“How much time do we have?”

It was the same question everyone had asked when she gave them the news. The one doing the asking this time was Nuille, looking as if she’d gone without sleep for a week. Which, quite possibly, she had.

“Days, at most,” said Saskia, speaking through their oracle voice link. “We’ll get there as fast as we can, but you should prepare for the worst.”

“We’ll inform the others,” said Garrain. “It is most fortunate that you have found a solution just in time.”

“A possible solution,” said Saskia.

Thus far, she had only worked her arlium bending magic in a dream, and in a limited fashion at that. There was no telling if it would work as well in the real world, or scale up enough to affect the huge volume of arlium churning beneath Wengarlen.

“It will have to be enough,” said Garrain. “We’ll do everything we can to support your endeavour upon your arrival.”

Saskia returned her attention to Ruhildi’s viewpoint. Her friend was riding full-tilt back across the Deadlands to the little strip of habitable land near the trunk, where the rest of them waited with the dragon. She was still days out. Days in which anything could happen back on Ciendil. Days that would feel like an eternity, with nothing to do but wait.

Except…that wasn’t quite true, was it? There was something she could do besides twiddle her thumbs. Maybe.

Looking through Garrain’s eyes, she scanned his map for…

There they were!

She popped into the heads of a small band of frostlings near the edge of New Inglomar. They dashed madly around a clearing, chased by a laughing young dwarf boy. Thorric was up to his usual mischief.

“Hey little guys,” she told the creatures through her voice link. Immediately, they halted in their tracks, ears twitching. Thorric also stopped suddenly, and eyed his pets with a curious expression.

“Who are you talking to?” he asked them.

That was an odd choice of words. Why would he think they were talking to anyone? One of them scratched something in the ice at his feet: a crude stick figure with an arched back and long arms. A troll.

A huge smile spread across Thorric’s face. “Aunty Sashki! I miss you so! When are you coming home?”

Okay, this was weird. Did he know she was looking through their eyes?

“Soon, child,” she said. “Very soon. I miss you too.” Obviously he couldn’t hear her, because she was speaking into the adorribles’ ears, not his. But she said it anyway because…just because.

One of the critters let out a chitter and waggled her paws.

Thorric voiced a happy chirrup of his own. “I can’t wait to see you again!” He began to run around in circles; something he often did when he was excited.

Watching the performance in befuddled bemusement, Saskia spoke to her furry vassals. “I wish I could say this was just a social call, but I have something to ask of you…”

If the Wengarlen rift had already blown, there would be nothing the furry little ice-makers could do to stop it. Just standing within a few hundred metres of a massive stream of molten arlium was enough to make anyone spontaneously combust—even frostlings. But with a buffer of argnum separating them from the inferno, it might be a different story. Argnum was the substrate of the world tree, equivalent to its ‘wood,’ but much harder and more heat-resistant than any ordinary wood. The thin crust of argnum beneath Wengarlen wouldn’t hold for long, and it wouldn’t completely block out the arlium’s heat, but it was a much better insulator than open air. If enough of the frostlings gathered around and beneath the town, their ice magic might just be enough to slow the imminent eruption.

A delay was all she could hope for, and perhaps all she needed. Once she arrived, she could work her own magic to provide a more permanent solution.

Speaking to one frostling tribe was the same as speaking to them all—and their queen, back on Grongarg. While not a true hive mind by some definitions—individuals retained some autonomy from the collective—the frostlings shared a kind of world-spanning telepathic link, rather like her own connection to her vassals, that let them share information instantaneously.

Across Dwallondorn, bands of the tiny critters headed for tunnels and crevices that would take them to the surface. There were three tribes in this cavern alone, and they were just the tip of an iceberg that extended throughout Ciendil—and beyond. Now, as untold legions of her tiny vassals migrated toward Wengarlen, she found she had access to an unbroken chain of eyes leading all the way up to the cave where she’d first encountered their kind. The one with the deepworm trapped in ice.

Their colossal prey had been reduced to a hollowed out shell—now used as a nest housing countless frostling families. Seeing this, she felt a strange kinship to the little murderlings. They weren’t the only ones to have chewed through the insides of a giant worm.

Spinning her consciousness down the mountainside and across the sea, she watched as thousands of tiny tempests descended from the rooftop of the Pillar of Strife on streams of super-chilled air. She had half a mind to demand that they turn back. Those tempests were barely more than babies, and they’d be putting themselves in terrible danger by venturing anywhere near the site of the rift. But their presence could also mean the difference between success or failure. And if Wengarlen did blow up, they stood a better chance of getting out in time than anyone else did.

There would be no averting this catastrophe without risk. Her vassals had decided to give it their all. She’d have to respect that, and follow their example.

As the hours passed, she flicked between the various control groups she’d set up, keeping a close eye on their progress. It would be days before the furthest ones arrived at their destinations, but the first wave would be there any minute now.

Wengarlen, once the thriving home of the druids, and the most powerful enclave in southern Ciendil, had seen better days. The trees and buildings on the fringes of the town were buried under metres of snow and ash. At its centre, the ground had sagged into a deep crater, from which billowed a cloud of steam.

She’d expected the elves to have deserted the place long ago, but to her surprise, she found a number of stubborn survivors huddled near the crater’s edge, skirting the narrow boundary between heat and cold. There were several mer here too, and what appeared to be an elven beastmaster with far too many eyes. He and the mer weren’t Wengarlen’s original inhabitants, but refugees who had taken shelter near one of the few sources of warmth on the surface of Ciendil.

That same source of warmth would be their undoing within a matter of days, if she didn’t get there in time.

Unsurprisingly, these elves and mer were none too happy at the arrival of hordes of frostlings at their doorstep. Shouting, they nocked arrows and levelled spears at the approaching critters. The beastmaster’s pet spidery thing clacked its mandibles as he strode forward, putting himself between the other residents and the frostling ‘invaders.’

“Better back off a bit,” she told her vassals.

Chittering, they hopped away from the agitated elves and mer, and waited at a safe distance. They wouldn’t do much good until many more of their kind arrived, in any case—enough to cover the entire surface of the crater.

“Our people in Wengarlen yet live?” said Garrain, when she told them the news. He sounded conflicted. The elves who had remained behind in his former home—either by choice, or because he’d refused to bring them back to New Inglomar—hadn’t exactly held him in high regard. Nor he, them.

“Some alvari do,” said Saskia. “I suspect most of them are refugees. Ironically, the heat from the impending eruption has made Wengarlen one of the few remaining habitable places on the surface. Until it blows and they all die horribly.”

“I’ll fly ahead, and let them know of the danger that awaits them if they stay,” said Nuille. “And that the frostlings are here to help. Perhaps they’ll join us in New Inglomar after this is over.”

“Be safe, my light,” said Garrain. “I will continue on foot, as fast as I am able.”

“You be safer, ardonis. I’ll come back for you.” Nuille shifted into bird form, and flapped away.

“I don’t know why you think you need to be there,” Saskia told Garrain. “Nuille can be a messenger, and heal anyone who gets injured, but most of your magic is for killing things, and you can’t kill molten arlium.”

“Where she goes, I go,” said Garrain. “Wengarlen was my home. And we can’t be certain you won’t have need of me. What if the assassin should strike at a critical moment when you can’t defend yourself?”

“What if the assassin should strike New Inglomar, or the refugees, while you’re away?” she countered.

“That is a risk,” he admitted. “I wish it were possible to be in two places at once, but it’s not. I choose—”

“Oh it is,” she interrupted.

“What?”

“It is possible to be in two places at once. But never mind that.”

He sighed. “As I was saying, I choose to go where the fate of Ciendil will be decided, even if it is my fate to be consumed by the conflagration.”

“Ugh, don’t be such a downer! There’ll be no conflagration. I won’t allow it.”

Feeling far less confident than her words may have led him to believe, Saskia turned her attention to her vassals gathering in the tunnels beneath Wengarlen. There were several spots where they could get close to the molten arlium without being directly exposed to its intense heat. From there, they directed their magic through hundreds of metres of solid argnum to the liquid inferno raging on the other side. It was already having a small, but noticeable effect, cooling the outer layer to a near-solid form that no longer wanted to defy gravity. Hopefully, this would ease the pressure against the thin crust holding it back from the surface.

All this time spent looking through her vassals’ eyes meant very little of her attention was focussed on the needs of her own body. Feeling more vegetable than troll right now, she was terrible company for her companions, waiting with her at the northernmost tip of the Deadlands. Sometimes, she’d be briefly pulled back to herself by clawed hands kneading her shoulders. Rover Dog was the best masseuse. Sadly, she was too busy and distracted for it to go any further than that.

The same could not be said for Kveld and Zarie. Even with her mind half a world away, she could hear them. Yeesh, they were like rabbits! Well, at least they seemed to have found a pleasant way to pass the time. She was happy for them.

Nuille touched down in Wengarlen after a full day in flight. She nearly startled the beastmaster out of his spidery skin when she shifted back into elf form and stood before him, shivering in the snow. Recovering his wits quickly, he pulled off his thick fur cloak and threw it down to her.

“Thank you,” she said, donning the cloak. “It’s fucking freezing up here.”

“Deus blind me!” he said. “What strange magic did I just see?”

“That’s not important,” said Nuille. “Gather everyone in the Circle. I bring dire tidings…”

As Saskia had suspected, only a few of the current occupants of Wengarlen were among its original inhabitants. The rest came from nearby villages, or, in the case of the beastmaster—whose name was Vannach—much further north, across the sea. It took some convincing, but the survivors reluctantly agreed to follow Nuille back to the Prime Passage. All except Vannach.

“The frostlings I’ll leave be, but I’m staying,” he insisted. “I will not flee like a craven cur.”

“Do as you please,” said Nuille. “But if you get in their way, they’ll freeze your blood and devour you.”

Vannach wisely allowed the frostlings—now numbering in the thousands—to approach unobstructed. They swarmed down into the crater, leaving trails of ice in their wake. Like their brethren in the tunnels below, they directed their ice magic through layers of earth and rock and argnum, to the molten arlium pushing up against the crust. More and more of them gathered, until the crater looked like a near-solid mass of white fur. Others hovered overhead, driving icy winds down into the crater. They were going all in on this. If she didn’t get there in time…

No. She would get get there in time. The alternative was unthinkable.

Another day passed. Saskia couldn’t sleep, so anxious was she to get back to Ciendil. Not even Rover Dog could do much to ease her tension, though not for lack of trying.

She watched as Nuille delivered the elven and mer refugees to the relative safety of the Prime Passage. From there, she took flight once more. Meeting up with Garrain, she bore him to the surface in her kitty form. It was nowhere near as fast as her tiny bird form, but considerably faster than walking.

The ground beneath the elven city was shaking almost constantly now. Despite their best efforts, the frostlings couldn’t hold back the tide for much longer.

By the time Ruhildi finally rode in on her skeletal horse, Saskia was about ready to burst. Bounding on four limbs behind her friend were a pack of zombie trolls. One was encased in a suit of heat-resistant armour. The rest carried on their backs a supply of duanum she could use to make more.

“I came as fast as I could, Sashki,” said Ruhildi. “Would that these useless piles of bones could run as fast as you.”

“Well I’ll be glad if I can run half as fast as them when I’m dead,” said Saskia. “Load up the dragon and let’s get going.”

Within minutes, they were off, bourne up the trunk by a surge of wind and lightning. The journey to Ciendil and back along the branch to Wengarlen would take several days.

They were still at least half a day out from Wengarlen when a deep fissure opened up inside the crater. In a single instant, hundreds of frostlings plunged to their doom. A huge tongue of flame licked up into the sky.

Garrain and Nuille, arriving on the scene, reeled back in horror.

It was happening. There was no time. She needed to—

She was.

Expanding. Unfolding. She exploded outward, her not-so-metaphorical tentacles reaching for the crater walls.

Blazing white light, brighter than the sun, rose up to meet her.

A single instant was all she had. And in that instant, she acted. Just as her late, not-so-great father had taught her, she focussed her mind on the mountain of arlium surging through the widening crack beneath her, and tugged at it just so. There was no time for subtlety or restraint. She siphoned up every drop of essence she could latch onto, sending it surging into the between.

To get to the between, it had to go through her.

Calburn had specifically told her not to do this, just days earlier. Not such a vast quantity of essence. Not all of it at once. But she had no choice. It was either let everyone burn, or…

Incandescent agony ripped through her, pure and all-consuming. It lasted only an instant.

And then…stillness. Silence. Blessed cold.

Saskia opened her eyes. The fact that she still had eyes to open came as somewhat of a surprise to her. A pile of agitated furballs wriggled against her smooth, unblemished shell. She felt no pain; only the soothing chill of their touch. All in all, she was feeling remarkably good for one who was supposed to have exploded.

She could only think of one reason why she hadn’t.

Instead of drawing all that essence through her troll body, she’d drawn it through the eldritch thing she’d briefly become during her emergence—at a moment when her connection to the between was at its strongest. Her undermind could absorb any volume of essence without breaking a sweat. And in the moment of her extrusion into this world, so could she.

Her eldritch form had weathered the exploding worldseed that had destroyed half of Spindle. A brief excess of essence was nothing compared to that.

Turning her attention downward, she saw that her desperate gambit had paid off. The ground had stopped shaking. There were no flames. And her oracle sight told her that the deep shaft the dwarves had hollowed out beneath them was now filled not with liquid fire, but the solid amber of crystallised arlium.

“Sash…ki?” The voice was soft, uncertain.

“I’m okay, Ruhildi. I—” Saskia froze. Her friend hadn’t spoken through her oracle link. The voice came from directly behind her.

She spun about, heart thrumming in her chest. Ruhildi stood there, as naked as she herself was.

Saskia’s own mouth dropped open. “How did you get here? And if you’re here, then what about the…? Oh. Oh no.”

With rising panic, she turned her attention to her vassals back in the bone dragon, where she and Ruhildi had been sitting, just moments earlier.

Kveld cast a frantic gaze around the cabin. The world outside lurched and spun. Zarie, seated beside him, clutched at his hand and mouthed a silent prayer. The dragon tumbled in the air, its wings flopping limply at its sides. No longer animated by Ruhildi’s magic, it had become a dead assemblage of bone and metal, its uncontrolled descent slowed only a little by the force of the gale battering it from below.

“Aquatic squishy can land us safely,” said Rover Dog, crouched behind them, gripping the dragon’s ribs on either side of the cabin. He looked to be enjoying himself immensely.

“Not by myself.” Zarie closed her eyes, drew in a series of short, sharp breaths, and opened them again. “Frostlings, I…need your help.”

Nine tiny white faces peeked out of the surrounding compartments, blinking and yawning.

“I cannot keep the wings steady on my own,” said Zarie. “But with your help, we can do it, yes?”

The adorribles sat blinking at her for a long moment. Then the five young tempests hopped down from their perch and slithered through the gaps between the dragon’s ribs. Four of them scurried out onto the wings. One tempest took up position at each wingtip, while another clung to each humerus. The last grabbed hold of the wide metal fins at the tip of the tail. The dragon seemed to have been de-electrified, thank dogs.

Each of the critters summoned a series of focussed gusts, directing the dragon’s limbs just so. The wings spread, the tail straightened, and the dragon’s wild plunge began to level off into a more gentle descent. What they were doing couldn’t be called flying. It could barely even be called a controlled landing. But when they finally came to a juddering halt in a nearby mountain valley, neither the dragon nor its occupants suffered any notable damage.

Saskia let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. “I think they’re safe.”

“Aye, no thanks to me,” said Ruhildi.

“It’s not your fault,” Saskia assured her. “I had no idea that when I teleported, I’d bring you along for the ride. Not that I had much choice.”

Ruhildi frowned. “That was…fair odd.”

“Understatement of the century. Is this going to happen every time I teleport, from now on? That could be…good or bad.” Saskia looked down at the seething mass of white fur spread out across the crater floor, and the tempests descending from the sky. “I can’t even begin to thank you enough, little guys. You pulled our butts from the fire. Twice. And at great cost.”

She eyed the great gash in the ground, now shining with the amber glow of crystallised arlium. How many of them had died in there?

Ruhildi looked at the arlium with a hungry expression.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Saskia. “That cap of solid arlium is all that stands between us and another eruption.”

Come to think of it, would the superheated arlium coursing its way through Ciendil’s veins slowly melt its way through the solid stuff? If Fireflower Isle was anything to go by, the answer was no. But she didn’t know enough about arlium heat exchange to bet everyone’s lives on that.

“By all that is sacred, what is this?” The voice originated from the beastmaster, Vannach, who sat astride his spider mount on the crater rim. His six eyes bulged. He raised his bow. “Demon! Necrourg—aargh!”

Vannach landed hard on his back, pinned to the ground by a large cat.

“There will be none of that,” said Nuille, after shifting back into her elven form. “Raise your bow against them again, and I’ll feed you your own balls. Are we clear?” When he didn’t reply immediately, her hand went low, and twisted. “Are we clear?”

“Yes!” he gasped.

“Good.” She offered him a radiant smile. “There are several alvessi back in New Inglomar who would be most displeased with me if I spoiled such a…healthy specimen.”

The scowl faded from Vannach’s face. “I will…consider joining your colony.”

“Wise decision,” said Nuille. “I suggest you head that way now.”

He glanced between Nuille and Saskia. Then he gave an elven shrug, and lead his pet spider away.

“Saskia!” said Garrain, coming up behind them. “What happened? How did you get here?”

“Surprise!” said Saskia. “Crisis averted. Wengarlen is safe. Well, what’s left of it is. Well, as safe as any other place on this frozen wasteland. We still have to deal with the Elcianor rift. And I’m afraid we’ll have to travel the slow way. Our…transportation is stranded in the mountains to the north, until Ruhildi can get to it.”

While they quickly filled each other in on the latest happenings, the frostlings slowly dispersed, leaving just a few stragglers clinging to her legs and feet like fluffy slippers. She barely even felt the cold of their touch, but she was glad they didn’t try to climb higher because…well, she was naked, and that would be weird.

Then a nude undead dwarf hopped on her back and shouted, “Giddy-up, Sashki!”

Saskia gave a resigned sigh. No matter how hard she tried to evade it, the weird was going to follow her wherever she went on this crazy world.

She and Nuille carried their respective riders north, to a coastal village where they might find a ship to take them across the sea.

They found a suitable ship moored in the docks. At Saskia’s request, a flock of frostling tempests descended from the sky to speed their passage. To the north, the air was a choking haze of ash and smoke, punctuated by the occasional falling chunk of hot arlium. Without needing to be prompted, the tempests formed a barrier of air around them, fending off the rain of fire, and creating a bubble of somewhat-breathable air.

They sailed northeast, aiming for the site in the mountains where the dragon had landed. Without the duanum armour Ruhildi had brought back from the Deadlands, going anywhere near the volcano would be suicide. That armour waited inside the dragon, along with their friends.

They were just an hour or two away from their destination when she received an urgent ping from Kveld.

“Saskia, we…have a wee bit of a…”

Surveying the scene through his eyes, Saskia felt her stomach drop. Her friends had hunkered down behind a high wall of rock Kveld had hastily erected in front of them. But an instant later, the wall was gone, reduced to a molten slag by a trio of concussive blasts. Letting out an audible grunt of effort, Kveld raised another wall in its place, and then another behind that, as they hurriedly backed up.

Her stomach tightened further at the sight of a single enemy marker on their shared map, dark violet in colour, advancing slowly toward them.

Chosen.

Why weren’t they attacking him? He was out there in the open. They didn’t even need to step out from behind the wall for their spells to hit him.

“You need to keep the pressure on!” said Saskia. “Don’t give him the chance to attack! If Garrain and Nuille could take out a Chosen, I know you can.”

“We can’t,” said Kveld. “’Tis Baldreg.”

“What?” The words didn’t seem to compute in her head. Baldreg was alive…? And a Chosen!?

Then Zarie peeked out from behind the wall, and Saskia caught a glimpse of their foe. Pale eyes gleamed on an awfully familiar beardless face. The short, stout figure unleashed another barrage of shots from his triple crossbow. Zarie ducked back behind the wall just in time to avoid being blown up by the ensuing explosions.

There was no mistaking their enemy’s identity. And the realisation utterly terrified her. If Abellion could make a Chosen out of Baldreg, who had made it his life’s mission to fight the Arbordeus…

Suddenly, Zarie fell gasping into the snow. A dark stain spread from a shallow cut across her leg. Cursing, Kveld wheeled on her attacker—only to blink in confusion, as he realised there was no-one there.

“It’s the assassin!” cried Saskia, drawing a startled glance from Garrain.

Her view from Kveld’s eyes jerked to the side. He pressed a gauntletted finger to his cheek, and it came away bloody. Then he slumped forward onto Zarie. Through his fading sight, she caught a glimpse of Rover Dog, also lying on the ground.

Poison. That was the only way the assassin could have felled them so easily.

Desperately, Saskia willed herself to teleport to her friends. It was no use. Only days had passed since the last time she’d used that ability. Not enough time to recharge it.

Footsteps crunched in the snow. A voice sounded in her ears; one that sent another chill running down her spine.

“We know you’re listening, demon. Our mutual friends and the mer appear to have taken a wee nap. No matter. It is you we wish to speak to. We invite you to meet us beside the bones of your precious dracken. Come alone.”

Saskia halted in her tracks, standing in silent shock. It wasn’t the words that shook her to the core—though they were bad enough. It was the voice that spoke them. She knew that voice.

“You ken what will happen if you refuse our invitation,” said Freygi. “We expect to see you within six bells. Do not make us wait.”