Since they had beaten Mictlan and repelled Marverni, Tien’Chi had ceaselessly carved a path to power. The Eternal Pyre, the Stellar Focus and the Earth Blood Deep Well had already made them a dangerous contender that was to be accounted for …

But Grim’s ambitions were far beyond that as she, more than anything else, wanted to become the next Pantokrator. Her enchantments gave her a bunch of about 50 gems each month, a quite good amount that allowed her to grow an ever stronger army. But that was close to nothing compared to what she had in her sleeves.

And, in that last Winter of the war, the news came in. The Old woman had focused the power of an immense Arcane Nexus. This was like an invisible magical vortex that absorbed magical energies, emitting an intense light when such energies were soaked up. Indeed, deeply connected to the Ether world it sucked from there all the magical powers released in the world. So, every time a mage, any mage, focused a spell or crafted a magical item, about half of the magical energies released in the process were caught by the Nexus and transformed into pure Astral pearls. The enchantment had a small drawback though as Astral magic was too pure to be recovered in this process, as well as Blood magic that was too alien for it to have any effect.

Nonetheless, Grim had made a step every other pretender recognized as a step too far. Indeed, she soon started to gather more than 200 astral pearls per month, a huge amount that more than doubled her magical power !

Lord Kall officially raised the issue amongst every other nation : Grim’s ambition had to be stopped. Of course, this was a political stance while he was himself putting the final touch to his great Plan for ascension … and even though this was somewhat of a bad news, given Tien’Chi held the Throne of the Moon, the last most critical target of the Plan, that situation could also be used to some advantage.

Indeed, the attack on Tien’Chi would look as a legitimate move to take down a too dangerous opponent for every other pretender. Lord Kall was really afraid that someone would figure out what he was up to and start a crusade that would thwart his Plan. As such, every reason to hide the true meaning of Helheim’s attacks were a good thing.

But the most interesting way to take advantage of the situation was to cool down C’ti and prevent them from crossing the border to the Throne of Bureaucracy. This was the main concern of both the War council and Lord Kall : C’ti had to be kept at bay.

So, an embassador was sent to the Desert Lion to join forces to dispel the Arcane Nexus and, if that effort failed, share the burden of war to take down the now too dangerous enemy. As much as 100 Astral pearls were sent to C’ti to help them try to dispel the Nexus. They had indeed better trained mages for that, and Lord Kall felt that from a diplomatic point of view it was better to be the one to give the resources …

The leaders of Helheim weren’t sure whether they should be happy or sad when they heard that the dispel from C’ti failed … happy for the diplomatic advantage, sad because Tien’Chi was starting to build a large army of giant golems that threatened the whole campaign for the Throne of Moon and as a result, the whole Plan …