Derestra observed the field. Unbidden, a well of amusement funneled up through her incessantly trained calm. She could not help it. This whole event was so entertaining! All the other contestants, thinking they had a chance of winning. How adorable.

When she had first learned that their neighboring country, the Fire Kingdom, had called for a Tournament of Powers along with a distant nation far across the Starry Sea, she’d been…conflicted. The WIld Queendom, her home, had been in a rough position for the last few centuries. Or so her mother said. The woman would know, considering how much influence she held.

Much of those difficulties had spawned from the Fire Kingdom. The brutes objected to the matriarchal society their nation lived under just as much as those of the Wild Queendom hated their neighbor's patriarchy. Filthy barbarians. An event called by them would no doubt be just as crass and unrefined.

But…

The opportunities spoke for themselves. All events in the Tournament of Powers had a reward for those who won. A reward provided and paid for by the host country or countries. And nothing sounded more satisfying than winning events and taking the Fire Kingdom’s resources from them. Besides, it was a grand opportunity to observe the barbarians and their new Ethermarks up close without a life-and-death conflict. Any insights into the Fire Kingdom’s recent advancement in directly enhancing their bodies with ether was a win.

She shook her head just thinking of it. Derestra was still in training, so she had never seen an Ethermark in person before, only heard them described by her mother’s loyal warriors. The ones that came back, at least. Seeing them in person had been equal parts underwhelming and revelatory.

From the stories, she expected the Ethermarks to burn with wretched, chaotic evil might. Searing her mind merely by looking at them. Instead, she found them to merely be glowing symbols etched in skin. Underwhelming. But that in itself was a revelation of sorts. Such a simple thing contained enough power to turn the tides of a millennia-long conflict in the Fire Kingdom’s favor.

Anyway, Derestra’s conflicted feelings about the Tournament had resolved as soon as she saw this event. Mass Combat. The clashing of armies, rather than shrouded punching each other into submission. A refined, tactical art that suited her homeland and herself. That was what she found so amusing. Her mother had trained her in tactics from a young age, preparing her for the field of combat and the important role she would play within it as her mother’s heir. She was well-prepared for a battle of armies. Especially when one considered her domain.

Ant.

A seemingly weak and easily dismissed creature, the ant. Small, unassuming. Even with the WIld Queendom’s reverence for nature, many opponents of hers had dismissed her shroud and mocked her as a hollow echo of her mother’s horrifying Spider domain. Everyone feared spiders, at least a little. Ants were…less intimidating.

Or so many had thought, to their own folly. Indeed, spiders were apex predators of the insect world, with hundreds of terrifying and nightmarish monster variants. But there was a reason her mother had selected her out of all her sisters as the heir to the family’s council seat. Spiders were solo hunters. Even mother’s iron will and absolute control over her created creatures could only inspire the barest level of cooperation in them.

Ants were teamwork machines. As eusocial insects, they lived and breathed comradery and cooperation in a way no spider could ever match. Ants lived for the colony. Ants died for the colony. That was all there was to it. Cooperation wasn’t a consideration; it was just reality for ants. Derestra could hardly imagine an ant hunting or foraging on its own. How lost and insane such a creature would be, it boggled the mind. A lone ant was no ant at all.

Who could possibly imagine a better creature for Mass Combat? Her tactical mind, combined with the absolute cooperation of her created monsters, would overwhelm any opposition and crush any opponent under a wave of chitin and pitiless compound eyes. Ants did not have mercy.

And that was where her unbidden amusement stemmed from. Her opponents did not know the horror they were about to experience. Already, only minutes after the match had begun, she had created five monstrous Queen Layers, a type of ant monster that could spawn other monsters. Incredibly rare. Monsters, in general, could not reproduce; only very special cases were the exception. And her shroud allowed her to make just such monsters with ease.

Derestra knew the Mass Combat trial was going to be a long one. Ten participants, nine enemy armies, such a fight would not be quick. So, she paced herself. The first step would be building solid defenses around her sphere. An ant nest was a fortress unparalleled, perfect for defending her victory.

Her Queen Layers immediately went to work, spitting out massive piles of eggs from distended thoraxes. They bore a strong resemblance to termite queens rather than ant queens. But that was monsters for you. They laid clutch after clutch of eggs. Fed by Derestra’s shroud, the Queen Layers kept laying, and the eggs grew with unnatural speed.

It took less than fifteen minutes for freshly hatched Digger Ants from one of her Queens to start forming a massive nest. Each of her Queens, though visually indistinguishable, would lay different kinds of ant monsters for her army. Diversity was a strong benefit when she had nine opponents, all with unknown army types.

Derestra smiled. In less than an hour, she would have a force to be reckoned with. After that, she could start scaling up, adding more Queen Layers, and exponentially increasing her forces. This event would be easy.

{}

This was almost boring. Hecate watched through Dave’s eyes as her horde stomped over an army of clay figures. It should have been harder. The enemy soldiers had no sense of pain and no obvious weak points with a tough exterior, so the swords and spears of her Undead Soldiers were far less effective.

It should have been a challenge.

Hecate watched another clay soldier dissolve into muck as weapons wreathed in Necroflame desiccated the earth they were made of. The clay ceased to hold itself together, falling apart in moments. It was honestly more than a little unfair. Dave was ancient. Older than any shrouded, maybe older than the Starry Sea. He’d fought in hundreds of universes on thousands of worlds against all kinds of opponents. The breadth of experience he held was absurd. Matchups that would have caused a normal person to stumble were fights he’d already won a dozen times.

How could anyone match up to that? The obvious answer was that they couldn’t. Especially considering the knowledge barrier all her opponents had to overcome. It wasn’t like undead were unheard of in the Starry Sea. Monsters took many forms. But they were rare, and distinctly different from the undead Hecate pulled from the Necroverse. Every enemy she’d fought so far just didn’t know how to deal with her forces, while Dave dissected them with stunning efficiency.

It was a slaughter. And now she was bored. What was anyone going to do against the tactical acumen of a dimension-hopping super ancient Spirit of War? Dave was practically designed for this fight, and all Hecate had to do was keep him supplied.

Then, she saw something through Dave’s eyes. Off in the distance, past the army of clay soldiers that was rapidly dwindling.

“Is that…Is that an ant?”

{}

Dave hummed. He probably shouldn’t; it was unprofessional. He had a reputation to maintain. He hadn’t spent eons cultivating an image of absolute professional capability to be caught humming in the middle of a battle.

But he couldn’t help it! This was fun. Hecate was fun. Dave always had a good time, traveling to new universes, seeing different and unique magics and powers. Overcoming them with a Necromancer and their horde at his back. It was a grand adventure. He’d been in epic battles clashing with armies thousands of times larger than the one behind him. Fought deadly duels against beings that outclassed him by orders of magnitude. He’d done a lot.

Despite all that, there was something about working with Hecate that he found refreshing. She was naive in a way that few Necromancers were, not the jaded and spiteful mess that many of his summoners had been. Thinking back, he’d realized that it had been a long time since he last worked with a summoner he actually liked. Traveling to distant worlds was always fun, but doing it with someone he could enjoy a conversation with was not always in the cards. And that made this trip…nice.

Plus, this battle itself was entertaining. Three different armies he’d fought through so far, all of them drastically different. He’d fought similar creations individually before, but he couldn’t remember a situation like this, where he’d faced such different opponents all in sequence with no downtime. It was like a fun little puzzle that held his attention. Like a morning crossword puzzle with his ectoplasm. Entertaining and satisfying. And more than a little relaxing.

So, he hummed. Quietly, so the Lesser Lich Hecate had summoned didn’t catch it. Carigonzar was a good sort, but uptight even for a Lich. All of them were control freaks. Even though Dave was the undead’s boss, he didn’t want the pointed looks of disapproval Carigonzar would no doubt shoot his way if he heard the humming.

Dave caught something at the edge of his vision. Something that stopped his humming dead. A twitching antenna. “Oh, by all the undead gods. No.”

Dave had fought many, many battles. So many. Too many to count. He’d won most of them. Most. Sometimes, the odds were just too bad, and he couldn’t salvage the situation. It happened. He wasn’t invincible or infallible. Just very experienced.

Most of those losses had been to ants.

The undead were titans of mass combat. Their innate ability to pool their minds and replace their numbers with the bodies of their enemies made them perfect for fighting armies. But if they were to ever consider anything else in the infinite span of reality their equal, it would be ants. The little insects were a force to be reckoned with in a universe with no magic. Once you added supernatural powers into the mix, their combat ability exploded.

“About face! Minimal forces to secure the sphere from the clay soldiers.” Dave sent his message through the Death Link, calling on the other Death Knights and the Lesser Lich to get the lesser undead moving.

“We’ve got ants.”

His message sent a shudder through every other undead there that could think. They all knew what ants meant. This fight was about to get serious.

In minutes, the one scout ant Dave had noticed became a flood of chitin and pincers, covering the grassy hills in waves of crawling bodies. These ants were as big as a small dog, half a foot tall, with pincers the length of Dave’s forearm. And there were tens of thousands swarming over the terrain, tearing toward His force of only 300 undead.

“I’m going to cull the ranks,” Dave informed his compatriots. For the first time in this event, he accessed his powers as a Spirit of War. Until then, he’d been fighting as a Death Knight. But that wouldn’t be enough for a horde this size.

With a flex of his will, Dave called his weapons from across dimensions. In a flash of green fire, he was surrounded by a halo of dozens of swords, axes, massive cleavers, rapiers, bows, and daggers. All bound to his new form and capable of channeling the massive well of power he now held, thanks to Hecate.

With a gesture, every weapon was clad in Necroflame, more intense and potent than anything he’d used since coming to this universe. Another gesture sent them tearing across the distance between him and the encroaching wave of insects bearing down on his forces.

Magically bound, enhanced, and empowered, deathsteel met carapace and cleaved through, slaying anything it touched at dozens of places along the line. Hundreds of ants died by the second. But it wasn't enough. Dave’s arsenal was only so large, and the ants flowed around his weapons, undaunted by their kindred cleaved apart, stabbed, and desiccated by Necroflame.

In less time than he would have wished, the wave reached his forces. Just before it did, Dave flooded the Death Link with his might, empowering all undead under his command as a Spirit of War. Necroflame flowed over their undead flesh and along their blades and bows. The Death Knight and Lesser Lich felt the Mana they had access to intensify and surge, gaining new depths.

The ant’s pincers met deathsteel swords, spears, and shields. Behemoths of combat locked together for the thousandth time before Dave’s eyes.

“This is going to take a while.”

{}

Derestra couldn’t believe her senses. What was that?! What was going on?! Her ants had met with living corpses clad in green fire that decayed everything it touched. One of them had sent out dozens of blazing weapons to carve through her forces. Ants were dropping by the hundreds, and that was before the proper forces clashed.

Her army outnumbered the enemy over a hundred to one, but they didn’t give an inch. Their unsettling black weapons carved through monster chitin like a scythe harvesting wheat. She had thought this competition almost over. Her ants had rolled through every enemy unimpeded. It seemed she was wrong.

“This is going to take a while.”