The city was dead quiet. Nobody roamed the streets, the stalls were empty and the shops were closed. It seemed like they were all waiting for something to happen. It felt like they were preparing for an attack.

Annabelle led Willow and Leopold to a building framed by polished columns which vaguely reminded her of some of the halls in the Arcanum. She tried to push the door open, but it wouldn’t budge.

“They’ve locked the doors,” she said.

That wouldn’t do.

Willow reached through and tripped the latch easily, barely deterred by the inlaid silver which smoked in the wooden doors at her psychokinetic passage. The door swung open and they strode into the massive hall.

It too was lit by the strange buzzing insects. Willow idly wondered how Sun Lin felt about her compatriots being used in such a way, but she supposed that the luminous things and Sun Lin were as far apart as warbeast and salamander.

Nobody appeared to be home, at least at first. Annabelle led the way down a hall and the rest followed, Sun Lin easily keeping up the pace. They reached a reinforced door at the back that Willow recognized and stopped.

“Here is where all of the warbeast development takes place,” Annabelle said. “It’s a small part of the university…”

Willow pushed past and laid her hand on the doors. They were solid silver, at least an inch thick, and she had to struggle to push her psychokinesis through. Hidden inscriptions activated on the folded inner surfaces of the doors, but they did little to stop her. The inscriptions seemed to be pointed inward to keep warbeasts from escaping.

To keep her from escaping.

She reached the hinges and with a flick they exploded. She ripped the silver doors out of the wall and left their smoking hulks lying in the hallway. Inside were a dozen men and women in the same white smocks she’d seen Andrew wear once or twice, all wielding inscripted weapons in clumsy hands.

She recognized two right away: Steph and Daniel. In an instant she snatched them from the group and pulled them across the intervening space, the toes of their boots barely touching the ground.

Their eyes were wide with fear, mouths choking on screams that just wouldn’t come. They had none of the armor that Weatherby’s guards had, which left them entirely at her mercy.

“You once treated me like an animal,” Willow said, her emotions warring inside her. It would be so easy, she knew, to pulp both of them here. To smash them and leave their remains on the floor for the rest of the researchers to consider when they thought of disobeying her. Or maybe she’d push them into the walls so hard the shards of bone could never be removed—a constant reminder.

Leopold laid a hand on her shoulder and Willow took a breath. She smelled fresh urine and saw that Daniel had pissed himself. Suddenly she just felt… sad.

They dropped to the floor, gasping. Steph began to sob.

Willow looked at the rest of the researchers clustered along the back of the large workroom. They’d lowered their weapons and a few had even dropped them to the ground, raising their hands in surrender. The room was large and held a variety of worktables containing a plethora of instruments. Surely there would be something here they could use.

“Essence reserves,” Willow said to the group. “And an atlas.”

“W—we can get you a report on the essence reserves,” a mousey girl toward the back said. She’d dropped a wicked-looking chain whip which buzzed with poison essence. “But we’ll need cartography for any charting.”

“You idiot, she’s going to open a—,” a man spat, then shut up at the look the girl gave him.

“So what if she does? What could she bring here that’s worse than this?”

A good question.

🜛

They still had forty thousand em in the storage tanks, but the essence-generating warbeasts had all died over the last few days. Apparently Andrew had run them too hard to saturate her prison.

A few of the researchers left to hunt up the students and professors sheltering in the cartography wing. Even fewer returned—no doubt taking the opportunity to escape for good. That was fine, she wasn’t going to be holding anyone here, especially if she’d just made Asche the target of every city-state within a thousand miles.

Leopold accepted what looked like a pair of giant shears from a researcher after a brief exchange, then allowed the man to go. He fled from the room without looking back.

“Here,” Leopold said, and gestured with the shears to her neck. Willow reached up and touched the metal band which Andrew had collared her with a week ago. It had bonded so tightly to her skin that she didn’t even feel it anymore.

“What’s it do,” Willow asked Annabelle as Leopold levered the blades of the shears under the strip of metal.

“We call them control collars,” Annabelle said. “They’re used to keep magical creatures in check when they work closely with humans.”

“Could anyone else order me around like Andrew could?”

Annabelle shook her head. “They’re usually keyed to only one person, and I’m sure Dr. Yates wouldn’t have wanted anyone to wrest control from him.”

With a heave Leopold snapped through the collar, which drifted slowly to Willow’s hand. It was packed with inscriptions, but many of them had been distorted.

Annabelle looked down at the straightened metal. “I suppose you were too much even for him. There’s no way it would’ve lasted much longer once you erupted.”

A younger man arrived with a sheaf of papers loosely held together in an envelope. He looked hopefully at the table on which the cartographers were working with Sun Lin, but Willow caught his eye. With a hard swallow, the researcher crossed the distance between them and handed the papers directly to Willow.

“You may go, if you wish,” Willow said. “Continue to spread the word. General evacuation of the human citizens of Asche. All collared creatures are to be brought to the university.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The young man nodded and fled the room. They were at barely half the researchers that had started, but Willow didn’t think she needed those who’d left. What use could learning about warbeast development have for her? As long as she found out about the one warbeast that mattered, that was enough.

She looked down at the envelope in her hands. Written in black ink across the front was the word ‘Wraith’.

🜛

It was strange living in Andrew’s house, but some petty urge drove her to it. To defile the place of the man who’d thought to collar her, to transform her into something monstrous. She looked out the window into the night at the multitude of waving lights as Leopold studied at the desk behind her.

“Bryan said he’d used the null rods before,” Leopold said, and the name made Willow wince, but if Leopold noticed he didn’t give any sign. “It looks like essence shadows were an integral part of the research that went into… well… what they did to you.”

“Those are dead mages,” Willow said, not turning away from the sea of lights in the dark. “What could a dead mage have to do with a warbeast?”

“The theory was that if you were killed in battle with a control collar on, you would revive as a collared essence shadow as your essence mixed with the inscriptions on the collar. It seems he tried to increase the odds by ejecting your essence from your body with that dagger.”

Willow rolled her shoulder—she was still sore from where Andrew had stabbed her, but it was getting better by the hour. It had been a very, very long day.

“Why would he want an essence shadow warbeast anyway,” Willow asked.

“You wouldn’t have a body,” Leopold said as if it were obvious. “There would be no way city walls could stop you. You could just drift through. Think of the devastation.”

She didn’t like to.

“Are they still out there?”

“Yes,” Willow said. Leopold came to her side and swept the drapery.

“There are more of them now,” he said. “I don’t remember uncollaring so many.”

“More have joined from the mountains,” she said and pointed out to the hulking dark shapes blotting out the stars. There were faint lights trickling down from the trees to join those gathered in the streets.

“They know they can leave right? It’s dangerous to stay,” Leopold said. “There’s no telling when the attacks will come.”

“They choose to stay,” Willow said. “Some of the warbeasts I euthanized… they called me their queen.”

“I heard that too,” Leopold said, and Willow turned to him in surprise. “We ran into a group of elves in the forest. Your canned spell saved my life, because they recognized it. They called me your paramour, and they laid the way open for us.”

“You are my paramour, I suppose,” Willow said and the traces of a smile brushed her lips. There were so many things that had happened, so many unthinkable things, it was hard to even remember that happiness existed.

“Later on,” Leopold said, ignoring the comment. “When I escaped, I think it was the elves who gave me that staff. They wanted me to get to you. I was too stupid though, I didn’t know the dean had tagged me.”

“You were brave,” Willow said and touched his arm.

“I was a fool,” he said. “They counted on me finding you. They would have had you in the mountains if you’d stayed to protect me. Without what Andrew did… you’d be dead at their hands.”

That thought had crossed Willow’s mind more times than she’d like to admit. Andrew had done this thing to her without permission. He’d violated her. But it had saved her in the end, even from himself. He couldn’t hope to control her, that’s what Annabelle said. His reach had gone beyond his grasp.

“In the morning I’ll have to address them,” Willow said. “I suppose they’re the new citizens of Asche now.”

“You’re their queen,” Leopold said. “Whether you like it or not.”

“Don’t remind me. Let’s go to bed.

🜛

In the morning Leopold and Willow left the governor’s estate to a sea of magical creatures. There were few of the smaller and more familiar variety, and those that were there seemed to have more essence than Willow remembered. The rest were larger, clearly hybrids or something else. All were sentient.

The ones that could, bowed. Many went to their knees, some even pressed their faces into the ground. The city was quiet as a tomb.

“War is coming,” Willow shouted, echoing Sun Lin’s pronouncement. “And I do not know when it will arrive. If you escape now into the mountains, I don’t think they’ll come for you. They’re coming for me alone.”

One of the creatures at the front stepped forward, a four-legged chitinous thing with the torso of a man. It held a bow.

“That’s an elf,” Leopold whispered into her ear. She was taken aback at the difference between her storybook plates and the reality that stared her in the face.

“My queen,” the elf said, and bowed again. “Those who stay are prepared to lay down their lives for you. The hatchlings have already been evacuated.”

“There may be little you can do,” Willow said. “They’ll send warbeasts. The other cities never stopped growing them.”

“We are aware,” the elf said. Willow thought she’d have to dig into that one day.

“And weapons beyond either of our comprehension. They’ll come at us sideways, because we’re not people to them. They won’t fight a war. They’ll come to exterminate.”

“We are prepared to die for you,” he repeated. “Too long have humans enslaved and experimented on us. With you here, now, we can fight.”

“I’m a human,” Willow said, and the twinge in her gut told her a small part of her wished at that moment she wasn’t. Not with what she’d seen in Asche.

“Not anymore,” the elf said.

🜛

In the underground chamber which had held Willow for so many days, she stood in the open-faced cube cell and looked around. It seemed so much smaller now that she’d been released. It had been her prison, but it was still the most effective way of transferring large amounts of essence.

“I’d be a lot more comfortable if you weren’t down here,” Willow said to Leopold, who stood on the other side of the barrier. He put his hand to the shimmering surface, and she matched him.

“If this goes wrong, there’s nowhere in twenty miles I could be where I’d be safe,” he said, and smiled. Willow let out a bark of laughter and covered her mouth with her hand. Sun Lin looked at them for a moment, then continued consulting with the cartographers.

The cartography department, as opposed to the warbeast development department, was much less squeamish about the city being overrun with magical creatures. It seemed like as long as they got to stay in their halls and pour over their maps, they were happy. They were doubly happy with all of the information Sun Lin had been giving them, expanding the borders of their atlases beyond their wildest dreams.

After a moment of looking into his eyes to steady her nerves, she nodded and stepped back into the center of the cell. Leopold went to the plate beside the door and tapped it a few times.

“Eight point three thousand miles. With the square distance calculation I’m going to flood the chamber with twenty thousand em.”

“I’m ready,” Willow said. Leopold stared hard at her for a moment, then pressed the plate a final time.

Microscopic portals in the ceiling opened into the essence reservoirs and the luminous gas streamed into the cell. Almost immediately they closed, and the essence dissipated until it became invisible. Not even enough pressure to remain luminous, but enough so that she wouldn’t have to tap her own reserves.

“Curve space,” Willow intoned, wrapping her hands in a circle like the textbook from Asche said. Essence streamed from her palms until light began to bend from the pressure.

“Close space,” she said, and began forming the shell on top of the core.

“Stability.”

“Freeze time.” Apparently strange things could happen in transit through a portal to a human mind. It was important to freeze the traveler’s perception.

“Tunnel,” she said, and saw as her psychokinetic spells shaped the final layer into a cone which disappeared into the back wall of the cell. She checked the layers mentally as she had the few times she’d opened small portals in preparation for the big one, and everything seemed in order.

She released the spell. The circle of essence, which had been building and bowing the light around it until it appeared black in the center, snapped into solid form immediately and the darkness at the center blew away. What she saw on the other side made her jaw drop in surprise.