Iana positioned the last of the the overstuffed chairs, looked at her handiwork and scowled.

“Wrong arrangement, wrong type of chair, or something else?” Dae asked.

The First Sorceress was garbed in her usual traveling leathers, leaning against the doorframe to the conference room and watching her adopted daughter prepare for the first meeting of the Princess’ Council.

“This is supposed to simple,” Iana said. “Why is it not simple.”

“Because you care about it,” Alari said, “and caring about things is never simple.”

The Queen of Gallagrin was dressed in an uncharacteristically common style, matching the traveling leathers Dae wore.

“Well, almost never,” Dae said. “Somethings don’t have to be complicated at all.”

She smiled and nodded to Alari, sharing some private bit of happiness that Iana felt no need to intrude on.

“So that’s why you’re leaving me alone to handle this?” Iana asked. “So that it won’t get too complicated?”

“Not at all,” Alari said. “The Princess’ Council is a brilliant idea.”

“We’re taking a vacation so that it’ll be yours without us overshadowing it,” Dae said.

“And if something goes wrong?” Iana asked.

“Not if,” Alari said. “When something goes wrong, you’re going to handle it, just like you handled the Shadowfolk.”

“So this is punishment for going off without telling you?” Iana asked.

“Off with your attempted assassin,” Dae said.

“You had your reasons for that, and they were good ones,” Alari said. “So no, this is not a punishment. You have my full and complete faith, you know that. And we’re not going so far that we can’t get back here if something truly dire comes up.”

“Jyl and Pelay and Undine and Eorn will be here too, and your Warbringer pack,” Dae said. “If you need backup against your allies, trust me, there’ll be plenty of people willing to step up beside you.”

“I don’t need backup against them,” Iana said. “I’m just not sure if I can make them comfortable.”

“This is something new,” Alari said. “No one’s ever tried anything like it in Gallagrin. So no one’s going to be comfortable, but that’s ok.”

“But I need them to work together,” Iana said.

“How did you get your Warbringers to work together?” Dae asked.

“Joint combat exercises,” Iana said.

“Ok, those could present some problems with this group,” Dae said.

Iana started rearranging the chairs, trying to find a grouping that would provide enough distance between her guests. As it was they were going to be worrying about surprise attacks, Iana wanted to make sure that if anyone tried for one, she or one of the Guardians would have time to react before it was successful.

“I am impressed that you managed to convince representatives from both the Faeneril and the Shadowfolk to be part of this,” Alari said.

“I’m impressed you survived meeting them in the first place,” Dae said. “There’s a reason we’ve never asked for help from either group before.”

“Wasn’t that your doing though?” Iana asked.

“My doing? Whatever do you mean?” Dae asked.

“There were some very interesting coincidences,” Iana said. “Interesting enough that I have to wonder if someone wasn’t magicking things up and influencing events from afar.”

“Dae? Is that true?” Alari asked.

“Guilty as charged, but far far less than you seem to think,” Dae said. “It’s true that I had an inkling of what was going on, and I did try to nudge a few things to work out ok. The thing is though that I don’t know if that made a difference or not.”

“You’re trying to say you’re not sure if you were powerful enough to influence events at a distance?” Iana said.

“The more I explore what magic can do, the more I’m learning that it’s less about outright power and more about vision,” Dae said. “Dropping a mountain on someone will solve whatever problem they’re causing, but it’s certain to create more problems in the process.”

“So you have to be careful with what you do then? Even now?” Iana asked.

“Especially now,” Dae said. “It’s something a wise queen has tried to tell me ever since she was a wise princess. Power can’t be exercised without restraint. There are always consequences, and none of us can foresee all of the outcomes of what we do.”

“So what do we do then?” Iana asked.

“Our best, and trust in those who’ve shown themselves to be trustworthy,” Dae said.

“Is that why you didn’t come after me personally?” Iana asked.

“That and I asked her not to,” Alari said.

“It was the right call too,” Dae said. “Neither of us could have made the connections you did. And Neither of us could have ended things as well as you were able to.”

“It was a close thing,” Iana said. “If it wasn’t for the enchantments you put on my clothes I would have drifted away into the Abyss.”

“Uh, what enchantments?” Dae asked.

“The special protections you put on my clothes.” Iana said. “I know I wasn’t supposed to notice the little glyphs in the hem but you picked my favorite type of flower so…”

Iana put down the chair she was moving and looked up to see Dae staring at her in disbelief.

“You didn’t put that enchantment there,” Iana said the pieces falling into place.

“I enchanted your knife,” Dae said. “I’m used to working with armor and steel. Metal holds the magic so well. It’s why I told you to hang onto it.”

“My clothes were definitely enchanted,” Iana said. “I’d given the knife away by then, so they had to be.”

“I believe you that they were enchanted, but not by me,” Dae said, squinting at Iana.

“If it wasn’t you then who?” Iana asked, looking over to Alari who shook her head.

“No one mortal,” Dae said. “The realm’s magic exists inside of creation. The Abyss is beyond that.”

“But who else could have…”

Iana stopped.

She’d stood before a god. One of her gods. She’d expected to face fury and condemnation but she’d found only love and kindness.

Iana had left the Green Council but that didn’t mean her god had left her.

She clutched her chest as a wave of raw emotion rolled over her.

Telliakai hadn’t tried to hold her back. The goddess of the Green Council had set her free, not because she didn’t care where Iana went, but because she knew that wherever Iana traveled she would there too.

“Are you going to be ok?” Alari asked, moving to help Iana settle into a chair.

“Yeah, it’s just…I didn’t realize…I thought I left everything behind me.”

“You left behind the parts of your old life that you don’t need anymore,” Dae said.

“And from here on out you get to pick the pieces that you make your new life from,” Alari said.

There was a knock on the door to the conference room, followed by a page entering.

“The Council members have begun to arrive, shall I show them in?” the page asked.

Alari looked to Iana.

“Yes, please do,” Iana said and straightened up.

“In a moment,” Alari said and turned to Iana. “You do not need our shadow hanging over you, but you can always have our arms to shield you and our shoulders to lean on.”

“Thank you,” Iana said. “I think I’ve got this.”

“We know you do,” Dae said, and threaded her fingers together with Alari’s a moment before the two of them simply vanished.

***

Yuehne the would-be-assassin was the first to enter, followed by Venita the dwarven sky carriage driver, with Wynni the Shadowfolk assassin and Che-chara the Faeneril warrior in their wake.

“As execution chambers go, there’s a remarkable lack of edged weapons around,” Wynni said.

“Execution chamber?” Che-chara asked.

“It’s one of the running bets as to the real reason the Princess invited me here,” Wynni said.

“How much do you stand to win when you return?” Venita asked.

“Enough to make me a moderately wealthy woman,” Wynni said.

“I have to confess, I don’t understand why we’re here,” Yuehne said. “Bets on execution aside that is.”

“It’s not complicated,” Iana said. “I’m not from Gallagrin. You all are. I need your counsel if I’m going to learn about this realm and be able to make the right decisions for it.”

“I get that part,” Yuehne said. “I mean why are we here. Us specifically. Or, well, me.”

“Why wouldn’t I want you here?” Iana asked.

“I tried to kill you,” Yuehne said. “Most people have a problem with that.”

“To be fair, I was going to kill her too,” Wynni said.

“And if she’d played her cards poorly when we first met, I might have had to kill her as well,” Che-chara said.

“I guess that makes me the odd one out,” Venita said.

“You tried to throw me off a sky carriage in flight,” Iana said.

“Oh yeah, almost forget that,” Venita said. “Kind of hoped you had too.”

“So you’re surrounding yourself with people who want to kill you?” Yuehne asked. “Is the idea that we’d be too busy trying to outdo the others that we’d never get around to attacking you?”

“While that would play well on the stage, no, I’m not insulting your intelligence like that,” Iana said. “You’re here, all of you, because you’ve given me good counsel and are willing to speak the truth to me despite any fancy title I get to wear.”

“I don’t recall ever advising you on anything,” Yuehne said. “I’ve just told you how wrong you are.”

“Yes, frequently,” Iana said. “The day I stop listening to that, is the day I become like my old superior, and I never want to become like him. If I can’t bear to listen to people telling me that I’m wrong, if I can’t modify my thinking when they’re right, or explain why I believe what I do, then I have no business leading anyone.”

“Elder Tonel used to say that a leader’s job was to make the decisions that the lesser people couldn’t,” Wynni said.

“He was a failure as a leader,” Iana said. “No one is ‘lesser’. Anyone can make decisions, especially if they’re stamped as correct just because of who made them.”

“So you think having us around will fix that?” Yuehne asked.

“Not just having you around,” Iana said. “I going to need more from you than  occasional meetings to discuss strategy and tactics. I’m going to need you, all of you, to be out there in the realm, engaging with our people. I going to need you to bring their voice, to even bring them, to me.”

“That doesn’t sound like how Gallagrin governs its people,” Yuehne said.

“It’s not,” Iana said. “Gallagrin is my home now. My family is here. But I am not a part of it. Not yet. I can’t offer it the leadership it is used to, but I can try to bring in what I know and maybe those tools can solve some of the problems that have faced this realm for decades now.”

“That’s a tall order,” Venita said. “What makes you think we’re up to doing all that for you?”

“You were willing to try,” Iana said.

“If we try and fail, won’t a whole realm be turned against us though?” Che-chara asked.

“Possibly,” Iana said. “That’s why we’re going to start small.”

“How do you start small with ruling a realm?” Yuehne asked.

“Most of the land in Gallagrin is held by the various noble families,” Iana said. “But there are a few estates outside of Highcrest which are held directly by the Royal Family. We’re going to take one of those over.”

“Militarily?” Wynni asked.

“In a sense,” Iana said. “My sisters and I were part of an elite combat unit in the Green Council. We’re going to take command of the militia forces which guard one of the estates and with your help, we’re going to turn it into a center of trade to rival Highcrest. Before I take the crown, I want to make a jewel out of the Keep at Empty Rock.”

“What sort of support will the crown give us?” Venita asked.

“None,” Iana said. “They said I couldn’t run you through combat exercises, but they never said I couldn’t put a challenge before you. The question is, will you join me in this?”

“A month ago I couldn’t have conceived of hearing those words, a week ago I would have laughed at the pretender who uttered them, but today? I don’t know how you did it, but today I hear my Princess asking me to join her and I can only say yes,” Yuehne said. “Yes, I will.”

Undine always liked the idea of arriving in the nick of time to make the perfect save. He’d grown up devouring stories like that, and while he knew reality rarely matched the telling of the great deeds of yore, there was a part of him which hungered for nothing more than to be the unexpected hero who swooped in and saved the day when all seemed lost.

Seeing Princess Iana being thrown off into abyss a moment before he and Eorn arrived was therefore just a trifle disappointing. Undine wasn’t a viscous or vengeful man, but as he watched Iana flailing to gain a handhold that she would never reach, a hard cast settled over his features and his teeth locked together.

“Throw me after her!” Eorn said.

It was a commendable idea. Sail off into the depths of the Abyss to rescue the one they’d been charged to protect. Another of their company, their commander Jyl, had a similar idea, and it failed for her just as it would have for Eorn.

In full Pact Regalia, Jyl leaped into the Abyss to follow Iana and bring her back, but at the edge of the Abyss she hit an invisible wall.

“Our magic is tied to Gallagrin,” Undine said. “Lady Dae warned us of this. We’ve failed.”

The Pact Spirits Undine, Eorn, and the other knights of Gallagrin were bound to were intrinsically a part of Sleeping God’s creation. Neither they, nor those they were bonded to could leave it.

“We have to try something!” Eorn was looking around as though there was some particularly long piece of magical rope they might through to the princess who had been swallowed by the darkness.

Before Undine could refocus her on the other problems that remained before them, two screaming balls of light shot across the quarry. Only the fact that Undine was drawing on his pact’s magics to perceive time passing at a slower rate allowed him to notice the new arrivals as they flew helplessly across the battlefield the quarry had become and out into the darkness beyond.

Without the time to mourn his lost princess, Undine wasn’t about to mourn the passing of two strangers, but their arrival was so outside of his expectations that he watched the Abyss for a fraction of a moment longer after they too vanished into the endless dark.

And that’s when the star appeared.

It was a tiny thing. Nothing more than a spark of light. Against the overwhelming, endless depth of the Abyss it was less than a candle flame, but even all of the weight of the void wasn’t enough to keep it from shining. Undine’s breath caught in anticipation. Nothing could exist in the Abyss, but out there, even beyond the reach of the spirits, a miracle had been born.

The star drew closer and Undine saw that it was a person. As most miracles are.

It was Iana. In her arms were the two Shadowfolk who’d shot off past the end of creation, and garbing her were the enchanted clothes which Dae had gifted her.

“That’s not possible,” Tonel, the Shadowfolk Elder, and also the one who’d thrown Iana into the void, said.

Behind him, his troops, waited, unsteady and fully revealed in the glaring light from Iana’s robes.

“For you, it’s not. For the Blessed Realms’ first Sorceress though? Well let’s just say this isn’t all she’s capable of,” Iana said as she settled down onto the edge of the quarry, the light around her fading away as she return to a space that was at least notionally connected to the Blessed Realms.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tonel said. “She’s not here, and you are still outnumbered. If the Abyss won’t kill you for us, then I will take care of it myself.”

The two Shadowfolk Iana had rescued regained their feet and moved to stand before her.

“Elder Tonel,” Bellightra said. “We bring a message from Elders Banra, Jofolo, and Peregin.”

“The Revolution Stratagem has been formally abandoned,” Lelandra said.

“They also instructed us to inform you that an official pact has been formed between the Shadowfolk Elder Circle and the Princess Prime of Gallagrin,” Bellightra said.

“From this moment forward, you are to drop all efforts at enacting any part of the Revolution Stratagem, in specific any that would impinge on Princess Iana’s health or well-being,” Lelandra said.

“Wait, what is this now?” Jyl asked, sounding as befuddled by the development as Tonel appeared to be.

“I’ve been speaking with the Shadowfolk Elders,” Iana said. “Present company excluded. We’ve come to an arrangement that will benefit both parties.”

“That’s preposterous,” Tonel said. “You’ve been my prisoner since you returned from the trip the World Eaters took you on!”

“I’m not saying I didn’t have help,” Iana said.

“Does this mean you can tell us what Silian was saying while you were mumbling to yourself?” Yuehne asked.

“Silian?” The balls of light in Tonel’s eye sockets burned a brilliant scarlet of rage. “That is not a name your lips may pronounce.”

“Silian, Silian, Silian,” Iana said. “Pretty sure you’re wrong there.”

Tonel tried to take a step forward but Jyl and Pelay were at Bellightra and Lelandra’s side and without fanfare Undine and Eorn joined them.  The battlelines were irregular and sloppily drawn but Tonel halted himself, perhaps seeing that what should have been a certain victory was rapidly becoming a likely loss.

“Blasphemer!” Tonel wasn’t moving forward, but he didn’t lower his weapon either.

He’s waiting for reinforcements, Undine thought. It wasn’t a terrifying prospect. They were already outnumbered. Being more outnumbered just meant more glory to be won. Not that the numeric imbalance would last long.

If Tonel wanted to commit the full measure of the Shadowfolk forces to this battle, then he would be handing Lady Dae the opportunity to end their threat once and for all.

Undine delighted at the idea of a glorious battle, but he knew if it came to a full on struggle, there would be little glory to be found.

Ideally in Undine’s mind, a fight was contested by both sides based on the demands placed on their honor. Both parties were as invested in the struggle as the situation demanded, which meant fights to the death only occurred when both parties had something worth laying down their lives for.

In a battle against the Shadowfolk main forces, there would be soldiers fighting because they’d been ordered to die, and there would be Pact Knight’s who were fighting because the Shadowfolk gave them no other choice. It wouldn’t be a combat of equals, it would be warriors fighting like rabid animals against a force with no option but to act as exterminators.

“I would be careful with the use of that word Tonel,” Iana said. “Of the two of us, one is listening to your progenitor informing her of your indiscretions with the attaches you’ve kept over the years and the other is the ‘Elder’ who is so removed from what his people need that he can’t hear the one voice that unites them all.”

“You’re lying, I’m the first among the Elders, I am the best for my people!” Tonel’s voice rose in ire and volume.

“Are you?” Iana asked, stepping past the protective barrier of the Shadowfolk and Pact Knight’s who stood before her. “Who profits from the Revolution Stratagem?”

“All of my people!” he said.

“How?”

“We will have the vengeance long denied us!”

“No. You won’t,” Iana said. “You’re like a child lashing out at nothing and all you would have gotten from your vendetta is nothing. I am not your enemy, and neither if Queen Alari. She was the one who enacted your vengeance for you. It was by her hands that the Butcher King died. You owe her your thanks and gratitude.”

“You don’t understand our vengeance at all.”

“I’ve burned cities in the name of vengeance. I’ve shattered the boundaries of the realms in the name of revenge. I’ve stood before the wrath of a god with justice on my lips and righteous fury in my soul. You’ve lived longer than me but you will never know as much about vengeance as I do.”

Iana stood nose to nose with Tonel, the fire around her in no sense physical and in no way deniable.

“At least not until you experience the mercy that I’ve seen,” she said, the fierce anger that stormed around her washing away like the tide.

“Vengeance is foolish,” she finished. “Especially misguided vengeance.”

“Vengeance is what we are!” Tonel said.

“No.”

It wasn’t Iana’s voice that spoke, despite the fact that it was her mouth which moved.

“We have always been more than any one thing,” the speaker said. “We are not vengeance, we are who we chose to be. Always and forever. That is the legacy I left for you.”

“Who are you?” Tonel asked, stepping back as terror rippled down his body.

“You know who I am,” Silian said. “You’ve always known but you’ve never wanted to hear me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tonel took another step backwards, and his troops shifted uneasily, their weapons lowering as their leader became visibly unglued.

“It’s time Tonel, there’s still one piece of honor left for you, one act of dignity as yet unruined.”

“What are you talking about?” Tonel brought his weapon up to ward off Iana’s advance.

“He’s speaking of you stepping down,” Iana said as she took a step forward. “You’ve led your people to this precipice. Others are waiting to lead them back, release those who serve you, don’t carry this madness any further. We don’t have any room left to work with.”

“No.” Tonel threw down his weapon. “I will never give up what it mine. It’s mine! Do you hear me!  These people are mine! Their greatness is my greatness. It’s greatness that I gave to them and that they will spend for me!”

He turned to his troops, body livid with pulsing rage.

“Do it!” he screamed. “Kill them! Kill her! Do it!”

Silence echoed over the quarry.

It was no longer a battlefield.

No one was willing to fight.

Not for a madman. Not for a tyrant. Not when there was a better way.

Tonel’s scream when he realized this tore through Undine. He’d never heard a sound of such primal fury and loss before. Even as fast as Undine was, Tonel’s movement was hard to follow.

In a blink the Shadowfolk Elder exploded with magical fire. Before another passed, he’d regained his weapon and was rushing at Iana.

The Pact Knights moved as one but in between blinks, Iana simply wasn’t there and Tonel streaked through the space she’d appeared to be in.

***

In the end, Undine wasn’t sure if Tonel meant to dash off into the Abyss or whether he had simply blundered in his final attack. Blundering seemed more likely and was the story that seemed to spread the easiest among the Shadowfolk.

Iana, standing just a few feet away had perhaps the best view but she spoke of it only as a ‘tragic accident’ and seemed content to allow the memory of the late and unlamented Tonel to pass away without further comment.

“So what is this pact thing she’s put together with the Shadowfolk?” Eorn asked after they were safely back in Castle Highcrest.

“From what I understand, Iana’s instituted a ‘Princess’ Council’,” Undine said.

“And that would be what exactly?” Eorn asked.

“A group of advisors who will help her understand Gallagrin and it’s people better.”

“That doesn’t sound like a big deal,” Eorn said. “Why is everyone up in arms about it?”

“Apparently she’s planning to give each of them her Voice when she takes the throne,” Undine said.

“Wait, like Lady Dae has Queen Alari’s Voice?” Eorn asked.

“Exactly. They’ll all be able to speak as the monarch.”

“Won’t that get….?”

“Confusing? Messy? Why yes.”

“You’re looking forward to this aren’t you?”

“They’ll be be trying times once our foreign princess comes to power but yes, I think they’ll be worth hanging around for too,” Undine said. “Provided you’re here with me?”

“Heh, like you could lose me if you tried,” Eorn said and punched Undine affectionately in the shoulder.

Bellightra passed through the shadows between the worlds faster than she’d ever moved before. It was easier when you imagined you were falling. The void beyond creation exerted a pull on all things and if you didn’t mind the chance of falling into an endless abyss, you could use that to move into the deeper realms faster than any mortal could travel on their own.

“Are we going to make it on time?” Lelandra asked.

They were falling so fast that Bel could see her wife’s face clearly. Neither of them could keep a cloak of invisibility held to themselves with the buffeting of a thousand world veils shredding before them.

“I have no idea!” Silian said, his voice a shared presence in their ears. “Isn’t it exciting?”

“Exciting. Yes. I hate excitement,” Lelandra said.

Below them pale stars, visible to their eyes alone, faded out as the Shadowfolk trio plunged in freefall through the skies, each cloud the last barrier of another world they were leaving behind.

“That’s a good thing,” Silian said. “I was afraid all of my children would turn out like me.”

“We thought you were basically a god,” Bellightra said.

“Nope. Not a god. Not a saint. Not even a  hero really,” Silian said. “All I was, all I am I guess, is someone who was lucky enough to be caught exactly where he didn’t want to be, and faced with a choice he couldn’t accept.”

“That sounds like the opposite of lucky,” Lelandra said, bracing for their next cloud passage.

“At the time I agreed with you. Did you know I invented a thousand and one new blasphemous curses thanks to the spot the gods put me in? A thousand and one! I mean after the first few hundred it was basically a matter of pride to see how many I could come up with, but still you don’t spend that kind of time on something unless you’re really motivated.”

“Well, they were going to kill us all, weren’t they?” Bellightra asked. “Extinction seems like a great motivator.”

“Hence this suicidal idea,” Lelandra said. “Even like this I don’t know that we’re going to make it in time.”

“We’re traveling as fast as I’ve ever managed, and that’s saying something,” Silian said. “You messengers were well chosen.”

“We can go faster,” Bellightra said.

“What? How?” Silian asked.

It was odd to hear a mystically omnipresent voice sound confused, but then it had been an odd day for Bellightra and Lelandra.

Everyone had heard of the incursion into one of their home realms. It didn’t take messengers to spread that news – gossip was always traveled faster than the official news carriers could compete with.

Bellightra and Lelandra were supposed to be enjoying a day off, one of the too-infrequent ones where their schedules aligned and allowed them a full day together. They were just laying out the ingredients for a day’s cooking when the news of the incursion reached them. Lelandra wanted to investigate but Bellightra had talked her out of it. They didn’t have that many occassions when they could prepare and enjoy home cooked food by themselves and they each loved to surprise the other with the new dishes they’d discovered in their travels.

So they stayed inside. When the official notice arrived that the colony was being put on alert for more trespassers, Bellightra had shut down the notion of returning to the duty station on the grounds that they hadn’t been specifically called for, and that there’d be no offer of compensation time for the extra hours worked if they volunteered their day off away.

“We’d know about what was going on if we were at work though,” Lelandra had said, chewing on the end piece of a root vegetable to ascertain its bitterness.

“We don’t need to care about what’s going on,” Bellightra said. “Not until it finds us.”

Trouble has a talent for finding people no matter how much they choose not to search for it though, and in this case the Trouble that found them came in the form of Bellightra’s Uncle Jafferal.

Jafferal was an unpartnered man who’d survived enough decades of active recon unit service to retire to a calm and peaceful life. In the decades since then he’d become an extra caregiver for all of his siblings and neighbors, providing an extra hand in raising their children largely because after years in the field he was as incapable of resting as the children he wrangled were.

Jafferal’s position was a happy one for him and a blessing for those who relied on him. It also made him the center of a web of information thicker than any of the Elder’s intelligence officers. Or in other words he was a typical part of the community gossip network.

“Ladies, would you like to speak to our progenitor, Silian? If so just say ‘yes’ and he’ll explain the rest of what’s going on, but be warned, once he’s a part of your life you can’t get rid of him. He’ll always be there,” Jafferal said without preamble or warning when they opened the door to greet him.

“Are you serious?” Lelandra asked.

“Completely,” Jafferal said.

“Definitely then!” Bellightra said.

From there their day went decidedly off schedule. Dishes were left unfinished. Cooking fires were extinguished. Inventive explicatives were deployed.

And a plan was formed.

Or to be accurate, it was less formed than pitched hastily at a wall and the parts that stuck were cobbled together into something that had the possibility of not killing every living soul involved in it.

Under the constraints they’d been given, Bellightra considered that a towering achievement. True, they’d had the aid and counsel of a person who’d outsmarted literal gods, but the details of the plan, such as they were, emerged largely from the collective (and hurried) discussion of those who were won over to the new cause of “not allowing the Shadowfolk to perish en masse because an Elder did something stupid”.

Bellightra and Lelandra had a simple portion of the plan to execute.

Deliver a message. It was what they did, almost to the point of being who they were. There were many days that Bellightra felt more like a courier than she did a wife, a chef, or any other part of herself. Those days never felt like they had a point. Not until she found herself trying to outrace fate and gambling with the lives of her entire species.

“Answer me this,” Bellightra said. “Is there still a chance to save the Gallagrin princess?”

“Yes,” Silian said. “I’m speaking with her now. She’s playing for time, but Tonel’s not stupid, he’s going to give her more than another minute or so.”

“This would be so much simpler if you could just speak to him,” Lelandra said, addressing their invisible progenitor.

“Tried that,” Silian said. “Been trying that for years in fact. Some people are surprisingly resistant to hearing things they don’t want to hear.”

“What could you have had to say that Tonel was that opposed to?” Bellightra asked, angling them onto a new course.

“That he needs to give up his position gracefully,” Silian said. “That he was the wrong person for the job, and that it’s beyond him. That there are others who could lead with clearer vision and less need for personal aggrandizement. Basically everything he’s spent his whole life trying to deny while at the same time working to make the unassailable truth.”

“That’s what I figured,” Bellightra said. “And maybe that makes this worth it.”

“What, exactly, are you doing?” Silian asked.

“Gambling,” Bellightra said.

“And the stakes would be?” Silian asked.

“Our minds, our bodies, our fundamental existence,” Bellightra said. “Your kind of stuff right?”

“Yes,” Silian said and then added with a small sigh, “of all my legacies, this had to be the one to endure didn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so,” Lelandra said.

“Watch for pockets of shadow worlds at the outer fringe,” Bellightra said and offered her hand to Lelandra.

“Watch for open skies,” Lelandra said and took her wife’s hand in her own.

There was a wrenching shake as Bellightra jumped them in between the Shadow Worlds.

No longer falling through the skies of the partial planes, but rather the paper thin emptiness that separated them, the two encountered no resistance to the abyss’s pull and their already tremendous speed increased so much that the pale stars flared around them, passing upwards and out of sight in the space of a single heartbeat.

Bellightra maneuvered them along a twisting, spiraling path that was somehow steeper and shorter than any straight line could have been. With each moment the gaps they fell through grew larger but so too did the micro-fragments that collected within the spaces between the worlds.

“Mountain!” Silian warned, and Bellightra spun them in a mad arc away from the unlit and nearly invisible mass of rock they’d been headed towards.

“We’re coming up on First Prototypes,” Lelandra warned.

“The First…oh thousand hells no!” Silian said.

Ahead of them, more dots were rapidly growing to reveal their true scale. They weren’t mountains. They were continents, discarded and shattered continents, some of the earliest works of the gods. They held little definition since they were only basic concept sketches of the worlds to be but even as basic sketches they had mass and structure.

“Can you make it through there?” Silian asked, referring to the pitch black spider web of cracks that hinted at the Abyss that lay on the far side of the First Prototypes.

“Could you?” Bellightra asked.

“Sure,” Silian said. “On a really good day.”

“Then so can we,” Bellightra said.

“Let’s just hope that today’s a really good day,” Lelandra said.

Bellightra drew Lelandra in close.

“Wish we could have used a portal for this,” she said.

“We can do this,” Lelandra said.

“Yeah, with you I can do anything.”

The cracks in the shattered lands of the void swallowed ‘First Prototypes’ ranged from fissures that were wider than cities to slits less than a finger’s width across.

Bellightra had only the absence of reflected light to measure them by.

And she was moving faster than she’d ever traveled before.

She and Lelandra entered a cleft in the proto-continent that was as wide as they were tall stacked on top of one another. In less than an instant they were passing through a section that was only a few inches wider than the breadth of their bodies as they clung together.

Rocks blurred past them like a river of teeth that would slice them to ribbons with the barest touch.

The walls pulsed inwards and Bellightra crushed Lelandra so close that neither woman could breath. The rocks whispered across the back of Bellightra’s hand and blood fountained from the perfect cut that appeared.

And then they were sailing beyond the great primordial landmass.

“There!” Lelandra cried, adjusting their course to intersect with one of the last Shadow Worlds that drifted on the edge of the Abyss.

Bellightra had been too busy watching the walls and navigating through them to see beyond, but she didn’t have to. Lelandra found the final tether of sanctuary they could cling to.

As they punched through the veil of the last realm between them and the void, Bellightra and Lelandra jumped to reorient to the world’s axis, spin and velocity.

They were among the best of the Shadowfolks messengers. They had the experience to pull the jump off, and they did.

But it wasn’t enough.

Together they landed in the bottom of a quarry where a fierce battle was exploding out of control. They’d arrive at their destination at the last possible second. But they were traveling too fast.

Helplessly they sailed across the quarry like two fiery comets, blazing out into the existence devouring emptiness of the void.

Bellightra held tight to Lelandra desperate not to lose the woman who fulfilled so much of her life.

And then an angel wreathed in all the lights of creation caught them.

Chanolsa was over at Nelosa’s house because everyone was over at Nelosa’s house. Even for a society as hierarchical and mission focused as the Shadowfolk’s was, it was still a rare occurrence to see troops deployed to someone’s dwelling and even rarer still to see one of the Elder’s leading them.

“So the humans just popped right up in your kitchen?” Chanolsa asked. “That can’t be real can it?”

“Real as my twinkly left butt cheek,” Nelosa said. “One minute I’m making dinner and the next I got an infestation of all kinds of people popping through a big hole in space right where I was standing a minute before.”

“All kinds of people?” Chanolsa asked, catching what she thought was the critical detail.

Belief in Nelosa’s story was mixed among the crowd of her neighbors, at least as far as Chanolsa could gauged it. Some didn’t want to believe their homes could be compromised like that. Others were all too eager to believe, and all to eager to take drastic, unreasonable action as a result.

Chanolsa didn’t place herself in either of those groups. She worked for the Water Corp, which was responsible for both finding sources of water for the Shadowfolk communities and outposts in the disparate  worlds they were spread to as well as investigating any large sources of water they came across.

There was no such thing as free water. Not in the Shadow Worlds. Water was an inherently magical substance, and wherever it appeared in a liquid form, it would draw in creatures to fight for it.

Chanolsa looked at the Shadowfolk dwellings in much the same manner. People drew in trouble. The more people, the harder they were to sustain, the more trouble. That in turn suggested that Nelosa’s story could be true. There was a wide gap though between “could be” and “was definitely” true.

“Yes, it wasn’t just humans. There was a dwarf or two, I think, and some kind of scale covered woman.”

Nelosa seemed to know that her neighbors were weighing the possibility that she was in league with the intruders. That would be a capital offense if it could be proven, and the burden of proof was not particularly high in Shadowfolk courts.

The only things that kept people more or less on Nelosa’s side was that Elder Tonel had been part of the raid and had not denounced her and, more importantly in some people’s eyes, Nelosa was making no attempt to calm the calls for action.

Chanolsa noticed that Nelosa wasn’t encouraging any actions either though. She made no offers to join in the proposed hunts, and offered no details beyond those she was asked for.

That delicate balance between holding back and holding out suggested that Nelosa, like Chanolsa, wanted nothing more than for the whole crisis to simple pass her by. They were not active duty fighters or support, they were not part of the Elder’s staff, the affairs outside their day to day lives didn’t concern them.

Chanolsa wished she could believe that. It would make life so much simpler if the only problems you had to deal with were the ones relevant to the work you did.

Another portal opened in Nelosa’s kitchen, confirming that life was never played fair. It never limited the trouble you could be forced to face.

No one in the room was better than a third class fighter, so it was fortunate that the portal disgorged another Shadowfolk, an assassin from the looks of her duty markings, and a high ranking one at that.

The assassin’s appearance didn’t launch the room into a flurry of combat, instead the chaos that erupted was filled with questions and demands.

“Who are you?”

“How did you get in here!”

“Are you with the humans?”

“Explain what’s going on here!”

It was impossible for anyone to answer the crowd back, so the assassin didn’t try. Instead she turned her head to the side as though she was listening to someone and then simply said, “Be Quiet.”

Chanolsa hadn’t been talking so the command rolled over her with little-to-no effect. In the silence that descended though, she saw neighbors who had been cut off mid-word and were struggling to get the last syllables out.

Chanolsa wanted to ask “who are you to tell us what to do”, but she found her voice as absent as the ones of those around her.

“We’re faced with a crisis, and I am faced with a burden,” Wynni said. In her hand a knife gleamed with reflected moonlight. Except no moonlight was shining into Nelosa’s house.

“The crisis is simple enough,” Wynni continued. The injunction to be quiet had not trapped anyone in Nelosa’s house, but Chanolsa found that sheer curiosity prevented her from leaving.

“Our Elders have set us on a path to extinction. I know some of you won’t believe that but it is true independent of your beliefs or feelings about it.”

“What proof do you have of that?” Chanolsa asked, the prescription to remain quiet fading as Wynni spoke.

“I was on the observation team covering the Gallagrin princess,” Wynni said. “I got to watch Elder Tonel’s plans fall apart from the frontlines.”

“So because you failed, we’re all going to die?” another one of Nelosa’s guests asked.

“No, with one exception, the forward forces made no tactical errors, the problems we face were endemic to Tonel’s plan from its conception,” Wynni said.

“Who are you to  judge an Elder’s plans?” a neighbor asked.

“No one,” Wynni said. “I could see the small scale pieces falling apart, I could see how doomed we were from how every engagement was turning against us. Stupid mistakes being followed by ineffective responses which were being driven by what had to be extreme greed and delusions. But I’m not an Elder. I can’t ask you to listen to me. That’s not what we do. That’s not who we are.”

“Then why are you here?” Chanolsa asked. The assassin’s approach to public speaking was certainly a different one, but since Wynni had clearly been corrupted by the humans she associated with Chanolsa could guess what would come next.

Among those who fell from the strictures of Shadowfolk society, there was a recurring vision that the Shadowfolks methods were cruel and self defeating. People who were dragged before a tribunal often tried to argue that what their betrayal had been in the best interest of the Shadowfolk and that they’re weakness in refusing to execute a mission objective was some odd form of strength. If Chanolsa was right, then she would hear yet another appeal to a sense of morality that relied on mythical qualities which no sapient beings they interacted with had ever shown they possessed.

“That’s where my burden comes in,” Wynni said. “I’ve apparently become a Speaker for Silian.”

The room erupted in a chorus of questions and jeers.

“Yeah, I know,” Wynni shouted over them. “Believe me, I am not thrilled by that notion either.”

“If you’re a Speaker then what’s Silian want you to say to us? This should be amazing right?” one of Nelosa’s neighbor’s asked.

“Nothing,” Wynni said. “I’m not going to waste my breath trying to talk through your individual concerns. We’d be here for hours and to be quite honest, we don’t have that long. Elder Tonel is on the verge of pushing us over the brink – literally – right now.”

“If you’ve got nothing to say, then get out of here,” Nelosa’s neighbor said.

“You remember that I’m allowed to stab people who interfere with my mission aren’t you?” Wynni asked. “And see that right there is why I’m not going to talk to you. Silian is.”

Chanolsa blinked. The assassin was not following anything close to the speech that most betrayers gave. To suggest that Silian, long dead Silian, would talk with them directly? That had to involve a trick of the highest order.

“Really?” Chanolsa said, unable to contain  her disbelief. “And what do we have to do to hear from our esteemed and revered progenitor? How are you going to make the impossible happen here?”

“I’m not,” Wynni said. “You are. Any of you who don’t believe me, or anyone who does and wants to talk with Silian anyways, all you have to do is invite him in. Before you do that though, I have to warn you, getting him to shut up is nigh impossible. If you give him leave to come into your life, he’s going to be there forever. You can ignore him – which I highly recommend most of the time – but there’ll always be someone with you, a snarky, judgmental – oh yes you are judgmental, easily offended person, who will give you another perspective on things whether you like it or not.”

It was the most ridiculous offer Chanolsa had ever heard. Just say ‘yes’ and you could talk to the closest thing the Shadowfolk had to a god? With no need to swear eternal allegiance or pay a blood price to join the secret cult? That was not how contact with a supreme being was made. There needed to be pomp and circumstance and gold drenched ceremonies in the most spectacular of settings. Gods didn’t form personal relationships with their followers. That’s what the priests were for.

Even in more recent times, when the gods slept and hated the Chanolsa’s race, there was still a small but active clergy among the Shadowfolk, people whose role it was to advise the Elders on the best path for the community based on the gods’ original design for them before the humans and the other races had tainted the love the gods held for their darkest creation.

It was absurd to think that could be replaced with anything, or that the Shadowfolk’s savior would answer their call personally.

“I’m in,” Chanolsa said, anger waiting for the moment when the assassin’s words would be revealed as the lie they were. Then the guards would come, and then the trial would happen, and then Chanolsa could laugh at the idiocy that drove fools to their own destruction.

“Well, the first thing you’re going to want to consider is who, exactly, the fool is here?” Silian said.

Chanolsa spun to her side, but all she saw was the faintest ripples of an extremely well cast invisibility spell. It wasn’t the sort of tell that gave away a flaw in the spell’s design, it was the kind of imperfection you interjected into a veil when you were teaching a child.

“Who are you?” Chanolsa asked, and heard a half people around her ask the same question.

“Let’s be brief here, I’m Silian, you know I’m Silian, I can prove it to you a dozen times over, but it’s all going to boil down to you deciding to accept who I am or crawling inside a series of increasingly convoluted delusion. Save yourself the headache, and save all of us the time ok?”

This was not at all how a god was supposed to talk.

But it was absolutely how Silian had been described in the most ribald tales about him.

“But, I don’t understand, why come back now?” Chanolsa asked.

“I didn’t come back,” Silian said. “I never left you. You are all my children. My ornery, misguided, ignorant children, but if you were perfect, well, you wouldn’t be mine then I guess.”

“What do you want of us though Lord?” Chanolsa asked, her mind turning upside down from the awe of speaking to the one who she owed her people’s entire existence to.

“Nope, no Lord, we’re not going there,” Silian said. “Listen, I am not apart from you. I am one of you. If my words have any extra weight to them, it’s because I can see a bit farther than you and across a little more time. All I have to offer you is words though. I can’t live your life. I can’t even tell you what you have to do. All I can do is tell you what I see, and ask you why you think what you do. All the choices that are before you? Those are all yours to make. That’s what I fought for centuries ago. It was never just about living. It was about being able to choose for yourself how and why you would live.”

The Abyss loomed beyond the cliffside, not merely an emptiness by a hungry yawning void. The gods who slept had pulled forth light, and form, and being from the void in which their creation hung. From nothing, they had created all of the existence of the Blessed Realms and its Shadow World predecessors.

The Abyss possessed no awareness then. It held no form or substance of its own, and while the gods had not intended to give it any, crumbs of the reality they created leaked away and fed the emptiness with the whisper of being. In the nothingness, the suggestion of a heart began to beat and from that beat came a single cry that hungered for more.

“So you’re saying that the Abyss out there wants to devour us?” Iana asked.

“If it can be said to have any being at all, or any desires, then they begin and end with hunger,” Wynni said.

They were tied up but still conscious, as were the rest of the party they’d accumulated. Tonel’s forces had been sufficient for the Gallagrin princess not to press for combat in the confines of the small home they’d unwittingly ventured into.

Instead they’d been shackled and bound and forced to walk through a standing portal, one of the few stable gateways between the Shadow Worlds. The transit had been swift but unpleasant, as was common to all journeys into the deepest, and most far flung of the lost places.

“Why is it hungry for us? It’s not a thing, it’s just darkness, it doesn’t need to eat,” Yuehne asked.

“I can’t say. It’s not like it speaks to us,” Wynni said.

“What existence it has come from the remnants of the god’s creations,” Lagressa said. “I’ve always thought that means the incompleteness of the void hungers for more, hungers to find the fullness and reality it lacks. It looks to consume us because we are the best source substance and intent.”

“That’s a plausible sounding theory but a more important question is why Tonel brought us here?” Iana kept her voice low as they were marched along the rough terrain towards what looked like a vast crater that ended was filled with strangely glowing rocks. On the far edge of the crater the land dropped away into the undulating darkness that surrounded them.

“The touch of the Abyss is corrosive,” Lagressa said. “To the body it is like a weak acid, slowing dissolving a person on all levels.”

“So we’re not just going to die, we’re going to magically melt?” Yuenhe asked.

“If so you won’t be aware of it,” Lagress said. “The body is resilient. It knows itself and its heavy with substance and definition. The mind however is another matter.”

“What happens to our mind if we’re thrown off into the Abyss?” Iana asked.

“Memories are less solid than vapor,” Lagressa said. “They dissolve away almost the instant you touch the Abyss.”

“Ok. That sets a limit for us then,” Iana said.

“What do you mean a limit?” Yuehne asked.

“We have until they try to throw the first of us in to work out how to unseat Tonel from power,” Iana said.

“Killing him would work, wouldn’t it?” Yuehne asked.

“No,” Wynni said. “If Tonel dies here, especially at the princess’s order, then the Shadowfolk will have an actual blood grudge to hold against her.”

“Could we challenge him to single combat?” Yuehne asked.

“We don’t believe in trial by combat,” Wynni said. “If it comes to violence to solve an issue then the proper application is via an assassination which leaves no clue as to the assailant or their patron.”

“We can’t assassinate him either,” Iana said.

“I believe you mean to phrase that as we should not assassinate him,” Lagressa said. “Our capability to do so is not in doubt I believe.”

“We’re chained up and surrounded by guards,” Yuehne said.

“Lagressa’s right,” Iana said. “There’s very little stopping us, definitely not the chains, and not the guards either.”

“Do they know that?” Yuehne asked.

“No,” Wynni said. “Most are alert to our surroundings. It is profoundly unsafe here. The ones that can hear snippets of what we’re saying think we’re bluffing, and are conveniently far enough away that they wouldn’t have to intervene if the fight looked unpromising for their side.”

“What about this Elder Tonel guy? How did he know where we would be?” Yuehne asked.

“We opened a rift into Nelosa’s kitchen. Those aren’t quiet or subtle,” Wynni said.

“A necessary aspect of using the Silence Breaker,” Lagressa said. “They can take you almost anywhere but they are a disruptive mode of travel. For those who know how to listen, the damage they cause is easily perceptible. It was poor luck on our part to land so close to a Shadowfolk stronghold though. Chance should have placed us far distant so that we could have fled the scene before anyone arrived to discover our presence.”

“Tonel probably had listeners our everywhere he could,” Wynni said. “We’re lucky we had time to get everyone through before he found us.”

“They don’t look so happy about that,” Yuehne said, stealing a glance behind them.

Iana’s group of prisoners, which included Yuehne, Lagressa, Wynni and Venita was being marched ahead of the rest of the party they’d assembled. In between the groups, heavily armed Shadowfolk warriors marched, keeping them separated so that they couldn’t try to fight back as an organized group.

“Tonel’s forces seem to be focused on me,” Iana said. “That should keep the rest of them safe until we’re ready to act.”

“What action can we take?” Yuehne said. “You want to topple Tonel’s leadership but he has us as his prisoners.”

“I’ll admit it’s not the best position to be working from,” Iana said. “I was hoping we could build support from within the Shadowfolk community, but that plan didn’t work out.”

“And do you have another plan?” Yuehne asked.

“Several,” Iana said. “It’s what they taught us when I was young. Never approach a battlefield with only one path to victory. We’re supposed to make sure every path leads to victory, but I was never that good.”

“And we’re supposed to trust you to save us then?” Yuehne asked.

“Of course not,” Iana said. “You’ll see things I’m missing. You need to help save us as much as anyone else here.”

“I’m thinking run away,” Yuehne said. “Only there’s nowhere to run to.”

“That might be a plan we could work with,” Lagressa said.

“How?” Yuehne asked.

“The last place this Tonel’s forces will chase us is into the Abyss,” Lagressa said. “If we ran into the ‘nowhere’ out there, we might be able to escape them.”

“But we’d lose our memories, wouldn’t we?” Iana asked.

“Yes, but not all of them,” Lagressa said. “The memories you can call to mind could be offered up first.”

“That’s good to know,” Iana said. “But let’s save that as a backup plan. What we need is some method for exposing Tonel’s lies, of waking people up to how he’s gathering power only for himself and in the process putting them on the path to war and extinction.”

“His followers won’t believe that,” Wynni said. “They’re too invested in what they’ve been told. They want to hate the sunlit people so much that any lie he tells them that supports that they take as the gods’ own truth.”

“Why isn’t that true for you?” Iana asked.

“I was never one of Tonel’s blind devotes,” Wynni said.

“But from what you’ve said, the Elder’s are still obeyed unquestioningly aren’t they?” Iana asked.

“That’s the official story they tell, but reality is more complicated.”

“I’ll make it simple then,” Iana said. “How many of Tonel’s troops will follow him into death and how many will rout and flee if the battle looks like it’s turning against him?”

“I don’t know,” Wynni said. “A safe bet would be at least half though I think.”

“We need to do better than that. We need at least three to one,” Iana said. “His support won’t crumble until it’s obvious that his side is overwhelmed.”

“We can’t get that many,” Wynni said.

“Not working alone,” Iana agreed.

“Who can we get to work with us?” Yuehne asked.

“No one,” Wynni said. “The people here are all Tonel’s elite guard. They’ll be loyal to him and only him. It what he picked them for.”

“Not fighting prowess?” Iana asked.

“They’re not poor fighters either,” Wynni said. “And they’ll fight like demons if they think their Elder is in danger.”

“Are there others you could convert to the cause of peace between us?” Iana asked.

“Yes, definitely,” Wynni said. “But they don’t matter because they’re not here.”

“If you could get back to them, could you convince them to get back here in time to help us?”

“I don’t think so,” Wynni said. “I can only talk to them one at a time. That’s going to be too slow to convince enough of them to turn to the tide.”

“This ancestor of yours,” Iana asked, “can he speak with more than one of you at a time?”

There was a pause while Wynni listened for an ancestor.

“He says he was wondering if you were going to ask for that,” she said. “He says that he can, but that there’s a price attached to it.”

“Tell him he’ll need to try harder than that if he’s trying to surprise me,” Iana said. “What is it that he wants?”

Wynni waited again, listening.

“What? Are you serious?” she asked.

Another moment passed and she turned to face Iana.

“He wants to be able to talk to you he says.”

“And what’s the hidden catch there?”

“Oh, I can answer that,” Wynni said. “There’s no special catch, the drawback to allowing him to speak to you is that he’ll be speaking to you. All. The. Time.”

She paused for a moment.

“Yes, you do,” she said, addressing  a comment that was unheard by everyone else. “No. No. Listen. You have literally not stopped talking for the last five minutes trying to explain how you don’t talk all the time. You are making my case for me!”

“I accept,” Iana said. “We, the Princess Prime of Gallagrin, willling consent to a verbal delegation with the Shadowfolk ancestor known as Silian.”

“What if he possesses your mind now?” Yuehne asked.

“My mind is not a nice place,” Iana said. “Shadowfolk hero or no, I doubt he’d like it in there.”

“That still doesn’t help us though,” Wynni said.

There was another pause while Wynni and Iana both waited and listened.

“Yes, I understand,” Iana said after a moment.

“What did he tell you?” Yuehne asked.

“He can’t mind control anyone,” Iana said. “All he can do is show people, Shadowfolk specifically, the truths about themselves that they’re trying to hide from.”

“That sounds very limited,” Yuehne said.

“It’ll be enough,” Iana said.

“How?” Wynni asked. “Even showing the guards the truth of what they’re doing won’t stop them. There’s too many other forces; loyalty, duty, power, prestige, and so on, holding them where they are.”

“You’re not going to have to try to convert these people,” Iana said. “You’re going to find the others, the ones whose minds aren’t shut yet. The ones you can still reach.”

“I’m still chained up,” Wynni said.

“Not with this you aren’t,” Iana said, and produced the enchanted knife that Dae gave her as though drawing it from thin air. Without a moment’s hesitation, she handed it over to  Wynni.

“What is this?” Wynni asked.

“A gift from a sorcerer to me, and now a gift from me to you,” Iana said. “The blade is yours. Among its other properties, it can work as the Silence Breaker did. Slice your shackles off and use it to bring back help.”

“And if I just run now, and betray you all?” Wynni asked.

“There is no curse on the blade to stop you from doing so,” Iana said. “You are free to do as you wish, with no debt owed between us.”

Wynni stared at the girl before her and saw not a scruffed up young human she’d traveled with, but, for the first time, the Princess of Gallagrin that everyone had spoken of Iana being.

Dorokath was amazed he was alive. The decision to summon the World Eater had been a desperation play. He knew that because Tonel hadn’t warned them about it beyond a simple statement of “we have contingencies in place in case you are unable to capture our enemies.”

The World Eaters were not “contingencies”. Elder Tonel might think of them as such but all that proved is that Elder Tonel hadn’t spent enough time in the field in the last few years. Or the last decade. Or ever in his life.

Despite the mission-bearers, the Assassins and the Warriors and the Scouts and the Field Researchers, being hailed as the best and most important within the hierarchy of the Shadowfolk society, it was surprisingly rare how often the most experienced and decorated mission-bearers were named as Elders.

Dorokath had no illusions that he was worthy of being considered a senior mission bearer, much less aspiring to the role of Elder. He’d achieved no great glory, and had been issued no challenging orders until the mission that landed him in the belly of a World Eater. He judged himself to be an ordinary warrior, destined for a life of service while he was young and hail enough to serve, followed by life of child rearing and work as a training instructor once he was too old to trust with dangerous assignments.

He didn’t object to that destiny. It was the life his parents had led, the life his squadmates were destined for and it didn’t require the agony that seemed to come with greatness.

Elder Tonel took that quiet acceptance as approval, and Dorokath’s willingness to undertake whatever menial tasks came his direction as proof that Dorokath was a true believer in Tonel’s cause.

Dorokath, for his part, was willing to mouth the words of support that Tonel needed to hear in exchange for the Tonel not asking for anything extraordinary of him. No perilous ventures into the deep shadow worlds for Tonel’s elite – at least not while he was building up their numbers. No lengthy scouting excursions either because Tonel wanted his troops always close at hand.

Dorokath suspected that Tonel was blissfully unaware of the mocking names ‘his troops’ gave him. They were careful to only speak them in private – no one wanted to court the Elder’s wrath without need – but there was a fundamental need in them all to find some expression for the lack of respect they had for ‘their liege’.

Despite possessing the “wisdom of an Elder”, Tonel wished to believe he had mindlessly loyal followers and so that’s what he saw. What he never looked for though were the expressions of support or adoration those followers would have been making if they did love him as he imagined.

In some senses though, Tonel had the last laugh, at least on Dorokath.

Dorokath had believed he was just following along, getting better than he gave. When the time came though, when Tonel had finally given a desperate order that sent Dorokath into extreme peril, Dorokath had gone to do Tonel’s bidding.

The assault on the seers wasn’t supposed to have been quite as perilous as it was of course. Initial reports suggested that no Pact Knights had arrived with them, and seers were not typically adept at personal combat.

In theory the mission should have concluded less than a second after it began. A quick bit of stealthing into the tent, a well timed opening strike that rendered their opponents unconscious and then a rapid trip to the edge of the abyss that would be handled by troops more familiar with long distance shadow walking.

Tonel’s description of the mission included no mention of the Titan-class resistance they encountered from the two Pact Knights who were mysteriously present, nor had the Elder informed them that he had forces luring a World Eater to the sunlit world.

That in and of itself told Dorokath how desperate Tonel saw the situation to be. World Eaters did not venture anywhere near the sunlight world. The substance of the gods’ true and final creation was anathema to them. Luring one up to the surface like that had required sacrifices. Many sacrifices. Dorokath hoped they weren’t people he knew, but didn’t believe that Tonel’s forces were large enough for that to be true.

The genius of using the World Eater was that its destruction of the seer’s camp was complete enough that even the best trackers wouldn’t find any traces of the Shadowfolk there. It would call into question the whole idea of their being present too as it was the first time in history, as far as Dorokath knew, that the strategy had been attempted. The Shadowfolk moved along small subtle pathways, striking with as little disturbance to the world around them as possible. The sheer scale of destruction the World Eater had caused would be the most compelling proof possible that the Shadowfolk had nothing to do with the attack on the seers, and by extension with anything else that was going on.

Instead of suspect the Shadowfolk, blame would turn on the other creatures that possessed the power to motivate the World Eaters. There were a variety of the, and even ones with malice towards the sunlit realms. In truth none made plausible villains for the events that had occurred though. They were sealed behind various barriers, and none were likely to waste a World Eater on such a pointless endeavor, but the sunlight folk wouldn’t be able to know that for sure.

The idiocy of Tonel’s plan was that they would probably try to find out.

In Dorokath’s view, the sunlight people avoided the Shadow Worlds for the very good reason that there was nothing in the Shadow Worlds for them. Travel was difficult there, the resources were sparse and more easily obtained in their own lands and unfamiliar dangers lurked in nearly every corner. A few brave souls would still trespass outside the light but there was little reward to encourage them to make a habit of it.

Just about the worst thing Tonel could do, in Dorokath’s mind, was to present the sunlit dwellers with a threat from the Shadow Worlds. That changed the equation immensely. The sunlit dwellers had almost wiped out his people and Dorokath firmly believed it was because of nothing more than a perceived danger. Once the sunlit dwellers saw not only what the Shadowfolk could do but also would do, war between the two became an inevitability.

Tonel had seemed terribly desperate when he ordered Dorokath’s troops into battle, his eyes ablaze with fear and unwon victory. He needed to fix what had gone wrong and any sense of restraint in accomplishing that had been well and truly abandoned.

Dorokath was frightened by that notion, but it was a distant fear, outweighed by the more immediate concern regarding how badly his mission had gone off track.

There were punishments for failure. Demotions being the least severe. Tonel’s work was easy but it also came with few advancements since Tonel valued his troops just slightly less than a case of toe fungus. Dorokath hadn’t cared about gaining rank quickly, but the prospect of losing what little headway he made was daunting.

What he needed, he knew, was to conclude the mission successfully. Bobbling the execution of a mission didn’t win you any favors, but as long as the mission givers got what they wanted punishments were few and far between.

On that front, Dorokath blessed all the shadows that sheltered him.

Waking up had come as a wonderful surprise. Death had seemed certain and in his rapidly fading memory he could feel the pain of being routinely battered into unconsciousness for what seemed like an exceptionally long time.

Even better than waking up had been discovering that the people they sought were already captured.

Dorokath knew that Semsblaine had to have been one of the other survivors. The knots on the captives should the sort of thoroughness that only Semsblaine brought to that job.

When the human woman woke up and started talking, Dorokath found himself breaking more rules.

Assassin’s and warriors were not supposed to speak with their targets. Ever. After as bad and stressful day as he’d had though, Dorokath felt a little need to gloat.

He was careful not to reveal anything to important to the captives, even though ultimately nothing he said would matter because none of his enemies would he even existed.

“Why doing this at all though?” Glyra asked. “You don’t have anything to gain from it!”

It was a question Dorokath had asked himself since he first heard of the plan to kill the Gallagrin Princess and frame a noble family for it. There had to be easier methods of accomplishing any goal Tonel had in mind.

“We must have our revenge,” Dorokath said, spouting the official explanation Tonel provided them with.

“On who?” Glyra asked. “The last person why warred against you is dead. He was killed by the queen who’s peace you’re trying to threaten.”

“She carries his blood in her veins. She is his heir. His debts fall to her.”

Dorokath didn’t like following that line of thought to far. He always came to the question of whether that meant he was responsible for the sins of the people who came before him. He couldn’t be of course, it was ridiculous to even think that he should pay for the wrongdoing committed by people who lived before he was even born. Making the queen pay for her family’s sins though was somehow different.

“If that’s true then why did you target Princess Iana? No blood from the Butcher King flows in her veins.”

“She is part of the queen’s family, Whatever her blood was, it’s Gallagrin blood now.”

That was a simple part of Shadowfolk philosophy. Family was created through acceptance. Dorokath couldn’t imagine getting in trouble for speaking of that. It was just so obvious a thing.

“So are you just going to leave us out here?” Glyra asked.

“Not those of you who survive,” Dorokath said.

“How are you going to get us back home?: Glyra asked.

“We live here, this is our home,” Dorokath said. “We know the paths that lead between the worlds.”

He was going to explain more, going to say how once they were erased, leading them would be trivial since they would walk wherever they were instructed rather than fighting back subconsciously. Walking through Shadows was as much a matter of intent as anything else and marching a prisoner who’d first desire was to escape up through the world was a receipe for disaster. Or more disaster under the present circumstances.

Dorokath was going to explain that, but his explanation was cut off by the several figures decloaking from the shadows followed a loud whump which signalled the distance they’d traveled to arrive at the edge of the Abyss.

Seeing Princess Iana being led forward by a pair of guards didn’t surprise Dorokath. It should have, but his day had been so unbelievable that one more element that was out of place almost felt reassuring.

What was less reassuring was the figure who brought up the rear of the assembly.

Elder Tonel was with the captives. The man who had never served on a dangerous field mission in his life had come to one of the most perilous places in all of the Shadow Worlds to personally overseer the events that were unfolding.

“What is this?” Tonel asked. “I thought the mission against the seers was a total failure?”

“No my lord,” Dorokath said, “We succeeded in capturing our targets. I was waiting for the others to return before we sent a runner to inform you of our victory.”

“You and what others are responsible for this feat?” Tonel asked.

“Semsblaine and at least one other sir,” Dorokath said. “I’m not certain who else survived the belly of the World Eater. I was unconscious when we landed.”

“I wasn’t a part of this. I jumped away early as instructed,” Semsblaine said, stepping out from the crowd of guard who surrounded Tonel.

Dorokath felt a chill run down him. If Semsblaine hadn’t tied up the captives that well, then who had?

Adorel’s first thought on falling into the belly of the worm wasn’t of self preservation or fear. The sensation of falling was a viscerally terrifying one, but his mind locked onto something even more bizarre and clung to it, refusing to even acknowledge the rest of the horrible situation he found himself in.

“How can teeth that big be inside something that burst up inside our tent?”

He didn’t mean to scream the question at the top of his lungs. Not once, not twice and certainly not over and over, but it was, he felt, a perfectly reasonable thing to wonder about.

Everyone inside the tent, sunlight dwellers and Shadowfolk, were tumbling into the ever widening shaft of the worm’s gullet. As they fell they passed rows of the pointed, stalactite-like teeth. Each tooth was three times as long as Adorel was tall and there were more of them than he could even begin to estimate much less count.

Below them, the teeth were slamming together in an undulating wave that raced up from the fiery depths they were plummeting towards. The bits of rock they’d been standing on met the compressing fangs and were shattered into dust.

Adorel considered his robes and their toughness vis-a-vis solid rocks.

They were enchanted with protective magics. The magics however did not make them as hard as stone however. Far from it.  In practice they could turn aside a knife blow and blunt a limited number of arrow strikes. The twenty foot tall, rocking crushing, teeth however were neither knives nor arrows and even if his robes could withstand the destructive force at the tip of the fangs, Adorel was entirely certain that he could not.

As he lacked the ability to fly, Adorel was also certain that he was going to need a miracle to survive longer than the next second.

Less than half a second later his miracle arrived.

Massive translucent wings of rainbow light flared and enfolded everyone Adorel could see.

The worm seemed to choke as they fell through the spiky tunnel of its throat. Adorel almost felt sorry for the best. Its teeth struggled to grind up the solid ball that was dropping farther into the worm than than physics should have allowed.

The other thing physics should have had problems with was the Queen’s Guard and the Shadowfolk continuing their battle while the plummeted. Each side had access to enough magic to tell physics to sit down and shut up though and so they’re clash continued unabated as the inside of the worm’s gullet began to show rivers of fire where its veins should have been..

One of the Shadowfolk appeared in puff of purple smoke – decloaking from invisibility, not teleporting, Adorel observed – and tried to throw Adorel out of the protective radius of the wings that Guardian Pelay had summoned.

As deaths went, it was certainly one Adorel could fight against. As fights went though it was one he knew he was doomed to lose.

One of the curses of limited precognition was perceiving the most likely course of events and yet being aware of them too late to have any impact on their outcome.

By the time Adorel foresaw himself tumbling out of the glowing shelter of Pelay’s wing shield, the Shadowfolk warrior already had a grip on his arm and was spinning him towards the teeth.

Adorel swung a fist at the blazing light in the warrior’s eye socket but he was too weak and too slow.

Jyl’s sword blades were neither weak nor slow though.

The arm that had hold of Adorel ceased accelerating him the moment it ceased to be connected to the Shadowfolk warrior.

Using her own wings for leverage Jyl hurled Adorel up to Pelay who already had a constellation of people floating around her.

“Why are we still falling?” Adorel asked as his fellow seer Glyra caught him.

“We’re not,” Pelay said. “This isn’t falling.”

“It feels like falling,” Adorel said.

“Listen for the shadows,” Glyra said, closing her eyes as an instruction for Adorel to do the same.

There were still Shadowfolk around, though far fewer than before, but a scrying trance still struck Adorel as a terrible idea under the circumstances. Terrible circumstances however sometimes call for terrible ideas, so he followed Glyra’s lead.

They weren’t falling.

From what Adorel could perceive, they were traveling between the layers of reality, or at least that was the best guess Adorel could make of the shredding magics that fluttered around them.

He had read of the places they were passing through. The Shadow Worlds. Remnants of the Sleeping Gods failed designs. The places no one came back from.

“How wonderful,” he said, addressing no one in particular but proud of himself that he’d gotten the whole ‘screaming about teeth’ issue under control.

“What is this place?” Lipa asked.

She and the other Faen kit looked angry. Adorel was concerned that they were looking angry in his direction, despite being reasonably certain that they had no particular reason to be angry him specifically.

“It’s not a place. It’s a thing,” Adorel said.

“We’ve been swallowed by a World Eater,” Glyra said.

“A what?” Kai demanded.

“They nibble on the lost worlds,” Glyra said.

“Supposedly,” Adorel said. “They’re mythical, so we can’t say for sure that such things even exist. No one’s ever captured one after all.”

“We’re literally seeing one with our own eyes! How can you possibly think they’re mythic?”

To be fair to Glyra, their day had not been an easy one but Adorel knew they had to be accurate.

“We’re seeing the inside of something,” he said. “We don’t know what this is. We can’t say it’s a World Eater until we examine it. Do try to maintain proper research standards.”

It wasn’t at all professional that she tried to strangle him. Understandable, or so everyone he ever told the story to would inform him, but hardly the mark of a professional to try to do in one’s own colleagues.

The good news was that when he regained consciousness, they’d stopped falling!

“What happened?” he asked, gazing around the quarry they had landed in.

Rocks of every shape and size were scattered around them. Many glowed with their own light, pushing back the starless night with illumination that flickered through dozens of different pastel shades.

“We hit bottom,” Jyl said.

Adorel noticed that the rest of his team and the Faen kits had setup a small camp and were working to get a fire going in a pile of branches taken, no doubt, from the short, scrubby trees that were entwined around the various clumps of rock that surrounded them.

“What happened to the Shadowfolk?” he asked.

“They left,” Pelay said. She and Jyl weren’t wearing their Pact armor, which signalled that either the party was safe or that they were in so prolonged a state of peril that the Pact Knight’s weren’t able to maintain their transformations for the duration. Adorel didn’t want to know which scenario was true. The first was so much more comforting than the second and in neither case was there much he could do about it.

“Most of them,” Jyl said, nodding towards a captive Shadowfolk on the far side of the firepit.

“Is it dead?” Adorel asked.

“No, but it probably wishes it was,” Jyl said. “Or it would if we let it wake up.”

“It’s been the topic of conversation while you got your naptime in,” Glyra said.

“I don’t recall napping?” Adorel said.

“That’s because we hit the bottom too soon,” Glyra said.

“But we weren’t falling. How did we ‘hit the bottom’ if we weren’t in fact moving?” Adorel asked.

“The World Eater puked us out,” Jyl said.

“After it lost enough of its inner teeth, it sent a wave of…what would you call it? Magma bile?” Pelay said.

“I would call it that if I had any desire to ever experience something like that again,” Jyl said. “I do not, so I’m just going to call it gross.”

“Ok, that’s an accurate description too,” Pelay said. “Whatever it was, the goop lifted us up and when we fell out of the worm’s mouth we were here.”

“And where is here?” Adorel asked.

“That’s what we intend to ask our friend over there once we figure out how to wake him up,” Jyl said.

“Why is he asleep?” Adorel asked.

“Because we keep knocking him out,” Jyl said.

“That would suggest an obvious answer as to how to wake him up wouldn’t it?”

“If we allow him to wake up, he will leave,” Glyra said. “Which in turn would present problems with getting our questions answered.”

“He’s not going to talk anyways is he?” Lipa asked. “I thought they were all mindlessly loyal and unthinking servants to their cause?”

“Also a concern,” Jyl said.

“Do we know of any limitations on their ability to teleport away?” Adorel asked.

“It seems to be an instantaneous talent,” Jyl said.

“We saw two of the vanish faster than a Faen could move, and she started with her hand on their throat,” Pelay said.

“Maybe we’re looking at this from the wrong perspective,” Glyra said.

“I would be delighted to find another one,” Jyl said. “The view here is otherworldly, but I suspect whatever’s on the bottom of that cliff would not be to our liking.”

Adorel looked down the rolling hill of the quarry floor to where the land dropped away again into, as far as he could see, a starless void of space.

“We’re thinking of him as being our prisoner. What if the reverse was true?” Glyra asked

“Then we’d all be dead and he’d be back home,” Adorel said.

“No, they weren’t fighting to kill,” Jyl said. “I think I see what you’re saying.”

“It was very chaotic towards the end of the battle,” Glyra said. “If we make it appear that we’ve been captured by another of the Shadowfolk, he may be willing to stay behind until he can find them.”

“And in the meanwhile we might be able to get him to gloat a little,” Jyl said.

***

“Do the knots need to be so tight?” Adorel asked.

“If it looks comfortable or staged, he won’t believe it,” Pelay said, tightening the rope that lashed his feet to his hands.

***

“Finally something went right!” Dorokath said as he rose from his restorative trance and discovered the mostly unconscious humans and Faen lashed individually to the trees that dotted the Abyssal Quarry.

“What do you want with us?” Glyra said, struggling weakly against her bonds.

“They haven’t given you the treatment yet?” Dorokath asked.

“Your friends? No they went looking for someone else. They said something about doing something to us when they got back,” Glyra said.

“Where are they?” Dorokath asked.

“I don’t know!” Glyra’s anger bubbled up through her words. “We were all scattered when we landed. I think that’s why they left. What are you going to do to us? Where are we?”

“This is the end of your world,” Dorokath said. “The end of all the worlds. Beyond this is the Great Abyss.”

“Why are we here?” Glyra asked.

“We need to erase you,” Dorokath said. “We’ll float you out into the Abyss. Those who survive will be blank slates that we can fill with whatever story we want.”

“Why?” Glyra sounded as genuinely horrified at the idea as Adorel felt about it.

“You’ll make much better witnesses once we’ve whipped your minds clear.”

“But then we won’t be able to bear witness to anything,” Adorel said, unable to restrain himself.

“Starting to wake up already?” Dorokath said. “You must be a hardier group than we thought they’d send. Doesn’t matter though, once you’re erased you’ll tell them everything we want them to know.”

“What if we don’t survive being erased?” Glyra asked.

“Won’t be my problem because I don’t care, and won’t be your problem because you won’t be around to care any longer either.”

Glyra knew when she was out of her element. She’d studied scrying magic for most of her life, and that had placed her near the front lines of a battle more than once. Watching brutal struggles from afar had been enlightening and had left her with no desire whatsoever to see one up close.

What one desires however is not always what one receives.

“What happened here?” Jyl said as she burst back into the tent.

“Shadowfolk,” Glyra said. “We were attacked a moment after you left.”

“How?” Jyl asked.

“We think they tracked the resonance from one or more of the observation gnats back to us,” Glyra said.

“I thought we were shielding those?”

“We were, but there’s always going to be some leakage,” Glyra said. “It’s a balance between how much we can see and how quiet we can be while observing.”

“One of them got away,” Lipa’roon said. “And one of them didn’t.”

Her right hand was covered in blood.

Her left hung limply at her side.

“How badly are you hurt?” Jyl asked.

“More than I want to be,” she said. “It feels like he cut my arm off. Check out Kai first though.”

“There’s no need. I’m fine,” Kai said from behind a desk.

“If you’re fine then stand up,” Lipa said.

“I think I’m happier here,” Kai said.

“Let me take a look at her,” Pelay said, moved around the desk to inspect the fallen Faen kit.

“I can’t believe they tricked us like that!” Jyl said, clearly looking for something to smash but refraining due to the general chaos that was already present in the scrying tent.

“I’m not sure that they did,” Glyra said.

“You think they just got lucky?” Jyl asked.

“Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it,” Glyra said.

“Unlucky would have been appearing fifteen seconds sooner when Pelay and I were still here.”

“Not for that one,” Glyra said. “You would have had the option to fight him in a less lethal manner.”

“They probably weren’t expecting serious opposition with us gone,” Jyl said.

“They probably didn’t stop to think what the opposition would be at all,” Glyra said. “The spot that they were hiding in would have been extremely easy to overlook. Our standard sweep would have missed it entirely and a slow search would have given them plenty of time to hear us coming, which they were obviously capable of doing.”

“Even a great defense isn’t perfect though,” Jyl said. “This could have been a contingency plan.”

“If it was, wouldn’t they have had a more significant force to send against us?”

“That’s a good point,” Jyl said. “This could have been a distraction, or an act of panic in response to being discovered.”

“I’m sorry you can’t question this one,” Lipa said, pointing to the corpse and then sitting down as one of the clerics began to inspect her wound.

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Jyl said. “I’m going to have the Queen pin a medal on you for taking that guy down. That took real bravery.”

“I don’t know if it was bravery,” Lipa said. “If I hadn’t been too mad to think straight I might have run away.”

“Hopefully that won’t be a question you’ll ever need to worry about again,” Jyl said.

“It looks like Kai’artha is going to be ok,” Pelay said. “The cuts didn’t hit anything major. We’ll need to knit the flesh together and the muscles will take a bit to heal up, but I think she’ll walk ok again.”

“That’s good because we’ve got to move,” Jyl said.

“I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” Pelay said.

“I know. I also know that staying here is an absolutely horrible idea,” Jyl said.

“Why? Do you think more are coming?” Lipa asked.

“If this was a panicked reaction, the yes, more are coming, because they’ll need to clean up after what happened. If this was a planned reaction, then more are definitely comes. A whole lot more.”

“Why would they keep attacking us though?” Lipa asked. “I mean especially now that you’re back?”

“Because we have proof of their involvement now, hell, we’ve got proof of their existence!” Jyl said, pointing to the blue-skinned corpse that was still laying on the desk.

“I’m sorry,” Lipa said.

“Don’t be. Like I said, you deserve a medal for that. Usually when one of the Shadowfolk takes a fatal wound they teleport away before we can catch them. It makes proving that they were involved in something incredibly difficult. Since they seem to enjoy that kind of anonymity, they’re almost certainly going to try to regain is as fast as they can.”

“But isn’t it too late for that?” Lipa asked. “I mean it’s not like we’re going to forget that we saw them.”

“It’s only going to matter that we saw them if we’re still alive to testify to that fact,” Jyl said. “That’s why we should move as soon as we can. If we can get you back home, the Shadowfolk won’t be able to track you.”

“But what about the rest of you?” Lipa asked.

“Pelay and I can take care of ourselves. Everyone else is going to head back to Highcrest castle. You’ll all be safe there.”

That was when the ground shook, indicating that none of them would reach safety in time.

Glyra had time to step to one side and strike out with the palm of her hand as another Shadowfolk warrior rippled into visibility in front of her.

She managed to lash out with a follow up kick that drove him to his knees, but then backed off as fast as she could.

Being able to sense a second or two into the future gave her some advantages in a fight but she knew from painful sparring experience that knowing a blow was coming and being able to dodge it were not the same things.

More warriors appeared in the room. Easily enough to kill them all.

This was the planned for response in the event that the Shadowfolk observers were discovered. Where the original assassins had struck with speed, the warriors who followed attacked with precision and teamwork.

Jyl and Pelay were a blur of motion, but the Shadowfolk warriors kept them separated while they also protected one another.

Glyra looked for an opening, some distraction she could provide that would allow one of the Guardians to make headway in their battle. There were two main problems with that plan though.

First, Glyra wasn’t enough to a combatant to pose a serious threat to the Shadowfolk warriors. Instead the warriors were able to turn her into a liability by merely moving in her direction.

Pelay was the one who shifted to protect her but Glyra saw that is cost the guardian ground. Instead of falling back from Pelay’s attacks, the Shadowfolk were able to force her to block and defend the attacks that they launched at her and the ones they feinted in Glyra’s direction.

Glyra looked for a place to retreat to, and noticed Adorel, one of her fellow seers being menaced by a pair of their enemies. Jyl came to Adorel’s rescue in much the same fashion as Pelay did for Glyra but there were limits to how well the two could defend their less empowered allies.

The ones in the worst position were Lipa and Kai though.

They were cut off from all aid by the positioning the Shadowfolk warriors had taken. Glyra looked with both her mundane and mystical senses but wasn’t able to find a path to them that didn’t involve being stabbed repeatedly and fatally.

The two Faen kits were helpless, but none of the Shadowfolk were moving against them.

From the damage Lipa had done to the first assassin that assaulted them, Glyra guessed the two could potentially take another one down, but it seemed like the Shadowfolk weren’t leaving them alone and unthreatened out of concern or fear.

As long as the girls didn’t move, the Shadowfolk paid them barely any attention at all.

The position and ferocity of the fighting was only the first major problem however. The second was that the shaking of the ground continued even after the Shadowfolk arrived. Glyra didn’t need future sight to know that something else was coming. Something she didn’t have any desire to meet.

“Get away! Get clear of here!” she screamed.

Everyone could hear her, but the only ones capable of escaping seemed to be the two Pact Knights. Unfortunately they were also the ones with the least interest in doing so.

“We’ve got to get out of here! They’re trying to capture us!”

Screaming wasn’t the best manner of getting an idea across, but from the renewed savagery of Jyl and Pelay’s attacks, Glyra was pretty sure they knew she was right.

With their superior numbers, the Shadowfolk could have been fighting for a win. Or at the very least fighting to inflict casualties. From how they arranged themselves and the kind of openings they were trying to exploit though, it was clear to Glyra that they were trying to herd and contain the seers, and Pact Knights, and Faen kits.

Basically everyone who knew of their existence.

“We need to get a message out,” Glyra yelled over the din. “They can’t win if queen has proof they’re here!”

Of course the only real proof lay splayed over the desk it had fallen on and making it off the battlefield carrying a corpse was just on the inside of impossible.

Glyra didn’t make the impossible happen. Her job was to see what was really there and report on it accurately.

When she looked at the battle, she saw an overwhelming response from the Shadowfolk to being discovered. What they’d done with a simple observation gnat had hit one of the most sensitive nerves the Shadowfolk had.

They were a species that was dedicated to remaining hidden and with a few simple mistakes they’d been dragged into the awareness of the very people they’d been scheming against for over a year.

Glyra felt a twinge of sorrow for them. She knew what the Butcher King had done. She knew how the Shadowfolk had been treated historically. She also knew the sort of deeds they’d done in response though. It was a thorny mess to untangle, and one that could definitely wait until they weren’t threatening her life.

Her shouting didn’t convince the Pact Knights to flee, despite the wisdom in that course of action. It did manage to draw the attention of the Shadowfolk warriors though.

With well practiced efficiency, they split Glyra away from Pelay’s protection. The harder the Queen’s Guardian fought to rescue Glyra though, the more the warriors locked their defenses and relied on sheer mass to push Pelay back.

For Glyra the experience was less pleasant. Two of the warriors turned to her and even with the second and a half of precognition she could summon up, it took all her strength to ward them off.

The situation was an unstable one. Glyra couldn’t mount an effective offense, so there was no chance to reducing the attacks against her, and her endurance was far more limited than her enemies who’d spent their lives training for battle.

Glyra gave ground as quickly as she could. The Shadowfolk were between her and the main opening to the tent, but Glyra’s insight told her that the ties holding rear wall of the tent had come loose thanks to all the shaking around them.

She didn’t want to be the one to flee and tell Queen Alari of what had gone wrong. She wasn’t sure she could even make it off the mountain for one thing, or outrun the Shadowfolk who would pursue her.

As it turned out, that didn’t prove to be an issue though.

Just as Glyra reached the back edge of the tent, an unfathomable roaring filled her ears.

Dust erupted everywhere and Glyra felt herself falling, the others shouting around her as the plummeted down the throat of an enormous multi-mawed worm.

Kai’artha had expected adventuring on the surface world to be exciting. She’d expected it to involve danger and intrigue. What she hadn’t expected was to be stabbed before she had a chance to see what the sky looked like.

Her thoughts weren’t on the heavens though as the grass thin metal of the Shadowfolk blade whisked past her cheek. Pure survival gripped her mind and she spun with the speed and grace that only one of the Faeneril possessed.

Her agility was against matched the skill and experience of a career assassin however and Kai knew that was a bad contest to gamble on. Especially since she was already injured.

She evaded another blow by hurling herself into a backwards roll over a desk. The assassin had the advantage in position and distance though and managed to spear her right calf before she put the temporary safety of the desk between them.

Agony pumped into her from the deep cut. She couldn’t risk standing on it, but she had to keep moving.

***

“Come on!” Lipa said. “They’re going to leave us behind if you don’t get a move on!”

Kai’artha doubted that. The Queen’s Guard had sought Lipa’roon out for a reason. They needed to move quickly but an extra minute of packing wasn’t going to be wasted. Not if they were going on an adventure.

“There’s no need to pack battlemail! We’re not going to be anywhere near the dangerous areas,” Lipa said.

Kai considered that. The Pact Knights had made it clear that they were going to take every precaution with the Faen kits. Any time a warrior went outside the clan’s holdings, they were expected to go armed and armored for a fight, but in this case Kai wasn’t sure they counted as warriors.

Traveling with the Queen’s Guard meant that they would encounter one of two different sorts of foe. The first kind would be the common villains. Highwaymen, robbers, and other miscreants. For a Faen traveling on her own, any of these could be deadly. For Faen traveling in small groups, the presence of arms and armor could be the deciding factor in an enemy choosing to seek other prey. In that sense, traveling with Pact Knights was like traveling with armor that was as thick as a castle and arms that were more powerful than a bolt of lightning.

Common bandits who dared assault them would be nothing more than a source of amusement.

The other sort of enemy encompassed anything so far outside the ordinary that it could give a Pact Knight a noticeable fight. In a battle against another faction of Pact Knights, or monsters from the unseen hollows of the world, Kai knew that she and Lipa and anyone who wasn’t part of the Queen’s Guard would be little more than a liability. No shirt of battlemail would turn aside the blows from a rampaging Lava Demon, or blunt the spears of a Lightning Elemental after all.

“Ok, you have a point,” she said, returning the battlemail to its chest. Why carry something that heavy if you weren’t going to need it she asked herself.

***

The trip to the observing base was faster than the trip to their new home had been. They didn’t so much fly with the wind and race past it and forge their own path through the sky.

Even so, by the time they arrived, there were tents set up and several scrying bowls receiving their last enchantments.

“Ok, they should have the observation gnats in range of the inn within the next fifteen minutes,” Jyl said. “I want you both to look over the maps we have of this location and start working out where their observation teams would be hiding. When you think you’ve got an idea of where to start checking, work with Glyra, she’s the seer I’m assigning to you.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Glyra said and gave the two Faen kits a small bow.

Glyra was a human woman who wore the traditional gauze eye wrap of a seer.

“You can see?” Kai asked, noticing that Glyra had the eye wrap pushed up onto her forehead.

“Yeah, scrying trances are easier when you’re not being bombarded by stimuli from your locale surroundings. That’s why we wear these.” Glyra said pointing at the eye wrap. “But otherwise we can see just fine.”

“What about the seer’s who are blind though?” Lipa asked.

“Well, not all blind people can master scrying magic. The ones that have the knack for it though need to be careful like the rest of us. Exerting too much effort on scrying magic can send your vision to really strange places.”

“For now let’s focus on scrying the areas around the inn,” Jyl said, and laid out a series of documents on the table in front of them.

The design of the maps was strange to Kai’s eyes. Everything was so flat. They were showing the space on a mountain but it was drawn as though the mountain had been smashed into the thickness of the paper the map depicting it was drawn on.

Proper maps had multi-dimensional notations, as any subsurface dweller could tell you. Without that you couldn’t be certain of what sight lines there were, or what might lie below you.

“This is terrifying,” Lipa said.

“What’s wrong?” Glyra asked.

“I think I understand what I’m seeing here. The space above this whole area is open isn’t it?” Lipa asked.

“There is some tree cover, but the inn is centered in a fairly large clearing,” Glyra said.

“They could be anywhere then,” Lipa said. “There are observation points almost everywhere around the inn.”

Kai saw what she was saying. There was so much space, minus the tree cover that had a clear view of the inn. She followed Lipa’s mental leap with one of her own though.

“It’s not that bad,” she said. “Remember that’s all air above what’s shown here. No one can hide anywhere above the tree line.”

“What if they’re flying and invisible though?” Lipa asked.

“Flying isn’t going to help them,” Glyra said. “There’s a rainstorm that’s blown over the mountain and brought heavy cloud cover with it. If they’re anywhere beyond a hundred yards or so from the inne they’re going to have a very hard time seeing anything that happens there.”

“What if they use scrying like we’re doing?” Lipa asked.

“Leave that to me,” Glyra said. “There’s a resonance that far sensing spells give off. As seers, we try to minimize that as much as possible normally because it clouds the images and sounds we receive, but in a situation like this it’s exceptionally important.”

“Because it can give away your position?” Kai asked.

“That and more,” Glyra said. “Hearing another seer’s scrying spells can tell you a lot about them, including their actual position and degree of magical proficiency. If you’re really good, you can even corrupt or edit the information their spell is returning to them.”

“The observation gnats have made it to the inn,” Jyl said to everyone in the tent, which included three other groups like Lipa, Kai and Glyra. “We know they’re somewhere around the inn, waiting for us. Find them without letting them find us.”

“Try here,” Lipa said, pointing to a spot on the map that seemed worthless to Kai.

Glyra slipped the eye wraps down to cover her vision and sank into a light trance. The bowl of clear water in front of her went cloud and then glowed with light, revealing the details collected from the eyes of the observation gnats.

The little bugs flew along, passing by the burned remains of the mountaintop inn and heading towards an empty edge of the field the inn sat in.

“Turn around there,” Lipa said, and the view shifted to look back at the inn.

The change in perspective also revealed a sharp drop off that was hidden by the rise of the field. Viewed from the angle Lipa had chosen it looked like the perfect spot for an observation post. Close enough to see and hear exactly what was going on, far enough that there was no danger of being accidentally exposed and with enough cover that, if a fight did begin, the people observing would be well protected for at least a few seconds. Long enough for a Shadowfolk assassin to teleport away to safety.

“It’s a good spot,” Glyra said.

“Good but not definitely where they’re hiding,” Kai said.

“You can’t see through their invisibility can you?” Lipa asked.

“No, that would require a form of counter magic I’m not versed in,” Glyra said.

“Maybe we don’t need counter magic,” Lipa said.

“What do you mean?” Glyra asked.

“You have more than one observation gnat in that area right?”

“Yes, this image is coming from three of them,” Glyra said.

“Take one and fly it through the space just over the ridge. It should see something different if it bumps into an invisible person or passes through an invisibility field,” Lipa said.

That was a wonderful idea. And an effective one. And it was precisely the wrong thing to do.

The observation gnat didn’t combust, or explode, it just fitzed away, the magic that held it together imploding on contact with the Shadowfolks’ invisibility spell.

Unfortunately for all concerned, the invisibility spell itself also fizzled, just slightly, in response to the gnats magic. It wasn’t much of a spark, but it was enough to give the spirits in the region something to play with.

The Shadowfolk observers didn’t know that the spirits had been taught to unravel invisibility spells, or that they’d been able to practice on other ones earlier that day. They didn’t know that the spirits were bored without the usual bustle of workers and travelers and had nothing better to do than gorge of stray spells they found in their domain.

Kai was shocked to see the two Shadowfolk standing exactly where Lipa had suggested looking for them, but the shock was replaced with concern when the two disappeared an instant later.

“What happened?” Jyl shouted.

“One of the observation gnats hit their invisibility spell,” Glyra said. “It’s my fault.”

“An observation gnat couldn’t reveal them like that,” Pelay said. “There’s another force at work here.”

“We need to get in there then,” Jyl said and was off.

Pelay followed her, the two taking to the sky on their own in a mad dash to find anything at the site of the inn’s destruction that would lead them to the missing princess.

“I’m sorry,” Lipa said.

“This one’s not on you,” Glyra said. “The gnats are mine to control. Guardian Pelay was right though. The gnats shouldn’t have reacted like that.”

“I just lost mine!” one of the other seers said.

“Your what?” Glyra asked.

“My gnats are gone,” he said.

“Mine too,” another seer said.

“That’s not possible,” Glyra said. “Unless…”

Kai saw her turn back to her bowl and set the water churning for a second. Glyra whipped her head up as she pulled the eye wrap from her head.

“They’re here!” she said. “The Shadowfolk. Or they will be soon.”

“How is that possible?” one of the seer’s asked.

“They followed the echoes back from the gnats,” Glyra said before blocking to her left with an unused tent pole that was leaning against a wall near her.

The sword stroke seemed to follow a long moment after the block, but Kai knew her perception of time was off by a few ticks.

Adrenaline was surging through her.

And then so was a knife.

The Shadowfolk assassin tried to take both Kai and Lipa down in a single hit from each of his weapon but there was a crackle of fading magic that preceded his attacks that gave each of the Faen kits enough warning to move away from the blow aimed in their direction. Not far enough away to avoid injury entirely but a cut on the arm was a lot better than a stab through the heart in Kai’s view.

The fight was a blue of motion and, a moment later, she was behind a desk with a badly wounded leg.

The assassin came up over the desk, intent on finishing of Kai, but he miscalculated.

The first blow Lipa took was worse than Kai’s. It was a shoulder wound but one that was bad enough to render the arm in question useless. Lipa had two things left though. The first was her other arm and the second was a Fight or Flight response that was pegged into the “Murder” end of the dial at seeing Kai’s blood spilled.

A lot of people confuse the Faen for a cat species. They have plenty of cat-like characteristics, but where they differ is in how they kill. Cats use their fangs. They tear out the throat of their prey, or cripple them and pull them apart. They’re savage as befits their status as animals.

Faen are different. They’re efficient.

Kai wouldn’t have guessed that Lipa was capable of punching directly through somone’s body with her claws, but a splatter of Shadowfolk blood and a fatal gurgle from the assassin proved her wrong.

Lipa’roon wasn’t sure she liked her new home. The all concealing shadows of the deep caves weren’t living up to their name.

“It’s a strange instinct for the young to flee from their parents once they settle in a new place, isn’t it?” Pelay, the junior Queen’s Guardian, asked.

“I can’t say I’ve observed it in any other species,” Jyl, the senior Queen’s Guardian, said. “Given that it’s a behavior that reached the point of instinct though, it can’t be that strange however it looks to us. If it was, the Faen wouldn’t have survived adopting it.”

The two hadn’t managed to find Lipa’roon’s exact hiding spot but the fact that they’d located the tiny cavern she’d secured was disconcerting. Lipa was the cleverest kit of her pack. She should have been the last one discovered but from what she could hear she was probably going to be the first.

“I’m kind of glad we’re not on their bad side,” Pelay said. “I knew she’s here but her heart beat and breathing are so faint it’s like they’re an echo from a week ago.”

“My elvish pride is reassured by that,” Jyl said.

“How so?” Pelay asked.

“I grew up hearing so much babble about how our senses are sharper than anyone else’s, especially humans,” Jyl said. “I’m supposed to be horribly embarrassed if someone else is able hear something that escapes by my ears.”

“You don’t sound upset about it though?”

“I’ve made some questionable choices, and not gotten away from all of them scott free,” Jyl said. “I think I hear a little better than the average human, and not quite as a good as most dwarves, but you know what? My life is still just fine.”

She paused in her inspection of the room and turned her back to Lipa. It was a perfect ambush position, except Lipa wasn’t hunting elves. Without moving or breathing, she catalogued her escape options. There were two that relied on pure speed. Those were a bad bet against Pact Knights. There were three others that relied on a surprise attack and capitalizing on the confusion that followed. Those were a worse bet against Pact Knights, so Lipa stayed where she was and suppressed a growl of frustration.

“I’m hoping I can avoid those sort of choices,” Pelay said. “I don’t know how well I’d deal with losing the awareness of what’s around me.”

“It’s not quite like that,” Jyl said. “Awareness of more of a mental state than a physical one. If anything I’m probably more aware now than I used to be.”

“Because of the hearing damage?” Pelay asked. “Your other senses increased to compensate for what you lost?”

“No, I don’t think it works that way,” Jyl said. “I don’t see better now, or taste better. It’s more a matter that in our line of work we wind up practicing attentiveness more than people who lead safer more sensible lives.”

“So you make better use of the senses that you have left?” Pelay asked.

“Sort of. What I’ve noticed is that being aware is often more a matter of being able to ignore things than perceive them,” Jyl moved away but she left behind a small handful of dust that spread out in the area immediately in front of Lipa.

“But how can you notice something if you can’t perceive it?” Pelay asked.

“There’s a few options,” Jyl said. “First, ignoring things is a skill. You have to be able to edit out the unimportant stuff so that you can focus on the critical bits. Like if you’re chasing someone through a crowd, you need to be able to filter out the mass of people around you and keep a clear view on the person you’re pursuing. If you try to take in everything you’ll be overwhelmed and lose track of the quarry you’re focused on.

“But aren’t you easier to ambush in that state?” Pelay asked.

“It depends,” Jyl said. “If you’re hyper-focused on your target, then yes, you won’t see anyone else lining up for an attack. In practice though, as I’ve learned to ignore things, I’ve found that I can spend less effort keeping track of the person I’m following and my mind is able to call any other notable details to my attention. Like I’ll see a flash of a blue robe from the person I’m following, so that I’ll know I’m on the right track, but I’ll also notice the glint of sunlight off steel in a place where steel shouldn’t be. That’s how you catch arrows by the way. You need to be aware of them before they’re fired, unless you’re already transformed and you’re ramped up on speed enough to swat them out of air before they reach you.”

“I have a hard time doing that,” Pelay said. “I mean I can’t really turn things off, I have to work to focus through them.”

“Go with that then,” Jyl said. “We each manage processing the world differently. It’s why we group up in teams. If we were all the same, then Lipa’roon would be able to hide from us with no problem.”

“Instead of already being caught you mean?” Pelay asked.

“Yeah, do you think we should let her in on it?”

“We do need to get going shortly,” Pelay said.

Lipa knew they were bluffing. The shadows here were ten shades too pale for proper hiding, but neither one of them had so much as blinked when they passed her. The senior Guardian had left a handful of dust but she’d dropped plenty of those around the room in other spots already.

“She’s going to try to get out of here you know?” Jyl said.

“If the two of us can’t catch the one of her, then we might have to stay back and let someone else tackle the mission from the Queen.” Pelay said.

“That is not a thrilling idea,” Jyl said. “Undine’s going to be laughing at us for weeks as it is.”

“I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have done better,” Pelay said.

“I’m pretty sure he won’t even bother trying to suggest that. He won’t have to.”

“Fortunately, Lipa’s not going to get away.”

There was a burning need in Lipa’s fangs to prove the two Guardians wrong. It baked away the resolve she had and gnawed her patience to the bone. All she had to do was stay still.

Or wait for them to make a mistake.

It was a small one, just a subtle turn Pelay made, but it left open a path that Lipa knew she was fast enough to exploit.

Her legs coiled without conscious thought directing them and she leapt, flying soundlessly through the air to land first on the wall outside the room and then just around the bend in the corridor that would take her out of view. No light would touch her as she sailed softer than an arrow to her destination.

At least that was how things were supposed to go.

Three inches into her flight, the dust on the ground before her kicked up and exploded in a shower of sparks. The flare of light blinded her eyes and the stench of smoke forced a terrible sneeze from her nose.

Lipa didn’t so much land on the wall as crash into it, and she didn’t make it around the corner in a large part because she wasn’t sure which direction anything around was as she scrambled to regain her senses..

“Ouch, that had to sting,” Pelay said.

“Let’s help her up,” Jyl said, and Lipa felt strong hands lift her to her feet.

She sneezed again.

“Sorry about that,” Jyl said. “Here, take a whiff of this.”

The Guardian placed something under Lipa’s nose that was soothing and cool. There was a minty fragrance to it, but all Lipa could notice was how much easier it was to breath. After holding her breath for minutes the sweet air tasted better than any meal could have.

“What do you want?” Lipa asked after a few moments spent regaining her breath. She was sore from her badly landed jump but nothing was broken and the pain wouldn’t linger. Not the pain in her arms and legs at least. The wound to her pride felt far too deep to ever heal properly.

“We need your help,” Jyl said.

“You’ve been nominated as the best Sneak your Faen clan has to offer,” Pelay said.

Lipa blinked. She was sure she hadn’t heard that correctly.

“What do you mean?” she asked, not quite as angry as she’d been but still far from pleased.

“We brought your clan here to keep you safe from the Shadowfolk,” Jyl said. “But our princess has run afoul of them.”

“Intentionally we believe,” Pelay said.

“We need someone who can hide as well as the Shadowfolk can,” Jyl said.

“And from all of the reports we got, that would be you.” Pelay said.

“What do you need someone who can hide for?” Lipa asked.

“They can hide better than I can,” Jyl said. “And by most standards, I’m pretty damn good at hiding.”

“The Shadowfolk have their magics, but even without that, they’re frighteningly skillful,” Pelay said. “We found evidence that suggests they infiltrated the giant’s airie at the top of the mountain without using any spells at all.”

“That’s where you come in,” Jyl said. “We need someone who knows how to hide and thinks along path that I don’t.”

“But I can’t find the Shadowfolk,” Lipa said. “I couldn’t even hide from you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jyl asked. “We never found you after all. You revealed yourself.”

“You said you already had me though!”

“And we did, but that was only because we knew generally where you were and that you weren’t inclined to kill us,” Jyl said. “With the Shadowfolk, if they think we’re getting close to them and we don’t know exactly where they are, they’ll vanish. Or try to kill us. Or both.”

“Yeah, but they can’t kill you, you’re Pact Knights,” Lipa said.

“That gives us an edge, but if a fight breaks out it will be very hard to ensure that they don’t wind up dead,” Jyl said.

“Is that a problem? They’re evil aren’t they?” Lipa asked.

“They’re hostile, it’s not quite the same thing,” Jyl said. “Also we need them alive for questioning. A pile of Shadowfolk corpses won’t make us any safer and they won’t be able to tell us anything about where our princess has gone.”

“I thought I heard the Shadowfolk were trying to kill all of us,” Lipa said. “What makes you think Princess Iana isn’t dead? She’s not a Pact Knight right?”

“She’s still alive,” Jyl said. “The Queen can discern that much from some enchantments that were placed on the princess. We just don’t know where she is.”

“The Shadowfolk may not know either, but we can’t be sure of that until we catch one for the Lady Dae,” Pelay said.

“So how are we going to catch one?” Lipa asked.

“We’re going to turn one of their traps back against then,” Jyl said. “But we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Ok, and what will I have to do?”

“Find the best hiding places that you can,” Jyl said.

“That’s not hard.”

“Well, you’ll only have a map and a scrying bowl to work with,” Jyl said.

“Ok, that makes it a bit more difficult. I don’t understand, why though? Why can’t I look for the spots in person?”

“The Shadowfolk have no idea where your family has gone and we’re going to keep it like that,” Jyl said.

“Also, even with Pact spirits we don’t want to engage them if we don’t have to, so we are absolutely not letting them get anywhere near you,” Pelay said.

“Oh.” Lipa felt a little saddened by that. Visions of daring battles against her families deadly enemies had been swimming in her head. They were scary to contemplate but if she could come home with a souvenir like a Shadowfolk skin? She would be renowned forever.

Of course most people who went hunting enemies like the Shadowfolk didn’t come back, so being somewhere safe didn’t seem like an entirely horrible thing either.

“Ok, I’ll do it,” she said. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Jyl asked.

“You’ve got to let me bring my friend Kai’artha. She will kill me in my sleep if I have an adventure like this without her!”