Chidilch'etl' and his companions left the unicorn hogtied in the forest and approached Tl'oghk'etnaeyen and the vampire queen at a walk, excited by the idea of the chase. Kesani'aan had taken lead, deciding to take first shot, as was his right. They had lazily begun nocking arrows when, out above the water of the lazy green slough, a trio of Valkyrie came flitting down the column of flame from the vessel the revelers had set on fire.

…Valkyrie?

Upon seeing them materialize fully in this realm, Chidilch'etl' and the two huntsmen behind Kesani'aan had hesitated, stunned. Chid couldn’t remember the last time a Valkyrie had been rumored to enter the First Realm—as far as he knew, the two Halls of Ásgarðr had been completely stagnant for the last eight hundred years, with nothing but their petty bickering to entertain them.

Kesani'aan didn’t seem to notice, his full attention focused on Tl'oghk'etnaeyen.

“Kes,” Chidilch'etl' warned the young lordling, nodding at the Valkyrie.

Kesani'aan looked, but like everything else in his life, he was willing to overlook it in his obsession to rid himself of his older brother. He nocked an arrow.

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had seen them, now, and was getting off his haunches, looking stunned.

“Huh,” the vampire said as Kesani'aan raised his bow, “and here I thought it wasn’t hunting seas—”

“Run!” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen cried, ducking away even as Kesani'aan released his arrow at his brother’s head.

Kesani'aan’s arrow missed Tl'oghk'etnaeyen and hit the vampire in the gut, knocking her backwards in her chair. “Gaia’s tit,” Kesani'aan cursed, readying another arrow.

One of the fishermen grabbed Kesani'aan firmly by the arm. “Dude, what the hell are you—”

“Kill each other,” Kesani'aan said, calmly throwing off the mortal’s grip. The man hesitated.

In that moment, a barghest upformed and yanked one of the Valkyries from her perch atop the water and began slamming her into the riverbed again and again, sloshing water up the bank in mini tsunamis as, instead of fighting back, they ran…

Chidilch'etl' had just enough time to consider three Valkyries running from a barghest when Kesani'aan, who clearly wasn’t paying attention to the inexplicable chaos out on the water, turned and snapped louder at the fishermen, “I said kill each other.”

“Kes!” Chid said softly, watching one of the Valkyrie free their sister and take her up the column of smoke while her other sister stabbed the barghest with her sword.

…A Champion’s sword, coruscating with the golden power of Freyja herself. A god’s power.

…and the barghest didn’t die. Instead he yanked it out and snapped it in half like it was a splinter.

What in a troll’s hairy sphincter is happening here? Chidilch'etl' wondered, stunned by that.

Kesani'aan wasn’t watching the barghest. He was scowling at the mortals, single-mindedly trying to shove his mind into theirs. One of the fishermen drew a small knife from his pocket while another grabbed a rock. They moved stiffly, obviously fully aware that they were being compelled— Kesani'aan never had been very good. Several others reached for rocks, still hesitating and glancing at each other.

Then, curse him to the Third Lands, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s powerful voice rang out like a gong, “Throw rocks at the men with bows! Hit them in the head as many times as you can!”

Then Chidilch'etl' didn’t have time to think about why a barghest would be able to survive a fight with a Valkyrie, because immediately, the fishermen all bent to retrieve stones and do as they were bid. Suddenly, Chid and his companions were all being pelted in the head, the back, chest, arms, shoulders…

So they had run. From fishermen. It was a fact that Chidilch'etl' would leave out of his report to his father at the Fire Clan.

They’d regrouped in the forest and begun killing them, of course, but before they could get them all, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen paused just long enough to tell the survivors to run, and they dropped their stones and bolted like frightened rabbits, again without so much as a moment of hesitation.

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen might actually be better at that than me, Chidilch'etl' thought, with a pang of uneasy respect. And, of all the feylords trained for future Council ascendance, Chidilch'etl' was the best. Kesani'aan had brought him along to ensure Tl'oghk'etnaeyen couldn’t mindweave them when they finally pinned him down, but seeing this display, how he had compelled dozens at once, Chidilch'etl' was more than ready to nullify the green lordling’s powers with a well-placed arrow to the face rather than attempting to beat him at his own game.

Then, on the slough, the Barghest-Who-Couldn’t-Be-A-Barghest had begun ranting about sky sluts and Odin. Chidilch'etl' and the two Sky huntsmen hesitated, watching the creature scream and curse at the sky. Then, mid-rant, he’d torn something out of his chest and broken it in half…

…and everyone fell to their knees at the crystalline thunderclap of a Champion renouncing his Oath.

What in the Endless Pits…?

“Was that an Odinson?” Tik'uniyunen whispered. The elder Sky huntsman was clearly uneasy. “Why’s he in the body of a barghest?”

Chidilch'etl' just shook his head, as confused as the rest. Chid had never heard of such a thing. He was still baffled by that when the Barghest-Not-Barghest began making a scene, screaming and throwing burning wood and jewels into the water as his shadows flowed outward, locking the burning boat into a bed of ice.

“Stop staring at the barghest!” Kesani'aan hissed at them. “My brother’s trying to open a portal!” Then the Sky lordling took aim and fired, taking Tl'oghk'etnaeyen in the hand.

Indeed, the green energy of the beginnings of a portal fizzled out, and Chidilch'etl' could only stare as the firstborn son of the Sky clan screamed and bolted with his vampire friend. “I thought you said he wasn’t trained!” he snapped at Kesani'aan, grabbing the lordling by the arm.

“He trained himself,” Kesani'aan snapped, throwing off his grip.

“Trained himself? He just mindwove a whole crowd and opened a Voidgate,” Chid retorted. “Is your brother a fucking savant?” This was definitely not information that had been allowed to disseminate to the other Clans.

“He had plenty of time and a library,” Kesani'aan growled. “Nothing to do but read.”

“Reading doesn’t make portals,” Chid snapped, furious that the Sky lordling had withheld this tidbit from him in his neurotic desperation to cut Tl'oghk'etnaeyen from the line of succession. “You said he had no tutor.”

“He didn’t!” Kesani'aan snapped, jogging up and loosing another arrow at his departing brother. “Now catch him before the green fucker escapes again!”

Nobody moved.

“Milord,” Q'aynidelzexen ventured hesitantly, “after reviewing the evidence, it might be safer for us to better prepare before we go up against a magus capable of—”

“You’re here to hunt, not to comment on the prey,” Kesani'aan told the huntsman. “So hunt!” He gestured in the direction the cursed feylord and his vampire queen were bolting down the riverbed. “If he manages to open a portal, I’ll deduct each day it takes us to find him from your pay.”

Q'aynidelzexen bowed deeply, his face going stiff. “Of course, milord Naltsiine.” Then he and Tik'uniyunen took their bows and jogged after the feylord.

Chid stayed behind, scowling at the Sky Clan’s favored successor. “This was stupid, Kes,” he growled, giving the Sky lordling a look promising that they would speak about it later. Then he joined the two huntsmen jogging along the riverbank in pursuit of Tl'oghk'etnaeyen. Because now that they had played their cards and Tl'oghk'etnaeyen knew they were out to kill him, he was just as likely to open up a portal into, say, Chidilch'etl'’s bedroom and murder him in his sleep.

Chidilch'etl' had started to catch up and was taking aim on the back of the Naltsiine firstborn’s head when black lines of seiðr cut through reality in front of his prey, and two vampire lords had emerged from the Void as calmly as aristocrats entering a Clan banquet. Tl'oghk'etnaeyen shouted something at the two newcomers, and a moment later, the taller one began slinging hissing black lines of seiðr at them.

Then, like in some gruesome and horrific nightmare, the already incomprehensible situation had devolved into a type of chaos that even the Stories at the Gathering couldn’t match. As Chidilch'etl' and his companions were ducking the writhing lines of seiðr that sliced through tree and bone alike, a group of human Inquisitors had arrived overhead, mowing down what remained of the forest with faespar, only to be torn from the sky by the blood magus’s seiðr. Then Tl'oghk'etnaeyen, the little shit, had tied the vampire queen in place with faewire and gotten himself abducted by the blood magus. Before Chidilch'etl' could place an arrow in his skull, the portal had closed. Then the black-clad human zealots that had been attacking the vampire lords unexpectedly found themselves face-to-face with an enraged queen, and flesh and limbs in a thirty-foot swath had begun flying like confetti.

It had only gotten worse from there.

After allowing the queen her moment of carnage, Kesani'aan had ordered them to put the beast out of its misery. And they’d turned the queen into a pincushion of arrows and were letting their hounds savage what was left when Pestilence had simply walked into the fray in a wash of locusts and had killed their saa łic'ae with a simple wave of his hand.

Pestilence.

The god.

As the four of them were trying to comprehend that, the God of Disease calmly pulled what looked like the missing legendary Third Lands’ athame Blóðvefr from his belt and bent to shove aside the shredded cloth of the queen’s back.

“What is happening here?” Q'aynidelzexen whispered, with the same uneasy confusion that Chidilch'etl' himself felt. “That looks like Pestilence.”

“I was paid to hunt a criminal, not fight magi and gods,” Tik'uniyunen said, shaking his head and backing up.

“You were paid to hunt,” Kesani'aan snapped.

“You never mentioned Pestilence when you asked for volunteers, lord Naltsiine.” Q'aynidelzexen followed his elder backwards, deeper into the forest.

“You stay!” Kesani'aan ordered. “Or my father will hear of your cowardice.”

The two men slowed, eyes fixed on the God of Disease as he knelt over the vampire queen’s back, ignoring them as if they mattered no more than the two saa łic'ae he had dissolved in a burst of locusts.

Pestilence was beginning to draw bloody arcs into the vampire queen’s back with Freyja’s legendary athame when a man Chidilch'etl' didn’t recognize appeared at the edge of the forest and carefully picked his way over the corpses and into the ring of destruction. Pestilence paused in his work, straightening and giving the man a little frown.

“How the fuck did you get out?” Pestilence had said, with a quizzical look. “I bound you.”

In response, the man had given Pestilence a roundhouse kick to the face that had burst Pestilence into a swarm of angry locusts and thrown Freyja’s athame into forest near Chidilch'etl'’s feet, where it immediately began to seep blood-magics into the forest floor, giving the mosses and undergrowth life, transforming the cranberries into beastlike vines that grasped outwards with wet, sticky tendrils…

Immediately, Chidilch'etl' and all three of his companions backed up— Kesani'aan didn’t need to give the command to leave Freyja’s dagger where it lay. In fact, with every other impossible thing that had just happened, two of them even dropped their bows as they stumbled further out of reach of the cloud of locusts that were even now re-coalescing on the dagger.

Ignoring them as if they didn’t exist, Pestilence forged himself anew and snatched up Blóðvefr and spun on the tall, green-eyed, dark-haired man who was now standing over the queen’s body. There was a very long pause, a calculation as the two watched each other, and then Pestilence had simply burst into locusts again and left.

Pestilence. Left.

Then, whistling, the man who had kicked a god bent and untied faewire.

Untied. Faewire.

“Am I dreaming?” Kesani'aan whispered, looking ill. As with all the feylords, the untying of the faewire was more disturbing than anything else that had happened so far. “What’s happening here, Chid?”

“I…” Chidilch'etl' swallowed. “…don’t know.”

Then, again treating them as if they didn’t exist, the man who’d kicked Pestilence began rooting through the queen’s pockets. He withdrew a pack of gum, carelessly unwrapped a stick, jabbed it in his mouth, then stuffed the rest of the pack in his pocket. Then, patting the other side, found and removed a blood-covered wallet. The man yanked a wad of cards from inside, examined an ID, held it up to the sun, slid a debit card into his pocket, then carefully replaced the rest in her pocket and hefted the savaged queen over his shoulder. Standing, he turned and paused, looking at them thoughtfully as he chewed the gum.

“You guys have any idea what just happened here?” the man asked, sounding genuinely curious. He gestured at the carnage, then glanced over the other feylords, stopping on Chidilch'etl', clearly awaiting a response.

Mouth open, Chid could only shake his head.

“Huh.” The man glanced at the dead Inquisitors. “Well, you guys should probably clean this up before the cops show up.” He grimaced. “I mean, I think they probably deserved it, considering the stories Björn told me, but the feds would probably have an issue with it.” He hesitated, once again meeting Chidilch'etl' eyes. “You know?”

Chid and the others just nodded.

“Right.” The man frowned. “Okay then. Guess I’ll see ya.” He gave them one last thoughtful look…before he vanished.

No portal, no puff of smoke, no runes or signals of intent, just vanished.

For a long time, all four of the feylords stood at the edge of the devastation in complete incomprehension.

“What…” Kesani'aan’s oldest huntsman said finally, “Did we just witness?”

For a long moment, the secondborn son of Lord Naltsiine said nothing, staring at the place where the man had disappeared with the vampire queen. He glanced at the seiðr- and faespar-shredded trees, at the bird-of-steel even then bubbling under the muddy green water, then at the swath of dead humans. Chidilch'etl' saw the lack of comprehension in the Sky clansman’s eyes, saw the way his hands even then had no weapon, having left it behind in his scramble to get away from Blóðvefr, saw his blinking confusion verging on tears, and decided to take things into his own hands.

“Get your bows and get back to the unicorn,” Chid said. “We need to retreat to the Second Lands and figure out what Tl'oghk'etnaeyen got himself into before we go further.”

“No!” Kesani'aan cried, reflexively. He lifted his chin with stubborn intent. “We have to kill my brother. They’re calling a Gathering soon and I can’t take the chance he’ll return to tell a Story to secure his inheritance.” Seeing he was going to remain unreasonable despite overwhelming evidence that they were out of their league, Chidilch'etl' tensed, preparing himself for the argument he had been avoiding until now.

Tik'uniyunen must have seen, for the eldest huntsman put a firm hand on his arm to stay him.

“That was Pestilence, my lord,” Tik'uniyunen offered diplomatically, looking nervous. “We should tell your father he’s the one who took Blóðvefr. It’s something the Council should know. It could explain what’s going on in the Third—”

Kesani'aan’s face darkened as Tik'uniyunen spoke, until he finally interrupted with, “And let my brother escape? No. The hunt is still on. We stay here until we have more information.”

“But…” Q'aynidelzexen, Kesani'aan second huntsman, hesitated, still staring at the place where the man had disappeared. “I concur with Tik'uniyunen, my lord. This is important. If that was Blóðvefr, the Council needs to know. The idea of Pestilence having Freyja’s object of power—” It didn’t take a savant to realize how bad that could be.

“I’m not going back to my father without my brother’s chain,” Kesani'aan insisted stubbornly. “We already lost two saa łic'ae. I’m not returning without it.”

“Yes, but…” the huntsman began. Then, seeing the hard look Kesani'aan gave him, he bowed low and subtly gave Chid a pleading look. He, of anyone, had the capability of talking the lordling into some semblance of reasonability.

Unfortunately, under his guise as a minor Sky lordling instead of the Fire Clan’s firstborn heir, Chidilch'etl' did not have the weight to override Kesani'aan without breaking the ruse. He held his tongue, despite the fact that his instincts were screaming at him to break character, inform Kesani'aan that his ‘best friend’ was a spy for the Fire Clan, and go back home before Pestilence carved on his back with Blóðvefr.

That’s what a smart Shila clansman would have done.

But Chidilch'etl' had already accepted a Task of his father that, should he be discovered by the Naltsiine before returning to his Clan with a unique new Story to tell before the Gathering, would get him killed. And he had just seen Pestilence get kicked in the face by…a man. He realized that, if the Hunt continued at its current pace, he might actually have one of the most exceptional Stories that the Gathering had ever seen, displacing any other contenders for exclusive citizenship. With that knowledge powering him, he figured he had nothing left to lose in letting Kesani'aan do something that would likely get the lordling killed.

“Kesani'aan is in charge here,” he said, despite the thrill of knowing he technically outranked the child. “He decides.”

“Back to the unicorn,” Kesani'aan said, carefully retrieving his bow from the mutated cranberry bushes, then quickly jumping out of the way as they reached for him. “We’ll figure out a new plan.”

“He was taken by a Nightlander magus,” Chid warned the young Sky lordling, as they moved back through the forest to where they’d left the unicorn. “What if they took Tl'oghk'etnaeyen to the Nightlands?”

Kesani'aan stiffened, and his friend’s gaze was hard. “Then we go after him.”

Chid recoiled, even the idea of earning a good Story not worth being taken prisoner by a Nightlander court. “You would take us to the Third Lands?” Beside them, the two huntsmen shared concerned glances.

“My father told me not to return without Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s chain,” Kesani'aan said stubbornly. “So we find my brother, kill him, and bring his whore’s Horn back for my father’s—” He paused, blinking. “Who the fuck is messing with our unicorn?”

Indeed, when Chidilch'etl' looked, a man was bent over Lightfoot where they had left him hogtied in the forest.

Just as Kesani'aan was stiffening and starting to move faster, however, Tik'uniyunen’s aged hand caught Chid by the shoulder. “That’s Pestilence,” he whispered.

“Pestilence can’t stand unicorns,” Kesani'aan blurted, but he slowed to a wary stop.

“What’s he doing to his back?” Tik'uniyunen, who wasn’t a magus, asked.

“He’s using Blóðvefr,” Chidilch'etl' breathed. “A blood binding…”

Even as they watched, the unicorn’s countenance was changing, his face taking on a darkness it didn’t have before, his long hair going from blond to black…