“Who are you?” the guard on the right asked.

Riven didn’t say anything. He could say who he was to the guard, and that wouldn’t be good. But if he lied, it wasn’t like they were inclined to believe him. The two soldiers had caught him on a narrow side-street where there wasn’t supposed to be any patrols. None of the other side-streets had any. Just his luck. Good thing the houses were still closed, and they were off the main thoroughfares. No other soldiers, or Scions forbid, damn Essentiers, were nearby.

“Idiot,” muttered the other one. “Don’t you see his uniform? Providence Essentier, that one.”

“Oh shit!” He held his rifle higher and aimed it at Riven’s head. “Make any sudden moves and I’ll blow your head off, Essentier!”

“What if I made any slow moves?” Riven asked. He could raise only one hand. The other he needed to keep on his sword and use it as a crutch.

“No moves at all!”

Riven rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“What do we do now?” the other soldiered hissed to his companion.

The one in charge mulled over his words. “Well, one of us has to go get some help. He’s a damn Essentier after all. I’ll even bet he might be one of the ones they’re looking for.”

“Can you handle him alone?”

“I got to, don’t I?”

“Why don’t the both of you take me to wherever your help is?” Riven suggested.

The soldier-in-charge frowned in suspicion. “Stop trying to tell us how to do our jobs.” He stared at his companion. Or maybe the man was his subordinate, who knew. “You, go find an Essentier. Or someone who knows what to do. Hurry!”

With a quick nod, the other soldier strapped his rifle to his back and ran off. Riven smiled. He’d wave, but he’d been told no sudden moves.

The soldier who had stayed behind glowered at him. “Now, you’re going to stay put and still as a statue. Any moves, and I’ll blow your brains out.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that already,” Riven said. “Can I at least take a seat? My leg is injured, and I can’t stand for long.”

“You’ve stood so far, haven’t you?”

Riven shrugged. “Just don’t shoot me when I fall over from the pain.”

“Hah. I don’t think you’re going to be falling any time soon. You Essentiers are made of sterner stuff after all.”

Well, he was. Riven couldn’t disagree, especially when considering all the other Essentiers he’d seen. But unlike most, Riven was suffering from a grievous wound. He shifted his weight until his injured leg was bearing too much, and his agony pulsed like a burning worm was trying to burrow into his leg and carve out a home. Nivi would’ve been so disappointed in him for ruining her handiwork.

Riven fell, his eyes closing.

“Oi!” the soldier shouted.

Riven’s half-closed eyes revealed the man charging forwards. So easy to pretend he was fainting, and so easy to lull the man into a false sense of surprise and security. Riven shifted his weight to his good leg again and stood straight. The shock on the soldier’s face made him grin. So stupid.

With a moment’s focus, Riven’s Essence shot out and formed a golden sphere around the soldier. His shot went off then, the sound muffled by the compressed, gold-tinged air. The shield cracked, but Riven fixed it in moments. So easy to trap his prey.

The soldier shouted out, ramming his rifle against the Essence shield over and over again. He shot too, then resorted to punches and kicks. None of it helped. Riven had him.

The injured leg still hurt, but Riven ignored it and dragged himself to the soldier. He raised his sword, hoping his injured leg could actually bear his weight for a few moments, just long enough for him to get this done. Nivi’s handiwork should let him do his job as an Essentier. That was what she had promised, though she had also told him to take it easy. This was taking it easy right? He wasn’t fighting another Essentier after all.

Riven placed the tip of the blue Coral sword against his Essence shield. With a moment’s focus, the shield disappeared, but the soldier didn’t stagger back or move in any way at all. Riven had placed the tip of the sword right against his neck.

“Any sudden moves,” Riven said with a grin, “and I’ll tear your head right off.”

The soldier swallowed, the blob of his bony neck bobbing up and down, pressing against the sword. “What do you want?”

“Just answer a few questions and you’ll be perfectly fine, understand? First thing first, are there any other Providence Essentiers here?

“Viriya Rorink. She’s attacking the city from the west. No one’s caught her yet.”

Viriya. The name made his heart leap a little too much for his liking. Riven pressed the sword tip a little deeper into the man’s neck. This was what Raynard had done too, right? “Are you saying you can’t take me to her?”

“I don’t know where she is! She fights like a demon and no one’s been able to tell where she comes from or where she’ll attack next.”

“That’s no problem. I think I’ve got what I needed from you.”

The soldier’s legs quaked. He was shaking all over, and Riven wrinkled his nose. Had the coward pissed himself? “Please don’t kill me! I can lead you to the west. I can maybe help you find her. You just got to trust me for a moment. I—I’ll even show you where not to go so you don’t get caught.”

He was begging now. Blubbering in terror, afraid for his life, and Riven had gone colder than the corpse he had left with Raynard. What was he doing, taking the life of some innocent soldier who could hardly fight back? Sure the man had a gun, but that was no confirmation he’d ever be able to harm Riven in any way.

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With a sharp gasp, Riven pulled his sword from the soldier’s neck. The man fell to his knees still shaking. He broke out into sobs, whole body wracked with shivers. This was what Riven had done. What he was really capable of now.

He’d reduced a man to tears just by the mere potential of his capabilities.

But harsh times meant harsh decisions. With another moment’s focus, Riven formed another shield around the man’s head.

The soldier fell to the ground, and struggled against nothing and everything. Like everyone else before him, he rammed his fists against the shield and kicked out into the sir. He cried out, but the sounds were muffled, barely audible. It didn’t take long for his struggles to cease. His legs stopped performing a mad pirouette and his arms lay still on the ground, his chest no longer heaving with exertion. In seconds, he was still.

Riven focused and the shield disappeared. He limped closer and peered into the man’s face. The soldier had gone blue, but a hand on his chest confirmed that his heart was still beating, if feebly. Not dead yet, but unconscious. Just what Riven had been aiming for.

He’d had enough of death for one day.

Taking a long, shuddering breath, Riven limped back out into the main street. Scions, his damn leg wasn’t going to let up anytime soon, was it? Not until he’d given it the attention and time it was due. He looked in either direction. Not a single soul anywhere. All the better. He’d dealt with enough soldiers and Essentiers for one day too.

But all he got was one step before shouts rang in from everywhere.

“Halt!”

Riven did so, heart thundering. The call had come in from every direction, not just to his left and right, but from above as well. He looked around, his whole body growing colder and colder as he found the source of the calls.

The buildings.

Shit. Orbray’s soldiers had taken over the damn buildings everywhere. To his left, to his right, all the houses lining the streets had their doors and windows open, all of which had guns and rifles pointing out of them like accusing fingers, a tribunal of metal and powder indicting Riven and sentencing him to immediate execution.

All those buildings. Riven swallowed. What had they done to the tenants inside?

“Lay down your sword, thief!” came the command from his right.

Riven tried to find where it had come from, but all he saw were more barrels pointing in from every direction. A trap. Someone had seen him coming, or known he was coming, and had taken the appropriate measures. Maybe someone who knew what he was capable of. All those guns meant Riven would have an impossible difficulty maintaining his shield.

But he tried anyway. With a little focus, he drew on his shield around him.

“Or what?” he shouted back.

The first shot cracked into his shield. More focus and he pushed out more Essence to fix it. There were too many though. Shot after shot blasted into his golden shield and cracks grew up all around him, too fast for him to fix. This had been their plan all along. Overwhelm him a barrage of bullets and then blow him apart.

Riven wasn’t going to sit there and accept it. The pressure within him burgeoned into something huge, and he blasted his Essence from within him in an auric torrent. His shield expanded and shot out faster than the bullets that came in. Despite all the Sept he had in store, it wasn’t enough. As his shield expanded, it became thinner in spots, allowing bullets to burst through. Several of the shots hammered in around Riven, and he thanked the Scions that he wasn’t hit. His leg was bad enough. He didn’t need to be dealing with a bullet wound on top of it.

The shield gave him only a monetary respite. It hammered into the buildings, shaking the structures right down to the core, hard enough that Riven felt the street tremble beneath his feet.

But the storm of bullets thinned. Just what Riven had been looking for. He reformed his shield near him, and set off down the street as fast as his injury allowed. Which was damnably slow. He wasn’t halfway towards the little alley he’d been aiming for before the soldiers in the buildings recovered and resumed shooting at him.

Chasm, when would they run out of bullets? If Riven had his leg free of pain, he’d have rushed into the alley with ease. He cursed as his shield started cracking, but charged onwards. Damn them all. He was going to survive, no doubt about it.

The next shot forced him to stop. It lodged in his shield like most of the rest, but unlike those, it was glowing golden-green. Riven’s eyes went wide as the green aura spread over his entire shield like a virulent infection.

Viriya.

Another golden-green shot cut through the gunfire, this one shooting past his shield. The next second, Riven went flying.

More specifically, his shield did, but it crashed into him and took him with it. He hurtled out of the main street as he screamed, the soldiers’ collective yell lasting barely heartbeats before all was silence. Riven’s shield broke when he landed, shattering into a thousand pieces that all dissolved into thin air. He had made it out of air after all.

He stood up, his injured leg trembling a little. The agony there was ever-present now, so it was easy to take it into stride. Nevertheless, Riven struggled to get up, and more importantly, get away. Those soldiers had to have rushed out of their hiding spots and had to be looking for Riven everywhere. They couldn’t have seen Viriya’s bullet in the storm they’d caused.

Riven turned, only to see Viriya standing there. “You’re alive!”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” she said.

“How’d you get here so quickly? I thought you shot me from the front.”

Viriya twirled her small carbine on her finger, then shoved it into the loop at her waist. “Magic.” She turned to lead him away. “Come on, there’s no time to waste.”

There wasn’t, that was for sure. Riven could hear the shouting now, the thumping of many booted feet on the streets as the soldiers turned the whole area inside out to find where Riven had flown and then ran off too. They’d reach this spot soon enough.

He followed Viriya, though the questions that would have wasted their precious time didn’t go away. Her grey jacket was torn and missing a sleeve, the black shirt underneath dirty and sweat-soaked. There was blood dotting her clothes, and the red on her trousers looked like it was her own, given the way she favoured her right leg. She had faced him for less than half a minute, yet it had been enough for him to note her singed hair and the bruises on her face.

Wherever Viriya had been, whoever she had faced, she hadn’t had it much easier than Riven.

They sneaked around until they were sure they were free. Riven might have memorized the maps he had, but Viriya had lived experience navigating the streets of providence city. Unlike him, she didn’t take any wrong turns or got herself in alleys filled with Orbray’s soldiers. If there was one thing Viriya could be described as, it was competent.

Riven never complained, but when Viriya finally called a halt under the shade of a large Coral tree behind some warehouse, he gave silent thanks to the Scions. If his leg had a mouth, it would have offered vociferous praise.

“We can rest here for a bit.” Viriya was looking at him with a strange mixture of curiosity, care, and criticism. “Looks like you need it.”

Riven sat on a nearby box. “What happened with you?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“I mean, we both have wild tales to tell, I imagine.”

“Well, I’d love to go on an extended discussion about whatever happened to the both of us but frankly, we don’t have time. This is just a rest. Then we need to be off, and we’ll need to keep our heads focused on the task at hand—avoiding the Ascension goons.”

“At least tell me if you know what happened to Rose. Is she alive? Is she here?”

Viriya grimaced, then looked away. The side of her face was red and raw as though she had been singed by hot fires. “I wish I could tell you for certain, but all I know is that the Municipier has been captured and taken hostage by Orbray. I think he intends to use her as a bargaining chip against the Invigilator.”

Bargaining chip. Riven’s mind whirled, and it was good he wasn’t trawling through the streets. No way could he have been able to focus after learning that. If Orbray intended to use Rose to bring Father to heel, then… then what? Would Father simply give up everything just to get his daughter back? It didn’t seem likely. And if that was the way things went, what would happen to Rose? With no further use for her, would Orbray kill her?

Why was everything so shit?

“I think that’s enough rest,” Viriya said. “You ready to go?”

She was looking at him carefully again, like he had turned into a fragile statue that would shatter at the touch of a feather. He stood up abruptly, using his sword to steady himself. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”