The chase. Serib held her totem-staff across her lap, drifting almost dreaming, quiet with Youth’s thoughts misunderstood. In the presence of her ‘amnesiac’ sister she had regained memories for all the sense that may make to you. Her head resting on Shay’s shoulder she pictured constants the same and variables rearranged - she imagined Payn there writing away at her desk, Fate sewing on and on.

  Each of us a thread to her, drops of ink smeared by fingers into letters and some of us not even that.

  ∞

  Gadail and Woid were having a good laugh. Time was there for a moment long enough that Twilight passed its darkening torch to Night’s envelop and the ‘lesser stars’ further away were bright with the rest. From Gadail’s fiery hammer charring branches all the deeper seemed that focal and the wooded moon of Ehl’yiteth shone its mystery greenish blue across the vast steppe. Poet-nomads committed to their myths that skyward sight they would not see for long: the moon through its lifecycle back and forth in shimmer from halves to wholes and crescents reversed or upturned, that we or the moon itself were bound to an axis disangled by the flood.

  Tribal fires sporadic through the nightscape, ‘human stars’ Serib thought, and dared one of her tingly-cold feet closer and closer to the fire.

  ∞

  She did not want Time to come back - her head was where she it wished to be. The sound of crackling wood and laughter under stars all she ever needed to hear. Her mortal duel with Patinya seemed so far from here - as from a life not her own a thing Syrib must have committed - the sight of moonlit blood pooling shoreside. A fellow apprentice following her truth.

  “I should use you as a cane more often.” Gadail’s words jolted Serib and her eyes though open opened properly by the fire; halting her wander of dark places. “My leg feels much better.”

  Woid napped on Shay’s other shoulder as none could recall him having shuffled over there, and Serib was startled to see the stars’ structures injured by Timelessness; obeying strange orbits unknown to Gravity’s home, dropping or falling out of their destinies always theirs and no longer.

  ∞

  Stars disappeared and reappeared or never did as Serib saw a human shape among them. There in silhouette were four or more bleak wings flapping soundlessly from the same human shape - an angel descending closer.

  ∞

  “Who are they?” she asked, and as Gada’il turned Serib felt the earth pounding: footsteps hurtling nearer.

  Her staff was cold as she took it from the ground.

  ∞

  A lad was running towards them across the starlit steppe away from the falling darkness in the sky. Shay did not intervene, seeing only panic in the lad’s charge and set her focus on whatever was chasing him.

  Whoever he was he jumped over the fire in his way and the flames leapt with him - as though commanded to - wrapped the sword in his hand a torch of strange white flame his hair dark and long in the night made clearer. His skin painted with starry spots as though from the skies he had come.

  He turned to thrust his flaming sword to the sky and a bolt of flame from it flew quick as lightning knows at the wings pursuing him. The firebolt struck his foe illuminating that horror's coming. The boy in darkness-again sprinted off with Serib quick behind him.

  “Oi.” Woid umbra-stepped to grab the lad’s shoulder. “Where are you going?”

  The lad however kept running, and Woid held his invisible hand in discomfort: the runner was boiling to his touch, known to him, and Woid called out:

  “Lord?”

  ∞

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Shay was facing the dark wings approaching, a vial from her harness ready in her hand, and Gadail hailed to Woid over the uncertainty:

  “Leave him, Once-Prince!” and then to Serib turned his quieter words carried by the breeze: “Go with the apprentice, get back on the road of your journey. Earth you wield with Fire next to find.” He turned his gaze next to Shay, after grabbing his totem-hammer still hot with embers from the smouldering branches and all the more was dark under the stars. “Will your tricks obscure its vision?”

  “For now.” Shay nodded and cast the vial up into the sky.

  A gust of Gadail’s command shattered the glass and from the broken sound a harmless mist was blown both thick and far.

  ∞

  “This is not your fight - nor mine!” Gadail walked ahead of the rogues with both his hammers brandished. “Your shadows will not help you here. If you have business in Haven then touch again the rune that brought you. Anywhere else is closer than this.”

  Woid sheathed his dagger back into shadow and Shay took her hands from the hilts of her swords:

  “What control would I have of this?” she asked, staring at the all-completing rune scarred into the tree trunk.

  Gadail spoke facing his many-winged foe - it was still many clouds away, growing in size and menace as it neared having corrected its course, its astral trail a tail finite:

  “Those are carved of Syrib’s own blood from her own tusk, and you are of that blood. Control is a strong word indeed! Wherever it takes you will be fairer than this.” He tried again his previous point.

  “Black Angel?” Woid looked up to the uncertain skies, then back at the lad. “You again…”

  Shay placed her hand near the glowing rune and took what moments there were left. Serib was looking back for a moment as she ran. Through mask and under moonlight, across Night’s distance and Timeless waves their eyes met.

  ∞

  Gadail meanwhile was chanting to his hammers facing the winged mass plummeting towards him its greatest threat, conjuring up a furious gust of wind powerfully throwing the black gargoyle off its wretched path. The earth and air trembled - that a meteor dethroned from its sojourn would have lesser shaken - as The Black Angel crashed into nearby fields. From its impact, layered and rolling waves of black smoke poured. Gadail’s thunder rumbled in the darkening skies, as black smoke below with the storm clouds clashed.

  ∞

  Serib did not wish to leave - it was happening again. Watching Gadail go. Leaving Shay and Woid behind. She was running back to say goodbye or help the impending fight when she saw the infinity rune flash with Bronze, and someone grabbed her arm. The rogues were gone.

  “Come on!” The runner had grabbed her, though his voice was eerily quiet.

  She could see him yelling, all his desperation quieter and quieter. Serib threw him off easily and turned to see the winged fiend was close enough to fight her master now. Amongst smoke clearing by the breeze, under greener moonlight strange-Silence its name, The Black Angel a statue to her eyes - its long weapon a sword perhaps and wreathed with darkness billowing against the starlight. The extinguished blade crashed unheard into the upheld hammer-totems of Old Gada’il, The Windlord.

  ∞

  In a tunnel or corridoor long ago with Woid - this angel the same force she there or then had met - that she had in kindness dared touch. There it had shielded her and Woid from view with its illusions, and here it fought her master, chased the runner-lad next to her.

  “Best if we do not get in their way! Come on!” She barely heard the lad pleading as Serib tore herself away to safety, seeing the duel was no place for an apprentice.

  There was for a while no sound at all as they ran. She could only hear her blood rushing and hums or hymns of the ambient void. With staff in hand she could feel his steps beating into the earth and her own thumping as she followed him, into an inky thicket of sheltering trees. Strobing moonlight shone through gaps in leaves and branches, and finally what seemed to them the long-lost song of wind through trees was loud.

  Her momentum was carrying her. She tried to stop as the woodlands around grew weirder still - the more trees she put between herself and Gadail, the cool night faded and ever warmer daylight began to blind her unprepared. She leaned on a nearby tree squinting, holding her staff against whatever threats she could not see. Birdsong was varied on the wind. Trees creaked under crinkling leaves. The calm unaccustomed, judgemental to her panting. Night had again become Day with weightless chance or change. She breathed shakily and powerlessly until all bright and blurry blended into clarity.

  ∞

  A harsh Summer in which the woodland was hush; the season had gone without its storms and warm rainfall. All the green that Spring and Summer grew together was turning yellow. At the edge of such trees Serib stood and out on the simmering steppe her master and his enemy were nowhere to be seen. Her sister and Woid were gone. In other ages, travellers to that lone tree in search of shade would never know.

  ∞

  As she looked for answers, having been thrown proper from one season to another, parched branches snapped underfoot, shaking her nerves. She was looking for the infinity rune she must have passed unbeknownst, hidden among these trees perhaps. Though what range did such runes possess? The one Shay had touched - could that have rippled this far as well? How far is far in Timelessness and therefore dismantles rules of Space and Tense? Was that the answer at all?

  She turned the lightning of her eyes to the lad she had chased-in-follow into the fading trees, leaving Spring behind.