It is time for the show.

The bright, noon sunlight is a beacon, illuminating the stage. From up high, the players are ants that only grow in size as their zeppelin drops.

When the anterior ramp opens the clash has already begun, and without pause, without a second breath, Allayria leaps into it. Behind her, the others follow, close, but closer the sliver of cold metal is kept, carefully, against the ashen flesh of her inner arm.

Don't tire yourself out before you even get here, it whispers.

This armor, crafted by her owlish watcher, feels like a second skin, another hide on top of the softer, weaker thing inside. The metal slab in her hand is another limb, something sharper, and when her boots thunder against the ground she understands this cold influence, this quiet power.

It can always feel like this, Isati whispers again as Allayria moves, more serpentine than human, feeling in perfect balance with the roaring beat of drums and bodies clashing in the burning cast of the twin suns. It always feels like this.

Yes, Allayria can understand this.

It's more a dance than a fight, an easy flow of limbs, of calculated knowing, and she cleaves through these bodies like they are water and she, the bisecting knife. There's a vicious glee here, a snide cunning, that takes without remorse, that claims without hesitation. They crumple like dolls in a game, dummies in a dusty room, and that's all they really are, in the end. Just livestock, a universe of bodies, and she, the only thing left thinking.

Not the only thing, Isati murmurs, sitting somewhere in a darkened room, waiting, letting her have this board to play. Not alone. Never alone.

No, perhaps not.

There are ripples in this reverie, errant interruptions to the bloody dream: Hiran darting past, the golden crown of his hair glinting in the light; Tara, tan sinewy limbs pulling taut around a bow; Ruben, with hands of ice, eyes strained with worry, amidst the carnage.

Herrings, Isati whispers, a strain in her voice, as if she really thinks the lure was taken, as if this is a spell and not an awakening. False paths.

It's a splatter of dust and other, darker, things, the flinging of red paint along the skyline.

There's only one way toward the freedom you seek.

One way she understands. Allayria has heard of more. But Isati is right, in her own, particular, way: there is only one way out of this carnage to freedom.

And in the darkened room, up, above the fray, a finger twitches.

The man in front of Allayria crumples like a bit of paper under a fist. And then another and another and another, until there is a little path, a narrow road in the sea of soldiers.

This is the backdoor.

She sees it in their eyes, in the curious way they watch the crumpling path. Hiran's face is a crinkled question mark; Finn's, blank and vacant; but Lei and Ruben have no creased brows, no scrunched noses. Their eyes are wide, and Lei's fists are white knuckled and strained.

It is time.

"Lead the way," she tells Lei.

His muscles bunch and cord, every part of him goes taut, like lightning through bones. She can see how much he hates this, how much it unnerves him to follow this path, to understand who is making it. She can almost hear it, the racing thoughts, the questions, concerns, as much as she feels behind her Hiran's curious glances and Ruben's hard stare.

They cross the sea of soldiers, pass through like ghosts, and when they reach the other side, when the might of Vatra has their backs to them, Lei turns back, white-lipped and blank-faced.

"What the hell was that?" Hiran asks. "How did you do that?"

"Practice," Allayria says, and someone else chuckles darkly in her head.

Lei leads them around the bend, around the outcrop of jutting, sandstone boulder. She should truly be projecting now, be whispering in her Skill—we are nothing, we are no one—but she knows she doesn't need to. Not anymore.

No eye falls on the party, no head turns at their sounds, no one sees when Lei leads them to the grate tucked into the side of the mountain. They vanish, swallowed up in the gloom and the stink.

Fire spindles out of Allayria's index finger, and then ignites on her middle finger, ring finger, thumb, and the droplets pool down into her palm, a beacon in the dark. She holds it up so the narrow, circular tunnel is illuminated.

Lei does not need prodding this time; he sets the course.

Somewhere, in this dense, black labyrinth, water is dripping. They can hear it reverberating through here, splashing down into the sludge and waste they trudge through, magnifying until it is less of a plop and more of a ringing.

It's a half an hour in when Finn's breath becomes uneven, a stuttering, hitched thing, and Hiran takes up a low murmur of assurance and comfort. It's enough to fill the tunnel, enough to distort the ringing, enough for Ruben to murmur his own words.

"Allayria," he says quietly, moving up to walk closer behind her. "Do you remember what I said when Beinsho sent you out the first time? Do you remember what I told you?"

She turns, regarding the old Skill master in the firelight.

"Of course," she answers.

It is always imperative that the Paragon sees the truth in all things, even if it is ugly.

Don't let your reluctance for this crown be the only thing that stands between you and the wrong path.

"All I've wanted was to give you the tools to make the right choice," he says now, his crinkled, twisting face shadowed. "To give you the opportunity to choose."

Close. Her fingers tingle with a shiver of inclination. A little further.

She looks back, long at the man whose ambition was the first thing she was told about. The man who spent his life looking for the Paragon, who wouldn't just let her die.

"I'm making the choice," she tells him.

She can see it, the faint crease, the slow narrowing of eyes, interpreting, calculating, and she moves ahead.

"I hear something," she says. "Finn."

He skitters forward, by her side, his wide eyes looking out at the darkness. He's searching with the question, brows crinkling, facing forward, focused.

My codebreaker, my ace, unseen, she thinks, and her hand twitches. It's time for the heist.

"What—?" Hiran asks, but the rest of his words are swallowed by a clanking groan from the ceiling above.

A/N: 👀👀👀👀

Happy Thanksgiving, all my American readers!

Chapter Notes: Allayria first calls Finn her codebreaker/ace in Prodigal's "Secrets in the Hollow Stone," and first conceives of the idea in "Lift Off." Isati warns her not to tire herself out in "Belonging That We Seek," and refers to herself as the only thing thinking in Partisan's "Unstoppable Forces and Immovable Objects." Ruben warns against the trappings of power in Partisan's "Grave Dirt" and Allayria's slow fire conjuring in the sewers hearkens back to the opening Paragon's "Beginnings" because beneath my cold, dead heart there is a streak of buried sentimentality. Don't tell anyone.