The shrine does not look holy anymore.

  The tower split before its main structure imploded in on itself.

  It still stood — each broken piece leaning on each other, not giving way, the only reason why the tower had not collapsed yet.

  Maya stands at the front of the tower, blue sigils burning along her forearms like kerosene flame. Nikolai is bleeding from the hip but upright, sword raised.

  The man at the altar steps forward over broken stone.

  He does not hurry.

  “You cannot survive this,” he says.

  He throws an arm over him as he casts. Black-edged force tears through the air.

  Maya raises her arm on instinct. Blue flares. The collision detonates the shrine’s remaining counters and tables outward in a violent bloom of wood and steel hinges. Her defensive Magick shield shatters, but she stays standing.

  Nikolai moves. Charging at the man.

  Steel screams against Magick. His sword striking the beam of energy that the man had incantated in front of him into a makeshift melee weapon.

  Shockwaves crack pews in half. The man barely looks at him — eyes fixed on Maya.

  “Princess of Madura,” he murmurs. “Let us see what remains of you.”

  Two cultists tear from a wound in the air beside him. Nikolai cuts one down in a single clean arc. The second slashes at his arm before collapsing with a crushed skull.

  Maya tries to cast again.

  The pressure returns.

  It is not outward force — it is inward. Her aura folds against her ribs like invisible hands compressing her lungs once again.

  Her breath stutters.

  The man lifts two fingers.

  Space condenses at the tips.

  Maya feels herself pulled forward by something unseen — gravity bending toward him.

  She answers with fire.

  Blue erupts from her palm. He cleaves it apart.

  The flames fanning outwards around him into the row of parchment posters hung around the shrine. Incinerating them almost instantly.

  Nikolai slams into him from the side, driving him into the cracked mural. Stone dust explodes around them.

  The man smiles.

  He drives a beam of energy into Nikolai’s hip. The push of force slamming him backwards into the wall — but this is Nikolai, it would take more than just a beam of energy to knock him off his feet.

  Nikolai snarls but traps the beam in front of him in his own body, refusing to give ground.

  The air above the altar shimmers.

  Another summoning.

  Maya reacts without thought — hurling a shattered fragment of the bell across the shrine into the man battling Nikolai, slicing past him in a whistle.

  The cultist’s shoulder ruptures in a wet spray of red.

  Rage sharpens her focus.

  “Move!”

  Nikolai twists free just as Maya unleashes a wide arc of blue flame. Stone vanishes. Flesh burns away where it touches. The man dives aside, losing cloth and skin.

  He rises, smoking, scarred.

  “You have promise.”

  Across the square, the market barely resembled what it was just less than an hour ago.

  Fruit bleeds into the cobbles. Smoke rolls low. Screams echo down side streets.

  Amia moves through the broken stalls and wagons like a blade through cloth.

  An assassin rounds the corner in front of her from an overturned cart — somehow making enough headway to have end up in front of Amia — thrown knives flash.

  She ducks; citrus bursts against her shoulders. One blade grazes her ear.

  She rolls and rises, katana already moving.

  The assassin splits open from abdomen to sternum in a red spill.

  Behind her, Artemis blocks twin bolts of unstable green Magick with her forearms. Shadow condenses against her leather vambraces and skin, fracturing the spells to ash.

  The female assassin unfurls and lashes a barbed whip toward Artemis’ throat.

  Artemis steps within the range of the whip and grabs it in midair. Smoke curls from her fist.

  She pulls.

  Hard.

  The assassin gets tugged from the unfair ratio between the tall woman’s strength, and her own body weight.

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  Artemis catches her by the throat before driving her skull into the cobbles once.

  And twice.

  The body stops moving.

  Amia exhales.

  The scent shifts.

  Burning shrine.

  And something darker.

  She turns just as the man in the shrine pivots.

  He sees her, and lifts a hand.

  The world shrieks.

  The lance of compressed force crosses the square faster than thought.

  And hits her in the chest.

  There was no time to brace.

  The impact empties her lungs. The world becomes white. Her body leaves the ground and smashes through stacked crates in a spray of splinters.

  She cannot breathe.

  The pain was not sharp — it was crushing. Like her ribs are being pressed inward.

  She tastes blood.

  Artemis is already there.

  She catches Amia as Amia stumbles — an attempt to get back to her feet, before she collapses completely — one arm braced behind her back, the other pressing hard against the center of her chest.

  Blood soaks through her bodice’s fabric under Artemis’ palm.

  Her jaw tightens. Her voice is low, steady.

  “Breathe.”

  Amia drags air into herself like surfacing from drowning. Forcing her head onto Artemis’ chest to steady her balance.

  Across the square, the man raises his hand again.

  Maya saw it.

  Saw Amia fall.

  And saw the second time the man raises his hand again.

  Something inside her fractures, like a crystal had just cracked itself through the middle without snapping in half.

  The blue along her arms shifts.

  Darkens.

  Darkens into red — it bleeds through the sigil that appeared around her arm like infection.

  The inward pressure that had crippled her shatters beneath a surge that is no longer precise. The pressure she exerts outwards now overpowering the inward push from before.

  It is not control.

  It is hunger.

  “Enough.”

  Her word distorts the air.

  Crimson erupts from her hands. Spreading around her body, energy pushing and pulsating in a wide circle around her. Her boots now inches from the ground as she begins to hang in mid-air.

  The initial blast lifts the man clean off his feet and throws him through what remains of the shrine’s altar. Stone implodes under him.

  He hits the square. Hard.

  Maya crosses the distance in just three steps.

  Each step in mid-air cracks the ground.

  Nikolai calls to her, but she does not hear.

  The man struggles up — hand raised in front of him and energy brewing around his palm — but the red blaze melts away his arm, his palm along with it.

  For the first time, he looked afraid.

  Maya raises an arm in front of her, hand mimicking a choking action.

  Energy detonates through the air around him as a crushing inward force begins to close in on his chest.

  Then his throat.

  Then his head.

  He screams.

  And the square below — and him — explodes.

  Not outwards.

  But in every direction.

  The force did not discriminate.

  It throws Nikolai backwards.

  It throws debris into the sky.

  It tears through the already-ruined shrine and sends a shockwave through the market.

  And it almost throws Amia and Artemis apart.

  Artemis shields Amia with her body, taking the brunt of flying stone across her shoulders.

  They tumble.

  Silence follows.

  Smoke hangs low and heavy while Maya stands in the center of a crater. Her arms trembling violently.

  The red fades back to a light hue of blue, before fading completely.

  She sways.

  Nikolai reaches her first.

  “Master.”

  She does not answer.

  Behind them, shouting erupts from the outer roads.

  Boots.

  Commands.

  And armour.

  Nikolai turns.

  Madura Empire soldiers begin entering the edge of the village in tight formation, blades drawn. They were still a ways away, but still too close for comfort.

  Their armour is unmistakable.

  Their insignia familiar.

  Too familiar.

  Maya’s jaw tightens.

  “Coincidence?” Nikolai asks quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Maya answers through breaths.

  Neither of them trust this timing.

  The soldiers see the crater.

  See the bodies.

  But they did not recognise the girl in the dress.

  Orders are shouted.

  “Secure the area!”

  “Detain survivors!”

  Detain?

  Maya looks towards where Amia and Artemis fell.

  Through smoke, she sees Artemis hauling Amia upright.

  Amia is back on her feet.

  Barely.

  Red stains down her front, but standing.

  She locks eyes with Maya across the ruin. Understanding passes between them.

  Not now.

  Nikolai grips Maya’s arm.

  “We cannot stay.”

  Three soldiers that had broken formation had almost reached the edge of the square.

  Maya lifts her chin.

  “Go.”

  Nikolai does not argue.

  He pulls her toward a side alley just as the rest of the soldiers in the platoon begin to make their way to the centre of the square.

  A spear whistles past where Maya’s head had been.

  They disappear into the narrow dirt-pathed passageways of Vialre.

  On the opposite side of the square, Artemis drags Amia toward the stables.

  Artemis moves without hesitation as another squad rounds the corner.

  She shoves Amia toward a tethered horse and cuts its lead rope in one fluid motion.

  “Up.”

  Amia grits her teeth and mounts with effort.

  Artemis swings up behind her, wrapping one arm around her waist as the other takes the reins.

  A soldier shouts.

  Arrows fire.

  Artemis turns the horse sharply, using a collapsed stall as cover before kicking it into a full gallop toward the northern road.

  The terrain shifts from farmland to wild brush, and then low trees. The air grows cooler when their silhouette disappeared into the forest to the west of Vialre.

  They do not look back.