A living piece of history stood beside Zalia. The king of a long dead civilisation.

  She had to tell Ember about him. If ever there was a soul in need of Ember’s abilities to heal trauma, it was the king. Maybe it had been selfish of Zalia to ask him to help them in their fight knowing what he had been through. Maybe it would be good for him; therapeutic to retake his world and get revenge on those who had destroyed it in the first place. Maybe neither of those things were true, Zalia wasn’t great at understanding even the people she could communicate with verbally.

  Whatever else might come from it, she knew she must have done something right as she saw the reverence and joy in the king’s eyes as Nateysta landed nearby to join them. The king bowed, deeply and respectfully, putting a hand over each of his eyes and saying something quietly in his own language.

  Nateysta bowed back, touching his beak to the forest floor. They rose together, staring at one another each with their own strong emotions. To Nateysta, the king was a remnant of his old world, a living memory and, perhaps, something to fight for. To the king, Nateysta was hope. A power strong enough to take back this world and kingdom of his and help return the Bathar to their rightful home.

  Zalia left them talking in the king’s language and made her way to the vault. The frog from the remnants of the collective was still there, little four fingered hand still resting on their ancestors memories.

  “Do you understand now?”

  The frog turned to her, blinking large, round eyes.

  “Yes, we do. We have taken some important memories from this collection to keep for our own. Our ways, our rites and rituals. Our purpose.”

  Zalia leaned against a shelf, pulling her hair back and tying it with a hairband grown from nothing.

  “Would it have been appropriate for us to ask before taking them?” the frog asked.

  “Not necessary. The memories are important to me but they are also yours by right. Take as much as you wish and know that I will keep the rest safe until you are able to reclaim them. Tell me, do you have a name, little one?”

  “A name. We don’t use names amongst ourselves, we are simply the collective.”

  Memories flashed through Zalia’s mind. Her own memories. A conversation oh so similar to this one with a different member of the collective and the time spent exploring Cormaine with them. She let them flow through her, remembering those days in a different light then she used to.

  “Well, maybe I can give you one if you’d like.”

  “You may. That is, afterall, the appropriate rite in this situation. You are the one who names.”

  “I’m the one who names?”

  “Yes. You gave names to Delphi, to Ro-ak and to Boreal. We have seen these things.”

  Zalia grinned. The one who names.

  “I will give it some thought then.”

  “Very well.”

  Zalia sat down, knees to chest, as she observed the frog.

  “Is there anything in those memories that might help us? We are trying to take back Cormaine and we could use any help you might be able to give.”

  “Hmm. I will look but it will take time to explore everything. It is a strange feeling searching these memories, as moving through them is like stepping down a road which you can neither see ahead nor behind. As soon as my focus changes, I forget what I was looking at unless I take that memory within myself.”

  “I know the feeling. I think you’re going to have a much better chance of finding something than I do though. I can’t make heads or tails of those memories most of the time.”

  “You exist much too linearly to understand, as do most beings.”

  “Yeah well you hop around too much.”

  Ignoring the look she was getting, Zalia stood.

  “Let me know if you find anything. You can put a memory into any of these other spots and I’ll be able to retrieve it wherever I am. And… it’s good to see you again.”

  Something had clicked in her mind during the conversation. She’d been thinking about the explanation Nateysta had given not long ago about how Cormaine had ended up in its current state. Some kind of large scale spell that had pulled the entire planet out of real space and into this strange pocket dimension. Some spell… or ritual. This wasn’t the kind of magic that would maintain itself naturally. It would have to be tied to something, perhaps even fueled by something. Maybe all they had to do to destabilise it was tamper with that source of fuel and she had a pretty good idea what that source was.

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  How many Thousand-eyed ones and other, larger god-like beings existed in Cormaine and how many did it take to maintain a planetary scale ritual. Did they function the same as the other gods, their power directly proportional to how many followers they have? If that was the case, all they had to do was kill enough demons and Thousand-eyed ones that the spell was disrupted and thus broken.

  She would ask Nateysta about it later, after he was done talking to the king.

  Even if she was jumping to conclusions about the nature of the spell holding Cormaine in a pocket dimension, they would need to hunt down some of the demon clans to try and learn more. That and free Zayes. He had been imprisoned here for decades and had been coming here for some time before that, he must know something. How they would take down a large number of Thousand-eyed ones to get into that prison, she didn’t know.

  Restless but forced to wait, she flew up into the tree and found a branch to sit on. She closed her eyes, sinking into her thoughts.

  She was brought back to the world hours later when Nateysta landed next to her in his smaller form, the one she had once named Ro-ak.

  “How did it go?”

  “You did a good thing, saving him. Rebuilding the Bathar, their culture and their way of life, will be a lot easier once all is said and done.”

  “Good. Tell me, is the spell that keeps Cormaine like this something that needs to be constantly maintained. Fed mana by the Thousand-eyed ones?”

  “I have considered it. It is possible. I know where your thoughts go and it might be the only path forward for us right now.”

  “Great. This place makes me restless and on edge. I need to do something, might as well start now right?”

  “If you must. Do not forget that they are stronger here than in Endaria. The other world is to them as this place is to you. It will not be so easy to kill a clan leader here as it was there.”

  “Fine by me. With Boreal and Aylie by my side, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble.”

  She pushed off and fell, wings spreading wide to catch the wind. The Grove led her to find Aylie, then Boreal, and she sent a brief explanation to Faian’s mind before they took off again.

  All that time ago, when she had left Cormaine by a far more violent method than she ever wanted to experience again, it had been due to an attack on this very island by one of the demon clans. She now flew in the direction they had come from. That clan must have gone to Endaria as its leader, the one who had killed Delphi and later tortured her, had died on the battlefield in front of the capital. There might be nothing left of that clan, but she didn’t have anything else to go on.

  It took them longer than she would have liked to find any sign of them.

  On a smaller island, attached to the ceiling by only two small pillars, lay the remnants of a camp. Tents broken down and torn apart, some more permanent structures that had been worn and degraded by the air of Cormaine. Scraps were all that remained of bodies and patches of blood spray were all the evidence remaining of a fight that had taken place here.

  As they got closer, Zalia began to see other, more recent activity. Prints in the soft earth not yet blown away by the coarse wind, patches of disturbed ground where some refuse had been shoved aside. Scavengers of some kind.

  They landed, scouring the island for any life but finding none. With a sigh, Zalia found the most recent tracks she could and locked her focus onto them. Hunter’s Sight began to show her other signs, patches of light around disturbed remnants and tracks she couldn’t have otherwise seen as well as some more obvious signs. A patch of fresh blood here, a broken pillar there. Then marks travelling up one of the pillars to the ceiling above with a trail leading away into the gloom.

  “I’ve got something.”

  Boreal popped her head up from nearby and prowled over.

  They took off together, the other two following Zalia’s lead as she tracked the demon. An hour passed before she could activate the Iron rank effect of Hunter’s Sight, putting a Hunter’s Mark on the demon. Then their careful tracking turned into a quick flight as Zalia locked onto the direction of whatever she was tracking.

  Her target got closer and closer until, at last, they arrived at a camp with activity. The island was larger than the previous one, shaped like a steep hill. There were hundreds of demons milling about, most of the feline type that Zalia had first encountered upon her return to Endaria when she had saved Aylie. At the top of the hill sat a larger than usual demon of the same type. The one that Zalia was tracking was making its way towards the larger one, a small, scrappy thing holding the remnants of a recently deceased humanoid demon in its jaws. It got to the top, almost crawling by the time it did, and dropped the corpse at the feet of the large one.

  Zalia heard the growl that came from that leading demon, even from their far off vantage point. The smaller one scampered away to find somewhere to hide but Zalia’s attention wasn’t on it anymore. She had a new target.

  “Hey Aylie, reckon you can play these things off each other, make some chaos?”

  “Yeah, yeah I think I might just be able to.”

  The situation down on that island looked tense, the order a slight thing held together only by fear. Unluckily for them, Aylie had the unique ability to mess with their minds.

  Nothing happened for a while, some of the demons snapping at each other and taking swipes though that might have been their normal behaviour for all Zalia knew. Then, chaos erupted.

  It started with two of the smaller, scrappier looking demons getting into a fight. Their brawl thrashed through a crowd of the others, none willing to step in and stop it. That was until the leader threw itself into the fray with a howl, quickly settling the fight.

  As it did though, three others, these looking a lot bigger and more muscled, jumped the leader. All at once, the different factions amongst the felines became obvious. Some backing their leader, others joining the ambush and yet more just trying to desperately keep out of the way. Zalia summoned her sword and bow and put a hand on Aylie’s shoulder, proud.

  “Yeah, I can work with this.”

  Together, she and Boreal dropped towards the fight, blood pumping and power thrumming with excitement.