Dispersing the spell binding him, Emily stares at the king’s corpse for a few moments before letting out a tired sigh, feeling a deep ache suffuse every fibre of her being as her dose of Goddess’ Blood runs its course.

She releases a wave of machina, scanning the scorched battlefield for any surviving magical items and only finds the remains of the royals’ thrones and the artefacts adorning the king. Emily’s attention is drawn to a ring on his finger with a greater space crystal carved into the shape of the Denros family crest, and to the crown on his head, with several milky-white crystals woven together to form a complex enchantment Emily can’t decipher at a glance.

“Interesting,” she hums under her breath, lifting the headpiece from the dead regent and presenting it to her son to inspect. “I wonder how much you’ll be able to learn from their methods.”

Emily takes the spatial ring as well, tucking it away in an unenchanted pocket until her mana has regenerated, and her spatial affinity has been unlocked again, to probe the potentially hostile enchantment carved into it. Satisfied, she puts the crown away in her belt for now and turns towards the battle still raging beyond the city’s north wall.

They’re still resisting?

Her gaze drifts up towards the dozen airships still floating above the city, a sad sight compared to the hundreds there when she first engaged.

“I wonder how many of their troops still have functioning minds,” she muses, drawing the Whisper and pointing the railgun to the sky, aiming for the ships’ weapons.

The quiet hum of electricity precedes a silent shot that punches a clean hole through one of the ships, disabling one of its long-range cannons. Emily takes a few steps before firing again, catching an ammunition store and blowing a gaping hole in the side of another.

By the time she reaches the end of the white-stone paved street, the sky is clear of enemy forces, with only Elisime in the distance, a few unmanned Cutters, and several bird-like drones surveying and dropping bombs on the city’s grounded fortifications. Emily runs back through the city, dashing past several people roaming the once-empty streets with confusion and a subdued, hopeful air, discussing the strange screen in the sky and the mysterious woman’s declaration, casting concerned gazes towards the rising smoke and sounds of combat in the north.

She reaches the fallen segment of the wall to find a steady stream of Denrosi soldiers scrambling over the rubble without their weapons, fleeing the battlefield. The moment Emily grinds to a halt on a rooftop above them, several of their awakened members feel the pressure of her mana and look up in terror.

A wave of panic spreads through the fleeing soldiers as they halt their movements and immediately start waving their empty hands in a placating gesture.

“If you want to surrender, I won’t attack you,” Emily says without raising her voice, filling it with mana to make it carry. “Tear off your Denrosi crests, throw down your weapons, and return to your homes. As long as you don’t resist, you’re not my problem.”

The panicking soldiers follow her orders, reaching up and tearing the crests from their uniforms before nodding to her in thanks and scattering into the city. Emily ignores them, firing a few projectiles from her left palm to pick off the hostile members hiding among their ranks, without  sparing them a glance, as she springs up onto an undamaged section of wall to survey the battlefield.

The once-buried trenches are mostly uncovered, some of them torn up by shells from Emily’s army and the rest cleared with magic. Though some of the mounted gun barrels still poke from the ground, spraying shots into the air to try and hit the jets rocketing past, most of the fixed weapons have been reduced to scrap or abandoned. Emily’s mechanical troops are marching between the uncovered maze of passages, pointing their weapons down and executing the resisting troops with chilling efficiency.

Though a large portion of her army still stands, there are dozens of droids scattered across the battlefield in pieces, and a few of the large artillery platforms Pod is commanding lie in smouldering ruins. Emily spots a flock of her sleek, bird-like machines covered in purple traces diving towards the destroyed remnants of her soldiers, swallowing them into seemingly endless stomachs.

He’s already deployed the Scavengers? He better be watching them closely. If he lets any of them get damaged, I’m rewinding and making him fight on the ground.

Emily nods in satisfaction, leaving the control of her army to her apprentice and leaping from the wall. Without casting any spells to reduce the strain on her aching Magic Network, she slips into the trenches and joins her troops in cutting down the resisting Denrosi soldiers.

***

As the battlefield falls silent, and the last resisting soldier falls dead at the feet of Emily’s troops, she finally relaxes, retracting her weapons and returning to Elisime, calling Pod to land the ship. She boards while calling her army back, starting the efficient process of refilling the ship’s cargo holds as several of her metal fighters join the Scavengers in collecting their broken comrades.

Emily checks on her apprentice in the cockpit to find him prodding at the two unconscious, brainwashed mages. They’re both comatose, bound by crackling chains of lightning, etched with images of running wolves, that don’t show signs of fading any time soon. She shatters the unnecessary binds, reabsorbing as much mana as she can from the spell before leaving Pod to wait for New Denntimo’s reinforcements alone and heading towards the centre of the ship.

She finds comfort among Elisime’s batteries, settling cross-legged with her back to a charged cell and listening to the quiet hum. Several hours slip by as Emily meditates, simply feeling the flow of energy through her strained pathways as her reserves of strength slowly refill.

She keeps her eyes shut once all of the depleted resources in her system have returned to full, focusing on the eternally missing chunk of her machina bar. She locates the energy in her cortex, burning away in her emotional centres out of her control to keep her emotional vault sealed.

After half an hour of inspecting, Emily finally concludes that the amount of rage in the vault has actually reduced by an infinitesimally small amount.

It’s barely anything, but reinforcing the few emotions I can still feel with machina, using them like a magnet, seems to be a viable way of releasing the feelings that are trapped in my vault. I need to be in complete control of my own mind.

Immediately setting one of her threads to the task of monitoring her emotions to burn machina when needed, she finally opens her eyes. Emily can feel her connection to space has returned, and her instinctual spatial awareness has come back with it, letting her stop the background processes her cores have been running, using a field of machina, to compensate for the lost sense.

She opens a page of her virtual notebook, filling in the details of the transactional spellcasting method’s effects. The idea came to her after feeling the resonance of mana in her voice when making a deal with the Elders, and grew as she experienced Denros’ ritual, feeling the raw power provided by simple, mortal lives. The strength of the spells she cast were unexpected, even by her, as she followed her instincts and observations to a resounding success.

Emily moves the virtual page aside and raises her hand, calling upon her metal and lightning connections and trying to form a miniature version of the same serpent she used earlier. Her mana follows her will but, the moment the scaled reptile solidifies, she loses her connection with it completely.

Emily blinks in surprise, severing her elemental connections and watching with rapt attention as the small snake violently turns around and begins devouring itself, collapsing inwards until it vanishes, taking her mana with it. Her notebook begins rapidly filling with information as Emily documents everything, hundreds of questions forming in her mind in an instant.

Why did I lose control of the mana instead of it destabilising? Where did my mana go? Can mana be destroyed? Is it only that exact spell? What exactly did I make a deal with? Mana itself?

Several possible tests flash through her thoughts, and Emily quickly settles on reestablishing her elemental connections while diving into the Spellweave with a few of her cores, watching the world fracture into a confusing mesh of abstract colours. She begins casting the same spell again, watching through her twisted vision as her magic appears like strokes from a brush, painting a vivid picture in hues of blue and silver.

This time, as the serpent solidifies, she sees several sections of the spell rapidly change colours, distorting as the construct destroys itself before folding inwards and vanishing, sending a splitting pain to Emily’s mind as she watches the process with wide eyes.

She doesn’t flinch, repeating the spell and focusing closer to delve into the exact runes forming it. The spell has a far less ordered structure than those Emily usually creates, and she notes the strange natural flow it seems to follow, sometimes repeating itself for no apparent reason and yet working without issue. Marking the difference for future study, she refocuses on observing the spell’s collapse, picking out the affected runes.

After a few tests on the full replication of the spell, Emily releases her metal connection and next creates a snake from pure lightning, watching as a new spell is formed with several familiar runic formations that destabilise, shattering upon the spell’s completion.

***

After a few hours of experimenting, it becomes clear to Emily that she can’t create any semi-independent constructs in the form of snakes from any of her elements, although serpentine projectiles and weapons still work in other elements, but not her main two.

“I should stick to applying conditions to spells I know the full runic form of for now,” she mutters under her breath while standing up and reorganising her notes, preparing to go greet the approaching Elders. “This condition removed more unattributed runes than it needed to, though maybe that’s why the spell was so strong?”

She heads to the cockpit and finds Pod relaxing, cleaning one of his revolvers with the two unconscious mages still slumped against the wall beside him, both sporting new needles in the sides of their necks.

“You could have just put these in their arms,” Emily says, flicking one of the needles as she lifts both captives with a solid platform of wind.

“They were moving when I got back in here,” Pod responds with a shrug, holstering his weapon and rising to leave with Emily. “Didn’t want to risk it.”

They head down to the passenger hatch and use the elevator to lower themselves down to the palace steps below. They step off Elisime’s lowered platform on the same level as a grand reception hall, with a doorless entryway, and head down the long hall to the sealed palace double doors at the far end, ignoring the shining stained glass lining the walls, depicting images of the dead royal family.

Emily casts a spell to create two iron thrones facing the entrance and drops the unconscious mages behind them, taking a seat beside her apprentice and waiting patiently for the two strong magic signatures she can feel in the distance, shooting over the city towards them.

After a few seconds, Josephine and Beau land on top of the palace steps at the far end of the hall, releasing a burst of fire and wind that dissipates as they walk forward to greet the two waiting for them.

“You know, when Silver first came to me claiming one of his newest hires was going to end the war, I called him crazy,” Josephine says with a conflicted expression. “Now that I’m actually seeing it happen, I’m wondering if I might be. I still can’t quite believe this is real.”

“As real as it gets,” Emily responds, waving her hand and lifting her captives into view. “I captured the Denerii as you requested, and you’ll find Charles Denros’ corpse at the palace’s boundary. Here.”

She pulls out the crystal with a recording of the execution along with the dead monarch’s crown and tosses them to Josephine, presenting his spatial ring as well but keeping hold of it.

“The crystal contains a recording of Charles’ execution, and I assume you’ll want to keep control of that,” she says, nodding at the crown and not mentioning the matching blueprint in her mind. “However, I’ll keep hold of this one till I crack the bloodline-lock and take my agreed-upon share. It’s well-made even by my standards, so it’ll take me a little while, and you stand no chance without a fourth circle spatial mage.”

“You can crack it?” Josephine questions, lacking any real surprise in her tone. “That ring was a gift from Modo’s Demon, Gaius Longaeva.”

“That explains why I recognise the runework.” Emily nods before raising a brow. “Modo’s Demon? I never saw that title mentioned in The Covenant’s library. In fact, there was hardly any mention of Gaius at all.”

“How strange. He may have vanished at the start of Dennari’s last war, but he’s still frequently mentioned in our history books,” Beau explains. “Old Denntimo avoided interaction with your continent to avoid him; the man who made an army disappear.”

“Fascinating. I think I’d like to have a look at your historical records later,” Emily says, pushing herself out of her seat and dismissing it.

“The Denros family almost certainly have the old records of their ancestors’ interactions with the man in their personal library,” Josephine says, nodding to the sealed doors behind Emily that lead to the rest of the palace. “Would you be interested in having a look now?”

Emily’s gaze follows Josephine’s to the closed doors that light up in her magical senses like a beacon.

“I wouldn’t be waiting here if I weren’t,” she says, reaching out with several thin threads of mana to probe the doors’ defences. “I assume you don’t have an easy way in.”

“No,” Josephine responds.

“We could wake these two up and ask them,” Beau suggests, gesturing to the unconscious captives.

“That’s not necessary,” Emily says, approaching the doors and tapping Charles’ ring on them to no effect. “I can deal with this quickly enough, I’ll just have to use brute force.”

She walks towards the side of the hall, gesturing for everyone else to follow her while sending a command to Elisime.

“You’re going to attack it?” Beau asks with surprise, probing the doors himself with a stream of mana.

“Yes. I can see a lot of strong magical defences, but they’ve made a critical oversight,” Emily explains as the shadow over the entrance shifts. “They’ve hardly reinforced the door, and most of their defences are aimed against magic.”

“Hardly reinforced?” Beau scoffs, withdrawing his probe. “That thing would barely be scratched by a grenade.”

“Exactly. I could probably break it with my fist if I weren’t worried about the proximity reaction to a breach attempt.”

Before they can react to her terrifying statement, there’s a sharp crack outside and a rush of air through the hall, shattering the glass windows into pieces as a railgun bolt slams into the centre of the doors, blowing them open. A flood of blue fire erupts at almost the moment of impact, incinerating everything within five metres of the door, but after it fades, they’re left with a clear view into the palace’s main hall, without a single barrier blocking their way.

“Let’s go find their library and studies,” Emily says, ignoring the strange looks Josephine and Beau are giving her and confidently walking over the singed ashes that were once a rug covering the floor by the entrance. “I’ll be taking a look around them before we head back to deal with that curse. You can search the rest of this place for your spoils without us.”