This can't be happening…!

Then Cedric sucked in a breath, held it for a long pause. He clicked his tongue in a sudden shift of personality, shut his eyes, and opened them again to a deep blue hue. “Okella… I should have known that was you. Relax. Calm down.”

The blue hue faded. Then came the red.

"I'm just going to make him suffer for all he's done to us."

And he began his approach.

Faunia fell to the ground, smashed a devastating fist for Kogar's gut, which he barely caught with both of his hands. Flames chased the blow, exploded into the air with the concussive blast of their impact.

By then, Cedric was sprinting. He charged his own fists, let Serkukan’s familiar scales coat him in crimson.

Then came his claws.

Head.

Then the leg.

He followed the agreement—his left went first for Kogar's head. The two-tone god made easy work of ducking beneath it.

Cedric’s right claw just barely brushed the glistening white armor—Kogar stepped back, yet still maintained his confident posture through the pugilistic shift of the fight.

Then Faunia thrust in with her glistening rapier forward.

Kogar ducked, evaded.

Cedric caught the back of his ankle with his own foot.

And down the god went. A sick grin fell across Cedric’s helmed face.

Faunia.

She lifted her head just slightly, as though hearing his mind.

Make your way to Auctdos Munor. Rykaedi is dead already—awaken Evra and we'll have won.

Just like that, her course was set. She turned skyward.

But Kogar’s voice in Cedric’s ear was piercing: “Embarassing you think me so fallible.”

THWOK.

Cedric was dropped to the ground, blood dribbled out from his nose and onto the cobbles between his hands. His armor was already dematerialized.

Faunia had already launched away.

Cedric spun onto his back, exposed, let Kogar take him by the collar and lift him up.

“This reality is mine to control. You've made a mistake in crossing me.”

Cedric took a long moment to consider his response. Then, simply, he spat a mouthful of his snotty blood into Kogar’s eyes.

And just when Kogar dropped him—he launched Okella’s tendrils from his wrist into the god’s skull.

“I don't need your damn reality…” Cedric muttered.

And it all fell away.

“Gah!” Cedric gasped to life in another place, in another time. He stumbled through the wooden doorway of a hot, hot house, fell to his knees upon the shabby wooden porch outside. Then he pried his eyes open to the immense, glaring sunlight.

It was after a long moment of surveying the landscape that his raspy voice crawled from his throat: “Is this… Harth?”

“Can I help you?” The stern voice of a woman called from inside. He turned over his shoulder to get a look at her, but all was obscured by that same potent light.

“Where am I?”

“You're not the first to appear here unwittingly, but you may perhaps be the most confused.”

Her footsteps clicked loudly as she approached him.

Then he saw her tan hand extend through the doorway for him.

Cedric hesitated before he took the hand. Then he allowed her to help him to his feet. “Can I ask your name? Who are you?”

But after he was to his feet, she walked back inside, left the door open as though inviting him in. There was no answer.

“Can you at least tell me what year it is? I need...” I need to know what memory I'm in.

“Today would be the first day of the Fourth Era.” She sat in an armchair beside the big, white-curtained windows at the back of the small yet bright home. She took a long pipe from the table beside her, packed some leaves in with her thumb, and began to puff from it.

“Fourth Era… You don't mean—we're in Kylinstrom after all? Is this Harth?”

“You do catch on rather quickly. Yes, we're in Harth.”

"Then yesterday would have been..."

"Tovas Strolcerth's execution."

Cedric’s brain buzzed. More questions were raised than answered by her words.

“Would you like some?” She held the pipe out toward Cedric.

He slowly began inside, stared at her as he approached.

Her features slowly unfolded; she wasn't exactly tan—not in the way that Marisol was tan. Nor was her skin as caramel as Miriam's. It was somewhat coppery as if by the sun, which surely the surrounding desert would have aided in. Her eyes were a shining jade like Cedric’s, her lips were soft, slightly puffy like Faunia’s…

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Then he realized why her face looked so familiar.

“Ry…” He shut his gaping mouth, sequestered the name. “Cassandra. That's your name, isn't it?”

She bit the end of the pipe. Indeed, her appearance was a resounding echo of a young Rykaedi, or rather, the body that Rykaedi had taken to for so long. Then she gestured at the seat again. “Will you not sit with me?”

Cedric stepped through the room to the matching wicker chair just across the ottoman from her. He sat, and she reached the pipe over for him to take.

With some reluctance, he took it. And after a long, deliberate pause, he snapped his fingers into the leaves and a spark made them ignite. Then he sucked in a deep breath.

“You're not supposed to inhale it,” she corrected, but Cedric’s coughing fit was evidence enough of that.

Then she laughed, a gentle, kind laugh like that of Marisol’s. Cedric’s heart ached slightly at that. He rubbed his chest and forced the choking away.

Finally, she answered: “Yes. Cassandra is my name..”

"Cassandra..."

Shwooooosh!

Faunia flew like an eagle down the narrow alleyways of Calamon, her target set on the Diplomats’ Guild Hall in the center of the place. She hadn't seen it in such a way, but now that she did…

Yes, I see.

From above, it was mostly boxish, uninteresting, untouched by architects with intent beyond grandiose size. The inside, she knew, was a different story.

But most importantly was the fact that it had been unscathed by the warfare which had torn the streets of Calamon apart. It was completely unbothered. Like it didn't even exist, a dream amidst a world.

She reached a hand out, felt the ley. Then her own lips cracked a meager smile. But she couldn't hold it long before her teeth grit and her tears ran. Her lips quivered. Snot chased down her face.

“...Mari… you died for nothing. For that, I can't forgive myself.”

And she ripped the illusion apart. The Diplomats’ Hall was gone, replaced by an ornate marble structure crafted with immense precision. Seven ascending, ribbed pillars wrapped in a circle around a domed entryway like a mouth, with stairs leading down into golden-torched darkness.

Faunia went for the ground, marked her landing for the cobblestones between the grassy, iridescent-flowered gardens surrounding the strange structure.

Then came the guardians—two golden helmets with white wings floated up from atop the pillars, two marble golems rose shimmering, curved glaives from their places beside the orifice.

And Faunia took her place confidently at their feet. She fell into a deep kneel. “Beckoners and servants of Lady Evra, heed my request. I would free your deity, would that you would allow me. Is this permissible?”

One of the golden helmets began to charge up, a blue light flared within.

They're Cassisians, Faunia. Angels.

The laser exploded out from the angel on her left. She swept her arm forward and a shield of bleeding ice took the impact, splattered red across the flowers.

Then the one on her right charged up. The two golems began forward.

“Do we stand a chance here, Tir? Or should I rush past them?”

If we can't kill them out here, there's bound to be worse threats inside. Let's see what we're capable of.

Faunia drew a bleeding longsword from out of her shield. She made one gesture of her intent, then sprung up high for the Cassisian on her left.

It darted back but her range was great, and she cleaved it in half with a single stroke. It exploded into a cloud of raw magical energy. It returned to the ley.

The golem swept his polearm for where she would have landed. She decided against landing, caught herself in Tirolith’s shimmering wings, and stuck her blade into its stone head. “But the core must be in the chest, no?”

And she dropped from the air, slid the blade down through his carapace, and landed. Then she flipped the blade, spun, and launched it like a spear through the center mass of the second golem. All that was left was the last flying helmet.

But it meandered off, floated away like a lost bumblebee on a breeze.

Faunia lowered her guard. After a pause, the two golems finally collapsed, crumbled loudly to piles of stones.

“Easy. Etherian magic must be stronger still than even the power of Heaven.”

Don't be so sure just yet. I doubt we've seen even a fraction of what's defending Evra.

Faunia slid the sleeve of her armor along her blade, then turned the edge that she could see her reflection. "We're stronger than anything they throw at us. Together."

Then came a new rumbling from below. She took her stance.

And Heaven's warriors made themselves apparent.

"Kasian will be home soon," she puffed on the pipe. "You should go."

Cedric's brow came down narrow, he sat forward in his chair as if beginning an interrogation. "What business does Kasian have here? What do you mean that you died? I have so many questions—"

"It won't be good if he catches you. Run, Cedric. Don't look back. We'll speak again soon."

"What do you—grah!"

The illusion was yanked from his eyes. His body was left cold, gasping in a chill winter's air.

Then he looked up to the visage of Kogar in the red sky above him, his massive scythe poised for a lethal slam.

Cedric leapt back from the impact and let the ground quake. Kogar thrust forward with two manic swings of that weapon.

"Okella may slow time, boy—but forget not that the Moment lasts a lifetime!"

Don't let him hit me. One hit and the Moment begins. Then it's all over.

Cedric ducked back as low as he could for the scythe's horizontal swing, caught the shaft of the polearm just at the end of its arc. Then he jabbed his claw in for Kogar's throat, but it was easily dodged. Kogar used his evasive momentum, threw a left hook from below right into Cedric's jaw, knocked him into a stumble.

The scythe came up diagonally. Cedric fell low beneath it, took a blow to the head from Kogar's shining boot. Then he was down on his hands and ass, crawling backward while the flurry ensued.

—blink!

Behind Kogar; he looped his arms to his in a grapple akin to how he'd grabbed Rykaedi. He locked their legs together, pulled for Kogar to go to the cobbles with him.

"You're so very mistaken, Cedric."

But Cedric fell alone.

"You don't yet understand. This reality is mine to wield, I the dreamer!"

Cedric called Okella's tendrils to life from his wrists again. Let's try this one more time. One more time, we'll see what he's hiding in that dense skull of his.

The scythe fell like a guillotine. A crimson shield extended from both of Cedric's forearms, caught the weapon in place. That gave the span of a breath in which the tendrils could pierce Kogar's skull again.

But Cedric knew he'd bought only a second more...