aswium (n.) the mingled feeling of disappointment, frustration and regret that results from an unsatisfactory situation.

Zoran.

It was a moment of utterly surreal tranquillity.

The sky above was grass-green, pale and crystalline; the grass underfoot was yellowed and browned, scalded away in black gashes of ruined earth, although when Zoran looked down at his own feet he found that there was mud rising up around his ankles, the colour of maroon and madder. Everything was so utterly still; the air was frozen around him in a perfect preservation of ruin. When Zoran looked at the man standing before him at the lip of the cliff, it was striking that not even a strand of his hair was moving.

He was barefoot, a brightly coloured shirt left open over a broad, bruised chest – some things seemed to survive beyond death, then. A long scar traced from cheekbone to hip. Zoran had never seen him with his hair this long; it softened him, somehow, made the curve of his cheekbone less severe and sharp than it had ever been in life. His eyes were hollow; they stared forward, blank and unseeing. Whatever colour they had once been, they were near-white now.

It was like staring into an awful mirror. In the other boy's face, Zoran saw what he could have been, and what he might still be – longing, there was longing there, a very deep longing and a very deeply-felt sense of inadequacy. In that face, Zoran saw the future and the past, and as he saw these things, he felt the moment of tranquility shudder around him. He had broken some invisible rule, then. There was an unpleasant tipping sensation, the world lurching around him, like the earth itself might buck him from its surface in rejection of his presence. The very soil under his feet was abruptly alive, and writhing.

Zoran.

"It's funny," Zoran said. His voice sounded strange; it reverberated back to him languidly, with a wavering lilt, as though it was reaching him across a lake of molten gold. He did not recognise it as his own. Not for the first time, he wondered whether he was himself. Was he still Zoran Czarnecki? "I was expecting to see… someone else."

Had he expected anything? Could he have expected anything? Of course he could. There was only one other person who seemed to dwell within the fibres of his mind, as real to him as his own bones. There was only one other person he carried with him, a strange hitch-hiker composed of guilt and regret, hooked tightly onto his heart.

"Your skull is too empty to fit another." He turned towards Zoran. Those hollow eyes – he almost would preferred to see empty sockets in their place. Instead there was the awful sensation of being, not unseen, but looked through. There was something horrifically intimate about such a gaze. "Inanna needs you. You are going to miss your chance, moron."

Dazedly, heedless of his words, Zoran said, "what is this?" He meant this: the ruin, the devastation, the unreality of it all. He could see that the other man understood, without Zoran needing to clarify. What, indeed.

When he replied, his voice was solemn.

"What else? It is the fall of Siarka."

That was… in any other moment, Zoran could have said exactly what that was. Siarka had been a holy land in the old Empire of Kur, hadn't it? This was a battle from the first generation, wasn't it? They had stained sky and soil with dark magic. The radiance and the world had torn the whole of the horizon asunder as the Schreaves were driven back, out of their stolen lands and towards the cursed island upon which they had sought shelter. This had been the beginning of one thing, the end of another. A fall, true as any fall could be.

"The fall of Siarka," Matthias said softly, "and the fall that might yet be."

Zoran.

"Zoran," Ina said. Ordinarily she would have put a hand on his shoulder; he didn't ask why she didn't. He looked up at her, abruptly aware of his reverie, and found that was watching him with that fallen-rose, sea-glass, leaden-heart way that she had. It burrowed deep, dislodging all else that might have dwelled in the wires of his self; whatever or whoever else Zoran carried in the marrow of his being, he did not carry Ina in the same way. That would have been to reduce her down, to flatten her, to a diminished form of herself; he would not have any part in the like.

"Sorry," he said quietly. The sword was heavy in his hand; his limbs felt weaker than they had only a minute ago. Was he imagining things, or had the air grown cold in that short time? He averted his eyes from the brightly polished surface of the blade, and fixed his gaze upon Ina, trying to force reassurance onto his features. It wouldn't fool her, of course, but it might make him feel better. "I was just... thinking."

"Good." Ina smiled softly. "Better you than me. Any useful thoughts?"

"I'll keep you posted," he replied dryly. "How are things looking?"

Behind her, their hostage was looking as doe-eyed as ever, his gaze slightly glazed as though in a stupor. Zoran wasn't precisely sure what comparisons he could draw; when Azula dealt with him, he stiffened into a mechanical approximation of movement according to order, but when Ina spoke to him, he softened entirely and agreed to all that she said with an enthusiasm that bordered on reverence. If Hyacinth were here, she would have been able to pinpoint some similarity between these effects and those evinced in generations prior by previous holders of the curses; as it was, Zoran could remember tales of those who could direct by suggestion – Celuiz Facundo, famously, had been extremely destructive with the particular manner in which the devil had manifested in him.

There was a slightly different flavour to this, however; Azula did not speak to the hostage, and Ina did not seem to control him, not totally. Under Azula, he seemed to wilt into automation; with Ina, he seemed simply to agree, rather ardently, with all that she suggested.

So this was an Illéan. If they were all of this sort, then Zoran could feel a shaky, rickety form of hopefulness beginning to unfurl in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps they had a chance; perhaps they would succeed after all. These were the devils of which they had been warned, the remnants of the Kur empire; these were the monsters from behind the wall. They seemed so human, when you stood this close to them; Zoran could see that Azula was feeling similarly. They couldn't afford to think about it now – they were here to be heroes. They could not afford to be distracted.

Even so, if all Illéans were this easily swayed…

But he had not known anything about the Radiance. Perhaps they had been wrong to hope as much, but, god, in that moment, Zoran had allowed himself to start hoping.

Ina's voice was soft. "I'm not sure if this will work."

"It'll work." Zoran resisted the urge to put a hand against her hair; it would only unnerve her. He could read it in her; there was no edge in her voice, but in the line of her body, there was a certain thrum of nervous energy. "I won't let you say anything else."

She nodded, firmly. "It has to."

"It will."

"Yeah," she said; her uncertainty was palpable, but her smile did not waver. She straightened her borrowed coat with a slight nervousness. The green garb was a little too large for her: it hung past her knees, the shoulders far too broad for her narrow frame. Zoran imagined – hoped – that such small details would not be apparent once mounted. He had taken Hanover's coat for his own; it fit a little better, but that wasn't saying much. The Illéan was much more muscular than the lean Warrior; the fit of the coat had been designed for a man much taller and broader. But it would do. It would have to do.

He looked at Ina, and smiled. There was the strangest sensation of playing dress-up; it was a life-and-death matter, and they were standing here, wearing ill-fitting coats and trying to figure out who should take which horse. They would be okay, Zoran thought; they had each other. He had Ina, and he had Azula, and they would be okay.

And Azula would be okay as well. She hadn't spoken much since they had found her, only murmured Mielikki's name again, softly, into Zoran's shoulder as he had embraced her. She had that shaky, reedy sound to her voice, like she was barely awake.

Zoran was trying to keep his eyes averted from the corpse that had once been their comrade. The Star, dead so soon – he wasn't sure if there were any steps that they had to take, whether they needed to reclaim the curse from her body before they left. Such thoughts settled his nerves, if slightly; they felt productive, constructive, helpful. The alternative was falling to his knees, falling to his knees and staring. He wasn't sure if this was the work of a druj; there was blood, a lot of blood, but her body was mostly intact. Her skull had been caved in, as though by some enormous invisible force; her hair was clotted and matted with the thick brown of drying viscera.

Xye was staring at the body as well. That glaze in his eye was slowly fading away, as though the reality of the situation was beginning to sink into his mind.

Zoran said, as softly as he could, to avoid being overheard, "have you decided what we're gonna do with him?"

Ina worried at a red lip, and accepted the sword from Zoran again as he offered it. She said nothing, so Zoran answered himself on her behalf.

"It makes more sense to leave him here," he said, gently, "he's an Illéan soldier, he's an enemy, and he's a liability. And there's no guarantee you can keep more than one person under control at a time. If we bring him with us and you need to handle someone else..."

He was saying nothing that hadn't already occurred to her; that much was apparent from the sad look in her golden eyes. She knew what had to be done, and she knew she had the strength to do it – she just didn't want to. Was that because of Pekka? He was giving her too little credit: Ina didn't need anyone's influence to be her kind self. Would any sense of Warrior dedication outweigh her instincts? He couldn't answer for her; he could only say what he could and trust in that familiar Nirari cleverness that ten years of friendship had taught him never to underestimate.

He yanked on the stirrup and tested the saddle's girth; this horse's tack was old-fashioned, all worn leather and thin strips of metal – iron, rather than the cheaper and more familiar steel utilised in Irij. It was a lively enough creature, shying at all the shadows that were moving through the woods as though it knew what might be lurking within the undergrowth. Zoran couldn't say it was wrong to act the way it was; he could only hope that whatever fear was brewing in this poor horse would carry them ever-quicker through the woods. This soldier must have come from somewhere, after all. The walls, he had told Ina, the walls.

"These walls," Zoran had said, softly, intently. "How stringently guarded are they?"

The Illéan soldier had given him a look which suggested that he resented the simple reality of Zoran not being Ina. "Rye tried to leave. We buried him in pieces."

"Oh," Ina had said, slightly hollowly. "Is that all?"

She turned the sword over in her hand. It was peculiarly shaped, with a flat diagonal tip; it was longer than most with which the Warrior candidates had trained at the academy, and deceptively light – it had a sharply honed edge, which might make up for that fact. Ina could flip it casually in her hand, and cut it through the air languidly; she was clearly thinking hard about their prospects. "We need him," she said, finally, reluctantly. "We need the inside perspective..."

"You don't think Azula could…." She was the Devil of Kur, after all; it wasn't entirely hopeless to suggest that a devil might be able to hollow out the skull of another, and give them some insight. Zoran himself was resisting the urge to check Matthias' notes. Did he even need them anymore, if Matthias seemed to know a secret path into his head to say the things he needed to say? The fall that might yet be. Zoran was sure that this was the warning that the previous Hierophant would have wanted him to focus on, but it was not the sentiment which occupied him: Inanna needs you.

Well, Zoran thought, he didn't need Matthias to tell him that. And the feeling was mutual. This was the only kind of friendship that he could conceptualise, when they were in a demonic forest on a cursed island – as a need, a devotion, a promise.

They owed the same to Azula, and she to them, and Zoran was only reminded of that again when Ina said, softly, "that's a lot to ask of her."

Zoran knew what Kinga would say if she were here: she's a Warrior, same as us. Was it asking too much of her? They had undergone the same training; they had been passed into the same initiation. Don't let her be a burden. But Kinga wasn't here, and Zoran had no intent to echo her words. He just said, "it is," and knew from the look in Ina's eyes that she was thinking the same thing as he.

She sighed. "I'll talk to her."

"And him?"

Ina shook her head, and passed the sword back to him. It was beginning to feel like some sort of strange relay baton. "I…. let me do one thing first."

Zoran didn't envy her the task. After all, Azula was sitting by the ashes of the campfire, staring at the body that had once been Mielikki. As Ina moved slowly over towards the younger girl, Zoran placed the sword carefully against the shoulder of the Illéan, the edge of the blade kissing his throat, and kept an eye on him closely. There was no guarantee of how exactly their curses worked, this early in the game; it was better to be safe than sorry. From the wary look the dark-skinned soldier shot Zoran from the corner of his eye, he seemed to understand.

Zoran couldn't hear the first thing that Azula said to Ina, or indeed how Ina had replied, but he didn't need to – it was all so clear from the youngest Warrior's anguished scream.

"What do you mean we can't? No!"

"Zula..."

"We need bring her with us. Please. We owe her that. Please."

"Zu..."

Azula had started to cry. Ina knelt before her, her head bowed, her hand hanging over Azula's hair as though some invisible force kept her from touching the younger girl's head. Zoran just resolutely avoided looking at Azula, at Mielikki, at the polished surface of the sword. He just stared at the tiny beads of blood bubbling along the edge of the sword as the Illéan soldier inadvertently leaned into its blade, and thought, you are going to miss your chance, moron.

So these were the walls.

They were enormous; Zoran was a little surprised that the sun itself was not totally blotted out by the enormity of these structures. They were grey monoliths; he could detect in their face no seam or joint to indicate where bricks might have been married together. It was an enormous monument to the fear and paranoia of the Schreaves – but really, having glimpsed the druj which lingered in the forest, he was not sure that he could blame them. He and Ina seemed to have skirted most of the monsters within the woods (had that been Matthias' influence?), but judging by Mielikki's body, or the state in which they had found the dead Illéan…

Maybe they hadn't avoided the druj. Maybe the druj were avoiding them. Now, why would they do something like that?

They had moved slower than Zoran would have liked. Azula had her arms clasped tightly around his waist, her face pressed into the back of his coat; he could still feel her shaking slightly with the sobs that she was barely repressing. Ina had taken the other horse, the flighty one; she had coaxed it into reluctant co-operation, weighted down by the burden of the Illéan soldier hanging, unconscious, from the cantle of the saddle. They had carried him as far as the edge of the forest, where Zoran and Ina had pulled him down and laid him on the ground and Ina had said, softly, "can you hear me?"

"Mhmhm."

"You should forget that you ever saw us. Can you forget? Will you forget?"

The Illéan soldier's eyelids had fluttered open, only barely; a slit of brown iris and blood-stained sclera was narrowly visible. "No," he said, almost dreamily. "No."

Now, Ina sat back on her heels. "Well," she said.

Behind them, Azula said, tremulously, "are we going to kill him?"

They should. Zoran knew they should. In the corner of his eye, he could sense the spectre of Szymanska telling him as much – the mission is all – but he couldn't tell who it was, if it was Kinga or Jaga whispering as much. He shook his head. Yes. They should.

"No," Ina said, "we aren't." She glanced at Zoran. "We need him to get past the walls."

"And then?"

"And then," she said, narrowly, "we'll do what we have to do."

"No," the soldier said again, his voice wavering. "No."

"No," Azula said, and as Zoran glanced back towards her, he saw that she was staring at the horizon, where a thin finger of smoke were rising slowly above the walls.

"Zoran," Ina said. Her voice was tense. Zoran nodded – he took her horse, the flighty one, and fled for the crest of the hill, which accorded them a true view of the walled city. It spilled out before him, almost beautiful in its concentric symmetry, the geometry of the clustered towns which sprouted like mushrooms along the perimeter of the three walls. Once again, he was struck by the sheer size of the space – yes, they had always known that the Schreaves had retreated to a walled fortress on the island, but secretly, on some level, he had expected a compound, a single castle, a fortified palace.

This was a caged city.

These walls contained a tiny world.

Maybe this was why the Illéan soldier had reacted the way he had – not only Ina's curse taking hold, but also the realisation that more lay beyond their borders than he could ever have dreamed of. No matter how comprehensive their education about the rest of the world, it could not compete with seeing it for the first time. After two hundred years, would the remnants of the Kur Empire really be prepared for an offensive from Irij? Or would complacency have taken hold?

These thoughts crossed Zoran's mind in the same second that it took him to register the source of the smoke. And then – he could only stare. There was an enormous, gaping hole in the wall, dust rising slowly from the rubble around the entryway. It was a jagged wound in the fortifications, clearly Druj were pouring through now, into the city and towards the next wall: Zoran was too far away to discern much about them, but even just the sight of them sent a chill along his arms. They were enormous, and faster than he could have dreamed of; they would overwhelm that section of the wall long before he and the girls could make it that far. And then what? They would be wading willingly into full-scale ruination.

Wait. Think. From this vantage point, he could examine the structure of the city in a manner that would have been impossible from the ground. There was a clear delineation between the walls, and again between the little bubble-shaped enclaves which formed at the compass-points of each circular section; that must have been where the gates were, Zoran thought, the enclaves serving the same filtration role as the double-doors on a volary. Anything which breached the walls would need to breach another, almost immediately, before it could access any large swathe of the population. And they had soldiers – soldiers that killed druj.

So if one point of the wall was compromised by druj… any reasonable commander would be redirecting all of his people to stem the flow, to stop the druj before they overwhelmed the enclave and reached the body of the city.

And if these enclaves marked where the gates were…

He returned to the others with this thought lingering. Once he had outlined what he had seen, he could tell that Ina was in agreement with him; she didn't need to say anything to that effect, only asked him to help her return the Illéan soldier to the cantle of the saddle. Azula, her fingers wound tightly around the reins of Zoran's mount, was staring at their enemy with a peculiarly fixed expression; when Zoran spoke directly to her, she just shook her head stiffly and said nothing.

Ina said, softly, sweetly, "you're going to help us, aren't you?"

The soldier nodded. "Yes," he said. "Of course..."

And he trailed off, and Zoran could tell that he was searching for her name, and finding nothing.

Before they departed, he crouched down at the edge of the treeline and pulled out Matthias' notes; he unfolded them hastily, and scanned the most familiar, the ones which had been placed at the front. Surely he would have arranged them in some form of order, would have tried to give them even the thin facade of usefulness. But there was nothing here, nothing that Zoran could immediately discern as useful, so he returned them to his jacket and gave Ina a firm nod.

God, he hoped this worked.

If it didn't….

They found themselves moving in a frenzy; if they didn't reach their destination before the Illéans had stopped the druj, Zoran thought, then the odds would swing back against them. For now, things were – tentatively, so tentatively – if not looking up, then at least no longer so utterly dire as they had feared.

Zoran had been correct; as they drew closer to the walls, they found that long stretches of the structure were totally unmanned, cannons hanging lonely from the lip of the fortification. For the most part, they found themselves travelling in the shadow of the wall; it was cool, and the air was so fresh and alive after the total stagnancy and stillness of the strange forest. It was spring: the grass through which they rode were twined with fresh-blooming flowers, tiny white blossoms and fragrant pink orchids.

Azula had stopped crying; she just kept her arms knotted around Zoran, and turned her face out, away from the wall, to stare at the hills which concealed the cursed forest from view. She had not said anything in hours, but Zoran didn't have the time to speak to her now. There would be time for that – for grief, for sorrow – once they were safe inside the walls.

If you could call that safe.

The gate, he saw, was a similarly enormous structure. He could never have imagined something manmade being so gargantuan – he had seen many buildings smaller than this gate alone. Why did they need it so large? Surely the only things ever admitted through its mouth, as their captive soldier had indicated, were soldiers and wagons and horses…

It was wrought-iron, or something similar, its face reminding Zoran of the astronomical clock which marked the geographical centre of Opona. Its face was a complex series of filigreed wheels, knotting together in frozen serenity, gilded and golden. The effect was such that, though not totally solid, there was no chance of Zoran or Ina being able to slip through the gaps; it was, in that sense, impermeable. Ina was three inches shorter than Azula, and Zoran much more narrow than their hostage, so it seemed they would have to fall back onto – a much more risky venture, he thought, and tightened his hand upon their pilfered sword. As though it would help them if Illéa chose to turn those cannons upon them…

So they retreated back in the direction they had come. As they rode past the gate, Ina twisting in her seat to give Zoran a nod. They were going with her plan. Well, that was good. There was no-one he trusted more.

She almost seemed more beautiful when she was in control of a situation like this. Her confidence shone from her like an incandescence; after the week that had preceded this, Zoran was just glad to see some light back in her eyes.

He wasn't sure how she had chosen their spot of egress, but when she gave him the signal, they alighted. He lifted Azula from their stolen horse, as Ina turned to their soldier and said, "here looks good, right?"

"Can't think of anywhere better."

The wall looked empty of patrols; there were not even any cannons here. As safe as they could make it.

They had examined the soldier's equipment in the first moments after they had realised he was neutralised, Zoran holding his sword against the man's neck and Ina keeping him under her thrall; they had relieved him of his coat and of the strange mechanism attached to his body with straps. Ina was examining this mechanism now, and speaking to their hostage in a low voice. "You are sure it can take the strain?"

"Of course." The soldier was smiling, sleepily. "It's designed to withstand sustained combat with the druj. This is nothing."

Ina nodded, and glanced back at Zoran. "I think he should take Azula first."

"What if your curse wears off?"

Ina shook her head, and spoke quietly. "Then I think Zula can handle it. You're the millstone here, Zor."

"Been waiting my whole life to hear that."

It was with great reluctance that he watched as their hostage pulled on his equipment. The thought of this going wrong was so strong that Zoran found himself reflexively focusing on anything but that prospect – on how the soldier buckled the straps of his harness around certain points, or how he set the canister against his shoulder, or how he gazed up at the wall to determine where he ought to aim.

And then Zoran glanced at Ina, and met her eyes, and smiled. He had to trust her.

Their hostage crouched; Azula climbed onto his back, and tightened her arms around his neck, clinging with a fervor. All over again, Zoran was reminded of the sheer scale of the walls; how enormous, how featureless, how far the fall. If this went wrong… no. This was what they had been trained for. Commandant had made sure of that much.

The Illéan soldier stepped back, and fired one of the hooks from his waist. It soared, high, and found purchase in the wall, very close to the top, with a loud hiss and a clang that reminded Zoran of the obstacle courses back in Opona. Rather than simply lift himself up with the hook, Zoran stared in something between amazement and bafflement as their hostage sprinted at the wall and, placing a foot flat against it, began to race up it – running up the face of the wall as easily as another might on level ground. Azula's hair hung back, complying with gravity when nothing else did; even as she slowly retreated into unclarity, Zoran could see that she had her eyes screwed shut, her knuckles absolutely white with the stress of it all.

And still they moved.

Zoran slid the sword into the scabbard they had taken from the Illéan soldier, and turned to Ina. "We'll need to deal with him," he said, and knew he was not saying anything she had failed to consider already. "Once we make it to the other side."

"I know." She shook her head. "I know." She paused.

"What is it?"

"Were we wrong to leave her there? Mielikki, I mean."

"There was nothing we could have done. Nowhere we could have buried her."

"I know," she said again, but still there was that sheen to her eyes. She smiled. It was like a portable star, that smile. There were tears pooling on her eyelashes, clinging to them like so much silver dust. "I just don't like thinking about her lying there, alone..."

Zoran couldn't disagree. They were Warriors, yes, but they were… comrades, too, surely. They had grown up together. Mielikki's needle had found purchase in their skin, at one time or another. They were all marked by her, somehow – physically, if only that. And they had left her there, on the ground, limbs twisted, head still oozing black…

There was a low thud as the Illéan soldier landed in front of them. The curious warmth which had permeated his every action while speaking to Ina was gone – he stood there, staring forward, quite hollowly, and did not so much as blink when Zoran stepped closer towards him. Zoran wound an arm through the harness, lashing himself tightly to the other young man.

It was strange, touching your enemy for the first time, strange for its mundaneity – Zoran could feel that all the sinews and muscles on the soldier's back were standing out rigidly against his skin, as though he were perpetually straining against some enormous invisible weight.

Ina said, "are you okay?" and there was that same awful change, the sense of total unreality, as the soldier turned his head towards her, and relaxed, and smiled, and said, "of course, why wouldn't I be?"

Ina blinked back the tears that hadn't fallen. "What's your name?"

"Xye," the soldier said. And then he wasn't a soldier, an Illéan soldier, their hostage or their captive. He was Xye. "Xynone Hanover."

"I'm trusting you, Xye," Ina said. "I have trusted you. With two people most precious to me."

"I won't let you down," he replied, and Zoran could see that he was again searching the recesses of his mind for the name of this person before him, directing his shapeless devotion into constructive action.

Ina looked at Zoran. There was that moment again, as there had been before initiation, where a strange forever seemed to stretch before him – an eternity of choices, in which any number of things might go on. Now, as then, he felt compelled to speak, but then Ina shook her head and said, "don't fall."

The fall that might yet be.

Leaving Ina behind felt like a physical wound; he could sense it, like an open cut, and it took all the strength in his bones to just keep holding on. Xye ran smoothly; Zoran found that Azula's idea of closing her eyes was probably sensible, but he could not bring himself to do so. He kept his eyes tightly upon Ina, and when she grew too small to see clearly, he kept his eyes tightly upon the world outside the walls.

Who knew when he would see it again?

Azula was waiting for him, her clothes buffeted by the wind. It was so cold up here, cold and windy; the world seemed to tear at them, and try to force them back down again. She was kneeling in the centre of the wall, as far from the edge as she could get, and she offered him a small, watery smile as he pulled away from Xye and went to meet her. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," she said, her voice small. "Just… thinking about hopscotch."

This was not entirely a comforting sentence, but Zoran just nodded, and gave her a hug. As they parted again, he could see that Xye had begun his final descent back to the ground to collect Ina; Zoran didn't think that the knot in his stomach would begin to unravel until the three of them were reunited. Maybe that was a childish thought when they were in the opening scenes of a war, he thought darkly, but he couldn't bring himself to care; things would be better when they were three again.

Three, plus Xye.

He helped Azula back to her feet, and drew Xye's sword once again. They were in Illéa now – they were in Illéa now – not merely on the island, but on the edges of the fortress in which the Schreaves had taken refuge after the fall of their empire. Zoran knew that the path before them was long, but still, this was the first step and… and they had done it. They had done it.

But they were entering the city, and they still didn't know where the others were, and Zoran found himself praying fervently that they, too, had reached the city. There was nothing he wanted more than to see Ghjuvan's warm smile or Ilja's sly one, the way Kinga quirked her eyebrow when she disagreed with him but didn't want to waste the energy on saying so, how Khalore curled her lip when she found a new reason to be angry.

Please, he thought, please.

Hiss.

Zoran glanced to the edge of the wall, expecting to see Xye and Ina – his heart jumped – but instead found himself meeting the gaze of an Illéan soldier in a long coat similar to the one Zoran wore now, although it was red instead of green. He wore the same hooked mechanism that had reeled the Warriors onto the wall, and wielded a thin silver sword in either hand. Unlike Xye, this soldier had a narrow, olive-toned face and a shaved head, with small eyes and a dark scar running through his mouth, twisting up his lip.

"Excubitor. Identify yourself."

Zoran pulled Azula behind him, shielding her with his body, and found himself speaking automatically. "Xynone Hanover. Western division."

For a split second, he genuinely believed this might have worked – and then the soldier shook his head, and began to move towards them. "I'm very sorry. That might have worked on anyone else – but I completed training alongside Ryson Hanover."

"Oh," Zoran said. If he knew what Xye looked like, then, yes, any suggestion of Zoran being related would seem… far-fetched.

Hiss. Someone else had alighted behind them. Please let that be Ina and Xye, he thought, please let that be Ina, please let that be someone other than another Illéan soldier. Being outnumbered…

"Leaving the walls is suicide," the soldier said, his voice low. "Attempting to leave… punishable by death. So, either way..."

And behind Zoran, Azula said, softly, just as she had on sighting the smoke: "no."

The soldier paused in his advance towards them. There was a curious jerky quality to that pause – mid-step, his foot seemed to shake in place, as though he was straining to place it against the ground again and some invisible force was stopping him. Now his shoulders caved forward similarly, like he was leaning into some awful, invisible gale.

He stood there, almost suspended, for a long moment. His eyes had widened; he had burst two blood vessels, and the red was slowly spreading across his eye. The corners of his mouth were twitching, as though he was trying, fervently, vainly, to speak.

His fingers sprang open, like the release of a bird trap. His swords fell, with a loud clatter, to the wall. His hands hung by his side, shaking.

And then, as Zoran stepped forward – could he help him? – the Illéan soldier abruptly stiffened, and turned, and threw himself from the wall.

It was a long fall. Zoran watched him as he went; he made no attempt to fire a hook, or save himself from his fate. He just shook, and shook, and shook.

And, eventually, he landed.

"What did you do?"

Zoran turned. It had been Xye who had spoken – so it had been them, Ina and Xye, Ina was here, they were okay, they were still three – and he had spoken, eyes wide, staring at the space his comrade had occupied only moments before. His voice was desperate, strained, lined with the dense panic of a man who has awoken into a nightmare.

"What did you do? What did you do?"

"Xye," Ina was saying, desperately, her eyes wide, but the magic was gone, her curse had broken. For whatever reason, Xynone Hanover was once again his own man, and making his own decisions, and right now he seemed to have decided that he should reach out a hand for Ina's throat and –

Well, they were Warriors. They had been trained as such.

Zoran had long-ago lost track of how many hours Ina had spent with Pekka in the sparring fields around the academy, straining to keep up with the rest of their class in combat. She had improved but slowly, and yet steadily. They had always known each other too well to allow for rapid advancement – no sooner had you devised a way to supersede a natural weakness than your combat partner had devised a technique to block you almost immediately.

But among strangers, especially a stranger who made the mistake of taking Ina's small size at face-value…

He reached for her throat, but slowly, as though still awakening, and Ina seized him by the wrist, and twisted it, violently, some of the last week's pain leaking out through her physical actions. It was obvious to Zoran that Ina would not ordinarily have acted so rashly, so harshly. She would not have placed so much anger into each movement. But she was angry. Who wouldn't be?

In the same motion, she jammed a shoulder into his chest, and pushed him back towards the wall; she raised one leg, and swept his feet out from under him, flipping him over her hip in a smooth, violent motion.

And so Xynone Hanover followed his comrade down.

And then they were alone on the wall, the three of them, reunited and safe and there, and Ina was turning towards them with that look on her face – dread Ina, dangerous Ina, fallen-rose, sea-glass, leaden-heart Ina. They were here, Zoran thought, they were in Illéa, and they were together, the three of them, and they were going to be okay.

He hoped. God, he hoped.