As we turned to rejoin the assembled champions my mind was reeling with doubts of deceits, betrayal. I supposed I’d never really thought about it before – champions were people. They weren’t the monolithic entities they were made out to be, they weren’t chiselled from stone. They were flesh and blood, urges and instincts. They were strong, and they were weak. Human or elf, gnome or dwarf – they were people. Capable of great deeds and capable of terrible mistakes.

Capable of evil.

There were fifty or so gathered now, mages and archmages standing in small groups and chatting. I scanned the crowd – purposefully keeping my gaze far from the quartet of dwarven champions talking near the cliff. Except for Starsight, who was apparently still in recovery, every champion I’d ever met was present – every surviving one, at least. Save for…

“Killstop?” I said aloud, making it a question.

“I don’t know for sure,” Timesnatcher replied. “There’s a small chance she’s hung up her robe for good. But I think not. I think she’s coming. And… ah, yes.” A mysterious smile slipped over his face. “Let’s introduce you to Netherhame, Shallowlie and Direcrown.”

Walking through the crowd at his side, I shook hands and exchanged greetings with some of those I’d met already – Nighteye, Shadowcloud, Lovebright – before we halted in front of the two sorceresses. Our shields slipped harmlessly across each other’s – it was reassuring to know I wasn’t the only sorcerer who kept their protections up by default. I put a lid on my slow-boiling anger, hiding my disgust at Neverwish’s machinations, as I regarded my new colleagues.

Netherhame wore a garish purple robe decorated with pinkish swirls and a green mask like the howling face of a banshee; she was tall, broad-shouldered, heavyset. Shallowlie was almost her opposite, a shrunken waif of a thing dressed in utilitarian black embroidered with small peach-coloured gravestones, evenly-spaced; her mask was a pale, smiling face that was all the eerier for its plainness.

I shook Netherhame’s hand first, whose grip was no less firm than that of a man her stature; then Shallowlie’s, whose cold, limp fingers seemed eager to release my own as quickly as possible. They each regarded me silently.

“So…” I looked across at Timesnatcher, then back at them. “We’re going to be working together?”

“Pleased to have you on board,” Netherhame said politely, but with a hard edge to her voice. She had a faint Rivertown accent, if I had to guess. “Congratulations on Shadowcrafter. I hope you’re a fast learner, Feychilde. There’s a lot to show you.”

Shallowlie said nothing at all, and I could see her eyes were downcast, not even looking back at me through the slits in her mask. If I had to guess, the smiling face of her covering was hiding a sorrowful expression.

Of course. I might’ve hoped, before he’d died, to have Dustbringer take me on as his student – but these women had lived that experience, and now he was gone, leaving them to pick up the pieces. On top of that, Shallowlie had been brought close to death during the Incursion, and it’d sounded like it could’ve been quite nasty.

I addressed Netherhame, recognising that there was a good chance Shallowlie (quite understandably) wasn’t going to be too forthcoming with her responses.

“I just wish I was joining the team under better circumstances.” I kept my voice dry, free from the complications too much levity or pity would bring me. “I’ll work my hardest to catch up, I promise. I…”

What was it called again?

Zel sighed. “The weave.”

“I watched what you were doing with the weave, with Redgate, when the smi- smikkle-”

“Smikelliol,” Zel supplied dejectedly –

“Smikelliol,” Netherhame said at the same time, her voice brittle.

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“Yeah – that.” I could feel my face flushing with colour – my attempt to strike up a professional conversation wasn’t off to the best of starts. “I’d like to see it again, try it for myself, some time, if you were willing…?”

Timesnatcher placed one hand on my shoulder and another on Netherhame’s, a small, proud smile on his lips. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity to sort that out. You’re going to be on assignment together this week; you’ll be able to contact each other.”

Assignment? I parroted internally, feeling a sudden wave of anxiety and excitement.

“I’ll explain more after the Gathering begins,” the arch-diviner continued, then turned aside. “Direcrown!”

A man, taller and thinner than both me and Timesnatcher, approached us. His fine robe was a burnt-brown, almost rusty hue, and he had a gold-cloth cape about his shoulders. The sorcerer wore a tall diadem atop his hooded head, the crown of his namesake. Its slightly-irregular golden teeth were long and jagged, pointing up more like dagger-blades than anything else, extending off a thin silver band. And hanging from the band at the front, there was the snarling mask of a fanged, bat-like fiend, its black fur covering him entirely within the cowl’s rim, probably fastened behind his head with a string…

Here was a champion who took his privacy seriously.

A crown, like that of Lord Undeath, but with a demonic visage…

Direcrown looked me up and down.

“Feychilde.” His voice was crisp but cool, not cold. His accent, more than merely refined, made him seem altogether aloof, superior-sounding.

“Direcrown.” I held out a reluctant hand. From what Timesnatcher had said, I got the impression I was about to shake the hand of a darkmage.

A darkmage willing to risk his life fighting the forces of Infernum… a darkmage who would enter my shield, whose shield I could enter…

But still a darkmage.

The man’s grip was light, perfunctory, but not because of sorrow like Shallowlie. Because of disdain.

He lowered his hand and looked me up and down again.

“We shall be glad of thine aid, what with our new chief-sorcerer, the esteemed Redgate, gone from the city for some weeks.” He spoke gloatingly, as though nothing more than the eloquence with which he spoke were needed to insult me. “It would behove you to listen closely to the advice of Netherhame, and follow the commands of all your betters – I am to take it that you have been placed in her care, am I not?”

And now if I say ‘yes’ I’m not only confirming she’s going to show me the ropes – I’m implicitly accepting I need ‘care’, accepting Redgate as my chief, accepting Direcrown as my better, and accepting that I’ll take his orders…

I smiled joyously, and kept my lowest-born accent as I gushed: “Indeed, noble Direcrown! Thou most of all had I hoped to meet and impress, ere this night I came hither. But speak thy heart’s desire and I shall see it done, or be much remiss. Verily I am thine to order-about as thou see’st fit –”

“And I see thou art a greater knave than our late, great leader.” Direcrown looked over the sorceresses as he turned away – Netherhame seemed to bristle, her limbs taut and chin raised, while Shallowlie just shrank further into herself.

“I get the whole Direcrown thing now,” I said as he stalked away. I was pretty sure he’d have a way to hear me, even as he slipped into the crowd, but I didn’t care. “Did someone once insult his tiara, and he took it as a compliment? Five help him…”

“Did you ever see Dustbringer and Direcrown together?” Timesnatcher asked, smirking.

“No… why do you ask?”

“If you showed up a few weeks later Direcrown would be hypothesising that Dustbringer faked his death, visited Facechanger and came back with a new name. He always spoke to him like that. Thee’d and thou’d right back at him.” The smirk on his face became the tight smile of one fondly remembering a friend gone from this world.

“If you carry on like that, Feychilde,” Netherhame said, “you’ll do alright.”

Shallowlie’s body language gave me the impression she’d enjoyed hearing me being all insolent in Direcrown’s face – she still hadn’t spoken in my presence but she was at least looking at me now.

“That’s something I’ve been meaning to ask about,” I said, turning back to the arch-diviner. “This Facechanger chap –”

“We’re going to discuss them, and your little vampire problem, as a group.”

My mouth almost dropped open. I hadn’t been planning on asking for help, but if it was being offered…

“First,” he turned and gestured towards the doorway, “I think you’ll find you’re going to want to watch…”

I stared, jaw still on the floor, as she entered the cavern, the doors opening inwards for her just as they had for me.

More than just my eyes went to her – it seemed half the room stilled and silenced at the sight of an unfamiliar champion.

She wore a new robe, a white and electric-blue exterior with darker blue-grey inner layers; she hadn’t let the rain touch it. Her distinctive hair was hidden by the aquamarine hooded cape about her shoulders, such that I doubted any who didn’t know her intimately would recognise her. Her upper face was concealed by the flaming phoenix. The mask she’d seen in the shop.

She went back and bought it.

Her radiance still clinging to her, Em strode purposefully into the room, stopped, and looked about at us.

When she spoke it was in a clear voice that carried across the chamber, a voice that bore only a hint of her Onsoloric brogue, which had somehow been replaced by an almost highborn air.

“Whatever name you’ve known me by,” she said, “I’d ask that you call me Stormsword.”

* * *