This story is so long that I feel it is only appropriate that I write a note of parting.

I created OTDOTS back in 2008. I was fourteen, and I spent a a month planning before starting, and continued to refine for a year. The result has been—as you can see—something indescribably long for my fourteen-year-old self, but pretty average for my current self. I've been writing it almost continuously (took a break in 2011-2012 for the 'A' levels) for the last six years.

The plot might have seemed advanced to me in 2008, but right now, I find it somewhat simplistic. Even so I don't want to change the plot too much to suit my improvements in writing. I think one disadvantage of having a heavily-preplanned story is having to keep to it to the end. But I've done my best with the material I gave myself in 2008.

And let's not even talk about the standard of writing. Read Chapter 1 again, and then come back here. And laugh.

Now, at the same time, Maple has moved far forward, and I think it was always inevitable that the details in the story would become hopelessly outdated. I hope this does not affect your reading, and if you remember Episode 1, then I think there should be no issue.

I owe a world-sized thank you to everyone who's here to read the last chapter. Even though it's been a year and a half since I posted the last, and six years since I began the story. Thank you for liking it enough to follow, and thank you for taking me here. Thank you for bearing with me when I was obnoxious or tardy. I think writing this story has helped my writing more than anything else ever has.

I got tired of editing once I reached the epilogue, so I hope you don't mind the detectable drop in quality after that point.

Chapter 12: Year of the Dragon

We dance into a trap of our own making.

We are our own redemption.

We are the demons who engender the dark; we are the gods with the blade to its end.

We are the fire of the stars.

stars and fate

And one day in the history of the universe, so distant that the only record remains in the stars themselves and the waning memories of the ancient beings—when Time and the primordial sea were but indistinguishable from one another—the Dragon began to sing to the world. A song that burned, a song of hope, a funeral-song, for the things that He would destroy, and the things that would begin in their place.

Lights glowed into being wherever His harmonies touched the grains of earth: each was a heart, incomplete in the forge, each shone its own shade—mauve, maroon, gold—every temperament that was to exist, and every possibility for every other.

I grant you free will—He whispered from above—to choose, between darkness and light, between selfishness and altruism, between justice and injustice.

Free will—to choose evil. To be the destroyer where we seek to create. To demolish that which centuries built.

His eyes closed, and for seconds that decided all of eternity, the world was dark.

It isthe best gift I can give you.

His eyes melted into tears that fell through the sky as He shed them. He saw the glowing hearts unfold across the world beneath him, breathing gently, as the heavens began to buckle and a crack in the sky let burning rain through.

Listening to the thunder of the world beginning, the Dragon knew that they were flawed—yet in them, He saw no less than perfection.

ralinn: of fate

"This is the sign," she whispered, the words that wrote the next spiral of fate.

caleix: midwinter falling

"I want guard patrols tripled the instant you are out of this room. Quadrupled! No one will so much as—pass a junction without being searched, understood?"

His shout was softened by the carpets and tapestries—all older than he was, but younger still than the ancient walls around them. Walls that would never break till the kingship came to end. The winter was warm within them, but the warmth stopped where his heart began.

"I...understand."

"I want Nightfall found! I want every square foot of the town scoured, every road, every street, every shelter in a ten mile radius of Henesys. I don't care how long they're at it. They will not rest till every traitor is executed! We can't let them—I can't let them—"

The king fell silent. He breathed hard, as if he had just run a mile, and besides that unsettling sound, only the low mutter of a radiator from somewhere remained.

A chill crept through him.

Paranoia, this paranoia...

Caleix bowed and massaged his temples. He was the same man, a little more wrinkled than before. But how much, how impossibly much, time had changed him on the inside.

What had he known in his youth? What had he seen of the world? It had been a time of light-blinded eyes, a time of thoughtless, foolish love. Love, which had tempered the horrors that were his birthright; love, which had made him believe in the best of things.

Kingship had scrubbed that glamour from his eyes, and suddenly the world seemed deep, and so grey, from end to end. Fifteen years at this seat, locked in a sobering granite castle without love to fool him. Fifteen years fighting an endless battle.

Only the witless could believe in love after seeing what he had. Fifteen years of rage and terror and watching people backstab each other.

How had that pale, summery world vanished? How, and when, had the warmth drawn its hem away?

The old cherry garden in the crumbling courtyard downtown.Falling petals.

Tears...tears meant nothing to this towering golden throne. Why shed them for a past he'd never return to?

Maybe...I no longer have any tears. Maybe they were all taken from me that night, fifteen years ago. Before my reign changed. The night I cried a river to the stars.

With a weary eye towards his ceiling, he thought briefly upon the constellations. He thought of the unfathomable distances separating the stars from the mortal world—distances meant never to be crossed, distances further than Time itself.

He remembered how the stars had streaked by his window those three special nights, rioting flame singing the hymn of new life. He remembered it all. The magic of the wait, the sound of a newborn's first breath, a shock of wind in a hollow world.

"It will be done to the best of my ability, Your Majesty." At last, the guard dared interrupt, and he did so grimly.

Caleix inspected his person momentarily. He remembered the day they'd first looked eye to eye: a face in the ranks, wild-eyed, too young for the violence that his suit of armour represented.

"I am pleased to hear that, Mr. Hesprel."

Caleix also remembered seeing Esharo smile. Once. The day the New Year fireworks had sparkled and shone far off, over rebellious Kerning, long-dead Kerning. But it was hard to imagine they were the very same person, for the sorrow was beginning to etch lines in his face.

This war is aging us beyond our time, isn't it? You and I both. It's not the sort of war humans were made to fight.

It was rarely that one found a servant of his calibre. From his very first days of service, Esharo Hesprel had laboured without fuss. He hadn't always succeeded, but it wasn't success that made him valuable; it was virtue, it was the righteousness he raised like a beacon above the snarling, treacherous blood fest that surrounded him.

In a decade and a half of knowing this man, of seeing in him more humanity than he did in his other subordinates, Caleix had allowed himself a concession that no monarch should. He had begun to believe he trusted someone.

The guard captain looked across the table at his king, both studying each other, gazes heavy with a sort of pain that only a long battle over a meaningless cause could engender in one—pain as deep as the midwinter cold.

A gully full of fallen petals. An imprint of an old summer day.

In this moment, the top curtains fluttered wide. Both pairs of eyes turned as sunlight streamed briefly through the grills, setting aglow a rectangle of the ceiling mural.

Then it was gone, and the room dimmed to a gloom even the lamps struggled to break through. A cold breeze twirled through the uppermost windows, carrying the fearsome tang of coming midwinter. Caleix hunched lower, to keep the chill from touching him.

Blossoms. Love.

The cold could have been the portent for an ending world. Everything about the wind and the impending freeze seemed an omen: the blight of the cold as it fell upon the land, a shadow of Caleix's own descent.

"And I want you to eradicate Nightfall." This decision had waited long upon him. "Take five hundred men with you, if you need, enough to outnumber them fourfold. Nightfall is the easier target now—and I don't want them to come close to entering the castle again. Ensure that anyone leaving Henesys eastward is well-followed—any of them could be a messenger for the guild. And..." He hesitated, fearing death, fearing all sorts of things. "...if any member of Orion's Belt is sighted, handle him or her ruthlessly."

While Esharo nodded, Caleix uncovered a sealed envelope beneath the letter he was writing, and pressed it into Esharo's palm. "They will not be put in prison. By my new decree—which you presently hold—all Most Wanted criminals are not to be imprisoned. They will be publicly executed, immediately. The citizens will watch the deaths of their heroes."

Esharo bowed. "I will start today," he said, eyes hardening. His fingers touched his left forearm, where Caleix saw the white of an old scar.

If there were any questions to be asked, none were voiced that day. "Thank you very much, Mr. Hesprel, and good day to you." Both knew the second clause was only a civility.

ralinn: jealousy

"This is…the sign."

Lanoré leant in closer, eyes glittering. Akera merely stared. But she refused to gape, and held her lips together in a fierce thin line instead.

"This is it!"

"The sign for what!" Akera exclaimed, a bang accompanying her last syllable as she thrust herself from her seat. "It is quite a feat to have made such a coin toss, yes—but if you will not enlighten me as to its significance, then that is all it is in my eyes—quite a feat!"

Instead of giving Akera the attention her gaze demanded, Ralinn continued to stare at the coin, her entire mind a whirl of questions. Akera's shouts hummed meaninglessly around her.

Was this it?

All these years. Seven years from the second when the first dream-song had begun, seven years since the words of prophecy—journey—duty—had begun to etch themselves onto her life.

All this time. And here, at last, stood the answer to this riddle.

Akera the Mage would take the Spear of Heaven. Akera the murderess would murder the king. Akera of Lith Harbour would free Victoria Island.

Here it was! Now victory was so close it could almost be felt, humming in the air. They they only had to complete preparations now, and attack.

But she refused. Ralinn refused to believe it. It wasn't right.

The still coin glinted, straight as a soldier in bronze, the embossed maple leaf outlined by the blue light.

"Well? Ralinn?"

Ralinn turned to her belt, pulling the mouth of her drawstring wallet open and reaching inside. What she produced on the tabletop was a strip of paper, barely the size of her palm, folded and creased by seven years of journeying, wrinkled by the sea.

Ralinn saw a change in Akera's face.

"What is it? A prophecy?" she asked.

"That's what it is. 'In the end, three stars will banish the darkness, and a soul of fire will end its reign forever.'"

"It's about Akera," said Lanoré.

"I don't know what the 'three stars' might refer to, but I'm sure that the 'soul of fire' is Akera," the Ranger said. "And that—" she gestured at the coin on the tabletop, "—confirms it. Two months ago, I read that finding someone powerful enough to wield the Spear is as likely as having a coin land on its edge. I never expected it to be a literal prophecy—but well, here we are."

All eyes shifted to Akera. But she was not the picture of confidence they expected. Something had been lost in her—and now she could only gape.

"So—I will kill Caleix?" the Mage said. "Me?"

You. Always you. "I—no—I mean, yeah." She fought to stay noncommittal. "How can you wield the Spear of Heaven? I mean, it's a spear..."

"Deina used a halberd as a staff," Lanoré said. "Akera could use the Spear in much the same way. Besides, it probably won't have much of a problem directing magic, seeing that it's already imbued with so much power…"

Staring at the Archmage's face, Ralinn bit her lower lip.

No, no, no—not like this.

"Well...no one in the guild would take on the task otherwise," added Akera, perturbation showing through her sternness. "Someone must do it."

I...I was the one who began it. I was the one who worked seven years.

She watched as Lanoré and Akera exchanged a few words—saw their mouths move and their expressions shift slightly with the words—but the rush of blood in her ears blotted it out.

I found them. I brought them together.But I will not be the heroine of this tale.

Akera will.

These thoughts solidified, and drove a spear of guilt through her heart.

No—I am not—that is what Akera is—jealous, always jealous—

"No," the word threw itself from her lips. The two lifted their gazes to her. "No. The Spear—is dangerous—it might kill her. You saw what it did to me. No—we'll find another way to kill the king. There must be a simpler way."

With a kick the Ranger threw her chair back and, without a word more, marched off towards the staircase.

"Then—Ralinn—what do we do?"

esharo: the damned

"Let me! Let me live!" Garth's ragged cries rang across the square. It had taken three men to restrain and bind him; Esharo knew Garth did not intend disobedience—"intend" in the most technical sense of the word—but fear was a potent thing; fear made murderers of men.

And he did not stop struggling, his voice alternating between roar and whimper—not even as he stumbled up the stepladder, not even when the dangling loop was lowered before his eyes. His head swung about like a rabid creature's, and his face flushed with his bellowing; Esharo had to catch him by the nape and thrust his head through the noose. Though his hands were secured by chains, the guard captain began to fear those trembling fists.

Now Garth would pay for his despicable crimes through the godless punishment device that arched over his bowed back.

For failing the hunt. For missing the mark. For allowing Orion's Belt to land safe at shore.

Executioner Ralstor tautened the rope with a sharp jerk that made the sobbing man choke. A grin contorted his lips as he bound it to the post; it was all Esharo could see beneath that hood.

Esharo stared at Garth's ragged boots, realising with a blinding stab of horror that this was the first guard, the first comrade he'd ever been signed to execute. Criminals, defectors, he'd handled before—but not one ally, not one from the same ranks as he, condemned for a mistake. He breathed deep to steady himself. Garth Orden; he was a guard too—a guard like himself, a guard who'd pledged his soul to the king.

There and then, the Henesys Guard Captain—favoured by the King of Victoria Island—was seized by a fear he'd never known. A fear that it would someday be him dangling from the gallows.

But—why? His eyes narrowed. He was not Garth. Garth had failed the king's trust. He, Esharo Hesprel, was a faithful servant.

And Garth was a faithful servant too, a good clean man—till he made his first mistake. One mistake.

Horror struck like a dull stone. He shut his eyes to the man's weeping.

Not one soul was exempt of Caleix's cruel justice, not even he.

When Guard Captain Esharo cast his eyes upon the harpooner again, it was no longer a glare. It was a plea for mercy, from a child to an effigy.

Closing his eyes, he wrenched the stepladder from under screaming Garth's feet.

It had been a week since the first and only fall of snow. The new precipitation had gotten the children excited, but not enough of the white flakes had fallen such that they could play games outside.

Mark my words, Lanoré had said, the snow will return with a vengeance.

Out beyond the walls, the wolves were killing rabbits, murdering them in cold blood—scant nourishment that would, with luck, keep their scrawny selves alive until the winter's reprieve. But they ought to have felt lucky; they were not held by the chains of the kingdom. They were not plagued by the even-deeper cold of a tyrant king's reign.

During grocery duty today, their dear little thief Orsa had snagged a copy of the Most Wanted off a pillar in Henesys Square; it was the source of much commotion that day as the kids and some of the adults gathered to see how the rankings had changed.

In their hands, the grim list became a game of some sort; apparently Akera with her price of twenty billion mesos—known to the defence forces as "The White-Haired Murderess"—hadn't yet yielded her top spot, though Lanoré ("The Silver Fang of El Nath") vied for it at Number Two with fifteen billion. Hyrien hung on beneath at third spot, and Ralinn right after; apparently having actually made an attack on the castle made one a greater threat. Which meant that originally fourth-ranked Cirid Celadon had gone down to fifth; they said she was a rebel leader who'd gathered every surviving soul of Kerning in the sewers, but the Ethiels weren't much open to conversation, and the ones who were only mentioned knowing the name from childhood.

"Some girl with a more illustrious career in thievery than most," said Pan with a shrug, legs crossed in one of the sofas. They glanced past the two unknown names that followed—Pala Beridan, Celel Adara—crimes listed as "murder of guards" and "high treason" respectively.

At the bottom of it all was signed the name Esharo, and while most people sneered at the writing of that filthy king's dog, it made Hyrien blink sadly, and no one quite knew why.

you are my story

It was hard to watch, and to know how much everyone had transformed—so much that this world was no longer recognisable for what it had been seven years ago. When Ketara remembered he had only been a child racing down mountainsides, hoping to find a home in a place he loved, among people who had grown so dear. Did he still? Did they still live, for that matter, or had they all died in the attack?

Wars would always be destructive. They began as little murmurs on the edges of hearing, and grew into worldwide revolutions—stripping kingdoms bare, leaf, twig and stone—repainting the landscape with blood and fire. Fire, always fire—fire to hold back the midwinter.

It was no surprise, how alien the landscape of Victoria Island seemed now. The days of that long summer seven years ago blurred in a fog of memory, meant never to be remembered because they would never return.

But that's must happen, right? We want the world to return to how it was then—that world, from a child's dream, almost. That world where the king knew how to love.

"Lida? Need some help here."

From the sofa, Ketara held the thief girl's gaze. "Dining table," he explained simply. He did his best to make it seem like a tiny request, and even smiled for her—but it was impossible not to notice how Telida's eyes clouded up.

Her zeal was all gone, washed out by some unknown darkness. Her cheeks used to flush red with rage, or with embarrassment, those midnight eyes flashing like blades, poisonous and whole.

Gently Telida took Ketara's hand, and tried to glare, but those eyes would not display the fury they could not feel.

His throat ached; he remembered the girl from the trees. Cruel, heartless girl with a dagger made of hate and eyes without mercy. She remembered that cry—the red stars shooting through dark, smelling of singed metal, hungry for the flesh of their assaulter.

The Dragon Knight beamed up at his companion as he rose. The story of Ketara and Telida had spread around, but Yunira hadn't turned any less clingy or moonstruck—she still followed close behind, doting on her idol and spending hours talking whenever she could, though she knew she could never put herself between him and Telida again.

Ketara was much better at hiding than Telida. He smiled as much as he had before, showing no sadness where it should have been. Sometimes, he dreamt of flying through the night in forests full of rain and spring—some remnant of those old days in Leafre, close to the heart of the Dragon's kingdom.

Several minutes after Ketara and Telida settled at one of the tables, Akera came to join them. "May I sit here?" she asked. She took the space without hesitation when they nodded, but was quiet for the longest time, staring from one to the other.

"I'm tired," said the thief suddenly, in the manner of complaint—but both knew what she meant. They felt it too, grinding away at their hearts.

Akera breathed out. "We all are," she whispered in reply.

A silence followed, as Telida picked at her nails and Ketara finished a mug of hot chocolate. He blinked—and tears came, when scarcely anyone had seen him cry before. The girl beside him noticed—she gripped his shoulder, and he lifted his head to return the gesture, the way he could, touching her hand—

—it's alright now—

—I'm sorry for crying; I don't regret it one bit—

—no, don't be sorry! You don't have to be happy all the time—

—I really am happy—I'm glad—

The white-haired girl pulled back. "It makes me envious," she murmured. And for a moment she lost herself, and let herself admit everything. "To see what you've done for each other. It makes me wish...I could be loved for once."

"My brother loves you," the Hermit answered simply.

"But…but that's different—that's something else altogether. I want to return it, but I can't, because—"

Because? Because what, Akera? Because of Shirion?

Do you still love him?

He hates me now. And he will always hate me, now that I've done what I did. I sealed that hate.

I sealed that hate, thought Telida, eyes burning suddenly with a sting so new that it shocked her. He hates me. My brother hates me. And he will always hate me, now that I've done what I did.

"But Akera," Ketara answered suddenly, in his voice the mellowness of the sun in the autumn. "Shirion did! I mean—he used to talk about you as much as he did about Ralinn—so much it got confusing. He told us all about the cool things you did—about you climbing masts to fix sails, long ago, and how you stole food in the winter when the guards took his away—and how you helped him escape one night! I know that's called love, just—not the same sort."

They stared across the space, that two yard space that seemed, suddenly, more than a mile.

Telida felt her heart pounding, and each pound was like that of a hammer on a chisel, wedged in a crack in her stony soul.

Am I happy, now? Am I happy because I had my way, or was I always mistaken? All this blood, the same blood—all these years of hatred, and neither of us has won, isn't that so?

All those childish games, killing Dungeon monsters to outdo each other. Trying to make each other bleed. Bleed the same blood.

All this time. Now we're all broken. And what have we gained?

Akera felt that dark gaze pierce halfway through her, but it might as well have been a dagger, long enough to reach from one end of the world to the other. She had the same eyes as him. Eyes of shadow, so confused, so hateful, so afraid.

The Mage considered again, more calmly than expected; when did I grow numb to the wounds? Shirion was different from Turino. He was steadfastness—a pillar of safety—someone whom, from the day they had spoken their first words to each other, she had always believed would be her protector. And she had never shed it, that looking-up. Shirion would always be her safety, from the storms in the night that swayed the highest branches of Ellinia, from the shadows shifting while she tiptoed along the mast and unfurled the sails.

Her heart felt like melted ice; she felt so warm when she thought of Shirion—but Telida's eyes, Turino's eyes, made her feel guilty.

Telida watched those sparkling sky eyes, and her heart pounded, harder than waves on the shore. She wished Akera would know that she'd give anything to make Turino love her half as much.

With that, an immensely productive meeting was adjourned. Its weight continued to sit in Hyrien's throat like a glacier as he rose from his seat to depart.

"So it's really happening, hm?" murmured Clynine from a side, peering over her mistress' shoulder. Hyrien stared. They stared right back. It was a few seconds after that he realized that they were waiting for him to address Nightfall.

There he went, making a fool of himself before the Silver Fang of El Nath. couldn't go around looking incompetent in front of her...

But when Hyrien turned again to the bustling hall, a coldness began to grip him from inside. Pelinor was watching.

Pelinor hadn't left. Pelinor hadn't faded. Pelinor was everywhere. When Hyrien took that seat in the study, and touched the old pen that still bore the scratches he had left—there Pelinor sat, writing with fervour. When he rose, shoes clicking on the dais, Pelinor held his breath. Pelinor watched. Pelinor wove between the tables, mingling with his people, asking after their thoughts and insecurities.

He'd have been the next king.

Hyrien hated to remember. Pelinor had been a great man, but he had made a singular mistake. Ad that mistake had been his choice of junior master.

"Hyrien—it's not about charisma or eloquence," he had said."Many could recite poems on the dais. But you know what's best for your people. You will make the right choices, regardless of what others tell you. And a guild needs the right choices to be made for it—sometimes against logic—if it is to survive."

No. I don't make the right choices. I once let a guard go against your orders. That very same guard—has become the Henesys Guard Captain. One of the king's greatest assets. The one who—killed you.

I let you die…you see now? You realize how wrong you were?

I chose to let you die…so I could save an enemy…

With clouded eyes, he looked out again at the guild of a hundred, passed into his keeping by the very man who had formed it.

In the shadows of morning, the children lazed in the chairs, some hugging felt-and-cotton replicas of the monsters around Henesys. The rest were either in search of breakfast, or patiently awaiting their turns, flipping tabloid pages at the sofas.

The White Knight crossed the room with conscious, nervous steps, hand outstretched for the rope of the bell hanging on the wall behind the empty dais.

At the wall, he stopped and closed his eyes.

The bell's clanging raised gazes of all kinds. Hyrien ascended to the dais, and watched as every eye in the room trained itself on him.

"Nightfall," he began—struggling to replicate Pelinor's tone, to imitate that shadow. But the struggle must have shown in his voice. Their eyes did not light up the way they always had for Pelinor.

He imagined Pelinor's beckoning voice, and he knew he could never say it the way his mentor had—

People, my people! I stand here, on the behalf of all of Nightfall, on the behalf of Orion's Belt's leader, Ralinn—having just left a conversation that has change so much. Here I come, bearing the news of a momentous change—

"Nightfall. I have important news."

All at once, the halfhearted attentions of the main hall denizens were sparked anew. He breathed deeply, searching for strength in the stone at his feet.

We were ready this day long before it came to be. Long ago, when each first heard the other's names, and felt, in the distance, a comrade in our cause. Seventeen years of gruesome battle—but seven years of knowing we were not alone—

Pelinor's voice filled the hallways. His voice would never be heard again. There's no time to dream of being another man.

"Nightfall and Orion's Belt have the same aim—to rid Victoria Island of King Caleix's rule. It is clear, to us at least, that a union would not only be favourable, but also preferable.

"Ralinn and I have discussed this in detail, and we came to such a conclusion. And so, I would hereby like to officiate the merger of Nightfall and Orion's Belt." He paused to gauge their response: they were enraptured. "From today until our shared mission is complete—until King Caleix is dead or imprisoned, and the country purged of his hold—Orion's Belt and Nightfall will exist as a single guild."

For the seconds after the sentence was complete, silence took hold. The news scattered slowly through his audience, by means of whispers and murmurs. The chatter began like the breaking of waves, loudening as conversations crossed and spread, surprise setting their voices aglow.

A small cheer went up. Everywhere he looked, Hyrien saw smiles and wide eyes, and his heart pounded.

"We have yet to name our alliance," he added, his worry giving way suddenly, like timbers falling through. "We would have named it Nightfall-Orion's Belt, but I am certain someone here has better ideas."

"Orionfall," sniggered someone in front. "Night Belt."

"How about the Night Hunters!" yelled a high voice from the back of the group. "You know, since Orion is the Hunter and all."

Taking the suggestion with a nod, he glanced about. "Night Hunters? Does that sound right to you?" he called.

"I second that!" shouted Yunira, leaping from her seat. A chorus of assent swept the crowd, following the girl's exclamation.

"The Night Hunters. Are there any objections?"

"I like that name," put in a voice from close by—a woman of thirty named Calade. "Very apt—working in hiding, racing from outpost to outpost into the heart of the dark. Hunting down the servants of the king!"

"Then our new guild shall be named the Night Hunters," announced the guild master after a nod. "The preparations for our very first mission will begin by the end of the week. By then, hopefully, we will have the four Job Masters with us." An anticipatory murmur swept the crowd. "Akera has finished drafting the plan, and there is left to do is to recruit members to the task force. We will first seek the help of those we have handpicked, but being refused, we will then welcome volunteers."

The crowd was stoked. Jibes were tossed between the warriors, laughter came from some of the mages, nervous tittering flittered between the children.

"And finally: here is the most important piece of news. Winter is at its deepest, and the end of the year is drawing near. Once that date passes—by the deities' prophecy—there will be no other chance to bring King Caleix's tyranny to an end. Before then, we must make our final move. We must overthrow him—or submit to his rule for the rest of our lives. I want you all to train now, as hard as you can, to your utmost ability—every single one of you—in preparation of that day. I thank you for your effort in advance. That is all I have to say. Thank you for your attention."

The peace that came thereafter was like a bucket of cold water over his head. The people before him were the same—yet now he saw something else in their eyes: light.

It began from the corner—a soft pattering of palms against each other, from somewhere there, where those children sat huddled among the cushions, their toys at their feet. He saw them shift and bustle, their hands moving, eyes for him only.

It swelled steadily to consume the room. A thundering roar like the rain: the sound of applause. Hyrien felt it wash over him, sparks twinkling all over his vision, his pulse beating like a drum in his temples. Was that enough? He had not been poetic, nor rousing. Still they clapped, veiled in light.

Hyrien let himself sink into the warmth of the sound.

It was strange, how time was so malleable; one moment a race, and at another glacially sluggish. The days were a flurry, of people wearing themselves away at the training grounds. Amongst the treetops from the bare doorway, one could see the flashes of weapons catching the sunlight in the air. Small fires went up sometimes, and the entire woods would smell faintly of smoke; all the better to keep the trainees warm. There was always a voice in the hall—barking orders across the marble room, yelling for an incomplete favour to be finished, bellowing for another drink. Friendly fistfights were common.

Then with every night, there was a lull: children found themselves around the fireplace, hiding in the labyrinth of sofas and armchairs that was steadily falling out of line. Some turned in early, eager for the precious time of tomorrow. Every tiny difference was the greatest difference in the world. More drinks were served, over some casual poker. The Ethiel thieves played bridge.

Some men, with great black brushes, took to painting the wall behind the dais. But it was not a mural that they left in place of the emptiness; it was a message, a reminder, a shout in the dark. "THE EVE OF THE DRAGON." The day they would reclaim the world—or die.

"Hyrien," Akera snapped, eyes all demand. "Your guild. There must be someone who knows the prisons."

His brow furrowed. "Elode," he answered. "Abandoned guardianship when he was moved into the interrogation division; apparently his role in uncovering the whereabouts of Athena Pierce changed his mind about the job. He feigned death during the destruction of Kerning."

"I will arrange a conversation with him later," the Mage clipped straight forth. "What job?"

"Ice Lightning Wizard."

"Wonderful. What does Ethiel have?"

"Not much," said Patricia, matching Akera's glare. "We have thief skills, a teleport rock and a desire to see our Dark Lord again; is any of that of use?"

The Mage's eyes seemed to light up, even now cobbling together another version of her preexisting plan. "All of that, actually," she replied, nodding to her once. "What else?"

"We need a diversion," Hyrien put in. "But we don't have the resources necessary for one. An attack on the castle? Fire in Henesys? We need an effective diversion that's easy on our manpower and resources."

"But of course," answered Akera, "Nothing creates a diversion better than the criminal at the top of their Most Wanted list."

shirion: falling

"Ralinn, are you inside?" He knocked thrice, the way he always knocked, and paused, listening to the echoes of his knocks race down the circular hallway.

Ralinn had not seemed the same ever since the week they'd arrived in the Nightfall Headquarters. One would have considered their arrival a cause to drop all burdens—but for Ralinn it seemed a reason for all sorts of new burdens to appear. Shirion had thought it his imagination, but one evening in a corner of their living room, Clynine had come to him with concerns of the same.

And them having committed almost two years ago to a serious relationship, the Crusader had known it his burden, more than anyone else's, to help Ralinn.

If help is required, he added in his mind, gaze tracing the patterns upon her door again. Goddess, I've seen her through near-murder, twice. She never broke nor buckled. Goddess, there isn't anything wrong.

Ralinn answered his knocks with no less than a minute of waiting on his part. When she appeared, his guild leader smiled, and it wasn't a false one. But it wasn't full either. She let him in and locked the door behind them, still smiling that waning-moon smile even then. "Are you here for something?" she asked, teasing—and again it surprised him, just like it always did, when he slackened his shoulders, slipped the band off his hair, and dared reach out to take her about her waist and kiss her hair.

She sat at the edge of the bed, and because he felt obliged by duty—and more than just duty—he sat down beside her and took her about the shoulders. The winter was cold and they were warmer together than alone.

Memory stirred in the depth of her heart. Memory of cold winter up in the bare battered branches, where there wasn't a warm corner spared by the high wind battering the ocean bluffs. A small fire on the branches. A shivering figure up there beside him, right where Ralinn was now, safe and curled in his half-embrace—except it hadn't been Ralinn then.

Akera…

The memory was swept away by another. All of a sudden, he felt the young mage's shoulders again—only his hands were curled around them, digging into her skin, and her eyes were bright, and she was limp for her shoulders had been bruised by the force of his wrathful shaking—her cheek swelling, blood upon her teeth. Well, she had tried to murder Ralinn! Ralinn—Ralinn lay bleeding, poisoned in the snow, cursing like a witch...

…but that white-haired girl from Ellinia Station, he had hurt her like this.

Suddenly it was too painful to continue holding her. He flung himself away, and he swallowed against the sting creeping to his eyes.

Ralinn picked up on his unease immediately; her grip about his arm tightened. "What's wrong?" she asked, leaning closer. "Why did you come here?"

Shirion blinked down at his lap, and was glad to feel no tears welling up. "Oh—ah—Linn," he answered, turning. "I feel as if...something's the matter. Are you alright?"

Ralinn tilted her head, shook it. "It's not as if I've ever done much for the guild," she murmured with a roll of her eyes. "It was always you, and the mages."

"Oh, yes…I heard—about Akera and the Spear, and the job she was supposed to perform—"

"Who told you about that?" the Ranger snapped suddenly, then withdrew, brow furrowing. "And what does it matter to you, anyway? I mean—I want my guild as safe as it can be; haven't you seen what that Spear can do?"

"Your guild?" Shirion asked, corners of his lips lifting the slightest bit. "I have always been honoured to serve—but we aren't truly your guild anymore."

She shrugged. "You're still taking orders from me," she answered, "by habit or otherwise—and I am still doing for Orion's Belt what a leader would. Don't get me wrong, I think Hyrien is very capable."

"It just wouldn't be the same if we didn't," agreed the warrior. "Even then…we're all mere pieces now, aren't we? Lanoré and Akera are with Hyrien; they're the strategists." He was the boy on the branch again, and that frail girl beside him was loving him without his knowledge. That girl was his commander now. Akera, the strange things we've become. "It's odd; I never imagined her becoming a leader of any sort."

Discomfort made Ralinn's eyes narrow. "Why do you keep talking about her?" she asked.

Inhaling, Shirion apologised by resting a hand on hers. "The night in Orbis haunts me," he admitted. "I know she may not be my best friend any longer, but I just—cannot believe I—injured her."

Pursing her lips, she nodded up at him with wide amber eyes. Many things were running through her gaze. "You were angry," she answered. "She was angry too. People are irrational in the hold of anger."

Irrational enough to murder? He wondered, without accusation, and knew that Ralinn hadn't forgiven Akera yet. That there were things Ralinn imagined doing to Akera that would equal her own deeds in horrendousness. But it wasn't for him to judge.

"In any case," he murmured, "promise not to…be prejudiced against her for that, okay?"

His guild leader rolled her eyes. "I can't do anything to her, or anyone," she answered. "There's no need to worry." Her eyes stopped blazing and she managed a smile. Still half-empty. He'd been about to leave, but a strong hand to his arm kept him on bed's edge. "As your ex-guild leader, I order you to stay right where you are."

"Yes, Your Majesty," he drawled, but stayed as she took him about the shoulders and started to kiss him of her own accord, when she never had before.

Scarcely two days ago had the two guilds entered their momentous merger. Already, though, the Night Hunters fought as if they were on fire. Ethiel was growing restless; they spent their nights in the treetops staring at stars.

Amid the crowd in the living room, Akera wove between sofas, seeking men and women who had been enlisted for the job. They would not be hard to convince. Not when she was the one asking.

At a corner table, the first inklings of the Final Plan were already taking shape in Lanoré's mind. Brilliance, she believed, was a useful tool to have—but not enough, nowhere near enough, if there weren't the right people to execute her plans. Clynine was on the edge of her seat, biting her lower lip, feet bouncing on the ground. "We have friends, remember? And we have Ketara." The Archmage quirked an eyebrow, and reclining in the facing chair, Hyrien understood.

While the blonde woman was at work with her assistant and their new leader, Akera brought her chosen to the benches outside the HQ, urgency in her step that everyone could read.

"It's very simple," she began once they'd found a good spot. "We're here to save the Job Masters, and the plan's not elaborate—just the bare necessities. …Well, there is a bit on the side, yes, but not much."

Showmanship, Akera! What's victory if you cannot savour the guards' defeat? You don't want it to be over without them noticing. Just as they want their victory to be seen, we want them privy ours. No, we want to force them to watch. Make sure they can't take their eyes off us as we snatch victory from right under their noses.

I don't even know why I listen to Lanoré.

Lanoré folded her arms, eyes pinning the Guild Master to his seat. "I would like for us to be in the best condition when we arrive," she answered. "I want to eliminate as many hindrances as possible, I want the path to be clear. When the time comes, we will be thankful for it. Besides, I don't imagine any other method being more foolproof."

Out beneath the forest branches, the ice did nothing to cool the fires Akera had lit in their eyes. "As usual, I will be doing the most dangerous tasks—not least because I'm the only one who could possibly perform them," she said. "We're counting on one thing. Whatever happens, follow through. Whatever happens, even if one of us is snagged by the guards, or dies, the rest are going on with their parts of the plan. Ethiel needs us to do that. Understood?" She waited for a response, which came fast. "Bandits, how's your training going? How far away can you manage?"

Propping his chin up on the dining table, Hyrien pursed his lips in thought. "Alright, go ahead with it," he said.

"Please, Hyrien—we can take any objections up in discussion," Lanoré sighed. the White Knight read a sliver of impatience in her eyes. He frowned.

"I don't understand why you ten can't simply come with us in the main force."

Branches drooped with caked snow. The bandits froze up as Akera's eyes crossed them, too mortified to give a solid value—how far?

What if she deemed their training insufficient? What if she began to apprehend them—this murderess who could well kill them all before they even had a chance to realize they were about to die? What if she decided they were unfit, after all that time training—

"Thirty yards," answered Coelion, voice slicing air. Akera narrowed her eyes so they all held their breaths, then nodded.

"More work will make your task increasingly simpler, but for now I suppose a thirty yards is a very good distance to work at. Everything is set. We will go in three days' time on the twenty-fifth night of Aquarius at eight o'clock. Please be gathered at the door by then."

"Yes, we will do our best, ma'am," the bandit answered, accompanied by a chorus of nervous, determined affirmations. They all knew what was to happen already. They were bristling with the fright of an impending mission.

Smoothing a sheet of paper out on the polished wood, Lanoré scribbled a little more in the corner of the draft, already cluttered with so much information it could barely yield any space for more. "There we go," she said.

Kaida made the call for lunchtime just then. "Will there be more to add?" Hyrien stroked his chin, trying not to let his attention wander to food. "To the plan, I mean."

"More? Yes, of course, there will be more," answered Lanoré with a smile that was more teasing than joy and a gaze that made him feel like a bundle of mistakes. "In fact, we'll probably keep finding new edits to make every day until the plan is actually executed. Which is good, of course—seeing that we'll be up against the entire guard force this time. That is likely not an exaggeration—Caleix has probably worked out that with our arrival in Henesys, the final attack is nigh."

"Probably," answered Clynine.

Hyrien swallowed; he hated to admit that the thought frightened him. All sorts of thoughts throttled his mind, of dead bodies, black cloaks, blood on stones. His friends' blood.

How will we ever win?

With a pang he remembered Pelinor. Pelinor and his plan and how horribly it had gone wrong.

He glanced at his superior Lanoré for hope, and clung tight to what he could find in that enigmatic smile. Orion's Belt is with us. Ethiel is with us. Soon, the job masters will be here too.

"And how can we hope to equal their numbers?" he asked, bowing when he detected the doubtful waver in her eyes.

The Archmage shifted her attention so it rested upon the door. "It's not an issue," she said. "Allies. We will send out the dragons in the cover of night. Then the rest hinges on strategy: we have the advantage of first move. At least, we hope so."

"We'd better work fast then, before some spy gets wind of our plan," commented the guild master, averting the woman's returning gaze to look at the sheet in her hands. "My junior masters tell me that the training grounds are thronged every day."

The door swung open, and light streamed into the hall, briefly, before dying again. The chatter rose. Meanwhile Lanoré laughed at Hyrien's comment. "They'd better settle down, lest the guards begin noticing the smoke over the forest," she murmured, rising suddenly from her seat. "Welcome back, Akera! How are things?"

From nowhere it seemed, Akera came into their midst. Her glare was pronounced and resolute beneath her snowy white fringe. As the White Knight had come to realise, when Akera appeared angry, it was impossible to know how she truly felt. All one could surmise was that she wasn't in peace—she could be worried, horrified, disapproving, determined, or indeed—angry.

The white-haired girl gave no sign of acknowledging the welcome. "Well enough for us to begin in three days," she answered.

"Hold it higher! Higher! Yeah…yeah, that's about it!"

"Enough?"

After scrabbling a little way further up and finding a good foothold on the bark, Erin Eaglevane Ethiel now sat straddling a bare branch somewhere in the Lesser Forest, the same that extended southward from Ellinia—ridiculously high up, and ridiculously far away from her ambitious companion Pan. From here, all she could see of him was a face white in the moonlight, and all he could see of her was the glinting coin in her hand.

She shivered a little; the winter was already dipping near zero degrees, and the wind threw that coldness at her, rendering her jacket and scarf barely enough to defend her from its frigid fangs. But she could not possibly climb down now just to put on something warmer; her effort would be wasted and Pan would force her to climb again.

"Great!" called her companion back with a thumbs-up, though she was, in all likelihood, too far away to see his gesture. "Now wait for it."

With that, his voice dropped and the air pulled itself tight. An intense silence crystallized through the night, a low whirl of winter wind that chased even the bravest animals into the recesses of the earth.

The bandit on the ground shut his eyes, leaves crunching under his boots. He began to focus his mana right in the centre of his chest, like a point of light, the way the Dark Lord had once taught him.

When his eyes flew open, a little yellow explosion shivered in the branches high above—then came a squeal of fright from the girl amongst them—and a yell of jubilation on his part.

"Sixty yards!" he exclaimed, punching the air. But Erin did not answer—and upon hearing a violent rustle of leaves and a softer cry, he took off with a little jolt of worry.

His gasps echoed softly in the hollows between the trunks, as softly as the brittle leaves made them—and for there was scarcely any light to see by, he could only forge his blind path through the trees and hope he was headed in roughly the right direction.

A confirmatory sound soon came—a sudden, rather vehement exclamation of "you jerk!", which made his heart leap into high gear.

As it turned out, Erin was in quite a predicament. It made for quite a sight—she was dangling from a branch by the crooks of her knees twenty yards above his head, struggling to swing herself back onto the branch. While seeming rather eager to get off, she had obviously realised that an overestimation would throw her clean off the branch, so her swinging stayed was cautious.

"It's alright, I'm here," called Pan up towards her, unable to help a laugh; she was a mess, leaves and twigs in her hair and pockets. "How's the weather up there? Any colder?"

Her pretty face was seized by a snarl—with a cringe he hopped away. "Get me off!" she cried, rather more shrilly than usual. "The sooner the better—there's dragons out here, remember?"

Pan's laughter continued unbroken. "So that's what it's about!" he cried. "You're scared of dragons!"

"I am—not— Well shut up, you beat Coelion's record with my help so stop teasing and help me get off!" she finally growled.

"Sixty yards! Now that's something, isn't it? Double the distance of the best bandit in Nightfall!" The youth folded his arms. "Come on, be glad you had a part in it." After a short pause in which the girl made it clear she didn't agree, her companion glanced about and scratched his chin. "So...how do I get you off?"

Silence was Erin's answer. He tilted his head to a side; apparently she hadn't considered that problem either.

"Um...you could climb up onto my branch and give me a hand."

"What? I'm not doing that!"

The dangling thief fired him a death glare—even upside-down, the expression had the same effect. "Or you could, of course, be my landing cushion."

Pan stared. How am I supposed to climb all the way up? In the dead of night? Without anything to ascertain my safety if I fall off?

Well, Erin had climbed twice as high.

"Er, right, coming!"He gritted his teeth.

With that thought fading into the dark, and in the coldness that rustled the bare twigs scratching at the stars, Pan leapt at the trunk with his arms outstretched to grip it, hoping to catch a foothold on the bark before he tumbled back all the way.

It took him three more jumps before anything of that sort happened. Erin laughed gratuitously and without any regret as he struggled inch by inch up the height of the tree.

Pan's face finally came level with the tips of her hair in ten minutes' time. "Not liking it, are you?" she asked. His raw palms throbbed. "And you dare complain I was going too slow."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," he muttered.

"But hurry. I don't want to chance a meeting with those dragons."

He smirked. "See? You're scared."

The female thief pursed her lips indignantly. He gave a small snort of amusement, that was all that was necessary—Erin shot her companion an upside-down glare. At that point, though, Pan had dragged himself up the last foot.

Then he froze at the sound of screeching, the rustle of faraway trees.

"What was that—what was that?" he shrieked.

His friend's breath quickened. "Dragon?" she mouthed the word, and he squeaked, crouching lower on the branch and thrusting a hand out towards his companion. Erin hadn't even the time to tease him. She swung up on her legs and snatched it, then with a great tug he heaved her up onto the branch. Or at least he thought he would.

Instead, the bark popped beneath her and she slipped clean off the branch.

A scream lit the night at the same time his vision began to spin and sparkle with fear. "Erin!" Pan yelled, gasping for breath. Spinning backwards in the scant room the branch left him, he lunged for her, for the ground twenty yards below—and felt the shift of his weight, the cracking of bark beneath his shoes.

The branch vanished from view and darkness burst into his eyes like an endless lake, wind beginning to whoosh by his ears. Erin had barely caught hold of the next branch three feet down; her arms were hooked around it. But that same branch lay in the path of his fall. And the male Bandit swung his limbs helplessly about, but he knew what had become inevitable...

With a crack, he felt his shoulder collide with Erin's branch. The pain was like a crack of lightning, followed by the thunder of woody sinews snapping, thousands of leaves roaring in the night, Erin biting back screams as she joined him, plunging.

He thought he heard a new sound, like whipping or whooshing, and the empty trees were coughing and creaking in the dark about him. He must have been bleeding; he had been scratched by so many twigs in the canopy—oh, his body would be bleeding alright, when he crashed and broke on the ground—

—Then his side collided with coldness. Pan felt the breath burst out of him as pain rippled down his ribs.

But first he focused on breathing. He sucked in a lungful of air. His ribs stung and his chest was flooded with winter.

Only then did he notice that the surface beneath him was moving. Bouncing…rocking…undulating. He twisted about, fighting not to slipp again, arms reaching, hugging the thing he'd fallen on.

A cry answered.

His eyes widened. But he was too winded to scream. Weakly, he spread his fingers beneath him: more coldness. Rhythmically-undulating stone, steel-coldness.

It was about a second later that Pan's eyes came into focus upon the wing, and his breath caught. A single black wing swung up and down, close enough for the gleam of scales to be visible, its great breadth extending from the surface on which he lay.

Come to think of it—perhaps it wasn't stone beneath him.

His fingers met the surface again, and he found cold bumps and depressions. It must be metal. But the wing wasn't a hallucination. Still breathless, he flipped himself carefully over, struggling not to leave his current position.

Understanding finally dawned on him as he was doing so.

Not metal. Scales. Reptilian scales that glittered in the little moonlight that filtered through the bare winter canopy above. With a gasp that restored him, Pan scrambled to his knees, wincing as his muscles protested. The surface swayed. He tipped a little and lost balance for seconds before finding it again, hands planted firmly on the cold surface.

Out in the night, between branches, he thought he saw gold eyes glinting between leaves. Beside him. Behind him. The night was thick with the flutter of dark wings.

Not metal. They were dragons.

The night was deepening. The steps to the side door were white with frost, and at their feet the earth glittered with crystals.

Ketara traced a shape in the black leaves with his good foot, a circle or a spiral that he supposed didn't mean much. Telida stared on absently at his little piece of art from where she stood, some way from the trampled pathway.

"Where do you think he went?" asked the warrior on the doorstep. "The creek?"

"Maybe. He likes to stare at water when he's sad. Or liked to, when I knew him." She glanced off into the forest, at the place where the cathedral of trunks finally lost the light of that single electric lamp, and vanished into the night.

Have you changed so much that even that is no longer true?

Changed. Her younger self—the one that had joined Orion's Belt one fateful day in the forest—would hate what she'd become. She was who she'd sworn never to be. She had given herself up to a man.

No, her heart answered. You didn't give yourself up. The Clock Spirit saw and knows. He was the one who gave himself up.

"Lida," said Ketara. She turned, and could almost see the sunset in his eyes. "I worry for you sometimes. For all of us, but I worry about you the most—"

"Well, there's no need to talk as if I can't guard myself!" she snapped, and was faintly aware of the drip-drop of her tears off her chin, melting snow. "Look, I'm fine as I am. There's no need to worry."

"—because you need someone better," he said. His hair was summery brown when the sun blazed through it, but in this winter where no sun glowed, it was black—black as anguish. Black as her own. "I think I'm—being a weight on you. Aren't I? I don't want to be that, Lida."

Her throat throbbed. She didn't want that either. But then she did. She loved him.

"Don't be an idiot, now. If not me, then who?"

They watched each other across the space between them, as his eyes grew as teary as her own, but neither could turn away, not even when the sorrow began to burn and she realised in the blur that this was the way it'd always be.

"It's fine—"

"—I hope I'm not interrupting."

Both looked up; Ketara blinked and attempted a smile. Telida bowed away. She'd have recognised it as her brother's anywhere. But when he did walk into their midst, feet dragging through the decay, she wasn't sure she recognised him.

He didn't walk like the angry, adamant Fire Poison Mage she'd once known. He walked like someone who'd lost a long war.

"Oh, were you out there crying?" muttered the Hermit.

"I don't think I was the one crying," he snapped straight back. "What is it, are you telling Ketara all about your tragic history?"

"It's nothing to do with you," she leered. "Stay out of this. Go away. I don't need you here!"

"I know you don't."

He raised his chin and strode up the front steps, vanishing through the door.

"I don't understand." said Ketara once the door had clicked. "He cares for you. I mean—he has told me to take care of you many times." A sad smile crossed him. "Not that I can."

She sniffed, folding her arms. "Because that's all there is to me. Just some little treasure to be guarded," she answered. "Why should I let him think that?"

"Isn't that a good thing? He thinks you're a treasure."

"No! Because what are treasures good for? He thinks I'm his to protect! Why, because I'm a girl? Because he's ten minutes older than me?"

Ketara crossed his arms. "Is it the same when I say I want to keep you safe?"

"No, it isn't."

His head rose. "What's the difference?" he asked.

"I don't love him," she answered, cold as the night.

The Night Hunters were a parody of the royal court—kings and queens and jesters, all over the place, their castle a mess. Where there should have been a throne there was a dais with a bell that anyone could use—Gemin had gone up before and rung to announce that Orsa had been a big bully and taken his pancakes without permission. Here inside this ancient Sharenian relic, they took turns being the monarchs.

Tonight the monarch was Akera. She wasn't of the tallest stature, but on the dais she rose higher than the rest of the guild, and even that was not necessary. Her fearsomeness towered over everyone else.

"Good evening!" she announced. The lack of a response was remedied by a jet of fire into the air—everyone was eager to listen thereafter. "Good evening," she began again. "I am here to inform you that because of the excellent work of the people involved, our infiltration of the prison will be brought forward a day. We start in two days' time."

A murmur started up, a smattering of applause that never caught on with the crowd. She glared at her audience for their quiet.

"I would also like to introduce the men and women involved," she went on. "The quest won't necessarily succeed, and you would give them your thanks if you understood any fraction of the risks they are willingly undertaking for us. From among Ethiel I have chosen all four bandits: Lawrence, Erin, Pan and Patricia." Small whoops went up from the crowd, no doubt from Ethiel themselves. "From the old Nightfall I have recruited Elode, whom, I am sure you are aware, was in the prison for a period, and the bandits Coelion and Aradel. And from the old Orion's Belt, there is myself." She let them clap for her, and did not pretend modesty, nor did she raise her chin like a queen. "While we are gone, please continue to lay low; please do not attempt to join or assist us. All people involved, please meet me here now. That is all."

Ralinn listened with a knot in her stomach. As she had just proven, Akera was a brilliant commander. An unsympathetic one, perhaps, but one who got things done.

Another arrow of panic struck her. Was she better than the Mage? Could she ever be? Everyone in Orion's Belt hated Akera. Yet Ralinn could feel them slipping from her grip. Everything she'd ever loved for her own. Her brother's respect. Shirion's care. The guild's subservience. The burden of glory…

"You selfish creature!" rasped a voice in her ear.

She shrieked and turned—to find Raydan leaning over the back of her sofa, grinning. Her eyes narrowed.

"Dan..."

"How dare you hog that seat?" he answered. "No one's being nice today, not even Yunira!" He gestured with his chin at the row in front of hers. The girl, pretty and red-haired, was chattering amongst a bunch of friends.

"What, do you expect her to be nice?" answered Ralinn.

"She is nice," he answered. "But of course she was too busy chatting to notice I was there." He breathed a happy sigh. "I think I like her."

"I thought she had a crush on Ketara," murmured the Ranger. "I can't blame her for that. Too bad for her, though. And too bad for you."

Raydan grinned back. " I'd say I have a shot!" he answered. "I mean, she's got to get over Ketara now. Right? Lida will make sure of it."

Ralinn smiled for her brother. "Good luck," she answered, watching as people began to leave the sofas—but not Yunira with her head of red hair, this girl who'd suddenly become a part of her brother's life. Things could change so much when they weren't moving like dust on wind. She'd almost forgotten.

Things could change so much. She bowed, and thought of Shirion's hand about hers. She thought of his voice, but the only thing she could hear him saying was Akera.

"Akera…"

She hadn't expected the voice, not this early in the morning. Near to no one ever woke earlier than seven. This was the reason Akera chose this time to work and think. And work and think were the things she most needed to do right now.

At this time, the main hall with its scattered couches was deserted. It echoed her breaths with uncanny loudness. The fireplace hadn't yet been lit.

Akera laid the book on her grey-gowned lap. "Yes?" she answered, raising her gaze though she'd already identified the owner of the voice. He wasn't often out in the morning. He was one for the night; he stayed up long beyond midnight sometimes, and she'd seen him leave for the forest on occasion and not return till morning had come.

Turino blinked back, losing all his words at once. "Good…morning," he answered, bowing his head as if to a goddess. She supposed she understood. Or maybe she didn't. To her love was security. Perhaps to him, love was worship. "That is all."

I don't think he understands himself.

He was turning to leave, but Akera felt a tug in her heart, incited by the silence and the cold, and suddenly she answered, "no, please stay."

What was it? She wondered now as her companion turned again, eyes slightly wider than before, and dark as the midnight he loved. Was she lonely; was that all? Or was she afraid as well?

"I rarely get to talk...like this, in silence," she went on as Turino approached. He wore a deep blue sweater that he might have borrowed from Ketara. "Once the rest of the guild's up, there's never any peace."

"Oh. Is your work going well?"

"I finished days ago." She laid a hand on the book. "How has living with Nightfall been for you?"

Pausing by the sofa, he smiled a small sardonic smile that no one had but him. "Did you expect me to make friends?" he drawled. "No, I think it's the same as every other place we've been. Just another stop in our quest to defeat Caleix."

Akera wished she could apologise now, for everything she knew her existence was causing him. She knew that pain. But no blames could be lain, in her case. She'd done her share to deserve everything she was receiving. Shirion's loss of faith, Ralinn's spite, everyone's disrespect. Turino hadn't done anything to warrant this. He'd done everything to deserve the opposite, in fact…

"Indeed." She fit her emotions into that single word. "I hope you are coping well."

"As well as ever," he answered. "I hope…you are."

Something flooded his gaze, as it locked with hers. Protectiveness.

Her heart pounded and she glanced at the book in her lap again. "No, I'm not, and I don't think I ever will," she replied. "Unless things somehow returned to the way they were when—"

"When—when you were seven? What sort of happiness was that?" he answered, temper flaring. "If you think this is all a battle for redemption, then you'd best give it up."

She frowned—and realised she had nothing to say. Wasn't he right? Some part of her foughtbecause she believed in that chance. That to redeem herself of all the sins she'd committed those twelve years ago, she had to fight. Fight and suffer.

But she'd saved lives, so many. She'd helped them to the completion of the Spear. She'd led them through victory after victory.

And here she was, as much a sinner as she'd ever been.

Akera bowed. "I'm fighting for a lot of things," she answered in a grumble. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have important business to attend to."

"You just—" Turino began, but she glared back, and moments before any word came to his lips, he blinked, bowed once in accession, and tore his gaze from her. "I understand."

Akera watched as he returned to the staircase and vanished down the steps, a silhouette in the lights below. She smiled a little, and at the same time shivered with sorrow. She wondered how anyone could fight so long without collapsing to despair. That same despair that had almost killed her.

The poor, lonely man, never once reciprocated by the people he'd given his love to. He'd become a constant in her life beneath her notice—a guard, a watcher, the friend she'd never credited for being there. Just one step closer than before.

dark lord: pleas

"Jet—are you…"

"…are you…"

He thought he heard echoes, but he couldn't be sure. This night was so thick and dark, here in the prison. Every night, curled up in this threadbare mattress with his whip welts stinging and the chains creaking in his ears, he heard many things. Sometimes he heard the balrogs they'd locked up in the four corners, decoys for their positions. Other nights, all he could hear was the laboured breathing of his fellow inmates, their wheezes and coughs, their screams in the Black Chamber.

But never before had he heard thisangel's scream, echoing like a ghost wandering the halls.

Never before.

Who was it, calling his name? Here in the night, the Dark Lord sat up on his bedside, craning his neck for a sound.

The voice did not speak again; his breath thinned and narrowed and his pounding heart began to calm. His fingers sank into the thinness of the mattress; surely he was only imagining voices in a bid to believe he wasn't alone, wasn't the only one locked here. Surely he was only stoking his hope with fantasies…

"JET!"

This time, the agony was piercing.

Now his breath caught. He knew this voice. He knew it from the days of light two decades ago—he knew it from the last time they'd spoken, and the voice had grown so thin ever since…

"Athena," he answered, fears and anger lighting up all at once, making his chest burn. He touched the wound in his arm, the one he'd carved in himself four months ago when the leaves had only been beginning to fall on that Perion mountaintop. He felt for its edges.

No, his heart protested—weary, so weary from the tears he'd shed and long left behind. No more. No more fighting. What use was railing against fate now? What use was fighting a battle he could not win, only to die a little wearier, a few more wounds in his side?

But Athena was here.

And the weariness was dust upon his back. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be free again. Suddenly he would suffer anything to get to the place where that voice was being held captive.

"Are you there?"

The scream was met with a bellow for silence, a kick that set bars ringing.

Her voice was her only freedom. She had sent it through the tunnels in thehopes of finding a friend, and they had tried to block its passage. But the voice could not be held, the voice was free, and now he knew. He knew and they couldn't take that knowledge from him! Athena was here, she was here; she was nearer than she'd been for years, she was so near he could almost see her eyes...

"PLEASE!"

A second admonishment, and she was silent, but the echo continued—it moved, independent of the wills of the guards. It shivered the prison walls; it woke the guards and convicts. He heard it, and heard every drop of the fury that had created it. The Dark Lord's eyes flooded with tears, but he'd learnt not to shed them.

Metal clanged, and he glanced about. His feet had dragged him to the bars of his cage somehow, chains and all. The cold air pressed on his shuddering form, flowing down the gleaming passageways from a window far away.

He raised his chin to the bars, felt them cold against his skin. He thought he'd learnt how to rein his sadness, but forgot how now—and his tears flowed to his lips, salty as blood.

"Athena," he croaked, as loud as his voice would let him. He felt the corridors grow a little warmer. He thought he did. "I'm here. Athena!"

He heard a pair of footsteps begin towards him, saw a torch flashing through the night; with a blink he leapt away from the bars, not the stealthy form he'd once been, but swift all the same.

When the lights arrived, they saw a sleeping form. The guards may have suspected him; their black, featureless faces gathered at his gate like ghouls, and he watched through the cracks of his eyelids as they dispersed into the dark—as his voice rang through the halls, and came to the ears of Athena Pierce, wherever she was.

twenty-fifth night

On the twenty-fifth night of Aquarius, the trees and the cities were lost in a blight of cold, cold of a world burning with despair, thirsting for light.

It wasn't as cold as some of the nights that had preceded it, but the sleet descended, and the earth was slippery, and the bandits and mages sprinted into the night in cloaks and scarves, cloth wrapped about their mouths to keep the cold from their lungs. They ran bowed, cloaks pulled close so they did not flutter.

Akera wore a hooded cloak not unlike theirs, but unlike them Akera was without a mask. In the night air about them swirled skeins, bales of mist; the sleet crunched beneath their feet.

"I want you all to stay out of sight wherever possible," she muttered briefly, certain they'd never remember. The trees rustled their farewells; the vegetation thinned and they knew the north edge of the forest was close, that this was where it began.

Coelion answered alone: "We will do so."

From the shadows they burst, like birds through treetops, sleek and eager. The cart road was lit by a line of pale lamps that unrolled like an unbroken thread from Henesys to Ellinia. As they flew, the night pumped itself through them. The chain of light took them between swells of hill where forests rose on roadsides, like dark armies that lay in wait beyond the smallness of the streetlamps.

Henesys rose upon the next hill, glittering with torches and bulbs. Breaths quickened. The bandits thought of the prisons and the places where Akera had said the money was hidden. Elode drew the prison maps in his mind.

"Good luck," whispered Akera, as the walls of the hillside city ascended to obscure every last drop of light, leaving no more than the towering guard towers visible. "Remember, keep going. Even if someone is captured. We'll have him or her back once we've overthrown Caleix. Just do what you're meant to."

Even from here the prison's position was impossible to miss, lying further north along the wall, its facade glowing with floodlights. But Akera tore her gaze away from it and persisted with their current route. Straight towards the eastern Henesys gate.

In this darkness, the thieves and Elode took an instant to survey of their surroundings, searching for cover. The forest stopped twenty yards from the Henesys walls, and it was the best they had.

Into the light they plunged. Down the last slope of the road towards the Henesys gates, into the view of the floodlights and the guard towers.

"Visitor!"

Maren's voice echoed against the wall and between the two towers. With a clang of metal on wood, the guards at the east gate locked their spears together.

He studied the highway and frowned. A visitor at this time. Not unheard of, but peculiar all the same.

A lone traveller approached, cloaks fluttering, but not in a leisurely stroll: the nondescript figure was charging, as if intending to ram the gates open. Maren leant through through the watchtower window and squinted while a chatter spread through the throng of guards behind him.

"Go get ready to be deployed," he muttered, waving them away before turning again to the window and raising his voice. "Visitor, please stop at the gate and produce your authorisation—"

Then he saw it. A flash of white hair beneath her hood.

Immediately he sprung back "—Guards!" he yelled, head swinging left and right in panic. "Guards! Get back!"

But his guards were already shouting orders, and their blockade was already solidifying across the road ahead of the advancing traveller, spears extended. No, his mind reeled, no, they can't take her on, they're not ready—

Panting, he ripped the telephone off the wall, eyes darting back and forth. These men, whose lives were his now, whose souls stood upon his palm—did he know what to do? His guards lined up, and they were ready to seize the White-Haired Murderess and her group.

He needed—necromancers.

But—no, no!Necromancers never did anything so menial as gate duty. He'd have to call them from elsewhere, perhaps from within the gates, perhaps from up north—

The test rang in his bones. Maren was being called on now, to make a quick judgment. To choose best. But how could he? How could he know, when he didn't know? He heard his own gasping. It made him think of death, death and his own mortality.

He squeezed his eyes shut, heart roaring in his ears. No. The prison wouldn't miss its necromancers for ten minutes. Make it quick. Capture her and kill her.

Up on the road, the cloaked figure had finally halted, but only because his guards were holding their ranks. Fools! The Murderess stood at their head, serenely raising her staff. His guards did not understand.

They'd never seen her at work. Neither had he. But he'd heard the stories from the Ellinia unit.

One spell, they said, and half your men were dead.

Akera's eyes swam with guards and their eyeless visors, lining up into a wall of metal, torches raised. The sky, the sky spun wide and black; the tower turrets pointed away into heaven.

Taking a glance up and down the rank of guards, she curled her fingers around the staff, and a blaze ascended from its tip.

"Surrender, Akera!" bellowed the voice in the tower. She saw his head swinging in the window, red-faced, hair straggly.

With her right hand she threw her hood off, and let their torchlight fall on her face. "I see you've already surrendered!" she yelled back. "Scared to leave your tower? Coward!" Simultaneously their torches erupted into columns of fire and the guards staggered away, throwing the blazing sticks at the ground. Her face did not change. The night flooded in as the torches were smothered in the ground.

The tower guard did not answer her taunt. He seemed to know the depth of his predicament, and he did all he could in his capacity as their leader.

"Guards! Charge!"

The Mage screamed, wordless but she was above mere words. The sky flared orange and fire roared outwards like a herd of stampeding beasts, heating armour red and blazing through gaps in visors. She breathed to cast the heat out of her lungs, as guards collapsed to their knees and their skin was scalded by metal.

Fire, fire, she knew nothing but fire; she was it, it was she, her rage and her despair. Fire exploded through the air, lighting greased boots, burning strips of field—a second wave of soldiers fell and moaned, joining the crackle of the flame.

But as they fell, they began to revealed the field beyond them in the northerly direction, and something moving like a wave across it: a black army, charging from the north. Fifty-strong at least.

Akera could not stop herself staggering away for a moment. They had no lights; they needed none. Their staves glowed the shade of red she had learnt to fear so intensely that the terror flooded in by reflex.

Clenching her teeth, she found more spells and cast them silently. They infused her limbs, rippling up her staff to blaze in the tip. The minor skirmish was about to become a proper battle.

Akera wasn't sure if she relished or feared the challenge. She gripped and raised her staff, and waited for their lightning to come.

The wind blazed with heat and light that was detectable even from thirty yards away. From the gold glow on the road beyond the trees, the thieves figured Akera must have loosed her first spell.

"She'll be alright?" whispered Pan.

"Don't be stupid," answered Erin sternly. "She's Akera."

As they slipped northward through the dark, the cacophonous bellows of guards and the clang of spears was overwhelmed slowly by the rustle of leaves above and the chirping of crickets. It was almost deceptively peaceful. Once the last sound had vanished from hearing, the thieves began to leave their Dark Sight and ease away from Elode, though they continued to run without a second's pause.

"Are you sure she'll hold up?" Pan said, glancing once back in the direction of that faint glow through the forest. Another blaze erupted in answer. A second spell.

"She may not, but we do what she's instructed anyway." At the head of their group Elode spoke, and the rest, who'd forgotten his existence till moments ago, turned. "We enter via the north gate. The four safest cells are at the corners of the prison; I do believe they were built for the job masters."

Now that Akera was gone, they automatically turned to Elode for leadership, and he did what he could, though he knew he couldn't be for them what the Fire Poison Mage had been. They proceeded deeper into the forest for a bit, till not a sliver of the wall was visible in the dark of night. But too soon the lights of the prison were blazing through the leaves, unmistakeable, brilliant electric torches baring everything on the grounds.

In less than half a minute, they had made it all the way to the forests's edge. They came to a halt just within its bounds and peered through the gaps between the last trunks. Their eyes were branded by the lights beaming down upon the north gate of the massive stronghold.

"Goddess, it's so bright," said Erin as she fought to blink the blaze away.

A tight unit of five guards patrolled, marching up and down in front of the towering iron gate in ranks of two, one at the head, mechanically, but to the eyes of the thieves, their panic was clear. Their steps were off rhythm, faster than any trained guard's steps should be.

"They've really eased up, haven't they?" said Elode. "In my time there'd have been ten guards."

"That's because there should be necromancers." Patricia answered. "There's a shortage."

He turned to eye his companions. "Are you ready?"

"I'm nervous," Erin said.

"This is fifty yards," muttered Coelion. "I did not practise for fifty yards." There was an uneasy shuffling of feet; no one dared begin. No one dared. Like the tipping of the carriage at the top of the hill. Once they started, there was no stopping.

Pan sniffed. "Please, I've done sixty," he answered, bowing and rubbing his nose in mock modesty. "You going to let a nineteen-year-old boy trump you all?"

"Don't make me laugh!" Aradel hadn't ever sounded half this disdainful before. "You were the worst of us at practice." Her eyes rose to the gates; her gaze hardened like metal as it cooled. She wouldn't be losing, not today. "We should coordinate this."

Coelion nodded, rubbing gloved hands together. The Ethiel thieves pulled in closer, their circle tightening. Elode stepped away.

"This is for our Dark Lord," whispered Patricia. The Nightfall thieves nodded to each other. "Three. Two. One."

Eyes closed; the lights blazed red behind their eyelids even then, and in the wind roaring through the trees, chilling them to the spines, their lips moved on their own:

"Meso Explosion."

A half-second gap warned them. Heads rose.

A boom of fire and smoke the walls groan and crack and spit as thousands of blazing fragments that had once been the wall exploded through the night air—smashing against the head of one guard, who flew sprawling across the floor—sending the rest into a frenzy of screams. And the booms continued to chorus, throwing smoke and flame into the air—years of money in the stores, all confiscated from old burglars as they'd arrived, fresh from their thieving.

There were orders being shouted all about the gate, which hung from its hinges, the rest of the wall decimated—they raced through the smoke and excavated their fallen friend from the rubble, others glancing frantically about for the attackers with spears extended.

All seven dash backwards, out of the scouring light, quivering. If they were seen now and attacked, it would be the end of their game. The most they could do was keep themselves alive.

But they'd have to move along with the plan sooner or later. Elode glanced back at his companions, worry and hope sweeping his countenance all at once.

"I'm beginning to think we might actually succeed," was the last thing he said before turning to put the next phase of the plan into motion.

Crisis. The day every guard had trained in anticipation of. It was here at last, the futue day he had sometimes imagined while laughing to drink at the downtown pubs with his comrades.

And it was hellish. It made no sense at all. Nothing like the drills. Nothing like the training battles they'd fought under Master Feldoren and Master Esharo. In those, everyone had stood neat ranks, and enemies had charged in from two directions. The strategies had been no more complex than manpower diversions, false starts.

Here, here there was silence, only howling winter wind and a cold that bit to the bone.

And the prison stood with one wall missing, gaping wide open, and Vanel was dead. No, Coren wanted to understand, yet he didn't; their prison vaults had been blown wide open and there wasn't a person in sight—no culprit, not even suspects, no one on whom to pin this crime!

It was as if…a ghost had done it.

And all precisely after the greater portion of the necromancer guards had been called down to battle a sudden threat in the south. His gloved left hand clenched into a fist. Was there any breathing person who could swear the events weren't linked?

Again Coren's eyes darted about behind his visor, his mind furiously considering theories. Maybe—one of us is a traitor. His eyes flew wide at the thought—but when they affixed themselves to his three squad men, all roaring curses and wailing over dear Vanel's body, he abandoned the idea.

Vanel. His eyes prickled at the sight. No—mourning at this juncture would be futile at best—and all he could do to serve his dead comrade was to ward off an attack from his murderer.

Then again—Coren's head spun—how was he to know his enemy's strategy? Which was the diversion—the explosion, or the battle being waged at the east gate? He was no tactician; he'd grown up on a farm. His mind was a storm of possibilities, probabilities, all too much for his simpleton's paradigms—but he held his ground, teeth gritted, and he did what he knew how to do: follow protocol. He held his spear point to the forest that enwrapped the prison on three sides. The best he could do.

"Neredis," he muttered, "go to the prison west gate, call Caslin and Hana, tell them our gave is open." His glare did not waver from the dark between the trees. Neredis dipped his head and flew westward as fast as armour let him. "Algo, Eina, be at ready. We don't know who did that, but they're going to kill us if we aren't watching out…"

His eyes swept the vicinity again, his breath sharp. On the grounds, everything was brilliant; the lights burned as bright as day, and all was so silent he could hear the lightest rustle of grass.

Then a figure emerged from the forest trunks.

The yell left him by reflex—"ready!"—as he fell into offensive stance, muscles tensing, fingers winding about the spear shaft. Scrapes of metal told him his companions had done the same.

The shape advanced slowly towards their pointed spears, becoming a man cloaked in deep brown, hands spread and weaponless. A person who looked like he couldn't possibly have exploded their gate open. But appearances made friends of enemies.

"State your purpose!" he shouted, more valiantly than he'd ever have imagined he'd dare.

"Coren," answered the cloaked figure. Coren shivered, eyes narrowing further.

The man spread his cloak; he lifted his left hand to his forehead, and threw his hood off.

Coren gasped, old fables lighting up in recesses of his memory. Terrible fables of the comrade who'd died in the explosion of Kerning, proof inerasable of the king's willingness to spend his own men for his gain…

"You…you died, didn't you, sir…" his words were a feeble wheeze; his spear point faltered as the old brigade leader glided towards him. Everyone knew him, Elode Iris. Everyone knew the martyr of the bombing.

"The dead do come back to life," answered Elode, smiling through piercing grey eyes.

Then Coren felt a shiver wrack him, that made his grip wrap tighter about his spear. Something was odd about the blonde man; his body seemed to crackle as he approached, and he could feel it on his skin, a ripple of static… "Algo, Ein—"

"—I wonder if you will be one of them," he finished.

He felt a jolt spread from his abdomen—a great gripping, blazing pain that made him curl, and shiver, every inch of skin tingling with fire. He watched the ground meet his visor, felt his nose collide with metal as the scent of grass flooded his helmet.

Elode…magician…alive…

The last thought churned up his thoughts like a plough biting through earth. Then the second jolt awakened his body again, and burned, and the pain turned his mind black.

A boom.

The sound rocked him and shivered his blood like a memory. A memory it was, old but not forgotten, the memory that had chased him away from the home. He felt the world break again, felt cracks shoot through the windows as the streets flooded with fire and smoke and the keening of children tore at his sanity.

The sounds were different here, different yet the same—gasps and shouts, panicked cries, as fire flashed in reflections down corridors, and the closer cells became nests of screams and bellows.

"Quiet, calm down!" Suddenly the orders of guards were pillars of safety. The only assurance of life and living. "Do not move, do not panic, we are checking on the situation!"

In the corner of his mattress, the Dark Lord gripped his knees. The boom was still groaning through his mind in echoes. The echoes were narrowing, thinning in the windings of his brain. Then they were echoes of a voice, higher than the thunder. Jet. Grendel. Dances With Balrog.

He curled up as the torches flashed on floors and silhouettes of vertical bars hardened at the gate. The panic was in their footsteps, and in the clicks of his boot heels against concrete: it wasn't an accident. It was an attack.

His soul sprang to life. Was this—dare he hope? He'd stopped dreaming of freedom in the bowels of that cart as it had rumbled down the roads. But he'd started dreaming again last night. Dreaming in the safe mercy of Athena Pierce's voice—and the knowledge that she was here.

He wanted to be free. He wanted them all free.

Was this the time, then? He'd thought on escape, plotted it, so many times over and in different forms and versions, in the last few nights. Each plot had been quelled by the understanding of his hopelessness.

But here, now, in the midst of a siege…

The veteran thief and killer's fingers leapt to the edges of the wound on his arm, the lump that had grown in his body's attempts to seal it over. Dare he? This was what he'd done that for. This was the day he'd plotted for. But the blood, and the agony, and would he be able to fight?

You're the Dark Lord. The lord of all thieves. Where they murder you massacre.

He clenched his teeth tight; his fingers leapt to the end of the wound.

Athena Pierce, Athena and Dances and Grendel.

He gripped that memory and that love with grinding teeth.

And pressed down on the skin at the tip and slid it forward with his thumb—

Coelion and Lawrence quickly took care of the two men flanking Coren. They snuck up under the veil of Dark Sight and plucked helmets off heads to reveal gaping, gasping faces, one brown-haired and one black—before flinging them face-first into the cart track and pummelling or kicking their heads till their eyes rolled. Not the most graceful manner of dealing with foes, but on the fly there weren't many simpler ways.

Already Erin had set to work; with hands as quick as his companions', she slipped the key ring off the belt under the armour plates of one of Coren's lackeys, and slipped a prepared strip of cloth off her belt in which she muted the keys.

Pan's gaze caught Lawrence's. The former's was certainty, and latter's, question. "Now?" murmured the taller of the two.

"It's all planned," answered Pan, something like a grin coming to him.

Elode watched the young thief scurry towards the rubble. "Let's go," he muttered under his breath, gathering his cloak and breaking into a run towards the entrance which lay in shreds and rubble, queasy from the memory of Coren's armoured body jerking about in the electric current.

They pulled their cloaks close and slipped through the open gateway, melting into the darkness beyond it. Elode had no invisibility skills; instead he hung close to them, listening for their faint footsteps in the low torchlight inside, and following them through into the prison depths.

The darkness completed itself around them, and the golden-brown torchlight grew clear, gleaming off the paving stones.

"How long until the inner gates come down, you figure? D'you think we could make a break for it and get out before then?"

Elode shook his head; he hadn't any idea which thief had asked the question. "They control it from both gates," he said. "Once Coren's messenger gets word to the south, they'll be done."

The dim entrance opened into an even dimmer corridor that ran left-to-right, sooty, bloody brown in the flickering torchlight from above. "Left first," whispered Lawrence. They turned, or at least Elode did. He hadn't any idea where his companions were, except from the faint sound of their breathing, somewhere nearby.

They had entered the prison proper now; black gates opened all along the length of both walls, and beyond each one, the figure of a prisoner sat curled in a corner. "One patrol of six per corridor," he reminded them in a whisper. His eyes darted about in the quiet orange. Not one speck had changed since he'd last walked this corridor. He paused now, spine tingling.

"Intruder!" roared a broad voice from behind.

With a piercing howl, a spear made its swinging flight past Elode's head. Yelling in fright, he spun back, panting, to face the assaulter. It was the east wing patrol, their tall forms armoured in steel, thundering towards him with their spears at ready.

The Wizard's fists balled up as he backed away. "I have not lost yet!" he shouted, in a whimper that sounded more cowardly than brave. "We—have not lost!"

The central man—Elode knew him now, Slein Demar—raised his spear and bared his teeth, and the Wizard started backwards. "You and who, the attacker at the Henesys east gate?" he answered, and as he did, they heard the crash of the inner gate slamming shut. Locked in. "Did she think she could hold off fifty necromancers?"

With a roar, Slein sped up his charge, weapon slashing. Elode's eyes darted backwards, and he felt the brush of something at his shoulder, heard a whisper: "give as a signal." Coelion's voice, from the depths of nowhere.

He took three steps backward, clenched his fist around his wavering staff and narrowed his eyes, beginning to gather a glittering blue Magic Bolt at its head.

"Bandits—GO!"

And they sprung straight out of the shadows, like ghosts materialising, cloaks aflutter. As Elode let his crackling spell fly and shatter against Slein's visor, spears were thrust and thrown in fright, but they fell hopelessly short, because the attackers had appeared far too suddenly. And now the thieves flew over the shields of the entire patrol, stabbing and yanking and blazing red, picking helmets off heads, slitting straps that held their armour together. The guards yelled and spun, swinging shields; Coelion was whacked in the skull by one flying slab of wood-and-metal, and he stumbled into the path of another guard who would have stabbed him through had Lawrence not flown in and barrelled him to the concrete.

Cloaks were ripped by spears and the Wizard yelled his spells as if his voice would throw them harder, freezing armour plates together and tripping guards. He watched Patricia take a stab in the shoulder, but when he flew forward to help she snarled and snapped and waved him away before driving the dagger blade under the incoming guard's chest plate.

They had no qualms killing, not the bandits who'd killed to stay alive—and Elode watched, stomach churning, as their daggers reddened and armour fell and crashed to reveal wounds that opened into their internal organs, all effusing blood. Sometimes he could not watch. By the time they had built a pile of metal-clad corpses, he was close to vomiting—but they waved him along towards the first junction, between east wing and south, where the first high-security cell—and the first job master—would be waiting. He wove between the bodies and fought to ignore the warmth and wetness he felt at his ankles.

This is my last time in the prisons, he swore in his mind. Goddess deliver me from this place, and Clock Spirit never have me return!

He was faintly aware of the bars of cells passing them as they continued along the east wing, prisoners bowing their heads as they watched them pass. Surely the guards in the other wings had heard the disturbance and would come investigating sometime soon. Six guards per wing. Eighteen guards to go. He wasn't sure they could take eighteen guards all at once.

As they ran, Elode averted the gazes of prisoners, but however he looked the corridors were lined with cells, and he could not forget where he was.

Erin sifted through the keys as they ran; Patricia was too weak to cast another Dark Sight, and she raced with Elode in full visibility, staggering a little, swaying as if her legs did not wish to hold her.

The Wizard searched his robes, but all he managed to salvage was a tiny bottle of low-grade red potion, and he tossed it to her; she fumbled and shook before the cork came off and managed to down everything in a gulp—the relief of the liquid barely showed in her face, but her step did straighten. She licked the rest off her lips; in the low light the liquid was eerily similar to blood.

"Keep the bottle," he answered, straight-faced, when she held it out for him. She jammed it in her pocket.

The first HS door loomed in sight at the end of the corridor; it stood at a forty-five degree slant in the wall at the turning, and its steel height stretched from floor to ceiling, a massive cuboid lock the size of a head where a knob would normally have been.

They slowed to a stop and caught their breaths as Erin searched for the keys. The faint sound of chatter appeared just then—more wardens.

The jangle of invisible keys finally ended, and he heard one rattle into the keyhole at the base of that massive lock…

A spear shattered on stone. "Stop right there!"bellowed a guard close by.

As the blade point punched at last through three-month-old flesh, it came sliding out in a blood-churning, blinding slash of pain he'd scarcely imagined the agony of.

His teeth shuddered against each other as he tugged and pushed against his pain; his head spun with firework lights—streaks of blood trailed his thumb, as sticky as paint and reeking of iron.

He gasped for effort and yanked it out, and his skin flared another time with the trauma of the cut. After that the air pressed cool on his skin again, but it continued to throb.

His skin had torn more than it need have as the blade had slid by, and when he moved the pain swelled suddenly, as if the bare blade were slitting him again. He clamped his eyelids together and clenched his teeth against yelling—bit so hard he grinned.

Blinking tears away so the blur of bars grew stern and clear again, the Dark Lord wiped both sides of the blade on his prison shirt. The pain was sinking in with habit, leaving his mind just clear enough to plot five minutes into the future.

But the planning began three months ago, he thought, gazing down into the gleam of the slender blade between the fingers of his bare right hand, no more than two inches long, one end blunted for holding. His left forearm still roared in agony; he'd have whimpered at the sudden spike of pain that now assaulted the muscle surrounding it, but he couldn't give himself away yet. Not till he knew what to do.

Slit his throat. They don't know I have a weapon; they'll be careless. Slit the one man's throat. Keys.

He'd murder for this, yes, he'd done it too many times to be ashamed of it. Goddess' justice? Dragon's mercy? He didn't have time to think of heaven high above when he was close to losing the world itself. If he was free he could save a thousand lives more.

Keys. Left or right, then? The voice—

Left. Left, and then—

Gasping in deep, the Dark Lord dragged himself to the gates, and sank to his knees. He raised his head, and let out a wail that was only half-pretended: "Guards! Aughh! Help me! I cut myself on your lousy bedframe!"

Steps were thundering down the corridor in mere instants; he played his part and contorted his face, clutching at his left arm—hiding the blade in his palm.

"Be quick about this," muttered the warden who emerged, his least favourite among them, which was all the better. The Dark Lord sneered at his face, but continued to pretend to ache, holding up his left arm, clutched by his right, through a gap in the bar. His mind was filled with Athena's voice. "Great Goddess, how did—"

His right hand lifted from the wound. There was only a second's gleam of the blade, palmed in his right hand, before his fingers spun it point-up and he thrust it up through the man's arced throat. He tried to scream but the blade worked its way through his voice box. Then clean across his jugular.

He slipped off the two-inch blade and faded from life. Now there was a minute or two before the other guards grew suspicious. He kept this knowledge close beside the face of Athena Pierce and the sound of her scream in the night. From them he drew rage.

As he had waited, a small turmoil of mutters had started up in the adjacent cells. "Hey, you running?" called a gruff voice. "Take me! Just one, it couldn't hurt, I could help—"

"Shut up," he muttered. "If I take too long, Geriel will come, and he'll bring other guards—"

"Take me or I alert the guards."

He rolled his eyes. "You'll slow us down—you get it? You'll get caught and hanged."

"I won't."

"You will. I'll make it clean. I swear I'll come with friends to break you out. I'll come with an army."

The Dark Lord slid the blade into the hem of his shirt. He hadn't time for this! He stretched through the gates for the man's belt where the circle of keys hung; his fingers unfastened the key ring, gathered the entire bundle of keys together so they didn't ring out. It was obvious which keys locked the ankle chains. He unlocked himself, and in a bound he was upon his feet again.

"Oaths are nothing," growled a woman in another cell.

"I'm the Dark Lord, and I hate this prison as much as any of you," he answered, still a harsh whisper. "Give me time, and I'll have you all out. All out at once."

"Leave him," Wellias from the opposite cell answered. His eyes glittered. "He was my mentor. He promised, he will."

Then they were all silent as the night. Whispering thanks, he began sorting through the huge ring of keys—each ordinary cell key was engraved with a letter—S for south wing in his case—and a number from one to thirty. Damn it, what was his cell number? Cold sweat broke out on his back as he fingered through the keys. The minutes were ticking away—

The facing cell. His eyes shot up at his companion Wellias' gate. 14. Then his was either 13 or 15. He gambled on S13 and stabbed it into his lock, twisted and waited for a click—seemed like luck was with him.

Westward, he thought, and flung the gate open. The bars that had become cemented in his reality slid away, revealing a floor too bare to be believed, too scarred. But was it too late? He'd dallied; he'd spent five whole minutes dealing with the guard, the keys and his fellow prisoners.

Feeling for the knife in his shirt, licking his cracked lips, the Dark Lord slipped outside.

He grew more frugal with his breath, saved it for running and not for fear. He shot through the corridors, painfully bereft of the Haste that had once come to him like blinking, prison-worn feet hardly enwrapped in prison loafers. He could feel the winter as he entered the western corridor.

The dark was no barrier to his sight; every face and every figure was clear, like a hieroglyph printed on a page, to be read and comprehended. Only he could scarcely comprehend the arch of every back, the furrow of every brow. The guard patrol was marching away, but it was nearing the other end of the corridor. Cells one to five were a chaos of clawed skin and torn bedsheets.

At cell six he stopped, eyes riveted to the figure crouching in his bed. "Grendel," he whispered. The old man lifted his eyes.

"Jet," he answered, voice crackling like old leaves. "The west gate's locked. They attacked from the east, that's what I heard. The east gate will be easier."

The Dark Lord nodded. "I don't have the keys for your cell, but—"

"There's no need," the old Archmage murmured with bowed head. Without his beard, dressed in cotton like every other man's, wrinkled and lined like old bark, he wasn't Grendel anymore. Only his voice was Grendel. "They took it all—I could never have fled, but perhaps I can now—"

With a wizened hand like a gnarl of branches, Grendel lifted his mattress to reveal a hand-sized hole, reached through it, and from deep within pulled out something that rang like bells.

"Quiet," muttered the Dark Lord. But the patrol was about to turn. About to see. No time. "Quick, here." The old man obeyed, lifted his rickety self from the bed. Without his magic he was but that, no more. Old man. He passed the keys to his thief friend outside.

The Dark Lord worked swiftly. In bare seconds, Grendel was free—and the old man promised he could run at least a bit, even though he was out of mana and his joints were weak without it.

"Stop!" It took barely five seconds for the guards to notice. Damn it. His veins burned as they broke into a thunderous run. More cold sweat. The man swung his bow—and the Dark Lord ran, gripping Grendel about an arm and dragging him away, southward. "Stop! Escaped prisoner!"

Two spears shot by his head, both avoided on sheer luck; Grendel was luckier for he hadn't the strength to so much as swing away. He panted and dashed, begging Grendel not to flag too soon; they made the turn into the south wing, just in time—as another spear flew, splintering against the grey wall two inches from a torch. He felt a woody shard graze the back of his neck.

"Stop right there!" bellowed the guard again. Grendel was bent like a tree in a hurricane, wheezing with the ache of running. The Dark Lord glanced left and right, shoulders heaving with breath—the Archmage faltered, grip tightening like a vice. He keep running, he knew he could—but what of Grendel, devoid of mana and feeble without it?

Or—he could singlehandedly defeat four guards with a two-inch blade…

Panic had worked itself into his bones. He felt for his tiny blade again and felt the massiveness of his exhaustion tackle him…

There was the flash of a dark brown cloak ahead of him—and a man emerged from a swirl of air, staff raised, and flew into their midst with a shouted greeting and a cry of Thunder Bolt.

He flung a loop of blue electricity at the first guard, who twitched and sank to the concrete with another crashing clamour of metal.

Then, like a spark setting off a chain of explosives, others followed. Flashes of light, the glowing shapes of daggers—straps ripping, helmets flying, spurts of blood on invisible knives—bodies twisting and the crash of spears falling from hands. Geriel's great girth sank to the ground just as an explosion of red sparks burst against his chest, sparks that swirled like flame as they vanished. Red sparks that could only be of one kind.

The Dark Lord spun back, gaping.

The guards were a heap of armour in a minute and a half. Much too dizzy to begin even considering theories, he stood stock-still at the heart of this remnant of chaos, hands clean, and watched from beyond the pile of bodies as another cloaked figure emerged from smoke—as that one figure became six—and the foremost pulled her hood from her face so its shadow fell away…

A breath got caught in the Dark Lord's throat. "Patricia," he muttered. The torches flickered across her face, and the face of the golden-haired man beside her. An Ice Lightning Wizard.

Patricia smiled with everything from relief to despair. It was the first time he'd seen her smile this earnestly. Behind them, he saw Lawrence in all his icy remoteness, and—he was quite sure—Coelion, Aradel, those cold-souled lovers.

"Dark Lord!" it was Erin's voice. She grinned and stumbled between her companions, through the fallen bodies, kicking armour that rang in answer. Her face changed as she approached; her smile waned. "How'd you get out—" her eyes darted to the open cell— "and why aren't you in the high-security cells? Oh, deities, we thought you'd be…"

"Decoys," he answered, sizing his old friends up. "They put Balrogs there. It was too obvious."

"I almost led you to your deaths," muttered the blonde man, who turned to the northward corridor. Patricia had moved to help Grendel by now. "This is an unforeseen complication, to be sure. But our quest doesn't end. We must find the rest of the masters. Grendel, sir, are you well?"

"They flushed my mana out," croaked the Archmage. "Never seen anything of the sort before." The unfamiliar Wizard had pushed a small blue bottle into the old man's fingers by then—he unstopped it and drank weakly.

"Dark Lord, the guards called reinforcements ten minutes ago," Coelion cut in. "They could charge in anytime." The rest were preparing themselves for the long run already—reaching for soiled daggers, gathering cloaks.

"And the security gates are down," added Lawrence. "We're trapped inside."

Elode shook his head; his mind had been working while they'd had their reunion. "Part of our plan is still operable. We planned for this. We killed twenty of their men, they won't be going on with regular patrols, too risky. They'll gather the guards outside the gates and wait for the reinforcements arrive. We don't know how long that'll be, but once they do, they will open the gates and raid the place for us."

"That sounds encouraging," muttered the Dark Lord.

"No, you don't understand. If they do, the gates will be open again, provided we aren't caught. Akera talked us through this. And I think I know how we're going to evade them. Come," he said, leaping over the stack of bodies and racing to the open gate of the Dark Lord's cell. "Everyone! Inside!"

He took Grendel with him, and whispered the plan in his ear as they went. The Dark Lord took the body outside and added him to the pile at the corridor. The bandits filed in after the two mages, pressing him and Grendel into a space at the corner. He smelt their sweat, felt their warm breath against him.

"Now Dark Sight," he said.

Lawrence cast a questioning glance at Elode. Then turning, he nodded to the rest, and they whispered the name of the skill in unison—Dark Sight. Together they vanished, like ghosts into the air.

Suddenly there was nothing between him and the gate. He saw everything: the pockmarked floor, the glittering chains, the faint flicker of firelight beyond the silhouettes of bars, nothing to intercept their light. The Dark Lord was a silhouette on his mattress, locking his shackles around his ankles.

"Now what?" Aradel said.

"Now we wait."

The winter was creeping through their cloaks and cotton, and there they waited in the numbing silence. Waited for a sound, for the thunder of boots.

Ten minutes ticked by, yet no sound came. Their breathing made the dim space humid. Elode shut his eyes to the faint orange light. What if he was wrong, what if prison practices had changed since he had left?

As became apparent in the next minute, he was right.

Creaks sounded, gates rising through stone, and the colossal clang of the gate announced its opening. Sharp breaths echoed around him. The echo of the clang was overwhelmed by the rumble of footsteps.

They waited, huddled together, eyes shut to the noise.

Shadows rippled across the concrete outside, but there were no sounds of metal armour. Elode almost cursed aloud. The necromancers are back.

"I want a thorough search of the south wing," called their leader. "Block the exits and check every cell. Make sure none have left. Caran, dispose of the bodies"

A black figure appeared at the gate. Elode started, almost stumbled. He heard breaths being held.

The necromancer took a second to peer through and glance about, left and right, then an extra five seconds to stare at the bowed prisoner. Elode pressed himself against the wall as that pale gaze passed through him. This guard's face gave way to another, and then another, neverending. A storm of faces, outside their gate.

The Wizard found himself shaking, fire blazing through his veins.

Some sneered and spat. Some taunted the prisoner on the mattress. But the gate stayed shut, and the eight souls that shouldn't be there were never seen. The Dark Lord remained curled upon his mattress, bloodied arm hidden beneath him.

At last the flutter of black cloaks and white faces ended. He stood pressed against the wall, still, like a pig in a full pen, praying his breath wasn't louder than his friends' silence.

Ten minutes became fifteen. Frantic words came resounding down the corridor: "They massacred the guards and left with Grendel, sir." A pause, for an answering grunt. "Yes, just came and went, took the old man with them, killed near twenty men, but that's it. Nothing. They're gone now."

"Were the gates down the whole time?"

"As soon as we knew they were here, sir."

The superior did not answer for seconds—considering, calculating on his suspicions.

The gruffer man made a sound like a choked laugh. "Well, then. If the old man has the magic to slip through cracks unseen, then Caleix is doomed! I wouldn't believe it just yet. Withdraw the survivors and set up blockades at east and west gates for the next twenty-four hours." He paced a few steps, paused to concede his underling's protest. "It's alright. We've still got three job master, and we've got the White-Haired Murderess; the news just came in—"

Elode choked back an exclamation. Akera. Damn it. Damn this all.

"She must have planned for it—" whispered Erin, but he knew from the waning of her voice that it was only a plea.

"I understand, sir. Is that all, sir?" replied the underling.

"Send a report to Esharo. We're having serious defence issues. Goddess blow them all to hell." Their conversation was joined by footsteps; the words faded slowly from hearing.

They all knew it should matter little—nothing. If Akera was lost, there was little they could do to bring her back. They would do better finish the quest they'd set out on. Four for the price of one; that was fair, wasn't it?

On his bed, the Dark Lord was pale and clutching at a bloodied forearm. "Are you ready to go?"

"We fear you are not," Elode replied, casting a wary eye at his forearm.

"Indeed" He winced. "Thank you for your assistance. You are?"

"Elode Iris."

"Elode. You...know a lot about the prison."

"I worked here. But I defaulted a year ago."

"Strange, you went upstream," he muttered, and Elode wasn't sure if the rise of his voice was suspiciousness. "Most of the defaulting happens in the other direction. But in any case—we should go. Dalliance does us no good."

"Sir, I'm not sure—"

"You took twenty guards by yourselves, did you not?"

"We're exhausted." It was Lawrence who spoke. "And we are pessimistic about our chances, I will not lie."

"Pan," whispered Patricia. They glanced at each other.

Then Lawrence nodded. "But we haven't exhausted our means."

"Alright then, I will not blame you for your fear," said the Dark Lord, grip tightening about his arm, perhaps to numb it. His fingers were smudged with red. "We must find Athena and Dances."

"Come, come here," Elode murmured, taking Grendel by the shoulder. They slid out into the cold open, and their time began to lessen. The bodies had been hauled away, blood smudged on the stone, and all around there were only the moans of prisoners. "Grendel."

When the old wizard turned, Elode pressed his staff in his hand. Grendel nodded once. "I have not recovered enough. I have about one spell in me before my mana dries up again."

"Make it a good spell," answered Elode, patting his back thrice.

The entire group of eight slipped through the hallways like shadows. There was no need for Dark Sight now; the guards were waiting for them outside—thirty guards, fresh from the city.

And how pitiful their state in comparison. Grendel had to conserve what he had. The Dark Lord had an injured arm. And all seven others were tired to the core.

The west wing was simple; Athena Pierce sat waiting at the gate of her cell, her ears giving her away despite the unkemptness of her golden hair. Erin slid the keys from her sleeve and freed her with all the nimbleness of a thief, and the elf took the hand she offered, leaping out into the corridor and breaking into a wide smile at the sight of the Dark Lord and Grendel.

"We must go," answered the Dark Lord, though he smiled in return.

They went along the west wing, until it met the north. Then eastward along the north wing, scurrying along the inner wall, passing dank black cells whose residents they studied as they passed..

"Jet?" whispered a voice through the cold bars on the left.

There nestled amongst the tangled sheets of a mattress no thicker than a blanket itself, the prisoner's eyes were wide and motionless, his shaved scalp gleaming slightly in the torchlight. The queer familiarity of that stare only registered as proper recognition when he spoke again: "You're here."

"Dances—" Erin raced to the gate, fingers curling around the bars. Without his headdress, without even his Perion tribe attire, he was almost ordinary. He had not lost his musculature to weeks of starvation or torture. "Dances with Balrog. We came for you"

"Erin Ethiel," he pronounced the name like a spell, his face morphing into a form a little more like the Perion chief's. A feeble smile. "I'm…shocked. You made it here."

"I have the keys," she answered, slipping them from up her sleeve.

Unshackling Dances with Balrog was a matter of seconds for the thief. He was wet-eyed when he emerged into the torchlit corridor and surveyed the crowd that had gathered to free him. "You must have been sent by the Goddess," he whispered.

"No, just the Dark Lord and Grendel," answered Erin, stuffing the keys into the sleeve.

"Thank you!" he gasped. Grendel smiled, raising a hand in welcome. The Dark Lord nodded once. Elode stopped him with an arm and pressed a blue potion into his palm, which he unstopped and gulped down voraciously.

"Dances with Balrog, the reunion must wait. They are waiting for us outside."

The words struck like a tide. Here in the torchlight, the team of ten nodded to each other. Their reserves were running dry, and a gruelling battle waited—a battle in which they were outnumbered four-to-one.

But it'd be a pity, to lose a game of strategy in a battle of strength.

They took off along this very last stretch, and the floor passed beneath their feet. Prison gates flashed past, then stopped passing as the walls grew bare, their exit nearing. The corridors grew tall, heralding their arrival at the atrium. The inner gate loomed.

All ten stopped. At the other end of the entrance corridor, the field shone through the jagged hole left by their explosion. And it was filled with stirring silhouettes, silhouettes wielding spears and staves, barricading the opening.

Every hand found its weapon. Thieves called on the others for luck and strength. Dances with Balrog glanced at Elode, and waited for him to nod.

"FORWARD!" he bellowed with the might of a general, and together they burst out into the floodlights.

A clash of metal greeted them, spears locking themselves together into a fence before them. Behind it, staves rose above heads, purple gems glittering.

"Stop!" one voice shouted above the rest. "Stop, and lower your weapons!"

More than forty guards, they saw as they binked the light from their eyes, forty-five guards bearing down on the exploded doorway. The helmet visors and black hoods kept appearing behind their frontline, more featureless faces flooding in to fill the spaces, more spears criss-crossing to form a glittering thorny wall.

"Surrender your weapons and raise your hands!" shouted the man at the fore. "You are still in the building. You surrender yourselves, you let us lock you up, you live. Or you step across that threshold, and we kill you all at once."

"Jet," muttered Dances with Balrog, pulling to her side and taking up a defensive stance, only his bare hands extended—extended as if ready to punch, to go down punching if need be. "We can't take them."

Grendel lifted his staff, but he had no intention to use it. Not yet. Athena Pierce had no bow. The Dark Lord was in a daze of blood loss, his wound blazing red and bleeding still.

"If only you had a weapon—" Erin muttered. Suddenly the dagger in her hand felt like the greatest sin in the world. It glowed red, red and useless.

"Weapon," repeated Dances with Balrog, glancing about. She could feel his steely will slackening. He, he—the greatest warrior of Victoria Island save Thaemis his equal—was as hopeless as she. "I need a weapon—"

"A weapon, you say?"

A crackle of falling rubble made fifty heads turn. In the rubble pile behind them, a slab of rock groaned, shifted, tilted—and then it slid down off the stack of fallen concrete in a shower of pebbles, leaving a gaping hole.

And from the hole emerged...the grinning head of Pan Ixora Ethiel.

And beside him emerged the head of a silver mace.

"Pan!" shouted Erin and Patricia in unison.

The head guard fought to retain his poise. "We do not wish to harm any of you!" he pushed on. "Do not move, thief. Do not move, any of you! Surrender yourselves—"

"Why?" murmured Pan, leaping from the hollow in which he'd lain concealed. Rocks tumbled away, down slanting slabs of wall. He swung the mace playfully about as he hopped onto the ground, standing in full view of the guards now. "Because you'll spare us if we do? Or will we all just die anyway?"

"What are you doing?" muttered Erin under her breath—

"Catch!"

Sudden as a flash, Pan whirled back and flung the mace at the warrior.

Dances with Balrog leapt and snatched the weapon from the air, spinning it to ready.

Their gaping head guard had just a second to sputter— "seize him!" Then with a purple flare and a boom that vibrated the earth and deepened the cracks in the walls, a shockwave rippled outwards, knocking guards to their feet in yells, squeals even. From the epicentre Dances with Balrog roared and leapt, mace swinging, and he spun to unleash a bleeding red arc of blazing light upon the fallen guards. Bestial cries erupted from behind slits in visors. The warrior leapt again, swung it like a paintbrush; its head hummed white as with both hands he swung it straight into the earth, where it exploded like a bomb and flung every person in front of the man skidding through uprooted grass, armour cracked, helmets yanked off, necks dislocated.

A crackling wave of red light flared suddenly—and it was this moment that Grendel chose to unleash a blast of white light, light that blew dark mages and armoured guards alike to the ground.

Erin felt her stare become a grin. She sprung forward with her dagger, and all at once the other thieves joined her, red on their blades, the enemy's floodlights gleaming upon them. They danced about their enemies, dodging like the wind, slitting limbs and throats without so much as a twinge. Right at the centre of battle, Dances with Balrog was alive, grinning, and something else altogether. Whenever that mace swung the guards fell like logs.

"Your Majesty," the shout through the door was frantic.

"Aismeth, door," answered Caleix. She slipped the hand-mirror into her pocket to take the door. The woman hadn't been herself lately; when she hurried to receive the visitor, she stumbled like a drunk. Her fingers slipped once before sliding the cover from the viewing slot. But it wasn't drink, he knew. Something was not right with her body.

Nevertheless she gave indication of a messenger, and unbarred the door for the huffing man's entrance.

"What is it?" demanded the king. "Speak!"

"From Henesys Guard Captain Hesprel to Your Majesty—near-simultaneous attacks on the prison and Henesys have been reported at eight twenty-four and eight forty in the evening respectively; Necromancer Guard Captain Mayel reports the capture of the White-Haired Murderess, and conveys that she is to be hanged after draining in the Henesys Square; Head Warden Geriel reports the loss of four prisoners—"

He hardly had to ask to know which four prisoners. Caleix felt his temples throb with the news. Where you advanced one front, another was pushed back.

He found himself only half-listening as the young messenger detailed the blows that the "rogue band of killers" had dealt to the prison forces. Rogue band indeed. He rubbed at his temple. No rogue band could have organised such a thorough operation. No rogue band would be rescuing the job masters.

And what do you hope to achieve by saving your four best battlers? I could equal them with a new batch of graduates and a new shipment of Lithium. He'd begun in distrust of the necromancers, but it had rapidly become apparent that they were the anchors of his campaign. Now the schools were churning the ice-souled creatures out.

A new despair struck suddenly, and it struck deeper than ever before. All was high-flying; imports were as steady as ever despite the winter. His guards, of both kinds, had seen a good swell in numbers recently, as if the cold had awakened them to their properly patriotic sentiments.

Then why did something twang him so? Where now, where was this danger?

It was in the fact that attacks were coming at one month intervals. It was in this rogue band. It was in the dizzy blind-woman's walk of Aismeth his housekeeper. Something is rising out there.

"—Your Majesty, would you like to deliver your replies?"

He clenched his jaw and balled a hand, imagining he were crushing the world in his fist. Lifting the broom, Aismeth made a troubled complaint about faintness and purple sparks.

"Send my regards to Miss Mayel; tell her I am impressed. But then...if the Murderess should escape, change the tense of my message. I was impressed." He steepled his fingers, peering down on letters he'd never read, the corner of the fine bamboo table mat lost beneath them. The corner of a carved crane's feather peeked out, flightless. "And please send Mister Hesprel this message: We've bidden our time to our own ruin. I want Nightfall flushed out now. I want him to stop at nothing to discover their whereabouts. It is paramount you convey the urgency of these words. Stop at nothing. Now."

"There's the two I took on my way in." Heaving a breath, Pan straightened up against the tree, gnarled roots curling beneath his crossed legs.

"Final tally stands near thirty-five, then," murmured Aradel, tapping her lip with a finger. "We did well, I'd say."

The group had only converged at the western edge of the forest minutes ago, hems blazing, faces scarred, legs bleeding out onto the soil—but all undeniably alive. They helped each other wrap their wounds, but they'd have to get back to the HQ for proper healing. Dances with Balrog had spent every second chattering about his victory, and Grendel had needed support from the Dark Lord and Athena Pierce, body robbed of its strength by that single explosive Angel's Ray.

For ten unbroken minutes since, they had scurried off through thick forest growth, dodging trunks and clearing roots in bounds, hearts bursting and some eyes flooded—with relief and regret and the cold, which drove nails into ungloved fingers.

Now they came to a stop in a lifeless hollow near the heart of the peninsula of forest, huddling together and gasping in vapour clouds—so deep amidst the winding ways of the trees that they were sure the guards would never find them—at least not with a force large enough to sweep the forest.

The winter was frigid, but it seemed warm beyond measure, now that the four job masters sat with them in the flesh, smiling old smiles and compensating for the decades of absence.

All four were weak nevertheless; three months in prison had left them desiccated of power and belief.

"Goddess, you're a skeleton," muttered Patricia over the Dark Lord, who turned away, feigning inattentiveness. "What did they do to you?"

"We'd been on his Most Wanted list for all of fifteen years," answered Dances with Balrog in his stead, hugging his knees against the weather. "That's fifteen weeks of ten strokes daily." His fingers gathered the smudgy grey fabric of his tunic, remembering the trauma of the whip. "I wonder—what became of the king."

"Don't we all?" answered Athena Pierce; she spoke with brilliance that worked magic of its own, despite the exhaustion that so patently hung upon every word. "Such a change, for a king so good before."

"Even so, it promises a proper return," answered Grendel in slow, measured tones, and they swore his eyes gleamed in this place where there was no light. "I do not think a transformation so sudden of any person—yes, even the king—can be reasonable or intentional. Caleix is not the king he was; somehow, his soul has been forcibly changed."

He rose, calling them to follow suit with an open-palmed gesture. Together they resumed their trek, thinking upon Grendel's deductions. There was a flutter in the branches, and their group tightened of its own accord.

"Akera," whispered Coelion from the back, remembering. The thought they'd been avoiding till now finally bobbed to the surface.

Aradel took Coelion by the arm, and the coldness began to swallow them as they exited the forest and crossed the highway, like shadows, at the narrow bend—the light of the stars too high and far to cast proper light. "We've done what we had to," she answered. He glanced up at the job masters leading the pack. The shadows flickered between the lampposts; a bitter wind picked up and their firelight guttered.

Grendel turned, a makeshift staff in hand that he had fashioned from a branch. "Akera?" he answered. "Did she come?"

"She was our diversion," said Elode. "And she's kept them off us till now."

"Half an hour," muttered the necromancer bearing her upper body. "I'd say that is impressive."

Akera did not struggle. Her head hung, but every blink was labour. The red lightning still stung in her bones, the crack of earth against her chin. And her fire had taken all the rest out of her—yes, Akera had found her limit.

I'm weakening, she thought—vaguely—through a haze of exhaustion that hung from all her chained limbs. Deciding that she deserved Ralinn's hatred, deciding she was doomed to this sinner's path forever—it had weakened her.

But she was unable to reveal this regret to them. Her limbs had ceased all attempts to serve her. In fact she'd only barely stayed conscious in the past ten minutes—conscious enough to watch them pick her tangled body off the gravelly floor and cocoon her in a cold swathe of chains.

But it was good, because she would not give them the satisfaction of a cry, not of pain, nor of fury.

"Do you know how many of us there are?" asked her bearer, hefting her higher. "How many necromancers you just took head-on?"

"Fifty-two," his female assistant answered, lifting a flask to his lips so he could drink without lowering his load. "You must have enjoyed that mightily, hm?" She leant close to the Mage's gagged mouth as she muttered an expletive, clicking her tongue. "What did you say? Can't hear you!"

Her high laugh ignited a spark of rage in Akera's heart. Damn right she couldn't hear her, if she could then she'd have spoken a word fierce enough to burn her ear off. But the gag was tight enough to be bruising, and she couldn't feel her lips.

While the necromancer procession moved, shrunken to a small twenty from the fifty she'd fought, Akera studied the sounds of their conversation—almost as rowdy as a normal guard force would have been, but not nearly as eager, as if the black shadow they called upon for power also weighed upon their souls like a long chain. A chain that bound every single one together. Her eyes closed when the chill of her sweat rippled across her skin. What was wrong; sweating from fear already?

"Hoist her!" a shout from ahead quickened her two bearers' steps.

Apparently word had been sent before her entourage, and they'd already set up a pretty stage for her, tall and dark-wooded, and topped with an ominously gnarled black gallows like the ones she'd seen down in the shadow of Ellinia Station. The sting of fear grew sharper—but why? She wouldn't let this gallows be her death, would she?

Would she? She could hardly move. Her limbs were dead; she'd spent too much on the fight. What if she went to her death paralysed and helpless?—helpless, Goddess help her, she didn't want to be helpless—

Akera was thrust onto the stage so suddenly she flinched, thrown side-first in all her chains and unable to break her fall. The links crunched into her ribs and she found herself rolling onto her front, fighting to thrash—move—unable to so much as twitch. Her side throbbed as if her bones were being gnawed at, but her teeth could not clench.

Up ahead of the crude wooden theatre stage, a line of guards had formed before the quadrangle gate. City guards, she knew them at once. Armoured monsters who'd chosen the king over freedom. She hated them. They were the ones who'd thrust Victoria into the tyrant's grip. They were the ones who'd driven cracks into the souls sheltering under the Night Hunters' roofs, they were the ones—they were the ones—

Once, her rage would have erupted as flame—infernal flame, roaring, hungering after all it could find, crumbling wood to ash, melting glass. But she was out of strength—and something had been lost to her. The rage came in tears instead. Boiling hot tears, maybe. Tears that could hurt no one.

Hands thrust her to her feet then, so hard she almost tipped backwards. She barely kept balance for her arms were chained to her sides; her reflexive flailing found her fingers colliding with metal. Giving in to despair for the first time, she sagged on her joints like a collapsing stilt hut.

More tears. Goddess save her, what was she becoming?

Her heart roared. The tears turned to a flash of hot defiance. She managed a snarl. A yelping snarl, a dog's. There was chafing laughter from the ranks of shadowed faces below.

In this whirl of world-turning darkness, Akera sought the steadiness of a single image. Her eyes latched onto the line of guards beyond her necromancer audience. They were elite guards, she knew, from the organic shaping of their armour. The man at the centre of the guard blockade had a helmet like a bronze dragon's head. Its blind eyes gleamed in the Henesys Square torchlights. How ironic that he took the likeness of the God of Kindness: that man, towering stern amidst his underlings with a spear longer and deadlier than the rest—was the merciless guard captain, Caleix's lapdog. Esharo Hesprel.

His steel eyes came to meet hers, perfunctorily. She returned the stare, cold as the night. Hands gripped her, and in a dull jangle, the first chains came off her shoulders; she could breathe again, but her mouth was bound and numb and aching. Bowing like a tree, she tried to shift an arm—it twitched uselessly.

But she did not release the guard captain's gaze, not once, and eventually the man lost interest in her. He was there to prevent her escape—and no doubt he would. No doubt he would follow his king's command to the very last fault. No doubt he would die for his duty, as much as her own leaders would die to set them free.

—it was a pity that such good hearts moved for such dark causes—

Calloused hands, rough as the earth, gripped her wrists from behind and snagged rope about them. Another ripped the gag from her mouth, cold air washing against her skin. She sucked in breath as the rope was wound tight against her bones, biting and scraping, and a wave of cold swept down her back. Perhaps she could kindle a spark upon her anger. Just a small spark would do, if she couldn't manage a flame…

No, it's not time. One spark—and they'd be upon her. She could wait. Must wait. A spark at the right moment was better than an inferno now, a plan made in safety much better than a plan cooked up beneath the gallows…

The gallows. A shudder flickered across her body. The noose was sinking towards her. Akera's heartbeat surged; her mind flooded with images, the world soaring up like symphony to the sound of her neck snapping…

"Up!" roared her executioner. He kicked at the stepladder before her, which ascended three steps to the hovering loop of rope.

Akera whipped around to sneer—and found the executioner holding a magician's staff at her. She breathed, and gasped, and found she had a voice. "Do it!" she screeched at the hooded man.

A chant. Red lightning sparked and struck, streaks of pain blazing across her abdomen. She winced and staggered but did not scream, and the laugh from below wasn't half as loud as it would have been. "Up," he repeated, advancing on her. She saw—and it made her stomach curl—that the weapon was a Blade Staff. Like Lanoré's, but with human blood staining its edge an uneven silver.

Up. Akera knew she had to listen eventually. She turned again, and took the steps without complaint. The blood tingled in half-numb fingers. She could feel the ropes.

A spark at the right moment.

A second hooded executioner was there to receive her; he gripped her chin, and looped her head into the rope, tugging till it rested snug against her throat. Akera did not spit like so many criminals must have before, only felt her heartbeat rush and thunder, spitting sparks through her eyes; oh, this panic, was it the panic before the attack, or the panic before true death?

Her fingers tensed in their bindings. She could feel her limbs trembling with readiness, and the little blood there was left in her fingertips was growing a little warm. She imagined the old tome pages riffling by beneath them, old lessons clouding up her eyes.

From the quadrangle grounds, the guard captain raised his head with piercingly cold eyes, and gave the command:

"Alright. Let her swing."

And flame rippled up along her arms—snapping and crackling in the air as the embers spat and a dozen guards, necromancer and not, began to frenzy and yell about positions—vigilance—defence—and with a terrible tripping swing she felt the stepladder tip beneath her feet, just as her wrist ropes crumbled away and the flames began to catch the planks…

Akera choked and gasped for seconds as the rope slipped and tightened—her free hands flew up just in time to stopper the remaining gap in the loop before it shrank to constrict her neck. She screamed like a child for a second, starting another fire that ate the ropes above her; then they snapped and she was upon her toes and knees, scrambling to stand before the pain could spear its way through—the planks groaned. The flames were catching.

All about the stage, Henesys Square was chaos and grey smog. Spears were crashing through the smoke even now, they wanted to maul her before she could fly—but the stage was collapsing; she felt the beams creaking and splintering beneath her. The fire was climbing the gallows arch like vines and already the structure was sagging with its own aching weight.

A sheet of smoke wafted into her eyes, and through it she watched the ranks break, the spears soar into darkness beyond. She was the heart of the inferno. She was burning, burning alive.

"You drained her, didn't you?" At the corner of the stage a necromancer was throttling an underling. "You drained her and hobbled her?"

"I did—" he coughed— "she shouldn't have recovered enough—"

Gruff, choking voices. "We'll run her through, I swear—"

"Leave it!" This, the guard captain—every note raw, dry. "Let her burn with it! We take her if she tries to flee. No one's rushing into the fire while I can prevent any such stupidity!"

Yes, I'll burn. In crackling unison the smoke went up like veils; the crossbeam collapsed in a blaze, the fire that was the curtain falling on the show. The stage was still falling, the stage would be no more—quite a show, no?

Her eyes stung and teared. Suddenly the fires were edged with rainbows in her eyes.

Lanoré, I sure hope you are pleased.

The beams beneath her finally became embers of coal themselves—falling, falling underneath her, to hell—and as she began to tumble with them towards the fuming furnace below, Akera reached through the folds of her burning robes.

Grendel had begun a long tale about Akera and the "wondrous glow" he'd detected on touching her forehead and branding her with the magician's seal. The highway to Ellinia had vanished behind them in the thickness of tree trunks, and now the grave, sickening quiet had begun to sink upon them again, save for the wise Archmage's persistent storytelling.

"Sounds like how it was with my student Thaemis," Dances with Balrog piped up midway. "I only wish I knew where she's been after so long; that blow at the tournament must have done her in good…" His murmur became a sigh. "I am sorry for her. But I really would like to meet her again, after all these years. Let us consider happier things! I know a young man Shirion, he nearly matched her; it's in the rumours that he joined—"

"Shirion's with us," Aradel put in. "With the rest of Orion's Belt."

"Ah, that man. He certainly has looks," murmured Patricia—which must have surprised Erin, because she gave her senior an odd look.

That revelation had Dances with Balrog grinning. "They are here? Excellent! I will have some catching-up to do, after all." The warrior job master's pleasure made Grendel and Athena glance in puzzlement at each ther, neither, apparently, going to these lengths to bond with students. "And if Orion's Belt is with you, then so would be Ketara!"

Aradel let out a coo at the sound of his name. Coelion groaned.

"What?" she snapped. "You can't deny he's nice to look at. Right, Erin?"

"I...reserve comment."

Athena turned to Dances with Balrog and asked, "Who is Ketara?"

"My secretary," answered the Perion chief, beaming proudly. "Got my shelves all tidy!"

"He spent half a year telling me that," muttered the Dark Lord. He'd spent the entire trip taking furtive glances at the Bow Mistress; none but his thieves would have noticed. "And his shelves weren't even tidy."

"It delights me that I will be seeing them all again, old friends with years between us!" announced the warrior. Then his nose pricked up, sniffing. "Hmm…have there been Fire Boars out? If that isn't Fire Boar then I've hardly smelt anything of the sort."

The sudden interjection met two seconds of confusion amongst the rest—before the gritty odour overwhelmed the rest, and their eyes widened. Two steps later, the pale glow of the HQ walls emerged from the foliage, which only served to alarm them more.

Their conversation vanished. Their footsteps grew more rapid amidst the newborn silence; the leaves crunched and scraped beneath them as they dashed between the trunks to the clearing of their northern entrance.

"Is there a fire?" called Aradel, soft enough for caution, loud enough for the sharpest listener to hear. In case the fire had been started by someone else. Someone not from the Night Hunters. Someone not meant to be here—

Then they saw her. There, sagging against a tree trunk not two yards from the doors, pale face gleaming with sweat in the lamplight, robes drooping with char, was a lone blue figure.

Silence.

When she raised her face, she managed a half-cocky smile. She dragged a breath in, let it go. "You're—late," she said, sooty white hair tumbling in tangles over her shoulders.

lanoré

Victory. She felt its crackle in the air, like lightning—or fire. She felt it in the first knock on the door, the ripple of sound. She saw it in the eyes of Zethis and Clynine at her table as they glanced at the door behind, forgetting their soda for moments.

Her answer had been upon her tongue, but the soft jangling of the bolts stole it from her.

They'd won.

She knew they had. And that meant they didn't have much time to go. Life is a raft ride when you're in the business of rebellion.

All stories of the night were told in a circle of couches, to much laughter and drink. Maegara, unofficially-appointed Keeper of the Drinks, rationed the beer, half a pint per drinker; it wasn't like access to beer was getting any easier, and they barely had five barrels left in the cellar.

"…then her voice was suddenly there, and she was yelling some rubbish about weapons—and oh, weapons? Well I'd be damned, for there were weapons right at my feet!" Pan seemed by far the most eager to convey the events. He and Dances with Balrog were the only ones in the rescue mission who could be described as anything other than "reclusive", so it was no surprise they were telling majority of the story. Athena supplemented a description or two; Grendel made the cryptic comments expected of a wise old man with a very long beard. Erin sometimes put down Pan's lyricism regarding his own deeds. But the other thieves seemed to think their time better-spent at the cards and drinks.

The job masters seemed to have recovered with pancakes and a spot of drink. Apparently pancakes were very much more than they'd gotten for any one dinner in the past month, and Kaida's prowess with the frying pan made up for the small servings.

Akera and the Dark Lord had been shipped off to separate healing rooms for the clerics to look at. Treatment of the job master's wound was typical of their repertoire. Akera's was slightly more complicated. They fixed a cracked rib, and wrenched a splinter out of her sole. There was a perturbed mutter when she explained the slit on her neck: the remain of some condemnable black mana-siphoning art. The Priestess Shara wasted no time in fetching their best Elixirs while the wound was being staunched. Eventually, they got her right, just in time for the party upstairs.

"…and if she did it right," Lanoré explained, "that's precisely when she took the Teleport Rock out of her pocket and vanished in the flames—"

"—I did it right, alright?" snapped the Fire Poison Mage, marching in on Lanoré's storytelling, Clynine in tow. Rows of eyes turned to the newcomer, the eys of a crowd that had just been regaled with a tale of that very same Mage's bravery. "The fire almost killed me! What sort of suggestion was that, showmanship?"

"Ah, but I didn't say you had to play it so dangerous," answered the Archmage, who gave that quiet smile. "Admirable, in any case. You finished fast, if I were any judge of speed. A little too fast, in fact; I've barely had time to consider my own plans." Without warning she rose to her feet; Zethis started. She crossed the room and rung the bell. "Night Hunters! Announcement!"

Their attention was immediate. She nodded at Hyrien through the silence; the guild master returned the gesture, rising from his couch and crossing to the dais. He had practically every eye in the room by the time he arrived.

"Night Hunters. Tonight is, of course, a time for rejoicing. However, this break cannot last long. It is my suspicion—not just mine, but your friends' as well—that this is the tipping point. Caleix has not planned any search of the forests due to fears of wasting manpower," he said. "To those not familiar with the complaints of our cleric friends regarding charm duty, this relic is guarded by more than one light charm."

Comments of befuddlement joined long explanatory lectures. Light charms; apparently the job masters had used a similar thing, rendering their abodes invisible for any person who had ever been a channel to true dark power. They claimed invisibility was useless once someone told the foes where you were, and that that was how Athena and Grendel had been found. Traitors.

"These charms will guard us," their guild master resumed, "so long as Caleix does not gather a force capable of levelling the forest around us; so far, he has not. But like I have mentioned already—this is a tipping point. We've taken the job masters from him. We're levelling the power balance. We're becoming a very tangible threat. He will begin his assault soon—" in this pause, he swallowed perceptibly—"and I believe he has a man who knows exactly where we are."

Soft mutters turned to cursing. Who, a traitor? But everyone knew everyone; none of the Night Hunters had left the HQ for longer than their duties had entailed—surely not long enough to furnish Caleix with information regarding their whereabouts?

Eyes pinned the Ethiel thieves immediately. They were silent, but made their answer clear with their glares.

"No, this man is not from among us," he said in hasty correction, then cast his eyes down. "He…is a man I once knew. And trusted. I fear my trust was misplaced. He has become their guard captain. I am sorry."

The words begged commotion; commotion came, though none of it as accusatory as Hyrien seemed to have it prepared himself for. He let their fervour dissipate, before dealing the last of his news. "As such, we will be pulling a risky ruse on them. I have had my discussions with Ralinn and Lanoré and they will conduct this alongside myself; you will obey them as you would me."

The guild master invited both women to stand where he had, withdrawing to a lower position in front of the dais.

With no more than a nod of acknowledgement, Ralinn began. "We are leaving the HQ tomorrow morning!" she announced. "And we will stay out for approximately a week, more or less if the raid comes later or earlier. The point of this is to make them think we abandoned this place." A hand shot up from the crowd. "Ayla!"

"What makes you so sure they'll come?" the warrior stabbed the question in right where it counted. She was answered by assenting mutters.

"Sure?" answered Lanoré, breaking the commotion. "None of us can be sure. But half of battle is guesswork, isn't it? And a pity if one is turned from an excellent tactic by the idea that one can't be sure. I suppose to you it appears a fifty-fifty gamble. But consider—it is a foregone conclusion that Caleix will go on the offensive eventually, something I recall never happening in your history. If you were Caleix, and having just lost all five of your Most Wanted within ten minutes of thinking you had them all, would you sit and mope?"

"I'd order defences stepped up," answered Shara solemnly. "I'd improve training regimes."

"And then? Sit back and wait for another attack to happen?" Ralinn had had that line coming; she let it fly like an arrow in a weak joint.

"I don't know how much of a strategist he is, and how adept," the Ice Lightning Archmage supplemented, "but if I were he, I'd start trying to take them by surprise. And now is about the time I'd begin."

"Can't we fight back?"

It was most unnerving that Lanoré did not once cease smiling. "Do you think Caleix would charge at us without a substantial force of—say—five hundred?"

A graveness took them thereafter, and no one seemed to want to ask for any more details in case any more were given.

One brave man rose, fear creasing his forehead. "Where are we going?"

The packing began in the wee hours of the morning; all the circumstances left them no patience. There were three complete families amongst the Night Hunters; the parents found themselves hugging their children to sleep tonight, whispering words of comfort that they couldn't be sure weren't lies.

We've put our lives in Orion's Belt's hands. No one wanted to claim that the division between guilds still existed, but it could not be forgotten.

It was useful that Nightfall had not strayed far from the nomadic life they'd led before settling in this Sharenian ruin. The only things they could not bring were the stocks in the cellar, and those were hidden behind a seeming impassable wall of rock that only a specific flower in the plaster relief at the other end of the hall could open. Sharenians had, in the books, been fond of their alcohol, and Maegara had figured that precisely the purpose of that hidden cellar.

"It'll only be a week," Window whispered over her shoulder when the keeper-of-drinks refused to part with the store, but when she looked, the Ranger had flown away.

It took an amazing feat of coordination for Hyrien and his junior masters Rako and Lind to usher every single one of the hundred and fifty inhabitants out through the southern door and into the clearing in perfect silence. Not a lamp glowed through the branches as they gathered. The Clerics began pulling their light charms down at the same time, the act manifesting in a flicker that enveloped the entire building for two brilliant seconds.

Up and down the unruly ranks, men and women huddled bundled in furs over sweaters, some with faces wrapped, children nestled in woolly arms. These did not look like the battlers responsible for destroying the previous Henesys company of guards. Mothers wrapped their battle-glove fingers about dozing daughters' heads, stroking them to sleep with the same leather that had once drunk blood. If there were swords, they were wrapped up in belted hilts, and only spears stayed swinging in the open.

Yunira raised her watch: two o'clock. Nodding once to her, Hyrien commanded the beginning of their trek, and his junior masters wove through the group softly spreading the message. Like a beast rousing, the entourage groaned into action, and began to seep through the widest gap in the forest, southward. Some were weighed down by sleep; others stumbled and shed tears, for they knew not the perils of the southern forest. A legitimate concern, because the area south of the Headquarters had always been the least-explored of them; nothing lay there, save the barren Victoria coast.

Lanoré had explained the move but two hours ago. Have you ever tried to transfer a bag of a hundred beads into a bottle? It's a simple matter of pouring, channelling, but every last piece will find itself in the bottle in a matter of seconds. Now have you tried transferring a hundred beads scattered throughout a patch of grass into a bottle? Perhaps not, but you can be sure it would be sundown before you were even half done. Now imagine the beads were us and the bottle were the prison. If we scattered, how long do you think it'd be till the guards caught us all?

So they, like the beads, were to scattering through the forest. There was half a month of walking's worth down south of the forest, and plenty of room in which to lose oneself.

It would be a mere waiting game. Lanoré predicted approximately one week; this was the value that was passed down the wavering ranks to troubled children. But this was because they hadn't any solid idea when the soldiers would come and leave. For this, Yunira had hired a dragon—Lehixrl, or so she called her. The pair, dragon and human, were conversing in hushed whispers on the fringe of the pack, the scaled creature craning its long neck and winding about the trees with the agility of its lesser cousins, wings folded up tight. The Night Hunters left a small bubble of ground between themselves and the red-haired Spearwoman's acquaintance, but it was a bubble of fear, not distrust.

"Try not to clump up," Hyrien advised from the head of the herd, then turned aside for a short exchange about dragons with Yunira, who in turn murmured something to Lehixrl. The dragon shriek-cawed a quiet answer. The message went down the chain. "The dragons know the forest; they will lead you back to the HQ, but they fear you will not take well to their presence." He regarded his wide-eyed guild, before appending his own message. "Please don't fear them. We were companions before—before the hunting, or some books say. They are the Dragon of Life's most beloved upon this world."

They knew that tale, if not the former one. The Dragon made them for Himself. The Goddess favours us only because we know justice.

By the light of magicians they advanced into the unexplored territory, huddling together as if leaving for the last time in their lives. They finally parted in the woods. A triad of warriors looked to Hyrien for the nod, before going into the shadow with a broken branch and a flame atop it. All other eyes hung upon their jacketed backs till their flame was gone.

Little by little, the group dissolved at the edges, friends departing southwest, the few descending straight south—radiating. Then suddenly Hyrien realised that even Yunira and her dragon were there no more, and he stood solitary in a clearing more hollow than the hall in the morning.

He began his southward trek alone, Esharo's face bobbing ominously in the back of his thoughts.

telida: loveless

The very first thing most did, once they'd made a niche for themselves under a fallen tree, or in a low-hanging branch, was sleep. Three o'clock; most walked no more than an hour before dropping upon their packs and dozing till the night was done.

In a ragged clearing enclosed by trees, barely large enough for two to lie side by side, Telida could not sleep. She felt her own breath.

Home. The ghostly howl of winter through bare spear-like branches made her think of winters in the Dungeon, when the branches had woven too thick even for the passage of snow. There'd be the same howling, though, even if she couldn't see where the wind came from; it felt like it roared from everywhere, swirling and curling between trees.

She'd have climbed, to keep herself warm, climbed and dashed and climbed till sun had broken the winter night at last, warming the world a fraction of a degree.

Rising and testing the bark of the nearest tree, Telida climbed. She hadn't forgotten how, and now she had two daggers to help her. Like teeth she sank them into the bark—pulled herself up, tugged one out, sprung up again and dug it in higher, legs gripping its girth. Ten minutes saw her arriving near the canopy, where fragments of glittering sky fell through the branches, laying their merciful light upon the black ground beneath—or what little of it the cruel branches would not claw away.

Onto the closest branch the panting Hermit finally hefted herself, before sagging, aching and breathing, in the crook of the branch. The cold breeze whirled between the rustling twigs. From here, the forest sprawled out, surprisingly unobstructed. She could see Ketara's dozing figure, curled around a rock of some kind. Then her restless eyes found the stars, and would not leave.

She hadn't seen any sky for weeks by now, for there wasn't any to look upon at the Headquarters. Now that she was near the ceiling of the forest, the gaps between branches became deep blue windows, and she could see the pinprick stars glittering between them, otherworldly and far. A swaying twig pointed at a particularly bright star; she stared at it, wondering which myths were true. Did the Goddess make stars; were they old messages for the future?

Ketara had told her once that he sometimes felt a golden glow of power open up like a flower in him when he had full sight of the stars. The thought seemed to elate him because he always grinned when he spoke of it. Care and worry welled inside her, and she found her eyes inexorably drawn to the Dragon Knight again.

"Lida."

Startlement almost threw Telida straight off the branch—her fingers snatched at the branch and her palms tingled, and as she waited for her heartbeat to steady again, her eyes finally caught hold of the dark figure that had spoken.

She was staring at her brother.

"What? How'd you get here?" She pulled herself up against the bark of the tree.

Emerging from the tangling boughs of the next tree, Turino slipped into view. He wore about his jacket a cloak as ragged as the night sky at dawn; it gave him a ghost's silhouette.

She might have been surprised; she could have been furious. Yet something else reigned over these lesser things, something she could only call a mix of regret and nostalgia, throat-numbing—and Telida found she could make no sound as Turino strode along the branch towards her, like someone who'd spent half his life doing so.

"I followed," he answered, pausing two feet from her, eyeing her like a raven studied a corpse—before lowering himself to the branch and pulling his legs over the edge.

She folded her arms, head tilting against the trunk. "Who let you," she answered, though she'd lost so much of her will to hate him that she could not bring herself to snap or leer.

His face had been changed a little by the years, perhaps more hollow now, more haggard. He was still pale, and still distant, like a star. The wind didn't howl; it whistled, and it stirred his hair and hers. Black like midnight.

"My heart let me follow," he answered, eyes shut. "Or it told me to. My will didn't like it—but it's so cracked already." The mage turned away. "I'm not very sure what I want, anymore. Don't you feel it too?"

His voice stole the angry words from her lips before she'd even begun to say them, leaving a whirling void in their place. Her heart ached with something—what was it? She didn't try to ask. Quietly, they watched the stars together, watched them twinkle and waver as thin clouds ghosted by beneath them.

Telida pulled her legs to herself. "No. I don't feel anything." A tear threatened in the corner of her eye.

Turino gave no sign of having heard. "It's odd," he murmured, eyes clinging to the stars. "We shared our mother's womb. We were together for nine months in that tiny space. One would think that would seal a bond of trust—"

Odd that we did. Odd that two children once so infinitesimally close could come to want nothing but to hurt each other.

"I know, and it doesn't mean anything," the thief growled. "Shut up about it."

But he'd opened the floodgates of her memory. Her heartbeat accelerated. Why had she kept the secret of their mother's fate so long? What difference did it make, whether he knew or not? Something that had been simmering, bubbling in her—for years—finally chose this second to burst through.

"Our parents hated us," she answered. "Don't talk about love in our family. You make the word cheap!"

Turino leered at her. "Keep our parents out of this."

She cringed, and her hands curled, but knew he had to know. "You aren't the one who watched." The tear in her eye was beginning to blaze. "Watched Father kill Mother." Blaze and struggle. She was beginning to choke.

"What are you talking about?"

"She didn't die by accident—he killed her, he killed her, because she wouldn't work—he broke his marriage oath—and the Clock Spirit killed him for it!" She had to pause for breath. "She was his slave. They didn't want us, Rino. We weren't meant to happen. That wasn't love—it wasn't love—"

The Mage's voice was soft and glass-brittle and impossible to listen to. "You watched…what?" he murmured. "When?"

It was the horror she heard in that single word. It was Turino's fear. It was how tight he clutched at the branch. That was the reason she'd never told him.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I never said it."

We shared a loveless womb. Loveless, that's what we were made to be.

"Why didn't you?"

"Because it hurt." She shook her head, voice quavering. "Not that it matters—"

For once, Turino had nothing to say.

Here in this endless cave of stars, between the arcing sky above and the branch where they sat, Telida felt smaller than a speck of dust. Dust, all of them dust—the wind had carried them far apart—and now, though he sat right beside her, legs dangling into the forest, it felt like there were hundreds of miles between them. She'd never reach him in time.

She glanced up for stars again, but in a breath the sky had clouded up. She watched Turino's eyes dampen. Her own tears ached in her throat, and ran down her face.

"Why?" she asked softly. "Why this hate? Where did it come from?"

"You...you hated me first," he answered, but his voice croaked a little.

"Why don't I love you anymore? Why did it stop?"

"Your love is with someone else," answered the Mage, glancing beneath them, at the sleeping warrior. "There isn't any left for me. And in me there isn't any left for you."

She sagged backward against the trunk. How wearying, the world, and her brother, and love, and hate. "You…me…I don't know when…"

The whirl of the world grew heavy and then she thought she saw glowing white specks descending through the branches. She felt her head sink; she was tired, so tired.

There were still tears on her cheek, dripping off her chin into her scarf, when the snowfall began and Telida fell asleep. Turino furiously blinked his own into oblivion.

There wasn't any room on this branch for the both of them to sleep; they'd never shared a branch before, not even in the Dungeon when hate hadn't yet embedded itself in his flesh.

Something bit at his heart now, together with the hate. Something he could only call a mix of regret and nostalgia.

Wrapping his cloak around himself, Turino rose into a kneel, leaning out—and brushed a stray lock from over her right eye. A tear darkened his glove.

There was love left for her. All the love he had to give. But he knew she'd never take it.

"I'm sorry you bore the truth without me," he answered. "I'm sorry I became your problem. I'm sorry you had to protect me."

akera: mercy

When the morning dawned, the ground was glittering, pale even in the shadow. It was a thin carpet of snow, and it began to thaw the moment the sky began to glow. Lanoré had woken the night before to lay her own jacket upon the Cleric. She lay shrouded in deep blue, shivering, breath wheezing lightly.

In the dimness, Akera sat on a root, and decided she'd start them a fire. Her hands were numb as stones; the cold was starting to chew at her bones, not good for any Fire Poison Mage. But a fire for cooking could not sit badly with the other two. They had between them some slabs of old beef, crackers that would last them more than seven days, a Cleric's bag full of stale peach cakes and a tin of hot chocolate mix—the beef could use some cooking.

She began her trek into leafless woods with nothing but her staff. There were twigs around their little camp, but after piling them together upon the snow, she'd decided there weren't anywhere near enough to keep a fire going.

The snow thinly buried the old leaves. All dressed in white like the caps of the Perion peaks, the forest wasn't the monstrous unknown it had seemed the night before. It barely crunched as she walked across it, bowing every now and then to gather black twigs in a fist. The breath left her in pale streams, and despite the cold that jabbed its spines through her gloves, she found herself beginning to sweat with the effort.

A glance back revealed that Lanoré and Clynine had vanished completely from her field of vision. The scenery was uniform, thick black pillars on shadowy white. No matter, because her tracks would be stark without another snowfall to hide them. But how far had she trekked by now?

With a mutter at the ache that had grown in her calves, she glanced at the bundle that was beginning to outgrow her right hand. Some of that went into her pocket, then she proceeded with her quest, winding between the dark dead trunks and sweeping the dirty things up.

"Ah, Akera!" She gasped at the same time as he did, gaze crossing the little clearing between the trees far ahead, where a tall figure was approaching.

Her heart was cracked in two, by old, instinctive joy and sorrow just as sudden. "Oh, hey," she answered, voice planed level. "I…did not think it likely that you'd be close."

She noted, as Shirion approached, that a small furless animal was slung over one shoulder, perhaps a ribbon pig caught huddled from the cold. His sword swung sheathed but loose on his belt. Hunting—no doubt for his dear Ranger girlfriend.

Akera stemmed the rage before it bled out; there wasn't time for that anymore. Anger meant she still loved him. And she had to stop loving him. He might smile, but it was a polite smile, a smile without trust. Who cared about the cold nights they had shared? Who cared that he'd afforded her compassion in a world where there had been none? Loving had been her haven once. It was only a wasteland now.

"Good morning." He nodded a greeting. "Nice to be meeting you here. The snow's beautiful, don't you think?"

A thousand days echoed. Him at the jetties. Him on the deck, a sack arching his back. Him haggard at the Station campfire. Good morning.

"It is," Akera replied. "That pig is for your breakfast?"

"Lunch and dinner, too," the Crusader answered. "Ralinn brought—" He went quiet then, blinking as if he'd made a mistake. "We have other…things for consumption. But this," he tugged at a trotter, "will be fresh."

She sniffed. "Who else is with you?"

"Raydan, Zethis." His voice faded off. For ten seconds they exchanged not a word. The quiet did not invite cricket chirps; the crickets had long fled. Akera decided the conversation must be over. Bowing her head, her eyes began to search the snow again.

"—Akera."

The Mage looked up. Shirion was watching her, face bearing evidence of an odd emotion she could not recognise. It was short of a smile, a smile with pieces of joy clipped away.

"Akera, please listen." Those brown eyes narrowed, though his lips tried for a smile. "Before we're at the Headquarters again, before Ralinn gets to sees every glance we exchange—can I assure you, now, that I've never stopped caring?"

In the past, in a time buried deep below, Akera wouldn't have allowed him a single word more. She'd have locked her mind, glared, and retreated like a ghost to her own black world. But his stupid words had sunk anchor in her stupid heart, like they had the day they'd met. And she could not drag herself to bay, not now. The crushed fragments of some old beating love answered suddenly to his voice, throbbing like embers-almost-dead.

She dipped her head. "I'm glad," she answered.

"I'm sorry it isn't more. Love—mattered little to me while we were on the run; I'd always thought it futile. I never thought you'd see worth in it—but you were always one to find worth in things." Bowing, Shirion began to study his hands. "You found worth in me."

She thought she felt a crack vein its way through the ice that held her captive.

"I believe," the Crusader went on, a little conscious of himself, "given more time, more years maybe, it would have been more. I know it would have. We just—never had those years."

And Ralinn came along. And she changed you. Not me. It wasn't me.

Her heart stung as if beaten with a flaming rod. She smiled though the ache was ripping her open from the centre. She nodded numbly. "No one can reason with the heart," she said.

"Will you forgive me?" asked her Crusader friend.

There's nothing to be forgiven.

"Of course."

There is something special about fire made by a human heart. Fire is drawn up from rage, from fury, from pure anger. And in every Mage's fire lingers a part of her soul.

The morning was glorious, carpets of diamond blinking up at the undersides of branches. When Lanoré and Clynine awakened that morning, the snow was thawed to dampness and their skin was not half as numb as the ice should have made it. Then they heard a crackle, and glancing up at the source of the warming glow, they found the most brilliant red flame they'd ever seen, dancing high upon a stilt of branches.

And far eastward, where the sun was just beginning to trickle across the satin snow and the shadows of trees bowed long across the white, lay a white-haired murderess, crying into her lap for things she'd never have.

zethis: the light of stars

The nights sank and rose, and the cold grew from bothersome to excruciating. Zethis spent much of his time gathering his legs in his arms between roots, huddling, pulling the jacket tighter. It did nothing to ward off the cold.

On the third evening of their outing, Shirion came to sit beside the shivering White Knight. Immediately he bowed his head away, quite ashamed of having to show himself in so pitiful a state, even more ashamed at the concern he knew he'd provoked.

"Are you feeling fine?" asked the Crusader immediately after settling himself there, seeming not-quite-as-regal with furs in place of his armour.

Somewhere by the next tree, Raydan issued a loud complaint at his sister about "icky meat" and a desire for potato chips. Zethis look up without meeting the older warrior's eye.

"I'm c-cold," he murmured.

"It is quite chilly," replied the man, though he showed none of that sentiment in his stature. With a smile he bowed close and patted the top of his head, and though Zethis avoided it, he couldn't help but note the pendant hanging about his neck, glittering beneath his collar.

It wasn't just any pendant. He had the same one. The very same one.

Zethis had been about to exclaim about the discovery, but instead he clamped his mouth shut. That pendant—I've had it all my life—

Shirion had, unfortunately, noticed the flash of surprise, and inquired about it.

Relenting, head bowing in shame, Zethis pointed out the pendant that hung upon Shirion's jacket. "It's—that pendant," he murmured. "I have something…like that."

A shooting-star spark of shock crossed his gaze, and he reached to lift the brown stone in his fingers. "Ah, this?" Zethis nodded, reaching with his gloves for the pocket in his bag where he had hidden it. When he raised it in his palm, the Crusader stared, and blinked. "Oh, that's surprising. I suppose they were a minor craze a decade ago. I'm not even sure why I have one…"

Long had Zethis realised that Shirion, the tallest, mightiest warrior of the guild, was an orphan like himself; they knew all the same sufferings. If he could even call them "sufferings"—it hadn't been some sort of tragic loss, like Yunira had suffered, and it hadn't been the ruin of a hometown, to which Ralinn and Raydan were both familiar. He hadn't even suffered like an orphan the way Shirion had. Again the fact made him frown and sigh.

"That's how it was," said Shirion. "I am left with nothing of my birth but this—and an heirloom in blood, the power that wakes at night…"

Pursing his lips at this, Zethis nodded. He'd seen him use that same power in battle, him and Ketara both. As if it were a gift given to the greatest warriors—yet there was no way he was great, was there? Dances with Balrog said once—

"It's strange..." he said softly. "It's really strange...but there's a lot of things you went through that…seem like things I went through too."

He immediately regretted the words. Shirion tried to ask on the topic, but Zethis shook his head and bowed it towards his lap.

He felt he'd never know why he stood amidst greatness. He barely deserved it, did he? He'd only meant to set out on a journey to find his neighbours, names all but forgotten by now. He'd made a friend at the Kerning Party Quest; that friend had taken him to join a guild of three. He'd thought nothing of it then. Just a little bit of luck.

But could any of them have known? Had it been coincidence, that he'd met Raydan first, that he'd been invited to Orion's Belt, that he would meet a man with a similar past to he?

He glanced up at Shirion. Had he known? It was nice to think that none of them had. That the deities themselves could not have guessed the windings that chance would have taken.

Yet something glowed with the promise that it had all been part of a plan. Something like a flickering star, its message finally spent.

"Do you remember?"

"How could I forget?"

The hollow was breathing quietly, even though there were no leaves to know. For the dead trees breathed too, knowledge crystallised in layers of flesh, hiding the vestige of life that was waiting for the spring.

The trees weren't dead. Even if the wind was biting. They were waiting to live again.

"Was it your voice I heard that night?" asked the Dark Lord, palm resting upon the bark of a tree.

"It was…" On the other side of the great dead tower, Athena blinked and bowed, and both paused, to watch the old Archmage as he looked for the stars. "I heard the guards say that the year was ending. And I felt it—this doom, resting solid and vile upon me. I felt as if…we have been doomed by the stars to die once the Year of the Rabbit is up."

"Why?" he sniffed. "Our punishment is not up for two months yet. Caleix won't execute us till he's had all the fun out of watching us bleed." Bleed. He touched the bumps of the wound that had saved his life. It had gone infected and swollen, boiled over with pus. He'd never use his left arm again.

"I do not refer to Caleix," answered the Bow Mistress. "We're doomed by the stars; there were shadows crossing their light, a portent for the end of days, as if the Goddess saw it too…not just ours, but our guards' too, our captors' end, Caleix's end, the end of all life that the Dragon left upon this world."

He paused. Grendel eyed them briefly. Jet's hand had found Athena's, but her grip was weak and cold. Death, it could not frighten him, none of it could frighten the Dark Lord—no death but hers. How could it be death already, so soon after he'd found her again?

"How…or why?"

"Have you heard the myth of creation?" she asked, after a pensive pause. "How the Spirit stole the world from the Goddess, and how She and the Dragon conspired to defeat It?" She breathed. "They never did defeat merely scattered, like dust when the wind blows…"

There was something of heavenly light in her breath. Elves knew Time better than the humans, but few remained now as seers of the stars. They'd barricaded their kingdom from the reach of humanity decades ago. Athena had stayed. And beyond all lies, beyond all possibility of lies, he knew she was making a prophecy. A chill rippled up his spine.

"Yeah, what's it got to do with—" The cold gripped his limbs. "It's happening again. Isn't it?"

"The Black Scavenger must lie close—closer than we know. It survives in the dark of space, but to thrive it must feed upon humanity…"

"Can any of this be prevented?"

"I would love to reassure you, but even I do not know," she murmured, and she searched the stars again. "I do not know what force of human power can contend with the Spirit."

They were both afraid to continue, and agreed without a word to bring the subject to close. The silence was conquered by the crackling of dry old twigs in the sky.

Before the night was out, before the trees stopped sighing and the sky creatures screeched to announce the arrival of the cold grey light, Grendel looked up and saw that the Dark Lord had not dozed.

"There is something strange about how Caleix has handled his kingdom," said Jet when he noticed his watcher. "The people's love is a surer anchor for his power than the fear he is wreaking upon them."

"And what do you conclude from this?" murmured Grendel, a touch sleepy, though a surge of magic—manifesting as a blue light rippling up his skin—banished that.

The black-haired thief glanced off through the deep grey woods. "He has no benefit to gain from harming them as he does now. Crushing families. Denying them power. He was a fine ruler till this began. Why do you think that changed?"

Grendel breathed a sigh through his lips. "Men have their reasons," he answered, "and not all are grand."

"I think he means for us to hate him, Grendel."

The wise old Archmage, with all his decades of memory, had no answer to that.

esharo: the hollow ruins

The charge lasted through the night; he and five hundred men, cresting the last hill into the blur of the forest. Esharo was glad for the armour plates that obscured the length of his right arm. Now was no time to look upon that white cross-shaped scar, no time to bring in questions of loyalty.

With all of five hundred men following in a hundred ranks behind him, he entered the forest where he remembered he'd been released. No mercy could be afforded these wretches. They had razed King Caleix's hard-won order, to the ground and would do it again if they were not eradicated.

Had Hyrien thought it kindness? Kindness to himself perhaps. By choosing to set him free with his memory intact, Hyrien had done Esharo a favour invaluable—a favour that would now be his guild's downfall.

As a man he would have felt guilty for exploiting Hyrien's kindness. But he was more guard than man, and this was a gift to be seized and cherished. The creed of the guards was founded in ruthlessness—for justice was rarely kind, and only hard hearts would not break when the weak were cast down in its name.

Impartial. That was what a guard had to be, to serve his king.

A flash of fear crossed him. When had he sunken this far? When had he become willing to command the massacre of the innocent?

was what he'd abandoned love for. What use would love be, when Victoria had crumbled? This was the reason he had endured those blistering days and blighting nights, the reason he'd persecuted his own thieving parents. Loyalty to duty, to the nation, to the king!

Teeth gripping the air, he felt his boots take him charging through the dark, churning up the thaw beneath his feet, mud splashing the roots of the curled trees. He tore down old pathways that grew wider though unmarked, and his men marched after him like a collective of machines.

The path merged into a crude main road, paved with dead leaves and meandering where the trees dictated the turns. And there, just beyond it, a segment of the ruin's wall loomed up. From here the road ploughed through the forest, straight up to its northern door.

Something came to Esharo's notice then: there were no footprints. If this was a major passageway for Nightfall, the thin mud from the thawed snow should have been pounded to a mash now.

But that was pedantic thinking, and what could it mean if they hadn't walked down this road for weeks?

"Formation!" he snapped, pulling free of the last clearing. Behind him he heard a clamour of shouts and mutters, as his men formed up in a hundred loose ranks of five, earth sinking beneath boots. "March!"

With that he made off for the great building, and their boots thundered after him. No commotion had begun in the HQ; no lamps had been lit. Esharo pushed forward. They would take Nightfall in their sleep.

"Sir," muttered his deputy Gieron at his shoulder, "I hear no one."

"Quiet!" he snapped back. Ah, Nightfall, trying to feign absence. A worthy ruse, but one that would ultimately fail. "Men, get behind me." He primed his spear amidst the shuffle of footsteps and, rising to the front step, raised his left fist to knock.

Nothing. Ten seconds' silence. Still nothing.

There was an uncomfortable shifting of feet behind him. "Quiet," repeated the guard captain, raising his fist a second time. This time, he put some shoulder into his knock.

And this time, the great ornamental door swung open a crack.

"What?" Gieron sounded less impressed than ever.

"Formation, men," he muttered anyway, never once taking his eyes from the door. He clenched his teeth as feet crunched through biting frost, as lines formed behind him. "All ready?"

A scrape of armour. "All ready, sir," announced his deputy.

Esharo nodded. "Now! Move in!"

The door burst open to admit the tide of men. The great hall yawned over them, plain and dim, old sofas scattered like pieces in an abandoned game, vines creeping through cracks in the walls. The air was frigid. And the silence was humming.

It was empty.

His sweat turned cold.

In his mind, he saw Garth again. Garth swinging. Garth with eyes half-popped from the sockets.

"From Guard Captain Esharo Hesprel," announced the messenger off a neat little scroll.

Caleix perked up in interest, in hope. But then he heard in the young man's voice the graveness of a funeral, and he sank into his chair again.

"Following information from a defector of Nightfall," the man went on, "the Nightfall Headquarters was discovered two miles southeast of the Henesys east gate, but it was found to have been abandoned. There is evidence of their previous occupation of the place, including old furniture and a stove, but no evidence of any residents within, and no information as to how long it has been abandoned."

"Damn this all!" Caleix flung his pen, but only as far as the edge of his desk. It clattered and rolled, and bumped against his old letter stack. He clenched his teeth as if the ache of his fury would weaken if he gnashed them hard enough. This close, this close, and they had to slip away.

In a flash, Nightfall had slipped through his fingers. And Esharo had failed. He'd failed twice already. He'd failed to see the White-Haired Murderess' execution through. He'd lost Nightfall. The enemies were rising.

He ground a fist against his lovingly-lacquered tabletop. Can I punish him for failures that were inevitable?

It would be folly to dispatch a faithful workhorse of near seven years in a fit of paranoia and rage—that he knew.

But what if he let this go unpunished? Would that be folly as well?

Ceramina...

The terror disintegrated. His fist unclenched, and he thought he saw a flash of a ghost cross the study. But when his eyes darted up, there was nothing. An empty carpet and a fireplace that blazed with coals.

Caleix's eyes closed to a sight that had suddenly grown unbearable.

She is an illusion. Her smile blazed like a ghost so pure his heart ached. Ceramina, Ceramina. Don't...delude...yourself.

He managed to rise on his feet, in this false warmth, bones creaking beneath him. The matter of Esharo, he supposed, would clear itself up after a walk in the castle. He had to remember the man's loyalty and not shortchange him for it.

But not the matter of the world. His kingship. The winter. That, he feared, would not clear itself till his reign was, finally, at end.

esharo: mural

He spent the minutes wordless, quivering, standing before the single mural on the wall like a man before a god, tracing its thick lines with his eyes. In big brazen letters it bellowed:

THE EVE OF THE DRAGON

As his gaze crossed the harsh dark strokes, a shiver came over him. The words stank of Nightfall.

They had been here. And then they had vanished. Like smoke in the wind, dispersed into the trees, into the night—who knew. Perhaps they'd killed themselves to withhold the satisfaction of homicide from Caleix and his guards.

Or so he'd have assumed—but these words...these words told him all he had to know.

These worlds told him they were alive, as alive as the trees that grew, gnarled and bare in the winter.

And they told him what they were planning.

The eve. They mean to seize us on New Year's Eve. Of course. I could assemble my men on that day, call the necromancers in, arm the castle.

Esharo blinked, but the torment of questions and fears did not stop buzzing louder in his ears. His will flickered for a moment. He cast a glance at the scar in his arm, partly concealed by a sleeve. The cross-shaped scar that a man of Nightfall had left on him long before. He remembered the sting of the blade.

The day he'd betrayed his king and given up crucial information. For what? What—had possessed him? Because he'd known he wouldn't be apprehended? Because Hyrien had managed to change his heart?

Well, how dare you, Esharo. How dare you make a mistake like that. If you try that again, ever again, you will die for it, you will die—

He would die. Esharo knew he'd die. Because they were losing, falling—Goddess, why did Caleix not see? They were losing. Losing, like the winter as it was broken by the dawning spring sun. The king was starting to thrash in his net. He was going to go mad. He was going to forget all frugality and deal out death like brochures.

I know I will die. Just a little man without family. This man who'd sold himself to law and justice. This man who'd condemned his own family for his king, put them in chains where they'd never see light again. This man who'd been a tormentor, an advocate for a tyrant, a hand in flinging his shadow far across the land.

Walls, walls all around. Walls of the monarchy. Walls of the law.

Could he have been the wrong, all this time? Could it be he'd come to fear the king, not love him? He'd done that all in the name of Victoria—killed and shamed in the name of Victoria—but really, he'd only done that all in the name of Caleix—hadn't he? For fear—hadn't he?

Someday soon that very same man would put him to death. Perhaps tomorrow, on account of this failure to find Nightfall.

But there was hope yet, there was a route out. What if he reported this wall scrawling to the king? He could turn this mission into a success, if it helped pre-empt Nightfall's attack. He could save his name, and in so doing climb a rank perhaps.

It was behavior his profession entailed, after all. Of course he would. That was what he'd done all his life. Foil their plan. Destroy the rebels. Crush them to dust. Further Caleix's tyranny.

I find myself having to choose between—

But now as he stared at all of Nightfall's plots, condensed into five words—surer than lead in his gut, surer than the life he was drawing in, out, through his lips—Esharo Hesprel feared the world was about to cave in upon him. He remembered the sting of the knife in his arm. He remembered the truths Hyrien had spoken, more potent than Caleix's propaganda campaigns could ever be.

—what is right—

"Sir..." It was the murmur of Gieron at his shoulder, equally captivated by the messy scrawling that loomed upon them. There were suspicions on his brow. Calculations. Worries. "Someone must have painted that. We should search the premises again..."

—and what I have been told to do.

Perhaps it didn't always have to be like this. Perhaps there was another way to redeem himself. Not to Caleix, but to the Goddess.

"No," replied Esharo. He turned his back on the words, pressing his fingers to the scar of an old promise. "Do not bother His Majesty with the triviality of a vandal's work."

"Sir, we cannot be sure—"

"Yes, we cannot be sure!" he snapped. "It's nothing. We don't have to search for consolation in false signs. I have failed him, Gieron. I will take my punishment peacefully."

I will let the rebels do what they must. These walls can be broken.

ketara: fly with me

Morning twisted through the trees, lighting the very tips grey. And only in the faint light did the silhouettes grow sharp, casting shadows in the thaw that had been snow three days before. Their wings crinkled and flexed, pulled close against the chill that might kill them.

In the gloom, Ketara's eyes rose into the dawn, head shifting against the trunk, shoulders tensing. When he blinked again, he saw that the faint black silhouette amongst the trees hadn't vanished. The volcano echoed in his blood—the tribes and circling rituals—the thundering lava pooling like blood beneath Horned Tail's feet—the crash of scales against his front.

It is finished, rustled a proud voice. He blinked and glanced about, upward. Telida was close. And the dragon-silhouette was shifting.

Without another sound's notice, the creature leapt off the branch and materialised into a sinuous black form, glittering with the dawn.

Ketara straightened in place, eyes taking in its every minuscule movement, the ripple of legs, the twitch of wings. "Ah? What?"

By then, the creature had stalked to his side, neck arching over him like a predator contemplating prey. If Telida woke now, she might think him in need of saving...

It crept a little closer before daring to speak, turning a great golden eye to its human counterpart.

They came and went, it whispered. They took nothing on their way. They are gone now. The enemies. My friends have left to tell your friends.

He made a sound of comprehension. "Oh, does that mean we can go back?"

It is safe, replied the dragon. Eyes wide, he started to rise, and winced at the stab in his wrist.

The dragon glanced away, ashamed to have seen his weakness. Dearest child of the Ancient One. Our brother in His love. It...pains me to see you so.

He glanced at his feet, which were enclosed in Nightfall's boots. The leather was worn but it had not budged. "Thank you for your condolences," he answered, "but I'm perfectly fine, I really am." The smile grew a little warmer.

Those golden eyes flashed out as it blinked; it tilted its head and made a sound in its throat, perhaps pity.

Fly with me, it finally said—then quickly withdrew, as if abashed of its own words, when Ketara looked up.

"With you? Now? I would...love to travel back with you..."

Now...and always, it answered. You should be free like you were made to be. Fly with me.

"Ah, but I swore to give freedom up!" The ex-Dragon Knight couldn't deny that it had sparked a painful flame of hope in him. "That's part of my oath, isn't it? What if the Clock Spirit kills you for helping me?"

Then it can kill the Dragon if it pleases! it cried. The Dragon would want you free! I know Right when I see it, and this is your Right!

Smiling, Ketara folded his arms. "What is your name?" he asked, and wondered for a while if this was really an answer. If he could join his friends in the final mission like he'd always thought he would...

My name is Elkhris, he answered. Will you let me be your servant—at least until you need me no more?

He laughed. "I don't mind if you don't mind!" he answered with a grin, shifting onto his knees with a boost from his elbow. He shuffled through the dark wet earth, where the sun met it and turned it deep blue. "You're too kind, Elkhris. Could you do me a favour and wake the other two?"

The dragon sniffed a small cloud of smoke, so hot and so close to his face he started backwards. They are already awake, it answered. But they do not want to rise.

"Could you...er...fetch them here?" he asked, and it answered, with pleasure. All at once, that little hopeful flame began to spread through his limbs.

The Night Hunters had found their temporary homes in the corners of the forest, all curled in dens and on trees, some with improvised shelters made of branches. Over the week that followed, the dragon messengers navigated the routes and found every one, finding children huddled in the crooks of trees, adults hunting despite the scarcity.

The ones who settled closest were the first to arrive. They trudged one by one onto the flagstones of the old white ruins, into the throat of a ghost—but the words they'd painted on the wall one evening in the snow—THE EVE OF THE DRAGON—welcomed them with old eyes and curled tails and belief all anew.

The great plot lived.

They rearranged the HQ so it looked as it had before abandonment, dragging and shoving the sofas back into the ranks and files, and the later arrivals came home to warm radiators and a blazing stove.

Training resumed, but the fog of caution lay palpable upon their shoulders. No one between the trees upon the earth dared yell unless in effort or agony.

The end of the year loomed upon them like the swollen cloud, and with it the day of their siege, the day they would either wrench Victoria from the iron grasp of the king or die in their last attempt to.

In the warm rooms of the HQ, little changed, and nights were spent alone.

Akera lay silent and pretended she didn't hear the rest of the world. Never mind Ralinn. Her word was less than smoke in the piercing beam of the old prophecy she carried. If she was to take the Spear, then she would, try whatever they may to stop her.

But something nagged at her long after everyone else was asleep.

It was fear. It wasn't fear that she'd fail to kill Caleix. With the Spear she direly outmatched him. It was fear because she outmatched him. The Goddess wouldn't bring them to the Spear as if it weren't the answer, would She? The Spear...the Spear couldn't be for that alone.

The room was empty when Ralinn was not there. I need a walk, she had said, and had vanished, but she had not come back and it was deep beyond midnight and Shirion was beginning to worry.

She is safe, he told himself with a shake of his head, looking upon that empty space on the rack by the wardrobe, where her bow usually hung. But he'd seen a change in the Ranger's eyes in the days since the forest, and he knew the monster was not on the outside.

The planners were at the table again; Hyrien was attempting to offer Lanoré the mug of hot chocolate he had meant to to have himself, because the queue was long today and she had a great deal of work to do, but the woman was insisting she knew the cold better than he.

"You can almost smell the spring!" proclaimed Yunira, giggling, as she sped by the table, children racing after her. A mother yelled at her daughter, who'd apparently just recovered from pneumonia, But no one blamed Lanoré or Ralinn for bringing that week of cold upon them; the guards had left footprints in the dust and gashes in the sofas, and everyone knew that the tactic had saved them all.

Hyrien frowned. He hadn't been able to stop frowning, and grew increasingly morose as the final day began to loom. The Eve of the Dragon.

"Are you sure they're gone? Properly deterred?" he muttered. "Are you sure they're not going to check again? They must know we were here."

For once, for the briefest seconds, worry crossed Lanoré's brow. "I cannot be sure," she replied. "But we could not have stayed in the cold wilderness any longer than was necessary. We need to weigh our costs and benefits. Too many deaths...would lose your people's faith and morale."

Hearing this, the tall Guild Master closed his eyes and breathed a simple sigh. "I mean no disrespect, but you seem to think of my guild members as—pieces."

She nodded in a way of acknowledgment without agreement. "Perhaps I do," she said. "Perhaps I find myself hard-pressed to feel for every one of them. We are fighting a war, after all, and it's never easy making the right choices if you think of them all as your children."

Making the right choices. Hyrien closed his eyes. Pelinor. Esharo. Yes, pity and compassion. He knew how compassion paved the road to the worst mistakes.

"I...well...it's not always a bad thing, either." He bowed to stare into the hot chocolate mug that she'd rejected, watched the steaming liquid ripple when he blew on it. "I don't mean to dispute your methods, of course."

"Yes, you do," answered the Archmage, and he didn't have to look to know she was smiling one of those frightful smiles that made him feel like a child caught breaking the rules. "But I take no offence. I apologise also if I have thrown your guild too thoughtlessly to risk in interest of these schemes."

"You saved them," he said. "I suppose everything we do hereafter is unavoidable. The final push. The attack. We've all pledged ourselves to this."

Lanoré nodded thoughtfully, staring off into the dim living room where there was enough laughter to dispel the air of death. "Yes, that is true," she replied. "It is the worthiest cause you could hope to give yourself to."

akera: damnation

No one wanted to be outside the next day, for a fog had come to blanket the forest, obscuring the new fall of snow from last night. No one wanted to be out where the dragons and soldiers lurked.

"It's time we abandoned all forms of obstructive politeness," Lanoré had said to Akera last night. "Ralinn must let you use the Spear. Her permission ought to mean little in the face of the world's end."

Akera clung onto this piece of logic now as she watched Ralinn emerge from the staircase with Shirion at her side. The Mage drew in breath when the expected pang stabbed at her; she'd hoped she wouldn't have to speak with both concurrently—but like Lanoré had said, it meant little. Her eyes narrowed.

The Ranger caught sight of Akera in time to take on a look of wariness, long before she had approached. When they came to a stop before her, the Mage answered with a sneer. But it meant little.

"Ralinn," she said. Anxiousness had gripped Shirion as well by then; his body was tensed, and his eyes darted back and forth. She tried not to cringe. "Let's not play now. You need to let me use the Spear of Heaven, do you understand?"

"I told you," answered Ralinn, "I am prohibiting the use of the Spear by anyone—"

"Oh! So, we just spent the entire year running all over Ossyria looking for its parts—for nothing? You're going to discard it all on a whim?"

Ralinn's eyes went cold, like they always did when she was threatened. "Plans must change with circumstances," she said. "I'm sure you know that."

"This isn't a change in circumstance! It's a rule, don't you get it? The Goddess told you to—"

"I will make my own decisions, thank you."

Her face must have changed. She felt the snap.

Beside her, the Crusader shouted something. Akera couldn't hear.

"—Akera! Don't do anything! Don't you dare—"

"This is not your decision to make! This is not your choice!" she screamed. "She's wrong! She's jealous! She'll get us killed, the wretch, she doesn't care about anyone but herself, so don't you dare DEFEND HER!—"

She hadn't seen her hands spitting yellow-white sparks at the air. She hadn't seen, through all the angry smog in her eyes, the flames rippling up her fingers, between her lips, across the floor.

And it all came in a boom—a sudden deafening, blazing surge of light, as the magic spat itself out of her—

Akera heard it all through a mist. The sound of Shirion collapsing to his knees in a moan so uncharacteristically agonised she was jolted right out of her rage and into a whirlpool of dizziness. Who—how— She heard, she heard Ralinn screaming—she watched, gasping with an aching chest, as the fire swirl away to reveal her friend—from the station, from branches, from deep in the snow, her bastion, her fortress—clutching at his face with blistered red hands, all his words tangled into moans and wheezes.

"SHIRION!" The cry split her throat, and she began to convulse with sobs, gasping for air, for mercy—

The hall was in chaos around her. Like birds they flittered about around her, racing to carry him to Shara and Grendel and whoever else could save him; Ralinn was swallowed by a crowd, she was gone, and there was no one left for her to pin her hate to.

"Good going," muttered a stranger at her side.

She didn't need to hear any more. Shirion's voice reverberated through her brain, shattering every window and chandelier.

Lost in this rising whirlpool of glass, dizzy beyond reckoning, lungs full of fire, Akera screeched and stumbled and wailed wordlessly again—but Shirion was gone, and there were only walls, walls everywhere.

The tears began to blaze like hot knives in her eyes, and Akera felt an overwhelming tide of black engulf her—

lanoré: shadows and fog

"Is she fine?"

Lanoré didn't look up, not when she knew who the speaker was, and not when the words were so thick with insincerity.

"I hope so," whispered Clynine, shifting on the neighbouring sofa.

"She is alive," answered the Archmage curtly. She touched a hand to the forehead of the Mage who lay snuggled against her, curled up in deep sleep. Her skin was still burning, and Lanoré whispered—Blizzard—so a mist of ice caressed her forehead. "How is Shirion?"

"The healers helped him well. I think he will be walking—though superficially scarred—by tonight."

"What happened?"

"Well, Akera asked to use the Spear, and I disagreed, so she worked herself up as usual and almost killed Shirion."

Lanoré nodded, veiling irritation behind pursed lips. Normally she'd not be irritated by people, and normally she'd do a much better job of obscuring it, but Ralinn was being dismissive—in a way so uncharacteristically cruel of her that it was impossible not to abhor.

"And who did this to Akera?" she asked instead, continuing to feign calm.

The ex-guild leader quirked an eyebrow. "As far as I can tell, she did it to herself." The spite crept into her voice this time and Lanoré felt her eyes narrow.

"Respect her!" she shouted—surprising even herself—and gripping the girl's wrist by instinct. "She did it to herself at the prompting of another. Do you realise you have a hand in this?"

"I did what I should have," muttered Ralinn, who then rose and departed. The lie rang out clear long after she was gone.

At least now Lanoré could sort out the things pressing on her thoughts. She touched Akera's shoulder, and her heart ached in a way she'd never quite known. As if she'd failed in her duty to protect the girl. She'd never noticed how sorely she wanted Akera to find happiness—not till now, now that she'd finally crumbled in submission. Was this how it felt to be a mother?

Her eyes shifted to Clynine to her right, tilting over her sofa's arm to stare at the sleeping Mage's face. Her mind went to her own parents in the snow, the parents she'd estranged to go her own way. Is this it, Mother, and will you still forgive me?

She brushed Akera's white hair from her pale, burning face. So young and so burdened. Gross injustice. But did heaven really care? Amongst the billions of souls the gods had watch rise and die—from the day the Dragon's tears had scattered across the world, to now—did it matter at all that Akera was withering from inside?

Clynine's upward glance made Lanoré turn. She followed the line of her gaze to find the Guild Master watching from many feet away.

How long had she left him standing? "Come over and sit," she called. She'd almost hoped that the appearance of the job masters would give Hyrien someone else to treat as a deity instead, but it seemed his mind had room for five. It wouldn't do, her new Guild Master treating her like his leader. What if that power was being transferred to her somehow? For the better of her friends—and perhaps herself—she did not want that power. But he needs to learn to trust himself.

"How is she?" murmured Hyrien as he arrived, voice subdued as if in reverence. He took the seat two spaces to her left. Lanoré sighed. It would almost be logical to conclude—from the two specimens she had—that White Knights chose their job on basis of their lack of confidence.

She only shrugged. "I barely know," she said truthfully. "She's burning up and still unconscious, that's all we can gather."

"I hear...she was meant to make the final move, on the day of the attack?" said Hyrien.

"The one who owns the Spear isn't allowing it." Lanoré sighed. "We might have to take it by force eventually. But I'd rather put that moment off until it can no longer be avoided."

To think...the greatest traitor would be one of their own. She gazed across the rows of empty sofas. The lights had been dimmed for the night, and she knew the fog outside hadn't cleared. Shadows, everywhere.

Lanoré wondered, briefly, if Hyrien was hesitating to respond because he was as anxious as she about matters, or because he feared to interrupt her daze.

She turned suddenly. "Please, don't fear me," she said. "You'd make quite a companion, I'd say, if only you weren't so—deferent." Companion? Lanoré wondered briefly. He was the Guild Master. And I'm apparently a goddess. Her smile must have become more than just inward.

"I don't mean to be," he admitted—well, at least he's admitting something— "it's just that...with the stories that have preceded you and which continue to be part of my impression of your person, you seem unreal to me—fictitious, maybe?"

Lanoré laughed quietly; somehow the night demanded it. "How much farther out of control is this reputation going to grow?" she sighed. "Let me explain why you shouldn't hold me in high regard. For one, I spill my drinks sometimes. And for another, I frequently have trouble waking up in the morning."

"Mm, noted."

"Do you believe me?" she said.

"If it matters this much, do go on..."

"I enjoy cold weather, but I'm sure that'd be obvious to anyone who knows me. I think I spend fifteen minutes on my hair everyday."

"That's...surprising. Surprisingly ordinary." He didn't seem surprised though, which the Archmage supposed was progress.

The fog seemed to moan outside. The lights could scarcely hold; Lanoré glanced at Akera and wondered if she should be left to continue her troubled repose here on the sofas. "Clynine," she said without turning.

"Yes, Mistress Lanoré!"

"Will you keep Akera company in the healing room?" she asked.

"Yes, of course, are we going to take her there right now?"

"Let me," the Guild Master put in, rising. The Archmage did not give a visible response, but allowed him to lift the girl. Akera needed rest; her recovery was all they could hope for.

Clynine tagged along behind, but Lanoré stayed ahead. They trooped down the stairs, leaving the last living room residents behind to enjoy the quiet.

The rows of beds at the healing room stood empty and pale when the lights flickered on, welcoming the new resident. The Cleric fluffed up a pillow and gestured at the bed—Hyrien was glad to comply, laying Akera on the sheets as if lowering something priceless.

"I will do my best to ensure her recovery," Hyrien said earnestly as he did.

"Because she will be important?"

"Because I care for all my guild members."

Care, Lanoré smiled at the word. Perhaps she did care. Akera, the girl who'd known too little care. Save for Shirion's—till today.

Ralinn watched Shirion. He left for breaks between news bulletins, and instead of training with the other warriors he always descended the stairs towards the sick room, never once asking the Ranger along. She didn't have to ask why to know.

The Ranger left the living room early that night after a lonely drink, slipped into their bedroom silently. Shirion wasn't there. Of course. He was looking after the girl who'd almost murdered him.

When he did arrive two hours later, she snapped at him for not knocking first. They discussed dull things at the edge of the bed, before she lay down to close her eyes. Bowing over her, Shirion swept her hair away to kiss her forehead.

"You're unhappy today," he said. "What is it?"

"I can't say it. I know what happens when I talk. I lose a rein."

"You have never cried before, you know? As if tears would shatter your face. You should, if you need to."

"I am the leader. A leader at some level. I cannot be seen crying like a child, now, can I?"

"Have you never let yourself be someone else? Someone other than the leader?"

Her face was stiff as card. "If I ever was someone else, I think I've forgotten. Who else will they trust if they can't trust me?"

"Many people. We are Orion's Belt no longer," murmured Shirion.

"Yeah, we aren't." She couldn't hold his gaze. "We're Hyrien's guild. Akera's guild. Isn't that right?" She paused then, stunned at what she'd just let escape. But then Shirion's alarm wrung the next words out of her. "Everyone is Akera's now, even—you."

She was surprised to find the corners of her eyes damp and her breath achingly fast.

"I am not hers," he answered. "I follow her orders and—"

"The Spear is hers. And so is everyone's love." Her eyes flared like fire on an oil slick. "Do you know that? Do you know? The Goddess sought her all along."

He stared back unaccusingly. "You're jealous of her. That's why you're stopping her from using the Spear. Isn't it?"

"No—I'm not! I'm just keeping her out of harm's way, I'm protecting her—"

"You're not. You never cared for that. You're being spiteful. Is risking the world really worth saving your pride?"

"I don't know, I don't know—stop it—stop it! Stop—caring for her!"

No, in fact, some part of her knew how she felt. That was the thing with feelings; they clung like oil, and all one could do was ignore them till they faded. But she had ignored long enough.

"Shirion." She said it like a plea, at cliff's edge. He glanced at her, and his worry made her heart curl up. "Please...don't look at me that way. I—I don't mean to be like is my weakness. I obeyed the guards. I did things for Caleix that harmed men, women on the other side of the world. When the Goddess came to me, even though I didn't understand what I was beginning—I was so happy. I could finally—do something."

Her eyes stung; she didn't know this feeling. The Crusader nodded. "Everyone seeks to do good for the world," he replied; he tried to reach for her shoulder, but she recoiled and turned the other way.

"I was glad to have the chance to turn upon him. And maybe some part of the child I was is—still with me. Maybe I did want to be a heroine. Maybe I still do. I—still do.But—but the truth is—it's not me. Akera is the Goddess' heroine. The Goddess just needed me to find and save her. I was just a—just a—"

She pressed her mouth against the back of her trembling hand, starting to sob like the helpless child she had never been. The story echoed between them, freezing everything it touched. And Shirion, for all the warmth he was, could not melt something so old, so insidious.

"You're not—"

"It's fine," she croaked. "You don't have to tell me it's not true. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"But then you know you must let her do what she must—"

"I can't just let her take—"

She tried to kill us both. And you love her even then. You're being selfish, Ralinn. No leader is selfish.

"—everything—"

"—she hasn't taken anything—Ralinn!" He snatched her by the shoulders before she could sink away in exhaustion. "Look, she and you—you're both hurting yourselves over nothing—"

"Not nothing—"

"Ralinn."

"I'm—disgusting. I never deserved any of it."

That night, the Ranger allowed herself to break. She screamed, and flung a slap at him; she yelled at him as if he were the reason for everything, though he clung to her just long enough. And she sobbed and wept, into a shoulder she didn't realise was there—till her convulsions ceased at last, and she was dozing in his arms with tears on her cheeks.

akera: morning

It was not till morning that Akera woke, and everything seemed greyer when she did. The emptiness in the room did not bring loneliness. Only peace. Except, it wasn't the pleasant lull of solitude; it was dull and crackly and empty.

She lay and waited—waited for Clynine to return from her breakfast. The girl exclaimed in apology when she found the Fire Poison Mage awake while she lowered the tray to her bedside table.

Akera didn't mind that Clynine hadn't been there. She didn't mind not eating. The food did not draw her despite the clawing in her stomach.

Five minutes later the girl vanished at the beckoning of Lanoré. The Archmage glanced through the door only a second—to meet Akera's eye—before withdrawing into the morning.

Akera continued to stare through the empty doorway long after she was gone. Lanoré...Lanoré had probably lost all respect in her by now. She'd failed to prove anything. Just another upstart. And she didn't want to any longer. She didn't want to be the most powerful mage in Victoria...

The memory of yesterday struck like a bolt; she cringed and felt fresh tears trickle down her cheeks when Shirion's voice resounded through her mind, crying accusation. The girl dried her face on the blankets, and the feeling was gone. She took the sandwich from the tray and ate, because it would sustain her, but even now she wasn't sure if she wanted to be sustained.

The light in the door didn't matter. The shadows shifting neither. She closed her eyes and pretended the world didn't exist.

That was, until the door creaked again, and her eyes lifted.

Turino. His arms were drawn up close, as if he feared her presence, but his dark eyes hung adamantly onto hers.

"Turino?" she whispered.

Another victim of her cruelty. She bowed away, face contorted against tears as an ache seized her throat.

"Turino."

"Yes?"

"Why...do you still care for me?"

"I don't know. I really don't know."

"You're stupid." She knew why. She knew he loved her. And she could not begin to comprehend how anyone could love a woman who'd tried to kill him.

She found the question nagging suddenly: would she ever return his love?

She loved Shirion, she knew she did. She loved him for all the years they'd spent living like the wind. She loved him because he'd been the lone light amidst a world of hardened faces, and she had needed its warmth. He had been the warmth in the snow.

But he'd never been the rain on the fire. Yes. The cure. She'd screamed and fallen, she'd blazed and scorched herself. But it had never been Shirion to save her from her own flame.

It had been him, in all his darkness. It had been him. He had taken her shoulders and yelled sense at her, burned with her, and without receiving anything but spite in return.

"Protect me," she growled, and seeing him start made her angrier. "Protect me! I order you to!"

"Stop it!" he snapped. "What's happening now? Are you going mad?"

She curled up. A sob shook her when she realised that he might be right. She bowed under the weight of the air, crying softly, and felt the hot lava tears tumble into her lap.

"Protect me," she rasped between convulsions and sobs. She was a shame to everyone and the world. "Protect me."

"I can't protect you from anything!"

"Stop, Turino, I thought you cared, help me. Help me." He nodded and ran to her bedside, sank towards her, catching her into his embrace, pressing her face against his shoulder.

Sitting there, sinking into the warmth of his hold, Akera found she no longer cared for the fire she'd once been so proud to wield. What use was a weapon one couldn't control? What use was power, when you could only use it for harm? What use was a gift so vile? She watched the flame gutter, gutter—

Straightening suddenly, he pulled away, glanced down at her face, shook her. "Akera. Akera!" His fingers wound tighter about her wrists in pleading. "Don't give it up, Akera—"

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, bowing so she could see nothing. He didn't understand, there was nothing left of her that she wanted to keep. But the poor boy wouldn't let go, he wanted to save her even though he couldn't, and he gripped her face and kissed her. As if it might light her again. She let him.

He wrenched himself away when he realised she wasn't responding. His eyes clouded up. "Akera—don't," he pleaded between sobs. "Don't give it up—"

"I don't want it!" she yelled back, hot tears swelling on her eyelids. "I don't want this power. Take it from me! Take it! I'm sick of hurting everyone!"

"You don't do it on purpose—I know—"

"Do you know? Do you know what it's like, spending your life in fear of friendship? Putting in danger anyone who dares come close to you? I thought it'd change when I joined the guild, I thought that was a chance. But I just hurt more people. I just—"

She gave out to a spasm of sobs then. The sound squeezed his heart like a vice.

"I don't—need to be powerful. I don't—need it. I'm just dangerous. No one can love someone like me. I don't want this any longer. I just want—it—to be—gone."

A stray breeze curled through the doorway. Turino pulled away, ad let go of her frigid hands. She felt so empty, she felt like she might scatter in the wind.

Her body sagged against the backboard. Her mouth curved into a tiny smile. Her sobs became manic laughter.

"It's gone now! Ha!"

"No—no, Akera—" His head sank forward; she saw a tear pool on his chin.

She was in ecstasy. "The Goddess is finally punishing me!"

"No. You're punishing yourself. You're doing this to yourself."

"She knows no mercy." She was free. She was caught between weeping and giggling.

He continued to bow, and the tears did not stop.

ralinn: the goddess' song

Clouds spiralled overhead, and the light beyond them was blinding enough that all she could do was bow and press on through the wind.

Ralinn didn't know where she was, but she knew she was here to meet someone.

From beneath the fog materialised a white desert. She felt the empty wind burn against her face. The light beat upon her, and she felt as if it were spreading her thin.

Don't run, murmured the voice of the wind. Echoing from all her dreams before and after. Don't flee.

"Then what do I do?" whispered the Ranger in answer, and tears raced down her cheeks. "Why did you lie to me so long?"

I did not lie.

"You didn't tell me that I was just doing you favours! You didn't say!"

Why should I have?

"Because I—I feel cheated. Because for the longest time, I thought—I thought I was your heroine. You made me think that. And you took it from me. You just...took it from me."

The silence that followed seemed to hum like a distant whale.

Ah...but do you not see, how Fate is woven? Some must be servants, child. Some must pave the roads for others, or the weft will stray and the world will go awry. Personal absorbances must sometimes be ceded for the greater good, child. It is time for you to give the tale away, to be carried by another. This is what must be done.

She cringed, eyes narrowed on the sand ahead. "So—I am. I am just a tool to your ends. A—stepping stone. Then why did you let me think I was—being heroic? Why did you let me believe that?"

Because you were being heroic! You were the right one. You had the strength, and I see how right I have been. But now you must have the selflessness, too—you must have the counsel to relinquish your pride.

"I...only wanted to change something."

You've changed everything, daughter. My daughter.

Her eyes grew wet again.

You have been key in the progression of good, and you must be proud of it, even if you are not the heroine.

She lowered herself to the shifting ground, and let the white voice engulf her, hot tears trickling freely into the sand.

You have brought us so close, Ralinn, to a victory I could never have hoped for without you. You have changed everything, my daughter. Now it is Akera's turn. She will take the tale to its end. You must give it to her, Ralinn. My daughter. You must let her try.

the dragon's roar

A rumbling of thunder began on the evening after. The doors creaked in the gale, and no one quite knew what to expect.

Then there were cries from outside. Yunira left her tabloid puzzle to answer the door as was customary, listening between cracks.

"We know you're in there! Open up!"

Nervously, she leapt away and turned to her guild master for instruction, features tight. "Hyrien! Hyrien, should I open—"

The last thing she was expecting, then, was for Dances with Balrog to spring up with the sprightliness of a child and dash right past her, a hand outstretched for the door.

"Crouching Bear?" he shouted, head thumping against the wood as he pressed his ear to it. "Crouching Bear, is that you?"

A soft cry of "Chief Dances with Balrog!" was followed by the clanging of door bolts, and the great grinding groan of the door, like the sound of islands shifting.

In the Perion tribespeople tumbled, with yells of "thank you" and "we made it" filling the main hall and living room as if it were their own home.

The stench of sweat and blood followed them in, telling of the days—perhaps weeks—they had gone without a bath. There was visible cringing in the living room. "It is good to be safe!" exclaimed the man at the fore, a man tall enough to touch the arch of the doorway. "Safe in stone! The safest there is, I say. Nothing safer than stone!"

"Of course! Concrete is a laughable substitute," muttered another. In the nearby sofas, Dalran Ethiel shifted uncomfortably at the jibe about concrete.

Holding the door open, Yunira could only stare. Normally, she'd be all over the visitors. But these visitors were entirely different, she knew. The eagerness of her welcome might pale next to their excitement for arrival—and that wouldn't do! She decided she'd stand aside instead, and let them welcome themselves.

And welcome themselves they most certainly did. Even now, hugs were being exchanged at the doorway. A trio of warriors had already begun to discard their weapons by the door; all three seemed entirely unbothered by the dry-blood streaks they were leaving on the stones.

Alarm seized Yunira. "Sirs and ma'am!" she exclaimed, slamming the door shut and leaping into their midst. "Sirs and ma'am, we have an armoury downstairs—could you, er, take them there instead! I'll show you the way!"

They glanced at each other. One man grinned. "Of course, sweet," he put in. "Lead the way."

"Hey, stop right there, Hawk!" his companion answered. "Let's introduce us to her first, eh? She can't take orders from men she barely knows!" His eyes went back to the young Spearwoman. "I'm Running Boar, young miss, and the bossy man here—" he jabbed a thumb in the direction of the man whom, in her opinion, wasn't quite as bossy as Running Boar claimed— "is Nighthawk. Hardly the deadly animal though!"

"Hey! Well—clearly, someone else fits his name better, eh, Running Boar?" Nighthawk accompanied the exclamation with a prod of his belly.

While the two men descended into a few ridiculous rounds of name-calling, the woman—who happened to be of much smaller stature than she'd seemed from afar—stepped in, grinning pleasantly. "Thanks for the help, girl, I'm Singing River—and you?"

She stopped herself before she could blurt something about Singing River's height. "Name's Yunira! Nice to meet you!" she beamed widely as they shook hands, the woman's glove scraping against her palm.

"And are you a warrior too?" she asked, slapping the girl's back with surprising vigour.

"Yes!" Yunira grinned, patting her arm away. "Spearwoman!"

"Good on you. You getting your third job anytime soon?" Her eyes moved to her companions. "Oi, you blockheads, get here."

She shook her head while Singing River rounded the scuffling men up. "I'm not ready to ascend yet!" she said when she returned, Running Boar and Nighthawk in tow. "I've been going pretty hard at my training, too. Hyrien said we had to. D'you know? We're going to battle soon! Barely two weeks now!"

Their heads perked up in synchrony. "So we heard," said Singing River. "We heard it in the little towns—a guild in the south, plotting an attack in the winter—we came looking...and look what we found!"

Yunira waved for them, and they began towards the staircase together. "Yeah, that's us!" she said, and gestured at the huge words that had been slathered in black across the wall behind the dais. THE EVE OF THE DRAGON. "New Year's Eve. It's all set!"

Running Boar cut in right about then. "Oh, and we—we could join you, couldn't we? Yes! Yes? If Dance with Balrog lets us—"

"Ooh, of course! Dances With Balrog will be fighting on our side—I think Lanoré has something planned for the Job Masters—"

"Lanoré—Orion's Belt is here too?" Nighthawk exclaimed. "You have quite a lovely gathering here, haven't you? Ethiel, as I can see, and Orion's Belt—and the Job Masters!"

"The King did us a favour rounding the Job Masters up," she laughed, and was absolutely flattered to have them follow suit. "And Orion's Belt—that was a twist of fate, but I swear everyone expected it, deep down. We've merged now. We're the Night Hunters!"

"Hear that, Hawk? They hunt you."

"Quiet, you idiots," Singing River muttered. "All gathered for war, how exciting! And good to see we aren't late." She grinned at her sword, lifting it to the light as they walked. "She thirsts for war. It's been too long since we were called upon to defend our land. Too long for any true warrior!"

The curving hallways echoed their footsteps as they strode by an array of hardwood doors, caught up in a lively conversation that inundated the silence. The armoury stood in the far arc of the hall, differentiated from the rest by the locking mechanism; Yunira came to a stop before it, and they followed suit. Producing a pocket knife, she scratched the keysign into the metal plate and waited for the door to click, before giving it a good shove.

It was almost a pity to watch her warrior companions offer their weapons to the respective racks—belts, blood and all. Talking to them, she had come to understand just how beloved the weapons were. These men and women were the true people of Perion—not the children who came and went on mountain roads, seeking power and fame. Their blood was of the battle.

It was strange, because she remembered reading that it was the Dragon, King of Life, who'd first gifted the warriors with their powers, and taught them ardour for the battlefield. Was there a strange sort of Life to be found in the delivery of death?

Maybe it's the safeguarding of life, Yunira mused. She found it odd to look at the new residents of the armoury—hanging bloodstained and dark, freshly-plucked from corpses, amidst the gleaming silver of the rest. Life, and war. I wonder why they always come together.

It was right about then that the girl grew aware that new footsteps were trooping down the corridor outside. An awfully large number of new footsteps...

She turned, and leapt when she found five new warriors at the door, all bearing weapons about as bloody as their compatriots'. "Ho, the pretty flame-haired girl's still here! Told you!" The foremost man chuckled the words as he strode in, a tattered, bloodied shirt barely covering his well-muscled torso. He reached to shake her hand. "Storm Rain's my name, thank you for your welcome! Which lucky man has your heart?"

Yunira could barely have prepared herself for the question; her mind began to race in quite a panic—Perion warriors sure were forward!—but inspection of his hearty grin assured her that he was devoid of any true romantic interest. But still... She thought of Ketara, and the fact that he was very much someone else's. She cleared her throat. "Um, well, I can show you later, sir..."

Thankfully for her, she was quickly saved from further awkwardness by the emergence of an unknown woman from amongst the new arrivals. She strode up to Storm Rain and gave the great man a jab in the ribs. He grimaced incredulously— "hey, I was just being friendly—"

"It's fine! It really is!" Yunira waved her hands in front of the newcomer woman, who flicked her head so her braid swung, and spun her club in her hand—the girl flinched. The woman, all sharp-featured and silent, merely offered a grateful pat on the shoulder, and walked right past.

"Singing River," she called out instead, while the Spearwoman fell into a daze. "The Boar giving you trouble?"

"Been perfectly-behaved!" answered Singing River eagerly, and beside the new woman she seemed even shorter than before. "He wouldn't dare—eh, would you, Boar?"

"You're no mother to me!" snapped Running Boar, a right child between the two. "Neither of you is!"

Yunira's daze persisted, as their short trip to the armoury turned into a brawl of insults and back-slaps, and she began to realise how hopelessly far out of her depth she was. The true people of the Dragon, were they?

I am the Heir to my clan, said Elkhris in the snow. Ketara had left Telida for the time, and she had let him go when she had seen the black dragons outside. She had helped him onto Elkhris, but had vanished before he could have thanked her.

"Oh, is that so?" murmured Ketara, head resting against his dragon's scales as he swirled a finger through the snowy night. He could barely see the lights on the other side of the frozen creek. "That must be wonderful."

It is not, dear brother, I will rule when the dark has claimed my father—or when he abdicates—but I know too little! I am not a ruler but a hunter.

"Oh, but things can change pretty fast," replied Ketara, wiggling his useless right foot about. "It'll be great, Elkhris. I promise it will!"

Muscles flexing and contracting, Elkhris lifted his tongue from the ice and rose to a stand. I would like...to show you to him. I would like him to see you before he goes.

His eyes widened, and it was not from fear. "Oh! Of course, I'd—love to!" he managed, grinning and shifting on the dragon's scaly back, as much as his wrists would allow. He shivered again—the dragon was so cold—but then Elkhris must have felt his trembling, for he made a guttural sound, and a gentle heat began to press up from his scales.

Quiet, he sang. You must keep this our shrine a secret. So Ketara bent close, and Elkhris sprung silently upon the next roar of wind into the dark.

rebirth i

He hoped, and kept hoping furiously, though He knew they were slipping away into the shadow. He wept blindly as He listened to the hearts of his children twisting and screaming in the Dark, the Shadow Across the Stars. All He could offer was a song of hope. Of mercy and sacrifice. The song that had raised them from the mud. He sang it each night, across the endless space, and waited for an answer. But no answer ever came, for when their mouths opened, the Spirit flooded their throats with despair.

His great heart of love and sorrow grew weary with grief, and every night His voice grew softer.

Thick night crystallised into glittering white points of frost at the tips of branches. Ketara watched them flicker by, clawing at the black wings that disturbed the trees. The gnarly growths began to tighten and tangle as they flew, and Elkhris twisted through the gaps, dipping and rising like a butterfly among twigs. There was something of an incredible joy to his flight, and white sparks of fire burst from his snout every few seconds, as if he could barely contain laughter.

A circle of dragons waited in the grey clearing, ten or so, a council. The dragon shrine was no stone relic, not geometric and paved, as if geometry itself were profane. The trees themselves shaped the sanctuary, curling with each other, centuries old. Dragons tangled their glimmering tails with the old black roots, and listened with their heads pressed to trees, waiting for the springtime trapped deep beneath their bark.

Ketara shivered at the cries of surprise that erupted from the gathering when their heir sank like a leaf into their midst, rustling hollow branches. The largest, broadest dragon arced his neck from where he sat curled about the widest tree.

A man, he whispered, eyes blinking, and the dragons beneath him echoed distrust with their watery hisses. Why do you bring a human to us? Is he here to negotiate?

Elkhris tossed his head. Father, he is the one, the Child! The Ancient One has pressed His mark into his soul, do you see it?

Their golden eyes changed in the shifting starlight when they saw the Dragon's light upon him, and one by one they began to sing their welcome, jaws wide to the frost.

At their bidding, the warrior slid nervously off Elkhris, resting weight upon his unspoiled left foot and limping towards the dragon chief. The great dragon's tail unwound, and he unfolded his wings like sails in welcome.

We sing tonight, he said. This is the last turn of the moon till the rise of spring. When the full moon beams upon us again, the new year will come riding upon it.

"New year?" Ketara echoed. Something trembled in him—hope barely burning like a candle left unguarded in the wind. He feared the new world would not come soon enough. He feared it never would. "The Eve of the Dragon..."

When the time comes, you will welcome the spring with one soul less in your company. His heart was struck by a pang. He knew he was going to die. I do not wish to miss that welcome. Tonight will be the night we celebrate the world coming anew, reborn.

Reborn. The warrior wasn't sure what exactly he felt resting upon the word, hope or dread. Would it be a rebirth in light and blossoms? Or a rebirth in thunder and crumbling towers?

Let us not— The chief coughed a cloud of smoke that could not light into flame. Let us not dally. Time flows relentless. He raised his voice first to the night. It was a rumble, like a roar whispered.

I might dream and weave and sing—

Ketara breathed so deeply that his lungs hurt with the cold, and swallowed, eyes darting about the darkened clearing. Amid their voices he felt so unforgivably small, so silent and crippled, nothing.

—and then—

The clear notes resounded across the hollow-shrine, and Ketara lifted his eyes to the circular space amidst the branches through which the stars cast their light. He thought he heard a distant harmony join them—something grand, calling from across an endless canyon. As if a crack had been rent through the spaces between the stars, and this song was struggling to bridge the cosmic gap.

—you might know everything—

Swallowing, Ketara lifted his voice and let the throb of his heart drown every fear out—and he found he knew the words of their song, in some unexplored memory he hadn't realised was his own.

rebirth ii

Tonight, something new sat upon the air. The war with Darkness hadn't ended; it never had. But tonight, tonight something came anew, and again—as before—He rose to the peak, and listened for the answer. Listened for the storm winds rising.

Tonight, He heard an answer.

Then hope flared in Him. He raised His great head at the mountain peak, and the night was so dazzlingly bright He could almost see the stars when He breathed their wind. He raised His head high, and gave a mighty roar into the abyssal dark between heaven and the world He loved. The roar rattled all of Time on its myriad axles, and the Darkness quaked.

With a small sigh that could barely be heard among their voices, the King whispered, Take my army, Elkhris...do what you deem best. Then he breathed a thin cloud of smoke, a little spark, lighting a leaf—and with a grand thud his lifeless head dropped to the earth.

Go to the Ancient One, whispered the old King's son, and his song turned slowly to weeping.

hyrien: storm winds rising

"As the Guild Master of the Night Hunters," he announced, "I would like to personally welcome the men and women of the Perion tribe." Warm applause followed. If he was lucky, these new additions would give the guild a boost on the training grounds. The fog was finally clearing, and they'd be ready to return to it by tomorrow.

And welcome that was, too, with everyone finally recovering from their week out in the bare wintry forest. They had barely two weeks to go, the first of which was half burnt out already.

"Now, as our guests—and this applies to Ethiel as well—you have all rights to exempt yourselves from guild activities, but also to join in them if you please."

"Hey, Hyrien!" The warrior interrupted the Guild Master without a thought. "Hyrien! Can we join you? Like, in the battle?"

"Yeah! Can we?" The chorus of agreements that followed put Hyrien in a momentary daze.

"Alright, alright!" he shouted, and was relieved to have the perfect silence return. These warriors made their own chief seem wise and surly. "Dances with Balrog. As their leader, do you permit them to join us in our siege?"

"Of course." The chief folded his arms and reclined with a grin. Hyrien raised an eyebrow, as a cheer went up from near the front of the crowd. Were they—the chief, and the warriors themselves—so eager to place their lives where the darkness might steal them? They were a strange breed, these warriors. So ready to throw themselves to danger.

Like Pelinor, the thought gripped him and wouldn't let go. He thought of their bodies. Bodies. Lances in flesh. Pools of blood and rain.

He swallowed. "Fine, then. You will fight with us, warriors. Is there anything else to be announced?"

He noticed movement to his right, and seconds later found himself being displaced from the dais by Lanoré. "Battle plans will be disclosed tomorrow!" she announced. "I wish you luck." She gestured at the words painted on the wall behind the dais. The black letters stared upon the gathering, and her acknowledgment of their presence only made them seem to rise higher. "I did not deem this wise at the start, but I must say now that the reminder might prove very motivational. We leave on the Eve of the Dragon. Hyrien?"

The man returned just as Lanoré stepped off. He surveyed the crowd once, trying to gauge their emotions from their expressions. "Is that all?" he repeated. "Are there any more announcements to be made?"

The fear won out in their gazes, and he was panged by guilt, even as he nodded and dismissed them.

cirid: storm winds rising

The plains between Henesys and the abandoned harbour were not known to offer shade. They knew little danger, devoid of the vicious creatures that roamed the rest of the island, and safe from patrols of guards, whose leader believed Kerning betrayed to death and Lith Harbour the victim of mutiny, the remaining survivors stranded with no help.

He was, of course, quite wrong about both. The first anniversary of Kerning's brutal massacre was barely nine days away, New Year. Lith Harbour's shores no longer heard the toll of bells. But neither had died, neither had cracked deeper than the skin.

Cirid Celadon had always known that.

Cirid grinned into the evening, and no inch of its dark girth was spared her gaze. The falling night had the disposition of a cruel queen, misty and austere, her hard long nails piercing grease and fur. But its fog wouldn't hide from the Guild Master's eye the surly grey wall that spanned the valley three hills away.

As the last sun cast them a parting red glance, she began to survey the top of the hill they'd only just crested. Bare woody branches criss-crossed overhead, howling softly and parting for slivers of purple sky, damp sloping earth spread beneath. "Right, alright, round them up for the night!" shouted Cirid, signalling for her Junior Masters, both of whom barely needed a look from her before setting off in a dash.

She listened with a small smile as a smattering of cheers went up through the sloping wood, for relief, and for the prospect of arrival in Henesys. Arrival, for what? Her lips twisted in thought as the wind began to bite. There was no home to return to, no lodging even.

But arrival, Cirid supposed, was not a matter of finding home. All seven hundred of her followers had lost all notion of home, after all. How they had stared when she'd found them—when she'd pulled each dented drain cover up, blown every grimy stone slab open, and found hordes of survivors behind each one, cowering from the noise in the dark. Their eyes had demanded escape, not home.

She understood, naturally, and that was part of the reason she led them. She had lost her home and parents one night, twelve years ago, when they'd left her at a seaside tavern with a hunting rifle, explaining nothing. Safeguarding her, she now knew. She also knew they might be somewhere in Victoria Island, slaving for a king they couldn't love. She knew they had been wronged by the kingdom.

Holding the kingdom as your enemy was no easy task, she was reminded when her boots sank in the soil and she wondered if the rations—even tight—would last her followers to the end of their journey. Seven hundred had come, winding through dangerous valleys that lay out of the highway's vantage, sharing food and comfort amongst themselves, some falling prey to sickness and exhaustion.

If the Goddess would provide, this journey would not last much longer.

Over the months she'd held a conversation, through dragons, with a correspondent over the hills. They had asked the first question one afternoon, sent the first black dragon to the depths of Kerning like a beastly herald of her coming fame, asking after the state of her uprising.

Twenty letters at least had gone between them ever since, half headed for a corner of the forest near Henesys, half to an old tavern under the City of Thieves.

The cause of their conversation had been clear from barely two letters in: a plot for Victoria's redemption. All of it had been simple hypothesis, really—till two months ago, when her counterpart had told her to move her followers to Henesys. To be there on the Eve of the Dragon.

Why? She had had the good mind to ask. No one ordered Cirid Celadon about, particularly not on the matter of her own people, and particularly not with his motives undisclosed.

We will have our vengeance and justice, or so the correspondent had replied in weeks following. The eve is the day we will win or fall, against Caleix. We need you.

What promise do I have, that my followers will not be wasted on this venture? They have lost their hope, and you offer them hope anew with a promise of revenge. Do not enter this without knowing you will ruin them completely if this promise is broken.

We have the Spear of Heaven, the next letter had said, and the ones who rebuilt it.

So here she was. Hills and roads and valleys away from her base in Kerning, seven hundred outcasts on her tail, winding through deep forests in valleys, places of safe cover and little navigational marking. It was probably enough to trust them on, this claim that Orion's Belt and the Spear were with them. It'd better be. Cirid was not one quick to trust, but there were rare times when she found her judgment overruled by a tide of desperation and hope.

"Boundary check, Ledrin," she said into her shorter, more trustworthy, Junior Master's ear, and gave him a light shove on his way. "Report back in fifteen. And get the headcounts while you're at it."

The wind howled while the Fighter made away, and the trees rattled like skeletons. Cirid listened; between their hollow whistles and creaks, she thought she heard a faraway roar. A roar of storm winds rising.

She wasn't one to entertain musings so grandiose, and she did not think of the journey ahead—into those cold hills—as a journey towards victory or death. This was only an act of duty, housekeeping. She was only as free as her nation. All about the woods she thought she saw sparks of light bursting into flame, contained and inconspicuous. She saw the shadows of the weak and powerful curl before each little pyre.

You can't fail us, Nightfall, the Mage thought, swinging the hunting rifle as her eyes crossed the darkening horizon. We'll be free together. This is why I'm putting everything in your hands.

The wind brought her news from across the hills; she must not mistrust. All the plans had already been made. Across these hills. She was a rescuer no longer, she was a warlady.

"Hyrien, sir," muttered Rako, rising abruptly from amidst the staring crowd. "A letter arrived from Cirid earlier this evening. Reborn has arrived. They wait in a wooded valley across these hills."

across these hills...

...the world flowed ever slower, almost syrupy, like glaciers, pooling in the valleys.

"I should never have been born."

Akera did not fight, did not try. She sat awake in bed every night, empty now there was no warmth to turn to for comfort, before she fell asleep. Goddess, I just wish—I just— she prayed and faltered. Goddess, you do not care.

It was cold without her fire. She began to shiver, on the sheets but she did not regret. She had forfeited it all, power and belief and love and joy and worth. It was gone and she meant nothing. She curled up in soundless, dreamless sleep, untormented but also absolutely numbed.

"You can't lose yourself like this..."

Turino watched from afar; he fought the tears but they flowed hotter than flame. He was still afraid, and in part he was sure it was his fault Akera had lost all her power. His fault that he hadn't done anything when he'd seen the faultlines in her facade. Telida? No, he was beyond even thinking he could help Telida. Not now, when she had her own beloved friend to help. No. He knew he'd lost her long ago. And he didn't fight. He didn't try.

"I will keep you safe...I swear."

Telida didn't know, she didn't know. She'd never known pain like this before. But that was because she'd never cared. Not till Ketara. And sometimes she wished that she had never learnt to care. Because caring was like willfully reaching into your ribcage and tearing your heart from its place, vein by vein, because not doing it meant that the pain was someone else's to endure. Sometimes he smiled at her, but she knew he was only smiling so her heart wouldn't break. Knowing that love tore at his heart, just like it tore at hers, only made it worse. When did I change? Do I want this change?

"But I don't know if you can."

Ketara wished nothing had changed; he thought of dragons singing him to sleep sometimes, but only because he'd never sleep otherwise. The King of Dragons was gone, and the new King was Elkhris, brilliant and hot-headed. But all this—changing, it was like taking wing without knowing you could fly, spinning wild, all dizzy. He knew he was supposed to be thrilled. But all he could think of was the person he had been before. The one standing on the cliff, gazing at the world beyond its edge. The one whose happiness hadn't been borrowed. Who was he now? He didn't know. He didn't know.

zethis: a phoenix

"I'm...tired," whispered Ketara to the blond White Knight boy who sat beside him, toasting bread over the stove fire.

Zethis turned, blinking. "Tired?" murmured the blonde boy. Just a boy. He had the farm in his eyes, in his hair. "That...doesn't sound like you, Ketara."

"I'm..." the Dragon Knight's lips curved in an attempted smile, but he abandoned the effort midway, shoulders sagging. "...I'm just tired. I'm so tired."

Nodding sympathy, Zethis listened to the fire crackle, and the twanging of the wind that swept the tips of the fire, rippling and curving with the heat.

It was all taking its toll, this warring both inside and out. He'd watched his friends fade into shadows of themselves. The journey was changing them beyond reckoning.

He hated to watch and he hated that tragedy kept avoiding him. He wanted to know! He couldn't just watch, he wanted to know how it felt to be hurt, and bear the weight with them, and not get off light.

The thoughts condense themselves into simple, stammered words. "I wish I knew how you felt." Blinking tears out, Zethis twisted the rod on which his toasted loaf hung.

"You do, I think. You left home, and you haven't seen your foster father since. Your father was really important, right?"

Zethis nodded.

Ketara turned to the younger warrior and smiled a bright smile that, in the firelight, began to look real. "And now you're watching all this happen to your friends. There's lots going on for you, but you're doing fine. You're stronger than us, that's all." Midway the Dragon Knight began to tear up. "No one really gives you credit for that!"

Zethis lifted the bread out of the fire, and offered it, on the end of its stick, to the Dragon Knight. "D'you want it?" he asked, managing a smile. "I think you need it more than me."

The Dragon Knight shook his head. "You should have it," he answered.

But Zethis narrowed his eyes, and poked the bread at him again. "You need it more!" he exclaimed. "Come on, it's nice bread. I ate some just now."

Suddenly shaking with sobs, a small laugh broke through. "You've changed a bit!" he said, and bared his teeth as a fresh wave of tears cascaded down his face, bright as lava in the firelight.

They sat watching the fire, and the fire swirled and guttered and rose again in a wave of heat, like a phoenix.

We've all changed, haven't we?

hyrien: what has to be done

Pausing amid his idle book-straightening, Hyrien turned to regard Lanoré, who sat studying the sheets on his desk.

She returned the glance half a minute later, eyebrows rising in expectance.

"Done?" he asked.

"Not much has changed." With those words, she pushed the notes out to the middle of the tabletop, and gestured at them. With polite haste he moved to the desk. For three minutes, he bowed over the papers and studied them, and there was clean silence in the study.

Hyrien eventually laid the sheets down on the tabletop, and stroked his chin in thought. "I see we are still splitting manpower." He hoped the dissent was obscure enough that Lanoré wouldn't detect it.

She did, naturally, and nodded at him with a serene smile that almost stung. "We know ourselves better than we know each other. Did you think the lines had dissolved?"

"I hoped they would," he murmured.

"Hope is all well and good, but at the same time you must keep the realities close in mind." She folded her arms. "However, I must mention that that is no longer my main motive. Let us be honest—Akera alone would have sufficed before, and I was merely overcompensating by sending the rest of Orion's Belt with her. But I doubt she will now, seeing that she's entered such a mental state. The fact remains that she, and no one else,must wield the Spear—but we cannot be sure she will be successful in using it. Now Orion's Belt will serve to back her up in case of critical failure." The Archmage's eyes paused upon his face; he drew his limbs closer. "Our written aim is to take Caleix off the throne—but I have reason to think that is not our ultimate cause. Only the Goddess knows what that is. We can at least manage the ousting without Akera, and I believe that could be enough, depending on what the latter is."

"But that means we—Nightfall—will be on our own."

"Oh, have more trust in your guild, Hyrien!" He bowed away at the sound of her laughter. "You'll have the Job Masters too, besides."

"Even so..."

Lanoré looked oddly at him for a while, then broke into an even odder smile. "I see. You would like for me to fight with Nightfall."

Hardly surprised, Hyrien nodded. "It would be comforting."

She laughed. "Oh...I suppose Akera and Orion's Belt won't miss me," she murmured, weaving her fingers together. "With those three warriors, and four others who are brilliant in their own right." In the next pause, Lanoré pinned her gaze to his again. "I have a condition though, and that would be that Clynine be allowed to fight by my side."

"Yes, by all means." Now he had succeeded in bargaining, he felt almost guilty for having done so.

She barely acknowledged his worry let alone made an attempt to assuage it, and he understood; he was a Guild Master and he should know to live without the comfort of approval. Instead, she touched the table's edge and drew a line of ice crystals across it. The radiators had it dripping within seconds.

"Do you feel this is all becoming rather terrifying?" she asked, with a smile even so. "It started as a plot to overthrow the king. Or we were made to think so. But I see now that forces have been working behind us all this while. The Goddess calls us together through Ralinn, and bequeaths us her Spear. The king answers with necromancers, dark magicians. It's grown into something far out of our grasps now—or, it has always been."

"Oh. It never really struck me till now."

"This is proxy warfare." She watched the ice melt like an old clock counting seconds. "They lost the ability to harm each other in what they thought was their final battle. We're fighting their war for them, now. But can we do anything but continue as we are? It's still in our interest; we all want Caleix gone."

"Yes...we do."

Her interest in the original conversation wavered momentarily. "You're a greater man that that, Hyrien," she said. "Above paltry, unsubstantiated agreement, I'm sure."

"No, I have nothing to add."

She only seemed half convinced. "Have you ever let yourself believe you were as great as your title makes you sound? I understand, I think; I used to have difficulty accepting any part of my fame. But fame and notice come with accepting a duty so great, you know?"

"You earned your fame yourself. I didn't. I think I was put here by mistake."

"I don't think it was a mistake."

"My predecessor, Pelinor. He was so much better than I, and they all knew him—my entire guild knew him." He heaved a sigh. "I feel like a a child trying to stand in for his father. I—don't deserve this."

"But you don't act on your duty because you think you deserve it," she answered, rising from her seat. "We'd all be ruined if the most important jobs only went to those with egos to equal them. You do it because someone must. Because they need you to, because they look to you—for hope—and you must give it to them.

"You know, Ralinn was no more than an ordinary training Huntress when she was sent a dream from the Goddess. Thrust into it, just as you were. But she didn't shirk the responsibility, even though she was ordinary and only at her second job and fourteen years old. That's...something I respect about her, I suppose. She does things if they have to be done. If others need them to be done. Even if they impose upon her in every way."

The lights were bright, though the windows were so small, and in this dreadful winter Ralinn thought she could feel the first distant breath of spring.

I'll give it, Ralinn thought, and she felt the lights sway suddenly, felt as if—for a moment—the curtains were parting for her.

This wasn't the climax of the story, not the moment when the world bent and bowed and rewrote all its truths. But it was the peak of her story. This was the greatest thing she would ever do—never mind that it would happen in the confines of a little stone building in the depths of the forst. Never mind that it meant that Akera had won and she had lost and likely no one would ever forgive her for the wrong she'd done. Or remember her for the right she'd done.

She had always been wrong—pride meant nothing. Her love meant nothing. She had to lay it all down in favour of something far more important.

She was going back on her word. She was giving up. She had to do what had to be done.

Marching straight to the table where the Guild Master dined, Ralinn called his name. Head perking up, he broke away from his conversation with Lanoré and Clynine to regard her.

"Hyrien!" she repeated.

Her fingers curled around the handle of the bag, in which she had jealously hidden the pieces of the Spear till now. Squeezing her eyes shut, to ward off her fear, she raised the bag in front of herself.

"Give Akera the Spear," she said without faltering. "She was meant to use it."

She wondered if they were surprised, when they glanced at each other—or if they'd been expecting this, if they'd always known that she would break and concede defeat. But that was irrelevant. She placed the bag in the Guild Master's lap, so its pieces rang against each other.

"Your service is vastly appreciated," Hyrien murmured, dumbfounded more than anything else.

"I am glad to serve," she replied, nodding once. Her eyes threatened tears. This was the peak of her story. A bewildered look. The passing of a weapon. An exchange of pleasantries. But she found it hardly mattered. I'm not a heroine. I am a leader.

And with that, the circle was closed.

hyrien: a shout in the void

Feverish days and nights had paved the way to this moment, days of communal training, increasingly ferocious—nights of deep sleep and wild dreams. They'd fought to grow strong, grow swift. But nothing could hone bravery. Bravery was found in the sky, and the memory of Victoria in the sun. Victoria without the shadow.

"My Night Hunters, tomorrow is the day!" Seconds, mere seconds it took, for the gravity of every word to settle upon the crowd. The night swelled. It flapped and snapped and billowed and no one dared look anywhere else but at their leader, the man who was everything hope could be.

Hyrien licked his lips; he knew what he meant, and he was beginning to believe it. His eyes moved to the circular ceiling, but there were no summer lights in the windows.

He steeled himself, and breathed in for the next proclamation: "Tomorrow is the Eve of the Dragon!"

He was almost alarmed at the shouts that rung out in answer, in all moods. Was this fear boiling up in his gut something Pelinor had ever known? No, Pelinor must be above this. He'd always found it in himself to grin and walk like a deity.

But I'm not Pelinor. Hyrien felt his own fingers curl, and there was no fatherly hand to guide him. No sun. And he felt strong even then.

You don't act on your duty because you think you deserve to.

"Many of you must be afraid—I know. I'm afraid as well, I'm just as afraid as any of you. How can it be us, you must wonder. How can we be the ones to save Victoria Island? We are only farmers—slaves—fugitives spared. We are hopeless sinners to the eyes of the Goddess. Powerless.

"But—Night Hunters—we are powerful. This is a knowledge Caleix took from us by turning us into slaves. He has driven the terror deep into us. But we forget, that it is by our own power that we have almost destroyed ourselves—Caleix is one of us. Caleix is only a man! A man, and look what he has done! We are so powerful we are afraid to know our own power. If a single man had the power to turn a world to hate, then surely we have the power to tear it down!

"Do you understand? We dance into a trap of our own making. But we are our ownredemption. We are the demons who engender the dark; we are the gods with the blade to its end. The Dragon made us with flame, and flame we are, phoenix flame—we are the fire of the stars!"

Hyrien listened to the applause as it rose from the seats and grew to drown his voice. He listened, only the fire of his speech warding winter away. The applause swelled, and began to sound like a storm. Some shouted for him. Fathers and mothers gripped their children by the shoulders and whispered into their ears. The Ethiel thieves, all in black, offered polite applause. He shivered. It was stranger than he could have imagined.

The night was full of stars, though the preparing battlers couldn't see them, stars sending messages of hope and despair. Their grips were nervous and tight as vices; their weapons clashed beneath the tent-canopy of clouds, splitting ice and bark.

Somewhere in Henesys, Esharo lay sleepless among cold covers, swallowing in the cold though he'd sealed his windows and turned the radiators on.

The Eve of the Dragon loomed in his eyes.

Tomorrow.

I live till tomorrow.

By tomorrow they will know.

It was only to be expected, though. He knew everything that went through the guard dormitories, rumour and whisper and tale. And he knew his subordinates had been muttering amongst themselves. Word of the black mural had been going around, whose existence he had so far hidden from King Caleix.

It was only to be expected. These rumours had been simmering so long—but only this evening had one man finally broken. His deputy, Gieron.

Esharo had found himself being taken by the throat and pinned to the wall of his own office.

"The mural!" Gieron had snarled with glittering raven's eyes. "Why have you kept it a secret, Esharo? Why are you hiding things from our king?"

"It is unimportant and we need not trouble Caleix with it!"

"Unimportant? A date painted on a rebel base's wall?" Those eyes had flared brighter, and Esharo had seen his death in them. "I have taken your orders without dissent—holding full faith in your virtue, Esharo. But I do not think I can trust your orders any longer. You are abusing your power, and to what end? To what end?!"

Treason had been his last bellowed word. His deputy had stridden away then, and he had not waited for dismissal.

And now, in this second-last hour, Esharo could only ponder upon the same question—to what end?

Sweat froze on his temples. He stared at the wall across from the bed, pale like the blur of his thoughts.

Had it been a whim, a sudden bout of anarchic foolishness? It wasn't a whim if he'd kept the secret for a month. Was it anger? Was he frustrated at the system that had brought him to the top—was he so ready to betray it?

Why? He buried his face in his hands.

Caleix had trusted him. Caleix had awarded him the position out of trust and belief.

And it is his own fault for trusting me! He clenched his teeth, but the blaming brought no catharsis, only dull pounding guilt.

Was it—then—because of Hyrien, his enemy? The white cross on his arm? Was it because Hyrien had set him free unharmed, because he had repaid his kindness by killing his leader and betraying their location to the king?

Was it that he felt he owed his enemy something...?

There in the blackness of the room, Esharo felt his throat gurgle, and pressing his back against the wall, he began to laugh. He laughed like someone bereft of sense. Because now he was a traitor to both sides! He had betrayed Hyrien, and he had betrayed Caleix! How many could brag of such a feat? How many could tell of this shame? He was a traitor, and he had been cornered.

He felt his laughter slowly die, listened as the silence drowned it out. All this silence, cold as the winter that was beginning to end. The laughter became dread, and he began to sob.

Esharo knew he had made many mistakes in his life—some mistakes graver than any anyone else in the world would ever commit. But the worst mistake of all, he knew now, had been abandoning his other life for Caleix.

Midnight rang. He heard his door burst open in a crash that put thunder to shame, and he laughed again. He'd finally made a good choice! No time to look like a dishevelled madman now. He was the Henesys Guard Captain till he was removed. And like a Guard Captain he would stand.

He thought of Garth the harpooner. Garth on the gallows.

Midnight rang a second time. The Eve of the Dragon had begun.

The clock continued to chime, oblivious to the shadow and the light and the life that fed it. The clock ignored all.

All at once his room door splintered, and helmeted heads burst through, glittering like cannonballs. He did not cower. His grin was punctuated by tiny breaths of fright and ecstasy mingled.

Of course, being the one who typically ordered these raids, Esharo knew the procedure by heart. He knew they'd raise their spears first, and shout—

"Stop in the name of King Caleix, traitor!" The closest man's voice was muted by the visor, so it was no longer so terrifying to hear the accusation flung at him. These things always sounded so much scarier when you were alone with your voice inside your helmet. Had he really sounded such a fool whenever he'd shouted that, like a man pretending to be a god?

Half veiled in darkness that the moonlight could not pierce, the leader of the squad lowered his spear and raised his visor. Esharo stared back. It was Gieron, his deputy Gieron, with eyes that seemed unable to choose between honour and enmity.

"Esharo, Esharo, why?" he murmured, brow creasing with the genuine ache of disappointment. "Do you not serve Victoria Island and the throne?"

Suddenly—at this pinnacle of time, where he could feel his life teetering on spearpoint—he suddenly knew why he'd betrayed Caleix. His lips eased into a smile, so at one with his fate was he.

"I serve Victoria Island," he replied, smiling and weeping tears of sorrow. "Only Victoria Island."

And Caleix betrayed Victoria Island.

Esharo was not given a criminal's death. Not even that. He was speared through the heart and buried in abandoned land nearby.

the eve of the dragon

"The battle plan is relatively simple, given the size of the force we are dealing with. There is little to fear about our apparent power imbalance; despite our lesser numbers, we have a concrete advantage in our ability to tap and channel the powers of the Goddess and the Dragon."

The dawn screamed red in the windows. It glared upon the hills and empty plains, upon the two gnarled forests of Victoria, upon sleepless eyes in the towns and suburbs. Beneath its bloody light the last plates of armour were being strapped on, the last strips of leather wound around spears and maces. Warriors helped each other with belts and chains, and the archers exercised their bowstrings with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling.

"Goddess guide your aim," whispered a Hunter to another.

"Luck be ours," was the blessing shared by the thieves.

A lone boy wept in a corner. He feared his mother wouldn't return at all. Just like his father hadn't returned, three months ago. He ploughed fingers through the dust, and his mother kissed his forehead.

"I'll be battling next to the greatest heroes in the world," whispered a father to his daughter. "Be proud of me!"

"Daddy, please stay alive, please—"

"I'll try my best." A grin. The girl didn't know that trying his best would do little for her father's chances. It was in the hands of powers above, now. In the hands of the Goddess of Justice, the Dragon of Mercy. And the Spirit of Darkness which will oppose them to the end.

"Basic information. For the benefit of those who have not seen it, the castle keep has three gates, set in a similar conformation to the city's, and linked to them via major roads. The west and east gates are well-guarded, and the north gate is inaccessible. Caleix has a thousand three hundred at his command within Henesys' walls, two-thirds of which are necromancers."

Lanoré stood with Hyrien at the edge of the forest, fifty men and women gathered behind them—warriors and mages who knewtheir numbers were far smaller than the king's. They might have a superior strategist, but strategy barely mattered when you outnumbered the enemy ten to one.

He shifted on his feet, caught between awe and fear. The Silver Fang of El Nath readied herself for battle at his side, the heroine he'd only have dreamt of seeing in battle before. But now he found he didn't simply want his heroine to live. He wanted his friend to live, too. He wanted his friend to survive to the end of this battle, with him.

"Fight your best," he finally managed, choking mid-word.

"Of course I will," she answered, and turned to regard him with a smile less icy than usual. "I thought I might tell you—before either of us has any opportunity to lose his or her life—that should this battle end the way we plan, I would like to know you better."

"Thank...you." His head spun like a wheeling bird, try as he did to steady himself with fear of death, or hope for life, or the colour of the dawning sky as it spread and seeped to claim the sky overhead.

Then she drew back and her gaze grew serious. "But you need to accept your greatness, before you can embrace it in full."

"Am I great?"

Lanoré sighed, shaking her head. "It takes quite some greatness, I imagine, to make me fall in love."

Clynine lingered with Zethis near the HQ door. Neither had known till last night that they would not be battling together, and neither had received the news without fear for the other.

There, clasping each other's hands, the girl could feel his trembling against her own. "It makes sense," she tried to give him something to believe in. "There will be hundreds of people there, and they'll need my healing, and the necromancers will be there as well! And, well, Mistress Lanoré will be there too."

He fought against a sob, and snatched her in an embrace both wholehearted and petrified. "Promise to be safe?" he murmured with a trembling lip. He thought of his father on the farm. He thought of Clynine seeing him at last, thought of them talking over drinks on the porch, beating the midday sun out of their eyes.

Zethis flung all of that wishing away. It might never happen now. It was war.

"I...love you," he said between shivers, and she understood that fear without words, for he knew what was to come. Blood. Darkness. And perhaps end. All passed through her vision like silhouettes in the light.

Shedding a few quiet tears of her own, she combed his hair down and pressed her cheek against his, and beamed at him warmly, just like the morning light they shared. "Thank you," she answered, and giggled, though the sound was trembly. "But why do you always sound so nervous? I love you too."

"As our listeners within the walls understand, Caleix knows nothing about our intentions to attack. This leaves us with the advantage of surprise, and we will use it by making a swift attack. Speed is crucial. The rest of the strategy is as follows.

"Thieves and archers, you will form the first charge. You will enter swiftly from the east, and unlock the eastern castle gate by whatever means necessary. Caleix is expected, at that point, to call city guards towards the castle, rather than the gate, to meet the threat. He values his town little."

"Athena?" called the Dark Lord. "Athena." The anxious bustle threatened to drown his soft calls out.

"Jet," she answered, directing archers and thieves into ranks on the frost.

He tapped her lightly on the back of her hand. "Good luck."

"Luck isn't my suit." She smiled lightly. "Goddess grant you alacrity and endurance."

"The Goddess does not like thieves." He shook his head. "It's barely been weeks, Athena. This is too soon."

"I won't die that easily," she said. "I will bleed, at most. This is why we learn to fight, Jet. To protect."

The Dark Lord only nodded, suddenly losing his compulsion to speak. He told her the truth with his gaze, that he cared too much to be pacified by mere hope. He wanted to be sure. He wanted to know.

"You'll—come visit sometimes, won't you?" the elven archer asked suddenly, eyes lifting—eyes that were bright in the sun breaking through the winter clouds. "Come to Henesys on your less busy days. Watch me teach. Have some ice cream soda."

"Don't spend the days hoping, Athena."

He never smiled, but she must have heard the silent promise, because the frown left her eyes. Their hands met briefly; the old black war burned in her eyes, the war with all its teeth and claws, shadow and blood hanging upon it. The old war hadn't died though they had fought to put it down.

The morning birdsong ascended with the sun, parting them. Fear or no, it was time for them to lead the charge as if they weren't afraid.

Ten minutes, the ranks had formed and the forest was still.

Fifteen minutes, the lone crow raised its voice above the roil of the wind.

The Dark Lord thrust his dagger in the air. Is this power? Is this how it feels to be a king?

I do not understand Caleix then. If power is waiting for blood to be spilt in your name.

He glanced through the silence, at Athena Pierce, Athena Pierce whom he would part with—win or loss—after tomorrow. What did Caleix want with tyranny, when there were things worth far more?

He'd heard of the king's wife, of course. Lost in the blur of the rising autocratic regime. Had he dismissed her so easily?

He didn't normally shout, to frighten or to encourage. But he heard Athena shout the name of Victoria Island over the heads of these children, and he followed suit, saddened to know that naivety alone tugged them to battle.

And he turned with tight fists and drawn lips to face the morning as it widened to welcome them.

"Your Majesty. Henesys Guard Captain Esharo Hesprel has been found guilty of high treason and executed in his home."

The news seemed to shake the room. Caleix thought of Esharo's face, gazing at him from across the table. He thought of that face.

"What evidence was there?" he demanded, "that he betrayed his men?"

"Assistant Guard Captain Gieron claims—"

"I don't care what he claims! He has everything to gain from his superior's disposal!"

"Would you not feel inclined to dismiss any judgment made against Mister Hesprel, then, Your Majesty? None outrank him but you, and does that not mean he is to be assumed innocent unless you have seen his crimes with your own eyes?"

With a bang of the tabletop he rose. "How dare you answer!" he spat, snatching an official document, crumpling it in a fist. "Out!" He glanced across the room at Aismeth, too caught up with her mirror to be perturbed by the sudden noise.

Esharo, traitor. Esharo, gone. Esharo Hesprel, whom he'd have trusted with his life. Damn it, damn the world and all its illusions.

"But, Your Majesty—there is more news—fifty attackers were reported to have massacred a platoon of guards and entered from the east gate—"

"What?"

Here, now, King Caleix finally collapsed into his seat, and stared listlessly at the papers cluttering it. He watched their stillness, stared at the curls of his writing, watched the blur of the messenger shift uncomfortably beyond.

"—Guard Captain Gieron recommends stationing as many necromancers as possible near the castle, as their target is most certainly the castle."

"Yes. Go on ahead." Esharo was gone. He'd let a traitor into his room. "This is it. Their endgame." He'd trusted the wrong man. "We...we must step up our fight."

The world was growing too heavy for him.

"And, sir, what of the strangers sighted in the valleys to the west? We have reason now to believe they are linked to the attack that just happened."

Caleix's eyes flared. "Who's the king here?" he snapped. He eyed his housekeeper, now trying to fall asleep. "Don't beg for orders! I will give them when I please!"

"Ah—alright." He shifted and clutched at the letter with white fingers.

The king massaged his forehead. "Do not slacken the western defences. I believe these strangers of whom you speak might be intending to take the opportunity of a diversion. They expect us to forget about them. Esharo would have advised me before...but clearly I should never have entrusted him with tactical work."

"Yes, sir. I will inform Guard Captain Gieron."

A nod was exchanged, and the messenger had flown.

"Aismeth," said Caleix, waking her suddenly from her slumber. "Tell me...tell me what I should do."

She shook her head. "Someone will probably be coming to see you," she replied. "You should be in your throne room, not hiding in your study. They will find you either way."

"I am a king," he replied with resolve, rising with a sweep of his robes. "I fear no one."

It was on the edge of the frosty pathway that Ralinn met Raydan for the first time in a week. The first charge had left half an hour ago. The second charge was waiting on the other side of the clearing, Lanoré and Hyrien and Clynine at the fore, all nervous chatter and wan smiles.

All there was to do, for the rest of Orion's Belt, was to wait for the second charge to begin, and for Cirid to answer. With the air so still and full of muttering, it was hard to believe any battles were being waged right at this moment.

Ralinn had begun to wonder up till then if she still cared for her brother as much as she should. But when their eyes met in the cold blue morning, all Raydan could think to do was tackle her with a huge hug, gloves and belts scraping against her arms, crossbow swinging upon his back, and she could not help but laugh in response.

"Where have you been!" he exclaimed after he'd pulled himself away. "Having fun with your boyfriend?"

"Now's kind of an odd time to be asking, don't you think?" She patted his head, and pushed his hair aside to find he still wore a strip of cloth as a headband. As silly as ever, the little brat. "We're going to fight now—I'm almost excited!"

"Yeah, I totally want to die," he muttered. "This will—make a difference, won't it? This battle? Or else I'll just go hole myself up in my bedroom and pretend nothing's happening."

"While Yunira is out here? Doing what you're afraid to do?"

Raydan grimaced. "It's not as if I'm going to be anywhere near her when they start fighting." His eyes betrayed him. "Come on, it's not too late. Let's run off and hide while we can."

Ralinn's eyes grew steely. He almost recognised the expression. "They're fighting for us. If we fail, we're all dead, us and them."

"But some of us will die...right? I'm scared, Linn."

She had no answer for a moment. Yes, some of them would die. Some of them would be fighting to save a home they would never return to.

"Yes," said Ralinn. "But you won't be one of them."

Across the clearing, a stirring of leaves was joined by the patter of feet in thawing earth. Voices ascended in a chaotic clamour, asking questions almost frantic. The terror in their voices was colder than snow.

"The first charge has entered!" cried a voice through the crowd. A woman burst into a clearing with the wind on her feet. "The first charge is inside the gates!"

The commotion of the warriors and mages took up purpose. Lanoré took Clynine's shoulder and bowing to say something. They began to straighten, sheathing their weapons, ending their conversations. The wishes of luck grew frantic. The air was strung tight.

Ralinn and Raydan glanced at each other. She ruffled his hair, and he rolled his eyes like the child he pretended to be. Then they turned, hearts booming, to find the rest of their guild.

"The warriors and mages will form the second charge; as soon as the number of guards has visibly lowered in the area, a signal will be sent and you will enter the city from the east as well, which will hopefully be made easier by laxness in numbers."

telida: interim

Together Telida and Ketara slipped into the woods. Here, where the trees bowed together, the forest looked a little like the Dungeon where she'd grown up. She turned her jacket collar up, and felt the outlines of the throwing stars in her belt pouch.

"You're being a little stupid," she sighed, as they came to a stop in a dim clearing, leaves crunching beneath their soles. "Those injuries were meant to keep you out of battles like these."

"I guess I am being stupid!" He smiled at her voice, and snatched a quick kiss—one she did not mind offering. Something new had come over him in the last few nights. Something like an armoured surety, a resolve, to be happiness pure and sure. It was a joy she would do anything to keep. "I think the Clock Spirit didn't count on another deity assisting me, though. Elkhris!"

Shadows stirred and boomed high above, and the branches swung aside. A golden-eyed beast shot, glittering, through the branches, black wings flickering against leaves. Eight dragons burst into the clearing and landed in a circle around them, arching their necks and glittering proudly in the grey.

We fly now, do we? asked the foremost, the new dragon King, the spines on his neck rising. We fly to victory!

"Yeah!" answered Ketara, and with a firm shove Telida offered him to the grand beast, who crept closer and bowed. Once he had climbed atop his back, Elkhris enfolded him in his papyrine black wings and rose. Around him, all the dragons called out their welcomes and questions.

The Dragon Knight turned to the girl on the ground. "Lida, come on!" he exclaimed. "Ileihran there wants you to ride with him. You remember him from the last time, don't you? You've flown before!"

He beamed at her, and Telida's heart swelled when she saw that the life had returned to his smile. She nodded once. Of course she remembered her flight in the dark forest of three misty years ago. "I don't fancy trying again," she answered, but smiled, and dashed to the dragon beside Elkhris, leaping atop it with barely a sound.

Here in this window of peace, in this quiet interim, Ketara found it in himself to cry out in joy. She let his voice buoy his heart up.

"Telida," he said earnestly, taking her eye. "I'm so happy to be with you."

The lithe body beneath her lurched suddenly, leaving only a second to for her to forget the tears about to spring to her eyes so she could snatch the dragon's neck and save herself from being flung off. She pressed close to the cold scales, and the morning hummed by her ears, alive with the songs of dragons once again.

Again we fly with mankind! they chorused, and their song spun Ketara's head like a fresh breath of spring. It is the Eve of the Dragon, friends. The Ancient One is waiting to rise!

Everything passed so fast. The forest and the barren countryside. The bloody road, the hills, the plunge into the valley, the open gates, the soaring arc of the sun.

All of a sudden, Hyrien was inside Henesys. Henesys, the king's citadel, the grey town.

Ahead of them, a line of guards had unfolded across the road, spears criss-crossing into a fence.

Standing on the frontline in that moment before the storm, fingers shaking with the urge to kill or run, Hyrien raised his eyes to survey the city. Beyond the wall of guards, the streets of Henesys were a teeming chaos of necromancers. Every foot of every road. Every inch of every street. Like ants on trails of sugar.

Death was waiting for Nightfall.

"Do not move beyond this point," the guard at the middle of the barricade said. "Discard your weapon, and offer yourselves up as prisoners."

"And what if we do not wish to debase ourselves as such?" Lanoré murmured from behind him.

"Guards," the man bellowed. Their weapons shifted.

Hyrien unsheathed his sword.

Dances with Balrog tensed at his side, axe swinging.

"They do not mean to surrender," whispered a necromancer guard. "Ready."

Their staves rose in a wave of red.

No turning now. No changing back. Every soul in Nightfall had been redeemed to new life for one reason. One reason alone.

"For the new world!" the Guild Master roared, and the warriors surged in on the barricade of guards.

Noon sank into afternoon, alive with the sounds of metal and screams, with the crackle and flash of magic; the clouds saw nothing; the wind did not care, and time was still twirling like a carousel.

A black dragon shot into the afternoon air from beyond the hills, raising shouts and alarms in its wake.

It circled thrice—thrice, dignified, as if drawing the shape of the sun in the air.

Cirid rose to the rock, her rifle at her shoulder, her boots planted firmly in the earth. "The second charge has entered!" she shouted, and all her people, scattered through the valley, scrambled to take up their weapons, abandoning their packs and food on the ground. "This is our last chance. Remember your cities, Lith Harbour and Kerning. Think on their evils. Think on your broken homes—and go! Win it back, for all that is good!"

Everything was happening. Everything was creaking into motion.

That same dragon burst through the barren canopies, just as the day was beginning to sink through the late orange afternoon, raising a rowdy chatter amongst his fellow dragons, their scales rippling with orange light.

Ketara glanced upwards amidst them, and even without evesdropping he knew the what had come.

The third charge, they cried, the third charge has begun! They reared and bristled with words that only Ketara could translate. Our time has come!They snorted blue fire that set the icicles dripping.

"Really?" the Dragon Knight murmured as pounding heat surged through his veins, glancing past Elkhris at Telida upon Ileihran. "They're ready. The king is occupied. Time for us to go."

The eight members of Orion's Belt sat trembling on the backs of dragons, and not one was a picture of readiness. Raydan nibbled at his nails. Turino frowned pensively. Ralinn glanced at her brother, then at Shirion. Akera bowed lifelessly to the scales.

All they could think of now, as they sat testing their grips on their weapons, breathing the cold air of the winter afternoon, was their own mortality.

Death, which had chased them entire lifetimes, death, which promised no return. Death sat upon the wind like a breath of rot, waiting to snap them up in its jaws.

But the only thing worse than death was pain, wasn't it? And what if the only way to end pain was by gambling with death?

Instruct us whenever you must, murmured Elkhris from the head of the pack, his seven mounted companions flicking their tails impatiently.

Ketara nodded though the terror flooded his eyes. He turned. "All ready?" he called.

"We have no time to waste," Ralinn replied.

The Dragon Knight conveyed the order. With a strident call, Elkhris bounded into the wind, and his wings lifted him out of the forest, fellow dragons following suit. Together they burst through the bare treetops into the gleaming sun, and shot away, across the hills and huts, to where that grey castle sat sprawling its ugly limbs out over the land.

The afternoon was already upon them, yellow as gold.

The Dark Lord longed to curse. He long to spit every curse he had at the Goddess, at Hyrien, at Lanoré, for not telling him it would be this painful. Battle wasn't strange to him, he'd fought before, and he'd watched death before his very eyes. But his friends had never been part of it, his friends had always stayed where they were needed, underground.

The afternoon was burning rapidly away, and their force was down by ten. He knew people among the ten. He knew them too well. Erin. Dalran. Poor urchins of the streets he'd dared call friends.

And even now as he dragged his dagger out of his enemy's visor, he knew that Lanoré had planned for everything, including this. This tireless slogging. This—this death. She had known. She had know the battle would last them hours, and that it didn't matter how hard the fight ontinued to be. So long as it was not over, so long as Orion's Belt did not carry out their part of the operation, they could not stop.

They were hanging by a thread. Thieves were not trained for stamina, and Lanoré had assured them that the warriors and mages would join them in an hour or so and take the fighting off their shoulders.

It had been hours but the warriors were not here.

He glanced up at the trees and terraces where the archers had sprung into hiding, and now fired as rapidly as they could though their backs strained and their arms must be fatigued. But every now and then a red beam struck one screaming from his place. He saw Erin's bloodied face, crumpled, trampled. No space in war for pity. He wondered where Athena was, if she was here at all, and he wished he could see her, just see her eyes and be sure she was safe, but another guard had flung himself at him, spear primed, and the battle had returned to his consciousness like a battering ram, knocking the sorrow from his chest.

So long as their true deception did not come to fruition, they would fight. They had to.

It's for Orion's Belt.

Afternoon raced on; afternoon melted into evening. The lights in the sky were like blood and rainbows, stirred in a cauldron of froth and smoke. They stained the air like poisons and elixirs, purples and greens, piercing reds. The colours, the colours were in the blades and staves, chameleon surfaces, pretending they weren't coated in blood.

Swords and spears. A net of blue light strung up below. Armour splitting rocks open and the chaos of screams, pleas, the Goddess too far away to hear.

Chances. Cries. Gushing wounds.

Lanoré had known from the start that the battle would wear them thin, threadbare...but she hadn't known she would start wanting to die.

She cast spell after blinding spell at the fore, advancing the line between houses and huts, breaking down their enemies' ranks, and they were charging through a marketplace now, taking strikes from every side. Lightning had burned shelters off stands, knocked barrels over, and all around she heard indecipherable battle cries and spell-weaving screams, the boom of weapons splitting the earth—but it was all far away in her mind. She cast an arc of lightning across the battlefield, over the heads of comrades, to find the head of a necromancer.

It was like chiselling at marble with a twig.

Half of the route to the castle was behind them now, a path strewn with bleeding corpses and sprawled black robes. But they were beginning to stall. The fatigue was weighing like lead. The deaths, more so. And suddenly the wall of necromancers was thick as concrete.

It was one mile to go. Even with this flame and lightning in their hands. One mile before they could meet their friends and allies at the castle gates, the thieves and archers waiting desperately for backup they could not do without.

Was this really their last battle? How could it be so—feeble?

She'd planned for this, yes, she'd planned for the king's redoubling of effort, he was no stupid man and he knew everything was to end today. Yet—the weariness, she hadn't counted on weariness so bone-bitingly deep, taking the plan out of everyone's minds.

She'd battled before. Countless times. On snow and at sea and on the mountain peaks. But never like this. Never with such dread, never in such a haze of despair.

It doesn't matter. As long as we are here. As long as the king is diverting forces here.

Nothing was too much a price to pay, for the safety of the world. Not even the lives of comrades, not even this meagre life of her own. But was that the right thinking?

She saw Clynine's white magic on the edge of her vision—here at her mistress' side, even now in tilt. And in her footsteps she saw her parents. Locked behind a wooden door, cobbling shoes together. She saw everything she had loved of the world before.

I want...I want you to go back to your parents, Clynine. I am no mother.

The Archmage spun and struck a guard down with a Cold Beam that trapped him against the ground. Beyond her, an axe blazed the arm off a necromancer and he crumpled like a tower of bones.

It will end before midnight. She made herself that promise. Her staff cut wind like a warrior's blade, and a bolt of blue lightning erupted from its tip, flinging ten necromancers to the ground. But it's a long way till midnight.

The necromancers were always shifting, their formations morphing between the houses without pattern, and they struck in a chilling rhythmic synchrony that persisted like clockwork. A chameleon monster. A creature without mind, but with purpose.

She dropped to her knees, robe flaring about her, as another crackling red wave surged over her head.

Beyond, a scream froze the battlefield, and a body thudded, charred to the bone, grinning.

Someone sent up a wail, Cera, Cera, Cera whom Lanoré had seen breathing clouds of vapour into the cold mornings at the Nightfall southern doorway, but she was that girl no more, only a Fighter who had lost her life to war—and her friend, still weeping, was shoved to her feet, a voice bidding her forget Cera now.

Is this what I want? Is victory worth the lives we are spending?

The battle did not stop, and the evening skies grew purple, bursting open in a shower of sharp snow.

Blood made curved trails across the white earth. Dances with Balrog sent a head flying from beneath its hood. Hyrien's sword sank into the heart of another. The necromancers' faces always changed a second before they died—like souls finally bereft of the shadows that held them captive, conscious and real for the last seconds of their lives. Each died as an innocent.

For fleeting moments, sometimes, it was so easy to succumb to a swell of emotion, to refuse to kill.

But the red lightning came again in a demonic chorus and Lanoré found she could only fight as mercifully as she would against a hoard of monsters.

"With the second charge causing damage near the gate and the first charge approaching the castle gates, the enemy forces will be placed in a momentary logistical dilemma, ending in what is likely the deployment of a majority of guards on the eastern side of the city, close to the castle and on the grounds. Now the possibilities double: either Caleix anticipates Cirid's forces in the west, or he does not. In the former case, we are bereft of a strategic advantage and will have to fight the long fight. Otherwise, the road to the west gate will be free for the taking, and Cirid will join us on the castle grounds with little delay."

"Forward! Forward" Cirid yelled, thrusting her rifle in the air in the red of the evening. Red was her colour. Reborn saw the sparkle of its barrel and it sent up a firework of courage.

They were not the warriors of Nightfall. They were not the Ethiel thieves with their deft hands. But here, as an unprecedented force of seven hundred, the guards could not stem their tide—this endless tide—in which every stab they landed was all but futile.

Cirid cast flame at the towers with a scream so fierce it curdled the blood of the stoniest guard. They kept pouring onto the road in messy ranks, but each was met by a hundred assaulters. The flames spun and spiralled and consumed the stilts. The towers came crumbling, and the men inside were dashed against the ground, eaten alive by flame.

"Go! Go!" she yelled into the sky, as Emina blew the lock apart with a Soul Arrow laden with rage. They flooded through the gate like water spurting through a bottleneck, and even as they did she quietly mourned the fallen. She felt the blood beneath her shoes, and she swore it had not been in vain.

But she was not one for tears. There was no room for tears today. Today, when everyone would die! Cirid Celadon grinned and thought of her death. Death was nothing if the world was free. Death was the price they paid!

And once they are in place, Orion's Belt will take the castle from above.

As the texture of the ground smoothed out and the wind began to scream, Zethis found his arms winding about the dragon's neck, his face pressed against its freezing scales. From where his head tilted against the creature's hide, he stared down at the earth below, at the windings of the highway as it emerged from Ellinia and raced through open fields, weaving around white hills till it slit through Henesys' wall and became a tangle of roads. Today the streets were a mess. Today they were a buzzing, glittering mass of movement. He could see weapons flashing in the blur. Colourful streaks and bursts of light.

Clynine, he thought, gulping, when he saw the traces of magic. He tried to find a flash of white, a cascade of green, but she was nowhere to be found.

Their flight took them straight northwest, and the castle turrets slashed into their vision like claws, tearing the clouds at their very points. Flags fluttered like ghosts amidst the snow, bells ringing the alarm of war.

At once the dragons began to plunge through swirling evening colours, and they chose the highest battlement as the landing point, to which all eight dropped, wings arching, till they thumped against the stones with the litheness of willows.

Immediately his guild friends leapt from their mounts, belts and sheaths ringing.

"Let's go!" shouted Ralinn as she unhooked her bow from her shoulder, taking the role she'd grown so familiar with. Her fingers ran through her quiver, rattling the arrows. "They've been waiting for us—hurry!"

Shirion nodded, gathering the rest with a shout and a wave of his arm. Ralinn and Raydan exchanged a look that Zethis read as trust, but it must be something so much more, something forged from five years apart and five years together.

The procession down the battlement was solemn as the grey before storm. Here they stood, in the beating heart of the shadow, and the vile, frigid cold of the stones was almost palpable.

Akera strode without purpose, but without delay. Her eyes did not betray emotion. She clutched at the bag, and her hair was dishevelled, like it had never been before. She had been broken by the king, driven to anger by his cruel deeds, driven to desperation, and grief, and utter self-hatred.

Turino trailed after her, an unfathomable sadness in his eyes that kept clinging even as they began to run, and in them Zethis saw a history that had been warped to unrecognition. Telida cast him glances, as if afraid to be noticed. What ran through her face as she raced along, hopes of the world hanging on the points of her stars? Was that hatred or grief, was that anger or care?

Perhaps it was all of those things.

Siblinghood. Zethis sighed, and shrank away, as, in this moment, the bonds between the eight in the guild tangibly strengthened and frayed, snared and wove. Bonds so tangled, he could no longer make them out or discern them from each other. Ralinn and Shirion. Ralinn and Akera, Akera who could not stop loving Shirion. Turino's divided need, for sister and mage, for two people he knew he would never have. Ketara and Telida, both of whom had been hurt for need of each other. Ketara and Turino. Raydan and Ralinn. Everyone.

"Keep your head up, Zethis!" called Shirion then, coming to pat him on the shoulder. "We need you to be proud and true. We need everyone at this juncture. Hold your head high."

He tried to smile. Shirion and himself. Everyone and he. They were all bound, bound till the very last day.

Ketara stayed upon Elkhris, the King of the Dragon Messengers, and the great beast strode after them with his wings outspread. He rounded up the group, as they sank down the yawning stairway, and the dark of the castle swallowed them whole.

Evening was falling. Everything could only worsen from now. Athena had abandoned her place among the trees—the numbers on the ground were dwindling too fast; thieves and archers weren't trained for stamina, and now dozens of them lay bleeding beneath trees, clutching at limbs, waiting like injured game for the hunters to pick them off.

Arrow after brilliant arrow soared across the battlefield from the arc of her burning bow, ripping through armour in a soul-rending surge of noise. But she was not an army, and every fallen comrade placed a dent in her will. There weren't ten minutes of battle left in her; there wasn't that much time; why weren't Orion's Belt done? Why hadn't the other two charges caught up with them, here at the hilltop, before the castle gates?

It was here, in mid-thought, that a chorus of yells came rising up the slope.

Athena Pierce spun round—and her mouth opened, bow dropping momentarily to her side.

Barely ten seconds saw the noise changing into a battle cry. And then came a torrent of new battlers—one, then suddenly a hundred—rising over the western side of the hills, swords and daggers swinging.

"Reborn!" Athena barely gasped, as the hundred multiplied by seven.

The wave did not end for minutes. Throng upon throng of warriors, thieves, archers rushed in like floodwater, to fill whatever gaps the walls and carts and trees left, brazen as the sun at noon, lighting the entire hillside with their weapons.

At their head charged a young woman with a glowing rifle, something Athena took almost a minute to understand—by which time the newcomers had engulfed their entire guard unit and were yelling taunts at them. Athena whispered silent praise to the Goddess.

"Sorry for the delay!" the rifle-wielding woman exclaimed, giving a two-finger wave. "There were more of them than we anticipated, and Goddess, Henesys is massive!"

Amid loading her bow and shooting foes down in the fours, Athena smiled back and answered, "It is, isn't it!"

Before the girl could answer, a spark of red snatched her attention—she crouched as the arc of lightning crackled past her, then, with five seconds to aim and brace herself against recoil, drove a bullet into the heart of the offending necromancer.

The Mage turned briefly then. "Cirid Celadon," she called. "We can talk later."

Clynine longed to weep. She longed to scream it to the world, out of this terror she'd never been born to contend with.

Never once, in those years, hiding in a room of mirrors in the depths of a mansion. Never once, with parents to hold her, with servants to meet her whim, with petals falling in the garden and all the world to love and everything, everything so sweet it had been almost impossible to believe anything could be wrong.

There was blood staining her arm, black in the indigo sunset, blood spattered across her shoes. She had watched a comrade die, she had seen a guard's head roll into the darkness. Every moment was a game of finding the attacker before he managed to strike—every moment was fearing for your life yet being strong enough to take the life of another. She'd cast a Holy Arrow and a necromancer had fallen, throat gurgling, like a black flower tipped with white. Evil, she had told herself, that man is evil, but she could only think of death, death, the eternal end of a soul, the darkness pouncing and seizing her. And she wanted to purge her body of it. Death on the back of her tongue. Death, sitting like poison in the marrow of her bones.

She clenched her teeth as she raised hers staff. Shara called her to stand strong, and together they cast Heal, and watched its twofold effect, friends recovering an ounce of vigour, necromancers descending, screaming, to the earth. Clynine felt the screams shiver in her brain, and she sobbed once, eyes clouding.

"I—Shara!" she cried—and the Priestess spun back, Shining Ray bursting from her staff and past the Mu Lung girl's head to send a woman behind her falling. "Shara!" It was a plea for help.

A sword plunged. His agonised bellow chewed away at her mind.

"I can't—Shara—I can't—"

She felt an arm take her by the shoulders, a voice whisper warmly in her ear despite the snow. "You'll be fine," said Lanoré. "I'm right behind you! I'm here!"

She sobbed, felt the woman swing her out of the way as a pagoda of electric arcs erupted overhead and sent black mages sprawling.

"You're alright," repeated the Archmage.

A red knife of light shot out of a stirring of bodies. Clynine shrieked at its heat, and stumbled back at the sound of her mistress' gasp, the tilt of her body—"I'm fine!" Lanoré promised with cold eyes as she sank on one knee. The Cleric could feel the snow gnawing at her gloved fingers.

Clynine watched Lanoré stumble to her feet, her silhouette limping as she rejoined the battle, eyes not leaving her assistant. "Keep fighting! This is what I trained you up for. You came to me for this. You came because you wanted to do some good for the world."

"Yes—yes—Mistress Lanoré—"

"Do it!" she shouted.

With a push, her mistress thrust back into the battle. She heard a humming surge, saw a red glare rise. She spun, teeth clenched, her own staff lighting up in her palm. She trained me for this. Up on Orbis. Every skill in every book.

The light gathered at the tip of her staff. "Angel's Ray!" Clynine shouted, and was answered with a whoosh, like the sound of flowers spiralling into the Mu Lung nights. White wings of light enveloped her, then exploded outward, and she heard shrieks and squeals, like the sound of pigs, far beyond her.

I'm ready! I'm ready! I'M READY! To give back! I'm not the girl in the garden. I'm not the child who couldn't live without her mother. I'm—

Ralinn glanced upwards when the chandeliers flickered simultaneously to life.

She shrugged, and they began to traverse it, pulling their weapons close.

Never once, though, did they find themselves having to raise their weapons in answer to a threat. The castle corridors stretched on, high and echoing and empty, each one like a cathedral. Marble statues prayed, sat, reclined in the alcoves, pale faces almost ghostly in the flickering chandelier light.

The floors were checkered, like endless chessboards, glassless arched windows opening in walls to reveal the endless dusk and the flaming lights beyond. Tonight the windows revealed the battle at the pinnacle of the war; it was hard not to stop and watch, to search desperately for the friends far below.

But here within the walls, the air was so still it was impossible to know that a war raged outside these walls that would decide if the world would live on after today.

Their feet echoed in the hallways. The quiet seemed almost sacred, their reflections gleaming in the smooth tiles at their feet.

Tapestries passed them, depicting the many victories of heroes before their time, feet planted on the chests of their enemies, heads raised to the sun. Had they served to inspire their monarch's cruelties? Had he seen in his tyranny the glory of heroes?

They walked with the belief that they were free to roam, but the castle seemed to lead them exactly where it wanted them to go. The turns felt deliberate, the passageways sentient. The ornate carpets led them only one way, straight to the heart—whatever it be. Ralinn felt an almost tangible tug, taking them through corridor after checkered corridor beneath the glow of chandeliers and the shadows between, statues of mages and knights offering cruel company.

And all was silence, save the whisper of breeze outside the windows. Wind began to pick up, curling through the windows in steady shimmering breaths. The chandeliers flickered.

Eventually, the windows stopped and the corridors turned an earthy gold, the gold of deep caves and riches and treachery. The ceiling swooped upwards, the walls outward, into a beating atrium that reached a gold-lit dome at the top, its walls decked in a theatre of statues. Thousands of statues in a thousand niches, casting their long shadows on each other, staring down at the circular room below.

Orion's Belt came to a halt in the centre of the atrium, where the concentric circles of the tiles converged.

A doorway yawned before them. A colossal archway, ten feet tall at least, revealing a hall more ornate and more spectacular than any they had passed on the way, almost as grand as the cave of Horned Tail, or of Zakum. Great arched windows, like those of the rest of the castle, stood amid a colonnade of pillars set into the blood-red wall, welcoming a view of the icy black night, pillars featuring the motifs of dragons and phoenixes, feathers and tails curling around them.

The floor was checkered, harsh black and white, just like the room outside. And a thick red carpet swooped straight down the hallway's length, to touch the foot of a tiered dais, lit from below.

A small laugh began. Gradually, it grew into a guffaw, till every eye had risen to find its source.

"You have come," announced that grand voice from the centre of the hall. "Orion's Belt!"

All eight glanced up, and Ralinn felt heat surge through her blood.

On the dais stood a throne. A glittering throne of precious metals, taller than any person, flaring outward at the top in a bouquet of dragon-tail curls. And among the golden curlicues sat a man of moderate stature, chin propped up on his right elbow, thick red cloaks cascading over the cushioned seat and onto the ground. At the foot of his throne waited a blue-haired woman, seated like a servant with a hand mirror before her. At the dais' four corners stood four motionless black-cloaked figures, serene and dark as chess pieces around their king.

"I am amazed," he went on. "I am frankly amazed. I emptied my castle halls to secure the gates against you—yet you didn't even use the gates, did you? Now...I am alone."

Sighing, he began to rise from his throne, sweeping his robes out around him. A hundred shadows flickered across the floor.

No, no—"No!" Ralinn raised her bow and nocked an arrow, arms shaking. "Caleix!" she shouted—and saw everyone else spring into ready around her. Everyone but Akera, who gazed listlessly into the air. "Today is the day you die!"

In the silence that followed, her cry faded into echoes, bouncing off tapestried walls, so feeble and small suddenly. The chandelier light cast countless more shadows all around.

King Caleix did not answer. There, standing still with the jewelled crown upon his head, he held his hands out to them as if in welcome.

"Give me a chance," he said at last, and she could see his kindly smile. "Would you really kill me when you outnumber me so unfairly?"

"You? You've deployed thousands of guards and necromancers in your name, and you've terrorised us for fifteen years," answered Ralinn. "And you dare say you are outnumbered!"

"None of them are here," he answered. "None but four servants, and Aismeth. Do you have no guilt?"

Aismeth. Akera whispered her name, and frowned.

"I will not feel guilty for killing the man who destroyed Victoria Island," the Ranger snapped.

The air was still and frigid. Everything was far too quiet, too hollow, for a final encounter of this scale; everything was too still, for this to be the climax of seven years' working and warring.

No one dared break the stalemate, to initiate the final push. Only the winter wind continued to move, softly, across the checkered tiles, making the golden chandeliers and their blazing reflections swing.

Caleix lowered himself back into his throne, nodding acquiescently. The faceless necromancers did not shift, but Aismeth ran a finger through her hair.

"Who is that?" asked the king idly. "The young man with the sword? The reports never mentioned him."

"Someone to whom you owe years of happiness," Shirion growled in answer. "You owe it to my friends as well. To all of us."

His lips curled perceptibly. "A king owes his people nothing."

"Who taught you that, Your Majesty?" snarled the Crusader, sword point rising. "Who told you you could take our wellbeing and not face consequences?"

Ketara shifted uneasily. Elkhris's throat rumbled with fire, as if sensing his discomfort. "The woman," he murmured, voice trembling. Akera's eyes darted to him. Ralinn's fingers tensed, and her arm strained, bowstring biting into her finger.

Even as they watched, Caleix's voice changed, from tranquil to troubled. His brow furrowed, and his shoulders slackened like an old man's. "Please, hear me, listen," he said, "I have done none of this of my own accord—"

The figure at the foot of the throne shifted—and Caleix glanced down. Aismeth the housekeeper was preening her blue hair in her hand mirror.

"Don't kill me, that's all I'm saying—"

"Whyever not?" Ralinn yelled. "Orion's Belt! We will not let victory slip away like this! With the king stalling for time till he has soldiers at his side!"

Eyes considering serenely for a moment, King Caleix sighed. "Alright, then. I'm sorry your quest must end so unceremoniously, but I cannot let you kill me." A last glance at Aismeth, as if to be sure. He raised two fingers in a beckoning gesture. "Necromancers."

He felt the weapon sink into his chest.

It was dull, and sudden. And then it was sharp, like all the world crashing through a hole in his skin.

The Dark Lord moaned. He could feel the blood spreading on his skin, cooled as fast as it seeped.

The pain was cracking his skill in two and everything was growing black, too black even for the night.

He could see the faintest stars. The Great Bear. The Argo. Orion, pointing across the white galaxy.

The Dark Lord—Jet—the Dark Lord—moaned the name of Athena Pierce in his very last breath.

With a thunderous flutter the necromancers ceased being stone. They threw their cloaks back to reveal the glaring red lights of their staves. A chant went up, vibrating with the rage of a looming storm. Then all four raised their hands in synchrony, like puppets in a play.

A soft, sure hum had begun, shivering the marble of the chamber around them. Recognising it, Ralinn shrieked and threw herself to the ground, just as the hum climaxed—

A crackling—and then a hot, synchronised flash of red that ripped across the room in a wave, branding a black line in the wall. The Ranger felt its heat press her head to the ground. Then it was gone and immediately she sprung up, nocking and aiming a wavering arrow, palms growing sweaty.

It flew wide and she cursed, pulling another arrow from her quiver even as the first bounced, shattered, against the marble wall. Across the hall Raydan aimed as well, but she could see he was shaking even more than she was, and that, even now, the necromancers were charging up their next attack—

Red surged in a blazing crackle, just seconds after Ralinn threw herself to the ground again, knees throbbing, and Elkhris leapt into the air, fleeing the beams. "Raydan—" she gasped, and paused, for Shirion had pulled her brother to the ground with him and grazed his arm against the red-black lightning, clutching now at his elbow with bared teeth.

Ketara gave a shout from above right then—the dragon leapt and soared across the chamber, spewing blue flame in swirling torrents. Red beams retaliated. Snarling, the dark creature wheeled out of the way, then turned back to throw a jet of flame in their direction, narrowly missing.

An exchange of red and blue, flooding the chamber with heat and sparks. Ketara yelled and gasped, clinging on for his life. "Guys," he shouted through the roar of flame and smoke, "get them now!"

Ralinn snatched for another arrow—but then Telida had sprung forward already, yell merging with the sound of metal stars leaving her claw like a flock of birds. Five, six clattered against wood and marble—but the seventh snicked and was followed by a moan and a dull thud—and then the Hermit was sprinting across the room, tackling a second necromancer to the ground in a flourish of dagger strokes that sent blood splashing across the floor. Stoked—perhaps by his sister's recklessness—Turino gave a shout and raised his staff. Twin whirls of flame, red and blue, churned like a hurricane across the room—then black lightning again, exploding against a horizontal staff.

A crackle, and another blast—Turino's staff clattering as he gave a cry of agony, his left arm curled up against his chest—but he refused to let it dull his fight, and he refused to leave his sister alone on the frontline, and retrieved his staff with his right hand, soaring across the red carpet to join her. "No—don't—" Ralinn called, but stopped. Elkhris roared overhead, and sent another cascade of blue flame raining upon them, setting the back of the throne ablaze.

"Lida!" yelled Turino, barrelling her out of the way of a stray shaft of red lightning.

"I can do it myself!" she yelled in answer, extending her claw and firing another barrage of stars, all ripping gashes in the necromancer's cloak.

Turino raised his staff at ready. "No, you can't, but neither can I!" he shouted. They exchanged a half-second's glance, in which Turino touched Telida's forearm Telida nodded.

Then they sprung into the fray in synchrony.

Against the glow of the chandeliers, two black silhouettes danced between arcs of red light, spinning out of reach, attacking in turn from two ends of the room, one flinging stars when the other's spell ended, flame swirling to take the place of metal so not one of the enemies knew which way to fire. The third necromancer was thrust to the ground, eyes wide, head bleeding. In a flash of robes Turino was at the foot of the throne—and with a sound between a laugh and a roar, he gripped the last necromancer's shoulder and shot a Fire Arrow into his head point blank.

Ralinn saw it at once—their chance. Caleix—Caleix, alone and unguarded, free for the taking—she leapt to her feet, fingers nocking an arrow as quickly as her brother sprung to her side and raised a bolt. "Orion's Belt!" she shouted, beginning her run. "Ready!"

And the moment shrieked, and sang, as they lifted their weapons and began their last charge, ready for the attack that would end it all—as the marble chessboard stretched, longer and longer, and the arches grew wider than the sky. "Please, please—" Caleix cried, falling to his knees at the foot of the throne, head thrown up in prayer; the world outside was still contracting, and the king's life was about to end—

"It's her!" screamed Akera.

All at once, the charge faltered, and weapons ceded their glow.

Caleix lowered his hands slowly, eyes wide.

Ketara echoed, "it's her, it's her—", and he clutched at his eyes, and Elkhris landed clumsily, tipsy with fear.

Amidst all nine stares Akera strode forward, and raised her wand at the woman by the throne.

"Thaemis!"

The sound was like a gunshot. Zethis gasped in fright. Ketara cowered. Shirion shook his head listlessly.

Blue hair. Red eyes. Ketara's witch. The Lost Hero.

"I never expected that you'd come here, of all places—under the service of King Caleix," Akera went on, her lips beginning to curl suddenly, as she took step after dangerous step in the direction of the throne. Everyone knew her wand was an empty threat but it didn't matter. She was a picture of utter surety. "But that is a lie too, isn't it? You are not his servant. He is yours. He fears you." She bared her teeth. "It's the hand mirror! You're using the hand mirror. Blackmail. What is it, Thaemis Omarden? Explain yourself!"

Even as Akera's words came, wild and senseless as a madwoman's, Caleix began to smile.

The woman—Thaemis—the blue-haired woman let her gaze flicker back and forth between the attackers, like an animal in a snare.

"Tell them," snarled the Fire Poison Mage like a huntress.

The masquerade was over.

She let the disguise of Aismeth fall away. She seemed to shrug it off, the diminutive presence, the withdrawing posture, as if it were a foul robe. Then she rose to her full height, and it was terrifying, for she hadn't seemed so tall, or powerful, before. As tall as a Hero—as tall as the woman who had vanished one day, fifteen years ago, when her enemies had come to rob her of all she had owned.

Then, grinning like she'd won a war, Thaemis spun—and flung the mirror at the ground.

The shards burst outward, like a splash of water.

The little pieces glittered in the chandelier light, and scattered into cracks between the tiles.

Caleix's eyes took five seconds to widen. When they did, they were red and wet with tears he was too stunned to shed. Before their dumbfounded stares, he collapsed to the floor, and crawled to the base of his throne, whispering something over and over, sweeping the shards together beneath his palms, tears cascading to join them.

The capture of slaves, the passing of laws, the condoning of fifteen years of cruelty. All of it had not been his will.

It had been hers.

But of course, Thaemis cared nothing for the king. Her dark eyes flashed blood-red as she strode into the midst of the strange tableau. Ketara shrieked, breaths coming ragged and thin, and Elkhris was paralysed by his rider's fear.

"You, my dear girl, have only scratched the surface," she said as she came to face Akera, fingers curling. Her eyes travelled to Ketara, cowering atop the dragon. "You silly child. You remember me." Then she glanced away at the rest of them, and leered like a snake. "He remembers! Your brother remembers! It'd have been hilarious to watch, three sons killing their father!" Her gaze caught Shirion's, and held it steady, her lips curling.

"Whose father?" the Crusader demanded shakily.

With a smirk, Thaemis, unarmed in a gown slit to her knee, walked up to the warrior—stood before his armoured height, and touched him on the shoulder. "Yours," she said with a sad sigh. "Yours, and his—" she jabbed her chin in Zethis' direction— "and the boy on the dragon. Your father."

She gestured at the king, who was raising his anguished head.

"Sh...Shirion," he whispered, hope rising behind the shattered facade.

"No," the Crusader muttered, fingers slackening on his sword—

Sudden as a viper, Thaemis wrenched the weapon from his loosening hand and spun it into hers—and with a swing, she slammed the blade against his cheek. He yelled and stumbled amidst her crow-like laughter, and Ralinn raced to take his shoulder, leering at the woman.

Thaemis moved like a blue river. She whirled straight by the crossbow bolt that Raydan sent soaring at her, then dove and thrust the butt of the sword in his gut so he groaned and collapsed to his knees.

"Do not forget who I am!" she shouted as she knocked three of Telida's throwing stars from the air with three slashes, and swung away from a jet of fire, both twins snarling at her. "I'm the Lost Hero! The greatest warrior!"

"You—were!" Zethis gasped out, and cringed when she paused momentarily, eyes turning to him.

"Oh yes, so you know me!" She knocked Raydan's crossbow out of his hands even as she spoke, the bowstring snapping.

The White Knight clenched his fists. "I...of course I know you, Thaemis, you were my idol." Ceasing her attack just as Turino dodged out of the way, she lowered her sword, losing interest in the battle, and a smile began to light her face. Zethis straightened from his crouch, and his eyes took up fire. "My father followed your matches. He told me all your stories. We bought your plaques. He'd be so happy, if I could tell him—that I'm finally meeting her!" Then his face fell. "Are you really her?"

"Why would I lie?" she exclaimed rapturously, walking up to him and ruffling his hair, though he clutched his weapon tight and bit his lip. "My boy. I did not think the child I sent away would grow up to adore me!"

"You—sent—"

"It was you!" Ketara gasped out, rising like magma from the throat of a volcano. "You took us. You removed our memories. You threw us out to be found!"

Thaemis laughed. "Anything in the name of advancing my cause."

Shirion glared, wiping blood from his lips. "What is your cause?" he asked. "Why? Was all this terror—" he glanced at Akera— "was it necessary?" Weaponless yet, he walked to face her, fists balled. "Fifteen years! Fifteen years, was it necessary?"

"Oh, perfectly necessary," answered the woman, but it was now that Shirion saw a shadow flicker in her bloody red eyes, of weariness she was trying—always trying—to hide. "I do not serve my own wishes!"

Ralinn felt her will slacken, her bow sink to her side. Something had not been right about this woman from the moment they'd seen her. It was as if—a world of power were waiting in her, waiting to spill out through her bloody eyes.

"I serve the Shadow with whom I bargained fifteen years ago. It offered me my supremacy, in return for a small favour. That I should take control of the nation in Its name, and ready the world for Its coming. And look where I am now," she laughed, curling her fingers so her nails gleamed. She strode up to the crouched king, his fingers bleeding amongst glass shards. "Caleix beneath me, with but his wife as the bargaining piece." She kicked his hands so they skidded through the broken glass, blood beginning to pool beneath them. "But it's too bad that she's dead now, isn't it? Dead inside that mirror. Like this world was meant to be."

"Why—why did you take the bargain?" answered Ralinn.

"Lost pride," she said.

"Pride isn't worth a deal so dark."

"You know nothing of lost pride!" shouted Thaemis, spitting the words like poison. "I lost my life! I might as well have! I lost everything that made me who I was! And now I have it back. I have it all. Any minute now, dear children, I will become the queen of a black world. I will win my reward for fulfilling my duty as the Dark Spirit's vessel." She leered like a snake. "And you can't stop us."

The cold suddenly grew vast, so infinitely vast, that no one could move. Not Akera caught in songs of madness. Not Ralinn who had begun this journey. Not the three sons of the king whose lives had only just ceased being a mystery...

Ralinn breathed two words—of course. She cast a sidelong glance at Akera. She understood now. She knew what was to come.

Then her eyes returned to Thaemis, Thaemis with all that smouldering pride—and she raised her bow and arrow. The Ranger was furthest from her, and it would be at least five seconds before she could reach her. She aimed the arrow, and drew a breath.

The Hero's face slackened when she saw the weapon. "Do you think a simple arrow will defeat me?"

"You are not the same woman," Ralinn.

Thaemis clenched the sword hilt in her fist.

"You were amazing," said Zethis, more sad than afraid. "I couldn't wait to meet you. But you became...this."

"We change," Thaemis answered, though her eyes had not left the leader of the guild, nor her arrow. "I only wanted to have what I'd lost."

"But you didn't have to. You were my heroine. You were my heroine right up till—till—five minutes ago."

Then with a shout devoid of regret or fear, Ralinn let her arrow loose. Thaemis flung Shirion's sword, but it was too late. The arrow took her in the neck and sent her rasping, gasping, to the floor, dark red blood leaking thick and sludgy from the wound, as the sword clattered like thunder across the stones. The Ranger sprung forward in a flash, and planted a foot on her chest, aiming another arrow in her face.

"Surrender, surrender now! You've lost!"

"I'm...I'm sorry, Zethis," whispered the fallen Hero, eyes giving up every last trace of light, as blood burbled up from between her lips. "I...didn't know."

Then a great shrieking began to shake the hall. A shriek that seemed to come from everywhere, ripping tapestries off walls all across the castle, shivering the ancient stones that held the castle high—and the carpet beneath them began to buck and whip, wind screaming like a banshee through the windows carrying the smell of rot and smoke—and it ripped the chandelier from its place, smashing it against the floor in an explosion of wax and glass and flame, lighting the scarlet carpet on fire.

And Thaemis—

A seam opened at the top and bottom of Thaemis' lip, a red line that ran up and down through her skin as if slit by an invisible knife, slid through her nose and her chin and between her eyes.

Her blue hair swirled into a storm—and her face erupted, split open along the seam in a spurt of blood that caught the hem of Ralinn's shirt, flooding out along the checkered tiles in dark rivulets.

Her body lurched and twisted, once, twice, a rope in wind—then, like an exploding cage, it burst open in a torrent of fuming black.

Black, black that expanded to fill the room, smothering the flame that had devoured a foot of the carpet, and spilled out the window like a many-tentacled thing.

Black that flooded the entire hillside, like mud clogging drains.

All across the battlefield, the necromancers lurched into the air like marionettes, and their cloaks stretched into tattered black wings. They spiralled over the field of corpses, shrieking and singing, red eyes flashing, black smoke bubbling up from their wings to coat the battlefield. Black smoke tumbling like sludge from castle windows.

Hyrien ran, but he felt the smoke snatch him, thicken, and twist through his throat—and all at once his lungs grasped at nothing. He gasped and tried to yell. Not a sound. He saw Lanoré with her fingers on her throat, she fired bolt after bolt at the smoke, and it relented a little—he watched her stumble and race across rumbling, roiling black ground, as he felt his sight dim to nothing...

DO YOU DARE HARM ME?

Ralinn screamed as black smog began to squeeze her body like a vice. She bared her teeth and fought to string an arrow, to aim her bow, but her hands were shaking like twigs, her fingers couldn't curl. Blackness boiled up beneath her like sludge, and all the faces were gone—everyone, everyone was gone, and every rock, ever hidden cloud, started to sing in hellish cacophony.

Elkhris bucked and roared; Ketara yelled, tears spilling into the dark, but no one answered. The Cloak of Night, the dragon cried, cowering and trembling upon the cold floor, head swinging, the Spirit of Darkness—

RALINN, YOU'RE ONE TO TRY! DON'T YOU SEE YOU ARE AS EVIL AS I AM?

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry—" Suddenly all she could see was Akera. Akera, torn open on the Nightfall floor. Akera, crumpled, twisted at the bottom of a cliff. Akera with a blade through her heart. "I'm—I'm sorry—I'm sorry—"

THE GODDESS WAS A FOOL—THINKING YOU WOULD BE MY NEMESIS!

Bereft suddenly of will, Ralinn sent up an anguished shriek.

DROP YOUR BOW.

Her fingers loosened; the Dark was pressing on her eyelids.

YOU ARE ONLY A SINNER. YOU ARE ALL SINNERS. YOU WERE MADE TO BE MINE.

Akera dead. Lanoré dead. Shirion dead. Her throat was not her own—her heart spasmed, like a bird stabbed through—and she cried for light and saving—"please", she screamed, "please stop"—but pictures of dead friends kept thrusting themselves through her mind like spears through her brain, and Shirion could only listen through the blackness as her mind was torn apart by them, weeping with fright and sorrow and love that he feared would be gone once this night was over. He shouted and shouted her name till his throat was bloody, but the darkness caught him about the neck and choked and throttled the words out of him.

"Ralinn—Ralinn—" his bellows became whimpers, and the tears would not help.

The ground was spinning beneath her. Solid darkness, playing with her body as it did the rest of the world, cawing and shrieking, the entire night heaving as one.

In a single roar that muted the stars beyond, It cast its tentacles out over the world—and swallowed it whole, at last, withering the tops of trees, blotting stars out.

A cawing crowing cackle began, like a breath of rot in myriad windows. The world. The world was only a puppet in the hand of unfathomable Dark. The world was Its to twist and destroy.

At last, millennia after the first ascension, the dominion of the Darkness was complete.

"Ralinn! Ralinn!"

...she twisted in its grasp, everything was black and bloody...

..."Ralinn!" a high voice called through the dark...

..."Help—" Ralinn whispered in answer, memory dripping from her mind like melted flesh...

"Ralinn, you're—you're not dead yet—"

...Akera.

Ralinn's voice had woken something in her eyes. Something like jealousy—but without the poison. And something like hatred, but devoid of spite. Something bright and white. She tore the bag open in the dark, finding Shaft and Shard, Neck and Spearhead, rapidly slotting them one, by one, by one, end to end, into each other. Spearhead into neck. Neck onto Shaft. Shaft onto Shard.

"RALINN!" Akera screamed again, hot tears cascading down her cheeks, and suddenly she knew what it was. It was love. It was fire.

Fire.

Necromancers wheeled through the air, and beneath them the battlers collapsed to their knees, choking and screeching with blue fingers at their necks.

"Go!" screamed Clynine, sobbing hot tears, flinging a Shining Ray at every tendril of black that came. "Go away! Stop!" She felt her foot kick a dismembered arm, she retched and swung her staff feebly even as her stomach clenched and everything was thrust out through her lips.

Her throat ran dry then, and she fought through the dark to Lanoré's side. The Archmage lay tangled in black, arms immobilised, a thread of shadow curling down her throat.

"MISTRESS!" the Cleric screamed, collapsing at the woman's side. "Don't go—don't go again, please, don't—" Her eyes darted about. Necromancers, swirling through the sky like crows, cawing glory and hate. And corpses. Corpses, tangled with each other, corpses of guards and comrades, woven with the shadows in a black orgy. Her eyes returned to her choking mistress, as she remembered the lesson she'd had in Orbis. "I can—I can Resurrect. I can still do it."

Lanoré shook her head slowly, but the black snagged on her hair. "Don't you dare," she croaked. "Don't you dare try. You're still alive. Keep it that way." Her smile returned. "That's why I trained you. Go—back to Orion's Belt. If they win. Go start Victoria Island anew. Be part of it. I want you to be part of it—"

"I won't—I won't be a part of it—without you," she sobbed in reply, and lifted her mistress' cold hand to her face.

As the Shard slid into the end of the Shaft, Akera screamed and screeched; in her blindness she could feel blisters boiling up on her hand, and the pain plunged so deep she began to scream—she wanted to fling the Spear away and forget it forever. But even as she fought with the heat, the Spear of Heaven lit up like a beacon in her hand—bursting through the dark like the summer sun.

Summer, summer, so far away.

It cut slits of light in the black, revealing ceiling and tapestry, an arched window here, a crumbling pillar there. The shards of mirror that Caleix lay curled beside. The fire on the carpet, almost dying embers. Checkered floors. Blind statues. Cast into relief by the glow.

It wasn't just her hand any longer—it was her entire forearm, her upper arm—all ablaze with flame hotter than any she'd ever made or known, fire that burned like heaven and drew scream after ragged scream from her, there on the marble floor. Yet she clenched her fist as it surged across her, let it swallow her limb a hungry beast.

AKERA!

Murmured the Darkness, drawing up thick around her even as she blindly cried.

AKERA OF LITH HARBOUR, HOW QUAINT! I DID NOT THINK YOU WOULD ATTEMPT TO DESTROY ME, WHEN YOU ARE ALREADY SO DEEP IN THE MIRE OF YOUR SIN.

Images plummeted like bombs through her consciousness, exploding in her skull. Her father on fire. Her mother's face in ashes. Turino blazing. Ralinn half dead in the snow. Shirion roaring out in agony. Fire, fire on the eaves of houses, fire burning through the eyes of grinning skulls.

WHY DO YOU TRY, AKERA? DO YOU THINK RISING AGAINST ME WILL SAVE YOU? DO YOU THINK YOURSELF SO NOBLE?DO YOU THINK THIS WILL BE YOUR REDEMPTION?

YOU WILL NEVER BE REDEEMED, AKERA. YOU HAVE NOURISHED ME, AND I HAVE LOVED YOU, I HAVE FED YOUR HATE!WE ARE SYMBIOTIC, WE NEED EACH OTHER! I BRANDED YOU FROM THE DAY YOU WERE BORN, I KNEW YOU WOULD GIVE, AND YOU DID!

YOU ARE NOT TO BE FORGIVEN, YOU IDIOT CREATURE. NOTHING YOU DO WILL APPEASE THE GODDESS! YOU HAVE SPENT YOUR LIFE SERVING ME, AND TO ME YOU WILL RETURN!

Akera felt tears of agony gather in her eyes, and though she was using every last ounce of her magic to rein the fire in, to stop it from searing away her flesh and bone, she had in her the strength to grin.

"No, I don't seek to be forgiven—" she answered, clutching the Spear of Heaven tighter so her fingers stung as if the skin were being ripped from them, feeling the oscillation of the flame fall slowly, gradually, under her control, one breath at a time. "I don't seek to be redeemed by the Goddess. I gave up on that long ago. I gave up on being loved. But that hasn't stopped me from loving!"

LOVING—

"I don't care, you stupid Spirit."

Like stars aligning. Like mountains sliding into place. Suddenly, the fire was all hers.

And suddenly, she was burning.

She felt her feet lift from the ground. Free of the world. Free of the Shadow.

She laughed. She soared to the ceiling, she extended a hand and her fingers slit gashes through the Dark like whimsical fireworks—she spun, laughed again, feeling the Goddess flood her veins and the Dragon move her hand.

"You are not invincible."

ALL MEN WERE MADE TO SIN.

"And to forgive. " She grinned wider.

YOU WOULDN'T DO THIS. YOU'RE TOO SELFISH. I KNOW YOU ARE. AND FOR THAT THE GODDESS WILL NEVER REDEEM YOU.

"And you're wrong," she sneered right back. "Because I am my own redemption!"

Its words descended into croaks and caws, and she grasped at a stray flame as it arced around the Spear, and let it swell in her hands into a bright, strong shaft. With a cry she flung it through the shadow, and in a trail of rainbows and sparks it ripped holes in the night.

"We are the demons who engender the Dark. We are the gods with the blade to Its end."

It roared, and expanded, and the castle roof erupted in a sound of thunder so grand it made her ears ache.

Out into the night sky It gushed and bloomed, like a great spurt of ink through a broken pipe—and feeling a surge of fire in her blood, she chased, a blazing star—she chased and slashed with the Spear, the Goddess' light poured through its shaft, slits opening in the Darkness to reveal the brightest stars. Canis Major. Centaurus. Orion.

The Dark boomed and snapped, and engulfed her like the sea as they rose, rose through the stratosphere, blowing the clouds to shreds. But she screamed and flung a shaft of light through the air, and it tore a straight line through Its unfathomable grandeur, sending shreds descending towards the ground below.

The wind was frigid. The snow swirled. All the sky roared white between her fingertips.

Akera cried out—Explosion—and her Fire Mage's spell snatched the rainbow flame of the Dragon, blew it open like a dandelion clock.

Fragments of Darkness scattered, never to be found.

She swirled through the air, slashed once, slashed twice, laughing manically; time wound back and forth around her in a great column—she screamed and reached through the weeks and years, and suddenly the trees in the castle gardens were blooming, and then they were burning red and gold—everything was malleable at her fingertips, everything was nothing to her!

Screaming in rage, the Dark snapped back again and wrapped Itself in a vast sphere about her, threadbare and fluttering.

DO YOU THINK IT SO EASY?

It shrieked.

DO YOU THINK I'LL JUST DIE?

"Yes," answered Akera, and in that word she felt a surge of joy so beautiful she could only call it heaven, tasting of the marble of the amphitheatre, soft as the velvet robes of the gods. Her tongue unleashed fire. Fire. Fire.

The black bubble burst, and the pieces shrieked like a million crows.

NO! I WILL NEVER BE DEAD! AS LONG AS HATE AND FEAR LIVES, SO DO I!

But she heard nothing but the angelic hum of her flame. Here in the sky, with the power of the gods in her hand, the White-Haired Murderess could see everything. She could see a child on the coast, staring at her light. She could see the pigs in the glen, rooting for fungus. She could see the fairies of Orbis at their games of chance, she could see Chief Tatamo in Leafre, patting a seed into the soil. She saw Ralinn staring listlessly, tears dripping from her chin, she saw Shirion holding her, and she felt glad.

For countless seconds Akera stood in the sky, nothing between her and the stars but fathoms of emptiness. The most powerful being in the universe, all the world swirling about her. Time fluttered on her fingers, the solid past, the nebulous future. Yes, for these seconds she could reach twenty years far, she could murder herself before she could be born and save that couple the anguish of the daughter that would come. She could destroy Caleix as he gazed through the golden windows at the shower of stars. She could kill Thaemis before the deal was made at that pool of boiling darkness in the deep blue cave.

But that would be selfish, for the Dark would live on. The Dark would return. And she wouldn't be there to stop it.

"If this is the price we must pay," she shouted, teeth bared in a grin, "then so be it! So be it!"

And she gathered up the world in a single breath of the night. She looked to Orion. She knew the answer to the riddle. She thought of Shirion, heir to the throne. She thought of Ketara, Dragon's Pride. Zethis. Son of the morning. Lanoré, Silver Fang, the Archmage she would never best after all. And Ralinn, queen of the rebellion, heroine of the greatest tale Victoria had ever told.

She threw it all, in a blinding spiral of light that looked like the flowers in the gardens when the winter was finally over and the spring peeked from the cracks in the bark. The Dragon's sacrifice rang in hers, so resonant she began to weep. The song He sang to raise them out of sleep.

They rose out of sleep again.

As she cast a universe of fire upon the Spirit, she found herself drowning in absolute, pure ecstasy. Ecstasy, like the spheres of the world and heaven touching so their harmonies fell into synchrony.

It was like every bone in her body shattering in synchrony. A universal song, vibrating through her veins, which held the fragments of the sky together.

Timeless Heart, Arelyn, Ayris and Kalia glanced up, all changed, claws in place of hands, fangs growing in their jaws. Timeless Heart, I hear her. She will be so transient. But she will last forever.

Clynine clutched at her staff and straightened where she stood on wobbling legs. She was just a girl, and the sky was blooming and bursting, streams of light like aurorae rippling outward for miles, catching the darkness, ripping it to ribbons.

Here on the ground, she saw that light beyond the flickering of dark spirits. And none of that light could save her friends from death. None could save them but she.

All her friends. Every one of them, dead and dying, crumpled amidst the trees.

"Clynine—" wheezed Lanoré a last time. "Listen—listen—"

No. She could not listen. She knew Lanoré cared, so much, and she knew listening to her orders had saved her countless times before. The last time she'd disobeyed, they had wasted three months.

But today was not that day. Today—today Clynine was no longer a girl without a mind. Today she wasn't going to give her mistress up because she'd been told. Clynine had had enough of doing as told.

She climbed, shivering, up to the top of a boilder, and slowly raised herself, till she stood in the full view of the necromancers circling above. "I'm here!" she cried. She raised her staff beneath a universe of glowing stars.

She saw their red eyes flash, and they twisted in midair, shrieking, plunging at her like a volley of knives through the sky.

She squeezed her eyes shut and for seconds all she heard was their screaming, screaming so rending that she felt her ears drip with blood. Her mistress lay dead at her feet. Hyrien did too. She wanted them to be happy.

"Resurrection!" she yelled with all her might, gripping her staff with both hands. "RESURRECTION!"

White light swallowed her whole. Then the battlefield. And every barren tree. Every twig. Every shingle. Every grain of earth.

She saw an army of souls, drowned at the bottom of an ocean. She dove amidst froth and bubbles, and she called them. She called them back up towards the surface, where the living world waited for them. She spoke of Henesys—Henesys before the king, Henesys when there had been festivals and markets, Henesys waiting for them to return, jubilating, to the new celebration that had been called in their honour.

She sang of Ellinia when the trees glowed like emerald, sure, it was winter now, but what when the spring came! When she spoke of spring, she spoke also of Victoria Island, growing out like a tree from dead bark.

"She's just waiting for the spring to return," she said. "And the spring—is almost—here—"

And two thousand souls chased her back into the living world, bursting through the surface of the endless sea, wailing and roaring. All the while, Clynine felt her self screaming blood between her lips, her ears pounding with the strange sounds of the universe, throbbing beyond limit. All two thousand. Every friend and enemy. She wanted them all back, and she didn't care for the pain.

Lanoré woke, and when she saw her comrades all stirring from the soil, she immediately remembered Clynine—

Clynine lay crumpled in the thawing earth, blood streaming from her nose and lips, blood pooling beneath her head. "Clynine, Clynine," she panted, dropping to her knees to touch her forehead. "Clynine, you didn't listen...you didn't listen..."

She rose to her feet, staring up into the maelstrom of ragged black creatures, and the strange aurorae that shimmered beyond.

"You didn't listen. I'm so proud of you." She struggled with tears, but what use would they be? Instead she thrust her gaze into the sky and raised her staff.

She did not have to cry Chain Lightning to unleash it upon the sky. The lightning exploded from her staff, it arched through the night, and grew so bright she could not keep her eyes open. She braced herself on the earth, let it net itself across the entire battlefield and burn every black mage to nothing.

The world shook, but it was silent. The Darkness exploded in the sky over Victoria Island, with a rumble that drove cracks through the castle foundations, and a bloom of rainbow that conquered the blackness like a million shooting stars outstripping the darkness it chased.

Akera descended through the silence, robes hanging in tatters about her limbs. This silence, it was almost...peace. Silence, not only in the world outside her, but silence within her as well.

Silence. The demons had finally fled the room of her mind, and she was alone...alone with herself, at last.

When she landed on the tiles, the Spear of Heaven rolled from her hand, and with it all the light drained from her being.

Akera suddenly felt as fragile as a dry petal on fire. On the brink of breaking to pieces.

Turino was the first at her side—dear Turino, of course; he reached out for her, and took her in his arms, so he scalded himself on her softly blazing skin.

"You're back!" he shouted. His smile was so wide and so true, Akera felt a surge of gladness and sorrow.

"I've...finished it," she replied in a whisper, and felt a piece of her lip crumble to ash.

"Akera?" his voice changed, his face fell. "Come on, it'll be fine. You're going to stay. You're right here, safe now. I'm holding you."

"Turino. Let go."

His grip shifted and tightened, and pieces of her robe came away as dust. His face twisted, he was only just beginning to understand. "Akera—you're right here! You're not going anywhere. Don't talk like you're going to die, Akera—"

When she tried to stand, her legs would take no weight and she collapsed, a trail of brilliant dust following her—and sobbing outwardly by now, Turino caught her blazing body and pulled her close. "Yes, Akera, yes, I'm here," he murmured. "I'm always here."

"I know," she answered listlessly. "Thank you." Locks of her hair tore away and vanished in flashes of flame; she hardly seemed able to fight, let alone willing. All that galactic light, gone in a blink.

Weeping wretchedly, the Mage bowed towards her, and she let him kiss her again, though she left ashes on his lips, and he smelt her burning flesh when she did.

Her eyes shifted. They hurt inside her skull. It hurt to move. "Ralinn, is all forgiven?"

"Forgive me," she answered, blotting her eyes with her arm. "I'm sorry, Akera, I'm sorry."

Her lips managed smile. "You were a friend."

"'Were'?" the Ranger answered, another wave of tears coming unbidden. "No, you are a friend, Akera, you are my friend—"

"Yes," Akera replied, just barely.

The flame thinned in the wind through the broken ceiling of the throne room. Nothing but the night sky shone down upon them. And here, gazing upwards into their endless light, she could feel every laboured beat of her heart, as it fought to keep going. Fought to hold her together.

It was only now that Turino noticed that her hair had changed in the fire. It was no longer the silver-white of remoteness and isolation, the white of the icy cage she'd built for herself and hid within all her life. It was warm brown. Brown, the colour of her life before tragedy. Brown like coffee with milk, and old woody houses. Brown of Lith Harbour soil.

She twisted, just slightly. "Be happy," she said.

With a cry like a phoenix's keening, he grasped at her burning clothes, but even as he did her body began to crumble. He could not watch, his tears kept cascading down his cheeks, blurring the world to unimportance, and his throat would not contain his wails; her face went still, and her nose, her eyes, her lips caved, her skull crumbled. She flowed through his fingers like sand and the wind scattered her across the floor, glowing faintly gold.

"COME BACK!" he screamed into the sky, fingers digging into the ash for just another touch, just another trace, of her warmth.

"Rino?"

The voice was crisp as a cold morning, and the wind could not drown it.

"Lida—" Turino shook with sobs, hands planted in the golden dust, as Telida dropped to her knees where her brother knelt.

"Quiet, Rino," she whispered in answer. She reached, tentatively, across the space between them, to rest her fingers on his arm. "It doesn't matter..."

"What do you mean? What do you mean,it doesn't matter?!" Turino whirled back, snarling suddenly, ready to shove her away.

But their eyes met once in that windy second, and he bowed his head, surrendered, abandoned a battle he'd thought would never end. She caught him by the shoulders as he sagged, and pulled him closer. He shifted, so his head was nestled against her shoulder.

"She's where she wants to be," she replied. "She's fine."

And the truth of Telida's word pierced to the bone, and the night began to tower so tall above their heads, the night full of blinding stars and prophecies. Ralinn gathered herself up on the shattered, checkered floor, and Shirion lost sense, sinking to the stone as he, too, began to weep, thinking of winters of old, of fires that smelt of incense, of a friend he hadn't loved enough.

By the throne, unfazed and misty-eyed amidst the sounds of sorrow, Caleix sat staring into the mirror, remade by the Spear as Akera had whirled through the sky changing the seasons.

It was Zethis who came first, who crossed the glittering tiles, and dropped to a kneel beside the great king.

He turned at the White Knight's approach, tears ceasing momentarily, lips trying to form words. Zethis watched him intently, waiting for a word.

"...Zethis," he finally said. "Zethis, I've been waiting fifteen years for you."

The boy paused, searching for the warmth in the man's eyes.

"Dad," he answered softly.

"Your mother is in there somewhere," the king said, lifting the mirror for his son. Zethis tilted and peered into the glass. "Eleira, do you see him? Your son. Aismeth didn't destroy them. They're all back here. They're all with me." The tears began again. "I found them."

The first thing Athena Pierce saw when she woke from her unconsciousness was the sky, aglow with a thousand rippling ribbons of rainbow-light, every thread streaming out of the broken tower at the centre of the ruined castle. Aurora, she'd read before. Beneath its light she dug her hands into the earth and lifted herself onto one foot, then the other, though her legs trembled with exhaustion and threatened to give way as soon as she was standing.

"A—thena—" murmured a voice in the soil. Her eyes darted to the ground, where saw a hand reaching through for her left boot, a black-gloved hand that belonged to a dishevelled thief.

"Jet," she answered, voice brimming, and she snatched at his hand, tugging him onto his feet with a magnificent swing. "We both—live. We live!"

"Are you sure it's over?" answered the thief, ever the cynic even in the face of victory, eyes darting about. But the guards weren't fighting, and there were no necromancers in sight, and it was as if everyone knew without a word that the battle—the war of fifteen years—was over. Jet whirled to face Athena again. "It is...Athena, it's done..."

She answered by taking his head with both palms and kissing him, while around them a multitude of bodies rose from their deathlike sleep, like flowers from the thaw that used to be snow.

Cirid dusted her shirt, rising from amid bodies she'd been assured were only slumbering. She plucked her watch from her pocket and smiled. Ten minutes gave her some time to prepare something.

She found five tins of gunpowder right where she'd left them, and in her moneybag a bit of the old colouring metal she'd salvaged from a corner of their raided cellar.

Tying the material in a few small paper parcels, Cirid took another glance at her watch, then pulled out the wooden wand she kept with her. She was quite a thrower, if she could say so herself. And even greater of an aimer.

Somewhere in the marketplace, Lanoré strapped her staff to her belt and lifted her assistant in both arms, placing a finger before her lips just to be sure that she was breathing.

She glanced about and called Shara's name, till the Priestess heard her, reclining somewhere beside the tree, and sprung up to meet the unconscious Cleric.

Shara breathed steady though her eyes were wild and distraught, stricken most by the sight of the girl's pale face. "Heal," she whispered, and a swathe of green light descended like a curtain upon her, but not a muscle twitched. She said it again. And again.

"Heal," gasped the Priestess yet again, fingers gripping the Cleric's face. "Heal."

She sagged with the effort of her twentieth consecutive spell, and began to shake the girl, bereft suddenly of her power, left only with the despair of a failed mother.

Tilting the girl's head back, she placed three fingers in her mouth and shouted the spell's name again. Green lit up beneath her skin, spreading to her neck.

With a choked cough, Clynine sprung up in Lanoré's arms, eyelids fluttering.

"Mistress...?"

The Archmage could barely stop herself gasping out, and she lowered the girl to the ground, before seizing her in a rough embrace. "Clynine!" she said. "Clynine, you live—"

"Mistress?" the syllables came slowly.

Lanoré released Clynine and stepped back. "I'm very proud of you, you saved hundreds of people today—"

"I...can't...hear you. I can't...hear you."

Elation evaporating suddenly, the Archmage felt her lips part. She wasn't sure if it was fear or the cold creeping into her fingers. "Clynine, are you sure? Swallow, look up, can you hear me?"

But she didn't look up, and didn't swallow, only glanced left and right frantically, terror contorting her face. "I can't—I can't—" She abandoned the sentence halfway, throwing herself into her mistress' arms again, sobbing timidly. "I can't hear."

Lanoré stood motionless upon the damp, frosty ground. Panic fluttered only briefly across her features—she couldn't feel more. She couldn't let them see.

Her numb fingers rose to clasp the girl's shoulders, and Shara bowed, weeping, as if certain it was her doing.

"It wasn't you, Shara," murmured the Archmage, a croak coming to her voice. "It's not your fault."

The wind carried Akera's ashes away in a spiralling swirl, and Turino was too broken to try and salvage them. He knew what he didn't want to know, that her ash would never be her, would never be that flaming soul with bright blue eyes again.

Instead he sat with his sister in the glowing pool of light that the Mage had left, trapped in memory and regret, and they held each other, trying to cast ropes of light across the dark between them, through eight murky years of hate and emptiness. She touched his left hand, and he responded, lifted it gingerly for her to hold. When she smiled at him for the first time since they had left the Dungeon behind, his face contorted with the ache of tears.

Standing beside the golden throne of the open chamber, stars sparkling high overhead, Ralinn rounded the rest up with shouts and beckoning gestures—her brother, Shirion, and Ketara.

"Is it really over?" asked Raydan, gripping his sister's arms when she offered them, then flinging them away. "No way, I'm not hugging you." But she snatched him about the shoulders anyway, and he laughed softly.

Reaching out to the man by the throne, Zethis helped Caleix to stand. Strange, to stand face-to-face with the tyrant you'd spend seven years hating, to find his face so ordinary it couldn't possibly be the man you'd wanted to kill before. To discover he had fathered you sixteen years ago. To realise you were taller than he.

"Will things change now?" asked the White Knight.

"Everything. Everything will change. I've done too much now to be trusted again."

"But everything can be fixed, Dad—" answered Zethis quickly.

"Not broken trust. I will abdicate. And your brother—"

"—my brother?" He had to think long and hard, but even then the fact did would not begin to sink in. "Oh—Shirion?"

Caleix nodded. "He will be a much better king than I," he said.

"I will not," answered Shirion suddenly, and both turned to the man, who strode, red-eyed, towards them. "I will not be the king."

"I will vest that power in you anyway," answered Caleix, "and that decision will be officiated within the week, perhaps tomorrow. What you decide to do with that power thereafter is entirely your decision."

"But—"

If there was anything two decades at the throne had imprinted in Caleix, it was a habit of ignoring others' opinions. He turned away from Shirion with no more than a smile. "I will begin my search for information shortly," he said, running a finger along the edge of the frame of the hand mirror in his pocket. "I must find a way to free my wife."

"A mirror world..." said Zethis. "We went inside one once. Only deities can open or close them, if I remember right..."

"Then I will find a deity and have it free her," he answered, eyes resolute. "The cost matters not."

Some way across the room, Ketara whispered a request, and Elkhris crept over to the twins, lowering himself to the ground so Ketara could slip carefully off his back. He sank onto his good leg, dropping to a kneel beside both twins. Both glanced at him with teary eyes.

"Come, we should go back," said the Dragon Knight, extending a hand, with a voice that brightened their eyes—if only for a second. "War's over. And the Year of the Dragon starts in a few minutes' time."

Out on the battlefield, amid swarms of battlers and guards who were quickly forgetting which side of the nonexistent line they stood on, Cirid Celadon flung the first parcel as high in the air as she could, and when it reached its peak somewhere far above the rooftops, she closed one eye and shot a Fire Arrow at it.

The bag burst in a dandelion of sparks, red as necromancer lightning, red as blood freshly-spilt, red as sunrise. Eyes turned, and gasps went up, as the boom resounded across the battlefield, red light filling their eyes.

She tossed the second with a little more swing, and when she shot it, it exploded brilliant golden white, and amidst the dazzled crowds beneath began many a rowdy cheer. It was like gazing at the Goddess' wings.

The third parcel burst in sparks that were vivid blue, and everyone saw in them the sky of springtime, waiting to emerge at the end of this deep grey winter.

And when Cirid shot the last, the most special package, it burst to reveal a firework of seven different colours. Those familiar with the myths thought this must be how it looked when the world was just beginning, when the Dragon had sung and traded His eyes for the world.

A lone man raised the first line of song, and everyone was surprised when the melody lit chains of memory, new strains of music. One by one they joined in the singing, and for heavenly minutes, Henesys was bright as the womb of the world.

"Let us welcome the Year of the Dragon!" shouted Cirid to the people all around as the last bar ended and they rose out of their daze, beginning to laugh, salvaging drinks from the ruins of their homes. A celebration began, then, that would be remembered for centuries.

Epilogue: Fire of the Stars

"The decisive battle of tonight was won through the hard work of nearly a thousand collaborators," read Hyrien from the podium on a makeshift stage in Henesys Square. "First, I would like to thank each and every member of every group and guild that assisted: Cirid, Ledrin, Emina, and the rest of Reborn, whom we pray may return to their homes after restoration work is complete; the thieves of the Ethiel brotherhood under the leadership of the Dark Lord; every member of the Perion tribe under the leadership of Chief Dances with Balrog; Orion's Belt under the leadership of Ralinn; and my own guild, Nightfall, who fought very well tonight."

"And Hyrien!" yelled the voice of Yunira from the crowd, who immediately raised the rowdiest applause yet.

Hyrien cleared his throat amidst their cheering. "Er, thank you, Yunira," he said, to a chorus of laughter. "We would like to honour the following individuals for their contribution not just to this battle, but in every moment that led up to it.

"First—posthumously—we would like to thank the previous leader of Nightfall, Pelinor, who dedicated fifteen years of his life to rescuing and training members of Nightfall. He always spoke of becoming a hero in death, but what he did not realise, I think, was that he was already a hero in doing what he did everyday.

"We would also like to thank Cirid Celadon, for a display of great trust in leading her guild from Kerning to Henesys without any guarantees of its safety, and coming to our aid when it most counted. And the Job Masters—Athena Pierce, the Dark Lord, Chief Dances with Balrog and Grendel the Really Old—" many snickers came at this point— "for readily joining our cause despite not being offered much of a choice.

"We'd like to thank Lawrence, Pan, Erin and Patricia of Ethiel, and Elode, Aradel and Coelion of Nightfall, for their role in saving—" he paused to turn the page over— "the Job Masters, who proved crucial in our campaign. Lanore for her work as a strategist despite it not being her area of expertise. And Clynine of Orion's Belt, for her selfless contribution in keeping all our battlers alive on the battlefield last night, at the expense of her hearing, and hope to aid her in whatever way we can.

"We would also like to offer a great thank you Akera of Orion's Belt, for doing what no one else would have dared. For raising the Spear of Heaven against the Deity of Darkness Itself—and winning. She was intelligent and powerful, but as many of you might know, she knew terrible circumstances—a life rife with turmoils she took upon herself to bear in silence. May she rest in peace and be favoured by the Goddess and the Dragon.

"And, we would like to thank Esharo Hesprel, the previous guard captain of the Henesys company." Here Hyrien paused, so he could take in the surprise he'd hoped to elicit. Surprise there was; it swept the gathering in a wave of mutters. "Now, Esharo did commit many murders in the name of Caleix, that cannot be denied, as did every guard under his charge. But when the time came, he chose to help Nightfall by wilfully obscuring information about our plans from his own king, and that, I should remind you, was absolutely essential to our victory today. Yesterday, he was executed for this deed. While many may dispute his claim to our gratitude, I believe the very act of defying the corrupt authority you serve in the name of fairness—a mortal sacrifice on his part, as is apparent now—is heroic in itself. May he rest in peace and be favoured by both Goddess and Dragon."

The HQ saw no silence till the break of dawn, and not even then. Ethiel played poker. Nightfall enjoyed an impromptu buffet. Orion's Belt sat in a circle, smiling and in tears, wishing this moment were eternity itself.

Turino would not leave Telida, he promised to love her like he never had, promised to give what he could so he didn't have to regret again. Ralinn could not sleep till Shirion was beside her; the dark kept returning, the dark was always waiting beneath her eyelids—she shivered to sleep against his shoulder, and his eyes grew damp when she did. Lanoré sat staring eastward, unable to so much as close her eyes in case the black ocean began to roar too loud.

Because she could not hear, Clynine watched more intently than ever. Watched Raydan ruffle Zethis' hair. Watched Zethis weave his fingers with hers, eyes a little brighter than before. Watched Ketara attempt to find a comfortable position on the couch. They all slept outside, near the cold, and Yunira guarded the keys till the night was over, casting little glances at her Sniper friend below.

When it was dawn at last, and Dances with Balrog's warriors lay snoring soaked in alcohol, and the thieves had concluded their last card game, celebration turned suddenly to bittersweet farewell. For with the end of Caleix's reign had also come the end of the cause that had brought them together under this roof.

Rooms emptied slowly as the early leavers—the ones without love or friendship to hold them anywhere—left with new scars and stories to tell. New quests to seek.

As the year began again, the Dragon seemed to rise from the bark and the earth, in little shoots and new birdsongs, spreading breath through pale roots and green buds and red blossoms, His great rainbow emerging through thousands of generations.

There were a great many visitors to the Nightfall HQ for the next week to come. But of course, priming this were the tabloids on the first day of Aries in the Year of the Dragon, which took care to detail every exploit of the Night Hunters on the night of New Year's Eve. Most of it wasn't far from the truth, and in fact a lot of it gave the major players their due respect. But for the most part, the tabloids did their best to be as sensationalist as always.

Raydan dropped off the sofa laughing, throwing the bulletin onto the floor between uncontrollable guffaws. "'She looked death in the eye, and death blinked first'—Did you tell them to say that?" he yelled amidst giggles, wiping his eyes.

Looking up from her own copy of the bulletin, Ralinn grimaced. "That was horrible," she muttered. "What a waste of words. They could have spent it talking about—I don't know, how Akera did everything." She glanced out over the living room at the pair of twins sharing a sofa at the far corner.

"Oh, they sorta did talk about her," answered Raydan. "'But the heroine of the night was Akera, who till then had occupied the top position on the king's Most Wanted list. Akera, knowing that only a person of her immense talent could handle the Spear of Heaven, took bravely to the duty. Wielding the powers of all the deities combined, she destroyed the Spirit for once and for all, putting on an unforgettable light display in the process. Another thing she did in the process, unfortunately, was give up her life. She will be missed dearly, especially by friends, whom we interview below.'"

He snorted when he was finished. But Ralinn found herself tapping her chin in thought. "I think the description...suits it, actually," she said. "Describing it like—like something to be celebrated, not mourned."

This made her brother pause as well. "Someone needs to build a statue of her," he said, and it was relatively clear he wasn't cracking a joke this time. "Put it in the middle of Henesys Square. So the evil place becomes a good place." He glanced up. "Hey, you're the new king's girlfriend, aren't you! Go tell Shirion to do that!"

Ralinn blinked. Still wasn't joking, was he. "I'm sure he'd agree," she said, somewhat absently. Shirion had made his intentions all but clear in little conversations they had shared since, but he would nominally be king for a week more at least. And this most definitely was in his power.

"But Linn," added the Crossbowman, sounding serious as ever. "Akera didn't do everything. I mean, yeah, she did do the most important thing, but she didn't do everything. Everyone did something. Except me." He snorted.

"No, you kept us hoping," she replied in a laugh. "Imagine if you hadn't been there. We'd have been gloomy all the time. And our morales would have taken a beating from that."

The Nightfall HQ was abuzz. Its location having been published in the tabloids to much hype, and a list of members printed in gratitude for their contributions, everyone's mother, father and cousin twice-removed was coming to meet the newly-made heroes inside the old Sharenian building.

While most people were beyond describable elation to see their families again at last, it was with immense reluctance that Lanoré waited by the sofas that day, holding Clynine by the shoulders with cold hands and a remote smile.

The middle-aged couple, newly-released from prison, appeared at the doorway in clothes that marked them out for their wealth, some time earlier than the proposed meeting time of two-thirty.

Instead of calling out to them, the Archmage bowed, swallowing nervously, and Clynine, who felt her mistress' tension, lifted a hand to touch the woman's arm. Five days had given them time to learn to bypass the girl's disability in conversation; they'd established a simple language in handsigns, and learnt to understand each other's gestures much better. But the silence gaped and stretch between them.

Lanoré couldn't have escaped the couple's notice forever, and Clynine's parents found them eventually, with directions from the other residents. They crossed the room eagerly, bowing in turn when they arrived before the two.

"Thank you, Lanoré," said the man. "We have read all about your journey, and we would like to thank you sincerely for all you have taught our daughter."

"I—" For the first time, she found her poise slipping. Looking upon the man's earnest gaze, her eyes began to prickle. "I'm—sorry. Clynine has been a wonderful assistant. But she—" A tear pooled in one eye and ran rapidly down her cheek.

They glanced at each other, both seeming to contemplate a reply. But the Archmage recognised the sadness in their countenances, the sorrow-laced pride, and love.

"I could have done better, and I would like to offer my sincerest—apologies."

She stopped. Tear by tear, she felt her facade begin to crumble. Years upon years, of terror and flight and pretending not to care, finally catching up to her. Right before their bewildered eyes, she began to descend into shameful, incomprehensible sobbing.

What's wrong with you? You aren't supposed to show them. You aren't supposed to feel. The sobs were clear and hard, stopped short by pride and anger, but the tears kept flowing, like a mark of her failings.

"You entrusted your daughter to me—and let this happen—I'm sorry—"

Again Lanoré felt Clynine reach to touch her arm, hand clasping hers.

"Pa, Mistress Lanoré did nothing wrong," she said, voice wavering, breaking slightly. "She took care of me. But I disobeyed her, and this happened. It was my fault."

"No—" Lanoré began to shout, to deny that it was anyone's fault but hers—but she stopped when the lady sank forward and wrapped her arms about her daughter.

"Lanoré, ma'am, there is no need to apologise," she answered earnestly. "We're not upset. How could we be upset? You've made her a heroine."

"But she made a heroine of herself," answered Lanoré, fighting to smile despite the pangs in her throat. "She has unfathomable talent. Please—keep teaching her."

"And we'd like for that teacher to be you," her father replied.

It was fifteen minutes before the couple, polite as ever, finally gave their final hugs and said their goodbyes, relinquishing the conversation as if giving up life itself.

Turning from the crowds and the lights, Clynine glanced up at Lanoré. "Thank you," she whispered. "You have given me so much, Lanoré." She bowed. "I haven't given you anything in return. I haven't even paid."

The room seemed to turn into a void, all voices falling silent. Nothing between them, no air, no light.

"No," Lanoré whispered. "Clynine, you've given me more than you think." How could she not see? "You taught me—humility, don't you know? You taught me to love. I didn't love anyone before this, my parents were caretakers, my friends were companions—but you, Clynine, when I took you beneath my wing, I suddenly learnt—"

All these multitudes, these nuances and explanations and tales, they refused to be captured by mere hand gestures. Her hands were useless, her hands were only mute—

Love, she signed desperately, the ache of frustration pounding in her throat. You, me, you, us, love, happiness, light, joy!—

"Mistress?" answered the Cleric in faint puzzlement. "I...I love you too?"

The Archmage paused. That's not what I meant, she ached to say, but Clynine's simple words caught her, embraced her, and she found herself smiling instead.

"Me too," she whispered. "I love you."

Till now, Hyrien had been conversing with Cirid at a table, and snatching short glances across the living room at Lanoré and Clynine. When he noticed them looking his way, though, he immediately busied himself with his coffee.

That did nothing to stop them from making straight for his table right then.

The Reborn leader smirked from across the table and tilted her head. "Seems like you'll be quite busy shortly," she remarked, putting her hot chocolate down and swinging her legs off the neighbouring chair. Despite his protests, she immediately made herself scarce, and Hyrien found he could do nothing but resign himself to the unaided confrontation about to follow.

"Afternoon," the Archmage announced her arrival, folding her arms till the Guild Master lowered his mug and began straightening his shirt. "Are you busy?"

"No...in fact, I would like to converse with you," he answered quickly, glancing between both females. Lanoré's eyebrows rose. "I mean, I would—I would like to talk." He paused to gather the words. "Are you alright?"

"Why would you ask?" she answered.

Hyrien wove his fingers together. "You were—over there, beside the sofas—"

"You were watching?" She only seemed faintly perturbed.

"I'm sorry."

"No, do not be sorry. I hope that is proof enough of my humanity. And fallibility."

"It's alright. You're no less for it," he answered. Lanoré sighed. In that moment's pause, he drained his cup and put it down, rising from his chair. "Could I bring up...the matter we briefly discussed yesterday? Before we left for Henesys yesterday, I mean. About...you..."

"Of course," the woman replied, beginning to smile herself. "What about it?"

Hyrien folded his arms and shifted on his feet, eyes refusing to settle anywhere. "You mentioned that—"

"Yes, I did," she replied. "And there was an offer implicit in my words. Are you going to take me up on it?"

"Uh—ah—" Now he'd been caught off guard. Clynine laughed softly. "Yes...yes, I wouldn't mind taking it up at all. I would very much like to, in fact..."

Lanoré nodded thoughtfully. "Would you do me a favour?" she said.

"Of course."

She met his eye, and said with a tilt of her head, "Kiss me."

Hyrien was far less adept at moderating his expression than she. As his face reddened, the room fell silent and others began to look his way, snorts and giggles rising into audibility—from Yunira at the door, who squealed with her hands held together, and Pan, who had lain draped over two couches till then, and sprung up now to watch events unfold.

"Lanoré!" exclaimed Hyrien, more than sufficiently aware of the attention coming his way, face burning all the hotter for it. "I'm not sure this is the right place or time—" The idea was at least somewhat appealing, he wouldn't deny. But the embarrassment just barely tipped the balance in favour of no.

Lanoré hadn't stopped waiting. "Getting cold feet now, are we?" she asked with a lilt.

"A—alright then—"

He bowed tentatively, eyes darting about the room. Not one person wasn't looking. Lanoré's fingers found his arm, and Hyrien hated to admit that she was a whole lot more beautiful than he'd realised before, now that he'd set his heart to noticing. He bent closer and closer; she was a tall woman so it wouldn't be as awkward as it could be—but everyone was looking, and, Goddess, he'd never kissed anyone before...

He wasn't ready when their lips suddenly touched—but she responded quick as lightning, pulling his face closer and kissing back as if she'd been waiting forever to do so.

To his profound horror, applause and laughter immediately swelled from the crowd.

He should probably have guessed that Lanoré wasn't one for shying away, but he hadn't expected such boldness. She communicated more emotion in this single gesture than she had for all the three months they'd known each other.

And he couldn't say he wasn't amazed, even though it was stirred in with a considerable measure of shame.

Hyrien swung back several seconds later, lost in a whirl of lights and the sound of blood in his ears. When he had steadied himself, he found her beaming with an elusive hint of what might be happiness. Not the glassy, formal sort she frequently displayed. Real, unfeigned happiness.

"I'm sorry," she said in a breath, without meaning it. She was Lanoré again. "And thank you." She turned in a whirl of blonde hair, Clynine tagging obediently behind. Hyrien stared after, trying to breathe steady.

"Yunira!"

Recovering from a huge fit of giggles, Yunira turned—and was startled to find a new figure beside her. A figure with dishevelled dark-blond hair, almost a head taller than her, grinning without any of the usual bawdiness. "Hey," said answered brightly. "Have you seen?"

"Oh, yeah," answered Raydan between snorts of laughter. "I always knew she was shameless, but not like this..."

"Shameless, really?"

"We used to play pranks together, you know?" But the Crossbowman barely had eyes for any person of the room except the one right in front of him. "Hey...do you want to take a walk outside?"

"Uh, walk? Yeah, sure, I've been on door duty all day, let me get someone over here—"

"Oh, no, it's fine then. I'll just join you at door duty, I guess. Can't have a pretty girl doing things for my sake."

Yunira giggled, casting her eyes at her feet, pushing hair behind her ear. "Then that doesn't apply to me, huh! I'm not pretty!"

"Oh yes, you are," answered Raydan promptly. Then he paused and frowned. "Am I being creepy?"

She swayed on her feet, hands in her pockets, twintails swinging. "Nah, we're good friends, aren't we?" she exclaimed, then turned to knock him on the forehead. "But you're not getting me that easily, stupid."

In answer, he grinned. "Challenge accepted," he exclaimed. "How about that walk now?"

"How are you?" asked Shirion as he approached the creek, twigs rustling overhead. This far out in the forest, it became easy to forget that you weren't the only person in the world. The bare trees towered overhead like the vaults of a cathedral, and the only sound here was that of the lone bird in the wind.

The creek flowed anew now that the spring was returning. Alone out in the cold of early evening, the black figure bowed over its edge seemed so lonely that the melancholy was almost visible in the frigid air.

Head lifting, Turino turned to meet the Crusader's eye. "I should be asking you," he replied, quiet as ever. "How are you?"

"I dream of her," answered Shirion, pausing at the creek's edge, staring at the reflections of dark branches, rippling in the current. "I see her the way she was, glowing and surrounded by rainbows. I see her spinning through the stars."

"Happy dreams, then?"

He lowered himself to the ground beside the Mage, legs crossing on the damp earth. "You could say so, but I always wake with a feeling of emptiness."

"Same."

They shared the silence and the sound of the ringing creek for a while, the cool spring descending to complete their tranquil tableau.

"You know—" Shirion broke the silence— "I know I love Ralinn deeply—but sometimes I wonder if...it would have been her. If Akera is the one I would have loved, given different chances, different circumstances."

Turino wrapped his arms around his knees, sighing. "I don't think anyone is meant for anyone else," he said. "It all depends on what we make of the time we're given. And you spent that time with Ralinn, so she's the one you chose."

"Mm. But...Akera is special to me, in a way I don't think Ralinn can accept just yet. She was my closest friend for years...and would always have been..."

The Mage smiled wryly. "Don't you tell me you have never been attracted to her before."

Shirion shifted, brow furrowing. "I did wonder a few times, when we were younger," he said. Then paused, glancing at the creek as if seeing something in it. "Let's not talk about it. She's gone now, she's...vanished. She's not in the world anymore, not even a trace of her body." He bowed. "Sometimes I wonder...if we dreamt her up. Maybe she never even—existed."

He hated the very words he was saying, and a tear threatened. But listening till then, Turino shook his head. He reached for his nape, and unclasped the chain he always wore.

Raising his left palm, he lowered the pendant gingerly onto it, and stared, eyes reddening even as he did.

It was a brush, half black and half white. Shirion glanced at it, and a bittersweet pang struck his heart.

He would know that white anywhere. The white of snow and stars.

"Akera," he murmured, and in the sound of her name, he thought he heard a flame crackle to life, somewhere far away.

all endings

King Caleix issued his formal apology on the same makeshift stage on the Sixth of Aries. It was on that day that he gave his crown to Shirion, announcing the return of the new king and two princes. Zethis could barely stand to remain onstage, shifting his weight from foot to foot every five seconds, but Ketara—perhaps aided by the crutch of a dragon at his side—took in the attention with a brilliant smile that had as many women sighing as ever.

It was on that same day that the Crusader announced, before the entire congregation at Henesys Square, his only order as the reigning monarch of Victoria Island: that Akera be commemorated in the form of a monument, to be placed that very square, as a reminder of her bravery and its triumph over the evils that the square used to symbolise. Then he ceded his power to the four Job Masters, who would rule their respective municipalities, in the loosest sense of the word, while a more permanent leadership solution was being arrived at.

The statue of the Akera was sculpted and erected two months from the day, right at the centre of bloodied Henesys Square. She was not depicted in one of her famous raging moods—but as a saint, a child, serene as a breeze in castle halls, her gown swirling around her the way it had as she had risen towards the stars. Eventually the Henesys citizens decided the square was too dank and dirty, and that it should match the statue. They paved it with cobblestones and refurbished the stalls around it so she should look more at home in the backdrop.

The castle ruins were demolished in a symbolic act of rejection of the old regime, but Athena Pierce, in her capacity as a friend of Ralinn and Shirion, had a mansion built farther down the hillside. "In commemoration of your contributions," she said, "and in anticipation of your future wedding."

Everyone went home, for home is the first place one goes at the end of war. Clynine's parents took her home, offering to take Zethis and Lanoré with her. But Zethis had his family business to attend to, and Lanoré had hers, so only Lanoré followed the little family to the renovated Ellinia Station, where they parted ways—she on a ship to El Nath, they towards Mu Lung.

Lanoré was delighted to find her parents' shoemaking business running well, if not flourishing. They weren't home that evening, but she found them at their favourite seafood restaurant, digging into a pot of marinated seal meat. They turned at the sight of their daughter, and they dropped their forks, forgetting dinner—forgetting to breathe for moments.

As for Zethis' "family business", the White Knight had the housewarming party to attend at the Victoria Mansion where his brothers—brothers!—were already claiming rooms. Their father had left on his pilgrimage through Ossyria before the house had been completed, but they took care to save a room for him—a grand room overlooking the Great Forest, big enough for two.

Before then, though, Zethis put a public message in the newspapers for the kindly man who had cared for him half his life. A day later, he found himself at the gate of the old farmhouse in the Henesys outskirts, standing amid the chirping of crickets and the rustling of half-dead crops. The gate was ajar, and the front door came open when the rusty doorknob fell out, so he snuck inside and waited three days, boiling his own water and cooking his own meals. The pot handles were smaller than he remembered them.

The three days ended with a knock on the door, and a middle-aged man, suddenly so muscled, so haggard, once-cropped hair falling in straggly strands to his shoulders, entered, and was seized by joy.

"Zethis," he gasped, eyes changing the way they always did when shock overcame him. Their warm embrace shrank the years to seconds. "You're back, Zethis, I thought you were gone for good—"

"I always meant to return!" he replied. "After the war, after everything. I always wanted to."

"I'm sorry, Zethis, I became a guard because they made life too hard—I took the easy route, I did terrible things, you wouldn't be proud of me..."

"Don't say that," answered Zethis, letting his father go. "I'll always be proud of you. Prouder than I am of my actual father, for sure!"

Zethis pulled a chair for his foster father, and waited for the old man to sit before seating himself. Amidst the passing of jokes and stories, they sat down to have the lunch they'd waited seven years to have.

Fields grew and sank as winter came again; soil was tilled and seeds were sown, and when an old school in Henesys was reopened the first thing they did was plant the cherry blossoms anew. Kerning was rebuilt slowly, by the thieves who had destroyed it, the Dark Lord directing construction efforts. Needless to say, it grew out just as orderly as before. Dances with Balrog returned to Perion with his tribe of eight, and within two years, a score of new members had joined—or been born.

New chapters were added to history books, new editions published. Hundreds of postwar books made their appearance, biographies and accounts and fictions—of Orion's Belt and the heroes they had brought. And Nightfall, the wronged of Henesys, rising to claim what they had lost under the banner of Pelinor with a heart like the sun, and under Hyrien with a voice like the moon. And the Job Masters, flung aside, only to rise as bright as before. And Esharo the hero, and Ethiel, and Reborn, and the people of Henesys, and scattered people in remote parts of Ossyria who'd had a hand in the fight, however small.

Victoria Island was beginning to look like the place it had been before.

Shirion and Ralinn were first to be married, two summers later; they were united on an island at Orbis in wreaths and furs, with all the fairies there to bless them, the sound and light of the Goddess so close it was hard to imagine anything but fortune for them.

Lanoré resumed her tutelage of Clynine, and together they developed a new means of transmitting messages—spells, by drawing dancing shapes and tales in light and ice and lightning. It was never the same as speaking, but magic held far more than gestures could—nuances and temperatures, that almost imitated the tones and lilts of speech. Eventually Hyrien opted to start travelling with them, and together they trekked through the far reaches of Mu Lung and into the lost cities of the Sahel desert. They only returned one day a year later when a letter from Zethis summoned them back for Ketara and Telida's engagement party.

Turino slowly lost his magic in his grief, for the fire brought the memory of Akera. He became an artisan at the Henesys marketplace, backed by full funding from the Cyrahel family treasury (that was, Caleix's) but money was not his motivation—only a neverending search, for an elusive peace that he found little fragments of in the love of his craft, and his sister. Some days he spent sitting at the foot of Akera's monument, making brushes and carving trinkets, revelling in the warmth of knowing her memory lived, so that, momentarily, it overcame the grief of knowing she was gone.

Raydan's parents, members of Reborn till then, called their son—and Yunira—to live with them in their new Kerning townhouse (courtesy of the Cyrahel family treasury, once again). Kerning society grew out fast and wild as weeds, and now with heroes and heroines to its credit—Ralinn, Cirid, Ethiel, the Dark Lord—they felt a spark of pride for the city they had once despised with a passion.

The Ethiel thieves found a little corner of the city, a little ruin on the suburbs overgrown with shrubs and overhanging trees, where Dalran remained as busy a cook as ever, and Lawrence took to obsessive reading, and Pan caved to teasing and confessed to Erin who accepted him with even more embarrassment. It was where the new thieves came to learn from unrecognised masters, given the secret address by a network of friends who pretended to be enemies.

justice and mercy

"It is with great joy that I call this meeting today, for the ordainment of two new deities from the pool of souls."

From the day she was located by messengers in the Forgotten Passage, she was adamant about her friend joining her in this vocation—and while the Goddess didn't usually entertain petitions, half the amphitheatre had watched her all eighteen years of her life, and her ratings were climbing even now, so there was no way it could have been avoided. Now the deities sat, discussing river maintenance and ocean tides and sculpting snowflakes, impatient for the announcements to go on.

"I have with me two very special souls who will, for their lifetime achievements, be raised to deityhood, to occupy a pair of seats that were, till now, nonexistent."

Then the light rose from the theatre stage like countless rippling curtains, revealing the two ghosts who stood waiting, wearing gowns of entirely different make. On the left, a white-haired woman, gown trailing in swirls like clouds at mountaintops, laden with clear crystals as bright as raindrops, a shawl of mist and dew drifting like a nebulous halo about her. And on the right, a lady with striking purple hair and a dress as dark as midnight, flaring outward like the petals of a mountain flower at the skirt and sleeves, hair ascending in a complex style of loops and knots. She stood on black boots that shimmered with stars, long strips of night wrapped around her ankles and shins. Beside her stood a majestic mare with a sleek black coat and scaly dragon's wings, every hair combed to perfection by the sprites who sat tittering in the stands.

The God of Records whirling in a cloud of threads and inky letters, glowing eyes taking in the crowd. "I would like to introduce both souls before they are christened. The first was a mortal ghost; her worldly name was Akera, and she died while handling of the Spear of Heaven in her battle against the Spirit of the Dark. She lived a life of unbridled suffering, and repeatedly resisted the temptation to die at her own hand, or to harm another. She chose, in her dying moments, to defend the world that had caused her this suffering. The Council of the Deities finds this grand and admirable.

"The second is the ghosts of a demigoddess destroyed; her name was Deina, and she died doing her duty, defending her tower for fourteen millennia alone, from the beginning of the world up till the day the Shard of the Goddess' Blood was taken and her world destroyed, her alongside. The older gods attempted to forget her out of convenience, but the Council of the Deities have ruled such treatment undeserved and unfair. Her loyalty will not go unrewarded."

Chatter and applause rose, the sound of rain and chimes. Amid it, the God of Records turned to face the pair.

"Akera, you will henceforth be known to the Council and the world as the Lady of Mercy. By the Will of the Dragon we vest in you the power to grant reprieve to those on whom law has become unfairly cruel, to absolve of sin those who have paid more than their due, and to relieve of suffering those who have suffered beyond their time. This should be governed by guidelines that you will draft with the Council.

"And Deina, you will be known to the Council and the world as the Lady of Justice. By the Will of the Goddess, we vest in you the power to award to the wronged what is deserved, to enforce law where it has been neglected, and to reward or punish rightfully where no law has been lain down. This should be governed by guidelines that you will draft with the Council. May this repay your sufferings during your lifetimes."

"Thank you," answered the Lady of Mercy. Justice stayed silent and bowed.

It was five years after his departure that Caleix came stumbling wearily to the edge of Orbis' last garden, years of books weighing in his haversack, when a white figure rose from the swirling snow, humming wordlessly.

"Who are you?" he whispered, arms dropping to his sides, knees threatening to buckle in her divine glow.

"Mercy," she replied.

And she lifted his mirror from his pocket, swallowing it in light and shattering it in her hands.

Caleix gaped, reaching a hand into the light, but only bright fragments whispered between his fingers, slitting red lines through his skin. He breathed, the snow whirling through the light so they were one and the same.

Then the light was no more—and in its place cowered a shivering figure, her eyes blank and bright in the cold, tears tumbling into the snow.

"Ceramina—Eleira—" he shouted, catching her trembling figure by the shoulders, pulling his cloak off and wrapping her in it, and pulling her close, so close, so that there was nothing in the world but her warmth, and no one but she. Nothing else. A single point of warmth in a world of snow and ice.

Ceramina was crying, weeping hot tears into his shoulder. "Celdan," she said raspily, "Celdan, was it a dream?"

"Yes, my dearest, yes, it was." The cherry blossoms fluttered. The windows gleamed. Their sons were sleeping and the stars shone on their closed eyelids. "Just a long and frightful dream."

The Dragon smiled down, listening to the new songs as they caught like fire on the late spring air, breaking free of His measured melody, sending up trills and glissandos of their own.

Coincidence it was that began this tale, but it was not coincidence that ended it. Not a moment in time, but millions of lives crossing, weaving wilfully with and into each other, like rivers and tales—sweating and bleeding, clawing through the earth to the light. Not orchestrated but organic. A scattering of sparks, sprouting out in willful design, as if seeking beauty by itself. It was this for which the gods envied humanity.