My entire body flushes hot and then cold under Rei’s smile. He delivers his invocation of Khasaf with a convincing illusion of conviction, but his voice is pitched to slide under my defenses and his eyes rove up and down my body. There’s a roaring in my head and I hear him as though through a tunnel, and when I look back at him, my knees go a little weak.

It pisses me off, and it takes me a moment to figure out why. Once I do, my body firms up and my joints pop as I pull my stance back together in absolutely the most straight-backed seriousness that I can.

Rei is literally the prettiest man I’ve ever met. I’m almost entirely unattracted to men, generally, just zero interest in anyone presenting masculine, but Rei always made my eyes linger and my stomach play let’s-race-in-nograv. He didn’t, back in the Sky Kingdom, make me feel like I had a literal fever, though, and he didn’t make my knees feel like they can’t hold me up.

“Drop the Skill, Lord Mayor.” I murmur it, knowing that anyone who wants to will be listening to me, just as they’ll be able to see me fiddling with my braid and the ornaments in it. “Let’s not ruin the party.”

He knows I’m not bluffing, I think, because abruptly he’s back to being… well, not exactly the same Rei that he was before, but not much different. Prettier, impossible though that would have seemed, and he’s dressed in tight pants that grip the full length of his legs before disappearing into a shirt that’s almost as tight. White and light blue, and a dark brown jacket drawn tight and gleaming; hair perfect, skin perfect, smile beyond charming. There’s a hint of tension in his eyes that is the barest and only hint of anything amiss; I think it’s because he doesn’t know what deal I might have cut with Lily, and he does know what’s woven into my hair.

Point for me, I suppose.

The benedictions have moved on to, at this point, a two-meter-tall fox girl, features looking like early teenage years with the addition of five long tails and dense reddish-gold fur in lieu of clothing. “That youth might make us fools; Noar in the spring, green shoots impetuous.”

That one comes from almost directly behind us, though I’m still able to see her perfectly out of the corner of my eye. In the hushed pause that for some reason overtakes the room, I realize why; the act of will involved in wanting to see something shifts not just my own muscles that drive my perception but also whatever spell is running, and subtly or otherwise shifts them into my field of view, like it’s bending photons on a lark.

Magic is kind of bullshit, and also kind of amazing. How does that even work? There’s no distortion, and come to think of it, the girl ought to be totally outside of my line of vision. Can I see directly behind myself? Does it interfere with me seeing what’s in front of me? How does that even integrate into my sensorium, and does it cause vertigo?

Yes, no, that’s an interesting question, and no; and then Lady Sheid speaks, and my attention snaps to her and abandons further speculation.

“That the river of time may yet flow. That all may shelter by the banks, in the hollows and in the reeds; that all may shelter where the waters gather, whether pond or brook-glade. Be welcome within my halls, all you who dwell within these realms. Come in grace, stay in grace, and may it be that you in grace depart.

“That there may be merriment, that there may be joy. That each of us might find a new truth in ourselves or one another. That there may be extravagance and elegance, subtlety and simplicity; that there may be mirth and song and excellence, fulfilment and companionship and in all matters striving to the limit.”

Lily pauses, and the silence remains absolute. My eyes are wide and my mind swept away by the undertones and overtones of her words, something layered with meaning that Omniglot barely lets me touch.

“That there may, in a turn of the world whose nature is imminence, be heard and seen in every city and field the echoes of our return, and the emptying of this Temple. That our voices might then rise to the true sky in joy; the voices of those of us reunited with our kindred, the voices of those of us who are all that remain; that Sed might walk Iavshet again, and Wind taste the winds.”

The power in her words is a vortex. It pulls at me, and I can feel something dim inside me for a moment as my vision blurs as though I were seeing the world through tears. I see, fuzzily, knees buckling and a visible wavering of the world, and then it passes, and there’s a moment where Lily is Lily again, vulnerable and harried and nearly human; and at the same time, she’s something primal and ancient, stooped and gnarled and utterly alien, and I can’t see her because there’s an impossible distance between us.

“First and last remaining; breaker; builder; she who was true, and rose, and fell. Mother of change, spirit of cataclysm, aegis and shelter. Let all of these memories be a blessing.”

The moment builds. My mind spins trying to encompass everything that just happened, what she’d said and hadn’t said, what she’d done and how the space and everything in it had reacted. Every word is etched indelibly into my memory, tempo and timbre and all, and it all still echoes in the space, and then there’s an inaudible snap and everything passes.

There’s a sphere in her hands. It’s maybe two feet in radius and absolutely covered in the densest runework I’ve seen so far, and then it’s more like one foot and still shrinking. My Visor is out and recording before I even think about whether or not it’s super impolite to do so, and I get maybe a second and a half of the densest not-exactly-footage imaginable, a flood of data that even the ridiculous computational power of my Visor can’t cope with, and then it’s over and my Visor slides back home into the earring.

Less than two seconds. The moment broken and Lily sitting, breathing heavily and looking visibly drained at what is now an interminable distance between the gathered crowd and herself, there’s a moment where nothing is demanding my attention. It takes a deliberate effort to not dive into that data, to not pull Sara and Zidanya aside and find somewhere I can inscribe every rune on that incredible working to pore over; I know full well that the calm is only momentary.

Conversation picks up in a sudden rush. There’s a feeling of presence, of attention, and I see in that strange corner-of-the-eye way that isn’t in the corner of my eye at all a small group walking towards me. They’re very good at seeming like they’re walking without purpose, but they’re also heading straight in my direction, and I’ve been to enough fancy parties to know the score on that score, so I shift the angle of my body to about forty five degrees off from their approach and drop my right hand to my waist from where it was at my forehead, rubbing to try to relieve the headache I hadn’t even noticed until this very moment that I was suffering from.

Amber’s hand meets mine on the left as she steps forward, still leaving a clear avenue of approach for the other party, and the whisper of her healing nestles in the back of my hearing and trickles its way down my spine.

“Voidwalker James.”

“Spire Guardian Foshi.”

The leader of the little group of three barely twitches, the other two showing more visible surprise. They’re two broad-shouldered gamahad with their hair braided in an extraordinary, complex arrangement and a gotz, squat and broad in every way, hairless and deeply wrinkled in every centimeter of dark green skin. It’s one of the gamahad who spoke, and the other two seem to defer to her, conferring in a flicker of exchanged looks.

“Tavedah Medah. It has been cycles. Spire-Under-Ahar greets you. We did not know you speak for the Magelord.”

“Maarah.” Zidanya smiles. “He’s not, you know.” She gives it a pause. “A Voidwalker, any more than the skiffriders were walkers in the storm.”

I look over at Zidanya. Something about her smile isn’t right, and the muscles around her eyes are all wrong. For that matter, it occurs to me that what Maarah said, or Foshi, whichever was her name, was probably an insult of some sort. Like Zidanya was stepping past her remit by talking in my place, or like… well, like I’m a subordinate in a derogatory fashion. “I take it you know each other.”

“There were five of them, once.” Zidanya smiles a little wider, a little more honestly.

“I… are you why there’s three of them, now?” She just grins wider, and I shudder a little. “That’s… why would you even say that? I don’t go around introducing myself as the person who, I dunno.” I flail mentally for a second, then take a breath. “You know what, never mind. We can talk later about inappropriate glorification of violent deeds. Maarah, is it?”

“I should like you to call me so.” She smiles at me. It’s a wide smile, a smile that twists her eyes and shows off her flat teeth, like a mouth full of polished molars more like a clay-and-silicate gray than a human white. “Spirebirth Maarah. Of the kindred who will bend the knee to the Lady, I am eldest. Seniormost, perhaps.”

There’s more of that feeling of pressure. They’re playing it cool, most of them, but I have the feeling that pretty close to every person in this room is listening in on this, is watching this conversation. Zidanya’s face twists in another one of those not-plausibly-smiles, which is weird; Maarah is almost looming over me, despite me having a half-meter on her, which is even weirder. Her body language… it exists, it’s definitely trying to say something, but I’m not catching the signal. “Spirebirth Maarah. Something tells me you have more than pleasantries to share with me and my companions.”

“To the point.” She sounds surprised. Her body language shifts again, but like hell can I tell anything about what it’s supposed to be; but I can definitely tell that her voice has gone ultra-formal, ultra-serious. “Very well. They call you many things. Magelord, Outsider, Runewright. They say your name is Adam James, and that you touch the Void and are not lost.

“You come here as four, and they say you will rise.” She looks me square in the eye, somehow, a trick of the magic letting her meet my gaze level and flat. As though she was holding it in, and she must have been, she lets slip a hint of power, a breath of presence. I hear Sara’s indrawn breath and a thak of flesh hitting something, and Amber’s grunt of effort; and I can taste the hunger in the woman I’m talking to.

Hunger for freedom, skin-hunger, hunger for dominance, hunger to fight and kill, hunger to strive and excel and grow.

“They say,” she says in a voice that reverberates in my bones, “you will pick a fifth tonight.

“I offer myself.”