Vidias, proper noun, root unknown (tentatively Primordial)

- (in astronomy) second moon of Eilos, lesser counterpart to Morya

- (in arcana) nearest and most potent cosmic influence on the ley lines of Eilos

- (in astrology) symbol of fate, consequence, and bleak omen

- Mawdy, Cassar, A Table of Words Either Difficult or Essential to Master in the Common Tongue, III, p. 43

*

    Ripping. Tearing. Fabric, fear, flesh. Drip.

    "For gods' sake, hold still! You're insane, do you know that?"

    "Beats...being dead...right?"

    The cold. The wet. The air and taste and stench of it. Sloshing. Swilling. Soaking through rags and skin and bone. Drip. Staining. Beats being dead.

    "Talwyn? Talwyn! Come on, darling, you're so strong..."

    Strong. Insane. A beloved daughter. A powder keg. Gifted. Cursed. A friend. A burden.

    "...not now, Talwyn. Not now. Not when we're so close to your answers."

    You can feel it. You're getting closer.

    Closer. Closer. Answers. Slowly, quietly, from the side, never head-on unless you want to startle the poor thing. Never head-on. Not even crows fly straight.

    Slow and steady. Beats being dead. Beats being alone.

    "Talwyn? Are you awake?"

    A bitter blend of straw, sawdust, and fresh blood lined the back of Talwyn's throat. Something shook the room around her as she peeled her face from the floor, but all that greeted her bleary sight were the bobbled, ashy folds of a weary black dress. Shallow pools splashed around her outstretched fingers.

    "That's all I've got right now. At least it's just about stopped bleeding, you lunatic."

    The world filtered back into Talwyn's thoughts. Her head lay in Kerensa's lap, and Darius left Arlo hunched over their hammer as he kneeled by her side. Sweat beaded across his brow, and his breaths were strained, yet the leaden weight of his exertion did not prevent a relieved smile gracing his face. "Hey, Talwyn. How are you doing?"

    With the tender caresses of Kerensa's fingers through her hair and the delicate lights of Darius' eyes finding hers, the first sparse elements of language returned to Talwyn's tongue. "I feel like dirt."

    Darius removed his hat and ran a hand over his face, through the damp waves of his black hair, and down his scalp. "Sounds about right," he said through a sigh, his smile persisting despite the ever-increasing strain it visibly placed on him. "Thank the gods we've got you back. You had me worried."

    The quakes ripped along Talwyn's spine again, heavier and harder this time. By her throbbing head, mauled chunks of lightning-scorched steel rose from the floor, their warped forms twisting into their original shapes. The steel golem rebuilt itself once more, and its reassembling feelers recovered every piece of the fallen golem, no matter how slight.

    Every piece, that was, save for those beside Darius' dropped rapier. Swallowed by the sword's chilling aura, the metal fragments rocked and fidgeted, yet never found enough magical movement to wing to their peers.

    "We've got to freeze them. The pieces can't move if they're frozen." Talwyn pulled herself to her feet, pushing her way through the stuffy sluggishness that tried to drag her back down. With her eyes on the stone golem nearby, she found her half-elf ally's shoulder with her reaching hand. "Darius, do you have a big ice spell you can throw out?"

    "I'm a little tapped out," Darius answered with a rub of his gold-stained hands. His glazed, glacial blue eyes stared through his fingers, only for something to sharpen his soft gaze. "I could try something, but I'd need my sword and a bit of time."

    "Then go get it already, pretty boy." With hissing grunts, Arlo limped towards the rest of the group, their whole weight planted on their downturned hammer. "I've got you covered."

    The expression on Kerensa's blood-smeared face alternated between shock and something closer to morbid awe. "Goodness, is this it? Your grand heroic sacrifice?" she asked, twirling threads of eldritch energy between her fingers. She studied the darkness that pooled into her palm, then leaned close to Arlo's ear, her lips curling upwards. "I know this might come across a little forward, dear, but when you die, I'd love to reanimate you and see what makes you tick. Only if it's okay with you, of course."

    Despite the startled gasps from their companions, Arlo sucked their pained groan back into a broken laugh. "Fuck it. Go for it, you walking freakshow," they hissed as they released their hammer and feebly cracked their knuckles. "But you'd better grab a seat, because you're gonna have to wait a little while longer."

    Fists clenched, Arlo threw their shoulders back, pounded their chest, and roared until the air split at their fury. Flames erupted from between their scales, encircling their copper-toned body with a halo of lustrous, sun-bright shreds. Their eyes flared with fierce golden light, a radiant glow that resonated through winding, blood vessel-like markings down their neck, chest, and back. Where they stepped, young embers left a smouldering imprint of their presence behind.

    The steel limb broke from the stone golem's back, releasing the unbroken construct. With a scoff, Arlo snatched up their hammer and slammed it into the ground, cloaking it in their ravenous flame. "Whatever you're doing, make it quick," they growled, moving unencumbered by the hastily-sealed wound in their abdomen. "Before the morons inside the base finally wake up."

    With a crack of their neck, Arlo bellowed and rushed at the stone golem before it straightened its hunched back. Talwyn turned her worried eyes to Darius, yet the half-elf was unmoved, intensely focused on retrieving his stranded sword. Given the broad stone limbs hanging in the aisle and the metal fragments that flew by, timing the run to retrieve it proved easier in theory than reality.

    It was fortunate, then, that Darius had no need to run into the fray. Crossing to the bard's side, Talwyn fixed her eyes on the rapier and extended her consciousness to its shining sapphire hilt. She held her breath, raised her hand, and closed her telekinetic reach around the weapon. As if mimicking its golem foes, the sword leapt from the floor and flew grip-first across the room.

    Talwyn slowed the rapier's flight as it came close, offering it before Darius' stunned eyes. Motes of vivid, verdant energy danced beside her arm, and she flipped her hair over her shoulder, a smirk on her face. "I think you dropped this, sir."

    Blinking away his surprise, Darius took the sword in hand. "How careless of me. Thank you kindly, miss," he answered, his own polite smile breaking into a light chuckle. Even as the clang of mithril on stone brought him back into the moment, he kept his expression warm and his tone controlled. "I need a moment to prepare. Just try and get them close together, alright?"

    Another metallic crash rang through the chamber, and Arlo's flame-licked hammer sent fiery cracks trailing up the stone golem's arm. Muddy clumps of molten rock dropped from the construct's body, yet it refused to slow its staggering advance between the carriage bays. Behind it, the steel golem's reassembly was hurtling towards completion.

    Electricity set Talwyn's nerves alight, and she signalled to Arlo as they landed by her side. "I don't think we can blast both these things apart again," she said, wiping a sheen of sweat from her brow. "Can't you slow them down or something?"

    "Slow them down? Nah." Gasping for breath, Arlo cupped a hand over their wounded abdomen. No amber blood spilled onto their palm, and they smiled before meeting the sorcerer's gaze. "I can knock them flat, though. I'm a professional at that."

    "Arlo, sweetheart, that's a fabulous idea!" Kerensa appeared over Talwyn's shoulder and grinned at her dragonborn companion, liquid darkness coursing beneath her paper-thin skin. "If you could trip them up, I should be able to keep them down while Darius does his thing."

    As her companions nodded in understanding, Kerensa broke forth and slung a glob of darkness at the stone golem's gemstone eyes. A shadowy sphere consumed the construct's head, blinding it to Arlo's reckless charge. Once behind its pillar-like legs, they lifted their hammer and flashed their fire, primed to strike at the perfect time.

    The flaming signal awakened Talwyn's fizzing magic. She took a deep breath, reeled her arm back, and tapped into the rumbling storm of energy that rolled within her. At her will, a lightning bolt fired from her palm, whipping her hair back as it blasted the stone golem's left leg apart.

    Thrown by the bolt's force, the construct staggered backwards, stumbling into the arc of Arlo's swift hammer against its surviving leg. Like a scorched, thunderstruck tree, the golem tumbled backwards over its metallic partner, crashing down right as the steel golem's final pieces slotted into place.

    Uttering a verse of arcane words, Kerensa spun a circle of festering shadow around the piled golems. Dark threads criss-crossed through the circle, and with a flash of deep purple light, curved rib-like bones rose from the floor and closed over the constructs. Squeaks and sparks flew from the mangled heap of rock, metal, and bone.

    Something turned in the carriage house air. A twitch, a chill sneaked into Talwyn's breaths, its touch oddly soothing to her heated blood. As she let the cool sensation twirl around her battle-weary bones, the first notes of a gentle, calming tune flitted by her ear. It was a harp. It was that harp, the instrument that tugged on her heartstrings like only unwanted emotional impulses had before.

    Stood alone before the encaged constructs, Darius plucked at the gossamer strings of his gold-trimmed harp, his eyes shut to the rubble and ruin. His rapier pierced a rare surviving patch of wood-panelled flooring, and beams of light as white as mountain snow and as blue as the clearest seas shone from its blade. As he played, the glow intensified, as did the stream of frosted air that surrounded the sword. The blade's enchantment, hitherto all but dormant, awakened to serve its wielder.

    Clouds of chilling mist sailed towards Darius, yet his playing only gathered pace. With every flick of his fingers along the harp's strings, the music sang out louder, bolder, stronger until it seemed to shake the very air it entered – until it did shake the air. Wandering, whispering winds poured into the battered carriage house, the oppressive humidity of the surrounding jungle transformed into revitalising rivers that bent to the bard's bidding.

    Rivers that swept the rapier's sparkling mists along with them. As Darius' song rode into its refrain, the frost-touched winds spun between the walls, spinning and spiralling until a mauling magical blizzard blasted through the carriage house's interior. Snow glittered on the silver wind, jagged hailstones clattered against every surface, and an otherworldly chill encased all it touched in solid, misted ice.

    In seconds, the golems that had moved with such momentum were little more than a bone-bound iceberg in the carriage house's litter-strewn sea.

    Arlo pounded their fist against their chest, stoking their coat of flames to vicious vivacity. "If the Maulers didn't know shit was going down in here before, they sure do now," they said, peering through the sole remaining curtain to the alley outside. "Shit. They're gathering outside – a lot of them, and they ain't interested in talking."

    Cloaked in the protective heat of Arlo's fiery aura, Talwyn glimpsed through the same window and sucked down a bout of nausea. Teams of Maulers outfitted with formidable, if eclectic, arms and armour spilled out into the puddle-strewn courtyard, muttering amongst themselves as they gestured to the savage snowstorm that claimed the carriage house. No figure commanded the curious crowd at present, yet the animated discussions would summon someone of significant rank, someone undeterred by the sudden formation of a devouring blizzard.

    "They'll catch us as soon as we step outside," Talwyn said as she backed away from the window, tugging at her scarf and shivering with both cold's bite and colder fear. "The main gate's behind them. Tangle's behind them. How are we going to get out of here?"

    Scanning the room, Arlo's eyes came to rest on the frozen golem mound at the chamber's centre. "I might have an idea about that," they said with a vicious grin. They stepped into the central aisle and, as if to answer the silent question in their companions' eyes, growled over their shoulder. "Follow my lead, and try to keep up."

    The dragonborn pushed through the persistent storm winds, their fire burning bright against the cold. As they disappeared into the mists, the softly singing harp strings came to a shrieking halt, and a breathless yelp presaged the storm's sudden end. The screen of snow and ice faded, and from across the room, Arlo rushed forwards with Darius slung over their shoulder. Rocking and wriggling, the half-elf desperately clung onto his harp and rapier against his carrier's powerful strides.

    Unhindered by the bard bouncing against their back, Arlo hurdled over the stray debris in their path. They hopped onto a flat slab of the frozen stone golem, leaned their hammer on Darius' back, and, with their single free hand, scaled the side of the piled constructs. At the top of the heap, frost-flecked splinters glittered around an opening blasted through the rear wall, the shelter of towering palm trees just a lunging jump away.

    "What are you doing? Are you climbing? Why are you climbing?" Darius peeled his face from Arlo's jacket. On seeing the floor steadily sail further and further down, his eyes glazed over with dazed dizziness. "It's okay. I'm okay. You've got me. You won't let me go."

    Arlo snorted as they heaved themselves onto the frozen mound's topside, their gaze fixed on the hole in the wall. "Let you go? Whatever you want, pretty boy."

    "No, I said you won't –"

    Without warning, Arlo dropped their shoulder, set their free hand on Darius' waist, and lobbed the half-elf through the hole. The bard's limbs flailed into the canopy's shady net, their warbling cries descending out of sight to cease with a rustling thud. Through the opening, a single, petal-sized orange leaf shot into the air before pirouetting slowly, gently out of sight.

    Barking out a savage belly laugh, Arlo hopped the gap and perched on the narrow wall, their back hunched to fit within the tight opening. "Guess he cleared the fence," they said, a bright smile on their face. As they prepared to follow their half-elf ally, they threw a look back to the witches at the frozen mound's foot. "What? Don't just stare at me. Get the fuck over here!"

    The vitriol laced into the dragonborn's parting command struck Talwyn like a runaway cart. Feeling the blizzard's bite leave her bones, she scrambled up the flame-licked path left along the pile's side. She paused at the top to haul Kerensa to her feet, then gauged the jump ahead of them. It was a fair distance to a slender landing platform, yet compared to the most spindly, spread-out trees Talwyn had scaled during her wilderness rides, it was no issue.

    Kerensa, however, did not match the sorcerer's confidence. "I'm aware this might be dreadful timing," she said, an unfamiliar trepidation to her tone. "But the most acrobatic thing I've ever done is balance on one leg while I put my sandals on. And even then, I still cracked my spine doing it."

    "Not much call for climbing trees in a wizard's tower, I'm guessing?" Talwyn asked with a hand to hide her amusement at the necromancer's shaking head. After another inspection of the sizeable gap, she nudged Kerensa's arm and gestured over her shoulder. "You could try hanging off my back."

    Sparks of uncertainty fizzled through Kerensa's clouded eyes. "And have you carry me across?"

    Tapping her foot on the steel construct's frozen helm, Talwyn freed the frustrated sigh that brewed in her gut. "Arlo's already dropped down. It's this or nothing," she said as she took hold of Kerensa's hands. She poured her warmth into her friend's bloodless extremities, her heartbeat quickening. "It could work. You're pretty light, right?"

    "Deathly so." Kerensa looked down at their linked hands, an uneven weight tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I don't want to drag you down. Are you sure?"

    "Not at all," Talwyn answered with an anxious laugh. She locked eyes with Kerensa, her chest steeled with precious, blizzard-chilled breath. "But I'm sure not leaving you behind."

    A svelte, rosy warmth brushed at the limits of Talwyn's mind, its pulses rife with the words left unsaid. Her dark hair falling before her face, Kerensa pulled her friend close by their linked hands and whispered by Talwyn's ear. "And I'll never leave you – not for your dreams, not for the moon, and certainly not for one measly jump." Before Talwyn could answer, the necromancer spun her to face the jump. "Well, off we go then, darling!"

    The necromancer's skin-and-bones body settled on Talwyn's back like a weighted blanket, the extra burden noticeable without being restrictive. Driven by Kerensa's faith-filled embrace, she scraped up what little grip the icy mound provided and launched into the air. The pair hurtled towards the opening, and Talwyn stretched to catch the thin landing platform offered by the wall. A dry, dismayed gasp heaved through her throat, yet in her floundering, her foot found purchase on the wooden wall. Fuelled by equal parts panic and relief, she snapped her arms out to catch herself, safe in the hint of balance the opening provided.

    Until the wet wooden panel below her boot bent and split apart.