The vortex of ash and hate tore Trenn from the earth.

  A thousand burning points of agony erupted across his body. Tendrils of packed soot latched onto him, their grip an abrasive fire that scoured his flesh. They stretched, pulled taut against his limbs like living ropes, then snapped, ripping away strips of leather and skin. A raw, inhuman sound tore from his throat as the wraiths reformed around him, their torturous cycle beginning anew.

  He rose higher, a broken puppet hauled up by a thousand shrieking strings, a tortured silhouette against the twin moons. The shriek of tearing leather was a constant, high-pitched note in the storm's gale. His last pauldron tore free, tumbling into the darkness below.

  He was a doll in a giant’s fist, lifted effortlessly up the night sky as gouges were carved into his shoulders and legs. A chorus of grinding glass filled his skull, the final tortured breaths of a hundred souls promising to unmake him.

  Their whispers slithered into his mind like intrusive, rotten thoughts. “Your fault,” they hissed. “Your flames killed us.”

  He rose beyond the skeletal canopy. Soot teeth latched onto his thigh and tore free, ripping a strip of flesh with it. The fresh agony was a distant echo, lost in the violent spin that sent the world reeling below.

  His spinning view captured a massive lake bordering the burnt woods. An immense dam spanned one end, a tapestry of interwoven logs so vast it seemed to bend the horizon. Gouged wounds were torn through its side, the splintered wood hemorrhaging torrents of water into the valley below.

  A metropolis of wrecked timber houses clustered above the dam. Their whimsical, colorful roofs were caved in, their walls shattered. The husks of massive lumber mills dotted the shoreline; burnt to cinders on one side of the lake, torn apart on the other.

  Is that our fault, too?

  His body thrashed, a desperate, useless struggle. He wrenched one arm free from a grinding grip, but three more hands of packed soot instantly clamped down, their ashen claws peeling skin from his bicep.

  The futility of his struggle became a suffocating weight. He was helpless, unarmed, and unarmored.

  And his allies?

  His sonar sense plunged groundward and found Mara. She stood frozen, staring up. Her powerlessness vibrated through their empathic bond. A wave of loss, not for him, but for the life she had sacrificed.

  She gave up her home to watch me die.

  A wraith’s claws tightened around his throat. He wheezed, his eyes bulging, as teeth sank deep into his shoes and feet. A scream died in his throat, shooting the air out of his lungs. As he gasped against his closed airway, his vision swam with black spots, the world dissolving into a grey haze.

  A gentle halo bloomed around the soot at his throat. The creature unraveled, its form dissolving into a cascade of bright particles. The Beaver Kin hedge spell! His sonar found her, swaying to her incantation, a steady note of calm beside the ragged frequencies of Ezy and Zeen.

  Her chant was a defiant pulse against the storm, a melodic order in the discordant chaos. With every couplet, she pointed. A new wraith, caught in the spell's current, would lose its hate-fueled cohesion and dissolve into rising motes of colors.

  Trenn's sonar caught a frantic, unexpected motion near the ground. The Purple Slime had become a living auger, a blur of frantic motion as it rolled and dug into the ashen earth. It devoured clouds of dirt into its pliable mass, then ejected the contents beside a rapidly growing hole.

  The wraiths were pulling Trenn ever higher. His tunic and pants were torn to shreds, the ashen grip a constant, rasping sandpaper against his bare wounds. The will to fight bled out of him as their whispers stopped being whispers and became his own thoughts.

  He was no longer Trenn. He was a stable hand, the smell of burning hay filling his lungs, his desperate gasps pulling in fire instead of air. He was a cook, the world a crushing weight of timber and heat, his own screams a muffled drumming against the roar of the inferno. He was a bouncer, his skin peeling away in a single, silent flash of immolation.

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  A dozen deaths, not his own, detonated through his nervous system in a single, paralyzing instant. The collective agony was a white noise that drowned his identity. In that moment, he wanted to die, not because of his own pain, but because their pain had become his, and it was unbearable.

  He suffered death after death, but was denied its release.

  The scrape of ashen claws across his face yanked him from the abyss. They dug hot furrows from his forehead to his jaw, the pain a brutal anchor in the psychic storm.

  As the will to fight bled from him, a new frequency cut through the gale—a desperate, frantic beat of wings vibrating through his sonar sense. A frenetic flash of pink and yellow was flying above his spinning blur of ash, pain, and blood.

  Bomber.

  The Giant Moth plunged into the vortex, its wings beating furiously. Its six furry legs clutched the heavy head of his enchanted long club. It quickly flew-by, the worn grip of the handle offered to Trenn like a lifeline.

  One last chance!

  He ripped his arm free from grinding claws, only for a new grip to clamp down instantly. A gasp of pain tore from him as Bomber began its familiar figure-eight. A lone wraith detached from the swirling mass, a black streak aiming to intercept the moth. The momentary shift in pressure was all he had. His fingers stretched, straining, as Bomber dove through the intercepting soot jaws.

  Ashen teeth closed on Bomber’s leg. The moth winced, dropping the enchanted club. The weapon tumbled through the air. Trenn lurched and banked, opening his wounds on scraping ashes. He buckled and twisted, locking the pain behind his clenched jaw and steely resolve. His hand shot out like a catcher’s mitt… and clamped around the familiar, worn grip.

  Yes!

  The Giant Moth peeled away, its sheer diving speed shattering the ashen jaws into a swirling cloud of dust. The wraith gave a futile chase, but even with an injured leg, Bomber’s powerful wings left it behind in an instant. The chase was lost before it began.

  Weapon in hand, Trenn's body moved without thought. A single, fluid motion brought the club down in a wide arc, the air booming with a concussive FWOOSH that dissipated a cluster of wraiths. The sudden absence of their support sent him into a freefall, the remaining ashen tendrils snapping as gravity took hold.

  His entire body was a mess of cuts, gashes, and bleeding wounds. His pain receptors had shut down; overwhelmed. As he plummeted to the ground, all he could hear was Mara’s gasping, stretched out “NO!”

  A streak of vibrant color intercepted his fall. Bomber. Its five injured legs clamped around Trenn’s head, the catch sending a brutal jolt down his spine. The Giant Moth’s wings beat in a furious, straining blur, but there was no stopping that fall. Instead, it was controlling its trajectory.

  The flaying wind scoured Trenn’s fresh gashes as the ground rushed toward him. Skeletal trees became a fleeting, grasping lattice that offered no purchase. The world narrowed to the shallow indent Skate had dug in the ash-covered dirt road. Trenn noticed the Purple Slime had flattened itself in the shallow hole. It looked like a small, purple trampoline.

  At the last possible instant, Bomber released its hold.

  The world narrowed to the shallow crater Skate had dug; the Purple Slime within a flattened, quivering target. Trenn crashed onto its pliable surface. The slime yielded for an instant before the hard ground beneath it stopped his fall completely. The abrupt halt sent a grinding shockwave detonating up his bone.

  A dry CRACK resonated behind his teeth as his tibia gave way, the splintered ends grating against each other with a sickening looseness. A half-second of crystalline agony followed before his lower back slammed into the slime, the rest of his body crashing down upon him.

  A resonant THUMP shuddered through him as Skate’s pliable mass yielded, absorbing the kinetic energy that would have shattered his spine into dust.

  The frantic hammer of his heart slowed, each beat a distant thud. The pressure behind his eyes gave way as a grey tide descended.

  He felt Mara’s charge through their braided tether. The wraiths swarming his fallen body became the target of her focused rage. Her fury was a physical sensation—a coiling of phantom muscle, the taste of bloodlust on his tongue.

  A spike of ecstatic satisfaction shot through the bond as her necrotic claws tore a shrieking soul from the swarm. Another spike of vengeful pleasure followed as two more were extinguished in a single, brutal swipe.

  Through his sonar, the world became a dying symphony. The Beaver Kin’s chant was a clean, melodic wave of focused power, a direct counter to the storm. Her hand extended, a single finger pointing. An Ash-Wraith's jagged, hateful static smoothed into a peaceful hum before its note winked out of existence.

  The world tunneled, the grey edges of his vision creeping inward. The fire in his leg became a distant, roaring sun. The wet warmth spreading from his shattered shin was a final, creeping chill. Mara’s fury was a final, blazing crescendo. The Beaver Kin’s chant was the last clean note. Then, one by one, the notes, the fury, the pain, the world—all of it dissolved into a welcome, profound silence.

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