She carried another vial in her hands. Black liquid sloshed inside from one of the many cauldrons that had gutted the landscape with its smoke and odors the last couple of days. We stood before the hulking carcass of a mastodon-like beast. Only its rib cage remained intact, wide enough for us to pass through. Two brown tusks lay nearby; the ends of one lay broken, the other buried so deep underneath the sand that only its tip gleamed out at us through the muddied churning of seawater.

The girl lifted the bottle to her lips and drank until there was nothing left. When she was done, she let it fall from her grasp, and before it hit the ground, she was already moving, performing the same ritual as she had with the taurvi.

Something that resembled lightning lanced through the bones, circled the massive ribs, and struck at the barely visible tusk. And then the skeleton moved. It struggled to stand, and the tusks rose, attracted to the rest of its body like a magnet. It settled atop the bony jaws. One by one, like a life-sized puzzle, it built and took form. Femurs attached themselves to pelvic bones and tibia, vertebrae lining up to collarbone and neck spurs. What it could not find, it created out of thin air.

And throughout it all, the girl never stopped. Her fingers danced and her feet moved, and she circled her creation like a parent awaiting the birth of her child until the massive being rose before her, whole and complete, magic spun into flesh.

“Imagine if you had the power to control daeva like these. Imagine the kingdoms that would quake and tremble before you. With such a threat at their borders, how quickly do you think they would mend their ways? Would more people fall under King Aadil of Drycht’s iron grip? Would he look out from the windows of his castle and see us at his gates and still send innocents to the headsman’s block? Would he still exile those like you who strive for a truth he does not wish to see? Would murderers in his kingdom still go unpunished for killing their daughters?

“And if I turned my taurvi and my akvan southward, to cross the rolling plains of Odalia to enter the kingdom of Kion, would the asha of Ankyo regret what they did to the man I loved?”

The akvan shook the sand and water from its hide and bayed at the rising moon. Its black heart shone, suspended in the breeze, until the girl reached out and plucked it from the air.

“Do they not understand,” the girl asked, her voice so very soft, “that they are nothing more than playthings in the eyes of daeva?”