No other time can serve you quite as well as the now.

Tallah couldn’t remember who had taught her that, but she’d been teaching it forward her entire life. She watched the scurry of activity below, huddled up against the great belfry on the corner of the Guild Hall. It really never ceased, this endlessly agitated life that Valen lived and breathed. Adventurers flowed in and out of the great building like the tides of the sea, merchants dressed in fine furred clothes brought in requests, recruiters wove through the crowd looking for their next candidates. It really didn’t matter that they were less than a bell's strike away from a Descent.

Showed how much truck most adventurers and merchants held with the divine. She’d laugh if not for the gnawing worry that He might actually show. And it’d be all she could do to not piss herself in abject terror of His presence.

Wind whipped her hair to and fro and her mask stung against her fevered skin. Bianca’s anchors kept her in place on the frozen precipice, stuck tight against the corner of the belfry.

She listened to the rhythmic tick tick tick of the mechanisms within the tower as it wound down to the moment of the bell’s strike. A great hammer hung above, poised for the blow, silver veins on blackened forged steel shining in the light coming from beneath.

If my timing’s right for the boy, they should all be at the Meadow right now, Bianca informed her. We should make our move in fifty heartbeats, to take advantage of the bell’s tolling.

Tallah counted. Her target would be the archives of the Guild. Impenetrable under normal circumstances, an attack there would throw the Guard onto a million guesses as to what her plans were.

Bianca’s suggestion was, indeed, safer than a direct attack on the Fortress. Adventurers ran if there were no profits to be gained, and it would take some time for the Storm Guard to rally to her. She could cause enough damage to make an impact and be seen.

We’ve made many poor decisions this Winter, Christina whispered. Let’s hope this is not another.

Her inner furnace burned steadily now. Fear gnawed on the edges of her resolve, but its insistence only served to infuriate. She’d need her anger burning bright.

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If Ort did come down, she’d bloody him. Revenge be bent, she would bloody the bastard even if she had to set fire to Valen a second time. Christina’s silent encouragement and support helped her bear down on her fears, smother them under the heel of her will.

She willed herself back to the matter at hand. How would she have prepared the attack if she had to capture someone like Cinder?

I’d set up a firebreak and get bodies around her that would make it hard to move about. Control and deny her escape routes. Have mage killers manning the front line, the rank and file behind, and as many archers and crossbowmen as I can gather to pin her. Force her out of hiding and into the open, where I could box her in with a healer and Egia. Decisive first strike if possible. Devourer even, if she’s dangerous enough.

She grinned at the thought. She was dangerous enough to warrant a Devourer used within the walls. Falor wouldn’t hesitate.

Sil and the others would need to bluff their way through the barricade that thought they were deadly dangerous. Mertle would probably handle the talking all right but it fell to Tallah to ensure their arguments were believable.

Twenty.

She breathed in deep, letting the freezing air stab at her chest. Power coursed in with the cold and stoked the furnace. She drank the vial of Aerum that she kept on her belt at all times and revelled in the rush that came with it. Every breath was crisper and richer, life-giving. She could hold her breath through a blazing inferno if need be.

Thirty.

I feel like we’ll come to regret this nonetheless. Christina sounded uncharacteristically pensive. Even so, I want a crack at the princeling if you face him.

“Pride will see us dead, Christi.”

Curiosity, not pride. I want to see what the Empress has made. I want to have the measure of him for when we come back for his head. The last time you clashed I was too indisposed to pay attention.

Tallah laughed as she watched the great hammer above ponderously swing into striking position. A mechanism had whirred to life somewhere in the wall. The great lump of metal moved up with glacier slowness and equal inevitability.

She got to her feet and stretched out the kinks in her muscles and joints.

Forty.

With a snap of her fingers, she was wreathed in constellations of flitting fireflies. With a sigh of pleasure, she allowed herself to rise up and take charge of the power at her disposal. After all, she didn’t need subtlety tonight. Only firepower. Christina and Bianca surrendered themselves to the guidance of her hand. Their powers sang in her blood.

Fifty.

Cinder walked to the edge and ignited her fire lances. She stepped off and fell with the hammer.