If she was coming after me, that meant she wasn’t coming after anyone else.

And I couldn’t let her go.

She was a cold contract killer. She needed a mentalist, because there was clearly a problem here. I hoped she could get it – mentallists were the largest pillar of Mossford’s prison system, unlike in somewhere like Nightflock, so I thought she would, but with the fact she was a murderer… it was hard to know.

I stepped forward, prepared to fight. I knew she’d use her escape spell or item, whatever it was, but if I could get her in one blow…

It was no use. The moment my Fungal Lock spell landed on her, she vanished in a warp in space.

I sighed and turned back to the group.

“Thanks for the help,” I said. “I knew it was a long shot, but…”

“I guess we’ve got to report it now,” Liz said, before lightly adding. “Good thing Ed’s a member of the lightwatch.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Yeah. This cutting short should give me just enough time to get back, report her, and then head out again.”

“Oh, your beastgate thing, right?” Liz asked, and I nodded. Dusk whistled that she couldn’t wait for me to get that done, so I’d finally stop lagging behind her and I gently bonked the tiny spirit over the head.

“Rude,” I told her. “I’ll report her to Delitone as well. She’s from Mossford, but it can’t hurt.”

Liz nodded her agreement, and we headed back, filing the report for their guard – they were named something weird that barely registered, gray something or other.

“We’ll do what we can,” Octavian said. “I’m sorry to hear that you weren’t able to get her.”

“It is what it is,” I said. “For what it’s worth, she doesn’t seem to want to kill me either.”

“I think that’s more to do with you being an inconvenience than anything,” Liz said.

“I am rather annoying to kill, aren’t I?” I said, a note of pride entering my voice.

“I wouldn’t want to fight you,” Liz said.

“Not because you hit especially hard,” Octavian chimed in.

“Right. You’re just a pain,” Liz agreed.

“Bullies, the lot of you!” I said, throwing my hands up in the air.

I stayed with the auction house that night, officially speaking. In reality, I slept fitfully in Dusk’s realm. I wished that I’d given Kene a binding knot, rather than taking one for myself. That would at least have let Dusk know if they were dead or not.

I couldn’t think that way. They were fine. Fine, I was sure of it.

The following morning, I was getting really nervous. I even tried to push my way back into the portal, but the Craftsman’s voice rang in my head, saying tha portal couldn’t accept me back in once I’d left.

That was stupid – I was still only second gate, it should have let me in, even if there were only a few hours left before the realm collapsed.

I guessed that the rules had changed when Travis and his group of half-cultish freedom fighters had upended the board, but I swore that if the craftsman let my partner die while I was locked outside a collapsing world and could have done something about it, I was going to track him down and force him to apologize. To me, the witch, and to Kene’s entire family. Maybe I could get him to give the kids who were interested in enchanting an apprenticeship.

The worst part was that my mana senses were finely tuned enough that I could tell just how unstable the portals were getting. The interior connections were starting to fray. One would vanish every few seconds, only to reappear a moment later. But each time one vanished, it took a little longer to come back.

Someone stepped out of the portal, but their magic was all wrong, so I didn’t even spare them a glance, starting down into the depths of the shimmering rainbow magic.

I couldn’t do anything. Dusk couldn’t either – she whistled to me that she was strong, but she couldn’t stabilize fourteen other realms that were nearly the same size as her.

There was no mana spigot where I could pour power in, and I was pretty sure that even if there was, it wouldn’t do anything. This wasn’t a matter of power, but of complex planar membrane fraying.

Maybe if I’d been Orykson’s apprentice, he could have swooped down from the sky and plucked Kene out.

I tried, shouting for Orykson to get down here. I tried pleading and begging, threatening, and bargaining, but he didn’t answer.

I tried for Ikki and Meadow, but neither one of them answered either. I called for the Craftsman, for the witch, for Azalea, for anyone I knew with a scrap of power that might, maybe, be able to do anything.

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Nobody answered me. For the first time in my life, I was truly alone and unsupported.

It was scary. Meadow had told me that if I got hurt or killed in the Idyll-Flume, she couldn’t save me. On some level, I’d known that I was alone here.

But to experience it was another thing entirely.

Finally, someone passed through the gate, and the moment my mana senses touched on them, I knew it was…

It wasn’t Kene.

It was, but it wasn’t.

It was their body, and their spirit still lay within their form, leaking out solar and life mana.

But their tattoos were gone, and their skin was an unnatural shadow-flesh. Their teeth were iron, and their eyes glowed a sparking purple.

The hag’s mana crashed out into the air, already in the middle of third gate, stronger than Kene’s early third gate.

I clenched my fist and prepared to unleash every spell I could, while Dusk thrust her hands out, and the world began to warp under the strange spiritual power she had.

“Get out of them,” I said. “Go back to your shadowy corner, before I make you.”

“Careful,” the hag rasped, stepping up to me, putting its hand on my shoulder and squeezing tightly. “You wouldn’t want Kene to bleed out, would you?”

“What?” I asked.

In response, the hag let go and spread its hands wide.

“Look deeper. I’ve not eaten the proginitor’s soul yet, as per our deal. After all, that would kill me too, we share a body. Better to maintain the body with Stave Away Death until it can be healed.”

I focused, concentrating my new Witch Eye’s spell, and through the shadow flesh, I could see what the hag meant. Underneath the layer of hag magic was Kene’s normal body, but it was covered in lacerations. Chunks of their flesh were missing, like something had taken a bite out of them, and their left hand was a completely mangled mess that looked like it might fall off at any minute. Their shirt had been torn to shreds, and in the center of their chest was a glowing red spot.

I sucked in a breath.

Dusk and I were moving in unison then. I turned, and before I could concentrate, she’d already snapped a portal to the Healer’s Heart open. I tore leaves, only to see something land in the ground next to me and release an explosion of lunar mana.

I looked down to see a tiny blue pyramid-ziggurat thing. It took me a moment to remember even what it was.

Ages ago, when I’d gone to dinner with Kene’s family, the witch had shown up and given me a copy of the Surveyor’s Eye spell.

But she’d given Kene something entirely different – a red and blue miniature ziggurat – and ominously stated that they might need it.

I turned and looked closer at the red speck, and sure enough, that was the red twin to this one.

Magic kept pulsing out of the pyramid next to me, but I ignored it. I didn’t think it could be harmful, even if the hag had thrown it, and it was shedding increasingly powerful amounts of Lunar mana.

I turned back to the Healer’s Heart and was plucking leaves when the lunar magic stabilized at seventh gate. A portal rippled into existence, a twisted gate made of shadows, and a moment later, the witch stepped through it.

Her eyes were burning with darkness as she surveyed the scene, first looking at the hag, then the healer's heart in my hand, then poking at Dusk’s realm.

“Quickly.” she said. “Give me the leaves, I have a sample of my grandchild’s mana, and can attune it to them. You get me six of the seeds from the ash willow, at least four flowers of breath aster, seven of sunset marigolds, six dewdrop feverfew, five handfuls of managrass, three firecreep, two spirit gourds, a handful of stonesprout, and three soultoad’s seat.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said, bolting into action. Dusk started to move too, ready to split off to make my job easier, but the witch grabbed her off my shoulder.

For a moment, I was afraid she was going to slip into the nonsense, or try to eat Dusk or something.

“I need you to control your dominion and realm, and shape me a tub in the earth near the healer’s heart,” the witch said, and I breathed a sigh of relief, then took off again.

I grabbed the things she’d asked for. I didn’t know what exactly she needed, so I didn’t dare drain any of them, but I did overcharge my mana and start fueling the healing functions in the plants I’d used for healing potions before.

When I arrived back near the healer’s heart, Kene’s body was in the tub that Dusk had made. The witch was pouring water into the tub, slowly filling it, while a sphere of glass floated in the air over the tub, the blood that was pouring out of Kene’s wounds slowly drifting up and into it, so it wouldn’t contaminate the bathwater.

“Idiot grandchild,” she muttered under her breath, too low for me to hear without my enhanced senses.

I thrust the armfull of plants I’d collected at her and she picked through them. Her eyes narrowed, and she nodded her approval.

“Good. I’ll need to drain and enforce these more, but at least you have the general idea.

Her hands flashed, mighty magic swirling over the plants.

I flared my Analyze Life spell, trying to pick up what the witch was doing.

She was clearly using the mass versions of the Enhance and Drain Plant Life spell, and I watched as some sort of wind kicked up around the plants. They lifted into the air, then sank into the bath.

The arrays within them began to spread and connect, and I realized the water that she’d poured in wasn’t ordinary water. It wasn’t mana–water either, which I’d expected, but some sort of… healing water. It was permeated with life, solar, telluric, death, and other things in trace amounts. It was strong, too, sixth gate.

“I took it from a spring in the unclaimed lands,” the witch said, noticing me watching. “Watch closely.”

The power of the healing components I’d given the witch was only third gate, yet as they streamed into the bath, they flowed in easily. Rather than simply breaking apart, they slid into the array where they were needed, directed by the witch.

I’d heard that my diaphanous dandelions could make a good supporting component, and I’d thought I knew what that meant. But as the power of the array trickled down into that of the third gate components, and I watched them elevate beyond what the flowers normal limits were, I realized that I still had a lot to learn about alchemy.

The spirit gourds floated out next, and they spun, their death magic that connected to the realm of spirits falling away, leaving only solid binding magic, which the witch spun into the spell, reaffirming the connections to… something. I thought she was using it to enhance Kene’s connection to the tattoos, since they were shredded, but I’d never seen something like that done before.

The firecreep and ash willow came next, and she broke down the spells, using the warmth producing array to heat the bath, and keep it at the optimal heat to soak into Kene, and she mixed in a handful of dried herbs from her cloak, that changed the way it worked. She moved so fast I coudn’t track what she did.

The stonesprout moved and connected to the water, helping repair and refine their bones, then the soultoad’s seat, enhanced up to sixth gate, and connected in so intricately I couldn’t trace it.

Kene’s blood, hanging in the sphere over the bath, started to drip down, and the hag spun it, somehow using it as a base template for what Kene should be.

When she finished, she slumped down, staring at me.

“I’m going to need to become… Off… for a while, boy. Keep an eye on the bath.”

Then she exploded into a cloud of ravens.