I thought he’d be taller.

“And I thought we’d have more time,” Tallah growled.

It had gone as expected until it hadn’t. The Guild plaza emptied the moment the first trio of fireballs flew and detonated. Aside from the guards protecting the sliver of the Ascendi, the other adventurers had turned tail and fled. She glided in through the chaos and unleashed her fireflies, turning the offices and tents inside the great Guild to smouldering ruins. The great tapestries adorning the walls fell in ragged scraps and caught fire. It wasn’t long before she heard her old moniker being shouted by the guards, and soon after the whistles started.

Then, the strangest thing.

The guards fled. They simply abandoned their post and melted out with the rest of the scrambling, panicking population. Heavy gates that separated the plaza from the rest of the quarter, gates that never shut as a symbol of Valen’s unending pulse, ground and moaned on great hinges. With titanic weight, they closed and shut her inside.

Fancy that. They’ve learned, Christina said. How many times do you think they’ve practised this?

Tallah felt her hair stand on end. Air crackled and buzzed with electricity. Even the breath of the storm seemed to catch in its throat. Aside from the fire devouring the Guild Hall, everything settled into a pregnant, waiting stillness.

Falor was there in a flash from the dark, as if come down from the sky itself like the snow. Thunder clapped a fraction of a moment later and the Guild building shook.

“He’s learned new tricks.” Tallah would have been impressed by the entrance if not for the look on his face.

His head was bare and his hair wild in the gathering wind. He pinned her with a liquid-black gaze, taking in her measure, spelling out her sentence in his silence. A great warhammer was clutched in his hands and he wasted no time swinging it.

Another flash and lightning snaked through the air like a crack through ice. Bianca pushed her out of the way at a thought. She glided back through the courtyard, lithe and quick as a feather on the wind, and fired back an incinerating lance in answer to the opening steps of their dance. He stopped and strangled it out with a gauntleted hand, his eyes never wavering from her. Runes shone on the gauntlet.

In the mask’s vision he was a storm, a violent whirlpool of raging illum that outshone even the Ascendi shard spinning in midair, oblivious of their contest of strength.

She had expected recriminations. An acknowledgement of her survival. Maybe questions? But he had nothing to say, just the mission to carry out.

You’ve learned some new tricks too, Christina whispered, a strange fascination tinging every sensation she let off. Let’s impress on him that killing us is not going to come cheap.

She moved her hand in an arc and white-hot fire burst at Falor’s feet. He swung his hammer down and blasted the flames away. Another crack of blue-white lightning tore across the ground and she ran from it. Air stank of ozone and of misting water, of burnt expensive fabrics and paper.

Fire and lightning chased each other across the Guild’s courtyard. Tallah tried to keep the Ascendi shard between them, but Falor was having none of it. His bolts crashed from above and burst from under her, testing her, prodding at the way she defended. If he was surprised by a pyromancer moving with the skills of a manipulator, he didn’t show it.

She was dimly aware, through Christina’s whispers, of soldiers gathering on the walls around the courtyard, swarming among the covers of the battlements. Crossbows levelled at her through slits and gaps in the wall. Steady hands tracked her, waiting for a signal.

Falor was only intent on her. In his shining white armour, trimmed with accents of azure blue, he was every bit his mother’s son. Tallah’s blood curdled at the sight of him.

She threw three fireballs, then three more. They scattered and flew wild, heading for the soldiers on the walls. Screams followed as they detonated and showers of masonry rained down.

Falor came at her with avenging fury, his warhammer swinging in a wide, bone-crushing arc. Bianca pulled her into his swing, tethered to the hammer, swinging with it in a tightening spiral. Her hand touched Falor’s chest and wreathed him in fire.

A fist shot out and caught her across the face before she could draw away, and sent her reeling back. A blast of power scattered her flames like smoke. That blasted gauntlet absorbed her flames again.

She tasted blood and the splinters of a tooth stung where they lodged in her cheek.

Soldiers dragged their wounded from the walls. Crossbowmen moved into new position.

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The moment she was paces away from a still smoking Falor, they all loosed on her.

Bianca picked the quarrels from the air and aimed them right back. Some screamed as they were hit, most dodged away. Falor gave an inarticulate roar of anger and signalled his men back.

Tallah reacted. She reached out to the men and held them in invisible grasps. She yanked and men fell from the walls, screaming.

She could have yanked the hearts from their chests and he knew it. A momentary flash of worry on his face as bodies thumped into the high snow.

We’ve been seen enough. It’s time we run. Hit him.

Tallah’s feet touched down on solid ground, Bianca’s power fading back and Christina coming to the fore. She drew her sword and imbued it with heat. Flakes sizzled on the edge as she aimed it at the princeling’s heart. It earned her a raised eyebrow.

Keep up, Christina said, and electricity hummed in her chest. Like a swarm of Summer wasps, she was abuzz with stored power.

She ran at the prince, jumped, and Christina sent her bursting through the air at the speed of thought. She covered the span of the courtyard in the blink of an eye, and there he was, straight in her reach, his throat rushing to the sword’s keen edge.

Yes! One moment. One slash. One cut. If she took his head right there, right then—

A dark-haired boy ran through her mind, five or six Summers old, yanking on her cloak as she made her report to his mother. Black eyes smiled up at her. Small hands groped for hers. Joyful laughter that she was back from her mission, and that she was safe.

A moment of distraction. Her blade whistled through falling snow and she missed. She also missed her feet and landed awkwardly, off-balanced by the speed.

Falor smashed her in the ribs with enough force to break her in two. It happened in a frozen moment in time, in less than a heartbeat. Bianca cushioned the hammer blow as best she could but the force of star ore meeting soft flesh sent her tumbling head-over-heels.

Coward, Christina spat in her mind.

Air exploded out of her in a blinding instant of shattering pain. At least three ribs splintered.

It wouldn’t have worked, she lied to herself through the haze of agony. He was moving before she had even launched her attack. He knew something was coming and, just as she’d taught him, was meeting and countering it. Tallah had transferred straight to him, something she shouldn’t have been able to do without Christina. It should have been a killing blow, her secret weapon, the one that she hoped would behead an empire.

He’d been ready for it. She was dead certain of it.

Pain knifed in her side as she struggled to draw breath. Soldiers cheered on the walls and hissed at her. Falor simply watched her struggling to her feet, hammer held loose at his side. His breath came in small, white puffs that blew away on the wind.

This is an execution, Tallah, Bianca realised. He is only playing with us.

“I know,” she wheezed out between bloodied lips. Air rattled inside. Something had shattered. A sharp jut of bone poked something tender and she felt sick. If not for the aerum serum, she would have fainted.

Curse the memory of the boy he’d been…

“Get up,” Falor said. His voice was cold and detached. “Make sure and die this time.”

“So your mother hasn’t cut your tongue out, boy?” Tallah had to force the words out.

He didn’t reply. Instead, he dropped his hammer and pointed two fingers at her.

She stared down her death. Lightning struck Falor from above and dispersed in circles of power around him. Again, faster. He shone like a miniature star as he readied a devourer, all for her. If she could have found the strength to laugh, she would have.

This was a stupid plan, Bianca whined. Tallah refused her nudges to run and pull away. She couldn’t outrun a Titan’s Punishment any more than she could outrun the morning light. We are going to die…

Falor unleashed his Devourer. It surged through the air, a blinding rush of power that was going to render her down to scattered atoms to fully erase her from existence.

Now! She raised her hands against the blinding flare and Christina reached out from her prison, ghostly hands doubling Tallah’s own.

The Devourer hit her with the power of an unleashed storm. She allowed it in. It burned in her veins. It rattled her teeth, singed her sinews, almost melted her from inside out. Her mind burned!

She raised her hands and Christina flung the power back outward, into the walls, into the snow, anywhere it would go. Screams rose as soldiers were caught in the blast. A part of the courtyard wall exploded outward in a cascade of stone and mortar, the blast taking out neighbouring buildings.

Blood and teeth and bones of my sisters! Christina’s voice was a croak of anguish. I can’t do that again. Run, Tallah.

If she had the strength, she would have flung the Punishment back at Falor. Pity that she had only barely survived it.

Bianca anchored a tether to a point outside the wall and launched her into the air as Falor ran to his screaming men and the collapsing walls. She set everything she had into escaping, angling her flight away from the plaza and towards the Alchemists’ Quarter. Trying to use the shard that close to the Ascendi could see her smashed against it, so she needed distance.

Pain nearly blinded her and she couldn’t focus on keeping her hearth lit. The cold cut through and chilled her down into the marrow, a constricting grip on her battered chest. Winds buffeted her path and shook her as violently as Falor himself.

A dizzying, headlong rush. She was only barely aware of the rushing buildings, all sense lost to the buffeting black storm. Bianca kept her down, hidden between buildings, rushing dangerously through narrow gaps and over the heads of people putting out the fires.

Thunder echoed behind her.