There comes, eventually, a most unpleasant awakening.

  Consciousness returns to Tiger in slow, sparse increments. Gradually he comes to realize that he is laying prone amidst a mountain of grain-filled burlap sacks; gradually he comes to understand that he is inside an old storehouse, a dark-draped and mildew-smelling little slice of quiescence that is—apparently—to be his sanctuary. The lights of the city surrounding ooze through the structure's innumerable fractures and wounds, not quite managing to actually illuminate but still doing just enough to grant the shadows within a defined, contoured edge. It is still thundering quite madly outside; the rain becomes a steady roar, a hammering of so many fists against the roof of that derelict old ruin. The world is demanding to be let in.

  Tiger's head is pounding (as per usual). His mouth is caked with old blood. He looks down at his hands—sees that the right is untouched, for his tattoo has already done the work of hungrily sucking up all the blood Tiger had offered (as per usual). The left, by contrast, is still marred with the runes he had carved into his palm—though they're also healing faster than human flesh probably should (as per usual). His teeth taste like iron; now he smacks his lips, tries to sit upright, experiences a truly hellacious bout of vertigo, and promptly decides it in his best interest to lay back down. And that's when he finally sees Panther.

  She's sitting on a crate opposite his own grain-sack berth, observing him in stolid silence. Her gambeson is partway undone and hanging about her waist, and her tunic is now wrapped in twice as many bandages—strips of torn burlap, actually—as it was before. Her sword is lain flat across her lap, and her eyes are heavy with bags even darker and deeper than usual. Even there in the darkness, barely visible to Tiger's own bleary eyes, still does Panther look abominably tired. Tiger sees it right away in the hunch of her shoulders, and in the downwards cant of her chin.

  He also sees Ibis's pendant, dangling there like an albatross around her neck.

  At any rate, Tiger's head is spinning, so Tiger lays his himself back down. And so the two of them just sit there in tense silence, for a while, until: "My eye stopped burning," muses Tiger, into the darkness. His voice is naught but a hoarse and ragged rasp.

  "Yes," replies Panther. Her own voice is flat and hard. Yielding nothing.

  "Stars." Tiger puts one hand over his right eye, and stares up at the shadow-draped rafters above. "You know, that's the one part of Sorcery that doesn't really hurt. Somehow. The flames in the eye, they almost feel...kind of good? If only by virtue of not feeling bad, I guess."

  "I know," says Panther. "You told me before."

  "Right," says Tiger.

  Another long pause. Thunder rumbles above, and the whole storehouse shudders below. "You're angry," says Tiger. Stating the obvious. Getting it out of the way, out into the open.

  "I'm furious," says Panther, just as coldly as before.

  "Look, I'm sorry." Tiger groans, tries and fails once more to sit upright. Collapses back down in defeat. "I know you told me not to," he sighs. "I know."

  "You almost killed yourself."

  "What other choice did I have?" Tiger turns his head, lifts his eyebrows right at her. "What was I supposed to do, just sit there and do nothing while Daiga kills us both?"

  To that Panther makes a noise of wordless displeasure, and turns her head quite sharply away. "People always underestimate me," she scoffs. "Guess this is nothing new."

  "Oh, don't you even try that shit with me," Tiger snaps. This time, his irritation—compounded by his headache—is more than enough to overcome his physical inability, and so the seventh prince props himself upright on both elbows. "I'm not an idiot, Panther. Am I genuinely to believe that you were going to kill Daiga, the bowman, and that freak in the bandages all by yourself?"

  "I hadn't lost yet."

  "You've lost your mind, that's what you've lost. Stars above, Panther, I really thought you were going to die!"

  Thunder booms; the grain rattles. Tiger and Panther both cease to speak for quite some time.

  Eventually, though—and contrary to the usual order of things—it is Panther who broaches the silence. "Tell me everything you know about Daiga," she demands, so suddenly that it takes Tiger a full second to discern whether her voice was merely the byproduct of a half-waking hallucinated dream. "Incipitors," Panther insists, when Tiger does not immediately reply. "You said you'd heard stories. Tell me everything I need to know about that bastard."

  "Alright, alright..." Tiger groans, forcing himself upright once more and rubbing unhappily at his still-throbbing skull. "I'll tell you what I do know, anyway."

  "Go on."

  "Okay. So. They're criminals who were sentenced to death, right? Everyone knows that much. Their identities are erased and their bodies are handed over to the Third Pillar, Yauju Daret. He's like—what would a Vokian call it—our head scientist? I met him a few times when I was younger and he never failed to make me uneasy, so take that for whatever it's worth. Anway: Yauju takes these people that legally no longer exist and he...he alters their brains, basically. Psychological conditioning, lots of very long needles, you get the idea. He trains them like dogs. Makes them physically incapable of disobeying orders. And pain is like pleasure to them, after he's done. Pain literally activates the...I don't know, the pleasure gland, whatever it's called. And then—you saw the scars, right?" He traces one finger across his forehead, for emphasis.

  "Hard to miss."

  "Right. Well supposedly he cuts the tops of their heads off, prints a bunch of runes on the inside of the skullcap, then stitches it right back on. Powerful runes. Words of Major Significance. Those words right up against a person's brain do...something, I guess. Somehow that makes them into Negators. Anti-Sorcerers. It's...I don't know how to explain it to a dull-eye, exactly. It's like my Sorcery is a fountain and he's turning off the tap. Or, like, I'm making an argument to the world, okay? I'm saying there should be 'fire' here. And the Negator offers a counter-argument, says 'no that's not true at all.' Or...or not a counter-argument, per se, more like...setting the record straight? I don't know."

  "He didn't snuff your flames," Panther notes, her ire momentarily smothered by sheer practical curiosity. She's obviously been sitting on these questions for several hours now. "He was unharmed, sure. But I thought Negators just shut down Sorcery outright."

  "He spoke the Word too late," Tiger answers, with a shrug. "The fire had already manifested. Maybe Daiga waited on purpose—maybe he wanted to test me, see what I was capable of." The prince sniffs. "Or maybe he's just an asshole."

  "He also said that he could smell your Aia," Panther continues, going right down her line of pre-prepared questions. "What is that?"

  Tiger just grimaces, closing his eyes and pinching his brow as he tries to settle upon the right words. It is a hopeless task; after all, it is not for no reason that all literature penned by powerful Sorcerers inevitably descends into messes of purple prose and indecipherable gibberish. Sorcery is not of this world—it is of The Other Side. Trying to box the irrational into rational terms is a fool's errand, one that lends itself only to misunderstanding and muddled metaphor. "Aia is like..." Tiger tries, finally, despite it all, "a culmination of every decision you've ever made, right from the moment you were born. It's like your signature, almost. Dull-eyes don't give off any at all, but it does flow freely—" he taps at his right eye, "—from an open conduit, like mine."

  "It sounds like karma."

  "Kind of? I suppose."

  "And Daiga can smell that?"

  "Apparently," Tiger sighs, with another shrug. "Something to do with those runes on his brain, I guess. I don't know. But I'm also not too worried about it; this whole city should be absolutely overflowing with mish-mashed Aia. I doubt he can track me all that well here." He pauses. "Probably." Another pause. "Okay, I have no idea. But—hey, how long have I been out?"

  "Eleven hours."

  "Eleven hou—wait, really? Stars above. Well, it's been eleven fucking hours and Daiga still hasn't come to kick in our door, so I think it's a safe bet that he doesn't know exactly where I—we—are."

  For a moment, Panther just regards him in stony silence. Then: "Sure," she says, simply, and then she rises abruptly to her feet and begins the process of shrugging her gambeson back on.

  "Woah, hey—" Tiger interjects, as Panther buckles her armored vest shut. "What are you doing?"

  "Going for a walk," Panther replies, flatly. She is right back to that same icy hostility as before; now, she doesn't even bother to meet his eyes.

  "Panther, hold on. Seriously. You're in no condition to fight."

  "I'll be back," is all Panther has to offer, in reply. Tiger offers a little bit more—pleads, beseeches, argues—but Panther doesn't respond any further, and doesn't look back, and so just a few minutes later she is gone and he is alone.

  And about thirty seconds after that, Tiger is already back asleep.

  Two knocks, two pauses, three knocks. Another pause—and then Kyar opens the door, glances down at his visitor, and says, "Stars, Casso, where the hell have you been?"

  "Out and about," the old man shrugs, nonplussed. "You gonna let me in?"

  "Yeah, yeah," Kyar mutters, turning away and inviting the old man to follow. So Casso does just that; he steps into that cheap-rented hovel and locks the door twice behind him, then turns back to a dismal sight indeed.

  The Empty Man is hunched at the far end of the table, head bowed so as not to scrape the ceiling, his bandaged-wrapped chest sporting a pair of vicious and actively-oozing lacerations. If he's in pain—if the sword put through his sternum was bothering him in any way—then the milk-eyed giant doesn't show it. Kyar himself was also looking quite dramatically worse for wear, with a black eye and a bandaged skull and a half-dozen other minor lacerations all criss-crossing his bare arms and face. Now he props his bow up against the nearest chair and takes a seat, and begins lighting up a weathered old pipe as Casso waits, silent, beneath the archway.

  Neither of the mercenaries invite Casso to join them; likewise, Casso has no intention of crossing that barrier before being explicitly granted permission to do so. Nor does he take any particular offense at any of this. He just waits, like he knew he'd have to do, until finally Kyar states the obvious: "Thanks for all the help back there, Casso. Couldn't have done it without you."

  "My bad," Casso admits, quite casually. "I'd just stepped out to take a piss."

  "That's a real long piss."

  "Ran into a coupla 'sharans while I was out there. Things got violent."

  "I don't see any blood on you."

  "Come on, man. I'm a pro."

  "Uh huh."

  "By time I was done with them, I swing back around to see the whole fuckin' gatehouse burning down. Didn't see you guys or the targets, and there was a whole army of Kainoan soldiers headed right my way. So I split. Figured I'd meet you back here if you all were still alive. If not—" Casso shrugs, for the second time, "—again, I suppose that'd be my bad."

  Kyar doesn't say anything back, to that. Not a word. Nor does the Empty Man offer any particular comment of his own. The two of them just stare. So Casso stares right back; he's far too old to bend over backwards explaining himself, or to beg for forgiveness. If anything, right now a fight to the death seems almost preferable. At least he knows he'd win.

  So, Casso's hand goes into his coat. And Kyar's augmented arm draws carefully towards the quiver full of razor-tipped arrows beside him. And the Empty Man shifts in his seat, his chains all rattling audibly. And so everyone holds their breath.

  And then Casso pulls out his flask and takes a swig, and Kyar says, "Alright, you twice-damned lazy old drunk, come on and sit down already. Quit looming like a fuckin' stranger."

  So Casso does just that; he takes a seat, and proceeds to pour Kyar and the Empty Man each a bit of his cheap and foul-smelling liquor (though the Empty Man did not eat or drink, it was common courtesy all the same). A pair of wooden cups clinked against a scuffed-up old flask; Casso and Kyar drank, whilst the Empty Man tossed the alcohol right over his shoulder. Now, Kyar sighs, and settles back into his seat, and then after a moment remarks: "Anyways, Casso, you're lucky you missed out."

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  "That bad, huh?" Casso puts his hands behind his head and his shoes up on the table; neither of his companions seems to mind or even notice at all.

  "You ever heard of a Shalasharan Incipitor?"

  Casso furrows his brow. "Think so, yeah. I might've killed one at some point."

  "Well, in addition to Panther putting up a hell of a fight and Tiger torching the whole damn building, we also had to deal with the craziest Incipitor you've ever seen in your life. Guy was borderline feral, I'm telling you. Stuck poor E.M. over here—" he jabs a thumb, "—right where a human's heart woulda been. Didn't give a shit about the poison blood 'neither."

  "Sounds like a nice guy," says Casso.

  "No fucking kidding," agrees Kyar.

  "Now our quarry is lost to us," rumbles the Empty Man, speaking up for the first time and immediately drawing all eyes right to the sound of his deep-basso voice.

  "I dunno about that," Casso counters, with a yawn. Everyone turns back to face him. "Incipitors can smell their targets, y'know. So ours should still know where his are. And if he's half as nuts as you say he—" Casso raps his knuckles twice against the table, "—well, then all we gotta do is wait. Wait, and then follow the carnage."

  "Sounds like a plan," Kyar nods, rapping his own knuckles twice in response. "Tell me something, though. You actually intend to participate this time?" The mercenary leans forward very suddenly, and the shadows serve only to deepen the many scars crossing his face. "You're the toughest one here, Casso, everyone knows that. But you're not worth half a shit if you won't actually fucking fight." Now Kyar leans in even closer, and hisses, "I just said you were the toughest one here, I know, but two on one? I don't think it'd go your way. How about you, E.M.? Think it'd go Casso's way?"

  "No."

  "There you have it," Kyar declares. "So, lemme be clear: if you hang us out to dry again, we come back and we find you afterwards. And then we kill you slow." He pauses. "And you don't get your share. You got that?"

  Casso, meanwhile, isn't looking at either of them. Casso is looking at the far corner of the room, staring off into absolutely nothing at all. His eyes are fixed on the vertex wherein walls meet ceiling and light meets shadow; his expression is bored and blank, and also weary beyond all belief.

  He is also very drunk.

  "I think we're being more than fair," says Kyar.

  "Sure, man," Casso agrees, finally, still without meeting the other man's eyes. Then he raises his flask in halfhearted salute and slurs, halfheartedly: "I'll do my part."

  Tiger spends some time drifting in and out of consciousness; for how long, he cannot possibly say. He glides through strange half-remembered realities, dreams of so many potential futures—dreams of Ibis returning alive, unharmed, having faked her death in yet another audacious scheme. He dreams of his father welcoming him home, his arrival heralded by a gilded caravan and a whole platoon of magnificently silver-armored guards. He dreams of Shalashar on fire. He dreams of Vokia leveled flat. He dreams of Daiga's hand around his throat.

  When Panther does finally return, quite literally materializing out of the shadows like some Equinox Beast of old legend, Tiger at first believes it to simply be yet another eerily-plausible dream. Life itself has felt so very much like a hallucination these past few days, everything all so surreal and strangely distant. Tiger has felt as though he were observing his own body, his own actions, all of it from outside his own self—as though he were but a mere spectator to his own existence. As though he were merely reciting from a pre-existing script.

  Reality grounds itself the moment a fresh-baked loaf of bread impacts against his stomach. Panther is very real, and has returned with a whole bounty of gifts to bestow—that is to say, several more loaves of bread and two flasks of lukewarm water. Tiger proceeds to consume each of these with little regard for pace or etiquette. At one point he interrupts this manic bout of feasting to ask, pointlessly, "Stolen?" He does so with only the faintest hint of reproach; nevertheless, Panther doesn't even bother to dignify his question with a response.

  Panther herself barely eats, and only sips intermittently at her own water—but she does sport a new, albeit shabbier and somewhat more ragged, grey cloak, and her sword is once more nested within an actual sheath. She drapes herself in that cloak as Tiger eats, drawing it tight, once more becoming naught but a head atop a formless gray shape. Yet still she is far from her usual stone-solid self; still she fidgets constantly, bouncing on her heels and twiddling her thumbs and generally refusing in any way to sit down or stay still.

  Her anger is all but palpable. It's worse than before. It poisons the air around them, sets Tiger's heart seasick with worry and unease, and in the silence to follow he finds himself wishing, desperately, that she would say something to break the abominable tension between them.

  His wish is eventually granted. "He copied my trick," Panther blurts, totally apropos of nothing, and much to Tiger's surprise. Though Tiger can no longer make out her expression, he nevertheless detects a shocking bitterness in just those few short words. It is an emotion he is not used to hearing from her—and so it takes him a moment to adjust.

  "What?" Tiger grunts, managing (with a bit less difficulty than before) to sit himself upright. The food and drink are pure strength in the pit of his stomach now, and his headache has mercifully begun to drain away. "I'm sorry, Panther, what are we talking about here?"

  "I'm ambidextrous," Panther replies at once, rising sharply to her feet and throwing the cloak back over her shoulders.

  "Okay?"

  "But I always favor my right arm, at first. Conditions my opponent. Makes them think I'm weak on my left. So right when they think they have me—" she taps her armored bracer, "—I block. Throws them off every single time. Won me a lot of hard fights."

  "Right. I've seen you do that before."

  "Daiga copied my trick," Panther repeats. "And he did it with just his bare arm. And then he laughed in my face, and told me to try harder."

  Tiger doesn't say anything at first. Then slowly, carefully: "Panther...you do understand that we won that fight, yes?"

  Panther snorts. "The hell we did."

  "We're both alive, aren't we? We succeeded, and they failed. That's a fact."

  "It was humiliating," Panther snaps, suddenly, with such startling and uncharacteristic vehemence that Tiger actually flinches backwards. "That whole time Daiga was just playing with me. Never took me seriously. Never even broke a sweat. I threw everything I had at him and he just laughed it off, like it was nothing. And then in the alley—that shitty old man. Just an out-of-shape, washed-up old drunk, and I was still too scared to fight him. You hear what I'm telling you? I was too scared to even try. Somehow I knew I'd die for it, so I just didn't. And he turned his back on me, too, because he knew—just like Daiga—that I wasn't a real threat. That I was just—" she gestures emptily, and angrily, and hopelessly, "—another victim."

  It was rare to hear Panther talk like this. It was rare to hear her talk this much at all. Tiger had no idea what to say or what to do; he had only ever known her as eminently cool and collected, the very definition of comfortable in her own skin. She was usually his rock! Had she confided these sorts of feelings with Ibis, behind closed doors? Had she always harbored such bitter insecurities?

  Tiger felt, suddenly, as though he were speaking to a total stranger. And he had absolutely no idea how to help her.

  "Panther..." he tries, anyway, "look, I don't know about any old man—I assume I was unconscious for that part. But I do know that Daiga was by no means an ordinary opponent, nor was that in any way a fair fight. Nobody could reasonably expect you to—"

  "Exactly!" Panther blurts, whirling around, her eyes going wide. "That's what they always say! I'm always the underdog, and then I always surprise them and I always win! That's why I'm—" And her voice breaks, very abruptly, tapering off into something almost resembling a whimper. And then the bodyguard slinks down, back to her crate, and hangs her head, and says very quietly, "That's why I'm her secret weapon."

  Silence followed. There was only the steady drumbeat of the encroaching rain. Suddenly, for Tiger, it felt terribly wrong for him to be witnessing his friend in such a state. It felt like an intrusion, somehow. A violation.

  And then, for the first time in four miserable days, Tiger did not think to himself I wish that Ibis were here. No. For the first time a new thought arrived, totally unbidden, and shouldered itself at once to the very forefront of his mind:

  This is all Ibis's fault.

  "You're not defined by your service to her, you know," Tiger mutters, eventually. Averting his eyes all the while. "Or to anybody."

  "Only thing I'm any good at," comes Panther's hoarse reply.

  "To serve?"

  "To fight. Same thing."

  "Panther...there's got to be more to life than that."

  "Yeah, well," she replies, bitterly, with head held in her hands. "Not for me."

  More silence. More rain.

  "How do I go on without her?" Panther beseeches aloud, to the floor below her feet.

  It was only Tiger who answered, and who answered honestly: "I don't know."

  "How do we get out of here?" Panther's head lifts; those slate-grey eyes locking tight onto Tiger's own. "What's our plan, Tiger? How do we get out of this city alive?"

  "I don't know," Tiger repeats, because he doesn't.

  And then—just a few seconds later, right at the very apex of their shared despondence and despair—that's when a soldier kicks the front door in.

  Panther is in horrendous shape and cannot possibly fight. Nevertheless; Panther leaps right to her feet, and her sword leaps right from its sheath in turn, and her cloak flares out like a pair of cinereous wings behind her. Her red-rimmed eyes are alight with nothing short of sheer murder as a dozen men in red-and-yellow tabards flood in and encircle them both, with shields and pikes all held at the ready. Panther draws back like a feral cat as her opponents draw near, the point of her sword snapping from one target to the next like some wordless razor-tipped accusation. "Stop right there!" one of the soldiers barks—but all he gets in response is a truly choleric snarl from the woman in question.

  From atop his mountain of grain, Tiger sees it clear as day: all the ingredients assembled, the powder and the spark both. He sees the whole storehouse teetering on the very edge of becoming a slaughterhouse. He knows that Panther will collapse at the very first blow; he knows that another attempt at Sorcery, this soon, will almost certainly kill him. He is very much keenly aware of his own impending doom.

  And so, in that one fraught moment where everything is about to go wrong, Tiger asks himself:

  What would Ibis do?

  And then he drops right down to his feet, and puts both his hands high up in the air, and says with perfect aristocratic ease: "Hello! My name is Tiger Qelas."

  There are twenty-two soldiers present. Twenty-one of them have absolutely no reaction to that name in conjunction with that face and that accent—but the twenty-second, the one that actually matters, he stiffens up at once. He comprehends fully, and perhaps already had an inkling to begin with. And so he immediately thrusts up one fist and orders, "Hold!" And so the other twenty-one do just that, without pondering it any further. They hold.

  Panther's eyes are darting suspiciously about as every pike is withdrawn, and every crossbow is lowered, and now the twenty-second soldier is walking up with one hand resting warily upon his sheathed sword. He stops a healthy distance of several feet away from Panther, directly in line with Tiger, and then he asks: "Sorry, what did you just say?"

  Tiger smiles. "I said," he repeats, with smooth self-assurance, "my name is Tiger Qelas. I am the seventh prince of the Shalasharan Royal Government Apparatus—the seventh son of Prime Celebrant and First Pillar Ralankasado Qelas. Know that my blood is sacred under Shalasharan law; by right of ancient accord, to carve my flesh is to carve the flesh of Shalashar itself. To bruise my skin is to bruise the skin of Shalashar itself. And to draw my enmity is most certainly to draw the full enmity of Shalashar itself. Now I shall repeat, one final time—" he takes a fearless step forward and puts one hand to his chest, "my name is Tiger Qelas. I am the son of Ralan Qelas. And I—" he holds up a finger, "—would like to speak with Governor Naok."

  For a moment, everyone is too stunned to respond.

  "At your earliest convenience," adds Tiger, with an exasperated little roll of the eyes. Even as, behind his mask of false aristocratic confidence, he prays with all this body and Aia that the rumors of an imminent Kainoan bid for independence are true. Because, if they are, then Kaino would never be able to pull it off without Shalashar's help—and they would certainly never be able to fight Vokia and Shalashar both.

  "Sir," says the lead soldier, eventually—and already that honorific seems to be a positive signpost—"you and a woman of that description are both wanted in connection with the destruction of the Southern Gatehouse, as well as Sorcery-abetted arson and well over three dozen murders. That's what I've been sent here to do. Sir."

  "I understand," Tiger tells him, with a sage and knowing nod of his head. A beat passes, and then: "Well?"

  "Sir?"

  "I understand what I'm being accused of," Tiger repeats, sighing as one forced to explain the blatantly obvious. "You told me, I heard you. Great. Now take me to see the Governor."

  "Sir—"

  "Do you intend to arrest me?" Tiger interrupts. He cocks his head to one side. "Because if so, then I very much intend to resist. As will my extremely capable bodyguard. And in the course of that resistance, you will no doubt be made to employ some manner of physical force—at which point you will, essentially, be assaulting the nation-state of Shalashar as a whole. Are you authorized to declare war, soldier?"

  "What?"

  "Are you authorized to declare war on Shalashar?" Tiger repeats, emphatically. "Forget about whether or not you should—are you even allowed to do so? No? Then you cannot touch me, and you cannot compel me anywhere via force or threats, and so it is your very fine fortune indeed that I am volunteering to go and speak with your governor. You have an unsolveable problem and I am offering you a very simple solution; all you need do is escort me to the man in question, and then all matters of international war will be once more out of your hands. Yes?"

  Long silence follows. Tiger is endlessly grateful for the surrounding darkness, as right now he is all but drenched in fearful sweat. Panther herself has finally calmed somewhat, returning back to her usual stoic and dispassionate self (even though the sword never leaves her hand).

  "Oh, and one more thing," Tiger calls, as the soldiers quietly debate just what exactly the hell they are possibly to do with him. Every head snaps right back up, and he goes on: "This woman? Her name is Panther; she is my eltok, my lifelong bodyguard, and under Shalasharan legal code she is considered an extension of my own person. That is to say that any harm or duress you inflict upon her shall be inflicted upon me as well, and anything you inflict upon me, well..." he trails off, for effect. "I'm sure you know the words to the song by now."

  Tiger glances back, for just a moment, and catches Panther's eye. He offers to her a small, surreptitious nod—a tilting of the chin, really, and nothing more.

  And then, slowly, Panther nods right back.

  "Yes sir," the lead soldier answers, with a weary and long-suffering sigh. "I'm pretty sure I do."

  End Credits Theme