There is something soothing about fire. The way it flickers and jumps almost makes you think of it as something alive. It crackles and pops. It writhes like a living thing, and it even needs to eat in order to live. But that is the lie of fire. It is as dead as a stone, as the clouds that drift across the sky, as water running in a river. Yet, I can't look away, because it dances.

"Are you alright?" Athemia asks me. The woman stares down at me, looking at my hand pressed against my bleeding stomach.

"I will be fine in a moment," I say. Yet, the wound closes slowly. It is a trivial thing now to see the pathways running through my body. They are broken and disjointed around the wound, the healing energies pumping through my body unable to reach the location. "It might actually be longer than that."

The pain is almost nothing, at least when compared to everything else I have endured recently. I know how to fix the issue, to set my body right, but first, I have to do something else.

Exhaling, bracing myself for some mysterious sensation, I release the power of the throne that thrums through me. The influx of magic racing through me fades, the enhanced state the throne offers dismissed for a moment. A wave of dizziness crashes through my head as if I tried to stand up too quickly. As I begin to tip back on my seat, a hand settles on my shoulder holding me steady until the vertigo passes.

I feel the weakness of the ability mentioned settle on me: a slight tremor in my fingers, a dull ache in the back of my mind that begs for me to sleep, to relax. But I have spent too long sleeping already. Pushing aside exhaustion has become as natural to me now as pushing aside pain. Mustering my will, my attention turns inward toward the broken pathways, slight manipulations of magic helping to adjust them so that they might start knitting together.

"That thing was nasty," Athemia says, nodding to the still-smoldering corpse. "You are a mage, right? I wouldn't push myself if I were you after taking a hit from it like that."

"It isn't the first hit I have taken from it," I tell her. Beneath my hand, my flesh begins to shift beneath my ministrations. The sensation is… bizarre.

Athemia sniffs, smelling the char and smoke in the air. "What happened to you? I was told that you were dead."

"Dead? I think that I did die for a minute, but that wasn't until today. A girl goes missing for…how many days has it been?"

"Since when I heard you died?" Athemia's eyes search her memory. "Twenty-three days."

"Twenty-three days." Somehow, it is both more and less than what I expected. I wonder if there is any number that would have shocked me. "I was trapped beneath the city," I say, nodding at the burning monsters. "That one and two others trapped me. I kept waiting for someone to come, someone to rescue me, but no one ever came."

We both watch the monster continue to smolder for a while, the fire's crackle the only sound in the chamber.

"There was a body," Athemia says, making me look over. "I was away, spending time in the lower districts, when we returned to the city, so I only heard about it after. People had started to go missing. Nothing that concerning since their friends still saw some of them around now and again, but many of the scouts stopped reporting in. Then, one morning, just a little more than three weeks back, people woke up to a horror show. Dozens of bodies were staked out in the open, butchered like animals and displayed for all to see. The missing scouts were found, and I heard that your body was among them. Your lover has been ripping the city apart, searching for whoever did it. He even left the 4th so that he wouldn't have to leave."

I nod, trying to take the information in. I have a number now, twenty-three days. That is how long I spent trapped in the dark, how long I forced myself to stay awake so that the walls wouldn't close in, how long I prayed to be saved. Though I hate myself for it, though I know how stupid it is, a deep sense of betrayal grips my heart. They had a body, that is why they never came? How could they be fooled by something like that? They just gave up on me, thought that I was already dead, and decided to throw up their hands.

A pinch in my side, muscles cramping, distracts me from the spiralling thoughts. My magical surgery proceeds, but losing concentration could be disastrous. I push the emotions aside, another thing that I have had ample practice at in the last months. Maybe I should thank the other two monsters for all the time to focus on improving myself before I rip their limbs off.

When next I look back up, I find Athemia staring down at me with a strange look in her eye. I realize that I am laughing softly to myself. "Are you sure you are okay?" she asks again.

I blink, shaking my head. "Probably not. I just found out that all of my friends think I am dead and that I have been awake for the last month. That can't be good for your head. On the bright side…" I move my hand away from the wound, the basic reparation of my magic pathways complete. It is such an odd thing to watch the skin pull back together, the lacerations vanishing in real time. It is even stranger to feel it as it happens.

I glance up at Athemia. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Waiting for that thing to show up," she says, nodding to the dead monster. She then takes some time to catch me up on what happened while I was buried beneath the city. Athemia tells me about the movements the tide has been making, how the monsters have become even more concentrated in the past few days, an obvious attack on the five cities approaching. She talks about how the monsters around Danfalla seemed to vanish, supposedly heading for Black Rock, though there were not enough scouts to confirm that. She tells me how the 4th were ordered to follow the horde, and how Illigar had split the army a few days out from the city, sending one half forward while she came back with their strongest fighters under cover of night, flying on Illigar's ship, meeting up with a contingent from the 2nd army.

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"Thousands," Athemia says. "We passed thousands of monsters heading toward the city like they were being chased by something. The commander knew his hunch was right then, that Danfalla was the true target of whatever was going on. He commanded me to hold this chamber, sent others to other points around the city where a breach could be made in the shield around the city." She shakes her head. "That thing almost had me fooled when it came in. I swear, it looked just like a person."

"It isn't a person," I spit. "Not anymore, and there are more of them out there. I encountered one before; it feels like forever ago now. It was much stronger than this one, more complete, I guess." I fix Athemia with a serious stare. "The city is on fire, going crazy up there. It is just like the last time. It will make people kill one another, kill their friends and family. I can't let that kind of evil last out there." I push myself to stand, this time experiencing a real head rush. Steadying myself, I push the sensation away, but the weakness throughout my body continues to linger. "I need to kill them."

Athemia puts an arm out to stop me. "You should stay here and help me guard this place. If another one comes, it has to be stopped here."

"I can't. You said that others came back to the city with you. If my friends are out there right now, I need to help them." Briefly, I describe what I found in the city above, realizing that the madness must have begun after she came down here to guard the barrier. "I managed to call for help. I think I connected with someone in the capital."

"That should be impossible."

"Only if the quarantine around the duchy is still in place. The duke's palace was gone, replaced by a giant tree the last I saw it. He must not be able to keep the barrier active any longer because of that. I don't imagine that Ramacalla will be able to help us before the night is up; that means that I have to fight tonight. I need to go out there."

She drops her arm. "If what you say is true, then I shouldn't stop you. I hope you find your friends out there. I can't leave here."

"I know. Stay safe." As I walk past her, I hear a jingle and turn in time to snatch a velvet bag out of the air.

"You were right, I owed you some gold." Athemia gives me a smile that says she wishes that she could take my place. There is a lust to destroy in her eyes, and that as much as the strange origins of our eyes makes a connection between us.

I can't help but smile back. "I will see you when this is over."

"You'd better."

It is a strange thing, a battlefield. Things progress so fast, yet somehow slowly at the same time. From the air, Illigar watches as a group of guardsmen on the ground huddle together, pointing their weapons outward toward encroaching demons while their unit forms a circle. It is what they've been doing for the entirety of the battle, less than ten minutes now, just holding tightly together, their ring slowly moving across the ground, leaving dead men and monsters in its wake.

Above, more of the flying demons dive toward him, stabbing at him with all manner of tendrils, claws, and stingers. He throws out a punch toward the nearest group, the fabric of reality rippling in front of his fist, a score of demons bursting into explosions of purple-red blood as their bodies fall. So many insects, all looking at him and Jane as the only two lingering in the air. The two rank-three magicians slaughter the buzzing demons, working their way through the thick of the mess, thinning the horde overhead, while those below struggle in the grass that slowly turns to mud. He could go down there now, help those men, but then those above would have no targets and scatter.

As his fists pump in the air, monsters scattered before him, his rage begins to build, fuel for the coming confrontation. His eyes continue to flick up toward the tree looming overhead, toward the powers he senses at their apex. He will go there, knows that he must be a part of whatever force hopes to fight that monster, but the steps between then and now will be excruciating.

Fifty feet from him in the air, Jane reaches into a sack at her side, small chips of infused metal following her fingers from the pouch and forming into an unstable construction of destructive magic. She hurls the mess away as it begins to shake and whine. When it erupts among the swooping demons, a thunderbolt cracks down from the sky, colliding with the magical bomb and destroying a swath of the sky.

The two commanders' heads snap around as they sense dangerous magic below, spatial magic. Nightmares of what such power can do flash through Illigar's mind before his attention focuses on a plane of yellow light in the middle of the battlefield. One of the creatures in the guide of a man steps through, the plane vanishing as he leaves.

Jane is answering his question before he can even voice it when he turns back in her direction. An apparatus of light, a projection from an enchantment array embedded in her palm, creates symbols in a language he doesn't recognize, the woman taking it in instantly.

"Teleportation," she says, though they both could have guessed that much. "Short ranged. Not enough power to cross the barrier around the city."

Illigar snatches a creature from the air, ripping its wings off with his hands before spiking it into the earth far below. He scans the battlefield, reading the terrain. It looks much worse than it is. When the chaos began, the demons outnumbered the 4th and 5th three to one, the forces of House Mari summoning far more from the hells than they should have. The number of the hordelings has been cut in half, but a good number of the fighting men and women fell along with them. Near the wall, positioned in front of the gate that has been blown apart, a dome of force protects a mixed squadron of the 2nd and 4th, the healers they had brought to the battle. Those men and women, whose efforts solely aimed at keeping their fellows breathing, are proving the difference maker. The demons die easily, and none among them are powerful enough to incarnate the others. Just a few minutes longer, and he could have the sky cleared.

"Follow it," Illigar yells over the din to Jane. "Find where it went and stop whatever it is planning."

The woman nods, arranging the array in her hand. Twelve balls of metal separate from her armor, spreading out around her before turning the air into fireballs. As the smoke clears and the first of the burned demons begin to hit the ground below, Jane is gone, hot on the trail of the teleporting monster.

As Illigar turns his attention back to the battle, his mind whirring with scenarios and potential traps, he continues to hammer his will against the reason. Why are these things doing this? If they are intelligent enough to turn the weapons of Mari back on themselves, surely they must have a goal other than utter chaos. Even while puzzling, his body works on clearing the sky, destroying one monster after another.

Down below, a wail rings across the battlefield, and pestilence follows just behind.

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