The line blurred past unfocused eyes. Muted chatter, faint crying and a heavy smell of herbs clung to Dovar’s senses, unwelcome intrusions into his faint world. He couldn’t be dead.

Chill dripped down his neck, seeping into his back. The cold infected his being, sliding down his—

“Dovar!” he blinked and looked up to see Sansir grabbing his shoulder. He lifted him to his feet. Only then did Dovar realize they’d reached the cloister, and pulled him away. “Don’t stand under the tower,” he hissed under his breath. “Those clusters could fall at any time.”

His eyes hurt as he blinked, then looked behind them. The tower had erupted in ice, tearing the front and roof off the building as Zubair departed. He reached up to rub at his neck, wiping away icy moisture.

Sansir led him back to the group. Esmund appeared to be asleep on Kirs’ lap, though he could see from the slight twitch of his eyelids and fingers that he was far from actual slumber.

They’ve gotten back together again, then. Dovar didn’t know how to feel about that. Perhaps it didn’t matter. He slumped next to them, listening as Kirs idly chattered away about rituals and theories and wells. Attempting to follow the conversation was well beyond him.

“I might have it,” she muttered. “If Zubair didn’t break it when he ran.”

She seemed to do equal parts soothing and agitating. The gentle brush of her fingers across Es’ forehead and shoulders, fighting against the words she seemed to spew forth almost at random.

I should find Asny.

Turning his head, Dovar glanced looked to Sansir and Grev. They both sat close, fingers intertwined. Grev rested his head on the taller man’s shoulder. The glint of a ring on his hand jolted Dovar. It seemed almost like a wedding band, worn on the right hand for the husband. Sansir was wearing one too, he realized.

His stomach roiled in sudden fury. Did they not care? Any of them? Ranvir was dead. He’d given his life for them!

But before he could even usher the words forth, the heat died again. He lowered his head and slumped, looking down at the stones of the cloister. A light dusting of snow covered the usually clean square. Dust as well, settling from the tower.

“Kirs. Can you talk about something, anything, other than work?”

Everyone’s eyes snapped to Esmund. He lay on her lap, still. His eyes closed. Kirs had frozen over him, looking as if the ghost of her unborn child had reared up from the stone before her.

Dovar rubbed a hand across his face roughly. That was not worthy of him, not even in his own mind. Ranvir would’ve wanted better of him, expected him to do more. He always thought Dovar was better than the truth.

He hesitated a moment, then straightened and walked past the two. He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, like Ranvir would have. “School,” he said under his breath. He couldn’t have spoken, so only she would’ve heard it, and Es’ eyes cracked open. A bare sliver of rainbow locked on him. There was ice in those eyes. Frost to spread into Dovar’s own chest.

Es had lost Ranvir today. His oldest friend. He’d done so before and he’d been affected, but this time…

Dovar shivered and looked away, meeting Sansir’s usually piercing stare. His was all warmth, muted though it was. His felt like a prospective shuffle toward a path he’d never thought existed.

Dovar examined the rest of the gathering. Worn and tired mixing with ready and untested. Perhaps untested was an unfair description of the Sleeping Sons. Then again, fighting — surviving, really — Saleema had left him changed.

Distantly, he watched tethered rising into the air above the city. Their forms were distant and almost alien as they roamed the skies. Zubair was the only recognizable presence up there. A force of organization and control.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

At least he’s good for something. Dovar shook his head and found a few of the more amenable officers among the Sleeping Sons. Getting their help to pick apart the protrusions of ice emerging from the tower was easy. Idle soldiers were restless soldiers and restless soldiers meant bad officers.

He watched them pull down chunks the size of a man, still half numb from the experiences of the day. Ranvir was dead. Yet, he couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be possible. It cannot be. Yet, somehow, it was.

At the dome, Zubair was patching the hole Ranvir had created. Dovar was surprised that it had held up as long as it did. To his remembrance, these structures relied on the pieces next to it. Then again, what Ranvir had taken out, while enormous, while enormous, was little more than a single brick considering the ritual’s size.

Zubair disappeared in a twist of light.

Dovar blinked. The man was gone. Lost in the refracted light of the ice. He glanced around. No one else had noticed, but… in the skies, a few of the fliers were hesitating.

His senses shot forth, stretching to its limits to reach the hole in the dome and… nothing. Zubair wasn’t there. Had he gone above? Or perhaps descended while Dovar was distracted.

Fists clenched tight, his once injured hand held tight to his chest, Dovar rose on currents of wind. People were noticing.

“Dovar?” Es asked, those sharp and cold eyes on him. He stood now, hovering over Kirs. At once protective and threatening.

His throat was dry and air rushed in his ears — the sound of his own labored breathing. Trembling, he turned, pried his lips apart. “Kirs, you had some potential extra solutions?”

He couldn’t see them, he could not look away from that spot. That tiny little growth of shining, perfectly see-through ice next to the hole. Despite this inability, he knew they’d left. People were yelling and other powers were blossoming. Then the shouts began.

“Where’s Zubair?”

Light flashed, distant yet with his focus entirely on it, distinctly purple. Someone appeared in the sky again, dropping a mass to the ground way below. Too distant for him to make out, yet he knew.

“Zubair is dead.” He blinked, not realizing he’d spoken until he heard the words. Zubair was dead. Saleema had just killed him. Saleema. “To arms!” he yelled before remembering himself. “Take positions! Tether-attack formation!” He yelled again, his voice carrying on the wind, roaring above the clamor of panic.

Then she was among them.

Saleema tore through them like a bull raging in a field. All who came before her fell. Her cursed blade flashing, sliding through all defenses. Asmar’s voice joined him. Space-tethered launched attacks encroaching on her own bubble of control. Warp stepped up to parry her blade.

Dovar pulled people back, forcing them to form groups. It was dangerous, especially as deadly as she was, but they needed to be close together for it to work.

He got the first group together, already coalescing when he’d started yelling, and they began their strike. They were only six people, but they struck with enough force to momentarily stagger her. Yellow-streaked purple eyes shot across the court, but she was intercepted before her counter.

Dovar saw it. This was not the same woman they’d fought before. “More!” he screamed, noticing a pair from another group. They’d been part of the first strike force.

Slamming to the ground before their fleeing forms, he grabbed each by the arm. “Look at her! How she is diminished. Tell me you cannot see what we’re already doing to her. Band together, I will find the others.” His impression of Ranvir seemed to work, at least a little. Neither seemed confident nor even anything less than terrorized, but they remained.

Cutting above the crowd, he couldn’t help but heap praise on the Sleeping Sons. They were doing a damned job of stalling her out. He found the others, dragging them to the pair. With a full group of ten, they launched a much stronger attack. Dovar could see Saleema picking herself together.

Her eyes healing shut to perfect purple. Her attacks growing both more precise and less frantic. Rain once more sluiced down over them, much harder than during the last fight. Morphos doing his part to shift the fight, inching it toward their favor.

Kasos had already begun putting other groups together. More and more were coming in.

Tether-senses wrapped like cord into rope, thick as a man, drawing a noose around Saleema’s indomitable form. Saleema erupted in power, throwing off all the space-tethered trying to lock her down.

They staggered back. Some were thrown into pocket-spaces entirely. Dovar was staggered once more by the swiftness of her control. A twinkle of purple lights showered the open front of the tower. From his position, Dovar could only vaguely make out Kirs’ near cowering form inside a tiny little ritual circle.

A copper circle, big enough to hold two carts side-by-side, lit underneath Saleema. From all sides, attacks were unleashed. Warp attacks that risked tearing apart the circle. Ayvir’s black lances of light. In the tower, Es stood. Fingers curling and uncurling. He’d need to touch her and he couldn’t get so close.

Saleema’s screech stabbed at Dovar’s chest. Brutal though it was, there was something primal and child-like about it as well. Lost under the sea of attackers, he could only faintly determine her physical form breaking, yet her spirit rose. Tethers began bulging and pushing away.

It wasn’t possible. How could one person handle all of that? How could she possible withstand it? Dovar sank to the ground, looking around. There had to be a way.

“Soldiers,” Asmar yelled above the clamor. “Prepare retreat.”

“No…”