PreCursive

  The two Solstice cssers guarding Dusk, Thirty-Two, and I abandoned us to charge Hook. Apanying them were well over a dozen different Loyalist guards who had been waiting out in the hall, all trying to furiously cram their way through the double doors leading to the baly.

  They weren’t really succeeding.

  As tied up as I was, there wasn’t much I could do to help Baldric, still locked in a standoff with Rhiannon.

  ‘Wasn’t much’ though, wasn’t anything.

  I stuy foot as far as I was able to as one of the guards passed me by. I wasn’t expeg that to actually do anything, but…

  It did.

  The surprisingly clumsy Solstice guard stumbled over my foot. In fact, he stumbled so hard that he actually tripped, and wasn’t able to stop himself from tumbling over the side of the railing in front of me.

  I bli the odd spectacle as they fell out of sight down to the courtyard below with a brief scream.

  They were drowned out, though, by the sound of the refugees from the Stacks own panicked yells. At the sight of the Duke’s assassination, they were all trying to flee the courtyard in a mad rush to the gates. For some reason though, they weren’t able to make it out. The view was blocked, so I couldn’t see what was stopping them, but there was no movemehe back half of the courtyard. Instead, there was almost a crowd crush developing, which caused my stomach to drop even more.

  I couldn’t imagine how many of those poor people were going to die in the midst of this.

  I could only spare a brief gnce for their plight, though, as things up here on the baly were progressing.

  Before any of the rushing guards could reach Baldric, even beyond the moron I’d tripped, a number of different Agents suddenly appeared oform to push them back. I was only a little surprised to see that they weren’t all Noe Agents. Instead, half of them were from SED, with their eerie bck spell masks obsg their faces.

  They rushed the guards and began to push them back, ons flying and fshing through the air. In moments, they had forced the guards away from the baly and down the hall oher side.

  Meanwhile, another, more familiar Agent dropped down from the roof above the baly to crou front of Dusk and I.

  Wisp, or rather.

  Sylvia.

  Without a word spared, she drew her short sword, and tried to hack at the powerful restraints holding us.

  Her sword, which I suspected was hewn from the same material as Grey’s own Stelrum, bounced off of the s. I heard Sylvia curse behind her mask.

  I shook my head rapidly, gesturing upwards to my mouth. Sylvia uood, and reached up to hurriedly rip the disgusting blood off of my mouth preventing me from saying anything. I wi the feeling of several hairs being torn out, but still immediately spoke. “She has the key,” I said quickly, jerking my head in Rhiannon’s dire.

  Sylvia followed my gesticution and cursed. “Then we go around,” She said grimly. She raised her sword once more, and instead of aiming for the s, she swung at the railing instead.

  That, at least, wasn’t obviously magically reinforced.

  Her bde sliced right through the iron of the railing.

  I blinked.

  Yeah, that worked.

  The railing fell away in pieces and us prisoners backed away from it. The problem was, even though we were teically free now, the three of us were still bound together. Thiry-Two still had a hood on their head, and they were, admittedly, keeping their calm pretty well sidering the chaos that was erupting all around us. I reached beyond Dusk and did them the favor of removing it, finally getting the ce to get a brief look at the young-sounding woman.

  I…wasn’t expeg them to look slightly familiar.

  She was young, as I was expeg, seeming to be in her mid-teens, with short-cropped, light blonde hair and emerald greehe pale-skinned girl was tense, with a serious expression on her nearly elfiures, and her eyes were darting every which way. They briefly settled on me, sending a strange bolt nition down my spine.

  Something about her…it reminded me of someone. Aeen I’d met a few weeks back, with simir c.

  Prince Oskar.

  But…I didn’t have time to parse that right now.

  None of us did.

  Because Rhiannon finally made a move, breaking the standoff between her and Baldric. The two of them had just been standing there in the few moments since Baldric's accusation, but strangely, they hadn't done anything. The only thing I'd noticed were a few odd fluctuations in the nearby Aether in their surroundings, but nothing physical had happened.

  Smiling slightly, the Vampire raised her hand into the air with one finger outstretched. Without breaking her gaze with the dwarf, she twitched that one finger.

  At the first sign of movement from Rhiannon, Baldric exploded into an imperceptibly fast lunge, but still.

  He hadn't been quite fast enough.

  Immediately, the far right wall of the pavilion exploded outwards, gss shards flying every which way. I had to duck out of the way in order to avoid being decapitated by a rge piece of razor-sharp pte gss flying through the air. When I ed my head back up, it was just in time to watch as a man rocketed out of the dust cloud of the explosion.

  A man I had nearly killed st night.

  General Atticus Longstripe, of the Herztalian 4th.

  In the brief glimpse I got of the man before he tackled a Baldric out of midair, I almost didn’t reize him. He looked almost wild pared to how he’d been st night, a visible snarl etched on his ursiures. He was bare-chested from the waist up, allowio see the rge roll of blood-stained bahat had been ed around his torso. Once again, he had fohe great mace he had been using in order to fight bare handed. But…I’m not sure it was his choice, this time.

  It looked to me that Rhiannon had direct trol of him. There was a far-off, distorted look in his eyes that told me he might not be fully in trol of himself.

  That was all I saw of the man before he speared Baldric around the abdomen and down into the courtyard. My mouth opened slightly in horror when I saw that the force of their impact had veritably pulped a small group ees that had been trying to flee in vain.

  At the level they were fighting at, I wasn’t able to keep with their fight pletely. But from what I could tell, Baldric kept trying to disengage from Longstripe to take the battle somewhere, anywhere else. Somewhere that wasn’t in the middle of a pack of i civilians.

  But Longstripe wasn’t letting him.

  Instead, he was swinging wildly, enraged by whatever trol Rhiannon had on him. He wasn’t b with Arts, or Skill, or even pure martial skill. No, this was a dispy of pure physical might.

  And the refugees were dying in droves from it.

  So much so that both the Agents who had ehe Loyalists below, and the Loyalists themselves, had entirely stopped. Instead, they were now doing their absolute best to keep the refugees away from the battle of the itans that was in the midst of the courtyard.

  They weren’t always successful. In moments, the fgstones were coated in blood and gore from those unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire.

  But there were enough soldiers and Agents doing what they could to save is, that whatever blockage had been at the entrance of the courtyard had been cleared. People looked to be slowly managing to escape from the crush.

  Rhiannon didn’t like that. She audibly tsked. “No, no, we ’t have that,” She said, raising her arm once again.

  Whatever she was about to do, Sylvia preempted her. Without a word, my partner rushed the Vampire with her bde outstretched and glowing silver. But the gulf between their strengths was just…too much.

  Rhiannon didn’t eveo look at Sylvia before ropes of blood sprang up out of o bind the Sculpted woman from top to bottom. She yelped as she fell face forward onto the baly, skipping across the surfapact the railing oher side. The impact was enough to visibly dent it, where Sylvia id struggling like a captive worm.

  “Not now, little girl,” Rhiannon said absentmindedly, her outstretched hand starting to glow a malicious crimson. “I’m busy.”

  I te how quick Sylvia had bee with, trying to take a step forward myself. But my feet, not to mention my hands, were still bound in s. I only managed a brief shuffle.

  “Nobody leaves,” Rhiannon said with finality, snapping her glowing fingers. A shockwave of tainted, bloody Maed in a sphere from the impact, traveling fast. In moments, it had passed us all by and beyond to surround the entire courtyard of the pa a glowing dome.

  Rhiannon had just trapped everyone here in a shield of some kind. The fighting, except for the battle between Baldrid Longstripe, ground to a plete halt. The refugees, soldiers, guards, and Agents all looked around in distressed fusion at their now fined surroundings.

  The Vampire who seemed to have meticulously arranged everything that had happened so far crowed in victory. “FINALLY!” She cried, spreading her arms wide and throwing her head ba exultation. “Finally, all the pieces are in pce! Let the ritual BEGIN!”

  With that, the flesh beh her sheer dress unduted wildly, and the creature masquerading as a woman…

  Stopped pretending.

  Two massive sets of batlike wied from her back, one of them nearly smag me in the face. Curling, ram-like horns rapidly grew from her forehead in an instant, to encircle her suddenly knife-like ears. Her hands a grew scales, the points of them sharpening into talons sharp enough to pierce straight through her shoes.

  This was no longer a woman.

  It was a monster.

  At some unseen signal, the fgstones of the pace courtyard began to shatter, to reveal hundreds, no, thousands of ruched into the bedrock below. I couldn’t uand them at all, despite my above-average litera the runiguage. Something about the sharp strokes and harsh angles of these particur runes made my skin crawl.

  The blood that had coated the fgstones from the victims of Baldrid Longstripe’s brawl sunk into the carvings. Slowly, they started to pulse in the shade of what they had just absorbed, casting the entire pa eerie shades of crimson.

  “The blood...of the i…” The creature that Rhiannon had bee breathed. Slowly, she reached down until she grasped the headless corpse of Olsen, still oozing from Baldric's decapitating strike. “The blood…of the noble…”

  She threw the cadaver down into the bloodbath that the courtyard had bee, where it impacted one of the disquieting runes with a spt. Almost immediately, the glow intensified.

  , she reached over to slit her own arm with her bde-like talons. She had to squeeze her arm, but she eventually produced a cupped hand of dark, coaguted, foul-smelling blood. She raised that hand up into the sky in near supplication. “The blood…of the loyal….” Rhiannon uttered, almost lovingly. Without another word, she threw that disgusting liquid out into the air as well, where it fell to the runes.

  They glowed brighter. Bright enough that their light almost began to blot out Tarus above. The air began to grow heavier with the weight of the corrupted Aether I could feel swirling all around me.

  Rhiannon smiled almost peacefully, her fangs poking through her lips. “Now…all we need is the blood of the mighty.” She chuckled breathily. “And it. Will. Be. Done.”

  My face paled at the implication. The mighty. Then…the fight between Baldrid Longstripe…

  Somehow, I found my voi the midst of this madness. “Does it even matter who wins?” I asked quietly enough that I’m not sure the monster would even be able to hear me.

  But she did.

  Rhiannon turned her head slightly to look at us prisoners, still hobbled by shackle and . She smiled slightly. “No.” She said simply.

  Dusk slowly closed her eyes to my left. “And what will happen when one does?”

  I was shocked to see geears of emotion gather in the eyes of the inhumaure holding us captive. “Then? Then I shall set into motion that which will reunite me with my mistress. With the orue goddess that this ungrateful world cast out.”

  “Ixiah…”