Liv clicked the heels of her enchanted boots together, and time seemed to slow around her.

Manfred, bloodshot eyes wide, was caught mid-lunge, his war-knife raised high in one hand. The sun glinted bright along the edge of his blade, and Liv suppressed a shudder at the idea of what the weapon could do to her body if it got past her guard. She stepped to one side, letting the wounded man fly by her. A glance around the battlefield was enough to tell Liv that she wouldn’t have to deal with him herself.

In quick succession, three of Liv’s personal guards tackled the man. Half a dozen more were already scrambling down the slope, following the path that Liv’s body had taken when she went rolling along the ground.

As she watched, a Whitehill man clocked Manfred in the chin with the steel-shod butt of his halberd. There was an audible crack as the mercenary’s jaw broke. One of the Elden guards had his knife arm trapped between her torso and her own upper arm, and when she suddenly sat down, Manfred’s shoulder dislocated with an audible pop. Finally, Kaija got hold of his grimy, sweat-soaked hair, yanked his head back, and slit his throat with her own dagger.

Manfred flopped back on the ground as the guards released him, and more scrambled into a loose circle around Liv, to guard her from any further attacks. Kaija kicked the mercenary’s war-knife away, and it skittered off into the brush.

“There,” she said. “That should do for him. Orella, find her majesty’s helm and bring it here.”

One of the guards ran back upslope, a woman that Liv recognized as one of the refugees from Ashford. Then, her attention snapped back to Manfred as the man sucked in a gurgling, wheezing breath.

Liv frowned, and leaned forward to get a better look. The man’s jaw was sliding back into place. The cut in his neck was sealing back up, and was only half as long as it had been when Kaija made it. Even the arm that had been dislocated was now reaching out to clutch at the trampled grass, searching for a weapon. All the while, the sigils etched into his arm pulsed a burning red, in the same rhythm as a human heartbeat.

“Cail,” Akseli pointed out, crouching down next to the wounded man, and pointing to a particular sigil. Liv recognized it as the word of healing, the same one that Arjun and his entire family used. “I’m not certain where it’s drawing power from, however,” her guard continued. “Embedded mana-stones?” He reared back and let loose with a punch, breaking the bones of Manfred’s face with his gauntlet. Even as Liv watched, however, a broken cheekbone began to reset.

“It’ll run out eventually,” Kaija grumbled. “If I have to hack his head off completely, I will.”

“No, it won’t,” Liv said. She extended the stormwand to point. “See here? Aluth. This armor was enchanted specifically to work inside the shoals of a rift. It’s pulling in ambient mana from all around us. It will keep healing him until he’s dragged out of the shoal, or until something’s done that will kill him outright.”

“Until then, he’ll simply keep getting up.” Akseli shuddered. “It doesn’t prevent the pain. What a horrific enchantment.”

“Fine, we’ll drag him downslope and then cut his head off,” Kaija decided.

“No. Let me be absolutely certain we kill him,” Liv said. “No more surprises. Dāet Aiveh Ais'Manis Senic.”

She’d never actually attempted the spell on a person before, and Liv couldn’t help feel a small bit of trepidation. Practicing on a few swords under her grandmother’s supervision, back at Al’Fenthia, seemed only a pale shadow of actually using the spell to kill. Still, she’d used Dā for other things, even if her study of the word hadn’t exactly been consistent due to the chaos of the past few months.

The word of power woke, and her mana flowed easily down her arm and out through the focusing enchantments of the wand. For just a moment, Liv expected to encounter Authority - but Manfred was no expert mage, even if Ractia had given him a word. A skilled soldier, perhaps, and a cunning tactician; Ractia had even etched powerful enchantments into his armor. But Liv’s Authority had been pitted against both an archmage and the shade of a dead god, and Manfred was quite simply nothing compared to either of those.

It started slowly: the crow’s feet around the man’s eyes deepened, and strands of silver began to appear in his hair. Akseli held one of his arms down, and Kaija the other, because the healing spell had never stopped closing his wounds.

“What are you doing?” the mercenary managed to croak out. The wound on his neck had closed, but he had to cough of blood to make himself heard.

“Killing you,” Liv answered.

His skin, where it was visible, began to sag and grow thin. Blood-matted hair thinned, lost its color, and fell out in wisps. Spots of age appeared on Manfred’s face, and his eyes grew cloudy with cataracts. His body stiffened, head thrown back, as a horrible rattle came out of his throat. Even after he stopped breathing, however, Liv’s spell did not stop - not until his flesh had fallen away to dust, leaving only a skeleton behind, trapped inside the hollow enchanted armor. Finally, the sigils graven into the steel darkened, with nobody left to heal.

“...that is terrifying,” Orella murmured. She must have returned while the rest of them had been watching the spell work, for Liv only now noticed the other woman. She held Liv’s dirt-crusted helm under one arm.

“My grandmother’s better with it than I am,” Liv admitted. “She wouldn’t have left a skeleton behind.” She sheathed her wand and extended her hand to take the helm. Orella handed it over, and Liv settled it back on her head. When, exactly, had she gone from finding a helm a bother, and started to find its weight comforting?

She beat her wings of mana, and lifted off the ground.

“You know when you go up like that, it makes it difficult for us to protect you,” Kaija called after her.

“I need to be able to see what’s happening,” Liv shouted back, flying up until she could get a good view of the battlefield. In the time since Manfred had tackled her, though it had only been a few moments all together, a great deal had changed.

The fighting now revolved around two equally important, and directly opposed, poles. Upslope, beyond the ruins of the final ward and before the very gates into the mountain, the circle of blood-letters continued their chants and prayers from the center of the town which had been built by the cult of Ractia. What cultists, Iravatan troops, Antrians, and great bats remained had mostly pulled back to defend them while they continued to work their magic upon the clouds overhead.

Downslope, nearest the ward, Liv’s grandmother and her great-uncle held the storm in check, arms raised, having frozen every drop of blood that fell from the sky. They hung, glittering like a million tiny rubies, above the battlefield, and each one of the crimson drops was potential death for every allied soldier who fought beneath.

Aira and Aatu had gathered most of the alliance troops around the two blue-haired siblings, forming a circle to defend them. Liv saw Miina there, as well, but another glance told her that Arjun had run downslope to care for the fallen great wyrm, Silica, whose body shuddered at the end of a long furrow of torn-up soil below them. If anyone could save the ancient creature it would be her friend, so Liv put the two of them out of her mind for the moment.

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At the middle of the fighting, between the two poles of striving magic, the conflict was thickest. There, in a furious melee, several of the most formidable fighters on the field had met each other, where Liv’s father was trying to push his way up to the blood-letters. Wren and Ghveris were with him, facing off against Nighthawk, Noghis, Aariv, and Seija, who it appeared had failed to find herself a replacement mount. Though her lance was clumsy on foot, that didn’t stop her from killing one of the Soltheris men as Liv watched.

Whatever formations either side had started with, all order had fallen apart. Without any remaining static defense, like the wall at the pass, to rally behind or seek to surmount, the battle had become little more than a fight between the deadliest people present, with any lesser combatants who tried to interfere meeting a quick, almost casual death.

Liv had no desire to throw her guards into it.

“Go and protect my grandmother,” she said, touching down for just long enough to give orders. “Kaija, send two people down to protect Arjun while he’s helping Silica. I want the rest of you to take as much pressure as you can off Elders Aira and Aatu. If they don’t have to worry about keeping the enemy off, they can tip the balance at the center of the field.”

“What about you?” Kaija asked. “Going to do something outrageously foolish, I’d guess?”

“I’m going to kill those blood-letters,” Liv said. “Once that happens, all of our elders will be free to come into play. They don’t have anything out here that can stand up to that much raw magical power - not unless Ractia’s going to come out of those doors, finally.”

“And if she does, she’s walked right into all of our best people.” Kaija sighed. “Fine.”

With a thought, Liv used her Authority to sweep up her scattered blades of ice and set them just behind and above her shoulders, three to each side, where they were most comfortable. Then, she took to the air again, using the blades to clear a path ahead of her, cutting suspended drops of blood out of the sky with swipe after swipe.

She went up high - higher, she hoped, than anyone occupied with the furious fighting at the middle of the conflict would notice. People had a tendency not to look up, when they were focused on fighting someone directly in front of them. There was a part of her that wanted to help her father, but with the decision made, Liv could only tell herself that he’d be best served by her changing the balance of power on the battlefield as a whole.

So long as Valtteri, Ghveris, and Wren could keep Ractia’s remaining commanders pinned down and distracted, it would leave Liv free to do that unopposed.

Her instinct was to swoop down from on high, blades orbiting around her, and make a pass through the ritual site. Six swords would cut down the blood-letters in short order, particularly if Liv could indeed take them by surprise.

It was a tactic that had worked well for her at large battles before - first at Ashford, and later at the pass into Lucania. But it was also a tactic that Liv had been using to compensate, in both places, for a lack of mana. A substantial initial investment of mana, that would allow her to make repeated attacks on large groups of soldiers without having to cast a new spell each time.

That basic condition, that assumption, wasn’t true here. They were already fighting inside the shoals, and the battle would only take them further on into the depths. To put it simply, Liv wasn’t going to run out of mana. So why put herself at risk by moving in close to her enemies, when she didn’t have to?

Liv drew her wand and inhaled. She pulled in as much of the turbulent rift-mana as she could, and it rushed down into her lungs and belly like a gulp of fortified wine. Warmth and power shot out from her core into her limbs, and the sensation of being once again nearly over-full of mana brought a giddy smile to her face. Liv could feel a tingling from her toes to her fingers, and knew that she had more than enough power for what she had in mind.

“Celent Ai’Veh Creim!” Liv incanted, lowering the stormwand to point down at the ring of chanting bloodletters, clustered around the blood-soaked place where they’d made their sacrifices. Crystals of ice bloomed far below, her father’s favorite spell, expanding rapidly outward over the streets of packed earth and consuming the corpses that had been discarded, strewn about to every side of the blood-letters.

The priests of Ractia stumbled backward, two of them falling immediately under the tide of crystals. Those two screamed, reaching up with desperate arms in an attempt to free themselves from the crushing, slicing mass that stabbed into their bodies.

Liv had, however, never stopped casting, and new spells tumbled out after that first piece of magic. “Celent Aiveh Dekm Sekim O’Creim,” she shouted, and ten swords of ice budded from the crystals, then shot forth in a circular volley that cut down half a dozen more of the bloodletters. Some were only wounded, but at least three did not seem to be moving.

She had, however, finally drawn the attention of those fighting below. Half a dozen bats beat their wings, desperately grabbing at the air to reach the same height at which Liv circled. The warriors of the Red Shield Tribe, seeing their priests dying, had abandoned the battle to come at her alone.

Unfortunately for them, Wren’s people did not train Authority.

Snow swirled, dancing about the hanging red drops of blood, and a cold, fresh winter wind howled around the top of the mountain. The bats shuddered, their wings stilled, and they fell out of the sky, crushed by the weight of Liv’s attention. She sent her blades spearing down after them, racing the tumbling forms to the ground, where with a thought she speared them through the center and then pulled the swords back up to her, streaked with half-frozen blood.

Liv looked back to the surviving blood-letters. Some had managed to scramble back away from her spells in time to reach safety; they were running for the great doors set into the rock that thrust up from the mountain peak.

“Celent’he Encve Manim,” she whispered, and with a swipe of her wand, five armored soldiers, wielding weapons of adamant ice, coalesced between the fleeing priests and the doors. The frozen warriors stomped down the mountainside, impelled by Liv’s intent, and their swords, axes, and hammers rose and fell.

With the death of the last blood-letters, the tenor of the clouds overhead changed. No longer could Liv feel the magic of another contesting her control. That left only the drops of blood that hung suspended for her to deal with. Liv thought that with the blood letters dead, their spell’s power might be broken as well - but then again, Costia’s final spell had persisted for over a thousand years. The priests of Ractia were no Vædim, but she also saw no point in taking risks when it was her friends and family below who would be the ones to suffer for it.

“Celent Aiveh Æn’Ractim,” she muttered, the incantation so similar to the one she’d first attempted, desperately, so many years before during the Day of Blood. An explosion of cold air cracked out from Liv, catching up each suspended drop of blood as it went. She could actually feel her grandmother and great-uncle handing over control of the blood to her, their Authority passing the magic off as easily as they might pass her a goblet of wine or a cup of tea.

Dozens, scores at a time, the drops of blood-rain froze through, then fell. Where they hit the ground, they shattered into a frozen pink dust, harmlessly. In mere moments, the sky was once again clear. Liv tucked her wings and dove, angling her fly back away from the doors to where the four elders present had gathered, then banked around them, surrounded by her swords, flapping to cut speed.

“Thank you for that,” her grandmother called, from inside of the ring of troops that had protected her.

“The blood-letters are broken,” Liv told them, “and most of the great bats as well. The only thing stopping us from getting to those doors is Ractia’s commanders. I want all our surviving troops to pull back to the last ward, and set up a battle line there. Get as many of our wounded out as you can, and see if you can save their lives. Kaija, you’re in command.”

Liv ignored the other woman’s frown, and turned to her cousin Miina. “Go with them. If they gather the wounded in one place, can you slow time around them?”

“I can, at least for a little while.”

“Good. That will give you all time to get Arjun up from where he’s helping Silica. Your priority at this point is to keep as many of our wounded alive as you can,” she told both women. “Anyone who isn’t an elder - or at least close to one - doesn’t have any business in the next part of this. Go.”

As the alliance soldiers began to withdraw downslope, Liv turned to the four elders. Her grandmother and great-uncle looked tired, but stood firm, a determined cast to their faces. Elder Aatu had been through the worst of the fighting, from the look of him - he was bruised and bleeding in several places, presumably from when his mount was killed under him, and the following desperate struggle to get him to safety.

Elder Aira, on the other hand, simply looked tired. Her back was bent, and she leaned heavily on her cane.

“Do you see what I mean, now?” the old woman said, looking to Aatu.

“I believe I do,” the battered old man said.

Liv looked between the two of them, and then put her questions aside. “The five of us drive straight up the center,” she said. “Right through the battle. We break her commanders, pick up my father and friends as reinforcements, and continue on to the gates.”

“You have a plan to open them?” Aatu asked.

Aira laughed. “They’ll open,” she said. The old woman reached into her robes and removed a crown of polished wood, which she set on her brow, thorns pointed outward. “Either for me or for Livara, but one way or another, they’ll open. Let’s put an end to this.”