The jagged fingers of the shade came to a shuddering stop just before they dug into my eyes.

  So close that my lashes brushed against their tips when I blinked, I found nothing in its featureless face.

  There were no eyes for me to see the pain it must be in, and there was no mouth for it to scream. It was absence made animate, a vicious void that had come to take whatever it could grasp within its hands.

  It was truly nothing, and I made it even less.

  With the turn of my wrist and the cold force of my will, it shattered into countless shards of broken ice. Pitch black and glittering atop the muddy ground, it joined all the other broken black bodies that lay at my feet.

  I dashed back and took the first small moment of rest I could since the battle had begun.

  Amongst the broken black shade and all those that I had slain before it, I pressed my back against my brother’s and took a much needed breath.

  “There is no joy in this, Kat. There are far too many for us to withstand the rush. Let us be done with this.” The giant man said softly over his shoulder. His wild black hair was beginning to fall loose from its knot. Every hard line of his body was slick with sweat and his muscles stood so staunchly against his mud splattered skin that it looked like it was set to split. He had taken off his glasses, which told me all I needed to know about how he intended to end things.

  Garm’s words sounded sour in my ears, but they were not wrong.

  Reality had torn.

  A thin black line had opened from the void and the shades had come pouring out of it like flour from a split bag. We had not arrived to the tear quick enough to close it, and in the time since, we had been overrun by the ruinous invaders. The uncountable bodies that I had brought freezing death to met the shredded shadows of those that Garm had torn apart and formed a black circle around us. As ever more of them spilled from the tear, scraping and clawing mindlessly through the opening, all the colors around us had begun to fade.

  Thousands, thousands of them I had slain and a thousand more would fall by my hand, but I had never seen so many at once.

  The muck and mud underneath our feet was already becoming transparent. It would not be long before the animate voids took the light from the sky and the green from the trees in the distance. The weight of their nothingness would split the tear further then, and leave nothing but collapsing reality in their shadowy wake.

  What Garm intended to do would work, but I could not let it happen.

  “You must close the tear until it can be properly sealed. Do so, then flee. Call for Fus. I shall hold them until he arrives.” Garm said, his oxblood power already bristling wildly up his massive arms.

  “You mustn’t. It has not yet been a month since you were able to walk again.” I called back to him as the mass of shades began to tighten the circle they had formed around us.

  “And it has only been two for you." He grunted as he swung a vicious strike and destroyed dozens of the mindless shadows in one blow.

  “But I have learned much since then. I will not hurt myself again.” I lied. I would get hurt, but my pain was worth Garm keeping his true nature buried deep within himself where it could not reduce the measured balance of his soul.

  He would have argued, and more than likely would have won, if I had given him the chance.

  "Kat." He sighed through another strike, but I could tell by the sound of his voice that he had accepted what I was going to do.

  In the small space between where Garm and I had stood and the circling shades, I brought the tips of my toes across the wet muck and drew a line. It took nothing but that familiar movement, one I had done a thousand times and would do a thousand times more, for me to find balance.

  That balance brought all that I was to my center. I let my power flow from my navel and wash over me with its breathtaking cold.

  With the first crescent draw, I spun and drew a second, connecting them into a perfect circle.

  Garm did not need to call his true name like I did. None of my brothers or sisters required such an embarrassing ritual to become themselves, but it was so much easier for me if I spoke my name aloud.

  "Upon the sign of the moon, I name myself Frostdancer!" I called out, having no time for the shame I usually felt.

  With another turn, my veil of white frost draped down over my face. On the next, my pale blue ice shaped into my dress of crystalline mail and spun around me in a glimmering wave. The final turn of my transformation froze the muck beneath my feet and sent a creeping tide of ice stretching towards the oncoming shades.

  Wherever it touched, whenever it met one of the animate voids, they became still as they were encased by the power of my wintery soul.

  I was almost complete. All of me had almost taken shape, but every warrior needed a weapon and every dancer needed a partner.

  "By my hand, you will meet The Bitter End." I shouted at the soulless black creatures as my spinning came to a graceful stop with my hands held high above my head.

  From my navel, my power spiraled up my arms and coalesced into my rapier of unbreakable ice. With a sudden, sweeping, bow, I brought it down with my right hand and felt the unshakable certainty that always came with its wicked point.

  With my eyes set on the tear, I let my partner lead.

  Without thought, I lunged forward and buried The Bitter End through a shade. My feet slid over the ice underneath them and carried me forward.

  The enemy could not withstand my piercing cold, nothing could.

  When the needle tip of my rapier was buried in the chest of one of the mindless creatures and none of its silver blade could be seen, I leapt. Landing and carving into the ice with the blades of my feet, a hailstorm erupted up from the frozen ground and tore through the shades like a volley of arrows.

  Pitch black bodies falling all around me like shadows in the light of the moon, I kicked off the berm of ice I had formed without the need to know where I was going.

  When my partner needed me to spin, I spun. If it needed me to back step or strafe, I made it so. When the need to press arose, there was nothing that could halt my advance. We were locked in perfect rhythm and we carved through the mass of shades without a missed step.

  In the heart of the dark creatures, I spun forward towards the tear and did what I was meant to do. Freezing the shades that were still clawing their way out of the ragged black line, I sowed reality back together again with nothing but my cold will and threads of pale blue ice.

  My dance was done.

  I knew it would not hold, but there was not a soul in chaos that could have closed it permanently alone.

  What I had done was beautiful, and though Garm had not been standing by idly and observing, he gave me the applause I deserved.

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  The applause came in the way of the vicious impacts he broke the remaining shades apart with. Every red brown strike he threw out from his massive arms turned the animate shadows into black sludge that seeped the color from the muddy ground. In the time it would take me to slay a dozen, he ravaged dozens of them with each wild swing.

  The flood of them stopped with my stitching of the tear, it would not be long before he had ended the rest of them without needing to transform as I had.

  My brother spun on his heels and sent savage claw marks ripping through the diminishing mass. His long black hair had come loose fully and it spun around him like my veil of frost did me. I met his button eyes as his spinning came to a heavy stamping stop.

  They always looked so small without his glasses.

  He raised his fist and shook it once in celebration, and then reality tore again.

  Right behind his back, the vision of the sky and distant trees behind him bulged out and split like an overfilled bubble. A flood of limbs and claws rushed out of the black tear and tore it open wider.

  Before he could react, the shades spilled out and drowned him in their darkness.

  "Garm!" I screamed, desperate for my voice to reach him in the writhing mass.

  My desperation did not come from fear for his safety, he was sturdy and the shades would not be able to devour him quickly enough. The fear I felt came from what I knew the sudden onslaught would lead him to do.

  I felt his power before I saw it.

  Like the ground was splitting beneath my feet, the frozen shades I had left in my wake broke apart into pieces. My balance could not be thrown off while I was my true self, but it was only by sheer force of will that I kept my own tear stitched shut.

  All at once, the mass of pitch black bodies burst up from the ground on towering spines of Garm's power.

  His ursine helm raised to the sky, a guttural growl echoed out of his maw.

  My brother had shown his true nature, and he would be lost in it soon enough.

  Blinded by the fur that ran back from his helm and wove into his armor, Wildreaver had taken shape and the very land beneath him would pay for that truth.

  More and more of the shades poured through the tear and I was certain that they would never stop.

  Wildreaver brought his savage claws down to the muddy ground with so much force that the enemies that were caught beneath them were crushed before they could be cut.

  His massive shape sunk deeper into the muck and all that he had sent up in the air came back down in thick rain.

  The well spoken, bespectacled, man was gone. The true him, the worst of him, had been brought to bear and he would not stop unless he was stopped.

  He needed help that I could not give him no matter how desperately I wished to.

  Father Fuscus! Please! Garm needs you! I thought with all my might, fully aware of my own inability to give my brother what he needed.

  The shades that slipped through the tear were slain and added to the ruined corpses of the ones that had come before them as soon as they stepped into reality. Higher and higher they piled around him as he tore into the ground with savage snarls.

  In the same way that a tree falling would make anyone stop and watch, my brother's true nature was strikingly violent.

  Father Fuscus did not answer. He did not burst from the ground and wrestle Garm to the ground. I could hear none of his hammer falls. There was no sign of his gems or stones.

  All that came from my desperate calls was a pure white mist that swept in over the top of the destroyed ground.

  All of my worry and all of my concern washed away as the mist began to settle down over my veil of frost.

  "Caerulus. You have come." I whispered.

  Walking atop the mist was she who had given me everything.

  "He called for me before he embraced his nature. You may release your hold on the tear, my moonbeam. I am here." Caerulus said softly. Her graceful steps atop the white mist came to an end and she became utterly still, like morning dew frozen on the tip of a leafless branch.

  Wildreaver’s rampage carried on beneath her feet, his sightless carnage focused only on what his claws could rend.

  Such blind violence, such savagery, should have never been so close to her. The two sights together were dissonant, conflicting, and wrong.

  Like a new day’s sun had warmed that same icy dewdrop and it had dripped down from the branch and landed on the still pond beneath it, she spun on the tips of her toes and let herself fall through her mist.

  Plummeting down towards Wildreaver in rings and ripples of white, her silver hair streamed up past her face, but her blue skin never met the sullied ground.

  As if reality itself had been created purely to hold her there, she hung weightless in the air with her toes pointed up towards the torn sky. She was like a crescent moon. The only sliver of light in an otherwise pitch black night.

  Wildreaver turned his eyeless ursine mask up to her and drew back his massive claws.

  With one of her perfect hands, she reached out and placed a single finger in the center of his brow.

  The massive man slowed his savage strikes before his arms fell limply to his side.

  She began to sing. There were no words, only a gentle melody of perfect notes that I felt like I had waited all my life to hear.

  As her song filled the shade smattered killing field, the tears began to close. Even beneath my own failing wall of ice, the pawing hands of the shades receded back into the nothingness beyond.

  Wildreaver fell away from Garm and settled into the muddy crater he had wrought in a sheet of dark brown dust. My brother’s eyes were shut as she lay him onto the ground and the celestial vale of her power that covered him healed the wounds his transformation had left him with.

  “You have come.” I whispered as I left my icy stitches where they hung over the tear.

  Still hanging in defiance of the natural laws of reality, she stopped her song long enough to speak with me.

  “To me, my moonbeam. There is little time, but I will save you from yourself.” She said.

  I broke my hold on my wall of ice and ran towards her as Frostdancer began to fall away from me. The bitter end left with its end buried in the muck, I reached out my hand to join with her perfect blue fingers.

  Before I could touch her, before she could save me from the breaking, I felt myself fall. . .

  I came back to myself with nothing but blue books above me.

  Still in The Well. I told myself, visions of Katarina, Frostdancer, Garm, Wildreaver, the shades, all hanging in my mind like the blurring ends of a dream.

  Caerulus, appearing in every way to be falling, but remaining where she was, could not have been more clear. Her shape, color, and song, all of it avoided the blur for a moment longer than everything else did.

  I had heard her song before, several times in several different arrangements, whenever the singing stairs song found their way under my boots.

  Climbing to my feet, I searched for the thing, but saw no sign of it.

  “Thank you! I am sorry about earlier,” I called out to it. “I would like to be friends!”

  There was too much in my mind for me to wait around and be disappointed by the lack of response.

  I took two long skipping steps and lunged forward with an imaginary sword in a pale imitation of how it had felt to be Frostdancer. One, two, three times, I thrust my make believe Bitter End through the nonexistent shades and laughed at the power I had felt in her memory.

  When my dance was done, I swung my arms down the aisle like I was Wildreaver. What it would be like to be able to crush and tear anything that stood in my way.

  What would it be like to lose my senses and be little more than a beast?

  I knew the answer to that. There had been no pretty armor or dangerous weapons, but it had happened to me a time or two.

  My wild strikes brought me to the end of the shelves that surrounded me. When I turned around to continue my rampage, a realization struck me.

  Wildreaver, Garm, had been a sorcerer.

  Katarina had been fighting alongside a sorcerer; she had thought of him as her brother.

  “I must tell Anna.” I said under my breath. There was too much I would forget if I did not leave The Well and tell her.

  Leaving The Well had never been easy for me. I had been crushed, dragged into memories, fallen from great heights, and gently fallen asleep.

  The icy blue of Katarina’s book laying open where it must have fallen from my hands made it even more difficult.

  “I am supposed to view three memories. I shouldn’t disobey my coach should I?” I asked aloud as I skipped over to it and sat down cross legged before carefully pulling it into my lap.

  I wanted to feel like Frostdancer again. I wanted to know more about The Mother in Blue.

  I would remember what I had seen already, how could I ever forget?

  With the book laying open in my lap

  As carefully as I could, I opened the book to its final page.

  There was no black letter or cross mark to stain the last of the empty white pages. From my admittedly limited understanding, that meant two things.

  Katarina was still alive, and there would be no skeletal horrors waiting for me in her memories.

  "Thank you," I called out to the thing. "Again! This is very helpful.

  Pleased with my good fortune, I placed my hand and the last page of The Mother in Blue's book and felt myself fall back into her.