Delilah walked down, down, down. The stairs seemed endless. It was an open stairwell, a spiraling, iron-wrought design, but the world beyond the stairs was still and quiet. They couldn’t see far. At first, there were the dark waters of the Edge of Night’s vast ocean. And then, as they descended further, there was just darkness.
The further down she led her team, the more the atmosphere changed. A disquieting sense of loss, of displacement, seemed to hang in the very air around them.
The Fallen Bastion.
At the end of this staircase lay their destination. Was that what she felt? Not just any Bastion, but the original Prime Bastion, the best and most important of them all, had fallen to Darkness. And she knew by now that Bastions were living things in their own right.
“Anybody know what this place was like before it fell to Darkness?” Alice asked. She carried herself with an air of nonchalance, but there was a slight touch of uncertainty in her demeanor.
“I do not,” Marcus said. He remained calm and steady as he so often did. “The Library of Solitude had already become the Prime Bastion before I was born.”
“The same goes for me,” Maribelle said. She and Isabelle walked down the stairs side by side, hand in hand. “It was a long time before I even knew there had been a Prime Bastion before the Library.”
“You never asked your mom about it?” Alice asked.
“Once, yes,” Maribelle said. “She had this very far-off look in her eyes. And then she just shook her head, and said she did not know.”
“So she totally knew something, and didn’t want to share,” Alice said, rolling her eyes. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Terevalde?” Delilah asked. “Emmeryn? Do either of you know anything?”
The pair walked in the center of their group, between Maribelle and Isabelle in front of them, and Marcus behind them. “It was a beautiful place,” Terevalde said, bowing his head, a hushed, reverent tone in his voice. “I remember very little, unfortunately. I was just a child when I came here, and I only came once.”
“We were not Paladins, nor Sub-Paladins,” Emmeryn said. “We knew about the Daylight Bastions, of course. In those days, everyone did. Darkness hadn’t struck our world so terribly, nor were the Paladins reclusive and dwindling. It was a time when the Light thrived, and its defenders thrived, too. But we rarely visited the Bastions, aside from the Library of Solitude.”
“A thirst for knowledge was something all three of us shared,” Terevalde said. “Ever since we were children. So we visited the Library of Solitude several times. More than that, though, we traveled. The Daylight Bastions always seemed like known quantities, so there wasn’t much to learn from them — at least, it didn’t seem that way to us — back then.”
“You must have seen all of the different libraries at Millennium Vista then, huh?” Isabelle asked, eyes bright and curious.
Terevalde chuckled softly. “The Millennium Vista was not constructed until after the Tragedy,” he said. “I have never been there.”
“Nor have I,” Emmeryn said.
“Then you must be… older than Mommy?” Isabelle asked, eyes wide.
“She was the first Princess of Solitude,” Emmeryn said. “And yes. She was born when we were children. It was a rather momentous occasion. We did not meet her until after she became the Prime Paladin, though, so we know little about her childhood.”
“Still, that’s… hard to wrap my mind around,” Maribelle said, shaking her head. “But then you knew her when she became the Prime Paladin? So the Fallen Bastion fell before the Tragedy?”
“It had not fallen yet, no,” Terevalde said.
Emmeryn bowed her head, her eyes full of sorrow. “A Bastion must be Lost, first,” she murmured. “That is what happened. The Prime Bastion was Lost, and a new Prime Bastion was needed.”
“How does something as important as the Prime Bastion get Lost?” Alice asked.
“It happened to the Library of Solitude, too,” Delilah said, thinking back on her own experiences reaching and then struggling to save the Library. “But the Library of Solitude was only Lost when Darkness started to infest it. So the first Prime Bastion must have been where the Darkness first learned what it would then use on the Library of Solitude.”
“Perhaps,” Emmeryn said. “Locations can be Lost without falling to Darkness. The city of our childhood was one such place.”
“Your home is Lost?” Delilah asked.
Terevalde and Emmeryn both nodded. “It was thriving when we were children,” Terevalde said. “But over time, things changed. A strange pestilence struck the city, and while the people recovered and the sickness passed… that was the beginning of a slow decline. People left, slowly but surely. In time, its importance as a Location faded. It is still out there, somewhere. But we cannot even remember its name. The people left, no one returned, and it was Lost.”
“Sounds kinda like a fairy tale,” Alice said. “I don’t mean that it doesn’t sound real, not like that. Just… magical. Different from the kind of magic we’re used to using. Something harder to explain, more about… the heart?”
“That is an astute observation,” Marcus said. “Magic goes deeper than what we can wield. It is a part of everything, and far more so in the Enchanted Dominion. Your planets are living things, but the Locations are alive in a much deeper way. They have consciousnesses of their own, hearts of their own. But each Location relies on the people who inhabit it, who visit it, who give it meaning and purpose. If people cease to care about a Location, if they depart en masse never to return… it loses its purpose. It fades from memory, and becomes Lost. Not dead, not nonexistent, but drifting, detached from the spiraling flow of the Enchanted Dominion. We visited several Lost Bastions on our journey to Revue Palace. Only the Abyssal Sanctuary had been struck by Darkness.”
Delilah thought back to that journey, to the amazing places she’d traveled through and seen. For all the beauty of the Ruby Balcony and the Luminescent Globe, and all the chaotic, complex wonder of the Adamant Factory…
Being empty of people had made them feel so lonely. And there had been a sense — not as powerful as she felt now, descending these stairs, but still there — of loss and sorrow.
If Locations had hearts and consciousnesses, then to be Lost…
That must be such a terrible state of being. To be forgotten, abandoned, to have no one know who you are or what you were, no one to remember you, no one to give you purpose…
We restored them. And Marcus and Maribelle put out the call for people to return to them, so that they wouldn’t be forgotten and Lost again.
I need to check on them after we win here. I need to make sure. I don’t want any Location to be Lost, ever again.
“Heads up,” Alice said, slowing somewhat. “We’re almost there.”
Delilah was about to ask how she could tell, when she stepped forward, expecting another stair… and instead her foot landed on level ground. She staggered a moment, stepped forward, and looked around.
She hadn’t seen any signs of the stairs coming to an end. They seemed to still have endless miles down to go, but all of a sudden…
They were at the bottom. The swirling abyss of Darkness they’d descended through was gone. All was eerily silent, and solid.
A corridor of Darkness. That was where they were. Floor, walls, and ceiling were as flat, smooth, and solid as stone. But all were pitch-black, dark in a way no natural material could be.
“Wait,” Delilah said, a memory surfacing. “Fae told me about this. From Maxwell’s journal. There was a place he went when looking for Collapse, a place that was seemingly constructed from the Darkness itself. He didn’t stay long, but…”
“But this may very well be the place,” Marcus said. “Did Maxwell’s story have any clues on how to proceed?”
Delilah shook her head. “He didn’t say much about it,” she said. “But Fae brought it up when she heard we were going to the Fallen Bastion. She thought it might be a clue.”
“Is it really Darkness?” Alice asked. She walked up to the one of the walls and pressed her palm against it. “It’s… smooth. But… oh!” She flinched back, shaking her hand as if she’d burned it. “Okay, yeah. There’s definitely something there. Darkness, no doubt about it. But it’s… different. Almost like what the Furies had, that kind of power, and depth, but without the rage. It’s almost calm, in a way. And… old.”
“If it’s truly taken the entire Bastion, then it would be ancient,” Marcus said. “Older and deeper than any we’ve faced to this point.”
“And it’s in the walls?” Isabelle asked. She flinched back, hopping about on her bare feet. “In the floor?”
Marcus tapped his staff once, twice, three times. One, then two, then three bells chimed, ringing in beautiful harmony. The dark halls seemed to brighten slightly, but only in their immediate vicinity. Farther down the corridor, the walls, floors, and ceilings were still the deepest Darkness.
“Stay close to me,” Marcus said. “We must move quickly, but cautiously. We have no idea what dangers could lurk here.”
“Nor what ill effects being in a place so infused with Darkness will have upon us,” Maribelle said. She looked to Terevalde and Emmeryn. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Emmeryn said with a nod. “As ready as can be expected, at least.”
“With all of you, I have often found I have little to fear,” Terevalde said. “The road we have walked has been perilous, but for all the danger, I have been safe with you. I couldn’t possibly turn back now.”
Delilah raised a hand to the device in her ear. “Checking in,” she said. “We’ve just arrived in the Fallen Bastion.”
“The strike team is in the Throne of Night,” came Deirdre’s voice. “They’re going radio silent unless absolutely necessary so as not to give you away. But we can see them, and will monitor their progress. The fighting hasn’t started yet.”
“Fae’s team cannot currently respond,” came Isla’s voice. “They have begun their show.”
Delilah waited for a bit, but the silence stretched on. “Shana?” she asked. “Shias? How are you guys doing?”
Silence.
“Have we lost contact with them?” Deirdre asked. “We didn’t expect to be able to see them in Dreamworld, but we tested the devices, so we should at least be able to talk to them. Shana? Shias? Are you there? Can you hear me?”
Silence.
“What do we do?” Isabelle asked. “If we can’t talk to them, or hear them, we can’t know what they’re doing, and we have to turn the Key at the same time, right?”
Delilah hesitated for a moment. Everyone turned to her, looking to her for answers.
“We continue as planned,” she said. “We have to trust Shana and Shias. They’ll come through.” She gathered herself, and started down the dark corridor. “Stand forth.” On she walked, determined and full of purpose. It was time to put a stop to the Endless Night.
——
“Shias?” Shana asked, turning in a wide circle, looking up, down, and all around in the vast skies of Dreamworld. “Shias!”
“Why wouldn’t he be here?” Ben asked, flying this way and that, looking all over. “Everyone else made it, so where is he?”
“Something’s gone wrong,” Annabelle said.
Shana shuddered. But she’d felt that something was wrong from the moment she fell asleep. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it. There had been a strange… shift, as she’d gone through the usual travel to Dreamworld. Like she’d been pulled somewhere else, but… not.
Had something happened to Shias? Was he still…
She felt it, then. In her heart, a faint sensation.
Shias was awake. He wasn’t in Dreamworld at all.
“We have to go back!” Shana cried. But when she tried to leave Dreamworld, to force herself awake…
She cried out in pain, sent flying through Dreamworld’s sky by a sudden invisible force. She spun, over and over, then finally came to a stop. Altair flew after her, checking on her from all angles. “I… I can’t go back,” she said, staring in horror. “I can’t go to him. And he can’t… come to me.”
“Then we have to hurry!” Kathryn said, flying to her side. “Right? The sooner we go and turn the Key of the World, the sooner all the danger is over.”
“Hold on,” Rae said, raising a hand to her ear. “Hello? This is the Dawn Riders, checking in. Deirdre? Delilah? Hello?”
No response came.
“But we checked them,” Ben said. “We checked that they work in Dreamworld. Why are we cut off?”
“If we’re cut off, then we can’t coordinate with Delilah!” Shana said. “We won’t know when to turn the Key, we won’t know what to do, and —”
“Stay calm,” Kathryn said. “If we can’t coordinate with the others, and we can’t leave Dreamworld, then what’s the best course of action?”
Shana stared at her, and Kathryn stared right back, anchoring Shana — at least a little — with her calm focus and determination.
“We continue the mission,” Shana said. “And we just turn the Key, as soon as we can. Just in case.”
Kathryn nodded. “That’s the way. Let’s hurry up. To the Palette in the Clouds.”
“Right,” Shana said. She looked down at Altair. “Altair… if you can… try and get at least some of your magic out. Whatever we can send to Shias, if we can help him in even a small way… then we have to try.”
Altair barked once, wagged his tail, and then flew skyward. Shana didn’t understand what he was thinking, but then…
He vanished.
Altair shot through a cloud, and then winked out of existence.
And Shana, though her most faithful companion, her beloved dog, had just left her, her heart warmed just a little, and she smiled as tears stung her eyes. Because she knew where Altair had gone.
“I can’t go to him,” she murmured. “None of us can. But you can. Go, Altair. Don’t let him be alone.”
——
Caleb’s road across the darkest shore, the Edge of Night, had come to a sudden, abrupt end. Through deepest darkness, he and the rest of the strike team stepped through, arriving at the Throne of Night.
It was a shocking, astonishing place. The strike team stood gathered on a high, stone platform, overlooking a spherical chamber, its size indistinct, hard to measure. Darkness, living Darkness, swirled all around them, like wind, like water, like fire. A barrier, with only one way in or out.
Between them and the throne itself down below them, large stone monoliths floated slowly here and there through the air. Each one was smooth along its surface, save at the ends. Each of them looked as if they’d been ripped from their foundations, shattered off from something larger. Ruins, pieces of a grander throne, perhaps? Of a physical fortress that had once protected the throne? Caleb had no way of knowing.
Down, at the very bottom of the chamber, on the farthest side, was the throne itself. Seated upon its dark stone surface was Sal, and he gazed up at them, a languid smile on his face, a defiant gleam in his eye.
He’d been expecting them.
Caleb hated to admit it, but seeing him there made his confidence waver. The Lord of Night didn’t look at all the worse for wear from Blaise’s attack. There was no physical sign of injury or wound, his clothes were all clean and undamaged. Perhaps he was a little bit disheveled — a button undone there, the collar of his coat a bit off-center there, his hair a bit messy as if he’d run his fingers through it — but that was all.
Looks could be deceiving. But Caleb had been hoping for a more visual sign that their foe was in the sorry state Anastasia had claimed he was.
“So you’ve come,” Sal said, his voice carrying a bit of an edge to it that Caleb had never heard before. He’d always sounded so calm, confident, and smooth. Now, there was something harder, more dangerous, in his voice. “Welcome, brave heroes, to the Throne of Night. How now shall you proceed?”
“We’re here to finish what Blaise started,” Anastasia said, stepping up to the edge of the platform, gazing down defiantly at Sal. “This show of yours has reached its end.”
“If you can see it through to the end you desire,” Sal said, lips curling in a smirk. “Come, then. Show me what you can offer.”
Anastasia was the first off the platform. She leapt down into a dive, hurtling the hundreds of feet between her and Sal. Bronn leapt after her, and Stride, too.
“Guess that’s our cue,” Chelsea said. She looked to Caleb, and he back at her, and they nodded to each other. Together with Will, Lorelei, and Gwen, they leapt from the platform, angling towards the nearest of the monoliths, large enough that all five of them could land and stand on it together.
This was how they’d decided to proceed in the few training sessions they’d had together before the mission. The strike team was one cohesive unit, but due to its size — and the varied levels of experience, skill, and strength — it operated more as a series of smaller teams in cooperation with each other. That was the best way for them to work, so Caleb had his team, Anastasia had hers. Midnight operated alone for now, though he and Caleb had a part to play, once Midnight set it up. Jacob Crowley led the members of the Grimoire Guard, while Artemis led her sister Athena, along with Galahad and Desmé.
They each had their own approaches, but Anastasia, Bronn, and Stride had the most dangerous one.
They were the ones who were to charge straight at the Lord of Night and hit him head on, right from the start.
“To the next one,” Caleb said, he and Chelsea directing their team on a heart-stopping leap to the next monolith, almost fifty feet below them, slowly floating past. They all landed cleanly, the four Hunters’ Enhancement Magic giving them strength to withstand the long drop, and Gwen coming down more gracefully, rappelling down using silver thread.
When they looked over the edge of their new perch, Anastasia had just reached the throne. She spun into a vicious heel kick, aimed right for Sal’s face.
And she hit him.
Not only that, but Sal actually reacted, wincing and grunting as his head snapped back. Bronn and Stride were next, launching their own follow-up attacks…
But Sal wasn’t going to let them all have their way. He flicked a finger, and Darkness erupted from the floor around the throne in a furious wave. The three former Shadows were flung away, sent hurtling upwards, tumbling end over end.
Sieglinde, still up on the platform at the entrance, caught them. Golden roots burst from a monolith and grabbed the trio, righting them and settling them down safely. Though Yggdrasil remained in Grimoire, Sieglinde had explained that, “She is my Summon. A part of her is always with me,” and now showed the truth behind her claim.
The Darkness receded, revealing a Sal who glared up at the strike team. And from the corner of his lips trickled a line of blood.
“Well, he can be hurt, now,” Chelsea said. “There’s a nice start.” She twirled her lighters. “Let’s see how much he can take.”
One by one, the strike team launched their attacks. Down below them, all alone upon his throne, the Lord of Night gazed venomously back up at them.
The battle had begun.
——
Shias stood between Sen and the bed where his sister and the other Dawn Riders lay sleeping. Pen Talisman in hand, he watched the Son of Night warily.
He had heard the stories. From Delilah and Alice. From the many who had fought him in Grimoire.
Sen was the most powerful of the Sons of Night. And Shias had precious little experience against any of them. Aside from defending Shana from Dullan on the road to the Share House, he’d never encountered any of them.
And now he was all alone against the most powerful of them all. The same warrior who had defeated both Alice and Marcus at the Abyssal Sanctuary in an instant, the same warrior who had wounded his father so grievously that Callum couldn’t be a part of this final mission. The same warrior who had sundered numerous weapons of experienced Hunters, and, most relevant to Shias, the same warrior who would have overpowered Hagen Rook, head of the Guardian Guild and one of the most skilled in Guardian Magic, if Hagen hadn’t been backed up by his wife and other members of his Guild.
Here Shias was, facing him alone.
Sen held his massive sword in one hand, easily, as if it weighed nothing. He tensed his legs, gripped his sword a little tighter, and Shias narrowed his eyes, watching him carefully.
Here it comes.
In an instant, Sen went from dozens of feet away at the door of the chamber, to mere inches in front of Shias. Even knowing he was going to move, Shias hadn’t been able to follow his speed. The massive sword came swinging.
But it didn’t touch Shias.
A gleaming white shield phased into existence, tilted at a shallow angle. Sen’s sword crashed against it, skated across it, and sailed higher than the intended strike.
Shias’ hair fluttered in the wind from that slash, a slash that would have taken off his head if not for that shield.
A flicker of unmistakable surprise shone in Sen’s dark eyes. He struck out his free hand in a closed fist, straight for Shias’ stomach.
But a second shield phased into existence just as the first one vanished. This one met Sen’s fist head-on.
And an instant later, Sen staggered backwards, taking two, three, four steps back, away from Shias. The fist he’d punched with was held against his chest, and a grimace of pain was on his lips.
Shias fought against breathing a sigh of relief. He kept himself composed, his eyes focused, his mind alert as ever.
“You’re not like that other Guardian,” Sen said, giving Shias a look of appraisal.
No. I’m not at all like Hagen Rook.
Shias remembered one of many conversations he’d had with his grandfather, the famed “Iron Wall” of Grimoire, a master of Guardian Magic in his own right. When asked about that nickname, Oscar had laughed.
“Oh, if anyone is Grimoire’s ‘Iron Wall,’ it should be Hagen,” he’d said.
“But you’re the previous Head of the Guardian Guild,” Shias had said. “And everyone talks about your many accomplishments. You can stop anything!”
“Oh, not ‘stop.’ That’s not the right word at all. Hagen and I are of two different schools of Guardian Magic, two different philosophies. He is the one who stops things. If anything, I’d say he’s the most powerful Guardian Magic wielder I’ve ever seen.” Shias had been about to ask a question, but he’d caught that familiar twinkle in his grandfather’s eye, and held his tongue. “Power is not necessarily the most potent tool in Guardian Magic. You’ve asked me to teach you, and if I’m going to be your teacher, then you’re going to learn my way of doing things. But it is valuable to at least know your options.”
“If your approach isn’t about power, then what is it?” Shias had asked.
And his grandfather had given him a very simple answer. One that had set Shias upon the road he walked today.
Hagen Rook used power. He met enemy attacks with impenetrable walls, took them head on and forced them to yield by the raw strength of his protective force.
But Oscar Greyson had a different approach to Guardian Magic — one so distinct and focused that he’d forbidden Shias from ever using a certain word to refer to Guardian Magic and its uses during their training sessions.
That word was “block.”
“If you wish to follow my philosophy of defense, then you must never, ever ‘block’ an attack.”
Shias had been confused at first. But he’d swiftly caught on. Oscar Greyson’s approach to Guardian Magic tapped into a different use of it entirely. Guardian Magic could block, it could stop, it could protect in a solid, linear way.
But it could also redirect.
“I never block any attack, not if I can help it. And I can always help it.”
Redirection. Like Shias angling his shield to throw Sen’s slash off-target.
Like Shias using his shield to meet Sen’s punch head-on… and redirect that kinetic force right back at him.
That was why Sen recoiled in pain. That was why it took him a moment to shake out his hand, to check his fingers, to recover from the force that had rebounded back on him.
“I see,” Sen said, eyeing Shias more warily now. “A fascinating approach. But one that can only go so far — particularly now that you have revealed your hand.”
True enough. I can’t surprise him with that anymore.
But just because Sen knew what Shias could do didn’t make him easy to overcome. That was another thing that Shias deeply valued about Guardian Magic, something that had spoken to him from the moment he first learned about it.
“No tricks,” he’d told Oscar, when his grandfather had asked him what he liked about Guardian Magic. “No deception. Even in redirection, whether its spatial or kinetic, it’s still straightforward.”
“And you like the straightforward approach?” Oscar had asked.
“Yeah. Because even if they know what you can do, even if they understand your methods, that doesn’t give them an edge over you. If it’s a trick, and they see through it, then the trick is over. You can’t trick them again. But there are no tricks, here. Even if they know what you’re doing, you can still stand tall and confident in your abilities.”
Sen knew what Shias was capable of. Well, mostly. Shias still had another card up his sleeve, a new card, one he’d only recently come up with and worked on. He didn’t want to play that card unless he had to, because, to put it frankly, he wasn’t sure it would pay off.
But Sen knew Shias’ fundamental philosophy and methodology now. And despite that, he had no advantages over Shias due to this knowledge. Sen had his specific style of fighting, his unique, astonishingly powerful methods of attack.
And Shias presented a defense that just might stand a chance of stopping those attacks from ever striking their intended targets.
Because that was the second part of Guardian Magic’s appeal to Shias. Just as his grandfather had put it…
“The point of the magic is in the name. If you walk this road, you become a Guardian. And to be a Guardian is to stand between danger and everyone in danger. Yours is the most narrow of paths, for your success is measured most harshly. If ever danger strikes those you guard, you have failed.”
But on the other side of that failure was what a Guardian’s success was measured by. And to Shias, there was nowhere else he’d rather be, no gauge of success and failure he’d rather be measured by.
What greater joy could there be than to protect the people he loved? It all went back to a promise he’d made himself, and secretly made to Shana, when they were just small children.
I will always protect you.
So he knew, right here, right now, standing against Sen, that he could be confident. Confident that no harm would strike his sleeping sister as long as he lived.
And he had no plans to die. Not here, not now, not when living was the one thing that kept his sister alive.
“Now, then,” Sen said, adopting a new stance, sword high and angled down towards Shias. “Let us see how long you can keep up those defenses all alone.”
But just before Sen attacked again, a sudden flash of blue light shone from behind Shias. He didn’t turn, didn’t look to see what it was. He couldn’t afford to be distracted now, couldn’t afford to take his eyes off of his deadly foe.
But when that blue light shone around Shias, like a protective aura, and he felt a very unique, familiar warmth flow through him, he knew what had just happened. Before he even heard that lovable bark, or caught a glimpse of that little tail wagging, he knew.
Altair was here. And with him came all of Shana’s love and support.
Shias smiled. That was the thing about having a twin.
No matter where he was, or what he was up against, he was never, ever alone.