Interlude

Twenty-third year of the Burning...

Hera crafted a shield out of nothingness to block Pallis’s blast, then reversed the direction on her protection spells to pull in the power from his attack to replenish her own reserves. Renewed, she struck back, weaving elder and arcane magic together into one spell and channeling it through a tunnel of totemic magic.

The dark beam shot out but Pallis deflected it. Here, in his own domain in the totemic realm, he could nearly match her in power, and he had thousands of years of experience. The spell ricocheted, boring a hole through the wall of the fortress he’d created.

But it didn’t stop there. Boundaries were fluid in the totemic realm. There was no real substance other than that which was created by the residents, and there was no difference between up and down or left and right. After cutting through the wall, the magical attack tore a hole in the barrier between the totemic realm and the mortal world. To Hera, the sensation felt similar to teleporting from one realm to the other ... but teleporting across the barrier didn’t rip open reality.

The breach sealed itself almost instantly, but not before she received a vision of the damage her wayward spell would cause, the magic somehow magnifying in power as it crossed between worlds. It was a level of destruction she’d seen equaled only once before. Realizing what she’d done, she shared a look of horror—and recognition—with Pallis.

He faded from view, leaving her alone to deal with the fallout. The battle was over, it seemed, but Hera had no way to stop what she’d set in motion. She fled from the totemic realm, not wanting to watch it happen.

Seeking a safe refuge, she teleported to her old apartment in Tir Yadar. The remains of the great city still stood like a silent tomb for those who’d once walked its halls.

The Chosar hadn’t been able to return to their former home since the tunnel road had collapsed. Even the elder mages among the stoneborn children had failed to rebuild the fallen section, plagued as it was by the proximity of the more severe wildstorms nearer to the city.

The overland route remained impassable as well. While the mundane fires across the continent had burned out long ago, the firestorms yet raged in central Van Kir, fed by power slowly leaking from the conjunction of magics the wardens had attempted to take for themselves. Allos thought it might take decades before the hole was sealed for good.

Nothing of interest remained in Hera’s old living quarters—in the months before the tunnel road had been lost, scavenging crews had emptied most of the apartments of anything useful. She left her barren rooms behind and wandered aimlessly through the West Tower residential district at first, but eventually Fortress Central beckoned to her, as it always did when she visited.

There, at the totem walk, she bowed her head in front of Owl’s statue, offering a moment of regretful silence. The People had lost Wisdom that day, and not just Owl’s. The other totems had all but disappeared from the world, offering no explanation for their absence. The most powerful and capable mages among the Chosar had died when Fortress West melted, and the rockfall which buried the military complex had killed many of the most seasoned and experienced soldiers.

It was a loss from which Hera suspected The People would never truly recover. She, Iris, Boreas, and Demea had managed to save the children from the wildstorms, altering them to fit their new environments, but the Chosar empire was shattered. Their remaining settlements were a shadow of what they once were. How many of Hera’s friends in the High Guard had survived the war only to die soon afterward, killed by the wardens’ quest for more power?

There was one bright spot, though. The intact section of Fortress East housed the medical facility with the stasis room where the Mage Knights still slept. Other than the mindless walking dead in the undercity, the knights were the last remnant of The People within Tir Yadar.

And there they would have to remain.

Hera couldn’t open the stasis pods without a physical body, and even if she did, the wild storms would seek out the knights and the firestorms would prevent them from leaving the city.

She checked in on them from time to time, though, making sure they were safe. There were twelve stasis pods in use. She stopped at the last one to stare through the glass at the newest member of the Order. Ariadne. What sort of world would the girl wake up to? How much more would change before it was safe to free her?

A flash of darkness crossed through Hera’s mind, then another and another.

Visions of potential futures. It was difficult to interpret the visions and nearly impossible to control them, but this sequence was clear enough. Ariadne had no future. She would either sleep forever or die soon after awakening, before doing anything of note.

More flashes of darkness, and then one single, hazy vision of the young woman awake and smiling, with a warden’s sigil on her brow. A sigil in the same shade of blue as Hera’s own weapon enhancement spells.

Hera froze, standing in thought. She hadn’t bonded anyone before her death. Could she still do so now? Unlike opening a mage lock or a stasis pod, the warden binding spell didn’t require physical touch. Could it pass through the stasis field?

She’d never attempted the spell before, but it had been burned into her mind since the choosing dream. She cast it now, and the pale blue sigil appeared on the young woman’s forehead—two circles linked side-by-side.