Night of Thursday March 11, 1490

A low groan from the floor stopped us before Ynez could start lugging her armory out the door. Rolling over onto his side, Thanos said in a defeated voice, "You don't understand. You just don't understand. Aphrodite, Ares, Poseidon — they're all still here. You can't stop them."

Without releasing either the sword or the spear, Ynez knelt beside him. "We don't need to. All we need to do right now is stop Hestia."

"You can't," he said flatly, and although she waited a moment longer for him to elaborate, he only closed his eyes and turned his face away.

Looking at Jamie, who had after all rejected Ascension in order to help us, she asked for his advice. "Oh, I don't know much about what you should do right now. I'm here for what happens after," he said with infuriating — and familiar — vagueness.

"Okay," Ynez informed him in utter exasperation. "The time for secrets is past. Tell us what you know!"

At the same time, I snapped, "All of this — " I swept my arm around the chamber — "happened because none of you would tell me anything! You tricked me into thinking that we were fixing the Plague when it was all about Astera Ascending, and now Hestia is loose and Thanos can't do anything to stop her! You got us into this mess — now get us out of it!"

Blinking at us in an injured way, the fox god explained, "But I don't know what to do about the Plague. I just know about the other gods — where they are, how to find them, how to stop them. That's why I stayed." He pouted at us, pushing out his bottom lip and wriggling out of my arms with (barely justified) resentment. "If you don't even appreciate my sacrifice, I should have Ascended with all my friends."

He did have a point, even if he and his friends had precipitated the crisis in the first place and really should have stayed long enough to resolve it. But I could feel the loneliness that filled his eyes and burrowed into his heart, and I said no more.

Ynez blew out a very frustrated sigh but nodded and ordered, "Keep Thanos safe then. You can hide him somewhere, right?"

"Yes, Prima," he said meekly. Crouching beside Thanos, he took the newly orphaned god's hand and began to urge him to take heart.

"Wait!" Ynez said suddenly. "What are you doing to him?" Jamie was using Ars Mentis to hypnotize Thanos and extract all his knowledge — not just his knowledge of the paths to the underworld that Astera had coveted — and Thanos, of course, no longer had any way to resist. "Stop that!"

Jamie protested, "I'm making him a mouse," but he did cut off his Effect. However, he couldn't quite conceal a sly smile that suggested he'd finish it later, when Ynez had her hands full with world-shattering crises.

Drawing herself up straight, and gripping the sword and spear menacingly, Ynez commanded in a low, intense voice, "I am the Prima of House Criamon and the warden of the spirits, and you are not going to hypnotize Thanos."

Actually cowering back a little, just as Mel had when Ynez exerted her authority, Jamie bit his lip but nodded obediently this time. He took the still-dazed Thanos by the hand, coaxed him to his feet, and led him away to one of the mice's many boltholes within the Hearth.

"Well," Ynez sighed, her authority draining away and her shoulders slumping back into the poor posture of an exhausted fourteen-year-old, "I guess we should go outside and see what's going on."

Outside the loom chamber, we found Tel — who obviously hadn't obeyed my order to "get out" very well. He was just lifting his hands from Gus' side with a satisfied air, and his father sprang to his feet, shook himself experimentally head to tail, then bounded in a circle like an excited puppy. The wound had healed entirely, and even the blood had vanished without a trace.

"It worked!" Tel announced happily at our approach. "I asked Thalia for help this time, and nothing tragic happened!" His smile faded slightly at our grim expressions. "What's happening now?" he asked warily.

"We're going to fix this," Ynez proclaimed with a proud lift of her chin.

"Oh no…." If Tel could have hidden behind his parents, he probably would have. "I'm scared…."

I understood exactly how he felt, and I nodded at him. "Me too. But we have to — so come on."

And so we exited the Hearth, one human, two demigods, and three dogs that remembered being Cerberus.

As much as Thanos' nightmare had petrified me, it was nothing compared to the inferno that Hestia and Paradox alike had made of Athens while we were in the Hearth. The bitingly cold rain had transformed into sheets of fire that showered from the heavens and set the city ablaze — which you'd think was already bad enough, but Thanos' and Astera's backlashes were also aging all of the buildings at the rate of a year per minute. Throughout the city, ancient monuments were collapsing with thunderous crashes or even dissolving straight into dust that choked the air. Mountains of rubble blocked the streets, flying debris drove back impromptu fire crews and fleeing civilians alike, and heartrending screams echoed to the very heavens, where the scarlet clouds grinned gigantically down.

Not two hundred feet from the orphanage, Hestia — now grown to forty feet tall — gestured imperiously, and a single piece of cloud tore free of the storm to hurtle down like a giant meteor, morphing midflight into a fire elemental that shook the very ground when it landed. Lunging forward, trailing flames and setting olive trees alight, it attacked an equally massive stone Buddha. Avaris had come to save us.

In the shadows of the dueling colossi, Ghallim sprinted frantically back and forth along the ring, fighting to keep it from exploding in a shower of Plague and hardened runes. "Goddess of ze 'Earth!" he called through their bond. "You 'ave 'ad your vengeance! You should indulge in your freedom now!"

Drifting back from the battle and leaving her fire elemental to fight Avaris, Hestia boomed, "You should worry much more about my sister than about me!"

"I am done worrying about your family!" he shouted back passionately. "From now on, I will only worry about protecting mortals and finding my true god, whoever 'e or she may be!"

"That is wise," she cackled, and a column of flame roared from her open mouth that Avaris barely dodged. As he landed, his momentum whipped his body around and wrenched his knee with a loud crack, and thin fissures radiated outward from the joint.

Looking completely confused — which was in perfect tune with his Resonance — Tel channeled Thalia again to suck in all the water from our well and all the remaining moisture from the air, and he grew larger and more translucent as he transformed himself into a water elemental the size of Hestia's champion.

With some amusement, she drank in the sight appreciatively before saying to Ghallim, "You're right. Fire should be free." She cackled again. "Enjoy your stay in this city, then. I hope it serves you as well as it did me!"

Sloshing a step closer to her and dousing some of the brush fires around the orphanage, Tel offered with utter sincerity, "Would you like a hug?"

She only laughed and soared into the air, up and up and up into the scarlet clouds where her fiery aura blended with and vanished into the flames pouring down on Athens. Without a moment of hesitation at its mistress' departure, the fire elemental lunged again at Avaris. He parried with one massive stone arm, but the stone creaked under the impact, and the cracks around his joints deepened and widened. Little pieces of his armor began to chip off and patter to the ground.

Looking around frantically for something useful that I could do, I stopped short and grabbed Ynez's arm. Approaching Astera's ward line were Adonis and his shaved head, leading a band of Reds. From another direction stormed the Prima of House Bonisagus (and putative guardian of the Aegis), wreathed head to toe in Hestia's flames. For once I wished that Ars Fati had lied.

"Leona?" I breathed.

Before I could confront her, Adonis stabbed an accusing finger at Ynez and shouted to his followers in a mature, Ars-Animae-enhanced voice that contrasted terrifyingly with his childish figure, "Our city is collapsing and she is responsible! Xenos she is, and xenos she shall be!"

As if at a prearranged signal, three Reds raised their bows in unison and fired at point-blank range.

At the same time, pushed past her limits, Ynez screamed back, "I'm done with your xenophobia! What right do you have to treat us like trash?" Echoing her challenge, her bear exploded out of thin air right in front of her. "Shield me!" she shrieked at it. "Do not kill!"

Two arrows plunged into the bear's shoulder all the way to the fletching, and it reared back on its hind legs, clawing at the feathers, its defiant roar echoing off the orphanage buildings. The last arrow thudded into Ynez's shoulder, and she gave a gasp of equal parts fury and pain. Behind her, the peacock that was her pride burst into existence and fanned its tail out in a dazzling display of iridescent feathers, each of the eyes glaring unflinchingly at Adonis and the Reds.

Striding forward majestically with her bear, her peacock, Hestia's bone sword, and Hades' spear, and completely ignoring the shaft still twanging in her flesh, Ynez hissed venomously at Adonis, "You, little boy, are in so deep over your head that you can't even begin to see the surface of what's going on. I don't have time right now to deal with you, but if you and your friends set one foot on orphanage grounds, I will make time."

Although his expression wavered only fleetingly before Adonis raised his anger like a shield and stood his ground — just a step outside the ward line — his Reds cringed before the pride of Ynez's power, exchanged nervous glances, and began to edge away from their leader.

Glancing up from the ring, Ghallim added in complete exasperation, "I 'ave spent ze past few days dealing with ze Plague, and if people insist, I can show you all just 'ow bad eet can get, entirely apart from pustules and such! So please, everyone, go do something else!"

The poor Sleeper Reds looked inclined to obey.

Since Ghallim and Ynez seemed to have the gang members well in hand, I rushed forward to intercept Leona. At my approach, she pointed her wand directly at my heart — the wand of searing, the one Thoren had specifically forbade any of his mages to bring on his raid — and I skidded to a halt three feet away. Casting a quick Ars Essentiae shield around myself, I asked as innocently as I could, "Why are you on fire? What's going on?"

Incredulous, she actually stopped in her tracks. "'What's going on?'" she repeated. "You imprisoned a goddess and didn't expect any consequences?"

Keeping her talking seemed like the best option — because if she were talking, at least she wasn't fighting us, and hopefully Ynez's bear wouldn't find an excuse to murder yet another senior mage from House Bonisagus. "Oh…. How did you find out?"

"She told me! How could you do something like that?"

I'd had quite enough of false accusations and unjust blame. I hadn't bound Hestia, I hadn't slept my way up through the Hermetic ranks, and I mostly certainly hadn't lured Thoren to his death, gods damn it all! I was just an eighteen-year-old who through no choice of my own had been born to a Titan and a mortal and then, when said mortal perished in an untimely manner, been brought to this madhouse of an orphanage. I was just trying to do the best I could with the situation I'd been placed in when I was a toddler. "We had nothing to do with it!" I yelled at Leona. "Nothing! We weren't even alive when Despina bound Hestia! We're trying our best here!"

Before I had even finished speaking, she blasted at me with Hestia's fire, but something in her eyes softened slightly at my words, and she pulled the blow at the very last second. The flames surrounded me just long enough to terrify me — and flickered out before they could consume me. The fires around her sank back into her skin.

Screaming in (Bonisagi) Enochian, I tried and failed to shatter her wand, but I did heat it to glowing white and she dropped it with a sharp gasp. Stooping to retrieve it, she snapped, "Then you should have told the other Houses and asked for their help! You should have told me! You were at the Acropolis often enough!"

"I was going to!" I cried, hating that my voice had gone all desperate and whiny. "I even started out for the Acropolis, but then Ars Fati told me you had changed your mind and had turned against us — "

"You listen to Ars Fati entirely too much!" she said, but now she sounded more like a mother lecturing a child who kept climbing trees and falling out of them and breaking bones yet never learned her lesson.

If, in this case, broken bones were an analogy for shattered cities.

Behind us, a shout of pain rang out, musical even in its distress, and we both whirled around to see Tel dance away from a fiery blow, only to twirl straight into a fireball. Summoning a burst of strength by draining his own life force, Avaris dove forward, strewing more pieces of stone armor across the grass, to seize the fire elemental around the waist. Grunting, he grappled it and dragged it bodily away before it could deliver a fatal blow to Tel.

At least the fire elemental looked as if it were wearying at last, its fires burning down to reveal the embers of its heart.

From high in the scarlet clouds, Hestia's voice wafted to us, addressing Ghallim, "I wasn't lying, you know, when I said that I was the least of your problems. My niece is fearsome and the Plague is her doing. If I were you, I wouldn't get into a duel of strength with her."

"I do not plan to!" Ghallim shouted back up at her.

Suddenly, a wave of power swamped us like a tidal wave and crashed against the hillside, then drained into the ring. At the same time, the energy already in the ring began to spin faster and faster, sucking in more and more Plague and building up pressure targeted inexorably at the filters meant to convert it into harmless Quintessence.

"I cannot control eet anymore!" Ghallim yelled. "Take eet, 'Estia, so your sister and niece cannot use eet!"

A bolt of black lightning shot out of the ring and pierced the clouds like a leyline, and through it Hestia started to siphon off Plague energy. Slowly, ever so slowly, the spinning subsided.

While we were distracted, Adonis vaulted over the bear that had slaughtered his mother and wrapped a hand around her murderer's neck. Shrieking the insult "Mother-killer!" he tore Ynez's Pattern in two. She crumpled to the ground, barely conscious, and her control over her wrath shattered entirely. Bellowing madly, the bear rampaged through the Reds, savaging them as it went, and they very wisely abandoned their leader and fled for the (relative) safety of the burning, collapsing city.

Leaving Tel to deliver another powerful blow to the fire elemental that nearly quenched its flames, Avaris teleported straight to Ynez, plucked Adonis off her, and flung him aside. But the bear leaped forward at the same moment, long, cruel claws outstretched to maul Adonis — and it impaled Avaris instead.

His stone armor crumbled into dust, leaving only an aged man, hunched on all fours in the grass and coughing up blood.

In keeping with proper responsibility and such, Ghallim or I should have confronted the bear then, but Ghallim actually flinched when its insane gaze raked across him, and I remembered the last time I'd tried to fight it.

"Leona!" Ignoring the wand of searing, I grabbed her arm. "Please, can you deal with the bear? Without killing anyone?" After all, she'd just told me to ask for help when I was outmatched, hadn't she?

Still stunned by the speed and viciousness of the fight, she stammered, "Look what you've done to the city — your city!"

"But we weren't the ones who — "

"You inherited the problems of your House," she said emphatically. "A Secunda cannot shirk responsibility when it is convenient."

I hated that she was right. "We're trying! We're still young! I'm eighteen, Ynez is fourteen, Tel is also eighteen — and Ghallim doesn't even believe he can do magic! And our mother died!" If we bore the blame for Despina's fiasco, then it was Leona's fault that Astera had died too soon and left us to shoulder burdens much too heavy for us to carry safely.

Leona had the grace to look faintly embarrassed — or maybe she was just terrified of the bear, which had abandoned Avaris and was now rounding on us. "I can't believe that mere children can wield such power," she muttered, staring transfixed at its teeth and claws.

I shook her arm again. "I promise I will explain everything to you later — but please help us now!"

"Oh, very well!" And she stepped forward, wand raised, to confront the bear.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tel throw back his head and raise his arms triumphantly as the fire elemental fell full-length across the yard, setting patches of dried grass on fire. Ghallim rushed over and tore the Quintessence out of it, leaving only a small heap of smoldering embers. Losing water by the bucketful, Tel sloshed across the yard to heal Avaris, leaving a muddy mire in his wake and completely drenching the peacock. Swiveling its tiny head around to goggle at him, Ynez's pride didn't even seem to mind.

Taking advantage of everyone's weakness and distraction, Adonis tried to finish Ynez off where she lay, but the bear spun away from Leona, crossed the yard in one bound, and ripped him to pieces before any of us even knew what was happening. From his bloody mangled corpse scurried a raccoon spirit, taking with it its aura of mindless, petty vengefulness. Oh, poor, poor Adonis….

"What is wrong with all the children in Athens?" Leona bellowed, hurling a fireball at the bear just a second too late to save her friend's son.

Raising its bloody muzzle from the boy's corpse, the monster batted away the fireball with one powerful swipe and tensed its muscles for a fresh attack. I shrieked a warning and tried to throw up a shield around Leona, but the knife slipped and cut deeply into my thumb, and I yelped and dropped the wood carving. The shield that had begun to form around her melted back into the air, but Leona did flash one of her appraising looks at me. I could only hope that she might recall all the times she'd seen me protecting people during fights instead of attacking them myself.

"Ashton," our resident mercenary inquired with perfect equanimity, "can we eat ze bear?"

His avatar growled, "Yes, but it will be hard and might hurt Ynez."

Searing energy swirled through the air again, as if an unseen hand had plunged into the depths of the ring and were manually spinning the Plague faster.

Raising his head abruptly and sniffing the air, Ghallim called to everyone in the yard, "Eet seems zat ze 'arvest 'as been shackled against eets will to ze Plague."

Without warning, Ashton split off from his host and pounced lightly to the ground as a large silvery lynx, startling Leona so much that she jumped. (I took perhaps excessive pleasure in her discomfit.)

"Play cat and mouse to distract Persephone while I open ze 'Earthstone chamber!" Ghallim ordered. Bounding into the Hearth, preceded by his god, he shouted to the other god-in-residence, "Jamie, do you want to 'elp?"

Beside me, Leona finally drew sufficient breath to gasp, "Bears and peacocks and now lynxes? What in the world is going on at House Criamon?"

An excellent question. "I'll get back to you on that," I said somewhat sourly.

Later we managed to extract the full story of happened in the Hearth from Ghallim, under threat of death by seraph (Zoe), death by bear (Ynez), death by danse macabre (Tel), and death by exhaustive interview (me). The first threat excited him, the second slid right off him, the third amused him — but the last actually convinced him. Who would have thought that the pen was more intimidating than magic?

As Ghallim raced deep into the caves, sprinting towards the Hearthstone chamber where Persephone had bound Demeter, Ashton bounded back into his mind, and Jamie and Thanos intercepted him. Over the rhythmic pounding of their footsteps, Jamie called out, "The mice always work together, even if we're only three now." The two flanked Ghallim, curving out through the tunnels to scout ahead.

Through the mind link, Thanos at last explained his family drama (which would have saved him a lot of grief if he'd been forthcoming in the first place). "I was only eighteen," he began a little dreamily, his mental voice serene even as his physical body raced along. "I was the youngest of seven siblings, all of us born Awakened with fantastic abilities. Everyone thought us blessed and expected much greatness from us, and our parents were proud. Demeter was much older than I, so her daughter Persephone was only a few years younger than I and the two of us grew up together. As the story goes, we fell deeply in love — but Demeter was overprotective of her daughter and forbade her to see me. Naturally, that only pushed Persephone to rebel, and we would sneak off together to explore dangerous Umbral realms. In retrospect, we probably should have taken more precautions before daring the realm of the dead...but I was eighteen and she sixteen, and we were overconfident as only the young can be, for always before we had extricated ourselves from difficult situations. Spirits, demons, dragons — we had fought them all side by side, and vanquished them all.

"But this time was different. This time, in the depths of Hades, I lost her. I searched and searched, and I called and called her name, but I could not find her. And so in the end I was forced to return home, leaving her trapped in the land of the dead. My sister screamed at me, of course, for very good reason, and tried to bring back her daughter. But she also failed. As the years passed and my powers waxed, I returned again and again to search for my lost love, but again and again I caught only the briefest glimpse of her hair, or her hand, or the side of her face before she slipped back into the shadows.

"Fifty years passed, then a hundred. My family grew evil and corrupted by their powers, as is wont to happen, and I swore to protect humankind from their warped fantasies. One by one I fought them, and I began to imprison them in Tartarus. Eventually I became the ruler there and could at last summon Persephone to me — but our reunion was bitter, for she had turned dark and twisted through centuries of imprisonment among the shades. Our child — she presented our child to me, but the poor thing had also succumbed to the evil of the underworld and been transformed into the essence of the Plague. Persephone could see nothing wrong with it. And so I knew that I could never release either of them.

"My sister," Thanos concluded soberly, "was blinded by a mother's love and never grasped the menace that her daughter and grandson had become. She thinks it's all a misunderstanding."

"Perhaps she 'as changed 'er mind," Ghallim suggested. "Ze 'arvest Resonance appears to be reluctant."

"Yes, perhaps," agreed Thanos. "But regardless of what Demeter thinks, she is now captive to her daughter, and you cannot defeat Persephone."

"Eet will not be necessary. I do not intend to fight her," Ghallim replied calmly. "I only wish to free Demeter and untwist Persephone, eef such a thing eez possible."

Thanos' only response was a hollow, defeated laugh, and through his and Jamie's eyes, Ghallim saw a vision of Persephone standing before the door to the Hearthstone chamber, hand pressed to the translucent stone to channel her mother's power. Stunningly beautiful, she seemed the very vision of all that was best and brightest about springtime, and as the mice approached, even Thanos' dying cypress tree trembled and put out fresh shoots.

Thanos, too, trembled, for an entirely different reason.

Ghallim merely inhaled deeply and sucked Quintessence from the Hearth into himself, and called through his bond to Hestia, "Would you be interested in destroying your prison?"

With a gleeful laugh, she answered, "Destruction is one of my favorite tributes!"

Raising his left hand, Ghallim summoned Hestia's fires and blasted the door right open. Inside the chamber, Tessa was tethered to the Hearthstone and wrapped head to foot in supple green vines that gagged her.

Taken by surprise, Persephone spun around to face him, tendrils of Plague still drifting from her fingertips. In a musical voice that tinkled like a mountain creek, she said, a little reproachfully, "I'd hoped that you would use the resource I gave you. One god to replace another — you might have saved the city."

Gently, Ghallim replied, "I appreciate ze gift, but we do not need another god bound 'ere."

"Well!" Persephone shrugged lightly, petals and leaves drifting from her shoulders to carpet the ground. "My mother's power is invaluable...but take it or leave it as you wish. I only thought to help."

"Power eez not everything, my child," said her cousin's priest softly. "More important are zose small moments in life — when you find something good to eat, say, or finish a drawing or piece of artwork."

A thunderous storm passed through the goddess' eyes. "I never got to experience any of those! They were all taken from me!"

"Ah, but even better than vengeance is freedom," Ghallim counseled, just as he had counseled one of her aunts only a short time ago.

"Freedom…," Persephone sighed. "I haven't felt it in so long…. Thank you for taking Thanos' immortality from him. Binding my mother here was a gift to all of you, in gratitude. I am surprised that you have the wisdom to reject it — it is more than my cousin could ever have taught you," she added cattily. Rising on tiptoe, she kissed him on the cheek. "My aunts and uncles and cousins will all come soon. I have many enemies, and I could use followers." Trailing a hand down his arm, she examined his bond to Hestia, testing its strength.

"I 'ave been bound to many things," he explained calmly. "I can care about many at ze same time. For example, right now I want my city back, I want freedom from fear, and I want peace for everyone — including you and Tessa."

"How very...altruistic. What possible appeal can a heap of crumbling stone and mortar hold for you?"

"A city eez more zan just eets physical manifestation. Eet eez an idea, a responsibility."

"I wouldn't know!" she snapped petulantly, like the child she had been the last time she walked the earth. "I never had one of my own!"

"Now you can," Ghallim pointed out. "But you must know zat eet eez more zan just putting your name on something and moving on. Any common gang member can scratch 'is name on a building and call eet 'is. For you to 'ave your own city means protecting eet, nurturing eet, 'elping eet grow. We all want to be builders, do we not?"

After a long, considering look, Persephone said, "You will make a fine king. I look forward to helping you conquer your kingdom someday."

Diplomatically, he replied, "I 'ave other priorities for now, but I will keep eet in mind."

Laughing her bell-like laugh again, she kissed him a second time. "Then I shall leave you to deal with my mother." She moved back up the tunnel gracefully and purposefully, her steps taking her past the crevice where Thanos cowered, and at the sight of her former lover and jailer, she cackled maniacally — sounding almost exactly like Hestia — and spat right in his face. Then she danced lightly in a spiral pattern and stepped sideways into the Umbra.

The oppressiveness of the Plague abated very slightly.

Hurrying to Tessa's side, Ghallim sliced through the vines with his decay-enchanted spear and set her free before we could repeat Despina's mistake.

As soon as she could speak again, Tessa demanded, "Where's my daughter? What's she doing?"

"Do not worry," Ghallim reassured her cheerily. "She eez off to found 'er own cities."

"You let her wander off on her own? She's only a child!"

"Not any longer. You must let 'er grow up, Tessa, so she can find 'er own way," he advised. As consolation, he handed her the packet of untainted seeds and added, "I believe you 'ave been searching for zese."

Ripping it open, she exclaimed in wonder, "Where did you get them?"

"Zey were a final gift from someone who was Ascending." At his words, awe warred with envy in Tessa's face, for at the moment of Ascension, Astera had outstripped even the goddess' powers. "Well, now zat ze immediate crisis eez over, I will return to fixing my ring. You can chase your daughter eef you wish. I will not stop you."

"I plan to!" Retracing her daughter's steps to Thanos, she yanked her little brother to his feet for a good interrogation and scolding.

While the mice were dealing with the goddesses, the rest of us confronted Ynez's bear — which was even more deadly than Persephone (at least on a local scale), and certainly much more vicious (overtly anyway). Still moaning after Adonis' attack, Ynez had just barely restrained the cursed beast by a tiny amount when her wrath and pride simultaneously spied something in the distance. The peacock screeched a raucous challenge that made me clutch at my ears, and the bear broke its fetters and tore away from Ynez, gathering momentum like an avalanche.

Up the path to the orphanage hurried Zoe, her seraph swooping overhead. "Ynez! Ynez!" she called out worriedly. "Are you all right?"

The peacock desperately flapped its wings and swiveled its pointy little head between Zoe and Tel repeatedly, as if pointing out just how much more stunningly good looking the latter was, and how the former couldn't possibly be worth any of Ynez's attention — but Ynez brushed it away distractedly. "Zoe! Get away!" she shrieked.

Although Zoe had a fraction of a second to defend herself from the bear, she wavered, torn between self-preservation and repugnance for injuring Ynez, even indirectly. I scrambled for my piece of wood, but it was still slick with my blood, and I couldn't get a good purchase on it to whittle anything recognizable, and the shield refused to coalesce around Zoe. Roaring, the bear plowed into her in a blur of teeth and claws to punish her for her crush on Ynez.

"Leona," I begged, "please help us!"

She needed no further invitation. Raising her wand again, she shot a stream of fire right at the bear, but it sensed the heat, lifted its head, and bellowed ferociously, and such was Leona's fear of the monster that her hand jerked at the critical moment. The flames missed the bear entirely and set a nearby tree ablaze.

The score so far looked like bear: infinity, House Bonisagus: zero.

Crawling to the embers of the fire elemental, Ynez lit one of her candles, then angled her mirror so she could see both herself and the bear. In the glass, Avaris stood just behind her, placing a paternal hand on her shoulder and lending her strength. "Good luck, my noble lamb," he said lovingly. "There will be much suffering along the path, but I hope that there will also be much joy. And so the cycle continues." Before her eyes, his spirit hugged her tightly and then faded from view along with the bear.

In the real world, the beast vanished with a pop right as it raised a paw to finish off Zoe.

"Noooooooooo!" Ynez screamed, dropping the mirror with a clatter. "Avaris!" On her hands and knees, she scrabbled over to his body, shoved Tel aside, and clutched Avaris' arm desperately. "Come back, Pater!"

Holding up his hands in a gesture of defeat, Tel apologized over and over. "I tried to save him, I really tried, Ynez. I'm so sorry."

From Avaris' body rose his avatar, a gold Eastern dragon, sinuous and horned, and it swept around the orphanage, brushing each of us in turn with a five-clawed foot and healing our wounds (partially anyway — I supposed one couldn't expect miracles even from emperor dragons). For one blessed moment of peace, its majesty drove back the fire and Plague, and granted us the chance to draw a deep breath and straighten our shoulders.

And then it was gone, and the world pressed down on us again.

Zoe jumped to her feet and dashed straight to Ynez, torn skirts flapping around her. "Ynez!" she exclaimed, reflexively dodging the peacock's vicious peck. "Are you all right? I have the strangest sense of deja vu, but…." Her voice trailed off into perplexity, and then she lost her train of thought as the peacock bit at her lacy sleeve.

"Go away!" Ynez snapped. At Zoe's appalled expression, she hastily specified, "Not you! The peacock!"

With one final beady glare, the bird folded its tail with great dignity and puffed back into the Umbra.

"Oh, Soror Zoe," Ynez groaned, folding up on herself and curling into a ball, "I've killed Adonis now too!"

Placing a tentative hand on her back, Zoe assured her in Spanish, "I'm sure it was justified. I know you, Ynez, and there isn't a bone of malice in you."

Regarding both of them helplessly, Tel suggested aloud, "You know how starfish can regenerate their arms when they lose them? Let's make Ynez like a starfish so she heals all the way. Umm, not literally a starfish, I mean. Just the regrowing part? Yes?"

Four Muses appeared as glowing forms around his head. One, clapping a bone-white comic mask to her face, said to another, "This is all very dreary. We need some levity in such a horribly distressing situation."

"Mel?" asked Tel in alarm. "Mel, what's going on?"

The Muse of Tragedy didn't respond, as usual.

The Muses of Dance and Erotic Poetry began playing a lively tune on their instruments. "It's time for a dance!" Terpsichore cried gaily. "A dance is just the thing to cheer everyone up!"

"You're all acting kind of strange, but okay. If that's what you want," Tel said, surrendering to the music, and he began to caper and leap about the yard. Giggling giddily, Ynez ran over to him and hopped along with him, and he caught her around the waist and swung her in a swooping arc.

"What in the name of all the gods is going on at House Criamon!" Leona sputtered, her eyes nearly falling out of her head.

"Well, it's very complicated," I explained, "so it might be easier to start from the very beginning." With Cly's help, I launched into chronicler mode: "Four hundred years ago, Despina Delios bani Criamon entered Athens to find the abandoned orphans starving and freezing to death. To save them, she struck a bargain with Hestia to warm them for as long as her — I mean Despina's — heart beat. But this wasn't quite as altruistic a move as you might imagine — " Leona actually snorted at that — "for Despina pursued Ascension with single-minded fanaticism, and as a mistress of Ars Temporis, she had foreseen that the orphanage and the children would be useful to her. In fact, one might wonder if her Marauderism had warped reality precisely so that she would find the dying children and have an excuse to bind Hestia to the Hearthstone…."

"This is very good," Cly praised me. "We need to remember some of these phrases for that history we're writing. Although we should polish the wording later."

I continued, "In addition, Despina had learned through her studies that she would need Hades' knowledge of the paths to the underworld in order to Ascend, so Hestia's imprisonment served a secondary purpose as well — as practice for when she would need to challenge the king of the dead himself — "

My words cut off with a squeak. Icy hands grabbed mine and pulled me into a lively jig, and I looked up at Avaris' dead eyes and lolling head. My squeak turned into a scream as soon as I drew another breath.

From the ground, the pieces of Adonis' corpse reassembled themselves like parts of a wooden puppet and bobbed up into a standing position, and Mel handed him a small harp, a smile of genuine pleasure under her tragic mask. Nodding exaggeratedly in time to the dance music, Adonis jerked his hands across the harp strings, and a discordant cascade of notes sent a shudder up my spine.

"Tel!" I screeched helplessly. "Tel! Make it stop!"

Spinning a grinning Ynez in a graceful underarm turn, he spared only the briefest glance in my direction and retorted, "Just stop dancing then. Why are you dancing with Avaris anyway? That's just creepy."

"Do you think I want to dance with Avaris? Tell Terpsichore to stop it!"

Tel's only response was to twirl Ynez again.

Recovering from her shock at last, Leona incinerated Avaris' body.

After an extra minute — just to prove that they didn't take orders from mere mortals — the Muses stopped the music and dancing. Adonis fell to the ground in pieces once again, and Ynez stumbled back from Tel, eyes bright and cheeks pink, while poor Zoe averted her gaze and picked fastidiously at the torn lace on her sleeve.

"This is absurd!" Leona babbled. "This is completely and utterly insane! This is precisely why one does not create a Hermetic House full of children led by another child! I am going to write to the ruling council of House Criamon to recommend that — "

Very very fortunately for our continued independence — but very very unfortunately for the city — a series of muffled explosions thumped like drumbeats in the distance.

Running out from the Hearth, Ghallim shouted urgently, "Persephone eez destroying ze Aegis! Zat eez ze 'omage she demands from mankind!"

"It can't be!" I protested. "I thought — I thought — bringing her back would fix the Plague…." My voice trailed off as I remembered all the catastrophically wrong assumptions I had made over the past week and a half. Why break the trend before my home lay in ruins?

"Maybe you should stop thinking so much," Tel suggested helpfully. "I don't. I'm pretty sure it works better that way."

"Look, Marina," Ghallim said, "I do not 'ave ze time right now to explain everything to you, but just believe me — Persephone eez evil. She eez ze mother of ze Plague!"

In the Umbra, Persephone was systematically circling her cousin's city, trodding on the spirit reflections of the Aegis stones and crushing each one in turn. The orange ring surrounding Athens went black, and for the first time in three years, Plague flooded into the city. In a twisted way, I thought, reaching into my satchel for the shard from Thoren's staff, it was a blessing that Mel had killed him before he had to watch the Aegis fall.

If only she had killed me, too, before I could carry out Astera's plan and doom us all.

Quickly proving Leona's assessment of Criamoni efficiency wrong, Ynez gauged the situation. "Okay," she said to all of us. "The city will fall. We must leave at once."

Immediately, Ghallim shook his head. "No. I will stay 'ere to 'elp people."

Tel, to everyone's surprise, seconded him: "I will also stay here. This is our home. Even if I can't destroy the Plague, I can keep myself and my friends safe."

"But there is no holding the line," Ynez argued. "This city is going to fall, so we have to go now! It's only a strategic retreat, Tel."

"That is the wisest thing you've said," Leona remarked, sounding grudgingly impressed.

As if to underscore Ynez's point, the Tower of the Winds collapsed with a crash we could hear all the way at the orphanage. In the distance, tiny animal forms leaped out of the windows and spread their wings as the home of House Bjornaer fell, and I was just petty enough to enjoy the thought of all those bullies tumbling down, down, down.

"Soror Zoe," Ynez ordered, "gather the Quaesitori. Leona, tell the people of Athens that we can no longer be responsible for them. I think they will be more inclined to listen to you."

"Very sensible," Leona said approvingly. "I will gather my House — " Her attention was suddenly caught by the shard that I was turning over and over in my hands. "What is that, Marina?" she demanded, horror crossing her face.

"I'm going to rescue Thoren," I said defiantly.

Her opinion of our House immediately plummeted again. "Are you mad?" she shouted. "He died! He is dead! You can't just go into the underworld and pull out dead people!"

I stood my ground and met her gaze determinedly. "Not 'people.' Just one person. Singular. I am doing this, Leona. I'm only telling you because I'm laying all my cards on the table."

While honesty might have helped us a week ago, it didn't seem to be doing any good right now. "Your entire House is mad!" Leona yelled at all of us. "The Prima is fourteen years old and cannot control her magic, the Secunda has been driven insane by love — "

At her words, the Muse of Love Poetry perked up. "This is a great time for a ballad!" Erato exclaimed enthusiastically.

Glaring at her, Tel snapped, "Who the f— " Leona cleared her throat very loudly — "are you?" he finished.

"Now that is an appropriate introduction for the poem," Erato tittered. "Mel, dearest, darling sister, you must tell me all about Tel and Verrus. I want all the juicy details — the more explicit, the better."

Flinging out his arms, Tel appealed to the heavens, "What is going on here?"

"An excellent question," Leona snapped, "and one which I would not presume to answer. I'm going back to the Acropolis. Zoe, don't you have some Quaesitori to see to?" Seizing the Inquisitor's arm, she practically ran from the Forgotten Orphanage.

Ynez barely noticed their departure, as she was much more preoccupied with getting our House to safety. "Ghallim, Tel, we can and will rebuild Athens," she argued. "But we should regroup in Alexandria, where the Plague is less severe."

"Alexandria? Oh," Tel (or maybe Thalia?) moaned, inventing an entirely nonsensical excuse, "but we'd have to get on a boat to get there. I don't want to get on a boat. I'd rather swim all the way."

"Ah," Ghallim needled him, acting more like his usual irritating self, "but zere are crocodiles in ze Nile. Do you want to be eaten by a crocodile?"

"Crocodiles?! Ynez, why do you want to go somewhere with crocodiles?"

At last Jamie interrupted us, bounding out from the Hearth and tugging urgently at my arm. "We have to get inside now! Look!" And he pointed dramatically into the distance, out past the harbor, all the way to the horizon where the Viking ships bearing Thoren and his mages had sunk from view that terrible night.

Tonight, a tidal wave was rapidly gathering strength and roaring towards the city.

Its Resonance screamed, "I've been waiting for so long!"