ALAIN, MORAYNE, AND CODE finally made it to the Odenite camp. Code had been leading them out of the city when monsters began raining down from the sky, and the rest of the night had passed in a dark, violent, snowy cold blur.
Alain hated the snow. He had never seen it before, and had been reserving judgment on the stuff his entire life. Now that he’d experienced it, however, he’d be quite happy if he never had to see it, feel it, shiver in it, kill in it, or die in it ever again.
Morayne, walking beside him, had not said a word since they left the city. Neither he nor Code had said much, either, but they had at least exchanged a few words between them. Alain recognized this sort of silence from Morayne. He reached out a hand to hold hers, squeezing it tightly. He barely felt a squeeze from her in return. He was about to ask her what was wrong, when Code swore beside him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. The Nazaniin had stopped, staring ahead of them. Or ex-Nazaniin, Alain was no longer sure; Code had said something about going to the Odenites first, and then perhaps traveling with Alain and Morayne to Maven Kol again, because he had no more business with his former associates in Triah. Alain had no idea what exactly that entailed, but it did not seem to indicate an ongoing relationship with the Nazaniin. He hoped whatever had happened did not have to do with himself or Morayne; he would hate to think they might have disrupted Code’s life. He’d said as much to Code, and Code had insisted otherwise, but Alain nevertheless felt something was off.
But now, Code had stopped, and stared at a campfire ahead of them. The Odenite camp stretched on for quite some time—if anything, it looked even larger than it had when he and Morayne had first arrived in Triah—with tents, campfires, gathering areas, and more. But straight ahead of them was a tiellan woman, sitting alone at a fire pit that no longer burned. She seemed oblivious to the cold, her breath puffing visibly from her mouth, but she did not shiver nor pull her dark leather overcoat more tightly around her.
“You,” Code said, walking toward the woman.
Her long black hair was braided tightly on either side of her skull, while a looser braid ran from her forehead, over her scalp, her neck, and halfway down her back. When Code spoke, the woman looked up at them, and Alain looked into twin black pools.
“Months of waiting to meet you,” Code mumbled, walking more quickly, “and I run into you in the bloody Odenite camp? What are you doing here?”
“Do I know you?” she asked, standing, a hand straying to the hilt of her sword.
“Not yet you don’t,” Code said, stopping in front of her. “But you’re about to. My name is Code. Was a Nazaniin, now I’m not so sure. Was assigned to gain your confidence, but now that I’ve found you, ironically, I don’t much care to do that. But I figured I’d meet you anyway, considering… everything. I’d kill you right now for what you did to the Eye, if I didn’t think you’d strike me down long before I made the move.”
“I will not strike you down,” the woman said, bowing her head.
Alain felt Morayne squeeze his hand. She was staring at the woman intently.
Something was certainly off, here. The woman had basically just invited Code to kill her, and Code wanted to kill her because…
Because she had destroyed the Eye.
“Ah,” Code said, when he noticed the woman looking at Alain and Morayne, “where are my manners? Alain, Morayne, may I introduce you to Winter Cordier, the Goddess-damned Chaos Queen.”
Alain would have thought that now would be the time his anxiety struck him hardest. That now he would have to begin counting, or stretching, or take a moment to excuse himself and just surrender everything he had no control over, like whether or not the Chaos Queen would kill him on the spot.
But instead, he simply met her eyes, those deep, dark pools, and holding Morayne’s hand tightly, said, “Hello, Winter. I think I might be able to help you.”
* * *
Kali, atop the Cliffs of Litori, held the small amber rihnemin tightly in both hands, the chill of winter creeping through her overcoat.
The fields at the base of the cliffs, almost pristinely white with snow save for a few lines of footprints, stood in stark contrast to the scene of violent horror on the clifftop. Humans, tiellans, Outsiders, and a single gargantuan beast all lay dead on the snowy grass. Blood, coagulated and frozen, coated the ground and the corpses alike. Hundreds of weapons and the dozen or so remaining siege engines littered the clifftop, the instruments of death scattered among death itself. The hundreds of other daemons who had poured forth toward Triah, sprinting down the cliffs, were nowhere to be seen, burnt into Oblivion by the mysterious burning light.
More than the horror behind her, and more than the emptiness immediately before her, two things drew Kali’s attention: the great scar marring the face of Triah, and the overwhelming presence she felt, both in the Void and through her voidstone, in the Odenite camp.
Kali had been hesitant to return to the Void, at first. Having just escaped, she’d been worried she might find herself unable to leave once more. But the inevitable call of the star-light-speckled blackness drew her back in, and there, as always, she saw Winter’s great burning dark.
After the Fall of the Eye, and knowing Winter was behind it, Kali could not bring herself to take the stone to her former student. Kali had watched the Eye fall from the Trinacrya at the center of the city along with hundreds of other Triahns, and she had never known such terror, such wanton destruction, in all her summers. She remembered, more than anything else, turning to see the faces around her, pale and slick with sweaty shock, all staring up at the Eye as it burned, eyes wide but still unable to take it all in.
If Winter got her hands on the rihnemin Kali now carried, what greater destruction could she cause?
Fortunately, Winter had been busy. Between the aftermath of the Eye, and whatever in Oblivion had happened atop this cliff, Winter had yet to contact Kali since she’d procured the rihnemin, and that was just as well.
But the respite would not last long, and Kali could not stand against Winter. She could still bring her the rihnemin, and save her own life, at least. And, after all, what was Kali if not one to follow orders?
Kosarin was the other option; he clearly wanted the rihnemin, though for what reason she could not fathom. A part of Kali relished the idea of holding that power over the Triadin’s head, but another part of her knew the man was just as dangerous as—perhaps the only person on the Sfaera who might be more dangerous than—the Chaos Queen herself.
With a deep, calming breath, Kali sat down on crossed legs, placing the rihnemin in her lap. The stone was a power piece in the ongoing warsquares match; for her next move, she would need to use it to her greatest advantage.
* * *
Knot knelt in his tent, unable to sit, unable to stand, unable to lie down or sleep. He knelt by her body, every trace of vampirism now gone, every hint that she had once been an incredible warrior, that she had once held a burning magic sword twice her own height, every hint that she had once been his friend, someone he cared about, gone.
A funeral was planned. A funeral had been planned by other people, not him. Truth was, he had no idea what she would’ve wanted done with her body. Truth was, he didn’t think she thought there’d be a body that remained when she died, especially if she died by exposure to sunlight. Truth was, he had no idea what the bloody truth was when it came to what had happened, to what she had done, to the pillar of white burning light she’d become and why she now lay before him, unmarked, unburnt, unbroken.
A cruel joke is what it seemed. Like she could still be alive, somehow, because her body was not destroyed or marred or burned into nothing.
But she was not alive. She was not alive.
She was not alive.
Every part of her was gone, and he could not bring himself to look at the face of the body that lay on the cot in his tent.
So, because it was the only thing to do, the only thing he could do, he knelt there, holding the girl’s lifeless hand, and cried.