"You think Kash's spies realized what we were up to?"
"Almost certainly," Ess said. She stumbled over a chunk of rock and fell into Pierce. He helped right her again.
"Why is it odd that they tried then?" Pierce asked.
Ess looked up at him as if the answer should be obvious.
"Well it means you were right about the color blue. They hate it. It may even be a poison to them in large amounts. If we had succeeded, Overland might be inhospitable to them. What I think is interesting, though, is that they cared to sabotage the enchantment when it was not going to work anyway. Perhaps Kash did not know any better than we did, though somehow, I doubt it."
Pierce thought about this. Something in all of it felt wrong, but he couldn't figure out what.
"The First should have known," Pierce said. "He shouldn't have been so confident if it wasn't going to work."
Ess waved a hand tiredly. "You may have noticed that humility was not his strong suit."
Pierce shrugged. He hadn't really considered the man's disposition to be prideful. He'd taken it as more of an old man's confidence. Ess would know better than he would, though.
"In any case," he started, then they heard a voice. It was calling out the names of the members of Gorgonbane, as Pierce had done.
"It's Scythia," Pierce said. "Scythia!" he called.
"Pierce!" she called back. Over a rise in the rubble there appeared a vaguely humanoid form, made up of small, hazy points of light. Scythia's gems. She must have activated them to shed some light.
They came together atop a hill of broken earth, and Scythia gave Ess a powerful hug.
"Just you two so far?" she asked. The others nodded. Scythia looked worried.
"The tower's wreckage is widespread," said Ess, by way of comforting the other woman.
They hadn't even set out again when they saw the flash of lightning in the distance. It could only be one person.
"Agrathor!" Scythia hollered, dashing off in that direction. Pierce supported Ess and they followed more slowly.
The skeleton man held his electric spear aloft, illuminating his path. It proved a worthy beacon to lead his comrades to him.
Scythia hugged him as well, an awkward embrace, due to his armor and lack of meat, but warm all the same.
"You haven't seen Axie or the First?" she asked Agrathor.
"No," he said. "And I never lost consciousness. I feel as if I've been searching for hours."
"Well," said Scythia, turning away, "if their need was urgent, I would sense it. They'll be okay." She seemed to be trying to convince herself.
They followed the mounting wreckage until they came to the edge of the Chasm. This brought Pierce at least in something of a loop, but it was impossible to tell how close he'd been to this exact spot during his first circuit.
A large portion of the tower had collapsed here, and there were heaps and mounds of broken stone. Everyone called out to Axebourne and the First. Pierce called out for Sev. With every shout, Pierce felt certain that some terrible thing would emerge from the depthless dark to attack. Thankfully, nothing did.
"They could be in the rubble," Agrathor said. "We won't know unless we dig." He went straight to it, grasping blocks of stone both whole and shattered, tossing them aside or into the Chasm.
Pierce joined him, then Scythia. Ess sat down in exhaust, but slowly put her telekinesis to work removing rubble as well. They had to be careful as they did this, excavating from the top of each mound, and downward.
They had worked their way through several smaller mounds and moved on to a higher pile of the tower's wreckage when Pierce caught sight of a faint blue light. It was bobbing slightly, at eye level an indeterminate distance away, swimming through the dark. Someone must have just come up a rise.
"Sev?" Pierce called, raising his sword. The bobbing paused and a voice called back faintly. It was the forgemaster's. He carried a leftover chunk of luminous crystal.
Pierce wanted to rush and collect him, but doing anything quickly in this near pitch blackness was unwise. He held his sword higher and waited for Sev to come nearer. He stopped at the bottom of the pile Pierce was on and called up.
"The others are with you?" Sev said.
"All but Axebourne and the First," Pierce called back.
Sev paused. "I can take you to them," he said. Even his normally flat voice sounded grey when he said this. Something must be wrong.
"What is it?" Pierce asked.
"I dug them out of the rubble, Pierce," Sev said. "They are dead."
Scythia wouldn't believe it when Pierce found her and told her.
She kept thinking, He is too tough. We've been through too much.
Yet when she bent the Circlet of Knowing toward Sev, it revealed him as honest. She had another question for the forgemaster, but the question scared her, and she decided to wait. First, she needed to see Axebourne for herself.
There was a little hollow in the tower's rubble where Sev had dug the bodies out. He said he'd seen Axebourne's halberd sticking out of the ruins - an unmistakable marker. He had laid the bodies out as if they were sleeping, left the big man's weapon laying across his chest.
Scythia had no words, no thoughts even. She fell on Axebourne's body and wept. Her sorrow was violent, penetrating. It was a thousand times deeper than what she'd experienced on hearing of the destruction of Chasmreach, or of learning of the death of her parents several years ago. Axie had been her friend, companion, comrade - all these things and more. He'd known her like a brother and cared for her, in all ways, like a father. How many times had they saved each other's lives? How many close calls had there been, with long nights of frantic love to push away the darkness of war and bloodshed? There would be no other lover like him, no one so
