The Cult of the Aether held the human soul ascended to heaven after death. There it mingled with mana, entering the realm of the immaterial, detectable only by those attuned to the dimension of incorporeal beings; the foul soul-drinking kynigoi and bloodthirsty vrikólakes and all manner of demonic parasites vied, then, to consume the lost people of Earth, but in the farthest, highest reaches of the void, there appeared angelic beings of mana. These angels swept away demons and welcomed the immortal soul into the stars, into shimmering silver halls and moon-soaked palaces, and there they dwelled for all the rest of eternity. That was the fate that awaited man and woman after death.

Eris was dead, but she saw no stars, nor the moon, nor any palaces of silver between stretches of the dark void. After so long as a cynic her suspicions were confirmed. The Cult was nothing but a lie, a con to trick the common people into worshipping the Magisters and, in times of old, the Regizars themselves. Death contained no ascent to heaven. No journey to the Aether. How could it?

Instead death was cold, numb, and dark. Her ears rang. She felt nothing. The sensation was as though she’d left her body behind, yet a vague notion of weight remained, a feeling of unfeeling that would burden not the slumbering mind and suggested something other than liberation from the mortal plane.

Cold, numb, dark, silence.

Until visions began.

She saw great snowy gates pass by her as she was pulled on her back through the ever-darkening woods. She saw the huge black walls of some ancient fortress, ruined and crumbled to time. She saw strange ape-like creatures on pillars and boulders watching her suspiciously, and past them was a distempered sky, crackling red and blue and yellow over her like it was about to swallow her whole.

She could do nothing but see as her journey continued. She was dragged by the arm. Up a flight of stairs. There, on a step waiting for her, was Vlodmir the Cleric, the boy she tricked into the Lightning Wall; he folded his arms and stared at her, judging her. Then he was gone.

Another two steps. Across from Vlodmir sat a dwarf on a boulder. Unrecognizable. His name could be anything, except that in his hands he clutched the Forgestone of Keep Arqa, and Eris knew it was the brother she killed in Arqa’s vault. He saw her for only a moment before she could see him no longer.

Next, against a ruined railing, came Kauom. His huge arbalest in his hands, he glared like the useless brute he was, staring at her for a long while. He disappeared.

Three companions. Three murders. All by Eris’ hands.

Thereafter she saw a snarling Astera overdressed in Elven attire, armed and armored like Aletheia, a look of perturbed sorrow on her face like she had just eaten something bad. The elf caried a century’s worth of antipathy in her eyes—a hatred always half-concealed in life. But no longer. All was on display now. Until, like the rest, she was gone.

Then came Guinevere. An idiot smile. The Dwarven axe in her hands. She found Eris’ eyes for just a moment, but their brief look seemed to carry a decade of sorority that did not exist. Her smile only faded when Eris was pulled from view.

Zydnus was last. A scrunched-up face. Fury in his eyes. A miniature man with a bow in his hands. She passed him by, but unlike all the others he followed after her; now the steps leveled, and the sky disappeared, replaced by the roof of a great hall, a hall just like Keep Korakos, yet now the roof was ten thousand feet high and the moon shined down through a skylight in the ceiling, day turned to night in the threshold of a second. Zyd trailed her to the ruined doors of the keep and then he stopped, and then he disappeared.

Three companions. Three sacrifices for the party. All reminders of mortality.

She stopped suddenly in the great hall’s center. The jaws on her shoulder let loose, leaving the imprints of feline teeth in her skin, and she was pushed by the head of some great beast upward.

A light blinded her. She closed her eyes and turned away, and all around were the apparitions of her friends.

Robur stood blank-faced and stared at her. He wore no expression whatsoever. She stared at him a long while.

Across from him was Aletheia. She was on the ground, tears in her eyes, wailing, not even watching.

Eris looked up toward the light. It faded like the sun slipping behind thick clouds. Then the Korakos throne came into view, and seated on it was a man. His shoulders in the shape of a triangle. Blond hair and a blond beard and fine clothes and a sword at his side.

He clutched an infant in his arms. Smiling down at it. Kissing it on the forehead. He looked up at her and his eyes were pure blue. It was Rook with their son.

So they were dead, too. All of them together. Rejoined at last. Now all their mouths moved but Eris heard only meaningless echoes; she had propped herself up on her good arm, but she collapsed back down to the freezing ground.

Rook approached her. He smiled. His feet sounded like talons across hardwood. He came to her, lowering their child, and he put it near her face—

And all the apparitions disappeared. In Rook’s place stood a white lioness.

Now everywhere, converging all around her, emerging from the shadows of her dead companions, an entire pride of lions. Two of them at first, then six more from the hall’s open doors, gathering about her in a circle.

First she was judged by those who knew her. Now she was judged by Leaina. More stories. More useless superstitions. More religious drivel Eris did not believe—yet as she looked upward she saw the animals all around her, and she was faced with reality, and she knew it was true when the weight of a paw was placed on her shoulder.

“Sleep now,” said the lioness. “Your journey is at its end.”

Eris was not dead. When she awoke she felt the prickling of straw against her back and a hanging pain in her arm and wrist and shoulder. She looked up and saw a roof overhead. When she exhaled she saw her breath. It was frozen in her small quarters and the air reeked of must and mold, but she had a single thin blanket and—of all things—a stove in the distant corner. It radiated weak warmth.

She shut her eyes and thought. Her mind was hazy. She felt dehydrated and starved. As she came to her senses, regaining control of her own body as if awakening from a spell of Sleep, she heard a noise like the pattering of footsteps, and when she glanced down to the room at large she saw a small brown creature enter through an open doorway.

It was a monkey. It had fur and walked upright, most of the time, but its tail was large and fluffy—it couldn’t have weighed more than thirty pounds, perhaps the size of a young child—yet as she looked at it more closely, she began to realize it was closer to a tree squirrel. Its ears were upright like a wolf’s. Its nose was rodent-like and its eyes large and disarming. Yet as it made its way across the room, it walked to the stove; there it used a small rod to stoke the fire. It had human hands. Then it easily climbed the rotting upholstery on a nearby wall and it looked into Eris’ eyes.

Their gazes met. She flinched to be so close to an unfamiliar animal. But the moment this squirrel, this monkey, saw her awake, it leaped to the ground and scrambled from the room, sprinting to safety.

Eris could not use her left arm, but she clenched her right against the straw bed in agitation. She did not know—but then she remembered. She remembered her dream, her visions of her slain companions, and a dread far colder than the air erupted like a glacial volcano in her chest. First she thought of her child—she had seen it in her vision—she grabbed at her stomach; of course the size was unchanged, but that meant nothing, what was within might still be dead—

But she felt a fluttering, as if a conscious reassurance from son to mother, right at that moment. Her heart slowed a beat. Next she closed her eyes and searched for Rook’s soul—and as always she found it there within her. She savored it. Letting it calm her. Reveling in the child’s heartbeat. She did not know why, she did not care about this creature inside her, but it meant everything that it had survived.

But her relief was short-lived. What of the others? And their things? She tried to lift herself from bed, but as she did she screamed in agony. Her left shoulder pulled her down to the bed again. It was supported by a pillow stuffed with feathers and any change in elevation brought immense pain. As for her arm…

An animal approached. Claws clacked atop the stone on the ground, like a dog through the halls of a house. Eris shifted nervously, feeling immensely vulnerable, and she reeled in horror as the animal in question stepped through the room’s doorway.

It was the white lioness. Eris could not help herself but let out a gasp of fright to see the predator close-up. Such a reaction she would not have to an ogre, or an orc, or a demon—but a lion was different.

This lioness barely fit within the confines. She must have been close to six feet tall at the head, and she had no trouble looking down over Eris on the bed, like a meal ready to be devoured.

She clutched the straw once again.

“You awake,” the lioness said. She spoke Kathar and the words came out like roars, yet all the same there was something feminine to her voice—a soft edge, a gentleness to suggest that speech was normal for her. “I am Minerva, eldest of the pride.”

Eris struggled to find words to match the situation. “You,” she stuttered, “are a lion.”

Minerva lowered her head to Eris’. Her breath was rancid. She sniffed along Eris’ neck, and then to her breasts, and she licked the skin there—Eris shuddered, unresisting, uncertain what to do, until the lioness withdrew her head—

With Guinevere’s religious symbol in her mouth. She tore it off Eris’ neck by its chain and let it dangle from her teeth, showing it off, before dropping it onto Eris’ belly.

“You are a follower of Ragom,” Minerva said.

“I ‘follow’ nothing,” Eris said.

“Then you make a strange decision to wear that symbol here.”

“It was a gift.”

Minerva snorted. She took a seat on the ground. “Tell me your name, Young Mother.”

Eris wanted to sit up, but still could not endure the pain. “Eris.” Now she had courage, and she said what she wanted to say. “I—my companions. A girl and a young man. Were they brought in with me?”

Minerva nodded—and that was a strange gesture to see, coming from an animal. “They will both live. The boy has lost his arm. The girl is scarred, but will heal.”

Eris gasped in relief. A knot cut in her chest. She pressed her head back into her pillow. It was all she could do to close her eyes. “Good. That is—good. Thank you. Where are we?”

“A fortress of the Old Kingdom. It is where my pride makes its camp.”

“That creature that tended my fire—”

“They are known as sciuri in our tongue. They cannot speak and do not understand values such as pride and family, but they can perform what tasks we cannot. It is they who start our fires, tend to our wounds, and help us with matters requiring dexterity.”

Man had dogs for scent and speed. Great Lions had monkeys for hands and dexterity. Eris looked down at her wounds briefly and saw they were bandaged, and no longer bleeding. “Did they—treat me?”

“No. A...sage is in our presence. She healed you, and your companions. Without her efforts they both would have surely died. You might have survived, although your child would have been in great peril.”

Now Eris’ willpower overwhelmed her body’s desires. She lurched herself up to sitting. It was difficult even without her injuries, for her joints were frozen and her belly got in her way. But soon she sat upright, and she looked at this Minerva squarely.

“You say you are the eldest. Am I so important to demand your time?”

“Yes,” Minerva replied simply. “But none of my sisters speak your language. Only I.”

“And how did an animal learn Kathar?”

“That is a long story, Young Mother.”

Eris thought back to the day of her injuries. “A lion was responsible for my rescue. He spoke Kathar as well.”

“Several of the lions do speak your language, as did the captain of the party that retrieved you. But a lion should not tend to the injuries of another tribe’s lioness.”

She presumed herself to be the lioness in this analogy. Such rules were standard everywhere in polite society—truly it was only the magicians who disregarded conventions for the sexes, because their need for the Manaseared with ability outweighed their concerns of accidental conception or social faux-pas. Perhaps Eris would have been better off had a more robust fear of men been instilled within her, given all things now.

She hesitated before asking the next question that consumed her mind. “There were important belongings near our bodies. A sword especially, but also a staff, an orb, a bow—were these things retrieved?”

Minerva did not respond at first. At length she said, “No.”

Of course it was a ridiculous question. How could a pride of lions gather up weapons on the ground? Not unless their squirrels came with them, but they had other concerns, no doubt. Eris closed her eyes and swore. All her things, lost. Rook’s sword. That was completely unacceptable. She would need to go out and retrieve them at once.

But it was hard to stay nervous about her lost possessions, when she looked up and saw the lioness before her. A decade spent in the company of these creatures and she still would not shake the instinct of prey regarding predators.

“The villagers of Coedwig say you devour their children for food,” she said.

“Why would we hunt prey determined for reprisal?” Minerva asked.

“Hunger?”

“We would sooner leave our homelands. We do not kill men to eat them.”

A notable phrasing—this Minerva still would eat a man, should the opportunity arise. “But you did kill the Prince.”

“He would have killed us first. He and his retinue fought honorably and died as warriors, in the manner of their god.”

Eris rubbed her forehead with her one hand. “But I do not understand. You happened upon us in the forest and saw I carried a symbol of your enemy. Why did you retrieve us?”

“You are with child,” Minerva replied simply.

Eris scoffed. “And that is all?”

The body language of a talking lion was hard to read. Eris received no impression whatever of how this creature thought, except through speech. “Women are sacred to Leaena. That is more than enough. But…the sage I spoke of. When she arrived, she gave us a prophecy.”

“A prophesy?”

“That a pregnant magician would come to us,” Minerva said. “And we would bring you to her.”

Eris’ breath picked up again. “I am part of no prophecy.”

“She foretold you would say that as well.”

“I am sure she did. And a healer, too? I should like to meet this sage. She would have much information to share.”

“She would like me to bring you to her as well, when you are able to walk. She believes you know her.”

“Know her?” Eris said.

Minerva stood and gestured for Eris to follow with a swipe of her head. Eris tried to stand and nearly fell, losing her balance, but she made it to a wall and steadied herself. Blood drained through her vision. Dizziness overcame her. Shortness of breath. Discomfort in her gut. But it passed, and she continued forward.

Minerva led her through the crumbling halls of the ancient fortress. Collapsed stone, debris and rubble, crowded every corridor. Spots of roof let in snow. There was no insulation from the cold here, and Eris was underdressed—her furs had been removed to get at her injuries, and out of bed she was just barely covered around the torso and the waist.

Every step jolted her arm and made her gasp in pain. Linens were wrapped about her bicep and forearm, but it wasn’t otherwise stabilized, and she could do nothing but hold it against her side.

Eventually they arrived at a central hall. It was much like that of Keep Korakos, only bigger and ruined and much, much colder. Blinding whiteness burned beyond a destroyed gate, letting in the howling wind, and while there were no torches, part of the roof had collapsed—letting sunlight in through the ceiling.

A woman tended to a fire near the room’s center. It was large and smoke trailed upward, escaping through the skylight. Next to her was a lounging lion, even larger than the one leading Eris, resting its enormous head and mane on the woman’s crossed leg. Two of the smaller sciuri creatures also sat warming themselves by the flame.

The woman looked up at Eris. She was gray and unremarkable, with brown eyes and a plain dress. Eris recognized her immediately, freezing in place.

“Hebat,” she whispered.

Hebat smiled. “Here they call me Juno.” She stroked the mane of the lion in her lap. “You’re half-naked, girl. You must warm up. Please—take a seat by the fire. If you’ll be able to stand again!”

A brief moment of self-consciousness overcame Eris, but it was much too cold to do anything but obey. The fire thawed her veins at once.

“You are a long way from your hut,” she said.

“A long time has passed since we met. Your body keeps its own calendar.” Eris covered her stomach with a hand, as if that might do something to conceal its immensity. ‘Juno’ made a dismissive gesture. “Do not worry. You carry him well. There is nothing more beautiful than a woman bearing the child of the man she loves.”

“It would be more beautiful yet if she did so willingly.”

“Uncomfortable things are often done under duress, even when the reward is worth it. You were a willing participant, were you not? Did you not savor its conception?”

Minerva settled near the fire, coming to a rest beside Eris. She pulled her arm away to make room. “I might not have, had I known where it would lead me.”

“Nonsense. You love power. You find euphoria in murder and destruction. And you find immense satisfaction in creation, like all women; you feel like a goddess forging life. You cannot help it. It is biology.”

Juno was right. She put into words secret, unthinkable thoughts. Eris hated being archetypical enough for anyone to guess how she felt about anything, but then some things were universal.

Pregnancy had made her feel powerful. For the first time in her life she was no longer inferior to men for being smaller and weaker and quicker to tire—now she did something they never could. And best of all, for all her sickness and discomfort, it came at no expense to her magic.

Yes. Creation was thrilling.

“You knew this would happen when we met,” she said.

Juno shrugged. “I did. But such foresight hardly takes a seer, hm?”

“Why have you come to this place?”

She looked at the lion on her leg. She said something to him in a language that wasn’t so distant from Kathar, but that Eris didn’t recognize. The lion responded in the same tongue. “Oh yes, that’s right. I came for the war.”

“And you walked from Telmos to Voreios alone?”

“Perhaps I turned into a whale and swam.”

Eris frowned. She looked the woman up and down. Clearly her prophecies were not false. She could see, somehow, the future, and she could heal injuries with great power.

“What are you?” Eris asked.

“Juno. Or Hebat. Or Hera. They give me many names; I can’t remember them all. They’re really no concern.”

“She is Leaena,” Minerva said.

Juno smiled. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop, my dear. You’re old enough to know that by now. I make no claims to be a goddess. I am but her humble servant, agent of Walwai, Leaena, Leaina, or Llewdod as they said in Voreian; thus I visit the White Lions whenever I find the time. They are a noble people.”

Eris did not believe, nor had she ever believed, that this woman was a priestess. Perhaps she was Leaina incarnate. Only time would tell. For now there were more important matters.

“I saw visions when I entered this place,” Eris said. “My companions. Their spirits. Was that the work of your Lioness?”

Juno straightened herself before shaking her head. “You were delirious. Frostbitten and exsanguinated. On the door to death, babbling like a child. You saw hallucinations, nothing more.”

“Hallucinations of all I know returned to judge me?”

She leaned forward. “Is that what you saw, hm? Tell me more. Does guilt weigh heavily on you, Eris?”

In fact she felt tremendously guilty. She hung her head, but replied simply, “No. I simply—thought it unlikely that—but never mind. They were mere hallucinations.”

“The wounded often see their pasts come back to haunt them,” Juno said. “You have a conscience after all.”

Eris moved closer to the fire for warmth. “I wish to see my companions. I was told they will live?”

“Their injuries were severe. I worked hard to ensure they would survive, and so they will. But it will be weeks before they recover.”

Eris thought back to that night in Telmos. “You said you could not heal Rook.”

“I lied. Ha!”

She frowned. “And what of my arm? Will it need removal as well?”

“Your arm will be better by the week’s end. I will supply you with potions. As for speaking with your companions—they are not awake. I have put them to sleep, to dull their pain and hasten their healing.”

“I should like to see them anyway.”

Juno nodded. “Very well. Minerva will show you the way.”

Aletheia was kept in a room much like Eris’. She was laden with furs, all stolen from nearby humans, and she slept, breathing softly. Eris peeled away the furs to steal a glimpse at the skin underneath.

She was naked. Her armor had been stripped away. Her bare skin beneath was seared in patterns of mail, where the armor, superheated, had burned through any and all fabric and scorched her skin. The grill-like pattern extended down her chest, to her waist, onto her hips. It was horrific. Red and oozing. She would be scarred forever.

Eris covered her again. She considered how she would react, to see her own body disfigured so. It would be the end of her life. At least at that age—when beauty was all she had…

She brushed a strand of hair from the girl’s eyes. Remembering her screams. She was immensely sorry for what she had said to her before the battle. It was pointlessly cruel. But there was little point apologizing now, while the girl was asleep. They would have to speak later.

For now, Eris was simply glad to find her alive.

Robur was different. She felt horror when she saw him. A spike of dread through her spine, like the fear that the noise heard in the dark at camp wasn’t nothing after all. She pulled down his covers…

His left arm was missing at the bicep. Juno had sewn the stump off. On his bare chest, from groin to shoulder blade, was a single cut. That had also been sewn shut.

This, Eris realized, was so much worse than a disfigured body. So much worse than lost beauty. This boy she had known for years still breathed, and yet now he was very different than before. She could hardly believe what she saw.

And what had it been for? What did he make the sacrifice for? Couldn’t he have slipped away during the fight? When he saw Eris was losing, mightn’t he have fled? Instead he interposed himself, and in so doing…

Eris fell to her knees. Why did he do this for her? After she had insulted him and been so cruel? Even after he had told her he would leave, why would he give an arm—and only through blind luck not his life—for her? What was wrong with this man? With Aletheia, too?

The guilt came like tidal waves. She was the village the weight of the water crushed and brought back to sea. She clutched his right arm and felt his freezing skin and tried to make sense of it.

Rook had risked so much for her. But Rook had loved her. She loved Rook. That she understood, after so long trying to make sense of it. Lovers could give everything for each other. But she and Robur were no longer even friends. She had told him terrible things. She had been monstrous toward him—and even still, even without love, he did this for her. Why? Why were these people like this?

Eris would have given anything to live in a world where everyone was as selfish as her. She could have understood everything and everyone then. All might have made sense. Instead she was adrift in a sea that she could not even see, yet all the same she felt, against all her efforts, a consciousness that kept her awake at night and made her loathe herself more and more with each passing year.

Eris was not worth death to Robur. She was not worth even an arm. She was not worth anything. They were no longer friends. She…

…saw once again that she would be dead, were it not for the help of others. And now not only her, but her son as well.

She started to cry. She brought her face down to his wrist. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “Please forgive me.”

He did not respond.

Her voice became louder, then louder with each word. “I am sorry. I am sorry, I am sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—please, forgive me—please—I did not mean what I said—Robur, you must forgive me, I beg you, please pardon me—I cannot—you cannot do this to me, I will not be able to live with myself!”

She was shouting by the end. She wrapped her arms around his torso and embraced him, sobbing into his chest.

“I’m sorry. When I said those things I was—cold and angry and trying to be cruel, but they are not true, not for either of you. I do not want you to go. I know what I am like and I—I cannot help it, but that does not mean I do not value your friendship. I—I do, truly, and to hear what you truly think of me—it is not surprising, how could it be, yet…”

She sobbed against him again.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I did not mean what I said. Forgive me.”

She spent minutes sobbing to herself there. They were miserable, self-pitying tears, but she couldn’t help herself. She loved her beauty, and her power, and her intelligence, and until last year she had never cared that she was abrasive and cruel. But now she did. Now she hated herself. And even if she wasn’t to travel with Robur and Aletheia any longer, she couldn’t stand the thought that they might recall her and think ‘enemy’ rather than ‘friend,' because, truly, they were the only friends she had ever had.

When the tears finally stopped, she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

He was silent, but he was awake. He looked back down at her.

“I forgive you,” he whispered. And then he fell back asleep.