon his hundredth failure, he would be banished from her lands, and if she ever saw him again, he would die. Ten years later, he failed for the hundredth time and was exiled accordingly."
The amusement in Skelly Mom's voice began thinning into something colder. "Shortly afterward, the Noonshade Empress and the rest of the Immortal Family fell, as I am sure even you know. It would seem that boy later founded a school of his own and dared rename the spells she had so kindly taught him."
"Boy, it's pretty cold in this dungeon, huh?" Roy remarked nervously.
Another brief silence followed before Skelly Mom cleared her throat. "Regardless. Zanandrian magic was created by the Mourning Tyrant and his 'crazy wife' as an answer to Anbokal. Three separate branches, cast simultaneously and bound into a single counter-sequence. You will need the old forms because I refuse to learn whatever ridiculous replacements your academies invented."
A violent bloom of color erupted around the Sixth Witch before Lynder could respond. Crimson fire spread across the surface of a translucent sphere, violet pressure rolled beneath it in crossing bands, and something dark green moved below both layers like roots beneath glass. Each structure shifted under the others as the entire formation accelerated toward him.
"As predicted," Skelly Mom said. "Little guildmaster, use Eshvai, Qeluun, and Mairi-Su. Bound Zanandrian release."
"Wait, Eshvai is..." Lynder raised both hands. "Yes, I remember."
Three formations ignited around him, but the first had barely taken shape before Skelly Mom shrieked into his ear. "No! You fool, that is Aishvai! Eshvai turns inward! Do I have to teach you the difference between a folding vowel and a..."
"QEZHUN! LEFT HAND! NOW!" Skelly Mom yelled as the multicolored sphere split open.
Recognition reached Lynder a breath before the attack did. A crooked lattice of silver lines burst from his left palm and struck the exposed crimson layer, peeling it sideways while his unfinished counters caught the remaining structures. Fire vanished first, pressure collapsed after it, and the green roots tore themselves apart against a final pulse of False Void less than ten feet from his body.
No pause followed. The Sixth Witch swept one arm upward and produced a rotating field of pale discs, each carrying a different pattern across its face.
"Osshenai!" Skelly Mom barked.
Lynder stared at the incoming formation. "Osshenai... Osshenai... oh! That one."
A dense blue helix left his hand and passed through the first disc an instant before it could turn. The helix divided inside the formation, struck the next two layers from opposing directions, and forced all three into one another until the spell collapsed in a burst of harmless white sparks.
"Veyu-Kesh!"
"That's the..."
"At once!"
Lynder snapped both palms together and released a flat black ring just as a column of red crystal erupted beneath him. The ring caught the rising structure, inverted its growth, and drove the entire formation back into the cavern floor, where it detonated beneath several feet of stone.
By then the Sixth Witch had already begun her next cast. Brown haze poured from four openings around her pillar and spread across the battlefield, thickening with every second until the entire region vanished behind a rapidly turning wall of grit and shattered rock.
"Thessai-Qun!" Skelly Mom ordered.
Lynder's expression went blank. "Thessai... wait, is that the old name for..."
"THESSAI-QUN!"
The answer came too late. A raging subterranean sandstorm swallowed him from every direction, its abrasive current moving fast enough to strip stone from the surrounding cavern walls. Unable to recover the archaic counter in time, Lynder dragged False Void over his body and disappeared into the grinding brown darkness.