Fighting the Seed of Darkness when I’d been in its mental realm had been easy. Absorbing it had been even easier. Living with it as it tore apart the anima within me though? That was just a bit harder.

    “Mel!” I heard Taisen call out to me but it felt like he was a mile away. I knew I was falling, or that I’d already fallen onto the ground. I couldn’t tell which was true, only that I felt like all of the strength had been drained from me and my outsides had gone numb. My insides were a whole other story though.

    “Why is this never easy!” Taisen grumbled. He might have screamed it, but all I could hear was a whisper.

    I wanted to tell him that I’d be ok. I wanted to tell myself that, but the truth was I hadn’t been ready for how bad the Seed’s effects would be. The brand that bound it to me was only on my hand but the Seed had diffused itself everywhere through my body. Wherever I tried to shift my anima, the Seed was there ready to devour it.

    I felt stupid. I’d seen the effect it had on Yael. She was vastly better trained in controlling her anima and the Seed had left her as nothing more than a comatose mass of pain. I didn’t know the kind of tricks that she did, and unless I figured them out, I didn’t think I was going to last a hundredth as long as she had.

    “Healer Taisen? What’s happened? What are you doing?” I heard a groggy Yael ask.

    The pain was still there, and growing worse, but I felt a small reservoir of physical strength pooling up in me.

    “Restoring your power. You’ve been through an ordeal. Rest.” Taisen answered.

    I felt more strength running down my arms and legs. It was a tiny trickle compared to what the Seed was consuming but it was enough that I was able to force open one of my eyes.

    Taisen was on his knees, with one hand on me and the other on Yael. He was pouring energy into both of us, healing Yael of the damage she’d taken and keeping me conscious. Around us, the barrier I’d erected still stood, shielding us from outside attacks.

    “I’m going to get you back on your feet, and then we’ll carry Mel out of here.” Taisen said.

    “Oh, you will never escape me now.” the Seed said, his words echoing in my mind.

    I closed my eyes, and let my focus sink down into my center. It was a meditation technique I’d learned from Master Hanq. I hadn’t guessed at the time that it had anything to do with manipulating mental Anima but, like with a lot of other things Master Hanq taught me, there were more uses for it than I’d originally imagined.

    “I beat you once already.” I told the Seed.

    We were inside my mind this time, so I got to decide what it looked like. Or at least I thought I did. I’d envisioned meeting the Seed in the gray cityscape that was all that was left of my home. I wanted to use it as a talisman to embody why I was in this fight. I wanted to use that empty, hollow rage that I’d felt against any part of the Karr Khan that I could.

    Around me the gray, empty buildings sprang up in the light of what should have been a beautiful day. With them came people though. Not one or two or a dozen, but rather hundreds. I didn’t understand what I was seeing until their faces started catching on my memories. I recognized them not from having seen them in life but from the memories that poured into me when I opened the shelter.

    “Who you think you have beaten little girl?” the Seed asked. I’d expected him to appear before me like he had when we’d met in his mind realm. The figure that loomed over my city though was taller than any of the buildings and appeared nothing at all like a human being.

    The only remnants of humanity in the Seed’s form were grotesquely distorted. A head that was both bulbous and crushed in with so many eyes that a spider would be jealous. From the central mass that could only barely be described as a body, ten thousand arms extruded outwards in all directions except down. Only two of the arms extended downwards and both were plunged into the heart of my city.

    I saw my anima flowing up the veins of one of the arms, while down the other arm  a thick sludge of brown and green and puss yellow flowed. The Seed wasn’t just taking from me, it was also spewing in bits of the Karr Khan’s mind to be able to control the monster that I would become.

    “How the hell are you so big here?” I asked. I could feel my control of the city, of my mind, slipping away from me.

    “You’ve made such a tragic error my dear. I’m sure it felt wonderful to think that you had thwarted my tool. You no doubt rejoiced at ‘saving’ the Crystal Guardian. Unfortunately for you, you managed to catch my attention in the process.” The voice that spoke sounded like the Seed, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t who I was speaking to anymore.

    “So you’re the Eternal Khan then?” I asked.

    “Yes. I have always been the Eternal Khan. All the parts of me are one, as you shall soon be as well.” he said.

    Saying the ghosts “reacted” to the Khan’s words would have been an understatement. The awareness of who was speaking spread through the denizens of my mental city like a wave. Their pale, translucent forms shifted into red, vaguely human shaped, columns of fire. With a scream that was deafening despite being purely psychic in nature, they rose toward the Khan’s inhuman form and began to burn him with their hate and sorrow.

    In response the Khan simply laughed.

    “Are these the defenders you hoped to save yourself with?” he sounded like a little boy who’d found a toy labeled “break me please”.

    I watched, alternately hopefully and terrified. I hadn’t known about the ghosts at all. I thought they’d left me, but if so my memories of them were strong enough to call them back, or more likely they’d waited within me, silent thanks to the fact that I’d done little except work against the Karr Khan’s forces since I’d encountered them.

    Their rage was a fearsome thing to behold. Even from hundreds of yards below them I could feel the psychic heat of the force they were bringing to bear on the Karr Khan’s mind. I remembered the power that I’d gained when I’d absorbed the two soldiers animas and the force Akell had demonstrated getting to the Ravager. Taken together, even ordinary people could be immensely powerful. From those experiences, it seemed like they should have been easily able to destroy the Khan. His laughter filled me with dread though, and as the last of the ghosts reached the main body, my dread was confirmed.

    By the dozens, the raging flames winked out and the insubstantial bodies of the ghosts fell from the Khan’s giant form. Most didn’t make it to the streets below before fading away into nothingness. The few that did, hit the ground, beaten and bereft of the force they’d retained beyond their deaths.

    “So much energy. This is delightful beyond reason.” the Karr Khan said.

    I felt the torrent of life that was rushing out of me expand into a river as the Khan greedily drank more of my anima in huge gulps.

    It’s easy to pretend to be brave. It’s easy to mouth off to people when you’ve got nothing else that you can do to them and nothing more to lose. Maybe it’s even easy for some people to accept death when its undeniably coming for them. It wasn’t for me though.

    I could feel Taisen pouring more of his energy into me, but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough. He was one man and the Karr Khan was a multitude.

    “Do you want to know what I will do with you once your will is eradicated?” the Khan asked. “Since you were so keen to save the Crystal Guardian, I’m going to make you my tool for destroying them.”

    More of the toxic sludge that was flowing down one of his arms spewed over my city and I felt my thoughts bogging down.

    “You won’t be very strong at first. At least not by comparison to what you will become once I’ve honed you properly.” the Khan continued. “So I will send you against weak targets. Their trainees. Their families. Those they have sworn to protect who cannot protect themselves.”

    “Why?” The question croaked out before I could stop myself.

    “Because the Crystal Empress must be stopped. She is the only one who holds power that can rival my own but she is lost in naivety. The order she is imposing on the galaxy is unnatural. It can last only so long as she holds the million worlds of her dominion together personally. When she falls, she will leave behind a galaxy which has nurtured the weak and the foolish and the wars that will rage then will return everyone to the Silent Aeons.”

    “And you’re better?” I still had some of my anger, but even that was fading quickly as everything drained out of me.

    “I shall never fall. I am Eternal. Under my hand, the million worlds will breed the strongest of minds, the most powerful of wills. My dominion shall grow ever greater as I shall as well. Where the Crystal Empress would hobbled the galaxy catering to the weakest and most useless, under my rule there shall be true prosperity.” the Khan said.

    “She’s already kicked…”, I could feel the words fading away in me but I fought to pull them together anyways, “She’s already kicked your butt once.”

    “Treachery was her only weapon in that battle, and I have taken it away from her, and thanks to you, I will have even more power when next we meet in battle.”

    Standing in the shadow of the Karr Khan’s enormous bulk, I knew he was right. I’d made a tragic error. He was more powerful than I could have ever imagined. I’d been a fool to think I could match him.

    Bitter tears, rolled down my face both in the mental realm and in the physical world. I’d never had anima before, I’d never been anyone special, but somehow I was going to die from having all of my anima drained out and thanks to me the one bright spot in the last millennia of galactic history was going to die. It wasn’t fair or true, but it felt that way.

    “Why can’t I go back to the way I was, when I didn’t have any anima at all.” I complained. It seemed ridiculous to be nostalgic for the far off time of “yesterday”, when I had no strength, but it beat the situation I was in. As my death approached me, I longed to be the girl I’d been. Not strong with anima, but at least strong in her own way.

    “Wait. Why can’t I go back?” I asked myself. Adrenaline is a purely physical agent, with no dependency on anima, and that thought dumped about ten thousand gallons of it into my bloodstream.

    Since the first time I’d separated my animas in Taisen’s office, I’d been thinking of “my Physical anima” and “the Void anima that I carried”. I’d been distancing myself from the terrifying dark anima inside me, especially after I killed people with it.

    It wasn’t “the Void anima I carried inside me” though.

    It was my anima.

    All of it. My Physical anima, my Mental anima, my Aetherial anima, my Energetic anima and, most of all, my Void anima. I was scared of it because I was scared of not being able to control myself. That fear was perfectly reasonable, but rejecting a part of myself was not.

    I’d lived for seventeen years with my Void anima so tightly woven into the rest of my being that none of the dozens of tests I’d been subjected to had ever been able to discern the presence of any other anima. If Master Hanq had known that I’d had any anima to work with it had been as an article of faith, not from anything he could have observed.

    The Karr Khan was huge and powerful. Much more powerful than I was, but this was my mind, my body and my spirit. I had the home field advantage here and he knew it. That’s why he’d appeared so overwhelmingly powerful. He needed to make sure that the last thing I would think to do was to try to fight back.

    With a laugh of my own, I embraced the terror that I’d felt since I first saw my Void anima.

    “What do you find so hysterical?” the Karr Khan asked in an annoyed voice and my spirit soared.

    “This.” I told him and drew my Void anima inwards. I didn’t hold anything apart from it. No reserve of Physical anima, no sheltered thoughts of Mental anima. It wasn’t going to “take me over” because there was no “it”. “It” was me. “It” hadn’t killed those soldiers. I had. “It” hadn’t defended us. I had.

    Just like my mother had taught me.

    I had the briefest of images of her. We’d been on a ship. It had hummed like this one did. There’d been an attack and she’d hidden me. She’d wanted me to be safe, even though she couldn’t be.

    There were other memories there, waiting for some other time. That one image was all I needed though.

    I was not going to go down without a fight.

    In my mental realm the sky darkened and the Karr Khan’s arms that reached out the the heavens, reached out to his other selves, were severed. One by one the lights in the city began to fade away as my darkness reached out to protect me.

    “You can’t escape so easily. This piece of me is still a part of all that I am.” the Khan said.

    “I’m not trying to escape.” my voice came from the darkness all around the Khan’s body. “And you’re the one who’s not getting away from me.”

    The Ravager’s attack should have left the ship devoid of life. It was capable of killing entire planets, but I’d manage to protect a small area from its effects thanks to the freakish way Void anima worked and the fact that the Ravager was fighting against her master’s wishes. It also helped that Akell hadn’t been aiming the brunt of the attack at me. That wasn’t a comforting thought for a variety of reasons though, not the least of which being what it meant for Opal.

    That Akell had used the Ravager’s power meant he’d either found his target, his “dearly beloved father” the Karr Khan, or someone else had forced him to fight back as hard as he could. I ruled out the first possibility when I remembered Akell gloating about presenting me to his father as a trophy. The boy commander seemed to relish the idea of killing the Khan after the Khan showered him with riches. Akell wasn’t particularly stable so he could have gone ahead with his attack without waiting for me to be around but I doubted he’d spoil his own fun like that if he didn’t have to.

   If he wasn’t attacking the Karr Khan though, that left only Opal on the list of people I knew to be on the space yacht who could force Akell to fight hard enough that he’d have to use the Ravager’s power. It wasn’t hard to imagine her pushing Akell that far either. She’d dealt a blow to his ego when she captured him and used him to find Jewel. He wasn’t the type to be forgiving of that.

    I choked back a sob as the image of what must have happened formed in my mind. Opal was a stranger in many ways still, but I liked her. She’d been kind to me and she’d tried to work with me. I didn’t want to see her as the withered corpse I imagined she’d become. I didn’t want to see it, but the Ravager was an artifact of epic destruction and without Void anima to draw on I couldn’t imagine how strong Opal would have to be to survive its attacks.

    I felt the attack recede and wondered if we’d even be able to find Opal’s body. It was insanity to think of escaping with her when I wasn’t sure we could escape at all. Everyone on the ship might be dead but there were other ships of the Khan’s forces in orbit around Belstarius and I was sure they’d be all too willing to shoot us down in the wake of an attack that had slaughtered the crew of the yacht.

    Not that they were likely to have the chance. Within the circle of protection that I’d cast there was a darkness that was waking up. I couldn’t struggle against it and maintain the barrier at the same time. I wanted to drop the shield so i could turn my attention to the closer threat but the sense of danger from outside wasn’t diminishing.

    A moment later I understood why.

    The Ravager’s second attack slammed into my shield with more force than the first had. I felt a palpable sense of Akell’s rage carried along with the attack.  I was confused by that at first, but then my heart soared. The only reason Akell would have to strike twice with an instant-death attack was if Opal had survived the Ravager’s first blow, and if she survived one attack, she might be able to survive a whole lot more of them, she might even be able to win!

    “Oh, I so hope she does. I enjoy exterminating Crystal Guardians.” I heard a bodiless voice say.

    “What’s wrong?” Taisen asked. He’d caught my expression as I whipped my head around looking for the person who’d spoken.

    “A lot. Did you just hear someone say something?” I asked.

    “No. Are we under attack?” he asked. He was looking at the protective circle that was forged out of Void anima. He’d seen the circle I’d summoned earlier for protection against the spellbombs and seemed to understand that this one was holding back an even more serious threat.

    “Yes. Akell just used the Ravager. Twice. And there’s something in this circle with us.” I said.

    Something that only I could hear. I looked around again and caught sight of Yael laying on the floor, within the circle. A terrible suspicion began to form in my mind.

    “You’re quite correct.” the voice said. “I am the one purifying the Guardian you have sheltered.”

    “You’re the Seed of Darkness they put in her?” I asked in my mind.

    “In this form? Yes, people have called me that.” the Seed said. The delight in his voice made me wish he had a body so I could smash his face in.

    Taisen knelt down in front of me and put his hands on Yael. I saw a grimace of pain cross his face as a bright anima shield covered him and began to flow into the apprentice Guardian.

    “Oh this is delicious! I don’t recall people lining up to be converted before. And such strength too!” the Seed said.

    “What are you doing?” I asked Taisen, despite knowing exactly what he was doing. The Seed fed on anima, but it could only feed on so much at a time otherwise it would be able to convert the host instantly. Taisen was feeding his own energy to Yael to diminish the amount she was losing but that wasn’t a viable strategy long term. It was like giving blood to someone with a severed artery, you could give all you wanted to but in the end you’d both end up dead.

    “Keep us safe from the Ravager.” Taisen said. “I’ll buy Yael the time that we need.”

    Before I could respond the Seed spoke up and from Taisen’s expression he heard it too.

    “Yes, by all means, give yourselves to me for a few more precious minutes of life.” the Seed said.

    I ignored the Seed and turned my attention back to the shield I’d constructed. I could still feel the Ravager’s power crashing against it.

    “Ravager! Fight back!” I called out loud.

    “I am! This is as much as I can do!” she whispered in my mind.

    “The Ravager is here? Oh, this day cannot get any better! No wait, there is one way!” the Seed said.

    I had cast the shield that surrounded us from the Void anima that I carried. It had been instinctive, drawing on memories I could barely bring to mind consciously. My subconscious had saved us, but it hadn’t been able to warn me of the costs involved.

    Looking down at Yael’s body, the vulnerability in my defense became obvious a moment too late. As my vision swam and my awareness fell away into darkness, I saw what had happened. Yael was laying across the lines of power that I’d inscribed on the floor when I summoned the defensive circle. She was touching them and so the Seed of Darkness inside her was touching them as well. That had given it access to me the same way Weri had been able to connect with me and blow up our transport when I tried to smack him with a Void anima attack.

    As my mind descended into the Seed of Darkness’s heart, I felt a familiar presence nearby.

    “Ravager? Is that you?” I called out.

    “Yes, I have drawn her in here as well.” the Seed said. The empty darkness pulled back as he spoke to reveal a man sitting idly askew on an ornate throne of sculpted bones. I’d seen Akell in an almost identical posture when I found him waiting for me in the chamber the Ravager had been hidden in. I approached the Seed, focusing my vision on him, and found that the resemblance was more than coincidental.

    “You cannot keep me here little monster. Once my master ends this attack I will be pulled back to him.” the Ravager said.

    “Yes, but you needn’t go alone. I fact I think I shall insist on accompanying you.” the Seed said.

    “You’re a piece of the Karr Khan.” I wasn’t guessing. The resemblance to Akell was too close. He wasn’t didn’t look like Akell exactly but that was only because he was older, and fouler.

    “Perceptive.” the Seed commented. “But then there are not many who see me whom I am not in the process of converting.”

    “Why have you brought us here?” the Ravager asked. In the Seed’s mental realm, she appeared as a girl shorter than me, clad in pitch black plate armor that was festooned with spikes and serrated edges.

    “To bend you to my will. There’s power in you both, less in the girl than in yourself Ravager, but I am not one to waste potential.” the Seed said.

    “You cannot change me.” the Ravager said.

    “Eveything can be changed.” the Seed said. “But in your case I don’t need to change you at all. You are already designed to be controlled.”

    “Is that what it is with you? You’re just a control freak?” I said. I didn’t have any weapons that could hurt him so I had to settle for trying to aggravate him.

    “I am not ‘just’ anything. I am the Eternal Khan.” the Seed said.

    “Seems like you’re just a tiny piece of him. Or is the real Khan into overcompensating too?” I asked.

    “I’m going to enjoy devouring you. There’s so much you don’t understand. Watching you struggle and squirm uselessly is going to be delightful.” the Seed said.

    “You can feel free to come at me whenever you want. I’ve already promised that I’m going to kill you if we ever meet and I’m starting to think the sooner that happens the better.” I said.

    “Kill me?” the Seed laughed. “I cannot die. I have transcended death.”

    “Everything can die.” the Ravager said. “Everything.”

    “Everything that you know, but you do not know the secrets that I do.” the Seed said.

    I looked at the Seed. He wasn’t sitting as casually as he had been. He was concerned. He needed us to believe that he couldn’t be killed. The kind of guys I knew who were desperate to convince you of something usually did it because they knew that thing wasn’t true.

    “He’s a body jumper.” I said to the Ravager. The Seed’s jaw practically hit the floor. “He splits himself into pieces and controls a whole bunch of people at once. If you kill his primary body his mind snaps over to one of the others.”

    I’d made a totally wild guess based on the bits of information I had about how the Seed operated. In any other place, I probably couldn’t have come up a fantasy as crazy as that, but I had an advantage. I’d made an mistake in allowing the Seed to forge a link to me, but that link ran both ways. If he could draw me into his mental realm, then my Mental anima was more than capable of mining that realm for the information I needed.

    “Got a little greedy there, didn’t you?” I asked the Seed. “You’re not used to having visitors over. Didn’t know they’d be able to read you like an open book if they weren’t busy being driven insane by you devouring them.”

    “You think that matters?” the Seed asked. All traces of humor were gone from his voice. I smiled. There’s something I find deeply enjoyable about annoying people that I hate.

    “I think it does. You think you’re perfect, that you’re safe from everything. I promise you though, you are not safe from me.” I said.

    “Oh yes, please do posture at me. I’ve never had anyone do that before.” the Seed said. “Next you’ll tell me to leave the Guardian alone, and get off your world or you’ll make me wish I’d never been born, right?”

    “It’s far too late for that.” I told him.

    “My master is ending the attack. Mel, I am sorry. I cannot stop him. He’s going to kill the Guardian who opposes us and then he’s going to kill you. Even holding him back, he has too much of my power to draw on.” the Ravager said.

    “Do what you can. Akell said you couldn’t be pulled from him, but I’m willing to bet I can pry you out of his cold dead fingers.” I said as she began to flicker and fade away.

    “You are not leaving here Ravager. Not alone.” the Seed said. When he moved it was with a flashing burst of speed that was impossible for the eye to follow. I’d been expecting exactly that though.

    We were in a purely mental realm, so my awareness and my reaction were instantaneous. The moment the Seed leapt at the Ravager, I was between them.

    I’d pictured intercepting him with a straight punch directly to the middle of his sneering face. In real life, the force that we collided with would have reduced his head to the consistency of a splattered tomato and my hand to a floppy noodle of shattered bone. As mental constructs we only felt the backlash from the other’s power, though that was still enough to hurt. A lot.

    I picked myself up off the “floor” of the mental realm and watched the Ravager finish disappearing entirely. I smirked and looked back at the Seed. he was picking himself up too and looked about as bad as I felt from our exchange.

    “It doesn’t matter. The Ravager is under the control of one of my Scions. I shall have her soon enough.” the Seed said.

    “Not if your Scion has anything to say about it.” I said.

    “He plans to kill me does he? He can’t even handle one of the Sapphire Guardians from what I saw in the Ravager’s mind. What hope can he have against me.” the Seed said.

    “Well, you’ll be dead for one of thing.” I told him.

    “Yes, so you’ve promised. I shall have to deal with that I suppose, and since you’ve denied me the Ravager for the time being, I guess that means I will need to get serious about converting the Rudy Guardian and having her kill you for me.” the Seed said.

    “I thought you weren’t the kind of waste potential?” I asked him as a truly terrible idea formed in my mind.

    “The only potential that refuse has is to be incinerated for fuel.” the Seed said, returning to his throne.

    “So you’re saying refuse just blocked you from achieving your goal with the Ravager?” I asked, a smile of certainty spreading across my lips. It was a terrible plan, but I was sure it was going to work.

    The Seed remained silent, choosing to sneer at me rather than respond.

    “That’s not it at all though is it. You didn’t change your tune because I’m junk. You changed your tune because I’m junk that you’re scared of.” I said.

    I started to pace around the mental throne room.

    “Why would that be? Because I figured out your fake immortality trick? That was pretty stupid of you to let slip, but I’m willing to bet I’m not the first one who’s sussed it out.” I said.

    “You don’t scare me. You annoy me little girl.” the Seed said. That he was sitting on his throne, recoiling away from me rather than attacking told a different story than his words did, and I was pretty sure we both knew it.

    “I guess I just need to try harder then. How about I do this?” I asked and strode up to the throne. The Seed jumped up to meet me, but he had no idea what I was going to do, so he wasn’t able to prepare for it when I grabbed him by the throat. I felt my anima start to drain out as I touched him.

    “You want to devour someone and kill me, then let’s relocate this little battle shall we?” I said.

    With an effort of pure will, I forced my physical eyes open. Taisen was still feeding anima into Yael and it didn’t look like more than a couple of seconds had passed since the Seed dragged me into his mental realm. I based that guess on the fact that I was still wobbling but hadn’t yet fallen over onto my face.

    Forcing my arms to move was difficult. The Seed was trying to stop me from inside. Twisting my mind to prevent me from reaching down and touching Yael. He failed.

    I laid my left hand on the brand that had been burned in her forehead. The one that bound the Seed of Darkness into her. The moment I touch it, I felt my connection to the Seed strengthen immeasurably.

    I pulled on it, latching into the Seed with all the anima I could muster. The sensation was about the farthest thing from pleasant that I could imagine. It was like I was swallowing a swarm of carnivorous bees. For as painful as it was though, there was barely any resistance. I knew the Seed didn’t want me to do this but it couldn’t help being drawn in by my Void anima. Before I could reconsider this rather stupid course of action, the Seed came free from its anchors in Yael and crashed into me.

    I gritted my teeth against the gut rending pain and pulled my hand away from Yael’s forehead. The brand had left her.

    And appeared on me.

    There’s a cost to any protracted struggle. Wrestling with Zyla, both physically and verbally, left me spent and dizzy by the time I let her go. It would have been a consolation that she was going to wake up feeling even worse than I did, if I hadn’t been reasonably sure she was going to wake up and have every reason in the world to kill me.

    That was a problem for another time though. I had a much more immediate issue to deal with in the form of Yael and the monster that was inside her.

    Little shivers were playing over her skin at irregular intervals. Flashes of pain escaping from the battle she was waging for her heart and soul.

    “Do I take you out of here or is this room suppressing the Seed just as much as its suppressing your anima?” I wondered aloud.

    If the anima suppression effect the room emitted was also affecting the Seed, then leaving her within the room would continue to slow the Seed’s progress while I looked for a way to undo its effects. If the room was only suppressing Yael’s anima though then taking her outside might give her a better chance at resisting the Seed on her own.

    “I wish Taisen was here.” I said. The cleric would be able to monitor her anima levels like he’d done with me. He could probably tell in an instant what was happening inside her. Without him, I had to go on gut instincts and basic reasoning, neither of which had enough information backing them to be reliable. That should have given me pause and encouraged me to proceed slowly. The unconscious body of Zyla at my feet argued against cautious, careful action however.

    I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone came looking for Zyla. She’d come to take me to the Karr Khan and I couldn’t imagine he would be fine with waiting for me to show up whenever was convenient.

    Despite the need for haste, that thought did give me pause. I only had Zyla’s word that she was taking me to the Karr Khan. I had to grant that lying didn’t seem to be her style, but would they have really sent just one person for a task like that? For that matter would they really have no monitors built into a cell that was as insanely over-magicked as this one was?

    The more I thought about it the more it became clear that there were events in motion that I was only seeing a small fraction of.

    On it’s simplest level, Yael had been beaten by Akell and Zyla had come to collect me and provide Yael with an “accidental” death that spared her from becoming a monster. The problem was I knew that both of them were highly accomplished Aetherial anima casters. Both of them could and did fight primarily with destiny spells.

    I shook my head at that. Trying to second guess everything that had occurred as being the result of one or the other’s fate altering spells was a direct path to madness. There was definitely some reality behind destiny spells, but it seemed like Aetherial casters shared a lot with simple grifters, where it was less about what they’d planned to have happen and more about how they could reinterpret events after the fact to make it look like what had occurred had all been part of the completely intentional master plan. That made some people happy, but I thought it was kind of stupid, which was probably a sign that I’d never be much of an Aetherial caster, even if I could survive long enough to get some proper training.

    For as much as overly elaborate planning annoyed me though, I could also see the pitfalls of barging ahead blindly. So I calmed my breathing and considered Yael’s condition.

    She had deteriorated a lot since we’d parted. I didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious but I had to guess it was no more than a few hours. For as bad as I felt, I’d have all sorts of other issues if it had been a few days or longer. I also didn’t know how fast the Seed would normally be able to convert someone as strong as Yael. My best guess was that it would take a while, otherwise, they wouldn’t have left her in here with me.

    Following on that guess, I supposed that if the anima suppression field was going to affect both Yael and the Seed equally then they’d could have stored her in some area far away from me. The best reason to dump her in this room was because they wanted both of us shut down.

    “I really hope this doesn’t kill you.” I told Yael as I lifted her up. A wordless cry of pain escaped her lips and she sagged into full unconsciousness as I hauled her up.

    Stepping out into the hallway beyond the cell felt fantastic. I could almost taste the symbolic freedom I’d gained, but what was a thousand times better was the sense of my anima waking up and starting flowing through me. I felt like an electric charge was filling me up to the tips of my fingers and toes. In my arms, Yael stirred a little and tightened, the relief of unconsciousness falling away from her as her own anima surged back to full power.

    She didn’t wake up immediately though so I looked around to take stock of where we were. The corridor outside the cell was a clean, creamy white, as though the walls and floor were made out of pearl. There were three other rooms nearby, one on the same side as the cell we’d been in and two on the other side. Of the four, only the cell I’d left had a border of sigils around its door. The others seemed to be non-magical holding facilities. The corridor ended in a round doorway that looked like it irised into the wall somehow.

    In the background I heard the hum that I’d noticed before and began to put together a string of clues that led to an unpleasant deduction.

    “This cell is custom made, and it costs so much that there’s only one of them here. Belstarius wouldn’t have needed just one cell like this. Either they’d have setup a whole wing of them to cover all of the caster criminals on the planet or they’d do without and save the money for something else. It could be a random rich person who lived in the city, but the Khan’s forces wouldn’t have just stumbled on it like that. Probably.” I reasoned. “What Akell would know about though would be the facilities on the ship that they came in.”

    More pieces started falling into place. Four cells wasn’t enough for much, unless you only expected to have prisoners to hold in them on special occasions. Even more compelling though was the hum. I recognized it. It was the hum of a starship’s anima plant. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I knew I’d heard that sound before.

    I looked down and found my hands trembling. Yael didn’t seem happy with that, so I laid her on the floor. My head swam a little and I felt sick to my stomach again. I didn’t want to be here. In the worst possible way, I did not want to be on a starship.

    I sat down beside Yael and put my head into my hands.

    “I can’t lose it. Not yet.” I told myself.

    “Not ever, hopefully.” the man who spoke was at the end of the short corridor, in the round doorway that had opened soundlessly. I saw only a few thing about him before I jumped to my feet.

    He was tall, pale skinned, unfamiliar and he wore the uniform of one of the Karr Khan’s soldiers.

    An enemy.

    I kicked off the wall behind me and launched myself at him like a missile. There wasn’t any subtlety or planning in my attack, it was pure reflexes and pure speed. I needed to shut him up and take him down before he could call for a pile of other guards.

    For as fast as I was though, even using my returned Physical anima, he was able to dodge out of the way of my charge and avoid the blows I threw at him.

    “Wait! Mel! Stop!” the man said, as he frantically ducked and weaved out of my reach.

    His words didn’t quite resolve in my mind. Fear and panic are great for inducing fast reactions, but lousy at inducing smart ones. What I should have seen as someone struggling to stay away from me, I instead interpreted as someone looking to get out of grappling range so that they could either shoot me or run away and get help. Since that would pretty much seal my fate, I made sure neither was an option for the man.

    A quick feint to the head put him just enough off balance that I was able to sweep his legs out from under him. As he fell I managed to grab his arm and land on him with that arm bent back over his head and my free forearm pressed against his throat.

    “Mel, I’m not your foe. Give me a second.” the man said.

    It finally registered that he knew my name. And that he was not threatening me. That sent me back into the land of utter confusion but a whole barrel of questions that sprang to my mind were answered a moment later as the man’s feature’s flowed and shifted from the unfamiliar look of the guard to a much friendlier face.

    “Taisen? What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him. I didn’t let him go though, in part because I was too stunned and in part because, I couldn’t be sure it was actually him.

    “I believe I mentioned that I’m a secret agent for the Crystal Empress?” he answered.

    “And a shape shifter?” I asked.

    “When I need to be. I’m better at medicine, but once you know the body at that level, there’s a whole lot of things you can do with Physical anima.” he said.

    “What was the first thing I said to you?” I asked him.

    “Honestly, I have no idea. It’s been a long day and my memory’s just not that good. I know we started talking about the condition you were in when you got to the clinic. Oh I know, you didn’t lie to me about it! That was nice.” he said.

    I let him go. It wasn’t impossible that someone else could have known that. Mind magic can do all kinds of weird and unpleasant things, but all things considered, it seemed like a safe bet to assume he was on the level. Especially since I figured I could still kick his butt if he wasn’t.

    “Sorry. I didn’t expect to see you here. How did you even get here? In fact, where is here?” I asked him.

    “We’re onboard one of the Karr Khan’s personal yachts. You and Yael were brought here after Akell claimed the Jewel of Endless Night.” Taisen said, sitting up.

    “Yael! She’s here. They’ve done something to her!” I said, pointing at the apprentice Guardian’s prone form at the other end of the corridor. Taisen got up without any further prompting and went over to the fallen girl. I watched him study her for a minute. He cast a series of spells that left glowing glyphs in the air and circles that shone with different shades of shifting light.

    “This is bad.” he said at last. “Her body is starting to breakdown because she’s drawn all of her anima up into a tight ball to ward off something that’s attacking her. I think her mind and spirit are ok, but her Physical anima is suffering in their place.”

    “Can you stop it? Or stabilize her?” I asked.

    “I don’t think so. Whatever’s eating her is made of almost pure Void anima. Any spells I cast are going to get consumed by it too.” he said.

    “Will that buy her any time?” I asked.

    “Maybe. But it might make the attacker stronger.” he said.

    “From what Zyla said, I’d guess you’re right on both counts. We need to help her hold out though.” I said.

    “Agreed. If we can get her out of here and back to the surface, I might be able to rig up something with a medical stasis pod that would freeze the process in place.” Taisen said.

    “Is that why you’re here? To get us out?” I asked.

    “Yes. Opal asked me to find you and get you both away from here. She’s gone after Akell to get the Jewel back.” Taisen said.

    “What about Master Hanq?” I asked.

    “He said he was going to recruit some help. After the shuttle exploded, the three of us landed together but we were blown miles in the wrong direction. We knew that you and Opal would reach the Jewel long before us, but Opal didn’t think it would be before Akell did.” he said.

    “ She was right. I got to Akell first, but he’d already bonded to the Ravager.” I said.

    “How do you know it’s the Ravager?” Taisen asked.

    “She talked to me.” I said.

    “She talked? Who talked to you?”, he asked.

    “The Ravager, the Jewel of Endless Night. I spoke with her.” I said.

    “That’s not…” Taisen didn’t get to finish his phrase.

    I felt the stab of cold in my chest that had come before serious danger had surfaced several times in the past. As had happened once before, when the city killing bombs had dropped on us, I felt the Void anima in me reach out almost entirely on its own and form a protective barrier around me.

    Where the other barrier had been a simple circle, this one was far more complex though. Within the circle were whorls of numbers, half remembered equations and writing in a  tongue that I couldn’t remember ever speaking. Lines of power crossed through the circle and formed geometries that reinforced the aura that sprang up around Yael, Taisen and I.

    For all that, the barrier barely held against the attack that came.

    Against the shield that I raised, I felt something like a tidal wave crash down. A tidal wave with a familiar presence behind it.

    “I don’t want to do this!” I heard the Ravager cry as a wave of pure death spread across the Karr Khan’s ship.

    That wasn’t what scared me though. What terrified me was the presence that I felt within the barrier. I was holding the Ravager’s power at bay, but there was a darkness lurking within all of my defenses.

    And it was hungry.

    I’d never seen someone in as bad a shape as Yael was. Between the obvious damage and what I could guess was happening inside her, I couldn’t imagine how she could be bearing the pain she was in. Zyla hadn’t left me any weapons, but then I clearly didn’t need any in order to end Yael’s suffering.

    I stood over the fallen Guardian and felt paralyzed. I couldn’t have stopped Akell, but I might have been able to keep him busy for longer. Did that make her condition my fault?

    No. This was Akell’s doing. I wasn’t going to shoulder that guilt.

    That didn’t make any difference to Yael though. Akell was the one who put her in this state, but I had the chance to do something about it. I could let her become a monster and a slave, or I could finish what Akell had started.

    Both of those options sucked.

    So I chose another one.

    “Are you prepared?” Zyla asked as she came back into the room.

    Her answer was me hitting her from behind.

    The blows did no damage but they surprised her. That was all I needed. With her anima shield in place I couldn’t beat her into unconsciousness. Joint locks on the other hand work just fine. Unlike punches and kicks, a good martial hold is a matter of skill and geometry. Zyla had access to her Physical anima, so she was at least dozens of times stronger than me.

    Just like everyone else I’d ever fought with. So I needed a tool that took strength out of the equation.

    Enter one of my favorite techniques: grappling! In a two-on-one fight, like I’d had in the alley against Badz’s friends, grappling is impractical. Take one guy down the ground and his friend will just kick your head in. Zyla didn’t have backup though, so all I needed to do was beat her. Or more precisely, arrange her limbs so that she beat herself.

    It wasn’t a tremendously dignified position that we wound up in. I was laying underneath her and behind her back when we hit the ground and we were wrapped around each other like a pretzel. The important thing was it was a pretzel configuration that I’d chosen. For all her superior strength, Zyla didn’t have a prayer at escaping from me. I’d twisted her arms and legs into positions where any effort she made to escape would be effort spent shattering her own bones or ripping her limbs out of their sockets.

    “I’m not doing your dirty work for you.” I told her as we struggled. Zyla didn’t even pretend to not understand what I was talking about it.

    “You’re condemning her to a fate she considers worth than death.” Zyla growled at me.

    “What do you care?” I yelled at her, as I flip her over and ground her face into the smooth floor of the cell.

    “She was an honorable foe. She understood.” Zyla said.

    “That’s what this is? You think this is about honor? What honor can there possibly be in killing her. In killing a whole damn city!” I screamed.

    “There is honor in duty. In service. She understood that.” Zyla said. There were tears running down her cheeks, probably because the hold I had her in was agonizing.

    “She’s not dead yet.” I said.

    “Yes. Yes, she is. She’d been branded. The woman she was is gone. If her mind hasn’t been devoured yet, then its being torn apart right now!” Zyla screamed.

    “Then take the brand off her. Cut it out, burn it, whatever it takes!” I said.

    “That’s impossible! The Seed has already begun to grow. Touching it is death.” Zyla said. She sounded terrified and I knew it wasn’t of anything I could do to her. We were silent for a moment as the weight of her words sank into me, down to a bitter, hard core in the center of my chest.

    “Then die.” I said. I felt a terrible cold echoing in my words.

    “It wouldn’t save her.” Zyla said, her voice barely above a whisper.

    “What would.” I asked, my voice still cold and hard as ice.

    “Nothing. Or maybe the Karr Khan. I don’t know.” she said.

    “And how do I make him do that?” I asked.

    “You can’t. He hates the Crystal Empress and all of her forces. He would never spare one of her Guardians.” she said.

    “So you can’t be any help to me then?” I asked.

    “I am your enemy. I cannot help you.” she said.

    “What about the bit about me being a member of the family?” I asked.

    “You’re never going to be one of the Khan’s children. Not the you who exists now.” Zyla said.

    “What do you mean?”

     “What is happening to the Guardian is a shadow of what is going to happen to you. They told me when they branded her. Your resistance has been too great and your skill with Void anima is too strong to rely on loyalty binding spells. Plus you’ve been in the company of a Sapphire Guardian. They can’t be sure what hidden surprises she has left in you.” Zyla said.

    “So they’re going to do this to me too?” I asked. I wasn’t frightened or surprised. I was carrying far too much anger to have any room for emotions like fear or shock.

    “No. You will receive a different type of brand. The Betrayer’s Chain. It will turn you into a vessel for the Karr Khan’s will directly. You will retain your memories and your skills but the will that drives them will no longer be your own. Once the guardian’s anima is consumed she will become a monster under our control, but she will never know the things she is made to do. You on the other hand will see everything. Will feel everything. But you will have no power to stop it.” Zyla said.

    I was silent in response to that. I thought I’d known bad people. The ones who would prey on anyone who was weaker than themselves. The ones who would take from people who had nothing. The ones who didn’t care who they hurt so long as they profited from whatever they were doing. What I hadn’t known was that they were amateurs. They were petty and destructive, but this was what it looked like when people got professional about destroying others.

    “How can serve someone who would do that?” I asked.

    “Everyone would do that. Those who believe otherwise are only clinging to a fantasy out of weakness or fear.” Zyla said. I knew the tone in her voice. I’d heard it in my classes thousands of times.

    “That’s what you’ve been told to say. That’s what someone taught you. What’s the real reason?” I asked.

    “You don’t understand.” Zyla said.

    “I’m getting sick of hearing that. I understand just fine. You’ve been beaten into believing the only thing you can do is support the biggest tough guy you know. You think that somehow if you deny yourself entirely and do only what they want you to do, no matter how hard or horrible that is, that you’ll be noble and pure in some way.” I said.

    “That’s not true. You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Zyla said.

    “Don’t I? You think you’re special because you’re a ‘Second Scion Circle’ girl? I’ve seen gangs handing out all kinds of stupid badges of honor. You’re the same. You’ve just got bigger guns and better training.” I said.

    “We are nothing like the scum of your world.” Zyla said. From the anger in her voice, I knew I’d hit a nerve. She was too smart not to see what she really was on some level. She’d just been clever enough to fool herself that being one of the Khan’s pet monsters was ok because she had a code to live by.

    “The only difference I see is that they’re dead and you’re still drawing breath.”

    “You’re going to change that aren’t you?” Zyla asked. “That’s what this all is. You’ve never killed before and you’re working yourself up to it.”

    “Nice attempt to analyze me, but I’m sorry princess, you got it wrong.” I said with a chuckle.

    “You can’t let me live. As soon as you release me, I’m going to overpower you and put you back in the shackles. You have to kill me.” Zyla said.

    “That’s what your life is, isn’t it?” I asked her, “It all ‘us vs. them’. Win at all costs. Be the best or you’re nothing.”

    “The only way I would be nothing is if I abandoned my duty.” Zyla said.

    “No, the only way you become nothing is by treating other people like they’re nothing.” I said. “You respect Yael, but you don’t have the first clue how she thinks.”

    “And you’re so close to her that you do?” Zyla asked.

    “Close to her? No, she practically hates me. But unlike you, I’ve actually listened to her. Do you know what everything she’s ever said has told me?” I asked.

    “What?”
“That she cares about other people. What she loathes about me can be summed up in one phrase; I’m a danger to myself and others.” I said.

    “Then she should have killed you herself.” Zyla said.

    “That’s not the way she thinks. That’s not the way her mentor thinks either. In fact from what they’ve told me, that’s not the way any of the Crystal Empress’s forces work, and they kicked your precious Khan’s butt.” I said.

    “We did not lose to the Empress’s forces. We were betrayed from within.” Zyla said.

    “Oh I get it, that’s why, for your generation, your Khan was on a big loyalty and honor kick. More convenient to keep the minions in line that way. Guess Akell missed those classes.” I said.

    “Mock me all you want. It doesn’t matter. What happens to the Guardian is on you now.” Zyla said.

    “You know what, you’re right.” I agreed. “Up to this point, what happened to her was Akell’s fault. It was your fault and it was your stupid Khan’s fault. But I’ve had enough of you. All of you. I didn’t do this to Yael, but I’m here, now, and I’m the one who can do something about it. So you’re right. She is my problem, and I’m not going to let her suffer like that.”

    “If you let me go, I am going to restrain you again.” Zyla said.

    I blinked at that. She was telling me, as clearly as she was able to, that I had to murder her too. I knew what it was like to hate myself sometimes, but compared to Zyla I felt like a beacon of stability and sanity in the light of that declaration.

    “Yael and Opal would never have killed you. Not if they could help it.” I told her.

    “If it was necessary they would have.” Zyla said, her voice a flat monotone.

    “I don’t think they would. Yael saved me when she had absolutely no reason to. They value life far too much to casually toss it aside. They’re different from you. And they’re different from me.” I said.

    “What do you mean?” Zyla asked, a trace of fear coloring her voice. It’s one thing to ask for death, it’s another thing to believe its really going to happen.

    “I’m not a Guardian. I wasn’t raised by the Crystal Empress. I learned a whole different set of lessons.” I said and began tightening my hold on her neck. “Do you know who I learned this technique from?”

    “Who?” she gasped out as I started to choke her.

    “Master Hanq Okoro. I didn’t know it for the longest time, but he was a Warlord too back in the day. Can you imagine the kinds of things he taught me?” I asked.

    Zyla couldn’t answer because I’d cut off the air to her lungs with my hold.

    “So you know who that makes me like?” I asked and then answered, “That makes me like you. We’re not so different really. You’re a monster and so am I.”

    Zyla started struggling for air, but it was to no avail. I had her wrapped too tightly.

    “That makes this really easy. I want you to think about that. For the rest of your life, however little there may be, I want you to understand that you’re no different from me.” I said and tightened the hold on her throat the last bit further that I needed.

    Chokeholds are dangerous. The line between knocking someone out and killing them can be thin and different for different people. With Zyla I had an advantage though; she had a pretty hefty amount of Physical anima to draw on. That made the line much broader. I still let up on the blood blocking hold after a few seconds though. I wanted her unconscious, not dead.

    I knew she’d never be an ally. She could have respected me choking the life out of her, but she wasn’t going to forgive the things I’d said any time soon (or ever probably). The truth though was that I was following what Master Hanq had taught me.

    “Killing someone’s a mess. Just avoid it if you can.” he’d said, and that had been all he’d had to say on the subject. At least in words. Watching him in action though, I’d always seen how, for as brutal as he could be, the people he fought with generally lived to fight another day. Or at least lived to see another day. In his own way, he treasured life as much as the Guardians did.

    And in her own way, Zyla did too.

    The first thing I saw when I managed to force my eyes open was Yael lying face down and unmoving on a low table in front of me. I didn’t recognize her at first, but even so I knew it was a bad sign. So was the fact that I was shackled to the wall and unable to move.

    I searched my memories, feeling weak and disoriented in a way that only being pummelled into unconscious can provide. I laughed a bitter chuckle at myself as I did. It didn’t say great things about my decision making capabilities that being beaten senseless was a familiar experience for me.

    My brain was running like sludge, but I was able to piece together bits and pieces of memory from it anyways. I’d run to confront Akell and stop him getting his hands on the Ravager. I’d failed at that and he’d captured me. I’d been afraid he would use the Ravager to kill the rest of the people on my world, but he had other plans it looked like. Specifically, he was angling to kill his “father” the Karr Khan.

    I remembered laughing at that – in my defense it was kind of a funny concept – and he’d reacted with unbridled rage. Based on the lack of memory of what happened next, I guessed that his attack must have been too fast for me to notice and too powerful for me to do more than survive.

    Looking around it was hard to say where he’d taken me. The room I was tied up in was covered in sigils, so it wasn’t a random place that he’d tossed me. There was a background tone that faded into and out of my hearing that was familiar too. It sounded like an engine working but not a kind that I’d heard in a long time.

    Then there was the issue of Yael. The last I’d seen her, she was taunting Zyla and an army of elite soldiers to come fight with her. She’d bought me the chance to stop Akell, and it looked like that had cost her severely.

    I knew that we were both prisoners of the Karr Khan’s forces. Akell had cackled his plan to use me to lure the Karr Khan into striking range and with the kind of power he was slinging around I couldn’t see how he’d have a problem with that. The only question I had on that topic was what had changed his mind so suddenly?

    It could have been natural I supposed. As a “Third Circle Scion” he’d probably lived his whole life as “less than second best”. With as much power as he’d stolen from the dead of the shelters, added onto the power the Ravager gave him, I could see why he’d want to take a shot at claiming the top spot.

    The funny thing was, if I wasn’t nearly certain that he’d kill me too, I’d have been all for him taking out the Karr Khan.

    The more I thought about Akell’s behavior though, the more I had to wonder if outside forces were at work. I knew Opal had mucked around in his mind, but she had left him sane. The walking pool of madness that was claiming to be Akell reminded me of something else. I thought back to the experience I’d had with the ghosts of the murdered dead. I’d almost gone nuts too, and those ghosts hadn’t had a reason to be angry at me specifically. If Akell had tapped multiple shelters and absorbed all of that hate and pain and fear, I could easily imagine that the will that was driving him wasn’t entirely his own anymore.

    That didn’t change the fact that he was carrying one of the most powerful weapons I’d ever heard of though.

    The Ravager.

    I didn’t know what to make of her. She’d been the one to let him see through my invisibility. Her powers were his to command, and she was definitely supporting him. I hadn’t been able to defend myself because of the overwhelming force she allowed him to bring to bear. Maybe. I couldn’t be sure of how anything worked between those two, or even if the force that I’d felt Akell unleash had been nothing more than the anima stolen from the dead.

    What I did know, was that she’d reached out to me. Even when she knew I wasn’t going to get to her in time. She’d still tried to talk to me. It was stupid, but part of me was looking at her like the Ravager was one of my younger “classmates” at the orphanage. She was millenia old, at least, she could kill entire planets and she couldn’t be destroyed but it still felt like she was small and helpless too. I hated that. Hated the thought of helpless people getting picked on.

    I thought of Badz and his crew. I’d nearly caved Badz’s head in with a plank of wood for trying to life drain Laz, one of the boys from the orphanage. Had the damage I’d done to him and his goon friends slowed them down enough that they got caught by one of the bombs? Part of me hoped so, but another part was angry at the thought.

    Badz and his goons were scum, but that didn’t mean that it was ok for someone like Akell or the Karr Khan to kill them and steal all of their magic. In their own way they were helpless too, at least in the face of what the Karr Khan had done to the city.

    That train of thought brought me around to my own situation. I’d fought and I’d lost. It wasn’t my fault. There was no way, even if I’d been a lot more familiar with using anima, that I could have taken on Akell and won. He had too big of a headstart and too much power at his disposal by the time I reached him. The only reason I even found him in fact was that he’d waited for me to catch up. I couldn’t be blamed for losing to him, but that didn’t change the fact that I had.

    “If you’re still alive, keep swinging. It’s as simple as that.” Master Hanq had told me early on when I’d asked for ‘the secret move that would let me win any fight’. It had sounded like terrible advice at the time, and it was, but there was a grain of truth to it.

    The thing about grains of truth though, is that they’re easy to overlook when you’re beaten and shackled to a wall. I was tired, and I hurt everywhere. I’d lost so much I couldn’t even tally it all up. Even the things I’d gained had come with terrifying conditions and price tags on them. I felt like I was ready to give up. I just needed someone to surrender to.

    As if on queue, the door to the small cell slid open with a soft whoosh and Zyla stepped into the room. I sagged in defeat. I wanted somebody to surrender to, just not her.

    “You are awake. Good. I have to prepare you.” Zyla said. Her movements were stiff and short which told me Yael had given her one hell of a beating. Her words were just as stiff and short too though and I wasn’t sure what to attribute that to.

    “Prepare me for what?” I asked.

    “You are going to meet with the Khan and be inducted into our ranks.” Zyla said.

    “Why?” I asked.

    “Because it is the Karr Khan’s desire.” she said without looking at me. She’d entered the room carrying towels and a robe. From a sealed compartment in the wall, she produced a basin and a jug of water.

    I considered telling her what Akell was going to do when he met the Karr Khan but decided against it. The two of them killing each other suited me fine, and Zyla wouldn’t have believed me if I told her anyways.

    “What’s going to happen to Yael?” I asked instead, looking over at the motionless girl.

    “The Guardian will be converted.” Zyla said with a catch in her voice on the last word.

    “What do you mean ‘converted’?” I asked.

    “It is a process inflicted on the Khan’s strongest enemies.” Zyla said. She didn’t seem happy with the notion which told me it had to be truly horrible.

    “What are you going to do to her?” I demanded.

    “My part is done. My duty only relates to you now.” Zyla said, dodging the question.

    “What did you do to her, you monster?”

    “I have done nothing to her. We fought and she was on the edge of victory when my brother appeared. He called for a cessation of our battle and then struck her down when she stepped away from me.” Zyla said. There was anger in her voice but it wasn’t directed at me.

    “So you captured us both then. What is this ‘conversion’ thing. What is going to happen to her?”

    “She will become a Devouring Shadow.” Zyla said.

    “And what the hell is a Devouring Shadow?” I asked.

    “It is a being of almost pure Void anima. When our elite forces need backup and we do not wish to risk a Scion, we will unleash a Devouring Shadow to destroy those who stand before us. The touch of Devouring Shadow consumes all of the anima from a person’s body, even the fundamental anima that allows them to live. There are very few defenses against them.” Zyla explained.

    “When are they going to do this to her?” I asked, renewed anger running through me.

    “It has already begun.” Zyla said.

    “What!” I shouted. “How?”

    “She has been branded with the Khan’s sigil. The seed of darkness will grow through her mind and her body. As it consumes her anima it will become stronger and stronger. The longer she can resist, the mightier our servant will be once it finishes devouring her.” Zyla said.

   She wet one of the towels and placed it beside the basin. She then walked over to me and reached for one of my arms. I thrashed and kicked in the shackles but they held me tight against the wall. I screamed in rage, but that didn’t help either. A moment later my hand came free from the shackles though. Then my other did.

    Zyla had released me.

    She bent down to undo the shackles on me legs and I smashed her on the sides of the head with my palms. It was both foolish and stupid. Foolish because I should have known that she wouldn’t have released me if I posed a threat to her and stupid because, even if I could have hurt her, I would have been better off waiting until my legs were free.

    Zyla showed no pain from the blows to her head, but she did look up at me silently.

    “Fighting won’t do you any good. Not in here.” she said.

    I saw the sigils on the walls sparkling with brief flashes of light as I moved. I tried to feel for my Physical anima and, as I expected, I couldn’t reach it at all.

    “The cell suppresses your anima, but not mine. You can’t hurt me here. Not even with your Void anima.” Zyla confirmed for me.

    I stewed on that in a silent rage. Zyla waited a moment and then freed my legs too.

    “What are you going to do to me?” I finally asked.

    “I am to have you cleaned and dressed for your meeting with the Khan. I have put out what supplies we have for that as well as the robe you are to wear.” she said. “I will leave and give you a few minutes to clean yourself and get dressed.”

    She turned to leave but I stopped her.

    “Wait. You were supposed to clean me yourself weren’t you?” I asked.

    “That is the standard practice for prisoners.” she confirmed.

    “Then why are you leaving?”

    “Do you wish me to stay?” she asked.

    “No, but I don’t understand.” I said, feeling perplexed.

    “That’s true. You don’t.” she agreed and left, closing the door behind her.

    I looked at the water and the robe and turned away from them to kneel down beside Yael. My whole body ached from the beating I’d taken and then hanging in the shackles but Yael looked a lot worse off. Deep purple, black and green bruises covered her face and neck. On her arms I saw thin cuts in the skin that looked like she was cracking apart like an eggshell.

    I touched her arm to turn her over and saw the first movement from her since I woke up. It wasn’t a pleasant sight though. Even my gentle touch sent a shiver of pain down her.

    A sickening weight landed in my stomach as I figured out why Zyla had left me free in the cell alone. It wasn’t my dignity she was concerned with. It was Yael’s.

    She was giving me the chance to kill the apprentice Guardian before the shadows devoured Yael and turned her into a monster.

    The worst kind of race is the one where the guy you’re racing against is at the finish line before you even start running.

    “I think I would have liked working with you.” the Ravager said as the mental projection faded away and I found myself standing in the mouth of the cave.  Behind me lay the two dead bodies the trap had drained of life. Ahead of me the cave plunged downwards into a misty, unwelcoming darkness.

    “Wait!” I called out as I felt the Void anima the Ravager had extended pull away from me.

    “The other one who seeks me has breached the last barrier. I am sorry.” the Ravager’s fading voice said.

    I swore. Loudly.

    Two of Zyla’s soldiers, ones I’d snuck past without even being aware of it, raced into view at the mouth of the cave. The stream of profanity I spewed tipped them off to where I was but they would have been better off pretending they hadn’t heard me. In the seconds it took them to locate me in the gloom and bring their bolt casters to bear, the first trap fired again.

    Tendrils of Void anima shot out and pierced the soldiers through. I turned away but the sound was unmistakable. They barely had time to scream as their energy and life were ripped out. I shivered. Without my conversation with the Ravager, that could have been my fate too.

    I tried not to dwell on the thought of dying (which seemed all too likely) and took off into the cavern. As a precaution, I cloaked myself in invisibility as I ran, since I didn’t know what to expect and that seemed to be my best all around defense. As it turned out there wasn’t much to defend myself from though. The next defense was a sealed doorway. Or what was left of it.

    It had been blasted open and the ward stones on its exterior shattered. The same was true of the next three traps that I found. I couldn’t tell how strong the traps had been, but given that they were designed to protect a legendary artifact from being recovered, I had to guess that they weren’t weak. Akell being able to smash through them like they were made of kindling was almost as worrisome as the fact that he was going to reach the Ravager before I did.

    There were other traps guarding the long twisting passages down to where the Jewel lay. Mental anima mazes and Aetherial illusions that would have turned me back or led me astray if the Void anima I was wrapped in hadn’t eaten the parts of them which tried to touch me.

    I was able to shortcut part of the trip by following the openings that Akell had blasted in the walls and floors of the underground lair.

    “He’s got to be getting tired.” I told myself. The destruction he’d caused and the traps he’d powered through didn’t seem like something even a talented or desperate human could have managed.

    Akell’s apparent power didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the more I thought about it the fact that the Ravager was located in a place like this at all bothered me more.

    “Why are there tunnels leading to the Jewel?” I wondered. It seemed like a needless security flaw to let people walk right up to the Jewel with only the anima traps protecting it. I was losing the race to Akell when neither of us should have been able to get within a mile of the Ravager if any sane defenses had been setup to protect it.

    I chewed on that thought as I ran past more disarmed traps and then remembered something Opal had said. I’d asked about tossing them into a star but she claimed that wouldn’t work because the Jewels could teleport themselves to safety. That this dungeon was the sort of place where they were hidden told me they could do more than teleport to safety. They could probably teleport in a lot of circumstances, either whenever they wanted to or under broad enough set of conditions that they had to be left somewhere that was accessible to potential users. I considered what that mean and decided it wouldn’t surprise me if the Jewels stayed entombed in dungeons like this because they wanted to. That way, they could be found, but only by someone powerful or clever enough to be a fitting master for a legendary artifact.

    Or maybe it was so they wouldn’t be found at all.

    It hadn’t sounded like the Ravager was eager to take up her old job. She could have been lying to me, but under the circumstances I couldn’t imagine why she would bother. That bugged me too. She’d reached out to me and spoke to me, but she was aware of where Akell was. Why would she have bothered testing me (and I was pretty sure she’d been testing me) if she knew she was going to fall into Akell’s hands long before I could reach her?

    I ran onwards plagued by questions like that. I had the growing certainty that I wasn’t like the answers though even in the I lived long enough to hear them.

    “And so you’re here at last. Took you long enough didn’t it.” Akell said as I stumbled to a halt at the door to the central chamber. It had been blown inwards like the others had. Inside, Akell sat on a small pedestal, lounging like a lazy cat. That was fitting because it looked like the chamber he was in had been shredded by a particularly violent and mad feline.

    Huge rents in the polished white stone floor and walls had broken the intricate symmetry of the thousand warding circles that had been placed to protect the room and its contents. It wasn’t the damage to the door or Akell’s presence that tripped me up though. It was the renewed sense of the Ravager’s Void anima touching on my invisibility cloak.

    “I’m sorry.” I heard her say in my mind.

    “You can dispense with the child’s spells.” Akell said. “They won’t be you any good against me. Not now.”

    He held his right hand up to his chest and on the back of it, I saw a black diamond that had bonded to his flesh. The Ravager, the Jewel of Endless Night, was his.

    I stepped into the room and let my invisibility spell fall away. I felt calm. We’d failed and it was all going to end. Akell could snuff out every life on the planet in an instant from what I’d been told. Somehow that was liberating, maybe because it meant I didn’t have anything left to lose.

    “Good. I expected you to be more troublesome, but I can see that this is simply my destiny, finally being revealed at last.” Akell said.

    “Your destiny?” I said, circling slowly toward him. “Planning on buying a spot in the First Circle?”

    “That was what I’d been thinking. Before I claimed this.” Akell laughed. He got off the pedestal and I could see that he wasn’t moving like a regular human any more. Anima flared around him as he floated up to a standing position and then descended to the ground at a speed that had nothing to do with gravity.

    “I’m surprised you made it in here. Kind of doesn’t look like you even need the Jewel.” I said, continuing to circle him and play for time. It wasn’t a plan as such. There wasn’t anyone who could come to my rescue that I was waiting for. I just didn’t feel like dying yet.

    “Oh, it’s still useful. I can feel the other animas fading already, but the Jewel? That’s eternal. As am I now.” Akell said. He started strolling through the room in a lazy circle to match the own I was walking.

    “Other animas?” I asked, a terrible suspicion settling into my bones.

    “From all the witless fools in the city.” he said with a laugh.

    “You found one of the shelters, didn’t you? One that had been hit by the bombs.” I guessed.

    “Not just one. They were right where mother had said they would be. So easy to harvest.” Akell said. He hadn’t struck me as entirely sane from the beginning but watching him stalk around the small room, seeing the odd ticks in his movement and hearing the unnatural clicks and catches in his voice told me that the “boy” I was looking at was nothing more than the thinnest of facades over a pit of madness.

    “I can’t believe you disturbed them. The ghosts should have ripped you apart.” I said.

    “Now sister, you almost sound like you would be happy to have seen that.” Akell said.

    “Still kind of hoping to.” I said.

    Akell laughed. It was the kind of boisterous, deep laugh that only someone completely unconcerned with their own safety can make.

    “I am so sorry to disappoint you then sister. The ghosts weren’t strong enough to overcome me before and they are certainly of no consequence now that I wield the Ravager’s power. There is nothing and no one who can stand against me any longer.” Akell said.

    “And what happens when someone takes it away from you?” I asked.

    “I cannot be separated from the Jewel. It is wrapped in the strands of my life and it has made them eternal. I can no more be defeated than death itself can.” Akell said.

    “Sounds boring.” I stopped circling. He was going to explode sooner or later and I wanted to get in at least one good punch before that happened.

    “It’s a boredom I’ll have to live with. Forever!” he screamed in delight.

    “So what are you going to do with forever?” I asked. I was going to point out to him that other people had worn the Jewel and none of them had made it to “forever”, but I figured there was no reason to spoil that unpleasant surprise for him.

    “Many things. I’d been thinking I would start by killing you and that damn Crystal Empire Guardian, but I’ve reconsidered.”

    “And why would you do that?” I asked.

    “You’re going to be useful to me.” he said.

    “Don’t think I will be.” I told him.

    “You’re not going to have a choice.” he said.

    “Cause you’re going to threaten me? Hate to break it to you but you’ve got nothing to hold over me.” I said.

    “My silly sister, I don’t need threats.” he said.

    The attack came so quickly that I wasn’t aware of it until I found myself embedded an inch into the white stone wall. I tried to pull myself out of the wall but I couldn’t budge. A force heavier than the mountain we were standing under was holding me in place. I tried to consume the anima that was powering the spell with the Void anima I had, only to discover that it was already doing that. Whatever power Akell had, I couldn’t drain it fast enough to make a difference.

    “I could hurt you of course.” he said and from his other hand lightning shot out and filled my world with a whole new sort of pain. Briefly. The shock lasted less than second before my Void anima started consuming it too.

    “But what would be the point of that?” Akell said, dropping the lightning and flapping his hand like it had been stung.

    “What are you going to do then?” I forced the words out past gritted teeth.

    “Well, I’d planned to join the First Circle. Or rather that’s what mother had planned for me.” he said and stalked around the room. He didn’t walk closer to me, he didn’t even seem to care that I was there. It was like he had a huge audience of followers that he was speaking to rather than one rather unfriendly girl who was stuck to the wall.

    “Those dreams are far too small for the bearer of the Ravager though. The Karr Khan thinks that, because the Traveler’s bearer is his subject, all of the Jewels should belong to him. What a fool. The Traveler is the least of the Jewels. With the Ravager’s power I can annihilate all of my enemies.” he said, pacing and gesturing frantically as he did so.

    “Which brings us to you. The Karr Khan wants you. He wants all of his children under his banner. When I bring you before him, he will reward me. Riches, a place of honor, my own fleet to conquer in his name.” the fires of madness were literally burning in his eyes. The pale purple glow was as inhuman as his voice when he spoke again.

    “He will give me all these things, and I will kill him.”

    I’d been slung from one emotional extreme to another so hard and often in the last several hours that the pleasant calm that settled over me as I ran through the forest felt more than weird. It felt alien. On the surface it seemed insane too. I was running towards an unknown number of elite soldiers, and the mystically trapped caverns beyond them, and an artifact of indeterminate, but immense, lethal power that would probably be in the hands of someone who hated me. Any one of those should have had me making tracks in the opposite direction as fast as possible. Instead my heart felt ok and my steps were light.

    It might have been that I’d simply lost my mind, but I didn’t feel crazy. I felt like I was doing something. Something that I needed to do. Something that mattered.

    “Head southwest for about a mile. When you see my signal cut straight north and head for the cave entrance.” Yael had said before we put our plan in motion. I don’t think either of us was happy with the plan, but Yael seemed content to play the part of ‘decoy’ to draw Zyla and her forces away from the entrance of the caves.

    I’d only known Yael for a few hours but she wasn’t terribly difficult to understand in some ways. That she was willing to play ‘decoy’ told me that she thought the real fight we had to worry about was the one against Zyla. Zyla was smart and powerful and had significant resources to call upon. I couldn’t disagree with Yael that Zyla was a major threat. Where our opinions diverged was on the subject of her brother Akell. He was the one closing in on the ultra-deadly relic. If he reached it, which seemed more likely than not, we’d probably be dead before we knew it.

    That might have been why Yael was focused on Zyla. She was dealing with the problem that could be dealt with. It was a lesson that Master Hanq had struggled to teach me without a lot of success.

    Given the forces that Zyla was going to bring to bear on Yael though, I wasn’t all that eager to trade places with the apprentice Ruby Guardian. Instead, I played my own role in the plan and jogged onwards, shrouded in Void anima. I gone invisible In part that was so that I could stay hidden and in part so that I could view the strands of anima that made up the Aetherial web that Zyla had cast to ensnare us.

    “Why can’t I just  destroy the web? Could she form a link to me like Weri did on the transport?” I’d asked Yael before I left.

    “No, but she would feel the loss of the strands that you consumed. The moment she felt that she’d move to capture you since you’re her primary target.” Yael had explained.

    “And the spell will sense me even under a shroud of invisibility?” I’d asked.

    “Maybe. As I said, she’s a talented caster. What’s worse is, you wouldn’t know she’d discovered you until you were right where she wanted you to be.”

    “Are you going to be able to handle her?” I’d asked.

    “Don’t worry about that. Focus on what you have to do.”

    And so I ran with my part of the plan firmly in mind. Wait for Yael’s signal. Head to the cave. Stop Akell from reaching the Jewel. Simple. Also impossible, but waiting around to die was a worse flavor of impossible to have to swallow.

    I’d tracked around the outskirts of the web and was almost due south of the cave when Yael’s spell went off. In the shadow misted vision that the Void anima gave me, I saw the lightly glowing strands of anima that made up Zyla’s entrapment spell suddenly flared into blinding silver luminance. One by one they flew away from me and joined into a single courscating path that lead back towards where I’d left Yael. She’d grabbed the entirety of the web and turned it into a giant arrow pointing to herself.

    The silver arrow was bright enough to make me blink and look away from it after a second. If my guess was correct, Zyla had gotten a much better look at it than I had, which meant Yael had more or less jabbed the Karr Khan’s commander in the eye and yelled “come get me” at the same time. Zyla was smart, but even smart people get mad, and mad people can do all kinds of stupid things. As proof of that, since I was still more than a little mad at the Karr Khan, I switched course like we’d planned and started heading towards the most deadly place that I knew of on the planet.

    I stayed cloaked in Void anima, I wasn’t entirely stupid, and managed to sprint past a pair of guards who hadn’t followed Zyla to support her in her fight with Yael. I left them behind without raising even a blink of suspicion and less than a minute later found the entrance to the cave. When I saw what waited there for me however, I wanted to turn back.

    There were dead people in the cave’s mouth. Only two, but I recognized what had killed them. Their corpses were shriveled and sucked dry. Just like the soldiers that I’d killed with Void anima.

    Neither Zyla nor Akell were supposed to be able to use that kind of magic, which meant the soldiers had been probably killed by one of the traps left to guard the Jewel of Endless Night. Since neither of the corpses were wearing the kind of robes that Akell had been wearing, it seemed like a good guess that they were both members of Zyla’s forces. That meant that they’d been killed after Akell had entered the caves, which in turn meant he’d bypassed the trap without deactivating it.

    So I got to face a cave full of live traps, rather than disarmed ones. I paused about twenty feet away from the bodies. Fighting people was something I could do, something I’d trained for. Life devouring traps on the other hand, I had no idea how to handle.

    “We made a mistake.” I told myself silently, thinking that I should have been the one to attract Zyla’s attention while Yael went for the Jewel. She had the kind of broad training in dealing with anima casting that would give her a chance here. I, on the other hand, was probably going to blunder somewhere and die horribly as a result.

    The image of my body as wrinkled and dead as the two soldiers were flashed through my mind and froze me in place. Other images followed it though. The dormitory’s that were my home, covered in grey. The empty shelter I’d found. The lifeless streets I’d run down.

    “So be it.” I decided. I couldn’t change those and I might not live, but there were worse things than dying. Like letting that happen to another city or another world.

    As I stepped up to where the soldier lay, the trap that had killed them fired again and engulfed me.

    I felt the usual chill in my chest before the danger flared and cloaked myself in Void anima even tighter to try to evade the effect. That didn’t work out so well because I was standing in the trap and there was nowhere to dodge away to.

    My vision, which had been colored by the gauzy shadows of my invisibility cloak, was plunged into total darkness. What startled me more though was the tactile sensation I felt, as though someone was holding me in a tight embrace.

    I tried to step forward or twist away from the force that held me but with no sense of the world around me I couldn’t tell if I was making any headway or not.

    “Have you come to save me?” someone asked and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

    The tactile sensation changed, slightly, and I recognized it. It felt like the link that Weri had forged when I our two Void animas had touched.

    “Who are you?” I asked, unsure of who I could possibly be talking to under the circumstances. I tried to look around to see where the voice was coming from as well, though I was pretty certain it was a magical projection inside my mind rather than someone literally standing beside me and speaking.

    “I have many names. I am the one who is sought. You know of me as the Ravager.” the voice said.

    “The Jewel of Endless Night?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

    “That is another of my names.” the Ravager said.

    “How are you talking to me? I thought you were an artifact?” I said.

    “I am now. I was not always though.” the Ravager said.

    “What did you used to be?”

    “A mortal. Like you. All of my sisters and brothers were before we were sacrificed and reforged into soul weapons to fight the Great War.”

    “Can I see what you look like?” I asked her, guessing the Ravager was a ‘she’ from the sound of her mental voice.

    In response to my question, the shadows receded and I saw a large, four legged, thickly furred creature with many tails standing before me. She wasn’t as heavily muscled as the mountain cat had been but she was noticeably bigger, almost the size of a horse, with eyes that faced forwards and gleamed with awareness and intelligence.

    “What did you mean ‘rescue you’?” I asked after a minute of taking her in and trying to make sense of what was going on.

    “I can see in the shadow of your mind, that you do not come to my sanctum craving my power, but in that you are alone.” the Ravager said.

    “That’s true, I guess. I don’t want to use you. I want to stop someone else from doing that.” I said.

    “Why?” the Ravager asked.

    “Why what?”

    “Why do you not crave the power I hold? Are there not those you wish to destroy?” she asked.

    I thought about that.

    “Right now it’s because I don’t understand it.” I said.

    The Ravager cocked her head to the side in confusion at that so I continued.

    “I used to want power because I hated being weak. Then I found out that I do have power, only it scares the hell out of me. Some of its good, but I’ve already done some terrible things too. If I had the kind of power that I’ve heard you possess, I don’t know what I would do with it, or what it would make me become.” I said, explaining to myself as much as I was to the Ravager.

    “Why don’t you wish to find out? You have enemies, I can see that they are close.” the Ravager asked.

    “I’ve already almost lost myself to the Void anima that I’ve got. If I’m going to turn into a total monster, I want to at least sacrifice myself for something that’s worth it.” I said.

    “And what would be worth it?” the Ravager asked. She was staring at me with so much intensity that her eyes were starting to blaze with a dark inner light.

    “Preventing another world from dying.” I said, holding my voice in a monotone. I couldn’t grieve for my home yet, there was still too much to do.

    “So you would slay one world to save another?” the Ravager asked, beginning to stalk around me.

    “That would still mean that a world had died wouldn’t it?” I asked as she paced behind me.

    “Yes it would.” she agreed.

    “What about you?” I asked, looking ahead and listening to her soft footfalls.

    “I have slain worlds for many reasons, at the command of many masters.” she said.

    “And on your own? What would you kill a world for?” I asked. It was a surreal thing to be talking about but I felt like that was the question she’d been waiting for me to ask. Maybe even waiting for anyone to ask, ever.

    “I am tool, a reforged soul, meant only for destruction.” she said, but I heard a catch in her voice.

    “But you were a mortal once. And you can talk, and think still right?” I asked.

    “Yes.” she agreed. She stopped pacing around me, so I turned to face her again.

    “Then you’re still a person aren’t you? Even if you’re bound by compulsions and don’t have a body like you used to, there’s still a part of you that’s who you’ve always been.” I said.

    “I…” she began and faltered.

    “You.” I agreed and then asked, “What would you slay a world for?”

    She looked away from me and there was a long moment of silence that followed. When she looked back the glow in her eyes had changed to a warm, sunlight shade.

    “I have seen too many worlds perish. I have heard the cries for mercy as they fell and tasted the rivers of blood that flowed in the wake of their destruction. There is nothing for which I would slay another world.” she said.

    I walked up to her and put a hand on her bowed head.

    “Then no one should ever ask you to.”

    If I had to pick someone to take on the world with, Yael would not have been my first choice. She wouldn’t have been my second, my tenth or my hundredth choice either. As it was though, she was my only choice.

    “You should leave.” Yael said without preamble. It was nice to see that we were in agreement on working together.

    “You can’t even stand yet.” I pointed out. She was still sitting on the ground at the base of the rock she’d crashed into. Between the slow pulses of power that radiated off of her and how careful and controlled her breathing was I could tell that she was working a spell that was near the limits of her ability.

    “It’s more efficient to heal myself this way. I’ll be fine. Go look for Master Kinsguard and Taisen.”, she said.

    “No.” I replied.

    I knew how annoying it could be to have someone distracting you while you were doing delicate work. She was the one who’d opened her mouth and started this though, so I didn’t have much sympathy for her.

    “Don’t argue with me. I don’t need your help.” she growled.

    “Good. I don’t particularly feel like giving it to you. I also don’t have any idea where anyone else is and I’m not going to run off on a wild hunt for them.” I said.

    “Then what do you want to do?” Yael asked. The irritation in her voice could not have been doing anything good for her spell casting.

    “Akell needs to be stopped. Zyla needs to be stopped. The Karr Khan needs to be stopped. I don’t think what I ‘want’ to do really matters.” I said.

    “Good. Then leave. You’re going to be a distraction if you stay.” Yael said, as she released her spell and climbed to her feet.

    “Answer me this first; can you take on all of them, and win, guaranteed?” I asked.

    “I can buy time for Master Kinsguard.” Yael replied. Her face was all hard lines and tension.

    “You just said you lost your link to her.” I reminded her.

    “That doesn’t mean anything.” She restrained herself from screaming the words at me but not by much. Despite the volume and the harshness she put into the words though there wasn’t a lot of conviction behind them.

    “Yes it does. It means you’re gambling that help will come.” I said.

    That got under her skin deep enough that she drew her anima blade on me.

    “Yes. Yes I’m gambling. The odds are long. I could die or worse. That’s what it means to be a Guardian. That’s what we do.” Yael’s scowl made me step back as much as the anima blade in her hand did. I felt myself shrinking in the face of her anger and grabbed hold of the fear that was snaking up my spine.

    “So are you arrogant or just stupid then?” I asked, stepping in closer to the tip of the blade she held out.

    “What do you mean?” Her scowl deepened into a snarl. If I wanted to get stabbed, it looked like it would be pretty easy to arrange. One more insult, maybe two at the most.

    “You’re facing impossible odds and you’re not fully trained either. It’s not good enough for you to go out there and die like a good little Guardian, you’ve got to go out there to win this.” I said.

    “That’s what I’m trying to do.” Yael replied, lowering her anima blade to her side.

    “No. You’re not. If you were trying to win you’d be figuring out how to take advantage of everything you had available to you. Ever since you woke up, you’ve been gearing yourself up for a big, hopeless battle.” I said.

    “And you think you know what I should do?” she asked.

    “No. I just know that trying to send me away to protect me like a good Guardian isn’t going to increase the chances of you winning this. Yes, I’m new to what I can do, but I can still do things you can’t, and I’m not an idiot. I made a mistake on the transport. I’m not going to make that same mistake again.” I said.

    “Great, so you’ll make other ones instead.”

    “Yeah. So what? So will you. So would Master Hanq or Taisen or your teacher. Nobody’s perfect.” I said.

    “If I have to protect you, I’m not going to be able to fight as effectively as I could alone.” Yael insisted.

    “Then don’t protect me. If I get killed, it’s on me, not you. If I get captured, I’ll free myself or die trying.” I said and forced myself to breathe to release the tension that had clamped my hands into fists. “Listen, I don’t want to work with you either, but you’re the one who knows where the Jewel is and where Akell is going to be. He’s got enough of a head start on us already and we don’t have time to argue about this.”

    “It’s not that simple.” Yael said, closing her eyes and shaking her bowed head.

    “Yes it is. You need all the help you can get, and I’m all that’s available for now.” I said.

    With a sigh, the apprentice Ruby Guardian looked up at me. She was still frowning.

    “You should really run.” she said again, but then added before I could speak, “But if you’re not going to then you’re right. We should move out.”

    “Are you finished healing up?” I asked.

    “Close enough to it. I can fix the rest as we move.” Yael said.

    “Where do we go?” I asked.

    “The Warlord said there was a cave entrance on the northern side of this mountain. If we get close, I can follow the trail of the tracking spell that Master Kinsguard put on Akell.” Yael said. I bristled at her calling Master Hanq a warlord, but didn’t call her on it.

    “Can you run?” I asked.

    “Yes. Try to keep up.” she replied and took off at a superhuman sprinting speed.

    I reached out for my Physical anima and let it flow through me. Catching up to Yael was almost effortless. It wasn’t a fair race though. She was holding back to reserve strength for healing while I was free to run as fast as I wanted to. Being able to overtake her wasn’t that useful of course since she was the one who knew where we were going. At least in theory. I started to doubt that when I noticed that we were running a long zig zag pattern up and down the side of the mountain. I’d become convinced that we were looking in the wrong spot when she skidded to a stop and froze in place.

    “What is it?” I asked, stopping beside her.

    “I found the trail.” she whispered. She had her eyes open but her gaze was turned inwards.

    “And something else?” I guessed.

    “Zyla’s here, waiting for us.” she whispered in reply. I knew it was foolish but I started looking around for either of the Karr Khan’s Scions.

    “How close is she?” I asked, reducing my voice to a whisper as well.

    “It’s hard to tell. She’s well hidden. Not moving either. The cave is a little more than a half mile directly ahead of us though.” Yael said.

    “So she’s focused on us rather than Akell?” I asked.

    “Definitely. She might have subordinates going after him, but she’s set up a web around this place to trap us.” Yael said.

    “What kind of web?” I asked.

    “Physical and anima. She has personnel stationed in a ring around her position, probably with several that I can’t sense, and she’s rigged lines of Aetherial anima that radiate out from the cave entrance we need to reach.” Yael said.

    “Aetherial anima? Why? What’s she doing with it?” I asked.

    “Looking to lure us into a trap.” Yael said. “If we touch one of the threads, it will ‘stick to us’. That will let Zyla pull us to where she is.”

    “Can we go around it?”

    “Not that I can see. The cave mouth is completely sealed by the treads and they remain solid a fair distance away from the cave.” Yael said.

    “Ok then, what would you do in a situation like this?” I asked.

    “Take out the thread caster.” Yael replied.

    “Which would be her, so she gets the fight she wants anyways.” I said.

    “She’s had time to prepare. That let’s her set the opening moves of the game.”

    “We need to turn it around on her then. Put her into a position that limits her somehow.” I said.

    “That’s why we take the direct route. It’s a trap, but going into it with our eyes open gives her the least chance of binding us further with destiny spells.” Yael said.

    “We’re not bound yet are we?” I asked.

    “A little, her magic is strong and it’s taking advantage of the existing conditions. We have to follow Akell if we want to stop the Jewel from being unleashed, so our path is naturally constrained to lead to him, even if we find alternate means of getting there.”

    I thought about that for a moment and then remembered what Zyla’s big “First Circle” brother Weri had done to me.

    “If she has a spell hanging out there, can you use it as a link to her?” I asked.

    “Yes, but she’ll be able to block most of the spells I could cast down it.” Yael said.

    “What about one that summons her to us? That would still be fulfilling the principal effect of the original spell, but it would let us fight her somewhere that she’s not setup to ambush us.” I said.

    Yael paused to consider that idea.

    “It would work, but she won’t come alone. It’s not a teleport, or a mental compulsion. Destiny spells control and guide random events and the choices that people have available. She’d come to wherever we summoned her but she’d be aware of what was happening and be expecting trouble.” Yael said.

    “Just like we are now.”

    “Except that she’ll have a small army at her back.”

    “Can we escape the army?” I asked

    “Not if there’s two destiny spells pulling us together.”

    “Can we beat the army?”

    “Hard to say. Zyla knows what we can do. She’s not dumb enough to bring a force that doesn’t have a chance against us. But she may be counting on the advantage of the trap she has setup.” Yael said.

    “And what’s the chance that this is all an illusion?” I asked.

    “Definitely not. It’s too solid and too rooted to be an illusion. She’s staking her plan on this.”

    “Why is she so focused on us? Shouldn’t finding the Jewel be more important?” I asked.

    “To the Karr Khan? Probably, but they don’t know for sure that it’s in this mountain. All they know is that a failed Third Circle is going in and setting off all the traps for them. If they take us out they can get the Jewel whenever is convenient.” Yael said.

    “And Zyla has the perfect spell for finding us.” I added.

    “Not perfect, but good enough.” Yael said.

    “Wait. Zyla has the spell that’s good enough to find us?” I said.

    “Yes. She’s a very good Aetherial caster.”

    “What about the troops that are with her? Are they that good?” I asked.

    “Very unlikely. Aetherial casters don’t tend to be front line troops unless they’re commanders like Zyla.” Yael said.

    “So even if she leaves some troops behind when she comes to find us, they won’t necessarily be able to notice one of us sneaking by them?” I asked.

    “No. They probably won’t. I see where you’re going with this though and I don’t like it.” Yael said.

    “I don’t either, but I think it’s our best shot. If you call Zyla out, we know she’ll come. She has to right? She’ll bring her troops with her, but if I’m not here you can fight as defensively as you need to.” I said.

    “Meanwhile you’ll cloak yourself and try to sneak in after Akell?” she asked.

    “I know it’s dangerous. He’s seen me in action too, but he’s probably not expecting me to show up.” I said.

    “What if Zyla has other traps laid. Or Akell hasn’t set off all of the traps that lead to the Jewel?” Yael asked.
“Then at least I’ll clear part of the way for you.” I said.

    Yael about that thought for a moment and then turned to me.

    “This plan sucks. It’s probably going to get us both killed, but I’m not coming up with anything better. I’m going to say this one more time: you should run away. You don’t have to die here.” she offered.

    “Neither do you. So let’s focus on staying alive. We’re not going to stop them as corpses.” I said.

    Yael looked at me and blew out a slow breath.

    “Agreed. Now give me a few minutes, I have an idea that I want to work on too.” she said with the gleam of a wicked insight burning in her eyes.

    The airship’s explosion didn’t knock me out. That would have been a mercy. Instead I was sent tumbling out into the open sky as pieces of the ship flew away from me in all directions. I tried to see where everyone else went but in the chaos of the ship’s destruction I couldn’t make out anything. All I could see was the field of debris that was rapidly spreading outwards.

    We’d been descending when Weri destroyed the transport. Despite that, the ground looked a whole lot farther down than I’d ever seen it before. Add to that the fact that Master Hanq had been pushing the transport over its top speed so that we’d have a chance to reaching Akell before he got the Jewel and I knew I was traveling forward at a pretty terrifying velocity too.

    None of that was as scary as the notion that everything that was happening was my fault though. Yeah, Weri had been the one who’d blown the transport up, but he couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t screwed up. I’d tried to use a power I didn’t understand and that had given him the link that he needed to channel his power to where we were. In trying to act like a big hero, I might have killed all of us in the process. The shock of that left me numb and unthinking for the first few seconds as I fell.

    That blank panic could have been the death of me, but a cold spike of pain in my chest jolted me out of my mental daze. Guilt? Fear? Self-recrimination? Those all got shoved to the back of my mind by the undeniable fact that I was falling to my death. The sight of the ground growing ever closer made a  wave of cold shoot down my arms and legs. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation but it did make it easy to focus on the present and clear my mind of the emotional baggage that was holding me back.

    “I’m going to go splat really soon.” I told myself. My sense of time was out of whack. On the one hand I felt like I was falling slower than I expected and on the other the ground was approaching a lot quicker than I knew I could deal with.

    I studied what was underneath me and saw there was a farmhouse, a road, a forest and a lake not too far off. From what I’d read that meant my options were to go splat and ruin someone’s home, go splat and get run over, get skewered and then go splat, or to go splat and then drown. Left to its own devices, gravity seemed inclined to splatter me over the road but I was pretty sure I could angle myself into getting skewered on a tree if I preferred.

    “An anima shield?” I asked aloud, thinking that I might be able to protect myself from the trees that way.

    “I’ve got no idea how strong of a shield I can generate, or if I can whip one up in the first place.” I argued. “And the odds are that, even if I can summon one, it’ll probably pop on the first branch.”

    I imagined a soap bubble around me shredding on the first tree that I hit and leaving me to be tore apart by the next lower set of branches.

    “That might work!” I yelled over the rushing wind as another idea occurred to me. I’d screwed up by playing around with my powers before but, falling alone in the sky, the only one I could hurt was myself, and I was as good as dead anyways.

    Closing my eyes, I pulled the Void anima into my left hand again and reached for my Physical anima. I couldn’t move through my martial forms while I was falling but the practice with the invisibility spell had shown me how to shape anima as I projected it and I used that same idea to push my Physical anima out into a shield around me.

   Opening my eyes I saw a glow surrounding my body and felt a spark of elation blaze up in my heart. That was dampened by how much closer the ground looked though so I closed my eyes again and continued with my idea.

    I could feel the shield around me like a second skin. I gave it a little push to expand it and felt it grow larger as it drifted away from me. Then I called for another shield to surround myself with.  As fast as I could I built up layer after layer of shielding.

    I was on my 14th or 15th layer when I felt the first impact. I was moving much too quickly at that point to be aware of the individual shields failing. All I could perceive was an enormous roaring crash with the shattering of what seemed like millions of tree branches. I was tossed around and turned end over end but less than a second after the crashing started I was laying on the ground and I was in one only mildly damaged piece.

    I barely had time to notice that I’d survived the fall when I heard another crash, this one on the other side of the lake from where I’d landed.

    I tried to get up and found that the world was still spinning for me. The shields had prevent me from being skewered and had broken my fall but I’d been tossed around in all sorts of insane ways in a very short period of time and my brain was not entirely thrilled with that.

    I pulled myself up against one of the nearby trees and caught my breath for a few seconds, while I considered my situation. Even as addled as I was, I could guess that if I’d managed to survive the fall then everyone else who was with me could have done the same. They were all real casters, not clueless nobodies who had to invent basic things on the fly.

    My options were to try to regroup with them or to run far away. Run away shouldn’t have appealed to me, but given the trouble I’d caused them already it was actually tempting. As I sat there and thought about it though, my self-pity party started to feel a bit hollow. I’d made mistakes, but I’d done some good too. I’d bought Yael time by stopping Zyla from killing her and I’d managed to hide the ship well enough that it had taken one of the Khan’s best casters to find us. I knew I had a lot to learn, and that I was probably as dangerous to myself and them as I was to the Khan’s forces, but elation at surviving the fall helped me reclaim some of the confidence the insane day had shaken out of me.

    After a few more breaths to calm my nerves and sort out my head, I got up slowly and started heading toward the crash that I’d heard. Taisen had been right, I discovered. My body did seem to be better able to repair itself than it had been. In the minute or two it took me to get out of the forest, my head cleared up and the ringing in my ears went away. By the time I got to the lake I’d moved from a walk, to a jog, to a run and was still picking up my pace.

    From the size of the crash, I knew that what had come down was either a sizeable chunk of the transport ship, or one of my companions who’d been using anima to cushion their fall. I could tell roughly where the impact was from the shattered tree tops that I could see.

    I’d landed near the north end of the lake, so I detoured slightly to run around it and then made my way up the steeps hills on the far side of the lakeshore. About two miles further on, I found the first signs of the crash. Whoever had landed there had picked a forest to land in like I had, but theirs was a lot sparser than mine had been. I followed the irregular line of broken trees to a small clearing. A small very rocky clearing. At its center Yael lay bent backwards over a boulder. She wasn’t moving but something else in the clearing was.

    I’d seen pictures of mountain cats before, but I rarely made it outside the city and had never seen one in person. It was smaller than I’d expected. Not much bigger than I was, but the way it moved was amazing. It had been creeping up on Yael’s unconscious body when it heard my approach and had drawn itself back into a defensive posture by the time I sped into the clearing.

    I skidded to a halt about halfway into the clearing and the cat looked back at me with cold, clear eyes. I was big enough to be a fellow predator, but small enough that it might have been worth fighting me for the meal. It flowed sideways, tensing and relaxing with perfect balance on each step. It was evaluating me to see what kind of a threat I was before it chose between fight or flight.

    “You don’t want a piece of me today kitty.” I warned it and relaxed into a fighting stance. If it came to straight contest of speed and muscle, I would lose badly. I smiled. I had more to rely on than pure muscle power. For the first time in my life, I was facing a physically stronger foe, and I wasn’t overmatched.

    Then the damn cat disappeared.

    I swore, loud enough to wake the dead, but sadly not loud enough to wake Yael.

    A familiar coldness spread through my chest and I knew I was in danger.

    So I vanished too.

    The world was cloaked in pale shadows as I pulled the Void anima over myself. I looked around hoping to catch a glimpse of an anima fire, but I couldn’t see the cat even in this state. That left me even more uncertain of what was happening. The one thing I did know was that Yael was still exposed and vulnerable, so I started making my way over to her carefully.

    I was expecting a trap or an ambush so when I felt myself brush against something cold, I reacted instantly. That saved my life. Four claws that were capable of tearing through steel passed within an inch of my throat as I rolled back and away from mountain cat.

    It’s attack had been a reflexive one. It hadn’t anticipated that I would move in towards it so quickly and it had struck out at me the way only an animal can. With that brief encounter though the situation had shifted and it was back into a defensive crouch.

    I mirrored its actions, crouching low and preparing myself for the moment it chose to spring at me. The world around was still covered in pale shadows, but I could see the mountain cat clearly. I was puzzled by that until I felt the threads of Void anima that were connecting us. It was like we we were under the same cloak of invisibility and so could see each other clearly once again.

    Master Hanq had said that early human anima users had used the movements of the animals around them to inspire the physical gestures of their anima spells. Watching the cat move and try to pull free of the connection between us, I began to wonder if they’d been more than just inspired by the animals they’d studied.

    “What can you teach me?” I asked the mountain cat.

    He looked back at me with narrowed eyes, his only response a slow shifting of his weight back and forth as he waited for me to move. I knew he couldn’t understand me. Not the words that I was saying at any rate, but I kept talking in the hopes that the words would influence my body language enough to communicate some of what I was trying to convey.

    “This one’s not lunch for you. You need to find your food somewhere else.” I said as I stepped towards Yael.

    The cat made a low growling sound as I moved. I was closing the distance to it, threatening it in a very simple way. The growling was a mixed sign. On the one hand it meant it didn’t want to fight me, since it was trying to warn me off. On the other hand it meant it was still willing to fight since it was holding its ground and not running away.

    “Seriously cat. Get out of here. Or show me how you’re doing that.” I said as I circled closer to Yael while staying the same distance away from it.

    The cat moved in step with me, pacing away from Yael but keeping me at the same distance. I was captivated as I saw it glide across the clearing’s floor. The wisps of Void anima around it followed its movements almost as though they were leading the way and the cat was following.

    “Wow, you are just beautiful aren’t you?” I asked it. That didn’t buy me any points with the creature though. I was an interloper and I was taking a decent meal away from it.

    I tried circling closer to Yael but backing off a step from the cat. It didn’t react to that, so I crouched down, folding my legs so that I was resting on the back of my heels. I saw confusion pass through its eyes and I could understand why. I was as weird and unusual to it as it was to me. Even if it had seen people before, it couldn’t have encountered one that could see it while it was cloaked in shadows.

    On a lark, I held out my hand to it and started making little “come here” motions in its direction.

    “Come on. There’s no need for us to fight. Come over here and I’ll show you we can be friends.” I’d wanted a kitten as a pet when I was little and some insane part of my brain was apparently still holding on to that desire.

    The cat did a weird, backwards scuttling motion in response to my request and the Void anima around it swirled and swallowed it up. I could still it as a darker shadow among the pale ones that shrouded the clearing but beyond that it was hard to tell much about the creature.

    Until it turned and ran away at full speed.

    The little girl in me pouted in disappointment but the rest of me, the part that was still sane, was more than relieved to see the cat go. It occurred to me that it might return, but even as I dropped the Void anima off of myself, I could still feel the threads of it that had connected the two of us. I wondered if that would make it harder for the cat to sneak up on me again, but I knew better than to assume that would be the case however likely it felt.

    Without the cat to distract me, Yael became my next concern.

    The rock she was laying on had pieces shattered off of it which suggested that she’d had an anima shield in place when she landed. I couldn’t tell if I should move her though, or even touch her for that matter. If I knew how to use my Physical anima, I could have tried to a crude healing spell to help wake her up, but I’d learned my lesson in the transport about experimenting when it could affect someone else. With my luck I’d give her a spark of anima and she’d wake up just in time for the Void anima in me to consume all the power she had, like it had done to the soldiers.

    Since I couldn’t risk that I settled for the only other thing I could think to do. I sat down beside her and started talking.

    “Yael. I don’t know if you can hear me, but you need to get up. We can’t stay here. There’s creatures around here, and Akell’s still on his way to the Jewel. You’ve got to get up.” I said.

    She didn’t even stir at my words, which made my stomach sink.

    “Come on Yael. Our teachers need us. I don’t know what happened to them, but if we survived you know they have to be ok.”

    I saw her twitch slightly at that, but she didn’t open her eyes or respond in any way.

    “Listen, what you did on the roof was brave, but if you buy it here, then Xyla basically kicked your butt in the end.”

    Her hands clenched at that and I heard a groan escape from his lips.

    “That’s right, show that Warlord’s brat what you’ve got.” I said.

    Yael drew in a deep breath and spoke without opening her eyes.

    “Shut up. Stop talking.” she commanded.

    “Get up then.” I said.

    I watched as she pulled herself slowly off of the rock and down into a sitting position beside it.

    “Anything broken or seriously injured.” I asked.

    “You destroyed our ship.” she said, grinding the words out.

    “Yeah. Didn’t mean too. Thought I could stop Weri.” I said.

    “That was stupid. It cost us everything here. I knew we shouldn’t have brought you with us.” she said, finally opening her eyes to glare at me. I was tired of that.

    “Excuse me princess. I didn’t know. I didn’t get the perfect training sessions that you did.”

    “That’s why you shouldn’t be here.” Yael growled.

    “Then you wouldn’t be here either.” I growled back. “Or how do you think you would have gotten away, if I didn’t cloak the transport?”

    “I’m a master illusionist. It wouldn’t have been a problem if you weren’t there!” she yelled.

    “Me? Why am I the problem?” I demanded. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t told myself already but I hated hearing it from her nonetheless.

    “Because you’re too wild and unpredictable. You can’t control yourself. Anything I cast, you could rip to ribbons just because you don’t know any better.” Yael said.

    “I’m controlling myself just fine now.” I spit out through clenched teeth. The truth hurts, enough that I was wishing the cat would come back, or that I hadn’t interrupted it’s lunch when I did.

    “And how long is that going to last? How long before you screw up again, because you don’t know what you’re doing and don’t have the training that you need?” Yael asked in a low and cold voice.

    “I have no idea!” I yelled at her. Fire and rage and all the self doubt that I’d swallowed made a maelstrom inside of me but it all turned inwards.

    “I have no idea.” I repeated, softer, and then asked in voice barely above a whisper, “Why did you save me on the roof. Why didn’t you just let them take me.”

    Yael sighed and I saw some of the tension ease out of her shoulders.

    “You don’t deserve that. No one deserves what they would do to you.” she said.

     We were silent for a moment before I spoke again.

    “You really hate them don’t you?” I asked.

    “Yes.” she said. The lack of hesitation told me that Taisen was right. It was personal for her. I’d been curious when he said it, but confronted with the reality of her pain, I found that I didn’t have any desire to pry into it.

    “That makes two of us then.” I offered.

    We were silent for another long moment. I could tell that Yael was focusing on the injuries she’d sustained; repairing herself as best she could.

    “I get that you can’t trust me, but for now it’s just the two of us.” I said. “We don’t know where our teachers landed and we don’t know where Taisen is. All that we know is that Akell doesn’t have the Jewel yet.”

    “Because we’re not dead.” Yael said.

    “Yeah. The question is, do you know where he was headed?” I asked.

    “Yes. We’re close to it. It’s under this mountain that we landed on.” she said.

    “Can we rendezvous with the others?” I asked.

    “I don’t know.” Yael said and then added, “I don’t know if they’re coming.”

    “Why wouldn’t they be coming?” I asked.

    “I can’t hear Master Kinsguard. She always keeps a mental link open with me, but I can’t hear anything on it.” Yael said.

    “What does that mean?” I asked, fear curling around in my belly.

    “That something has severed the link, or that someone is blocking it.” Yael said. “Or that she’s…”

    She broke off before she could finish the sentence, but I could see the same pain and fear in her eyes that I was feeling.

    I’d assumed that if Yael and I could survive the fall that the three more experienced casters could too, but we had no way of knowing that. Or of knowing what had happened to them after they landed. As far as we could tell, we could be the last two people on the planet who weren’t working for the Karr Khan.

    Extending yourself too far, for too long, is dangerous. I’d learned that a hundred times over in the martial lessons that Master Hanq had taught me. Practicing all the time sounds great, but the body has limits and when you exceed them, the damage you can cause will set you back a lot farther than taking time off to rest would. Despite knowing that however, I still climbed into the transport and got to work on cloaking us in a veil of invisibility.

    “How did you find the location of the Jewel so fast?” Taisen asked.

    “Akell showed us.” Opal said.

    “That’s right, you have a tracking spell on him don’t you?” Taisen asked.

    “Several. Fewer now than when we parted company, but he was intended to find the ones that he did.” Opal said.

    “So how did he know where the Jewel was? I’ve been here for two years and I never caught a whiff that there was an ancient artifact was on this planet.” Taisen said. I detected a note of hurt professional pride in that declaration.

    “You’re not a Void anima caster.” Yael said.

    “And Akell is?” I asked, wondering how much more dangerous that would make him.

    “No. He can’t use Void anima at all. That’s why he’s relegated to the Third Circle. The Void anima users in the Khan’s clan are automatically given membership in the First Circle.” Opal said.

    “He does have a friend in the First Circle though.” Master Hanq said.

    “His mother.” Opal confirmed. “From what I saw of her in his memories, she’s very adept. She’s also one of the casters on the warship who’s trying to locate the exact coordinates of the Jewel.”

    “So the Khan’s troops know where it is?” Taisen asked. I would have asked the same thing but I was starting to follow the casting of the invisibility spell better.

    I was a novice. I knew that. I felt clumsy and horrible and useless at casting. I’d felt that way before though. A lot of times. Each time Master Hanq introduced me to a more complicated martial form, it felt weird and difficult. For a while at least. In time though, I figured each of them out and there was a gradual shift to where doing the form felt like the most natural thing in the world.

    I could feel the same thing starting to happen with the invisibility spell. I knew I was being inefficient in my casting. My motions were smooth and fluid but they didn’t match up well with the way the Void anima was flowing off of me. It was like I was painting the ship with an invisible ink that ran from me in fits and spurts. When the “anima paint” wasn’t flowing on its own, I had to force it out, which was what wore me down. With some simple alterations in the movements though I was able to allow the anima to flow more smoothly.

    I had to smile at that, in part because it was working and in part because none of my teachers would ever have believed that I was doing what I was.

    I glanced over at Opal as I continued casting and saw that she was watching me. Possibly still concerned at what I might do if I let the Void run away from me. I felt an odd mix of emotions at that. Relief that I didn’t have to worry about losing control. Sorrow that I couldn’t be trusted. Hope that maybe I’d get a chance to learn how to do this the right way from her.

    I glanced away before she could read that in my eyes. I felt like a little kid for even thinking it. Having Master Hanq as a teacher was luckier than someone like me deserved in the first place. The chance that an actual Guardian of the Crystal Empress would have time for me was pure fantasy material. Besides, she already had a protege.

    “We don’t think the Khan’s forces know exactly where the Jewel is.” Yael said. “If they did they would be landed their search parties to retrieve it.”

    “Then what coordinates did his mother give Akell?” Taisen asked.

    “The nearest dark spot.” Yael said.

    “One of the obscuring spells on the Jewel creates shadow images of it. They look like the Jewel and even have a link to the real thing. They are one of the last lines of defense to prevent the Jewels from being found.” Opal explained.

    “What they told me was, because the shadows are linked to the real Jewel, it’s much harder to pierce that spell than any of the rest.” Master Hanq added.

    “And if you try to pick up one of the illusionary jewels?” Taisen asked.

    “Various horrible things happen, including, for one of the shadows, that the real Jewel is teleported away.” Opal said.

    “Why wouldn’t they all do that?” Taisen asked.

    “The teleport is a desperate option. It leaves the real Jewel revealed.” Opal said.

    “Which means anyone with one of the other Jewels can find it easily.” Taisen said, filling in the blanks.

    “Especially if they happen to hold the Traveller already and can warp directly to it.” Opal said.

    “So which is Akell heading towards? One of the illusions or the real gem?” Taisen asked.

    “The real one, we think.” Yael said.

    “I’ve surveyed this planet a few times. I wasn’t looking for the Jewels but I did find a bunch of anomalous areas. Visited some of them to see what was there but I didn’t find anything. The thing is I thought I’d visited all of them but it turns out there was one that I missed. I knew about it, but I couldn’t recall it until Ms. Kinsguard was kind enough to break a compulsion that I didn’t notice I was under.” Master Hanq said.

    “What kind of compulsion?” I asked, spitting the words out in between movements to maintain the invisibility spell.

    “A forgetting charm, and a powerful one at that.” Opal said. “There aren’t many kinds of compulsions that can be made to last for a long term and even fewer that work on someone with Mr. Okoro’s level of training.”

    It was a little strange seeing Opal and Master Hanq getting along so civilly. She was a Guardian and he was a Warlord. That should have been an explosive combination but all I was seeing was an easy, respectful understanding passing between the two of them. Fighting through an army of elite soldiers together had apparently quieted any doubts that they had about each other. At least for the duration of the current crisis. After that I guessed we’d find out if the Crystal Empress actually had given my mentor amnesty for past crimes.

    I hoped that was the case. I hadn’t known him all my life, but he’d been there for a most of it and it was hard to imagine him as someone terrible. If the Crystal Empress did want to put him on trial, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to let that stand.

    “Akell is heading to that dark spot then I take it?” Taisen asked.

    “He stayed in the city for a while, probably searching for transportation, but yes, he’s heading directly there now.” Opal said.

    “Damn destiny spells.” Taisen complained.

    “Wouldn’t work on the Jewels. It was pure dumb luck that he was closest to the right one.” Master Hanq said.

    “Can we catch him?” Taisen asked.

    “That depends on how adept he is at navigating past the illusions and traps which the Jewel is shielded by.” Opal said.

    “Worst case then is that he gets the Jewel before we show up.” Taisen said.

    “No, the worst case is that he uses the Jewel before we show up.” Opal said.

    “I thought he would want to return it to the Karr Khan to win back his place.” Taisen said.

    “That’s why he’s seeking it. Once he holds the Jewel’s power though anything may happen.” Opal said.

    “Assuming he gets to it that is. He’s not as smart as his sister Xyla. Or as powerful. The traps should be more than enough to disable him or keep him away from the Jewel itself.” Yael said.

    “They should be, but I had hoped we would retain an advantage in terms of getting to the Jewel first. If it had been anywhere on the planet outside the range of ground transportation we could have easily tracked and overtaken Akell before he got close to the Jewel.” Opal said.

    “I’m beginning to suspect that destiny magics are involved.” Master Hanq said.

    “If the Jewel’s could be found with an Aetherial spell, they’d have been located ages ago.” Opal said.

    “That’s true for spells that we or the Khan’s forces can cast, but what about one cast by the Jewel itself?” Master Hanq asked.

    “That’s not possible, the Jewel’s require a wielder to work their magic. If they didn’t everyone on this planet would be dead already.” Opal said.

    “That only tells us that they require a wielder to exercise some of their powers.” Master Hanq pointed out.

    “Does it matter? Akell’s ahead of us. Either the traps will stop him or we will.” Yael said.

    “Very practical. I like it. Remind me to make you a job offer when this over.” Master Hanq.

    He was teasing her. Yael figured that out by the time her hand was halfway to her anima blade. She froze in the middle of the action and glared at him. Tempting as it was for her, she wasn’t going to kill a Warlord just for taunting her. Nor was she going to kill our pilot while he was flying the transport we were in.

    “Zyla will be there.” she said instead, letting her anger at Master Hanq seethe out through her former opponent’s name.

    “You can sense her?” Taisen asked.

    “No, we’re still too far away and the invisibility spell is blocking my view out.” Yael said. “She’ll know we’re looking for Akell though. The plan’s not a deeply subtle one. She can’t track us, so she’ll follow our quarry instead.”

    “If we take the time to fight her again, Akell will definitely get his hands on the Jewel.” Master Hanq said.

    “She probably won’t give us a choice.” Yael replied.

    “I could sneak us in.” I suggested between a pair of kicks.

    “We can’t count on that. She knows you’re with us. She’ll have methods in place to detect you. If she didn’t she wouldn’t even bother showing up.” Yael said.

    “Or she’ll have contacted someone who can deal with you before you show up to become a problem in the first place.” a man said from behind me.

    I whirled around, hanging onto the invisibility spell by the skin of my teeth.

    The guy behind me was taller than I was but not by much. He was built like a statue, all perfectly sculpted muscles and long flowing hair. He looked like the kind of rich pretty boy who I imagined spent his time in trendy clubs and racing fast hovers. The aura of power that crackled around him suggested he was far from being one of the “idle” rich though.

    “It’s a projection.” Opal called out.

    “Not “it”. He. Weri of the First Scion Circle to be specific. And, yes, I’m afraid I can’t be there to deal with you in person.” the man said. “But that’s quite ok. You see you stole something of ours. That transport that you’re so carelessly flying about in? I can’t affect you from here perhaps, but that ship is bound to the Karr Khan’s clan and we do not accept betrayal in any form.”

    I felt the transport start to shake.

   “He’s triggered the self-destruct!” Master Hanq shouted from the cockpit.

    “Block it!” Opal shouted back and leapt into the co-pilot’s seat.

    “I am. It’s why we’re not sky debris already.” Master Hanq said through gritted teeth.

    “I’m taking us down.” Opal said.

    Without speaking Yael drew her anima blade and began slashing the projection repeatedly.

    “That’s only costing me the barest erg of power you realize.” Weri said.

    “I thought…” I said, struggling to keep the invisibility spell going despite the apparent lack of protection that it offered. “I thought you wanted to take me in alive?”

    “Oh you will be captured alive. Or if you lack the power to survive a little spot of trouble like this, you’ll be declared an unfit halfbreed and my sister will be absolved of the charge of bringing you in. She won’t be happy with that, but sometimes we must save people from the peculiar notions they hold dear.” Weri said.

    “I’ll kill you before that happens.” I said and dropped the invisibility spell. If Yael was taking away a little bit of his power by slashing the image he was projecting then I had an idea.

    As it turned out though it was a terrible idea.

    I called the Void anima into my left hand and plunged it into him. I’d meant to consume the anima that he was projecting and hopefully burn him out in the process. Or, to be honest, I hoped to kill him, I just didn’t think I’d get that lucky. I didn’t get anywhere close to that lucky in fact.

    “You truly are untrained aren’t you?” Weri said, as a malicious grin settled onto his face.

    I felt the void that I was reaching out with touch on something else that was cold and empty. Weri’s Void anima. Before I could react or pull back I felt a link form between us, and I knew something terrible was going to happen.

    “Thank you new sister. This is much more efficient than what I had planned.” Weri said and with those words I felt a wave of force travel down the link between us and explode outwards from me.