Eduardo smiled as he set down the phone. He had been cutting it a bit too close with this one, but in the end, his superiors had been content with the results. That was more than enough for him. The whole incident had been a bit too much for excitement for him, an unnecessary disruption to his otherwise boring and predictable work of making sure the world worked exactly like the Red Fist wanted it to. With the power of all the Primordials alive, it was not a difficult task, consisting mostly of organising the minutiae of politics, wars and whatever else made the world turn. As what was ultimately a middle manager in a history-spanning society that ruled the world from shadows, he didn't call the shots, only directed them, and such a position fitted him just fine. Less stress not having to worry about the fate of humanity and all such. He had no idea what the overall plan was, he only knew what needed to happen right now.

That he had had to leave his comfy offices in Singapore was originally a bummer, but in the end travelling had been nice too. He'd had the most delicious pastels in Sao Paulo, seen a play in a small theater in Lima, and even managed to eke in a dive in the Sunken Coast of Rio de Janeiro. That was, of course, only possible due to the fact that he had access to an actual private jet. Yes, they were banned in basically every country, but being a member of the Red Fist had its perks.

Unfortunately, not being stuck in a nuclear submarine for a week wasn't one of perks. He would have preferred the dirigible, but the Grand Master had insisted on minimising any potential risks for disruption. The loss of the boy had already begun to affect the performance of the Primordials, and controlling every possible variable was not possible anymore. Also, they did not know whether there were more Corrupted aware of Luca than the three they had captured. He did not look forward to interrogating them, and had considered delegating the task to one of his underlings, but had deemed it too important not to handle it himself. It wasn't that he had sympathy for these people, being part of the shadow order that rules the world tended to kill any empathy towards the puppets who just danced to your tune, but he found it awkward, messy, and way too time-consuming.

The little buzzer in his small steel box of a cabin went off. He pressed a button, the light above the door turned green and a soldier came in with the boy, Luca.

Eduardo smiled and motioned the boy to sit down. The young Primordial did so without a comment.

"Tsk. Tsk. You've caused a lot of trouble for us," Eduardo said.

The boy just looked at him, quietly. Eduardo didn't have much experience dealing with the Primordials, but he knew that they were – on purpose – kept out of touch with the actual physical world. How they had managed that in the times of yore, he could not even fathom, but in the modern times it was achieved with a combination of very strong drugs and virtual reality. It was possible that the kid was still just very confused.

"We'll get you home soon enough," he said. "Don't you worry."

There was a sudden clarity in the boy's eyes now. "I don't want to go home. I want to… I want to wake up somewhere nice with Azucena and Fernanda."

"Oh," Eduardo said and chuckled. "I'm so sorry, this is a bit awkward," he paused to enjoy the mix of confusion and panic on the child's face. "You see, this submarine is made of steel – and steel is a type of iron really. If you didn't know, and I don't know why you would, iron dampens your abilities. That's really the reason we ended up on a boat, just can't carry enough steel under a dirigible." He laughed again. "It's funny, really. Again, you don't probably know this, but there is so much lore about the iron thing. Anyone would be surprised that it actually works!"

The Primordial was seething with anger. In any other situation, he would have been the most powerful being Eduardo had ever encountered, even in his young age. Now, he was little more than a kid with a tantrum.

"Since you clearly can talk," Eduardo continued. "Can you tell me why – and how – you escaped?"

Luca crossed his arms defiantly. "No."

Eduardo chuckled again. "No worries, we have our means to find out. Of course, if you co-operate now, I might be persuaded to show some mercy to your friends."

The kid's eyes widened. Good. He understood the situation.

"She hasn't been very kind to me so far," he pushed. "So, I'm sure you understand she needs to be punished for her misdeeds. As do the others. But… since you clearly care so much for her, maybe I could be a bit more lenient. My superiors won't be happy, though, so I do need to have something to appease them with."

It was almost unbelievable how small the boy looked, sitting on that plastic chair in his cramped office. His arms fell aside and his gaze was fixed on his shoes.

"I'm sure there's nothing you'll lose by telling me your side of the story."

The boy hesitated. Eduardo waited patiently. "It was an accident," Luca started. Eduardo knew that wasn't the case. Accidents didn't happen to people who transported Primordials. Still, it was entirely possible the boy thought it had been an accident. "I woke up outside. I– I didn't know where I was. Everything was strange. Smells are weird."

Eduardo nodded. "How did you end up in the mall?"

"I think I walked. And then the nice man took me in. He gave me food and asked questions and was happy when I made my answers come true. Then Azucena came along and I saw that she was even nicer than the man and wanted to go with her. We ate ice cream!"

"And you had never met Azucena or the man before?"

Luca shook his head eagerly.

Eduardo had anticipated that most of this could be just a coincidence. The apprentice just happened to hold base near where the incident was, and Azucena was after him, not Luca. It was likely, but would not satisfy his superiors that much. He had hoped Luca could give him some kind of a hint of the person, or people, who had attacked the transport, and that it would have been enough to transfer the whole case to someone else. Someone, who dealt with active threads. Eduardo's job had been to arrange the transport from the facility near Sao Paulo to Morocco, and no one had expected any trouble. If there were people who knew about the Primordials outside of the Red Fist, the organisation had no idea who they could be.

"Will you let me go with Azucena now?" the child asked hopefully, and had completely misunderstood what Eduardo had meant earlier.

"Soon," Eduardo lied. "Soon."

* * *

Anna had been waiting for this moment for so long, and that now it was finally here… she felt empty. The man she had hated and vowed to bring to justice was at her fingertips, yet she felt nothing. She had barely been conscious before, on the airship and in Azucena's home, but what she had seen of him, had not been what she had expected at all. He was a nerd. Just a nerd with some rather mild magical ability. He wasn't the monster she had remembered.

He was tied to a chair. She had tried to ask for something to dampen his abilities, but the guards had only laughed and said she was a dummkopf. She had not been completely surprised that a secret society that apparently somehow ruled the world employed a bunch of German guards, especially these nazi-sympathising ones, but it had driven home who she was in bed with – this time figuratively. Once Heinz Werdin had died a painful death, she would make herself sparse as fast as possible.

Enough waiting, she decided and kicked the metal chair between his legs. The murderer jolted awake.

At first, he looked dizzy and confused. But in mere seconds, clarity returned to his calculating eyes. "Anna?" he said in disbelief.

She froze. She had imagined this moment so, so many times, but not like this. Not in some submarine controlled by magic-wielding world-dominating proto-nazis. It had always been on her terms, with her magical powers overcoming his. He hadn't been helpless, and he had always known what he had done. Didn't he now?

"You know what you've done," she seethed.

He blinked. "I… do?"

She just stared at him. He had to know. She had not prepared a monologue, nor did she even know how to begin explaining. "You killed my mother," she splurted.

Heinz looked genuinely surprised. "I did?"

"And my father. You murdered my family, asshole!"

He still didn't seem to understand who she was talking about. This man must have killed so many people they all faded to obscurity. What a monster!

"I— Can you, please explain. I'm not a murderer, but I did take part in what was more or less a shadow war in the magic community. But the Corrupted don't have children."

She sighed. "Or so you thought."

He looked down, defeated. "I'm not proud of what happened back then. It was just before the Cataclysm, and… we did what we thought was necessary. In retrospect, we made a lot of mistakes. I really can't say if they were worth it or not. The truth is, back then, we just went with our guts. We did our best to avoid casualties, and I always thought I never caused a… collateral damage. But I do want to understand what happened."

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"My name is Anna."

He almost rolled his eyes, the bastard! Had he no fear? "I… knew that?"

"Anna Schenker," she said.

Now, there was a realisation in that thick head of his. He swallowed. "Anna," he said and paused for an annoyingly long time.

"Your father… is the Necromancer."

* * *

A freezer! They had put her in fucking freezer! If she hadn't woken up when she did, she would have probably frozen to death. Did they think she could warm up the air while she was unconscious? Or, more likely, they didn't really care. They were after the boy, so why hadn't they just killed her? What had happened to the others? Whoever these people were, if they hadn't outright killed her, it's possible they had also just captured her friends.

The air around her was gradually becoming tenable. She could see their logic: keep her using her magic to keep warm, so she would be too depleted to try and stage an escape. They had, of course, underestimated her abilities. Now, she only needed to figure out how they had underestimated her abilities.

The freezer was a plain room with only a few crates inside and surrounded by frosty walls of steel. There was, obviously, no handle on the door. She could feel the floor vibrating a tiny bit, which signalled to her that they were not stationary. Her best guess was that they were in the huge airship that had so rudely destroyed her beloved vessel. She realised she had not even named her airship. The poor dirigible had died a nameless death.

She peered inside one of the crates and saw a pig carcass.Ugh! They ate dead animals, in this day and age? The savages! Although she had eaten her share of meat that had not been artificially produced, that had been a long time ago, and now it just weirded her out. Most of the earth had banned the practice by now, as there was no real need and both the ethical and ecological concerns greatly outweighed the novelty value of "real" meat. Not to mention all the potential diseases.

So, these people clearly thought they were above the common morals. She had dealt with people like that before, hell, the Necromancer was peak that. The bright side in that was the fact that people who thought themselves better or more deserving than everyone else, also tended to underestimate everyone else. If there was something Cassandra had learned, it was to never underestimate your opponents. That was a very quick way to die.

Of course, she was at a rather sizable disadvantage at the moment. While she could use her magic to stay warm for quite a long time, she was still trapped in a freezing steel box and when her power did run out… she'd have a very chilly encounter with the Grim Reaper.

It was clear that the people who put her in a fucking ice box had at least an inkling of her powers. Assuming that everyone else was still alive – and since they hadn't killed her when she obviously had nothing to offer them, there was no reason to think they weren't – they had not given her a cellmate, and probably didn't have several of these things on one airship.

Locking the pyromancer in a freezer was an obvious idea. They would wait for her to run out of power and then start the interrogation. That was called the depletion tactic and it was the bread and butter of arcane warfare. For someone less experienced, who had not participated in the Shadow Wars that preceded the rise of the Necromancer, it might have very well worked, but this was not the first time she had been locked in one of these. After that, she had taken some pains to actually familiarise herself with the common designs of walk-in cryonic appliances, and learned that they always had fail-safes.

The most common place for an emergency unlock mechanism was the panel near the door, but her captors had at least been smart enough to cover it with a tightly screwed metal plate. The screws would be impossible to open by hand, but they clearly were not very well-versed in the whole skillset of a pyromancer. Yes, most of her magic dealt with fire and warmth, but cold was just the same thing in reverse.

Cassandra placed a finger on a screw and started to siphon the heat from it. It was, of course, already cold, but could be frosted even further. At the same time, she used her palm to direct the excess heat onto the panel, warming it up. It was a simple trick, really: the heated plate expanded at the same time as the screw grew a tiny bit smaller. It wasn't much, but it would loosen the thread enough for her to be able to use her fingers to twist it open. It took a good bit of time to get the plate open, and she had to keep spending magic to keep herself warm, but it was still nowhere enough to deplete her completely.

Fuck, she thought as she saw the mechanism under the cover. They had removed the failsafe switch. Even the lever that could be used to unlock the door in case of a blackout was gone. Time for plan B.

She knew there would be an electric circuit under the floor and where the weakest spot was. It would be impossible to open, like the plate, but not covered in thick steel. She put her palm on it and started again to siphon heat. The whole freezer started to warm up from the excess heat and she heard the fans propelling cold air faster and faster. In a few minutes, the floor was frozen through. She got one of the crates and smashed it on the floor.

The plating broke and pieces of frozen pork exploded around the room. She grabbed the cable in the hole and pulled. The room went dark and the fans stopped rotating.

It was more than likely the people on the other side would notice her actions quickly, so she had no time to lose. She took a pork rib and pulled out a bone. Using the bone as a lever, she managed to unlock the door.

The door was slightly ajar. She held her breath and waited. No one came.

Carefully, Cassandra stepped out of the freezer. The room outside was dark, and there was no one there. Were they really so confident in their little freezer trick that they had left her completely unguarded? That seemed unlikely, considering the military prowess of the assault wizards and the obviously unlimited resources of the mystery organisation hiring them.

It was clear something was happening. She quickly crossed the room and peered out of the door on the other side. It led to a narrow corridor with several generally round doors and a lot of piping. She was by no means expert on dirigibles, but in her limited experience, this was not how even the military grade ones would look.

After making sure no one was nearby, she went into the corridor and opened the door opposite to her. It lead to a small room with a smattering of chairs and tables. And a window.

It's a bloody submarine, she realised. She must have been out for a good while if they had the time to fly her to the coast and onboard a submarine.

That complicated things, but her first priority remained the same: find the others.

"Find the child!" came a shout from the corridor.

They had misplaced the child, again? That boy was as slippery as an eel, it seemed!

As the room was a dead-end, she knew there was no other option than to fight. Or, rather, take out the soldier before he knew what hit him.

Taking the man who entered the room by surprise was a piece of cake. He had been looking for a defenseless adolescent, not a trained assassin with magic power. Jumping out from behind the door, she quickly covered his mouth and turned up the heat. Her fire magic burned out the oxygen straight out of his lungs – an uncomfortable feeling for sure, but also not a lethal one. The lack of oxygen knocked him out in mere seconds.

She peeked out of the door, but did not see anyone else. They were spread thin looking for Luca and as such, would be easy pickings for the pyromancer assassin. As long as she was careful and did not attract unwanted attention.

She went to look for her friends.

* * *

Heinz was feverishly trying to piece together a sensible timeline. Standing in front of him, with a particularly nasty knife in hand, was a woman who could only be the daughter of the infamous Necromancer. But she had had no magic prior to her recent intercourse with one of the apprentices, which meant she could only have been born before his late father acquired his powers. The Necromancer's early years were still shrouded in mystery, but there was no possible scenario where Anna, in her early 20s as far as he knew, could have been conceived before her father had been Corrupted. He had already been laying groundwork for his plans of world conquest at that point.

But even more distressing than that was the identity of her mother. He had to make certain he was correct. "Your mother was Helga, right?"

Anna was still in shock – and denial – but she nodded.

"How did she die?" Heinz asked.

"What do you mean – how did she die?!" Anna screamed. "You killed her!"

He hadn't. He had no idea what had happened to Helga after their brief, uh, relationship. That had been around 15 years ago, well after Anna's birth, but she had never mentioned a child. Yet, if Helga Schenker had indeed had a child, there was only one possible father. The man he had saved her from.

"Can we, just for a moment, assume I didn't?" he said. "I need to know."

Anna sighed. "Fine. I found her body, twisted and destroyed by magic. There was no other explanation. The police had no idea what had happened."

"Anna," he said sympathetically. "I did not kill Helga. She was killed by her unborn child." That was, at least, the only explanation he could foster. Why and how she had been pregnant with a magical embryo… he had no idea.

"That makes no sense! She wasn't pregnant!" Anna protested.

"It's likely she had no idea herself, either. The magic manifests very early and… tragedy ensues often within the first trimester." He paused. There was one more thing he had to know. "Why do you think it was me?"

Anna was sobbing. It was understandable, as her whole world had just turned upside down. "There was this… old lady. She was the one who told me that the police were completely stumped, because my mother had been killed by magic. I– then I went through her messages and found several from you. They were threatening. You wanted her dead!"

Heinz sighed. There were definite upsides for such communication technology not existing today. Of course, letters could also be misunderstood, but the lack of context in the times of social media and the short-form messaging left a lot of room for misinterpretation. "I didn't threaten her. I was warning her about going back to your father."

"But I'm sure–"

"It's been nearly two decades since you saw those messages. Are you sure you remember their exact contents or just what you thought they were about?"

Anna was quiet. She had calmed down and was more contemplative than shocked.

"Look," he said calmly. "There's a lot to go through. I have no idea how you are even able to exist. You were born after your father got infected with magic."

"My mom never told me."

"I'm sure she would have… if things had been different. But we can figure it out! I even know exactly how! But you need to let me go. We need to find the others and escape this dreaded submarine."

Anna hesitated. That was a good sign. He was getting through to her. "Tell me how, now!"

"Just before we met, I went with Cassandra to a place that your father had owned, back in the day. Before you were born. If there's anywhere that holds the answer to your progeny, it will be there."

With new determination in her eyes, she nodded and opened the cuffs holding him in place. "I'm sorry," she said.

He smiled weakly. "It's ok, you didn't know."

As he got up, she said: "There's one more thing."

"Anything."

"Can you tell me what my mother was like? Not now, of course, but when we're out."

"Oh, for sure. Your mother was an amazing person. She just… fell in with the wrong crowd. But I have several stories I'm sure you'd love to hear."

"Give me a taste, please."

"She growled in a death metal band."