Thunder rumbled across the sky in the seconds following Tess's return to the ground. She assessed her surroundings, cautiously projecting her perception into the sparse woodland around her. Moments later, a soft step sounded as Ruenne’del landed to her side.

  A smaller ball of light came zooming down from the sky, before orbiting the two of them in a lazy circle.

  After leaving Ori’s cabin, they had found Lucas, who had flown them tens of miles south. Once Ruenne’del confirmed the location, all three dismounted the enormous bird and made for the ground.

  Tess still could not get over how, almost overnight, she had changed. From a gawky village hunter-girl with few prospects, to someone who could turn into a lightning bolt and float in the sky. A giddy mix of power, potential, fear, and apprehension churned in her gut. She loved who she was becoming; even so, in the previous weeks, the fear of messing up this opportunity had pushed her far beyond what she thought she was capable of.

  She understood it now: the sort of trials and challenges Ori had faced might not have suited her. Where Ori made a path for himself when none existed, Tess would have floundered, hemmed in by a narrow sense of what was possible and her own modest desires. But when others set her goals, even extreme ones, she always seemed to find extra strength in meeting them and in living up to expectations, both her own and those placed upon her.

  At her summons, her Salt Sp?rstān appeared in her hand. The slender crystalline longbow felt like a weightless extension of her arm. What should have been a tall, unwieldy staff moved like a sail in the wind, always pulling her towards where she meant to go.

  Tess smiled, remembering Ori’s reluctance to soul-bind the set to her. He had claimed he could make a vastly improved version soon, and that upgrading this one would not be worth the future pain. But to Tess, the fact that the first thing he crafted after returning from Thornecross was for her, mattered more than he knew. The set was miraculous and absolutely perfect, and the artefacts and abilities that came with it already felt like cheating.

  “You wouldn’t know we were heading into battle, given the smile you’re sporting,” Freya called out.

  “I can’t help it,” Tess said, after trying, then failing to straighten her face.

  “It’s your trial,” Ruenne’del told her. Simple words, but they finally settled Tess into the right frame of mind.

  “Alright.” Tess let out a slow breath, replaying everything she’d learned from her scouting runs with Caoimhe. “The nest should be in Sablemere Ford, or what’s left of it. This path takes us across the valley, so we should get an overlook as we approach. Rue, can you help with the glamour? I’d like us kept out of sight the whole way, if possible. Freya, if you could cast the ritual now, please.”

  Ruenne’del made a vague, careless motion with her hand. Tess felt it at once: a subtle shift in the way the world noticed them, as if their outlines had been pushed gently out of focus.

  Beside her, Freya transformed. Her glowing sprite form shed a scatter of alchemical dust, then a surge of mana flashed through the air.

  “Done. Does it work?” Freya asked.

  Tess closed her eyes. Immediately, she sensed the others’ presences as a warm, fuzzy pull, growing stronger the more she focused on it.

  “It’s working,” Tess said.

  “Good. That one should last about a day, with the range covering a valley or two,” Freya replied. A light weight settled back onto Tess’s shoulder.

  It was a simple team ritual, binding them as a unit and giving each member a physical awareness of the others for a moderate period. There were more sophisticated group rituals, including permanent ones, but this was among the easiest and most practical one for a team Tess did not expect to fight alongside often.

  Freya settled on Tess’s shoulder. Then the three of them slipped into the forest, moving with care through wet undergrowth and thin stands of pine. The climb grew steeper. Tess kept her breathing quiet as the past few weeks of lessons and hard-won experience replayed in her mind.

  She had learned about her affinities, teamwork, decision-making, and advanced forms of archery. She had also learned what set her apart. Where most High Elves leaned towards elemental or celestial affinities, hers sat somewhere between Astral and Material. A muddy mix for many, but for Tess, it felt right. Astral carried a pull towards dreams and the mind. Material fed her fascination with gems and crystals, and, unexpectedly, her new joy in clouds, weather, and storms.

  That strange combination was why Caoimhe had been so grave when she spoke of her potential evolution. Whatever sub-race Tess might become, it would be unlike any that existed now, and the consequences might reach further than even her mentor could predict.

  Tess pushed the thought away as they crossed the valley paths. She returned her focus to managing her presence and sharpening her perception. With her Astral affinity, she could mask herself in a way that echoed the fae, nowhere near Ruenne’del’s effortless mastery, but enough to make her difficult to notice by most senses at greater rank or below.

  With the Trial of Radiance applied, the effect deepened. Her glamour had grown strong enough to manifest small objects like arrows, that she could loose and propel as if from a bow, even at short range. It was useful, but it drained her quickly, and the results were far weaker than anything fired from the Salt Sp?rstān.

  They crested the ridge.

  The trees thinned into a clearing, and the valley opened beneath them like a gangrenous wound.

  Sablemere Ford was gone. In its place sprawled a smear of rotten men and infernal demons across the narrow floodplain. Cook fires dotted the ruins in ugly clusters, smoke rising in thin streams from the ground. Between the fires stood cages in rows, some tipped into mud, some upright, all crowded. Pillars rose from the churned earth like stakes set for a grim harvest. Captives were chained to them, nailed to them, or left slumped at their bases in positions that tightened Tess’s throat.

  The flesh traders were easiest to recognise. Groups of humans with nets and hooks, with cages on wheels and heavy lengths of chain. Some shouted and laughed around the fires, while others kept their heads down, dragging captives, sorting weapons, pushing carts.

  Threaded through them were the dusk-bent, the ones touched too deeply by infernal influence. Tess couldn’t always see the corruption clearly up front, but as a mass she could feel it: a wrongness in the air, a harsh taste at the back of her throat. Those men and women moved with a different set to their bodies, too stiff or too loose, as if something inside them had replaced their normal emotions with a hunger that was rapacious and profane.

  Behind the charred remains of the old town lay the pit.

  From this angle, the depth was hidden, mercifully concealing whatever waited below. Still, Tess’s grip on the bow went white. It could’ve been her entire family in those cages, on those pillars, or down in that pit. She remembered how helpless and hopeless she’d felt back then. How she’d fled, then begged others to help them without even trying to save them herself.

  Now, with hindsight and the hard wisdom Freya, Ruenne’del, Caoimhe, and Seraphine had forced into her, Tess could imagine different choices. She pictured herself hunting mortal flesh traders one by one, using the cover of the forest and her local knowledge, using patience instead of panic. Perhaps she might’ve awakened, though more likely, she would’ve died first. Freya had been blunt about it. The water level between awakening and death left too much of the cup empty to be worth it for most.

  Using Caoimhe’s methods, Tess counted and judged the force below. Roughly ten thousand in total, most mortals or low Awakened. Only around a hundred held at Greater ranks or higher, the kind where lifeforce and abilities made them harder to kill and far more dangerous in their retaliation.

  For Tess, the imps were the most dangerous, followed by the succubi. Dark spellcasters mixed among the humans also ranked high on her threat rating.

  Among Caoimhe’s many lessons on team compositions and strategies was her way of assessing groups. While a mix of brawlers and ranged spellcasters fared well in most situations, the most deadly and hardest to deal with were groups built around speed, range, and control. Ranged damage, without friendly fire to worry about, scaled far better with team size and strength, while speed was often more reliable for staying alive than defensive abilities or strategies that required linchpins to prop up otherwise more vulnerable group members.

  For the group below, while on the surface it looked like a disorganised rabble, there was a core of very serious spellcasters at the Sovereign rank, with some even having reached their first racial evolution.

  Her strategy was clear: park on the ridge, whittle down the mortals between Tenth Mark arrows, and then prioritise the spellcasters with soul-rending crystal spear-bolts. While Ruenne’del dealt with whatever rushed at her through the forest, Tess would reposition with Storm-Step whenever she faced too much return fire.

  “Do you see their leader?” Tess asked Ruenne’del.

  “He will appear later. When he speaks, I will respond.”

  “You want to speak with him?”

  “Not with words,” Ruenne’del said, her smirk decidedly vicious.

  “Alright.” Tess returned her grin, the fairy’s confidence infectious. “Is everyone ready?”

  “I’m ready,” Freya said.

  “It’s time,” Ruenne’del said.

  Tess pushed off the ground and re-summoned her bow as she settled into her stance. She took several slow breaths that did little to settle the nerves churning in her gut. From her void storage ring quiver, she drew a simple wooden shaft with a bodkin point and lined up a shot into the valley.

  It was just over a mile to the man she’d chosen, one who had been cooking a suspiciously person-shaped leg over a fire. The bend of smoke from the cook fires gave her a read on the wind. But with her strength and accuracy driven up to Sovereign rank levels by the Trial of Radiance and the Pinnacle-rank Arcane Longbow she wielded, the arrow’s speed would leave little time for wind or gravity to matter.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  With her father’s Headseeker archery carved into her spirit by years of hunting, Tess drew back. The silver arcane string brushed against her mana regeneration without touching her reserves, and satisfying tension built until the string pressed against her cheek.

  She loosed.

  Half a second later, an arrow sprouted between the eyes of a mortal man as a muted crack echoed across the valley. He dropped to the ground, dead, and for a moment, hardly anyone reacted.

  Tess waited with bated breath, watching for someone to notice. One squat, filthy man did, sat near the fire picking his nose. He stared at the dead man with an arrow in his skull, his thoughts moving slowly, as if his mind couldn’t register the scene as abnormal. Perhaps, with all the death and suffering they’d been party to, a corpse wasn’t unusual.

  Regardless, Tess didn’t give him time for his mind to catch up. Another arrow sprouted from the side of his skull.

  A third, fourth, and fifth arrow followed, each one targeting a man or monster who had noticed the fall of another. She could feel the set effect, Marksman’s Poise, sharpening her focus and improving her speed as she settled into a flow state, killing ten before ten breaths had been taken.

  With the eleventh shot, mana drained from her reserves only to be refilled from a distant Lysara. That rush of mana out, then in, left her blinking away the dizziness, despite being used to it, as a half-yard javelin of crystal formed between bowstring and the bow’s grip. With mana, she could also control the tension of the bow, applying more of her strength into the shot, as Peritia that had just been earned was invested into this arrow that would pierce more than just flesh.

  Tess loosed. The Tenth Mark crystal spear flashed across the valley, punching through the face of a Sovereign-ranked imp. Its head exploded into a bloody mist as the arrow shattered into crystal fragments on the ground behind it. With Peritia thickening the air from her successful hit representing a thousandfold return, Tess had the confirmation of her kill. She was unsure whether the soul-rending properties of the arrow mattered; however, it was good practice, and there would be much harder targets to deal with, and soon.

  The Killing Dance of the Morrow Wind sang through her veins as a pirouette carried her partner, Hildseax, whistling through the air around her. Her steps, her breath, the roar of onrushing demons, all of it became music. She let herself settle into the song: peace inside chaos, freedom found within the chains of Foresight, a structure she rarely enjoyed, a beauty in violence she otherwise disdained.

  As a Seelie princess, it should have been beneath her to be involved in such squabbles, to personally deal with some no-name band of infernals, monsters of the sort either of her beloveds could annihilate with a thought. Yet here she was, dancing through blood and spinning limbs, finding her own joy as she made sport of how long she could play without a single drop landing on her sweater.

  She leapt, her wings buzzed. Her form twisting as Hildseax followed her swing, followed the steps of her dance, flowing through throat and spine as another head spun away, its owner never knowing she’d been there, even in death, a death incidental to her dance.

  A crack of thunder rolled through the air, signalling her sister’s reshuffle and the start of a new song. Now, the Killing Dance of the Hollow Heart played in her mind, her Presence inverted, and with a large step through the small unseens of the forest, wind-blades of Glamour parted necks and split skulls in her wake.

  She was a Seelie Princess, but what did that matter beside the future that had opened up to her now? A future that would have ceased tomorrow with the natural end of her life, had she not met him. A future tyrannical in its banality and meaninglessness, and far worse than any she could imagine. And now, a future she could rewrite with her own hands, one that was unknown, mysterious, wonderful, and free.

  Glamour extended the length of Hildseax as she carved across the space between her and her elven sister, the blade’s edge passing cleanly through several trees and flesh and bone without slowing. She had grown increasingly fond of Tess. A village girl who had been almost too humble, too mundane to have normally caught her notice. And still, it had taken her far too long, almost embarrassingly so, to recognise the spark of portent Ori had seen in her with a glance.

  A spark she had taken upon herself to nurture and develop, a nurturing that had brought her experiences novel and intimate, joys that had her faith in her beloved deepening as Tess’s potential bloomed into someone even Fate would need to take notice of.

  She stepped through another small unseen and emerged, flowing with the music of the Hollow Heart. The paths of foresight crossed beneath her feet and rose to meet the sweep of Hildseax, its edge never still, always flowing, while wisps of Peritia thickened the air. Above and behind her dancing form, the whistle and crack of skilful arrows massacred foes, writing a new entry into this realm’s legend in the Library of Fate.

  She chose a new dance, one with quicker steps to match her sister’s arrows: the Killing Dance of the Blood Sparrow. Her wings hummed as she moved, feet light and fast. Hildseax flashed in time with each shot, Glamour lengthening the blade with every crystal spear.

  Soon, Tess transformed into a bolt of lightning as a rain of spells fell upon their position, and she followed her through the unseen of the sky. The low cloud of the day hid the feather-falling elf as she fired crystal bolts from above. The whistle of wind, the cries of alarm and roars of anger, the shattering, tingling crunch of crystals, all of it braided into her music as she paused her dance as they hovered in the sky.

  “He comes,” she said, using the voice of the wind.

  Tess looked at her, expression hard, her eyes holding a question.

  “I will go, you will kill him.” She said in answer.

  The Killing Dance of the Falling Star carried her through cloud and wind and down onto the unseen of the dead village. She landed softly as Presence and Spirit crystallised into Aura, and the full nature of a Princess of the Seelie Court unveiled itself upon Twilight for the second time.

  The winds shifted. The clouds began to turn, as if in prelude to a whirlwind, and stars woke in the daylight sky.

  Though she was one among thousands amongst her siblings, her share of Grace as a Seelie princess made her earlier sport of avoiding raining blood meaningless. Born of the union between a Celestial and an Arch-fairy, her uncommon beauty and vivid presence had only sharpened since she’d mastered inversion. Unleashed, her Presence alone was enough to melt spellcraft and curses below the Immortal rank. Now, after unifying Presence with Spirit, her Aura could merge into her Glamour, thicken the air with her whims, bend probability and fortune in line with her desires for moments long enough to be meaningful, even to Fate.

  To the demons massing in the ford, the effect was immediate. She was a sun among stones, and even the glare of her reflected light could blind. It shattered the will of all but the hardiest mortals, many dropping to their knees in confusion and awe. Fear made the Awakened halt and stare, until Aura, Grace and Glamour hardened blades of wind that took the heads of those too slow to move or think.

  The Killing Dance of the Falling Star was a procession that ended with a final, sudden flourish. The walk of the mighty, each step gathering portent and momentum for the next, the weight of Glamour, Aura, and Grace multiplying until it became impossible to ignore. She had always hated this dance, the dance that mirrored her life: a straight path she had been made to walk, inevitable, ponderous, and pretentious.

  But here, with each step, she seized control of the dance, of her life, of Fate.

  “Where is he!?”

  The infernal leader appeared, ten feet tall with wide black horns. The monster burst from the far side of a hut, its club already swinging as crystal rained from the sky all around them. Hairy and ugly and stupid, its malice was just as pungent as its stench. Though only Immortal rank, its aura suggested a devil or great demon lineage, one far more powerful than anyone else currently on this continent.

  Her steps continued as Fate turned beneath their feet.

  “You’re her, the bane’s wench!” The leader’s small red eyes fixed on her. “I have a message. If he doesn’t com—”

  She already knew the sum of it. Their meticulously crafted, multilayered trap, one built to exploit his nature, his White Mage class, his honour. One designed to force a deal, a bargain that would corrupt by degrees, one her beloved would honour even as it harmed him.

  And if that failed, deeper traps lay in store, its trigger held in the hands of the demon before her.

  She glanced towards the survivors still trapped in cages, the ones her Aura, Glamour, Grace and Foresight protected even now, from errant spells and malicious curses.

  “Are you listening??? You need to get your bastard of a—”

  Her steps drew heavier, her aura pressed all but the survivors and Sovereign rankers to their knees while Tenth Mark arrows executed them one by one.

  “You… stop this fae shit now, or else!” The demon finally noticed her dance. His earlier belligerence slipped into something wary, his voice echoing across the growing silence, a prelude to the final flourish.

  She drifted to within spitting distance and watched his balance shift onto his heels, jaw bunching as if he had to force himself not to step back. Then at last, the small mind beneath the large muscles grasped the danger he was in.

  “You fucking bitch, fuck off, else I’ll smash you to bits!” the demon roared, hefting his stone club as the dance crested.

  With his attention pinned to her, there was little left in the demon’s mind to think, to choose, to react other than how she intended, which was just as well. If it did manage to spring its trap, few in this realm could survive the consequences. And while she cared little for the fates of mortals, what little she did care was because of him.

  Besides, within the unsprung trap was a gift she was all too eager to present to her beloved.

  The music of the Falling Star roared as the demon’s club fell. A mountain of Aura and Grace rose with Hildseax’s rising, swirling motion, and her blade took the lead in the dance’s climax.

  Mithril met stone. Aura and Breath met Infernal blood magic. There was pressure in his strike, an intensity that might have troubled her in any other dance. But the tip of her sword gathered the Aura and Grace of a Seelie Princess to a point, and the stone club broke, then shattered, exploding into a rain of fragments that turned the demon’s bovine face into a ruin of bloody meat and torn skin.

  The damaged face regenerated in the breath that followed.

  She shifted back into the Killing Dance of the Morrow Wind. Hildseax became a whirlwind as she pirouetted on tiptoes around the stomping monster, its roars of rage new music. Distant thunder marked Tess’s new position, and arrows once again littered the ford.

  Hildseax sliced through thick hide, through tendons, but the magic-resistant monster was too tall for her to truly threaten, its prodigious Lifeforce able to out-regenerate all but her most desperate strikes, the strikes from songs she did not need to dance. So she did what the dance demanded: she kept moving, kept cutting, kept leading it into failure.

  Tenth Mark arrows smashed across the demon’s back, its neck, its face, and one broke off a horn as it roared again in fury. Ruenne’del laughed, deep in the throes of the dance, its flow, its joy, its freedom, freedom to express herself in this moment, freedom from class or nobility or pretence, freedom from Fate.

  With every crystal arrow, the demon weakened. Its regeneration slowed. The Breath that fed its motions and attacks came later, and with less force, as it twisted and roared and lashed out at the fairy forever out of reach.

  It stumbled. Hildseax flashed and shattered its last horn, and then a crystal spear punched through the back of its head.

  Not dead yet.

  Thankfully, her sister knew better than to hesitate.

  Forty breaths and five more Tenth Mark spears later, a tide of Peritia formed around Tess, marking the demon’s miserable demise, the end of the Killing Dance of the Morrow Wind, the completion of Tess’s trial, and the redemption of Sablemere Ford.

  Minutes later, consecutive cracks of thunder signalled her sister’s arrival. She paced forward, an arrow levelled at the fallen foe. An odd silence, broken only by the sparse cries and calls of survivors, spread through the remains of the town.

  “Is… is it done?” Tess said, chest heaving with exertion, while white knuckles belied her tension under Marksman’s Poise. “Did we get them all?”

  Freya emerged from Tess’s forehead and circled them, while she came down from the high of the killing dances. She shrugged, unable to care whether they were all dead, even as her peripheral perception caught a few mortals fleeing into the forest.

  “Your trial is won.” She said.

  Tess’s bow lowered as a slow, radiant smile blossomed.

  “Has Fate asked you to awaken?” Freya asked, transforming into her pixie form before landing on Tess’s shoulder.

  “Yes. Even with the trial, it's call is like a wind trying to lift you into the sky. But you said I shouldn’t do that yet?”

  “Let’s wait for Ori. I’ve already sent word. He’s on his way.”

  At that, she turned towards the pit full of bodies, beneath which lay the unsprung trap, her body trembling with anticipation for the wondrous futures her gift might soon unfold.