Eris felt nothing except cold. She had been so certain, so convinced of her invulnerability, that the sudden shattering of her hatchet stroke hardly registered even as her head hit the forest’s floor. Disbelief, not pain, with more attention paid to the unfamiliar tingling of spreading warm wetness across her skirt, cloak, beneath her, down her legs; to her socks flowed torrents of piss, she had wet herself from fear when faced with such an ancient creature—she couldn’t believe how pitiful she was, how afraid, even though still more fury than fright singed away at her intestines. She wouldn’t be defeated so easily. She grabbed for her hatchet—

Her fingers didn’t move.

Her arms didn’t move.

Her head didn’t move.

She tasted blood in her mouth. The cold grew colder. With every breath her lungs became heavy and her ears rang. Numbness crept through her veins like a shot of chilled manaserum.

There wasn’t much to think at a time like that. Panic overruled the mind’s ability to wonder. It was like sleeping while awake, the body removed from the mind’s purview along with most of the brain. But Eris still found the wherewithal to feel relief as she realized she was dying, because it was with that thought she came to the conclusion that the sticky, viscous warmth pouring down her waist wasn’t piss but her own viscera. That meant she wasn’t afraid after all.

At first.

Time lost meaning during death throes. It seemed to speed both forward and backward, like a marble on a ship’s deck. She had no awareness of the people around her, of the battle and the orc. She had been injured grievously before and, like anyone, had wondered how it might feel, how terrible it might be, to finally die—but in fact it felt like nothing at all, with no real pain except vague discomfort. The pain didn’t come until later, and when death roared on approach like a flash flood from the mountains, ‘later’ was no concern. She would be swept away in the current long before ‘later’ arrived.

No epiphanies. No visions of her past. No regrets, really, except the vague awareness that she should have sent Robur in to attack the orc first. That was dying. Almost like nothing.

But ‘nothing’ changed when she heard Rook’s voice. She couldn’t feel him, and although her eyes were open she saw nothing save darkness against the sun’s light, but his voice was recognizable distantly, drowned-out, like speaking beneath water. After that, or maybe before (it was hard to tell), she had an awareness of being moved, and seconds later the pain began.

It was the kind of pain so extreme she couldn’t bear it. So overwhelmingly agonizing that it couldn’t be endured. If she were fully awake she might have screamed and flailed and swore and batted her hands against the ground and cried, and maybe she did at first, but as she was then, exsanguinated and paralyzed, she could do nothing except sit and wait to die. And for the first time, Eris wanted it. If this was to be her eternity—she preferred oblivion.

That was when she knew fear. Sinking, animalistic despair. There was no coherence to her thinking, but to be subsumed by powerlessness, to have failed, to be trapped in her body like a cell, and now to die. Yes. In the face of such terrible pain, even Eris was afraid. She was afraid that she was already dead, and all those ancient stories of the dead souls of sinner being sent to dissolve for eternity in the Lioness’ bowels were true after all. She deserved that fate. She deserved an eternity of suffering, not that she would do anything differently if given another chance. And when oblivion didn’t come, and when eternity ticked on despite her pleas, she convinced herself that this was precisely what had happened.

Yet at some point the suffering diffused. Not that it let up, not that it got better, but after so long at such intensity a kind of numbness set in. She lost all track of being—and then she heard the voices again.

Drowned-out whispers. This time she couldn’t tell what they said or who said what, but by virtue of their coming and going she knew something, at least, was still changing. That meant a world existed beyond her own body. That meant an end might still come. She wasn’t in the Lion’s Purgatory yet.

All that was what dying felt like. Death was different. When death came, she felt swelling in her throat. Fire in her veins. Rashes along her arms and back. Those formed the first awareness of her body, her first sensations anywhere except her gut, since her injury. Her stomach pain concentrated back to undistilled agony. Her heart would stop any moment—

Something strange happened next. Her awareness of the wound to her gut was as nothing more than a bloody abscess. It consumed all her abdomen. Front and back. No definition, no clear location. She didn’t remember what manner of weapon had made it nor how large it had been. She hadn’t given it any thought. She couldn’t have.

Now it became clearer. The pain narrowed. While the rashes continued to spread everywhere across her skin, while a different kind of pain overcame her, she felt her wound more clearly. Her numbness faded. Tingling was banished. The cold receded. She had lost so much blood and been so weak, yet over the course of minutes she felt her heart become empowered. Her lungs worked on demand. Her breathing deepened.

Warmth overcame her stomach. Not like it was before, but a comforting, pleasant warmth, like the sun against bare skin on a cold day. It grew hotter and hotter until it bordered on painful, yet as it grew, the pain of the injury faded.

Then it was gone, and so too was the warmth.

She felt very sick, but only then did her capacity for rational thought return, and only then did she see that her rashes and blisters and hives weren’t the sign of death at all, but of spellsickness—and spellsickness was very much a sign of being alive.

“Eris!” Rook said. She was rocked about like a doll in his arms. She couldn’t move at first; when she finally managed to reanimate herself, it was only as nausea swelled within her. She lurched upward and threw up. She didn’t lurch far enough, because Rook was covered first. But he didn’t seem to mind. He grabbed her in an embrace, repeating, “Eris!”

She pushed him away. A second later she threw up again, this time at Rook’s side, and as she watched the bubbling green vomitus sizzle in shifting luminescence against the grass, she was overcome with a new kind of stomach pain—the immense pain of an allergic reaction to manaserum.

She centered herself. Rook grabbed her forearm affectionately—she repaid him with a glare.

He let go.

“What’s happening?” he said. “Why is she sick?”

“I believe it’s the antipotion,” Robur said. She didn’t notice him at first, but he stood over her. “The effect is similar to overcasting—”

Eris felt one of Rook’s hands down her back, along a rash. She might have cringed away if she hadn’t been busy retching again. This time it was blue and spotted with blood.

“Overcasting? Like spellsickness?” Rook said.

“Yes, as I was saying, the crystallized mana in her bloodstream has been released. The treatises say it will be several days before full recovery.”

She wiped her mouth. Panting. Leaning over so much sparkling vomit. She saw then that she was covered in blood. All her clothes, her legs, her arms, and the ground beneath her—like a dyed piece of cloth. Rook was, too. Despite the immense discomfort of spellsickness she felt in control of her faculties once the nausea had passed, awake and alert. It was the kind of pain that distracted without destroying, that demanded without consuming and left the mind untouched as the body rebelled.

She glanced about the battlefield.

It was early morning. No sign of the orc. Three sarcophagi levitated nearby. The bodies of those few goblins which weren’t incinerated still lingered, their Essences yet to decay. Eris felt them—

Eris felt them. All around her. She breathed in and she felt them. The presence of a half dozen magical creatures around her. She breathed in again and felt the aether over her. She tasted the mana in the air. She felt it all around her, coating her skin, surrounding her like a film, like the humidity of a sauna—delicious, inviting, and she would never overheat.

Blue bile glowed on her lip, dripping like drool toward her leg. But still she smiled. She extended a hand. She couldn’t resist: it had been so long, and now she remembered what it was like to be filled with mana. Even as her body rejected that power, her mind was euphoric. She was back in her real body once again. Over half her life had been as manaseared; these last months had been as something she wasn’t meant to be.

Mundane.

So she couldn’t resist. She folded her fingers one at a time and she called mana from the air. Energy sizzled on her fingertips. Entering the palm of her hand. A white flame flickered for a moment over her hand…

The power was overwhelming. She snapped her thumb and the spell dissipated, but when she looked at her hand again, all her fingers were overcome with itching, burning, glowing hives. Swelling before her eyes.

She swore.

Rook grabbed her. “Eris. They’re dead, you’re safe.”

“Get off me, you ape!” she swore, pushing him again feebly. Her fists beat against the hard muscles on his chest. He restrained her by the wrists. “Let go!”

He stared at her. She glared at him. She was not in the mood for their flirtations. She hated being touched. She pulled against him again. Finally he let go.

“You nearly died,” Rook said. There was nothing but concern on his voice. “Please, Eris. We have blankets. They’re—” bloodied, she could see that for herself, “but you…”

“I am fine,” Eris replied. She attempted to lift herself up, but her legs gave quickly. A wave of stabbing pain overcame her stomach. Nausea followed. She threw up again. When finished she wanted nothing more than to collapse downward and moan herself into a coma, but still concerned with appearances, she instead brought her knees to her chest and remained upright. It was only as she sat there that she remembered the nature of her injury. “What did you do? Why am I—why have you given me the antipotion?”

Rook shifted. He seemed exhausted, with some mixture of terror and relief pouring forth. “We couldn’t save you. Astera couldn’t treat your wound. You lost too much blood. She…she couldn’t…it was only with…when she…”

“She sacrificed her Essence to save your life,” Robur said, “but the antipotion had to be administered first.”

Eris pretended to understand why, nodding her head. She took a moment to focus on her body. Her skin itched everywhere, but the blisters on her feet were gone. The chafing on her legs from the long walk from Nanos. The sunburn on her forearm and neck. She checked everywhere and everywhere she found no scars, no open wounds, not even birthmarks or discoloration on her skin beneath the manarashes. Her complexion, which had always been good, was now flawless as crystal ice. Almost like an elf.

Her heart had continued to race as she took inventory of her situation. Fear maintained. Now she calmed. Whatever happened, it brought her very, very close to the end—but she was still alive. And once she managed to center herself, her concerns turned toward the path ahead.

“Then the Wyrm is dead,” she said.

“No,” Astera said. She rose from a divot in the earth nearby. She was covered in mud and gore, like the rest of them, but she looked sickly. Her cheeks were sunken. Her skin pale. Her voice shakier than before. “But,” the very words seemed taxing, “we have its soulcharm.”

Eris felt another tinge of unfamiliar fear. “You idiots! You have restored my powers while it still lives?”

“We had no choice, Eris,” Rook said.

“There is no way for us to defeat the Wyrm while I am in this state! It will funnel its own powers into me and take control!”

“Saving you has cost me centuries,” Astera said. “You would do well to show gratitude.”

“I will tender no thanks for that which you did voluntarily, elf. Your idiocy is your own purview. And I can scarcely believe you did what you did for my sake and not your own.”

“Are you saying I saved your life, at my own expense, for selfishness?” Astera said. She was shocked.

Eris rolled her eyes. “To soothe a guilty conscience, perhaps?” She clutched her stomach, grimacing, as a wave of spellsickness pain overcame her. It was, at least, not so bad as her previous bout after her encounter with the bugbears, and it made her only more prone to spitting out her thoughts. “Do not pretend generosity when you do what you do out of the role I play in your own plans.”

“You are an evil witch,” Astera said.

“Shall we play that game? Tell me: did you not swear yourself to Aletheia protection? How do you justify sacrificing her life for your own, when you so magnanimously give years for mine now?” She probed at the open wound on purpose, with glee on her voice. “Who is worse, I wonder? The cruel witch who tells unkind truths, or the treacherous elf who trades little girls for her own sake?”

She expected to have been stopped by this point, but when no one intervened she added, “I have never betrayed anyone successfully.”

Eris had loathed Astera since their first meeting and felt smug about the silence that followed, to such an extent that it was as long as a minute before she saw the stunned silence on her companions’ faces. They stared at her, and when she looked to them, they glanced away.

She felt strangely at that. Her first reaction was a tinge of alienation, a sense that she might have done something wrong—yet soon she remembered that she needed no one’s approval, and a frustrated indignity overcame her.

“Eris…” Rook started.

“You’re right,” Astera said. “I would have liked to see you die. And I do need you. And once our business has been settled, I will kill you myself.”

With that she stormed off into the forest. Well, less of a storm and more of a limping, exhausted stumble. Eris giggled as she went. She called out, “If those are the terms of the deal you offer, you give me little reason to comply.” Then, to herself, once Astera was gone, “Though t’would be amusing to see you try.”

Rook and Robur were both silent for a long time. Eris was happy for the moment to feel like she was brilliant and had said all the right things, then happy for a few moments more to rest her eyes.

“How do you feel?” Rook said softly, eventually.

She shook her head. “Better than I shall presently if we do not resolve the matter of the Wyrm at once. ‘Tis well we do it while the elf sulks. Where is the soulcharm?”

Robur presented it. Eris had read about soulcharms, and she had spotted the small amulet during the battle, but she hadn’t recognized it at first glance. Now it seemed obvious. It was shaped like the hilt and crossguard of sword, like a piece of jewelry, golden, with two flared wings. Embedded between the place where the grip and quillons met was a glass vial, a transparent vial, yet at first glance it was totally opaque. Like a phylactery for a magician painted black.

The whole assembly wasn’t larger than a pendant. “Give it to me,” she said. When Robur hesitated she snatched it from him, then examined it more closely.

The vial thrummed with mana. She felt the sudden urge to tap into it, like she could from the air, like she did of the infernal and the elementals at Akancar, and a voice echoed through her mind:

Release me.

She gasped and tossed the soulcharm away. Rook thought fast, catching it.

“What?” he said.

“It is awake already,” she said.

Release me.

“How are you sure?” Robur said.

“It is speaking to me,” she said.

Set me free.

“What does it want?” Rook said.

This shard commands it to set destroy the prison. Set me free.

“What do you think?” she said. “It wants to be let loose.”

Robur ran out into the woods to get Astera. Rook helped Eris to her feet. She still couldn’t stand. Her mind may have been alert, but her body was weak. She was forced to lean against him.

He usually smelled very good. Right now he smelled very bad. He was injured himself, and although Eris wasn’t overconcerned with that, she noticed the way he concealed his pain.

They spoke as they waited for the elf to return.

“What if Robur taps the shard’s Essence, like you’ve said he has before?” Rook said. “Then we set the Wyrm free and kill it.”

“It will do no good. The Wyrm is a being of radiant mana: it will be able to charge the tendril it has in me in seconds.”

“Then we negotiate.”

“Because our last negotiations with this creature went so well!”

“Circumstances are different. We can free it from this prison—return it to its cave.”

“And hope it keeps its word? Rook: I will never be free of this demon until it is dead!”

“Then say how to kill it without killing you!”

She pulled away from him. She stopped at a sarcophagus, leaning there, catching her breath. She thought very hard.

An idea.

“A manawyrm’s Essence is vast,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Yet it is not infinite. The orc would have exhausted it in time.”

“Decades at least,” Astera said. She and Robur approached back from the woods.

“Decades of careful use, perhaps. Yet three mages together could drain it more quickly. They could use it to destroy the Wyrm’s body, then vent the rest on nothing—it may take time, but it would be possible. The Wyrm would dissipate like the orc afterward.”

It wouldn’t dare.

“She would!” Eris snapped at no one. Her companions stared at her.

Robur shook his head. “We have seen how such wild magic can be highly unpredictable at Akancar…”

“That will take time you may not have,” Astera said. She glared at Eris. Apparently still upset; Eris had already moved on. “And we may accidentally empower the shard within you.”

“Those risks are acceptable compared to all others,” Eris said.

No! It will be mine the moment it attempts to wield me!

“Are they?” Rook said. “How long would it take?”

Eris hesitated. “Dissipating the magic away as fire? I—days. No longer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure,” she said, but she hesitated, and Rook saw through her.

“Eris,” he said. “Are you sure?”

She looked into his blue eyes. “No,” she admitted. “I do not know. It may be longer.”

“It may be much longer,” Astera said. “If this creature has been dwelling within a Manastone cave, its Essence may be charged to last centuries, and we put ourselves at risk to channel such vast energy. None of us are powerful enough to release it all at once. Even if we were, it would be destructive beyond imagination.”

“It would be very dangerous,” Robur agreed.

“Yet it is our only surefire method to destroy the Wyrm’s material form,” Eris said.

“You said it would be immune to magic, like the orc,” Rook said.

“It may be, but enough mana can be used to create natural flames of sufficient temperature to dispose of even Manacrystal,” Eris said.

Rook shared glances with the rest of the party. He said, “There are too many unknowns. What’s certain is what you told us—that this Wyrm is lethargic, that it didn’t want to leave its cave. We can offer to return it. It’s a thinking creature, isn’t it? It can reason?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then isn’t this safer?”

“I agree,” Astera said. “If it can be trusted to act in its own interest, it will make a deal.”

“What do you think, Robur?” Rook said.

Robur froze. “If we are concerned that the Wyrm will not honor its deal—I can keep it honest with Supernal Vision. I should be able to see the moment the shard is returned.”

“You are all idiots!” Eris shouted, but she doubled over in pain, coughing, forced to spit up green blood. “Have you learned nothing of dealing with this capricious demon?”

“Even a demon acts rationally,” Astera said.

“No,” Eris said. “A demon, like you, is a petty, vengeful, stupid creature, that will lie for its own benefit. It is not to be trusted.”

“Then no one is to be trusted,” Rook said.

“No one is to be trusted!” Eris said, as if Rook finally understood. “But at least your trust in me does not end with your body being commandeered and perverted for some other purpose. That is the consequence of being deceived by this demon.”

It thinks all creatures are as evil as it is.

“Shut up!”

“Eris…” Rook said. “You aren’t well. Please...”

“Even at my worse I am no oaf, which is more than can be said for you,” she snapped.

“You thought you could control the Wyrm once,” Astera said. “Have you truly learned your lesson so thoroughly that a deal cannot even be considered?”

“No!” Eris said, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world, “I want this creature dead! That it cannot be dealt with is mere coincidence, and unfortunate truth.”

“That’s enough!” Rook said. He raised his voice for the first time all day. “We aren’t here for vengeance. We’re here to save you, Eris. We—”

“Stop saying my name, ‘tis most condescending.”

He closed his eyes, taking a breath, staying calm despite her provocation. “…we’re keeping you safe. So if you’re bothered that the Wyrm might live on, then you’ll have to learn to live with it. Just as how Astera learned to live with knowing the orc who killed her parents is still alive. Just like how I’ve learned to live with knowing that a snake has taken up in my family’s burrow. Sometimes that’s what people who want to live have to do.”

“I do not have to do it, because the opportunity for vengeance lies right at my feet as we speak, you idiot—”

She stopped herself. She was furious to see her companions turn against her—even Rook, who was supposed to be wrapped around her finger so tightly so as never to fall off. But she was also in terrible pain, and she wanted nothing more than to resolve this—and without the help of the other magicians, she would never be able to drain the soulcharm.

So she sighed. Shaking her head. Smiling, but furiously.

“You will regret this, Rook. All of you.”

With that she offered no more argument.

Give the elf the soulcharm. I will speak through it.

She shuddered to think the Wyrm had been listening. But she closed her eyes and focused on the breeze. Now holding back more nausea. She said after a moment, “Give Astera the charm.”

Apparently Rook did, for when Eris opened her eyes again she saw the soulcharm in the elf’s hands. The black glass at the center of the crossguard had turned pure blue, and it glowed with a blinding light.

At its center glowed a single fiery eye. It blinked

The Manawyrm’s voice issued from the charm. Not through Eris’ mind, as it had for nearly two years, but real sound that shook the forest.

“Free me and be rewarded.”

Everyone hesitated. It was Rook who reacted first, not certain where to address his speech. His voice was shaky. “We want only one thing,” he said. “The release of our companion.”

“It is a vile, deceitful, murderous, treacherous, vain, fleshy, useless mortal. Why does it want it back?”

Rook blinked. He glanced to Eris, then shook his head. “We—we need her. She’s important to us. No other reward will meet our demands. If you release her by revoking your shard, we’ll bring you back to your lair.”

“I know this mortal that speaks to me. It thought about it often. It possessed disgusting thoughts that would make the speaker sick. But not so evil as its intentions toward the one it attempted to kill, which I saved before the Lightning Wall beneath the mountains of the land mortals call Nanos.”

“What?” Robur said.

“It never said its intentions, because that is its nature. Why would its allies want it back? Its allies it has betrayed? Its allies should kill it and ask for a different reward.”

“Do you intend to listen while this demon spews lies?” Eris said. “Or shall we accept that I have been vindicated already?”

“Call her anything you like,” Rook said, “she’s under our protection. Her freedom is our price for cooperation.”

A terrible noise reverberated through the woods, like a choking bear.

“Its companions would let such a being continue its life, even knowing its crimes? Does it have no sense of justice?”

“They know nothing, for you have invented these crimes yourself,” Eris said.

“Justice is exactly why we need her brought with us to Darom,” Rook said. “She is one mortal. What is her life compared to your freedom?”

Another hideous noise. Then a long delay.

“Very well. The treacherous witch will be freed, once I am free.”

Rook gasped in relief. “You’ll sever your link first.”

“No! I have see enough of mortal caprice! It shall return me to my cavern, then destroy the soulcharm, and then the treacherous witch will be freed from the shard of my power.”

“How can we trust you?”

“How can I trust it? I will keep my word, for I am not mortal.”

Astera spoke softly toward Rook. “Terrestrial demons and elementals are often bound by intense senses of right and wrong. It is not in their character to lie.”

“You will listen to this imbecile over me?” Eris said.

“It is true,” Robur said.

“Is it true?” Rook said, looking into Eris’ eyes.

She scoffed. “Yes. It is true. This creature believes strongly that what it says is good. But you do not know its full intentions. Need I remind you that this beast killed Kauom?”

A moment’s consideration.

“It seems to regard lies poorly,” Rook said. He sighed. “Eris. There’s no other way.” She sealed her lips and shook her head. Rook nodded after a long pause, then continued, glancing at the soulcharm, “Okay. We’ll take you back.”

They found more than just the three sarcophagi among the orc’s things. One goblin carried a pack; within were two separate spellbooks. On both burned pages of untapped magic. Robur and Eris took one each. The orc himself carried his hauberk of chainmail, a beautiful elven bow, and a fine sword; Astera took all three.

With their loot sorted they set off. Eris refused to participate in the pushing of the coffins back down the mountainside, in part for anger and pettiness and in part because she was too sick to do much of anything. Even walking was unpleasant.

That night the pain was too bad to sleep. She spent all hours hoping Robur didn’t take the Wyrm’s words too seriously. Come next morning she felt much improved, however, and even managed to use Hydropneumonic Purification on a small cup of dirty water.

The first spell she cast in months. Such a small, simple thing, but she still felt so powerful in doing it. But even that minor spell intensified the rash on her arms. She would need to wait a while longer yet before using real magic.

At the mines the goblins were all gone. Their clothes and weapons remained—but their bodies had disappeared. The party pushed the levitating sarcophagi through narrow passages through the cavern and up to the final place where she had first met the Manawyrm. Eris cursed the plan the entire time.

Soon the three box-like coffins, the trio of heavy, floating cubes of metal, were suspended in a row in the air at the Manacrystal cavern’s center. Astera approached them, holding the soulcharm.

“These are elven devices, built to contain Manastone,” she said.

“How do they open?” Rook said.

“Like this.” She held the soulcharm up to one of the cubes. A moment later the metal at its top, the box’s roof, disappeared as if becoming transparent. Within were the brightly glowing Manacrystal bones of the Manawyrm, without any connection or sinew of magic. Even that much radiated mana.

She did the same two more times.

The black soulcharm turned blue.

“Now. Release me.”

“You’ll keep your word?” Rook said.

“I have never lied. Lying is for miserable creatures who deserve death.”

Astera nodded. She clutched her fingers around the soulcharm—and she leveled it outward. Closing her eyes, as if relaxing…

A flash of blue light escaped outward from its bottom. A brief burst of heat, yet not hot enough to burn. Then…

The bones of the Wyrm raised themselves from the box. Crystals hovering into the air. Slowly a skin of teal extended outward, linking each to another, assembling a basilisk-like monstrosity before her eyes. Soon there was a leg, then another in the back, and the joints between burned with blue flame. The enchantment on the sarcophagi failed. All three fell to the ground at once, then were batted aside.

The Manawyrm was left in their place.

Two fiery eyes stared the party down.

The party lurched backward.

Silence.

“Will it kill me now?”

“We made a deal,” Rook said. His voice shook.

“Yes. I honor my deals.”

The eyes panned toward Eris. She stared back at it. There was nothing for a long time. Then, suddenly, she felt a lurching in her gut, and a pull, and she became exhausted. Her eyelids so heavily she could barely stay awake. Rook caught her.

He looked to Robur, whose eyes were alight with Supernal Vision. “Did it work?”

Robur nodded.

“I told you,” he whispered to Eris. “It’ll be all right.”

“The arrangement is kept. But the treacherous witch will not leave.”

“What?” Rook shot upward.

“What?” Eris followed. That woke her back up.

“It has been freed from our pact. I have done as I promised. An immortal never breaks its words. Yet it is a danger to all who walk this world: my kind and its own. It cannot leave. It must die.”

“That wasn’t our deal!” Rook said. “You said she would go free! You said liars deserve to die!”

“I said it would be freed. I never said it would go free.”

Something akin to a laugh shook the cavern.

Eris clawed Rook where he held her. “Do you see now why I said what I said?”

He pushed her backward, drawing his sword, stepping forward. He limped on his ankle as he did so.

“You can’t have her!” Rook shouted back.

“Move, or it will die with the treacherous witch.”

“Then we’ll fight!” Rook said.

“Run!” Astera said.

The Manawyrm breathed out three streaking purple missiles toward Eris. She hesitated, but Rook pushed her to the ground and out of harm’s way. One of the missiles hit him in the shoulder and sent him stumbling backward.

Eris didn’t stop to watch. She scrambled back up to her feet and turned to flee as Rook faced the Wyrm down, Robur at his side. She didn’t see what happened next; she was at the narrow entrance to the cavern—

She hit a solid wall.

A wall of blue light. A forcefield blocking her in.

Astera was on the other side, trapped. Unable to pass back through. She hit the field with a fist, but it was no use.

“You idiots!” Eris said. She turned.

The Manawyrm lunged for Rook with its jaws. He rolled aside, slashing at it with his sword. The blade nicked at the magical skin on its dragon-like skull and blue ichor leaked outward, but the beast wasn’t deterred. Rook slashed at its belly; this time it hesitated, but as he ducked backward, it sent forward a jet of arcane fire from its mouth, sizzling with bolts of blue energy.

The fire overcame Rook’s arm. He screamed. It licked his face and burned away his torso. Even after the spell finished the flame continued to burn, but Robur jumped forward, and Eris recognized his casting of Arcane Abrogation.

The fire went out—but Rook stayed limp, his sword at his side.

The Wyrm turned to Robur.

Eris looked to Astera through the forcefield. She battered her hands against it again. Her left arm bounced off, but her right arm went clean through, all the way to her gauntlet—

Her gauntlet. Her Spellward gauntlet. It ignored the forcefield’s protection to the elbow.

That gave Eris an idea.

“The soulcharm! Give it to me!”

Astera looked back and forth between the melee. She hesitated.

“Give it to me now!”

She did. Astera placed the soulcharm in Eris’ palm. She closed her fist, then retracted her gauntlet through the forcefield.

Rook writhed. Robur defended himself with a forcefield against a Manastone wall as streams of arcane bolts left the Wyrm’s mouth, flickering against a red half-bubble shield. His strength waned but the shield held for now and the Wyrm grew impatient—and so it turned toward Eris.

She handed the soulcharm to her bare palm. The vial was black. She had no idea how it worked, but she extended it toward the Wyrm and tried to tap its Essence into the vial, like breathing and blowing a balloon, just like charging up her old staff’s gem. The Wyrm took a heavy step toward her, and for a brief moment sparks of energy pulled out from the light between the creature’s bones. Streaking lines of blue aether, toward her hand; the Wyrm roared and swatted at her—

But it wasn’t just the Wyrm that was charged by the power of the Manastone here. Magicians could draw on that power, too, and unlike the energy in an elemental, it was pure aether, easily molded into magic. They wouldn’t be able to destroy the Manawyrm with ice or fire, but more creative magic would still be effective.

Robur thought fast. He pulled mana from the stone around him and sent a blast of rushing air into the side of the Wyrm just as its claw collided with Eris’ side. Both it and her were picked up by the wind and knocked over, and even sick as she was she was smaller and more alacritous than the hulking Wyrm.

Eris jumped toward Rook. She picked up his sword, circling around the Wyrm’s tail where small crystals formed a long, serpentine back. By now it had recovered. It lumbered to snap at her again, letting out a barrage of more magical missiles, but she caught them with her gauntlet; and without any further thought she took a sweep down at the Wyrm’s tail with Rook’s sword.

The blade went through as if met with gelatinous resistance. Like cutting through water, before emerging on the other side. Half a dozen small crystal ‘bones’ fell limp to the ground. More blue, liquid mana dripped from the wound like water poured down a bamboo spout. Eris dropped the sword to raise the soulcharm again, and as before she focused as much as she could to breath in, then channel its Essence into the charm.

The vial thrummed in her hands. It grew heavier by the millisecond. And as the seconds passed, the brightness of the Wyrm faded; the colors remained, but they dimmed, darkened, and the Wyrm’s movement slowed. It roared again and raised on its hind legs, but the mana poured from the wound in its tail, flowing in torrents into the charm.

She pulled it backward toward her head. A force drew it like a magnet from her hand. The mana still flowing…

The Wyrm disappeared. In an instant all its sinew, all its sparkling skin, vanished. Its bones hovered in the air—then dropped in unison to the ground.

Eris held the soulcharm. She stared past the Wyrm’s bones, toward nothing in particular, and waited to hear a command. She waited to hear that condescending voice that had plagued her for so long. Two years. More than a tenth of her life.

Silence.

Robur rushed past her, to Rook’s side. Astera followed. But Eris stayed still.

She dropped the soulcharm by its chain. Looking at it more closely. Was it really so easy? Was she really free?

How to kill a Manawyrm, she wondered, or how to finally use it for her own purposes?

She hung the chain around her neck.

Next. Rook.

Her heart fluttered to steal a glance at him. She heard the voices of her companions as they treated him, while they searched for salves and applied bandages to his burns.

“…is he alive?” she asked at length.

“Do you care?” Astera said. “You have what you wanted.”

“I do,” Eris said innocently. “It was for my defense he was injured. Even considering…” She intended to blame him for his injury, for this entire lunatic plan, but she decided to stay silent this time. Not long after he began groaning in pain.

There was a crater in his shoulder from where the magic missile impacted, like an asteroid’s impact on red, ferrous earth. The skin on his left arm and across his chest was pink and red, but Robur had dispelled the magical flame before it did severe damage.

“Where’s Eris?” he managed through gritted teeth, looking around.

She stepped forward. “I am here,” she said. She hid the soulcharm between her breasts—as if to hide it, like her companions might forget she had it—and looked down at him.

They stared at each other.

Astera tightened the bandage on his shoulder. He hissed doubled over with a hiss before glancing back up. “Good work,” he said.

They rested in the adjoining cavern, where Rook had dueled the lizardman chieftain. The matter of what to do with the soulcharm, and how to dispose of the Wyrm’s body, would need to be handled later. No one had the energy to attend to that argument now. Instead they lingered mostly in silence.

Rook’s injuries were severe, but survivable. He would not be fighting again any time soon. Or tumbling across a bedroll, but she wasn’t certain she wanted to any longer.

She wasn’t certain how she felt at all.

Time vindicated her. But she was right only in part, and it seemed all worked out for the best. Recoverable injuries and a few new scars were a small price to pay for her freedom. Even now she could hardly believe it—her powers were back and her thoughts were her own once again. If Rook had died it would have been regrettable, but for such an outcome, that price would have been acceptable too, no?

Yes. Or so she thought. But she thought it with no conviction, like she didn’t believe it no matter how much she wanted to. She was prepared to sacrifice Robur and Rook for herself, but she wondered if she wanted to. They had treated her well. They were useful. Their times together had not been entirely terrible. Astera could be disemboweled for all she cared, but the others? She wasn’t happy to see Rook in pain.

But he hadn’t listened. That was what made her furious. He was supposed to listen to her. Men were supposed to do whatever she commanded, whenever she commanded it. That made her angry. She no longer felt like she was in charge.

“Eris,” Robur said. He pulled her from her contemplation.

She was no longer so easily startled by his apparitions. Instead she looked to him with a sidelong eye and raised brow. “Yes?” she said impatiently.

“I have been curious…since yesterday—what—I mean to say—when you first told us of the Manawyrm. What was it that—when we were at the Lightning Wall at the Magister’s Vault, and you lost control. What was it—because it said something, and I have been curious what—”

“You have said that already.”

“Yes, of course. What—what was it—when the Wyrm intervened. Why did it say it ‘saved’ us?”

Instantaneous numbness shot through Eris’ back. There was a truth she could never, under any circumstances, utter. She would die before saying it aloud. It was a question she had been dreading all day and night.

She responded with a scoff.

“Do you wish for me to parse all the Wyrm’s ravings for meaning?” He shrugged. “Allow me to tell you with certainty that there is none. As I explained to you and Rook, the Wyrm deals in nothing but lies. It was attempting to sow discord in our ranks. Nothing more.”

“If that is the case,” he pondered, “why did he honor his word by revoking the shard?”

Eris sputtered for a moment. “I—I do not pretend to know the internal motivations of an immortal demon. I can only tell you what I know if its nature, which is that it lies ceaselessly.”

“So you meant us no harm when you lingered beyond the Wall, without tossing us the keystone?”

“Of course I meant no harm. What would I stand to gain by betraying you?”

“There was much gold…”

She feigned outrage. “I cannot believe you would accuse me of this—treachery! Would you like me to swear my innocence before you? Fine. I do. I swear on all my life that I have never meant harm toward you or any I traveled with. Now do you take the word of a demon at a higher value than my own?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Now—leave me. I am still sick. I…need rest.”

“Very well,” he said.

But Eris didn’t rest. She stayed up still, feeling more like ever than her hold on her companions was slipping. That needed to change.