AN: A little warning about the future plot. I mostly already knew that the plot-device Hero Summoning doesn't fit into the magic system as presented. There really is no way to do so. It wasn't going to be a problem but I can't figure out any reasons why Cato wouldn't poke at it.

Answering that question opens so many more and adds so many new things that the story will change drastically. A bit like how it changed from a more classical fantasy adventure to an uplift story earlier.

This time I'm just going to go with it and eat the darn bullet. So, whenever Cato/Morey finally figure out how it works, I'll probably start the equivalent of Book 2 of this story. Rather than just leaving it at "no records of mysterious ancient magic", I think it'll be better to actually explore it even if I have to change the overall tone again.

Also, not really sure about the glass section. Feels kinda redundant. The only important bit was the lack of manpower...

The idea started as a simple suggestion. An offhand comment from Bashal. Pouring glass didn't work because the surface of the pan was never smooth enough, Cato explained. If only they could float molten glass on another liquid. If only.

Landar, of course, had promptly went off and tried to obtain a ten meter wide basin to pour mercury in. Mercury was one of those metal side products that the Ironworkers were building a stockpile of that no one knew what to do with. After a few cases of fatal poisoning, the Lesser Circle had immediately proposed the Federation's first pollution law, forbidding the dumping of toxic materials. Hence an isolated warehouse on concrete foundations was built to contain various heavy metals, caustic chemicals or just drums of poisonous waste.

Everyone else had objected, once she explained what she was going to do. The problem was that the only other known liquids of sufficient density were molten metals. Fuel production wasn't quite up to the level that they could afford to waste it on keeping a molten bath heated just for glass production. It was just glass, meant for small fragile containers, luxury items and laboratory equipment.

No one quite believed Cato when he said that glass could substitute for a lot of things they were using steel and wood for. Or perhaps it was just the way that steel and its various alloys were being regarded as the miracle metal that everyone just defaulted to now.

After much experimentation, at exorbitant cost to their stockpiled magic, it was concluded that the process was far too costly to be feasible. The one prototype sheet of perfectly flat green glass would fetch a nice price for the University to recoup losses, ending up as windows in wealthy houses.

Cato had then proposed using gravity again, by dangling a sheet of semi-molten glass from a fixture, the process Bashal had finally reworked into drawing the glass from a bath in a pair of rollers. That worked, if not as well as the float process.

The Ironworkers tried to sponsor another related company to use the new rolled glass process, which led to the final insurmountable hurdle.

"And we have no one we can spare to start another company. Especially one that would place yet more demand for fuel, which would require another round of expansion..." the recordkeeper looked up at Cato over her glasses, the irony not lost of any of them, "Cato, are you trying to work the people of this territory into the ground? Why would you invent another process that requires as many hands as the Ironworkers? Do you hate us?!"

"I didn't invent this," Cato clarified, "this was more Bashal's work. While I may have contributed some ideas and small experiments, the process was mostly optimized by him. Consistency might not matter much when it's cheap paper but glass is really sensitive and getting all those machines designed was something he wanted to learn on his own. "

"Spare me the story, Cato, we all know that without you and your experiments, none of this would have happened. I'm dreading the day when that branch in Corbin finally gets their heatless iron ore processing right. Goodness knows they will want even more steel instead. " She squinted at him, not realizing that she was parroting the very same turns of phrases that others had picked up from Cato. "There simply isn't enough people to do all of that. "

"We could try selling the techniques to another region," Willio spoke up, "the capital territory or even Inath might be receptive. Nowhere else would there be sufficient demand for this mass production of glass. "

"I don't think Minmay would be impressed if you tried selling anything to Ektal," Cato added dryly.

"Politics. Always getting in the way of good business," Willio sighed.

"You'll find that's always the case. Sometimes, there are even good reasons. Why don't we get some advice from Minmay? Perhaps this would help him introduce himself to the Greater Council, a shiny bone to throw to them. "

"Landar, I think it is time to stop," Cato sighed as he put down the latest test device.

She just frowned. Not that the magical crystals did anything more than glitter in light and glow in magic.

"Landar. "

The alchemist scowled.

"Landar. "

"Fine. I admit. There is no easy answer. " She ground out between her teeth, "so I'll just to have try everything under the sun. And in combinations too. "

"No Landar, we have looked at almost everything remotely plausible. Nothing appears to affect magical signatures beyond just blocking them. We have been searching on and off ever since Kupo made her request. " Cato touched her shoulder hesitantly. "We will just have to leave it up to serendipity. Someone, somewhere, will go 'that's funny' and solve the whole magic lens thing for us. "

He paused, then continued when she still looked stubborn. "We have nothing to go on. Nothing at all. Magical signatures don't even seem to work like light. "

"It's just frustrating!" she finally broke down and spat at the failures dotting her bench. "All we have to show for that time is just 'dense concentrations of magic block magical signature'. Which we knew already!"

"For all we know, the magical lens could be a completely physical object. Maybe there's a magically altered physical process. Who knows? If it's not a large class of materials with the effect we want, we'll never find it. "

"Yeah, I've heard you say all that many times now! But this is the first time we have never made even the slightest progress! "

Cato patted her in a hopefully comforting way. She was looking a little unstable, perhaps it was time to force a break to rest. It wouldn't do to get the Mad Alchemist in a mood when she was feeling like this. Who knew what she would blow up this time.

"And besides, I have other worries too," he admitted, trying to change the subject. Landar took the bait, realizing what he was doing but she probably didn't want to think about magical lenses anymore.

"Oh?"

He rubbed his chin. "Remember the runes for the summoning circle? I've examined it right and left and upside down and everyone I've talked to has no idea how they work at all. I've tried drawing them, even carving them in stone slabs, never a complete circle of course, but nothing happens. There's no feedback or even an explosion. "

That Cato didn't dare make a complete summoning circle was obvious. Even in discussions, he had kept three runes out of the diagram, ones that only appeared one other time or were unique.

"There's no magical signature, there's no reaction to magic when I tried to get the alchemists to charge them, enchant them or even blast them. According to the queen's notes on the First, the summoning circle merely needs to be completed and it will operate. There are some ritual steps beforehand but how much is just tradition and how much is a real requirement is unclear. For all I know, the last ritual step of placing the final rune by hand is an actual requirement!

This feels less like some unknown mechanism and more like a completely different kind of magic. And that worries me. "

Landar raised an eyebrow. "How does it worry you? I'd think it'll excite you. "

Cato just smiled back grimly, "if this is really a different magic system that operates on completely different rules, then there are two questions. The obvious one is, are there more? The more worrying one is, which one came first?

Since it is clear that the summoning circle can reach across worlds to Earth, where Inath's mana does not reach. Are we sure that magic system really came from the First?"

"So, tell me this," Taff complained from his spot at the workbench, "there was all this talk about an attack plan and we're stuck here doing this?"

He gestured out at the padded crates full of fire shells surrounding them. His three colleagues sat with him, each with their fire shell.

"You know why this is important, armies can't fight without weapons. The commander clearly has some plan to use fire shells that explode on contact with disruption magic. "

Layla was right of course but that didn't make Taff feel any better. "I was expecting to work on spell cannons or coordinating magic bolt batteries. Not stuck in the back area!"

"If you're that eager to get killed, you should have become a battlemage," Layla scoffed back, "alchemists make the weapons, real fighters do the fighting, didn't you know that?"

Her statement, given with a hint of bitterness, was passed around the four with glances. Like a bottle of common wine, it was something all of them had experienced at one point or another.

Taff sighed and put the fire shell he had modified into the done pile and picked up the next one. After a hundred or so, the instinct to cringe at holding a ridiculously dangerous object was squashed. So too the nervousness at having his back to a floor to ceiling pile of the same ridiculously dangerous object. At least he wasn't tossing them around casually like the group down the row.

"Still, I wonder how they can call us soldiers too. We're not even doing any fighting," he complained again.

This time, none of them bothered to answer him.

"And you want the use the cavalry rekis to carry these spellcannons?"

"The twenty Fukas as the lone strike force? Are you crazy?"

"What about air cover? How are we going to-"

"Enough!" Erin shouted over the protests of the party leaders. The bigger parties at least. Why couldn't they have organization like Minmay's Guards? She was rather spoiled by their clear chain of command.

"Sorry for talking after all that but I think I speak for all of us here when we say your battleplan is not going to work," one of them stepped forwards. Immi, leader of the biggest remaining party from Ektal, still at the member limit despite how obsolete that concept was getting nowadays. "Perhaps you should explain what the purpose of all this is? I can see you're prioritizing a skirmishing screen but where's the main force? We're not even luring the zombies into our prepared fields! Four thousand fireshell mines does not make a viable defense!"

"That is because we are not defending. This is an attack, one that I feel has low risk," Erin explained, "Fukas are much faster than humans and can attack from much shorter range when equipped with mist shields. The fire shells serve to cut down their numbers without undue losses from our forces, and if they don't take the bait, we will have come away with very little casualties and can just dig up the disruption only fire shells with no difficulty. "

It was a neat explanation but one that didn't really fit the facts if you considered that she was deploying all her spell cannons forward too.

Spell cannons weren't actually that large and with some practice drills, a crew could pack one up and leave on rekis within a minute. So they were quite feasible as very long range skirmishers.

"Combined with the fire shells launched from the spell cannons, I hope to trigger a firestorm," Erin said, "based on the fires in Minmay, I believe that with a third of our fireshells, a firestorm can be induced. This is the reason for the deployment of the mines with the disruption trigger modification. "

She was met only with silence. The idea of an artificially triggered firestorm was something that most people had heard of from rumours. The idea had been floated a few times in theoretical discussions but no one had really considered using it.

"This is a Special Effects plan, isn't it? I can recognize Denno's daring in this," Immi said, shaking his head.

The Fort commander smiled, "no, actually the idea came from me and we refined it over a planning session. The skirmishing forces will attack and provoke the zombies, hopefully causing them to chase into the minefield here. Where the spellcannons set up behind will add their fire to the attack. Given they will have nearly half of our fireshell stockpile, with the mines taking up another third, there should be sufficient margin of error to trigger a firestorm without fail.

Your part in this, as knights of Ektal, will be to serve as a backup and reserve. In the case that the zombies look likely to break through, your job will be to escort the spell cannons back to the fort here. "

She waved a hand, "if you have actual objections, then give me reasons. Otherwise, the attack will begin in three days time. "

Lory leapt across the open grass into the next ditch. When the dreaded light beams failed to materialize, he waved his tail over the top.

A second later, he was joined by the other three from his squad. The last of the four crouched behind a nearby outcropping, her body nearly flat to the ground.

"We're just a hundred meters away from the zombies, around the point where they normally charge to attack," he said, meeting each of their eyes, "if they come at us, run for it and don't look back. When the signal goes up, we will shoot and scram. Remember your ems. "

"How many times have we drilled with this? We know to reinforce ourselves. "

"Won't hurt to say it again, Yalea," he flicked his tail at her. Her ear twitches betrayed her nervousness despite the joking tone, barely visible from her slightly forwards position at the rock jutting out of the ground. "Ready shields and guns. "

They hefted the tiny circles of metal on their arms. The shields were not the traditional plate of metal, instead being a light open frame. Six bars of steel set in a diamond shape with crossbars in the middle, the shield was a heavily enchanted object meant to create a plane of magical mist in front of it. While it wouldn't last for more than five minutes without recharge, em-boosted fukas could run a very long way in that time.

The gun of course was the same two-function spell forming wand and projectile shooter that most fukas were assigned. While many knight parties did not accept fukas, Minmay's Guards actively recruited them for their greater mana capacity and generation, then equipped them with the best close range weapons and magic. Em training that fukas were adept with often increased their magical power quickly, ideal for spell forming wands with a little training in normal magical techniques.

He peeked over the edge of the ditch again, the black mass of zombies in the distance was as quiet as the dead. Only a few flaps of cloth scraps caught in the wind could be heard. Even the zombie nightcryers were grounded.

The dreaded black mist, though, was active and hanging over the land like a sickness. Contrary to what he saw in the last probing attacks, the mist was not a diffuse cloud. Thick ropes threaded between the clumps of zombies, pulsing with imagined malice. Clouds of magic moved around along their own paths, not tied down to any particular zombie or group.

Lory took a steadying breath and leveled his spell forming wand at the nearest glitter of crystal, taking the time to aim his gun at it. Glancing around, he saw his three squadmates doing the same, all aiming at different targets. Not that there was any lack of them.

Seconds passed, a minute, then a flare of magic from behind shot into the sky. The signal flare pulsed three times and Lory discharged a jolt of power down into the gun, sending a bullet straight into the crystalline monster with a supersonic crack. The thing shattered satisfyingly.

A blink later, Yalea ducked down behind her rock, yelping as a wave of light smashed into the other side. Hot air, fused dirt and debris washed over the squad.

"Shields! Let's get out! Mind the safe zones in the minefield!" Lory shouted as he flicked the shield on and leapt out of the ditch.

Three lances of light scattered on the blurry air in front of his arm. He held it facing the zombies even as he followed the three running squadmates back towards the mine line.

Behind them, the horde of the dead stirred. Like a lumbering beast waking up, the ground began to rumble as thousands and thousands of feet raised and fell. Black wings flapped strenuously, climbing into the sky. They barely cleared the top of the zombie aura when they came under attack.

Three flights of white wings slashed down to meet them in a massed attack formation. Fire and disruption streamed down to meet light rays and blasts of compressed air heading up. Then the elkas banked and jerked their flight upwards, clusters of fire shells loosed behind them. Flowers of fire blossomed in the sky behind them, adding to the warm heat that Lory could feel on the back of his neck.

Only twenty six fliers came back up, one of the elkas having been focused on by the shooters. Leaving the flaming figure behind, the elkas trailed magical mist to cover their escape. The attack was a major success though, a large number of the nightcryers were crashing back down in flames.

The remainder that survived to reach the sky quickly became embroiled in a dogfight against the elkas. One that the experienced elkas were handily winning.

It wasn't as effective as Lory hoped, the flames of the descending bodies flickered out, snuffed by dense clouds of dark magic. Even as the band of four fukas bounced from crater to ditch to rock, the roused zombie army rolled forwards with a bone deep rumble. Even the fire shells launched from the spell cannon line behind the minefield did not achieve much; their mid-air flowers of fire short lived and ineffective. Even as they darted through the safe zones between the mines, scattering beams of light with their shields, the first mines throwing up huge gouts of flame behind them only to be quashed almost immediately.

The insanely flammable contents of the fire shells were simply not catching fire inside the zone of cloying magic.

Lory cursed between his gasps for air. He knew the general plan of the humans, launch enough fire at the zombies and cause a firestorm, hopefully it would destroy the army for them. It clearly wasn't going to work if there was no fire at all.

"It's not working. "

"I can see that," Erin snapped, not bothering to look away from her binoculars. The little device from Minmay was wondrous in its scouting potential but it was still a little expensive to make. Perched on a three storey mobile command tower a ways behind the lines, she could see across the entire valley from where she stood with impressive clarity.

"They've already gone past the first line of mines to no real effect, spell cannons have fired almost ten shells each. I don't think you're going to get a firestorm," Denno said, still infuriatingly calm despite the magnitude of the disaster they were finding themselves in.

Erin huffed and didn't reply. Another flicker of black dots flew up from the spell cannon line just after the mine field, another splash of fire against the shield of magic. There had to be... nearly a hundred thousand moving bodies in that army? She hadn't expected that concentration of zombie magic to so quickly snuff out living fire. It was their most effective weapon after all.

If living fire didn't work, then what would?

She glared down the lenses. Was this all for nothing? Perhaps she should call for a retreat to the back lines and...

No. Wait. There was one other thing to try. One last gamble.

"Bring me the manual trigger. " Having used her command voice, the messenger didn't question Erin and immediately ran down the tower.

Back when designing incendiary mines, the prospect of mines being left in the ground untriggered after a losing battle was raised. Despite the way that the enchanted container could be sensed by nearly anyone, it was deemed too much of a risk. Hence, the mines were all built to detect a weak magical signature of a specific long pattern that would instantly detonate it. A system to develop the remote detonation into something useful for command detonating individual sectors by dialing codes was also proposed at the same time, which was probably the real reason, now that Erin thought about it.

Nevertheless, the trigger could literally detonate the entire minefield in one go. With the spell cannons still firing, she could still create the firestorm.

"Are you crazy?" Denno turned towards her, his face carefully blank. "Your screening forces still haven't exited the minefield. "

"If we wait for them to leave, the zombies will cross nearly half the minefield. At that rate, there won't be enough mines to make a firestorm anymore. " She gripped the railing.

"What of the spell cannons then? If you create a firestorm so close to them, they might not be able to escape. "

She might be able to give the order to withdraw and wait long enough for them to escape the firestorm. But that time for an orderly retreat would mean that many more mines being swallowed by the zombies. With the mines only barely being enough to theoretically create a firestorm, there was practically no room for waiting.

A clatter on the wooden steps heralded the messenger ran back holding a palm sized box.

"Sound the retreat," Erin sent him off again to launch the signal.

With a salute, he went. Not waiting on Denno for more arguments, without any hesitation, Erin immediately flipped the box open and depressed the button with her finger.

Lory and his squad were halfway through the minefield, having left the zombies far behind. Only a hundred meters left to go.

It was right then that a large flare of magic appeared like the rising sun in the distance, like a spell cannon on continuous fire. It pulsed erratically for a few heartbeats then winked out.

Just as he was recognizing it as the general retreat signal, his entire world seemed to fill with fire. Explosions erupted on all sides in one massive bang, so loud that the sound felt like he was getting punched all over his body at once. Flaming hot dirt- no, even the dirt was on fire!

His eyes squeezed shut reflexively, his ears seemed not to be working and he couldn't even feel his skin. There was no time to contemplate how the mines had detonated, all he could think of was how lucky he was to be standing in the middle of a safe corridor.

Stumbling forwards blindly, Lory veered away from the heat, trying to grope his way out of the inferno he found himself in.

It didn't help him when the air seemed to turn red and start raining fire.

"What under Selna-!"

Taff looked up from loading the spell cannon at Layla's aborted shout. He blinked. Where was she? He blinked again, only to see her rapidly retreating form running towards the back line where the knights waited on their rekis.

Manning the spell cannons was like a dream come true, he was directly contributing to the war now! He could even see some of the fireshells his team had launched using the spell cannon land on the front line. Too bad their effect was muted but at least a few zombies got burnt.

He was barely aware of the abnormal magical flare out of the spell cannon line, right in front of him in fact. Spell cannons to his left and right were still charging up for the next shot and in the midst of their massive magical signatures, it was hard to sense anything. Even the comparatively stronger magical signal was hard to recognize.

Still, something had to have spooked Layla, right?

He was still wondering about it when his back seemed to catch on fire. A split second later, a shockwave swept him off his feet in a roar of sound that cut out in a strange ringing noise. It took a few bewildering seconds of watching the guards and knights panicking around him before Taff realized that he was deaf.

He glanced backwards. As he had thought, the entire minefield had exploded.

Taff stumbled away from his spell cannon, eyes watering at the heat. He was almost blind, couldn't hear and the heat was only increasing. There could be orders or even a retreat but he wouldn't even see it.

He brushed past the stockpile of ammunition and paused. His magic sense was still working.

Making a quick modification, he scrambled backwards to join the mass of fleeing people.

A huge fireball expanded upwards, a tower of flame taller than entire buildings. As the living fire near the middle quickly ran out of air, the flames began to choke. Still, the rapidly rising hot air carried the dust upwards, droplets of living fire catching alight as the uppermost surface rose into fresh air. Magical liquid fire didn't need oxygen, of course, and continued to burn away merrily.

Near the ground level, at the spell cannon line, the wind was beginning to pick up, blowing inwards to fill the rising air. Even as the knights and spell cannon crews backed away instinctively, the order to abandon the spell cannons and retreat only caused further chaos as deafened soldiers sometimes still tried to save their equipment.

Perhaps it was just a misguided sense of loyalty, or perhaps it was an accident in the confusion, but at one point along the concentrated spell cannon line, a stock of fireshells exploded. The resulting wave of fire was still large even if fully half of the shells had been fired and the fire consumed the stock of the spell cannon beside it. Sympathetic detonations continued to ring out as the heat ate through the containers until the next crate was also consumed and exploded as well. Crews that still hadn't retreated were simply consumed as a third of the line vanished one after another before the explosions hit a break caused by one particularly sharp crew who scattered their fireshells and ran.

Their efforts went to waste however, as less than a minute later, a cloud of fire began to form above them. Or perhaps not a waste, if their efforts were the last straw that pushed the conditions into a firestorm, no one would ever know. Almost all involved could feel the gathering magic already.

A firestorm was truly on its way.

The rains of fire told in the stories from Minmay began almost immediately. Flakes drifted down gently, scattered far and wide by the rising air. Radiant heat bloomed in the cloud. What was still flammable on the ground began to catch alight almost immediately once the solid shards of magical fire snowed down all around them.

The knight cavalry escaped easily. Behind them, nothing but slowly melting wreckage of spell cannons, the occasional flares of escaping magic from storage or released from magical crystals. The zombie army on the other side of the developing catastrophe wasn't visible through the sea of fire, at least the expected light beams had stopped firing. Or perhaps the fire was simply blocking it, they couldn't tell.

The spell cannon operators and Minmay soldiers helping them were closer and not so lucky. Stationed less than a ditch's distance from the minefield, this was considered a safe risk as the edges were clearly flagged. The initial wave of heat and accompanying blast had burnt many, but the little distance they had and the ditch was enough to keep them from the direct effects of the liquid fire. A bare few, the ones who had reacted to the retreat signal in time and who started running immediately were safe. The rest had a variety of injuries ranging from crippling and later fatal burns to just looking like they had spent a day out in the sun.

But without the speed of the rekis, most of them didn't escape the firestorm as it swept backwards into the valley. The dense drifts of magical fire stormed down and rolled over them without mercy.