A/N: Apologies again for taking so long to update. Thanks to C.D. Meiss, Rin, gallowsCalibrator92, and Bloody-Destination for reviewing the last chapter, and a belated thank you to everyone who added this story to alerts and or/favorites.

Terra:

At first glance, it might appear to be the mother of all Girl Scout campouts. Girls and women are gathered in small groups, doing each other's hair, putting makeup on one another's faces, and talking a mile a minute. Who cares if they're out in the desert, behind a wall of solid stone that certainly wasn't there yesterday? Most people wouldn't look farther than that.

But suppose you're one of those people who looks closer. Then, maybe you'd realize that the talking isn't girl talk; it's an incessant stream of nervous babble. You could notice that the makeup isn't makeup at all, but curiously elaborate face paint with odd symbols woven into the design edges. You could see that beneath the paint, every face is pale and strained. You might see the weapons tucked just far enough out of sight to be missed by the casual viewer, but still within easy reach.

It's three o'clock on August 1st. Dusk is due to fall at seven thirty-six pm. The first fight in the Chaos war, the first and probably last battle for Earth, will begin in four hours, and no one really knows what to do with themselves; so they're overdoing it with face paint.

I'm off to one side, trying to fuse the second earth and first fire forms into one sequence. I finish off the sequence with a showy foot stomp rather than the jump that's suggested, mostly because if anyone saw me jumping up and down in the desert they'd think I was throwing a massive temper tantrum. My booted foot smacks the ground, and a fissure opens up in the earth ten feet away, bubbling lava oozing out.

"Not bad," says Renna.

With an impatient wave of my hand, I close the newly formed fault line and turn to face her. "Renna, I told you to evacuate with Jane and Erik two hours ago."

"The battle doesn't start for another four hours," Renna says. "I'm going to stick around here for as long as I can. Are you sure I can't -"

"Not if you want that baby," I say, cutting her off before she can even get to the gist of her question. Renna can't go into the fight without putting her child at risk, so I've forbidden her to be part of it. "What are you going to name it?"

"I was thinking about Michael," Renna admits. "If that's all right with you. Michael Ember Sunrider."

"That's a mouthful," I say, thinking the kid will be lucky to make it through kindergarten. If there's still an Earth by the time he's old enough to go to kindergarten. "You seem really sure it's going to be a boy. What if it's a girl?"

"I think it'll be a boy," Renna says. "But if it's not, I'll cross that metaphorical bridge when I come to it. And Terra, Loki needs your help."

"Why, what did you do to him?" I say, instantly wary and worried that some of the Sirens have decided to use their pre-battle nervous energy to prank the Trickster.

"I didn't do anything to him," Renna says. "Darcy gave him some face paint and I don't think he knows what to do with it. Just thought you should know."

Then she trundles back to the main group to sit with Nada and Jazz, the old-timers. They've been Sirens the longest, and it's the three of them, if anyone, who've noticed that there's something wrong with me. Loki noticed, too, but that was because I was being stupid. I think I've managed to put him off it by acting normally, but when it comes to Loki, I'm never sure whether it's me fooling him or him fooling me.

These past weeks since Renna made her prophecy have been mental agony, mostly because I'm not sure how literally to take her predictions. There's always some element of panic when you have the date of a battle bearing down on you, but this is different. The phrase "the blood of the dragon will be spilled" can be interpreted literally, meaning that I could fulfill the prophecy by stabbing my finger with a needle and letting it bleed. Or you could believe it's a prediction of my death. Because I don't want to give myself false hope, I've chosen to believe it's the latter, and that's been seriously messing with my head. I can't stop thinking that everything I'm doing today - be it waking up, reapplying the makeup that covers my scar, laughing with my friends, allowing myself a brief moment to watch Loki - I'm doing for the last time.

Stop it, I tell myself. You have the fight of your life coming up - and at that, I laugh a little - and you can't afford distractions.

Unfortunately for me and my survival prospects, another distraction presents itself immediately in the form of Loki, who's sitting at the edge of the group. He has a pot of face paint in each hand and a confused expression on his face.

"Need help?" I ask.

Loki nods. I sit down in front of him, taking the paint pots and noting that he's been given green and gold. "Do you want me to paint runes, or a design, or -?"

"As long as it's not a target on my forehead," Loki says, settling himself more comfortably on the ground, "I'm all right with anything."

That makes me laugh. "No targets, I promise."

I steady Loki's face with my left hand and dip the index finger of my right hand into the pot of green paint. Ordinarily, I'd start by outlining the eyes, but I don't think Loki would look good in what amounts to green eyeliner. So I paint a few leaves on his forehead, thinking idly about the green man faces from medieval Europe, and I sit back to admire the effect.

It suits him. The green matches his eyes, and the leaves give his fine, sharp features an otherworldly look. Looking at him, I feel a peace that's been absent from my thoughts in recent days. Darcy and most of the younger Sirens believe that when you look at someone you love, fireworks go off in your head. Not so for me; I've got enough fireworks on my own. When I see Loki, calmness I associate with being on solid ground, skating over a frozen lake, watching the dying embers of a fire, sweeps over me.

"What is it?" Loki asks. "Why are you smiling?"

I realize that an unbearably silly smile has come over my face, and I do my best to erase it. "Nothing," I say, suddenly aware of how close I am to him. I'm sure there are girls who would just lean across the space between us and kiss him - in fact, several Sirens who are bored and listening in are advising me to do just that - but I can't. For all my confidence in other areas, when it comes to romance, I'm a wallflower.

I finish painting the leaves as quickly as possible, using them to frame the upper half of his face, and then I add gold accents. Then, as a final touch, I cover my thumb in green paint and draw a thick stripe down the center of Loki's lips.

"What're you doing that for?" says Darcy, walking past. "I don't think he's in danger of becoming a berserker!"

"It's not just for berserkers," I say, wiping off my hand on the hem of my shirt. "It's so you remember what you're fighting for. I think we all need that."

Darcy rolls her eyes, complains to everyone within thinking distance about how I make everything so profound, and moseys off. Loki checks his reflection in the polished metal of his helmet. "Thank you, Terra."

"No problem," I say, and stifle a huge yawn.

"You should sleep," Loki says. "I know you haven't these past nights."

I roll my eyes. "No one else has, either. We've all been up dancing around any plant we can find."

That statement sounds incredibly weird, I know. But practice makes perfect, and if we want to grow a new World Tree in anything less than a millennium, the Sirens and I need all the practice we can get.

"Yes, but after the all-night tree-growing sessions, everyone else went back inside and slept the whole day," Loki presses. "You, on the other hand, waited until you thought we were all dead to the world before going right back out to work more. Don't think I wasn't paying attention."

I suppress a snarl. Sometimes, Loki's habit of noticing every move I make really gets on my nerves.

"I see no reason why you should stay awake for the next few hours," he continues. "Lives are at stake, and the last thing your fighters need is their leader to be dead on her feet."

Dead on her feet. Good one, I think bleakly. "Okay. You win. I'll sleep. But be sure to wake me up an hour before the fight, so I can do my face paint, get into my armor, and give one of those morale-raising speeches to the troops."

Loki chuckles softly. "All right."

I stretch out awkwardly on the sand, fold my hands behind my head, and stare up at the cloudless sky. It's going to be a clear night - with a whole gallery of stars to witness what looks and feels like a futile last stand against Chaos. My thoughts fall into strange patterns. I wonder where Lethe is, and if she's thinking of me, and if she knows that, because of what she's doing tonight, she might lose her other child. I think about Adrian, and wonder if he even knows what he's doing anymore. Ashari crosses my mind only in passing, when I decide that no matter what happens to me, she'll be imprisoned forever as the new anchor of the Bifrost.

I think of Loki, too - he's never far out of my thoughts these days - and think that maybe it's not possible for two people, both free from the Fates' design, to live happily ever after. I wonder if there even is such a thing as happily ever after. And then someone's hand, probably Loki's, reaches into my line of vision and closes my eyes.

I wake up slowly, forgetting for a moment where I am. My head is no longer resting on the ground - it's on something else, and when my good eye focuses, I realize that my bizarre pillow happens to be Loki's leg. This in itself is a problem, but as I blink sleep from my eyes, I register that the light in the desert has become a lot weaker.

I sit bolt upright, and my head smacks into Loki's chin. "Ouch! Dammit! What time is it?"

"Seven nineteen," says Nada, hurrying over, drawn by the sound of my swearing.

I round on Loki. "You were supposed to wake me up an hour before the fight! And now I've only got -" my sleep-muddled brain takes a moment to crunch the numbers - "seventeen minutes before they're here!"

"I fell asleep, too," Loki says. "I'm sorry."

I shouldn't be angry with him. I really can't be, because if he knows that I wasn't sleeping, he probably wasn't sleeping either. But I can't help thinking that I might only have so many hours left, and I wasted a bunch of them on sleep. I mean, I didn't even have any dreams.

"Yeah, you two looked very comfortable," Nada says, smirking. I try to figure this one out, but my brain's still foggy from sleep. And I don't have the time. I have to get ready for the fight.

I kick my backpack over, sending armor spilling onto the ground, while I try to tie my hair out of my face with the one hand and rummage through the pack in search of face paint. I meant to cut my hair, but I forgot.

"Guys, get over here and help me," Nada says, snagging a brush and taking the hair tie out of my hand. "She'll never get ready in time on her own."

Suddenly, I'm surrounded by Sirens. Most of them seem to be working on getting me into my armor, and when I try to help, I only get in the way. Nada brushes my hair back and ties it into a neat braid, something that would have taken me several minutes to accomplish on my own. In a surprisingly short time, I'm dressed in my armor, my knives and a sheath to hold the Soul-Reaver - once I (to quote the Terminator) reacquire it - are strapped to my back, and I'm ready to go. Except…

"Face paint," Nada says.

Darcy hunts around in the backpack and comes up with a pot. "Come on, Terra, you only have black? That's so dreary."

"Here," Loki says. After diving out of the way when the Sirens swarmed, he's waded cautiously into the fray to hand Nada the pot of gold face paint.

"Thanks," Nada says, and, balancing both pots in her right hand, turns back to me - only to find that I've broken free of the group. I snag a water bottle and a towel, drench the towel in water, and start scrubbing at my left eye.

I don't know what brought it on, but suddenly, I find the idea of going into battle with my scar covered unbearable. Maybe it's because I'll be facing Ashari, and she was the one who gave it to me. Maybe it's because I might die; and if I die, I want to die with nothing left to hide; but either way, it's time to stop taking the easy way out.

The other Sirens watch me impassively. They all know what I'm thinking and doing - well, not precisely; I've kept the prophecy under wraps - and they all have their opinions about it. Joy thinks I should keep the scar hidden because it's unsightly (she's never been much for tact), Jazz thinks I should go for it and that Joy should shut the hell up, Nada thinks I should do whatever makes me happy, and everyone else is following one of them.

"Stop scrubbing, Terra," Darcy says finally, breaking the silence and handing me a bottle of makeup remover. "You'll give yourself a black eye."

I mutter thanks and set to work removing the last streaks of pale makeup from my face. When I'm sure it's all gone, I stand there a moment with my back to everyone, trying to compose myself.

I don't have a good track record with people seeing my scar. Before I got wise and started covering it up, people would stop and stare in the street, fingers pointing, mouths covered. The nurses in the hospital where I was recovering would whisper about me behind their hands, pity in their eyes. And Adrian, who swore he loved me, took one look at my scarred features and turned away.

I take a deep breath and turn around, scrutinizing every face for a hint of pity, shock, or revulsion. None of the Sirens wear any of those emotions - in fact, most of them have the biggest, proudest grins I've ever seen. My eyes slide right over them, seeking one face; Loki's.

It barely takes a second. I know when he's seen the scar, because his eyes widen, and an inexplicable anger ripples over his features. But he doesn't look away. He doesn't look away, and that's all I want. I don't want pity - all I want is for the person I love to look me in the eyes without flinching.

I don't know how long we stay that way, but it must be awhile, because eventually Nada clears her throat and says, "Terra, we're, um, on a bit of a tight schedule…"

"You can gaze into each other's eyes later, provided we survive this thing," Jazz adds. "Let's move."

Darcy relieves Nada of the face paint pots and goes to work on me. I can't see what she's doing, and I can only hope she hasn't gotten it into her head to paint flowers. Or kitty whiskers. In an effort to distract her from any diabolical inklings, I say, "What do you think of all this, Darcy? The battle against Chaos?"

"I think you're playing Russian Roulette with the fate of the universe," Darcy says, her face screwed up in concentration as she dabs gold paint onto my forehead. "But I'm cool with it. I mean, what else are you supposed to do? Sometimes, you've just got to take a chance and hope for the best. All right, you're done. And we have seven minutes left."

Darcy heads off to sit with Elise and Miranda. Unnatural, expectant silence descends over the group, punctuated by a few whispered conversations. I get up and sit in the shadow of the wall, knees tucked to my chest, with my helmet sitting in the dust in front of me. With the fight almost upon us, I thought I'd feel more scared, but I don't. I just feel numb.

Soft footsteps, accompanied by the quiet clanking of armor, herald Loki's arrival, and he sits down beside me. He doesn't speak for a moment, and then he says, "Are you all right?"

"Nobody's tried to kill me in a few weeks," I say, disinclined to talk. "I'm fine."

"That's not what I mean," Loki says. "Are you frightened?"

Tight-lipped, I shake my head, and he says, "There's no shame in admitting it if you are, Terra. Only fools feel no fear."

"Fine," I say. "I'm scared. Okay? Happy now?"

Loki covers my hand with his, a comforting gesture I never would have expected from him. "You'll be fine," he says. "I will stay with you the entire time. Might that help?"

I weigh the options. If I'm going to die, chances are I'll be killed by Ashari or Adrian, and if that's the case I don't want Loki anywhere near me. But if he's out on the field, there's a chance that he'll be hurt by a foot soldier, like he was last time, and I can't let that happen twice. "Yeah," I say. "I think it will. But if Ashari or Adrian shows up, clear out."

"Was it Ashari who gave you that scar?" Loki asks, an odd note in his voice.

I nod.

"I won't leave," Loki vows. His features are stone, with a strange, cold fire in his green eyes. "Should Ashari appear, I will redouble the pain she caused."

Now I recognize the unfamiliar tone in his voice - it's anger. I've never seen Loki angry in the entire time I've known him. I don't think he's the type to be furious. Moderately annoyed is the most dramatic I've seen in him. So what is it about this that's made him so angry?

Don't you get it? Darcy says. It's because -

- she hurt you, Elise continues. He's so romantic.

"Why?" I say, ignoring Darcy and Elise's immediate cries of protest.

"Because of what she did to you," Loki says. "I heard about it from Renna. Ashari hunted you down just to carve that sign into your face. I intend to pay her back in kind."

Told you, Elise says, with what approximates a sigh. Darcy gives her a smack.

A tide of whispers runs through the camp, and both Loki and I listen. The words are unmistakable. "One minute. One minute left."

One minute. I turn back to Loki. "The map to the Waterless Sea, that I gave you before the Titans -"

"I still have it, Terra," Loki says. "But I won't be needing it, because you are not going to die."

I manage an anemic half-smile at his words, wishing, hoping, praying that he's right. But I can't convince myself that he is, and Loki, with that oh-so-annoying perceptiveness, picks up on it. He carefully puts an arm around me, I rest my head against his shoulder, and that's how we sit as the final seconds tick down.

The earth shudders once, and everyone goes silent, waiting. A second spasm goes through the ground and tears a gash ten feet wide through the group. Several people nearly topple into it, and the Sirens scramble up to their feet, grabbing weapons and staring at the new fault line.

With the earth still shivering, Loki and I get to our feet, and, dodging the rocks now falling from the guarding wall, make our way to the group. I summon the earth dragon and shut the gash, only to have another one open up along the edge of the wall. It seems as though the earth is shaking itself to pieces, and the earth dragon is keeping up a continual hum of pain.

"What is this?" I say. My estimate puts the second tremor at a 7.9 on the Richter scale - definitely strong enough for the mortals to notice. While I wasn't naïve enough to think that our preparations for battle would go unnoticed, I was hoping that the mortals wouldn't think much of it until the fight was underway. No hope of that now, and a chance that hapless people like the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization will wander into the fray and get caught in the crossfire.

"It's Chaos," Loki says into my ear. "It's ripping holes in the fabric of the universe to allow passage through."

"This never happens when Ashari travels," I say.

"When Ashari travels, the universe is only allowing the passage of one being," Loki says. "The tremors would be negligible."

A horrible thought occurs to me. "How many people did they bring?"

I head back to the wall - the damage to which is already being repaired by Jazz - and clamber up, followed by Loki. When I reach the top, I peer through a gap in the rock spines. My breath catches at the sight. "Oh, shit."

The Guardians, clothed in Chaos red, are marching toward us. And it looks like there's almost -

"A thousand of them," Loki says, inadvertently completing my thought.

And that's not the worst of it. Along with the ranks of Guardians, I can see a group of demons, no doubt summoned by Ashari; above them, in the sky, a trio of wyverns circle; and in the back, Ashari and Adrian sit, he on a black horse, she on a red. The Guardians have apparently decided to forgo secrecy and pull out all the stops.

"Where's Mother dearest?" I mutter, squinting around to make sure I haven't missed her. I don't see her. That's odd - why would she miss this fight?

Loki looks interested. "Maybe she's deserted."

"No way," I disagree. "Ashari would shred her, and there's nothing more precious to Lethe than her own hide. Why would she leave, though? She can't think that we're going to live through this. Not with the army they've brought to crush us."

The Guardians come to a stop, twenty feet or so from the base of the wall. There's an unnatural stillness to them, their stiff postures and blank, red-eyed faces. I spot Aaron on the front line, his eyes empty, and something clenches in my chest. Poor kid. Look what they've done to him.

Unbeknownst to me, the other Sirens have been silently manning the wall, summoning their animals and preparing for battle. Jazz, my designated second in command now that Renna's out of commission, looks to me. "We attack on your order, lady Princess."

"Remember," Loki says into my ear just before I pull on my helmet, "you cannot go into battle until Ashari shows herself. Do otherwise, and you risk all our lives."

"I know." I survey the ranks of Guardians; glance to my Sirens, their faces pale and resolute beneath the face paint; and look back up into Loki's green eyes. "What do you say we make the first move?"

Loki considers it, and nods. I consider all four elements, trying to decide which one I should use to attack. I rule earth out, as the dragon is still reeling from the Chaos tremors. Air and water are not nearly destructive enough, and I wish to send a message; that despite being greatly outnumbered, those of us who stand against Chaos aren't going down without a fight.

"Fire," I decide. And I call the dragon and send a massive fireball hurling over the front lines, into the center of the Guardian army.

By the look of it, one Guardian was incinerated outright, and two others are badly burned. The Sirens cheer, glad that we've done some damage - but I'm dismayed to see that, for all the impressiveness of the fireball, it's only caused one casualty. I look up at Loki, afraid to voice the question.

"They're shielded," he says quietly. "As I understand it, the attack is absorbed by the shield and dissipated. The larger the attack, the more damage it will do. Also, according to the histories of the last war, the shield can be overloaded. But I wouldn't worry about that unless they find a way over the wall."

"Thanks," I say. Then I send the command out to the Sirens. Attack!

The Sirens follow my order, hammering the shielded Guardians with blasts of fire, none so impressive as the ones coming from the mouth of Jazz's salamander. The smith is in her element, hollering unintelligible curses as her creature spews flames.

The Guardians have started moving at last - but rather than adhering to any recognizable strategy, individual warriors are making suicide runs at the walls. I turn to Loki for an explanation, but he shrugs. "I've never seen this before."

I tilt my head to get a better view of the problem and notice something strange. "What's that they're dropping at the foot of the wall?"

Every Guardian who runs at the wall manages to set something down at the base of it before being incinerated. Closer inspection on my part reveals the objects to be some sort of red gemstone. The stones are irregularly shaped and seem to glow with inner fire. It's no kind of stone I've ever seen before, and I haven't studied Chaos extensively enough to know if this is one of their regular weapons. I'll have to ask another Siren. Jazz is the obvious choice, but she's working hard to disable the shield on the left flank of the Guardians, and I decide she can't be spared. Instead I turn to Laurel, stationed about ten feet away from me on my right, the second most skilled at working with earth.

"Laurel," I say. She looks toward me, and I continue, "Get ahold of one of those rocks and tell me what it is."

Laurel smiles, pleased at being asked. Ordinarily, she flies far under my radar. "Will do, lady Princess," she says.

I watch as Laurel summons one of her badgers to crawl down the wall and bring back a red stone. She turns it over in her hands, weighing it, tapping it against the wall. Then she says, "I don't know for sure, lady Princess. But I think it's some sort of -"

Loki, who's been surveying the battlefield, turns back and sees the red stone cradled in Laurel's palm. His eyes widen in horror and he yells, "Put that down! Now!"

But his warning comes too late.

For a moment I can't make sense of what happens. The plume of red fire that engulfs Laurel's body doesn't make sense to me; neither do the screams of the Sirens or Loki's shock as he pulls me away from the blast. And then I understand, playing back the last few moments and seeing the stone in Laurel's hand explode.

Laurel, I say into the mental link. Then louder, almost a scream. LAUREL!

But there's no answer, despite my foolish hope. The immediate disappearance of Laurel's badgers, the emptiness I find in the mental link when I call for her, all tell me that the first casualty on our side has fallen - and that she died because of my direct order. If I hadn't asked her to check out that damned stone…

"It was a bloodstone," Loki says to me. "A Chaos creation. Whoever creates the stone can detonate it at will."

"But why detonate it on Laurel?" I say hollowly.

"She had dark hair, pale skin, was about your height," Loki says quietly. "In all likelihood, the creator of the bloodstone believed she was you."

I bite my lip and stare down at the ground, trying hard to fight off tears. And that's when I see the bloodstones littering the ground along the foot of the wall, and figure out exactly what Chaos is planning.

"Get the stones clear of the wall!" I scream. The Sirens hurry to my command, but I know that it's already too late. As soon as the bloodstones' creator sees us moving the explosives, they'll detonate them and destroy the wall.

It happens fast. One moment, I'm standing on solid ground - and the next I'm airborne, flung aloft by a wave of searing heat and debris. Dust and smoke sting my eyes, and chunks of sharp rock slice at any exposed skin as I plummet back to earth. I hit the ground hard - too hard - and bounce a couple times, coming to rest against an armor-plated body that is too cold and far too still.

"Loki," I say. His eyes are shut, his face empty, and a trickle of blood runs down his cheek from a cut on his temple. "Loki, wake up!"

He stirs, and the awful knot of fear in my chest relaxes. "Are you all right, Terra?"

"I'm fine," I say impatiently. "And you?"

"Not quite fine," Loki says. "But alive. Which is more than can be said for them."

I look at the place he's indicating and see a pile of bodies, at least three. All of them Sirens, all of them burned beyond recognition. The only way I can discern their identities is by the absence of their voices in the mental link. Four Sirens dead already, and we've barely made a dent in the Guardians' forces.

"I can't do this," I say, staring at the charred bodies that were once my friends. "I can't."

Loki puts one hand under my chin and lifts it so that I'm looking into his eyes. I don't understand what's happening until I feel his lips brush the scarred surface around my blind left eye. "Yes," he says. "You can."

"Lady Princess!" Jazz screams from somewhere. The tone of her voice is what frightens me - I've never heard Jazz sound so panicked. "We lost the wall! They're coming through!"

The dust is clearing, and I can see figures loping effortlessly through the breach in the wall. I struggle to my feet and call out to the Sirens, "Get to your battle positions. They've made it this far; but we're going to make sure that they don't get farther."

All my plans for this fight, all my hopes have been dashed. Everything's going wrong, and there's nothing I can do. Fear starts to wrap its iron coils around my chest, crushing my lungs and making it hard to breathe.

I glance at Loki, who's drawn his knives, and my eyes catch on the golden chain around his wrist. He sees me looking and mouths two words. No fate.

I take a deep breath, summon my dragons, draw my knives. The fight of my life has only just begun.