The camp was silent.

  After the heavy snow had hit over night, covering the ground in a thick layer of white, the silent was, somehow, quieter than ever. The snow blanket dampened noise, and the cold forced nearby critters to remain in their holes. The only sound I could hear, in fact, was the occasional thump of snow falling from the bare branches.

  ‘I’ll ask again,’ I said. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘We heard you,’ Val replied. ‘It’s just…’

  She trailed off, but she definitely hadn’t needed to finish that sentence. All five of us knew that Arit’s army would be on the move by now, the malae-laden wagons protected by his hordes of corrupted soldiers. How he had them following his command, I did not know. But where the Council faced a problem, they usually also found a solution.

  We could handle two or three corrupted soldiers, maybe even as many as ten, if we had a plan. But two hundred? We had no chance. We’d die before we so much as reached the malae, much less had time for Zoi to burn them all.

  I looked over at Zoi, who was crouched over the fire, staring into the flames. I knew what she was wrestling with; fire magicks had a dark allure, one that Zoi was only just beginning to experience for the first time. She’d burned malae, her first time using her fires on anything living—if you could call them that—and then only hours later, she’d been forced to burn a man. Even without fire getting under your skin in the way it did, hurting people in this way could do things to you. To your head. To your soul.

  ‘If I portal you in,’ I said to Zoi, ‘how quickly could you burn them?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Zoi,’ I said.

  When the tiefling still didn’t look up from the flames, Arzak shook her gently by the shoulder. Zoi snapped out of her trance.

  ‘Apologies. Were you talking to me?’

  ‘I portal you in. You burn the wagons. I portal you out.’

  ‘That’s the plan?’ From her pale face—not just from the cold—and her uneasy tone, I could tell she wasn’t convinced.

  ‘As it stands. How long would it take to burn them?’

  ‘How many wagons?’

  ‘Eight.’

  Zoi shook her head, and her eyes drifted over to the fire once more. ‘Too long,’ she said.

  ‘Then we’ll think of something else.’

  The camp went quiet once more, though whether this was the silence of deep contemplation or inner despair, I did not know.

  I heard a crunch of snow underfoot. From Corminar also turning to look over his shoulder, I could tell that it wasn’t just my imagination. I kept my eyes peeled for signs of life, and a few moments later, I saw the orange blur of a fox darting along in the distance. I looked back at Corminar, and shook my head; we were growing paranoid in these dire times.

  At my side, Val shivered. The fire was growing low; someone would have to do something about that. Though Zoi could summon fire, there was no use her wasting her mana reserves when there was plenty of wood around still untouched by the snow. Maybe we’d need the tiefling’s summoned fire later; I had a feeling there were ambushes and other attacks in our near future. I slapped the tops of my thighs to announce that I was standing, then headed off into the woods in search of dry wood.

  A set of light footsteps followed as I passed away from the light of camp. Glancing around my shoulder, I saw that the tiefling had followed me. Perhaps it was the inner yearning to feed the fire herself—in some way—or perhaps it was something else that pulled her along with me.

  ‘You’re still here. You’re still with us,’ I said. I phrased it as a sentence, but we both knew it was a question, really.

  ‘You hired me to burn the malae,’ Zoi replied. ‘There are still malae to burn.’

  I held her gaze. ‘Very good answer. Now, what’s the real answer?’

  ‘I don’t want the world to end.’

  I couldn’t help but smile. ‘That’s an even better one.’ I held her gaze for a moment longer, looking for signs of deception in those eyes. But I saw only fear—the fear of a woman who’d become wrapped up in something terrible, something that she would now need to see to the end. ‘Come on. Let’s find some fuel for the flames.’

  Zoi nodded.

  * * *

  Val and I kept first watch that night, though I’ll admit that I was doing most of the watching, unless my wife had invented a way to keep watch through her eyelids. She’d struggled more with her tiredness these last few days, though she assured me this was normal; I’d just have to look after her a bit more than usual. Not that Val thought I typically spent time looking after her, rather than the other way around.

  At least the snow had stopped for now. Only Arzak didn’t seem bothered by the cold, though the orcish homelands were so far north that they had weather like this in their summers, on occasion. Lore and Corminar stirred under piles of their clothes by an old oak tree, every now and then yanking a thick blanket back from the other. Zoi, who’d clearly realised that Arzak didn’t struggle with the cold, had curled up next to the orc’s back. I didn’t quite know how Arzak would react to this turn of events when they woke up for their turn of watch, but that was none of my business.

  In an effort to keep warm, I stood up, sliding my arm out away from the dozing Val, and began to pace around the camp. The snow crunched over foot, but not enough to rip anyone away from their dreams. In fact, the white blanket dampened the noise of my footsteps. I kept my eyes on the trees, scanning them every few seconds, though surely any would-be attackers, sapient or otherwise, was cowering from the cold.

  Out there, somewhere to the north, was Arit. He and his soldiers would be camped out for the night, too. Though would all his soldiers get their rest? I definitely wouldn’t sleep knowing that there were soldiers of corruption standing guard outside the tents, able to spread corruption onto others with the lightest touch.

  I felt it, then: a pang of doubt erupting in my gut. Were we already too late? Had our only chance to stop the Council’s plan been back in that desert, when we’d been too busy chasing down Yusef to put an end to the malae once and for all? How could we defeat so many soldiers of corruption? How could we get past them to reach the Council, to stop them creating their new world at the expense of our own? Did all this—all this fighting, all this freezing our butts off—did all this have only one destination, our deaths?

  I shook my head; I couldn’t think like this. Going down this route was a path to certain destruction, to manifesting the very death that I feared. No, I would have to do better than that. I would have to believe us inevitably victorious if we were going to stand a chance of saving the world, and—much, much, much more importantly—staying alive in the process.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  ‘Styk.’

  I felt my gut wrench again, but this time not with doubt but with fear. Val had only said my name—and softly, at that—but I knew that tone. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  When I looked over at my wife, I saw that she had a blade to her neck.

  ‘You lied,’ said the person standing over her. My mother. We knew we hadn’t seen the last of her, but for her to return to us so soon? Either we were a priority target of the Council, or she had rushed back to us… because she felt betrayed?

  I raised my hand slowly, fingers splayed, gesturing for Cleo to stand down. ‘Alright,’ I said, ‘let’s not do anything rash.’

  ‘Keep your voice quiet,’ the Player said, dark eyes bearing into mine. ‘If you wake the others, then…’

  ‘Then you kill me,’ Val cut in. ‘He gets it. I’m really done with you.’

  She took the words right out of my mouth.

  ‘We had a deal, you and I,’ my mother said. ‘You would stop hunting us, let us do what we needed to, and then we would welcome you into the new world with open arms. I brought that deal to Cleo. It has her approval. And now you make a fool of me?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry if we double-crossed someone who wants to end the world,’ Val mumbled, and this really wasn’t helping her chances of staying alive. Of my child staying alive.

  ‘Val,’ I said, resisting the urge to gulp.

  As I had sensed meaning from Val’s tone earlier, she did the same from mine. Her mouth snapped shut; there was no sassing her way out of this one.

  ‘So you’re here to kill us, this time?’ I asked.

  Cleo stared back at me a moment longer before replying, as though she was still working out the answer to this question herself. ‘I am here to send a message. I will not kill you, but I will kill your wife.’ She pressed the side of the blade into Val’s neck, drawing blood but not doing more than minimal damage.

  ‘Why? Why won’t you kill me?’ I asked, my volume getting away from me some. I paused, glancing to the others, but though they stirred, none awoke. In more hushed tones, I continued, ‘Is it because I am blood? Is it because there is part of you in me?’ To voice this made me feel sick, but it was the only bargaining chip I had right about then.

  ‘Everyone has a line that they won’t cross,’ my mother replied.

  I almost breathed a sigh of a relief right then and there. It wasn’t just that I wanted to know that I was safe; now, Val was too, at least for a time. ‘Then you won’t hurt Val either,’ I said, still holding Cleo’s gaze. ‘You’re going to be a grandmother.’

  My mother’s gaze flickered to the woman in front of her, to the woman into whose throat she pressed her blade. It was as though she saw Val for the first time, then. The knife drifted away from the flesh, only by a fraction of an inch, like it was an unconscious act.

  ‘You are going to be a grandmother,’ I said again. This wasn’t quite how I’d ever expected to give this news—I’d never really expected to give it at all—but here we were.

  Cleo released Val, stepping backward, and out of reach of any reprisal. Not that we would attack her; it was clear by now that she was just as likely to kill the lot of us as we were to kill her.

  Stood there, between the bare trees, Cleo considered me one more time. ‘Stay away from Arit, Styk. There will be a place for our family in the new world, but only if you stay away.’

  Cleo really thought that I would relent, this time. No, she wanted to believe I would relent. She wanted to believe it so badly that she had fooled even herself. Elfric had given us a glimpse of my mother’s actions in the Badlands, but now I glimpsed the impact they’d had on her mind. This was a woman who solved problems only with violence. Now that she’d come across a problem that she wouldn’t—or couldn’t?—kill, her mind desperately grabbed at other options.

  I said nothing that would dissuade my mother from the idea that I would let this world die. In fact, I remained quiet as I watched her go, until her form faded into nothing as her camouflaging magicks reactivated once more. It would come to a battle in the end—that much I was sure—but this bought us more time. And maybe that was enough.

  I did have one nice thing to say about my mother’s hope that I would surrender, though. Val would be safe. Our child would be safe. And I would never have to worry about either of them ever again.

  After all, in the new world, we would be gods.