It was a while before the Captain decided to call a pause. The pace of their retreat was punishing to say the least, and it didn’t even take twenty minutes by Riven’s estimation before the world started to swim in his sight. His legs were already pillars of dull lead, his arms swinging only because his momentum made them dance. Riven would’ve dropped to the ground, never to get back up again, if the Captain hadn’t called a halt to proceedings.

They were far enough. From Riven’s spot under the shade of a rocky overhang, the mountain they had vacated was no larger than his fist held as far as possible from his face.

Despite that, the strangeness caused by the Chosen was pretty clear. Wild colours bloomed on the mountaintop, ethereal smoke twisted away into the air, and multihued brilliance shimmered everywhere. It was all blurry too. The Scion’s Hand had called down his pocket of the Beyond, pulling all the unfortunate Fiends within. Riven could only imagine the madness a Chosen could inflict.

“Company!” the Captain shouted. “Form up!”

She had ordered everyone to relax, but not to settle in too deep. They needed to be able to move as fast as they could if more danger popped in from nowhere. The soldiers had taken the command to heart. At her signal, they shot up from wherever they lounged and stood ruler-straight. Training. That was the product of strictest training.

“We don’t have to leave just yet,” Riven said, refusing to get up. If they wanted him to move, they were either going to have to wait or create a palanquin. His legs weren’t going to work any time soon.

“We might as well,” the Captain argued as she walked over. None of the soldiers turned to look, their discipline rooting them in their current position. “We need to get to Ascension city as fast as possible. I don’t think the other bastions survived.”

“You’ve got little faith in your kind.”

“They don’t have another Essentier hauling a Chosen around.”

Point taken. “Still. The Chosen bought you some time so you can escape in an orderly fashion. There’s no point if you end up in Ascension city only to be too tired to do anything about the Deathless assaulting it.”

She swallowed, her tanned face growing a little pale. “There’s Deathless there already?”

“No doubt. Trust me, I’ve seen an entire army cross through the Demesne. They might already be there, or they might not yet, but they will be by the time you reach Ascension city.”

The Captain didn’t take that well. Her eyes went back to the mountain, noting the way the strange light was finally starting to die down.

It seemed the Chosen had finished.

“Why are you really here, Essentier Morell?” she asked.

“I’m here, Captain…?”

“Rett.”

Riven nodded. “I’m here, Captain Rett, to get my sister. High Invigilator Orbray has promised that she will be returned safe and sound if I go to him in peace. I thought I’d sweeten the deal—”

“That’s bull crap and we both know it.”

Riven flushed. Damn it, hadn’t she believed him once? Or had she suspected all along that he had been lying? Scions, he really needed to get better at concealing his true feelings. “I’m here to help. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Help is hardly ever free.” She glared down at him, eyes dark as the shadows Riven had ensconced himself in. “That’s what’s giving me pause. No one helps for no reason. If it isn’t to take advantage of me and my troops later, there’s something you’re seeking, even if it’s something stupid and related only to yourself.”

The heat along Riven’s neck had grown prickly and uncomfortable. Damn, but this woman was too perceptive. “And what’s it to you if it is?”

“I need to trust where you’re coming from.”

“You can trust me, Captain Rett. I have no ill-will towards you or any of your soldiers.”

“Then can you tell me where Essentier Parce is?”

“I said I don’t know, didn’t I?”

The Captain shook her head ever so slightly. Not an outright statement that he was lying, but rather, a hint that she knew something was being hidden. And she didn’t appreciate it one bit.

“Captain!” one of the soldiers shouted in alarm.

They all turned, following the soldier’s arm as he pointed. The Chosen was coming.

He blasted through the air like he was a white meteor, his armour gleaming and the golden etching flashing in the sunlight. Riven gasped. Damn Chosen was coming straight from the mountain. Had le launched himself from the peak like cannonball?

With a huge thump, the Chosen landed in the midst. Dust flew out everywhere, and they all cringed and fell back. Riven coughed, his nostrils filling with grit and sand. Scions, did this Chosen have no idea of a proper entry?

“I trust all is well?” he asked.

Riven hacked out another cough. He forced himself to his feet, a little surprised he didn’t immediately fall over. “It would’ve been if you hadn’t just jumped down from the mountain like a damn asteroid.”

“It thought it the quickest way to reach you.”

“And the Beyond?”

“Would have been slower.”

“Did you kill them all?” Captain Rett asked once the dust had cleared.

“More or less,” the Chosen said. “Enough to dissuade the few survivors from making any foolish attempts to harass you. You are safe. I cannot promise anything about the path ahead, but for now, you can rest in peace a while longer.”

Riven turned to her with a grin. “See?”

The Captain said nothing, her expression twisted between relief and exasperation.

With a little clearing of his throat, the Chosen wrapped his arm about Riven’s shoulders and drew him away. “I’ll be stealing Riven here for a moment. We must discuss important matters. I suggest you all wait till his return, then set off.”

The Chosen was about to lead Riven away, not even bothering to register the scowl on his face—damn Scion’s Hand hadn’t even bothered to ask his permission before hauling him away—but Captain Rett jutted in.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, her face indicating she was clearly unsure on how to address the Chosen. “Did you see another Essentier at the bastion or on the mountain?”

“I have.” The Chosen’s answer made Riven’s heartbeat spike, and his whole body tensed. What was he doing? He’d blow Riven’s cover if he admitted everything. “He’s dead.”

Rett didn’t look taken aback. Didn’t even look fazed or dismayed. Her eyes were fixed on the Chosen’s, a guarded stance claiming all of her as her shoulders stooped just a little and her fingers worked as though getting ready to grab her sword or her gun. Scions, she thought the Chosen had killed the Essentier.

“How?” she asked.

“I was too far. I couldn’t tell properly. I did notice an enormous amount of blood though.”

“Wait,” she called out as the Chosen turned and dragged Riven away. He didn’t pause, but neither did Rett in her questioning. “How was he wounded? How did he die?”

“Too far,” the Chosen threw back.

Riven grimaced as he was pulled along. Damn, that had been close. That woman was more dangerous than a venomous serpent and he’d have to watch his back.

“I cannot stay here long,” the Chosen said once they had given themselves some space from the soldiers.

Riven found himself swallowing. “Don’t tell me there’s another Chosen nearby?”

“None that I’ve seen yet. But my powers will attract attention and I need to be off.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“I won’t just leave you, though,” the Chosen said when he saw the fallen look on Riven’s face. “Here, maybe I can help you find who you seek.”

“Who I seek?”

“The one you need to stop so that Orbray doesn’t call down a Scion.”

“You know where she is?”

The Chosen frowned. “She, is it?”

He looked outwards, across the expanse of the little valley stretching before them, ringed by rising heights all around. Distant mountains thrust their peaks into the sky, jagged teeth of the earth’s jaw trying to crunch into the dome of the heavens. The world shimmered and everything faded from sight. There was a swooping sensation inside Riven’s stomach as though he was rising in the air, but it didn’t look like he was floating. No, the word only blurred.

He was surrounded by the Chosen’s pocket of the Beyond again.

“Look,” the Chosen said.

Riven wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing. The world underneath was shifting as though he was zooming forwards at the speed of lightning, still indistinct as ever. Then the motion stopped.

He frowned. Then peered. Figures. Scores upon scores of figures crawled all over the ground, distant and small as though Riven was looking at them from the top of a mountain. They were surrounded by a far larger army, the ones making up the larger contingent bigger and buffer than the ones milling in the centre.

“Is this her?” the Chosen asked.

Riven blinked. Of course. “Yes. That’s Mhell and her Spectres, surrounded by Fiends.”

“Ah, as I suspected. A Deadmage, yes?”

“That’s right. How did you know where to look?”

The Chosen shrugged. “This is the Beyond. It shows us what it wants us to see, nothing more and nothing less. It seems you’re meant to go there, Riven.” He took a little breath, then looked up again. The world shimmered again, and there was the swooping sensation as though Riven was riding on a train that took him straight to the heavens. “There. Now you can see where you must go to reach where you need to be.”

Riven blinked for a moment, unsure of what he was seeing. There were little blots everywhere, and he knew they represented masses of moving entities, either Deathless or human. He’d kept an eye on Mhell’s little army as they had risen, and they had turned into one of those blots.

“Which one are we?” he asked.

The Chosen pointed to one several leagues away, a tiny speck only invisible if Riven looked closely enough. “That one.”

“That’s very far.”

“But not too far for you to get there in time.”

Easy for him to say. Unlike the Chosen, Riven couldn’t shoot himself off mountains or use the Beyond. Or could he?

“You said that I have the Beyond within me, right?” Riven said. “Can I try to use it like this? If so, I can travel wherever I need to and get out without needing to spend an insane amount of energy and effort.”

“Perhaps.” The Chosen was hesitating. “But controlling the Beyond takes its own kind of effort. Do not expect it to be painless.”

“I won’t. How do I go about… pulling it out?”

“All you need to do is focus on what’s within you, the same way you do with your Essence. Call it out, and it will respond if it really is there.”

Riven took in a little breath. The Beyond was waiting his call. He was sure of it. Ever since his departure from the actual Beyond that he had entered thanks to Lacelle’s Essence, he had felt it there—a strangeness he couldn’t explain, abilities that seemed abnormal, a sharpness and clarity to his Essence that he’d never had before. He had to try.

So he focused.

It didn’t work. He frowned within himself, but he had no pact to draw on. It was easy with his Essence, where he had the deal of Surviving to keep it in line and draw it out. Riven knew how his Essence worked.

The Beyond was a mystery. There was the briefest flickers of something inside him, a feather-light touch of what he could only assume was the edge of his own pocket of the Beyond. It was as abnormal as what the Chosen called up, giving the same feeling like he was about to submerge and lose himself. Like the world he would enter was murky and brimming with unknown and unknowable depths.

But the Beyond was beyond his grasp.

“Don’t fret too much,” the Chosen said, clearly picking up that he had failed. “It isn’t easy to control what you don’t know.”

Of course. It was silly for Riven to assume he could do it in one try. Still frustrating, though. He didn’t want to wait a few thousand years like the Chosen. It was doubtful he even had a few thousand hours to live, given the way things were going. “How long did it take you to master it?”

“I—”

Everything went white. The Scion’s Hand stilled and Riven looked up, alarm making his heart shudder. Judging by the Chosen’s reaction, this wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

“What’s happening?” Riven asked quickly.

The Chosen didn’t reply. Hs face had gone blank, his ochre eyes distant as a statue, his red hair lank and still. Riven’s heart thudded even worse than before as the silence seeped into him like an acidic poison. He looked around, but everything was white, as though the frustrated Beyond had torn away the world it had painted, leaving the canvas utterly blank.

Then it went dark. Light crawled back in as though it was flat on the ground, barely able to squeeze in through what tiny cracks it had been afforded. The scene that came up was clearer than it could have ever been, even if Riven had been there personally.

A man was standing atop a mountain. He was dressed in loose leather armour, his wiry, muscle-bound arms bared to the world. A cloth hood covered his head, but it left his brown as teak face uncovered, dark hairs straggling loose and blowing in the wind. Two scimitars were embedded in the ground in front of him, the edge of the red Coral blades glimmering like they were Spectres.

There was a devilish expression on his face, his scarlet eyes staring straight at Riven as though he knew just where the two of them were.

“Is that…?” Riven’s voice was a little too choked to finish the question.

The Scion’s Hand nodded. “Yes. That’s another Chosen. The Fifth Scion’s Heart.”

They stared at the man for a while longer before he too started to grow indistinct. Maybe the Beyond couldn’t handle such visions for too long. Either way, the world went back to what it used to be, a murky, foggy mess that gave nothing away. The Beyond was inscrutable again.

“I need to leave immediately,” the Chosen said. “I’ve wasted enough time.”

“That Chosen, is he coming after you?” Riven asked.

“He is. Or rather, he is issuing a challenge that I must meet. Otherwise, he will do to your forces what I have done to the Fiends back there.”

“I don’t have any forces.”

“Regardless. You know what I mean.” The Beyond started to dissipate, the world returning to crystalline clarity. “I’ll be taking your leave now. Take care, Riven.”

Riven didn’t get to figure out what to say in farewell. Was he supposed to wish a Chosen luck? Or was he supposed to give them shallow, vapid encouragement and profess his belief in the prowess of the Scion’s Hand? The Chosen faded with his Beyond until there was nothing left. Just the world, rocky and empty Ascensions Demesne.

#

That little, private talk with the Chosen had been enough of a rest. Riven and the Captain both decided to set off as soon as he had met up with them again. He had been unnerved by the glimpse of the other Chosen, unsure of what the visions specifically meant. Was that man content to wait for the Scion’s hand to appear before him? Or was he even now scouring the land, dropping in on unsuspecting batches of Deathless and annihilating them?

The Scion’s Hand—his Chosen, as Riven was calling the man in white armour now—had said something about the other Chosen destroying Riven’s forces. And what other force did he have, save the Deathless? Though that was dubious, given the way he had shattered a small section of them and helped kill the Infernal leading them.

“Are you sure this is the right way to go?” Captain Rett asked.

“I’m sure,” Riven replied.

They were marching at an even pace, which had helped Riven stave off the cramp threatening to return to his legs. He cursed his feet with every step. Despite giving them that little rest, they were still acting up. So entitled. Scions, this was a good lesson for them to build up their stamina. Though he was sure they weren’t ever going to properly recover until this whole mess ended one way or another and he could actually rest for a few days straight.

“More Deathless…” Captain Rett muttered. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Hey, it’s vouched for by a Chosen, all right? Not far now.”

“Half a league or so.”

“See? Not long left. And we’re not going to meet up with these Deathless, just sneak past them. Demons filled up everywhere else, so these specific ones are our safest bet in getting out off this madness with something akin to our skins still intact.”

Riven hadn’t told Rett or any of the soldiers that he knew Mhell, of course. The Captain already didn’t trust him much, and revealing something like that would have got him shot then and there. Much easier to lie that the Chosen had said following Mhell’s group would get them to safety, spouting the reason that since she wasn’t exactly interested in fighting, she and her troop of Spectres would cut out a path straight to Orbray. A path they could follow to safety.

Not wholly true. Riven intended to get to Mhell for his own reasons, but either way, he could secure safe passage for these soldiers.

At the same time, he could also stop Mhell from furthering Orbray’s plans.

“Captain!” a soldier called from the back. “Deathless at eleven o’clock.”

They all looked in the indicated direction, their sights trailing up a steep inline. Halfway up the ridge, a ghost stood, staring down at them like a hawk surveying gooselings.

A Phantom.

“Halt march!” the Captain ordered. “And aim.”

The soldiers obeyed. They took up formation, pointing their guns at the distant ghost. The Phantom didn’t move, didn’t even flinch, fearless atop its perch. Scions, it felt like so long since Riven had faced one of them. All that time back in the Sept refinery in Providence city and then in his own damn apartment.

The Captain had raised a hand. She dropped it. “Fire!”

Her soldiers fired, a score of simultaneous shots blasting out of their rifles. A barrage of Sept bullets tore through the air towards the distant Phantom. The ghost stood nearly a hundred yards away, their glittering outline jagged like sawtooth. Despite the bullets racing towards them, the Phantom didn’t move.

A second later, when it appeared as though the Phantom was about to be perforated into many tiny holes, the bullets stopped in mid-air.

Riven swallowed. This he knew. This he had been told and had experienced first-hand. The Phantoms used telekinetic powers to affect the world around them. Stopping bullets, even when they were moving so fast, must have been little more than child’s play.

“Shit,” one of the soldiers muttered.

“What in the—”

“It’s not going to work,” Riven warned.

Captain Rett whirled to him. “Then what is, Essentier?”

“You think I know?”

“He’s firing back!” another soldier shouted.

Panic spiked up. The soldiers started to scramble, guns forgotten as they stared around to find any kind of cover. There was nothing. Not in this valley between the ridges.

“Stand fast,” Captain Rett shouted.

Someone shrieked. “Incoming!”

Even as the soldiers started diving to the ground, Riven focused. His Essence went up in a golden flash, creating a wide shield in the air above them all. The bullets returned even faster than they had been shot in the fist place, but Riven’s shield withstood the blows, cracking here and there as the bullets lodged in.

The soldiers all stared up, eyes wide and agog at the shield over their heads. Several of the cracks broke, and the bullets they had fired clinked down to the ground, some of the soldiers shuffling back so they weren’t hit on the head.

Captain Rett turned to Riven. “Are you doing this?”

Riven favoured her with a humourless smile. “Do you see any other Essentier around?”

“I thought you’d be leading us to safety.”

“Are you really going to blame me for not foreseeing an attack by Deathless in a land filled with Deathless?”

“I thought you and your damn Chosen saw everything!”

One of the soldiers was close enough to tug the Captain’s sleeve, which she did, forgetting decorum in her panic. “Captain, the Phantom’s coming down.”

They all stared at the ghost. It did climb down, but not much. The Phantom stopped once he—it was easier now to make out that it was the ghost of a man—reached the next level of the ridge. He was now close enough to strike them with the Spirit his kind possessed.

But he was also closer to Riven too.

There was movement from the Phantom, the kind that foretold that he was getting ready to use his Spirit. Riven focused first. The pressure burgeoned within him, golden Essence shooting out in a barrage of lines from him. Every soldier near him drew back with gasps and other cries of surprise, but Riven ignored them all. His mind was bent entirely on the Phantom making the air whirl and twist.

The golden lines shot at the ghost, forming a spherical shield around him. He was encased in Riven’s Essence, the surprise at being trapped all of a sudden forcing him to stop.

“That takes care of that, right?” one of the soldiers asked.

Riven couldn’t help but scoff. “If only.”

He focused again, ignoring Rett and her troop’s reaction. More golden Essence flew from him, adding to the distant shield around the ghost. It started to collapse in on itself. The Phantom struggled to get out, the air within the shield twisting around as his Spirit tried to grasp something and bend it to his will. But there was nothing but air, and air was a poor tool at best.

At least, when one didn’t have Riven’s Essence.

The Phantom was yelling now as Riven’s Essence crushed around him, compacting the ghost into a smaller and smaller ball. It was horrific, but Riven didn’t look away. He was doing this, he was causing this sort of brutality, and it would be utterly cheap for him to look away now.

Then the golden shield rose in the air.

Riven shouted along with the soldiers, as surprised as all of them as the golden orb floated higher and higher. What in the Chasm was happening?

Then he saw it. Another Phantom, even higher on the ridge than the first Phantom had been. They were pulling up the other Phantom enclosed in Riven’s shield, their arms reaching down and dragging back up as though they were hauling the golden globe up with invisible ropes.

“More of them, shit!” Captain Rett cursed. She turned to Riven. “Can you get that one too?”

That high up, Riven could barely see the Phantom. “No.”

“Then we run?”

There was nothing else they could do, other than wait here and die at the hands of not one but two Phantoms. “That’s right.”

“You heard him, run!”

They ran. The soldiers shouldered their rifles then dashed off towards the other end of the narrow valley. Riven hurried to keep up. For all that he was an Essentier, the soldiers were still outpacing him. Damn it, he might know how to kill Deathless and Essentiers alike, but he sure as the Chasm was awful at fitness and stamina.

It was made worse by the fact that Riven looked back as he ran. The Phantoms were still high on that ridge, and the distance was too great to tell if they were watching him and the soldiers. But Riven was sure his shield would be broken soon, if it wasn’t already.

They didn’t get far.

“Fuck!” someone screamed from up ahead, and the whole company came to a halt.

Riven and the Captain shoved through the press of rank and sweaty bodies, and Riven drew in a sharp breath. Yet another Phantom stood far head, right in the middle of the path they were taking.

“We’re screwed now aren’t we?” Rett asked.

Riven could only nod.