Their rest stop didn’t last much longer. Lucas had expected to have a nightmare of a time rousing everyone in their current states, but they were like zombies, their minds hollowed out. All it took was a little coaxing, and they were on their feet. They shambled along with barely a lick of attention paid to their surroundings, and to Lucas’ surprise they made decent time, at first. None of them had any regard for their physical health. They were far more interested in putting more distance between themselves and Taunton.

  The next few days proved to be deeply unpleasant. Most of the survivors remained in that catatonic state, their minds having retreated deep within themselves. Disturbing as the sight of them was, they proved easier to handle than the ones who rediscovered consciousness, because most of the latter ended up in a state similar to Aly had been. Present and aware, but still horribly affected by what they’d been through at the demon’s hands. It had delved through their memories and dredged up the very worst moments of their lives in order to torment them, and it had been adept at its craft.

  Emotions ran high. People panicked, had night terrors, went through bouts of paranoia. Fights broke out here and there as people ranted about their experiences.

  One man constantly muttered to himself, and screamed when Lucas tried to get too close. Another man in heavy armour insisted every shadow hid a beast. There was even a woman who’d keep to the sides of the group as if she was acting as a guard, watching everyone like a hawk, but when Lucas approached her, he discovered that she was under the impression all the others were manifestations created by the demon, and she had to keep an eye on them all.

  There was only so much Valerie could do to calm them down. He and Valerie became sort of shepherds for the group, corralling them in the direction of Dawnguard, and he could tell that Valerie thought less and less of the task as the days went on; he waited for the moment when she’d approach him to declare that they were leaving these people behind, and was preparing arguments against it, but she never did.

  Lucas had been worried that the demon’s little illusory show would’ve revealed to them that he was responsible for launching the beasts into their town, but that seemed to have been long forgotten. Instead, more than a few remembered that Lucas and Valerie had escaped the brunt of the demon’s attack, their memories likely aided by the stark fact that Lucas and Valerie were indeed much better off than the rest of them. Outright hostility never quite manifested, since the excuse Valerie had used on Aly seemed to mollify most, but resentment towards them still simmered.

  Their progress was at least relatively swift, regardless of everyone’s mental and physical state. None of the survivors wanted to chance being left behind to a demon’s clutches, so they all pushed through their fatigue and wouldn’t hear otherwise; they outright refused to stop, and sometimes even demanded to continue going through the night.

  Valerie put her foot down, there. As much as she, too, wanted to get back to Dawnguard as soon as possible, pragmatism won out—if they pushed themselves too hard and caused injury, the journey would only take longer in the end.

  Everything would have gone much faster if they’d all remained in that state of stupor. It felt horrible to think that way, selfish. But the stress of constantly dealing with these mad people was getting to him, as the days went on, and many times he found himself wishing that they’d all just mindlessly follow his orders.

  But the longer they spent like that, the worse the damage to their psyche in the long term.

  “I’ve seen this plenty of times before,” Valerie told him one night when he brought it up to her. “Demons do so love to break people’s minds. It’s… curable. But their chances are higher if they get to healers soon. Proper healers.”

  Watching Aly nervously try to feed the farmer’s children, Lucas grimaced. “Is it better or worse in kids?”

  “That depends on the child,” Valerie said softly.

  If there was one silver lining in this dark, dark cloud, it was that Lucas was growing rather skilled at wielding lunar mana against demonic corruption. Working on Valerie afforded him a lot of practice, and it turned out there was use for it in the others, too. Dealing with whatever was sending the stupored survivors into their current state was beyond him, but he was starting to see the shape of how lunar mana took the edge off people’s emotions, and he liked to think that was helping them. Most of the more alert survivors wouldn’t let him get close, even after he showed what an effect he could have on Wick and Aly.

  Days and nights came and went. Typically, they’d walk through the entire day, relying on Aly to hunt for them, and Lucas to build them shelters for the night with his floramancy. There was little conversation aside from the quiet coordination between Lucas and Valerie, and the dour mood of the group never seemed to lift, no matter how much distance they covered. It felt like the survivors couldn’t quite mentally escape Taunton, even when the destroyed town was surely dozens of miles behind them.

  It was only when a great white tower appeared on the horizon that the mood lifted even a fraction.

  First sight of it showed little more than a pale white line spearing up between two distant mountains, but just that small glimpse was enough to send a wave of relief through the group. Their pace crawled to a standstill as sobs of relief punctuated every further footstep. Even those in the deepest throes of paranoia and panic gleamed some comfort from the sight of the Order’s famous headquarters.

  At the back of the group, Valerie stepped close to him and said, “It’s taller than it looks.”

  “It looked pretty tall,” Lucas replied.

  “Well, it’s taller,” Valerie said. She gave him a small smile, though it was wiped away just as swiftly as it appeared, leaving him blinking, wondering if he was imagining it. “It’s said you can see all the way to the other end of Aureon from the roof.”

  “You’ve never tried?” Lucas asked.

  “If you could see all the way to the top of Aureon,” Valerie told him, “you’d be able to see the Blighted Lands, too.” She paused and let out a sigh. “One day, when the Blighted Lands have been purged and the Demon Lord vanquished, then I’ll climb to the top of the Moontower and behold the horizon in every direction.”

  “Well, I was going to ask if I can go have a look right away, but I reckon I like your idea better,” Lucas said. “It’ll be a nicer experience, seeing a land free of all this evil.”

  Valerie nodded.

  They set off once more with renewed purpose, which somehow ended up making them move slower. There was less urgency in the group, now that the Moontower was in sight; Lucas supposed they thought it was a mark of safety, warding off their fears of another demon attack in the night.

  In fairness, they’d seen neither hide nor hair of any demon or beast since the incident in Taunton. But Lucas rather felt they’d flipped from one extreme to another. Doing away with their rampant paranoia was a relief, but he would’ve liked them to maintain some diligence. The day after sighting the Moontower couldn’t have seen half as much progress as the previous day.

  But onward they continued, and he had to admit it was a more pleasant journey when they didn’t have to corral their charges as much. Even the catatonic members of their large party seemed drawn towards the Moontower’s protecting embrace, barely needing to be coaxed forward anymore.

  The tower grew and grew, seeming to reach ever higher as they approached. After two days of moving towards it, Lucas started to appreciate just how tall it must actually be—it seemed to go on forever, and Valerie revealed to him it might as well do so. Apparently, the mountains it appeared to be nestled between were actually quite significantly closer than the tower itself was.

  “It was built to be precisely 5000 metres tall, or so Lady Claire says,” she told him one night, sitting by a fire. They’d taken to situating themselves away from the rest of the group at night, for the most part. “Since it so precisely hits 5000 metres, she believed it had to be deliberate.” Valerie shrugged. “Records of its construction are long lost, if they ever existed. We don’t even know exactly when it was built, just that it had been around for several-thousand years at the time of the Conquest.”

  “That’s crazy,” Lucas said. “I don’t know the exact height of the tallest tower back home, but I’m pretty sure it’d be less than half of that. A quarter, even.”

  “The Burj Khalifa was the tallest building at the time of your comrades’ summoning,” Valerie said. “Lady Claire didn’t know the precise number either, but she estimated it was around 800 metres.”

  “Sounds about right,” Lucas said. “Not even a fifth, then. And that’s with the wonders of modern engineering. Kinda insane that some ancient people in your world outdid us like that.”

  “To be fair,” Valerie said, “Your modern engineering has a distinct disadvantage to magical engineering. Lady Claire explained your laws of physics to me. They sound quite restrictive.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Never been much of an engineer, to be honest,” Lucas said.

  Two days after they’d first sighted the Moontower in the distance, they reached the pass between the two looming mountains, both capped with snow. Lucas had hoped things would get even easier from here, anticipating the road Valerie described that wound right between the mountains before cutting a straight line right towards the city’s main gates, but, naturally, there were complications.

  “That's a lot of people,” he said, wide-eyed.

  They’d found themselves on a small rise overlooking the point where multiple main roads converged on the approach to Dawnguard, forced together by the pass and the small river that flowed through it; the terrain was hazardous and rocky, forcing the gravelled road narrower and narrower until it was barely wide enough for five people to walk side-by-side without rubbing shoulders. The road stretched out before them, one long walk all the way to safety, and yet the entire group had come to a halt, boggling at the teeming mass of humanity that seemed to stretch on forever.

  There had been some hints of human presence on their approach, and they’d anticipated coming across more refugees fleeing south. They had done just that. Except no one had expected there to be this many.

  “Does the crowd extend all the way to the city?” Lucas asked, squinting into the distance. It was hard to tell, with the two mountains looming over them, partially blocking the view, but it certainly seemed like the convoy stretched right through the pass, at the very least.

  “It just might do,” Valerie said grimly. “There are—or were—certainly enough people in Harwyckshire as a whole to cover that much distance.”

  Lucas hesitated. “What are you saying?”

  “The worst may have come to pass,” Valerie said. “Let’s move. We need to find out what’s happened.”

  The group’s urgency had been low before, and now it was practically non-existent. Grim anticipation hung over them like a dark cloud, and Lucas got the feeling the others were dreading what news they were going to hear as much as he was, hence their hesitation. Valerie was the only one who seemed keen to learn anything, and even she maintained her position at the back of the group, making sure everyone kept moving forward.

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  It took them a little while to reach the main mass of people, and long before then the grim atmosphere of these people shuffling towards Dawnguard became clear. There was an air of defeat and despair to the crowd as a whole. There were no smiles, no enthusiastic declarations. Not a soul was trying to lift the mood. There was a low din of people murmuring to one another, but it was like nobody wanted to make too much noise, not wanting to draw any attention to themselves. The loudest noises were the barked orders of those few people still armoured and armed, attempting to coordinate the seemingly endless procession.

  Valerie approached the nearest as their group sought to join one of the offshoots before it merged into the greater column at the entrance to the pass. The man wore dirty red armour, his helmet covering his face, and his voice was hoarse as he called out to the crowd, “Keep moving! If you hold things up, I’ll come in there and kick your arse forward myself!”

  “What news, Ser? What’s going on, here?” Valerie asked him when they came close. He was positioned off to the side of the path, where the rocks were more hazardous, but seemed stable enough. Valerie stepped out of the line to address him, and Lucas followed, the others shuffling around at his back, pushed along by the tide of people.

  The man glanced at her, then did a double take. “Ah, a skycloak. I didn’t recognise you with your cloak drained so. Are things so dire up north that you can’t even recharge that thing?”

  Valerie’s expression darkened. “I have been away on a separate mission to my comrades, Ser, so my knowledge of the current situation is unfortunately lacking.” She looked around at the crowd, then leaned forward and asked quietly, “Has Harwyck fallen?”

  “Not yet, as far as I know. But it’s a matter of when, not if, I’m told.” The man sighed, his shoulder slumping. He gestured widely at the grim scene around them. “Hence what you see here. The decision was made to evacuate the county, bring people back towards Dawnguard and redistribute them south.”

  “Are there any other members of the Order present here?”

  “No. Closer to the city, perhaps, but not on this side of the mountains. Most of them went north as part of the force that was looking to help Harwyck, from what I understand. Don’t think it’s worked. Maybe if they’d set out a few moons earlier…” He shook his head. “I don’t think anyone in charge thought there was any hope of holding it. If you ask me, your comrades only went north to extract as many warriors from the city as they could.”

  “That’s very possible,” Valerie said through gritted teeth. “Thank you for your help, Ser.”

  The man nodded, already dismissing them as he went back to barking atthe crowd to keep moving; some had slowed to try and listen in on the conversation.

  They had to navigate the uneven roadside to catch up with their companions, most of whom had kept shuffling along with the crowd, with Wick left to watch over them. The tall shieldmaster regarded Lucas and Valerie with a blank expression as they returned. “Has Harwyck fallen, then?”

  “Not yet,” Valerie said.

  “But it’s a matter of time,” Wick said.

  “If it hasn’t happened already,” Valerie agreed, her voice tight. She looked at Lucas. “It’s more imperative than ever that we make it to Dawnguard as soon as possible.”

  “You want to leave them now,” he whispered, mindful of the translation magic messing things up for him. Wick was watching them, but didn’t comment.

  “They are as safe as they can be among this crowd, and they won’t get to the city any sooner due to our presence,” she said. Her lips thinned briefly. “If the city is following protocol, a triage camp will be in place outside the city walls, and they’ll get preliminary treatment there. Anyone who truly needs it will be sent onwards to the houses of healing, while the rest will be kept stable.”

  “If it’s safe out here, why do we need to get to Dawnguard faster now?”

  “Safe for them and safe for you are different things,” Valerie said, giving him a hard look. “Having you travel for so long with twenty people was risk enough, but here? With this many people around? Every moment, the chances of something going wrong increases.” She glanced back at Wick. “I will allow Ser Wick to use my name to secure the best possible treatment for those who escaped Taunton. Simply find any Skycloak and tell them Captain Vayon sent you, and told you to use the word Helga to confirm our association.” She turned to Lucas once more. “Will that ease your worries?”

  Lucas nodded slowly. He still wasn’t happy about it, but recognise the merit in her argument. “And how are we going to skip the line, anyway? You saw what it was like in the pass; the road is absolutely packed with people, and on either side are rocks that’re so sharp they can probably cut your eyes if you look at them too long.”

  Valerie’s stare seemed to sharpen, somehow.

  ~~~

  The world blurred beneath him. Part of it was due to the tears in his eyes from the buffeting wind. Another part was the dizziness; Lucas had never been afraid of heights, but clinging to someone’s back as she leapt from giant rock to giant rock was not the same thing as peering over a high ledge.

  Most of it was the sheer speed Valerie was moving at, covering hundreds of metres with every jump and somehow keeping the ride smooth enough that he wasn’t in danger of throwing up. Small consolation, considering the circumstances. It still felt like a fucking rollercoaster ride, his stomach swooping as they sailed through the air.

  Lucas tried to distract himself by focusing on Valerie’s mana. She didn’t expressly need him to work on her right now, since she was in a decent enough state, very few points of corruption leaking into her system, but she wasn’t against him inspecting her. Probably because it was a decent enough learning experience, for him. He could see how well-controlled her mana was, the way it flowed evenly to every extremity, suffusing every atom of her body and augmenting it. The strength it granted her was mind-boggling, and the thought he himself would be able to pull off casual feats like this some day made him a little giddy.

  That might have also been the dizziness, to be fair. Unfortunately, it only got worse when he closed his eyes.

  Below, the long line of humanity twisted through the pass like an endless snake. The road was absolutely packed with people, and there was quite the variety on display. He picked out people of every ethnicity that was vaguely analogous to Earth, and ones that weren’t. There was no one starkly inhuman, per se, but he saw traits that he didn’t think would’ve occurred in a world without magic. Blue skin, pointed ears, absurd heights and proportions. That sort of thing. He’d have to ask Valerie about it later—he’d been working under the assumption that people here were mostly, well, the kind of human he was used to. But thinking back, Jyn had had an unusual complexion, and blue lips. And Wick was a good seven feet tall. Was that some kind of giant’s blood? Or was it relatively normal?

  Thoughts like these ran through his mind as they sailed over the crowd, jumping from convenient rock to convenient rock. Sometimes Valerie was forced to cross over the road, and Lucas was sure they drew a lot of attention, though no one was in high spirits enough to point out the Skycloak bounding around overhead.

  Even with their higher pace, it still took a good few hours to navigate to a point where the mountains were no longer blocking their view of the city beyond, and if Lucas had been moving under his own power, he probably would’ve been rooted to the spot, awed.

  In his time, he’d been to a few big cities, and had the privilege to see them from unique perspectives. The Shard gave a fantastic view of London. Tokyo Skytree let you appreciate just how far the urban sprawl spread. The Burj Khalifa placed you above the clouds and granted you a perspective that was usually reserved for mountain peaks, with countless skyscrapers jutting out below you like glass teeth.

  For some reason, even with the knowledge of the Moontower, he hadn’t been expecting Dawnguard to be so vertical. His imagination had conjured up something medieval-looking like Prague or Bruges, not… this.

  Dawnguard was, in a word, beautiful. Valerie’s descriptions hadn’t done the place justice, but to be fair to her, no words could have adequately prepared him for the awe he’d feel.

  The enormous white walls, smooth as moonlight on a calm sea, stood in silent defiance of the swirling dust that rose from the throngs of weary travellers camped at their base. Each sun-bleached battlement glimmered with an otherworldly sheen. The walls surely stretched hundreds of metres high, judging by the tine specks at their base that had to be people.

  Within the shelter of those grand walls, he could see a labyrinth of fantastical skyscrapers and looming structures. The spires and towers seemed more suited to the modern cities Lucas was accustomed to, though admittedly the pearly aesthetic distinguished them from skyscrapers quite nicely. Bridges spanned the gaps between tall roofs like a cobweb spun by a giant spider of pure light, bustling with people.

  And from the heart of the city soared the Moontower, far exceeding any mortal measure he had deemed possible. 5000 metres had been just a number before, but seeing it compared to the city around it finally allowed him to appreciate the absurdity of the structure. Its jagged spire, carved from an unearthly marble that caught and bent the light, seemed to pierce the very belly of the sky. The morning was relatively clear and bright, but at night it would surely ascend beyond the atmosphere, melding with the stars so that the highest pinnacle shimmered, caught in a perpetual dance with moonbeams. A haze of pale luminescence wrapped itself around its uppermost reaches, as though the tower’s topmost chamber served as a conduit for the celestial realm.

  “I hope we don’t have to climb that thing,” Lucas muttered.

  Beneath him, Valerie snorted. “I imagine you’ll be given immunity from that little hazing ritual. Fear not.”

  According to Valerie, there was pretty much no such thing as a suburb in Dawnguard these days. There had been more sparsely populated areas once, before the Demon Lord’s advance pushed millions of people south, but Mornlunn’s rulers had decided they needed to build up, packing as many people as possible into the city’s ancient walls and their longstanding, powerful magical protections.

  Thus, you ended up with a medieval-style city with a population rivalling that of Tokyo or Shanghai or Mumbai, and things were about to get worse with the fall of Harwyck. Valerie couldn’t tell him how many refugees there were now, but if there were less than a million in total he’d be surprised.

  Outside the great gates, a sea of tents sprawled, housing those who had evacuated from Harwyckshire and perhaps even beyond to find safety within the city’s embrace. Ragged standards fluttered in the wind. Voices in a dozen tongues mingled with the clanging of makeshift forges, the cries of peddlers hawking wares, and the comforting lullaby of song around fires. There were families huddled in close warmth, warriors sharpening their blades, and Wands sketching protective runes on the dusty ground. All of them waited, hopeful that the city’s gates would open and grant them a place behind those radiant walls.

  It was nice to see that not everyone was so hopeless as those Lucas and Valerie had already passed, but he could see they were in a minority, even here, with relative safety so close.

  Lucas had been hoping he’d finally feel safe when the city’s walls came within reach, but dread was settling on him more and more. He couldn’t help thinking he was hopping out of the frying pan, only to fall right into the fire. Facing down a demon and a horde of beasts had been terrifying. Now, he had to face down people.

  Politics, he thought with disgust and trepidation. His gaze kept being drawn back to the venerated Moontower. The global headquarters of the Order of Five. Thousands of skycloaks called that place home, and not all of them viewed him as Valerie did.

  And they were far from the only faction at work in this city. They were people of a like mind to Jyn, who’d kill him to try and extract the power his summoning had bestowed upon him. Others would try to dissect him to study how the great powers worked and see if they could be replicated. Even the factions who weren’t so malicious would be troublesome; some would force him to act as their pawn, others would want to butter him up. Plenty of people would worship him as their saviour finally arrived, and a similar number would probably berate him for taking so long to get here.

  As if he had a choice in the matter.

  Valerie kept going even after they emerged from the pass and onto the open plain, despite no longer having any rocks to leap over. Instead, she seemed perfectly happy to continue running with him on her back. He had to admit her pace was higher than his greatest sprinting speed, and she didn’t appear to be breaking a sweat. If not for the way her mana seeped right into her muscles, joints, and bones, he would’ve thought it was legitimately taking her no effort at all. It was like she was using mana to replace the oxygen depleted by her exertion, and Lucas couldn’t wait to learn how to do that.

  They sped across the open land until they reached the edge of the tent city, and only then did Valerie finally stop to let him down. He had little time to mumble a thanks before she was moving forward once more, dragging him along by the crook of the elbow until his stride matched hers. Her eyes scanned the crowd, and there was a tension in her body that felt incongruous to the situation.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispered, eyes darting around in search of what had spooked her.

  Valerie just grimaced at him as she pulled him deep into the throngs of people lining the main roadway towards Dawnguard’s main gates. With his head on a swivel, Lucas just about caught a glimpse of a sky-blue cloak pushing its way through the crowd towards them before Valerie grabbed him by the scruff and hauled, forcing him to duck his head.

  “What’s gotten into you?” he asked.

  Before she could answer, an outraged voice cut through the low din of the crowd, “Vayon! I know you saw me!”

  And so it begins, Lucas thought.