Many thanks to BeaconHill for betareading.

The eastern horizon was beginning to bleed in pink and orange as dawn approached. I sat within the quietly humming Dragoncraft, my eyes gazing behind us towards the dawn as it rose over the Black Hills, the great basin of Wyoming stretched below us like a patchwork carpet. Sophia and Emma were both asleep on opposite sides of the vessel, each sprawled over a bench with a blanket and a pillow.

"We're approaching the LZ," Dragon's voice said softly, emanating from the speakers in the cabin's ceiling. "I'm starting to descend. Ten minutes to arrival."

"Thanks," I murmured.

We'd decided to fly in under cover of night and to land in the woods outside the Yellowstone Caldera. It wasn't that our business was exactly secret—though, in fairness, I wasn't often as vulnerable as I would be while my whole focus was on the forging of the One—but I didn't see any need to get local authorities involved. It would just pull focus, having to explain the situation to them, convince them of its necessity, and reassure their concerns about anything to do with the supermassive volcano under the park. It would have taken days—days I had, sure, but days I didn't want to spend that way.

Our gear, as well as supplies for a week, were bundled into three large rucksacks. Emma was the only one who hadn't brought her costume. "No point," she'd said. "I'm not Oracle anymore." Sophia and I had strapped our weapons to the sides of our packs, with Amauril and Sunrise hidden as best I could manage by our coiled ropes, bundled tents, and rolled-up sleeping bags.

I watched as the trees below us grew and slowed. A few minutes later, we slipped between them as the Dragoncraft set down in a small clearing. The early morning light was filtering in through the trees, leaving the forest looking almost monochrome.

"Welcome to Wyoming," said Dragon. "You'd better get the other two up. We don't want anyone to happen upon a landed craft."

Sophia woke easily, with just a gentle shake and a whisper. She blinked up at me, a bleary smile on her face, before shaking the sleep away. "We're here?" she asked, yawning.

"Yes," I said. "Can you start unloading while I wake Emma?"

She nodded and made for the compartments where our packs were stored, while I crossed to Emma's makeshift bed. If Sophia had slept lightly, Emma was like a particularly anxious feather. She jolted to alertness with just a touch. For a moment her eyes were wide and terrified as she gazed up at me, before awareness flooded back into them. She let out a shuddering breath. "Sorry," she mumbled shakily.

"Don't be," I said. "We've landed. Dragon needs to get this ship away before sunrise, if she can."

Emma nodded. "Okay, I'm up. Give me twenty seconds."

It wasn't long before the Dragoncraft's door closed behind us. The three of us stood together, watching as it began to rise, almost silent. Once it crested over the treetops, a veil seemed to drop over it. It wasn't invisible, but the metal was dull and unreflective, and as it rose into the gray sky it grew harder and harder to see until it seemed to fade away into a cloud.

"All right," said Dragon's voice, coming from the radio at my belt. "I'm going to keep a couple of craft in the area the whole time you're here, and I'll monitor your position via GPS. Let me know the moment you need anything, and I'll be there."

"I know," I said. "Thank you." I turned to my two traveling companions, swinging my rucksack over my shoulders. "Ready?"

Emma nodded solemnly. Sophia grinned.

The three of us strode into the forest. As the sun rose, the golds and oranges of morning filtered through the leaves of the trees, dappling the ground with rays of brilliant color. The first red and yellow leaves of autumn were just starting to drift down from the branches above, painting the whole cavernous understory in the colors of fire.

Emma caught up to me, falling into step beside me. She had started to regain some weight and some color had returned to offset the pallor of her cheeks, but her dark eyes were still sunken in dark circles, exhausted bags lingering beneath them.

"Did you ever come here when you were a kid, Taylor?" Emma asked quietly.

For a moment, I thought of observing that I had lived here once, when it was Mordor, but I thought better of it. She knew. "No," I answered instead. "We never went any farther west than the Mississippi River. What about you?"

"Once," she said. "We got a cabin in the geyser fields for a couple days. I don't remember much, I was little. I think I whined because I had to share a room with Anne."

I chuckled. "You never seemed to mind when we shared a room as kids."

"That was different," Emma said with a soft laugh. "I love Anne, but no kid wants to share a room with their big sister."

"How is Anne, by the way?" I asked. "She came back to the Bay after your trigger, right?"

We were treading into dangerous territory, I knew, but that was the point. That was why Emma had asked about my childhood, why she'd offered a story about her family. She wanted to break the walls between us, to stop having to walk tiptoe. And so did I. "She's okay," Emma said after a brief hesitation. "She's gone back to her team in New York. She left before the Empire imploded. Good thing, too—I'm glad she wasn't caught up in that."

I raised an eyebrow. "Did she know you joined the Empire?"

"No, but she knew I triggered, and she figured I was a villain." Emma sighed. "And I didn't even realize she was a cape. I'm supposed to be the Thinker."

"She's a cape? Really?" I asked, startled. I remembered Anne—she'd always been kind to me, in that slightly paternal way of older siblings. I didn't remember any of the hard edges or raw scars I'd come to expect from capes. Maybe she'd triggered after Emma and I had stopped talking? Or perhaps there was no trigger—maybe she was one of Cauldron's artificial capes, like Dean or the Triumvirate.

"Yeah. She's a member of a hero team called the Paladins, in New York. Her cape name is Brigandine."

"Brigandine?" A hazy memory emerged from months ago. "She came back for Leviathan, didn't she?"

"Yeah." She looked at me. "Did you meet her at the fight?"

"I don't think so," I said. "I probably saw her before or after the fight, but I don't think I ever had Brigandine pointed out to me."

"I imagine things were pretty hectic," Emma acknowledged. "It was bad enough just getting bundled into the shelters. I'd just gotten my powers, and everyone was panicking—it was like they were all freaking out in my head."

"That sounds awful." I remembered the first time I'd seen Leviathan, emerging from the cresting wave, the brilliant light shining from its core. "Leviathan was the first time I was really scared after I started wearing the Three," I admitted. "Scared for myself, I mean—I was definitely scared for my friends when we fought Bakuda." I looked back at Sophia, who was following us quietly, a smile on her face as she watched us gingerly building our bridge of conversation. "I think most of us got closer to dying there than we did at Leviathan, right?"

Sophia grimaced. "We got lucky Shielder was there," she said. "That fucking bomb at the end…"

"I don't know this story," Emma said, looking between us. "I remember Bakuda—she was that tinker who worked for the ABB, right? What happened?"

And so we talked, swapping stories back and forth. Our childhoods, our exploits as capes, our friends and family—all of these were lumber and rope in the careful construction of our little bridge, so fragile over such a wide gap. But it was working. I could feel myself relaxing, could see the tension leaving Sophia's shoulders, could see the forced edge bleeding out of Emma's smile.

Our talk grew easier as the hill we climbed grew steeper. The trees began to thin out as the elevation rose. We stopped briefly for breakfast once the sun was properly in the sky—just some granola bars and a bit of orange juice. We had proper food packed, but we could wait to cook until we'd set up a camp, hopefully tonight.

It was getting on to midmorning when we finally crested the outer hills of the Yellowstone Caldera and got our first in-person look at the volcanic plain. The green grass and low shrubbery receded as it approached the center of the flatland, until eventually it gave way to the pale yellows and browns of the geothermal vents.

Emma cut herself off in the middle of a sentence with a gasp. I wasn't sure what she was seeing, but I could guess. I was seeing it myself. The shadow of Barad-dûr rose over the land in my mind's eye, a lingering darkness from an eon long past. I almost thought I could smell the ashen air of Gorgoroth, so faint that it might have been real, and simply unnoticed by the people hiking and touring in the valley below.

"I once saw a thread online about the possibility of Behemoth attacking Yellowstone," Sophia said quietly. "They were saying it might set off the supervolcano, cause a mass extinction event. You think it didn't try that because of, well… this?"

"Maybe," I said. "I'm not sure the Endbringers are trying to drive us extinct. But even if they are… I don't know if Behemoth could make this volcano respond to its power. Orodruin… has only one master."

Emma took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, letting the air out slowly. "All right. What are we looking for, Taylor?"

"The Cracks of Doom," I said. "A cave, leading deep into the heart of the volcano. I expect we'll have to get closer to the geyser fields."

"Well," said Sophia, shifting her pack on her shoulders. "We'd best get moving, then."

We started back down the hills. We weren't following a well-defined trail, so it was slow going. We descended carefully, skirting around the steeper slopes and looser gravel.

We were getting close to the base of the hill when we stopped for lunch by the side of a dirt road. Weeds were growing unimpeded on the unpaved path, and the very faint tracks of rubber tires were at least a week old. We sat in a circle on a fallen tree and a nearby rock and ate a small meal—tuna salad sandwiches I'd prepared before we left, and an apple apiece.

"It's still a few miles to the geyser fields," said Sophia between bites. "Do you still think we can find the Cracks of Doom today? I'm starting to think we might need to get some more supplies while we're here."

"It's possible," I agreed. "I didn't want to land inside the Caldera because it was too exposed, but I underestimated how much distance we'd have to cover once we were in. I still think I won't have too much trouble finding the entrance, but it might take us an extra day just to get there."

"On foot," Emma said.

"Well, yes, on foot," I said. "I assumed we didn't have a car."

Emma pointed behind me and Sophia. We turned. A cloud of dust was rising from the road in the distance, and I could just hear the rumble of an engine getting closer. "I know we were trying to keep our presence quiet," said Emma. "But we could try to hitch a ride."