The journey across the fifth rise passed uneventfully. Unless a parade of misfits led by a beautiful goddess triumphantly bursting foes with the wave of her hand is eventful. It was too easy to be Agnessa Iadora. Here, it was. She was over-leveled, so to speak – obscenely so – for the likes of the monsters in the area. The same insects that nearly killed Windston, and left Frem and him creeping about with Rain, were nothing with her here. Windston felt here, with her, like he had felt alone in Zephyr. It’d been a long time since he felt that way. Powerful. Untouchable.

  Safe.

  Frem couldn’t get enough of it. He even got involved, firing here or there, only to watch his blasts explode behind a misting splatter of enemies she so casually felled first.

  Rain was less enthusiastic. It’s like he’d seen this all his adult life, or at least during those times he traveled with Agnessa. He walked at pace with her, only behind her, his face cast to the ground.

  Just beyond the gate to the sixth rise, where the aristocratic once lorded over those below, Agnessa stopped, looked around, her hands out at her sides to halt the others.

  She stood this way for a while, maybe a minute, her eyes closed.

  She faced Rain. “He is here,” she said, nodding. “He is.”

  Frem said, “Who?”

  Furggen said, “The Wizard King,” and immediately took flight.

  They walked more slowly after that. That skip in her step, the exaggerated swivel of her hips, was lessened. Her strides were longer, but slower. And she paused here and there to shut her eyes and think. In those moments, Rain hid. The boys did as he did, Frem with great reluctance, usually dragged by Windston.

  This rise wasn’t like the ones below. The buildings were tall, extravagant. Figures were carved and mounted all about, from dragons to gargoyles to angels to men and women. Those who died here were few. Or their remains had been picked away.

  In the middle of the road, the wide road of flat stone that ran north to south down the center of the rise, was a great green statute of aged copper. It depicted a robed man with curly hair and a long beard to match. He clutched in both arms a monstrous book. Something was inscribed at his sandaled feet, but none there could decipher it. Its was a language long forgotten.

  She paused in its shadow, a faint thing among others beneath the moons and the glowing ship. Silvery gray clouds passed overhead here on that mid-May night. Something about the ship had affected the sky. Or something else had. The impenetrable mist was dispersing.

  Windston followed her gaze when she lifted her head. The two towers loomed over them, as they did over every rise. Only now they were close, and their true size could be measured. They sprang up like fingers in the night, one even with the lay of the seventh rise, the other just higher, stumped but on a hill. A light shone there, one that reached up to the sky in tendrils so faint, even in staring one wondered if they were really there.

  “The plague queen is there,” Agnessa said. “But so is the wizard.” She winced, looking pained, strained or both. “He is up to some form of wizarding madness, though I can’t tell just what.”

  She hurried then, at Windston’s full run. They chased her, some with more success than others. Furggen swooped low and matched their speed. The final gate to the path to the seventh rise flew before her, tumbling. That would be her final assist for the trio. She launched herself skyward into the darkness and wasn’t seen by them again that night.

  The boys continued after Rain in her absence, up the long and winding way of flattened and smoothed stone, ridged only at the steepest climbs for wagon wheels and carts.

  At the top of the way, under a gateless portcullis, Rain slowed. His spikes appeared out of nothing in his hands. Frem lit his hands aglow, and Windston’s sword raged in blue flames, surging in arcs of yellow lightning.

  They stopped then in a defensive triangle. They were a small troop in the midst of towering statues along the only road on the seventh rise. Statues, and an unseen enemy. They could feel its gaze upon them. Gaze, not eyes. It had no eyes.

  The boys didn’t know why, but Rain suddenly lunged and Furggen took flight. They both coincided up high, higher than either boy could jump. A shadow they missed landed in the middle of the road. Rain landed behind it, Furggen beside.

  A voice rose out of nothing, seemingly from everywhere, and spoke in a deep tone so muffled, none there could understand it. Though they did catch that it knew their names, the robed figure with the face of swirling nothingness.

  “For I am the Haathuud nymph. And I shall be lord,” it said louder.

  Rain, who had been circling it slowly, made another lunge for it.

  The Haathuud leapt up into the air in a storm of buzzing, loud but immediately quieting. It was fast, faster than Rain, who was faster than the boys, even Frem.

  There was nothing but quiet then, and then a static sound from the stumped tower – and a flash, and then nothing.

  Rain peered that way, and Furggen landed on his arm as he did.

  Frem, who had been off on his own, hurried to Windston. Together, they stood ready, in the light of their weapons, their eyes wide and darting this way and that.

  The Haathuud nymph fell with a thud in a crouch where he’d been. He slowly rose, his hood falling limp behind him.

  Rain moved in, slowly this time, with only one long spike in both hands.

  In a flash, the Haathuud lunged toward him. They crossed spikes for a moment, Rain on his feet, the Haathuud leaping about here and there, flipping and twirling as if to taunt the dead man. He landed a kick to Rain’s face, reached up and snagged his ankle as he rose, and slammed him on Windston, who had lunged himself to attack.

  They hit head to head, a ringing in Windston’s ears drowning out the flurry of blasts Frem shot the Haathuud’s way, but missed. A statue teetered and groaned, slanting forward as its mount of slab slid into a crater at its feet. The Haathuud perched on its head with a flutter, ducking this way and dodging that as Furggen swooped down on it.

  As Rain stood, the bird relented. It positioned itself before him, wings spread, until he stood tall and straight, recreating his spikes.

  Windston stood too with a little help from Frem. He leaned on him for a moment as the Haathuud laughed.

  The sound was like a chorus, like echoes of deep laughter.

  “It isn’t too late to flee,” it said. “We will find you. Yes. But in weeks, maybe. Even years. You can live. You can dream. You can breathe. You can feed. You can breed. You can even, perhaps, forget. For a while.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Why are you like this?!” Windston yelled.

  The Haathuud laughed again, and Windston leaped toward it, his sword crashing down where it suddenly wasn’t. There was a flash as the head of the statue was suddenly cleaved in two. Two tons of copper fell to the road, cracking a wide stone slab. It lay there teetering, rocking. By the time it stilled, and Windston had landed in the grass north, the Haathuud returned in a puff of smoke at the statue’s feet.

  It was Frem’s turn. He rained hell, stone and muddy grass bursting, the statue adjusting to the new terrain before falling with a crash on its side, dirt flying.

  The Haathuud appeared over him, its spike falling. Rain kicked it before it could fall on Frem, and it went tumbling, groaning.

  Still, it dusted itself off and laughed. “Is that the power of the mighty Rain Gray?”

  Windston was to its north while the other two separated. They triangulated around it south. Furggen flew overhead in a circle. The bird’s focus had been drawn further south, where a trail of dust was rising. Something had run that cloud into the air. Something big. Something powerful. And it headed their way.

  The Haathuud seemed to sense it too. It found its way to the top of the tallest statue there, an armored man with long hair, a hand on the hilt of a sword at its side. It was postured, feet apart and pointing southwest as if in aggressive warning.

  Feeling suddenly alone in the dark, Windston made a break for his friends. Together, they stood in a triangle again, Rain at the lead, and moved slowly toward the statue.

  The Haathuud let out a chuckle, and then it threw back the sleeve of its robe and let a flurry of jagged matter loose and fly. Frem fired back while the other two rolled away. He was cut on his forehead and had missed the Haathuud. But the Haathuud came down anyway, as its statue had suffered more in the exchange than Frem. It landed lightly on the ground between Windston and Rain, the statue teetering and crashing on its back.

  “One final chance,” it said, a gravelly cacophony of rising and falling tones in the air as a lighted gust circled it, engulfing it in translucent white flames.

  Rain lunged. Windston leaped. Frem fired.

  The Haathuud found itself dodging one attack only to find another. Windston flew into a wall of stone east beyond the statues. But the Haathuud’s hand clattered with him, and they both slid down and then fell into a springy patch of clovers.

  The monster held its wrist in silent agony as it made a run first for Windston, and then for the tower to avoid Furggen’s attacks. Steaming liquid sizzled where it fell from its wrist. At the tower’s steep climb of stone steps, it stopped and faced them.

  “You were warned!” it yelled, the sound of its voice echoing throughout the vast courtyard. “Now you shall feel my wrath!” There was a flash on its wrist, and a hand grew. The boys hadn’t noticed, but it shrunk as it happened – shorter, and narrower. But it was no longer crippled, and the blades that flew out from its wrists fell into its hands like Rain’s. Armed, it flew out in a rage to meet him there at the middle of the path of broken stone.

  They clashed, spike to spike, while Frem aimed and Winston neared from behind. At the perfect opportunity, Frem fired. Rain was tossed away but the Haathuud was off balance. Windston swung again but missed. In an instant, he found himself impaled on a spike, right where the Haathuud had dripped its venom before. He hung there, supported by the Haathuud’s strength. And then, as it withdrew, he lay there, gasping.

  The Haathuud loomed over him, watching. Frem fired at it, but it stopped the blasts with an outstretched hand. Rain was on his feet again, but fear seemed to keep him back. It was in the air. It was the Haathuud’s. It was palpable, and it was contagious.

  The ground shook. Heavy steps neared. The Haathuud, in a sudden panic, crouched like a frightened cat and looked ahead at the open portcullis.

  There was nothing there. And then there was. A giant of a beast, covered in black fur, with the face of both a lion and a man strode in the fashion of a werewolf. Its eyes were crazed, its fangs bared, and its claws extended as black hooks from its fingers as it roared in a sudden rage that shook the land.

  “Bombo?” Frem said; he recognized the strained shorts and vest.

  It was Bombo. It was. The skin changer king of Saria. The avenger. The enraged.

  He lunged at the Haathuud, for it was the Haathuud who he blamed for the death of those kids he watched die, one-by-one.

  In response, the Haathuud plunged its spikes into Bombo’s chest. They bent like wood against stone and broke in two. The massive beast that was Bombo snatched and hugged the tiny monster, ripping it with his claws, tearing it apart, bit by bit, limb from limb.

  He tossed it, the body and the head, which came tumbling down at Windston’s feet. There, limbs shot out again, this time from a very small Haathuud. But as it stood, its other limbs came clattering toward it, as if drawn by magnetic energy. It absorbed those limbs, and flung first Furggen, and then Rain, who had launched a coordinated attack from above. The beast that was Bombo roared again, and the Haathuud answered its challenge with a mighty scream.

  Its scream was cut short. Windston had risen to his feet, his sword in hand, and plunged the tip of the blade into the Haathuud’s back.

  He was sleepy when he stabbed, but wide awake now, in a void of pure white light. The Haathuud was there, standing across from him. And there he was, standing across from it. An arc connected them from wrist to wrist. In that way, they struggled.

  He felt his vitality slipping. He saw the Haathuud growing. It laughed the words, you are revealed to me.

  In a flash, it was over. Windston was up on his feet, whole again. The Haathuud’s body was gone – only its robe remained. Windston leapt over it, dropping his sword as he did, and ripped at the pack on Frem’s back.

  Frem struggled and kicked, punched and squirmed and cussed. Bombo grabbed Windston, but Windston threw him aside. Rain and Furggen were next, but it was as if they weren’t there, grabbing and clawing and tugging him.

  His prize in hand, Windston shoved Frem over, and held up for the world to see the sack containing what he considered the keys.

  The keys to what?

  The Keys... to the Adombodee.

  He found his sword and snatched it from the ground. He flew then, not as himself. He flew then, not as the Haathuud. He flew as a new being, of two beings unassimilated into one anew. He shot into the sky like Agnessa, toward the black ship.

  That ship sprung alive in uttering, and stirred, slowly wheeling. A great horn sounded from within it, and rays of green light crossed this way and that toward the flying boy.

  They missed, or he dodged them. But they pierced the ground where he’d been.

  Bombo and Frem and Rain fled from there with Furggen. The rays kept crossing down. On and on they ran, as on and on Windston flew. The white ship joined the black in attacking, with streams of white light that rainbow-ed the night sky, melting dirt and stone alike. The city was under fire, melting and crumbling.

  Within himself, Windston wrestled alone with Haathuud. A struggle for dominance, for power, for control.

  For control over his own body.

  And he was losing.

  The Haathuud was a powerful force, maybe more so in essence than physicality. With each touch, it understood more about Windston. But with each touch, he knew more about it.

  He knew more about everything. He was… enigmatic. He, himself – Windston was. Though he wasn’t sure why the Haathuud, its hive mind, thought so. He was a keeper. A wielder. A bearer, of something. A warrior, against forces – but what?

  The Red Star.

  What? The star?

  He saw it then, in his mind, clearly. It was there. It was coming. It streaked about space at a speed so great, it’d be there – soon, someday, in his lifetime. It’d be there, in their space – with their sun and moons. With the planet.

  A fear overtook him. It overtook the Haathuud, too.

  For a moment, nobody controlled the body. It fell from the sky like a brick.

  Windston liked that better. He was limp, but he was fighting. He had wrapped up the Haathuud, and he was winning. He clutched him. He… imagined him, buried. He buried him, somewhere within his thoughts. And then he sealed him shut.

  All of him. All of him but his foot, which the Haathuud gripped with a hand. It was only a hand now, in that white expanse. A wrist and a hand, clutching Windston’s foot.

  Bombo caught him. He caught the boy and ran with him. The sword he still gripped stung him with every touch, but he roared and carried on.

  Frem had snatched his bag. He flew with it now. They were already on the third rise. Bugs swarmed everywhere, dispersing in panic themselves.

  What few soldiers remained flew up toward their ships.

  The ships….

  They weren’t firing. The black one was fleeing. But the white one was charging.

  The party ran and ran and ran and ran. By the time they were at the beach, the white ship fired, and Mirra, the great city, from the very inside to almost the outer rises, was no more. A great hole was left at its center, a smoldering mess of molten everything in withering ashes melting in billowing steam.

  The white ship glowed then, brightly as before, when it first appeared. It vanished in an instant, leaving behind a scar in the vision where it was.

  That, and soldiers, who screamed when caught and devoured.

  A green light hung there too, where it had been. It glimmered, and sparkled.

  That light was there, in the sky, beneath the moons, beneath the star. The red star.

  The Red Star.