They rode hard for a full week, toward the very fringe of Winter's reach. The pounding of hooves, Violet's steed as tireless as Winter itself, matched the drumbeat of her thoughts. Faster. Rest later. Find her before she's gone.
Before entering the Distant Lands, Satria would meet with Maeve at the desolate rock known as the Forlorn Fort. Once there, final preparations would be completed, and they would then venture forth. Violet aimed to reach them before they did. What distance Satria had hoped to cross in ten days, Violet and Jon had done in seven, but the days Violet had wasted thinking like an invalid weighed heavy on her. If the expedition had already left the lands of Winter, how would Violet and Jon find them?
The horses trotted single-file around a narrow ledge, curving halfway down a round cliff. Violet's eyes scanned the horizon, searching for flecks of dark against a shroud of white. They were close. They had passed the last inhabited court just yesterday, and the Lady there confirmed that the Queen and her second had passed through just days prior. They rode through the night after that, and now, with dawn broken and the air dry and clear, she hoped to spot something soon.
"There," Violet said, pointing. "Smoke. That has to be them."
Rather than continue the slow, and winding descent down the cliff, Violet nudged her horse to the side, off the edge. The creature whinnied in protest and threatened to buck, but she dug her heels into its flanks, and it steadied. Like all creatures of Winter, it respected strength.
The wily beast navigated its way down the shockingly steep incline with its legs locked, sliding down the snow as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Violet cracked a grin. Once all four hooves were safely on level ground, it tossed its head and snorted a challenge. Violet looked back to see Jon taking a more cautious route, waved at him, and tapped her heels and leaned low against her mare's back as it broke into a gallop. Wind whipped at her as she raced toward the source of the smoke.
The Forlorn Fort, an ancient and eerie tower of black stone said to have once been a court itself, grew steadily larger. It was still far too distant to hope to make out individual figures moving near it, but Violet already knew there would be nothing to see. The shining stars of Maeve and Satria would have had the glare of the sun in this empty place, but she felt only still silence. They were already gone.
She rode up to the tower and found where the expedition had made camp in its shadow. Cooking fires still smoldered, issuing the trails of smoke she had spotted, and she pulled a torn scrap of fabric from the snow. It could only have come from one of Satria's banners. Jon rode up beside her.
"They're gone."
"A most astute observation." Violet's lip curled. "Their tracks are clear enough. Onward, then."
Jon's eyes slowly tracked outward, following the winding path churned into the snow by hundreds of hooves. On it went, fading into the distance and a vast expanse of white, crushed beneath a gray sky. No hill rose or valley fell, and no tree broke the horizon. It appeared empty; what in this foreign place waited, none could say.
He stared at that uncanny frontier and said, "Didn't you say the last person to go there came back an eternity later, insane and bent on conquest?"
Violet arched an eyebrow. "You have nothing to fear, Jon. You're already mad to have come this far."
She snapped her reins, and her horse cantered forward, into the unknown. Jon chuckled and followed beside her, tugging on his belt to ensure the long iron dagger strapped to it was close to hand.
She could not say when she first entered the Distant Lands, but when she next glanced back, the Forlorn Fort was lost to mist.
~#~
Something was wrong with the snow.
It fell as a powder, the flakes finer and mistier with every step they took away from Winter, into the lands of madness. Now, the snow below was so soft and powdery it was like a dry liquid. It was a deep, treacherous dust, and the steeds of Winter who should have glided effortlessly over any snow instead sank deep, bulling their way forward only by brute strength and tenacity.
In time, the snowfall began to slow, and the accumulated blanket over the ground began to thin noticeably. The horses moved more easily, and the fog receded farther and farther, unveiling ever more of the same: white, flat terrain extending into a horizon of gray under a bleak sky.
Violet slipped off her horse and dug down into the snow, struggling to clear it as it seemed to fall back in on itself and slipped between her fingers. But after a time she had cleared a hole through it and exposed the ground.
"Is that stone?" asked Jon, looking over into the hole. She had bottomed out when her fingers brushed something hard and flat, and when she widened the hole, the flatness beneath continued unbroken. The surface was gray and perfectly smooth, yet somehow prone to catching objects slid over it.
"I don't think so," Violet said. She pulled the Elder Wand free.
Ventus.
A ten meter long cone of snow was blasted away under a rush of wind, leaving more of the perfect, smooth surface. It seemed somehow artificial, or otherwise apart from the natural. No, it was more than that. This was to the artificial as the artificial was to the natural. Or perhaps it was the other way around.
Its perfect, surreal uniformity was offensive; Violet jabbed the Elder Wand. Percutio!
A dull streak of distorted air shot into the ground, and a Piercing Curse strong enough to penetrate a dragon's scales did nothing at all. It did not ricochet as such a spell might off a protective charm; it did not splash as it conceivably could if it struck an object extraordinarily harder than steel; it merely vanished, unable to even scratch the gray not-stone.
Jon whistled slowly. "Imagine what that stuff would be worth if you could find a way to work it."
Violet's eyes narrowed, and the Elder Wand swung down like a headsman's axe. Her expression grew taut. "Fiendfyre!"
A crescent serpent of starkly black and white flame crawled out from the Elder Wand, so hot that Jon covered his face with his arm and the scattered snow meters away began to melt—not to water, but dissolving entirely into nothing at all. But however incandescent the flames raged, however sharp her destructive intent, the surface remained unchanged. Finally, panting, Violet slashed the flames away, cursing under her breath.
A cold suspicion settled over Violet: What if it's not that we can't break through? What if there's nothing to break through to?
She pressed her palm to the unending flatness. It was neither hot nor cold despite the Fiendfyre's kiss. Swallowing, she straightened, looking out over the thinning snow ahead. The fog had totally lifted now, and the sight ahead was a horror, lifeless and hostile. The Wyld was a vast canyon, and this was carried on through the Distant Lands; to one side and to the other, hundreds of kilometers away, Violet could see colossal gray walls stretching up to the dead sky and beyond, so very tall that they seemed to curve inward like claws, confining those who walked within. Distantly imprisoned on two sides and with Winter behind, there was only one direction to follow, one place Satria could be. Forward, into void.
And forward it must be.
~#~
The sun, the sky's sole feature throughout their long travel, was even-tempered, warming Violet's skin where her snow-dress did not cover it, but never crossing the line to hot. But this was not the sun as was over the Earth or even the Wyld. Its prominence in the sky changed not by time but by position. Since they first set out, the sun had moved from perhaps a three o'clock angle to three and one half, in a time that was surely many hours long. At first Violet concluded that days were simply longer here, but when they stopped to make camp some time later, the sun moved no further, burning on in an unending mid-afternoon. After they rested for a time and ate a meal of smoked reindeer and hard bread, they proceeded, and the sun did too, making its slow track across the sky.
And, Violet was quite sure, it is not quite so bright nor so large as it was when we left.
There was not a hint of life here. With the snow but a memory, it was gray in all directions, as remorseless as death itself. They had brought food for themselves, but not nearly enough to feed the horses for long. Even Winter's steeds required some sustenance, plucked from rough vegetation and small creatures in the snows. If they could not find even that in this place, it would only be a matter of time before they were forced to continue on foot.
With nothing to mark day from night, they continued on some time later, silent and unsettled. With every plodding hoofbeat, the sun crawled lower and grew fainter. Gray began to appear black.
And then the hypnotic uniformity was broken by grains of fine red sand underfoot, blown by a wind that had been absent before. Violet exchanged a look with Jon and spurred her horse onward, eager to see anything other than gray. A desert of red opened before them, but it was as lifeless as what came before; powder whipped their faces under a ceaseless wind, and the sun was now weak enough for the air to near true coldness.
There were weapons buried in the sands. Saber-hilts gleamed orange under the sun; snapped arrows were littered around them. The mechanisms of muggle war were laid out, primeval relics alongside high technology, all as weathered and eternal in appearance as the desert itself. Alongside broken spears were twisted metal, ruined artillery; scorched vehicles offered eerie witness to their journey. In the distance, the hulk of an overturned warship rested in the sand, and Violet imagined that in a thousand years it would finally sink beneath it as if it were an ocean itself, to rest in eternal darkness.
It was that sand that was the end of the horses. Exhausted, hungry, and unable to cope with the terrain, Jon's collapsed with Violet's soon to follow. She slit both their throats, spilling their blood upon the ruby sand, and on foot they carried on.
Whatever the nature of the desert, it was nothing like the Wyld in scale. After only an hour more they left it behind, returning to the gray space in between. "Funny," Jon quipped. "You never really appreciate something until it's gone."
They carried on. The emptiness ahead was vast and endless until it was not, and despite that they now walked on foot, it was hard to say whether they were actually making less ground. Violet had the distinct impression that distance, geometry even, was not quite linear here. Was one step forward the same as any other, or did it shift, reshaping itself by rules beyond comprehension? They had walked in a straight line and found for it a desert of blades and now this, but what if Satria had encountered things entirely different? What if, however long they walked, they never found anyone at all?
Around them now was a freezing storm, entirely dark but for the flashes of constant lightning, arcing between impenetrable clouds and smashing to the ground below, which was covered in a fog so thick that Violet could feel its dragging resistance to every step. The air was heavy, bearing down on her shoulders and back and resisting exhalation. The storm had arisen nearly without warning—first it was merely a slightly darker line on the gray horizon that grew steadily thicker until they were engulfed in it, buffeted by gusts and dazed by cacophonous thunder.
"Arresto Momentum!" Violet cried into the wind, holding the Elder Wand ahead of her in both hands, head bowed against the wind. A dome of fixed air formed up around them, turning away the wind and muffling some of the roaring and thunder. Jon looked at her with wide eyes.
"I've never seen anything like it!"
"Keep moving," said Violet, releasing one hand from her wand to clutch Jon's arm to ward against separation. "And give us a shield!"
No sooner had he cast a Shield Charm than an explosion of light and sound crashed around them and heat flashed over her skin, making her recoil. Ozone filled her nostrils, and vivid afterimages lingered in her sight. They proceeded, heads bowed under the fury of the storm, but lightning did not strike so close again. Storm gave way to gray, now nearer than ever to black, and they made camp again. The lack of day and night was disorienting, and spells cast to measure the time produced irregular results.
More oddities awaited them as they once again made their way, similar in some sense to the place of thunder: first a vast expanse of yellow fog and dust that seemed eerily frozen in time, clouds of dust stirred from the ground as if by an absent wind that hung there, unchanging, for however long one watched; and then two more foggy expanses, now nearly as cold as the most desolate parts of winter and entirely coated in sheets of of ice. Then …
Then there was nothing at all. The sun was gone. The night was empty. No stars nor moon lit the desolate heavens, and the darkness was something unearthly. Lumos charms shone only weakly, their light faltering a few feet from wand-tip. The Deathstick, in its terrible power, shone through unaffected, and Violet took the lead, holding it high.
No, Violet realized, the sun isn't gone. It set.
Behind them, pressed low against the ground, a small globe of warm yellow shone faintly, though it provided no illumination at all. Ahead, other lights were similarly visible on the horizon, so dim as to be visible only now that darkness had fallen.
There was a terrible otherness to the sight, like sense and reason had been inverted. It was just familiar enough, in an unplaceable way, to evoke a sense of haunting nostalgia, like the lingering traces of a forgotten dream. Truly, they were in the Distant Lands now. The sheer uncaring vastness ahead was like the yawning maw of a creature so colossal it could not be recognized for what it was. It made Violet's skin crawl and reminded her constantly of Esrid and the corruption that had infected her connection with Winter, which she knew to be born of this place. Despite the certainty of her resolve to find Satria before it was too late—and in this place, too late could not be very far away at all—she was unsettled, on edge. Her fingers coiled and released the hilt of her blade, and the back of her neck itched, low instinct screaming in warning that something was out here with them, that their every step was being watched.
Which would be worse? For this waste to truly be empty or for it not to be?
"Merlin, Violet," Jon groaned, his voice instinctively hushed. "Can we please not have this discussion right now?"
Violet's lips twitched. "Forewarned is forearmed, or something alone those lines. Personally, I—" She went very still. "I didn't say that out loud."
"You sure you're feeling all right? You sound perfectly normal to me, acerbic quips and all."
"Not that. The first part, I didn't say it. If you heard what I was thinking, then …"
A slow, sly breeze slid over her skin, rustling her hair and threading between her fingers. Whispers filled her ears, voices rising and falling over each other, at times familiar and at others strange, fragmented and intimate, things which would never be voiced. Violet did not listen further. Such words could be nothing but trickery.
Violet did not finish her sentence to Jon, instead guarding her thoughts beneath a hollow shell, but it was cold comfort; she considered herself an Occlumens of rare skill, and if she had not felt even the faintest brush of intrusion within her mind, it seemed unlikely that there was anything at all to be done except, perhaps, to cease thinking entirely. Was it even an entity which listened and echoed, or the nature of reality itself now that they had left reason behind? Perhaps here a thought could simply be as loud as a spoken word.
The darkness stretched on and on. They had food enough, though without the horses carrying it was a chore, but spirits were low. Adversity, Violet was accustomed to; an enemy, an obstacle, suffering to be endured, victory to be seized—but not this. Not nothing. Whole days came and went where they may as well have made no ground at all for all that their surroundings changed. When hours passed without a word said between them, the sounds of their rhythmic footsteps blended with the whispering wind to induce a nearly dreamlike state where one could forget their own name. The best remedy for this hypnotic dissociation, Violet found, was to converse with Jon. She had long since ran out of anything remotely insightful to say, so she had resorted to starting pointless arguments, which annoyed him, amused her, and kept them both sane.
It occurred to Violet, then, just how uniquely cruel Maeve's exile of Esrid had been. To be alone in this place, well, it was no wonder what became of him.
"Jon, look." Violet pointed. Ahead, barely illuminated by the farthest reaches of the Elder Wand's light, lay something on the barren ground. It was a banner. Satria's, again. An ill omen if there ever was one.
The shaft was broken, the fabric tattered. A smear of dark red stained it. Blood. Violet picked it up and rubbed the cloth between her fingers.
Jon's voice was grave. "I can't think of too many ways a thing like that could have ended up here."
"No," Violet replied, equally grim. She held her wand higher, forcing it to flare brighter still, piercing the oppressive darkness. Empty gray greeted them in all directions. "But what of the bearer? If they fell, where do they lie?"
Onward there were more signs of what had occurred. The magnificent clothing of Winter's finest warriors lay torn and sullied. Weapons were haphazardly discarded, but there were no other signs of battle. No corpses stared, unseeing, up to the sky. The ground, impregnable even to Fiendfyre, was untarnished by magic. The blood on the clothing and crusted on the edges of blades did not paint the gray. It was almost … sterile. Death had been here, and it had left not a footprint.
Violet looked ahead into darkness and to the sides, where she knew the Distant Land's far-flung borders towered infinite. Could she afford to risk carrying on forward and trusting that she could find Satria, that the path was not already twisting beneath them, trusting even that neither she nor Satria had deviated from a straight course in a more conventional sense? Or might she miss her entirely, like ships in the night, pressing forward when she ought to have stepped to the side?
No. The risk was too great. If the expedition had encountered some hostile force—and clearly they had—there was no telling how their plans might change and what effects that could have. Worse, Violet might never get such an opportunity to track them. Few objects could be so powerfully symbolic as the very banner of the ones she sought.
A sacrifice would be required. Violet drew a knife.
"Ah, Violet? What are you doing?" said Jon tentatively.
Violet made a show of slowly turning and staring out over the barren landscape. "Wouldn't you know it? No beasts, just when you need one. So unless you're volunteering …"
Without waiting for a response, she brought the knife down, slashing across the veins of her wrist. Blood immediately welled up, coating her fingers in a slippery glove of red and spattering to the colorless ground, where it pooled for a time before sinking away to nothing.
"I prefer," Violet said tightly, pinching the smoothly parted edges of the gash together to slow the flow of blood, "to use an animal for these things. A bull. A chicken. That sort of thing. But we had to go and lose the fucking horses."
Gripping the broken shaft of the banner in her bloody hand, she allowed her eyes to flutter shut. Her heart thudded in her chest, each beat bringing another pulse of blood. She chose the words carefully. They were unpracticed, chosen after only seconds of consideration, but they were the right ones all the same.
Blood to blood, by blade shed, by allegiance bound;
The Elder Wand remained where it was; this was not the sort of magic suited to a wand.
Broken valor, by sister found;
By blood and power, a purpose new:
Recall those who have forgotten you.
A rush of power surged through her, strong and fiery and familiar. It was the power of her own blood, that most precious and intimate thing, given value and bartered to forces unseen. A sacrifice was necessary to achieve any meaningful reliability in Divination, and no sacrifice would match a personal one in efficacy. The price would be high, but it was clear now that it would be enough.
For a wind had begun to blow, hard and steady, and the sullen banner sprang with life until it stood proud and straight, snapping fiercely under the rush. It pointed in a direction not quite forward, in the direction that would lead them to the fae explorers and the promise of familiarity in madness and to Satria, and all Violet intended to say to her. And for as long as she could pay the price, it would guide them still.
Violet did not show her relief with a sigh, but she felt it. Divination was ever more an art than the other branches of magic, save perhaps for the Dark Arts, and was deeply rooted in instinct and veiled in inscrutable mystery. She had feared that without the shadowy guidance of Winter she would falter, but she had not. She had power and instinct of her own.
Jon watched with a wary, even gaze, but he said nothing. She gestured for him to come and, holding the fluttering banner like a lit torch, began to follow its guidance. Her blood continued to run, sustaining the wind, and the uncomfortable sensation of warmth trickling down her arm was enough to spur her to swiftness.
"Be prepared," said Violet, rolling her shoulders. "I suspect it's too much to hope that whatever made them drop this banner isn't still around."
"Of course not," muttered Jon. "We couldn't have that, now could we?"
They walked. The wind blew, and the banner led. Violet bled.
Though she showed no hint of it, and the blood's vanishing into the ground concealed it, the thin yet ceaseless red stream dripping from her fingertips was beginning to take its toll. Her heart was pounding with each step, and her hair was slick to her forehead. Paradoxically, strength was flooding her as Winter sought to arm her against whatever threat she faced, washing away the stinging burn of the cut. She leaned into it, reveling in the coldness, only for poison to leak in.
Oh, no, you can't die now. I'm not ready for you yet.
She flinched. She had gone too far. Painfully—in flesh and mind—she pulled herself away from Winter, away from its strength, and stumbled briefly as dizziness struck her. Straightening, she shook her head and carried on. The shaft of the banner was becoming a leaden weight in her weakening fingers.
There was some danger to this. With her partial separation from Winter, the uncanny recovery from injuries she had grown accustomed to would be absent, and yet another prolonged weakness was one she could ill afford, to say nothing of the often unpredictable consequences of magic of the blood. But there was no choice now. Like before, when she had abandoned the ritual of cleansing, there was only forward.
On they walked, until Violet was fighting for breath and every step was a battle to keep her pace even. But then she saw it: on the dark and distant horizon, a light that flickered and shifted. Fire. A lot of it.
A sharp smile spread over her face, and she tossed the banner aside. She held out her bloodied arm. "If you would, Jon? I'm afraid I never quite excelled at healing charms."
Violet let slip a soft, satisfied sigh as he healed her, the cut's even edges knitting evenly. She worked her wrist experimentally and gave him a beatific smile. "My hero," she cooed.
"You never needed that before," he noted, rolling his eyes.
"A temporary inconvenience," Violet said dismissively. "Don't get used to it. I still need you to take people apart, not put them together."
"I always was better at that bit."
The distance remaining was hard to judge but likely large. Violet's lips twitched.
"If only I could Apparate. It would be fascinating to discover what would happen if you tried it here."
"I hope that wasn't a hint," Jon replied, deadpan. "I would prefer myself in one big piece than a thousand tiny ones."
"Shame. Try to keep up, then."
She broke into a steady jog, and though she was tireless, her head spun with every step. Jon cursed and followed belatedly, providing continuous verbal updates on his dissatisfaction with their new, faster pace. But it was rewarded as the light on the horizon slowly grew, wobbling unsteadily and shifting in shape. By the time they arrived, Violet was actually feeling slightly better, the exertion having had a revitalizing effect. Jon was cursing.
His eyes widened as he took in the scene. "What the hell?"
His words were lost to chaos.
What had previously been a single orange glow was resolved as three separate fires, devilish in their intensity and casting harsh light over their surroundings. Three huge wooden wagons were ablaze, and the panicked shrieks of the horses carrying them rang out along with the clatter of hooves as they strained against their tethers to escape the heat. As Violet watched, a low groan sounded and the smooth, curved side of one of the wagons gave way under the stress, fire erupting outward as it folded outward and burning supplies spilled onto the ground.
Shadows weaved at the edges of the light, and it was the song of war to which they stepped. Wild screams, harsher shouts of command, and ringing metal thundered in her ears, and the air smelled of gunsmoke and fresh snow and fresher blood. Passing the Elder Wand to her left hand, she drew her sword, cold steel catching the fire's glow along its edge. Her grip around it felt frustratingly weak, and reluctantly she brushed Winter, bracing to recoil if thoughts that were not her own entered her mind.
They never came; her touch had been light enough. Good. Time to dance.
"Follow me," said Violet, raising her voice over the din. "Satria's somewhere in this mess!"
"Who are we fighting?" Jon replied.
"Anyone who gets in the way!"
And into the fray they ran. It was madness from the start, easily the most chaotic battle Violet had found herself in. There seemed to be no sides, or countless of them, and in the darkness it was nearly impossible to discern friend from foe. To conjure light was to pin a target on yourself, so they remained as shadows among shadow, peering out to catch flickers of movement. Brief flashes of light from Winter magic cut through the blackness, though they lasted no longer than lightning, and only prevented their eyes from properly adjusting.
Ahead, a tortured cry was torn from a Winter fae, her bright blue eyes filled with shock, as another figure, no more than a silhouette, cleaved her sword hand away with a double-edged axe. She staggered backward and threw out her remaining hand, and a flare of corrosive magic streaked toward her enemy. He didn't so much as slow, and the upstroke of the axe silenced her permanently.
"Avada Kedavra!" Violet snapped.
The figure crumpled, his axe clattering on the ground. Violet stalked closer and rolled over the body, only to hiss. He, like the woman he killed, was of Winter. Her stomach lurched as for a moment with an irrational certainty that Maeve must have found a way to escape her vows to Satria and chose this moment for a betrayal, but a closer look revealed that both the fallen fae wore the livery of Maeve's household forces. Her teeth ground together.
"I don't know what the fuck's going on here," she said to Jon, who was keeping watch on the darkness with a passionate focus. "These two shouldn't have been fighting. New plan: we Disillusion ourselves and don't attack anyone until we figure out who we're actually meant to be killing."
Jon nodded and tapped his head with his wand, fading from view. In the uncertain firelight, even an imperfect Disillusionment Charm was as good as true invisibility. Violet felt him tightly grasp the back of her dress in one fist and nodded, concealing herself as well. Together they advanced, Jon maintaining his steady grip to ensure they were not separated.
All around them was a wild melee, less a true battle than scattered individual duels. How many have already fallen? Satria had brought with her some forty Knights, but Maeve was supposedly supplying far more. Either the vast bulk of the expedition had already been slain, or this wasn't the true center of the fighting. Unwilling to contemplate the former, Violet instead acted on the latter possibility, extending her sense of magic in all directions and listening for the familiar star amid a storm of lights and violence. Satria was out there somewhere. She had to be.
"I found her," Violet gasped, finally picking out the right note from cacophony. A stray bolt of dark light, hurled by a madly laughing man with crazed eyes, tore through the air, and Violet reflexively slashed at it with her sword, its Winter magic unspooling around the cold iron. Jon cursed as his legs were sprayed with sparks, but his Disillusionment held, and he followed as Violet broke into a sprint.
Her apprehension deepened with every death she saw, Winter killing Winter such as she had not seen since the Massacre of Lords, fae blood spreading from still forms until both blood and body slipped away into the solid gray. Something was terribly and utterly wrong. There was no sense to the fighting, no strategy or objective. Some fought for survival, lashing out at all who approached, but others attacked with wild abandon, heedless of wounds that would soon prove mortal, often shouting nonsense words and cackling with lunatic laughter. She swore she saw a man cut off his own tongue and swallow it, while others carved strange and unfamiliar runes into their flesh that seemed to twist and reshape themselves, writhing like larvae.
Briefly, she considered laughing too. For all her gloomy predictions of the expedition's fate, not even she had imagined it would be like this.
But then a light shone through the blackness ahead, like a fresh sun in the sky, and at its center it shone upon a woman with resplendent red hair, whose hand, raised high, now fell, and silver flame boiled down from above to immolate half a dozen figures in columns of smokeless fire. She stood alongside another woman, of white hair—Satria, it must be—and around them was a tight circle of perhaps thirty, presenting the gleaming edges of sword and leaf spear-tip and bayonet to their former comrades, who circled them, whose sinuous motions seemed in the semidarkness almost hungry.
The defenders looked weary, some visibly wounded and others merely exhausted, barely moving in response to the feigned lunches of their foes. These too were fae of Winter one and all, though haunted in their features and filled with deranged energy. Some held weapons or were haloed in magic, but others appeared entirely unarmed, and it was these the defenders watched most warily. Jon tapped her back.
"That's her, isn't it?"
Violet nodded silently then, remembering he couldn't see her, whispered, "Yes."
"Looks like they might be able to use a little help."
"Probably. But look at them. They're locked in close order and on the defensive, even though the enemy's disorganized and they have Maeve and Satria on their side. And most of them will have enough magic to attack from range or firearms if not, but they're just waiting. Something's off. We don't want to stick our necks out until we know what."
The maddened fae continued to circle, occasionally darting forward only to skitter back. Eventually, one dash proved realer than the rest and a slight woman with bloodstained lips leapt forward with a curved saber in hand. Electric blue magic flashed down the length of the alchemical silver blade and outward toward the defensive ring, only to be annulled by an identical conjuration from Satria with a bright flash and echoing ring. Undaunted, the woman carried on her mindless charge and impaled herself on half a dozen spear-shafts, continuing to drag herself along them even after one of the defenders stepped out and slashed her through with a bayonet before swiftly stepping backward. Violets eyes narrowed. Her unnatural resilience and total disregard for survival survival aside, there was something about the way she flailed at the defenders with long, grasping fingers. Her sword was an afterthought. She just wanted to touch them.
Finally, she collapsed under the weight of her injuries, but with so many spears embedded in her the defense was temporarily compromised. Shrieking, more of the attackers charged the weakness, forcing the defenders to abandon their spears and draw blades, while those in the backline with rifles finally fired, sharp cracks joining the battle for the first time since Violet reached it. Why not until now? Firearms were rarely effective against anyone with moderate magical ability, but the attacking fae weren't even trying to defend themselves. It was almost as if they were trying not to kill them, or at least not too quickly if Maeve's calculated attack earlier was any indication.
Those who had survived the volley crashed into the line, which briefly buckled but held. Too close for spears, swords flashed, striking sparks. The fighting was brief. The defenders' discipline left the attacking fae cut to pieces after only seconds, staggering backward with heavily bleeding wounds or lying still on the ground. Maeve snapped her fingers, and the silver fire once again bloomed, torching two of those who had retreated and leaving the ground briefly coated in soot. But then one, dead on the ground, began to move.
"Again! Make ready!" cried Satria's familiar voice in the fae tongue. Hopefully Jon would get the picture.
The corpse convulsed, bulged, and exploded, spewing a black shadow that crawled, rising into the air and into an ethereal mass floating toward a defending fae man Violet recognized as one of Satria's Knights. Immediately, the defenders unleashed everything they had, and bursts of light tore into the shadow, each one making a small chunk of it vanish. Black flecks sprayed in all directions as it was ripped apart, and the line broke, recoiling away as they had not even against a suicidal charge. Through the opening, Maeve unleashed more fire and Satria a withering wind, and when the storm passed, the shadow was gone. Gone, except for one man in the scattered line who had his hand to his cheek. When he pulled it away, there was a patch of darkness there, like a hole in the world, and a terrible fury crossed his face before he drew a knife and slit his own throat. His body crumpled and slowly vanished into the gray ground. None of the others reacted.
Finally, Violet understood. Someone or something was controlling the treacherous fae, driving them mad and turning them against their comrades, and its goal was not to kill but to spread, and to do that it needed only touch. And some of them were not just controlled by the something but carriers of it, such that with their deaths it would burst free, a greater threat than any number of blades. That was why the defenders were taking care not to kill the enemy too quickly. If a single touch of darkness was enough to make a man kill himself rather than allow the inevitable to occur, more than one of those dark clouds attacking simultaneously would be a perilous threat indeed.
Still, Violet had seen enough. She knew just the approach to take here.
Allowing her Disillusionment to fail, she twisted the Elder Wand sharply. "Fiendfyre!"
A forked jet of harsh black and white flame streaked out, flaring larger into an inferno. Heat washed over Violet, and a hiss like radio static filled her ears as the deathly fire howled for annihilation. It reached its targets in under a second, and where it passed nothing was left but fine ash. Some of the more conscious ones futilely attempted to raise shields or ward off the fire with cold winds, all of which did nothing to even delay their fates.
One by one they burned. Whatever was inside them, it burned under Fiendfyre as well as anything else.
The last mad fae died with a rattling gasp. With no more targets, the apathetic numbness Violet had learned to associate with Fiendfyre of the Elder Wand threatened to overcome her, but she mastered herself and dispelled the flame with a swift swipe of the wand. It was done.
Fatigue crashed over her, the lingering debilitation of blood loss making its presence known. Jon appeared next to her and offered his arm, but she shrugged him off, looking up to meet the startled and wary eyes of the until-recently embattled fae. Nodding, he slipped away, catching the gaze of cruel Malicar, who would have survived when so many others did not, and began to converse with him.
Maeve, Violet noticed, was watching her very carefully, and she responded with a prideful jut of her jaw. She was not the same girl who had needed to resort to threats of mutual immolation on a lonely island in the sky.
"Children, children," Violet said, spinning the Elder Wand in her hand before slipping it up her sleeve. She sheathed her sword a moment later, and all the fae seemed to relax slightly as the bare iron was stowed. "How you squabble when I am gone."
Effortlessly sweeping through the ranks between them, Satria stepped out of the circle and approached, returning her bone sickle to her belt. She wore an expression of deep concern, and she breathed a soft sigh as she neared Violet.
"You should not have come," said Satria. "But I am glad you did."
Violet nodded, acknowledging what went unsaid and agreeing to leave it that way until circumstances were more permissive. It was easier this way. There were many things she wished to say, but she abruptly had no words for them.
"What happened here?" she asked instead, pitching her voice low so as not to be overheard. "Was it Esrid? If his, ah, influence turned Armen, then perhaps …?"
"No," said Satria. "Armen was unmade, then formed anew as a torn picture of himself, made flat and distorted like the other Reviled. That is not what happened here. Even when they turned on each other, even when they shouted praise to cruel and dark stars and tore at their own flesh, they were of Winter. Their magic still came to them, and though their grace was tarnished, it was never lost."
"Then what could have possibly done this—this travesty? How many did we lose?"
Satria pursed her lips and turned, surveying their dark surroundings. Maeve was directing the remaining forces to hunt down the remaining stragglers of the mad fae and search for other survivors. "My Knights were hit the hardest. No more than ten remain. Half of Maeve's, perhaps. Add to that the scouting force that was wiped out to the last but for the carrier, and we have perhaps thirty in total, some wounded. And most of them are Maeve's."
Well, considering the supplies burned, maybe that's a blessing in disguise.
"The carrier?" Violet asked.
Satria's expression twisted with distaste. "Yes. The source of all this. We sent out riders ahead from the start, naturally, to identify any threats before the main body reached them. One returned without his partner—one of Maeve's, but reliable according to her. He spun a tale of a vast black sphere somewhere in the darkness, so dark it devours any light that touches it. He was unusually intent on investigating it further, which should have forewarned us. Alas, we agreed to dispatch a larger force to assess it and retrieve his partner who had remained by it. Hours later, the man returned, again alone, trying to convince us to send even more. Even Maeve saw sense then and demanded a proper explanation.
"Perhaps there was still some fae in him, for he did not lie; instead he attacked her, reaching out with grasping fingers for the Queen, and I shudder to imagine if he had reached her. It could have ended there, but during his … questioning … his blood came in contact with his interrogators. They then touched others, and by the time the first contaminated went mad, it was nearly too late. Maeve and I marshaled those we could, but it was supreme chaos by then. That must have been close to a day ago now. They wore us down with constant attacks, coming out of the darkness with eyes full of stars and a desperate sort of determination. At first we did not understand the true threat, and some of those touched went unnoticed until hours later when they betrayed us at the worst possible moment."
"I found a banner," said Violet. "It must have belonged to the detachment you sent with this 'carrier.' But that would mean …"
"That you and your mortal friend passed perilously near this anomaly. No doubt. You were most fortunate. Mark my words: this is an accursed place."
"Merlin and Morgana," Violet whispered. "What next?"
"We press on, of course." Maeve, unabashedly eavesdropping, looked entirely unruffled. She smiled broadly, and for all Violet could tell, it was even genuine. "Violet, my old friend. I am most pleased to see you again."
"On?" demanded Satria. "With the supplies burned, the horses scattered, and the bulk of our numbers lost? We have found little and nothing of value, all while Esrid could be razing the Court of Winter. A wise commander would cut her losses."
Maeve laughed, flicking red hair over her shoulder. "The first hint of adversity and you wish to flee? Perhaps I have misjudged you. Leave, if you wish, but your forces stay. You are but their Lady; I am their Queen."
"They are lost then, to your arrogance and pride. You led us here knowing nothing of what we would find, nothing of the threats. We can't kill a fucking sphere, you daft fool, and you sent my Knights to damnation chasing the word of your man—"
"No," said Maeve, her voice trembling with barely restrained passion. "No, it is you who know nothing. The Distant Lands are misnamed. They are not lands at all. They are a bridge. And in time, when Esrid is dead and gone and Summer subjugated beneath a frozen sun, Winter will rule not just one world but a thousand in their celestial glory. The stars favor me, and in their name I will rule."
Violet's eyebrows shot up. Megalomania was hardly an uncommon trait among powerful fae, but this was a new low. She coughed lightly. "Be that as it, er, may, I unfortunately think there's no option but to go forward. Despite the danger, there is an undeniable potential to this place."
"At least one of you has eyes that are open," Maeve said coolly. "We set off as soon as the recoverable supplies have been put in order. I suggest you take rest while you can. And mind the whispers on the wind. They lie. Guard your mind if you can; slit your own throat if you cannot."
On that morbid note, she left, conjuring balls of her fire to orbit her and push back the darkness. Imperious commands drifted from her retreating form, growing slowly quieter as the distance between them increased. Violet rubbed a hand through her hair, sighing.
"A lot of fire for the Queen of Winter," Satria said quietly.