When Heroes Die

“The beginning of a new story often necessitates the closing of an old one. When embarking on a journey, be careful with what you choose to let go of, lest it be chosen for you.”

– Quote attributed to Tariq Isbili of the Dominion of Levant

I didn’t actually know much about what the Sovereign of the Red Skies could do, aside from hearsay. He had the kind of reputation that made it a good idea to not ever come to his attention. He had earned it during the Conquest by raining hell-fire down on the armies of Callow. Literally.

That made him being here something I wasn’t too happy about.

But it wasn’t the end of the world. I was confident I could deal with fire. So long as he wasn’t a ward specialist, I should stand a chance in a fight.

To his credit, the Arcadian Artist reacted to the presence of the Warlock almost immediately. He opened his mouth and spoke.

“Harmonize.”

I hadn’t even been aware he could use that more than once, but considering I could use my own Grace repeatedly, it made sense. That was when pandemonium broke loose.

I had only the briefest of moments to put up a defence. A shimmering sphere of light surrounded me, before I was sent blasting up into the sky by a narrow ray of frost. Like a pinball, I slammed into the chariot. The momentum sent me off at an angle and my barrier bounced up higher into the sky.

Disoriented, I created a platform beneath myself before bringing my momentum to a halt. It was so easy in comparison to before. The world didn’t fight me on it, and the Artist wasn’t pitting his will against me either.

Then, I took a moment to look around.

The Artist had overlaid what appeared to be a battlefield from Arcadia on top of Creation. Spreading out from the building I had just been evicted from, was the intersection of Summer and Winter. Verdant jungles met icy tundra and high in the sky above, two familiar figures waged war against each other.

Princess Sulia and the Prince of Nightfall.

They each had about thirty attendants with them. On the Princess’s side were winged knights, and on the Prince’s side were horned figures riding what looked to be unicorns. They were broadly spread out, with about a hundred feet between each of them, and for some reason were locked in single combat.

Two of them had been fighting amidst the wreckage of the building below.

A raging pillar of flames shot from Sulia’s fingers and was nimbly dodged by the Prince, only to smash into a cathedral in the distance. The agonized wails of innocents from the distance burned themselves into my mind.

Hastily, I smothered the flames.

To my frustration, the Prince returned the favour, dropping what looked like a large chunk of glacier at the Princess. She blasted it aside. It smashed into a tower, which toppled into another building nearby.

They closed in on each other, weapons drawn. Lines of fire and frost traced themselves into the sky, painting mesmerizing patterns. If it hadn’t been over an actual city, it would have been spectacular to watch.

Roaring infernos and shards of frost were rapidly flying backwards and forwards, with a significant portion of the excess smashing down onto the city below.

I made a few more attempts to intercept projectiles, before conceding that approach was futile.

Neither side was particularly discriminate in how they chose to fight.

The merging of Arcadia and Liesse ended, but the figures remained.

As if the day could get any worse.

The two Fae Royalty were so busy with each other that they hadn’t bothered to restrain me at all. I was able to affect most of a mile around me, although nothing within a couple of feet of them, or the Warlock.

The Warlock, who coincidentally had something like eight dense layers of sigils around him, was no longer focusing on either me or the Artist. He had instead turned his attention to the sky. The glyphs snaked around him sinuously, and more of them were rapidly starting to appear. I didn’t have even the slightest idea what he was attempting to do.

It made sense for me to try to make an escape here, I knew I was probably out of my depth.

I couldn’t.

Letting an entire city be destroyed in a bid to keep myself safe would be a regret I wasn’t willing to take on. Not when I was able to help.

So as stupid as it was, I was going to tentatively try to assist the Warlock, even though I knew it was probably a bad idea.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t fight back if he didn’t honour this unspoken offer of truce.

I would just treat this like an Endbringer fight.

If I were to guess, the Warlock was a much bigger danger than almost any other villain to me. He had a Name with a focus on magic, which automatically gave him an edge.

But saving people was more important than engaging him in a fight. I wasn’t sure I could beat him if he did choose to attack, but I wouldn’t back down if he did. He was one of the Calamities who didn’t actually do anything currently indispensable.

As far as I knew, the Warlock didn’t build or maintain infrastructure, and he wasn’t involved in running either Callow or Praes either. I didn’t know how much he contributed to the mental wellbeing of the other Calamities, but if he did help there, that was arguably the only positive thing he had ever done with his life. “The mass murderer has friends, too,” wasn’t a very good reason to keep anyone around. In every way that mattered, he was a net negative to society.

The world would go on without him.

I didn’t maintain much in the way of hope for trying to negotiate what I wanted with the Calamities, but if I didn’t at least try, then I had only myself to blame for it. Killing the Warlock might cut off that avenue entirely, but I doubted it. My impression of the villains in Calernia so far told me that they would happily negotiate with somebody over the corpse of their mother while loudly declaring their eternal friendship with the murderer.

Searching, I spotted a small, single storey building on the ground below and willed it away. I felt a small pang of guilt, but the owner could always replace the building. The same wasn’t true for people’s lives. In the sky, just a few feet above the tallest steepled rooftop, an inverted parabolic dish with a curled in lip stretched out below the combatants. It extended about a hundred feet in all directions from their point of conflict.

I hoped that any incidental attacks would fall into it and be properly contained.

In theory, it made more sense to try to imprison the two Fae Royals. Practically, I knew that they could break through almost anything I attempted to erect unless I burned a ghost on it. I wasn’t willing to go that far just yet. Not when I had other options. This would hopefully halt any splash damage from making its way down to the ground.

The smashing of flames and frozen projectiles into it felt like the pitter-patter of rain against my head, but was otherwise unremarkable.

What next?

I needed people to evacuate, or at least be aware that there was an emergency. As far as I knew, there weren’t any emergency protocols in Liesse for something like this, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do my best. I took a moment and focused, visualizing what I wanted.

A large section of road vanished and as it did, a sense of unnatural calm fell on everyone within the full mile radius of my aura. Emotional manipulations were the only effects I could actually extend that far without exhausting myself. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but right now seemed like a good time to go all out.

Great. There is no way I don’t establish the wrong kind of reputation like this. But if it works…

Panic in an emergency was bad. By doing something this overt, it made it clear there was a problem, and that people needed to move without causing a riot. It wasn’t much, but this was a way I could prevent more harm while dealing with the threat. Then, I let out the wail of an alarm, shouting at people to leave the area. The fight in the sky was hard to miss, so I didn’t exactly need to point out where it was, I just required them to keep a level head and move out of the way.

A towering column of fire smashed into my barrier. The shield shattered into shards, and the conflagration flattened a two-storey building in the distance.

It seems I need a better barrier.

Committing to the loss, the fourth spectre vanished. With only three more left, this was something I was sure to regret later. The more of them I burned through, the higher the eventual cost. I also wasn’t happy using them on what was probably the less dangerous enemy, but at least I was reasonably sure the Warlock wouldn’t burn the city down to the ground.

A massive, golden, translucent sphere materialized around the two major combatants. It should in theory keep them contained for long enough for the Warlock to finish whatever it was he was doing, while allowing them to continue killing each other.

The prison itself rapidly became a wash of oranges and blues as they continued to trade attacks.

A migraine began to build up in my head. While they were content to fight each other inside of it, the incidental damage that was accumulating was still placing a strain on me.

It also did nothing about the remaining Fae, but they were not beyond my ability to affect.

Fire and hail continued to fall mercilessly out of the sky as the attendants continued to trade blows in their almost hypnotic duels.

This wasn’t acceptable.

A wave of hell-fire blasted its way into the sky from behind the Warlock’s chariot. Ten of the Winter Fae vanished as a result of his efforts.

Reaching out mentally, I tried to snuff the Summer Fae out. To my surprise, it was effortless in comparison to my previous encounter with the Prince of Nightfall. Four of them vanished into a puff of smoke. Whoever these attendants were, they clearly weren’t important.

That didn’t stop them from making a mess of the city below.

A detonation sounded out, uncomfortably close to where I was.

That was when a new surprise added itself to the field of combat.

It seems the day can actually get worse.

I hadn’t been sure what had happened to the kraken. I could have been quite happy continuing to go on with my life, blissfully unaware.

Looking down from above, I caught sight of a sixty-foot wide squid materializing. It was spread out across the roofs of several nearby buildings and seemed somewhat diminished compared to when I first engaged it. Currently, it was flailing around with half of its body on fire. I suspected it would be more of a threat to civilians than me or the Warlock.

If I knew where the Artist was, disposing of it would likely be as easy as killing him. Unfortunately, I had lost sight of him on account of the much larger threats.

I felt control of my prison begin to slip away, as if someone else was trying to wrest it from me. It took me a moment to realize what was happening. The Warlock wanted control of it. I let him have it. The extra mental toll it added on wasn’t worth the effort of being the one responsible for containing the combatants. If he wanted to contend with the Fae, he was more than welcome to.

The relief I felt as possession of the sphere passed to him made it much easier to focus on the fight.

Turning my attention to the remaining lesser Fae, I snuffed them out almost disdainfully. They weren’t in Arcadia, they were in Creation, and right now the rules were on my side. All that remained was the octopus, the Princes, and the Warlock. Time for me to choose a new foe.

I looked briefly to my left and saw the Warlock in his chariot, surrounded by a dizzying array of magics. He was half a hundred feet away, floating in the air, much like myself. So far he had not taken a shot at me. For now, I would leave him be.

The Fae were a problem I couldn’t deal with, but the kraken was one I likely could.

Where is Roland? The city is going to the hells and I need help!

One of the squid’s tentacles smashed into the side of a two-story building, demolishing it and sending debris hurtling towards the Warlock. The Warlock’s Chariot ascended, being missed by only a hair’s breadth.

The tentacle wrapped around some shrieking civilians. Reacting on instinct, I coated it with a layer of rime. Before I could do anything else, it squeezed, sending viscera spraying all over the area. Frustration at my failure to save them reared up, but I mentally batted it aside.

Fuck.

I wasn’t about to let this slide.

Once more, I started to ascend. There was no reason to remain within the construct’s range. Layering panels of hardened light in the sky, I rose up, gaining a better view of the fight.

I tried to dismiss the thing, but it had been stuffed with what seemed like every last soul the artist had. This really was his attempt to go out in a blaze of glory, wasn’t it?

The Warlock reached into his robes and then tossed what I guessed was salt into the air. It vanished in a cloud of coloured smoke. Then his large working finished, and eight rings of darkness snapped into place around the barrier he had stolen from me. The hues inside the sphere almost seemed to wash out, as if the contents were partially displaced from creation.

The sigils floating around the Warlock compressed into a minute, intricate sphere that began to orbit his left hand.

One tentacle slammed down on another building, and another swerved towards the Chariot. The building that the kraken was on had caved in entirely, its mass falling through into the rooms below.

Nimbly, the Warlock moved his chariot out of the way once more. He had started up another major working, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

Concentrating on the squid, I focused my attention and honed it to a point. Then, I transfigured the remains of the surrounding building into a mass of mineral oil. What was good for the goose should be good for the kraken, after all.

The creature let out an unholy shriek, flailing like a toddler. Two more people were sent hurtling into the sky. Carefully, I suspended them and started lowering them to the ground. I wasn’t sure how injured they might be, but there wasn’t much I could do about it right now. At least, not with all the larger ongoing concerns.

Looking back at the kraken, I frowned. That hadn’t been what I was aiming for when I attacked it this way.

I was about to try working on a method of containment for the beast when two sinuous snakes of fire headed my way from the Chariot. It seemed that despite the ongoing disaster, the Warlock was willing to engage me as well. It didn’t really surprise me. Expecting people to work together in defence against shared enemies would be far too reasonable.

If it didn’t happen when the world ended, why would it happen against all of this?

I tried to dematerialise the snakes. To my mounting frustration, my will found no purchase. Who used wards to throw fire at people? He had weakened the boundaries of creation in a line trailing towards me, and the flames were simply fire from some other dimension leaking through. I tried containment next. Snow was pulled out of the surrounding environment. It snaked up into the air and formed a sphere around the snakes. Collapsing inwards. The snakes disappeared.

I sent a helix of light spiralling towards the chariot in thanks for his gift of snakes. It returned to me as a flock of flaming swallows. Already having an effective method of containment, I encased them in snow. Problem dealt with, I turned my attention back to the ongoing disaster.

This isn’t going anywhere.

This part of the city looked, smelled and sounded like it had been through an Endbringer attack. Most of the buildings within sight were either frozen, on fire, or in the process of being crushed by the beast. Explosions rang out, and hallow screams of despair could be heard in the distance.

Smoke rose up everywhere, making it difficult to keep track of what was going on.

I started trying to restrain the kraken. Debris disappeared, and chains of light started to restrain the creature. Heartbeats later, the chains broke.

… Well, if I can’t contain it directly, what about indirectly?

I carved out a chunk of the city centred on the squid, then sent it levitating up into the air. At that point, I slowly started to reshape it into what would hopefully be an effective prison.

A tentacle slammed into the flying chariot, sending it crashing into the ground below. Idly, I looked down and caught a proper glimpse of the Warlock. He was a dark skinned, broad shouldered, bedraggled looking man. Dusting off his burgundy and gold robes, he stepped out of the wreckage.

I was snapped out of my reverie by another tentacle coming down from the island above.

Maybe raising this thing in the air wasn’t the smartest idea after all.

The tentacle almost pulped me. I had mere moments to surround myself in a stronger barrier. That didn’t stop the pane of light I was standing upon from shattering under the force of the impact. I was sent careening towards the pavement below.

Despite the cushioning of my shield, I still found myself bruised as I climbed out of the wreck beside the Warlock. I hacked out a cough. The acrid taste of the smoke was cloying this close to the carnage.

The Warlock spared a glance in my direction, then turned away and focused on the squid.

I tried to attack him with a beam of light once more, but it slammed against one of his barriers.

The kraken continued to flail above. It hadn’t attempted to leave the island yet, despite my efforts to contain it having failed. One of its tentacles slammed into a building on its platform and sent it flying off into the distance. It smashed against the city walls, causing parts of them to crumble. The structure must have contained something highly flammable, as it had ignited in a blaze of green.

That part of the city burned against my etheric touch. I yelped.

A look of annoyance briefly crossed the Warlock’s face. “Only I am legally allowed to send this city to the hells,” he declared.

Well, isn’t that ominous.

That was when he pulled out a silver knife and slit his right palm. Three drops of blood fell onto the pavement. At that moment, the second major working he had begun finally drew to a close.

“Up you go,” He said, sounding positively cheerful despite the ongoing fight.

The kraken appeared to be picked up off of my floating island, as if hoisted by an invisible hand. Seeing no reason to keep it up there any longer, I gradually lowered the chunk to the ground. The squid rose higher and higher, floating up in the sky. Flailing about, it seemed to strike invisible barriers around it. Wards. He was containing and lifting it with wards.

He waved his bloody palm absently in the direction of the beast, and then said only a single word. “Crunch.”

The surrounding air stilled, as if the world was holding its breath. Then the wards around the cephalopod began to compress. As the sphere grew smaller, its outline became visible. An intricate gold latticework that was slowly closing in. As fascinating as it would be to watch the beast implode in slow motion, I suddenly had much more pressing concerns.

The Warlock turned my way, his eyes narrowing.

“Aspirant, that’s a Name I haven’t seen before. I’m sure I’ll learn something fascinating once I have your frozen corpse on an operating table.”

Suffice to say, I wouldn’t be too happy with that arrangement.

“Can’t we just pretend I wasn’t here?” I asked. I tried dropping a large rock on him from above while we spoke. If I wanted to have a chance here, then I needed some way past his barriers, since I couldn’t just affect him directly.

“I think not,” he replied, amused. Without even turning to look at the rock, he detonated it into a shower of splinters.

With his right hand, he started working on another staggeringly complex spell.

The intricate array from his earlier spell continued to orbit around his left wrist. Dagger still in hand, he fired a beam of frost from his index finger my way. Scrambling, I dived to my left. The cool air overhead warned me how narrowly I had avoided being iced. I responded in kind. I fired a particoloured beam of light in his direction while starting to dash away. The ground was precarious, the roads a mess after all the conflict. I made patchwork changes to it while trying to make my escape.

I floated the shard of a broken mirror in front of me, giving me a way to watch him as I ran. Considering what I had seen his last two major workings achieve, sticking around didn’t seem to be smart.

The Warlock ignored my attack disdainfully, and it fizzled out once more against his shield. He didn’t seem to even bother trying to attack me, instead working on completing the more intricate effect. Then he started to chant under his breath.

Ominous.

Right, it seemed that line of attack was a dead end. It didn’t really surprise me, but it was best to be sure.

Hoping to buy myself some time, I shrouded him in clouds of billowing darkness and continued to run towards the end of the alley. It lasted about ten heartbeats before a weird green acid like substance started to eat its way through the effect.

Beside me, I noted a boy whimpering in pain. His features were badly scorched, and he looked no more than ten years old.

Fine, I’ll help the kid.

It wasn’t the sensible option, but I couldn’t just leave the kid when it would only take a moment to help him out. I stopped, then focused on healing his wounds. The process was effortless.

Of course, it’s easy now that Max is dead.

Pulling in some rubble from beside me, I did the same for my eyesight and my arm. Now that I was out of the painting, I was willing to take the risk. With the help of my Name guiding me, it took only a couple of heartbeats and barely any effort at all.

Not that having those fixed did much for me here. This wasn’t a fight I would win with two arms.

I started running away once more.

Do I risk teleporting away?

Doing so would almost certainly tire me out. Teleportation was hard to do, although I could do it to anywhere within both my line of sight and my presence. The problem was, if the Warlock came after me after teleporting, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself for long.

I didn’t know how effective illusions would be against the Warlock. It was clear to me, though, that nothing else I had tried so far had succeeded. If he placed a ward around me, I probably wouldn’t escape. Focusing, I manifested the most distracting image I could think of. A not insignificant chunk of road vanished from my left, and a massive vision of the Brockton Bay skyline blossomed into existence around us.

Illusory skyscrapers manifested from nothing, overlapping the increasingly damaged city of Liesse. Parts of a fake building imposed themselves between myself and the Warlock, cutting off his view. After everything else that had happened, it was a significant mental drain. Despite this, it was still much less of an effort than attempting to teleport. I took a gasping breath, then started to run once more.

Then, I felt a ward slam down, locking me in place.

It pinned my movement, preventing me from moving anywhere outside a very small area.

The illusion fizzled out.

The Warlock hadn’t even looked up from his working.

This is bad.

The ward hadn’t limited my ability to act within it, but that didn’t really matter at all if I couldn’t leave.

Letting the mirror fragment drop, I turned back and faced the Warlock. I would need to find another way to resolve this before he brought the fight to a close.

The pitch of his voice rose. His spell was nearing its end.

What else could I try? Maybe I could use a vacuum offensively? I created an opalescent sphere around him, about eighteen feet in diameter. That way, there was no interference from his wards. I made the effort to evacuate all the air out of it.

Briefly, I found purchase before he twisted my sphere in some way and the air came rushing back in. To my dismay, I found that he was exceptional at working with barriers.

His larger, more complicated working continued. The sibilant chanting from the Warlock drew to a stop.

He opened his mouth once more, only this time it was to converse with me. His voice was deep and he spoke loudly. I could hear him clearly, despite the distance between us. “Would you care to enlighten me as to how such a thing as you earned a Name at all?”

I didn’t answer. I was running out of ideas on what to do. How about modifying the temperature? I superheated the air outside his protections, then was forced to duck behind the remains of a building as he sent the air billowing away.

I felt another ward fall in place, cutting my range in half.

He didn’t seem to be sure of exactly how to contain me, but that didn’t matter much. He was working it out fast.

The Warlock started to funnel the heated air up into the sky absently, so I removed the excess heat again and converted it into an attractive force centred on him.

Parts of the chariot’s wreckage nearby came hurtling towards him. Without even sparing it a glance, he blasted it, sending it careening through a stained-glass cathedral window in the distance.

What else can I do?

As far as I could tell, he had limited my movement horizontally, not vertically. I didn’t know if it was possible to climb high enough to escape the trap. But I would give it a try.

Running on spiralling radiant platforms back up into the sky, I transfigured some debris around the Warlock into sand, then turned the grains into glass. Levitating the shards, I sent them hurtling his way rapidly in an undulating cloud. He reacted quickly, trapping the glass in a spatial deformity that caused it to loop in on itself. It was only a couple of heartbeats before the glass vanished somewhere else that was beyond my ability to affect.

Another ward locked into place, cutting off my ascent.

What other options did I have left?

… I should have teleported out while I still had the chance.

That was when the spell the Warlock was working on finished.

The world as I knew it began to distort. I didn’t know what the effect was doing to me, but I didn’t want to find out. Scrambling, I pitted my will against his. I had no luck. As I expected, it was a ward. A monstrously complicated ward.

Fuck.

In the moments I had spent inspecting it, he had taken an already complicated spell and pushed it far beyond what I even had a hope to understand. Feeling it out with my mind, it was like I was inside an intricate knot. No matter how I moved, it felt like I was tied down.

It reminded me of the feel of the banner when the three of us had fought the absence demon, only this time from the inside.

… The Warlock wasn’t just trying to contain me. He was attempting to bind me.

A sliver of dread slid up my spine and panic started to set in. I wasn’t willing to spend however long serving as this monster’s slave.

“You would be a proper nightmare to fight with another twenty or so years tacked on,” he added absently.

I tried feeling my way through the effect. It wasn’t stopping me entirely from affecting the world just yet, although I suspected that was still to come.

Instead, it was trying to chain me to the will of the man. Force me to obey his every command. More and more, my actions became sluggish, as if my body no longer followed my own commands.

Find something, Taylor. Anything!

In a bid to distract him, I turned my attention to the ground beneath his feet, vanishing it. He stumbled for a moment, but his grip on the spell remained firm.

“What are you anyhow? There are twenty-three kinds of demons and girl, you aren’t one of them. You aren’t a person either, that is for sure,” he continued to talk conversationally. He walked as he spoke, coming to a stop leaning against the wall of one of the now ruined buildings nearby.

“Whyyyyy don’t you tell meee, se you’re so talkative? Therrrre’s only sooooo long before I you down,” I slurred out a taunt. The effect was ruined by how hard I needed to struggle just to speak, but I doubted he would be impressed regardless.

More and more invisible strings started to latch onto me. I felt like a mummy, wrapped tight in linen cloth.

A part of me hoped I could distract him by drawing him into a monologue. The villains around here seemed to love those. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the distraction, but any extra time would help.

“You couldn’t even hold your own against an oversized fish, girl. Don’t bother pretending that you’re in my league.” He replied.

He reached into his robes, pulling out more spell components as he talked. My efforts to distract him were proving to be futile. Whatever he was doing in his bid to bind me, he was doing without seeming to pay much attention to it. From the moment he had started to actually engage with me, it had quickly become clear just how outclassed I was.

What else could I do? I could try to send more direct attacks his way, but I doubted it would do much. Fireballs, lightning, and beams of ice all had the same problem, and the moment he finished binding me, it was over.

Do I risk it?

I wasn’t sure if anything I could do could break through his wards directly, but if anything could, it would be something that I hadn’t been able to do before. There was a chance it knocked me out in the process, but I would rather risk it then just give in and accept being this monster’s slave.

Turning my attention towards some debris, I put all of my attention into transmuting it into sand. It took three tries, and tears of frustration pooled at the edges of my eyes as I worked.

Come on, Taylor. You can do this.

I didn’t want him to catch onto my plan before it went into effect, so I sent it swirling around him as is. Despite appearing non-threatening, he made the effort to disperse it regardless.

It seemed I was going to have to take a gamble on it working from a distance then.

Please let this work.

Struggling, I suppressed hysteria as I repeated the sand generation a third time. Then, I focused on my impression of Fléchette’s power, digging deep into persevere. Doing something like this was beyond me without a Name, but I wasn’t so sure now. Straining, I imbued the effect into the sand. The fifth ghost vanished.

Mentally, I commanded all the sand to move.

I didn’t discriminate, I didn’t care what it hit along the way. I just wanted this man gone.

It swirled towards him, a violent, destructive sandstorm that annihilated anything with mere touch alone.

His eyes widened in shock. It was the first time anything I had done had actually drawn a reaction. He spat out an incantation faster than I could hear, and it seemed as if the very dimensions between him and the incoming sand rapidly contorted.

For a moment, it was as if there were multiple realities overlapping where the dust storm was.

From what I could tell, he was attempting to send the cloud somewhere else. I tried fighting back against him, making the effort to ensure that my plan worked.

The result was somewhere between both of our goals, which meant that in the end I lost out.

The cloud of dust went spiralling through the broken remains of a nearby cathedral, shredding what little was left of the place.

My shoulders sagged in despair.

Moments later, reality folded in on itself, and my attack vanished to somewhere that I couldn’t affect.

That plan had failed. Worse, he knew to expect it now.

This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t willing to accept this. I would try again and again, forever and ever, if need be. Eventually, he would slip up.

That was when I felt my perception gradually start to shrink. The horizon crept in. It started slow, at a snail's pace. The effect wasn’t limited to just one sense, either. It was as if a bubble had been placed around me and was inexorably closing in.

Much like with the octopus.

I tried to imbue something at the horizon with the same destructive effect to break the ward, but found that the Warlock had corrected his previous oversight. He had done something to interfere with my senses. The result significantly hampered my ability to fight back.

My attempt fizzled out.

Panicking, I tried directly pushing back against the working in a clash of wills. I didn’t really expect it to work, but it was better than doing nothing. At first, I had no luck, and my mind just slid into a complicated knot. But as the effect grew closer, it became easier for me to understand what was going on.

I’m not going to be this man’s slave! I won’t allow it!

So I began to innovate, creating a defence of my own.

It took some effort, but eventually I was able to shape my will into a crude shimmering boundary and use the meeting point between his many gossamer threads and my barrier to stall the jaws of the trap. It was an attempt at a counter-ward of sorts, albeit without any of the Warlock’s finesse.

They latched onto my shield, but they weren’t latching on to me. It bought me a moment’s reprieve. Time that I desperately needed if I wanted to break free.

I kept tinkering on my defence while I thought. I didn’t have much hope that I would succeed, but I wasn’t prepared to just give up.

In the background, I saw the Warlock start up another spell.

Please hold.

His efforts to contain me slowed. After a while, the two of us came to a draw. There were thousands of threads wrapped around my kludged together shield, but they were unable to press in any further. The Warlock scowled at me.

“You’ve made a fine mess of this city, and I mislike being made into a janitor. Your first act of civil service will be cleaning up this carnage.” The man declared. Soon after, he completed his new working.

Three golden rings manifested into Creation. They locked into place around my prison. Then, the sphere started to rise even further into the air. I remained positioned in the centre as it began to ascend. Another, smaller ward manifested inside the first. To my horror, my ability to resist was limited to the latter.

My counter-ward winked out.

The horizon started to creep in again. Even more of my control over myself started to slip away.

It was reaching the point where it felt like there were two people in my body. Me, and the part of me that had to follow his rules.

I scrambled against his working. My answer had not been good enough, I needed a better one. There had to be a way to bypass the wards around the Warlock entirely and then just snuff him out. I wasn’t willing to simply accept being put on a leash or stuffed into a box. I turned my attention to his protections more fully, trying to work out exactly what it was that the Warlock had surrounded himself with.

Gradually, I started to make sense of his aegis. There were many wards, far more than there first appeared to be. They were closely layered and overlapped on a minute scale, but something told me that while they existed in this dimension, they didn’t exist in all the others. So what if I navigated through the void and attacked him on the other side?

The half of my mind that I still had control over focused on the part of me that cohabited with the Choir, then started trying to circumvent the barrier he had put up. My plan was foiled almost immediately. The Warlock realized what I was doing and a new set of barriers fell into place.

“Enough of this.” He cracked his knuckles below.

“Link.” He stated.

My heart flopped around somewhere on the ground beside the Warlock. I didn’t know what he was about to do. But I knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

The meniscus of the inner sphere seemed to change subtly. It wasn’t something I could see visually. I couldn’t hear or feel it either. It was just something I could sense. As if there was now a connection between the bubble and somewhere else. That place wasn’t pleasant. I could taste the crackle of fire and brimstone. A world made of nothing more than lava, ashes, and dust.

One of the hells, it has to be.

It made sense. If he decided that he couldn’t safely bind or kill me, just stuffing my somewhere else until he had a better answer would work.

“Nah, we’ll be having none of that,” a familiar voice said, butting in. It tickled the back of my memory, but I wasn’t sure where I had heard it before.

The Warlock turned around in surprise. I struggled to crane my neck.

A fair skinned woman who looked to be in her early twenties with red hair and a heart shaped face was leaning against the ruined axel of the chariot. It was more or less the last part of the wreckage which hadn’t been either destroyed or moved somewhere else.

I blinked.

How is that wheel balancing without the chariot supporting it?

I let out a rasping laugh, thick with hysteria.

The woman was about a finger’s length shorter than me. She was just outside the area I could currently affect, and wore a dishevelled green shirt and trousers. In her left hand she was holding a flask and in the other, a lute. Standing on the broken remnants of a road, she raised the flask as if to salute, then took a deep gulp. After swallowing, she gagged.

“This stuff is vile,” she stated, then glared at me. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but the look she gave me made it feel like she held me personally responsible for the contents of the flask.

“A bard,” the Warlock said. “By far the most irritating type of Name ever inflicted upon us by Creation.” He paused. “On the other hand, I have been meaning to dissect one of those. I thank you for the sacrifice you’ve volunteered to undertake on behalf of the Empire.”

I couldn’t place where I should know her from. It was annoying me, like a frustrating buzz at the back of my head from a fly that needed to be killed. If I wasn’t busy trying to find a way out of the Warlock’s trap, I was sure the answer would be obvious. Unfortunately, between the screams from injured people in the distance, the smoke, and the bindings I was struggling against, I was fresh out of attention to give.

The Warlock started to turn away from her. “Nonetheless,” he continued. “Please wait in line, I’m busy rehousing my latest acquisition first,” he emphasized and pointed at me.

“That got personal for the both of us really quickly,” the Bard replied, affecting mock offence on my behalf. “I mean seriously, look at her. She’s just a perfectly normal girl who isn’t really there up here,” she tapped the side of her head. “She isn’t yours at all. Fortunately, both of us are totally going to escape.”

Thanks, I guess?

I wasn’t entirely sure if that was more or less offensive than being called an acquisition by the Warlock. I wasn’t about to say as much, though. It didn’t seem like a good idea to interrupt her, seeing as she seemed to be holding the man’s attention. Why she had decided to take my side in what was increasingly seeming to be a suicidal act wasn’t entirely clear to me.

If I weren’t currently tied down, I would probably give her a hug. Right now, I greatly appreciated any support at all.

“Do get on with explaining how you will be managing that,” the Warlock asked, amused.

“Oh no, see, I didn’t have to actually do anything. I was just the distraction.” The bard replied, taking another pull.

From behind me, I heard a voice that renewed my hope.

“Confiscate.”

The spell orbiting the Warlock’s arm flickered out. It was only the first to go.

All the wards surrounding me fell next. The relief at suddenly feeling full control return to me was all the encouragement I needed to turn tail and leave.

Run, Taylor!

Taking the opportunity, I spun around as I fell. I spotted Roland on the ground below me. He looked as lethargic as I was. Turning my gaze as far away as I dared to aim, I teleported blindly and included him in the effect. I didn’t know where we ended up. I didn’t exactly care. So long as it wasn’t near the Warlock, it was good enough for me. I felt exhaustion dig deep into my bones.

To my muted embarrassment, we were high up in the air wherever we arrived. Roland yelped. The two of us began to fall. Not wanting to become closely acquainted with the ground from up high, I formed sloping barriers of light beneath us.

Behind us, I heard the detonations of fire and shattering of frost as the fight between the Fae phased back into Creation once more.

“Run, Roland!” I shouted. I didn’t know if he heard me, but this wasn’t a fight we would win.

It was time for us to heel and toe our way out of this mess.

“I will, Taylor,” he affirmed.

It was the shortest sentence I had ever heard him say.

Then, I took a brief look over my shoulder.

The Prince of Nightfall was ducking and weaving his way behind buildings, using them as cover from Sulia’s onslaught while he mustered up his own responses.

There was… a lot of incidental damage as a result.

Taking my own advice, I ran on my golden bridge as we vacated the battlefield.

Under us, I noted crowds of people. Far more than I would have expected, considering everything else that had occurred. Why hadn’t they left? Staying close to a fight of this magnitude was certain doom. Was it some weird disaster tourism hobby shared by all the locals?

It took me a few moments for me to catch up to Roland. Side by side, we continued to make our way out.

“Would you care to explain what manner of idiocy possessed you to pick a fight with the Warlock?” Roland berated from my side.

“I didn’t pick the fight!,” I shouted back, my voice shrill.

What I had seen of the Warlock so far convinced me that if we stuck around to fight him, it would almost certainly end badly for us. Not only that, but it would end badly for everyone else as well. I wasn’t willing to see myself repurposed as a tool for the man.

And I thought the man was supposed to be good with fire.

I felt a pang of guilt at abandoning the defence of Liesse, but squashed it. The Warlock had shown that he was fully capable of managing the defence of the city on his own.

My earlier decision to stick around was certainly a mistake.

“Then why were you engaged in conflict with the man?”

“He found me.”

It was then that a sense of inevitable doom began to ripple through my aura. A premonition, a warning of an oncoming storm. I had the gut feeling that whatever it was originated from where the Fae were sparring, and was utterly terrifying in nature.

The two of us both froze simultaneously.

“Everything burns,” a voice whispered from on high.

It was as if the world itself held its breath. Silence fell across the battlefield, movement stopped, only the lazy trailing of smoke into the sky broke the stillness that had set in.

“Harmonize.”

A third time, another merging of Arcadia and Creation. The Artist was really asking to die today. But If he also felt the same sense of dread and was trying to make an escape, I could understand his choice.

There wasn’t a single part of me that wanted to be near whatever was about to occur, either.

I didn’t have time to look around and see where we were. Acting on instinct alone, massive ruined chunks of cityscape below us vanished. A huge dome of hardened light materialized between us and the horror that I sensed was approaching. My vision began to swim. My makeshift defence was centred on me and extended fifty feet out. The sixth ghost disappeared.

There was an almighty flash above, as bright as a dying star. The sky turned a brilliant white.

I couldn’t look, I closed my eyes. Whatever it was that Princess Sulia was calling upon had an otherworldly touch to it. As if the Gods themselves were weighing in.

My hair started to smoulder, it felt like the very air caught light. Spots appeared in my eyes despite being shut. In mere moments, the world around me became drier than a wasteland.

Blinking, I opened my eyes and looked up. A seemingly endless torrent of flames poured almost languidly from above. The cataclysm descended deceptively slowly. Roland and I were only on the outskirts, far away from the epicentre.

Licking my cracked lips, I tried to wish it away. My will found no purchase.

There was nothing I could do.

A pit of despair sunk its claws into my chest.

This… Did nobody on Calernia understand restraint?

I could almost taste the hopes and dreams of a city dying as the onslaught continued to fall.

Even as far away as we were, the flames dripped like treacle, but arrived like an inexorable flood. I couldn’t help it, I whimpered as I felt the edges of the conflagration make contact with my aegis. The cascading rain of molten light rolled off my shield, pooling in the city below.

Three heartbeats later, my barrier shattered.

This is ridiculous. We just wanted to buy a book!

It was a poor consolation prize, but the miracle had lost most of its momentum by that point. That didn’t stop the dregs of the inferno from crashing into the city below.

Eerie flaming whirlwinds swept across the landscape. They billowed one way and then the other, letting out a shrieking cacophony that sounded much like the wail of anguished souls. Watching them was like observing professional dancers proceeding through a choreographed routine. It was a mesmerizing mirage of misery, played out for the amusement of the Gods Below.

The heat on my face was scorching, and I could taste the ash in the air.

Everywhere I looked, the city was broken. Up close, it was a blending of either frozen tundra or verdant jungles, and both parts were currently alight. Further away, it was just torched buildings without the Arcadian addition.

Distantly, I could make out the figure of the Prince of Nightfall in the sky. I wasn’t sure how he survived, but the effect hadn’t tolled his doom. His fight with Sulia continued and much like her, there was plenty of inadvertent damage to Liesse from him as well.

Large chunks of ice jutted out of the distant landscape, and frozen blizzards carved their way through peoples’ homes. The water from the lake bubbled and spat furiously, a churning mess of sparkling light contesting Sulia’s flames. I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening there, but I wasn’t prepared to stick around and find out.

The heavens above were a clash between a furnace and a freezer, with a rippling aurora at the intersection of the two.

It left a bitter taste in my mouth to admit it, but this was beyond my ability to fix.

Not only that, but if I was chained down again, I would likely do far more harm than good.

“We should make haste to depart,” Roland whispered.

“Yeah,” I replied, my voice hoarse. Broken out of my shocked reflection, I turned my attention to the fastest exit from the flaming carcass of Liesse.

I wanted the Artist dead, but I wasn’t willing to risk containment to do it.

The fight between the two members of the Fae Royalty continued in the sky. A rapidly progressing patch of contorted space started to climb its way towards them from below. It appeared that the Warlock had turned his attention back onto the Fae once more.

As one last act of support for the city, I did my best to snuff the flames around me out. It wouldn’t do much, but I hated to just leave.

As we made our escape, I sloped my platforms back towards the ground. Not only do people in the sky stand out, but I was far beyond winded. Continuing to exert myself seemed unwise.

I ducked under the smouldering remnants of an Arcadian tree that was planted on a rooftop, then pushed aside the leaves of another. Crossing over from Summer to Winter, it became easier to navigate our way back down.

I looked over my shoulder briefly. The movement of the two Fae Royalty seemed much more contained. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but it felt as if there were three or four worlds folded in on each other at the location of the fight.

For a moment, I agonized over what else I should do. There were many ways I could try to improve our chances of our escape. Finally making up my mind, I focused. The last ghost faded from behind me. An overpowering veil of secrecy enveloped the both of us. It was the strongest shroud I was capable of.

I had no idea if it would help, but everything else had failed.

Fleeing while hidden seemed like the smarted option.

I looked around, suppressing the urge to pant. As soon as I could, I would need to rest. We were approaching the edge of both the Artist’s melding of Creation and Arcadia and the city itself. The gates loomed ahead. Large chunks of the walls had been demolished during the onslaught, and their previously white faces were blackened with soot.

That was when the effects of the Artist’s ability faded.

The outcome was much worse than I would have expected.

Rather than finding myself on an ordinary street, this time I was left in the snow. I looked around. A wintry wasteland spread out on my right, with sparse evergreens dotting the landscape. Footprints marked out a meandering path leading further into the snow.

To my left, there was a lush jungle. Verdant trees, rich soil and the sound of life clamoured for my attention that way.

Roland was nowhere in sight.

I looked up. Above me was a moonless sky. A bitter wind raked its cold claws through my hair. I was stuck in Arcadia.

As far as I could tell, I was entirely alone.

This wasn’t a place I wanted to be.

Taking a chance, I tried to form a portal, hoping to be able to break my way back to Creation. My will slammed against a force harder than iron. I had the sense that I did not have the right to shape the world in that way. Perhaps if I wasn’t so drained, I could have pressed my way through, but right now I was running on fumes.

I don’t know what to do.

Of course, that was when I felt the veil I had only just erected break under the scrutiny of Arcadia itself.

It took me more effort than I would have liked to suppress the scream of frustration that had built up inside of me.

What else is going to go wrong?

Refocusing, I turned towards the footprints in the snow. I didn’t know who the markings belonged to. It could be the Artist, or it could be Roland. It could also be just about anyone else. Either way, so long as it was a person, following them was my only real hope.

Right now, I just didn’t want to be alone.

Considering I hadn’t really seen the Fae doing much walking around, I was willing to bet on it being a person. They seemed to prefer flying, or riding on mounts.

If it was Roland, we could regroup. If it was the Artist, well, I wasn’t letting him get away again. Once he was dead, I could use the brush to escape. If it was someone else. Well… They were just as unlucky as I was.

I started staggering after the trail.

It was almost nostalgic when the first painted tiger roared.

The Artist, then.

It jumped out at me from between frosted trees. Warily, I fumbled against the world until I succeeded in dousing it with mineral oil. Once it was gone, I continued forward. As I travelled, I was confronted by two more of the beasts. They weren’t particularly threatening once you knew their weaknesses.

It still took far more effort than it should have.

By the time the fourth arrived, my well had run dry. I drew the dagger on my side and dodged forwards as it leaped over me. Pivoting, I jumped onto its back and hung on tightly. It started to shake from side to side in an attempt to dislodge me.

Despite my lethargy, I clung onto it like a limpet.

It pranced in circles and swung its head frantically, gnashing its teeth, and attempting to bite at me. It was disorienting. My head rag dolled from side to side and my breath came out in ragged snorts as I made my attempt to end the creature.

Its attempts were ultimately futile. I wasn’t willing to let go.

Gritting my teeth, I stabbed the beast repeatedly where I guessed its painted heart would be.

It took far more work than I would like, and I was shaking from exhaustion by the end of it, but the beast finally came to rest.

Climbing off the now still painted corpse, I panted my way after the Artist. For a while, the erratic thumping of my heart was the only sound I could hear.

Then, that changed.

I began to hear the snap of branches up ahead. Shortly after, the sound of footfalls on the snow. I was drawing close. It sounded like the painter was desperate.

Good.

I couldn’t make him out properly from between the dead foliage. The noise was enough for me to guess roughly where he was, though. It would be convenient if I could just kill him at range, but I was entirely out of steam.

I broke out into a last ditch sprint.

Moving forward as confidently as I could considering I felt like I had been run over by a dragon, I pushed my way through the brush. My breath fogged the air before me. I wasn’t going to drag this out, or give him the chance to pull out a new trick. All of a sudden, he was right before me. He hadn’t even turned around before I struck. My knife sunk into his side. Once, twice, three times.

The Artist let out an anguished wail as I began my onslaught. A bunch of rolled up canvasses under one of his arms dropped onto the snow. I ignored them.

Feebly, he started to turn around, but I kicked out ruthlessly at his legs, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Distantly, I heard him whimper as he pleaded for his own life. Mentally, I was too far away to take note.

The lassitude that had embraced me was so deep that the edges of my vision had gone dark. There was only the next task. Nothing else mattered at all.

Crimson drops stained both my hands and clothes as I pinned him down and continued to twist the dagger home.

A few moments later, and he let out a final, bloody gurgle. His movement came to a stop.

Sighing, I fell back into the snow behind me.

After everything else, the act of killing him had been almost anticlimactic.

What… Next?

Escape… I needed to… Escape. Arcadia wasn’t a safe place for me to stay.

That meant I needed to do what? Find the brush. Yes. I should find the brush. The Artist would presumably have it, I just needed to search his corpse. Then, I could make an exit of my own.

Straining, I pulled him out of the snow. I started to check his pockets, trying to find the brush. A mounting sense of dread rose after I realized the truth. It wasn’t on his person. Frantically, I started to check the surroundings. I looked between the bushes and in the snow. I even backtracked, carefully going over all the places the two of us had passed during his flight.

By that point, my eyes must have been bloodshot. I felt like a scraggly, wild animal, and almost certainly looked like one as well.

It was over an hour later before I was forced to concede that I wouldn’t find the brush, or anyone else.

I was here alone.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to escape.

What would a hero do?

The Artist probably had other exits, I didn’t know where they were, but I knew they must exist.

A hero would put their trust in blind luck.

It was an awful plan, but my thoughts came sluggishly. I wasn’t willing to rest. Not in Arcadia, at least. The outcome would certainly be disastrous for me.

That did nothing to alleviate my problems. A fog had settled over me and was weighing me down. I no longer had enough mental bandwidth to connect whatever dots existed and find my way out on my own.

I made one more cursory check of his corpse for anything else of value, my hands shaking as I did so. Then I firmly shut my eyes and shambled around in circles until I no longer knew which direction it was that I was facing. I started to feel the gentle tug of fate, guiding me. Coming to a stop, I opened them again. Then I began to stagger my way forwards, hoping that the hand of providence led somewhere safe.

Two hours later, and my movement had slowed to a crawl.

I started to hear the call of a hunter’s horn. Shortly after, the sound of hooves from behind me.

Why… Can’t I just have… Peace?

There was only one thing it could be in the lands of Winter. The Wild Hunt.

If I were human, there was no way I could outrun them. And definitely not in the state I was in, either. But I wasn’t really a human, as much as I thought of myself as one. I also wasn’t about to give in. So, despite the screaming of my muscles, I started to sprint.

Every part of me protested. My world had already narrowed to a point, but now it narrowed even further. The sense of my body floated away from me, as if it were distant. A part of me, but not me. Only the smallest piece of the whole.

The glaciers look so pretty.

Despite how desolate it was, the environment was still breathtaking. My mind had long since wandered away. All that was left was the goal. The sun rose and set and rose again, and still I went on. For a while, it sounded like they were gaining on me. I didn’t let up.

My eyes began to droop. I had lost all sense of time entirely.

Passing through dead forests, I followed the strings of fate as they guided me onwards.

I’m really burning the candle at both ends here.

The thought made me want to laugh for some reason, so I did. My voice echoed against the otherwise empty landscape.

Gradually, the noise of pursuit started to fade.

I need to stop tempting fate.

I wasn’t sure if it would prevent catastrophes from happening, but enough had gone wrong that going forward I was willing to give it a try.

Eventually, the sound of my feet crunching against the snow was all that was left that I could hear. The place I was in was uncanny. Thick banks of fog had appeared out of nowhere, clouding over the sky. Even if I could see it, time in Arcadia was fluid, and I had no way to properly measure it at all. This was what I imagined being the only person alive in the world would feel like.

It was so very lonely.

Saying my supplies were limited was being wildly optimistic. I had no food or water, and I was too tired to try transmuting any either. Not that it would be a good idea regardless. I didn’t know what consuming parts of Arcadia would to do me, but it certainly wouldn’t be good.

I had reached the point where I was relying entirely on my inhuman biology to survive. My clothing was both burned and torn. What little coin I had was in a pouch at my side, not that it would help me, and I had my blood crusted dagger sheathed on my left leg.

I kept trudging on.

I don’t know how long I kept walking for. Time had long since lost meaning and the world became nothing more than a blur. I couldn’t go to sleep, I just wouldn’t let myself. In Arcadia, it wouldn’t be safe. The world had closed into one narrow corridor. Trudge, trudge, trudge. The crunch of snow underfoot, the mist before my face, it all blended together. No matter what, I would go on.

My eyes closed.

I hoped Roland had survived. I wasn’t willing to bet on it, though. Why couldn’t he have landed in Arcadia beside me? Actually, that was probably worse. He wouldn’t be able to survive this place for long at all.

That single clash with the Warlock, as brief as it had been, was enough to convince me that he was far out of our league. The bard was almost certainly a wet smear on the ground. I didn’t see any way that she could have made it out alive.

Phantoms of my past started to haunt me as I travelled. My dad. The expression on his face so very lost during the negotiations with Alexandria. His eyes, so sad, staring through his glasses. Then the moment when it dawned on him that his little girl wasn’t his little girl any longer.

The ghost faded away.

Lisa came next.

You never asked for help.

Her voice called out to me, bitter, tired. As tired as I felt. Her bottle-green eyes looked on from beyond the edge of reality, judging me while I walked. She faded away next.

My mom, Brian, Rachel, Alec, Aisha, Theo. More and more people. An endless crowd of faces parading past me.

One by one, I watched as they watched me or said their piece, then proceeded to vanish into the void.

Then, even their support was gone. Except for the warm embrace of the Choir of Compassion, I was alone once more.

It was comforting, but did nothing to drive back the cold.

The icy claws of the Arcadian Winter dug into me. My ragged breath raked erratically over my face. The scorched remnants of my hair had long since frozen into frigid clumps.

My fingers and toes were numb. There wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t tinged in frost.

Strings dangling puzzle pieces illuminated up the path before me. I followed them blindly, not paying attention to anything else. The fragments rotated, spinning in the air. A glimpse of a way forward. A hint of what was to come.

Don’t give up.

The embers within me flickered weakly.

The sound of wood echoed underfoot, but I was too exhausted to take notice.

Tired.

I was so, so very tired.

Almost absently, I registered the burbling of a voice. Someone was talking. Words. I think there was anger, irritation, fear and maybe a bit of concern? No matter. People meant safety, right? I could rest. Finally, I could rest. I let myself go. As I finally stopped maintaining focus, I collapsed onto the floor.

I’ll… do… better… this… time.

I… promise.

Darkness.