We stop directly across from the gate. The river blocks us; to get inside, we must drop to rushing rapids, swim across, then dash to the iron bars. Or, find another way.

Arrows plunk into my mist umbrella and the dirt around us. Zadia tilts her head at the gate, and the stone courtyard beyond it. "Where's the bridge?"

I point at the wood base under the gate. "It pulls out."

She shoots a bolt of mist, shaping it like a trident to stab the worn front of the platform. But the wood resists, sparking black flecks, rattling like a stubborn piece of meat until the trident dissipates. She makes another though, stabbing and trying to drag the bridge.

"You don't want me coming home?" I shout to the raining arrows. They've got a dozen guards up there now, and a black and navy salamander pacing the parapet.

Zadia stabs two tridents into the sparking platform and rattles it forward, pulling the tridents out before they dissipate, then stabs them in again. Rinse, repeat.

"We're going to get it eventually!" I shout. "Really, we're just giving you time to surrender, since we could get across way easier!"

Arrows hail around us, bouncing into my umbrella or biting the dirt or landing silently in the rapids.

"It's going to zap us or something as soon as we touch it, isn't it?" Zadia whispers, scowling at the bridge slowly shuffling across the stretch of dirt. Supporting chains drag from the leading corners.

"Which do you think has more energy," I ask, "a bridge, or me?"

Zadia scoffs. "Hopefully you."

Her pair of tridents keep stabbing, tugging, jerking free, and stabbing again.

The salamander scurries down the wall, dark-armored rider wielding a steady lance. "Oh look," I say. "They're coming already."

Zadia grimaces. "Please don't kiss the salamander."

"Nah, I'll save that for after the bridge." I exhale deeply, sending out a cloud of mist, drifting almost lazily to scrape the salamander off the wall and hold them like I might a tiny lizard in my hand. The rider jabs their lance into the mist, so I catch it there, like quicksand.

My magic lifts them back up to the parapet, then releases them, but leaves binds of mist around the salamander's legs. So they topple sideways, and the lance clatters, spinning off the wall. The rider nearly does too, but armored hands stretch out to grab them. The lance smashes to the bridge, the metal crumpling.

Zadia pulls the wood out over the water. But the chains go taut, stretching to the top corners of the gate, and machinery creaks, dragging the bridge back in toward the castle.

"Aw come on," Zadia hisses.

"Hey, you've lured some of them down to the courtyard," I say. "That's good."

She rolls her eyes, and her mist tridents dissipate. "Hurry up and duel your bridge. They're against us having our fancy entrance first."

Our fancy entrance where we walk across the bridge and enter the courtyard, resting our feet's safety on the fact the night sparks haven't injured me in all the years I lived here. But yeah, apparently they don't want us having a fancy entrance to kick off this invasion.

"Okay." I exhale vapor, drifting it across the river, spreading like a rumpled quilt. I keep feeding it breath, and the tips curl, reaching like toes from under a blanket, up the riverbank, across the dirt, advancing to the edge of the bridge, now snug under the tall gate and arch of obsidian stones.

My toes of mist brush the wood. Dark sparks crackle, burning away the light. My fog keeps advancing, spreading, coating the platform and slack chains, wrapping tendrils around the iron bars.

The gate trembles, squealing like hot metal touching ice. Layers of my mist evaporate in a shuddering pulse. I gasp, and drop to my knees, and Zadia makes a mist umbrella because mine has flickered out. Arrows thunk against it.

I pour more mist over the river, to the castle, burrowing into the bridge, tangling around the bars.

We could do this way easier; make some stairs over the water and up the side, or go around back and sneak in through the sewer tunnel, if they haven't blocked that off already.

But we're not just here to attack the Obsidian Castle; we're here to seize it for ourselves. Wipe all trace of night pests from the stones. Dominate them.

I yell, launching a blade of mist from my mouth. It cracks into the top of the gate, raining stone. Shouts ring out from the wall, and a slick, black salamander with dark blue splotches hurtles down the rampart. Zadia spears it with a lance of mist, so it and rider fall, thudding to the dirt.

My mist embraces the bridge and drags it forward, fighting the soldiers inside trying to crank it back.

The black sparks fizz, and my mist evaporates at its touch, but I breathe more vapor at it, hyperventilating. The night enchantment holds like a slick oil, but layer by layer, my mist licks it away.

Pulsing mist swallows the gate. A bar of iron snaps, and rocks crumble. Then the whole enchantment erupts in black fire, burning away my light. White specks dance in my eyes and I find myself lying on the ground but I roll onto my side, staring at the burning gate.

I yell out a stream of fog. The fire tries to rebound it out, hissing. But I flick a finger, and the stream puffs into a soft cloud, settling over the fire like a blanket, smothering the night to nothing.

No more sparks rise to fight me.

I stand up, dusting my hands. I...think I'm actually aware that the light in me has diminished. "Do the honors?" I motion.

"Gladly." Zadia grins, and pokes the bridge with the tiniest trident, barely as big as a finger. Yet it snaps the bridge forward so fast one of the supporting chains breaks off, flailing into the water. The wood thunks to the dirt right in front of us, and the mist trident goes and joins our umbrella.

"Nice," I say. We step onto the bridge, footsteps thunking over the rapids, arrows bouncing off our umbrella, shouts and flags above warning us.

They should be warning themselves.

***

Two guards--armored, wielding swords--stand behind the gate. Zadia and I walk up close, and I stick my face through the closest square of bars. I grin, eyes crinkling to near shut. "Hi," I say. "Do I know you? I can't see your faces through the visors--"

The one closest lunges with the point of their sword. I recoil, hands flying to my nose. Then I wail, stumbling away.

My wail morphs into a laugh, and I lower my dry hands. The sword never touched me. "Nice try."

The guard stabs their sword through the bars, trying to jab me. I step aside, puffing out mist.

"Hey." Zadia precariously perches on some fallen stones, in the shade of the gate's arch. "I wanted to cut the gate down. You already broke the top bit." She points, at where I snapped a single iron bar out of place while draining the night sparks.

"I bent one bar," I say. "And you already snapped a chain off."

She rocks side to side on the smooth rocks.

"But whatever, go ahead."

"Yesss," Zadia says, puffing out a cloud, and it splits into a swarm of needles. I step back, grinning at the guards. They look like they don't know what to do anymore; swords drawn, standing ready behind the gate.

Zadia's needles fly, burrowing into the center of the gate, where the two hinging halves meet. The metal interlocks shut with hundreds of tiny teeth, but the mist spikes slice through, severing them. Then the needles thread around the bars, wrapping like vines. The guards rush forward, blockading the gate with their shoulders, shouting for aid.

The gate also locks into place against the top of the archway, and through stakes into the stones. But Zadia flicks her fingers, and the gate flies open, launching the guards across the courtyard. The gate doors crash into the archway walls, shivering dust, and the mist disperses.

"Wow," I say. "That was really delicate."

"Thank you for the compliment." She flourishes to the courtyard. "Your turn."

I stride through the gate, but don't quite enter the courtyard--they'll rain annoying arrows down, or send soldiers streaming down both sets of stairs from the parapets, thinking they can surround me.

Instead, a tendril of mist flies from my breath, slithering across the ground to coil around the thrown guards. This courtyard has no trees, no mushrooms or flowers. Just patches of dirt in the corners near the corridors, the soil speckled with decorative blue pebbles.

The mist drags the soldiers, kicking, toward the shadow of the archway. Waiting, I crouch above the gouged stake holes of the gate. The soldiers scrape and squeal over the stones, coming to rest before my knees. The mist flicks off their helmets, and I tilt my head. "Hi, Sixscore," I say to the one on the left, his bright hair buzzed short. "Hey, Steadfast," I say to the one on the right, his nose crooked.

"One--" Sixscore breathes, gloved fingers scrabbling for a dagger at his side.

I snap my head toward him, launching a mist coil to squeeze his hand. He winces.

I lean forward, tips of my knees resting on his boots. "Have you ever kissed someone at least twenty years younger than you?" I slide mist all around their bodies so they can't move, can't even talk to answer.

I just want them to think about what's coming.

It's awkward really, but I crawl on top of Sixscore's chest, crouching like a frog, and bend over. The mist pushes his head up, and his eyes go wild, darting, nostrils flaring. I peel away the vapor covering his mouth. He flattens his lips.

I kiss him, and breathe fog to pry his mouth open. I slide my glove of light down his throat and he chokes, unable to move. The other guard yells, muffled.

"Shut up," Zadia says, and something smacks. The yelling stops.

My magic caresses the edges of Sixscore's soul, somewhere between his ribs and heart. He can't breathe, with the mist clogging his throat. He's trying to, hard, so I let some mist shoot down into his lungs. They spear the base of the soft, spongy tissue.

I open my eyes to stare into his wild, black gaze. He thrashes, bound in a gown of mist. Gracefully, I pluck at the edges of his soul, a black thing fitted to his body, a skin below his skin.

It unravels quickly at my touch. So I suck it up real fast before it floats away from his skin, and suck up my mist in his throat, and pull my lips away.

Sixscore stares blankly, blinking, breathing calmly like he hasn't been starving for air for the past minute and also like his lungs aren't stabbed through and bleeding.

I slink, one limb at a time, onto Steadfast's breastplate, fingers drumming on the metal. Zadia's mist has him in a chokehold so he'd quit screaming, but it vanishes. "Does it always take that long?" Zadia asks, behind me. "I think there's people on the stairs."

"Line them up," I say. Then I bend down and pull Steadfast's face up to mine. I kiss him, he tries bludgeoning me with his tongue, so I cover it with mist and slide it slowly around the inside of my gums, over my teeth. He shakes. Slowly, I unravel the edges of his soul and I'm more careful this time, so it comes away from his body like two cloths unstitched from each other, but the fragile one--the soul--stays intact, a solid shadow of his self. It sits patiently, detached, and I place Steadfast's tongue back in his mouth before I suck his soul up. The light in my chest grows.

"This is so weirdly fascinating," Zadia says. I stand; she's blocked off the narrow staircase to either side with walls of mist and towering guardrails, leaving the bottom dozen steps bare. Footsteps thunder, and weapons glint above the fog. They're probably trying to climb out. Running to their demise. "Do they taste good or something?" Zadia asks.

I shake my head. "I can't taste anything. I just suck their souls out."

She nudges Sixscore's knee with her boot. "They're still breathing."

"There's nothing inside there though." I shrug. "I also slashed open his lungs, so he's going to die real soon."

She frowns. "Seems a bit overkill."

"He was trying to breathe, so I let him breathe mist."

A thud echoes from the stairs at our left. "So do you seriously want to kiss every one of these people? That'll take forever."

"Not all of them," I say. "Just enough to overflow what's in here." I tap my chest.

She rolls her eyes. "So almost all of them. Maybe you should also conserve your energy and not stab more people's lungs out."

"I'll go faster," I say, and stride up the stairs. "Can you let them through one at a time?"

"I can try." She grunts, and the mist barrier on the steps fizzles for only a breath. Two soldiers tumble out, and a longbow cracks under them. "With varying results, yes."

I trap them in mist, flinging off their helmets. "Oh. Girls."

They have matching brown braids down their backs.

"Excuse me?" Zadia says, and the girls blabber my name, kicking and growling.

"I actively hate kissing girls," I say to Zadia. But I kiss these two, fast, ripping out their souls. Then I kick them off the edge of the stairs so they pile in the dirt.

"Oh, watch out." A mist umbrella forms above Zadia and I, and arrows bounce off it. "They're still on the parapet."

"Lovely." I check the shadowed corridors in the courtyard, leading into the castle. "They'll probably show up behind us soon too."

***

In all grossness, I probably drink a lot of spit. Some blood, too, because some of them bite their own tongues and spew it everywhere when I try to kiss them.

But none of them escape, on our trek up the staircase.

Warriors run into the courtyard, but by then we're halfway up the stairs, and the parapets have emptied out of archers, since they all ran around the castle walls to find a different way down.

"They're so eager to come meet us," Zadia says, and forms a mist wall so they can't get up the stairs.

I kiss the next three guards that tumble through her upper barrier. It's gotta be something about courage, or determination that they'll be the one to strike us down, that keeps all these soldiers on the stairs from fleeing. Surely they've seen our slow advance upward, the soldiers tumbling out one or two or three at a time, and us cutting through all of them.

"Maybe they think they're stalling until nightfall," I say. "Which would make their sacrifices worth it, slowing us down a little bit at a time--"

"--if you weren't gaining more energy with each one you kissed."

"Yep." I wreathe the next soldier in mist, and he starts shouting over his shoulder about us gaining energy, but my mouth smacks him on the lips and there goes his soul. He has pretty cheekbones.

I also don't know his name. I kick him off the side, and he lands in the mound of soldiers, some breathing, some not. The hill's tall enough we could almost walk down it instead of the actual stairs. But the living guards in the courtyard--blocked from the stairs by Zadia's mist--don't run up it, those are their friends and comrades, so they stand yelling and shuffling, brandishing swords. Much less annoying than the next group that runs out of a corridor firing arrows and grappling hooks at us, forcing Zadia to form a wall at our side. The projectiles thunk and fall away.

"How's your energy?" I ask.

"Getting pretty low. How's yours?"

"I feel bloated. But not quite there."

"Not quite there?" Even though it's now blocked by thick fog, she looks toward the hill of bodies stacked along the stairs. "Maybe, we go for the Empress' quarters," Zadia says, "and you kiss strangers on the way. I'm not a people person, but it appears our unwelcome-ness at this party is causing a massive scene, and it keeps getting bigger."

"Not a people person, but you know what a party is?" I joke.

But I agree. Not just about our unwelcome-ness at this crowded party; my insides are fluttering with impatience to see the Empress' quarters. "Once we get to the parapet, I'll feed you, then we run for it."

I map out the distance in my head; we can take the next set of stairs down into a courtyard, run through the dark halls past the kitchens and sleeping quarters to the heart of the castle, where a winding staircase leads up to the central tower.

"Great," she says, sweat prickling on her forehead. I kiss the next guard, and the next, and another dozen until we step onto the parapet, black stones radiating heat. A final guard charges at me, but I tangle them and their shaky spear with mist, and reach up to knock the helmet off. Fast, I kiss her, before she can yell.

I let go, and she flops on the stones, armor and rock clacking, hair splaying around their skull like drooping fern fronds.

Zadia comes up beside me, panting for air, maintaining the wall of mist blocking off the stairs.

"Tell me when you're full." I touch her wrist, dripping mist through my fingers.

She wipes her forehead, pushing frizzy hair back. Her shoulders straighten. "Okay that's good."

I pull back, mist vanishing from my fingertips. I...think I might be aware of how much light I gave her. It's more than what a single soul gives me. Maybe more than two. Is that supposed to say something about the strength of night warrior souls, and how much light they translate into?

"We run there." I point across the parapet to the next set of stairs. There's already a few guards the size of specks running up them, but it's the closest way to the Empress' quarters.

Zadia nods, breaking into a jog and dispersing the mist wall at our backs. I run after her. Footsteps thunder on the stairs behind us.

***

Author note: okay...I don't have much to say on this one, it's pretty straightforward. Or gayforward? A gayforward invasion into the castle...