"Get back, Seer!" Palail called.

The palace guard to her left - Jhorin - swung high at her while his partner Elanth tried to control her with his spear. Dueling against the pair of them was a nightmare, but she accounted herself well, dancing between their coordinated strike and even keeping Jhorin on the defensive.

None of that would matter, of course, if her charge got herself killed.

The arrow seemed to move in slow motion, fired by the third of their trio, Talannanne. No, it was moving slower than it should have; it stopped beside the dueling fighters, too far away from the Seer to harm her even with an explosion. Palail did not have the luxury to watch it, however, as Jhorin and Elanth redoubled their assault.

"Traitor!" Elanth cried as he bound her sword with his spear. Palail ignored the accusation, focusing all her attention on parrying with her dagger instead.

She twisted away from Jhorin, freeing her sword. Her blades became a whirling web of steel as she desperately held her ground against them. She had beaten both of them individually in training, and even managed to best them both at once in the dueling ring but not often. They had already caused too much noise. Reinforcements could arrive at any moment.

And then the Seer was beside her, moving with a swaggering arrogance. As though her enemies were blind. And perhaps they suddenly were; their strikes went wide, hitting only empty air. She simply was not where they aimed. Stepping closer, she crippled both of the palace defenders with strikes to their joints, her hands just as deadly as their actual weapons.

The pair hit the ground with dull thumps, and Palail could finally breathe freely. Beyond them, she saw Talannanne's body, resting still on the ground. "Thank you," she gasped, the exertion of the assault finally getting to her. Or perhaps it was the fact that they were fighting against what might have been allies only a short while ago. Merciful gods, she had trained the pair herself. To think that they would be trying to kill her, and for good reason - had the world gone mad?

If it had, the source of that madness was standing before her, appraising her coolly. Liriel shrugged, turning to the next hallway and walking away. "There is little time. Each moment we tarry brings greater risk of the other tribes investigating the attack. None want their prize snatched from their jaws this late in their game."

"They think Tellyth aims to usurp the King?" Palail asked as she reached the Seer's side.

"It is what they would do, so it is what they believe all will do. The treacherous often think firstly of treachery," Liriel responded. "Wait a moment; a patrol is coming."

In a moment her words proved true. Yhunu's squad marched across the intersection before them, weapons out and ready for combat. Palail blanched; there was no cover in the hallway to hide behind, and there was no way she could hold against so many.

Damn Liriel's eyes! Tellyth had wanted to split his forces in half to guard her when she had declared her need to visit the Seer's Tower before they left, but Liriel had insisted that he had greater need of soldiers than she did. Little use for their entire endeavour if the only one of their party with knowledge of this ritual and how to stop it were to die here.

One of Yhunu's men looked at her - looked right at her eyes - and continued scanning the hallway without alarm. The troop continued their march, slipping away from the pair of intruders. Palail finally released the breath she had been holding, and glanced at the impassive Seer. "One of them saw me. I know he did."

"How fortunate that he did not seem to care," Liriel replied enigmatically.

They found no other enemies en route to the tower. Palail waited in the lobby while the Seer claimed whatever she needed from her quarters.

As she waited, Palail tried to settle her nerves. It had always been unsettling interacting with the Seer; even when she had returned "tamed," as some of the guards called her, no one had wanted to spend much time alone with her. She had looked at people with cold anger plain in her eyes and moved like a stalking cat. It seemed all but inevitable that whatever fragile bonds holding the pretense of civilization in place for her would snap, and she would revert to what she had been before. But now, she was so much worse. Oily arrogance suffused her being. There was no more of the hesitancy and obvious insecurity that had softened her harsh demeanour before.

And Tellyth was completely taken by her.

Palail knew that he had been handling his ouster with difficulty, but his complete belief in the Seer's insane plan shocked her still. He clung to the hope that the King would see the error of his ways, that any of this could be fixed. Palail could see the writing on the wall already. Her loyalty to her captain was great, perhaps the only thing greater than her loyalty to herself. If it hadn't been, she would already be gone.

Perhaps she should have left anyway. This was a suicide mission, even if none of the others realized it. The more time Palail spent with Liriel, the stronger her suspicions became of the returned Seer's motives. Worse, she was sure the psyker could sense her thoughts, and just chose to play the part of the saviour. She knew she was being paranoid about this - if Hyla or Asina knew about her suspicions they'd only laugh at her - but her paranoia had kept her alive many times, and she tended to trust it.

It had prevented her from being washed away in Ghira's Folly, after all.

Liriel descended the stair in no great hurry, carrying the Staff of Rendition and a cloth bundle. As her foot touched the ground, an explosion sounded elsewhere in the palace.

"If that didn't alarm the others, nothing will," Palail remarked.

Liriel nodded in agreement. "The time for subtlety is past. Let us go directly."

Liriel suited action to words. The Staff was a versatile tool, but its primary use was in channeling power to the crystal shards at its striking end. Each razor edge, suffused with the chaotic power of the Warp, formed a linear singularity that destroyed any and all real matter that it came across. The pair raced through the hallways, and whenever a detour away from a direct path would take them too long, Liriel activated the staff, boring her way through the walls that separated them from the landing pad.

Breaking into the throne room, they came across another group of guards. A dozen of them, elite knights of the Polassi chief. They were more alert and better equipped than even the Ulluthani royal guard; Palail wondered if they had plundered their gear from the royal armoury. They reacted instantly to Liriel's destruction of the wall, advancing with drawn weapons without even a shared signal between them.

Palail acted before she could stop herself. She leapt in front of Liriel, shouting, "Keep moving, Seer! I'll catch up to you!" and damning herself for the suicidal impulse.

Liriel merely waved a hand. Palail could feel something emerging from her, a psychic wave that passed over her without harm but crashed against the advancing knights. With a sound like distant thunder, they collapsed, their knees and elbows bent at wrong angles. Before they could draw the breath to scream, Liriel waved her hand again. This time, their minds were scattered, eyes rolling into the backs of their heads and mouths foaming.

The Seer simply moved on over their collapsed and comatose bodies. Palail said nothing, but paled at the ease at which the group had been dispatched.

"They are not dead," Liriel said blankly.

But they might rather be, Palail thought. "I've never seen a warlock fight," she said instead, matching the Seer's stride.

"For good reason. To call upon the Warp so readily is dangerous, even for me," Liriel said. She gestured with her staff towards the runestones that hovered around her. "The tools help dissipate that risk, but were we not so pressed for time, I would prefer to fight them in the more usual manner."

"And the two of us could have taken that group?" Palail asked skeptically.

"Yes, but you would have died," Liriel said. She continued before Palail could ask anything else, "Eyes ahead; the shuttle is still here."

The wraithbone craft rested on a raised landing pad in the center of the North Gardens. This morning, artfully cut and decorated shrubbery had filled the green, and in hidden nooks had nestled a dozen gazebos, benches, and fountains. Now, explosions scarred the ground and the blood of aeldar mixed with the churned mud. People were dying; limbs shorn off in vicious melee and intestines spread on the cold ground.

Tellyth had managed to assemble only three dozen soldiers for their attack; a small number, but many of them had still been working in the palace, and had allowed the rest of the group in without the need for an assault. Now, however, the guards were alerted, assaulting Tellyth's knights with their full fury. There were not enough to form a battle line, nor even defend the wounded who had been dragged inside the grounded shuttle. They mixed among their attackers, skirmishes flaring around the hedges and tables.

Liriel ran into the hell of the battlefield, almost dancing as she moved. Palail did not understand her movement until the first arrow fell where she was not, blowing apart a chunk of the path. Liriel swung her staff at nothing that Palail could see, until one of the palace's defenders stumbled through a hedge and was bisected by her weapon. She did not pause even to confirm the kill, only looked back at her supposed bodyguard and said, "We must escape before the rest of them arrive! Get to the shuttle and ready it for launch! I'll follow you!"

Needing no further prompting, Palail dashed for the shuttle amidst the chaos, keeping low to avoid attention from the shadowy archers at the edges of the gardens. Concealment was plentiful here, though little of it would stop an arrow. Or a body, Palail added as one of the palace guards crashed through a hedge in front of her, followed by Hyla with her stupid gods-damned red crystalline sword. She screamed something incoherent as she hacked off the guard's arm, paying no attention to the other guard moving to attack her exposed back. Palail stepped into his swing from the side, driving his spear to the ground and plunging her dagger in his breast.

"Much obliged," Hyla said, a grim smile on her face.

"You're enjoying this?" Palail asked. The woman fair radiated enthusiasm for the battle. Her armor was soaked in blood, the megadon leathers shining as crimson as her thirsty blade.

"You left when Tellyth did. You don't know what this place has been like since," Hyla shrugged. "I'm just repaying some debts."

"Fine. Pay them when we return. The Seer wants us all gone."

Hyla nodded, and Palail resumed her scramble towards the shuttle. Beside it, Tellyth was directing the defense, bellowing commands to his most elite warriors as they fought off what looked to be half the palace's garrison of knights, but could not have been more than two dozen. They were shielded from arrows here by the enclosed walls of the landing pad, which funneled their attackers into a few narrow chokepoints. Palail dashed through a chokepoint over the still-warm bodies of a squad of guards, Hyla at her side, to find her commander within.

"Asina, we've got another wounded at the north entrance! Ilayai, Pael, take his place! Everyone outside the defensive positions, pull in!"

"War-leader, the Seer is coming. We need to ready for launch." As she spoke, Liriel flipped over the top of one wall, clothes soaked in blood.

Tellyth turned to her, but before he could speak, Liriel spoke up. "Get your troops inside as quickly as you can. The Polassi have made their move. There are a hundred knights entering the courtyard intent on stopping us. If they can set up their brightlances we will have no chance to escape."

Tellyth grimaced. "We're under too much pressure to withdraw without casualties. We'll need to wait for a break in their attack."

Liriel looked at the embattled defenders with, Palail thought, some annoyance. "We cannot wait that long. I will give you an opening. Be ready to move."

As Tellyth shouted his commands to his warriors, Palail counted in the skirmishers who had been delaying and disrupting their formation outside the landing. Just as she counted the last one in - Drastiu, sporting a pair of serious wounds on her arm and brow - she felt another immense wave of psychic energy emerge from behind her. Whirling, she saw Liriel - and her victims. The Seer swept her gaze across the field, and wherever she beheld resistance, aeldar fell, blood pouring out of their eyes and ears.

This time, however, the attack seemed to lash back at her, a sonic boom erupting just in front of her and laying the psyker flat. Tellyth and Palail rushed to her side, the rest of the warriors embarking onto the shuttle in good order. Liriel's head lolled between them as they picked her up, Tellyth making sure to snatch the Staff off the ground as well. Palail felt her skin prickle at the contact, some remnant of the Warp energy enough to set her body's warnings off. If Tellyth noticed, he gave no indication.

They stumbled into the passenger bay of the shuttle, Tellyth shutting the door behind them and calling out to the cockpit, "Khyan! Lift! We're all here!" Under his breath, he added, "Those of us that survived."

Palail left Liriel to the care of Asina, the team's medic, and staggered to the front of the ship. Khyan was hurrying his way through the launch sequence and she sat beside him to aside him with the final preparations.

"How long until we can leave?" Tellyth asked as he entered the cockpit.

"A few seconds, I think," Palail answered. Khyan did not respond, too engrossed in the connection with his craft. The short aeldar just gave a short sigh of relief as some final condition was satisfied, and the walls of the cockpit seemed to melt away, leaving the impression that the occupants were standing on thin air. Then Khyan grasped a flight orb hovering above its base - one of the few physical controls in the shuttle - and lightly pulled it upwards.

The craft responded instantly, shaking slightly as it lifted from the landing pad. Out of the viewscreen, Palail could see another contingent of guards spilling out of the palace. Thankfully, only a few were equipped with projectile weapons - the ancient brightlances of the royal armoury would take some time to set up for those unfamiliar with the devices. In a few seconds the shuttle was rose too far for mere arrows to reach and the conspirators relaxed.

"That's the easy part done then," Palail said.

"You thought that was the easy part? All we have to do now is destroy an ancient ritual site," Tellyth asked incredulously.

Palail looked up at the moon, seemingly nestled among the stellar wound that was the Great Rift, and merely said, "Assuming that whatever performed that ritual isn't waiting for us."