Page 55 of First Ritual

I nodded like I understood. Birch seemed to gather as much, but didn’t press further, instead widening his focus to the rest of the team.

A deep tension had edged out the bubbling excitement from yesterday’s mission announcement. These magus meant business.

“Fertim’s mission is to destroy Vero’s charm stores,” he said. “As always, the goal of this group is to give Fertim the best chance of success. We want to lure Vero into relaxing their guard where the actual attack will occur. We want them unable to predict where we’re going. We want them to prepare for a different attack. And go.”

Huxley raised his hand, which then glowed orange. “Leaf used at least five charges against Rain last week. They’ll want to protect the rest they have. They drained two of their mother weapons in that battle also. With Leaf beaten and removed from the East Novice Ring, they’ll want to build numbers of magus there again.”

“Charges?” I whispered to the woman beside me. “Mother weapons?”

“Charges are power stores,” she quickly said, her eyes not leaving Huxley. “We wear them on a belt in battle to help extend our capabilities. Mother weapons are thrice-blessed weapons that we put out in storms to collect and store lightning for extra bang.”

I whistled low. No wonder I’d thought the cave was coming down if they’d been using lightning and those power belts.

I wanted one.

Of each.

Birch dipped his head at a young magus, who wrote on a piece of parchment. I felt the brief drag of energy in the room and the writing appeared on the far wall.

Vero status: Minimal charges and mother weapons

Vero objective: Increase magus numbers in East Novice Ring

Huxley lowered his hand, which stopped glowing. The orange glow transferred to the next person to raise her hand, a woman older than Birch.

“Their northwest territory has been weakest for longest as we all know,” she said. “That’s another focal point for their next move if they win.”

More writing went up.

Vero status: Minimal charges and mother weapons

Vero objective: Increase magus numbers in East Novice Ring and North Novice Ring

Birch’s wooden staff lit orange. “Strengths?”

The orange glow transferred between members of the team as they threw suggestions out one at a time. The glow had to stop multiple people speaking.

More writing appeared on the wall.

Vero strengths: Heavy occupation South Novice Ring and West Novice Ring

Heavy occupation Charm Store

Birch’s gaze flicked to me. “Our attack team is more concerned with which magus occupy the charm stores and their various strengths and weaknesses. In this group, we look at the magus outside of the main move area to use as decoys. We also select what we call misleads, which are pretend missions. What’s our main mislead this week?”

I plastered interest on my expression.

“Capturing an east novice presence is out,” Huxley said. “That was last week. Improbable to get the same mission so soon.”

The glow flew to the woman beside me. “Capturing a south novice presence. It’s not so far from the charm stores to be unbelievable, and we have most presence in the south and west quadrants. They can’t ignore the threat of increased activity.”

This was turned over by the group for a while.

Main Mislead: Capture south presence

Sub-mislead 1: Capture weapon store

Sub-mislead 2: Capture charm store