There is a song to it, the lapping of the water. A memory surfaces with the sound, the soft splash as the tide kisses the stone, the playful sound of specks splashing as they break away from the body. Most never hear the plop after, the little spray of water back into the whole. Sigrid hears it, she hears everything now.

The memory rises in her mind like a bubble into another world, another life, that she can see with her naked eyes–a little girl screaming in joy as she runs away from the lapping waves, keeping her small feet just ahead of the water line. She studies it on the approach, the scene devoured by her mind in the time it takes to take a step. Such a life she once had, but that had been taken, the waters of the beach consumed in flame. This new life, this was what it meant to truly live, to see the world in its entirety, to have the skein of reality pulled straight and brought into focus. That girl on the beach was happy in the way only children can be. The woman still searches for that emotion, knowing she won't ever really find it, but enjoying the quest.

A collapsed section of the tunnel forms a mound of wet gravel at the tunnel's exit, requiring her to jump over to splash down into the shin-high water. Sigrid whistles, her senses capturing everything in a glance: jagged cuts of stone broken away from the ceiling to lay in the water below, movement to the left as the ebbing water rustles the clothes of the dead scouts piled against the wall, the savory smell of char and tar with the barest tinge of rusted blood just beneath, black stains marring the pillars that still stand throughout the chamber, straining to keep the roof up.

Of the room's two occupants, she forces her vision on Ferro first. He sits upon a piece of ancient masonry, knees pulled up to his chest, facing away from her. The young man's clothing lies in tatters, barely sticking to him where it hasn't fused to his skin.

"Morello says you won't let anyone get close," Sigrid says, wading through the water. "Says you threatened to kill Kessa."

"Mmm," is his reply.

Tension snakes up through his arm as she takes a step forward, his fingers flexing around the hilt of the crude sword he still holds. Sigrid's aura erupts in response, a shroud of violet and black energy surrounding her in a protective embrace, pushing out to encompass half the chamber, washing over Ferro unseen and unfelt. She pauses, watching the young man, a feeling she has never experienced before coming off of him, something too interesting to ignore.

"The mission comes first," she says, backing down and pulling her shroud tight once more around herself. "Leaving people alive puts that in jeopardy. You understand that, Ferro."

"There was something…" he says, cracked lips moving.

He stops, wetting them, trying again. Standing beside him, Sigrid can only see half his face. He is bruised and beaten, his stringy blonde hair clinging tight to his skin, but his eyes are alive, focused ahead. There isn't even a chance she might get him to look at her.

"There was something just before," Ferro says, his voice a strained whisper. "Some feeling, snakin' up through my fingers. A tingle in my hands and mind, like I was moving, but it was my soul moving. I…I wanted something, just then. Can't really remember what it is like to want something most days, but I did then."

He nods at the object in front of them. A sphere of iron sits suspended in the center of the room, easily six feet across, held in the air by seven blades connecting the metallic surface to the floor and ceiling. Dozens of rusted hilts pincushion the surface of the sphere, their hilts melding together, the blades burrowed inside, aiming to end a single life.

"We made that together," Ferro says. "Her and me. She had a power like yours, something I can't see, only feel. It tried to push me down, crush me into the dirt, trying to make me remember what it's like not being good enough. I did remember, remembered the taste of blood and dirt in my mouth, the feeling of my face hot with tears. Then it happened, I didn't want to let her do that; I didn't want it with everything I have." He reaches out, grabbing her arm tightly with his damaged hand, squeezing hard enough to shatter the bones of mortal beings. "It can't be destroyed."

"She is still alive," Sigrid says, her guard up again with Ferro's hand on her arm. She knew just how dangerous his particular magic was.

"I know it," he says. "Still struggling, even now."

In her expanded vision, Sigrid saw the struggle, the occasional glimpse of some red-gold energy bubbling from the surface of the sphere, pushing out between the hilts, but hardly making it a fraction of an inch before being forced to recede. She looked at him, seeing the way that his hair seemed to wave slightly in a breeze that did not exist down here beneath the earth, saw the faintest shift in the air about him. Was he close?

"It's like a dull ache in my head," he says. "The power given to me by the master pushing against hers. That feeling is in there, like my hand is curled tight around something precious. I've been that precious thing, I think, caught by the big hand." A genuine smile grows on his lips, his eyes finally breaking away from the metallic sphere to look down at his charred hand. "This must be the feeling of being on the other side."

"I need a body for the next stage," Sigrid says, slowly pulling her arm out of Ferro's grasp. His hand falls back, fingers splashing and dangling in the water. She sighs, finding him lost in his head again, turning to her pocket.

Sigrid pulls free an orb of metal all her own, a casing of some strange steel engraved with alien markings too bizarre to stare at for long without her getting a headache. As she rolls it between her fingers, she hears something fleshy suspended in fluid sloshing around inside.

"What's that?"

Sigrid blinks, looking to her side. Time slipped past her again, something that tends to happen when she contemplates the gift. Ferro still sits with her, staring at his creation suspended in front of them, but the orb draws his attention as powerfully as it does her own. She slips it back into her pocket.

"Something the Master left with me before we came here. It will help with the final part."

Ferro nods, slowly pulling himself from the ground. When he turns to look at her, she wants to look away. The half of his face that she hadn't seen is a mess of burns, the skin charred so badly it is black where it hasn't been reduced to torn muscle and bone. He doesn't seem to mind the grievous injury, not in the least.

"I'll get another girl," he says, snatching something floating in the water next to him. He steps off his rock and into the water. "Morello'll make the body look like the one you need."

She stops him, stepping in front of him to bar his way. "Sounds like you're trying to make a plan, Ferro. Is that it?"

"Just tryin' to solve the problem."

He looks up at her, that vacant expression back in his eyes. There is no challenge to the glance, no hint of the man that would nearly hack Kessa's arm off when she tried to approach the metal sphere. He is just a boy again, a young man so unmoored by the world that he will go along with anything. Sigrid begins to question whether or not Ferro was far more crafty than he ever let on.

"Fix your body," she tells him, stepping aside to let him through. "I still need you to move through the city. Morello says there is a guard that needs to be taken care of, one who saw him help lead the girl here. Take care of that before sunrise."

"Whatever you say, boss." The slow slosh of the water follows Ferro from the chamber, his back receding into the dark.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Sigrid lingers a while, contemplating the working of iron and magic in front of her. She could crush it, end a potential threat. It would be the practical thing to do, but she also knew it would be an error. He was close, close to joining her. No one else in the coven even showed a spark of that kind of power. Besides, she found Ferro's metaphor apt. The worm wriggling inside that squeezing hand would never be able to free itself without a miracle, and Sigrid knew better than anyone that miracles are deaf things, especially towards those that need them most.

After hours of fruitless searching, the constant drum of his boots on the cobblestones stills. Dovik pauses a moment when he sees the crowd, a mix of people standing in the middle of the street. They aren't silent, muttering in small groups, some shielding their eyes from the sight at the front, others staring blankly on. When he starts moving again, it is as if all sound falls away, just the soft slap of his boots against the stone once more.

A hand stops him, a soft but immovable force pressing against his chest. He looks down, finding Jess in front of him, her gaze insistent despite the tears in her eyes. He realizes he stands in front of the crowd with an impotent guardsman demanding that he step back, realizes that he has forgotten to breathe for the last minute and a half, realizes that tears are threatening to form in his own eyes. Then, there is a pressure around him, Jess, burying her face into his chest, her shoulders shaking.

The world is a blank thing, hot, detail disappearing down the street. He tries to shudder in a breath, but that brings heat to his face, tears threatening to fall. He can't do that, not here, not when Jess holds onto him like this. His feelings are for later. He tries to summon the analyst, the part of his mind created from endless hours of his father's training, a machine in his mind made to find a path, to orient him. Nothing. He stands adrift, barely enough thought left to him to know that he should put his arms around the woman crying into his wrinkled shirt. Breath finally comes.

He forces himself to look, the evil of the vision pushing away the numbness. A piece of the analyst comes, taking in the sight, trying to find issue.

In that spot on Jallis Road where they had passed just the night before, sixteen pillars of twisted wood stick from the ground like the reaching branches of a dead tree. From each of the crooked branches, a naked man or woman hangs, impaled on the wood. Their eyes have been torn out, chests ripped open to steal the soul cages from those that had them, the tableau completed by their entrails being cut out and wrapped around the poles.

Dovik recognizes even with how disfigured some are, but it is only one that draws his attention. She hangs there, the centerpiece to the tableau, a jagged scar cutting almost fully across her stomach, the wind playing with her sunrise hair. Caught on her fingers, a loose bit of cloth flutters in the breeze, Jess' handkerchief.

He chokes on a sob trying to snake up his throat, and the pain as he bites down on it forces his gaze to fall away. His arms squeeze tight around Jess as he finally sees Jor, sitting on his knees on the cold cobbles, staring up blankly.

The 5th army finds out about the horrific scene left in the night at some point. Men capable of the task force him away, and he stumbles back, numb in his body, his mind working and failing to comprehend. Even hidden from the sight in an alcove just a dozen feet away, he still sees her, staring down with holes for eyes, a scream locked on her face.

His eyes catch Jor's as he sits on the stoop opposite him. Nothing intelligible passes through the gaze, just a feeling. Someone would die for this. They had to.

Pain and panic are my everything. Screws press into my skull, the only thing stopping their turning is my will. I feel them, formless blades sliding close and closer through the dark in the shifting of the sand. Minutes pass without a slip in my focus, splitting my attention in so many directions that I can't even tell where I end and the sand begins. Then my body spasms, torn muscles and ligaments around the rusted metal stabbing through my thigh, trying to knit together. The pain causes a slip, the screws pressing on my brain turn a quarter. Another grain of sand is lost, drawn in, and made part of the swords trying to kill me.

I wonder where they are. Shouldn't someone have found me? I know I felt a presence before. Why would they leave me here? I'm going to die in here. There's no way out. I've already tried everything I can think of.

The sand shifts, more ground lost. Despite the dark, my vision swims, tears falling away, drying on my skin long before they can join the shallow puddle of my blood at the bottom of my iron coffin. I can't hold out anymore. I try to take a breath.

Stale air pours down my throat as I gasp. I try to close my mouth, try to fight the pain in my lungs, the pressure in my head, but I can't help myself. I gasp again. Nothing. The air is poison, whatever part of it necessary for life gone, used up. My voice croaks, lungs sucking in air that only makes everything more hazy than it was a moment before.

The world creaks, the metal teeth of the trap around me growing, grinding against the walls of my dark sand coffin. I gasp, nothing.

My head falls back against the wall, something sharp there cutting open my scalp. The sharp pain conflicts with the dull ache in my chest. There is yelling, not my own, someone else here with me. My focus, my tether keeping the jaws of the cage around me from snapping closed, bobs like a ship caught between two rivers running in opposite directions. I am a straining animal in a monster's jaws, hands being cut to ribbons, holding the mouth open. I am alone in the dark, utterly.

A jolt, the tip of a sword growing like a vine stabbing into my back, pushes the dull pain fully aside. My will floats above the red sea of searing pain, and I force the jaws back, just barely making them stop. I gasp for air, but there isn't any.

A jar appears in my hand, the glass almost cracking in my desperate grasp. Unscrewing the lid is an eternity. The half-breath of air I pull from it offers a second of clarity, the sweet aroma of the half-eaten cold cream like a light in the dark. But then, there is a light.

Galea wavers in front of me, swimming in and out of focus, yelling something that I can't hear. The teeth bearing down on me grind into the sand, growing infinitesimally longer. It takes everything to stop myself from gasping again, but I am already using my everything to stop the walls. My will isn't enough. She cries out, panic on her face to mirror my own. My little fey spirit. I feel the final darkness coming; no more air left. I'll pass out; it won't even take a second for the trap to close tight around me then.

There are so many regrets. But as I watch Galea, her form dimming as my vision vanishes from me, I find myself regretting her end as well. I doubt the eye will survive. We will go together.

I just wish I could give her whatever it is she wants.

My head lolls forward, everything fading, my will vanishing along with it. There is another next to me, someone else's desire moving the reins of my soul in the instant I let go.

Blue light erupts in the dark. Air rushes into me, a full breath of life-preserving breath filling my lungs. The walls creak around me, the sand shaking, losing its strength. I grab hold of it, yelling in the toothed coffin, grabbing my magic with the full strength of my will, forcing the teeth away. The swords groan, shaking the world around me, resisting my push against them. We struggle together for a time impossible to count before a stalemate is reached once more.

I pant, sweat running down my neck, tears falling from my eyes, staring at the blue and white flames flickering in my hands.

"The sky affix," I say, enough air to breathe by, a cool breeze radiating from the dragonfire I hold. "I didn't think it did anything."

"It makes sky," Galea says. She hovers in front of me, covering the worry in her posture with pasted-on confidence.

"You did this?" I ask. "You made the fire?"

"I can't do that, Mistress. I do not have a will, only you do. You wanted me to do it for you, so I did," she says.

I can't summon any incredulity at the spirit dragon. I was just there, standing on the precipice of the eternal dark. "Thank you," I manage to say.

"It doesn't solve the real issue," she says. "Mistress, you are still trapped."

"They will find us," I tell her. "My friends will find us."

She doesn't seem hopeful. "How long can you hold out until they arrive?"

I suck in lungfuls of the precious air my fire creates, basking in the heady feeling as my thoughts clear. Even thinking, speaking, is difficult with my entire will being bent to stopping the swords from growing. If I weren't able to communicate with Galea in my head, I don't think I could manage it.

I spare a glance to see my vital energies. None are in a good state, especially my pool of healing magic. The blade through my leg causes a constant trickle of blood, all of the magic restored by my soul spent sliding down the blade. My mana and stamina are also terribly low, my stamina lower than I have seen it in months.

"We will make it," I tell her. "They will find us soon. They have to."

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