CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Epilogue

Afterword

Also by Isaac Keyes

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1

It was chaos.

Or, at least it looked like chaos, but it wasn’t really, if you looked.

The Skyshard Distillery, or more to the point, the headquarters of the Dravizek Celestori, the dragon cult, was awash with people running everywhere, yelling constantly. But they clearly knew what they were doing and where they were headed.

Osaarin, the massive Dravini man who led the cult, at least under Isik, stood in the courtyard behind the manor house, issuing orders and fielding endless questions. He tapped his foot nervously, but other than that, he seemed in complete control.

With nothing particularly relevant to do, I’d been standing by him and waiting for people to need help lifting heavy things, which they often did. During a lull, I said to him, “This all seems pretty well organized for an impromptu exodus.” 

He glanced over at me and smiled. “This, like many other days, is one we always assumed would come. It’s only by Inquisitor Isik’s hand that it was put off for so long. And while I’ll be very sad to leave this place, we’ve accomplished everything we’d always hoped.”

Peeking over the edge of the highest plateau was Nir, a real, authentic dragon. Revana and I had journeyed to another world and convinced her to return to Vendira, although ‘convinced’ might have been a strong choice of words; she’d practically leapt at the opportunity the second we’d found her.

But things couldn’t just be good for five minutes, of course. We’d returned, nearly died fighting one of the strongest royals there was, and then, after all that, the Gorvani army was on the march, headed towards us. 

The plan, such as it was, was that everyone would flee through hidden caverns underneath Skyshard while Revana and I stayed behind to harry the army and leave with Nir, who wasn’t even close to being able to fit into the escape tunnels. But since there was a little bit of time before everything went to shit, the cult was trying to save as much as it could, packing up books and ancient texts and rare materials.

Isik strode up to us, the light blue skin of her face slightly flushed from effort. Probably yelling at people. She was really good at that. “Preparations are almost done,” she said to Osaarin. “Start having people head towards the basement. I’ll meet you there and be one of the last to leave.” To me, she said, “You’re really going to stay and fight?”

“Can’t take a dragon through the tunnels. And we’ll buy you all more time and make sure the focus is on us. Although, there is another reason we’re staying; now that there’s a dragon on Vendira again, word needs to spread. And what better way to start things out than by wrecking as much of the army as we can?”

“Fair point,” she said as she pulled her messy, purple hair down to rebraid it. “But don’t overreach. Nir’s death would be catastrophic to everything we’ve worked for.”

I nodded. “Of course. And on that subject, how were the dragons defeated during the empire’s founding? What should we be watching out for?”

Isik raised an eyebrow at me. “I’m sure I have no idea. Such tactics haven’t been relevant in centuries. And I’m an Inquisitor, not a General. Just don’t do anything stupid.” Without another word, she turned and left, heading into the manor house.

After I was tasked with carrying a few last loads of heavy crap, I wandered off to find Revana, who was with Nir, of course.

“Michael!” she said as I came up the stone steps. We’d been through so much together, but my stomach still did loops sometimes at the sight of her. Her bright, golden eyes always shone with what seemed like their own light, and they stood out to her pale skin and white horns and claws. Golden scales went down the sides of her body, all of which I had seen many times and would never tire of seeing again. “Is it almost time?” She wore a ferocious smile, obviously ready for the battle to begin. As much as she was one of the kindest people I knew, there was a vicious side to her, and I’d personally seen her messily kill quite a few Gorvani without preamble or remorse.

“It is. Do we…have a plan? I’m hoping we have a plan. At least one that’s a little more nuanced than ‘kill the enemy.’”

“We do. You and I will briefly make a stand at the gates and kill as many as possible, before we ‘retreat’ back to the courtyard, and once enough Gorvani have flooded into it, Nir will come, roast as many as she can, and we’ll fly off on her back. We’re not going to even make a dent in the army, but that’s not really the point, is it? Let them all see two channelers of the shae,  sweeping their people down, and then once they think they have the upper hand, a creature from myth swoops down and takes even more out.

“It’s…it’s kind of what our plan has always been, you know? You were summoned here to be a symbol, and while that all stalled out for a while, now Nir is with us. And now, you and her and…I…can be the symbols of the rebellion.” Revana had spent her life working towards all of this, but she’d never thought she’d be able to channel the magic herself. But here she was, a channeler in her own right, much more skilled than me if not more powerful, and I was so incredibly happy for her.

I’d decided a long time ago that I’d be what Vendira needed me to be, and that I would do everything I could to destroy the empire because it deserved it. And that was all true, but really, really, at the end of the day, I think I was mostly doing it for her.

While we waited the last few minutes before everything blew up, Tiq ran up the stairs and handed Revana a folded piece of paper before doubling over and panting. “There…I…oh geez…I’m not that out of shape! I just…” She paused for a few seconds and got her breathing under control. Her hair was tied back, which I’d never seen before, but she still wore all of her numerous rings and piercings. “Sorry! I just ran all the way up here from a couple sub-basements underneath the manor. That’s a map of the most strategically valuable places to cast the new spell and sever the tenebrous channels. Anyway, gotta go! We’ll meet at Irina’s, okay?” She pushed her glasses back up onto her nose and without another word or a chance to reply, she bolted back down the stairs.

We just watched her go. I turned to the others and said, “Well, I guess it’s about time.” Nir took off, her massive wings buffeting us with forceful downdrafts before she was in the air, soaring away to hide behind the mountainous peaks until it was time.

I drew my sword and summoned my armor, the shae molding itself around my body in what now felt like a completely normal sensation. I looked over to Revana, who’d done the same. Her glowing, magical armor was more decorative than mine, which had ended up being an intimidating bulk that covered me in a thick layer of protection, but still was able to shift and flow so as to not hinder my movements. In every way that mattered, it was vastly superior to real, metal armor.

We looked over the edge of the plateau, but the army had moved well beyond where we could see and up onto the mountain path. “I imagine they’ll be here soon,” I said. “Let’s be waiting for them.” We walked down through the eerily deserted complex, and I wondered how many of the people here had thought of it as home. We’d only been here a few days ourselves, but already I was sad to know the empire would be taking it over, and in all likelihood, razing the place to the ground.

We opened the front gates and waited.

2

I had thought the Gorvani would send some forward scouts or something, but perhaps they thought they didn’t need to since Gor’mina, the late Fourteenth Daughter, had been here first. They probably expected to round the last bend and see a smoking ruin, their jobs already done for them, as the first few people that saw us stopped dead in their tracks. We could see wide eyes in the ones not wearing helmets, and I raised my sword at them, saying nothing. I really wished I’d brought what was left of Gor’mina’s head down here so I could throw it at them and say something menacing, but it was too late to go back and get it.

We stood and waited for them to come, and while it took a moment, the ones in front were eventually spurred on by the ones behind. They drew their own weapons and screamed as they rushed towards us. 

I stepped in front, pushing the shae into my sword until it arced out, essentially giving me an impossibly long, two-handed blade. In the small space of the front gate, I could cover the entire approach, cutting everyone down and not allowing anyone to pass.

Revana was behind me, throwing out countless projectiles made from the shae itself, and both her and my own attacks sliced through armor and bone like they were nothing. Some of the Gorvani had bows and crossbows, but their attacks clinked uselessly off our armor as waves of soldiers quickly fell to the both of us.

I had expected a bit more from the Gorvani army of all things, but these soldiers were little more than the rank and file enforcers I’d fought so many times. The only real difference was that these people had standardized weapons and armor and perhaps a little more discipline, but other than that, it seemed like they only barely knew what they were doing. But was that surprising, really? When would this standing army ever have had to fight? The entire populous was locked down pretty tight and the thought of open rebellion basically non-existent, so these soldiers might very well be fighting for the very first time. I almost felt bad for them. Almost.

As we fought, we kept slowly stepping back, as if we were being pressed, although I could have charged through the enemy ranks at any time. But I needed more space for the ever growing pile of bodies we were leaving in our wake, and trying to kill an entire army would be stupid anyway; there was only so much we could really do.

But we were sending a message. 

And judging by the fear and hesitation that was becoming increasingly noticeable in the soldiers, we were doing a fine job of it. They eventually ‘pushed us’ back to the courtyard and were able to just start flanking us when Nir’s ear-splitting roar washed over the battle. Everyone, Revana and I included, looked up to the sky where she was swooping in from behind a peak. 

A cross between what I thought of as standard western and eastern depictions of dragons, her long, winding body undulated through the air, supported by massive wings and her iridescent scales danced in the light, a different color depending on what angle you were looking from. She opened her mouth and her eyes glowed as sigils formed in front of her face, erupting into fast, lethal blasts of pure shae that slammed down into the enemy ranks and shook the ground under our feet. It wasn’t breathing fire, but I could see how it would easily become that in myths and legends. She swooped around a few times, releasing more and more devastating attacks before she landed behind us. 

We quickly retreated and climbed up onto her back. Revana fired off a few last attacks and then we were in the air and climbing. I’d been in planes before, but this wasn’t anything like that; the wind in our face and nothing around but Nir’s wings was a completely new and wonderful experience.

Until it went to shit.

I noticed something bad happening on the ground. It looked like a royal, which I’d been surprised to not yet see, and they were surrounded by a circle of Gorvani channelers, all suffused with the tenebrae. “Uh, the crap is that?”

Revana looked down and made a strangled sound. “That’s a circle of channelers, all pouring power to that royal for…something bad I’m su—”

The tenebrae exploded out from them and raced up to meet us, a long waving strand that slammed into Nir’s side and stuck there. She cried out as she tried to weave and roll — which was extremely disconcerting — but the magic held firm. “They’re trying to ground us!”

And they were. The magic pulled back towards the royal, and without warning, a second attack pulsed towards us and wrapped around Nir’s foot. She banked and rolled, but the tenebrae wouldn’t let go, and it was pulling us slowly but inexorably down further.

I didn’t have any good ideas, but I had a pretty bad one. “Let it pull us down, and I’ll jump, disrupt the casting, and afterwards, I’ll run off the edge of the mountain. You can catch me as I fall.”

Revana looked at me with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. “That’s…that’s insane!” She shook her head and said, “But okay! I’ll shield you on the fall, so try to land directly on that royal bastard!”

Nir grunted, which I took as acceptance, since she started gliding downwards.

I was still wearing my shae armor, of course, but another layer slid over me as Revana channeled. I kept my sword in its sheath and readied my shield, on which I was planning to land, and once we got close, I did the stupidest thing I had done since coming to Vendira. So far, at least. 

Nir was trying to remain stable in the face of the magic pulling her down, so I thought I was able to do a pretty decent job of jumping. I didn’t hit the royal himself, but I did crush two of the Gorvani that had been helping him channel the spell. I worried a little at myself in that moment, because the sounds of their crunching bones as I landed on them was extremely satisfying. 

I rolled off my shield and had my sword in my hands immediately, swinging this way and that, letting most of the blows directed my way be deflected from my yargeth-scale shield or bounce harmlessly off my armor. Within seconds, a few more of the channelers were down, either dead or wishing they were. The royal looked a lot like the others I’d seen: he wore billowing, white robes from the waist down and nothing but some ostentatious jewelry up top. His shadow-infused face was contorted in anger, but I just assumed that was a royal’s default state at this point. He summoned a two handed sword and attempted to fight me with it, but while it was actually capable of stopping my blows, he wasn’t exactly a pro at it.

I swung in massive arcs, trying to create space and cut down any of the other Gorvani or soldiers who surrounded us. I thought that if it had been a one on one fight, I could have taken this man down relatively quickly, and while it was very tempting to try, I wasn’t here for that. I was actually done with what I’d come here to do already.

His anger turned to angry confusion as I turned on my heel and ran, cutting through more of the lesser soldiers in a blatant attempt to get away from him. I don’t know what they thought was happening, but judging by the gasps behind me, none of them had assumed I’d make for the edge of a somewhat short cliff and throw myself off of it.

Just as my feet left the ground, it occurred to me that I should have been paying the least amount of attention to where Nir and Revana were, but I had not.

Luckily, they were clearly doing a better job than I was, because within seconds, Nir’s huge body appeared underneath me and I was momentarily on her back, scrambling to take Revana’s hands so I could stay there. Once I was righted, I looked back and yelled; that royal asshole was attempting another spell. I took Revana’s hand again and slid down Nir’s scaly side so I could twist and have my new shield take the magic, which deflected harmlessly from it.

“Let’s get out of here,” Revana yelled.

Nir turned downward and sped away from the Gorvani before leveling out.

I looked back to see one more tenebrous blast issue forth, but we were too far gone for it to be a danger.

Nir turned back towards us and flapped her wings. “My apologies to you both. I should have remembered the ways they took down my kin. I shouldn’t have gotten so close, but I wanted…I wanted them to hurt.”

“We’re fine,” Revana said. “And we’ll know better for next time. But I think we did what we wanted. We gave the others time enough to flee and you better believe those bastards were shaking in their boots, seeing a dragon and two shae channelers completely trashing their worthless army!”

We all shared a laugh, but she was right: this was the beginning of the end for the Gorvani.

3

“What the crap is that?”

As we were flying away from the army and the place where we’d nearly screwed it all up just as things were going our way, I had glanced over to the horizon and there was something deeply odd sitting there.

“Isn’t that…Telorn?” Revana asked.

It was, but there was a huge, circular…ball of darkness? Was that what I was seeing? I asked as much aloud, and Revana just nodded, staring and just as confused as I was. “Nir! Can you take us closer to…whatever that is?”

She twisted her head around to look at us. “Yes, but I fear I already know what it is.” She didn’t elaborate any further, but she did turn to head towards the capital. She beat her wings and we flew higher, I assumed so there wouldn’t be any repeats of the last near disaster. We kept below the sparse clouds but only just, and as we came closer, the ball of darkness remained just that, a perfect sphere of what could only be the tenebrae.

Revana nearly slipped off Nir’s back as she leaned forward, her eyes as wide as mine as we looked at it. “It…it covers the entire palace.”

And so it did. It was a gigantic orb centered around the Imperial Palace in the center of the city. The rest of the place seemed to be going on with life as usual; people and golems still made their ways down the streets, but no one was using the many bridges into the palace.

“Is it a tenebral ward?”

Nir craned her head around again. “If you want to call it that, yes. But it’s a ward in the sense that an ocean is a cup of water. Penetrating it will be…difficult to say the least.”

“But we have to, right? If we don’t bust up the Tenebral Font and kill the Emperor, this isn’t over, is it?”

“No,” Revana said. “The Font must be broken and the royalty, all of them, have to die.” She looked down at the foreboding ball of shadows. “What should we call that thing?”

“The shadowsphere?” I said.

Revana shrugged. “It’ll do, yeah. Let’s get out of here, Nir.”

We turned and left Telorn and the shadowsphere behind, flying off into the clouds for quite some time. We didn’t talk further, and I took the time to start worrying about Tiq and the others, hoping they got out from under Skyshard and were able to disperse into wherever they were going. We’d agreed to meet Irina’s, but I didn’t think that was going to be our first destination.

We were in the air for what seemed like hours before we finally landed in a forest’s clearing far away from anything approaching civilization. Nir went off to hunt or whatever it was that dragons did, while Revana and I made a little lean-to. I made a small fire pit and tried my best to start a fire, which was a skill I was taught before our first assault on the sigilarium. I ultimately was successful, but it was for the best that no one was around to hear my frustrated swearing during my many failures. 

Revana had wandered off into the forest to find us something worth eating, a task I wouldn’t be useful for, since I had no idea what was poisonous and what wasn’t. She came back with a couple things reminiscent of mushrooms and some bright orange fruit that was a lot more like strawberries than anything else. As the sun started down towards the horizon, we talked about what our next move might be. 

Revana took out the paper Tiq had given her, which turned out to be a fairly detailed map that showed where we might cast the spell we’d found deep under the ground in the yargeth-laden ninth province. Honestly, they were all appealing for one reason or another, and while our first instinct was to focus on the province with Irina’s shop in it, we quickly came to the conclusion that that was just selfishness.

“We’re kicking off a revolution, right?” I said. “What’s the best way to do that? Everyone’s oppressed by the empire, but who needs our help the soonest?”

“Oh, well, that’s an easy one now that you phrase it like that. We should hit the third province; it’s the one with most of the quarries and mines where the men are sent for labor. If anyone’s going to be primed to rebel, it’s them. They’re pissed and treated like slaves, but also are by definition strong and capable. We take the tenebrae away from the Gorvani there, it should be a simple thing to convince them to fight back.”

After our dinner, such as it was, Nir returned and encircled us and the fire. She didn’t say where she’d been or what she’d been doing and we didn’t ask. I just assumed she found Vendira’s version of cows or something and ate a couple whole. 

Secluded and with a dragon as we were, we didn’t bother keeping watch for once, and the night passed quickly and without dreams.

In the morning, we talked our plan over with Nir, who agreed with our assessment, and in short order, we were back in the skies, making our way to the third province. A few hours later, the landscapes of forests and winding roads started to give way to massive, angular holes dug into the ground. Some of the quarries were still active and some abandoned, and we saw the entrances to quite a few mines as well. The map we followed was pretty straightforward and took us over a large tract of land that was suspiciously undeveloped amidst a sea of cut stone.

“Here we go,” Revana said as she turned around to face me. Nir circled high in the sky as we joined hands and began to channel. I pulled in as much magic as I could, letting it slip through my hands and into Revana as Nir did the same underneath us. I could only imagine what the blinding light we were giving off looked like from the ground; I had to shut my eyes against the glare.

I felt more than saw the shae taking shape around us, the huge, circular sigils forming in the air as we flew overhead. Revana had cast the spell once before, in a limited fashion, in order to kill a royal who’d been actively killing me, but that was a pale shadow compared to this: with my and Nir’s power combined, Revana was able to weave incredible sigils, and when they were complete, they burst with power and the sound of a ringing bell.

The shae shot up above us, high over the clouds, swirling and coalescing, more and more and more of raw shae being pulled from the magical current itself, and Nir flew us well clear before it all came together to rocket down towards the ground, a massive lance of pure magic.

It stabbed into the land, throwing up dirt and rocks and trees before it kept burrowing down. The current of the shae funneled endless amounts of energy into it all, and it lit up the sky like a second sun, bright enough that I had to both look away and cover my eyes. 

The sound was deafening, and I’m not sure I can even describe it; it was a huge reverberation that rattled our bones, and I could only imagine it was causing a massive earthquake down below. 

Once it finally ended, I squinted down to see an enormous, perfectly round hole carved straight down through the bedrock, a yawning pit of black with no visible bottom.

“That’s…” Revana’s eyes fluttered, and I grabbed her just as she was about to fall off Nir’s back. 

“Hey now! Stay with me!”

“I’m…I’m fine.”

She was not fine. But I assumed the channeling had taken too much out of her, so I just held on tight.

I had expected a big eruption of the tenebrae to burst out of the ground, but I hadn’t actually based that on anything. The tenebral currents apparently ran extremely deep, so it was more likely that we’d see nothing at all, but I was still a little bit disappointed. “How can we tell if it worked?”

Nir turned back towards us and said, “We land and see if the Gorvani can offer any meaningful resistance.”

“Is that…a good idea? Last time they were almost able to pull you down.”

She shook her head. “I doubt anyone but the royalty has any idea how to perform such a thing, and even then, you saw how many tenebrous channelers were needed to pull it off. If we land at one of the quarries, there’s not a very big chance of that happening again.”

“She’s right,” Revana said, quietly. “The quarries are guarded by only a few Gorvani because that’s all they need. The ability to brand everyone at once is very…efficient. Aside from that, there will be regular enforcers, which shouldn’t be much of a threat for any of the three of us now.”

She was right, and just the day before I had myself handled an entire, if narrowly funneled, army, but my thoughts hadn’t caught up to the reality of it all. Not so long ago, I’d been hard pressed to fight one or two enforcers without help, and I’d almost been killed quite a few times since coming to Vendira.

But now? No one but a royal would be much of a threat to me, just as Revana had said. Me! I was just some nobody who was afraid of talking back to a rude person. Or, that had been me. When this adventure had started, I’d struggled to keep up, constantly second guessing myself even though I was committed. But I found myself not only sure we’d win in a fight, almost any fight, but I was sure we’d win it all; we’d bring down the entire empire, and we’d just taken a huge step towards making that happen.

I had had all these reflections as we flew away from the crater we’d made towards what seemed to me like a random quarry, functionally the same as any other we’d seen already, but Revana had seemed to choose it. We’d flown for some time and she had recovered enough that I let go of her, and the three of us slowly made our descent towards a big, flat area for Nir to land on.

I didn’t know what I thought we were flying into, but it sure wasn’t this.

“Oh, shit,” was all I managed to say.

4

It was chaos. Bedlam. Maybe other synonyms I couldn’t think of, but it was at least those.

We had come in thinking we’d kick off a minor revolt, but wow, it was already fully underway. The entire quarry was in a total uproar, filled with Dravini, Surini, and Humani men, breaking machines and pushing back against a completely overwhelmed number of guards.

As we landed, smoke billowed up around us from broken machinery and an alarming number of fires. I glanced around and saw a few Gorvani corpses dangling from cranes and hung on the edges of rock faces, and their deaths had not been kind or swift by the looks of it. The survivors were fighting back against the workers, trying to hold small, protected areas higher up and in little buildings, but it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the workers broke their defenses. 

We watched as a small guard post was assaulted and its door ripped off the hinges by a line of people with a long, heavy chain. The Gorvani inside screamed, and I could see them holding out their hands in a last, desperate effort to channel and brand anyone, but the tenebrae was gone along with any chance they had of living. I made myself watch as they were drug out and violently murdered with pickaxes, sledgehammers, and fists.

So many times since I’d come to Vendira, I’d seen some truly awful things. I had thought myself pretty hardened to it by this point; the day before I had personally slaughtered scores of soldiers in hand to hand combat. But at least they’d been actively fighting me.

I looked over to Revana, who was sitting there on Nir’s back with me, a completely neutral look on her face. “Should we…do something?”

She blinked and glanced back at me. “Do what? Things are doing themselves just fine without our help.”

I curled a lip. “But this…this is just awful.”

“Do you think they don’t deserve it?” she asked in a low voice.

A chill ran up my spine at her tone. I knew there was a viciousness inside her. Hell, I’d personally witnessed it many times, but I still didn’t love it. “No, it’s not that…”

She put her white clawed hand over mine and a little bit of sympathy softened her expression. “This was how it was always going to be. There have been generations of violence and oppression. And it’s not just going to be here with the laborers, it’ll be like this everywhere. And you’re right, it is awful, but it’s also inevitable.”

“I guess so. I suppose I should just suck it up and deal, huh?”

Her eyebrows climbed pretty high at that statement. “Oh…no, Michael. No. Don’t think that way. It’s good that you’re reacting the way you are; please don’t force those emotions away. What’s coming really is going to be pretty bad, and while I’m not sure I can muster much sympathy for the Gorvani, they are still people. And I’m sure there are good ones that are going to get swept up in everything.”

“Huh.” I thought back to a comment Isik had made about wanting to see the new world after the empire fell but assuming she wouldn’t. “Like…Isik?”

Revana nodded, a tiny, humorless smile on her lips. “Yeah. I’m still not sure how I feel about her, but I can’t deny we wouldn’t be where we were without her. I guess I…maybe I don’t want her to die.”

I smiled. “Did you ever imagine yourself saying that about an Inquisitor?”

“I sure didn’t.”

We climbed down off Nir’s back and stood there, watching the chaos unfold. Some people had seen us and broken off, and it looked like the last holdouts were about to get overwhelmed. Soon enough, the violence was over and we had a sizable crowd surrounding us.

As people filed in, I turned to Revana and asked, “So, should we make a speech or something?”

“Yes, you should.”

“Me!?”

“You’re the brandless hero, riding in on a dragon after severing the tenebrae. Of course you! Oh, summon your armor for it. And draw your sword and imbue it with the shae.”

She was right, as much as I didn’t want to admit it. I’d rather fight the rest of the Gorvani army than start making speeches of all things, but it was what I was here for and I’d said many times to myself that I’d do anything to free Vendira. Even make speeches, I guess.

I summoned my armor, and as I was doing it, I felt Revana helping mold the magic, so it came out as awe-inspiring as any I’d seen. I drew my sword and pushed the shae into it so that the golden magic arced up as I held it aloft. 

“People of Vendira,” I said, and I noticed my voice carried far better than I ever thought it would — apparently Revana had been able to pick up some of the amplification techniques the royals had been using, “we’ve come to free you from the empire’s grasp! We’ve broken the tenebrae in this province, but I hardly need to tell you that, do I?” There were some assorted cheers and laughter, which made me feel a little more comfortable. “My name is Michael, and I was called to this world to aid in the fight against the Gorvani. It’s not been easy, and there have been many struggles along the way, but I stand before you now, brandless, a channeler of the shae, and along with the help of so many good people, we’ve summoned a dragon back to this world!”

Nir stood and opened her wings before unleashing an ear-splitting roar that was matched by the crowd around us. 

“We’ve broken the empire’s power here, for now, but it’s up to everyone to take the fight to the Gorvani while we have this chance, as you’ve all already demonstrated you’re willing to do. What we ask most of you, however, is to get out and spread the word: The empire’s time is almost over, and together, we’ll grind it into the dust and create a better world for everyone!” Except the Gorvani, I thought. I didn’t say that though.

That seemed a natural end to the speech, which I was immensely pleased about, especially seeing as how I’d never been great at public speaking and I’d had zero time to prepare. 

The crowd devolved back into a more mild form of chaos while people decided what they might do now that they were suddenly free from the empire’s control. Many came up to us and asked a thousand questions, and we did our best to answer them, after a hurried consultation between Revana and I about what all we would actually say. We’d agreed to keep Isik’s name and involvement out of it for now, and we only vaguely alluded to the cult’s activities aside from that fact that there was a dragon right here.

Nir herself fielded a lot of questions, shocking many by being able to talk. I supposed dragons were as much a myth here as they were on Earth, so no one really knew what to expect. 

“Reva! Revaaaaa!”

A younger Dravini man eventually muscled his way to the front of the mob, waving excitedly and calling out to Revana. He had black horns and claws, with bright green scales running down the sides of his shirtless body, which is a coloring I’d only ever seen on one other person so far.

“Reva!” He had the biggest smile on his face, which Revana returned before she leapt down off the stone ledge we’d been standing on and into his arms, hugging him tightly. When they were done, she crawled back up and pulled him beside her.

“Michael, this is Amalir, he’s—”

“Irina’s son,” I said.

“Wh-yeah! How did you know?”

“Irina’s the only other Dravini I’ve seen with those colors. And she did mention a son, once. Oh, and he called you Reva, which no one else ever has, except Irina.”

She gave me a wide, appraising smile. “I’m impressed!”

“Well don’t get too excited or expect that kind of thing to happen a lot, but I’ll take it this time. Anyway,” I said, turning to Amalir, “I’m Michael.”

“It’s…it’s very nice to meet you.”

I almost expected him to call me sir, and I was getting the distinct impression that I intimidated him, which was a complete first for me.

“So you’re…really brandless, then?”

I still had my armor on for no real reason, so I let it drop before I pulled my shirt up and showed him my unmarked skin, which was a lot less weird than the first few times I’d done it. “I am, but I’m not the only channeler here.” I looked expectantly at Revana. I wasn’t going to let her off the hook and let her sidestep her share of the attention.

She smiled a little shyly and held out her hand, where she conjured a small ball of golden light.

If anything, I think Amalir was blown away by that way more than he’d been about me or the freaking dragon sitting with us. After he was done being overly excited about it, which I didn’t blame him for, we asked about the current situation.

“I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that we get branded all the time, whether we’re doing anything wrong or not. So it was really obvious, really fast, that the Gorvani were suddenly unable to do it. I’ve heard a couple people talking about how they saw the actual moment when their powers went away. Of course, their natural reaction was to try even harder, but that just made it more obvious what was happening. A few tried to play it off and send in their enforcers, but there aren’t really that many of them here. The Gorvani just rely on branding everyone constantly, so they had no idea what to do.

“None of us knew either, but once some people started shouting about how they suddenly couldn’t brand anyone, and when the imperials couldn’t immediately disprove that…well, things got real heated, real fast. Some of us just hung back and watched it all happen, but there were a lot of people here real willing to start…”

“Killing people?” I supplied.

“Yeah.” Amalir looked around at all the corpses that were hanging from various places and shuddered. “It’s not like they didn’t have it coming, but…”

Revana nodded and said, “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that all or most of the quarries and mines in the province are much the same, which brings me to our next problem: how to organize any of this. I don’t think things are going to end well if we just let everything happen with no direction.”

“We need a leader,” I said.

“We do,” she said, looking pointedly at me.

“Oh, no. Nope. Absolutely not. I’ll give speeches if I have to, but what you’re talking about is something completely different. You need someone to organize the people and make sure they have food and that sort of thing, make decisions about where to go and what to do, and I’m telling you right now: I’m not the person for that. What you want is a general.” I laughed a little to myself. “You know who’d probably be a good choice if she wasn’t a horrible choice?”

Revana paused, but then laughed with me. “Yeah, she might have some of the skills, but I don’t think we’re going to get the people to, you know, take orders from her.”

Amalir leaned in and asked, “Anyone I know?”

“Oh, no, no. It’s not,” Revana said.

There would come a time where I wanted everyone to know what role Isik had played in all this, but today wasn’t it, this wasn’t the right place, and these weren’t the right people. “Why don’t we check on a few of the other places around here, see how the province is faring overall, and see what the empire’s response is going to be. I imagine they’ll send the army if they can, but they’re already…busy, I guess.”

“And we need to figure out what to do about the shadowsphere, but I’m hoping Tiquette’s going to have some thoughts on that one. Amalir, we’ll be going to see your mother soon; do you want to come with us?”

If I thought he’d been intimidated before, the concept of riding out of here on the back of the dragon nearly broke him, but he did stutter out a favorable reply eventually.

5

We flew to a few other quarries and found much the same result in all of them. I grudgingly gave a few more speeches to the people, but mostly we were there to be seen. While we had agonized over what we should be telling people during the trips, that decision was also made largely for us. 

I don’t know if I thought we were going to mold these people into a standing army right then and there, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen for a lot of reasons. What was going to happen was everyone was going to go home immediately. While there were some that were eager to take the fight to the empire — way too eager — most wanted nothing more than to see the people they loved again.

Since they’d been taken from all over the empire, we also didn’t have to do anything to spread the word; it was going to happen quickly whatever we did or didn’t do.

While we were at one of the last places we were going to visit, or make an appearance at was probably more to the point, I asked Revana, “It wasn’t a coincidence that the first quarry we ended up at was the one where Amalir was, right?”

“Nope, it wasn’t. I couldn’t be positive he would be there, but it was the last place I’d heard he’d been assigned.”

I nodded, smiling. “We’re going to hit the eleventh next, aren’t we?” There were strategically better provinces we could prioritize, but we both knew we were just going to do what we wanted now, despite what we’d agreed on in the beginning. Irina’s shop was in the eleventh, and once Amalir had shown up, it was pretty obvious what Revana’s plan had been. She’d probably tell me that since it was next to the twelfth province, the one where we’d directly taken out the sigilarium, that it was a tactically sound choice.

“Of course. It’s next to the twelfth, so it only makes reasonable sense that we get any latent momentum from there.”

I looked at her and she looked at me, and we both held a straight face for a moment before grinning like idiots. “Yes, loads of sense.”

Once we’d done what we came to do and climbed up on Nir’s back, which Amalir was still clearly not completely okay with, we took to the skies and talked over the next step. Since it was so far away, Nir agreed we’d need to teleport close to our target instead of flying all the way there.

“We’re gonna what now?” Amalir asked.

But before we could explain the situation, which was really for the best, Nir pulled in the shae and began to glow. I’d really thought we were going to land before doing this, but apparently dragons were much fancier than I had realized.

The portal burst into life in front of us, and within a second, we were in and through, the odd stretching sensation a little worse than before, probably because we’d soared into it at pretty high speeds. In the blink of an eye, we were in the eleventh, the land mostly the same, but the sun had noticeably risen from where we’d been. 

Amalir had been sitting in front of Revana, with me in back, and he’d taken his first journey through a portal about as well as we had; he immediately leaned over and was sick, the vomit trailing down Nir’s scales.

Revana and I had to tighten our grips and she slipped an arm around Amalir as Nir balked and jerked to the side. 

“S-sorry,” Amalir said, just before his face screwed up and he vomited a second time, at which Nir reacted just the same way.

Nir turned back with a horrified expression written plainly on her face. “Ugh…I…well…I’ll find a lake.” Although she tried to soldier on about it, her movements became very rigid, and her head turned this way and that, obviously looking for a body of water.

Some moments later, a small lake appeared over the horizon and she picked up speed, essentially sprinting for it. We crashed down into the water; she didn’t wait for us to get off, and while she didn’t submerge us, the huge splash from her entrance to the water drenched us pretty thoroughly anyway.

After she shimmied around and got the puke off her scales, she swam towards the shore and let us get down. Amalir took two steps onto the beach and basically collapsed. “Sorry again,” he managed to mutter.

“It’s…fine,” Nir said, although her narrowed eyes said otherwise.

I pulled Revana away to the side and said, “Why don’t you drop the two of us off near Irina’s town and head off to perform the severing spell yourselves. Can you do it without me?”

She nodded. “We should be able to, yes, although it’ll be quite a bit more taxing.” She looked down at the prone form of Amalir. “Buuut, maybe it’s a good idea anyway. Let’s give him a couple minutes before we go, though.”

Once we were back in the air, Nir kept glancing back at us, probably concerned about Amalir, but within no time, we were setting down a little ways outside town. We’d agreed to keep it a little more discreet than what we’d done so far in the third.

“We’ll come find you soon, Revana said, and then they were off, heading into the clouds once again.

I glanced over to Amalir, who was pointedly not staring at me. I was really going to have to get over this intimidating people thing, but I wasn’t sure I knew how, seeing as how literally no one had ever been intimidated by me before. Maybe some casual conversation would help, I thought. “So, uh, you grew up here, right? Did Irina always have a repair shop?”

“Yep, she sure did. Had it since before I can remember.”

“Did you work there?”

“Yeah, until I was old enough to…you know.”

Get enslaved was where he was going with that, and we both knew it, and I decided maybe a somewhat comfortable silence was actually a better idea for the trip into town, which I could already see through the trees. Thankfully.

Our incredibly uncomfortable silence was indeed short lived and we were in through the gates of the town in no time. I didn’t remember the layout very well, so I let him lead us to the shop. The little bell tinkled when we went in, and there she was: Irina was sitting in the back of the room, bent over some paperwork. “Be right with you.”

Amalir and I shared a look and a small smile, and we just stood there, saying nothing, waiting for the explosion that was coming. 

Irina hurriedly finished up the paperwork before turning around. She screamed when she saw us standing there, her hand trembling in front of her mouth. She stood, stunned, for a brief second before vaulting over the counter and slamming into Amalir and giving him what I could only assume was a bone-crunching hug.

He grunted and choked out, “Hi, Mom.”

Irina was crying into his shirt. “Lir! Oh, Lir!” She rocked him back and forth before finally letting go, her black-clawed hands still on his shoulders. “I…wow, I didn’t…I didn’t expect this at all!” She let him go to also favor me with a bone-crushing hug, which I did my best to return. She stepped back and said, “So…what!? What’s happened!? Tell me everything!”

“It’s kind of a long story since we last left here. Maybe the kind of thing best told over tea?” I said, which I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist and there’d probably be some orange-iced dulcet jumpers too.

“Yes! Of course!” She rushed to the front of the store and flipped a sign saying ‘temporarily closed’ and was off into the back. 

Amalir and I made our way to the large dining room and sat across from each other, the awkward silence only lasting a little while before Irina returned, bringing a huge platter with tea and jumpers, which I was just over the moon about. Judging by the look she gave me when she set it all down, she was well aware of that. I showed enormous restraint in that I poured a cup of tea before jamming one into my mouth whole.

I idly wondered if I should be composing myself better in front of Amalir, but quickly decided that I didn’t care about that and ate five jumpers and drank three cups of tea while I gradually got through telling Irina what had happened since we’d been gone.

She had an endless barrage of questions for the both of us, but Amalir’s story boiled down to: I broke rocks for a long time, then I rode a dragon here.

“So,” I said, “Have you heard from any of the others? I’d really hoped we’d walk in to find them here.”

Irina shook her head. “No, Michael. I’m sorry, but I haven’t heard anything from anyone recently, except Vashe; she managed to make it out of the twelfth some time ago.”

Vashe was probably last on my list of people I really wanted to hear from, but still, it was something. “How’ve things been going in the province since we busted up the sigilarium?”

“Apparently life went on as usual for everyone inside, with the somewhat noticeable lack of anyone getting branded, but the amount of enforcers around went up, so there was still a lot of oversight from the empire. I can’t say if the population really noticed a change besides the complete lockdown, which is still in effect. They really just tried to pretend it never happened, and I think they’re trying to rebuild the sigilarium and get things back to normal before anyone really catches on.”

“Is that possible?”

“No one knows. The sigilariums were constructed so long ago that we had no idea how long it would take to rebuild one, aside from, you know, quite a while.”

The chime over the front door sounded and we all turned, and a moment later Vashe herself walked in, her brown ears and tail twitching in excitement. She stopped short when she saw us all sitting there. “Shit. Hi, Lir.” She pointed at me and said, “Since you’re here again, get off your ass; there’s some shit happening at the portal nexus.”

I didn’t ask what shit she meant and I didn’t think she’d tell me. She just ordered Irina to keep the shop closed and locked and to stay inside, and without another word, she pulled me out of my chair before I could grab one last jumper and we were quickly out the door, Irina locking it behind us.

“So you’re not dead, huh?” she asked, which I assumed was her trying to make conversation with me, which was nice but very surprising.

“Yeah, we managed to get through. I’ll have to tell you all about it later.” Or someone else could, probably. “Revana’s fine too, and last I knew, the others were as well, but it’s been a while and I’m getting a little worried.”

She grunted in reply. “Well there’s something else to worry about for now.”

We ran the rest of the way, and as we got closer to the portal nexus, it became very clear that something bad was going on. We could hear loud cries and yelling like a battle was going on, and as we turned the last corner, we saw that that was exactly what was happening.

I assume it had all started inside the nexus, but the fighting had spilled out onto the streets. It was a pitched battle between a huge crowd of what could only be the quarry and mine workers we’d liberated and a whole lot of enforcers with a few Gorvani scattered in between. The latter were branding as many people as they could, but they seemed to be getting overwhelmed. The workers were armed with a variety of things including pickaxes, long lengths of metal bars and pipes, and broken chairs by the look of it. Some wielded real weapons they’d taken from the enforcers themselves.

The only reason the battle was lasting as long as it was seemed to be because the Gorvani were able to brand large swathes of their enemies, but it didn’t look like it was going in their favor overall.

And then we saw the exact moment that the tenebrae winked out of existence. 

One second, every single Gorvani had the swirling mass of shadows around their hands, and a second later, every single one of them lost it.

The entire battle paused for a few brief, deeply confusing seconds.

And then it was the quarries all over again.

A lot of the enforcers, once they’d seen what was happening, turned and ran. Without the threat of being branded themselves and facing a much larger group of enemies, a large portion of them just dropped their weapons and fled.

The Gorvani kept trying to channel, many of their faces screwed up in confusion, anger, and fear. A few started to turn and run as well.

The workers, after a few seconds of surprise, realized exactly what was happening. And since none of them were being branded and there were a lot of weapons laying on the ground, they surged forward and absolutely decimated any that remained, and it was just as brutal and savage as the scene at the quarries had been. 

Vashe and I just stood there, watching it all happen, and the entire battle was over within a minute or two, with the exception of some of the more bloodthirsty workers who were sprinting down the streets to find anyone who’d tried to run.

“Damn,” Vashe muttered, looking out over the chaos. She turned to me and asked, “So what the fuck was that? Why’d the Gorvani just…stop branding people?”

I gave her a shortened version of what had happened lately, centering mainly on the new spell we’d found and what it could do. “So Revana and Nir will probably show up here shortly.”

“Nir. The dragon.”

“Yeah.”

“Revana’s gonna show up here. Riding a fucking dragon.”

“Yep.”

She took a long, slow breath and said, “Okay.”

This was when a few of the people still standing around recognized me, which I was going to have to get used to. I was quickly surrounded and I did my best at being Michael the Brandless, congratulating them on their excessively bloody victory just now. Thankfully, I didn’t have to give a speech, just stand there and be seen, so it wasn’t so bad. 

I was able to get their story from a few of them, and it seemed after the tenebrae was lost in the third province, thousands of workers had gotten the same idea to head to their homes, but shockingly, it was a little more organized than anyone would have guessed. People heading towards the same places grouped up and assaulted the portal nexuses and waited on scheduled openings, so they could surprise the imperials at their destinations. And based on what had just happened here, it was working pretty well, but I still feared what the empire’s response was going to be.

After most of the people had gotten their fill of gawking at me, Vashe walked up. “So you’re some kind of savior, now, huh? Don’t let it go to your head, or I’ll have to bust you down a couple pegs, right? Can’t stand pompous assholes.”

I laughed and assured her that that wouldn’t happen. It was actually pretty reassuring knowing that not everyone was going to start treating me like a hero. It was nice in theory, but in practice, I’d always been pretty uncomfortable with it. Especially now, when it was crowds of people who’d only heard about the idea of me and didn’t know the real me, who was still plagued with a decent amount of self doubt. But maybe lots of heroes were like that. Who knew?

An ear-piercing roar echoed over the city, and seconds later Nir flew low over the rooftops.

“And here she is,” I said.

6

Nir circled a few times before landing in a relatively open town square between buildings. 

Vashe and I ran up as Revana slid down Nir’s scales and slumped on the ground. “You, uh, you okay?”

She nodded but was having a lot of trouble focusing on me. “Yeah, yeah I’m…”

Nir gave her an appraising look. “Casting the severing spell with just the two of us was much more taxing on her than I believe she imagined it would be. Perhaps there’s a place for her to rest?”

Vashe stood there dumbfounded with wide eyes. “It…she? Talks?”

I’d never seen her like that and I was very much enjoying it. “She does, yeah. I’ll let you two get acquainted.” I bent down and picked up a not really conscious Revana in my arms before heading off to Irina’s. I looked back and was endlessly amused to see that the awkward situation I was leaving was probably worlds worse than what I’d endured with Amalir.

“We did it,” Revana said softly.

“Oh I know you did.” I explained about the battle we’d seen and that we were there to witness the exact moment the tenebrae failed.

She had her eyes closed, but she laughed. “Oh, I’ll bet they were terrified.”

“The Gorvani?”

“Yeah. Can you imagine living your whole life relying on one thing, and suddenly it’s not there?”

“In the middle of a pitched battle, no less.”

Nir roared again, which must have just been a thing dragons did sometimes, and shortly after we saw her flying away overhead. I wondered what conversation, if any, she’d had with Vashe. I’d probably never know.

I knocked on Irina’s door with my foot, and she rushed out to unlock it, exclaiming over Revana, only calming down when we both assured her she was fine. 

I took her downstairs to the bedroom we usually used, and it was set up for us now, which I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see. Revana slipped out of my arms and onto the pillow, falling asleep almost instantly.

Irina was hovering over me, seemingly still unconvinced Revana was fine, but I drug her out of the room. Once the door was closed, she turned to me and said, “I received a message from Tiq while you were away. It was short, but apparently she and others are in the seventh, which is all the information she sent. I assume this means something more to you?”

The relief that went through me was immediate. I leaned against the wall and let out a breath. “Yeah, I’ll bet they’re at the Carvers’ Guild building. Oh, I’m so glad to know they got out safely and ditched the army. Hopefully they all did.”

Irina glanced at me and the closed door to the bedroom. “Tiq asked that you come when able. Are you…?”

“Well, I should go now. I’d like to wait for Revana, but I know she’ll be fine here, and…I’m too worried about…”

Irina arched an eyebrow at me.

“Okay, okay. I’m worried about Isik.”

She chuckled and patted me on the shoulder. “Of course you are. She’s one of us, and I don’t care what anyone says.” The smile slid off her lips and she said, “But you’re likely right to be worried. As much as we know she’s not the enemy, not everyone will.”

I elected to not bring up the brutality I’d already seen towards the Gorvani, which I’d edited out of my retelling of our adventures to Irina. “That’s…an understatement, I think.” 

I wanted to check in on Revana one more time, but she was fine and me waking her up wouldn’t help, so I happily let Irina push some jumpers into my hands before I left to make my way to the portal nexus.

I didn’t know what to expect, but people had set up a sort of martial law in and around the nexus. I stopped the first person I saw who looked like they knew what they were doing, which was a middle-aged human man who was walking up and down the building, occasionally barking orders at people. 

I walked up to him and said, “Hi, uh, I’m…”

And that’s as far as I got before he turned on me, his eyebrows climbing high on his head. “Oh! I know you! Brandless!” I’d been hoping no one would really recognize me, but I guess the yargeth-scale shield hanging on my back was a gigantic give-away.

“Uh, yeah, that’s me. My name is Michael, by the way.” I really didn’t want to start being referred to as a title, but that might not be my choice. “Anyway, what’s going on here? Are the imperials all gone?”

He laughed loudly and slapped me on the back. “You bet they are! Cowards turned tail the second they stopped being able to brand everyone! Always knew they weren’t worth shit! And their enforcer squads didn’t fare much better.”

“And…that’s it? Nothing else has happened?”

He looked around the huge, open room and said, “Nope. Not a damn thing, yet. A few escaped through the portals when we came in, and we expected immediate retaliation, but so far, nothing.”

I followed his gaze around the room and really looked for the first time. There were huge crowds of people, but barely any portals were actually in use. And in that crowd, almost everyone was armed. “This is a trap, basically,” I said.

“Mhmm. We keep expecting the bastards to come eventually, and you better believe we’ll be ready when they do. But in the meantime, is there somewhere you were wanting to go? We can send ya anywhere you like, and you don’t need to go alone. No telling what’s on the other side of any of these things, you know?”

I opened my mouth to say I didn’t need an escort and that I’d be perfectly fine, but what if I did walk straight into an ambush? He was right; I really didn’t know what I’d be walking into, so I said as much.

His eyes lit up; he was clearly happy at my decision. “Hey, boys!” He pointed towards a group of heavily-muscled and well armed men. “Brandless here wants some company through a portal!”

Damnit. The group came over and I told them my name was Michael, but I wasn’t sure a single one of them heard me over their incredibly enthusiastic acceptance at being my bodyguards for a while, which was yet another thing I found pretty weird. The man directed us all to a nearby portal and told the young Surini operating it that The Brandless needed passage to the seventh. So that was great. I was a the now too.

We passed through the portal with me in the middle and while I thought this was all a little overblown, I did draw my sword before we went.

Once through, though, it was obvious that my valiant crowd of bodyguards wasn’t needed after all. The nexus was eerily quiet, and only a few people were wandering about, but that did include a nexus…attendant or whatever. She was an older human woman, and we all had to repeatedly assure her that we weren’t a threat. After she’d calmed down, we got the story from her.

“Just recently, like within the last hour or so, every single Gorvani left the nexus, and more to the point, I think every one of them in the surrounding area did as well. Runners came bearing messages from somewhere, and without saying much to anyone else, they all just…left, including the overseer for this place. Those of us still here are just…doing our jobs, but I can’t understand what’s happening.”

It was difficult removing myself from my new, enthusiastic bodyguards’ care, but I was finally able to convince them I was safe enough on my own, but it had involved summoning my armor, which of course attracted a lot more people that had been around. Finally, I was able to leave the building by myself and head towards the Carvers’ Guild. I thought about trying to get into one of the many secret doors around its base, but it’d been long enough that I forgot pretty much everything I would have needed to know to get in one. So I just waltzed in the front door and asked for Mephina, whose name I did remember.

Luckily, she was there and I was taken to her office.

She was sitting behind her huge, carved desk looking through some papers. She smiled sweetly when I came in and asked, “Need some shelter from the sweltering sun, do you?”

I laughed softly at the code phrase I’d needed the first time. “I sure do. But tell me: is everyone alright? Were they all able to escape the imperials?”

She nodded. “Yes, yes. The exodus from Skyshard went mostly as planned. There were some small hiccups in bringing the tunnels down behind everyone, but the army was blocked most effectively and no one died. Some broken bones and near misses, though.”

“Are Tiq and Isik here?”

“Lady Tiquette is out at the moment, but the Inquisitor is downstairs. She said to show you down as soon as you made it here.”

I didn’t trust myself to navigate the complete maze that the inside of this building was, so I let Mephina lead me through, down a lot of stairs and through a lot of nonsensical hallways. She gestured at a doorway and said, “She’s in there somewhere.”

I thanked her and opened the ornate door to find a sprawling library lit by rows of arcanic chandeliers. I walked down row after row of shelves filled to bursting with all manner of books before I finally heard the faint ruffling of pages close by. I poked my head around the corner to see Isik sitting at a long table that was jammed with piles of old tomes and new, crisply bound books. “Uh, hey,” I said.

Isik bolted up from the table, her chair falling over behind her, and shadows burst from her raised hands. “Oh,” she said, and the shadows winked out of existence. “Hello, Michael.” She righted her chair and sat back down. Her blue skin glowed in the lights above and her purple hair was pulled back into a severe braid. She had noticeable bags under her eyes and the space between her piles of books was filled with sheets and sheets of paper, all covered in her writing. “I’m pleased to see you well.”

“I’d, uh, say the same, but I’m not quite sure you’re well.”

She laughed tiredly and said, “It could be worse.”

“Yeah, it sure could.” I told her about the things I’d personally seen happening to the Gorvani. “I’ve been very worried about you.”

She took a long breath and gave me a sad but very genuine smile. “I’m glad to hear it. There are probably only a handful of people who don’t want to kill me on sight at this point. Not that that’s a new concept in my life, of course, but the magnitude of it now…”

“How was it getting out of Skyshard?”

“Not bad, all things considered. The cave system had been well maintained, just for that day. We were underground for quite a while before emerging into a forest, and after that, we split up and headed towards different towns and their portal nexuses. I was able to make it here before anything of note really happened, which was very lucky, judging by the reports I’ve been hearing. And what you’ve told me just now. 

“Not that I’m surprised. The people have been under our thumbs their whole lives. I can only imagine how thrilling it is to be able to resist at all, let alone do it effectively.”

I pulled a carved chair over to sit across the table from her. “Yeah, and on that subject, apparently most of the Gorvani are just retreating for now?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding slowly. “I also received orders from the capital to drop what I was doing and go there. Not that it was a direct order; these were blanket orders to all Gorvani. All of us. But they don’t say anything more.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going, are you?”

She shook her head and sighed. “No, for various reasons. And I believe that once I fail to appear, they’ll assume I’m dead. If they, then, find out I’m not, I’m sure to be labeled a traitor, so I’m officially no use as an Inquisitor anymore.” She gestured towards the pile of books and paper in front of her and said, “Well, not after this. I think this is the last thing I can use what authority I have to do.”

“What is it?”

“You recall the key that Gor’mina gave us just before she died?”

“Of course.” She’d also said that if she was going to die, the empire should die with her. No one knew what she meant at the time, but hopefully Isik had found something.

“I can’t find anything on the key itself, or even a key like it. It’s either something unique to the royalty or possibly to Gor’mina herself, which led me down another path, searching for places the key could be used and not information on the key itself. It turns out that she, unlike most royals, kept an estate outside of Telorn. Most of them stay in or close to the palace at all times — I’m pretty sure they regard the rest of the entire world as below them.”

“You think the key might be used at this estate?”

She shrugged and leaned back in her chair. “Honestly I don’t know, but it’s the best idea I have. She did give it to us, so she ostensibly thought we would be able to use it, and if it goes to a lock deep inside the palace itself, I doubt we’d ever have much chance to access that. Until all the royals were dead and the war was over, of course.”

“So, what’s the catch, then?” Because there was one, I was sure.

“The estate is in the first province.” When I didn’t immediately react, she continued, “The first that can’t be cut off from the tenebrae because the Font is there. The province that will be highly guarded even when the empire is retreating from the others. That one.”

“Ah, yes, that place.”

She gave me a small smile, which I was glad to see. “But it looks as if we’ll need to get there somehow anyway. The portals are a stupendously bad idea, so—”

“We could ride a dragon in. Is Gor’mina’s estate within view of Telorn?”

“No,” Isik said, leaning back and looking thoughtful. “It’s not. It’s on the periphery of the province, actually. As if Gor’mina herself wanted to be as far away from the capital as she could.”

A thought belatedly popped into my head. “Hey, not to change the subject, but you have heard about the huge shadowsphere surrounding the palace, right?”

“Oh. That. Yes, I have. I assume you’re about to ask me questions about it.”

“Well, I was…”

“You can save your breath, because I’ve never heard of a thing like it before now. I had no idea a free-standing ward was even possible, let alone one as massive as that.”

“Huh,” I said, vastly disappointed. “We’re going to need to figure out some way to get inside it, but what bothers me more is the question of why they did it at all. Doesn’t it seem weird to you? I mean, protect the Font, sure, but I just get the impression there’s more to it than just a shield.”

She didn’t respond for a bit, her eyes darting this way and that. “That’s…very astute of you, actually. I’m displeased with myself for not thinking of it already.”

“Well, you were busy.”

She smiled. “Indeed. But I think you’re right. However, I have no idea how to even begin answering that question. I’m not sure I’d know how to do so even if I was still a functional Inquisitor, aside from asking a royal directly, and you can imagine how such a thing would turn out. Anyway, back to Gor’mina’s estate. Your dragon would be willing to carry us there?”

“I assume Nir would be willing to do pretty much anything that helped win the fight against the empire.”

A voice echoed out from somewhere else in the room, “Hello? Hello, Sir Brandless? I have a message for Sir Brandless.”

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Isik arched an eyebrow at me and failed to suppress a highly amused grin.

“Don’t you start!” I said. “Hey! I’m over here!”

A young Dravini man eventually found his way over to me, although it was pretty hard to locate anyone in the room due to the echoes. He bowed deeply at me and handed me a slip of paper while keeping his eyes downcast.

“Uh, thanks, but you can look at me if you want, and my name’s Michael.”

He did not look up at me, just bowed again and said, “Yes, of course, Sir Brandless.” And without another word, he turned and practically ran back the way he’d come.

“That title makes you uncomfortable,” Isik said, still smiling widely.

I sat down hard in the chair and sighed. “Supremely, yes.” I flipped open the paper and read the brief message inside.

“So what’s the dauntless Brandless of Vendira been summoned for now?”

“Ugh…” I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. “I told you not to start that shit. You say it to one other person and I just know it’s going to catch on.” I glanced over to see a sparkling in her eyes. “I’m serious! Don’t say that to people!”

She held up her hands and said, “Alright, alright. I suppose I can keep it to myself. So what does Sir Brandless’s message say?”

“It’s from Tiq. There’s going to be some big demonstration here soon, and she wants me to be there, but that’s all it says. I’m really, really hoping I don’t have to talk to anyone.” I told Isik about our trips through the quarries and mines in the third and all the speeches I had to give.

“You aren’t enjoying the social aspect of being Vendira’s champion?”

“Definitely not. If I’m being completely honest, I’d almost fight a royal over having to give more speeches. I guess I did it well enough based on how the people reacted, but it’s not something I want to keep doing.” I slowly stood and pushed the chair back in. “I should go, though. Mostly I want to see that Tiq’s okay, but if I’m going to be a symbol, I might as well go be a symbol.”

7

It was late afternoon as I left the Carvers’ Guild and the streets looked like normal at first glance. People were going about their business and golems of all shapes and sizes were lumbering by. I stood outside the doors and just watched for a while, and there was a definite change in the air. A lot more people stood in groups talking, some of them wild and excited and others huddled in and scared. And while I stood there, not a single Gorvani went by.

I made my way to the public square that Tiq had indicated and found that whatever I was here for, it was already happening. Standing on top of what looked to be a very hastily built platform, Osaarin was talking to a huge gathered crowd. I stopped in the back to listen for a little while, and wow, he could give a speech!

He was animated and excited, gesturing wildly along with his words, and it didn’t hurt that he was tall and wide, striking an imposing figure. I came in to hear him talking about Nir and the broken sigilariums, but without a lot of the technical details. Instead, he talked about Nir as if she’d chosen this time to come home to Vendira, that she knew the empire’s time was nearing an end.

And he talked of the Gorvani’s broken power without adding a single detail about how it had happened aside from briefly alluding that Nir was heavily involved, which was of course true. Then he went on a long tirade about how the Gorvani were actually cowards and had been all along, and now, the second the tenebrae failed them, they’d collectively run scared to Telorn, but that was just going to make it easier to find them and crush them all at once. This statement was met with overwhelming cheers, and I couldn’t help but wonder again if any of the Gorvani were going to survive this. I hoped so. Some of them had to be good people, right? I mean, I hadn’t met anyone like that besides Isik, and she admittedly had done a lot of atrocious things and…

Well I wasn’t going to dwell on that, so I circled around the crowd and came up to the back of the stage where I’d seen Tiq hovering.

She squealed when she turned and saw me, and then she launched herself into my arms hard enough that I staggered back a few steps. “You’re okay!”

I hugged her back and said, “That’s what I was about to say. Although I did hear the escape from Skyshard went fairly well, all things considered.”

She stepped back and said, “Yes, it was shockingly well organized. And here we are, at the next step of the plan. Speaking of which…” She took my hand and dragged me towards the stage.

I had a massive bout of panic that I was going to have to speak to the crowd totally unprepared, but I followed her up anyway, and at her urging, I drew my sword and summoned the fanciest, but not most protective, version of my armor.

Apparently Osaarin had just gotten to a point in his talk where I was somewhat relevant, as he segued easily into, “And here he is! Our Brandless hero! Scourge of the Gorvani! Slayer of the Emperor himself!” His voice easily carried over the entire square.

Still wasn’t loving it, but at least the new titles were pretty cool.

The crowd exploded into a mass of noise and cheering, so I leaned into it as much as I could, summoning as much of the shae as I could hold, so that I was noticeably glowing. I held my sword up high and yelled out, “For Vendira!” I figured I’d go with a positive sentiment like that instead of screaming death to the Gorvani or something. I really doubt it mattered what I said, though. I probably could have professed my love of dulcet jumpers and everyone would have cheered for that too. Which, to be fair, they totally should have.

I smiled and kept my sword aloft as the cheers went on, but eventually, Osaarin started talking again and I took the opportunity to leave the platform before anyone noticed that I hadn’t said more than two words. I rejoined Tiq in the back and said, “Revana and I have talked about needing a…general or something. Someone to rally the people, but I think that’s really taken care of itself. Is this the first place you’ve done this?”

She shook her head. “No, the third. We heard you were probably coming here and decided to make it the next stop. We were a little worried because the tenebrae still functions here, but honestly, from the little bits and pieces we’re hearing, the Gorvani have all but abandoned most of the provinces.”

“Yeah,” I said with a curled lip. “Doesn’t that strike you as kinda weird?”

“It does, yes. We kept expecting immediate retaliation, but nothing’s happening. Anywhere, apparently.”

“Have you heard about the shadowsphere?”

“The what now?” After I explained what we’d seen on Nir’s back, her eyes were wide. “It’s real? Yes, we’d heard rumors here and there, but I didn’t give any real credit to them.”

“I think the Empire’s up to something inside there. Something awful. I don’t know why I’m so sure or what it could even be, but it’s a feeling I can’t shake.”

She tilted her head. “Perhaps Isik could tell us—”

“Nope,” I said. “She’s just as clueless as we are.”

Tiq was silent, her eyes darting this way and that, her head still tilted to the side. 

I kept my mouth shut, letting her work through whatever thought processes were going on in her mind. As time went by, her expression changed, getting more and more frustrated, her eyes moving around faster. Finally, she threw her hands up and said, “You know what, I have no idea! Not only is there no precedent for anything like this, but I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’ve never even heard any of the other Astrologians talk of anything like that. A free standing ward? Not possible, I would have said. Although it is centered around the palace…and the Font itself…so…” She heaved an annoyed sigh. “I just don’t know. I would need to perform some testing to know anything. And as you say, the sphere isn’t the actual problem, what could be happening inside it is. If Isik doesn’t even know anything…”

“Well,” I said, grasping at the only lead we had, which didn’t seem like much at the time, “Isik’s found out that Gor’mina has an estate outside the capital. But it’s still in the first, so I was going to have Nir fly us in. She thinks it’s the only place the tenebrous key we were given might go. Maybe there’s something to find out there? She was a royal, after all.”

Tiq shrugged, unimpressed. “I suppose. It’s worth checking out, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope.”

We listened to Osaarin for a while longer until he ended the talk with an emotional tirade about being free from tyranny and death to the emperor and all that. Afterwards, the sun was halfway under the horizon, and I realized how insanely tired I was from the long day.

Apparently there were rooms in the Guild I could use, but I wanted to check in on Revana and staying at Irina’s would be a lot more comfortable anyway. I swiftly made my way through to the portal nexus, through the crowd, and to the repair shop.

Irina assured me Revana was fine, but even though she’d been briefly awake, she was back in bed. I peeked in the door, but I didn’t want to disturb her after what she’d gone through, so I chose another room in Irina’s basement. It was mostly the same as our normal room, if a bit smaller.

I slept deeply and without any dreams or borrowed memories. In the morning, when the light was shining brightly around the edges of the curtains, I yawned and stretched out. A small, involuntary scream escaped my lips as it became apparent that I wasn’t alone in bed.

8

“Good morning,” Revana said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She snuggled up close to me and it was immediately obvious that she wasn’t wearing any clothes. “I woke up a little early and thought you might like some company.”

I turned towards her and slipped one arm under her neck while my other hand started sliding over her soft skin. “I won’t say no to that. Do we have much time?”

“Not really, but let’s make the most of what we do have.”

I pulled her close and pressed my lips towards hers, my hand slipping down to squeeze her ass.

She hooked a leg over me as our tongues twined together, her hands moving up and down my body. She awkwardly kicked the covers off as we kissed, our bodies then moving in sync. She moaned quietly as she pressed her hips against my rapidly growing erection.

I pulled away enough to lift her breast up to my mouth, licking and sucking on her hard nipple, my hand reaching down between her legs to find her already wet. I rubbed against her and slowly slid my fingers inside, reveling in the feel of her body against mine.

She lifted her leg to give me better access while sliding a hand down to slowly stroke my length. We only stayed that way briefly before she pushed me onto my back and climbed up on top of me. 

Her boobs were smashed against my face as she slid easily down onto my cock, and I pressed in further as I groaned loudly, hoping the sound would be muffled. She didn’t waste any time; after only a moment, she was riding me hard, sliding up and down on me as I gripped her ass in my hands, helpless to do anything but lie there and try not to moan too loudly.

I closed my eyes and reveled in the feel of her skin on mine, of her breasts surrounding my face, and her tightness around me.

She slid a hand between us, trying to stifle her own moans as she rubbed her clit, not slowing her pace for a second. 

In the back of my mind, amidst the whirlwind of pleasure, I wondered how she was doing it with claws, but however it worked for Dravini, it worked well. She started cursing under her breath as she slammed down on me harder and harder, starting to ride me even faster.

It was all too much and I whispered, “I can’t hold it any longer, Revana.”

A whimper escaped her lips and she said, “Just go.”

As if I had any choice in the matter, I came hard inside her, my arms wrapped around her back, pulling her close, thrusting back into her as I jerked and spasmed and tried not to moan loud enough to wake everyone in the house.

A moment later, she gasped, her whole body trembling.

I kept thrusting into her as she pressed her face into the pillow by my head, her moans muffled as her legs shook and her claws gripped the sheets. With the last few spasms of her hips, she wrapped her arms around my neck and pushed her tongue deep into my mouth. We kissed and rocked, the last few tremors flowing through both of our bodies.

Finally, she laid her head down next to mine and I trailed a hand over her horns.

Afterwards, we showered together, and it turned out that showering was still very high up on my list of enjoyable things that I’d taken for granted during my entire life on Earth. I updated her on everything that had happened the day before, including Isik’s lead into Gor’mina’s estate. “I really hope it pans out, because I just know something bad’s going on inside that sphere, and I sure don’t have any ideas on how to find out.”

“It almost has to be, doesn’t it?”

I was thrilled she agreed with me, because as time passed I was more and more sure I was right. “Do you want to come with us?”

She shook her head, her light blue hair sending water droplets in all directions. “As much as I’d love to come along on an adventure with Isik, Tiq wants my help with something.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“I, uh…don’t really know. She tried to explain it to me but I only understood every other word. Something with her device? Maybe?”

Tiq’s weapon, a thing we’d just started calling the device, was an arcanic machine that let her, essentially, shoot balls of lightning at people, but I’d only ever really seen it in action during the fight with the Sixteenth Son as we were all escaping from an imperial prison. I could barely imagine what sort of plans she had for it, especially if Revana was going to be involved. “Well, good luck with that. Try not to get blown up.”

As we were drying off, I thought about going for round two, but Irina was soon knocking on the door, telling us breakfast was ready.

It involved Vendira’s version of pancakes with their red syrup, and over it, we talked about the empire’s lack of response and what we should do. “Given that they’ve all retreated, should we even bother with cutting off the rest of the sigilariums?” I asked.

“I think it’s in our best interests, yes, but it really needs to be both of us and Nir together. Performing the severing without you was just too much for me. I got it done, but it’s on the outer edge of my abilities.”

“Well then, after Isik and I go to the first, we’ll get back to that, assuming everything hasn’t completely gone to shit by then.”

We all stuffed our faces, ready to be moving, and soon after, we were heading out the door with Revana promising to send Nir to the Guild building in the seventh as soon as she could.

The portal Nexus was still as it had been, filled with pissed off people hoping for a fight that apparently wasn’t coming. They gave me another escort, but it seemed like it was just something to do, since most of the portal nexuses in all provinces but the first and second had been deemed safe. Or as safe as could be. My bodyguards were still disappointed that nothing exciting awaited us on the other side of the portal, and I had to repeatedly decline their offers to walk me the few blocks from the nexus to the Guild building.

As soon as I walked in the front doors, I was greeted by a young Surini woman I’d never seen before and was directly taken to see Isik, who was sitting on a covered balcony outside her personal rooms. She was still wearing a soft shirt and pants meant for sleeping, and I thought it might have been the first time I’d seen her in such a casual fashion.

The bags were mostly gone from her eyes, I was glad to see, and her long hair tumbled down her shoulders, still messy from sleep. She held a small cup of hachi she’d poured from a pitcher and offered me some, which I readily accepted.

“Did you find out anything else since I left?” I asked.

“Some, although it’s not particularly helpful. There are a few accounts of the royals that spoke of Gor’mina. These are personal diaries and journals, you understand. No one is allowed to print anything about the royalty unless they’re directed to do so. Anyway, it seems the fourteenth had a lot of enemies. And that itself is very common among the Gorvani, but it seems she had even more than normal, and a lot of people around her ended up dead.”

“Also normal,” I said.

Isik nodded. “Yes, very, but it seems like they weren’t just random people who managed to look at her cockeyed, but underlings of rivals, rivals themselves — really anyone up to other royalty.”

“Well she sure didn’t hesitate to kill the sixteenth the minute the opportunity came up. Crushed his face in her hand. But…is this useful?”

She took a long sip of hachi before answering. “Not really. I told you it wouldn’t be. But it does, if anything, make me think this trip to her estate is going to be worth it.”

“You think there’s something there we can use against the royalty?”

“One way or another, yes. I take it since you’re back here, you’ve booked us some transportation?”

“Kind of. I asked Revana to send Nir here when she could.”

Isik’s face fell. “Ah, I see. I was hoping you’d heard from the dragon herself that she was willing to carry someone like me.”

Oh, right. “Well, I hadn’t thought of that. But I mean, you personally headed up the Dravizek Celestori, so it shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

She gave me a humorless smile and shook her head. “My kind did wipe out hers, which is something she personally remembers. So I wouldn’t assume that anything I’ve done is quite enough to offset the distaste of touching me or providing me with a service.”

“I’ll, uh, go have a talk with her when she gets here. And are you…okay with, you know…just walking around?”

She didn’t answer immediately or look at me, just curled her lip. “...No. I’ve been provided with a…disguise, if you want to call it that.”

I didn’t have time to ask what that meant, as a piercing roar sounded above us, and a second later, Nir was swooping by, close enough that the beating of her wings knocked over a few things on the balcony.

Isik was sitting back into her chair, her eyes wide and a nonplussed expression on her face. She blinked and shook her head. “I suppose she’s here, then. I should…change, I suppose.” She stood and walked back into her rooms and I followed behind.

I sat down in a padded chair to wait while she went into another room to change, but I was forgetting Vendira’s attitudes toward modesty. I had gotten quite used to it from Revana and to a lesser extent, Tiq, but I’d never seen Isik so much as roll up a sleeve.

She stripped off her shirt and stepped out of her pants, throwing them on the bed, and I was glad she was facing away from me so she couldn’t see my face as I just gawked at her in complete surprise. She slid her underwear off as well and turned to open a large wardrobe on the other side of the room.

I kept my expression as neutral as I could while I more or less just stared at her. I had gotten the impression she was older than me, but that wasn’t reflected in her body; she was the same light blue all over and her skin was smooth and looked very soft. Her breasts were much bigger than they’d ever appeared under her clothes, although they still weren’t nearly as big as Revana’s.

While rummaging in a drawer, she bent over at the waist, facing directly away from me. If it had been literally anyone else in the entire world, I would have thought she was trying to seduce me, but I put those thoughts out of my head as best I could. She pulled out and put on a black pair of underwear and a bra, for which I was simultaneously grateful and disappointed. Then, with a huge, angry sneer, she pulled a long robe out of the wardrobe, and I had to stifle a laugh. It was a priestess robe. I didn’t know what that honestly entailed; I had gotten the impression that the Mulaq’Shae weren’t the only ones to wear such things, but whatever their connotations, Isik was obviously pissed about wearing it. She threaded her arms through it, audibly grumbled, and pulled out a pair of loose, dark pants as well, stepping into them before cinching the robe closed.

“You look nice,” I said.

The look she shot me could have shattered a golem. “If you say anything like that to me again, Michael, I will kill you.”

I blinked back at her. “Noted.”

“Good,” she said, and only because I knew to look for it, I caught the tiniest upturning of the corners of her lips. “Now go find that dragon and make sure she’s not going to drop me from the clouds while we’re headed towards the first.”

As I was walking out the front doors of the building, it was insanely obvious where Nir had landed. Even if I couldn’t see the tips of her wings over the next building, there was a loud and animated crowd all heading that way. I followed along, hoping I could even get Nir’s attention and be able to talk to her privately in all this mess.

A mob had formed in a circle around her, but while there were a lot of people, not many had the courage to get close to her. She was conversing with the few that had. The situation made it much easier for me to step out of the crowd and get her attention. She finished answering someone’s question and turned to me. “Hello, Michael.”

I was so, so pleased that she hadn’t called me brandless or any of the other titles I was accumulating. “Hey, Nir. Did Revana tell you why I asked you here?”

“You seek a way into the first.”

Crap. I was hoping I wouldn’t need to have this conversation at all. “Yes, that’s true, but there might be a part of it you’re less than thrilled with.” I looked around at the crowd, who’d now clearly noticed who I was. “Can we talk somewhere, uh, private?” I hoped she knew where that would be, because I couldn’t imagine us ducking into a side room somewhere.

She blinked slowly at me and said. “Yes. Climb on.”

Oh. Yeah, that would work. I quickly did as she asked so no one else could start talking and make this take any longer than it needed to. Within seconds I was on her back, and with a huge roar and flap of her wings, we started up into the air. Shortly after, we were making lazy circles around the tallest buildings in the city. 

“So, what unpleasant thing would you ask of me?” she said.

I briefly explained about the shadowy key Gor’mina had given us before she died and what our best guess was as to where it went.

“And this is the place you want to go?”

“Yeah. But it’s not going to be me and Revana. It’s going to be me…and Isik.”

A small pause. “The Inquisitor.”

“Yep.”

We made two full laps of the city’s skyline before she spoke again. “I am told she kept the Celestori from being found by the empire. The…rest of the empire.”

“Yes, she did.”

Another lap went by. “You trust her?”

“I do. I’ve literally put my life in her hands more than once, and she’s never betrayed us or said anything that didn’t turn out to be true.”

“If she lived the life of an Inquisitor, she has done awful things.”

“Yes. And she’s been very upfront about that. When she was younger, she truly believed in the empire, and that what it did was right and just. It was only later she realized she was just as much of a tool for the empire as anyone else.”

“She told you this herself?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm…A Gorvani on my back. I don’t know if I can bear it.”

I didn’t know how forward I should be with Nir, but the truth was the truth. “You wouldn’t be here without her. The empire would have found the Celestori and, well, you know what would have happened to them. And she’s saved my life more than once. Where we are in our fight against the Gorvani, we wouldn’t be there without her.”

I counted five and a half laps before Nir spoke again. “I’ll do it. I’ll carry her to the first, so long as you’re with me as well.”

“That’s the plan,” I said.

“Very well. It is…distasteful, but if she’s truly done all that you say, then I’ll endure it.”

We landed in front of the Carvers’ Guild, and standing outside the door with her hood up was Isik. She wore soft boots and gloves, and together with the hood, none of her skin was visible. She had a leather bag looped over her shoulders, bulging with who knew what. I told her of the talk Nir and I had just had, and she nodded. We both approached Nir, who eyed Isik warily.

She lowered her head so that her face was almost touching us, and she said in a voice quieter than I thought something of her size would be capable of, “I have agreed to this because of what Michael has said of you, but I do not like it.”

Isik nodded. “If it’s any consolation, dragon, I’m not at all comfortable with this myself.” She pulled her hood back just enough so the two of them could exchange a long, unblinking stare, after which, they both slowly nodded. 

That was probably the best possible outcome, so I started to climb up onto Nir’s back, and once I was there, I helped Isik up.

Nir was unusually stiff and unmoving during it, and once Isik had sat down, I thought I felt a tiny shudder run down her body. She roared, which was apparently part of taking flight for some reason, and then we were off the ground and climbing.

Isik, who’d sat behind me, yelped and wrapped her arms tightly around me. It was almost cute, but I knew if I said that out loud, she’d probably try and throw me off just out of reflex.

“You do have the key, right?” I asked.

“Yes, Michael, I have the key.”

She clung on tight, and I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t going to be the most awkward trip I’d ever taken.

I was wrong, of course.

9

Neither Isik nor Nir spoke for the entire trip unless I spoke to them first, and they both gave me succinct answers to anything I said, providing precisely zero conversational openings. After a couple clumsy attempts, I just shut my mouth too and tried to think about better things. Of course there weren’t really any of those either; most of my thoughts circled back to the shadowsphere around the palace and what horrific things could be going on inside it. It was all speculation without a single fact, so my mind spiraled wildly out. 

Were they breeding shadow-infused yargeth in there? Maybe they’d developed Earth-like missiles that were going to rain destruction down on the entire planet…for some reason. Perhaps they were going to mold the Tenebral Font into a giant, city crushing monster and it was going to walk around smashing everyone.

I shook my head and tried to push the stupid thoughts away. For the thousandth time, I did not ask if we were there yet, because we weren’t, and I knew it’d take most of the day to get there and it hadn’t been most of the day yet.

Much to my chagrin, I’d been informed that we’d be flying the entire way, instead of Nir creating a portal, since apparently doing so might alert the Gorvani. And since this was to be primarily a stealth mission, screwing it up at the outset wasn’t a good option. Also, since Nir wasn’t familiar with the area, we might come out somewhere not even close, or directly over a town, above which our presence would be extremely noticeable. We’d be portaling on the way back, but the trip there was going to be long. And awkward.

We stopped a couple times to relieve ourselves, and during midday, Isik produced sandwiches from her bag, which were delicious. They were some new kind of meat I wasn’t familiar with, and a red sauce that was surprisingly spicy. “Did you make these?” I asked her.

She scoffed and said, “Of course not. They…are good though, aren’t they?”

Nir was off eating whatever dragons ate. I had just assumed it to be medium sized animals that she swooped down on and swallowed in a single bite, but I still hadn’t actually asked and didn’t really have plans to do so.

The day wore on, and slowly, so slowly, the sun made its way down the sky, but before it touched the horizon, Nir turned to us and said, “I believe we’re here.”

We looked down on a massive estate nestled in the mountains and surrounded by trees. There was one central manor along with a variety of other buildings and stables. I wondered at the wisdom of just flying right down to it, but as we got closer, it looked to be completely abandoned. 

When I mentioned it, Isik said, “That’s actually likely. Once Gor’mina was dead, all her possessions, and that includes people, are up for grabs. Most in the service of royals don’t want to stay that way, so I’d have been surprised if there were a lot left here.”

“It’s just a free for all? There’s no…laws or anything?”

Isik scoffed. “Oh there are rules, but they almost all boil down to: the strongest take what they want first. There’s a lot of posturing and grandstanding to prove you have the most status and deserve whatever it is you’re stealing. Or looting. Whatever. I’m not sure if it would work the same with the royals though; they used to not ever die.”

“So the estate’s probably been looted?”

“Likely. But whatever’s behind this key should still be there.”

“We’re hoping.”

“Yes.”

“I kinda wish you’d told me all this before.” Maybe we could have avoided this entire day of silent awkwardness.

“Irrelevant. This is still our best, and only, lead.”

Despite the seemingly abandoned nature of the place, Nir dropped us off a little ways out from the main gate. She assured us she would be close by, but would find a less conspicuous place to wait.

Isik and I wandered up the path leading to the entrance, and while she was probably trying to keep it subtle, I could hear her grumbling under her breath. “What is it?” I asked.

Her eyes flicked over to me and she sighed. “I’m questioning the wisdom of bothering with this disguise when all I did with it was walk from the front door of the guild to a waiting dragon right outside. How many steps could I even have taken? Was it worth it?”

“I’m sure there will be other chances to use it,” I said, trying to be positive, but I knew that was beside the point.

She scoffed and said, “That’s beside the point.”

I laughed and she narrowed her eyes at me. 

“Perhaps if no one is there, I can find some better clothes.”

“You want one of those robe things the royals wear that only cover from the waist down? There’s probably some here.”

“I’m not sure which one would be worse.”

As we approached the estate, I kept expecting something to happen, but we saw and heard nothing, and there were indeed no guards or anything to speak of. The entire place was surrounded by a tall, stone block wall. Its stones were a variety of colors and some really impressive designs had been worked into it, and it was topped with rather vicious looking iron spikes. The gate was made of wrought iron and was as detailed as any carving I’d seen on Vendira. I walked up and tentatively pushed on it, and it opened easily on well-oiled hinges. I took a few steps inside and looked around.

The entire front courtyard was filled with trees and bushes and flowers in an explosion of colors, all well maintained and trimmed into a variety of shapes. I stood gawking at it all when Isik cleared her throat from behind me.

She was standing just outside the gate with an expectant look on her face. When I didn’t respond, she sighed and shook her head. “There’s a ward over the gate.”

I hadn’t even thought to look, but on close inspection, I could faintly see little lines of the tenebrae floating in the air, almost invisible in the darkening evening. “Can you dispel it?”

“Yes, but it’s a rather strong one, and I’d just as soon save my strength for the many inevitable wards that will be inside the manor. Just carve me an entrance through the wall.”

The wall was pretty thick and I felt a little bad just busting it up since the designs were so nice. It took a little work and a lot of cutting, but eventually, I was able to slice and pull out enough stone to make a comfortable, if small, hole that Isik could pass through. We both took a moment to look and see if the ward was laced into the wall itself, but it didn’t appear to be, and then nothing happened as she slowly came through.

We walked up to the front doors, which were two stories tall and just as ornately carved as anything was. They featured panels that looked like royals standing above a mass of people who were either worshiping them or begging not to be killed. So, pretty on brand, I thought. I tried one and found it unlocked, and even though it was massive and made of solid wood, it took no effort at all to swing it open. Inside, I stood in a massive foyer of light marble tile and pillars, decorated with hanging plants just as colorful as the courtyard. The ceiling went all the way up to the fourth floor and had railing and balconies wrapping around it, complete with huge skylights shining down from the top. As I stood there looking around, Isik cleared her throat at me again. I turned to see her standing just outside the door with an annoyed expression.

“How soon you forget,” she said. “Open a window for me, would you?”

The huge, stained glass windows by the door didn’t open, so I wandered into the next room, a large sitting room with a selection of musical instruments that I wasn’t familiar with, besides one that looked kind of like a piano. Kind of. At any rate, the room had windows that opened, so once I figured out the weird way they latched, I pulled it open for Isik, who was standing right outside.

I stepped back to make room, but she didn’t move. “There’s one on the window too, isn’t there?” I leaned in and squinted, and sure enough, I could faintly see the magic there. “You want me to cut another hole in the side of the house, or…?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. “No, I’ll just take this one apart.”

Whatever she did was too complex for me, besides the fact that the tenebrous sigils were just harder for me to make out on sight. With a small snap, the ward reverberated and puffed out of existence. 

Isik gingerly climbed in, taking her time to not trip over the robe. Once she was in, she marched to the door I’d come through, and then to the three others that led out of the room. She gave a satisfied nod and said, “Well, that’s something, at least. Not every door is warded. I imagine some of them are, but hopefully it’s mostly the external ones.”

We started wandering through the place, and while I thought I had seen opulence before, this blew anything I’d ever seen clear out of the water. But maybe that’s what you got when you were an immortal, god-like being at nearly the top of society. Everything was made out of marble or carved wood and stone, the ceilings were high and the doors were huge, and the furniture was the softest, most comfortable stuff I’d ever sat on in my life. Even Isik wasn’t immune; I caught her falling back onto a number of couches with an inwardly satisfied smile on her lips. The kitchen was literally bigger than my apartment back on Earth, and its pantry, which was packed with pretty much everything I’d ever seen on Vendira and more, was bigger than my living room.

Every single room we walked into was immaculate; there wasn’t a speck of dust or a single thing out of the place. “This place had to have been taken care of right up until recently.” I said. “But it doesn’t look the least bit looted.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it? Perhaps taking things from a royal, even a dead one, was too much to consider.” A small shiver went through her body. “I know I wouldn’t attempt it. What if the thing you took was something another royal wanted? I doubt they’d ask you for it. Not nicely, at least. At any rate, that’s good news for us; everything will still be here to find.”

“Should we, uh, be scared of a bunch of royals descending on this place while we’re here?”

“Hmm, normally I’d say yes. But perhaps they’re all busy doing whatever it is they’re doing inside the shadowsphere.”

Oh, right. I’d managed to forget about it briefly, which was a nice break from the constant, back-of-the-mind stress that it was causing. I pushed it aside as we both started a random search of whatever rooms we could wander into.

We’d been trying to stay together, but I went out one of the back doors and ended up in a garden that was even more elaborate than the courtyard, filled with a rainbow of plants and endless statues and water features. I had thought Isik was right behind me, but I walked slack-jawed through the place for a little while before I turned and found myself alone. A little ball of anxiety settled in my stomach, but against my better judgment, I made a circuit of the garden. I told myself that it was a good idea to secure the perimeter, which was a term I’d heard more so than I knew what it really meant. I just wanted to gawk at all the pretty displays of plants, which I did. But I also was on the lookout for…I wasn’t sure what. 

The most notable thing I found was a huge statue of a yargeth, which was carved with a  lot of accurate detail that I knew about, since I’d almost been killed by one. All seven of its heads were vomiting out a flowing stream of water into the fountain it was settled in.

After long enough, I went back into the house to try and find Isik. I assumed she’d finished looking through the first floor, so I went up a set of marble stairs and tried random rooms. I didn’t really want to call out, just in case someone was still here. While we’d seen no trace of people, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that we were being watched. I finally found her in one of the many libraries. 

She jumped a little as I came in through the door. “Damnit, Michael. Don’t do that.”

“Do what? Walk around?”

She smirked. “There was a time when I would have branded someone for that kind of flippant remark. Where did you go? I thought you were right behind me.”

“Yeah, same. I ended up out back looking through the garden. There’s a yargeth fountain out there. Very lifelike. Not to scale, though.”

“Charming,” she said while idly looking through the shelves of books.

“Anything worthwhile yet?”

“No. Nothing yet.”

“So are you like, getting the feeling that we’re being watched?”

“Mhmm.”

Well that wasn’t reassuring.

“However,” she added, “I haven’t seen any evidence  of that, and it’s something I’m always looking for.”

We continued our search of the house and its endless rooms. The sun fully set, but the lights were apparently automatic, and the entire place stayed lit, which I was pretty thankful for. I didn’t want to search a creepy, abandoned estate in the dark, completely convinced assassins or ghosts or ghost assassins were around every bend and behind every door.

As it was, though, the house was still pretty creepy. Without the daylight, every room reminded me of countless horror movies set in old Victorian houses. The doors and floorboards didn’t creak ominously, but for some reason, that made it even worse. While I was wandering aimlessly around and freaking myself out for no reason, I lost track of Isik again. “Oh for fuck’s sake!” I said to no one. Or whoever was listening. “No, damnit.” I muttered to myself. I had to stop psyching myself up. I doubled back, trying to find Isik, but she wasn’t in any of the rooms nearby, and I still just couldn’t bring myself to call out for her. 

I was leaning against the railing, looking out over the open foyer, when I heard her scream.

10

I bolted up the nearest staircase I could find, frantically trying to find the source of the screams. I went down hallway after hallway, thinking I was getting closer, but the sounds must have been bouncing throughout the house. 

Finally, I ended up in a large sitting room and Isik was on the floor in a doorway, writhing and continuing to scream. I ran to her and pulled her back, but I couldn’t see what the problem was. Once we were clear of the door, she gasped, her eyes as wide as they could go, and she grabbed onto my arms. I put my hands on her shoulders and repeated, “You’re okay” a few times, although I wasn’t at all sure she was.

She rocked back and forth, making involuntary noises and grunts before she finally got her breathing under control. We continued holding on to each other until she calmed down enough to talk. “Ward,” she said. “Fuck. I didn’t…even see it, and I was looking for them. It was…” She took a long, deep breath and said, “It was the most awful ward I’ve ever experienced. It was…it was like my insides were on fire, but also being sliced apart and ripped out.”

“Wow,” I said, unsure that there was anything I could really say in response to that.

If my reply was inappropriate or stupid, she didn’t say so. She shivered violently and took another long breath. “Alright. Help me stand.”

I didn’t think that was a good idea, but I helped her up anyway. 

Her legs were shaky and she kept a hand on my shoulder, but we headed towards the offending door. She leaned in and so did I, but I couldn’t see the usual telltale waves of tenebrae. 

“Yeah, I don’t see anything here either.”

“No. It’s completely invisible it seems. Which leads me to believe this room is important.”

Inside the door, we could see a lavish bedroom with a massive, four-poster bed with curtains. There were a few wardrobes and a huge desk, and along the walls there were a few doors, some leading to closets it looked like, and one big one out onto a balcony. “You want me to cut the wall open?”

“I…” She narrowed her eyes and thought for a moment. “No. I’ll bet this one winds around the entire room. I’m going to try and dispel it.”

“Right now?” I asked. She did not seem up to a complex task after enduring that.

“Of cou—” she started to say before she bowed her head and sighed loudly. “Perhaps I should regain my strength before attempting it.”

I was relieved to hear her say it, since I really didn’t want to have to force her to take a break. We went all the way down to the bottom floor and into the excessively huge kitchen. I sat her down at an island in the middle that had padded stools before I went into the pantry and tried to figure out something I could make. There were shelves absolutely jammed with all kinds of foods, and in the corner, there was a machine more like an icebox than a refrigerator, but it was still obviously powered by the arcanae.

I came out with something that looked a lot like bacon and a couple of eggs before I rummaged through at least twenty different cabinets to find some appropriate pans. The stove, such as it was, was pretty confusing, just like the shower controls, but I eventually managed to turn it on and start heating up the pans. 

During it all, Isik was watching me with direct interest, and once I noticed it, I got more and more uncomfortable until I just had to say something. “Uh…am I doing something wrong?”

She smiled tiredly and said, “No, not at all. Just…” She looked away and seemed unwilling to finish the sentence.

“What?”

“Can you…cook, then?”

“Uh, yeah. Can’t you?”

She snorted and said, “Oh my no. Such a thing is…beneath my station. Or, it was.”

I opened up the bacon-like meat and  put a few strips in the pan, where they started to sizzle enticingly. I worked up the eggs and got them going as well, all while Isik watched me like I was an exhibit in a zoo. “Do you want me to show you how? This stuff is pretty easy, really.”

Her eyes met mine and there was genuine feeling behind the smile she gave me. “No, at least not right now. I suppose I’ll have to learn, though.”

I was glad she didn’t add if I live through this onto the end of that. “I can show you what I know, but if you want real instruction, you should ask Irina. She’s one of the best cooks I’ve ever seen. I’m sure she’d be thrilled to show you how.”

Isik laughed and shook her head. “Yes, she would, wouldn’t she? Maybe I will, one day. After all this is over.”

She still didn’t say it, but I heard the tone in her voice all the same. She never thought that day would come. I knew exactly why she thought that, and it wasn’t unreasonable, but I told myself I’d do anything and everything I could so that day would actually happen. The empire and all the royals would be dead, and Isik would be in Irina’s kitchen, learning how to cook. It was an almost sickeningly wholesome thought, but it made me happy all the same.

While the food finished cooking, I found a bottle of something I’d never heard of, but once I opened it, it smelled amazing, so I poured a couple glasses and set them out before getting the food ready. I set it in front of Isik and she gave me a weird look. “What?”

“No one’s ever cooked me something because they wanted to. It’s a new feeling.”

“Yeah, well, don’t say anything too nice until you actually taste it. I could have royally screwed it up, you never know. I know how to cook things that look like this on Earth. No guarantee these are the same.”

“Fair enough.”

While I’d demurred about the food, it smelled great and I was pretty sure I’d nailed it. We each took a bite, and I was right; it was fantastic, just as good as Earth bacon.

“Damn,” Isik said, “that’s pretty damn good.” Then she took a drink of whatever I’d poured and almost choked. “Is that lightningberry wine?”

“Is it what now?”

She reached across the island and grabbed the bottle I’d poured from. “It is! Did you know what you were doing when you chose this?”

“Nope. Totally random. It smelled pretty good, though.” I tried a drink, and it really was pretty good, but I didn’t think it was as good as she was making out. “Is it fancy or something?”

She laughed loudly and said, “You could say that. I was privileged enough to have some of this on one occasion in my life. It’s made for the royalty only. It’s a rare occasion that they deign anyone good enough to have any. The one time I was considered worthy was after the Inquisition had rooted out a large group of traitors organizing against the empire. A few Inquisitors were allowed to share a bottle, and it was heavily impressed upon us what an unparalleled honor it was.”

After we finished eating, we decided that we probably weren’t going to uncover all the secrets of the manor in one night, so we each picked one of the bedrooms upstairs and called it a night.

It was a little weird showering in a dead royal’s house, as I couldn’t really shake the feeling that we weren’t alone, but it seemed like if something was going to happen, it probably already would have. The bathroom was as ridiculously fancy as the rest of the house; it was covered in light and dark, complementary marble and all the fixtures practically gleamed. The shower was big enough for ten people for no reason, and the controls for it were even more baffling than others I had encountered on Vendira.

The walk in closet was still filled with clothes, so I picked out a few things because why not? I didn’t elect to get pajamas, since I might have to wake up and suddenly fight, but the things I got were comfortable all the same, and not nearly as ostentatious as some of the choices.

While I was laying on the bed with one lamp still on, lost in thought, my door cracked open. I sat up quickly, but it opened to reveal Isik standing there, dressed in a long, black and gold robe, her long hair unbound and flowing over her shoulders. She had a strip of fabric in her hands and a strange look on her face that I couldn’t decipher. 

She closed the door and slowly came over to sit on the edge of the bed beside me. Her eyes met mine, but she didn’t say anything. I kept my own mouth shut and waited to see what this was about. Finally, she said, “I have something to ask of you, Michael.”

There was a weird tension in the air, but I just said, “Okay. Sure.”

“There probably won’t be a time like this again, with the way things are. And while I still have the opportunity…” She unlooped the belt on the robe and pulled it off one of her shoulders, revealing one pale blue breast, as she wasn’t wearing anything under it.

My eyebrows went as high as they could go as I laid there, frozen in surprise.

“I know you don’t care for me the way you do for Revana, or even Tiquette, but I see the way you look at me. And for whatever strange reason I’ve never fully understood, I find myself more at ease with you than I have been with anyone in years.” She smiled at the surprise that was still clear on my face. “You are, of course, free to decline if you wish. I won’t be offended.”

“I, uh, no…it’s not that…I just…”

She pushed the robe off her other shoulder and let it fall to the bed.

Not trusting myself to say anything coherent, I ran my hand up and down her arm. Her skin was much softer than I thought it was going to be. 

With a devious smile, she slowly climbed on the bed and slid a leg over to straddle me. She lowered down, and the feel of her body pressed against me was an instant turn on. She pushed her lips against mine, and we kissed, a much slower and more measured kiss than I was used to. Our tongues met, pressing and writhing against each other in that same slow manner. 

I slid my hands all over her body, from her shoulders, to cup and squeeze her breasts, and down her back and onto her ass. It all felt oddly forbidden. Not because I had no clue what Revana was going to think about it, which was a concern, but because it was Isik. The Inquisitor. I felt like this was all a daydream I was having that the real her would want to kill me over.

She raised up long enough to strip my clothes off of me, and when she laid back down on top of me, the feeling of her skin on mine was incredible. We kept kissing, my hands gliding all over her body, while she ground herself into my completely hard erection.

After a while, she rolled off of me and got the dark strip of cloth she’d brought at the beginning that I’d forgotten about.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a blindfold, of course.”

“Oh.”

“Put it on.”

Well, whatever, I thought. It’s a party. 

I raised it up to my eyes and she laughed, pulling my hands away. “It’s not for you, Michael.”

“Oh.”

She smiled and turned away from me. “Knot it snugly, so it doesn’t come off.”

“Yeah…okay.” I didn’t know any knots, so I just tied it in a bow, but I did my best to make it snug. “There we are. Uh, what now?”

She turned back to me and I swore she could see me even with it on, although that was unlikely. “Now you tell me what you want me to do.” After a pause, she added, “If you’re comfortable with this.”

“I’m supposed to…give you directions?”

“Well, commands, really.”

Oh. “You want me to…command you. In bed.”

“Yes.”

“That’s…uh…”

She laughed softly. “Only if you want to. We don’t have to do this.”

“No, it’s just that…I dunno, you’re literally the last person in the world I would have expected to want something like that.”

She laughed much louder at that. “Oh, then you don’t know people, Michael. I’m the first person you should have suspected that would like this.”

I didn’t know if this conversation was unsexy or not, but I still wanted to have it. “Uh, how so?”

“I’m an Inquisitor. It’s my job to be in control. All the time.” She took a long, deep breath. “All. The. Time. Almost no one outranks me, so all I do is give orders. Be the one responsible for anything and everything. So the satisfaction of letting go, in a safe environment, and just be commanded? To relinquish control and not have to think? Just listen, and do? It’s exhilarating. So tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Not like, literally anything, right?”

“No, not anything.”

“Do we…need a safe word?”

She giggled. Giggled. “No, not for this.”

“Okay. Get down on your knees?”

She shook her head, smiling. “Don’t ask me to; tell me to.”

Right. Okay. “Get on the floor, on your knees.” She did as I commanded, and it felt about ten times more forbidden than just squeezing her ass. “Open your mouth.” She did, and I stood up in front of her, put one hand on the top of her head, and guided my cock between her lips with the other. Her mouth felt amazing, and I groaned as the sight of her giving me a blowjob was mindblowing in a couple different ways.

She only used her mouth, and after a few moments, it occurred to me that I hadn’t told her to do anything else. “Use your hands,” I said. She reached up and wrapped my cock with one hand and played with my balls with the other.

I had to concentrate pretty hard to remain standing; she was good, which I guess I hadn’t really expected. I didn’t think she was going to be bad, but damn.

“Stop,” I said before sitting back down on the bed. I pulled her gently over by her head and guided her back down onto me. I cupped her breasts and pinched her nipples firmly, but not nearly as hard as I would have with Tiq. Then I let myself fall back onto the bed and crossed my arms behind my head, just reveling in what she was doing.

After a little while, I told her to stop and sit on the bed where I had been. I kneeled on the floor in front of her and kissed her neck before working my way down her chest and sucking on her nipples. She gave a soft moan under her breath, her hips raising just a little, and it was the first sound I’d heard from her since we’d started. I kept going, kissing down her stomach and pushing her legs apart before I slid down in between them, kissing and running my tongue over her. She didn’t moan, but her body shuddered slightly at the touch. 

I slowly slid my tongue up and down before gently pushing two fingers inside her. I wrapped my other arm around her leg and pulled her closer, licking and softly sucking on her clit. Her breathing came faster and her whole body arched and squirmed. I would have stayed there longer, but I was almost painfully hard at that point, so I got back on my knees and slowly guided myself inside her. “Take it,” I said, not because she really needed to do anything, but it felt right.

We both moaned as I slid inside her.

The blood hammered in my veins as I slowly fucked her, while the thought that this was all still insanely forbidden circled in my head. Forbidden maybe, but outrageously hot. And it felt good and fun in a way that I didn’t think it would have with Revana or Tiq. I couldn’t imagine giving them a blindfold and issuing orders.

“Lay back,” I said, and once she did, I pulled her legs up and sat her feet on my shoulders, my hands resting on her thighs. I went a little harder, pounding into her, watching her breasts bounce back and forth.

She bit her lip and I almost lost it.

After a while, I pulled out of her and let her legs down. “Turn around and bend over.”

She rolled over, crawled to the middle of the bed, and pressed her face against the sheets. 

I thought I might just pass out at the sight of her ass in the air, waiting for me. I practically leapt on the bed, positioned myself behind her, and slid back inside. The time for going slow was over and I couldn’t help myself; I pounded into her hard and fast while barely not going over the edge.

She started to moan and whimper, her toes curling and her hands grabbing the sheets.

I kept going, already riding the edge, when it occurred to me that she was doing the same thing. Did I need to order her to come? I slid my hand up her back and into her dark purple hair, which I curled my fingers into and pulled as I said, “Do it. Now. Come.”

Three more thrusts and her body started to shake. She gripped the sheets harder and moaned loud enough to be a scream. Her legs trembled and her body arched and twitched, and I rode her spasms as best I could. I had no idea how I kept it together, but I didn’t want to finish inside her.

Once her moans had mostly quieted down, I pulled out and more or less yelled, “Turn around and open your mouth!” She quickly did as I said and I grabbed the back of her head as I jerked my cock off into her face, spasming and trembling myself, while I tried to stay upright. The first few spurts went over her head and I screamed as loud as she had as I looked at her, blindfolded, tongue out, taking my load on her face. As I was almost done, I pulled her down onto my cock, which she eagerly sucked without being told to, which was for the best as I didn’t think I could speak.

Finally, I fell back onto the bed, breathing hard and covered in sweat, laughing.

She stretched out on her stomach and did the same.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Mhmm,” she agreed.

We laid there for a while, getting our breathing under control, saying nothing.

“You can, uh, take the blindfold off now,” I said, just in case she was waiting for it.

She sat up, untied it, and let it fall to the bed. 

The sight of her sitting there, naked, face still a mess, was still just as mind blowing as it all had been at the start. “Fuck,” I said again, “that was…I mean, wow. Just wow. Amazing, but very unexpected.”

“I knew you found me attractive, but I had no idea if you’d go for it. But I thought, while we’re here, staying the night in a dead royal’s estate that we’re currently looting, why not? The world’s fucked, so we might as well have a little fun.”

“I’m glad you came in,” I said.

“As am I. But what I really want to know now is what will Revana think when you tell her?” I leaned up and looked at her and she just smiled. “You’re going to tell her.” It wasn’t a question. “She does seem to hate me less lately, so that’s something, I suppose.”

“I’ll, uh, let you know how it goes. But it’s Revana; she’s not going to fly off the handle or be unreasonable about it. If I thought she’d be furious, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Remarkable,” she said, shaking her head, “two sensible people that would react reasonably to things. I can’t tell you how painfully rare that is.”

“You don’t need to convince me; I worked with the public.”

She laughed and slid off the bed and headed into the bathroom.

Shortly after, I heard the shower come on. I went in after her and was happy the toilet was off in its own tiny little room. I really needed a shower too, so I got in, but it wasn’t intimate. She had her own showerhead and I had mine and there were still a lot more to choose from. Besides, I didn’t think our relationship was one that involved cuddling afterwards.

Once we were done, I dried off and fell into bed without bothering with clothes. I thought she might join me, but she put her robe back on, said good night, and slipped out the door, heading back to her own room.

“Fuck,” I said softly to myself as I lay there in the dark, replaying the whole thing in my head over and over.

11

I woke up late in the morning with sunlight streaming in through the windows. Nothing seemed to be happening, so I laid there for a while longer, slowly clearing the sleep from my mind. While I was there, I replayed the previous night in my head a few times again, which is what I’d fallen asleep to. I still struggled to believe it was real. 

I finally rolled out of bed and just for good measure, I showered off again. I picked some more clothes from the closets and made my way down to the kitchen, where I brewed a pitcher of hachi and poked around in the pantry until I found some suitable breakfast cakes. I was sure they weren’t intended for breakfast, really, but I was on vacation in a fancy villa, so why not.

I ate alone at the comically large dining table and then headed up to knock on Isik’s door. I didn’t expect her to still be asleep and was proven right; her door was open and her room was empty. 

I went up to the master bedroom and before I walked through, I tried to see if the ward was still there. I couldn’t see anything, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t been able to when I knew the ward was there. So I strode into the room, which was just as stupidly big as everything else in the manor was, and around a corner, I found Isik rifling through a dresser.

She looked up quickly, but the tension left her shoulders when she saw me. “Being in here makes me nervous. I feel like a child in a room I’m not allowed to be in. Oh, also good morning I suppose.”

“Morning. Find anything?”

“No, not yet, but I only just awoke recently.”

“Oh, I expected you’d be up before the sun and have this place torn apart. You want some hachi? Also there are breakfast cakes.”

She slowly turned her head to look at me with a baffled expression. “Breakfast…cakes?”

“It’s pretty common on Earth, actually. Kind of. They’re not cakes…but they kind of are? You know what, I’ll bring you some and you’ll see.”

She shook her head and continued her search. “If you say so.”

I walked down the many stairs to the kitchen and then all the way back up with a big glass and a slice of fruity cake. “Was it much trouble getting the ward down?”

She tentatively took the food from me and sat in a huge, plush chair. “Less than I thought it would be, but it had multiple layers, which isn’t something you ever really see. She tried the cake and washed it down with a big gulp of hachi. “Hmm, it’s not as bad as I imagined.”

After she finished the cake, we both started searching the suite and all its little side rooms and closets, but we didn’t get anywhere. “Does this place have a basement?” I asked.

Isik nodded. “It does. I went down there yesterday. It’s mostly wine storage and maintenance tools. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, although I suppose we could look again.” She shook her head and leaned back into the padded chair. “I really think what we’re looking for is in this room. It’s the one with the most vicious ward.”

“Have you been out on the balcony?”

“Oh, no I haven’t. There’s a similar ward on that door and I hadn’t gotten around to dispelling it. I don’t know what you’ll find, though. I can see most of it through the doors and windows.”

“Worth a shot,” I said. I got up and brazenly walked through the ward and felt nothing. The balcony wrapped around the entire master suite and had a truly amazing view of the back garden and the mountains and forests outside the complex. I didn’t really think I was going to find anything out here either, but once I’d walked the whole thing twice, something didn’t make sense. I went back inside and walked the rooms again, then back outside for another pass. I came in and found Isik standing in the middle of the room grumbling. “Hey, I think I found something. Maybe.”

“Oh, I hope so, because I haven’t.”

She followed me into one of the closets and I said, “This room isn’t big enough.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“I’ve walked the balcony a couple times and mentally measured the rooms inside and out. And this closet, based on what I’m seeing outside, isn’t big enough. It should be about twice as wide as it is.”

“A hidden room,” she said.

“Almost has to be.”

“The thought had occurred to me and I’ve been looking for triggers and switches or patterns on the floor that would indicate a door, but I’ve not found a single thing.” She pressed her lips together and slowly looked around the room. “However…I’ve been thinking conventionally. Perhaps I need the key to even see where it goes. I really should have thought of that immediately.”

“Can’t win ‘em all,” I said. “Where is it? I’ll go get it.”

“Downstairs in ‘my’ room. In the bag. Don’t open the box it’s in. I haven’t touched it without a layer of the tenebrae between me and it, and I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

I was down and back in short order, the light, wooden box in my hands. I opened it and held it out for Isik.

She summoned a tenebrous gauntlet, but still gingerly picked the key up. She walked around the room, vaguely holding it up to things, but nothing happened. “Well, okay. I’m going to try channeling into it. You might want to back away.”

I didn’t need to be told twice; I actually left the closet and stayed in the bedroom where I could still see her.

She channeled into the key, and instead of exploding, it glowed darkly in the odd way the tenebrae did, and there was a faint trail from it into a random cabinet. She waved me back in and with a lot of pushing and prodding, we found a panel that looked solid but actually slid open to reveal a complicated tenebrous pattern. “I think we’ve found it,” she said. She held the key inside the pattern and there was a flash, or the opposite of a flash since it was all shadow magic, and a hidden door opened on the other end of the wall.

“So it being shaped like a key…” I said.

“Had nothing to do with the way it functioned, yes.”

“Okay, just so we’re clear.”

The hidden room was just a little smaller than the closet, but it was packed with all manner of weird things. It was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, filled with books and glass vials and a lot of little machines that I couldn’t even guess the use of.

“Uh, any of this making any sense to you?”

“Perhaps. I wouldn’t touch anything if I were you, though.”

“Way ahead of you.” I stood there uselessly while she slowly looked through the space. At the other end was a table piled with handwritten notes and old tomes. 

Isik sat down at the chair in front of it and pieced through the pages, slowly. She made a lot of involuntary grunts and gasped quietly but frequently.

I kept waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t; she just sat there making noises, oblivious to how anxious I was getting. “Soo…”

She turned to look at me with one raised eyebrow and thinned lips. “I believe Gor’mina was even more of a psychopath then she seemed.”

“Wow, is that even possible? She was way, way off the deep end.”

“Yes, she was,” Isik said, nodding. “But this stack of papers details many plans and thoughts she had about killing the Emperor himself and usurping his position, along with murdering the rest of the royalty.”

“She wanted to be Empress, huh? And that makes sense; she killed Gor’drelar without hesitation. Although I gotta say, I’m not really shocked to hear any of this. It’s about as crazy as I thought she was.”

“Oh well, yes. Grasping for power is pretty standard as far as people go; you’re right about that much. It’s the casual brutality and the way she talks of people as things. But mostly, based on what I’ve just gone through, it seems her motivations weren’t because she wanted more power; she already had an immense amount of it. She was planning all of these things…for fun. Because she could.”

I thought back to our fight and said, “You know, that kind of checks out too. When we had her mostly dead on the ground, her face literally melted away, she just laughed and…thanked me for one last thrill.”

Isik shivered and made a pained face. “I’m glad she’s dead.”

I didn’t know if I should say it or not, but I asked her, “You’re really scared of the royals, aren’t you? I know we’ve talked a little about it before, but it’s not just garden-variety scared, is it?”

“No, loathe as I am to admit it. They’re…they’re monsters. They’re not even people anymore. The horrors they inflict on anyone based on the slightest whim…” She looked up at me sharply and added, “And I’m an Inquisitor. I have my own life full of visiting horrors on people who didn’t deserve it. But them…” She shook her head and got herself composed. “Anyway, it’ll take me some time to sort through these things and see what can be useful for us. I know we had some…cake…not too long ago, but perhaps you could cook us something for lunch?”

She turned back to the table before she said it, but I could hear the small hope in her voice. “Yeah, sure. No problem.”

There was a long pause before she said, “Excellent.”

I could hear the smile in her words.

12

I took my time in the kitchen, slowly looking through the huge pantry for whatever I could find. I ended up making some variation on beans and rice, although it had a lot of weird vegetables and a spicy sauce, which I was pretty proud of.

Isik walked into the kitchen just as I was finishing up, and she stood there watching me get everything on plates and pour more hachi. Based on some subtle movements that didn’t ever materialize, I think she wanted to help me, but either didn’t know how or couldn’t bring herself to actually do so, but I didn’t mind.

We sat at the table which was still much too big for two people. “How’re things coming along up there?”

“I’ve set aside a number of books, journals, and stacks of paper that I’ll need to bring back and look through further. I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to.” She was taking a long drink of hachi and looking out the window when her eyes went wide and she spit her drink out all over the table. “Shit,” she said as she stood suddenly, her chair sliding back from her.

I looked out the window as she was already running towards it and I saw what had surprised her; there was someone out there.

She skidded up to the glass and channeled. 

I saw the person in the garden, a young Gorvani woman, start to run before she suddenly collapsed with a short scream.

“Get out there, Michael! Kill her! Don’t let her get away!”

My sword was upstairs on the bed, but I bolted out the door and rushed over to the spy, who was writhing on the ground as Isik branded her. Once in a while, I had been practicing summoning weapons made from the shae, so I pulled in the magic and gave it form in my hands. The warhammer wasn’t quite as big as the ones Gor’mina had used, but I was still new to it.

The woman was on her side, clutching her abdomen, and her face was scrunched up in pain. She tried to crawl away  from me, but wasn’t able to move much at all.

Fuck.

I raised the hammer up, and with only the barest hesitation, I brought it down on her head as hard as I could. I heard her skull crunch with a wet, squelching sound. I dismissed the weapon and turned away without looking at the body, giving Isik a nod as she stood in the window, trapped in the house by the wards. 

Ugh. It was necessary, but it wasn’t fun.

Isik hammered on the window, and when I looked up at her again, she was frantically pointing towards the other end of the garden, where another Gorvani was sprinting away.

Shit.

I ran after him as fast as I could, but he had a decent head start. We passed out through a set of gates off to the side of the garden, and apparently he was able to bypass their wards, which made a lot of sense for someone sent to spy on us. The gates led to a small sitting area with a pool that sat beside the forest, and I watched as the man rushed into the trees.

There was nothing to be done, so I summoned a lighter version of my armor in case this was an ambush and set in after him. 

In no time at all, I was breathing hard, but I was just able to keep the spy in sight as he weaved around trees, trying to lose me. I pulled more of the shae into my body so I could keep going, and after we’d gone for a long time, he finally started to flag.

His steps became wild and he quickly fell over an exposed tree root, rolling and cursing, before he came to a stop on the ground, panting heavily.

I caught up and summoned my hammer again.

He rolled onto his back and held up his hands, yelling, “Please, no!” He tried to scramble and get up, but he was just too winded. He looked up at me in terror and the quickness in his breath wasn’t just exertion. “Please,” he managed to say.

What was I going to do? Let him live? I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t let him get away.

I raised my hammer up high, and for some reason, I looked him in the eye before I brought it down on his face. His skull made the same sound the other woman’s had. Just for good measure, I struck him again, to make sure he wasn’t still alive and suffering. For a moment, I just stood there, my hammer still blocking my view of the corpse. I let the emotions come as they would, but I didn’t feel sick or have to throw up. It was awful, but it had to be done.

I dismissed the hammer but still looked away.

“Aw, shit!” I said as I realized I was now lost in the woods like an idiot. “Okay, okay.” I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to think. It was still before noon, so maybe I could guess the direction I needed to go by the sun, which I couldn’t really see very well through the trees.

I picked a direction that I thought was right, tried to look for a trail the two of us might have left, and did my best to keep the sun in the same spot relative to myself. Not that I could see it well, even after I was walking for some time. After I’d been going for a bit, I lucked out hard and came into a little clearing on a pretty steep slope, and I could see the manor.

Wow, I was way off.

The trip back was annoying and long, but I made it, finally coming out on the main path that led up to the front of the house. Relieved, I went inside to look for Isik, but didn’t find her in the kitchen or in our rooms.

She was back in the hidden room, quickly stuffing a hoard of things into a large bag she’d apparently found somewhere. She looked up as I came in and said, “Oh, good. Did you get him?”

“I did. Got kinda lost in the forest afterwards.”

She didn’t stop rifling through the things and dumping the ones she thought were worth it into the bag. “Did you see any others?”

“Nope.”

“Neither did I, but we can’t assume there weren’t any.”

Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. “We better go, then.”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she asked wryly. “Oh! One more thing.” She stopped and turned to a small display case shoved into one of the shelves that held a silver necklace with dark stones inset into it. “I need you to take that out of there.”

“Warded?”

“Yes, just like the scale we obtained.”

I reached in and pulled the necklace out, but it felt weird. I wanted it out of my hands immediately. “Ugh, where can I put this? It feels off. I’m not sure how to describe it.”

She handed me the little box the key to this room had been in and said, “Just put it in there for now.” 

I did without hesitation, and once it wasn’t in contact with my skin anymore, the feeling went away. “What is it?”

Isik took the box from me and dumped it into the bag with one last book and cinched it tightly shut. “It’s…well, I believe it’s a tenebrous relic, just like the necklace you’re wearing now, and it possibly does the same thing: enables the wearer to channel vastly more of the tenebrae.

“Oh, shit. I didn’t know things like that existed!”

She shook her head and gave me a grim expression. “Neither did I.”

13

We packed up the rest of our things without bothering to hide the fact that we’d been in the house. Isik didn’t wear the priestess robes but she did bring them with her. Although we couldn’t be sure anyone was coming, there was still a palpable sense of urgency and I tried not to panic as I got my things together.

We were standing in the foyer making one final check through our stuff when Isik’s head popped up and she said, “Did you hear that?”

“I…didn’t. What was it?”

“I thought I heard a door closing somewhere, maybe in the next room.”

“It’s probably nothing,” I said, even though I didn’t really believe it. “I’ll go check.” I hurried into the large sitting room and looked around, but nothing was out of place. I went through a couple hallways and other side rooms for good measure, but I still found nothing.

Back out in the foyer, I was about to say everything was fine when I saw a weird twisting of the light right behind Isik. I didn’t have a clue what it was, but I shouted, “Look out!”

She turned and hurriedly stepped away, her eyes darting everywhere.

But she wasn’t fast enough; the weird warping of light coalesced into a puff of the tenebrae, and there was a man there, wielding a wicked looking dagger, thrusting it straight towards Isik’s chest.

Her eyes went wide and she tried to back away, but there wasn’t any time. The blade was almost in her chest already.

I watched this from across the room, and in that moment of pure helplessness, I knew Isik was about to die. My body moved of its own accord, running towards her, knowing I’d be too late. I pulled in the shae, as much as I could, and without any idea how but knowing I had to be across the room right now, I teleported.

I blinked across the room instantly, my armor reflexively appearing around me, and I grabbed the dagger just as the tip slid into Isik’s skin. I wrenched it back and she fell to the floor, bleeding but not dead.

The assassin screamed in wordless rage. He was Gorvani, his skin mottled with shifting darkness in an odd mockery of the royal’s tenebrous infusion. He pulled the blade out of my hand and lunged again at Isik, but I slammed into him, sending him tumbling across the floor. “NO!” he bellowed. “SHE HAS TO DIE!” The tenebrae inside him shifted, splitting and reforming in a random pattern, like the stuff inside a lava lamp.

Isik had scrambled back to her feet and summoned her own armor and her floating sword. “R-Rykan!?”

I looked again, and it was him. Rykan, the Inquisitor, the one Isik and I had humiliated and maimed in an imperial vault in what seemed like forever ago. 

“What did they do to you?” she asked him.

His face contorted in rage, his lips curled and his eyes seething. “They gave me the power I always deserved!” His eyes flicked over to me. “I’m supposed to be killing this one, but you’re first, Issy. I wanna watch as the light leaves your eyes and you know it’s me that killed you, you worthless fuck!”

Wow.

“Hey, shitbox,” I said, and he turned to me with a mixture of confusion and rage, “You aren’t touching her without going through me, and I think we both know you’re not up to that.” He lunged at me, much quicker than I thought he was capable of, but his shadowy dagger did little more than scrape across my heavy, golden armor. I thought this would be over soon, but he reached up to my helmet and a huge burst of the tenebrae made it through the small openings and hit me in the eyes.

It hurt. A lot.

I fell back onto the floor, trying to heal the damage with the shae. Once I was able to blink my vision back into focus, I saw him wrestling Isik to the floor. Her own armor had apparently deflected a few blows, but he was overpowering her and trying to slide the blade into her neck, while batting away her floating sword with bursts of the tenebrae. It looked as if they were both trying to brand each other as well.

I had my sword on my hip, but I summoned the biggest warhammer I could, sprinted to them, and knocked him off and across the room with a golf club-like swing.

Isik quickly stood and got behind me. 

Rykan rolled to his feet and yelled, “Stop interfering!”

“Uh, no,” I said.

He rushed forward again, this time slipping back into whatever invisibility he’d been using when he’d come in. 

I summoned little, exploding balls of light around the entire room, shutting my own eyes just as they all went off. Rykan screamed while I walked forward, swinging my hammer in a circle around me, reasonably close to where I thought he’d be. On the third rotation, I connected, and I heard some ribs break as he collapsed, his invisibility failing.

He was on the ground but not at all down. Three dark portals opened up above him and I pushed as much energy into my armor as I could as I leapt to protect Isik. We hit the floor as I felt repeated blows crashing into my back, my armor almost dissipating.

I rolled and got to my feet just soon enough to reach up and catch Rykan’s arms as he tried to stab me. We struggled momentarily, and I was shocked at how strong he was. Since I was about to lose the contest, I spun, dragging him around and using the momentum to throw him into the wall as I summoned my hammer and plowed it into his chest as he slumped down to the floor.

Or I tried to, because his hands raised up and released a huge blast of magic, blowing my hammer into tiny golden pieces. As I stumbled back, he leapt up and rushed me, wrapping his arms around my waist and picking me up to slam me on the floor. His dagger was back in his hands and he brought it down onto the faceplate of my helmet over and over again, and I could feel that it was seconds away from cracking.

Isik’s sword slammed into his back, penetrating his armor, at least a little.

He tried to raise up and attack her, but I pulled his arm back down and wrapped his entire body up as best I could with my arms and legs, watching Isik’s blade slice into his back, over and over and over. He spasmed and screamed, but I held on tight. After countless blows, he finally slipped out of my grasp and tried to stand, but I punched him as hard as I could in the throat.

He gurgled and flinched, and I hit him again in the face and tried to flip him over. He was able to slip out from under me, and he muttered, “Noooo,” as he stumbled and tried to run, but he fell back to the floor, bleeding profusely. I caught up with him, summoned my hammer, and raised it up high.

“Wait,” Isik said. “Just cripple him.”

I didn’t think she was saying it just out of cruelty, so I did it. I brought the  hammer down on his legs and one of his arms.

He turned and glared at me, and if he felt any pain, it didn’t show over his naked hatred. “You bastard! She should be dead!”

Isik came over close to us, but not too close, and said, “What did they do to you, Rykan?”

“They gave me the power I deserved! And it should have been enough!”

She shook her head. “Power, is it? Look at you. The tenebrae doesn’t even know where to go inside you. You didn’t think you were going to live through this, did you? You’d have died soon whether you succeeded or not.”

He was vibrating with hate, his eyes locked onto Isik’s. “No! I’ve been chosen by the royalty! This is an honor you couldn’t even dream of!”

“Uh huh. If you say so. But tell us before you die miserably, what’re they doing in the palace?”

He just started to laugh, his eyes widening but still locked on Isik’s. “Oh, you’ll find out soon! You’ll all find out! Every last pathetic one of you! The Gorvani will always reign! The rest of these worthless people will die! But I won’t spoil the surprise!”

Well that didn’t sound good.

Isik scoffed. “Oh, you don’t even know. Why am I not surprised?”

“What? Of course I know what your miserable fate will be!”

“Sure, Rykan.” She shook her head and looked over at me. “Just kill him, Michael. He’s not important enough for the royalty to have told him anything. It was foolish of me to think he’d have any important information.”

“How dare you! You want to know!? You want to know!? The emperor’s going to wipe out all the other races! The ritual is already underway, and soon, all your friends will die screaming, and you’ll only be able to watch! And then they’ll come for you, Issy, and you’ll finally get the death you deserve, you worthless traitor!”

Isik hesitated, but then said, “What a load of shit. Such a thing isn’t even possible. If you’re going to make up threats, at least make them credible.”

Rykan just laughed louder. “Oh, you just wait and see! Once the preparations are complete, the Font itself will surge, sending a wave of death throughout the land, burning the non-Gorvani out from the inside, through their brands! You think I don’t know!? I was imbued with this power at the Font by Emperor Gorva himself! I’m greater than you’ll ever be!”

Gorva!?

Isik stood there, looking at him, her mouth hanging slightly open. “Kill him.”

Finally.

I slammed my hammer down on his head three times before I was sure he was dead, but I still struck a couple more times for good measure. I didn’t feel any of the guilt I’d felt with the spies.

“Die and rot, Rykan. You deserve it,” Isik said.

I slowly looked around the ruined foyer. “Do you believe what he said?” I asked.

She shrugged and said, “I’m…not sure. I believe that he believed it, but he was somewhat unstable even before…” she waved her hand at the corpse, “whatever it was they did to him.”

“That was infusion of the tenebrae, right? Like the royals have?”

“Well, yes and no. I believe true infusion takes years. Decades, perhaps longer. How long has it been since we’ve seen Rykan? They must have just forced it inside his body. Look, it’s still shifting inside him.”

And it was. The shadows that looked like the royals’ skin shifted and moved all over his body, even in death. It was pretty off-putting, especially on a headless corpse. “He was certainly on par with some of the royals I’ve fought. Not Gor’mina, but still. You think he would have died soon anyway?”

“I’m almost positive, yes. They did this to him and sent him out as a disposable weapon, and he was exactly the right person to think it was an honor they were bestowing on him. He always wanted more, thought he deserved more. Why, I was never really sure.”

“I think we should treat what he said as true. It would explain why the empire recalled all the Gorvani and why they don’t seem to be doing anything else. Well, except assassinating us.”

“You, Michael. He was supposed to assassinate you. I was just a bonus.”

“Didn’t seem like that to him.”

“Oh, no, not to him. But you were the real target of whoever specifically sent him. But…yes, I think you’re right about treating his ramblings as true. For now.”

“Oh, one more thing. It’s not important, but the Emperor’s name is Gorva?”

She blinked at me. “Yes? Have…have you never heard it?”

“Nope. I would have remembered that. Everyone’s always just said ‘the Emperor.’ And, I really have to ask: which came first? His name, or the name of your entire people?”

She chuckled. “All the records of history before the founding — even of our own people — are either destroyed or buried so far even I’ve never seen them. Which, honestly, leads me to believe he took the name of our people, not the other way around. If he really had come first, there’d be no point in suppressing the histories. He wants everyone to think he’s a god and we’re created in his image. Or some shit, I’m not sure,” she said with a curled lip.

“Sounds pretty on brand for the asshole that’s maybe trying to kill everyone.” If the royals really were planning on killing literally everyone, it was almost too awful to imagine, so I tried to push it out of my head and did my best to focus on the current situation. “Anyway, we need to get out of here, fast. Let’s head out back and I’ll see if I can attract Nir’s attention. She should be close by.”

We gathered our things the best we could and headed out the front door. As we passed through, I asked, “Uh, did you take the ward off the front door?”

“Yes, just a little while ago when I came down before we ate.”

We circled back around the manor and ended up in the middle of the garden, and it occurred to me just then that I hadn’t agreed on a sign for Nir. I couldn’t think of much else, so I summoned some shae balls of light and threw them up as high as I could before they exploded in a series of blinding flashes. 

We waited.

I did it again.

We waited some more.

I did it a third time.

“Michael, this is less than reassuring.”

“I know that!” After even more time had passed with no reply, I asked Isik, “How likely is it that the empire sent more than Rykan.”

“Essentially assured. Remember the army that was following Gor’mina? I’m sure at least one battalion has been sent out here to make sure the job is done. The empire likes to be sure, especially in the case of dissidents.”

“Like us.”

“Oh my yes.”

“Okay, so, this isn’t really the time, but why did they send the army to Skyshard but then not do anything else afterwards? That’s really been bothering me.”

Isik shrugged. “I can’t be sure, of course, but I assume they thought they would be able to stop the dragon summoning, so they deployed all the resources they could. Afterwards, especially once you started severing the tenebrous channels to the sigilariums, they surely decided that marching an army anywhere wouldn’t be enough. I imagine it returned to the capital to protect the shadowsphere and…the ritual they’re probably attempting inside it.”

“Are we definitely thinking Rykan was telling the truth now?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, just looked around for the dragon that wasn’t coming. “Perhaps,” she finally admitted. “But I’m not going to give it much thought until we’re safely out of here.”

The sun moved noticeably along the sky while we sat there, helpless and without a backup plan. With nothing else to do, I wandered around to the front of the house and through the gate, heading a little ways down the path, just to make sure no one was actually coming for us.

And that turned out to be terrifying but also lucky, because that’s exactly what was happening.

I sprinted back up to the house, pulling the shae into myself so I didn’t have to slow down. Once I came around the side of the house, I yelled to Isik, “We gotta go now!” I picked up my things and we wordlessly took off into the forest.

“They did send the soldiers for us, then?”

“They did and they’re almost here!”

We raced into the woods while I wondered where in the world Nir was.

14

We got lost almost immediately, of course. Although, I did wonder if it still counted as lost if we weren’t going anywhere in particular. We put as much distance between ourselves and the manor as we could, and I asked Isik probably eight times if she was sure she had everything she wanted from the secret room, as if there was anything we could really do about it now.

Could I have faced down a battalion of Gorvani, assuming they didn’t have a powerful royal or some fucked up experiment like Rykan with them? Probably. Did I want to risk being cocky and get overwhelmed or killed by some new bullshit I didn’t know about? I did not. I also didn’t want to get Isik killed, because that had nearly happened already.

“Should I keep sending up light balls for Nir? How’s she going to find us out here?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. The soldiers will know we’re not far away because of Rykan’s corpse.” She paused to laugh to herself about that. “I always wanted to kill him. You know what? It wasn’t as satisfying as I had always hoped.”

“Because killing someone never is?”

She laughed harder at that. “No, don’t be ridiculous. It’s just,” she gestured vaguely all around us, “this isn’t the way I imagined it happening.”

I elected to not ask how she had envisioned it.

We slowed down after we’d gone far enough, or what seemed like far enough, but we didn’t stop. My head was filled with thought after thought about how to get out of this situation, but aside from walking through the woods with no map or survival skills, I didn’t see how we were going to swing it without Nir. Isik started to slow down but kept pressing on. I didn’t think she’d admit to wanting to stop, so I suggested it instead.

“Oh, alright,” she said, out of breath, “if we must.” The ghost of the smile was on her lips, still practically invisible, but she must have known I stopped for her sake. Not that she would ever admit to needing it.

“So, any ideas?” I asked.

She grimaced. “Not as such, no. I’m not familiar with this area in the least. The forest could extend to the horizon without any towns. Honestly, it probably does and is why Gor’mina chose to put her estate here.”

“You don’t know how to forage for anything, do you?”

She gave me a level look and said, “Michael, I don’t know how to cook. Do you think I know the first thing about surviving in the woods?” She looked around at the endless trees and her eyes drifted back towards me, hopeful, as she said, “Do you?”

“I, uh, do not.”

She sighed heavily. “Amazing. The revolution ends because we’re too stupid to survive briefly without civilization.”

While we sat there lamenting our impending deaths, I heard a faint sound in the air. Isik must’ve heard it too, as I saw her perk up. 

“That’s what I thought it was, right?” I asked.

“Oh, I really hope so.”

It sounded again, far away but remarkably like a dragon’s roar.

I stood and pulled in the shae, lifted my hands, and conjured a swarm of light balls, sending them as high above the canopy as I could. The roar got just slightly louder, so I did it again. Shortly after, the roar sounded right above us, so I sent up one last volley.

Nir crashed into the trees just a little ways away from us, the sounds of their trunks cracking and splintering echoing through the air. She spun in a circle, bashing down the ones still standing around her, making a small clearing. When we ran out into it, she yelled, “Getongetongeton!”

That didn’t bode well.

We didn’t ask why; we just jumped on her back and secured our things as best we could.

With a massive flapping of her wings, which was what the clearing was apparently for, we were off into the sky, and despite whatever was apparently going on with her, I was overjoyed to be on her back and flying away.

“Michael, I’m going to open a portal, and I need you to help channel.”

“You got it!” I pulled in the shae and pushed it back out and into her, and a moment later, a massive portal opened in the sky just in front of us, and in another instant, we were in it and through, coming out in a cloudless sky over what looked like the capital of the seventh province.

Isik grunted and tried to pull her priestess robe on over her clothes, but it was difficult in the wind. I tried my best to help, and we finally got it.

I wanted desperately to ask what had been going on with Nir, but figured that could wait until we landed. We descended to the plaza where Nir had landed a few times before, but as we came around the edge of a building, she pulled up quickly and Isik and I had to scramble to stay on her back.

The space was filled with tents in long lines and packed with people. “Well, that’s new,” I said. The stage that Osaarin had been giving speeches on was still there, although there wasn’t anything happening right then. We flew around the city and saw that many of the open places were much the same, but we finally found a spot that had enough room for Nir to touch down in.

Once we’d climbed off her back, Isik hurriedly pulled out a pair of thin gloves from her back and slipped them on, also making sure her hood was pulled up and covering her face. “I’d prefer if we made haste back to the Guild,” she said.

I still wanted to hear what had happened with Nir, but I didn’t like the thought of Isik walking through the streets by herself, especially not with a large bag full of evil grimoires and a tenebrous relic. She’d be ripped apart if anyone found her out. I told Nir that we’d speak later, and she flew off to who knows where, roaring before she went.

Isik and I walked quickly through the streets, and while we tried to take some lesser traveled paths, there were people everywhere. Even the side alleys and little walkways weren’t completely empty. While I had to constantly dodge people wanting to talk with me — I was still pretty recognizable with my sword and shield — we made decent time.

Once we were in the doors, Isik breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Okay. I’m willing to admit that the disguise was a good idea. But what on Vendira is going on here?”

“No idea. But let me walk you to your rooms before I try and find anyone to ask.” Even though we were in the Guild, I didn’t trust Isik to be safe until she was in the labyrinthine hallways tucked away in the hidden parts of the building. I kept hoping we’d run into Revana or Tiq on the way, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Once we were in Isik’s private rooms, she set the bag down and plopped unceremoniously into a large, plush chair. “Hmm, not quite as good as the couches in the estate, but it’ll do. I am pleased to not be in a crowd, though. I should think I’ll remain back here, poring through these books, for some time now.”

I took that as the dismissal it probably was; I figured she just wanted to be alone for a while, so I went, but not before I left my sword and shield in her care. I got mildly lost in the hallways, but eventually found my way back to the foyer. I asked the woman sitting behind the counter if she knew where I could find Revana, Tiq, or Osaarin, hoping she even knew what I was talking about. It’d never really been clear if the entire guild was part of the Celestori, or just certain people in the building.

I didn’t really get an answer to that question, but she did have a message for me from Tiq, which was just an address in the city. Walking through the city streets was wild; there were people everywhere, rows of tents and temporary housing in every possible corner, and the talk I overheard was all about revolution and fighting the empire. Was this an army? Sure seemed like it. I also noticed that a lot of people were wearing little dragon symbols, some made of leather, some cloth, some just stitched in designs. It didn’t seem that the style mattered so much as there was a dragon on your clothes. Which I supposed is what Nir was to be anyway: a symbol of resistance.

Without my weapons, barely anyone recognized me, and on the few occasions where it happened, I was able to quickly duck into the crowds before I could be accosted. Tiq’s new place or wherever it was that I was headed was across town, so I had ample opportunity to listen to people talk, and as I went, I became more and more sure I was walking through an army’s encampment, or at least that’s what it was fast becoming. 

The address led me to a four story apartment building that was no less packed with people than the streets were. I managed to make it up to the top floor without talking to anyone, and I knocked on the door of the unit in Tiq’s message.

She opened the door in a thick pair of goggles, a heavy leather apron, and long black gloves. “You’re back!” She launched herself at me and wrapped me up in a hug, which I returned tightly. “Come in, come in!”

We went inside, and I was shocked at how much the place looked like her old home at the Astrologia. The apartment was huge and had a ton of rooms, many of which were filled with a complete mishmash of tables and shelves covered in various machines and wiring. The only things missing from her old place were endless bookshelves. She led me through a maze of furniture to a room in the corner of the building with big windows overlooking the street.

She took off the gloves, goggles, and apron, revealing stained work clothes underneath, which seemed fitting but was something I’d never seen her in. “Have a seat. I’ll be back with some tea.” 

Of course she would, I thought. 

She returned shortly with hot tea and a plate of little chocolate cakes, or the thing that passed for chocolate on Vendira. “So, tell me all about it! Was there anything there worth finding?”

I related the whole story as best I could, not leaving anything out except for the sex with Isik, which I just didn’t feel like talking about right then. 

She sat back in the chair, her tea forgotten on the table. “Wow, that’s quite a story, and there’s a lot to unpack there. You didn’t hear what happened with Nir?”

“No, I wanted to get Isik hidden away as fast as I could. I hope I can find her again soon and talk about it. Anyway, what have you been up to? Did you kill someone to get this apartment?”

She laughed and said, “No, but I probably would’ve. It’s huge, got a corner room, and there’s practically no traffic outside the door since it’s the top floor. The previous owner was a minor Gorvani official, and they’re all gone, so people have just kinda been taking their stuff.”

“Oh, that’s a good lead-in to me asking what the shit’s been going on around here? Is this an army encampment?”

She shrugged and took a sip of tea. “More or less, yes. Osaarin’s been giving a lot of talks to the people. If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, I’d say he was planning for this all along. He’s a really talented speaker, and I think he imagined the dragon cult not only summoning a dragon, but also leading the charge against the empire once that day had come. And that’s exactly what’s happening; all the people are rallying under the banner of the cult itself. Have you noticed the little dragons people are wearing?”

“I have, yeah. Everyone’s Celestori, now?”

She chuckled. “Well, kind of. No one really says ‘Dravizek Celestori,’ so ‘Dragon Cult’ has really caught on a lot more, and you should hear what Osaarin thinks about that.” She laughed some more.

“Not a fan, huh?”

“Oh wow. I’ve heard people in the old Celestori talk about how he tried so hard to get everyone to use the ‘proper’ term. I’m sure he’s annoyed to no end now, because with this many people, there’s no hope for it, really.”

“I’m gonna call it the cult to his face next time I see him, just to see his reaction.”

“Oh, Michael,” she said, shaking her head. “Please do. I hope I’m there, too.” As she said that, the lights in the room flickered and went out. A supremely annoyed expression passed over her face, but after a moment, they came back on. “And that leads me right into the next thing. The imperials are screwing with the arcanae.”

“That’s not good.”

“No,” she said, closing her eyes. “And after what you told me that Rykan claimed, it makes a little more sense.”

Oh, well shit. I was still really hoping that that was all bluster with no truth to it, but I think I knew better; I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. “What makes you say that?”

“It just started happening last night, but a few colleagues of mine that have shown up in town ran a few tests for me, and it turns out that massive amounts of the arcanae are being funneled towards Telorn.”

“And you think it could be part of this whole ‘kill everyone ritual?’”

“You might not be aware of this, but the imperial palace functions as one big sigilarium, with the Font at the center. As with the others, it has six large towers protruding up into the air, which carry out a number of the functions of the building, and they take incredible amounts of power to run. You probably never noticed because the palace is covered in other towers and spires as well. But if they’re casting some world-wide spell in there, the most obvious choice for carrying it out is sending the effects along the ley lines to all the lesser sigilariums, and doing so would take a mind-boggling amount of power.”

I didn’t like a single word I was hearing. “Can we just sever the lines, like we’ve already done?”

She drank the last of her tea and set the cup down. “I don’t know. It might work, but that spell was never meant to be permanent, as the natural flows would reassert themselves in time. And because of the nature of the magic, it’s possible that such a large spell could just force open the tenebrous channels and erase whatever work you did.”

“So, what do we do?” I really, really hoped she was going to have an answer to that.

She cocked her head to the side and was quiet for a few moments before she said, “Of course, the best thing would be to disrupt the ritual itself, which involves assaulting Telorn, breaching the shadowsphere, and killing the emperor.”

“Oh, is that all?”

She smiled. “Yes. Just that. And it’s what everyone here is gearing up to do anyway, but such things require time, and it’s possible we’re running out of it. Although there’s no real way to know. All the information we have is something an unstable enemy yelled out of hate, even though it makes sense. The ritual, if it exists, could take hours, or weeks, or more. Who knows?”

“I think we should probably assume it’ll happen sooner than later.”

“Yes, I agree. And since there’s nothing we can do to stop the tenebrous portion of it, we’ll have to stop the arcanic portion. Or at least slow it down.”

I leaned forward and asked, “Is that something we can do?”

The smile she gave me was the most self-satisfied one I might ever have seen. I was a little surprised she wasn’t actively patting herself on the back. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

We went back out into the maze of tables and shelves and at a big one in the center was Tiq’s device. Or at least a suitably upgraded version of it. “Wow, you’ve been busy, I guess. That thing used to be a lot smaller. Is it the same one?”

“It is! And before I tell you all about it, let me just show you.” She slipped it on over her shoulder and it automatically clipped around her elbows and wrists. It was a lot bulkier but still had the same overall design that hugged her shoulders and came down her arms. We went out of the apartment and up the stairs to the roof. “So, the old design allowed me to project balls of the arcanae, right? It was useful, but only against weaker targets, and not against who we’re up against now. Also, the fact that it used batteries was a massive weak point in the design.”

“It…doesn’t use batteries?”

She tried to keep the huge smile off her face, but just couldn’t. She beamed at her own work and it was adorable. “Just watch.”

She raised her hands to the sky, and I couldn’t tell how she activated it, but suddenly a huge bolt of the arcanae leapt from a squarish machine on the roof that I hadn’t really noticed. It was probably an air conditioner or heater or something. Maybe. At any rate, the energy jumped from it and into her device, illuminating the angular channels set into it. With a small movement, she shot a bolt of lightning into the sky. I suppose it was a bolt of the arcanae, but I really didn’t think there was a lot of difference.

Then she did it again.

And again.

She turned to me, still over the moon with herself and said, “Well?”

“Fuck, Tiquette!”

We both turned to see Revana standing there with huge eyes.

“Revana!” I quickly ran over to her and enveloped her in as tight a hug as I could. She returned it, pressing her chin into my neck.

“I’m so glad you’re back!” she said, slightly muffled.

“Hey now!” Tiq was standing with her hands on her hips. “We’re supposed to be praising my genius over here!”

“Okay, okay,” I said, releasing Revana. “That really is impressive, Tiq. Does it just like, steal energy from the machines around you?”

Her self-satisfied smile remained constant. “Oh, not just that, it pulls it from the arcanic grid itself! No more batteries! Functionally infinite power!” She shrugged and added, “Not in the woods or something, but anywhere in a city or town! And it’s capable of sustained fire too!”She demonstrated, sending a streaming bolt of arcanae into the sky that twisted and arced. “There’s a limit, but whatever’s on the other side’s probably dead by that time. Oh, and you’ve got to be careful that there’s no one you care about between you and wherever you’re pulling the energy from.”

“Uh huh. There’s still only one of these, right?”

She curled her lip and grunted. “Yes, unfortunately. The base of the model required some truly rare components that I can’t access anymore.”

That was probably for the best, I thought. “Well, it really is impressive, Tiq. Can I assume it’s part of your plan to cut the power to Telorn?”

“Integral, yes.”

“What’s all this now?” Revana asked.

I let out a long breath. “Let’s go back downstairs. I’ve got a lot to fill you in on.”

15

“They’re gonna kill everyone?”

We were all sitting in Tiq’s corner room again, having yet again more tea and cakes. I didn’t complain. “Honestly, who knows. But I think it’s a possibility to consider seriously.”

Tiq shook her head. “I highly doubt they’d murder every non-Gorvani. The empire would crumble without people to run it. However, do I believe they’d kill a lot of us? Of course. Without hesitation. Or, they could be planning to brand us so hard our minds melt away, leaving our bodies alive to shamble around as work horses and slaves.”

Revana and I sat back in our seats. “That’s…not possible, is it?” I asked.

“Oh, I have no idea,” Tiq said. “I’m just thinking of any and all scenarios.”

I didn’t tell her not to do that, but wow I wanted to.

Revana blinked herself back into focus. “Yeah, so anyway, on another note, I spoke with Nir.”

“Oh, you did? Great. I didn’t have time to. What did she say? What happened to her?”

Revana looked at me with a cocked eyebrow. “You…don’t know?”

I just shrugged back at her. “She picked us up in an insane hurry, portaled back here, and once we landed, I wanted to get Isik out of the crowd as fast as I could.”

Oh yeah, Isik. I was gonna have to tell Revana about that at some point. But not with Tiq sitting here too.

“Well, okay,” Revana said. “She apparently thought it would be a good idea, while you were in the first, to go spy on Telorn.”

“Oh no,” I said.

“Yeah. She was actually pretty sheepish about telling me. It was all so…human, you know? She thought she’d just fly high over the city and see what she could see, and not get anywhere near a dangerous distance.”

“Uh huh.”

“Right. She did confirm that the army had retreated to the capital, and they’ve set up around the shadowsphere, in front of the palace. But after she did a few laps around the city, she thought it’d be a good idea to test how solid the sphere actually is. So she descended and hurled as big a blast of the shae at it as she could. It didn’t even dent the thing. Didn’t disrupt it for the slightest second. It did, however, get the attention of one of the royalty that was sitting with the army, who tried to pull her down.”

“Oh, shit.”

“She managed to get away, but said that whichever royal it was, it was a powerful one. After that, she flew straight to you, and on the way saw a battalion of soldiers and was afraid she’d be in danger from them as well.”

“Was there anything about the sphere she told you that could be of use?” Tiq asked.

“Sort of. Apparently, there is an entrance to it.”

I groaned. “It’s in the middle of that army, isn’t it?”

“It sure is.”

“And it’s our only real way in?”

“As far as we know, yes. I can’t imagine we’ll get any more information though. We’ve had some scouts trying to penetrate into the city, but they’ve all turned back before they got anywhere close enough to find useful intel. The entire center of Telorn is nothing but a sea of Gorvani.”

I had sort of held out hope that the army forming here in the seventh wouldn’t even be necessary, that the small group of us could infiltrate the palace and kill all the royals somehow without endangering thousands of people. “We’re going to have to get in the hard way, aren’t we?”

Revana looked down and shook her head, her tea cooling forgotten in her hands. “It looks that way, yes.”

“Which involves fighting the entirety of the army, cutting down the rest of the royals, entering the shadowsphere, and murdering the emperor.”

Tiq gave me a tentative smile, “Well, one part of that might not be as bad as it seems. The Gorvani army, for all they’d love you to believe it, isn’t well trained in the least,” she said, echoing my thoughts during the fight at Skyshard. “Why on Vendira would it be? It’s almost completely ceremonial. The Inquisition roots out and kills any dissidents, along with various city guards. I can’t think of a single time the army’s ever actually done anything besides be a massive escort for the royalty. They’re there to wear armor and look imposing, and that’s about it. I’m sure they’re taught how to fight, but how many can do so in a real situation?”

“Just like our army,” I said.

“Yes, but at least we’ll be on more even terms.”

“In terms of skill, yes. But are our numbers even close to theirs? Don’t we need a lot more people to overcome the fact that a lot of Gorvani can brand people?” Sure, Revana and I would be there, and in a small battle, that would matter a lot. We aren’t talking about a small battle.

Tiq’s face fell and no one said anything for a while. The answer was pretty obvious. 

“I’ve been having some thoughts,” Revana said, “and I think this is an appropriate time and conversation to bring them up. You know what would help a fight like that immensely?” She paused, but Tiq and I said nothing. She held out her hands and gave us a look like she was about to give a sales pitch. “More dragons.”

I looked back at her blankly, but I really did have to admit, “I mean if we could get more dragons, then yes, they would be helpful. Didn’t we have a complete shit of a time getting Nir back here, though?”

She was clearly very excited about this idea and was smiling widely. “Yes, but now that she is here, she can search for others much more easily. Dragons are naturally good at opening portals and traveling between worlds. She might require our help, but if she could bring even one more back, two dragons could basically portal around at will! Well, theoretically.”

“The idea does have merit,” Tiq said. “But planet hopping is a taxing journey, and our time is running low.”

“I know, and I’ve been talking with Osaarin about it. The cult has a list of other places they thought it likely that dragons would be. We went to the world Nir was on because she was the best shot, but there are other decent possibilities.”

“Well,” I said, “I for one would welcome any and all help we could get, because it’s looking like there’s no way to do this but the hard way. We’ve got to overwhelm the Gorvani and that’s that. Or do so long enough to get a small team inside the sphere, which really doesn’t make the whole thing any less hard.”

The conversation stalled out a little after that, and we rehashed some things and finished the pot of tea and the last of the cakes. There was a knock on the door and Tiq went up to get it, leaving Revana and I alone.

“Hey,” I said, “there’s something I wanted to tell you.”

“Uh, okay?” She cocked her head in much the way Tiq would; apparently she heard something in my tone.

“I’m, uh, not sure how to say this…but while we were away at the manor in the first…I…” Nothing to do but just say it. “I slept with Isik.”

Revana blinked and didn’t react for a moment, but then just burst out laughing, leaning back in her chair and slapping her knee. “Oh okay. Uh huh. Sure.”

“Uh, but like, really.” I was trying to keep my face as neutral as possible.

Her laugh died somewhat down and she leaned in and squinted at me. “No you didn’t.”

I shrugged.

“No…I don’t…No. Surely not?”

“Uh, yep.”

“Michael! You did not!” At my continued neutral expression, she said, “Did you?”

“Yeah.”

She sat back in her chair and her jaw dropped a little. “With Isik?”

“I was pretty surprised too. She initiated it.” She just stared back at me and I gave her a pained expression. “I kinda thought you should know.”

“Isik, huh?”

“Yeah. I’m…well I mean I’m not sorry, per se, but I don’t want to make you feel…I don’t know!”

She chuckled softly, a small smile on her lips. “You don’t want me to be mad at you about it?”

“Yeah.”

She leaned back and the tension flowed out of her body. “Oh, I’m not. It’s…rather shocking, I’ll admit, but you’re free to do whatever you want. It’s just…Isik? She’s pretty and all, but she’s…Isik.”

“It was really weird at the beginning.”

She gave me a conspiratorial look with a smile. “So was she, you know, good?”

I had to laugh out loud at that. “It was actually super hot.”

“Really?” Her jaw dropped and her eyes were wide. “Wow. That’s pretty unexpected. I guess. I don’t know. So, like, was part of foreplay removing the rod from her ass?”

We both laughed pretty hard at that while I wondered if I should repeat it to Isik later. She’d either kill Revana or think it was hilarious and there was no inbetween. 

As we sat there laughing, Tiq came back in. “What’s going on here?”

Revana looked over and said, “Michael banged Isik.”

I made a strangled sound and the laughs died on my lips.

“WHAT.” Tiq’s mouth worked soundlessly before she managed to add, “WHAT.”

“I mean…I…y-yeah?”

“Isik!? The Inquisitor? That Isik?”

“Yep.”

Tiq cocked her head to the side and said, “Well, I can’t imagine she gets a lot of opportunities.” She shuddered a little and said, “Can you imagine two Gorvani getting together? Foreplay is probably just an hour or two of posturing to establish dominance about who’s going to be on top because they think it matters.”

We all snickered. That was one I definitely was not going to pass on to Isik.

We chatted about inconsequential things for a little while after that, and once the light started to fade, Revana excused herself, wanting to get a few more things done before it was fully dark.

I started to do the same, but Tiq stopped me. “No reason to go back to the Guild tonight, is there? There’s more than enough space for you to stay here with me. Unless…Isik tired you out too much and you’d rather be alone?”

Oh. “Oh! No, no. I’d love to stay the night here.”

She smiled broadly. “Good. I imagine things will soon get very busy and there might not be many more chances for time alone. But let’s not think about any of that tonight, and enjoy what we can.”

16

Tiq told me to shower while she finished up a few things, so I did. The bathroom wasn’t nearly as fancy as the one in Gor’mina’s estate, but it was still pretty nice. I kept expecting Tiq to join me halfway through, but she didn’t appear, much to my disappointment. 

Once I’d gotten out and dried off, I stepped out of the bathroom without getting dressed, because unless I wildly misinterpreted the situation, this was where things were headed. I was pleasantly surprised to find a trail of flower petals leading from the bathroom door. I followed them through the apartment, right back to the corner room. When I opened the door, Tiq was sprawled out on the couch wearing…well it wasn’t clothes. It was as if someone had taken the concept of tattered rags and made it into a sort of lingerie, covered with sparkling sequins and beads. What cloth it did contain was dark red and covered absolutely nothing, aside from various strips of random skin. I loved it.

We smiled at each other and she patted the couch. I came to sit and she crossed a leg over me and slid on top. Without a word, she wrapped her hands around my neck and pulled me into her boobs. My hands slid across her soft skin as I bit down on one of her nipples. I went just a little bit harder than I was usually comfortable with, but she just sighed and ran my hands down her shoulders. I switched back and forth, sucking and biting her nipples, the metallic taste of her piercings on my tongue. 

She reached down and started alternately rubbing herself and running her hand up and down my cock. She started to moan and grind against me, and I kept one nipple in my mouth and my hand on the other, biting, sucking, pinching, and rolling, enjoying the moans and gasps she was making. After some time, it seemed like she was almost there, so I just kept doing what I was doing. Her artfully tattered rags slid over my skin as we moved together, almost as soft as her skin.

She raised up and slid down onto my cock in one fluid movement, and after bouncing a few times, she wrapped her arms around me and shuddered hard. She curled in and pressed her lips to the top of my head and tried not to scream, probably because someone would surely hear in the building.

After she stopped trembling and her breathing slowed, she got off me and stood, walking over to the corner windows. She bent slightly over, pressing her breasts against the glass and gave me an expectant look.

I followed her over and looked down at the street below, which was still completely packed with people milling about, even though nighttime had fallen. “You think anyone can see?”

“Dunno,” she said, wiggling her ass at me.

Good enough for me, I thought. I gently slid back inside her, and we moved slowly against each other, both looking down on the people below. 

She pressed her hands on the glass, and I covered them with mine as I pressed my face into her long, black hair. 

I wanted to go faster, but was afraid of rattling the glass, so I kept a slow, measured pace. The thought of being seen was an unexpected thrill that I didn’t know was a thing I’d like. I slid my hands down to her ass as I kept watch on the crowd on the street. Some people looked up or around occasionally, but I didn’t think anyone actually saw it, which was just a little disappointing in a way.

After we’d been there for quite some time, she turned to me and asked, “I take it you’re liking this?”

“Actually, I really am, yeah.”

She gave me a devious smile and said, “Good, come with me.”

I followed her out of the room and through her signature maze of stuff, and we wound our way around to a door I hadn’t seen before that opened out onto a covered balcony. There were a couple wooden chairs and a large padded couch. There was a solid railing, but nothing over it; the space was completely open to the street below. We were in the dark and it would be difficult for anyone to see us, but not impossible. The building across the street, however, would have an unobstructed view. Not that I could see anyone inside it. I could hear the sounds from the people below pretty clearly, which meant that it’d work the other way as well.

She directed me to the couch and pushed me onto it before climbing on me and sliding down my cock. She moaned just barely, trying to keep her mouth closed. 

I slid my butt out on the couch, leaning back more, and I pulled her head down to mine before pushing my tongue between her lips. We rocked back and forth slowly, and thankfully, the couch didn’t creak or make any noise, so long as we didn’t go hard enough to make it slide, which happened a couple times.

The feeling of her wrapped tightly around me was maddening, and I wanted nothing more than to speed up, but we kept the same measured pace, even though our breaths came fast and lightning shot through my body as I pulled her tight to me.

She curled down into my neck, whimpering and gasping as she started to bounce on me  a little harder.

“Having trouble going slow?” I asked quietly.

“Yes,” she whispered in my ear with a little giggle.

She sped up, making the couch slide, and I had to take a hold of her ass and slow her down. 

“I don’t care if they hear,” she whispered, speeding up again.

“You will in the morning,” I said back to her, slowing her down again, in what was, I think I can safely say, the largest, most difficult act of restraint in my entire life.

“Dammit! You’re probably right.” She leaned back before shoving a nipple into my mouth.

I bit down on her and she put a hand over her mouth to cover up the moan. I guided her ass up and down on my cock as fast as was safe, and shortly after, she wrapped her arms around me again, bucking and shaking and shuddering, her mouth and eyes closed tight as she tried not to make any noise.

I was so long overdue at that point that it only took two thrusts of not trying to come before I exploded inside her, her body tight against mine and her boobs smashed into my face as we rocked together, both doing our valiant best to not make any noise as we came.

I couldn’t be completely sure, but I thought we’d done a pretty good job.

She stayed on top of me as we got our breathing under control and the blood stopped pumping loudly in my veins.

My gaze wandered out over the city, and I noticed there was a building down the street that was still very well lit despite the hour. “Hey, what’s that place?”

She turned to look and said, “Oh, they’re producing crossbows in there.”

“Just crossbows?”

“Mhmm. The best counter to being branded is shooting a Gorvani from a distance. Also, it takes vastly less training to get someone competent enough with a crossbow over a bow or sword.” As we sat there, our sweat cooling in the night, it became increasingly chilly. “Wanna get in the tub?” she asked.

“I sure do! Let’s get inside.”

The bath was separate from the shower, a large tub that we both easily fit inside. Once it had begun to fill up, I dipped my now freezing feet in and shivered. We slid in, and although the water was barely over our hips, it was an immense relief.

While more water flowed in, she gave me a pained look.

Uh oh. “What?”

“I don’t want to spoil the evening, but can we talk about tomorrow?”

“Well, that depends on what tomorrow is.”

“Oh, right,” she said, laughing. “I got sidetracked by the conversation about you and Isik.” She gave me a weird smile that I had no idea how to interpret. “Recall my plan to cut Telorn’s supply of the arcanae?”

“I do.”

“We’re heading to the second tomorrow to try and do just that.”

“Oh. Who’s ‘we?’”

“That’s what I wanted to discuss. I want you to come with us. There’s a group of soldiers — real soldiers, not the hopefuls that have flocked here — that will accompany me. The short version of the plan is this: There’s a facility in a town in the second that much of the arcanae flows through. One of the empire’s biggest mistakes while laying down their infrastructure was to not add very much redundancy in their systems. If we can permanently disable this place, it’ll cut a massive chunk of Telorn’s power off. 

“There are other teams hitting smaller facilities, but this one bottlenecks a lot of energy. And if we destroy it in a way that it can’t be repaired, it’ll take a lot longer for the royals to…do whatever it is they’re doing.” Her tone implied that she didn’t want to believe that the empire was planning on killing all or most of the citizens any more than I did.

“Sounds great. What’s the catch?”

She took a moment to turn and grab a glass bottle, uncork it, and pour a dark blue liquid into the water flowing into the tub. It immediately started creating a huge mound of bubbles. Her eyes flicked up to mine and her lips were pressed together. “The facility is in the middle of a populated town. And disabling it permanently involves blowing it up. Spectacularly.”

“Aaaand even though we all don’t want to die and need to destroy the Gorvani, you don’t really want to commit any war crimes along the way, right?”

“Exactly.”

“So I’m coming with you, right?”

She smiled widely and it crinkled her eyes. “I was going to ask, but yes. I would feel so much better with you there. Revana has too much to do and can’t join us, even more so now that she wants to summon more dragons.”

“I’ll absolutely come with you.” Honestly, I would have probably demanded it; as capable as Tiq was, she wasn’t a fighter, and I would have been overcome by worry if she’d gone off on this mission alone. “I assume you have some ideas on how to not kill everyone?”

“We do, but…could we discuss it tomorrow? I just wanted to know that you’d come.”

“Yeah, that’s more than fine.” I pulled her over and she came willingly, snuggling up against me amidst the bubbles as we sat and enjoyed the moment while we could.

17

In the morning, I awoke to Tiq’s soft snoring. I blinked the sleep from my eyes and reached over to pull a curtain open, letting in some of the early day sun. I turned to look at Tiq, who’d drooled onto the pillow. I shook her awake, and she snorted and flinched, finally opening her eyes the slightest amount.

She looked down at the pillow and muttered, “Ugh,” before flipping it over and smashing her face against it again. 

“Should we get up and get ready for the mission?”

“Not going until later in the day,” she said, half muffled by the pillow. “Lemme sleep.”

I kissed her on the cheek and slipped out of bed. After a quick shower and an even quicker breakfast, I headed downstairs and out into the streets. With nothing else to do, I figured I’d pay Isik a visit and make sure she was still okay. I found Mephina herself inside the Guild’s massive doors, and she led me through the hallways, which I almost thought I was finally getting the hang of. 

Isik was already up and sitting at her desk by the window, still wearing her set of soft night clothes. She gave me a weary smile when I came into the room. “Hello, Michael.” The bags were back under her eyes and her desk was filled with papers from the manor and many more in her own handwriting.

“Hey. Should you maybe go back to bed or something?”

“I sleep intermittently. It’s good enough.”

It didn’t seem good enough.

I must have made a face because she waved a hand and said, “Spare me your concern, Michael. I’m functional and this work is of the gravest importance. I can sleep when either I or the emperor are dead.”

“Uh huh. Does that mean you’ve made some progress?”

She ran her hands over her face and sighed. “Yes, although I almost wish I hadn’t.”

“Oh good! I was just lamenting the fact that things hadn’t gotten massively worse in the last…few hours.”

She snorted and laughed softly. “It’s not the worst news. Not for you, anyway. Just for me.”

“Oh no.”

She beckoned me over and shuffled the papers around. The desk was piled with the things we’d taken from the manor and a lot more beside, spilling out onto the floor and up against the doors to her balcony. “So, you recall that Gor’mina had plans to assassinate the Emperor?”

“Of course.”

“Apparently he never leaves the Font’s general area. Or only exceedingly rarely. So any attempt to murder him would need to take place there.”

“Where he’s the strongest,” I added.

“Precisely. And more to the point, she theorized that if he were truly threatened, which, let me add, has never happened, he would retreat into the Font itself.”

“Uh…like he’d dive into it or something?”

“More or less, as far as I can tell. He would submerge himself in the very tenebral currents, where no one could reach him, except another royal, perhaps.”

Well this was all sounding pretty shit. “So, can I hope that, just maybe, Gor’mina thought up a way to counter this?”

“She did, and I don’t like it. Well, I don’t like what it means.” It really wasn’t like Isik to beat around the bush like this, and I didn’t like where this was going. “She developed a technique to force the Font to expel the Emperor—”

“Like just vomit him up?”

She chuckled. “Yes. It will…vomit him up.” She shook her head and continued, “It must be performed by an extremely powerful tenebral channeler.”

Oh. There it was. “Do we have one of those? Are you powerful enough?”

She slumped down in her chair and groaned. “And there is the crux of the situation. I am the only Gorvani that could be trusted. And am I powerful enough? Well, I would be if I used the tenebral relic we stole from the manor, which is exactly why it was constructed. Gor’mina assumed she would need help in the assassination attempt and, of course, could not trust any of her fellow royals. So she planned to give this relic to a compatriot. It seems she never found anyone she could trust though, which might have been due to her psychotic nature.”

“You mean she wasn’t physically capable of trusting anyone, or due to how she was, she couldn’t attract anyone who would be trustworthy?”

“Yes.”

I laughed. “I see. Can I take it that the part of this plan that you don’t like is that—”

“I will be required to fight not only the royals, but the Emperor himself.” She closed her eyes tight and I could see the fear writ plain on her face.

I went over to her and took her hand in mine. I wasn’t sure she’d allow it, but she just let me, keeping her eyes tightly shut. “We’ll all be there. You won’t be facing him alone.”

She squeezed my hand in return. “It will have to be enough. I just worry that my fear will overcome me at a critical moment.”

“Don’t you worry. Once we get in there, engage him, and start mercilessly kicking him in the balls, he’s gonna seem way less scary than you’re imagining.”

She opened her eyes and just stared at me, her mouth slightly open. Her mouth worked wordlessly for a moment before she managed to say, “What?”

I grinned like an idiot. “Sorry, it’s a joke I made to Revana once. That’s going to be my method of fighting him, right? Just get in there and kick him in the balls until he’s dead.”

She covered her face with her hands and just laughed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, Michael.”

“I know. It’s pretty funny though, right?”

She leaned back in her chair and smiled widely at me. “Yes, Michael. It is. It is pretty funny. I’ll try and keep that in mind when I think about the upcoming battle.”

“Well, I’m going to go check on Revana and see if Tiq’s ready to get out of bed yet. Speaking of which, maybe you really should get a little more sleep, huh?” I didn’t think she’d listen to me, but I thought I might as well say it anyway.

She looked over to the bed and sighed. “We’ll see.”

It wasn’t a no, so there was that.

I successfully made my way out of the building on my own with only one mistake in the twisting hallways, and I was pretty proud of that. I went back to Tiq’s apartment building to check in on her, but I was going to let her sleep if she hadn’t gotten up yet. However, I met her coming down the stairs as I was going up. She was dressed and had her new and improved device around her shoulders. “Oh! I wasn’t really expecting you to be up.”

“Oh, well, once you woke me up, I couldn’t stop thinking about the device and all the calibrations I wanted to do on it today before we leave, so here I am. Want to come with me?”

“Of course. I was going to find Revana first, though. Can that be on the way?”

“Oh yes. I need to pull energy from various points around town, but it’s not important where, as long as I hit a lot of them.”

We went into the streets and after asking around, it seemed like Osaarin was going to be giving another talk soon, so we headed that way. Along the route, Tiq engaged her device next to a lot of street lamps and inside a few shops, completely oblivious to the reactions of the people around us when a huge burst of lightning shot into her machine. She was careful to not kill anyone though.

We found Osaarin on the platform where he gave most of his speeches, in one of the larger open squares in town, giving a speech, of course. It was full of things I’d heard many times before and everyone already knew, but the way he spoke, the passion he put into his words that he clearly meant, riled up the crowd in a way I was sure I couldn’t have duplicated in a million years. I stood at the back, content to let him talk and not interrupt. 

To my horror, as I watched, the air behind him wavered and shifted, just like it had before Rykan attacked Isik. I tried to yell, but my voice was drowned out by the crowd. I attempted to push my way through, summoning my armor as I went, but I was much too far away, and as I looked on, a tenebrous Gorvani man appeared in the air behind him, dagger waiting to strike.

I felt, not so much as I saw, the shae being channeled behind him. Revana had been standing to the back of the platform watching the speech, where I hadn’t been able to see her. A shield of the shae wrapped around Osaarin just as the dagger made contact with him. He cried out and fell, and I couldn’t be sure if he’d been fully protected or not.

No time for that, though. I vaulted onto the stage, summoning my new warhammer, since I’d left my armaments behind. I swung at the man, but he shifted, teleported just a fraction, avoiding my blow. I tried again and again, but this one was far more skilled than Rykan had been, and I could do little more than get in a glancing strike here and there.

Revana joined in, covered in her own shining armor and with a glowing shae sword in her hand. We pressed the Gorvani, trying to flank him, but he was just too fast, blinking around with almost every movement.

I spared a second to see that the crowd had pulled Osaarin off the platform and was shielding him as best they could. Cries had gone out when the whole thing started, and people were running along the streets trying to find help.

Our enemy couldn’t penetrate our armor, but we couldn’t hit him either, so we danced in an idiotic stalemate while I worried about what would happen when he just blinked back over to Osaarin and tried to finish him off. Revana and I did our best, making some small hits, but his tenebrous nature closed up the minor wounds almost as soon as we inflicted them. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Tiq standing just off the back of the stage, her eyes narrowed and her arms held out. 

We fought on and I tried to subtly direct our enemy her way, and while it was difficult and infuriating, once he was almost off the edge of the platform, Tiq engaged her device.

Lightning shot from a street lamp nearby, coiled into her silvery weapon, and arced out, slamming into the Gorvani’s back. It wasn’t just one shot, though, the arcanae just kept pouring out of the device and into the poor bastard in front of us. His entire body was rigid and he jerked and spasmed, unable to control his movements by the look of it.

After a few seconds, smoke began rising from his skin and it looked as if his eyes might well burst out of his skull. I spun, gaining momentum, my hammer in both hands, and in one hard blow, I knocked his head straight off his shoulders. It hit the side of a distant building and plopped onto the ground, still smoking.

For good measure, I smashed his headless corpse a few times. Who the fuck knew what kind of weird shit could happen.

Revana, Tiq and I went to the edge of the stage and looked down on Osaarin, who was sitting up but breathing hard on the cobblestone. My eyes went wide as I saw another telltale ripple in the air, another assassin coming to finish him off.

At the very second he materialized, before I could cry out, numerous crossbows twanged, the assassin becoming, in an instant, a pincushion. He took numerous bolts to the body, but a surprising number slammed into, and passed through, his head.

In a second, he was on the ground, little more than a pile of bloody meat. Whatever tenebrous powers he’d had, they weren’t a match for a stupid number of crossbow bolts to the back, which I took to be very reassuring in regards to the battle to come.

I looked back to Osaarin who, shockingly, had not taken a single bolt.

Close by, a very organized detachment of people came up to us, their eyes still looking everywhere for more assassins. A Surini woman with blond hair, ears, and tail came up to me with a huge smile on her face. “Greetings, Sir Brandless.”

Ugh. “Uh, hey. You can call me Michael.”

“Michael it is, then. I’m Cersi, leader of the newly formed and yet-unnamed coalition of crossbow instructors.”

“Oh, well, uh,” I looked down at the corpse, which looked to have taken every single bolt that was fired, “count me impressed. And thank you very much for the help.”

She smiled a huge smile again before spitting on the corpse. “Our pleasure, really.” She went over to Osaarin and helped him up. “Are you hurt?”

His eyes were wide and his hands shook, but he said, “No…no, I’m…I’m unharmed.”

Well, physically, anyway.

I leaned over to Revana and said, “We should get him somewhere safe so he can calm down.”

She nodded and jumped off the platform, offering him an arm. He towered a full head over Revana but looked for all the world like a shaken child clinging to his mother’s arm as we left the square. Cersi followed us after issuing some orders, and we made our way into a nearby house that Osaarin had apparently been using.

With nothing else to do, I wandered into his kitchen and made tea, because if I’d learned anything on Vendira, it was that its people loved tea. And I, of course, did as well. I fumbled through the drawers and pantry before I found what I needed, and I took some time getting the water kettle to work, because it didn’t work the way the ones I had already used did, because nothing is ever easy.

I was only mildly frustrated when I came back out into the sitting room with a pot of tea and a stack of cups on a tray. I poured for everyone and Cersi gave me an odd look as I handed it to her, maybe weirded out that Sir Brandless was waiting on her. Whatever.

Osaarin looked a little better, and his eyes brightened once he’d had a cup of tea. “Forgive me, I should be a little tougher than this, but…”

“You just stop right there, Osaarin,” Revana said. “It’s okay to be flustered and afraid after you almost got stabbed. No one takes that well the first time, trust me.”

“It’s true,” I said, chiming in. “It was a long time before I even started to get used to shit like this.”

He smiled weakly and looked at each of us in turn. “Thank you for your kind words. Perhaps you’re right. I…once I’d started to get the admiration of the people, I believe I created an image of myself in my mind. The dashing general, yes? But I’m not a fighter. I’m a speaker, nothing more.”

Revana slapped him on the knee. “Don’t you dare sell yourself short! What you’re doing out here is just as important as anything! The people need to believe in the cause, and they need to keep their morale up if we’re going to win this thing, and that’s what you’re doing!”

“Seriously, Osaarin,” I said, “you’re really good at talking with the people. Worlds better than I’d be at it. I was afraid I’d end up having to be that person. I gave a couple speeches. They went okay, I guess, but they’re not nearly as good as yours. And trust me, I’d rather fight than get up in front of people and talk.”

He met my eyes and laughed softly, “Really?”

“Oh yeah. Definitely.”

He nodded, a small smile still on his lips. “Thank you both. I think I needed to hear that. I’ll…keep doing my part.”

“Damn right you will,” Cersi said. “But don’t think you need to be watching your back. I’ll assign you a guard of four people at all times from now on. From my own people.”

He looked up sharply. “You’d do that? That would…that would make me feel worlds better.”

After we all finished our tea and the discussion died down, Cersi left with Osaarin to meet with her people.

Once we were alone, I turned to Revana and said, “I’ll be honest; I was surprised Osaarin was the target and not us.”

She nodded absently, taking the lid off the teapot and making a face when it was empty. “The empire’s trying to break our spirit, and a very public murder of Osaarin would be a good way to accomplish that. Besides, he’s an easier target than we are.”

“Good point. Any good news about the other dragons you’re looking for?”

She slid down on the couch she was sitting on and twined her fingers behind her head. “I’ve been working with the cult’s scribes, and we’re reviewing all the old research, so I think we’ll soon be ready to try, yeah.”

“Soon, huh? That gonna be soon enough?”

She glanced over at me. “Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? But what else can we do but try?”

“Yeah.” I leaned back and sighed. “I’ll be glad when this is over. I mean, once this is over and we’ve won.”

We sat in silence for a while before she responded. “This is more stressful than it’s ever been, isn’t it?”

“Overwhelmingly, yes. I’m trying my best not to think about it.” I got up and went to sit by her on the couch.

She slid onto my lap and curled into me as we wrapped our arms around each other. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said.

“I’d love to promise you that you won’t.”

She nodded, her head pressed into my neck. I ran a hand slowly over one of her horns.

We just held each other for a while. I didn’t know exactly how much time had passed, but the shadows had noticeably moved along the floor. My thoughts wandered to a hundred different things, some good, some alarmingly bad, but I kept them quiet and managed to convince myself that everything would eventually work out just fine.

Tiq came in through the door, dressed in light leather armor and gave us a cock-eyed look. Her device was draped around her shoulders still. “Do I need to give you two some time?”

“No,” Revana said. “We’re just…taking a break.”

“If you say so. Seriously, I can come back later.”

Revana uncurled from my lap and slid off. “No, come in. There’s work to be done and I should get to doing it.” She kissed me on the cheek and made her way out the door.

I wanted desperately to say something more, to give her some real comfort, but there was nothing I could say or do. Except kill the Emperor and end everything. I groaned inwardly. One step at a time. “Is it about time to go?” I asked Tiq. It was odd to see her wearing armor. I never had before and although it looked comfortable enough, she sure wasn’t.

“It is. I sent a runner to get your weapons. Is there anything else you need?”

I’d already spent some time speaking with Revana and Isik, so I couldn’t think of a thing. “No, I’m ready. Let’s get this done.”

As we walked through the streets, it became pretty obvious that more and more people were recognizing me even without my sword and shield, which was…fine. Totally fine. I only had to dodge about twenty conversations along the way. Once we were inside the portal nexus, we met up with Tiq’s runner, who handed me my things with a look of complete reverence. I did my best to sound commanding or whatever he expected me to sound like. I don’t know that it would have mattered what I said though.

There was a decently sized group of competent looking soldiers waiting for us. I asked Tiq, “So do I get an actual briefing of what we’re doing now?”

“Yes! The plan, such as it is, is that we’ll rush the portal nexus, secure it, and then we’ll split into smaller strike teams and…murder all the Gorvani in the town. This is in the second province, so there’s still an imperial presence, but it should be minimal with most of the Gorvani being recalled to Telorn. Once they’ve been dispatched, we’ll infiltrate the arcanic facility while the rest of the team will make the rounds of the town and get the people out.”

I blinked at her and paused before I said, “That sounds like an incredibly messy plan, to be honest.”

She took a long, slow breath and said, “Yes.”

“It’s the best we’ve got, isn’t it?”

“Also yes.”

“Oh, another question. We’re portaling directly into the town? Don’t portals have to be activated from both ends?”

“They do, and we’ve sent a small team into the second from across the border in the third. They should be activating the portal soon. Their mission was to get into the nexus and use one of the emergency portals that aren’t housed in the main station. The town’s on the smaller side, so once it opens, our team should be able to rush in and gain control fairly quickly.”

I heard a couple shoulds in there, but whatever. Nothing to be done about it now. I found the public bathroom while we waited, as the tea had run right through me. I idly hoped that while I was in there, the portal would open, the plan would go off without a hitch, and I’d saunter out and we’d commence with an easy phase two. If only.

I came back out to find everyone milling around with a variety of unpleasant expressions on their faces, and the tension in the air was nearly tangible. I found Tiq who was wearing her own worried expression and asked, “Everything going great, then?”

“We should have heard something by now. If the other team can’t open a portal, I don’t know what our plan B is going to be.”

There was not a single reassuring thing I could say, so I just joined in, pressing my lips together and enjoying the looming sense of dread that was sitting heavy in my chest.

Everyone jumped when the portal flared to life, and the sense of relief that coursed through my veins almost knocked me over. We started to line up, ready to charge into the fray, but we all stopped and stared when Vashe came through, a pissed off look on her face.

“We’ve got a fucking problem.”

18

Of course we had a problem. Nothing could go smoothly, could it?

Vashe’s ears were twitching and she looked like she wanted to yell at someone. Anyone. “So this skeleton crew that was supposed to be manning the town? Yeah, the fucking Gorvani army is there. There’s soldiers and patrols everywhere. A few of us managed to sneak through and get into the nexus, but we aren’t locking that place down without a few battalions coming down on our heads. And forget wiping out the Gorvani presence in there; there’s way too many to even consider that.” She kicked a trash can over with a frustrated scream and slammed her hand into the portal control machine.

I looked over to Tiq and asked, “What do we do?” as if anyone was going to have any answers.

She cocked her head to the side, but instead of her doll-like expression, her face was still scrunched up with worry. “Removing the Gorvani won’t be possible. Extricating the townsfolk while they’re still there won’t be possible. Infiltrating the facility will be much, much harder.”

“What happens if we call this thing off?”

She shook her head. “The royals get all the arcanic energy they want and need.”

There was a lot of chatter and debate, but no one could offer a reasonable solution. 

Vashe had wandered off to maybe punch something else, but she came back and silently listened to the conversations, clearly getting more and more annoyed as time went on. Finally, she slammed her hand down and yelled, “Enough!” Everyone stopped and turned to her. “Not a single one of you is proposing the only plan left.” After no one rose to that, she scoffed and said, “We have to go ahead with the sabotage but forget the townspeople.”

There were various gasps and murmurs. I stayed quiet, and so did Tiq.

Vashe went on, “You think I like the idea? You think I wanna kill a bunch of innocent people? Well, I don’t. But they’re all gonna die anyway, aren’t they? Along with pretty much everybody else. So either we do this thing and stop the empire from getting what they want, or we wring our hands and those people die anyway.” Still, no one said a word. “Tell me I’m wrong! Someone, anyone, tell me I’m wrong!”

“You’re not,” I said. Everyone turned to me and I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach. “You’re not wrong. Unless someone can think up a better plan right this second, the only recourse we have is to bust up the place and…let the fallout be what it will.”

One side of Vashe’s mouth turned up in a grudging smile. She didn't say anything, but I think she was surprised I’d been the one to agree with her. On some level, so was I. But it was the only thing to be done, as far as I could tell. “We all knew fighting the empire was going to be rough. I didn’t think it was going to be kill a town rough, but here we are. Vashe is right. Those people are probably going to die whether we do it or the empire does it, so let’s just get the mission done.”

I expected some blowback from that, but these were soldiers, and as much as no one liked it, most could see the reality of the situation. Some few turned and walked away, and we let them go, but most of the group stayed.

There was some quick planning, and the smallest and most efficient group we could send was Tiq, me, Vashe, and Cersi. Tiq had to go because no one else had the knowledge to correctly destroy the arcanic facility, and the other three of us were some combination of best in a fight and most stealthy.

This new plan would work much better at night, but that was a few hours away, so all we could do was wait. Vashe went into the portal and issued some orders to the other two people that were on her small strike team, giving them the update and telling them to hold their positions. Tiq and I could have gone back to her apartment in the meantime, or went…anywhere, really, but we didn’t. The four of us who were going on the mission couldn’t seem to move or do anything more than sit around and experience a whole lot of dread. Some of the others brought in dinner for us and we ate it, still not talking, all wrapped up in our own thoughts. 

Finally, finally, the sun fully set, and we all exchanged terse nods before we went into the portal.

We emerged into a small, concrete room with the two other people in it, and Vashe quietly told them to stay where they were. If all went to plan, we’d be back and if the portal wasn’t there and open, we’d either be sprinting out of the town as fast as we could or…getting blown up.

We slipped out into a small hallway that had an exterior door. Vashe took the lead and Cersi took the rear as the two of them were the experts here. I did my best to not make any noise, but mostly I was worried about Tiq, who wasn’t a fighter or spy in any sense of the words. 

Her face was schooled to a cold neutrality, but I could only imagine how stressed she was. I knew how stressed I was. She stayed quiet and quickly followed any commands that Vashe or Cersi ordered.

Cersi had her crossbow readied and two full quivers full of bolts strapped tightly to her sides. Vashe carried a dagger in her hands and had a sword by her hip. I had my sword and shield, which I did my best not to bump into anything as we went. Tiq had her device, and I really, really hoped she wasn’t going to use it in a moment of panic, because it was extremely conspicuous and would give us away instantly if a giant, unnatural current of lightning flashed, leaving a crisp and smoking body.

At least one thing was going our way, as the night was dark and overcast, leaving a multitude of hiding places for us to scurry to and from. Vashe kept up a quick pace, and we all did our best to follow, sprinting from one set of shadows to another.

There were no citizens out on the streets, apparently owing to a heavily enforced curfew, about which I wasn’t the least bit surprised. There were regular guard patrols, however, and while they weren’t constant, they were enough of a nuisance that we were often crouching down in the shadow of a building or hiding behind a row of bushes much more than we were running.

The arcanic facility was obvious; it was a large building that dominated the smaller ones in town. I’m not sure why, but I’d expected something sinister looking like the sigilariums, but it was just a normal enough building, although the exterior was made largely out of stone and there were few ornamentations. There were still decorative features and carvings, but overall, it was a lot more like a building from Earth than any I had seen on Vendira.

Once we got closer, Vashe signaled us to stop, and we stayed sitting against the side of a three-story house while she poked her head out and spied on the guards milling about at the end of the road.

I could hear, just over my head, the sounds of a family coming through a slightly cracked window. I couldn’t tell what they were saying or doing, just that there were three or maybe four people, talking animatedly about something. A heavy lump of disgust sat low in my stomach. These people were going to get blown up soon, by us, and there was nothing to be done about it.

I was kinda surprised that my adventure on Vendira kept finding new ways to make me feel horrified. Up until now, it had been the varied and striking brutality of fighting and killing, but this time it was different. Innocent people were going to die. Well, that had been happening a lot, really. But innocent people were going to die because of me this time. 

Or if not me, the empire.

I suppressed a groan. This truly was a shit situation, and as much as I’d justified it, it was still pretty awful. I wanted to sneak up past Vashe and see what she was looking at, mostly to get my mind to stop spiraling into negativity. After what seemed way too long, she turned back to us and said, “We’re going to have to do this the hard way. I don’t think there’s any way for us to get inside without removing some of the guards.”

I nodded and said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Stay here, be quiet, and don’t fuck anything up. I don’t think an asshole in glowing armor cutting some people in half is the kind of thing that’ll go unnoticed.” It kind of sounded like she was doing the whole joking-but-serious thing, although she also might not have been since there was zero indication of mirth.

I just said, “You got it.”

“Tiq, stay here too. We’ll handle this.” She waved at Cersi, and the two of them bounded across the street into another set of shadows. 

Tiq and I both crept up to the side of the house, poking our heads around the corner, which I assumed would be fine since Vashe had been sitting like this for quite some time. At any rate, we were still safely concealed in the shadow of a huge tree. It probably would have been better for us to sit back where we were, but I wanted to see how this was going to play out and apparently Tiq was no different.

The street backed up to the tall wall that surrounded the arcanic facility. I assumed we were going over or through it and not just announcing ourselves at the gate or something. It was only then that I thought about how I didn’t know anything about the actual practicalities of this plan and was just along for the ride. I really hoped Vashe and Cersi didn’t get killed. Well, of course I hoped that, but even more so right then.

It was some time before anything happened, but when it did, it was fast. I barely saw Vashe as she crept through the shadows, and in an instant, she’d pounced on one of the Gorvani at the end of the road, her dagger flashing only briefly in the streetlight before she was dragging him backwards and out of view. The second her weapon was in the man’s throat, the other guard jerked and fell heavily to the pavement. I could only imagine he was sporting a bolt in the face. A moment later, Vashe’s hands shot out into the light and dragged the second body out of view.

“Wow, they’re good,” Tiq said.

“Yeah, I’m impressed.” I didn’t really want to say anything good about Vashe since she still rubbed me the wrong way, but there was no denying the skill we’d just witnessed; they’d made it look so easy, but one wrong movement and one of those Gorvani would have been waking up the whole town and we’d have been completely screwed.

“Should we go meet them?”

“No,” I said. “They told us to stay here, so we’re staying here.”

After some time, we saw Cersi in the shadows across the road, and she waved for us to follow. The blood hammered in my veins as we crossed the street, completely lit up by the streetlights. This wasn’t at all the kind of mission I liked, it seemed. I’d spent almost the entire time on Vendira getting into loud, obvious fights. And while I was confident I could win against anyone else in this whole town, that didn’t count for shit at the moment.

We followed Cersi through the darkened alleyways until we caught up with Vashe, who said, “Clock’s ticking until someone notices those two are dead. Let’s go.”

Apparently the plan was to go over the wall, as Vashe got out a short rope with a small grapple on the end of it. Cersi stood against the wall and Vashe climbed on her shoulders before tossing the grapple up and linking it around one of the metal spikes on top. Once it was secured, she climbed up and looked over the top. She looked down at us and shook her head, so we waited.

I really wondered what Revana was doing while we were out here having all this fun. Maybe there’d be more dragons when we got back. That was a thrilling thought.

Once the coast was apparently clear, Vashe leapt over the top. Tiq went next with a lot of help from us, and I looked on helplessly while she clumsily got herself over the spikes. I couldn’t see what happened on the other side, but I didn’t hear any big thumps, so I assumed Vashe got her to the ground safely and quietly. 

I was next, up and over as fast as I could, and Cersi followed shortly behind me, the rope in her hands when she dropped and rolled.

We were in a narrow strip between the perimeter wall and the building, which had no doors or windows on this side. Vashe gestured impatiently and said, “Let’s get going. I doubt we have much time at all before…”

I looked behind her in horror as, quite a ways down at the corner of the building, a Gorvani stepped around the corner.

Cersi’s crossbow twanged immediately. I wouldn’t have thought she even had time to get it back out after crossing the wall.

The Gorvani woman fell, but there was no way she was alone. I sprinted down the narrow channel, hoping the other guard would be too momentarily surprised to do anything. I rounded the corner in the shocked face of a man, and I saw him inhale, ready to cry out.

I stupidly hadn’t drawn my sword, so I punched him in the throat as hard as I could. He made a gurgling sound and grasped where I’d hit. I tackled him and slammed him to the ground, but the space was too tight yet to draw my weapon, so I frantically wondered what I was going to do. Should I try and choke him to death? Gouge out his eyes? Ugh. I didn’t have any claws to speak of.

Vashe was beside me in an instant, ramming her dagger into one of his eyes, keeping pressure on it and a hand over his mouth until he laid still. “Good work,” she said, and I was oddly happy to hear praise from her. I had kind of expected a rebuke for not bringing a dagger with me. 

Could I summon a shae dagger? Yes, of course I could. Probably. I’d have to figure that out.

There wasn’t anywhere convenient to hide these bodies, so we left them where they were and pressed on. There weren’t any more patrols between the one we’d just killed and the side doors we were headed towards. It was locked, of course. When Cersi knelt down in front of it and pulled out a set of lockpicks, I gently pulled her back. “I’ve got this one,” I said, feeling useful. I drew my sword, sent a trickle of the shae into it, and slowly slid the tip down between the doors, which offered no resistance at all. I pushed them open into a small room with five Gorvani looking directly at me.

19

I don’t know if the Gorvani were expecting a delivery or a shift change or what, but they didn’t immediately jump up when the doors swung open. Surely they’d known they were locked, though? Well, how much would I care if I worked nights at a facility that was guarded by an army? I doubt I’d expect enemies waltzing in either.

At any rate, this was what I was actually here for. I summoned the bulkiest armor I could and ran towards them. I spun and slashed, kicked one man backwards out of his chair before coming down to skewer him. When I rose up, another was down with a crossbow bolt in the face. Seriously, could Cersi pull off anything but headshots? 

We killed the Gorvani swiftly, but not before we made a lot of noise, and there was no telling if anyone else in the building could hear. It seemed unlikely that anyone outside could, because we’d currently be fighting them if that was the case.

“Which way, Tiq?”

She started down the single hallway from the room that we were in, but Vashe put a hand on her shoulder and said, smiling, “I’ll go first.”

“Oh, yes, right. That would be best. We’re looking for the arcanic buffers or storage or something like that. I’m not sure exactly how it’ll be labeled.”

While we made our way down the white, brightly lit corridors, two workers stumbled out of side doors. Cutting them down didn’t feel great as they obviously weren’t combatants, but there was nothing for it.

Following the signs, we ended up going down a few floors into sub basements. “Hey, we’re going to have enough time to get out of here, right?” I asked.

Tiq nodded. “Once we set this place up to blow, it should take some time for the required energy to flow in before the situation becomes critical.”

“Should, huh?”

She paused before replying, “Yes. Should.”

“And once we rig it to explode, no one can reverse it, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, that’s the one thing I’m absolutely certain of.”

Well at least there was something.

At the bottom of the stairs, a door opened into a huge room with four massive machines made of endless lengths of tubes and pipes and wires, all humming loudly. “These are the buffers,” Tiq said. “We’ll need to—”

There was shouting coming down from the staircase, floors above.

“You three go on,” I said. “I’ll hold them here and meet up with you when I’m done.”

Cersi grabbed my shoulder, a concerned look on her face. “You don’t know how many are coming and you’re going alone?”

I smiled, perfectly confident in my abilities, assuming they were just common soldiers. “Seriously, I can handle this. You get Tiq in there and do what needs to be done.”

She didn’t look totally convinced, but she shrugged and gave me a small smile, “Well, if you say so.”

I didn’t wait for anything more, just bounded up the staircase until I slammed into the enemy, literally. I still had the heaviest version of my armor on, and I plowed into the first people coming down the staircase. It wasn’t a time for finesse; I left my shield on my back and summoned two shorter versions of my warhammer, one in each hand. They still had the weight of the magic behind them, and in the cramped space, they were a much better option. I put my shoulder into the soldiers and swung with reckless abandon. I had gone into the fight assuming that none of them would be able to pierce my armor, and that turned out to be right.

There was almost zero chance there would be one of the tenebrae-infused assassins here and a totally zero chance there would be any royals, so I was practically a juggernaut. I left broken and battered bodies in my wake as I made my way up the stairs, my hammers crunching bones and breaking skulls. Belatedly, it became apparent that this was a lot of soldiers I was tearing through.

This was followed by two thoughts. First: we had clearly been found out. Second: was this the only staircase down to the buffer room?

I spun on my heels and rushed down to the basements, leaving behind a confused group of enemies. I hoped they’d be scared away by all the mangled bodies they’d have to step over to follow me.

I burst into the room to see Tiq standing in the middle of the four huge machines. Her hands were raised up high and there was lightning shooting from all four machines into her device. Or out of the device and into the machines? There was a lot of energy flying around in any case, and it was the most mad scientist shit I’d ever seen.

I had to look away from the blinding light, and I saw Vashe and Cersi in a little raised control room at the top of some metal stairs, waving to me. I rushed up, stepping over a couple corpses on my way, and said, “I killed a shit load of people on the stairs. There’s more coming; we’ve absolutely been found out.” I chanced a glance down at Tiq. “What is it that she’s doing?”

“Fucked if we know,” Vashe said. “She told us what buttons to press up here and we pressed them.”

One of the four machines exploded in a shower of sparks, pieces falling off of it at random. Tiq continued whatever it was she was doing.

Cersi shook my shoulder and led me over to one of the control panels. “Hey, we found this. It can alert the entire town that something dangerous is happening. If we’re screwed anyway, should we hit it?”

I wanted to immediately say yes, of course, but would it be a good idea? “It’ll be a madhouse getting out of here if we do, won’t it?”

“Probably.”

Against my better instincts, I turned to Vashe. “What do you think?” I figured if anyone could look at this practically and not get worried about the morality of the whole thing, it was her.

She grimaced and looked at the controls. Before she could answer, another one of the machines failed spectacularly. Cersi rushed to hit some more of the buttons while Vashe looked at me and said, “Shit’s fucked anyway. Let’s do it.” She went over to the panel and started messing with it.

Assuming that was all under control, I went back down to the floor just in time to see the third machine give it up. The one still active was glowing with what had to be pent up arcanae. Oh, that’s the plan, then. That one was gonna go nuclear once we got out of here. Or if we didn’t. Tiq waved me over and directed me to a series of pipes that she wanted cut, so I got out my sword and sliced cleanly through them, the fear of being electrocuted at the forefront of my mind. I didn’t, though.

Just as I’d done it, soldiers appeared at the door, apparently having overcome the trail of corpses they’d had to traverse to get here. They stopped when they saw me. Or maybe when they saw the glowing machine that was humming really loudly. Honestly, it scared the shit out of me too. They looked back and forth, but in that instant, ear-splitting klaxons or whatever Vendirans called them started blaring out a wildly off-putting noise.

That was too much for the Gorvani, who turned tail and bolted back up the stairs. 

Cersi and Vashe came down to meet us and Tiq asked, “You activated the alarms?”

Vashe nodded. “The Gorvani all know we’re here. Might as well get as many of the townspeople out. Too late for subtlety.”

“On that note,” I said, “let’s get the fuck out of here ourselves.”

It turned out that there wasn’t another staircase down here in what seemed like extremely unsafe design, but whatever. I was just happy the retreating Gorvani hadn’t thought to try and barricade us in. Cutting through whatever they happened to get their hands on would have been possible but a huge waste of time we didn’t have.

We all rushed up the stairs as best we could, climbing over broken bodies and slipping in blood. It was pretty gross, really. The building was empty, so we didn’t encounter any resistance on the way out. Once we’d retraced our steps and come out into the night, we all stopped and stared. 

The alarms had worked. The streets were full of panicked, screaming people.

20

I turned to Vashe and asked, “What now? Should we try to get back through the portal?”

She gritted her teeth and swore under her breath. “I…”

“Look,” Cersi said, “that’s exactly where everyone else is going. The nexus is going to be jammed full. We’ll be wading through a sea of people if we try.”

I looked at Tiq. “Can we make it out of the blast radius on foot?”

“No way to know, honestly. But if I had to guess, which I do, I’d say it’s probable, as long as we put enough solid structures between us and the blast. The shockwave will be one of the biggest dangers.”

“Let’s do it, then!” I started to run and the others fell in behind me. We went around to the other side of the building and I quickly cut a crude hole in the stone wall. Once we were on the other side, we were pressing against a tide of people running the other way. I wanted to call out and tell them to follow us, but no one was listening to anything and it would have wasted precious time, so we barreled through. 

As we went, it did become apparent that we weren’t the only ones ditching the nexus and making a break for it, and I noticed a few people gawking at my armor before changing directions. After a few blocks, we had our own following, which was fine by me. 

The houses and shops whizzed by as we sprinted out of town. I hadn’t been looking, but I hadn’t noticed any Gorvani among the crowd, and there were none in the group following us. The gate around the town soon loomed in the distance, and I chanced a look back at the arcanic facility. “Oh shit.” There were shafts of light poking out of the building where, I guessed, pieces of the machine in the basement had blown off and rocketed through the walls and floors.

Tiq looked back and yelped. “Faster! Fasterfasterfaster!”

I didn’t think I could, but I ran faster.

The area outside the town’s gate was rolling farmland. We picked the tallest hill we could and tried to put it between us and the blast.

I wasn’t looking at it, but I saw the light before anything else. I pulled Tiq to the ground and covered her as best I could with my body, pushing every last bit of the shae I could into reinforcing my armor. I shut my eyes tight.

The shockwave rolled over us next, a bone-rattling sensation that seemed to travel through the ground itself. I’m pretty sure being on the other side of the hill saved us all.

Then, the sound caught up with it. It was deafening.

I stayed still, wrapping my arms around Tiq as best I could.

Once it was over, I tentatively lifted my head and looked around. A huge group of the townspeople had come with us and were laying on the ground. “Tiq, you okay?”

She nodded, “Yeah. You?”

“I’m fine.”

Vashe and Cersi were close by and unharmed. 

“Hey, let’s get out of here,” I said to them. I had no idea how many of the townspeople were able to get out before the blast, and I really didn’t want to explain the situation to any of them. I just fervently hoped this was all worth it. Without any more preamble, the four of us set off into the night, following the road we’d come out of the gate on. “What now?” I asked.

“We head towards the third,” Vashe said. “That’s where my team came in, and it’s not all that far. We’ll stay on this road for a little while before turning off. Keep a watch for any Gorvani, but we didn’t encounter many at all on the way here.”

So it was that we found ourselves trudging down a country road in the middle of the night. The clouds were still thick overhead, and we stumbled in the dark without any moon or starlight to guide us.

As the time wore on, my legs started to ache. Vashe and Cersi didn’t flag, but they couldn’t be doing a whole lot better than I was. Tiq, on the other hand, was having a very bad time and it was obvious. She grunted and groaned, stumbling often, and was making a clear effort to keep up with us. She did not, however, offer a single word of complaint.

“Maybe we should take a break,” I ventured.

Vashe, who was in the lead, looked back at me and was obviously about to give me some shit over the suggestion when she saw Tiq. “Well…okay,” she said.

We all stopped and Tiq practically collapsed, her breath ragged. “How…much…further?”

“Not until sunrise, probably,” Vashe said.

Tiq leaned back with wide eyes, completely nonplussed. “...Okay,” was all she said.

We sat there for a little bit before three of us all stood and made ready to leave.

Tiq groaned to herself and tried to stand, her legs wobbling underneath her. When I tried to help her up, she waved me off, saying, “No! It’s fine. I’m…fine.” One of her knees gave out and she landed hard on her butt with a little, “Oof.” It was adorable, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

“Hey, why don’t you climb up on my back,” I said. “I’ll carry you for a little while.”

“No, Michael! I’m perfectly capable! It’s…fine! I don’t need to be carried like a child.” She was on her feet again, but after a brief amount of walking, she was breathing hard again and falling behind.

I turned to her and said, “Just let me carry you for a bit.”

“No, I’m—”

“Get on my back or I’m going to pick you up in my arms. Which one is going to be more embarrassing?”

She looked back at me, shocked, her mouth hanging open like I’d offended her ancestors. She tried to reply, but just stopped short each time. Eventually, she closed her eyes and said, “I’ll get on your back,” in a very quiet voice. She hopped up and looped her arms around me and I slipped my hands under her legs.

No one said anything else, but I could feel how tense she was. 

I was a little surprised Vashe hadn’t taken the opportunity to make fun of her, but maybe the situation was too dire for that.

The time absolutely dragged by as we walked, and walked…and walked.

At one point, I was pretty sure Tiq fell asleep on my back, but she soon woke up with a snort and demanded to be let down. Before the night was over, I carried her twice more.

But finally, after the sun had peeked over the horizon, another town came into view. And since we’d apparently passed into the third province, there was no threat of Gorvani waiting for us there. Very few people were out in the streets and we made our way quietly to the portal nexus. The people there knew who Vashe was, so we were able to get a portal opened to the seventh in short order.

Finally, we’d be safe.

As we crossed through, a huge sense of relief washed over my body. As I stepped out, though, a strange noise was in the air. It sounded like a crowd…but louder?

“Sir Brandless! You’re back!” The attendant was overjoyed to see me. Too overjoyed? And also…afraid? What was that noise?

“Yeah…what’s going on outside?”

“It’s the Gorvani army. We’re under siege.”

21

I rushed out of the building, and at the end of every street I looked down, there was a barricade and a mob of people fighting.

So much for safe.

There wasn’t time to think or ask anyone where I was needed the most, I just summoned my armor again and drew my sword. I left my shield on my back, as I planned to eat any attack that hit me and keep on swinging.

I took a few steps and it became quickly apparent that I was way too tired for this. I’d spent the previous night fighting, fleeing for my life, and walking. So much walking. I pulled the shae into my body and willed myself to move, even though it really felt like I couldn’t.

I picked a random direction and charged.

I didn’t know what the other three behind me would do. I hoped Tiq would stay in the relative safety of the nexus, but I was sure Vashe and Cersi would either be right behind me or heading off in a different direction.

From what I could tell, our people had been pressed into a few city blocks, rough barricades erected between the buildings. We must have had some warning to get them up in time, I thought, otherwise the city would be overrun by now.

I hoped Revana was safe.

I screamed as I charged the barricade, the muscles in my legs burning and screaming with me; only the shae was carrying me through this debacle. I leapt over the top and landed in the middle of the Gorvani soldiers, crushing at least one as I fell. I didn’t bother to finish them off, I just swung away, dodging and weaving between the blows I could, letting the ones I couldn’t bounce off my armor. As I cut down enemy after enemy, I could see the fear in their eyes, and I didn’t think it was just because they were fighting me.

Was it Tiq who had said it recently? That the Gorvani army was mostly ornamental and had never done any real fighting. These weren’t professional soldiers I was killing, they were professional parade members, honor guards, and status symbols. But here they were, assaulting the rebellion, probably against their own wishes. Or maybe not. Who knew how brainwashed they all were?

These thoughts wandered through my head as I focused on the battle, but there was nothing the enemy could do to me. Even their crossbows plinked harmlessly off my armor, and more than once, a sword broke over my face. I kept looking for royals or the new assassins that would really need my attention, but there was nothing. Just an endless slew of rank and file soldiers with terror in their eyes as I cut them down.

After there was a sizable pile of corpses around me, the Gorvani finally broke and started to run, many of them earning a few bolts in the back.

It would have been nice to think that was the end of it, but this was just one road, so I ran, as best I could, back into the town. Or at least the part of town we still had control of. I picked another street and ran to the end where the fighting was the thickest.

To my surprise, I found Isik of all people fighting against the Gorvani. Not because she wouldn’t, but no one on our side was actively trying to kill her at the moment. She wore her tenebrous armor, but over top of it was a bright red cloak with a golden dragon’s head sewn into it. Her hands were bursting with the tenebrae, much more intense than I’d ever seen; she must have put on Gor’mina’s relic.

The Gorvani on the other side of the barricade tried to fight on, even though they were all clearly being branded. It looked like this place was wrapped up pretty nicely, but I leapt into the fray anyway, thinking if I could free Isik up, she could help me elsewhere.

It was even more of a massacre than the last place had been. The soldiers could barely resist me at all while the pain of their brands ran through their bodies. It was only a moment before they broke and fled as well. 

I rushed over to Isik. While it didn’t seem like anyone was going to turn on her, I thought it would be a good sign if I was seen talking with her. “Well this is a mess. When did it all start?”

She looked about as tired as I felt. I wondered if she’d slept at all last night either. “Scouts brought word in the night, with just enough time that we could erect some semblance of a perimeter and call all the people in. They attacked at sunrise.” She glanced around and said, “Our people are largely untrained, although many have received…some instruction with a crossbow, which was excellent planning. However, the army has turned out to be laughably underwhelming. I think the soldiers are less trained than our own people, somehow. They seem to have competent enough leaders, but whatever discipline they had evaporated on first contact.”

“Well, that’s something. Are you…are people okay with…you?”

“I have, for most of the battle, been at Osaarin’s side, present situation notwithstanding. The cloak has helped, and once I started obliterating the enemy,” she said, shrugging, “people have come around.”

“The relic’s working, then?”

“It’s…intoxicating. Yes, it’s working well.”

Didn’t really like the tone of that statement, but I’d have to come back to it. “Have there been any royals or assassins?”

She pressed her lips into a line. “No. I find this concerning.”

I didn’t like it either, although I couldn’t really put my finger on why. “Odd, but there’s nothing to be done about it now I guess.”

“Yes. Were you successful with your mission?”

I nodded. “We were, even though it was a complete shitshow for a lot of reasons. But we got it done.” I wearily looked around. “Well, there’s more to be done.”

She sighed. “Let’s go.”

We didn’t run. Isik didn’t bother and I didn’t know if I could. We turned a corner and found the barricades at the end of the road had been overcome, and our people were retreating. I held my sword up high and yelled wordlessly, pressing into the Gorvani. Some of our allies turned and regrouped, and a moment later, all of the enemy closest to us convulsed and fell as Isik branded them.

I didn’t bother with the ones on the ground, just stepped over them and hacked away at the ones behind, and in short order, they turned and ran as well. I doubled over, my hands on my knees as I struggled to catch my breath. The shae wasn’t cutting it anymore; I was about at the end of my rope. 

“Are you going to be okay?” Isik asked.

“I…I’m okay, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”

I looked up to see the enemy we had just sent running coming back our way again, having apparently run into some reinforcements. 

“Damn,” I said.

My ability to channel felt like it was weakening, and if that happened, and my armor fell away, I’d be dead almost instantly. But there was nothing for it. I stood my ground and fell into a fighting stance.

The fact that Isik was there was the only thing that got me through that skirmish. I could tell she was selectively branding the people closest to me so I could cut them down with little effort. Still, I took many blows, my armor finally cracking as my ability to keep it solid waned. I strained and did what I could, hoping each blow was the last, but they just kept coming.

Finally, I began to see the Gorvani fall away around me without my help. They cried out or just fell, crossbow bolts sticking out of faces and chests. I risked a glance behind me and found our own reinforcements coming. As the enemy turned and ran, again, I finally let go.

I slumped to the street, my sword clanging on the pavement and my armor dissipating in a puff of light. “I…can’t…” I said to no one in particular.

“Get him out of here! Take him to the guildhall!” That was Isik. She was talking about me. Probably. Hopefully.

Many hands reached out for me, and I was lifted off the ground. I was pretty sure there were four people carrying me, but it might have been more…or less. I blinked, trying to get my brain to start working again, but it was too much, too hard.

Buildings passed by me and the sounds of fighting receded somewhat. 

But then there was another sound, something familiar, but different. It took all the energy I could muster to force my senses back into alignment. The people carrying me slowed as we all looked up into the sky and saw a dragon pass by, roaring and sending out massive balls of pure shae to slam into the Gorvani.

But then, there was another. And another. And then, one more.

I was pretty sure I was seeing more than one dragon and they weren’t just a figment of my overtaxed mind. They circled the city, all of them attacking mercilessly, wiping out huge groups of Gorvani.

I started to laugh, either at the thought that we were winning or that I’d finally lost it and gone off the deep end. Both were amusing to my broken mind, but I still really hoped that it was the first one. I tried to ask the people still holding me which one it was, but I couldn’t get my mouth to form anything resembling coherent speech, and I don’t think any of them heard my attempts anyway as they all stared up into the sky themselves.

When the darkness started to creep up around the edges of my vision, I stopped fighting and let it take me.

22

I jerked awake, thrashing and reaching for who knows what. When nothing bad happened, I tried to open my eyes, which were heavy with sleep. I blinked and cracked them open, but the soft light shining into them was blinding. I laid back and felt a pillow underneath my head, and finally realized I was in a bed. Somewhere.

It took a while, but I was finally able to open my eyes and look around the room I was in, and the sense of relief I felt when I saw that it was Tiq’s apartment was overwhelming. I pulled the covers back up to my neck and tried to relax, but as my brain started working again, a truly ridiculous amount of aches and pains registered all over my body, along with a bone-deep weariness that I’d never felt before. Also, I was hungry. Extremely hungry.

And I had to pee. Pretty bad.

I debated on whether to endure it or not, but it wasn’t going to go away, so I gave in and pushed the warm covers off, just then realizing I was in my underwear and nothing else. Muscles I didn’t know I had screamed at me when I tried to sit up, and it took no less than four tries before I finally did.

Standing was no better. Not only were those muscles just as sore, but they didn’t seem like they were going to be up to the task at first. I would stand, only to have them give out, falling back down to the bed on my butt. Again, I considered giving up and getting back into the warm sheets, but now that I had made the decision to deal with it, the urgency to get to the bathroom was rising steadily.

I finally stood, and I stayed there, wobbling, before I attempted to walk. Thankfully, it was…doable. I made it into the bathroom and relieved myself, washed my hands, and hobbled back to the bed to fall right back in.

Once I was warm again, the thoughts of the previous…whenever it was…came slowly back to me. We’d been fighting the Gorvani. I’d killed a lot of them, and Isik was there. I overdid it. A lot, apparently. Some people came for me, and that was it.

I took a long, deep breath and wished I had some dulcet jumpers. And a huge pot of steaming hot hachi. Those were the thoughts that were running through my head when I fell back asleep.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, I was awoken again by sounds in the other room. I felt…better, but not good. I tried to sit up and had an easier time of it than I had, but it was still a chore. I fell back to the pillow and said, as loud as I could, “Tiq?” I repeated myself a few times, but I wasn’t sure my voice was even carrying out of the room.

The door slowly slid open, though, and Tiq poked her head in tentatively. When she saw I was awake, she came in with a huge smile on her face. “Hey! I thought I heard something.” She got a chair and pulled it over to the side of the bed and sat down. She was wearing a set of grease-stained work clothes, including a shirt that was probably once white and now never would be again. Her hands were covered in grime and I noticed she made a point of not touching anything. “How are you feeling?”

I smiled wanly. “Bad. Well, exhausted. Achy. Like I ran to Telorn and back, without stopping. Twice.”

She nodded. “All your bones intact? You know who I am and where you are?”

“Yes, yes, and yes. How’d the battle go? Okay enough, I’m guessing, based on the fact that we’re sitting here. Oh! Did I see multiple dragons before I passed out? Oh, and what day is it? How long have I been asleep?”

She endured my barrage of questions without interruption. “It’s been a little over a day. You slept for all of yesterday and through the night. Yes, Revana and Nir were able to find a few other dragons, and I believe are on the hunt for more, although I’ve only heard what people are saying; I haven’t spoken with her directly. The battle went…well enough, considering. We won, if you want to call it that, but there’s another problem now.”

“Well yeah. Naturally.”

She scoffed, but had a smile on her lips. “Once Revana came in with the dragons and they all started blasting the Gorvani, the proverbial dam broke. We were pushing them back on many fronts, but once they were getting attacked from the air with no hope of any real retaliation, they turned tail and ran. A few people managed to cut their way through to the command post the army had set up, and the leaders were all slain.”

“Royals?”

She shook her head, a concerned look on her face. “No. I heard a few reports that there were assassins, the newer ones, but only a few and while they were dangerous, they apparently couldn’t turn the tide of any of the smaller battles. I think they really were designed with assassination in mind, and were never meant to be front line warriors. As for royals? No, not a single one. No one knows what to make of it. Also, before I forget, there’s one other thing.” This line was delivered in a way that implied I was really, really, not going to like what followed.

“Oookay?”

She gave me a tight smile and patted my hand through the sheets. “It’s become clear that we need some leadership structure. We did fine this time, but if we’re going to press on and assault Telorn, someone needs to be at the head of…whatever we are. The rebellion? The resistance? We’re the dragon cult, but that’s honestly not descriptive enough for a lot of reasons. Anyway, we need someone to be a figurehead for people to look to, and someone whose responsibility it is to make the ultimate decisions.”

Great. “And can I assume by your tone that everyone’s already decided that it should be me?”

She gave me a pained look and squeezed my hand. “Yep.”

“Amazing.” I sighed again. “Do I get a title or something, at least?”

She chuckled, her eyes crinkling. “I’ll bet you could just say you do and everyone would go with it. I would advise against something like King or especially Emperor, though.”

I laughed and then winced as the muscles in my chest, and everywhere else, twinged with pain. “What about like, Superking, or TurboEmperor-God or something?”

She laughed loudly and with a wry smile said, “I don’t think you understand my advice.”

“Oooh…okay. Something a little more…modest, say?”

“Mhmm.”

I let my head fall to the side on the pillow. “I’ll think about it. And it goes without saying, but I’ll do it. The thing. Be the…leader or whatever. Not really something I’m qualified for, but I’ll do my best.”

“I think that means you are qualified. And don’t think you have to do anything alone. We’ll all be there, and we’ll talk things through. But the final decisions will rest with you.”

I nodded weakly. There were more questions I wanted to ask, but I was about at the limit of my head’s processing power. “I’ll try and get used to the idea. In the meantime, do you have anything to eat around here? I would like anything and especially everything you have.”

“Yes, yes!” she said, quickly standing up. “I should have had something waiting. Give me a little bit and I’ll head downstairs and get you something from the food tents. Don’t fall asleep!”

“No promises,” I said as she sped out the door while I immediately fell back asleep.

23

Tiq prodded me awake again, the smell of something good already reaching my nose. “Okay, okay. I’m up. I guess.”

I made to stand, but she pushed me back down on the bed and unfolded a tiny little table and sat it over me, after which, she jammed a few more pillows behind me so I could sit upright. “I couldn’t find any hachi, but there’s a jumper in there. Just one. They wouldn’t give me any more than that.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. You’re the best, Tiq.”

“I know.” She sat down on the foot of the bed while I started stuffing the hot food into my face. It was some variation of beans and rice with a sauce, but it might as well have been the finest steak I’d ever had for as much as I was enjoying it. It had been a day and a half since I’d eaten anything? More?

“Since you’re awake, there’s going to be a meeting soon of all the important people in the city, and we’re going to decide exactly what to do.”

“Bust up the shadowsphere and murder the Emperor,” I said.

She leaned back on her hands and chuckled. “Naturally, but there might be some practicalities to discuss.”

We heard the door slam in the front room and Revana called out, “Hey, are you in here?”

“Back in the bedroom,” Tiq yelled back.

Revana practically squealed when she came in the door and saw me…alive, I guess. “You’re okay! You certainly had us worried, sleeping for over a day!”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “But on to the real news: There are more dragons!?”

She beamed and said, “There are! Although when you saw them, there were only four. We’re up to six now!”

I paused, another huge bite on its way to my mouth. “Six? Six? I…how?”

She laughed and sat down on the chair beside the bed. “With Nir’s help, it was so much easier to open a portal. Not easy, but we did it. Luckily, the first world we visited was home to two more dragons. I’ll introduce you later. And after that? Having multiple dragons assisting in making the portals? Well then it was easy. We actually visited many worlds after that, searching for more. Some of them had your,” she said with a curled lip, “green grass. Anyway, when we came back to find the city besieged, we flew in and roasted as many of the Gorvani as we could.”

“Excellent timing. That was right around the time I was finished. But then you went out again and found even more dragons?”

“Yeah. We went yesterday while you were sleeping. It was all thanks to the work the cult had already done, mapping out places the dragons might have fled all those years ago. You can’t imagine how emotional they all were to see each other. I think they all assumed they were the last. Like I said, we ended up in a lot of places with nothing, but there were clearly more dragons than anyone thought. Once this is all over, Nir and the rest are probably going to hop around the cosmos and find anyone else they can.”

“Well, that’s just amazing,” I said around a mouthful of food. “Have you heard that I’ve been elected Superking?”

She paused and raised an eyebrow at me. “Super…king. No, I had not heard that.”

Tiq snorted. “I advised him to take a lesser title, but he’s already putting on airs.”

Revana blinked at the both of us. “Oh, are we talking about the leadership thing?” She smiled and said, “I think I’d also advise against that title.”

“Oh. Well, my other choice was TurboEmperor-God. Is that better?”

She brought her white-clawed hand to her face and tried not to laugh. “No, I don’t think it is, Michael.”

We chatted for a while longer while I unabashedly stuffed my face, taking special delight in the dulcet jumper. When there was another knock on the door, Tiq went to answer it, coming back to say, “That was Vashe. Since you’re awake, the…war council…is being called very soon. I have some clothes for you here, but you probably have time for a quick shower.”

“Alone?”

She tilted her head and looked over her glasses. “A quick shower.”

I laughed. “Probably for the best, anyway. I think standing there’s going to be all I can do.”

In the end, it was not all I could do, because I couldn’t even do that. I just sat on the floor of the shower and cleaned off as best and as quickly as I could, getting dressed also while mostly sitting down on a small stool.

I leaned on Revana as we went down the stairs, but once we were out on the street, I was determined to walk on my own. If I was going to be the boss or whatever, I might as well project a little confidence. Although I didn’t have my weapons with me, it was instantly apparent that basically everyone knew who I was on sight, which was less alarming now that I was getting used to it.

The war council or whatever was in the Carvers’ Guild, but instead of winding through a maze, we only traveled down a single straight hallway to get there, which I really hadn’t thought the building had. The space was a massive meeting room with a long table and chairs, all exquisitely carved, of course. There were places for Revana and Tiq, and Vashe and Cersi were already there. Osaarin was at the far end, and there were also a few people I’d seen but didn’t know their names. The chair at the end of the table, carved to look like a blaze of roaring flames, was for me. It would have been pretty exciting if it wasn’t for the crushing weight of responsibility that came with it. 

I sat down and tried not to wince as the aches and pains came from all my muscles, organs, and bones. I did my best not to slouch and kept a neutral look on my face, hoping that this being boss thing got easier as time went on, but I kinda assumed it didn’t. 

Everyone looked to me, because apparently I not only had to make the decisions but also start the meeting as well. “Thanks for coming, everyone.” Yeah, that sounded fine. “It’s come to my understanding that we’re lacking in leadership structure and hierarchy. With the time we have, we’re not going to get more than a rudimentary system going, but we should be able to organize things for the push into Telorn. What happens after that, well, it depends largely on how the battle goes down.”

After I got the ball rolling, we actually pretty quickly decided on a lot of things. I think that a lot of the decisions had more or less been made, but someone needed to be at the top to approve them. I made some minor suggestions and tweaks, but for the most part, I just gave the go ahead to everything people already wanted to do.

I’d still be the Brandless and the de facto leader, and the title we settled on was Warchief, which I suggested because it carried a connotation apart from a governing leader. Once the war was over, there’d be no need for a warchief anymore. Also it just kinda sounded cool.

Cersi and Vashe would both carry the title of General, which I was real leery about in Vashe’s case, but I couldn’t deny that she was an effective soldier. I just hoped that translated into soldier management. 

Cersi, on the other hand, struck me as someone we all should have put in charge instead of me, but she seemed a lot more comfortable with a lesser role. And between her and Vashe, they’d probably do a really good job. I kept in mind that we’d already held off a dedicated Gorvani invasion and we weren’t starting from scratch.

There was a little more discussion that I only marginally weighed in on, and then we got to the real topics.

“So, as…many of you know,” Cersi said while glancing at me, “When the Gorvani army that assaulted us broke, most of their people turned and ran. However, a sizable chunk of them laid down their weapons and surrendered. With nothing in place for such an eventuality, we’ve put them all in a few apartment buildings that we’ve sectioned off from the rest of the city.”

“We have…prisoners of war?” I asked. 

She nodded grimly. “And we need to decide what to do with them.”

Vashe scoffed. “As if it isn’t obvious. We should execute them and be done with it!” When the table erupted into arguments, she shouted everyone down. “We can’t trust any of them! They’re a liability, sitting right here in the city. They’re draining resources and manpower. You might not like it, but you all know they’d do the same to us!”

Osaarin slammed his huge hand down on the table, the sound bouncing around the room. “We’re not savages! And do you think they wanted to attack us? They’re as much the royalty’s tools as any of us were. Are we no better than the empire? Is that what we’re fighting for? So we can slaughter them all to feed our desire for revenge?”

Well, this seemed to me, a pretty easy decision. I held up a hand, and to my surprise, everyone stopped talking and looked to me. “We’re not going to engage in mass executions.”

Osaarin sat back and smiled and Vashe looked…pissed, but then she always looked pissed. She did not, however, argue with me about it.

“If we start killing them now,” I said, “it sets a precedent. I don’t know what any of you think we’re doing, but exterminating the Gorvani isn’t it. Especially not helpless people that are in our care. And speaking of the Gorvani, where’s Isik? Shouldn’t she be here?”

“I believe she went to speak with the prisoners in question,” Osaarin said.

There were two guards standing by the door. I pointed to one of them, a young Dravini man, and said, “You. Go find Isik and tell her we need her here as soon as possible.”

He quickly bowed and said, “Yes, Warchief,” before heading out the door.

Well that was pretty cool.

“Let’s put that aside until she gets here,” I said. “What’s the next order of business?”

The next item for the war council was…the war.

“We need to plan our assault on the shadowsphere,” Revana said.

“We may have bought ourselves some time,” Tiq said, “with our destruction of the arcanic relay. Although, that might mean that the ritual would have already completed and we’re on borrowed time, or it might still be weeks away.”

“Our people could really use more training,” Cersi said. “As of right now, most people who are willing to fight can hold and fire a crossbow, but for a large portion of our fighting force, that might be the extent of their abilities.”

“You say that,” Revana replied, “but we held off the invasion here. It turns out the Gorvani army is laughably undertrained, or is at least not battle-tested.”

Vashe laughed. “If half of them had known what they were doing, we’d have been wiped out. They know which end of a sword to hold, but most of those idiots couldn’t swing it to save their lives, which is exactly what they were trying to do. Stupid bastards have been relying on branding people for so long, they never figured out how to do anything else.”

“I don’t think time is on our side,” I said. “We could wait, Cersi, but could you really impart any decent training even if we gave you a week? Even that seems too much.”

“It’d be better than nothing,” she said.

“Still. Based on what we accomplished here, coupled with the fact that we have no idea how long we truly have, I think we need to start mobilizing soon. Possibly tomorrow. I’d love to give you more time, but I don’t think we’ll get anything of value out of it with just a few days.”

The doors opened and Isik strode into the room as if this was precisely when she’d meant to arrive. The red cloak was still around her shoulders, although underneath she was wearing normal clothes. She took an open seat and looked flatly back at everyone. “Yes?”

“We understand you’ve been speaking with the Gorvani prisoners?” Osaarin asked.

She scoffed. “Speaking to them?”

“You’ve been interrogating them,” Tiq said.

“I’ve been interrogating them, yes. I am an Inquisitor. How soon you all forget.” She sighed and curled a lip before adding, “Although I hardly needed to be. Many of them seem eager to tell me what they know with the barest of questioning, either out of a misguided belief that doing so will result in leniency or because they’ve all been subjected to so many horrors lately that they just wanted to tell anyone that’ll listen.”

“So you’ve been getting some good information from them, then?” I asked.

“Yes. At first I assumed it was a coordinated plot to throw me off, but so many of them are telling me versions of the same truth that it seems their loyalty to the Emperor is truly wavering. Honestly, it’s somewhat astounding. I had thought that a lifetime of propaganda would result in a completely tenacious, impenetrable belief in the royalty. But apparently that’s not the case.”

Vashe laughed viciously. “Those bastards are finally seeing the truth, are they? Serves ‘em right! What’s the Emperor doing that would make even a sniveling Gorvani turn?”

If Isik was offended by that question, she didn’t show it. “There’s a persistent rumor going around that the ritual inside the shadowsphere — which they’re calling The Great Barrier, by the way — is going to kill a large portion of the population. All the high ranking Gorvani have apparently been assured that this will only apply to the so-called lesser races, but as time goes on, people are less and less sure of that.

“Personally, I can’t see how it would work. I have extensive knowledge of the shadowbrand, and while it can denote caste, it’s never denoted race. Any ritual that would affect it would affect everyone. The only ones spared would be those without a brand.”

“Which is only the royalty,” Revana said.

“Yes. I’m not sure if the masses arrived at this conclusion on their own or if my colleagues have been disseminating it, but a sizable portion of our own prisoners believe they are at risk. However, they continue to follow orders for the most part because disobeying orders is a one hundred percent chance of immediate death. I should also add at this point that many Gorvani, although only channelers of the tenebrae, are being summoned inside the shadowsphere. Those that go never return, which isn’t helping any of my fellow Gorvani to believe we’re anything but expendable.”

“This essentially confirms the fact that the ritual is not only real, but it’s for the purposes that we feared,” Tiq said.

Osaarin shook his head, muttering. “They can’t possibly be planning on killing everyone.”

“I should imagine not,” Isik said. “But would they kill half the population? Three fourths? Probably. They view us as cattle. Culling the herd is an inconvenience, but give it a few generations, which is nothing to the immortal royalty, and things will be back to normal. They’ll just have to abandon some of the provinces until the population recovers.” No one answered this and quite a few around the table fairly gaped at Isik. “What? Are you all so surprised that the empire would go to extreme lengths to quash a rebellion? Overkill is literally the only thing they know how to do.”

“I think,” I said, “that kind of assuming they were doing it and getting confirmation that they’re doing it are different things.”

Cersi chimed in, “This doesn’t answer the question of what to do with our prisoners.”

“Right,” I said. “That. Isik, do you have any insight?”

She smiled humorlessly and said, “If you asked, I think some would volunteer to help us fight.” Vashe leaned into the table and started to say something, but Isik cut her off. “Not that we could safely trust any of them; I’m not suggesting we do it. But what should we do? I don’t believe there’s much of an option. We leave them where they are when we march on the capital, either leaving a skeleton crew to guard them, or not. I don’t think it wise to just release them before we leave for Telorn, and as much as I’m sure some of you would like,” she said, eyeing Vashe openly, “I don’t think killing them is a wise long term solution, but their judgment will have to wait until later.”

“It doesn’t sound like there are any great options,” I said. It seemed like this was what being a leader was mostly about, I mused: making crap decisions with no good choices. At least I was getting the full experience. “Isik, see if you can find out anything else useful from them. They didn’t have anything to say about the conspicuous lack of royals around, did they?”

“Oh, that. Apparently the army in Telorn is being led directly by the First Son, Gor’ven. I’ve only seen him twice, but he is, by all accounts, exactly as you’re all imagining him now. But aside from him, no one has seen any of the royalty, and the speculation is they’re all inside the sphere. Probably aiding in the completion of the ritual.”

“Has the Emperor made any appearances?”

“No, and that’s of no surprise.”

“Hmm…okay. See if you can find out anything else useful from the prisoners.” I turned back to the rest of the table. “We’ll keep them where they are now, and when we leave for the capital, a small contingent will stay here to keep an eye on them. Cersi, pick people who are competent, but keep our best with us. And I assume whoever you choose to leave behind is going to be mad about it. You can say you’re acting under my direct authority.” That was fun to say, too. “If they have a problem with it, they can come see me.” I really hoped no one would do that.

She nodded. “You got it.”

“Revana, are the dragons able and willing to help in the assault?”

She laughed softly. “If you thought it was easy getting Nir to come home to Vendira, you should have been there when we met the others. Not only did they leap at the chance to come back, but a few of them are thirsty for royal blood. They’re ready the second we need them. And if there really is only one royal to contend with outside the sphere, then you and I can rush him so there’s no real threat to the dragons.”

“At least something’s working out. What’s next?”

Vashe bent over with a grunt and started rummaging around in a bag before bringing out a rolled up paper. She smoothed it out over the table, and it was a map of Telorn. “There’s a couple different options for actually getting our people to the battle.”

A long discussion ensued, but it mostly boiled down to how close we wanted to try and get. There were many portal nexuses in Telorn, and the closer in meant less walking through the streets but more danger to try and open in the first place.

I looked over the map. “Any of these are options? There isn’t a big wall or something keeping us out?” I really should have known the answer to that; I’d been to Telorn and looked out over the city from the top of the Astrologia, but I sure wasn’t thinking about the logistics of assaulting the place while I was there.

That seemed like so long ago now.

“Nothing like that, no,” Isik said. “The empire’s power was already established by the time construction on Telorn began in earnest, so there was no need for primitive defensive structures like that.”

“Uh, the smaller cities have them.”

“Remnants from ancient times, mostly kept up for tradition and aesthetics. None of them use them for any actual purposes.”

It seemed like everyone had an opinion on this one, except me. I stayed quiet and let everyone else argue it out for once, because really, all the options had good and bad points. I really hoped I wasn’t going to choose the wrong one.

24

In the end, after hot hachi was brought around and we talked the subject to death, we just ended up picking a nexus in the middle range of our choices. I thought it was probably a lesson I could learn about saving time in the future.

There were a couple more minor issues that were brought up, but the meeting ended shortly after that. I for one was overjoyed. I’d never liked attending meetings even when I was the least important person in the room. But I thought I’d done pretty well, and looking back, I really had come a long way since I’d first been summoned to Vendira. My mind wandered to what might have happened if I never had been, if I’d lived the rest of my life the way it had been going on Earth.

I quickly shoved those thoughts away. Vendira was my home and that was that.

As everyone was about to get up and leave, I turned to Isik. “Stay for a moment, would you?”

She nodded and remained sitting while everyone else filed out.

Once we were alone, I said, “So you’ve been able to walk around without people harassing you?”

“Well, that’s one way of putting it. No one says anything, but I see a lot of naked hatred in their stares. I kept thinking I’d have to make a few examples, even though it would probably have been counterproductive. At any rate, unbeknownst to me, Osaarin had been working me into the talks he gave when addressing the people. Not by name at first, but eventually. So word spread of my involvement with the Celestori. When I appeared during the battle, it wasn’t a complete surprise to everyone. I’ll never be truly accepted, but I’m grudgingly tolerated for now, which will suffice.”

“Good enough is good enough, I guess. Are you ready for the battle? As in, are you able to cast Gor’mina’s spell at the Font?”

She sighed and looked away. “Yes.”

“We’ll be there with you. Don’t worry.”

She gave me her tiny ghost of a smile. “I don’t need your platitudes, Michael. I’ll perform my duties as best I can.”

“Well, we’ll still be there by your side.”

She scoffed and got up to leave. With her back to me, she said, “I know.” And then she was out the door.

I was able to slip out of the building without anyone else asking me to do something, and I thought it would be a good idea to be seen. And if I was being completely honest with myself, I was really coming around to the idea of being someone important. It was a novelty that would probably wear off, but it was something I’d never thought would happen.

Out on the streets, the mood was tense. Everyone knew we’d be marching on Telorn but no one knew exactly when. I wandered around, talking briefly with anyone who approached me, doing my best to raise people’s spirits, but I didn’t divulge anything that had gone on at the meeting. It would probably be tomorrow when we started mobilizing, but that was contingent on a few things, so I didn’t want to spread false rumors. I could only imagine how that would go. “But the Brandless said…” Yeah, that’d be great.

“Michael! Oh, Michael!”

That didn’t sound like a voice I knew. And despite my urging, people were pretty leery about calling me by my name. 

“It is you! Michael!” A black haired Surini woman rushed up to me, smiling widely. She looked…sort of familiar. She must have noticed the confusion on my face, because she laughed and said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“I…uh…” Oh, it was right there. Just on the tip of my tongue. Oh! “Oh! You’re…oh, I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name. But we helped each other out…getting away from those enforcers, right?”

“Yes! I’m Sera.”

“Right. And then…where’s, uh, Bairn? Oh, I mean…did he?”

She smiled warmly. “Yes, he survived!” She turned and waved into a crowd, and then there he was, coming towards us, his arm held at a weird angle. 

“Michael, it is you! Unbelievable.”

“Oh, I’m so happy to see you here,” I said. “I thought I’d just never know what happened to you. I’m glad you pulled through.”

He smiled and tried to hold up his arm. “I did. I don’t have a lot of functionality in this arm anymore, but it’s worlds better than being dead. And it’s all thanks to you. Those enforcers would have cut us down and there’d have been nothing we could do. We owe you our lives.”

“Oh, well, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Sera was smiling up at me a little too hard. “We didn’t know who you were. What you were. Just some stranger that was an enforcer, but then wasn’t. And as quickly as you came into our lives, you were gone. And now, look at this. You’re the Brandless.”

“Yeah…” I said, rubbing my neck unconsciously. “I suppose I am, but you can still just call me Michael. I’d prefer that over a title or something. What are you two doing here?”

“We came to help, Bairn said. “We can’t fight, but there’s a lot of other ways to help. Once we heard what was happening, we knew we had to be part of it. We’ve lost enough at the hands of the empire. And…is it true? Are we actually marching on Telorn soon? To threaten the Emperor himself?”

I held out my hands and said, “There’s no other way out. No one’ll be free while he’s still alive.”

We chatted for a little while after that, and I was insanely happy I got to know how their story turned out. Now I just needed to know how everyone else’s would turn out.

I spent the rest of the day being seen. There was nothing else I needed to do, so I wandered around, talking with whoever wanted to talk, and trying to keep people’s morale high. It was so much easier than actually getting up on a stage and giving a talk. It also helped that everyone, including people I’d never seen, already liked me. Or the idea of me, at least.

As the day wore on, Cersi found me and gave me an update on the mobilization. All of her lieutenants had been informed, but the plan was being kept from everyone else so they could sleep as soundly as possible for one more night. In the morning, things would begin in earnest: people would be armed and armored, divisions would be assigned, and battle strategy would be laid out.

I ate dinner standing up outside a food tent, talking with more random people. The mood was tentatively positive and I hoped it would stay that way in the morning. Once the sun began to set, I went to find Tiq, whom I hadn’t seen all day.

She was in her apartment/lab, still tinkering on her device. She didn’t look up when I came into the room, but she said, “Hey. I was wondering if you’d come see me. Finally get enough of parading yourself around?”

“As if. Should I really deprive the people of looking at my…awesome…presence?”

She laughed but still didn’t look up. “So awesome, indeed. Are you ready for tomorrow?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. What about you? Surely you’ve upgraded that thing all you can.”

She scoffed. “Impossible. There’s no limit to science. One day I’ll be able to blow up the moon with this thing. Not that I would, of course. The moon is very important for many reasons.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her that she didn’t see. “Of course. What are you actually doing to it?”

“Streamlining its capacity to funnel the arcanae. It performed admirably at the arcanic station, but my hopes are that during tomorrow’s battle, once we get inside the shadowsphere, that I’ll have a chance to disable one or more of the Font’s six towers.”

“Oh…you’re planning on entering the shadowsphere too?”

“Of course.”

I had really hoped she’d stay somewhere safe, but that was a pipe dream and I should have known it. “Just promise me you’ll have Cersi assign you a group of bodyguards.”

“Already arranged.”

Oh, well that was something, at least. And she wouldn’t be trying to fight the Emperor directly. We hadn’t discussed it in detail, but only me, Revana, and Isik would be able to stand up to him, I believed. 

“Oh, Revana was looking for you. She’s up on the roof,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“No idea.”

“Uh huh…well, I’ll leave you to it.”

She nodded and said nothing more, completely absorbed in her work.

I went up to the roof to find Revana sitting in a chair she’d obviously carried up from Tiq’s apartment, and there was another empty one beside her. “Is this seat taken?” I asked.

She looked up at me and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s reserved.”

“For who?”

“The hero of Vendira.”

“Hey, that’s me! Or at least I’m the closest anyone’s going to get, I think.” She nodded thoughtfully and gestured for me to sit, which I did. “What are you doing? Just watching the sunset?”

“I suppose. Mostly I’m just worrying.”

I slid my chair closer and put my arm around her shoulders. “No need for that. We’re going to bust up the Emperor and blow up the shadowsphere. Easy.”

She laid her head on my shoulder, positioning herself so her horns wouldn’t poke me. “I wish I was that confident.”

I put my other hand on hers and said, “Truth be told, I’m pretty scared of tomorrow too. We’ve faced down a lot and made it through, though. So I keep telling myself we’ll make it through this. Just one more thing to do and it’s over. We didn’t come this far to only come this far.”

She laughed softly. “I like that. I like it a lot.”

“Something I heard somewhere. Wish I could take credit for it.”

She took a long, deep breath and said, “Do you remember when I summoned you here? That night in those old ruins? We fought Jorel and he was the biggest threat in the world at the time. And tomorrow, we’re going to fight the Emperor himself. 

“And now I can channel. There are dragons, too.” She shook her head, smiling. “I’m so happy this all happened. It really is beyond anything I ever actually hoped for.” She raised up to kiss me softly on the lips before putting her head back on my shoulder. “And you. I never thought I’d have anyone like you.” She turned in and wrapped her arms around me, and a moment later, she trembled slightly, tears running down her face. “But I’m so scared it’s going to end. That I might die tomorrow.”

I squeezed her as tightly as I could. “You won’t die tomorrow. I won’t let you.”

“I wish you could promise me that.”

I wanted to, but we both knew it’d be a lie. There were no guarantees. All I could do was hope and keep doing my best. As I sat there and looked down on her, I decided that if it came down to her or me, I’d throw myself in the way of whatever danger there was so she could live. She’d hate me for it. But I’d still do it.

The sun had gone down and the stars were twinkling softly in the sky. Maybe they were the same stars you could see on Earth, maybe they weren’t. I squeezed her tight again, and I wished there was something I could say, but there wasn’t. I held on to her as hard as I could while I had the chance.

It wasn’t quite time to sleep, and I didn’t want to get stuck in a depressing mood. There was no real way to talk ourselves out of that, so I tried something that would be distracting, and that I’d meant to bring up beforehand anyway. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. When Isik and I were fighting Rykan in the manner, I was able to teleport. Just once.”

She raised her head and stared at me with wide eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah. It was either that or watch Isik get stabbed to death. I’ve tried it again since, but can’t quite get it to work. It feels like it’s just around the corner, but so far, I can’t replicate it. Can you give me some help?”

“I…yeah. I know how the magic is supposed to work, but it’s an incredibly difficult ability. If you’ve done it once, though…”

She stood and closed her eyes, the glow of the shae surrounding her. I was pleased that she seemed to have already forgotten our possibly impending deaths, even for just a moment. Sigils appeared around her, and I did my best to remember what they were. Surprisingly, they were far less complicated than I’d imagined, which I told her.

It was such a weird idea, I thought, being shown how to do something I’d already done. Theoretically, I should know how, but that wasn’t the case at all.

She opened her eyes and shook her head. “It’s not a complicated thing to do, it’s just really hard. See the sigils I’ve made?” There were five interlocking runed rings around her. “They need to be summoned in the right order, and then empowered in a different one. They’re relatively simple.”

“What’s the trick, then?”

“You have to do it all pretty much instantly. The memories of how to do it are clearly in your mind, but you were only able to pull it off on reflex because you felt it instead of thinking about it. It also takes a lot of the shae to succeed. More than I can channel in an instant. Go ahead and try it. Oh, you’ll also need a very clear idea of where you want to end up.”

After a few attempts, I was able to teleport a very short distance, but wasn’t able to replicate it well at all.

“You’re doing great!” Revana said, “Really. I’m impressed you can do it at all!”

I got a few more small successes in before it was time to head to sleep, if we could. We went down to Tiq’s apartment to find her quietly snoring on a couch next to the table with her device. We crept by and into her bedroom, where we stripped mostly down and got underneath the covers. Revana shimmied up next to me and I wrapped my arms around her, hoping we could get at least a semblance of a good night’s sleep before the battle.

I closed my eyes and imagined what it would be like when it was all over.

25

“Hey, wake up, you two.”

Tiq’s voice cut through a dream that quickly faded. I opened my eyes to find that the sun had risen quite a while ago. “Did we,” I said, my mouth barely making out the words, “sleep in or something?”

Tiq chuckled. “We decided to let you both sleep for a while, thinking that having our two channelers well rested was pretty important.”

“That’s considerate,” Revana said, her mouth functioning about as well as mine had.

“We’ll be up soon,” I said. I couldn’t remember much of the night, just passing dreams and flashes of briefly waking to darkness and being pleased there was still time to sleep. I had thought we’d sleep poorly with the stress of the battle looming over us, but that apparently wasn’t the case at all.

We slowly sat up and let the sleep filter out of our heads. “Today’s the day,” Revana said.

“The last day of the Gorvani empire. And the first day of…whatever comes next.”

We took a quick and not at all sexy shower, both of us stuck in our own heads, worrying. I’d feel better once we were out on the street, moving, with everyone around us. We dressed and came out to find Tiq standing there, her device around her arms, making some last minute adjustments. She looked up and smiled. “There you are. Osaarin’s going to give one last address to everyone before we go. You should both be there.”

“If we must,” I said.

The mood in the streets was an air of nervous excitement. I mostly stayed away from conversation as we made our way to the guildhall, in front of which Osaarin was going to give his speech.

We stood behind him as he addressed a huge crowd that had gathered, and while he spoke with passion, barely a single word he said registered in my head. I was standing there the whole time lost in my own thoughts and nervousness. The people cheered intermittently, more and more ready to be moving as time went on, as was I. 

At the end, my attention wandered back around and I was actually listening as he said, “And if you ever feel doubt in our ability, remember this: The Gorvani attacked us here. They bothered to attack us here. Why? Because they know we’re a threat. If there was nothing we could do to stop their plans, would they have come? No! They would have sat safely in Telorn and finished whatever diabolical machinations they’re planning! We can win this! And they know it too!”

Cheers erupted from the crowd, and I had to admit that I was moved as well. I hadn’t thought about it like that before Osaarin said it out loud. But he was right. Not only did we have a chance, but we had a good chance. I found myself smiling, swept up in the moment.

Revana disappeared into the building afterwards without saying anything, and she soon returned with my mostly forgotten tunic, the holy relic that I had worn forever before I sat it down one day and apparently never thought of it again. Not that it mattered; it had conveyed the memories it was meant for, and afterwards it had no real function like my sword did.

“I don’t know if it’ll stop an attack of the tenebrae, but here. You should have it back.”

I quickly slipped my shirt off so I could wear it underneath, the soft fabric familiar against my skin. “Thanks. Any little bit helps.”

Cersi strode up to us with a concerned look on her face, her blond ears twitching. “Vashe and her team have returned from infiltrating Telorn and activating the portal, but there’s news.”

“And it’s not good news, I can only imagine,” I said.

She took a deep breath and shrugged. “Well, I can’t rightly say. It’s…unexpected. I’ll let her tell you.”

We quickly made our way to the portal nexus, Cersi’s determined stride and dour face discouraging anyone who tried to talk to us on the way there. Inside, Vashe was standing with her usual vaguely angry expression. Isik stood away from her, already wrapped in her tenebrous armor, the two of them obviously not comfortable in each other’s company.

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

“Okay, so,” she began, and I didn’t take it as heartening that she didn’t start with either swearing or a complaint, “Telorn was ludicrously easy to get into. The streets are basically empty, and the whole place feels dead.”

“You didn’t see anyone at all?” Revana asked.

“Oh there were plenty of people in the buildings, looking out as we passed by, but we barely saw a single person out on the streets. We didn’t get close to the city center of course, but I’ve got no idea what to make of any of it.”

“It’s weird,” I said, “but it doesn’t change anything, does it? The plan’s still the plan.”

“I guess,” Vashe replied. “There’s nothing there to get in our way. I just have a bad feeling about it.”

“Isik,” I said, “Any ideas?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t fathom a reason, Michael. The last reports we’ve heard were that the city was still functioning in a somewhat normal capacity.”

A chill ran down my spine as I had a thought: what if the ritual was already complete, and the effects just hadn’t caught up to us yet? But no…there were people in the buildings, apparently. Well none of this made the least bit of sense. “Open the portals and send some scouting parties through before the main force, but let’s get moving either way. In lieu of anything actually threatening, there’s no reason to hesitate.”

Vashe nodded, obeying my orders without comment. It felt weird, but was a welcome change.

Cersi ran out to start issuing orders down the line, and within a short time, the streets of the city were packed with people, waiting at the nexus. 

“Let’s do it,” I said, and portals began flaring to life. There were more in Telorn’s nexus than here, so we were able to activate every single one in the building. And then our army was marching through.

I stepped out into the capital with a mix of anticipation and fear, the blood pumping hard in my veins already. Revana and Isik were beside me, though, which helped. I didn’t actually know where Tiq was; she hadn’t been at Osaarin’s talk. I just hoped she’d stay safe.

Vashe was standing outside, so I went out to speak with her. “Your scout groups are all out?”

She nodded. “Will probably be a little while before we hear back from any of them that matter. The palace is pretty far away from here.”

I wanted nothing more than to get going, but we weren’t going to start marching until most of our people were successfully through. Vashe was right; the streets of Telorn felt weird. I didn’t see a single person, whereas normally these places would have been packed, wall to wall. At Vashe’s urging, I did notice a few faces in high windows looking down on us. I briefly imagined kicking down a door and demanding answers. “Should we try and question those people?”

“I sent a squad around to knock on doors, but not a single person answered. I didn’t really want to give the order to bust in.” 

That didn’t sound at all like Vashe, I thought, but I agreed with her all the same. “Hmm. Well, once we move, I’m sure it’ll become apparent.”

“Yeah.”

We stood there in not quite comfortable silence while we waited for our people to come through. It happened so much faster than I thought it would. Partly because every single portal was in use and someone was doing a completely bang up job of organizing this — I’d have to give them a medal or something — but also because the concept of an army on Vendira wasn’t nearly the same as what I’d had in my head from Earth’s history. We didn’t have tens of thousands of people, lined up in endless regiments, ready to fight, and neither did the enemy. Thousands, we had, I was sure, but tens of thousands? Not even close. Probably. I didn’t actually know what that many people looked like. I’m sure the population of Telorn was easily a ridiculously massive army, but only if every single person was a soldier, which they were not. Even the actual Gorvani army wasn’t that big, comparatively.

I was shaken out of these random thoughts by the sight of dragons flying overhead. Revana yelled at people to make space, and Nir flew down and landed among us, her wings sending huge gusts of air past as she came down. I’d forgotten in all that was happening to even meet the other dragons. Hopefully we’d all survive and I’d have a chance later. 

Revana and I went up to her, and the first thing she said was, “I have news.”

“Good or bad?” I asked.

“Strange, unexpected, but good. Everyone in the city that we can see is at the palace. There’s a battle taking place there already.”

26

We stared at Nir for a moment before either of us could reply. Revana recovered first and said, “The people are fighting the imperials!?”

“This is what appears to be happening.”

“Like, successfully?” I asked.

“Unclear. They have not breached the Gorvani’s inner defenses, though.”

I shook my head and turned, yelling to Vashe and Cersi. “There’s already fighting at the palace! We’re late to the party! Let’s move, now now now!”

We ran. Well, we jogged, anyway.

We were still pretty far from the city center, but we made good time. Seriously, whoever was organizing our people deserved a mountain of praise. We were a massive column, taking up the entire street as we went. I could only imagine the Gorvani’s surprise when we showed up, not only as an enemy, but as reinforcements to a fight already ongoing.

I nodded to Vashe and Cersi. They’d be issuing orders and their lieutenants would be passing them down the line. 

We rounded the last corner, coming out into sight of the palace. I looked to Revana, and we both summoned the best armor we could and drew our weapons.

This was it.

I didn’t wait for any of our people; I just charged into the fray.

It was complete madness. We were in a huge, open square that led into steps that went up to the front of the palace, and the entire place was clogged with people. Some turned and saw us, calling out, “It’s the dragon cult!” before continuing the fight. These weren’t soldiers; they were common people in common clothes, and their weapons varied wildly. Some had actual swords and spears from who knew where, some were wielding farm implements as weapons, and some had chunks of stone and I swear I literally saw a board with a nail in it. There was a smattering of armor among the people, if you wanted to call it that. While I saw a few pieces of actual leather armor, many had cobbled together some semblance of protection from pieces of metal haphazardly applied to their bodies. It was all really a little post-apocalyptic. 

Despite their last minute armaments, they weren’t losing. 

I cut my way through the Gorvani, taking my time and extra care not to cut down any of our people, and it was not at all easy to distinguish who was who in the midst of a battle. The Gorvani were a different race, but still, I really took my time, since I figured killing someone innocent wasn’t worth mowing down the enemy.

I looked around and realized that none of the Gorvani were channelers, so no one was getting branded. I stopped and stood there dumbfounded, like a complete idiot, just so confused as to why the empire wasn’t doing the one thing they always, always did. My mind wandered back to what Isik had mentioned from her interrogations of the prisoners: channelers were summoned into the shadowsphere and they never came back. But all of them?

I shook my head. Apparently so.

I pushed my way through until I hit the Gorvani line and I rammed my way through it, bashing anyone in range with my shield, sending them flying. Once I was surrounded only by the enemy, I could finally let loose.

I danced along with my sword, cutting through people like they were butter. Their bodies and armor offered no resistance to my sword, and within seconds, I’d cleared a large circle around me, the ground littered with severed bodies and pieces. I didn’t stop, just jumped into more of the Gorvani, cutting and hewing where I could, and again, there was a clearing forming around me. I was barely even breathing hard.

Our soldiers funneled in behind me, bolstering the townspeople and savagely pushing the Gorvani back. I caught a glimpse of Revana a ways away from me, doing pretty much exactly the same thing I was. Without tenebrous channelers, no one could stand before the two of us. 

Nir and the other dragons were soaring above, sending down blasts of the shae into heavy concentrations of enemy soldiers. I saw panicked faces among the Gorvani, who couldn’t decide what to be more afraid of: us, or the dragons above.

The townspeople had been pressing the enemy before we showed up, but now that we were here with channelers, an organized army of realish soldiers, and air support, we fairly walked our foes back up to the palace and the base of the shadowsphere.

It loomed high above, almost reaching into the clouds. I could see the gate that must lead into it, and I changed directions, heading straight for it. Finally, the Gorvani broke before us and ran, although it didn’t seem like they had anywhere to go.

A massive wall of the tenebrae rolled through the battle, branding everyone it touched, Gorvani or otherwise, sending them all to the ground, screaming and writhing in pain. Revana still stood, but judging by her posture, it had still affected her as well. A booming voice swept over the battlefield and said, “YOU’VE RUSHED HEADLONG INTO YOUR OWN DEMISE, MORTALS. COME, AND RECEIVE YOUR DEATHS.”

That would be Gor’ven, the First Son. I was pretty surprised that he hadn’t called us worms, filth, or rats. So far, it seemed like each of the royalty had had their own personal insult for us. I guess his thing was not having one.

He turned and channeled at the circular, silvery gate, which promptly sealed off, the blackness of the shadowsphere flowing in over top, preventing it from even being seen while closed.

Amidst all the twisting and moaning people, I walked up the last of the steps to find him standing in front of the shadowsphere’s gate. Like the other royalty, his skin was the deep, dark purple of the tenebrae, and he wore the white robes from the waist down that they all had. But he had a crown, a silver, spiked circlet with black and red jewels set into it. His neck was draped with more silver jewelry, all adorned the same way. He held a massive halberd, taller than even he was, and it also pulsed with tenebrous magic. It was the first time I’d seen the royalty use a weapon that wasn’t just made of the tenebrae. 

He sneered when he saw me. Even though I would have been able to easily hear him, he still did the booming voice thing. “BRANDLESS. IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE YOU APPEARED. YOU WILL HAVE THE HONOR OF DYING BY MY OWN HANDS.”

“Get fucked,” I said.

He took a step back and his jaw dropped, his eyes wide in shock. I didn’t know if he’d expected me to go along with his whole hero and villain speech thing  or if it was just that no one had ever spoken to him like that before. It was pretty funny either way. His mouth worked wordlessly for a while; I’d really thrown him off his game.

I figured I might as well keep it up. “Well, come on, asshole! You gonna fight me, or are you as big a coward as your worthless emperor?”

He still didn’t know what to say, but he lowered his halberd and started towards me, his brows drawn down in anger. 

I’d expected him to rush me, but he was, unfortunately, not quite as easy to bait as the rest of the royals. I held out my arms and said, “Finally! Here I thought you might just turn tail and run, being all talk.”

Still, he didn’t rush me, just slowly came forward, his hands bursting with magical power that flowed down the length of his weapon. It was just the two of us; everyone had seen what was happening and no one wanted to get close to this fight. I risked a glance back and couldn’t see Revana or Isik, but the battle still raged around us.

I raised my shield and took a step towards Gor’ven, reasonably sure I could handle him alone. 

He moved, and it was fast. It wasn’t teleporting, but he was in my face in an instant, swinging the halberd with both hands. It connected with my shield and…damn. My shield held, but my expectations of this fight were shattered. I’d braced for the impact, my stance precise, but my whole body was rocked by the force of the blow and I skidded back, my shae armor leaving grooves in the ground. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if I’d just had to eat the attack without my shield.

Since Tiq had made it for me, it had been a wonderful convenience, able to shrug off any and all attacks with ease. Now…it seemed it was essential. He attacked again and again, and it was all I could do to block, the force of each blow reverberating through my entire body.

I tried to counterattack, but there wasn’t any time. He was in my face, swinging over and over, and his anger wasn’t making him careless; each attack was delivered with perfection. I couldn’t see a single opening to exploit.

It became very quickly apparent that I wouldn’t be able to survive like this. He was going to wear down my ability to block eventually, and if I took a direct hit, I wasn’t completely sure my armor would save me. Nir and the others had directed a few attacks towards him, but he shrugged them all off, barely even acknowledging them, the shae practically dissolving as it made contact with the dark magic inside his body. I had to take a chance.

The next time he struck, I pulled in the shae and tried to calm the panic that was starting to rise in my chest. I channeled and quickly as I could, the image of where I wanted to be solid in my mind, I teleported.

I was off to the side behind him, facing the same way I had been. I knew which way I had to turn, and there was a wide opening as Gor’ven struggled to comprehend what had just happened. I slashed down his back, across his spine, and he screamed as the shae flowing through my sword sizzled and burnt the tenebrae out of his body.

His legs buckled, but he recovered before his knees hit the ground, the tenebrae already mending his wound. 

He roared, pivoting and swinging recklessly at me.

I ducked and managed to deflect his blow off my shield, but there was even more force behind it, and it knocked me to the ground. 

With superhuman quickness, he brought his weapon back around and tried to slam it downwards into me.

I teleported again, appearing some distance away, but still on my back. I scrambled to get up, righting myself just in time to block another heavy swing. I skidded back, but on the next strike, I teleported again, this time behind him but off to the other side. 

He turned, expecting me to be in the same place, so again, I had a wide open window to thrust my blade into his back, again severing his spine. 

He roared, backhandedly whipping the halberd at my face, so I ducked and rolled away. By the time I recovered, he was pressing the attack again, but I was ready, and I’d even thought of a new trick. I ported behind him, and when he turned, I ported right back to where I had been. This time, I was able to thrust my sword into his neck.

He dropped to the ground and I rode him down, keeping my sword exactly where it was. Once he’d fallen, I pressed my blade down through him and into the stone so the hilt was the only thing still showing, the sword kept neatly in place.

He wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t move and the shae relic kept him from healing.

I couldn’t resist taunting him. Maybe it was shitty, but he deserved worse. “Looks like you get the honor of dying by my hands, asshole.”

He tried to talk, but couldn’t. His eyes were wide and filled with fear, and it was so, so satisfying to see. I doubt he thought there was a chance in the world that he was going to lose this fight. I idly wondered if he’d lost a single fight in his entire life. It was too bad he wasn’t going to live long enough to really appreciate it, though.

Leaving my sword where it was, I summoned my warhammer, funneling as much energy into it as I could. Part of me really wanted to hear what he would have said at this point, but it probably would have just been arrogant, trite, and boring.

I slammed the hammer down into his face, looking into his eyes as I did so. His skull cracked but didn’t cave in. So I hit him again. And again. And again. And many more times. Eventually, I was just hitting splattered brains and chips of bone, so I stopped.

I performed the voice-amplifying technique and yelled over the battle, “GOR’VEN IS DEAD. YOUR LEADERS ARE DEAD. SURRENDER, OR JOIN THEM.”

27

The battle didn’t immediately end, although all the Gorvani that had witnessed me killing Gor’ven all dropped their weapons and prostrated themselves in front of me. It was kinda cool in a really awful way.

I rushed back out into the fray, repeating what I’d said as I carved through as many resisting enemies as I could. Although there were no tenebrous channelers left, there were still commanders in the Gorvani’s numbers, and they weren’t going to stop fighting for anything. I did my best to find them all and cut or smash them down. Without any real resistance to speak of, I left my shield strapped to my back, my sword in one hand and a smaller version of my hammer in the other. It wasn’t a really practical way to fight, but my thick armor protected me from anything they still had to throw at me. I felt a few arrows and crossbow bolts bounce harmlessly off of me, a couple even hitting me in the face. I found any enemies I could still fight and sliced them apart or knocked their heads off to sail over the battle. 

Finally, I found all the commanders I could, and I made a show of executing them. They were only killing their own people by continuing the fight, and there was clearly nothing to be done but remove them, so I did in a fashion that clearly sent the message to their underlings that resistance was only going to lead to death.

Looking around at what was left, it was shocking they fought on as long as they did. Our people, combined with all of Telorn’s townspeople, overwhelmingly outnumbered the remaining Gorvani multiple times over. 

“LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND SURRENDER. YOUR LIVES WILL BE SPARED.” That was as much for my own people as for the Gorvani. I’m sure there were countless people that wanted to execute every last one. I couldn’t say I blamed them, per se, but it wouldn’t help and was a bad idea anyway. I hoped that everyone would accept that as a command, and the bloodthirsty ones would be hesitant to cross the Brandless.

In short order, it was over. There was really no question of how it was going to turn out, really, once Gor’ven was dead. He was literally the only chance the Gorvani had. Did he think he was going to be enough? Probably. Arrogant jerk. 

Instead of finding anyone else, I stood over Gor’ven’s stupid corpse in front of the shadowsphere’s gate and waited for them to come to me. Revana appeared first, coming up and looking at the dead royal. She dismissed her helmet long enough to spit on his corpse. “Rot, you piece of filth. My only regret is we only got to kill you once.” She kicked him a few times for good measure. I loved her so much.

Isik came next, giving Gor’ven’s remaining body a wide berth. “You’re sure he’s dead?”

“I smashed his head into bloody chunks. They can’t live through that, can they? I’ll bet they can’t, because if they could, he’d be up and trying to kill me again.”

She nodded but said nothing more.

Cersi came briefly, and we talked about what was next, which was entering the shadowsphere, but there was a lot to be worked out outside, so she left to start issuing orders. It wouldn’t do for the situation to devolve into more of a bloodbath than it already was, so she started giving orders for the Gorvani to be herded together and guarded by our army.

This was going to be complicated and dicey at best, but I tried not to worry too much about it. Hopefully I wouldn’t be the one dealing with it, and there was still a massive part of our mission to fulfill before we really had to seriously worry about any of that.

I looked up at the dark ball of pure tenebrae that loomed overhead. “Just one more thing to do,” I said to Revana. “And then it’ll be over.”

“Did we have to save the hardest thing for last? Couldn’t we have gotten it out of the way early and just had some clean up at this point?”

“Shit, I wish you’d suggested that earlier. I left this until now for dramatic tension.”

We shared a little laugh, but it was mostly lost in the face of the enormity of the task ahead.

We approached the gate or at least where the gate was submerged in the dark channels of the shadowsphere. A little thread of doubt crept into my mind. “Uh…how do we open it? Isik?”

She came close but the side-eyed look she gave me wasn’t the least bit reassuring. “This isn’t just some ward, Michael. Or a lock to be opened.” She sighed. “I had hoped it would still be open. As arrogant as he was, Gor’ven hedged his bets. I’ll do what I can.” She lifted her hands and channeled, the amount of the tenebrae flowing through her nearly matching what I had seen the lesser royals accomplish. 

I hadn’t asked her how the first time using the relic necklace had been for her; I almost burnt myself out using mine. But she was Gorvani; apparently they had some sort of natural affinity with the tenebrae. At any rate, if she’d had a terrible, frightening time like I had, I doubted that she’d ever admit it.

We stood there watching her, her lips pressing together and her brows drawing down more and more as she channeled, trying a wide variety of different things to open the gate. I didn’t know what I was looking at, really, but it seemed like she started with trying to unlock it like a normal ward, despite what she’d just said about it. Then she segued into more brute force attacks, her magic slamming into the sphere, but they had no effect. After more failures, she tried some truly complicated spells, the sigils and runes exploding from her hands and swirling around us all.

The magic of the sphere warped, and for a brief second, we could see the shiny metal of the gate surfacing. Isik was struggling, pushing a completely ludicrous amount of magic at the gate, but as soon as it surfaced, it was swallowed back up again and she fell to her knees. She shook her head, her breaths coming in gasps. “I…can’t do it, Michael.”

“It’s okay. We’ll get in there.”

Revana and I joined hands in front of the sunken gate and channeled. At first, we tried just slamming the shae into it, hoping we could burn enough off to open it, but the entire sphere was a constant flux of the tenebrae, and any we burnt away was instantly replaced by an unstoppable tidal wave of dark energy. After a quiet discussion, we tried to push in, slipping through the energy and latching on to the gate itself with the intent of applying a few sigils, but that was even less successful.

After our second plan failed miserably, the doubt really crept into my thoughts. There was no way our journey was going to end here because of what was little more than a locked door. I drew my sword, wrapped myself and my armor in as much of the shae as I could and tried to force my way through the waves of the tenebrae.

I was able to force about half of my blade in before the current was too overwhelming, pulling it out of my hands and throwing it to clatter on the stone. I myself was twisted down and faceplanted. I suppose it could have been worse; I could have lost the sword in the sphere, never to be seen again. I went over and picked it up, aware of all the eyes on my back. 

Tiq, Vashe, and Cersi came up and we stood in a circle, all of us not wanting to say it out loud.

“Tiq?” I asked, hopefully.

She shook her head and looked up at the looming sphere. “I’m sorry, Michael, but this is one area where I’m not anything approaching an expert. I can shoot it with the arcanae, but I can almost guarantee it’s not going to work.”

“Try it anyway,” I said.

She nodded and stepped away from the rest of us to use her device. Arcanic energy was ripped out of a streetlight close by and crashed into the gate with a massive shower of sparks. She kept it up, but it didn’t make a dent or ripple as we all watched helplessly.

She stopped and sighed. “As I thought. The arcanae is a lower order form of magic after all.”

I felt like I was failing as a leader and a warrior. Whispers had started to run through the crowd and I knew we needed to keep our momentum or we truly would lose, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to do. We’d exhausted all three types of magic, and shooting bolts into it wasn’t going to work. But what else was there to be done?

With a massive roar and buffeting of her wings, Nir landed beside us as people scrambled to get out of her way. “Why have we stopped?”

We explained the situation, and then for good measure, she, Revana, and I all channeled into the gate again, but there wasn’t any appreciable difference in the result. 

For a moment, I saw the same doubt in her eyes. But then she shook her massive head and said, “If we cannot open the gate, then we will create a portal to get you inside.”

A portal. Why didn’t I think of that?

She must have seen the joy on my face, because she added, “It will not be a simple matter. You planned to have many of our number enter, did you not?” After I nodded, she continued, “That will not be possible. Creating such a portal will be extremely difficult, as it will require passing through the shadowsphere, and the disruption from the ever-shifting tenebrae will cause the portal to be unstable. It will take our combined might, and even then, I believe only a few of you will be able to enter. Will it be enough?”

“Yes. It will be, because it must. This ends here.”

It was quickly agreed that I, Revana, Tiq, Isik, and Vashe would enter. Nir was leery about even that many, but I assured her that all of us would be necessary. Cersi would stay outside and do her best to manage the army and crowd while they could do nothing but wait and hope.

We made a lot of space so all six dragons could land, and after a brief discussion, they agreed to create the portal. I could, however, sense that pretty much none of them thought portaling through the energies of the sphere was a good idea, even though we were only going a very short distance, as far as portals went.

Still, there was nothing to be done. 

They arrayed themselves in a circle, and we waited to the side. All of their eyes glowed bright with the shae, and then their scales, the golden magic flowing from their bodies to a point in the middle, growing and growing, until a portal appeared.

It was not like the others I had seen. It wobbled and warped, making the oddest noises I had ever heard in my life. It was like the very fabric of the universe was being stretched and it didn’t like it one bit. Honestly, that probably was what was happening. At any rate, the sound was not reassuring.

They all lifted their wings and leaned forward, pushing more and more of the shae at the portal. I don’t want to say it stabilized, but it did get a tiny bit better. Probably.

“Now or never,” Nir said, her voice coming out as a grunt as she strained.

“Let’s go! For Vendira!” I yelled, mostly to leave everyone outside with a tiny bit more hope. 

We went through the portal, and it was nauseating, even more so than that portal that we’d taken to find Nir had been. It was only a second, but it was awful. I landed on the ground, my head spinning and my stomach threatening to empty out everything I’d ever eaten before.

I laid my head on the cool stone and tried to breathe, tried to stop myself from vomiting loudly. Eventually, the sensation went away. I looked up and a strangled yelp escaped my lips.

Inside the sphere, shit was weird.

28

As I looked up, dumbfounded, at what lay above, I heard the others coming to their senses as well. 

“Uhh…” I heard Revana say.

The entire inside of the shadowsphere was ringed with undulating, oddly curved, pseudo-rings of the tenebrae, billions and billions of runes shifting in and out of existence on the inner surface of the sphere. Reality seemed to warp and twist with no reason or discernable pattern, and it looked like nothing was safe from this effect; buildings were twisted and pulled along with the light. Fortunately, this seemed to be mostly happening higher up in the…well not the sky, really. In the upper reaches of the sphere.

The ground was veined with long, winding strips of dark magic, cracking and faintly pulsing in an irregular rhythm. I tried stepping on a dark, forking line, and it held, so we wouldn’t have to be jumping around the whole time. Some of the tenebrae reached up and into the buildings around us as well, distorting their features and creating truly grotesque forms from the once beautiful carvings.

Most striking of all, however, was the palace itself. Or I should say the area where the palace had once stood. In place of the massive building which had been the size of a small city itself, there was a cracked and groaning ruin, pieces of buildings strewn about, their sides ending in jagged cracks or sometimes in unnatural, stretched lines. The six towers that powered the tenebral currents still stood, each one looming over the ruins and crackling with arcanic and tenebrous energy in a swirling mass. Any and all other towers that had once existed here were gone, even their bases indistinguishable in the destruction. In what must have been the center of it all, where I suspected the Font was, a huge pillar of pure magic shot up into the very peak of the shadowsphere.

There was light here, but it wasn’t from the sun. Some of the lights that had dotted the city were still functioning, but most of the illumination came from the arcanic towers above and their swirling magic. It all flickered like a candle, the shadows dancing in all directions as light came from everywhere at once. It was pretty disconcerting.

I looked over to the others and they were standing just as I was, staring stupidly out over the devastation. “Hey,” I ventured, “we should get moving.”

They shook their heads or blinked out of their revelry. Isik was the first one to reply. “Even I never could have imagined this. This is…madness, in every sense of the word.”

“More reason to put an end to it,” I said.

She closed her eyes and nodded, a small shiver running through her body.

I went over to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. Uncharacteristically, she didn’t react or pull away. “We’re all here together, and we’re going to defeat the Emperor together. All of us.”

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Yes. Yes, we will.”

Tiq activated the device, pulling the arcanae from some random crack in the wall. Who knows if it had been part of the grid or was just some weird mass of energy there for no reason. Either way, Tiq nodded, satisfied. “Vashe and I will head to one of the towers and try to disable it.”

Vashe added, “And we’ll bust up anything else we can find on the way. Once we’re done, we’ll come help.”

“No,” I said. “The Emperor’s going to be too powerful to fight without being able to channel. I don’t want you to risk yourselves needlessly.”

“Screw that,” Vashe said.

I gave her a level look and said, “That’s an order.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Tiq said. “And if we can find ways to help, we’ll help, but we won’t do anything too risky.”

Vashe scoffed but didn’t add anything else.

I hugged Tiq tightly and Revana hugged Tiq and Vashe, and then with a few parting words, they turned and went off in the direction of the nearest tower. I tried to push down the thought that it might be the last time I ever saw them. 

I looked at Revana and Isik. “Ready to commit regicide?”

Isik snorted, smiling. “Yes.”

Revana looked towards the massive column of magic and said, “I was born ready.”

There weren’t any streets or paths any longer, so we just looked to the tenebrae spewing out of the Font and used that as our guide. We climbed over and under a city’s worth of rubble, and again, I was intensely grateful that the reality warping crap was happening high above. I did not want to know what it was like to get caught in one of those.

It was all truly post-apocalyptic; I felt like all I needed was some scrap armor and a cobbled-together gun and I would fit right in. There were bodies, of course. Apparently whatever had happened was quick and came without warning, as there hadn’t been a mass exodus. Many bodies lay in the ruins of homes and businesses, and I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like when the sphere had been created.

We crept on, silent, each of the three of us just taking in the carnage and not having anything to say about it. What was there to say? It was even more horrible than I’d imagined, and I thought I had known just how depraved the empire was. 

But then it got worse.

As we approached the boundary of where the palace proper had been, we found the Gorvani channelers, and they were dead. Maybe. It was unclear.

A massive ring of floating bodies encircled the palace’s crumbled outer walls, all Gorvani. They floated in the air, their feet dangling a little above the level of my head, and their mouths were open and their hands were raised, triple streams of tenebrous runes trailing out of each one of them. Their eyes looked upwards, unfocused and unmoving as the magic trailed out of them.

“What…what is this? Isik?”

She glanced over to me and back up at the bodies, her eyes as wide as they could go. “They’re…” She shivered violently. “They’re…being used…as conduits to help fuel the ritual. See the runes emanating from them? Their bodies are not channeling, but forming the pure tenebrae into more and more pieces of the spell.” She added softly, “That would have been me.”

“Are they dead?” Revana asked.

Isik paused for quite some time before she said, “I don’t know. Functionally? Yes, almost certainly. But are they still in there, aware of what’s happening? Possibly.”

“Well, I’d love to end their misery,” I said, “but the best way to do that is to end this shitshow.”

Revana and I kept walking, but after a second, I turned around to find Isik still staring at the not-corpses. I reached out and took her hand, pulling her along, and she blinked and said, “Yes. Apologies. I’m coming.”

At least one thing was going our way, since the palace walls were crumbled to nothing in a lot of places, and we didn’t have to find a creative way inside. It looked like this part of the place had been blown outward by a huge, explosive force, probably the Font spewing up all the magic to create the shadowsphere in the first place.

The entirety of the ruins sent chills up my spine and I was constantly watching my back, but there wasn’t a single living person inside the sphere with us. Except the Emperor, and…all the other royals we’d yet to kill. I had completely forgotten about them. “Hey, uh, how many royals are left, and how strong are they?”

Revana and Isik stopped in their tracks. 

“The…other…royals…” Revana said.

“Oh, shit,” Isik added.

“Did you both just kinda forget about them this whole time?” I asked. When they nodded silently, I said, “Well, that was pretty stupid of us, wasn’t it? I just kept expecting them to show up, but they never did, aside from Gor’ven, and then there were other things to think about. Anyway, how strong are they, Isik?”

She took a long, deep breath and thought. “Well, we’ve actually killed the strongest ones now. Gor’mina and Gor’ven were always rumored to be the most powerful. Gor’yen got eaten. Gor’drelar and Gor’shura are dead but they were both weak. One other presumably died during the events with the yargeth but I never heard enough details to confirm who it was, so that leaves…ten more royals.”

I stared ahead as a sinking feeling overwhelmed me. Only through a sheer force of will was I able to focus and say, “Hopefully we can kill some of them before we engage the Emperor. We won’t know what the plan is until we get closer. And with the three of us, surely we can overwhelm some of them, killing them quickly.”

“Actually, Michael, that might be possible,” Isik said. “They won’t expect me to be with you, and I can likely nullify much of their magic.”

Revana kept walking. “This doesn’t change anything. This ends today, because we’re ending it. I don’t care how many assholes are still here. We’re going to kill them all and that’s that.”

Isik and I shared a look, shrugged, and followed her.

29

The ruins got progressively creepier as we went along. At first, there was a lot of recognizable rubble, carvings, and pieces of buildings, but the further we went, the more the tenebrae had warped everything, making odd shapes and eerie angles. Pulsing lines of dark magic were interwoven into the material, giving the place an almost living quality, like we were walking through the innards of a massive, living creature. I didn’t like it, and judging by the others’ stoic silence, they didn’t either.

Finally, after a lot of uphill walking, we reached the lip of the crater that was at the center of everything. “Whoa,” I said.

It looked like ground zero for a massive explosion, and really, I was sure that’s exactly what it was. The ground was streaked with even more of the tenebrae, shooting out from a mass of roiling magic in the center, some distance below us. It trembled and hummed, but it was unmistakable what it was: another sphere. The column of dark magic spewed out of the top of it, reaching all the way to the peak of the outer sphere. 

“What…what do we do?” I asked. “We don’t have any dragons to teleport us inside this one.”

Isik motioned to the side of the crater and said, “Look closely.” There were bright lines buried mostly under the black magic, but they gave off a bright, blue light, and there were six of them arrayed around the center sphere.

“Are they the arcanae?”

“Isik nodded. “It looks like it. I’m not sure what they’re doing exactly, but…”

She was interrupted by an enormous, ear-splitting explosion from one of the towers that we could still see in the distance. The top of it was blown to pieces, the whole thing cracking and finally crumbling to the ground, throwing up a huge cloud of dust before the sounds stopped. 

“Tiq…Vashe…,” Revana said. “Hopefully they weren’t still inside.”

We watched as one of the arcanic lines on the ground started flashing erratically, pulsing and beginning to hum itself, and we saw the tenebrae being pushed away from it, if only slightly. Isik scoffed and said, “The arcanae shouldn’t be able to push back like that…unless you had a lot of it.”

As if on queue, the other lines that were visible started to pulse and glow, pushing away the tenebrae and beginning to force cracks into the ground around them. “Uh, should we…?” I said.

The three of us stepped back slowly, one foot after another, waiting and watching, unsure of what was going to happen. Suddenly, we heard a huge crack of thunder, and I doubled over, pressing my hands over my ears.

Revana was shouting something, and before I could react, she’d pulled me and Isik down past the lip of the crater. We tumbled away and scrambled to hide behind a huge piece of oddly smooth, magically-infused debris.

The thunder kept cracking, over and over and over again, then, even though I was looking away, I was blinded by an overwhelming light. I shut my eyes tight but could still see it; I couldn’t bring my hands over them because they were still covering my ears. The ground itself started to quake, and I wondered if anywhere was going to be safe.

I smiled to myself, thinking that if Tiq had set this entire place to blow, even if it killed us all, as long as the royalty died with us, I’d still be happy. It wasn’t the best outcome, but it wasn’t the worst.

The thunder and quaking continued unabated, making my ears and eyes hurt even though I was doing the best I could to protect myself.

It reached a crescendo, the entire world shaking so much I thought I might be torn apart, and with five bone-rattling cracks, it was over. The light faded, the sounds stopped, even though my ears continued to ring, and the ground finally calmed down. We all sat there for a few moments more, and I eventually uncurled myself to look at the other two. They looked back at me with as bewildered expressions as I assumed was on my own face.

Without a word, we stood and walked back, so very slowly, to the lip of the crater. The first thing I could see, or not see as it were, was any trace of the five remaining towers. All that stood in their places were massive clouds of dust.

The light emanating from them was gone, but it had been replaced by the glowing lines of arcanae in the ground, which gave more than enough brightness to see.

“She…” Revana said, “She caused a chain reaction. All the towers are gone…” She surveyed the devastation and said, “Do you think they made it out?”

“Of course they did,” I replied, hoping that by wishing hard enough it would be true.

The ground around the smaller sphere was little more than jagged rock and deep fissures. The sphere itself wobbled wildly as we looked upon it, stretching and shrinking, humming erratically and spinning faster and faster.

We saw the holes form in it as it destabilized, and with the gentle sound of a summer breeze, it dissipated into the air as if it had never been there.

What was left in its wake was the Tenebral Font, source of the empire’s power and our ultimate goal. I squinted into the distance, trying to make out what the little specs arrayed out around it were. “Are those…more channelers?” There seemed to be dark lines emanating from them like we’d seen from the maybe-corpses outside the remnants of the palace walls.

“I don’t believe so. Not in the way you mean,” Isik said.

We started walking towards it, and as we got closer, I was more sure I was right, and I said as much.

Isik just shook her head and smiled a tiny smile. “No, Michael. Well, yes, they are channelers, but not just channelers.”

She didn’t want to just say what she meant, but we got closer, it finally dawned on me. I was about to say it, but Revana got there first. “It’s the other royals.”

“Precisely,” Isik said. “At least we won’t have to fight them now.”

Revana scoffed. “His own children!?” Her eyes were wide as she threw up her hands. “Is literally nothing sacred? Nothing at all? He’d even sacrifice his children for this…this bullshit?”

“Are you truly surprised?” Isik asked.

“Yes! Yes I am! I know our lives are worthless to him, but all the lives of his children?”

“I’m sure he thinks of them as replaceable as he does anything.”

Revana growled, her claws flexing.

“Hey. Hey, look at me. We have to be calm when we fight him,” I said.

She pressed her lips into a thin line and valiantly tried to control her breathing. “You’re right. You’re right. But…he’s the source of all of it. Every single atrocity this fucking empire ever committed is his fault. Every sin. Every death.” Her breath started coming faster again, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “Everyone I’ve ever lost, every sorrow we’ve ever felt…it’s all. His. Fault.” She spoke the last words through gritted teeth. “Death is too good for him! Centuries of suffering and pain! Countless lives cut short! And now this!?”

I tentatively put my hand on her arm. She was shaking with rage. “His life ends today. It is too quick, and more than he deserves. But his life is over. All the years he believes he’ll live, we’re going to take them away from him today. It won’t feel like enough, but it’ll have to be.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’ll do, because it must.”

I took her hand in mine and pulled her gently along, hoping her anger wouldn’t get in the way of fighting the Emperor. I also spared a look for Isik, whose face was completely neutral. I hoped her fear wouldn’t get in the way either.

As for me, I didn’t really know what I felt. The end was finally here. All we’d fought for had led us to this moment. It was one thing to imagine it, but it was another to know it was happening, that everyone was outside the sphere, waiting for us to be victorious, which I could only believe that we would be.

We picked our way through the ruins towards the Font and our final goal.

30

As we got closer, it became pretty evident that the figures arrayed around the Font were indeed the other royals, floating in the air and spewing out a multitude of runes, many more than the other Gorvani outside had been. Unlike the others, they appeared to be more alive, their faces contorted in pain and their eyes darting in all directions. 

The Font itself was little more than a runed-carved, silvery, circular ring surrounding a huge hole in the ground that belched out the column of magic. “I expected it to be a little more flashy,” I said.

“When the palace still stood, it was,” Isik replied.

“So where is he?” Revana asked.

“I don’t know, but these bastards sure don’t look like they can fight back,” I said, drawing my sword. I pulled on the foot of the nearest royal, and she floated down easily. Her eyes were wide with fear and pain, dark runes exploding out of her very mouth. I thought it was almost a mercy as I sliced her head cleanly off. Her body fell to the ground and withered into a dry husk as we watched. “Well, nothing else to do, yet.” I picked the next royal in the line, a man, and did the same to him, his body withering just as the first one had.

“Stop,” a voice said. It didn’t boom or reverberate, but it was loud and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, or maybe was being pushed into my mind directly.

A huge form walked calmly out of the bursting magic of the font, and then standing there before us was Emperor Gorva himself. He wore the same robes as the rest of the royals, but his were black instead of white, and he wore no jewelry with them.

To say his body was like the royals’ was to say that a light bulb was like the sun. He wasn’t infused with the tenebrae; he seemed to be made from it. He was a walking avatar of magic, any semblance of being a person long gone. He stood a head taller than me and was heavily muscled, and while it was difficult to make out the features of his face, he seemed to be smiling at us. 

The odd voice sounded again as he said, “Greetings, champions. Channelers of the shae.” He shook his head and laughed. “I thought I wiped out your kind long ago, but I thought the same of dragonkind. How thoughtful of you to bring them back to me. Once I’m done with you, I can eradicate that nuisance once and for all.”

“You’ll be doing nothing of the sort, you fuck,” Revana spat. “Because you’re dying here today!”

“Is that what you think? You believe that because you’ve been able to best my children, that you’re a match for me? How little you understand.”

“This ritual,” I said, “you’d kill everyone? Lay waste to the entire empire you built? You’d kill your own kin for it?”

He gazed calmly up at the royals and said, “If they’re strong, they’ll survive this. And if not, they won’t. More can always be raised to their places. And my empire will not die. It will be broken and remade anew. I have new ideas for its next iteration. 

“Your people won’t all die. Only seven or eight out of ten. The ones remaining will be strong, and in a few generations, they will have multiplied, as you are wont to do. We will rebuild, and this pathetic rebellion will be forgotten.”

“Traitor to your own people,” Isik said softly.

Gorva looked at her, as if noticing her for the first time. “Inquisitor. Well, you’re not the first to turn.” His eyes narrowed and he said, “What is that around your neck? I feel Gor’mina’s touch upon it.” Laughing, he added, “It won’t aid you in this fight. None of you understand what you face. I am eternal. I will rule this world without end. It is mine.”

“Well, I think we’ve listened to quite enough of this bullshit,” I said. “Let’s see just how eternal you really are!” I rushed at him, my sword held high, and with all the power I could muster, I brought it down towards his face.

He barely moved. He batted it away with his bare hand, nearly knocking me off balance with the force behind the subtle movement. My blade didn’t slice into him, but the connection of the shae and tenebrae sparked briefly where it made contact. It was difficult to see his expression as his face was made of dark magic, but I could see that he flinched. Only very, very softly.

But he did flinch.

“We can do this! The empire dies today!” I cried.

I attacked again and again, drawing on every inherited memory of battle that I could, varying my strikes, feinting, and aiming towards the parts where I could inflict the most damage. Revana glowed, opening portals of the shae to rain down endless projectiles on him.

Isik stood back, whether in fear or waiting for an opportunity, I couldn’t tell.

Gorva hardly moved; he batted my attacks away and just weathered Revana’s. While it might have been uncomfortable for him, it was quickly obvious that we weren’t doing anything substantial. 

I switched tactics, sheathing my sword and summoning my warhammer. I put as much magical weight behind it as I could. While he still swatted my attacks away, his smile faded as he put more effort into each deflection. After a few more blows, I teleported behind him, the momentum carrying through as I turned and swung. I made contact with the back of his head, the blow solid and sending him stumbling forward.

He turned with a scowl on his face, the tenebrae exploding from his hands. I readied my shield for the attack, but he teleported and slammed his fist into my side.

I flew across the open ground, tumbling and flipping, my body crashing into all manner of jagged stone. I really should have expected him to be able to teleport as well. But I hadn’t. The pain in my side where I’d been struck was intense, but my armor protected me from at least some of it.

I scrambled to stand, drawing my sword again, my only thought being that I needed to have his attention; I didn’t know if Revana or Isik could last against him for any amount of time. I looked back, but he was just standing there, batting aside every attack Revana could throw at him. 

Isik was backing away slowly, her hands trembling.

I ran back towards Gorva and yelled, “Isik! Help us! We need you!”

The Emperor laughed loudly and said, “She knows her place, as should you all. There’s nothing any of you can possibly do.”

Just before I got to him, I leapt into the air, bringing my sword down in an overhand strike. He held up a hand to catch it, an amused expression on his face, but just before I made contact, the tenebrae burst into existence along my blade.

For the tiniest fraction of a second, I could see Gorva’s eyes narrow in confusion; it wasn’t his power that was coating my sword.

My relic, which has struggled to cut his flesh at all, passed cleanly through his palm and sliced his arm in two, stopping just before his elbow. I didn’t quite understand what had happened. Isik had clearly done something to my sword, circumventing his defenses, and I wasn’t about to question something that worked so well.

He howled in pain and teleported away from me, a look of pure rage on his face. The two pieces of his arm came together and mended as we watched, healing back to perfect in seconds. But it had hurt him. And seriously pissed him off. He looked to Isik, whose eyes went wide under his gaze.

He ported, but I knew it was coming. He appeared in front of Isik, a swift, shadow-infused blow aimed right at her face. But I was there in an instant, and I cut his hand off and knocked his arm aside before the strike could land.

Again, he ported back, the same look on his face. “How dare you,” he said in a low voice. “You are not worthy of even seeing one such as I. You dare attack me in this way? I’m going to keep you alive for years, the agony you’ll experience will—”

I ported into his face, and when he tried to hit me with his already regenerated hand, I ported behind him and spun, my sword passing through the back of his neck. I expected him to collapse like the first son had, but he turned and tried to hit me again. Apparently his healing was much faster than his children’s.

“ENOUGH,” he roared, his amplified voice booming across the ruins, rattling my bones and shaking the ground. He ported away and raised his hands, which pulled huge lines of magic from the Font. A thousand thousand dark circles opened in the air above, ready to shower us with countless projectiles.

I ported to Isik and Revana, who, thankfully, were standing close together. Revana grabbed my arm without a word, and I pushed as much of the shae to her as I could. Seconds before the magical swords and spears and formless masses of black energy that burst forth from the portals annihilated us, Revana formed a dome of the shae around us.

The rain of attacks pummeled the dome without end. As the moments crept by, Revana started to struggle. “I can’t hold this forever,” she said through gritted teeth.

“He’s drawing directly from the Font. I don’t think he’s going to stop.” Isik said.

“I’ll just have to make him,” I said. I teleported out from under our protection to just behind where I knew Gorva was. He floated in the air, his feet dangling above my head, but he was so invested in his assault that he didn’t seem to realize I was there. I had planned to slice into his neck again and hopefully cut off his head, but he was too high. I also wanted to make sure whatever I did made him lose all focus or he might be able to keep casting and crack Revana’s dome. If he did that, she and Isik were both dead.

I crouched down, and with all my might, I shoved my blade straight up his ass.

He screamed in shock and rage, his whole body rigid as every single one of his magical portals winked out of existence. I wanted to slice forward and out, but he kicked me in the face and I stepped back, my blade coming free. 

He ported away and just looked at me, his face a rictus of embarrassment, rage, and shock. I had seen a lot of satisfying expressions on Gorvani faces during my time on Vendira, but this was a new, clear winner by a wide margin. “YOU…YOU WILL…ALL…” His mouth worked soundlessly for a little while before he was able to speak again. “YOU WILL…ALL SUFFER…YOUR SUFFERING…WILL…”

Isik and Revana burst out laughing, doubling over and staring right into his face as they did. While his reaction was pretty funny, I didn’t like that they were openly taunting him. I made ready to be at their side in a second.

Gorva did indeed port straight to them, the tenebrae bursting from his hands, but in that second, a massive ring of the shae flared into life underneath his feet, a complicated sigil of glowing runes that raised up from the ground through an encompassing layer of shadows, wrapping itself around him and binding his arms tightly to his body.

For a second, I stared, dumbfounded, but then it clicked into place. Revana had laid a trap and Isik had covered it up with the tenebrae. They’d known exactly what they were doing when they laughed in his face.

The sigil held tightly, sparking and flaring as the shae burned into his skin. I ported over, ready to strike, but he was finally able to burst free in a blast of power. 

I was knocked back. Revana and Isik ran, fear replacing their mirth. Gorva ported behind them, his hands overhead, but again, another sigil formed under his feet and snapped into place, holding him tight.

How many traps had they laid? Had they been doing it during the whole fight?

Wasting no time, I appeared beside him, ready to strike. His arms were pinned, but as soon as I swung, he opened his mouth, expelling a huge cloud of the tenebrae. It wasn’t an attack, really, but it surprised me, my blade missing its mark and driving down into his shoulder.

Again, he was able to break free from the trap, but I could hear his labored breathing. It turned out that even he had limits.

He tried to get his momentum back, shooting around the area, but there was trap after trap after trap, and it was clearly draining his strength to break free each time. I was still having trouble landing the perfect strike, but it would be soon. I knew it. Revana started in with her attacks, each golden spear piercing harder than it had at the start, and each time Gorva tried to channel, Isik countered it. She couldn’t completely nullify his abilities, but his attempts to attack and defend were noticeably weaker. We hounded him without end, his actions getting more and more desperate.

“NOOOO!” he screamed. “I. AM. THE. EMPEROR! I AM ETERNAL!”

He knew. He was losing, and he knew it. 

We redoubled our attacks, pressing him harder and harder, his defenses getting weaker, his ability to channel failing, even for all that he seemed to be made of the tenebrae.

Then I saw it.

I saw the opening.

As clear as day.

He broke through another sigil, but he was weak, and he started to fall forward. And I was there. His hands were held out to brace himself as he fell to the ground, and there wasn’t time to move or defend. 

My blade passed cleanly through his face, cutting off the top of his head at an angle.

31

His body thudded to the ground, the severed piece of his head and brain falling a little distance away.

The three of us just stood and stared, not saying a word.

It was over.

The Emperor was dead.

Revana walked slowly over to me in a daze, her eyes unfocused. She slipped her hand in mine, and I looked over to see her mouth hanging open, looking down on the…corpse?

The tenebrae swirled around the body, flowing and then pooling around its head, and we watched in horror as Gorva’s head reformed in front of us. We stepped back in shock, unsure of what to do.

He jerked and vaulted to his feet before teleporting away from us and to the side of the Font. “I…told you…I am…eternal,” he said. “You will…never win.” His voice was ragged and his posture bent, but the fury was still in his eyes.

“Screw this,” I said. “I’ll cut your head off as many times as I need to!” I sprinted towards him as Isik’s tenebrae flared on my sword again.

Gorva shook his head and took a few steps back and fell into the Font.

I skidded to a stop, unwilling to follow him in.

I stared at the massive flow of dark magic, my eyes wide and fear creeping underneath my skin. “No…” I said. “We have to kill him. What…what can we—”

“How soon you forget,” Isik said.

I looked over towards her, and though it took a moment, I almost laughed with relief when I remembered. “Right. Gor’mina’s plan.”

“Indeed,” she said, smiling widely. We followed her to the edge of the Font where she began channeling a massive spell, her dark rings of the tenebrae encircling the entirety of the Font. It took some time, but they eventually snapped inwards with that reality-bending sound, and the Font, for a brief second, stopped flowing.

And then it exploded with magic, the dark column resuming, but as it did, it spewed out the spinning form of the Emperor. He landed with a crack on the jagged stone. I appeared beside him and struck, but he teleported away.

We stared at each other for a moment after that, his eyes wide in bewilderment. “How!?” He looked straight at Isik and repeated, “How? It isn’t possible! Someone like you couldn’t possibly have…HOW!?”

Again, I appeared beside him, bringing my sword down. He reached up and grabbed my hands. I saw his eyes dart around, looking for a place to run, but I think we were both pretty sure Revana and Isik had absolutely covered the place in sigil traps. I was overpowering him, getting closer to knocking his arms to the side and cutting through him.

He ported again, this time beside the Font, but instead of trying to retreat into it, he pulled the tenebrae flowing from it into himself. He bellowed and writhed; it was too much to actively use, even for him, but he lashed out, sending a thin, straight blast directly into Isik’s side, right where her brand was.

She collapsed, screaming and writhing herself.

Gorva appeared beside Revana, and a second later, I was there.

But that had apparently been his plan.

His arms shot out, grabbing each of our throats. He was still connected to the Font, and the tenebrae pulsed through him and into our skin.

It was pure, unmitigated pain.

It crept into our bodies, our armor puffing away, and I could see it crawling through Revana’s skin, down into her chest and up along her jaw, and I could feel it doing the same to me.

Gorva’s face was twisted as well; this must have been a last, desperate attack.

It was, however, working.

There was nothing I could do. The tenebrae seemed to be stopping me from channeling and I couldn’t raise my arm to attack. A moment later, my sword fell out of my weakening grasp. I locked eyes with Revana, and I could see my own fear reflected in hers.

I couldn’t move or do anything at all. The pain was overwhelming. This was the end.

“This is gonna hurt, you two!”

That was…Tiq’s voice.

A split second later, a blinding bolt of lightning slammed into the Emperor’s chest. His whole body jerked and went rigid, as did mine, and Revana’s. I don’t know if the blast of the arcanae hurt or not; the tenebrous attack was already the worst pain I’d ever felt.

A huge ball of lightning traveled down the bolt connected to the Emperor, and we were all blown in different directions, tumbling over the ground and skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust.

I had no idea if years had passed or just seconds, but the shae began to flow into my body again, slowly erasing the pain that rocketed through every nerve ending I had. I sat up, blinking and trying desperately to clear my vision.

I clambered to my feet before I could really tell what was going on, but as I stumbled forward, the scene finally came into focus.

Revana and Isik were standing over something. Tiq and Vashe were making their way slowly through the rubble towards them. Apparently some time had actually passed.

I wanted to cry out, to tell them it wasn’t safe and they needed to run, but it finally became clear what Revana and Isik were looking at. It was the Emperor, laying face down on the ground. I rushed over, stopped and joined in to stare. “Is he…?”

“No, actually,” Revana said. “He’s not. I was about to come get you, but we needed to make sure he wasn’t getting up again. Are you okay?”

“I think so.” Without a word, Isik handed me my sword and we all shared a look. “Okay, time to end it.” I stepped up, and with one quick motion, I cut off the Emperor’s head, cleanly through the neck. We all watched with a mixture of surprise and revulsion when it reformed again, just as it had earlier, the decapitated head dispersing and the tenebrae flowing back into his body. “So…can he really not die then?” I asked.

By this time, Tiq and Vashe had appeared. They watched as we flipped Gorva over and Revana cast no less than seven sigils binding him to the ground. At the start of the binding, he was barely conscious, but as the sigils wrapped around him, he came to his senses and began to grunt and jerk, groaning in pain as the shae burned into his skin. Every new sigil seemed to hurt him more, and once Revana was satisfied, I slammed my sword into the middle of his chest, through to the stone below. He howled as the blade went into his body.

We looked down on him as he screamed. After all this time, we were standing over the defeated form of the Emperor of the Gorvani empire. But what in Vendira were we going to do now?

Feeling we were safe enough at the moment, we moved away, so we could speak over his screams. Mostly he just yelled, but he also attempted some threats and tried to tell us he was eternal.

After some discussion, Tiq said, “Based on my experiments with the korids, it is indeed possible that he’s in a state of immortality.”

“So there’s nothing we can do to end him permanently?” Revana asked.

“Oh, I didn’t say that. The tenebrae will have to be burned out of him through application of the shae.” She turned to look back and gesture at him. “Just like that, actually.”

“How long would that take?” I asked.

Tiq shook her head and said, “Impossible to say without extensive testing. He’s been absorbing the tenebrae for centuries, clearly much more than any of the other royals were allowed to take. It’s possible it’ll take just as long to burn it all away.”

“It might take centuries for him to die?” Revana asked with a little upturning at the corners of her lips.

“Possible,” Tiq said.

“Too bad the fucker’ll go mad before that happens,” Vashe said.

“Oh, no,” Tiq replied. “That might not be the case. Michael sliced his brain in two and then his head completely off. Clearly his mind doesn’t exist solely within his flesh anymore; it’s linked to the tenebrae that now makes up his body. If his memories stayed intact through partial and complete destruction of his brain, it’s extremely likely that they would persist through torture, no matter how long.”

Revana started laughing. Softly at first, but then louder and louder to a crazed crescendo. “You’re telling me…that not only will he be tortured for centuries, but he’ll be lucid the entire time!?”

“Possible,” Tiq repeated.

Revana just kept laughing, and heedless of our stares, she went back over to Gorva’s prone body, and as we watched, she started kicking him between the legs, over and over, as hard as she could.

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing too.

32

“We were watching for a lot of the fight,” Tiq told me. “We escaped the tower and made our way to the center after I was sure the arcanic currents would cascade into a chain of explosions that would destroy the rest of them.”

“That was insanely impressive,” I told her.

She beamed. “Thank you. The device performed admirably. We didn’t dare venture down into the fight for obvious reasons. I can’t tell you how much I worried, although neither of us could look away. 

“When we saw that you were in trouble, I knew there was only one thing to do, and I hoped the arcanae wouldn’t be too much for you, but you and Revana came out fine.”

“She recovered faster than me, it seems.”

“She’s Dravini, and has more of an affinity for the shae’s healing, but yes.”

I looked up at the shadowsphere looming above us still. “Well, anyway, it’s time to end all this shit.”

Isik was standing off to the side and had barely said a word. When I walked up behind her and touched her lightly on the arm, she jumped, apparently totally unaware I was there. “Oh…hello, Michael.”

“Hey. You seem off in your own little world over here. We need to stop the Font, but…are you okay?”

“I…” She blinked and looked up. “Yes. Let’s finish this. We can speak afterwards.”

The column of tenebrae still shot out from the silvery, runed circle that made up the visible portion of the Font, although it seemed much less scary and foreboding now that Gorva was beaten and bound. The royals still floated around it, though. 

“How do we do this?”

“Finish off the rest of the trash, Michael, and afterwards, I’ll stem the flow.”

“You got it.” The royals were in various states of consciousness. Some of their eyes rolled down to look at me as I grabbed their feet and pulled them down so I could slice off their heads, and some did not. It was a little anticlimactic, I thought as I butchered the rest of them without the slightest bit of resistance.

As I cut them down and the flow of runes lessoned, the shadowsphere groaned with the weird sound that I was getting a little used to. Once the royals were all dead — and there was a thought — Isik stepped up to the edge of the Font and channeled. The runes carved into the silver metal flared and the energy inside them faded, one after another, and when they were all powered down, the endless column of the tenebrae started to shrink. Within minutes, it had tapered off into nothing, leaving behind a bottomless hole in the ground.

The shadowsphere quickly grew unstable as the sigils that wrapped around its insides fizzled, breaking down in a shower of dark sparks and finally puffing out of existence. As they did, huge holes appeared in its surface, and gradually, the magic drifted away and faded to nothing. It was gone.

Nir and the other dragons were the first to reach us, and as they landed, I thought again that I really needed to learn their names, especially since the world wasn’t ending now. “It is done?” Nir asked excitedly.

“Well, more or less,” Revana said, going on to explain the situation with Gorva.

“Hmm…” Nir examined him closely. He was still grunting and struggling uselessly against the bindings, but he’d stopped constantly screaming. Nir opened her mouth and bathed him in a powerful blast of pure shae.

Gorva started screaming again.

When she was done, we all looked at him again, but there was no discernible difference, aside from the noise he was making. “It might truly take centuries to burn him away?” She asked.

“We can’t be sure,” I said, “but that’s what Tiq thinks.” Tiq herself was some distance away, doing something to her device, which was no surprise.

“And he will suffer the entire time?”

“Oh yeah.”

“It is…fitting.” Nir breathed on him again, eliciting more screams. 

A little bit later, people started to show up, having walked in when the sphere was destroyed. The dragon cult led the crowd, but it was just as filled with the townspeople that had fought against the Gorvani.

Cersi came up to us with the biggest smile on her face and said, “I knew you’d be able to do it. I just knew it!”

Revana asked about the Gorvani channelers that had been arrayed around the crumbled palace walls.

“Oh, is that what was happening to them? No, none of them were alive that we saw. It was so eerie coming upon them, just a ring of withered corpses for what seemed like no apparent reason. So, are there no Gorvani channelers anymore?”

Isik, who’d been standing there but saying nothing turned to us. “Well, there’s at least one left. Me.” Her eyes flicked over to the Font and she added, “For now. But the days of tenebrous magic are at a close. I wonder if I’ll miss it.”

The Font’s destruction was the last real order of business we had to see through. Revana and I bound Gorva even tighter, applying many more sigils around his entire body, one of which sealed his mouth closed when we got tired of listening to him scream.

When I got tired of listening to him scream. It was obviously music to Revana’s ears. She kicked him in the crotch at pretty regular intervals, too, which made the both of us giggle like idiots. Had anyone in the history of anything fallen so far? God-Emperor one minute, reduced to this the next. It was amazing.

The rage never left his eyes, even though they were often shut in agony, but the way his gaze darted around once the people came in to look at him said how humiliating he must have found it all. Here we were, just a bunch of insects or worms or whatever to him, and not only had we beaten and bound him, but here was a crowd circling around just to watch. 

We dragged him by his feet — a suggestion of mine that Revana also loved — away from the central ruins of the palace. It was essentially a parade, and I wondered if it would actually become one, maybe a yearly tradition to mark the occasion. Once everyone was safely away, the dragons took to the skies overhead. I had asked Nir if they would need our help for this part, but she assured me I could stay on the ground and watch.

I was content to do so, but Revana went up with her, wanting to be a part of the event. The dragons circled in the sky overhead, the Font between them below. Everyone else was on the lip of the crater, eagerly anticipating the chance to watch history in the making.

The dragons glowed brightly, massive sigils appearing in the air around them. The currents of shae didn’t flow directly overhead, but the magic came in from all directions at the dragons’ powerful command. The sigils grew bigger and brighter, and once the spell was complete, a massive column of pure shae coalesced high in the clouds to slam down into the ground, traveling down into the Font, destroying it at every level, from what we could see and on down deep under the surface.

The tenebrous channels would still be there, still a natural part of the world, but everything that brought the magic to the surface would be gone.

We had to close our eyes against the glare, and once we opened them, the walls of the Font crumbled, dirt and debris rushing in to fill the gap, and once the dust finally settled — it took a while — the Font was gone, and nothing but barren dirt and cracked stone was in its place.

Isik had a hand held up, channeling the tenebrae, the shadows swirling and dancing at her command, but slowly, very slowly, they dwindled into nothing as she watched and smiled. A single tear fell down her cheek and she said, “It’s gone. It’s truly gone. I can’t feel it at all anymore.”

33

It was over.

But of course it wasn’t. 

When we came back out to the steps that had led up to the palace and the base of the shadowsphere, the people cheered. I’d resummoned a light version of my armor, just so people would know who I was and what my presence there implied.

For a while, we were lost in a sea of smiling people, everyone wanting to say something or cheer or pat us on the back. Often literally.

Eventually, we spotted Osaarin in the mess and with a little coaxing, he came to stand beside us and give the speech none of us wanted to give. Tiq looked exhausted, Isik was still keeping her face devoid of expression, even though I could see the tiredness in her eyes, and Vashe, for once, looked less pissed than normal.

Osaarin was just as thrilled as everyone else, and that came through with his animated address to everyone. I didn’t hear so much as a single word he actually said; I just let myself be washed away in the excitement of the crowd and the thought that we’d really done it. We’d won.

But there was so much to do now. First and foremost, we had to decide what to do with the Gorvani. And not just the ones who’d fought against us, but all of them. Their entire people.

Most of them had never done anything to anyone, just lived their lives the same as everyone else, but they'd be subjected to the same backlash as all the ones that had. But for now, it was decided that the army would be held prisoner until a better solution could be found, and the others could come and go as they pleased, but we spread the message as far and wide as we could that random acts of retribution wouldn’t be tolerated.

It was going to be a shitshow and everyone knew it.

After Osaarin’s speech, I noticed Isik slip away, and once I was able to extricate myself from everyone, I followed, finding her perched on top of a large piece of stone that used to be part of the palace’s outer walls.

“Hey,” I said.

She didn’t turn to look at me, and she was silent for a while before saying, “Hello, Michael. I thought you’d want to celebrate with everyone else.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure there’s going to be days of that on end. I’ll get my fill of being congratulated later.” I wanted to ask how she was, but it was such a poignant question and I didn’t quite know how to word it, so I just sat down beside her and looked out over the city. For a long time, she didn’t speak, so I didn’t either, figuring she’d talk when and if she wanted to. Finally, she looked over into my eyes. There was a world of emotion behind them, but I still couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. Still, I kept my tongue.

She exhaled slowly and said, “This is the day I’d always imagined and never thought I’d see.”

“You didn’t think you’d live through this.”

“No. Or this day would just never come either way. And now that it’s here, I don’t know how to feel. It seems so unreal. The royalty is dead and I am not. The empire is broken, but I’m still here. What am I now? I was an Inquisitor. Then a rebel. But now? I haven’t the slightest idea. One thing I know for sure, though, is that I will never be fully accepted anywhere. I’m a traitor to my people, and a monster to everyone else. No, no. Don’t object. I know it’s not the complete truth, but most won’t appreciate that distinction.” She looked into my eyes with her tiny ghost of a smile. “Don’t think this is nothing but wallowing in self pity, though. I’ll find my way forward. But for right now, I’m just tired. Too tired to think, to feel, to do. I want to sit here for a while, and just exist.”

That was a dismissal, so I leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before I stood.

She looked up at me with wide eyes.

“Don’t forget that I am and will be here for you, whenever you need me.”

She turned and continued looking out over the city. “Thank you, Michael.”

When I got back to the crowd, Revana was there, and she ran to me and leapt into my arms. We both hugged each other tightly and she said, “We did it. We really, actually, did it.”

“We sure did.” I pressed my face into her neck.

She let her feet down to the ground, but we stayed in each other’s arms.

“I…” I didn’t quite know how to say it, but I tried. “I did this all because Vendira needed it, because I wanted to help, because I wanted to do something worth doing. But honestly? I mostly did it for you. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Uhh…you two need a minute?” Tiq had wandered over, but was slowly backing away.

“No!” Revana said with tears in her eyes. “Get in here!” She pulled Tiq in and we all hugged, trying our best to fit together comfortably.

The rest of the day was spent talking and laughing, assuming anything else of importance would be done later.

As the sun drew close to the horizon, Revana, Tiq, and I made our way to the upper floors of the Astrologia, which had escaped the devastation that many buildings had not.

“I’m home!” Tiq yelled as we stepped inside her rooms. She ran off to do who knew what, while Revana and I went to her corner room and started making tea. Unfortunately, there weren’t any sugary cakes or jumpers to be had.

Tiq returned in her blue scholarly robes, one of many sets she must have owned. She looked like she did when we first met, and so very much like herself.

The three of us sat in that room, drinking tea and watching the sun go down on the empire’s last day.

EPILOGUE

Gorva screamed. He wasn’t always screaming, but often. We’d stopped thinking of him as the Emperor quite a while ago. Revana and I stood in a tiny valley on top of a mountain peak, an artificial feature, something that no one except a dragon would ever stumble upon. Completely hidden from view from anywhere but above, a small stone temple sat nestled in the trees. 

It was, not by coincidence, at the convergence of many of the shae’s currents that flowed through Vendira’s skies.

Gorva’s prison was known only to a handful of people, just in case someone, for some reason, hoped for the glory days of the old empire and tried to free him. The temple amounted to one medium sized room with Gorva in the middle, chained to a dias by shae-imbued metal. He was laid on his back, his arms and legs stretched out and held tight by his shackles. Besides the chains, his body was covered in overlapping sigils, cast and maintained by either myself, Revana, or one of the dragons. He also had a partial metal mask that wrapped tightly around his eyes, because, in Revana’s words, he didn’t deserve to see the sun again.

Brutal, but it wasn’t as if it was any worse than what he himself had done to countless others, I was sure. The shae bit into his flesh, burning him constantly, slowly incinerating the tenebrae out of him. 

We’d defeated him in Vendira’s spring, and it was now well into autumn. This temple had been built extremely rapidly with the dragon’s help, and in all that time, there was barely a discernible difference in the magic that made up his body. Tiq had come and taken measurements many times, and based on her results, she concluded that it would indeed take decades, probably centuries, to burn it all away, as concentrated as it was.

And during that entire time, Gorva would be here, in constant, mind-numbing pain, never even having the release of madness.

I’d never really given it much thought, but Revana told me she was always mad that he’d never really atone for his crimes. How could he? He was responsible for centuries of pain and sorrow and death for countless lives.

But this? I think even she was pleased with the outcome. She’d said to me once that when she was on her deathbed, years and years from now, it would make her smile to know he was still here, still suffering, and it wouldn’t even be close to ending.

We checked his bindings and chains. The magic would last for a long, long time even without upkeep, but regular maintenance would make sure.

Revana stepped between his legs and kicked him hard in the balls, as she regularly did when we came here.

I chuckled and said, “Do you think he can really feel that over all the rest of the pain?”

She shrugged, smiling. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

We went outside and sealed the door with a shae ward. It wasn’t like the tenebrous type that would cause pain, but it would alert the casters, us, if anyone tried to enter. The second it shut, Gorva’s screams were cut off and he’d be alone with his pain until we came again.

Revana was wearing a stylized version of her priestess robes, cut very revealingly and augmented with a leather bodice with intricate design. She was a priestess in truth now, although she probably always was, really. But in time, many of the brandless children that were now being born would be taught to channel the shae, and she’d be the first one to do it.

She’d offered me honorary robes, but I’d declined, much more comfortable in regular clothes. I was wearing boots, dark pants, and a slightly fancier than normal red shirt because it was a special occasion.

She slipped her clawed hand into mine and we both channeled. I pushed the magic to her and she formed the insanely complicated sigils in the air that shimmered and burst into a portal.

Arcanic portals still worked fine, of course, but with the dragons’ tutelage, Revana had become adept at casting her own, and they had the bonus of being anywhere we were. I had only walked to a portal nexus a few times lately.

We could only do it together, though; I couldn’t manage the sigils and she couldn’t channel enough energy herself.

We stepped through and emerged into the seventh province, in a little room in the Carvers’ Guild especially set aside for the two of us. It was little more than a broom closet, but that’s all it needed to be; it was a space where portals could randomly appear and not bother anyone.

We weaved our way through the building, which I’d finally gotten the complete hang of, emerging into the day from one of the exterior’s secret doors. As we walked down the street, many people shouted and waved; we’d become celebrities and couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized constantly. It was a novelty, but mostly it was just tiring. Nothing to be done about it though.

The city bustled with activity. Since Telorn had suffered so much damage, the capital had been moved here. Now that the empire was gone, cities were starting to have real names again, although no one could decide on what this one’s was going to be. It had been suggested that it be named Michaelia or Revanari, but we’d quashed those ideas as fast as we could, neither of us at all comfortable with the idea. Telorn would also be renamed, but it was encountering the same heated debates as no one could agree on what.

One of the biggest problems in the wake of the empire’s death was how the people were to govern themselves. Because of his own merits and also that he had my and Revana’s backing, Osaarin was popularly elected as the interim leader, which was yet another thing no one could decide the name for. I had suggested regent because it sounded nice and was a word Vendirans weren’t familiar with, and it was sticking for now.

Once things were hammered out and a new set of laws were drafted, it was all but assured and expected that Osaarin would remain at the top. However, his power wasn’t anywhere near absolute; the people had had enough of that shit. There were a lot of limits to what he could do, and at my suggestion, the dragons were named as arbiters of any important dispute. I figured their long lives and perspectives would help temper what I had seen far too much of on Earth: petty and short-sighted decisions.

The temporary government building, which would naturally become the official one when everyone realized that all their stuff was there and moving was a hassle, stood tall in the middle of the city. I wasn’t sure what it had been before besides something mostly used by the Gorvani.

We went in the doors and across the foyer to a bored looking Dravini woman and I said, “Hi, we’re here to see Regent Osaarin.”

“Uh huh, do you have an appoin—” She cut off when she looked up and saw who we were. “Oh. Uh, okay. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

Okay, some things about being celebrities were nice.

The dragon cult had mostly been making decisions since the fall of the empire, since there was no one else that wanted the job and they were trusted by the people. Osaarin had finally been able, however, to get people to start calling it the Celestori, probably because the idea of being led by something called a cult wasn’t a great idea. It was being called the Celestoric Assemblage. It was another for now thing that was absolutely just going to become the official title once everyone realized that thinking up another name was pointless and everyone already knew this one.

“Michael! Revana!” Osaarin had been sitting behind his massive, intricately carved desk doing paperwork when we’d come in. He got up and came around it to give us both crushing hugs. Since he was the biggest person I might have ever seen, it was a lot like getting mauled by a bear.

We sat down in the incredibly plush chairs in his office and were immediately served hachi by one of his assistants. “So, how’re things?” Revana asked.

He gave us a pained smile and said, “We’re getting things done, but there’s a mountain of new headaches every day.” Chuckling softly, he added, “But I’d rather be here, doing this, than anything else.”

“How’re things with the Gorvani?” I asked.

He sat back in his chair and shrugged, picking up his cup of hachi. “I suppose they could be worse. Most of them have moved into the tenth province. I’m not sure why there, but there’s been a large migration. The people living there have also started to move out, and it’s quickly becoming a separation of peoples. I’m not sure if it’s for the best or not. Not all of them are going, of course, but by and large, the tenth is mostly a Gorvani province.

“But none of them are required to go there or prohibited from going anywhere else, so if it’s their own will, it’s acceptable. Honestly, perhaps they feel safer that way. Many people are doing their best in regards to treating them fairly, but many are not. I believe it’ll be a generation or two before the animosity towards them truly fades away.”

We stayed and talked for a little while longer about inconsequential things, but it was obvious that as much as Osaarin liked having us visit, he had a lot of things to do. We said our goodbyes and left the building. 

We made our way through the streets, still being recognized constantly, until we reached the new army’s headquarters. There had been some debate about whether an organized fighting force would be necessary in the new society, but arguments for it had won out. We meant to see Cersi, who’d been officially raised to the rank of General, but she was in the middle of training new recruits and only had a few minutes to speak with us.

I had assumed being a general would involve mostly paperwork like Osaarin’s job, but Vendira had a different attitude about it, it seemed. Vashe had been offered a similar position and fervently declined.

Finding ourselves a safe little area, we created another portal and went through, emerging in a small, cordoned off area of Tiq’s rooms. They were like they’d always been, a complete mish mash of weird things. Her device was on its own special stand, prominently displayed in the center of everything. 

“Tiq!” Revana yelled.

“In here!” Tiq replied, but we could only faintly hear her.

We found a small room off to the side that I’d never been in before, and it was full of books and writing utensils, the floor to ceiling windows looking out over the crater that had been the palace. “Nice view.”

Tiq snorted. “It’s a nice reminder of all we’ve done, especially here.” She was bent over a stack of papers, an even bigger one off to one edge of the table she was sitting at. She’d started writing a memoir of our adventures together and as I looked over her shoulder, I saw she was up to the point where we’d broken her out of prison.

I wasn’t keen on remembering a lot of things we’d done, but it would be nice to have it in print from someone who’d been there.

Over the intervening time, Tiq had grilled me about Earth at almost every opportunity, her questions coming without pause or end. She’d browbeaten me into agreeing to take her there one day, but it was something I was more than happy to put off. Indefinitely, if I could. I had no desire to ever return. 

She had been wealthy before the collapse of the empire, and that was still the case, since no one wanted to institute a new currency. Since she had no obligations to the Gorvani anymore, she spent all her days in the Astrologia, pursuing countless projects and collaborating on a host of scientific experiments. I often reminded her to eat and sleep.

“Are you at a good stopping point?” Revana asked.

“No, but I never am. We can go anytime.”

Tiq wore her usual robes, but she was covered in even more jewelry than normal, rings on every finger and a multitude of earrings and various other piercings. She’d given me a few rings as gifts, and I was wearing most of them. I liked them very much, but I also knew it made her happy to see them on my hands.

We went back to the empty section and created another portal, this time coming out in the late Gor’mina’s estate in the first. Of course, it was Isik’s estate now. No one had objected to her claiming it, for a lot of reasons. It was largely regarded as haunted, either literally or figuratively, and letting Isik live there would get her out of the way. No one said that out loud, but everyone involved knew it, even Isik, and she was just fine with it.

She had no desire to move to the tenth with most of the other Gorvani, and while she could technically live wherever she wanted, she’d been right: she’d never be truly accepted, despite everything that she’d done.

In my opinion, the scales were balanced. Much more than that, really. No matter what horrors she’d committed in the name of the empire, she’d been instrumental in dismantling it. But she didn’t see it that way and a lot of others didn’t as well. Gor’mina had built the estate to be far away from anyone, and that suited Isik just fine.

But that didn’t mean she was alone. Far from it.

For one thing, she couldn’t very well live alone in such a huge place, so she’d enlisted quite a few people as servants. They weren’t actually servants; they were paid and free to quit, but old habits die hard and they all still thought of and referred to themselves as servants. They were all Gorvani, people who, like Isik, didn’t fit in anywhere for whatever reasons. I had expressed worry to her about their reliability and that they might literally stab her in the back, but she’d laughed me off and reminded me that she was an excellent judge of character. So far, she’d been right. They were not only loyal, but were quickly becoming her friends as well, which she didn’t have a lot of.

But they weren’t her only friends.

We walked up through the main gate, and I was happy to see the hole I’d cut in when we’d visited before was all patched up. You couldn’t even tell it had ever been there. The gardens and flowers were still beautiful, changing to an explosion of color in autumn, and they’d already been that before.

Under a particularly large tree, we found Oronir, and it felt like years since I’d seen him last. His face lit up in a huge smile as he turned and saw us coming up. “There you are! Irina said you’d be here soon. I trust you’re both well and that…things are in order?” Oronir was one of the few people who knew of Gorva’s prison and eventual tomb.

“Revana smiled widely and said, “They are and will be for a long, long, long time.”

We spoke for a few minutes before he gestured towards the house. “We’ll catch up more later. Irina has something for you, so you best get in there and not make her wait any longer,” he said with a wink.

The front door was open, so we just walked in, and in the sitting room off to the side were Irina’s children. Amalir waved when he saw me; he was getting a lot more comfortable in my presence, which was a relief. Irina’s daughters were sitting at a table playing a board game of some type, only looking up and smiling at us for a second before concentrating again. I’d forgotten their names and would have to wait for a good chance to ask Revana what they were again, so I didn’t make an ass out of myself later.

We wandered back to the kitchen, passing two of Isik’s servants or whatever they were as we went. They smiled and nodded to us. We weren’t strangers here.

As we came through the door, Irina squeaked and rushed towards us, wrapping us both in a hug at the same time, which we happily returned before she let us go and crushed Tiq in her arms as well.  “You’re finally here! Took you long enough! Reva, I have something to show you!” She pulled Revana away, the two of them disappearing into a side room.

Tiq glanced at me and then Isik and said, “I’ll go see what it is Irina’s so excited about,” before she quickly left as well. She and Isik actually got along very well, just as Revana had predicted so long ago, but Isik was scowling over a pan of sizzling meat and didn’t look like she wanted to be disturbed.

Despite that, I went over to her and gave her a one-armed hug, which she only slightly tensed up for. She’d told me before that I could, but she still wasn’t very comfortable with such casual displays of affection and maybe she never would be, and that was okay. 

“How are you?”

“Irritated.”

“I can see that. How’s the cooking going overall? I told you Irina would leap at the concept.”

She grumbled. “And so she has.” She shook her head and glared down into the pan before adding, “Cooking has somehow turned out to be more and less involved than I thought it would be. This, however…well, this is the second try today. I might or might not have filled the kitchen with smoke earlier.”

I laughed and said, “Everyone does that. Trust me.”

“Mhmm. Irina said much the same, but I still dislike it. I feel like a child learning how to hold the correct end of a paint brush.” She glanced quickly up at me and said, “I do not like being the student. It has been years upon years since I was in such a position.”

“You’ll get it eventually.”

She said, “I do not need your platitudes, Michael,” but that ghost of a smile was there. She sighed heavily and continued, “Or Irina’s, though she practically drowns me in them. She is a very understanding mentor. Much more than I would and have ever been.”

I looked down at the meat, circular patties of something, and said, “You might want to turn those over.”

She grimaced but did as I suggested. “It’s odd. Irina accepted me faster than literally anyone else. I asked for her…teachings…and she was so excited to help me. As if I wasn’t who I was, or Gorvani at all.”

“She saw a lot of the good things you did. Some of them in person. And she’s quick to see the best in people. She sees the good that was always in you.”

She pushed the meat around while looking at it cock-eyed. “I don’t understand how she can just overlook…well…”

“You haven’t forgiven yourself, have you?”

We listened to the sizzling food for a moment before she said, “I feel so strange, standing here, learning how to cook. In my home. With my…friends. I don’t deserve it. I should have die—”

“No.” I put my hand on her arm and looked her straight in the eyes. “You deserve this. To live. To live this life. To have friends. To be happy. I’m going to hug you now, okay?”

“...Okay.”

I didn’t crush her or anything, just reached around and gave her a quick but firm hug and a kiss on the cheek before stepping back. “Do you…ever think you’ll be able to forgive yourself?”

She turned away, back to the stove. “...I don’t know.”

I smiled a huge smile. “You usually tell me, ‘Of course not, Michael, how could I?’ So that’s progress!”

She sniffed, the barest hint of a laugh. “Perhaps. Perhaps you’re right.”

“You’re a good person, Isik.”

She froze for a second before she said, “That’s enough of your sentimentality, Michael.”

I laughed and said, “Fair enough. How are your…servants? Staff?”

She shrugged, clearly welcoming the conversational shift. “They’re getting along very well. They, like me, are best suited to being here on the estate, content to let the rest of the world forget about us. They were moderately scandalized when I made it known I would be learning how to cook. Beneath my station, they said.” She shook her head and grumbled some more. “They’re having trouble adjusting to this new world we live in. But as just discussed, perhaps we all are. At any rate, Michael, I’m pleased you’re here but leave me to this task.”

“You got it,” I said, smiling. “How long until dinner’s ready?”

“A while.”

On my way to find Revana, I ran into Irina in the hallway.

“Michael! I didn’t mean to ignore you! I was excited to show Reva something. How are you?”

“Great, actually, which is something I’m going to have to get used to saying. It’s good to see you, and just in case she can’t bring herself to say it out loud, Isik is incredibly grateful that you’ve come and are teaching her to cook.”

Irina brought her hand to her mouth and giggled. “Oh, I know. She’s never come out and said it plainly, but there have been a few offhanded comments and vague allusions. I’m so happy she asked me! I believe it was your suggestion?”

“It was, back when it was part of a future that no one was sure would happen. But it really does mean a lot to her, and to me, that you’re doing it.”

“As if I would ever have refused.”

I smiled. “I know. You’re the best. But you should probably get in there before she fills the house with smoke again.”

She laughed again. “Of course. I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready, but I think you have some time to kill,” she said, before disappearing back into the kitchen.

I found Revana in a library, looking through some seriously old books. “Hey, what did Irina want to show you?”

“These are copies of ancient texts, although they’re old enough themselves. They have some very interesting things to say about the time before the empire and the role of people like me. I can’t be sure it’s a firsthand account, but it’s something to look into. Apparently Amalir found them stuffed in the bottom of a random bookcase with who knows what else. Shocking, because things like this were heavily purged. Anyway, how long until the food’s ready?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a bit. Want to go take a walk?”

She looked up and smiled, closing the book. “Sure. I can look at these whenever. Irina assured me Isik was fine with me just taking them. And I have a surprise for you! Also care of Irina.”

“Oh, okay. Lead on, then.”

We went out into the back garden and winded around the topiary and various sculptures, all still well cared for. The yargeth statue was still there, still vomiting out seven streams of water into a large fountain. We took some twists and turns and ended up at a gate that you probably wouldn’t find unless you knew it was there.

It led out of the garden, into a small, stone-dotted pathway through the trees. We followed it for a while as it bent and curved before opening up onto a secluded pond. It was clearly not natural; the shape and artfully placed plants attested to that fact. But still, for all that, it didn’t look overly artificial either, as if it really was meant to be there, perfectly placed between the trees.

Revana squeezed my hand and headed towards the water, expertly slipping her robe off in seconds. She kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned the tail button of her underwear before letting them slide down to lay on the ground.

Wasting no time, I slipped my boots and mildly fancy shirt off, taking care to lay it where it wouldn’t get too dirty. I tried not to fall over in my haste to strip naked, this unexpected scene already getting the blood pumping in my veins.

Revana was already in the pond, leaning back to let her light blue hair trail out on the surface behind her. Her breasts were easily floating on top of the water as she smiled and beckoned me in.

I waded in until I was chest deep and I pulled her close. She turned and wrapped her legs and arms around me as I stood on the soft bottom. Her head fell into my neck and I hugged her tightly. For a while, we stayed there, unmoving, letting the slight breeze pass over us as we listened to the quiet sounds of the forest. 

It was such a huge change, not having a looming sense of dread at the back of my mind, of always wondering if we would make it through the next horrific thing we had to do. The empire was gone. The royals were gone. There would be a lot of problems to deal with in the coming years, but they were mundane problems, not looming death.

I ran my hand over Revana’s horns and she lifted her head and pushed her lips to mine. We kissed softly, slowly, just enjoying the sensation of our bodies and tongues pressing against each other. I slid both hands up and down her body, her legs and the water more than enough to hold her up. I went down her back, squeezed her ass, and trailed one hand slowly down the length of her tail. 

She slipped a hand into my hair and lightly slid her claws down my back with the other. Her breath came faster and she pulled me in tighter, if that was even possible. Her hips ground against my growing erection.

I slipped my hands under her ass and slowly slid her up and down against my cock as she laughed. I carried her to the edge of the pond, which was surrounded by soft grass, and we found an area that was just the right height. I set her down and she leaned back and opened her legs. 

I sank into the water, just my head and hands in the cool air as I started by kissing her knee and working my way down her soft, light skin. I took my time, moving inch by inch as she grunted and groaned, impatient and excited. “Just do it!” she said, laughing as she finally just pulled my head close.

I slid my tongue over her wetness and she sighed and leaned back, throwing her arms behind her. I tried to go slow, but her bucking hips and ever increasing moans suggested I do otherwise.

I slid my fingers inside her as I moved to lick and suck on her clit. Her back arched and I was worried the moans that were escaping her mouth would be audible back at the mansion. That thought didn’t stop me or slow me down, I kept the pressure on her, riding her body as she writhed and bucked. I reached up and pinched one of her hard nipples, her hand coming up to cover mine.

She got louder and louder until I was sure we were going to have to endure some amused stares when we got back. Her legs started to shake and her claws dug little trails in the ground as she finally screamed, scaring a few birds out of the surrounding trees. I stayed pressed to her as best I could as she orgasmed, bucking wildly, her legs splashing water all around me.

She finally calmed and laid back on the grass, getting her breath under control. She leaned up and looked at me, her eyes saying that we were only just getting started. “Get over here.” She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me close as she reached down and guided me inside her.

I slid all the way in easily, a huge moan escaping my own lips.

She wrapped her hands around my neck and pulled me in, pushing her tongue deeply between my lips. 

There was no thought of going slow. Even had I wanted to, the urgency of her tongue and her hips said otherwise. I slipped my hands down around her ass and pounded into her as fast as I dared, her tightness driving me wild and sending electricity coursing through my entire body. 

She thrust against me just as much as I was thrusting into her, an animalistic growl coming from deep in her throat.

It was maddening.

I kept at it as long as I could, pounding her for all I was worth, but eventually, my muscles gave out, and with a groan, I stopped, my head coming down to rest beside her neck, my breath coming fast.

Her own chest was rising and falling fast. She leaned back and I bent over with her, my face coming to rest between her huge boobs. 

I reached up and squeezed and pressed them into my face, completely enveloping myself in them. I stayed there as long as I could, but I eventually had to come up for air and found her laughing, which I joined in. “It’s better when the world isn’t ending, isn’t it?”

She laughed even harder at that. “It really is, yeah.” She pushed me back and out, spinning around to lay face down over the edge of the pond, the tips of her toes sitting on the bottom. 

I slid back inside, going at a much more reasonable pace now that we’d gotten some of the urgency out. Watching her ass bounce and jiggle as I slid in and out of her was nearly as good as watching her breasts do the same. Her tail wrapped loosely around me as I reached up and lightly pulled on her horns, arching her head back. 

She giggled and scratched a few more small trails in the grass with her claws. 

I closed my eyes and sighed, letting the sensations and sounds wash over me. 

After a while, her moans started to get louder again, and she reached down between her legs. 

I kept the pace as steady as I could as her muscles tightened more and more. 

She was quiet for a few seconds before she breathily said, “Faster, now, faster!” As I sped up, her whole body shuddered and she screamed again, pressing her head to the ground and digging deep lines in the grass.

I moved with her body as she spasmed and yelled, loving every sight and sound. 

After she quieted down, she turned and asked, “What do you want now?”

Instead of answering, I just turned her back around to our first position and slid back inside. I pushed her back so she was leaning on her arms, her boobs bouncing as I slid in and out again. The sight of her body and her beautiful smile send me over the edge in no time at all. I pulled out and came while more or less screaming myself.

I hit her in the face, but most of it went all over her breasts and stomach as I jerked and shuddered and tried to remain standing and not fall into the water. We looked into each others’ eyes the whole time, and after I was finally spent, I did fall backwards into the cool water, letting myself go all the way under.

I came up to find Revana laughing at me. She said, “Well, that was pretty good, huh?”

“Pretty good, yeah. I’ll bet we can do better, though,” I replied with a huge smile.

She grinned again and said, “We have lots and lots of time to get it just right.” She slid off the edge and dunked into the water as well, washing everything off. When she came up, she took my hands in hers and said, “If you’d have told me, a long time ago, that this is the life I would have, the world I’d live in, I just wouldn’t have believed you.”

“Oh, I know exactly what you mean.” I leaned in and kissed her before hugging her tight.

A breeze came through, blowing our hair and sending little ripples across the pond in a moment we would both surely always remember.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The End

AFTERWORD

Thank you very much for reading! It means a lot to me that so many people are enjoying my stories.

I hope you loved this series and the characters as much as I do. I hope to revisit Vendira someday!

ALSO BY ISAAC KEYES

The Dragon Cult Series

Brandless

Shae Warrior

Shadowbreaker

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