Being seconds from death offered some people a certain amount of clarity. They could look back on their life and take stock of things, tallying their deeds in anticipation of Umranu’s court in the afterlife before being sent on to their final destination in the Great Beyond. Others would experience a moment of peace without all the business of looking back. Such individuals could simply enjoy their final moments for what they were, gaining an almost supernatural awareness of their surroundings without bogging it down with complex thoughts. They merely existed for the sake of existing one last time. Still, others would be overcome with overwhelming terror, raging against the oncoming darkness with every ounce of their remaining strength to eke out precious seconds of life. Or so Elaina had heard, anyway.

Elaina herself didn’t experience it like any of these. Instead, she had a singular focus on the man bearing down on her with a blade. All of her senses seemed to funnel down onto him and only him. The way he moved, the way he smelled, and the way he sounded all became the center of her universe. No detail of the man was lost on her. From the sweat running down his scarred face to the smell of the blood on his breath, Elaina was aware of all of it in a peculiar moment of strangely dilated time. At that moment, the smell of gunpowder from the recently fired weapon finally registered with her.

Without thinking, the hand she’d placed on Steinbach in her futile effort to shove him off her slid down the front of his torso to the concealed holster on his hip. She’d never fired a gun before but understood the basic idea of point-and-shoot. Pulling the weapon from its holster and turning it, so the muzzle was pressed firmly into the man’s abdomen just under the armor plating, Elaina squeezed the trigger.

The flash from the muzzle was almost entirely concealed, and the sound of the weapon seemed slightly muffled in the space between them. A small explosion of dark crimson erupted from Steinbach’s back, freezing him in place as his insides were rearranged by the bullet that had bored clean through him. With a sweep of his arm, the captain slapped the pistol from her hand, sending it skittering across the bridge to the other side, but the damage was done. He staggered back a step or two, struggling to remain firmly on his feet. The world around them seemed to go quiet as he felt weakly at the wound, his hand coming away drenched in his own blood.

“Doesn’t matter how it gets done,” Elaina said in a ragged voice, “isn’t that what you said?”

The older man stared back at her for a moment as he turned the knife in his hand to favor a thrusting motion over a stabbing one, “I’m not done yet, Red.”

“You are,” Elaina argued, “the only thing left is to see if you survive. But this fight? It’s done.”

“It’s not done until I say it’s done!” Steinbach roared, positioning himself for another strike as she slowly pulled herself back up.

Elaina had given a lot of thought to the notes about the vrocks and the version of the spell that would be most useful to her. She didn’t need anything that lasted. She didn’t even require something that traveled far. What she needed was a step further than the glamer she applied to her face every morning, slightly scaled up. That was the Imago, and she held it firm in her mind.

“*Rabe dubult,*” the swordmage said, easing the intentions of her spell into reality. An illusory duplicate of herself, as convincing as the face she wore, sprang to its feet to move left. At the same time, she reached over with her off-hand and seized the grip of her sword. Steinbach, wounded and furious as he was at that moment, was on a hair trigger. He was working off of adrenaline and reflex, which was precisely why he lashed out with the dagger he was holding. It was aimed right at what he thought to be Elaina’s neck. Landing the strike would have been an instant kill, even if the blade wasn’t made of cold iron. He didn’t realize his mistake until he had already committed to the attack, and the blade began to pass through the glamer harmlessly.

As Steinbach’s arm crossed over the real Elaina still situated on the ground beneath him, Elaina turned the sword and slid it right up underneath. The blade found its mark in the man’s armpit, thrusting deep into his torso. The swordmage held it there momentarily, the pain that dominated her physical existence temporarily abating. It returned as she pulled herself to her feet, twisting the blade and sliding it slowly out of the man’s body. His arm fell limp at his side, and blood began to ooze from his mouth. He stumbled forward in an effort to stay on his feet.

Elaina’s eyes caught the movement of his other hand, the one with the ring, as it balled into a fist.

“Don’t!” the swordmage yelled, but Steinbach was already whirling around, throwing his fist forward to activate the ring. Elaina quickly released her sword, having only one good arm to work with, and activated the protection spell through the bracer. The word of magic was lost in the explosive force of the two forms of magic meeting one another. Parts of the roadway between them crushed downward, hurling broken stone in every direction. Elaina was launched back in one direction while Steinbach and her sword were thrown in the other. Both were bombarded with debris, and a deafening boom carried along on a concussive wave of magical force.

Elaina slammed back against the parapet she’d risen from just a moment before, knocking some of the capstones loose in the process. Steinbach struck the parapet on the opposite side at an oblique angle before twisting and vanishing over the side. Her sword went right along with him.

Everything went quiet as the crowds on either side of the bridge waited to see if Elaina would get back up or if the two combatants had taken each other out of the fight at the same time. Finally, after what felt like forever, Elaina began to pull herself to her feet as she tried to keep pressure on the open wound in her arm.

“Well fought,” Veidt’s smooth voice grabbed her attention suddenly. She lifted her head to see him standing before her, reaching out to touch the back of her branded hand. With a word, she could feel a cool sensation as the mark was removed. Now that everything was over, the brand was no longer needed. She had won.

“Yeah, thanks,” Elaina said brusquely. She wanted to get back to Royce as soon as possible, though for once, it had little to do with sex and more to do with patching up the numerous wounds she had suffered in the battle.

“Always best to end a career on a high note, I say,” Veidt added.

Elaina’s brow furrowed with disgust, “I doubt he would consider what just happened a high note for his career.”

“Not him,” Veidt corrected, “You.”

Before his words could fully register with her, Veidt seized her by the throat with one hand and lifted her off the ground. Elaina’s good hand reached up to his arm, gripping it tightly in an effort to wrench it free from her.

“I didn’t think Karl would have it in him, but I had my hopes,” Veidt admitted as shouting erupted from either side of the bridge. The Orbonne company trained some of their cannons on the landgraf’s men, but it seemed neither side knew precisely what was happening. “Even so, the damage he inflicted on you before taking his leave was considerable.”

Elaina could barely breathe with the tightness of his grip, let alone speak. She began to think of some form of magic she could do through force of will alone. As the thought occurred to her to start kicking wildly, to buy her a breath, the mage released her throat. Nevertheless, the pressure remained, and Elaina began to float weightlessly out over the edge of the bridge.

“In the end, your fates were always intertwined with one another. I just never imagined that it would be quite so poetic as this.” Veidt smirked. Elaina could hear familiar voices calling her name faintly. She flailed with her good arm to wave them off. She didn’t want the cannons opening fire on them.

“You,” Elaina managed to croak, “Always you.”

Veidt’s eyes lit up as he nodded, “Always me, yes. I’d been trying to get Karl out to Willowridge for months, at the least. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone came around to lay claim to it. But we knew what was waiting for us, and he wasn’t willing to have any of his men slaughtered if he could help it. So Dieter was sent to get the intel we needed.”

The mage brushed some white hair from his face as he stepped closer to the edge, pushing her further out over the chasm below. The only thing holding her in place was his unseen magical grip on her throat. A breeze moved up past her, blowing ginger locks of her hair around and ruffling his cloak. She saw several more yellow stones along his belt, the ones that exploded with a thunderous sound. He had several other odds and ends hanging from his belt and secured in a bandolier across his chest.

“When the idiot turned up dead, I thought we could finally go in,” Veidt continued, “But no. Karl was consumed with vengeance, with you. He forged that knife especially for you, using the information I gave him from your blood.”

Elaina could feel herself blacking out as he strangled her to death mid-air. She tried to see what everyone else was doing, but her vision grew darker by the minute.

“When we got wind that you were going to Willowridge, it seemed like kismet,” Veidt exclaimed, “Karl was finally willing to take a run at the place. I made sure to send word to key fiends that you would be in the area so they had something to look forward to. A faeling like you is a delicacy to some, a rare carnal treat for others.”

“You,” Elaina repeated in a strangled rasp. Veidt was how the fiends had identified what she was with such ease. Faeling, they kept calling her. The lack of other ginger swordmages in the surrounding area made it easy for them to know exactly who he had told them about.

“Mmm, yes. But they couldn’t get the job done. So, I thought maybe it was good that you were clearing things out for us. Then, when I claimed Willowridge as my own, I might have some decent soldiers left over from the company to put to work right away.”

Veidt closed his hand a little, his tone growing more frustrated as the grip around her throat tightened, “But he just wouldn’t let it go. He wanted you and was willing to throw everything away for your head.”

The movement of the trinkets Veidt wore on his belt gave her an idea as she began to fumble at the pouches on her belt frantically. If she could get a hold of a platinum piece, she was sure she’d be able to sink it into his skull from here. Of course, it would result in him dropping her, but at least she’d take him out too. Her fingers brushed across something smooth and cool, but it wasn’t a coin. It was the large bead on the necklace of fireballs she had been given. She had forgotten all about it.

“With him gone, I’m the ranking officer. With you gone, I shouldn’t have much trouble mopping up the rest of them with cannon fire,” Veidt’s eyes caught sight of her pulling something from her belt. He shook his head, “Goodbye, Miss Woodlock. You had a good run.”

His hand opened, and the grip on her throat was released. A terrifying feeling of weightlessness set in as she went into free fall. Unlike her last brush with death, she did not gain a heightened awareness of anything. It was all anger now. It was all spite. Ripping the bead free from the necklace, she held it between her fingers and took aim. It wasn’t a coin, but she had seen Resius do it with bottle caps and other similarly sized objects.

“*Leym bon!”* she rasped angrily as she snapped her fingers around the bead. The spell’s magic infused the bead and sent it shooting up at the diabolist mage looking down at her from the bridge. Based on his close bond to fiends and the fire he wielded in the battle against Resius, she was willing to bet that Veidt was resistant to fire. Perhaps he was even actually immune. But she was positive that all the shit he was carrying on him was not.

The bead, supercharged by her spell, struck the lip of the capstone at Veidt’s feet. There it embedded itself into the stone in several pieces before a high-pitched whine filled the air, cut off suddenly by a cataclysmic eruption of fire. It was much larger than the last time she had seen it, much larger than the potion of fireball in the cistern. She couldn’t be sure if it was because she had combined it with the coin snap spell or if she had managed to save the best bead for last. Before the fire had even reached its full expanse, several secondary explosions followed. Each and every one of the yellow stones that he had been carrying went up, in addition to every potion he was carrying as well. Finally, the dense concentration of magical interactions blew a gaping hole in the bridge itself, sending debris flying in all directions and chunks of the bridge crumbling into the chasm that Elaina herself was bound for.

Elaina smirked despite her imminent demise, satisfied with the catastrophic cascade of magic she had set off. An immense pillar of black oily smoke rose into the sky before the flames had even cleared. The men operating the cannons would have a hell of a time getting accurate shots on Elsebeth and her men.

As she gained speed, Elaina looked down at the bottom of the chasm, fast approaching. She took a deep breath, savoring the ability to breathe again momentarily before exhaling a long despondent sigh. She supposed this was as good a high note as any to go out on.

From either side of the chasm, out of the earth and stone, long, thick tree branches extended under their own power to intercept her. Each branch twisted, forming complex bows with dense canopies of soft, lush branches. Soft as they looked, they hurt like hell when she passed through them. Much of her momentum had been slowed but at the cost of long angry lines torn out of her skin and clothes. Parts of her armor were peeled clean off her as she went into a spinning tumble. Now she hit vines, which wrapped themselves up around her ankles tightly. When she hit the end of their length, the vines stretched for a fair distance more, slowing her in the process.

Elaina nearly stopped when the vines snapped, and she felt the weightlessness return once more as she fell the remaining short distance to the ground below. Despite how much shorter of a fall it was, it still hurt. For the second time in the last hour, the swordmage had the wind knocked out of her, though this time, she was sure there were a few broken bones to go along with it. Still, she was alive. She rolled slowly onto her back to see the chaos of the explosive chain reaction she’d set off on the bridge still playing out. She managed to laugh once before coughing up blood.

“F-Fuck,” she gasped, drawing in a long ragged breath.

“You probably shouldn’t speak, babe,” Royce’s voice said gently. Elaina turned her head painfully to the left to see Royce approaching her. Only it wasn’t the Royce she knew. This Royce stood fully nude with lush green skin, bark wrapped around parts of her arms and legs and up one side of her face. Small leaves had sprouted from parts of the bark, particularly behind her, where some came loose to trail behind her. The pupils and irises of her eyes had vanished, giving way entirely to pristine white sclera. The symbols on the golden bands around her arms and thighs glowed gently.

“Royce?” Elaina coughed, confusion written plainly on her face.

“Mhm,” the witch confirmed as she knelt beside Elaina slowly, “I’ve got a tree spirit riding me right now. That’s why I look like this. It was the quickest way to break your fall.”

“Oh,” above them, the debris from the bridge was peppering the sides of the chasm, threatening to rain down on them at any moment, “I like it. It looks good.”

“Thank you,” Royce smiled, “But we should probably get out of here quick.”

“Realmshifting?” Elaina asked with a raised brow.

“Yes, but it’s going to hurt a lot in your condition,” the witch warned.

“Will I live?” a bit of fear crept into Elaina’s choked and raspy voice.

“Hmm, almost definitely,” Royce said after a second of consideration.

“Fuck it, let’s go,” Elaina agreed. Any chance of surviving this colossal cluster fuck was better than none.

Royce reached down and slid both arms under Elaina slowly. When the witch lifted her, Elaina reconsidered the idea that survival was preferable to death. The thundering crash of stone chunks striking the chasm walls and bouncing off at odd angles grew closer and closer. Then, all of it suddenly vanished, disappearing into the disorienting twist of the world around her as the witch pulled her into a realmshift.