With the sudden appearance with no warning whatsoever, I'd wondered if it was the Spare. If Thoth had simply capitulated to practicality, prioritizing the usefulness of an extra pair of hands at the cost of her paranoid mind. But as I rose to meet her, the moment before my eyes fell to the paucity of shadow beneath her feet, I knew the truth.

  "You're… not really here, are you?"

  Other than that first, ill-fated meeting, I'd never seen her use the projection again. I had a suspicion she used it for scouting—often, when we were scouring dwarven ruins for parts and coming up short, she'd sit down, meditate, and suddenly know where to look, going to great lengths to hide it from me.

  The fact that she was giving it up now, like it was nothing, was incredibly alarming.

  "A messenger will suffice." She said, glancing down at the archivist then back to me. "I… need a few things. From my quarters. Along with whatever's in your satchel of palliatives. Assuming it's well stocked."

  "It is—You're injured?"

  I felt the fingers of concern grow tighter. Because there was no way of knowing how this played out if she'd taken a mortal wound.

  "There was an unexpected incident." Thoth said brusquely, trying far too hard to appear unbothered. "Already dealt with, and I've tended the immediate damage. But I was in a hurry to depart, and apparently less prepared than was prudent." The last word was clipped, and bitterness rang through.

  "Hang on. I'll be there shortly."

  /////

  I rifled through Thoth's quarters, once home to some dwarven lord or statesman, now littered with books and maps. My eyes caught on troop movements, circled settlements and scribbled notes written in codes, and I tried to commit as much to memory as possible while the projection watched over my shoulder, looking increasingly frail and transparent.

  "Spare weapon, rations, plenty of fresh bandages—"

  "You have a needle and thread in your pack?" She asked, voice distant.

  "Always. What else?"

  "Within the armoire, bottom right cabinet. There should be a potion and a blade."

  I threw the small door open and found the potion. Its exterior was atypically matte and clouded, shrouding the color and consistency of the contents. "There." I held it up to the light, unsurprised as it revealed nothing, perfectly opaque. "What is it? I probably have some already."

  "Unlikely. And it doesn't matter. Just be careful with it. What you're holding is the last of a very short supply." She grunted. In the reflection of a nearby mirror, I saw her press a hand to her side, wincing.

  For now, I let it go, returning to the armoire for the blade.

  Upon seeing it, my heart leapt into my throat. It was the ceremonial knife. The same one she'd left in my lung at the coronation, and the same I'd been threatened with at the edge of the throne room abyss.

  Of course you'd have me deliver the implement of my execution.

  I didn't hesitate long, just for a moment, then packed it into my satchel as if nothing was amiss. "Now what?"

  "I…" She trudged over to a map of the area surrounding the fortress, then planted her finger against a particularly craggy spot several wingspans to the south. "Am here. Taking shelter within the mouth of a very unpleasant cave."

  "Hold it." I grabbed a pen from its well and made an X where her finger was, then folded up the map and placed it in my trouser pocket.

  Her voice grew weaker as she spoke. "It would be wise to hurry."

  "I'm going now."

  But by the time the words left my lips, the projection disappeared.

  My hurried steps slowed to a stop.

  After taking a few seconds to make sure she was gone, I removed the ceremonial dagger from the bag, and dropped it at my feet. Whatever state she was in, there was no world in which I brought it to her willingly.

  That left the potion.

  I popped the cork and lifted the neck of the bottle to my nose. It was pungent, bearing the sharp ozone signature of alchemy, but once that faded the natural contents came to the forefront.

  Notes of Heart of Anjeire.

  My brows rose in surprise.

  When we'd left Whitefall, Thoth had seemed on the verge of losing her mind. There were still signs of it, from time to time, whatever cognitive malady it was that plagued her, but mostly, she'd seemingly pulled through.

  Now I understood why. At some point down the line, possibly when we were ferrying harvested mana from here to Whitefall, she'd actually found some.

  And had been rationing it ever since.

  There wasn't much point in not bringing it, beyond cruelty. But the bigger question was whether to go at all. I already knew she'd intended to kill me. Whatever happened was severe enough that she was willing to renege on our deal, end this without the duel. The truce was already broken.

  Our mutual misery was coming to an end.

  I pulled a lowhil blade from its sheath at my side. My hands trembled. It'd been so long, and I'd endured so much, that the thought of finally, finally going home, back to my family, back to Maya and the people who loved me, was almost more than I could bear.

  Not yet.

  Maya's voice reached my ears, balming the rising panic in my soul.

  I looked for her, finding no one. "If she kills me—"

  A death without the dagger will send you back to me. Every benefit intact. She needs it, she wouldn't have asked for it otherwise. Meanwhile, your greatest enemy is badly injured. You heard it yourself. Her walls are down. She's vulnerable, now, in a way she's never been.

  "I'm… so tired." My voice cracked.

  Finish strong, Ni'lend. Just a little longer.

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  "I want to come home." I whispered.

  Don't you want to see how this ends?

  There it was. I couldn't even argue. Because it didn't feel like we were finished. I hadn't pulled it off yet. I understood Thoth better, could stave her off, maybe even put up a good fight if the odds fell in my favor. But that was anything but a guarantee.

  I shoved the lowhil blade back in its sheath and packed the potion into my satchel.

  On the way out, I stopped by my spartan quarters to retrieve Maya's staff, bid goodbye to Shale and the rest of the automatons.

  And left Couha'zen for the last time.

  /////

  My legs ached as I summited another dune, wind whipping my tunic and cloak violently. My endurance was always the last to recover after we clashed, and though I'd started out at a decent pace, the wind and shifting sand had slowed me greatly. Visibility was good for now, and there was less ash to invade my lungs, but the air was still poor, and the weather was mercurial.

  I kept the craggy rocks in sight at the height of every swell of sand, trying to prepare myself.

  If she was of sound mind, hurt but not dying, she'd likely ask why I hadn't brought the ceremonial blade, and I needed to be ready with an answer.

  I reached the cave by late afternoon and found it empty. It was the right place—there was a great deal of blood. But upon further inspection, it was old, at least a day.

  Didn't reach out after it happened. There was a delay. Could have been hours to a day at most. Pride, or injuries severe enough that they hampered casting. Probably the second.

  After ensuring she hadn't simply retreated further into the cave, I stepped back out, wind stealing my voice as I shouted, yelling barely audible over the swirling din. The sand betrayed any hint of a trail, whatever blood she'd left behind either buried or carried away in a gale of scarlet grains.

  Something reached me, the scent of rot, not unlike a carcass left unscavenged. It was nearly impossible to define where it was coming from, so I moved to a vantage instead, scaling the tallest dune in sight, hoping to find something, anything, to point me in the right direction.

  I didn't find her.

  But as the wind died, and the burnished sun descended below the gray, washing the desert in glittering embers, the scene below robbed the breath from my lungs.

  Wyverns, and their assorted pieces, littered the dunes in a gore-riddled sprawl. Open jaws revealed razor-sharp teeth and forked tongues turned gray. They were missing limbs, eyes, and their leathery wings were riddled with gouges left by steel set to purpose. One was melted and charred, its entire front-half reduced to bones, only its back legs and tail intact.

  Almost immediately, I put together what happened.

  The sanctum taught hard lessons regarding wyverns. They were drawn to mana, subsisted on it. Their presence offered a belated explanation for the sudden decline in ghoul population. The fierce lizards were territorial, but they were also cunning, creatures of reason. If it was more efficient—and likely it was, considering how the mana of a single ghoul was probably less than a morsel to a monster their size—they probably banded together to hunt entire packs, using their mobility to cull and devour the remnants in larger numbers.

  And with her ample mana, Thoth must have lit up like a beacon.

  This… is an incident?

  An unsteady breath caught my ears. Transfixed as I was on the aftermath of battle, had the wind not died, I might not have heard her at all.

  Further down the crest of the dune sat a woman. Brown, windswept hair cascaded to her shoulders. Her face was soft, small mouth framed by tired, red-rimmed eyes. Bled-through bandages wrapped much of her body, trailing down her simple garb.

  A million frantic thoughts flooded my mind, one after another.

  I didn't know her.

  I didn't.

  But she was human.

  There was no reaction as I approached. Every step felt slower than the last, as if the dune itself were crumbling beneath my feet, treacherous sand whisking me further and further away. Words abandoned me. In all the time since the world had ended, I'd never seen another person. The only reason I'd survived this long at all was because of the harvested mana, without it I would have grown sick and died long ago.

  Of all the increasingly outlandish possibilities I could think of, there was only one that made sense.

  I cleared my throat, and when she didn't respond, spoke aloud. "Rough night?"

  Her dark eyes snapped to me immediately. She was alert, focused. But within her gaze was a cloudiness that gave the impression that she wasn't there at all. She sniffled and wiped her eyes. "You could say that."

  "Mind if I sit? Share the sand?"

  "Do as you please."

  I lowered myself beside her, grunting as the growing tension in my back and legs finally released, and crossed my arms over my knees. "Those wounds look serious."

  "They will mend."

  "I'm not so sure—"

  "They will mend." She repeated, forcefully. And for just a moment I could see it. Then it slipped away, and she was just a confused, injured, unfamiliar person who appeared to be having the worst day of her life. "I'm sorry. You're just being kind, that was rude of me—why do you look as if I've sprouted a third eye?" She cocked her head.

  That would be less jarring.

  "Just… curious, I suppose." I tilted my chin towards the carnage below. "You do all that?"

  "No." She looked down at the wyvern carcasses, as if seeing them for the first time. Then at her hands, her wounds. "At least… I don't think so. My mind is a sieve. I'm not sure where I am, or how I got here."

  "But you remember something. Something that ails you." I glanced at her tear-stained cheeks.

  She shook her head. "I won't bother you with it."

  "Look around." I managed a smile. "The world's on its way out. There's not another person for wingspans around. Do you have somewhere more pressing to be?"

  She shook her head.

  "Same. So, it stands to reason, that a story shared between strangers would be a welcome distraction."

  It felt like eons before she spoke. And when she finally did, her voice trembled.

  "My father warned me, once. 'Be careful what you're good at. Because you could be doing it forever.'"

  "I think I've heard that one before."

  "Well, I hadn't." She sniffed, pausing a moment. "And as it came from my father, I took it to heart, as a girl. Applied myself. Tried everything practical on for size. Nothing fit."

  "Sometimes it takes a while. Gods know I was a terrible child. Absolutely worthless. You couldn't have been worse than me."

  She snorted, brushing at her eyes. "Perhaps we could have comforted each other in our adolescent mediocrity."

  I laughed. And for the first time in years, it wasn't fake, or calculated.

  Her eyes grew distant. "You're right. It did take a while. But eventually, I found it. The thing that I was good at. Better than anyone else. Oh, did I find it." Her jaw worked silently. "For the first time I was useful. It came easy, then, for a while. The task was hard—bordering impossible, but life was fun. Thrilling."

  "What was it?"

  "Hm?" She turned to me, pale and distant.

  I repeated it, though there was a part of me that wanted nothing less. "The thing you were good at. What was it?"

  Her mouth turned upward at the memory, baring bloodied teeth. "Breaking things. Breaking people. Cutting them open to see how they tick. Dissecting their minds, their motivations. Using that leverage to manipulate them into doing whatever I wanted. And it was easy. So laughably, trivially easy. As horrible as that sounds, it was put to good purpose. Noble purpose."

  I absorbed that, feeling a growing dread, a feeling I couldn't explain.

  "So, what happened?"

  "I wasn't careful." She swiped at her nose, lips pulling down in disgust. "And after a long stint of solitude, it became second nature. A mask I couldn't take off, fused to the skin beneath. An instinct. It was just easier. People didn't listen to me before. They only listened when they were afraid. So I played to my strengths. And I didn't realize what that meant." Her eyes grew red with the rambling retelling, body trembling. "There was someone I valued. Someone I was waiting for. Someone I wanted to save. But when the time came, instead of doing what I promised, I broke him too. Because all I could think of was how unfair it was, that for so long, I was stuck in the fetid mud, alone while he got to fly free. So I wanted him to feel it. To see what it cost. And instead I pushed him too far, and broke him, just like I break everything else, and now…"

  The trembling suddenly stopped. Her eyes went blank, hand falling to her side. All at once, it was as if the building tension had never been there at all, as if the person I'd been speaking to had simply slipped away. Owlishly, she looked around, starting as she saw me.

  "Oh. Hello there."

  She scanned our surroundings, eyes passing over the dead wyverns, only pausing on them briefly before returning to me.

  "I think I'm lost."

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