As anyone who’s ever accomplished something truly incredible can attest, the joy isn’t fully realized until the deed is properly celebrated. It turns out that celebrating alone is a bit like opening a gift you wrapped yourself. And that’s why Diya couldn’t help but feel a bit cross when she exited the forest and found not a soul waiting for her.

  Hmm, I didn’t expect a parade or anything, but your chosen one did just attune the final blood magic art…

  It was the worst kind of irritation. At first, she was upset that no one was there, but—as it often did—the aim of that frustration quickly curved inward. She quickly remembered that she preferred when the irritation was aimed outwards. Not that her apathy paid much mind to her preferences.

  Tamsin has a whole coven to get up on its feet. Of course she doesn’t have the time to spend a week waiting around for me to emerge from the forest depths. Diya let out a deep breath, then began the hike across the ruins back to the new coven’s camp. Still, I could’ve died in there. And I am she-who-has-two-different-colored-eyes-and-learned-three-types-of-magic.

  After the initial disappointment began to fade, the walk proved to be a decent way for her to clear her head. Empty townhouses leaned together, windows blown out, ferns dancing in the wind. Fog from the river drifted through broken gaslamps and silent factories, softening the edges of the city in a way that made its history all the more mysterious.

  Soon her apathy had been replaced by curiosity. What was life like for the humans who once lived in cities like this? How did the fragments of forgotten technology work in that time? Was it a better time to be alive? Were the Skarlith a problem then?

  It took her the better part of the day to get back to the settlement. As she came around a bend, coven walls coming into view, a peculiar sound carried on the wind.

  Diya stopped, turning her head and listening intently.

  Bells? That’s strange, maybe in celebration of my achievement?

  But as she stepped curiously forward, it became clear that the bells didn’t ring in celebration; they barked in alarm, metal throats crying out that something was wrong.

  With a dreary feeling like she had swallowed an ice cube, Diya took off into a dead sprint towards the settlement.

  ***

  The coven was more like a beehive that had been smashed with a stick then the industrious place she remembered. People ran about carrying as much as they could, faces wracked with fear. A panicked man ran into Diya and they both tumbled to the ground.

  A hand reached down to lift her up.

  “Tamsin!” Diya cried out, glad to find the one person who could make sense of the madness.

  Pulling her to her feet, Tamsin hugged her tightly, the worry in her face was evident even beneath her lace mask. “We need to move. Follow me!”

  “What’s going on?” Diya asked, moving fast and following hot on her heels.

  “Our scouts found something!” Tamsin shouted, slicing through the panicked crowd. “The Skarlith are sweeping over New Avignon, it’s by far the biggest force we’ve ever seen!”

  Diya’s face went pale as the moon and her jaw dropped. “Did you check our reserve of violet smoke bombs?”

  “I did. All expired.”

  “Perfect. And the reagent hunters returned with more stonemoss then we know what to do with?”

  Tamsin shrugged slightly, then grabbed her hand, guiding them through a crowded alley. “If only. Couldn’t find even a bag of the stuff. Returned completely empty handed.”

  “Perfect. So, the Skarlith are sweeping over the city and we’re without our secret weapon?”

  “That just about sums it up.” Tamsin had never been a master of discerning sarcasm or rhetorical questions. She had always been an introverted kid, and spending eight years alone on an airship hadn’t done much to sharpen her social skills.

  Diya groaned. “Alright, so what’s the plan?”

  They dipped through an alley, appearing in the courtyard outside Diya’s workshop. There rested a fleet of airships being hastily loaded with supplies and people.

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  Tamsin pointed towards the rusted vessels and sighed deeply. “We get everyone loaded up and we evacuate.”

  “But—” Diya started nervously looking from the airships to the hundreds of terrified people, head spinning as she attempted the mental mathematics. “We can’t all possibly fit, at least not with enough supplies to keep everyone fed.”

  “I ran the numbers. We can get everyone aboard, but you’re right, the food will only last us a few days. Still, we’ve no alternative. No one’s ever seen an army of Skarlith this large. If we try to stand and fight, they will massacre us.”

  “Where will we go?” Diya asked.

  “Does it matter? Anywhere but here.”

  A glimmer of light shone in Diya’s eyes and her breath caught in her throat. “If we can stop Arjun and Zoralia, then the coven can live in Ghanesha.”

  Tamsin’s eyes narrowed, daring to hope. “I don’t have any doubt in my mind that we can take down Arjun and Zoralia.” She wrapped her hand around the back of Diya’s head and pulled her closer so that their foreheads were pressed together. “Afterall, we have the chosen one on our side.”

  They stayed together for a moment. Perfectly still. Panick and chaos swirling all around them. Feeling their impending doom approaching, the pair ascended the ramp made of scrap wood and stepped onto the deck of The Mourner.

  Tamsin looked out at her people, cleared her throat and called out to them. “All aboard! Take only what you absolutely need! We need to lift off as soon as possible!”

  The citizens of the coven left behind everything they owned and hurried aboard the fleet of airships. Each rusted behemoth was packed to the brim, so much so that Diya wondered if the vessels would even be able to take to the skies. Tears fell like rain. It was the second time they had been displaced in a matter of weeks, but this time they would be leaving their home for good.

  To them, the dead city overtaken by nature was the only home they had ever known. That’s why the sound of those booming engines, muddled by the sobs of hundreds, sent a shiver down Diya’s spine. She wanted to wrap her scarf around her ears and shut her eyes. To escape into a dark oasis of silence.

  But she couldn’t allow herself that comfort. She saw the way the people looked to her for strength. Felt their belief. For many of them the only thing keeping them from losing it in this bleakest of hours was their confidence that Tamsin and Diya would guide the ships through the storm.

  When everyone was aboard and the fleet finally lifted off, Diya breathed a sigh of relief. That sigh melted into awe. The sun was setting behind the ruins, but still there was enough light for her to see the invading force for the first time. She had never seen anything like it. Carrying torches the Skarlith poured from cracks in the earth and washed over New Avignon.

  Viewing it from above, the strength of the force was immeasurable; thousands, tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand? Who could say?

  That’s when she noticed that the ships weren’t climbing towards the clouds, but rather moving towards the eastern side of the city. The Skarlith hadn’t made their way to that side yet, it remained untaken, though they were advancing quickly. It was only a matter of time.

  Diya turned to Tamsin. She blinked slowly like her mind had slipped into a fog, then inhaled sharply, knowing at that moment exactly what she intended. “You’ve forgiven him?”

  “No. I haven’t found the strength within myself to forgive him yet. But if I leave without him, I’ll never get the chance.” Tamsin stood tall at the helm, fingers gripping the oak wheel resolutely. Diya thought for a second she saw a tear in her eye, but just then she blinked and it was gone. “No matter how he wronged me, I can’t leave him behind to die like this.”

  ***

  Night had fallen upon the city like ink from the sky’s inkwell. In the pale moonlight, the overwhelming tide of Skarlith transformed from a dark blanket over the ruins into a writhing mass of shapeless shifting shadows. However, the thunderous reverberation made by tens of thousands of boots served as a crystal-clear reminder that the enemy had claimed New Avignon. Of that, there could be no doubt.

  Kromac and the handful of witches who had remained loyal to him in the schism had done the only thing they could—fled to the high ground. There they paced anxiously, trapped on the glass roof of the museum as the terrible forces of their enemies climbed the walls. Through the soot-stained glass, the swarming army of Skarlith could be seen, chitinous armor reflecting the torchlight in reflections swirling like smoke.

  Engines roaring, The Mourner emerged from the dark clouds and hovered above the rooftop. Down dropped a dangling rope ladder like a hand extended to a drowning man. Hopeless expressions reversed and the witches scrambled up the ladder. All but one.

  Kromac stood like a statue, staring up at the ship. The Mourner was the same ship he had commissioned to serve as his sister’s prison all those years ago. Now it could be his salvation, if only he would allow it to be.

  Tamsin’s masked face appeared over the side of the airship’s railing looking down at him. She waved her hand back and forth, signaling him to climb the ladder. “They’re nearly upon you, Mac! You need to get out of there!”

  She hadn’t called him Mac since they were children. Something about the way her voice carried on the wind shattered something inside of him. It took him back to them playing together as kids. Without warning every lie he told transmuted into a stone in the castle he had built around himself. The mental chain reaction set off an explosion, and the castle, irreparably damaged, collapsed inwards. He felt crushed. The realization that his self-righteous decisions—each one having felt to him utterly infallible—had been so incredibly wrong, and caused so much harm to the ones closest to him burned him up. The weight of his actions was unbearable.

  Heart aflame, face flush with shame, Kromac glared down at the horde of bug-men, barbed spears pointed. With misty eyes he took a weary step up onto the ledge that ran along the exterior of the museum roof. He looked up at his sister, tears falling and called out to her. “I was wrong. One day I hope you can forgive me...”

  Without another word, he leapt off the roof. For a moment that seemed to last a lifetime he was plummeting toward the ground stories below. Then he was gone. Swallowed whole by the endless mass of enemy soldiers.