"I'll meet you there!" Jerad calls out as King snaps her fingers and steps through the resulting portal.

"Don't bother," she says before the window to Hescaria's capital shuts behind her. Already her connection to the undead of Dersen grows stronger, but her presence alone won't be enough.

Peeking out the large, unguarded tower window, she scowls at the sight below. They're at the gates: great dire wolves leaping over the walls, Paladins bless the pouring undead into a final death, and Runic Warriors pound against the gates with a large battering ram.

King sucks her teeth and snaps her fingers. A portal appears in her step to transport her atop the tower. It closes behind her and she glowers down at the Sainid platoon. A couple Mages stand at the rear as cover and support—the best targets.

Taking a breath, she pulls her sleeves back and raises her hands to the sky. She twists, as though roping the air into her arms, curling and funneling mana to a single locus above her. It's not long before a dark cloud forms overhead. Her fingertips crackle with short-lived sparks of lightning, and a chill wind billows into her dress and hair.

King's machinations don't go unnoticed; the group of Mages she's prepping to smite have her in their sights. Two of them go through hand-signs and chant. Mana spikes between the two and their extended staffs enlarge a spark of fire suspended in air, rounding it out as they chant and hold the hand-sign.

Thunderclaps boom as lightning cracks through stormy clouds. The Mages aren't keen on relishing the building power, and with a blast their fireball roars through the air. Arching far and over the Dersen's walls, it loses mass, but not enough that it won't hurt if it lands.

Blue flashes throughout the sky and five bolts of lightning descend upon the Mages, burning them within and without. Their fireball still breathes, reaching the height of its arc, and as it begins its descent, King pulls on the thread of magic she's laid out. The black clouds above act accordingly, pouring rain and hail over Dersen—King points at the approaching fireball and all falling raindrops make chase instead.

As a pleasant steam wafts over, King lets out an even breath. Paladins, Beast Tamers, Runic Warriors, and leftover Mages all witness what's happened and make to retreat.

Unfortunately, King is never quite satisfied. The skies quake as thunderclaps disturb and bolts char. The Runic Warriors are the easiest to pick off; even with their borrowed and stored magic, surviving King's mana-chucked lightning bolts isn't guaranteed.

Paladins are tougher, and what few of them scramble down at the gates, molding the earth into arching walls for shelter. Enough of them doing this inspires the Mages, and in a coordinated fashion they raise a broad, large arching wall that covers all, including the large monster pets King has ignored.

"How's that!" King yells out, startling even me and surely her enemies. "Come on out! Let's finish what you started!" Bolts descend on their mounds and walls, the ones that have been individually built shatter, leaving them vulnerable to more bolts.

King pants and gasps; manipulating the weather, even in this mana-rich atmosphere, must be tasking. Her clouds darken the bright afternoon sky, sending Dersen into darkness as she has rain fall again to loosen the dirt of the single large arching wall remaining.

As her breaths become less haggard, King calls on Seeker. The seeking blade twirls at the side of her head, point ready to skewer. Before she can give it her word though, something creeps out on the horizon: a construct, a machine.

"A weapon," King sneers. "Kill."

Seeker zips away, seeking to bleed its edge with the blood of the cowards beneath their mound of earth. Ghouls and ghasts leap over the walls by the dozen, all headed after life and that clunky thing sitting in the distance.

A sharp metal clang draws King's attention to Seeker's attempt. She scowls, finding the blade deflected by a Paladin, and immediately commands it to try again. Seeker zips out of the mud, but the Paladin merely swats it away, his armor full of enchantment and blessing.

The ghasts make it to him but find a trap waiting for them as they're staked with ice made from the water King's raining down. The last two Mages roll out of cover. Soaked in the rain, they make quick hand-signs and send a flurry of icicles into King's horde of undead.

"Damned undead! Move! Dodge it! Arrghh fuck this." The rain ceases and lightning returns. A bolt descends on the fleeing Paladin, his arms waving at the weapon in some signal.

Panting, King holds off on letting another bolt loose, sufficed with Seeker's backstabbing redemption of both the last Mages. The ghasts and ghouls search under the collapsed, wet mound of earth for any survivors, already sharing their curse with the cold corpses littered at Dersen's front.

"What do you think that thing is?"

I almost give her an answer.

"Silent treatment still? When is this going to end, Nil?"

Seeker returns to her side, and she scowls at it. "Fucking useless thing. I can't believe this is your weapon, Nil."

Stolen story; please report.

I'd have responded to that if the weapon didn't start moving. King watches it from the top of Dersen tower. From that point it's quite a distance away, yet when it explodes with fiery mana, extending an arm through the air, King's eyes go wide with recognition.

"Trebuchet."

The siege weapon catapults a burning boulder at Dersen, a sign they want nothing but to destroy the city and all within, dead or alive. Finally, a hint of joy rises within me.

Slacked-jawed, King watches the boulder soar across, and defiant, she takes a deep, greedy, mana-filled breath. The black clouds become one as lightning courses through, taking a round lap until—

The charged bolt strikes clean through the boulder, shattering it into a hundred rock-sized flaming pieces that shower over Dersen. Fire and brimstone ram through the gates, taking it off its hinges and setting the battlements and all the undead ablaze with blue fire.

"Holy fire… Paladins." King curses as Dersen smoulders and yells at the undead remaining, "Move! All of you, out!" Another burst of mana brings her attention back; they're readying the trebuchet to launch again. As her curses intensify, she snap summons another portal and pulls her orb out of it.

Seeker cuts a circle into the ground, sealing King in before impaling her waiting hand. She grunts as [Armored Form] doesn't let Seeker stab deep. It wriggles its tip in before blood pools down from her hand and into the circle.

A bit of Essence flows out with every drop, and once the circle is filled King smears the bloody hand over the orb, hissing, "Trakota!"

At the word, an emerald fire lights up the blood-filled circle, rising far into the sky before taming into a gentle lick. The same fire ignites in her eyes, burning with cold necromantic power. "Trakota!" The utterance carries the orb in her hand, catching it in the flame.

A metal clang whips a second smoldering boulder. It carries through the sky like a second sun, and this time King doesn't bother stopping it. It strikes at the heart of the city, exploding with concussive force as it levels the area and digs a crater.

Magically, King's tower remains standing, as does a quarter of what's left of Dersen behind her. She sets herself down, legs folded and eyes aflame with cold undeath, and utters once more, "Trakota!"

The flame swallows the orb, melting it to nothing as King's eyes roll back, depriving me of sight momentarily as King's spell takes effect. When the light returns, we are no longer atop the tower, and yet we are.

King flexes the long, gray arms of an undead ghast. Eyes aflame, she roars at the near thousand undead she made sure to evacuate earlier—and points. The horde does as a horde does, with King at the head bounding away from the broken, burnt, and lifeless city.

The Paladins forsake their siege weapon, calling out to a reserve of Warriors instead. As King and the horde of ghasts and ghouls grow closer, so do their numbers increase. More and more Sainid Warriors pool out from behind the trebuchet, falling into some formation soon to mean nothing.

Runic Warriors, Beast Tamers, and their beasts, dire wolves and chimeras, brace the front. Paladins scatter to the sides and Mages—

A dire wolf launches at King, its maw wide and full of piercing teeth. She catches its lower jaw, keeping it wide and open for her ghast's arm to sink through to its stomach. Roaring, she lifts the wolf, wearing it like a sleeve on her arm, and smacks the stunned Beast Tamer with it.

The horde crashes against the impromptu wall of Sainid flesh, biting and clawing away even as their stomachs are slashed open, their arms cut and eyes poked out.

King rips her arm out of the wolf. The beast, long dead, flops to the ground, but a second later it rises beside her, eyes hollowed and aflame with the emerald fire she's conjured. The ghast she puppets grunts and the wolf launches into the fray as well, leaving King standing behind to watch as it tears into the very man it served.

Her eyes watch something else though. The wall is thicker than expected, tougher too. The Sainid did well to hide their numbers and test the strength of their enemy with that first, unfortunate platoon. Far behind the trebuchet that sits right in front of King are tents. She parses a look ahead, through the trees and shrubbery leading up to Dersen.

Right under her nose. She never thought to look so close. Arrogant King.

"Raarrhh!" A Runic Warrior comes charging, levying a cleaver down at King. She raises her hand to catch the blade, but it tears right through and amputates the left arm at the elbow.

Reminded whose body she's puppeteering, King leaps back. The Warrior slashes upward, narrowly missing the ghast's chin and driving King further away.

The world goes black for a moment. When the light returns, King's taken hold of a blood-soaked ghast with two good arms, but it's no different here. A chimera latches onto her ankles with its tail. It pulls, but she's already slashing the tail away, sending the beast into pained yelps. A sharp, bursting pressure sends through the ghast's back and chest as a blade bursts out— the Beast Tamer stands behind her, his face twisted with rage as he roars and saws the weapon back and forth until—

Darkness again.

The light returns, and King has chosen another puppet. Hissing, she leaps at the first living Human she sees and slashes her throat open before the young Beast Tamer has a chance to react.

A man roars behind her, and she twists in time to react to his charging impale. He rights himself immediately and faces King. Eyes burning with rage like the rest of them, he runs a hand over the large cleaver, activating the runes engraved within, and a thin inch of frost hisses off of it.

He and King study each other for a short-lived moment before Seeker runs through his head. Blood splashes against a spot on the ghast's leg and boils through. Then another spot boils and King hisses, looking around for the true cause.

It doesn't take long to spot the hanging body of water, and before King can order her undead, it starts to rain.

All across, undead hiss and screech in agony. King bares through. Eyes bursting with emerald flames, she lunges through the horde of crumpling undead and butchering Warriors and Beast Tamers, narrowly dodging their attempts to cut her down before she reaches her target—any fucking Paladin she can find.

As she bounds and lurches, a Mage steps in her way. King strengthens her raised claws to skewer through the Mage, but she's faster. Her fingers flip through hand-signs, and King runs right into a torrent of flame.

Darkness again, and this time we're back at the tower. King's emerald flames die out in the circle, and the Sainid Paladins and Mages make quick work of what undead remain.

Seeker zips back from the field to her side as she stands staring down at her defeat, thumb and middle finger an inch away from a snap.

A high-pitched screech tears through the darkening sky, drawing the attention of everyone, including the Sainid below. The screech lets out again, closer and closer until a heavy beating sound accompanies it.

"I-is that…?" King mutters, looking up at the clouds as they part for a long, scaly belly.

It descends. Gliding through the clouds on golden-yellow feathered wings, gusting over Dersen, over King. Its feathered green tail twirls as it snakes in the air with a maw full of fire.

"Dragon…" I say, breaking my silence in the awe of the immolating river of flame it vomits over the Sainid.

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