In the dark nighttime the waves thunder on the seawall of Thalassa City. They crest high, splintering and fracturing against the shuddering rocks, melting in the tumult of pouring rain. The pound drums deep in bones as they scale the walls, insects clinging to sand and grime, resisting the riptide of salt.

They are up, moving across the saltstone, up and over, feet thudding on the ramparts, hands moving, arms flinging, metal flashing in a clash of lightning and thunder that weaves spidery fingers in the nighttime sky. The patrol dies quickly as the rest of the hostage city comes alive.

It's hard for the Jarles to see them in this fractured light, but these invaders know now that sight is not the only sense those soldiers will use. They have another, another that prods before they swing, another that mutters across bonds of metal, murmuring to the beat...

Power is Might.

The besiegers have no silent language that speaks—theirs only swings.

When the next wave of bodies vaults up over the seawall her patrol sets out. They see the beacon in the horizon; the plume of cinder and light, green against all this dark. The rain pelts into a downpour and the Nature-callers heed nature's gift, ceding rock and root for ubiquitous, elusive water.

The sea breaches the seawall.

They have but minutes, minutes to run across the slip-slick narrow ledge, to leap past the hurtle of clamoring bodies, to hit the roof, to scale across it, toes catching and sliding, before the water rushes in.

It's a grapple of slippery limbs and fists as bodies emerge out of the darkness and clash, gripping and grasping, clutching and then pounding as they are pushed under the water, into the shallow depths where bubbles ripple up and shake, panicked, on the coursing surface.

A crumpling wall catches the next attacker, and the one after topples over the ledge, caught unawares by the pelting swoop of wings and talons, glinting in that electric light.

Water runs in rivulets down the invaders' masks, slinking through their vision and the rain taps persistently across their backs.

They have to get to the beacon.

It starts when she follows the heave of wet stone with a smooth ripple of shifting metal, shimmering down like liquid death on a soldier's head. The living one next to him shivers.

"It's you," he says before he dies.

"I wondered—" says another, spluttering blood and spit.

"—when you would turn up," finishes a third, one hand clutched to his helmet as the other swings wildly at them. "Did you miss m—"

She hews them down, one by one, as they careen toward her, like drunken things, stumbling over the cobblestones.

"No mercy," one gasps. "No pity."

She cuts him down too, kicking the body off the walkway, pushing through to make a path on toward the glowing light.

"We aren't so different," another continues, dreamlike. "Beneath all the inconsequential things."

One of the Keesark soldiers shifts next to her, recoiling as the Jarles begins to shudder. She cuts between them and cleaves down.

"Just us," the dying man chokes. "Just us, in a sea of weaknesses."

One of the Keesark men cracks open the door, breaking it in two, and they rush inside.

"What—?" one of them grunts, unnerved, but the floors and walls shake as they feel something pummel into the side of the structure.

"Find an exit," Allayria orders and they comply, old training wrestling control from these new anxieties.

They move through the next room and then break into a closet, shoving shivering shelves aside to peel back the stone, brick by brick. The five Nature-callers make quick work of it.

"They're coming," the Beast-caller warns.

"The rear," Allayria commands and two hang back, turned away from the others.

"Contact," a Nature-caller says and suddenly the sound of the sea roars through the room, the whirling echo of an old god.

Brick crumples as they break through to the outside.

"With me," Allayria warns as they begin to sprint across the sloping rooftop, and her boots slap against its reedy spine as they go, single-file. There's another building across the gap, one with a flat roof and a wide ledge...

She takes the jump, leaning into the impact, bending and rolling along the gritty slush before she springs back up. There's a spot on her shoulder that will bruise in the morning, but she has to make it there first.

Down to the south is the wide glow of flames.

"The siege has started," the Beast-caller says.

"Cut down who you can, but keep moving forward," Allayria instructs.

The bodies start to flow through the streets below them, like black beetles, marching down through the weaving paths toward the lower city. The five move together and pull down a tower across the street, the crumpling mass of stone and cement stemming the tide and trapping an ill-fated bunch of bodies beneath.

"Forward," Allayria commands and they acquiesce. She can see other groups in the distance, along the rooftops and sprinting through the streets, identifiable only by the way they press on, not toward the south but forward, to the light in the sky.

Contact point.

It starts again as they get closer, as the Jarles begin to slowly piece together what they, and all the other teams on the other side, are doing. The metal soldiers begin to hang back, to halt and turn, as if hearing a distance call, toward the beacon too.

"Why aren't you coming?" one manages to ask as Allayria cuts through him. "When are you—"

She speeds up into a sprint, water springing up as her heavy boots crunch on tile and stone. When they reach the flat vista of a courtyard they descend, soaked gloves clutching tight to slick ropes, the soles of their shoes scraping on the pebbled walls.

"Your Excellence," a Nature-caller says hesitantly when they land, and Allayria follows the point of his finger to the spindling walkway of the beacon-lit tower, and the swarm of Jarles soldiers scuttling up it.

She turns, her soaked hair clinging around her mask, her neck, and she confirms the meeting of the two sides: the seawall besiegers and the land invaders, uniting in the bright green light to cut the rioting city in two.

There are enough.

"In formation," she barks to her team, because those that lit the beacon are still up there, and the Jarles mole is with them.

Lightning splinters across the darkened landscape, revealing flashes of shimmering armor and dark helmets as the group clashes with the first wave of soldiers.

"Are you afrai—" one asks, sloppily swinging down at her, but the query cuts off with a grunt as the soldier crumples in around her boot. She kicks him over the edge, down onto the water-soaked cobblestone street below.

"You should be," another whispers in the seconds-width brace of his sword with hers, before a pelt of stone throws him down.

The next one takes her by surprise, ramming into her as she sends its twin out into the rumbling sky. She collapses under the weight of dripping armor, scrabbling against the cold grip of steel-wrapped hands.

"Mother wants to meet you," it says, panting, almost whining as its hands shake around her arm and neck. "M-mother wants to find you. I should let her, I should—"

The words twist into a wail as she shoots fire into the mask, her knee punting up into the side as one of her team grips the man and throws him off. She takes the proffered hand and springs up.

"Push on," she calls to the others as a stray stumbles past, stammering "M-Mother," as a spear runs through him. "Find entry point."

A boom rolls out across the cityscape and they turn to see the harbor in flames.

"Quickly!" she yells and they move, two taking down the tower wall, two more rushing through as the rest follow.

The air is damp and close inside, smelling of musky timelessness, as filtered as the feeble light passing through the clouded windowpanes. There's the clang of metal above and below and the sounds of things dying, slow and pitifully.

"We move to the top," she tells them, splitting her sword into two knives, pulling up her heavy mask. "Six point circle."

They slip into formation, the Beast-caller in the middle, the others and Allayria around the sides. They move as a unit through the narrow, spindling hall, eyes in all directions.

"Movement below," one of the Keesark soldiers at the rear tells her as they climb another flight and a few others glance back too.

"How far?"

"Twenty paces."

"If they get within ten, pull down a wall."

"Watch—"

A door splinters to their right and the air is filled with swings and clangs as bodies spill through. The circle shifts, five moving around the engaged two, taking the higher ground as the Beast-caller notches an arrow.

"Paragon," one of the Jarles shrieks before the feathered end of an arrow plumes out from the base of his throat.

"Up," she orders the team and they push onward, through the heavy door at the top and the dark hallway after that.

The team can see the waiting four when they reach the open top of the tower—they're standing, silhouettes in the flashing light, seemingly alone, and the band of seven rushes forward. Allayria is at the lead, focused on the stooped, wispy-haired one—the bookkeeper, their eyes within the city, the seed for this plan—but then a hand slams down on her shoulder and jerks her back.

A thick streak of lightning cracks across the sky, throwing the four's features into relief and purging the shadows that once hid the long, steel poles that impale and prop the corpses up.

The team is slow to react when the shadow jumps from behind the bodies, when the shaking but slippery masked thing charges, flashes of white silver in its hands, barreling for Allayria.

There's a pummeling of rock, a punch of an arrow, but it's her knife, punctured in just beneath the leering, simpering mask that stops it, and it crumples, a puppet without its strings.

On the floor, it's still smiling up at her as the red halo grows and something compels her, something pushes her to stoop down, to reach out for the mask.

When the tips of her fingers just touch the cold, smooth surface she hears it, the voice beneath all the others, low and intimate, a whisper around the shell of her ear:

We're going to have so much fun, the two of us.

A/N: OUR GIRL IS BACK! As is a certain someone else. We're a little in media res here, but next chapter should illuminate a few things...

Also note: the Table of Contents has been updated with all the chapters for Part 2.

Chapter notes: Isati's final dialogue is from Partisan's "Sisterly Love" chapter.