It was dark now, but Grace found her way by the light of the moon, a blue tint cast over the world. She saw some of the children still out, only half a dozen, and a couple of parents still watching over them, but her own son seemed no longer a part of the group.

For a second she grew anxious, but it was easy enough to clamp down on it. With the World Tree just a brisk walk away, and everyone so friendly, the area was as safe as safe could get.

She eventually found tiny Joseph by himself, sitting somber with his back to a tree, head propped on crossed arms. Standing over him, arms akimbo, Grace felt her brow crease even as she smiled. "Why aren't you with the other children, Little Bull?"

Joseph looked up, surprised at the voice, but once his eyes adjusted and he found only his mother standing there, he lowered his head again.

"The game ended," he said, dully.

Something had clearly happened, but parents knew when to push and when to leave things be. This would take some massaging. "Come on, then, let's go back home," she said, offering a hand.

"It's not home," Joseph said, though he took her hand and let her lead him away.

They walked a while, passing the dwindling crowds still out and about, the buzz of activity barely louder than the chirp of crickets now ringing with the breeze. Like them, everyone was going back in, either up the path to rooms in the World Tree or into the various huts and tree houses nestled in the forest.

Joseph watched them, and Grace let the silence hang, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the former grew impatient with it.

And just as predicted, he did.

"When are we going back?" Joseph asked.

"A week or so, honey," Grace said. Then, sending him a soft smile, "Homesick, huh?"

"I'm not homesick. I just don't know anyone here."

"Neither do I. Or your father. But it's important that we get to know your Uncle Alex."

"He's scary."

"He's a sweetheart. I'm sure you'll get along."

Joseph gave a sort of half-shrug in response, making Grace sigh. It was way too soon for him to be this restrained, even if she knew it was for her benefit. Time to change tactics. "So, did you have fun with the other kids?"

"It was fine," Joseph said, noncommittal.

"Did you make any friends?"

"I dunno. We played." Joseph paused, briefly. "One of the kids was an elf."

"Oh?" Usually getting details out of him took a bit more than that. "You don't see them too often. Were they nice?"

"He was alright." Another, longer pause. "He said humans are bad."

Grace's smile shrunk, though her lips still curved some. "Did he now..."

Now Joseph spoke quickly, spilling everything out. "And I said you liked humans but he said you shouldn't because they were gonna kill you and it's dumb to trust them since they're the bad guys and he called you—" Here he stopped, grimacing, and did not continue.

It wasn't hard for Grace to guess what would've come next. She shook her head, chuckling. "My, he sounds like quite the friendly one."

Joseph made to speak, hesitated, swallowed, opened his mouth again. "Later he was saying how they're killing all the trees and kicking us out of the forest." He looked up at her. "Mom, is that true?"

Grace nodded. "Some of them are."

"That's not okay, right?"

"No, it's not."

They went on for a while further in silence, until Joseph's grip tightened in her hand, brows furrowed. "Why do you like humans, Mom? No one else does. It's weird. When I told them they all thought I was..."

Some kind of freak, a Dimple, though Joseph would never say he'd been called that to his mother. It was hard enough having this conversation without somehow feeling even more embarrassed about it.

Grace pulled them to a stop, and after a moment knelt down to his level, hand settling on his shoulder. She looked at him kindly, eyes a kind orange. "What do you think, Little Bull?"

Joseph looked away. "I've never met a human."

"So? Do you think they're good or bad?"

Joseph shrugged. "I dunno."

Oh, he was adorable. Grace cupped his cheek and rubbed her thumb through his soft fur. "Do you know why your dad and I named you Joseph?"

"He was a great hero, like Dad's name," he said, and after a moment of thought added, "or Uncles'."

"That's right. It's the family tradition to be named after great heroes. Joseph was a human one, like your father and uncle's." The comment made Joseph shrink into himself a little, and Grace almost grinned at that, but went on to not discomfort him too much. "Do you still know Joseph's story?"

"Kind of."

"Tell me what you remember."

The little minotaur shuffled a bit, but it helped not to look at her as he spoke. "Uh, Joseph's family didn't like him," he said, slowly to not mess it up. "So one day they turn him into a slave and sell him to... a king?" He glanced at her, unsure, and Grace nodded. Close enough. "But Joseph had a special power, where he could read people's dreams, and tell the future. So one day he read the king's dream, and saw there'd be a drought, and because of that they saved up enough food to eat even if they couldn't grow anything for five years."

"Seven years," Grace corrected.

"Seven years," Joseph repeated, throat dry. "And so now he was an important person in the kingdom instead of a slave. Then one day his family came to ask the king for food, because they were hungry from the drought, and they didn't know it was Joseph they were asking. Which is kinda weird, since he grew up with them?"

That made Grace laugh. "You'll be surprised how different people can look after a few years. Go on."

"Right, so they asked him for food, and he pretended he didn't know them but gave them a lot to eat anyway. And when they found out it was Joseph they were surprised, since they treated him so wrong before. So they went back to tell him they were sorry."

"That's right. And what did Joseph do?"

"He forgave them?" Joseph put it as a question, finished now and unsure as to what the point had been. "So... you want me to forgive the humans?"

"I want you to always know that it's an option," Grace said, scratching him behind the ear. "That you can be kind, that it doesn't always have to be a fight. Not just with humans, but with everyone. Even that elf boy." Her smile turned amused. "Though that doesn't mean you should just let people roll over you either."

Chastened, Joseph leaned into her scratches. "How do I know when to be kind, and when to fight?"

Grace pulled her hand back and, gently, set it on his chest, over his heart. "You'll know, Little Bull. Just remember why we gave you your name, and trust yourself, and you'll know."

Joseph felt warm at her touch, and met her smile with a shaky one of his own. Then, something bright caught his attention behind her, and the boy glanced over to see a robed figure standing some distance away, hands cupped at the mouth, with what looked like fire squirting out of it.

"Woah," he said, making Grace turn to see. "They're like a dragon!"

It took a few seconds for Grace to process what she was seeing, but once she did she slowly got up and grabbed Joseph's hand by the wrist. "Come on, honey," she said, striding away and pulling him roughly along.

"Hey, what are they doing?" Joseph asked, still looking as the fire seemed to spread, ballooning out from the robed figure and spilling onto the ground in a rolling orange wave.

Grace didn't answer, instead bending over to pluck Joseph right off the ground and shifting up to a jog. Yelps of surprise from the few still out like them suddenly started chorusing, and now Grace sped to as much of a sprint as she could, holding Joseph against her, ambivalent to his weight despite the strain on her arms, and a great loud whoosh boomed out before the yelps turned to pinched screams.

"Don't look!" Grace said, though she couldn't stop to make sure Joseph wouldn't, and she felt that he either didn't do as she said or hadn't heard her over the spontaneous cacophony of shouting and crackling wood.

Then, all too suddenly and in a sort of trance, Grace heard Joseph shout "Watch out!" and felt a wall of heat slam through the air around them. The smell of burning charcoal immediately assaulted her nose, the roar of fire filled the world, and Grace felt hot, too hot, her skin and hair and eyes consumed.

- - - — MKII — - - -

Mara felt sick at how easy this was. Turn, inhale, clap hands, exhale, and everything before her dissolved into black smoke and ashes. Trees, grass, people, it was all the same.

At first, no one did anything but run, which was the natural reaction really, even if it just meant dying to something they couldn't see. Then a few of the braver ones had tried running at her, shouting loud and recklessly, she supposed to get the adrenaline out. Those didn't last any longer than the ones who tried to escape, of course, but it didn't hurt to try.

Another breath, another wave of fire, another set of screams and charred bodies. Most just fell over like black statues, motionless on the ground, but some had enough strength afterwards to start crawling or writhing in agony.

She noticed that the smaller ones, like the pixies or gnomes, were often small enough to disintegrate entirely, the black particles which had moments before made them up washing away with the fire almost on contact. How unbelievably distasteful. And god, the smell was something she'd just never get used to. Burnt meat in an acrid and pungent campfire.

Not for the first time, Mara hated herself for having willingly learned to do such a thing, but she supposed if it hadn't been her it would've just been someone else. The least she could do was make it quick, so she always made sure to hit the few who survived their first volley with another one right afterwards.

A minute into things, Mara figured she'd covered half a square mile or so, though it was hard to tell behind the wall of fire and smoke all around her, not to mention the sky, now a deep red hue. She looked around at the slice of hell she'd carved out from the forest with stony calculation. That would probably be enough.

Then, nearby and growing closer, the sound of smashing wood boomed out above the crackling of burning trees. Mara turned to it, cursing to herself, though this hadn't been entirely unexpected. One second she saw a wall of flame, the next a hole of wind as something blurred through it like a giant cannonball.

It was just enough forewarning for Mara to leap out of the way, cloak billowing behind her and hands coming together in preparation. The cannonball skidded to a stop some distance away, and now she could see that it had been a burly mass of solid muscle and fur topped with a bull's head.

Alexander Asterion; she recognized him from En's file. One of the Councilmen. She'd expected some security to try and badger her as she ran away, but this had also been a possibility.

The minotaur spun to face her, and their eyes met for a brief moment before Mara breathed out and shot a wave of fire right at him. His great figure disappeared behind it, and Mara could only make him out as a vague shadow under a thick veil of orange, red, and yellow.

That is, until that shadow grew and opened up another hole in her blaze, tree trunk-sized arms held out at either side as if to hug her, the sheer force of his tackle carving through the heat with only small flames sticking to his fur. He wasn't even running, hooves instead sliding across the ground as if skating atop it.

Now an arm's length from him, Mara could make out the pure rage in his face, his nose flared, teeth bared and grit tight enough to risk breaking, beady black eyes twin pools of dark hatred.

Back bending, Mara just about dipped under his lariat and twisted on her heel to see him run right past, skidding to a stop a couple dozen yards later, leaving deep grooves on the ashy ground.

Alexander turned around again, stomping his hooves, his own hands coming together at the same time that her's did.

Eyes widening, Mara bent her knees and jumped high into the air just as Alexander dashed past where she'd stood, feeling the force of his dash from the swirling wind he left in his wake. She was still in the air when Alexander turned around again, clapped his hands, and reached her in a straight line from the ground up to her, fist swinging and big enough to explode her whole torso out her back if she let it.

So she didn't let it. Mara twirled in the air, bent her legs, and planted her feet right on his knuckles. Her timing was perfect—in a second he barreled through the air, hammer punch swiping at her, and Mara was able to kick off the hand. It did hurt the soles of her feet some, but she was able to divert most of the force, using it to jump off his punch with one long backflip that landed her a comfortable distance away.

Mara watched him land roughly at the other end of the clearing, head swerving to find where she'd gone, looking somehow even more angry. They stared each other down now, gauging.

That tackle isn't normal, Mara thought. A Trick, then. She'd seen him clap his hands, after all. It didn't seem like he could change direction so easily when he used it; a bit on-the-nose for a minotaur, but then again there probably wasn't a matador in the world who could stay out of his way for long with how quick the dash was.

Plus, it had enough power behind it to blast right through any normal fire she could throw at him, or maybe he just had enough Spirit to tank it. No point trying to run from that. Not for the first time in her life, she wished the Ranger Corps didn't always have such incomplete profiles.

She'd just have to turn up the heat, then. Breathing in, Mara clapped her hands and pulled at her own Spirit. It roiled within her, already boiling, but boiling wasn't good enough.

Alexander had been examining her just as closely, and it was with no little unease that he saw her skin start to glow a bright red, steam slowly rising out of her in a billowy outline thick enough to make out even behind the general air of smoke that now hung low throughout the whole forest.

And was it just him, or was the air getting even warmer?

He saw her widen her stance, chest stretched forward, elbows outstretched, hands splayed out beside her face, palms facing forward. Something tickled at the back of Alexander's neck—his danger sense—and hurriedly he clapped his hands together.

What came out of her mouth this time was not a mere wave of fire. It started that way, flame branching out from the stream in short spurts, but in a moment it seemed to tighten, shooting through the air in a deadly cylinder of pure red.

Alexander dodged just in time, mostly because he had enough foresight to get out of the way before what was apparently a goddamn laser beam could burn a hole through him.

Instead it burned a hole through everything that had been behind him, carving out a cylinder about the diameter of a basketball through every tree it hit.

Some couldn't take the blow, falling at the sudden loss of support, while others managed to stay upright even with the perfect circles of open space now tunneled through their trunks. It was hard to tell how far the beam had gotten behind the still-raging inferno, and for all Alexander knew it went on forever.

Who the hell was this person? That much firepower wasn't something anyone just ran into, much less something that came knocking all on its own for seemingly no reason.

Well, that question could wait for after she got her head beaten in. If I let her survive, Alexander thought, seething.

Just as he thought so, a shout came from nearby. Alexander snapped to it, rage melting into terror as he saw Bell of all people stumble in.

The other minotaur struggled to a stop, bending to lean on his knees, coughing into the crook of his arm. Behind stinging tears—a product of all the smoke he'd ran through—Bell saw Alexander standing there staring at him. "There you are," he said, the fool. "Have you seen Joseph? Grace?"

Alexander would've told him to get the hell out of there, but he saw Mara readying another shot without even bothering to clap her hands, so he settled for tackling his idiot brother out of harm’s way instead.

He got there an instant before the red beam split the air, and both minotaurs rolled roughly along the ground before stopping in a dusty and soot-covered heap.

Bell coughing underneath him, Alexander thought about choking the imbecile, but maybe it’d be better to save that treatment for the woman who'd caused this mess in the first place.

Stolen story; please report.

Speaking of which, there she was, hands still splayed, lungs filling with air as she prepared yet another beam, aiming right for them.

Too late, Alexander realized. No time to dodge. So Alexander bent forward and hugged his brother, covering the other minotaur as well as he could, hoping against hope that his Spirit could at least dull the laser somewhat when it punched into him.

But before she could fire, Mara heard a whistle and threw herself back, barely avoiding the thin silver beam that stabbed through where her head had been. It slammed into the ground, ripping at her hood instead of her brain, and because she'd already powered her laser it spilled from her mouth in an arcing shot, cutting diagonally across the air and splitting trees in half like a long, burning sword.

The silver beam retracted up into the smoke above, and a second later it reappeared as a lance in the hands of Lorcana, her other hand held up by the pale grip of Harmony as the fairy flew them both in. As soon as they were in sight, Harmony let go, and Lorcana dived right for Mara lance-first with a fierce shout.

The beastwoman landed and Mara rolled out of the way, ducked under a subsequent swing of the lance, kicked and got blocked. They exchanged a few more useless blows before Mara started trying to gain some distance, Lorcana right on her heels.

Meanwhile, Harmony flew toward Alexander and Bell as the minotaur brothers stood back up. Their bright ivory face looked more severe than Alexander had ever seen. "Our security forces have made a perimeter. They're currently rescuing survivors and seeing to the wounded. For now, we three will deal with this..." Yellow eyes narrowed. "This assailant. Do you have any idea who she is?"

"Haven't had the chance to ask," Alexander said gruffly. "Where's Silviamon?"

"In position," Harmony said, and now they both turned to Mara and Lorcana, still locked in close-quarters combat. "All we need to do is get her above this smoke."

"You saw that... that dragon's beam," Alexander said. "Not even I could take that straight on. She also has wider ranging attacks, though not nearly as powerful."

"And her body is hot to the touch. You and I will have to be careful."

Alexander nodded grimly. "Let's kill the bitch."

But before he could go, Alexander felt a tug on his arm. Bell looked up at him with barely restrained terror, clearly struggling not to fall into another coughing fit.

"Alex, we have to find my family," he said desperately.

Alexander stared hard at him. Truthfully, he wasn't very hopeful, but it wasn't his role to hope. He grabbed his brother's shoulder, gripping it tightly.

"You go look, Bell, but I cannot join you. This," he said, turning to Mara, "is my duty as a warrior."

For a moment, Bell looked like he would argue, but as he looked at his brother's face he eventually gave a single, sharp nod. "Good luck, then, brother," he said, and without another moment of pause ran off into the burning forest.

Alexander watched him go, eyes softening for a moment. "Good luck," he said, voice low. Then, turning to Harmony, who'd watched with some impatience, he offered a sharp nod of his own. Together and determined, channeling all their fury, they flew into battle.

- - - — MKII — - - -

Joseph kept his head down, partially to keep all the smoke out of his eyes, partially because anything he saw around him would just make him gag.

Animals and Greenkin burnt to a crisp littered the ground, eyes glazed over like fish. Homes smoldering in piles of ash. A few stray survivors stumbling around covered in black, red, and purple, sometimes crying silently, sometimes screaming or groaning in agony, sometimes pulling at motionless bodies in desperation.

He was part of this latter group. Reaching up to his face, he wiped at the snot running down his nose, smudging his face black with soot even more than it already was.

The tears made it hard to see, but he didn't dare wipe them away for risk of making his eyes sting even more. So he let himself cry openly, not that he was alone in it, because the body he pulled was his mother's, and she cried with him.

Her legs didn't seem to work, or maybe she was just in so much pain that she couldn't walk. A savage burn ran up and down her thighs and, Joseph knew, covered the whole of her back, for she'd hugged him close when the fire came and managed to protect him from most of its damage. Her beautiful hair, orange like the fire around them, had been all burnt away, and now she gasped around a wordless mumble, and Joseph could do nothing but drag her on, knowing it hurt her to so roughly slide across the ground but having no idea what else to do.

His hands shook as he pulled, his knees wobbled, and half the fur that covered his legs felt brittle over the rawest pain he'd ever felt. Joseph had already given into helplessness; all the fear, all the grief, all the despondent shock had at some point settled deep under an ocean of void nothingness, so that now the tears came on their own and his body moved soullessly, pulling and straining as if from a great distance, everything far away from him even as it crashed and buffeted against him.

Then, suddenly, his father was there before him, shouting words he couldn't understand, hugging him close, bending over Grace's body, nudging her, looking around desperately and shouting again.

Help, Joseph saw him say, reading his lips, though the sound did not come, Someone help! Anybody!

But no one would come. Joseph stood there, watching his father slowly realize this. At that point Bell propped Grace up, making to carry her, but one of her hands came up weakly to stop him. It cupped his cheek, holding it gently, and somehow Grace smiled up at him despite the pain and the splash of his tears as they landed on her face, mingling with her own.

She said something, lips moving tightly. Bell leaned closer, his ear right up to her mouth, and she said it again, and again, and then something in her gave way, and Joseph watched as his mother went limp in his father's arms, eyes closing.

Dead. Joseph had never seen anyone die before, but he could immediately tell that was what had just happened. Grace didn't move anymore, her skin seemed to dull, her lips, still smiling, slackened in a final escape from all straining. His mother was dead.

Bell bent over her, shoulders trembling, face smushed on the nook of her neck, his whole body spasming in long and repeated expressions of anguish. Joseph felt it too, his own pain, but only buried under a thick layer of numb paralysis.

Then something made the ground thump, and a thick beam of pure red heat sliced through the trees around them in a tall arc. The cuts blackened and steamed thick black smoke immediately on contact, so that a rain of branches, splinters, twigs, and burning bushels of leaves fell over them.

One smacked down on Joseph's head, the blow a muted sting, and he fell holding his head, vision briefly gone, then back and blurry as if underwater. Along with it came noise, returning in all its fury, so that Joseph all at once heard again the screams, the crackling of flame, the dull explosions from somewhere not too far.

More than all those, he heard his father's voice. "Joseph! Oh god!" Bell set Grace's body down as gently as he could, then reached over and pulled Joseph close, examining his head. He checked over the wound, then with another shake of his body hugged the boy. "Your mother... Ah, Joseph, my Grace!"

Shakily, Joseph hugged him back. "What... what did she say?" he asked, feeling woozy.

Bell leaned back and looked at him with such tragedy as Joseph had never seen, mouth opening, but before he could speak another red beam shot over their heads, then turned down and sliced through Bell's arm.

The appendage dropped smoking and flaccid on the ground. They both stared at it, blinking, completely befuddled.

The wound cauterized on contact, but the shock and the pain were too much. The minotaur fell on his knees in an instant, his scream ragged and bloodcurdling, and Joseph felt the weight of his panic finally start pounding at the doors of his sanity.

It was too cruel. Everything in the world was too cruel, and Joseph could already see that even the one moment of respite seconds before would now be paid for in full.

"We have to run," Bell mumbled, and it seemed he was talking mostly to himself, he rose, stumbled, fell again. "Get somewhere safe. Security... Harmony said they'd be out here somewhere..." Coughing, Bell turned to Grace's body and, gingerly, propped it on his arm. He rose, holding her like a delicate instrument, then fell again, eyes rolling to the back of his head.

He blinked, glaring hard. Bell paused, breathing ragged, contemplating. His eyes came back into focus, and now he looked at Joseph with something approaching assuredness.

"Can you walk, son?" he asked, voice weak.

Even Joseph could see it wasn't much of a choice. "Y-Yes."

"Good. Start walking." Bell reached down for his wife's hand, held it there. Another red beam shot out overhead, another rainfall of branches, but all throughout Bell looked Joseph in the eye with sadness, pride, and hope. "I'll be right behind you."

Joseph stared at him, lip already trembling. He walked backwards a couple of steps, then shook his head and ran right into Bell's chest, and then everything broke in him. His eyes broke a dam of tears, and he bawled like a baby, saying no no no. Over and over again he said it.

"I'll be right behind you," Bell repeated, though now his voice grew soft and weak. "With your mother..."

Joseph shook his head against Bell's chest. He kept on doing it despite the chaos around him, despite his father's eventual slackening of the body, despite the slow decline of noise and the rising rate of calls for help around him, despite the Greenkin dressed in blue who tried to pull him away.

They had to be taken together, all three of them. Bell, Grace, and Joseph, the latter the only survivor of their young and happy family.

- - - — MKII — - - -

Finally, Alexander scored a hit.

Harmony had served as a distraction, flitting about in the air and dodging every shot that came their way. As soon as Mara had blown a stream of fire at her—a normal one, for the laser blasts seemed to take more preparation and only Alexander seemed immune to the rest—Lorcana had stabbed her lance forward, lengthening it across the clearing and aiming straight for the heart.

Mara had cut the fire short and dodged, as she had every one of their attacks so far, and for once Alexander had been right there to meet her.

Having dodged right into his path, Mara could do nothing except throw her arms up in a hurried block as he rammed his shoulder into her. The blow sent her careening in the air some two dozen yards into a tree, which had by then been so thoroughly burnt away that it immediately exploded into splinters when she hit it back-first.

Alexander smirked, feeling satisfied for all of three seconds before Mara started rising to her feet, gasping for breath, and the steam billowing up from her actually thickened and then sparked into flames.

All that effort, the teamwork, the multiple burns all three Councilmembers sported from glancing blasts of heat, and now the woman was quite literally on fire?

"Does she not have a limit?" Alexander asked, covered in sweat. The heat was starting to make him feel dizzy now, like sitting too long in a sauna. "The longer this goes on, the worse it gets for us."

Harmony came to hover beside him. "Looks like we'll have to depend on Lorcana's lance from now on," they said, looking at his arm. The spot he'd used to ram Mara now colored in a raw red, the result of a mere instant of contact.

"I'm fine," Alexander growled, though it did hurt quite a bit now that he’d noticed it.

Lorcana came to take her place beside them "She's a slippery one," she said. The three kept their eyes on Mara as the woman's cloak burned up into dust, and the rest of her clothes weren’t doing much better. "We need to get her in the air."

"Where's that beast of yours when we need it?" Alexander grumbled.

Lorcana snorted. "Khurang burns as well as anyone here," she said. "I'm not bringing him to this mess."

"Focus," Harmony said, as Mara had recuperated and got ready to send another fireball. "I'll take her up. Alexander, distract her. Lorcana, get ready."

That was that. Alexander and Lorcana had been in the Council long enough to know there wasn't any point arguing, and anyway Harmony was already flying ahead. The two looked at each other, frowning, but they had their instructions. Plus, a fireball was already on the way to them.

Lorcana jumped up on Alexander's back as he clapped his hands, and a moment later they were out of immediate danger. But as they turned to look at the fireball's impact, they noted how the explosion lingered, almost frozen in time, before settling into an insistent and sizable sizzle, burning hot like napalm. Mara was getting more and more dangerous, alright.

Wordlessly, they set the plan in motion. Lorcana leaped into the air, aiming her lance, and in a moment it extended across the clearing. Mara dodged it, eyes glowing white and skin bright red neon, and like last time Alexander was already there to meet her, dashing forward into her path of escape.

The tactic wouldn't work twice, however, and Mara was ready to hop over his outstretched arms, planting her hands on his shoulders for good measure. His skin burned at her touch, and Alexander grunted through the pain.

Now it was Harmony's turn. With Mara in the air, she couldn't dodge when the fairy flew up to her.

The two hung there for an infinite moment, Mara's brow raised, silently asking, What exactly do you expect to do here? Harmony had no weapons, no particularly strong Spirit as fast as these things went. Touching her barehanded would be incredibly foolish.

But Harmony had never claimed to not be foolish, and so that's exactly what they did. The fairy took Mara by the arm, grimacing at the heat as it began to melt through her porcelain skin, and in seconds flew them both up over the burning trees and smoke.

They flew fast, Harmony's wings fluttering, and Mara gaped at the sheer audacity of someone so willing to burn themselves alive for some kind of sacrifice play.

Well, she wasn’t about to just let this happen. Feet swinging, she reached up with her other hand and clawed at Harmony's wings, grabbing them and wrapping them around her fist.

They burned away in seconds, reduced to dust, and Harmony screamed at the loss of this indiscernible presence.

Still, they kept rising, and Mara had another bout of surprise once she realized the wings hadn't been the only thing keeping them in the air. Panicking a bit now, she clawed at Harmony again, hand dragging all throughout the fairy's body, hugging herself to it, trying to make the pain too much to bear.

Harmony's face morphed into one of harsh stone, curved in a desperate resolution as they kept going up, up, up into the air, far past the smoke and heat below so that even the red tint of the sky started fading back into its natural nighttime blue.

Until, eventually, it was too much for even them, and Harmony had to let go, half their body a smoking ruin, stark white riddled with an equally stark black. They rose a bit more from pure momentum, then hung there at the apex of their climb, Harmony struggling to stay conscious and Mara looking down grimly.

They began to fall. Mara clapped her hands—though she hadn't made a habit of falling from deadly heights she did have some countermeasures—but at that moment something entirely unexpected happened.

Nearly a mile away, standing on the spiral platform halfway up the World Tree, the forest demon Silviamon finally spotted someone fly up out of the forest below. One pair of arms crossed, the other held up a pair of binoculars against his eyes, and there they were, Harmony and some glowing red person trailing fire. The two figures split from each other and began falling, which seemed as good an opportunity as any.

"It's about time," he said, voice strained. Hard enough to just watch all this happen, but everyone had their strengths.

His crossed arms coming undone, Silviamon clapped this second pair of hands, calling for his Spirit, and across this great distance Mara suddenly felt herself freeze midair.

At first she thought it had to be some weird trick of perception, maybe vertigo from being so high up, but then a few seconds ticked by and she accepted that she had, surreally, stopped falling entirely. Her hands, clasped in prayer before her chest, would not move, and actually neither would any other part of her body no matter how much she tried to make it so.

It was as if someone had simply pressed the pause button on her life, though she could still see and feel that this wasn't the case elsewhere. The fire still raged below, the smoke still steamed up, the trees far away still rustled in the moonlight.

And the silver lance, at first a glinting spot and then a long sharp spear shooting through the sky towards her, still stabbed just as well.

It reached her in a moment, pierced her through the gut, then kept going for another twenty yards, shearing through her insides all the while. Then, it retracted, and all of Mara's guts spilled right out along with its exit. Her skin dimmed back to its normal hue, her eyes stopped glowing, the steam and fire sputtered out. And only now was she allowed to fall.

Mara felt the air whip by, saw the ground coming nearer, and felt her vision darkening for what she knew would be the final time. They got me, she thought, and chuckled darkly. It always came fast in this life, but somehow she'd convinced herself it wouldn't for her. She'd left the job, hadn't she?

No. She'd let herself get pulled back in. Or she'd wanted to get pulled back in. En, did you expect this too? Maybe that was too unfair. The man was heartless, but if he had any preference for anybody in the world it would be for the few friends he had.

It was terrifying how quickly the acceptance came. Mara felt the numb pain of her wound, then the fear of her death, then the despair at the state of her family, and finally the sheer exhaustion of staying alive, all one after the other in a single moment. The ground came closer and closer.

There was Alexander with Harmony in his arms, Lorcana with her lance jutted on the ground like a staff. Her killers. Though she'd been just as much a killer, if not more, so who was she to judge?

Well played, was the only thing she could think of them. Fair and square. So she closed her eyes, and let her final thought be that of her children. Those two boys would turn out fine. She both knew it and had to believe it.

En had better make good on all his promises. For you. Jason, so responsible already, and her little Malcolm. For you...

- - - — MKII — - - -

Two hundred dead. Five hundred or so wounded. Fifty still missing, though their chances were slim. These were the numbers that came in the following days.

The RC had been contacted. Some Enforcers had been sent, had looked around the destruction, and had found nothing.

The woman was a mystery, they said. A rouge agent, her motives unclear. A terrorist, surely. Probably some sort of xenophobe. Truly, it had been an inexplicable tragedy. The loss would be felt for generations. A case would be assigned immediately, and the Enforcement Bureau would do its damndest to find out what had led to such a random act of unspeakable violence.

Their words were very well said. Very pretty.

"Those bastards are behind this!" Alexander roared. "That woman was too well-trained, too powerful for them not to know!"

He stomped around Harmony's private quarters at the top of the World Tree. The room was spacious and spartan, with only a table at its center, a bookshelf covering one of its walls, and large windows covering another.

Lorcana sat at the table, as angry as Alexander but seething silently, a vice-grip on her lance. Harmony, looked out the window, hands behind their back. A red robe fell over their lithe form, and no wings fanned from their back.

"We have to do something," Alexander said, each sentence followed by a huff of rage. One of his arms was wrapped in bandages, and the same went for both shoulders. The burns would heal, though it would take another day or two. "We have to respond! Those... those damn human villains!"

"Peace, Alexander," Harmony said, and at their words the minotaur and beastwoman in the room both snapped to glare. "'Your anger achieves nothing now."

"I suppose you'd think so!" Alexander said. "Yes, you are always so peaceful. Not two days after this massacre and you bring another human into the High Council! This Daphne Fall... Ha! Those Scouts should be disbanded, not given a new leader!"

Harmony turned, and for all his bluster Alexander came up short, almost flinching back. Yellow eyes stared at him until he looked away.

"The Eco-Scouts are the central pillar of this organization," Harmony said, voice icy. "Lest you forget, Alexander, we are still a division of the Ranger Corps. Without the Scouts, the ELD would not exist."

"Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing," Lorcana muttered. "Perhaps the ELD as it stands now is nothing but a set of shackles."

Harmony's gaze turned to her, and Lorcana looked down too, through not without gritted teeth. The silence hung for a moment, and then the fairy closed their eyes, breathed deeply.

"You are right, of course."

At this, Alexander and Lorcana both perked up, surprised.

"Whether the RC knew about this plot against us or not is meaningless," Harmony said. "The fact is, our position as a people makes us vulnerable. As vulnerable as anything else on this planet that isn't made by and for humans. These are the shackles that we must break. But doing so would mean standing against more than the RC. It would mean standing against all the human world, and such a thing is not to be done lightly. Not without extensive planning, and not without a powerful enough weapon."

These words were met with confused looks, but then Silviamon entered the room. For once he lacked all humor, looking around at them with a severity that seemed alien on his sly features.

"The news?" Harmony asked, though nothing about them spoke of any real curiosity. What followed would be what was expected, and here Alexander and Lorcana both got the inkling that something crucial in their director had changed, something that excited them as much as it terrified them.

"It seems this old man you spoke of was still alive after all," Silviamon said. "And what you ask for is within his means. Though, he did ask for payment... of sorts."

Harmony nodded. "He will get whatever is in our power to give."

"What is this?" Alexander asked, stepping forward. "What are you talking about?"

"We are talking about the one thing we can do to break free of our shackles, Alexander," Harmony said. Now they opened their eyes, looking them all over. "If we commit, it might come to be some years in the future. A world where the balance of power returns to where it was before humans took control." Here their voice dropped, weighty as a boulder. "Tell me now if I can trust you to stand against the world."

Alexander, Lorcana, and Silviamon all looked at each other, and with each passing moment their uncertainty hardened into deadly promise. Wordlessly, they all stared back at Harmony, intentions clear.

The broken fairy gauged them. "Good. Good..."

Harmony turned back around, looking out the window at the scar that had been left in the forest below. A gray mark in a sea of green. Sudden, indiscriminate, and deadly. Horrific. Also, a good strategy.

"Here is what we will do..."