Through the window, the light of the moons shone down on the trees. And in that moment, Hina was sure she knew where Kai was. It was right there in the name. The Grove.

And there was a way into the grove from every room in the building—Kai was never even far away.

She closed the curtain, and kicked at the window through the coarse fabric. The glass wobbled under her foot, and then shifted before it shattered, falling to pieces on the ground in a crunching, clattering hail of glass shards.

A faint rumble came from behind her, but Hina ignored it. She tugged the curtain aside to reveal a jagged hole in the window, sharp fingers of glass still clinging to the frame on all sides.

Hina leapt through, landing on the other side on shifting dirt and leaves, and the crunch of broken glass under her sandals.

Her right forearm was slashed and bleeding. A trickle of blood flowed onto the soil as she walked. It wouldn't kill her. Bram's Emergency Treatment had showed her what a significant wound looked like. This was minor.

And Hina had more important things to worry about right now.

The noise in the room behind her resolved into a pained growl. Hina didn't look back. Even if he survived—and Hina didn't think he would—Bruce wasn't getting up any time soon. The sound faded as she walked away from the building.

The night was cold, and filled with the wet scent of the trees. Rotting leaves and damp earth underfoot.

Hina walked towards the center—it was a feeling more than anything else. But she was certain, Kai would be there.

Stumbling over roots and the uneven ground in the dim light, Hina walked under heavy branches and around curved trunks. She kept between the trees where the way was clearer as much as she could, but the grove only grew thicker as she walked on.

She considered summoning a light, but dismissed the thought. The fight with Bruce had left her more drained than she'd like—she couldn't afford to waste power. Not until she had Kai and they were on their way out of here.

And it was better if she didn't draw attention to herself with a light. Who knew what else was out here? And both Gerda and Ivan were unaccounted for.

Though she half suspected that Ivan wouldn't stand in her way.

But Gerda... Hina's heart raced at the thought of running into her in the dark. It would be better if she could avoid her entirely. If it came to a fight—well, Hina hoped she'd have surprise on her side.

But if Kai was in the center of the Grove, surely Gerda would be there too.

The thought made Hina stop in her tracks.

If nothing else, she had to go in with a well full of power. Hina leaned one hand against the rough bark of a nearby tree while she cycled.

The power rushed into her, a raging torrent of energy that filled her up in moments. It chased away some of Hina's physical fatigue and replaced it with a less tangible kind. And with a sense of clarity and purpose. Nothing could stand in her way.

She'd bested both Bruce and Nora. She could handle Gerda.

Hina walked on. Pressing in amongst the thick vegetation, she walked for what felt like hours.

It was hard to tell how big the grove was. She couldn't see the windows of the house behind her anymore. She couldn't see where she'd come in. All she could see in any direction was the trees.

And the wet trail of darkness that she left behind her in dripping splashes on the ground. At least she wouldn't get lost. Wouldn't get any more lost than she already was. And when she touched the wounds on her arm, she could feel that they were already closing. Healing already.

She walked on.

After what felt like another hour, the trees thinned. Hina walked up to the edge of a wide open clearing. She could feel the sense of power ramping up, the air thick with it.

Her eyes drawn to the tree in the center of the clearing. It was tall, towering over all of the others, on a scale of its own. It might have been a hundred times Hina's height, if not more, silvery leaves shimmering in the moonlight—or no, glowing with a light of their own.

Twisted roots and branches fused together, forming a maze of limbs that reached out in all directions. The great trunk was raised on a platform of roots, which curved around and under the tree, coming out of the ground all across the clearing.

The shapes that it made—the patterns—were mind-bending and hard to follow. Looking at them hurt Hina's head.

She tried to look away from the details, but it was hard. Something in her was drawn to the images, to the shapes, to the way the moonlight played across the leaves. It was a familiar feeling, and Hina resisted the tug of it, glancing in short bursts at the tree.

Hina could see its details better than she should have been able to in the darkness—it was lit with a sourceless, directionless light, like the light inside the building—and when she thought about it, Hina could feel the tree. It had a tangible presence, even from the edge of the clearing. A familiar presence. A hint of recognition. A murmured hush in the dark. A shared secret.

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If Kai was here, he wasn't in sight. Hina walked around the tree, keeping to the edge, behind the trunks of the other trees. Hidden in the shadows, she hoped.

Half-way around, a figure came into view, bent over a platform or a table at the base of the big tree. There was another figure lying on the table, a slight form that Hina would recognise anywhere. The standing figure was chanting in a low voice. Hina couldn't make out the words.

It was Gerda, Hina was sure of it. And Kai on the table, not moving. And she was doing something to him.

Hina had to stop her. Kai was not safe.

She summoned the sigil, a pulsing, writhing mass of twisted lines that spun within her mind—bigger and more complicated than it should had been for all that Hina had been the one to summon it. It held more detail than she remembered. More loops and whorls and twisted lines popped into being as she held the image. A pattern of such complexity that it hurt to look at, much more to hold.

It moved within her mind like a living thing, pulling at her power in all directions.

Hina's head ached from the effort it took to resist that pull, and a deep weariness settled into Hina's body.

She had to act quickly, before she lost control.

Forming a thread of power, Hina extended it towards the sigil.

The sigil pulled—pulled her thread into a channel, into a torrent, and it wanted more. It asked for, demanded more.

It was all Hina could do to hold on to her power—stop it from taking it all at once. Her well drained to a quarter within an instant, and still it pulled, trying to widen the connection.

Hina couldn't keep this up, she had to do something and she had to do it now.

She fumbled, feeling around for the beast core in her pocket—within her ambit. The little ball of earth-aspected power. Hina needed to link it to the sigil, so the sigil was using the core instead of Hina's own power.

It was something she'd never tried before, but she knew it was possible in theory. Olivia had said so.

Hina extended a thread from the beast-core to the thing in her mind, feeling out with it for a connection—she felt it snap into place.

The draw on her own power slowed—with a flex of her strained will, she tried to reduce the flow of the connection between Hina herself and the sigil down to a tiny thread. Small enough that her rapidly dropping store of power would last a few more moments.

It was a balancing act. Hina couldn't unlink herself entirely. Not without giving up control of the power to the sigil. And if she ran dry, she could lose control entirely—like the first time, and Hina could feel that if that happened now, the consequences would be far worse.

That's where the worst kinds of monsters come from, Olivia had said.

Hina bore down with her will, and the connection shrank. Through the connection, she got flashes of the sigil's will—an endless pit of hunger, but sated for now—the beast-core was... adequate. It would be compliant so long as it continued to be fed.

Hina took all of stones out of her pouch. Seven shiny black stones piled ready in her left hand.

She had to use every one of them. Every advantage she had. Her right hand went to the bell around her neck—unbinding couldn't hurt, surely. She unwrapped the string from around the clapper and pulled the bell over her head and held it in her right hand—carefully keeping the clapper away from the sides.

If she had anything else that could help, she'd have used it. She cursed herself for not spending the time—the risk—to figure out what her other trinkets did. And then dismissed the thought. She couldn't spare the focus.

Hurriedly, Hina pictured what she wanted from the sigil.

It pulsed within her mind, expanding and contracting three times, with increasing force. She could feel it drawing heavily on the beast-core, a cup filling as it drew far more power than Hina could have supplied—her well was now down to about a tenth, mere dregs of power—the sigil could have easily killed her if she hadn't had the beast-core ready. The other one—she had to be ready to swap it in right away if the first one ran out.

Her mind ached as a wave of patterns flashed through it in a complex sequence. So fast that Hina could only catch images of one or two of the patterns amoung—hundreds? More?

Hina needed to be closer. She stepped out from behind the trees, walked into the clearing. If Gerda looked up now, she'd see her.

But the thin woman stood with her arms raised before the tree, her chanting growing louder and more intense. She didn't look in Hina's direction.

And there was nothing for it, Hina needed a clear line of sight.

The chanting reached a peak and then stopped, punctuated with a gesture from Gerda in Kai's direction that Hina couldn't quite make out in the darkness.

The image of a cup in Hina's mind filled as the sigil flashed through its working within Hina's mind, a whirl of complex patterns and symbols and a flood of power.

The air went still, the silence palpable.

The working completed with a snap, and Hina felt the sigil's power surge through her, a wave of energy that threatened to overwhelm her before it went out into the world through her ambit, centered over the palm of Hina's left hand.

Hina raised her right hand and rang the bell over and over again. The noise of it drowned out everything else, and filled Hina's head with pain and light. A deep, resonant sound that echoed through the clearing.

Another roaring, deafening noise drowned out even the sound of the bell. The air lit up with fire as a stone shot forward from within the cloud of stones floating above Hina.

The roaring continued as the stones shot forward, one by one to strike Gerda. Something flickered in the air around Gerda, with each deafening impact, flashes of coloured light lit up a sphere around her, three, four, five, six times.

With the seventh impact, Hina heard a crack and a loud crash, and a cloud of red dust rose and crashed over Hina. Everything in the clearing was hidden by red dust.

It hung in the air while Hina fought to dismiss the sigil in her mind.

The torrent of power was still linked to the beast core in Hina's right pocket, and the sigil resisted her intent to dismiss it. It wouldn't go anywhere. It hung there in her mind, a huge thing, tendrils twisting and writhing.

Hina pushed at the connection with all of her might. She strained and shoved, but it wouldn't budge. She gathered up the last of her power and pushed again. The core in her pocket crumbled and fell apart. The sigil in her mind disappeared with a silent snap. It left her with a hollow feeling in her gut.

Hina's well was dry.

Into the dust, she staggered forward, coughing and spluttering. She stumbled over something—a twisted root—and clambered over it, pushed herself up and forward. Kai was somewhere there, somewhere just ahead.

She found the table with her hands, an undulating wooden platform formed the great tree's roots. Her hand found Kai's sandaled foot, she shuffled along his body.

The air began to clear. Shifting, swirling patches of lightness within the red dark.

"Kai?" Hina's voice was a whisper.

Her hands patted up along Kai's body. He wasn't moving.

She found his head and his neck—tried to check for a pulse and her hand came away wet—blood. He was bleeding.

"Kai?" She tried to shake him. "Kai!" He didn't move.

The dust shifted and for a moment the wound was visible. A deep gash in his throat. Too deep. Blood flowed out in weakening spurts that slowed as Hina watched.

His body lay still.

Kai was dead.