I start to see it now, and I'm entranced by it. Once, Tacit the Grim told me that he would show me what the world truly was. It is only now that his death makes sense. His body clutching a flag, his opponent, a twisted and disgusting monster clawing its way up his standard. He stood as a bulwark against them, giving his life just to hold back their power a bit longer.

The lesson stands in front of me again, played out on the destroyed land beneath me. Before, it was just a diffuse thing. These monsters exist like the weather, just a natural part of the world. They come, people die, and then we all move on.

But that isn't the truth, is it? There is something in my head, a faint spark of memory not my own. These creatures aren't just a problem on this world, are they? They always come, and they can end all life if not checked; I've seen that happen. If they can win, if they can stand together as a ravaging coalition to devour all life, then they can't merely be as a storm. No, they are a group, a faction, a horrible afterbirth given form by the mana suffusing the air and the land. They want to wipe us all out, each and every man, woman, and child, and they can do it. They are our enemy.

Suddenly, my growing distaste for the elven nobility, my frustration at being kept in the dark all my life, all of it seems so petty as I watch the battle below. At this moment, as people crawl and climb over obstacles to reach the islands of safety, no one checks for lineage. The guards and adventurers defend the noble and common alike, stabbing with iron and magic toward the creatures that claw up even the bodies of their own dead as they advance.

This is a battlefield. This is a war. Exhaustion is everywhere, in the heaving chests of the defenders as they press back the tide, in the puffing mist that boils out from the monsters with mouths to breathe, in the way coordination itself seems to fall apart as all below are infected with the muscle twitching of fatigue. I know that feeling deep in my bones, the fear that the next time you blink, you will wake up several minutes later or not at all. Only, I can't sleep. I don't breathe hard and my muscles don't twist. My soul groans with every movement, complaining with the ephemeral music of a bending tree, but the energy pulsing through me won't allow my body to grow tired. I can't stop, once I do, I won't be able to get back up.

Motes of black sand gather around me in orbiting satellites as I call it to me, the balls of dark particles lighting up with a kaleidoscope of dragonfire. No reason to stick to only one kind now. The power alone should be enough to kill all the dross, but I might as well try to see which flavor is the most effective.

My soul presence boils out, spreading out over the field below me, weight pressing down on the already exhausted creatures. There is stillness, just for a moment, and then I enter the war.

Dragonfire descends in a pastel rainbow from the sky. A hammering sound begins to warble the air as the first of the explosions start to resound, plumes of fire detonating in the thickest patches of the monsters I can see from my vantage above the 4th's field hospital. The creatures below scream, turning panicked eyes skyward as balls of fire crash among them like meteors. As the packs try to run, they stumble into one another in their weariness, drawing my attention and suffering the focused effect of my soul presence.

In a few minutes, I exterminate more than a hundred of the demons below with all the delicacy of a child beating an ant colony with a stick. The limit begins to approach. The need for seeing a numerical display of my mana has long since passed; my understanding of the magic running through my body has passed well beyond that crutch. The ballistic assault of hellfire from the air slows, stopping as my mana begins to dip. But, even as I let it go, relaxing my jaw and pulling back my assault, I feel the reservoir begin to fill once more.

My rate of recovery is insane, there is no other word for it. The field below me is blown apart, burning wreckage of orange, green, blue, and even gray giving light to the charred and broken bodies of monsters below. There are still so many, already so many dead before I even arrived. How did House Mari even manage to summon so many? If the barrier around the city fell…

One group below moves, a woman at the lead shouting as she leads them forward with the point of her spear. Four guardsmen jump from the platform they had been standing on, stabbing out at the few demons around them as they try to clear some room. Eight people, people dressed in ripped and torn clothing, fine and common among them, huddle close to the guard that press forward. The initiative of the group turns on them. The monsters scattered from a magical assault they can't stop remembering their dark purpose, as a dozen people leave the safety of their position and try to make it across the battlefield.

The monsters yip, their calls high and scratchy like that of wild dogs, converging on the group as it tries to navigate the destruction. In less than a minute, twenty or more of the demons race in their direction, moving on them from every direction. As the first leaps, bounding off the rim of a broken barrel, it is snatched from the air by a spear of dark sand, pinned to the bloody field like an insect to a board. The leader of the guard either doesn't notice the attack or doesn't care to slow, running through another of the weird sting-dogs with her spear before throwing it aside.

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I do what I can, throwing spears from the air. It is a task I am not used to, directing the heavy bolts of gold and black dust with precision enough to skewer the monsters below. I'm not perfect at it, not by any means, but it requires less mana than blowing the area apart with dragonfire and is less likely to end with a dozen people burned to death. The rain of spears falls over the group, every one out of three managing to hit a monster as it leaps for the group before turning into drifting grains in the aftermath. Saving them all is impossible, impossible for me at least.

Of the dozen that run toward the barrier, ten make it. One of the guardsmen trips less than a minute away from the barrier. An older man breaks off from the running group, doubling back to try and help him up. I manage to kill six of the monsters that rush the pair, staking them to the earth, but all it takes is one to make it past. It dies after, stabbed through by a pair of spears before being pulled apart, but the damage is already done. Two more bodies are added to the bloody dead, more meat among the mud.

I feel them, the bodies, the chill of their skin as my soul rolls out over the field. Cold fingers run over my arms, flat teeth from open mouths scrape across my hair and neck. This is not where I should be. My mind is cracking under the sensation of it all. It is too real, too real to be just another hallucination, but then, I always thought that while trapped in my dark dreams. No, this is real. I am just a girl, not even twenty years old, floating above a massacre, lit by the light of a red, night sky. There is a feeling like I have always been here, and like that I'm not even here right now. Despite it, I can't keep this damned grin off my face as power rushes through me. I am free, aren't I?

The storm of dragonfire falls again less than three minutes later. The explosions that tear and burn are more focused now, blasting away all the monsters surrounding one of the largest groups of survivors. As the flashing lights of the fire begin to fade into smoke around the group, I catch a few eyes turned my way from below. Another fusillade of flames descends, a clear trail plowed through the snow in the wake of my destructive magic. They don't need any words to understand. Before my channels can begin to run dry again, the group of more than forty is on the move, those still with energy running at the head, forcing back the demons that emerge from their hiding places where they used their dead brethren as a shield from the blaze.

This time, none falter as they push toward the domed shield. They make the cover of the shield, having a hole in the magic opened for them as they rush inside before my magic can even begin to run dry.

A few monsters buzz around me in the air, far fewer than there should be, I know. Those that approach too close attract my attention, feeling the full wrath of my presence. Those that manage not to plummet from the air require a more direct application of magic. Blowing them apart, sending their burning carcasses to splatter on the ground, I am stricken for a moment by the ease of it.

The first time that I killed one of the flying eyeball demons hadn't exactly been the most difficult thing in the world, but they feel more like nuisances than anything right now. Drifting through the air, watching the fatigued fighting below as I wait for my magical reserves to refill, I catch a glimpse of my future. The power of the throne sustains me now, the ability granted to me pushing all of my attributes far higher than they should be. Even so, I still burn through my magic far faster than it replenishes. But, what if that won't always be the case? What if a day comes when my ability to pull power from my soul surpasses my ability to spend it? Will that be me one day, an infinite font of power, inexhaustible?

For the next twenty minutes, I move through the same cycle, burning away entire swaths of the land beneath me, making a passage of safety for one group or another. Then I pause, allowing myself to recover, resting despite the constant fighting and death playing out below me. Shouldn't it affect me more, having to witness it? Shouldn't I be driven to desperation, leaving the safety of the sky to fight a desperate melee down on the ground, unwilling to let a single death happen while my mana recovers? I don't. There is a part of my spirit that feels like not giving over to the desperate emotion of the field below is failing somehow. If I don't put myself into danger, I'm doing something wrong, aren't I?

Yet, I stay, methodically pursuing the issue. I see every time that I fail, feel every life that could have been saved turn to ash. Seventeen times over the half hour, I fail. I will remember their faces forever, will hear the last whispered words forever, but I refuse to let it make me reckless.

Then, it is done. The majority of the field before the palace is cleared. Of the bodies now littering the ground, I can't have contributed more than a third. The monsters that remain skitter away if they are able, fleeing back toward the dead tree that overlooks us all.

The wind whistles around me. No one told the warm breeze that a battle was going on. As I move, as I take my attention from the earth below me and push my awareness further away, I find my pockets of survivors throughout the estate. One in particular draws my awareness. The sky is racing past before I know that I am moving, my attention focused on one cluster in particular, on the billowing aura inside a ring of men and women.

"Jor'Mari."

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