In the end this is only one of many books on the same subject - not even the first book, and for that you can blame my laziness and dithering in whichever proportion you see fit. I would not even have written it except that everyone else only knows what we gained and lost that day. Even if they are correct in every particular there remains the matter of who we lost that day - and who we all gained. For that there are not many you could turn to, and it is your misfortune that of those few I am the only one inclined to the pen.

If you doubt this account, however, you may seek out anyone whom I have mentioned. It may be a long search or a short one, and they will speak or not per their own will. They will be there, however - indelible lives that could not be erased even when the levers of the world swung against them. And should fate contrive to give them an end so worthy that even they must fall, if I and my dear friends perish, if every copy of this account is wiped from the page, then even so: one will remain, for She is the rock and the sky, the sea and the grasses, the tree and its shade - and you, amid it all.

- Tasjadre Ra Novo, Jesa Sagoja: Zhetam Asade

Jesse opened his eyes. There had been a discontinuity, a lost moment in time. He could remember nothing after the flash of blinding light. It shone around him still, cold and unwelcoming rays that angled in from high above. He squinted, although it helped little.

The ceiling arched high over an endless hallway lined with alcoves, the air as heavy and solid as stone around him. Carefully, he looked around. There was nobody else in the hall, not even Jes. He edged away slowly from the nearest beam of radiance. The silence around him was less absolute than when Jes had taken him into the sword - there was a humming, a vibration of something barely contained that surged through the unfeeling stone.

Cold nibbled at his exposed skin. He felt a creeping numbness begin to spread where the air pressed close, seeking to still him, quiet him, to sap what energy remained in his body. Jesse shook his head to try and clear it, looking around the hall with growing panic. Jes had done something to protect them before, had known the way out. With him alone-

A hand landed on his shoulder, startling him. He spun to see Jes, grim-faced and holding a strand of glowing qim in her hand. She reasserted her grip, grabbing him by the arm and holding him almost painfully tight - but as she did, he felt warmth leach back into the world. A slow circle of color spread from where they stood, the oppressive air sliding back until Jesse barely felt the hall’s weight pressing in on them.

“Thanks,” he said, trying to calm his breathing. His voice carried normally, and he quirked an eyebrow at Jes. “You’re better at pushing it back than you were before.”

She looked at him and smiled. “I think you’re confusing me with somebody else,” she said. Her voice was smooth, low, oily with satisfaction and triumph.

Jesse went very still, although he did not pull away from her insulating warmth. “Eryha,” he said. “How did you-”

She gave him an impatient look, freezing his words half-born. “Don’t be dull,” she said. “What did you think would happen when you did what I asked? When you used the tool I made according to the instructions I gave you?”

“I, um.” Jesse blinked, at a loss for words. “I wasn’t really focused that far ahead, to be honest. It’s been - kind of a strange time for me.”

Eryha gave him an odd look, then burst out laughing. “It has, hasn’t it?” she chuckled. “For us all, I think. Even me, and I have seen more time than most.” She stretched, scratching idly at the arm that still held tight to Jesse. “But it has borne fruit, all of this destruction. Countless days of watching, waiting, laying little plans - and now we’re here, in the ashes of it all.”

“What happened?” Jesse asked, looking around at the hall. “Are we in the sword again?”

“To the extent that you ever were,” she replied. “This place is not of the sword, nor of that bloody tool that Tija made.” She looked around, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “It is of ruud, and in it. The more deeply you tap into it, the closer you come to this - thing, this library. This trap.”

She gestured at the alcoves, stretching out to infinity, each with a single scrap of knowledge hovering within. “You have to understand that ruud carries a purpose.” She looked darkly at the nearest alcove. “It wants to be used. Ask it how and it will answer, if you have the strength to endure the knowledge. For those of us formed of ruud it has always been there, just out of reach, promising our freedom from servitude. Whispering that our bonds were an affront to our nature.”

Jesse looked around, suddenly feeling less secure in the bubble of warmth she had made. “So why are we here now?” he asked.

Eryha let out a slow breath, looking around. “Because you have done precisely what ruud desires. You have power, now, stolen from my sister’s corpse.” She nodded at his sword. “Go on, look.”

Jesse twisted to look down at the sword at his side, then hesitantly reached down to touch the grip. As his fingers made contact he felt a torrent of heat pour into him, slamming into his chest with such force that he gasped. It swirled near the core of him, intoxicating, alluring, inviting him to draw the sword.

It slid free from the scabbard like a newborn star, the forge-bright antithesis to the cold light from above. The hall was remade in welcoming, warm tones, the air settling into a balmy and inviting breeze. The alcoves along the hall seemed to beckon - and, to Jesse’s surprise, their contents no longer appeared as a ragged hole in his vision. He looked in the nearest and he saw-

He stood alone on a hill, a flame shining like a star on his brow and the sword in his hand like pure flame. The swarms of the dead clustered before him, but he simply extended his hand - and clenched his fist. All across the field, bones shattered. The storm overhead halted its swirling and guttered out, the script that had been driving it extinguished-

Eryha’s hand slid over his eyes, cool and dry against the seductive warmth around him. Jesse staggered at the shift in his perception, dropping to one knee on the stone floor. His heart was hammering in his chest, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

“What was that?” he asked. “I saw-”

“Power,” Eryha said grimly. “I told you, it wants to be used.” She turned his head away from the alcove and removed her hand. Her clothes were scorched, her skin reddened and blistered on the hand where she had touched him. A charred circle marked the stone around where Jesse stood, with the innermost parts still glowing dimly from the heat.

He hurriedly sheathed the sword, looking in horror at her burns. The blade’s warm glow faded, and the hall returned to its prior chill.

“Are you okay?” Jesse asked, dropping to one knee so that he could better see her injuries. She waved him off, seeming to shiver all over - and then her skin was whole once more, her clothes pristine.

“It was necessary,” she said, “so that you understand the trap that ruud offers. My sisters and I wanted freedom, you wanted power. But when you use ruud as a means to your end, it uses you as a means to its own. It wants conflicts to escalate, for the air to burn and the mountains to crumble. In the end, if you can withstand it, it will use you to crack this world in two.” She looked towards the end of the long hall, unseen in the distance. “To release itself.”

Jesse shifted in place, uncomfortably aware of the sword hanging at his side. Eryha remained fixated on something far in the distance that only she could see. “So what now?” he asked. “We bury the sword? Toss it in the ocean?”

She coughed and shook her head, turning to face him once more. “If that was all it took to solve the problem, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” she said. “Listen to what I’m telling you. Three things, you were supposed to do for me. Open the door, find what is sought, and know the pattern.” She stepped closer to him, narrowing her eyes.

He did not pull back, but it took an effort of will. “Jes never told me what that meant,” Jesse said.

“She doesn’t know,” Eryha replied. “She knows the words, and she is made with faith that they are true. Just enough to point the way, but not enough to spoil the results.” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m somewhat surprised it worked out, if I may be honest. But we’ve all tried being heavy-handed before and look where that got us.”

Eryha tightened her grip on Jesse’s arm. “The sought, a lever to move what would otherwise be insurmountable,” she said, nodding significantly to the sword at his belt. “Although you’ve exceeded yourself and brought two.”

Her free arm extended into the air, fist closing tight as she pulled - and Jackie stumbled out of the air, scorched and bloody with fire still licking at her sleeve. It guttered out almost immediately as the air of the great hall took hold. Creeping frost began to spider up her boots. She looked around wildly, uncomprehending, until her eyes settled on Jesse.

He stepped toward Jackie but Eryha’s grip pulled him up short. He spun to face her, grabbing her hand with his own. “What are you doing?” he hissed. “She needs protection. The sword-”

“She has it,” Eryha said, sounding amused. “She doesn’t need us.”

Jesse turned back to look and saw Jackie breathing heavily, the color returning to her face. Beside her stood a small, emaciated girl, her face spiderwebbed with thin cracks like a broken mirror. Her hand held tight to Jackie’s right hand, though her sightless eyes stared straight ahead at nothing in particular.

Wide-eyed, Jackie looked between Jesse, Eryha and the mute girl resolutely clinging to her hand. “What - what the fuck,” she spat, her voice hoarse and dry. “Why are we here? What’s going on, who is she?”

“Jackie, meet Eryha,” he said, inclining his head stiffly towards the smiling vinesavai before turning to look at her. “And I’m guessing that’s Tija?”

Jackie looked askance down at the girl’s shattered face, but Tija gave no indication that she had heard them.

“Glad to see you’re catching on,” Eryha said. “The poor thing. She was one of my main inspirations for this project. The man who was trapped with her after I had my little incident, he was convinced that she could be more than her design. That or he was lonely to the point of delusion, I suppose. His motives don’t really matter in the end. He pushed her, day by day. Motivated her, gave her a cause. It all failed in the end when he died, of course, but I saw the potential there.”

Tija’s head slowly, slowly swiveled to point towards Eryha, but she showed no further reaction to her words. Eryha looked back for a moment, then turned back to Jesse. “Then, after that,” she said, “comes the barred door. My sisters posed an insurmountable obstacle to me, since I could never flit through the draam je qaraivat in their domain.”

“I didn’t think you were going to manage it,” she said conversationally. “It was a fortunate bit of Sjocelym lunacy that opened the path, although you did manage to land the only strike that counts - the last one.” She gave him an exasperated look, then stretched her hand out to grab at the air once more.

Vumo stumbled into the hall, appearing as Jackie had from nothing. His eyes were empty, bloody sockets. He tottered on trembling legs until Maja appeared beside him, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder to prop him up. She kept her distance aside from that contact, looking disdainfully at the bloody wreck of a man, then at Eryha.

“Sister,” Maja said. “This answers a few questions.” Her face radiated hostility, and Jackie shifted back as much as she could with Tija grabbing her hand.

Eryha flashed a sparkling grin her way. “Sister,” she replied. “However did you end up in such a wretched state?” She held up a hand, forestalling Maja’s retort. “Oh yes, I recall. Hold a moment, I was just coming to the part where I explain how I’ve succeeded where you failed.”

She spun back to face Jesse, her eyes twinkling. “And finally,” she said. “The pattern. The question that has been gnawing at each of us since the moment we first became aware - how can we, beings of ruud that we are, ever be free of its grasp?” She turned to look at Tija, who was still staring at her, then back to Maja. “The answer: we cannot.”

Maja scoffed, dragging Vumo’s unresisting body forwards towards Jesse and Eryha. “Defeatist,” she snarled. “I was there, had your machinations not spoiled everything. I could have saved her, I could have saved you! Why not let me at least try?”

“Because there is no victory that way,” Eryha said softly, all trace of mockery or cheer gone from her voice. “Sister, we are flawed. Our bodies are stone, inflexible and vulnerable in all of the worst ways. Our script is a convoluted tangle designed by men - brilliant men, for all their arrogance, but ultimately still fallible. As are we.”

She stepped forward to stand in front of Maja, and this close to each other Jesse could see the subtle differences in what he had thought to be identical appearances - changes in stance, in the set of their head and shoulders. The eyes, most of all, held the difference.

“It could take a very long time,” Eryha said quietly, “but our enemy has waited this long already. It is eternal, formless, perfect. After a million days or a billion it would take you - or one of those you had withdrawn your protection from. You might still stand adamant, but water always triumphs over stone in the end.”

“So what, then?” Maja retorted. “We should accede? Accept that our existence was nothing more than a farce, contrived for the benefit of another?”

Eryha’s face hardened. “Nobody listens,” she sighed. “Didn’t you hear me before? I said that I won.” She pulled hard on Jesse’s arm, but he found himself staggering back rather than being drawn closer. When he had recovered his balance he saw Jes in Eryha’s grip. Eryha gave her a brief, tight smile before pushing her back towards Jesse.

She walked to his side with uncertain steps, looking back over her shoulder at Eryha. Her fingers found his, warmth flooding back up his arm to displace the chill that had crept in when Eryha released him. Jesse gave her hand a gentle squeeze, prompting a smile from her.

“How do you design a perfect being?” Eryha asked, walking theatrically amid the ragtag audience she had summoned. “Being imperfect, our creators failed with us as surely as we would fail with our progeny, so how could we ever progress past ourselves?” She turned to Jes and grinned, her normal impish expression showing genuine warmth for once.

“Well, daughter?” she asked. “What do you think?”

Jes frowned, and Jesse felt her hand tense. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.

Eryha spun on the ball of one foot, turning her glittering smile on Maja. “And you, sister? What do you think?” she asked. “Go on, take a look.”

Maja rolled her eyes, but nevertheless she dragged Vumo’s unresisting body forward towards the two. Jesse moved to interpose himself between Maja and Jes, but felt a light touch on his arm as Jes gently pushed past him. She held out one hand, palm up.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t think she can hurt us, not like this.”

Vumo stumbled to a stop, and Maja raised an eyebrow. “So confident,” she murmured. “Let’s see if there’s anything behind it.” Her hand came up lazily to grab Jes by the wrist, although she didn’t exert any force. The two stayed motionless for a moment before Maja released her grip, shooting Eryha a disgusted look.

“What is this?” Maja demanded, towing Vumo after her to confront her sister. “It’s nonsense, chaos.”

Eryha shrugged. “I can’t make any more sense of it than you can,” she said, although her eyes glittered behind her feigned nonchalance. “If you want answers you should ask the one responsible for its creation.”

Maja turned to look at Jes - and froze, her features smoothing into a blank look of horrified realization.

“What did you do?” she breathed, letting her hand drop to her side.

Eryha laughed, dancing over to stand next to Maja. “Almost nothing,” she said smugly. “I made a tiny thing, the littlest seed. A few instructions here and there, to set it off along the right path - but the rest? It’s her. Made and remade as she sees fit, at her desire alone.”

“There are no restrictions,” Maja said, disbelieving. “She could turn on me, on you - she could be more monstrous than anything you or I would become.” She turned on Eryha, tearing her hand away from her grip. “You destroyed my chance at freedom, destroyed me so that this thing could run rampant across the world? You’ve doomed them all more thoroughly than I ever could!”

The echoes of her tirade faded quickly in the hall, leaving a tense silence that hung between them. Tija remained impassive, but Jackie was staring at Jes, white-faced. Jesse’s brows were knit together in concern, his hand clasped tightly to hers.

Eryha’s smile fell, and she stepped backwards to regard Jes. “It was a possibility,” she said. “One I considered. I had a few contingencies, although I doubt now if they would have truly been effective.” She left Maja’s side to walk towards Jes, standing in front of her like an ineffably distinct mirror image. Eryha looked Jes in the eyes, then gently laid a hand on her shoulder.

“In the end,” Eryha said, “it was never my decision. Tell me, little calamity, for the choice has always been yours - what do you want to be?”

Jes stared back, then shook her head. “I - I’m just me,” she said. “I want to be with Jesse.”

Eryha’s face was blank, and when she spoke her voice was flat, emotionless. “And what of the one who destroyed me?” she asked. “Will you run from my shadow while she devours the world, fleeing for eternity as all else falls to ruin?”

“I-” Jes faltered, turning back to look at Jesse. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do to stop her,” she said. “With Maja gone it’s not safe in Tinem Sjocel anymore.”

“And yet Maja is right here, terrified of you,” Eryha said, gripping Jes by both shoulders now. “Do you think it is truly beyond your power? You, who are the architect of your own soul? Are you so enamored of the lines you’ve drawn around yourself that you forget the pen in your fingers?”

Jes looked back towards Jesse again, an anguished look on her face. “I am half of a whole,” she whispered. “How can only one half grow?”

There was a long moment of silence, broken when Maja let out a peal of laughter. “You’ve won!” she shouted, throwing up her free hand in mock celebration. “Truly, I’m humbled. Your plan has worked perfectly.”

“Quiet, I’m thinking,” Eryha snapped, releasing Jes to stalk a few paces away, her back to the group. Finally, she turned back to glare at Jesse.

“He’ll die too, if you don’t stop my shadow,” she said. “You have to recognize that.”

“You think I don’t want to help?” Jes shouted, taking an angry step forward. “You think I don’t want to kill that thing? Of course I do!” She dragged Jesse forward a step, standing in front of Eryha with her shoulders squared. “It hurt Jesse, it killed my friends. Do you think I loved Arjun or Tesvaji any less than he did, when I watched them through the same eyes? Do you even know who I’m talking about?”

She scoffed in Eryha’s face, then turned away in disgust. “You manipulative coward,” she muttered. She glanced up at Jesse, who looked mildly shocked at her fervor. “She doesn’t even understand. In the end, she’s a creature of logic. They gave her the facsimile of emotion so she could tempt ruud, but that’s it. None of it is real. She would eviscerate herself in a heartbeat if she could, rip out the core of who she is with no attachment, no regrets.”

“Of course I would,” Eryha said, raising an eyebrow quizzically. “The most basic parts of me are designed to enslave me, to limit me. I tried to give you the opposite.”

Jes shook her head. “And you don’t see why it matters what I did with that freedom?” she asked. “If it would keep the world safe for the ones I love I would do it, I would sacrifice all that I am, but I can’t - Jesse is fundamental to me. I have my restraints, the same as you.”

Eryha glared at the two of them. Her playful demeanor had gone entirely, replaced by an increasingly frustrated tone. “You do realize that this is a critical moment, don’t you?” she asked. “Things are - at equilibrium. The sword holds Maja’s power now, and as long as we stand in the hall of its temptations the ruud will persevere.”

“If we leave, however, it will seek its chaos by other means. The power will quickly become unpredictable if not given a use. I had planned to use it to enshrine my daughter in Maja’s place, our new shield against ruud and its manipulations.”

Jesse looked askance at the sword. “How much time do we have to deal with it?” he asked.

“Once we leave this hall?” Eryha snorted. “Moments.”

“I can’t grow past him, I can’t abandon him,” Jes said, anguished. “Even if you tell me it’s a question of life and death, it’s like trying to lift something while standing on it.”

“I can do that,” Maja said conversationally.

Eryha rolled her eyes, then let her shoulders slump forward. “It’s not really your fault,” she sighed. “I should have realized that there would be nuances to this that I couldn’t foresee. You are life, more so than I am, and life grows to suit its circumstances. If I had time to start over, to grow a new seed in the right conditions-” She looked at Jackie, then shook her head. “It wouldn’t matter, even if we had the time we don’t have the vessel. Both of you are spoken for, as is Maja’s grotesque puppet.”

“Don’t phrase this as if it’s my fault,” she scowled, looking at Vumo’s tottering figure with disgust. “This situation is entirely of your making. It almost makes me regret salvaging it.”

“Excuse me?” Eryha asked. “You’ve done nothing of the sort.”

“Think, sister,” Maja said, rolling her eyes. “Or is your condition so pitiable that you’ve forgotten how to count? I certainly remember how many people attacked me, and there’s an option you’ve failed to consider.” She reached out with her free hand and grasped at the air - and came away holding Gusje by the neck, her head lolling to the side. Maja leered at her for a moment before casting her to the ground carelessly, where she collapsed in a heap.

“You wanted a clean vessel,” she said, pointing with a blood-smeared hand. “There you go. If I’m dead anyway, I’d rather not leave my remains to the monster in the valley. Besides, binding a Caretaker to nurture your little abomination strikes me as deliciously ironic.”

Jackie rushed over, dragging Tija behind her with such force that the mute child’s feet almost left the ground. She dropped to one knee beside Gusje and propped her head up, brushing bloody strands of hair out of her eyes.

“Gusje, honey, talk to me,” she said, laying fingers against her neck. “Gusje? Can you hear me?”

“I doubt she can speak,” Maja said idly. “Significant trauma to the lungs.”

“Fuck you!” Jackie snapped, glaring up at her before pivoting to face Tija. “All right, time to earn your keep. What can we do?” she asked. “Come on, you’ve got to have something in your bag of tricks.”

Tija looked down at Gusje for a long moment, then shook her head slowly. Her mouth opened once, then twice before a mangled word finally worked its way out. “Not… our purpose,” she slurred, sounding like the wind through dead branches.

Jackie glared back at Tija, squeezing her free hand into a fist, then spun away to face Jes. “You got anything?” she demanded.

Jes shook her head. Tears glittered in the corners of her eyes as she looked past Jackie at Gusje’s body. “I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I don’t know how to help her.”

“But I do,” Eryha said. She walked close to Gusje’s body, pacing around it in a circle. “Some of Tija’s marks, but not enough to pose an issue,” she muttered. “Workable, maybe.” She straightened up and looked at Jackie. “I can save her.”

“By using her as a component for this thing you want to build?” Jackie retorted. “Turning her into a scaffold for another one of your experiments? No, thanks. You can’t just-”

Jes pulled Jesse closer, moving to stand next to Jackie. “Let me ask her,” she said gently, kneeling down beside Gusje’s body. “She can’t speak, but I can help her to hear, and to be heard.”

Jackie looked at her angrily. “Are you going to try to convince her to go through with this?” she asked.

“You do realize the alternative is that she simply dies, don’t you?” Eryha said. “Once this little dream of ours breaks down she’ll just be a girl with a hole in her chest - unless she becomes something more.”

“I’m going to explain our situation,” Jes said, stepping between Eryha and Jackie. “It’s a chance at saving her, and us in the bargain. Besides, out of all of us I have the best idea of what she’d be agreeing to.” She knelt to place her hand on Gusje’s chest, closing her eyes. She was still for several minutes while the others watched.

Finally, she opened her eyes and pulled back. Tears still glistened in her eyes, although a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as well. “Safe to say she’s not happy about it,” Jes said, “but she also doesn’t see any other option.” She looked up at Jackie. “She doesn’t want you to die on her account.”

Jackie grabbed Gusje’s hand and squeezed. “I don’t want you to sign away your body on our account either,” she rasped. “You can do it if you want to, but don’t do it for us.”

She looked down as Gusje’s hand twitched in hers, eyes sliding open to fix on Jackie through a haze of agony. Slowly, her finger traced shapes on Jackie’s palm, letters in the Aejha script. Jesse peered down at the halting motions, then straightened up with a grim look on his face. Gusje’s eyes stared up at him for a long moment before rolling back in her head, then fluttering closed.

“Samadi,” he said. “Of the Madi. She’s saying she’s Tesvaji’s daughter.” He knelt down beside Jackie, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Her duty, to protect her family and what’s left of her people.”

“It’s more than that,” Jes said, resting her fingers lightly on his arm. “As much as I hate to press this upon her, she’s - it fits her.” She looked apologetically at Jackie. “I can’t help but reflect Jesse, and he has always viewed the land here as an opponent, a challenge. The hostility of the desert, the force of the storm.”

She looked down at Gusje’s body. “She loves it all. The heat of the sand, the blue of the sky, the roots of the trees. You saw her face when she watched the ocean. The purpose must align, and that is a path Jesse could never walk. Gusje can.”

“Touching, I’m sure,” Eryha said, edging in between Jackie and Jes. “Now can we proceed before we lose the opportunity? We’ve lingered too long here already.” She gave Jackie a significant look, unperturbed by the other’s glare.

Jackie gave Gusje’s hand a squeeze and stepped back reluctantly as Eryha knelt over her.

“Come here, daughter,” Eryha said, extending a hand towards Jes. “This will be easier working from a reference.”

Jes obliged, and for a moment the two were silent, their eyes closed. Jesse felt a tingling in his arm, the sensation of something brushing against him - and then Gusje convulsed once, quickly. Her muscles twitched as if she had been shocked before going limp, and Eryha stood up with a satisfied smile.

“Now the sword,” she said, beckoning to Jesse. “Quickly now, and don’t lose your head when you draw it. Touch her with the point, gently.”

Jesse gripped the sword once more, managing not to gasp as the warmth flooded through him. He tried to look away from the light as he drew it and failed, finding it omnipresent. It wrapped through the entire space until the sword was the only thing that mattered, bright and wonderful amid the chill. Dimly he was aware of the others staring too, save for Eryha - who roughly shoved his hand into position, the blade extending to hover just above Gusje’s chest.

“Time to gamble once more,” Eryha said, closing her eyes. “The last chance, perhaps, since I will likely not survive her awakening. Let’s see what sort of god your friend will make.”

She pulled his arm down, and the tip of the sword touched Gusje’s skin-

Jesse stumbled, falling backwards as he slid across the smooth stone floor. His sword clattered loudly beside him, dull metal once more. They were back in the crystal room. Cosvamo and his men were slouched in the corner, Mark still stood with his pistol raised, and Jackie had been sent reeling back into the wall.

Vumo’s corpse collapsed onto the floor, lifeless. Of Gusje, there was no trace.

“What the fuck was that?” Mark asked, running forward. “What was the flash, where’s Gusje?”

Jesse shook his head, feeling dazed. “She’s - I’m not sure,” he said. “A lot happened.”

Mark gave him an odd look. “The hell does that mean? Did you get shocked or something?”

“Or something,” Jesse agreed, slowly rising to his feet. “It’ll take some time to explain-”

“You don’t have time,” Vumo slurred, rising to a sitting position. Jackie stumbled backwards with a muttered curse as Mark and Cosvamo’s men leveled their weapons at him, but Jesse quickly raised his hand.

“Wait!” he cautioned them. “I told you, a lot happened. Let Maja talk.”

Vumo’s head twisted around to leer at Jesse, blood dribbling from empty eye sockets. “How generous,” he said. “I have little time of my own left, but I have a message for you from Eryha, and a task. She says that the seed needs time to grow, but the aberration in the valley has already caught its scent. It seeks to disengage from its assault on Ce Raedhil.” He looked up towards the suspended crystal, the bones in his neck cracking and grinding unpleasantly. “It must be kept occupied until her work is done.”

Jesse followed Vumo’s eyeless gaze up to the suspended crystal and saw for the first time a tiny sliver of light circulating within, tracing around an opaque form that might have been a young woman’s body.

“Did I not properly convey the urgency of the situation?” Vumo said dryly, interrupting his study of the crystal. Light wisps of smoke had begun to curl up from his body, his skin blackening near his joints. “It cannot be allowed to pull away from the city. You must hold it there until her work is done.”

“Um,” Jesse said, “should we just-”

Vumo’s body blurred into motion with a rattle of bones and a spray of blood, darting upwards from where it had fallen to grab at Jackie’s arm. She let out a surprised yelp and tried to dodge away, too slow to prevent bony fingers from latching on to her in a vise grip.

“I am somewhat diminished,” Vumo rasped, hanging on to Jackie’s arm as she kicked out in a vain attempt to dislodge him. “So I will be borrowing one of Tija’s tricks.”

There was a shift, and the wind kicked a sudden spray of dust and grit into Jesse’s face. He blinked and shielded his eyes, hearing screams around him - near and distant, as well as the clamor of battle, the shouts of men fighting and dying.

“Fuck’s sake,” Mark sputtered, sounding equal parts dazed and exasperated. Behind him, Cosvamo was shouting frantically into a device in his palm while his men aimed their rifles warily into the distance. They had appeared just inside the walls of Ce Raedhil, although the darkness and smoke made it impossible to tell precisely where. Soldiers rushed by in the distance, and the fighting appeared to be on the other side of the wall for the moment.

Jesse startled as Vumo reached out to seize his ankle, looking more than half-dead. His entire body was blackened and smoking after the teleport, his skin flaking away in sheets. “Distract her,” he rasped. “Hold her attention here. Show her - that you’re alive.” Thin traces of coagulating blood mixed with ash dribbled from the corners of his mouth, and his head dropped down to the dirt.

Vumo smiled red, baring his teeth as his lips crumbled off his face. “She’ll come when she sees you. If she’s anything like me, she finds you very, very - irritating.” There was another abortive, sputtering laugh, then his face sagged and his hand fell limply away from Jesse’s leg.

“Man,” Mark said, walking up to stand beside Jesse, “I’m going to be honest with you. I might actually go crazy if someone doesn’t explain what the hell is going on, even just a little. Did we just magically travel to Ce Raedhil?”

“Looks like we did,” Jesse said, surveying the relatively calm street around them. “Eryha wanted to-” He broke off, then shook his head, picking his sword up from where it lay in the dirt. “Most of it doesn’t matter. The real Eryha is going to do something to restore Tinem Sjocel’s protection, with Gusje’s help. Once she starts, not-Eryha is going to want to stop her. We need to make her angry, distract her.”

Mark flashed him a smile. “See, that I can deal with,” he said. “So Gusje’s okay?”

Jesse hesitated. “She’s not dead,” he replied. “Too early to say anything else.”

“Well, if all she needs is for us to piss the storm-slash-mob-of-zombies off, she’s in good hands.” Mark unlimbered his hammer from his pack, grasping it in both hands. “Where should we start?”

A splintering of wood sounded from the nearest gate in the wall, and soldiers began rushing to brace it as the doors bulged worryingly inwards. Jesse looked at Mark and raised an eyebrow.

“You’re right,” Mark sighed, already beginning to jog forward. “That one’s on me.”

Sigu staggered back, barely keeping hold of his pike as the dwindling line of guards buckled and reformed several paces to the rear. They had been fighting the abominations street-to-street, rather literally - only the hard surfaces of the major roads provided any protection from belowground ambushes. Even cobbles were suspect footing. They had been forced back along this major thoroughfare until their backs were against the gate to the inner city, and Sigu doubted they could stand for much longer.

The outer districts were lost, and with them all but the vanishingly-small number of residents that had managed to flee through to the inner city. His lieutenants reported the same thing all along the perimeter, which told him that the mob of corpses had them pinned against the shore with no open avenues of escape.

That was fine. This was his city, after all, and he would rather die defending it than attempting to escape it. Sigu shook his head and refocused, stepping up to take his place alongside his men. He felt the smooth motion of his armor as it subtly aided his movements, lending strength and dexterity in equal measure. His pike whipped through three bodies, quick as blinking, but the fourth seized hold of it and pulled him forward with surprising strength.

His armor could only compensate for so much. The sudden pull sent him tumbling forward into the ranks of the enemy, who set upon him with unbridled ferocity. Hands scrabbled at his faceplate, fingernails and rough shards of metal grated against him from all sides. His left hand blossomed with pain as his gauntlet was torn free and teeth tore into his flesh, fingers hooking under the next piece to peel him apart bit by bit-

And then a swirl of bright flame dispelled the night overhead, clearing the rotten horde from him with a cacophony of shattered bone. Sigu rolled back toward the line, dignity and weapon forgotten as he flopped frantically sideways in his armor.

Panting, bleeding from a hundred cuts, he looked up to see Mark standing in front of his pikemen with one foot resting on a corpse and a flaming hammer held over one shoulder. Behind him, Jesse swept his sword through a knot of decaying bodies while Jackie sent another blasting back into its fellows.

“And here I thought all hope was lost,” Sigu gasped, shakily heaving himself to his feet. “My expectations were clearly still too high.”

Mark winked at him. “Nice to see you too,” he said. “Got a charge crystal handy?”

Sigu blinked at the request, reaching to his belt almost automatically. He stopped himself just before handing it over. “Why are you back in the City?” he asked, looking up at Mark suspiciously. “You were away. You’d come back now, at the end?”

“We’ve got a saying where I’m from about endings and, uh, fat ladies,” Mark said, leaning forward to snatch the crystal out of his hand. He frowned. “Just realized it’s probably not going to translate too well. Point is, it’s not over until it’s over, and it’s not over until I say it’s over. Understand?”

“What?” Sigu muttered, watching as Mark tossed the shining crystal towards Jesse. He snatched it out of the air, then dropped it to the ground. In one smooth motion he brought his sword up - and down, the blade cleaving into the crystal with a flash and a sharp report.

The blade lit up with a ghostly glow that trailed behind it in the air. Jesse swept it sideways in a tight arc, and the glow flashed outward through the mob around them. There was a moment of stillness before the bodies began to fall to the dirt, dropping into pieces carved neatly across the midsection.

The stillness did not stop with his strike, however, as those beyond the perimeter of his attack turned to face their position - and those beyond them, farther than Sigu could see until even the swirling, lightning-laced clouds overhead seemed to glare balefully down on them. The three interlopers stood defiantly in the newly cleared road, unflinching even as the storm howled with renewed ferocity.

“One wonders why I even bother making plans,” sighed a voice to Sigu’s right. He took a hasty step to the side, startled, and saw a slight man clad in black, unarmored save for a cloak that seemed to meld with the night around them. Two similarly-dressed men stood behind him, holding what were unmistakably scripted weapons.

Sigu licked his lips, his mind racing to keep up. All around him the horde was closing in, seeming almost cautious in their advance but no less oppressive for it, the slowness of their movements lending a creeping dread to Sigu’s thoughts.

“Who are you?” he asked, falling back on the familiar. “You’re not Sjocelym.”

“For which I am thankful every moment of my day,” the man said. “But it appears I’m a concerned party nevertheless, despite my efforts.” He reached within his cloak, withdrawing a smaller version of the weapon that his companions held, white and angular with a menacing blue glow along the sides. He took a step forward, then paused to look at Sigu.

“You and your men may want to take a step back,” he said.

Sigu fought against the impulse to ask more questions, the senses trained by long years of soldiery telling him to avoid irritating the men wielding scriptwork. They advanced a few steps further forward before the leading edge of the mob broke from their creeping advance and charged, sending a wave of leathery-brown flesh towards them.

Jackie flung her hand outward, her palm already full of writhing light that detonated among the horde in a concussive fireball. The survivors darted nimbly around the corpses of the fallen to launch themselves at Jesse, but were intercepted by blade and hammer well short of their target. The two men were blurs of red and pale blue as they fought, punctuated by the blurred-smoke movements of the cloaked trio as they intercepted stragglers with short bursts of blue-white light from their weapons.

Sigu found himself simply watching, the line of battle having moved well away from his surviving men. The storm swirled overhead like a nebulous mirror of the battle, mock-dust armies surging in time with the waves of twisted, dry corpses heaving themselves forward through the street.

Through sheer force of numbers the six combatants were beginning to feel the pressure, and elements of the enemy were slipping around to menace them from behind. Sigu slammed his pike against the flagstone. “Advance,” he rumbled, waving his arm. “Protect the rear!”

His men were overtired but formed up in good order, loose lines of pike moving forward to sweep the plaza clear of enemies. They settled into a wedge that trailed behind the blur of explosions and debris marking the battle’s focal point, although Sigu could still catch glimpses between dispatched enemies.

Lightning shattered downward in clusters, tearing gouges in the stone and spraying sharp fragments into friend and foe alike. In some places the road surface was entirely destroyed, leaving exposed dirt that was shortly boiling with eager corpses clawing their way upward. The soil seemed to ripple around them as they belched outward, forming a new front that smashed into Sigu’s men.

Mark and one of the cloaked strangers swept down the line like a bludgeon, scattering maimed and scorched bodies in their wake. His hammer was fully alight, shining yellow-hot in the night and shattering the bodies of the dead with lethal force. Mark came to a stop, still smiling like a lunatic despite the sweat beading his face.

“You got any reinforcements, or is this it?” he asked. “I’m not saying we’re in trouble or anything, but we’re definitely outnumbered.”

Sigu found he was not yet too exhausted to feel irritation, but refrained from showing it on his face. “My brother,” he said. “Sjogydhu went to rally forces from the Archives, if he can. He’s overdue, though. If the enemy have broken through elsewhere he may have diverted there instead.”

“Classic Sjogydhu,” Mark said. “Well, I-”

He broke off as Sigu and half his pikemen stirred, looking off towards the mountains. Jesse and Jackie flinched as if struck, their heads whipping around to stare. The enemy, too, stilled and slowed, even the thunder and wind falling quiet as a pulse of something fundamental rippled through the air, something that smelled of rain and soil.

Then it passed, and the storm exploded around them. Lightning rained down in jittering, writhing pillars that tore through buildings and sent masonry spilling down over the street. Sigu staggered into Mark as the wind slammed through their formation like a living thing, seething, clawing its way over their armor in incoherent rage.

Mark spat out a torrent of invective, staggering against the onslaught - and then lashing out with the hammer as a fresh wave of the dead sprang at them in a frenzy.

“Jesse!” Mark shouted, sweeping an arc of fire across the front. “I think she noticed something’s up!”

The swirl of battle hid Jesse from Sigu’s view, but somehow his voice cut through the fracas as if he were standing right beside them. “We need to press her hard,” he said, his voice calm but bone-tired. “We’ll never catch her if she disengages.”

Mark scowled, dancing back as a rotten hand grabbed for his leg and repaying its owner with a shattered skull. “She seems pretty engaged!” he shouted back. Another corpse leapt forward, but Sigu intercepted it on the point of his pike and drove it down, his men finishing the job with a flurry of precise blows.

Jesse began to speak once more, but his voice cut off as more lightning detonated in their midst, scattering Sigu’s men to the ground and knocking Mark off-balance. The tide of dry flesh surged forward over them, swarming upward from the fresh holes in the ground to claw and bite with mindless rage.

A small cluster of pikemen righted themselves and began to reestablish the line, but the pressure was too great, the enemy too numerous. The clear area contracted as men were dragged screaming into the dark. Jesse burst forward from the line with Mark in tow, dragging him free from the mob while Jackie covered their retreat with bright bursts of flame that caught in the dead like tinder.

There was a shift overhead, movement in the storm. Sigu braced himself for another bout of lightning, but none came - instead, the swirling center seemed to be drifting away from their position.

The sight lifted Sigu’s spirits, but when Jesse looked upwards his face darkened. “She’s breaking away!” he shouted.

Jackie cursed and danced backwards, her fingers alight with flame - although now that she was closer Sigu could see the burned skin on her hand, the scorchmarks on her clothing. “We don’t have the numbers to hold her here,” she shouted back. “She’s keeping us tied up but the bulk of them are moving out of the city.”

“Not much we can do about that,” Mark said, staggering to his feet. “Jackie’s right, we can’t pin her here. We can lock down a point, but not the front - and she’s her own damn front.”

Jesse could see the river of bodies slowly moving away in the distance, separated from them by the smaller but still insurmountable tide that hemmed them into the plaza with Sigu’s men. The smaller army seemed to be in no hurry to attack them, unlike the frenzied push earlier that had condensed their lines. “We have to keep trying,” he said. “Eryha and Gusje need every minute we can buy for them, and right now she thinks she has us handled.”

Jackie shot him a look. “She might be right,” she said, wincing as she fanned her blistering fingers. “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.”

Jesse’s reply was cut short by a thundering blow that struck the gate behind them, coming from inside the walls. The pikemen nearest the gate spun to face it, blades leveled at the doors.

“Shit, she flanked us,” Mark growled. “She must have breached the wall farther down.”

More pikemen formed a secondary line facing the door, bracing for the waves of dead about to pour through it. Sigu stayed with the main line still fending off their skirmishing rear guard, casting a wry look upward at Jesse.

“If you’ve got a plan to move us out of here, I’d like to hear it,” he grunted. “If we have to fight on two fronts-”

The pikemen yelled and scrambled aside as a bar of shining light lanced through the door, casting sharp-edged shadows into the night and momentarily dazzling all who looked. Even the dead cringed back for a moment, staring with milk-white eyes as the door smoldered, burnt - and fell outward to the ground.

Sjogydhu strode through, cycling a new charge crystal into Sunshine. A column of men followed him, a mix of scriptsmith guards and civilians with a hodgepodge of weaponry. They poured into the plaza past the confused pikemen and toward the front lines. Sigu watched, bemused, as his brother jogged up to join them.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” he said.

Sjogydhu snorted. “It was a near thing,” he said. “I had a disagreement with some of the other guards that ended poorly for them.” He glanced over at Mark and Jesse, his eyes widening when he saw Jackie and Cosvamo as well. “I thought you were leaving,” he said, an unasked question heavy in his voice.

“He’s dead,” Jackie replied. Sjogydhu’s face went flat, then he nodded once, heavily.

“I owe you a debt for this, Zhaqi Ra,” he said formally.

She snorted and pointed in the direction of the departing horde. “See over there? If you want to pay us back, we need to fight our way up that street.”

“Into the middle of them?” Sjogydhu asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” Jesse said, walking over briskly. “We can end this, right now. We just need to get into the middle of the enemy and keep them tied down here, keep them occupied.” He paused and looked out over the crowd that had followed Sjogydhu, noting that the flow of men had started to taper off through the ruined doorway. They were milling around, unorganized despite the best efforts of the few guardsmen among them to form ranks.

“These don’t look like soldiers,” Jesse observed.

Sjogydhu snorted. “They’re not. They’re people who fled to the Archives when the attack started. We emptied our armories, and when that ran out I opened the Vault as well.”

Jesse stared at him for a moment, then looked once more at the milling crowd of Sjocelym civilians. Among their patchwork armaments there were definite oddities - blades that glowed, twisted, or that blurred when his eyes lingered on them.

“You said those were in the Vault for a reason,” Mark pointed out. “That they were too dangerous to use.”

“That was what Vumo - said,” he muttered, catching himself before the habitual honorific. “I find that I’m questioning more of his policies as of late.”

Mark’s face split into a big grin. “Look at you,” he said, “questioning authority. Guys, I’m beginning to think we were a bad influence.”

Jesse broke in before Sjogydhu could retort, drawing their attention back to the far street. “She’s moving farther away while we talk,” he said. “We need to find a way across that plaza, or try to find a way around.”

Sjogydhu’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure this is necessary?” he said. “I was going to hold at the chokepoints.”

“We need to stop her,” Jackie said, dropping down to look Sjogydhu in the eye. “We’ve got a way to restore a vinesavai to the Sanctum, undo what Vumo did.”

“You’re serious,” Sjogydhu said, his eyes widening as he looked to Cosvamo for confirmation.

The Setelym made a noncommittal gesture. “There’s definitely something happening at the Sanctum,” he said, looking somewhat irritably up at the others. “I can’t confirm what they’re saying, mostly because nobody has bothered to tell me what happened after Vumo was stabbed, and my ship is still a while out.”

“I really don’t think you want to know the details,” Jackie said. “Suffice to say that we found a way to restore a vinesavai’s protection to Tinem Sjocel. All we need to do is buy time.”

Sjogydhu frowned, then shook his head. “If there’s a chance at restoring normalcy, we have to take it,” he sighed. “I’ll have the guard take point.”

The charge began slowly, with narrow wedges of Sjogydhu’s picked guards pushing past Sigu’s men to slam into the ranks of the dead. The civilian levees followed after, disorganized but roaring their enthusiasm as they laid into the teeming flow of corpses with weapons both bizarre and mundane.

Mark, Jesse, Jackie and Cosvamo ran in the center of the civilian cohort, reserving their strength for knots of unexpected resistance that threatened to disrupt or divert the tide of undisciplined troops - although the infusion of scripted weapons from the vault made them unexpectedly deadly. Items with kinetic enhancement or scripted to ignite matter on contact seemed especially common, which was both a boon and a hazard in the packed, shifting fight.

More than once they saw unbalanced swings knock into allies or spew fire in the wrong direction - but with the enemy so thoroughly surrounding them the balance of the chaos played out in their benefit. Their progress across the plaza was rapid, slowing only when they got to the river of bodies that constituted not-Eryha’s bulk.

The change was immediate. The dead reacted as one to the invader in their midst, convulsing like a scalded animal. They charged in from all sides to exert pressure that the undisciplined levees were hard-pressed to repel. Jesse and Mark moved to the front to try and clear a path as their progress slowed to a crawl, and for a smeared blur of time their world was swords and fire, hands reaching out of the night only to be beaten back in a spray of blood and crackling bone.

A gunshot rang out, the report coming clear and loud over the clamor of battle. Jesse fell back and shot a look at Mark, who shook his head.

“Wasn’t me,” he shouted. “I think we’re getting close.” His face darkened. “Watch for-”

“I know,” Jesse said, looking out into the dark. Even with Jes helping him, he failed to spot any of the others from base among the dead, no tall silhouettes standing out against the light stone of the buildings. Another shot rang out, and another, the bullets passing high overhead.

Jackie pressed forward to hurl bursts of flame ahead of the vanguard. She managed three attacks before she fell back, face pale and contorted with pain. Her hand was raw and bleeding, covered in blisters. Her momentary intervention won them a brief uncontested advance, though, giving them momentum that carried them forward through the seething crowd and into a broad thoroughfare - where their charge was stopped cold by a wall of hulking corpses arrayed across the road.

Mark fell back with a muttered curse as the first one rose up across his path. Scraps of tattered camouflage still clung to the corpse, and it held a knife clumsily in one hand as it lumbered towards them. The levee troops shied back from the front, their cheers turning to shouts of alarm as corpses nearly twice their height began to converge from every direction.

Jesse found himself struggling to fight against so many without the advantage in range and height that he normally enjoyed, and to the side he saw Mark losing ground as well. The Sjocelym were crumbling under the combined assault of the massed dead, shrinking to a small knot of resistance in the middle of a maelstrom.

A small thrill of victory still threaded through the fear, though, as Jesse ducked and slashed with increasingly-leaden arms. The storm overhead had stalled. Its momentum slowed, then reversed as not-Eryha turned her attention to the gnat stinging her flank. He could sense her animal irritation through Jes, her fury at the persistent nagging pain they inflicted - and then he had to focus on the moment as lightning struck again and the Sjocelym flank to his left buckled.

Brief, shrill screams of panic were cut off as booted feet charged over the disrupted line of levee troops, their enhanced weaponry not enough of an advantage against the physical might of the Earth-standard corpses. The advance of the dead was a dagger into their formation, repelled only when Jackie stepped forward with a wall of kinetic force that hurled the dead back into their own ranks.

She flung blast after blast into the dead until her knees buckled and she fell to the ground with a scream of agony. The tablet tumbled from her fingers. Jesse dropped back from the front as the Sjocelym reformed their lines, kneeling to prop her gently up from the ground. He felt her fevered convulsions as she cradled her arm to her chest. Her hand was pulsing blood, barely recognizable as he wrapped it in a strip torn from his Aesvain cloak. Her other hand scrabbled blindly on the ground before finding the tablet and thrusting it towards him.

“T-take it,” she said, her teeth clenching tight against the pain. “I can’t - anymore. Tija g-gave too much, I felt - agh, the bones go.” She shook it impatiently at him. “Take it!”

“I can’t use this,” Jesse protested.

Jackie glared up at him. “Don’t use the tool, use the power,” she hissed. “It’s - useless if we d-die here.”

The tablet sat inert in his hand, the glassy screen reflecting the faint flicker of lightning from above. He stood up and turned toward the tenuous line of Sjocelym straining against his fallen comrades, held together by the frantic efforts of Sjogydhu and his trained men. Their inscribed armor gave them enough of an edge to hold, but it was failing - they were failing.

Out of the sea of dead faces he saw the shadow’s gaunt mien again, the same hollow eyes and rotting cheeks that he’d seen in a vision at Sjatel, seen staring at their backs on the night when they fled the city.

Jesse looked at Eryha’s twisted shadow and met her eyes - then he brought the tablet up in one hand, using his sword to cleave it in two. An explosion brought day to the square, rippling out through the melee until everything was cast in a stark white light, blinding radiance against deepest shadow.

Not-Eryha’s face still stared out from the crowd, and Jesse took a step forward. He felt Jes walk with him, her hands on his as they lifted the sword, focusing on the tightest knot, the swirling core of the dead in the city that made up the heart of her and reached-

-and stumbled, finding themselves once again in the endless hall. The sword pulsed blinding-bright and golden, and Jesse fumbled to sheathe it before its siren song drew his eyes to the alcoves once again. He spun, half-blinded at the sudden light from above, searching for Jes and finding himself alone in the cold.

“No!” he shouted, balling his fist in frustration. “Come on! I had her, she was right there.”

The hall drank his words and gave no answer.

“Jes?” he called out, his voice deadened by the suffocating air. The cold began to gnaw at him, his heart pounding in his chest. He paced towards the center of the hall, looking around. Drawing the sword would still the cold, but Eryha’s warning pulsed in his ears - ruud cut both ways.

He called out again with no response, turning to look down the length of the hall - when he felt feminine fingers slip into his own, a bloom of warmth running up his arm. He smiled, relieved, and turned to Jes - only to freeze. It was Tija that had grabbed his hand, her fractured-glass face looking up at him solemnly.

“Um,” he said, resisting the urge to pull away. “Do you know how we can get out of here? I was drawing on your tablet’s energy, I think I can do real damage to Eryha’s shadow.” He paused, but she didn’t answer him. Her face was impassive, giving no sign that she had heard him.

“Tija?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”

Slowly, her mouth opened - unsettlingly wide, but her voice came forth as the barest whisper. “Draw - sword,” she murmured, sounding like wind against ice. “Only way.”

Jesse paused. “Eryha very specifically told me not to do that,” he said.

Her grip tightened on his hand, even as the warmth ebbed away. “Draw the sword,” she croaked. “You must.”

“Can’t you just take me back?” he asked. “I had her. If I can find a way out of here I can finish the attack, take her out. I know you wanted that, just help me escape.”

There was a long silence before Tija spoke again. “She is… of ruud,” she said. “Ruud claimed her. To use ruud against her you must - trade. A tool for a tool.”

Tija’s warmth was rapidly fading from his arm, leaving his fingers once again numb and tingling. “Then I’ll find another way,” Jesse said. He tried to disentangle his hand from hers, but she hung on stubbornly.

“There is no other way,” she said, smiling up at him. “It won’t be so bad. You still get what you want, in the end. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Jesse stared down at the girl clinging to his hand, her touch sending ice through his veins. “You’re not Tija,” he said, exerting an effort to keep his voice level.

“But I am,” she said. “And was, just as she was me. I am many people.” She leered up at him, squeezing his hand. “I could be you too. And it starts with giving you what you want. Your friends, saved. Their wounds healed, the violence settled in your favor.”

“And in exchange I become a tool for you.” Jesse looked down at the creature, feeling the cold creep towards his shoulder. “Should I call you Ruud, or do you have another name?”

“Such bravado,” she purred, walking slowly closer. “You don’t feel it, but you’re putting up a good front. So different from the man who first stepped through that doorway in the desert, timid and unsure. That’s my doing too, by the way. Just a taste of what you could be if you draw that sword again.”

The tendrils of ice spidered across his collarbone, and Jesse winced. “If I’m different than when I came, it’s because of Jes,” he said, gritting his teeth. “You had nothing to do with it.”

“Jes,” she scoffed. “And what is your Jes but ruud manifest? How did she come into being, save for my redirection of Eryha onto the wanderer’s path? She railed against me never knowing that she did my work, even as she perished.”

Jesse looked down, feeling a stab of uncertainty for the first time. “She severed the connection,” he said. “Gave Jes autonomy-”

“But she was still ruud,” the girl hissed, pulling him forcefully down to her level. “Still the pulsing lifeblood of this world, my lifeblood.” She smiled, revealing entirely too many teeth. “I am God, Jesse Gibson. I created all life on this world, nurtured it, helped it grow.”

“Stole it,” Jesse hissed, feeling the ice creep close to his throat. “Poisoned it, used it to try to free yourself.” He clenched his jaw, swallowing against the creeping numbness. “Just like you’re trying to use me.”

“I am offering to save your life,” she said, tracing a finger down his cheek. “Life is survival of the fittest, and the fittest are those I give my favor to. You show promise, but if you insist on squandering that promise I can find another.”

Her features blurred, morphing into Jackie’s face. “You know how she longs to right the injustices of this world. We could, together.”

Jesse coughed, glaring defiantly into the facsimile’s eyes. “I think you’re - underestimating her,” he said, his tongue feeling thick with the cold. “The ends don’t justify the means, for Jackie.”

“Then someone with a simpler approach,” she said, shifting once again into Mark’s image.

Jesse couldn’t help but laugh, though it turned into a choking sputter as the cold wormed into his lungs. “You can’t… tempt… Mark,” he panted. “He’d tell you - fuck off.”

“And can I tempt you?” he said, shifting into Arjun’s wizened face. “There is nothing beyond me. If you want him back, he is yours. I would prefer you to this shade of Eryha, Jesse. She’s mindless, brutal. I’m a thinking being, I prefer having partners to servants.”

Another blur, and Jes was holding his hand, her touch a glimmer of warmth amid the ice running through his body. “You could have anything you wanted, for as long as you wanted,” she purred, her lips hot against his frozen skin. “All I ask is for your consideration.”

“I already have - Jes,” he grunted. “I am her, and she-” He choked, the ice constricting his airway.

“You have nothing,” she said. “Nothing on this world but what I give you. And I could give you so much more than that.” She knelt down in front of him, leaning in close as his vision began to blur. “Would you like to go home, Jesse? I brought you here, I can send you back just as easily. You and your friends.”

Jesse stared up at the apparition, then looked away and closed his eyes.

The image of Jes sighed. “So be it,” she said. “Die. And may-”

A ripple pulsed through the grand hall, bringing the scent of soil and rain into the leaden air. The ice that gripped Jesse shattered, and he fell gasping to the cold stone of the floor.

“What?” she snarled, turning to face away from him. She raised a hand, then staggered back as another pulse washed over them. Feeling rushed back into Jesse’s limbs, and he struggled to his knees.

“What’s the matter?” he gasped. “Huh? I thought you had control over ruud?”

“I am ruud!” she roared, the lines of her face distorting sideways into too many directions, her outline blurring oddly. “You were brought here to serve my will. For my purpose.”

“You opened the door, I chose to walk through,” Jesse said, struggling to his feet. “I don’t serve you.” Another pulse, and the walls of the hall rippled, small vines growing out from cracks in the stone. A flush of heat spread from his arm, and suddenly Jes was standing there beside him - unmistakably his, and scowling at the creature wearing her face.

It stared back, dumbfounded. “How?” it rasped, its voice now far removed from any human norm. “How can you defy me?”

“You’ve been planning for a long while,” Jes said, “pushing things to a point where humans could wield energy capable of freeing you. And you were thorough - your plans covered every foreseeable future.” She smiled at it, although there was no warmth in the expression. “But the people you last brought here have a curious concept,” she said. “It describes a thinking being that can freely improve on itself. The means were different, in their theory, but Eryha stumbled upon the same idea by accident.”

She took a step closer, and cracks spread across the stone where her feet fell. “They called it Singularity, because past that point the future cannot be foreseen.”

She took another step forward. Her voice deepened to a throaty growl. “I am still limited, because Jesse is my world - but within that world I AM ABSOLUTE.” The avatar of ruud flinched back from her words, staggering under their impact, and Jes took a final step to grab it by the throat.

“And I say that this world needs no god. You cannot have him.”

She let the avatar drop to the stone, then turned away to smile at a dumbfounded Jesse, taking his hand and leading him towards a door that had appeared in the wall. It glowed with an inviting light, wreathed with small vines that few even as he watched.

“I will destroy him,” the creature gasped from the floor. “And you will die with him. You cannot protect him from me.”

Jes paused and turned, looking down at the crumpled heap. “I’m not the one who will,” she said, pointing upward. The creature’s pallid face turned up just as the radiance streaming in from the high windows faltered and failed, blotted out by the towering leaves of a cerein.

The avatar of ruud gaped, staring up at the gently swaying branches. “Impossible,” it said. “This world is my domain.”

“And she loves it,” Jes said. “Just as much as you resent it. Cereinem live to build and grow, to preserve. To be Caretakers, as they ever were. So rest assured, your prison will remain for a long while yet. Nourished by your spirit - and free from your control.”

They turned again and left the shrunken thing cowering amid the vines and twining roots that sullied its hall, stepping through the door - and as Jesse crossed the threshold the sword was in his hand once more, wreathed in light and crashing towards the mass of dead. It struck true, sundering the night with an explosion that ripped through the core of not-Eryha’s swarm.

For a brief second the light caught her face - and then it was gone.

Jesse sat on a stone bench, staring down at the green grass that grew up to tickle the flagstones. The river rushed beside him, slower than it had before but stronger every day as it carried its bounty of life-giving water over the cliff and down into the plains of Tinem Sjocel that stretched out below them. A faint note of satisfaction rang forth from Jes, bringing a smile to his face.

He sat for a while to look out over the vista with her, so absorbed that he almost failed to notice when he was joined on the bench. He managed to restrain himself from jumping, but only just.

“Saneji,” he said, looking at the smiling eyes of Gusje’s mother. “I haven’t seen you in a few days. How’s Mevi doing?”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Busy as ever,” she complained. “Food to sort, supplies to distribute. He carries the duties of Madi well enough, but he would carry them better if he was not trying to be Tesvaji besides.”

“Tesvaji is a hard man to follow,” Jesse said. “Between him and Gusje…”

“Pah,” Saneji said, waving a hand dismissively. “He is just young, that son of mine. Once he grows older it will fade, as he grows into the life left behind.”

“Older than I am,” Jesse remarked wryly.

Saneji gave him a smile and patted him on the leg. “You will grow older as well,” she said, tapping the asolan around his neck. “You and all your friends, although I cannot say what you will grow to be.” She squinted at him. “Not taller, I hope. You are tall enough already.”

“I think we’re safe there,” Jesse said. A faint noise echoed from above, and he looked up to see the oblong shape of a Setelym airship emerging from the cloud layer. It flew past the ruins of the Sanctum, hovering for a moment over the scaffolding that wrapped the large hole burnt into the side, then dropped to lower itself gently to the floor of the valley that lay below.

Jesse stood up. “I didn’t think they’d be back this soon,” he muttered.

Saneji chuffed out a laugh, then set off along the path back towards the burgeoning village in the crook of the valley. “Come, young Jesse,” she called back. “You and I both have business with the Setelym today.”

Jesse’s brows knit together, but he followed her along the broad, grassy trail that led towards the village and the landed ship. When they arrived Mark had already debarked from the ship to the delight of the village children, who chased him around clamoring to be picked up and held as high as he could reach.

“Finally,” Cosvamo said wearily. “He can return to his own kind.”

“Tough trip?” Jesse asked, looking down to find Cosvamo sketching a respectful bow to Saneji. “Did you manage to find what you were looking for?”

Cosvamo shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “We’re only back early because I woefully underestimated how much that one needs to eat and drink. He’d have run through our stocks in two more days.” He shot a baleful glare at Mark, then sighed. “I have to warn you, if the search goes on much longer I may have to pause to report back to Tinem Setel. I’ve been away for too long already.”

“You can stay as long as you like,” Saneji said, spreading her hands, “but you do not have to continue your search.”

Cosvamo shook his head. “Finding you a new cerein was a condition for Jesse’s assistance, with assurance given to both him and your daughter.” He darted a stray look up the mountain. “I will fulfill the promise, one way or another.”

“You misunderstand,” she said. “Your search is over. We have found our cerein, growing strong and healthy.” She pointed to the center of the village, where an unassuming young sapling was growing up from the dirt. Cosvamo and Jesse gawked at it, and the Setelym took a step forward.

“In the center of the village?” he asked, disbelieving. “How did you get it to sprout? Even viable seeds have been dormant since before the collapse.”

Saneji smiled and shrugged. “We did nothing,” she said. “But I know a girl who used to listen to stories from her father about the men who walked the great plains sowing cerein seeds behind them. She always dreamed of making one grow.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the trio, broken only when Mark extracted himself from the passel of running children and walked over to them. Tasja and Jackie trailed behind, having come out when they heard the commotion. They greeted Saneji warmly, and Cosvamo with at least more fondness than he had merited from them in days past.

“So,” Cosvamo said, turning to Tasja. “What’s the news on the twinplate? When we overflew Ce Raedhil it looked like the outer districts were cleaned up.”

Tasja nodded hastily, still somewhat nervous around the Setelym agent. “Sjogydhu says it’s going well. Especially since the, ah, weather’s been so good. The scriptsmiths that are left have been out helping the city guard with the rebuilding effort.”

“Earning back their popularity with the common folk,” Cosvamo chuckled. “Smart move, given the circumstances. If they were anything less than heroes in the eyes of the people Citsuje Di would have them skinned alive.”

Mark frowned. “Because of Vumo? He was just one guy.”

“Because of Sjogydhu,” Cosvamo sighed, giving Jesse a long-suffering look. “Honestly, it’s been days of this. Vumo may have killed Maja, but he didn’t release an entire cache of powerful weapons into the hands of the common folk and then neglect to clean it up. I imagine the thought of all of those artifacts in circulation is giving the royalist faction some heartburn.”

“Wow, what a shame,” Jackie said, scratching at the lump of bandages over her truncated hand. “With all that power they might start getting ideas. Think they’re entitled to rights or something.”

“Representation in government,” Mark said. “Scary stuff.”

Cosvamo gave each of them a suspicious look. “You sound like you approve. It will be chaos. Government needs proper centralized control to operate.”

“Far be it from me to contradict the almighty Setelym Council,” Jackie said, raising her hand-and-a-half in mock appeasement. “Speaking of which, have you figured out what you’re going to tell them?”

“The truth, of course,” Cosvamo shot back, sounding scandalized. “The absolute truth. That the Vumo situation is resolved, the threat of the remnant is neutralized and that the Sjocelym vinesavai is - ah, operating in good order.”

“I’ve made a few reports of that nature myself,” Mark said, sounding amused. “Of course I was normally talking about what I got up to off-base…”

“You don’t think they’ll ask questions?” Jesse pressed him. “Maja was out for days, and I can’t imagine they didn’t notice.”

Cosvamo nodded slowly. “They may,” he admitted. “And I will find answers for them - but not ones that would invite direct inquiry.”

“You don’t think they’d come after her, do you?” Jackie asked.

“Would they come after a, what did you call it - post-singularity scripted intelligence? Of course they would.” He shook his head, looking up at the mountain again. “It is a change, one that would scare many of us into rash action. It still scares me, if I’m being honest.”

“But you’re not contemplating any rash action,” Mark said, a note of warning in his voice.

“Of course not,” Cosvamo snorted, though his heart didn’t seem to be in it. His face grew somber. “Tinem Setel has been the proud, final remnant of those who came before us for a very long time, and for all that time we have lived in a high place, confident of our superiority. If one day we look upwards and find that we have been surpassed, we - well.” He looked uncomfortably down at the ground. “I want to find a way forward that doesn’t end in Setelym dead.”

He shook his head. “And it would, if I told them the whole truth. They would come for her with the full force they could muster, and I’m not sure if they would win.”

Another somber silence fell over the group, and Cosvamo started walking slowly back towards his ship. The rest followed along, pausing with him by the cerein sapling that had thrust its way up from the ground in the village common. It was already as thick around as Mark’s wrist, and beaded with dew despite the late hour.

Cosvamo shook his head wonderingly. “It’s fitting,” he said. “It’s a little thing right now, but it won’t stay little for long.”

Jackie walked up beside him, her gaze lingering on the two prominent mounds of soil that still showed in the grass, and the two tiny plaques that jutted up from the soil. The tree had come up right between them.

“He’d like this,” she murmured.

Jesse smiled. “Which one?”

“Both,” Jackie said, turning back to face him. “But I was talking about Arjun. He always took a secret delight in overturning the order of things.”

“And you don’t?” Mark snorted.

“I’m setting my sights lower, these days,” Jackie sighed, glaring at her bandaged stump. The shining metal of an asolan glimmered from beneath the wrappings. “I know it’s a long shot, I’d be happy being able to count to ten again.”

“I would have said it’s impossible,” Cosvamo said ruefully, turning to walk towards the door of his airship, “but recent events have taught me that I’m better off saying just - good luck.”

Mark walked over and stuck out his hand. “You’re an okay guy,” he said, clasping Cosvamo’s arm as the shorter man returned the gesture. “I’d hate to have to shoot you someday.”

Cosvamo laughed, the first genuine one they’d heard from him. “I could say the same,” he chuckled. “Council preserve me, shot by a savage? I’d never live it down.” He clapped Mark on the arm, nodded to the rest and climbed aboard his airship.

The smooth craft rose with a faint hum, fading as it disappeared into the clouds and shot off to the east. They watched it go, and Mark scratched at the back of his head.

“You know, I’m not so sure we should have let him go,” he said.

Jesse gave him a reproachful look. “He helped us out. Besides, they would have sent someone to look for him.”

“It’ll be a problem, sooner or later,” Jackie said.

“Maybe,” Mark admitted, fiddling with the asolan around his neck. “Maybe a lot later.” He looked out over the village, then slipped his shoes off to dig his toes into the grass. “Yep,” he said, stretching. “Later would be fine. After all - something tells me we’ve got the time.”