Rabam felt the water press against his mouth, while something inside his lungs strived for release. Flashes were already exploding in front of his darkened view, while Aili’s blue light expanded in the water in every direction, making it impossible to locate the sphere.

Then the flashes became a golden light that engulfed his entire vision. For a foolish instant, he thought he’d somehow died without even opening his mouth. Then his face felt dry. He couldn’t resist that unexpected invite and opened his mouth, expecting to be killed by the convincing hallucination his brain had somehow come up with. He couldn’t overcome the shock of tasting air before something hit him in the stomach. It wasn’t strong enough to hurt, but he instinctively clutched at the thing that was propelling him upwards. He felt boundless relief in feeling glass under his fingers.

“Welcome back,” Aili said in his ears. “Hold on and awake me if the monks try something.”

She pushed him toward the surface, leaving a trail of air bubbles behind her. They broke the surface amidst confused faces of monks emerging from the seafoam. They kept going higher, tracing the first half of a parable aimed at Suimer.

“What happ-“ Aili began, but didn’t finish her sentence.

The descending part of the parable started a bit sooner than Rabam had expected. He looked down at the approaching walls of wood and stone and the sea of jagged debris that divided them. Since it didn’t look like Aili was slowing down, he risked a glance at the sphere between his fingers: the light was blue.

His heart skipped a beat from panic and fatigue. He pushed forward as much as his viss as he could muster. It wasn’t much more than a speck.

“Stop us!” he screamed.

A strong wind came up from below to embrace him and slow down the fall. He still curled onto himself to protect Aili’s golden light from the monks’ binoculars.

As soon as they were past the innermost walls that surrounded the temple and half of the village’s houses, the half that wasn’t covered by a hill of debris, the wind became considerably stronger. Rabam was slowly lowered on his back onto the stones of a square.

“You can let go, the monks can’t see us through the walls,” Aili said.

Rabam softened his grip. He looked at the rotating golden light and smiled.

“How in the world did you manage to escape?” Aili asked before he could say anything.

Rabam chuckled. He sat with his legs crossed and told her everything, from the moment he met Ebus on his way to deliver the letter to his imprisonment, from the meeting with Daira to the process, and the two parts of his evasion. A deep fear gripped him before he could decide to reveal about the murder, so he just glossed over it, exaggerating Cuisan’s fighting ability when he helped him escape.

“Impressive,” Aili said in the end.

Rabam shrugged, mood completely soured. He had given the order to kill a man, his lungs and limbs were hurting, and Zeles…

He looked up at the tip of the mountain, the only portion of it that was visible over the wall. The earth wasn’t trembling anymore, which meant the monks had created another sphere and were about to deliver it to Suimer. And there were still two gods on the boats, even if he doubted they had enough viss left to mount an attack against a goddess with the whole two hundred years at her disposal.

“Aili…” he started, then saw the people that were coming down from the elevated temple and out of the houses, a line of torches filling the streets.

“A monk!” someone shouted.

Rabam looked down at the tunic that had betrayed him. The people’s approach became more cautious, their expressions considerably more hostile.

“I’m not with them,” Rabam said, standing despite the burning fatigue in his legs.

He was holding out Aili’s sphere with one hand, not realizing the inhabitants might not know what it was until someone shouted: “The monks were holding those things! They’re weapons!”

That stopped the advance of the closest inhabitants, suddenly uncertain about what to do. The ones descending from the temple had evidently heard the shouts, but not their content, so they were rushing down the road to see what was going on.

“Calm down, please,” Aili said from above, using her own voice. “We’re Zeles’s friends. And Saia’s.”

Most of them turned around toward a woman that was cutting through the crowd.

“Where’s Saia?” she asked.

Rabam looked at Aili, hoping she’d have something more reassuring to say than anything that came to his mind.

“Aways from here. I know she’s trying her best to come back, but I can’t tell you when she will. Sorry.” She paused for an instant, then asked: “You’re Lada, right? Saia’s mom.”

The woman nodded, seemingly less tense since Aili had recognized her. By the way she was looking at the sphere, she seemed to be making the connection with Aili’s presence.

“Aili?” Rabam called, determined to bring her attention to the most urgent task at hand.

She didn’t answer for several seconds, which prompted him to call her again, louder. He glanced at the sphere, expecting her to be deactivated again, but her light was still golden.

“Zeles,” she said in the end, in a voice deprived of emotion and intonation.

“I wanted to tell you,” Rabam said. “He has used a lot of viss to create this place and fight off the other gods, then the earth trembled and I fear he’s…”

He couldn’t finish. He felt a weird guilt for having thrust upon him the responsibility of Mili’s death, especially now that he was a murderer just like Loriem.

“His sphere is empty,” Aili confirmed.

Rabam looked up toward the mountain. He wanted to let her grieve in peace, but there was no time.

“They’re coming here.”

There was one more instant of silence.

“Right. I know what to tell them, but I'm sure they'll deactivate me as soon as they hear my voice.”

Rabam looked into his pockets: the holders he'd used to keep Aili awake were almost completely depleted. He held them out for her to see.

“If you fill these with viss, I can keep you awake.”

"What are they?"

"They can preserve energy and..." Rabam shook his head. "I'll explain later."

Lada stepped forward.

“Zeles has taught us how to use viss. If there's something we can do, I'm sure everyone will be glad to help.”

Before Rabam could answer, someone snatched the holders from his hand. He turned to see an old woman examining the pattern by keeping it close to her glazed-over eyes.

“I can knit more of these,” she said. “My friends can help.”

Rabam looked at the sphere on the ground, not knowing what to answer.

“Thank you, from the bottom of my heart,” Aili said. “Zeles didn't want to involve you, and I wish I could respect his will. But there will be more fights, and I'll need every speck of viss I have.”

They were quick to organize the work. The inhabitants that had viss to spare formed two lines, one for each of the holders, while the third one was being used by the knitting group as a reference. Rabam didn't have viss to give and didn’t know what else to do, so he sat back down, still holding Aili’s sphere. He couldn't really help, he didn't have anything to fight with. He couldn't stand the thought of fighting, after causing Bades’s death.

Amidst the chaos of children crying and families mourning their buried houses, he saw some of the people who had either already given away their viss or never learnt how to in the first place gathering knives and scissors, anything that could be used as a weapon. They knew as well as he did that they were useless unless the monks managed to enter the village, but if that happened it was already too late.

“We need weapons,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Good idea,” Aili immediately replied, then raised her voice: “Anyone who wishes to defend the village, follow Rabam. He'll teach you how to fight.”

He felt everyone's attention slowly turning toward him as they figured out who Aili was talking about. His mind went to the training sessions with the sentinels. The older ones taught the beginners, and Bades supervised most of the lessons, since he was the strongest prior. It was impossible to imagine how he could train the inhabitants without also thinking of him, in some capacity.

Still, he couldn't admit any of that to Aili.

“Of course,” he said, leaving her on the ground and slowly standing. “Do you have spears?”

Most of the available people looked at each other, some shook their heads. Rabam probed a stone with a foot. He remembered the survival lessons where they were taught how to build an improvised weapon.

“Look for long sticks and tool handles. We'll also need a pickaxe to break some rocks and ropes to tie it all together.”

They slowly scattered. Rabam followed them, hoping the physical labor could distract him a bit.

They had just started breaking the rocks, trying to figure out how to shape them into deadly points, when Aili gave the alarm.

“Monks approaching from the forest.”

Rabam let go of the spear he was fabricating and started running toward the nearest staircase. They were made of sturdy wood, climbing the internal part of the wall at regular intervals.

“They’re holding a god,” Aili added.

Rabam was startled by the barrier of light that appeared for an instant in the air. He saw the night becoming slightly less dark, the shadow projected on the wall before him, and turned to see the same barrier behind him.

The monks had resumed the attack.

“If you think you can deal with me as you did with Zeles, you’re sorely mistaken,” Aili said, voice so loud it echoed from the walls and bounced past them.

Rabam climbed faster. Once at the top, he squinted to look for the monks in the darkness, but he could only distinguish far away lights beyond the two sets of walls. One group was waiting in front of the shore, on the boats they had used to bring the five gods closer to Suimer. Two more were waiting at the limit of Aili’s domain, on Tilau and Kivari’s side respectively, hesitant about coming closer. The last group was small, two monks that stood close to each other, as if not expecting to find a god inside the fortress that had appeared at some point while they were descending the mountain. One of them was holding a sphere that shone of a blue light, even if Rabam had no doubt they’d have awakened the new god as soon as they understood the situation.

“I have almost all of my power intact, while your gods depleted what they had left after decades of work to fight Zeles,” Aili continued. “And I don’t even need to fight back. The way these walls are built, if you touch their structure, the debris will collapse and submerge every single one of you and part of Tilau and Kivari. Your gods could try to save you, if they won’t be too busy fighting me, but that requires viss. Zeles sacrificed a hundred years of life to build this place. Can you afford to do the same to destroy it? You have…”

She stopped. Rabam looked up, then down, toward the far-away pavement. Aili’s sphere had turned blue.

“The holders,” he yelled, and there was a bristling of activity as the inhabitants ran to fetch them. “Tie an extremity to the sphere, then…”

Lada followed the instructions and activated Aili before he could finish.

“And as you can see,” Aili continued, as if she was never interrupted. “You can’t put me to sleep anymore. We proved we can control your gods…”

“I’ve left the backpack in the external forest,” Rabam quickly whispered.

“… Albeit it requires more time than we’d like. But do you trust them to be awake when you need them the most?”

She let the silence linger for a moment. Rabam couldn’t see the monks’ expressions, couldn’t even hear their words from the distance.

“What did they say?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Aili replied, then raised her voice again. “As I was saying before you interrupted me, you have lost. Go home and inform your priors of what happened. I’m open to negotiations, if they’re fair.”

The monks lingered a bit more, pacing with their torches along the borders like drunk ants. Rabam observed their movements, knowing Aili was doing the same. They started dispersing after a bit, flames scattered by the wind. Soon they had retreated into their tents in the nearby villages.

“It’s over,” Rabam said. “For now, I mean.”

“We really need to get those shards back.”

“I’ll work on it. I just need to rest a bit, first.”

He expected her to be understanding, so he was surprised when she said: “No. Right now. Every second we don’t have them we’re at the monks’ mercy. And I need to talk to Saia about… All this.”

Rabam turned his head to look at the wall on the opposite side of the village. It was dark as the bottom of a well, and everyone knew the external forest was dangerous at night.

“Yes. I understand,” he said, even if it let a bitter taste in his mouth. There were times when he had wished for Aili to order him what to do without worrying about his feelings or wishes, but now he realized how much distance it put between them.

“There are no stairs on the outside,” she said. “I’ll carry you down with my winds and bring you back when you return.”

He sighed and raised his arms above himself, like a child waiting to be picked up.

“Of course. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Finding the backpack in the complete night of the forest’s shore would’ve been close to impossible if Rabam hadn’t remembered the big rocks under which he’d left it. He didn’t dare light a torch, eyes wide open on the distant tents of the monks while he waded in the low water. Once he was near enough to Suimer’s shore, he sprinted toward the walls. He felt someone shout behind him, a stray sentinel left to guard the fortress, but Aili’s wind picked him up and carried him back on top of the second set of walls.

“Saia’s speaking,” she said, startling him while he descended the staircase. “She’s sending messages through the shard.”

He halted his descent and sat on a creaking step, realizing he didn’t want the inhabitants to hear that conversation and ask questions.

“What is she saying?”

Aili answered after a moment.

“That she’s fine, she’s coming back soon, and she’s sorry she couldn’t reactivate me sooner, but the escape was more complicated than expected.”

Rabam thought about the cloud people. He felt foolish for thinking that he could make deals with them, when they had managed to trap a god for so long. He was once again aware of how much Saia had saved him.

“She wants us to tell people everything and ask whether they want to stay under the monks or join her side,” Aili said, her tone suddenly bitter. “She’s gone insane.”

Even from far above, Rabam saw Aili’s light becoming more intense.

“Why?”

“I thought the same, at the beginning. That people deserved to know and decide for themselves. But the truth is they don’t see any problems with the monks taking every decision for them, as long as the gods keep them safe and fed. And believe me, if I hadn’t realized there was something missing from our history, I’d still be thinking the same.”

“How can you be so sure about that?”

“I’ve tried to tell someone about the gods’ existence, while you were imprisoned. I failed terribly. He just didn’t want to listen, he kept asking me if I was joking even after I reassured him a thousand times that I was not. I even showed him my sphere! He just didn’t want to accept it, and the little he could accept destroyed him.”

“That was just one person. I’m sure if we could spread the word, some people will hate the idea of being manipulated for so long.”

“Some people, sure. Saia wants everyone to know. She said: ‘No more secrets. The monks thrive on secrets, we have to take them away from them. If the inhabitants want them to stay, they should at least be aware.’”

“Her words or yours?”

“I’m paraphrasing a bit because she’s using as few words as possible, but yes, that’s the meaning.”

Rabam thought about it. The monks’ control over the villages was based on the inhabitants thinking that the gods were actually deities.

“I think you’re underestimating what impact knowing the truth would have.”

“And I think you’re both overestimating it. Zeles tried, right? He used his actual name, word got around in the villages. Did they arrive en masse to investigate why there was a new god in the village and another had disappeared? Did they question why half of their villages was controlled by a neighbouring god, and their own disappeared overnight? Or they left him to die alone, because none of this actually changed anything in their lives?”

Rabam didn’t know what to answer, so he remained silent.

“Lausune was under the monks’ control for a while,” Aili continued. “Save for the first days, nobody inquired about them after they were gone. Koidan was back, they could keep living their lives. That’s all that mattered.”

“Maybe they’re just used to trusting their deities without question?”

“Sure, as long as the deities tell them what they want to hear.”

“Did you tell this to Saia?”

“She knows. She says that if the majority decides to keep things as they are, we should gather the rest and leave. But I know her enough to tell she’s scared. She’d be devastated if after all of this the inhabitants would still choose the monks. She says she’s prepared, but I don’t want to see her crumble. She’s already been through so much, and I don’t even know the extent of it. I don’t want her to hurt even more.”

Rabam rested a cheek on the rough surface of the wall.

“What about finding the truth about the mountain?”

“That would be amazing, but how? I can’t move from here, and every single monk out there knows your face by now. Even if we wanted to gather more information, or enact Saia’s plan, we can’t do that. We’re trapped. My plan failed so spectacularly that Zeles is dead and the monks are absolutely sure that I’m their enemy. We’re better off holding onto what we have managed to save and waiting for Saia to come back.”

Rabam wanted to point out that with the shards and the holders there was still a lot they could do, but he couldn’t get enough thoughts in a row without sleeping first.

He closed his eyes.

“Did you tell her about Zeles?” he asked.

He wasn’t sure whether Aili had been quiet for a long time, or if he’d just nodded off from exhaustion.

“Of course,” she answered. “She’s devastated.”

Dan looked up at the rumbling clouds. Still no sign of rain. He was glad for it, because it meant they had a bit more time to stay in Lausune before the storm started running away from them.

The food he’d been carrying from the market started to weigh on his arms. He entered the cave, hesitant, as if he was intruding into a stranger’s room.

Morìc was still filling the holders with his viss. After fixing the carpet, he’s spent days bent like that on top of it, the torch planted on the sand an armlength away. Dan had to beg him to at least put on some leather boots, if he didn’t want to use gloves. The snakes rarely left the pools, but when they did they were attracted by the movement of the flame, and Dan still remembered the sting of their bite. In the end, only pointing out that getting bitten would have meant asking for the gods or monks to heal him convinced Morìc to listen.

“I’m here,” Dan said, immediately walking up to the backpack with the supplies for the voyage. They didn't know how long it would take, even Morìc didn't remember how many days the first trip had lasted. Nor they had a clear idea about which direction they needed to follow, except for 'forward'.

“Everything alright?”

Dan was almost startled by Morìc's answer. He'd been so focused on his work in the past few days that he had never returned his greetings. When he spoke, he used their old language, saying that Dan needed to learn it. Never mind Morìc himself only remembered half of the words and only a bit of grammar.

“A monk asked me why our house is always empty,” Dan said. “And I said we were sleeping with some relatives in Tilau. She tried to grab my hand, but I managed to run away.”

Morìc sat back on his talons and pinched the sides of his nose.

“They're going to guess we're here, sooner or later. Good thing we're leaving today.”

Dan nodded. He didn’t want to leave. He was sure if he’d expressed his wish to stay, Morìc would have just left by himself. But his brother was missing a piece, and he was willing to cross the sea to find it. If Dan stayed behind, he’d have eventually missed him too and come back. He would always be hurting, always detached from reality, never whole again. So Dan had decided to follow him. The mountain would always be there, after all.

At the moment, there was something else that worried him more.

“So Koidan was a guy named Zeles,” he said, recalling Morìc's hasty explanations. “Then he was replaced by Aili, and now it's going to be someone else?”

Morìc was looking at the carpet again. It took an instant for him to answer.

“Yes.”

“And where's Aili?”

Morìc shrugged.

“Zeles said the monks wanted to kill her. I don't know much else.”

“Not even if she's alive?”

“I think we'd have heard something by now if she wasn’t.”

“So we're leaving without being sure?”

Morìc looked at him.

“I don't know when the next storm will be. It's either this one or being captured by the monks.”

Dan nodded.

"And Saia?" he asked.

"I don't know where she is, sorry. I know it's hard to leave without a goodbye..."

"You didn't tell goodbye to anyone," Dan interrupted him.

Morìc lowered his eyes.

"Not recently, at least."

Dan thought about their parents. He could remember them a bit, their faces, an echo of their voices over a blurred background. He remembered the anticipation for the mysterious magic lessons they were giving his brother and that they'd promised to teach him too, once he was ten.

Morìc had tried fulfilling their promise, but Dan had never really liked learning the rules for creating the patterns, nor practicing the practical sides of sewing and weaving. He’d never understood how Morìc could stand to stay inside for hours in front of a loom, without talking to anyone or enjoying the sea breeze. Now he wished he had at least some idea of how it worked, enough to help Morìc get ready and sleep a bit more.

Since he seemed focused on the carpet again, Dan sat at the cave’s entrance, looking at the village. He could distinguish the houses despite the curtain of semi-darkness caused by the sunset and the rain clouds at once, even if the shadows looked a bit deeper and the lights too intense.

Something shifted in the air. He knew with certainty the rain was about to start, and a minute later the first drops speared through the sand. Winds started stirring the surface of the sea. He wondered whether he was strong enough to carry both of them to safety if something happened to the carpet and they had to swim.

He reached with one hand under his long shirt, where he had hidden a small pouch filled with desiccated sea snake meat. He swallowed a piece.

The rain became intense, then started dwindling as the clouds that had generated it moved toward the open sea. Morìc approached the entrance of the cave.

“Time to go,” he said.

Dan nodded and stood to help him set up the carpet.