Hurry.

“I’ll see ye when ye arrive. No time t’ travel, ‘m afraid. Stars guide ye.”

With that, Grymfalk took her leave of Saire and teleported back to Camp Broken Glass, where night was falling on another day of search and rescue. She had only left them now, in their hour of dire need, because they could no longer afford to wait for Saire to make up his mind. They need him now. There are people missing. Marie, gone. Children missing. Caelius — gone. And, it turns out, more.

Marie, her poor elezen co-healer, is a lovely woman not well-equipped to brave northern Ilsabard alone. She had come to rely on Grymfalk for guidance and protection on their field assignments, and though Grym had done her best to teach Marie everything she reasonably could — how to watch her back, how to keep to the shadows, how to escape sticky situations — there was still so, so much she relied on the roegadyn for. Direction, most especially. Her indecision sometimes became crippling anxiety.

After a night like the tempering had been, Grym was hard-pressed to think Marie would be fighting fit to handle dangers alone.

And Caelius. What was it she had told Atraeus on their first meeting? “‘f a hair on his head’s ever misplaced, ‘s ’cause I’m already facedown in a ditch.” Lot of good that promise did.

It has hardly been over a day, Grym reminds herself forcefully as she retrieves Button’s runed collar from the box of belongings under her cot and wriggles it over the beagle’s head. Hardly over a day. He could still be alive. They both could.

“Where ARE they?!”

“They were s’posed to report two hours ago!”

“We have sent a scouting team — ”

“A scout team to go look for a search-and-rescue party?”

“Oh, bloody brilliant o’ ye! I’m sure this’s JUST what we need.”

“Okay, genius, what would YOU have us do?”

“How ‘bout we don’t repeat th’ same mistakes within a 48-hour period, fer one! Comes a time when ye have t’ cut yer losses!!”

Grym’s brows furrow at the argument happening through the too-thin walls of her barracks. Securing Button’s collar and boots, she grabs her own armor and makes quick work of donning it while the debate goes in increasingly bitter circles. She nearly forgets to stuff the papers in her pocket as she beckons the beagle along after her. By now, Button has been part of enough search-and-rescue operations to know that the boots mean he’s going out to work, and his puppy demeanor fades beneath the focused attention of the working dog.

“Search team’s gone missin’?” Grym interjects as she pokes her head around the corner to get a look at the arguers.

“Which one are ye askin’ about??” shoots back a particularly irritated hyur. “Th’ first? Th’ second? Th’ third, now? No, don’t bother specifyin’! Th’ answer’s th’ same fer every one!”

An elezen beside him seems similarly miffed and rubs her nose as she speaks over him. “Yes, they have. That’s why we sent scouts this time.”

“What bloody difference is that gonna — ”

“Some of the refugees have also gone missing,” says a lalafell from between the bickering pair, more exhausted than peeved. “But that’s probably different. Some of them likely went to look for loved ones on their own terms.”

“Loved ones?” Grym’s demeanor sharpens immediately. “Caelius’s parents, have they — ”

“Aye, they left. Just a few — where are you going?!”

But Grym does not wait, snapping once for Button to follow close at her heel and striding out the door at a pace most would have to jog to keep up with. Her spear and halberd clink on her back.

“Reportin’ in, goin’ out,” Grym shouts to the guard at the camp’s northeast entrance as she passes by, still speedwalking. She takes the shout she hears in return as acknowledgement. They know her face — and if not, they know Button and can figure her out from there.

The little beagle is close at her heel, eyes trained on her for the instant her hands go to her pocket. He knows he has yet to be given the scent of today’s search. Without slowing, she fishes out one of the papers and bends to put it in range of Button’s nose. One of Caelius’s many drawings. His parents had insisted on keeping some for themselves instead of posting every last one around the ruins of Garlemald for Atraeus, and those precious few papers fluttering in her hand had just enough scent on them to be useful to Button. Inhaling deeply several times in succession, he lowers his nose to the snow and trots faster, boots leaving tiny circular prints in his wake. Grym stows the drawings and jogs after him.

He has a scent.

They run through the dark. Grym had taken to nighttime hunts of monsters and magitek for the cover of darkness, a black which her enchanted torc dispelled for her alone. Nightvision proved a powerful compensation for lack of hearing.

Of course, that tactic is only useful when she’s the only one who has it. Neither she nor Button notice the shadow skittering in their wake, amorphous blackness seeping from footprint to footprint like a hellsent slinky.

Onwards. There are shouts in the distance, but Button does not veer from his path and Grym cannot hear them. If only she could, they would be familiar. The ruins grow dense as they weave further into the city, veering only to avoid wandering dangers.

There is once where Grymfalk is certain they walk in front of an armor’s sensors, but though it stops and turns to face them, it holds its fire. Thinking only of escaping to carry on the search, she does not question its restraint, nor that it chooses not to follow.

They only make it another two blocks before Button draws to a sudden stop, sniffing aggressively, beginning to pace in circles. Grym knows well what that means. The scent stops here.

Button barely makes it through one series of concentric circles before a piercing shriek reaches them both. Caelius?! Not a single beat of hesitation passes before Grym breaks into a sprint after the sound with a sharp whistle. Search abandoned, Button bolts after her, runes glowing on his collar as she feeds aether to the protective enchantment.

“CAELIUS?”

Another scream, a rising shriek. He’s, what, two blocks away? “GRYM? I-!!!”

“WE’RE COMIN’! STAY PUT!”

The shadow that had followed them mimics his voice again, leading them on with another agonized shriek. They break into the street where he ought to be with wild eyes darting through every shadow, every corner.

“CAELIUS!”

Seconds pass. Nothing. “CAELIUS!!” Nothing. “CAELIUS, CAN YE HEAR ME?”

A cry rings ahead. Not Caelius, but familiar. His mother. Grym takes off again, Button close behind.

Careful, now. His voice in her ear.

She snarls but does not slow. “Fuck off. If yer gonna fuckin’ shoot me, do it fuckin’ right, or I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear it,” she snaps, panting. Where. Eyes dart through every shadow, every shape.

You are so much less agreeable when you think you stand a chance, he muses, speaking slowly with a hint of irritation that tilts his tone toward a growl.

“I said fuck off.” Where. The cry came from here, didn’t it? There! Through those ruins, thirty yalms ahead, their silhouettes move — Caelius’s parents. They must have gotten lucky and heard him, too.

Freeze or the kid dies.

Snow sprays as she skids to a halt, sliding over the layer of ice hidden beneath the white. She doesn’t bother to hide the ferocity on her face, teeth bared as she puffs misty breath into the night. “What do ye fuckin’ want.” she snaps, talking fast. “Get it over wit’. Don’t have all night.”

So harsh, and here I am gifting you a mercy. Perhaps I should rescind the offer…

“SPEAK!”

Low laughter, genuine amusement, precedes his answer. Grym seethes where she stands, flexing her hands into fists again and again, rolling her shoulders, glowering.

You are expecting it, I see. How clever you have grown over the years. He presses on without giving her the chance to process that. You shall choose where my bullet lands, Grymfalk. Name a person, a body part, and the rest may be spared.

“I’m no’ here t’ play yer fuckin’ GAMES!” she bellows. In an instant her hand flies for Caelius’s parents, aether erupting from her palm and taking form in the same moment it hurtles to surround the pair, cascading ever faster as water tumbling down falls. Scale-feathers ripple in that turquoise glow as if drawn by invisible muscles. Her serpent-shield coils around the boy’s parents hardly a second after she’s spoken, securely in place. The pair hesitate, recognizing her voice and her aether. Grym smirks. She’s won, hasn’t she? She’s wearing mithril, and no bullet will penetrate that shield, not so long as she still draws breath.

She cannot see the ceruleum tank from where she stands. It lies just behind the ruins between her and the parents, gleaming in the moonlight. Caelius’s parents do not know to be wary. They do not know to be suspicious of an undiscovered tank of ceruleum this late into the aftermath of the war, at least not quickly enough to run. The father knows. The father senses. He takes his wife by the shoulders and shoves her back from the tank, fear and love and hope in the whites of his eyes.

Oh, come, now. Didn’t I warn you what would happen if you insisted on heroics?

Bang.

The eruption is too fast to track, to comprehend. A surge of ceruleum sludge coats everything, reaching even Grymfalk. Though her shield hardens against the shrapnel, it hardly slows the liquid, which coats the father and the exposed side of the mother’s arm. Button’s protective runes flare with a deep draw of Grym’s aether to repel the threat.

Her stomach sinks. “STOP! STOP!!”

Ignis.

Night becomes day. The microscopic spark barely exists before it is eaten. Flames roar down the fuel faster than eyes can follow and a blaze springs to life fully-formed, towering over the ruins, devouring, so loud and so fierce it drowns out the cries of its meal.

It is blinding and then it is pain incarnate. The father’s back is all but vaporized in an instant and the fire is not satisfied and the pair are too stunned to do more than stare into each other’s eyes, flames burning away the liquid in their eyeballs. Keeping their eyes open is too painful, too hard when every nerve is pain or dead. Hellfire eats a hole clean through the father’s belly and breaks into his lung, roaring up the cavity as if drawn up a chimney, but it does not kill him quickly. Not fast enough to be merciful. No, it spares him long enough for him to rasp his son’s name, for him to tighten his grip on his wife’s shoulders and then loosen as what remains of his back grows too weak to hold him upright, for him to topple to the charred and burning stone. Only then does the flame finish what it started. Only then do his blackened eyes cease their twitching. Only then does his charcoal flesh release his spirit.

Fire howls up the mother’s boots, up her arm. Though she has to press her eyes shut against the heat and smoke and pain, she has enough sensation to feel her husband fall, to despair, to wail.

The only one who hears her is laughing.

Just as suddenly as the firelight was born, it dies. A darkness tinged with blue seeps into the flames one and all and snuffs their life, their air, evaporating the fuel and dispersing it before another explosion can rip through the vapors. Icy eyes stare. He had not ordered this. He summoned no void powers, nor had he wanted the blaze to end so soon.

Ah — so that’s why.

Burned along her neck and shoulder, charred at the hip, Grymfalk stands with Heavensfall drawn. Harmless dark flame licks down its haft and blade beneath the glowing text that marks its entire length. The darkness seeping from her is the horrid calm before a hurricane. Perfect silence. Smothering, suffocating.

That power vanishes nearly as quick as she’d called upon it. She’s running for the mother, who clutches her face in her hands and sobs, before she’s even finished putting the spear away. The pain is overwhelming but she knows the shock will hold it at bay — for now. It will just have to be long enough.

As she sinks to her knees at the sobbing mother’s side, she has to suppress a retch for the reek of burnt flesh, has to avert her eyes from the charred bits of bone that lay beside her, blackened, stripped of all blood and tendon. All that remains of him. A shaking, agonized breath, and she draws forth soothing sea-foam aether awash with glittering stars. She casts it liberally. It is a potent balm and gentle numbing, a precious gasp of sweet relief.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, holding the mother gingerly. “Caelius wasn’t here. He’s still out there. So hang on fer ‘im, okay? Ye cannae give up jus’ yet.”

Fresh sobs wrack the mother’s bent spine.

Perhaps, one day, you will be enough to save someone.

Grym’s eyes close, jaw clenching tighter.

Ah, but maybe it is dangerous to get your hopes up. Carry on with your endless striving, Grymfalk. Marie, Caelius, Beric, Hrani, and the others whose names I’ve forgotten cannot afford such setbacks. You had best divide, else you will never conquer.

She lacks the wherewithal to tell him to shut up, but she hopes the snarl on her lips is answer enough. Button, unharmed for the protective runes etched into his collar, trots up as Grym reaches for him, lips moving along the incantation. She can barely form the words. But the spell clicks into place eventually, purple aether swallowing and depositing the three of them in Camp Broken Glass.

As the town takes shape around her, the last of her consciousness fades. The world goes dark.