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Shadows, chased by fire

Very fast All very, very fast

It begins

The crater is a ragged bowl, and the Do to wing and swords drawn, and when they plu out, and no getting around the that had almost happened in the Kirin caves happens now, unchecked and hip-crack quickness Swords: unsheathed; palms: upraised The effect of the harass rippled by a wind, the attacking ranks say, and in the reet the a They don’t wait to be pinned between fire and stone but leap--launch--and meet the e on fists

Many fists against fewer, perhaps, but the fewer have ic

At the first touch of shadow, Akiva reaches for sirithar--

--and is thrown to his knees as though clapped by thunder--thunder as a weapon, thunder in his head--and he’s ringing with it, and tilting, and so who isn’t a boy anye on Akiva’s shoulder The saed by a chimaera, another chimaera now steadies, and there is no sirithar, only the clash of blades, and then the boy Rath lunges into battle and Akiva surges to his feet and draws his swords, and he can’t see Karou…

… and Karou can’t see him, and she can’t stop to look There’s Zuzana and Mik and an angel is coet there in ti her mouth to scream when she sees Virko He pounces

Rends

The angel becomes pieces and Karou has her crescent- her way through the eneain, and again thunder invades his head and drives him to his knees

For the merest instant, he has the i and then gone All around hirunt and stagger Magic is denied hiht

Zuzana has closed her eyes Reflexive reaction to dis out how you’d react to seeing limbs torn off in front of you, but now Zuzana knows, and she knows the coursing terror of "all this war stuff," and she decides at once that not seeing what’s happening is worse than seeing it and so she opens her eyes again Mik is right at her side, and he’s beautiful, and Virko is crouched before her, planted there, and he’s terrible, and he’s beautiful, too The spikes at his neck have flared wide She didn’t know they did that They’d lain sleek, aler, sharper, and with serrated edges, but now they’re all fanned out and bristling and he looks twice his size It’s like a lion’s mane made out of knives

And then Karou is there with blood on her blades and Virko is folding his spikes back down--they interweave, Zuzana sees, and the elegance of it… the symmetry al that she’ll reme a curtain on that, but the symmetry--and Virko’s spikes aren’t padded noith a smelly blanket, and there’s no harness to hold on to hen Mik boosts her up, but Zuzana’s not afraid, not of this In the lad to have a friend with a lion’s mane made of knives Mik ives a great, labored heave and they leave the ground and then… vanish

Ziri sees Virko wink out--gone--and Karou is turning, searching Not for hireat gust that can only be the draft of Virko’s invisible wingbeats blows her hair back like a battle standard, silken blue and strea maelstrom of battle, she is surrounded by a curious cushion of stillness

Because she’s being protected, Ziri sees, by both chiotten Because she’s the resurrectionist, and because she has another, more immediate job to attend to The realization kicks hio ahead Jael must be stopped

Ziri looks for Liraz and she’s there, and so is Akiva They’re fighting back-to-back, lethal Akiva wields a pair of matched swords, Liraz a sword and an ax, and her smile seems a third weapon, almost It’s the same smile froht "Three Doerness And Ziri sees that before hi’s happening There’s Nisk and Lisseth Astonishingly, they’re backing Akiva and Liraz up Each has a blade drawn but a haainst the pulse of weakness, the Dootten

Ziri feels a lift of hope It’s a hope he knoell and despises: the ugly, black hope that one er

Kill or die, no other choice

Bodies litter the crater and e of hoill be filled with corpses as though the mountains have cupped their hands to offer up the dead to Nitid, goddess of tears and life, and to the godstars, and to the void

The bodies are chiotten, and then--

--a second darkness falls

Overhead, a second sky of fire is falling, wing to wing to wing, and even the ugly, black hope can’t outlast this Another wave of Dooddess of nothing but tears

"Karou!" Ziri calls, and it doesn’t surprise him anymore to hear the Wolf’s tenor coor and rally tired soldiers to keep on, and keep on, as though life is a prize to be won by bloodletting Kill and kill and kill to live How ? It’s just a calculus in the end, and though the real Thiago had surmounted impossible odds in battle, none of theo

He calls out orders; chiotten alike take heed By the ti with Karou, Akiva, Liraz, and Thiago at its center

"You two need to go," the Wolf says His voice is raised above the chaos, and his eyes are intent but not cold, not mad This White Wolf will tear out no throats with his teeth today "Get clear of this Use the glamour You have a job to do"

Karou objects first "We can’t leave you now--"

"You have to For Eretz" For Eretz It’s understood that this o if you designate a safety," Karou says in a choked voice "So in safety and colean souls after it’s all over It’s pointless Now that the seraphim know about resurrection, they take uard the ashes until evanescence is certain But Ziri nods anyway