Viv was the first to react, and her reaction almost started a war.

Her red lighting sabre flashed into being. It was more powerful than Rory had ever seen before, sparks flying in every direction, little impacts forcing everyone around her back. Rory himself was thrown backwards to land on his rump, mirroring the same effect Viv’s power had on Marcy. Sylvia and Hakim had stepped back quickly enough, protecting themselves with a strange, shimmering barrier.

Viv saw nothing of the consequences of her powers. Her furious eyes were fixed solely on the Invigilator. “Return them,” she growled. “Give Alex back. Now!”

Rory’s head was still dazed with shock. Even the pain shooting up from his coccyx was too muted. But he did notice that Viv looked different. Monstrous. The rocky-metallic blue scales of the Thunderclaw had covered nearly all of her body save her face. Little arcs of red lightning flashed all over her. She was a storm about to burst into being.

“Heed your warning,” Arkone said, making no move whatsoever. “I grant you a stay from any retaliation simply for the fact that you are a part of Rory’s entourage. Take this mercy and return to your home before you make any further mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” Viv yelled. “You took my child. The only mistake here is yours. Return them immediately before I carve you into mincemeat.”

Thoughts were sluggish. Shock after shock after shock had hammered into Rory. The destruction of the Imps, the discovery that Alex was alive and well, the revelation that they were a part of the rebels, his sudden successful establishment of his system-approved business, and now, the fact his child was gone to who knew where. His brain could only handle so much before collapsing.

But the basics were still functioning, and the only thought that came to his sluggish mind was that Viv was only going to get herself killed.

Somehow, Rory dredged up his voice from wherever it had retreated to. “Viv, stand back!”

She didn’t listen. In times like this, she never did. Viv’s wrath was a thing to behold, a hurricane one weathered and hoped to come out of alive, not something one stopped.

The red lightning sabre rose high as Viv aimed into the sky. It grew wide and powerful, its thrumming energy making the air vibrate and the ground start to shake. Higher up vertical bolt, smaller arcs flashed off in every direction so that the ensemble looked like a glowing red tree. In any other situation, Rory would have stared in admiration at Viv’s creation.

Before she could act, however, before even Rory could think to summon his Weaving in an attempt to prevent her from doing anything irreversible, Arelland tackled her. She sensed him. Her concentration broke as she whirled to face him, the towering pillar of treelike lightning starting to crumble.

But the elf was too fast. Despite Viv’s attempt to stop him, he successfully flashed through the blistering salvo of red lightning she sent shooting at him. The subsequent collision as Arelland barrelled into her sent her tumbling to the ground with an angry yell.

Rory winced at the impact. Arelland had not only bowled her over, he was also pressing his weight down to pin her in place. That mech suit of his couldn’t have felt good. The weight alone would be unbearable. Viv struggled, but she couldn’t make any progress. Her curses had no effect on her captor.

“What are you doing?” she growled. “Get off before I cut you into pieces too, you traitor.”

Arelland might have been a statue for all the reaction he showed.

“You caused all this,” Viv continued. Her voice was becoming more and more strained, turning from ragged to broken, like leather being pulled across broken glass. “You knew and never told us. You used them. You used us. How could you? We trusted you. Believed in you.”

At any other time, Rory would have vociferously protested the treatment she was receiving. But he didn’t react. With Viv’s arms held back, she couldn’t cause any trouble.

Which gave Rory the opening he needed to take on the Invigilator himself.

“Viv,” he said. She continued cursing Arelland and Arkone, who had, thankfully, not yet left. Gathering his fleeting thoughts, Rory raised his voice. “Viv. Listen to me.” She stilled, her head twisting at him. The murderous expression on her face lessened only a fraction. “Let me handle this. We’ll get Alex back. I promise. But we can’t fight. Not against… the Invigilator.”

There were a lot of things besides Invigilator that had sprung to his mind, but he had successfully reined himself in. Viv had no reply, only slumping under Arelland’s weight. The elf made no move to remove himself off her though. Apparently, he didn’t trust her to not do anything if she was free. He was probably right. Viv took a mile for every inch of space she got.

Rory pushed himself upright with his staff and faced Arkone. His feelings roiled like the storm Viv had threatened to unleash and his heart was hammering in his chest like it lived the fury he couldn’t give in to. He closed his eyes and dragged in a deep breath. A clear head. He needed clarity.

“Invigilator Arkone,” he said, forcing his tone to stay neutral, focused. “Where did you take Alex?”

Arkone regarded him for a short moment. “To where none but I can reach.”

“Why now?”

“Why? For Alex McIlroy was an insurgent. A self-proclaimed rebel against the system, one who would see everything that has been established turned over on its head. As a System Invigilator, I cannot allow such a presence to remain in this world any longer than needed.”

Rory’s jaw pressed his teeth together so hard, he was sure they were going to crack. Focus. Another deep breath helped him regain his line of thinking. “Yes, but why now? Why, Invigilator, couldn’t you have taken them while they were under the custody of the Imps? What stopped you then?”

The invigilator didn’t reply. Rory’s lips thinned. He would have called it a mirthless smile if the circumstances had been different. Just as he had suspected, there was more to it than just the Invigilator seeking to apprehend the rebels.

“Answer me, Invigilator Arkone,” he said. “Why did you refuse to act against the Imps? Do you curry favour with them? Had you made some insidious deal with them? Were you helping them?”

“Rory!” Arelland warned.

He ignored the elf. Arkone was on the verge of revealing the truth. He could almost sense it. There was no visual indicator to go off, and Rory couldn’t interpret anything about the Invigilator’s alien body, but something told him he was on the right track.

“Tell me, Invigilator,” Rory said. “Alex and the other rebels were free for your taking with the Imps. And yet, you didn’t act until we had freed them for you. Don’t tell me you’re not really as all-powerful as you pretend you are. That you’re a charlatan. That you—”

“Enough,” Arkone finally said. “You question what you will never understand.”

“Please, enlighten us before we discover that you are nothing more than a sham.”

“I refused to act to prevent myself from acting against you.”

It took Rory a second to parse that, but when he did, his expression grew fiercer. “Is that so? I think I know exactly why you did nothing before.”

He took a step forward. There were more warnings, from both the Otherworlders and the Homeworlders, but he ignored them. His rage was burning like lava through his veins. Alex had been right there. Just a yard away.

And now they were gone.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You didn’t take the rebels because they were with the Imps. Had you acted against them in any way, it might have appeared that you were favouring me over the Imps, playing your direct hand and affecting things in a biased manner. So, you stayed out, even after your supposed duty was to remove the rebels from the area.”

Rory turned to the others, asking with his eyes if they saw it too. “In other words, the Imps had figured the Invigilator out.” He saw no recognition of what he was talking about reflected in their gazes. No problem. When he turned back to Arkone, he knew the Invigilator got it. “They knew you wouldn’t act. They weren’t hiding the rebels from you. You knew all along. The Imps dared you, challenged you, and you failed to act. You lost against the Imps.”

Still, no reply. That was fine. Rory had arrived at the conclusion he had been coming to, the one his frantic brain had latched onto as the final recourse to see Alex freed.

“But we won your fight for you,” Rory said. “Isn’t that right, Invigilator? We destroyed the Imps and recovered the rebels, and now, free to show yourself and use your powers, you came to us and stole my only child.”

He put as much of his frothing, building, overwhelming anger into his last words as he could. How dare the Invigilator take his family from him? How dare this creature believe that it was right to ruin his life, over and over and over? It was all he could do to not lash out with his staff.

“And what of it, Rory McIlroy?” Invigilator Arkone asked. If there had ever been any warmth in that alien voice, there was only a hollow chill there now.

“What of it?” Rory laughed. It sounded broken to him somehow. “What of it?” He shook his head. “Don’t you see? You owe us, Arkone. We did your work for you. Or are you going to deny that, if we hadn’t acted, you would have claimed the rebels by yourself? Are you going to lie?”

The venom in his words were meant to strike straight at the emotions Rory was sure were somewhere within that alien body, and he was proven right. There was a slight change in the air around Arkone. It crackled with power now. Rory had succeeded. He had gotten a rise out of a creature who should have been looking at him as nothing more than a speck of dust.

“Rory,” Arelland said, voice filled with desperation. “Enough.”

He didn’t react. Steps struck the street behind, rapid and closing, but Rory had other plans. He slammed the butt of his staff and activated his Sigil of Barricading Blizzard, summoning up several thick, icy barriers to shield himself from whatever the others were attempting. Rory heard Delic curse in a language he didn’t know as he tried to break his way through. The dwarf might even succeed at some point, but it didn’t matter.

Rory had enough time.

“This ends now, Invigilator,” he said as he stepped froward.

“There is nothing you can do.” Arkone’s forced calm was that of a glacier. Implacable, no reason to react any more than necessary for any attempts against it would amount to nothing. “I grow weary of warning you. Your anger is understandable, your dismay a reaction in fraught times, so I will overlook your mistakes this once. But attempt nothing further. This is your last chance.”

“No. It’s your last chance.”

Rory didn’t wait for the Invigilator’s response to his obvious threat. He pulled out the Tele Ocular he had recently bought from his Inventory. For all the times he had thought it might be applicable, never before had such a perfect opportunity presented itself. Rory placed the lens against his right eye, keeping his left trained on the Invigilator.

Arkone still hadn’t acted, and he got the feeling that the Invigilator was curious to see what he was actually going to do. Fine, then. Overconfidence would be what took the Invigilator down.

When Rory focused on the right side of his face, he found half his senses had been transferred next to the gigantic Corebeast. It was as though he was partly there. He could touch the creature with an extended hand. There was no time to stand around marvelling at the experience, though.

So, Rory used his Weaving. White lines burst out of his hand and homed in on the strobe-like flashes running across the monster’s body. They started to blink out one by one, and as the Corebeast found itself freer than it had in a while, it screamed out an ear-splitting trifecta of roars.

“Impudence.”

A jarring sensation wrenched Rory back to his spot before Arkone. He found himself slammed against his own icy barricade, a riot of colours washing over his body. The Invigilator had finally acted. Rory grinned though, clutching the new Sigil in his hand tightly.

The Corebeast was free again.

“It’s coming in!” Delic shouted from behind them.

He was right. The Corebeast had the full use of its body once more, and it wasted no time rampaging towards them at an incredible speed. Not that it lasted long. The flash of colours disappeared from Rory, and he staggered forward as he watched the colours wrap around the Corebeast again, halting its progress before it could get dangerously close.

Poor monster. Its heads tried to get off another violent miasma of attacks, but the Invigilator was too fast. More colours splashed against the three monstrous jaws, snapping them closed to prevent them from spewing their destructive effluent.

But the Invigilator was distracted. Just what Rory needed.

He slammed his left fist on the street. Pain bloomed, vicious enough to summon tears. A few repeats turned the agony livid. Rory was gasping by the time he stopped. Perfect.

Next, he focused his Weaving on his fist. Agony. He needed the same Sigil that he had used on the Thunderclaw Knight. It was his best way of taking down an opponent too powerful to be faced by normal means. Soon enough, Rory had a Sigil of Pain in his right hand.

No time to waste. Rory pulled the magical Oculars against his right eye again. This time, he aimed it at the Invigilator’s back. All he saw was darkness. Too close. Biting down on his curse, Rory adjusted the magnification so that the Invigilator’s back appeared close enough for him to touch, according to his right eye.

Rory reached out and placed the Sigil of Pain against Arkone’s back, activating his Sigil of Warding instantaneously.

Instead of inserting into the Invigilator’s back, the Sigil crumbled to dust.

Rory staggered upright as Arkone faced him once more. He swallowed. Well, that plan had failed. He should have suspected something like that wouldn’t work on the Invigilator.

But he wasn’t out of ideas just yet.

“You would dare to strike against me directly,” Arkone said. There wasn’t any anger in her voice. All Rory detected was a minor note of wonder, perhaps surprised that an ant would bite a mountain’s foot. But then, he suspected the Invigilator hadn’t ever seen what ants could be like.

“I’ll do more than just that until you return Alex,” Rory promised.

“It seems there is no reasoning with you. So be it.”

“Invigilator!” Arelland called. “Please, he is only distraught at the turn of events. If you—”

“Enough.” The threat in that single word seemed to make even the air itself go silent. Arkone turned back to Rory. “You seem desperate to meet your offspring again. Then I will grant your wish.”

Rory wasn’t fooled for a second. Hope was dead in his heart. Rightfully so, for he saw the Invigilator’s next move coming from a mile away. There was a twist as a new chaotic blob of colours bloomed around him, more frantic than the ones binding the Corebeast. He knew it. This was what Arkone used to send undesirables to…

He grinned. To exactly where he needed to go.

In the split second he started to feel a strangeness in and on his body, Rory acted. He activated his Weaving, willing it to work faster than it had ever before. If it could work against lightning bolts, it could work against this. It would. Rory wasn’t about to accept anything less.

The storm of white lines circled him like his own miniature cyclone of power. Rory didn’t know how effective they were, but the strange sensation, like that of motion, had dissipated. He held his palm open as he focused all his willpower on maintaining his Weaving and making sure it didn’t let even an inch of Arkone’s ability inside his tiny barrier.

“You go too far, Rory,” the Invigilator said.

Rory was too distracted by yet another new Sigil to reply. Once more, the system gave him no notification. But no matter. Rory knew exactly what it was and what it could do. With his free hand, he Warded the new Sigil into his staff, filling up its third slot.

He stopped the Weaving.

As the lines of white light disappeared all of a sudden, the Invigilator seemed surprised for a second. At least, the swarm of riotous colours didn’t rush him immediately.

“You—”

“Goodbye,” Rory said.

He activated the new Sigil in his staff. Instead of the Invigilator, it was the Staff of Deadly Winter that sent out the colourful burst, soon smothering him completely.

A second later, Rory disappeared.