Rabam realized too late that pushing viss into the carpet wasn’t enough to make it fly where he wanted. The pattern had two entry points, one at the top center to make it levitate and one slightly to the right to make it go forward. He had to incline one way or another to guide which way ‘forward’ was at any given moment, and it was difficult to do that with the wool shifting under him.

He made a brief stop at Mili’s house, avoiding Mivion’s territory, to get a backpack and one of the fire wands he had prepared after using the last one at the lake. He ate a piece of cheese as he considered his meager equipment: a carpet with less than an hour of flight, a fire wand and a magnetic cylinder felt awfully little to go up against the monks and their gods on his own, but there was no time to gather anything else, nor he would know where to get more support. They were short on resources, while the monks could pull them out indefinitely.

He surveyed Tilau before heading toward Suimer, to get an idea of which situation to expect. He flew low, just a few armlengths above the treetops, kept hidden by the advancing night. The monks had planted tents on the outskirts of the village and in the central square, but he couldn’t lower enough to set them on fire due to the amount of surveillance. He saw light and movement on the border between the villages, a line of gray tunics pushing against a barrier of wind. And further than that…

His control on the carpet wavered when he saw what was happening in Suimer. Debris, stones and tree trunks were raining from above, a thick fog of sand and dust covering the area of impact. At first he thought it was an attack from the enemy gods, then realized they were still sleeping, since there wasn’t a barrier of light dividing them from Suimer. So it had to be Zeles’s work, even if he couldn’t figure out why. The monks’ shouts coming from the village shook him from his paralysis. He couldn’t indulge.

He made a wide circle around Tilau, looking for traces of Aili’s presence. Her light, most importantly, but also a cluster of monks and priors that revealed an imminent execution. The thought that it could have already happened resurfaced multiple times to his mind, but he pushed it down with all the strength he could muster. He wouldn’t stop looking until he knew for sure that she was gone.

He saw movement at the northern harbor and headed there. At the very border between Tilau and Suimer, outside of the gods’ influences, there was a cluster of boats surrounding a bluish glow irradiating from the water. He felt a surge of hope and doubts: if Aili wasn’t the deity lost at the bottom of the sea, he was not only wasting time, but awakening them would have helped the monks and spelled both of his and Aili’s demise. Since there was no other sign of her presence, he had to hope some more, and act before they could notice him.

Following a sudden inspiration, he steered the carpet toward the other side of the harbor, where the external forest lay undisturbed. He lowered onto the rocky beach, scanning the surroundings for the biggest stone he could find. He tried to lift some of them before settling on a smaller one that he could uncomfortably keep tucked under an arm while he manoeuvred the carpet.

He flew away toward the boats as fast as he could, aiming to reach them before they could spot him. He saw some monks swimming inside the water, the rest waiting from the boats. He flew high and let the rock fall just as someone shouted to alert the others of his presence. The monks retracted as the stone hit the wood of a boat, detaching a piece of the stern. It wasn’t enough to sink it, but the waves managed to bring in loads of seawater that kept the monks busy.

Rabam’s triumphant smile was wiped away by a spear flying past him. He took out the cylinder and pushed two more weapons away. They fell into the empty water, where no one could reach them.

He dug in his pockets for something else to use and found the fire wand. Encouraged by his success with the stone, he flew low above the water, close enough to a boat whose monks had already thrown their spears. He let go of the carpet’s entry point that kept it afloat and extended the hand holding the wand, pushing viss onto the pattern. The wood melted like butter under its tip, leaving behind a carved wound with flaming borders. The monks hurried to extinguish the flames, but clustering on one side of the boat put it out of balance to the point it overturned.

Rabam couldn’t rejoice for that small victory, since a wave hit the carpet. He let the wand fall into the water and slammed his hand down on the pattern’s entry point that could take him up and away from the water. The carpet’s movements had become sluggish, it required more of his viss just to keep a steady course. He realized that not only the heavy wool was doing all it could to drag him down into the sea, but the water had probably washed away a bit of the viss that Zeles had pushed onto the carpet’s holders.

He retreated back to the external forest as fast as he could, aware that turning away from the monks made him an easy target. He managed to land without being hit by a spear and immediately crouched to examine the damage.

The water had washed away almost all the viss inside one of the holders. His time of flight had just become much shorter, and there was no way of telling by how much.

He retreated behind a bigger rock and took a moment to rest. He couldn’t keep attacking the boats as he’d done, otherwise he wouldn’t have enough viss left to escape once he saved Aili. If he even managed that, considering the two boats that had just detached from the main group to reach him.

Sudden flashes of light distracted him. The barrier between Suimer and the two boats that were still carrying spheres was up again. The monks had reactivated the gods Rabam had put to sleep. Whatever Zeles was doing with the debris, wood and stone he’d been moving around inside his dust storm, he’d have to hold off two gods as well.

He took out the shards from the backpack. He needed a lot of viss if he wanted to deactivate them for long enough, but he had nothing of the sorts at his disposal. He rummaged inside his pockets in a desperate search for a solution. He touched another shard, wrapped in a string of wool.

He took out Morìc’s three holders, still tied to Saia’s shard and to each other. He made sure they still contained enough viss to make a difference, and was pleased to realize they did. Morìc’s work didn’t look sophisticated, so he undid the knot with hands trembling from the tension. He deactivated the shards in quick succession, looking for the ones connected to the attacking gods. The barrier faltered twice, so he set aside the corresponding shards. The boats were still approaching from the other side of the harbor, but he was still well hidden by the dark. He still retreated a bit more behind the rocks, to hide what he was doing. He tied the two shards to the string, one right after the other. Then he held tight the activation point and sent forward what viss he could spare without getting too tired to activate the flying pattern.

The barrier of wind and flickering lights disappeared. Zeles resumed his work with renowned strength. Rabam watched in awe, trying to guess what the end result could be. He was building something, that much was clear, but the yellowish dust was still too thick for him to distinguish anything beyond the beginning of a wall. He could see the shape of his statue slowly descending Suimer’s staircase road as if it cost him a huge effort.

Since the situation at Suimer seemed to be settled for the moment, Rabam brought back his attention to the monks fishing for Aili’s sphere. He wondered what was holding them back. They seemed to be sending a lot of messages back and forth, maybe to request some sort of equipment.

The two boats had almost reached the external forest, and the monks on board were shouting for him to abandon his hiding spot. He took the cylinder with the hand that wasn’t clutched around the pattern of strings. Their weapons didn’t worry him as much as his own lack of a plan.

The viss inside the holders finished before he could decide on what to do. The battle between the gods started again with an impetus that sent strong winds in every direction. He hid his head behind the rock to avoid the dust that was being blown into his eyes. One of the monks yelled, grabbing the boat’s border not to be put out of balance.

Rabam kept an eye on the monks looking for a place to board on the beach of stones while he turned the carpet bottom-up. There were two more holders left, but he didn’t have the tools to detach one, nor he knew if he should, considering they didn’t have much viss left to fly. He looked at the chaotic and barely distinguishable purple pattern at the bottom, his hands hovering above the strings, tied in indecision. Before he could decide whether to risk ruining the carpet, the earth trembled.

He expected it to be over almost immediately, as it had every single time the earth had trembled in the last months. But it kept going for several seconds, followed by the low rumbling of some rocks detaching from the flanks of the mountain and the rustling of the foliage. The dust settled down, revealing Zeles’s work: a wall encircling most of Suimer, leaving out only the harbor and the strip of land next to the border of white stones. The first wall wasn’t as tall as the second one, encircling the innermost part of the village. There was a bit of space between the two defenses, filled past the brim by a shapeless form that vaguely resembled the mountain behind it. When a god illuminated the area with a flash of their viss, he saw it was made of uncut rocks, sand and debris. Only the intense blue of Zeles’s statue emerged from it all, hands abandoned to the sides and back slightly curved forward, as if a wave of tiredness had hit him from behind. Despite the earth trembling, despite the rocks tumbling all around him, he didn’t move.

When the trembling stopped, Rabam realized what had happened. He looked at the remaining boats, the ones still holding the gods, the ones clustered around Aili’s light and even the two who had finally boarded the beach of the external forest. He needed to act, or their defeat would have been complete. His mind went back to when he’d tried to cross the tunnel to infiltrate the monks’ village. This time, there wasn’t the option of trying again if he failed, nor someone waiting for him on the other side.

He hid the pouch with the shards of the gods not involved in the fight under a layer of sand and placed a small reddish stone nearby to remind himself where to look. He laid down the carpet and jumped onto it, briefly stopping to repel one more spear and put a monk out of balance by pulling on their sword from afar. He flew away, again toward the cluster of boats where the monks were taking turns to dive down. He lowered himself right on top of the spot where Aili’s light seemed to be most intense, at least when looking from above. He manoeuvred the carpet so that it would fall onto the monks once the pattern wasn’t active anymore, then jumped down, head first into the water.

He started kicking even while his brain was wrestling with the cold. He swam downwards like he had practiced many times in preparation for using the tunnel. His eyes didn’t register anything besides the darkness around him and the light down below. He periodically extended one hand to feel for the bottom, but each time it came back without touching anything. His heart was pounding, scaring him more than the echoes of voices in the water and spears cutting it from above. At that moment he realized how deep he needed to go, why the monks hadn’t reached Aili yet despite trying for so long.

The instinct to reemerge kicked in. The pressure of the water that wanted him up and away from the bottom wasn’t an obstacle anymore, but a gentle push that could guide him to safety. But he had nothing else to lose except for his life, whichever direction he went. He welcomed the burning pain as the punishment he deserved, and kept swimming.