“When the Tower fell, what remained was not silence, but the echo of a broken nightmare.”
— Eleanor Fairfax, founder of the Fairfax dynasty
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Figures bearing golden banners scrambled behind the walls, releasing streams of gold into the atmosphere as their wings beat against the air of defeat.
Flames roared in the sky to the north and south.
They crackled like a hundred quills scratching in a church scriptorium.
Walls of ice groaned and rose, cutting off the deadwood soldiers.
The first wave struck. Steam and smoke spat into the air.
Nymphs charged through breaks in the ice.
Exhaustion clawed at me, but I shoved it aside. The King of Winter was treachery incarnate. He wasn’t being manipulated—this was part of his role, or a scheme. Likely both. The Queen had enacted my version of Zeno’s Paradox. The King had retaliated. Their intervention balanced out. However, the tide of the battle favoured the King. I couldn’t let either of them win. Not if I wanted to uphold my oaths.
The acrid tang of burning wood snapped me out of my thoughts.
My eyes flitted over a figure in the distance. A figure who vanished before I could learn more.
Wants to fight worthy opponents.
“How to fix, how to fix!” Yvette’s voice trembled as she voiced her distress. “It broke everything! I was almost done. Perfect. Not my fault. Not this time!”
A lance of guilt stabbed through my heart. Yvette’s hands fluttered like birds. Silver and gold sigils surged from her fingertips as she did her best to contain the budding catastrophe. My mouth ran dry as the ground lurched around her. Each stumble of hers felt like a fracture in my own resolve.
Light flared as I focused and healed Roland while he staggered through the wreckage. Splintered palisades framed his path like broken ribs. Should I transform back? No. Not yet. Not until I had a plan.
The clouds churned in the sky. Silver lightning stabbed upward, thrumming in a continuous pulse of static.
Ice projectiles slammed into Aine’s walls, then shattered, their jagged edges crumbling to mist.
The ground quaked under Winter’s inexorable advance.
Walls of ice groaned and rose again, protecting the deadwood soldiers.
Steam hissed as the heat of the assault met the unyielding cold.
“The Tyrant played us for fools,” Roland growled, reaching my left flank.
I spared him a glance before returning my attention to the Tyrant’s line.
Should I risk striking now?
“I’ll name my next horse ‘Triumphant the Second,’” I muttered. “Let’s see if it can conquer Calernia. Pandora’s the only one that seems to be winning around here.”
As frustrating as I found it, Yvette hadn’t given the signal to attack Kairos yet. Fair enough. She had enough on her plate. The Tyrant had probably tied the slaves’ safety to the ritual. It’d fit his kind of awful.
“Heavens forfend,” Roland exhaled, “I’d rather you don’t. I wonder what part we shall all play in this performance?”
A third bolt of nothingness connected to the sky. The ominous swirling sphere of silver and gold at the heart of the spell didn’t bode well, either. Should I risk attacking Helike’s ruler anyhow? Summer’s sun might’ve disrupted any traps in the working. But if I was wrong…
The thought stuck in my throat as the battlefield roared.
The wooden walls groaned behind us, buckling under the impact of ice.
Unicorn-mounted Winter Fae darted and spun above Aine. Their silver lances clashed with the golden blades of Summer’s riders. The Tyrant’s army had marched closer. His crossbowmen fired into the chaos. Bolts arced, shredding banners and piercing golden flesh. Immortals screamed as their flags tore. Life seemed to leech from them as the fabric frayed.
The army of Winter encroached.
No frozen fortifications rose this time.
No streaks of flames cut loose in retaliation.
“Thinking,” I muttered, picking up from where we’d left off.
Could I force the King to move and tilt the scales towards Summer? Summer had no heavy hitters left except the Queen. Winter had Larat. At least, it did in theory.
“Maybe there’s still a chance for someone to rise from the ashes,” Roland mused.
I glanced at the ruined palace. Larat hadn’t moved from near the broken throne. I doubted he would any time soon. Even if he did… He’d bested Sulia, but I’d fought two dragons. I’d bet I’d win in a direct fight.
“Do you think it fits?” I asked.
Roland had done his part. Yvette’s story unfolded, just not for combat. The Tyrant’s army couldn’t touch me. Well, nobody could touch me. I could shut the entire battlefield down except for the King and Queen.
“Consider the story,” Roland pressed. “The hour is late, the sun is gone, and hope is all but lost.”
What if Aine fell? Could I risk it? No. I didn’t know the stakes. One fact remained true: I needed the balance of power close enough to force an agreement. Attacking Winter’s army would do nothing. The King didn’t care about his soldiers.
“We’ll save it for an emergency,” I drawled.
I ignored the flat stare Roland gave me and thought further. Had I missed anything critical? The cloaked figure hadn’t struck. They’d had plenty of chances at everyone except the rulers of Summer and Winter. That narrowed the list. My initial bet of the Ranger or the Warlock remained unchanged.
“We need to move, Taylor,” Roland urged. “Indecision kills faster than any spell.”
I glanced his way. Gaunt faced, he gripped the hilt of his dagger so tight that his knuckles had gone white. He was also correct. Regardless, our mystery figure wouldn’t make their move until the monarchs clashed. They’d wait for an opening and strike with their chosen ally’s momentum behind them. That gave them the edge they needed. Perhaps I should…
“I’ve got an idea,” I blurted. “I’ll force the King’s hand.”
My lack of weight didn’t matter against ordinary soldiers. They were hopelessly outclassed. As brutal as it was: their contribution only counted when all major participants were removed from the conflict.
“Is this wise, Taylor?” Roland inquired.
The Tyrant would betray whoever our mystery figure was, then skew the confrontation towards one side or the other. I’d have to tilt it towards even again.
“Wise? No,” I admitted. “Necessary? Yes”
“Is it worth the cost?” his voice grated as he asked.
“I think it is,” I confirmed. “I’ll trust you to anchor me if I’m wrong.”
The Rogue Sorcerer examined me for a few moments before giving a reluctant nod.
“Fate cuts its teeth on choices like these,” he sighed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t devour us whole.”
“Keep watch,” I ordered. “My mind will be elsewhere.”
“I will protect Yvette,” he agreed. “She’s our best hope should all else fail.”
I transformed as our conversation ended. The shimmering dragon collapsed inward, leaving me human again. My second ghost faded. Light streamed from me as I wove one of the simplest miracles.
A barrier.
Not just any barrier.
This one was vast, expanding in a gleaming dome to encase all of Aine.
The shield glimmered under the impact of countless projectiles. Bolts, sorceries, and hail struck in an unending symphony. Each impact rang against my protection like a church bell. The barrier held, but the vibrations reverberated through me. Thousands of tiny teeth gnawing at the edges of my mind. A buzzing storm of angry insects.
The first crack came fast. A tiny fissure, barely perceptible, rippled across the resplendent barrier. My mind stretched thin as ethereal fingers sealed it shut.
Then another appeared.
And another.
Each fracture came faster than the last, webbing through the dome like frost over glass. My focus strained as my hands wove invisible threads to mend the tears.
Futile.
All futile.
Three more erupted for every one I repaired.
It was like juggling knives blindfolded, each blade aiming for my resolve. My breaths came sharp and shallow as I struggled to prevent the collapse. The pressure of the dome drove slivers of ice deeper into my mind with every passing second.
I wouldn’t drop it. Couldn’t drop it. I only needed to force the King of Winter to take the field.
Even if I felt like I might shatter before the shield did.
Pressure bloomed at the base of my skull.
A sharp and insistent sensation.
I staggered.
T.t.too much.
The throb strained against the limits of what I could endure. At least, so long as I pretended to be human. A person would’ve crumbled already. But I wasn’t a person, was I? I set aside my trepidation even as my nails carved lines into my palms.
An angel’s whisper slowed me for a moment. A reminder of my own decision to maintain the illusion of humanity. I acknowledged their concern, then chose to press onward. Hesitating would cost us too much. Mental fatigue? A luxury I couldn’t afford. I folded it up and threw it away.
Later, Taylor. You can cry over your tattered humanity when this is over. For now, be something else.
The agony dulled as I dismissed it, fading into a faint echo beneath the roar of duty. Nothing existed but me, the warmth of the angels, and my faith in the Gods Above. Everything else dulled.
I buried my thoughts in the shield.
No, I did more than maintain the shield.
I became the shield.
A strike rippled in the north. And so I smoothed it away. Another fracture to the south. The dome reformed. The world outside my aegis blurred into chaos: a feeble blizzard hurled by a Winter duke, ice lances crashing against my barrier, and the thunder of unicorn riders’ hooves.
The shield quaked under the relentless assault. A jagged tear ripped through the side as gold and silver lightning arced from near where my body lay face first in the soil. The hole vanished under my touch an instant later.
I can actually do this.
None of the conflict mattered. None of it could affect me.
A host of Winter Fae charged my body where it lay, crumpled, outside the barrier. Their leader — a count, judging by his presence — bore down upon my body with the all the weight of an empty prophecy. The air crackled with their icy malevolence.
Pointless. All of it. I wasn’t there. Not truly. My existence was the shield.
And yet, I needed to protect my friends.
The fingers of my body twitched in the dirt. Light rushed outwards from me in a searing arc. An arc as brilliant as it was merciless. The count and his vanguard disintegrated in an instant, their forms sublimating into steam. The scent of scorched air and vaporized snow lingered. They had little protection in conflict when they were so hopelessly outmatched.
Distantly, I noted as Roland darted towards where I lay. He heaved my body onto his shoulder with a grunt and staggered towards the ritual. It shimmered ahead, the spiralling interior wavering like an unsteady flame. Gold and silver threads twisted in patterns which refused to settle. Roland pushed towards it, then set me down as close as he dared.
I let him.
My fight was above Aine.
Larat descended the shattered palace like a spectre. He strolled towards the battlefield with a palm upon the pommel of his blade. His shadow flickered strangely against the icy ground, bending and twisting as though shaped by an unseen flame. I spared him only a moment’s attention before ignoring him. I sensed no outward hostility towards us. Gods willing, he’d fight by my side against the Tyrant.
Another strike from a Winter ballista.
Another repair.
A second flying band of fae skirted the edge of the ritual. I honed my attention to a fine edge as Roland exchanged flames with frost, only for my efforts to prove unnecessary. The assailants were swallowed by a violent, golden discharge.
Nothing existed beyond the shield.
The sublimity of the experience suffused every part of me. Was this what it felt like to be an angel? To shed everything except purpose. To be able to reach out and change the world with but a touch. The barrier gleamed as I toiled. Layer upon layer of Light reinforced until even the dukes failed to find purchase.
And still, the army of Winter advanced.
They didn’t care. They didn’t need to.
Summer’s forces were trapped inside my aegis. They couldn’t fight while I held the dome. Their fiery banners, their spears, their rage against Winter. All meaningless, so long as I maintained the shield.
I felt his arrival before I saw it.
Frost clawed at the air.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
The clouds folded in on themselves like curtains drawn against the sun.
The ground cracked under the weight of ice.
Arcadia held its breath as a man wearing a grey wood crown that wept blood-red sap strolled past the Tyrant’s army onto the western front. His every step seemed to freeze the air, the weight of his arrival pressing down upon the battlefield.
“Time shatters, but stillness endures,” the King of Winter said. “Eternity is the edge no shield can blunt.”
Lightning crackled against my shield as the King of Winter raised his left palm to the sky, while holding his right behind his back.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
“Even broken threads can be rewoven,” roared the thunder, “if chaos serves as the needle.”
The dome shattered.
Red, green, gold.
Colours.
A wash of colours.
The sky?
I shook my head.
The ground, the ritual, the palisade I leaned against.
It all rushed back to me as my perspective shifted.
All at once; I felt as if I’d been dipped in cold water.
I examined the battlefield for alterations. Yvette flitted around the ritual site. A wild creature haunted the back of her eyes, and she twitched every so often while she worked. A fresh barrage of fiery projectiles crested the walls and slammed against newly risen fortifications of frost. The King of Winter waved a languid hand and all the flames snuffed out.
“Yvette’s finished disentangling the slaves from Kairos’s ritual,” Roland informed me.
He leaned beside me with a dagger clutched tight between his fingers. He looked like he’d aged a decade in an hour.
I must’ve missed the signal.
“Then we go after the Tyrant,” I surmised.
A familiar dais hid in the coat tails of the King of Winter. The Tyrant. Of course. He wouldn’t miss this for the world. I stared at the gaunt faces hauling the gaudy platform. Why were the slaves carrying it? An ugly emotion swelled within me.
“How many times can you break yourself, Taylor, before there’s nothing left to rebuild?” Roland whispered.
A lance of Light departed from my palm. It crossed a quarter distance to the horizon, only to vanish at a single glance from Winter’s monarch. I swallowed a scowl.
Message received. For now.
“As many as I need to,” I sighed. “I learn to burn a little brighter every time I fall.”
What story is this?
Time. The King of Winter had started with an assertion about time. He could be continuing with his prior extension of my story, or he could be establishing a larger plot of his own.
“It helps when you don’t turn to ash in the attempt,” Roland complained under his breath.
Perhaps he played the role of someone like Chronos from Greek mythology? Attempting to manipulate the King of Winter with stories remained a terminally stupid idea, but at least I could attempt to glimpse the shape of his larger scheme.
“And yet here we stand opposed once more,” the wind whispered from atop the walls of Aine.
The earth trembled under the weight of unnatural fury. A tangle of living vines surged from beneath the walls, passing around Helike’s camp and snapping through the frozen deadwood soldiers like brittle reeds. Frosted limbs and splinters flew as the forces of Winter were hurled back towards the horizon in a cascade of raw, primal power.
A lone figure — and some villainous attaches — stood undisturbed on an island of tranquillity.
A symphony of primal violence lapped at the frozen shores.
“Waging both the same and a different war,” Winter’s monarch sang a mournful tune.
Vines shrivelled, their vibrant green fading to ashen black as frost clawed up their stems. The air turned brittle. Ghostly howls of forgotten souls rose from the frozen expanse. The broken furrows in the earth stilled, ice surging across them in jagged veins, sealing the land beneath a sheet of gleaming death. Aine’s walls buckled under the weight of ice. The sky dimmed overhead as clouds swirled with unnatural fury.
“Another battle,” the Queen of Summer sighed, “they’re all the same. And so the pattern reverts again.”
The broad-shouldered girl stood between the smoking gates of Aine, golden curls dancing around her tanned face. She lifted a yew spear streaked with white that resonated with me towards the clouds. The sky split wide open. My eyes traced the point of the spear. Fire rolled overhead. A thick and slow treacle soup that gradually pushed back the darkness.
Lines of now distant Winter fae perished under the raining inferno. The horizon trembled as elemental forces tore at the land, reshaping valleys into jagged peaks and melting frozen rivers with but a touch. The sky itself seemed to groan under the strain of another repetition of the cyclic clash arguably older than Creation itself.
“Even time stills,” the dark skinned ruler whispered through the hissing of melting frost.
A deafening silence thundered across Arcadia as a metaphoric tornado of shadows swirled forwards from the monarch’s fingertips. It churned like a conceptual whirlpool of nothingness. A whirlpool devouring everything it touched. Colour bled from the world in threads—red, green, blue, gold. All of it drained into a lifeless grey.
Momentum vanished. The false twister devoured it, leaving a surreal emptiness in its place. Anything it touched froze, caught in an unnatural stasis. A small voice at the back of my mind screamed of danger. It was as if time itself had been suspended.
Causality had once again been severed at the hands of Winter’s king.
“It’s usually the villains who try to play god, princess,” Kairos mocked and blew a kiss at Yvette from behind his father’s coattails. “Why cage a brilliant mind when the world’s begging to be remade?”
I tensed and shifted my attention towards Yvette.
“Tower? No, no!” Yvette talked to herself. “A tower? Wobbly. Wobbly towers are disasters waiting to happen. A bridge, though? Bridges don’t wobble… mostly. Except when they do. Safer. Yes, seems safer. Not a big change. Just tip the tower. Stupid horse. Can’t fail ma. I need to -”
… She ignored his casual taunting as she monologued to herself below her breath.
I stomped down on the temptation to interrupt the working. To remind her of the original goal. Who knew what disaster would unfold if her concentration wavered? All of us relied upon her now. I’d trusted her with this task. Revoking trust at the eleventh hour sounded like an easy path to failure.
My focus switched back towards the Tyrant.
Yvette might ignore him, but I wouldn’t.
How should I head off his relationship gambit? I’m sure he’d find converting Yvette to villainy hilarious. Unlike everyone with a functioning moral compass. Perhaps swap it with a story of an unwilling relationship? Something like Persephone’s Abduction? Then from there into the story of either a rescue or no relationship at all.
“Hey Kairos,” I shouted, “Instead of abducting her, why don’t you come over here and chat with the family?”
Come on, Yvette. Finish your ritual soon.
“Taylor, really,” he scoffed. “What’s the point of brilliance if it’s shackled by the book? Let her soar with me instead, priestess!”
Spotting the Tyrant proved challenging, considering he’d positioned his dais — safely in the lee of the temporal storm — behind the King of Winter. Kairos lounged on his throne with one leg draped over the armrest. He tapped his sceptre against his chin. A slow grin spread across his face.
I’d bet he loves the sound of his own voice.
“I know how that ends,” I retorted, “you offer her the world, then take everything else.”
“You wound me, Taylor,” he laid a palm over his chest. “Betrayal’s your art, not mine. I’m all about freedom from the right kinds of tyrants.”
Of all the… no, don’t entertain his nonsense.
“Try to be more convincing next time,” I countered, my voice drier than the Wasteland.
“I only sting when I’m betrayed first,” Kairos purred. “Don’t act surprised when the tides come in, and you’re still at sea.”
It would be nice if anywhere else had acoustics like these.
“What did I do to deserve this?” I muttered.
“What surprises me is that you think any of us want to drown alongside you, Roland interjected.
“So dramatic,” Kairos sighed. “How about a nice lakeside retreat in Helike?”
I’d bet Helike doesn’t have any lakeside retreats worth visiting.
“I’ve no desire to swim in treacherous waters,” Roland replied, “and I’m not so easily bribed.”
“Oh, Roland, my dear, you wound me,” Kairos chided. “I offer you a new home, and you whine about getting wet.”
All of us stilled as the weight of Summer pressed upon Arcadia. The Queen of Summer stepped beyond the walls and prepared to challenge Winter’s dominion. The flash of a blade stole the next words from her tongue. She turned towards a cloaked figure strolling onto the field and blinked.
“I have no quarrel with you, Lady of the Lake,” the Queen of Summer said, brow creased slightly.
Alarm prickled at my spine as the nothingness spread. I glanced towards Yvette. The ritual hadn’t been completed. I didn’t know what would happen if the King of Winter’s attack struck it. I didn’t want to, either.
“I looked for you, before,” the Calamity said.
“Could you do something about the weather,” I interjected and pointed towards the growing disaster.
A heaviness slammed into me then. A crushing presence coiled around my ribs like a vice. The suffocating awareness of being a small creature caught in the gaze of something vast and hungry. The sensation clawed at my spine, daring me to flinch. I didn’t. I’d faced larger monsters. She was nothing in comparison. The feeling withdrew.
“It’s your mess, kid,” she dismissed me with a shrug.
A stab of fury lanced through me. She didn’t care about all the careful plans she broke, so long as she got her uninterrupted fight. It would likely take all of us — including the Tyrant — to stop the King of Winter’s attack. She’d tied us all up for a chance to fight Summer’s ruler, and Kairos wouldn’t cooperate.
Have faith, Taylor. You can do this. You expected this.
“A fight between us is meaningless,” the Queen said.
A streak of black lightning illuminated Roland’s blade as he swung it upward, cutting through an intangible tendril of shadow. The absence of light crawled along the edge of his weapon as he called upon his Grace. A stretch of greyness surrendered to colour once more. The shift rippled outward, vibrant hues bleeding into the void.
It’s not over yet, Taylor.
“So you had me running through a maze instead,” Ranger snorted. “Cute. No maze here now, though. Not while your seat is contested.”
The blade in Roland’s hands began to glow.
Dim.
Brighter.
Searing.
An incandescent star in the shape of a weapon.
He yelped, then tossed the blade aside. I caught him as his knees buckled. Light flowed from me to him an instant later.
“This strife is unnecessary,” the Queen insisted.
Yvette’s hand darted out and the blade levitated towards her. Her eyes widened as she gripped the Mavii steel. Grey not-light radiated from its edge. The Ranger cast a glance back at us. Her lips raised a fraction, into something between satisfaction and a smirk.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been properly introduced,” the figure said with a laugh, “I am the Ranger. I hunt those worth hunting for. Rejoice, for you qualify.”
The honey-skinned half-elf unsheathed her second sword in one fluid motion. She darted towards the destroyed gates of Aine.
“Desist,” the Queen of Summer said. “Even should you survive this conflict, there are more pressing concerns.”
The Queen spun past a blade with the eerie, weightless grace of a leaf caught in a breeze. Her spear lashed out, its golden tip slicing a faint red line along the Ranger’s arm. A focused intensity stole over the Ranger’s face as she stepped back enough to gather her momentum for another strike.
“Right,” Kairos crowed, “put on a show for the rest of us. Even the strongest pillars-”
The Tyrant heckled the Ranger as she pulled an arrow from her quiver and hurled it at him. A gargoyle caught it between stony jaws.
I glanced at Yvette.
She’ll be fine. I trust her.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. She shook like the light of a candle. Was she laughing or crying?
“Taylor,” Roland’s voice broke my reverie. “You need to repulse this.”
The Ranger surged forward without hesitation. Her twin blades shimmered in the flickering light. A cascade of flames erupted ahead of her, raw and vicious, but she met it head-on. Her swords slashed through the Queen’s conflagration as if it were nothing but mist. The remnants of the effect dissipated in a glittering spray.
“I know,” I replied.
I’ll hold this at bay for as long as you need to win this for us.
My attention drifted away from the battle as my third phantom vanished. I raised another barrier around our group. This time, I acted with extreme care. The barrier enveloped all three of us while being wide enough to avoid disrupting Yvette’s ritual.
The Prince of Nightfall skirted the edge of the void and approached the two combatants.
The greyness pressed closer. It tested the edges of my aegis; much like the mobs tested palace walls during the fall of Aisne. I braced myself for another barrage against my psyche. I expected something akin to when I shielded Aine. A brutal fight where I had to outpace the enemy’s ability to tear holes into my defence.
The actual clash took me by complete surprise.
The creeping catastrophe wasn’t a force I could meet with any miracles I knew. It wasn’t a thing. It was an absence. Not quite the same as the absence demon, but similar. It licked at the edges of my barrier. Winter’s icy grip split and into disparate threads like a hydra the more I contested it. I felt it contest my control over the aegis. A clash of wills between me and Winter’s monarch. I struggled — I don’t know for how long — then faltered. My protections didn’t shatter. They didn’t fall.
They flickered in and out of existence.
It was the moment between falling asleep and waking up.
The time between times.
I imagined if I took a knife and kept dividing something in half forever, what was left at the end would have more significance to it than the creeping numbness that I fought. And it kept extending its domain. Its presence was an anchor on my chest, a scream just on the edge of hearing. I pulled my shield inwards as it wavered, flickering under the malign influence.
I gritted my teeth and pushed more of myself into it.
Innovate strained to find me an answer.
But I knew that I delayed the inevitable.
“There is some irony in a hunter being snared in their own trap,” Larat murmured. “I might sabotage many deals, but this one? Even with my liberty stolen, I''ll savour upholding it.”
I spared a glance towards the fight. Ice snapped and spread in jagged veins beyond my barrier across the battlefield. The one-eyed fae swept forward, a blur of pale steel and shadows. His blade gleamed as it arced towards the Ranger’s eye. Graceful as a swan, she pivoted, her twin swords meeting his single blade with a ringing clash. Sparks flared, soon swallowed by a scorching salvo of fire. The Ranger ducked, narrowly avoiding the flames licking the air above her head.
“Didn’t know you were so eager to donate a second—” The Ranger’s quip cut short as her words were stolen by a sudden stumble.
“Rend!” Kairos flourished his ivory sceptre with a laugh from his position on the golden throne.
The Ranger staggered, her leg buckling as a crimson slash carved across it. She snarled, turning the fall into a roll. She raised her blade to carve through another wall of encroaching flame. The fire parted, but her balance faltered. Larat’s next swing came too fast, too precise. She tried to counter, but his weapon drove past her guard, slicing deep into her eye.
A spear wreathed in flame arced through the chaos. It struck the Ranger with a sickening impact, piercing clean through her heart. Blood sprayed, painting the air in fleeting crimson arcs before vanishing into the all consuming greyness.
“A fire stolen is a fire burned twice as bright,” Larat mused as he pulled an eye from her falling corpse and pushed it into his own head.
The temporal anomaly surged.
My barrier fragmented.
Winter passed my defence a heartbeat later.
The Tyrant opened his mouth from behind the King of Winter.
The Queen of Summer raised her spear and sent plumes of fire his way. Kairos laughed from his seat, even as barriers of frost stayed his end.
And then, cutting through the suffocating dread, came the enthusiastic voice I’d been waiting for.
“I was wrong! I was wrong!” Yvette''s laughter rang out, manic and triumphant. “Doesn''t matter what it is. Only how you look at it. Like, like mirrors, maybe? Or like the first word of a sentence… how it''s only the first word because the rest of the sentence follows. Everything hinges on context. Even whether a sentence is true or false. Isn''t that funny? It''s perfect.”
No, it’s not funny!
My breath froze in my chest.
“There is more to strength than fire or steel,” the Queen of Summer agreed as flames leaped again towards Winter’s working.
Yvette waved a hand as if swatting away a gnat, and the air popped. Something felt different about her. As if she’d stepped into new shoes, or become comfortable with old ones. Sigils — dozens, perhaps hundreds — snapped into existence around the steel platform. They formed intricate patterns that seared themselves into the surrounding grey.
“But that’s okay,” Yvette said as she reached into her pocket dimension and tossed an hourglass into the roiling mess. “Pandora showed me accidents are inevitable,” she glared at the horse. “It doesn’t matter if I’m involved. What matters is that we keep trying. That all of us keep trying.”
The nothingness struck her wall of sorcery like a tidal wave meeting stone. It rippled and twisted upwards like a shoal of fish under assault by sharks. Then it folded inwards, drawn into the vortex forming at the ritual’s centre.
“Ergh,” Yvette scowled while her fingers danced. “Enough with this already. Bypassing Light with Winter that way is clever, but nothing I can’t put right.”
She brushed aside a stray golden lock with movements so delicate I almost wanted it strangle her. It was as though the weight of the world pressing in didn’t concern her in the slightest. Her emerald eyes burned with a jubilation so fierce it bordered on insanity. An excitement I hadn’t seen since soon after we first met. She practically vibrated with energy, bouncing on the balls of her feet like a child on the brink of a great discovery.
Then she turned and levelled an absolutely insolent grin at the King of Winter.
“You’re not a God,” she declared. “Not even the palest imitation of one.”
The King of Winter returned her grin with a foxlike grin of his own.
“I’ve seen what they can do,” Yvette said. “I’ve also seen what you can do. And there’s nothing you can do that together we can’t Replicate.”
The dagger blazed in Yvette’s hands. She didn’t hesitate. She hurled it—point-first—into the heart of the ritual. Time seemed to slow. I could feel the grains of a metaphoric hourglass fall upwards as the blade approached.
Gold and silver spiralled skywards, twisting like a serpent as it climbed toward the heavens. A brilliant helix cast its light across the battlefield much like the rising sun, turning the grey horizon into a veritable riot of colours.
The
dagger
struck.
Arcadia
broke.