There were fantastical stories that argued that a mirror world existed, where everything was the total opposite of reality, while still being much the same. If it hadn’t been a story, Riven was sure he’d somehow entered it. Providence city was the same as it always was, except it felt completely different. The streets were haunted by emptiness, the windows looked down at him with blank eyes, and the doorways were little better than mouths sewn shut. There wasn’t a single friendly soul anywhere on any road, and if he hadn’t known better, he’d have assumed everyone had simply evaporated.

Viriya allayed that fear.

“Aren’t you worried about your family?” Riven asked. Her mother was taking care of her brother. A brother who couldn’t even move on his own. Riven’s leg twinged in sympathy.

Viriya paused. She seemed to freeze, as though she’d realized she was going the wrong way. Then she moved on. “They’re safe, just like most everyone else in Providence city.”

They were in another alley where two high buildings on either side cloaked them in shadow. There wasn’t anyone in them, thankfully. He needed to not be obsessed about the possibility of soldiers or enemy Essentiers lurking everywhere. Paranoia wasn’t going to help him through this mess.

“How are they safe?” Riven asked.

Another pause. She glanced back at him, her eyes seeming to skitter everywhere before landing on him. “Everyone was evacuated by the Invigilator before this whole mess started. Or at least, I assume they were after I left. That was the protocol if something like this ever happened.”

“So… you don’t know for sure?”

“I trust it has.”

She didn’t say anything further, but she didn’t have to. Unspoken thought it might be, Riven got the impressions he was supposed to trust too. That’s what Mother said all the time, right?

But he couldn’t discount the sense that Viriya was hiding something.

They were finally coming to the edge of the city. There was no indication of any soldiers nearby as the buildings grew sparse and roads turned into streets that were more unkempt than those in the city proper. Riven had told Viriya there was an escape car, and she hadn’t asked about anything except the car’s exact location.

What bothered him was that he was slowing them down. Much as he tried to push past the pain in his wound, there was still a limit to how fast he could go and it wasn’t fast enough. Viriya didn’t comment on it, and if she was frustrated by it, she did a great job of hiding it. But that only ate away at Riven all the more. He was a liability. Damn it, if they got caught, it would be his fault. Why couldn’t there be some miraculous cure that could fix it all up?

Apparently, survival was all right even if he was in pain severe enough to make him want to faint, so his Essence was useless about it too.

“Are you sure you gave me the right location?” Viriya asked eventually as they paused under a small Coral tree. What was it with her stopping under Coral trees?

“Yes, I remember correctly.”

“Why are you grinning?”

Riven smothered his grin, but it was too late. She’d seen. “Nothing.”

Viriya glanced at him with eyes screwed up in suspicion. “If you say so. All right, let’s move.”

That’s how long their rests lasted. Silent journeys, save for their footfalls, then a small conversation-filled rest, then a resumption of the journey. The only breaks were the times Viriya was either unsure of which direction to take or took a moment to check if the path ahead was clear. And her unerring ability to choose the right path meant the path was always clear. It was almost uncanny.

“Is this the place?” she asked.

Riven looked around, limping forward and staring around. It took him a moment to recognize the area, but he noticed the familiar decrepit building with the cracks on the wall and the broken window. Viriya had brought him here at a different angle, so it had seemed unfamiliar at first. “Yes this is it.”

He stepped forward and led her a little way off to a small area between the building and a dirty high wall. The car was waiting for them there, leaving only a tiny space for them to squeeze into. Damn, Raynard wasn’t the smartest when it came to parking.

“Wait a minute.” Viriya was frowning at the car. “I’ve seen this before…”

“It’s from the research facility.”

“The research—” She looked at him sharply, eyes dark as green garnets. “You went that far? No wait. We need to get out first, and you can tell me on the way.”

She made to move towards the car but Riven shook his head. “There’s someone else here and we need to wait for him to arrive.”

“Who?”

“An Essentier from Rennervation. He’s a friend, I think.”

“You think?” Viriya’s frown grew, the furrows on her brow digging even deeper trenches. “Riven, we’re past the point where we could deal with mights and coulds. We don’t have that luxury anymore. We’re at war!”

Riven patted his chest, where the letter Raynard had brought him resided. “Faith. I’m trying to have some faith for once. You can allow me that, right?”

Viriya closed her eyes. The effort she was exercising not to blow up and kidnap Riven was too visible. Riven held his ground, trying to appear impassive though his heart was quailing. If she chose to force him into the car, he didn’t have the strength to refuse her.

“How long?” she asked.

Time limit? Drats. “I… can’t tell. We didn’t decide on a time limit, only the spot where we’d meet.”

“Well, that’s great. We can just wait here for the rest of eternity while the Sundering comes and goes.”

“How about we try to stay a little cool? In fact, why don’t we trade stories on what went on.” Riven tried to keep his voice as diplomatic as possible. Viriya looked one wrong word away from bursting into raging falmes and that was the last thing they needed. “I’ll start.”

He told her everything. It took longer than he’d assumed when the idea popped in his head that it might be good to get the context of what had happened clear. He started with the events at the hospital, intending to keep it contained to brief, pertinent facts, but the more he talked, the more he began to elaborate on things like his feelings and what it all meant. Riven made sure not to hide anything he’d learned from Mhell, making sure she understood what Orbray had planned with regards to the Scions and Knightforger likely being one of the Chosen.

When he got to how Glaven died, Riven choked up a little. He recovered quickly, but the frustration on Viriya’s face, which had been slowly going away as his tale progressed further and further, completely disappeared at that. She didn’t interrupt him though, waiting until he finished speaking.

The she reached forward and placed a hand on his. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s all right. I’ve dealt with it.”

“No. It’s not all right. None of it is.” She was looking at him with not just concern, but a deep sadness, as though she had been there when Glaven had died. As though she had stood helpless as a witness. As though she had suffered the same. “How’s your leg?”

Riven drew in a sharp breath. It wasn’t just Glaven’s death maybe, but all the fighting, all the deaths he had been responsible for too. Did she think less of him now for it? That he was some kind of monster? “Er, still hurts, though Nivi looked at it and gave me medicine. I think I need some time before it will heal fully.”

“Time we don’t have.”

Riven had stood for quite a while now, so he stepped back and sat down on the car’s trunk. “Still. Can’t leave Raynard. As you may have noticed, we don’t exactly have a dearth of allies right now.”

“I still don’t know if we ought to trust this Invigilator Aross.”

“Have you met her before? What’s she like?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Kept to her own business mostly. She was neither overly approving of anything done by the Invigilator, though nor every decrying either.”

Riven frowned at the new information. The way Raynard and Starls had put it, he’d assumed she was a staunch ally of Father in his every manoeuvre but this made it sound like she had always been a neutral party. But then, neutral parties normally threw in their lot with the side that looked to be victorious, with the side that was more powerful. What did she know about Father to throw in her lot with him?

“You went so far, Riven,” Viriya said, “yet you only came back full circle and ended up back here in Providence.”

Riven blinked. “Where else was I supposed to look for you and Rose? Aren’t you glad I came back to get you?”

“You didn’t have to get me. I only returned to check on things and make sure if everything really had gone to shit, among other things.” She paused, frowning. The state of Providence was definitely frown-worthy. “I can do that because I can handle myself. But look at you. You can hardly walk straight.”

Riven frowned a bit at that, though he didn’t immediately respond. Her words were admonishing, but her eyes betrayed what she really thought. There was a strange light there as though she was seeing Riven in a new way, reappraising what she had originally thought of him, and all her words were only a reminder that he ought to not get too ahead of himself.

“If I hadn’t come here, where would you have gone, pray tell?” Riven asked.

“I’d find out where you’d escaped, then head over there.”

Riven swallowed. “You’d… find me?”

“What’s so surprising about that.”

“You wouldn’t go after Father?”

“Not unless you were dead.”

“Why?”

Viriya didn’t answer immediately. Oh, she had the answer ready, Riven could see that straightaway when she opened her mouth to reply. But something else seemed to occur to her as she was about to speak, and Viriya paused to consider.

The area fell silent again. Raynard might have parked badly, but Riven had to praise him for finding a very secluded spot. So long as no one peeked out of the window above them of course.

“I wasn’t ordered to come find the Invigilator,” Viriya said. Riven said nothing, only stared at her. There was more to it. Viriya scowled at him. “With no other knowledge of any other matter, I was going to find you before you got yourself killed and then together, we’d regroup with your sister. Then we’d get back to the Invigilator, or wherever else we might be needed.”

Riven sighed. “You still think I’d be killed off that easily?”

Viriya didn’t answer for a moment again. But she didn’t take a long while to think either. “No.”

Riven smiled at her, but Viriya being Viriya, she didn’t smile back. Didn’t even offer that half-grin she tucked into the corner of her mouth every so often. Her eyes fell on the sword, and he wondered if she could teach him about sword work as well. He needed to get a grip on how to wield it properly before he met any damn Essentiers.

“Isn’t it your turn to tell me what happened?” Riven asked.

“There isn’t much to say,” Viriya said. “I was on the train to Ambrosial Demesne but there were two of Orbray’s Essentiers on the train as well. I killed them both, then got away.”

“You make it sound so simple. But it doesn’t look simple at all. It isn’t simple at all. I know, Viriya.”

“What exactly do you want to know, Riven?”

“Why didn’t you get to Ambrosial once you’d killed them both?”

“I learned from the Essentiers that my journey was pointless. The Invigilator of Ambrosial Demesne had already pledged his loyalty to Orbray and his Essentiers and soldiers had joined forces with Orbray’s. I concluded the mission of delivering your father’s message held no more merit and decided to return to Providence to see if my home had been captured.”

Riven nodded. “Does your family live in the western district? Or did they used to rather, before all this shit went down?”

Viriya’s face took on a strange twist. She had donned a cold mask as though Riven had entered dangerous territory and had to be stopped from seeing anything further. “What does that have to do anything?”

“Nothing. Just curious. Anyway, what were the Essentiers like?”

“Two Firstmarkeds. One of Orbray’s and one was from Ambrosial. And yes, it was the Ambrosial one who tore up the message I gave him, exposed me to the Essentier from Ascension, then tried to kill me as a show of loyalty.”

There was that little grin, right at the corner of her mouth, though it held no mirth this time. Just a hard, jagged edge, cold as an icicle and even deadlier. Riven swallowed. Not one but two Essentiers. Riven had barely been able to beat Olsten and Weathering, a Secondmarked and a Firstmarked respectively, with the help of his brother who had given his life in the process.

Meanwhile, Viriya had taken on and killed two Firstmarked Essentiers all by herself, and that too without suffering any grievous injuries like Riven had.

Sometimes, Riven was quite glad to remember that Viriya was on his side.

“How does it feel?” Viriya asked. She was looking at him carefully again, a wariness to her expression as though she was approaching skittish deer.

“How does what feel?”

“The killing.”

Riven went cold. Killing. Tam back at the hospital floated before Riven’s eyes like an apparition, a broken, mangled body lying in a pool of blood on the polished, white, disinfected tiles. So did a vision of Olsten screaming. And Weathering’s rage. The bond that those two had shared, and Riven had sliced right through the same way they had severed his brother from him.

What a sweet thing vengeance was. What a bitter taste it left in the mouth.

He stared at her, and those deep green eyes weren’t wary anymore. No, they were nothing more than dark mirrors, reflecting all the cold that had possessed him.

Viriya was used to death by now. This hadn’t been the first time she’d killed people.

“It’s… hard to get used to,” Riven admitted. “Difficult to reconcile myself to. I don’t know if I could ever see it as the right thing to do. I don’t know if I’m… if I made a mistake I can now never fix.”

Viriya didn’t say it was right or wrong, nor did she confirm if it was born from necessity. Maybe Raynard was kinder, or maybe Riven had fooled himself into thinking that was what he wanted, what might even need, but Viriya wasn’t ever to be soft about something like that.

“You’ll get used to it,” was all she had to offer.

“Used to what? The death? The killing?” Riven shook his head. Was there even a difference? “What is there to get used to? And is getting used to it even right?”

“You get used to the feeling. It’s never right and it’s never easy. But habit makes everything a little less difficult to bear.”

Those weren’t comforting words, and honestly, Riven had been foolish to expect comfort from Viriya. No, she had basically admitted there was more to come. More death. More killing. More acts of savagery that Riven would need to perform. But for some reason, Viriya’s words left him feeling just a smidge warmer.

She was the same as well. She had done the same as well, was willing to even more, even if it was only to find him.

Riven took a deep breath, finding himself staring upwards. Were the Scions okay with all this? Killing was a damnable sin according to the Monasts. But these weren’t cold-blooded murder, at least.

No, this was war.

“Were you hoping to find Aross after this?” Viriya asked.

“I promised I would,” Riven answered.

“We can’t. Rose comes first. She has to be our priority and we need to free her from Orbray before he decides to use her.”

“I know.” Riven wasn’t sure what he’d tell Raynard, or how the Rennervation Essentier might take the news, but Viriya was right no matter what Raynard might insist later. “We need to rescue Rose first. She’s my sister, after all. I’m not losing another sibling. Never.”

Viriya nodded. She was about to speak more, when the sound of rapid steps interrupted them. Putting a finger to her lips to ensure Riven’s silence, she stepped closer to the end of the little alleyway, hand going to the gun at her waist.

Riven raised his sword. Scions, it had better be Raynard.

It was. He turned the corner, freezing in surprise at the sight of them, Viriya’s gun pointed right at the centre of his temple.

“Who are you?” Viriya asked. “State your business and make no sudden moves, or else I’ll blast your brains out of your head.”

The calmness with which she said it sent a shiver coursing down Riven’s spine. Poor Raynard felt it too, his teak-hued face going a shade pale.

“That’s the one I was telling you about, Viriya,” Riven said quickly. “Raynard, from Rennervation. Raynard, this is Viriya. As you can see, she’s a little feral sometimes.”

Viriya put her gun away and gave him a disgusted look. Then she stepped back, giving space for Raynard to enter.

But the Essentier from Rennervation didn’t move. “They’re coming. You have to leave.”

“Who’s coming?” Viriya asked, pulling out her gun again.

Riven went tense, every muscle ready to move. Well, all but the one on his thigh where the injury pulsed like it was giving birth. “Is it Orbray’s soldiers?”

Raynard nodded. His face grew even paler, his beard seeming to curl in on itself. He was frightened. No, closer to terrified. Whatever was coming couldn’t be good.

“No time to waste, then.” Riven started towards the car, pulling open the door and doing his best to squeeze into the tiny space between the building’s wall and the front passenger seat. “You found a great space to park, by the way. But next time, could you do it in such a way so that at least one of us can get in from one side.”

“I’m not coming with you,” Raynard said.

Riven turned back. Viriya was squeezing into the car from the other side, already looking everywhere to see where the key was. He pointed to the glove box but was barely aware of doing so. He was still too busy staring at Raynard, trying to get the implications of what he was saying “What do you mean you won’t come with us? You want to die?”

“I don’t want to die!” Raynard shouted, and Riven’s heart shook hard, quailing at the sudden anger from the Rennervation Essentier. “You think I want t—to sacrifice myself because of some children? You may be important and powerful people, but my life has meaning too! I have a home to get back to, a sweetheart waiting for me and worried every moment I’m away from her. You think I want to die?”

Riven shook his head. “That’s why I’m telling you to get in. We can all make our escape together. Quickly, before they catch up.”

Raynard closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The gesture reminded Riven a little too much of Viriya, who still said nothing, busy trying to start up the car’s ignition and reverse it back out of the alley.

“I’m going to stall them for as long as I can,” Raynard said. His eyes held unfathomable purpose in them, a deep sorrow but also an even deeper resolve. He was willing to die. “I’ll buy you time to get away, so you better make use of it.”

Before Riven could argue that it sounded like a terrible idea, he was gone.

“Get in and get out of the way,” Viriya demanded. “We don’t have time to waste.”

Riven didn’t move. Raynard was already heading out of the ally. “Did you find out if anyone in the hospital survived?”

Raynard paused for a heartbeat. “Dorvhaes is still alive. Pendle, however, has died.”

With that, he was gone.

Riven got back in the car when Viriya yelled at him again, albeit not so loud that the soldiers outside the alley might hear. She reversed the car out, her expression so fierce, Riven had a hard time stifling the urge to tell her that they needed to get away, not run over every single one of Orbray’s agents with the car. It wouldn’t be surprising if Viriya meant to take them all on by herself.

She didn’t though. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead and the car trundled off, going faster and faster as they left Providence city and the sounds of battle behind.

Riven muttered a silent prayer that the Scions would see to Raynard.

Sharp magenta lines crossed the street ahead. Riven barely managed to shout out a warning, but Viriya was driving too fast. The car blitzed over the lines. There was no difference, and Riven’s hammering heart started to slow down. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he was seeing things.

The bullet out of nowhere took the car in the tire. Viriya jerked the steering wheel hard but couldn’t prevent it from veering off the street and crashing into an upended cart, scraping against a building’s wall with a shower of sparks before coming to a halt.

Riven had prevented himself from ramming his head onto the dashboard. Coughing, he got out of the car as Viriya squeezed onto his seat to use his door. Her one was blocked. He cursed. Things could never be easy, could it?

Judging by the magenta aura flickering around the approaching figure, they were facing another Essentier.