Former Captain in the Dorchester Army Knight Harold Angleton, known as Knight Angleton to his subordinates, Harold to his friends, and Harry to his lord physically recoiled from the mental pain he felt when he bounced off the gate. He, along with many other Wackos with appropriate abilities, had hit the hells be damned thing at a run, fully expecting to obliterate it. The amount of force they’d applied should have been more than enough to tear it off its hinges.

  And yet, the gate still stood implacably before them.

  Blinking away the blinding headache from his abilities backlash, he glanced around to see the Wackos who’d joined him weren’t fairing much better. Abilities were not spells, and they were not techniques. They were each an expression of a person’s soul. It was a material representation of their pillar. Rather than relying exclusively on essence, abilities were instead fueled by a person’s will. That they worked that way was scientific proof that forging one’s will could reduce the cost of spells. There was still a cost in center, but not nearly as much as it would be if the same effect were caused by magic.

  The drawback to this was of course that when they failed, the backlash was much worse.

  Doing his best to not dwell on how many troops were suddenly out of the fight, he forced his mind to set aside the pain for a moment so that he could think.

  Luckily, he had maintained his connection to the command channel. He could hear Battle Leader Averett shouting out orders to spread out under the wall. She had instantly adapted to his failure and taken control of the situation. She was proving to be a most impressive leader.

  Sheathing his sword, he placed his hand on the gate. Closing his eyes, he sent his will into the stone, trying to understand what had happened.

  He could feel the gate offering resistance. It had been enchanted. It had been specifically enchanted against humans. The kobalds had sacrificed the stone's ability to stop almost anything else BUT humans. A simple wild boar would probably be able to knock it down. As long as that boar wasn’t doing it with the intention of allowing humans through behind it.

  Opening his eyes in shock, he unconsciously stepped back from the gate and stared at it in amazement. He’d never seen such a powerful enchantment before. Conceptual enchantments of this level weren’t able to hold together in such an essence-starved region as Dorchester. Within less than a week, the stone would return to simply being stone.

  But they didn’t have a week. They didn’t have time to wait for nature to take its course, they needed through the gate NOW.

  ‘But how?’ he wondered.

  Knight Angleton ignored the sounds of spells exploding from above him, along with the grumbling sounds of Wackos impotently smashing at the gate with their shields. Yet, he could feel the pressure mounting. If they didn’t get through this gate, their mission was over.

  At 71 years old, and at an impressive level 53, he’d long since learned how to deal with obstacles in his path. Whether it was politically motivated superiors interfering, or training plateaus that annoyingly halted his progress, he knew that he had to find a way to accept the situation and adapt.

  ‘If we can’t go through, perhaps we could go over?’ he thought to himself as he looked up through the hazy shield being maintained over his head.

  Thinking quickly, he began mentally preparing the orders he’d need to give out. First, he’d have to bring together whatever mages were capable of manipulating the earth. The others would just have to persevere and figure out a way to maintain the shield on their own. Then -

  “Lord Walker has opened a way through! The first teams inside get up on that wall and eliminate those casters! Melee fighters to the front!” former Sergeant Richardson shouted over the command channel.

  Opening his eyes wide in surprise, he whipped his head to the right as he watched the entire formation begin funneling through a confusing hole in the wall that hadn’t existed up until just now.

  ‘How in all the planes above and below did he manage that?’ he wondered.

  —--

  As he was still near the hole he’d opened in the wall, Nero had rejoined the formation quickly. It would still be a few more minutes before the rest of the Wackos arrived. In the meantime, the only productive thing for him to do was to test the range of his spells. No one could fault him for that, right?

  Putting action to his thoughts, he ignored the sight of the Wackos patting each other on the back and congratulating each other on their survival while raising himself back up on a small four-foot-tall pillar.

  His spell-casting process continued to refine as he reached out to collect and condense essence and soul stuff before launching a spell shell arbitrarily off into the distance. His mental perception field struggled to keep up with it as it flew threw the air into the dense collection of kobald buildings. He hadn’t taken the time to carefully pick a target, more interested in comparing what he saw with what he’d read about how spell constructs were affected by distance from their caster.

  Just as the books had warned, he could see the shell already breaking down. While at a distance of a football field, the shell still had plenty of cohesion as it was still inside his observation range, the moment he lost sight of it with his senses and relied on tracking it with his eyes, he saw it come apart. Far in the distance above the buildings, he saw its glow disappear into the ether without even the slightest hint of an explosion… the essence he’d spent on it utterly wasted.

  ‘Huh,’ he thought to himself as he stroked his chin in thought.

  He could reasonably assume that if he were to imbue a LOT of soul stuff into it, the shell would likely hold together. After all, he’d done it before when he’d been assaulting the kobald camp up on the surface of the mountain. But, at that time, he’d had so much soul stuff to work with he hadn’t been paying too much attention to how much he’d been using.

  ‘This is going to take some experimentation,’ he thought to himself before once again lamenting the fact that Nick hadn’t come along.

  Beginning his first test fire, he carefully began imbuing soul stuff into a shell. However, before he could materialize and fire it, he was interrupted by the gruff voice of Harry shouting up at him.

  “Lord Walker, Did whatever you do to get through the wall provide you with any intelligence that we need to address before we push forward?” he asked tersely.

  Blinking in confusion at the question, Nero replied, “Um…. No?”

  Offering Nero a quick nod in thanks, Harry turned and shouted, “Everyone! We’re moving out at a run. Without access to the Battle Hub, we’re cut off from the updated intelligence from the Tower of Magic’s scrying mages. So, we’ll just have to deal with whatever the enemy has come up with. Keep in formation. Stay under the shields. Remember, our goal is to stop the ritual. We can kill the enemy to a kobald AFTER we’ve accomplished our mission.”

  Stepping up alongside him, Cathleen added in a voice just as professionally uncompromising as his own, “As you’ve seen, many of these kobalds are not the stupid grunts you’re used to facing. Pay attention to your footing and don’t get drawn out in fights that will leave you out of position. STAY IN FORMATION. Melee fighters will maintain the perimeter with their shields while the mages keep us safe from above with their own.”

  Nodding in agreement with her, Harry picked his speech back up. “The gate to the throne room should still be enchanted to allow us through with the command override signature we’ve been given. The mages back in command agreed that the kobalds haven’t been able to break the enchantment, so they’ve been ignoring it. It’s tied to the land of Dorchester and has existed since the time of its founding. They couldn’t hope to breach it, and therefore won’t expect it when we do. The kobalds are most likely expecting us to use one of the smaller side entrances that they assume are the only way into the throne room. The moment those gates open, they’ll throw everything they have at us.”

  Cathleen’s voice got even colder, as her tone felt like it was chilling the very ether. “After we’re in, prioritize killing off the ritual casters. We’ll take up position over the former ritual center and then begin our slaughter in earnest. Remember… Deal with the ritual first, then kill them all.”

  Without another word, she and Harry turned and began walking away toward the front of the formation, the Wackos in the way parting around them.

  Nero winced as the combined sound of raucous cheering erupted from all around him. While Harry and Cathleen had been shouting out their orders, he’d dismissed his pillar spell and returned to the ground. He was once again amongst the mass of soldiers and no longer standing out.

  Nero played along as he held up his fist and cheered along with them. He’d found it was more than a little impressive to hear Harry and Cathleen shouting loud enough for everyone to hear them, but it was even more impressive to hear how impressively LOUD hundreds of shoulders braying for blood could sound when they all did it in tandem.

  The ether was filled with their presence, coming together in a coordinated sense of oppression that practically demanded his essence field to mingle along with theirs. It took everything Nero had to not let his sense of identity fall away and just give in and join them.

  He wasn’t sure how, but he succeeded. For the time being, his mind remained his own.

  Which worked out, because he absolutely didn’t want to get stuck in the middle of the formation again. He planned on causing some chaos, and he could only do that if he managed to stay near the edges.

  Ducking under the shoulders of the Wackos around him, he slipped through the crowd toward the forward edge on the right. Being there should allow him to do some damage while leaving some destruction burning behind him.

  The tricky thing would be to stay out of sight, as his smaller presence wasn’t all that inconspicuous. But, he had just the trick to overcome that particularly annoying little obstacle.

  With a flex of will, he dimmed his presence in the ether, allowing himself to blend into the background. He couldn’t help but try and see if he could apply soul stuff to the process, hopefully making it easier.

  As he dipped and ducked around the Wackos who remained unaware of his presence, he tried over and over again to find a way to infuse soul stuff into the technique. He’d managed to imbue plenty of it into his mage armor, and at this point, it was practically maintaining itself. However, the hiding technique he’d learned from watching Cathleen, Rose, and the Evaluators didn’t seem to have anything to latch onto. It wasn’t a spell, so there was nothing to reinforce. It was a product of his mind, and therefore not something that could be fueled by potential.

  It didn’t even stress his center. Well not directly at least.

  ‘Well, I could do that I guess,’ he thought to himself as he checked his center reserves. 79%.

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  Reaching out with his field, he collected some free-floating soul stuff. He ignored the remnant minds that were basically emotional leftovers and fed them into his center. Like always, it took a little effort, but he managed to overwrite their potential with his own. Smiling widely, he felt his center being reinforced. What was once the potential of the kobalds was now simply HIM.

  Nero still found the entire concept of a person’s ‘center’ odd. He understood that it was what made him ‘real’, and was the core from which his material presence stemmed, but the fact that he could conceivably argue that people were nothing more than enchantments still weirded him out.

  ‘Whatever. It’ll just make the ‘Express Yourself’ T-shirts I eventually sell all the more relevant,’ he said to himself.

  Before long, he found himself right behind the front lines, watching them get ready to go. Everyone was moving around quickly, re-tightening their armor and pumping themselves up for the coming run to the throne room. There was a palpable sense of excitement floating around, and Nero did his best to not allow himself to get caught up in it.

  He knew he needed to remain focused and separate from the larger essence field to successfully cast anything. Without his isolated essence reserves, their combined essence field would have a stranglehold on the essence flows. Regardless of how mentally strong he was, he couldn’t hope to overcome the combined metaphysical might of the entire group.

  “MOVE OUT!” Harry’s voice boomed across the formation.

  Like a dog being let off a leash, everyone around him began running. The downside of being hidden and not part of their essence field became immediately apparent. It felt to Nero like being in the middle of a stampede. His lizard brain or whatever it was called began freaking out. He was absolutely positive that he’d be run over.

  Only a few feet away from the edge of the formation, Nero ducked and rolled under a shield out into the open. Luckily, he managed to keep hold of his hiding technique and nobody noticed him effectively ‘ejecting’ himself out of the formation.

  Since the formation was basically a big circle, his safety was in no way guaranteed as the rounded edge immediately began bearing down on him.

  With what he’d later refer to as a manly grunt, and in no way a ‘squeak’, he rolled to his feet and began running at an angle perpendicular to them. No other thought was on his mind other than that he needed to get the hell out of the way.

  Salvation was quickly found by ducking into the ruins of one of the kobald buildings that the formation parted its way around as it passed.

  Coming to his feet and dusting off his armor, Nero glared at the passing Wackos with annoyance as he muttered under his breath sarcastically, “Well, that worked out well.”

  Realizing that he couldn’t stay there or he’d end up getting left behind, Nero tried mentally going through his options. Unfortunately, he couldn’t come up with any. Until the last of the formation passed, he was stuck there. Unless he wanted to drop his hiding technique and rejoin the formation, he would get run over the moment he stuck his head out.

  Grumbling in annoyance, he folded his arms and watched as more and more Wackos ran by. Each one’s face was twisted in a hate-filled grimace, seemingly eager to begin cutting down their enemies for the glory of … well, him probably.

  ‘Is it me, or is my life getting weirder? Or has it always been weird, and I just hadn’t noticed? Is it my improving mind stats allowing me to recognize it, or have I just been ignoring it as I did with the flat-earther movement?’ he wondered to himself, recalling how it had blown his mind to find out that people still believed that when he was in his mid-twenties.

  The last of the Wackos finally passed by while he was stuck in his head pondering life’s little mysteries.

  Seeing as he could now move out of the rubble without getting run over, Nero rechecked his mage armor and his collected essence. He knew the moment he began throwing around spells, he’d be noticed, but for now, he was practically invisible.

  Running off at an angle near the back of the formation, he struggled to keep up with them. They were moving at quite the clip, and in no time at all had begun overrunning the kobalds hastily set up defenses. Like a wave of ants, they ripped through the kobalds. Nothing the kobalds did had a chance of stopping them.

  Around the edges of the formation, the melee fighters led with their shields, occasionally chopping down kobalds as they ran by. From the angle Nero was at, he could see the massive shield the mages had put up hovering over them. It was a really impressive defensive formation that allowed them to move forward without having to take any casualties.

  Throughout the kobald buildings that they either obliterated as they ran over them, the groups of kobalds not directly overtaken threw out pot shots as the formation ran by. Nero flittered through the kobald groups like a wraith, watching kobalds looking around in confusion, probably having sensed something as he passed by.

  He wanted to wait until the Wacko’s formation was deeper into the enemy area before he let loose.

  As the formation got closer and closer to the larger kobald buildings, Nero knew the formation would have to split into smaller pieces or do something clever to get through them.

  That’s when he’d strike.

  Awkwardly climbing up onto one of the kobald buildings, Nero watched as the formation got further and further away. More and more kobalds took the roofs along with him as they tried to add their arrows and spells to the numerous ones already raining down on them.

  From where he was, Nero thought the sight of the formation enduring under all that enemy fire was awesome. Although, it was kind of weird to be standing near the edge of a building while a group of kobald casters worked together to fire combined spells into the distance at his friends.

  Brought out of his contemplations by the sight of the formation slowing down, Nero looked over to see how they’d deal with the larger kobald buildings stopping them from just running them over. Surprisingly, they handled it well.

  The entire formation smoothly adjusted itself into a more streamlined configuration. The sides came together while the back slowed down enough to accommodate the Wackos moving toward the center. Instead of a large circle, it quickly became a spear. With no trouble at all, the formation continued between the kobald buildings, decreasing the amount of spellfire coming down on them from behind by hiding between the buildings.

  That wasn’t to say that they were safe, as the buildings themselves had tons of kobalds shooting down at them from all the little windows they’d carved out of their rounded stone structures.

  Dusting his hands off as if he were preparing to get to work, Nero muttered, “OK. Time to earn that cheddar.”

  Turning his attention to the group of ten kobalds who’d arranged themselves in the center of the roof he was on, Nero grinned while beginning to form his acid ball spell. The moment he did, one of the kobalds near the rear glanced over at him reflexively. Now that he was actively becoming a threat, his presence in the ether was much harder to hide.

  With a screech, it pointed at him causing the others to turn away from their casting and focus on him.

  Nero didn’t wait for them to comprehend how he’d gotten there and instead began firing softball-sized globs of death at them. Just to be sure, he allocated two for each of them. Considering they were casters, they had no shields to hide behind. So, he wasn’t all that worried.

  In short order, they were rolling off the roof in pain as their scales melted.

  Dismissing his spell, Nero took a deep breath to focus. He reached out with his essence field and began funneling the thin soul stuff in the ether toward him. There wasn’t all that much in the area, but there was still some floating over from where all the fighting had been. It was a start.

  Collapsing more essence into his collected reserves, while waiting for more death to reinforce his mage armor, he focused on carving his spell shell chucker and sticky fire spell forms to his shoulders. The configuration had worked well in his last large-scale engagement, and he didn’t see why it wouldn’t work again.

  Walking over to the edge of the roof, he began blanketing the ground around the short building with flames to finish off the kobalds that had been burned by his acid. All too quickly, he was noticed by the surrounding kobalds who’d been focusing on chasing after the formation.

  Not wanting to wait for them to get coordinated, he began launching spell shells into the surrounding buildings. Explosions begat death, and that death begat soul stuff accumulating around him. The more he killed, the more he could kill.

  Not every death was a clone, so Nero got more proof that his assumptions had been at least partially correct. There was plenty of soul stuff ignoring him, but more than enough to fuel his spells.

  Unable to think of a cool way to get down from the roof, he reluctantly took the time to crawl down from the ledge as the buildings around him burned. Once back on the ground, he resumed his assault. Like a mobile turret, he began spreading out his sticky fire while shells took out whatever groups of kobalds had the temerity to pop up.

  He ran at a light jog as most of his focus remained on his casting. Whenever he had a moment, he reinforced his mage armor. He really wanted to pump enough into it for it to get back to that invulnerable state it had achieved during his last massacre. His working theory was that it just required a substantial amount of potential being infused into it before it fundamentally altered itself into a true enchantment.

  Occasionally a kobald would get a spell off, or an arrow shot, but they weren’t nearly powerful enough to defeat his defenses.

  Without needing to draw his sword, he ran through the streets after the formation, eager to clear the way behind them. As more and more buildings blew up, he was able to spread out his fire to include a larger area. Kobalds died by the dozens as he filled the streets with magically imbued fire that was enchanted with the idea that it should BURN. Shells exploded with the inherent desire to shatter bodies and stone. Nero focused on adding whatever concepts he could into his spells with the soul stuff providing the potential. The spell forms themselves providing nothing more than the construct for him to enchant.

  The magical fires he set caused more of their own, and the shrapnel from his explosions took out kobalds by the score. It was ‘indirect spell effects’ for the win. While he watched his enemies fall, Nero marveled at the power of magic here, and how with enough ‘potential’ he could make anything.

  He wondered what more essence dense areas were like, and what kind of enchantments could exist in them. There was probably a balance. It would make sense that the more essence in the ether, the stronger the reality around it was. Either way, it would be interesting to see.

  While part of his mind was struggling to stop his thoughts from drifting, the majority of it was focused on his cycle of spells. Collapse essence, fill up the spell form, collect soul stuff, imbue the construct, fire it, collapse essence, refill his mage armor, collect soul stuff, imbue his mage armor, repeat.

  As he approached the larger kobald buildings, he realized he was finally in range of bringing them down. He could tell that the formation was already past them, as he couldn’t see them with his perception field. Not wasting his opportunity, he began shelling them mercilessly. He’d filled the ether with plenty of soul stuff, so he was able to charge the hell out of his shells with destructive potential.

  But his first few shells showed him that he’d underestimated the kobald’s building prowess. The larger buildings took his shells like a champ. There was some damage, but not nearly enough to bring them down.

  ‘Hmmm…. Need more Daka,’ he said to himself before absently sending a wave of sticky fire to obliterate a contingent of kobalds who had thought they were being sneaky by coming up behind him.

  While he wanted to bring down the buildings, he didn’t want to over-imbue his spell and cause another problem for Jennings to give him shit about later. There was a fine line between bringing down a building and bringing down reality. He needed just the right amount of sugar to sweeten the cake without making it taste like candy.

  Slowly ramping up how much soul stuff he was using, he soon found the sweet spot. The moment he did, the buildings began to come apart.

  Giggling like an idiot, he walked forward while pelting the building with exploding shells as they came down in a glorious display of violence. He’d seen videos of buildings being demolished, but he’d never seen it happen in person. It was freakin’ amazing.

  While he was constantly funneling soul stuff into the spells, he wondered idly how the kobalds had even built something like that.

  From the back of his mind, he began answering his own question. He imagined the kobalds coming together in large groups to lay out ritual patterns that could ‘build’ their structures from ambient essence fueled by sacrificing their workers. He ‘remembered’ how the grunts walked over in groups to have their throats slit. It was a disconcerting feeling to ‘know’ what had happened and how the kobald clones who’d died had been totally fine with it.

  Unconsciously pausing his assault, Nero gripped his head with his hands.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he mentally shouted to himself.

  Nero had felt something like that before, but that had been when he’d been sleep-delving. The only conclusion he could come to was that he’d somehow appropriated something from all the kobald soul stuff he’d been filtering through his center.

  An arrow bouncing off his face made him snap out of it, his mage armor protecting him.

  Snapping his eyes toward the shooter, he restarted his spell form for sticky flames. In no time at all, he recleared the area before glancing at the remains of the larger buildings which were now nothing more than ruins. Beyond them in the distance, he could see the throne room gates beginning to open.

  The formation had made it.

  In the center of the doors, a bright red light began pouring out from the crack. As they split open, their golden carvings reflecting the flames he’d set throughout the cavern, Nero could see a massive rift already active behind them. While the doors continued to open, he could hear the sound of fighting and explosions going off in the distance.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he thought to himself before he began running.