The remains of the four chimera beasts disintegrated on the stiff high-altitude breeze.

  “Aye, these creatures have had their hit points and resistances buffed since my day.” Gael had returned to his contemplative position three paces left of dead center at the southern edge of the tower’s roof.

  Everyone who was Brand-compatible save for Gael had leveled up after the fight. Calaf was now level 53 with modest endurance, strength, and charisma boosts. Zilara was level 42 with boosts to everything but strength. The church party received their cleric and paladin-weighted stat boosts. The mages of the party did not pause to examine their level-up Interfaces, for they had a more important target that would boost their stats far higher.

  With the chimeras dead, the Battletower roof reverted from ‘arena mode’ to something more like an observatory. Stone astrolabes emerged along the perimeter, including right off Gael’s right shoulder.

  Two remaining crimson mages took readily available items off these semicircular astronomical instruments. These key items were necessary to rank these crimson mages up to Battlemage. With the loot dealt out and the parties recovered,

  The sun hung low to the south and west. It would be nightfall within an hour.

  “We must move fast,” Gael said. “It is unwise to stay in the Battletower after dark.”

  Far below, the setting sun cast long shadows over the crags and fissures of the hinterlands. Rocky ground squirmed with thousands of restive figures. The rot must have been watching and waiting beneath the hinterlands for weeks, months, even years. Mass casualties from last year's heretic purge only strengthened the army of the dead. No settlement could survive out here for long, and it was only a matter of time until the rot spilled out into more populated areas.

  Calaf did a quick head count. They only had three mages here – Gael, and two surviving crimson mages. They’d arrived on the roof with three crimson mages.

  “The third mage?” Jelena wrinkled her nose. “Got tail whipped off the tower while you were in that one creature’s mouth.”

  “I trust the scholars downstairs have informed you of what needs to be done?” Gael asked.

  The mages nodded. “We have the spell. But we’re down a man. With the two of us and you, we can only cover three of four directions.”

  The church party was all knights and clerics. Neither of which could perform the specific spell required, a proprietary spell of Battlemagery.

  “We can call for other mages now that the tower is clear,” Calaf suggested.

  Still facing away, Gael shrugged. “Possible, aye. But it will be dark by the time you get down, recruit another mage, and get back here. Every night this phenomenon spreads unchecked is another night it risks breaking out of range of our countermeasure.”

  A hand shot up from a diminutive figure. It rose only to the level of Calaf and Jelena’s shoulders.

  “Tag me in, Hoss.”

  The crew looked to Zilara.

  “I can do it.”

  “This is a task for an experienced mage,” Gael said.

  Zilara was bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. “My stats are above average. C’mon. At least let me see the spell.”

  After a short period of negotiation, the surviving mages shared a spare spell with the holy child. It was a heavily modified version of a rote illumination spell, aside from a strangely high arcane requirement—a requirement Zilara happened to meet with room to spare.

  “She’s our… niece?” Jelena said. “Yeah. She’s from a far-off land. But she’s got the pedigree and a custom class that ought to handle any midlevel spell.”

  “As I can see,” Gael said, motioning at Zilara’s twinbrand eyes. “Can you do it, lassie?”

  Zilara nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah. Give it to me. I want to fry something. I’m good for it, Hoss. I’m good for it.”

  Even so, they set Zilara up on the north face of the tower. This would give her less ground of her own spellcraft to cover. Gael remained on the southern face, with the two surviving crimson mage graduates assuming positions to the west and east respectively.

  Astrolobes were placed at each compass position, a stone base with a set of dozens of glass lenses set up within a natural divot embedded in the floor. Zilara pilfered a spare lens, one of the Battlemage rank-up items. They’d already pilfered the Thief equivalent, and it was better to have it and not need it than need some and not have them.

  The spell they’d traveled up here to cast was:

  The astrolabe bases were turned outward and angled down over the infested countryside, the collection of lenses altered for a purpose other than stargazing.

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  With the sun just a sliver behind the western mountains, the ground was alive with a squirming morass. Centuries of undead growth crawling out from shadowed areas beneath the earth. It had finally reached a critical mass too dense to hide and numerous enough to overwhelm any other force in the land on the open field.

  Spellcasting, as always, took the form of a muttered or whispered incantation. Unlike the church spells Calaf was more familiar with, this took the form of a regimented language in quick fragments. After several minutes ‘casting,’ it became apparent that these incantations were math equations. The language was guttural and more alien than the antiquated text in the gospels. Calaf got the impression that nobody was saying it with the proper accents or sibyllic emphasis.

  Nevertheless, Zilara, Gael, and the others chanted until a miniature sun manifested in their hands. Further repetition of the arcane equations caused the mini-flare to grow in luminosity but not in warmth or lethality.

  The non-mage members of this rooftop raid looked down at the floor to avoid the blinding light. It would be many minutes more before the ritual was complete. Miniature suns crackled with a surprising amount of sound, so there was not much to do but mill about and think to oneself.

  Huh. If flares were a more secular, Battlemage-specific spell, it would explain why Honest John started throwing them out after he’d holed up in the Battletower for an extended period. Probably lured his level-manipulating, stat-boosted ersatz militia out into the hinterlands specifically to get access to the tower and its treasure trove of custom spells. Mere association of That Bastard with Joan and Cayo’s more benevolent reformist movement had given the arbiters carte blanche to purge everyone involved. Perhaps if Joan and Cayo had been more discerning in who they sourced their level-up baubles from, the world would be in a significantly different place right now.

  It was well past dusk by the time the spells were complete. And yet, a new, miniature sun manifested from atop the Battletower like an omnidirectional lighthouse. Below, the teeming morass of reanimated travelers, cultivators, and dire-beasts slunk back, too late to escape the cleansing flares. Lenses on the astrological equipment amplified the already blinding light of the flares, frying rot off its army of host corpses and granting merciful final death to countless creatures and people.

  “The mini-flares should be self-sustaining now,” Gael yelled over the din of the four crackling suns they’d manifested. “Lock them in place and leave them be. Travelers in the hinterlands will be safe this night.”

  The four mages daintily placed their handheld suns into a stand on the astrolabes. They locked them in place with a brace that did not appear to be part of the basic astronomy kit. The battletower was now a beacon, casting rot-slaying light in all directions. There was scarcely a shadow to be seen for a hundred leagues around.

  For the first time in untold months, that nameless barrowside settlement would be able to sleep peacefully through the night.

  The church party went down first. Mercifully they did not recognize Jelena’s posse as wanted criminals. Calaf and the others went down with Gael once they were certain that the flares would keep the rot at bay until at least midnight.

  Using a spare astrolabe as modified binoculars, the mages confirmed that their beacons had torn through a sea of undead menace. Bodies littered the hinterlands, rapidly decaying to dust in the steady, focused light.

  “I fear the rot will not be so easily cleansed,” Gael said as they hobbled down the stairs.

  “Hey, before we leave, what’s with that tower?” Zilara pointed at the short, squat spire-atop-a-spire poking out of the Battletower.

  Gael stopped, looked up the stairs, and nodded. “Aye, a fair question. That was built by the church relatively recently. Built out of the load-bearing pillar that runs the length of the tower. Contains the lift. Not sure what it does. Church handled the construction themselves.”

  The portal room was changed during the descent. Instead of a multicolored rainbow of portals, there was black and white fuzz between each archway. This was the tower’s self-quarantine measure: set all the portals to a ‘blank’ location, preventing them from being used. Shutting the door – and the portal network that risked sending the rot to all corners of the continent in an instant.

  The group continued their descent. Gael went slow, using his mallet as a walking stick.

  “Well, you’ve gained a great number of levels since we last came to this place,” Gael told Calaf. “You should be ready to go to Fort Duran. By the time you storm the ramparts, you’ll be strong enough to rank up to Paladin.”

  At the mention of the forsaken Fort, Calaf’s mood soured.

  “I’ve been there before. It was cleared out. We marched there straight after the Battletower was cleared.”

  “With General Perarde’s group? Aye.”

  Calaf nodded.

  “Pity the party went separate ways after Kai died,” Gael’s grumbly elder drawl came out dejected. “Paladins are the cornerstone of many a party. Have you tried using a party without a Shielder?”

  “I… can’t,” Calaf said.

  “Right, aye. Makes sense.” Gael hobbled along faster. “But your party here has two unbranded. They can still stab and shoot, aye? The lass can cast most clerical or mage spells. Any combination of Branded or unbranded can dish out damage. But healers and Shielders – they make or break a team.”

  The Squire thought Enkidu could probably take most blows with or without the Menu, but he didn’t tell Gael this. They likewise operated with no proper healer, though Zilara and Calaf both had some healing spells.

  “Have you heard word of the others?” Gael asked.

  “Met Mikail mere weeks ago. At the Docks. Cleared the Scout’s dungeon.”

  The old, slow Gael and Calaf were the last people in the portal room. They neared the end of the stairs. Calaf was moving intentionally slowly to let Gael keep up with him,

  “Doing the full dungeon circuit?” Gael smiled, and he gained a spring to his step. “Brings me back.”

  It was common to hit a ‘grand tour’ of every dungeon to provide variety for repeated pilgrimages. Going about to every dungeon on the route was not, in and of itself, suspicious. None would guess that Jelena and Calaf were running around gathering forbidden testaments.

  Calaf’s voice dropped. “We encountered Karol in Port Town.”

  “Oh, Kai’s sister?” Gael nodded understandingly. “She ran off with some church contingent. Tried to say goodbye but they’d already shipped out.”

  They reached the second, outward-facing floor. The many traps shut down after their completion of the rooftop trials. Beyond, one last network of stairwells remained in the chimera-infested first floor. No further threats were present. Calaf spent the long walk explaining the fate of Karol.

  “She died fighting this same rot.”

  “At Port Town? Ay, as perilous a place for it as here, with all those ships.” Gael stroked at his beard. “Steal a ship, set its course, and the rot could drift clear off the continent.”

  “You don’t sound surprised,” Calaf said.

  Gael shrugged. “These creatures first popped up here around the same time. It was just a handful of missing travelers in those days. But the arbiters could not address the threat here despite repeated requests, as they were stationed in Port Town for some number of months.”

  It went unsaid that there were only a handful of reasons why the arbiter’s presence could be required for so long.

  “Mayhaps that’s why they established these auxiliaries?” Gael grumbled after a time.

  A heavily abbreviated explanation of their previous encounter with the rot took the entire trip to the elevator. The lift down to the mage’s college passed in silence, aside from Calaf and Gael talking at a whisper.

  Calaf said more than he probably ought to. He talked about the Gael about the circumstances behind Karol taking her own brand and being tasked to assassinate a dissident off the Menu. To his surprise, Gael was receptive to this talk. The aged mage did not balk or appear skeptical, instead nodding sagely.

  “The church has long integrated the Battletower into clerical matters. Those levelers, cultivators, whoever they were, gave the ecumenical council perfect cover to further purge the more scholarly schools of magic and further garrison church guards into the tower. I don’t doubt that they’d use an aspiring mage as a catspaw. Though you may not wish to talk too loudly once we’re on the college floors, yes? There’s no telling who may be listening.”

  Mercifully the church party had taken the lift ahead of time, so they weren’t about to be accused of heretical talk.

  “We talking heresy? Y’all got any hidden or heretical testaments?” Jelena asked, blunt and far too loudly, as the lift neared the ground floor.

  Calaf shot her a look, but her sly grin and pursed lips meant he couldn’t stay mad for long.

  “What?” asked the relic thief. “Nobody’s here, ‘cept for these mages. And we’ve established there’s tension between mages and arbiters.”

  Gael put a finger up to his lips.

  “You may wish to save your church for after midnight. We have extensive archives in the college. But the night is still young, and our containment measure was only temporary. Check to see where we stand once the tower changes over.”