“What?!” Aphora leaned forward, as her fingers curled around the lip of the table with a crushing grip. “What do you mean they’re all dead?” Tesha’s reaction to the knocking at the door, the signs of battle in the abandoned city - it all came rushing back to her in a single moment of epiphany as she answered her own question. “The Fey are being hunted by something, aren’t they?”

Mullu-Lim nodded grimly. “The details were scarce, but as far as I could gather, the Children of St. Martin have been fighting some sort of war beneath the surface for at least the last hundred years.”

“So that’s why they’ve become more and more reclusive,” Aphora surmised.

“Maybe. Or maybe the more friendly ones are just dead.” He shrugged. “From what I gathered, their realm is fairly disorganized, a bunch of mostly independent city-states who don’t have any one ruler over them, at least until recently. The war seems to be forcing them to work together more closely, but that cooperation didn't come soon enough for Tesha’s city.”

“What happened?”

He sighed. “Not entirely sure. Almost nothing in Tesha’s papers even mentioned the enemy; it’s like they’re afraid to speak of them. It appears that the elders of her city did actually plan this expedition, as she said, but the original plan was for their whole city - man, woman, and child - to flee. But before their plans were completed, the city got wiped out. The group with us is just whoever managed to escape, Lady Aphora, but there’s no one left waiting for them back home.”

Aphora drummed her fingers across the table, lost in thought as a grave new threat yawned before her. “What do we know of this enemy?”

“Little to nothing.” Her commander leaned forward, the table groaning beneath the weight of the mostly transformed stag. “They just call them the “knockers” - if their enemies have a real name, I didn’t find it - but aside from that I learned very little, save for one disturbing detail.” He paused, taking a long draught of wine until Aphora couldn’t take it anymore.

“And?” she snapped.

He set the goblet down slowly, his hand lingering for a moment on the stem. “The Fey believed them to be a race created by the Sidhe.”

“Selene’s grace,” she swore, slapping the table with her palm so hard that a small crack ran down its face. “Selene’s grace. The Sidhe? Tell me you’re joking,” she demanded fiercely. The deer man shook his head grimly. “I am sorry, my lady; I only wish I could.”

Aphora swore again. "So an unknown foe that is most likely predisposed to hate us as well." Forcibly quieting herself down, Aphora threw herself back in her seat with a weary sigh. “Do not tell anyone of this news, Mullu-Lim, save for Torin, of course. There is no point in worrying the people until we know more. Perhaps these 'knockers' have been left behind, in whatever distant lands the Fey dwelt in.”

“Very well, my lady.” Nodding his head to the left, he stood up and departed her chambers.

As soon as he had left, Aphora locked the door and searched through her bags. She found what she was looking for quickly enough and, with shaking hands, she cast the edekkû across the floor. The first result was nonsense, the carefully inscribed bones providing a message that she could not decipher in the slightest. But as she cast them a second and a third time, the message slowly grew clearer. The bones spoke of danger, perhaps even death, but not disaster. Nothing has changed, she reassured herself, feeling a little better about Mullu-Lim’s news. But she was still going to have a heart-to-heart talk with Tesha the next morning. The Fey could not be permitted to continue hiding such dangerous secrets.

The heart-to-heart talk, as it happened, had to wait. While living in Gis̆-Izum, Aphora had been relatively insulated from the constant demands of leadership. The majority of her elves had lived outside the city, in small settlements and glens dotting the Sapīyan countryside, where relatively little government input was needed. The reality of adjusting to living together in a single large settlement - with a group of unfamiliar Fey on top of it all - had been more difficult than she had expected.

All day long she was besieged by one request after another, forced to intercede in mostly petty disputes. She had more important things to be doing, more important things she needed to do, but at the same time, Aphora couldn’t afford to let the tensions between the Fey and elves blow up into a real quarrel. She was confident they’d all learn to get along given time, but until then, she found herself playing the peacemaker.

Still, the day came and went without her having a chance to corner the Fey leader, and as night fell she knew she had a more pressing engagement: the time had come to fulfill Kas̆dael’s request.

“Are you ready, my lady?” Torin knocked on the door gently, not waiting for a response before he let himself in.

Aphora groaned, burying her face in her hands. “Not in the slightest. I can’t believe the goddess is forcing us to shelter a Gemlirian, but I suppose we can’t just leave her waiting. Can we?”

His lips pursed in a thin smile. “I’m afraid the gods don’t generally take well to being told ‘no.’”

With a final groan, she lifted her head. “Fine, give me a minute.”

Once her long locks were safely tucked behind her antlers, the pair quietly slipped out of the manor. Not wanting to alert the servants of her departure, they skipped the stables, relying on their own stamina to carry them the distance. Until Aphora had had the chance to judge the child for herself, she didn’t want to risk bringing her around the Fey or the elves.

Torin noticed her frown as they trotted toward the tunnels. “Something wrong, my lady?”

She smiled wryly. “We have an unknown enemy lurking in the darkness, and are about to welcome another into our midst - and if I fail to keep this enemy safe the Goddess of the End herself will be angry with me - but no, nothing major.”

His laughter rang off the rocky ceiling. “I’m sure you’ll manage, my lady. You always do.”

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Qas̆pāhti waited long into the night for her kin to fall asleep, concentrating on the relentless chorus of crickets that had taken up residence behind their humble hut. When their breathing had finally grown calm and steady, the raucous snoring now clashing with the chirping crickets for dominance, she cautiously rose from her straw pallet.

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There was no need to tiptoe across the pressed dirt floor, as the ground muffled all about the loudest of footfalls, but the true test came in getting through the door. The winters grew cold on the western plains and she had to fight to drag the thick, wooden door the few inches needed to let her slip through. It scratched against the ground, squealing as it ran over a pebble embedded in the dirt. For a moment, the sound of snoring ceased and she heard someone stir on their mats. Qas̆pāhti froze, her heart beating so loudly in her chest that she was sure the whole room could hear it, but no one emerged from the darkness to grab her.

After a few minutes had passed in peaceful silence, she finally worked up the nerve to push through the door. The roughhewn wood scraped against her skin painfully, but she soldiered on, not daring to open the door any further lest it make more noise and, after a bit of frantic wiggling, she managed to pop free.

The moon shone brightly overhead as she crept through the tall grass behind the hut where she had dug her small passage. She just had to drag herself down into the small tunnel of dirt to retrieve her precious spellbook, and then she would be free to run to the strange door in the cliff, the door the goddess had told her off.

A shower of dirt fell across her face as she pulled herself through the small tunnel, her shoulders brushing against the narrow confines, but she tumbled out a moment later into the tiny hollow she had carved out for herself - or, if she was being honest, she had largely stolen from a warren of rabbits she’d ousted from their home. But her heart sank as she swept her gaze across the small, dark hole.

There was no sign of her book. By the fallen stars. Pure instinct took over her as Qas̆pāhti threw herself up the tunnel. All attempts at being stealthy were abandoned in her headlong dash up the cramped corridor. She had been discovered.

As her head breached the top of the hole, she struggled to pull herself out, her shoulders caught on the lip of the opening. But she needn’t have bothered. A giant hand closed around her neck as she was yanked free in a shower of dust and dirt. She struggled uselessly in the grasp, kicking and flailing against her captor. “Let go, let go-“

Her face slammed into the ground with a bone-crunching pop. She screamed, her cries of pain muffled as he slammed her again and again into the ground. Through her haze, she recognized the face of her aunt’s husband, an ugly scowl on his face. With one last slam, he tossed her onto the ground. She rolled through the tall grass, landing in a tumbled heap. She didn’t even see the book he threw at her until it hit her in the cheek.

“What is this treachery, girl?” He snarled. Qas̆pāhti struggled to stand up, pushing herself up the ground, but collapsed as her arm gave way beneath her. Searing pain lanced through her body as the splintered bone poked through her flesh.

His kick landed in her chest, and she was thrown backward, screaming as her already broken arm was bent backward. Somehow, whimpering, she managed to crouch to her feet, her hand reflexively grabbing the spell book that had fallen beside her.

“You’re consorting with the enemy, betraying our people, our GODS!” He roared, globs of spittle flying everywhere. “Despite the shame your father brought to your family, I took you in. I fed you, I clothed you, and you repaid our kindness by betraying us.”

His hand closed around her neck, and he yanked her up to his height. Qas̆pāhti’s eyes struggled to focus on his. They glowed in the dark like two burning embers, as he glared at her with pure scorn. “You are our kin no more. You are nakirtu.” He spat, his spittle smacking across her face.

“Please! Don't-” she wailed, knowing what his words meant. He was going to kill her. His grip tightened around her throat and her vision begin to swim. Her instincts took over and she failed wildly. Her strength was no match for his, her blows bouncing off his tough skin ineffectually, but, by chance, her fingernails found something soft - his eye. With a howl, he let go of her as he clutched at his face and she dropped to the ground like a load of bricks.

She could barely see, could barely think, her lung screaming for the oxygen they had been deprived but somehow Qas̆pāhti found the strength to stand. Her legs shook like jelly, her shattered arm throbbing with hot, white pain, but she pushed on, hobbling with single-minded determination toward her only hope - the nearby river. She was a water witch, after all.

Her strength gave out as she neared her destination, and Qas̆pāhti tripped by the bank, but her headlong fall took her into the waters as her uncle caught up with her. Barely conscious, she managed to flood all her essence into the water as she begged it to listen to her. Please, take me to the door.

The river listened to her. His hand closed around her ankle, but the river swelled up, tearing her out of his grasp, as a thin plume of water breached the banks that limited it. The water carried her along, slipping and sloshing through the thick grass faster than her uncle could run. The pain alone served to keep her conscious, her screams echoing in the darkness as her shattered arm was smashed into the ground over and over again. But the water did as she asked; within moments, she reached the ledge that overlooked the pit beside the emerald door. The river spilled over the ledge, and she fell, helplessly, into the pond waiting below, toward whatever servant the goddess had sent to meet her. Please be there, she prayed, to whatever god was listening.

Aphora had exited the door promptly at midnight as Kas̆dael had asked her, but there was no sign of the child. She waited impatiently as the minutes stretched into hours. Indeed, if it had not been a personal command from the goddess, Aphora would have hours earlier, but she was still on the verge of leaning when the first screams broke the silent night. They came from above the pit, somewhere in the upper village. Is that the child? She hesitated, not wanting to rush blindly into an enemy village and risk blowing their cover. Her decision was made for her when a few moments later, a column of water erupted above the cliff, releasing a small bundle toward the shallow pool at the bottom of the pit.

She sprung into motion, intercepting the child before she hit the ground. Her momentum took her into the cliff face, and she bounced off, gracefully soaring over the now-muddied waters of the pit, before landing safely near the door. It took Aphora no more than a quick glance for her to see the extent of the young Gemlirian’s damage. Blood covered her pale, grey face, gushing from her nose, and her arm hung limply beside her, broken in at least a dozen places. Her eyes were dull and listless, but she stirred slightly in Aphora’s arms, her lips moving noiselessly. She was a Gemlirian, yes, but in that moment Aphora could only see a battered child, as a cold fury stirred in her hurt. Who did this to her?

“Nakirtu! Arrat-ilāni!” Aphora's gaze shot upward to the troll screaming at the top of the cliff. He cut an imposing figure, a solid mass of muscles and brawn that testified to his skill as a warrior. I think I found my answer. Aphora’s lips curled in anger. Pushing the child into Torin’s arms, she leapt across the shallow pond to the cliff's face, clearing the thirty or so feet in a single bound.

Soaring into the air, the strands of her dress unspooled around her rapidly. A hundred threads glimmered beneath the moonlight as the Gemlirian stared dumbfounded at the sudden enemy that had appeared. It was the last thought he had. The threads shot forward, punching through his flesh and bone with a supernatural force. Squirming and wriggling, they tore through his body, erupting out his back in a shower of gore. Aphora landed beside him as he slumped over, lifeless.

She kicked the body off the cliff, hearing the splash as it landed in the water below. Aphora hesitated a moment. The better part of valor would be to leave now, to return unseen to their quiet hideaway. But her resolve hardened as the bloodied face of the child flashed across her mind. She stalked toward the village quietly, her hands twitching as the threads squirmed around her, like a swarm of flying snakes. Tonight the Blood Moon would feast.