It was always night beneath the snowed-over trees and time froze in the cold. The days were short and insignificant. Eris lost track of the hours. When the party finally happened upon civilization, a stray homestead before fallow fields or a settlement of mud walls and thatched roofs, they found hungry, suspicious people with little to sell and even less interest in outsiders. Miles passed before they met a soul who spoke Kathar; Aletheia used the Wisdom of the Sages to barter for supplies, but their clothes marked them as aliens even when their speech did not.

Coin was exchanged for stale bread. Rations were not available. They were forced to waste days gathering food. Aletheia was a decent huntress, but she tried and failed to catch game with her elven bow for two days and left the party to go hungry.

Eris decided to take matters into her own hands. She went out in the snow in the morning and sat in the snow.

“What are you doing?” Robur asked, watching as she shivered.

“Hunting,” she replied.

“You’re very visible,” he said. “The animals will be scared away.”

“My prey does not fear women on the ground. Now be quiet.” She folded her arms, hunching down onto herself, conserving her heat. Robur stood there beside her silently. Eris kept her eyes on the trees. Waiting. Her skin went numb.

Five minutes. Ten.

A flock of small birds fluttered down to the branches. A few had come and gone since she first was seated, but she had been waiting for just this moment. She wouldn’t need the staff—but the focus twisted over her left palm, her arm on her crossed legs.

She imagined her fingers wrapping around the neck of every distant bird. One by one by one. Her focus locked in like shackles over each, then she moved to the next, until most she could see were in her mind’s grip. Then she tugged.

A flurry of black wings erupted over the canopy. Four or five birds escaped into the air as all the rest were jolted down to the ground. Eris tore them from their perches and smashed them against the snow. Even despite so many targets for her spell the force required to move these creatures was nothing compared to holding back an owlbear or moving large rocks. The flock impacted the forest floor with the muffled crunching of snow; but even with them out of her vision, Eris’ grip remained strong, and she smothered them, holding them down until she was certain every neck was snapped.

Aletheia was not a bad huntress. But she, like Astera before her, lacked imagination. A magician did not need a bow to hunt.

They ate well after that.

They hoped to find refuge in Coedwig. Their remaining hundred silvers would go far in this remote place, but Eris suspected they would need to fall into the patterns of their first two years: the town would be a hub for the coming months. A place to rest while they pursued leads. Some source of income would be required, but surely there were goblins in need of slaying, bandits to kill, tombs to raid, and graves to rob in Voreios as much as anywhere else.

Now, more than ever, pure survival seemed the order of the day. The future was a vast uncertainty. But they would find their stride. They always had in the past.

A frosty river ran through the forest. On the opposite banks rose a palisade, and there the town was. The fortress. The only place worth mentioning in scrolls and books that bothered acknowledging Voreios at all.

The structures here were more impressive. Wood and stone. Smoke rose from chimneys. The whole of the town was built around a hill, where another wall and a small keep protected some warlord’s domicile.

A handful of men on watch let the party in. Yet as they walked through the small market, Eris was the first to realize. Coedwig was deserted. The few who went about chores, tending animals and drying laundry and managing businesses, were all women.

“Something is wrong here,” Aletheia agreed.

“Or something is right, for we may have our opportunity to make a living after all,” Eris said.

The inn was always an excellent place to gather information. There were no patrons, but a redheaded woman bade them entrance and was eager for any business.

“Where is everyone?” Robur asked.

All three magicians used Wisdom of the Sages on themselves. They no longer concealed their appearances or their true natures; no one would hunt them to this remote place. To Eris’ ears, all sides seemed to speak Kathar. To the woman across from them, they spoke Voreian. It was merciful, because if they attempted to use each other’s tongues naturally, it was doubtless they would sound to each other like Guinevere had. No one wanted to endure that again.

“You’ve come all the way down from the mountain pass and haven’t heard? Nor seen neither?”

“Seen what?” Aletheia asked.

“The war. It’s the damn cold, that’s what started it. We’re at war.”

“Explain,” Eris said.

The woman took a breath as she tried to impart everything she was thinking. “At the end of Fall, boys and girls started to go missing from the fields outside the walls. They thought it was bugbears again at first, and the Prince gathered up his warriors and went out to find them, but then he didn’t come back.”

“It wasn’t bugbears?” Aletheia said.

“It was the White Lions,” the woman said. “They found their tracks by the bodies of his warband. They left him alive, the Prince—but he didn’t make it long once we brought him back.”

“White Lions,” Eris said.

“A pride.” The woman snorted and centered herself. “They say they’re left from before the time of Ragom, before man had reclaimed Voreios. They’re a tribe of cats as big as horses and smart as priests. We’ve been fending them off for—forever. No one can remember a time before we fought them. But they’ve never killed so many before, and now the Prince. So our men-folk aren’t putting up with it. They’re doing what Ragom should have done and hunting the last Lions down.”

“You are at war with animals? And you are losing?” Eris was stunned to hear this admitted openly.

The woman opened her mouth to answer, then reconsidered. Finally she said, “My husband passed three months ago, leaving me this and his arms for our sons, so I’m not partial to everything. But the regent’s put a price of fifty drachmae on the hide of each lion. So you see it’s not a war in the true sense, but there’s not a man in this town who’ll pass up that bounty, and not a wife who would let him. And none of us would want to anyway, after what they did. So I call it a war.”

Robur thanked her for the information. As they retreated to their rooms, Eris said, “There you have our first expedition.”

Aletheia scrunched her nose. “Hunting lions?”

“It sounds dangerous,” Robur said.

“They are animals. They are no more dangerous than bugbears.”

“You need to rest,” Aletheia said. “And by then it might be over.”

“We cannot pass any opportunity when it strikes. Idleness will see us starve. The weather has been harsh already; why else would lions begin targeting children in fields? Funds must be acquired if we are to winter successfully in this place.”

“Perhaps this expeditions could be handled without you,” Robur suggested.

Eris glared at him. “I will choose to interpret this as favorably as possible and presume you mean because I am pregnant.”

He shrugged meekly.

“The answer is the same as before. I will not stay while others labor for me. We rest tomorrow, then depart. ‘Tis a good way to make an impression, to slay their maneaters for them soon after we arrive.”

Aletheia gave a look of discontent, but sighed. “Okay. I’m just happy to sleep in a bed again.”

The snow was smeared with blood. Eris folded her arms while Aletheia investigated three bodies of men with bows. In Katharos today the air would be above freezing. Here every breath stung the lungs. Already Eris regretted leaving the warmth of Coedwig’s walls, but she knew she would be vulnerable over the coming months—even once the child was discarded into Aletheia’s hands, she would need time to recover from the ordeal. Preparations would be made beforehand. Especially while she could still walk without waddling.

“The lions did not eat very much,” Robur observed from standing.

“Maybe they didn’t taste good,” Aletheia said. She turned one man over. Claws had torn his sternum open. A quiver was at his side and she picked through its arrows. “He has all his arrows. They were ambushed.”

“Are lions ambush predators?”

They both looked to Eris. She had been distracted by a wave of heartburn and a shortness of breath, but after a moment responded, “Am I the expert in felinology now?”

“You’re the best at pretending to know things,” Aletheia said.

“As it happens, I know little more than anyone else on lions. Especially not those of the white variety. In fact I have never even seen a lion.” Eris rubbed her eyes. “But when such creatures did roam Esenia, I do not believe they called forests home, and especially not frigid forests such as this. They preferred climates such as Koilados. They are pack hunters, but not especially intelligent. And they were not white.”

Aletheia placed a clump of snow on one of the men’s wounds. A gesture of respect, for when burial was not an option. Then she stood. She hesitated before saying, “When I was dead. I had a dream of lions. They were blond, but there was a female and she was white.”

“Interesting,” Robur said.

“A coincidence,” Eris said. She glanced around. “If they are ambush predators, then we should go with caution. I would prefer not to be mauled today.”

Recent snowfall had covered any and all tracks in the vicinity. They stumbled aimlessly around for hours looking for a sign of these mythical lions, but found nothing except another party of men from Coedwig. It seemed their hunt had been equally fruitless. Aletheia told them where they could find the bodies of three fallen townspeople and again they parted ways.

Night fell. By then they were far out in the woods and couldn’t make it back to town, so they set a camp within the trees. That was a cold, wet, paranoid night, where every shadow was thought to be the approach of a vicious predator. After all their travels, Eris thought, she was being kept up at night by kittens. How utterly absurd. One person was always made to keep diligent watch while the others tried to sleep, but it hardly mattered, because no one slept and everyone watched anyway.

Well past midnight Robur stirred. “We must return to Coedwig tomorrow morning.”

“We are not returning,” Eris said. The child was giving her immense trouble and each jolt in her womb was like being pounced on by a predator. She did not know if she shivered because of the cold or her nerves, but her heart felt ready to give out. Still her voice was calm.

“I do not think we are prepared to hunt these creatures,” he said.

“I agree,” Aletheia said. “We can find something else.”

“Many starved men have eschewed rancid meat because they intended to eat ‘something else’ which never came.”

“We’re not starving. We’ll figure something out.”

“Indeed; this is something now. The matter is settled.”

Robur frowned. “You say that often, but the matter rarely is settled.”

Eris hated being questioned. She was miserable and agitated and could not hold herself back; the reprisal was beyond what was warranted. “We all know how this will go. You will protest like a fool, yet I will stay, and because you are both weak-willed parasites you will stay latched to me; and thus I always have the final say. In everything. So it shall always be while you know I will not follow you. It has been years, so let us stop pretending otherwise.”

Aletheia looked angry. She closed her eyes. But she said in a calm voice, “Rook didn’t follow you.”

Eris looked for the girl’s eyes in the darkness. “He did, in fact. It merely took time. Yet prove me wrong. Leave. Go back to Coedwig and abandon me here. I will not go.”

“She is right,” Robur shrugged.

“Of course I am right. And I will be right until at least you have received the thing I have and you want.” She put her hands on her enlarged stomach.

“Yes. You’re right,” Aletheia said. “You’ve made your point. We can’t let you get killed alone until you’ve had Rook’s son. Thanks for reminding us why we shouldn’t stick around afterward.”

“Have I not heard that before?”

“I’m serious. You’re—I thought we were friends now. I’ve tried so hard to be nice. But every time you’re still a bitch to me. You insult me and never listen and I’m sick of it. So I’m going to take Korax and I’m going to go and I hope you never see him. He wouldn’t want to see you. And I hope you get what you deserve, driving away all your friends, going off alone. I—I just hate you, Eris. I thought you were different now but you aren’t. You’re mean and petty and—I just never want to see you again.”

The words came like standing in the downpour of a frigid waterfall. Eris hadn’t meant anything from her remarks, she was simply venting, but clearly she triggered something deeper in Aletheia. Now she felt rage prickling beneath her skin.

“Good,” she said with her teeth together. “And Robur shall remain with me. Yes?”

“I…do not believe so. I will do as I can to assist you, and I wish to see you safe, but traveling with Aletheia—and my time in Darom—has made me realize that I—” He hesitated to phrase the next sentence. “While we are associates, and I hope you do as well as you can, I…do not enjoy your company. Very much. Or at all. You are rather unpleasant.”

She stared at him. “What?” she said.

“Nobody likes you, Eris,” Aletheia said sadly. “Nobody who doesn’t want to have sex with you.”

She was stunned. The words were a confirmation of what she long knew, or at least suspected—that neither of her longest-lasting companions cared for her, that her behavior drove them away. Indeed it was designed to do just that. In her youth she had not wanted any friends. Yet over the years she had come to like them, Robur especially but since last summer Aletheia too, and sincerely. Whatever contempt they held her in was not reciprocated. And she realized for the first time that she desired for them to like her. She—wanted them to feel at least toward her as she did for them.

Eris had changed. In a soberer state she would have apologized. She would have asked how she might be more tolerable. She would have assured them that she knew she needed them, that her remarks were harmless. But she hadn’t changed enough, because her first response was not one of reason, but fury.

“Then so be it,” she hissed. “Do you think I relish your company? The melancholic cadaver whose anguish keeps us awake at night? The runaway magician whose own mentor did not deem worth saving? A girl who wishes to be a squire and looks like a boy? You lose far more through departing my company, ‘tis safe to say. And you try so hard to be kind, yet I saw how you looked at Rook; how far did kindness get you? Will it ever attract a man? Not likely, though all the same, while I carry his child, you, like a cuckquean, are the one who must raise it. How fitting for the life of a follower. Your mirror shows you a fantasy.”

Aletheia clenched her eyelids.

“And you,” she said to Robur. “How long have you followed after me like a puppy, only to—it was clear already you lacked willpower, and for years you have done what I said and when. Not until now has it been so clear you are also a rank idiot. Would you like to know what I truly think of you? Would you like to know a collection of secrets? Let me be straightforward, then: I knew of the Lightning Wall in the Vault of the Magisters. I used the boy from Veshod as lure to deactivate it, and I intended to do the same to you. ‘twas always my objective to see you killed and turned to cinders, abandoned and stuck to starve with all the rest of the riches there while I took the best of the haul and returned later, after you were dead, to claim it all for myself. Only through the intercession of the Manawyrm were you spared, and you were so stupid you did not realize what I had planned—and you saved me, and helped me slay your own rescuer! You fool! Oh yes, I am a very wicked woman, and I have regretted the failure of my betrayal ever since. Since the day I met you I have never seen you as anything more than a tool for my own goals. You are barely human. You—speak like a toadstool. You look ridiculous. You have no mind of your own. Kings, ‘tis infuriating! I hate you most of all! At least Aletheia is not stupid such as you!”

Eris took a torch to her only relationships in the world, and even as she spoke she knew it was for nothing. No gain at all. Most of it wasn’t even true. She didn’t know why, but she did it anyway. She couldn’t help herself.

Robur’s face did not flinch or change. Aletheia was crying. He took a breath. “That was very mean,” he said simply.

Eris screamed in frustration. “Yell, you freak! Why can you not be angry?”

“I am angry,” he said in monotone.

“Just stop,” Aletheia sobbed quietly. “Everyone just stop.”

“And now she cries again. How unexpected.”

Everyone fell silent after that, perhaps realizing that the best way to stop the conflict was to simply stop speaking. Eris’ heart raced. She was more exhilarated than after committing murder, perhaps because, unlike murder, she knew now that she was in the wrong, but she didn’t care. After her blood had calmed some minutes later she finally added,

“I hope this settles the matter. We will hunt the lions.”

Aletheia’s sobs burst into loud tears. Robur covered his face but said nothing. Yet they didn’t leave. And after eight more hours of night, after an eternity of waiting the dark away, they still kept by her. Just as she said they would.

The morning was silent in the snow.

Eris saw no way around it now. They would leave her. And perhaps that was for the best. As for the child…it was another person for her not to get along with. For now he was close to her, and in the hours that followed her fight with her friends she savored that closeness once again. He was someone she could never drive away, no matter what, and a brief cure for the loneliness that overcame her. But once born he would be his own boy, and then his own man, and how could she ever get along with him? Eris was a loner. She was not meant to have friends. Aletheia was right; the only people she could get along with were men willing to look past her faults because her bust distracted them.

The loner’s life suited her well enough. She didn’t need this boy. She hardly wanted him anyway. Better to give him away. Then she could resume her ambitions. She managed to calm herself and assuage some regret with those thoughts.

But they rang hollow in the end, because if one lesson had stuck with her over the last year, it was that even she needed friends to survive as an adventurer. She couldn’t afford to drive these two away, not yet, because even if they did not stay by her side, they represented her ability to forge relationships in the future. If Eris could not keep Robur as a friend—by the Aether, who could she keep?

Yet she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to apologize. It seemed hopeless now.

Another day passed in silence. Another body found. No sign of any White Lions. Eris was ready then to give up, but no one said anything, and she couldn’t bring herself to admit she had been wrong.

It was dusk when Robur broke the silence. “There is a woman with a light,” he said. They had just begun to set their camp and pluck a meal of bird. He gestured off toward the trees.

Eris looked. The woman had just stepped out from behind a stretch of thicket, coming into view, when she spotted Robur and froze. She wore a surcoat unmarked and had a sword at her hip, an iron helmet hanging from a belt, and dangling beside the helmet was a thick glass vial. It was red, and it rumbled, glowing, gleaming in the dim twilight.

She tugged it off and set it on the ground. Then she put on her helmet.

“Put on your armor,” Eris said.

“What?” Aletheia had been tending a fire for cooking, but she scrambled to her feet.

“Armor and weapons! She carries Robur’s manaserum, it must be a Seeker!”

It hadn’t occurred to Eris until just then. She hadn’t thought of it. But of course, the moment Robur had come to them, he gave the Council a way to track her and Aletheia to the ends of the Earth. The idiot boy. Eris’ mind worked fast and she saw no other explanation—it was red, while Eris was green and Aletheia was golden, and it was active, to give away the presence of its owner—yes, it was Robur’s, and only a Seeker would have access to such a thing, no one else.

The woman was far-off, but when she saw herself seen, she started to sprint their way.

Eris fell to the snow and grabbed her weapons. She fastened Rook’s sword around the top of her belly, where it settled uncomfortably and ridiculously high up beneath her breasts, but nowhere else was narrow enough for the belt, and then took her staff and orb in her hands. “She will attempt to manaburn us. Do not let her. Engage her at once.”

Aletheia slipped into her mail jacket and rose. Robur had nothing to grab, but he drew his dagger.

“Doesn’t she want to talk first?” Aletheia said.

“Not this time,” Eris said. She readied herself. Preparing a ball of white fire in the top of her staff, she channeled mana from the air, to the focus, then arced it back to the staff one final time; there it sizzled and gathered, desperate for release.

Eris felt ridiculous. She was huge and off-balance. This was no way to fight. But she had no choice. The fight came to her.