Author note: remember how last chapter, people were like "Chondra's the Dawn" right at the end of the hapter? Well this chapter picks up right after that. Just for a bit of context.

***

 Nomsa laughs. At me. "No she's not. You're the herald, you think the Dawn's going to be twenty years older than you?"

Berrtie nearly falls over. "What?"

I clench the straps of my backpack. "Nomsa!"

"Oh yeah." Nomsa motions at me. "Berrtie, meet Troy. Troy, meet Berrtie. Troy's the Destroying One."

"At least according to some mist by a river when they were ten," Kael says. "And several books and some certain incidents which shall not be named..."

Heat prickles my neck. "You can't just tell her like that!"

Nomsa's hands drop. "Uh, whoops? I kinda forgot she didn't already know..." She curls her lip. "Why didn't you tell her?"

"Me?" I knock my curled fists together. "Because I can't do anything!"

Berrtie raises her hands, stepping between us. From the line of tents, Chondra has apparently decided mutual threat of annihilation is how this suicide mission ends, and light lances sprout from the sky.

"You can do things." Kael brushes against my shoulder. "The mist bubble, the dream thing--"

"Not on purpose!"

"Or when"--they try to pull my fingers from squeezing white around the strap of my bag--"we did that thing in the library?"

I jolt away. "Not on purpose." I glare. "None of that was on purpose."

Kael's eyebrows furrow, and their hand falls to their side.

"Okay..." Berrtie slowly lowers her arms, gaze flitting between the two of us. She turns to Nomsa. "So you know Troy is the Destroyer? For sure?"

"Yeah." She shrugs. "They used to have to obey everything Kael said. Kael was also this Gardener person we found in the prophecy books, but he gave that up. They also ki--"

"Stop, Nomsa," Kael says.

Nomsa clamps her mouth shut. Her eyes bulge, and she shuffles closer, leaning in to whisper at Kael but loud enough we can all hear anyway: "Does Berrtie not know about that thing either?"

"It hasn't come up." Kael glares at my mouth, and I glare at their orange eyes.

Piercing lights strike into weak shadows at the battlefront. Why, Chondra hasn't even waited for all her forces to arrive.

Berrtie shifts side to side. "So is it going to come up now, or..." She points at the light lances in the sky, the rising walls of mist, the flickers of shadow and streaks of black arrows. "There is this fight thing going on and approximately half our daylight is gone."

Kael's gaze flicks away. "Nomsa thought my soul should've been sucked out because we kissed but it wasn't because Troy's destroyer powers aren't actually activated."

Berrtie purses her lips, eyeing me up and down. I halfway turn my body away, staring at the battle spreading wider before us, light and dust flying up around the ravine.

"That is something the prophecies mention a lot of," Berrtie says. "Kissing."

She sinks to the prairie, crossing her ankles, sword scabbard awkwardly biting the dirt beside her. "I need to hear this whole story. Maybe we can work out how to help Troy with their powers so when nightfall comes we don't all die."

"Librarian mode activated," Nomsa mutters. But she drops to her knees, and Kael and I follow. Sirens blare from the distant line of tents, probably a quarter of an hour's walk away, and Kael flinches.

"Troy." Berrtie fixes her stare on me. "How did you discover you were the Destroying One?"

I slowly inhale.

"Quickly now." She snaps her fingers.

"I was ten," I say, "and I found this mist in the forest." 

***

We tell Berrtie everything (but summarized), in our circle of dusty boots and backpacks and swapped water containers, pretending like we're oblivious to the fighting. Not that much fighting happens--it's high noon. The night warriors can't recharge their powers, their reserves are half empty. And the waiters on the dawn have had the whole morning to bask in the glow of the sun, so they hardly need to hold back for fear of running out of light.

We tell her everything, summarized, and the walking groups of white-clad families behind us steadily creep up and pass, giving us wide berths and confused stares. But neither are they in a rush to make it to the battlefront, high noon making this fight barely a contest of wills.

Kael talks about the prophecies and the day in the library they gave up their command over me--glossing over that event--but my mind wanders. The night warriors surely saw us coming. Even now, glancing toward the imposing mountains, a cloud of dust fuzzes the definitions of blue peaks, and toward the battlefront, the trail of Chondra's forces lingers under a dirty haze.

Did the night warriors run away before Chondra's forces arrived? Or did they gather like a pack of cats to meet the marching advance? How are they holding out until night? What would Brevity or Meekness do?

I stare at the dirt. I know everyone on the opposite lines, don't I? Or, I've interacted generally with most of them at some point in my life.

A buzzing shiver starts at the top of my head, working down my spine and trying to split me into two. Or maybe three; One, Troy, and Destroying One. Goosebumps race down my arms and my thighs quiver.

Nomsa's telling Berrtie about keeping Kael and I separate so no soul-sucking kisses happen, despite my still unactivated powers.

The light lances in the sky fade, the distant horizons never took up the warcry--maybe the nearest Waiter on the Dawn camp is too far away, maybe they had no one to attack, maybe they didn't think these light lances meant everyone everywhere should attack, right now.

My neck twitches. If I were One, I would hope the night warriors could outlast this surprise advance and strike back under the dark moon. I wouldn't hear about it until nights later though, when messengers came in, and those without immediately fatal injuries (those would've been treated at the battlefront) were toted into the healing wing.

If I were Troy, I suppose I would be right here, sitting with Kael, picking no sides but theirs. Maybe we could sneak past Chondra's messenger in the rear of our "army" and run into the mountains.

If I were the Destroying One, I suppose I could tell Chondra she's a fake and call down light on all the camps of night warriors; their guards, their messengers, their field medics and hidden reserves--I could destroy their camps all down the plain. Theoretically. If I knew how.

But I don't even want to do that right now, I just want to...exist. Yet that tight squeezing thing around my heart pulses, reminding me it's there, waiting.

Curling over my lap, I squeeze my hands to my head, groaning. Leave me alone, Destroying One.

"Troy?" Kael says. "What's going on?"

I jump; I nearly forgot other people were around. "I'm just tired." I rub my eyes.

"Just tired." Nomsa snorts. "Sure. What's actually wrong?"

I grit my teeth, sitting up. "I don't know what I'm doing. I can't figure out what this"--I wave my hands at myself--"is even doing, how am I supposed to herald any Dawn?"

Nomsa folds her arms. Kael looks away, hugging their backpack in their lap, but Berrtie just hums, pursing her lips. "There's legends that light lancers used to be able to summon the recent dead to aid them."

I furrow my eyebrows.

"The Bhuta legends?" Kael asks.

Berrtie shakes her head. "This is different stuff, in the mist lancer section. I've read through a ton of scripts theorizing that the Waiters on the Dawn grew weaker after the Dawn died, which is why summoning the dead is no longer possible. But if Troy..." She narrows her eyes. "If Troy can give one of you a boost, maybe we could call the dead to talk to us or help Troy get their powers. Maybe train them."

I open my mouth.

"We're going to get trained by ghosts?" Nomsa squeaks, bouncing.

Berrtie pats her bobbing knee. "Maybe. It has to be after dark to try summoning any of them, anyway, and unfortunately the moon is nowhere near full. So we'll need a lot of juice to bring any of the dead out to play."

"What if I don't feel like destroying anything?"

Kael frowns. Nomsa scowls, and Berrtie mirrors Kael.

"You'd rather die tonight when Chondra's failed to get all the night warriors?" Kael curls their fingers under the flap of their backpack.

"No." I shake my head. "What I'd rather have is things no longer controlling me." I poke my chest. "I swear, there's something in here that feels different than I do, and I hate what it makes me do sometimes. I hate that I can't control when I do mist stuff."

"Oh," Kael says.

Nomsa climbs to hands and knees, crawling across our circle to push her face close to mine, lips pulled down. "Have you ever thought that feeling is just all your bottled up anger?"

It clicks a trapdoor of fury open in me, exposing a whole labyrinth of tunnels with people's names--but my face stays flat. "I'm not dumb, Nomsa." I push her shoulder away. "I know what anger feels like."

A siren quakes across the plains, and the sky empties of light spears. Nomsa sits back on her heels. "But do you know what bottled up and fermented anger feels like?"

Berrtie lays a wide hand on Nomsa's shoulder. "I think that's enough...prodding, for now. Shall we eat?"

Kael squints at the sky. "Sure. I predict we have two hours before the night warriors pull their shadow-over-the-sun trick and launch a counter attack."

"They do that?" I whisper. Then I remember; a flash from Perseverance's memories, calling a dark cloud over the sun. "I've never seen them do that."

"Well it doesn't do anything," Kael says, fiddling with the straps on their bag, "it doesn't charge them. It's just a scare tactic."

"It got old ages ago." Nomsa climbs to her feet. "Watch out, I'm signaling Zadia."

She gives us no time to move before a pulse of light shoots from her mouth, but afterward Kael still shields their eyes. A star of light streaks into the air, fades, and a second shoots from her mouth, arcing the other direction. I blink dark afterimages from my gaze.

Then Nomsa sits, wordlessly digging in her bag for something.

"Okay," Berrtie says. "I see how you guys find each other out here."

"You can do the next one," Nomsa tells Kael.

"Wow, thank you." Kael rolls their eyes in a circle. "I mean that sarcastically."

"Yeah, I don't care," Nomsa says.

***

Author note: trained by ghosts? Exciting. Meeting Zadia? Also exciting. So much exciting stuff is about to go down :):)