Plato turned his neck toward the traitor, and realized then how broken his body still was, in spite of its newfound strength and speed. He snapped his neck into place. “You’re not the one I must kill,” he said, and began to lift the Mirshalite Sower up. This was… yes. This was Kamila Zelenko’s father. Plato smiled, his body consumed in ecstasy. “You’re the one who must witness it,” he said, and he lifted Stepan from the ground. The sand whirling around Stepan, it blended with the sand from Plato himself, and the black mist, and with a hiss some of the sand fell upon the floor. He tossed Stepan Zelenko to the ground, unconscious.

Walking through the continued pushes of the traitorous Primordial Eirchais, Plato approached the traitor. Luca Buday. “And you,” he said, snapping his neck again. “You matter nothing, apostate.” He approached Luca. With each step toward her, more sand gathered around him, spinning in his presence. He was the eye of the storm, the epicenter of the quake. Plato saw recognition amidst the fear in Luca’s eyes, but she was a dead thing to him, her mind could not reach to his the way his could reach to hers. He knew she knew him. Plato Arap. Priest of Gaurl, soldier of the border town Carakhte, warrior under Captain Cigdem, Faithful of Aivor, devoted Solist. Yes, devoted Solist, unlike the traitor. Sharpshooter. Proud son. Killer of savages. Killer of savages. He reached toward her. A little mist escaped with her next breath – blue, quickly surrounded and overtaken by Plato’s own black mist cloak. It covered him in comfortable darkness.

“You are just a stupid little traitor,” Plato said. “the spawn of traitors. I will correct the accident of your birth.”

“I’m –“ she started to say. She reached out – probably for that pathetic Eirchais. He was a million miles away from her, separated by the everything that was Plato. Their bond… weak, with the black mist separating them, covering the world.

He grinned blissfully as he prepared to strike the death blow against the traitor.

Then Plato Arap stumbled back as stone grabbed him by the arms. The arms of the stone shifted and rippled and dragged Plato Arap back toward the hole he’d crawled through. Luca reached down. There, on the floor, it was a discarded weapon. An old battered repeating crossbow. Four of the bolts had already been fired.

Luca emptied it into Plato.

He screamed, tearing through the wall against his own will. Where the bullet from his own gun had been nothing to him, these bolts stung like fire. Plato heard screams around him, the screams of Valers, which soothed him a bit as he tore through the stone walls toward the outside. But he could not reach out to kill them, for he was moving too quickly. The rats would live, for at least another few seconds. Shame.

He was outside. He raged and tore against the wall, tried to pass through it, but it wreathed itself in mist and energy and would not let him through. He felt the gritted teeth and intense concentration of the man at the center. The stone stood still and inert, but Plato could not pass through it. he looked toward the Invictan soldiers – their backs turned to him, running. Beyond them, houses – half the village - burned. Plato smiled.

He tore off to the northeast, frustrated with the wall, knowing he would not pass through in time for it to matter. Besides, that tether pulled at his neck. There was something nearby he needed, and who knew how long it would remain?

Plato found the ATV just outside Etyslund, and took to the road, following the tether that linked him and his prey. “Zelenko,” he purred as he listened to the motor. “I’m coming for you, baby.”