“What do I propose?” She drew a deep breath. “To stop her first.”

Four words. Four simple words, at whose utterance the imagination was made real and the amber mist became caustic, burning her eyes, the inside of her mouth, nostrils – she exhaled the vile substance that was searing her lungs –

Choking, reeling, she clambered out of the chamber, the others spluttering as they followed. She couldn’t open her eyes, and was left groping her way out, listening to the sounds made by her fellows as they scrambled in her wake. Thankfully the path back to the tunnel was short, and as they reached the top of the slope the cold Mund air washed over them.

She opened her eyes a crack, and could see it ahead of her – the light of torches, and the darkness of night beyond.

Yet as they approached the end of the tunnel, still coughing and spluttering, Oreltia felt the wave of panic bear her under. Most of the other Sisters would be at the bottom of the grassy hill, resting and praying in the temple proper, and a few might have been at the top of the hill, performing a cleansing rite – but the Warden-Acolytes were just beyond the tunnel. The pair of guards would see the way their four leaders had been rejected by the goddess, the way contact with the holy mist had burned them.

No. This cannot happen.

Oreltia peered ahead with watery eyes, and waved her hands in anger at the two witnesses out there, screaming silently to Mekesta:

You cannot allow this!

It was hardly even a prayer, just four more soul-condemning words, issued in her mind as pure reflex; but the hand of the goddess, dark and divine, fell upon the hill, borne on a black wind.

On either side of the tunnel-entrance, two young, mace-armed Sisters stood guard at all hours, ensuring only those of sufficient rank entered the sacred space; Oreltia had passed the pair selected for tonight’s duty when she was on the way in. Now those two Sisters were suddenly crying out in panic, clutching their faces.

“I’m blind!” one of them whispered hoarsely, shrinking down to the ground. “Oh, Maiden, I’m blind!”

“Me too!” grunted the other; this one didn’t curl up on herself but instead started wheeling about, her arms extended. “Darkmage attack!” Her voice seemed to only get deeper and deeper as she tried to shout.

Oreltia exchanged a long, burning glance with her peers as they moved out of the tunnel.

Mekesta protects us, she thought, gulping in the cool night air, wiping her eyes.

“Dark… mage,” the second guard continued, rumbling the word as if feeling sick. She was slowing down in her frantic motions, face now twisted in pain.

“No… no, my dear ones,” Oreltia said in as soothing a tone as she could manage, stifling her coughing. “No, just a… a portent. A sign of Wythyldwyn’s displeasure. This Kanthyre –”

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“High Healer!” The whispering guard recognised her voice. “O Exalted, heal me!”

Oreltia put her hand on the girl’s shoulder warmly – the four of them had recovered enough now…

“No,” came the sound of Faylena’s voice.

Oreltia turned in some surprise. She hadn’t heard Faylena speak with such harshness before.

But the words weren’t being directed at the girl. They were being directed at her.

Don’t try to heal them, she realised. That’s what Lena means. Let the curse run its course…

But whatever the four high priestesses expected to happen, it wasn’t this.

Instantaneous blindness. Deafness and muteness within a minute. Complete loss of motor control within two.

“Whatever are we to do with them?” Lady Bennerswent asked in a strangled voice.

“Wait,” Faylena said.

They watched.

After three minutes the girls were dead.

In silence, they continued to watch as Faylena commanded, each of them praying for the miracle to come to pass.

After five, the girls’ bodies and belongings were gone, transformed into threads of black matter that fluttered away on the breeze.

Oreltia caught one such shred of a Sister’s remains, squeezed the strange material until it burst into dry fragments of blood, staining her fingertips red.

“She killed them.” Lady Ullton sounded as though she were about to pass out, but she snapped to horrified attention when Oreltia glared at her. “She – the Mother, I mean, not you!”

She is scared of me, Oreltia realised.

“There was nothing else for it,” Faylena said softly, then cast Oreltia a sidelong glance. “That was a powerful hex. Did you make a promise to the Night? Without involving the rest of us?”

Faylena’s tone, challenging. No fear in those eyes either.

But no real reprimand.

Oreltia shrugged. “They had to die, and, yes, Ullton, I take full responsibility. I’ll enter it into the record that they didn’t show up for their duties tonight, and speak with their proctor about their absence in the morning. Two of them, friends, going missing together? The usual excuses will be given.”

“But – what of…?” Lady Bennerswent looked back at the tunnel behind them, the golden light floating there in the distance beneath the hill, like strands of frogspawn adrift in a pond.

“The Maiden has rejected us,” Lady Ullton said, quivering on the spot.

“Yet she accepts this harlot, this bride of a crude barbarian?” Oreltia didn’t bother to check her scorn. “Against all our tenets, Kanthyre dares lay with a man, yet her power remains. And we,” she gestured to the others in turn, “we curse the rings, and still the goddess does nothing. The light below the hill will accept us again. It’s Kanthyre – Kanthyre we must be rid of. Then everything will be okay again, I promise.”

Ullton looked every bit as dejected as Oreltia had felt when she first arrived in the sacred chambers, but, for her part, she was over it now. Ullton might’ve been broken by these events, but Faylena and Bennerswent seemed mostly unfazed – they nodded along as she explained her plan, and when she was done her peers gave her their agreement before departing for their dormitories.

All except Ullton, whose nod had come last, and wordlessly at that; a tacit confirmation that told Oreltia much.

Ullton won’t get in the way, she realised, watching her three peers make their separate ways down the hill. She won’t get in the way, but she still needs to die before this is over.

She kicked at the last bits of black, bloody material still clinging to the grass, then made her own way down the slope, heading for her bed.

She had no trouble falling asleep, but the dreams were so dark, so deep, that for minutes and minutes when she first awoke Oreltia was convinced she’d died and been reborn years later, into a world that made no sense, a world craving shape, and the touch of her athame would be its saviour, her knife’s edge existence’s salvation.

* * *