The two Solstice classers guarding Dusk, Thirty-Two, and I abandoned us to charge Hook. Accompanying them were well over a dozen different Loyalist guards who had been waiting out in the hall, all trying to furiously cram their way through the double doors leading to the balcony.

They weren’t really succeeding.

As tied up as I was, there wasn’t much I could do to help Baldric, still locked in a standoff with Rhiannon.

‘Wasn’t much’ though, wasn’t anything.

I stuck out my foot as far as I was able to as one of the guards passed me by. I wasn’t expecting that to actually do anything, but…

It did.

The surprisingly clumsy Solstice guard stumbled over my foot. In fact, he stumbled so hard that he actually tripped, and wasn’t able to stop himself from tumbling over the side of the railing in front of me.

I blinked at the odd spectacle as they fell out of sight down to the courtyard below with a brief scream.

They were drowned out, though, by the sound of the refugees from the Stacks own panicked yells. At the sight of the Duke’s assassination, they were all trying to flee the courtyard in a mad rush to the gates. For some reason though, they weren’t able to make it out. The view was blocked, so I couldn’t see what was stopping them, but there was no movement near the back half of the courtyard. Instead, there was almost a crowd crush developing, which caused my stomach to drop even more.

I couldn’t imagine how many of those poor people were going to die in the midst of this.

I could only spare a brief glance for their plight, though, as things up here on the balcony were progressing.

Before any of the rushing guards could reach Baldric, even beyond the moron I’d tripped, a number of different Agents suddenly appeared on the platform to push them back. I was only a little surprised to see that they weren’t all Nocturne Agents. Instead, half of them were from SED, with their eerie black spell masks obscuring their faces.

They rushed the guards and began to push them back, weapons flying and flashing through the air. In moments, they had forced the guards away from the balcony and down the hall on the other side.

Meanwhile, another, more familiar Agent dropped down from the roof above the balcony to crouch in front of Dusk and I.

Wisp, or rather.

Sylvia.

Without a word spared, she drew her short sword, and tried to hack at the powerful restraints holding us.

Her sword, which I suspected was hewn from the same material as Grey’s own Stellarum, bounced off of the chains. I heard Sylvia curse behind her mask.

I shook my head rapidly, gesturing upwards to my mouth. Sylvia understood, and reached up to hurriedly rip the disgusting blood off of my mouth preventing me from saying anything. I winced at the feeling of several hairs being torn out, but still immediately spoke. “She has the key,” I said quickly, jerking my head in Rhiannon’s direction.

Sylvia followed my gesticulation and cursed. “Then we go around,” She said grimly. She raised her sword once more, and instead of aiming for the chains, she swung at the railing instead.

That, at least, wasn’t obviously magically reinforced.

Her blade sliced right through the iron of the railing.

I blinked.

Yeah, that worked.

The railing fell away in pieces and us prisoners backed away from it. The problem was, even though we were technically free now, the three of us were still bound together. Thiry-Two still had a hood on their head, and they were, admittedly, keeping their calm pretty well considering the chaos that was erupting all around us. I reached beyond Dusk and did them the favor of removing it, finally getting the chance to get a brief look at the young-sounding woman.

I…wasn’t expecting them to look slightly familiar.

She was young, as I was expecting, seeming to be in her mid-teens, with short-cropped, light blonde hair and emerald green eyes. The pale-skinned girl was tense, with a serious expression on her nearly elfin features, and her eyes were darting every which way. They briefly settled on me, sending a strange bolt of recognition down my spine.

Something about her…it reminded me of someone. Another teen I’d met a few weeks back, with similar coloring.

Prince Oskar.

But…I didn’t have time to parse that right now.

None of us did.

Because Rhiannon finally made a move, breaking the standoff between her and Baldric. The two of them had just been standing there in the few moments since Baldric's accusation, but strangely, they hadn't done anything. The only thing I'd noticed were a few odd fluctuations in the nearby Aether in their surroundings, but nothing physical had happened.

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Smiling slightly, the Vampire raised her hand into the air with one finger outstretched. Without breaking her gaze with the dwarf, she twitched that one finger.

At the first sign of movement from Rhiannon, Baldric exploded into an imperceptibly fast lunge, but still.

He hadn't been quite fast enough.

Immediately, the far right wall of the pavilion exploded outwards, glass shards flying every which way. I had to duck out of the way in order to avoid being decapitated by a large piece of razor-sharp plate glass flying through the air. When I craned my head back up, it was just in time to watch as a man rocketed out of the dust cloud of the explosion.

A man I had nearly killed last night.

General Atticus Longstripe, of the Herztalian 4th.

In the brief glimpse I got of the man before he tackled a Baldric out of midair, I almost didn’t recognize him. He looked almost wild compared to how he’d been last night, a visible snarl etched on his ursine features. He was bare-chested from the waist up, allowing me to see the large roll of blood-stained bandages that had been wrapped around his torso. Once again, he had foregone the great mace he had been using in order to fight bare handed. But…I’m not sure it was his choice, this time.

It looked to me that Rhiannon had direct control of him. There was a far-off, distorted look in his eyes that told me he might not be fully in control of himself.

That was all I saw of the man before he speared Baldric around the abdomen and down into the courtyard. My mouth opened slightly in horror when I saw that the force of their impact had veritably pulped a small group of refugees that had been trying to flee in vain.

At the level they were fighting at, I wasn’t able to keep with their fight completely. But from what I could tell, Baldric kept trying to disengage from Longstripe to take the battle somewhere, anywhere else. Somewhere that wasn’t in the middle of a pack of innocent civilians.

But Longstripe wasn’t letting him.

Instead, he was swinging wildly, enraged by whatever control Rhiannon had on him. He wasn’t bothering with Arts, or Skill, or even pure martial skill. No, this was a display of pure physical might.

And the refugees were dying in droves from it.

So much so that both the Agents who had engaged the Loyalists below, and the Loyalists themselves, had entirely stopped. Instead, they were now doing their absolute best to keep the refugees away from the battle of the near Titans that was occurring in the midst of the courtyard.

They weren’t always successful. In moments, the flagstones were coated in blood and gore from those unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire.

But there were enough soldiers and Agents doing what they could to save innocents, that whatever blockage had been at the entrance of the courtyard had been cleared. People looked to be slowly managing to escape from the crush.

Rhiannon didn’t like that. She audibly tsked. “No, no, we can’t have that,” She said, raising her arm once again.

Whatever she was about to do, Sylvia preempted her. Without a word, my partner rushed the Vampire with her blade outstretched and glowing silver. But the gulf between their strengths was just…too much.

Rhiannon didn’t even need to look at Sylvia before ropes of blood sprang up out of nowhere to bind the Sculpted woman from top to bottom. She yelped as she fell face forward onto the balcony, skipping across the surface to impact the railing on the other side. The impact was enough to visibly dent it, where Sylvia laid struggling like a captive worm.

“Not now, little girl,” Rhiannon said absentmindedly, her outstretched hand starting to glow a malicious crimson. “I’m busy.”

I tensed at how quick Sylvia had been dealt with, trying to take a step forward myself. But my feet, not to mention my hands, were still bound in chains. I only managed a brief shuffle.

“Nobody leaves,” Rhiannon said with finality, snapping her glowing fingers. A shockwave of tainted, bloody Mana erupted in a sphere from the impact, traveling fast. In moments, it had passed us all by and beyond to surround the entire courtyard of the palace in a glowing dome.

Rhiannon had just trapped everyone here in a shield of some kind. The fighting, except for the battle between Baldric and Longstripe, ground to a complete halt. The refugees, soldiers, guards, and Agents all looked around in distressed confusion at their now confined surroundings.

The Vampire who seemed to have meticulously arranged everything that had happened so far crowed in victory. “FINALLY!” She cried, spreading her arms wide and throwing her head back in exultation. “Finally, all the pieces are in place! Let the ritual BEGIN!”

With that, the flesh beneath her sheer dress undulated wildly, and the creature masquerading as a woman…

Stopped pretending.

Two massive sets of batlike wings erupted from her back, one of them nearly smacking me in the face. Curling, ram-like horns rapidly grew from her forehead in an instant, to encircle her suddenly knife-like ears. Her hands and feet grew scales, the points of them sharpening into talons sharp enough to pierce straight through her shoes.

This was no longer a woman.

It was a monster.

At some unseen signal, the flagstones of the palace courtyard began to shatter, to reveal hundreds, no, thousands of runes etched into the bedrock below. I couldn’t understand them at all, despite my above-average literacy in the runic language. Something about the sharp strokes and harsh angles of these particular runes made my skin crawl.

The blood that had coated the flagstones from the victims of Baldric and Longstripe’s brawl sunk into the carvings. Slowly, they started to pulse in the shade of what they had just absorbed, casting the entire palace in eerie shades of crimson.

“The blood...of the innocent…” The creature that Rhiannon had become breathed. Slowly, she reached down until she grasped the headless corpse of Olsen, still oozing from Baldric's decapitating strike. “The blood…of the noble…”

She threw the cadaver down into the bloodbath that the courtyard had become, where it impacted one of the disquieting runes with a splat. Almost immediately, the glow intensified.

Next, she reached over to slit her own arm with her blade-like talons. She had to squeeze her arm, but she eventually produced a cupped hand of dark, coagulated, foul-smelling blood. She raised that hand up into the sky in near supplication. “The blood…of the loyal….” Rhiannon uttered, almost lovingly. Without another word, she threw that disgusting liquid out into the air as well, where it fell to the runes.

They glowed brighter. Bright enough that their light almost began to blot out Tarus above. The air began to grow heavier with the weight of the corrupted Aether I could feel swirling all around me.

Rhiannon smiled almost peacefully, her fangs poking through her lips. “Now…all we need is the blood of the mighty.” She chuckled breathily. “And it. Will. Be. Done.”

My face paled at the implication. The mighty. Then…the fight between Baldric and Longstripe…

Somehow, I found my voice in the midst of this madness. “Does it even matter who wins?” I asked quietly enough that I’m not sure the monster would even be able to hear me.

But she did.

Rhiannon turned her head slightly to look at us prisoners, still hobbled by shackle and chain. She smiled slightly. “No.” She said simply.

Dusk slowly closed her eyes to my left. “And what will happen when one does?”

I was shocked to see genuine tears of emotion gather in the eyes of the inhuman creature holding us captive. “Then? Then I shall set into motion that which will reunite me with my mistress. With the one true goddess that this ungrateful world cast out.”

“Ixiah…”