Many thanks to BeaconHill for betareading.

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Binary 15.3

The sky was dimly lit with an angry orange glow, even in the dead of night. Low clouds drifted along the sky, luminous in the burning light. The golden dragoncraft slowly descended onto the plains, just on the edge of a grove of tall trees. The door slid open, and I stepped out, my armor aflame with reflected light. In the distance burned a perfectly hemispheric inferno, a marble of fire slowly rolling across the savannah.

Sophia hopped out behind me. She whistled as she stared across the plain, tiny fireballs reflected in her eyes. "It's one thing to be told about Ash Beast or to see it on the news," she said softly. "Being here is something else."

I nodded mutely. Even here, more than two miles from the outer edge of the burning sphere, I could hear the rumbling roar of it, like a sustained thunderclap.

Sophia's fingers twined about mine. "So, I've been assuming that our plan is just you walking in there and ignoring the fire," she said. "Now that I see it, I'm suddenly worried that's not gonna work."

"If it were normal fire, I'd be fine," I said darkly. "But I've got no idea how much control the Shard has over it, and I don't like the idea of walking into what might well be a trap."

"It's also, uh, not a fire," said Sophia, her voice a little shaky. "I mean, it's one thing to hear from the PRT that Ash Beast is a 'sustained nuclear reaction' or whatever—it's another to see it. That's basically a little Sun, right?"

"Eh." I wiggled a hand, palm down. "The Sun's got some mythology behind it."

Sophia just sighed and shook her head. "Back on topic: What's our plan? I don't have a way to get through that. Too much light to maintain my shadow state for long."

I nodded and looked back at the conflagration, my smile fading as I considered the problem. The familiar dark impulses rose up in me, pointing me down a simple path—Belthronding could shoot an arrow through that fire. Even if the shaft were destroyed, I could ensure that the head reached its mark.

I shook that idea away. "I could try to push back the fire and radiation," I said instead. "Break open a clearing rather than just wading through it."

"What, like an air bubble?"

"Something like that."

Sophia grimaced. "I'm coming with you if you do that. I don't care if it's risky, you're not going in there alone."

I squeezed her hand. "Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way."

We started forward. As we crossed the distance, the air gradually warmed around us, and the low rumble of the fire rose in crescendo until it was as loud as a jet engine in our ears.

"Remind me to ask you to heal my ears after this!" Sophia shouted beside me.

"Ask me to heal your ears after this!" I called back.

"What?"

I shook my head, smiling at her. "Nothing, here!"

I reached out and pulled on Nenya's power. Amy and Shaper released it to me willingly, and I enclosed a barrier of air around Sophia's ears, like the world's most excessive noise-canceling earmuffs. "Better?"

"Much," she said, relieved. She could still hear the flames, but they were muffled now. She was no longer shouting, since she could hear herself again.

We reached the edge of the fireball. It slowly approached us, fire hungrily eating away at the ground as Ash Beast made his slow, ponderous way forward.

I tugged Sophia inward. "Stay close," I told her. Then, after a deep breath, I began to sing softly in Valarin.

As I strode forward, the flames parted around me. They closed again behind us, so that we were walking in a little pocket of clean air in a firestorm. The radiation was entirely blocked, the heat oppressive, but not lethal, though Sophia was panting beside me.

The blackened, scorched earth beneath us cracked beneath my boots. I kept singing, never pausing even for breath. We walked on, nearly another half a mile.

There was no dark silhouette in the fire, slowly coalescing. It was fire, it gave off light. There was nothing to cast the silhouette. No—I practically ran into the Ash Beast when we reached the center of the sphere.

He didn't look human. He didn't look like much of anything. His body was a roiling mass of limbs and teeth and tusks, constantly shifting as fire coalesced into matter and matter dissolved into flame.

Two eyes bright like coals gazed at me, fear and confusion and long despair swimming within.

I reached out, still singing, and laid my left hand upon what was probably his brow. I found the Shard and its tether to the young man.

I gripped and pulled.

The Shard came away cleanly, with a sense of relief. It scuttled away into the dark where its kind lurked without a backward glance.

Between one heartbeat and the next, silence fell. The light and heat and sound blinked out of existence like salt dissolving in water. There was just me, Sophia, and a young man with nut-brown skin, maybe seventeen at the oldest, standing before us. He fell to his knees and started to babble in broken Arabic, his wide, panicked eyes fixed on me.

I knelt before him and put my arms around him. "It's all right," I said softly in his language. "It's over. You're safe. You're free."

He clutched me and wept.

-x-x-x-

The sun began its slow ascent across the eastern sky. The southern Atlantic passed far below us, visible through the Dragoncraft's windows.

It had been several hours since we left the Congo, the former Ash Beast—now just a traumatized boy named Abrahim—in tow. We'd dropped him off at a joint Protectorate-King's Men outpost on the island of Saint Helena. He'd have whatever support we could offer him—and the 'we' I represented was starting to get rather large.

Sophia yawned and stretched in her seat, putting aside her book. She looked over at me. "How's the view?"

"Gorgeous," I said. "The sun is rising."

She stood and stepped up beside me, gazing out the window. Her hand found mine. "Wow," she whispered.

We stood there for a time, drinking in the majesty of the world from above.

At length, Sophia shook herself and turned back to me. "I should probably get some sleep before we get to France," she says. "What's our ETA, anyway?"

"Dragon?" I asked, looking up.

"We should touch down in Paris at 20:00 local time," Dragon said. "About two hours before sunset."

I nodded. "Do we have a landing site already?"

"I've gotten clearance to drop you off at a helipad at de Gaulle Airport," said Dragon. "After that, flushing the Blasphemies out will be up to you. We know they're in Paris, and we know they like to make spectacles when they're in big cities, but we don't have anything on their specific plans this time."

"Understood," I said. The Blasphemies, I knew from the PRT profiles, were more difficult for Thinkers to predict or even consider than most capes. "I'll figure something out."

"You have an idea?" Sophia asked.

"The beginnings of one," I said, smiling at her. "Get some sleep. I'll think about it some more, and we'll talk through it when you wake up."

"You're not going to sleep?" she asked.

"I'll probably get a few hours," I said, sitting down across from her. "Not just yet, though."

"All right," she said, and lay down on the bench. She grabbed a pillow and stuck it under her head, and slipped a sleep mask over her eyes. "Should be up well before we land."

"I expect so," I agreed. "Sleep well."

I waited until her breathing evened out and her mind relaxed into slumber before looking away.

Dragon, I said mentally, reaching out to Vilya's bearer. Do me a favor and get me a reservation at a restaurant close to the Eiffel Tower.

Ha, all right. She sounded amused. Any preference on cuisine? Or cost?

Cost isn't an issue, I said. Pay it out of the bounty on Ash Beast.

Will do. You want to reserve as Mairë and Tirissëo, or as Taylor and Sophia?

I considered that for a moment. I'm tempted to say Taylor and Sophia, but I don't know how fast we'll need to change, I said. Let me borrow Vilya's precognition for a minute?

She lent me the power and I used it to gaze into a snapshot of the future. A blink later, I had my answer. We'll go as Mairë and Tirissëo, I told Dragon. It'll draw the Blasphemies' attention faster, and we'll be able to react in time.

Sounds good, Dragon replied. I'll get you a reservation. Be careful, all right? Even if we tried to order an evacuation, there would still be a lot of civilians around. And if you're going to stop at a restaurant, I assume we're not evacuating?

No, I confirmed. If we try, it'll trigger the Blasphemies to attack the moment the evacuation starts, targeting the civilians on the move. No, this is the least risky option.

Sounds like you've got this in hand. Good luck, Taylor.

Thanks. I closed my eyes and let myself drift into dreams.

-x-x-x-

"Seriously cannot believe you did this." Sophia smiled at me from across the table. The Parisian sunset painted the sky in rich orange hues overhead. A floral scent was in the air, and snippets of low conversation in French were adrift on the wind. "You're such a dork."

"Guilty as charged," I said, holding out my wineglass for a toast. She clinked her glass against mine. And we both sipped.

The drinking age in France was still sixteen for fermented-fruit drinks, like wine and cider, despite an attempt to raise it a couple of years back. An attempt which, if I recalled correctly, had been partially beaten due to the efforts of a few underaged hero teams who took exception to the idea that they could die fighting villains without being allowed to party afterwards.

The waiter came with our appetizers, and I thanked him in fluid French, enjoying the way his expression subtly shifted as he tried and failed to catch any hint of an accent. As he left, Sophia let out a soft chuckle.

"You never actually learned French, right?" she asked.

"Not as such," I said.

She shook her head, her eyes rolling under her half-mask. "Show-off."

"Again: guilty as charged."

We started eating. I'd ordered us a heavy set of appetizers and relatively small entrées. We had a charcuterie board with crisp toasted rounds, a small Alsatian tart, and an olive tapenade. Sophia had looked at me oddly when I ordered three appetizers for two people.

"Still don't know how we're going to finish all of this," she said between bites of the tart. "Not complaining, though."

"We could take leftovers back," I pointed out.

"Does the Dragoncraft even have a minifridge?"

"I'm sure we could figure something out."

"See, that's what I'm talking about." She looked at me suspiciously. "You're acting like this is all a hypothetical. What're you hiding?"

I smiled at her. "You'd best eat," I advised. "I think we're on a bit of a timeline."

Realization crossed her face. "Ohhh. Got it." And with that, she tucked back into the food.

I nibbled at the charcuterie and studied her across the small table. We were seated on a porch outside the restaurant, a three-arm candelabra poised between us. The three tiny flames flickered in her deep green eyes, setting them sparkling like gemstones.

I reached my hand out under the table and let it rest on her knee. A smile came to her eyes, but she kept eating with only a glance at me.

My arm crept upward to her hip. My fingers closed on Alca's handle.

In one fluid motion I stood up and moved to the side without disturbing the table. The crossbow came up, and a bolt fired directly into the eye of the chalk-white woman on the roof behind me. She dodged with unnatural speed, the dark eyes above her frozen rictus-grin gazing down at me with an unnerving, dark intellect.

In that moment, I knew for certain what I had already suspected. The Blasphemies were not—had never been—human.

For a heartbeat we gazed at each other. Then she leapt away to the neighboring rooftop, her slender frame belying coiled, lethal strength.

I held out Alca handle-first as Sophia stood up. "Sorry about the interruption," I told her.

"Hey, I knew what I was signing up for," said Sophia, taking it and pulling Raumo out with her left hand. "We work for a living."

I grinned and drew Sunrise. It practically glowed in the twilight. As one, we turned and leapt to the rooftop.