Tara scurried into Fred's lab. "Sorry I'm late! And don't feed me that line about going when I please where I please. I know that; I also know I need to get tattooed before I go see Hamoji and it needs to be done soon."

Fred nodded. "It's my fault for not learning it sooner, though. We could have had this done on the way."

"Fair enough." Tara peeled off the cutoff t-shirt she'd been wearing and began unfastening her daisy-dukes. "I ran into Stephen. We hadn't talked much. He knows how to do a lot, but he thinks a lot of things-" She hesitated. "I think he really is demon-blooded, though. He's Angel and Darla's son. But he's a nice guy. At least, he's a guy most of the time."

Fred raised an eyebrow at that. "Was he trying to get into your pants? Because those are, y'know...awfully revealing."

"Fred, I don't think he even knows what gay means. He looked startled that he was turning me on when he changed." A little reluctantly, Tara peeled off her undies too.

"Hmm. I'm sorry this has to be so intimate, by the way. It's just part of the process." Fred took the needles she'd borrowed from the Sage out of her drawer. He'd been spending a lot of time away lately, not that she could blame him.

Tara shook her head. "We agreed it wasn't g-going to happen again and we weren't t-talking about it. So there's nothing to worry about."

Fred nodded agreement. "Nothing to worry about. By the way, for what it's worth, I grew up Southern Baptist. My parents probably would've taken the whole demons-existing bit in stride, and yet I've never told them I've been high or kissed a girl or, y'know, had sex ever."

"Assemblies of God," Tara confided as Fred set the needle to her right arm. "Though honestly my father put so much of his own spin on things he was probably technically a heretic himself."

"How'd he end up married to your mother?" Fred began a slow series of curving lines. "They don't seem very compatible."

"I only figured out the last bit myself when I was in Yu-Shan," Tara warned. "It's a long story."

"We've got a lot to do," Fred said as she worked up from the wrist. "Go right ahead."

"Before my mother there were witches in my family line," Tara said, "but they weren't Wiccan. Miriam Becker was Pennsylvania Dutch, and Mennonite, back in the mid-1800s. Her family made hexes to protect farms-you know the star symbols?-and some of them were sin eaters."

"Wow! That's some old stuff there."

Tara agreed and went on. "She was twenty-three when something went wrong. Apparently she really was possessed for a while, by something like an Ethros. She killed her husband before being exorcised by a traveling preacher named Isaac Maclay.

"Her family didn't trust Isaac. They claimed he'd sabotaged one of her sigils to let the demon loose on her, but she'd fallen in love, and they ran off to eastern Kentucky where he was born. They had a son and a daughter, and the son was a great preacher, but the daughter was a witch-she could read minds.

"Isaac managed to persuade people that his line was strong enough in the Holy Spirit to keep witches under control, and before long people started marrying off suspicious daughters to his sons and grandsons. Technically within a few generations there was some inbreeding, but no closer than first cousins and not usually that.

"My mother ran away to college like I did. That's where she learned about Wicca the religion. But her scholarship got canceled from something related to Vietnam, and her parents took her home to get married.

"She always told me my dad was a liar, but after she died I found her diary. The last entry said Isaac Maclay had told the truth. I thought she was admitting we really were demons."

"But Spike proved you weren't," Fred said, puzzled. "Did she doubt herself that much?"

"That's the part I figured out in Yu-Shan," Tara explained. "Isaac told the truth that he was innocent. I went back and reread Mom's entries about the family history. Some of the Beckers agreed he hadn't done it, that more than half of Miriam's hexes failed on their own. She wasn't any good, Fred. She had the knowledge but not the...the knack."

Fred stared. "But then where'd the family talent come from? Later marriages?"

Tara looked her calmly in the eyes. "Isaac Maclay was a very successful exorcist, prophet, and faith healer, Fred. I don't know where he got it-not demons, apparently-but it came from him. And the best faith healers in the entire Pentecostal movement, the ones who aren't fakes, are from the Maclay line. Only the men, of course."

"Then it always ran on both sides." Fred goggled at her. "You have to tell your family, Tara. Whoever will listen. And this is definitely going into your tattoos "

"I don't know if anyone will," Tara said regretfully. "I always thought Cousin Beth had potential, but she's convinced herself never to try. And the men...they're so invested I can't imagine them ever believing me. I'll try when I get a chance, though. Maybe Beth will listen. She's got nothing to lose."

Chapter 63: Bloodlines

The flame died, and Beth Maclay uncurled. She could hear loud voices, but only after long minutes could she make out what they were saying. It was her uncle Simon and his sons Nathan and James, and they were arguing about the fire she must have been in.

"The Lord sent the Spirit down like fire," Simon was saying from somewhere below her. "Fire isn't just from hell. Lord knows, boys, even hell is God's judgment."

"Well, he was judging someone mighty fierce," James said.

Beth stepped lightly over the wreckage of the bed and out the door. She stopped to look at herself in the bathroom mirror for a moment. She was the same, for the most part, but flickering golden flames shone from her hair without burning it.

"Uncle," she said softly, coming down the stairs into the kitchen.

"Beth!" Uncle Simon took a step toward her, then halted uncertainly. "What's that on your head, Beth Maclay?"

"The Lord sent his angel to save me, Uncle Simon. My faith set me free of the family curse. There's no demon in me any more."

Her uncle gave her a skeptical frown. "Exorcisms have been tried and failed, Beth. I..." His eyes went back to the light radiating from her head.

"When Moses came down from the mountain, his face shone from speaking with God," Beth said. "When the people gathered on Pentecost, the Spirit of God rested on their foreheads like tongues of fire."

Nathan shook his head. "You're a Maclay woman, Beth. The devil always has his counterfeits. Maybe this is a trick of Satan."

She ignored Nathan and looked to his father. "If I cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub, then by whom do your sons cast them out? Whoever blasphemes the Son of Man may be forgiven, but one who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven."

Uncle Simon shook his head at her. "Your argument would hold more water if I'd seen you cast out-"

Beth Maclay ignored him and opened the basement door. She strode down the stairs. There they were. With the utmost calm she reached out and snapped the nearest one's neck, then seized the other and dragged him upstairs. You couldn't last long as a Maclay woman if you got hysterical about every little problem.

"Here," she said, holding up the three-eyed demon by its neck. She drove three fingers of her other hand through its back eye and into its brain, and it collapsed, spasming weakly, onto the floor. "You were saying?"

Her uncle inclined his head-not to her, of course, but to God who was speaking through her. "Boys. I'd say we're on holy ground. What would the Lord have of us, Beth Maclay?" He kicked his shoes off quickly, and his sons followed suit.

"We're going to round up all the disgusting demon witches in this family," Beth said, "and then we're going to purify them in the Spirit and in fire. After that...well, there's a lot of witches and demons in the world these days." And if she could find her, Beth would see to it they started with Cousin Tara.

Faith scarfed down her fifteenth roll-she was craving grains, surprise surprise-and looked up from the table. "I thought Creation was s'posed to be...like Greece or something."

"I take it you mean ancient Greece," Xander suggested. "We can do tzatziki if you want."

"Most of Creation is pretty rough," albino-Buffy acknowledged. "But Luthe is pre-apocalyptic, so it makes LA look primitive."

"The ancient Solars were smarter than Reed Richards and a lot more helpful," Xander went on. "Until they went bonkers, anyway."

Faith nodded. "And started making instruments out of surgically-altered kids and spells that mind-wiped people into sex toys. I remember." That drew a few stares. "Shadow's Grace killed some of 'em. She was plenty old herself, so it wasn't a guarantee you'd lose your marbles."

Buffy nodded slowly after a few moments. "I don't remember much, but Garen Cuzo negotiated a deal with the eastern raksha that guaranteed a thousand years of peace...in exchange for a city full of people to harvest souls from. He thought it was a real triumph."

"Amyana wasn't that bad," Xander put in, "but she drowned most of a million people when she sank Luthe. She had reasons, I guess, but still."

"Wait, wait," Faith said, putting down a fish fillet. "B, you said 'he'? I thought all the Slayers in your line were girls."

"Oh boy," Xander muttered.

"They were," Buffy explained, "only I'm not the Slayer. Or Buffy exactly."

She didn't seem to expect Faith to take that in stride. "No, I get it. You're a copy. Fred told me about it. You're still her. I mean, look at me. I'm all horsey, but I'm still Faith Lehane."

"You're missing a detail," Buffy said. "I'm an Abythal." She began to display a wicked set of fangs, then hesitated. "Ugh. Vampire thpeech impediment. Totally ruins the intimidation factor. Anyway, before you ask: Buffy-prime went evil, then I got called to negotiate an alliance with a Deathlord. This was the price, and since I thought I was gonna have to kill me, I accepted. Then Xander goes and figures out how to save her-"

"Go team heart!" the goofball called out.

"And now there are two permanent mes," Buffy finished. "You're supposed to call me Unconquerable Shadow, or just Shadow for short. And Will's the Scholar Hanged From the Tree of Life. It's an Abyssal thing."

Faith nodded. "I saw what happens to people who call Shoat Cora. We're five by five. Okay, next order of business: can you fix me? Going home looking like this'll be a bitch and a half."

Shadow and Xander looked at each other. "I'm sure someone can. We'll ask around."

"This isn't exactly Faerun," Xander said. "People here are gonna look at you funny too. Maybe not in Luthe, but most places. But I'm not sure any of us can yet."

"I got turned into a muppet," Buffy said. "I got lucky and a demon lord fixed it."

"You go, Buffy!" Faith gave her a high five, though Buffy took too long to respond. "What is it with you and demons anyway?"

"The norm for Exalted," Shadow said apologetically. "I couldn't admit it back then, but yeah: using our powers does make us hungry and horny, and if all we have around is mortals we tend to go through them like popcorn. In other news: you're hot and I'm blind."

"Well, duh," Faith said. "I'm seeing somebody, but if you wanna hook up, Amy's cool with it. We're not an exclusive."

Shadow gave her a once-over. "Might take you up on it before you go. Anyway, that wasn't what I meant about the demon, but you weren't wrong. Even married him first. Then slayed him third, so no worries."

"No big. What about the eye? Can you fix that?"

"Pretty sure we can," Xander said. "Little simpler than a horse-leg-ectomy. I'll see what we need to do. How'd you lose it?"

"Bullet to the brain. Lucky for me, they were tryin' to call more Slayers, so they shocked me afterwards. Underestimated my healing factor." Faith hesitated. She'd come here for this. "Lilah's president. She's gonna free the Old Ones. I have to stop her. Only, we couldn't keep her from getting elected and we couldn't manage to kill her. The one time I got close enough, I think she let me and then she kicked my ass. What the hell do I do?"

Shadow blinked. "Faith, I...I'm not the Slayer any more. I'm a Moonshadow-a traveling negotiator, mostly. It's not that I can't fight, but...you're Night Caste. You ought to be better at this than me. Better than either of me, if you're doing it all sneaky."

"Fuck. You mean I came here for nothing?" Faith shoved herself away from the long table and rose to her feet. "B, what the fuck am I supposed to do?"

Xander gave Faith a long, considering look. "I don't think you're gonna like this, but...the Exalted weren't just made to fight. We were made to lead. Buffy's a queen now. So's Fred. I'm an admiral, and Anya...well, that's complicated, but-" He took a moment to clear his throat. "I know. It's America, not some city-state in another dimension. Your friends don't want to. You don't want to. But..."

"Faith," Buffy cut in, "if the only way to save the world is to go all Genghis Khan...you go all Genghis Khan. I wouldn't want to do it either. We were raised to believe in democracy and trained to work in secret. But neither of those is more important than saving seven billion lives. Am I right?"

Faith didn't think horse bodies were made for sitting down hard. She did it anyway. "Yeah. You're right. Shit, but you're right."

Fred walked around Tara and began to work on her back. This wasn't so simple as the arms had been. There the tattoos had flowed like a branching river; here they wanted to make jagged lines and sudden hooks. "Why Sunnydale?"

Tara shrugged awkwardly. "I thought I was a demon. It was the hellmouth."

"You just thought it was the thing to do." Fred nodded, but Tara shook her head vigorously. "You figured the Slayer would stop you?"

"Fred, I didn't know anything about a Slayer." She seemed to be folding into herself. "I thought I was going to stop caring. I thought I was going to be evil. I went where I...I thought other evil things would accept me. And I'd hurt people and wreck things b-but I wouldn't care. And I knew the right thing to do was k-kill myself, or g-go home where my family c-could control me. But I just didn't want to. I was tired of doing the right thing b-because it always made me miserable."

"Jesus, Tara." Fred finished up the unexpected jagged line and knelt down to enfold her in a hug. "You were lied to. You actually did the right thing. We're all glad you didn't kill yourself or go home."

"It doesn't change what I thought I was doing. You have no idea how many times I lied to Willow or sabotaged her spells so she wouldn't find out my secret."

"You didn't really have a secret, Tara, except that your family was horrible." Fred suddenly became aware that she was cuddling a naked Tara and began to pull away, but Tara clutched her arms and hung on for dear life. "Tara. It's okay. That's all over now."

Tara turned to face her for a moment, looking into her eyes. The moment stretched on...and then Tara turned back around. "We have to finish this. Any more questions about college?"

Fred shook her head slightly. "Nah, I'm done with that. Let's move on."

"Thanks, Dennis!" Harmony said with a grin. She followed the ghost through the cemetery, leading her shambling horde...well, her handful of shambling minions...toward the fight. Amy was pretty sure to win; it was just one vampire, though she was a powerful one. That wasn't the point of this fight.

"She's not a good candidate for ensoulment," Kate explained to Shoat. Shoat had her own minions, of course. "She was already a serial killer. She wasn't exactly using her soul anyway." Shoat nodded solemnly.

Up ahead, Amy was trading blows with Sharon Adams. Sharon was somewhere around as strong as Amy, who hadn't managed to amp up her strength too much yet, but Amy's telekinesis was more than an equalizer. Sharon's blows struck branches and stones and globes of force.

Harmony raised her hands and framed the vampire between them. The bond to the body felt different from the sort the zombies had, but it was there between her fingers. It was like the difference between...cotton and polyester? Never mind, not important. She kept her right hand up and brought out the athame Amy had helped her pick out, slicing with her left.

The vampire had a moment to look startled before she collapsed into dust. "Woot woot!" Harmony clapped once. Not only had she succeeded, magic felt good.

Shoat brushed her hands together as if brushing off the dust. "Now we know the Puppeteer's Knife spell works on vampires."

"Would've come in handy for Slayers all these years," Robin said testily. "We know why they weren't allowed to learn it."

Kate made a quiet humphy noise. "While I'm fairly sure a great many Watchers are assholes, imagine if Slayers had gotten their hands on some of these other spells. Say, the ones that make or summon horrible monsters. All in a good cause, no doubt."

Harm tuned out the argument. Kate and Robin had gotten worse since Faith left and Robin started trying to train new powers. She'd half-expected necromancy to feel bad instead of good like her other powers, but it was just a different good. She was brushing up against death and surviving.

Channeling energy into her body made her feel taut and, um...energized. Channeling it into her head made her brain swim in an ocean of ideas she couldn't have imagined before. Channeling it into her words and behaviors made her absolutely, supremely confident. Faith seemed to experience it more basically, more...elementally, but Harm was fairly sure this was what she meant about the aftermath of a good slay.

She wasn't complaining, except maybe about the guy shortage. Riley was always so reluctant. If this kept up she wasn't sure what she was going to do. Why couldn't more guys Exalt?

Still arguing. Harmony slapped one hand against a tombstone. "To me, my minions!" It was a cheesy and unnecessary thing to say, but it made everyone laugh, which cut off the fight, and that was good.

It was all good.

"What's the most heroic thing you ever did?" Fred held up a hand. "Doesn't have to be the thing that got you Exalted. We all know that couldn't happen at home."

Tara was surprised to realize she'd thought this through. "Glory came for me. She thought at first I was the Key, but I knew it was Dawn. I wouldn't tell her, so she told me in detail what she was going to do to me, how she was going to break my mind and make me suffer. And I kept quiet. She reached inside my head and tore me up. I hurt and I was afraid and the worst part was I knew it was all my fault. I know now it wasn't, of course...and I know that sounds really, really passive, doesn't it?"

Fred put the needle to Tara's temples. "Not all heroism is active. You were protecting Dawn, and the world. Some of the stories here say the turning point of the Primordial War came when the Sun traded himself for one human hostage." Her eyes widened in horror as the moonsilver ink took form: the suggestion of hands or claws clutching at Tara's forehead. But the imagery refused to be unmade. Suddenly the grasping fingers became offering hands, holding Tara's caste mark as it flared for a moment. "Whew. Sorry, you'll have to see it for yourself. It..." She reached over and held up a mirror.

"That's a little disturbing," Tara agreed.

"The process isn't fully under my control," Fred explained. "Or anyone else's. It...inscribes the truth."

Tara nodded thoughtfully. "That's magic, all right."

Dawn came round the corner, but Faith was gone. She looked left, then right, then back the way she'd come. Then...she considered that the alleyway opened up here, as she left the interior and stepped out among the towers...she looked up.

Faith's hands were pressed against the narrow passage's walls, holding her upside down. For a human-shaped person, the maneuver was just extremely hard; she'd seen Buffy do it before. For Faith as she was now, horse torso held stiffly horizontal above her human one...

"Faith, that's impossible."

"Yeah. Was hoping you'd keep going." Faith's arms belatedly began to quiver with the strain. She tried to lift the horse body into alignment, but the join wasn't flexible enough. "Well, you saw me." She dropped down, somehow using momentum to flip herself over and land on all four hooves. "Surprised you're looking for me."

"Made up with Glory," Dawn said. "Making up with you is small potatoes. Well, unless we have to kiss."

"Wouldn't think of it, short st...you've grown. Well, you're still her kid sister to me, so..." Dawn studied Faith's very peculiar expression as she realized just how hard it was to think of Dawn as a child.

"Let me help, Faith." Dawn flickered out of existence for a moment. When she reappeared, she was back to being shorter than Buffy, with faint traces of "baby fat" on her cheeks. "This is more what you were expecting, huh?"

"You look more like the old you," Faith said, taking a deep, relieved breath.

"I feel more like her too," Dawn acknowledged. "Only really I'm not either of us. I'm not fifteen. I'm not twenty. I'm more like twenty thousand.I was unshaped once, and I think I've existed since Time Not."

"You're Yog-Sothoth," Faith said with an uncomfortable frown.

"I'm who?" Dawn asked. "What's that?" Was Faith seriously calling her a Lovecraft demon?

"The Thought of Ea Gso," Faith said slowly and carefully. "The other raksha, the ones I met in the Wyld, they told me about you working with the Craven Emperor-"

"'-to make a breakthrough," Dawn finished. "I...I remember that. I remember what I am." She studied Faith through slitted eyes. "And you came through me."

"Long story, totally an accident," Faith said quickly.

"No big," Dawn agreed. "Walk with me." She took Faith's hand and pulled her back through the open hatch. "Sometimes during the Balorian Crusade, raksha would open portals from the Wyld to a freehold deep in Creation. No one does it anymore; it's too risky. But I wasn't finished yet. I'm a chancel, a little pocket dimension, and I have a whole freehold inside me...breakthrough and all. Making me a person again was supposed to put an end to the Key."

"It didn't work." Faith stated the obvious as they strolled past a series of storage rooms.

"No. I don't know exactly why, but it was done by humans, so you can see how they might've made a mistake." Dawn opened one of the doors and stepped into a room full of spare parts. "I remember plotting with the Emperor, and against him, too. Just politics as usual. He's Fomorian-he wants to reduce existence back to the pure chaos of the Wyld, so completely that there'll never be anything else again. And I was shuddadvaita."

"Gesundheit," Faith said, barking a laugh.

"The shuddadvaita want a compromise," Dawn said seriously. "They want to merge the Wyld and Creation to make a mostly-stable world, but one that changes slowly and unpredictably."

"You say 'they' now." Faith idly toyed with an unfamiliar tool.

"I'm not who I used to be," Dawn said, "not after thousands of years as an artifact and then being basically Buffy's human sister for a year. You're not who you used to be either, after going out into pure chaos."

"I'm kind of raksha myself," Faith agreed. "At least, that's what they told me. Oh, yeah, and a centaur," she added. This time the laugh sounded a little forced.

"They're gonna try to use you," Dawn said. "They'd never have done it otherwise, and they're not finished."

"Everybody always does," Faith said with a shrug. "Let them try."

Just then a tall, slender man opened the door, bald and calm of expression. "Faith," he said, "I am the Sage of the Depths. I've come to see about your eye."

Tara squirmed. The tattoos were nearly done, though. Outside, the moon was riding high over the sea; she simply knew.

And Fred was tattooing her ass.

"Was Willow your first? When did you know?" It seemed a little invasive right now, but it was as much a part of her as the questions about witchcraft. More, perhaps.

Tara blushed. "M-madonna," she said. "I was watching a Madonna video some time in the early nineties. It feels so cliche."

"Madonna's pretty," Fred said evasively. Or maybe she was trying not to watch her own hands too closely. "Who cares if it's cliche?"

"That's not all of it," Tara admitted. "A girl in Wicca Group...Nancy Downs...we had sex a couple of times before Willow. She wasn't bad, but I felt so guilty I didn't get much out of it. She finally told me I was too repressed and left."

"Ah," Fred said simply. "Been there, with boys even. Why do you think I started smoking pot?"

"I kissed a few boys in high school because I thought I should," Tara said. "I didn't really get anything from that."

"You should know what the Sage told me," Fred said. "The Exaltations are pure improbability, like the Heart of Gold. There are powers that can bypass orientation-Anya might have mentioned that. And sometimes even people who were completely straight or gay before Exaltation get a little bi over time. It can take decades or even centuries, but it's most common with Lunars. it isn't that old business about experimenting because you live so long and get bored. It's a mix of raw power and past life memories, and it has absolutely nothing to do with normal human sexuality, so try not to be freaked by it. Do you remember anything at all from Ma-Ha-Suchi?"

"Flashes," Tara said. "I don't know how long it takes Lytek to clean an Exaltation, but I don't think it's his fault. Ma-Ha-Suchi was just kinda...ground-in? I remember some of his dates...and an apocalypse...and a little of what he planned to do...and Buffy's face as he died. Out of a couple thousand years that's not much, is it?"

"Not much at all," Fred said distractedly. When had she scooted around to the front? "Ma-Ha-Suchi was bi as hell, to hear Leviathan tell it. So if you feel something for a guy or two, don't let it get to you, okay? But it probably won't happen for a long time, if ever." She looked up at Tara, face flushed bright red. "And yay we're done here!" She pulled away hastily.

Tara stood and stared at herself in the mirror. The tattoos hurt-in some places they had hurt a lot-but there was none of the swelling or itching she would've expected from mundane tattoos. And there was no wonder Fred had been embarrassed; they covered some very intimate places. They were smoothly curved in most places, jagged in a few. Straight nowhere, unlike the circuitboard cross-hatches that covered parts of Fred. She giggled a little at that. If she felt attraction for guys now, well, she knew the cause and it was okay, but she didn't think she would. Not soon, at the very least. "You did a good job."

"Thanks," Fred said, still blushing. "I'll make a few adjustments once I'm sure of your caste, but they should function now."

"Next stop," Tara said, "Mount Hamoji."

Two miles from Gem, Buffy stood on the lip of an active volcano, surrounded by fretting courtiers. "Everybody chill. Please. I know what I'm doing."

Her double had carried out her instructions, and now she was going to have a minor marvel to greet this "Scarlet Whisper" with, one that all of Gem could benefit from. She picked up one end of the red and white jade chain. It was no masterpiece; it had been worked by apprentice Terrestrials. But it wouldn't need to be one-just long. Buffy looked down, gauging the distance to the lava.

Then she backed away six fwet and took a running leap.

How far down? Ten stories? Twelve? It was hard to measure as she hurtled toward the bubbling red rock. She pointed her hands above her head and straightened out just in time to pierce the lava below her. "And it's a perfect ten!" she quipped.

Lava filled her mouth. It was dense like toothpaste, but it didn't burn her. Not even a little. She took an experimental swallow. "Gravelly." She could even see, though the bright red-orange glow made her squint and revealed little.

The jade chain still trailed behind her, indestructible as promised. She lifted her right hand and punched the hook at the chain's end into the solid black rock of the mountain wall. Then she began to swim upward, following the chain. She breached the surface-still clothed for once! her powers had protected her clothes too!-hacked up a couple of lungfuls of lava, and darted nimbly up the chain to dismount in front of the terrified nobles. "Ta-da!"

She glanced up at the cables the jade chain connected to. Thry were as insulated as the Dragon-Blooded could make them with scavenged Essence wiring. She could probably do better given some time, but things had gotten crunchy on that front. Unless a sandstorm blew them down, no one would get a shock, and then not for long.

"C'mon," she urged the nobles. "You've got to see this. You've gotta feel this." Her first thought had been electric lighting, but with glowstones cheap and getting cheaper those were hardly necessary. No, she'd made something better, something they'd notice as soon as they entered the city. For her part, she could hear the hum already if she listened carefully.

In the sweltering heat of Descending Fire in the deep South, a new wind was blowing. In the city of Gem, the fans were coming on.