Tazaro stared out of the window, twirling the knife in his hand between his fingers. He was originally using it to whittle away on a chunk of red dogwood he’d picked up on his way home, but as his thoughts began to race, idle fingers found their involuntary pastime. He sighed as he caught himself mid-twirl, then tsked at his careless subconscious.

  “Hey, Sheeva?” He called to her before he could convince himself that the madness coursing through his head was fallout from nerves and nonsense tickings of a worried mind.

  The frown furrowed his brows, and he mildly pouted at himself as her tired “hm?” crossed the room from her spot on the loveseat in front of the empty fireplace. She had chosen to write her findings in her journal, intent on changing her ever-growing list titled Things To Remember in Eternal Servitude.

  Tazaro put the half-finished figurine on the windowsill. It was a much more elaborate carving of a Great Malboro than he might have managed before they set out on their journey beyond Roussell’s safe walls. Considering he’d never seen one before in his life until the Vivroan Crags, nor could he recall any book of his giving as accurate a description as his recent memory, the figurine now illuminated by the setting sun seemed on its way to being so life-like, it could spring to life and attack.

  With such tiny vines, Tazaro decided it wouldn’t be as vicious. Instead, he could almost consider it cute. He made a face at himself for thinking so, then turned to Sheeva.

  “Did Bartholomew say anything to you about meeting us somewhere, or did he just seem to…slip away?” He asked. The restlessness had now spread from beyond his mind and into his feet, and as he felt the urge to bounce his leg, he stood instead to pace the small pathway by the queen-sized bed.

  Sheeva turned to identify the movement in the corner of her eye. Upon noticing the concern on Tazaro’s face, she shuffled around to face him, propped on the back of the couch with her arms.

  “I’m…” She began, thinking back. All she could remember was Marina’s wrinkle-ridden, piteous form as the old, regretful woman painted away on the canvas between admitting her mistakes and voicing her death wishes. “Not sure.” Sheeva finished, unwilling to recall the rest of that short-lived encounter. “I was kind of busy.” She summed.

  Tazaro nodded to himself; compared to the instant recalls from physical stress and thrill of battle, the stress of confrontation would often leave him fuzzy to details, too.

  “Mm, ok. I understand. A little too well.” He agreed, then waved a hand at his mild tangent. He sucked his teeth and fidgeted with the Tyrj-Laerso cufflink on his button-up shirt.

  “I, I feel there was something different about that smile. For as much as it gave me the creeps, it seemed there was something…sad behind it.” He shuddered at the unnerving mesh of white-pink gums amid black and blue jowls. He didn’t even seem to have the wits to make a snide comment about any food that may be stuck between the Ta’hal’s pearly teeth…if it hadn’t already been dealt with due to his self-grooming, picking at spots with a long claw.

  “Almost like…a ‘goodbye.’ Something doesn’t feel right. Can we search–

  He hadn’t even finished the rest of his thoughts before Sheeva was to her feet and striding towards the chest at the foot of the bed.

  “We can do that,” She readily agreed, propping her foot up on the wooden chest to tighten the laces of the boot she’d hastily shoved her foot into. With a sharp zip, the laces secured the thick leather upper around her calf, and she quickly double-knotted the long laces and tucked them away behind the tongue.

  Tazaro answered the call to action and crossed to the door for his jacket, already in his boots. The tan, soft leather felt good in his hands and even better on his person. He flicked his hand at a light-blue brace stitched into the leather sleeve that stretched out over his wrist, forearm, and along his upper arm. The tough, resistant scale they had scavenged from the Basiliska curled up and wrapped around his previously injured shoulder to shield it from further harm as a makeshift pauldron. The strips of scales in the length of his jacket snaked throughout the lapels, tail, and collar, and with the inch-wide, thick epaulets, the finished armor offered extra security to his other, undamaged shoulder.

  He clipped a light-blue plate of a scale, fortified with hide strips of the Cruinian outback Septicorn–a territorial and carnivorous beast with a crown of seven horns–to his belt, then secured it around his thigh with a strip of leather, glad to have something further to protect himself with.

  After pulling his shirt sleeves through the arms, he plucked off the Tyrj-Laerso cufflink. With a click, he twisted the swords into alignment, expanded them to their normal size, and slung them over his shoulders, tightening the strap across his chest.

  Though simple, the “war gear” bolstered his courage.

  Sheeva had finished gearing up, Abraxas tied to her hip, the mildly heavy leather jacket shimmering with a metallic sheen as the stretch of magnesium-alloy plating stretched to cover her torso.

  The “page from Bartholomew’s book” was ever so useful, considering it had helped prevent a few poisonous creatures from sinking their ugly fangs into their skins and leaving them warm and dead in the Cruinian outback. They’d even gone as far as to test out the integrity of their armor by pelting the leftover scraps of Basiliska scales with icicle spears and fireballs and stabbing at the thick hides of Septicorns with their tail-blade knives.

  “Do you have anything to track him with?” Sheeva asked, tying her wedding band around her neck with a thick piece of twine and her hair back with her trusty, red ribbon. Satisfied that her hair was out of her face, she turned to the door and opened it, waiting at the threshold.

  Tazaro shook his head, copying her in tying his matching wedding band around his neck with twine. He tucked it beneath the collar of his shirt, then hurried toward the door.

  “Unfortunately, no. We’ll have to search.” He responded, holding a hand a few feet above hers while they cast a sealing spell on the inn door. With a flash of bright, pink light, the forcefield spanning the length and width of the maple wood filled them with relief that the machines they had unpacked would be safe and waiting for them upon their return.

  “Damn. I was hoping that...” She muttered, trailing off as she strode down the hall towards the eastern stairwell. She didn’t want to explain to the front desk clerk why they looked dressed and ready to kill, lest the three of them have soldiers waiting to clamp their wrists in irons upon their return.

  “Hoping that it would be that easy? C’mon, Sheeva. When have the odds ever been in our favour?” Tazaro snickered, thrilled to poke the hole in her wishes. He scurried down the steps, hot on her heels.

  “Are you serious? Now? You’re making jokes about our screwy luck now?” She grumbled in exasperation.

  As they snuck through the side door, Sheeva’s deepening glare did not go unnoticed.

  “That had better not come back to bite us in the ass, Tazaro!” She barked, irate.

  He held his tongue and mumbled a sincere “yes, ma’am,” then followed her around the corner. They were in the alleyway between the inn and a nearby restaurant they’d promised to check out before they departed. Tazaro cast a nervous glance over his shoulder at the windows in the stucco wall as Sheeva began to pick the lock to the fire escape.

  The green-tinted windows obscured Tazaro’s view as he intently stared at a customer devouring something that roughly looked like a chunk of meat. Considering they could only see outside into the world as well as he could see inside, he decided the patrons were too busy eating to notice a pair of people up to something illegal.

  Perhaps, their luck really was screwy.

  “Here,” Sheeva called, catching his attention away from the aromatic dining area.

  He looked up, blinked at the hand offered to help him, then took it as he hiked his foot into the swinging ledge. The thing threatened to bash into his shin as he stepped up into it, but thankfully, with Sheeva’s harsh pull, Tazaro didn’t have to worry about it as he climbed onto the bottom ledge.

  He dusted his hands clean of the leaves, dirt, and sand caked to his sweaty palms, then hurried up the steps. Halfway up the things, he paused, wondering why they hadn’t just gone to the roof in the first place, but held his tongue. His petty sass wasn’t worth igniting frustration, and, if anything, he could simply point out the illogical fallacy later to laugh about while they enjoyed a hot bath.

  Thank the gods for the Grand Steps at the base of Malfa Temple, Sheeva thought to herself as she walked out the ache of rapidly climbing what felt like ten stories. She scoured the rooftops, then weaved her eyes in the streets, listening intently for the steely tings and twangs of a blade against a blade, screams of pain or cries of fury, or even the panicked ruckus of innocent bystanders. No disturbances were seen or heard near their location from the hospital she’d visited earlier to the fisherman’s wharf loaded with docked ships.

  Tazaro, seeing that Sheeva was busy examining the streets, took it upon himself to search the opposite side of the building. As he stared straight down, Tazaro found he wasn’t at all terrified as he had been almost two years ago, and he smiled at the epiphany of his personal growth for a brief moment before hardening his stare in search of the giant, blue beast or their red-eyed, black-robed foe. From a plaza he’d promised to tour with her once things settled to the entrance archway, all was quiet on the western front, and he sighed, letting his gaze slack to the mountains in the distance.

  The sky darkened as the sun set at his backside, leaving a pinkish-hued sky that softly darkened into a deep, azure blue, indigo, and eventually, dark enough that he could see the beginnings of a constellation he’d newly begun to sketch. Hidden behind the molten reds and vibrant oranges of “Firebird,” he’d decided as its proper name, were the makings of another constellation that appeared as a conical collection of four tinier stars. He wasn’t sure whether they were pointing towards their tiny planet, but he hoped they would stay on Cruinia long enough for him to determine so.

  A purple flash of light caught his eye, and he stood straight and looked, peering at the outskirts of Torde. Another zapped in the hot, Cruinian sands, and he called over to Sheeva.

  “Come here, quick–think I found something.” He announced, looking back to the horizon.

  Sheeva joined his side in an instant, looking in the same direction.

  “What?” She asked urgently, the worry in her voice.

  Tazaro pointed, guiding her gaze along his arm and beyond his index finger. He grabbed for the miniature spyglass Lenus had gifted them with to convince them to ditch their pursuit of Zakaraia and “become folks of the sea.” It was an endeavor that Tazaro might have considered if they weren’t already so close to achieving the end goal of their pursuit and if Sheeva didn’t suffer such horrid sea sickness.

  He peered through as another flash of light formed. A pillar of sand rose into the sky to knock someone off course, stood for a second, then fell back to the ground in a pile of rocks. As he fixed the spyglass on the person launched into the air, he watched in horror as Bartholomew’s ten-foot-tall, armored figure sailed through the skies, then landed in the sand to throw a small cloud of it everywhere.

  “It’s Bartholomew and Zakaraia,” He confirmed for Sheeva, who was squinting at the things in the distance. She whipped her head to look at him in disbelief.

  “I thought we had him promise to wait for us?” She asked, angered.

  Tazaro scoffed, shrinking the spyglass and stuffing it into his coat pocket.

  “Well, he’s not, and that idiot’s getting his ass kicked.”

  He shuffled his wings from his back and hopped up on the ledge, looking down at the back alley below. There were no people, and from what he could see, there weren’t any people relaxing on the rooftops, either.

  A warm updraft hit his face, and after getting the initial stench from the garbage bins below out of his nostrils, he realized that this would be the perfect opportunity for them to utilize the fastest way to get to Bartholomew.

  “We haven’t yet been run out of a town with pitchforks and torches. Didn’t know you were eager for that, Zvezdayu.” Sheeva smiled as she hopped up on the ledge, wings already bared and ready for takeoff.

  He shot her a disinterested look, then pushed off the ledge, straightening his wings. The thermals caught beneath his body, and as he tilted them slightly to create the lifting drag he’d need to soar high, Tazaro ignored the sudden lurch of his stomach as he rose a few feet. The wings spanning the length of his body billowed and arched, and he relished the delightful stretch it seemed to give to the muscles along his spine.

  The building across from them was about the same height as their inn, and Sheeva folded her wings to tuck them close to her backside as she landed on her feet. She hoped whoever lived on the floor beneath the rooftop wouldn’t come out to investigate the noise scampering above their ceiling as they ran across to the other side. With another jump, the spread of their wings, lift, and land, they hopped across the rooftops of the tightly-packed buildings, as they would in the forests around the temple–something Tazaro jokingly called “outdoor parkour.”

  The last, unimposing hurdle was the stretch of walls surrounding the town to prevent it from being blown away from vigorous sandstorms, but with the last of the evening’s thermals and a well-timed swoop, they cleared the ancient things with ease.

  A tense wave of energy buzzed on Tazaro’s face as they neared the site of the battle, and the ricochet of rising hairs on his arms and the back of his neck made him shudder.

  A battered Bartholomew knelt on one knee in the shifting sands, trembling with the effort to weakly hold his claymore at the ready. Across the way, a gloating Zakaraia brandished his nasty smirk and blood-ridden falchion as he took a few steps towards the wounded man. Wondering if the hand was still a stub, Tazaro trailed his eyes along the ta’hal’s left shoulder and down the long limb, relieved to find it just as useless as it had become.

  When Zakaraia leaped into the air, blade aimed for Bartholomew’s recoiled form, Tazaro sprang to help, tearing Tyrj and Laerso from their scabbards as he dashed across the uneven ground, but gasped in surprise as something cold shot past his head.

  A well-timed spear of ice flung past Tazaro and into Zakaraia. The icicle had sheared through the bastard’s leathery wings. In the blink of an eye, a second, cylindrical icicle rammed into his ribs to knock him aside a few good feet.

  “Good shot, Sheeva!” Tazaro congratulated, determined to focus on the fact that she’d successfully hit Zakaraia and ignore that she’d almost hit him.

  “Yeah,” She grunted cooly. Still, the concern on her face told him she wasn’t about to truly accept any compliments at the moment.

  Confident that Zakaraia would take some time to recover considering his pinned wings that he was struggling to shake free, they rushed to Bartholomew to aid him.

  Naturally, Sheeva was the first to scold him.

  “You’re a damn idiot, Bartholomew. You said you wouldn’t go looking for him!” She hissed, trying to help him to his feet. “Thought Ta’hal kept their promises!”

  His ears flattened back in embarrassment, but he accepted her offer, groaning as he got back onto his feet. He pressed a paw to his side, felt something warm and wet, and then glanced at it. The wound incurred was already healing, sizzling as it fused itself shut.

  “You’re lucky it wasn’t his tail-blade,” Sheeva grumbled, tending to another wound on the Ta’hal’s ear that hadn’t begun to heal itself with a quick healing spell.

  Tazaro let Bartholomew’s offensive, “argh, Vilgek skulka!” response slide and turned to keep a skeptical eye on Zakaraia. The icicles were beginning to melt, but the Ta’hal’s wings were still pinned. The holes had begun to heal, newly formed skin seeming to cleave through the chunk of ice in their midst. Amid the tan, leathery skin webbed between the wing’s digits, he spotted a section of lighter, smoother skin and shivered as he recognized it as Sferran.

  But of course, he reminded himself, the sadistic being would consider suturing the permanent tail-blade wounds with Sferran flesh.

  “For your information, Mom,” He grunted with an accusatory glance toward Sheeva, who returned the glance with a pleased, challenging smirk. “I didn’t seek him out,” Bartholomew explained, grabbing for his claymore.

  Sheeva softened, relieved that he’d kept his promise.

  “I allowed him to find me,” Bartholomew explained, with a throaty cackle and sneer at Sheeva’s huffed, angry, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

  The two of them turned towards Zakaraia’s airy voice.

  “You see, Bartholomew? Once a Ta’hal, always a Ta’hal. Utilizing loopholes to get what you want is what we do. It’s what makes manipulating these poor sods so much fun!” He rambled, getting to his feet.

  He slashed at the icicle pinning his wings together with his tail-blade, shattering the thing into pieces. The chunks fell out of his wings as he shook off the bitter chill and stretched. With a flap that flung the trickles of melted ice and kicked up a cloud of sand all over the three of them, Zakaraia launched himself into the air. In mockery, he hovered there momentarily while trying to decide what to do.

  Bartholomew scrambled to pick up his claymore while Sheeva tore Abraxas from its scabbard. Freshly sharpened, it bolstered the courage in her chest as she took a clearing breath.

  “Knock him to the ground. Tie him down with roots, nets, rocks–whatever we can use. Tear off his wings if we have to.” Sheeva muttered, satisfied with the affirmative grunt the other two gave.

  “I’ll gladly do that,” Bartholomew offered, taking to the skies with a mighty flap of his wings. Sheeva’s blurt of protest went briefly unheard. His bulky stature didn’t allow for great speeds, but Bartholomew pressed himself as hard as possible and forcefully swung the claymore down at Zakaraia’s head.

  Not to Bartholomew’s surprise and in the blink of an eye, Zakaraia blocked the overhead strike. Bartholomew felt a minute sense of pride at the fact that Zakaraia needed both falchion and the tan tail-blade, and more pride raised the furs on his face when he noticed the flash of fright in the blood-red ketze eyes beneath him.

  Bartholomew blocked a low-hanging, stealthy strike into the side of his chest from Zakaraia’s tail with his own, knocking the dangerous thing aside. No longer caring about fighting fair, he delivered a distracting kick to the shin that caused Zakaraia to cry out in pain. Zakaraia’s block crumbled, allowing the full weight of the claymore to fall, but Bartholomew twisted instead of bringing the blade into his shoulder.

  Weapons bucked to the side, Bartholomew grappled Zakaraia and turned his back to him, driving a claw deep into the Ta’hal’s ribcage. He situated his foot against the joint of Zakaraia’s left wing, took hold of the sturdy limb, and jerked it with all his might, rewarded with a deep-rooted pop and another feral screech of pain. With a claw that covered Zakaraia’s face, Bartholomew whipped around and flung Zakaraia towards the ground.

  Tazaro and Sheeva, stunned and impressed at Bartholomew’s ruthlessness, began to ready their spells instead of charge into the fight. Sheeva sheathed Abraxas and began to form the sigils for her binding roots, eyes closed in focus. Having cast his net spell so many times he joked he could do it in his sleep, Tazaro took a deep breath and calmed himself.

  Energy pooled at his fingertips, and he began threading his net, interlacing the second weave of threading to form–hopefully–a much more reliable one that wouldn’t break as his last one had.

  Still, he kept a careful eye on the fight above if he needed to shove Sheeva from harm’s way or dodge any dangers. He wished there had been a little more time to prepare as a heel drop Bartholomew delivered into Zakaraia’s chest sent him plummeting towards the ground. Tazaro turned to Sheeva to check on her progress. She was ready, hand hovering behind the sigil to slap through for deliverance at a moment’s notice.

  Zakaraia launched a dark, purple blob that landed in the sand a few yards away from them with a poof, creating a hole in the ground. The sands shifted, and as everything in the hole’s midst began to pull towards the center, Sheeva and Tazaro felt themselves be dragged, too.

  As the hole grew bigger, Zakaraia disappeared through it with a blinding flash.

  Tazaro barked a startled gasp as the ground beneath him gave way and reached out to catch himself on whatever he could. He caught himself on the rim, feeling his legs dangle in a weightless space he could only guess was the Ta’hal’s bizarre portal. His almost-finished net remained clutched in his hand.

  When a destroyed cluster of dead desert urchins buffeted them on their way to being sucked in, Sheeva lost her grip and fell back with a brief scream that silenced halfway through. Tazaro turned and whipped out the net, hoping to catch her.

  To their fright, it caught Sheeva’s wedding band that hung around her neck instead and whipped the priceless ornament back into his palm.

  “Ah! No, Sheeva!” Tazaro barked.

  “I’ll catch–” Bartholomew called out. As he peered into the blur of darkness and fast-moving stars and watched as he caught Sheeva, Tazaro realized Bartholomew had finished the sentence with “Sheeva” before the sound was swallowed by the portal.

  The plink that would have sounded from the snapping twine holding her wedding band around her neck didn’t, and as the blinding darkness enveloped and muddled her senses, Sheeva squeezed her eyes shut. She immediately felt the pressure shift on her face and let out a soundless scream, nauseated by the deafening silence and chilled to the bone from the sudden lack of residual heat from the sandy outskirts. Even more unnerving was the lack of wind that would have ruffled through her flyaway hairs and pierced the buffer of her clothes, but she refused to open her eyes.

  With an abrupt jerk, her fall was broken, and she slapped at whatever aberration had taken hold of her from the surrounding darkness with another soundless scream.

  Fur and scales tickled her palms instead of the tough tendrils she’d imagined, and she snapped her eyes open, blinking a few times in confusion at Bartholomew’s face.

  Beyond his frame, she could see Tazaro dangling from the edge of the portal amid the sand pouring in from the world beyond.

  She cried out a “wait,” but for as loud as she could yell, her voice did not carry. Not even a whimper could be heard amid the deafening silence.

  The shift in their orientation as Bartholomew seemed to stand on solid ground snared her attention, and she looked. Indeed, they were now standing upright, Sheeva clinging to Bartholomew for dear life. She looked at Tazaro across the way, still hanging from the edge, though appearing to float horizontally in the darkness.

  Somehow, she trusted their strange space and called out to Tazaro to let go. Again, her voice did not carry, much less escape her throat. She struggled against Bartholomew’s hold, which only caused him to hold her tighter.

  With a flash of light that caused her to squeeze her eyes shut again and another disorienting pop that sent a chill up her back, Sheeva noticed a change in her surroundings as they stepped through the other side.

  Though the air here was close, the fact that there was air was undeniable, even if the air was extremely cold and numbing. Sheeva’s limbs trembled with uncertainty, but as she listened, she could hear the hushed sounds of wind wafting through trees. With a clearing and slow inhale to still her rapidly beating heart, the clean, crisp scent of dormant birch and the invigorating smell of fresh snow snapped her to relief.

  Testing a few stamps on her feet to relieve them of their nerves, the crunch of snow could be felt beneath her shoes.

  Finally, she opened her eyes to look around.

  The forest they were in stretched for miles, tree limbs naked and bark peeling, warped by winter’s harsh bite and speckled with frost. More snow fell around them, and she looked to the sky. The sun was bright, but it didn’t warm, and she stared in further shock at the fact that she could see constellations toward the horizon. She peered at their formation, jumping from one to the next, worry growing as she found she couldn’t recognize any of them.

  “Where-where are we?” She asked, not caring that Bartholomew could hear the fear in her voice.

  “A place of no time and no space,” Bartholomew answered ambiguously as he stood beside her after unsheathing his claymore. His skeptic, challenging gaze was fixed among the trees.

  Sheeva, perplexed, looked around again. Zakaraia seemed to be the least of her worries now.

  “I don’t understand,” She admitted.

  Bartholomew sighed.

  “Limbo, if that helps you grasp it.”

  Sheeva’s stomach dropped.

  "What?" She whispered, looking at her hands. Curiously, she prodded herself with them. There was no loss of feeling, and she found no wounds.

  “Did we–” She stopped, remembering that Bartholomew was about as alive as a rock. “Am I dead?” She asked, horrified.

  The confused squint of his eyes and the amused curl of his lips, followed by the huff of air that billowed in a cloud from his nostrils, told her she was overthinking their circumstance.

  “Feh! You worry too much, Sheeva!” He laughed. He waved a claw at something. “No, this is just…a stopping place. The interstitial glue between Sferra and–well...” He trailed off, leaving Sheeva to wonder.

  “Between Sferra and what?” She pressed.

  He remained disturbingly silent before he spoke.

  “Had I made you keep our deal, you would find out.”

  Sheeva shuddered and hugged her arms to herself.

  “It’s so cold,” She shivered, further chilled by her overactive mind as it began to draw up more accurate depictions of what she’d imagined she’d need to expect. She had imagined herself wandering aimlessly for at least a few hundred years before forgetting Tazaro’s handsome face and contagious laughter, but with something as boorishly stimulating as what seemed an uninhabitable forest, she decided she might have lost her mind far sooner than that.

  “And, Tazaro? What of him? Is he safe?” She asked. She jerked to look behind her at the portal, hoping it was still open. It lingered like a waving strand of string in a gentle wind. Sheeva immediately headed to reach for it, but Bartholomew grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.

  “It’s dangerous,” He warned. Sheeva wrestled her wrist free of his hold.

  “I don’t care; I’m going to get–” She barked, turning back and heading toward the string. Something knocked her off her feet and flung her across the way, and after she rolled to a stop, she looked up as the tall, robed figure approached.

  “Like hell, you will! One less person for me to have to fight,” Zakaraia grunted, wisps of air puffing from beneath his hood as he spoke. He stopped in front of them a few feet away and pulled back the black hood to reveal his face.

  Sheeva pushed herself to her feet and brandished Abraxas again, sizing Zakaraia up from the ornate stone crown upon his head to his dark, ebony talons. He was much taller in their strange location than he was on Sferra, and as he plucked at the iron clasp binding his cloak around his shoulders, Sheeva took a couple steps back as she immediately cowered at his form when the cloak pooled around his clawed feet. She jerked her head back up as the fact caught up with her that he had a secondary set of eyes resting just above the innermost bend of his eyebrows, and she hoped he didn’t catch on to the widening of her eyes in their fright.

  Considering he towered over Bartholomew by a couple of feet and that Bartholomew stood tall over herself by at least two, Sheeva found herself needing to tilt her head up to look at the creature’s face, less humanoid than it had been but still carrying the claw-mark scar that spanned his face. His crimson-red eyes were more ketze-like, irises narrowed vertical slivers dilated by piercing brightness reflected off the falling snow. The long, pointed ears with lobes that dangled, pierced with weighty jade earrings, were a disturbing grey, and as she peered at the left one, she felt the shadow of a confident smile on her lips. Apparently, the chunk she swore she’d seen Bartholomew take out of his ear hadn’t been something she’d imagined before fainting in the temple courtyard during their last encounter.

  Two, four…six…seven long wings with feathers so black they shined with an obsidian sheen jutted from his tall torso, fanned in terrifying majesty that she couldn’t believe she was briefly admiring. One pair stretched from his lower back to droop and curl around his calves, while another pair midway up his back crossed behind his waistline. The remaining two pairs, one wing a shriveled stub from what Sheeva assumed was a successful severance, poked out from his shoulders to frame his arms and chest. Their plumage was puffed, giving his stature more build and aiding Sheeva in feeling dwarfed in his presence.

  He unclasped something at his side, and Sheeva watched as a tail unraveled from around the Ta’hal’s narrow, bony waist. With a flick, the tail split into three, and the limbs seemed to have minds of their own as they hovered menacingly over Zakaraia’s scale-pauldron shoulder.

  Sheeva finally understood how he’d hidden a blade in his chest as she eyed the matching jade gemstone buried in the pommel, and her fearful, unblinking eyes followed as Zakaraia reached into his chest. The first time she’d seen him do it, it had been shrouded by robes, but as the grey, leathery, scaly skin writhed and warped around the bony fingers and eventually, Zakaraia’s hand, Sheeva shuddered, unnerved. Watching the hand disappear into the depths of his chest and not seeming to be unphased at the black blood dribbling down his chest was far more disturbing than watching the rapid regrowth of his bones, attaching sinews and bands of muscles of his tail.

  As he pulled it from his chest, the metallic singing of his falchion sent the hairs on Sheeva’s neck sticking up in fear and the adrenaline rush stinging her back from her feet.

  “Are you terrified, half-breed?” Zakaraia taunted, the knowing smirk stretching from clipped ear to pointy ear.

  Sheeva couldn’t speak, trying to muster up the courage she’d been building for the past year. Seeing their foe in what seemed as close to his true state as possible put it into a deeply skewed perspective, and she began to doubt her ability.

  Barring the stub of his left hand, with all the limbs and advantages he still seemed to have at his disposal, which should she focus on first? How would she manage to juggle severing a wing when she had to worry about being run through with a falchion, two-foot tail blade, or slashed at with gruesome claws? Suppose she managed to disable most of his limbs and pushed her face in his–would the tiny, flailing arms with hands he had for hair pluck out her eyeballs at the last minute and leave her helplessly blind?

  “Don’t you remember me saying that we Ta’hal aren’t all pretty things to look at, Sheeva?” Bartholomew asked, appearing at her side.

  He, too, had changed, but she expected the stark changes, considering Cassie made it a point to comment about how creepy the “row of teeth” and stalky head with dreads was. His claymore lay slack against his shoulder in a nonchalant lean, but the fierce glint of determination in his teal ketze eyes was encouraging.

  “I…I don’t remember,” Sheeva murmured, taking a few steps to the side to give Bartholomew room as he stretched his wings.

  “Oh, it was shortly after I interrupted what would have been you and Tazaro’s first–

  –Ah! Yes! Of course, I do, you bastard!” Sheeva huffed, tsking as she recalled the moment clearly.

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  Still, she glanced behind her at the wiry wisp, concerned for her husband’s well-being. She hoped that, wherever Tazaro was, he was at least safe, and if he was on his way, he wasn’t too far behind them. With a bout of valor and resolve, she and Bartholomew could handle Zakaraia by themselves in the meantime. Sheeva turned back to face the source of their fears.

  And, if they managed to defeat the bastard while Tazaro was catching up with them, she supposed she’d have the rest of their lives to make it up to him.

  Tazaro clung to a threaded rope of energy he had slung last-minute at a dead but sturdy-looking tree, wavering between the massive black hole that ripped the ground from beneath their feet and the warm sands of the earth falling around his body. After processing the initial shock, Tazaro slowly understood a stark, eerie contrast between the two mediums his body stretched across.

  Despite his feet’s struggle, they kicked at nothing, and the weightlessness, almost as though he were swimming, further disoriented him.

  Curious, he allowed himself to peek over the ledge and, to his greater confusion, watched as Bartholomew seemed to be standing on something, though with the rapid drain of stars in the odd space, it was difficult to see what it was. He followed the trajectory of the assumed pathway to find it wasn’t far off from where he currently hung, and if he tried, Tazaro believed he could catch and tether himself.

  He pulled himself back into the shifting sands and turned around to face it, peering into the swirling darkness. An odd, thin strip of warped stars slowly appeared amid the void, and he caught himself praising the gods for their favor. With his heart pounding in his chest, a gulp to settle his nervous stomach, and a foreign leap of faith, Tazaro gave himself a running start to launch himself off the edge.

  Arms outstretched as he reached into the darkness, he feared he had grossly miscalculated as his eager hands grasped at smoke. With growing panic, he flapped his wings, but they caught on nothing with the seemingly airless space.

  “Vilg!” He swore, unable to realize his call ended in a voiceless shout. He watched the world above become smaller as he fell into the abyss. No breeze ruffled his clothes, and his heart cried out in dismay at the gods’ trickery before it was cut short by a rough collide with something solid.

  After opening his tightly-squeezed eyes as they dealt with the pain of his throbbing nose, Tazaro gawked in even more confusion. He was no longer looking down at the opposite side but rather, across from it, hands gripping an unmistakable ledge.

  “Tok…za…vilg?” He panted, momentarily frozen as he stared at the swirls of stars. He whipped his head around to glance behind, expecting to see a portal floating formlessly above the pathway, but to add to his disorientation, it was vertical, like a magical archway.

  As he caught his breath, a vague outline of a crossroad began to form. He pushed himself to his feet, shoving aside the frightening thought that, once he stood to his full height, the ground would give way once again and that he might be on his way to the maddening depths of oblivion.

  When no such thing happened, Tazaro bit back his eagerness to insult the gods he’d previously decided to trust, lest they mess with him more than they already had. He forced his wobbly legs to take a step forward.

  When step after step met on solid ground, Tazaro wasted no more time and bolted for the other side. No breeze kissed his face or wicked away the sweat on his brow, and no harsh force impacted his knees as they carried the shock from his feet to his hips. He could almost liken it to swimming in salty water so dense they could walk on it.

  Strangely, despite all his effort, he had not made any progress toward the other side. It caused him to wonder if he was merely asleep in the comfortable queen-sized bed at the inn and all that happened within the last hour was just a vivid dream. He slowed to a walk, panting as he tried to figure it out, then peered ahead as something moved in the darkness.

  A string of light floating ahead came to form, and with a burst of relief, Tazaro bolted forth again. Indeed, the wiry wisp became more clear as he ran, and with a furious swipe, he snatched at it before it could disappear from him.

  The violent flash of light amid the darkness was piercing, and he shielded his eyes with his arm, then dropped it as he felt an intense chill. The gentle serenade of a forest replaced the deafening silence of the abyss, and as fresh, clean air flowed into his chest, he gorged his lungs on the stuff to replace the stagnant airs he’d had welling within.

  As a tree fell to his left, Tazaro snapped his eyes open and whipped his head towards the sound of crackling wood, ready to sprint out of the way of what Rin used to call “widowmakers”--the dangerous fall of a two-tonne tree. Through the thicket of sun-bleached, bone-colored birch trees, he could see a pathway of fallen trees.

  Hoping the other two were all right, he hurried alongside the fallen trees, assured that at least Sheeva was still alive after hearing her sharp cry followed by the thunderous crash of yet another tree in the distance. Rather than waste time running and dealing with the frustrating, uneven terrain, Tazaro took to the sky to follow the path, casting a warming spell on himself to shelter from the harsh chill of winter’s bite.

  Tyrj and Laerso reflected the light of an unknown blue sun and, as much as he wished he could, chose not to muse on how the sun, moon, and stars could all appear in the sky simultaneously. Instead, he focused his attention on the trail of fallen trees and began to descend just ahead of where the path stopped in hopes of intervening.

  As the crack of a whip sounded out, Tazaro looked directly down. Something big, grey, and faster than he could discern began to shoot towards the sky from the ground, followed by another, smaller figure with a blue tint. He curved as far left as his wings would allow without causing him to spiral out of control towards the forest below to avoid the first projectile, then twisted to avoid an energy arrow that flew past his face.

  After righting himself, Tazaro looked up to follow the two creature’s paths as the Ta’hal began to clash in the air. The clinks of deflected tail blades and the horrendous screech of metal against metal echoed down onto the world below.

  “Tazaro!” Sheeva’s voice called.

  Tazaro looked down, swarmed with relief at the sight of her face: flush with exertion and brows furrowed with vindictive rage as she hurried to join the fight above. Abraxas shimmered from one hand with less luster than normal, covered in a thin sheen of black blood, while her other hand wielded the tail blade knife.

  “Chop him to bits!” She called as she flew past.

  “Chop him to...” Tazaro trailed off as he realized she was out of earshot.

  Bartholomew kept their foe busy from the front while Sheeva flanked from the side, hacking and slashing with almost reckless abandon, focusing her efforts with the dominantly-held tail blade as she blocked nasty affronts from Zakaraia’s three-limbed tail with off-handed Abraxas.

  Tazaro shook his head, then charged into the fray, switching the already short blade Laerso for the even shorter bowie-fashioned knife strapped to his thigh. As he went to drive his knife into Zakaraia’s backside, one of the tails knocked his strike aside and threatened to bury itself in his stomach in turn. Instead, the blade skipped off his makeshift armor, and the Ice Basiliska scales took the brunt of the force.

  Tazaro looped his arm around the tail and tried again, successful as he dug the blade into the space where Zakaraia’s tail connected with his body. The knife met the harsh resistance of bone, but Tazaro yanked it free and drove it in again. Sliding along what he assumed was cartilage, he twisted the knife as well as he could for maximum damage, hoping to nullify the use of the unfair advantage. Beyond the howls of pain, Tazaro felt the tail wrapped around his arm lose its vicious grip and go slack.

  As black feathers ruffled against Tazaro’s hand as Zakaraia tried to shake himself of Tazaro’s improvised grapple, Tazaro blinked, staring at the brush of black blood against the back of his hand. Confused, he counted the extra wings: two by the tailbone, one firmly attached and the other a bloody stump that moved in phantom unison with its partner. Two more rested further up along the Ta’hal’s torso, nicked in places. Some wounds were sizzling, emitting smoke as the flesh regenerated and sealed together, while other wounds were trickling and didn’t seem to be healing at all. Finally, he looked at the wings stretched across Zakaraia’s shoulders.

  The two right wings had been successfully severed, one of which was a long-healed stub and the other a freshly severed limb, and Tazaro had to admit, he was impressed with Bartholomew and Sheeva’s work in his absence. However, he didn’t have time to comment and grunted from impact as one of the four wings knocked him against the head.

  He yanked the knife free and attempted another strike, but as one of the wings flapped hard as Zakaraia tried to writhe free, it knocked the blade away from his body. Tazaro tightened his grip, unwilling to lose the only thing that would actually kill their foe.

  Thinking fast, Tazaro cast a flimsy, quick net around Zakaraia, and as blue threads wound around Zakaraia’s limbs and torso, Tazaro pulled the strings tight. Though he’d lacked adequate time to prepare a good net, his efforts seemed to work decently enough as the wings crumpled behind Zakaraia’s back and his arms and legs locked against his body.

  “Sheeva, chimaera!” Tazaro barked, alluding to the improvised tactics they’d pulled during a fight with a cave-dwelling chimaera in the northern part of the Urul-Maizen pass. Miraculously, they’d managed to kill the beast when Tazaro bravely tackled it to the ground with his bare hands while Sheeva aimed a shot with a spear of ice.

  Heeding Tazaro’s brave call, Sheeva retrieved her knife from the sheath wrapped around her waist in one hand, held tight to Abraxas in the other, commanded Bartholomew to follow, and dove. Bartholomew followed on her heels, ready to slash with his weighty claymore.

  Tazaro braced himself and held tight as he felt the knockback from the stab of the knife into Zakaraia’s shoulder, quickly followed by the upward slash of Abraxas across Zakaraia’s chest. But, as Bartholomew sheared the claymore down across Zakaraia’s already exposed chest, the knockback was enough that Tazaro felt his net give, shocked into letting go as he felt them both be thrown back a couple of feet.

  Sheeva looped around for another strike as Bartholomew readied another strike for a charge, and Tazaro found himself hopeful. The bait-and-switch method they’d used to take out a nasty chimaera was working incredibly well.

  Blistering heat scorched Tazaro’s face as Zakaria spit a breath of fire blindly in front of him, grazing Sheeva’s arm. The searing flames collided with Bartholomew’s armored chest, but the forceful, steady stream of fire was enough to cause Bartholomew to back off. In Tazaro’s lack of concentration, the net binding Zakaraia broke, and as Zakaraia’s pointy elbow bashed against Tazaro’s skull, Tazaro’s shield faltered.

  Stunned, Tazaro let go and fell, vaguely aware of his increasing plummet towards the earth.

  However, he felt a pair of hands grasp his shirt and tug, smelling singed hair and burning clothes, then felt himself be violently jerked aside. An earsplitting, nauseating screech sounded out that rippled on his skin, and beyond the shape of Sheeva’s shoulder, Tazaro watched as an intense, wide beam of dark energy shot down to the earth from Zakaraia’s chest.

  The attack was impressive, dreadful, and disturbingly beautiful as streams of purple lightning and green swirled around inside the pillar, but as he followed the trajectory towards the earth, his eyes widened in fear when the spell cleared.

  Where once had stood sturdy birch and Hyperion trees, a clearing sat as though Zakaraia had stamped a gigantic cookie cutter into the world and tossed the chunk aside.

  “Tazaro, brace yourself, now!” Sheeva commanded, unwilling to know what the intense flow of energy at her backside was as she flapped hard to slow their crash into the trees. He followed her order without hesitation and with good timing as he watched the canopy suddenly appear around them. He came to his senses, wrapped his arms around her, and tried to use his wings to help slow their fall.

  Successfully, they landed on their feet before Sheeva took a knee, slapping at the still-burning fabric of her coat. Tazaro helped to shed the jacket to take a look, all too familiar with the smell of singed flesh from the rare times he needed to work iron into nails.

  He ignored her pained, barked “bastard!” and stepped to the side to allow light to pass through.

  The skin on her upper arm was rosy, and a few large, round blisters had already begun to form. Tazaro sighed, relieved that the skin wasn’t a few shades deeper, indicative of a far harsher burn than he felt capable of healing. Even with their best spells, Tazaro doubted the ability to fully heal the wound at the moment, but something would be better than nothing.

  The leaf-like trail of the healing sigil was almost second nature. As Tazaro guided the floating sign to her arm, Sheeva visibly relaxed and let go of a heavy sigh, soothed from the aching burn that seemed to spread from her fingers into her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” She murmured, getting to her feet, albeit clumsily. Fearing worse, Tazaro urged her to sit down instead and stooped to scan her. She winced, grunted at something, then sat back with an exhausted “pshew.”

  “Sorry I called you a bastard,” She mumbled softly with a small smile. Her eyes blinked slowly before she closed them to deal with her dizziness. “Didn’t mean to. Iz the pain thaz the bastard,” She grumbled.

  “Don’t worry about it. Are you hurt anywhere else?” He asked, tapping her forehead. The scroll he unrolled didn’t reveal anything worse than her pain and the fact that she’d just received a likely scarring second-degree burn, but considering he didn’t know everything, Tazaro looked her body over quickly for any serious bleeding.

  There were a few nicks and scrapes, with fresh tears in her clothing, but he could see no serious wounds. He checked her head to ensure she hadn’t hit it on something. Assured there was no injury here either, he grabbed a clump of snow and set it atop her head as a makeshift icepack, and she sighed in comfort.

  “Thanks. I’m fine. Just woozy.” She mumbled. She lolled her head to look up at the sky. “What was that attack? I could only feel this…intense energy.”

  Tazaro looked up, too, then pressed the both of them into the cover of the spacious treetrunk as a grey blur of Zakaraia, followed by a blue flash of Bartholomew, zoomed overhead.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out. It’s like it, uh,” Tazaro paused, searching for a way to describe the horrifying thing. “It obliterated a chunk of the forest. Just like that.” He snapped to accentuate his point.

  Sheeva opened her mouth to ask for more details but snapped it shut and jerked her head towards the sky as the clash of two weapons rang out.

  Bartholomew blocked a strike from Zakaraia’s falchion with an elegant, red-bladed halberd that he had retrieved from the depths of his chest. As the blade nearly pierced his eye, Zakaraia pushed against the flat of his blade with his stump, slowly recognizing it at its new distance.

  The skull-shaped, red-tinted, three-foot blade was one he hadn’t seen in a couple of millennia, and as he thought about to whom the halberd had once belonged, he eyed the name carved in Ta’hal lettering on the side of the seven-foot metal pole. Had the centaur’s trusty weapon really been hiding under his nose for this long?

  Sure enough, the weapon had once belonged to Anansi’s loyal “steed,” Orobas–fittingly named Orobas, the Loyal–and he sneered in jealousy at Bartholomew’s lucky nab.

  “So this is where you kept his weapon! Shame, I’d have liked to have added it to my arsenal!” He chirped, attempting to kick at Bartholomew’s leg. Bartholomew tucked his wings back, pushed himself out of the way, then raised the halberd above his head as he tried to swing it down upon Zakaraia’s head again.

  “Like hell! You already have Fenix’s disgusting spell!” He barked, referring to the destructive pillar of darkness that he shot from his chest, thanks to the assumed prophet’s gemstone that Zakaraia no doubt had hidden in the mysterious depths of his chest.

  Seeing a chunk of flesh fighting to reposition itself after Zakaraia’s ribcage had burst open to deliver the highly risky spell, Bartholomew whipped his tail behind him, straightened it, and attempted to jab the blade into the vulnerable spot.

  However, Zakaraia managed to misdirect the pressing attack with a block with the stump. Bartholomew’s tail blade grazed Zakaraia’s side instead, causing Zakaraia to cry in pain. The resistance from the falchion gave in and brought the fangs in the reaper’s skull dangerously close to Zakaraia’s face.

  Zakaraia couldn’t help but fear that if the blade had come any closer, his second set of eyes might have been irreversibly pierced by the fangs jutting from the row of teeth. First, the loss of five of his remaining wings, and now, the threat of Valrigard’s infrared eyes? For the first time in what seemed like a thousand years, he felt a twinge of concern for his immortal self.

  Seeing his moment, Bartholomew twisted the halberd to lock Zakaraia’s falchion in the skull’s teeth. With a butchered pronunciation of Orobas’s command, the two fangs in the skull’s row of teeth elongated and stabbed Zakaraia in his forearm. Zakaraia howled in pain, then cried out sharply as Bartholomew harshly jerked the falchion out of Zakaraia’s idle hands. Bartholomew felt a confidence boost as they watched the primary blade fall to the forest floor below.

  While Zakaraia was distracted, Bartholomew brought the halberd close, then speared forth to jab at Zakaraia. The block was ineffective when the jab was blocked with a quick draw of his baselard but with little time to prepare with a brace from his stump. A simple, forceful twist left Zakaraia again disarmed, and before the bastard could turn tail and fly away, Bartholomew lurched forward.

  He hooked the fangs of Orobas’s Scythe around Zakaraia’s torso and spun, severing the remaining two wings on Zakaraia’s shoulders in one fell swoop. The twinkle of jade caught his eye, and he fixed his gaze on it, unable to believe his luck. He snatched at it and yanked it free, slipping his arm through it as though it were a bracelet until he could crush the “stupid thing.” A final stab and twist at Zakaraia’s backside with Bartholomew’s tail blade had him wailing with pain, and as Bartholomew launched Zakaraia towards the ground, he followed in hot pursuit, unwilling to give Zakaraia any chance for tricks.

  With another bellowed command and a brilliant, prismatic flash of light, the halberd’s pike elongated and sharpened.

  Zakaraia’s back hit the ground, and he barely witnessed Bartholomew’s advancing frame beyond the blur of bleary eyes before they squeezed shut from pain as he struggled to suck in a breath of air.

  Sheeva and Tazaro paused in their frantic run as they heard a loud crash, then pushed themselves harder, unsure who had fallen to the earth with such a cataclysmic boom. Upon reaching a new clearing, they peered through the dust at the figure writhing on the floor in pain while making gaudy noises for air.

  Sheeva fell back and blurted out a shriek as a giant spear shot down from the sky to bury itself in the unclaimed figure, then cried out a startled “oh!” as a massive creature landed on the pole to send it deeper into the earth.

  As though stepping down a set of stairs, they watched as Bartholomew stepped off the halberd’s tangs, appearing worn out. Tazaro ran to their friend’s side to catch him as he staggered in their direction, then helped him to the ground as he caught his breath.

  “Here,” Bartholomew grunted, shoving something cold and stony into Tazaro’s hands.

  Tazaro stared at the weighty thing in his hands in disbelief, turning it over as though thorough examination would make him understand what he was really looking at. The jade stones seemed dull in the light and lacked the genuine luster as a real one would, and, considering the thing was supposed to be made of stone, it was particularly light. His skepticism apparently showed on his face a little too much as Bartholomew scowled at him, then cast a glance at the Ta’hal struggling to unpin his shoulder from the ground with only one hand.

  “Break it,” He commanded. Tazaro blinked, then opened his mouth to protest.

  “I don’t think it’s–

  –just break it; we’ll know if it’s fake then! We don’t have time to sit around and examine things too closely!” Bartholomew insisted.

  Sheeva ignored their bickering and focused her attention on the pinned-down beast. She began to worry as the bastard grabbed the blade with his bare hand and shoved it to the side, screaming from the self-inflicted pain as the steel cut into his palm. Still, he persisted, and to her growing horror, the pike shifted to the right, then towards the left as he wiggled it loose with his bloodied stump.

  Trying to focus, she formed the sigil for her roots spell and slapped her hand through it, just in time as Zakaraia shoved the pike out of his body and managed to sit up. Long, dirt-clodded tree roots as thick as her leg sprang out of the ground and wrapped around Zakaraia’s torso, then slammed him back down on the upturned soil.

  “Damn it!” Zakaraia swore, struggling against his binds with all of his strength. As Sheeva watched some of the roots give, she tightened her fist in hopes of restraining him even more. They squeezed harder, and Zakaraia yelled again out of pain and frustration.

  Tazaro wasted no more time. He raised the crown above his head, then chucked it at the ground as hard as possible. It shattered, revealing the dark shade of basalt on the inside.

  “This is–

  –fake, yes. I know.” Bartholomew grumbled, forcing himself to his feet. “It didn’t release the poor souls he’s disgustingly obtained.” He stormed to Zakaraia’s body and kicked him in the side.

  “You bastard! Where is it?” He demanded to know.

  Zakaraia merely cackled in defiance.

  “You really think I’m gonna tell y–oo!” He squealed, cut off as Sheeva twisted her hand, thus twisting the roots binding him into a tighter coil. He gave a wheezy, weak cough, and Tazaro tried not to think about how mildly terrified he was of his wife’s spell, previously unaware of its full capabilities. Sheeva twisted her hand back a few degrees to lessen the tight coil in case they needed him to talk.

  “Check his head,” Sheeva suggested. Bartholomew stood to his full height, then turned to her with confusion.

  “What?” He growled.

  “He wouldn’t consider hiding his crown in the same place twice…would he?” She explained, face contorted into one of intense focus as Zakaraia tried to break free again, squirming and barking obscenities at them.

  Bartholomew’s eyebrows raised as he thought about it, and after a slight tip of his head in acknowledgment of the clever suggestion, he moved toward Zakaraia’s head, where the obsidian and jade crown rested, half-cocked on a grey head. The thing only seemed to stay in place thanks to the dreads of hair looped through and tangled around the prongs.

  “Be ready, Tazaro,” He ordered, raising his foot and arching his tail to hover the blade over the middle of Zakaraia’s torso.

  Tazaro nodded, retrieved his tail-blade knife from the scabbard tied to his leg, then approached Zakaraia’s side. He stopped, unable to find a clear enough space to stab with the thick roots in the way.

  “Sheeva, I don’t have a clear shot. Can you–

  –yeah,” She sounded behind gritted teeth, visibly trembling with the effort to hold her spell.

  As she shifted her hands to widen their position, the roots moved slightly, shifting to pin his limbs down, and as Tazaro felt it was enough space to get through to the beating heart in their enemy’s chest, he nodded at Bartholomew to signal his ready.

  With a feral roar, Bartholomew stomped on the crown around Zakaraia’s head, and Tazaro wasted no time plunging the blade down, taking a knee to add force to the blow.

  To Bartholomew’s fright and dismay, not a single prismatic wisp flew from the shattered remains of this crown, either.

  Had Tazaro imagined it, or had Bartholomew cried out an unmistakable “shit!” following the shattering of the only other stone crown to be seen?

  The rapid shift of the roots beneath his feet caused Tazaro to lose his footing, and as he stumbled backward, he watched in terror as Zakaraia broke free of his binds with the swish and flick of his last remaining tail. Roots in shreds, Zakaraia leaped to his feet and stood tall, then swiped at Bartholomew, who was closest, with a claw that knocked Bartholomew back a few feet.

  “Ha! Gotcha, bitch!” Zakaraia barked in glee, turning his head as Sheeva charged for him with Abraxas. He ducked her reckless swing, then kicked at her with a foot, sending her crumbling to the ground and coughing for air as the strike broke through her shield.

  As he raised his hand to strike her from behind while she was down, Tazaro rushed forth and blocked the strike of the deadly claw with Tyrj.

  Zakaraia turned his attention on Tazaro, spitting an insult for his interruption. With rising vehemence, they traded or blocked angry swipes with claw and blade as their fight skittered them across the clearing.

  Stuck in a standstill as Zakaraia’s claw locked against double-handed Tyrj, citrine eyes hardened with determination locked onto reds glistened with malice. Zakaraia stepped forward, and Tazaro felt himself slide back into the snow. The white puffs of air from the panting mouth lingering a few inches from his face made Tazaro scrunch his nose in distaste as hot, stinky breath ruffled through his hair.

  “Oh-ho! You really can hold your own, now, boy!” Zakaraia sneered, nose curling up as he leered down. It didn’t seem to shake Tazaro as he’d wanted it to, and he squinted in indignance.

  “Mothers are so easily manipulated. You wave their sniffling little children in their faces, and they’ll willingly give up their own lives!” He chuffed, seeming to puff up his chest in cruel boast. “And boy, what a sniveling little wimp you were!” Zakaraia taunted in a low growl, sneering and pleased with his insults.

  Zakaraia blinked, surprised when his stare only steeled instead of causing Tazaro to crumble and shirk back.

  In a bold move, Tazaro broke his bracing stance with Tyrj to close the distance and deliver an energy-fueled punch to Zakaraia’s scaly stomach, happy to find the shocked widening of his red eyes as the force made him stumble back a few steps. The brief bark of pain Zakaraia let out was cut short as the strike triggered his diaphragm and caused him to gape like a fish out of water for air. Before Zakaraia could regain himself and strike back, Tazaro side-stepped, shifted into another stance, and delivered a powerful kick to Zakaraia’s chest, only able to reach because the bastard was doubled-over.

  With a burst of bright-green energy that Tazaro watched shoot from his foot, through Zakaraia’s chest cavity, then into the snow to split the ground beneath, he finally understood the full capacity of the deadly technique he’d developed. Not even the densest muddie he could craft could have given him such a realistic presentation of his ability, considering that sticks and mud were nowhere near as sturdy as real bone, flesh, and even the scales that acted as a form of natural armor.

  Zakaraia felt the immediate swell, lyse, and the explosion of his heart amid the massive surge of pain in his chest, and as the mind-numbing agony brought him to his knees, he clutched at his chest with a hand. As a shadow of a blade formed in the snow, Zakaraia jerked his head around to look; Tazaro had his sword raised and ready to shear off his head.

  He rolled to the side and scrambled to his knees, stumbling aside as the long, lanky trees spun and weaved with the sky and snow to make a nauseating mess of white, dark blue, and greys. He jumped aside as Tazaro speared the air next to his shoulder, then ducked desperately as Tazaro sliced across the air where his neck had just been. As Tazaro brought down the blade across his chest, Zakaraia leaped to the other side, then slashed at him blindly with a sharp claw, unsure where his own weapons were.

  Tazaro stepped to the side, dropped Tyrj, whipped around to Zakaraia’s backside, and grappled, then dropped to a knee to flip Zakaraia backward over his curled frame. He hit the ground hard with a blurted “oof” and lay there in the dirt as he tried to comprehend what had happened amid rapid vertigo tumbling him around.

  Determined to dislodge the remaining tail, Tazaro grabbed Laerso and yanked it free of its sheath, attempting to bring it down across the scaly tail.

  However, a sharp zing on the blade rang out as Zakaraia raised his tail and bucked away the threatening blow. Tazaro screamed out shortly as Zakaraia blindly drove his tail into his thigh, breaking through the tough Basiliska scales he’d fashioned into a cuisse for his legs. Beneath the light-blue scales, Tazaro could see red blood dripping down his left leg and splashing onto the white snow beneath his feet. Laerso slipped from his numb fingers as he fell to a knee, but before Tazaro could unstick the tail-blade from the cuisse, Zakaraia rushed, knocking him back against a tree.

  Frantic, Tazaro grabbed his knife again and raised it, hoping to at least inflict a deadly strike on Zakaraia’s neck while Zakaraia was distracted with trying to wiggle the tail-blade loose.

  The knife plunged through the palm of Zakaraia’s hand when he let go of Tazaro’s collar to block the strike, and as the claws closed around the tangs, Zakaraia ripped the blade out of Tazaro’s hand. With a headbutt that left Tazaro dizzy, Zakaraia lifted Tazaro off the ground to knock his forehead against Tazaro’s face. As he raised his claw to swipe again, Tazaro followed the talons shimmering with blood beyond his dimmed range of blurred sight.

  A large ice sphere collided with Zakaraia’s broken torso and flung him off Tazaro. He barely heard the snap of his cuisse, too distracted by the sharp pain that followed, and Tazaro fell to the ground, tumbling as he collapsed beneath the sudden weight of his body and the weakness of his leg.

  Lightheaded, weary, and trembling, Tazaro struggled to shuffle against the base of the tree while relying on his uninjured leg and tore the remains of the shattered scale plate from his thigh to assess the damage. Beneath the double-layered, two-inch thick cuisse that had nearly split in two, a pool of blood oozed from the wound shrouded by the clean slice in his jeans. While the wound throbbed with severe pain, he was thankful that the cut was clean and straight; though it was still a fairly deep puncture that seemed to have closed on its own. It was still bleeding a trickle, but as he poked with a nervous hand in morbid, dumb curiosity, a short gush of blood flowed from the wound and down his leg.

  Cursing himself, he slapped a hand to it and attempted a healing spell, uttering a groan of pain. He felt the bizarre tingle as the wound began to seal itself shut and winced in discomfort as the bands of his muscles repaired themselves, twisting and twitching while he groaned from the deep burn.

  As he breathed away the rest of his tension and looked around for the others, Tazaro jumped as Sheeva appeared at his left and stooped down to check on him.

  “Are you alright?” She asked, worried.

  “Yeah,” He groaned as he forced a slow breath and let his head slack against the tree trunk. “Yeah, think so,” he answered fully, glancing over her shoulder at the slump that was Zakaraia. He was apparently breathing out his pains, clutching his chest with a claw and oozing blood from his mouth like a drooling soba. Tazaro hardened his stare, feeling vindictive as Zakaraia vomited black blood.

  He rolled over onto his hands and knee of his uninjured leg and attempted to stand with Sheeva’s help. The wound ached, but the pain was forgotten as Bartholomew charged in on all fours with a feral roar, barreling into and knocking Zakaraia over. Stony rakes of claws against claws rang out, and as Bartholomew managed to successfully pin Zakaraia on his backside, Sheeva gasped in fright as Bartholomew bit at Zakaraia’s throat like the lion’s head of a chimaera.

  The horrendous gurgling that resounded through the clearing made her shudder, but Bartholomew’s order slowly registered in her frightened brain.

  “Tie him down! This is it!”

  Sheeva shook her head and raised her hand to trace the tan, loopy sigil in the air, and as she slapped her hand to deliver it, she felt the body-wide sap of energy as roots sprang from the ground and coiled around Zakaria’s legs. The cost brought her to a knee, but she desperately held fast.

  Tazaro didn’t have much experience with the spell since he preferred to use nets, but he attempted to copy the spell as well as he could. He doubted that he would have enough time to craft and sling a net, and as he, too, needed to take a knee as the instant sap left him breathless and his face itching from exertion, he closed his eyes to hold his focus.

  Bartholomew spat the residual blood that tasted of charcoal from his jowls, then drove his claw into Zakaraia’s chest in blind search of the real obsidian, jade-jeweled crown, wincing as he nicked his paw on something sharp. Zakaraia was faintly aware of the arm rummaging around in the portal of his chest, but beyond the slur of his muddled brain, he couldn’t drum up the will to struggle. His vision spun and remained blurry as his wounds fought to heal, and as the wounds on his neck sealed, he could finally take a clearing breath.

  “Get the fuck off–He began but coughed as Bartholomew’s claw clasped around his neck and squeezed.

  “Fuck you,” Bartholomew retorted, now up to his armpit in his search, meanwhile reveling in the raspy cries and sounds of choking as his claw tightened. As warm blood trickled beneath his claws, Bartholomew twisted his hand to widen the gash and buy himself more time.

  Beyond something fuzzy that squeaked and definitely moved when he touched it, the sleek surface of a gem, followed by the unmistakable pores of volcanic stone, graced the padding of his paw. Hopeful, he grasped it and yanked his hand from the cold abyss.

  In his paw, the crown rested, jades sleek and shiny, pristine in their cool, blueish-green hue, accentuated in their majesty by the rich, regal obsidian that also shined with a shellac sheen against the light of the blue sun.

  Zakaraia’s distressed gasped “NO,” convinced Bartholomew that he held the genuine article. Bartholomew raised the item above his head and slammed it down on the ground as hard as possible.

  The crack it gave was surreal, but the prismatic wisps that erupted from the shattered crown filled him with relief. Tiny, oblong wisps began to float up; past his face, beyond the sheltering canopy of the pines, and into the eventide, starry sky, and, while they might not be able to find their way to the mouth of Fidelia’s stream for further guidance, at least they were free to float in the cosmos.

  Zakaraia’s howl and furious struggle caught Bartholomew off guard, previously pacified by the immense weight lifted from his shoulders. As Zakaraia snapped free of the roots binding his legs, Sheeva felt herself be jerked forward to face-plant in the snow, unable to brace herself.

  With a mournful cry, Zakaraia raised his hips to free his tail from being pinned beneath his backside and whipped it at Bartholomew’s head. In a flash, Bartholomew snatched the blade before it could connect with his face and drove it through Zakaraia's chest, directly beneath the bony ribcage.

  Zakaraia let out an airless gasp and gaped soundlessly in pain as he felt the organ slow its beating to a stop and shrivel like a rotten beet. From the knife’s point in his chest, Zakaraia’s grey body began to calcify, turning a slate grey and rigid as his pores turned to stone. The tears from his eyes hardened and slipped off his cheek to plop into the snow beneath and leave an impression. As he tried to kick himself free, his limbs tore away from the stone as the petrification crawled across his skin, and as he let out a scream, it was cut short as the full transformation set in.

  A statue, sealed in eternal, agonizing writhe of desperation, remained.

  As silence filled their ears, Sheeva and Tazaro slowly looked up from their crouch. They hunkered down, hands over their heads in case the petrifying sickness spreading across Zakaraia’s body erupted in a sudden explosion. Rising to their knees, they watched wordlessly as Bartholomew clambered off to the side, then sat back down on their bottoms as he did the same, panting for air and trembling from physical exertion.

  The sky above, still with the eventide glimmer lingering on the horizon and darkened, starry center, encouraged them to stare into the cosmos as they collected themselves.

  “You know, Bartholomew, seems Ta’hal turn to stone after all,” Tazaro commented as he struggled to grasp the sheer concept of their accomplishment, though only to mask the sinking feeling that there was still more that Bartholomew had not disclosed–despite their insistence that he be as upfront as possible. Though, what a Bartholomew thing to do, he hummed as he blinked sluggishly at the odd constellation of a silver pitcher.

  Still, it caused a ripple of soft chuckles that grew into laughs, then died back into stunned silence.

  “It’s not always the same. Orobas melted into a puddle of goo. Belias burst into flames and became a pile of ash.” Bartholomew admitted, scowling at the trickle of sweat that crept along his neckline. He wiped it away, then sighed heavily as light, fluffy snowflakes fell to kiss his flush face–not that the other two would be able to tell, given the thick scales and blueish fur nestled beneath.

  “Feh!” Sheeva huffed as she sat up and brushed the falling snow out of her face. “Just when were you going to–Tss, vilg!” She swore as she brushed at the snow that fell on her arm, the expansive, upper-arm burn mark forgotten about. She prodded at it with an experimental finger, then hissed again at the sting.

  She stared at the snow, then scooped a clump in her hand. With a satisfying hiss and soothed sigh, the relief of the burning sting further showed on her face with its elated expression.

  Tazaro lolled his head to the side at the sound, then frowned.

  “You’re not supposed to do that with ice, you know,” He called in a reminder. Sheeva pursed her lips, guilty.

  “I know, but it feels–” She stopped to grab another handful. “So. Fucking. Good.”

  "Sheeva, stop. You'll make it worse," He begged as he sat up, too, and made to crawl to her. Worry strangled his gut as his leg seemed to drag along when he went to roll over. He stared at the wound, trying again to move his leg, and could only drown in anxiousness as it refused to cooperate. It was no longer bleeding, but he bit back a scream each time he tried to move as a stabbing pain shot through his leg and into his brain.

  “I don’t think I can move, Sheeva,” Tazaro admitted, hoping she didn’t pick up on the wariness in his voice. Terrified that he might be permanently unable to walk caused the worry to sink farther into the ground than his guts did.

  Snared and concerned, Sheeva stopped the bad habit of applying ice to her burn and turned to him.

  Tazaro stared forlornly at his leg beyond the shadow of extreme exhaustion, the wisp of dedication seeming to drift farther and farther away. She struggled to her feet, then plodded to him, doing her best to set herself down carefully at his side.

  The wound in question seemed sore and tender to the touch, and she grasped a few clumps of snow in her palms to cleanse them a little, then fished around in her bag for her medical kit. Retrieving the clearly labeled “not for drinking” alcohol, she splashed some on her hands. The snow beneath crisped before it melted, but Sheeva didn’t pay much attention to that, more focused on tearing away her husband’s pants for better access to his wound.

  She winced sympathetically at his pained “yip” when a few frayed strings from his pants tugged at the wound as she peeled it back. Apparently, Tazaro had accidentally sealed some fabric in a quick attempt to heal himself. Grabbing a nearby stick, she handed it to him to clench between his teeth.

  “Here, bite. Brace yourself,” Sheeva ordered. Tazaro obliged, watching fearlessly with staggered breaths as she checked the wound for other fabric fragments or outside debris. He grunted in pain through the stick as she located a hemp thread sticking out of the wound, then plucked at it with tweezers sanitized with rubbing alcohol, now bloody as they pricked at buried flecks of basiliska scale fragments.

  “Good that you took the time to heal this. It seemed like it was deep. I, I can’t be sure, but it will likely scar.” She commented, hiding her frown at his worried, muffled, “it will?”

  Regardless of what the future would hold for him, she was extremely grateful that he was still alive.

  Once he was calm and laying slack against the tree trunk, Tazaro mused on the damage done to his leg as he wiggled his toes in thanks. He didn’t think the blade had nicked his femur since he felt that, if it had, the integrity of his bone would have been compromised and likely fractured or shattered the moment he’d tried to stand on it. But, as he stared at the petrified tail blade on Zakaraia’s statue, he paled with realization. If he hadn’t had the basiliska scale in front of his leg, the blade would have pierced clean through, and with as violent of a jerk that had torn the blade from his leg, the gash would have left him bleeding out and dead in minutes.

  He tested a few raises of his leg, breathing through the ache of his muscles, and, upon bending his knee without much trouble, felt ready to stand and walk about.

  Determined to get back onto his feet, Tazaro pushed himself to his hands and knees, then shifted onto his feet, using the tree to assist in a temporarily wide-footed stance. Getting to his feet seemed hard enough with the weight shift on his right leg, and he hesitated to take a step forward. When Sheeva’s warm hand took his, and Bartholomew’s scaly arm appeared to his left, Tazaro felt the swarm of appreciation spread warmth and encouragement through his whole body.

  Trusting they would catch him if he stumbled and fell, he bravely took that first step…and nearly buckled onto his face as an immense sting shot through the front of his thigh.

  “Tazaro…” Sheeva started in a warning tone. “Maybe you should wait for a little while longer. It’s good that you can be on your feet, but you still need to rest.” She sighed, tucking her face away into his chest as she pulled him into a hug. He found he leaned on her more than he wanted to admit as his legs began to shake.

  “I-I’m fine,” He insisted. “I just need to walk. I-I want to walk.” He grunted in a heavy voice. He hissed as Sheeva’s hands squeezed so tightly on his shirt that it happened to pinch some skin and stilled at her stern growl of his name.

  “Tazaro, please.” She insisted, finally raising her head out of his chest to look at him. “To say I understand your feelings is an understatement, but you must take it easy. It’s hard to–trust me, I know.” She urged with a gentle hand on his cheek. The warmth melted his hardened, stubborn stare, and he felt the furrow of his brows slowly release as he nestled his cheek further against her hand. The pools of tears and the wry face of sweet agony completely sobered him, and, with a heavy sigh that made him want to plop back down into the snow, Tazaro relented.

  With a short nod, he voiced his acceptance and allowed her to help him kneel and sit back down against the tree. He tried not to watch as she hustled around and built a fire to warm them for fear of becoming envious and letting his thoughts run rampant, and he was roughly aware of his eyes closing as he drifted when the weight of a blanket lulled him to sleep.