Ka circled above and behind the army of black dots. Zombies dotting the foothills leading up to the Snow Wall was not a welcome sight. Not when he was trying to gain entry to the very same valley they were sitting outside off.

"No way in?" Tiki asked as he swung back to their group, waiting for him in a high altitude soar over a thermal.

Ka waved a wing in negation, "no, they have nightcryers with them, I saw three or four flights in the air. Who knows how many on the ground. "

"Flying zombie nightcryers," Tiki shook his head, "it gets worse and worse. "

"It's strange that this army is less than half the size of the big one that attacked last month, but they're better organized and seem more intelligent than before," Ka noted. Indeed, zombie attacks were known for their reckless charges regardless of the odds.

Whoever heard of zombie armies camping?

But that was what this army seemed to be doing. If the almost daily attacking groups were now waiting here instead of attacking, that might explain this build up into an army. It didn't explain how the supposedly mindless zombies were now showing signs of tactical ability, if not suicidally attacking fortified defenses could be considered tactical ability.

Still, that didn't help Ka's group get home. The army was blocking the way into the valley with more nightcryers than Ka would want to face even with the entire Clan Two, much less their little group of four, one of whom was injured and flying poorly.

"We'll have to go around, take our chances with the peaks to the side," Ka said finally.

Tiki frowned, "you're proposing flying over the Snow Wall itself. You realize that the air itself freezes on your feathers if you go that high?"

"We shouldn't have to go that far to stay out of sight of the nightcryers," Ka paused, "but we'll wear all our fabrics. Just in case. "

Lolu covered her pain with loud complaints as she shook ice from her wings, "first you foul our wings with sand then freeze our blood with ice. What storms are you going to drag us through next, Ka?"

"There's no more, you know that. One more day and we'll be out of the peaks and below the clouds again," Ka tried to reassure her, he knew she was just putting on a brave front despite her joking. "We are past the notice of the nightcryers and should be able to make our descent by air in the morning. "

"Past their notice only because you made us climb up the mountain like those landbound!" She tried to hide her rubbing of her stiff wing where the hole was.

Tiki patted her shoulder in a manner he clearly hoped was reassuring but did nothing for Lolu. After all, he wasn't the one with a burn a handspan's wide in his wing. Of course, he avoided all contact with her feathers even if he had to bend his arm around her half outstretched wing.

"The last fire shell should be drained in an hour," Ka said, "our lift and strength should be recovered by then and we'll head back by air. "

She shuffled closer to the fiery pit in the gap in the rocks they were nesting in. The rest of them had their feathers to cloak them from the bitter chill but Lolu's injury made her more susceptible to the cold. And since neither zombies nor nightcryers had followed them up this high, they could spare the three remaining fire shells for heat.

Simply puncturing the shell without priming it was enough to cause the living fire inside to slowly flow out and promptly catch alight. They had to take turns holding up the shell so that the liquid dripped away from it, and didn't pool and make it explode, but the globs of sticky flame burned brightly even in the snow.

As they sat around the fire miserably, Ka frowned and rubbed at his eyes. A feather raising feeling was creeping up on him.

"Do you see something wrong?" Kee asked, noting his brother's actions.

"Is it getting brighter here?" Ka answered with a doubtful question of his own.

"Well, the sun is rising after all. "

Ka looked at his brother then shrugged, "but the shadows are wrong. The ice must be getting to my eyes, or perhaps the light shines strangely off it. "

Their conversation attracted Tiki's attention. He glanced around then cupped his hands together for a moment. "I think the air is glowing," Tiki noted faintly.

"What. "

"The air. It's glowing. "

Ka considered the last fire shell he was holding up and glanced over to Kee, who was peering into his clenched hands. His brother nodded back in confirmation. "Any idea what that means?" Ka asked Tiki, who answered with a shrug.

Remain here on a mountaintop with some unknown phenomenon happening or take their chances with a flight without their full strength? The choice was obvious.

Ka threw the fire shell down the ridge to join its brothers and stood up, "we're flying out. Now. "

A few minutes later, their packs were tightened and wings unfurled to dive off mountain ridge into the snowy air. And not a moment too soon. As the chilly peaks fell behind them, Ka glanced back at their impromptu nest to see a curtain of light descend from the wintry sky itself. The glow engulfed the rock and snow with an otherworldly radiance and Ka had to consciously keep his flight going when he saw the top of the mountain fade out of existence to be replaced by the uniform white light.

"An Aura Light!" Tiki exclaimed, "it looks like the legends are true, they really are stronger the higher you go in the mountains!"

To his horror, Ka looked back to the front to find the rest of the world, the warm lower air he was diving towards had also disappeared in a curtain of light, leaving the band of Elka with no visual guide to the shape of the mountain beyond their immediate vicinity.

Lolu choked a little behind him. Ka raised his fist and signaled them to pull up their wings into a shallow glide instead of the steep dive. The curtain of light ahead had retreated when they drew close in their dive, as the light engulfing the mountain behind kept pace. As their descent slowed, the light seemed to follow them, leaving the Elka stranded in their narrow strip of snow covered mountainside and empty air.

"Any idea what is happening, Tiki?"

The young wing had no answer. It seemed that there were no legends about this.

"As long as we don't touch the light, I believe we will be all right," Ka said, trying to keep his worry out of his voice. He didn't need their confidence shaken in this crisis. "But just in case, we fasten draglines. Me, Lolu, Kee, Tiki. Fifteen meter line. "

His brother unspooled the wire they used for assisting Lolu into the air before tossing it over. Setting up their little chain took some awkward formation flying but eventually they were ready to proceed.

"We fly down slowly, to give us time to see the lower peaks and valleys of the Snow Wall as they come out of the Light," Ka said. They nodded back grimly. The story that implied they could very well be flying down a similar mountain in another world was left unsaid.

So they suffered a long hour of careful gliding and dodging shadows in the Aura Light before the curtain parted before them to reveal a welcome snow-free mountainside.

A familiar mountainside less than a day's flight from Clan Two's home range. Certainly not a different world.

Ka looked back up beyond the thin clouds and saw the light dying into a faint nothingness. The deadly peaks above glinted as the sunlight bounced off the snow, twinkling innocently. As if their strange journey had not happened at all.

Cato was frowning by the time Ka had repeated his report of the expedition. Minmay and the whole Greater Circle was present to hear it after the Chancellor had deemed it important enough to repeat to everyone.

"So we have confirmed the zombies get their numbers from real bodies. And they have been destroying a country to the north in order to attack us. Furthermore, the nightcryers are working with them and the zombies are learning strategy?!"

The summary from the new mayor of Corbin town grew more incredulous as he went on.

"Clan Two has verified the presence of the army at the north end of the pass, numbers are estimated to be equal to the previous major attack and gathering more each week. Erin's report indicates that with most of the Guard still on rotation away from the Fort, if the zombies attack now, they have a good chance of causing severe casualties, if not breaking through entirely. With nightcryers in the army, it is not clear our previous trench tactics would be as effective. "

It was unstated that the Minmay Guard provided a large amount of the firepower present at Fort Yang despite being only a third of the total number of soldiers. Better weapons, better defenses, some semblance of military order in comparison to the conscripts from the other territories.

"Ektal has been trying to raise more soldiers to reinforce Fort Yang but weapon production is lagging behind recruitment," the chancellor nodded towards Willio, "thanks to the effort of our Ironworkers, we have more and better weapons than the king. We also lack the hands needed to wield the new guns and fire shells, hands that are better employed in the new foundries and factories. I would like to discuss the feasibility of selling our weapons to King Ektal. "

"Won't that weaken our position? The Guards and King Ektal's knights are roughly even, if you account for our better weapons and the magical shields. Provide them with our weapons and they'll overrun us with numbers. "

That was Hino. Previously leader of the knights in Minmay, she was now leading most of the parties who remained to become a peacekeeping force. Sort of like police but more militaristic and somehow beholden to public opinion. Cato wasn't sure if there was any Earth analog to that.

Minmay sighed. "Almost certainly. The king would not casually break the peace treaty brokered by Amarante but..."

"But Inath is far away and our military advantage gives us influence across the entire country and is worth more than mere money," Hino finished for him, "what about other forms of compensation? Can we use the sale of weapons to gain security in other ways? Perhaps Aldir might be willing to lend us support in court in exchange for weapons?"

"Aldir is firmly in the pocket of the King, any agreement with them can't be trusted. My contacts there say that Aldir provides almost half the production of fire shells in their army," Willio added, "besides, they're not a border province, what do they need weapons for?"

More protests and grumblings about trade and balance of power drove Cato back to the report again. Selling the Guard's old weapons to the Ektal knights only made sense when you considered that Guard recruitment was beginning to stall. It was an easy solution to increase total firepower.

"What about our University? Don't they have a new weapon or two to solve our problem like the last time?"

The murmurs of side discussions died away. Cato looked up from his perusal of the zombie clothing drawings. A small town mayor near the border of the Central Territory? What did he know of how the University operated? How did this person get a seat at the Greater Circle, didn't the chancellor interview and personally approve each of their characters?

Cato glanced around and saw not a few others seemingly waiting for him to answer. Surely they didn't think that Landar had a new miracle weapon to save them all the time, did they?

The silence dragged on for a long moment.

The Chancellor frowned, "maybe. Well, Cato, I heard Landar was developing rocket weapons? Do you think we could use those to attack the army without risk of their light beams?"

The eyes of the Greater Circle on Cato, he slowly stood up. "In theory, yes. The rockets are deadly enough, with fire shells at their tip. Placed at an angle, the rockets should be able to reach two or more kilometers. However, Landar's design has issues that make an attack using them impractical. Accuracy is terrible, the rockets are just as likely to hit the ground at half range than reach the target. About one in five explode when launched, even with refinements to the propellant mix and the most stringent manufacturing tolerances. If you launched ten thousand rockets at the zombie army, I expect no more than three or four thousand to actually hit them, and that much only because the army is stationary and large. "

"Can they be made more practical?"

Well, that was the obvious question. Cato nodded, "rocket artillery requires manufacturing precision and purity of chemicals to be reliable. Project Flight has helped with the design of the stabilizers but I suspect we will need some sort of magical guidance system. Landar is experimenting with designs but I cannot foresee when her team will make a breakthrough. Her attempts at gyroscopes might reach acceptable accuracy next week or it could take six months of refinement. It's hard to say. You can't expect us to solve your war that simply. "

Another baron from the minor villages spoke up, "what about the living fire formula? Can't we do the same crash research program as you called it?"

"If the Greater Circle thinks the funds for a rocket stabilization system is well spent, I won't say no," Cato said, "but I must admit that it will take time before your hopes can be answered. Even after a sufficiently accurate rocket is developed, you still need to build them in sufficient quantities to damage the zombie army. It is my recommendation that some agreement with the king's forces be reached in order to sell our older weapons. "

Minmay's advisors looked at each other with troubled faces. "Perhaps we should consider other alternatives first?"

Ugh, this was going to take forever, Cato just knew it. How these people, handpicked by Minmay for efficiency, end up going in circles was beyond him. True, they really really didn't want to sell their weapons to the king who had just been the enemy, but both sides squabbling when the zombies were at the figurative gate... Cato sighed again.

"What is it Landar?"

The alchemist stayed silent as she dragged Cato towards the experimentation room. Kupo was waiting just outside the doors, dressed in her signature brown healer's robes for surgery.

The look on the doctor's face was no less troubled than Landar's.

Doctor and alchemist shared a significant look and Landar pushed the door open to the room.

Sterile tiles and polished stone operating tables showed upgrades since Cato's last visit. It appeared more sanitary and the closed choking ambience was much improved by the higher ceilings and steady magical lighting. Cato was not reassured however, the carved channels on the table and floor still held flecks of dried blood around the edges and corners. No surgery was conducted here, this was an execution room after all.

What was new was a curtain of magic laid across the door, a sustained breeze of disruption magic hanging at the edges of the room sealing the insides away from external magical influence. Keeping the barrier up all the time must be denting their research budget severely.

Strapped to the table with strong leather fasteners and heavy irons was a body. Cato blinked as a hand twitched. Then Landar pushed him through the magical barrier and he could feel the magic from the body. That was a zombie.

"That zombie's only a few hours old," Kupo said, sounding not a little disturbed. "We think we have isolated the mechanism of zombie reanimation. "

He couldn't help but shoot the healer a sharp look. That was important news, possibly strategically important. "Tell me the story?" he asked the two women.

Landar took his question, slowly switching to a lecturing tone as she narrated. "After the initial experiments with lifeforce degradation, we decided to test the same on zombies hoping to find clues as to how zombies worked. The connection between lifeforce and zombie reanimation preference is already known and we wanted to see what would happen if we performed the same degradation experiments on zombies. After all, their bodies are dead but their magic stays with them instead of dispersing. "

"We found that zombie parts contain about half as much magic as normal humans, but stick to the flesh even if the body part is removed from the main mass. When reintroduced to the zombie, removed parts can sometimes reattach themselves with magic expenditure, even if the same part is swapped between two zombies. And that this property of zombie lifeforce could spread to normal human body parts if a portion of the zombie part is placed inside the human part and the human body part has been severed for a sufficiently short time. Approximately a few hours, longer depending on which part. "

Kupo cut in here, "We tried to artificially induce this transfer in a human body. What we found was that contact with even a single finger from a zombie was sufficient to induce conversion in a corpse as long as the body was older than six hours since death and less than two and a half days. The period in which a body or part becomes vulnerable coincides with a significant rate of mana release in lifeforce degradation experiments, and the maximum time of conversion is the point where no more lifeforce remains. Furthermore, even bodies with no lifeforce that have not completely rotted away or burnt can still be reanimated, the same with those whose lifeforce is destroyed by disruption magic.

We suspect that the group reanimation requirement is linked to the same requirement for the aura or black mist as the Fukas call it, individual zombies are clearly capable of reanimation by themselves if only they behaved correctly. Having a group simply allows them to do this faster and without remaining in contact with the body throughout the conversion process or cutting bits off themselves. Maybe the zombies simply aren't smart enough. Yet. "

The two researchers stopped there and glanced at each other before Kupo continued, "the Pastora have records of certain old diseases that died out during the Migration. Inherited records from the First that imply the Tsar created magical diseases as weapons and as attempts to improve themselves. The old diseases were also of the type that changed the patient's lifeforce in some way, not always detrimental. And... I suspect zombies are... related. I admit it is only a hypothesis but there is some agent... an animating substance in zombies that converts an animal's lifeforce made vulnerable by death. The similarities between zombie lifeforce and our own is too much. I think the zombies were created by the Tsar, perhaps as a weapon, perhaps as a failed experiment to create another demihuman, they must have been unearthed by someone some time before the attacks began more than a hundreds years past. "

Cato nodded, "and if this is true and we can find the source, any surviving records or tools might give clues of a weakness or at least more information on how the zombies evolve. "

"More than that," Kupo added, "since we are now certain that the zombies virtually require lifeforce to reanimate a body, we know they have no way to gain more zombies other than to attack and kill people or animals. We can reduce their numbers by cutting off the source of their bodies. It's a feedback loop. The more zombies there are, the more successful their attacks, the more towns then cities being overrun and more zombies are created. Furthermore, simply cutting zombies apart does not truly kill them, they can still repair themselves. That means in a battle that the zombies win, they take no losses at all. Their numbers just build and build until a major city gets overrun and we get a giant army at our doorsteps, like that city the Elka found in the north. I don't know why the zombies are attracted to us even when their armies get completely destroyed at Fort Yang but this is our solution. "

"Yes I see. A passive defence will never work, the zombies will pick off isolated settlements and remain a constant annoyance. We have to go on the offense. Once the main army is destroyed, if we can contact any survivors in the north and extend protection to them, we can halt the snowballing, cut down their numbers," Cato mused as he began to pace, "the initial battles will be big and costly but if we can break the armies, the tide will turn, the zombies will simply never recover so long as we actively hunt them. "

He glanced at the body still strapped to the table and drew a breath, "anything else? No? Then I will report your findings and suggestions to the Lesser Circle immediately... I am still disturbed by the human experimentation but I admit that at least some good has come of it. "

Kalny and Cato stared up at the huge metal cylinder. Heat wafted off the construction like a hot noon day, the cool breeze in the concrete courtyard was just a brief respite. Here and there, pipes stuck out of the frame, pumps driving their contents to and from storage tanks at the site. Smaller and larger welds, where holes had previously existed in failed configurations, marred the surface like a tapestry of experimentation. It was crude. It was inefficient. It was a patchwork of compromises that worked, sometimes.

It looked like the start of a new field of industry. Beautiful even, in spite of the flaws.

"I didn't think you could actually do it," Cato commented, "a proper fractional distillation tower for crude oil? With the lighter gas recycled as fuel? No more chromatographic processing for fire shells? Next you'll be telling me you're going to start cracking the heavier oils and building a refinery. "

The merchant chuckled, "oh, I have grand plans of course, once the ironworkers can spare the steel. Getting the materials to build this was like trying to reach the sun. Maybe in a few years. Still, the irony of our positions is not lost on me. "

Cato paced around the construction, admiring the steel. Those rivets were not the simple screws he was familiar with, something custom designed for high pressures maybe? "An interesting reversal, I guided the construction of the first steel smelter in your warehouse while you stood back and provided materials. Now you build a oil distillation column while I stand back and provide the research. I suppose we have not grown out of building giant metal towers. "

"Quite. "

They admired the machine together. The roar of the heating fire and the gurgling of the liquids in the pipes filled the gap in their conversation, a very different cadence to the clanging and banging of the foundries.

"Have you any luck in obtaining kerosene? Landar is quite anxious to experiment with it as rocket fuel. And you know from the meeting how important that can be. "

Kalny smiled and shrugged, "in time. The researchers need to solve the contamination problem from the lower fractions first, the quality is too unstable. Or perhaps it is time to commission a new tower. This experimental design might never able to achieve the required separation. "

"It just costs too much and there isn't enough steel. Same as always," Cato nodded, "I'll talk to Willio. Perhaps he can squeeze out more capacity from his furnaces. "

"Good to hear that. To think there was a time when everything was made of wood and the Ironworkers barely made a kilogram of steel per smith a day," Kalny shook his head with a smile, "never expected to think to myself that a full ton of steel a day was too little. What's the production at now?"

"After the new bigger furnace design powered directly from a mana well starts operation, that furnace alone is expected to pour four tons a day, with better control over the carbon content and impurities. About half that production is reserved for expanding their metalforming equipment but you can expect twenty tons of Minmay steel on the market a day in about two weeks. Willio's planning an even bigger furnace after this but we'll need to expanding the coal mines and coking facilities again to keep up with the demand. "

Kalny nodded, "sounds like you've got even more work to do. "

"More meetings you mean. I didn't open the University to be a manager of a company but I haven't found a suitable successor. "

All Cato's complaining got was a grin and a pat on the back. Kalny needed that coke for his operations too, it was becoming the fuel of choice now that wood sources were getting further away from the city.

"Why can't I just be a hermit wizard studying quietly in his tower?" he shook his head with a mock exasperation, "things would have been so much easier. "

"Money? Fame? The look in Landar's eyes?"

Cato raised an eyebrow, "Landar would be more than happy to lock herself in with her experiments if not for the risk of blowing herself up. "

Kalny nudged him, laughing, "certainly true if you get locked in with her. "

The two men looked up at the start of an oil refining business, though the worlds they imagined looked very different.