...
Somewhere in the smoke-clogged streets of the Lower Ring, Lili wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, taking advantage of a brief pause in the bucket line. It was strange to feel sweat beading on skin that was now shivering in the nighttime chill. Then she turned and felt the radiating heat off the building burning beat across her cheeks once more. Her arms ached from their unaccustomed labor and her palms stung from hauling the the rough buckets filled with canal water destined for that fire. But despite that, the fact that she had the opportunity for this brief break in the constant motion of the bucket brigade was a bad sign.
"What's wrong down at the canal? Why did the buckets stop?" She straightened up and cupped her hands before her mouth to yell out back down the street. "The main place is lost but we need to keep wetting the buildings around it so the fire can't spread!"
"I think our volunteer system is breaking down." Xinfei said, breathing heavily beside her. Despite Lili's best efforts, every now and then he had managed to reach past her in the line and grab another bucket when Lili was distracted flexing her raw palms, taking an extra burden upon himself. Now he had worn himself out by trying to spare her. He puffed, "No one's listening to I don't know where Xiaobao's gotten to. We should stop pushing forward and get back behind the barricade they've got set up back there."
Lili was about to argue but that was when a harsh shriek echoed down the canyon-like street. The last semblance of order in the bucket chain fell apart as its members fell back, wide-eyed and looking up at the smoky night that had long since descended down to the half-hidden rooftops above them. Soon Lili and Xinfei were left alone before the burning building that was once stacked shops for a dozen businesses. A larger structure beside it, it looked like an apartment block, was now beginning to catch. Then something hit the burning building. Like a shot from a ballista, it smashed down from the black sky to punch through the face of the structure, making a splintered hole through which grasping flames breathed new life with the inrush of air.
Then the ground under Lili's feet trembled. A few meters away it burst up in a sudden fountain of earth, catching and cushioning the decent of the dark-green robed figure who landed down on the street. The man was a Public Safety agent and he settled down into an expert fighting stance as he continued to glare at the crater he had just made in the side of that fire wreathed building. Lili heard faint pottery sounds from above and behind her. Squinting she just barely saw the dim outlines of two more human figures perched up on the tile roofs opposite the fire. The Public Safety agent on the street paid the two young spectators not mind, at least until Xinfei somehow greeted him by name.
"Hey, Inspector Yang, was it? Yeah, you're kind of late. Your friend Ma'er the gardener was counting on you down in the Harbor!"
Inspector Yang slowly turned his head at a glacial speed look at Xinfei's lanky, sooty visage with incredulous disbelief. As if to punctuate this absurdity something roared out from within the burning building and there was suddenly a green mist wrapped humanoid figure standing in the splintered hole its forced decent had smashed. Lili grabbed Xinfei's arm to haul him back towards the semi-protective mass of the barricade as behind them Masks and Public Safety clashed in the streets and crumbling buildings.
After a while it became apparent that no one was pursuing them. The two young companions still stood on the barricade pile as the Masks roared and ripped the burning shops apart, throwing paving stones and blazing rafters with an equal lack of concern. The benders were moving in to engage them amid the smoke engulfed streets but the Masks seemed to regard these masters of elemental magic as minor annoyances best. Behind these feeble stacked fortifications the local neighborhood residents were fleeing, any instinct to protect their homes lost before the overwhelming fear that had swept the city. Not that it would have done them any good to stay. The barricades that had helped focus the guards brigades on attacking the Masks did virtually nothing against the possessed themselves. Lili and Xinfei stood there on the wobbly summit of a line of crates, tables and overturned carts mostly for lack of anywhere else to go.
Lili looked down at her pale green opera dress. It was now more grey and black than green, marked all over with smudges of smoke and ash. As she looked down she felt a prickle of sweat on her forehead again. She must have wiped off her makeup there. Absently, without looking away from the apocalypse before her she said, "This makeup really does not stand up to this kind of treatment."
"Would that be a selling feature?" Xinfei said in the same comically calm tone; a relaxation born of exhaustion and hopelessness. "Activity resistance? I wonder how you would go about assessing that. I do still have forty jars of that white base makeup stuff you financed and a secure contact for more down at the Harbor."
Here, as the city was tearing its self apart with spirits and ghosts and normal angry people, Xinfei was taking about selling makeup. Despite everything, Lili smiled. "Oh, just put out whatever claim you want on the label. No one tests things like that. Especially with something as subjective as makeup it is the perception that matters most of all. People will see what they want to see. Is your stuff of good quality, though?"
He shrugged in the alternating breezes of chill night and blazing gusts that battled for dominance in this destruction driven weather pattern. A howl and a scream echoed together from deeper in the city. "How would I know? I was mostly planning on relying on the Fire Nation labels and getting them out to the richer Lower Ring places that wouldn't normally see stuff earmarked for the central rings. Of course, I got this load cheap because it's in irregular black jars without all of the normal decoration so I'm not sure I'll be able to convince people the product's genuine. I'm figuring I'll mark it up double and hope to get lucky for profit on a small number of sales."
Lili casually shook her head. "Don't bother with that. Be bold. Quintuple the price and go straight to the Middle Ring sellers. If one of my crowd saw twenty examples of the standard product and then a few strange black jars at over twice the price then you just know they would have to buy the 'better' ones. Any shortage in stock would only work in your favor. Everyone wants to have found the secret."
Xinfei began to chuckle weakly, coughed on the smoke in the air, and then began to laugh harder. "Well, a man always has to listen to his chief investor. I'll get right on that."
They still stood in the rickety barricade pile before a wall of burning city blocks. Around them and beyond their perception the fabric of the world creaked and wavered. Spirits, ghosts, and fiery gods made their mark and in the screaming streets two young people discussed the merits of a permanent retail location.
...
The god mask was on her face and from behind her heart Ayika felt the burning fires across that sweep of the Lower Ring. She felt the wound in the fabric between the worlds, a widening divot that was spreading outward across a larger and larger area of the city. She saw the ghosts and spirits spilling across the border, swirling through the material world without rule or direction. She heard the screams and cries of ten times ten thousand people as conflict and anger and fear rose with the otherworldly pressure against their souls. Here and for a hundred kilometers around her the city was thrashing in pain, but beyond that influence the Ba Sing Se still sprawled out yet further. The endless rings curled out into the night and on the far side of the city no whisper of this chaos had even reached them. Out in the vast belt of encircled farmland that fed the metropolis farmers slept without even knowing Islanders had ever come to settle within the outer walls. Ayika saw this all as her mind battled flame.
Burning power pushed against her and she stood firm, her feet rooted to the earth. Power swirled around her and she swirled with it, carrying it and guiding it. Power came to challenge her and she submitted, then she turned and forced it to submit to her. An eternity passed and Ayika opened her eyes to the dark tunnel of the underground aqueduct. Then she opened another kind of eyes.
Ayika saw the dark glimmer of the flowing water and the shadowed stones of the wall of the tunnel on the other side. At the same time, with a sense beyond sight she also saw another land, the land of drifting lights and endless castles. A second landscape opened up before her, unfolding from behind the air, a land where stacked buildings of tan brick, dark green tile, and white plaster grew into massive trees who's window spotted branches reached the sky. There were streets were made of wood and grass, while drifting palaces of grey mist carried roofs of sparkling stone. All around Ayika wonders and phantasms swirled and changed in brilliant colors beyond any painter's pallet beneath a sky of melted motionless lightning. Strangely, in this chaos she felt calm. This was the spirit world and there was a man sitting on the ground beside her in an urban meadow.
She looked to her side and was not surprised to see an elderly man with a pointed white beard dressed in rich robes of green and red. His skin was the same color as Mizumi's.
"Hello, Ambassador Naruhama."
The soul of the old man looked up at her from his seated lotus position. He smiled. "Please, call me Aza. In such an intimate meeting as this I think we can dispense with formalities." He patted the ground beside him, offering Ayika a seat.
She decided to comply and then suddenly, without any intervening motion she was sitting cross legged on the dark earth. Here in this world intent and action were blurred together. As she shifted her weight Ayika noticed that there was something buried under the top layer of dirt, a substrate of something that shifted. It clinked like chains.
"What is...?"
Aza Naruhama waved one of his hands. "Do not worry about that yet. Someone is trying to get your attention in a very presumptuous manner. They think that if they spend decades setting up a sequence then that nullifies the choice of all involved. Do not let them bother you."
Ayika made an uncertain noise that set the dead Islander chuckling quietly. Around them, a multitude of varied spirits were starting to gather, come to watch the two humans; one living, one dead.
She furrowed her brow at the growing shifting semicircle of an audience. It was hard to think, and back in that dark tunnel there was something she could not bare to think of. Gesturing at the spirits she said, "What do they see that's so interesting? Is it just that we're not spirits?"
Naruhama tilted his head as he raised an eyebrow. "Try looking again."
Her view of this strange world flickered and now the spirits stood around her and a dark and burning giant clad in paper manacles and obsidian. He towered over her. This was the Naruhama who's involuntary influence was to be feared. This was the burning ghost god that had ripped open the barrier in the world. This was the power she had come to stop.
Ayika looked down at herself and she was a tiny figure beside the towering hulk but within her translucent form there was a core of shining burning light, a pale blueish green like pure jade. Then her sight shifted back to what passed for normal in the spirit world. In the distance, unconcerned with the intrusions and visitors, a monumental castle carved out of a mountain stretched its legs to go roaming across fields beneath clouds that bled rainbows in lightning form.
Ayika turned back to Naruhama, now a kindly faced old man once again. He nodded in recognition of what she had seen. She tried to nod back but as she did so Ayika felt the deep debt of weariness that lay over her heart wash through her. She sagged and almost collapsed. She was so tired and her task was still before her.
Her voice was almost a whisper. Her body was across the veil between worlds. "Can I do it? Can I undo..."
Naruhama said, "At this moment, young lady, there is very little that is beyond your capability."
She remembered the words of other spirits. "But everything has a cost."
"Yes, it does. In this world as in the other. You have taken the power Huitzlan and my deluded countrymen imparted to me into yourself. You can use that power for whatever purpose you wish or you can ensure that I am sent to my renewal. It is entirely in your hands."
Even separated from her flesh Ayika felt another wave of exhaustion from her distant body that told her that time was limited. She had managed to bring Naruhama's soul and ghost together within herself, but no normal human was meant to hold that much power. Whatever shaman gifts Ayika had were stretched to their limit. The strain was probably killing her.
"Right. I suppose I must..."
"Honorable priest, I am compelled to convey a suggestion." A heavy voice called out from the growing crowd of spirits.
Ayika snapped her attention upwards to see rows of glowing foxes and shadowed wooden women parting to reveal the rich antique robes of Blind Dog Lord, his withered eyeless head rising above the throng. Ayika sighed, her voice tinged with bitter anger. "I thought I sent you away."
The ancient spirit bowed his head in uncharacteristic humility. "Yes. And I have been sent back to you. I am under higher order."
"Ha!" Ayika laughed at the ridiculousness. She had heard enough stories from Grandma Aka to know that excuse was absurd. "Even in the Spirit World this is still the same part of the city! We are well within the bounds of your court's domain. You are a city god here. Who could order you?"
Suddenly, Ayika felt an invisible power press down against her. It came from every angle and sent her trembling to the very border of existence. It was not pain, or force, but only mind-shattering attention. It was the sense that something saw her, and that something KNEW. Then the pressure of terrible understanding withdrew as suddenly as it had arrived. Ayika was left with the impression of a mind that stretched behind the horizon and was made of ten thousand units of ten thousand parts, each a universe of thought on their own. It was a mind of Brick and Stone and Humanity. In the spirit world the ground beneath Ayika flexed and distantly in the back of her awareness she could have sworn that it did the same in that dark tunnel of the material world.
Ayika recognized what that sensation was. She knew that force. She had loved it and marveled at it since she was a child. She knew what power had issued the order to Blind Dog Lord, who ranked above him. She whispered in disbelief of her own words;
"Ba Sing Se. The city is alive. The spirit of the city itself..."
Blind Dog Lord cocked his eyeless head to the side. "Do not sound surprised. I told you that everyone has superiors. And mine has been working diligently to arrange an opportunity for one of their ancient allies."
Ayika's spirit world form was jostled again as once more the ground beneath her crossed legs flexed and buckled. In the meadow in front of her a large expanse of dark soil bulged up under the scattering crowd of spirits and rose into a tall new hill before falling down again into fresh valley in the same undulation. There was something huge buried under the ground, something bound in chains with links of carved stone that were briefly revealed by a small landslide of dirt.
"What...?" she began to ask.
Then Ayika's awareness widened in a disorienting rush of reply to her unspoken question. Past rustling purple leafed trees and crystal market squares she saw that this disturbance stretched out through the strange spirit landscape of melded city and forest. There were undulating coils chained beneath the ground for distance beyond comprehension. Then a massive head rose up from the earth at the edge of the horizon and in the space twisting properties of this world Ayika saw it clearly as if from two paces away.
She saw the ancient beard of a forest of withered reeds, she saw the pointed teeth of water smoothed rocks the size of bridges, and the strength of mightily currents formed into undulating muscles beneath chains of stone and metal. She looked into the shimmering eye larger than an Islander ship and knew that she was looking face to face with the spirit of the Kuang River, chained and divided through the city. A spirit of a gift used and regulated to an extent that many city dwellers had forgotten it existed. Then that eye closed and the great spirit sank back into the deep sleep that had consumed centuries
Blind Dog Lord raised his arms hidden deep in voluminous sleeves and called out with ceremonial power. He was reciting by rote. "Daughter of Water. Heart of Jade. Priest of the City. Perform for us all the unbinding of the Kuang! Help erase the quiet accumulation of chains over millennia! The people of the city have forgotten her and sent her to sleep. Now rouse the guardian spirit that can watch over every canal and waterway of this land! Perform the symbolism! Her waters are in your veins, your home is in her bones, and now you stand, empowered, under stone at the banks of her flow as fire drips onto the surface! All the pieces have been assembled and you can write the final stroke. That is your role, as it is my role to ask of you."
These words hung in the air like a choir of golden bells. The gathered spirits waited.
"What do you mean, all the pieces have been assembled?" Ayika heard her own voice and was surprised. Beside her, Naruham's head slowly lowered in embarrassment or anger. Ayika slowly stood and confusion gave way to fire as she glared at the spirits which surrounded her. "Me, with Naruhama's ghost mask beside that stream and blood from...This has been part of a plan? Some abstract goal of...of undoing a metaphor?"
Fury rose within Ayika's chest. "Are you saying that you spirit gods planned that?" There was power burning in her words. "This war was some sort of ritual? You planned the Masks?! You planned Huitzlan and Erliao and Tailang?! You planned for the murder of Naruhama, and of Lizhen, and of..." Her voice broke over the tragedy she could not name and then she screamed;
"All of this chaos and meaningless sorrow?! You spirits planned this?!"
Above her, the clouds of the spirit world gathered and swirled. The ground trembled. Beside her, Aza Naruhama's form began to fade away and flames began to lick along Ayika's skin. Even the distant sense of all-consuming Ba Sing Se was driven back from her. Her body still wore the God Mask and she held the power of the ghost. The crowd of spirits shuddered as the ground cracked beneath Ayika's feet. Her view shifted and she was suddenly looking down on Blind Dog Lord and the other spirits barely reached up to her waist. Ayika rose taller and taller as the burning power filled every particle of her being. Distantly she felt the waves of exhaustion from her physical body pass through her again but they could not touch her fury or her strength. The absurdity of this story was her fuel. She had lost so much and now, for once in her life she was strong.
Blind Dog Lord was not cowed, though he looked up at the giant form of a shaman raging with the power of a tortured god. The air was sucked toward his mouth and hissed as he opened those withered jaws again.
"Yes, it was planned. And it was pure chance. Metaphor and ritual, it is all the same. All of existence is a ritual, cast by forces far beyond our understanding. Chaos and order are both ingredients. Even without understanding there is still significance. You are part of the ritual of the river, which is cast by Ba Sing Se. The great city is part of the ritual of the world which is just one small component in the ritual that powers the cycle of existence. And that eternal cycle is a ritual cast by the act of two young women holding hands on a roof by the light of fireworks. Even bound to the wheel, choice still matters. It is all that matters."
Ayika held out her massive hand that was now more vast that the entire assembled crowd of spirits and as her soul burned she knew that her material body would fail soon. But while this power lasted she could reach out and destroy even a spirit lord. She could turn and do battle with the grand spirit of the Impenetrable City. She could rage and fight and she might even win. She might get some vengeance for this cruelty and nonsensical, meaningless torture. She could exact any punishment she might desire, in this world or the other, against all those proud fools who had toyed with all their lives. But she would not.
Then Ayika was small again, standing before the looming shadow of Blind Dog Lord. Tears ran down her cheeks and her hands were clutched into fists at her sides both here in her soul form and across the worlds in her body. She said quietly, "Will unbinding the spirit of the river or whatever you want stop all this? The trouble between the worlds?"
The spirit god bowed his eyeless canine head, rough grey fur shifting slightly in the breeze. "Yes. It is a ritual of freedom. Aza Naruhama of the Fire Nation will be released in the process and his power will fade, righting the disturbance between the worlds. Everything has a cost."
"Right. Whatever." Ayika felt dizzy and light, to her blurring vision the spirit world and the tunnel under the Lower Ring were starting to merge. That is where Mizumi was and soon Ayika would be able to go back to her. But in the face of all these meaningless machinations beyond her control there was something she still had to ask.
"Why me? Why did it need to be some random water tribe girl so far from the home of her nation? Why not one of your own people of this place?"
Blind Dog Lord looked down at her with an eyeless stare. "Born to the land of earth, raised between walls of stone, master of all the brick streets. You are Ayika of Ba Sing Se. You are the daughter of this city. This is your home and we are your people." Those words were simple. They were true.
He stepped backwards and that lord of the shadowed courts bowed down to the immigrant child of the Bed. The other spirits bowed still lower, feather, claw, and bone all reaching to touch the floor of this spectral land. They bowed before Ayika. "Now make us in your debt."
Ayika closed her spiritual eyes. She could feel the soul and ghost of Naruhama contained within her frail heart. It was shadow and fire and tortured power. She did not know what she needed to do, but she knew what she intended to do. Hopefully, here that would be enough. She reached out with her exhausted will and seized the single touch of the divine in the heart of the inferno.
In the dark tunnel under the burning Lower Ring, slow drops of cooling blood seeped down to the smoothly flowing surface of the hidden aqueduct. That line of water reached out in both directions, forming a web across hundreds of overbuilt kilometers until finally the canals, sewers, and drains converged to deposit their abused contents together once more behind the river wall in the Harbor. At the foot of that wall, beneath the vaulted supports of those watercourses, beneath the river, sat the house in which Ayika was born. The life of the river was also hers, in both imprisonment and in freedom. It was the life of the city.
Ayika looked out through the merging veil between worlds and saw all this. She did not know what it meant but she decided that she did not need to. Then she reached out and broke the chains.
...
Nia Mua made her stand on the bank of the canal. She was tired. That earthbender man, Douli Ma'er, had been fighting with skill beyond that of any soldier but by now he was flagging too. He would never show it and indeed his kicks and punches still showed the same perfect form. They were just slower. That grey hair spreading from his temples had been earned naturally but still he kept up with Nia, a bender over ten years his junior. Nia swept her hand and a slicing jet of water whipped out at a golden-aura cloaked Mask who just barely dodged out of the way. It did not dodge of the heavy paving stone that came plummeting down out of the sky a moment later.
Duoli Ma'er trusted her in a fight. Nia liked that. He could still not see the shades of hungry ghosts though by now even he could see the more dangerous wild spirits. But fighting would not be enough. The Masks never stopped. Nia had tried to trace the center of the disturbance in the city like Ayika had shown capable of doing but the shaman found herself drawn into fight after fight. She was wearing herself down trying to guard these strangers, even as she knew it was useless.
Protecting the populace was a fools errand as the constant influence of the hungry ghosts and untied spirits influenced people's minds and turned them against each other. Any group of citizens she and Ma'er saved was just another potential mob or stampede. They were all going to be torn apart. Nia held out her hand to briefly lean against a building wall and regain her breath. Then she coughed on the smoke that hung thick in the air and remembered that they all might burn to death instead. She smiled, it was nice to have some uncertainty in life.
Ma'er suddenly stood beside her. Nia silently cursed at her own surprise. That man could move quietly when he wanted to. He could also punch in a way to bring an entire apartment building crumbling down with magical power. It was a useful set of skills. He looked over at Nia and said:
"We should get back to the barricades. It is about time for another attempt to advance them, and I believe we have pushed this group of Masks back. Or at lest re-aimed them in another direction. It's like herding beasts."
She waved her hand and gave him a sarcastically flirting wink as she breathed heavily to regain her energy."Yeah, yeah, I'll hurry up, mister business."
They made their way back to the nearest barricaded neighborhood they had found. Nia led the way through the rising sea of ghosts that filled the street with invisible crowds. The shades of the unhonored dead varied from the ancient examples which were barely human to the recent ones who's funerals had been sabotaged by the influence of Naruhama's unburnt mask and now stood as pale portraits of how they appeared in life. Then Nia and Ma'er saw the hastily built barricade, a line of crates and furniture stretching across a narrow point in the lane.
There was a burning building near this outpost of humanity who's blaze was steadily spreading down the block. A line of ring dwellers had set up a bucket line to extinguish it but they met with no success. The power of a firebending ghost held sway here, bolstering the flames. Nia had exhausted herself trying to fight earlier fires and by now she simply let them burn. The two benders were recognized by the local defenders but they both ignored the multiple calls people made to them. Over the barricade, Nia and Ma'er leaned against a wall in this small patch of relative safety.
Nia tilted her head back to look up into the black sky tinted with an angry orange glow. "Do ya think those two girls a managed to find it? Find your boy Tian and that mask he had?"
Ma'er sighed heavily and absently scratched at the old scars around his lower jaw. After a long night, even fighting inhuman monsters grew boring in that very specific way deadly horrors could. "I do not know. It's possible...Nia! What is it!"
Ma'er jerked in response to Nia's sudden crumpling. Nia had abruptly seized up and then bent over at the waist as if she had been pushed down by an incredible wave passing over her. Indeed, she felt like she just had. She ignored Ma'er's attempts at mustering help or defense because they could do nothing against that incredible curtain of energy that Nia had just felt wash over the entire city. This power was more than anything she had ever experienced. It was terrifying and exhilarating. It was fire and shadow put to focused use.
Ma'er reached over to put a hand on her when he suddenly froze at an unexpected sound. Nia Mua was laughing.
"Ha ha ha!" There were tears being squeezed out of the corners of her red eyes, irritated by the smoke.
Ma'er growled at her as he looked around, checking the dark corners and secret ways. "What? What did you sense?"
Nia continued to laugh, so hard that she was almost out of breath to speak. "I've no idea! With power like that we're either saved or we're all going to die!"
The world was painted on a sheet of fabric and now that curtain had been shaken. Something was changed and some door was closed. Before Nia's eyes a few of the hungry ghosts began to sink down into the ground and fade away. She saw an ancient specter, by now mostly a tall blob with a spiral pattern for a face and a gut, tentacles waving in the imitation of arms. It straightened up as if it felt a pleasant breeze on what had once been its face. Those wavering appendages ceased their grasping and were instead held outstretched in welcome as the ghost began to fade and dissolve into the night air. Others were following suit, the eldest ghosts first but Nia was now certain that the others would follow.
The crowd of people on the barricade attempting to defend their neighborhood could not see the ghosts. But they did notice that the fires burning on wooden planks and beams now consented to go out when doused. In fact a single tossed bucket now extinguished an entire wall, as if the fire was trying to make up for the element's earlier lack of cooperation. The people of the city were also working together more harmoniously, ghosts and spirits were no longer disrupting with their emotions and passions. The dead were fading and the spirits were retreating, seemingly of their own accord. It seemed that something had gone right.
Nia grinned at the confused and concerned Ma'er. "It looks like the brat managed it! I'll be damned if Ah know how, but she..."
Nia had turned to look at Ma'er but now she could see past him to the dark course of canal that intersected the terminus of this dead-end street. A massive shape rose out of the black water, forming a man-tall bulging wave while simultaneously not disturbing the still surface of the canal at all. Then the curtain of phantasmal water parted and ran down a bulge of muscle and scale to reveal a huge shimmering eye that looked straight into Nia's heart. The breath caught in her throat and then the river spirit sank down again into the canal, leaving only black smooth water reflecting low hanging clouds, orange with the light of the fires across the ring.
A rough hand grasped hers. "Nia!" Ma'er shook her out of her daze.
Nia blinked and looked back up at him. "I've not got a single clue what that's about. But Ah feel like Ah probably should."
Light drops of rain began to sprinkle down onto her cheeks. Then a screeching, savage roar echoes out over the endless forest of rooftops.
Ma'er said, "It sounds like the Masks are still out there."
"Yes. But they will be weak. That banishing will have hit them too." Nia's lips curled back in a predatory grin. She had found within herself another well of energy to draw from. She actually had some hope. "And now we hunt them. I believe ya said that was your specialty. Lead the way."
They ran forward together. Gentle curtains of rain came to fall as in the air above the city an apparition of fire bloomed into existence, flitting across the wide rings of roads, buildings, and towers.
...