“We need to get better at eldritch minds. Especially nethernal ones. They’re only a little bit different to ours. We should’ve sensed the ghosts, if nothing else.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I managed to say through clenched teeth, staring out at the mountains ahead of us.

“No way we can practice on the undead Kas has access to. They have the craziest minds… But we could’ve asked him to keep that old man, couldn’t we? How much would something like that infringe on his freedom? He wasn’t fully-formed yet on this plane. No evil in him. Would it be wrong to control him?”

“Can’t have it both ways.” I tightened my one remaining fist; the force-tendrils extending from my stump started to coil and twist as if to emulate the gesture.

“It would be awesome to have access to a diviner. We should be able to make less mistakes then. And we could enhance them, maybe. If we can get a good glimpse at the future, maybe we can expand it in our memories, and –”

“Guys.” I drew a deep breath. “I’m trying to get a serious brood on over here. Can you not do that, you know, mind to mind instead?”

“Oh, sure. So, we might be able to capture details that –”

“No, guys! I mean, between each other.”

Finally in silence, I smiled despite myself. Whatever they’d done to me – whatever they were doing – it was clearly working. The mountains ahead loomed blue against a clear, pale sky, and I thought I was almost looking forward to –

“That goes for me too,” Orcan barked.

“And me!” Kirid said in a strangled voice.

When the twins laughed, I laughed, and, in spite of the offended-looking Telese, it almost felt good.

I spent the next several hours just waiting, letting my half-wraith state encapsulate me, hide me from the wind and rain more reliably than Orcan’s spells. I dwelled on Mal Malas, going over the memories at a level of precision I’d never before managed. The twins were helping me, letting me inspect the details such that I could scrutinise a single flapping scale on the dracolich’s flank. The degree to which such mental activity was helping my overall emotional state, rather than hindering it, was dubious. I saw it, again and again in my mind’s eye, the way he had brought his magenta sabre down, sundering all my defences at a single blow. There was fear in me, yes. But there was elation, too. I was finally feeling like myself again – my old self.

You have to be prepared.

It sounded like the twins, but it spoke in my mind using my own voice, and I chose not to question it. At least, I hoped it was me choosing not to question it…

I cast the twins a sidelong glance, and they winked at me in unison.

I had no more shudders left. I just had to accept it.

At least they are alive.

More than once I thought I caught a glimpse of a purple tinge to the clouds ahead of us, but it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. When at last I did see a pinkish glow smearing the horizon, there was a perfectly natural explanation: the sun was setting over my right shoulder, and we were rising into the highlands, the mountains slowly becoming shapes graven in rock rather than shadows.

“What if he isn’t out in front of us?” I blurted once the internal pressure became too much for me to take. “What if he lied?”

“He toldt you he vould see you in Mundt, no?” Kirid asked. “He vould lie at zis, you think?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I mean, I think we haven’t gone over him, or close to him. But he can hide himself from me, from my magic, from all onlooking eyes probably… He has at least one decent illusionist… And if he went a different way – he could’ve sacked a different town –”

“What he did to Blackice Bay, he did for you.” Orcan closed his spellbook smartly, sitting forward and rubbing at his back with both hands. “You know this. It is so that you will follow. But he will not expect all three of us. Now, Kirid, my dear – bring us a few birds, if you would be so kind.”

The silent druidess complied, though I could tell from the look in her eyes that she still didn’t entirely approve of this use of her power. She’d seemed far more at ease hunting for us in her own osprey-shape, when we crossed Northril. Wordlessly, she summoned and entranced our evening meal; I looked on dubiously as Orcan carefully roasted the birds, and then I feasted on mountain-eagle for the first time.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I chewed mechanically – even the twins couldn’t improve the flavour much, apparently –

“Will you stop doing that! We can hear you, but we are trying to learn how to butt out, and you aren’t making it any easier! We can instinctively pick up thoughts about us. If you want it to taste like salted pork –”

It instantly changed on my tongue.

“– or boiled socks –”

I froze.

“– just you keep on the way you’re going.”

I chewed mechanically, keeping my thoughts to myself.

I didn’t need to trouble the others with my doubts. Orcan was right. It would be textbook Malas to invite me to chase him. And, in any case, Prince Deathwyrm had to remain a secondary concern. For all that he could lay waste to thousands, I couldn’t make that my responsibility. I had to keep my eye on the goal.

Getting to Mund. Stopping the madness before it started. I didn’t want to add Xantaire and Xastur and Orstrum to my tally of dead family members. The list was quite long enough already. One Incursion was probably all it would take. And even if they survived, it wouldn’t be mere thousands who would suffer. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. Who else would die? Would Hontor and his sons be amongst the dead? What about Salli Meleine? What about Emrelet?

If not the demons, then Everseer… or, just maybe, Malas’s ancestors…

Measured against them, the dracolich would be a mere annoyance. I had to think of him like that.

As a stepping-stone. Part of my schooling.

Once I finished my eagle breast, I finally sat down on the edge of the wizard’s rock, dangling my feet over the mountainside we were currently scaling. The drop was a couple of hundred feet, but it was hard to get a grip on, what with the speed at which the ground beneath us was climbing up, the angle of our ascent ever-steepening.

As we capped a rise, coursing suddenly over a lifeless stony gorge between two great pillars of rock, our angle flattened again. I dropped the left-over bone and gristle, letting it plummet, instantly dropping out of view behind us.

The twins had finished first, rejecting more of the bird than the rest of us. Orcan was still eating noisily, eagle held nonchalantly in his right hand while his left worked the pages of his spell-lit spellbook. Kirid would be at hers for the best part of an hour, the way she was nibbling at it, methodically consuming every stringy tendon like one of those mad people who ate apple cores.

“What’s the deal with Timesnatcher, then?”

There were realities I had to face. This was one of them.

When I looked to Jaid and Jaroan, they smiled and deflected it, turning their heads to the grizzled old wizard.

Orcan swallowed his mouthful too quickly, and he almost choked, producing a horrible-sounding cough. “What is he, to you?” he asked, sounding more curious than I’d heard him in a long time. “You are Feychilde. This means you knew him?”

“He was my friend.”

The bitterness of the reply which found its way out of my mouth seemed to leave the implication clear.

He was my friend… once.

“From what I have heard, I would no longer look to him for friendship, Feychilde.” There was a kind of sneer on his face when he used my champion’s name. “It is said that when he laughs, it is as the laughter of fate itself, mocking all that transpires.”

“Tell him the rest,” the twins murmured.

“Yes.” Orcan’s eyes suddenly sparkled. “It is said no more champions step forward. That after – I suppose it is, after your Everseer – that Nightfell is the only one. And Timesnatcher now defers to Nightfell in all things. There is talk in the taverns of your home city. What spell has she put him under? Was it her, who has accomplished his downfall? And so many other of the champions have fallen. Glancefall, yes? He is dead. There is rumour that the killer – Dreamlaugher –”

“Dreamlaughter.”

“Yes! They say she killed him. Fangmoon was killed by the heretic, Higher Arch Nine or vhichever…”

He was getting excited, his accent slipping.

I was the opposite. I shrank into myself.

Sol…

So many times, she’d saved my ass.

She fixed me after Zyger! She… Theor…

I redirected my stare, fixing it blankly on the twins. I could feel tears welling up behind my eyes.

They shook their heads sadly in unison.

Why didn’t they tell me?

“… ze former champion, Stormsword –”

I swung my head back around.

“– slain on Magisterium business, on foreign soil. They held parades in her honour.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“You knew her too, did you not? Slew many demons together, no?”

He fell silent, looking plainly curious, no more cruelty on his face than there’d been in his voice – if anything, the old wizard just seemed thrilled to finally have his invitation to gossip freely without having to initiate the topic…

He was completely ignorant of the loss of self I underwent.

For just a moment, there was only a hair between the old shrivelled head of Orcan and the old shrivelled head of Shadowcrafter. The casualness with which he sliced me, pierced me, question after question, glance after glance, each one producing a wound in me he could never see, never understand. It was beneath the impassive exterior, the outer skin which was so swiftly transformed to ice, colder than any armour Winterprince ever wore. Even as he punctured my heart, the darkness enveloped me, the chill of Northril overcoming my willpower.

Only a hair of difference between them.

Only the head atop Orcan’s shoulders.

Despite his powers, I would’ve found it so easy to cut him down then and there. It wouldn’t have helped, though, would it? It would’ve just been one more pointless death to lay at my feet.

Emrelet…

I couldn’t even process the cascade of thoughts. The images, sounds. Scents.

“Vill you stay vith me? Just until ze dawn?”

At least I know now why Jaid and Jaroan didn’t say anything.

And then their voices came to me, solemn and low:

“Our condolences, brother.”

My voice was hoarse when at last I responded.

“Yes. Yes, I knew her.”

* * *