Contents

Title Page

Copyright

[Gnome Wisdom]

[IMPORTANT]

Welcome to Elysia

Tower of Winter

The Feathered Plains

The Crystal Fields

Gardens of Mist

Maelstrom of Stone

The Steel Labyrinth

The Lightning Wastes

Caverns of Flame

Ragnarus

[Sequel Page]

THE TRAVELER'S GATE CHRONICLES

Will Wight

www.WillWight.com

Copyright © 2015 Will Wight

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Patrick Foster Design

These stories have been published before, separately, as Tower of Winter, Gardens of Mist, and The Lightning Wastes. If you already own these collections, and you published this book in error, then refund your purchase! Quickly! Now, before the Gate closes!

Otherwise, proceed…

IMPORTANT:

What follows is a small collection of short stories set in the universe of the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy, which begins in the novel House of Blades.

If you have not read House of Blades or its sequel, The Crimson Vault, you will not understand the following stories.

It’s okay; it’s not your fault. I understand. You’re still attractive and insightful.

If you were simply browsing the Kindle Store and this book caught your eye, I urge you to close this preview and go check out House of Blades. I’ll wait.

If you’ve already read the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy—or at least the first two books—then come on in, my friend!

These stories are intended to give you a closer look at the Territories and characters we didn’t get to explore in the main trilogy. If you’d rather stick with Simon, Alin, and Leah, I’ll understand! The complete Traveler’s Gate Trilogy is now available, and I hope it meets with your approval.

Still with me? Then buckle up. We’re headed off the map.

Here there be dragons.

Welcome to Elysia, young Traveler.

You will have heard many stories about what it means to be one of us. Do not be fooled. No outsider understands our purpose. They think we are here to lead other Travelers, to make the decisions they cannot.

This is true, and it is not true.

They think we are here as a last resort, as an ultimate power, to keep the Incarnations in check.

This is true, and it is not true.

They think we are here to balance the other Territories, to keep them from obtaining too much power and upsetting the natural balance.

This is true, and it is not true.

What I am about to tell you is known by few, and understood by even fewer: we are not here to lead, or to threaten, or to eliminate threats. In the course of our duties, we will do all these things, but ultimately we are here for a single purpose.

We are here to guide. We are here to lead by example, inspiring other Travelers to live up to their own potential. We should be as beacons in the darkness.

Welcome to the City of Light.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Page 1

Tower of Winter

First, you should observe the Violet Light, which is aligned with Helgard, the Tower of Winter. Many students who came before you have wondered why the Violet virtues of honesty, openness, and genuine expression are linked with this specific Territory. Helgard’s Travelers are scholars, known for their dedication to knowledge, research, and memory. Why, then, are they not linked to wisdom, or even diligence?

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 1: Violet

Donia Sarkis, Traveler of Helgard, had great things ahead of her. Everyone said so. She might be an Overlord one day, when Vasilios stepped down. She might end up as an explorer, braving the unknown dangers of the Tower’s uppermost floors.

Today, it seemed, she was meant to be a nursemaid.

Nikolos shivered in his heavy, fur-lined cloak. He sniffled miserably, his well-bred good looks spoiled by a bright red nose. His sleek blond hair was ruffled by the wind, and he could barely keep his hood up.

“Wait!” he said. “Did you see that?” He stared off into the blowing snow as though he had spotted some danger.

“I don’t see anything but snow, Nikolos,” Donia said, keeping her tone polite. Nikolos was the Overlord’s son, and a bad report from him would haunt her for years. She could not afford to let the Overlord down.

“Regardless, we should wait and watch,” the boy said, sniffling at every other word. “We wouldn’t want to run into an unknown danger.”

Nikolos stumbled through a drift and plopped down on top of a thick, rounded boulder carved like the head of a statue. It was a grossly exaggerated caricature of a face, locked into the expression of a monster about to devour a meal. Its long tongue hung down almost into the snow, baring four pointed fangs at the corner of the mouth.

It looked as if someone had carved a stone statue of a hungry monster, severed its head, and thrown that head on the ground. Donia happened to know the statue’s “neck” actually grew down into the bedrock of Helgard’s fifteenth floor, and there were hundreds of such heads scattered all around the floor. Some were so small they were often covered entirely by snow, though others were the size of a barn.

No one knew the purpose of the heads, though there were theories. Somehow, Donia doubted they were originally intended as benches for spoiled children.

“I seriously doubt we’re in danger here,” Donia said, because she couldn’t help herself. “This floor is well controlled. There are even a few permanent outposts.”

“You never know,” Nikolos said. “We should keep an eye out.” He was hugging himself and staring at the ground, not even pretending to watch for danger.

Nikolos had come up with some excuse to rest every hour since they had entered the Helgard Gate. At first, he was simply “overcome with the natural beauty of the Tower,” and he needed a moment to collect his thoughts. He would insist that he had heard a voice in the howling wind, or that he only needed a moment more to decipher the ancient runes on Helgard’s outer walls. Once, when he caught sight of an icefang shuffling through the snow, he had sworn there was a dead body beneath the powder, struggling to surface. They had to freeze in place, he said, because sudden movements could set it off.

Donia remembered herself at fifteen, so she kept herself polite, though she couldn’t ever recall being so obnoxious. If she was tired, she would have said so. None of this dancing around the subject or making up excuses.

His attitude shouldn’t matter, she reminded herself. He could be a screaming terror, and I’d still have accepted. Jobs like this are a ladder straight to the top.

Overlord Vasilios had insisted Donia should escort his son from his relatives’ estate in Alrin all the way back home to Bel Tara. It was an easy assignment, but one that showed a great deal of trust in Donia. She had only been a Helgard Traveler for a few years, but she was already getting personal assignments from the Overlord.

Annoying as this job might be, she had to prove she could do it.

A patch of glittering snow caught Donia’s attention, lying at the base of a twisted tree. In the right light, it looked as though someone had sprinkled the snow with a handful of crushed diamonds or powdered glass.

She recognized the signs immediately, as any Helgard Traveler would: an icefang lay in wait beneath that shimmering snow.

Icefangs were among the least of the dangers Helgard had to offer, but she had known careless Travelers to lose chunks of flesh to an icefang bite. The creatures were scavengers, usually preying on the sick or the dead. She wondered if Nikolos counted as sickly. They were also highly territorial, and it was entirely possible that she had stepped near this one’s burrow without realizing it.

Donia took a few steps closer to the icefang, away from Nikolos. The beast began to tremble, almost imperceptibly.

She held her middle two fingers together, leaving her other fingers spread out, stretching her hand out to the icefang in a sign of peace.

For a few seconds, the scavenger’s eager trembling stopped as it felt Donia’s imposed peace wash over it. That wouldn’t be enough to stop it, not on its own, but it gave Donia enough time to enact the next step.

Under her breath, Donia whispered the icefang’s name.

Not its personal name, of course. Learning that would have taken entirely too long, and she didn’t have time. Instead, she recited the generic name for the icefang species. It was twelve syllables long, all but impossible to pronounce, and all icefangs would respond to it to some degree.

She had heard it said that being a Helgard Traveler was half research and half rote memorization. In fact, she had spent three-quarters of her time as a student simply memorizing the hundreds upon hundreds of names all Travelers of Helgard were expected to know as a matter of course.

At this point, keeping an icefang quiet required no more effort than walking through the snow.

As usual, when she correctly named a creature, she felt a rush of emotions in return. With more intelligent creatures, she would receive a rush of specific thoughts and memories, but the icefang was little more than a vulture. It felt frustration, deep hunger, and a barely-restrained eagerness to attack the intruders that had dared to set foot in its home.

The peace she had imposed with her sign still lingered in the creature’s mind, and the unnatural calm also gave the icefang a degree of confusion. It wasn’t used to being calm.

As always, the icefang’s emotions weren’t the only things that transferred along the bond. Donia felt her own frustration with Nikolos, her hope to please the Overlord, her fear that she wouldn’t live up to her reputation, and her satisfaction at finally being home in Helgard all flow out of her.

The icefang wouldn’t fully comprehend any of that, of course, but it grew to understand her nature just as she understood it. More than anything, it felt her power and authority as a Traveler of Helgard. It knew she could call up a dozen forces more deadly than itself, and it wanted no part of that.

The glittering snow shrunk two sizes as the icefang cowered in the snowbank.

Nearby, Nikolos heaved a sigh and rose to his feet.

“I suppose I was mistaken,” he said at last. “We must remain vigilant.”

He trudged over to Donia with his hands tucked into his pockets and his blond hair disheveled. The corner of his boot almost scraped the icefang hidden in the snow. Without her interference, it would have taken his foot off.

Nikolos never even noticed.

***

After Donia and Nikolos climbed up the seemingly never-ending ladder leading from the fifteenth floor to the sixteenth, Donia remembered something she had been trying to ignore.

She hated this floor.

The entire thing was one open room, with no trees or hideous statues to break up the monotony. The blue-gray outer wall of Helgard encircled the floor, and without any obstructions, Donia thought she could make out the curvature of the tower, though it was hard to say for sure since she couldn’t see the far wall.

The floor appeared somewhat even, which she knew was an illusion. There was no snow here, and the ground was made entirely of uninterrupted ice. It looked as though the ocean’s surface had frozen during a choppy ocean storm: waves and spikes and curls of ice rose from the surface in a twisting frozen maze.

That was one of the things she hated about this floor. Damasca had a small outpost here, but she couldn’t see it from the floor entrance because of all the waves breaking up her line of sight. She could barely judge distance at all.

The icy floor glowed from inside with a pale greenish light. Perhaps she should have enjoyed that—there were much darker floors in Helgard, after all—but occasionally the light would flicker out, as though something in the depths of the ice had passed briefly in front of the light’s source.

That was a continual reminder of a fact she didn’t want to think about: something lay beneath the ice here, and no one knew what. The older Helgard Travelers had stories, of course, but they had no more idea than she did. Everyone who might know was either dead or insane.

Which brought her to the worst thing about the sixteenth floor: the silence.

From the frozen waves below to the enormous, distant icicles on the roof above—each of which was the size of a lighthouse—there was plenty of space to create air currents. Many of the Helgard floors generated their own weather. But not the sixteenth.

Nothing disturbed the air on the sixteenth floor. Not a breeze, not the call of a bird, nothing. It was the closest to absolute silence Donia had ever endured.

And she couldn’t stand it.

Nikolos cleared his throat, and it sounded like the rumble of thunder. “Quiet here, isn’t—“

Donia clapped a gloved hand over his mouth.

Nikolos’ words echoed softly off the nearby ice. Donia remained tense and alert until the sound died away, then she relaxed. Slightly.

She put her mouth close to his ear and whispered as softly as she could. “What did I say before we climbed up here?” She loosened her hand, giving him a bit of room to speak.

“Quiet,” Nikolos breathed, barely moving his lips.

“That’s right. Better men and women than you, all Helgard Travelers, have made too much noise on this floor and regretted it. Do you understand?”

Nikolos nodded eagerly.

“Now, I’m going to take my hand away, and I want you to remain as quiet as possible.”

When the boy nodded again, Donia took her hand away and turned back toward the field of ice.

A worn, dirty Traveler with a scraggly beard stood not a pace behind her.

Nikolos shrieked, though to his credit he stifled it quickly. Donia’s heart was pounding, but she reacted with more composure, as befit a Traveler of Helgard: she held her right hand out in a sign of aggression, words of summoning on her lips.

The Traveler, whose blue-and-white Damascan uniform was torn to ribbons, held up both of his hands, palms out. The gesture showed he was unarmed and, for a Traveler, showed he wasn’t making any hostile signs.

“No, wait!” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “Help! I need your help!”

Donia looked around, wary of a trap or ambush, though she couldn’t understand why this bait would be necessary if he meant to attack them. The floor was lonely and silent; he and his friends could have jumped on Donia and Nikolos, if such was their intention.

“Where is the rest of your unit, Traveler?” Donia asked.

The stranger shook his head frantically, like a dog trying to shake off water. "Gone," he whispered. "Attacked. Viciously attacked. Please, help me. I can't leave this floor."

Nikolos must have felt the need to interfere, because he said, "Of course you can. We're standing not ten feet from the way down."

Donia ignored him, keeping her focus on the shaken stranger. "What's your name, Traveler?"

"Lukis, ma'am," he responded. "Inspector Lukis, Outpost Sixteen. Listen, I need you to take word back to the first floor. They're here. They're here for the Frozen Ones!"

By the end, his voice had risen until it was more of a scream than a whisper.

"Inspector Lukis," Donia repeated calmly. "Why can't you leave with us?" She had read that you were supposed to remain calm in these circumstances, even though all she wanted to do was bolt back down the ladder that had taken them here. This was more trouble than she was authorized to handle.

With a trembling finger, Lukis pointed down at the glowing ice on which he stood.

At first, Donia saw nothing, and she almost told him so. Then something flickered deep below the frozen surface, like the glimmer of a fish's scales.

Lukis took a step to one side, and the distant gleam followed him.

"What is that?" Nikolos asked, staring down into the ice himself.

"They called it up from the ice," Lukis whispered. "They sent it after me, but it can't get me up here. It can’t break the surface. If I tried to climb down the ladder, I'd have to pass through the ice. It would have me."

"How do you know?" Donia asked.

Lukis shuddered. "I could feel it," he said. "It...called my name."

Donia felt a chill pass through her. Naming a creature of Helgard created a bond between the Traveler and her named companion. With intelligent creatures, it was more a sharing of names, in which both parties learned equally about one another. However, the Traveler always initiated the bond, and it was up to her how far to pursue it. If there was something here that could name them back...

"We'll carry your warning, Inspector," Donia said, trying to project the same absolute certainty she had seen in Overlord Vasilios so many times. "Who's doing this?"

Lukis let out the quietest laugh Donia had ever heard. "They’re some kind of cult, maybe a dozen Travelers. I don't know who they are, exactly, but they killed the rest of Outpost Sixteen before we could even react. They’re ruthless. And they…”

He leaned in close, his eyes flicking from side to side. "They want to raise the Frozen Ones."

Donia cleared her throat. He had mentioned the Frozen Ones before, but she had decided to overlook that. The Frozen Ones were part of an ancient legend of Helgard, and one that seemed to have its basis more in colorful rumor than actual history.

"Believe me," Lukis went on, sounding desperate. "Maybe they’re crazy, I don’t know, but they believe there are beings sealed here, on the sixteenth floor. They've been calling down into the ice for hours, trying to wake up whatever they can. They killed my unit because they need the bodies. They think the blood might help..."

His whispers trailed off, but Donia had no idea what she could say.

"Are they from Enosh?" Nikolos asked, sounding strangely excited. "I've heard the Grandmasters do things like that. You know, blood sacrifice to raise monsters, that sort of thing."

From what Donia had heard of Ragnarus Travelers, the Damascan royal family was more likely to be involved in human sacrifice than anyone from Enosh, but she kept that to herself. The annual sacrifice was cloaked in mystery, and no one outside the Royal Palace in Cana really knew what went on there. It was all way above her, and none of her business besides.

"Not Enosh," Lukis said. "I know all of the Helgard Travelers that Enosh ever sends to this floor. One of them was visiting the outpost when these...cultists tore it down."

Nikolos' face twisted into an expression of revulsion. "How can you stand to be so close to an Enosh heretic? I'd kill them on sight, myself."

Nikolos wasn't a Traveler, and Donia was of the opinion that he would get himself eviscerated before he managed to kill anybody, but she held her opinion close. "Inspector. Are we safe here?"

Lukis chuckled bitterly, though he didn't raise his voice above a whisper. "As safe as we ever are on this floor. They're busy with their ritual, or whatever dark business they have going on, and they're all the way over by the outpost. Where the outpost used to be, anyway. They won't be coming back after me."

"You should stay here, then," Donia said, though she realized immediately her suggestion was useless. Of course he would stay here, where it was safe. What did she expect him to do, run back in and fight the cultists single-handedly?

"In the meantime," she continued, "Nikolos and I will head back down and warn the Inspectors on the first floor. From there—"

"Hold on," Nikolos interrupted. "How long will that take?"

Donia sighed. "Nikolos, surely you can see that—"

"And what will they do about it?"

"They will send Travelers," Donia said impatiently. "A small army of Travelers, with powers at their command you couldn't even pronounce."

Nikolos met her gaze, his eyes more serious than she had ever seen them. "So we climb back down sixteen floors, which will take us hours, if not longer. We convince the Inspectors to send people up to the sixteenth. Even if they believe us without sending someone to look for themselves, how long will it take for them to gather enough Travelers? Not to mention getting them back up here."

"What would you have us do, Nikolos?" Donia asked. She meant it to be mocking, but if he had a real suggestion, she was more than willing to listen.

"There's a route to my father through here, right?" Nikolos said. "That's why we're on this floor in the first place. We should go to him. It's faster, he'll believe me immediately, and we won't need an army. My father alone will be more than enough."

Donia had to admit the boy had a point. She had seen Overlord Vasilios in action, and the man was like a Helgard Incarnation in the flesh. And according to rumor, the Overlords each had artifacts of Ragnarus ensuring they would always be more powerful than their competition. With that kind of weaponry on their side, they would have nothing to worry about. Besides, the Overlord would surely want them to come to him with this.

She turned to Lukis, outlining exactly which crossing they needed to take. "Where is the enemy?" she asked. "Can we cross without running into them?"

Lukis rubbed his gloved hands together nervously. "I couldn't say...I think, if you skirted the center of the floor and headed straight to the crossing, you could open a Gate without them being any the wiser. But there would be no guarantee you wouldn't run into a straggler, or a scout, or somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Donia stared off into the featureless waves of ice, mulling over the situation. It would be safer to go down to the first floor, that was for sure. It was her responsibility to keep Nikolos safe. The safer option wasn't necessarily the right one, though. She wasn't certain whether the Overlord would love her for bringing him the news first, or hate her for taking his son into danger.

As she sometimes did, she pictured herself as she imagined others thought of her: strong, skilled, confident. Always ready with the right answer. That woman would know exactly what to do. She would likely press forward, relying on her own ability to keep them all safe.

Unfortunately, Donia wasn't sure that woman actually existed.

"We will move forward," Donia said at last. Lukis groaned, but Donia continued speaking. "As carefully as we can. If we see anyone, anyone at all, we immediately turn around, no questions asked. Now, Inspector Lukis, are you with us?"

Lukis gaped at her. "Me?"

"We've never encountered this enemy before, we're not familiar with the floor, and the boy here is the Overlord's son. He's not a Traveler."

Inspector Lukis looked Nikolos over more carefully.

"The boy?" Nikolos whined.

"As you can see," Donia went on, "we could use your help."

Lukis glanced from one side to the other as though trying to find his way out of a trap. At last, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Let me show you the way," he said at last.

***

For the first few minutes, the silence of the sixteenth floor was laced with tension. Donia barely took a step without craning her neck to see over a frozen wave, and three or four times she almost called on Helgard's power to destroy a shape that turned out to be nothing more than a flickering shadow.

But Lukis set a pace barely greater than a crawl. He called a stop at any sound, seemingly even the echoes of their own footsteps. An hour into the journey, without seeing any sign of danger, Donia's alarm began to fade, and she started to worry.

Nikolos drifted up to her, seemingly casual, speaking under his breath.

"What do you know about him?" the boy asked, nodding toward Lukis. The Inspector stared intently between two man-sized curls of ice as though expecting someone to materialize inside them.

"Nothing more than you do," Donia said. She had never heard of Lukis before. But then, Outpost Sixteen was one of the most isolated positions in the Tower. The more social or ambitious Travelers avoided it, leaving those who had a reason to stay alone.

"I've been thinking. Isn't this a little suspicious? We haven't seen anything wrong this whole time. We're taking his word about this threat. We're taking his word on where it is. How do we know there are even any enemies out here at all? Even if there are, how do we know he's not with them?"

They were far enough behind Lukis, and Nikolos was speaking quietly enough, that Donia doubted they would be overheard. In truth, Donia thought much the same. Lukis had shown them nothing to back up his claims.

But there was something of an understanding between Helgard Travelers, even between Travelers of Enosh and Damasca. They may be enemies on the outside, and they would work against each other when ordered, but the real danger was the Tower itself. Tradition said she could trust Inspector Lukis.

"I say we trust him," Donia said. "For now. But I'm on my guard."

Nikolos clearly wasn't satisfied, and he seemed on the verge of voicing another complaint.

The ice in front of them exploded.

The frozen wave burst with a sound like a thousand falling trees, bursting into a cloud of ice shards that tore into Donia, tearing through her clothes, slicing her skin.

With well-trained speed, Donia threw her hands up, holding her fingers in the correct signs, and whispered a quick word.

Helgard Travelers collected names and gestures that allowed them to summon, control, and influence the creatures of the Territory. But she was not limited to calling on living creatures.

She held out the signs, whispered the key, and the Tower of Winter answered.

Freezing wind whipped up around them, tearing at the fringes of her coat, throwing her dark hair in her face. In front of Lukis, it was much stronger. So strong that the wind blasted many of the flying ice chunks from the air, blowing them to one side of Donia's group.

Some of the ice got through, drawing lines of burning red on her skin. Far fewer than before, though.

Lukis hadn't reacted as quickly as she had, but he had been closer to the initial explosion. As the ice shards continued to fly, he huddled behind Donia's barrier of wind, curled up on the ground. His torn coat was in tatters now, and he was visibly splattered in blood.

Donia didn't have time to worry long over Inspector Lukis. Three figures appeared in the blowing snow and ice. One of them raised a hand, and the daggers of ice stopped flying.

I guess I owe Lukis an apology, Donia thought. Here were his mysterious cultists.

And they were dressed...exactly as she had imagined.

They wore the typical uniform all Helgard Travelers shared, out of necessity: a fur-lined coat with a hood and thick, warm gloves. Unlike Donia's outfit and Lukis', both of which were blue with white fur, these three wore black coats lined in dark gray fur. The lower halves of their faces were covered by a black mask that, Donia had to admit, looked rather warm.

In another circumstance, the effect might have been silly. They were dressed up like the villains of some bad play, and there wasn't even any reason for it; black was no good for stealth up here. The landscape was white, the light blue-green, and night never fell on the sixteenth floor. Part of her thought they couldn't be serious.

Then she saw the dark stains, glistening against the black of their coats, and she had a disturbing thought.

Those coats wouldn't show bloodstains for long.

One of the figures stepped forward and spoke. His voice was cultured and educated, possibly a wealthy son raised at the heart of Cana. "I'm sorry for that. We can't be too wary out here, you know. We've heard rumors that there might be some Enosh Travelers around here, and we were not as careful as we should have been."

Blood dripped into Donia's eye, and she wiped it away so it wouldn't freeze her eye shut. Anger and fear warred for control.

"You're sorry?" she said. "You could have killed us! You nearly did! Give me one reason why I shouldn't report you to my Overlord. One!"

The lead figure bowed at the waist, inclining his head a fraction. "As I said, it was a misunderstanding. We have heard rumors—"

"We've heard some rumors ourselves, today," Donia said. Fear and anger were still having their match, but anger was leading by a head. "Who are you, and what is your business here?"

He paused, glancing down at Lukis.

"Ah," he said at last. "Rumors. Yes, I imagine you might have heard a few. Well, I have nothing to hide. There is a being sealed in this floor known as a Frozen One. Perhaps more than a single individual. We are here to share our names, perhaps form a bond with this being, as has been the tradition in Helgard since time immemorial."

Casually, Donia slipped her left hand into her pocket, swiftly forming sign after sign. She would have to move quickly, when the time came, so it would be best to do as much of the preliminary work ahead of time as she could.

"And what about Outpost Sixteen?" Donia asked.

Nikolos edged around until he stood behind her. Wisely so, she thought.

The black-coated man shrugged. "Mistakes were made."

That was all.

"Well, I think," Donia began, and before anyone could react, she shouted for her strongest ally.

She called him Rishla, for short, because his full name was fifteen syllables and required years of linguistic training to pronounce. He looked something like a furred serpent, or a long weasel, with pale tan fur and a dozen legs. He was fiercely loyal to her, devilishly intelligent, and one of the most powerful creatures she had ever encountered at the tower. More importantly to her right now, he would come at the sound of his nickname, said alongside the proper signs. She didn't have time to shout all fifteen syllables.

Well, he would normally come at the sound of his nickname.

Creatures of Helgard could hear their name spoken anywhere, especially by their bonded partner. Why wasn't he coming already?

More importantly...

Usually, a battle between Helgard Travelers was a match of who could make their signs and shout the words the most quickly. The three cultists should have been yelling like town criers and frantically twisting their fingers, but they did nothing.

Lukis barely managed to raise himself on one bloody arm, twisting to look at Donia.

"No!" he croaked. "Don't summon...not here."

He collapsed again, his strength exhausted.

The black-coated speaker swept a hand in Lukis' direction. "You heard the man," he said. "But it seems like it's too late."

The light beneath the ice vanished entirely, for one disturbing second leaving the entire floor in complete darkness.

She heard a sound like a cross between a lion's roar and the tolling of an enormous bell.

One of the cultists who had previously remained silent started laughing.

"This floor is sealed by the power of the Frozen One," the speaker said. "We've managed to encourage that much cooperation, at least. Anything that tries to enter is met by his wrath."

Donia didn't respond. Not in words. She crossed the first two fingers of each hand and stuck them out, one to each side.

She spoke a key.

This time, the enemy Travelers sputtered their own keys and began raising their hands in signs. The speaker raised his hands and made a warding gesture, trying to get his key phrase in place.

He was too slow.

A gleaming crystal snowflake the size of a wagon wheel came hurtling out of the distance, spinning through the air, its edge sharp enough to cleave bone. It had formed itself from loose ice and snow, and she could now control its flight with the motion of her right hand.

She whipped her right hand forward to point at the cultist speaker, then brought her left hand in as well.

A second giant snowflake followed.

She didn't know any of the powers associated specifically with the sixteenth floor, but she could use this one anywhere. Very few people in the entire Tower could form two White Razors at once, much less so quickly.

Donia was counting on the surprise.

One cultist called up a burst of wind, blasting a single Razor from the air, but not before it could nick her in the leg. A second cultist dropped to his knees, letting the Razor fly over his head, straight at the speaker.

The speaker spoke the last syllable of his key and stumbled backwards. In front of him, the loose ice-shards rose into the air, forming into a blue-white wall.

The White Razor slammed into his ice-wall in a thunderous collision, sending chips of ice and a freezing wind flying in all directions.

Donia was already forming new signs, speaking the key to her next summons.

The cultists muttered along, doing the same.

Then Inspector Lukis picked his head up once more, thrusting a bloody fist at the ceiling.

He breathed out three final syllables, smiled, and collapsed with his face on the ice.

A crack echoed throughout the sixteenth floor, as though the world itself were breaking. Donia couldn't help but look up...and up...and up...

At the icicles on the ceiling. The icicles that could crush an entire village.

One of them, with its point directly above Lukis, started to fall.

It looked deceptively slow, she noticed, as though it would take ten minutes to reach the ground. And beautiful. It refracted the ambient light of the sixteenth floor with the thousand indescribable colors of the rainbow.

It didn't look anything like incalculable tons of ice rushing toward her at lethal speeds.

All of this flashed through her mind in a single instant before she grabbed Nikolos' arm and hauled him along behind her, running recklessly over the icy surface. She didn't know which way she was going, and she didn't care a bit, so long as it was away from that mountainous hammer of ice.

Ordinarily, she would never have run over this ice. One slip on ice this irregular could mean death at the best of times, and now it certainly would. Mentally, she thanked her father for the gift of the new boots he had sent her last Winter's End. She did not slip, and she did not look back. She kept running.

For a few seconds.

She crested the rise of a frozen wave, dragging Nikolos behind her like a cart behind a horse. She jumped off and almost landed on another Traveler in a black coat.

He had fallen onto his backside, scrambling backwards, face locked on the descending icicle. Donia couldn't blame him. She vaguely noticed a half-dozen other figures, dressed the same as the first, all around her, and a huge red circle painted on the ice.

She would worry about all that after she survived. She ran.

She made it a few more steps before the icicle hit, tossing her from her feet.

Donia slammed face-first into the ice, and the world went dark.

***

She woke to agonizing pain.

Donia's cheek, pressed against the ice, had begun to burn with the cold. She felt like she had been stabbed with a dozen knives, all up the right side of her body. Her hip sent up lances of pain when she tried to move, and it made a disturbing clicking sound.

Worse, she could barely move. She was trapped. Her breath came faster and faster as she rolled her eyes around, trying to see a way out. All she could see, by the light of the dim glow beneath her, was ice: chunks of ice pressed against her face, above her, beneath her, all around. She was buried alive.

The thought brought on a new wave of panic, and she instinctively tried to push herself up with her right hand. As soon as she leaned on her arm, pain shot through her as though someone had crushed every bone in the arm with a hammer.

She couldn't help herself. She screamed.

When her shout faded from her own ears, she realized she could hear voices. Not from far away, either; maybe she wasn't buried as deeply as she thought.

As loud as she could, Donia shouted for help.

Outside, someone cleared his throat. "Someone survived in there," he noted. Donia recognized the voice.

It was the cultist who had spoken earlier. And he wasn't alone; several others muttered along with him.

Just when she had thought things couldn't get any worse.

The thought of other people outside, not far away, actually calmed her down. For the first time, she managed to take a calm look at her surroundings.

Piles of ice, many the size of boulders, had fallen all around her. None of them rested on her directly, for which she was thankful. Several could have crushed her to death.

Upon further inspection, there were gaps here and there around her. She might even be able to lever herself into a sitting position.

Taking a deep breath, and ignoring her pain, Donia wriggled inch by inch up, so she wouldn't have to lie trapped under the ice.

The speaker outside wouldn't shut up, though.

"Was it the lady who made it?" he called. "Do you have the boy with you?"

Donia was having trouble breathing through the pain, but the thought of Nikolos took the rest of the breath from her lungs.

Nikolos was most likely dead. She would have to face his father. Suddenly she wished the collapsing pillar of ice had managed to crush her, too.

"Let me out and we'll talk about it," Donia managed to yell.

"Hmmm...no, I don't think I will," the speaker said cheerily. "Though you couldn't have been more of a help to us, really. All that blood and noise and power flying around. The Frozen One is stirring. He just needs one more push. I'm going to do you a favor; I'll allow you to be one of the first witnesses to the birth of a new Tower."

Donia had a little pride left, so she only screamed at them. She didn't threaten. She didn't beg.

But she was going to die buried alive under a thousand tons of ice; she felt she was due a little screaming.

She had heard nothing but her own shouts for so long that she almost didn't believe it when she heard another sound.

"Um," someone said. "Hello?"

It sounded scared. Vulnerable. Young.

"Nikolos?" she asked, barely willing to hope.

"Traveler Donia? Is that you?"

Donia felt more relief at the sound of Nikolos' voice than she would have ever expected. "Nikolos. You're safe. Are you hurt?"

"I don't know. I...I can't feel my legs." Panic entered the boy's words. "I can't feel my legs!"

It took Donia many long minutes to calm Nikolos down. She was nearly at the end of her road, but giving in to terror wouldn't help anyone. She told Nikolos so.

"They're outside," she told him. "I heard them. They're doing their ritual, and that gives us some time. I'll think of a plan, and as soon as we get an opportunity, I'll get us out of here."

"Okay," Nikolos said, gasping out the word. "Okay."

To her, waiting for an opportunity felt a little too much like doing nothing.

She could call up enough power to shift the ice, but doing so might destabilize the entire pile and crush her. Besides, she had no idea where Nikolos was. Anything she did might kill him. She had some bonded creatures who could dig her out, but her summons had failed earlier.

If she had to, she would try summoning every being of Helgard whose name she knew. She would keep it up until her voice failed her or something got through.

But she wasn't sure what had happened to Rishla when she had tried to summon him earlier. She wouldn't call anything else into an unknown danger until she had no other choice.

The cultists hadn't left. They still spoke with one another outside her frozen prison. Occasionally Donia heard a crunching footstep on the ice, or a single word made oddly clear. Some of them began to chant.

When she yelled, they ignored her. She shouted until her throat hurt and she started coughing, but she never got another response.

That left her sitting there with her injuries, propped up against the bitter cold of the ice. Even through her Helgard training and her thick coat, the chill of the ice seeped into her bones. She needed something to distract her from the cold and the pain.

Nikolos chose that moment to ask a question.

"Traveler Donia?"

"Hm?"

"What are they doing out there?" he asked. "What are the Frozen Ones?"

Donia thought back to her long years in the Helgard libraries, reading through the long history of myths and legends in the Tower of Winter. She had never taken the stories seriously, and comparative mythology was hardly her field, but some of it stuck.

"Stories," she said. "Very old stories."

"True ones?"

"Nobody knows. These Travelers outside obviously think so. There's a legend that says Helgard was once part of a greater world. A world torn apart by unimaginable beings of terror and rage. The men of that world built the Tower of Winter to freeze these things, to keep them asleep for all of time. Now, we call those beings the Frozen Ones."

"So the whole tower is nothing but a big icebox," Nikolos said.

"Right now, I can believe it," Donia replied, pulling her coat closer.

Outside, the chanting of the cultists grew louder. The light beneath her flickered.

Time passed, she wasn't sure quite how much, but Nikolos said nothing. Donia had seen people fall asleep and freeze, here in the Tower. They moved and spoke a little less, and then still less, and finally not at all. It was hard to notice the transition.

If that happened to Nikolos, she would never forgive herself. Forget what the Overlord would do to her; Nikolos was a fifteen-year-old boy, raised by over-indulgent parents, thrust in a situation for which he wasn't prepared. She was responsible for him, and she had put him here.

The pain shooting down the right side of her body didn't matter. She had to keep him awake, aware, and alive until she could find a way to get him out of here.

"Both your parents are Travelers," Donia called.

Nikolos said nothing for so long that Donia's heart dropped, but he finally grunted in agreement.

"Did you never take the tests?"

"...every week since I was ten," Nikolos said. "They put me through every test known to mankind. I've spent the night in Asphodel gardens; I've had a Corvinus raven read my mind; I even hiked up a mountain in Ornheim."

"Not Helgard?" That would be surprising, considering his father was one of the most skilled and powerful Helgard Travelers in the world.

Nikolos laughed for a moment, ending in a gasp of pain. Still, he forced his words out. "Oh yes. Helgard more than anything. They forced me to keep an icefang as a pet for months, to see if I would bond with it. They didn't get rid of it until the third time it chased me up a bookshelf and wouldn't let me come down. Another time, they brought me to the edge of the Badari Desert, and gave me this little frozen goblet. They told me that, if Helgard accepted me, the goblet would fill up with water and I'd be fine. I passed out six hours in, and my father had to get an Avernus Traveler to fly me out."

"Sounds terrible," Donia said honestly. She had to keep him talking. The cold was starting to slice through even her, so she could only imagine how Nikolos must feel.

"It wasn't so bad," the boy said. "If I was a Helgard Traveler, I could become Overlord after my father. Even if I Traveled a different Territory, at least I could do something worthwhile."

"It's not like Travelers are the only ones worth anything," Donia said. "Most people aren't Travelers, and they live perfectly productive lives."

"Yeah," Nikolos said, "let me go and sell carpets for the rest of my life. That's just as good as calling fire from the sky."

He sighed. "Anyway," he went on, "what about you? Did your parents have you tested?"

“Not exactly,” Donia responded. A real conversation, at last. Some part of her was convinced that, if they could just keep talking, everything would turn out all right.

“My mother works for the Seamstress Guild when she can, and my father serves in your household,” she said. “They couldn’t afford to give me a real test. And it would never have occurred to them anyway.”

“Hold on a moment,” Nikolos said. “Is Master Sarkis your father?”

Donia smiled, even though she knew no one could see her. The trust Overlord Vasilios had for Donia’s father was one of the main reasons why she had been trusted with this mission in the first place. And the boy hadn’t even known who she really was.

“He is,” she said.

“Seven stones! I never knew.”

“Well, when I was twelve, your father sent a team of Helgard Travelers to our house, to live with my family while new quarters were constructed. This was a few years before you were born, by the way. One of the Travelers had an icefang with him, crawling along at his feet, and I decided to reach down and pet it.”

She could still see the creature: a clump of snow running along at its master’s heels like a dog, sparkling in the sunlight as if it were covered in diamonds. Something in her had to touch it, as though the icefang itself were calling to her.

“And you survived?” Nikolos sounded horrified.

“Instead of tearing my finger off, it hopped up on my shoulder and wouldn’t leave. Its Traveler couldn’t get it to come off all day.”

Nikolos stayed silent for a moment, then he burst out laughing. Out of instinct, she almost told him to be quiet, but what was the point? He couldn’t wake anything worse than what the Travelers outside were already calling up.

So she might as well keep talking.

“They took me to Helgard immediately for training, though I was still allowed to live with my parents. I spent most of the next fifteen years studying and learning. I wasn’t allowed full access to the Tower until a few years ago.”

In truth, most Helgard Travelers were never allowed to travel freely from floor to floor. They were restricted according to their ability, and most never progressed beyond a certain point.

“I wish I could be like you,” Nikolos said. "Even among Travelers, you stand out. You've got the talent. You've got the skill. I bet you could free yourself if I wasn't here, couldn't you?"

Maybe she could. It wasn't a sure thing, but if Nikolos hadn't been in danger, she would have rolled the dice already. As it was, she couldn't risk his life as easily as she could risk her own.

"It's not like that," Donia said.

"It's okay," Nikolos replied, and he sounded dreamy. Sleepy. "I've given up. You get out of here, you can do it. You'll be okay. My father needs you more...more than he needs..."

Nikolos' voice drifted off into indistinct murmurs.

"Nikolos?" Donia called. "Nikolos?"

No response.

She had to keep talking. Talking might keep him awake, might give him something to concentrate on. It might keep her awake, for that matter.

"It's not as easy as you think," she said. "They give me tasks they would never assign to anyone else, and they expect me to do it. They know I won't fail. So far, I haven't. Not until today. I'm the one who succeeds every time. What will they think when they hear I've died?"

Donia let her voice ramble as she wondered out loud. "What will they think, when word gets out that I died in some random engagement on the sixteenth floor? Will anyone ever tell my parents? The rest of Helgard might have more to worry about soon. Maybe no one will ever know. Maybe I'll be one casualty among many..."

She sat there as her voice died, letting the silent cold sink into her skin.

Outside, the cultists murmured their indistinct chants.

Something tickled at the back of Donia's mind, like a half-remembered dream mixed with a sound out of hearing.

She strained to hear the whisper, to remember the thought.

In her mind, she reached out.

And a tumble of thoughts, ideas, and images blasted into her head, sitting her bolt upright despite the pain. It was more than a simple voice, in the same way a wild forest fire was more than a single color, but somehow she understood.

Go on, it said.

It wanted her to keep talking.

"Who are you?" she asked. On instinct, she glanced around, though of course she saw nothing but ice.

The voice responded.

It sounded almost like words; a string of a hundred syllables somehow shoved into her mind in the space of a heartbeat. But these words carried the image of ice, endless ice, a timeless winter, a green light, an impossibly ancient intelligence forced to sleep and kept from waking for countless thousand years...

...now, finally, roused from its dreams.

The rush of thoughts slammed into Donia's brain, leaving her panting, disoriented, trying to sort words from memories from ideas. It felt like she had managed to read an entire book in half a second, with every word shoved through her at the same time so none of it made much sense. She only caught broad themes, and a few key facts, but something jumped out at her.

He's a Frozen One. I'm speaking with a Frozen One.

The ice rumbled beneath her feet, and the light far below flickered once more.

The thought triggered a wave of fear on pure reaction. She could barely fathom the nature of this thing, any more than she could understand the size of the Tower itself. What little she could piece together scared her more than anything she had ever seen in her Territory.

After a moment, her fear subsided, and rational thought caught up with her once more. The cultists outside had been trying to find and raise the Frozen One, but he had not come to them. He had come to her first.

She could use this.

"I need help," she said. "I'm trapped. Can you help us?"

She was more prepared, this time, as a rush of sensations flooded through her mind. Two strangers, meeting across a frozen plain. Two points as impossibly distant as the stars. An insect and an oak tree, discovering one another for the first time.

I do not know you, he meant. And he was right.

For two beings in Helgard to call upon one another, they had to share not only names, but also the essence of who they truly were. Their histories, their personalities, their secrets. For something like an icefang, a creature of pure instinct, Donia only had to open herself a fraction. But something this intelligent, this powerful, this old...he would know her entirely. Every shameful secret, every painful admission, every stark truth of her personality. He would learn things about her she had never known herself.

Even worse, she would learn about him in return.

Could she handle it?

Once more, Donia pictured herself as others saw her: strong, competent, unfailing. She would not have hesitated to give her name to this frozen elder being, not if it meant rescuing an Overlord's son and destroying a danger to the Tower at the same time.

The real Donia had already hesitated, but that didn't mean it was too late to try.

She took a deep breath.

"My name is Donia Sarkis," she said, and she filled the name with more than just sound. She released her dreams, her ambitions, her hobbies, her fears, using them to add texture to the name until it meant all that was her.

The Frozen One heard her name.

And he heard far more than she had ever meant to say.

She wasn't the best choice to send on the mission with Nikolos, and she knew it. She hadn't told the Overlord because this was her chance to look better in his eyes with very little effort. She remembered, and the Frozen One learned.

Three years before, on Helgard's eighth floor, she had seen a pack of snow bats tear into an Enosh Traveler. She was only twenty yards away, and had tamed a snow bat of her own, and she could have saved him. She was supposed to; all Travelers of Helgard should look out for each other. But she had been afraid of failure, afraid of calling the bats down on herself. And he was from Enosh, after all. No one would blame her. She had stood there, watching his blood stain the snow, frozen. She made no decision, and he died.

The Frozen One learned.

As a student in Helgard, Donia had only one rival. Another girl who, despite an almost pathetic lack of ability to bond with any of Helgard's creatures or powers, still managed to out-score Donia in every test. One night, Donia snuck in and tore random pages out of her rival's textbook.

The Frozen One learned the worst of her. He learned things she had forgotten, that she had pushed out of her memory because they were too embarrassing or painful. He learned the best of her, too: the time when she spoke with Overlord Vasilios and secretly negotiated her father's promotion. The time she had saved a crippled mirka and nursed it back to health, releasing it into the wilds of the fourth floor before it was returned to pulling carts on the second.

Finally, after an endless instant, the Frozen One had learned everything about her. She sagged back against the ice, as exhausted as if she had slogged a mile through hip-deep snow. She wanted nothing more than to let the cold lull her to sleep.

She wasn't prepared when the Frozen One shared his name in return.

It was a thousand syllables pronounced in a second, impossible to memorize, and yet somehow burned into her brain.

The name carried a poem of meaning in each breath: this being was a cog in the wheel of creation and destruction, an agent of change, a lonely force with the job of keeping nature in flux. The Tower of Winter was built around him, locking him in place, robbing him of meaning and power and purpose.

Him and a hundred like him.

He wanted nothing more than to return to his place in his own world. That need burned in him, hotter than a star, more insistent than gravity. But he knew his world was long dead, and only the Tower was left, drifting in time on an empty sea.

Another time, Donia would have been fascinated by these concepts. Here was a being that understood, really comprehended, the nature of the Territories. Or one Territory in specific, at least. And she was sharing his memories.

Another time, she would have given anything for the opportunity to study the Frozen One's thoughts. But at that time, she struggled just to stay conscious.

The Frozen One's story continued until she felt as though she had aged to death, been born again, and aged once more.

It stopped, and she found herself back in the ice, where she had started.

Her thoughts were torn to shreds, like a child shredding a sheet of paper into a thousand pieces and scattering it all over the floor.

Nikolos, she thought, but for a moment she couldn't remember who he was or why he was important.

It's cold. Why was that bad?

My ribs hurt. I'm in danger. The Tower would go on long after her body died. It would drift, stuck between reality, never to end because it existed in a place without beginnings or endings...

What would you ask of me, Donia Sarkis? the Frozen One rumbled. The sleep calls to me. I must rest again soon. Before I do, I want to see something change.

Donia looked down at the ice, completely unsurprised to see a face watching her in return. The eye alone was bigger than she was, set in a rough, craggy, mostly human face somehow leeched of all color. The green light glowed, far below.

His voice was no longer too much to bear. Compared to the thunder of hearing his name, his usual speech was nothing more than a bumblebee's whisper.

"Release me," Donia said. "Save the boy."

She whispered one last, long name.

With a thunderous crack, the ice split beneath her. The huge chunks and boulders of ice that had surrounded her whisked away, hurtled into the distance as though they had been thrown from a catapult.

A single hit from any of those flying bits of ice would have torn chunks out of her flesh. She felt no fear.

Compared to his fear, still burning in her mind, her own was nothing.

She sat up, blinking around at the world. A circle of black-coated cultists stood a few yards away around a circle of red, stumbling backwards and pointing into the air at the flying ice. She looked in another direction, and saw Nikolos' blond hair lying almost at her feet. He had been so close all along.

His chest rose and fell, barely. Hope kindled once more in her chest, though it seemed a tiny, feeble thing, barely noticeable against his loneliness and despair.

But it was enough for her.

Donia turned her head and met the eyes of the nearest cultist.

"Well," he said, and she instantly recognized his cultured voice. "Well, well, well. That's an impressive showing, I know, but—"

Ice cracked beneath the bloody circle, and a huge body shifted beneath the ice. The black-dressed Travelers stumbled backwards. They pointed and started laughing. Some of them cheered in victory. The speaker turned around and rubbed his hands together.

"At last!" he cried.

Donia had the feeling he was about to be drastically disappointed. She pointed.

"Him," she said.

With a sound like a collapsing barn, a blue-skinned fist big enough to grip a horse punched straight through the ice, sending black-coated Travelers flying.

Donia’s blood had frozen on her skin. Her vision blurred, and her thoughts swirled with memories taken from the ancient titan. She wondered if she would survive this. Even if she did, would she be able to open up a Gate and take Nikolos home?

Whether we make it or not, she thought, we still won. She supposed she had accomplished something great today, after all.

Pushing his way through the ice, the Frozen One rose.

To summon a creature of Helgard, you must understand its name, its nature, its very soul. To understand another, you first reveal yourself. To do so is painful, fraught with risk, and highly rare.

It is also the key to the Violet Light.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 1: Violet

The Feathered Plains

Loyalty is a fine attribute, though it is often misunderstood. Some interpret loyalty as nothing more than allegiance to a group or cause, but this is far from complete.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 2: Orange

Denner had never liked Avernus. It was one of the safer Territories, but that only meant it wasn’t always crawling with murderous specters and fire-breathing monsters, and it had plenty of water and fresh air. In Endross or Naraka, drinkable water was far more valuable than gold. As locations went, Avernus boasted some impressive scenery: waving plains, forests of impossibly tall trees, sharp-sided mountains like daggers of stone.

He wasn’t sure what it was about the Territory that irritated him so much. Probably the people.

Denner stood in a high-roofed tent lined with Avernus Travelers. Each of them wore some arrangement of buckskin or hide, decorated liberally with feathers. They clearly meant to imitate the Avernus tribes of old, who had lived off the land in the Feathered Plains and only occasionally stepped out of their Territory.

Unfortunately, these modern Travelers got most of it wrong. One skinny fifteen-year-old kid wore a bear-tooth necklace—bears were not native to Avernus—and a wide-brimmed hat made out of felt. Another woman squinted at him through a pair of spectacles perched on her nose.

The end result was a tent full of people who looked like they had bought their costumes from a shady acting troupe.

Each of them had an owl.

One woman cradled a giant brown owl in both her arms. Another man sported a fluffy black owl on one shoulder, and the woman next to him had a sleek white owl perched on the top of her head.

All the birds stared directly at Denner. He couldn’t escape their huge, unblinking eyes without walking out of the tent.

Maybe this was what he hated about Avernus. There was always a bird watching you.

The High Watcher of the Strigaia tribe sat at a desk directly in front of Denner. She reached up and adjusted the blindfold over her eyes.

“We believe the Halliat tribe has taken our young rebel in an attempt to use her powers against us. We have seen this future. If our rebel remains alive, everything the Strigaia tribe has worked for all these years will count for nothing.”

Denner cleared his throat. “What has the Strigaia tribe worked for all these years?”

“Never mind that,” the High Watcher snapped. Her huge black owl glared at him from over her shoulder.

Denner’s over-sized, leather-bound book shifted under his arm. He pressed his arm tighter against his side, squeezing the covers together.

The book let out a little squawk, but it sounded enough like a bird that Denner hoped nobody noticed.

“Eliminate the rebel,” the High Watcher continued. “Bring proof of her death back to us. You will be compensated appropriately.”

She produced a leather purse and upended it on her desk, spreading gold coins across its surface.

“How dramatic,” Hariman said, from beneath Denner’s arm. Denner held the book tighter, wishing he would shut up for another minute.

Several Avernus Travelers gave Denner odd looks, perhaps wondering how he could speak without moving his mouth. A couple of owls cocked their heads.

Denner barely noticed; he was staring at the gold. How many nights in a real bed would the money buy him? He had been on the road for so long. He could always stay in his bedroom back in Valinhall, but that place had…unpleasant memories for him now. Like most of the others, he stayed away as much as he could.

“Do I have to kill her?” he asked at last.

The old woman raised an eyebrow, which looked decidedly odd behind her blindfold. “I thought I had hired a warrior of Valinhall, not an Asphodel gardener.”

“You haven’t hired me yet,” Denner said, though the gold did look awfully tempting. It did bother him, though, that they simply assumed a Valinhall Traveler would be comfortable murdering some stranger. Was their reputation as bloody as all that?

“As it happens, yes, we do need her killed,” the High Watcher said. “Her sight is too dangerous to simply keep locked away.”

Denner scratched at the stubble on his cheek, debating. “If she can see the future, I don’t see what hope I have of catching her by surprise.”

There were ways, in Valinhall, of evading visions and other forms of supernatural sight. But none that Denner could access on short notice.

The High Watcher waved her hand. “Our sight is not such a convenient thing. I do not anticipate you will have any trouble. We would catch her ourselves, if she were not so close to Halliat land. We are not a match for their eagles in open combat; only by foresight and preparation do we remain safe.”

“What makes you think I’ll be any safer, then?” Denner asked.

“We wish to hire the best,” she said. “And we’ve heard you have something of a specialty in this area.”

Under Denner’s arm, Hariman cackled.

Everyone was staring at the book now, even the blind High Watcher.

“Is your book talking?” she finally asked.

Now, how does she know he’s a book? Denner wondered. Out loud, he said, “Getting him to talk is no problem. It’s getting him to stop that’s the trick.”

Inwardly, he debated for a few more moments. Then he sighed. He was putting off the inevitable.

“Where do I find her?” he asked.

The High Watcher smiled and gave him specific directions. So specific, in fact, that they must have been watching the rebel from afar. Were they sending birds to spy out the land? Or were their powers of clairvoyance that formidable?

“She has short brown hair,” the old woman said. “She will try to stab you at your first meeting. And she will not be wearing the proper uniform of a Strigaia tribe Traveler.”

Denner took that to mean she wouldn’t be dressed like a novice actor in a cheap city play. He bowed to the Watcher. “I will keep you informed,” he said, and turned to walk out.

Hariman’s fussy voice interrupted his exit. “I can’t help but ponder the irony inherent in calling a blind woman the ‘High Watcher.’ Aren’t you rubbing her nose in it a bit too much? Or is it that she’s less manipulative and short-sighted than the rest of your—”

Whatever else the book was about to say was cut off as Denner picked him up and squeezed him between both palms.

Denner offered a shaky grin to the room of insulted Strigaia tribe Avernus Travelers.

“Books, right?” he said, trying to laugh. “You can’t take them too seriously.”

***

Hours later, Hariman was making up for the time he had spent silent by chattering non-stop.

“…so you see, the term ‘Feathered Plains’ is actually a misnomer! The first Travelers to return only saw plains, so they assumed the entire Territory was nothing but a vast stretch of rolling grassland! Naturally, that’s not the case, as was proven by the scholars—”

“We’re proving it right now,” Denner interrupted. He pushed a branch away from his face. “These obviously aren’t plains.”

“Tut-tut,” Hariman said. “Never mistake subjective experience for proper objective proof. It took years of cartography and observation to finally determine that the ecosystem of Avernus is so varied!”

“That, or a single Traveler with open eyes.”

The forest around them had everything Denner would have expected in ordinary, mundane woods: blooming trees, a green canopy, a carpet of fallen leaves, scattered underbrush. But everything here seemed to be scaled for giants.

The fallen leaves were the size of bedsheets, the berries on nearby bushes bigger than Denner’s head. The trunks of the thinnest trees were wider around than a ballroom, and the canopy was so far overhead the leaves might as well have been a green, sun-dappled sky.

The branches Denner pushed away from his face were attached to bushes the size of ordinary trees. On the scale of this forest, they might have been weeds.

“At least they got the ‘feathered’ part right,” Denner said. He meant it idly, but he knew Hariman would respond. Hariman never passed up the opportunity to lecture.

“Yes, indeed they did!” Hariman said brightly. “Every observed animal native to Avernus is some kind of bird. There are the birds of the five main tribes, of course, but thousands of others, many of which remain undocumented even today! What an exciting Territory this is!”

A swarm of small, blurring forms the size of mosquitoes flew out of a nearby bush, pausing to hover in a flock over Denner’s head. As he got a closer look, he realized they weren’t bugs at all, but some kind of tiny black hummingbird.

Something rustled the leaves of the canopy overhead, and Denner craned his neck to look up. High above, a beaked head pushed its way down through the leaves. Its feathers were the color of flame, and its beak looked long and sharp enough to stab through bear hide. It cracked its beak and let out a ‘caw’ that actually shook the ground under Denner’s feet.

The ambient noise that usually filled the forest, the chirps and songs and rustling of leaves and feathers, went silent.

The giant bird at the top of the forest glanced around, then slowly withdrew its head. Its beak slid out of sight, like a dorsal fin disappearing under the ocean.

“Hariman,” Denner muttered, “how big do you think that thing was?”

“At this distance?” Hariman asked, making no effort to keep his voice down. “It’s hard to say. How are we to know how far away those leaves are? More than big enough to swallow you whole, for certain. If Manyu was around, I’m sure he could tell us precisely.”

“That’s okay,” Denner said wearily. “I don’t need to know any more precisely than that.”

Maybe Avernus wasn’t as safe as he’d thought.

Hariman’s gold face, engraved on his front cover, squinted off into the distance. “I thought you might want to know,” he said, “we are about to cross over into Halliat lands.”

“How do you know?”

“Those feathers, on that tree next to the red bush.”

Denner looked, and saw a bundle of white feathers nailed to the bark.

Hariman chattered on, “Three feathers, the middle one reversed, means that—”

Something caught the edge of Denner’s hearing, and he clapped a hand over Hariman’s face.

In his mind, he reached out to Valinhall, to a stone tablet engraved with the stylized image of an eye.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, he saw the world through a red haze. The forest floor was dull, almost rusty, while the trees had veins of ruby running through them. The birds, hidden in the underbrush, were brighter still.

From past experience, he knew the symbol of an eye—an exact match to the image on the tablet—would have appeared in the center of his forehead. His would be drawn in red light, which he supposed explained why he saw the whole world in red every time he called the third eye. Valin’s had been purple, and if he remembered correctly, Kathrin’s was blue.

Denner slowly turned his head, scanning the woods; turning too quickly would give him a splitting headache. After only a few seconds, he spotted what he was looking for: a mass of bright red, seething light.

As best he understood it, the third eye allowed him to see life. The more energy a living being had, the brighter they showed up. Plants were dull, and lifeless stone all but invisible, though humans blazed like stars.

A human like the one trying to hide herself behind a nearby tree.

Denner banished the third eye. He could have held onto it longer, but it would take five or six hours to recharge already, and the longer he held it the more time it would take to return. Besides, banishing the eye always gave him a splitting headache, and he wanted to get over the pain as much as he could before this woman tried to ambush him.

“What is it?” Hariman demanded. “What’s wrong? I can tell something’s wrong, I’m not an idiot.”

Denner sighed. “I thought I heard something, Hariman. I checked it out, but I was wrong. It was nothing.”

Deliberately, Denner turned his back on the hiding woman and began to take loud, heavy steps back the other way.

“You really don’t need to be so paranoid, you know,” Hariman said. “I don’t think it would kill you to simply let yourself relax and enjoy your exotic surroundings. There’s much to be learned in Avernus. For instance, did you know if you ate a berry from that bush behind you, you would grow feathers instead of hair? It’s true. I once knew…hold on. Who is that?”

Denner turned, calling stone. The power of Valinhall hardened around his skin, defending him, in case this woman was as dangerous as the High Watcher suspected.

He caught sight of her, with her hands empty and open, her knife sheathed at her side, and he realized she wasn’t a woman.

She was just a girl.

Maybe fifteen, at most, scrawny and underfed and covered in more scrapes and bruises than clear skin. Her hair was hacked short, as though she had cut it loose with her own knife.

She stared at Denner with a determination so fierce it looked almost like anger.

“I didn’t stab you,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“They said I would stab you, didn’t they? Well, I didn’t.”

“I appreciate that, thank you,” Denner said politely. Privately, he wondered why the High Watcher hadn’t mentioned that their ‘rebel’ was little more than a child. Had she been trying to trick him? Had the girl’s age not mattered to her? Or had she expected it not to matter to Denner, because he was a bloodthirsty killer of Valinhall?

No matter what, he was going to have a few words for the Watcher when he returned.

“Just a moment,” Hariman said. “This is the dangerous rebel of the Strigaia clan? I hope she’s more dangerous than she looks.”

“My name is Keiren,” she said. “And yes. There’s a lot more to us than you think.”

“Us?” Denner asked, but he should have known better.

A shadow passed over Denner’s head, and he instantly summoned his Dragon’s Fang. Like most of the other Fangs, Diava was curved and sharp along only one edge. Its hilt was wrapped in red-and-gold thread, and a line of spidery script ran up the flat of the blade. It was a normal, comfortable length for a sword—nothing like Kai’s seven-foot monstrosity.

With Hariman tucked under one arm and Diava gripped in his other hand, Denner crouched and raised his eyes, ready to strike a bird from the sky.

A brown-and-white owl glided silently overhead, lighting on Keiren’s shoulder. The bird scowled at Denner and gave him a single, disapproving hoot.

“Us,” Keiren said.

“You see what I mean about paranoia?” Hariman put in. “We need to work on your nerves.”

Feeling somewhat silly, Denner relaxed, releasing the stone amulet—its power was about to run out anyway—and banishing his sword.

“We’ve seen you already,” Keiren said. “Standing there. Sent to kill us. Do you even know why?”

“I don’t think it’s my job to ask,” Denner said. He had taken money for this kind of thing before, but he was usually hired to kill enemy commanders on the battlefield, or stop out-of-control Travelers. Not to kill a girl who had run away from home.

Keiren absently stroked her owl’s head, but they both continued staring at Denner, absolutely serious. “Strigaia owls, and therefore Travelers of the Strigaia tribe, have visions,” she said. “You know that.”

“Everyone knows that,” Denner said. That was all anyone did know; everything else was shrouded in typical Traveler mystique.

“It’s not as convenient as you think,” Keiren went on. “You can’t decide what you want to see, whenever you want to, like opening a book. Each Traveler sees something different. The High Watcher, for instance, sees gold.”

“Gold?” Denner asked. “Like, veins of gold? Gold mines?” That would explain why she was willing to spend so much money to hunt down one rebellious girl.

Keiren and her owl rolled their eyes at the exact same time, which was more than a little creepy. “Not just gold. Money. Currency. She sees visions of times when buying something will affect her future. She probably saw herself handing you coins, so she knew she would—or maybe should—hire you. Do you see?”

“Apparently you’re the ones who see,” Hariman quipped, laughing at his own joke. “You get it? See?”

Denner sighed.

“It’s not all that useful,” Keiren went on, ignoring Denner’s advisor. “Most of the tribe only sees very specific things. One of my best friends could see the positions of the stars anytime. If he concentrated on a day in the future, he could see what the stars would look like that night. It was more helpful for predicting the weather than anything, since he knew whether it was going to be cloudy. My father could predict down to the hour when the latrines would need emptied. It wasn’t glamorous, but he saved us from disease more times than we’ll probably ever know.”

Keiren stared off into the forest, her face growing distant. Her owl nuzzled into her head, hooting softly.

Denner waited a few more seconds, then cleared his throat. Keiren and her bird turned back to look at him. They blinked at the same time.

“No one of us is too useful on our own,” Keiren continued. “Our visions are too limited. But together, we can shape the future.”

Denner looked into the giant forest, thinking over the girl’s words. This was getting far too troublesome for him. There were too many factors at play here that he did not, and could not, understand. He never should have taken a bargain with the Strigaia in the first place, but last night he had boiled stolen heads of wheat to make a thin soup. The coins were too appealing.

Hariman squirmed under his arm, and Denner let him speak. “Pardon me, but there seems to be an inconsistency in your story. If Strigaia visions are as limited as you claim, why should the tribe care about you? Surely you can’t pose a threat on your own.”

Keiren’s owl sighed and shook its feathered head, like a teacher exasperated by a stupid pupil. The Traveler smiled and stroked the bird’s head. “I see Travelers,” she said. “Not just Avernus Travelers. I see Travelers from all different Territories, and I see them in moments where they will have to make an important decision. I’ve seen the King several times, deciding whether he will personally ride to battle. I’ve seen Grandmaster Helgard deciding whether to step down, and Overlord Indirial considering whether or not to train his daughter. I’ve seen you, Valinhall Traveler, standing in front of a tree, deciding whether to kill me or speak to me first.”

Denner stared at her, stunned. No wonder the High Watcher wanted this girl dead so badly. In any conflict, Travelers were the most valuable resource. If one side could read the decisions of the enemy Travelers before they were even made…well, Denner would rather have Keiren’s power on his side than two dozen Naraka Travelers calling fire from the sky.

As he stood there, trying to digest the full implications of this girl’s ability, his mind latched onto the one least significant aspect of his situation: he was being rude.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I never introduced myself. I’m Denner Weeks.”

She cocked her head at him, the same way Kai always did.

“That’s not your name,” she said.

Denner fought back a chill. “It is now,” he responded, as firmly as he could.

There was a long silence apart from the chirping of a thousand birds. Overhead, a giant limb shook, as though something had landed on it.

“Ahem,” Hariman said, “while this has been interesting and everything, we really should move this along. Either kill her or let her go, Denner.”

“The book’s right,” Keiren said. “You have another decision to make. I’ve already seen the results of trying to run from you. I can’t do it. My only chance is to persuade you face-to-face.”

Denner had killed more people than he cared to remember, and he had more dead friends than live ones. But he didn’t consider himself much of a murderer. He wanted an excuse, any excuse, to let this girl go free.

But he was also a man of his word. So that excuse would have to be a good one.

“Why did you run away?” Denner asked, at last.

Keiren raised her head to stare into the trees. Denner was struck once again by how lost and alone she looked: her face was caked with dirt, her hair ragged and hacked short, her clothes barely holding together.

“I’d be happy to answer you,” she said, “but it looks like we’re out of time.”

Denner looked up himself, and saw what he had already begun to expect: huge white eagles, the mounts of the Halliat tribe, had landed on most of the limbs in view. He could count six mounted Halliat-tribe Travelers without even trying, and he knew more must be on their way.

But he was still a Valinhall Traveler, and these were Avernus. Maybe Endross or Tartarus could have posed a threat. He had to admit being a little nervous—no battle was certain, no matter how overwhelming it appeared—but he doubted his story would end in this feather-strewn forest

“We have time,” Denner said calmly. “Tell me.”

Beneath his arm, Hariman chuckled.

Keiren glanced nervously up at the trees, then around at the underbrush, as though looking for an opportunity to flee.

Denner stayed where he was. He could catch her easily enough if he wanted to, and she knew it.

“One day the red trees will die, and the Incarnations will be free once again,” Keiren said at last.

Denner’s heart froze. She shouldn’t have known enough to say that. He supposed he should stop underestimating the girl who could see the future.

“The Strigaia tribe has known this for years,” she went on, keeping both eyes on the Halliat Travelers in the trees. “They think the Incarnations breaking free will mean a world free of Ragnarus’ control, that the world will be restored to its natural order. We’ve all been raised to agree. My parents believe it. My teacher believes it. I was raised here in this Territory, so all my friends believe it.”

Hariman made a choking sound.

Denner probably sounded the same way. “Why would anyone want the Incarnations free?” he said. “Do you have any idea how many people would die?”

“Do you?” Keiren challenged. “I’ve seen it. They will escape, I can’t see anything we can do to stop that. But we might be able to do something about the Incarnations after they’ve broken free.”

“What?” Denner asked. He had seen an Incarnation before, and he had no desire to repeat the experience.

Keiren shrugged, almost dislodging her brown-and-white owl, who flapped its wings for balance and hooted indignantly. “I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out. For now, I have to get away.”

A deep male voice called down from the trees. “Outsider,” he said. “We are taking the Strigaia girl. Do not resist and we will allow you to leave.”

Seemingly on instinct, Keiren took a step backwards, her face twisting in fear. “What are you going to do, Denner?” she asked, keeping her eyes locked on the Halliat eagles.

There was only one decision he could make, really. Even when he’d been played like a game piece, it burned him to go back on his word, but there was nothing else he could do.

Denner summoned Diava.

The Dragon’s Fang shimmered like a heat haze as it materialized, its weight comforting in his hand.

“I can find you a home in Damasca,” Denner said. “I’m friends with an Overlord, after all.”

Keiren gave him a relieved smile. “Thank you,” she said, “but I can’t. Everyone I know is here. I can’t leave them, even though they want me to. When they succeed, they’ll suffer under the Incarnations as much as anyone. I have to help them, even if they kill me for it.”

Her determined resolve made her look much older. She had clearly made up her mind.

“What a surprise,” Hariman said, “Strigaia Travelers being foolish and short-sighted even though they can see the future.”

“I think you made that joke already,” Denner said.

“Who’s joking?”

“Last chance, outsider,” the Halliat Traveler roared from overhead. One of the giant eagles shrieked, and Denner winced at the sound. “Walk away! We’re taking the owl girl with us.”

Denner used Diava to gesture into a bush big enough to hide an entire house. “Get in there and hide until the fight’s over,” he said. “If you see a chance, run.”

Keiren crawled under the bush, but she hesitated before she disappeared completely into the leaves. “Do you know a man, about your age, who has white hair? He may or may not be carrying a doll?”

A shiver ran down Denner’s spine. “I think I know who you’re talking about.”

Hariman snorted. “Ha!” he said. “You think?”

Keiren licked her lips. “At some point, he’s going to have to decide whether or not to take an apprentice,” she said. “Tell him he should.”

She seemed shaken by something, above and beyond the eagle-riding Travelers about to descend from the sky, so Denner gave her a smile. “I will,” he said reassuringly.

Keiren stood up, grabbing his forearm in both her hands. “This is important,” she said. “He really, really should take an apprentice.”

Denner pulled his arm away, trying not to show how uncomfortable he felt. He was used to Traveler work, but he could never relax around someone predicting his future. It was unnatural.

“I’ll tell him,” he said. “I promise.”

“Stay where you are!” The Halliat Traveler roared from overhead, and Denner sighed.

He was going to have to deal with this troublesome situation after all.

He called steel.

Instantly, the chains began crawling up his forearms. They may have looked like shadows, but they felt like real chains, and they grew link by link as they slithered up the backs of his hands and around his wrists.

At the same time, the steel flowed through him like an icy river.

Three of the white Halliat eagles were lifting off from their branches high overhead. One of the birds carried a huge Traveler with a feathered leather helmet on over his head. He held a spear in one hand. Denner presumed he was the one who had spoken.

Denner jumped.

He didn’t have the increased speed he had seen Indirial and Valin use, but he was fast enough on his own. Agile as a cat, he hopped from tree trunk to tree trunk, steadily leaping higher until he reached one of the lowest branches.

Before the Travelers could react, Denner was among them, staring an eagle in the face.

He jumped again before the bird could bite his nose off, landing on a higher branch. The huge Halliat flier was hovering only six feet away; from this position, Denner could speak with him over his bird’s flapping wings.

But the other Traveler was still staring below him, at the spot where Denner had stood only a moment before.

“Over here,” Hariman called.

The big Traveler’s head spun around, and he found himself staring at Denner from only a few feet away. From his perspective, the scene must have been quite strange: Denner had climbed up these huge trees in an instant, and here he was, wearing a travel-stained brown cloak and carrying an enormous red-and-gold book and a long, gleaming sword.

“What…what tribe are you with?” the Traveler demanded, though his voice was shaky. He sounded much less intimidating now that he wasn’t shouting. “Are you Gendo?”

As Denner often had to remind himself, most Travelers had never heard of Valinhall. The Strigaia were something of an exception, he supposed, since they could see into the future.

“I’m not an Avernus Traveler,” Denner explained.

“Of course not!” Hariman said contemptuously. “Do you see a bird anywhere? Honestly, doesn’t anyone think anymore?”

“I’ve been hired by the Strigaia tribe,” Denner continued. “We’ll take care of the runaway girl in our own way. Leave her alone.”

The Halliat man frowned in confusion. “But it was one of your owls who told us where to find her. You said we’d have a chance to do whatever we wanted with her.”

“Playing both sides of the board, eh?” Hariman said. “Both short-sighted and manipulative. This is truly a shock.”

“You really need to get some new jokes,” Denner said to his advisor. He looked back to the Halliat eagle-rider, who was staring at Hariman in some confusion. Why were talking books always so much of a surprise?

“Back away, and this doesn’t have to end in violence,” Denner said.

The Halliat Traveler’s face hardened.

Denner sighed. Then, with the strength of Benson’s steel, he leaped forward.

The white eagle squawked and flapped its way backwards, but it wasn’t fast enough. Denner landed on its back and grabbed the Traveler by his collar. With one hand, he hauled the man over the towering drop to the forest floor.

The Traveler kicked and screamed, and the eagle bucked under Denner’s feet, but thanks to the steel he ignored it all.

“I’d still rather this not end in violence,” Denner pointed out.

The other Traveler nodded vigorously, his feathered helmet flapping.

“I love to see a peaceful resolution,” Hariman said. “This reminds me of one of Valin’s first battles after…”

Denner let him ramble. With any luck, the eagles would fly away that much faster to escape the lecture.

***

When the High Watcher felt her way into her tent that night, using a cane to feel her way inside, Denner was waiting for her.

“You didn’t tell me she was a girl,” Denner said. He didn’t sound as angry as he felt.

The High Watcher froze, fear flashing across her face.

The mighty warrior of Valinhall, Denner thought, assassin of children and bane of blind old women everywhere. Angry as he was, he still had to fight an urge to help her into a chair.

After only a second, she mastered herself, and her cane came down to rest on the ground. “Her age should not have mattered to you, killer that you are,” she said. “We told you enough to recognize her. Isn’t that enough?”

Denner’s anger flared up again. That was how she saw him, was it? Willing to kill anyone, anytime, with or without justification?

He supposed she had reason to think so. Valinhall had a certain reputation, after all.

And that reputation was not without its uses.

“Well, she’s dead,” he said. “Give me my money.”

The High Watcher nodded, though she was looking at the wrong corner of the tent. “Do you have any proof?”

“No,” Denner said.

He summoned Diava, laying it across his lap. He knew she wouldn’t be able to see it, but he had prepared for this eventuality: he pulled an ordinary rock out of his pocket.

He began to draw the rock across his sword. It produced the distinctive ring of a blade being sharpened.

Diava was made of Tartarus steel, tempered in the forges of Valinhall. He couldn’t sharpen it; all this would accomplish was grinding down the rock.

But it sounded intimidating.

For about half a minute, Denner sat there, drawing the rock across his blade, filling the silence with the sound of steel on stone.

Then the High Watcher pulled out her purse.

You show true loyalty when you remain dedicated to those who have turned their backs on you. If they reject you, you need not reject them in return.

One may remain loyal to a cause even when all others have forsaken it.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 2: Orange

The Crystal Fields

A Traveler of Lirial would tell you that intelligence and quick wits are the most valuable tools in the Crystal Fields. These are indeed admirable traits, but a would-be master of the Silver Light requires something deeper.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 3: Silver

This story has been passed down to Lirial Travelers since the dawn of Elysia itself. As it was told to me, so I will tell it to you.

This is the story of Korriphus, the best of all Lirial Travelers. He was known as a wise and learned man who served the Elysians well. It was he who gave us the first moon charts, who outwitted the first Lirial Incarnation, and who organized teams to explore the tombs of the Daniri, seeking their treasures. Truly, he was a great man.

And none knew the greatness of Korriphus better than Korriphus himself.

In those times, Lirial Travelers were plentiful, so they built cities for themselves among the Crystal Fields. One day, a white ape with six eyes walked into the greatest city in Lirial, where Korriphus ruled. None had ever met this ape, but they treated him with respect, for Lirial Travelers know better than most how wise it is to show respect to strangers.

The ape called himself Seliethin, and he was most interested in Korriphus.

"Who is this Korriphus?" he asked people in the city streets. "Is he worthy of rule?"

"He is the best of us," the people responded. "He reads the moons like ink on a page! He punishes and rewards with an even hand! When his own son spoke against his rule, he punished the boy according to the law, with no favoritism. Naraka Travelers come to him for justice! There is none more worthy of rule."

"I see," Seliethin said. "He rules fairly, then. But is he strong?”

“Strong as the mountains themselves. He Traveled deep into Ornheim and, on his own power alone, subdued a hundred golems. He brought them back here to raise the very walls you see around you. When the black army rose up in Tartarus, he drove them back into the Labyrinth before the Elysians heard a word of unrest. Lirial is not known for its strength of arms, but Korriphus is the one exception.”

“So it seems,” Seliethin said. “Very well, he is strong and just. But is he wise?”

“Wise?” the people cried. “Look no further for wisdom! He has raided the libraries of Helgard, bringing back their books for our own study. He devised the most intricate mechanisms for keeping our precious Sources hidden. He is on the very brink of deciphering the language of the Daniri themselves.”

Seliethin pondered for a long time. Finally, he shook his head.

“This Korriphus sounds like a learned man indeed,” said the ape. “He does not, however, strike me as wise.”

The people were shocked at Seliethin’s words, but none more so than Korriphus himself. When rumor reached him that a stranger had questioned his wisdom, he sent for Seliethin immediately. You see, Korriphus took his appearance very seriously, and to challenge Korriphus’ reputation was to challenge Korriphus himself.

When Seliethin was brought before him, Korriphus first tried to reason with him. “It has come to my attention that you doubt my intelligence,” he said. “This troubles me greatly.”

Seliethin bowed. “My lord, it is not your keen mind I doubt, but rather the use to which you put it.”

No one else had ever questioned Korriphus’ wisdom, but he was determined to remain polite to Seliethin’s face.

“How may I prove to you my wisdom?”

“Fortunately, my lord, there is a simple test,” Seliethin said. “The Daniri left a riddle behind, as they left so many other things, and we may use it to better ourselves. I am told you are close to deciphering the Daniri tongue?”

Korriphus waved a hand lazily in the air. “I have yet to properly apply myself. I am sure the solution is not so complex as most believe.”

“Then this puzzle shall not trouble you long. When you solve it, you shall find me among your most vocal supporters.”

“Very well,” Korriphus said. “Show me your riddle.”

Seliethin, Korriphus, and a team of Korriphus’ closest friends and advisors set out that day, guided by the six-eyed ape. They rode for an entire cycle of the moons before they found themselves in front of the smallest Daniri tomb Korriphus had ever seen. It was only a single obelisk, sticking up out of the gray dust of Lirial, covered in the writing of the Daniri people.

“Tell me what words are written upon this stone,” Seliethin said. “You may use any means at your disposal. Only when you find the answer to this riddle will I call you truly wise.”

Seliethin bowed to Korriphus and left, vowing to return in one year’s time for the Traveler’s answer.

In the first year, Korriphus rallied the top scholars of Lirial. They spared no expense in attempting to decode the language of the Daniri, and to some degree they succeeded. It is thanks to their work that we can now read the marks on the outside of many Daniri tombs.

But when the year ended and Seliethin returned, Korriphus was no closer to reading the words on the stone. He made three guesses, and when none of them were correct, Seliethin left once more. Again, he promised to return after one year had passed.

The next year, there was a famine in Lirial. Some of the underground mushroom farms had failed to produce a full yield, and blight had struck many of the flocks. The people turned to Korriphus for a solution, but he had nothing to give them.

“If I am not wise enough to solve the riddle of the stone,” he said, “how can I be the one to solve your problems? Go, turn to another for answers.”

His advisors rationed the remaining crops, and the city was saved, but Korriphus hardly noticed. Another year passed with Korriphus still unable to read the stone.

This time, when Seliethin arrived, Korriphus challenged him. “What do you know of the Daniri secrets?” he mocked. “You are an ape from the gray wastelands of Lirial.” He arranged a hundred puzzles and riddles in front of them, and dared Seliethin to solve even half of them, if he was worthy.

Seliethin bowed before him. “My lord, I am secure in my own wisdom. Are you? What does the stone say?”

Korriphus had no answer. Once more, Seliethin left.

This time, Korriphus promised a fortune in gold and powerful artifacts to any Traveler who could bring him the key to the stone’s secret. Lirial Travelers are not immune to greed, and they spread out into the unexplored wilds of Lirial. Even Travelers of other Territories came to Lirial, eager to try their minds against the riddle that had bested the famous Korriphus.

That year, a rebellion rose against the Travelers of Elysia. Their ruling council sent to Korriphus, asking for Lirial Travelers (for in those days, the Lirial Travelers served and supported the Elysians without question). Korriphus had few Travelers of any worth to give them, for all his best and strongest were out of the city, trying to solve Seliethin’s riddle.

At the end of the year, Seliethin returned. This time, Korriphus had a dozen possible answers to lay before him, but the ape rejected them all.

“I see why men call you learned,” Seliethin said. “I fail to understand why they also call you wise. In one year, I will return.”

The ruling council of Elysia was not pleased at Korriphus’ poor support in their time of need. That year, they sent Elysian Travelers into Lirial, where they removed Korriphus from power and put another in his place.

By that time, Korriphus did not care. He brought a tent into the endless gray sands, making his home outside the Daniri obelisk. Some of his old friends and servants brought him food every once in a while, and thus he passed the rest of this life, meditating each day on the stone’s words.

Every year, Seliethin came from his distant home to challenge Korriphus. And every year, Seliethin left, saying the Traveler was not yet wise.

In this way, Korriphus came to the end of his allotted years.

As Korriphus lay dying, his sightless eyes staring up at ancient words he had long since memorized, he heard Seliethin approach one last time.

“Please, before I die, tell me the answer,” Korriphus said. “Is it a map? Is it nothing more than nonsense? What have I done wrong? Tell me, before I leave this world forever.”

Seliethin placed one of his hands on Korriphus’ bony shoulder. “It is an old Daniri proverb. A warning, to men such as you and I. ‘Wise men seek understanding so that others might gain. To pursue knowledge at all costs is the mark of a true fool.’”

So Korriphus died, and the wind buried him at the foot of the prize he had chased for so many years. There are those who say he lies there still.

Even now, when many of his accomplishments are lost and gone, the warning of Korriphus remains, etched in a forgotten language onto a spire of stone. Let us not forget his lesson, lest we must learn it anew.

Intelligence without wisdom is like a sword without a hilt: it will bring you only harm.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 3: Silver

Gardens of Mist

Compassion, tied to the Rose Light, is also the virtue most necessary for leading Travelers of Asphodel. To protect their minds, they cut themselves off from each other. This is understandable, perhaps, but it is also a tragic weakness. If we are to heal them, we must first show them what they lack.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 4: Rose

Today, I learned why Damascan magistrates don’t accept eyewitness testimony gathered in Asphodel.

It’s not like I didn’t know what could happen to people out in the Mist. I’ve lived in the Gardens my entire life. I was born here, in a hollowed-out tree on the edge of the Midnight Fields. Every day, I step out of my door and walk into the Mist without a second thought. I’m not rich enough for a carriage, and I have to get to work somehow.

I give the Mist nothing to feed on, so it can’t touch me. My emotions are my own, locked up and held tight until I’m back between four walls. I’m no Traveler, bending the Mist to my will, but I know how to survive. So it always surprises me a little when someone vanishes into the forest and is never heard from again, except as a drifting voice on the wind.

Don’t they know any better?

It’s not fair of me, I know, but I expect everyone to know the rules of Asphodel like I do.

First, you don’t walk into the Mist unless your mind is clear as good glass. When I walk outside, I’m a saint in human skin. You couldn’t get a rise out of me if you stabbed me through the foot.

Second, you don’t stop and smell the flowers. The bigger and brighter the blossom is, the more it wants to eat you. Nobody survives a day in the Midnight Fields unless they learn this lesson.

Third, you don’t trust anything you see in the Mist. Not ever.

It’s hard for some people to remember the last rule, which I guess I understand. If you can’t depend on your own eyes, how do you know what’s real?

The answer: you don’t. But it’s easy to forget that.

Which is what killed Adrian Corydon.

I never had a problem with Adrian. He was about forty years old, and had been working in the Fields ten years longer than even I had. He rescued me one day, when I was foolish enough to let myself get distracted by a herd of wild bulls and forget I was standing in a patch of purple blossombells. They had dissolved through my shoes and started digesting my ankles by the time Adrian pulled me out, and I never felt a thing.

Even when the pain set in, I didn’t scream. I didn’t allow myself to think about my shredded, bleeding feet. I knew better; the Mist was all around.

So anyway, I remember Adrian as a good man. Not everyone thought that way.

Adrian tended to get a little angrier than he should, a little more stressed. He let the work in the Fields get to him, and sometimes he raised his voice in the middle of the Mist. One time, he staggered into our work site, stole another man’s hoe, and waved it in the air while screaming about how his wife didn’t respect him. He had a bottle in his other hand, and I had no doubt what it contained. Adrian was partial to a particular recipe of nasty liquor made of yellow starvine sap. It was cheap, he could brew it at home, it burned like a bonfire, and yellow starvines were known to produce the most pleasant hallucinations of any of the flowers in the Midnight Fields.

That was only one of the Adrian stories that floated around my work pool like kites on the wind. Adrian was a big, bearded man, and he threw his weight around even where he shouldn’t. Some people resented him. Others wondered about his wife, Phelia. Was she safe? Did he hurt her? Maybe we didn’t see her as often as we should…

Looking back, it was all a recipe for some kind of disaster, but I didn’t notice at the time. I tended my own garden, as they say in Asphodel, and let everyone else tend theirs. I keep to myself as much as I can. I’ve been that way for years, ever since my own wife left me for a merchant back in Damasca.

“It’s not you,” she said. “It’s this place. It does things to you. It’s not natural.” She walked through a Gate, and I never saw her again.

I wanted to feel something, but I didn’t. The Mist was excited that day, and I knew I shouldn’t stretch my luck.

You’re right, I should get back on track. Adrian Corydon. I was sleeping when it began.

Someone pounded urgently on my door, which woke me immediately. No one’s ever urgent in Asphodel. There are other things in Asphodel, worse than the Mist, and they’re attracted to signs of panic.

I still live in the hollowed-out tree I inherited from my parents, and it’s not a big one. I barely had to roll out of my hammock to unlatch the door and push it open.

Adrian stood there, right outside my door, his boots planted in a big puddle of Mist. It’s winter here—Asphodel has seasons like normal, though I know a lot of Territories don’t—and the air was cold enough that I regretted every second I held the door open. Adrian, though, he was soaked in sweat. His beard clung to his chest like a pile of soggy leaves sticking to the forest floor.

His hands spasmed opened and closed, like he couldn’t wait to get his fists around someone’s neck, and he had to lean one forearm against my doorframe to stay upright.

“Took me a long time to find out where you lived,” Adrian said. He was panting like he had run all the way here from town.

By “town,” I mean the cluster of huts and homes around the Midnight Fields that we affectionately called “the town.” It probably qualified as a village, I guess. Enough people lived there.

“All these trees look alike.” I held the door out a little wider, inviting him to step inside.

As he walked past me, I smelled no spirits on him, just sweat and the clean-water tang of the Mist on the winter air. At the time I thought that meant he was sober. Later, I told myself of course he had been drunk, and I hadn’t noticed. Now, I don’t know what to think.

With the Mist safely locked outside, I let my irritation bubble up from the place where I’d shoved it down. I don’t know anyone who likes being woken from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. I’d spent the whole previous day hoeing my row and picking blossoms in the Fields, as Adrian himself had. The last thing I wanted was a mystery visit infringing on my allotted eight hours of sleep.

“What do you want from me, Corydon?” I asked.

It wasn’t the most hospitable thing to say, I’ll admit, but he must not have minded too much. He laughed.

“Don’t worry, it won’t be a long visit. I need to ask you a question.”

“Get to it,” I said. “My bed’s not getting any warmer.”

Adrian rubbed his hands together and blew on them, as though to capture the heat. “I don’t have many friends, you know. Nobody who would take me seriously. I haven’t talked about this much, but lately I’ve been…seeing things, hearing things. At the edge of my eyes. It’s like I can’t turn around quite quick enough, but I know something was there.”

I couldn’t help the hint of humor that crept into my voice. “You been out in the Mist too long, Corydon?”

Adrian wasn’t born here, like me, but he was the next thing to it. I couldn’t think of anyone who had walked the Gardens longer than he had. He should know better than to give in to fantasies born in the Mist.

Adrian jabbed a finger at me. “That’s it! That’s just it. I don’t see anything moving in the Mist. I don’t see dead relatives, or walking nightmares, or anything else Mist-touched people claim to see. It’s the Mist itself that’s moving.”

“The Mist moves all the time, Adrian,” I said. The Mist, for all its supernatural properties, is still water in the air. It moves with the wind like any cloud.

“I know what it does,” Adrian snapped. “Don’t treat me like a new hire, you know better. This is different. Sometimes I think the Mist is moving around behind my back, you know. Reaching into me, pulling stuff out. The anger, the fear, the…you know what I mean. One day, I’m afraid the Mist is going to get what it wants, and everything I’ve pushed down all these years is going to bubble up to the top and come bursting out of me. It’s going to keep on coming, up and up, and the Mist is going to feed and keep feeding until there’s nothing left of me at all…”

His voice drifted off. He didn’t seem to need a response, for which I was glad. If I had reacted honestly at the moment, it would have been to run out of my house, into the night, and to keep running away from this potentially deranged madman.

I’ve seen dozens of people whose sanity has been eaten away by Asphodel. None of them are what I would consider safe living companions.

I don’t know why I didn’t leave. Maybe something he said rang true in me. Maybe I just wanted to know. But I had to ask the next question.

“Why did you come to me?” I asked. I had a positive opinion of Adrian, but we were hardly friends. In many ways, I barely knew the man.

“You’ve been around longer than anyone,” he said. “You know what the Mist can do to folks. And there was your wife. And…well, I don’t want this conversation getting around, if you understand me.”

I did. Not only did I stick to my own company, and was therefore not likely to spread any rumors, most people around here considered me the lonely man who lived on his own because his wife had left him for mysterious reasons. I couldn’t ruin Adrian’s reputation in town because, frankly, no one would listen to me.

“I understand,” I said. That probably didn’t sound too gracious, so I tried to offer him what advice I could. “Listen, if you want my opinion, I’d say you should go home. Get a good night’s sleep. Talk to your wife, if you can. But more than anything, keep control of yourself. You’ve managed to keep the Mist out this long; you can do it a little longer.”

Today, as I look back on this conversation, I wonder if I should have said something different. Maybe I could have said something else, something that would have helped.

Probably not.

Adrian straightened up and nodded without looking me in the eye. He looked sober now, and his sweat was at least starting to dry. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve gone this far. What kind of man would I be if I backed down now?”

He stuck out one hand, and I took it. His huge hand had a set of calluses to rival my own.

After that, he left. As he walked off, I would have bet good money that a wave of Mist followed him.

I know, it was probably my imagination. A dozen people have already heard this story, and they all said the same thing. But I can’t forget the Mist, slithering after Adrian’s footsteps like a snake. Outside of a mist-binder’s control, I’ve never seen it act like that.

But, like you said. Probably my imagination.

I managed to scrape up a couple more hours of sleep before the next knock came. This time, I wasn’t nearly so irritated. I knew what was coming. I’ve always had a sense for bad news.

The foreman of my harvest crew—my boss—stood outside, holding a glowing cluster of pink night-roses like a lantern. She was one of the few bald women I knew, and she had tiny black eyes like a pair of beetles.

She was also a gardener, a Traveler with the power to call on the plants of Asphodel. Despite my exhaustion, I straightened my back and bowed my head in respect.

“I beg your pardon for waking you,” she said. She wasn’t really sorry, but good manners were a matter of survival here. Provoking someone else could be just as bad as letting yourself get provoked.

“No pardon necessary,” I said. “Is there a problem in the Fields?”

The foreman lowered her bundle of glowing flowers, shifting the pale pink light away from her face. “Phelia Corydon is dead. We need you to help find Adrian.”

Her words stunned me, but a tendril of Mist was creeping in my door, so I let the cold swallow my reaction. “Of course. Let me get my coat.”

Perhaps luckily, we weren’t the ones to find him. We wandered around in the cold and the dark for only an hour before we came across a small crowd, maybe ten or twelve people. I knew most of the faces. They were gathered around a tree, all talking at once. Some of them held bundles of night-roses, like the foreman; others lit their way with more traditional lamps, or even wickwood torches.

The crowd stood in a mass, facing a bloody mess at the foot of a tree.

Despite all my years of training and conditioning, I almost lost control of myself when I saw what lay there on the Mist-shrouded ground.

Adrian Corydon sat with his back propped against the tree. He was as wet as the last time I had seen him, but this time his clothes were soaked in blood. Adrian didn’t have a scratch on him, though his wife lay in a heap next to him. Her once-white nightgown had been stained dark red.

I didn’t stop to look for further details. The ground lurched, my stomach twisted, and I had to look away before I called the Mist to me.

The foreman demanded answers in a calm, reasonable tone. As though there was no corpse at her feet. Rule number one in Asphodel: stay calm.

I’m still not sure if Adrian heard her or not, but he spoke anyway. His voice quaked with emotion released: fear, anger, horror, relief, I’m not sure.

“It was the Mist. It got me. It got me at last. I told you it would. It set a trap for me, do you see? It’s a trap.”

By the end he was pleading, reasonable. At his feet lay a bloody hunting knife, of the sort we used to skin bulls or peel the bark off shellvines.

When he said all that, we knew what had happened. We’d all seen it before. He’d panicked in the Mist, let it get to him. It had eaten him from the inside out, twisted him, turned him into something that couldn’t tell the difference between reality and nightmare. It was best to put such people out of their misery.

So we did. They did, I mean. I was with them, but I wasn’t with them, do you know what I mean? I think, even as dark as it got, part of me knew something was wrong. I didn’t do anything.

I didn’t say anything either. I didn’t tell them what Adrian had told me, or beg them to stop. I put all my effort into keeping myself absolutely calm.

I wouldn’t want to let the Mist in.

They were a quiet mob. Quiet, and efficient. They had a rope up and over a tree before the sun’s first rays crept over the forest.

Adrian kept repeating, over and over, “It was the Mist, you understand? It got me. It wasn’t me, it was the Mist!”

At first, he was as calm as usual, but as they dragged him closer to the rope he got more and more frantic. Which, of course, made them drag him faster. Excited by his emotion, the Mist pooled closer, twisting toward him in questing tendrils as it looked for a gap in his mind.

On its own, the Mist is harmless. We live in it, work in it. But when it senses prey, it’s more deadly than a wildfire. Everyone around is in danger.

The foreman was the one who finally got Adrian’s head in the noose. Her beetle-black eyes were cold when she ordered the drop.

They lifted him up, pulled the rope tight, and dropped him short.

He kicked a few times, the Mist surged up, and they both went quiet.

“Well,” the foreman said, “that’s that. I’ll expect to see you all at work in two hours.”

Without another word, everyone went home. Even me. I couldn’t sleep, but I tried; I knew I would need my strength for today’s work. Besides, disposing of madmen was familiar work for anyone who stayed in Asphodel any length of time.

Not that it was usually quite so…graphic. Or personal. But I repeated that to myself until the sun rose higher and the bell chimed, letting all the harvest crews know to report to their fields.

As I did every morning, I picked up my equipment: hoe, gloves, hat, spade, shears. I made sure it was all in place, and I made the usual hike down to the Fields.

When I got to the edge of town, a little collection of propped-up wooden shacks next to the tangled rainbows of the Midnight Fields, I noticed two things. First, no one was working. Everyone on my crew was gathered up in the town, silent, tools hanging forgotten at their sides.

Second, a woman with loose, stringy hair was walking from worker to worker, asking a question I couldn’t quite make out. A woman in a white nightgown.

Eventually, as I knew she would, she made her way over to me.

“Have you seen Adrian?” Phelia Corydon asked. She had panic in her eyes, but none made it into her voice. “I woke up, and he wasn’t there.”

Later, the foreman made it very clear I should not have told her. She almost had me brought up on charges before the Overlord. By telling Phelia what happened to her husband, I might have made her vulnerable to the Mist, and thus endangered all of us.

But as it happens, Phelia Corydon acquitted herself well. I told her the story I’ve just told you, and she didn’t scream. She didn’t attack me, or break down into tears, as I might have in her place.

Like a true woman of Asphodel, she made a mask of her face. Then she spat at my feet.

Without looking at anyone else, she walked into town. I don’t know where she was going, but I heard later she had reclaimed Adrian’s body and was taking the case to the Overlord. It’s probably true.

So I’ve told you the whole story, even the parts I should probably leave out, for my reputation’s sake. But as I said already, I don’t have much of a reputation.

I know, I should have realized immediately what the Mist had done to us. I should have insisted we take Adrian inside, wait for morning, and examine the evidence.

It hasn’t been long. I’m still shaken by the whole thing. I’ve had enough practice staying calm, you’d think I’d be able to keep my head in any situation, but I’ll tell you what: this one gnaws at me.

But given time, I’ll pack it away. Shove it down. I’ll bury the memory so deep that I don’t feel anything, so it can’t be used against me. As much as I can, I will forget Adrian Corydon.

I have to.

In their attempts at self-preservation, Travelers of Asphodel often throw away the only parts of themselves worth protecting.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 4: Rose

Maelstrom of Stone

There is always time for patience…

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 5: Green

When Chloe etched the final rune into her knuckle-sized sapphire, it felt like being let out of prison.

She dropped the sapphire—cut into two dozen facets, all covered in fresh, blocky runes—on her workbench, next to a sprawling collection of her tools.

“That’s one sapphire heartstone done!” she called into the swirling tunnels of her house. “In record time! You should go ahead and retire, I’ll take over for you.”

She always tried to make jokes when she needed to leave the house in a hurry. Sometimes she could slip away while her grandfather chuckled.

Chloe pulled her padded leather jacket on with one hand and opened the door with the other. Maybe, if she were only quick enough, she could make it outside.

The scuff of her grandfather’s slippers behind her warned Chloe that she had been too slow.

She spun around, favoring him with a bright smile. “I was heading out, grandfather…I mean, ah, Grandmaster Ornheim. Can I get you anything while I’m out? Something to eat, or…”

Chloe’s grandfather, whose name was once Deiman Uracius, looked like nothing more than a village child’s idea of a wizard. He sported a white beard long enough to reach his belt, had he worn one. But of course he didn’t wear a belt, because that would mean forgoing his traditional thick, brown robes. Rings of precious metals and gems flashed on each of his fingers: plain halfsilver bands; gold rings set with sunstone; rune-etched rubies; obsidian bands with small caps of iridian sand. On his face, as always, he wore that small, infuriating, invincible half-smile.

Nothing will ever disturb me, his expression said. Nothing ever could. If gold coins rained from the sky I would not laugh, and if the sun failed to rise I would not weep.

Grandmaster Ornheim laced his ring-speckled fingers together and fixed his granddaughter with the same not-quite-smile. “I am proud to be your grandfather, Chloe, you know that. But it is important for you to use my title.”

Chloe would be lucky to get out of this without a twenty-minute sermon on Enosh cultural propriety. “I know that, Grandmaster, I apologize.”

The Grandmaster took no more notice of her words than a golem would have. Less notice, if the golem were well made. “Not even in private. Our habits in private never fail to carry over into the public sphere.”

“Perhaps the reverse is true as well.” Chloe snapped her fingers as though she had realized something. “That would explain all the lectures! You don’t give enough of them to your students, so all the undelivered speeches bubbling up within you must carry over into the private sphere.”

Her grandfather’s patient smile didn’t flicker. “Your tolerance astounds me. You absorb every word of my wisdom with the patience of a mountain, and yet you still find time to put every one of your tools up in its proper place. How do you do it?”

She was becoming too predictable; he hadn’t needed to glance over at the workbench. Chloe let her shoulders slump—she needed to show him that she wasn’t happy about this—and marched over to the workbench, hurriedly scooping up her tools and dumping them into the appropriate rack, drawer, or box.

Grandmaster Ornheim strolled over to stand beside her, plucking her carved sapphire up from the surface of the workbench. “This is functional. Clean. I can see how this might work quite well, actually.”

“Of course,” Chloe said, but she couldn’t help a little spark of pride. She had worked for hours on that heartstone, after all, even if she hadn’t done it willingly.

“Have you any thoughts on the golem?”

“Oh! Yes, hang on…” after a moment she found it: a glass jar of sparkling golden sand. Iridian.

She poured a handful of iridian into her hand, willing it into the air. A tendril of sand rose, following her thoughts, spreading out into a gleaming sheet of tiny stars.

“I was thinking something like a bird, you see.” The sand condensed into a glittering model of a stationary bird. She wasn’t sure what kind of bird it was—there were no birds native to Ornheim, so she had only ever seen them on trips outside—but this model looked like a bird to her. “I’d like a light rock for the body, maybe something volcanic, I’m not sure.”

“And the skystones?”

“Here, here, and here.” At each word, a hole appeared in the iridian bird: one each at the tip of the tail and at the end of both wings. “Before you say anything, I know it will be a little unbalanced, so I’d plan to put the heartstone here, in the middle of its back.” Some of the spare iridian floated around the bird’s back, encircling where the heartstone would go.

This was the one part of the process in which Chloe had actually invested time and effort. Anyone could carve the runes of a heartstone; the process was mostly tedious memorization and hours of mindless drudgery. She would rather spend her time in the mines. Designing the golem itself, on the other hand, actually took a degree of creativity, even artistry.

Plus, in her personal opinion, skystones were amazing. With only a little mental effort, an Ornheim Traveler could make those little blue stones rise and hover in midair. She had begun practicing with skystones since she had first felt her bond to Ornheim’s vast stores of earth.

Grandmaster Ornheim waved his hand, and the iridian wrenched itself from Chloe’s control, flowing back into the jar in a sparkling golden river. One tendril of sand even reached back out and pulled the lid back on. “Very good. You’ll be ready to assemble your golem soon, but don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve got plenty of time.”

This from the man who would spend six weeks studying a block of marble before he first touched it with his chisel. “Yes, Grandmaster.”

Before her grandfather could say anything else, Chloe turned and pulled open the door. Some of her friends were going Beneath today, and if she was lucky, she might get there in time to join them.

Grandmaster Ornheim’s hand rested softly on her shoulder, and she almost screamed in frustration.

“I hope you’re not leaving quite yet.”

“No, I’m not,” Chloe said, in the most unconvincing tone possible.

“You need to—”

“Yes, I know. You tell me every time.”

The Grandmaster stroked his beard, always playing the venerable old teacher. “You do? Then tell me, what must you do before leaving?”

Chloe almost started running. How far would she make it before her grandfather brought her back? It was an unfair thought, of course, since Grandmaster Ornheim would never physically stop her from leaving. His disapproval, along with the inevitable lecture when she returned, was enough to keep her in place.

Besides, she owed him more than that. Even if he sometimes made her want to slam her face into the side of a boulder.

“An Ornheim Traveler must always stay and watch the Cycle,” she recited. “It is by the flow of the Maelstrom that our lives are guided, and we must respect that flow.”

“Lest we be crushed beneath it,” her grandfather finished. “Sit. Watch the Cycle. The City Beneath has existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. It will still be there in an hour.”

An hour? In her estimation, she could learn the Cycle safely in one look. It wasn’t so much different from glancing at a clock. Not in principle, anyway.

Chloe walked up to the edge of the cliff outside their house and leaned on the railing. Her home—like everyone’s home, here in Ornheim—was carved into the side of one of the more stable mountains. A path three or four paces wide stretched out from the front of the house like a porch, terminating in a seemingly endless drop down to Ornheim’s dark surface. Only Master-level Ornheim Travelers were allowed to descend that far. Master Ornheim Travelers, or those few who fell through the thin wooden safety railing.

Chloe didn’t spare much thought for the drop. She had lived with that threat for most of her life. Besides, she had better things to worry about.

Above her whirled the Maelstrom of Stone, flying and dancing in an endless Cycle.

Rivers of shining golden iridian drifted by, twisting like giant ribbons on an invisible breeze. A star-shaped chunk of rose quartz the size of a barn rolled in a lazy orbit around an inverted mountain with a flat top. It looked like it had been torn up from the ground by the roots. As Chloe watched, she saw specks of blue flickering toward the bottom of the floating island. It must be kept aloft by veins of skystone running all the way through its mountainous bulk.

A stone titan plodded by, its craggy face almost as big as Chloe’s mountain. Its dull eyes were fixed on some invisible point in the distance. Some people built villages on stone titans; they steered themselves around great danger, and tended to visit water sources quite often. Chloe could never imagine living on a mountain that wasn’t stationary, herself.

The sky of Ornheim remained in constant motion. There was no backdrop of sun or stars, as there might have been in the World Above, but layer after layer of spinning, walking, shifting, dancing, moving stone in every shape, size, and color. As legend told it, Ornheim was nothing more than an unimaginably vast cavern, with a ceiling out there in the distance, but Chloe didn’t place too much faith in the theory. For one thing, how would a roof that big stay up?

After only a few minutes of staring out at the Cycle, Chloe began to grow bored. The ribbons of iridian circled her mountain, making a full round once every eight or nine minutes. The chunk of rose quartz, on the other hand, only took twenty-eight seconds to encircle its island, and was getting a little closer each time. The upside-down mountain seemed to drift randomly, though it looked mostly stable. The rose quartz star and its inverted island would crash together eventually, though that was hardly remarkable. Rocks the size of small towns slammed into each other all the time here, with a noise like thunder.

Nothing else even remotely interesting was happening nearby. She had a good grasp on the Cycle, or at least the part of it affecting her. What was she going to gain by standing here waiting? The Cycle took more than a few minutes to change.

Chloe had almost turned away when she noticed a flash of green on the surface of the floating island, maybe fifty paces away.

She spun back to look, since anything that deviated from the Cycle was worth investigation. But the island’s rose quartz “moon” quickly rose, blocking her view.

She waited the next fourteen seconds in utter impatience, mentally begging the chunk of rock to hurry up and cross over to the other side, so she could see what was happening on the island’s surface.

After the most agonizing quarter of a minute she could remember, Chloe almost cheered when the chunk of pink quartz floated to the other side.

This time, she recognized what she had failed to notice before. The speck of green was not a rock formation, but a girl. A dark-haired, tan-skinned girl in a green dress.

Chloe let out an involuntary gasp. There was a girl, who looked to be less than Chloe’s own age, out in the Maelstrom itself. Alone. Even Grandmaster Ornheim would not have traveled beyond the mountain without a good reason and extensive preparation, and he likely would have brought help.

The spiky ball of rose quartz floated by on another orbit, reminding Chloe: it was going to crash into the island. It might take minutes, hours, or even a day, but when it eventually happened, the girl would die.

Saints above, what am I supposed to do?

“Grandfather!” Chloe screamed. She seemed unable to tear her eyes away from the girl in the green dress. No, I can’t call him that, he won’t answer. “Grandmaster Ornheim!” No response. “Grandmaster!”

He may have left. That wouldn’t be too unusual; he was a Grandmaster, after all. Ornheim was his backyard, and he could come and go as he pleased. Did she have time to go look for him? Did she have time not to?

Her grandfather, she knew, would tell her to wait. Observe. There is always time for patience; that was one of his favorite sayings. Another of his most common: You must learn the board before placing your first piece.

Chloe respected her grandfather, and patience was the way of Ornheim. Carving a golem’s hearstone took weeks, and building its body could take months. Learning to read the Cycle took years; learning to navigate the Maelstrom took a lifetime. There were no shortcuts in Ornheim, and endurance always yielded results. But she could not justify doing nothing while a girl died in front of her eyes.

She wasn’t sure what exactly she could do, but surely something would be better than nothing. That, or it would result in two bodies lost on Ornheim’s surface instead of only one.

One of the giant ribbons of iridian floated by, and Chloe got a terrible idea. Before she could think about it too much, she vaulted over the railing and into empty space.

For a sickening instant, her stomach lurched, and she wished with all her being that she could take it back. She was going to fall into the hazy, brown distance, and—while she didn’t know exactly what waited on the ground—she was pretty sure she would get there by means of a sudden, violent stop.

In response to her mental screams, the river of iridian flowed down and cushioned her fall. Not that it felt much like a cushion at all, really; it felt more like slamming face-first into a beach. But she would take what she could get.

She had initially imagined using the iridian to form a bridge and letting the girl cross. The problem was that a full bridge lay far beyond the scope of her abilities with the substance. Maybe Grandmaster Ornheim or one of his top students could do it, but Chloe certainly couldn’t. Not yet. Commanding iridian took great concentration and physical stamina, the demands on which increased exponentially when you tried to work at a distance. Chloe’s only hope was to stick as close to the iridian as possible, carrying herself over to the island, and then hopefully both of them back.

Seconds in, she started to shake. It felt as though she had tried to drag a cart uphill. Soon after, she started to sweat.

It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought. Maybe I’m using too much power. Experimentally, she relaxed her mental grip on the sand.

Immediately, the gritty golden cloud started to disperse, and she began to fall through.

She tightened her grip once more before she had fallen more than a few inches. After about ten seconds of silent, terrified shaking, she got her flying carpet of sand moving once again.

She didn’t know how she made it—the iridian river seemed to crawl forward an inch at a time—but she eventually covered the fifty paces to the island.

She had imagined setting her floating platform down, reaching out to the girl in green, and the both of them flying gracefully back to the mountain.

Instead, she let herself crash to the island’s surface, the glittering golden sand drifting off like smoke to spiral through the air once more. Every muscle in her body hurt, as though she had run for days while carrying a sack full of stones.

Sweaty, shaking, and lying flat against the rock, Chloe barely managed to speak. “I’m here…to…get you.”

The girl measured Chloe with dark eyes, and then looked back up at the escaping sand. “Do you have more of that?”

Between labored breaths, Chloe shook her head.

“Then it seems we’re both stuck,” the girl said. “Unless you have a golem nearby. Or some other plan I haven’t thought of.”

She didn’t seem nearly as panicked as Chloe thought she should be in this situation. Nor as grateful as she’d hoped. “I thought…you would be…scared.”

The other girl thought for a moment. “My mother wouldn’t be scared. She would say fear is a waste of energy.”

Chloe had finally started to get her breathing back under control. “Your mother would get along well with my grandfather, I think. I’m Chloe.”

“Deborah, daughter of Deborah.”

Deborah inclined her head formally, and Chloe did the same. As best she could while remaining face-to-face with the stone, anyway.

A shadow passed overhead, and Chloe knew it had to be their pink-hued moon. She raised one hand and pointed. “That’s going to crash into us at some point.”

Deborah followed Chloe’s finger up. “I had hoped I was imagining things. Well, no use waiting for it to happen. Maybe, if we work together, we can call the iridian back.”

“Not me,” Chloe said. “It’s too far away, and I’m too tired from making it all the way over here. It would kill me.”

In truth, Chloe would try it if she had to, but she wasn’t exaggerating when she said it would kill her. In her current condition, she was sure the iridian would simply slip from her grasp and drop her.

Deborah patted the stone on which she sat. “There’s plenty of skystone here. But it’s far too deep to do us any good.”

Chloe pressed her own palm against the rock and listened to the voice of the stone. It passed through her like a wave of distant whispers.

There was indeed a vast network of skystone here, as she had expected. Deborah was right, though; there was no way to pull even a single chunk of skystone up through such solid rock.

“We don’t need a piece of skystone,” Chloe said. “We need to use what’s already here. We can fly the whole island.”

Deborah glanced over at the mountain, which seemed much farther away from this side. Skepticism was evident on her face. “Even if we can activate so much skystone, I can’t steer it.”

“I can.” Probably.

“Really?” Deborah’s eyebrows raised. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Chloe said. Assuming it’s exactly like a theoretical iridian bird.

In true Ornheim fashion, the two Travelers didn’t act immediately. They sat there, waiting, for over half an hour. Partially, Chloe wanted to regain her strength before she tried activating and controlling whole veins of skystone. She also wanted to give her grandfather time to show up and stage a miraculously timed rescue.

After half an hour, though, neither of them could deny it any longer: the chunk of quartz was getting closer. Even now, if they timed the activation badly and lifted the island too quickly, they would slam themselves against the quartz.

“Seems like this is the time,” Deborah said, as though she had checked a clock. She knelt, placing both palms flat against the rock.

Chloe didn’t have to imitate the other girl’s pose, but she did so anyway. It seemed like a good position for speaking with the stone. “Ready anytime,” she said, hoping it was true.

She let her mind drift down into the jagged roots of the floating island, seeking skystone. The blue stone webbed the inside of the inverted mountain, filling the ordinary rock like a bright blue skeleton.

When the quartz passed by overhead once more, Deborah flared the skystone. The veins flashed blue in Chloe’s mind, and the island jerked upwards.

No, not like that, Chloe thought. More like…

She sent herself down, into the rock, and activated the skystone on the far side of the island. It flared to life, pushing them forward and slightly up. They drifted closer to the mountain on their own momentum, now; they might come in a little high, but Chloe would be more than willing to risk a broken leg by jumping down rather than a broken spine by falling.

“Above!” Deborah shouted. Chloe jerked her head up to see the barn-sized star of rose quartz flying down at them like a colossal hammer.

Together, the two young Travelers flared the skystone so hard they blasted toward the mountain, barely scraping by the quartz in time to avoid a titanic collision.

And they were headed straight for the side of the mountain.

Desperately, Chloe flared the skystone closest to the mountain, trying to slow them to a safe speed. Deborah, on the other hand, had a different idea: she was trying to bring them higher, apparently so they could float safely over the peak.

Chloe felt it would have worked out much better if they had worked together instead of moving in two different directions, but it certainly could have been worse. Their island came to rest above Chloe’s mountain, hovering exactly over the highest peak.

“It worked!” Chloe said, her voice filled with exhilaration.

“Yes it did,” Deborah agreed, in much the same sound as a sigh of relief. “Now, how do we get down?”

***

Deborah, as it turned out, was the daughter of the current Overlord.

During the two or three hours they had spent trapped on the same floating island, Chloe had never thought to ask Deborah where she lived. She had simply assumed Deborah was one of the many deserters Enosh received from the Damascan villages.

Grandmaster Ornheim, once he found and rescued them, had known exactly what questions to ask. In short order, and with impeccable manners, he had figured out precisely who ‘Deborah, daughter of Deborah’ was.

When Chloe first heard the news, her first reaction was confusion. How could Deborah be an enemy? Chloe had risked her life to rescue the girl. Her second reaction was fear; surely, Grandmaster Ornheim would hold the young Deborah hostage against her mother’s behavior. That was, if he didn’t execute her outright.

Instead, Chloe’s grandfather sent a sapphire messenger golem to tell the Overlord what had happened, and to offer her daughter back.

When the Overlord and her entourage arrived, full of gratitude and words of friendship, Grandmaster Ornheim let out the longest speech he had delivered in weeks.

He had been holding back, Chloe could tell.

Within the lecture, he had a lot to say about the great Cycle, about what it meant to be an Ornheim Traveler, and, of course, about stone. Chloe’s grandfather could never say more than three words together without talking about stone.

She was just considering sneaking off when the sound of her name brought her back to her senses.

“...Chloe has always had a problem with waiting. ‘Listen,’ I always tell her. ‘Watch. Be still and think.’ These are good lessons, but there are other things worth learning as well. Things that she teaches me.”

Chloe frowned. She couldn’t remember ever teaching her grandfather anything in her life.

“She reminds me that certain situations call for action, not preparation. We can’t always be perfectly informed or absolutely prepared. Sometimes, we simply have to act. There are times when I forget that. If anything, today’s events have shown us why we can’t always wait for an opportunity. Every once in a while, we must seize whatever chance we can, and hope for the best.”

Grandmaster Ornheim turned toward Chloe, a broad smile splitting his beard in half. “For if we don’t act when we need to,” her grandfather said, “then what were we waiting for in the first place?”

…but sometimes, there is no time for waiting.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 5: Green

The Steel Labyrinth

Diligence and humility are abundant in Tartarus. To truly fight as a unit, you must work without complaint and suppress your selfish pride. No Territory teaches these lessons better than the Steel Labyrinth.

There is no such thing as a lone Traveler of Tartarus.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 6: Red

296th Year of the Damascan Calendar

2nd Year in the Reign of Queen Deianira III

12 Days Until Spring’s End

Everywhere Valin looked, he saw swords. The tiles in the floor were made of a thousand blades, hammered flat in an interlocking pattern. From the ceiling hung a forest of sharp metal, honed to a razor’s edge. Each wall bristled with hundreds of needle-tipped knifepoints.

And the three Travelers standing in front of him each had a sword pointed straight at his chest.

The young woman in the middle was in her mid-twenties, roughly Valin’s age, and the patch on her uniform indicated she was a lieutenant in some Overlord’s private army. Her right eye was covered in a black patch, and she had her long hair tied behind her back.

“State your name, your rank, and your allegiance. Keep your hands away from your weapon.”

Casually, Valin rested a hand on his sword’s hilt. “Aren’t Damascan soldiers supposed to keep their hair short? It’s not like I care, but I thought it was regulation.”

According to Deianira, Valin had three bad habits.

His first: he talked far too much, even in situations where he should keep his mouth shut.

The lieutenant’s grip tightened, and she took a threatening step forward. “If you do not state your name and allegiance, I have no choice but to treat you as an agent of Enosh and deal with you accordingly.”

To either side of her, her fellow Tartarus Travelers spread out to keep Valin encircled.

Valin tried to keep his face serious, he really did, but he couldn’t help a small smile. “Out of curiosity, how would you treat me if I were an agent of Enosh?”

Another bad habit: he taunted his opponents. He didn’t have to, he supposed, but it was so easy. Everyone took combat so seriously all the time; because it was a matter of life-and-death didn’t mean you couldn’t have a little fun with it.

A hand brushed Valin’s shoulder as one of the soldiers tried to seize his sword arm. He should have moved faster.

Which brought to mind Valin’s third habit, and the one that came up most often: he loved a good fight, so he started as many as possible. More than he should, to tell the truth, but he saw himself as a helpless prisoner of his own impulses. Nothing got his blood up quite like a good brawl.

As a way of keeping himself in line, he always tried to wait until the other man threw the first punch. No one had punched him this time, but surely grabbing him was just as bad. They wanted to take Valin prisoner as a suspected killer from Enosh, and if they succeeded, how would he do his job?

Valin’s elbow crunched into the soldier’s nose. Warm blood spurted onto Valin’s arm, and the Traveler let out a shout of pain.

“If I really were from Enosh, that would have been a knife,” Valin said. “Did you really think it was a good idea to try and grab someone you thought was a dangerous assassin?”

The lieutenant seemed stunned for a second—in Valin’s experience, people often reacted that way when he stopped to chat in the middle of a fight—but she recovered quickly. While Valin was still talking, she lunged, her sword-point leading the way.

It was exactly the move they taught Damascan twelve-year-olds in their first year of fencing school. Valin slapped the sword away with the back of his hand and stepped forward, grabbing the Traveler by her collar.

“Stab, you’re dead,” Valin said. “You’re a Tartarus Traveler in the Labyrinth. Surely you can do better.”

He shoved her backwards and she stumbled, barely managing to keep her feet. The third of the trio had raised his sword, but he changed his mind and knelt, pressing a hand to the metal floor of the Steel Labyrinth.

A hissing sound echoed through the hall as the mysterious mechanical contraptions of this Territory whirred to life.

Valin’s smile widened. “See? There we go.”

With a sound like a sail snapping in the wind, half a dozen spears launched from the far end of the hall, flying straight for Valin. They passed harmlessly around the three Tartarus Travelers; Valin almost thought one of the spears actually corrected itself in mid-flight to avoid the lieutenant.

In the split second it took the spears to reach him, Valin had his sword drawn. It was a standard Damascan longsword, forged for him by the best smiths in Cana. Deianira had bought it for him only a couple of months ago as a Winter’s End present.

He only hoped it wouldn’t break.

The first spear reached his right leg, and he barely stepped out of the way in time. The second he had to kick out of the air. The third, he dodged by leaning to the right, and the fourth simply missed.

The fifth and sixth spears flew true, and he didn’t have the time to dodge. With both hands on the hilt, he brought his sword crashing onto the first spear, striking it down with a shower of sparks. Without a second to pause, he swept his blade to the right, knocking the final spear off-course and sending it spinning in midair. The butt of the spear smacked into his ribs, but without enough force to do any actual damage.

The spears clattered to the sword-patterned floor in a crash of falling metal.

Valin slid his sword back into its sheath. “Now that was a rush! I’ll have to come back here. Good practice.”

His heart pounded with exhilaration, and at last he felt the old fire in his blood. It was all too rare these days that something challenged him.

The three Travelers were still on the ground. They weren’t unconscious, were they? He didn’t think he’d hit any of them too hard.

The lieutenant stared at him as though he had started to glow. “How did you do that?”

“Years of training and experience, a good night’s sleep, and loads of natural talent.”

The man with the bleeding nose raised himself to one knee. “Who are you?” he choked out.

“Oh, right.” Valin glanced around the hall until he spotted what he was looking for: a canvas satchel leaning against the spiked steel wall. He’d dropped it there as the three Tartarus Travelers attacked him.

“In the front pocket of my bag, there’s a piece of paper. Could you grab it for me?”

The lieutenant exchanged a look with one of her subordinates. After a few seconds, she reached warily into the front of the bag and plucked out a crumpled, browned sheet of paper.

“Deianira sent me,” Valin explained. “She thought you might need some help.”

The lieutenant’s eyebrows drew down, so close together that it looked like she was trying to glare a hole in the paper. She flipped it around, showing him the red wax seal on the other side.

“This is the royal seal,” she said. “By Deianira…do you mean Deianira the Third? Our Queen?”

“How many Deianiras do you know?” Valin asked. “I’ve only ever met the one. Didn’t you ask for help?”

He reached out for the paper. In what looked like an unconscious reflex, the lieutenant clutched it tighter. “We asked for reinforcements and advice, actually. From our Overlord, not from Cana.”

Valin didn’t know how the Queen had intercepted a message from Tartarus, but he had learned long ago not to underestimate her ability to ferret out secrets. “My strength and considerable experience are at your disposal,” he said. “I also took it upon myself to evaluate your combat skills.”

The lieutenant winced and looked away. “I can only say that, unlike many Travelers, we’re actually weaker inside our Territory than outside it.”

He had assumed as much. Tartarus had a well-earned reputation as a deadly combat Territory, but much of their strength came from their ability to summon their weapons almost instantly. Inside the Territory itself, they couldn’t summon weapons directly.

He knew that, but he couldn’t help feeling disappointed.

“But I have no excuse,” the lieutenant continued, to Valin’s surprise. “We took you too lightly, and you were gentler than we deserved. Thank you.”

That may have been a first. Usually, the people Valin defeated showed one of three reactions: fear, anger, or disbelief. The lieutenant didn’t seem resentful at all, but he supposed carrying a letter with the royal seal on it could have simply impressed her. Perhaps that was all it was.

Still, he wasn’t sure how to respond.

“No need for thanks. I was rougher than I should have been.” Deianira would have passed out from shock if she heard those words coming from his mouth. “Besides, I was looking forward to the opportunity to come to Tartarus. I’ve never spent much time here—I can’t imagine I’ll find what I’m looking for, though I guess you never know.”

One of the other Travelers spoke up: “What are you looking for?”

“Dragons,” Valin said simply.

The soldier with the bloody nose snorted, and Valin shot him a look to shut him up.

The lieutenant looked completely lost. “But dragons aren’t real,” she said. “Are they?”

Valin sighed. He had delivered this lecture a thousand times, and sometimes he got sick of doing it. “In Naraka, there are black-skinned lizards that breathe fireballs. In Endross, there are huge flying drakes that spit lightning. In the lowest levels of Ornheim, there’s a species of burrowing worm that hurls sparks and is intelligent enough to speak. With all that, why shouldn’t there be dragons?”

“But—” the lieutenant began, but Valin kept going.

“And no, I know what you’re going to say, those aren’t dragons. I’m looking for a real dragon. Strong, intelligent, flies, breathes fire…a dragon. We’ll find one in a Territory one of these days, mark my words.”

Valin had seen plenty of draconic creatures, but nothing gave him the sense of majesty he had always pictured in the dragons of legend. Dragons should be more…magical, he guessed. And somewhere out there, in one Territory or another, he’d find one. He only had to keep looing.

“I see,” the lieutenant said in a voice that said she didn’t see at all. Clearly, she had lost the thread of the conversation a while back.

“You’ve seen many Territories,” one of the other Travelers said, in a transparent attempt to change the subject. “But I haven’t seen you summon anything. What kind of Traveler are you?”

“I’m not a Traveler,” Valin said. “I don’t have bonds to any Territory. I go from one to another, doing what I can. That’s probably why they call me the Wanderer.”

The three Travelers exchanged glances, but they had nothing to say.

***

The way back to the nearest Damascan base was tricky, and Valin was soon lost. Every half an hour or so—though it seemed completely unpredictable—the Labyrinth whirred and shifted. The hallways shuffled, the floor separating and sliding apart, new gaps opening in the walls. Once, a dead end transformed itself into a room full of whirling circular blades inches in front of Valin’s face.

The Tartarus Travelers took such things in stride, adjusting their course accordingly every time the maze shifted. They barely spoke about their route at all, following a mental map they all evidently shared.

As they walked, they answered Valin’s questions.

There were very few permanent outposts in the Steel Labyrinth. At least, none permanently manned. By order of the Overlord, no Damascan Travelers were allowed to sleep in their Territory; there had been disappearances, including a handful of tragic incidents in which the sleeping Travelers had been trapped in rooms with no exits. Sometimes, when they woke up, they were able to make Gates and escape. Other times, they would be skewered by traps while still unconscious.

Thus, the rule about sleeping in the maze.

The Tartarus Travelers understood these rules and seemed to accept them. Valin had been summoned for a more urgent reason.

“Something has been killing Travelers in our unit,” the lieutenant—whose name was Roshan—said, as she gently guided Valin away from a pit of gnashing mechanical traps. “They’re usually alone, and they fail to report in. When we find them next, it’s only their mangled bodies.”

“You think it’s Enosh?”

“We think one of them has disguised themselves as one of us,” Lieutenant Roshan said. “We think he or she is ambushing us when we’re alone, or else has summoned something to do it for them.”

She seemed more disgusted at the thought of a summoned killer. Was that because she was afraid of monsters from another Territory, or because she hated the idea of someone too cowardly to do their own killing? Valin had heard odd things about notions of honor in Tartarus.

“I’ll need to see the body. I can’t guarantee I’ll find anything helpful, but I’ll do what I can.” He wasn’t rude enough to say it to her face, but he was certainly more likely to know something useful than any of these Tartarus soldiers. He had devices in his satchel that might come in handy.

“You’re more likely to find something than we are,” Roshan said, impressing him yet again. “We’re going to stop by and pick up some more weapons before we show you the scene, just in case…”

Her voice trailed off as the wall in front of them parted, revealing a man lying on his back in a small pool of blood.

Too small, Valin noted immediately. The corpse was partially curled around a circular chest wound as big around as a man’s head. Anything that caused a wound that size should have left a puddle of blood twice as deep.

To her credit, Lieutenant Roshan did not hesitate. She snapped orders to her two subordinates, and they quickly drew their swords and positioned themselves around the body, watching the corners of the room for movement. It was not a large room, perhaps five paces to a side, and the only visible entrance was the one through which they had come. But if Valin had learned anything from his short time in Tartarus, it was that the Labyrinth could open up a new door anytime and anywhere.

“I take it this isn’t the body you meant to show me,” Valin said.

“The Captain’s body is in a coffin,” Roshan said in a tight voice. “We left the blood where he was killed, in case we needed to examine it again. This is a totally different room.”

Valin dipped his fingertips in the blood: still warm. He gestured to the corpse. “Who was this?”

“He was meant to stay with the Captain’s coffin.”

“Alone?”

She nodded. “This is the fourth victim. The second one taken right under my nose.” Roshan stared straight at the wall, and Valin left her to her thoughts. He had nothing productive to say.

Besides, the body was more interesting.

He ran a finger along the edge of the wound, coming up with a thin layer of black grit. Ash, perhaps? If so, they were most likely looking for a killer from Naraka, or maybe Endross.

He examined the body for another five minutes before he came up with another source of the black dust. Under the fingernails this time, as though the soldier had managed to scratch his attacker.

Valin scraped out a little of the dust and rubbed it between two fingers. Against his better judgment, he placed a little on his tongue.

He spat it out immediately. It didn’t taste foul; worse, it tasted like good topsoil. That narrowed his list of possibilities down to one. “Everybody who died was alone?” he asked, to be sure.

“They were.”

“Then I’m afraid I can probably tell you what killed them,” Valin said. “And you’re not going to like it.”

All three Tartarus Travelers turned to face him.

“What?” Lieutenant Roshan demanded.

“A Strugle.”

The room fell into a long stretch of silence.

“The monster from the children’s rhyme? ‘Good little girls, they must obey, or else the Strugle will take them away’? The Strugle is real?”

One of the male Travelers coughed to cover up a laugh.

Valin knelt and began rummaging through his pack, wishing he had packed the stone amulet he had once unearthed in Ornheim. It had been designed specifically to block the attack of a Strugle.

“Strugles are native to Ornheim, though based on the way it hunts, some naturalists believe it originated in Asphodel.” He had a dagger here that could heat itself red-hot but never lose its shape; no, if he got close enough to use a dagger, the Strugle would simply eviscerate him. “It locks on to feelings of loneliness, uncertainty, isolation, and it uses them to identify its prey. Its favorite tactic is the ambush; some people believe it feeds on the fear and surprise of its victims as much as their flesh and blood.”

The frozen horn he had picked up in Helgard, perhaps? Maybe it could banish the Strugle back to the Territory from whence it came…but no, blowing the horn in Tartarus was too risky. It might banish whole rooms from the Labyrinth around them, leaving them to fall right through the floor.

“Tartarus Travelers would normally be a good match for a Strugle,” Valin continued. “You summon quickly, you’re usually armored, and you’re rarely alone. It’s hard for a Strugle to target someone like you. But that’s when you’re outside your Territory. If you’re here, and you don’t know what you’re facing, you’re little better off than an ordinary person.”

These days, it almost never occurred to Valin that he, too, could be considered an ordinary person. He had certainly never thought of himself as ordinary.

“How do we catch it?” one of the men said.

“We don’t,” Lieutenant Roshan responded, reluctance heavy in her voice. “We tell everyone we can about it. We let the Overlord know what we’re up against. We prepare, and we hit it together.”

“Lieutenant…” the man began, but he let the statement hang.

Valin thought he saw the problem. He wasn’t the most familiar with Tartarus Travelers, but they had a reputation for their prickly sense of honor. He didn’t fully understand it—honor seemed like an unnecessary set of arbitrary rules, to him—but he could at least accept it.

“Is there some reason you might want to catch this thing yourself?” Valin asked. He kept rummaging around in his satchel; surely something in his collection would come in handy.

“As I said, two victims now have died under my protection,” the Lieutenant said. “Including my commanding officer. The Overlord has yet to send a replacement for him, but when he does, I have no doubt I will be at least demoted. Capturing or killing the beast myself would go a long way toward restoring my honor, but that won’t happen.”

“Why not?”

She met his gaze levelly. “Because it’s not about me. It’s about saving lives. The smart move is to regroup, report, and form a plan of attack.”

“Aha!” Valin said. At last, he had found something worth looking for. It was a plain gold medallion, unmarked, that gave its wearer a vague sense of danger. He had received it as a gift from a Tartarus Traveler, actually, who had found it in a locked chest deep in the heart of the Labyrinth. Valin was convinced the medallion was unfinished—there had to be some way of improving it, even if no one else would try—but it would be perfect against an ambush predator like the Strugle.

“Fortunately for you,” Valin said, “I rarely do the smart thing.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized how they sounded, but he plunged ahead anyway. “I’ve hunted Strugle before, in teams and alone. You can evade them, you can trap them, and you can kill them. All you need is bait.”

Roshan shook her head. “I told you, I won’t—”

“Let me put this to you another way, Lieutenant,” Valin said. “I’m going to find a Strugle. With your help, I’m much more likely to survive. And if I die, it will be because you abandoned me.”

Without another word, Valin set off down the steel-plated hallway. Deianira would have backed these Travelers into the same corner, he was sure, but she would have felt badly about it. Valin didn’t. He would have been perfectly happy to hunt the creature alone, but if she followed, perhaps Roshan would get a little bit of the credit.

Only seconds later, three more sets of footsteps followed him.

***

Several hours after Valin’s conversation with Roshan, he knelt on a metal ledge, looking down into a cavernous steel bowl. Blindfolded, Lieutenant Roshan crouched at the center of the bowl. His golden medallion hung around her neck.

They needed bait for the Strugle, and at first Valin intended to use himself. He found a likely spot to set up a trap—a room with lots of the dark tunnel entrances Strugles preferred, close to where it had carried out its earlier killings. When he started tying the blindfold around his own eyes, Roshan had stopped him.

You’ve fought these things before, she’d said. Are you afraid of them?

Well…no.

Then that settles it. They’re attracted to fear. I’ve never seen one of these things before, I’ve only seen what they can do to my men. I’m terrified.

And somehow, Valin found himself prepared to carry out an ambush, while Roshan sat out there waiting for one.

He had faith in their chances of attracting a Strugle. The hunter was obviously very active, considering its recent body count, and the conditions were perfect. As long as Roshan was genuinely shaken, they had a good trap.

Assuming they could kill the creature once they caught it.

Strugles may have originated in Asphodel, but they were adapted to life in Ornheim. Their hides were covered in thick, stony plates that would turn any blade short of a pickaxe. For the two Strugles Valin had killed before, he had lured one into an ambush of fireball-wielding Naraka Travelers, and crushed the other beneath a giant boulder.

Valin had heard great things about the superiority of Tartarus Steel blades, but if they could pierce the hide of an Ornheim predator like a Strugle, he would buy one of those weapons for himself. Maybe Deianira could get him one.

He waited in silence as two hours stretched into three. It wouldn’t have surprised him to spend an entire night waiting patiently for the Strugle to arrive, but obviously it had instructions to strike early and often.

At the edge of the metal bowl, a flicker of movement caught Valin’s attention.

He stared into the shadows, trying to figure out whether his eyes were tricking him. The darkness shifted again, and a brown-black lump slid into view.

It looked like a starving man strapped with stone armor. Slatted ribs pressed against thin, flaky skin underneath heavy blocks of granite. Its arms tapered to black spearpoints at the end; he couldn’t see anything like hands or claws.

As he had recalled, the face was the worst. Its mouth was a circular, sucking vortex full of teeth, its eyes huge moons of milky white. It was a face bred for inspiring nightmares in children.

Luckily—or perhaps not—Valin had seen worse.

Quietly, he signaled the other two Travelers, gesturing down toward the creature. Roshan couldn’t see his gestures from behind her blindfold, but it seemed she sensed something. She froze as soon as the Strugle emerged from the shadows, slowly turning her head to face the monster.

The Traveler nearest to Valin reached over, lifting the lid of a long silver treasure chest. He had insisted on picking it up from a Damascan armory before they set this ambush.

Across the room, on the opposite side of the great steel bowl, the other male Tartarus Traveler raised one hand in front of him.

A spinning blade the size of a cartwheel erupted into the air out of the silver chest, so big it seemed like it couldn’t possibly have fit inside. Almost soundlessly, it whirred into the air and spun into the Traveler’s waiting hand.

The closer soldier reached into the chest with one hand. When he pulled it out, the hand was covered by a gleaming silver gauntlet.

So quietly Valin almost couldn’t believe it, more pieces of armor flew from the chest and assembled themselves on the Traveler’s waiting body. In only a few seconds, and with less sound than a clattering teacup, the soldier of Tartarus was covered by a suit of polished steel.

Unaware, the Strugle crept closer toward Lieutenant Roshan. It scuttled like a crab, though it only had four limbs, inching sideways and lurching forward as though nervous.

Right now, the medallion she wore should be warning her of the Strugle’s approach. She would be ready to attack when the time came.

Valin placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. The three Travelers would attack first. With any luck, they would finish it off before he managed to climb down. If not, he stayed in reserve. Everything had lined up exactly as they had planned.

With a grinding squeal of shifting gears, the Labyrinth changed.

The bowl slid back, bringing the Strugle and Lieutenant Roshan away from the rest of the room. Valin’s ledge raised even higher, and the room widened, separating him from his allied Traveler on the other side.

Great, Valin thought. Now it’s going to take me forever to climb down.

It actually took him another second to realize the real problem: now, even the two Tartarus Travelers were too far away. The Strugle would get the first strike.

“Go now!” Valin hissed to the Traveler next to him. “I’ll catch up!”

But the man didn’t leave. He reached into the chest and pulled out one of the strangest swords Valin had ever seen. It was long, clearly meant to be used with both hands, and slightly curved. The sheath still covered its blade, but Valin knew it would only be sharp along the outside edge.

The Traveler leaned back, poised to throw the sheathed sword like a javelin.

“Lieutenant!” he bellowed, and launched the sword like a ballista.

It shot straight for Lieutenant Roshan, who did not turn toward the sound of her subordinate’s voice, as Valin had expected she would. Instead, she turned to face the Strugle and tore her blindfold off.

For a split second, as the curved sword flew through the air, she stared into the Strugle’s horrific milky eyes.

And without looking, she reached up and caught her sword in her left hand.

In one smooth motion, she pulled the sword from its sheath and swept its edge toward her opponent.

Valin didn’t watch how it turned out; he started to scramble down the side of his steel cliff. The landscape was made up almost entirely of interlocking steel plates, and he cut himself more than once, but he knew he would need to get down there as fast as possible.

The Strugle’s preferred method of attack was ambush, terrifying the victim into paralysis before impaling them on its spear-like arms and draining them of blood. But if it was confronted, it would not run away and seek other prey, as would many predators. Instead, it hunched into an almost turtle-like defensive stance, using its stony armored plates to defend itself as it continued to force its victim into a corner. Only when it had no other options would it finally flee.

In this situation, the Strugle running was probably a worst-case scenario. It would be free to hunt on its own, and there was no realistic chance of tracking it down a second time before it killed again. They had to kill it before it either devoured Lieutenant Roshan or decided to run.

Why did the room have to shift? Valin wondered. Why then, at that exact time? If the bowl had stayed in place, the Travelers could have killed the creature instantly, from a safe range.

If the Steel Labyrinth was self-aware, it had a sick sense of humor.

On the far side of the room, the Traveler with the bladed disc hurled it toward the Strugle. Closer to Valin, the man covered in armor leaped down from the ledge, landing easily on the ground twenty feet below.

Obviously, the armor reinforced his body somehow, which Valin deeply envied at the moment.

I’d give my left leg for strength like that right now. He wouldn’t mind the armor part either, to tell the truth; his fingers were bleeding from a dozen little cuts.

When he finally reached the bowl, the three Tartarus Travelers had things well in hand. The one with the disc waited high on his ledge, throwing it every few seconds and calling it back to his hand. It didn’t do much damage to the rocky monster of Ornheim, but it left little chips of stone in its wake.

It seemed the armored Traveler’s job was to keep the Strugle from reaching its prey. Every time the creature got close to stabbing Roshan, the man pulled it backwards. Roshan herself used her gleaming blade to deflect strike after strike, occasionally flickering out to draw blood.

Delay tactics, Valin realized. They were holding it there, chipping away at the predator little by little, waiting for it to succumb to its wounds and die.

Not a bad strategy, but if this kept up, Valin wouldn’t get his chance to fight. The whole trip would be a waste.

Apparently the Strugle heard his thoughts, because the creature’s head twisted almost backwards on its neck, its two white-lantern eyes staring him straight in the face. Its round mouth let out a growling shriek, and it slipped through the armored Traveler’s gauntlets to scuttle straight toward Valin.

It seemed to prefer weaker prey.

Valin drew his sword and held a basic stance: blade up, feet apart, crouched on the balls of his feet. A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. This wasn’t, perhaps, the most efficient way of getting rid of the creature, but Naraka take him if it wasn’t more fun.

The Strugle opened with a probing jab of its spear-arm that Valin had no trouble deflecting. The second had a little more spirit behind it. Rather than trying a third time, the Strugle hissed and rushed him, loping straight forward with both arms extended.

Valin twisted to the side and put his whole body behind a thrust to the Strugle’s relatively unarmored chest.

Then Tartarus played yet another underhanded trick on him.

His sword bent and snapped off, clinging as it struck the metal floor.

Without missing a step, Valin threw his hilt aside. If he tried to back off, the Strugle would simply stab him through the back. So he leaped forward.

He didn’t have anything like the strength it would take to wrestle with the creature evenly, but he would settle for not getting stabbed. Awkwardly, he pushed at the Strugle’s arms with hands and feet, trying to keep it entangled long enough for Lieutenant Roshan to strike the final blow.

Over the monster’s plated shoulder, he happened to catch a glimpse of Roshan’s eyes.

She had her curved sword held in both hands, and was almost here. He hoped he could hang on long enough for her to get there and stab the monster through.

Wait, come to think of it, how will I get out of the way when she does? She won’t stab me, will she? This was a bad plan.

Instead of crossing the last few paces to him, though, she stopped, drew one arm back, and threw her sword forward.

Is she trying to hit this thing with her thrown sword? Valin thought. People tried it occasionally, but it never worked. Never. If she managed to kill a Struggle with it, he was going to apprentice himself to this woman, and never leave until he learned her miraculous sword-throwing secrets.

The sword didn’t fly nearly as straight as it had earlier; it looped and wobbled through the air

Oh, she’s not throwing it at the Strugle. She’s throwing it to me.

If anything, the thought was even less comforting…but still interesting. He couldn’t deny he liked the idea of finishing off this creature himself. He had to let go of one of the Strugle’s arms—potentially freeing it to stab him in the back—to reach up and snatch the hilt of the lieutenant’s sword.

He was face-to-face with the Strugle’s whirling circular mouth, close enough to smell the iron on its breath. His body was pressed against the creature’s unarmored underbelly.

He had the perfect chance. So he grabbed the hilt of the sword in both hands and drove it down, putting three and a half feet of steel into the monster’s guts.

It spasmed as it died, leaking strangely dark blood all over the place. Valin stepped back, to avoid getting more blood on his skin than he absolutely had to. He pulled the sword out with him, and it slid from the monster’s body with miraculous ease.

“I need to get one of these swords,” he said. “They’re incredible.”

Lieutenant Roshan’s grin made her look ten years younger. “Come and see me in the Forges, and I’ll show you how they’re made. We’ll have plenty of time, since I suspect I’ll be on forge duty for the next few weeks. If not the rest of my natural life.”

Valin reversed the bloody sword and held it out to her, hilt-first. “I might take you up on that. But who says you’ll be punished at all? We caught the thing, didn’t we?”

She took the sword from him and began wiping the blade down with a thick cloth she produced from her pocket. “Not enough, I’m afraid. It was your plan that worked, and you that struck the final blow. Thank you, by the way.”

Tartarus Travelers and their honor. They could be even more confusing than the Labyrinth itself. “If you knew that, why did you toss me the sword? Why didn’t you wait and kill it yourself?”

Roshan moved around to the armored Traveler, helping him out of his breastplate. Apparently he couldn’t just conjure it off the same way he could summon it on. “I knew you had the better shot,” she said. “That was what mattered. Besides, it’s not like this is over. We still don’t know who summoned it in the first place.”

“Sure you do,” Valin said. “Enosh. It’s always Enosh.”

“We’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid.”

Valin nodded absently, still looking at the Strugle’s corpse. “That’s it for me, though. My job’s done. I was almost hoping it would take longer.”

“Hoping you would run into a dragon?” the armored man asked. His voice was somewhat muffled by the helmet.

Valin spread his hands helplessly. “Not entirely. The Territories are fascinating; I can never see enough of them. I’ve never spent much time in Tartarus before, so I was hoping to get to know it a little better.”

He hesitated, then added, “And you never know. Maybe there are dragons here after all.”

Lieutenant Roshan shrugged. “Well, good luck to you. Tell the Queen we were grateful for your assistance, and hers. If it helps…I’ve heard rumors of fire-breathing snakes with golden scales. Not dragons, exactly, but close.”

“It’s just a tale we use to keep the novices up at night,” one of the men put in. “But as you said, you never know.”

Valin had certainly followed up on less. “Where?” he asked.

“Supposedly, in the center of the Labyrinth.”

He picked up his satchel, slinging it over one shoulder. “Can you point me in the right direction?”

“It’s a labyrinth,” Lieutenant Roshan said. “That’s more than a name. It’s a big maze.”

“So no one knows where the center is.”

Oh, well. He would find it himself. He liked things better that way.

“Before I forget…” Roshan said, and tossed him his gold medallion. “I had a real battle with myself about giving that back to you. It may have saved my life today. The voice is a eerie, though.”

Valin snatched the medallion out of the air and tucked it away in his satchel. He hadn’t forgotten; part of him had been hoping that Roshan would stay quiet and try to keep the artifact for herself. He should have known better.

“You wouldn’t be willing to part with your sword, would you?” Valin asked hopefully. “I could make a trade.”

She laughed. “Pick one up yourself. There are plenty around here. If you want a good one, though, you’ll have to come see me in the forges.”

“Oh, well. It was worth a try.”

Valin raised a hand in farewell and headed out of the room and back into the razor-filled hallway. He had a few days before Deianira expected him back. Maybe as much as a week.

The Wanderer walked deeper into the Steel Labyrinth, looking for dragons.

You will find that the Red light of diligence shines strongly in the Labyrinth, for many of its Travelers hold fast to the old ways. Rather than guiding them, we must ask them to guide us.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 6: Red

The Lightning Wastes

Valor is an easy virtue to admire.

We make heroes out of those who charge recklessly against superior forces. We idolize the warriors who risk their lives to save the innocent, who stand firm in the face of certain death. Truly, bravery and courage are fine qualities.

But Travelers of Endross can take it too far.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 7: Gold

358th Year of the Damascan Calendar

1st Year in the Reign of Queen Leah I

9 Days Until Autumn’s End

Queen Leah the First slumped over onto her camp desk. The thing almost collapsed—it was made to fold and pack up for easy marching, and she'd been using it as a permanent fixture for months now. She was lucky it had lasted this long without buckling under her.

She kept her face pressed against the desk. So what if the desk broke, sending her crashing to the ground? She couldn't bring herself to care.

She had other things to worry about. Such as her meeting with the nine Overlords, which had just ended.

“Could that have possibly gone any worse?” She asked, into the desk.

Indirial's cloak rustled and a chair creaked; he must have sat down. “An Incarnation didn't blast through the tent and kill us all. In that light, I'd say we came out ahead.”

Leah raised her head, which took ten times as much effort as normal. “They're not listening to me anymore, Indirial. They're not concerned about the nation. They can hardly see past their own cities.”

Indirial's easy smile never left his face, blinding white against his tan villager's skin. It was hard to put a dent in his optimism. “You're young, and they barely know you. Give them time. Besides, the nation's going through a crisis. Of course they're going to look to their own realms first.”

He had taken his black cloak off, draping it over the back of his chair, leaving his chain-wrapped arms bare. She had rarely seen the shadow-chains that marked his arms so short; they stopped above his wrists. He wore confidence like a second cloak, solid and dependable even in a crisis. He had to be as old as her father—old enough to be her grandfather, in fact—but he looked twenty years younger. The benefits of Valinhall, she was sure.

Leah glanced over at the table next to her. It was much sturdier than her portable writing desk, and covered with a giant map of the kingdom of Damasca. The map was almost lost beneath a chaos of pins and buttons in every color imaginable. The release of the Incarnations had worked on the nation like a kick on an anthill. Cities were practically trading refugees, as their citizens fled one citadel for perceived safety in another. Thousands of them were here, camped under her command, less than five miles from the sealed city of Cana.

“It's not what they're doing that bothers me,” Leah said. “Look at what they're not doing. None of them bothered to address the Endross Incarnation. Not even Overlord Feiora.”

Only a few days ago, they had received word that the Endross Incarnation had burst forth from its prison beneath the city of Eltarim. It had left the city largely untouched for some reason, blasting off into the wilderness to terrorize ordinary merchants and a handful of small villagers.

Indirial folded his arms. “Overlord Feiora rules Eltarim, but the city and the surrounding lands are practically unharmed. She's no Endross Traveler.”

“She should have been,” Leah said. Her father had appointed Feiora Torannus to guard the Endross Incarnation, even though she was an Avernus Traveler. In every other case, the Overlord Traveled the same Territory as the Incarnation he or she guarded. Feiora was the sole exception, and at the moment Leah was having trouble recalling why. “In any case, that's no excuse for her shirking her duty.”

“You think she may have a...personal reason for refusing to listen to you?” Indirial's grin got a little wider. “Maybe you shouldn't have trapped her brother alive.”

Lysander Torannus, Feiora's brother, had been another Overlord. Before she sealed him into a block of solid crystal for treachery and attempted regicide.

Leah glared at the Overlord of Cana. “I'll let him out at any time, if you think she won't mind me executing him instead.”

Indirial put on a thoughtful look. “No...no, I don't think that would win you any friends. Besides, she has a point. She's got enough trouble keeping her people from panicking. She doesn’t need to hunt an Incarnation down. What would she do if she found it?”

Leah had to resist raising a hand to her pounding head. She always got a headache after meeting the Overlords. Instead, she scooped up a report detailing the number of Travelers under her direct command.

“How many Endross Travelers did you have working for you?” she asked.

“Six.”

“Can you find any of them now?”

“I'd bet I can tell you exactly where they are.” Indirial craned his neck and looked meaningfully out the flap of the tent.

A few miles distant, but still clearly visible, the city of Cana glowed like a cherry-red sunset. The whole capital, from wall to wall, was covered by a shining dome of scarlet light.

Sealed by the power of the Ragnarus Incarnation. No one had been in or out since the Incarnations first escaped, over three months before.

Leah found herself wondering whether any of the Endross Travelers were still alive. Whether anyone was alive, under the dome, or if their blood, minds, and souls had been used as fuel for the weapons of the Crimson Vault.

“I don't see any on the list,” Leah said, scanning it quickly.

Indirial leaned forward, shuffling through her papers. “I think there's...ah, yes, here we go. One of Cana's weather-workers made it out before the city was sealed.”

Leah took the paper he offered her. “An Endross weather-worker? I never knew Cana had one.”

“The weather in Cana's pretty mild, so she had an easier job than most, but she warded off her fair share of storms.”

She stared at the one single name under the “Endross” column, as though she could make it multiply by sheer force of will. “Where are the others? Even counting the people trapped in Cana, we should have seen some Endross Travelers from other cities.”

Indirial hesitated for a moment before speaking. “This is hearsay, you understand, but I've talked to the other Overlords. They're all missing Endross Travelers. I'd go so far as to say we're missing maybe half of all the Endross-trained Travelers in the kingdom.”

“Where did they go?” Leah asked. Her tone sounded much more harsh than she meant; she sounded like she was going to track them down and strangle them all one by one.

Then again, that might not be such a bad plan.

“With the King dead, and the Incarnations loose, and no Overlord specifically looking over their shoulder, where do you think they went?” Indirial leaned over the map. “Some of them probably deserted, I'm sure some of them started following their Incarnation around, and I'd bet most of them took the excuse to move to their Territory. You know how Endross is.”

Endross itself was a blasted landscape, half storm-wracked desert and half deadly jungle. Endross Travelers were the only ones crazy enough to try and live there.

Leah stood up, taking care not to put any weight on the unsteady desk. “Since the Overlords are unwilling to do their jobs, I'll have to go myself.”

Indirial pulled his cloak off the chair. “I figured as much. Let's go get that weather-worker, she can guide us.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Not us, Indirial. I have a different assignment for you.”

The Overlord's eyebrows raised. “You can't go without a bodyguard.”

“I need you to hunt down the Endross Incarnation. Kill it if you can, but if not, drive it away from the populated areas.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Huh. I guess there's no one else around to do the job. Very well, my Queen, I live to serve.” He gave her a little cloak-flourishing bow. “I will leave as soon as you select another bodyguard.”

“I hardly need one.”

“No one is safe alone,” Indirial said, for once completely serious. “Particularly not with the Incarnations around. And no matter how confident you are, you'll be surrounded by Endross Travelers in their own Territory.”

“They're Damascan citizens,” she pointed out. They should obey her without question.

“They're Endross,” he said simply. “You need a bodyguard. I haven't seen Kai in weeks—”

Leah shuddered at the thought of spending even one day with Kai. She had never gotten over her distaste for the man. He was simply...eerie.

“...and Denner's in the south, leading refugees away from the Asphodel Incarnation. If I could find Kathrin, I could hire her to guard you, but that would take a few days.”

Indirial's grin was back, in full force. “There’s one Valinhall Traveler left.”

“It doesn't necessarily have to be a Valinhall Traveler.”

“Would you prefer one Valinhall or four Tartarus?”

Bringing one guide and one bodyguard meant she was confident enough in her royal commands that she didn't need to lean on force. Bringing one guide and four bodyguards meant she felt she needed protection, because she didn't expect the Endross Travelers to obey her. They would see it as a sign of weakness.

“...one.”

“Excellent!” Indirial said, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “I'll open a Gate.”

***

Indirial left his Gate open, then walked out of the tent. She called after him, but he didn't respond, which was typical: once the Overlord had a new goal in his sights, he tended to head straight for it, blocking out everything else.

She turned from the portal and faced the entry room of the House of Blades. It looked like nothing so much as a sitting-room for a wealthy noble. A wealthy noble from a century past. It was a little dim, and the swords—hung in wooden racks on the walls—left a little to be desired, as far as decor went. Ornately carved tables sat here and there in the room, covered by books and surrounded by plush, red-cushioned chairs. Against one wall set a comfortable-looking red sofa, though she thought she could hear a soft growling coming from that direction. It sounded like a badger stuck beneath the cushions.

Between the ostentatious furniture and the soft lighting, the scene almost looked like it belonged in an attic, covered in dust. She ran a hand along the top of a desk. It was spotlessly clean, and had been recently polished. She'd only entered Valinhall a handful of times before, and she had never caught a glimpse of anyone doing housework. Perhaps the House cleaned itself. Or maybe this was how they trained Travelers: by forcing them to dust the furniture.

“Excuse me,” she called into the hallway, which extended out beyond the entry hall. “Is anyone there?”

She felt distinctly uncomfortable, calling into a foreign Territory like this. Who knew what sort of creatures she might awaken? Then again, she had never seen anything here that looked remotely dangerous. Indirial and Simon always spoke as though the House was the most deadly Territory of all the eleven known to man, but she had yet to see why. It seemed quite comfortable, to her. Maybe they were spoiled.

When no one responded, she marched forward, into the hall. Doors stretched down the hallway on either side. To her left was a door with a single small circle; to her right, a door with a huge circle orbited by three small ones. Some way of distinguishing the bedrooms, she supposed, but she had never gotten a look inside one of these doors. She had no idea which one was Simon's. Maybe she should knock on each one separately, and see if someone answered.

As she raised her hand to knock, the door on the far left opened, and a woman stepped out. She had a pair of goggles pushed up her forehead, tied around the back of her head with a leather strap. They looked almost like Avernus flight goggles. Her long auburn hair was bound back with a rag, and she wiped her hands with a similar scrap of cloth. She looked like a miner's wife, more than anything else, though Leah knew she had some job here in Valinhall. She wasn't entirely clear what that job was, no more than she could remember this woman's name.

Her eyes grew wide, and she immediately fell to her knees, prostrating herself on the ground. “Your Highness! We were not expecting you.”

“You may stand,” Leah said wearily. She got sick of having to order people to stand; wouldn't it be much easier if they stood by default, and then she could order them to kneel if that was what she wanted? “I'm looking for Simon.”

“Of course, my Queen, of course,” the woman said, scrambling to her feet. She tried to smooth her hair, realized she held a dirty rag in her hand, and stuffed it into her pocket. “I'll have to wake him up, though. He's been fighting like a madman. Spends hours deep in the House, comes back bleeding so badly he can barely make it into the pool. The imps are going to get him one of these days, I swear they are. Maybe you can talk him out of it, Highness.”

“Perhaps,” Leah said. Imps? She wasn't sure what the imps were, though she had heard about Valinhall's healing pool. “Which room is his?”

The woman hesitated. “I'm sorry, Your Highness, but it might be better if you waited in the entry hall. I'll fetch him for you.”

“I've woken him up before,” Leah said, and the other woman frowned.

“Have you, now? I had wondered why...well. You're that Leah, are you?”

Leah cleared her throat. “Yes, I probably am.”

The woman nodded as though she had figured out the solution to a difficult puzzle. “Well, now. That explains some things. I always think I know that boy better than I do, but he never talks about himself. He always makes you ask.”

She chuckled, and Leah laughed politely along.

At exactly which point did I lose control of this conversation?

“So, which bedroom...” she said, trying to steer the woman back on track.

“Ah, yes. This way. I know you said you could handle it, but you might want to stay in the doorway.”

Handle what? Leah thought, but the other woman was pushing on one of the doors, the one marked by a large half-circle above two smaller circles.

Inside was a bedroom as well appointed, if not as large, as any of the rooms in the royal palace in Cana. The bed was a huge four-poster, with a bedside table on each side and a mirror against one wall, next to a washbasin. The only aspects of the room Leah didn't understand were the shelves built into the far wall, so they were the first thing anyone in the bed would see upon waking.

The shelves were covered in dolls. Dozens of little girls’ dolls, wearing every sort of clothing from a villager's brown shirt and pants to long, flowing court dresses. They had blond hair, and black, and white, and red, and every color Leah had ever seen on a human being.

And they all stared, with painted eyes, straight at Leah. As though they had been positioned that way all along.

“I see the dolls are doing…well,” Leah said. She knew how useful they could be, but she still couldn’t help a little shudder when she saw them looking at her. “Does he have to keep them right there in the bedroom?”

The other woman shrugged. “It's Kai's thing, I think. I’m sure he put the shelves there. Anyway, I don't question Travelers.”

Simon lay, shirtless and sound asleep, amid the cloud-soft whiteness of the bed's blankets. He was all tangled up in a sheet, as though he had tried to escape and the sheet had grabbed him and pulled him back. She always thought of him as small, and he would never be much more than her height, but he had put on a surprising amount of muscle in such a short time. If she hadn't known better, she would never have recognized him as the scrawny boy from Myria.

Instead of walking over to shake him, as Leah had expected, the woman cupped her hands to her mouth. “Simon!” she yelled. “Company!”

Leah barely saw it happen. First Simon was tangled up in the sheet so thoroughly that she was sure it would take a seamstress and a pair of gardening shears to get him loose, then he was across the room, inches in front of her, with a knife in his fist. The gleaming point of the steel pressed against her collarbone.

She choked down a scream and stepped back, proud of herself for not falling over backwards. “What do you think you're—” she demanded, but she stopped herself.

Standing in front of her, Simon woke up.

He blinked a few times, let out a little half-yawn, and noticed her for the first time. “Leah? Why are you…” He saw the knife in his own hand, and his fingers jerked open. The knife clattered to the floor.

“Ah! Sorry. I didn't...they try to kill me in my sleep. All the time. It's a habit, I'm sorry. Are you hurt?”

Leah shook her head, too numb to speak. He had almost stabbed her in the chest before he even realized who she was. Wait. Who, exactly, tries to kill him in his sleep?

Simon frowned at the other woman. “Mistress Agnos, how did you get in here?”

“Like this,” Mistress Agnos said, miming twisting a doorknob and pushing the door open. She watched the two of them with a little amused smile on her face. “You should keep it locked. And I told you to stand back, Your Highness.”

“So you did,” Leah said sourly. “Simon, I need someone to guard me while I go to Endross. We'll be in a Territory where it rains lightning, and we'll probably be surrounded by dozens of Travelers that want to kill me. I need someone to keep me alive and unharmed until we get back. Will you do it?”

Simon glanced down at himself, then at her, and his face flushed. “Uh, let me get a shirt on first.”

“That would be best.”

***

It took Simon a few minutes to get ready, but he eventually emerged, wearing his hooded black cloak and carrying a doll. This one wore her long red hair tied back in a tail, and her outfit was nothing more than a plain villager's shirt and pants. He held the doll in the crook of his arm as he followed Leah out through Indirial's Gate.

“Come back and visit us, Your Highness!” Mistress Agnos called, from back in the entry hall. Leah gave a noncommittal smile and wave. She was actually a little wary of the other woman, who seemed to swing between utter deference and a sort of motherly concern. It was disconcerting.

Helene Rhode, the Endross weather-worker, waited for them on the other side of the Gate. She was perhaps forty years old, with the bright green eyes characteristic of some Western Isles ancestry. Her sandy blond hair was cut close to her scalp, and she had a horizontal scar across one cheek. Most noticeably, she had a weapon strapped to every inch of her clothes. An unstrung crossbow hung from a harness at her right hip, opposite a one-handed infantry sword. She had buckled a dozen knives across her chest, on the outsides of her thighs, and on the insides of her boots. The hilts of two long knives, almost swords, poked up from her shoulders.

Thanks to the time fluctuation between Valinhall and the outside world, Leah had only been gone two or three minutes, but during that period Indirial had evidently found Helene in the camp and gotten her to the command tent. The man did work fast.

I thought she was a weather-worker, not a walking armory, Leah thought, but she kept it to herself. Helene probably expected anyone she came across to mention the weapons, so Leah would maintain the upper hand by saying nothing about them.

“Helene Rhode, I presume,” Leah said.

Helene tilted up a silver flask and took a drink before answering. “You need someone to show you around the Wastes, am I right?”

“That's correct.”

“Fifteen years I've been working in Cana, keeping the worst of the storms away. Ten years before that, I was guiding merchant caravans across Endross, trying to keep them alive. I'll get you wherever you want to go.” She flashed Leah a grin that looked more like a lioness baring her teeth than a smile.

Leah nodded as though she had expected no less. “You'll do perfectly, then. I need the Endross Travelers of Damasca to stop ignoring their duties and return to their posts. I don't know who can make that happen, but you will take us to them, and I will deliver my commands in person.”

Helene took another swig, arching an eyebrow at Leah over her silver flask. “Is there a reason you're going yourself, Your Majesty? No offense meant, but wouldn't you be better off sending a lackey?”

“I can delegate anything except my duties as a Traveler of Ragnarus,” Leah said, half-truthfully. The full truth was that she needed as much authority here as possible, and she didn't have an Overlord to represent her in this matter. It would be easier and faster to do it herself.

“You think this will involve Ragnarus?” The Endross Traveler sounded uneasy.

“It will if our friends don't cooperate.” In reality, if Leah had to rely on her crown to force the Travelers to obey her, she would have already lost. She was hoping to do this without using any of her Ragnarus weapons.

Not that she wouldn't bring them anyway, of course.

Helene nodded to Simon, her first time acknowledging his presence. “And him? I thought you were going to get a bodyguard.”

He had quietly walked over to the map table and sat his redheaded doll next to him. They appeared to be studying it together.

“My bodyguard. That's right.”

“Not to overstep my bounds, but wouldn't it be better to bring another Traveler? Between you and me, I think we can handle most trouble, but I don't think a boy with a sword is going to do us any favors.”

“I am a Traveler, actually,” Simon said. He sounded totally calm, but Leah knew he must have been irritated, or he would have left the question for her to answer.

“Oh really? Which Territory?”

Simon met her eyes. “Valinhall.”

Helene shot Leah a puzzled look. “Where?”

Oh, of course. Sometimes Leah forgot Valinhall's existence wasn't common knowledge. “The same Territory as Overlord Indirial, Helene.”

“Overlord Indirial? Really? I always thought he was a peculiar Tartarus.” She shrugged. “Well, the older you get, the more you learn, I guess. Now then, boy, what's with the doll?”

Simon looked down at the doll and back up, and Leah got the impression they were having a silent conversation. “She wants me to tell you her name's Rebekkah,” he said. He winced and added, “She would also like me to punch you in the face.”

Helene grinned her lion's grin once more. “I'd like to see that play out, Valinhall.”

Leah stepped in between them and gave Simon a cold look. He shrugged and pointed to Rebekkah, who seemed to have the slightest glare on her face. “That's enough. Helene, can you take us where we need to go?”

The Endross Traveler buckled her flask next to her crossbow and spread her hands. “I can take you to the main outpost. It's not hard to get there from here, actually. Short walk. I don't know who's in charge over there, but whoever it is, you'll probably have to fight them.”

“Excellent,” Leah said. “That's why I brought a bodyguard. Lead the way.”

Helene swept out of the tent, Leah followed, and Simon walked behind them, muttering softly to his doll.

***

Leah learned something that day.

She learned that she hated Endross.

It had taken them an hour of walking to reach the place where Helene had decided to open a Gate. Leah wasn't sure whether this was simply the closest place she could open a passable Gate, or whether this took them somehow closer to the main Endross outpost. It was supposed to be accessible from Cana, and they had walked directly away from Cana to open the Gate, but distance could be strange in Territories. An hour's walking west in the outside world could put them two hour's distance east in a Territory. Or a thousand feet up. It all depended on the Territory and the nature of the Gate.

In this case, Helene stopped by a cactus and an unremarkable stretch of scrub grass and announced, “This is it.” She spread her hands, opening one of the swirling, violent thunderstorms that Endross Travelers used as Gates. It hung horizontally in the air, a lightning-filled shadow roughly in the shape of a round doorway.

Helene stepped through without hesitation, obviously trusting the other two to follow. Simon waited for Leah to move first. Leah glanced at him, hoping to see him nervous, so she could offer support and thus make herself feel better. No luck. Simon looked back at her curiously. He even raised his eyebrows, silently asking if she needed anything.

She shook her head and stepped through the Gate. Back in Myria, she had so often wished Simon would act with a little confidence. Now, she wanted the old Simon back. If only to have someone around who was more uncertain than she was.

She stepped through, and had an instant to observe the landscape—a flat, cracked wasteland of yellow sand stretching as far as she could see, beneath an overcast sky—before something hit her ribs like a kick from a horse. She tumbled backwards, caught a glimpse of a blinding flash in the sky, heard thunder loud enough to tear her ears apart, and slammed into the unyielding ground. Her breath whooshed out of her, and she gasped for air, clawing for the weapon she’d dropped.

“Whew,” Helene said, grinning into Leah's face from two inches away. “Close one.”

It all came together: Helene had tackled Leah out of the way. Of what? Leah rolled to one side to see a smoking black scorch mark on the sand for an instant before the wind whisked the char away, leaving clean sand in its wake.

“Surely that would have missed me,” Leah said. The bolt looked like it would have hit several paces off the mark.

“Lightning works a bit different here than it does in the other world,” Helene said, pushing herself to her feet. “But it still carries along the ground. It doesn't have to hit you straight on. Standing too close still gets you.”

The other woman was practically shouting, both over the ring in Leah's ears and over the constant howling of the wind. The storm caught strands of Leah's hair and flailed her face with them, forcing her to constantly hold her hair back. She hadn't even managed to stand up yet.

Simon walked through the Gate a moment later. Leah was on the ground, covered in sand, trying to keep her face clear of her own hair. There was a scorch mark two paces from the Gate. Helene was still brushing sand from her pants.

“What happened?” he asked, in all innocence.

“Never mind,” Leah called over the wind.

The sky above her turned from a cool gray to jet-black in little more than an instant. She scrambled out of the way, imagining another lightning bolt blasting her to smoking pieces, but Helene didn't move.

An instant later, a waterfall of rain blasted Leah, soaking her to the bone in a second. Her crimson dress—formal attire, for when she was acting as Queen—deflated, fabric clinging to suddenly ice-cold skin. Her hair went from flapping around her face to hanging in front of her eyes in a sodden mask.

Then, after only a moment, the rain stopped.

Leah peeled hair back from her eyes to see Simon and Helene still standing in the exact same places, dry as the cracked sand.

Helene shrugged. “That happens,” she said. She started to trudge across the desert.

Leah couldn't remember the last time she had felt so embarrassed. She must look ridiculous. At least there was no one around to see. Well, Simon, but he hardly counted.

Simon let out a choking noise that might have started as laughter, and he was clearly losing the struggle to keep a smile off his face.

She raised one eyebrow at him, as her aunt would have done. “Well?”

Without saying a word, Simon walked over to her and extended a hand to help her up. He was still smiling, though, so she ignored him, instead searching around for the weapon she had dropped. When she found it, she shoved it into the ground and used it to prop herself up without Simon's help.

As Simon looked at the gold-headed, black-hafted Ragnarus spear, his smile faded. “Do you think you'll have to use that?”

“If I do,” Leah said, pushing hair out of her face, “then your presence here will become unnecessary.”

Simon nodded seriously, and together they began walking after Helene. A few more seconds passed, during which Simon wisely kept his mouth shut. Then his wisdom ran out.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

Leah shoved him with the butt of her spear.

***

The Endross outpost looked like a primitive fort. The wall was fifteen feet high and made of logs with the bark still on, lashed together by brown vines. A network of square wooden towers showed above the walls, each one made of rough-hewn timbers. The entire outpost was a square, not a circle as Leah had expected, and from each corner rose a tall metal spike.

“It’s to catch the lightning,” Helene explained, when Simon asked about them. “Funnels them into a…you know what? I’m not supposed to talk about it. Keeps the whole place from burning down, that’s all you need to know.”

Two Travelers, a man and a woman, stood guard outside the outpost gate. The woman was dressed in what Leah would expect from one of the Badarin desert people: her head was wrapped in a white cloth, she wore loose-fitting, pale-colored garments, and the pommel of her sword had no bare metal showing. The man dressed more traditionally for Endross Travelers, in a leather breastplate and leather-padded leggings, with a leather cap. A necklace of what looked like lion’s claws hung down over his chest.

He smiled broadly when he saw them, baring all his teeth like a maniac. “Who goes there.” It was a statement, not a question, delivered in the most evil, threatening tones Leah had ever heard.

Without being asked, Helene announced them in a clear, ringing voice. “Her Highness Leah the First, Queen of Damasca, seeks an audience with the leader of this outpost.”

Leah wasn’t ‘seeking an audience’ with anyone. She was demanding the presence of whoever currently commanded this outpost, so she could get her Travelers back. However, Endross Travelers seemed unlikely to appreciate a political distinction, so she let it slide.

Simon stood to her right, and at some point he had raised the hood of his cloak. She found herself oddly comforted to have him there, even though—as she reminded herself—she still had her father’s spear. Surely that would be enough to deal with anything an Endross pulled.

The man lost his smile, and the woman at his side pulled a cloth away from her mouth to whisper in his ear. Her expression said she never smiled, and did not expect that trend to change anytime soon.

The man cleared his throat. “You would be looking for Corthis, then. He’s the strongest around here. But you’ll have to prove who you are.”

Leah and her companions stared at the guard. Before they reached the outpost, Leah had arranged her crown on her head: a silver circlet set with a large ruby. The gem gleamed and pulsed with its own crimson light.

Hefting the spear, Leah took a step toward the guard. “You want to see proof of my identity?” she asked quietly. With a touch of her will, she prepared the circlet for action. It flared with a harmless red light; the crown wouldn’t activate without more effort on her part, but it still looked impressive.

The male guard took two steps back. Then one more, just to be safe. The woman stayed where she was, but she cringed from the light nonetheless.

“Sorry, my Queen, I didn’t recognize you,” the man croaked. “Enjoy your stay in the outpost.”

With a shockingly loud voice, the woman bellowed for someone on the other side of the gate to let the strangers in.

Leah let the light in her crown die and strode in, following a chuckling Helene, and followed by a silent Simon, who had taken the rear without being instructed. Perhaps he might grow into the bodyguard business after all; half of it was simply looming behind his employer, letting people know he was there without saying a word. Granted, that would be easier for him if he were two feet taller, or if he had more of a reputation. Or if people knew what a Valinhall Traveler was.

But she saw some potential.

Corthis, it turned out, was in the very back of the outpost, in a building that looked like a wooden amphitheater. He sat in a raised box above the stadium, which was packed with roaring Endross Travelers. And, for that matter, roaring Endross creatures. Snakes slithered among the feet of the stomping fans, deftly avoiding being crushed by their masters. Something like a reptilian panther wove in and out of the shadows beneath the stadium supports, its coat occasionally crackling with blue sparks. Tiny storm drakes flashed in glittering swarms above the crowd.

As Leah stepped inside, she got her first glimpse at why the Travelers were all cheering.

The floor in the center of the stadium was bare, packed Endross sand. Two big men in torn leathers, presumably both Endross Travelers, circled each other in the ring. They were scratched, bleeding, and unarmed. One of them roared and charged like a bull, slamming his shoulder into his unprepared opponent’s middle. He didn’t stop there. He kept charging until he hit the short wall marking the edge of the floor. He slammed his opponent’s body into the wall, flipping the other man up and into the spectators on the other side.

The watching Travelers loved it. They roared and stood, some of them literally glowing with excitement. Those few shone like bolts of lightning themselves.

A gong rang out, echoing through the stadium, apparently announcing the end of the fight.

After about five minutes of non-stop cheering, Corthis raised a hand. He had once been a truly enormous man, but now age was catching up to him. His hair and beard were as much gray as black, and Leah suspected he hadn’t had his huge gut for long. But his arms were as wide around as Simon’s waist and thick with muscle.

“Men and women of the Wastes!” Corthis announced, his voice ringing like a town crier’s. “We have a royal visitor!”

A few people laughed, a handful booed, but most stayed silent. Everyone in the stadium, even the bleeding man on the floor, turned to look at Leah.

Well, her parents had prepared her for nothing if not addressing the public. “I would speak with you, Corthis, if you represent these people. May I approach?”

Without waiting for a response, she walked toward the stairs leading up to Corthis’ box.

“Anything for my queen!” he shouted, and a dozen spectators laughed. Leah walked up into the box, her guide and her bodyguard following.

Up close, Corthis seemed to fill the entire box. Between his loud voice, his expansive gestures, and his physical size, he had a sense of presence that made him almost overwhelming. Also, he had a huge snake wrapped around the head of his chair, and he was leaning against it like a pillow. That was the sort of disturbing detail she was sure he used to throw people off track.

“So, Your Highness, what can I do for you?” he asked smoothly, as soon as she entered the box. She did not let herself be rushed. Instead, she pulled up a chair, angling it so that she could look him in the eye.

“I suspect you know,” she said. “The Endross Travelers have settled here instead of seeing to their duties in the kingdom. We have an Incarnation running around loose, and none of your Travelers to help contain it.”

Corthis opened his eyes wide, as though startled. “Only one Incarnation? Why, this situation must be better than I’d heard! Let’s all pack up and go home right now!”

Scattered laughter from the nearby seats. Corthis was making no effort to moderate his voice.

“You are all Damascan Travelers. Your duty is to your country.”

“Let us speak seriously,” Corthis said, which had to have been a deliberate insult. “We have no Overlord above us. We cannot stand against an Incarnation. What are we to do? Who is to tell us our duty?”

Leah let a little heat into her voice; it was appropriate at this point. “I’ll tell you what your duty is not, Traveler Corthis: hiding while the citizens of Damasca die beneath the lightning of your Incarnation.”

Corthis smiled and spread his hands, not at all put off by her words. “I still see no reason why we should return to a devastated kingdom instead of staying here to secure our own lands.”

“Because I command it,” Leah said. She had intended to wait a little longer before playing that piece, but he had set her up too well.

“And who are you to command me, little girl?” Corthis asked, amused.

Leah shrugged. She raised her voice to match his, letting her words echo through the stadium. “You value bravery in combat here, don’t you? Let’s meet in the ring.”

She didn’t move, exactly, but she shifted so the light caught the rubies set into her crown and spear.

Corthis coughed. “None of that, now, none of that. No one doubts the strength of Ragnarus, to be sure.”

A few people in the crowd murmured uneasily.

“But it’s not the strength of your Territory in question,” he continued. “And what is the strength of a leader if not the strength of his men? Let’s test two of yours against two of mine, and see who comes out on top.” He smiled as though he had finally trapped her. In that moment, she almost pitied him.

Endross Travelers had a reputation for being brave, vicious, and slightly insane. They were also known to be stubborn, stupid, and…she supposed the best phrase would be ‘predictably unpredictable.’

Leah saw nothing here to refute those beliefs.

“Agreed,” Leah said, feigning reluctance. Helene, to her credit, didn’t hesitate. She loosened the sword at her side, checked a couple of knives, and walked down the stairs to the center of the stadium.

Simon, on the other hand, stopped and gave Leah a questioning look, which was not the image she wanted to present in public. He should have given every appearance of accepting her orders without question.

“You’ll be up here alone,” he said, in a low voice, which made it a bit better. Her bodyguard should worry about leaving her unprotected.

“Don’t be concerned,” Leah said, loud enough that Corthis could hear her. “I have nothing to fear from him.” It was true; she could activate her crown as quickly as she could speak, she held her Ragnarus spear in her hand, and she had a few other surprises prepared in her pockets. She could handle an Endross Traveler or six.

“He’s right here, though,” Simon said, in the same low voice. “Why don’t we deal with him?”

What did he mean by ‘deal with?’ Did he literally mean make a deal with the man, or was he suggesting execution? Perhaps torture? With Simon, she wasn’t sure.

“I have every confidence in your ability to ‘deal with’ anyone. However, please proceed into the arena and do as your queen commands.”

Simon winced, but he managed to execute a fairly credible bow. “And what does my queen command?”

“Win.”

“I can do that,” he said. His cloak trailed behind him as he walked down the stairs.

Corthis shouted a couple of names, and two big leather-clad brutes walked from the seats. One of them held a huge two-handed sword, and the other walked with something like a glowing blue crocodile at his side.

“The Queen’s men will be put to the test of the storm!” Corthis called, in his booming voice. The crowd’s cheering drowned even his bellowed words. Helene, Leah noticed, rolled her eyes at being counted among the Queen’s ‘men.’

The four combatants stood on the sand. The three Endross Travelers—including Helene—looked like dogs at the ends of a series of chains, each straining to reach the others but holding themselves back. Simon, in contrast, hadn’t lowered his hood or summoned his sword. He wasn’t crouched, or in any kind of stance Leah could recognize. He just stood there.

“What’s wrong with your boy?” Corthis asked in a whisper. He peered closer, leaning forward in his chair. “Is he carrying a doll?” Leah didn’t respond, hoping he would take it for mysterious confidence.

From somewhere in the stadium, a gong rang out, and the Endross Travelers started moving.

Not faster than Simon.

In an instant, he crossed the space between him and his two opponents, and had one hand around each of their necks. He heaved his shoulders, tossing them three paces backwards, over the short wall and into the stands.

The gong rang again, weaker this time, as though the one ringing it hadn’t been quite prepared. The glowing crocodile hissed and ran up to Simon, but Simon leaned down and stared it in the eyes. He didn’t do anything but stare, as far as Leah could tell, but the reptile froze.

It backed away, moving in a reverse waddle until it got far enough away to scurry out of the arena entirely.

“Are they out of bounds?” Simon called up to the box. Leah didn’t think it mattered whether they were disqualified or not; they lay motionless on the steps and didn’t show any signs of stirring.

Corthis cleared his throat. “Indeed they are, indeed they are. That was…a remarkable display.”

Helene had her head cocked and was looking at Simon as though she had never seen him before.

Leah shouted down into the ring. “Simon, why don’t you keep going while Corthis and I have a talk?”

Simon swept another bow in her direction.

“What do I do?” Helene muttered. She was probably talking to Simon, but Leah could still hear.

“Relax,” Simon suggested. “Get a seat, have a drink. I can’t keep going forever, so you can take over for me when I’m done.”

Leah turned to Corthis, making a point of not looking into the arena as the gong rang again. “We were discussing my Travelers?”

“Yes…” Corthis said absently. He seemed to be having trouble tearing his eyes off the spectacle below. This time, lightning flashed in the corner of Leah’s eye before a body hurtled into the stands. “Look, Your Highness, I’m trying to do right by my people. There’s nothing they can do to help in the outside world. More important, they believe there’s nothing they can do. And there’s nothing more deadly to an Endross Traveler than a lack of heart.”

The gong sounded, and Leah pretended not to notice. “I could debate this with you, Corthis. I don’t agree with your assessment of the situation, and I could explain why. But I don’t have to.” She leaned closer, forcing him to look away from the fight and meet her eyes. “It is my place to determine when and where I need my people. It is not yours to question and second-guess, do you understand me? Not now.”

This was a tactic Leah had seen her father use to great effect on more than one occasion. There were two possible outcomes: either Corthis would collapse and do what she said, or he would act out of wounded pride and…

His eyes hardened, and the beginnings of a sneer grew on his face. The ghost of fear chilled Leah’s heart. Maybe she had miscalculated. If he stood against her here, she would have to kill him. Or have him killed. Either way, the Endross Travelers would at best divide, at worst rebel.

He started to respond, but his eyes were drawn to the arena floor. His words died. Leah followed his gaze.

Simon stood, his hood down at last, surrounded by four Endross Travelers and an equal number of summoned beasts. One of them was a snake as big around as a tree trunk. Its eyes glowed shining blue, and its exposed fangs sparked with lightning.

Leah’s breath caught. Simon had seen one of those serpents before. It had killed his mother and almost killed him. If he froze up now…

Simon leaned in, looking the giant snake in the eyes, ignoring the other monsters and Travelers around him.

In a voice audible from her box, he announced, “I’ve seen bigger.”

He held his hand out to one side and summoned his blade.

The sword was awkwardly long, probably seven feet from hilt to point. It gleamed in a graceful, slightly curving arc, and Simon held it in one hand.

“What Territory is that?” Corthis asked.

The gong rang.

Almost as one, the four Endross Travelers and their creatures blasted a wave of sparks, light, and crackling lightning, all directed inward, toward Simon. For a second, Leah was blinded.

When she finally blinked her eyes clear, Simon had landed with his feet on top of one of the other Travelers, slamming the man chest-first into the sand. With the back of his blade, he knocked a second man backwards, sending him staggering into the back wall of the arena. In the reverse stroke, he sliced a reptilian monster’s wing off. It screamed and writhed on the ground.

Simon leaped again, landing on the third Traveler and bisecting his beast from head down to tail. The final fighter screamed and raised a sword, which flashed a bright white. Simon glanced down at the redheaded doll—Rebekkah—in his left hand, and looked up at the last Traveler standing.

He stabbed his blade down at an angle into the sand and walked toward the man with the sword. The other man struck, but Simon swayed to one side.

Then he punched the man in the face, laying him out on his back.

The snake slithered up behind him, catching him apparently unawares, and Leah had to resist the urge to call out. Without turning around, Simon stepped back, slamming his heel down on the serpent’s head with a wet, audible crunch.

The rest of the snake’s body quivered and went still.

The sound of the gong floated over the utter silence in the rest of the stadium.

Corthis’ sneer had transformed into a look of complete disbelief.

Leah raised one eyebrow. “As I said, Traveler Corthis, you don’t have a choice.” And, in case that threat wasn’t blunt enough, she added, “I wonder how quickly he could jump up here, given a reason.”

Either he somehow heard her across the distance of the arena, or else he had the world’s best natural timing, but Simon’s shadow fell across Leah’s face. He was crouched on the railing of Corthis’ box, his cloak falling behind him, his outrageously long, gleaming sword held out to the side in one hand.

He didn’t say a word, and he didn’t look toward Leah. He stared at the big Endross Traveler, who was steadily losing color.

Leah stood. “Every Traveler who is capable will come with me right now. I expect to see the rest of you in my camp outside Cana within three days’ time. If you do not arrive by dawn three days hence, I won’t come back. He will.”

Simon kept staring. Leah could have sworn that she heard the doll’s distant, whispered laughter.

Corthis cleared his throat. Then he did it again. “Thank you, my Queen.”

“You’re welcome.”

***

Only a handful of minutes later, Leah was walking back across the Lightning Wastes with Helene beside her. A dozen Endross Travelers walked behind them, keeping a healthy distance back, and behind even them was Simon, hanging around the area like a watchful sheepdog.

For some reason, Helene kept shooting glances backwards. “So, that Simon of yours,” she said at last.

“What about him?” Leah asked. She couldn’t help but feel a little pleased with herself. If Simon could repeat this performance, she could think of several scenarios where the demonstration of his talents would prove very useful indeed.

“That was an impressive display,” Helene went on, taking a drink from her flask again. “If I were fifteen years younger, I’d have caught a man like that. He’d never stand a chance. Does he belong to anyone?”

Well, this conversation had rapidly taken a turn into uncomfortable territory. “He’s not a dog. But if you’re asking me if he’s…romantically engaged, no, I don’t think so. He tends to spend most of his time alone.”

Helene shrugged. “You can cure him of that. If I were your age, I wouldn’t let him get away.”

Leah stared straight ahead, determined not to show any reaction. Her aunt had droned on this topic with disturbing regularity, though more often than not, she had tried to set Leah up with Alin. “He does have a way with swords, I’ll grant you.”

“What other virtues does a man need?” Helene nodded decisively, as though she’d settled the matter, and then she upended her silver flask over her own head. Water. Had it contained nothing more than water the entire time?

Helene probably wasn’t the best source of relationship advice, but she had played her role in this operation well. So had Simon, and she would need to thank him later.

As they stepped through another Endross Gate and back home, Leah let her thoughts slide to the next item on her list.

The Endross Incarnation wouldn’t go down easily.

Maybe Simon could help with that as well.

Valor unfettered is no more than recklessness.

Your bravery must be matched by an equal measure of patience, compassion, and understanding. Otherwise, it is worthless.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 7: Gold

Caverns of Flame

Perhaps due to the harsh and unforgiving nature of life in the Caverns of Flame, Naraka Travelers do not consider mercy a virtue. Tragically, it is often seen as a weakness, rather than as a component essential to true justice.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 8: Blue

The ash hound looked up at Rasmus, one of its eyes cataract-white, the other glowing orange like a hot coal. It growled once, flame licking up its mane and back, before it hopped around playfully.

Rasmus took a step back, lest the pup scratch up his shoes. This was the first creature he had called, and he knew he should feel grateful. Ash hounds were useful, summoned all over the kingdom to sniff out murderers. With proper control and training, they could find one murderer in the center of a crowded city, even if he had been hiding for decades. They were handy beasts, he could admit, but they were so...common.

First off, they looked like ordinary charcoal-colored dogs. What kind of Naraka Traveler inspired fear and respect by walking his dog around? Any villager with a leash and a mutt could strike an equally imposing figure. Besides, he had barely to turn his head to see a pair of ash hounds worrying at a well-worn haunch of meat, or another pup burrowing deep into a pile of yellowed human bones. His own small hound whined, as if he wanted to join them in their play, but was afraid to leave Rasmus alone.

He didn’t share a bond with this creature—he was no Helgard Traveler—but Rasmus knew a simple mental call would bring the dog running back, so he released the creature with a simple psychic effort. The flames on its back flared up with its joy, it left one lick of scalding-hot saliva along the side of his leg, bounding off to dive into the stack of bones.

For Naraka Travelers, the trick was modifying your mental call to attract exactly the creature you wanted, and getting it to do what you intended. There was rarely a long-term bond between summoner and summoned, except in certain special cases.

At least he had finally commanded a beast of Naraka, and it had responded. He had taken three days of preparing bait, patiently waiting, and constant mental effort to lure even this pathetic specimen close. This should be a day of celebration, but he couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.

Disappointment flared into hot, sickening shame when the ground rumbled around him, and Taichon's shu'kra erupted from Naraka's red stone.

The shu'kra, or cavern-worm, was a ravenous rock-eating monster the size of one of Cana's sewer pipes. Rasmus could only see its head and a few segments of bright pink skin; the rest of the creature's long body was hidden underground. The exposed portion was still nine or ten feet long, leaving him to wonder exactly how massive the worm's whole body must be.

Its head was a nightmare of clacking mandibles and spinning, grinding teeth in a vertically slitted mouth, with no apparent eyes, but Taichon reached up and patted the worm on its salivating maw with no evidence of discomfort.

“There's a good boy,” Taichon said, smiling up at the shu'kra. “You're hungry, aren't you? Don't worry, we'll have plenty for you to eat.”

Taichon had the pale skin of a Damascan and a mop of curly black hair. He was the son of a minor noble—one of Overlord Eli's relatives, Rasmus had heard—and the two boys were much the same age. Rasmus had come to study in Naraka only four days before Taichon showed up, and they had been trained together ever since. By rights, they should be closer than brothers by now, after three years of rigorous training in the history and methods of Naraka.

Rasmus hated him.

There was no test in which Taichon didn't have to out-perform Rasmus, no trial he didn't have to complete a little faster. He had his noble training to fall back on, that was what it was. Rasmus was the son of a weaver, he didn't have the sorts of advantages that a rich boy like Taichon must have enjoyed. It wasn't fair that they should be held to the same standard.

“Marvelous!” Tutor Petrus said, clapping his hands and beaming at Taichon. “You're doing a wonderful job of exercising such delicate control. In the best partnerships, as you know, there's a subtle degree of give-and-take.”

Taichon ran a hand down the cavern-worm's pale skin. “I never thought it would be so easy. You only have to nudge him in the right direction, don't you? He knows what he's doing. It's not even a command, really, so much as a request.”

Tutor Petrus chuckled. He was an older man, perhaps as old as Rasmus' grandfather, with a bulging belly and a prominent bald spot. The boys were lucky to have him, or so they were told, because he usually served as the personal advisor to Overlord Malachi himself. He had a soft eye for Taichon, for sure.

“Binding a shu'kra at your age. You'll be in high demand around here if you can keep this up, I’ll say that for certain. We haven't had a good rock-worker at the outpost in years. Once we get past your Initiation, you can help us expand the farmland, maybe even clear out the tunnel between the Cana and Eltarim waypoints. We'll put you and your worms to work, son, no need to worry.”

Finally, Taichon seemed to remember that Rasmus was there. It was about time someone did.

“What happened to the ash hound, Rasmus?” Taichon asked.

The question sounded innocent enough, but Rasmus' face burned. He knew what the other boy was doing. He was trying to compare his shu'kra to a plain runt of a dog. “I sent him off,” Rasmus said casually, as if he didn't notice Taichon's plan. “There was no reason to keep him around, I can always call another.”

“Have you given it a name yet?”

“Why would I? It’s not as though it’s special. If I need a hound, I’ll just call up the closest one.” On a sudden burst of inspiration, he decided to try and get the instructor on his side. “Then again, I haven’t heard Tutor Petrus' input. Sir, what can you tell us about ash hound naming conventions?” Tutor Petrus rarely missed an opportunity to demonstrate his familiarity with Narakan history.

The old man flapped a hand in Rasmus' direction, walking over to squint at Taichon's worm. “Name it whatever you like, son. I named my first ash hound after a boy who used to throw sticks at me. Petty, I know, but I got a sense of satisfaction out of being the one to throw the sticks for a change. So, Taichon, what kind of bait did you use? I could have sworn I saw you walking down here with the skull of a thief, but could you perhaps have had a stretch of hangman's noose somewhere about you?”

Ignored completely. Rasmus felt like this was his lot entirely too often, and it was always Taichon's fault. He acted like he didn't plead for the attention, that he didn't beg and dance like a dog for scraps, but Rasmus knew the real story.

While the other two talked excitedly about the potential uses for a tame cavern-worm, Rasmus watched his dog drag the end of a bone all over the red dust of the cavern floor. He lost himself in a vision of a snapdragon lurching up the side of the cliff, wreathed in flame, and gulping up the ash hound in its crocodile jaws. It would turn on Petrus and Taichon, but Rasmus would save the day at the last second by commanding it in an overwhelming burst of psychic talent. Maybe that would count as his first successful summons, and he could forget the dog ever existed.

Rasmus replayed this version of events in his mind several times—sometimes Taichon escaped with no wounds except to his pride, sometimes his shu'kra was sliced to ribbons, and sometimes Taichon suffered terrible injuries before Rasmus could finally bring the snapdragon to heel—until he noticed Tutor Petrus clearing his throat pointedly.

“At the risk of repeating myself, it is time for you to be about your chores. The tower sanctuary needs water, after which you should deliver four buckets to my personal dwelling. Quickly, now.”

Taichon patted his worm on the flank one more time, and it slithered backwards into the rock, no doubt to continue tunneling somewhere far below. Rasmus didn't spare his hound a second glance. He followed Tutor Petrus, hoping the old man would notice his dedication and focus.

Damasca controlled most of the useful routes through Naraka. Rasmus had always assumed this was because of the inherent superiority of Damasca-trained Travelers versus those self-taught or trained in Enosh, but there turned out to be a much simpler reason. Damasca built an outpost around each waypoint, those towering obsidian obelisks marked by golden runes. The waypoints marked the only places where you could make a Gate into or out of Naraka, so they became the only locations of strategic importance in the entire Territory. Enosh controlled the routes in and around their one city, but they were welcome to stay in their barren stretch of wilderness. Between all the other major cities, Damasca owned the roads.

The outposts were villages, really, each centered around a waypoint leading to one of the kingdom's largest cities. Rasmus and Taichon approached the Bel Calem outpost, which was surrounded by a ten-foot wall of coal-black wooden planks bound together. Rasmus had only ever seen one tree in Naraka, and it wasn't the kind you would cut down for wood. Without water or sun he didn't see how any plants could survive here anyway, but he was assured that the charwood was in fact native, and was heat-resistant enough for the climate here. He had never seen the wall burst into flames, so he supposed the material must live up to its reputation.

Inside the walls, past a couple of savage-looking Itasas tribesmen standing guard, the complex looked largely empty. Only a handful of buildings were scattered all over the empty space inside the wall, leaving plenty of bare ground—one stubby tower of red stone for the full Travelers, one blocky barracks of charwood for the Itasas tribe, a second, almost identical charwood building for holding supplies, and the tiled courtyard surrounding the obsidian tree. Its spiked black branches stabbed into the sky, almost higher than the walls. In the very center of the wall, surrounded by all the man-made buildings, the waypoint stood straight and tall, its black spike pointed at the cavern ceiling far above. Its runes shone brightly enough that they lent a soft yellow light to the whole outpost.

Those were the only constructions that, for one reason or another, needed to rest aboveground. Everything else was built below, in natural tunnels expanded by tame cavern-worms.

Today, there was one extra feature in the outpost: a wagon shaped like a vast barrel, pulled by four nervous-looking oxen. Rasmus always thought animals from the outside world looked exotic, though he couldn't understand why merchants insisted on using them here. The creatures inevitably hated Naraka's persistent smell, and panicked at the first sight of any native wildlife, so they were less than practical to bring along. But most water merchants insisted on trying.

A line of people waited behind the water-wagon, carrying buckets, pails, pans, smaller barrels, canteens, flasks, and bottles. Anything they could use to carry a mouthful of water. There were no full Travelers in line, of course; they had people to haul water for them. People like Rasmus and Taichon.

Petrus nodded toward the water line, as though they hadn't performed this same chore a hundred times. “He'll have buckets for you. Bring two each to the foot of the sanctuary, empty them in the well, then fill them again and take them to my house. If you hurry, we can talk about your Initiation.”

Rasmus' gut seized up, and he found himself grabbing his teacher by the sleeve. “I'm sorry, sir. Initiation?”

One of the Tutor's gray eyebrows raised. “Yes, of course. We've spoken of this before. Once you've called your first creature, you're to be made an Initiate. Surely you should know this by now.”

Rasmus felt his face flush. “Yes sir, I know, but I mean...so soon? I thought we would have time to prepare first.”

“There's very little to prepare for, really. We call it an Initiation and surround it with ceremony, but really you walk up to the obsidian tree and confess. Depending on the weight of your confession, it will grow you a fruit. You eat the fruit, and you're qualified as an Initiate. It's a practical requirement more than anything else. Now, if you will excuse me...”

With that, Tutor Petrus hurried off, his hand raised to wave at another old man in red robes.

Rasmus was familiar with the obsidian tree, of course. It was housed in this very outpost, so Naraka Travelers from all over the country came here for Initiation. Once the black tree produced its fruit, whoever ate it gained the ability to handle fire and not be burned. Some could only resist a candle's flame, and anything hotter would eat through them as quickly as anyone else. Rumor said Overlord Malachi could swim through lava and bathe in molten iron without feeling the slightest discomfort. Your degree of protection depended on your confession.

And there was Rasmus' problem: he had nothing to confess.

As he and Taichon retrieved their wooden buckets from the water merchant, Rasmus considered his history. What had he done? Was there any crime he committed, anything he had hidden from himself? He wanted as dark a sin as possible: rumor among the other Travelers-in-training said only the most severe, profane crimes earned the highest degree of protection.

Taichon tried to start a conversation while they stood in line, but Rasmus was too tied up in his thoughts to pay much attention. He had tried to steal a sack of figs, once, from a stall in the streets of Bel Calem, but the stall owner had caught him with his fingers around the fruit. When they got home, his father switched him. Surely that wouldn't work: he had already received punishment, which under Narakan law meant the crime had never happened.

The merchant worked a pump on the back of the water wagon, and the clean stream flowed out into Rasmus' bucket, splashing his hands. No charge for them; the merchant recognized they were running errands for the sanctuary, and he would bill the Travelers later.

What terrible thing must Overlord Malachi have confessed for his legendary protection? Perhaps he killed a family member, or organized a rebellion. Maybe he spat in King Zakareth's face and got away with it. That didn't make much sense, as he would never have risen to the rank of Overlord with any of those crimes on his record, but it had to be something truly terrible.

Rasmus hurried toward the tower as best he could with a bucket in each hand, lagging behind Taichon, who always seemed to make everything a race.

This time, to Rasmus' surprise, Taichon slowed and waited for him to catch up. “You're quiet today.”

“That's my right,” Rasmus snapped.

Taichon shifted one bucket to his other hand so he could scratch his head. “Are you worried about the Initiation?”

He held both buckets in one hand and he still didn't spill a drop. Rasmus tried to imitate him, as casually as possible, but he almost sloshed a pail full of water down his shirt. “Worried? No, of course not. Are you?”

“Terrified,” Taichon said.

They stopped talking when they reached the charwood door at the base of the red tower. The Traveler assigned to the door recognized them and waved them through, and they jogged down a short set of stairs to the well, where they dumped their buckets into the pool of waiting water. It wasn't a real well, of course, since there was very little natural water in Naraka. It was nothing more than a stone pool to collect their purchased water. But since the Travelers used it for everything from drinking to bathing to laundry while they were in the Territory, they called it a well.

The boys hurried back up, and once they cleared the sanctuary, Taichon continued. “I know nobody's supposed to listen to the confession. And even if they do, nothing you confess to the tree can be held against you, but I can't help but worry.”

“Why?” Rasmus asked, as they filled their buckets from the wagon again.

Taichon waited until they exited the wall of the outpost before answering. “When I was a child, back in the outside world, I was climbing a tree with my sister.”

Rasmus didn't have any brothers or sisters, and he hadn't known Taichon did either. The thought made him uncomfortable, somehow, as though Taichon had more of a life outside of Naraka than Rasmus did.

“We started messing around, you know, teasing. I couldn't take a joke when I was young, and I started to get mad, so I pushed her a little harder than I should have. I didn't mean anything by it, I was just mad, but she fell. The tree wasn't terribly tall, but she still broke both legs and hit her head. For a minute, I thought she was dead. I ran and got our father, and by that time she woke up, and she was in terrible pain. She recovered, of course—she's fine now—but she didn't remember the few minutes leading up to her fall. So when my father asked me how it had happened, I told him she had tried to reach a bird's nest and slipped. Everyone believed me, even her, and I was never punished for it.”

That was a good one. It was a crime of passion, and thus not as damning as if it had been planned or premeditated, but he had harmed another out of anger, lied to cover it up, and injured an innocent in doing so. Taichon's fruit would surely be the size of a melon. Rasmus would be lucky if his looked like a grape.

“Are you sure you should have told me?” Rasmus said, as he marched along the dusty red stone of Naraka's caverns. “Maybe the tree won't count it if you've already confessed.”

“I don't think so. According to the Principles of Admission, an admission of guilt is only valid if it's made to a duly appointed representative of the law, or else directly to the wronged party. You're not either. Besides, you're a close friend, so your testimony wouldn't be accepted in a court on my behalf anyway. By the laws of Naraka, I'm clear.”

Taichon always sounded so pleasant and certain, even when he was lecturing on principles they had learned together years before. Rasmus knew the law as well as Taichon did. And he couldn't help but notice how Taichon counted Rasmus among his close friends when it came to a court case; how convenient for him. That ensured Rasmus would never be able to testify against him. Undoubtedly he was planning some crime and wanted a silent compatriot. Was that all Rasmus' friendship meant to him, after three years of joint training?

Tutor Petrus' private dwelling was dug into the rock about half a mile from the main outpost. While most Travelers lived in the tower sanctuary during their stay in Naraka, a few of them—those who spent the most time in specific regions of the Territory—kept small, permanent houses here. Rasmus didn't mind the trip, since no senior Travelers were around to give him any other chores while he was outside the outpost walls, but the ever-present threat of predators hung over him like a cloud of smoke.

The deadliest creatures waited deeper in the Caverns, away from populated human settlements, but you could find ash hounds anywhere, trotting down tunnels or over cliffs. Sometimes a snapdragon or swarm of mor'we got hungry enough to hunt down the dogs near a waypoint. Everyone who lived long in Naraka knew someone who had vanished outside of the outpost walls, never to be heard from again.

Tutor Petrus' well waited outside his round charwood doorway. The pool was covered by a stone lid that took both of them to drag it off, and it was much smaller than the well in the sanctuary. Their four buckets filled it almost to the brim.

“How about you?” Taichon asked, as they walked away from Tutor Petrus' house. “Do you know what you're going to say to the tree?”

Rasmus couldn't tell the truth, of course. That would be admitting defeat to Taichon again. “I have...some idea,” he said.

Though part of the route back to the outpost wound through tunnels carved in the red stone walls, much of the road was exposed. They had to step carefully on these sections, because there was often a sheer cliff to the side, dropping ten or fifteen feet to another plateau of solid rock. Rasmus had known careless students or visitors to slip in the grit and ash, tumbling down to the stone below. The fortunate survived with only a few broken ribs, while the unlucky could suffer a twisted neck or shattered skull.

“Well, I told you my story...” Taichon trailed off uncomfortably. Good manners suggested Rasmus should share his tale now.

“It's a lot like yours, I would say,” Rasmus said. The bucket in Taichon's right hand swung out over a fifteen-foot drop. “Pushed someone. They fell and got hurt. The difference was, they deserved it.”

“Huh.” Taichon sounded disappointed. He clearly didn't think Rasmus had any such story. That was just like him: he never believed anything Rasmus said. Hadn’t they built up any trust between them, over the years?

“You don't believe me.”

“No, that's not true,” Taichon protested.

Rasmus would show him.

He barely thought about it. It was more a surge of emotion, of inspiration, of something long hidden inside him lurching up and taking control for a single instant.

Rasmus took one step to the right and shoved.

Taichon had time for one startled, panicked expression before he went over the cliff. A second later, a cracking thud and two hollow thunks marked Taichon and his pair of barrels hitting the ground.

I’ve done it now, Rasmus thought. I did it. His head felt like someone had pumped it full of smoke. Would the Travelers find him now? He had intentionally injured another student, after all. That was a crime. He had committed a crime in Naraka, of all places. What was going to happen to him?

No, not a crime. A punishment. After all, had Taichon not confessed to him that he had gone unpunished for hurting his little sister? Wasn't it a Naraka Traveler's job to arbitrate such cases? In fact, this was the best kind of penalty: one that fit the transgression. Taichon had pushed his sister out of a tree, and in just retaliation, Rasmus had pushed him off of a cliff. If the fates were kind, Taichon would suffer the same injuries as his sister. The scales of justice would be balanced. Rasmus might even be rewarded, for acting as befit a Traveler of Naraka.

It occurred to him that he couldn't hear any of the noises he had expected from Taichon. No screams, no groans, nothing. Maybe he had hit his head, like his sister. That would be for the best; maybe he wouldn't remember anything when he woke up.

Rasmus stepped around a wild ash hound as he walked toward the cliff, shoving the dog out of the way with one leg. He leaned down.

Most of Taichon's body lay pressed flat against the stone, but his head had twisted almost all the way around, as though he had tried to get one last look at Rasmus.

His killer.

Rasmus stumbled back from the edge, thinking fast. He would have to come up with a story that didn't make him sound like a murderer. He couldn't lie; the older Travelers had ways of finding guilt through the most clever lies. He had to make the truth serve his purposes.

Taichon had fallen from a cliff, and Rasmus saw it happen. He wished it hadn't happened, he was full of regrets, and all that. It was true; he now wished he had waited for a shorter drop. He had never meant to have a body on his hands.

As cover stories went, that one would do. But he had to look like a real friend in grief. He threw his buckets to the ground, as though he’d abandoned them in his haste to help his fallen friend.

Rasmus started to run. Someone in his position would be expected to go for help as soon as possible.

As he ran, he couldn't escape one thought: at least he would have something to confess in his Initiation.

He barely made it three paces before he was forced to stop. A trio of ash hounds, their manes burning, stood in his path. They stared at him with orange eyes.

Odd behavior for the dogs. They were mostly scavengers, except under certain conditions, when they would work together to bring down larger game. They never stood and waited for something to come to them. Rasmus swerved to run around them, but another hound emerged from a nearby tunnel and glared at him with glowing eyes.

Rasmus spun around to try another route. There was a second tunnel back near Tutor Petrus' house; it took more time, but he could always explain that he had been forced to take the longer route.

As he hurried back, he noticed three or four more ash-gray shadows, smoldering gently and trailing smoke.

He ran faster.

He had passed the spot where Taichon's body lay before he saw the hound behind him. Now, how had it gotten through? It couldn't have passed him without him seeing it, and it couldn't have come from behind him: the only other thing behind this point was Petrus' house.

The tiny dog, barely more than a puppy, stared at him, its back burning with a line of embers. Something in its stance gave it away.

This was his ash hound, so to speak. The first creature he had ever summoned.

“I didn't call you.”

Rasmus sent a mental command before him, ordering the dog aside. It stayed where it was. Instead of moving, it lowered its snout to the ground and drew in a long breath through its nose. Once. Twice. All of the other ash hounds, in fact, were loudly sniffing the air and drawing closer.

Ash hounds could smell a murderer.

His stomach twisted, and his heart hammered through his rib cage. “No, it's not me. It wasn't me. It's not a murder, it was an accident.”

One of the largest hounds, whose fur was actually ablaze, let out a growl like distant thunder.

“He deserved it!” Rasmus begged. Sometimes, his tutors said, you could talk Naraka creatures into agreeing with your view of justice. If you made your points in the right way. Rasmus sent his sincerity into a mental pulse aimed at the ring of hounds; surely they could sense he was right. “I gave him a just punishment. You see? I'm not a murderer! I'm a Naraka Traveler!”

One of the closest hounds lunged, knocking him onto his back. Its teeth in his shoulder felt like a handful of red-hot knives. Rasmus screamed as he'd never screamed before, a desperate sound that tore at his throat.

Another set of jaws closed around his ankles, and he thrashed physically and mentally, trying to shake them loose. They were going to tear him to pieces. This was how he would die. Not like a Traveler, but like a criminal, torn apart by a pack of hungry dogs.

It took him a handful of seconds to wonder why more of them hadn't started biting him. Some had the tops of their heads pressed against his side. Were they trying to save him? Maybe a handful of the pack agreed with his version of justice.

Pain tore at his ankle, stone scraped his back, and he realized they weren't going to eat him after all.

He screamed louder.

With one final push, the pack of ash hounds hurled him off the cliff.

He only had an instant, twisting in the air, to see the coal-orange eyes of his summoned hound, staring down at him like an Arbiter in judgment.

Then he hit the rock.

Naraka Travelers believe punishment should be like a well-executed crime: direct, focused, and brutal.

Very few of them have ever experienced real mercy. They are not to be judged for this, only pitied.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 8: Blue

Ragnarus

1st Year of the Damascan Calendar

1st Year in the Reign of Queen Cynara I

Winter’s End

Cynara of Damasca stood on the remnants of a wall she herself had broken. Only a few months ago, Cana had been an enemy city she’d paid dearly to capture. Now, it was her final refuge.

And not much of one, at that.

From here, she could see the enemy arrayed against her, a set of game pieces arranged neatly on a vast board. They stood in three distinct groups, as she would have expected, given their vastly different natures.

To the north, the Asphodel Incarnation towered over the rest. He looked like nothing so much as a cloudbank shaped into a robed scholar. His head scraped the sky, and at his feet, a colorful garden of deadly plants sprouted spontaneously. Serpentine shapes moved in the clouds of his feet, and flocks of birds wheeled in the Mist of his chest, but he was otherwise motionless.

To the south, a flashing thunderstorm followed the hordes of Endross. Wyverns flew and spat lightning back up at the clouds while, on the ground, giant snakes and draconic lizards frolicked in a spectacle of blue-white sparks. The Endross Incarnation was lost among them, but she supposedly had the face of a beautiful woman and the clawed limbs of a giant reptile. That was solely rumor, though; the last Endross Incarnation Cynara destroyed had been a man who looked like he was made of packed sand and pure lightning.

Directly ahead, between the other two camps, were the Elysians.

They were divided into nine neat camps, color-coded for her convenience. She couldn’t make out the details of individual figures, but she could guess well enough. The Gold District would be made up of armored soldiers, some of which had the heads or bodies of animals. The Red District would be tiny, deceptively strong gnomes; the Blue made up of twisting vampiric sea creatures, and so on. After the campaign she had fought, she was more familiar with Elysia than she’d ever wanted to be.

The wind caught Cynara’s blond hair, pulling it behind her like a flag. She felt the icy winter wind on her face and didn’t flinch. It would be hot enough in the battle; she should cool down now, while she still could.

The Old Man’s laughter sounded from the swirling crimson portal next to her. “You’re so grim, child, when you should be celebrating! Only three Incarnations here. Those are much better odds than you expected.”

Cynara kept her eyes fixed on the Incarnation of Elysia, who at this distance was nothing more than a gold-and-white blur. “Three? So six are free to rampage across my kingdom, killing as they wish.”

The Old Man smiled, splitting his gray-black beard in two. As always, he carried a simple wooden staff, despite the weapons available to him in his Crimson Vault. He wore unadorned gray robes, tied at the waist by a hemp rope, and his beard fell in a fan across his chest. From those features alone, he might have looked like a homeless beggar, but the whole of him was…majestic, somehow. As though he were a king who had decided to dress himself as a peasant to survey the common folk.

He turned his eyes to her, one an ordinary gray eye, and one a shining scarlet stone. “Truly, you always look on the sweet side of things.”

Cynara lowered herself to sit on the wall. No need to keep standing, and she would need all her strength for the upcoming fight. “Have you found a solution?”

“As it happens, I have.”

She eyed him suspiciously. With the Old Man, answers were never cheap. “Is that so?”

He spread one gnarled hand, revealing a handful of blood-red seeds. They looked simple enough, like stubby beans. “It took me years to gather this many, but I’ve finally done it.”

She didn’t take them. “We’ve been down this path before.”

“There are nine here, Cynara. One to bind each of the eight lesser Incarnations, and one for Elysia.”

Cynara shook her head, watching the wind push the Asphodel Incarnation’s mist around. “Only nine? I would have thought you’d want a backup plan.”

The Old Man leaned heavily on his staff, making the wood creak. Or maybe that was his spine. “The Hanging Trees work best in multiples of three. More than nine, and it may become unstable. You don’t want that.”

“I don’t want to pay your price at all,” she said. “We’ve spoken of this before. There’s only one life I have the authority to sacrifice.”

He nodded toward the three otherworldly armies. “How many lives have they taken, do you think? How many more, before you or they are defeated? I’m asking you to walk the path of lesser carnage, not greater.”

Cynara pretended to work that over in her mind, but the truth was, she had reached a decision weeks ago. She only argued for the principle of it, to soothe her wounded conscience. He was right. In this case, a lesser sacrifice was necessary to prevent a greater.

And she would be the first. She would not let her people pay a price she could not afford herself.

She reached out to take the seeds, but he pulled back his fist.

“So eager, all of a sudden,” the Old Man said. “I must first recover my investment.”

Cynara glared at him, wondering—not for the first time—if his own weapons would work against him. “You may have my life. That’s all I have to give.”

He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Well…not quite.”

Anger finally burst through her, sharp and hot. “This subject is closed!”

“You could rule when Elysia is cast down.”

“And become a tyrant worse than she could ever be!”

“Not a tyrant. A queen. An immortal queen, commanding a united land.”

Cynara stood, putting herself face-to-face with the Old Man’s crimson eye. “I will pay whatever price I must to keep my daughter and her kingdom safe. But that does not include becoming a monster. I would put her in even more danger than the threat of Elysia. I have put one amount on the table, now take it or be gone.”

The Old Man’s red eye flared, and his gray grew suddenly piercing. “I see I cannot sway you. Very well. You have forsaken life eternal, and Ragnarus will drink the last of your blood.”

She snatched the seeds from his hand.

“I hope you choke on it,” she muttered.

A horn drifted to her on the wind, sweet and pleasant as an angel’s song. Her heart turned to ice.

Asphodel and Endross remained motionless, waiting on the plains. They would be used as reinforcements for the primary assault. An assault that, she knew, would be coming any minute now.

The armies of Elysia had begun to move.

***

Cynara finally found her daughter racing through the twisting streets of ruined Cana. They had been searching for one another.

The fourteen-year-old girl collapsed into her mother’s arms, shaking uncontrollably. “I heard the horn. Everyone else is in hiding, but I had to find you.”

Cynara the First pushed her daughter out to arm’s length, the better to get a look at Cynara the Second. The girl had the same blond hair and piercing blue eyes as the rest of her family, and she was just as gangly and awkward as her mother had been at her age.

She smiled at her daughter, pushing a handful of eight seeds into the confused girl’s hands. “Take these. Plant them in bloody ground, then lure the Incarnations close. The Tree will bind them. They need to be fed, one life per year.” Their hunger would grow with time, but they were a temporary measure at best. Meant to last for a few years, at most. Hopefully Cynara the Second would do what the First could not, and find another way to deal with the Incarnations for good.

The girl took the seeds, confusion plain on her face. “Mother, why…why don’t you…”

Cynara grabbed her daughter tight, hugging her one last time. “The others will follow you. I’m taking the easy way out, I’m afraid. I’m only dealing with one Incarnation. You’ll have to take care of the other eight.”

“Wait, please, I don’t—”

She placed a single kiss on her daughter’s forehead. “Rule wisely, Cynara the Second. May your reign be longer and more fruitful than mine.”

A terrifying screech sounded overhead, and Cynara spun, summoning the Lightning Spear into her hand. Its blade was worked with gold, its hilt black wood, with a bright ruby set into its head.

“Run, daughter,” Cynara said. There was a moment of hesitation, and then the slap of feet on stones as the girl ran.

Just in time. Something like a bright blue jellyfish the size of a horse swung up the side of a broken building before scuttling like a spider down toward Cynara. At the same time, an animated suit of gold armor came dashing down a side street, roaring a wordless war cry.

Cynara stepped forward, hurling the Lightning Spear. She felt the price immediately: her body was wracked with indescribable pain, as though her every bone had been shattered at once. The spear itself flew with a hundred times the force she had used, striking the charging armor like a thunderbolt and blasting it to red-hot shards of smoking metal.

The blue jellyfish made a wet, sticky, whistling sound and leaped, its tentacles curling in midair. The Spear was already on its way back to Cynara’s hand, but she couldn’t throw it again in time. So she raised her other hand.

The red wand drizzled sparks of red light, like glowing crimson tears.

Flexing her will, Cynara triggered the power of the Bleeding Wand.

With a shriek, the Wand’s power blasted forward. A wave of crimson light devoured the jellyfish, but it didn’t slow. It continued forward until it hit the side of a three-story tower, which instantly dissolved and blew away as featureless gray dust. The tower stood for a second on three legs instead of four.

A great roar drowned the city as the side of the building slid away. Rubble crashed into the street like an avalanche.

Cynara stood in the middle of a broken street as the Lightning Spear smacked back into her waiting palm. The bill for the Bleeding Wand would come due later, but she’d never thought she would be willing to pay it. The Wand devoured the user’s sanity with every use. In time, it would leave her a cackling madwoman eager to blast everyone to dust.

She had never planned to use the Wand, but it was amazing how different the world looked in the face of her imminent death.

A woman’s voice, sweet and clear like the chiming of a crystal bell, sounded from behind her. “Your Territory is an abomination, Cynara. It thrives on blood and death.”

Cynara turned, a crimson weapon in each hand, to face the golden-haired Incarnation of Elysia.

“I’m not the one who destroyed this country, Rhalia.”

Rhalia’s eyes were cool, like a pair of gold coins. “Sometimes a mother must be rough with her children to show them the right way.”

She didn’t look monstrous, like many of the other Incarnations Cynara had seen. She wore a simple white robe, belted by a golden sash, and her skin was still clear and as pale as it had ever been. Her bare feet drifted six inches above the ground, with not even an orange glow to give her away, but Rhalia had always been skilled with the orange light. Even before Incarnation took her.

Cynara couldn’t help it: she let out a peal of laughter. “You see yourself as a mother, now? That’s how you justify wholesale slaughter?”

“Those who follow me are safe and secure. I’m building a paradise.”

“You’re filling a graveyard.”

Rhalia called a globe of golden light into one hand. The other writhed with knots of twisting blue. “Then let your grave be the last.”

The Incarnation thought she was being clever, but Cynara was ready for her. She sidestepped, firing her wand at the ground where she had been standing a moment before. The cobblestones disintegrated, as did the tentacles of blue light that had been waiting beneath them.

Rhalia had never been very good at setting traps.

Cynara hurled the Lightning Spear at Rhalia’s chest. It blasted through the orb of gold light the Incarnation had just thrown, slamming into a hexagonal plate of green in front of Rhalia’s dress.

The green light cracked, and Cynara intended to follow up with a blast from the Wand to break the shield, but the spasm of pain from throwing the Lightning Spear caught up with her. She shook once, and the moment passed.

A cushion of orange caught her feet, dragging her up toward the sky. The Spear hadn’t returned yet, so Cynara called a different weapon into her empty hand: the Lonely Dagger. Its red-streaked blade sliced through the orange light as if through paper, and Cynara twisted in midair, landing in a crouch.

The Lightning Spear met her outstretched palm, and she hurled it again, blindly. Pain shuddered her body, but she was more worried about the Dagger’s price.

She could summon it and use it freely, but the minute she banished it back to Ragnarus she would forget someone. The longer she kept it here, the more important the person she would forget.

After a moment’s thought, Cynara banished the Dagger. As useful as it would be to keep around, there were a few people she wouldn’t want to forget. Not on the day she died.

She wasn’t sure what memories she had lost—that was the nature of the cost—but she only had the Dagger out for a few seconds. In the incredibly unlikely event that she survived this day, some minor noble was going to be very offended when she forgot him completely.

Rhalia deflected the Spear with a wall of green, and Cynara realized she had a chance. She scrambled over to the section of road where the cobblestones had shattered, baring earth.

This was the third time the city of Cana had been invaded. Twice in the last year. Enough blood had been spilled in this city to soak the soil.

Or so she hoped. If it hadn’t, the Hanging Tree wouldn’t take root, and she would die at the Elysia Incarnation’s hands.

Frantically, she dug at the dirt with her bare hands, pressing one of the seeds down and sweeping some soil over it.

Red light flared underground, shining through the thin layer of earth. Cynara’s heart unclenched.

Rhalia held a sword of gold light in one hand now, but she stared at the ground, uncertain.

“What is that?” she asked.

Cynara didn’t call the Lightning Spear to return. She left it lying on the ground like a piece of debris. She dropped the Bleeding Wand to one side. “I win,” was all she said.

She was covered by a dozen cuts, some of which wept freely. In the case of her left arm, a piece of flying debris had sliced her deep.

Cynara pinched the wound together, sending a drop of blood onto the ground above the seed. The earth trembled. Rhalia raised a hand to hurl golden light.

A tendril of red erupted from the ground, wrapping around Cynara’s wound. She could feel blood flowing from her into the Tree, weakness taking over her body. It wasn’t painful, but neither was it pleasant.

“What did—” Rhalia began, but she was interrupted by the rising of the Hanging Tree. It rumbled as it rose, little more than a sapling in size, but menacing still. Its leafless limbs whipped blindly at the air, each covered in tiny thorns.

The root around her hand was not. It was smooth, almost gentle, as it drew upon her blood for power.

Sensing danger, Rhalia flared orange light at her feet and began to fly away.

The Hanging Tree didn’t let her.

Thorny branches seized her around each ankle, dragging the Incarnation closer and closer to the ground, even as she strained to fly away. She turned, hacking branches with her sword of yellow light, but the branches kept growing back, kept reaching.

Cynara’s arm had grown cold, and she was feeling dizzy. Death wasn’t such a bad fate for her, she supposed. Not for such a good cause. But her daughter would be alone. She was only fourteen; what if the lords and ladies didn’t listen to her? What if she couldn’t rebuild? There was every chance she would be killed before she could get the Trees planted. Would their new nation of Damasca ever escape its birth pangs?

Rhalia dropped her sword, having switched to a new tactic. Even as she was dragged backwards, scraping across the ground, she held out her palms.

A golden portal opened in front of her. A Gate, leading into the City of Light.

It was beyond anything Cynara had ever imagined. Graceful walls of gold and silver rose from a flower-strewn field, and towers of every color stretched almost to the sunset-colored sky.

Red light—of her own generation, not from Ragnarus—twisted around Rhalia’s limbs. With her newfound strength, she tore free of the Hanging Tree.

It wouldn’t last. The Tree was already reaching for its Incarnation, and it would catch her before she got too far.

But it was enough. Rhalia crossed the border of her gate, into the fields of Elysia.

The thorny branches recoiled, unable to cross from one world into another. That was interesting; the Old Man had never mentioned that the Trees wouldn’t work in a Territory. That must have been why he had insisted on her planting them here.

Cynara’s dizziness had grown so she could barely stay upright, and her vision was beginning to fuzz at the edges, but she still fixed the Incarnation with a smile. “Good enough. Stay sealed in that world or this one, Rhalia, it means nothing to me.”

Rhalia shrugged, the motion more graceful than it had any right to be. “I would say I got the better of this little exchange. I keep my life, while you have parted with yours.”

Cynara couldn’t stay standing any longer. She collapsed, landing hard on her knees. She barely felt the pain. “I can think of greater prices.”

“I am eternally patient,” the Elysia Incarnation said. “You should have stood with me, sister.”

Then the shining Gate closed, and the last thing Cynara saw of her older sister was a pair of golden eyes. Eyes that were once a blue as bright as her own.

Her vision was fading quickly, but as far as she could see down the road and into the city, red roots were erupting from the cobblestones, seizing creatures of Elysia and draining the life from them.

All over the city. Does the Tree’s influence really stretch so far? She hoped it would be enough to keep the other Incarnations away, until her daughter had a chance to drive them into a corner and seal them for good.

Her thoughts drifted to Cynara the Second, as she fell onto her back, staring up at the clear winter sky. For the first time in years, she felt some measure of hope. Her daughter had the seeds. She had the key to the Crimson Vault.

Maybe the Incarnations wouldn’t be the end of this world after all.

My life was a small price to pay.

Everything went black.

***

It was difficult to open a Gate from the other side, not to mention expensive. Abominably expensive. But every once in a while, the Old Man felt it was worth it.

The Ragnarus Gate formed, opening directly beside Cynara’s body, sprawled across the shattered street. A root of the Hanging Tree uncurled from her wrist.

The Old Man stepped out, using his staff for balance.

The Tree itself, little more than a sapling, hissed as he approached. It wanted even him, hungered for even his blood, but it didn’t attack.

Even the murderous plant knew better.

Leaning on his wooden staff, the Old Man knelt, tolerating the creaking pain in his knees. Queen Cynara’s eyes stared sightlessly up at the sky. Her eyes were beautiful, he supposed, if you appreciated that sort of thing. Personally, he thought they would look much better in red.

“You have given everything you have to Ragnarus,” he murmured. “Let me help you take the last step.”

The Old Man extended one gnarled finger and pressed it to her forehead. Before her soul departed completely, he willed some of his power into her, flooding her body, repairing its damage.

She gasped and jerked awake.

Her eyes were already gone, replaced by solid orbs of red flame. Her new skin crept over her, like ice over a freezing lake, turning her to a fluid statue of blood-colored steel. Her clothes flared and blazed away, replaced by a long dress of scarlet light.

The Old Man stepped back to admire his handiwork as the first Incarnation of Ragnarus rose to her feet.

“What have you done?” Cynara whispered, through metallic red lips.

He prided himself on his tolerance and even disposition, but he was a tad offended. “I have saved you from the brink of death, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve made a masterpiece from that which you would have wasted. You can fill the gap your sister left. You will be my hand in this world.”

Cynara met his gaze. He had been right: her new eyes were much more beautiful.

“You told me this would only cost me my life!”

The Old Man smiled fondly, as he would at a naïve granddaughter. “You will find that’s not the only time I have lied to you. Now, Ragnarus, go forth and take your throne!”

She looked at him, and down at the bloody branches twisting around her feet. “I do not answer to you.”

She walked into the Hanging Tree, her arms spread wide. The branches picked her up, lifting her into the sky, and then pulled her down under the ground. She didn’t say a word.

Once, in a place far away, the Old Man had been renowned for his foresight.

But he hadn’t seen this coming.

He knew she would be able to hear him, still. The Hanging Tree was of Ragnarus, and now she was Ragnarus. Unlike the other Incarnations, she would never fully lose consciousness. It would be a fate worse than death; she should have listened to him.

“Well. Your line will continue, Queen Cynara. Our pact remains unbroken. I will deal with the others, your sons and daughters, since you would not let me deal with you. And who can tell? Maybe someday, when you are free, you will come to see things my way.”

With one last backward glance to see the Tree waving in the air, the Old Man stepped into his Vault and closed the door.

If you still put your own needs before the needs of others, every other virtue is without meaning. This is the key to all I have taught you.

There is no love greater than sacrifice.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 9: White

THE END

Of The Traveler’s Gate Chronicles

The Story Concludes In…

CITY OF LIGHT

(The Traveler’s Gate Trilogy, Book 3)

Available Now on Amazon!

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