Guided by Celeste's wind magic, the makeshift raft drifted up the narrow stream in the depths of a ravine. The tall yellowed walls of stone blocked out enough of the sun that it reduced the light of the afternoon to the twilight of evening.

Ada stared outward at the unseen latticework of what she now understood to be void structures; inscrutable twists of space and time which would collapse upon themselves and toss those unfortunate enough to take the wrong route to unknown corners of the world, or leave them stranded Somewhere Else. She could not find a path through the chaos Celeste navigated in spite of being unable to see the obstacles she avoided.

"How do you know where you're going? You can't sense the path, can you?"

She has a gift for it. Celeste's smile was small, sad, as she looked out into the canyon for the clever but mundane little signs to keep them on the right path. "An old friend showed me long ago."

Not long after, Ada felt the world twisting, or untwisting as the case may be. "Something's coming!"

"You shouldn't be here." The voice came before a woman appeared from nowhere. The tall, slender dark-toned woman with indigo hair went from not being to being in a single moment from the three-dimensional perspective. The bow she carried readied, but pointed at the ground.

"Greetings, Priestess." Celeste stepped forward, unconcerned. "I apologize for delaying our reunion until I was the bearer of dire warnings, Rumia."

"Lady Celeste." Rumia nodded in respect, but it was a quick motion of one who was following protocol rather than an actual concern for tradition. "You should not have brought outsiders. Especially not that." She pointed at Arakash, who still lacked the strength to take a human form.

Celeste appreciated that she wasn't asked why a noctrel was with her. "We had little choice. The Sacred City has fallen, and now you're our only hope to get the warning to others."

Rumia wanted to reject the words, and were it anyone else she would have. Instead she was faced with the knowledge that a daeva, that Celeste, had brought news of the fall of the capital. "That shouldn't be possible. Who? How?"

"We should discuss this inside," Celeste said. "The noctrel needs to come with me, and Adageyudi is still suffering from her ordeal. I have reason to believe your healers are better equipped to help than I am."

Rumia looked at Ada; the purple-haired girl who reminded...

Shiara stepped up, putting herself between Ada and Rumia. She didn't know what the other woman's stare was about, nor did it matter. "And I'm not leaving Ada when she's like this." As far as Shiara was concerned, she would burn everyone in this canyon before she allowed her princess to be hurt again.

"Fine." Rumia accepted that her issues were less immediate than Celeste's warning. "We won't go to the main city, but there's a place we have set aside for emergencies like these."

Rumia moved to the cliff face and pressed her hand upon it. Purple energies traced outward, forming a complex series of interlocking triangles which faded to reveal a room carved into stone. It was spacious, if spartan, and had an array of utilitarian chairs around a single large table.

Outside of human senses, Ada followed the network to its destination; the room itself was an hour's walk away and, in fact, everything about the display was to confuse people. "She didn't have to touch the cliff; it was theatrics to hide the portal," she whispered to Shiara. Unbeknownst to her, Arakash and Celeste heard as well.

Celeste went in first, stopping just to make certain Arakash was limping behind her. Shiara took hold of Ada's hand and helped steady her walk into the portal. Rumia followed behind, after giving the hand-gesture to her backup to close the portal behind them. Isylans understood better than most that sometimes mundane techniques worked better than all the magic in the world.

"Here, take these if you need them." Rumia took a number of small crystals off the shelf. "It's low quality sarite, but it should help you recover some of your power."

What followed was a brief, if detailed, explanation of what happened in Karana, narrated by Celeste. "After we fought our way past the undead to the... appropriate portal... we made the rest of the journey here."

"You're trying to keep your military secrets now?" Arakash asked. "Are you afraid someone's going to try to invade Shadowblight's new charnel city? I say let the them try; the big problem will take care of the small ones."

"Be that as it may, I take my oaths seriously," Celeste said.

Rumia had other concerns; she hadn't been able to take her eyes off Ada since she sat to hear the tale. "You're certain it was your power?"

"Who else could it be?" Arakash said. "That magic had to come from Ada. And now that we're here, you have to admit she has a certain resemblance to you." He sniffed the air. "You even smell alike. There's no point in denying that she's Isylan."

"That is profoundly creepy," Shiara muttered.

Rumia ignored the needling of the demon; Celeste wanted him alive, and there were more pressing concerns. "And your father is Sorda? You're certain of this?"

Ada looked down at the table. "I never had any reason to believe otherwise. Now... I don't know. I never imagined he'd do something like this, let alone to his own daughter."

"You're his." Cutting through everyone's self-delusions was a petty entertainment, but Arakash was open to any diversion in the moment. "I don't care if he is a blood mage, it requires a parent or full sibling to exert that control. Besides, anyone who saw the two of you in the same room would see the resemblance. It's your brother who looks like he has a different father."

"I assure you, Soret is full Tyras royalty!" In spite of the situation, she felt the need to defend her brother's honor. "He and Nesare took after their mother. And as you keep saying, our father's a blood mage. He'd know if she was unfaithful."

Rumia watched the exchange and made her judgments in silence. "So you are certain." And it would take her a long, long time to make her peace with that truth. "Thank you Lady Celeste, we will disable the portals through the Sacred City and spread the warning. You can reside here as we make arrangements."

Celeste wanted to reach out and offer support to the woman she remembered as a happy child, but now was neither the time or place. "We need to ask something of you. A portal to Kuros."

"If what you say is true, I doubt we could spare the resources." A truth, but not the reason she didn't want to send the group on their way. Once again, she glanced at Ada.

Celeste suspected she knew why, and thus knew the way to talk around the issue. "Ada needs answers that her grandfather might be able to provide."

"I feel for her, I do." She wanted to hear those answers, herself. "But we can't waste our energies on personal matters. Every portal takes time, power, and now lives."

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"Then don't do it for personal reasons," Arakash said. "Do it for the tactical value."

"I fail to see how-"

"Then you're a worthless general."

"Arakash!" Shiara shouted at the demon; defending Rumia for reasons she wasn't certain of.

Arakash ignored the elemental who could still kill him with ease. "Her grandfather is Tyras' prior king. He'll know their defenses, their vulnerabilities, and maybe have an idea what Sorda's plans are. This is our best chance to stop him, and maybe Shadowblight."

"You swear this isn't a personal goal?"

"I couldn't imagine anything more personal. He tried to kill me, and now that Shadowblight is unleashed, it's only a matter of time before everything dies. I him dead. I want to kill him. I want him to beg for the mercy of death. However, m goals so happen to serve your needs."

"It is your decision, Lady Celeste." Rumia closed her eyes and surrendered the power, and the responsibility, to the woman who had a century more experience than her. "Is this mission worth the lives that will be lost?"

"I... yes, I believe it is." She began fiddling with her armor and removed one of the few decorative icons that were not damaged in their retreat. A brief flash of magic was enough to guarantee it carried her seal. "Have any of your people who've been spying on our conversation take this to the Citadel of Anora. The monks will help as best they can, enough to speed your efforts."

In truth, the icon was unnecessary: the citadel housed dozens of daeva at all times who could verify the truth. If, indeed, Anora was not already aware of the return of greatest threat the world had ever known. There was, however, a chance they would suspect the Isylans mistaken or deceived by illusory magic, so it was best to add a redundancy.

Arakash watched the exchange and couldn't help but poke at Rumia's issues. "Does that mean they'll send a competent leader to help here?"

"Do I have to come over there and burn your tongue out?" Flames flickered in Shiara's eyes. "Because I will, and I bet it'd feel great. For me, not you. You'll probably scream."

"Thank you, but he's right," Rumia said. "I'm suited for the role of soldier, not commander."

Arakash considered gloating some more, but life, or lack thereof, chose then to interrupt. "Too late. They found us!"

Shiara looked around, but with the passage closed they were far from any view to the outside world. "What are you talking about?"

"Right." Celeste stood and place her hand on her weapon. "I feel them, too."

"Go ahead, ignore those of us without supernatural senses," Shiara muttered.

"We were tracked somehow," Celeste explained. "To carry this much taint, there must be hundreds of them. At least one with intelligence."

Not to be outdone, Arakash expanded on Celeste's statement. "There are two. One must be a vampire." He knew because it still carried echoes of living essence within it. "The other I can't say for certain. It's incorporeal, that I can be certain of."

Rumia was now on her feet, deciding how to approach the situation. Her first priority was protecting her own, and she was more than confident of her combat abilities. "Klay, take Commander Celeste's sigil and head for the Citadel. Nela, alert our people. I don't think they can find a way to the city proper, but I don't take chances. We'll stop them before they get close."

"Hmm, guess you weren't lying about being a good soldier." Arakash gave a nod and smile of approval.

Rumia smiled back, then realized what she was doing. "Are any of you combat capable?"

"I am," Celeste said. "I don't have much energy for spellcasting, but I can fight. And even the presence of a daeva weakens the undead."

"I'll help." Ada reached for one of the sarite crystals which she had until now declined out of a wish to not be a burden. "I owe it to all of you."

"Me, too." Shiara was not letting Ada fight without her. "I've exhausted my magic, so don't expect much from me."

"Have you looked at me?" Arakash scoffed at the question. "If I had blood, I'd be dead in a pool of it right now."

"Easy fix, hold still." Rumia concentrated and tapped into one of the more advanced spell techniques of void magics. Reality distorted around the noctrel, locking on to old patterns and bringing them to the forefront. Arakash's body rippled as if a calm lake had been disrupted by a stone, and where the waves traveled the body warped back into proper form.

"I didn't think healing magic worked on you," Shiara said

"I didn't think healing worked on me, either." Arakash spread his wings and tested his arm. The pain was gone and mobility was restored to full. "Isylans are full of surprises."

Rumia smiled again. "It's temporal magic rather than creation. Healing infuses a person with life essence, while void magic can be used to warp time time and make it as if the injury never occurred in the first place. With skill, we can fix anything, even broken weapons or furniture."

She reached for one of the lesser crystals. Like most powerful spells, it came with a prohibitive cost of personal strength. She had at best three uses of that spell before she found herself bedridden.

"That sounds convenient." Shiara couldn't make sense of the odd interplay between Arakash and Rumia, but she knew she hated it. "You should teach Ada how to do that."

Rumia looked at Ada for a moment, but said nothing.

"Let us deal with the immediate threat first." Knowing what they both suspected, Celeste came to Rumia's rescue. "We need to see what we face, and then develop an attack plan."

"Yes, commander." Rumia didn't bother touching the wall this time. She tapped into the chaotic maze of warped space twisted through the Void, and found the appropriate gateway. The energy costs were minimal here in Isylan territory, where the major tunnels had existed for centuries. It took her little effort to open their path to the enemy.

They stepped out on the top of the burnt yellow plateau, not far from the canyon in which the river traveled. In the distance, a decomposing menagerie shambled toward them, heedless of the countless traps the Isylans had constructed.

Hide and flesh sloughed from the bears, wolves, cougars, boar, and lisks which had in their deaths been turned to soldiers for the Black Pillar. Beneath their feet swarmed the small animals that no longer knew fear of their former predators. Above, the birds flew in spite of having no feathers and little flesh remaining on their wings. There were some human dead in the swarm, but they were few.

Too far away for any but Celeste to see, a man dressed in blood-stained fineries of Karanan tradition led from the back, sending his horrors to kill at his command so that he could 'live' as a coward.

Shiara focused on turning her fear into anger, in the hope that it would bring greater strength. "Now would be a great time for one of us to have a plan."