The day dragged on like a slog, though they only sat in safety. By evening, Frem, who had gotten up to pace around every so often, punched his right hand, snapped and said, “That’s it. I’m leaving.”

  Nobody said anything. He’d said it before and he’d say it again, just as soon as it became clear nobody would join him.

  Windston had propped himself into a sitting position against the wall facing the front door. His sword lay beside him, a dull black within faint blue. Rain had remained by that door, flush against the wall, but not leaning. He just stood there, staring ahead, at nothing. Every now and then, his eyes would track to the left, toward Frem. But he mostly just stared the way only one both dead and alive can – at nothing, completely still, and haunting.

  When the sun had completely set, all hell broke loose outside. The popping they’d heard here and again became constant. It came closer at times. But it always died off. There was no need to wonder why.

  Out of nowhere, Windston flinched awake and saw that the door was open. Rain had pulled it in. Furggen was there, a mess of wet feathers and muddy claws. He slid to a halt and then hobbled to the middle of the floor, where he shook off the rain, wings outstretched.

  Rain Gray was hovering over him. He pulled something from off the bird’s neck. It was a bit of webbing and a hand.

  He tossed it outside.

  The bird turned toward Windston. Frem was to the right of it, flush against the wall, exaggerating a fear of it. “You get up now. We go.”

  “Go where?” Frem asked as Windston shifted slowly with a groan.

  The bird didn’t look at Frem, but Rain did. “To the seventh rise,” it said.

  “Seventh,” Frem said. “Which one is this again?”

  Windston glared at Frem, halfway up. “One, two,” he counted, standing. He brushed himself off. “The second.”

  “Seventh rise,” Frem muttered, kicking at nothing. “What’s even up there? Wait – is that where we go to kill all the bugs? That’s why we’re here, after all. Remember? You wanted me to blow up all the bugs for you? Do you even remember that, Windston? Or are you too busy listening to a total stranger.”

  “We go now. We hurry,” Furggen said. But he showed no urgency. He was just kicking at his ear, and then he pecked under his wing.

  It was Rain that looked anxious. He was at the window, looking outside and up, at nothing, maybe.

  It was not nothing. There was a sudden blinding light, and a sound like a roar of wind, and then stillness. All the windows shattered. The walls shook. The floor rumbled. The light was so bright they could see every little imperfection everywhere – in the walls, on the floor, on themselves. It was as if Rain’s skin itself was glowing, what with how bright it suddenly was outside.

  “We go!” Furrgen said, hopping onto Rain’s shoulder.

  Rain flung open the door and stood just outside, hustling them on with gestures.

  They ran beneath his arm. There was something in the sky. It was bright like the sun, though shaped like a diamond on its side. It was over the black ship, and it dwarfed it. It was a ship itself, though one of radiant energy, and it hung there, miles long, miles wide, and roared.

  Everything was clear as day. Everything was clearer, brighter. The black ship was moving, now, both lower and toward them. But so did the giant diamond.

  Shadows raced with all the movement. The black ship’s, and those cast all around. As both ships moved, it was a like a city active over a city asleep shone down, or the sun itself – it was hard to quantify. But Windston felt that, or something like it; he felt like he was witness, or maybe even victim, to a power so great, he couldn’t even understand it. The sun ship. The white diamond. The animate light.

  The smaller ships it brought were nothing like the black’s. They weren’t wood, nor did they putter. They plummeted, embedded themselves in the rock where they landed. What beings escaped them were armored in chrome, all over. Their visors glowed blue. They blasted about, all about, everywhere. They were even near to where the boys ran after Rain.

  As fast as they could, they raced. He wasn’t heading any one way, but rather adjusting as things crashed all around. Though he did seem to have a purpose.

  As bugs swarmed in ways previously unimaginable – from everything, everywhere, and in numbers that shaded the sky – he finally found what it was he sought. A cellar. A well inside of it. A rope that dropped down. And then, underground, a tunnel.

  It was small. There was no water there, not by the bucket. There was a trickle. Some drips. Nothing more.

  That was all the better. They crawled. They had to. They couldn’t fit otherwise, unless in maybe the lowest crouch.

  Frem was in the back, his bag in front of him. He shoved it onward, behind Windston – sometimes into him.

  The ground shook and quaked. Rain carried on, Furggen behind him.

  They went on that way for a while. Too long. What they emerged from was a dark, cavernous expanse of untouched earth and rock. For leagues they traveled here, under stalactites, over and through stalagmites.

  At the end of the way, there was an arch of brick and stone. Through it, a sewage system, like before. Only this one was cramped and rough in places; rock and earth shown through, where in the lower rise it did not.

  Water was plentiful here, in puddles, in pools, in rectangular holds. Plentiful, but rancid. Open pipes over holds were dry. Over the puddles and pooling recesses in the floor, water dripped. A system typically active was shut off. Or broken in abandonment.

  Frem lit the way now. Before, they’d just followed the glow of the spike Rain bore. But they were too dim, and the air was too open here.

  Though there was the occasional thunderous rumbles, and the ground quaked very lightly, whatever commotion there was going on outside was muffled by the sheer volume of rock that stood as all around as a buffer. Windston feared utter mayhem still raged on, and it was probable that it did. He felt like maybe they’d jumped into a fire they couldn’t withstand, and wondered if they’d make it out of there, or if it’d find them.

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  Just then, Rain stopped. Furggen growled, but didn’t speak. And then he said, “It is up now.”

  There was a latter of wood and iron in a case of iron running up the wall. As Rain gripped it, Furggen looked up. And then he climbed.

  The boys followed. This climb was a very long one, higher even than up the rope they’d taken to the second rise. But it ended, and a draft of cleaner air and the shots of guns and screams of men let them know they’d met the end before they had.

  In the open, on a paved triangle between brick and grass, Rain hurried them out. They followed his lead as Furggen took flight into the darkness. The white ship was dim, a faint outline blotted out in the middle by the smaller black one. But it was active, and it hummed, and men jumped from it, even still, like they had from the black one. And there were smaller ships about, both wooden and metal. And dots in the sky, the flames beneath the packs on backs. And bugs were there, buzzing about in swarms, ending dreams and devouring insides.

  They took shelter under an open manger. Hay lay scattered all about, and the bones of livestock. Over them, they crept. Quietly. In the open again, they found a path behind a row of houses along the wall of the third rise. There, cut into the wall and rising, was a stairway of slab. The middle moon was bright above it, over the shrines and temples of an ancient past; over the ruins and remains of two eras, two peoples, two civilizations. On that rise, they found very little in terms of homes and shops. It was all spectacle, all relics, all a draw of the outsider to look within. It was smaller, too – the smallest of the rises. It was a chip whereas the others were blocks. And it was easy to travel. The dead were few here, and so too were the bugs.

  Up the fourth rise, which was another cut in the wall, they stopped. A light was there all the sudden, at the top of the stairs – just beyond it. The littlest moon was above this flight, the other two blocked by a spike of rock left unchanged for a thousand years, more. But there was another light too, one that showed soft green, and sparkled.

  Rain stopped. He stopped and his posture slumped. He breathed then, in and out, and Windston felt it palpably as relief.

  The light dimmed. And then there was a figure, black against the moonlight. Rain resumed his walking – that’s right, walking, not running. And the figure walked slowly down too.

  “Who goes there?” Frem shouted.

  Windston shushed him, but he was otherwise ignored.

  “I said who-”

  Furggen landed just then. He plunged from above onto Rain’s shoulder with a heavy thud.

  The figure was almost upon them. Frem lit his hands aglow.

  “I said who goes there?!” he yelled, almost a scream now.

  But he didn’t fire. In fact, he didn’t move except to drop his arms. He immediately put them back before him, lighted the way, as what he saw in a flash looked better observed than not.

  It was. It was a woman. A beautiful woman. Perhaps most beautiful. She was pale in the moonlight, her hair a silvery glow. She wore what looked like light armor over her chest, but nothing metallic otherwise. A skirt was beneath it, and high stockings. Her arms were thin and subtle, her wrists small, like her hands. She was shapely, but thin. All of Windston’s height. Nothing more.

  She winced, held her hand in front of her eyes, and then raced to Rain, who she hugged.

  He did not hug her back.

  “Rain Gray,” she said staring up into his eyes, her voice rich, beautiful. “Here we are, together again, in peril.” She was smiling. “Isn’t that the way of it?”

  He didn’t say anything, nor did Furggen, even when Frem gripped at his shoulder, and then Furggen’s legs (which the bird promptly withdrew) to inquire.

  The woman, who had turned and glanced over her shoulder at the climb she’d run down, which now lay before them, gave Windston one quick glance, and then Frem, before turning away from them.

  “I said what’s your name,” Frem said. “Hello – can you hear me?”

  “Agnessa,” the woman said softly. “Agnessa Iadora.”

  “That’s… strange,” Frem said. “But okay, I guess. I’m Frem. And this is Windston. We’re the other people with you. Right now.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just walked ahead, her heels clopping clip, clop, clip.

  Rain followed directly behind her, Furggen on his shoulder. Windston was just behind him, off to the side, and Frem was on his other side, though he’d hurried up to pester the woman.

  “How did you get here?” he asked her. “Did you come here through my dreams? And what was that light? Was that you? I can do that. See?”

  She ignored him.

  “I’m not a kid, you know. I’m older than I look. I’m…” He paused, made a shushing gesture at Windston. “Sixteen. Almost seventeen. You’re, what – eighteen?”

  She still didn’t say anything.

  “That’s not that different from sixteen. If that’s what you are. If you’re older… well, I don’t care if you don’t.”

  “Age isn’t the matter,” she said.

  Furggen chuckled.

  “What, is it ‘cause I’m blue?” Frem asked. “I can change. I can. I could do that. I’d do that for you.”

  They reached the top of the climb. There, Agnessa rose into the sky and turned, lit aglow as a green star beneath the blackness and the pale whiteness of the ships above. She scanned the area. Or appeared to do so. Frem stood there, craning, mouth gaped, shining his light at her skirt but seeing nothing.

  Windston rolled his eyes and looked at Rain, who he hadn’t noticed had been staring at him. He wondered then, as maybe he should’ve all along, who was he? Who was she? Why were they there? Why were they – he and Frem – there? Was it really to kill the bugs and the swirl? Or what?

  His sword flashed for a moment as Agnessa landed, shocking him with an energy not unlike when Frem had shot it.

  She seemed to notice. Or, she had at least noticed the sword. She was staring at it, and Rain moved between it and her, nodded his head. Furggen said, “Yes. As I said.”

  Agnessa looked around him at it. And then she held her hand out. “May I?” she asked.

  Windston winced, withdrew the sword, held it behind him.

  But she didn’t drop her hand. She held it out, just as she had, and said, “I only want to look.”

  Windston sighed. “Fine,” he said. “But it might-”

  She took it. She took it abruptly, almost as a snatch, and presently looked it over.

  Her eyes widened as runes appeared on the blade, raced from the hilt to the tip, where they faded. “This is it,” she said. She looked at Windston. “Where did you get this?”

  “I’ve always had it,” he said.

  “Always,” she said. “What is always? For as long as you can remember? From the time you were born?”

  “I was found with it.”

  “Who found you with it? Where?”

  “My mom and dad. Well, some hunter found me first. But he was dead. They found me looking for him. My dad did. He took me home. He was the mayor. This was in Zephyr.”

  “Zephyr,” she said. She was looking at Rain. He shrugged.

  “It’s just south-” Frem began.

  But she shushed him, said, “Quiet!” and, “Don’t you ever shut up?”

  She handed the sword back to Windston, looked him over, a look of disgust on her face. “Take it, I guess,” she said.

  “I will,” he said back, feeling a bit angry about the way she did that.

  She turned away from him then. She turned away from all of them. She was walking off ahead, briskly, and Rain lumbered after her. She was talking, maybe to Rain, but maybe to no one. She was complaining about something.

  She stopped, turned and pointed a finger at Furggen. “I thought you said you didn’t see anything there!”

  The bird shrugged, his feathers parted and puffed on his neck and head. “Furrgen.”

  She carried on again. Out of nowhere, a monstrous bug, all of twenty feet long, flew out from behind a building before them, its wings and legs splayed, hissing.

  She didn’t miss a beat. She didn’t jump, she didn’t flinch, she didn’t crouch, she didn’t stutter. She simply raised her hand and the bug burst into pieces and guts and goo.

  Another one, same thing.

  Another one.

  Another one.

  “If you had just done what you said you’d do,” she said, “maybe all of this,” she said, spreading her arm as if displaying, “wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have been in the middle of God knows where, and Rain, you wouldn’t…”

  There was a pause.

  “Where were you again?” she asked.

  Furggen said, “I was in the hills.”

  “The hills,” she said, lowering her head, her ponytail, which was long and silver, rose with her gesture so that it was only just above her butt rather than over it. “The hills!” she said louder.

  She looked at Furggen and he puffed again.

  They had made it to the steps of the fifth rise.