Igor hated the talking parts.

He’d been in seven different wars over his sixty years. Countless battles. He’d waded through blood and fought outnumbered on top of a carpet of those who had already fallen. He did his best to seek out the thick of combat, the places where his greatsword could do the most work, yet always, always, he managed to find himself in positions where there was nothing to do but listen to others talk.

He was a man of few words, admittedly. Action over prattle, that was his motto. Or would be, if he’d ever thought about it. Maybe there were better words to…

Igor shook his head. No, he was getting caught up in their nonsense. It didn’t matter what the words were. Mottos were for people with tiny, frail arms and legs that tired quickly.

William gave him a pointed look, from where he knelt on the other side of the group. Igor huffed impatiently, but went back to waiting. The entire Prism Council was kneeling at the front of the ritual chamber, hands bound behind their back, though everyone one of them and their captor knew how futile a measure ropes on wrists were when it came to the entities involved.

No, it was a symbol. Posturing. As long as the Council remained as they were, they acknowledged that they weren’t in a position to overcome the frail, bent man who paced about near the ritual circle, monologuing.

Igor tried to focus on the words, but their meaning slipped away almost as soon as he heard them. These types all had the same script. Something something something vengeance, something something never defeat me, something something fruition. There was little that Igor loved more than the part at the end of the script. The gasping, the struggling to form words around the lump of metal lodged in their lungs.

This cannot be, impossible, but I was something something something.

Just to Igor’s right, little Lily had already slipped her bonds, though she remained kneeling with her arms behind her back. She shared his love for blades, and his contempt for people who’d rather talk than fight, but she usually followed young Will’s instructions to the letter. As much as he might hope for her to snap and start opening throats, she’d wait until the signal was given.

Igor eyed the bloodmages that lined the room. He held back a snort of derision. He was pretty sure he’d heard the term “honor guard” applied to the crowd of undisciplined savages that stood, leaned, or shuffled their feet on the borders of the ritual chamber. What were they guarding, exactly? The most powerful bloodmage in existence?

He noticed the talking had stopped. Igor looked around excitedly until he realized that everyone in the room was looking at him. Expectant.

Igor cleared his throat. “Erm...Once more?”

“You seem anxious, Master Kozlov,” Fulgencio said, one hand toying with some sort of black stone amulet. His voice was like dust in the desert. As ancient a voice as Igor had ever heard, and his father had lived to a hundred and fifty. 

Igor thought back to the mission brief. Getting “captured” and brought to the ritual chamber had been the plan, but William didn’t want the carnage to start until he knew for sure where Cheri was, and what state she was in. That meant, no matter how much talking happened, they wouldn’t make any progress towards the good stuff until Fulgencio revealed the girl.

Igor fixed the elderly bloodmage with his fiercest glare.

“Produce the child, coward,” he boomed, “that my blade might find your flesh and free me from this incessant talking.”

“And what would it do, to see her now?” Fulgencio asked. “Would you attack me here, at my seat of power? Would you cut me down and sew my soul into your clothing, as you did with our former Master?”

Igor felt the slightest of responses from the Yellow Mantle, though it usually twitched some small amount when the Rainbow Mage was mentioned, even in passing.

Quiet down, Vanquished One, he thought.

Apparently interpreting his silence for submission, Fulgencio turned his attention back to Will.

“Would you like to see your daughter?” Fulgencio asked, the last word heavy with sarcasm. “Would knowing her fate ease you into yours?”

Will’s normal composure cracked before the simple question. The assassin, the general, the leader fell away, revealing the man beneath. The husband, the father.

“Please,” he whispered.

A thin smile appeared on Fulgencio’s withered lips. Insufferable blackguard.

“Ah, the father’s love,” he mused as he settled back on the rough-hewn white throne at the back of the ritual chamber. “I know some of that heady brew. I am a father myself, you know-”

Igor grit his teeth. Just like that, they were back to talking. Dear gods, was there ever to be an end to it?

End it…

The meddling voice in his head whispered its usual sibilant fare.

They will listen, if you command…

In the three years he’d been wearing the Yellow Mantle, he’d only called on its power thrice. It was a stark contrast to some of the others, who relied on their scraps of the Rainbow Mage’s soul for more regular parts of their duties. Some, the Scholz boy foremost among them, had received access to magic that amplified their own quite favorably, and used that to their advantage. If he was being completely honest with himself, his role as the head of the Cabal of Peace would have been greatly aided by the power, but he was too old to change his ways.

Peace was secured at the edge of a sword.

That being said, sometimes the Mantle was too enticing a shortcut around the idiocy that seemed to dance forever at the fringe of honest battle these days.

“ENOUGH!” Igor bellowed, and he felt the Mantle shout with him. “MOVE ON WITH YOUR PLOT, OR ELSE BE SILENT!”

The wave of power rolled through the entire room, and imaginably a larger area around the exterior of the ziggurat, but its effects were felt only by Fulgencio. This was no simple binding, some collateral application or haphazard command. This was pure Compulsion, distilled from all other magics. The Yellow Road, wielded through the Mantle.

Inarguable, inviolable.

Fulgencio raised a trembling hand, gesturing to one of his waiting bloodmages. The man, who Igor vaguely remembered being briefed on, raised his own hand, and a small girl appeared in the center of the ritual circle. She was bound in rope, a heavy cloth sack over her head, but she was similar in form to what Igor remembered of Cheri.

Will sighed, running a hand over his hair.

Was that the signal?

Igor tore his massive arms out of their pathetic bindings, calling his greatsword from its containment rune with the same motion.

The talking was finally over.

It was time for the good part.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The big idiot hit the first cluster of bloodmages like a cannonball, cleaving top halves from bottom halves with each swing of his stupidly gigantic sword.

Lily glanced at Will, who was still conquering his disbelief at Igor's impatience. It wasn't exactly an unexpected outcome, in her opinion. She was honestly kind of impressed with how long the big lug had waited. It showed real growth.

“I guess that’s that,” Will said resignedly. “Let’s get to it.”

Will glanced at her, and she smiled back at him, like he’d taught her. Pull the lips back, show the teeth, spread the cheeks out. He winced, but that was normal. If there was anything wrong with her smile, it was ultimately his fault for teaching her wrong.

“Heidi, see to Cheri,” Will ordered, calling out his sword. “Lily, give us a full suite.”

Lily’s smile changed immediately to a scowl. She’d proven herself in battle a dozen times over, and Will still tried his best to keep her out of direct combat as much as possible. It made sense from the tactical angle, but it didn’t help her with the itch.

Will felt it. He always had a sense for when her bloodthirst was pushing at her ability to control it. Lily suspected he’d been similar in the past, that he’d conquered his itch and moved past it somehow. It was why she’d felt so drawn to him, in those early days. When she’d been fresh from the arena, still in survival mode during every waking hour. They’d expected her to acclimate eventually, over years of peace, but it hadn’t helped. The opposite, in fact.

She had thought it would change things for the better, finally having the chance to put the knives away. But it didn’t. It just made her anxious, like she knew the next bloodbath was right around the corner and she wouldn’t be ready. 

Casper, Warwick, and Morgan joined Igor in the melee, while Fulgencio and his inner circle watched them smugly from behind the line of soldiers. God, what it would do for her itch to put a knife in that insufferable face.

“Lily,” Will repeated softly. “I need you watching our backs on this. Can I count on you? Are you here, or are you there?”

She grit her teeth. Her hands clenched on the handles of her knives until the knuckles turned white. Knives she didn’t even remember drawing. He was right, damn it. The furthest she got from that dark place was one foot out the door. Just enough to see what life was like outside, to smell it, and then the suspicious lack of pressure saw her retreat. Back to the mindset that had kept her safe all those years. The mindset that she didn’t need, but couldn’t let go. Her magic had been created to aid, but all that she’d ever done with it was kill. She always wondered what sort of person she’d be now, if she’d been raised like Will. She wondered if she could ever truly be that person.

Well, even if she couldn’t, she could at least pretend.

Lily jammed the knives back into their sheathes, and nodded once to Will before gripping the cloth of the Violet Mantle, drawing it closer around her shoulders. Her magic didn’t need the help of the bound soul, but they were of the same kind and so naturally worked to find ways to meld. It was the nature of Connection.

She felt the link form with every member of the Prism Council and their magic. Her mind overflowed with information, every specific aspect of their abilities that her magic could target for amplification. Igor’s strength, speed, durability. The rate and accuracy of Casper’s odds. The range and speed of Morgan’s swap-teleport. If there was a quality on the power that restricted its upper ceiling, she could enhance it to raise that ceiling.

She took a deep breath, and hit them all.

What had been an overwhelming display of force became an outright slaughter. Igor’s greatsword became a blur, sweeping through the bloodmages’ fortified bodies so quickly the first didn’t even have time to topple in half before he was already cutting into the fifth. Morgan flickered through the middle of their ranks, swapping so quickly that his victims rarely had time to even realize they'd been struck before he had moved on.

Battles between the Rainbow Nation forces and the savages of the White City were rarely close. The White City simply didn’t have the strength behind them, the numbers or the training, to stand against Avalon or its sister-cities on the field of battle. Even when they sprang surprise attacks with an overwhelmingly advantageous starting position, it was only a matter of time before they were swept aside by the wizard response. Their forces lacked organization and the magic they drew from Fulgencio’s Well of Souls paled in comparison to the power granted by Agartha. And that was between the rank-and-file soldiers. In this particular battle, between a small crowd of bloodmages and the most powerful wizards in the Rainbow Nations?

The word slaughter sprang to her mind again, but then it wasn’t usually very far from the surface. It felt appropriate in that moment, though, which was rare. The Prism Council moved through the enemy host like a scythe through grain, with their combined experience, years of practiced teamwork, and the sheer difference in the caliber of their magic working in concert to overwhelm anyone who stepped forward. 

But Fulgencio was still smiling.

There had been dozens of grinning shitheads on the business end of Lily’s knives over the years. There was all sorts of scum in the arenas. Liars, manipulators, predators. Their methods differed, but one thing ran the same amongst all of them: when they were cornered, their smiles would falter. When they knew the guillotine was descending, knew their head was held by the stock, their composure would crack. Some would beg, some would rave, some would become vile and petty, but none of them could stay smiling. Not if they knew they had no way out.

Which meant…

Lily reached out with her magic, forming a link to Cheri. Her amping had an odd interaction with Glory and her daughter. Because their magics were so general, more of an everything sort of capability than anything specific, Lily’s own magic didn’t grant her any specifics when she looked for what she could improve. It was simply up. More.

The Connection solidified, and Lily felt her blood run cold.

Length of magical conduit, rate of energy transfer, number of targets linked…

“Will!” Lily shouted, moving to drag Heidi away from the person she was untying. “It’s not-”

She felt the strength run out of her body, like she’d cracked open and all her energy had just spilled out onto the ground. Around the room, the rest of the Prism Council were in similar states. Casper and Morgan collapsed, Warwick was now struggling with opponents he’d been holding his own against only moments earlier, and even Igor, that endlessly powerful goliath, seemed like he was moving under heavy constraints. Only Will seemed unaffected, by virtue of the Mantle of Sovereignty, but what good would that do, alone against the rest?

Will fought fiercely, but one man with two arms could only do so much, even a man as skilled as William Vinaldi. He ran a bloodmage through, and the dying man collapsed on the blade, arms clawing at Will’s grip. After failing to haul his weapon out of the bloodmage’s grip, Will let it go, swiping behind himself with a newly produced sword to generate space. Even enhanced as the blade was, the warding slash merely bit into the shoulder of the first man who rushed in, leaving Will helpless beneath the tide of black-robed men who dragged him down.

When Fulgencio began to speak, Lily couldn’t even muster the strength needed to lift her head. Instead, someone grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her head backwards, lifting her chin off the ground. Around the room, she could see the rest of the Prism Council being given similar treatment.

“An invasion turns to a pretend capture turns to a real capture,” Fulgencio mused as he slowly strode to the center of the room. “Oh, my dear Council. Where is the group of intrepid dissidents who slew the Rainbow Mage?”

He helped the bound impostor to her feet, removing hood and ropes with a gesture. The girl, black hair unkempt from however long she’d waited to trap them, looked awestruck as Fulgencio reached out and caressed the side of her face.

“Ciara, you’ve performed masterfully,” he said, practically purring. The girl’s dark eyes shone with adoration as she trembled beneath his touch. “How go things below?”

“The girl was released from the sarcophagus, O Most Ancient, just as you predicted,” she said, voice hushed. “The Connection was forged, and the tunnel was primed, but then…”

“Further interference,” Fulgencio finished. “No matter. We’ve formed the doorway, and now all we need…”

He met Lily’s eyes with a hungry gaze.

“...is the key.”

Lily could feel the weight of the magic that was holding them transfixed. It was a ritual, it had to be. No single bloodmage could possibly have enough strength in them to overpower the entire Council at once. The leylines were faint, though, distant in a way that she’d never seen used in ritual magic. With the aid of the Mantle of Connection, Lily followed the magic back to its source, to see if there was anything useful she could glean.

Seven focal points, built into towers outside the borders of the city. Some powerful magical artifact was anchored at each, and the imaginary lines that connected them to each other and the central point were all marked with runes. It was all so standard that Lily couldn’t possibly fathom where they were getting the energy for such a powerful effect.

That is, until she felt the first person die.

Lily expected that, on some level, wearing the Violet Mantle connected her to all people on the planet. If she wasn’t focusing actively, there were a lot of things that she wouldn’t automatically detect, like movement or the activation of simple magics, but there were some things that were too heavy for her to miss, especially if they happened in her vicinity.

Death was one of those heavy occurrences. Every time a life was snuffed out, she felt the absence like a missed step, like she was panting and missed the inhale after an exhale. It was an unpleasant sensation, especially when she was on or near an active battlefield, but it was still better than the itch.

It was an old woman. She couldn’t get any exact sort of reading on the age; the Connection wasn’t that clinical. She just got the impression of age, of frailty. Old enough to probably be a grandmother. Sickly, too, with a supply of life force that was already dwindling when the ritual began. Probably why she was first to go.

Lily’s stomach roiled and her eyes stung with bitter, angry tears. Bitter, that the world could still be such a horrible place. Angry, that she still cared enough to cry for it.

“You...monster…” Lily spat the words.

Fulgencio offered her a sympathetic smile, with all of the condescension but none of the kindness usually present in the expression.

“The whole...city?”

He made a noncommittal sound. “I imagine there might be some who are strong enough to survive. It’s a wondrous testament to the two tenets of the White City, is it not?”

“The weak will perish,” the girl in the center of the room whispered reverently. “The enlightened will serve.”

The remaining bloodmages had positioned the collapsed members of the Prism Council equidistant from each other around the room. In the center of the chamber, Fulgencio took Ciara’s hands.

“Are you ready, my dear?” Fulgencio asked softly.

She nodded.

The lives began vanishing more quickly now. One at a time, faster and faster until there was no separation between the deaths. A tide of souls, lives burned up into pure magical energy, flowed into the ritual chamber, passing through Fulgencio and into Ciara.

Where the ancient master of the bloodmages seemed to act like a gateway, with the magic making a smooth transition into, through, and out of his frail form, the girl was far less accustomed to using magic of that potency, of that sheer quantity. 

Starting from the entry point, where Fulgencio was gripping both of her hands, her flesh began to wither and burn. He held her fast as she started to squirm, then jerk, then writhe against the pain, as the purity of the magical energy inside her began to burn away her body. She opened her mouth, as if to scream, but only light and smoke escaped. In a spare instant, the girl’s body was all but destroyed, leaving only the frame still held in existence by the magic it held, and its need to exist inside a container of some kind.

Lily knew that there were only a few ways that things could go from this point. The magic was either intended to fuel a magical effect of truly horrifying impact, or the magic would be processed and placed in a vessel, probably Fulgencio. Either way, she couldn’t let it happen. Every member of the Prism Council was incapacitated, and she was the only member with the ability to do anything about it.

Most wizards learned where their limits were within a few years of manifesting. A power’s upper boundary was one of the most important things to bear in mind when strategizing its use.

That is, if you had an upper boundary.

Glory was fond of joking that Lily’s magic was an error in the system. Magic was a living force, and it typically found ways to package itself such that its use couldn’t overtax its owner. If all you could do was throw one fireball at a time, you couldn’t overwhelm your body’s store of energy by trying to throw three hundred fireballs at once. The magic just wouldn’t respond. As much as it lent its strength to the wizard who bore it, it also expected respect. The following of certain rules.

For the first four years or so that she spent in the slave colosseum, Lily had thought her magic was only useful for boosting the magic abilities of others near her. It wasn’t particularly useful in that context, especially when she’d been placed into one-on-one deathmatches. It had forced her to be creative when she could be, and ruthless when she couldn’t. But, over the years of testing her limits and finding her way out of one life-or-death battle after another, she’d discovered something incredible.

If she amped Will’s personal storage magic, she could increase the speed with which it stored and withdrew objects, or even the total storage space he had to work with. But that was it. She couldn’t change what she could amplify, couldn’t help Will out in other areas. Not with her magic the way it was.

So, during one particularly bleak match, not long after she’d turned eleven years old, Lily had tried using her own magic to amplify itself.

The result was groundbreaking. As her magic’s ability to amplify increased, she could continuously turn it back onto itself, resulting in a feedback loop of explosive growth. Eventually, she could overcome the very nature of the magical amplification, branching out to physical or even mental boosts. The strain it put on her body was the only thing that kept this particular trick in the bag, but now wasn’t the time to be holding cards. 

Will was the first person to notice Lily overamping. They’d had conversations about it before, about its nature as a trump card and how much he disliked the notion of her burning away her life force in such an all-or-nothing bid. He met her eyes from across the chamber, and  she could tell from his expression that he knew there wasn’t any other way.

Standing in the center of the ritual, Fulgencio began to glow. Their magic, and the magic stolen from his citizens, had formed a massive conduit that ran from him down through the ziggurat, traveling in an intricate pattern into the depths, so impossibly deep that it passed beyond the range of her innate understanding. She could probably fully track what was going on if she passed her over-amplification into the Mantle, but that was a risk she wasn’t willing to run. There wasn’t a threat that existed on the planet that was worth the danger posed by the purple coat she wore.

Still, the plan was clear enough. Fulgencio had always wanted the magic inside Agartha. But, just like the Rainbow Mage, he’d always found it beyond its reach.

Until now.

The same overwhelming force that raged inside Glory was steadily growing in the old bloodmage. Raw magic, too powerful to be compared to the paltry talents of any individual wizard. Too powerful to be contested, except by the entire Prism Council in their prime.

The magic inside Lily began to hum, but she didn’t stop. She was now far beyond the farthest she’d ever taken it before, but it wasn’t enough. She still felt stuck, and whatever magic was suppressing them all was still too much for her to fight. It sucked away the magic almost as fast as she could amplify it.

More.

She felt a sharp pain behind her eyes, but she grit her teeth. Fulgencio, his eyes closed as if in bliss, stirred slightly, like something was distracting him from his dramatic victory.

More.

Mist began to rise off her skin as the burgeoning magical energy burned away the sweat and dirt on her body.

“Ah, what’s this?” Fulgencio asked, turning an amused gaze onto Lily. “Struggling still?”

Lily would have responded, were her focus not entirely consumed on containing the over-amplification effect. It was something of a bad habit of hers. She got mouthy when she was uncomfortable, or when she was annoyed. Now wasn’t the time, though, not when she felt as if the magic would escape out any pathway offered if given the opportunity.

“I would warn you of the futility of your actions,” Fulgencio said, “but the sight of the Council struggling until their very last is so bittersweet, I cannot-”

He paused as Lily managed to make her way up onto her hands and knees. She felt weight across her shoulders, and something heavy struck her in the back of the head, but she was beyond pain now. 

The structure shook as she drew in one knee and planted one foot on the floor so hard it shattered the stone. Her energy still seeped from her, but it was barely noticeable compared to the rate at which her power was doubling, tripling, each second that passed. Nothing like the overwhelming pressure that had held her to the floor, that still held the rest of the Council.

Blood poured from her nose as something inside her gave, but it wouldn’t stop her now. A bit more magic towards her natural healing and whatever inside her that had torn would mend itself as quickly as it deteriorated. 

“Kill her,” Fulgencio said suddenly. When no one moved immediately, he took a step toward her, though his feet stopped just short of the boundary that marked the central portion of the ritual.

“Kill her!” he shrieked.

Fulgencio glowed brightly, fury written all over his face. But Lily glowed too. If anything, the light given off by her skin was brighter than his.

It would have to do.

Lily stood abruptly. She barely felt the weight of the bloodmage who was attempting to pin her, barely registered the impact as the simple act of rising flung him into the air. A group of bloodmages crowded in from behind her, and she swiped an arm at them. The simple action levelled every man that stood in its path and broke her arm in four places. She grit her teeth against the pain, directing more magic towards speeding up her healing. The rest, she put into physical power.

Lily glared at the Blood God, her arm still drawn behind her body.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The girl’s arm stopped well short of Fulgencio, but the shockwave that accompanied the motion knocked the old man from his feet and virtually shattered the dead girl he was using for his conduit.

The moment the ritual was disrupted and Morgan felt the strength come back into his body, he slipped back into the Twilight Realm. The transition came along with a feeling like slipping underwater, all the color washing from the world.

The Twilight Realm was lonely. The only method in or out of it, as far as the Council had been able to tell, was the Indigo Mantle or Morgan’s own swap ability from within it. And Warwick had done a lot of testing on it. It was hard to sate the old necromancer’s curiosity sometimes, short of the revelation of every mystery involved with his current obsession. 

There was a lot of mystery at work in the Twilight Realm. A perfect replica of the world they all knew, devoid of light and life. Everyone who existed in the normal world still existed in the Twilight Realm, only insubstantial and transparent, their sounds audible but distorted.

Morgan felt a sense of relief upon retreating to the solitude of that dark space. He wasn’t a hero. Not in the way the others were. He’d followed Will into his rebellion because his master had, and when that man hadn’t survived the battle with the Rainbow Mage, it had fallen to Morgan to claim his share of the burden. He’d never chosen this. He didn’t feel any glory in battle, like Igor, and he wasn’t running from some haunted past like Lily. He was no prodigy, no legendary soldier or assassin. In that world full of monsters, he was always just Morgan.

In this world, Morgan was all that there was.

On the other side, Lily had collapsed. It wasn’t much of a surprise. The amount of energy she’d been working with had to have been utterly insane, to have overpowered a suppression effect that kept the rest down. She’d knocked Fulgencio across the room and into the stone of the wall, though the strike had probably put her down for the rest of the fight. Most powers self-managed their strength to make sure backlash wouldn’t destroy the bodies that hosted them, but Lily’s over-amplification was something of a cheat, so it probably didn’t have that sort of safety net.

Morgan considered moving her unconscious body into the Twilight Realm, but it was a risky endeavor. His swap teleport worked here the same way it did in the normal world. He isolated one smoky, insubstantial target and forced it to trade places with another, or himself. If he was in the Twilight Realm when that happened, he would find himself in the normal world, and his target would be trapped in the Twilight Realm until he came to get them. It was simultaneously an absolute protection and a death sentence, because if something happened to him and he couldn’t come back for them, their only option was to wait in that shadowed place until hunger or thirst claimed them.

“Morgan!” Will shouted, even as he and the rest of the Council took up defensive positions around Lily and Heidi, who tended the fallen girl. The shout begged no response. Will knew Morgan was near, and that he could hear.

“Something is going on below,” he continued, grunting with effort as he blocked an overhead strike. “Cheri might be down there, and it sounded like there might be others.”

Morgan nodded, then flickered back to the normal world when he remembered that Will couldn’t see him.

“I’ll need my mannequin,” he said, swapping Will for a closer bloodmage. The swapped enemy didn’t have time for even a surprised cry as the formerly blocked machete cleaved deep into his chest, freed from Will’s guard.

Will stored his longblade and retrieved a strange object. It was an artifact made specifically for Morgan, a roughly human-shaped bundle enchanted to be just slightly lighter than air, along with a small wooden rod, barely longer than his hand was wide.

“Good luck,” Will said, meeting his gaze.

Morgan said nothing. When had he ever been lucky?

Instead, he simply grabbed the mannequin by the iron loop that extended from the “head”, and returned to the Twilight Realm.

He rushed back down the hallway they’d been brought down, out into the open air at the top of the ziggurat. The air wasn’t warm here. Weather didn’t really exist in the Twilight Realm; the air was always the same almost hauntingly quiet, neutral presence. No wind, no rain, no clouds, no sun in the sky...Just a bleak gray canvas up above and a colorless, flickering world below.

Heidi had done a scan of the ziggurat’s layout earlier, and there were only two entrances into the massive central structure. One on the northern face, at the peak, and one on the eastern face, at the base. It would take too much time on foot, to hike down the side or to take the staircase to the bottom. The city was something of a labyrinth, even this close to the center. No, the quickest route was through the air.

He made a half turn and hurled the mannequin off into the void. When it reached roughly sixty feet away from him, floating horizontally off the ziggurat, Morgan swapped places with it. 

He hated this part. When he compared himself to the teleporters who could freely choose their destinations, or even just the wizards whose magic allowed them to fly, he'd always found his magic more than a little lackluster. Mobility was limited if the area wasn't crowded, without taking some very unnerving steps.

Unnerving, like teleporting himself into the air so high that his survival hinged on a few tricky magic items.

He immediately plummeted, twisting in the air to extend one arm back toward where his mannequin now rested on the ziggurat’s top step. Morgan clutched the wooden rod so hard that his fingers hurt, but it was a far cry better than accidentally letting the thing fly off into the air. Aiming was always the most difficult part of this maneuver. It was hard to keep his eyes open against the pressing rush of the air around him, and though he always swore to himself that he’d get a pair of goggles after situations like these, any situation that called for this particular maneuver was usually so tense that it would slip his mind once things were calmer.

Still, experience and the slight edge in spatial awareness that came with half a decade of using his ability like this helped him to line up the rod enough that it triggered the attractor runes built into the mannequin. Distant as it was, it took flight, hurtling through the air towards him far faster than he was falling.

Once it was close enough, Morgan flicked his wrist to halt the rapid attraction and caught the mannequin out of the air with both arms and both legs, wrapped around it like a bear climbing a tree. It was somewhat undignified, but there wasn’t anyone around to see him.

It always took him a lot less time to fall than he expected. Probably something to do with spending all his time around so many people that made being in the air look like a lazy process. A spare few seconds later, with the ground rushing up to meet him, Morgan unwrapped himself from around the mannequin and kicked it off toward the ground.

Considering the speed he was already moving at, it didn’t make it far from him even with the nudge, but it didn’t really need to be that far away. The instant it made contact with the stone, he swapped with it again, catching the mannequin on his back before grabbing it by its iron loop once again. 

He’d landed just in front of the second entrance Heidi had detected. Not bad.

The normal world had a flurry of activity going on here. Bloodmages swarmed this entrance, alternating between attempting to set up defensive positions and fleeing outright. It must have been quite the rescue effort, to have the bloodmages in such a stir. He wondered if Liara might have led O’Sullivan’s cell on a separate mission, perhaps with freshly discovered intel.

The theory was quickly abandoned as a rush of frigid air poured from the stone tunnel. To his surprise, Morgan could tell it was cold simply by feeling the stir in the air. Few effects were powerful enough to actually change the state of the Twilight Realm, and those that were usually wreaked absolute havoc in the physical world.

This attack was no exception. The arrayed bloodmages crystallized, some of them left in unbalanced positions, mid-motion. Those whose poses didn’t allow them to remain with their weight distributed as it was simply shattered, a leg or an ankle giving way to deposit the rest onto the unforgiving stone.

Not O’Sullivan, then. Morgan honestly couldn’t remember having seen any cryomancers with this level of strength in the Cabals. Then again, he wasn’t exactly an expert on the staffing of the other Cabals. He tended to leave that level of monitoring to his Shadows; it took enough of his energy just keeping an eye on the other members of the Council.

A rather surprising procession emerged from the hallway. Three Cabal wizards, including one of his own, a bloodmage, three Mundane children, and…

Morgan switched out of the Twilight Realm as Cheri came into view. The girl, usually quite affectionate in her greetings, simply smiled at his sudden appearance. To be fair, she looked exhausted. The signs of healed wounds covered her body: clothing, soaked through with blood, torn to reveal pale skin where whatever weapon had torn into her. He’d seen Glory in a similar state several times before, though he’d never once been struck so hard by the girl’s resemblance to her mother. 

“Uncle,” Cheri said, holding up one hand as the rest of the group, save for one, shifted back into combat-ready positions.

Morgan gave her a wry smile. He was barely seven years Cheri’s senior, but she referred to all of the Prism Council in such a manner.

“Lord Indigo,” Karalis said, kneeling. He could hear the tremble in her voice. It wasn’t really any kind of perceptiveness that let him pick it out, more a product of his proximity to the time in his life where he’d have reacted that way, facing his superior while out of order.

“Agent Karalis,” he replied. He’d found that, thanks mostly to the Mantle on his shoulders, as long as he didn’t engage with his subordinates too openly, it afforded him an air of mystery and cold superiority that seemed to work wonders for his reputation. Even now, when he honestly wanted nothing more than a soda and a book to read somewhere quiet, the girl flinched at his simple acknowledgement as if he’d shouted at her.

“I just wanted to say, sir,” Karalis began, “that the only reason I’m here...That is, the reason that I came despite-”

“We forced her to come,” one of the Mundane children cut in. One of the Browman girl’s companions, the Japanese one. Marika, was it? Even if Morgan hadn’t known Karalis to be the type of wizard to avoid being forced into anything, the confused glance she shot Marika at that moment would have spelled it out plainly.

“No, they didn’t, I-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Morgan snapped. Karalis ducked her head back to its bowed position. “Things are going to shit, and you’re all leaving, now. Is this all of you?”

Silence greeted him. A few heads moved like they wanted to turn to the boy, the youngest of the Mundanes, but no one looked at him directly. If he remembered the briefing, that was Browman’s younger brother? They’d thought him dead in the attack on the glade.

“Where is Browman?” Morgan asked, realizing with a start that she wasn’t there. It didn’t seem in keeping with his admittedly young understanding of her, that she wouldn’t be at the center of all this. “Bringing up the rear?”

Cheri grit her teeth, hand curling into fists. “She-”

“She’s gone,” Emily’s brother said. His voice was even, but Morgan knew better than most what a voice sounded like when it was empty, rather than calm. “She’s not coming back with us.”

Morgan sighed. Well, if she’d come this far, with a group like this...She’d known what could happen. Honestly, the fact that they’d clearly pulled it off, with only one soul lost? Morgan was certain he wouldn’t have been able to do the same, when he was her age. He wouldn’t even have been brave enough to try.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “But we’ll have to do our grieving on the run. Follow me, and stay close.”

He turned and began to jog off, but stopped after a few steps when he didn’t hear sounds of anyone following him. Sure enough, upon turning he discovered that none of the youths had moved. In fact, Karalis hadn’t even risen from where she knelt.

“Fulgencio is after the power in Agartha,” Karalis said, head still bowed.

“We know,” Morgan replied. “And he succeeded, at least in part. We don’t know how much he got before Lady Violet managed to interrupt the ritual, but if it’s even a shadow of what fighting the Rainbow Mage was like, staying here will be dangerous on a level none of you can even imagine.”

Cheri glanced back at Tyler, who held the broken remnant of a Cabal of Vengeance longblade in one hand. When she met Morgan’s gaze again, he saw fury in those violet eyes. Fury and determination.

“You’re more like your mother every time I see you,” Morgan murmured.

“Thank you,” Cheri said. “It means a lot to hear you say that. But right now?”

She raised a hand and gestured, and the array of frozen bloodmages shattered, dissolving into piles of blood-red fragments.

“Right now, I feel a lot more like Grandfather.”

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Lily was in bad shape. Heidi had been using the Green Mantle’s power for over two years now, and in that time she’d healed all sorts of wounds. It usually involved little more than a nudge, mentally informing the Mantle what she wanted to happen, and it would take care of the rest. She’d seen incinerated limbs reform as if from nothing, seen a fall victim reconstitute from little more than a pile of shivering goop.

Somehow, whatever the poor girl had done to herself to interrupt the ritual was far, far worse than any wound that Heidi had seen before. It felt like every muscle in her body was torn, and ruptured blood vessels were leaking blood into pretty much every space on her body that had room for it. 

The worst of the damage was concentrated on the arm that she’d used for her attack. The word shattered didn’t seem appropriate. It didn’t encapsulate what had happened enough. The bones were pulverized. There were places along the arm’s length where the flesh had burned away, where the very fiber of the arm had split, leaving the resulting limb longer than it would normally have reached, like a paper chain.

And it was fighting her. The injuries were rejecting the Mantle of Control’s magic. Far from being something that had ever happened before, Heidi couldn’t even fathom how something like that could happen. This was the magic of the creator, the being that had formed their planet from cosmic dust. Destructive as it was, there shouldn’t have been any way for Lily to supersede that authority with her own magic.

“Will!” Heidi called out, as the pulse of magic she injected into the girl’s body was rejected for the fourth time. “Something’s wrong!”

“Little...busy…”

And he was, damn it. Fulgencio had extracted himself from the stone of the wall in short order and...it wasn’t looking good. Short as the absorption ritual had run, the bloodmage had managed to access an unbelievable level of power. It didn’t feel like he’d truly managed to conquer Agartha, the power was nothing like that level of strength, but nor did it feel truly appropriate for whatever he should have been able to usurp in fifteen seconds of connection.

Even just the man’s presence was exerting a palpable pressure. Heidi had seen him take several hits from Igor’s greatsword, and not only had he not suffered a wound nearly so bad as he should have, but whatever injury he did receive sealed itself shut in short order. Casper and Warwick were working together to finish purging the rest of the bloodmages from the room, while Will and Igor were struggling to keep Fulgencio occupied.

She should have known better than to distract Will during live combat, but...this was Lily. The girl was dying. The only member of the Council who wasn’t wizardborn, the only member of the Council still below the Mundane age of adulthood. Heidi had been there with Will when they’d found her in the slave arenas below Avalon. She’d held Lily’s hand as she stepped out into the free air for the first time since she was six years old. She wasn’t about to just sit here and watch her die. Not here, not like this.

A small hand worked its way into hers. She looked down to see that Lily, against all odds, was still conscious. She didn’t even have the strength to lift her head, but her eyes held Heidi’s gaze.

“H...hel-” Lily stuttered, squeezing her eyes closed in between short, shallow breaths. “Help…”

“I’m trying, Lily!” Heidi cried, gripping the girl’s hand with both of her own. “I just don’t-”

Lily shook her head back and forth, the movement accompanied by a pained moan.

“Help...them…”

Heidi’s breath hitched in her throat. “If I leave you, you’ll die...Don’t you get that?”

The girl pulled her non-mangled hand out of Heidi’s grasp. It was almost painful just watching her muster the strength to curl that hand into a fist.

Then, Lily punched her.

There was no power to it. It barely had the strength of a poke, but the message behind it hurt all the same. It was the girl’s way, to be aloof when she felt vulnerable, and to lash out when that wasn’t enough. The blows couldn’t possibly inflict any damage on Heidi; the girl didn’t have the strength left in her to lift an empty glass. But that was what made it so painful. Even here, on a battlefield on the other side of the world from her home, the girl would rather be thought violent and unhinged than be seen as weak. As a burden.

Heidi caught Lily’s fist, something she’d never have been able to do were she not so injured. She slowly brought it up to her lips. 

'You can take control…'

A sibilant voice whispered in her mind. She’d become all too familiar with it, since the Rainbow Mage’s death. Since she’d been forced to shoulder a responsibility beyond her strength and ability. It spoke to her when she felt useless, or when she felt situations spiraling beyond her ability to control them. Which made sense, considering exactly what it was that was speaking.

'I hate you,' Heidi thought, projecting the words into the darkness behind her eyes. 'Leave me alone.'

'You need me,' the voice replied, no less sinister for being smug. 'Without me, the girl will die.'

Heidi said nothing, her eyes drawn back to the battle. Will called out his enchanted shield to intercept an almost careless backhand from Fulgencio, the force of which dented the fortified metal and knocked Will from his feet. Igor stepped in to prevent any followup while Will recovered, a standard strategy for fighting in pairs, but the old man caught Igor’s warding strike with his bare hand. Heidi could see the thick, corded muscles in Igor’s arms and shoulders strain against the bloodmage’s casual effort.

'Without me, you will ALL lose.'

Casper and Warwick were now facing off against the Sender and a handful of his guard, but between the elusive bloodpriest’s constant barrage of attacks and his ability to continuously summon reinforcements from elsewhere, the pair was making little headway. Neither had yet been touched, of course, it was Casper and Warwick after all, but it didn’t seem likely that they would be in a position to aid the others until they managed to break through.

She squared her shoulders. Maybe Lily was right. There was a time to rely on your friends. There was a time to trust in yourself. And there was a time to become unhinged.

She closed her eyes. 

'What do you want?'

'More…'

'More?'

'More control…'

Heidi felt the cold grip of fear in her stomach. She glanced back at Lily, who had fallen back unconscious. 

'How?'

'Draw me close...As the girl did...Let me in…'

She’d seen Lily do it so many times. The subtle way she invoked her Mantle, hunching within its confines, pulling it tightly around her as if she were fighting off a chill…How much influence did the Mantle of Connection have over her? Did it whisper to her, even more than it did to Heidi?

Was her continued standoffishness just her way of fighting the Mantle’s will?

Heidi reached up, each hand going to its opposite shoulder and gathering up a handful of the cloth there.

I won’t let her die. I won’t let any of them die.

As she hunched inward, pulling the Mantle tightly around her body, a thought popped into her head. She didn’t know if it came from her or the Mantle, but she believed it either way.

'Only I can Control the outcome.'

The change was immediate, and overpowering. Calling on the Mantle normally felt like an extension, like her will had become a limb that she could flex, stretch, and use to grasp or manipulate objects. This...wasn’t even comparable. It was like she had an invisible hand poised a hair's breadth away from everything for at least half a mile. Like she could grip the stone of the wall, the steel of Will’s sword, the very air between them, all at the same time with the effort it would take to smile or close her eyes.

Fulgencio would have the same sort of advantage, though, or something like it. She’d have to be smart about it. Stone from the walls, around his neck like a collar. A horizontal impact while he attempted to force his way out of the stones, to snap his neck or decapitate him. She would need more, to overpower any passive regeneration…

As her mind spiraled down the list of potential options, she began to float closer, already seeking to position herself for the coming assault. The toe of her boot caught on cloth, and she rose higher to clear the obstruction.

And paused.

...first…

Heidi tilted her head as the dim, quiet voice sounded in the back of her mind.

Please...help her first…

She glanced down at the dying girl at her feet. Her body had been shattered by the force of the magic she’d wielded, however brief. It would be quite possible to stabilize her, though it was unlikely that she would return to the battle in time to contribute to the outcome. She would need weeks, if not months, of rehabilitation to restore her magical conduits to a healthy state.

Which made her a useless piece.

Whatever it was inside her that was holding her back, it was weak. Both in the sense that it wasn’t sourced in strength of any kind, and in the sense that it didn’t truly have the ability to restrain her, should she seek to ignore it. Sentimentality, the helpless surrender of one’s ability to control the outcome. 

Please…

Heidi hummed in irritation. The incessant distraction couldn’t keep her from exerting her will on the fight, but even a momentary disruption could throw the entire plan into disarray. A moment spent now was probably preferable to a moment lost later. She directed her will at the girl’s wounded body, instructing her cells to rapidly advance their rate of regeneration. Blood would be produced to replace what she’d lost internally, though her body cavities would need to be drained at some later point. It was unlikely that she would be able to even stand on her own power in the next day, but her life was no longer in danger, and the annoyance at the back of her mind faded. She was finally free to handle important matters. Restoring order. Orchestrating the world.

Seizing control.

Will and Igor hesitated at the edge of Fulgencio’s reach, clearly not eager to engage the bloodmage without a better plan in place, but delay would not win this battle. Heidi nudged Will forward, the force sudden and strong enough that he was sure to stumble. True to his opportunistic nature, Fulgencio seized the moment, closing the distance and striking out with a shining fist.

Heidi noted that the attack was in line to strike Will in the chest. Unarrested, the blow would almost certainly result in a mortal wound, but wouldn’t kill him instantly, which meant Fulgencio was not taking the fight seriously.

This presented an opportunity. It indicated a proclivity for ostentatious displays of power, as well as a preference for leaving his enemies alive long enough for him to fully enjoy the magic he’d managed to siphon from Agartha. Heidi felt comfortable he would behave predictably, and continued her setup.

No doubt due to his surprise at Heidi’s sudden push, Will failed to bring his shield up in time to absorb the blow, so she aided him in its raising. She even tore stone from the floor of the ritual chamber to reinforce the dented metal, resulting in a barricade that absorbed most of the incoming force.

Most of the force. The attack still punched through the stone and metal, broke Will’s arm, and knocked him a dozen or so feet away. Heidi considered mending the arm, but ultimately decided to keep her attention on the matter at hand. Any information she could glean was useful information, especially in the absence of the Blue and Red Mantles. She cast a sidelong glance at where Casper and Warwick still skirmished with Ignacius. One hand twitched, and she felt her will brush over the exterior of the Mantle of Knowledge.

It would make things so easy…

Heidi shuddered, desire and anticipation pulsing throughout her body.

It would feel so good to be whole again.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

A soft, silvery ringing sounded in Warwick’s ear, and he swore out loud.

Even though the Influence Alarm had been his idea, and heavily insisted at that, it wasn’t something he’d ever truly wanted to hear. They’d all known the risk they were running, when they bound the Rainbow Mage. Wielding magic of such purity was dangerous, and the overwhelming power of the Creator meant that they didn’t have any real way of knowing what exactly they were dealing with. The notion that the Mantles might be influencing the Prism Council had been raised by Will in the months that followed the end of the rebellion, and Warwick’s findings were...unreliable. 

There were certainly signs that the behavior of the Councillors was changing, though it was difficult to find evidence that the Mantles were to blame. Will took the leadership position for the new Rainbow Nations, and also wore the Mantle of Sovereignty. Casper seemed possessed by his quest for the truth at the heart of the world, but he had always been curious, always been scholarly. Was it his own ambition that stoked those flames, or the Mantle of Knowledge? The ones who seemed least affected were those whose natures seemed to directly conflict with the road of magic they bore. Young Miss Arnett, who shied away from personal connection, or Master Kozlov, who didn’t believe in exerting control over others, who barely seemed able to control himself.

Still, as the leader of the Rainbow Nation’s magical research and development team, it fell to Warwick to learn as much as he could about their new powers. Aside from the whispers that every Councillor but Will admitted to hearing, and the fact that the Mantles seemed to react to being observed or directly addressed, there wasn’t much concrete information to glean. It was still enough apparent sentience to warrant his implementation of the Influence Alarm rune that all the Prism Council, and anyone who served them in a direct secretarial capacity, had embedded in their souls.

They were simple enough, in practice. Once applied, they sampled the nature of the first Mantle they felt, easily identifiable due to their purity and strength, and then went dormant, waiting for certain thresholds of that same sampled energy to be detected in their host.

At what he considered to be a safe threshold, the rune would inform its bearer that they’d passed it. More of an awareness measure than a preventative one. At somewhere around the middle point, the rune would inform him, irrespective of its bearer’s wishes. At the last stage, when the rune detected the presence of more of the Mantle’s energy that there was natural energy…

Suffice to say that no one, especially not Warwick, wanted to see it happen. Though his necromancy gave him ample ability to aid damage to one’s soul, it had been necessary to ensure that the damage caused by these safeguards was beyond his ability to repair. 

Utter, abject destruction.

Heidi had triggered her alarm, and a mental check showed Warwick that she’d shot up to nearly eighty percent of her overall limit. Casper would want to know, and though it was hardly the time or place for a discussion, they had other options available.

Warwick closed his eyes for a moment, forcefully intending on a future action.

As per the usual, Casper picked up on it immediately. He deflected a pair of knives with his own shortblade, paused for a moment, no doubt to check the odds, and then shot him a glance.

“You’re sure?” he asked, giving Warwick his full attention even as his eyes glowed blue from beneath the Mantle’s hood.

“Positive,” Warwick replied. He had no way of knowing what exactly had been said in the future exchange that Casper had witnessed, but so long as his intent was solid, the message rarely failed to get through.

Casper turned back to face Ignacius, whose sneer had yet to fade. It was truly something, that a single opponent could stand against the two of them, but neither Casper nor Warwick had yet to start pushing seriously. It was always better to test the waters against men like this, the people who always had something deadly up their sleeves. But they were out of options.

“Save her,” Casper said. “If you can.”

Warwick chuckled, turning to join the group that was busy occupying Fulgencio. “Sentimentality? Are you so proud of your Familiar?”

“She was a terrible Familiar,” Casper said, the ghost of a smile appearing on his face. “I’ve just grown rather fond of her as a person.”

Warwick simply shook his head. They’d all been children at the start of this, each and every one of them. It made him feel old, to see them all so…grown.

William was picking himself up off the ground as Warwick left Casper to face Ignacius alone. Their intrepid leader was tearing the remnants of a shattered shield off of a broken arm, though his expression was resolute as always. Igor was doing his best to withstand Fulgencio’s current onslaught, his swollen, muscle-bound body doing what little it was good for in fights between advanced wizards, and Heidi…

Heidi floated in the air, just above Lily’s slumped form. She was turned toward Warwick as he approached, one hand outstretched in his direction. The emerald light that blazed in her eyes almost left her face completely obscured by its brilliance. 

Warwick’s anti-magic barrier flared to life without sound or fanfare, the bound skeletal limbs that served as his primary weapons poising to strike. If things had already gone this far, the best course of action would be to render Heidi unconscious, severing her ability to grant whatever permission she’d inadvertently granted the Mantle of Control. He was confident in his ability to overpower her. The greater telekinesis her Mantle offered was at odds with the magic in his own, combined with his inherently superior magical acumen. The Mantle of Alteration would keep him safe, while simultaneously allowing him to dissolve the Green Mantle's hold on Heidi.

He felt Heidi's Control ripple outward and braced himself for the struggle, but didn’t feel it impact his shield. Troubling. Even the Mantle’s subtler touches should be apparent when trying to affect his shield. It was almost as if-

Warwick didn’t realize his mistake until the Blue Mantle flew past him toward Heidi’s outstretched hand.

She was after the Mantles. Or, probably more accurate, he was after the Mantles. Each piece of the Rainbow Mage's soul would have its own way of going about things, but they all shared the same goal.

Reunification.

Warwick sent a mental instruction to his limbs, and they hastened to comply. He didn’t control their movements with his mind, not in the way that he moved his arms and legs. There were too many, their capacity for movement too flexible for his brain to have been capable of keeping up with it all. Instead, they had a simplified system of targeting, modes that they could be placed in. Intercept, Arrest, Destroy, Kill, Incapacitate. Simple intents. In this instance, Arrest, targeting the Mantle of Knowledge. 

One bony appendage flashed out, the spike on its tip driving into the midst of the blue cloth and deep into the stone beneath it. It wouldn’t puncture; of this he was quite certain. They’d done numerous tests on the relative strength of the cloth and had found that, while it wasn’t armor in any sense, the material was nearly indestructible. It wouldn’t tear or shear, and enchanted weapons of every conceivable kind had been tested against them to the same result. That being said, it didn’t offer any protection to material behind it, and still moved like cloth.

Which meant it could be pinned.

 Heidi’s eyes dropped to where the Mantle was held fast by Warwick’s limb, though no emotion, neither confusion nor frustration, appeared on her face. Her outstretched hand twitched, and the Mantle flapped and twisted under the redoubled pressure.

After seeming to realize that it wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how hard she pulled on it, Warwick finally felt contact on his barrier. Heidi was attempting to reach into it to grip the offending limb, to free the pinned Mantle. Warwick sent his remaining limbs the order to Incapacitate. It was time to take Heidi out of this fight. 

It wasn’t going to be easy, though. As soon as his newly instructed limbs left the shelter of his anti-magic barrier to begin the offense, they were seized by Heidi’s Control. Assessing with the Orange Mantle’s magical dissection earned him little information for the contact: The magic Heidi was wielding was pure, it was strong, and it seemed to come from all directions at once. Every inch of the surface of the bone was affected individually.

His only options for actually being able to strike her with the limbs would be to dismiss his barrier or move close enough that she was eclipsed by it, neither of which were actually feasible. The instant he wasn’t protected from her Control, she would either incapacitate him or strip him of his Mantle, or both. 

Still, if the battlefield was divided into dangerous and safe based on what was or wasn’t inside his barrier, there were still gains to be made. He lifted a foot to take a step forward, only to briefly lose his balance in the face of the wave of pressure that struck the outside of his barrier. Heidi seemed to understand that letting Warwick move his barrier over where the Mantle of Knowledge was pinned would see it removed from her grip.

“This really isn’t the time for a stalemate, Miss Gustavson,” Warwick said drily, even as his mind raced for options. He chanced a quick look back to double-check on Casper, though he needn’t have bothered. The boy had been a legendary assassin long before he’d donned the Mantle of Knowledge, and if Warwick knew him at all then he was guaranteedly still practicing without its foresight, just to keep himself sharp. If anything, the loss of the Mantle had probably resulted in him capitalizing on Ignacius overcommitting for the opening.

If Heidi heard him, if there was even enough left of Heidi in there to know him, she gave no sign. Her other hand raised towards the ceiling, then swept toward the floor in an unfortunately familiar gesture.

The ceiling of the ritual chamber collapsed, chunks of stone easily six feet on each side shearing out of their formation, unable to resist the urging of the Mantle of Control. For what it was worth, most of the attack was aimed at him specifically, with Heidi guiding the falling stone towards him to change a simple cave-in to a veritable avalanche.

It was a valid avenue of attack. His barrier analyzed and counteracted hostile magic, but there wasn’t much about a hundred tons of uncaring stone that his barrier would have to analyze.

Warwick awakened his phylactery. The bones of the paltry dozen who’d sworn to serve him in death wouldn’t be enough to avert the incoming attack, but the vanquished souls within his phylactery were so petulant about things like this. He supposed the notion that his death would destroy the phylactery and free his conquered enemies was probably a strong motivator to stay put in situations like this, but that wasn’t an option.

So he simply filled the phylactery with pain. Raw agony, torture in a form so pure that only an untethered soul could truly experience it. In the microcosm inside the small enchanted jewel, Warwick could distort time itself, causing seconds to pass like weeks, months, years. Needless to say, when applied correctly, the resulting cooperation was less of an uncertainty and more like opening a faucet and watching the souls do as he commanded, each eager for the opportunity to escape their torment.

Necromancy was so unpleasant at times.

One couldn’t argue with the results, though. A forest of skeletal appendages surged forth from the phylactery’s housing, nestled in the small of his back. Each had its own set of instructions, its own purpose. The majority of them worked to weave a protective lattice overhead, the souls several thousand times sturdier than the bone they were imitating. They could technically look like anything the souls had known while alive, but bone was a constant. And thematically appropriate.

The remaining limbs split their focus. Some went to the floor, to provide stability to the structure above, gouging the floor with the spikes on their tips. Others struck out against the falling rock, full to bursting with the violent, raw magic that came part and parcel with the manipulation of souls. Stone disintegrated at their touch, the corrosion expanding outward from the first point of contact to banish each incoming missile into no more than dust.

The swirling clouds soon obscured most of the room, and the sudden reintroduction of humid jungle air made the particles stick to what they contacted. Warwick knew from the feedback on the tip of the pertinent limb that the Mantle of Knowledge was still pinned, still out of Heidi’s grip, but he had no sense of the rest of the room. Limbs probed out, their tips wreathed in an enervating effect designed to sap enough energy to render those they contacted unconscious, but they did not find Heidi’s form. She’d used the smokescreen to reposition.

'Where are you, child?' Warwick thought, his eyes roving the roiling dust beyond his defensive formation.

A rumbling in the stone beneath his feet warned him of an incoming attack. Anchored as he was, eight different limbs spiked into the ground in a roughly circular pattern around him, mobility was no issue. Each skeletal appendage remained attached to their anchor point, simply shortening or lengthening to drag his body as he willed it, each movement narrowly avoiding a massive stone spike as they erupted from the ground.

They struck one after another, tracking his motion through the air. The general accuracy of each attack meant that she could still locate him somehow, despite the clouds of dust still thick on the air. 

No. Because of the dust. She had the Mantle of Control’s invisible hand on every physical thing in the room, even the particles in the air. Just because she couldn’t affect him through his barrier didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t aware of what lay beyond her reach. If she had a mind to-

Warwick narrowly avoided another spike, swearing again as it passed close enough to him to snag the Mantle’s cloth. A lesser raiment would have torn, considering the wickedly sharp tip on the spike and the speed at which it emerged, but the Mantle of Alteration simply wrapped around it, holding him in place for a brief moment.

Which, as it turned out, was all it took.

The surface of the last spike rippled briefly, and a pair of pale arms emerged. The stone on the spike’s side yawned open like the maw of a giant mouth, and Heidi floated free. Too close to dodge, too close for any of his limbs to make it in time. Firmly inside his anti-magic barrier.

I miscalculated, Warwick thought, in the odd calm that always seemed to accompany moments of impending, unavoidable doom.

Heidi reached out and touched his chest, and everything went wrong.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

You picked a hell of a time to become formidable, Casper thought scathingly, taking his eyes off Ignacius for the moment it took to watch Heidi fell Warwick with a touch.

The brief window of distraction wasn’t dangerous. Or rather, it wasn’t dangerous to him. There was an eighty-eight percent chance that Ignacius would seize the opportunity, desperate for the kill and eager for the chance to assist his Blood God. Not that the man wasn’t rapidly growing into a being that was finally worthy of the title. No, Ignacius would surely attack in that moment. Seventy-six point four percent chance that he would attack from one of his blind spots, sixty-four point seven that he would attack from both. He wouldn’t want to open a portal in front of him, and wouldn’t want to risk Casper turning to see the oncoming attack when his attention shifted back to Ignacius.

 He mulled over the flood of numbers in his head for half a second more before leaning back sharply. The pair of flying knives collided with each other in the space his neck had occupied a moment before, and he snatched them out of the air before turning back to the Sender.

Warwick was dying. In that brief moment of contact, Heidi had done horrific damage to the man’s internal organs, and though manipulating life force and delaying death were two of the staples of necromancy, it wouldn’t be but five minutes more until Warwick’s captured souls finally abandoned him. He would collapse, Heidi would strip the Mantle of Alteration off his corpse, and then she would retrieve the Mantle of Knowledge from where it still lay, pinned to the ground.

He knew, because he’d seen it.

In the sporadic research they’d done into the expanded strengths the Mantles offered each of the Prism Council, they’d discovered some interesting things about their relative strengths. William, who was their leader mainly by stint of his being the most prolifically skilled killer among them, gained a magical immunity that trumped any known magical effect. And, in spite of this, the introduction of the Mantles had made him their weakest member. Heidi, Igor, and William had all fallen behind the rest of the Council, and Warwick had a convincing theory as to why.

Casper flung the two knives he'd appropriated back at their owner, forcing him to match them with two of his own. Not thrown, either. No, the old blood priest didn’t have the physical strength left in his body to actually hurl knives at speed. More likely, he had a personal cabal hidden somewhere, instructed to hurl knives on mental command, then redirected through the Sender’s portals. It wasn’t technically endless, but Casper wasn’t in the habit of attempting battles of attrition with unknown quantities. His eyes flicked back to Will and Igor, the latter pressing Fulgencio with a blistering assault while William struggled back to his feet.

It wasn’t entirely his own fault, that he’d fallen so far behind. It was about the nature of their magic. William’s power, his odd dimensional vault, was classified as Transmission magic, whereas Igor’s vitality-infused strength was understood as Sovereignty magic. Had Will received the Indigo Mantle, or Igor the Red, it was easy to see how they’d have ended up as forces to be reckoned with. It was a matter of compatibility.

On the other side of the line, Casper, Morgan, and Lily had all received the Mantles that corresponded to their specific magic, though the girl had never really specified in which way her amplification power was aided by the Violet Mantle. Morgan’s trick with the Twilight Realm was undeniably effective, and Casper…

Casper was, with very little room to argue, the strongest of them all. The visions granted by the Mantle of Knowledge were whimsical, fleeting glimpses of futures that could be. They had the same weakness that most future sight magic came with: it remained true, no matter what the situation was, that virtually anything could happen. It was a well-known fact that even the most trusted of oracles had to be treated more like advisors. It was impossible to know what would make a certain vision come to pass.

Unless, of course, you could see the odds. With his own magic, he could affirm what variables were in play. Who had done what, who had yet to act, and what would come after. 

In the moments before Heidi had ripped the Blue Mantle off his shoulders, Casper had reaffirmed what he’d known for hours leading up to this final fight. After triggering his trap, Lily would ravage her own body to gain the strength to disrupt it. Every timeline in which they didn’t trigger the trap resulted in Fulgencio fleeing, to a statistical degree of certainty. Every timeline in which Heidi wasn’t absorbed by her Mantle’s will saw her dead within a minute of combat starting, and Lily succumbed to her wounds shortly afterward. Casper was following a carefully curated network of visions, using his magic to tell where the paths diverged, and along which variables.

All the stories Casper had grown up reading told him that, when they were up against a mighty foe, the heroes always had their backs to a wall. There was always one path to victory, one cosmically low chance for the stars to align, showing the way to the happy ending.

It was nonsense, of course. Even now, with the situation as bleak as it seemed, there were in excess of four-hundred and fifty timelines in which Fulgencio was defeated. Of those, three hundred or so resulted in the death of at least one member of the Council, one hundred and ninety of which were his death. Most of these outcomes were unacceptable, though it wasn’t a matter of self-preservation, nor did it have much to do with loyalty to his friends.

It was simply the Path.

This wasn’t the only catastrophe that Casper had seen. It wasn’t the worst, either, not by a long shot. There were apocalypses, some already conquered and some yet to be seen, that made the Blood God seem trivial in comparison.

Heidi’s rampage, Warwick’s defeat, even Will’s injury...These were all signs that they were on the best path, and Casper would continue doing everything he could to cultivate their best odds. Every action, every slightest movement was another step on the Path.

He placed his feet in carefully tested positions. Right foot pointed toward Ignacius, left foot angled slightly in Will and Igor’s direction. It planted the seed in Ignacius’s mind that he might be looking for a chance to reinforce his friends, and the opportunity presented by that would disturb the blood priest’s serene battle rhythm. He would be torn between moving to press that advantage or continuing to wait for a better opportunity. Bloodthirst versus intellect, the two characteristics that were at war inside the Sender’s personality. 

Patience won out, and Casper mentally checked off another divergence point as Ignacius paced away from his God. He stayed a fixed distance from Casper, assuredly something to do with his knife-portal trick’s effective range. His tense, hungering prowl might have been threatening in another circumstance, but Casper had seen every timeline in which he attacked, and more importantly, every timeline in which he didn’t. There was no longer any degree of threat the poor man could offer the Prism Council. He was little more than a prop in the greater scene.

Heidi had managed to extricate the Mantle of Alteration off of Warwick’s narrow shoulders, and was now working on freeing the Mantle of Knowledge from where he’d pinned it. The limb must have been a manifestation of one of his sworn spirits, as a coerced soul would have had no reason to continue its last charge once Warwick had collapsed. Its loyal stubbornness was touching, if ultimately fruitless. When she found herself unable to haul the skeletal spike from where it had bonded to the stone, she simply eroded the stone from beneath, creating a void large enough to pull the Mantle through and out. 

She didn’t don them, though. That was good. In the few timelines where Heidi’s overeager pilot got too impatient to wait for the whole set, things ended very badly. For her, for the rest. No, she simply let them hang in the air behind her, to await the moment when she’d successfully reunited all seven.

He’d seen that future, too. There were few where it happened, but when it did, what lay beyond...Suffice it to say that the Rainbow Mage was not a being that made the same mistake twice.

In the corner of his vision, two pieces of rubble switched places.

Casper let out a sigh of relief. The timeline in which Morgan returned now was vastly preferable to the one where he personally escorted the youths out of the city. The best results came about after quickly resolving the situation with Heidi. Dragging the encounter out saw her strong enough that the energy required to overpower her was woefully missing when they turned to Fulgencio.

Heidi turned back to where Lily had collapsed, but she and her Violet Mantle were no longer there. Instead, a girl crouched there in night-blue armor, poised to move the instant she was noticed.

Julia leapt through the air, one dagger held overhead in both hands. It was laughable for a girl with no combat magic to attempt something like that against Heidi as she was now, but it was the fact that it was so laughable that caught Casper’s attention. The Karalis girl was shrewd on her own, but with Morgan directing her it was ridiculous to think they would come up with such a foolish plan.

Casper always had a tendency to get caught up trying to puzzle his way through every turn of events, to drill down through each phenomenon until he exposed the truth at its heart. The Knowledge powers he -usually- wielded helped keep him safe during these admittedly unprofessional moments, though the pair working in tandem tended to take the fun out of solving a particularly elusive mystery. It was largely due to how long it had been since he’d really gotten to sink his teeth into a true conundrum that he failed to notice the horrifying implication.

He hadn’t seen this future.

Fear crept down his spine like cold water. It had been so long since he’d been confronted with uncertainty, but the truly terrifying factor was not knowing what had changed. He’d looked through thousands upon thousands of timelines in preparation for the attack on the White City, and in none of them did Morgan see fit to bring his junior Shadow into the fight.

It paralyzed him. It had been years since his feet had left the Path.

Heidi caught Julia out of the air, because of course she did. Julia strained against the woman’s telekinesis, but she may as well have been an infant for all the good it did. Her eyes, the only part of her body that she could still move, met his own, and he saw fear there. Uncertainty.

The entire Prism Council had grown accustomed to his uncanny ability to adapt to any plan on the fly. No one really even communicated with him anymore, relying on his ability to already have seen the futures where they did. He spoke to others, but he only heard their responses in the Blue Mantle’s fleeting visions. What would it do to their chances for survival, if they knew he was blind to their circumstances? Would he miss his opportunity to act, at the pivotal moment?

Had he led them to their deaths?

'Calm down, Uncle,' came a voice into his mind. Cheri’s voice was a familiar tone, but there was something different in it. Something confident, something dire.

'Cheri?' Casper thought, mentally emphasizing the word to reach the girl’s telepathy. 'Is this your doing?'

'I’m not sure. Something new is happening. I’m...different.'

It made sense. The purer the Knowledge magic, the more assuredly it would distort the future sight of less potent wizards. Cheri’s presence here wasn’t something he could have predicted, by stint of the fact that futures in which she heavily influenced the outcome were concealed by her own magic, much the way Glory did. 

'So what do we do?' Casper asked.

For the first time in his life, Casper heard nervous chuckling transmitted by telepathy.

'You don’t have a plan,' Casper thought, doing his best to convey his disbelief.

'Oh, I’m so sorry! How did your first god-killing plan go?'

'We killed a god!' Casper replied acidly.

'I’m fifteen!'

Casper bit down on his response, slowly exhaling through grit teeth. The rest were fond of pointing out the obvious similarities between Cheri and Glory, but it was times like these when the girl most closely resembled the cocky teenager Casper had grown up with.

'Like father, like daughter,' Casper thought, to no one in particular.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Will wasn’t certain what was worse: fighting with a broken arm, or the fact that he was actually getting pretty good at it.  

There were some soldiers he’d known who had picked up combat tricks that lent them an untouchable edge, assassins who’d learned to completely conceal their presence, healers who’d learned the warning signs for every poison and malady under the sun. Experience gained over excellent careers, lending itself to further excellence.

It explained why most of his tricks amounted to “How to keep fighting when you’re getting your ass kicked”. Not twenty seconds after Heidi had shoved him into that attack, his broken arm was splinted and the shattered shield replaced. The new shield was more like a buckler, and its straps and housing helped reinforce the splint while simultaneously being easier to use without putting more strain on the broken limb. It still hurt like hell, but at least it could hold a shield. He didn’t have to worry about getting effortlessly pierced by some random beam of light.

Or manipulated stone. Fulgencio turned to give Igor his full attention, and Will took that opportunity to cast a glance at Heidi and the new girl. This was, without a doubt, the worst possible time and place for them to lose control of the Mantles. Warwick was down, Casper was...frozen? Not acting, at least. Will trusted him to know what he was doing, as he always had, even in the days before he’d gained future sight. Either way, with three Mantles out of commission, the Prism Council was running out of steam. The way things were going-

On the other end of the room, in the background over Heidi’s shoulder, two rocks switched places, and Will’s heart soared. He hadn’t realized exactly how tense he’d been until the dread he’d been shouldering for the last half a day vanished from his body. 

It was Morgan’s standard communication for “I’m here, let’s make a surprise attack”. Will was happy his friend had made it back to the battle, keen for any edge he could get in the fight ahead, but more than that…

If something had gone wrong, if the situation below were anything to fear, it would have taken him longer to return. He hadn’t even been gone five minutes. A turnaround that quick could mean only one thing:

Cheri was safe.

Dangerous as the battlefield remained, Will couldn’t help but feel a level of relief that was usually left for the debriefing after an operation. Every sacrifice he’d made, every battle he’d fought, for the last fifteen years...it had all been for her. For the sake of keeping her safe, he’d started a civil war, killed a god, and dyed his own hands in blood. 

And, in spite of all of that, Cheri had come to hate him. He was so busy ensuring she had the right to a future of her own that he hadn’t put any thought into the present she’d been living. He’d promised her a life, and had given her a prison. Built out of love, not hatred or fear, but a prison nonetheless.

These last few months, Will had wanted nothing more than to simply apologize. To let it be known why he’d done what he’d done, and to let Cheri make her own decision afterward. If she never wanted to see him again, he would have understood.

Gods, it would have destroyed him, but he’d have understood.

In the end, he hadn’t even gotten the chance to talk to her. As soon as Shepherd Sommer had discovered her whereabouts, they’d sent Glory in to track her down, and everything had gone to shit. He’d arrived on scene moments too late to see her. Well-intentioned but missing the mark, like always.

All this time, he’d borne this fear, this dark dread that told him that he’d finally failed in a way that he couldn’t recover from. That no amount of playing from behind could recoup what he’d lost in his foolishness and pride. 

The thought of having to return and face Glory, knowing that he’d failed, knowing that she’d know...It was almost too painful to bear. She’d trusted him to see this through, stayed behind to recover from the absurd quantities of energy she’d expended in her rush to rescue Cheri from the attack on Haden. Will knew how hard a thing that was for her to do. Showing weakness to anyone, even him, was like a poison to Glory. Acknowledging that she wasn’t strong enough to aid them, putting that hope and fear into Will’s hands...

Would they truly have a future together, if he betrayed that hope? If he brought that fear to life? Would she ever look at him the same way?

'Don’t be stupid, Dad.'

Will’s breath caught in his throat.

'Mom didn’t fall in love with you because you never lose. You lose all the time.'

Tears started to his eyes and immediately overflowed, contrasting with the helpless smile that crossed his face.

'Like, all the time, if you listen to Uncle Casper and Uncle Warwick.'

'Spurious lies,' he thought back.

'She fell in love with you because you never stay defeated. Because you’re too strong to stay down.'

Will didn’t respond immediately. His eyes scanned the room, alighting briefly on each player on the battlefield. Casper, still looking uncertain. Ignacius, still pacing. Fulgencio and Igor, locked in combat. Warwick, motionless on the ground, and Heidi, still holding the Karalis girl transfixed.

'That’s why they chose to follow you, Dad. Not just because you’re strong, but because you show them how to be.'

'Cheri,' he thought, seizing the moment now before it slipped away from him again. 'I just wanted to say-'

'Nope!' Cheri’s voice chirped in his mind. 'I don’t forgive you. You were a jerk and an idiot.'

Her tone was light, but the words cut him as surely as any blade.

'And,' Cheri continued, a little quieter, 'you’ll have plenty of chances to make it up to me. I’m making a list of demands, which I think are exceedingly reasonable. First up…'

'Anything.'

'Let’s kick this guy’s ass, and go home.'