The Adalaantian landscape, even this close to the Fade, was very familiar. Euffie was sure she didn't just have Adalaantian parents; she'd been from this place. Euffie as she remembered herself since Derek purchased her was drawn to Aleb as her homeland; finding out Adalaant was where she’d been born was like finding out she was adopted. Adalaant and its death camp had not made a good first impression on her.

  Fuck, man, I don’t want to be from anywhere anymore.

  It did not help that the little part of her, the dread voice, desperately wanted to go deeper into the country, not away. Almost anything that tiny, scared child wanted was not good for her; she wanted masters. She wanted to stay small and weak. It was the only way she knew how to exist. Adalaant was the perfect place for a person like her, and the new Euffie wanted no part of it.

  Days of travel later, and Euffie was getting very tired of the dull pain in her head from all the times her engram took issue with the very world around her. Oppzis was working hard to keep the engram from hurting her without accelerating its decay, and he was doing a pretty good job all things considered. She was lucky it was afternoon right now, and he was in the sky; the pain from the engram was always more manageable with his help.

  From her seat on the horse behind Jadpers, Euffie shot another look at the Fade to the east. It seemed more active now than it had been before. They were marginally closer to it; Jadpers had rotated with another rider. Still, it drew her attention and made her uncomfortable. She felt like it was watching her, in a way Jadpers didn’t seem to share.

  Kaanel felt a similar discomfort, but he said that they were safe from the Fade and its wraith as long as they were still in Adalaant. They’d left Adalaant two days ago, but it still hadn’t attacked. Jadpers said it was because they were already far from the battle site.

  Today, however, the Fade still looked upset. It looked hungry, but it was looking at its plate in a way that made it obvious there was one item in particular it was interested in above the rest. Euffie felt like it was her, but then, she imagined so did everyone else on the plate. She was pretty sure, however, that no one else could see the figure in the mists with the tentacles in her back.

  Oppzis said it felt different too. Her eyes weren't playing tricks. Something was moving inside the Fade, something wrong.

  “Jadpers?” Euffie asked. “Do you see that thing in the mists? The lady with the axe?”

  Jadpers glanced in the direction of Euffie’s pointing finger, but shook her head and faced forward again.

  “Nope, still just you,” she replied. “Does she look like she’s getting bigger?”

  Euffie squinted. “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, the next time we catch up to Heemlik and Kaanel we’ll ask the scriptomancer if he can see her. Maybe it’s a mage thing. And besides, Heemlik will want to know that sort of thing, especially now that we’re out of Adalaant’s protected area. He’ll listen if we say to take a longer route to Saangra, if it means being further away from the Fade when his mages are getting jittery about it.”

  Euffie nodded, and held tight to the Prisnidine as the horse picked up its pace. She wanted to look away from the apparition; it had given her quite the scare when she first got a good look at it, but that had been an hour ago. It was fading now, like a creature in water sinking deeper out of view.

  "So," Euffie said as they trotted forward again, "How long have you all known Saangra? Aren't lunomancers also hated in Adalaant?"

  "Of course they are; aren’t you from here?” Jadpers said sarcastically. “Sorry,” she added. “Memory engrams are the worst. I've never had one, but you see a lot of 'em up in Ecliptica."

  "Do you ever rescue lunomancers from the Gaar?"

  "Lunomancers are a rare thing," Jadpers said, "and I doubt they'd need a ragtag bunch like us. The only one I know is Saangra, and I'm pretty sure she could rule the world if she wanted. Kind of like Foteeslm’s trying to do. We're lucky she's on our side. If only she wasn't so afraid to kill people …"

  Oppzis said the thing in the Fade was getting closer. Euffie turned her head and saw the figure visibly turning and changing.

  "Jadpers!" she called out. "Look! The Fade!"

  Jadpers turned eastward as the horse continued on. Her wooden features creased.

  "Holy shit," she cursed. "I can see it now. Heemlik probably can too. We need to rally with the other scouts!”

  Jadpers signaled with her hand and called out to the riders ahead. They saw her immediately, since the approaching Fade had already turned their heads.

  We aren't gonna have time, Euffie realized. The Fade itself, with the shadow inside riding it like a wave, was visibly rushing across the ground toward them. It started at walking speed, but then it picked up. Oppzis impressed on her that she needed to do something, now. There was a spell she could cast that had a good chance of working.

  A good chance?! she thought back. Oppzis explained that the entity in the Fade was over-exerting itself, and that it was pushing against a boundary Oppzis didn't fully understand. Lunomancy of any kind would be detrimental to it. The Fade was hoping Euffie didn't try it and instead pointlessly attempted to flee.

  Well, what spell do I cast?

  Oppzis said to do the same thing she'd done when she sprinted straight into the wall of mist on that night two months ago: open herself up to him, point her hands in the right direction, and relax. That was hard to do while trying not to fall off an accelerating horse, but she would do her best.

  “Jadpers, it’s almost to us!” Euffie cried. Jadpers was already veering off-course to avoid it. The scouts ahead were returning to them but the Fade would beat them by at least a minute. Behind them, the rest of the party halted, and Euffie saw them backing away.

  “I can see that!” the Prisnidine replied. “Hold on tight!”

  “No, stop!” Euffie said, pulling on Jadpers' shoulders. “It’ll catch us if we run! My moon says I can stop it, if you’ll hold me!”

  Jadpers shot a glance over her shoulder. “What? You’re gonna blast it away with magic?”

  “Yes!”

  Jadpers seemed to consider this. The Fade had stopped a few miles away, but out of it had sprung the Fadewraith, levitating high in the air with her enormous axe held out to one side. Her body dripped a black fluid to the ground below, and tentacles sprouted from her back.

  For some reason, the mists seemed to be tugging at her, like a wall of hands. Euffie couldn’t make out much detail of her face, but even at this distance, the engram did not like it when she looked at the creature.

  But the dread voice did.

  Jadpers was saying something, but Euffie couldn’t hear her. She was too busy telling the dread voice to stuff it; every time it pleaded or said the Fadewraith’s name or her title, the engram screamed and stung like hell. It was worse than it had been since waking up in the Gaar.

  “Euffie!” Jadpers shouted. “Are you gonna run through it again?”

  With Oppzis’s help, Euffie managed to talk over the dread voice until it shut up. She was grateful to Jadpers for shouting at her. Euffie went with a script as Oppzis fed it to her; he’d gotten her past the Fadewraith before, and he could do it again.

  “No, I’m going to blast it with magic like you said! Now stop and hold me up. You’re never gonna outrun it!”

  To Euffie’s surprise, Jadpers actually listened. She tugged on the horse’s reins. The animal obeyed, reluctantly, at least long enough for Jadpers to dismount and haul Euffie off too. She held up Euffie like a new baby being presented to the village, or as an offering to some great beast’s gaping maw. Euffie felt the breeze rushing around her to get away from the monster she’d just demanded an audience with.

  Euffie’s engram was furious with her. She cried out in pain as the Fadewraith drew to within a few dozen feet. She was a short woman, a head shorter than Marthera had been. She was a grotesque sight, oozing black blood from multiple deep cuts in her torso and across her limbs. Her leg looked like it had been hastily re-attached with glue. Her clothes stuck to her body almost the same way. They looked like one big Fadereach splotch covering the woman’s body. Her left eye was black as if it were bloodshot but with black blood. Her hair and stomach hung from her with the same looseness. The axe in her hand was an unstable cross of sharpened stone and mist. As she neared the ground, tentacles shot like grappling hooks out of her back and stabbed into the ground, hoisting her and supporting her a few feet up off the dirt. Her face only grew more strikingly familiar. Underneath all that fresh, clearly unattended damage, it looked a lot like Euffie’s.

  Euffie was in too much pain to think any further on the matter, and she needed all her remaining focus to follow Oppzis’s instructions, not break through her engram like she did when she saw Marthera again. The only stable thing about the Fadewraith was the malice in its eyes when it looked at her. Euffie raised her hands, and pointed the open palms at the approaching figure. The tentacle legs around the Fadewraith uprooted themselves and stabbed down into the ground again to “walk” her toward her prey. When Euffie looked into that face, she felt the dread voice within stronger than she ever had before, stronger even than when she’d been around Marthera. This woman made Euffie feel tiny, infinitesmally unimportant. Bothersome. Weak. Needy. A waste. The engram could protect her from remembering who this was, but it couldn’t stop everything about how her gaze made Euffie feel. In short, Euffie had known this person, but she did not want to.

  “Do your thing!” Jadpers shouted. The Prisnidine was standing her ground, but her voice was filled with that tense anger that keeps soldiers alive when they have to trust someone. "What are you – "

  "I'm trying to concentrate," Euffie interrupted. Silvery light appeared around her outstretched arms pointed toward the Fade. The figure in the scorching clouds stopped in front of them, her head tilting like her grin as the tentacles lowered her awkwardly to the ground. She appeared amused by the silvery magic Euffie was summoning.

  Stolen story; please report.

  It occurred to Euffie that Jadpers was probably deeply unnerved by that axe; as a cross between a tree and a more standard human, and with skin the texture of wood, axes were bad news.

  “Draining all your blood kills anybody, Yoof, not just a sinner.” Euffie figured an axe in the face was the same.

  Oppzis reminded her to focus. Her magic was crackling painfully. She needed to get out of his way. He couldn't cast a very strong spell without her help, but he needed to be driving.

  "Holy shit, that’s a lot of silver!" Jadpers said. The other riders were drawing nearer, but Euffie couldn't see their reactions.

  “Hello, you little brat,” the Fadewraith said, limping toward her. Its axe dragged a line in the Fade-splotched dirt. Misty gouts fell and burned the ground around them. Euffie noticed tugs of mist pulling at the Fadewraith’s shoulders and legs, as if she were walking against the wind or up a river. The Fadewraith seemed to be struggling against its source, and it helped Euffie deal with the spike of pain at hearing the creature’s voice.

  Euffie could feel the force between her palms blossoming. Oppzis commanded her to release the magic, now, before it spiraled out of control. She gasped and let it go. At the moment she released it, she realized just how much energy she’d stored up. It was like setting down something heavy and noticing just how much effort you’d been putting into holding it.

  Euffie's magic arced away from her and struck the ghastly lady’s hastily raised axe blade. There was a scream that no one deserved to hear. Euffie’s hands felt frail, the opposite of itching where instead of the body pleading for you to touch it, the body pleads not to be touched. It even takes issue with the wind. It threatens to disintegrate if you so much as wave it in the moving air.

  “I will finish this last thing!” the Fadewraith screamed as the silver magic dissipated out to either side of her. Her axe blade was scorched and worn, reduced to a jagged club by the lunoplasm Euffie had just showered it with. The tentacles around her writhed with white burn marks up their lengths. Jadpers held Euffie firm, though she took several steps back. She pulled Euffie closer to her chest, to transfer some of her weight to Jadpers’ legs.

  “You will not get away unpunished any longer!” the Fadewraith bellowed, striding closer.

  Oppzis told Euffie to do it again. Grunting and straining, she brought her hands together, but then Jadpers dropped her to the ground and drew her own sword.

  “Hey!” Euffie shouted, trying to get to feet she didn’t have. The magic dispersed around her. Euffie could hear horsebeats nearby, but couldn’t turn to look.

  “She’s weak! I’ll handle her!” Jadpers shouted. “Heemlik! Help me!”

  The heavy, deteriorated axe slammed into Jadpers' sword. She dodged away so the axe missed her by an inch, but her blade was thrown spiraling away. She ducked under the follow-up swing, but took the Fadewraith’s knee full in the face. It raised its axe to finish the collapsed Prisidine. Euffie’s heart leapt at the sight; she wasn’t Jadpers, so instead of Jadpers’ life flashing before Euffie’s eyes, her death did.

  The Fadewraith grunted, interrupted by another harsh pull back toward the Fade. Jadpers scooted away, trying to lead the thing away from Euffie, but that didn’t work. With an audible snap of bone and tear of flesh, the withered Fadewraith rounded on her. The rip in her torso had widened, and more of her organs were spilling out. She raised her axe, but when she brought it down on a screaming Euffie, an engram appeared in the way and cracked blocking it. A pair of arms grabbed Euffie’s shoulders and started dragging her away.

  “Kaanel, take her to the horse!” Heemlik’s voice ordered. He ran forward, plunging his rapier into the Fadewraith’s black eye. Her axe was stuck to the engram, and before she could react, he stabbed her several more times in rapid succession down her neck and side. Black blood poured out of her in little streams like a beer barrel. With wounds like that, where was the blood getting the pressure to escape her? It was as if her body was trying to fall apart faster. The mists tugged her ever stronger back into their embrace.

  “Let go of me!” Euffie snapped, yanking against the hands under her arms. She didn’t know who this woman was anymore, but after that attempt to bisect Jadpers, this was personal. With a shout and a rush of magic, she threw her arms forward out of Kaanel’s grip.

  The Fadewraith released the axe, and had a new one half-formed before the first had fully dissipated. Her flesh visibly deteriorated, like a corpse being eaten in real time. The axe passed through Heemlik’s rapier, hardly nudging it. When it came back around, though, the mists had mostly hardened, and it slammed into his chestplate with enough force to send the Eerind heir tumbling away in the dirt with his rapier clattering beside him.

  Oppzis said Euffie only needed to hold on a little longer. She could feel her power loosening the very fabric of her body. She didn't know what spell this was. Oppzis explained that it was hardly a spell at all. It was like calling iron a sword. It wasn't a sword, but it could be one, and it didn't need to be a sword to smack people and hurt.

  “Heemlik!” Kaanel shouted, leaving Euffie alone to help his husband. Behind the Fadewraith, Jadpers groaned and pushed herself up on her arms. Her dazed green eyes sought out Euffie, and widened, silver power reflecting in the irises and against her disheveled black hair. Around her, the tentacles from the Fadewraith’s back writhed and recoiled from the witch on the ground.

  “Euffie! What are you - “

  “I said I’m fucking concentrating,” Euffie growled, and released the spell for the second time. The weakened Fadewraith took it full-brunt. There was another scream as it collapsed on the ground a few feet behind Jadpers, one of its arms toppling off and sliding away along with the axe it clutched. The body held still. Even the mists no longer tried to pull it back toward them.

  There was silence for a moment. Then, in eerie unison, the tentacles from the Fadewraith’s back reached down and gripped the corpse. Some of them stabbed into the ground, lifting the limp frame a few feet off the dirt, its remaining limbs dangling beneath it as they walked her back toward the seething mists, dripping a trail of darkened gore. The Steppe Hounds and Euffie watched wordlessly as the Fade swept its servant back inside, like the corpse of a poorly behaved pet it found run over by a cart in the street.

  And just like that, the threat was gone. The Fade was still far too close, having consumed a mile or so of territory just to get to Euffie. That woman had hated her. Euffie wouldn’t explain it if asked, even if the engram wasn’t prohibiting her. That lady hated Euffie with so much passion it was contagious. Euffie didn’t feel pride in that woman’s presence. She felt nothing but shame, and a keen awareness for everything people did for her. She felt greedy, eating and sleeping with the Steppe Hounds when she didn’t even have legs to stand on. She felt dirty, riding their horses and having Jadpers carry her everywhere else. The longer she thought about that Fadewraith’s face that so resembled her own, the more Euffie got the urge to hide somewhere until the Steppe Hounds left her behind.

  Then, Euffie all but fell on her back. She struggled to remember where she was. The sound of a harpsichord being played poorly drowned out distant noises like the wind and the Fade’s scorching turbulence. She saw a clear, orange sky above, and let her silver-glowing eyes get lost in it while her engram settled. Her body’s earlier frailty felt strong as an ox compared to now. Her arms tried not to twitch despite how much energy had just crackled around them, like resisting the urge to cough with a sore throat. It hurt not to scratch that itch, but any scratch felt like it might deglove her entire arm.

  Someone was calling to her, but Euffie could barely make out her own name until she saw Jadpers’ face filling her view, and saw the woman’s mouth forming around the word. She had a bruise on her face where the Fadewraith had struck her, but it still warmed Euffie’s soul to see that face occupy the sky.

  “Euffie! Euffie, are you all right? Heemlik and the other scouts have gone back to the main force. I’m the lucky girl who gets to haul your sorry ass back up on my horse and watch after you. Come on, up you get.”

  Euffie grunted as the Prisnidine’s firm hands and arms slid under her back. Her uniform protected her fragile flesh from most of the friction, but she swore she could feel herself bleeding underneath the cloth. Or maybe that was just sweat. What did it matter; she didn’t even want to be awake right now. Jadpers was saying something about how awesome she looked sending that crippled Fadewraith back where it belonged.

  “Just put me back on the horse,” Euffie managed. With some effort, Jadpers did so.

  “You’re not as light as you think you are, no offense,” Jadpers grunted, hopping up on the horse in front of Euffie. Euffie tried, she really did, but as she drifted toward unconsciousness, she could barely make out a thing her friend was saying. There was a sound like rushing wind, something about the Fade moving again.

  “Ung- huh?” she tried, lifting her head and turning to see that the Fade had retracted back into itself, leaving a scorched, purple-stained stretch of land. Then, it had launched out a long tendril of mist between their horse, and the rest of the Steppe Hounds. Jadpers cursed; they were separated. The Fade was trying to cut off the refugee convoy, make them take an even longer way around, perhaps even force them to forego reaching Saangra. The mist kept going further and further west, as if drawing a line on a map.

  Euffie saw Sun-Beak just make it through the towering mass, and Heemlik turning around to shout something.

  Several moments passed, but the Fade didn't turn to face them again. It was hellbent on its new targets.

  "Well … " Jadpers said, turning the horse northward. "Shit."

  "We're just heading off?" Euffie said, frowning through her exhaustion. She slumped against Jadpers’ firm, reassuring back.

  "Heemlik will take care of the other refugees, and I'll take care of you. Not the first time we've been separated by surprise."

  "Oh … "

  With that, they cantered away. Hit with another wave of exhaustion, Euffie wrapped her fragile, crackling arms around the Prisnidine. Maybe it was just exposure, but she felt comfortable touching someone, for the first time she could remember with the engram on. It had cooled off now, and as she drifted off to sleep, the guardrails on her past started melting away, and the dread voice got to sit at the head of the table.

  Jadpers arched herself to make a more comfortable sleep.

  ***

  Kriisti threw her hands at the inner wall of mist. The vapor coalesced and hardened to withstand the blows right where her fists impacted it. She could feel her strength flowing out of her with every motion, like bubbles out of her mouth underwater. She was fading quickly. She was falling apart at the seams. She had pushed herself to get her final revenge. She’d saved the weaker target for last, and it hadn’t even worked. The brat didn’t even have legs, and had stopped her with the most basic spell in a witch’s arsenal. If only her damned master hadn’t been dragging her away the entire time.

  Kriisti knew where this was going before she heard the sound of an axe grinding on course earth behind her.

  "You little monster!" she screamed at the horse carrying her target away. “You come when I call you!”

  Her throat, while in much better condition than Deledrim's had been, still gave off the wear and tear of Fadely possession. Her brown, lean Severidian dress, ruined by decay even before the Fade reanimated her, swayed around her in the windless, dead air. Her decrepit skin and hair was little improvement. She was like a beetle trapped in a jar for too long.

  The horse carrying the girl who had ruined Kriisti’s life crested a hill and disappeared from view without so much as turning back. To top it all off, the girl hadn’t even the decency to be awake for Kriisti’s final demand she return.

  Then, Kriisti grew very quiet, and very still. The Fade was even less company than a moon was, even though it literally surrounded her instead of hanging up in the sky. For a few minutes, Kriisti was alone with the one person she hated even more than her family: herself. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes; it oozed over her like a blanket made of lava.

  They were not good memories. She witnessed them trickling out, like dead bugs falling out of a beautiful box.

  She said nothing to the Fade, and especially not to its new servant behind her. The Fade was a cruel master, and it used cruel servants. Kriisti knew that very well.

  Kriisti slid down the misty Fade's border with a sound like sizzling oil. She left a trail of purpled ooze too weak to stick to her. An alarming portion of her front sluffed off on the wall. When she had slumped to her knees, she heard an axe clang against the dirt behind her with the finality of the door to Lady Deledrim’s tomb.

  Kriisti sucked in whatever passed for breath in this place, and drew herself up on her knees. With eroded features, she turned to face her final death. She didn’t recognize her replacement, which was just as well, or she might add another person to her failed hitlist. Even though she’d run herself ragged and out of time, without taking either of her targets with her, her last thoughts before the axe came down were: fucking finally.