The world was blurry, bleary, and dull. An ache pounded through his head, amplified with every heartbeat, and one of Kosta’s fingers poked cautiously at the lump just above his temple.

“Fuck!” Kosta hissed as a lance of agony radiated out from the spot. That hurt like a bitch!

His body seemed distant and unwilling to listen to his commands. Kosta laid limp for a time, focusing on controlling his bleeding and drawing upon the light of his soul. Water flooded beneath him, and Kosta soon found himself grateful that he’d fallen upon his back. His unconscious body might have drowned otherwise.

“Ugh,” Kosta struggled to rise as the clamor of combat rang out ahead of him. It couldn’t have been too long if they still held the wall…he slowly guided magic to his wound by the power of his will, and Kosta relaxed a fraction as the pain eased ever-so-slightly.

At least he could think again.

Awareness slowly surged back to him. Memories flooded in. The sounds of steady, unceasing combat grew louder and louder. Kosta’s eyes cracked open, fearful of what he would find, only to stretch wide as an enormous hand descended from nowhere to pluck him from the waterlogged street.

“Get off me!” He howled, thrashing like a madman as thick fingers wrapped around Kosta’s chiton, which was heavy and stuck against his clammy skin. Fear jolted him. Kosta whipped his hammer out instinctively—the tool shimmering with grey power and a Projected spike that would ruin anyone’s day—and swung for where he assumed his opponent’s crotch would be, but struck nothing but air as his assailant simply held him out of range.

How long were his arms?!

“Enough!”

Despite his poor condition, the voice sparked recognition. Kosta had heard it before, and he blinked the panic away, overcome by confusion.

“Hammer man?” Kosta asked groggily, still stunned from the brick’s impact. At least his magic must have blunted it, even if it had coalesced too slowly to stop the projectile entirely.

“Art man,” Philo acknowledged.

Kosta dimly realized that the rain had ceased. A few drops still came down, but the storm had receded now that its dread purpose was accomplished. The terrible figure in the sky still hung suspended in the air, watching. Waiting.

“Eneas said you’d fallen. I’m glad you still live!” Philo exclaimed. He twisted his wrist so that Kosta could see him but didn’t let go of his chiton. “Come! We must hurry to the rendezvous. Headsman Linus holds the line, but he will have to retreat before long. Should the Merakian and his beast descend to battle—”

A Merakian? So that was what had come to Dytifrourá. One who had steeped themselves in the Dream. Somehow, the news that Philo brought was only half as surprising as the intelligence behind his ordinarily blank gaze.

“Philo. You’re…” Kosta interrupted.

“Stringing two sentences together?” The ghost of a smile traced Philo’s lips as he jogged away from the clash of combat behind, still holding Kosta as easily as he would a kitten. “Just a game I like to play. It’s fun to see how much I can work someone up. You were always a favorite, art man. Cly thought so as well.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Kosta growled. “Clymere knew?!”

Philo’s chuckle rumbled his chest. He could give Headsman Linus a run for his money in sheer bulk. “I wanted to ask you for something other than hammers ages ago, but Cly wouldn’t hear of it.”

He was going to smack Clymere the next time he saw her.

If he saw her…but Kosta couldn’t bear that line of thought.

Kosta was turned toward the wall now, and his heart stopped. The great wall of Dytifrourá was truly shattered. The gates still stood, but without the enchanted protections woven into the archway, there was nothing to preserve them against magical attacks.

But Dytifrourá’s defenders stood staunchly even in her darkest hour. Gleaming bronze and shining silver plumes broke the fog, blasting the foreign power away. Shields clinked together as lines upon lines of militiamen interlinked them to hold the gap where the Merakian had sundered their defenses. The magic hammered into the shields were designed to interlink and support one another, forming an adaptive defense just like the walls once possessed.

A silver wall formed.

Screams and sounds of clashing combat reached his ears as they did battle with whatever Hesperians surged forth. Kosta could hear much and see little, but his breath froze in his lungs as he managed to spot a dozen bodies crushed beneath the heavy rubble. Others had been dragged out but given up for dead.

The wounded were hauled out of the frontline and patched up by blue-eyed Ademia and a few of the militia’s combat medics. Each had been handpicked and trained by Ademia herself.

Small groups of guardsmen scattered from the battlefront as it intensified, sent away to new positions by Headsman Linus or one of his lieutenants. It was then that Kosta caught sight of their sentinel, Headsman Linus standing head and shoulders above most men as a dozen illusory warriors armed with sword, shield, and a bow strapped to their backs fought alongside him. The bite of their weapons was just as real as mundane bronze or iron.

Headsman Linus was a monster, conjuring up an armory’s worth of illusory weaponry to hurl into their foes or strike down whatever opponent dared face him. Every stroke of his sword (so massive that it was more of a cleaver, really) cast off three more illusory strikes in tandem that shredded whatever defenses his opponent mustered.

Still, something seemed to have attracted the Headsman’s attention. Silver flashes pulsed, carrying with it a molten glow, and all his attention seemed intent upon slaying this new foe.

One Hesperian, armored lightly in leather with one hand free for spellcasting and the other clutching a simple ax, attempted to leap above the Headsman to land in Dytifrourá’s interior. It was foolhardy: dozens of the militia had left for more favorable positions, trusting in their Headsman and his honor guard to hold the invaders at bay, and met the leaping warrior with upraised spears.

He didn’t experience a pleasant landing.

Other warriors sounded a retreat, carrying the wounded and a few civilians (including Eneas, whose cart was much lighter now) away to safety.

“Where’s Clymere?” Kosta’s voice was ragged. His eyes refused to leave the devastation. Arrows and bolts of fire, ice, and lightning rained down upon the gap in the walls to be absorbed by the phalanx. Illusory birds sometimes exploded from his weighty strikes to intercept the projectiles.

What attacks did make it through had little hope of piercing his armor. Headsman Linus was clad in a resplendent set of thick apeironic bronze laced with various helioklept veins to compensate for the various enchantments tied to the sacred metal. It didn’t make the Headsman invulnerable, but light, glancing blows had little hope of piercing his defense. Lesser workings of magic washed right off.

“Headsman Linus sent her back to guard the southern tetraodía,” Philo said, referring to the crossroads south of the Ischyrópota. “She commands a garrison there. We’re attempting to route any remaining civilians that way. We fear the main road won’t be safe for much longer.”

The militia occasionally dashed in to catch a certain blow or strike an attacker off guard, but Headsman Linus alone was enough to hold the gap. His magic was absurd! It possessed speed, flexibility, and raw power that Kosta could hardly understand.

He felt the seep of his own magic in his veins, steady and even. Sluggish in comparison to the casual command that Headsman Linus exhibited.

Philo’s words and the terrible sequence of events that had shattered his world finally caught up with him, and Kosta could only stare blankly behind him as Philo hurried down the main road toward their rendezvous. They passed his workshop. Much of the wood paneling had been stripped away by the wind and now lay in splinters and broken chunks by the door. Even his sign had been nearly obliterated, and any loose pieces of wood or brick had been torn down.

Water fell in through the gaps and flooded out from the door. His life. His work. His art…Kosta futilely reached out, groaning, but Philo shook his head.

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“It’s all gone now. There’s nothing for you there,” Philo said quietly. He angled Kosta away, but Kosta still craned his neck to catch sight of his workshop. The Argyropolis commission! The gifts for the upcoming ceremony! His pet projects! He needed them!

Philo ran faster.

He stared down the street blankly, eyes locked upon the enormous heap that was Oroneiros.

It had never seemed so distant nor so faded.

Kosta’s breath was torn and ragged as they passed scene after scene of devastation. Ruined homes. Broken masonry. Personal belongings strewn and stamped on by the hordes of sudden refugees. His heart froze as he caught sight of Arius, a middle-aged man who frequently bought some of Kosta’s trinkets for his stall of curios, broken and bloody and trampled upon by the crowd, blind and deaf to the poor man’s struggles.

Arius’ face was pale and his chiton was waterlogged. It clung tightly to his bruised and broken skin. His jaw hung open in an empty expression, eyes blank and lifeless. The cheerful, laughing merchant’s limbs jutted at awkward angles.

He must have fallen.

“Don’t look,” Philo said, voice tight. He adjusted Kosta on his shoulder. “We’ll see more. We’ll take anyone still living with us. But we must press forward.”

“Dytifrourá has fallen,” Kosta said. The simple words struck him as fiercely as one of those bolts of lightning may have. Last night he had been drinking wine and laughing with Clymere, supping on Eneas’ wonders and imagining what might have been.

And now what might never be.

“Aye. Headsman Linus received word that Fort Phylax was under siege a day ago. We thought it was nothing but another test of our vigilance. Our reinforcements would have broken it, or so we thought. But a runner made it here this morning. Phylax is broken, its stones scattered across its mountaintop by a terrible storm.”

“The Merakian,” Kosta stared blankly up at the figure in the sky. It was small, so terribly small next to the enormous white griffin which lazily encircled it now that the wall’s defensive turrets had been broken, and he now saw three lesser griffins and their riders flocking around it.

Less than a half-divine Aretan.

Less than one of the mighty, fabled Kleosians.

Lesser enough for Dytifrourá to be worthy of its notice, but great enough that they never should have needed to stand against it.

“The Merakian Stelios and his Nephonauts,” Philo spat hatefully as he turned his head to glare daggers at the lone figure, some of the first true emotion Kosta had seen from him. His calm demeanor had been compromised. “A Hesperian champion meant to be guarding their western front. He will die for this. The Dipoli will not stand for an incursion. The Hesperians will be bled dry and stamped into the dirt. Fools!”

But for now, it was all the Dytifrouráns could do to survive. Kosta felt far away, as if trapped in a bad dream, but even there the hunger for vengeance stirred inside every time he heard a scream from the frontlines or saw the splintered remains of a landmark within the town.

Everything was ravaged by the horrible gales. Some buildings had been broken entirely, torn away from their foundations and cast all over the main thoroughfare. Bodies littered the streets, some young, most old. Some had been trampled and unable to escape, whatever magic they possessed proving too feeble to tear themselves from the fleeing horde. If they had not died of their injuries, they’d drowned in the water flooding their streets.

He knew some, but recognized almost all of them. They were people he’d passed in the streets since childhood: Karpos, a winemaker who had gone through his Dòrognosis alongside Kosta, had been trampled as well. Some were even clients, and his throat tightened at the sight of an older woman who’d once modeled for him. Her remains were almost too broken to identify, but he caught sight of a beautiful silver bracelet that he’d included in his sculpture.

Here and there he saw militiamen who had bled out. Kosta couldn’t help but exhale in relief every time he saw beneath the bronze helm and fading silver plume to see that it wasn’t Clymere’s face hidden beneath.

Philo always paused by those to check for the little metal tablet keyed to them. No doubt he’d do his best to ensure it made it to their families.

More screams came from behind them. A griffin shrieked from over the walls. Philo cursed. “Can you run now? We can’t remain on this road…they’ll break through soon.”

His vision still swam a bit, but his magic did its utmost to wipe away the light injuries. Kosta dully wiped a bit of blood from his forehead and winced as he felt the beginnings of an ugly knot where the scrap of brick had struck him.

Perhaps he hadn’t been too slow after all. He’d taken a nasty knock to the head, but the barrier had at least blunted the damage. His magic would have preserved him against worse, but he felt vaguely nauseous already. He’d be in no condition to fight if he hadn’t managed some sort of defense.

“Yes.”

Philo gingerly lowered him to the ground and eyed him for a moment to ensure that he wouldn’t collapse, then nodded. The huge guardsman stared down the main road toward the eastern gate with a scowl—it was hard to believe that he’d ever convinced Kosta that he was a hammer-obsessed dullard.

What else had he missed?

“They’ve already left,” Philo muttered in relief. The eastern gates were open, held by just a few squads of militia. Some had already abandoned the walls and stood by the gates, poised to defend it and buy the refugees a little more time from the Hesperians.

They’d likely hurried the evacuation efforts along when it was clear that the western gate would fall. As soon as the interlocked defenses of the walls had been broken there and the veil surrounding the town had been shattered, the integrity of the entire wall had failed. Mundane brick, bronze, and stone would fall to any of the high-level Hesperian practitioners in minutes.

There was no point remaining. Anyone else would just have to catch up.

“Run for the gates! Several roads are blocked by debris. We will clear out any remaining civilians, then fall back ourselves, Aretans willing. You won’t be wanting for company long.”

Kosta almost stepped down the road that would lead him to safety, then stopped. His instincts demanded that he flee, but he knew in his bones that he could not.

“I have to find Clymere!”

“Are you serious?” Philo scowled. He hefted his enormous hammer with one hand and pointed it back at the western gates, which trembled as a griffin rider—one of the Nephonauts, Philo had called them—harassed the rear guard of militia that held the gap in the wall behind Headsman Linus. “Do you not see that?”

Kosta did, and it terrified him.

The beast was perhaps twenty feet long from its cruel, hooked beak to the fuzzy tip of its leonine tail. Its great wings buffeted the miltia with terrible gusts of wind and its shrill cry pierced every ear like a spike. The Nephonaut atop it was armed with a great lance and hurled his own brand of blue lightning into the ranks, though the great warrior had to move swiftly to avoid a flurry of illusory spears cast at them by Headsman Linus.

He did not miss the slow, steady switch that the front lines made with Headsman Linus. They lacked the precision and power to duel such a mighty foe, but Headsman Linus did not.

While the soldiers were earthbound, Headsman Linus flung a half-dozen phantasmal spears at the griffin, which exploded into bursts of darkness that encircled the beast when one landed in its flank. The Headsman gave chase as the griffin screeched.

It was surreal to see the enormous man sprint up an illusory stairway after his foe, his bulk supported entirely by the strength of his magic and the force with which he could imbue into his illusions.

Headsman Linus may not have the power to conjure up a storm and force it to heed his will, but Kosta had a hard time imagining a more flexible magic. He was limited only by the depths of his endurance and the limits of his imagination. If he grew to match the power of this Merakian, Kosta doubted that Dytifrourá would ever fear another storm.

But one thing was made clear: that was a battle far beyond him. The blue-tinged lightning would devour his pitiful barriers in the blink of an eye. Even his Teris talisman would fall to the intensity of its arcing fury.

“I can’t leave Clymere alone here. Not now! I’m no warrior, but I have talents. I can be useful.”

“You’re mad!” Philo groaned. His face tightened beneath the brow of his helm. “You realize that we’re likely to be slaughtered, yes? All we can hope is that we buy time and distract the Hesperians to save civilians and make their conquest as painful as possible. Tomorrow…well, that’s quite a distant dream.”

“Then that will be my fate as well.”

“Very well. I don’t have time to argue—go make yourself useful. I need to go secure the remaining holdouts. Just keep Clymere’s spear out of my ass when she realizes that I’m not carting you out of town, understood?”

They shook on it. Philo pointed his hammer down a side road. “She’s that way. Fight well, art man. Spend your blood well.”

Kosta nodded back, doing his best to disguise how ill he felt. His hands shook ever-so-slightly, but he steeled himself. “And you as well, hammer man.”

With that, Philo took off. His speed was incredible without Kosta to burden him. He vanished down another alley in the blink of an eye, too quick and too silent for his heavy weapon and burdensome armor.

He was alone now. Danger pressed in from all directions, gnawing at his instincts. Run! They screamed, but Kosta didn’t listen.

Kosta took one last glance at the gates. Hesperian magic blazed against the remaining defenders holding their ground for every possible second. Other soldiers filed out in individual squads; a large contingent of militia that had broken free earlier would pass by soon. They headed down the main road directly for the gates, likely going to aid the refugees and ensure that Dytifrourá’s military wasn’t entirely broken.

If he were a smarter man, he would join them and go on into…hmm, safety might be a strong word. But it was certainly more secure than remaining in the wind-ravaged remains of Dytifrourá.

But as much as he might like to join their ranks and lend them his services, Clymere wasn’t among them. That cast his decision in stone and sealed his fate.

This town was backward and full of ignorance. Kosta had known from the time he was a child that his fate rested beyond Dytifrourá. If he wanted to escape the trappings of this world and set his hammer and chisel to shape a new one, he must leave.

But not like this. Not without Clymere safe and sound.

So Kosta steeled himself and took the first step down the winding road that would guide him to his sister.

The first step towards his destiny. Whether it ended today, tomorrow, a decade, or a millennium didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it began today.