Book Ten Part Two

 

 

The Iron Pillowcase is down an arm since the last time Ravi faced her. This, in theory, should give him quite the advantage.

“This is the difference between you and I,” she says through her smile as Ravi drops, panting, to land in the wasteland of eviscerated earth that had once been a courtyard. “You are just a boy. Still wet behind the ears and blushing at everything. You’ve discovered your Trait and think it’s all you need.”

The ground shakes, and Ravi dives aside as a monstrous chain bursts from beneath him, bringing a rain of jagged rocks down on him. Smaller chains clinging to the monster’s links sling more precise projectiles his way, and he is unable to dodge them all. Another one crashes into his hip, sending a lance of pain through him. He stumbles as the mega-chain crashes back down and begins burrowing again.

“Ravi!” Emerald yells.

Ravi’s eyes find the Iron Pillowcase, and he bounds aside just as the morning-star hits like a meteorite.

His arrows hit nothing. Even scattered all over the courtyard as they are, he cannot bring his opponent close enough to them to strike his curse-breaker through her as he did last time. He only has a few left. His bones feel bruised, and his lungs scream at him with every breath he is forced to inhale. Even if he can destroy the chains, it seems to cost her nothing to make more.

He puts another arrow to his bow, meets the woman’s eyes.

She laughs. “Oh yes. That’s it. Those defiant eyes…” she licks her lips. “Eventually, you’ll beg. But not before I’ve had my fun…”

The earth shakes again, and Ravi starts running.

 

Emerald is winning. She flits around the cyclops, untouched by the broad strokes of his tree-sized quartz club. Her breath makes slag of his armour and, though his reactions are fast, she only needs a handful of seconds to burn through the steel. He is tenacious, however, and she has not yet been able to burn through his helmet. She growls in frustration as she further singes his hand instead of the enormous bucket that should make for such an easy target. He roars through the pain of his skin crisping to black and swings his club down once more.

All the time he can make Emerald waste is time that she cannot come to Ravi’s aid. The crafter is right that he is inexperienced. She has clearly achieved her rank among the guard by more than just her ability to craft – it shows in how quickly she has adapted to Ravi’s curse-breaker. In how she has kept Emerald’s interference in their fight to a minimum.

Emerald lands before the cyclops and scowls. Though the Darkness still lurks below, a threat to all life in the Song, she can no longer afford to hold back. She will just have to trust in Riyo and the others to get that job done. She inhales her pilot.

The cyclops is not wary of her sudden stop. He lunges forward, raising his club over his head and screaming with the force of the downswing. Emerald feels her blood catch, feels the warmth of its power rush through her body. Her eyes burn with it, her muscles ache with it. Everything seems to go still, each moment crawling past her attention like its place in time has been forgotten. She looks up, and her breath bleeds between her teeth in a hiss that lasts a lifetime.

The club lands, and the staircase down the hill splits in half. The gatehouse, now bereft of the drawbridge that defined its purpose, buckles in the centre and crumbles into the chasm created beneath it. The moat oozes in, moving more like treacle than water. A sickly crocodile follows the new current languorously over the edge and into the pit.

“Emerald!” Ravi yells, then swats the morning star aside with his dagger – his curse-breaker barely numbing the shock that rides up his arm from the impact. Flickers of light lash out behind the ball of true iron and tear apart the crafted chain behind it, but another snake-like series of links strikes out from the ground and grabs it out of the air, lashing it once more towards Ravi. It catches his shoulder and sends him tumbling to the ground with a yell of pain.

The Iron Pillowcase stands over him, the chain dangling from her arm reeling the morning star slowly back in. She puts her bare foot in the middle of Ravi’s chest and presses down, making him gasp.

“Now that your dragon friend is gone, I can take my time with you.” She leans down, putting more weight on him. Her fingers stroke his chest, then curl around a single feather by his throat. “I wonder…” Her expression turns vicious, and she yanks the feather out.

Ravi screams.

“I wonder what you’ll look like once I’ve finished plucking you.”

“Huh?” Momber says.

The Iron Pillowcase looks up.

The cyclops is staring at his club. The wicked black stone is riddled with cracks, and he blinks at them as they begin to fill with light.

“It’s pink,” he says.

Ravi closes his eyes and turns away.

The club explodes. The insides of Ravi’s eyelids are seared pink, and it feels as though someone has punched him in the eardrums. The weight lifts from his chest, replaced by a hot pressure that seems to weld his feathers to his body.

The formless noise subsides, replaced by a numb ringing and the rainfall sound of rocks returning to earth. Ravi sits up, fluttering his eyelids and peering through the dust. The crack in the world tapers to a point where the club landed, stopping at the heel of a flame-wreathed talon. Emerald’s mouth turns up at the corner. She looks past Ravi, towards the Iron Pillowcase.

“Don’t count me out so quickly, human.” She takes a step forward, her wings opening wide and her tail lashing the broken ground. “And don’t underestimate my friends, either. Ravi, we’re switching again.”

Ravi takes a slow breath and breathes it out, then stands up just as Emerald reaches him.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Emerald says. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He winces, but her cowl doesn’t touch him. He can’t even feel it. “Riyo’s taking the long road to the Reach so that she’s strong enough to cross it when she gets there. We’re going to get stronger, too.”

“Right.”

“The big guy is slower than you. He can see well, but it’s useless if he can’t respond in time.”

“I can work with that,” Ravi says. “What about you? You won’t be able to resist her reality completely.”

“We’ll see,” Emerald says.

“Good luck, then.” Ravi gathers his strength, ignoring the ache of his bruises, and springs towards the keep. Momber Maul, dazed by the explosion, is just now returning to his feet. He looks like a tin soldier that has barely survived a house fire. His armour droops and drips away from holes in its plates. His tabard and mail are shredded and charred, revealing thickly-haired skin beneath.

“Dragon!” he roars. “You broke my club!”

“You’ll have to take that out on me,” Ravi says, drawing to his cheek.

The cyclops raises one arm just below his eyes slit, ready to cover it as soon as Ravi fires. He lets out a frustrated, child-like growl. “Let me help my family!”

“We are trying to help your family,” Ravi says.

Momber does not believe him. He charges forward, eye-slit covered with a massive fist. His other arm comes down like a felled oak and smashes more rocks. Ravi is already behind him, bow raised, but there is no opening there to exploit. He has three arrows left, and one of them needs to hit the cyclops in the eye.

With a roar, Momber drags his hand around, throwing more debris into the air and forcing Ravi to back away. He feels their gazes meet through the cloud of dust and rocks. This close, he can make out the cyclops’ sunset-orange iris shining in the gloom within his helmet. Momber scoops up a fragment of his club twice Ravi’s size and hurls it at him. It skips off the floor and hits the wall of the keep like a shot from a trebuchet, opening another jagged hole in the masonry that cleaves through several floors. And it gives Ravi an idea.

He bounds up to the highest point of the hole as the cyclops charges closer. Mortar crumbles as he uses the broken façade to launch higher, out of Momber’s reach. His curse-breaker-charged dagger sinks into a gap between two stones like an ice axe, giving him a hand-hold. He swings up onto it and jumps, arcing over the cyclops with an arrow bending his bow.

That orange eye doesn’t lose him for even a moment, and so the arrow streaks into the ground between the cyclops’ legs when he jerks backward at the last second. Ravi’s penultimate arrow slips free of his fingers as he falls towards the courtyard, spinning and crackling up out of his reach. The last finds his bowstring, and his curse-breaker rolls around it. The steel point twinkles with caged lightning, and Momber’s gauntleted fist rises to intercept it.

It misses completely. Momber grins. He has been watching the bird boy’s quiver, waiting for him to grow impatient and waste his last three chances. He lowers his guard.

A crack of blue light catches his eye just above him.

The arrow almost seems to have left its glorious path on Ravi’s vision. A streak of blue light touches a point beneath the cyclops’ legs. A spark makes a flash, and then the arrow is moving upward. A dagger in the wall of the keep makes another spark, and the arrow is striking towards the heavens. A final spark – a tumbling arrow, lost in a fall – and Ravi’s final arrow streaks over the top of a giant fist and into a slim slit between two sheets of steel.

 

Emerald flares her cowl and roars. Chain links soften and tear asunder as she spreads her wings. Though her soul is burning away, she grins. The Iron Pillowcase watches, panting. Sweat drips over her bare skin, matting her hair and stinging her wound. A palm she no longer has feels clammy with it. Her head aches with the promise of agony when her reality finally falls, but she pushes against it. The king has promised her everything and she will not give it up, even in the face of a burning dragon.

The ground shudders, and the monster chain strikes from beneath like a deepworm of the Glimmering Sands. Emerald’s claws dig into its first link, holding her fast as she is driven into the air. The pressure it creates is like a breeze compared to Riyo’s attempts at crushing her. At the apex of the strike, Emerald leaps, her wings catching the warm afternoon air. She inhales, then breathes.

A pillar of roaring pink lances through the giant chain, sending molten metal cascading from every impact as it pierces each link. Emerald folds her wings and falls back towards it, then slams them back against the wind to give her speed. She grabs the top of the chain and drags it down, her flames eating at the metal like it’s butter. She smashes it down in front of the one who crafted it, blasting the first link to cracked, glowing fragments and roaring boiling air at her.

The Iron Pillowcase falls to her knees, panting and clawing at the earth with her remaining hand. Emerald can hear the quiver of fear in her every pained breath.

“So strong,” she gasps.

“Still not strong enough, though,” Emerald says, stepping on the morning star and shattering it.

Momber Maul shrieks, rending the world with his voice and drilling into Emerald’s skull until she roars indigo fury at the sky in retaliation. She turns to find Ravi on his knees in front of the cyclops, his fingers in his ears and his eyes screwed shut. Momber is clawing at his helmet, at his gauntlets, trying to escape from twisted metal that no longer disengages properly. As his scream fades, his actions become more frantic, until the metal itself breaks apart in his mighty grip. He twists free his helmet and flings it aside.

The left side of his eye is filled with blood. The blood vessels in the other half of the eye make dreadful cracks across the white, and his pupil is almost wide enough to hide his iris completely. Flakes of orange-white light glitter around its edge, sometimes escaping into the air in front of him.

“No,” the Iron Pillowcase says, trying to scramble to her feet. She winces in pain once she reaches one knee and has to stop.

“Looks like we win,” Emerald says.

“No. No you don’t. You’ve doomed us all.”

“Uh,” Emerald says, returning her attention to the cyclops. “We have?”

Momber’s eye is now leaking light, and orange flashes run beneath his skin down his neck. Crackles and bursts escape his eye, and the pupil shrinks slowly towards its centre. It reveals burning sunlight in his iris.

“The cyclops are sometimes called the rage of the mountains. They’re berserkers. Their eyes are as resilient as the rest of them, but they’re unimaginably sensitive.”

“So poking him in the eye… just makes him really mad?”

“To the point of losing consciousness. Their most fearsome warriors carry blades they use to cut their own eyeballs, sacrificing themselves to utterly destroy their enemies. They leave nothing standing. Nothing alive. It’s where the phrase ‘blind rage’ comes from.”

Emerald sighs. “Ravi, get back,” she shouts.

Ravi nods and jogs up, stopping by Emerald just as the cyclops’ iris closes down completely.

“Are we worried about that?” he says.

“Very,” Emerald says. “Get her out of here,” she gestures at the exhausted crafter. “I’ll try and shut him down.”

“You can’t…” the Iron Pillowcase says. “You…” She winces again.

“You should close your reality,” Ravi says.

She looks up at him. Tries to draw on her anger at losing her arm, her hatred for the bird and his friends. She even tries to clutch to her fear. Nothing will displace the pain, and she knows that he is right. If she doesn’t close her reality now, she will die.

“Screw you,” she manages, before letting her reality collapse and accepting the darkness that comes next.

She falls into Ravi’s arms, and he frowns.

“I guess that’s fair,” he says. He tries not to think about where he is putting his hands as he lifts her over his shoulder. Thankfully her chains do not need to be upkept by her reality just to continue existing, so at least she retains what little modesty she had.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” he asks Emerald.

“Yeah. If I can’t stop him, I’ll fly away. Just get to a safe distance. I don’t think this is going to be pretty.”

Ravi can feel the cyclops rage pressing down on him already. He heads down the hill towards the ruined gate, casting one look back at the giant. His eye glows and crackles, his muscles give off searing puffs of light. He raises his arms and tears his armour down from his shoulder, exposing an iron-muscled chest. Steel, leather and wool litter the ground as the rest of his armour comes away. Then he sniffs the air, his lips peeled back in a snarl that seems to hate the very universe. He turns towards Emerald and raises a fist.

“Oh boy,” she says.

 

 

 

“Illiana Frostburne was known as the Unbroken Wall,” Longshank says from up in the gallery. The stairs are packed with puppet guardsmen, and neither of the Frostburne royals will give Rolleck the Lost time to break through them and stab the heart of the hydra. Illiana’s hammer crashes into the ground in front of him, shattering the marble beneath the carpet and leaving her open to a riposte. Torus covers the gap, his sword glancing against Rolleck’s with an anguished clang. Rolleck grunts as he shoves the blade aside and thrusts in, forcing the golden-armoured ghost back, but it is too late. He rolls aside to avoid another hammer blow.

“She married her childhood friend, who grew up to be a great general. She, on the other hand, grew up to be a brute. She always led the charge from the front, and always survived. Her strength was legendary, and they called her hammer Nightfall.”

Nightfall falls, but Rolleck lunges forward rather than away. The overhead blow becomes a swing in response, but it is low. Rolleck leaps over it and jams his sword into the ghost’s faceguard. His momentum carries them both to the floor, where his sword breaks the back of the helmet and pins it to the carpet.

He dives forward, but he feels Torus’ sword on his leg as he does so. The sound of his heart is briefly drowned out by laughter that only exists inside his head. Pain rushes through him, tightening his chest and then seeping out with his blood.

“Torus Frostburne was known as the Golden Voice,” Longshank goes on, apparently unfazed by the demise of one of his ghost warriors. “The most beloved of the Frostburne kings. Even more so than Tondwell.”

Rolleck forces himself back to his feet. He can already barely feel the cut on his leg, but he knows that is dangerous, too.

The more you bleed, the easier you are to catch, the voice says.

Help me, a different voice says.

Rolleck parries a thrust from Torus and stumbles back. His leg almost gives way, and he has to duck a swipe meant to take his head. He roars and drives forward, but the ghost’s defence is too good.

You broke something, the new voice says while the other one laughs and his sword sings. Rolleck’s head feels full.

“His swordsmanship was honed through years of duels like this one. He won his husband’s heart on the end of a rapier and toured all the Songs as an emissary of Frosthold. He duelled the very best swordsmen and women from Everstall to Tower’s End and never lost. His sword, Whisper, was said to have a siren’s call that would not let anyone escape its voice.”

He’s controlling us, the new voice says. It is deep, but undeniably feminine. Like puppets. But when you stabbed me, you cut something.

Rolleck glances at the fallen Illiana. The armour is struggling to rise.

Torus presses in, and despite the hum of his blood and the oil leaking down his arm he is forced back. More cuts appear in his suit alongside those inflicted by the Ligmist-man. His waistcoat is now a wreck. It is one of his favourites, too.

He is still controlling me, but I can fight it for a moment. I can help you.

Rolleck doesn’t know how to respond to the ghost inside his own head. And besides, he is busy being torn to shreds by a professional duellist. Rolleck has fought his fair share of duels, of course, but he feels clumsy compared to Torus and Tondwell. Whisper’s scalpel point draws another line down his forearm as he twists away, rolling back towards the centre of the room.

He feels a presence behind him, too late to turn.

Jump.

He does. Something touches the bottom of his foot, and he grins as understanding dawns.

“Ha!” Longshank says. “You cannot kill a ghost like that, you fool.”

He hadn’t been lying about Illiana’s strength. The push sends Rolleck high above the gallery. A series of black vision slits follow him up, but inside one of them a pair of eyes widens. The one with an enviable length of well-groomed moustaches drooping out of it.

Rolleck’s sword arm flashes out and barbed wires slash into the man’s armour, wrapping around his arms and shoulders. A pull misbalances him, and jerks Rolleck through the air towards the balcony. He slams shoulder first into Longshank and they hit the floor, Rolleck coming down hard on the old captain’s chest and driving the air from his lungs. His bucket tumbles across the carpet and clangs against the wall.

The puppets around them all turn in, levelling crossbows and spears at Rolleck.

“The princesses asked me not to kill you,” Rolleck says, pressing his sword to Longshank’s throat. “Don’t make me break another promise.”

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and his left eye goes wide. His right eye, however, is as black as a starless night. Rolleck can feel him shaking.

“The master…” he chokes, “cannot be… disobeyed.”

His arm jerks up, and Rolleck slams his fist into the side of his head. His good eye loses focus, then rolls up into his head. His body goes limp and, with the crash and clatter of an explosion in a pantry, all of his puppets collapse into their constituent parts.

Rolleck holds the sword beside the man’s throat for a little longer, but the only sound is the beating of his own heart and the disappointed sigh of his blade at the cessation of its beloved violence.

“His strings are gone,” Illiana says, appearing beside him.

“Thank you, stranger,” Torus says, appearing a moment later.

Rolleck stands and regards the pair of ghosts. They both look as they did in their primes – Illiana tall and strong, Torus lithe and rakish – both red haired like their descendants.

Illiana kneels beside Longshank, peeling back his right eyelid to reveal a gateway to the abyss.

“It did something to him that let him see us,” she says. “Once we were under his sway, he could force us to waltz with his armour puppets. We- Ugh.”

There is a flash of blue light. Rolleck blinks, first thinking that Longshank had awoken. But the dagger buried in Illiana’s chest is held in a twisted, blackened hand. The arm has emerged from beneath Longshank.

“Shit,” Rolleck says as the ligmist man rises from the shadow under the fallen captain’s arm. Illiana stumbles back. Her scream starts in the air, then fades until it is only in Rolleck’s head. Then it is gone. Her incorporeal form frays away from the dagger like the Deis Lisanna had back in Fefille.

Rolleck lunges for him, but a flash of blue curse-breaker meets him. He is shoved back and hits the railing around the gallery.

“I should have known the old man would fail,” Groven says, kneeling beside Longshank. He takes his dagger and pushes it slowly into the captain’s black eyeball. Dakness flows from the wound like blood, dripping upwards over the blade and onto Groven’s hand. He shudders, lips parting as though in ecstasy.

“This is not good,” Torus says. “I cannot help you without a host, stranger.”

“It’s Rolleck,” Rolleck says. “And it’s fine. Go and find the princesses – see if you can help them.”

“Very well. Good luck, Rolleck.”

The ghost vanishes, and Groven’s eyes snap open. One of them is flushed with inky darkness.

“Oh, no,” he says. “You spirits have been interfering in a future you should have had no part in for too long.”

He flickers into shadow, his master’s sight showing him the spirit’s path. He can feel a new strength flooding him, familiar and yet still so enticing. He flits out of the shadow beyond the door and rams his knife home, teeth shining in the light of his Trait.

A grey blur mars his vision for a moment, like a guillotine falling past far too close to his face. He recoils, watching the ghost’s back get further away. Unblemished. His dagger is falling to the floor, and with it… His hand.

Groven screams and dives back into shadow, emerging near the top of the stairs. He stares down at the stump of his wrist, then looks up at the swordsman. His left eye flashes, red and inhuman. He grins.

“The master,” Groven says, “will not… be denied.” Power surges through him, and the blood leaking from his wrist goes black.

Rolleck watches as the man’s blood forms a new hand at the end of his too-long forearm, and he feels his smile fading.

It would be too easy, otherwise, the voice says. There is a grin in its voice. Run.

“Not this time,” Rolleck says.

There is darkness leaking into Groven’s other eye, now. He turns both on Rolleck and hisses.

“The master… will take… everything.”

 

 

 

 

Tondwell Frostburne, first of his line, Guardian of the Icebound Walls, King of all Frosthold, made very few mistakes in his life. He took the throne of a kingdom, ended a dreadful war, ruled justly and fairly, and was ever and always good to his family.

He has realised, since his death, that this does not matter. The number of mistakes is irrelevant in the face of their magnitude, and no amount of good can make up for even the smallest jot of evil. Whether one works at fixing one’s mistakes for ten years of four hundred, they can never be truly undone. Not so long as someone remembers you made them. Though generations have passed since the last person who knew of Tondwell’s great mistake died, he still remembers it. And never more so than now.

The dungeon corridor is nigh unchanged since the day he killed his brother. Grey iron doors march through the darkness, barely different from the grey stone walls that separate them. Now, as then, they hide empty cells. Prisoners haven’t been kept down here for more than ten years. Dust gathers thick in the air, but there is a trail leading through that which has settled on the floor. It leads to the back wall, where a hole bores deeper into Valos’ darkness.

“It wasn’t your fault, Tondwell,” Fortissa says.

I let the darkness in.

“You couldn’t have known.”

I could have asked more questions. I could have shown more caution. I could have waited but a handful more hours for when the World Force arrived.

“Or you could have watched the titan destroy Frosthold. Kill your people. Your brother.”

I failed them all anyway.

“But your inability to forgive yourself for it is what made you fail them again.” Fortissa winces at her own words, but keeps on. “Do you think Sanella will be glad of everything you’ve done to keep her safe? The lives you’ve fed to that creature?”

Of course not. But what was I supposed to do? Let her die?

“Would she have wanted you to?”

… Yes. After all this time… She probably hates me more for allowing her to continue living in captivity than she would have if I had killed her myself. I couldn’t, though. Not after Talbot.

“It’s time you accepted that the Darkness is the enemy, Tondwell. That the responsibility for all of this lies there. Even if you made bad choices, they were choices it forced on you with no good options. It only gave you that false agency in the first place so that you would convince yourself you are to blame and let it keep you under its control. You did exactly the same thing to me over what happened to Indessa.”

Fortissa steps through the hole in the wall, her greaves finding rough stairs cut into rough stone. The smell changes from dust to earth – a deep, damp smell. Riyo and Glitter follow her, Riyo shushing Glitter the moment he seems like he will ask the princess to explain the half a conversation they have just overheard.

I’m sorry, Fortissa.

“I forgive you, Tondwell. What you put me through is what you yourself have been experiencing for hundreds of years. We have a chance to make it right, now, for everyone.”

The air grows colder as they descend. This does not bother the haunted princess wrapped in the Chill of the Grave, nor the ice crystal wrapped in steel and glass.

Riyo shivers. “I just can’t seem to dress right for this adventure.”

“It shouldn’t be this cold,” Glitter says. “Something is changing the temperature.”

Fortissa comes to a halt as the narrow cave suddenly opens up. The trickle of water patters around the space, giving a sense of its depth that the flickering light of Fortissa’s sword cannot. There is a soft sound from above, and a handful of stones and dust clatter down the wall to their left.

A wall of snow shoves Fortissa and Riyo into the cavern, sledging them down a shallow incline of loose earth. Something massive hits the ground behind them, blue light skirting off a glossy carapace. The cold bludgeons them and chitinous whispers clutter the air, seeming to come from a hundred different places at once.

“The end is here.”

“The seven come.”

“Cold.”

“Darkness.”

“The world ends.”

“Nightmare.”

“Death prevails.”

“Mana.”

“Light fails.”

 “Destruction.”

“Silent suffering.”

“Desolation.”

“The End.”

“That feels like a bit much,” Riyo says, frowning back up at the creature.

“What is that?” Fortissa says.

Insect-like legs shuffle and a maw of vile teeth opens like a sinkhole before them. Breath like a mass-grave of incontinent rodents rolls over them, driving them back in disgust rather than fear. The creature looks like a beetle, its face and abdomen covered in a thick black carapace. It has too many legs to be a beetle, however, and eight black eyes shine in the firelight.

It recoils a little, then spits something from its gross mouth. Fortissa’s sword flickers across its path, keeping it from hitting Riyo in the face. Riyo just wrinkles her nose.

The substance is white and twinkles with frost, and it wraps around Fortissa’s blade.

Riyo grabs Fortissa around the waist just as the creature begins reeling her in, her heels digging into soil that is too loose to keep them both from being dragged forward.

“Let go!” Riyo shouts. Then, “Let go of the sword, doofus!”

“Oh,” Fortissa says, and does so.

For a moment the creature’s face is highlighted by chill blue fire. Then it crunches down on the sword, plunging them into complete darkness.

There is a dreadful munching sound, and the light returns. The sword lands in the snow in front of them, still wrapped in flame, but now bent almost in half. Fortissa reaches down and picks it up gingerly. The hilt glistens with frosty slime.

“Ew,” she says, then glares up at the nightmare. “This sword belonged to my grandmother, you bastard.”

The creature doesn’t care. It opens its mouth and spits again.

A twinkling white hand rises before Fortissa and grabs the string of sludge before it hits her. Another grabs the creature’s foreleg, and it makes a high, keening sound as Glitter flings it away. It crashes into the wall of the cavern somewhere to their left, ending its cry in a tumble of falling rock.

Glitter steps into the light. His stubby legs are wrapped up in snow and a pair of thick arms emerge from his shoulder panels, but his chassis is still exposed. He has drawn a grumpy face on his glass.

“I don’t like bugs,” he says.

“Huh,” Riyo says. “How come?”

Glitter pauses. “I don’t know, actually. I didn’t really see any until I left the mountain – father said it was too cold for them there.”

“Albert didn’t like them, did he?”

“No,” Glitter says slowly. “I should give them a chance, shouldn’t I?”

The nightmare screeches again, and the clicking of its legs makes an uncomfortable sound as it echoes around the cave.

“Not this one, though,” Riyo says. “Sorry, but you’re the only one who can see properly in here. Can you squash it, please?”

“Sure! I’ll stop hating bugs later.”

Glitter’s right arm swells in size and, as the skittering gets closer, he raises it into the darkness above. The nightmare’s drooling mouth opens wide as it enters the pool of firelight, its voice and breath coat them all in a creeping discomfort. Then it vanishes under a massive fist and a monstrous crash that makes the cave shake.

A moment later, the snow bursts apart. The creature’s carapace has risen to reveal wings that flicker back and forth so fast that they blur the darkness into light.

“Wow, that’s cool,” Glitter says. Then the nightmare smashes into him and drives him back towards the other wall.

“Time to go, princess,” Riyo says, grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her towards the other end of the cave.

“Will he be okay?” Fortissa says, trailing after Riyo anyway.

“Of course. We should worry about us. You’re going to have to face your father by yourself if all I can do is keep the Darkness off us.”

The edge of the cave comes into view, and they follow the wall with a growing sense of unease until they find a jagged hole that looks like it was created by giant teeth rather than human labour. The darkness within exudes a cruel miasma that Riyo recognises.

“The Reach,” she says, staring into the nothingness. “The incursion is close.”

Fortissa takes a long breath and blows it out between her lips. “Let’s go save my father.”

 

 

 

This is not a favourable fight, Indessa.

Indessa grabs the blade of Cotter Lee’s sword, her fingers flashing with blue energy, her heels ripping the carpet and breaking the stone beneath as she pushes back against the force of the blow. She then drags the blade across to her other side to smash away Tolmet’s next strike. The swords crash together and bounce apart, letting her jump back before both try to occupy her chest.

“Is this what you wanted all along, Cotter?” she shouts. “To kill me and my family? To sit on that stupid throne yourself?”

I really don’t think-

“Shut the fuck up, Talbot.”

Black-eyed Cotter comes on again. Whatever the Darkness is doing to control him, it still seems to have all of his sword skills. His flowing, far-reaching sword strokes are as familiar to Indessa as his deep, strong voice. She folds beneath one, then snaps her foot into Cotter’s face, knocking him over. Her hand comes up to block Tolmet’s follow-up strike, but it wavers, slipping past her guard and punching into her side.

She gasps but doesn’t let him pull back. She grabs his blade and kicks out at his face, making him flinch back and allowing her to hook her leg over his arm. Her balance, with Talbot’s simian senses behind it, is perfect. Tolmet’s never has been, and the Darkness has not improved it. She unbalances him and slams him to the floor, wrenching his wrist against the inside of her leg as she does so. It forces him to let go of his sword.

“And what about you, Tolmet?” She pants. “You wanted this too, right? A blemish on the family that you couldn’t bear to look at. I bet you wish I’d died back then, huh?”

“No,” Tolmet groans from the floor.

Indessa’s heart jumps, and her hesitation almost gets her decapitated. Talbot’s Trait flashes, but it doesn’t stop the blow completely. She feels blood trickling out of a cut along her jaw line as she bounces back from Cotter. He presses in, forcing her to duck and roll away again.

“What, then?” she says. “Why did you leave me?”

Cotter seems to take on the fury Tolmet has abandoned, his attack sharpening to the point that Indessa can barely fend it off. The Trait flickers and warms her body, but she feels the impact of every blow she turns aside. Her hand and feet ache from it.

“You couldn’t bear to look at me!” Indessa screams.

“I was ashamed!” Tolmet lurches back to his feet and charges forward, teeth bared. Cotter’s teeth appear too, and he throws himself into a risky attack that leaves him open. Indessa sees the gap, but Talbot’s instincts show her the trap that would allow Tolmet to run her through.

She falls back, letting Cotter misbalance all by himself. Then Tolmet’s elbow crashes into his side and sends him tumbling across the floor into a pillar.

Even if Indessa’s eyes worked, she wouldn’t have time to blink before Tolmet roars and swings his blade down at her. It smashes into her forearm, sending Frostburne banners rippling around the throne room.

“I was sixteen years old,” he growls. Indessa sees his eyes flicker in their void, but the strength behind his sword never wavers. Despite everything Talbot is giving her, she feels her knees begin to bend. “Just come into my majority. Prince. Heir to the throne. Mother was gone, father reticent. I’d lost Talon, my mentor. But the people still looked to me. And I let that happen to you. I failed.”

Indessa falls to one knee, but the pressure does not relent.

“Once, Tolmet,” she says, her anger falling off to a slow simmer. “You failed once, in letting this happen to me. We’re family! I would have forgiven you, if you’d let me. But you didn’t. You failed again, and again, and again. Every time you thought to visit me and let your guilt dissuade you, you failed me again.”

Tolmet’s sword draws closer to her, its blade pushing through the Trait and biting into her forearm. Blood dribbles along crystalline steel and gathers at the point, where it drips onto her shoulder.

“All that loneliness. The certainty that I was grotesque. That my family hated me. That’s your failure, too.”

Her strength wanes further. Her heart hurts. Her body hurts. Her arm falls lower, and the sword comes to rest where her shoulder meets her neck.

Indessa, Talbot says. She feels him take over, keeping her arm up even as she surrenders. Don’t give up. I gave up on my brother for four hundred years. It is a regret that still haunts me.

Indessa looks up into those black eyes. Looks through them, to the brother she barely remembers.

“I didn’t want to hurt you anymore.” Tolmet’s voice is quiet, at odds with the ferocity of his expression.

“But you did. You still are. All you need to do, is stop.”

Tolmet blinks. His eyes are blue again, shining like sunlight off Corsmere’s still surface. The pressure on Indessa’s arm slackens.

And she strikes.

Tolmet’s chestplate caves in, the Frostburne sigil crumpling. The Trait bursts from her fist like a wildfire, grabbing hold of the air and shoving it outward against the walls. Dust and mortar fall from shaking rafters and shower the room. Tolmet hits the throne, cracking its back, and slumps into it.

Indessa waits, panting, as the dust settles, and silence dapples the moment.

Was that… the right thing to do? Talbot asks. It felt as though you were on the cusp of a breakthrough.

“It’s what I wanted to do,” Indessa says.

Tolmet’s mouth falls open. Inky tendrils emerge, feeling around like insect antennae. They drag a glob of black sludge out behind them, which falls onto the prince’s broken chestplate.

Ew.

Indessa grimaces in agreement, watching as the creature grows several more ‘legs’. It seems to taste the air, then turn its chilling attention on Indessa. It springs forward like a crossbow bolt, surprising both her and Talbot with its speed.

“Peace.”

Indessa raises her hand to try and fend it off, but the thing splats against an invisible wall a short way from her like an insect hitting the front of a train.

“Tolmet?”

He has his hand outstretched, reaching for the creature, and sighs as it slides down his reality.

“Riyo Falsemoon taught me more than she realised when she used my power to keep the Darkness out. I decided to try using it to keep it in, and it worked.”

The sludge seems disorientated, and Indessa steps past it into her brother’s reality. She lets Talbot’s Trait fade from her. The feeling of tranquillity that washes over her is familiar – it has kept her from crying herself to sleep countless times over the last ten years. Finally confined to a smaller area, though, it is much more effective. The anger that has sustained her crusade against her family for all these years melts away, seems to leave her mind clear for the first time in a long time. She approaches Tolmet as if in a daze and falls into his arms. As she does, Talbot lets go of the waltz.

“I’m sorry,” Tolmet says. She feels his tears on her cheeks. Feels dampness on her blindfold to match him. “I’m so sorry.”

“I forgive you, big brother,” Indessa says.

Talbot smiles, then turns away and leaves the moment to them. Though he cannot touch the world nearly as strongly without the waltz, he can draw enough strength from Indessa to do what he needs to. Tolmet’s sword flashes through the air and into his hand. The Chill and the Trait wreath the blade in ice and lightning, their ephemeral blue light showing through the translucence of his body. He walks over to where the scrap of Darkness is still writhing on the ground.

“It’s not quite the revenge I have wished for,” he says quietly, “but it is a start.”

He plunges the sword through the Darkness and into the stone of the floor. The creature hisses like it is deflating. Its oily substance catches the Chill, and silvery-blue fire engulfs it. Though it fights and lurches around, the sword pins it in place until the spectral fire sputters out. Nothing remains of the creature.

“The master… cannot… die.”

Cotter Lee is standing. Black blood drips from a wound in his scalp, and his body seems uncomfortably tense. His sword dangles from shaking fingers.

Tolmet looks over his sister’s head and narrows his eyes. Carefully, inch by inch, his reality expands. Indessa senses the shift in his concentration and falls out of his embrace. She keeps her hand on his arm, however.

Cotter is ensnared within Tolmet’s reality, but his countenance does not change. His black stare is fixed upon Indessa. After a moment, she sighs and lets go of her brother. To her broken eyes, Talbot stands alone in the void, but his eyes guide her slow, shuffling steps towards Cotter.

“Indessa,” Tolmet says.

“Shush,” she says. Her outstretched hand finds Cotter’s chest. She can feel the strain of his muscles; feel the way he is fighting himself. She pushes up onto her toes and kisses him on his stubbled cheek.

“I forgive you, too.”

She takes a step back as Cotter starts shaking. His eyelids flicker, showing eyes black like an endless chasm and the rich brown of wet earth back and forth. His mouth yawns open, and sickening tentacles emerge.

Talbot steps up beside Indessa and grabs them, his furry hands gripping hard and ripping the Darkness from Cotter’s throat. He slams it to the ground and pins it like its ilk, watching with a satisfied smile as it is consumed by the Chill of the Grave.

Cotter slumps to his knees, and a new peace draws in over the throne room. The sense of it reminds Indessa of her childhood. Of the long-faded feeling of being at home. Of being safe with her family. She turns to Talbot and returns his smile. Behind him in the void, there is another smudge of light. Her smile fades, and Talbot turns to follow her spectral sight.

All he can see is the wall.

“Torus…” Indessa says.

“We can face him, if we must,” Talbot says.

Indessa nods. “I was getting tired of the darkness, anyway.”

The Chill flares up as they enter the waltz, and the throne room reveals itself to Indessa once more.

Cotter stands up and clutches at his head. “Indessa. I-”

Indessa walks up to him and slaps him across the face.

He lets out a breath, then smiles. “I deserved that. And a thousand more.”

“They’re coming,” Indessa says. “Trust me.” She then kisses him on the mouth, which shocks him far more. “More of those, too.”

“Uh…” he says.

“But first, we need to free my father.” She turns to the wall just as Torus barrels through it. From everyone else’s reaction, Indessa surmises he is showing himself to them.

“Stop, Torus,” she says.

He does, raising his hands. “I’m sorry, young princess, for what I did earlier. My bonds have been broken.”

Indessa breathes a sigh of relief.

“The danger is not passed, though. Tilch’s spymaster took some… darkness… from Captain Longshank. I do not know that that swordsman can prevail. His skills were… a little rough around the edges.” He runs a hand through his glossy hair and glances over his shoulder, expression worried. “It’s like he was taught the sword by a bear.”

Indessa shrugs. “I’m not worried. I need to catch up with Fortissa.” She turns for the passage down to the dungeons.

The whole keep seems to shift a metre to the left, and everyone is thrown to the floor. Light like the burnt-orange depths of a hearth-fire cascades through the windows, clashing with the blue of the Frostburne banners and glinting off the gold of the throne. It is followed by the roar of a volcano erupting. The sound hits the back of the room in a sonic wall and seems to buckle against it, shaking the air until it falls apart completely.

Torus, unaffected by vibrations in the air and the earth, frowns back the way he has come.

“What was that?”

“The cyclops,” Talbot says with Indessa’s voice. She springs back to her feet but stays low, wary of another tremor. “He must have gone berserk.”

“What?” Tolmet says.

“We need to get to father, Tolmet,” Indessa says. “If we can beat the Darkness, all this will be over.”

“Go. You and Fortissa can reach him – his heart was always softer for you two.” Tolmet regains his feet. “I will go and try to calm Momber.”

“He’ll crush you in a second,” Talbot warns.

“I have to try. I’ve read some of the historical accounts of cyclops berserkers. He’ll destroy the city, Indessa.”

Indessa hesitates for a moment. She has just got her brother back. To part with him again so soon will hurt.

There is another explosion outside. This one lights the room in a garish pink.

The dragon is still fighting him…

Tolmet steps towards the door, but Indessa grabs his arm.

“Just… be careful, okay? If it looks like Emerald is winning, leave it to her.”

Tolmet smiles down at her. “You be careful, too. Give my love to Fortissa.” He kisses her on the forehead and walks past Torus towards the entrance of the keep.

Indessa watches him go, then turns to face the dungeon stairway.

Cotter steps up beside her and lays a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you, Indessa,” he says.

“Thank me by helping me save my family.”

“Of course.”

 

 

 

“Gravity Mould.”

Fortissa’s sword snaps straight, the Chill flame jerking after it as though gripped by a fierce wind. Its light is joined in the air by a deep red glow that promises the heat of a dying star, but that delivers nothing. It casts a shadow across a rock-strewn floor. A figure bent by a bone-deep fatigue, propped up with a simple wooden staff. He stares into the glow like it’s the fire in his hearth and he’s waiting for his children to return home to him.

“I will admit,” he says, voice cold and distant, “that you have surprised me.”

“I’m full of surprises, me,” Riyo says. Her reality fills the space and ensnares the king, turning him to face them.

He is smiling too wide, ripping a jagged-toothed hole in his unkempt beard. His black eyes drink in everything, ever hungry.

“I’m sorry, father,” Fortissa says.

“Your father is gone,” the Darkness says, his creepy amusement only deepening. “His shell is my bridge to this delicious new world.”

“I should have seen,” Fortissa goes on, ignoring the parasite feeding on her father’s spirit. “Should have been there for you.” A tear slides from the corner of her eye. “I was so angry with them, for what they did to Indy. For seeing your devastation over mother as weakness to be exploited for their own gain. I used that anger to justify so much. If I had just… You must be so disappointed in me.”

“He is gone!” the Darkness growls. His smile has turned to a snarl, the shadows making his teeth into fangs. Blackness boils around him, pushing against Riyo’s grip.

Riyo pushes back, sending the king’s expression to an even darker place.

“You do not know how much it chafes me,” he says. “There is always more time, but…” Darkness cascades from him, bubbling like molten tar and seeming to stretch a hole into Riyo’s reality.

“Father! Please!” Fortissa says as Riyo flinches, clutching at her head.

“Your father is dead, girl!”

Riyo feels something tear, and she retracts her reality around herself and the princess. Shadows drip from the king like sweat, oozing over him until his form is hidden in Darkness. It bulges outwards, malicious tentacles whipping at the walls of the cave and writhing through the light. They consume it as they pass, leaving nauseous smudges on the air. In the centre of the mass, a single, red eye bursts open.

“To waste this power.” The Darkness’ voice seems to flow from the Reach itself, hot and angry. “There is always more time, but the hunger… it hurts. The End feels it most of all. We must fill the void.”

Tentacles lash out, smashing against the outside of Riyo’s reality. The darkness seems to grow, hiding the Reach behind hulking sludge and filling the cave with an oppressive anguish. Riyo’s reality shrinks further as the tentacles begin trying to bore through it. She can feel each one, as though they are digging into her brain.

Fortissa growls and swipes at one of the tentacles, the Chill rippling along her blade. It catches the Darkness and the creature lets out an inhuman roar that echoes back through the cave. Its eye turns its burning gaze to Fortissa as it folds the flaming tentacle back into itself. It gives a soft hiss.

“Fight it, father,” she says, glaring into that eye and refusing to blink. “Help us drive it from our home forever.”

“He,” the mass says. “Is.” Its tentacles twist and spiral, wrapping around one another until they form a single inky appendage. “Gone.”

“Fortissa!” Riyo says, but it is too late.

Her reality tears before the overwhelming force of the next blow. The tentacle’s point moves like light – blinding and unstoppable.

Fortissa looks down, to the place where it vanishes into her armour just below her sternum.

Riyo can only look at where it comes out the other side.

“No!” The voice seems to come from inside the Darkness, but it is apart from it.

The tentacle withdraws, and Fortissa slumps to her knees. A flicker-flash of blue light sets the cave aflame, drawing another angry hiss from the Darkness. Its limbs unwind, flailing uncontrollably. Its eye is wide and unfocused, its pupil wrenched open.

Tondwell stumbles from Fortissa, a hole through his chest to match his host. His body is barely visible in the dampened light of the Reach, now shining past the shrinking Darkness. The creature hisses with the malice of a thousand dying souls, drawing back, and a second ghost steps from its embrace.

Tilch Frostburne wears a neat goatee and short, well-placed hair with just a touch of grey at the temples. His armour gleams crimson, the Frostburne tabard proud across his chest. Fortissa barely remembers him. The man who had stood so tall and laughed so much. The man who whose compassion she had wanted so badly to be able to imitate. The man who had made her love him so much that she had followed him down such a terrible path. Her father.

One of his eyes is the pure crystalline blue that matches hers. The other is a strand of Darkness that droops through his translucent form and winds its way back to the writhing creature.

“I’m sorry, father,” Fortissa croaks. “I failed. Again.” She lurches forward and blood pours from her mouth, splattering the rock in deep, painful red.

“Fortissa,” the king says, his words strained. “You have never failed me. You have become so wonderful. Please. Please, forgive me.”

“Gravity Mould,” Riyo says. Her tattered reality reforms around a fireball of anger in her chest. It fills the cave, and the Darkness falls still.

An axe blow of pressure plunges down into it. Its glooping form is rent in half and the earth below it cracks with the sound of a mountain falling over. The eye has closed, but it opens once more on the half of its body still attached to the king’s spirit. Tendrils lance out from the break, reaching to bridge the gap between its halves.

“No chance,” Riyo snarls, raising her hand. Her fingers crook, and she squeezes. Reality bends in on itself at her will, compressing the eyeless lump of Darkness until the weight of the world could not pull it free. The Darkness screams, but Tilch Frostburne turns and grabs the strand of abyss that still links them. His heels dig into the rock without marring it, and the Darkness is brought up short like a dog on a lead.

Riyo pulls, and an impossibly dense marble of foul sludge drifts into her outstretched hand. Her reality snaps closed around it – just a small dome above her palm. She grits her teeth and brings everything into that one, tiny space. Light erupts in her hand, raw and blinding. It fills the cave and sears the walls for but a moment, then flashes out of existence. Riyo breathes out and opens her hand, fingers creaking against cramped muscles. Her palm is empty.

She looks up and meets a quivering red eye, stare for stare.

The Darkness flees.

Tilch is yanked from his feet and dragged along the floor like a small blonde woman being dragged behind a horse. Riyo’s reality flashes out and she grabs at him, but tentacles of night whip around him and start hauling him back into the mass. The conscious part of the Darkness can fight back against her, and the strain on her mind gives it enough time to leap through the shimmering red portal, and into the Reach.

“Shit,” Riyo says. She walks up to it, lets its glow light the shadows in the depths of her eyes. She glances down at her scruffy shirt and the empty sheathes on her belt. She has always known that she must enter the Reach, but it has been a problem for a distant future version of herself until right now.

She looks back to Fortissa. She has collapsed to the ground, and blood leaks from her armour and dribbles from her lips. Tondwell kneels beside her. His body heaves as though he is breathing heavily, though no air moves through his ephemeral form.

“Go,” he says, his voice a tickle in her ear. “I will save her.” He glances up at her, and, though his form is fading fast, his eyes are like frozen diamonds. “I will protect my family.”

Riyo holds his gaze for a moment, then nods, turning back to the Reach.

“Save them. Tilch. And Sanella. Please.”

“You’ve served your family well, Tondwell Frostburne,” she says. “I’ll do the rest.” She steps into the molten void.

“Thank you,” Tondwell says. He reaches out and touches Fortissa’s cheek. The Chill ignites them both, and the waltz begins.

“Tondwell…?” Fortissa says.

Do not worry, my dear. I owe you a great debt, and even if I cannot repay it, I hope you will eventually forgive me anyway.

Fortissa doesn’t have the strength to form a reply. Her vision is hazy.

For many years I used you. The waltz shares power, but if it is not entered into equally, then one party takes and does not give. Give too much, and nothing will be left.

Fortissa’s cold, drifting thoughts suddenly latch onto that.

“Wait,” she breathes.

Thank you, Fortissa. For everything. I have never been more proud of my family than I am in this moment.

“Wait!” Fortissa says. She feels stronger. Strong enough to rise to her knees. Before her, a great blue flame burns. The Chill of the Grave warms her face, her hands. Her strength returns to her as the pyre shrinks. She clutches at her chest, tears flowing over her cheeks.

“No,” she sobs. “Tondwell. Stop.”

The flame grows dim and fragile. A torch. A candle. A match. And it is gone.

For the first time in her life, Fortissa is truly alone. So there is no one there to hear her cry.

 

 

 

In a cave dozens of metres below Saviour’s Call, a blizzard rages. A mist of ice swirls like soup, riven through by hailstones the size of squirrels. Two monstrous shadows blunder through the storm, throwing themselves at one another and crashing together. Breaking apart and then redoubling their attacks.

One of them is whistling.

Glitter finds it helps him to concentrate, even in the depths of battle with a really creepy nightmare-bug. For its own part, the creature from the depths of the Reach adds to the noise by screaming its high-pitched frustration at him every time they come together. Its tongue cannot find purchase on Glitter’s snow golem, and its claws rake harmlessly through snow that reforms endlessly around Glitter’s body.

This, Glitter is happy about. His defences are perfect. A wall of ice to guard Riyo’s back. A blade of ice to… shatter uselessly on her enemy’s carapace. This is his current problem: whether he tries to stab or bludgeon or smother, the nightmare shrugs him off. Albert had once told him that words could cleave what even the finest sharpened steel could not, but Glitter has now said ‘excuse me’ at least forty-six times, and the creature continues to just yell at him. As far as he can tell, the yells do not mean anything that its actions are not already telling him.

The nightmare’s wings flash to light as it leaps into the air, and though Glitter flings several lumpy snowballs after it, it flits out of their paths like a ladybird. It smashes into the ceiling, almost exactly unlike a ladybird, and brings shattered rocks cascading down onto Glitter. Chunks of snow break off him and then are reabsorbed.

For a moment, only the blizzard moves. Then the creature vanishes.

“What?” Glitter says. Only the howling snow answers.

The creature hits him in the back, smashing through his golem and driving him out of the front of it. He rolls end-over-end into the opposite wall, frantically drawing snow after him. The golem crunches back into existence, but he has already lost the creature again. The tune of his whistling grows discordant and panicked. A quick check of his body tells him he now has a small dent on his back, and the panic only grows worse. His defences aren’t perfect, after all.

The creature smashes into him again, this time from the front, driving him further into the wall. He lets out a squeal of terror as a small crack splinters the surface of his glass. He lets his golem go and flails with his snow before the nightmare can retreat again. Ice flash-freezes around a chitinous leg, and Glitter is dragged back out into the caver. The creature fades from his senses again, save for the leg he is gripping.

“The temperature!” he yells at himself. Albert often shouted at himself when he was working through a problem. As though every minute he spent thinking about it was wasted when it turned out to have an obvious solution.

“It’s matching the temperature perfectly so I can’t feel the energy difference with the air.”

That doesn’t tell him what to do about it, though, and a moment later he swings out against the creature’s sharp turn. He meets the wall again, and ice shatters to let him loose. He tumbles back down to the floor and lands in a snow drift.

He had started the blizzard in the hope that the severe drop in temperature would hamper the creature. It hadn’t worked, but Glitter should have figured out why almost immediately. Now it is only hampering him, so he stops it and drags it in around himself, building a dome of snow and ice to shelter him from his invisible foe. He feels the impact when it next swoops at him but, buried like a hibernating bear, it cannot get close.

Of course, if he waits too long then it might decide to follow Riyo and distract her from her fight with the king. That would be awful.

The silence starts to oppress.

“Think,” Glitter says to himself, drawing a set of frown lines on his pretend forehead without even thinking about it. If the creature can compensate for the temperature and the air movement, then he needs to find something that it can’t deal with. Something that will still let Glitter see it. Then he needs to find a way past its shell. He wishes he knew more about bugs. Are their bellies softer? Perhaps its wings are its weak point?

His dome of safety shakes again, and this time he can feel the way the snow moves as the creature begins scrabbling through it. He still cannot feel its body but, if he concentrates, he can feel where it isn’t. Though it is matching the energy of the air around it, it is only doing so at the surface of its carapace. There is a void of nothingness that the air cannot penetrate. If it is moving, however, it will do so too quickly for him to track – it would be like trying to pin down a specific patch of air molecules on a breezy day. He needs more data he can use. More information. What could help him see?

“Haha!” Glitter says.

Then a massive, clawed forelimb breaks through the snow and smashes into his body. The claw leaves a shallow graze on his glass, and a rush of fear goes through Glitter. Snow entwines around the leg and crushes close, condensing and freezing into true ice. The rest of the snow lurches out, forming into a golem around Glitter and dragging the creature after him. He swings it around and then flings it into the wall.

It fades from his perception again, though he still feels the vibrations of its roar and the crash of rock against beetle-face. Glitter lets the snow crumble from in front of his glass and quiets the blizzard inside his body. Instead of drawing in energy from the snow, he starts emitting it. His crystal pulses with light, growing brighter and brighter until all before him is bathed in crisp blue. Glitter feels the photons leaving him, changing the energy of everything they touch and pinging away in new directions. He feels them return after bouncing off a shiny black carapace.

It turns out what he needed to see was the same thing everyone else did.

The nightmare blunders to its feet and shrieks, its wings blitzing into motion again. Dust and snow stream from its body as it leaps into the air and dives towards Glitter. The gap in the air was too slow to follow, but, bathed in light, the creatures is now clear to him. Glitter draws himself a smirk.

The remnants of his golem rush upwards, an avalanche in reverse. They enshroud the nightmare in a cocoon of snow, crushing inwards. Unfortunately, Glitter cannot exert nearly as much force as Riyo. Wings stilled, the creature falls to earth, but its body is too tough. It breaks free of the cocoon with another screech and spits at Glitter. Snow rises to meet the slimy tongue, but the force behind it is far greater than before. It smashes through the hastily raised wall and slaps into Glitter’s face.

“Eww,” Glitter says, and then he his flying through the air. He extends snow hands to brace himself against the nightmare, but it raises its forelegs and claws through them. Glitter feels those claws slam into his sides. He feels the air change as they rise together, the creature’s wings making a furious buzz to cope with the extra weight.

They fly, and then they fall. The creature swoops low, dragging Glitter across the rock floor. Metal dents and bends, sending twinges of guilt and worry through Glitter. But he does not struggle. Albert once told him that, once he has solved a problem, he should not rest on his laurels. He should focus all of his energy on making the solution in his head a reality. And Glitter has solved a problem. Because on the ground, amongst the remnants of a snowy cocoon, there is a single smudge of warm, black blood. Glitter can feel its heat in spite of the creature. And he knows where it came from.

The two of them come to a grinding halt against the wall of the cavern. The nightmare’s tongue ungloms from Glitter’s face, to reveal that his smirk has only grown wider. Two feral claws jab into his glass, making tiny dents before pulling downwards to extend them into shallow grooves.

They run about two centimetres each before the nightmare starts screaming. It flails backwards, but snow floods in and snaps around its legs, holding it in place as it squirms. Steam begins rising from beneath its carapace, and Glitter climbs to his feet with a little help from some spare snow.

“I found your weak spot, Mr. Bug,” he says.

There is a crunch, and the sound of blood hitting rock is covered by another screech. Glitter cannot create the pressure Riyo can, but with enough time he can at least make his ice as hard as steel. A pair of jagged ice swords are now burying themselves deep into the nightmare’s body from the base of each of its wings.

Glitter watches as it struggles. As its body falls steadily out of its control. More blood gushes forth, the swords turning its insides to mush. It slumps down, its legs going limp. The blackness of the creature’s eyes still holds only hate. Its every failing action is still one that tries to reach Glitter. To hurt him. And yet, as that hate finally fails and those eyes lose the shine of life, Glitter feels unfulfilled. He feels almost sad.

“Squashing bugs isn’t fun at all,” he says. “I don’t think I do hate them, after all.”

Glitter is tired. It is not something he experiences often, but it is something he is wary of. He has no idea what his tiredness could lead to, because he is unique. Albert had some theories about what might happen if he expended too much energy, but they had never had time to test it. Even so, he drags his snow to him and makes a sturdy pair of legs. Riyo has told him that crafting makes her tired, but she does it anyway, even to the point of falling unconscious. He has seen Emerald, Ravi and Rolleck expend every joule they can muster without hesitating. This, then, is something people do for the sake of their friends. Glitter draws himself a smile as he walks towards the back of the cave, following Riyo’s path. He feels satisfied. Perhaps that is how they feel, when they are tired. Perhaps tiredness is not dangerous, but a physical marker for a task completed. Something to be proud of.

Something stirs the air of the cave behind him. He turns as someone strides into the light of his crystal.

“Who are you?” he says. And then, “Waaah!”

 

 

A firework display of pink and orange lights the windows and arrow slits that open into the entrance hall of the keep. The ground shakes, the air is filled with the roar of explosions and violence outside, and the shadows move and flicker across the carpets and walls. They crawl over empty suits of armour and creep behind pillars and under fallen stones.

Groven creeps with them. Rolleck cannot know which he will emerge from, and the Darkness within him has made him faster. Stronger. Angrier. His instincts for the movements of a ligmist are no longer enough, and each hit he takes leaves a deeper wound. His breath roars in and out of his lungs, sweat and oil coat his skin, and blood seeps into his clothes.

Run.

This time, Rolleck cannot run. If Groven is allowed to interfere with Emerald’s fight, the cyclops could destroy the keep. If he is allowed back towards the throne room, he could jeopardise the mission to seal the incursion. The voice knows he is trapped. He can feel its taunting tone, tickling his irritation towards fury.

Run.

A streak of empty night breaks from the shadow of the stairs as another orange flash pieces the gloom. Wires slash across its path, but not before it has scored another cut on Rolleck’s arm and vanished amidst the cluttered shadows of Illiana Frostburne’s armour.

“Shit,” Rolleck gasps, withdrawing the wires.

If you will not run…

“No,” Rolleck says, then growls as he manages to get his sword in the way of the next attack. It still nicks him, and he might as well try to fence with a mayfly for all the good a riposte would do him. Groven is too fast.

Then you would choose to die? Here?

Rolleck spins and rips the air, slicing through one of the pillars holding up the gallery and the shadows beneath it. Groven springs from a different shadow, and Rolleck leaps over him. Before he has landed, Groven has vanished into shadow once more.

Rolleck grits his teeth.

Let me give you just a hint. A taste.

“No!” Rolleck yells, but it is too late. Wires tighten around his heart and his veins burn with power. Time seems to slow, and his red eye shows him a world of muted grey. A crimson smudge flits across his vision, moving from the edge of one of the pillars to a stack of shattered armour at the top of the stairs. His sword is already rising as Groven leaves his new hiding place, and it cleaves through shadow and light. Goven streaks past him with a scream and hits the floor. The shadows that hid him fall away, letting blood hit the carpet in a steady stream.

A moment later, the entire staircase explodes, drenching the hall in dust and debris. Fragments of armour clash against flying masonry before coming to a chaotic rest on the carpet.

The wires loosen, and Rolleck falls to his knees, panting. Every inch of him aches like he has been torn apart and stitched back together. Near the broken door, Groven lies clutching his side. Blood seeps from a massive gash there, but already the Darkness is oozing through him. It dribbles over the wound and presses in, causing a flash of blinding pain and then a soft mellow of relief.

He rises to his feet, grinning wide, and advances on the winded swordsman.

Looks like it wasn’t quite enough, the voice says. There is a false modesty to it, and Rolleck knows that Groven only lives because the voice let him. Perhaps, if you ask, I will give you a little more.

“Fuck you,” Rolleck gasps.

One day, you will need it too much to say no, the voice says. But even if you don’t, I’m still behind you.

Groven extends a blade of darkness from his overlong forearm. Its edge bleeds shadow and the soft blue light of the Trait alternately, making it strobe.

“The master cannot be killed,” Groven says. There is a child-like glee in it. “He will wrap this world in Darkness, like he has countless others.”

“Did you always serve a monster, Groven?”

The spy looks up to the broken stairs. Prince Tolmet stands at their head, his armour battered but his eyes as clear as fresh-formed ice.

Groven blinks. “Of course. The master has always called to me. He brought me here. Showed me the holes in your family, in your hearts. Manipulating Tilch and Tondwell was the easiest thing in the world.”

“You…” Tolmet says, his expression darkening. He grabs the hilt of his sword. “You killed my mother, didn’t you?”

Groven gives a broken smile. “Such a terrible illness. A few dark whispers turned it into an assassination and a threat. A few nudges convinced a ghost to appear. Then it was just a case of adding two and two. Even a mind as slow as Tilch’s could see that his wife might not be gone forever. That he might see her again, if only he had whatever power Tondwell did. Whatever power was left lying down there in that dungeon…”

Tolmet’s teeth grind together. His sword clears its sheath in a rush, rage giving it power.

“Peace.”

Groven winces as the prince’s reality touches him. He feels the Darkness within him tense.

“A filthy power.”

“You’ve brought so much pain to us,” Tolmet says.

“There was nothing you could do to stop me then,” Groven says, watching the shadows shift as a new burst of pink flame outside casts everything into stark relief. “And there is nothing you can do to stop me now.” The shadows settle amongst the rubble in front of Tolmet, and Groven flashes into darkness.

Rolleck leans forward and, with a yell, drives his sword into his own shadow.

Tolmet blinks and takes a step back as Groven stumbles out of the shadows before him. Blood spurts from the spy’s chest and splashes at Tolmet’s feet.

They both stare at the crimson stain in front of them for a second, then Groven smiles.

“The master…” he says, “cannot…”

Tolmet’s sword makes a perfect arc of steel. His anger for the spymaster, so hot and fresh that he is not even sure it is real yet, draws a terrible roar from his throat. For the first time, his reality moves. Not just fostering peace, but creating it. Silencing the thoughts of war and violence with a shock of tranquil stillness.

Groven’s instincts flee him, his hatred seems to flutter away on a soft breeze. Suddenly, the Darkness feels distant. He feels as though he can see a path to peace wending its way between the black stains on his soul.

Then he feels Tolmet’s sword in his neck.

The spymaster’s head rolls from his body and bounces down what remains of the stairs, coming to a stop at Rolleck’s feet. His mouth yawns open, and inky tentacles clutch at the fibre of the carpet. They drag Darkness from his mouth, and Rolleck watches, fascinated, as the creatures tries to crawl away from him.

“Don’t let it escape,” Tolmet shouts.

“No, I suppose I shouldn’t,” Rolleck says. He walks after the pitiful lump of void and plunges his sword into it. It dies silently, writhing in its agony and then falling to pieces and fading away.

Tolmet struggles down the ruined stairs and joins Rolleck.

“Thank you, swordsman,” he says.

“Don’t mention it, your highness.” Rolleck says. “You killed him, after all.”

The keep shakes and light floods the room again.

“Perhaps we should both save out thanks for when we’re actually safe, though,” he says, glancing out of the door and then looking down at his sword.

“I…” Tolmet says. “I’m going to try and talk Momber down.”

“The cyclops?”

“Yes.”

Rolleck blows out a breath, then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Not in this state.”

Tolmet nods. “You have already done more than anybody could ever have asked of you. It is strange to think we crossed blades little more than a day ago.”

“Riyo always counts it as a victory as long as we make some friends as we go,” Rolleck says.

“She’s quite remarkable,” Tolmet says. “Far better suited to leadership than I.”

“I wouldn’t sell yourself too short, your highness,” Rolleck says, patting the prince on the shoulder. “Riyo leads a group of four idiots. You’ve been leading a whole country since you were just a boy, if I understand the story right.”

“I led us here. To this mess.”

“A glob of malicious shit from the Reach caused this mess,” Rolleck says. “You led as best you could before it and half the people loved you in spite of the Darkness’ machinations. Once it’s gone, you can go on leading.”

“Do you really think they will allow me to?”

The keep shakes again.

“If you can talk the cyclops down from the ledge, they’ll believe you can do anything.” Rolleck twirls his moustache. “Heck, if you can do that, I’d probably be convinced to follow you into the Reach.”

Tolmet smirks. “Thank you. That is where I will begin.” He sheaths his sword. “Even if the people will not have me, Momber is my friend. I owe it to him to try and save him.”

“Best of luck to you,” Rolleck says as the prince heads for the door. He then sits down. Of things owed, he knows an unfortunate amount.

The voice laughs as wires tighten and the pain begins.

 

 

 

The energy coursing through Momber Maul is ludicrous. His skin glows with it and turns aside Emerald’s claws as though it is tempered steel. His eye laser vaporises everything it comes into contact with, leaving a streak of explosions in its wake. His fists fall like the iron-shell colossi that jump off the cliffs of the Timbre Song to squash their prey. The world shakes, crumbles and roars as Emerald flits around and through the cyclops’ rage.

Her hottest flame will burn him, but he doesn’t seem to care. Blackened wounds ooze hot, red blood from a dozen places on his body. She had hoped to wear him down by piling up the little injuries while dodging his attacks, but at this rate her cowl will kill her long before he finally tires. She can feel her veins twinging already.

The cyclops’ eye pulses orange, and Emerald darts in towards him again. A burst of flame draws his rage straight at her. She feels his roar deep in her chest, but she stands defiant before it, her cowl flaring. The crackle of orange lightning across his iris tells her it is the last moment, and her talons break the ground below her as she leaps. The laser rips into the ground, burning perhaps even to the centre of Valos, and then shaking the hill as more explosions follow the beam down.

The first few lasers laid waste to lines of houses and pitted holes in the city walls, but since then Emerald has been able to point the cyclops’ ire down into the earth or up into the unsuspecting clouds.

He brings his massive hands together like he is attempting to catch a fly, and Emerald flaps her wings to take herself out of reach. She then breathes down at him – a lash of flame so potent it would embarrass the deepest magmas of Yl Torat. The flame scores a line of charred flesh and boiling blood across his left shoulder and he screams in mindless anger. He stamps his foot and smashes more of the south tower of the keep into dust with a flailing fist.

“Momber!”

The cyclops turns away from her and directs his roar at the door of the keep, where Prince Tolmet stands in dented, bloodied armour. His sword is sheathed, and his hands are raised placatingly.

“Oh no,” Emerald says. She drops to the ground and springs forward, surging flame into her left fist. Her cowl fades from the rest of her body, focusing her power into a single place.

“Listen to me, Momber!” Tolmet says, his voice quavering. The eye that burns before him is not the one that creased at the corners when a young Tolmet had pulled a silly face. “It’s okay, now! We’re safe! Me, Indessa, Fortissa…”

The eye is crackling, warping the air before it and glowing with the promise of fire.

“Momber!” Tolmet begs.

The cyclops only roars again in response.

A scaled foot breaks the ground in front of Momber, and Emerald the dragon slams a neon pink uppercut into Momber’s chin. A monstrous explosion turns everything else pink for a heartbeat, then a pillar of orange light reaches for the afternoon sky. The clouds part in a circle around it, then a line of firework bursts follows its path into the heavens.

Tolmet, squinting through eyes made murky by painful light and twisting a finger in his ear to try and root out the dreadful ringing that now fills them, recovers his feet. Emerald lands in front of him and throws a scowl over her shoulder.

“You should not be here, Prince.”

“I was closest to Momber,” he says, hearing the guilt in his own voice. “I thought I could…”

Orange lightning crackles through Momber, lighting his skin and sparking between his teeth as he snarls blind hatred towards both of them. Tolmet is struck again with the feeling that he does not know the creature before him.

He shakes his head. “I can,” he says, looking past Emerald. “Momber! Please! Hear my voice! It’s over! We won!”

Emerald gathers her flames. She is getting better at controlling them – using her cowl more effectively. It is burning hot now, though. Scorching her insides as it courses through her. Her left hand feels like it has been cooked. She flexes it and growls at the pain. Even so, she lets it fill with flame once more, watches them seep more strongly from beneath her scales.

“Momber! Please, it’s me, Tolmet! You’ve served my family for twenty years! Saved our lives!”

Momber Maul lumbers forward. His right arm swings back, and Emerald roars. The punch comes like a falling star, and Emerald rises to meet it. Their fists collide in a cascade of light and sound that cracks the firmament and raises dust and rock into the air.

Emerald is thrown backwards into the keep. The walls break around her like they are made from paper. She crashes through the throne, bursting it into splinters of wood and globules of molten gold, before tearing through the Frostburne crest on the back wall. She comes to a halt buried in the wall that surrounds the keep, stone crumbling down around her. She groans, then holds her breath. She cannot tell whether she hurts so much because her insides are on fire, or because her bones have been shaken loose of her muscles. Her cowl slowly flickers away as her blood is starved of oxygen, and she takes a long, painful breath. More mortar trickles down over her shoulder, but she does not have the energy to pull herself free. Not yet, anyway. She feels almost comfortable, lodged in the wall.

Tolmet regains his feet once more and finds himself at the lip of a crater. Some of the keep’s south tower has fallen into it, and amidst its rubble lies Momber Maul. His right arm is a blackened wreck, twisted to a strange angle. His eye is closed, his body still. He looks as peaceful as he always has when asleep. Tolmet slides down into the depression and approaches him cautiously. His skin no longer fizzes with the glow of subdermal lightning, but his fists are still larger than Tolmet.

“Momber?” he says, touching the cyclops’ giant finger.

He stirs. Tolmet takes a few hasty steps back as Momber sits up. When he opens his eye, that furious light is still inside it. His lips part in a snarl, his left arm rises.

Then he blinks, and his pupil opens. The light of his iris fades, and he blinks a few more times, then winces, looking down at his right arm.

“Prince Tolmet?” he says, massive brow furrowing. “What happened?”

Tolmet breathes a sigh of relief. “You fought well, Momber.”

“I did?”

“Yes.”

Momber looks around. Sees the battered keep and the trashed courtyard.

“Hurts,” he says, his voice quiet.

“I know. We’re all hurt, Momber.”

“Don’t like not remembering. Don’t like darkness in my head.”

“The Darkness is gone now,” Tolmet says. He turns back to the keep and adds, “I hope,” under his breath.

 

 

 

A horrible red light illuminates Princess Fortissa’s face. The way the Reach moves in this confined space makes her think of swarming insects more than lava oozing. Her eyes still feel raw from crying. Her body feels cold from the silence and emptiness around her. The sword in her hand is so heavy it is a wonder she hasn’t dropped it yet. Still, she waits. Riyo Falsemoon has promised to bring back her father, and she has walked into the Reach itself to do it. The least she can do is wait for her return.

“So, it is still here,” someone says, making Fortissa jump. She spins around to find a woman behind her. Her dark skin is broken in places by patches of crystal, like amber windows into her body. She is wearing an outfit that incorporates purple and silver cloth with old-looking leather armour. The light of the Reach slips over her bald head and shines in her violet eyes.

“You’re the crafter my brother hired,” Fortissa says. A sense of unease slides over her, and she tightens her grip on her sword.

“Ynara Velvette,” the woman says, still focused on the Reach. Her mouth is tight, her eyes narrow. “Amberritz.”

Fortissa glances around. She can see no sign of the woman’s reality, but decides she must have opened it. She raises her sword.

“Though I have fulfilled my contract with your brother already, I have decided to offer you an additional service, free of charge.” She gives Fortissa a grim smile. “Consider it a gift of my former employer.”

Something gold flickers through the air and Fortissa manages to snatch it with her off-hand. It is a coin, black and gold.

“The World Force…” Fortissa says, looking back up at Ynara. “Why?”

“As I said, I am a former member. It is by chance that I came here, but it is a fortuitous chance, for you.” She raises a gloved hand. “Stand aside, and I will close the incursion.”

“Wait!” Fortissa says, causing the woman to scowl. “My… my friend is still inside.”

Ynara’s expression sours further. “If your friend went inside then they are dead. The power I felt earlier was… I cannot risk it coming back. Move.”

“I won’t.” Fortissa sets her feet.

“Then I will move you.”

Fortissa tries to anticipate Ynara’s attack, but it is useless. One moment she is holding her stance, the next, she is encased in amber up to her neck. She cannot move but to gasp. The block of crystal slides across the ground, kicking up a trail of dirt as she is moved aside.

“This is for the good of your kingdom, Princess. The dangers an incursion presents…” She touches the chunk of amber in her cheek and remembers the sensation of burning cold. Of powerlessness and terror. A shudder runs through her.

“Wait. Please,” Fortissa says. “Just a few minutes. Please.”

Ynara shakes her head. “It is too dangerous.” She extends her hand again, spreading her index finger and thumb. Yellow crystal forms over the surface of the Reach in a delicate spiral, creeping inwards until the two strands meet in the centre. For a moment, yellow and red are balanced in a vortex of colour. Then, the crystal begins to spin. Ynara pushes, driving the Reach back.

The sound of footsteps echoes down through the cave. The gloom beyond the light of the Reach clatters with the noise, and a moment later Indessa and Cotter Lee emerge from it.

“Fortissa!”

“Indy! Stop her!”

Ynara turns from the Reach and raises her other hand. A wall of yellow flashes into existence, blocking the entire cave.

Indessa puts a Trait-wreathed fist straight through it, then rips it aside. It crumbles into amber fairy dust around her as she steps through.

“Tch,” Ynara says. She plucks something silvery from her pocket and casts it forward. The air between her and Indessa shimmers a translucent yellow, and another wall forms. This one wavers like imagination made unconvincingly real. Indessa tries to smash it, and only ends up hurting her knuckles.

“Talbot?”

It… whatever it is, it dissipated my trait. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“What did you do?” Fortissa says, catching movement out of the corner of her eye.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ynara says, still focused on the Reach. “Your sister cannot break it.”

“Princess,” Torus Frostburne whispers.

Fortissa doesn’t look at him. “Please, just give Riyo a chance.”

The crafter ignores her. The whizzing spiral of crystal is now a blur.

“Please allow me to waltz with you,” Torus says, glancing at Ynara. It seems she cannot see him, however. “Together we can break free of her crafting.”

Fortissa nods.

The cave begins to shake. Rock starts folding away from the edges of Ynara’s barrier, making space around it.

Ynara’s head jerks around again, her expression fierce. “That damn sword.”

The barrier fades away, returning to the same silver glimmer that birthed it in the first place. It flickers back into Ynara’s hand. Indessa follows it, her fist aglow with the Trait. Cotter withdraws his sword from the ground and lunges after her. With another silver glimmer, a lance of yellow light strikes Indessa aside. Cotter’s foot comes down on a smudge of twinkling yellow, and within a heartbeat the crystal encases him completely.

Then Fortissa hits Ynara in the stomach, sending her sailing into the wall. She hits feet first and crouches into it, then flips off it onto the floor. There is a crunch from the Reach, and the spinning crystal crumbles and fades to nothing. The Reach resurges, seeming to worm its way further out into the air.

“You fools,” Ynara says, face a wreck of anger and fear. “You have no idea what is coming for us through that portal.”

Indessa rolls to her feet and grabs Cotter’s cage. She squeezes, and the crystal cracks apart with a satisfying clink.

“Yes, we do,” Fortissa says, levelling her sword and falling into a stance she is not quite familiar with, but which Torus wears like a cat wears its fur. “Riyo Falsemoon.”

 

 

 

The Reach is not what Riyo had expected. In truth, she is not sure exactly what she had expected, but it was not a forest. Behind her, the portal glows and oozes, but around it is only dark crimson rock. She has emerged from a cliff face that extends up into darkness, left into darkness, and right into darkness. It is like a wall where the world just comes to an end.

The forest before her is black. What look like pine trees bear needles of obsidian slightly lighter in colour than the gnarled trunks and branches that support them. Grey cobwebs hang from everything, and a gloomy mist, alive with grey light, creeps across the floor and clambers the bark of the trees.

Off to one side, a short way from the portal, an inky sludge oozes around the base of a monstrous tree. Riyo approaches it, but it does not respond to her. She grabs at it with her reality and feels it shy away, try to flee as gravity shifts around it; pulling it towards Riyo. It gloops from the tree trunk in a steady trickle, its resistance meagre and weak, until it is all gathered in a sphere before Riyo. She crushes it, wondering at the lack of effort it requires. Then again, the tree now looks no different to the rest of the forest. She has no idea why the Darkness goop was even there.

She turns and glares out into the forest. The Darkness has taken the king, and she needs to get him back. The portal’s glow probably won’t be enough to let her find it again, but as long as she can reach the infinite wall, she should be able to find her way back. She heads off into the forest.

“Um,” a voice says next to her, and she jumps ten feet in the air, landing on the branch of a tree.

“Whozat?” she says, eyes flickering between the trunks of trees and the shadows that claw at them.

The air flickers, and a woman appears on the ground below her. Her hair is long and black, starting at the most severe widow’s peak Riyo has ever seen. Her cheeks and forehead are speckled with silver scales, and her eyes are a little too big and a little too round. She is wearing a long, white summer dress that shows more scales on her chest and arms.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I wasn’t sure…” She looks around the forest, a shiver running through her body. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“That thing. The one that took me. The one that killed…” She clutches at her chest.

“You’re the old ghost,” Riyo says, hopping from the tree and drifting down to her. “Sarsaparilla.”

“Sanella…”

“Right. The old king told me to find you.”

“Tondwell? He’s still alive?”

“No. He’s a ghost.” Riyo cocks her head to one side. “How long have you been here?”

“I… I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like so very long. Perhaps a few weeks? After that… thing… inside Tondwell killed Talbot, he wrapped me in that cold darkness. I couldn’t see or speak or…” she shivers again. “Where is this place, anyway?”

“We’re in the Reach,” Riyo says. “And I don’t want you to panic,” she adds quickly as the ghost’s face somehow goes even paler, “but I think more time might have passed than you think. Tondwell has been a ghost for like four hundred years.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story,” Riyo says, turning back to the forest, “and I don’t remember a lot of it. I’ll let the princesses fill you in once we get out of here.”

“Um. Okay. Where’s the way out?”

“Oh, we still have someone else to save before we can leave. Another ghost.”

“We?”

“Yeah. Come on. We can all leave together once I’ve smashed the Darkness and saved the king. Or the king’s ghost, I guess. Hey! I guess that Toilet guy is technically king now.”

“Toilet guy?”

“The prince. I dunno, all of them have names that start with ‘T’. I sort of lost track.”

Riyo leads a bewildered Sanella deeper into the forest. The mist roils around their legs, seeming to flow away from the centre of the forest and towards the cliff behind them. Riyo walks against it, watching the darkness around her as it wanders between the trees. The silence reminds her of being in space – their footfalls are soundless, and even though the branches move as if there is a breeze, they do not rustle. The air smells like that of a dusty library rather than a pine forest.

“Can you really defeat that thing?” Sanella says when the oppressive emptiness becomes too much.

“Maybe,” Riyo says.

A cold, ugly laughter rolls through the forest.

Riyo frowns. “Somebody thinks I can’t, though.”

The trees fall away as they keep walking, until they are standing in a clearing of warm grey sand. The mist forms a knee-high wall around the space but does not venture into it. The ghost king stands in the centre of the clearing, his eyes as black and empty as the sky. Riyo stops in front of him.

“Welcome to my domain, crafter,” the king says without moving his mouth.

“Give him back,” Riyo says.

He laughs. “You have stolen away the fruit of my hard work by your obstinacy. You have dragged us further from the Crux with your meddling. And after all that, you dare walk through the seat of my power and make demands of me?”

“Um,” Sanella says, glancing around. The mist is gone. The trees at the edge of the clearing which had been visible by its light have faded into the starless night that rules this place.

The darkness leeches from the king’s eyes, slipping from the back of his head and drizzling to the ground. It soaks into the sand and fades away.

“You should not have followed me,” the king says, his eyes wide with fear. “The power he has here…”

The darkness now presses in around them, cutting off everything more than a metre from their feet. Above them, etched on the sky like a burning red sun, an eye appears. Below it, a mouth opens as wide as the horizon and grins with a mountain range of uneven yellow teeth.

“THE POWER OF THE SEVEN IS ENDLESS. YOUR WORLD WILL DIE AND BECOME OURS.”

“Okay,” Riyo says slowly. “I think maybe he was right. I can’t squash him. Let’s go.”

A planet falls on Riyo, and cracks appear across her reality that feel like they are being wrought directly into her skull. Blood drips from her eyes and nose. The two ghosts grab her by the arms and start trying to drag her away, but another hammer blow rattles her head and shakes her vision to a blur. Her reality crunches down to a crumbling ball around the three of them, while outside it the darkness presses. The pressure squeezes Riyo, and she cries out. The Darkness’ laughter consumes everything.

“WITNESS THE END THAT COMES FOR YOU AND YOUR WORTHLESS KIND. WITNESS-”

The impossible mouth closes suddenly. The eye goes wide, its jagged pupil contracting as though the light of the sun has appeared within it. The darkness that covers everything seems to stretch upwards towards the eye. It rises like a curtain from the forest, strands and streams clinging to trees before being yanked free. A wave of frustration and anger washes over the entire space, burning Riyo’s skin before fading away. The eye closes, and the last of the darkness is sucked away like water draining from a bath.

All around them is red, oozing metal. The forest is wrapped in the red glow of the Reach. The sand beneath their feet grows hotter, the air tends towards scorching, and where once the eye had looked down on them there is now a tunnel of fire reaching away until it is lost to sight. Until it reaches Calis.

Riyo regains her balance, clutching at her head. Behind them, the crimson wall still looms over the forest. Now, though, she can see where it ends; where the red heat of the Reach touches the heart of Valos. She begins stumbling towards it.

“What just happened?” Sanella asks.

“Don’t know,” Riyo manages. “Gotta get out.”

“Something pulled the Darkness back,” king Tilch says.

“What could do such a thing?”

“Something I don’t wanna meet,” Riyo says.

They half-run through the forest towards the wall. As the trees thin out, the ground begins to shake. Behind them, the crash of falling timber grows to a roar. Trees pirouette through the air, and a wave of molten metal climbs up and over them. Its crest foams with white-hot fire as it begins its plunge towards a crescendo of burning death.

Riyo throws out her reality and leaps, dragging a pair of wailing ghosts behind her. Down moves ahead of them, and they fall towards the portal. Riyo barely notices when she starts screaming, the heat pushing against her reality as the Darkness had.

They slip through the portal just as the wave breaks against the cliff face with a roar that seems to follow her from inside her own head. She rolls to a stop on the floor of a cave and scrambles to her hands and knees. The portal is stretching outwards like a membrane being pushed by a monstrous hand.

“Riyo!” someone shouts.

Riyo ignores the pillars of yellow crystal that surround her and that weren’t there when she entered the Reach. Instead, she throws her reality against the portal, pushing back with everything she has left.

“Spin it,” someone says, but she can barely hear over the roar inside her head.

Someone grabs her and slaps her across the face.

She blinks into a pair of angry, violet eyes.

“Spin it, you amateur,” their owner says. Her voice is crisp and clipped. She reminds Riyo of… someone.

“Oh for…” the woman drops her and turns to the portal. Riyo feels another reality inside her own, and a spiral of yellow appears before the Reach. It spins like a windmill and drags the extruded section of the Reach with it, twisting it into a braid of molten evil. Riyo stops pushing and watches as the hypnotising circle before her shoves back, and back, and back, until it is pressed against the wall of the cave once more. The crystal contracts, spinning even faster as it shrinks. After about a minute, it is no larger than a coin, and Ynara closes her fist. The portal vanishes with a comical pop. With its light gone, there is only the soft yellow glow of the crystals Ynara has made, and they show a black wall of rock and earth. She lets out a sigh.

Riyo blinks up at Ynara. “Don’t know you.”

Ynara arches a pristine eyebrow at the scorched, bloody mess of a girl at her feet.

“Nor I you. Let us keep it that way. You strike me as a menace to good sense.” She glances around. “I suppose I’m done here.” She snaps her fingers, and the majority of the crystals in the room shatter, including the odd, fizzy, translucent ones that form a cage around Indessa. “Next time, I would suggest you just let me do my job.”

“Wait,” Riyo says. “You closed the thingy. How?”

“I told you,” Ynara says. “Spin it. If you just push it will push back. If you make it dizzy, it gets lost once it loses contact with Valos and can’t find its way back.”

“That’s it?” Riyo says, then winces at the pain that being angry causes in her brain. “My master is a prick.”

“You should close your reality,” Ynara says. “You’re about to die.”

“Pfft,” Riyo says, but the woman is right. The princesses come to join her, along with Cotter Lee and the ghosts she rescued from the Reach. “Someone can carry me back up, right?”

They all nod.

“Okay. See you on the other side.”

Riyo lets go of her reality.

 

 

A mile and a half from Saviour’s Call, in a field recently harvested clear of a modest wheat crop and now bare and muddy, there is a farmhouse of old, sturdy wood. Beside it is a barn with a hole in one of its walls. There is a ladder propped against the wall beneath it, whose occupant has his shirt sleeves rolled up and a saw in his hand. Edgar Reine’s first job is to remove the broken boards, which he can then replace. Where he will find the money to buy new boards, he does not know. Inside the barn, his cows snag mouthfuls of hay from a large bale in the corner beside the secret tunnel that leads into the city. He is not sure what he is going to do about that, either, but one thing at a time.

“I’m sure they’ll fix it for us, if you let them,” Tamara says from down below.

Edgar’s wife has believed strongly in the rebellion ever since it began. She idolises Cotter Lee and thinks he will make a wonderful king once the evil Frostburne line is finally removed. Edgar does not share her conviction, but he has never been particularly good at containing his wife’s passion.

“They seem busy, at the moment,” he says. “And it looks like it’ll rain in the next few days. Best to at least get it covered.”

“You don’t think they care enough, do you?”

“I didn’t say that, dear.” He rubs at his bruised ribs surreptitiously.

“Just wait and see,” Tamara says. She has recovered well from her concussion, but even from the top of the ladder Edgar can make out the lump on her head.

“I’ll get a cloth over it,” he decides. “Then maybe the rebellion will sort it.”

“they will.”

Edgar begins sawing, but then his mind goes white. For a moment, he doesn’t know what is happening. He realises he is in pain, but it is so intense that he can’t feel it. It is as though all of his nerves have been seared away in an instant. He opens his eyes a few seconds later, the pain gone. It is replaced by a new pain in his back and rear. He is staring at the sky, and that means he is no longer on his ladder. The mud is cool against his back, and the grey clouds promise an eventual torrent, but for now just make everything seem greyer.

“What was that?” Tamara says, jumping up to her feet. She looks back at the house. “Incy!” She starts running.

Edgar stays in the mud. He can hear his daughter crying, so he is fairly sure she has experienced the same thing they did. By the noises the cows are making, they felt it too. The mass migraine is just another thing he doesn’t know what to do about. There is too much he does not know what to do about. He is starting to feel as though just getting a cover over the hole in his barn might not lead logically to the next step in his life. That, at some point, he might have to accept that it is all starting to become a bit much.

There are some days, he decides, when just lying in the mud for a while is exactly what a body needs.

 

 

“What in the blackest night was that?” Ynara says, clutching at her temple. The amateur is now unconscious. Or possibly dead. She nudges the girl over with her foot and frowns at her serene expression. A little drool leaks from the corner of her mouth, and her chest rises and falls as though she is dreaming of clean air and tranquil skies.

“I’m not sure,” Cotter Lee says. “It happened last time she over-exerted herself, too.”

“That is… distressing,” Ynara says, then shakes her head slowly. “It is not my concern. None of this was.” She turns on her heel and marches back up the tunnel, whispering a glowing amber crystal into existence above her open palm to light her way. She only manages a few steps before a high-pitched noise catches her ear. It is growing louder, wailing through the cavern like the wind. Her breath begins to mist in front of her, and ice crystals glitter softly in her light.

Ynara spins around, the chunks of her missing flesh beginning to hurt. The wailing rises with her heart rate, but the portal is gone. The incursion is closed. That creature has no way back here.

The floor in the centre of the tunnel shines with a slick of ice, and now there is a rough, scraping noise to accompany the wailing. Ynara feels the pressure of something terrible approaching and jumps aside just as something large and oblong rushes out of the gloom.

Glitter slides by on his face, crashes through one of the remaining crystal pillars, and hits the wall where the incursion was with the force of a runaway space train, wailing all the way. The cave shakes and stone falls from the ceiling. Snow rushes from Glitter’s shoulders and pulls him upright, and his scream becomes words without a pause.

“Riyo!” he yelps, drawing himself a worried face. He then notices everyone else in the cave. “Oh. Hello. Is she okay?”

“I think so,” Indessa says.

“Oh. Phew.” Glitter then turns to Ynara. “You trapped me in a crystal!”

“So?”

“That was very rude! I think?” He glances towards the person closest to him for reassurance, who turns out to be the former king of Frosthold.

“Very rude,” Tilch Frostburne agrees.

“Ahhh! Ghost!”

“I’m leaving,” Ynara says. This time her egress is not interrupted, and she vanishes into the gloom of the cavern.

“There are so many ghosts here!” Glitter says, backing into the wall. His metal body clatters against the rock as he shivers.

“Please, do not worry,” Fortissa says. “The ghosts here are all our allies.”

“Are you sure? My father told me a lot of very scary stories about ghosts. I don’t want to be eaten.”

“We will not eat you, friend,” Tilch says. “I saw the way you and your friends fought for us. You are heroes.”

“Okay…” Glitter says, but he still wears his worried face.

“We should get out of here,” Cotter Lee says. “There may still be fighting at the keep.”

“Wait,” Indessa says. “Talbot, stop being a coward.”

“Talbot?” Sanella says.

There is a flash of blue flame, and Talbot steps from Indessa. Both Cotter and Fortissa move to catch her arms as she slumps, then glare at each other over her head.

“Oh, come on,” Indessa says. “I don’t need to be able to see to notice that tension.” She shrugs both of them off. “If I can forgive you both, then you can bloody well forgive each other.”

There is a moment of quiet guilt.

“Of course,” Cotter says stiffly.

“Right,” Fortissa mutters.

“Sanella…” Talbot says, reaching for her but coming short. “I… I’m sorry. I had no idea you were still…”

“Not alive?” She has a slight smirk on her face, and Talbot feels as though his heart should quicken. But it doesn’t. The smile fades away.

“I suppose we’re both ghosts now, huh?” Talbot says.

“It hasn’t made you any smoother.”

Talbot gives a rueful smile. “You haven’t changed either.”

“It hardly feels like any time has passed at all, for me.”

“So, does that make me the more experienced, now?”

Sanella steps forward and flicks him on the nose. “Obviously not. I was haunting this place when it was two huts in a field.” She puts her hand on his arm. “It does make you the one who stuck around though. Spirits come and go more than you’d think.”

Talbot looks into her eyes, sees the flicker of mirth that he’d fallen in love with all those years ago.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Talbot says. “And neither is Tondwell.” He turns to Fortissa, smiling.

Fortissa doesn’t meet his eye. With a flare of blue light, the waltz ends, and Torus takes a step back. Fortissa looks up, a new tear trickling from her eye.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

 

 

 

The throne room feels cold. This is in part because it has a new, dragon-shaped window, but there is a bleakness about the people in it that adds its own chill. It does not help that half of them are either unconscious or dead.

Tilch Frostburne stands where the throne should be, frowning at the fragments that remain. His children stand behind him, the princesses holding onto their brother. Cotter Lee waits a short way away with eyes only for Indessa. Talbot Frostburne sits with his back to the wall by the dungeon stairwell. Sanella sits by his side, his hand in hers, while Torus rests a supportive hand on his ancestor’s shoulder.

Emerald sits at the base of a pillar, Riyo’s head pillowed on her lap. Rolleck is conked out behind the pillar, while Ravi leans against Glitter, who has decided his input isn’t needed here and is pretending to be a cabinet.

“There are some decisions to be made,” Tilch says, turning to face the room. “And they are no longer mine to make.”

“The question is,” Cotter says. “Who should make them?”

Sanella pats Talbot’s hand and stands up into the tense silence.

“I obviously cannot make the decision, but Tondwell always said, while he was planning his schemes and scheming his plans, that it’s important to take stock of where you’ve come from in order to figure out what you need to do for the future.” She glances at Talbot, who has looked up from the ruined carpet to listen to her. “On numerous occasions, he asked me to talk him through everything I knew of the history of Saviour’s Call and the Frosthold Song. Perhaps I can share it with you all, in case it will help?”

“I would like to hear that,” Tilch says, nodding. “Much of our history is written by biased hands.”

“Okay.” Sanella takes a deep breath that she doesn’t need. “Saviour’s Call was founded by refugees nearly three thousand years ago. I was one of them.”

Talbot’s bushy eyebrows hit his hair line so fast they make a sound.

Sanella smiles at him. “Still a lot of catching up to do, big boy.” She turns back to the former king. “We were followers of an old religion, now long-dead, that held that a saviour would arrive to liberate us from a great cataclysm. When the Reach began its descent, well… we believed that was the cataclysm.”

“That’s fair,” Glitter says.

Ravi raps his knuckles on his side.

“Sorry.”

“We fled the Songs closest to where the astronomers said the Reach would touch down and headed west. The prophets of our religion always said the saviour would come from the west, so we went in search of them. Hoping they would shelter us. It’s a long, hard journey out here. After facing the Glimmering Desert and the Eastern Icebound Wall, and with no sign yet of the saviour, we were too tired to go further. Besides, we had found this beautiful, tranquil place. Fertile land, clement weather, Corsmere’s clear waters… There were many among us who believed this place was the saviour’s gift to us – a sanctuary in which to wait for their coming. We decided we would put down roots and endure the cataclysm to come, raise our voices in song and hope that they would hear us.”

“Saviour’s Call,” Fortissa says softly.

“That’s right,” Sanella says with a smile. “Maybe the saviour already heard us, or maybe they are still to come. Or maybe they never will, and it was all the fancy of a group of terrified people who didn’t know any better.” She shrugs. “Anyway, we built a little town. A few of us formed a council, and many more refugees displaced by the arrival of the Reach and the ensuing flood of nightmares eventually found it. The population swelled, more farms were settled, more fishing boats built… Saviour’s Call grew so fast. I was murdered, along the way – funny, really. I’m so far past it that I often laugh when I remember how stupid the whole thing was. The council fell out over taxes, and my greatest rival paid a newly arrived crafter to assassinate me. Then he threw my body in the lake and tried to convince people that I had drowned.”

“But… you have gills,” Glitter says.

“I know. It was transparent enough that everyone knew he’d done it. Then several other council members had waking dreams that convinced them to vote in favour of his execution and that was it for him.” Sanella’s grin turns wicked. “I watched as Saviour’s Call became a city, and people grew wealthy. A council chosen by people who knew and trusted all of its members was no longer an option, and the people with great wealth took control by strength of hired arms and lobbied influence. Oligarchs became nobles became kings, and Frosthold became a monarchy.”

“It does not sound particularly honourable, when you phrase it like that,” Prince Tolmet says. He is now standing off to one side, staring at one of the surviving pennants bearing his family’s crest. “In the writings of our bloodlines, it describes our rise to nobility as the acceptance of a duty to protect the weak and powerless.”

“Lots of things change depending on how you describe them,” Sanella says. “Many nobles did help those they had power over, many did not. There were fights among noble houses. For a long time, the longest any one family held the throne was three generations. Then another civil war arose. Always, the winner was a noble and little of substance changed. That is, until Tondwell.

“Tondwell and Talbot’s early life saw the very worst of this period or warring nobles. The populace grew unhappy with taxes rising every other day. The nobles encouraged citizens to join their cause in exchange for protection from the king’s taxes. The whole city broke into factions and it wasn’t safe to walk the streets during the day, let alone at night.”

“Tondwell, through his impossible charisma and keen strategic instinct, managed to end it. He changed so much for the better in such a short time. After the incursion… well, I don’t know – I was encased in sticky goo.”

Cotter Lee looks down at the hilt of his sword. An heirloom passed down through his family for hundreds of years. His family is from the same noble stock that took power thanks to their wealth. Thanks to bribes, lies and politics. He has known for a long time that he has no more right to rule than the Frostburnes. He had hoped he could force a fundamental change in Frosthold but, apparently, he is no Tondwell Frostburne. All he has done is create another faction. One just as willing to follow a single leader’s vision as those who continued to believe in the king.

He sighs. “My family’s histories stretch back to before the Frostburne rule began.”

Sanella nods at him, so he continues.

“They are not kind about the Frostburnes. Not in tone, anyway. But in substance, they tell grudgingly of a prosperous reign. Tromell, Tondwell’s son, kept the peace his father created. I think the incursion helped with that. The people had a recent and terrifying reminder of the danger coming from outside the kingdom. It encouraged unity and the maintenance of peace above all else. My ancestors believed that that was the main reason, but Tromell lived a long time, and there was never any question about his daughter succeeding him.

“And so it went. The histories I read made a great deal of every mistake, but they were few and far between. It took the machinations of a demon from Calis to make anybody but the jealous nobles even question the Frostburnes.” He comes to stand by Tolmet and looks up at the pennant. “Even among my ardent supporters, you have always been respected, Prince Tolmet. It would take little convincing for them to follow you into a new era of peace. The only person you really need to convince is yourself.”

Tolmet sees through the pennant. Sees the city outside, now falling into shade as the sun slips away. He sees all the lives ruined, all the fear and sadness amongst the people. Sees the imaginary ghosts of those he has unwittingly fed to a monster.

“That is not something I can do easily.”

“Nor should it be,” Cotter says. “That is what gives me faith that endorsing you would not be a mistake. That, and the fact that you will have your sisters by your side.”

“If he screws up, I’ll punch him again,” Indessa says. “That goes for you, too.”

“Well, that’s decided, then,” Sanella says, clapping her hands together without making a noise. “Now, Indessa. Talbot says he’s been helping you see. I was hoping you’d let me take his place for a little while, so that we can have a chat.”

“A chat about what?”

“Oh, lots of things,” Sanella says with a wink.

“Uh, sure, I guess.”

Cotter Lee and Talbot Frostburne share an uneasy look.

“Um,” a voice says, surprisingly soft given its volume. “Sorry about this.” They all turn to the hole in the wall to find a big, blood-shot eye peering through it. “But there’s some lizards here.”

“The drakes!” Indessa says. “I almost forgot.”

“I’ll debrief them,” Cotter says quickly.

“I’ll go with him,” Talbot says. “Uh, just in case.”

The two of them scurry out of the throne room. Sanella laughs.

“Well, seems things are mostly sorted out here,” Ravi says so that only his companions hear. “I’m going for a walk around the city.”

“Okay,” Emerald says. “I’m going to go to sleep.”

“What, here?”

“Seems to be working for everyone else.”

“Okay. Pleasant dreams.”

The night has taken hold, and the stars are lost behind a flat screen of dark cloud. The city is quiet, its people hidden or fled, its lanterns doused. Ravi flits over streets filled with signs of work undone and tasks hastily abandoned. The rebels have done a good job of evacuating, though the lines of devastation left by a berserking Momber Maul probably hurried things along considerably.

In spite of the loneliness up above the city, Ravi feels eyes watching him. Though he moves quickly, those eyes never waver. Never look away or fall behind. They follow him all the way to the corner of the city where a dilapidated house wears a disguise of emptiness. Where a few cracks in the floorboards let a meagre light shine down from the first-floor window. A figure emerges from behind the curtain simulating darkness inside, her eyes shining and her whiskers twitching.

“What happened?” Meera says softly.

“It’s over. We think,” Ravi says. He is a long way out of his depth. What the princesses described about what happened beneath the keep is almost meaningless to him, except to fill him with a sense of dread. The Darkness, whatever it had been, had called itself one of seven. It had controlled nightmares, controlled the Reach itself. He hopes for everyone’s sake that the former World Force mercenary was right that the incursion is now closed for good.

“What of the king? What will happen to Saviour’s Call?”

“The king is dead. I think Prince Tolmet will take over. Cotter Lee seemed to agree that is the best course.”

“Is it true he is a Rose bastard?”

Ravi sighs. “You should wait to hear what he has to say about it tomorrow. I didn’t come to share gossip. I came to talk to the kids.” His voice sounds a little harsh to his own ears, but he is tired.

“Of course,” Meera says, and there is an edge of fear in her voice. It makes Ravi wince, but he has earned it. In his head, he sees the lizard woman from the day before. Her bloody claws, and the bloody stump of her neck.

Meera leads him into the house, then waits by the door. Upstairs, Ravi knocks on the beam by the trap door leading into the attic. The silence above him changes, becoming more tense.

“I’m coming up,” he says to break it.

The kids are sitting well back from the door, the light of their single candle twisting shadows across their faces as it flickers. Ravi closes the door and sits before it, not really sure what to say.

“I never introduced myself properly,” he says. “My name is Ravi Matriya. I just… I wanted to apologise. For what happened to Fallow.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kenta says. His voice is quiet and reserved.

“It was my fucking fault,” Gem says. He is sitting furthest back, almost outside the candle’s glow.

“That’s not true, either.”

A chill passes through the attic, and the two younger children wail in fear. Fallow is sat beside Ravi, his translucent form glowing faintly.

“It’s not anybody’s fault, really.”

“Fallow…?” Sol says, reaching out towards him.

He smiles. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“You’re a ghost?” Kenta says, eyes shining with new tears.

“Yeah. Look!” He waves his hand through the floor.

“That’s… fucking…”

“It’s really cool!” Fallow says, forestalling Gem. “I can run through walls and make things cold and stuff.”

“Yeah, but… you’re fucking dead.”

“Yeah…” Fallow slumps a little. “I… I don’t really know what to do. What does being dead even mean, once you’re a ghost?”

“Do you have to… haunt people?” Kenta suggests.

“Umm, maybe? I don’t really want to, though. And besides, picking things up is really hard. I’m not sure I can throw spoons around and stuff like the ghosts in the stories.”

“Perhaps,” Ravi says, “you should talk to someone who knows a little more about it.”

“Do you know much about ghosts, Mister Ravi?” Sol says.

He shakes his head. “Not really. But I know people who do.”

“Huh? Who?” Kenta says.

“The princesses, for a start.”

The children all gasp.

“You know princess Fortissa?” Kenta and Fallow say at the same time.

“Oh, she’s so pretty,” Sol says wistfully. “Right, Gem?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah. I guess.” His blush is visible even in the shadows outside the candlelight.

“Gem’s got a crush,” Sol sing-songs, her smile a little cruel. The two younger children join in as she continues.

“Fucking shut up,” Gem growls. “I don’t have a fucking stupid crush.”

“She is very pretty, though,” Ravi says. “I’m a little smitten with her, too.”

“See?” Sol says. “Everyone crushes on the princess.”

“So can we meet her?” Kenta and Fallow say together, their excitement lending even more youth to their features.

Ravi can’t help but smile, in spite of everything. “I think I can swing that, yes.”

 

 

The eastern gate of Saviour’s Call forms two sweeping arches. The first over the train tracks, the second over the road. Ravi sits on the grassy verge that descends from road to tracks and watches as the first eastbound train hauls its way clear of the building that houses the platform. A pair of ice crystals, one at either end, drive the wheels over the rails, picking up speed as they go. Once they have given the train enough power to get under way, the steam engine takes over. Smoke billows from the smokestack, and a whistle sounds as the train passes through the walls and off towards the rest of the world. It might even be going all the way to Ragg, but Ravi doesn’t know. He is content to watch it disappear between the rolling hills of Frosthold. He’ll ride one, one day. But for now, he is happy to walk.

A small crowd has gathered by the gate, anticipating the arrival of the new king. There is still tension. There is still worry. But the leaders of both sides have said that the war is over. That the blemish of a four-hundred-year-old incursion has finally been cleared away. The new king has promised reparations to the people that will beggar the throne as an apology for the wrongs caused. The nobles have somehow been convinced to help with reparations, too. Cotter Lee says his new police force will follow the examples set by former sheriff Talon Dorman.

Most people do not understand what has happened. They have seen, however, the optimism among every one of their leaders. And now, they have seen the abolition of curfews and taxes. They have seen roads free of rebel bandits and markets full of produce. They are cautiously optimistic too.

People also aren’t quite sure why the entire royal family and the sheriff are coming to the eastern gate so early in the morning, but they are willing to follow the tenuous rumours for the chance to get a closer look. And they are to be rewarded.

Tolmet’s armour has been repaired. He looks resplendent astride his white charger, with his lance flying the colours of his family over his head. His handsome jaw supports a broad smile, and the silver crown on his brow is elegant in its austerity. He is flanked by his sisters, both wrapped in the ephemeral power of the waltz. Fortissa wears her winged armour, shining even though dour, angry clouds hide the new-born sun. Indessa wears dark leather armour with her family’s crest picked out on its breast in silvery-blue thread. Her missing arm is covered by a black wolf pelt.

They are accompanied by a small group of guards and police officers, led by Cotter Lee; a black-clad woman with nervous eyes and round, twitching ears; and a man in a nice suit with a bushy moustache.

Tolmet dismounts before the crowd, who are not yet comfortable enough to cheer his presence but are nevertheless enraptured by his smile. They clear a path for him as he approaches the gate. In the wide arch beneath it, a petit woman stands with her hands on her hips, a large, curved sword on her back. Her blonde hair whips about in the wind.

“Saviour’s Call owes you a great debt, Riyo Falsemoon,” Tolmet says.

“Pfft,” Riyo says. The crowd gasps, but Tolmet just laughs.

“I thought you might scoff at the offer of some grand reward,” he says. “But I wished to see you off personally, anyway.”

“It’s an honour, your majesty,” Emerald says.

Ravi and Rolleck nod, while Glitter draws himself a smiling face.

“The honour is ours,” Fortissa says.

“Yeah,” Indessa says. “Thanks.” She glances around at the empty space between them and the crowd. “Uh, our ancestors thank you as well.”

“Everyone’s here,” Glitter confirms.

Ravi catches something out of the corner of his eye and turns. There are only empty cobbles, but a short way back from that spot he sees several small faces peering at him from in the crowd. He throws a wave at them.

“I’m glad it all worked out okay,” Riyo says. “But it’s time for us to move on.”

Cotter glances past her at Rolleck. “You mentioned you were looking for a town in need of a good police officer. I could use a man of your talents, Rolleck the Lost.”

Riyo glances at Rolleck, who refuses to meet her eye.

“I appreciate the offer,” he says after a moment, “but I think I need to continue travelling for a time, yet.”

Riyo grins.

“Of course,” Cotter says. “You will always be welcome here.”

“I’ve prepared you a small gift,” Tolmet says, then waves down Riyo’s protest before she can voice it. “Mister McIves?”

Gangles hurries forward, clutching something to his chest.

“Yes, yes. Here.” He thrusts an old book at Riyo. “I thought this might be useful for your quest.” He scratches at his moustache.

Riyo flips the book open, letting the stiff, yellowing pages flutter from one cover to the other.

“It’s called The Misfortunes of Calis,” he says. “It’s been in the chapter house for centuries, and I only read it the once, a decade or so ago, but your recent misadventures reminded me of it. It’s all very theoretical, of course – not a jot of actual evidence in there – but it presents the idea of some powerful creatures responsible for Calis’ demise. One of them is referred to as Darkness.”

“Huh,” Riyo says.

“That’s it?” Ravi says.

“I guess it’s just not something I feel like thinking about right now.”

“That is fair,” Gangles says, nodding, “but it also contains some other information about Calis.” He gets closer and lowers his voice. “It talks a little about the planet before it became what it is. It also suggests that there are other, similar documents. Including,” he leans in yet further, speaks in barely even a whisper, “a map.”

Riyo just stares at him from an inch away.

He withdraws and clears his throat. “Um, yes. So. Of course it couldn’t guide you to the sunlight stone, but if the mana caverns as they are now are a mana-flooded ruin or cave system that existed before, then such a thing might help you find their entrance.”

“Oh!” Riyo says. “Yeah, that would be useful.”

Rolleck covers his face with his palm.

“Indeed, indeed,” Gangles says. “That tome there was excavated from the central mana ruins of the Glimmering Desert. If there are more volumes in the same series, then they might also be there.”

“We’ll have to stop in there on the way past, then,” Riyo says.

“I’d be careful, if I were you,” Tolmet says, looking uneasy. “That excavation site was abandoned after a series of accidents. Groven was always quite interested in it.”

“Pfft,” Riyo says, then turns to her companions. “Come on, guys. Let’s go archaeologying.”

“That’s not a word,” Emerald says.

They walk beneath the arching gate of Saviour’s Call together. Rolleck and Ravi share a look of enduring despair, while Glitter sprouts a giant snow hand, startling the gathered crowd. He waves.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he says. “I hope we can see you again.”

Tolmet smiles. “The aid you rendered to Frosthold will never be forgotten.”

Fortissa and Indessa share a look, then nod. Veils of blue flame spring up to another series of gasps and cries from the gathered citizens. They burn between the royal family and the crowd, hiding them all. A moment later, five figures appear in the mouth of the gate. The light of their flames shines through their bodies as they wave.

“A strange group,” Torus Frostburne says.

Fallow nods. “They’re weird, but they’re really cool. Especially Ravi.”

Talbot laughs. “A lot of potential, that one.”

“In all of them,” Tilch says. “Do you think they can do it?”

“Do what?” Torus says.

“Take the stone.”

“Riyo pulled you from the Reach itself,” Talbot says. “And she will only become stronger.”

“Still, so many have tried and failed.”

“Who’s to say?” Torus says. “But I will say this for them: they have the makings of heroes.”

“Maybe even saviours,” Sanella says.

Everyone turns to look at her, and she shrugs awkwardly.

“Religion is a strange thing. You think you’ve surrendered it completely, turned against it, even, and then something happens that makes you wonder…” She shakes her head. “I suppose if someone saves you, it doesn’t really matter if they’re spoken of in prophecy – they’re your saviour.”

“She did come from the west,” Talbot says.

“Does your prophecy say anything more about the saviour?” Tilch asks.

“Loads of things, most of them grand and overblown. They will carry warmth into the cold, they will banish the darkness, they will soothe the nightmare and subdue the tides of mana. They will shelter us from destruction and walk resolute through desolation. They will face the end.”

That is followed by a short silence.

“Kind of makes you hope she isn’t the saviour,” Talbot says.

“Nobody would wish that on a friend,” Tilch agrees.

“I hope it’s all a load of crap,” Sanella says. “But if someone must endure it, then maybe… maybe she can.”

“They can,” Fallow says. “They’re cool.”

Sanella smiles.

The five ghosts fade away, and the wall of spectral flame wanes and falters.

 

 

 

“They escaped,” Darkness says. “If you had just-”

S I L E N C E

“We don’t waste the reserve on piddly things like that, moron,” the first says.

“Your plan was quite good,” the fourth says. “It is a shame you executed it so poorly.”

“There is always more time,” the sixth says.

“Fuck that,” the fifth says. “We fucking always say that, but it’s never taken this long. I’m fucking tired of waiting. The reserve is fucking massive, anyway. We should use it to blow away these fucking lice and rebuild it from their fucking souls.”

“Stop talking, please,” the third says. “Your voice is an abomination.”

“Suck shit.”

T H E R E   I S   A L W A Y S   M O R E   T I M E

“Seven knows best,” the first says. “Let’s just try to be a bit more creative.”

“Does anyone have a plan ready?” the fourth says.

“Uh,” says the first.

“Let me take another swing at that Saviour’s Call place,” Darkness says. “If you just-”

“Shut the fuck up,” the fifth says.

“So you have a plan, then?” the third says.

“Fuck you, too.”

“The time will come,” the sixth says.

“Helpful as ever,” the third says.

“Then it is my turn,” the fourth says.

“Wait, really?” the first says.

“Yes,” the fourth says. “I have been watching. Calculating. Preparing. The next incursion will be mine.”

S O   S H A L L   I T   B E