Thunder clapped, and brilliant light from outside the broken attic window cast stark shadows over the hanging foodstuffs and blank-faced youths as what they’d just heard registered.

  Dalliance re-used [Prediction], unwilling to lose its use for a second, with how things were going.

  Either Effluvia is back on her feet, or the thing is outside.

  “We’ve got to go,” Dalliance told them. Servility, kneeling beside Zenith, looked from her to the entrance awkwardly. She wasn’t going to be able to walk, Dalliance knew. That wasn’t what legs were supposed to be shaped like.

  “Well yeah, it’s on fire.”

  Knot nodded at Earnest’s words. Lackey just rolled his eyes and strode off. His action disturbed the predictions, a new most likely path becoming clear: it was going to swoop through the window and kill him. And, presumably, everyone else, Dalliance didn’t wait to find out.

  "It's coming back! It's coming back!" he yelled, his voice shrill with urgency and to cutting through the crackle of the fire. Earnest looked at him seriously, bracing his shield and stepping forward.

  Woebegone scoffed."Why would it do that?"

  "This place is on fire," Knot agreed, his accent thick with logic. "It's just an animal. It’s going to want to find open spaces, away from the smoke." He and Woebegone began to make for the loft entrance.

  "It's coming back!" Dalliance insisted. Sure, they had no particular reason to believe him, but the complete lack of interest or credulity was surreal. “DON’T go over there—at least help carry Zenith!”

  "He's been right before!" Earnest protested. Dalliance felt a rush of appreciation for having been stood up for—but it was no use, and Knot and Woebegone had nearly reached the doorway when the crow burst through it, soot-colored wings tucked for the dive, foot outstretched.

  Zenith screamed a warning as it took Knot by the head, jerking the boy abruptly backwards. Where the head goes, the body follows, Dalliance remembered his Da telling him once. It felt abnormal, to have time to process what was happening as, with a powerful downbeat of its wings, it lifted his classmate and darted forward, releasing him midway and flinging him headlong. A trail of blood arced through the air, past Dalliance’s line of sight as Knot crashed through a flour barrel in a rapidly spreading cloud of white dust.

  The crow alighted on one foot. Zenith and Servility froze, unprepared to protect themselves, Zenith with tears streaming down her face. A teardrop head with ebon feathers turned this way and that, perfectly still in the sudden silence, and locked eyes with Dalliance.

  What do you want? He wondered.

  It tilted its head as if assessing him for the best place to bite, then hopped a half-step forward and SCREECHED.

  For an instant he felt like his head was being squeezed in a vice, and then his [Prediction] shattered. It cawed, almost like a man chuckling, hoped lightly into the air, and left them there, wingbeats throwing flour into Dalliance’s eyes and filling the loft with flour.

  The hells?

  He struggled to re-cast [Prediction], which felt like a sore muscle. It resisted.

  The jingling of mail announced the presence of Mister Worth, who appeared at the top of the stairs, sword in hand. "Did anyone see—" he began, but wasn’t given the opportunity to finish: a stray ember from the burning thatch fell, right in front of Dalliance’s face, into the flour cloud.

  In the following few instants, there was a surprising amount of noise.

  Sterling, closest to the barrel besides Knot, flew down into the stairwell and out of sight with the sound of metal crashing against metal. Knot directly beneath the center, bounced off the plank floorboards, blood splattering out of his nose onto his face and shirt.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Woebegone was simply gone, though Dalliance didn’t know if he’d been blown out the nearest window or just abandoned them.

  The fire was dying down, he thought. Hopefully. Looking toward it, his eyes passed over Zenith, who’d rolled over and seemed to be gasping, eyes wide and face white. Servility had kept his feet, but his hands were full.

  “We need to get out,” Dalliance said. “Stairs?” Earnest nodded and disappeared downwards.

  Suiting word to action, Dalliance grabbed Knot's shirt and hauled the dazed boy toward the stairs.

  The first floor of the Millhouse was largely dedicated to a gear train running a series of millstones in their bowls, a long shaft studded with gears turning slowly while individual stations intermeshed with it, inexorably converting the weight of the river to crushing force.

  One of them was crushing Sterling. The knight’s son’s chainmail coif had already been ground past, gripping him by the proverbial collar inescapably. Earnest was beside him, tugging frantically at the armor with the strength of his whole body, to no avail. Hearing Dalliance, he turned panicked eyes upward. "Throw the switch!" Earnest screamed. "He's going to die!"

  Knot was just conscious enough to have started holding Dalliance’s wrist feebly—and too heavy to move somewhere safe in the instants Dalliance had. He felt strangely at peace with himself as he jerked his wrist away from the semi-conscious schoolboy, leaving him partially on his feet near the top of the rail-less steps leading down to the grinding floor.

  He fell off the steps entirely, missing the stairs and face-planting to the cement floor a story below. Dalliance winced, but he was committed, He jumped himself, rushing over to the bank of levers. A second's prediction made it obvious which one to pull, and with an instant's hesitation the brass bars engaged, lifting the gear teeth free from the train.

  "I can't get him loose!" Earnest yelled. Being free from the train hadn't made the mechanisms any freer, it seemed.

  "Go without me! Finish this!" Sterling shouted, his voice strained. He pulled his sword free and it awkwardly clattered to the floor near Dalliance. "Burn the son of a bitch!" he finished, a near whisper. It looked tight on his throat.

  Dalliance nodded, snatching up the sword and heading out the main door of the mill.

  The snow was a full flurry now, fat flakes falling and already noticeably deeper than before.

  He was in front of the mill now, emerging on the opposite side from where the fight began. Far above, nearly hidden in the snow, the wicked bird still circled.

  Dalliance raised the sword, considering chanting the keyword, and watched the wheeling confusion of futures. Hundreds of birds which might swoop down at him. He raised the sword, aiming where it might be. And blinked

  The image skipped forward—and changed. Every time he had the bird in his sights, it was already somewhere else. Copying him. Scry versus scry.

  Spell-thief.

  The bird swooped down, maneuvering deftly between the distant, huddled forms of Effluvia, Circe, and Rotter. It screeched at Circe, then wheeled back around, ducking low to snatch something from the ground.

  As it rose, Dalliance felt his stomach hollow with dawning terror: It retrieved its own severed foot. Bathed in the aura of Circe's healing magic, holding the limb to the stump, it climbed into the swirling snow.

  “There’s only one artifact on the field that can beat you now,” Dalliance realized aloud. Sterling's sword.

  He pushed his mind faster, cycling through variations of attack, the predictions blurring into a dizzying, draining torrent. He could feel his acuity burning away at an unnatural rate. The bird began to respond more slowly.

  I’m wearing you down, he thought.

  But he wasn’t the only one who knew. It screeched, the sound alien and furious and echoing with distance. The black dot wheeled in a long arc, and dove at him.

  It was too soon. In every single future he saw, he was going to die. He might trigger the sword and clip it, setting it on fire, but it would crash into him with its two good feet, tear out his guts, heal itself, and then kill all of his friends.

  There was no winning move. He was going to die.

  A voice cut through the chaos, clear and resonant. Charity.

  “Lord of strife, my cause is just. Uphold the righteous and strike down my foe.”

  And in the swirling chaos of his predictions, a new future appeared. A single, narrow path to victory.

  He didn’t hesitate. Dalliance felt his [Redirect] skill catch the crow, though its entire being was focused on killing him. Its head shifted upward, focused away from him, toward the source of the new interference—just in time for her to put a crossbow bolt through its brain.

  (relevant topics, please)