1 Chapter One

Akachi stumbled. Her hands tingled, raw from prying the hatch on the metal squirrel, and she still hacked on smoke it had blasted back, singing her hood and stiffening her blackened gauntlets to charcoal, which she had to crack like lobster shell, pry off the hot fragments, then peel the flecks sticking to her fingers, leaving her hands splotched and speckled white.

As this was her third time through Teriana's blasted woodland fringe, she was so wobbly from hunger that she grazed her arms and ears on the jagged, charred branches. Every time she passed through to the surrounding meadows, she thought she heard Jgorga's gruff growl or Isola's maudlin lilt,

then crashed back past the trees, following the trailing voices, until she believed herself pranked by wishful thinking. In fearing loneliness more than fear itself, her every step toward freedom sabotaged her own best interests, until she quailed from the open meadow. It was very strange. No sooner had she clapped tight the hatch, and watched the squirrel mech tear through the battlefield, bearing Lucien far away in moments, than she fell to her knees for nearly an hour, too exhausted to do or think anything,

so that when she finally arose, it was like waking from a dream.

Not that she wasn't still in the dream world. Her outlandish Ephremian armor made her so impervious, she could participate in horrors without taking the full brunt of terror. Being so insulated from danger was like being unable to leave someone else's nightmare. Arrow and blade rang out, but did not pierce the scales, and even the backblast of the squirrel's engines left her more or less unscathed.

Unscathed was hardly whole, she soon learned.

All her battles, all her adventures, had a cost to pay, a toll exacted on her consciousness,

until it shrank under the crushing weight of horrors she thought stamped out, which only scurried into the ever enlarging shadows of her mind, swelled into a buzzing swarm, then to a crackling storm.

While she wanted done with this nightmarish war more than anything, when her terror-storm threatened to break, the only thought that slashed free of the dark flood was freedom. Having raised herself to her feet, she had tottered toward the woods, her resolve strengthened by thoughts of Michel.

Yes, she must find Michel. All alone on this horrible world. Her determination was a cold but familiar feeling, for it trembled like faith. Having had not even her own room or clothes most of her life, but only her animalyte vestments, Michel had been her only point of difference, all that stood between her and utter loneliness, so that even now, she resented more than anything this feeling of letting go, of leaving something behind. With Michel behind her, Akachi had been walking blind,

and she didn't know how Michel did it, day in, day out. How do you walk without a hand to hold?

How do you go forward without a destination, with no visible, tangible future? It had been weeks since she had held Michel's hand, but she still knew the feel of it. No, that was only half-true. The feel of her hand was still so real, it lived larger than a memory.

As a toddler, she had been happy to steady the blind girl, but after a few years as Michel's seeing-eye dog, she began to resent the carefree play of the other Animalytes. While it made sense now that their talking animal keepers would be uncomfortable with the idea of actual service animals, Akachi could scarcely approve, not even after coming to be grateful for her role. The commitment instilled in her as a toddler had become an office more sacred than friendship, until she knew Michel's hand better than her own, and right now missed Michel's hand more than she might miss her own.

Without Michel, her feelings for Michel had become phantom pains, living on without sight, thought, or reminder. Perhaps it was only her feelings' echo she felt, just as her mind played tricks on her,

making her think she heard the others in the woods.

The high-pitched shriek shivered the grass, then swelled to a whine, then a roaring hum, until the jagged branches shook, some shaking off tattered bark, and a few splintering to shreds, until the tooth-rattling buzz drove her hands to her ears, her face quivered like a tapped drum, and her eyes stole upward, only to be blotted by a descending shadow. Even though the last battle was twelve hours ago, the battlefield haze was thick with torn earth, trodden dust, and rain that just wouldn't fall. The bloated clouds had fallen lower and lower until Akachi's face watered like a fountain, sweat and humidity pooling in non-stop sheets that she wiped with the back of a sleeve still stained with soot from the mechanical squirrel, and now as sopped and fouled as an oil rag.

The shadowy sky sunk even lower, driving down and down, so near Akachi reached for the grainy, grey surface, so beaded with condensation from its humid descent that the droplets ran down her forearm, under her sleeve, wetting her elbow and the back of her arm.

"AKACHI!" As her name echoed along the meadow, the long grasses dimpled, and the strange airship settled inches away, its nose not a yard from her face. Its landing seemed a smokeless, inertialess wonder, lifted by such strange vibrations that she flinched from looking at it directly, fanning her eyes and peering between her fingers. As the blur quieted, flicking wings came into view, still slicing so fast that their invisible thrash did not stir the tall grasses until they hacked to a flutter, when their billowing wind blasted Akachi off her feet to tumble yards away and flounce flat on her back.

"Aito?" Lurching to all fours, Akachi rose unsteadily to her feet. While it had been his voice,

she knew not to trust her senses on Alsantia. Speaking of which--an airplane that flapped its wings? It was beyond belief. How could it work, she wondered. Realizing it was magical, Akachi scowled and shook her head, hating how magic could so easily gloss over the facts of the universe. With a touch of magic, insane became sane, and nonsense became not only workable, but real. For all of her faith in Alsantia, she could scarcely appreciate magic, for no other physical forces were so whimsical. If gravity was as capricious as magic, who would risk leaving their house? How did Alsantians get out of bed in the morning with this tremendous unknown lurking in every nook and cranny of their world?

Akachi was so dumbstruck by the bird-like vehicle that repeated shouts of her own name made no impression, and she stared blankly until she was tapped on the shoulder.

While her mind rolled over and played dead, her body was too exhausted to do anything but lurch out of reach. Her numb fingers fumbled at her empty scabbard. Where had she lost her sword?

Having only drawn it once to signal a charge on the Alsantian front, it had already betrayed her, like her faithless armor had failed her helpful hands. Given time, nothing was secure, and all things were inevitable. Invulnerable armor would break down, a once-drawn sword would go lost, and two fast friends would slowly drift to the distant sides of a supercontinent.

It was not Aito.

"Architect?"

"We are friends, are we not, Akachi?" There was never a person so hard to look at as the Architect. She defied categorization. You couldn't think her old, despite that shock of silvered gray,

not with lean muscles poking and jutting in a strange, sciencey garb, more carapace than clothing.

Her face was smooth, her grip was strong, and she frowned without wrinkles, more statue than woman.

While no beauty, she was more stunning to look at than any actor or supermodel. Her eyes were intelligent, but vacant, as if heading for the horizon. The only place she ever looked like she belonged

was aboard her strange vehicles. "Call me Adjia."

Akachi bowed her head as she rolled her eyes. How could she be on a first name basis with this surreal being? She drew in a sharp breath as the moment lingered, then malingered, as the Architect's curious smile bore down cruelly on Akachi. How could she be Lucien's mother--how could she be anyone's? She stifled her snicker before it ripped out, and raised her smiling eyes. What did everyone else call her? "Your grace." It sounded less ridiculous than she had feared. In fact, it sounded natural.

What else could you call someone so otherworldly?

To be fair to her grace, no doubt all those from Earth had a touch of the angelic, the satanic, and the alien on Alsantia. They were the ones profaning an enchanted world. They would always be the interlopers here, no matter if they came from this world or not. Everyone would always think of them as strangers to Alsantia, even if they were raised to the status of kings and queens.

"Will you not board? Our enemies eye us, and your friends await."

Akachi frowned, but headed in. "They're not my enemies. They might be out to get me, but I doubt they know my name."

Adjia tittered. "If you mean you're only guilty by association, all the more reason for us to take our leave of this place."

"Don't you care what happens here? Isn't Teriana your home, Atch...Adj...your grace." Having tried out the name in spite of herself, Akachi just couldn't say it. She could barely stomach it, for it tasted like sorrow tainted with pride, the great Architect in denial of having lost everything: her crumbling, burning home, her son's entire childhood, and the husband she had helped to bury in work.

A work that now bore this surreal fruit: an otherworldy aircraft of glossy steel that repelled not only the spattering raindrops that began to roll in, but her eyes, which kept turning from the glare, even as they were called back to Adjia by every wry and scornful nuance of her expression.

The Architect scowled, snatched Akachi's worn, crumbling vambrace, and dragged her up the ramp.

Much roomier than the walker or the strider, every square inch of the interior was devoted to a cabin conspicuously free of mechanism, not only engines, or even a single gear, but any visible means of steering. In fact, it was so prodigiously clean of the trappings of Ephremian technology that it had a hint of the sacred. This winged vestibule belonged more in a church than on a battlefield. If Akachi didn't have the common sense to deduce this was no technological wonder at all, her bones and blood, thrumming to the inrushing energies of the dynavoir, screamed loudly that this was a miracle made manifest, what this world called magic.

Only two chairs faced the smoky windshield. Jgorga lolled in one, looking sparser, mangier, and lazier than he had the day Akachi met him, as if his mileage had shed not only pounds, but fur and soul. Aito and Isola rested on a faded carpet with threadbare fringe and ragged tassels at the corners.

Sitting in the pilot's chair, Adjia grasped a long blue staff with a sharp bend in the middle, and hooked it over her neck and shoulders.

Akachi drifted to her friends on the carpet. While no doubt an antique in Alsantia, the carpet had the stamp of the outlandish and the unusual. Its burgundy, turquoise, and violet threads zig-zagged, tracing jagged mountain peaks, snaggy cream-colored clouds, and shaggy, golden flowers that, Akachi realized, were meant to be sun, moon, and stars.

"If everyone is finally ready," said The Architect, "we must find my husband and son."

Akachi couldn't help herself. It was inappropriate even to think such a question, but she couldn't suppress the thought, and it squeaked out like a fart in an auditorium, so loud and glaring that she wondered why all eyes didn't flash to her at once. Not that she believed in telepathy, even on Alsantia,

but just as hidden meanings played in the fleeting reflections of the Albatron, certain rude and impertinent thoughts were visible in any face, not just in wide eyes and reddening cheeks, but that artful blankness that couldn't quite suppress the incredulous flaring of a pupil. the twitch of an eyelash,

or the crinkling of the corners of the mouth in the merest scratch of a frown or the slightest trace of a smile. This rude thought rattled in her now until her ears shivered, and she caught Adjia's eyes glowering in the faint glimmer of her face in the smoky windshield.

"If you're wondering why I bothered coming for you, I'm kicking myself right now. I had envisioned a two minute stop, and we've nearly cracked five." Was that a heavy sigh, or a gasp of frustration? Whatever it was, as Adhia' unhappy exhalation bottomed out, she sucked in a vicious growl and poked Jgorga. "You fill her in."

Jgroga's heavy brows furrowed deep under her scathing tone, and for the merest fraction of a second, the raccoon flashed teeth. They were shockingly white, but what caused her spine to crawl were their gleaming points. She had never seen him this angry. No matter how cultured the beast, when push comes to shove, claws and swords prick out, and fangs and steel are bared, and it is a testimony to their faith in themselves and their brethren that peoples and civilzations do not fall to blows more often.

Averting one's eyes to the high road, as Adjia did right now, was an awful risk, for if Jgorga was less humane at heart, his nails would spill her awesome brain, and it would stop forging its amazing thoughts. While aggression is the growling undercurrent of civilization, souls, like ideas, are tissue thin, and it is a miracle either are ever born.

"Akachi, direct your questions to me." The raccoon's voice was surlier than she remembered, as if Conrad had rubbed off on Jgorga. Seeing his sunken, red-rimmed eyes, Akachi realized she had never seen him sleep. "While wearing the yoke, The Architect needs all her attention."

"The yolk?" Akachi glanced around the aircraft's unusually spartan interior. "Like an egg?"

When Isola snickered, her blonde tresses shivered like Christmas tree tinsel. Akachi had never cared for the Alsantian girl, but had kept her feelings under wraps, pitying her sad, tragic story, even as more lonely than Lucien's or Berangere's, given they had been a world away from their parents, but her father was gone forever. But no one had said a word to Akachi of her Alsantian roots. Where were her parents? Her castle? After the ashes settled, who would care for Akachi? As her resentment stabbed,

self-loathing rose like bile, leaving a bad taste in her mouth. But she couldn't help it--how did Isola still look so noble on a battlefield, after marching through forests and kingdoms? The worst part was seeing Michel in Isola. Michel was blind in her own eyes, but Isola was blind to others' eyes, having eyes only for Lucien. While her heart missed Michel's hand, she would never coddle Isola, or care one way or another for Isola's feelings. As she scowled back, her upper lip curled in a snarl. "What are you laughing at?"

"I'm hardly laughing/ It's--you're--not that funny. And I'm not happy enough to laugh."

"Shh." When Adjia laid the strange bent staff over neck and shoulders, her eyes went blank. No, blank wasn't quite right. They went blue, glowing brighter and brighter, their radiant azure blue casting a midnight blue shadow under the golden overhead lamp. "If you must talk, do it quietly." Her grumble twisted to a growl. "How happy do you think I am, bringing my son's girlfriend on his trail."

"He's not my...." Isola stopped, then seemed to fold inward as she knelt lower in the rumpled carpet, cringing against Aito. "Even if he is my..." She wiped her eyes.

"Pull yourself together, Lady Fafahite." Adjia's stern eyes had completely blued, not only her formerly brown pupil, but the white, like two gleaming, sky-blue pools wide awake under a blue sky.

"I'm flying three thousand pounds. Can't you keep flying off the handle?"

"Flying? But we haven't budged." When Akachi pushed herself to her feet, she pitched left, catching herself on the wall. "What was that?"

"That was you!" snapped Adjia. "Sit down. This is hard enough without you tipping us willy-nilly."

As Akachi regained her footing, her armored boots slid and scuffled, so her hands took more of the weight as she sidled nearer the shuttered side window. As her hand clapped to the shutter, it slid with a crack, pinching the ridge of her forefinger, which flew to her mouth.

"Ow! Oh, wow!" The flaring pain ebbed at the sight of clouds sprawling towards sunset. "We're so high! Where are you taking us? What about Lucien!"

By clinching near the window and standing on tiptoe, Akachi could see the war-torn battlegrounds. Uprooted and shattered trees scarred the woodlands, and hundreds of campfires blossomed as sunset dimmed to a blacker red. Akachi saw it all at once: the darkest meadows were armies. Suvani's armies had swelled in size, staining Teriana like blood.

"He's not there," Adjia hissed through her teeth, her eyes blued with the strain of the enchanted yoke. With a start, Adjia realized it powered the entire aircraft. This was no steampunk marvel, but something magical.

When Isola glowered back, Akachi avoidewd the stare for as long as she could, until the blonde girl's glowering eyes were more maddening than the Architect's glowing ones. When she reluctantly turned her head, Isola rolled her glowering eyes with a conspicuously malicious sarcasm. "Sit down. Jgorga was about to tell you everything."

"What's to tell?" Aito said. "She's figured it out. We're going after Lucien."

"Lucien? Where could he have gone so quickly? I was with him not even an hour ago."

"You were with him?" All traces of Isola's flippant sarcasm dissolved as tears glistened in her smoky glance. "Who took him?"

"Lucien took off all by himself. I helped a little. But it was his decision, all on his own." Aito and Isola stared incredulously as she related how she helped him board the squirrel war machine.

"Don't make me laugh," snorted Adjia. "It's hard enough flying this thing."

"I'd think you'd want to know."

"I already guessed as much. I'm surprised he didn't do something more outlandish, the way he takes after his father. Regardless of where you left him, he's been taken since then."

"How would you know? None of us have seen him for over an hour."

"I'm following his tracer."

"His tracer?"

"Yes." Her pregnant grumble lingered. "You all have one."

"What?" Akachi's shout boomed in the aircraft. "When did you do that?"

"For longer than you could have possibly known."

"When? Tell me! We weren't born with these tracking devices."

"No, even I can't do such work on the embryonic level." As the Archiect made a half-turn on her chair, the aircraft swerved right, a steep pitch that sloshed Akachi's insides and streaked sweat down her back. "Ustragon has dabbled with much smaller things, refining his instruments to manipulate the microscopic, but he draws the line at life."

Jgroga murmured, "so you make the vehicles and buildings, and he does the abstract work."

"If my husband's interests lie more in the theoretical, theory is hardly abstract. Theories are things of the mind. To scientists and other thinkers, Ustragon's theories are as concrete as castles and bridges. And do you think no planning went into my walkers and striders, or this prototype for the Zalgynes? I took a shortcut by way of magic, but only after I had laid the groundwork. You could say this airship is nothing but theory, animated by sheer will via the raptures of magic. If my theories take a physical shape in the world, if I leap immediately from thought to concept to construct, that is only the order of manifestation of the physical universe."

"Don't encourage her!" snapped Akachi. Her tone shook even herself. If her face was hot,

and her chest had swelled with fiery anger, her guts quailed at the thought of being rude to the cabal of parents that had embedded them in the careful but cold clutches of The Mansion of the Shining Prince.

"She could give us real answers, and you let her babble on about theories."

"Flying one and a half tons even by magicked willpower is a struggle, and you should thank him for the diversion. Taking my mind off my burden makes it easier to shoulder."

"You're welcome." Jgorga shrugged.

"If telling the truth isn't as natural as breathing for you, that says what kind of person you are." Akachi's heart thumped.

"You're taking this rather personally. I can imagine why."

"What is that supposed to mean?" But Akachi knew what she meant. It was so obvious it didn't need to be insinuated, not when Adjia could reach for the chip on Akachi's shoulder so easily, so visibly did she wear it.

"What if you don't like what you hear, Akachi?"

"Outside of books and class, when have I ever liked what I heard? The Elderliches were too critical to tell any well-meaning lies, and you perch like a vulture on your bones of bad news, more gossip than Architect."

"That seems grossly unfair to me. I've driven you children all around Teriana." She sniffed. "I admit the land has seen better days..."

"There you go again! Don't you care what happened here?"

"Of course I care. I love Teriana. The violence and destruction make me unbelievably sad, and my heart cries out for justice." Adjia was far from teary-eyed; in fact, their reflection in the smoky glass brimmed with so much blue light that it spilled out in misty tendrils. If anything, the Architect was exulting in her abilities, like a champion athlete. "Justice is hard to find in Alsantia. It is as easy to find a traitor as a friend."

Akachi's blood ran cold. Was this Adjia's confession? Was she turning them over to Suvani? "You're wrong." Her voice shook. "Friends are all around us. All we can do is trust the ones we love."

"So easy as that?" Adjia snickered. "True, I might think that about Ustragon. And Jgorga is as solid as a rock, if also as thick as a brick."

"Hey!" Jgorga rubbed his eyes and yawned. Aito and Isola chuckled uneasily, then with timid enthusiasm, seeing the raccoon's reaction.

"A joke." The Architect's smile was far too smug, and Akachi noticed she didn't say only a joke. Adjia clearly meant it, however much she meant it to be laughed at.

"Well, if you feel like talking, I'll be your distraction. Tell me everything. Everything good in my life has come with warts, and I've had to love it warts and all."

Adjia's face clouded. Her brows knit with worry, and her smug smile, always so aloof from the grim, sordid reality of Alsantia, as if in on a beautiful, lighthearted inside joke, tightened to a sharp frown, but as the smoky windows darkened under a passing cloud, her reflection faded to black, and by the time the vehicle had flitted to a new patch of sunlight, she wore her smug smile again, even if her image, captured in glass, wasn't quite herself, like a statue seen from a gallery staircase and taken for human. "Another time, Akachi." Her warming smile seemed to warm the smoky glass itself. "And I hope you will not be entirely dissatisfied with the truth."

"Why not now? Tell me."

"If only we had time, Akachi. We've arrived."

By leaning on tiptoes under the shuttered window, and tipping her head back, Isola brought one eye above the level of the sill. "Weren't we going after Lucien? And your husband." Her voice dipped apologetically as she pushed away and clutched the back of Adjia's seat.

Aito took his turn at the window. "That's the front line. Wait." Having drawn back from the window, he crumpled on the rumpled carpet and buried his eyes in his hands.

"This is where the aoirate leads." Her eyes flashed to the smoky window and crinkled in amusement at their puzzled looks. "The aoirate is a seed that whispers in the cognivoire. No one knows why it cries out in our magical ether, but in spite of our ignorance, it exists."

"You planted seeds in us?" Akachi's memory dredged up hydroponic vegetables pictured in the Mansion's encyclopedia.

"No." The Architect grunted as the vehicle dove. "Well, yes. I suppose. On the one hand, it isn't the most precise word, given what has no roots in you can't be called planted, but in the sense of something tucked inside, there is no better word."

"The best of all possible words?" Jgorga snorted, as if making a joke.

"You would doom us to fuzzy thinking by subtracting a letter. Very droll."

"Guys." Aito sounded strained. "This can't be right."

"I never called it the best word choice, just a better one." The Architect humphed loudly.

Akachi was distrubed by how distraught Aito looked, and thought to side with her friend. "I mean, really, Adjia--we're on the run, and you're arguing about word choice?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Adjia." Aito snapped loudly, sounding older than his years. "You know what I mean."

"If you mean I know why you'd be stricken with horror by what's below, I had wanted to see it with my own eyes before I worried you children with the rumors in the cognivoir."

"If you hear things by magic, you're a wizard, not an architect."

"Akachi, would you shut up!" Aito glared, his hands balling into fists, and his eyes brimming with tears.

"What's gotten into you, Aito?" growled Jgorga.

"My word," cooed Adjia. "That's hardly called for, Aito. By subterfuge, I hoped not only to rescue my family without alarming the troops, but to spare your friends' ears, who might jump to unfortunate conclusions about one of their own."

"What do you mean one of our own?" Isola cut in. "Then there is a traitor among us?"

Akachi snorted. "If there's a traitor, I find it hard to believe it's not her."

"Akachi!" Jgorga's voice crackled with frustration and exhaustion. "Manners."

Aito's eyes were downcast as he returned to the window. "Take another look, Akachi."

As Akachi rose to her feet, Adjia leaned the yoke on the smoky windglass, came uncomfortably near, and clasped their shoulders, so that they were bathed in the azure blue emanating from her eyes,

until it gradually dimmed, leaving them in cold shadow.

With the Architect not at her post, the aircraft leveled, and Akachi no longer had to lean on a tilted wall, but only go on tiptoes and rest her chin on the sill. While the army below was enormous and monstrous, it had not changed. "What am I looking at?"

"The trees." Aito's voice shook. "Believe me, I didn't know."

Akachi grumbled. "Not Ashflowers again."

"No, these trees know what they do."

Then she saw it. While it would never become a familiar sight, she had grown accustomed to the strange sight of the Daikonese Elders' slow roll along the battlefield, their roots creaking like wagon wheels. "Is this a parley?" While the language of battle would always sound and taste strange, she now knew parley was a meeting with enemy forces, usually for the purposes of a temporary cease fire, so both sides could collect their dead, salvage usable arms or armor, or observe a common holiday.

"No. This isn't a parley, or any kind of negotiation. The trees have already capitulated to Suvani."

"She's won," growled Jgorga. "And Teriana begged these traitors to come to their rescue," When Aito flashed a resentful look, the raccoon scowled and sighed. "Sorry, kid. No. I know it's not your fault, but I'm not sorry, not even for you. How could they cave at the worst possible time?"

Having recently marshalled troops in this war, Akachi saw that the combined Alsantian and Daikonese armies were mobilizing, forming gigantic columns and ranks flanked by rows of titanic trees on one hand, and karik calvary on the other. Werewolves loped at the front, savagely sprinting as hybrid half-men, and no sooner had the second and third ranks formed behind them, a vast sprawl of Daikonese spearmen, and Daikonese archers behind those, than the Alsantian army began marching at a brisk clip, chanting, singing, and clapping, a tremendous roar that shivered the aircraft walls.

When a glittering cloud flashed and flitted from the tumult, Adjia seized the enchanted yoke,

and without sparing a moment to take her seat, twisted left and right, tottering with the swerves of the enchanted aircraft as Akachi clutched the sill, and Aito braced both hands on the tilting wall. Even with this dodging, they were peppered by the tick-tick-tack of arrows, many so spent by their flight that they rained back to the armies below, but some not only meeting their marks, but lodging in the squealing and hissing hull, one splintering the side window, and three raising white welts in the thick, smoky windshield.

Torn between burying her head in carpet or clinging to the fractured window, Akachi dragged herself nervously but desperately to the splintered windowpane, daring a glimpse at what else was coming. The marching forces below now seemed a shimmering sea of dragon scales, having raised their shields to ward off their downpour of arrows.

Adjia's eyes were ice blue again. "Disciplined but stupid, arent't they, Akachi." Was she connected now to cognivoir and dyanvoir? How else could Adjia see below as her eyes faced forward,

and the aircraft hurtled toward a flashing storm cloud?

"Where did that come from?" shrieked Isola.

"Let's roll with the winds of change, Lady Fafahite." The Architect spread her feet, as if falling into a fighting stance, then lowered her head and shoulders to bring the enchanted aircraft into a steep dive under the thunderhead.

Then a vast, fearsome darkness swamped the entire battlefield, not only the land but the sky above. And this was no natural shadow. While homegrown shade was chilly, even ice cold, this darkness roared with a raging heat which enveloped the aircraft, making it steamy, stuffy, and hot.

When the shadows seemed to flex, soldiers were seized by gale force winds and blasted like tumbleweed, and even the Daikonese elders had to brace against this sudden stormfront.

"Akachi!" Adjia's voice was strained, and it was not from controlling the craft, Even in the steep winds, the aircraft veered and flitted in Adjia's mental grip with the agility of a water bug, darting left and right and bobbing up and down until Akachi's head swam and her guts churned, when she slumped from the window to puddle against the wall. While her heart hammered, she had to see, so she painstakingly pulled herself up the wall as it rolled, for with the aircfraft mid-swerve, what had been floor was gradually tilting to wall, and what had been wall was tipping to floor, so she went from dragging herself up to crawling across, then looking down through the splintered windowpane.

It was hard to see, not only due to the webbed crack, but the inconveivable nature of what she glimpsed. Had the Alsantian's locked shields so resembled a dragon that their roar was taken for a mating cry? In wings twice as capacious as the canopy of trees, resplendent red scales glittered down,

its sweeping tail as long as sixty single-file Alsantians. a malicious curl to its sabre-long eyelashes,

While not devouring Alsantians, or slashing them with claws, its enraged irritation did violence to the soldiers, as its tail cracked like a whip, scooping them into a pell-mell sprint that so exceeded any human capacity for running that it was more like falling forward, their boots barely touching the ground.

"That angry hen is Suvani."

"Suvani? No way!"

"When did she get this much power?"

"Never." As Adjia's tone dipped to deadly serious, her bubbly sarcasm dissolved and her eyes burned a brighter blue. "It isn't human magic. It sparks with the divine."

"You're sparking a bit," muttered Aito.

"And Suvani's sparking for us right now!" hollered Akachi. "Run!"

"Hold on," said Adjia. As they pulled away from the ascending dragon, the buzzing wings doubled their beats, then tripled, then blurred into invisibility until they seemed wingless, the hurtling metal buckling and spitting one, then two rivets, as wind slammed the smoky windglass, swelling the white arrow-flecks to bubbles, one of which popped with a tinkling of glass and an inrushing shriek of wind.

Having dangled from the windowsill to flop in a snag of Aito, Isola, and scrunched carpet,

Akachi's view abruptly changed from a tiptoed glance through a narrow window to a widescreen disaster movie, a disaster all theirs, and likely five seconds in their future, as the Alsantian banners crisped near legible despite their blurred descent, until they couldn't be more than a thousand feet,

a hundred, twenty feet, then a blink away from death, and Akachi's eyes wouldn't unblink, but screwed to a frightened pinch.

Instead of the badoom of impact she expected, they lurched, sprawled across the floor, and tumbled under the seats, where Jgorga's nails bit the underside of his co-pilot's seat.

Isola's hair had become a dissheveled frazzle, not only blotting out her face, but streaming into Akachi's eyes, who spat and swatted blonde as if swarmed by the annoying blonde Alsantian. This was now entirely too much, she thought angrily, clutching fistfuls of hair, then mastering herself at the last moment, so that she didn't yank like she wanted to do, but grudgingly parted the blonde mass, pulling it apart until she found Isola.

"Girls, pull yourself together."

Jgorga snickered. "Speaking of someone who has it together, Adjia. You're really going for it, aren't you?"

"Should I let my family become skulls in a dragon's hoard?"

"While I've always preferred a stealthy approach, I wonder how much time I've lost when I see your direct approach." Direct approach was an understatement, as Akachi's belly lurched, and several gurgling underbellies she didn't know she had, as the enchanted aircraft's arc hurtled over columns of wing-blasted troops, their turbulent flight path knocking the Alsantians' heads together as they headed for the Daikonese elders.

"It's hardly algebra, Jgorga. There's no solving for A when it pings constantly in my head."

"You installed the receiver in your head?" asked Aito.

Adjia ignored the question. "Speed flies into good fortune. Look." Resting in a tangle of branches atop the colossal Elder, one of the Architects' mechanical walkers was pierced by vine and branches. "It will be tricky from here. And there isn't much time. Akachi, the walker's access port is the same as the one in Lord Vollouir."

"Who?"

"The squirrel! Listen, Akachi. We can't rescue them if they're dead or dead to the world."

"Why would Lucien be dead? Do you mean sleeping? Wait...why are you telling me this?"

"Get ready, Akachi."

"I'm anything but ready!"

As their first pass screamed over the gigantic Elder, Adjia muttered under her breath. The aircraft swerved in a wide arc. "They're not responding, Akachi. I'm piloting. Jgorga is too broad..."

"Hey!"

"Isola and Aito are the right size, but haven't accessed my designs before. You have. It has to be you. Look, the Elders are converging. This is our last shot--after this, we'll be a tree backpack too."

"Fine!" Akachi felt far from fine.

"Move the carpet, Aito. It's blocking the doors." This was easier said than done, with acceleration piling on their weight, and all three children had to drag the ponderous carpet from the doors.

As they veered back, the right wall rattled with arrow fire.

"Don't get shot, Akachi."

Akachi stared incredulously at Isola. What a thing to say. When she closed her eyes and tried to breathe slowly, it ragged in and out, and she was on the brink of a stammering sob when she tightened her lips, wiped away the snuffle, and leaped out the opening doors.

She was instantly hollowed out by her violent gasp as she boomed hard on the crackling windshield. Having the wind knocked out of her vented any possibility of sobbing, but she groaned,

and the glass rapped back.

Lucien's face flattened to the inside of the sphere, and his thumbs and fingers pressed alongside,

made his hands look absurdly large. All she could see of the figure shadowing him was a silhouette,

which seemed to gesture to her right. Lifting her head into the gale raked up by the dragon's wings,

she saw the access port, which was the exact size and shape of the one on the mechanical squirrel.

While she had landed only a yard from where she needed to be, she clung to an upended land strider embedded in a giant tree, whose branches twitched and shook as it clawed for the aircraft,

and that access port might as well have been a mile away. She would have rather run an uphill mountain mile than crawl that precarious yard, but as there was nothing else to be done, she swung one leg near, but her armored toe clattered on the strider's hull, once, twice, then flailed in frightened frustration three, four, five times, until she kicked off one boot, than the other, and her damp, holey socks gained a gingerly purchase against the cold steel, when she shimmied over, her fingers now tight claws burning with the cold fire of muscle fatigue and pinched back by the chilled metal.

In the darkened sphere, the taller figure clutched Lucien and his dimming silhouette receded in the larger shadow. As The Elder plodded forward, his crown of branches swayed, and the walker creaked as it teetered, shivering through Akachi's fingernails and palms. For a moment, the slight incline of the crashed walker was nearly vertical, dangling Akachi over a vast abyss, so that she could see the half-formed werewolves below snapping and snarling at the walking tree's roots. She froze. The windshield was now completely dark. Where did they go? Don't help me, Lucien. She clinched to the cold port. If they pushed against the access port she might fall.

But why hadn't they used the access port? Dangling two hundred feet high, her lancing thought brushed the cobwebs from her mind. Something was wrong in the land strider. If they were wide awake and at the ready, then why had they not rescued themselves? All was not as it seemed.

It seemed very clear to Akachi now, and made sense of Lucien being submerged in the shadows.

He had been warning Akachi.

All these thoughts flashed as she waited by the access port. Having exhaled a cold, chattering breath, she tugged hard, but it wouldn't budge. When she pried and clawed at the unyielding hatch, she felt a dent on one side, surrounded by scrapes. They looked like scratches from tiny claws, It was jammed in exactly the same way as the mechanical squirrel. A saboteur, she realized. Someone with time to study the vulnerabilities of the Architects' designs.

Now she muat trust her feet. While her stockinged feet were still damp and slippy, they had dried a bit from the shrieking dragon-fanned winds, and her toes, sticking through sock holes, pressed to the slick steel. When they slid, she gained traction by straddling the side, then clinching close to bring the leverage of her chest and shoulders to bear, balancing her while she plucked and twisted the metal grate. While the stuck hatch resisted her feeble swipes, on her fifth fumble, the grill batted out,

venting a breath of warm air.

Her butterflies flitted away, leaving a chilly emptiness in her guts, more anticipation than dread,

as she realized Lucien's guest had likely entered the same way. As it was likely a wizard, shape shifter, talking beast, or an all-in-one threat, or worse, a swarm of them, entering this tight squeeze felt like feeding herself to an anaconda, and even if the way was clear, she did not relish shimmying through after this foul creature had squirmed inside. The aroma wafting on the warm, moist air was fetid and sour, part dumpster, part doghouse, and part under the hood of a car. Wrinkling her nose and pursing her mouth, she groped as far as she could with one arm, gripped the sharp lip of a slightly upturned join of two welded sheets of metal, then kicked off from the hull, snapping herself inside the steel mouth with one swallow, then shimmied further. While Lucien had the ground under his feet when he crawled in the other hatch, she had to worm in awkwardly after an awkward, flopping entrance, then scoot forward one-handed the whole way inside.

"At least let me help her!" Lucien's grumble echoed in the access port.

"But we have a bet." This sneer, and the snicker that followed seemed to track slime in Akachi's ears, so nauseating was the tone, insinuating not only a snarled threat, but a cringing whine, like a hound craving the beast it dreaded most.

"Lucien, stay put." This wheeze broke into a watery cough, then a gurgling fit of coughing.

"Yes, boy," came the whining screech, "keep your seat." As a faint skittering doubled to a rapid scratching, Akachi hoped her own movements were not so amplified by the conduit, or the ears of whatever scurried inside. "If she falls and dies, Gurbek is fifty pasanis richer, but if she crawls in, I am the winner. Be quiet and let us watch the door."

"Do you want popcorn?" Lucien was cracking jokes, but Akachi heard the worry in his voice.

"Shh!" came the other snarl. "I want to hear her fall!"

"Door..." The weak gurgle rose to a contemptuous snort, then seemed to pop in another nonstop, squelching cough. When the hacking died, the voice strained to an unusually loud pitch. "It's only a crawl space, with access to my engine, tools, and armory."

Armory. Despite his trembling voice, there was an unmistakable emphasis. Did he know she was in the conduit? With a shudder, she came to a stop, conscious of her armor bunching, scraping, snapping and rattling.

An armory. Did he expect her to fight? Which junction would she follow to reach it? What weapon would overcome these unknown creatures? Where was Adjia flying now? Had she stranded Akachi, or was she risking a holding pattern over the arrow-happy Alsantians? In the dark conduit, there were too many questions. She did not even know if the unknown speaker was on her side.

Presumably, it was Lucien's father, or a paid pilot or engineer, but what if it was yet another enemy beholden to Suvani?

Akachi scuffled back to the juncture she had passed when she headed for the grumbles, coughs, and growls. Poking her head down the other tube, nearly muted the voices, which she took this as a sign that, if not the armory, it was at least a different segment of the land strider. It couldn't have more than three compartments, not unless it was twice as large as what protruded from the Daikonese Elder,

half buried in an enormous knothole.

When the conduit dipped, she slid a yard, was poked by an upended ladder, then slumped to the upside-down ceiling of a small compartment. Everything had fallen in a jumbled heap to the topsy-turvy roof, and the scattered contents looked more like a dropped junk drawer than tools or weapons.

But these were the Architects, she reasoned. If Adjia carried nothing that looked like a weapon.

that didn't mean she wouldn't make one, and if she did, it would likely look nothing like Akachi's ideas of what weapons looked like.

Even if he hadn't sent her here for a weapon, by clueing her into this compartment,

he expected her to escape or rescue them all. As Akachi sifted strewn tools and devices, she looked past any useful or practical shapes, racking her brains for how these steampunk tools might pry three people free from the clutches of hideous creatures, and then the dragon shadowing the battlefield. When her head began to pound, her wires crossed, so that insignificant screws and nails seemed crucial to the Architects' puzzle of purposes, like the monkeywrench made of one piece of metal; the long stick enscribed with runes, presumably an Alsantian yardstick; wafer-thin metal triangles the width of Akachi's hand, steep and narrow like spear points; sheafs of charcoal graph paper, some rolled and ribboned, and others loose; and then the truly undefinable items, which seemed to have come from a world much more alien than Alsantia. One was a metal cup topping a stick, at the base of which was a grooved handle. While Akachi could only see it darkly, her fingers rested snugly on the finger ridges, and felt raised impressions, which wiggled under her finger tips--possibly buttons.

While there wasn't much room, Akachi carefully rose from her crawl to a kneel, held the stick at arm's length, aimed the cup away from her face, and squeezed the button under her pointer.

Whoosh! A red flame lanced out, licking the wall.

Akachi sucked in a cold breath.

Maintaining the squeeze, she waved the strange tool around the armory. As her eyes had accustomed to the dark, the torch was searingly bright, and she fanned her eyes with her other hand.

It was even worse than she thought, for groping had only given the vaguest impression of the enormous mess starkly revealed by the flaring torch light. Clicking the button again, Akachi stood in the dark.

Did he expect her to fight whatatever overpowered him and Lucien with a torch?

Maybe that wasn't the right setting. When she pressed the next button, an icy shock of cold water drenched her hand and sleeve, and the strange tool clattered at her feet. Her hand had numbed so fast, she hadn't felt it slip.

As she picked it up in two fingers, it bobbed this way and that, disgorging streams of water. Her tighter squeeze produced more and more, first like a seltzer bottle, then a geyser, splashing from the wall to her face and chest, until she released her grip, then squeezed again. The water slowed to a drip, and the rod dried instantly.

On pressing the ring finger button, a bright beam stabbed out, pooling orange and gold light on the wall. "Great," she sighed. "A flashlight." While she grumbled, she admitted it was a nice trick in Alsantia, where you needed sun, fire, or magical training to have light whenever you wished.

Two more buttons. If one was the weapon, there was now a fifty-fifty chance of it being the next push of a button.

No sooner was the index button depressed than sand gushed from the cup, and when she frantically pressed again, its next click refined the sand to a fine silt. This crud is going everywhere! As if hearing her mental shriek, the fine sand became thicker, then cruder, then cruddier, until a flood of crud blasted the wall, then back into the creases and chinks of her armor. It has a mental component, she realized, and the rod responded to her thought of flowers by shooting roses and flitting daisies,

their petals spinning like copters as they drifted to the floor.

When Akachi pressed the second button again, and thought motor oil, a thick, black sludge flowed over, and when she thought water, clear water streamed out, cleaning the rod and her fingers of the viscous oil. What the rod created soon vanished after she changed the mental setting, so that the oil spill vanished, and a puddle of water took its place, until she pointed the rod away from her face again and clicked the fifth and final button.

When nothing happened but a hum and a murmur, she tentatively tilted the rod back,

peered into the dry cup, smelling of smoke and dust, and felt its hissing whisper in her eyelashes.

As she passed her palm over the cup, thinking of air, it leaped to a whoosh, flooding the compartment with a wind that fluttered in the blueprints and rang the scales of her armored sleeves like chimes.

So. Five settings: fire, water, light, earth, and air. Modified by the mental component, these magical elements might be infinitely refined: energy, liquid, radiation, solid, and gas. While its fuzzy science didn't correspond perfectly to what she remembered from the Discovery channel, it was a very useful tool, limited only by the user's imagination. While not a weapon by design, crisis and necessity were fertile ground for creativity.

Imagination. Her heart fell as she clutched the rod in a white-knuckled grip. Unlike Berangere or Lucien, Akachi was never praised for imagination. While the Elderliches said she would be the wisest of them all, they had suggested no other gifts, certainly not intelligence or imagination. If wisdom was what was left once you eliminated any other intellectual gifts, it sounded like a personal abyss, and felt like being praised for waiting and silence, for nothingness and nonexistence. Unwrapped intelligence and imagination offered up so many surprises. but no matter how much wisdom was shaped and praised like a gift, there was never anything inside for Akachi's benefit.

Even holding a magic rod that made all of matter and energy a supple clay to shape as she wished, her heart skipped a beat, her mind drew a blank, and her inner, wisdom-shaped void

was hungry for any idea at all.

She would give it to Lucien. Better yet, his father. Even a wounded Architect could do more with his own tool than Akachi. What could she do, after all? Flood the compartment with water, sand, or worse, crud, and drown them all? Consume them with flame? Blast them with lasers?

Akachi scratched her head. That one sounded possible, even doable. Laser, she thought, then pressed the third button. The device was apparently limited not by words, but the thoughts they encoded, for the strange Earth word, surely not in Alsantian dictionaries, was accepted by the rod,

and the cup streamed a bright red light. Just like Star Wars, she laughed. But the beam only flicked around the compartment, blinking here and there on her breastplate, but tracing not even a scratch on the finish. Thank goodness, she told herself. So much for wisdom. She took a deep breath, clicked the first button while thinking laser, and produced a thin beam two feet long. Luke, I am your father. Laughing, she swung it like a toddler with a toy, and the bright beam sliced a bubbling gash in the smooth steel wall. It had been like waving a fan or a flyswatter, metal melting and gushing like water,

making no resistance at all.

Would clicking two buttons at once give her some range? Depresseing both the first and third buttons, Akachi thought laser, then dropped to the floor just under a bright burst that ricocheted a dozen times before being absorbed in the folds of her cloak, which smoldered to tatters as she stamped it until her metal boots blackened.

Having slid the rod in her frayed sleeve, she climbed into the crawlspace and scooted down the conduit, stopping at the whining snarls of whatever held The Architect and Lucien.

When she peeked in the grill, she saw furred feet fidgeting very near, and the dingy hem of a red and purple cloak. Further back, Lucien's father laid on the floor, his white shirt blotched with dark red blood.

She clicked the pinky button, and thought sleeping gas, but nothing happened. She realized she didn't know what sleeping gas was. While her thought of laser was close to what a laser was, her thought of sleeping gas was too vague to manifest.

What could she do? She couldn't crawl through while it stood there, and if she gave it a hotfoot,

it would retaliate as she squeezed into the compartment. With so little room inside, her laser might ricochet to strike Lucien's father. She couldn't see Lucien, but as he might be a sitting duck as well,

lasers were not an option.

Having pressed the second button until water soaked the rags of her cape, Akachi masked her nose and mouth with the wet tatters, then pressed the fifth button.

Smoke.

As the gray plumes shot into the vent, Akachi cringed from the grill, pressing her back against the crawlspace. Her makeshift mask began drying immediately, but was damp enough that they hacked and coughed long before she did, and when the compartment had fogged to the point that furry feet were all she saw, she pried off the grill, crawled in, and suppressed her tight little coughs as best she could as she made her way to the wounded man.

Lucien was slumped in the co-pilot's chair, and beside him another furry, half-human beast doubled over, retching into its furry elbow. She creeped near and laid her hand on Lucien's arm. When he recoiled with a jolt, she pointed to his supine father, who rasped as his eyes puffed to a squint and his face reddened.

She could kick herself. While she had incapacitated the beasts too, this was hardly wisdom.

When she thought air, the smoke dissolved, leaving a lingering, acrid aroma, hacking, trailing coughs,

the scamper of Lucien to his father's side, and the ratty beasts, tottering to their feet. As they crouched, and their paws curled into claws, she brought her hand to her eyes and pressed the third button.

Sunlight, she thought, and was half-blinded herself in the painful, golden light that blasted the shadows,

and lit the windshield, the dashboard, and the beasts, in harsh definition.

"Aggh!" Lucien howled. "A little warning!"

"What is it?" shrieked one of the creatures.

"A little wizard! Kill it!"

Lucien half-dragged his father toward the crawl-space as the ratmen reeled. "Akachi, he won't fit."

"Lucien..." His father mumbled, his eyes blind not from smoke and light, but blood loss.

Akachi stooped near to help Luicen, and the Architect's hands fumbled for the device. When he clicked the fifth button and mumbled, the cup issued a foul, noxious vapor. One ratman dropped to the floor,

while the other clawed near, convulsed, then curled into a ball, his furry face graying by the second.

The Architect mumbled again.

"What?"

This time he fumbled for her arm and drew her near. "Rat poison. You'll die too...if you don't leave me here."

"Raise the canopy!" Lucien banged his hands on the instruments until the windglass hissed and raised, much too slowly, so that they only had the smell of stormy air as the taste of the bitter vapor

made Akachi's throat scratchy and dry. She snatched the rod back, and thought clean air, but Lucien's father only whitened in the bracing wind. Was it too late? Had he succumbed to the poison? Had Lucien? Had she?

As the storm rushed in, clashing with the wind blasting from the rod, surging rain spattered in a glinting cloud, a spuming, drenching explosion of water, fogging the vented compartment with the spray. One rat-man puked on all fours as the other staggered toward Akachi.

Whatever curses it snarled were slashed through by its high-pitched whine, as its claws went for Akachi's throat, denting her ridge of neck armor enough to pinch her next breath. When she clicked the forefinger button rapidly, too frightened to think in words, she pictured big, burning flames, and the wand was only too happy to oblige, disgorging a jet of flame that fanned the creature, its fur blackening and its skin crackling, bubbling, hissing, and steaming in the pouring rain. As the canopy glass withdrew, the stench washed over her, and she retched on the back of her hand.

As Lucien helped his father onto the surface of the strider, the beast moaned and tottered, as if it didn't know its death was a smolder away.

"Get out of my way!"

As the flames died, its eyes grayed.

"Get! Out! Of my way!" Each exclamation point topped a strike from the butt end of the rod.

As it fell, the other rat-man clutched her other side. His claws slipped between two armor scales,

slashing her shoulderblade, As Akachi stumbled to one knee, she lashed back, heard his bubbling shriek, and felt the back blast of the flame.

Her eyes brightened and widened as her neck was pinched with a hot light touch that peeled up her tingling scalp, when Lucien stomped back through the windshield and down the dashboard, throwing his father's bloody cloak over her head, smearing blood where he patted and rubbed vigorously.

"What?" she sputtered, the blood smell so strong she could taste it, mingled with charred fur and bone. "Stop it!" Her shout hurt, each word seeming to tear through the back of her neck to the top of her head. "Lucien! Stop!"

"You were on fire!"

As terror rushed in, she clasped the cloak, now wet with blood, rain, sweat, and her own shouted spit, and where her fingers passed through ragged holes, she touched hot, painful patches on her raw scalp, a torn surface that felt more like some alien landscape than the back of her head.

Balling the cloak into her hands, Akachi tossed it to the floor. When she pressed the flame button on the hand grip, the torch sizzled to a matchlight, then snuffed out entirely.

"How bad is it." First she whispered, then she shouted. "How bad is it!"

Lucien turned his head a little to the left and right as he took it in. Then he grabbed her hand. "There's no time!"

"Tell me!" Her eyes welled with tears as she yanked his hand, squeezing it until he flinched again, this time gawking at his own clutched hand. His hand was still slack with disbelief or horror, and hers was rock-hard from adrenaline. "Tell me, or we're not going anywhere!"

"Akachi!" He tugged and tugged at his hand, but it was to no avail. He was a half foot taller,

but ordeal and panic had made her, in that moment, much stronger. "It's not that bad, Akachi." As his voice dipped to a cringe, he averted his eyes to the windshield. "We don't have time! If my father bleeds to death, or Suvani catches us, you fought for nothing, Akachi."

"Right now, all I want is to shrink to nothing, Lucien." She let go. "Fine. You go."

"It's not that bad, Akachi" Desperation fanned his dishonesty to the heat of faith.

"You're lying." Her nose and mouth were wet. She had struggled so hard not to cry, but the tears came anyway, flowing silently down her face.

"I'm not." Exasperation and impatience had creeped in his tone, but his eyes warbled, as if they wanted to fly away. "I won't lie to you, Akachi. It's not bad, not from the front. But your scalp and neck, Akachi. You need help. Let us help you as you helped us."

Terror and adrenaline had kept her standing. The pain had been excruciating, but she had blocked it out, burying it under the nightmarish fear that Lucien wanted to turn away from her ruined face, but as his hopeful words dissolved the threat of denial, her wounds upwelled, a scorched shadow spreading until it blotted out her consciousness. As she blacked out, she heard Lucien rush forward,

and felt his hands under her arms. Even then, awareness persisted, a tiny spark raging against the dying of her light.

"Akachi!"

As breath slumped in, then slumped out, her ponderous body grudged every breath. Exhaustion had so spread throughout her that even her lips felt grateful to rest, as if they huddled in quiescent ecstasy. There was no question of answering Lucien, but she tried to shape the grudged breaths into words, murmurs that he bent his head to hear, brushing his forehead against hers, but as these whispers escaped, her gibberish was drowned out by rain, and she forgot whatever meaning she had intended.

"What do I do, Akachi? I can't leave either of you!"

His shoulder braced her chest as her feet left the ground, and she swayed as he grunted,

the rain blitzing her back and stinging her scalp until it felt more on fire now than when she was burned, and as her murmurs became mutters, her mouth, still desiring that tranquil slumber,

clenched around a scream that fluttered to her eyes.

"It hurts! Lucien, it hurts! Put me down!" Blood flecked with black trickled down Lucien's shirt. He was carrying her across his shoulders, his face contorted, arms shaking, and back bowed under the strain. Having brought her through the windshield--his lurch up seats, dashboard, and roof what made her sway so violently--the rushing storm was washing out her burned scalp and neck. The charred flecks were little bits of Akachi, washing into the strider's polished chrome and the bark of the Daikonese elder.

As Lucien stamped and clattered on the walker, one foot nearly slipping in streaming rainwater,

his stomps echoed painfully, scuffling her shadowy unconsciousness like rumpled bedsheets, and she deliriously clung to a homey dream, that certain scent of laundered linen and cotton comforter plumping her old bed as she strained to hear Berangere softly reading The Scarlet Pimpernel as Loren nodded off and Chiyo snored under her sheets. In this conjured memory, Oji snuggled against Akachi,

his closeness empty, vacant of warmth. The purr she could only imagine shivered the dream, now soft and rippling like cat fur. I'm dreaming. Sadness stroked her, soothed her fast-beating heart. Oji had never snuggled her, but always slumbered between Loren and Berangere. As the cat vanished, she clutched at it in vain, knowing Oji had never even jumped in her lap, not once. Having never held a cat,

she had no idea what he felt like. Her hot stab of resentment was so fresh, her eyes flicked open, then crushed down under the rain-pounded pain of her charred neck and scalp.

That laundered scent was so burned into her consciousness, it would always evoke her childhood, or her conspicuous absence of a childhood, the cultivated cult of loneliness she had shared in with the other children. Even if it was real, even if the Elderliches were talking animals from Alsantia, on Earth, the only world Akachi had ever known, they were a cult, and she had given it real faith, having no other way to cope with her burdensome forlornness, her neverending reach for a family

she would never have, for even if she found her parents--a mother and father Adjia hesitated to name--

she could never be brought home, not in truth, not when her heart had no room for any more unknowns,

being still full of the abyss of faith. It made no sense, but how could she not believe, when she was so desperate for meaning? If her faith wasn't true, what did that mean? All her realizations, all her epiphanies, would not only mean nothing, but recede into that nothingness, if she had wasted her time.

Had she ever known faith. or was her imagination of God like her lying dream of holding a cat? The tears were still flowing. Perhaps they had never stopped flowing, having dammed up since childhood.

In the ashes of her religion, a new realization crystallized: she envied Loren and Berangere's friendship

more than she had ever wanted faith. Any faith she had clung to was only the lying depths of her loneliness, and if it had provided solace in times of despair, that reservoir was now empty--no matter what world she was in now, she had been circling this black hole, and hadn't truly been able to experience Alsantia. Not like Lucien, Berangere, Loren, and even despicable Conrad, who all discovered parents, meaning, and even a place here. There was still no place for Akachi, the one who had believed in Alsantia most.

Lifting her head, Akachi looked with bleary eyes through the blurry storm and war-torn landscape, now buffeted by dragon wings, the immense, scaly beast darkening the Alsantian legions,

rivaling even the storm clouds in its immensity. It wasn't fair that the spoiled Queen should now be impervious to harm, free from worry, and able to smear any threat by a flick of her wing or tail,

char any hint of violence by the merest puff of her breath. Neither of her worlds were so kind to her. Her worlds had left scars as they passed over her, not the omnipotent, caressing shadow which had been Suvani's benefactor, but a hungry, swarming flame; while Akachi had to live on the beast,

Suvani had become the beast.

"We have to take the fight to her." This time her murmurs made sense, not only to herself, but to Lucien, whose head half-turned, and even to the half-dead Architect, whose face, whitened from frightful blood-loss stared straight through her, his eyes so riveting that she felt pinned to the moment.

"Yes, we do."

"What can we do?" Lucien's voice was distraught but resigned. "Adjia's not coming back, is she?"

"She gave us as much of a chance as she could." When the Architect's eyes flicked to Lucien. Akachi knew something unsaid passed between them, that she was instrumental in their being stranded on this wreck embedded in a turncoat walking tree. If she had rescued them from wererats, her efforts had been in vain, for Lucien had to double back from his escape to help Akachi.

Lucien's eyes were angry, and the whole world seemed to bear the brunt of it. The dragon's wings curled upwards, spreading thundercloud shadows, the crinkling of its shining scales like crackling thunder and flashing lightning. Somehow, the Architect leaked more blood onto the walker.

The Daikonese Elder stomped on, ignoring them like so many squirrels in its enormous canopy of leaves.

It wasn't fair! She had been brave! She had mastered her fear! She had killed to save Lucien and the Architect, but it had been no use, not with behemoths above and below--and even as her eyes turned upward in outraged prayer, all she saw was dragon. "It doesn't end this way!"

"What?" Lucien was incredulous. "What can we do?"

The Architect grunted his weak assent. "I'm as optimistic as any inventor, but it looks like the end, or the beginning of the end, Akachi."

"Our story can't end here!" Akachi snatched up the tool and nearly fumbled it, for as her fingertips brushed against it, it rolled up on the lip of the surface, where it might have spun another quarter inch and fallen to the snarling werewolves below had her other hand not scooped it up. Having passed it to her right hand, Akachi considered the buttons. Which element or combination would save her now? Would save them all, she corrected herself, but she felt the change in her heart. Her disenchantment had not stopped at faith, but now purged her determination of all heroism and altruism,

leaving only a selfish desire to survive, despite her miserable days in this war-torn world.

"Akachi, what about him?" Lucien stooped to wrap his father's cloak around his wounded torso. "I can't carry him, and we can't leave him here."

He left you on Earth. Akachi couldn't stop the thought, nor her boiling resentment, nor the flame of rage that roared through shadowy faces, parents she had never known. "I don't know, Lucien."

"Well, it's clear to me." The Architect coughed a bubble of phlegm and blood, but as Lucien bent over him with a look of concern, he waved his son back. "We either all stay, huddled on this precariously lodged death trap, or you leave me here and help yourselves."

As Lucien blinked back tears, some beaded down his nose. "How could we do that to you?"

"If you don't leave, Suvani will take us all. Either way, my fate is certain. And maybe Adjia will come for me. We don't know."

"Don't do that," snapped Akachi.

"Don't do what?" wheezed the Architect.

"Persuade us. If our minds and eyes aren't clear, we'll hate ourselves later. You're asking us not only to leave you to Suvani. but to a dragon, and her armageddon army, the largest army ever assembled on Alsantia." At the present, they were in the eye of that vast storm of vile humanity and beast-kind, which stretched from horizon to horizon, blackening Alsantia as far as the eye could see.

"Akachi." Lucien's voice was strained. "It would be better if this was easier. And guilt later would be easier than leaving my father now."

"Fine." Akachi hated herself for her ranting tone. "We have no choice. No one's coming for us,

and we must save ourselves. Your father's best hope is falling into Suvani's hands, so he doesn't bleed to death." When Lucien's sob ripped out of him, she sighed. "Maybe Adjia will come back. We're certainly due for a miracle."

The Architect laughed weakly. "I think your fall from the sky used up our luck today."

"When a star falls, does the sky?" The deep voice rumbled. A cooler darkness overshadowed the hot dragon shade, as claws embedded in the walker, wrested it from the Elder's back, and tore it skyward.

As the sky heaved and dark clouds hurtled around them, Lucien fell over his father and Akachi clung to the windblown walker. "Inside!" she shouted over screaming wind. Having grasped the Architect's arm, she helped Lucien drag him to the shattered windshield.

They ascended and ascended with terrifying velocity, cleaving over the startled dragon's enormous wings, which now seemed clumsy and glacial compared to the powerful thrust of the golden sphinx, who burst above the dragon's shadow, then the clouds, as if all creation was falling in layers to its mighty claws.

As the majestic wings leveled off, the winds dragged to a gentle breeze. Just as they were about to lower Lucien's father through the broken glass, they stopped, clutched their windblown cloaks to their chests, and smiled at the sunlight warming their faces.

"Akachi!"

"Michel?"

No sooner had the blind girl climbed down the sphinx's claw than Akachi hugged her close and tight. As Alsantia seemed to spin under her feet, white clouds blotted out the war-torn world. Akachi sobbed with relief. It had felt like clouds would never be white again. It had felt like she would hold nothing true ever again.

As the moment burned, so did her racing heart. She drew back, holding Michel at arm's length. "Are you OK?"

"Now I am. But I have quite a story...OW!" Akachi's hand left a light pink mark on Michel's cheek. "What was that for!"

"Don't ask what was that for! You entitled, pompous twit!"

"You're still mad about Ghulmarque."

"Who cares about Ghulmarque! I'm mad about you! I had to leave you on the brink of war! And you think I want to hear about your adventures!"

"I'm sorry!"

"You're sorry! You can't even imagine what I've been thinking! What I've been feeling!"

"I've missed you too."

"Oh, you've missed me." While the sphinx had decelerated to a more accommodating speed,

as Akachi stridently paced the narrow length of the walker, Lucien paled, and his father became ash-white, no doubt fearing she would come too near the brink and tumble to her death.

"Be careful, Akachi," said Lucien.

"Fine." Akachi scowled, clinched so near that her breath twittered Michel's eyelashes, then clutched the blind girl and sobbed hard into her hair, hair that smelled like wind and cat and bird and sand.

"It's okay, Akachi." Michel stroked her hair absently. "As long as you don't hit me, Akachi. But don't you want to hear how I got here?"