Underneath the watch of that pale God

That jealous gibbous in the sky

In the withering glare of the only one who loves you

Silence the wicked one’s outcry

-From “Claim the Sun”, a Karzakh Gaurl song

Far away to the south

The splintering wooden streets of Carakhte cracked and burned underneath Stepan’s boots. Buildings aflame, red and black and gold and silver running in the streets along with rivers of red-black ooze. The earth shook with explosions and the blood seeped up from every pore in the earth, every crack in the streets that formed beneath Stepan. His strong hand held Cigdem Nacar by the head, dragging along the emaciated former soldier until splinters filled up his legs and arms. Cigdem screamed and blabbered, shouted madly, pointed at the collapsing buildings and at the groups of Invictan soldiers massing for their great march to the north.

The soldiers were gathering as though nothing were amiss, those who hadn’t already left the city. But the workers, the civilians who’d kept this whole place afloat for years, were burning in the wreckage. Stepan stepped over the outstretched arm of a man trying to pull himself out of the collapsed tavern. He didn’t spare a glance toward the man’s face, but Luca stopped to try to pull him free. Stepan stopped only when he realized he’d left Luca behind, and turned, seeing her help the man up to his feet. “Run!” she said. “Run and go somewhere safe, anywhere!”

“Wait – come with me,” the man said. “We’ll be safer together.”

“I have to save Stepan,” Luca said, and turned to run. The man gasped, pointed, and shouted:

“that’s the wrong way! You need to get to safety!”

“I have to save Stepan!” Luca repeated, and went toward the old man.

The tavern-keeper turned, spared one last glance at the collapsed building that had once been his business, and turned to flee. He made it about two hundred paces down the road, not too far from the south gate, before a crowd of running soldiers passed him and shot him down without stopping to ask his name. No uniform, no breath.

Luca ran out in front of Stepan and turned around to face him, shouting: “This is madness! We have to go somewhere inside or get out of the city! They’re going to shoot us if they see us!”

“Then stop them with your Devotee,” Stepan growled. “Or else stand aside and let me turn this whole city against them. The soldiers are tearing this place down anyway – why don’t we simply bring it on top of them?”

“The Emperor is approaching,” shouted Cigdem. “He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming! You’re dead! All of you are dead! All the Veil is dead! We’ve lost! We’ve lost!”

“Where is he, then?” Stepan muttered, throwing Cigdem against the wall. “Luca, guard us.”

“He’s coming by the south gate while the city burns around him,” Cigdem muttered. “I know, I know.”

“How do you know?” Stepan shouted, watching the blood seep up from the ground around where Cigdem sat. “Is any of this real?” His rage terrified him. Sweat dripped from his beard. His eyes burned and ached and grief.

“The Emperor speaks to all Invictan soldiers today,” Cigdem said. “And he knows my heart – he knows even when I stray, I’m still his soldier.” Cigdem laughed, and grinned. “I thought I’d betray him, but I only betrayed myself. Oh, my love –“

“Shut up!” Stepan reached out with a foot and kicked Cigdem. Cigdem coughed, clutching at his bruised ribs. Luca grabbed Stepan by the shoulder, trying to pull him away, but when he turned to look at her, her hand was withered and bony. He smacked it away with little effort, roaring and stepping forward and pressing his hands onto the lone-standing, stable wall in front of him while everything else burned around.

Another explosion sounded somewhere nearby but Stepan was unbothered. The Sower’s gift was already on him and the wall, the earth, the roads were Cultivated beneath him.

Where his hands touched the wall were as points of electric contact – though his fingers sank slightly into the wall as it yielded to his command, twisted to his touch.

“I had a plan!” Luca shouted from a few feet away as he shaped the buildings around him to his needs, crushing those within who had not already escaped. He managed to catch a few soldiers with the rubble, running them through on planks and nails. But most of the soldiers were already gathering outside the city, marching to the north, and those who remained in the city were clustered –

Around the Emperor.

Twisting the earth, Stepan sent a wave of raw destruction through the ground underneath him and toward the Emperor, but with a shove of enormous power he felt the spiraling corkscrew of dirt pushed aside. Stepan gasped and turned his head to the side. Luca was still there, shouting: “I had a plan and it all fell apart! What the hell happened? Everyone’s –“

“The Emperor lit the town on fire,” Stepan muttered. The thought stung in his mind like a needle thrust into the brain, though he hadn’t actually dared to delve into that fearfully radiant mind. “He wanted the city to burn as soon as his soldiers were through. You were planning to destroy the city, but the Emperor already wanted to destroy it.”

“He set his own border-town on fire…”

“Yeah,” Stepan muttered. Glanced down at Cigdem. “Did you know about this? Did you foresee it?”

Cigdem shook his head, babbling. “I had no idea. I thought the Emperor would pass through here with his army, that’s all! We were going to kill him – we… can’t you get him? Can’t you bring a building down on him, or?”

“I’m trying,” Stepan muttered, and twisted another mass of wood planks into a spear, which shot down toward the Emperor of the Invictans. Two soldiers, hard-trained guards dedicated to protect the Emperor’s body, died before the Emperor gripped the tip of the spear and twisted it.

Behind him, Zhiren walked with hands out. Even through the Aetheric mist he shaped, through the earth he commanded, Stepan couldn’t glimpse him.

“This is doomed to failure,” Cigdem said aloud, and slowly pushed himself up. Stepan kept his hands against the wall, staring into Cigdem’s eyes with eyes that were focused on a place far away from this remote, unburned corner where they now stood. “You’re insane, Stepan. You’re completely insane. And I was a fool to follow you here!”

He drew his knife and swiped for Stepan’s throat.

Stepan’s fingers were pulled from the wall as Luca grasped him by the shoulders and pushed him aside. She reached out toward Cigdem – the Invictan soldier now floated in the air, his knife arm flailing helplessly, just as he had floated the day all those seasons ago during the Battle of Etyslund, when Luca had held him aloft once before.

“You idiot,” Luca hissed. “This, now? When we’re so close?”

“I was wrong,” Cigdem shouted, tears flowing down his face, swiping uselessly with his dagger. “I was wrong! You’re wrong! The Emperor is strong and wise. And I…”

Stepan set his jaw and Cultivated the road underneath them, and everything shook. Cigdem fell to the ground, released by Luca’s Devotee, when Luca stumbled back and shouted, “Eirchais! Protect us!” and threw herself over Stepan’s prone form to shelter him. Stepan, over Luca’s shoulder, saw the wall collapse and splinters large as swords impale Cigdem through his back, through his arms. Blood ran with the tears from the Invictan soldier’s eyes.

“The Emperor is strong and wise!” Cigdem said again, a slow, gurgling exclamation. “The…” he trailed off and did not speak again.

And his gasps were in turn silenced, by the roar of splintering metal and wood as buildings crashed down upon Stepan and Luca, huddled together in the center of a dying town as a hostile God walked inexorably toward the north.

The long road toward Kivv.