My skull cracks against something hard and I wake up as the cart trundles over another pothole. They must be doing that on purpose, Imperial infrastructure tends to be better than this – spending too much on roads is just about the only thing they’re good for. We hit another one and I give up on going back to sleep. This is the third time since morning hit – how much longer could this possibly take?

At least with Fourey, at the gates of Havale, he’d been polite enough to knock me out. Maybe I should have just joined in with Emily and called The Mother a slag. A concussion is looking like a pretty sweet deal next to the unbearable tedium on consciousness.

The old turnip bag scratches against my face and almost instantly becomes an all-consuming agony as my nose starts to itch. Bringing my legs up, I try to grind my nose against my knee. It brings sweet relief, but something cold and pointy prods my back.

“Lie still, prisoner,” a knight’s voice echoes out of his helmet and I freeze.

“Right, right, praise the empire,” I mutter, locking my joints together and keeping still.

I can hear the sound of someone trying to turn around while in armour, and someone other than the belligerent tin can pipes up. “That’s the way, make sure to keep that up,” the captain says with a chuckle, from somewhere above me. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people who don’t shut up when we arrest them.”

I don’t reply, because it’s probably bait and I don’t want to get stabbed. He goes on regardless.

“Most people don’t know, but they wipe years off your sentence if you repent – get’s you out of a death sentence depending on what you’re in for.”

Now, either this is the laziest bait I’ve ever heard, or he’s actually telling us how to game the system. Either way, I’ve never seen fewer shits given by an imperial officer. The guy’s subordinate is literally sitting next to him.

“Praise the Empire,” Evelyn’s muffled voice carries over my shoulder, and she doesn’t get stabbed.

“I’ll put in a good word,” he says. “What are you guys in for anyway?” I hear his fingers snapping, then the rustle of paper as he unfolds our wanted posters. “Oh boy,” he mutters too loudly. “It’s never good when it’s vague – sorry guys.”

He awkwardly hands off the papers and fall silent. I find myself reassessing his sincerity, because as an attempt to crush the prisoner’s spirits, it’s brutally effective.

“Captain Morgan! We’re here!” Someone shouts from the ground, and he immediately takes the opportunity to escape the morbid atmosphere. That he’d created.

We’re pulled from the cart, turnip sacks still pulled over our heads, and herded over to a wooden platform. I hear the creaking of rope, and I feel a little panic clutch my chest. I have just enough time to consider headbutting steel plate, before my stomach drops out from under me and the ground starts swaying.

The others are varying degrees of panicked and it takes me a moment to realise that we’re slowly rising into the sky. A gust of wind blows by, and the platform goes with it, swaying as it rises. I stumble and physically feel the wood below me creak. I spend the next few minutes trying not to be sick.

Luckily, for everyone around me, we come to a stop and the soldiers push us forward. My feet crunch against rough stone and we’re led up a winding staircase. Something about the way that the wind catches my clothes tells me that I should probably be thankful that I can’t see anything. Otherwise, I’d probably just let them execute me right now.

We’re finally pushed inside, and after a disorientating labyrinth of stairs and corridors, a door swings open and we’re sent tumbling into a small cobbled room. I try to keep from landing on as much of my face as possible, then grind it against the stone anyway until the sack come off.

Evelyn lands gracefully in a heap, then manages to thread her legs through her arms. I struggle to copy her, and manage a strangled pretzel before she comes over to help me out. My shoulders ache from having my arms tied behind my back all night, but the tiny sliver of a window perched at the top of the wall is more important.

“Abbey, give me a boost.” She grumbles a little but comes over. I don’t know what’s she’s complaining about – I guarantee she’d beat both Emmet and I in an arm wrestle. She cups my foot and helps me scrabble up the rough cobblestone wall. I reach the top and wedge myself into the narrow opening.

There are a few different types of prisons that you can end up in if you’re unfortunate enough to catch an imperial’s notice. If they throw you in a random town jail, then you can usually get out by lunchtime – albeit with lighter pockets. If you’re unlucky enough to end up in a dedicated empire prison, then you’re likely to be stuck in there for quite a while. And if they bother dragging you all the way to the capital, then you’ve probably tried to kill the Empress or something, and you’re going to die tomorrow.

It’s the second type that I’m worried about, and the creaky elevator ride makes one possibility loom over the rest. I poke my head through the window and look out over the patchwork countryside – blurred from our position, hundreds of feet in the air.

They brought us to fucking Coltis. Of all the holes in the empire, it had to be the floating one.

I drop back down and try a breathing exercise. Fucking Coltis – I think there was a distant cousin that got locked up here. He didn’t last a week before he tried a hovering spell off the side. Unsuccessfully too – all the more dire.

Evelyn starts badgering Abbey for a lift and I walk over and peer through our jailcell bars. I shake them, but they fail to buckle before my titanic strength. An armoured guard snaps his book shut and peers down the corridor at me.

Only one guard? And they haven’t strapped us to the wall. Maybe my cousin was just an idiot. Looking the guard dead in the eye, I snap my fingers and spongify the bars. Motes of arcane light float around my fingers, and the guard slowly raises his hand to grip a bell by the clanger. We maintain eye contact for another second, then I slowly mould the bars back into place. He nods and settles back to read his book.

I guess you can be a little lax when the only way out is a fifty-story drop.

“Don’t antagonise the guards,” a voice wheezes from the shadows. I only freak out a little and turn to see a wizened old man glaring at me from the corner. Though when I say ‘wizened’ and ‘old man’ I mean ‘hasn’t touched a comb in years’ and ‘forty-ish’.

“Where the fuck did you come from?” I squawk. Evelyn glances over and unbalances, setting her arms windmilling while Abbey struggles to keep her upright. The jail hermit just snorts through his beard.

“I was here before you learnt to wipe your ass,” he grunts. “The guards get jumpy around magic. Keep your head down and pick a corner.” He waves me off, but before I can tell him to go fuck himself, someone catches my notice. The person standing silently by the wall – and who I only just remember is still with us – Emily.

“You fucking delusional cultist!” I shout – admittedly redundantly – and stalk over to her. “What the fuck is your game? Of all the stupid ways to get away, this has got to be-”

A shimmering plane of energy materialises in front of me and I bash my nose against it. Emily doesn’t look like she’s moved – maybe she’s better than I thought. Snapping my fingers, a firebolt goes streaking towards her, but it bounces off another plane of magic glass and rolls away into the corner.

Emily still hasn’t moved – though she’s starting to. Then who’s casting spells? I whirl around and hit my head as another shield springs to life right in front of me again.

“What did I just say?” The old man grunts, his posture slouched and finger glowing. “And no fighting in my jailcell. Just let me rot in peace.”

I take a step towards him and the air shimmers menacingly.

“Fine, whatever,” I exclaim, stalking back to the others. Emily settles back against the wall slaps her blank face back on. She’s way too pleased with herself – she must be up to something.

Abbey lowers Evelyn back down and Emmet wanders over. “Where the hell are we? It looks like a skyscraper from here,” Evelyn asks. I stop trying to give Emily and the old man the stink eye simultaneously – across both sides of the room – to expand her mind with knowledge.

“Coltis – it’s an imperial prison built on a floating mountain. A fifty-story drop tends to dissuade escape attempts, so they tend to leave you here when they want to forget about you for twenty years.”

“You’ve had floating mountains and you didn’t tell me?” Evelyn asks, completely ignoring everything else. “I want to see that from the ground. This beats the hell out of fantasy farmland.”

“Can we focus?” I snap. “You don’t get sent to Coltis because you were late on your taxes. This is actually serious.” Evelyn wilts a little, but Abbey just scoffs.

“So we blast our way out, right?” She brings up her hand, and even manages to smother the flinch when she realises that she’s about to wave it.

“But we might hurt people,” Emmet pipes up. “Even kill them – that can’t be right.”

“Emmet, you can’t be serious, we’re breaking out of prison,” I say.

“Well, it doesn’t feel right,” he stammers. “Do you actually want to kill people for this? Will you?” He looks me dead in the eye and I find it suddenly very difficult to match him.

“Well maybe not kill them – not intentionally,” I mumble, and a hint of steel reinforces his eyes.

“The boy is right,” the old man says from the corner. I startle at his voice again and whirl around. “You can try all you want to change this world, but you will always end up hurting someone. It’s best to just sit back and stay out of it.”

“Who even are you?” I ask as he settles back, looking insufferably pleased at having dispensed his dog shit wisdom. He regards us, then deigns to respond – though obviously not as reticent to converse as he pretends. He’s probably not talked to anyone in a while.

“I too once tried to challenge the status quo,” he begins. “I wanted to revolutionise the teaching of magic, bring it to the common folk. But the empire caught wind and put a stop to it. They burned my book, locked me up, and killed everyone else. Now they use my methods to train their own mages. No matter what you try, power always floats to the top. The only thing to do is to mind your business. It’s not your problem.”

“But shouldn’t you try to fight against it?” Emmet asks.

“It’s not my fight. Who are we to fight back anyway?” the old man says, but Emmet frowns, unconvinced. “Trust me, just sit down and let the world turn.”

“I’m sorry that your kindergarten didn’t pan out old man,” I say, walking past and grabbing the cell bars. “But that’s got to be up there with the worst moral philosophies I’ve ever heard.”

“Nothing good comes from tyring to overturning the system,” he responds. I turn to him, bewildered.

“Who’s overturning the system?” I ask. “We’ve got things to do and these jokers have no right locking us up. Since when was it even remotely possible for us to threaten an overturning of the system?”

“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a possibility,” he says softly.

He deflates into a sack of dust and regrets. It strikes me that he’s probably been here for years, watching prisoners come in and out, and feeling powerless to stop the machine – glowing fingers and all.

“That doesn’t sound right,” Emmet says, walking up beside me. “You shouldn’t sit back and ignore evil around you.” The old man grunts and says no more. Emmet falls silent too, still wrestling with himself.

“You seem like a pretty strong mage,” I say, changing tact and smelling an opportunity. “Why don’t you help us out? I bet those shields of yours could help keep everyone safe.”

“Absolutely not,” he snaps. “Magic shouldn’t be used for violence.” I rub my bruised nose but don’t say anything. “I know your type – only interested in lightning bolts and sundering the earth. Magic is the song of the soul, and I won’t debase it with such barbarism.” His words seem to spur a deep set energy within him, as if coming back from some earlier time.

Something about those words tickles my memory – so much so that I don’t immediately say anything in response. Why is it familiar? A book spread over my lap back in the manor. Words winding around each other in a mess of Old Mythic. Evelyn’s complete lack of gravitas as she reads them aloud.

“Your book,” I say, interrupting whatever he was going on about. “What was it called?”

“Darke Mag’kx – have you read it?” He asks in confusion as I bite my tongue and choke on it.

“Rothmore, looks like you’ve made some friends.” A vaguely familiar voice interrupts whatever humiliating fanboying I was about to engage in and turn around to see a black-clad swordsman grinning from behind the bars.

The old man – Rothmore – grumbles something about ‘imperial dogs’ and David clutches his chest dramatically. He’s not changed much since he chased me down back in Havale. An easy grin belies the fact that he could probably slit us all up without blinking.

“You’re Rothmore?” I end up asking. “You wrote Darke Mag’kx?” From the snippets that I’d managed to read, I’d always envisioned Rothmore as a rosy cheeked grandfather – insufferable enough to write everything with cooking metaphors, powerful enough to get away with it. The grouch in front of hardly fits the bill.

“Oh yeah,” David drawls. “He was a big shot back in the day – real clever clogs. Though teaching peasants magic – win stupid prizes, I guess.”

Rothmore bristles but bites back any response. David looks almost disappointed, but quickly sweeps his gaze over the rest of us.

“Kind of a reunion here,” he says with a smirk. “Have you said hi yet, Red?” He turns to the cell behind him and I look past his shoulder. Another prisoner with red hair raises her head and scowls at him. It’s difficult to place her amidst all the grime, but it eventually comes to me – mostly because Evelyn whispers it to me. Valerie – the cultist leader from Havale. I had assumed she was Sable’s second in command or something, but then she wouldn’t be rotting here.

David nods and turns back to us. “Emmet,” he nods with a smile. “Outrealm girl,” he greets Evelyn. “I don’t remember your name,” he greets me. His eyes skip between Emily and Abbey. “Other outrealm girl and cult girl – you’re coming with me; the boss wants to talk.” He barely suppresses the sarcasm as he says ‘talk’ – yep, that doesn’t sound good.

Poison still seems like the only worthwhile thing I can do, so I let inky tendrils coil around my fingers. Rothmore shifts behind me, and I feel a self-righteous scowl prickling the back of my head. I’m starting to get a sixth sense for that.

The cell door swings open and David takes a black booted step inside. Abbey takes some kind of fancy fighting stance and Evelyn copies her as best she can. David calmy lays a hand on the hilt of his sword and the tension instantly ratchets up a notch.

There’s a moment of tense silence, before it’s broken by the creaking of wood almost next to my head. Twisting around, I almost poke my eye out as David’s partner, Melanie, draws an arrow that feels like it’s aimed at every one of us at the same time. Where the fuck she came from is largely academic as I scramble backwards.

“Alright folks, calm down,” David says. “Cult girl, get over here.”

Emily doesn’t shift from the corner. Instead, she pulls a small crystal out of her robes. The stone pulses slowly with a green glow. She nods absently and throws it at the ground.

It takes a second for her actions to register as unusual to me. Once it does, I immediately assume that it’s going to explode. I can only attribute this thought process to a deep familiarity with magic – I notice Rothmore ducks when I do as well.

David, for all his faults, is a professional problem solver. In the second that I spend staring gormlessly, he’s already drawn his sword and leapt towards Emily. An absolutely wild move when someone pulls out the pulsating magic rock, but what do I know?

Lucky for him, the crystal shatters as it hits the floor, and crucially, doesn’t explode. The wall does instead.

There’s maybe another half second in which I once again fail to react, before the room is filled with fractured stone and dust. The roar of the explosion and falling debris doesn’t stop, and it takes a moment to recognize it as the wind, rushing through a room perched hundreds of feet in the air.

I squint through dust and cutting wind and find the air warped and translucent in front of me. Rocks lie shattered around me in a perfect semi-circle, only dust having gotten past the softly pulsing shield. I glance back to catch Rothmore laying his hands back down, the magic glow playing faintly around his fingers.

He waves an arm and the dust in the air drops to the ground like a tonne of sand. I blink as the dust already in my eyes suddenly triples its weight. Through blurry vision and blurry air, I see the others cowering behind floating translucent shields, just like me. More importantly, there’s a gaping hole in the wall, opening out into a terrifying drop.

Floating at its mouth, a black silhouette against infinite blue, is Sable – his arm upraised to dissipate the dust and looking a little put off at being beaten to it. The fucker’s burnt face pulls into a smirk as he watches us cower. I half hope that Rothmore would stand up and start throwing lightning – as doubtful as it is that any of us would survive that. Instead, he just sits there, scowling. It’s only the fact that the shields seem to grow thicker that suggests he cares about the intrusion at all.

Sable touches down, and promptly ignores the lot of us. I shiver as his gaze passes over me, but I don’t even seem to register to him. Instead, he finds Emily and stalks over to her.

“This had better not be all for a prison break,” he says icily. “It isn’t like you to waste my time.”

A bell starts ringing in the distance, and the heavy sound of plated boots echoes down the halls. Emily nods over his shoulder and I freeze as his gaze passes over me again. Then he sees Abbey, and a twisted grin splits his face.

“Well done, well done,” he says, vaguely patting Emily around the head and stalking over to Abbey and Evelyn. “It has been a trying few days looking for you,” he says, waving a hand through the shield and reaching for Abbey. “This is wonderful. Come – we have much to do.”

“Fuck off, you freak,” Abbey snarls and backs away as Evelyn joins her. I stay huddled in my corner, memories of Sable taking us apart still fresh in my mind.

A pearly shield springs into place as he stalks forward. He raises a fist, sparking with lightning, and punches through the barrier before swinging around with a snarl.

“Who dares?” He shouts, and finally his eyes land on me. I freeze as his face, distorted by the shield, twists into a mad scowl as he recognizes me. “You,” he spits, and lightning strikes the shield in front of me.

The white scar along my jaw prickles and Sable draws back for another bolt, momentarily forgetting his original goals. Abbey jogs his memory as a jagged pillar of salt manifests in mid air and rushes into him.

The air flashes as his personal shield struggles to keep his organs together, and his crazed focus snaps back onto Abbey. He bursts forward, then is forced to dodge as an arrow whistles past his ear. There’s a soft curse from Melanie, before a slightly louder curse as Emily arcs lightning in her direction.

With Melanie distracted, Sable rushes towards Abbey, who grits her teeth and raises a hand again. This time, she rolls good old-fashioned fire, and forces him to shield himself. Evelyn takes the opportunity to abandon all sense and darts in for a right-hook. Sable waves an arm, and a gust of wind knocks her off her feet and into the wall.

“Enough of this!” He shouts and throws a purple bolt of energy at Abbey. She has just enough time to register shock, before the bolt hits and she slumps to the ground, unconscious. Gods, I hope it’s unconscious.

Emily appears at his side as he grabs Abbey, and they jump out through the gaping hole in the wall. My stomach clenches before rationality can catch up, then I see them shooting away with whatever flight magic Sable arrived with.

It feels like it should be quiet in the wake of the cult leader’s sudden departure. In reality, the banging of metal beats steadily through the prison and the shouting of orders slowly creeps closer. I get to my feet, muscles stiff and joints cold, and walk towards the rent in the wall. It only occurs to me now that I probably should have tried shooting Sable – or done anything really.

The sound of metal stops echoing down the hall and starts echoing in my ear as a gauntleted hand throws me aside and a knight takes my spot. It’s Reynard, because of course it is, and he scowls into the middle distance.

“He got away with the girl, sir,” David limps forward to deliver his report. “What are your orders?”

Reynard lets the question hang, then slowly bends down and grabs me by the shirt.

“Where have they gone, Sepulchrum?” He asks. “Where are they based?” On one hand, finally someone remembers me. On the other, I shake my head and splutter through his clenched fist. “Worthless,” he mutters and drops me.

He walks slowly over to Evelyn, who’s shaking off being thrown into a wall, and asks her the same question. She doesn’t have an answer either, and neither does Emmet. Reynard finishes his line of questions, then draws his sword.

“Milord!” A raspy voice cries from the room opposite. Reynard puts his next interrogation technique on hold and looks through the bars. I follow his gaze and see the red-haired cultist, Valerie, pressing her face against the cell door. “I know where they went – I can show you.”

“Who is she?” Reynard asks as Valerie keeps supplicating.

“One of the cultists from the Havale incident, sir,” David answers.

“Did we not have them all killed?” Reynard asks mildly, yet loudly enough for Valerie to hear.

“Ah, yes, sir. I don’t know why she was transferred here.”

“Irrelevant, I suppose,” Reynard says and strolls over to Valerie’s cell. “You can lead us to Sable’s lair?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Valerie answers, nodding as hard as she can. “And then, perhaps I can be let free?” She grows quiet before Reynard’s impassive gaze. He lets her stew before nodding ambiguously.

“Assemble the men, David,” he calls. “We set out within the hour.”

There’s a sudden rush as the imperials leave, locking the bars behind them. The clanking of metal begins again as soldiers ready themselves. The wind howls through the still ruined wall and the shouting of prisoners sounds in the distance. Even so, it feels too quiet as we sit in the prison cell.

I step away from the nauseating drop and try not to look at the too blue sky. The minutes trickle by in this not-quite-a-silence and I begin to think of how far away Sable’s gotten with Abbey. The thought makes me sick, but it sticks.

Emmet clambers to his feet, if not for any purpose, then at least to do something. He looks at us, we look back.

“What do we do?” He asks, unsure himself.

I tilt my head and feel the sticky sweat coating my back. We could leave it be. Let the empire sweep in and kill everybody. That would probably solve a few problems. It's not really our fight.

“We’ve got to save Abbey, right?” Emmet continues.

Yeah, we probably do.