I bolted upright, as if from a dream.

I was back in the ritual chamber. On the altar, unpleasantly enough. I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand as memories of a dream fled my mind like smoke. I’d talked to...someone. A dark place, but almost painfully bright with the magic it held there. The ritual chamber was dark now, too. A few torches still smouldered in their sconces, but no flames danced in the entire chamber.

How much of it had been a dream? I closed my eyes and thought back, trying to trace the events back through the dream, to the last point I’d been awake. We’d successfully infiltrated the White City, somehow. We’d fought our way down here, awakened Cheri…

And sprung a trap.

The memory of the spiked chains piercing her body leapt to the front of my mind, and the rest cascaded from there. I’d leapt into the pit to free her from the ritual, I’d destroyed the chain with Julia’s dagger. And I’d fallen.

It was all but gone, the memory of whatever had happened down there. That place was where the souls of the dead resided, which sounded straight out of a horror movie, but the feeling in my chest was...peaceful. I felt at ease, more confident and stable than I’d felt since Mom died.

I paused, halfway through the motion of hopping down from the altar.

'Mom died,' I thought, and waited. 'Dad died too.'

The pain was there, and the longing. I missed my mother so much, and the wound left by Dad’s absence was still so fresh, but…

But I felt like I could move forward. I wouldn’t succumb to the weight, I wouldn’t let it drag me down. I was strong, as strong as they all thought I was. Stronger, even.

A few items were strewn about the platform near the altar. I could almost imagine the scene unfolding. Jay dropping his bag to remove the roll of bandages he’d offered me earlier, only to discard them once he saw Cheri healing her own wounds. They still lay there, next to his bag. They’d left in a hurry, or in a state of disarray.

Or both.

The memory of what I’d done, what I’d said, tightened my chest with guilt. I’d have to apologize, make it up to them somehow. I resolved to find a way, once this was all over.

 I picked up the bag, stuffing the bandages back inside and doing a quick inventory. It was all standard survival fare. Some firestarters, some rations, bandages, a utility knife and a fold-up hatchet, another magnesium flare and a few red-smoke markers. Nothing that would really matter much, against a blood-mage on his way to godhood, but an empty bag would probably help even less.

Above me, the entire ziggurat shook with the force of some distant impact. I dropped low, but started moving all the same. It wouldn’t do to get shaken off, back into the pit, but I also didn’t have any time to waste. I was as far from the action as I really could be, and my gut told me that things were coming to a head. I strained my eyes, hoping I could see some sign of what was going on through the stone, but there was only blackness above me.

Which made sense, of course. Adela had told us we were directly beneath the Well of Souls here. The Blood God’s Agartha-in-miniature. If there was anything capable of acting like a magical wall to my vision, it was a massive repository of blood magic. I needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.

The path I travelled showed signs of conflict. I pictured the others, fighting their way out through the sheer mass of bloodmages that had lined the ritual chamber when I’d fallen. Apparently easier with Cheri leading the group, if the carpet of slain enemies was any indicator.

Despite the situation, there was still something uncomfortable about treading on corpses. Most of them had probably been some measure of subjectively evil during their lives, but among them there might have been...I frowned. The thought had started naturally, but trailed off, like I hadn’t known where it was going after all.

Well, they might not all be so bad. They might not have deserved to die like this.

The humidity hit me hard after so long spent underground. The heavy, hot air was different than it had been, barely an hour before. I focused my vision, my eyes picking out the presence of a nearly ubiquitous layer of fine powder in the air. Dust, pulverized stone from the ziggurat.

Naturally, as I tried my best to piece together what was going on by squinting at literal dust in the air, the universe saw fit to spell it out for me. A flash of brilliant white light lit the sky, followed by another burst of even brighter rainbow light. Not a rainbow as it was traditionally depicted, not seven parallel bands, but a glittering kaleidoscope of seven hues. The two varieties appeared in a staccato, random sequence, sometimes a beam that cut through the city ahead of me, sometimes a burst that illuminated the clouds overhead like a flash of lightning.

'Cheri,' I thought incredulously. The energy felt so familiar, despite my never having seen Cheri wield even close to this level of strength.

Without warning, an anguished groan sounded in my mind, followed by a string of truly foul swear words.

“What?” I asked aloud, dumbfounded.

'Sorry, sorry,' came another voice, more recognizable. Cheri, speaking in my mind. 'A little distracted at the moment. One second.'

Another burst of rainbow energy fired off, and I saw a glowing white form blast off in its wake, driven nearly to the border of the city before the flood of colored light dissipated. The glowing person, an old man I didn’t recognize, continued flying under the force of the attack, crashing into a distant tower before disappearing in the rubble as it collapsed around him.

“Emily!”

The cry sounded half a second before someone crashed into me from behind, knocking me from my feet. I braced for a hard roll on the stones, but I never made it to the ground.

Cheri held me firmly from behind, the two of us hanging suspended in the air. Tears streamed from her eyes, her expression an amusing mix of ecstatic and upset.

I couldn’t stop the grin from appearing on my face, though my proximity to mortality left me less likely to forget myself in the moment.

“Blood God,” I grunted. “Cheri. Mortal peril, active battlefield.”

She squeezed, and I groaned, but she mercifully relented before she did any permanent damage to my spine.

“Sorry,” she said, after putting me back on the ground. “Things have been pretty serious since you left, and I needed the distraction.”

I arched an eyebrow at her. “Not sure getting distracted is really the ticket. How’re things going?”

“Very badly!”

“Well, try not to sound too beat up about it.”

“Doing my best. I’m not in any danger, as far as I can tell, but I also can’t figure out how to really hurt him. I can move him, sure, but...you know…”

"Harder to get the kill, huh,” I mused, turning to stare in the direction he’d been sent. “I guess I could understand that. Did he manage to get linked to Agartha too? Is that what I’m seeing?”

Cheri shook her head. “Not quite. He sampled some of the power there, and he used...something...to mimic the Connection. Only instead of being connected to the planet, like me, he’s connected to his Well of Souls.”

Her face screwed up in disgust as she said it, practically spitting the words.

I turned back to where the Well of Souls was a black blot on my vision. Now that she mentioned it, I could see an unusual link between the ziggurat and the distant collapsed tower. It started off composed of the same black light as most blood magic, but it converted into a brilliant white near the end of its length.

“He’s converting the energy somehow,” I said. “Something on his person?”

Cheri scowled. “He has some kind of artifact. An amulet, I think.”

“Any chance you could take it out?”

“No dice,” Cheri said, using an expression I was certain she’d picked up from us. “It and the entire ziggurat have so many anti-magic protections on them that I doubt I’d make it through with an hour of dedicated focus.”

“Hmm,” I said, frowning. “I didn’t notice anything like that in there.”

“Defenses like these are typically reactive,” Cheri explained. “It would expend too much energy to keep the barrier up at all times, they just turn on when they sense hostile magic.”

As if to demonstrate, Cheri gestured with one hand and a flash of energy burst up from the ground at the base of the ziggurat. Where it made contact with the stone, a wall of black energy appeared.

I didn’t like that I hadn’t been able to see it. It was something to remember to focus on, in the future. The notion that there were effects that could hide even from my eyes made me distinctly uncomfortable. Still, it raised a strange point.

“It doesn’t stop physical intrusions?” I asked. “It’s just magic?”

“It’s not like anyone’s gonna break it with a sword, Emily.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it.

“That’s it,” I said incredulously.

Cheri gave me an odd look, but I was beyond caring. I could finally see a way out. A plan.

“How long have you two been fighting like this?” I asked excitedly, turning back to Cheri.

“Thirty or forty minutes,” Cheri said uncertainly. “Em, are you feeling okay?”

I didn’t answer, tilting my head to one side and sweeping the skyline with my remote vision. If this level of light show had continued for this long…

There.

“Cheri,” I said, a smile on my face. “Do you think you could send a message to someone?”

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

“Honestly, I should thank you,” Fulgencio said drily.

“Oh?”

“For giving me the time to calm down. I was...growing heated. Frustrated, perhaps. Your control over the Seven Roads is so innate, despite your inexperience. We are simply different beings, you and I.”

Cheri made an unimpressed noise. The two floated in the air over the city, separated by ten feet or so.

“Different is one way to put it,” she said. “A more descriptive way might be that I’m bouncing you all around your pathetic graveyard like a toy.”

I could see the flex in Fulgencio’s jaw as he processed the insult. He was easier to rile up than I thought he’d be, but distracted was how we needed him. I

darted out from the hallway from the pit and started making my way toward the stone staircase that led to the top of the ziggurat.

I passed out of earshot of the pair, though I kept an eye on them as I moved. I didn’t imagine that Fulgencio would be particularly concerned with me as an individual, in fact the plan sort of hinged on it, but I still didn’t want to reveal my presence until I absolutely had to.

Conversation ended as Fulgencio began tearing entire stone buildings from the ground, hurling each structure at Cheri in a constant procession of house-sized projectiles. The attack was frightening in its scale, with nearly every building in the nearest quadrant of the city flying up to join in the assault, but Cheri deflected it with seemingly little effort. More than deflected, even. Each building disappeared into dust, then condensed under Cheri’s will to form new, smaller shapes.

That explained all the dust in the air.

If it served to help disguise my progress up the side of the ziggurat, I welcomed a little grit in my breath. We only had one shot at getting this right, and if Fulgencio caught on, I wasn’t sure what would work from that point.

Cheri launched a volley of stone spikes back at the Blood God, who drew in his cloud of floating buildings to act as shields. Offense and defense alike shattered at the impact, and Fulgencio sent the entire field of rubble flying outward, a shot-gun attack that covered the entire one-hundred-eighty degree arc in front of him. Cheri waved aside the projectiles that would have struck her, but she wasn’t the only person in their path.

A storm of stone chunks, ranging from baseball sized to rocks as big as my chest, rained down on the face of the ziggurat, and I dove flat against the staircase. It was way too many attacks to dodge, even with my eyes. In the absence of any meaningful cover, I simply made my body as small a target as possible, backpack taken off and held over my head. It wouldn’t stop one of the larger pieces from crushing me, but it might at least save me from a concussion.

As if only now realizing her oversight, Cheri turned and glanced my way, eyes wide as she thrust a hand out to halt the rain of debris. It halted the stone assault immediately, but I could see the realization dawn on Fulgencio’s face as he followed her line of sight.

A sinister grin spread on his face as his eyes finally alighted on me, my crimson bodysuit plain as day against the white stone. Then, he disappeared.

Him leaving my ordinary line of sight left me momentarily flustered, but my enhanced vision picked him up as soon as he reappeared.

Directly behind me.

I turned and scrambled away, even knowing how useless a gesture it was. Fulgencio floated forward, easily matching and surpassing my speed, and seized me by the back of the neck. 

He lifted me off the ground like I weighed nothing, but when I didn’t immediately die I used the position to struggle as well as I could. Elbows, kicks, blind scratching...I knew I didn’t have the strength to actually harm him, but I equally didn’t have it in me to just hang in his grip like a doll.

Cheri sailed in to land on the staircase, eight steps down, as Fulgencio waited, holding me aloft.

“Put her down,” Cheri said quietly.

“It occurred to me,” Fulgencio replied, as though he hadn’t heard her, “that there aren’t any of the Seven Roads in which I could match you. Your inherent affinity is too potent. You were literally made for this, after all.”

“Put her down!” Cheri repeated, volume rising.

“But my dear Ignacius managed to impart something very important to me, gleaned from his encounter with you during the assault on that Mundane city. Your magic may be potent, your control effortless and precise, but you cannot wield the Seven Roads in tandem. Even your admittedly fascinating Connection-influenced magics can only be brought to bear one at a time.”

I could feel the pressure that Fulgencio was exerting on my neck, and I could see the magic that Cheri was directing my way was the only thing that was keeping him from pulverizing my spine with that casual grip. I met her eyes and I could see that what Fulgencio was saying was true. She couldn’t manipulate stone, or see the future, or even fly, not while she was maintaining the magic that was protecting me. 

My hands scrabbled behind my back, clawing at Fulgencio’s face and chest, seeking purchase on anything they could find. 

“I, however, am not limited in that sense,” Fulgencio gloated. “I am not limited in any sense. I am-”

“Wrong,” I said.

He turned me around and examined me. Close enough for me to see the liver spots on his skin through the white nimbus of magic that effused his body.

“Wrong?” Fulgencio asked, a dangerous edge to his voice. “Wrong how?”

 “You’re limited in the same way that all the rest of your bloodmages were,” I said, looking him straight in the eye, “and you’re limited in the way that all wizards are.”

I felt his grip redouble in its futile effort to crush my throat, though I imagined a large portion of that was unconscious. In absence of Cheri’s magic, he didn’t really need any more strength than the bare minimum of what he could muster to shatter my weak human bones.

I grinned at him, mostly to incense him further.

“You underestimate what people are capable of without magic,” I said, as Cheri charged up the staircase. I held one hand out to her, a braided leather cord in its grip.

Fulgencio looked like he’d been slapped. He glanced down in shock, his free hand reaching up for the spot on his chest where the amulet had once rested.

“Thieving rat,” he snarled.

Cheri was one step away from us when his hand closed around my wrist. I cried out in pain as he twisted the arm, my hand prying open.

“And,” I added, as he stared dumbfoundedly at the unadorned leather cord in the hand, “you’re predictable.”

Behind my back, my other hand passed the obsidian amulet, removed from the cord that had borne it, into Cheri’s waiting grip. She gave me one last uncertain look, then leapt back into the city, moving with the long, stone-shaking strides that only came with enhanced strength.

The plan hinged on a few key elements: First, Fulgencio shared, or more accurately embodied, that bloodthirsty, sadistic predictability. He reacted to displays of pain and weakness by leaning in, and the best way we had to maneuver him was to let him think he was winning and capitalize on that over-extension. He should have known that, while under Cheri’s protection, he wouldn’t have been able to force my hand open. But the minor victory, the domination of forcing me to act, and that little cry of pain had drawn him into the ploy.

Second, he was obsessed with showing how he stacked up to any vestige of the Rainbow Mage that was available. The Prism Council and Cheri were all that was left of his ancient foe, so any enemy outside that select few was beneath his notice, or at the very most a bargaining chip.

Third, Fulgencio didn’t-

My thoughts tumbled around my head as Fulgencio took to the sky, hauling me along behind him. That...wasn’t ideal. If Fulgencio took me with him, or even if he let me go, too far away from the central ziggurat…

It wasn’t like me to come up with an all-or-nothing plan, but there was no use crying over it. We’d just have to adjust. Cheri still had the amulet, and if we could find an opportunity to destroy it, and sever the connection between Fulgencio and his Well of Souls, the day could still be won.

It took us a lot less time to catch up to Cheri than I’d hoped. I supposed flight would always have an advantage over enhanced movement, if only for its ability to take the straight-line path.

“Rainbow Daughter!” Fulgencio screamed over the rush of wind. “Cease this pointless nonsense! You know you cannot destroy that stone!”

Cheri took one final bound and then skidded to a stop, turning to face us where we floated in the sky.

“Then why the panic?” Cheri asked. “If I couldn’t harm it, what harm comes from my carrying it?”

Fulgencio grit his teeth and, without warning, he hurled me down to the rooftop where Cheri stood. My impact cracked the stone, but Cheri’s magic absorbed the shock perfectly, and I rolled to my feet without hesitating. 

“It was a gift,” Fulgencio said. “It is...personally important to me.”

That...was surprising. The thought that a person like the one who’d ordered the attack on my hometown might have that sort of relationship was beyond mind-

boggling. It curled my stomach, since a monster of this caliber didn’t deserve to be able to cherish things the same way I cherished my friends, but it also left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

I mean, if a man who could be adequately described as the Blood God still had some humanity left in him, could anyone really be declared beyond help? How could anyone truly be condemned if this man, ascended halfway to godhood in an empire he made into a graveyard, could still long for a gift given to him by someone he held precious?

I didn’t forgive him, obviously. I don’t think there was a level of emotional display that Fulgencio could make that would so incline me, but...it was perspective, at least.

Cheri gave me a sidelong glance, and I did a quick three-hundred-sixty degree scan of the horizon.

“Did you get a response?” I murmured.

“Yeah.”

“Now or never.”

Cheri held her hand up, the polished piece of obsidian between finger and thumb.

“Take it, then,” Cheri said. “But not with Control. If you claim a personal connection to this, then come and get it like a person.”

Fulgencio stared her down, as if silently weighing the implications and risks against getting the trinket back, but began floating down all the same.

“How much is this gonna suck?” Cheri asked me quietly.

I thought about that, doing my best to draw a mental comparison.

“Probably about a hundred times stronger than what Augustus can do? At least?”

She eyed me skeptically. “A hundred.”

I shrugged.

“Better dial up the protection,” she muttered. “Just in case.”

“The protection?” Fulgencio said, as he alighted on the roof in front of us.

“From that,” I said, pointing up into the sky to the right.

The missiles hit us from the left.

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

I could tell that the plan wasn’t going very well because when I regained consciousness, I hurt all over. I guess any plan that involved military planes shooting you with actual ballistic missiles was bound to be a little volatile. The pain meant that Cheri’s protection had dropped at some point, though my continued existence seemed to indicate that it had at least absorbed the initial impact.

My vision was clouded. Nothing was wrong with my magic, there was simply too much smoke and dust in the air for me to see anything meaningful on the Mundane spectrum, aside from an overwhelming amount of information regarding the way the particles were moving.

On the other hand, things were pretty crazy on the magic spectrum. Great loops and arcs of raw magic were dissipating into the sky, emanating from a prone form that lay near the epicenter of the crater left by the barrage of missiles. The magic bled from Fulgencio’s body in great bursts, his form pitching and rocking with each expulsion.

I picked out where Cheri was reclaiming her feet, the glow of her magic barely visible through the light show that was going on in the background. I hauled myself back upright with a groan, shaking a layer of dust and smaller debris from my back and shoulders.

“Well that wasn’t so bad,” I said, picking my way carefully through the rubble. “Who’d have thought it would be-”

A shattered chunk of stone crumbled underneath my foot as I put my weight on it, and I went down hard. Thankfully, I didn’t hit my head or arms on anything sharp as I landed, but it definitely didn’t help the level of bruising I knew I’d have to deal with in the morning.

Just above me, Cheri reached down and I held a hand up, grateful for the help.

The glowing hand reached past me, plucking a small piece of polished black stone from the ground.

“It was a clever trick,” Fulgencio mused. “If this were anything other than the magically condensed obsidian that it is, I imagine the ploy would have succeeded.”

The amulet floated out of his hand, turning slowly in the air before it pressed itself into the flesh of Fulgencio’s chest. I watched as the flesh split, blood appearing but not breaching the skin before the obsidian disappeared into the cavity and the skin sealed itself over it.

“No more tricks,” he said, an almost apologetic smile on his face.

The dust in the air had thinned out to the point where I could see Cheri where she lay struggling on the ground. The magic that had been so vibrant in her before, so riotous, had almost completely fled her body.

I sank slowly to my knees, dropping my gaze as Fulgencio paced over to her.

“I never would have imagined you’d resort to using Mundane military strength, though I doubt you planned it beforehand. Undoubtedly attracted by the light from our battle.”

I heard Cheri groan as Fulgencio grabbed her by collar, hauling her up onto her feet.

“I know you haven’t expended the energy in Agartha already,” he continued. “So is this merely the limit of your personal ability?”

Cheri started to laugh. Unable to help myself, I started to laugh too. I knew there had been three important elements to the plan.

Fulgencio looked between the two of us, disbelief quickly turning to anger.

“Is this how you greet your end, then?” Fulgencio hissed. “You mock me as the last vestiges of hope flee, as some last act of defiance?”

He cocked his head to the side as the roar of the nearby jets shook the air with another pass. When no missiles struck, he clicked his tongue.

“They still linger? Do they gather to witness your demise?”

When our only answer was continued laughter, we pushed Fulgencio past the boiling point. He held out both hands, lifting Cheri and I into the air in front of him as the magic in him hit a fever pitch. I struggled to turn my head away from the blinding light his body was putting out, but he held my head directly forward.

“Have you forgotten where you stand?” he shrieked. “Have you forgotten who I am?”

“Sorry,” I said, between fits of laughter. “I guess we’re all forgetting things today, aren’t we?”

The fury in him cooled down a bit, to the point where I could see the confusion in his expression.

The sound of roaring engines filled the air once more, and he swept one hand to the side, banishing the dust that still hung around us in a powerful burst of wind. Two sleek silver aircraft screamed through the air, strafing past us in close formation. Missiles already launched.

“You refer to the Mundanes?” Fulgencio said uncertainly. “I already mentioned-”

He turned to face the central ziggurat, and stopped dead.

A plume of brilliant red smoke reached toward the sky, pouring from the end of a small black tube. It was held aloft in the hand of a girl dressed all in black, hair of the same color reaching the small of her back. The only person who could operate under Fulgencio’s nose without his awareness, without our awareness potentially giving the game away.

Adela held the smoke flare over her head, marking the ziggurat where the Well of Souls was hidden. We only had one shot at this, so we couldn’t afford to leave it up to the assessment of two fighter pilots, especially when the physical layout of the White City was so repetitive with ziggurats.

This way, there was no chance to misunderstand, and no chance to miss.

“Adela,” Fulgencio whispered as the missiles struck. The force from the explosion did little more than stir the air around us, but it struck Fulgencio with much more power. He staggered back, took one faltering step towards the collapsing ziggurat, then crumpled to the ground.

I saw Adela disappear moments before the explosion blossomed, and I felt a brief surge of fear for the girl. If she used her power now, then she would die and none of us would ever remember knowing her. She wouldn’t be missed, she couldn’t be thanked for her role in this victory, and she couldn’t ever make what she did right.

Cheri and I dropped to the ground as Fulgencio’s magic released us. I landed on my feet, a little heavier for my minor injuries, but Cheri’s knees buckled under her weight. I turned and caught her in my arms, holding her upright even as I could tell that she didn’t have the strength left in her to stand on her own.

“Don’t worry,” Cheri mumbled into my shoulder. “Uncle Morgan got her in time.”

Of course he had. If I knew Adela, she wouldn’t miss an opportunity to disappear if she thought she was going to die, and the fact that I still remembered her at all meant she had to have survived. It didn’t stop me from breathing a sigh of relief, forceful enough to send a shudder through my body.

“Hear, hear,” Cheri said.

A dry, rasping cough drew my attention. Fulgencio still struggled to claw his way towards where the ziggurat that had housed the Well of Souls was little more than a pile of smouldering stone. The magic was leaving him, though the process was slower than it had been when Cheri had lost control of her power a minute earlier. It bled out of him, flowing out to stain the ground, where it disappeared deeper into the earth.

Returning to Agartha, where it belonged.

I eased Cheri to a half-kneeling, half-sitting position on the ground, then crossed over to where Fulgencio lay.

“Be careful,” Cheri called to my back. “He’s got enough strength in him for something.”

“She has nothing to fear from me, Rainbow Daughter,” Fulgencio replied tiredly, then broke into another fit of coughing. “I...am defeated. Soon the magic that lets my body keep its form will leave me, and I will be so much dust. To expend my energy to kill one more wizard...No. I will not tarnish my legacy with such pettiness.”

The words were reassuring, but the way the magic he had left remained in his body, the way the fleeing energy hesitated around him and then drew inward, gave a different impression.

“No,” Fulgencio repeated, “I will do everything in my power to harm our true enemy.”

The magic within him built up to a crescendo, and I rushed to position myself between him and Cheri, for all the good it would do. Even with him weakened, or dying, I was no more difficult to vaporize than the stone beneath my feet.

But no attack came. Instead, the man turned over onto his back, shining eyes reflecting the cerulean blue of the sky.

“I do not curse you, Rainbow Daughter,” Fulgencio began, and his words carried an ominous weight to them. They weren’t loud; on the contrary, it was almost a struggle to hear him at all. They just felt...momentous. I felt anxious, I wanted to stop listening, even as I hung on every word.

“I do not curse you,” he repeated, “because your existence itself is already cursed. I have no need to call a blight on your life, because the shadow of fate has already stretched long across the path you will walk.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Cheri said hotly.

“You don’t know yourself, child. And, by far the most important factor, you don’t know them. You think you know what they’re capable of, but you feed off how much you cherish your Connection to them. But neither blindness nor willful ignorance will protect you from what comes.”

“And what is that?” she asked.

“They will come for you. They will be weeks, months, years in coming, but they will come. You are not the same as them, and they will never accept you as ruler.”

“We accept her,” I said, eyes hard.

His glowing blue eyes flickered to me, then went back to gazing at the sky.

“Then they will remove you first. They will bide their time and work from the shadows until everyone who supports her is dead or turned, and then they will come for her, like they came for her creator. Like they came for me.”

“You’re wrong,” Cheri answered, but her voice was quieter than the dying man’s.

“I have seen it,” he rasped. His body was beginning to disintegrate, dissolving into glowing particles starting at the extremities. “I know you don’t have the

power left in you to glimpse the future, but I know you’ll look for it when you can. And you’ll see.”

The disintegration sped up dramatically when his limbs faded away, and in a matter of seconds, Fulgencio was dust, blowing away in the wind along with the whispers of his final words.

“You will see.”

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

The dawn in Haden spoke of change.

A detachment from the Cabal of the World, led by Heidi, worked with a slew of construction contractors to undo the damage dealt by the White City’s invasion, while the Cabal of Dreams ran an outreach event to answer questions, concerns, and finally do some of the honest work in lifting the veil between the Mundane and the magical people.

The exchange program ended, the violent night urging both sides towards more actual collaboration. The school made an attempt at a sendoff party, though the atmosphere was somewhat chilly. It seemed that most students who didn’t have the invasion on their mind still remembered Julia’s Compulsion spree, so the level of student enthusiasm was far lower than what would typically accompany getting a ticket out of class to eat cake and dance.

The Tryhard Club was set to have a party of their own. As we all gathered to pick through the burned ruin of the clubhouse, the mood was lighthearted, if a touch wistful. We picked through the blackened mess, finding a cushion here, a melted video-game controller there, and we remembered the times we’d had fondly. Tyler almost cried, because he was Tyler, and Roman joked, because he was Roman.

Jay, Marika, and I would graduate in a few months time, and we would be among the first generation of former Mundanes to face becoming adults in the new world. With a little bit of a head start, of course. Despite the admittedly extenuating circumstances surrounding my pacting, Liara was still responsible for mentoring me, which meant my days were about to become pretty busy. As an assistant to the deputy head of the Cabal of Vengeance, I was going to be at or near the heart of every expenditure of military force that the Rainbow Nations extended.

I hoped that there wouldn’t ever be a call for it, but the part of me that always sought to be prepared, the part that belonged most to my mother, knew that it was just a matter of time.

In what was probably the most shocking result of the events of the past few months, Marika and Jay would, for the first time since they met in elementary school, be going their separate ways. Something had changed in their relationship since we got back from the White City, and though Jay had admitted to being mystified, Marika simply refused to talk about it at all. It was obvious that something had changed for her, most apparently represented by the odd guest she brought with her to the party.

“You’ve had that look on your face a lot, these past few days,” Cheri said, nudging me with one shoulder. The pair of us had sought some relief from the strain of work mixed with midday heat, taking shelter in the shadow of the massive pine where we usually affixed our target dummies. The tree was wide enough for both of us to lean against it while largely facing the same direction.

I smiled guiltily. “Sorry. There’s just...a lot that’s changing.”

The Tryhard Club was bringing in a set of fold-out tables from the back of Mr. Jefferies’ truck. I couldn’t help but laugh at the look on the balding man’s face as Adela took a stack of six or so tables and hefted them over her head. 

“I’m really happy that you let her come back here,” Cheri said. Her head lolled back to rest on the wood, her eyes closed with an expression like bliss on her face.

“Not sure it was really up to me.”

“Oh, it was,” came a voice from behind the tree.

Lily, the girl who I’d first met under the name “Lady Violet”, was lying down on the other side of the tree from us, her namesake Mantle bundled up under her head like a pillow. She opened one eye to regard me disinterestedly as I poked my head around the tree. I knew she was there, one of the perks of detached three-hundred-sixty degree vision, but I was trying to continue observing basic social conventions in spite of that power.

“We went three and three on whether or not she should be put to death,” Lily continued, arching her back in a luxurious stretch. “Will broke the tie, saying that his vote would be yours.”

“And which way did you vote?” I asked.

She smiled at me, all teeth, and I shivered despite myself. 

Cheri’s chin settled on top of my head as she floated up to drape herself over me.

“She voted for freedom,” Cheri said cheerfully, prompting a scowl from the other girl.

Lily pushed herself off the ground, twisting to her feet in a motion that was fast, if not particularly fluid. It looked very practiced, at least. With no further discussion, she turned and leapt over my head, tackling Cheri to the ground where a brief wrestling match ensued.

I turned back to watch the rest of the Club as Cheri got tied into a loudly protesting pretzel. Jay was helping Adela arrange the tables while Marika oversaw Tyler and Roman unloading the food and beverages from her mom’s van. It still struck me as wrong on the deepest level that Marika wasn’t sticking close to Jay. It frustrated me beyond belief that I couldn’t figure out what was wrong there, couldn’t work to fix it. Like an itch I couldn’t scratch.

“Lily,” I said, without taking my eyes off where Marika was trying to flat-tire Roman while he carried a pot full of stew. “You know what’s going on with Marika, don’t you?”

I didn’t miss the way she and Cheri exchanged glances.

“So you both know,” I said wryly.

Cheri looked appropriately guilty, but Lily just shrugged.

“You all learned a little about yourselves, when you went to the White City,” she said. “Marika didn’t like what she learned.”

“And is that what you’re doing here?” I asked, slightly embarrassed for how hostile the question sounded. “Is that why you’ve been hanging around Mari since then?”

“Sorry,” she answered, the wolf’s grin back on her face. “That’s confidential Cabal of Dreams business.”

Lily tousled Cheri’s hair roughly, prompting a wince from the younger girl, before slipping off her to go collect the Mantle of Connection. She slung it over one shoulder, then wandered off into the forest.

I shook my head as I watched her disappear through the trees.

“She’s something else,” I said.

Cheri nodded, an apologetic grin on her face.

“She means well,” she said, though she didn’t sound fully convinced. I definitely wasn’t.

The banquet had been laid out by this point, and I saw Jay scan the area to find Cheri and me a full five seconds before his shout got Cheri’s attention.

“Shall we?” I asked Cheri, offering her a hand up off the ground.

So much had been lost in the past few months. A father. My humanity. A future, replaced by another that was sure to be harder and more painful by far. But when I looked at the group I’d come to accept as my family, at how much they’d grown, and the smile of pure, unadulterated joy that shone on Cheri’s face as she accepted my hand, I imagined the scales might be closer to balanced than they ever had been.

Together, the two of us joined the others to enjoy a happiness that honestly felt stranger than magic.