45

South of the Eastmaw Mountains

THUNDER RUMBLED ABOVE WINTER as she cut her way through frenzied men and women, tiellans and humans, their eyes glowing red beneath the dark gray clouds above.

People screamed all around her. Outsiders roared, the eerie, multitonal screech taking Winter back to a time where she had lost two men she cared a great deal about, and much more besides.

Some of the red-eyed berserkers attacked the Outsiders as well as any soldiers around them—apparently the rage within them truly was no respecter of persons. If anything, the berserkers seemed more effective against the monsters, considering how heedless they were to damage and harm. They died quickly, but caused significant damage to some of the Outsiders in the process.

Finding Carrieri was not difficult; Winter directed herself towards the great red beast that had started all of this in the first place. The monster laughed, twice the height of a man, as tall as the Outsiders that had dropped from the sky.

Then, up ahead, in a crack of lightning, Winter glimpsed Carrieri. She shouted his name, and somehow, through the cacophony, Carrieri heard her.

Immediately, the Khalic soldiers around Carrieri formed up, facing Winter’s squad. Carrieri had a few dozen horsemen around him, along with some infantry, though they were scattered, fighting berserkers and Outsiders.

Winter’s own forces readied their weapons, eyeing the Khalic soldiers. Rain continued to pour down from above, pattering on helmets and plate mail, soaking through Winter’s leather armor and clothing.

“Did you do this?” Carrieri shouted over the troops that separated them.

“No! That is a Daemon, Carrieri,” Winter called back. “We won’t escape unless we work together!”

A Goddessguard approached Carrieri, speaking into the man’s ear. Carrieri nodded, slowly.

“What do you suggest?”

“Where are your psimancers?” Winter shouted above the chaos. “Do they have any faltira?”

Carrieri turned his head as another person spoke to him, then looked back at Winter. “They do.”

“Give it to me!” Winter shouted. She wanted to sob with joy at the news. She wanted to sob with joy, and sink into herself and die, because she felt such elation despite the horrors around her, despite Eranda’s death. “I can stop them!”

Mefiston laughed. “You cannot stop us now. We are taking our true forms, one by one.”

The Daemon moved, more quickly than Winter could anticipate, crashing towards them. Selldor ran forward to meet him, but Mefiston swung one hand casually at the tiellan Ranger and sent him flying across the battlefield.

In a rage, Winter ran towards the Daemon, now advancing on Carrieri.

“You work so hard to resist your anger, Carrieri,” the Daemon growled. “I cannot tolerate such behavior.”

“Leave him be!” Winter shouted.

Mefiston turned, a smile on his face. “And you,” he growled. “You…”

Mefiston stopped, cocking his head to the side.

“No,” he growled.

“Bazlamit! No.”

With a roar, Mefiston burst into a thousand rays of red light. Winter shielded her eyes, the light blinding her for a few moments. When she looked back up, Mefiston was gone. Winter blinked. She could not believe it. Had he died? Winter could not be sure, except that he was no longer here.

That was a good thing, she had to believe. At least for now.

“The other daemons!” one of her tiellan soldiers shouted.

Winter turned to look out at the battlefield. In the intermittent lightning flashes, Winter sighted dozens of Outsiders slaughtering humans and tiellans alike. Mefiston may have been destroyed, but what he had wrought remained.

“Give me the faltira,” Winter said.

“Do it,” Carrieri ordered.

One of the human psimancers protested, but Carrieri spoke over the woman. “Do it.”

The woman rushed forward, a frost crystal in her hand.

Winter snatched the crystal, the rough, light feel of the thing filling her with longing. “How many more do you have?”

The woman glanced at Winter. “Just one,” she said.

Winter swore. Two crystals would never give her enough power.

“Your colleagues don’t have any more?”

“They’re dead,” the woman said. She did not attempt to hide the bitterness in her voice.

Winter frowned. Of course they were dead—she had killed them.

“Give me the last crystal,” Winter demanded, holding out her hand.

Just as the psimancer handed Winter her final frost crystal, she heard Carrieri’s shout above the storm.

“Retreat!” he shouted. “Khalic forces, retreat!”

Winter turned in horror. “What are you doing?”

“We are leaving you to deal with this,” Carrieri shouted, looking her in the eye. “I am sorry to do it this way, but we came here to defeat the tiellan forces. I will not leave without that victory.”

“But the Outsiders are more of an enemy than we will ever be!” Winter shouted above the rain, screams, and violence. She could not believe he was doing this. She had thought, just for a moment, that they might work together, to the benefit of both tiellan and human ends.

She could not have been more wrong.

“We can regroup and deal with them,” Carrieri said. “But we cannot allow you to continue carving your path through Khale. I am sorry, Winter.” Then, he turned and rode off, taking his forces with him.

Throughout the battlefield, the Khalic horn of retreat sounded, and Carrieri’s army—with the exception of those still affected by Mefiston’s wrath, who still fought anything in sight blindly and wildly—disengaged, running or riding away for their lives, following Carrieri down the hill and away. Some of the humans didn’t make it, either killed by Outsiders, too far away to hear the call to retreat, or too deep into the melee to be able to find their way out, but thousands of human soldiers fled the battlefield.

Only the tiellans remained to face the Outsiders.

Winter looked down at the two frost crystals in her hand.

With faltira, I can do anything.

She immediately swallowed one of the crystals, and the rush filled her, engulfed her. She was whole again.

She turned to the Outsiders and released her tendra, snatching up weapons from corpses’ hands. She focused a dozen or so tendra on each Outsider at once, taking on seven Outsiders at a time. Almost a hundred different weapons cut through the air, and then through Outsider flesh and armor and bone. The Outsiders roared, unable to fight the invisible foes.

Suddenly, Winter remembered the dome in Izet. She remembered how the Outsiders seemed to sense her, to recognize her power. They clearly could do so now. As one, the Outsiders turned to her, their blank, black eyes staring through the storm, and they began to fight their way to her.

One Outsider took a flying leap across the battlefield, shaking the soil beneath Winter’s feet as it landed just a few rods from her. Winter dove out of the way, dozens of her tendra still fighting other Outsiders, as Urstadt and the tiellans who had accompanied them moved to defend her.

“Protect Winter!” Urstadt shouted. Rangers responded, advancing on the beast.

Swords, spears, javelins, shields, axes, and any other blades she could get her tendra on flew wildly in the rain-soaked sky, piercing and slashing and impaling Outsiders who seemed to take hundreds of wounds before they showed signs of weakening. Rainwater and blood and mud were everywhere, and lightning split the sky every few seconds. Thunder cracked and rumbled almost as continuously as the Outsiders roared and screamed. Beneath it all, if Winter listened with intent, she could hear the groans of the wounded and screams of the fighting and dying.

Winter had taken down two, now three Outsiders, but she couldn’t work fast enough. Although the portals had closed off when Mefiston perished, at least fifty or sixty of the beasts still remained.

Canta bloody rising. Fifty Outsiders. They had faced half a dozen in Izet, and only Winter had survived. Winter could not possibly kill them all, and at the rate she was using psimancy, her power would run out soon.

Tiellan men and women were still trying to fight the Outsiders, but they were no defense. Each of the Outsiders slowly cut a path towards her, circling inward. Winter had cut down another half-dozen Outsiders, but so many still remained. Berserkers still roamed the battlefield, but their numbers dwindled. Very few with the glowing red eyes remained that Winter could see.

And then, abruptly, her power faded. She had run out of faltira.

Immediately, she raised the other crystal the human psimancer had given her. She hesitated, looking at the thing. This was their last hope. If she could not do something with this, they were lost.

She took the crystal, and the power continued to surge through her. Suddenly another Outsider leapt through the air, almost landing on top of her.

“Winter!”

A force slammed into her, pushing her aside and out of the Outsider’s path just in time.

Winter, dazed from the crash, moaned as she stood up. Urstadt rolled to her feet, armor dented and covered in blood.

“You all right?” Urstadt grunted.

“Fine,” Winter gasped, “for now.” Her tendra exploded outward in a new burst of power. In the meantime, the other Outsiders had already advanced a terrifying distance towards her.

The Outsider that had nearly leapt onto her rose to its feet, growling. Urstadt rallied more tiellan troops and they attacked the beast, though the Outsider seemed to keep its eyes focused on Winter the entire time.

Winter stumbled backwards, trying to get some distance between herself and the beast, and backed right into the rihnemin.

Winter turned to look at the stone, standing tall over her. A flash of lightning illuminated the fading runes on its surface.

Thunder broke the sky above her, and Winter retracted her tendra, dropping her weapons, and turned to face the rihnemin. She could not defeat all of the remaining Outsiders, not with the few tiellan Rangers that remained and a single frost crystal.

But Mazille had told her the rihnemin housed ancient tiellan power. She had a choice, now. She could either die fighting the Outsiders with her tendra, or die trying to access the power of the rihnemin.

She sent every single tendron she could muster searching over the rihnemin’s surface, until each found that strange, magnetic draw point. Dozens of tendra, then more. Sixty. Seventy. Before Winter knew what she was doing she had sent nearly one hundred telenic tendra into the rihnemin. Every rune on the stone burned into the dark, storming sky. Colors of every shade, purple and yellow and green and red and orange and blue, burned brightly, their light reflecting on the pouring rain.

Winter wiped her eyes. What else do I need to do? she pleaded.

She stepped towards the stone, placing her hands on it.

Then, her world changed.

* * *

The woman is suddenly aware of all of the minds around her, thousands of tiellan minds that fight and die on the battlefield. She senses the thoughts and intents of the fleeing Khalic soldiers, leaving their enemies to die. She even feels the unconscious rage of the berserkers, their only desire to kill. The whispers and screams and moans threaten to overwhelm her, but she pushes past them. Her sudden awareness does nothing for her, nothing against the Outsiders that threaten her, her tiellan friends and family, and everything that remains on the Sfaera.

Show me what else I need to do, the woman pleads. I plead again for someone, anyone, a goddess or a daemon or anything in between to show me the way, to show me how to save what is left of what I love.

* * *

And then, suddenly, I am back in the imperial palace of Izet, fighting the Outsiders, smashing the massive stone pillars of the dome into the huge Outsider that has been let loose in my world.

I’m with Knot, striking his face in an inn in Tir, beating his chest, pushing him against the wall, kissing him.

I’m sitting on a makeshift throne in a royal tent and Knot approaches me, a frown on his face. It is the first time I have seen him since he died, the first time he has seen me, and he cannot help but be disappointed in me.

I am commanding an army of Outsiders, and cannot comprehend why.

A voice calls me murderer, and another one calls me queen, and a third calls me mother.

Then I am back at the rihnemin by the Eastmaw Mountains, surrounded by dying tiellans and snarling Outsiders. The rihnemin glows brightly at my touch.

Use blood to access the firestone, an inner voice says.

I cut open my palm with my dagger, and press the wound against the rihnemin.

* * *

The woman’s blood, on the rihnemin.

* * *

Winter’s blood, on the firestone.

The multicolored runes on the rihnemin suddenly grew brighter, so bright they lit up the darkest storm clouds Winter had ever seen in a rainbow of color. The lights faded, almost to nothing, and then lit up once more, this time in unison in color and hue—bright blue. A beam, or a river, or some monstrous limb of blue liquid fire poured forth from the top of the rihnemin and connected directly with the Outsider that had just tried to leap onto Winter. Blue fire, burning so hot Winter could feel the heat against her back, singeing her hair and clothes. Somehow the rihnemin, the runes, and the blue fire itself were her eyes.

The Outsider drowned in the fire, its skin and bones smoking and burning as it screamed, melting into a puddle of putrid destruction. The blue beam immediately jumped from the immolated Outsider into the nearest of its kin, a few poles away, dripping blue flames through the rain and onto the ground as it traveled, melting the next Outsider. Then the blue river of fire split into two, falling onto two more Outsiders, and then six, and then more than Winter could count, and soon arcs of blue flowing fire curled over the entire battlefield. Bits of liquid flame poured down with the rain, hissing and sizzling and falling on tiellans, on Winter’s soldiers, injuring the living and singeing the dead.

Every last remaining Outsider burned a blue death. Then, the arcs of fire withdrew, retracting all the way back to the rihnemin, where Winter stood still, bloody palm on the stone, as the liquid azure flame disappeared, and the runes faded.

Winter took her hands from the rihnemin and turned, falling to her knees. The stench of burning flesh permeated the field, despite the heavy rain. Another flash of lightning lit the dark sky, followed by a crack of thunder that made Winter flinch.

Then Urstadt was at her side.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Winter could not respond. Corpses of all kinds littered the battlefield; charred Outsiders, flesh still smoking and sizzling in the rain. Mutilated soldiers, both human and tiellan, that had been regurgitated, mauled, clawed, and crushed by the Outsiders. Other dead soldiers, fallen in battle. And, of course, the moans of the wounded and dying, rising over the sound of the rain, between crashes of thunder.

Hands gripped Winter’s arms, lifting her to her feet.

“I am done,” Winter said, shaking her head. “This is over. We’ve lost, Urstadt.”

“We took heavy losses, Commander,” Urstadt said, “there is no denying that. But ours is the only side that has not retreated or been wiped out. That makes us the victors. Look at what your Rangers have to say.”

Winter’s remaining soldiers—perhaps three thousand, at most—slowly made their way through the corpses on the battlefield, towards the hilltop where Winter stood. She felt frozen. What could she possibly say to them?

But, as the first tiellan approached her, walking close enough to her that Winter thought he might strike her, the man stopped abruptly. Then, he fell to his knees.

“My queen,” he said.

Winter stared at the man for what seemed an eternity. All she could think of in that moment was Eranda. When Winter finally found her voice, she shook her head. “I am not—”

Urstadt touched her arm. “Listen, first.”

The second tiellan, a woman, approached her. She, too, knelt in the pouring rain. “You saved us, my queen. I am forever in your debt.”

Eranda told me I should be queen.

Another knelt. “My queen.”

And another. “Thank you, my queen.”

And another. “You are the leader we have waited for. You have my fealty, my queen.”

Eranda did not live to see it.

Soon, the entire remaining population knelt before her, thousands of tiellan men and women, their knees soaked in blood and rain.

“Long live the queen!” someone shouted.

“Long live the queen!” another repeated.

The entire crowd took up the cry.

“Long live the queen! Long live the queen! Long live the queen!”

Winter closed her eyes, willing all thoughts of Eranda out of her mind. She could grieve later, if she had anything left in her that could grieve. As the tiellans shouted around her, Winter stood a little taller. She wiped the rain and blood and tears from her face, and looked out over her people.

Someone needed to lead the tiellans out of this disaster. She had gotten them into it, after all. She would get them out, and restore to them what was rightfully theirs.

Humans had taken everything from them—their heritage, their dignity, their souls. Humans would pay for this.

Beginning with Riccan bloody Carrieri.

Urstadt turned to face her, and bowed her head.

“Long live the queen.”