Even in the air, Gem felt fear grip her.

The skies had been a safe haven, a sanctuary. Her own domain, untouched by any other and one to which she could retreat at the slightest whim. As much a safety blanket in the Sieve as Gilasev had been in Mirandis as a whole.

No other mystic her age could hope to mimic even the imperfect, flawed aerial propulsion she’d intuited. None could even come close. It was hers and hers alone, as great an inheritance as any other she’d been granted by her family.

It had been a foolish complacency.

Even from a half mile high, Gem could make out the flickers of movement just above buildings below. Women and men taking to the skies like she did. Clumsy, uncontrolled. More akin to hurled artillery shells than birds.

Still they claimed them. Invaded her sanctuary, knocking its gate asunder and laying waste to the interior.

A part of her died at that. The young part, that had relished so deeply in her earliest memories of the world above. When it had been an escape from the monsters of her daydreams.

Gem was daydreaming no longer, and she could see clear as day the monsters below would have found little trouble in pursuing her to the skies if they caught sight of her.

Trusting they wouldn’t look up was no reassurance at all.

She flew on in a stifled terror, fighting back the trembling that threatened to shake her from the sky. Diluting her fear with a focus on the magics of Udrebam’s atmosphere.

Feeling the arcane currents was no difficult task, their volume would have shamed oceans. Locating their focal point was a shade trickier, but even that yielded to Gem’s senses.

Soon she knew exactly where the magical conflagration was at its greatest. Could practically taste the unearthly forces as they unravelled, feel their every spike intently enough for fear to answer each one.

Gem continued hurtling towards them heedless of the danger each cell in her body screamed of. Lavastro, she knew, would be in the midst of the magic. And that was where Gem needed to be.

She recalled the frightful madness she’d seen in her friend’s eyes when last they spoke. The placid, calm sincerity with which she’d spewed her vileness. Both things to compel her away.

Yet moreso did Gem recall the woman’s smile. Her wit, her beauty, the hours she’d spent speaking with her, the thousand things she’d learned from their friendship and the thousand tears she’d let fall across her shoulder.

It mattered not to Gem what Lavastro thought of the world. Not when measured against the woman’s life.

She was her friend, and Gem would not have their last talk remain what it was. She would not have her only peer in the world die to a pack of giggling morons bringing down a city.

The certainty sustained her trajectory even as it cut nearer to the devastation in the city’s heart.

Closer to the hottest fires of the pit.

***

Lichos snarled as a ganger lunged for him, the magic in his veins screaming like it never had before. His enemy seemed almost a sculpture, so deep was the perceptive trance taking him. Time lengthened a half dozen times over, body holding so much magic he could sense the limits of its capacity. Feel his very cells straining to hold the arcane might.

He hadn’t reached them yet, but it would take little more to do so. Lichos hadn’t known there was a maximum at all before the attack.

It was surely an excess to bring against inepts. Even with half the strength he held, Lichos could have pulped the man’s skull just as easily.

Gibbering left the man’s slacking mouth as he fell, convulsive and broken. There was no time to see him become a corpse, even for the seconds it would take. In Lichos’ preternatural haste he’d already moved past when the body was halfway to the ground. Legs shifting like pistons, air whipping by his ears like musketry. Speed so great that the entire world seemed stagnant around him.

He kept the stadium ahead in sight, not daring to let it leave his eyes. As if doing so might make the structure vanish and melt away into the rest of the alien city’s soulless body. Lichos had his target, he had his orders. Even as every instinct screamed for him to disregard them, he continued following the command. Soldiering his way to the grave.

Find the Gemini, get her to safety. It was as simple a task as any he’d been given, at least that went past merely killing. Still it was a difficult one. In a city as big as Udrebam, surrounded by enemies as numerous as the gangers, it may have been impossible.

The thought occurred to him just as he slew another ganger that it was no ordinary girl he sought. Tightening his focus to stare into the spectra of arcane, Lichos swept the landscape for any irregularity. Desperation driving him rather than any true hope.

He’d not expected a miracle, but he found one. A streak of light across the skies, not fast by mystic standards, yet not slow. Vibrant in a way he’d never seen equalled, and, bizarrely, holding a void at its centre.

Nihil, wrapped in magic. Lichos would’ve bet his life the signature belonged to Gemini Menza. Cutting his way through another group, watching as two more sprinted from him in panic, he started for it.

***

The Crux came into view as Gem shot towards it, great stone body rent apart in a half dozen places. Split, fragmented, toppled and even slagged at parts. Ten thousand tons of stonework and mathematics left crippled in minutes. As great a testament as any to the power of magic.

Still Gem continued towards it, even as she felt her nerves racked by the waves of noxious arcana emanating from the space around it. Fighting her instincts to advance.

Fear took root easily in the dsvastation’s face, finding bountiful nourishment in her heart even through the flow of Cutaris and Utalis. The feeling deepened as Gem saw energy dancing around the surrounding streets, moving in great streaks or erupting blasts. Flashing so bright and hot that even from a half mile away she felt her eyes water at their glare.

The ground was split below, cracked and uneven like an alligator’s back. Glowing with an ugly, sickly red as steam coiled from its heated face. Houses were flattened, roads upheaved. Carefully laid stonework cast into the air as a noxious, choking cloud of debris.

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Above it all she saw the figures suspended high, winds of magic coiling around them with a hurricane intensity.

Flying, as it seemed all others suddenly could, and circling one another like fighting falcons. Wielding talons of magic.

Gem twisted around the conflict, knowing at a glance it was one she had no business involving herself in. No more than a rat would a battle between lions. She’d widened the gap separating herself from it by only a few hundred paces when the obvious occurred to her.

Lavastro might well be amid that, fighting for her life.

It was a thought Gem regretted having as soon as it came. Vitally important, yet inflicting upon her a duty to contradict the fear.

She cursed herself as she turned, hair streaming with the magic in her wake. Heart thundering as if to try and free itself from the doomed vessel heading into the storm.

The magic only grew stronger with proximity. Already at the edge of her comprehension, it pushed ever further onwards. Past the point of senescence, she realised with horror. Into the realm of the Immortals.

Gem’s eyes picked out more detail to match her ephemeral senses. She recognised Lady Balogun levitating amid a trailing, bloated dress. A greying, bearded man with eyes of fire. The Jyptian skin and blue eyes of Elijah Sorafin. Others, too, all alight with tempestuous magic. All hurling their might against a single enemy.

All failing as the mystic swatted their efforts aside with a contemptuous ease.

She skirted around the outside of the battle, carefully studying it for any sign of Lavastro. Opening her preternatural eye wide so that she might find her friend’s magic where flesh remained hidden.

It was a useless effort. The battlefield was too large for even Lavastro’s giant frame to be visible, and there was such power being thrown back and forth that even her might was smothered beneath the supernal curtain.

Still she tried, not knowing what else to do. Lost without Gilasev, lost without Lavastro.

Gem remained hidden only through luck and the grace of nature that had left her power so insubstantial next to what was unleashed beside her. Escaping notice like a flea underfoot.

But luck was a fickle thing, and hers was not so unique as to last forever. Amid the eruptions of flame and light, the quivering air and bone-shambling earthshakes, she felt the Immortal’s gaze fall upon her.

The distance between them was too great for Gem to glean any details from the woman’s face. It was but a markless mask of flesh, its colour barely even reaching her, let alone the etchings of features. Somehow she felt the grin regardless, instincts painting a picture of it in her mind’s eye. Urging her to turn and flee without hesitation as the magic bore down on her. It was all she could do to fly, beneath that tyrannical presence. All she could do to spite her thrashing nerves and flee. Even breath was a struggle, the concentration of power and malice in her wake so deep it almost seemed to freeze the air in her lungs and surround her in stone.

Sound chased her before anything else, a great roaring as magic moved again. Light eradicated shadow along the ground below just as the rumbling cries of a destruction too great to fathom washed over her. It brought new urgency to Gem’s flight, hastening her like nothing ever had. Burying every other noise beneath itself.

Gem tore across the city so fast she might have laughed at the wind’s protests, were the circumstances different. Her speed carried her a quarter mile unimpeded before strong arms closed around her from behind.

She gagged, a terrified chill running down her spine as she spun into the hold. Sensing in an instant that whatever gripped her was too strong to break free from.

Her fist swung almost without thought, knuckles finding a stagnant target. Pain met the punch as Gem’s fist rebound from her assailant’s nose, cartilage proving harder than bone. Enemy’s eyes not even flickering at the impact.

The grip around her tightened so much she thought it might snap her neck, forcing her still with terror and desperation, squeezing the breath from her.

Held so, she could only look on into the eyes of the Immortal. Chocolate brown and framing a face she’d not seen before, it seemed alight with recognition. Harsh with a terrible cruelty.

“I thought I recognised you.” Came her voice, low and sharp. Crawling like a spider. “That silver hair, those sparkling eyes, you really are the spitting image of your father. I’m sure you want for nothing, with looks like that. Goddess knows he never did.”

Gem couldn’t help but listen to every word even while her mind raced in silence, thoughts turning with desperation to how she might escape. No plan came to her at all.

She was in the grip of an Immortal, one who recognised her with no great love. It was a testament to the woman’s self control more than Gem’s power that she’d not broken like an insect beneath the grasp.

“Look at you writhing now.” The Immortal sneered. “Like an eel. Perhaps snakes are a better comparison. If you’ve got half your father’s wits I’ve no doubt you’re already thinking like one, hm? Trying to imagine how you might turn this situation to your advantage. Break free of my hold, escape into the sunset better off than you were before. Damn the cost to anyone else. Am I right?”

Gem thought away even as the knowledge that she’d been so easily seen through hurled a wrench into her cognition.

She wouldn’t allow herself to rest at the mercy of a creature like that. It wasn’t the fate of Gilasev Menza’s daughter to die such an ignominous death, she’d sooner burn.

The woman’s grip was unbreakable, though. Her thoughts surely faster to scale. Gem couldn’t hope to catch her by surprise, couldn’t hope to wrestle free no matter what opening she exploited.

Even the Immortal’s eyes might prove immune to the harsh light that had blinded so many others.

Fear left her heart a hummingbird’s match as Gem thought, finding no solution other than the hope of a miracle. She began to move magic, gathering it in her palm as subtly as was possible. Hoping with every fibre of her being it would go unnoticed.

A foolish wish.

“You’re going to try light, I assume?” Asked the woman, grinning wider. “Please, go ahead. I’d love to see your face when it fails.”

Gem screamed, as much from rage as fear. Loosing the gathered energy in as bright a glare as she was able.

It was searing enough that her own lids fell defensively, sight stolen by the very power she unleashed. Still the grip held, and Gem remained stuck in place by the diamond fingers wrapped around her.

She sustained the energy for arduous seconds, stopping only when exhaustion took its hold on her.

Then the light faded to reveal a face unchanged by Gem’s endeavour. Lips still parted in a sneer, eyes still bright and clear as if the harsh shine had never reached them. Calm unshaken by the greatest power she could muster.

A single look was enough for hope to die, giving way to despair. The woman spoke, as if there was anything more her words could do.

“Are you quite finished?” Asked the Immortal, voice pitched with a terrible, casual calm. “That little tantrum lasted longer than I’d have suspected you could manage. Truly, I’m impressed. You really are your father’s daughter.”

Her smile grew crooked, eyes hard.

“I can’t wait to hear of his rage when he finds what’s left of you.”

Something washed over them both just as the woman’s voice trailed off. Deep as the ocean, broad as the skies. Continental in scale and vacuous in depth. Magic in its purest and most terrible form.

That, at last, broke the woman’s hold. Shaking her thoughts more deeply than all of Gem’s magic had her body.

Gem flew for the second time, arcing downwards to let gravity aid her escape. There was no time to wonder about the infernal presence’s arrival.

She’d dropped barely a dozen paces before a hand closed around her leg. A glance revealed the Immortal’s snarling face at her back. Then Gem screamed as something struck the woman from one side, dragging her out of sight.

The sounds of battle emerged again, hotter, as well as louder. Instinct told her a greater battle than any she’d witnessed was unfolding, but any awe it might have inspired was turned to fear.

She flew onwards, downwards. Arcing and hurtling away, every yard of movement carrying a new prayer for safety.