My lungs were turning into coals.

By now all I could do was run.

Any attempts to make this a proper withdraw had lasted a handful of seconds. Then the first men had fell under the three Chalkers hounding them, and the rest had trampled like crazed ants through the streets, clawing at the windows and rapping at the doors. The cries meshed with the wet sounds of the feast. The ripping flesh, the shrieks.

Every man for himself. It turned into a rout.

“Lugana!” Someone took me in his arms. I looked up.

“Da-Dad,” I croaked. He held a hammer in his left and was bleeding from an ear, but seemed fine.

“Are you alright? Oh, Lu, are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine! Listen, Kishirra told us to bring these people at the workshop, we should be fine there.”

“Your mother is holding the door. Oh, I thought…” he hugged me even closer and then he gripped me by the wrist. We began to run, swifter than the wind, swifter than I thought my legs could carry me.

Luckily, the other Lugana was still safely at the reins.

We passed through the crowd.

Should help them, some distant part of my mind said.

I waved my arm to call upon them, but almost nobody saw me. They were all busy escaping, their eyes white in the scattered light of the candles, their mouths open to scream amidst the sifting scent of lemons, amidst the scattered candles, amidst the ruins of the festival.

“This… way,” I shouted. Useless.

Dad pulled me towards the workshop’s entrance. Mom’s eyes shot open as soon as she saw us. She jumped straight through the door, holding a spear.

“Lugana!” She shrieked, holding me and Dad together. “Oh, thank the spirits you are here. Are you safe?”

“I’m fine. Listen… listen. Kishirra said that we should try and keep people safe in the workshop.”

Did she? My memory was a bit confused. But I trusted in autopilot-Lugana.

“It might hold out,” Dad agreed. “Besides, those things can’t take a good hit.” He waved his hammer.

“You just come inside. Hey, you!” She grabbed a young man who was running about with an ugly scratch on his face. “Get inside! And you too!”

Mom gathered as many people as she could. Dad pushed me towards the entrance and past the counter – which he had already pushed down to make a barricade.

“Pick the spears up,” he said. “Pointed at the door. I’ll get the furnace ready. Let’s see how these things like some coronite.”

I did as he said – Mom pushed inside a few more people.

“Don’t stand there! Help Lugana set up some defences!” Mom whipped them into shape and they accepted the weapons as I passed them onto them.

Amidst the steel ones lay another one.

A black poleaxe of shining Kiengiri not-glass.

I picked it up and I froze right as I was passing it over.

“No, not this one.” I gave the woman next to me a short spear Dad’s been working on and I kept that one for me.

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“Lu!” Mom exclaimed hugging me close. “You’re safe. Oh, you’re safe. My child. Oh, thank the spirits. Starless night, what are those things?”

“Chalkers,” I said, still feeling like my mouth was moving on its own. Kishirra’s weapon was here. It was not there with her. Not good. “Like the stories you read me when I was young.”

“But those were… oh spirits.” Mom covered her mouth in dismay.

And then something heavy battered against the door, sending a cloud of white powder through the cracks. The wood creaked and moaned as claws scratched against it. A nail-like claw tore through the material.

“They are here,” I said.

The door creaked again. Amidst the growing light from the furnace, I had a flash of insight.

I saw Kishirra dead on the ground, golden blood running from her mouth – her eyes dull as old silver.

Something inside me revolted against it.

I wanted to take this poleaxe and pierce right through that thought. Kishirra couldn’t die like that.

So beautiful, so desperate – alone.

She would not.

By sunrise, we wake up with bright thoughts.

“Mom,” I said. “I love you. Dad!”

He couldn’t hear me, but he still turned his head. Somehow, he knew.

“I love you! You are the best parents I could ask for.”

By midday, we share bright words with each other.

The door broke into splinters and a white thing, all hungry teeth and pleased growls at the upcoming feast, slithered towards the barricade.

As every spear meeting it trembled, I jumped forward, holding the weapon in my hand.

I cried as one with autopilot-Lugana. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly what I was doing.

And by eventide, we have done bright deeds.

+++

Kishirra choked on her own blood. She still stood, if only one knee. She was surrounded by corpses, laying about like the macabre bloom of a deadly flower.

Others were still coming. The Chalkers that had finished to reduce the inhabitants to a pile of bones turned towards her, eager for more.

This was on her.

These industrious, well-meaning people.

All her fault.

That is enough, said the smoky voice she had learned to hate.

A woman walked forward, her skin as alabaster as powdered snow. Her skin was pulled taut on her skull and a rictus-like grin split her face. Her body lost flakes of see-through skin which fell behind her like the tail of a comet.

Would not want to spoil the body.

Kishirra grit her teeth. She would not die on one knee.

Oh you shall not die at all. No, everything will fall upon its proper place.

She frowned. Something else was going on.

In the middle of the woman’s chest stood a tiny piece of glistening sapphire. Or perhaps something that looked like a precious gem, but instead of scattering light it seemed to eat right through it, a ravenous azure fire that made her eyes hurt. It was like when she had tried to look at the Sun before embracing the Faith.

Back when it would still hurt her.

But this was a different kind of brightness, a light similar to those that sometimes lingered about graves or marshes – a light that alighted nothing.

“The Seven Sisters,” Kishirra growled.

But the tiniest of shards and the briefest of echoes, the thing embedded in the chest replied. The woman-shaped flesh that was its vessel hinted at a mocking bow. It has been a long time since the neutering of the world. Yet, enough to keep walking on the one true trail. And soon enough, to walk anew.

Ever since she had embraced Faith and set her fate in the hands of Someone else, Kishirra had let go of fear. But right then, laying stricken and bleeding in the middle of Bùrian’s market square, at the end of that beautiful festival, fear came back to lick at her neck with its hideous, scraping tongue. It coiled around her heart in an icy vice and spiked through it.

Lady, she prayed, looking up.

Did She abandon her for good?

Oh, the other way around. It is always the same with you sun-seeking hypocrites. You put all your faith in someone else, and when you are found wanting, you break like the thinnest glass.

The thing that had been a woman shook its head.

If you have to blame someone for your failure, blame your selfish desires.

The woman leaned forward. Her form seemed to fill the sky.

Kishirra would have wanted to fight – but what would have been the point?

She had wasted this life.

She had failed the Test.

And she had been found wanting, just like the rest of her doomed race.

Save others? She couldn’t even save herself.

At least… Lugana…

The woman-thing crouched right next to her. Its fingers came to rest on her lips. She snarled and spat.

It bothered them not.

Open wide now, it said.

Kishirra gritted her teeth.

She failed in everything – but she could make it a little harder to debase her body.

Perhaps her Lady would spare one thought for her.

“Hey! You!” Said another, shaking, young voice, rattling through the air like the first gale of spring. Kishirra turned to her right. There, standing panting and spattered with white and crimson, holding her Sab-Gi’Su poleaxe, stood Lugana Delebasse. She pointed a trembling hand at the woman-thing. “Yeah, you! Keep your fucking hands off my Elf GF!”