The battle had been pitched for over three hours before T'reth really started to worry. His men had fought valiantly and held out longer than they'd ever had to before, and he was proud of them, but at the same time, of all the battles they'd fought, they'd never struggled to eke out a victory for this long without some sort of intervention from Star. In his gut he could feel that something was very wrong, for the immortal to have not shown her support yet, but he had no method of contacting her to find out what had happened other than to think to her…and even now, almost a year after his first contact with the immortal, he still had no idea how often that actually worked.

Right now it didn't appear to be working at all.

"T'reth! We've lost the northern line, the Royalists are advancing!" Ackala's voice was almost lost beneath the clamor of battle, but long familiarity made the words comprehensible despite the distractions. His friend was beside him the next moment, fighting off the Royalist soldiers with a fury T'reth could never match. "Gree, Tiktuk, and Marcel report mages on all fronts and a sorcerer leading on the north. We're not going to hold out much longer!"

Unspoken was the question racing through T'reth's mind with increasing frequency. "I'm working on that." He told the larger man. Ackala gave him a sharp look and lunged at a Royalist coming up behind him. For a moment afterward their vicinity was clear of enemies and Ackala turned to grab his commander's arm.

"People are dying, T'reth, bystanders and soldiers alike. If we lose this battle, we won't have much to pick up afterwards. We need her here now."

"You think I don't realize that?" T'reth retorted, grimacing at the reminder of how bad this situation was becoming. "I can't make her be somewhere when I want her there, Ackala, I can only ask. And I have been. I don't know why she's not…"

The wind shifted so abruptly it was unmistakable, throwing dust and smoke into T'reths' face and cutting off his sentence. A rumble of thunder above their heads came from clouds far too thin to produce such a loud noise, but when they looked up they saw that the thin cloud cover they'd had all day was suddenly becoming darker and thicker at an impossible rate, seeming to loom down at them as if it wanted to smother the entire landscape and everything on it. The wind shifted again, swirling in visible eddies all around the city they were fighting in, catching the numerous plumes of smoke in its grasp and pulling them towards each other in ways that were anything but natural. T'reth felt his gut lurch sickeningly at the sight as that feeling that something was terribly wrong twisted deeper into him, even as Ackala let out a shout of victory.

"Let's see how they like us now!" his friend exclaimed.

The smoke was being sucked toward the sky, forming a massive column of roiling darkness. The clouds swirled in tandem, reaching down to complete the column, and then beginning to give the thing a form that was both familiar and incredibly foreign to T'reth. He knew what it was supposed to be; it was obvious who was causing the phenomenon, and yet… the figure of shadow was nothing like the Star he had come to somewhat know and understand. This wasn't the creature of light who brought snow because a homesick northerner had made an off-hand comment about it. This wasn't the stranger in their camp that showed the magically inclined children how to make a fire and put it out with only words. This wasn't the source of knowledge and wisdom that had shown him how to light up a dark room with the radiance of the sun, who had told him stories of a civilization he was descended from with an enrapturing attention to detail. This wasn't even the Goddess he had met in a green field a year ago, demanding that he speak his heart and not waste her time with foolish rhetoric.

(Dream is Collapsing) This was the Demon that the Goddess had always had the potential to become if she was pushed, and T'reth remembered suddenly why most of his soldiers avoided her at all costs.

Ackala fell silent as they watched the smoke and cloud being continue to form somewhere near the middle of the city, and then reach out to one of the fires. There was an ignition within the swelling darkness and with a roar and crackle the whole sky began to burn, red and yellow and black churning above them as if the very forces of Hell had come to join their war. T'reth turned to his friend and found Ackala with both hands balled into fists and pressed against his head, jaw clenched and face pinched in pain.

"Get everyone out of the city, back to camp!" T'reth ordered, shaking the larger man to be sure he had his attention.

"She's going to kill us all!" Ackala yelled back, unable to hear himself over the ringing in his head.

"Yes! Evacuate back to camp! GO!"

They split up, sprinting different ways to spread the order among as many people as possible.

The shadow looming over all of creation began to move, reaching out with flaming claws to set fire to everything not already ablaze. A beam of blue shot up from the north and lightning struck back in her anger, thunder roaring as she turned toward her assailant with untamable fury. Beams of ice exploded at the enormous form in rapid succession as the sorcerer defended himself, each burst of blue more desperate than the last as the creature failed to dissipate or even slow her advance. A few seconds later she reached out and the beams faltered, and then stopped altogether.

The fiery shadow continued her advance unhindered.

T'reth darted among burning buildings, dodging frightened horses and other animals and catching anybody he could, telling them to retreat to the southeast, where the camp was. Half the people he told he couldn't tell if they were his soldiers or townsfolk, but he didn't care. Star wasn't stopping for any of them, and Royalist or Rebel supporter, no civilian deserved to be caught in the middle of this.

The whole city had to be on fire at this point, the heat and smoke so heavy that his lungs and throat and eyes were burning as he raced through the chaos, trying to think of a way to stop this. What could he possibly do, though? Even if he knew how to do more than glow with the power that was his birthright, he couldn't stand up to this. But then again, maybe he didn't need to match her power to stop her.

He stumbled to the outskirts of the city entirely by chance with no idea of which side of the city he was on, coughing harshly to clear his lungs. The smoke was still thick and the sky was still a blanket of flaming wrath, giving him very little sense of direction, but as the shadow began to move out of the city with a purpose to her inexorable advance he was pretty sure he knew which direction she would be going, and he knew with just as much surety that if Star was allowed to continue like this, there would be very little left of their country to rebuild once she was done. He had to stop her, or at the very least try his best. The only way he could think of to do that was to get over there and get in her way, and that meant that he needed a horse.

The horse liked his idea even less than he did, but he managed to convince it that running alongside and far in front of the fiery form wasn't as bad as it could have been, and within a few minutes he was jumping off and letting the poor animal run away. The shadow drifted closer, seeming to absorb everything in her path, and then changed course just slightly to avoid him. That was when he knew that he could do this. He had the power to stop her; he just had to get close enough to force it.

He felt like his lungs were going to start on fire as he ran toward the flaming creature, but he forced himself to move forward and push through the heat and smoke and pain, knowing that he was the only one who could and would dare to bring her back to herself. That conviction was the only thing that carried him into the maelstrom of fire and smoke before him.

Almost instantly he couldn't breathe. He could feel his skin and clothes burning as he collapsed, heart racing out of control, mind clouded with the fear that he wasn't going to make it out of here alive, and at the same time throwing the thought at this Demon that she needed to stop, that she didn't have to do this. Telling her, purely on a whim brought to him by his failing mind as he hovered on the edge of consciousness, that it was okay to feel. That she didn't have to cut herself off like this. That she didn't have to be alone this way.

The darkness took him then. He never saw the fiery shadow pause and stand still for an endless minute, the fire within the darkness flickering, and he didn't see the smoke and debris and cloud dissipate when the wind tunnel holding it all together abruptly died away. What he saw when he woke up was Star, kneeling beside him with one hand on his chest and the other on his forehead. The last of the heat and pain left his body as he took his first few conscious breaths, relaxing in relief until he felt her hand wrap around his throat and haul him off the ground, leaving his feet dangling several inches above it.

Never do that again. The words lashed into his mind with a compulsion to obey them, but he fought it. Her face was inches from his, silvery eyes wreathed with fire and burning into his very soul, it seemed.

EVER.

The order clamped around his mind like a vice that he couldn't escape, and when he could think again he found himself on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. Star was walking away, black wings lifted for takeoff.

"Only if you don't." he rasped out.

He might as well have put a wall in her path, she stopped so quickly. When she slowly turned back after a moment, there was a hint of uncertainty behind her hard mask. "What…did you say?"

"Only if you don't." he repeated, swallowing some of the rasp and starting to straighten. The immortal took a faltering step back, blinking, and then he started to feel it, too; an odd vibration in the air. When he glanced down, his hands were glowing with a golden light and he flexed them in confusion. He wasn't concentrating on making them do that at all, why…

He looked up to Star for an explanation only to watch her stumble away from him, face twisted in fear.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, holding up an arm as if to ward off a physical attack. "No. You can't. It's not possible! Stop!"

"I don't—" He started, and then lurched to his feet when she collapsed. "Star!" He hurried over and reached down to shake her shoulder, but the instant he touched her golden light exploded between them, blinding him for a moment and filling the air with words that he knew in his heart, even though he didn't understand them in his mind. A surge of energy left him as he fell back in shock, and unconsciousness hovered on the edge of his mind again.

What have you done? Were the words that whispered into his head a moment before the darkness won him over again and he was lost to the world.

~0~

"T'reth? T'reth, can you hear me? I think he's coming around."

T'reth groaned as Ackala's voice sent a throb of pain through his head. It felt like his brain was trying to escape its prison in his skull, and he almost wished it would so that it would stop hurting. Another voice joined his friend's.

"T'reth? Hold still a moment, sir."

He winced at a particularly intense stab of pain, and then sighed in relief as it ebbed away at their lead healer's touch. He opened his eyes slowly, surprised that it took him as long as it did to get used to the lamplight in the healer's tent.

"Better?" Middan asked once the commander had focused on him, and T'reth nodded slowly.

"Thank you." He murmured quietly, still trying to tread gingerly around his own head as the throbbing ache hovered around the edges of his mind, waiting for an excuse to flare up again.

"What happened? We found you on the north side of the city, passed out at the end of the burn path." Ackala told him, watching his face intently. "We thought you were dead."

T'reth glanced down at his hands. They weren't glowing anymore. "I…don't really know what happened." He admitted.

"Then you had better figure it out." A voice hissed from across the tent. All three men started and turned to see Star slipping out of a dark corner, silver eyes glowing a dangerous white. Ackala drew his swords, confirming the source of the tension T'reth could hear in his voice.

"Stay back, Demon." The large man threatened, but quietly, acknowledging the fact that he was defenseless if the Goddess decided to ignore him.

Star glared at the mortal challenging her, growling deeply before spitting a harsh word at him that nobody understood.

T'reth lurched up in alarm to grab his friend. "Don't-!"

Golden light crackled in the air around them, fending off the invisible attack as easily as Star had fended off the sorcerer's back in the flaming city. Middan jumped back in surprise, shielding his face from the sparking light.

"What in Rauruk's name was that?" the healer breathed into the stunned silence afterward.

"Something that should not be." The Goddess stated coldly, terrifying gaze still locked onto T'reth.

The air in the tent had a dangerous feel to it, and T'reth knew he had to tread carefully here. Still… "Star, I don't know what happened, I don't know what it is." He told her, almost pleading. "How can I fix it or undo it or whatever I need to do if I don't know what it is?"

The Goddess' gaze narrowed to an angry glare. "It is a form of oath-bond. Figure it out." She ordered scathingly, and then in the blink of an eye melted into the shadows of the tent and was gone.

There was a moment of wary silence, and then T'reth slowly moved to lay back down, suddenly exhausted again and with his headache making a steady return.

"What's an oath-bond?" Ackala wondered.

T'reth grimaced and shook his head. "I don't know."