Beryn breathed out. The kind of destruction that had been asked of her was beyond a scale she felt confident carrying out. She walked through her men and the conscripts of the town checking weapons and what armor could be had for everyone. Then, she looked through the poison arrows. It took most of her magic to keep up with the poison production and the smiths had become fast at making them, but there still seemed to be so few. Most of all, she checked faces for resolve.

The resolve she saw was strong. They trusted her. She fed them, helped cure their diseases and leveled the battlefield between regular humans and the forest gods. They all had faith in her, but she did not have faith in herself. The waste of it… she thought to herself.

However, failure and rebellion were not options. She looked to the oil-soaked rags for the ends of regular arrows. “Everything looks correct. You have all done well,” she said. “Arm up, we start now.”

***

Once Taigan was looking sleepy and leaning on her slightly, Rosalea would decide that they should both go to bed.

Perhaps it was because of the conversation, but she had a familiar dream.

She looked back over her shoulder at the Castle Darius, before shape-shifting into a wolf… she was establishing a home in the woods with Gaiden and Hakon. This time, in the dream, Rosalea thought she had a sense of white fur in her peripheral vision, but each time she tried to grab onto the memory, it seemed to slip out of her reach.

The cottage was on fire, Gaiden was dead…

Rosalea was in Mire. She was trying to get away from the men looming around her, but her spell activated and pulled her down to her knees. The men turned to fire, the cottage fire spreading somehow to Mire, and she was trapped…

She awoke with a twitch. Her heart was thumping. Feels like the first time the dream changed at all. She wondered if her mother’s spell could be slowly weakening on her. She stared at the roof of her shelter. It is still night, she thought as she waited for her heart to slow down. Nauru adjusted against her, and she put her arm around him.

We cannot use fire, she thought of the people not just marked by the dragon, but within the boundaries of the town subject to the ownership spell. Anything they would need to run from could get them killed instead. She could easily see herself, wanting to flee the town, unable to escape the encroaching fire because her body locked up. She was not prepared for any kind of solution that involved indiscriminate killing.

The wind shifted, fluttering her canvas door, and she thought she smelled smoke. She felt unsettled. She got herself up and did not take time to put her boots or socks on and just carefully picked her way out to the edge of the sunning rocks.

Nekana was there. She gave a glance from the side and then looked back out into the gray light of not-quite dawn, toward the town. “That seems like a bad sign.”

“What?” Rosalea asked, feeling confusion.

Nekana smiled as Rosalea came alongside her. “Nothing, it just seems like any time there is an ominous feeling in the winds of the future, you are awake to feel them.”

Mere creaked her way up to the other side of Rosalea. “Perhaps it is that she hears the trees.”

“I do not have magic,” Rosalea reminded them with a frown. “I thought I smelled smoke is all.”

“There is usually smoke in the air from that refinery,” Mere observed.

All three of them stared out for a moment, and as Rosalea thought perhaps there really was not anything out of place, she saw the dragon land on the cliff near the distant Miron, and she roared loud enough they could faintly hear her.

Then, from along the cliffside, dozens of points of light appeared and hailed down on the valley below like a rain of light, that began to blossom into fire. A few seconds later, they fired again, and again, a hail of fire from above into the valley below.

Nekana snarled and shook off the clearly stunned sensation she had. “Get everyone up, we must go now.”

“No!” Rosalea said.

Nekana was already in motion, and she half-tripped as she stopped and spun back to Rosalea, “Why?”

It is just exactly what we were talking about trying to do Miron, to force them to come out or go where we want. They did it first. “It is a trap, they will be waiting for you if you go.”

“We cannot let them burn the forest,” Nekana said flatly and turned away. “Everyone get up! Let’s go!”

“No!” Rosalea said adamantly again, but the wolf was gone. Mere howled, her old voice cracking a little with the emotion that she was clearly feeling. Nakai answered from some distance off, and everyone else woke and howled with her. Connall’s pack answered. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach grew, and Rosalea moved to try and grab the old wolf by her head and get her to stop the call. “No! You must not!”

But Mere simply shook her head, and Rosalea lost her footing. “You do not understand. It does not matter. We cannot let them burn our home.”

And Rosalea was scrabbling back onto her feet, “Do not go!”

But only Miri, Sasha, and Raisa stayed. Even Bazil went.

Rosalea met Raisa’s eyes helplessly, but she shook her head, looked away, and moved off into the trees where Rosalea could not see her.

Taigan and Nauru came toward her, Nauru whining as Rosalea stood powerlessly and looked at the fire spreading through the valley. A tight band settled around her chest. Why can I not do anything?

Taigan looked out, taking in the shadows dancing near the growing flames as a new hail of flaming arrows landed in the trees below. Everything was catching too easily, there must be a mage either fanning it, or an oil was involved. “They took our idea,” he said with pursed lips, and he looked over at Taj.

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Rosalea paced back and forth along the cliff edge. Three pups, no magic, and one Uryan warrior with a sick liana. She felt rage mixing a little into the anxiety. If she was here, what was she supposed to be doing here?

“If we cannot get the pack back, some of them are going to get killed,” Rosalea said. “In minutes, they are going to open fire on the mystics that come with their poisoned arrows.”

“Demons and fire?” Taigan said with a raised brow, “I did not know that Hell could be so properly represented.”

Rosalea nodded and paced back the other direction, stepping over Nauru as he tried to get between her feet and make her stop. Something. I have to do something.

Another wolf came from the trees further up the mountain. “I heard the call for war,” said Amalia. Rosalea felt relief surge through her as she ran with her bare feet right up to the wolf. “They went! I could not stop them! They are going to get killed!”

Amalia scooped Rosalea up by the back of her shirt, detaining her and stopping her from grabbing onto her. She put her down again on the slate stones that made the drop off that everyone sunned on. “That’s a lot of fire,” she said, looking at the orange glow on the horizon. “They are forcing us to come down and defend the Moryshin.”

“He is in the valley?” Taigan asked.

“Yes,” Amalia said. Rosalea braced as if the wolf would stop what she was doing and run down to join the rest of the pack.

They heard the first faint screeches of a deer mystic that went demon, and the green-yellow of its flame was just discernible among the orange flames of the mundane fire by the river. Taigan flinched, but looked at Rosalea, “There may be no other choice but to try and fight.”

The dragon roared again.

“What if it is looking for me?”

“We know that it is, and the Gods have made very clear their stance on you ending up in her hands,” Amalia said calmly. “You and Taigan almost died over it last time.”

Rosalea gave Taigan a guilty look, but he managed a smile for her.

Rosalea began to pace again. If we cannot go for the dragon, I wonder if we can go for Beryn and cut the head off the snake.

“Rosalea,” Amalia said with her head tilted to one side. “What is that on your foot?” Amalia asked with a tilted head.

Rosalea frowned and paused, looking down at her leg. She half expected to see a bug on it, but then she saw the dragon brown spot that was on the top of her foot, near her ankle. It was large and irregular-shaped, blotchy. “Birth mark?” she asked pointing to it.

Amalia was staring at her intensely. “Rosalea, will you answer a random question for me?”

“Sure?” Rosalea frowned. Why are we talking about this in the middle of a fire?

“What kind of wolf did you change into?”

“Uh, black?” Rosalea asked, “I guess I had a white spot here,” she pointed to the brown mark. “Why the sudden interest?”

“Just a dream I had once.” She looked back down to the fire. “If Taigan will agree to arm you, we can go down and see what we can do to help.”

Rosalea nodded enthusiastically, surprised by Amalia’s change of opinion almost as much as she was surprised by the odd questions. “I have a spare bow,” Taigan said, holding his hand out. The bow materialized from his earth storage. He handed it to her. “Not too many arrows though. I also have,” and he put his hand out again, this time calling a hunting knife. “Better than nothing. Honor is well enough we can try to follow along.”

Amalia nodded, “I will guide us down.”

***

The Moryshin breathed in the smoke. He heard the chaos. He heard the screams of his children. The dragon was burning his forest. It is too far. The gods provide me with no heir, and yet I cannot fight. I am blind. I have lost the trees. I cannot remember myself.

His gaunt, wasted body was a burden to him. A dragon stole my future, and now one would steal my present. Rage pressed through him. In the forest, where death and corruption stained the trees, he could hear a clear call out to him. He could hear a promise for power.

Today, it whispered to him, a war is going to start if you do not stop it. They will all fight until the last of them, and then the dragon will win.

He did not want to embrace the kind of darkness he could feel in that corruption. I am supposed to be what holds the mystics steady, that stops the magic from changing them, and not go changing myself into some monster…

What else is someone long passed their prime good for? He did not know if that point of corruption was speaking to him, or he was imagining it in his distress. Maybe he was already corrupted because the land and his children were poisoned, and so he was slowly unraveling.

Unwise are born every day now. I cannot go on like this.

And so, the ancient unicorn slowly got to his feet, summoning all of the last of his strength. He focused on that point of land, where the first rabbit mystic had died with the increased dose of poison. This body is a burden. This life is a burden. I have to become something else if I am going to protect this forest.

“Stop!” a voice cut through his whirl of inner thoughts.

He looked over, but could not see. The voice had sounded so authoritative. He waited, but there was no other sound.

The effort he had been putting into psyching himself up to fight back faded. The dragon was screaming rage - some of his children had gotten into a big enough group to attack it, and so it was leaving.

Thunder clapped overhead, and the rain began to pour, driving back smoke and fire.

He felt ashamed for losing faith in his mystics.

The call of the corruption and death remained though, whispering to him, that it would be there when he wanted it.

***

Hello, I am granting you graces now, an unfamiliar voice chimed in Kartowen’s ear. I would like you to know that you are being scryed right now by a hostile Myajac, and I would strongly advise that you take cover immediately.

Several of his stats were adjusting in the corners of his vision. He had not been able to properly use the old magic since it had come back to him a few days before. He had wanted to talk to the Moryshin, but it was clearly earning him the attention of Bane. He transformed into a mouse and scurried away as fast as he could.

The voice unnerved him; it sounded familiar, but he could not place it. He was used to hearing someone that sounded like Bane before the unification process when he used the old magic back home.

There will come a time when you and I will be enemies, but for now, my enemy’s enemy is my ally. I am re-attuning your blessings to be Sage’s graces. This process will complete in a few moments. Please activate the shroud now, though.

Kartowen’s heart pounded as he saw the ability pop up in the lower corner of his vision, and he waved at it with his mouse’s paw. He suddenly felt… sheltered. The magic that sheltered him was Caelus-based, distorting and displacing his image until he was not traceable.

Who are you? He thought to the new system master, but there was no answer for him. His abilities all had slightly different names, but everything else seemed the same, except his new ability of shroud.

He looked back to the tree where the Moryshin was and shook his head. So, was Bane… rooting for some sort of change? When we were each unique people and not what he is now, his domains were order and death.

If Bane was scrying for him, did he know about the deep magic being accessible again? Or… had he always maintained his own personal connection to it?

Kartowen had bought time before things got truly ugly, but if people did not figure out how to handle this situation very soon, then things were going to go very dark soon. He could not be on hand to stop the Moryshin’s temptations again, not with Bane watching.