EMMA

  "What?"

  The stupid question fell out of Emma's mouth on its own while the world spun beneath her feet.

  "Or until someone kills you. Likely the second option, unless Avarea's fate takes a turn for the better." The Venatrix didn't sound like she was joking. "You're holding power like an Immortal now."

  Emma's hair was still falling out, a few more wet brown strands sticking between her fingers every time she combed it back out of her face.

  "I don't think you understand." She started. "Humans on Earth only lived for—"

  Another fireball roared away into the driving rain, popping with a crackle and a scream that sounded almost human to Emma's ears.

  Almost. There was a raspy note to the exclamation that Emma hoped nobody had ever made with a human throat.

  "I don't have time to explain the specifics to you, Emma, but do try not to give my apprentice more than her share of the credit when you find out the details," The Venatrix paused, examining her handiwork. She seemed to have stalled another group picking its way up the hill. "Or the blame, if your thoughts on being an Immortal skew that way. She may see it differently than you, because it was an accident. Don't abuse that."

  The warning in her voice was clear. Emma had been forgiven exactly once.

  "But I was... the way the world ended, sickness was going to kill me fast." Emma explained. "I should be falling apart. You said you could see how much the potion was doing, right?"

  But the Venatrix shook her head.

  "Durability investment makes your channels harder to read, and you are enduring something. It looked like an advanced version of Seraph Sickness, but that potion will more than cure it," Mahira intoned. "I saw the end result of how much you were damaged limiting my vision, skewing your mana investment towards durability in front of my eyes."

  "So I'm... not going to die?" Emma asked. "Mirri didn't just buy me time, she saved me? And it's going to last a long time?"

  Mahira nodded, and then said something even more ridiculous than the possibility she had just dismissed.

  "Mana alone is life-extending, but the density you've attained so far, and the practice regenerating from the potion will keep you safe from the ravages of age until your body meets a pyre, may the day never come," The Venatrix said the last five words like a prayer. Maybe they were, to her. "You'll age to your physical prime, and stop. A true Young Immortal. Like that one."

  Emma didn't linger on the insane proclamation. The idea of living forever was crazy, but Mahira was promising her eternal youth. Not at the end of something, or in exchange for something, just as a natural consequence of magic she had been exposed to.

  Emma shook her head. She wouldn't be doing it alone for very long, if she had a choice. It all depended on—

  "What about Calen?" Emma asked. "He got a full potion. A different one, Mirri said, will he—"

  She choked on the question halfway through, but the Venatrix understood.

  Emma even heard her reply, over the blood pounding in her ears.

  "We can check when we're safer, Emma, but his... predicament will be similar," The silver-clad huntress sounded almost amused by her own choice of words. "You two will have as long as you like to navigate the specifics, if you survive the decade. Do make sure you write down what you find for the rest of us."

  It wasn't rain running down Emma's face, blurring her eyes. Calen was going to live too. She wouldn't be alone.

  She could maybe do that.

  She blinked the tears away, shaking off the wave of relief. They were still in danger, but Mirri's hesitation made a little more sense, if the rest of Emma's life was going to be forever, not just a few hours.

  And she had just hurled threats at someone important, who was busy saving her life. In front of an authority figure with a personal connection to that person.

  "I thought I had days. Maybe hours." Emma admitted. "I didn't mean—"

  "Might be minutes."

  Emma startled. Sutai had snuck up on the conversation, taking the Seraph's place and pose in the gateway. The tan-scaled priestess was focused on the Venatrix as she continued.

  "Pipsqueak won't go, won't let us carry him without seeing his sister." Sutai shrugged. "I said throwing him might change his mind, but the Warden's daughter got tetchy about it."

  Mahira was eyeing Emma with some amusement while Sutai spoke.

  "She takes her oaths seriously." The Venatrix said wryly. "You should have avoided prodding her like that, but I suspect she's fond of second chances. Come."

  Emma wasn't sure which of them was being addressed. The instructions were probably for both of them. She still didn't know what a Warden was.

  Questions for later.

  Sariel had fluttered halfway down the ridge, and the air smelled of ozone even from where they exited the gate. The knights and the dragonborn with them had almost reached the bottom of the slope. They were dangerously close to the treeline.

  Oddly enough, the monster still looked alive, but it was moving sluggishly in the forest. Emma saw person-sized figures weaving around it with extra care. Seeing the activity, Mahira muttered something in the tone of a curse.

  "Emma, how did you get such severe Seraph Sickness on a world with no mana?" The Venatrix prodded. "We only see cases like yours when they swarm, or when one is heavily injured near other combatants."

  "I... we didn't have any of them," Emma waved her hand down the hill at Sariel. "It had to do with the way the world was ending."

  The three-meter behemoth cocked her head quizzically.

  "Oh? I suppose Earth would have had a manaless apocalypse, if it were barren as you say." The huntress was obviously poking at her understanding of the situation, making sure everything fit neatly. "Usually those only come from communities of Arrivals who were hit by meteor strikes. But those don't cause Seraph Sickness."

  Emma nodded.

  "No, we had a whole lot of eyes on the sky watching for those anyway," She admitted as they turned the corner outside the wall. "It was bombs, like... metal casings that produced really big fireballs without mana. They used something else to—"

  "Em stop!" Calen shouted over the driving rain. "What are you doing?"

  The Venatrix whipped her head around to fixate on Calen.

  "Calen she's trying to figure out how to help!"

  He snorted and tugged his arm out of Mirri's grasp to trudge over while he spoke.

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  "Yeah, I bet." Calen's face was twisted into a snarl at first. "She throws fireballs too, and we don't know what magic can do yet, just that it's a huge force multiplier. But we do know it takes understanding of the process you're mimicking."

  He waggled his fingers, the orange lines that glowed when Emma squinted a reminder of Mirri's outburst upstairs. She had said he must understand the process of combustion, to have formed them.

  Calen had at least calmed his tone by the time he turned back to Emma to finish his rant.

  "Do we really want to hand out that specific kind of understanding to the first people we meet?" He asked.

  Emma hesitated, slowly closing her mouth as she processed the implications.

  Fireballs and magic or not, these people were still fighting cannibal warlords with spears and swords. Would they really understand the danger of playing with what she was describing?

  Or would one of them just... try to create a fusion bomb with magic, in the palm of their hand?

  The Venatrix flared her nostrils at Calen for a moment, and then turned back to Emma with a more somber note in her voice.

  "He's right," The huntress admitted. "But my intentions are pure. Any understanding you can give me in a few sentences might be the difference between life and death, here and now."

  Mahira sent a nervous look down the ridge. Sariel had just taken another leap away, maintaining an equal distance between them and the knights. The Seraph would break off completely only when the enemy committed.

  Which was going to be soon.

  "Em we don't know their goals!" Calen raised his voice again. "She waited until the Seraph was gone to ask."

  "We're trying to keep civilization from being swallowed by chaos," The Venatrix snarled at him, exposing lightly yellowed teeth. "The gods have made their bets this year, but there are things you don't understand. If they're coming back, we need this knowledge to match them."

  "I can't. Not... not this fast," Emma started. "It would take too long, and I wasn't going to—"

  Mahira turned on her again. Emma's knees went weak at the intensity of the gaze she was subjected to.

  "Was your planet scoured by light poured from beneath silver wings?" The Venatrix demanded. "Do you have Seraph Sickness because your species was being exterminated by Seraphim? Did your Wardens open the planar bridges? Is that how you were overwhelmed in such numbers?"

  Emma closed her mouth. Calen was right, Mahira wanted the same secrets that had caused the apocalypse, but she was asking questions that didn't make sense.

  Couldn't make sense.

  They knew how the world had ended. Emma had spent almost a decade earning the right to be part of the solution so they could all live. Aliens hadn't done it with magic.

  Humanity had just failed.

  Mahira was worried about something else, so she didn't need to know the specifics, not at this moment.

  "No," Emma croaked. "We did it to ourselves. No."

  Needle-sharp teeth were too close to her face.

  "Are you sure? Beyond all doubt?" Mahira hissed. "This is more important than you or I or all of us here together."

  "I... no? Yes?" Emma stuttered. "It was far away. We don't even know who launched first."

  Calen stepped in the way. The effect was a bit ruined by the fact that Emma could still see over his head, if only just.

  She was grateful anyways, taking the opportunity to press herself against the cover of the stone wall to shelter from the wind.

  "We knew it was coming, it just happened early," Calen said. "It was all something we understood, something we knew could end civilization. We survived for a few centuries without doing it, and then messed up, bad. After that, it was only a matter of time until it happened again."

  "Then tell me," The Venatrix hissed out. "I'm trying to keep this world safe. Keep you two safe, here and now. More power is the best—"

  Calen laughed.

  Not the gleeful chuckle Emma was accustomed to hearing from him, or a rare joyful peal. It wasn't even something polite being thrown in the way of a bad joke.

  It was an ugly, derisive sound that did everything short of spitting on the ground.

  She reached forwards and gripped him by the wrist, reminding him not to take it too far.

  They still needed leverage.

  "You're trying to keep the world safe? Good. So am I." He said, not looking at Emma as he paused.

  He did squeeze her wrist back. Just once, before he continued.

  "She goes first," Calen said, meeting and ignoring Mahira's frustrated glare. "You want our cooperation, we both have to make it. We both get more information about how things work, and then maybe we can talk about some of the things Earth knew. Not all of them."

  The Venatrix gave the scene behind her a glance as the Seraph launched skywards, abandoning them entirely after sweeping the ridge one last time. The fight must be starting.

  "Take her down and come back for him," Mahira declared. "Fast, or we all die here."

  A dipped chin saw Emma seized under the arms from both sides. She tensed reflexively, leaning into the grab as her feet slid out from under her on the slick stones.

  "I need a solid grip under your shoulders," Mirri muttered down into Emma's ear, her snout incredibly close. "Sutai is taking your legs, and once we're in the air, we'll need to be fast to have the mana to carry your brother afterwards. Grappling with you isn't fast."

  "Okay." Emma went limp at the instruction, and closed her eyes instead of looking towards the cliff edge.

  It was fine. Everything was going to be fine, because they had leverage.

  Her feet were lifted out from under her, and a brief countdown later, her still-empty stomach dropped. Emma squeezed her eyes shut even tighter as the wind buffeted at them on the way down, unwilling to dare a glance early.

  The priestesses were shouting at each other over her body, jostling to keep her mostly level in the air, but Emma heard little of it over the howling gale and the patter of rain.

  "Landing!" Mirri shouted, just barely audible in Emma's ear. "Get your feet rea—"

  Emma's legs dropped, and her eyes snapped open.

  They weren't on the ground yet, and Mirri's arms wrapped around her torso like steel cables as they tipped. She was almost certain her face was about to smash into the exposed patched of bedrock at the base of the cliffside, but the sound of the wind intensified, and she could feel something flex behind her.

  Briefly, not a single raindrop touched them, the gale from Mirri's wings overpowering the storm.

  She landed one ankle, then the other, the jarring impact sending tingles of static up Emma's bare heel and through her knee.

  Nothing broke, but it would bruise.

  Or maybe not, as the static continued to prickle at Emma. The potion was still in her system.

  "Sutai!" Mirri complained, releasing Emma where they had sprawled on the ground.

  Little stones dug into Emma's face where she had finished landing, but she quickly scrambled away from Mirri.

  The priestess had chosen not to drop her. Not only on the way down, despite Emma's earlier threats, but when the fall would have been 'safe'.

  "Warm your plates and get her settled, I'll help the Venatrix before we take pipsqueak." Sutai replied over the intermittent gusts from her wings.

  The tan-scaled dragonborn hadn't followed them all the way to the ground, instead perching on the cliff. Another moment passed, and Sutai was already climbing through the air again to another perch.

  Emma winced as Mirri cursed, hugging herself and tapping at her armor with a claw.

  "Thank you," Emma told the ground. "For not... you know. When she dropped me early."

  "Of course," Mirri hissed out after a moment, standing. "Wouldn't want to spend forever with a target on my back."

  Emma winced. She owed this lady an apology.

  "I didn't mean—"

  Mirri fixed her with a glare, and Emma backtracked, remembering what the Venatrix had said, upon hearing that excuse.

  She had meant it. That was true.

  Her apology needed to be the truth too.

  "I thought I was dying. Today," She said instead. "I know it doesn't—"

  "You'll be fine, there's a Venatrix here to snatch you from the Maw," Rainwater misted off the end of Mirri's snout. "You two must be Mercy's favorite Arrivals this year."

  Emma was pretty sure Mahira and Sutai had said the cannibals were chasing the Venatrix specifically, but decided not to fight about it.

  Mirri still hadn't brought Calen down, after all.

  "This year?" Emma asked instead.

  "Later," Came the curt reply. "Don't wander far, we'll all cross together, to stay safe."

  With a nod, Emma kept her mouth shut.

  Leaving things in silence let Mirri throw her wings wide, and leap into the sky.

  Emma tried looking up into the rainstorm for a better look at the patterning on them, but quickly lost sight of the details as the priestess climbed away. The pale spots had been oddly distributed. Calen would probably be able to figure out what kind of camouflage it was later.

  The idea that someone that scary would need natural camouflage was its own kind of scary, but the snake longer than most city blocks explained at least some of it.

  Emma cupped her hands under a stream of water splattering down from the cliffside, likely the reason this patch of bedrock was exposed in the first place, and had water for breakfast while she waited for Calen.

  A few mouthfuls of gritty rainwater later, she decided that 'don't wander far' still included 'wander far enough to leave a clear landing space', stepping away from the cliff.

  The opposite side of the pass held a near-identical tower, perched atop a near-identically sheer cliffside. Why they didn't just walk out with everyone else after Calen's leg finished recovering was beyond Emma, but she wasn't the one making the plans anymore.

  They had found someone. People who wanted to get them to safety, at least.

  And she wasn't dead. It didn't matter that she had just fished another fistful of her hair out of the hood behind her head, that would grow back eventually, if she lived.

  Or she would just be bald forever, instead of dead. That still seemed like a good trade.

  She had soil beneath her feet, including alien grass than didn't quite feel right, stiff and scratchy despite how well it bent. It grew, though. And it was green. Nothing twisted or stunted any of the early shoots of other foliage. There was rain that wasn't poison in the skies, and as long as they made it across this tiny valley, she had a future outside of a concrete box buried under a mountain.

  Emma took a breath without counting for the first time since she had sent Calen away.

  Something cracked, and the topsoil jumped with the impact of several stones, ten meters to her left.

  Her heart froze when she looked back up.

  Calen had just sailed over the cliff's edge.

  Headfirst, flailing, and alone.

  Terminal velocity is the maximum speed an object can attain while falling, reached when the downward force of gravity equalizes with drag, reducing acceleration to zero. This function is asymptotic, meaning the rate of acceleration slows as the falling object approaches its maximum speed.

  releases to Royal Road on Monday!