“How much farther?” Corvo asked.

“We have just barely set out,” Mother replied. “You see the tower as well as I.”

Corvo strained his neck to look at the horizon. He did see the tower from here, the Obelisk—it was impossible not to. It stretched like a Spire into the sky in the distant distance, its top cut off by the circling red storm like the cloud-covered peaks of a mountain. But the view lapsed. It disappeared behind trees or ruined walls, and then he had no sense of where they were going or how far was left.

He was tired already. His feet ached. He wanted to play with Pherenike again. It wasn’t fair that they had to leave.

“How much farther?” he asked again.

Mother sighed. “It is hardly ten miles. We have a path. We will be there very soon.”

But soon came and went. They still weren’t there.

The way out from the Mortalist compound was nothing like the way in. With the goblin sorcerer slain, the landscape changed completely. The forests were gone. In their place were the stark and shadowed ruins of the City. Crumbling arches and lonely columns loomed like gravestones in a cemetery alongside weed-covered roads. The deeper they went, the more solid the ground became, with fewer plants and stretches of glowing flora and more unbroken buildings and roads, so that soon it seemed like a concrete blanket had been spread out permanently underfoot.

They found the place where they had fought the goblin ambush off in the sorcerer’s labyrinth. No bodies had been left to rot, but arrows, clubs, and spears—and stains of blood—cluttered the cobblestone.

Trito kneeled down.

“A carrion demon has devoured the bodies before they could decompose into the Aether,” he said. “One reason of many to go quickly through these streets.”

Mother pressed on without him, saying over her shoulder, “You are the one kneeling.”

The buildings grew in size. From two stories near the walls, to three, to four, and soon five and six and seven, interspersed across city blocks, forming alleys and canyons of brick that stood strong enough against the millennia to cast their shadows from the clouds across the streets.

Then Corvo lost all sense of time. It was just one day of travel. Just one day. Just ten miles, like Mother insisted. But as the streets grew darker, the maelstrom became more violent. Thunder cracked around their heads. On hills or atop buildings they saw creatures, enormous birds with no feathers and monsters the size of wagons, just as they had beyond the City’s walls when they first arrived in Seneria.

Twice they spotted demons. One was bound to land and lumbered distantly down a street. It was blue and cast such a bright light that it seemed to be a star come down to Earth as it burned its color ahead and behind. Another was the same, but it had huge wings, like the dragons that Mother said did not exist, and it swooped over their heads with burning red light, cutting through the dim skies like a torch swept to-and-fro at night.

Mother led them forward. She focused herself before turning a corner, always then with confidence; or, if she hesitated, she would lead them back around, and onward they went.

The Obelisk grew much larger. So did the palace behind it. The pyramid at its top framed the horizon now.

“Can’t you teleport us there with Blink?” Dorian said.

“It is still too far,” Mother said. “And Trito would refuse regardless.”

“Then leave him,” Dorian said.

They glanced to Trito. He said only, “Eris is correct.”

“It isn’t worth it,” Aletheia said. “Not yet. It would draw too much attention.”

That was all.

An area of the city was recessed below the rest. There it was flooded and marsh-like. The party slowed to wade, and Corvo nearly had to swim. Pink algae and blue lily pads crowded the water and sloshed in the wake of his trudging. Trito picked Corvo up, holding him easily with a single hand across the deepest sections. He resented being carried like an infant again, but he was also grateful for the brief rest. But the cold winter air chilled his legs where they were wet.

The mouth of an ancient temple hung open along the road. Brackish water drifted in and out past columns lining its face like huge and gappy clenched-together teeth. Corvo watched it, wondering what it was once meant to have been, when Mother stopped.

Trito lowered him back into the water.

“There,” Mother whispered.

She moved suddenly. She grabbed hold of Corvo and heaved him toward the temple’s flooded entrance, and they and all the others sloshed to take cover from the road.

Corvo felt like he was at the bottom of a nearly empty cup. He shivered as water splashed against his torso.

Mother pulled him to one of the walls. A brick there was missing, and she leaned down to look through it.

Corvo watched over her shoulder.

A bright light appeared at the end of the street. White shone atop the surface of the dark water, casting a radiant haze upward and down of the like Corvo had not seen since the sun’s disappearance weeks prior.

From it emerged three horses, topped with riders armed with spears. They wore armor of layered plates that gleamed like polished steel. Conical helmets shot from their heads with crests of feathers running from front to back. Quivers hung from their saddles with bows nestled within, and they cantered in a triangle formation forward.

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“The Regizar’s Spellbreakers,” Trito whispered.

“Elves?” Aletheia said.

“Maybe they could help us,” Dorian said.

“We would do better to trust orcs with our safety,” Trito said. “Spellbreakers wear enchanted armor and are adept at dispelling magic. Do not let them see you.”

He returned to the entrance and took up a position there. The others took cover, hoping not to be seen, while Mother focused on the temple’s open mouth.

Corvo watched the three riders come closer. Soon he looked away, and he watched the entrance instead. The light came closer and closer, reflected first in the water, and then the sound of sloshing hooves, until at last the foremost in the triangle could be seen straight ahead of them.

He stopped when he was in view. And he looked directly through the temple’s mouth, directly at Mother and Corvo, through the narrow slit in his visor.

“I smell someone elusive,” he said in Regal, over his shoulder, his voice distant and muffled. “Is that….”

Yet then he turned. With a kick of his spurs, he took off in a gallop down the flooded street, and the others followed after him.

Mother sighed. She lowered her staff, and then Corvo realized that it had been glowing.

She had been sustaining a spell.

“Come,” she said. “Quickly. I had to use Invisibility over us. The elves will not see through it, but many others shall. We are nearly there.”

Back out of the swamp, the buildings rose higher yet. Soon every one was tall as the Mortalist tower. Rope bridges spanned the gaps between them, shoddy and poorly made. The Obelisk became impossible to see. Mother continued on regardless.

They came upon the scene of a battle. A dozen dead goblins had been piled together. The head of an orc was on a pike nearby, and black blood formed a film underfoot.

“The work of your Spellbreakers?” Dorian said.

“Yes. They will do the same to us,” Trito said.

“Why?” Aletheia asked.

“Because we are trespassers, and it is in their nature to destroy and consume that which is not their own. The Elves of the City are not so placid as those we met in the Shadowed Lands. Their lives are endless violence against forces darker even than the Shadow Man.”

“You know them well,” Mother said. “We will take your word for it.”

Mother led them up a building, where they could rest safely off the street and stop to reorient themselves. The interior was moldy and wet and cluttered with bones and cobwebs. Its top story was up a dozen flights, and there they rested.

Some creature had used this place recently. Arrows were scattered across the ground. But for now it was theirs alone.

Now the Obelisk of Serapion was like a mountain before them. Its colossal base blocked out the view of the palace behind it. They weren’t far. Hardly another mile, at most.

Then, Corvo hoped, it would be over, and he could sleep in the dark again.

“What was the Obelisk for?” Aletheia asked. “Who was Serapion?”

“He was a Regizar,” Trito said. “One of the most celebrated by my people. He conquered much of Ganarajya in his reign. The Obelisk was built to commemorate his accomplishments—to be a monument that would last an eternity.”

“And reach the Aether?” Mother said.

“It did not reach the Aether in the time of the Old Kingdom. But its observation chamber will serve our purposes well.” He laughed. “It is funny, that no matter how tall his obelisk, he is still forgotten by the mortals of today. So all men deserve to be.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mother said, glaring at him, but she was at the side of the roof now as she watched over its ledge. “More orcs. See.”

The others came to her. They kneeled down and watched, and thus soon saw a congregation of orcs moving down the road between the tall towers. Four of them, tall, black where the elves had worn white, and shrouded in darkness. Each rode a bipedal lizard, as the other had before they met the sorcerer, and behind them were many more goblins. An army of them—at least fifty in a column, marching onward.

One orc lifted his black-helmeted head and looked upward. Like an animal sniffing for prey. The other at his side took a step forward.

A pink light flashed. Corvo had to look away for a moment, and when he looked down again, he saw only three orcs remaining.

One had vanished.

Streaks of green-flaming arrows came from windows along each of the towers. A volley impacted the goblins. Many dropped, while many others raised their shields and spears and screamed. The orcs twisted about themselves on their mounts. One orc was hit at the neck, where his armor was weakest, and he toppled from his mount; yet the other was luckier. The arrows hit his black cuirass and were deflected off to the side, skipping to the street.

It was an ambush.

Elves in light chainmail, cloaked in gray, descended from the towers. Arrows followed after them. Another swath of goblins fell. A tall female elf engaged one of the orcs on its mount; they exchanged blows, and the lizard mount’s jaws snapped at her. But she was faster. She stepped to the side as it bit at her and cleaved down her blade, severing the lizard’s long neck with a single swipe.

It collapsed, and the orc atop it fell to the ground. He was pinned down by its weight.

The elf let out a volley of magic missiles at his chest. They flowed from her fingertips like arrows from a bow, one after another.

The orc’s armor was obliterated. Shards of flaming steel rained down over the goblins behind him. But he was not injured, nor slowed; he returned the gesture, channeling back five putrescent green darts of magic from his fingertips and into the woman’s chest.

They tore through her torso. She stumbled backward, and when she fell, it was in two halves.

Behind them the goblins swarmed one elf and stabbed him until he moved no longer. The remaining orc on his mount killed two elves who had rushed to put it down; the lizard slew one with a bite to the neck, and the orc cut the head from a second. But an archer in light armor aimed a shot with her bow carefully, and she shot an arrow clean into the orc’s visor.

The largest orc, he who had killed the female elf, roared something in a distant, unfamiliar speech. He threw the lizard off from his legs and stood, and his few remaining forces swiftly retreated back down the road.

More arrows were exchanged. But soon the orcs were gone, and the elves were left with the ground.

Mother grabbed Corvo and covered his eyes. She drew him to her side.

“They fight and kill and die for a scrap of ruins,” she said.

“Yes,” Trito said.

“That can’t be all,” Aletheia said. “The orcs are evil. Aren’t they? They just want to destroy. That’s what Astera said.” But she did not sound confident.

“The only difference between an elf and an orc is that an orc has no choice but to become a predator of the arcane,” Trito said. “Like a demon itself. He will consume the Essence of any elf he captures to prolong his own life. But he is no eviler than the elves he fights, for many elves will do the same to fuel their magic. It is only their choice of prey which differs.”

“What is the choice of prey for an elf?” Dorian asked slowly.

“If they can find them? Magicians are preferred.”

Corvo peeked through Mother’s fingers. He saw that one of the elves had lost his arm in the melee. Two others came to him, yet he touched the bleeding stump and held it firmly.

Before their eyes, a new arm sprouted. It extended, pale and unclothed, until the elf was as he had been moments before. His wounds regenerated in an instant.

Yet the female elf remained dead.

The elf who had regrown his arm came to her. He touched the two halves of her body.

A moment passed.

She turned to dust beneath him.

“Elves will also often cannibalize their comrades,” Trito said.

“The spell that removed one of the orcs,” Mother said. “Did you recognize it?”

“It is a trap. A rune left in the road to disorient or kill those who do not notice it.”

“We’re lucky we didn’t walk into it,” Aletheia said.

“I can sense them. You should be able to as well.”

“We must be careful as we proceed,” Mother said. “And hurry.”