Sand padded gently beneath Liilia's feet, unable to ride the wind out of her way. The Thirsting Wastes made up most of the Vimovarv Province. They were the Fade's most distinct unswallowed victim. When it first sprung up, the Fade gobbled up the mountains from which the rivers in Vimovarv flowed. The skeletons of villages lined the dry riverbeds. Liilia steered well clear of them. The Other Liilia had a nasty tendency to flare up when it saw corpses. A town without people was as dead as a human without blood. Liilia would rather stray closer to the Fade than pass one of those husks of civilization. That horrible wall of gas loomed into the sky off to her left side as she strode north.

  Liilia was a tall woman with a face that looked perceptive in the same way water looks wet. Her age was impossible to tell. Her sharp brown eyes made strangers flinch as though she were brandishing a knife. Her hair trailed on the ground behind her in a protective sheath, not because she was a royal but because she damn well liked brown hair, and it was one of the only things she could get the Other Liilia to agree on. No one else's opinion mattered. Especially since most of the time they were trying to kill her, or paying someone else to give it a go.

  In keeping with this pattern, Liilia also wore her lunacloak everywhere she went. There was not a single circumstance where it was uncomfortable. Hot and humid, hot and dry, hot and bright, hot and dark, hot outdoors, hot indoors. It had hot under lock and key, which on Mekkendor meant it was set. None of this was to say it couldn't handle cold. Like right now, in the desert night of Barrid. Deserts were brutal places where it was always either scorching or freezing.

  The lunacloak wasn't short, but it looked that way next to Liilia's hair. It only reached down to her hips. It was a deep pink color patterned with maps of the sky and moons. Two hundred years later, it was like a family photo with lots of faces scratched out as the stars moved and left relatives behind.

  Liilia's hands were shaking at her sides. Again. Nights like these made Liilia grateful she had the sense to get rid of the one person she couldn’t bear to hurt, all those years ago. Whatever her life was like now, it had to be better than being around the Other Liilia. If Liilia listened carefully, she could hear shrill screams bouncing off the sand dunes, landing nowhere except her own ears.

  Liilia stopped walking. That should have told the people she’d detected that they’d made their last mistake. The last one that mattered, anyway. The moon Hepa, high in the sky, also would have alerted a more experienced lunomancer tracker that their lives would be measured in seconds from now on as its blue hue shifted to pink.

  When Liilia turned around, she was greeted with a band of surprisingly well-dressed bounty hunters. They didn’t actually greet her; they were hiding behind a few sand dunes she’d already crossed, visible through Hepa’s eyes that Liilia shared, highlighting them in pink through the terrain. But Liilia still felt greeted by the crossbows she saw on their fine clothing and the restraints hanging from their belts. The bounty probably read dead or alive. It usually did.

  Liilia’s eyes glowed as she started taking steps towards them, the seeming casualness of the intense brightness an intimidating show, especially to someone who’d never seen it before. Her hands sparked with the same light, little drops of magic trickling off onto the ground beside her feet as she approached her pursuers. They left little burn marks in the already scorched sand. Her lunacloak’s patterns started to shimmer and light up. By the time she took ten steps in the direction she had been coming from, she was a terrifying display of power.

  A fight like this was all about the witchbinder. The runomancer who had specifically trained to hunt moon-witches like Liilia. None of the other mercs mattered to a lunomancer of her caliber. But as she looked over these merc's silhouettes, she couldn't pick out an obvious mage. Did they not have one?

  The mercs showed no reaction as she approached. They sat there on the opposite incline of the dune, holding perfectly still, as one of the last lunomancers on Mekkendor bore down on them. Liilia slowed her stride. Her hair rose from the ground behind her, curling in the air like a whip.

  At moments like these, the faintest sound thunders in the strained ear, the weakest vibration of the ground feels like an earthquake, and the slightest movement looks like an ambush in full swing. Time slowed down for Liilia as she absorbed all the information Hepa’s birds-eye view could give her. She sensed a beetle burrowing a few yards away, and nothing else. That didn't calm her a bit. Her lunacloak’s patterns gave off an angry hum that only a lunomancer could hear.

  Through the distant screams, Liilia could feel someone else listening.

  When Liilia had crossed about a third of the distance towards the bounty hunters, she swiveled around just in time to block a vicious downward axe blow with a hastily summoned shield. Behind her, the bounty hunters vanished like crushed vapor grapes. Liilia came face to face with someone whose eyes glowed a dim purplish-grey. The same color as the Fade.

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  Liilia knew this face. She knew it better than any other. It was the same face she'd seen the Fadewraith wear before.

  “Hello again, Liily!” the Fadewraith said cheerfully as it swung its ono axe again. It slammed into Liilia’s shield and made a crack. Lunoplasm was a durable material, but Fade mist could make it look pathetic when it wanted to.

  That isn't her, Liilia ordered herself to remember. That's just the Fadewraith. She- it's worn faces you knew before. You know how to see through an illusion. You make illusions.

  The Fadewraith had disembodied intelligence, Liilia knew. This meant it could hold intelligence in its hands, examine it, put its thumbs in the eyes, and push. Liilia wouldn't let it.

  Liilia backed up and transformed the shield into a sword. Her hair rose off the ground as if she were underwater, coiling like an angry snake dripping with pink magic. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse. Probably from all the screaming.

  “Trying to kill me this time?”

  “I detect a hopeful note to your inquiry!” the Fadewraith said. Its long vaporous hair trailing in the air behind its wispy head like Liilia’s. “Too bad. I’m not here to kill you at all. You’re coming with me.”

  Fuck, it even talked like her now. Liilia bore her teeth.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Liilia replied. They circled one another in the sand, watched over by Hepa and the Fade. Liilia’s lunoplasm sword was short, but swift, dull in color but not in edge. The smaller size of Liilia’s weapon granted her room to summon another, smaller tool if she needed. Most of Liilia's more unique arsenal of lunomantic spells would be useless against a creature like this. Illusion magic didn't work on a being literally made of smoke and mirrors.

  The Fadewraith’s grin grew. “Actually, you’re coming several places with me. Starting with the Fade, and ending with hell. Whichever version you please.”

  The Fadewraith charged forward, and the two crossed weapons. The blades sparked on contact as if they were still in the midst of heat treatment, spraying sparks that were only harmless to the mage that summoned them.

  The Fadewraith’s larger masakari prevailed in all head-on collisions, which was why there were none. Only deflections off of hastily summoned bucklers from Liilia. The shields dissipated and reappeared with necessity. She kept her sword ready in her dominant hand. The pair’s hair guided itself in the air behind them with the power of their wearers. Liilia fought like water. Her attacker fought like a very fast boulder. Light flashed and shone all around them. Sand sprayed up and blew about in the chaos. Hepa’s outline strained to support her partner with their combined power.

  The axe nearly glanced the wrong way, into Liilia's face. She caught it with her short sword, binding the heavy weapon between both of hers. It trembled with the tension, inches from her nose. The Other Liilia wanted out so badly, but now was not the time. With Hepa in the sky, it was easier to control her.

  “How many times do I have to kill you before you lose my trail?” the lunomancer shouted. “Why do you still bother with us? Why do you keep wearing this face? Do we scare you that much?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Liily,” the Fadewraith said with a dark smile. It pushed its axe closer. “There is no ‘we’ for you lunomancers, and if your kind scared us, you’d have been dead long ago like the Empress magics.”

  With an angry yell, Liilia ducked to the side, avoiding the blade pushing through her defenses. She disintegrated her buckler, and the axe slammed into the ground with a sudden lack of resistance. Liilia re-summoned her buckler and struck the off-kilter Fadewraith across its face. While it recoiled from the blow, she plunged her sword into its gut. Liilia bashed her buckler against the blade, forcing it out the Fadewraith's side and spraying black fluid across the kicked-up sand.

  The Fadewraith made no sounds of pain or anguish at the slice of its torso. Not to say it had the decency to be silent as it teetered and collapsed on its side in the moonlit sand, its masakari crashing beside it. Instead, it laughed the whole way down. Its manic eyes met Liilia’s as they both stopped flaring their magic and their eyes returned to the closest thing they had to normal.

  “You’re alone with yourself,” the Fadewraith said smugly. It started to dissipate, further staining the sand an ugly black color. “See you soon. You were never enough for any of them, and you won’t be enough for me.”

  Liilia said nothing. She started walking the same way she’d been traveling before, as if no fight had taken place. This, of course, angered the Fadewraith, so for the last few moments of its existence, it swapped its voice for the sound of a harpsichord.

  A harpsichord being played by a complete novice.

  When Liilia stopped and turned, her eyes were moist. The Fadewraith was nearly gone, but it still had time to laugh and nod.

  “Yes, she’ll be dead soon, too, Liily. The orphanage couldn’t protect her. You did the work for us, like those good little witchbinders you're always looking for over your shoulder.”

  The Fadewraith vanished. Its mist started trailing along the sand in the direction of the Fade, like a horde of tiny insects who couldn't decide what shape they were.

  With that, Liilia was alone with her least favorite person, dragging her feet and sheathed hair through the sand while her moon fruitlessly tried to comfort her.