Wenster was still staggering around, crying out at and probably cursing Riven for ruining his not-so-pretty face. Ample time. Riven checked his Sept stores as quickly as he could. His bullets were running low going by how most of the magazines refused to glow. The little pouches that held extra Sept now only held dead particles. Even the extra vials he had stuffed all over himself only held grey powder, not the glittering kind that he had been lining his jacket and his pant pockets.

Shit. Scions, why now? Though to be fair, he’d had those vials all the way from the research facility so it was a minor miracle they had lasted him this long.

But still. Riven was so close. A little more, and he could take out Wenster without too much trouble. Wenster! Riven looked up. Maybe he could use Wenster’s own Sept to take the big bastard out.

But Wenster was done crying. He was staring at Riven, his eyes fixed with an unprecedented malevolence. Well, one eye. The other he had clamped over with one fist, though bloody tears were still seeping out from under his fingers, leaving crimson tracks along his face.

Riven had just turned this fight into a duel to the death. Great. Just what he needed. As if it wasn’t already hard enough to fight back against the damn brute.

“It’s time we ended this,” Wenster ground out.

“Are you sure you can see well enough to do that?” Riven asked. “I won’t blame you if you ran.”

Wenster took a deep breath, his whole body stilling for a moment. He sighed. “Perhaps you are right.” His brilliant blue essence underneath his skin flickered brightly again, and he changed his form to the skeletal figure. It made the blood steaking over his face look more prominent somehow. Riven bent forward, shoulders tensing, but Wenster only stepped back. “I’ll be going.”

He did go. Wenster turned around and walked away faster than most men ran.

Then he stepped. He faced Riven again, and he brought his hand away from his face, revealing the gory ruin that was his face. “On second thought, it’s time you died.”

Riven’s heartbeat reached the stratosphere as Wenster charged. Didn’t matter. He’d draw his shield as soon as Wenster came close enough. Easier said than done maybe but Riven focused, seeking that familiar pressure within him, that promise that his Essence would always be at his beck and call.

Survival. It was now or never, wasn’t it?

Wenster charged in too fast, body flaring blue, but Riven focused as hard as he could until he felt as though the veins throbbing all around his head had to pop sometime soon enough. Golden Essence came out, forming a membrane of compressed air around him in a hemisphere. It didn’t seem as strong as it normally was, but then, Wenster’s skeletal form was weak. Fast yes, but nowhere near as strong as his hulking form.

Before he barged into Riven’s shield Wenster jumped. The blue Essence within him flared bright and pulsed like cerulean hearts all over him.

He had changed forms to his hulking state.

Shit. He was flying at Riven with the speed of his skeletal form, but he now had the weight and power of his huge, muscle-bound form. Riven wasn’t going to survive a direct hit from that. Unless he could pull in Wenster’s own Sept to use against the brute. Yes, that was his sole remaining option. Soon as the brute got close enough, Riven would power his Essence using his enemy’s Sept.

Sadly, there was no time. Wenster crashed in like a boulder fired from a cannon.

Riven’s shield was little better than paper. It shattered immediately upon impact, though he let go of his focus, forcing the burgeoning pressure within him to recreate his Essence armour. Wenster barged into Riven and threw him into the wall behind, the momentum making the Firstmarked crash in beside him. The force was incredible. Riven’s shout was lost as the entire wall crumbled, a landslide of broken bricks and bent rods burying him alive as the world whiplashed around him.

By the time things settled down and the world was no longer looking like it was about to tear apart, Riven couldn’t move. His limbs were locked to the ground, sure as though Viriya had used her Essence to make sure he was no longer a nuisance. A mountain of rubble had pinned him in place, and the best he could do was move his head around. It wasn’t fun. The darkness hemmed him in, though thin shafts of light pierced it everywhere as though the rubble had been shot by bullets. So bright! Riven glanced around at the tapestry of white stars. He must have been thrown outside by that brute, Wenster.

Thank the Scions, he wasn’t hurt though. Not too badly. His Essence shield had taken the brunt of the impact. His right shoulder was sickly warm and pulsing as though it’d blow up any second, his arms felt leaden and heavy with agony, and he wasn’t sure he could even feel his legs—which was a whole other can of worry—but at least he was alive.

Bur for how long? If he couldn’t get out, he’d run out of air. Riven’s stomach growled as if trying to remind him that starvation was fatal too.

A sound pricked his ears. Scrabbling fingers and scuffling footsteps, someone struggling against the rubble pile. Wenster. Had to be. No surprise the bastard Firstmarked was still alive and well, and probably trying to make sure Riven was dead.

“Are you still alive, Morell?” Wenster asked as though he had heard Riven’s thoughts and agreed. “Don’t make me pull you out just to kill you.”

Maybe Riven should have stayed silent. Maybe he should have kept quiet and hoped Wenster would assume he was dead and leave him alone. But the thought of escaping that bastard made Riven’s stomach cramp in shame. It was no less than admitting defeat. “I’m still alive.”

“Oho! How kind of you to admit it.” The pace of the digging increased, and the landslide over Riven started to shift. The rocks and debris fell around with heavy thumps, the little pinpricks of light everywhere shifting as though the cosmos was unwilling to stay still.

Wenster had to be close. It was getting harder and harder for Riven to breathe, but he wasn’t going to stay buried here for long now. All he needed was for the brute to get close enough for Riven to draw on his Sept. Then he could get free. The scrabbling got closer, the rocks shifting so that the weights on Riven’s limbs moved too.

“Sir!”

Wenster’s digging stopped. “What are you doing here, Captain?”

“Sir, we need you back at the command centre. The lines are falling back, and the strength of their assault was… unprecedented.”

“How far have they taken over?”

“Sir, there’s no time! We need to get going. Half the whole Office is lost.”

Wenster cursed. “Morell, it seems the Scions have granted you a respite. But if you want to die, I suggest coming to face me again. If you can crawl out from here in the first place.”

Riven wanted to answer the bastard, but it was best not to waste any breath.

“We’ll take care of the Essentier, sir,” the Captain said.

Wenster moved off, his heavy thumps getting fainter. “Ah, good suggestion. I’ll leave him in your capable hands, captain. He’s nearly dead by now so shouldn’t be hard.”

Before Wenster’s footfalls faded to nothing, the sounds of more people coming in surrounded the area. They started to climb. Rocks fell all around Riven and the lights started to go dark one by one as soldiers covered them, then poked their rifles through. It looked like the Captain hadn’t come alone.

For all that Riven appreciated his Essence, he doubted it could survive so many bullets shot at him simultaneously. especially if these soldiers were bent on killing an Essentier. No doubt they’d be resorting to iron bullets, not Sept bullets.

Riven closed his eyes as he took a deep breath, the air clogged with dust. Maybe his very last breath. All those bullets would tear through him, leaving him an even worse mess than Noll.

Noll. He shot his eyelids open. No, he couldn’t die. Not yet. Not until he had exacted justice for Noll. For how that innocent soldier had been murdered.

“You can’t kill me,” Riven said. He had to say something. He had to hold the soldiers off from killing him, and words were all he had.

“Don’t be foolish, Essentier,” the Captain said. “We’ll be killing you now. If you have any last words or prayers, speak them now. You have one minute.”

“I’m serious. You cannot kill me. Do you know what happens to Essentiers after they die, especially when they have a lot of Sept nearby?”

There was a heavy pause. Riven had touched on the exact subject they all knew, and they all chose to disregard anyway. Killing anyone in the presence of Sept meant they’d have a Deathless to deal with, which was fine since people had to be dying with Sept bullets near them all over the Invigilator’s Office in the battle. But how many of them were witness to an Essentier dying with a lot of Sept near them?

A loud thump sounded somewhere distant. No one paid it any mind. Just another sound of battle.

“What happens?” the Captain asked. “You’ll turn into just another Deathless, yes? No matter. We’ll kill your Spectre too.”

“If I became a Spectre, sure you would. But you don’t know the truth. It’s something no Essentier will ever tell—many because they themselves don’t know, but most because it’s a shameful secret—but I’ll let you know since I’m about to die, right?” Riven paused, eyes travelling from one rifle muzzle to the next. They had slacked in their grips a bit, the soldiers rapt in their attention to him. “Essentiers don’t just become mindless Deathless. We turn into Class Two Deathless. Your Phantoms, Infernals, and Deadmages. We are the ones who control the other weaker Deathless, all the Spectres, Fiends, and Necromancers. We are the ones who’ve been causing so much of the devastation you’ve heard of.”

It wasn’t wholly true, but Riven’s voice was convincing enough. He had inserted a bit of the truth and that always made the bigger lie much more believable. Mhell was living proof after all. Well, Deathless proof. But still.

One of the guns aimed at him straightened so the dark circle was looking at him with heavy malevolence. “You think we’d believe you just like that?” So that’s where the Captain was. At least Riven was getting a good lay of the land, so to speak. “Soldiers!” All the other rifles straightened in their owners’ grips. “Aim!”

There was another loud thump from somewhere behind.

“Sir!” one of the soldiers called.

“Not now,” the Captain said.

Riven’s heart was thumping far too loud. Scions, this couldn’t be his death, right? “Oh, I really hope I get to become a Deadmage.”

“Enough!”

Another thump. A little closer this time.

“Sir!”

“Enough!” the Captain shouted.

Then everything blew apart. The debris all over Riven shattered into a thousand little stones and a million tiny bits of dust. Soon as the weight over his limbs vanished, he pulled his arms over himself and drew his legs in as he curled into the foetal position. The shattering debris pelted him too. Rocks rammed into his shoulders, stones shot his back like half-hearted bullets, and his limbs had turned far too hot and heavy.

At some point, the world stopped shaking and feeling as though it was about to tear into nothing. The pile of debris over Riven had disappeared. He had space to stand up. Finally.

The scene of carnage stole his attention away from his quaking legs. He was on a wide balcony as he had surmised, but it was impossible to tell that this was still morning. The explosion had thrown up so much dust, it clouded the area and let too little light penetrate within, sinking the whole balcony in gloom. Which was dangerous since the floor was fractured in places with cracks wide enough to send Riven plunging to the ground several score yards below. The low light made them hard to spot. Worse, it was littered with broken chunks of the wall, shattered bricks, plaster, and rods, all threatening to make him trip.

Riven hadn’t even begun to look at the bodies. A glowing green speck had caught his eyes.

He walked over to it on his trembling legs, taking care where he placed his foot. He’d survived Wenster, that rubble avalanche, the soldiers, and finally this explosion. Dying by crack seemed a terrible way to go after all that.

A bullet. It wasn’t glowing just green. No, golden-green.

Viriya was here.

Of course. Who else would shake and tear the whole world apart like that? Who else would go so far to save Riven?

He looked up, waving away the dust to peer in the distance. More golden-green spots blinked back at him from the distance, the largest and brightest by far on top of a water tower that loomed over the other buildings.

It didn’t take long to find Viriya. She flew towards him like the angelic saviour she was, chestnut hair loose and waving around in the wind, glittering green like she was carved from emerald stars. Riven took several steps back as she landed where her bullet had fallen to the ground. The green Essence winked out.

“You alive?” she asked.

Riven nodded. He had let go of what little of his Essence he still had, but it was still miraculous that his Essence had survived through all that. He had perhaps underestimated it. “Thanks to you.”

“Good. Then let’s go.”

“Wait, hold on a minute. What in the Chasm is going on out there?”

“Bombs, can’t you tell. I threw incendiaries from that water tower.” She pointed to the green Essence still glittering on top of the water tower. “There’s no time to explain. We need to capture this whole place as soon as we can.”

Riven swallowed. That could only mean one thing. “Aross is already here?”

“She is. The assault from her forces started about half an hour ago, and the Rennervation forces are making good headway into the city. Aross will be here soon. We can’t let Orbray’s retreating forces get a foothold in her own damn office.”

“That’s… not enough. But we do need to get going. I can go on, but it’ll be slow.”

“Doesn’t matter. We just need to keep moving. “

Viriya went over the rubble and jumped back into the corridor Riven had been thrown from. She didn’t even glance at the corpses of the soldiers she had killed. Riven couldn’t be so stoic. Or was that callous indifference? Either way, Riven’s eyes were glued to Orbray’s soldiers who had been crushed by falling debris, though several had severe burns as well. Little fires had popped out from the blast, though they were all dying. Riven gagged when he saw one rock jutting out of a woman’s midsection with her entrails crowning its bottom. Another man had lost his head, and one leg and arm, all replaced by debris as though he was turning to rock, limb by limb.

Riven did his best to ignore the others as he made his way towards Viriya. He made sure to keep an eye out for those pesky cracks that would send him tumbling down to the streets below. Riven jumped into the corridor too, though he wasn’t used to the height. The landing made his legs cramp, and he staggered more than walked as he followed Viriya. Scions, that trembling was awful.

“Er, I don’t have any more Sept,” he said when he caught up to Viriya, which he only did for she was kind enough to go slow.

Viriya stopped and thumbed through her jacket, bring out several glass vials full of powdered Sept. She handed them to Riven. “Take these. But be careful when you use them. I don’t have any more I can waste.”

“I didn’t waste mine,” Riven muttered.

“Well, you need to be more efficient. You have to admit you use your Essence willy-nilly way too much.”

“I would have killed off Wenster if I hadn’t run out.”

Viriya blinked. “You nearly killed the Firstmarked?”

Riven told her the gist of what had happened as quickly as he could when they resumed walking. The corridors were empty and untouched, though the dust in places held many footsteps and Riven could hear the distant sound of fighting. That was when he remembered there was a fire burning in the basement, but Viriya didn’t seem overly concerned. She didn’t seem very impressed with his fight against Wenster either. Maybe it was just her mask.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said. She didn’t react to that. “Did you kill Lacelle?”

Her little sniff sounded nearly like laughter. “I wish. No, I got away because it was taking too long. I met up with the insurgents and they restocked me with lots of Sept, telling me to join in on their little internal assault. But when they said you were heading to the Invigilator’s Office, I knew I needed to get there as soon as I could. Couldn’t let you die, now could I?”

“Well, I’ll have you know lack of Sept was all that would have killed me.”

“As always. I heard you were taking out warehouses. We took some out too, and a few depots and outposts. The Rennervation loyalists are a lot tougher than I imagined.”

Yes, that they were. Mirren and her soldiers had taken out those guards outside the meeting between Vorellick and Wenster with rapid ease. Though that made Riven wonder where Vorellick was at the moment.

“What now?” Riven asked.

“We find their command centre.”

“Then we kill Wenster? He’s the acting-Invigilator.”

“Yes. We kill this acting-Invigilator. I want to be done with this mess.”

They came to their first real battle site. A little room to one side, where the bodies of both Aross’s and Orbray’s loyalists had died. A scene of carnage, where blood had sprayed everywhere. A dozen Nolls, all staring at nothing.

This time, like Viriya, Riven ignored them. Wenster. That was his goal. He was coming to kill that moustachioed bastard.

Riven and Viriya would be the heralds that ushered in the return of Aross.