I looked up and down the steep Hilltown street, left to right, back again, for what must’ve been the hundredth time. It was almost three o’ clock, and the light was already starting to wane; the side-street would be quiet even when it wasn’t raining, and most of the Hilltowners I saw were in the process of rushing indoors out of the downpour. I spotted no locals heading into the tavern outside which I was standing – the place might as well have just shut for the day. Only those whose occupations necessitated being outside were braving the weather: mostly transporters of goods, wagons laden with barrels, sacks, crates. Their horses didn’t look too happy about their current assignments, either.

“Still nothing,” I said over the link.

“Stop looking with your eyes. Whoever they are, they’ll have eldritches with them. Do you use your eyes to sense eldritches?”

If I don’t have to look with my eyes, why are you making me stand out here in the rain?

I bit down on my first few answers, going instead with the one I knew would open me up to the least-scathing reply. “No, Killstop, I do not.”

“The reason you’re the lookout is you’ve got senses we don’t. Do we have to go over the plan again?”

“No, Killstop, we do not,” I replied patiently.

I heard Em giggling inside my mind.

“Don’t be ganging up on me now, ladies.”

Glancefall was chuckling too. “I think it’s too late for that, Feychilde. You have my sympathies.”

“If this continues, I will report each and every one of you,” Jaevette said. “We are on a mission. Protocol dictates –“

“Protocol dictates you listen to your commanding officer, the dubious honour of which belongs, it just so happens, to me,” Killstop said sweetly. “Or did I hear Zakimel wrong?”

Em giggled again, helplessly, and perhaps just a trace nervously. She probably didn’t know for certain whether Jaevette had guessed her identity – she had a fine line to walk in that regard.

In any case, Jaevette didn’t reply to the arch-diviner’s question. At least she wasn’t a hypocrite. I knew if I were in her shoes – being bossed around by a kid a quarter of my age, one who didn’t even wear the badge – I’d have at least grumbled a bit.

Not Jaevette. No biting riposte, no witty repartee to keep me entertained while I stood here on the street. Instead I kept myself busy, hoping the canvas on the frame above me didn’t give in and drench me in a few gallons of rainwater.

I sighed, and leaned back against the wall heavily, letting my skull smack into the bricks. It didn’t really matter much, something I’d discovered after trapping my fingers in Keyla’s door when I returned her amulet. A couple of satyrs heavier, I was virtually immune to minor injuries now. It seemed their reflexes were no good for things that simply wouldn’t hurt them.

I would wait under the awning outside the tavern, wrapped in an invisibility that would hide me from both casual onlookers and enemies. Wait, until I sensed the eldritches. I would tell Tanra, and she would disable the arch-diviner and arch-enchanter accompanying the arch-sorcerer. She and Glancefall would then set about removing Lovebright’s – the dragon’s, damn it, I had to stop thinking of her as a human being… They would set about removing the dragon’s protections, bringing this trio of archmages back into the fold of sane people.

It made sense, I supposed – as Timesnatcher had said, we really did have to ensure every last part of the dragon’s influence was cleansed from the city before we could be certain about confronting her. We didn’t want to do it with a dozen or more archmages still at her beck and call… Still, it rankled. I wanted to be in Irimar’s group, the group tracking her down…

I wanted to be there when it started.

Five archmages per team, and Timesnatcher had put me with Killstop. A credible choice – me and Tanra worked together a lot, for sure, and we got on well – ish – but had he done it just to avoid an awkward conversation? Had my epiphany about Magicrux Zyger gotten me and Em shunted off to one side? Stormsword, Glancefall in his jester’s apparel, and the arch-magister called Jaevette rounded out the group. Zel, who’d rejoined me after I left the Maginox, seemed to have already developed a special hatred for the magister.

Jaevette was a plump woman of advancing years, a druidess in a textured green robe – but there the similarities with Leafcloak ended. She was tall and fierce-looking, younger than Leafcloak by at least a decade; her hair had been shorn short and left messy despite the otherwise well-groomed appearance. Certainly her robe was a whole lot cleaner than most druids’ I’d known, the ten-spoked Magisterium wheel shining away upon her breast as though its threads had been polished.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Perhaps she gets her cats to do it for her,” Zel said.

If you’re up to joking, you must be feeling better, I replied.

“I can’t… Don’t want to talk about it.”

I’m sorry, Zel. If I’d moved him –

“Please, Kas. He’ll be back… someday. And I don’t blame you, or Winterprince. I blame…”

The fairy cut off her sentence. I’d heard the anger starting to flood her voice, even felt it, a squirt of bile rising in my throat.

“I’m sorry. I… I really hate dragons.”

You want to poke the eyes out of this one? I don’t think anyone’s going to complain if you do.

“I’d rather stay with you, if that’s okay. I’m of more use in here.”

Of course it’s okay… Whatever you need.

“Kas…” I could feel the emotion surging through her again. “Thank you,” she finished simply.

No problem… Say, can I ask you about Magicrux Zyger?

“What about it?”

Well, what do you know about it? You mentioned it, earlier…

“You’re still worrying about this Timesnatcher-Neverwish business?” she said it in a scoffing tone. “Look, you interact with Killstop on a daily basis, and Duskdown has taken an interest in you – I’d say none of them have any idea about your real future. You need to stop worrying and start enjoying it, Kas. If you’re going to be a prominent arch-sorcerer in the capital of the world, you’re going to have to start taking this kind of thing in your stride.”

I don’t see the others getting this kind of intrusion, though.

“Do they have your kind of power?”

Em –

“You could take her. You know it.”

After what Winterprince did –

“He’s still stronger than her… for now.” She said this last in a tone of grudging admittance. “And that was on another plane, where you didn’t have… us. You could definitely take her.”

I didn’t like even the vaguest consideration of ‘taking’ her – not in that way.

“Kas!”

Sorry – I mean, what does that matter?

“Your strength? What does it matter? What doesn’t it matter? Do you really think they aren’t going to take an interest in you, when you turn a plane inside out to wipe tens of thousands of undead creatures from existence? When you –“

That was Nentheleme! And that, that Saphalar bloke!

“She came for you, Kas. You drove it, the whole thing. Don’t deny it. You have power!”

So the diviners are interested in me, because I’m powerful. Because I make stupid decisions. And… I should just ignore it? Seriously?

“… Something like that.”

Zel…

“What? I don’t know everything, do I? You know what I was saying, about how they can’t see your future? That goes tenfold – thousandfold! – for me. Don’t you think… don’t you think I’d tell you, if I could see something? I do…”

I shook my head. And the dragon wanted me to get in trouble with Sentelemeth because I’m powerful?

“Who knows? It could’ve just been a fun little game for her.”

Zel was right –

“Again…”

– it was entirely possible that this whole escapade had just been the dragon larking around, an amusing jaunt that got out of her control…

Suddenly senses came alive.

Wraiths, their chaotic swirling patterns standing out in my mind, moving up the street towards me. A vanguard, designed to warn them in case of threats.

We’re on.

“Four of them,” Zel immediately supplied. “They’ve got a druid as well, it appears, given the height on that one.”

“Four, not three – druid with them,” I reported to the others as I spread my shields. “I’ll trap the wraiths when you signal.”

“Move into position behind them,” Killstop commanded, at the same time as Stormsword said softly, “I feel them. One’s very tall…”

“They aren’t trying to hide,” I mused. I could see the wraiths now, vortexes of shadow on the air, and manipulated my barriers to draw them into my diamond-cage without them even realising. “She’s gathering them up, a show of force… Distraction?”

“Potentially,” Killstop answered. “If she’s going to throw away her Minions as a diversion, though, we’ll snap them up. She may not be aware we’ve got a few of our own lined up to take down the Master.”

“Did you just refer to Timesnatcher as a Minion?” Glancefall asked incredulously.

“If I’m the Master, what else can he be?” the seeress said, deadpan. “You don’t get to take two Masters. That would be cheating.”

I drew the wraiths towards me before locking them in place behind me, stowing my shields down to a minimum again. With my fey-sight I saw, far off, the archmages coming round the corner at the end of the street below me. A champion I recognised – the elven enchantress, Dancefire – with an arch-magister in tow, and two others that seemed to be randomly-attired darkmages –

Glancefall started to answer, but then Killstop barked: “Now!”

I crushed the wraiths even as I whipped the shields back, closing my trap.

The ambush was, as all good ambushes, ridiculously one-sided.

A lone wagoner watched on through the torrential downpour as anarchy erupted in the centre of his peaceful street, robed figures that flickered in and out of existence soaring in a tornado of violence:

A giant woman throwing another giant woman through a shop window, and, when that didn’t put her down, throwing her through a brick wall –

Fingers of lightning that leapt down through the rain but then stayed in place, a blinding ring, fencing-in a series of almost-imperceptible blurs –

The illusion of some kind of rope-demon, like a huge mass of nooses, reaching out for people’s necks, flickering off into non-existence almost as quickly as it had appeared –

Six or seven actual demons, being trodden under by a hill of black iron spikes, before the crimson flames that had birthed them reappeared to dismiss them –

Anarchy that lasted less than thirty seconds.

Then our invisibility came flooding back, uncontested now by no opposed enchanters of equal power. A pair of darkmages and a pair of soon-to-be allies in our custody, we left the street’s sole occupant and those staring out their windows to rub their eyes and winch their jaws shut. If it weren’t for Jaevette’s crude technique leaving one building in a state of disrepair, no one would even believe the story the onlookers had to tell.

* * *