The hijacked broadcast was the first of Odin's strikes on the home front, but it was far from the last. Odin never sent soldiers or demons or witches, but their moves were devastating nonetheless.

The first sign that something was wrong was how the school curriculum stuttered. One day, we were learning about how the Redlanders were barbaric savages and possibly even slavers; the next, Mr. Ganrey was reluctantly telling us that, actually, Redlanders weren't culturally homogeneous and there was no evidence that the majority of Redlander civilization owned slaves. In Ritual Magic 201, we'd be learning how to incite joy and passion to help empower the front line, then hastily drop that lesson in favor of studying theory of magic instead.

The penny dropped when a member of the Silent Parliament was tried for treason and consorting with the enemy. I wasn't sure what Odin had offered her to get her to try and change the home front policy away from militarization, and I didn't need to.

They were the Dealmaker, after all. Whatever the woman's price was, I was sure Odin had matched it.

But that was just Odin's opening move. The second broadcast they hijiacked was short—it had to be, before the censors could cut them off—and was released right after the Silent Parliament declared victory over the traitor in their ranks. And with four words, Odin threw the home front of the Silent Peaks into chaos.

"Now find the rest," Odin said, a hard, cruel glint in their eyes.

###

If being the Redlander boy who spoke out in defense of history was unpopular before, it was downright lethal nowadays. The Silent Parliament and the city watch were tearing themselves apart trying to stop civilians from conducting witch hunts in the streets while hurriedly conducting witch hunts of their own, and the fact that everyone was a witch didn't help matters at all. Everyone with the faintest attunement to anything was constantly scanning everyone else's emotions in hope of catching a traitor—and it didn't help matters that the constant suspicion and fear was wrecking the battlechoirs' ability to cast their grand works of passion and joy. Anyone who went around endangering the limited supply of happiness and drive that we still possessed was regarded with suspicion at the very least, and outright violence at the worst.

Which meant, of course, that fucking Iola was more important than ever.

I was pretty sure he'd taken the rejection from the army personally, because he'd taken it upon himself to uproot every traitor he could find—and because he was Iola, that more or less meant doing his utmost to make life for Lucet and I as miserable as he possibly could. At the very least, he seemed to leave Meloai out of it, and Freio had silently moved away from us once he realized that staying too close was an easy way to become the target of Iola's ire.

So it was just Lucet and I in the House of Warp and Weft, after Iola had badgered Mr. Ganrey into assigning us cleanup duty now that Albin was off at the war.

"One of these days, something more powerful's going to come through this damn rift, and we're all going to regret sending Albin to the front lines," Lucet grumbled. The amorphous blob of shifting flesh we were currently trying to kill sent a weak ripple in space our way, but we weren't helpless ourselves. I dissolved the attack with a field of calm while Lucet fired a frostbolt into the pulsating mass; it squelched in displeasure and turned to flee.

"Oh no you don't," I snapped at the minor Demon of Arrogance as it squished towards the nearest door. I hurled a shard of glossy insecurity at the door, and the power of insecurity washed over it, transforming it into a solid facade. The transformation would revert with time, but it did what it had to, rendering the door impassable for the time it took for us to catch up with the Demon of Arrogance. I followed up Lucet's frostbolt with a blast of heat, and the Demon of Arrogance shriveled and died, leaving behind a floating soul fragment and its corpse.

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"Rifts, Cienne. How many new attunements do you have?"

I hesitated. Even with my closest friends, I was still anxious about letting slip the fact that I held the secret of attunement. Thankfully, the mystery surrounding attunements meant that it wasn't even that out of the ordinary to randomly pick up a couple overnight; people had assumed I'd simply gotten lucky with whatever forces governed witchcraft. "Five," I said. "Calm, sorrow, passion, joy, and insecurity."

Lucet whistled. "Damn. You're on your way to becoming a bloody terrifying witch."

I laughed awkwardly. "I mean, a spearmaster who trains one move a thousand times will beat a soldier who trains a thousand moves once, right? Iola could probably cook me from the inside out, if he wanted."

"Not before you gave him a frostbolt to the face," Lucet said. Her expression turned rueful. "Seems like you became the riftmaw before I stopped being the hearth dragon."

I bit my lip guiltily. I... I wanted to tell her, I really did, but... Odin already terrified me enough. They'd wrapped me around their finger, got me to spill my heart out to them, and then fucking abandoned me like yesterday's trash. For all I knew, they were listening to us as we spoke. Instead, I said, "Hey. You're getting damn good with your frost magic. Someone tries to hurt you, you can freeze their face off."

Lucet gave me a savage grin. "Yeah. I'd like to see Iola walk that off. Now come on." She picked up the Demon of Arrogance's corpse, grimacing as it squelched. "We've got three more to go before we fill our quota."

Lucet and I talked and laughed and bantered as we patrolled the House of Warp and Weft, and for three blissful hours, we could fool ourselves into thinking we were ready for anything life could throw at us.

Then the second phase of Odin's counterattacks came.

###

"I AM GOD!" Our newest classmate hurled a gale-force burst of wind at Mr. Ganrey, sending him flying backwards into the pavement with a crunch, and Lucet swore as the mind-wiped Redlands soldier turned towards where the three of us were hiding. I fired a frostbolt off, but I wasn't feeling sad so much as fucking terrified right now, and it was so weak that I don't think the ex-soldier even noticed. "BOW BEFORE ME!"

"Who would've thought that trying to mind-wipe and re-educate enemy soldiers would backfire?" I muttered to myself.

"I suspected it would," Meloai helpfully added. "Although we didn't know Odin could slip soul fragments past mind-wipes before."

"I think something went wrong with this soul fragment's reintegration," Lucet said. "Why would Odin want a raving madman who thinks he's God? Wouldn't covert agents be a better choice?"

"Bloody hell if I know. Odin's been running circles around the Silent Parliament this whole time. I wouldn't underestimate them," I said. The self-proclaimed god rose on a column of wind, turning towards us with a snarl, and I swore. "Get behind me," I said, breathing out a misty veil of calm.

It came just in time, and even with my newfound attunement, it was really quite hard to stay calm while a madman was trying to huff and puff and blow me off the side of the mountain. Even with the shroud of calm struggling to enervate the torrential winds, I could barely breathe, and my skin felt like it was being pulled off of my cheeks. So for once in my lifetime, I was grateful to see Iola amongst the cowering classmates as he stood and pointed at the student, those sickly dewdrops of joy accelerating to impossible speeds as a beam of invisible light struck the mind-wiped soldier in the head.

For a minute, the poor soldier didn't even notice—but he was already a dead man walking. Less than a minute after the spell was cast, he wobbled in the air and vomited, seizing up before falling to the ground. Reddened, weeping sores marked where the beam of deadly, invisible light had passed through his skull.

Lucet and I traded glances as Iola gave the rest of the class a satisfied, self-congratulatory grin.

"He's going to be fucking insufferable after this, isn't he?" Lucet asked rhetorically.

And just like that, the first week of the war had passed.