“I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I commend your ability to fight my soul fire. Still, young Thunder Watcher, from the moment I saw your pathetic little form sitting high and mighty atop that great orange pillar, you were truly marked for death,” Baroth says. “This is inevitable. Do not fight it. It will do you no good—make the pain even worse.”

  The sky, the forest, Katal itself turns black, white, and gray—all color is sapped and drained. I struggle on the ends of the antler, trying to pull myself out. Noticing this, Baroth extends his antlers out and branches them excessively, making it so that multiple antler-points dig into my insides. Bone crunches. Everything is bursting.

  I scream.

  I try delivering a backwards kick with lightning, trying to recreate my previous escape from this position. But he is too far out. I try lobbing lightning behind me, yet other antlers penetrate my arms, my hands. One antler slaps me so hard in the back that my vision gets blurred. Another strikes me across the jaw, breaking off a few teeth. One particular tooth gets embedded in my upper jaw. My mouth bleeds. It would take lightning to spit that one out—not that it matters. I am hurting all over.

  This much will break me.

  The regeneration already comes slower, despite being moderately enhanced by my angel dust.

  Where did this power come from? Why wasn’t he using this before?

  I suspect it has something to do with the entirety of the world now looking like the colors he splays in his wake. It feels as if I’d entered another realm entirely.

  Perhaps he’s simply grown stronger throughout this fight.

  The elk is laughing now, rearing its head up and down. It’s bouncing me on its head.

  Thinking is… a privilege.

  And… I… can’t—

  The antlers retract, freeing me. I spin in the air, facing Baroth, spitting blood and phlegm and hammering my fists down.

  None of my blows land, for the antlers extend once more, now piercing my front.

  He just wanted me to face him?

  Beyond a certain threshold, additional pain is useless. Everything is just blinding.

  “Actually, on second thought, please, continue struggling,” Baroth says. “Your screams are truly musical. I wonder, did your mother scream like this?”

  What?

  Upon seeing my confusion, he smiles.

  “I did my homework. What? Did that hurt your feelings Raiten? Does the lonely little Thunder Watcher miss his mommy? His bitch mother? You know, I’ll be sure to dig her up and play with her corpse once I’m done with you. Or maybe, I’ll keep your soul on the brink of death, only to bring you back to life to watch me—I still haven’t decided. Honestly, I have been planning out how to beat you for so long that I never really got around to ironing out the details of your demise. But I’ve dreamt of it. Oh I’ve dreamt of it many nights, lusting for it. You don’t know little one. You don’t understand how much I’ve obsessed over it.

  “It took so long to get the elk. But once I did, I hunted and hounded, relentless. And then I saw and studied—admired how much you’d grown. I respect your resolve to an extent, Watcher. Oh, perhaps I’ll pay with that female of yours or that stupid pet shark you keep. Maybe I’ll visit Erot and his farm. Damn I should’ve done that first actually—might’ve been better. Oh well, mistakes can be overturned. After all,” he brings me close to him, face to face.

  His black eyes bear into me. The fire catches my soul. The antlers dig deeper.

  “After all, Watcher, I am Baroth of the Eleventh Kingdom. And I am free once more.”

  Then, everything begins to tear.

  …

  Sorina:

  From a distance, I see the changing colors of the sky. The clashing of blue fire and red lightning. And then, the monochromatic colonization of all—black and white become supreme.

  And when we crest a hill overlooking a blacker forest, I finally spot them.

  My eyes widen.

  Raiten looks to be impaled by the elk creature.

  No. No no not like this damn it! Umbrahorn shakes beneath me. My enemy flies a forest away from me.

  We won’t make it.

  But… something else can.

  “Umbrahorn, throw me!” I yell.

  “Wha—What?” Umbrahorn asks, confused. Voice cracking. I want to slap the shark, but I don’t have time.

  “Remember when you threw Raiten at me? I need you to catapult me up into the air the same way.”

  “But—”

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  “No buts! We have no time. Do it!”

  Before I can chastise him again, the shark finally obliges. His top half dives underground and his bottom tail surfaces, slamming into my back with immense force. I didn’t prepare myself enough for the blow so my breath hitches as I arc into the sky, far higher than I expected.

  But that works well enough.

  I cup my hands around my lips.

  Take a deep breath, infusing my lungs with a wealth of air.

  Then, I aim my mouth at the elk.

  And I scream.

  …

  Raiten:

  They say your life flashes before your eyes before death.

  Mine doesn’t. Rather, all I can see is pain. All I can hear is pain. All is pain. All is red and dead and bloody tearing, ripping, body splitting. But then, something breaks that. I see a figure in the far distance, soaring through the sky. An angel. I think it has come to take me.

  The scream takes Baroth and I by surprise.

  It passes through us like a banshee’s screech, splitting our ears, making his bleed black and mine run red.

  Everything goes deaf.

  Sound is merely a series of thumps.

  But, for a moment, just a moment, not all is pain, because Baroth’s tearing has ceased.

  And an idea forms.

  As the elk blinks in frustration, I spit out my gum-lodged-tooth, imbuing it with all the lightning power I can muster from the thick angel dust in my blood. The dust nearly winks out. But the tooth…

  It drills straight through the elk’s head, shooting through its cranium, making its eyes twitch, gloss over. Purple blood spurts on me from the small hole. The hole begins to heal almost immediately, flesh reforming.

  I won’t let it.

  I press my thumbs into the elk’s brain-hole, imbue them with all my remaining lightning.

  And this time, I’m the one that tears.

  When Baroth starts screaming and his elk starts bleating, I cry with laughter. Blood red tears run down my cheeks as I pull. My lightning wreathed thumbs scorch his cranium, his skull.

  Purple blood and elk-brain bits gush upon me, mixing with my redness.

  “After all, Baroth,” I rasp. “I am no longer the Thunder Watcher of Clan Adachi. I am free.”

  I bring my head closer as his antlers retract.

  “And I told you, I’d kill you again.”

  The world of monochrome begins to fade—back to normalcy.

  Baroth’s body begins to twitch, convulse. Then, it goes still.

  And, we begin to fall, blood flowing in droves as the antlers retract, the soul fire disappears, and I soar away from the elk, losing consciousness.

  …

  Sorina:

  “Where is he, Umbrahorn?” I ask. The shark follows the trail of destruction left in Raiten’s wake. Chunks of the forest are decimated. Animals are scorched. Ash and earthly remnants flurry down from the sky like snowfall.

  Mist-Cloud follows close-behind us. If we need to run, Mist-Cloud is the mount I’ll take.

  I hope to all the heavens that my screaming helped. I lost sight of Raiten after that gambit, since Umbrahorn caught me and we entered the forest.

  “He should be… right here. What the—” Umbrahorn begins looking around. No, I realize. Did his trail end?

  A trail ending in nothing. A desolate clearing—the trees around us turning to ash, burning away.

  The eye of the forest, as one might call it.

  “Sniff again!” I tell the shark. He gives me a side-glare.

  “It doesn’t work like that. I’m telling you, my senses are very keen and they tell me—”

  Something big and hefty thumps right in front of us, startling both Umbrahorn and I. The shark rears up and throws me off its back in surprise.

  I roll to the left and unsheath my dagger, pouncing on our foe.

  It's the elk. Or… some hellish creature made to resemble an elk. Eight black eyes. Four clawed hooves, four regular ones. Giant, imposing antlers. One angel wing. One devil wing—now half burnt off.

  And it’s head is split in two.

  “It's dead,” I mutter.

  “Is it? Are you sure?” Umbrahorn asks. I look at him, surprised to find him hiding behind Mist-Cloud of all things.

  “Umbrahorn?”

  “Check again! I’m telling you, check!” The shark yells. Shrugging, I take my knife and slit it across the elk’s throat. Purple blood drains out, sticky and viscous—more so than normal blood. It’s almost like honey.

  “Why are you so afraid? Do you know what this is?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. I’ve never seen the prideful spirit like this. It should be amusing— yet it feels more disconcerting.

  Before I can press him, minor wind spirits surge around me. I consider asking the little sprites what happened, but instead, they start whispering frantically.

  “Run, run, run! They are coming. The soldiers are coming!” They yell.

  “Who?” I whisper. With sprites, you have to whisper—lest you blow them away. They can’t be seen by the naked eye, so spirit mancers sometimes employ them as spies—though apparently they are fickle and hard to control.

  “Catolica, Catolica!” They hiss. “Catolica, Catolica!” They say it like a mantra now.

  Then, they soar away, riding the wind currents.

  I have a quick mental debate with myself: fight or flee? I look at Umbrahorn, shaking like a little boy in his first battle. With a sigh I make a decision.

  “Umbrahorn, we have to go! Let’s hide behind the treeline, up the hillock. At least then we can nab a look at our enemies.”

  ‘Enemies’ I call them. Yet Catolica used to be my home. Your home that now steals from plague-bearing free villages, I remind myself. Your home that married you off to Sorayvlad.

  “What about the elk—“

  “Leave it, let’s go!” That snaps Umbrahorn out of his fear spell, for a moment at least. We ride up and off towards the hillock, my eyes fixed back on that dead elk. There’s something so… wrong about it. Even its corpse is menacing.

  As soon as we reach the crest of the hill, I spot Catolica troops moving into the clearing that we left. About two dozen men filter in, dressed in drab kilts and red gambesons. Front-runners—scouts. I recognize the regiment type from my father’s old troop.

  They hold their weapons out to the elk and prod it with their metal, poking some new holes into the beast. One of the men kicks it. Nothing. Then, an angry looking woman shoos the men away and kneels down next to beast. We can’t hear them, no matter how much I strain my wind senses.

  The woman spouts some orders. The men snap into motion—a dozen of them go and pick the beast up, heaving it over their shoulders. They struggle to place it on a wagon of sorts.

  Then, I spot something even more worrying.

  “Umbrahorn, you see that, right?” I ask.

  He nods. “They have him.”

  In the wagon, slumped over the side railing, is the bloodied form of Raiten.

  And Catolica has him in chains.