“People of Mund. Listen carefully. I’m not going to get chance to do this again, and you need to hear every word. Many of you know me as Everseer, and for years you’ve thought me dead – those of you who know me will attest, this is my voice. I am alive. My real name is Vardae Rolaine, and since my disappearance I have dwelt within the Thirteen Candles. Yes, I am a heretic…”

The wizard imagined the horror, the confusion, the panic. Millions of people would be hearing this.

As Vardae spoke, Emrelet raised her hands to the skies and called for the thunder. When the aeromancy failed, Bor finally realised what was happening and tried to encapsulate them in a zone of silence – but it just let the voice through more clearly.

Then Irimar arrived with Soleine. The great seer, the leader of the champions of Mund, looked at them both and shook his head.

“We have to hear it,” he called over Everseer’s voice. “To help everyone – we have to know. Even if it makes us all heretics.”

“… heretics are not what you think. We are a maligned insurgency, born in a failed experiment. Chaosmakers and Rebels. Killseekers and Troubled Ones. What does ‘Srol’ even mean? Do they let their children come up with this stuff nowadays?No – it was due to a spelling mistake. Yes. The truth is that we aren’t what they thought we were going to be and when they tried to get rid of us, tried to erase their mistake, we fortified. It’s all ancient history, now, of course, but it’s relevant all the same. It’s what the Magisterium did, and does, and will continue to do until the day it collapses in on itself, burdened as it is by the grandeur of its lofty goals.”

Emrelet stared at each of the others in turn. Timesnatcher was the only one who didn’t stare back, just looking off into the trees.

“The Dracofont. The five dragon progenitors. Mal Tagar. Ord Yset. Nil Nafrim. Do you know the names of these three? Of course. But do you know their deeds?”

Emrelet frowned.

“Why are they just names? Why aren’t their feats described in the tales? Tyr Devas. Ulu Kalar. Do you know those names? Why not? Why are the histories broken? Because they fear the five dragons, and these last two especially. The Five Founders’ last act before becoming the Founders, before raising these great city walls… their last act was to defeat the Dracofont in pitched battle. Here, inside these marble bounds – this was where the Dracofont was destroyed.

“This is where they will Return, their ghosts finding form in the material plane once more.”

Timesnatcher stirred. “It was her. Everseer was the arch-diviner Kas ran into when he went missing at the library. She imparted some of this to him already. And he knew… he knew he couldn’t trust us to trust him if he even gave a fraction of a sign…”

Fang shushed him, and Spirit looked shaken at what this might imply for Tanra’s situation, but Emrelet was left to wonder just how much her own attitude had shaped Kastyr’s responses in the last days of his freedom.

Was Feychilde not truly dark?

The question, considered in a vacuum, had merit, but then:

He struck Papa!

The Magisterium still hadn’t reasserted control. Vardae Rolaine was continuing.

“… first, when the magisters realised these five, truly tremendous dragons were coming back, they put together a committee designated to explore outlandish means of countering their resurrection. The ‘great Returning’, they call it. They believe in it, as though it were written in the Book of Kultemeren. Your leaders – they are heretics! Weak ones! Ones unwilling to do what they must! They play into the dragons’ clawed hands… Traitors, all of them. Wait – they did not tell you that until recently they were under the control of Tyr Kayn? Granddaughter of Tyr Devas? They didn’t tell you Lovebright was an illusion designed to bring about the resurrection of the dragon-royalty of old?

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“No. Of course not. They let it fall to me to lay the rumours to rest. You see, eventually some elements of that original committee were absorbed into other departments that still exist to this day, cataloguing the predictions of the end days. They sit there in their glass tower, scrutinising the prophecies for a loophole. They know, believe me. They have known all along that we are – all – doomed. They know, and knew, yet what news does the town-crier bring? Nothing. They said nothing.

“We were the ones who wanted to speak up. Give people the choice. Because what we know is this. The more archmages the demons kill in Incursions, the stronger the dragons are in the moment of their return. The more people here when they return – you understand me, right? The more food here when they return, I mean – the faster their powers swell afterwards. We are in a lose-lose. And yes, we’ve killed plenty of you; we’ve spread rumours, trying to get you to leave. Culling the livestock. What do your lives matter? What do our lives matter? We cause fear and spread such havoc as we can contrive. But the magisters tar our names, the champions foil our plots at every turn. We’ve concocted every deterrent in the book and you still keep coming. But who can blame you, right? Mund, yeah? Yeah. We’re all in the same boat. So here’s what’s going to happen to this boat before it breaks.

“You are going to leave. Disembark, or, gods help me, I’ll kill every last one of you myself. Your… heads… will… roll. Timesnatcher’s incapable of stopping me alone. Killstop’s gone into exile, and Feychilde has been sent into everlasting darkness – hadn’t they told you about that? They did nothing wrong. But they dared speak to one of us, you see. Their old friend Nighteye – he was one of us, until he was executed without trial – without a single – word. Did you know about that? That Nighteye swore himself to me, to my cause?

“Sensing a running theme here yet?

“Feel free to check my facts, if you don’t believe me. I’m sure your local mage-lords will want to look you square in the eye and try to bluff this one. Just try them. Trust me. All they’ll be able to do is call me mad. But you know what mad sounds like. This ain’t that. This is the real deal.

“You have until Highsummer. Come the end of summer, Nine-Ninety-Nine, I take your heads if you’re within a hundred miles of the city. Between dawn and dusk, I’ll decapitate the lot of you. It’s an oath. It’s a promise. I’m a champion, don’t you know? I swear it. By Glaif. By Illodin. You’ll die. I’ll do it with my own hands, to spare the world the dragons.

“I’d plan to be out of here by spring, if I were you. Get a head-start.

“See, magisters? Even a portent of horrifying doom can make you crack a smile, if you do it the right way. You should’ve listened to me from the beginning.

“Those of you trying to get into this room, I warn you personally now. You’ve passed the corpses of your friends already. I will kill the first twelve of you with honour. The remaining four – I will stab you in the back as you flee. All of you will die if you persist…

“Very well.

“Happy Nine-Ninety-Nine, Mund. Go in good cheer. Go with the blessings of the low gods, or of the high. But however you do it, damn you, go.”

There were a few moments of hushed silence, as they assimilated the words – then Irimar was echoing her, urging them to go, ensuring they each were linked and obtained flight-spells before sending them off, west, north-west, north…

It didn’t matter if she was a champion or not. Emrelet had a job to do.

Whatever the truth of Vardae’s words, what mattered right now was the inevitable rioting in the streets. The unrest. The many insurmountable obstacles this Heresy had raised in their path.

As the wizard flew, she felt the coldness enter her own heart. The doubt, sown by the evil arch-diviner.

Did Henthae already know? Has she known all along? It all ends in fire and blood?

Did she know and never tell me?

But the most regretful thing about it was that it never would have mattered anyway.

I would have stood by her all the same, even to the end of the world.