Olimpia

"Who the feck is shouting so loud!?" Shouted a shrill voice, "Don't ya know people are sleeping over here!"

"It's ya'r shrieking that's waken everyone up!" Screamed back the old man, "Then again, an old bat like ya can't hea— Hmm, I smell blood."

"What?! Oh, the spirits of our ancestors preserve us! Barlot can finally smell himself! We might finally find relea— Hun? What’s tha— Hey, which fecker started a fight without inviting us? Wake up, ya unperceptive children! Why am I the one waking you up when there's shite to kill!? Where's the respect for your elders?"

Kanieta's smile was stretching ear to ear as she looked at Derg. His eyes were squinted as he looked to the side. She could practically see the irritation radiating off of him.

"Ahhh, I guess that we will have to do this the hard way." Derg shook his head like he regretted the necessity of his actions, but he would do them regardless.

Kanieta scrutinized Derg and the mana around him and his men. While the entire room was filling with blood mana, as far as she could tell, Derg wasn't the one controlling it or the golems. He was obviously in league with the blood mage, but it didn't look like it was someone on the stage, as all she saw from them was pure mana.

It would be weird if someone on stage could control blood mana, as having two domains of magic was extremely rare. And blood magic and enhancing magic had little in common. Despite that, a question lingered in Kanieta's mind.

Derg waved his hand like a signal, and a moment later, the blood mana in the chamber shuddered.

What is go… Ice gripped Kanieta's heart even as heat prickled against her skin, and she looked up. The sun had moved into position directly above and was now shining down the center hole of the Great Hall.

There was a rustling as if thousands of snakes were moving over each other, and then the roof began to fold outward. Pulled by the vines covering the walls, five sections of the ceiling broke apart, letting in light.

It was supposed to be an awe-inspiring moment. Where the Conclave would pronounce its verdict or start a recess until the following day, witnessed by the heavens while they were at their brightest.

Something those present during the Grand Hall's first usage could look back on with pride and fondness and share the event with their children and grandchildren.

But if anyone looked back on today and spoke of it to their descendants, there would be no fondness or excitement in their voice. Only a wretched feeling of disappointment and betrayal as the harsh reality of mortal greed and cruelty slugged them in the nose.

There was no life overhead. No, that wasn't right.

No matter the perversions that were done to create the blood golems, they operated with some facsimile of life.

They ate. They grew. They produced waist and reproduced.

And it was said the blood golems could feel emotions, but it was only an endless hunger for more food. More flesh.

It was a loose definition, but it was still believed that, in some sense, they were still alive.

So there was at least one life, and possibly hundreds, overhead.

As more light poured in, it revealed a massive network of interlacing flesh tendrils spanned every inch of the seating.

"There were thousands…" Kanieta whispered to herself in horror as the whole reality of the situation settled over her mind. Thousands she was meant to protect.

No matter what anyone said, this was her fault. She was the one who pushed for the People to come south and seek out help from the Olimpians and build new fortifications in the lull of war.

The Crescent Moon had been howling for decades about subjugating the Olimpians, but they weren't serious. Most of their attention was on preparing for the next battle with the Letairry. That was all that was on anyone's mind for a long time.

It was Kanieta's scouts that scoured the southern slopes of the Broken Peaks while collecting and processing the information they found looking for mountain passes. She went to merchants, crafters, farmers, and anyone else who seemed helpful in forming a plan of what it would take to feed, house, supply, and move the People.

Years of work while she watched the war progress to an inevitable conclusion she and those around her had long foreseen. The whole time she was berated for not doing her part.

But that didn't stop her. Kanieta gathered anyone who would listen to her and prepared for the Great Escape, as it became known. And when everyone finally realized that they would lose this war if nothing changed, she presented her strategy to the Conclave. Out of other options, they agreed.

So she guided those that had no other choice but to believe in her dream of the future. But now, those she led, the ones who made her dream a reality, were being killed.

They were not killed by the Latairry or the Olimpians but by their own kin. Because Kanieta created a scheme and took every chance to push it forward as she sought to undermine the Crescent Moon to place her in of position of power.

She knew Derg would respond, but Kanieta never imagined he would go so far as to work with a blood mage.

True, most of the civilians would have already died or been enslaved without her, but that didn't mean she was absolved from all guilt for everything that happens to them in the future. If anything, it meant that she would hold more of the weight for the consequences upon her shoulders.

And now, thousands of those who had followed her were dead.

Dead in a way that she would never want on her wors— Well, maybe if it was Derg.

The golem that Kanieta was having so much trouble with. Was nothing more than a drop in a storm. A drop of rain to the torrent that was about to fall on their heads.

As she watched, dozens of golems started letting go and falling from the branches.

She opened her mouth to shout a warning but found that nothing could make it through the tightness of her throat.

"There isn't enough for all of us." Complained one of the badgers.

"Eek!" squealed another badger in the most excited tone Kanieta might have ever heard from one. "Their falling from above too! There's more than enough of us all."

"Maybe for ya lot with dusty and patchy fur, but I still got vigor in meh." Said one of the younger badger chieftains as the stone began to form up around him, "I call all the ones on the left."

All the others started hollering out how they would kill the most while scampering off, as they 'called' certain parts of the room.

Badgers rushed past her as they tried to get into position to kill the golems right after they landed. But even with their immediate willingness to jump into action, the lowest golems were hitting the ground before most of the badgers could move more than a few dozen feet.

Even with the new arrivals, the golems were falling surprisingly slowly. It seemed that even they had a limit to how hard they could hit.

After they started falling in the air, their entire forms would spread out into a giant sheet. So instead of plunging straight down, they spiraled in large circles like birds. It was only at the last twenty or so feet that they compressed their mass to hit the ground hard.

Tracking the falling blood golems, Kanieta's blood began to boil. Letting the emotion guide her actions, she pulled on her core, collecting mana to create a spell form.

Her knees became slightly weak, and her head throbbed as her core was emptied in an instant, but she ignored the discomfort. When more energy entered her core, she pulled that out, as well, and added it to her spell.

It was a simple spell.

Not the simplest spell, as technically, the simplest spells are single runes. Runes that fall into a category of Domains such as Earth, Fire, Water, Mana, and Blood. All of which are fields that have specific attributes associated with them that can be manipulated through magic.

Every rune could fall into those terms in some ways, but that was beside the point. And anyone who walked that path got their own spectrum of advantages and disadvantages.

At a basic level, a single darkness rune was a spell and a genuine path to power.

If Kanieta had the willpower — which she did — she could cast a shadow rune and fill it with power making what would look like a sphere of darkness. Then, she could manipulate the shadows using her will and make a Shadow Spike or Tendril.

Technically, every spell ever devised could be cast in such a way, though it wasn't practical.

This casting technique was how the badgers made their stone armor. Feeding mana into a rune and then exerting their will to shape what is already around them, if they don't feel like spending the mana to make it, they usually don't.

Though that path has the downside that doing multiple things becomes exponentially harder. And anything complicated isn't really possible, but it has its upsides too.

The main strength is that most cannot match up to them in terms of their spells. It's a significant enough difference in power that it's more than could be laid at the feet of flooding the spell with mana or practice.

Anyway, Kanieta's First Circle spell had three separate runes. Shadow, Condense, and Spike, which was a basic Shadow Spike Spell, but no novice could ever cast it.

Different tier spells were divided into circles.

The First Circle spells had three runes to them. A Second Circle Spell needed three runes for the first level and up to six more to fill up the second level. And that process continued with the third level, as it took nine runes to fill up after all previous circles were filled. The Law of Three continued for every tier increase.

However, one could have sub-runes that stack, augmenting specific aspects of a spell based on the caster's intent without progressing to the next tier of the spell. Whatever the number of runes is for the highest circle of the spell, you can raise it to the power of three to get the number of sub-runes it can hold.

The problem comes in when you use the same rune over and over. The mana cost and willpower to make the sub-rune and hold it in place is half the cost of the original for the same increase in power. But after the third sub-rune of the same type is put into place, the cost starts doubling per sub-rune, and the effects are only increasing the spell's effect by half of the original.

Overcasting a spell like that isn't worth it most of the time, as it takes too long and too much mana. Though it is useful to make an overwhelming attack.

Like, let's say that a large leaf is slowly falling from really high up. A leaf that will wait to get right above you before changing into a boulder and dropping onto your head.

In such a situation, a mage will have all the time they want to overcast a spell and would be a bit of an idiot not to.

"Whoeverrr prepares an attack before they hit the ground is a fecking coward!" Shouted a badger causing Kanieta's eye to twitch.

Kanieta waited. She knew that sooner than later, she would be attacked. Until then, she was content to wait and prepare. To watch.

Thanks to the badgers, those golems on the ground were torn to pieces in seconds. But there were far more where they came from. The badgers by the doors were even making underground stone bunkers for those who couldn't fight. That's awfully considera—

"Everyone get the feck in there!" Shouted a badger, "I don't want ya ruining my glorious battle~!"

…Yep. Serves me right for expecting too much.

Looking back to the sky, she saw a golem positioned above her. Its size was rapidly sucked in, and it fell like a spearhead.

Kanieta moved to the side and flicked her wrist. The spell circle she had been making unfolded on the ground, and it was little more than a foot wide.

It was, after all, a First Circle spell.

Around the outside of the spell ring, seven identical Spike Runes glowed with mana. Two more, and she would have been maxed out. Pity I didn't have more mana. Kanieta idly thought.

In contradiction to the relatively small circle, shadows poured out of the spell, making a ten-foot patch of darkness, then it drove upwards.

The spike nearly matched the golem in diameter as it fell. As the golem and overcharged Shadow Spike Spell closed together, the flesh of the golem parted, not because of the spike but because the golem was avoiding it by shifting its flesh to form a hole.

When the golem was nearly to the base of the spike, Kanieta released her hold on the six other smaller shadow spikes of the spell. Though she couldn't see it, she knew they came out of the sides of the central shadow spike and into the golem.

With the spell still connected to her mind through a tether, she flexed her will, and the spell started spinning. The flesh of the golem started vibrating for a few moments, then, all at once, chunks began flying off the creature as her spell ripped it to pieces.

Breathing like she had just sprinted for two miles, Kanieta kept one eye up as she started moving away. Battles were raging all around her now, and staying still was asking to get killed.

Before she could move more than a few steps, she heard a shout behind her, "Kanieta!"