“Emily thought it was something like that,” Tyler said.

Cheri rolled her eyes, a smile touching her lips. “Nothing escapes your sister, does it? It kind of scares me that a Mundane girl could be so sharp.”

Tyler fidgeted on his stump. He’d given up the glade’s better seat, a heavy cloth camping chair piled with cushions, though the quiet forest clearing was set up to accommodate three or four comfortably. Behind them, nearer to the vine-covered entrance to the clearing, an earthen vault was dug into the dirt, reinforced with wooden beams and secured with a sturdy door. The cool subterranean space was packed wall to wall with snacks and beverages, and the two of them had been working through them at a steady clip as they talked the night away.

“Sorry,” Cheri said, blushing. “I don’t mean anything by it, when I say Mundane. It’s-”

“It’s not that,” Tyler said quietly, shaking his head. “We know you like us, we’re not worried about the word choice. I honestly think it’s a little worse when Mundanes say “people” or “normal” when talking about themselves. Like you’re not normal, not people.”

“We all have things we need to work on.”

“Hear, hear.”

Cheri tapped her hand against the armrest of the chair with a grin. She stretched languidly, reaching high as she arched her back with a satisfied sigh. It was hard not to notice the way Tyler’s eyes traced her form, and though he immediately reddened, he at least didn’t stare too openly. Still, Cheri’s grin widened a notch as she met the boy’s gaze.

“I really appreciate this, you know,” she said, tone conversational.

“Appreciate...what?” Tyler stammered, still slightly red in the face.

“You hiding me again. Staying out here with me. Sharing your secret place.”

“It’s nothing,” Tyler said, though it sounded like the exact opposite. “The Tryhard Club sticks together. We’re strongest like this.”

“Is that it?” Cheri asked, leaning forward suddenly. They were still easily six feet apart, but Tyler reacted visibly to the change in proximity, shuffling uncomfortably as his face jumped back to beet-red. “Is that the only reason?”

“Well...It...That is, I…” Tyler sputtered, though it sounded like he was getting further from a coherent point the longer he attempted.

“Yes?” Cheri pressed.

“I want to keep you safe,” Tyler finished lamely. “I want you to be happy.”

Cheri giggled. Her eyes flashed green, and she rose up into the air. She gestured, and Tyler also floated off of his seat and, to his credit, only flailed panickedly for a brief moment. When he relaxed, he found himself floating, face-to-face with the pretty wizard girl.

“This isn’t fair,” Tyler complained, looking all the world like he desperately wanted to run away and hide somewhere. “There’s a total power imbalance here.”

“Your complaint has been noted,” Cheri said, leaning in to kiss him on the lips.

Adela turned away, more out of disgust than concern for the pair’s privacy. The interaction was so excessive, so sickly-sweet. It embodied everything that she hated about the Rainbow Nations, the antithesis of the life she’d known growing up in the White City. Under normal circumstances, the pair would have gone through their entire lives without ever having to take one. They’d never know battle or the true terror that accompanies a wound you think might be the one that kills you.

Even now, standing so close to them that she could reach out and grab Tyler by the ankle, drag him to the ground and open his throat, the pair were so lost in their own world that not even the Rainbow Granddaughter could detect her.

But wanton bloodshed wasn’t her mission. Her mission was to find the girl, relay her position to Ignacius and the strike-force, and remain nearby to assist in her capture, should they need it. She hadn’t ever failed in a mission before, and though the Rainbow Nation file on Fantasma was incredibly sparse on details, the priority placed on her capture or death was fourth on the list of all bloodmages, or had been the last time she’d visited the Rainbow Citadel. She was the Blood God’s last-born child, his most prodigious success. The brief glimpse of his smile, the vaguest hint of approval or pride had motivated her to commit atrocities that would see the ignorant boy in front of her flee in horror before the list was even half completed. There wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t do for her father.

So why, then, hadn’t she reported the Rainbow Granddaughter’s location yet?

Ignacius and his army were in the city. They’d been expecting her communication for nearly three hours, ransacking their way through the cluster of Mundane excess as they awaited direction. But for that entire time, she’d simply sat, listening to the conversation between Tyler and Cheri. The girl had spoken at length of her childhood, hidden in a quiet room in a lonely tower, staring at the world through a window glamored to look like a featureless wall from the outside. Tyler had spoken of his mother, of his sister, and of how difficult it was to find a place for himself in a world that was both leaving him behind and ushering him forward.

And Adela had understood. The White City was a brutal place, but they still knew camaraderie. There was probably a little more casual murder than in most places, but beyond that fear of blood and knife, bonds formed. Love blossomed even in that isolated place of cold stone, but she’d been denied even that. Her skill and her fervor would have made her one of the most popular of all the blood priests, were it not for her magic.

The name Fantasma had created a sort of misunderstanding among her fellows and enemies both. The name evoked invisibility and intangibility. This misconception had saved her life in the beginning of her career, when jealous rivals stole into her room bearing powers that could detect the invisible, harm the intangible. Invisibility was dangerous, but even Mundane humans could detect an invisible person. Intangibility was difficult to deal with, but there were certain spiritual and mental effects that could penetrate even that sort of invulnerability.

But how do you face an enemy when you don’t even know that you have one?

When she activated her magic, Adela slipped from the memory of anyone who knew of her. The longer she maintained it, the more permanent the loss. She could focus the effect on individual people, or disappear into it to apply it to the entire world. In a lot of ways, it was far stronger than invisibility, far safer than intangibility.

It was also far, far lonelier.

There had been some novelty to it, the first time she’d had to convince her friends of who she was. The constant reminders and her own participation would usually slowly revert the effect of her magic, but the process wasn’t infallible. She found herself having to start over with some, having to distance herself with people she’d known for years and fought alongside in countless battles. She would refer to events they’d been together for only to receive blank stares and appeasing laughter following her explanations.

It wore her down, over the years. As her power grew stronger, as the memory loss became faster, less reversible, she stopped renewing the bonds. It’s not like they missed her.

It still hurt.

All blood magic had costs for activation. It was in its nature. But even in a society where Adela personally knew a wizard who had to bite through his own tongue to activate his magic, she frequently thought that there couldn’t be a more painful magic than hers.

So when she heard Tyler and Cheri sharing their stories with each other, baring their vulnerabilities, she understood. She had her mother, and she’d never been confined out of fear for her safety, but it was the underlying pain that resonated with her. The pain of wanting a place to belong. The yearning for recognition and warmth. She knew it so well that it had entranced her, hearing the similarities in all their situations. They truly weren’t so different.

But it didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. Not in the face of what was coming.

“When I was a little girl,” Cheri said suddenly, causing Adela to whirl around in alarm, “my mother told me that love is what connects us to each other. And that’s important, because Connection is at the root of all magic, and all life.”

The pair had returned to the ground, though they were close enough that it looked like they might resume their romancing at any moment. Tyler’s brow furrowed in confusion at the sudden speech, but he looked half-concussed at the moment anyway.

“It’s sort of ironic,” Cheri continued, a sad smile on her lips. “Because a few years later, my father told me that when it comes to bonds, pain binds us together even surer than love.”

“You think that’s why we’re all together?” Tyler asked, looking like he couldn't quite catch the girl's meaning.

Cheri released Tyler’s hands, turning away towards the wall of the glade, where tangled creeper vines filled the gaps between the trees. “Would that be so bad? To think that it was your pain that led you to each other, and love that held you there?”

“I’m just not sure,” Tyler admitted. He stared down at the hands that had held Cheri’s a moment before, then shoved them in his pockets as he began to pace. “Everyone has pain, right? Wouldn’t everyone connect with each other, if that were the case?”

“There’s lots of different kinds of pain,” Cheri mused. “Like attracts like, I would think. You’re timid, and you hate that side of yourself. You feel overshadowed, like you could disappear and everything would continue on without you.”

Tyler frowned, but he couldn’t disagree. “But none of the rest really feel that way...do they?”

He added the last part uncertainly, as Cheri shot him a dubious look.

“Roman’s a middle child in a family that has five children,” Cheri said, counting off on her fingers, “Marika is hopelessly in love with Jay, who can’t see it, Jay is hopelessly in love with Emily, who can’t see it, while Emily seems like she’s doing her best to deny she exists...Is there really not a theme, here?”

Cheri took a seat on one of the arranged stumps. “I never had a single friend before I came here. We’re all...forgotten people.”

The Rainbow Granddaughter turned her head slightly and looked Adela straight in the eye. She froze, and only years of experience stopped her from fleeing. There had been targets who had some intent detection ability, who’d known she was there but not where she was, hoping to startle her into detectable motion. She’d once been tasked with assassinating this grizzled Shangri-Laian warrior who’d spooked her into a mistake by growling “Who’s there?!” at an unexpected moment. She’d found out later that it was just something he did every few minutes when he was alone. A case of paranoia trumping subtlety.

“It works on me sometimes, Adela,” Cheri said softly. “But at times like this? When your heart is desperately trying to reach outward before you can close it off again? I can feel the open Connection like the wind on my skin.”

Adela grit her teeth, but it was unlikely, at this point, that Cheri was bluffing. She dropped her magic with a twist of will, reappearing to Tyler’s Mundane eyes. The boy nearly jumped out of his shoes, stumbling backwards until he tripped over a tree root and sprawled out on his back.

“It’s how I knew you were there, at my induction party,” Cheri said. “Even then, you longed for it. It was a while until I felt you admit it to yourself, but your heart can’t lie to me.”

“This whole time, you knew,” Adela said, idly pacing to try and get herself between Cheri and the tunnel of bent saplings that led into the glade.

Cheri nodded. “The blood magic is plain as day, when I’m looking for it.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you warn them?”

“Part of me hoped you would decide to stay. I could feel you starting to waver,” Cheri said sadly, shaking her head. “I don’t know what happened. I’d have put money on you deciding to join us.”

Adela felt her hands curl into fists. “So you could have stopped it.”

“Stopped...what?” Cheri asked, uncertainty flickering across her expression for the first time that night.

“Check your Connection,” Adela shot back, lip curling.

Cheri whirled back to face the city, to the north, and a sharp intake of breath accompanied her eyes flashing violet. When she turned back to Adela, there was anger in her eyes.

“What did you do?”

“The same as you,” Adela said, shrugging. “I stood by and did nothing.”

“I should say,” came a sibilant voice from over her shoulder.

Adela felt a chill run through her. She did her best to keep her face impassive as Ignacius strode across the threshold into the glade. Behind him, his entourage of lackeys spread out to fill the empty spaces

between the trees. The blood priest had a smug look on his olive-skinned face, lips pulled back from his filed teeth in a sadistic grin.

“I was beginning to worry,” he whispered to Adela, leaning close. “We were expecting prompt communication, and there were some who worried you might be faltering in His service.”

Adela snorted derisively. No points for guessing who. Ignacius was, to put it lightly, the most fanatical blood priest in the White City. There was no questioning his position in the hierarchy, though you’d never be able to tell based on how insecurely he acted around the other blood priests. He’d always seemed to have a particular issue with her, probably due to the fact that no degree of performance could approach the proximity she had to the Blood God by virtue of being his daughter.

Cheri moved protectively in front of Tyler as the pair of them backed toward the far end of the clearing. Adela could see the panic in her eyes, though she mastered it well. It spoke volumes of whoever had taught her to fight, that she hadn’t used any magic yet. Moving hastily in a duel between wizards was an easy way to die, and Adela was certain that Cheri’s parents would have drilled her on the basics, if not more.

The bloodmages surged forward, the low-ranking and bloodthirsty making up the tip of the spear. Those eager to prove themselves, or those that deeply enjoyed the proving. They would wear the girl down, maybe even force her to use some of her last resorts, before the more patient warriors went in for the decisive blow. 

“Her movements are rather impressive, for such a young girl,” Adela commented as Ignacius stepped up beside her. He made a noncommittal noise of agreement, a look of bored interest on his sharp features.

“Vestiges of the godhead, surely,” he answered. “Competence granted, not earned. Not learned.”

Adela thought back to the last few weeks. Watching Cheri spar with the rest, watching her train with that characteristic glee at being able to shine her brightest. There was a lot about the girl that was...entitled, to say the least, but there was a strength to her as well. She was more than just a product of her parentage.

Even now, as she parried a knife thrust with the back of her hand before seizing her aggressor by the chest of his robe and hip-throwing him into another bloodmage...That wasn’t a Rainbow Nation technique. Emily had taught her that, and she’d already learned well enough to incorporate it into a life-or-death struggle. She was fighting nearly eight fortified mages at once with nothing but her bare hands and matching fortification, all while defending the terrified boy behind her. At fourteen.

“It does you no credit to underestimate her,” Adela said coldly. “You should be thankful your ability makes you too useful to deploy to the battlefield. Don’t forget, you’ve always been shielded by competence granted.”

A sneer twisted Ignacius’ face. “Ah, forgive me. I’d hate to speak ill of one of your new friends.”

She bit back a retort. It was foolish of her to defend the girl, and Ignacius wasn’t the type to be baited anyway. It wasn’t like her, to get drawn into this sort of foolishness. Normally she would have reactivated her ability and made her way back to the dispatch point to debrief and return to the White City as soon as her part was done.

What was keeping her here? Her mind drifted back to a few moments earlier, talking with Cheri after being called out. 

I could feel you starting to waver. 

The girl was canny, but she was no liar. Refusing to face it would do Adela no good. All of Cheri’s magic was impressive, but her ability to see into the hearts of others seemed like the one she was most in tune with.

And, in all honesty, Adela had wanted to stay. The softness of it all, the warmth. It was enticing in a way that very little was, back home. She’d greatly enjoyed her conversations with Emily, one of few women she’d met in her life who seemed to take things as seriously as Adela did. Jay was an impressive specimen, in just about every way an honest woman could assess a man, and Marika was cunning as a snake behind her facade of harmless mischief. 

And Roman…

Adela fondly remembered the days she spent in the library, studying the city and the surrounding area in a vain attempt at narrowing down potential hiding places. She hadn’t been in any state for field work, after the unexpected backlash from the sword she’d used to kill Hound. She healed quickly, but the explosion had shattered her arm and a few of her ribs on that side, so a week or so out of commission had been well within her expectations.

What she hadn’t expected was practically needing to use her magic to avoid the attention of some spiky-haired Mundane who wouldn’t take stony silence and an even stare for an answer. She’d nearly drawn her blade on him the first time she noticed his guileless snooping in the shelves behind where she was researching.

Which would have been disastrous, it had turned out. The young Dreamer initiate attached to the cultural exchange had been suspicious of her from the start, though it seemed like he’d refrained from doing anything further than simply observing her until he felt the need to step in and warn Roman away. For all the good that had done.

It had taken all the grace she possessed to not give Xander a gloating look when Emily and Roman had shown up the next day to “save” her from his attention. He’d done what any good operative would do in that situation and backed off, but it was painfully comical knowing that he’d been so close to two of his objectives simultaneously only to be thwarted by a pair of Mundane teens.

Adela had declined their offer of companionship, though their willingness to throw themselves headlong into a confrontation with a wizard and something Roman had almost said that day made her suspicious. Upon returning to her base of operations to find it decimated and failing to assassinate the team’s sensor due to unknown magical interference, she released Cambiador and set out under the assumption she was now operating solo. Not for the first time, she was alone, surrounded by enemies, with only her wits and a blade between failure and success.

Desperate to exhaust every lead she had, Adela followed Emily and Jay to a barn in the woods where she found her quarry, at a party, without a care in the world. The warning, designed to spook her target into making a mistake or acting erratically in situations where they might otherwise be more likely to hole up, only seemed to draw the group in tighter. Which left her with only one choice.

The humiliation of approaching Roman the next day at school to ask if she was still welcome was almost a deal-breaker. Her experience in the White City told her that displaying this sort of weakness would be met with ridicule, taunting, and extortion. To let someone know you wanted something they had was akin to putting your life in their hands.

But Roman had just smiled. He grinned like there wasn’t anything he wanted more, and he’d brought her into the fold without another word on the matter. 

What was it about that smile?

A terrified cry brought Adela back to the present, back to the forlorn glade filled with bloodthirsty allies and kind, loving enemies.

Formidable though she was, Cheri was slowly but surely losing the upper hand. By now, even the most swing-first, think-later of the grunts were beginning to take their time, and the slow methodical approach they were now implementing was beginning to wear on the girl. She was breathing heavily, apparently unaccustomed to sustained periods of fortified activity, and she was bleeding from a minor wound above her hairline.

It was Tyler who had cried out, amusingly enough. Even with Cheri doing her best, she was losing track of all the combatants now that they’d committed to wearing her down, and every so often one would get close enough to seize Tyler or prepare to strike at him before the girl could get enough space to ward them off.

Cheri struck down one mage before hauling the latest incumbent off of Tyler and flinging him across the glade. She turned her back to the larger clump of bloodmages to intercept another lunge, and one of the more discerning of Adela’s allies finally saw his moment. The man standing to Ignacius’s right, a bloodmage Adela was pretty sure she’d seen on an operation before, raised a hand and a black chain manifested, tearing out from the flesh of his wrist before shooting through the air toward Cheri’s unprotected back.

Cheri noticed at the last moment and deflected the chain away with a backhand swipe, and Adela clicked her tongue. Interacting with magic in such a reckless way...The girl’s training, or teaching, or whatever it was...It was obviously incomplete. To willingly come into contact with foreign magic, blood magic no less, was a recipe for disaster.

The brief contact batted the length of chain away, but the force didn’t carry through the rest of the length. As soon as it touched the girl’s skin, the chain came to life, wrapping around the girl’s arm and around her neck like a snake. Even as she was hauled away from Tyler, Cheri kicked one blood mage away from the boy and reached for another, but her questing hands came up short. She was dragged away from the terrified boy as a cackling bloodmage got an arm around his neck.

Adela didn’t expect the chain to be of much use against the Rainbow Granddaughter, but her expectations were exceeded slightly when the slip of a girl finally used her flight to halt her momentum, then hauled back on the chain. The sudden force ripped the chain free from the bloodmage’s wrist in a spray of blood, leaving a wide gash at the point of manifestation. Separated from its creator, the chain disappeared into black smoke, and Cheri turned back to Tyler and his captor.

Then, she froze.

It was straight out of the White City’s basic tactical training. If an enemy is too dangerous to face alone, outnumber them. If they’re too strong to be overpowered, restrain them. If they’re too clever to be confined...you target the people who make them weak. 

And she looked weak, now. When she turned to see Tyler, captured, the cruel edge of a machete pressed against his neck, she looked every part the fourteen-year-old girl Adela knew her to be. Scared. Uncertain. Insecure. So insanely out of her depth that she was only now realizing how close to drowning she was. The surrender would come any moment now. In the face of the forces arrayed before her--

“Tyler,” Cheri said quietly. The gravity in her voice made her voice ring in the silence of the glade, as ally and enemy alike hung on her words. “Do you trust me?”

At her words, Tyler’s quivering stopped. He sniffed, hard, and nodded once, the fear in his eyes still present but mixed with a steely determination not unlike the expression his sister normally wore.

“Consider carefully, child,” Ignacius said, his sinister voice instant polluting the serene moment between the two children. “The boy means nothing to us. The slightest movement from you, and-”

“You asked for this,” she replied.

Ignacius scoffed, but something in Cheri’s expression made Adela take a step back. In the half a month she’d been observing the girl, Adela hadn’t seen anything remotely similar to the cold arrogance with which Cheri was regarding Ignacius. It was...imperious.

In the next moment, several things happened all at once. First, and this is probably what saved her, Adela activated her magic. It was something of an instinct, one that Adela had learned to heed immediately whenever she felt it. Second, Cheri’s eyes flared with a brilliant orange light, and a crown of crackling energy formed in the air over her head. Lastly, in response to the sudden action, the bloodmage holding Tyler slit the boy’s throat and shoved him forward, before he and every other combatant in the glade called out their magic in preparation for the actual battle.

But there wasn’t a battle.

If Adela had blinked, she would have missed it. Cheri’s crown emitted a veritable storm of attacks, each a beam of light no thicker than a pencil. In less than a second, each beam found its target, boring a hole straight through the heart of every bloodmage in the glade. Even as she was, wiped from existence with her magic and frantically diving to the right, the beam took her high in the chest, piercing her beneath the collarbone. In the absence of magic that would divert the attack or evade its instantaneous flight, every other White City invader present collapsed, slain. Even Ignacius, the most notorious bloodmage below the Blood God himself, was felled, writhing and twitching in his death throes.

It was painful, literally and metaphorically. She hit the ground gasping, blood on her lips, probably moments from dying cold and alone, far from everything she’d ever called home. Tyler, on the other hand, that cowardly, useless personification of Mundane excess...He fell into Cheri’s arms, and she was healing him before a drop of his blood touched the dirt.

White City blades were soaked through with blood magic, and wounds they inflicted could take days to heal, even after the contamination was given time to dissipate. Even so, Cheri closed the boy’s throat in less time than any other healer would have taken with a normal wound.

“Are you okay?” Tyler asked shakily, his voice somewhat raspy. There was probably blood in his throat. Cheri was at least showing some signs of effort, in the wake of decimating an entire battalion of blood mages, along with their priest. She was breathing heavily, not quite panting, and a faint sheen of sweat coated her features.

Adela scoffed, then groaned with the pain that simple action sparked in her chest. She hauled herself to a seated position, one hand pressed against her wound. Cheri turned sharply, one hand held out to keep Tyler behind her. Adela showed her palms, wincing with the movement.

“What’s to be afraid of, at this point?” Adela asked with a weak smile.

Cheri didn’t shift her position, or return the smile.

“That wound isn’t enough to kill you,” she said coldly. “You know it as well as I do.”

That was right enough. A hole in the lung would probably do a Mundane in, if left untreated, but Adela’s body was fortified. She’d heal the damage before it had time to kill her, even if it left her weak in the meantime. Weaker than normal, at least. She could probably tear the head off an adult man if she had to, but in a situation like this? Injured, cornered, face to face with the Rainbow Granddaughter? That attack may as well have decapitated her.

Adela tilted her chin up as Cheri approached her. She wouldn’t beg. She’d been this close to death before, and she hadn’t begged then. Cheri put a finger to Adela’s forehead, and Adela glared back at her, defiant and proud.

“Wait!”

Cheri recoiled like Adela had shocked her. Tyler, for who else would actually think of sparing an enemy at a time like this, had a grip on Cheri’s other hand, a guilty expression on his face.

“Tyler…” Cheri began exasperatedly. “I know how you feel, but this isn’t-”

“Something I’d understand?” Tyler cut in, anger clouding his normally cheerful expression. “Yeah, I get that a lot. I understand more than you think, Cheri.”

“I wasn’t calling you stupid, Ty,” Cheri shot back, her own face reddening. 

“That’s not the point! You can’t just kill her! She can’t fight back, she’s-”

“Ty, she’s dangerous!”

“So are you!”

For a moment, Cheri looked like she’d been slapped in the face, but she recovered her composure quickly enough. She opened her mouth to retort, but Adela had heard enough.

“Oh, shut it, the both of you!” she shouted at the pair. “None of this matters! Even if she leaves me alive, the Cabals will take me once they get here, and I’ll never see the light of day again! They’ll torture me for information on the White City until I die, and no amount of Mundane teenagers vouching for me will change that!”

Cheri was quiet, but Tyler wasn’t willing to let it go.

“We could...we could hide you,” he said, though uncertainty oozed from every word. “Like we did with Cheri. We could figure out some way to...to pay it all back, and-”

Adela threw back her head and laughed. Not the pleasant, warm laughter that rang off the Tryhard Club’s stained wood, but the harsh, cruel sound that reminded her of humid air and white stone.

“Pay it back?” she asked. “You want to pay back the lives I’ve taken, the homes and families I’ve played a part in destroying? Maybe some community service? Grow up, Tyler. Between me and dear old Ignacius on the ground over there, we’ve killed more people then you’ve ever met.”

Adela nodded to Ignacius’s corpse as she said his name, but something about the body caught her attention. She hauled herself to her feet with a groan, taking a wide path around where Cheri and Tyler were standing, though Cheri tracked her with her entire body anyway.

“Whatever you’re thinking of trying,” Cheri said, “I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else.”

Adela rolled her eyes. After having seen Cheri in action, and with the knowledge that her power didn’t offer her more than passing protection, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do in this situation. It was more curiosity that drove her to walk over to Ignacius’s facedown corpse and turn it over with her foot.

It was occasionally rather difficult to tell the multitudes of blood mages apart. Many considered it an act of religious deference to shave their heads like her father, and most filed their teeth to points to add a layer of horror to their appearance, so if a particular bloodmage didn’t have any unusual features to set them apart, it was easy to lose track of one face among the crowd.

Still, she’d been partnered with him for nearly three years. As much as she didn’t care to remember the people who would inevitably forget her, you didn’t commit atrocities with someone for that long without developing the ability to recognize them on sight. And as surely as any White City soldier would recognize Ignacius the Sender on sight, Adela was certain that she was one of the only bloodmages alive who could accurately identify the corpse at her feet. And it wasn’t Ignacius.

It was Cambiador.

Adela’s stomach dropped, though little of it had to do with her partner’s death. The man was a monster, the classic archetype of a proud White City operative, and even considering what side she was on, it was hard to imagine the world being worse for his passing. No, the dread she felt was from knowing what was coming.

The sound that Ignacius’ magic made was soft, like the flutter of wings. It wasn’t an easy noise to pick out if you weren’t used to hearing it, accustomed to listening for it. What was worse, in the absence of daylight, the blossom of pitchblack smoke that accompanied the teleportation was almost impossible to see.

Distracted as she was by Adela’s unexplained corpse inspection, Cheri didn’t react to the first knife until it hit her in the back. The girl’s knees buckled for a moment before she overcame her shock, but by the time she’d whirled around, there was no sign of the attack save for the remnants of black smoke dissipating into the air. Meanwhile, two more knives appeared, flying from the left and right simultaneously.

Adela had only borne witness to Ignacius fighting on two occasions, but both times left her thankful that they were, nominally at least, on the same side. His style was meticulous. It spoke to how off her normal wavelength the events of the night had made her, that she hadn’t thought it strange for Ignacius to show up, in person, at the beginning of the fight. The Ignacius she knew would exhaust his opponent with an increasingly intense barrage, all from the safety of a location he would only leave once he knew victory was assured. Despite how much the White City valued bloodthirst and recklessness, Ignacius always remained the same: cautious, measured, deadly.

Cheri deflected one blade and tried to leap the other, but the wound she’d sustained slowed her movement. The flying knife slashed through the meat of her thigh, though it was a narrow enough hit that it continued on rather than becoming embedded. A frustrated growl sounded in Cheri’s throat as Ignacius upped the tempo, and Adela moved to the borders of the room and crouched low to avoid either party’s line of fire. She could see the tension in Cheri growing as she finally realized the trap she’d fallen into.

In the half a month during which Adela had closely studied Cheri and her magic, she’d managed to glean only two things: First, she could call on each of the Seven Roads of Magic, which was good to confirm even if it was expected. Second, and a lot more important, was that unlike her mother or grandfather, Cheri only seemed able to call on one Road at a time. If she dropped her Sovereignty long enough to call on Knowledge, to maybe glean where Ignacius’s hiding place was, she’d be cut to ribbons and the boy would follow. If she even had enough strength in her to access Transmission, the pair would be vulnerable upon landing, and she had no way of knowing if her destination was safe.

No, her only choice was to ramp up her fortification, and do her best to deflect the assault barehanded. And, for a brief moment, it looked like she might be able to do it. With four knives in the air, the girl’s almost blurring movements were plenty. With eight, Cheri could still keep up, though every knife in two had blood on its edge as it was deflected.

With twenty open portals, it was over in moments.

Silence settled over the glade as the last of the knives left the air, and Cheri slumped over Tyler’s cowering form. She was cut in over a dozen places, her body bore at least a dozen knives, and still she protected the boy. 

Adela settled back into a seated position with a sigh of relief. By the Blood God, there wasn’t a scratch on Tyler. What a horrifying girl.

True to form, Ignacius and what remained of his squad appeared, stepping out from a massive bloom of shadowy flame. They remained on the threshold for a moment, as if waiting to see if Cheri would spring into action as soon as they arrived, but the girl was motionless despite Tyler’s frantic attempts to rouse her.

Apparently satisfied with his results, Ignacius motioned curtly and his squad jumped into action. Two unnamed- as far as Adela knew- bloodmages worked in tandem to lift Cheri into the air with some sort of telekinesis. It was an odd image: such a waif of a girl, hanging limply above them with more blades in her than Adela had ever seen in one body...and she’d still almost certainly survive. She’d better survive. It was her understanding that just about every one of her father’s plans revolved around the girl.

Guardiana of Ignacius’s inner circle began taking steps to restrain Cheri. It seemed like overkill, just looking at the forces on either side, but they couldn’t really afford a misstep here. Not with the godhead. The wizened blood priest wove a thick cloth from the air, black as midnight, and set to winding it around Cheri’s floating body. It hung on her loosely, but Adela had seen the magic at work before, and knew that it was both spiritually innervating and surprisingly tough.

A few more binding magics layered on top of Guardiana’s cloth and things were ready to go. Some random bloodmage she didn’t recognize offered her an arm, which she accepted. He hauled her to her feet, a touch rougher than necessary, but gentility wasn’t really a notion in the White City. She wouldn’t need assistance walking or anything of the sort, nor would she allow it even if she did need it, but it was unlikely that she was going to be deploying for a few weeks.

Adela met Ignacius’s eyes from across the glade, and forced herself to drop her gaze. It didn’t do any good to pretend a job well done was anything but, and even considering the sneak attack and the Mundane in the mix, Ignacius had defeated the Rainbow Granddaughter, practically by himself. That sort of strength demanded acknowledgment.

“And what should we do with the leftovers?” asked one bloodmage, one clenched in Tyler’s hair. Even now, the boy was struggling to pull away, to get to where Cheri was now bound in what looked like a black cloth sarcophagus.

Ignacius looked at Tyler with dispassionate eyes. 

“Kill them.”

Them?

As dull as her conscious paranoia had grown in these last few weeks, her instincts at least still remembered the tempo of a bad turn. Her magic flared to life, wiping her from memory even as the bloodmage who held her wrist raised his machete. She hauled on the man’s grip, but he held her fast despite his lack of awareness.

“Aah, and she slips away,” Ignacius said softly. “We went over this, my soldiers. Each of you has a clenched left hand. Raise it.”

Adela felt a chill run through her. They’d established protocols to get around her magic. Each bloodmage in the glade raised their left hand directly into the air. Except the mage who currently clasped her wrist.

Confusion flickered across his face as he found his ability to match his comrade’s pose inhibited by Adela’s phantom weight.

The man stumbled forward a half step as Adela hauled on her arm, but he caught his balance almost immediately. Still, the slight movement caught Ignacius’s attention, prompting a cruel smile to appear on the blood priest’s ancient face.

“As we discussed, Ixil. Strike.”

As the machete fell, Adela thought of her mother.