Albert looked across the table at the gathered magi. The table was set up to seat eight, but only four chairs were currently occupied, his own included. The seat next to his own was empty, and the side of the table to his right was completely unoccupied. Kio and Willow were seated across from him, while Miriam sat alone to his left. He frowned as he looked at the empty seat next to hers. “Still no sign of Jarak?” Miriam shook her head. “He was last spotted entering an alleyway near the social services district. Investigations of the alleyway turned up three scorched patches of cobble, some metal slag and a fine layer of ashes, but no sign of Jarak. I’ve put out some discrete requests to search for him, but we can’t announce he’s missing without risking panic and unrest, and… Well, if that boy doesn’t want to be found…” “He probably won’t be. And Mora?” “Still just sitting in the walled garden. The healers have no idea what’s happened to her, let alone how to reverse it, and she refuses to speak to a counsellor.” “Aren’t you a counsellor?” “Technically, yes, but I haven’t been practicing since I became magus. But if you want my professional opinion, rusty as it is… Mora’s a strong girl. She’ll get through this. She just needs time.” “I see…” “Look, I know we’re all worried about them and everything…” Kio interjected. “…but can we try to focus on matters we can actually resolve, here? What’s the status of the cage project?” Albert frowned. “Not seeing a lot of progress, I’m afraid. The attack caused a lot of damage to the lab, and the reconstruction efforts and the increased security measures are putting a lot of strain on their already ridiculous budget. Add to that the absence of their team leader, and… Well.” “I guess Awa still refuses to leave Kaia’s side, then?” “It’s perfectly understandable.” Miriam said placatingly. “They have gotten very close, and Awa was the one who asked Kaia to act as security for the cage project. And given the state Kaia is in now…” “Is she also refusing to speak to counsellors?” Miriam huffed. “I wish she was refusing to speak to counsellors. That would mean she was at least interacting with people at all. But so far, the only one who’s managed to get any kind of reaction out of the girl is Awa. To anyone else, she might as well be catatonic.” Willow sighed loudly, somewhat theatrically slumping back against his chair. “This is getting us nowhere. What about the attack itself. What have we found out about that?” Jarak was sitting cross-legged in the basement of an abandoned building, surrounded by empty water bottles and field ration wrappers. He was covered in dirt and old sweat, and there were traces of dried blood around his nose, mouth and eyes. But he didn’t care about any of that. There was someone out there trying to hurt his friends, and he was going to make them go away. When he had let his fire out to make his attackers disappear, he had felt a very particular kind of heat. Specifically, heat moving through bronze of a very specific shape. All three attackers had worn bronze pendants of the exact same shape, and the feeling of hot bronze in that very specific shape had burned itself into Jarak’s memory. It was the key. It was how he was going to find the people trying to hurt his friends. The city was full of warmth. The warmth of ovens and foundries. The warmth of sunlight and candles. The warmth of cookpots and teacups. And of course the warmth of people. That last one was easy. People were warm in a different way than anything else. A way that was soft and magical and familiar. Jarak could sense every single one of the fifteen million people in the city at every moment. But it wasn’t people he needed to find now. So he concentrated, letting his magic flood every part of his being, immersing himself in the fire until he could sense all the warmth in the entire city all at once. He felt blood starting to pool around his right eye once again as the magic strained his body, but he didn’t care. He had two good eyes and a whole lot of blood, so losing a bit of either didn’t seem like a big deal to him. Not if it let him find what he was looking for. And finally, he found it. The unique warmth of molten bronze, pouring into a mould of a very familiar shape. Focusing in on the area around the bronze, he realized it was in the artisans’ district. The third shop on the south side of Goldsmith Road. With a small grin, Jarak stood up and pulled on a heavy cloak with a big leather hood that covered his face in shadows. He had a visit to make. Mora was sitting in the inner garden, idly tossing a small stone up into the air and catching it again. The stone made a harsh clicking sound every time it landed on the hard, stony skin of her palm. She looked down at her arm, the white skin shimmering in rainbow hues where the afternoon sun struck it. She felt slow and heavy, and fine motor control like tossing the pebble into the air and catching it again was a chore to accomplish. With a sigh she pressed a finger against the skin of her arm. It felt tough and hard to her, but still yielded to pressure. But to anyone else, it was as hard as a stone, her entire body as rigid and unyielding as a statue. Needless to say, this had rather put a halt to any kind of intimate relations with the crew at the quarry site. Which was a real shame. Their free and open approach to physical intimacy was one of the things she missed most about her time with the quarry workers. After the incident, Mora had quickly decided to return to the capital. She felt she might be needed here, and working at the quarry just wasn’t as satisfying any more. She hadn’t just abandoned the crew, of course. With her new ability to freely manipulate quatrite, she had easily cut enough quatrite from the quarry walls in a matter of days to satisfy demand for the mineral for months to come. Of course, the quarry workers would have to split and shape the huge blocks she’d cut out to match the orders that came in, but cutting the blocks from the wall in the first place was the hardest part of the job, and the workers could easily handle the rest without her assistance. But now that she was here in the capital, Mora found that she just couldn’t motivate herself to do… Well, anything much, honestly. She felt… Different. Wrong. Not quite human any more. Miriam had tried to help her adjust, but Mora wasn’t sure she wanted to adjust. She wasn’t sure what she wanted any more… With a deep sigh, Mora closed her hand over the stone and squeezed, easily reducing the granite pebble to gravel and sand. Kaia was lying in bed, just staring at the ceiling. Some counsellor or other was talking to her. Or talking at her, perhaps. The words sounded kind and gentle, but Kaia couldn’t really hear them. All she could hear was the sound of First river cleaving through meat and bone as easily as air, and the dull, wet thump of the bisected woman’s body hitting the wet floor. She felt someone taking her hand, and looked up to see Awa’s worried face looking down at her. “Kaia, please. Talk to us.” “I… I just…” The image of the woman’s body flashed before her eyes, blood and bone and ruined organs gleaming in the cold light of the laboratory. Again she heard the soft sound of First River sliding through flesh. The clang of the blade hitting the floor after slipping from her hand. Bile rose in her throat, and she bent double, clutching at her stomach. But she had nothing left to throw up. They’d had her on a nutrient drip ever since the incident, since she couldn’t keep anything down. Awa watched as Kaia bent double, shuddering and clutching at her stomach as she retched. Turning away to face the counsellor, she saw the middle-aged woman shake her head sadly. Stifling a sniffle, Awa raised her arm to wipe her tears on her sleeve. “I didn’t exactly get a good look at them during the attack.” Kio said. “And they both fell off their mounts somewhere over the border woods. The canopy there is far too dense to perform an aerial search before winter, so I doubt we’ll be able to find their bodies any time soon, if at all. But at least one of them was wearing some sort of pendant or amulet. I saw it gleaming in the sun.” Albert nodded thoughtfully. “I investigated their paper trail. They worked as couriers in Sunhome for years, but they only requested a transfer to Starhome very recently. This job was their first courier run out of the Starhome roost.” “What about the woman at the quarry?” “Kyla Vale. She first sought employment at that quarry about two weeks after Mora arrived there. Her head and neck were badly mangled by the impact of the stone that killed her, but the workers did find a bronze pendant some way away from her body. A pendant identical to those worn by the saboteur at the lab and the traitorous maid.” “They must have been planning this attack for months, at the very least.” Willow remarked. “Since shortly after the cage project began, if I’m any judge.” Albert agreed. “And what about the attack in the alley, if that is what happened?” “Investigators have studied the metal slag remaining at the site. Most of it seems to come from weapons grade steel, but the second most abundant type of slag is from bronze.” “I suppose we can safely assume this was a coordinated assault orchestrated by a single group or organization.” Kio posited. “So it would seem.” Albert agreed with a deep frown. “As if the twilight beasts weren’t bad enough. We clearly have a human enemy to contend with as well.” The goldsmith looked up from his work as the hooded man entered his shop. He couldn’t quite make out the man’s face, but he wasn’t terribly worried. After all, who would have the audacity to rob a store in broad daylight? No this, he decided, was probably just a regular customer whose skin was sensitive to sunlight. “Welcome, sir. How can I help you today?” Jarak didn’t say anything as he let a little bit of his fire escape him. Not much. To the goldsmith, it would feel like little more than a warm breeze. But it was just enough to let Jarak feel the warmth flow through a familiarly shaped piece of bronze beneath the goldsmith’s tunic. “Well you see…” Jarak began as he walked up to the counter. “I recently saw some of your work, and…” The goldsmith was completely unprepared to defend himself as Jarak leapt over the counter, hands outstretched. Jarak’s hood flew back as he bore them both to the ground, landing atop the goldsmith with his hands grasping the man’s neck, putting just enough pressure on his throat to keep him from screaming without making it impossible for him to breathe. The goldsmith brought up his hands to pull at his attacker’s arms, and could only stare in horror as his own arms were wreathed up to the elbow in eye-searingly bright white flames and disintegrated into powdery ash. “I’m very interested in those bronze amulets you’ve been making.” Jarak continued cheerfully. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me all about them?” “I… would never… betray… my brothers… and sisters…” The goldsmith croaked out. “Oh really? Well then, let’s put that to the test, shall we?” The goldsmith felt his skin starting to char and smoulder. He would have screamed, but all he managed was a strangled wheeze. Mora had climbed to the highest open-topped tower of the castle. She wasn’t really sure why. She wasn’t sure of much of anything, anymore. Well, that wasn’t quite true. She was sure of the things she missed. She missed the warm softness of a loving embrace. She missed the gentle feeling of the breeze on her skin. She missed feeling warm and real and human and really, really alive. Now, she felt like stone. Hard and cold and lifeless. She saw the city spreading out beneath her. She felt the city spreading out beneath her. Every stone. Every brick. Every plot of soil or pile of gravel. She felt them so much clearer than she ever had before. It was like the entire city was inside her head, and she couldn’t get it to stop. Sometimes she forgot where the city ended and she began. Forgot the difference between herself and the stone. She turned around and looked up at the endless blue sky above her. It felt so open. So free. So far from all the stone and earth endlessly barraging her mind with its presence. She felt the stone of the tower beneath her feet. Felt the sheer drop behind her. Without even really thinking about what she was doing, she allowed herself to fall backwards. Kaia was asleep. She slept often, since the incident, but never well, and never for very long. Awa watched her toss and turn with a worried frown. Every time Kaia’s nightmares made her whimper or twitch, Awa felt it like a stab in her heart. With trembling, hesitant fingers, she reached out to take a hold of Kaia’s hand. “It’s all right, Kaia. I’m here for you. It’s all going to be OK.” Kaia whimpered once more, but Awa thought she seemed slightly calmer now. “Don’t you worry. I’m here, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” The sound of her voice did seem to calm Kaia’s restless sleep just a little, but Awa felt rather at a loss for what to say. Casting her eyes about, she spotted the water magic books on Kaia’s nightstand. Picking up one of the large tomes with her free hand, Awa awkwardly managed to flip to the first page without letting go of Kaia’s hand. “Chapter One: The basic effects of water magic on cell division. It has long been known to healers that the usage of water magic can encourage or speed up the healing of open wounds…” As she continued to read out loud, Kaia’s fitful sleep gradually grew calmer. The gathered magi looked at the pendant lying in the middle of the table. The polished bronze gleamed in the light, outlining every edge and contour of the carefully sculpted representation of a gauntleted fist. On the back of the fist was an embossed symbol consisting of a circle with a four-pointed star symbol at the top of the circle and a sun symbol at the bottom. “So, has anyone seen this design before?” Albert asked. “I recognize the circle thing on the back of the fist.” Miriam replied. “It’s the seal of the Duskwatchers. They’re a sect of goddess worshippers who worship both goddesses. Ever since the twilight started spawning beasts, they’ve turned into something of a doomsday cult. But I’ve never seen their seal represented on the back of a fist like this.” Albert sighed. “The college of historians and the chief of police both told me much the same thing.” “It could be some sort of breakaway sect.” Willow suggested. “I mean, it’s not like it’s hard to see how members of a doomsday cult could be radicalized like that.” “That’s true, but this attack was too well planned to be the work of crazed fanatics. Someone has to be in charge of this sect or whatever it is. Someone with enough resources and influence to arrange a coordinated assault like this.” Kio snorted. “Well, discussing it isn’t going to solve anything. We need more information before we can do anything about it. Tell the police and the military to be on the lookout for this symbol. That’s all we can really do at the moment.” Kio stood up from his chair, causing Albert to raise an eyebrow. “And where are you going, exactly?” “I’m going to go talk some sense into the Godslayer’s daughter. You people keep talking in circles if that’s what you want to do, but I’m going to make myself useful.” Jarak breathed through a piece of cloth he had tied over his mouth and nose as he peered around the room through a pair of safety goggles. Flame and heat didn’t bother him, but ash and smoke could clog up his lungs and sting his eyes as much as it would for anyone else. And there was a lot of smoke and ash in the underground chamber. There had been over a hundred people down here when he made his entrance. A hundred people who were very keen on killing him or, failing that, making sure there wasn’t anything useful left for him to find here. Faced with such odds, Jarak hadn’t been able to keep both himself and the evidence they were trying to destroy safe while also leaving any of them alive. Maybe if there were fewer off them, he could have managed it, but in this situation, he simply couldn’t do all three at once. And given how long it had taken him to get the goldsmith to tell him about this location, he had decided that the people here were the least important things to keep intact. So now he was trudging through charred corpses and drifts of ash as he peered at the scorched room. The fist-shaped bronze altar at the front of the chamber was half-melted and listed slightly to the side, but Jarak was more interested in the desk and filing cabinets in the corner. The people here had managed to toss a bunch of the papers on the desk into the fire before he could boil the blood in their veins, but a lot of it still remained, and the filing cabinets were completely untouched. Rifling through the mass of papers left behind, Jarak realized with a frown that most of it was written in some kind of code, and the few things that weren’t were still much too complicated for him to figure out. With a shrug, he fashioned the mostly intact robes of one of the people he had boiled from the inside into a crude sack and started gathering up as much of the papers as he could. He had killed the bad people who wanted to hurt his friends. The other magi could do all the complicated thinking bits. Mora stared up at the sky from the Mora-shaped depression she had imprinted into the soil of the garden. Hitting the ground had been a bit jarring, sure, but it hadn’t really hurt at all. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, really. She was heavy now, sure, but she was nowhere near as heavy as the stone block that had landed on her head, and that hadn’t hurt either. Feeling more than a little out of sorts, she reached out a hand longingly towards the evening sky. Around her, little pebbled started shooting off into the sky, propelled by her earth magic, only to rain down on her a few seconds later. Frowning thoughtfully, she tried to feel for the stone skin surrounding her body. It was a bit awkward, like trying to get a good look at your own nose, but after a while she managed to get a good grasp on her stony skin with her magic. With a bit of effort, she started to levitate her own skin, pulling herself off the ground to hang suspended a few meters above it. Mora smiled as she turned her body to and fro in the air, spinning and twisting in the grip of her own magic. Thoughtfully, she looked skywards once more. It seemed to beckon her. Call her to a place with no stone or earth but that encasing her own body. With a laugh, Mora did something no earth mage had ever thought possible. She flew. Kaia was awake again, but really, Awa’s conversation with her was no less one sided than it had been while Kaia was asleep. The girl just starred at the wall with unfocused eyes, seeing nothing but the images in her own head. “Let me talk to her.” Awa spun around with a yelp. “Kio! You scared the daylights out of me! I didn’t hear you come in.” “Not my fault you aren’t paying attention. Now, let me talk to Kaia.” “Do you think you can help? The counsellors haven’t been able to do anything.” “The counsellors aren’t soldiers. They’ve never killed anyone.” “Kaia isn’t a soldier either.” “I know. That’s the problem. Now get out.” “What? Why can’t I stay?” “Because I need to be alone with her for this to work.” “But I…” “Do you want her to get better or not?” “Of course I do, but…” “Then get out and let me help. If it makes you feel any better, you can stand outside the door. Just make sure you don’t let anyone barge in on us.” “Well, all right. If you’re sure…” “I’m sure. Now get!” Awa threw one last uncertain glance at Kaia before heading out and closing the door behind her. Kio took a deep breath, and then summoned up a circulating air current that would disrupt any sound escaping the room. It was a pretty complicated trick, and it was far from perfect, but with the thick stone walls and heavy doors of the castle, it should be enough to keep Awa from listening in. Turning to Kaia, he looked at her empty gaze for a moment before setting his face into a frown and slapping her hard on the cheek. “Ow! What… What the hell?!” “Stop moping about like a useless little twerp! So you killed someone. Big fucking deal. We’re fighting for our survival here. People are going to die! Get over it, you big baby!” “But I… I just… I cut straight through her! Right through, like a fucking training post! All that blood! All the… the… oh god…” Kaia began to retch again, but Kio just slapped her on the other cheek, stopping her in her tracks. “Grow up! I’m sorry you’re traumatized or whatever, but we don’t have time to deal with you self-destructing on us. Look, when we first summoned you, I thought you were going to be useless, but it turns out I was wrong. We need you if we’re going to win this war. But right now? Right now you’re worse than useless. Because while you’re sitting here wallowing in self-pity, you’re making Awa useless. And sure, we need you, but we need Awa even more. She’s a weird little nerd, sure, but she’s also a genius, and without that genius on our side, we are all roundly fucked, do you understand me?” “But…” “No! No buts. If you don’t pull yourself together and stop acting like a human doorstop, we are going to fail, and then we are all going to die. I’m going to die. You’re going to die. Awa is going to die!” Kaia’s head snapped up, and her eyes narrowed. “No! That will not happen!” “Hate to break it to you sweetheart, but if you don’t get your shit together, that will absolutely happen.” Kaia grabbed the sword leaning against her nightstand and pulled the blade from its sheath, the blade gleaming in the lamplight as frost started to form curling patterns across the silvery surface. “It won’t happen! I won’t let it!” “And how many people would you kill to make sure it doesn’t happen?” Kaia glared at him, her mind full of something hard and sharp and full of anger and water magic. “How many are there?” Kio grinned. Now this was a Kaia that would be useful. Kel Warder was a broken man. Plummeting hundreds of feet through the air would do that to a person. He had fallen through the thick canopy of the forest and landed feet first in a stagnant pond. At that speed, hitting the surface of the water hadn’t been much different from hitting the ground. He had broken both legs, one of them in two places. He had fractured his hip bone and broken two ribs. He had broken his left arm and dislocated his left shoulder. But he hadn’t died. And his spirit had not broken. He had pulled himself from the boggy waters with his one good arm. He had dragged himself across half a mile of forest with one arm to find an inhabited dwelling. He had fended off foxes and badgers and crows who were ever so eager to see him turn into carrion armed with nothing but a stick of wood. But none of that was the hardest thing he had to do. The hardest thing he had to do was to throw his pendant into the pond where he started his journey. If the magi had survived the attack and found the pendants of their attackers, being found with the holy symbol would be a death sentence. And he wasn’t in any state to try to conceal his possessions. The woodcutter whose house he had discovered had taken him to the nearest village, and the village healer had in turn sent him off to the nearest city so he could get treated in a proper hospital. The doctors and healers in the hospital had told him he wouldn’t be able to walk again for months, if ever. Two weeks later, Kel had snuck out of the hospital, hobbling away with the aid of a pair of stolen crutches. Using most of what little money he carried, he purchased travelling provisions and all the innocuous little alchemical reagents that, when carefully mixed and prepared, could be turned into a very big explosion. Because Kel Warder was a broken man, but his will remained unbroken. The mission had failed, but the cause remained. With steel in his gaze and determination in his heart, Kel began his slow, hobbling journey towards the front lines and the mobile garrisons.