Alize opened her eyes to muted sunlight. She blinked to see Onder’s wrinkly face above her. His smile gathered the skin around his eyes.

“It’s a relief to see you awake, Alize. We feared you might take much longer to recover from such a spell casting.”

Alize yawned before sitting up straight as the memory of the night’s events replayed in her mind. But her worries receded to see both Davram and Kell seated by the fire. The magic had protected them.

You saved Sargons, Celillie’s voice admonished.

I controlled the situation, Alize countered, frowning.

The new day had granted her a strong headache. She massaged the back of her neck and asked the Magi to explain what had happened.

The blue light had found Davram, none too soon because the encroaching Kogaloks arrived only just as he registered what had happened. But, understanding himself to be invisible, Davram had simply stepped aside to avoid a Soul Eater. Alize did not miss the numb tone the Sargon used to recount the experience. It seemed he had not quite completely recovered. Concern flash over Kell’s face too. Davram described standing perfectly still as the woods around him filled with Soulless.

He did not know until dawn what Kell had seen at the campsite.

Alize was already invisible when she fell unconscious, though Kell only ascertained that after shaking her quite a bit.

“The most alone I’ve ever felt,” Kell added, “knowing what was coming.”

Alize gave him a sad smile. She knew that feeling all too well.

The Kogaloks had trampled up to their vicinity with marked intention, and it was only by good luck that they did not collide with any of the horses. Kell for his part had barely dared to breathe; one Soulless passed so close to him that the fur on his boots brushed Kell’s arm. But they could not work through Onder’s magic, and eventually they withdrew, passing by Davram again.

“I have lost contact with the High Magi at Caracas.” Onder said gravely. “They all may have been killed. It appears the Kogaloks came from there.”

“They may have obtained information about Alize,” Davram warned.

“That’s very concerning.” Onder replied, “As is the fact that because I slept, the signal that should have gone out when a Magi is harmed could not reach me.”

“Has this happened before?” Alize asked.

“It’s difficult to say, since I normally am asleep in the heart of the night. But it may explain how the Magi community missed the assault of the first two Magi that attacked you. The Caracas High Magi though, they are not easily missed. I’ve relayed my suspicions to the other Magi.”

“And?”

“There are at least seven additional Magi unaccounted for. They could all have been killed, or the Kogaloks could have made them into Soulless. An investigation has begun. But Alize, I have a question for you. The way Kell tells it, you took my magic.” Onder locked his gaze on Alize, and for the first time, she could see the defiance Kell had mentioned in Julfa.

“I didn’t take it,” Alize retorted defensively. “I used it.”

“What does that mean?”

Alize shrugged. She did not relish this line of questioning because it made it all too obvious that she had no answers, and no understanding. Yet again. “I just looked for the spell and I found it and I used it.”

“No.” Onder shook his head adamantly. “Do you know how long it takes to learn those spells Alize? It’s not something that can be borrowed - it must be studied by skilled Conjurers! Your magic must -”

“I’m sorry?” Alize snapped. What did Onder mean to imply. “I saved your life with it, you thick-headed nasty old-”

“Enough, Alize. Onder, this isn’t helpful.” Davram stated from across the fire, his voice conveying an absolute finality.

Alize grumbled and shook her head vigorously. Her mind felt sluggish. She rose to her feet and began stretching her limbs.

Davram continued, his voice less urgent than the Mage’s. “Alize, Onder is trying to articulate that what you did is not technically possible.”

“Disproven.” Alize said curtly. “The trees told me how.” She rose and began pacing around the campfire.

“If you can use my magic, imagine what you can do with the echoes!” Onder exclaimed.

“I don’t have any echoes!”

“Let’s give them to you – I’ve still got the two vials! We can just see-”

“No!” Alize yelled. Her frustration overwhelmed the restraints she had so carefully constructed. “I’m not here for you to experiment on!”

Davram interjected, “No one is suggesting that-”

“Yes he is! Why must you keep acting like that this is all my responsibility?!”

Without another glance at Onder, Alize turned her back to the campsite. This isn’t about me, she wanted to scream. But like a gasp against a gale, the conviction evanesced, utterly futile.

Instead, she began walking. She needed to move to clear her head, and in every direction the forest called her to its open embrace. Away from these questions, away from these failures. She walked without looking back.

In the forest, detritus the color of rust surrounded the squat evergreens. At Alize’s height, the woods appeared dead, with rusty branches that broke as Alize pushed past them. The tree’ greenery lived in the canopy. The needles beneath her swallowed her footfalls. They silenced her against her will. She wanted to make noise. The scene haunted her for its passive surrender to death preying on its still loveliness.

The trees had warned her, but all their whispers and cautions had limited use without explanation, and Alize understood nothing. Her life was not her own, her safety beyond her control, so long as she lacked the ability to forge meaning. She could guess at the trees, but she did not know truly know them. It was never a conversation.

Alize followed the shadows without any purpose or direction. The feeling was all too familiar. Though the trees assured her the threat had passed, they trembled with the memory, still unsettled.

Alize hated that fear. She pushed it from her gut to stop the sickening weakness it fostered there. The Magi had been killed. They would give her no explanation. Onder, Kell and Davram were still by her side, but with the threat so close today, how long would they stay?

And was it truly protection, a rogue Magi and two Sargons? What could it truly be worth?

As if to answer her question, Alize heard a branch crunch behind her. The trees had told her, of course, that Kell had followed her, but now he seemed ready to announce himself.

When she turned back, Kell met her gaze rather sheepishly. “If I don’t say anything, can I come with you?”

All the responses that flew into Alize’s mind were both untrue and unkind, and she had no more energy to riddle through all the corresponding emotions. Instead, she said nothing. She turned her back to Kell and continued pressing into the forest, giving equal heed to the brambles growing thick before her and the Sargon’s footsteps behind her.

If Kell had concerns about getting lost, he did not voice them.

Alize ducked under branches and twisted between boulders. Everywhere the woods blossomed in full brilliance of the autumn, as many shades of brown and orange as the spring held of yellow and crimson. The scene bore a bittersweet ordinariness, for this was the world Alize knew better than anything, the world with no path, with filtered sunlight and dense pockets of shadows.

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Alize pushed against the vegetation, embracing each impediment, but careless in her missteps because she had no mindful peace to ground her. Not today. The brambles caught on her leggings and scraped the skin underneath. She knew later she would find scab streaked down her calves as yet more reminders of her sloppiness and fragility.

Without glancing backwards, Alize imagined Kell enduring the same abuses from the thorns. He was without his armor, as exposed as Alize. But, she told herself, no Sargon would have the experience for such petty pain. She wanted to see him fail at it, to distract her from her own failings. She did not want to be the weak one.

Kell fell behind, but never far.

Fumes of decay wafted through the trees, mixed with the forest’s fresh damp. Alize stopped when she reached the edge of the marshland.

When Kell halted at her side, she twisted to regard him with cold eyes.

“What do you want Kell?”

“You’re scared,” Kell reached out to grasp her hand as he had held it earlier.

But Alize was in no mood for it. She wrenched free, feeling his callouses scrap against her own. “You forget your place, Sargon.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“Right.” Alize retorted. “All you’ve done is slow me down.”

“Suit yourself. But I’m here, if you want a friend.”

Alize laughed into the dank air. “That’s not your true agenda! You’re keeper of the Hrumi! You’re here because Davram thinks you can manage me!”

“Manage you, Alize? Believe me, I wouldn’t dare try.” Kell tried to smile but his half-way grin faltered when he caught Alize’s eyes. “Look, I’m being honest with you. I like you and-”

“Is that part of the script?”

“The script?”

“The script you force-feed the Hrumi?” Alize spit out her words.

“Nocturne, Alize. I wish you would trust me a little more by now.”

“You’ve got one task here - and you’re doing it great, really. But don’t think that I forget your purpose.”

“And you,” Kell narrowed his eyes, “seem happy enough to misunderstand me.”

“Don’t you dare! You’re totally disingenuous! You don’t know me, just as you don’t know the Hrumi!”

“Then tell me something! Tell me something true!”

“I don’t have to!” Alize snapped. She felt a tiny rush of satisfaction when she saw Kell grimace with exasperation. Falter, she goaded him.

“Fine,” Kell retorted, “You can have your own self-fulfilling prophecy. You refuse to tell anyone anything meaningful and in the same breath reproach them for their ignorance. Cyclical logic, and you -”

But Kell’s last words were lost as Alize swung towards him.

The force knocked his breath from his body. He tumbled backwards into the ferns.

But he did not collapse. When Alize blinked he regained his footing.

Kell shoved her right back.

Alize deflected his weight, intending to topple him again, but his footwork kept him balanced, allowing him even to trip her, to knock her to the ground. She yelled, but it rang mostly of frustration, not anger.

And yelling felt really good.

Kell stepped back from her ashen-faced. “Alize I’m-”

“Fight me!” Alize shouted. She rose to her feet once more, “I can still beat you!” I need to win, for once. I need to remember what confidence feels like.

Kell hesitated but evaluated Alize. After a moment he began shrugging out of his overcoat. “No weapons?”

Alize nodded. She assumed an attack stance but Kell struck first.

She twisted from his blow. Kell’s next thrusts missed her too, until she pulled him off balance and he staggered into a tree trunk.

Undeterred, Kell jabbed with his elbow but Alize avoided the impact, kicking his knee from behind. He fell backwards and Alize knocked him hard in the stomach as he hit the ground.

As Kell lay coughing, Alize bit her cheek. Perhaps she had gone too far. But in an instant Kell recovered, lurched to his feet and jabbed her in the gut.

Though Alize folded with the impact, she caught his hand and twisted, maneuvering to grant her control over his whole arm. Using her weight, she applied enough force to guide Kell gasping to the ground. She easily positioned herself to kneel on his back.

“You can call it.” Kell panted.

“I won?”

“I’d say so.”

Alize released him. “Let’s go again.”

Kell rose. “Ready.”

Alize’s shoved lightly initially but Kell responded in full force and soon they were striking and blocking each other in rapid succession. Beads of sweat appeared on Kell’s forehead and Alize could feel her chiton sticking to her back. Her muscles began to burn but still she kept up her speed, her best protection and her best offense.

Kell’s breath became ragged but he lost nothing in his technique. Then, surprising Alize, he swiped her swiftly, causing her to lose balance. His fingers tightened around her arms as she stumbled to the dry ground with Kell on his forarms above her.

Each way Alize tried to shift, she could not shake him. Finally, Alize stilled. “Call it,” she rasped. She swallowed as Kell released her, then pulled herself to a sitting position. Her heart hammering, she tilted her head to watch the Sargon.

Kell sank down to the ground across from Alize and smoothed his hands over his face. When he lowered them, Alize could see the calm had not yet returned to his features. Her own hard breathing matched his, leaving Alize wondering where his thoughts traced. Wondering if his mind flared with anger, exhaustion, or worse, indifference.

A Sargon winning against a Hrumi, honorably, nearly shattered Alize’s world. Her whole life, all her training, all her discipline, rendered inferior, useless. This was the failure that Celillie had taught her would be her death sentence.

“Thank you,” Alize blurted out.

Kell looked up. Alize searched his eyes, but found no hints of contempt, nor smugness nor condescension. She kept bracing for a monster but found instead something that frightened her so much more because she could not rationalize it. Her guard kept falling before Kell, and she began to doubt its utility.

“For what?” Kell asked.

But Alize could not form the words. For dispelling monsters. She broke away from his gaze. She wanted to bury that gratitude, to hate it, but it seeped forth unhindered. Around her the trees were silent in their consciousness like bated breath.

Still Alize found no words to answer him.

“Can I tell you something?” Kell ventured.

Alize blinked before muttering that word of certain defeat. “Sure.” If you must.

“I thought about letting you beat me.” Kell lowered his voice under the weight of forest’s hush. “To assuage your Hrumi pride.”

Surprising herself, Alize laughed softly. “Is it that bad?”

“Is it-? Yes! It’s like a barrier,” Kell told her, animated, gesturing with his hands, “you wrap yourself up in it, and I can’t even talk to you. I don’t know which you resent more, that I’m a Sargon, or that I think I can help you.”

“I can’t exactly separate them.” Alize shook her head, grimacing. “When I’m not fighting you, I’m fighting myself.”

Kell leaned back to look up to the canopy. “It sounds exhausting.”

“It is! You want me to believe that the princes are persecuting us for our actions, not our souls, but I’m responsible for my actions! That implicates me!”

“If you say you don’t kidnap children, I believe you.”

“But it’s the Hrumi, Kell, you can’t separate us!” Alize groaned in frustration. “And I’d be crazy to trust a Sargon anyway! You have to realize that just talking to you goes against my entire upbringing - everything I do, everything, is a concession against,” Alize stressed her words, “my convictions. So don’t scorn me for wanting to win. I already feel like I’m losing.”

For an instant Kell’s eyes met Alize’s. Though she expected his pity, she startled instead to see warmth, like comfort. “I’m sorry for that. That’s not my intention. I don’t want to tell you what to think – I just want you to think.”

“Is that true though, Kell? You don’t even deny my perspective, you just mangle it to fit your own heroic narrative. You’ve taken my own story from me.”

Kell paused, blinking, and then responded slowly. “Your story’s not wrong, Alize, but I think it’s incomplete. I’m trying to reconcile both of our stories.”

Wincing, Alize dropped her hands to her lap. “Like an earthen mirror,” she grumbled.

“A what?”

“You haven’t heard of an earthen mirror?”

Kell raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t.”

Alize rested her chin in her hand. “Lest we trust what is without and neglect to gaze within, an earthen mirron reflects naught and grants us recognition.”

Kell blinked. “Where did you learn that?”

“It’s part of a poem, my mentor used to recite it. It’s supposed to teach you that the outside world rarely gives you enough information to constitute truth. And incomplete truths won’t teach us any more than what we already believe.”

“Ah,” Kell hummed, “then until you see your beliefs clearly, you’re letting them cloud everything else.”

“I guess so. The only way to be free of our assumptions is to learn to see them.”

“I rather like that. What a beautiful way for the Hrumi to cultivate freedom.”

“I don’t know,” Alize grimaced. “Isn’t the most effective oppression the belief that we are free? Wait,” Alize stammered, “forget I said that.”

“Why?”

Because you don’t need another reason to scorn the Hrumi. “Because,” Alize drew her hands down her face, muttering, “you’re a Sargon, you’ll take it out of context.”

“I’ll be the first one to admit that my society isn’t perfect.”

What a pretty sentiment, Alize despaired. Internal grievances among the Hrumi were not discussed. Celillie called for a fight before the gods. So far, the gods had always favored her and then each matter was considered resolved and subsequently unmentionable.

Kell frowned, continuing his thoughts uninvited. “I don’t think there’s a society in the world where it wouldn’t take special of courage to question the story they tell you.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Alize sighed. She observed Kell, trying to hear his words, not the accusations she overlaid on them. “Look, I’m sorry I push back against you so much. This - none of this - is easy for me.”

“I should understand that. I think,” Kell made a face, “I think I’ve come off as awfully self-righteous. But honestly, Alize, I’m learning a lot from all the ways you disagree with me.”

Alize smiled as she shook her head. Kell seemed so eager to be proven wrong, it made no sense to her. “Then I’ll tell you something else too.”

“What?”

“Letting me win would be a much bigger blow to my pride than actually beating me.”

“Aha! I did something right!” Kell flashed a grin at Alize, and for a heartbeat she thought herself lost in his brown eyes. “And listen,” he continued more somberly, “I will tell you that I don’t have a problem with wanting to win. I just don’t think it always entails beating your opponent.”

Kell rose, extending his hand to Alize. When she raised her eyebrows at him, he flushed slightly, but did not withdraw. Alize drew a breath and wrapped her fingers around his warmth, to match his tight grip.

Maybe for the first time, his strength did not frighten her.