Wren was very much hoping, somewhat selfishly, that once Liv and Sidonie figured out how to move or build a waystone, the very first was put down at Clear Water Cenote. While she couldn’t claim to understand the particulars herself, and had spent a significant amount of time prior to the Freeport trip out scouting rifts on the western coast of Varuna, she’d been present for enough conversation to gather that it wasn’t going to be accomplished quickly or easily.

  Which left Wren making yet another run between the dam rift, still held by a small Elden garrison, and the Red Shield Hunting grounds to the northeast. Unburdened with captives, or even the youngest and oldest members of her tribe, she made good time. She wasn’t quite so fueled by urgency and desperation as when she’d know that Liv and the others were headed into the Tomb of Celris without her, but the thought that it was finally time to rescue everyone slumbering at Godsgrave was more than enough to push her onward into the early evening.

  Rather than use her bow, Wren took her cougar form and ripped out the throat of a peccary, before feasting on the fresh, hot meat of its loins, shoulders and lower back. The animal’s fresh blood more than made up for what she’d used in shape-shifting, and once her belly was full she found a high branch to hang from. If she’d been settled into the routine of living as a bat, she would have flown through the night, but she was coming off spending nearly the entirety of the journey to Lucania in human form, following a human sleep cycle.

  And she had another reason to sleep at night, as well.

  Wren opened her eyes to a city like nothing she’d ever seen before. Broad avenues separated white towers that stretched to the sky, higher than any castle that had ever been built. Trees lined the roads: purple flowered jacarandas, flame of the forest, blazing a vibrant orange-red, pink trumpets and all the rest, the most beautiful flowers of the Varunan jungle. Wren walked beneath them, unable to keep from craning her neck up and turning around as she tried to take it all in at once.

  There were gardens, as well: entire city blocks seemed set aside for wandering paths of ornamental stone, twisting beneath and between fragrant boughs, past artistically placed boulders, leading to ponds and fountains where stone benches provided a place for passersby to rest. Wren saw Eld hurrying along those paths, in such a brilliant scattering of skin and hair tones that they seemed almost to be flowers themselves, and she followed them toward the sound of music.

  In one corner of the park, at the edge of a great lawn, was an outdoor stage, and there Elden men and women danced, twirling such that vibrant scarves fluttered behind them. Their audience was primarily other Eld, but Wren also saw a hovering mana platform, brilliant, shining gold striated with blue the same shade as the water at Coral Bay, upon which two of the V?dim reclined.

  She knew them at once, because there was something distinctly inhuman about their faces. It was a subtle thing, as it always had been with Ractia, such that you could almost get used to it when you were seeing the Lady of Blood every day; but then, if you went away to hunt for a while, and returned, it struck you all over again.

  The one on the left had hair of brilliant blue, shading almost to a deep, midnight at the darkest, but in the highlights reminding Wren of nothing so much as the wide mountain sky that Liv seemed so enamoured of. Her dress matched the color, but seemed to be as light as a feather on the wind, constantly stirring and nearly floating about her. D?ivi, Wren decided. The resemblance to Liv’s cousin, Miina, was uncanny, and she suspected that Liv’s grandmother might have looked much like this when she was a young woman.

  The second goddess had the body of a dancer, much like the Eld on the stage. She was elegant but strong, compact, and even among the colors of the Eld, Wren had a difficult time believing that her hair was natural, rather than something made by magic. It was a shining, metallic silver, that shaded into blushes of lavender, blue, and pink, all mixed together as if by an artist’s knife.

  “Veitha,” Ghveris said, coming up on Wren’s side. “The Lady of Song.”

  Wren knew it was him immediately, though even the voice was different. There was no hissing of steam or mechanical rumble, nothing artificial at all: this voice, like the man beside her, was entirely natural, entirely alive. She shouldn’t have recognized him, but there was something about the intonation, the feeling behind the words, that was immediately familiar.

  She turned to face him with a thrill, realizing that, for the first time, she was seeing not the metal armor that had been built to keep her friend alive, but him. Ghveris was tall, but not enormous: that was only how he’d been built by the V?dim, to be a machine of war. His hair was dark, cropped close to his head, as dark as his eyes. His shoulders were still broad, his arms muscled from the life of a warrior, but all the proportions were human. He wore peculiar clothes: a sort of shirt and breeches that were more fitted than anything produced in Lucania or among the Eld, and of a fabric that Wren couldn’t identify.

  Wren couldn’t help but smile as she looked up at him, and it took her a moment to realize that he’d continued to speak. “What?” she said.

  “Corsteris.” Ghveris waved an arm to indicate the park, and the towers that rose into the sky beyond this single small spot of greenery. “The rebellion had been eating away at the edges for years, by this point, but here it might as well have not even existed. Ractia had asked for volunteers: humans who were willing to be turned into soldiers, to help put down the rebels. I would never have been able to come here, not without dying of mana sickness, but that was one of the things she was promising.”

  “To make it so that you’d never have to worry about mana sickness again.” Wren nodded. She hardly even felt it when she entered a rift – not until the depths, in most places, where the mana was most dense.

  “When she was done with us, we were given a week to recover,” Ghveris explained. “That’s when I came here. I remember walking up and down the streets, trying to see everything. I heard the music, and sat down on the grass to watch the Cotheeria dance. Halfway through the performance, two of the V?dim came down from the sky, and I ended up watching them nearly as much as the dancers. When the show was finished, they took the lead dancer away with them. I’ve wondered what happened to her.”

  Wren followed his raised hand, and watched the woman he’d pointed at for a moment. She spun gracefully, back arched, head thrown back to expose her pale neck. She was nearly as small as Liv.

  “Veitha is one of the ones who left, isn’t she?” Wren asked. “Perhaps she took people like that with her. Or perhaps she was freed. That woman might have descendants in the north today.”

  “Perhaps.” Ghveris shrugged. “The morning after this, we were sent to our first battle. You are making good time across the jungle?”

  Wren nodded. “I should reach Red Shield territory tomorrow. I haven’t had any problems. How are things on your end?”

  “Liv and Keri went to inspect the army today,” Ghveris told her. “And then up to the ring. Arjun insisted that he and Elder Aira be allowed to examine her, to see just how much her body has changed.”

  “She must have liked that.”

  “Inkeris threatened to pick her up and carry her there,” Ghveris said, and for the first time Wren saw him smile. There was such mischief in it that she couldn’t help but grin in return.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “You talk differently here,” Wren realized. “More relaxed.”

  Ghveris shrugged, and it was the same movement his pauldrons made. “I’m not struggling to speak Lucanian, here,” he said. “May I show you something?” He held out a hand, and Wren took it.

  She couldn’t tell this was a dream. Perhaps at the edges, as he tugged her along the paths, where things blurred and became indistinct when Wren wasn’t looking right at them, or paying close attention. The strand of her hair that was dyed purple, something she hadn’t done in more than two years. But the hand enfolding her own felt like a man’s hand: calloused in some places, warm, and strong.

  He took her to a small grove of trees, of a type that Wren didn’t recognize. They were short, so far as trees went, with very thin, purple-brown leaves that looked from a distance almost like fur, or soft feathers. Four of them grew together in such a way that, when Ghveris ducked and led her inside, they found themselves in a sort of dome, with bare earth surrounding the trunks and roots.

  “You found this when you were exploring the gardens?” Wren asked him, and Ghveris nodded. He sat down, folding his legs, and she hesitated only for a moment before placing herself right in his lap.

  “Wren –”

  She turned toward him, reached up with a single finger, and touched it to his lips. “Do you know why I fetched these dreamstones?”

  Ghveris smiled. “You claimed it was so that we could stay in touch and pass information.”

  “We’ll do that too,” Wren said. “But no. It was because of what happened at the guild hall. When you came out of the smoke, and when your armor started to crack – that was the first time, I think, that I ever really thought that you might die.”

  “I did not,” Ghveris pointed out.

  Wren nodded. “I know you didn’t want me to see what’s inside the armor.”

  “Because it isn’t me,” he told her. “This is. I don’t want you to think of a few disgusting organs, kept alive in a jar, when you look at me. I want you to think of this.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if I saw or not,” Wren told him, raising her chin to meet Ghveris’s gaze. “I don’t care what you look like. I didn’t fall in love with a suit of armor, or a set of dark eyes, no matter how pretty. I fell in love with the person who carried me through the snow, who let me lean on him all through the night in the desert, who is somehow, even encased in all that machinery, one of the gentlest people I’ve ever met.”

  Ghveris winced. “You shouldn’t love me, Wren,” he whispered. “I won’t ever be able to touch you, to kiss you, to hold you in my arms while we sleep –”

  “You can kiss me right now,” she pointed out. Wren turned herself around so that she was straddling his thighs, and pressed her lips to his. After a moment, Ghveris’s hands came to rest on her hips, and then they didn’t speak any more.

  ?

  By the time Wren landed at the edge of the village, it was nearly noon but she still felt like singing. When Blossom came running over to her, she picked the girl up and swung her around in the air with a grin, to a giggle and a happy squeal.

  “We haven’t seen you in months,” Calm Waters told Wren, once she’d caught up to her daughter. “What brings you all the way out here?”

  “We just got back from Lucania,” Wren explained. “Everything there is finally settled, though not without a bit of trouble. We found a cell of Ractia cultists in the capital, and had to fight our way out of a burning building.”

  “Are all your friends alright?” Blossom asked, with wide eyes.

  “Yes. Yes they are,” Wren assured the little girl. “Ghveris got a bit banged up, but we had new armor made for him, and it's going to be just as good as the old pieces.” She would make certain of that. Not that she truly thought Liv would forget, but the girl was so busy that there were a hundred demands on her time at any given moment.

  She pulled herself out of those musings when she saw Soaring Eagle and old Walking Tree, who’d been the third to sit for the tribe at the Hall of Ancestors, approaching.

  “We’re ready,” Wren called over to them. “Or at least, we’re ready to make a start. Liv wants to get to Godsgrave before the rainy season begins, and begin pulling people out.”

  Soaring Eagle let out a sigh of relief, as if some burden that he’d been carrying unseen, for months, had finally been set down. “I trusted that she would,” he admitted. “But it will still be good to make a beginning.”

  “She was hoping that you could come back with me to Bald Peak,” Wren said. “She wants you there for the planning.”

  “Can I come?” Blossom asked, tugging at a strand of Wren’s hair. “Will Rei be there?”

  Wren shook her head. “He’ll already be back to Mountain Home, by this point,” she told the little girl. “But you could see the new baby, if your parents are willing to bring you. In fact, I think it would be a good idea for you to come. I want to introduce you to my friend Arjun – he’s the one who helped me get my cougar form.”

  “It would slow us down,” Soaring Eagle said, thinking it over. “We would need to go by canoe, instead of fly upriver.”

  “But she has been learning to fly for some time,” Calm Waters pointed out. “With the blood-letters gone, the only way to get a second form –”

  “Yes.” Soaring Eagle turned to Walking Tree. “I entrust the tribe to your care while we are gone. I do not think it will be long before I send word, one way or another; we will want our warriors and hungers there, when the time comes to enter Godsgrave.”

  Wren took it upon herself to occupy Blossom while her cousin and Soaring Eagle threw themselves into preparations. She showed the little girl how to hold a dagger for fighting, rather than for carving up a carcass, and made a game out of footwork. They stayed for a dinner with the entire tribe, and made a beginning of their journey in the morning.

  To Wren’s satisfaction, if not her comfort, an experiment proved that Blossom could ride on her back in cougar form, with her little fists buried in the fur along the back of Wren’s neck. That meant that, even after Blossom was too tired to fly on her own, Calm Waters and Soaring Eagle could continue overhead, while Wren ran through the jungle below them, leaping fallen trees and boulders. Blossom thought it was all great fun, though by the time they reached the canoes hidden along the north bank of the Airaduin?, two days later, Wren’s back hurt no matter what form she was in. The spine of a cat, it turned out, was not anything like that of a horse, and not at all meant for carrying loads.

  That night, after they’d eaten and put Blossom to bed, when their cook-fire was little more than glowing orange embers, Soaring Eagle took Wren by the elbow.

  “Are you feeling well enough for a night flight?” he asked, keeping his voice low so as to not wake his daughter.

  Wren twisted at the waist, then arched her back, which made an audible popping sound. “Honestly, I think flying will be a relief.”

  “Follow me, then.” Soaring Eagle shifted, spread his wings, and flapped his way up and out from beneath the jungle canopy, over the open river.

  Wren took her bat for and followed him, and was surprised to see him veer southeast. They flew for hours, in a straight line, leaving the great river behind, and while Wren hadn’t been certain at first, the farther they went, the more certain she was where they were headed. They’d long since gone too far south for Calder’s Landing, and there was little else in this direction but –

  “Godsgrave.” Soaring Eagle chose a tall, stout tree, and landed among the strongest branches, where he shifted into his human form and wedged himself into a crook in the limbs, one hand clutching an arm-thick bough to help him keep his balance.

  Wren found herself a suitable perch of her own, and settled in. There wasn’t any real danger of falling – both of them were practiced enough to change form before they hit the ground. But it would have been embarrassing.

  Like a baleful sunset, Godsgrave lit up the horizon. Wren couldn’t make out the clouds that smothered the sky above that great crater, but she knew they were there because of the utter absence of stars.

  “It must be enormous,” she whispered, after a moment.

  “I wasn’t certain whether you’d ever actually seen it,” Soaring Eagle said. “When I was much younger, and much more foolish, I flew out here because Wildcat challenged me to do it.”

  “I think I remember that.” Wren nodded. “My cousin didn’t talk to you for days after, as I recall. How close did you actually get?”

  “Not even to the edge of the crater. The air tasted like poison, and I turned back. But I’ve never forgotten how the place looked at night. I’m not certain your friend realizes just how big the crater is.”

  Wren could feel Soaring Eagle’s eyes on her. “This won’t be our first time in a greater rift,” she assured him. “The Well of Bones, the Tomb of Celris. I won’t say either of those was easy, but we got out alive both times. And, honestly, we’re going to have the kind of help now that we never had before. This won’t be just five or six of us going in with whatever we can carry on our backs.”

  “A lot of people would have second thoughts when they finally see it,” Soaring Eagle said, after a moment’s pause. “Even very brave people.”

  Wren laughed. “You don’t know Liv.”

  here. I am more available there than I am here.

  at least one more chapter of volume eight today (Tuesday). I'm pretty confident that if this isn't the end of eight, Wednesday's chapter will be, and then it will be time to dive into volume 9, which I currently expect to be the final volume of this story.

  Dramatis Personae

  Blossom - Daughter of Soaring Eagle and Calm Waters. "What do you mean my friend won't be there?" ::pouts::

  Calm Waters - Niece of Nighthawk, mother of Blossom, cousin of Wren, wife of Soaring Eagle. Red Shield Tribe. Scouting second forms for her daughter.

  Ghveris, the Beast of Iuronnath - Formerly a Great Bat in service to Ractia, now the remains of his body form the heart of an Antrian juggernaut. Was totally a hunk. [Mana Battery: 10 Rings]

  Soaring Eagle - Husband of Calm Waters, father of Blossom. Red Shield Tribe. "...just how crazy is your friend, anyway?"

  Wren Wind Dancer - Daughter of Nighthawk, cousin of Calm Waters. "LOL you can't even imagine how crazy. Liv goes to 11."