Battle. For all the combat she’d seen, the fathomless deep embodied by the concept had eluded Anilith. This was no duel, no skirmish, no one-sided slaughter; this was a field of indiscriminate death, where strength could only be stretched so far. Battle, the Wind seemed to say, was nothing more than a collection of moments, every decision final, each moment someone’s last. Battle was glory and horror, a battery of souls fueling a machine greater than its victims could know.

  Watching through the eyes of the Wind, Anilith felt more death in those opening moments than she had yet caused. Still, the Wind blew, free and uncaring. This was only a piece of a whole, an event it had seen countless times before. Again, Anilith grasped at the nature of perspective.

  She had always been a warrior, a soldier so enmeshed in those moments of life and death that she had never had the luxury of seeing the bigger picture. Ignorance was a blessing and a curse, she realized. She had never seen the full scope of a battle, never been afforded the chance to watch the churning tides of war at work, ebbing and flowing with the power of lives. As a soldier, anything but her full attention would mean death. Standing behind the frontlines, sheltered from the throes of battle, she found a new perspective.

  If battle was a collection of moments, war was a collection of battles, and impossible to fully grasp from within. Only by standing apart could she even begin to realize the vastness of such a concept, and she found the taste sour.

  Absorbing the entire battlefield, being aware of all ground lost and gained, patterns unfolded before her. Each variant creature had its own strengths and weaknesses—she’d known that much already—but when compiled into an army, these attributes created bulwarks and fracture points in the formations. Accounting for that information, particularly with the Wind’s ability to observe combat evolve in real time, Anilith began to develop a sense, almost preternaturally, of how exchanges might unfold.

  As she let her waking mind explore these patterns, a deeper part of her—that part one can never fully silence—pondered the peculiarities of perspective. Stepping onto the mountaintop, she’d realized how limited her view of her powers was, how much more she could learn if she looked at the world on a greater scale. Combat, it seemed, had similar secrets.

  Is War always a means to an end, she wondered, or is there a greater purpose? These tribes have been enemies for gods know how long, and they’re no closer to a solution than they day negotiations failed. Their “why” isn’t as simple as mine, but they have their reasons. Can there be no peace until one viewpoint is erased?

  The truth, as she saw it, played out before her eyes. When philosophies clashed, unable to mesh, War followed as a matter of course, burying ideas and bodies without distinction.

  It was far simpler being a soldier, and doubtless more exciting.

  Fire rained from on high, and the sea rose in challenge. Amid such primal fury, a cataclysm of legend she would scarcely have imagined witnessing before the Tower spirited her away, what place had man to stand?

  At a glance, it was hard to tell if either side had an advantage. Goblins and Grokar died in droves, the front was immense, and the casualties too great to quantify. Across the killing field, spells clashed violently. No single working could cover either side. From her expansive perspective, it almost seemed there were several fights happening at once, the battle breaking down to countless engagements at choke points, and the scene from the caves beneath the Keep played across many of them.

  The clear, cool day vanished, sky swallowed by swaths of steam. Wind billowed, coaxed by flashes of intense heat meeting frigid air, creating currents everywhere the forces clashed. Shadow hung heavy in the air, blocking out the sunlight. Within minutes, natural sight was of no avail.

  The unceasing sounds of Battle cut through the fog, though, the heavy footsteps of War and screams of agony piercing the veil.

  Nothing could have prepared her for the encompassing noise brought on in the wake of these armies. Voices cried out from the fog, meaning lost in the din. They were, for all appearances, the voices of ghosts to be. No moment was free from the ringing of iron, the stomping of feet, or the screams of the dying.

  From her position behind the front, Anilith observed the fruits of hatred that had been watered for ages. None present was safe from War’s insidious touch. Something stirred within her as she paid vigil to the destruction, the loss—something warm overfilling her with vigor.

  Hope, she thought, but it was tainted with that sour taste.

  Through hard-fought experience, Anilith had earned insight into the abilities of the goblin army, but the Grokar had revealed little of their own capabilities. Hydromancy, it seemed, was only the barest of their gifts.

  The creatures had learned caution from the goblins' electrifying counterattack in the tunnels, and, more than that, had developed strategies to nullify such a surprise attack. While many of their casters focused on manipulating water in its raw state, others seized the steam caused by the clashing elements, turning it against the goblins themselves, simultaneously protecting themselves from a conductive strike. The most skilled hydromancers seemed to have some ability to shift the form of water, causing icicles to rain on the goblin lines, an attack that proved far more deadly.

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  I’ve never really thought about how malleable water can be. Somehow, I’m glad we didn’t have to deal with this when we stumbled into their territory. Kinda makes me wonder, though: how close were we to disaster there, and why did Kewrok surrender if he still had these tricks up his sleeve?

  Those weren’t the only tricks the Grokar had held in reserve, either. More surprising still, they left some openings for the goblin fulminancers to strike back at them, only to reveal a greater counter. Juggernauts bearing flaxen armor intercepted the attack, seeming to consume the energy, feeding it to a corps of cloth and carapace robed Grokar. Crisp, concentrated beams crackled from their spear tips, frying enemy soldiers with uncanny accuracy.

  It seemed the Goblins weren’t the only ones with a fondness for such a dangerous element.

  Other Grokar mages wove spells of light, manipulating the battlefield in a way that couldn’t fool the Wind, but left her doubting the scenes her eyes beheld. Grokar soldiers moved where there were none, attacks struck unseen, and coordinated blasts of light further disoriented the enemy. That was to say nothing of the combined efforts of this new caster and the elite hydromancers. Light shone through thick, clear ice and scorched the enemy with rays of destruction.

  And that still wasn’t enough to overcome the goblin army.

  The goblins employed illusions of their own, making Anilith unwilling to use her Earth Sight. Storm clouds fought to wrest control of the sky’s primal energy from the Grokar, creating a battlefield all its own. If either side gained dominance of the abundant power, they would gain untold momentum, but the balance held. Entire swaths of the Grokar line sank into sudden fields of magma, only to float and burn at the surface of the liquid stone. The line of engagement was being consumed by elemental chaos, each side seeking to control and limit the other.

  But Anilith was beginning to see the path forward, guided by Hope that kindled in her chest.

  Arian. My people have long sung songs of its transformative powers. That has to be what I’m feeling.

  When the back-and-forth reached an equilibrium, new demonstrations of light containing shifting colors struck the goblin army. Each variation seemed to have a unique effect, some even being used on the Grokar themselves, enhancing their own frontline. Before Anilith had time to grasp this new magic, humming bursts of energy, each brimming with light and the storm’s might, joined the fray.

  Her reluctant allies’ success was short-lived, though, as the goblins, surprising her for the first time in the battle, answered in kind. Thrumming, red beams plummeted from the tip of the pyramid, burning through any defense with ease. Grokar and goblin alike fell victim to the intense energy as the beams carved a path anywhere the Grokar stood to gain too much ground, although the friendly fire was minimal next to the Grokar losses.

  It was a battle of attrition; scant feet of ground changed hands as the forces moved in step, a deadly dance where they returned repeatedly to ready position, new bodies stepping into the breach at every turn. A victory here meant a loss there; a sacrifice ushered in a momentous charge on a separate flank, while each rout faced harsh retribution.

  Still, the battle raged endlessly. The magma pits soon smoldered with countless fallen, pushed aside by the momentous, near-magnetic force behind each clash, and the smell would live in Anilith’s memory for as long as she drew breath.

  There is a special place in the mind for the truly loathsome experiences of War, and it is a place where too many find themselves lost.

  Anilith watched it all, absorbed it all without shrinking away. These armies may have been destined to fight, but this was her responsibility—their responsibility. If her party hadn’t stumbled into this place, the carnage before her would not have come to pass. She owed it to every dead and dying person, even the Grokar drones, who knew nothing of free will and choice, to see this through and find the lessons hidden in an ocean of pain.

  Responsibility was just another aspect of perspective. She would need to become something more than a soldier, choose to see things from a viewpoint she hated, to have any hope of breaking the cycle.

  To channel the songs of Arian.

  Fires raged, and the firmament’s wrath struck with numbing frequency. The air hung thick with spells, many clashing, others fulfilling their destructive intent. In the fog of war, shadows flickered and whirled, moving like a third army in the pandemonium.

  Slowly, the tactics of the goblins crystallized in her mind’s eye: how they countered a breach, how they assaulted a weak point, how the mass of bodies shifted when the front lines moved. After the first hour, she began to predict where holes would form in the backlines as goblins surged to the front. Her role became clear, and something clicked into place within her, revealing a pattern she could use, and a hopeful idea began to form.

  A gentle pressure, one her mind had neglected throughout her observations, alerted her to Orion’s presence, and she finally allowed the connection to form.

  Thought you’d never let me through, kid, he sent. Not sure I ever seen you that focused. Tell me you learned somethin’, at least.

  You could say that. Now, you might call me crazy, but here’s what I’m thinking…

  She shared the bones of her idea, Orion offering suggestions, and they pieced together a plan in earnest. Before the end, each of them sported a manic grin, but none of them loved it more than Razhik. Some would have called it foolish, but there could be no risk-free ascent in the bedlam of battle. Only by combining their unique skills would they find a path through the mayhem.

  It was fortunate that they had their own chaotic King of Shadows.