Shalkar.

  The Agri-District.

  Three harvest seasons after the cataclysm of fire and brimstone brought by the rogue Russia Tower from Yekaterinburg, the workers and residents of Shalkar’s Agri-districts were well-versed in evacuation drills.

  Within hours of Nizhny’s arrival overhead, except for scouts hidden in shielded lookouts, the Rat-kin and Centaurs working the fields escaped into the Dyar Morkk underneath to be rapidly transited into the city’s safe underbelly.

  Once underground, Rat-kin guards in the uniform of Marshal Lulan Li’s Hearth Guards, reinforced by Dwarven Golems with thrumming Spellswords, ensured that no spies or enemy Mages could infiltrate the shelters.

  All of this was invisible to the Towers overhead, who made their cautious advances in a leapfrog pattern, expanding and contracting their defensive and offensive capabilities as they roamed.

  Though Nizhny and Novosibirsk were of equal dignity, the observers knew who was the principal offender of Shalkar’s sovereignty and would, therefore, be taking the brunt of its ire.

  While Novosibirsk flew at a comfortable altitude, its geometric fortifications bristling with magic circles and defensive Mandalas, Nizhny hovered closer to the ground, barely a dozen storeys over the verdant valley, with the base of its repulsion-Mandalas flattening anything not tied down or reinforced by magic.

  Now and then, Flights of Mages exited the catacomb structures that housed the Tower’s military forces, making large, circular figures with their mana trails. These would encounter the defence forces that had remained to report on the Tower’s progress, move to harass or disperse them, then return to the safety of the Tower’s shielding.

  Within Nizhny’s multi-level control centre, Petyr Shuysky, Master of the Tower and Hero of the Federation, was observing the situation with his compatriot, Master Boris Govorov of Novosibirsk, technically his equal, but in reality his superior. Compared to his sickly self, Govorov appeared handsome and dignified, with the piercing blue eyes of Ice Dragons and a full head of hair accented by an equally impressive moustache. On the man’s chest, a row of medals three tiers deep indicated his credentials as Lord Marshal of the Novosibirsk Oblast.

  On Petyr’s enormous lumen-caster illusion, his Diviners projected the scenes around the Tower far and near. One of those scenes showed the source of the distant plume of light smoke in the city ahead.

  The source was a riot inside Shalkar’s third residential district, where the young and inexperienced ruler of the city had housed all of the “refugees” from Yekaterinburg. Of course, now that Novosibirsk was making its move, these Mages and NoMs were no longer refugees sheltered by Shalkar’s generosity but detained Russian citizens of the Orenburg Oblast.

  The Sparrow responsible for the spontaneous rage seizing the population was none other than the favourite pet of Vasili Popov, the pearl of his current flock of little birdies. Together with her peers, they had implanted suggestions, sown discord, and disrupted the entirety of Shalkar’s assimilation ambitions until its citizens burned with desire for their return to the Motherland.

  “We request aid from the Federation—“ the voice of one Sergey Ivanov, formerly a Lt Colonel of Yekaterinburg, shouted through the public communication channels open for all to witness and see, another feat managed by Natalia, the She-wolf, Volkova. In the event that the Federation takes over a portion of Shalkar’s inner district, there should be no ambiguity that their former citizens invited them, and that Russia was merely expressing its God-given sovereignty. “… Too long has our people been shackled by the crystal-crazed false-prophet of Shalkar and her preaching of profit—“

  “… and there we have it,” the Message relay communicated the immense relief expressed by Marshal Boris Govorov from his circular command station, made to resemble the interior of a great warship. “That was a close call, Comrade Shuysky. If Natalia had not come through with the revolt, we would have had to aggrieve a Regent of the Mageocracy openly.”

  “Truly… unimaginable,” Shuysky replied with his usual grimness. “Who would have imagined that Moscow had planted ears among the Demi-humans. I had always imagined ourselves to be puritans, believing only in the power of the numberless proletariat.”

  His Comrade Tower Master laughed. “We’re doing precisely that, Comrade. We’re saving our people from mingling with these rats, horses, hyenas, and what else have you. Do not fret for our masters back in Moscow. They know their duties as well as we should. Have faith.”

  “My only hope is that this isn’t a trap or ploy,” Petyr Shuysky maintained his composure and expression as he spoke. “You know these wily Demi-humans. Even if Moscow has found a way to work with them, their goal is surely their kind's benefit, not ours.”

  “Petyr… my brother in arms… calm yourself. I cannot and will not say the whole true, but allow me to explain that the warning pertaining to our interventions comes from beings the Federation cannot hope to ignore.”

  Shuysky gave the matter enough pause to be convincing that he was being convinced. He wanted more information for his future new home’s benefit, but Govorov was already generous by revealing that much. If Popov had been present, an order and an expectation that Nizhny would die trying to fulfil his orders was all Shuysky would receive.

  “As discussed then, my Tower will lead,” the Tower Master said.

  “Indeed, comrade. As always, your dedication to the Motherland is without equal,” Govorov replied without a hint of irony. “We are following closely and will provide every opportunity to reduce your burden.”

  A blaring number of sirens rocked Shuysky’s control room, demanding his attention. “I anticipate that you will keep that promise, Comrade Marshal,” he said to his brother in arms, his mind brimming with calculation and anticipations of what was to come. “Because the Khan’s Centaurs are not known for their meekness!”

  Richard Huang, administrator of Shalkar City and deputy to her Regency, the Pale Priestess, watched with impassivity as his partner-in-espionage, the criminally alluring Natalia, put on a show worthy of American Vid-caster academies.

  In an isolated block of Shalkar designated to be the centre of the wide net the city had cast to ensnare a Tower, the Sparrow Hawks had used their talents to Suggest, brainwash, obfuscate and manipulate the Moscow loyalists into what they believed to be a grand coup. For weeks, the sods had been lead to believe that Shalkar was emptied of Gwen’s military forces, and that the city’s security was a hollow shell of its pre-Deepholm self.

  Then came the order to preemptively attack immediately, and Natalia had to rush down to the Districts to fabricate a justification for taking action while the loyalists were still subverting the city’s volunteers and defenders.

  Thankfully, that was when the Suggestions the Sparrows had originally planted in the former citizens of Yekaterinburg served as convenient shortcuts to tragedy. With only a few words and the passing of a semi-truth order from Moscow Tower, Ivanov and his men raised their banners. They barricaded themselves and a thousand of their followers inside the residential District’s town hall, using a device Natalia had set up to communicate with the Russian Towers.

  For Richard, the loss of those poor, deluded citizens as the cost of exorcising Shalkar’s festering parasites was an absolute necessity, for he had no use for men and women whose eyes stared elsewhere while living upon the shining hill of progress built by their dearest Regent.

  And besides, the loss of the failed converts was nothing compared to the Mages, Rat-kins and Centaurs that would fall due to their present ploy.

  On the lumen-caster screens of Shalkar’s Bunker, wrapped around a semi-circle construct made to capture the Diviners’ relays, he coldly observed the Khan's elite Khesig Honour Guard, followed by several thousand Rat-kin that made up the city’s militia.

  At the outskirts of the city’s districts, the Centaur cavalry met the first Tower, Nizhny. Midway, they began to harness the immense mental and vital energies the Demi-humans manifested to best a larger, monstrous foe.

  Simultaneously, spellfire in lightning, ice, fire and stone rained down from the Tower, only to be brushed aside by the fearless charge of the topless Centaurs, their glowing bodies scarlet with the Mandala of Thunder blood.

  Dozens fell after the first volley, but those were the weakest of the charging phalanx, whose vitality was drained by those who led from the front. With a great howl whose voice was not transmuted to Richard’s Lumen-projection, Khudu launched a Dwarf-forged Pilum one-half the length of his galloping form toward the Tower.

  Behind him, a hundred Centaurs joined by a thousand of their brethren, launched their barbed spears as well, sending upward such a cloud of menacing destruction that Richard felt the hair on his forearms stand in awe.

  With a shockwave that could be felt even in the Bunker, the red cloud struck, sending kinetic ripples to travel from the Tower’s lower quadrant to its upper back section, flowing out Magic Circles and Mandalas along the way.

  For a small, breath-held moment, the forward momentum of Nizny Tower stalled—then great plumes of burning mana rose from its furnaces, and the Tower’s surface shimmered anew with regenerative Walls of Force.

  Mage Flights swarmed from the Tower’s interior, understanding that the Centaurs could not manage a similar attack immediately. Spellfire skirmishes broke out below Nizhny immediately, with the skilled Russian War Mages aiming to prevent the Centaurs from squaring up and returning to burn another ten thousand HDMs from the Tower’s liquid reserves.

  But for all the fire and brimstone, flare and flames, the Centaurs’ central preoccupation appeared to be stalling the Tower.

  And they were successful—until the looming shadow of Novosibirsk cleared its line of fire by floating over and above its sibling.

  The sky darkened—then enormous clods of conjured stone, some mixed with magma, others with ice, rained down on Khudu and his troops.

  Explosions rocked the fertile fields of the Agri-Districts as horses fell or were crushed, with the Khan’s former bodyguard capable of only turning aside half of the spells. Once more, those higher up in the hierarchy slipped out from under the endless assault, while those whose vitality was expended were left to their device, as the iron laws of the steppes had intended.

  “Sir—“ Richard’s aides, a pair of Dwarves from the same Clan as Hanmoul, reported that the city’s newest defensive artillery was now online. “Permission to fire counter volley.”

  “Do it,” Richard said, shaking off the guilt of using allies as bait with the ease of a duck shaking water from its back. “And tell Khudu to retreat.”

  While Richard’s communications officers performed his bidding, the entirety of the Bunker shook and vibrated. Unlike its previous iteration, the newest spell cannon mounted in the shielded mountainside of the Bunker converted mana via the means of a lesser Leviathan Core harvested from the Regent’s last outing.

  Though a quarter the size of the Core intended to power the new Tower, it’s integration into the Bunker’s systems meant Shalkar had a reliable source of fresh water for its agricultural needs, and in events such as their present crisis, could lob great globs of liquid with the weight of entire buildings, either in liquid or frozen states.

  Calibration and accuracy of their newest artillery aside, Richard watched with anticipation as the projectile of mass-mana materialised into an oblong sphere of water in the tens of thousands of litres. Considering that a mere cubic meter of sea water weighed a ton, he had always wondered what destructive power ten thousand tons of incompressible water would wreak upon a slow-moving, untethered target.

  Over the next dozen seconds, with Nizhny’s Tower Master cackling to himself, the water spheres struck.

  With a cacophony that could only be imagined, the officer corps of Shalkar watched a flying Tower rear backwards violently, shielding and mana array sparking all over as it dipped low enough to scrape the wheat fields, digging a trench as wide as it was deep into the sandy soil below.

  The Centaurs scattered, escaping into the pre-prepared low-way entrances that sealed themselves before the cascade of water and mud could smother the mechanisms.

  “Bit of a trajectory,” Richard remarked, licking his lips as Lea cooed beside his ear. “And slow travel time as well. Very impressive knock back, however. I dare say a Fire Elemental swarm would be erased with ease.”

  “Lad, yer Human Towers can only dodge via teleportation,” the Dwarven Engineseer replied through a pair of heavily haired nostrils. “It costs us less tae fire th' leviathan cannons than it does fur them tae dodge. With our unlimited access tae th' ley, we kin pace th' firing tae wear oot their supply o' HDMs even if they turtle.”

  “Point made." Richard understood enough of the Engineseer to agree. “However, when will we fire next?”

  “Aboot sax minutes, lad,” the Engineseer deflated. “That’s the best we can push on an MK I.”

  “Aye,” Richard exhaled. “Natalia?”

  On screen, the shaken Tower lifted itself out of its momentary stupor, its frontal sections ablaze with force projections as it burned through its internal mana reserves. As always, the true weakness of a Human Tower wasn’t in its design, but in the logistical chain supporting its functions. With a lurch, the archaic-designed Tower with its medieval, Mage Tower facade and cathedral-like window-scapes shimmered and thrummed with silvery Conjuration…

  “Nizhny will begin its ingress to take the city’s outer node,” Natalia replied from the communications room in the Geofront below the occupied District, above which the loyalists had already been contained after putting on the show. “Novosibirsk reports it will follow shortly.”

  Richard snorted, shaking his head in disbelief. “With allies like this, who needs Gwen to break their backs?”

  Their spymaster also shook her head, then rapidly spoke Russian to the Divination devices connected to their foes.

  “Is the Orsk Station clear?” He made sure to double-check the evacuations of the Low-way station that Nizhny had been given space to occupy. “I would loath to lose men and women solely due to incompetence.”

  “It’s as clear as can be, Sir,” a junior administrator notified her superior. “We fabricated a report about a monstrous incursion and cleared it as soon as the Towers began their assault. Anyone who remains now should either be hiding from the city guard, or has chosen to remain wilfully.”

  “Good enough for me,” Richard spared no compassion for looters or the lazy, and far too much care for his precious guards to risk them on civilians. “Establish the perimeter. Shut the dimensional anchor points. Let nothing infiltrate into the Dyar Morkk.”

  “Aye, Sir!” his staff went about their battle stations.

  Just then, the screens flashed a brilliant white. Nizhny glowed, then winked out of existence—

  —to reappear much closer to the city, hovering close enough that the new canons would need to be recalibrated for danger-close artillery support.

  Instantly, the Tower's shielding collided with the Resonance Engines protecting the city, causing the air to catch fire. This turned the outer district, with its warehouse hub, into the epicentre of a localised sunset.The buildings closest to the descending Tower wobbled and then collapsed. At the same time, the intense heat of the colliding energies set entire warehouses, rows of trees, and aqueducts alight, laying down enormous, street-sized zig-zags of mana burn in a forward-facing arc that looked like an insane child had placed a birthday sparkler on a woollen carpet.

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  Richard watched the scampering figures of those who had refused to evacuate the “monstrous incursion” scamper and burn, and rolled his eyes at their insubordination. Most poignantly, he noted that almost all the offenders were Humans, with barely a Rat-kin or Centaur among them. Most of these would be looters or opportunists, with a few stubborn old-timers who preferred to defend their shops rather than be compensated.

  By her Paleness, I hate my own kind. Richard affirmed his loathing for his fellow kind. He hadn’t noticed that he was grinding his teeth until Lea cooled his fevered breath with a jolt of ice-cold mana.

  After a dozen breaths where he threw the unnecessary collateral over his shoulder, Nizhny was already digging in, performing what was planned and promised.

  “Fire the Spellswords, keep the damage under their maximum shielding output,” Richard informed the engineers.

  A second later, a hundred spellfire blasts opened up on the surface of the Tower as it penetrated the bedrock, its base aglow with Mandalas that sought to usurp Shalkar’s control over the ley-lines.

  This was the moment.

  The gamble.

  If Shuysky were to betray them here…

  Felling Lea’s cool body against his head, Richard decided he didn’t like the risk after all.

  “Tell our Tower to be on full alert, all weapon platforms should be ready and active. Golems powered and Spellswords warmed for slaughter. If Nizhny’s Mages enter the perimeter, take no prisoners. Spare no crystals. Nothing is to be damaged or pilfered from the Regent’s construction site.”

  The Dwarven teams from the Citadel affirmed his orders.

  “Inform Magister Holland and the Lady Grey,” he gave orders to reactivate Shalkar’s ISTC Mandalas. Somewhere not too far from Shalkar, well within the sheltered regions of the Kyiv Green Zone, Shalkar’s backers were attending an auction of Magical Goods manufactured by Shalkar’s rare contingent of Dwarven artisans. “Tell our allies I would like their esteemed selves and entourage present, as witnesses for what shall come to pass.”

  Nizhny Tower.

  The Control Room.

  Petyr Shuysky acknowledged with no uncertainty that, once more, he was at a crossroads.

  The first time he was at the crossroads of life and death, he had been a young man, and he had been afflicted with the common illness of young men of privilege—the misconception that passion, good intentions, and heart were enough to change the world, and that God was Good.

  His family shunned him for his sympathies for the proletariat, though there was no denying his place as heir to the Shuysky Grand Duchy.

  Then, when the Bolsheviks took him, tortured him, and gave him a dog’s choice, he made it.

  He gave up his family.

  He gave up their assets.

  He gave up their hiding places.

  But was that a really choice?

  It would be easy to say that he regretted those choices.

  But what does regret mean when you have no choice?

  He wasn’t there to see his mother’s death, but sometimes, Petyr dreamed it.

  In the dream, he was sixteen or eighteen, a blonde, noble youth with too much wealth and privilege. His mother was tall, statuesque, with eyes like the arctic ocean, and a fine head of magnificent pale hair. She always dressed in green, always in a bodice, and Petyr remembered thinking daily about his mother’s poise, grace, and pain. In her arms, she held a baby. Maybe it’s his sister, perhaps not, his memory wasn’t so reliable now after the Mind Mages had scoured his brain for information.

  Her death, his Commissar later told him, had been tragic—dignified and tragic. Alone she stood, her guards fled, turned or died, with her daughters in hand, facing the peasant Mages and their Wands with a grim smile. They informed his mother that Petyr gave them up, the Commissar had said. But his mother did not rage, nor did she cry. She merely said to the peasant men, calmly, that as a reasonably powerful Ice Mage, she would fight them to the death and take half of them with her, or they could allow her to kill her daughters first, quickly—then she would too would die with dignity. The Commissar had explained to Petyr that the officers, who were at least educated and had come from the Military Academy, had allowed it because they understood implicitly that here was the last of Russian’s noble past, that the tragedy occurring on that day would not happen again, for it was a tragic end borne out of love and sacrifice, grace and dignity, a sentiment too private and noble for the Russia they hoped to build in the coming century.

  Petyr, hearing the kind words of the Commissar, had asked to die.

  “Too late. You are long dead, Comrade Shuysky,” the grizzled old veteran said with a sigh. “When you are released from those manacles, you will be one of us, the walking dead. Like me, you shall serve the Federation and be the hammer and sickle of Comrade Stalin, then perish…without tragedy.”

  Two decades later, his friend, the disgraced Grand Commissar Vinogradov, was put to death for embezzlement of state funds, executed without dignity in the Red Square.

  To his knowledge, the man had lived penniless, eating only at the state canteens.

  “Mana drawing at forty-seven per cent!” His chief Engineer disrupted Petyr’s thoughts with a bark, his tone rich with relief. The last attack had drained their mana reserves, knocked out several primary Mandalas, and put their levitation engines under immense strain. “We’re cutting off their defensive Mandalas now! Ley-tapping in progress, sixty per cent!”

  Seated beside a dozen archaic consoles inscribed with precious metal and Cores, Petyr laid a hand on the keys to channel a half-million HDMs worth of mana into the Tower’s Conjuration Mandalas.

  If he continued the Tower’s forceful seizure of Shalkar’s ley-line, then Novosibirsk would easily penetrate the city’s airspace, making their artillery useless. His Comrade Tower would then force itself into the residential District’s ley-line node, becoming impervious to the Bunker’s siege-strength Spell Swords.

  After which, the negotiation would begin for the seizure of the city, or at worst, an exchange that would force the Regent to give up her Leviathan Core and annexe a section of Shalkar to the Federation.

  Petyr watched the Bunker’s power nodes turn dull on the Divination screens.

  The World Tree of Shalkar loomed overhead, larger than he recalled since their Towers invaded the north. From its green foliage nearer the top to its autumn colours below, the sheer magnificence and beauty of the World Tree was enough to make Atheists believe in the existence of a higher, benevolent power. From his instrumental panel’s confusion, Petyr fully perceived the rumours that the tree’s presence distorted space and time as a Pillar of the Axis Mundi.

  “Master Shuysky, Master Govorov wishes to confirm our position.”

  “Confirmed,” Petyr gave the order. “Tap into the ley, draw out its power to fill our reserves. Send out the regimental Mage Flights to seize the Regent’s fabrication site. Sent out our Reserve forces as well. Claim it at all costs.”

  “Confirmed! Relaying our position now, Tower Master!” The control room replied.

  Petyr watched his men and women, some of whom had been with him for decades, swarm out of the Mage Tower like angry hornets upon discovering a honey hive. In another country, in another Tower, perhaps a Tower Master would be attached to the youngsters under his protective shielding. In Moscow, where the motivators of ambition were self-preservation, where fear, pain, jealousy, and wrath ruled the weaker emotions, his men and women seemed more like pawns on a chessboard than flesh and blood people.

  But they were his children, in a manner of speaking, and he had to give them what mercy he could spare.

  “Novosibirsk activating Planar Jaunt…” his aide reported. “Displacement in Three… Two… One… They’re in! The Operation is a success!”

  On screen, Petyr passively watched the cubism-inspired Novosibirsk Tower shunt into place above the NoM Districts, its shielding raining down a shower of sparks and plasma as the resonators clashed and the Levitation Engines crushed the structures below, effortlessly erasing a portion of the Federation’s supporters from existence.

  Without a moment to spare, the Federation’s finest Mages exited Novosibirsk’s interior, clad in the finest war gear Moscow could afford its elite forces. Their only purpose was to ensure that Novosibirsk had enough time to destroy the layers of protection that shielded the Districts from the Dyar Morkk below, so that the Tower’s tendrils could drill into the ley-lines repurposed by the Dwarven Citadel.

  Then, an endless battle of attrition would ensue both above and below—at least until negotiations were had and the city was sliced and diced by its hungry occupiers.

  It was a good plan, Petyr had to admit.

  One that had no reason to end catastrophically, at least on paper.

  Shalkar.

  The Bunker.

  Richard Huang watched the same district burn for the third time since its founding.

  The first time, a rogue Tower Master had dropped a meteor and shattered the buildings, the windows and the landscaping.

  The second time, it was a revolt by disgruntled humans who wanted to be more equal than their Centaur and Rat-kin compatriots.

  This time, it was because belligerents had called for aid from a Russian Tower, and the arrival of a Tower displacing the fabrics of space was enough to disintegrate the pre-fabricated concrete habitat blocks made by the Dwarves.

  How many had died in that staggering moment?

  Richard guessed a few hundred, because that was the number Natalia had corralled into the landing zone they had anticipated. Among them would be the leader of the rebels, that fine young man called Ivanov something, the one who had harassed Petra’s family. Of all the men and women whose names had been placed on a list for his perusal, Richard had made sure that the Sparrow Hawks paid especial attention to him, so that at the moment of the Tower’s arrival, the fool would be open mouthed and grinning below, his brain-half-soup but still functional enough to realise the irony of his sudden, violent end.

  DING—! DING—! DING—!

  A dozen warnings blared, as did the Messages from the different district leaders protecting the city. Richard did not need to answer them to see that Moscow’s Mage Flights were already suppressing the defenders with fire and lightning, ice and wind, rapidly clearing a beachhead so that Novosibirsk could deploy its Mandala below and drill into Shalkar’s geo-front.

  The screens flared, painting Richard’s face a technicolour array of Elemental hues.

  Golems emerged from the tunnels to counterfire.

  Spellswords mounted on the Bunker’s hillside blared their mana cartridges.

  Rat-kin militiamen in the tens of thousands, armed with wands and hand-held shields, ran through the streets to contain the Tower’s incursion into Shalkar’s infrastructure.

  A Message spell bloomed, its access unmolested by Richard’s priority filters.

  “Master Richard,” the sultry voice of Natalia drifted across the air, a little breathless, for they were about to accomplish. “Master Shuysky has arrived in the tree’s Crown. I am escorting him to his new abode now.”

  Richard’s glowing eyes returned to the largest screens, one showing Nizhny, and the other a rotating image of Novosibirsk, its surface clad from apex to nadir in shimmering shielding.

  His gaze lingered for a moment at Novosibirsk, then the entire control room grew bright as daylight from the sudden burst of Conjuration surrounding Nizhny.

  In a wink, Nizhny Tower was gone, leaving behind an enormous cavity akin to a missing molar in the outer Districts.

  At the same time, the depressed, orange-red Sigils signifying the blocked pathways of mana feeding Shalkar reignited with new vitality, sending a field of emerald Glyphs to replace the emergency warnings.

  Shielding, weapon platforms, low-way tunnels and Resonance Engines dormant and asleep ignited at once, restoring as much as one-third the total volume of mana coursing through Shalkar’s underground circuits.

  In the Geo Front, a Mandala Dwarven engineers had been building since a year ago flared into life for the first time, tapping into the World Tree’s dimensional anchorage properties to lock down the transit of objects through space.

  Richard felt a thrill that tingled his spine. Indeed, it was now time to break an opponent's leg.

  The ground beneath Novosibirsk shattered, but the Tower’s Force-driven Mandalas could not penetrate the city’s crust.

  The resulting shockwave rang out in a great dust cloud, sending Golems reeling and Rat-men fleeing for cover as what remained of the Russian district collapsed outwards or crumbled where it stood.

  Above Novosibirsk, panes of pure force, projected by turning the city’s defence inward, prevented the Tower from escaping through conventional means. At the same time, incredible volleys of spellfire sent its Mage Flights packing into the Tower’s shadow to avoid instant obliteration.

  Within the great misshapen Tower of concrete, steel and glass, Master Boris Govorov had fallen from the high heaven of mission accomplished to Dante’s lowest circle of Hell, unable to comprehend the inexplicable occurrence of what had just happened.

  “Where in St Peter’s name is Nizhny?!” he demanded of his staff. “It disappeared? Did they destroy it? Was it a Dragon?”

  But Towers were built to fight Dragons, and though only his Tower could withstand and fight an Ancient Red Dragon to a standstill, there was no way for Nizhny to be obliterated in a single instant.

  “The mana signature was for a Greater Teleport,” his Divination officer analysed the floating, shimmering mana residue at once. “They’ve… er… activated the Contingency Teleportation Reserve Mandala. Nizhny has…er… gone home, sir.”

  Govorov would have ripped out his finely trimmed beard in a fit of rage and confusion if he hadn't had decades of tenure in creative suffering and Moscow politics.

  “Were they in danger?” He asked.

  The Divination station remained silent.

  “Where is Shuysky? Can we hail him?”

  “No, Marshal,” the shaky reply possessed a tension that could be played like a viol. “Nizhny is out of range, assuming it has… returned.”

  Govorov touched a hand to his temple and felt the sweat pouring down his chiselled face.

  “Are those his men still in the field?” He pointed to the Contingency Ring signals hovering over where Shalkar’s Tower was being constructed. Even as he spoke, a few flared and burned. “Where did that go?”

  “To us, Master Govorov,” the Divination aide checked their internal diagnostics. “With Nizhny out of range, they’re tethered to our triage bays.”

  The control room shook. The shields were holding, but Engineering reported that the Tower’s mana reserves were visibly decreasing.

  “A trap, then?” Govorov said to no one in particular. “A betrayal from Shuysky? But…why? And the Sparrows…why…”

  His brain refused its logical computations. The operation had been a year in the making. Their present assault was a spontaneous, unplanned attack that no one in either Tower had anticipated. The Sparrows had been orchestrating the revolt and feeding the Towers reliable information since their arrival.

  How could they have failed to specularly?

  Was there perhaps…

  A striking note of fear played in Govorov’s chest.

  An Oracle?

  Did Shalkar have an Oracle? Indeed, if they were connected to the Dragons as the rumours had suggested, it wasn’t impossible that the Regent had access to an Oracle that could foretell moments of Calamity.

  Even so, should the Sparrows not have seen such a thing?

  Or did the Oracle foresee the Sparrows’ infiltration of the city, dipping their fingers into the river of time to foretell which seeds would bloom or wilt?

  Govorov castigated his self-doubt. Doubt was the slayer of action; he had seen too much to stop.

  “Engineering, prepare for maximum displacement,” Govorov made up his mind as doubt fell away to ire, turning his mind cruel. If these Demi-human loving Mageocracy pawns would seek to entrap him, then he would show them what the Russian military is capable of when cornered. “Gather the Mage Flights, brief the Captains on the Shielding Stations Shalkar has deployed, and equip the men for sabotage and reclamation.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Govorov considered the resources on hand.

  “Divination, send an SOS to Moscow as soon as we breach the shielding. Use the Contingency capsule at the first opportunity. Artillery, all Tier 4 Evokers and above, to engage maximised manifestations, spare no mana or Mandala. Abjuration, focus on protecting our Mages as they descend for the Shielding Stations. I will allow limited structural damage to the Tower’s non-essential segments.”

  Govorov paused.

  “Assign the Ist Guards Aviation Flight and the 3rd and 5th Support Flight to the recovery of Nizhny’s survivors. They are to join the assault on the Shielding Stations at E-42 and G-22 as soon as they clear the Tower site.”

  His men affirmed their Master’s commands.

  “Tower Master, hostiles are incoming from the north, unique mana signature! It’s a named Mage Flight!”

  Govorov furrowed his brows.

  To his knowledge, Shalkar’s military was young, and other than the Regent and specific individual Dragons, the city possessed no renown units or Mages with international infamy.

  The Divination projections flickered as the Magus-operator attuned the lumen projection with his Clairvoyance. The newly perceived vision showed a youthful-looking Mage in orange-white battle armour, bearing a tabard embossed with three golden lions on gules, flared with a crown, atop a tapestry lined with intricate golden sequins.

  The orange-haired Mage did not attack, but merely hovered just out of shielding range, flanked by two Flights of grizzled veterans in various Mage-plates ranging from the heavily inscribed Intercessor Suits blessed by the Knightly orders under the Church of England, to Tactical Assault plates crafted on commission by Dwarven artisans.

  “Thomas Holland…” Govorov felt his jaws clench and his heart sink. “The Drake Slayer of St George.”

  The Mage himself aside, five of his best Mage Flights would faire no better than an upper tier monster when facing the Steam Mage and his entourage, whose members had taken more lives in the Niger Delta than his men had fought in the last decade. The members bearing intercessor armour were especially worrying, for Faith Magic enacted small miracles far beyond Russia’s mastery of the Imperial Magic System.

  As for Holland, if the future Duke made it inside his Tower… Govorov could not begin to imagine the damage the Drake Slayer could accomplish before his Contingency Ring triggered.

  With Holland standing guard, could his Tower Mages break through to Shalkar’s Shielding Stations?

  Even if they did, who could hold the stations while Govorov made his escape?

  “Sir…” another image materialised. “The Thunder Dragon is here as well.”

  Govorov felt his mouth grow dry as an enormous flock of Harpies swirled over the Tower’s apex, overshadowed by a colossal Thunder Dragon with cruel, yellow eyes and a clubbed, spiked tail. There was no sound, but the Marshal could hear the mocking laughter as clearly as the insane screeching of warning Glyphs atop his command console.

  While Govorov tried to unlock his rigid jaws, an emergency channel pinged.

  “Master Govorov,” his chief communication officer spoke calmly and measuredly, a testament to his threshold for trauma. “Call incoming from the Bunker. It’s their administrator, Magus Richard Huang.”

  “Pause all operations,” Govorov forced his bristling beard to fall back into place. “Put the Administrator through.”

  A second later, the youthful face of Richard Huang, a young Magus barely in his late twenties and yet wielding the power of a city, looked over the Tower Master and his pinned medals.

  “Master Huang,” Govorov nodded slowly, but not too obviously. “Your Regent has played us well.”

  “Master Govorov,” his opponent bowed without shame. “With all due respect for one of your station, I must inform you that I have not established this line of communication to demand capitulation.”

  “Then why are you here, Master Huang? To gloat?” Govorov suppressed a growl. “We are outnumbered, but the Russian spirit isn’t so easily quelled.”

  “Ah—“ the Asian administrator scratched his head as if supremely embarrassed. “I agree, since our grandmother is Russian, and the tenacity of that woman puts even our sassy Priestess to shame. However, I’ve just been informed that the Regent is on her way back—and er… if you know her reputation, it might be advisable to capitulate to me here and now and keep both Moscow’s losses minimal and your power base unsullied…”

  Govorov felt the pit of his belly drop.

  This whole time, the accursed Devourer wasn’t even in her city? She was elsewhere? Where? Was that why Moscow had demanded that the Regent be stopped and her Leviathan Core confiscated? With the Thunder Dragon and Thomas Holland, and if the Devourer were to arrive now…

  “… or… You know…” the vice-Regent laughed and shrugged awkwardly, every inch the merciful, inexperienced diplomat. “Pay full price when you negotiate with her Profitess, the Priestess of our Shoggoth, Liberator of Cities, Friend of Tryfan, Goddess of the Deep, Saviour of Deepholme, kin to Dragons, and of course, the Regent of Shalkar, the very mother to the city whose children you just bodied with a Tower.”

  Notice: Vol 9 Will hit the shelves soon, meaning those chapters will be removed from the RR backlog.

  New VOL 13 COVER - Noblesse Oblige

  VOL 14 COVER - Where Dragons Dream