Discarding any notion of digging him out of his hole, she called on the Helian Sun and parted the storm with dawn’s coming. Scorching light burned all in sight, but destruction was an old friend to Wekesa. He knew it better than her.

“Reflect,” he hissed.

His mind spun, sights in the thousands flooding it, until he found the realm he’d sought. The most beautiful of his tricks, the one truest to the essence of sorcery. A lie told Creation: that its lay was as that of the Hell he had sought, as if they were perfect reflection. No great toil of alignment here, only the barest of efforts as he matched the realms. The sky went crimson, great shapes forming in depths that did not exist within Creation, and hellfire began to rain. The Witch would learn today why men had named him Sovereign of Red Skies.

…

The matron had forgot quite how terrifying Warlock could be, when let loose, but for all that terror the Witch had been every bit his match. And in their struggle, they had wrecked the Vales beyond recognition. The southern Twin was buried in stone along with most the valley before it, while a stray lance of lightning had hit the peak above the northern one, making half the mountain collapse atop it. That alone would not have cut retreat entirely for the Legions, but then Warlock had begun throwing down mountains to replace those he’d broken and it had gotten much, much worse. Half a city’s worth of brimstone had tumbled down the slope of the northern valley after being batted aside contemptuously by the Witch of the Woods, and there was no going around that.