“Thessa! Jailbird, listen to me! You have to bite down on this cureglass.”
Thessa blinked until her eyes finally began to focus. The voice belonged to Pari. Both she and Tirana crouched over her. They were still in the lighthouse, though half the wall was missing. She could smell smoke and burnt meat, a terrible heat like a Balkani sauna. Tirana held one hand tightly against her own mangled bloody shoulder, but she had both milkglass and cureglass in her ear.
“I’m sorcery-aphasic!” Thessa finally managed, shoving Pari’s offering of godglass away. “It’s not going to bloody well help me! I need a surgeon.” She tried to shift herself, only for the pain to hit her again. Her memories began to fit together preceding the blinding white light that still echoed in her mind’s eye. “Did Breenen shoot me?”
“The traitor shot us both,” Tirana spat, looking down at her shoulder. “But he didn’t shoot to kill. He was too much of a coward to finish the job. Him and his glassdamned traitor enforcers. I’m going to skin every one of them.”
“After we save Thessa,” Pari snapped.
“Fine. Come on, this is going to hurt.”
“Hurt” was an understatement. Thessa nearly fainted twice as they got her to her feet, one of them under each arm. She looked around, trying to get her bearings, before a realization hit her. “The phoenix channel. Where is it?”
“Where do you think? Breenen and his goons took it when they fled. There were just a few of them left. That blast killed everyone else standing in front of the lighthouse. Every single dragoon.”
Thessa felt her knees grow even weaker, and when she tumbled she almost took both her companions down with her. She stared at the empty copper cables that had coupled to either side of the phoenix channel. Its absence felt like a dead spot in her heart. All that work. All that pain and suffering. She turned away, averting her eyes, only to look through what had once been the wall of the lighthouse.
The Forge was completely transformed. The untethered phoenix channel had ripped a valley through the center of it, starting from the door of the lighthouse and disappearing out of sight. It sizzled and cracked in the rain, belching steam that filled her nostrils with the scent of charred rock and burnt bodies. “You said the dragoons are gone?” she asked weakly.
“Yeah,” Pari said stiffly. “Along with most of Breenen’s enforcers, our carriages, and everything else we brought with us. Our own wounded were around the side and it’s the only reason they survived.”
“Glassdamn,” Thessa whispered. She had hoped for a distraction, not a disaster. “Why didn’t Breenen take me with him?” she asked.
“He didn’t have enough enforcers to carry both you and the channel,” Tirana grunted. “Now come on, we should move.”
Pulled along by the other two, Thessa began to limp forward, more and more of the unnatural valley coming into sight as she neared the edge of the Forge. It extended for more than a mile, cutting a jagged furrow across the scrubland below the Forge. Down below, a handful of their loyal enforcers picked at what remained, trying to find supplies. “Wait!” She tried to turn back to the lighthouse, nearly falling as she put all her weight back on Tirana. “Did it even work? The phoenix channel?”
Tirana and Pari exchanged a look. “What,” Pari said, “do you think I was trying to get you to put between your teeth?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a whole handful of godglass, holding it out in front of Thessa. Each piece resonated with sorcery, full of color and life. Thessa’s breath caught in her throat, and she pushed down her pain using only her rage.
It worked. It worked, and then it was stolen from her.
“We’re going to find those traitors,” she told Tirana, “and when we do I’ll help you skin them.”
Kizzie tore the forgeglass earring from her piercing and hurled it away. Her whole body ached, her head pounding, glassrot nausea sweeping through her so powerfully that she thought she’d empty her stomach at any moment. Both arms and hands were covered in yellow scales, skin crackling as she moved them. She lay sprawled on the ground, her head and shoulders propped up by the wall, tunic heavy with blood that was almost entirely not her own.
A single acolyte, the last man she’d come across before her strength finally failed her, lay on the ground just a few feet away, her sword buried to the hilt in his eye. His foot still twitched, though he was certainly dead. She didn’t know what had happened to her stiletto. She found her gaze resting on the razorglass blade tattooed on the acolyte’s hand.
Where was Aristanes? Where were the rest of these acolytes? The shouts of alarm no longer echoed through the long halls. Somewhere in the distance, as if from the bottom of a well, she could still hear the Tall Man’s snarls and inhuman screams, accompanied by the sound of walls and furniture being destroyed. She should get up, go find them, and do what she could to help. Could she even move? Every sinew felt utterly destroyed by the very sorcery that had gotten her this far.
She had often wondered why the very richest and most powerful guild-families didn’t employ high-resonance godglass more often. She’d always assumed it was because the costs were prohibitive, but now that she’d felt the firsthand effects of it, she knew it would take days, perhaps weeks to recover. If she’d fought for just a few seconds longer, it might have consumed her entirely.
She closed her eyes, listening to her own frantic, shallow breaths, waiting for more acolytes to appear and finish her off. It wasn’t like she could put up a fight.
Some time had passed, though she couldn’t be sure how much, when the distant sound of fighting suddenly ceased. She strained her senses, remembering that she still wore the skyglass and her braided earrings, trying to determine which of the two combatants had come out victorious.
Slowly, she grew aware of a scraping sound, like that of an armored body being dragged along marble floors. It was coming toward her, of that she was certain. Shuffle, shuffle, scrape. Shuffle, shuffle, scrape. Her nerves were dead, her body so wrung out that she didn’t think it possible to feel terror for her own death anymore. The sound continued to approach, until a shadow darkened the far end of the hall and a monstrous form appeared.
It was the Tall Man. The creature was much reduced, its massive, leathery body bleeding from dozens of wounds. It left a trail of black, tar-like blood. Yellow bile oozed from the one eye that remained open, and dripped from both ears. Several of the tentacles had been ripped off its face. It swung its head back and forth until it spotted Kizzie, then turned toward her, one leg dragging behind it as it limped toward her.
Shuffle, shuffle, scrape.
Kizzie tried to gather the strength to crawl over to that last corpse and extract her sword. She wanted to die with a weapon in her hand, at least, but found that it was too much. She took a few deep breaths and managed to get the blackjack out of her back pocket. It would do hilariously little to such a beast, even wounded as it was, but at least it was some kind of weapon. She held it out in front of her like a pistol, waiting for the Tall Man to fall upon her.
The creature came to within a few feet and stopped, hulking over her like a statue, brilliant blue eyes glistening as it stared down at her. It cleared its throat, and what came out next surprised her with its human sound.
“We were going to offer you a place among us,” it said softly.
Kizzie scoffed. “What, you can turn me into something like you?”
“No, no,” the Tall Man replied, its voice full of world-weary exhaustion. “You cannot change races. But you can serve us.” It looked down at the acolyte with Kizzie’s sword buried in his eye.