The unbearable lightness of existence had often weighed on Diya as she rose through the ranks of the military academy back on Ghanesha. Purpose was a star she thought she saw faintly glimmering each night, but was never quite sure it was real. Each day had a certain monotony to it that no amount of accolades or merits could erase.

  Yet, as Diya perched on Shikra’s saddle, Tamsin holding tightly to her, she felt like more than just another cog in the machine called life. Whether she truly was some prophesized hero—and she was relatively certain she was not—her actions finally felt like they had weight. Who knew what terrible things Arjun might do to her home if she couldn’t stop him? And stars forbid that Zoralia succeed in her mission to sacrifice Ghanesha.

  As awful as each of the unfortunate events that had led her to this moment had been, she felt more alive than ever before. Shikra cooed warmly, sending a vibration through Diya’s body, as if understanding what its friend had been feeling.

  The giant bird shifted beneath them, wings half-extended, like it was eager to dive into action. It was a full moon and the two luminous orbs looked on, each partially obscured by the fractured city skyline as they perched atop the long silent bell tower. The bell itself was painted with a grainy teal verdigris, and it dozed, half buried in the splintered wooden beams. Diya found herself longing to hear what it might have sounded like when the city was in it’s prime.

  So far below, the Skarlith camp sprawled across the broken plaza below like an infestation of weeds. Bone-walled shelters curved unnaturally, their surfaces slick with a sheen that caught moonlight like wet carapace.

  “Despite the fact that we have the perfect weapon, why can’t I shake the feeling that we’re in way over our heads?” Diya said quietly, running her gloved fingers across Shikra’s neck feathers.

  “I know it seems we’re not more than a pebble trying to stop a river, but we can do this,” Tamsin replied flatly, holding up a satchel full of subtly shifting ceramic bombs. She looked out over the edge of the tower, white mask concealing all but her eyes. Yet, those eyes were steady, unflinching. “We’ll sow panic, a surgical strike, not fight a bloody battle. Make them run, seize the relic, and vanish, leaving them to run back underground to spread word of our new weapon.”

  “Where do you think they’re keeping the relic?”

  “The Sunroot Idol.” Tamsin mused, eyes scanning the camp. “Look there. I think that must be the chief’s quarters. I suspect he would keep the relic close. So that should be our focus.”

  Together they examined the thorny structure in the center of the camp, it was an unsettlingly symmetrical mound of bone and silk web. Groups of guards stood tall, posted at each of its three entrances. Spiraling out from there was a series of smaller structures with warriors, laborers, and what appeared to be enslaved servants moving about them.

  Diya’s hand lingered on the satchel. She closed her eyes and breathed a calming breath, ceramic spheres shifted within, each empowered by Tamsin’s blood, just as she had been. Their first true collaboration. Her invention, Tamsin’s sacrifice. A strange new power that could potentially be the coven’s salvation, yet dangerous and untested outside the workshop.

  She had been cooking up weapons in her workshop since she was a teenager, and the excitement of unveiling a new concoction always filled her with equal parts excitement and terror. Usually though, failure only came with the prospect of embarrassment, not the death of an entire people.

  Shikra ruffled feathers, sensing her tension. “Easy, girl,” Diya murmured.

  Tamsin cracked her knuckles, then ran her fingers over the twin maces slumbering across her back. She was prepared to wake them, and the sleeping beast inside of her. “Ready?”

  “No.” Diya grinned anyway. “But since when has that stopped us?”

  They descended like a falling star. Shikra folded her wings, air whipping past them as they sliced through the night in a controlled nosedive. Wind blew Diya’s braids across her face, her teeth bared in a silent snarl. At the last instant, Shikra unfurled her wings, braking hard as Diya deftly lit a fuse and hurled the first bomb.

  The ceramic sphere sailed through the sky, lit only by the moonlight, the tiny flame eating through the fuse. A moment later, it cracked against a chitinous tower. For a heartbeat, nothing, then a boom like a mighty engine roaring to life. Violet smoke burst outward in silent spirals, slithering through camp corridors, clinging to the hungry night air.

  A unit of panicked and confused Skarlith guards nearest the plume fell to the ground, convulsing violently. Limbs jerked out of rhythm, antennae twitching in disarray. They shrieked in that insectile language, but the cadence faltered, unraveling into jumbled clicks. The Skarlith on the edge of the purple clouds looked on with horror before throwing down their weapons and fleeing.

  “By the moons…” Diya breathed.

  It was working.

  Tamsin leapt from the worn leather saddle, a white blur flipping through the cold night air. She landed nimbly among the disoriented warriors, maces flaring in arcs that broke chitin with a chain of wet cracks. Every strike was punctuated by Skarlith cries, some mortally wounded, others merely grazed, but all stricken with terror.

  Diya watched her friend nervously, quickly deciding that the best way to ensure their safety was to stick to their plan. How many missions had she been on in which everything fell to muck because of a undisciplined deviation from the plan?

  She kicked her heels and pulled Shikra into another dive. Her hands lithely flung two bombs this time. One shattered against the cracked plaza stones, another bounced into a half-constructed structure. Smoke mushroomed, violet and iridescent with a glittery crackle. Warriors stumbled, antennae writhing. Their stabled beetle mounts reared and thrashed, tethers snapping and black shells gleaming as they bolted from the acrid haze.

  Alarm horns blew. Echoing out and filling the plaza with brassy noise. The unnaturally neat order of the camp melted away.

  But in Diya’s vast experience in battle, things rarely went as planned.

  Arrows of bone hissed past Diya’s head. A Skarlith archer clung to a scaffold, six eyes locked on her. She jerked Shikra into a roll and drew her flintlock in the same motion. The pistol barked, and the sniper collapsed, its ichor spraying like oil against pale bone.

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  Still, too many remained. Hundreds. Maybe more.

  “Keep moving!” Tamsin’s voice rose over the chaos. She pointed toward the imposing structure at the camp’s center, they thought housed the relic. Already the Skarlith were rallying, forming tighter ranks, though taking care to avoid the violet smoke, they audibly clicked in unison. Discipline in the midst of madness.

  Diya swallowed the taste of soot. “You first.”

  Tamsin didn’t argue. She charged with inhuman agility, smoke curling around her like an amethyst cloak. When she appeared on the other side of the haze she smashed into the wall of Skarlith like a wave, unrelenting. Her spiked mace heads were coated in black ichor as she turned the warriors into clouds of gritty black mist. Before long she had broken the first group, and sprinted towards the next.

  Diya and Shikra skimmed low, bombs tumbling from her hand. Violet fog trailed in their wake, twisting the battlefield into a lavender-hued dreamscape. Figures flickered in and out of visibility, hulking beetles shrieked before retreating through their own ranks.

  The camp was breaking. But the central structure still loomed ahead.

  That most imposing building was grotesque, a cathedral of bone spires fused by resin, humming faintly with vibrations that thrummed through Diya’s boots when Shikra landed. The nearest entrance gaped wide, guarded by a dozen towering Skarlith, each wielding a long razor-sharp bone scythe. They wore armor constructed from interlocking bone-like plates and each wore a pointed helm painted crimson.

  Tamsin spat blood, mask askew. “I’ll handle them, you get The Sunroot Idol.”

  “You’ll what?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she slashed her own palm across one mace. The weapon howled with a sudden crimson fire. Then like an apparition, she disappeared and was amongst them, faster than sight, each blow a detonation of power and fury.

  Diya had no time to argue. She dismounted, and Shikra barreled into the red-helmed Skarlith, razor sharp beak ripping one in half. Diya sprinted past the whirlwind, and ducked into the structure.

  Inside was dim, the structure was cavernous and intricate webs clung to every surface. Curiously, gradients of red light pulsed across the web like waves. For a moment she was transfixed by the strange phenomena, then she gagged at the stench oof the place; mildew, blood, and something sour, rotting. It made the Blackblood Refinery seem like a field of flowers.

  She tiptoed forward only to notice that the place was filled with columns seemingly wrought from living beings, at least that’s what Diya assumed based on the twisted faces and hands intertwined in them.

  Then she saw it; at the center stood the relic—The Sunroot Idol. A crude effigy carved from something akin to amberstone, veined with a faint glowing golden light. Even she, ignorant of coven lore, felt its pull. Power radiated from it, steady as a heartbeat.

  She stepped forward, hand reaching, then froze.

  A lone Skarlith stepped out from a web shaped shadow. Unlike the others, this one wore no carapace armor. Instead, it wore only a three-horned bone helm, and its muscled body gleamed with etched patterns, as if inked with white sigils.

  The officer from the battle before. She thought.

  It stared at her, then tossed its ornate helm to the ground. Without its bug-like armor, Diya found it strangely…human. Like a grey-skinned man, only with antennae protruding from its temples. Its antennae twitched, and it hissed in a clicking rhythm that felt like…words.

  Diya’s stomach clenched as it spoke.

  Her fingers brushed her last stonemoss bomb. “Sorry, friend. I can’t understand you, and I’m not here for a chat.”

  She lit the fuse on her glove’s striker, and rolled the sphere across the resin floor. The Skarlith officer rolled to the side instinctively, anticipating what came next. But what happened next wasn’t at all what Diya planned.

  The bomb never detonated. Instead, it fizzled out with a pathetic whimper, lying sadly on the moss-covered floor.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me…” Diya muttered under her breath.

  The warrior seemed to smirk, then it drew two wickedly barbed jet black swords from sheathes hanging at it’s belt and charged.

  Palms slick with sweat, she back peddled, fumbling for the flintlock holstered at her hip and nearly tripping over her own feet. Lithely, the officer sprinted towards her, twirling it’s swords in a manner that hinted at the fell things it was capable of.

  Two dark blades flew in on a trajectory that aimed to separate her head from her neck. Diya managed to free her pistol just in time to toss it up and deflect the strikes.

  The force of the impact knocked her off balance and she stumbled backwards. Its subtle smirk had grown into a wicked grin, the officer used the momentum to swing one of the deflected swords all the way around in an upward slash.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she jumped laterally, narrowly avoiding the strike. Remembering her military training, she held out one arm as a support to steady her pistol, quickly aimed, then squeezed the trigger.

  There was a thunderous boom, and the air was filled with black powder smoke. Diya didn’t dare stop to check her work, rather, she dashed backwards around one of the nightmarish columns.

  As she popped out the other side, the result was clear to her. There stood the officer, unscathed. The blade of one of its black swords was a shattered mess, her shot had hit its weapon, not it.

  It tossed the sundered weapon aside and continued its assault.

  Diya followed suit, tossing her spent pistol to the ground and running from the warrior like a coward.

  Cowardice got a bad reputation. She thought. Sure, valor is fine, but staying alive is much better.

  As she fled from her pursuer, she drew her short sword. In her heart, she knew she was no match for the skilled officer—she was bloody awful with a blade—but if she had to die, then dying with a weapon in her hand felt somehow preferable.

  Her musings on how she preferred to die were cut short by a heavy kick to her sternum that sent her crashing to the floor. Diya wheezed, gasping for breath as she discovered all the air had been knocked out of her.

  Towering over her stood the officer, his predatory grin so wide now that she could see every one of his pointed teeth, his barbed blade pointed ominously down at her.

  This is it, I guess. She lamented, noticing that her short sword had been knocked out of her hand when she hit the ground. So much for dying with a weapon in my hand.

  At that moment there was a deafening boom, and the officer’s head exploded into a mess of ichorous spray.

  There was a split second of shock, then its body slumped to the floor. Standing behind him was Tamsin, white mask and twin maces stained black, her body trembling from the toll of her magic.

  Without saying a word, she helped Diya to her feet, they grabbed The Sunroot Idol and fled the hellish structure.

  Outside, chaos reigned. The violet smoke had turned the camp into pandemonium. Skarlith fled in all directions. Giant beetles stampeded, smashing half-built structures and Skarlith beneath their bulk.

  Shikra shrieked, wings sweeping a gust that cleared a path through broken structures and bodies. A ripple of relief went up Diya’s spine, and she jumped up onto the birds’ back, hauling Tamsin onto the saddle behind her. The roc launched skyward, talons gouging deep furrows into bone resin as she kicked off.

  Arrows followed them, a few whizzing past their heads. Diya leaned low, stroking the bird’s neck. “Higher, girl. Get us out of this nightmare.”

  The camp shrank beneath them. Violet smoke curled over it like a living storm, scattering the Skarlith in every direction.

  For the first time in hours, silence claimed them.

  They landed on a ridge miles away. The twin moons hung high above the ruins, casting the Idol’s golden glow bright.

  Diya collapsed against Shikra’s flank, chest heaving. Her gloves were black with soot and ichor. She couldn’t stop shaking, the battle’s chaos echoing through her like aftershocks.

  Tamsin removed her mask. Her face was pale, streaked with blood, but her eyes burned fierce. She cradled the Idol with reverence, then looked at Diya. “You did it.”

  We did it, Diya wanted to say. But the words tangled in her throat.

  Instead, she laughed, ragged and raw. “Two women and a bird against an army. And somehow, we’re the ones still breathing.”

  Shikra crooned, lowering her head until her beak brushed Diya’s shoulder.

  Tamsin smiled faintly, exhaustion softening her sharpness. “This changes everything.”