The leaf-eared Chosen strode forward, eyes shining through the slits in his pale mask. His claymore whirled, cleaving through armour and flesh and stone, carving great channels into Spindle’s walls.

Freygi darted into a side chamber, through an adjoining passage, and back out into the corridor, emerging at Thiachrin’s back. If she could just get close enough to stick a blade through the cracks in his armour, this would all be over.

She didn’t fancy her chances.

Skilled though she were at passing unseen, he were a Chosen. A most powerful one, to have slain the Chancellor. If he sensed her approach, he’d carve her up like so much meat. Still, this may be the only chance any of them got to vanquish their foe. Countless others had given their lives to grant her this chance. She had to take it.

Freygi stalked through the shadows, blades at the ready. When she got within two dwarrow’s length of him, she sprang.

Her slender blade sank deep into his armpit—one of the few weak points in his armour. Grunting in surprise, he spun on her.

She never even saw the blow, but she felt it: a crushing pressure against her midsection, driving all the air from her lungs, and sending her spinning into a wall. Light closed in around her.

When next her awareness rose to the surface of the waking world, she were looking up at a masked face.

“You will do,” said Thiachrin. “Normally, we only grant this honour to our allies, but we will make an exception for someone of your…obvious talent.”

He took off his mask, and all she could see were his eyes; shining like twin stars. Behind those eyes, something vast and eternal pressed down on her.

“Just kill me and be done with it, you bollocking shitebag!” she gasped. “Kill me afore I sink my blade into your skull, and paint the walls with your brains!”

“Such fire!” said the Chosen. “We will use that too. Now lie still. This will be quick.”

A pale hand clasped her forehead. The malevolent presence behind his eyes began to seep into her mind.

“Surrender,” the presence whispered.

She wouldn’t dignify that with a reply. A thousand deaths would take her afore she gave one spec of ground to the tyrant or his leaf-eared lackeys.

“You want to kill them all, don’t you?” said the voice inside her. “Surrender, and you can kill to your heart’s desire. The ground will run red with alvari blood. Their forests will burn. And you—you will stand triumphant atop a mountain of bones.”

Why was he saying this? The leaf-ears were the tyrant’s favoured children. He would never allow her to slaughter them.

“The alvari of Ciendil are a failed people,” whispered the presence. “They are weak, and unworthy of my protection. You may have your vengeance on them. All I require from you is your surrender.”

The words were seductive. If he truly had abandoned the leaf-ears…

No. No no no! ’Twere a trick. And even if ’tweren’t, the tyrant were a more despicable foe than the leaf-ears ever were. She would defy him to her last breath, no matter the cost!

“As you wish,” said the tyrant. “If you will not surrender, then you will be cast aside. To tell the truth, this would be your fate, either way. This way is just faster. Faster, and…more wasteful. Some of Freygi’s fire will be lost. But there will be more than enough for my purposes.”

Thiachrin’s eyes flared brighter than the midday sun.

Freygi made no sound—not even as she felt her spirit and her body being rent asunder. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

 

Peering through the smokey haze, Saskia stepped toward the dragon-shaped assemblage of battered bones, silvery metal and blue glass sprawled across the mountainside. The unconscious forms of her friends lay in the snow beside the bone dragon. Baldreg the Chosen stood over them, crossbow cocked and held at the ready.

As for the other Chosen…where was she? Where was Freygi?

She could be lurking anywhere out there, veiled as she was in powerful magic that not only hid her from sight, but from Saskia’s oracle senses as well.

And so it came as little surprise when a line of light appeared in the air, intersecting with her midsection. Saskia waited until the telegraphed trajectory turned red, then tilted her body to the side. Something flew past her, and thudded into the snow at her back.

“You’re going to have to do better than that.” Saskia opened her arms wide in that classic ‘Come at me, bro’ pose. “You want me? Well here I am. But, fair warning, that’s the last unanswered attack you’ll get.”

As she spoke, Saskia swept her eyes over the spot from where the thrown dagger had originated. Sure enough, her eyes seemed to want to wander anywhere but there. With a supreme act of will, she forced her gaze to remain steady. Her head pounded, and she felt as if she was going to throw up at any moment. Tears blurred her vision. She blinked them away angrily.

And that was when she saw her.

Freygi stood still as a statue, her pale, slender form barely visible against the white snow and battered trees. Her hair was gone, and she wore the same porcelain mask that adorned the faces of the other fully-indoctrinated Chosen they’d encountered before.

“How are you even alive?” asked Saskia. “They saw you cut down.”

“Did they now?” said Freygi. “We’re not here to give answers, demon. We ask but one thing of you: surrender. Surrender, and our mutual friends—and the mer lass—will walk free, unharmed.”

“And just who, exactly, would I be surrendering to?” said Saskia. “Am I speaking to Freygi and Baldreg, or just a pair of Abellion’s puppets?”

The side of Baldreg’s face twitched. “I’m so sorry, Caesitor, but ’twere my bonnie! I had to…”

Hearing his words, and seeing the obvious signs of turmoil on his face, Saskia felt a stab of pity. She didn’t need an oracle vision to imagine how the scene must have played out. As Redgrove burned, Freygi had come to him, and offered him a chance to be with her again. All he had to do was become a Chosen like her. From his point of view, his wife had returned from the dead, and he would do anything—anything—to have her back. Even if it meant betraying his friends and siding with the tyrant he’d sworn to oppose.

Or maybe Freygi hadn’t even offered him that much of a choice. Saskia didn’t know the mechanics of it, but she herself had taken vassals both willingly and unwillingly.

Either way, now he too was a Chosen—though clearly not as far gone as Freygi. His eyes were paler than they had been, but he wore no mask, and he still had his hair. Whatever process stripped away a Chosen’s individuality, and moulded them into their master’s image, it hadn’t yet run its course with him.

If there was enough of Baldreg left inside him to feel remorse over betraying her, maybe he could be saved. Maybe his link to Abellion could be severed. It was a slim hope, but it was all she had. His apparent distress could be a ruse, of course. Saskia’s oracle truth sense wasn’t telling her anything—apparently it didn’t work on Chosen. Still, best not to antagonise him right off the bat, just in case.

“It’s okay, Baldreg,” she said. “You did what you had to do. I understand.”

Freygi looked at the unconscious bodies in the snow. “Understand what we’ll be doing to them, if you don’t surrender.”

“Oh I understand perfectly,” said Saskia. “But here’s the thing. Do you really think I’d be so stupid as to give myself up while my friends remain your hostages? You’ll cut their throats the moment I’m at your mercy and they’re no longer needed.”

“They are our friends too, Caesitor,” said Baldreg. “We won’t hurt them unless…”

“Okay, let’s say I believe you still care about Kveld and Rover Dog,” said Saskia. “Then what about Zarie? You barely know her, Baldreg, and the only time Freygi ever met her, she tried to kill her.” Saskia didn’t bother to mention the fact that she didn’t trust Freygi not to murder the other two either.

“Mayhap we should let the mer go,” said Baldreg. “As a sign of good faith.”

Freygi turned her masked face to him for a long moment, before answering, “Aye. Let’s let her go.” She stepped toward Zarie.

The skin prickled on the back of Saskia’s neck. There was something about the way she said those words…

Saskia took a step forward. “Uh…how about no.”

They both turned to her. Freygi, who had been in the process of drawing her blade, slid it back into its sheath.

“I have a passing familiarity with the evil playbook,” said Saskia. “When you said ‘let her go,’ you meant ‘kill her,’ didn’t you?”

The Chosen tilted her head in acknowledgement. “Mayhap.”

And that right there all but confirmed Saskia’s assessment of her, as if her past actions in New Inglomar weren’t proof enough. The creature standing before her was not the same Freygi she had known. She was, in some sense, the entity who had killed that Freygi. Ruhildi may be undead, but there was far more life in her than this…thing. This hollowed out shell of a person, dancing on the strings of her unseen master. When Freygi had said goodbye to Ruhildi in the dream, it hadn’t been because her body had been killed. It had been because her soul had been ripped out of it, cast aside to make way for…something else.

Baldreg also appeared to have come to some kind of a realisation. He was staring at Freygi in apparent shock. “You…what? I thought we agreed—”

“Oh come on, Baldreg!” said Saskia. “This isn’t frocking Freygi!” And you, quite possibly, aren’t Baldreg, she added silently.

Baldreg scowled at her. “Methinks I ken my own spanmate. Now she may have…changed a wee bit…”

Saskia suppressed an eye-roll. She was never going to get through to him. She turned back to the other Chosen. For convenience, she’d still refer to her as Freygi, even though she wasn’t. “You want to kill a hostage you think I don’t care all that much about, just to prove you’re serious. You think if you do that, I’ll become a blubbering wretch, begging you not to hurt the others—the ones I really care about. ‘I’ll do anything, if you just don’t hurt them!’ That’s what you think I’ll say. Am I right?”

“Och aye,” said Freygi. Saskia could have sworn she was raising her eyebrows beneath the mask.

“Well there’s just one fatal flaw with that prediction,” said Saskia. “What you don’t know is that Zarie is just as much my friend as Kveld and Rover Dog are. You think she’s less important to me just because she’s a mer, or because I met her more recently? That’s…to quote another friend, bollocks.

“And just so you know, I made a vow before I came here: if you harm a single hair on any of their heads, then I will act as if all of them are already dead. If that happens, I have nothing to lose. You can kiss any notion of a deal goodbye, along with your lives, and that of your precious Arbordeus. From that point forward, I devote everything I have—everything I am—to annihilating you.”

“Then we are at an impasse,” said Freygi. “If you don’t believe we’ll let your friends live”—Saskia didn’t fail to notice she’d dropped the pretence of calling them ‘our friends’—“then there’s naught to discuss. We’d best just kill them and get to fighting.”

“Not so fast,” said Saskia. “I don’t believe you would let my friends live. But I trust Baldreg.” I trust him less far than I could throw him, but more than I trust you. “So how about you let Zarie walk free—for real, this time? You stand over here, while Baldreg administers the antidote I know he keeps in his backpack. Once that is done, then we’ll talk surrender.” Yours.

Freygi stood silently for several seconds, before answering. “Alright. But only the mer walks. The others will be freed only after your complete surrender.”

Saskia nodded.

Baldreg put a vial to Zarie’s lips, tipped back her head, and poured it down. She waited in tense silence until, finally, the mer woman began to stir.

Zarie blinked up at Baldreg, her eyes slowly widening. She looked down at Kveld. Then she caught sight of Saskia. “What…?”

“It’s okay, Zarie. Get out of here. Garrain and Nuille and Ruhildi are waiting down the slope.”

“What happened?” askied Zarie, shaking Kveld gently by the shoulders. “I cannot leave him like this! Why will he not wake up?”

Zarie couldn’t see Freygi, Saskia realised.

“You can and you will leave. There isn’t time to explain. If you stay, she’ll kill him.”

That may or may not be true, but her words had the desired effect. Zarie staggered to her feet. “You will keep him safe, yes?”

“Trust me, we’ll be okay,” Saskia reassured her. “I won’t let them hurt him—or any of us. Now go!”

Sending one last worried glance her way, Zarie dashed off down the slope, to freedom.

“Well played,” said the Chosen. “We can see why they would follow you. Now, surrender.”

“Okay, so how does this work, exactly?” said Saskia. “You gonna bind me in unbreakable chains or something?”

Freygi drew a slender blade and ran it across her hand, smearing dark blood along its edge. The blood seemed to shimmer and shift, becoming a sickly cream colour, almost as pale as the surrounding snow. With a casual flick of her wrist, she pointed the blade at Saskia’s throat.

“Oh, you mean die,” said Saskia.

“No, you misunderstand,” said Freygi. “We don’t want you dead. We want you to join us. One prick of this blade is all it will take. When you are asleep, open your mind to us. Surrender, and your friends will live.”

Under any other circumstances, doing as she said would be a terrible, terrible idea—even to save the lives of her friends. But Saskia had an ace or two up her sleeve. She just couldn’t be certain it would work.

Drawing a deep breath, Saskia approached the Chosen with slow, measured steps; arms at her sides. It was as non-threatening a posture as a troll could adopt. Even so, Baldreg’s crossbow tracked her every move.

The Chosen stood impassively, waiting until Saskia stood over her. Now that she was within striking range, it would be so easy to end the life of this cruel facade.

And yet she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t reach down and tear open Freygi’s throat, as she had done to Thiachrin. Not because of who she was, but because that action would tip Baldreg over the edge. Saskia could feel how close he was to the brink. If she killed Freygi, he would kill Kveld and Rover Dog, and lose himself.

Just a little longer…

Freygi pressed the tip of the oozing blade against Saskia’s leg—and plunged it through her rock-hard shell.

Numbness crept up her leg and into her belly. She let herself pitch forward onto the snow. Her eyes drooped shut.

“I didn’t think she’d give in so easily,” said Baldreg. “She always were a soft-hearted one, though.”

“Not as soft-hearted as we remember,” said the Chosen. “The demon we kenned wouldn’t have played dice with her friends’ lives. And she almost looked as if she were enjoying it. ’Tis a pity her efforts will go unrewarded. We have a mer to catch…”

“You can’t be serious, bonnie,” said Baldreg. “Just let her get away! What harm can it do?”

“What harm? She’s our enemy! Did you let the alvari walk free in your Vindical days? Or when they came knocking at Torpend’s gates?”

“No,” admitted Baldreg. “But I don’t like what we became, back then. There has to be another way…”

“Now you’re sounding like her.” A boot thudded into Saskia’s side. “Don’t tell us you listened to her lies, afore. We are Freygi—and so much more. You will understand, soon enough. We can’t wait to bring you completely into the fold.”

“I’m ready, Sashki.” The voice in her head sounded like it had a mouthful of gravel. It probably did.

You’re just in time, thought Saskia. On three…

The numbness spread by Freygi’s blade had almost completely faded. Baldreg wasn’t the only one with an antidote to Freygi’s poison. Garrain and Nuille had come up with their own, unique counter to its effects. And it had worked like a charm.

Two…

Having been laid low by poison before, Saskia had made sure she brought an insurance policy this time, in the form of blood. Garrain’s blood, to be precise. For what better way to impart immunity to poison than to drink the blood of someone who was already immune to it?

One…

Just as troll’s blood on its own wasn’t enough to heal other species, Garrain’s blood also required a little bit of something else to impart its immunities and curative powers on her. And that something was arlithite. A tiny taste was all it took. Now, for a limited time, her blood wasn’t just a healing potion. It was a cure-all potion.

Now!

In a flash, Saskia’s arm whipped out, reaching for—

Her hand closed around empty air.

Damn Freygi was fast. And…where had she gone? The Chosen was no-where in sight. That could not be good…

At the same moment, an undead dwarf burst out of the ground, knocking aside a startled Baldreg. Ruhildi had been burrowing underground for some time now, moving into position while Saskia kept the Chosen distracted. Her friend didn’t need to breathe, so she could’ve stayed down there for days, if need be.

Wasting no time, Ruhildi snatched up the vial of antidote Baldreg had been carrying, and dashed to Kveld’s side.

The vial shattered. Its contents splashed across the snow, along with two of Ruhildi’s fingers, sliced off by a flicked dagger.

Crap crap crap! Their advantage of surprise didn’t seem to count for much.

“Time to make your move, guys,” she told her friends and allies through her oracle link—the ones who couldn’t read her mind. Through her vassals’ eyes, she could see that Zarie had just met up with Garrain and Nuille, who had been lurking nearby, invisible. The three of them sprang into motion. A dark stormcloud gathered to mark the tempest’s passage.

While she spoke, she cast her gaze frantically around the valley, trying to pinpoint Freygi’s location. It was hopeless. At the speed the assassin moved, she could be anywhere. They wouldn’t have a shot of finding her until she struck again, and by then, it may be too late.

She needed to wake up Rover Dog and Kveld, because they were sitting ducks right now. Or lying ducks. Baldreg’s antidote may be gone, but that wasn’t their only option. Dashing to her friends’ sides, Saskia bit down as hard as she could on her arm, and with a supreme effort, managed to puncture her rock-hard flesh. She drove her claw into the wound and pulled it apart. Bright blood poured into Rover Dog’s mouth, and then Kveld’s.

Baldreg climbed to his feet, his expression furious. He looked at Ruhildi—and froze.

Not in the sense that he stood in silent shock, though there was surely some of that. Froze in the literal sense. His limbs turned blue and rigid, and icicles crept across his skin.

A flurry of fuzzy white forms skittered across the snow, converging on their location. Five more descended from the sky, hovering at the eye of a howling hurricane.

Baldreg’s eyes blazed blinding white. A jet of steam rose from his body. Cocking his crossbow, he spun and aimed at the advancing frostlings.

“Wait!” shouted Saskia, reaching for him.

A trio of explosions detonated across the valley, swathing dozens of frostlings in billowing flames. The smell of scorched flesh and fur assaulted her nostrils. Baldreg sprinted away, quick as lightning, dashed up a rocky spire, and stood atop it, preparing to rain fiery death down on them.

Twin spears of lightning stabbed at the Chosen—one summoned by the frostling tempests, and the other by Zarie, who had just arrived on the scene alongside Garrain and Nuille. Saskia blinked away the bright afterimage—and drew in a shocked breath. Baldreg crouched low atop the stone spire, with his long metal crossbow planted into the stone beside him, pointing up at the sky. He’d used the crossbow as a lightning rod. Little, if any, of the lightning strikes’ energy had passed through his body.

No sign of Freygi yet. She could have run off, but that seemed unlikely.

“See if you can sniff out our sneaky little friend,” she told Garrain over her oracle link. Thus far, he’d had the more success than anyone else in ferreting out the invisible assassin, although that wasn’t saying much.

Nuille, meanwhile, had taken to the skies in bird form. She swooped down on Baldreg, and Saskia’s heart leapt into her throat as she watched him raise his crossbow, take aim and—

The spire collapsed, sending the Chosen tumbling off his perch. No question who was responsible for that. Ruhildi stood facing Baldreg, fists clenched.

He was already dashing off in another direction the moment his boots hit the ground. Creatures of bone and rotting flesh reached up out of the snow, clawing at him, but he danced nimbly aside, and blasted them away with a couple of well-placed explosive bolts.

Saskia bounded after him on all fours, wishing she had Jarnbjorn. It would be waiting for her in the dragon, along with all her gear, but there wasn’t time to fetch it now. She felt a slight weight settle on her shoulder, and to her surprise realised it was Nuille, now in the form of a tiny rodent. The druidess had apparently decided it would be prudent to keep a wall of troll flesh between herself and fiery death.

“’Tis over, Baldi.” Ruhildi spoke softly, yet her voice echoed across the frozen treetops and windswept cliffs. “’Tis your turn to surrender. Lay down your weapon. No-one else needs to die. Sashki will find a way to help you. I ken she will.”

“There is no coming back from this!” called back Baldreg. The anguish in his voice tore into Saskia’s heart, but she gritted her teeth and continued her charge. If she had to choose between the lives of Chosen-Baldreg and everyone else, well, that was no real choice.

“’Tis never too late to—” Ruhildi’s voice abruptly cut off.

Saskia watched the scene through half a dozen eyes. A head rolled across the snow trailing a tangle of dark curls. It bounced off a tree stump, and lay still. Dark, unblinking eyes stared up at the sky.

Saskia stumbled and fell. She choked, gagged, then violently emptied the contents of her stomach across the snow. Her head spun—but not in the literal way Ruhildi’s head had spun. And with that thought, she felt her world coming apart.

Behind the headless corpse of her friend stood Freygi, bright blade twirling. Her eyes shone behind the mask.

Ahead of her, Baldreg’s steps faltered. He spun about. His eyes widened, then narrowed, as his face twisted into an expression of purest rage. “You,” he snarled. And in that moment, she could tell he was finally seeing Freygi for what she truly was. Not his wife, but his wife’s killer. And now the killer of someone as dear to him as his wife had ever been.

He raised his crossbow, and in the blink of an eye, three shots were in the air.

The first bolt thudded into Freygi’s mask—and detonated.

For an instant, as the mask was torn aside by a ball of expanding fire, Saskia caught a glimpse of the face beneath it. The mouth gaped in silent astonishment. The eyes were wide. But behind the eyes, something ancient and cruel snarled in impotent fury.

Then the other two bolts struck. The Chosen’s body—and Ruhildi’s—were swallowed up in column of billowing flames and acrid smoke that licked high into the sky.

Letting out a keening groan, Baldreg flopped onto his knees, and then his back. Saskia crawled to his side—just as the convulsions started. His back arched. Limbs flailed. Spittle ran from his chin.

“Is there anything you can do for him?” she asked Nuille, who stood at her side, wearing her elven form.

“I don’t know,” said Nuille. She knelt over the convulsing dwarf, hands already aglow with healing energy. Within seconds, the druidess let out a blistering series of curses. “All the blood vessels in his brain are close to bursting. I’m doing the best I can, but…I don’t think I can keep him alive much longer.”

Saskia felt numb. Ruhildi…

She shook her head. Ruhildi was already undead, right? Maybe she could ‘survive’ the destruction of her body. Regardless, there was nothing Saskia could do for her right now. Whereas Baldreg would certainly die without her intervention.

“I think Abellion is attacking his mind—punishing him for going rogue,” she told Nuille. “We need to get him to the keystone. The one in the dracken. Can you keep healing him while I carry you both?”

“I’ll try,” said Nuille.

Saskia picked them both up and dashed to the dragon, which lay in a tangle of broken trees. Forcing open the great beast’s ribs, she clambered inside and set him down beside the keystone. Touching the black monolith, she hastily gave her command.

Moments later, she was floating in that now-familiar void. Baldreg thrashed in the water beside her, already trailing a tenuous vine. But unlike the fleshy tendrils attached to her doppelgängers and vassals, this one trailed off into the far distance, where a pale, dim form hung limply in the water.

She wanted to get a closer look at that vine’s source, but there wasn’t time. Baldreg seemed to be fading before her eyes, his flesh growing pale and waxy as his legs and arms flopped about like dying fish.

Seizing the vine, she pulled it until it came apart, staining the water with viscous light.

Baldreg’s back arched, and his thrashing abruptly ceased. But not in the way she had hoped. If anything, he seemed to be fading faster now.

There was only one thing she could do. One of her own tendrils snaked toward him. It seemed to sniff at the tip of the torn vine hanging from the back of his neck. Then it darted forward—and fused with it.

In the deep place, Baldreg’s eyes shone with a new light. Not pale or white, but amber bright.

Back in the waking world, Saskia opened her eyes. Turning over, she let out a long sigh. Baldreg lay beside her, asleep, but breathing steadily.

“He will live,” said Nuille, still kneeling beside him. “And he isn’t the only one, it appears.”

“‘Life’ is perhaps not the best word for her present condition, my light,” said Garrain, who stood at his wife’s side.

Both of them gazed outside the dragon, where Rover Dog and Kveld and Zarie had gathered around a dark shape, crouching in the snow.

Saskia stepped out, and her breath caught in her throat. Her friends were talking to a…skeleton. The corpse was so badly charred, there was very little flesh left. Only the arlium remained; ropey filaments of the stuff, coiled around blackened bones. The arlium seemed to be growing, forming what superficially resembled muscles and tendons. Ruhildi’s head was in somewhat better condition, with flesh still present on one side, and a naked skull with a thin veneer of arlium on the other. It was attached to the body at a slightly crooked angle.

Ruhildi flashed her a grisly one-sided smile. “As you can see, Sashki, I’ve had better days…”

“H-how?” stammered Saskia.

Her friend’s fleshless smile widened. “You didn’t think I’d let a little decapitation or incineration stop me, did you?”

“Uncanny squishy,” muttered Rover Dog. “Not even princess could survive that.”

They buried Freygi and the slain frostlings on a tree-covered mound overlooking a frozen lake. It was a beautiful spot, even now, in this apocalyptic wasteland. If the light of the sun shone undimmed across it again, it would be truly something. Hopefully, that day would come sooner rather than later.

Only now, after Freygi’s second, and final death, did they notice the strangeness surrounding her first less-than-complete death. They had never even considered the possibility that she might have survived her encounter with Thiachrin—in body, at least. Baldreg and Kveld and Rover Dog had witnessed the blademaster cut her down, but they hadn’t stuck around to check if she actually died from her injuries. The fact that there had been no body was easily explained by the near-destruction of Spindle. What was not so easily explained was the fact that not even those who loved her had thought to check. Or that no-one had considered the possibility that she might be the invisible assassin. Even though…duh, assassin.

“Her concealment magic went beyond hiding from our sight, methinks,” said Ruhildi. “She were hiding the truth of her existence. If the Chosen can do that, then…”

“What else might they be capable of?” Saskia finished for her. “I guess we can ask Baldreg, when he wakes up.”

She felt a little guilty that they hadn’t waited, before burying his wife. Then again, she didn’t know what his state of mind would be when he awoke, or how long it would take. Or whether he would ever wake up.

And they still had at least one more vital task to perform. One that couldn’t be deferred any longer. It was time to finish the task she’d set for herself all those months ago. Time to save what remained of Ciendil.

Approaching Elcianor from the air, she saw there was very little left of the elven capital. Walls and buildings and trees—and all the people who had lived inside or among them—had been blown apart, incinerated, melted or buried. In their place was a steadily growing mountain of ash and arlium and molten lava.

All she had to do was to climb that mountain, and cast the ring into the fires of—whoops, wrong quest. All she had to do was put a cork in a volcano. One that burned far hotter than any on Earth. Getting close enough to the vast column of superheated arlium to work her magic on it was the problem. But they’d already come up with a solution for that. Thanks to Ruhildi’s crafting and Kveld’s wards, the heat-resistant fat suit, which she dubbed Big Mummy, should be up to the task.

Should be, but the only way to know for sure was to get out there and hope she didn’t catch on fire. So here she was, surrounded by a thin layer of metal, with dozens of nervous furry critters clinging to her body, acting as living refrigeration units.

The suit did its job well enough. She couldn’t see outside with her eyes, which was probably a good thing, because it would have been like staring into the sun. Instead, she relied on her minimap, a little X-ray vision, and her vassals’ eyes to guide her where she needed to go.

The ground close to the arlium jet was covered in rivers of lava—not arlium, but molten rock. This proved no obstacle to them. Ruhildi, who was able to work her magic across vast distances if Saskia was near, swept the lava aside.

A hundred metres was close enough to begin to work her magic. She focussed on cooling the arlium closest to her, and worked her way back. Within fifteen minutes, the plume had sputtered to a halt, and she shifted her focus downward, creating as deep a plug as she could make it. The arlium shooting into the sky kept rising—for a little while. As it cooled, it sagged, forming arches and rippling folds. Huge chunks of half-solidified arlium rained down for kilometres in every direction. She had to be fast on her feet to avoid being flattened. By the time it was over, the resulting structure looked less like a flower and more like a tree.

After such a long journey, after all the dangers they’d faced, the adventures and tribulations of the past few months, the actual sealing of the volcano had been a bit of an anticlimax. Saskia was just fine with that. Excitement was not high on her agenda right now.

And she wasn’t done yet.

Within hours, the air had cooled enough for her to remove her helmet, and view her handiwork with her own eyes. The bone dragon landed nearby, and her friends gathered around her, watching as she began to form shapes in the bright amber surface. Patterns and figures—and faces.

Before she quite knew what she was doing, she’d created rows of giant Mount Rushmore-style heads, surveying the scorched land. The faces were those of her friends, rendered with all the life and laughter and detail she could breathe into them. Freygi, she saved for last, because she wanted to do justice to their fallen companion. The mischievous expression she chose for the assassin was how she wanted people to remember her—bright and full of life; not the monster Abellion had made in her image.

“’Tis beautiful, Sashki,” said Ruhildi.

Saskia blinked at her friend, once again startled by her change in appearance. Over the past day since her encounter with Freygi, Ruhildi had been repairing her mutilated body, but the result was not the same as it had been. She now looked less like a corpse, and more like a cyborg, sheathed in a duanum shell, with one side of her face covered in a metal mask. It was eerie, and somewhat terrifying, but also…kinda badonk.

She wondered how Baldreg would react to seeing her like this. If he reacted to anything, ever again.

“World saved, yes?” said Zarie. “What do we do now?”

“Now we go home,” said Saskia.

Home, for the immediate future, would still be New Inglomar. It would be a while before the skies cleared and the sun shone once more on the surface of Ciendil. Longer still—perhaps centuries—before it returned to some semblance of the way it had been: brimming with life and magic.

At least now this branch had a future. She hoped it would be a bright one. But she could think of only one way to secure the future of this branch and every other.

“I think we’ve earned a little rest,” she told her friends. “But don’t get too comfortable. As long as Abellion is still out there, we’ll never be safe, and there will never be lasting peace.”

“Aye,” said Ruhildi. “If the tyrant on the amber throne can make Chosen out of Baldreg and Freygi, anyone could be next. Anyone, leastwise, ’cept us—your vassals.”

Saskia nodded. “Frankly, I’ve had it with that frocker. I, for one, am not going to sit around waiting for him to bring the fight to us, next time. I’m going to go up there and kick his butt into the void. So who’s with me?”