Time recoiled.

Rider’s impenetrable shield containing the fire arrow broke under the weight of Aria’s Light Trait. Pure weaponised power detonated under extreme stress and in a tightly condensed space. Aria might’ve been the Throneholder but tonight…she was a fucking idiot.

“Rider!”

The collision of conflicting Traits collapsed in on itself, the room warping into a frozen battlefield slowly waking from its slumber. The protective shell only Rider could control shattered. But the form of the Throneholder began to move rapidly towards her, confusion turned to complete decisiveness. Dagger in her hand, Rider had no choice but to let the shield go. Gripping her cane, she slammed it down a second too late. 

Light met shadow and consumed the fire for itself.

“Run!”

Rider’s voice croaked under the sound of so much noise, her Trait reacting on instinct to try to contain such a volatile mass of swirling elemental magic. Dropping to one knee, the shadows tried to submerge the fire and extinguish it, but the searing light had kept the fire burning long after it should have winked out. 

“Throneholder!”

Rider cursed. She couldn’t just leave it be. Clearly, Aria couldn’t either. She could handle an assassination attempt. She could handle a time stopping powerhouse of a Regent. But what she couldn’t handle, was a reckless Traited using a power she didn’t understand. 

“Damn it all to Hellgrind.”

She was only one Traited. She’d need an army. An army she no longer had. An army Aria had no intention of utilising against anything but the demons. Rider growled in exertion, the shadows erupting from all sides at the sight of Aria’s face twisting into mania mere seconds after the sight of her shadows.

The ache of lost love burned in her chest even as the mask that the Throneholder tore away broke Rider’s fragile longing to return to something more. She grinned a savage grin at the sight of Aria being in pain as much as she was. But when her eyes looked to the spot where Aria had been there was no sign of her. The great Throneholder of Opalis had run away. All to save herself. 

“Captain!”

Rider thought they were talking about someone else.

A hand roughly pulled her out of her trance, her shaky legs felt like stone as the ground became more solid and it took her several minutes to realise what had happened. She looked up at her rescuer and found the dirt strewn face of a young server from the waitress staff dragging her to her feet on an unfamiliar, cobbled street. They weren’t in Scholar’s Keep anymore. They had gotten out. 

“Skyla.”

Her blonde hair was covered in brick dust and pebbles of debris, her black tie uniform dishevelled and ripped at the arm with a shallow cut tied off by part of the end of her shirt. Static electricity rippled around her, her hair fizzing like a mad scientist, but her dirt caked hands were singed badly at the nails and some were even missing from the bed.

“What were you thinking, keeping an entire building up on your own? You’re dumber than Nate on a damn pub crawl and you know it.”

Rider let out a snort, the sharp intake of breath causing a tremor of pain that brought her to her knees. She hissed at the stabbing ache in her back, the familiar inflammation in her arms that came with getting too close to an angry Light Traited. Skyla half dragged her into a nearby alleyway, the familiar streets of Axis winding together again. The Undercity. They were far underneath the city of Opalis.

“People were dying. I could feel it. If I could’ve just bought them some more time-“

Skyla thwacked her on the shoulder.

“Whatever Aria did to you to think that sacrificing yourself was OK was seriously fucked up. Look at her. Look at yourself. You can barely stand.”

“But-“

“You said you didn’t want to be responsible for her mistakes anymore, right?”

Rider’s breath caught in her throat. Skyla had never hit her before. But she had never spoken so clearly before either. Her hand loosened over her cane. It had helped numb the pain but the shock of electricity that came from Skyla’s touch had broken Rider’s concentration and no matter how she breathed through it, ignoring it with clenched teeth was the only thing Rider knew how to do.

“I did.”

The mantra of the Throneholder was still burned into her thoughts. A defective Shadow Traited was there only to support and follow the light. Rider hated to admit it, but she still believed it to be true. Even after Aria had burned her entire world, the meaning of that still stuck with her through every painstaking step she took.

“So, what did you call that back there, then?” Skyla reiterated, her Nocturian accent returning a little more each time.

Rider flinched, barely able to keep herself upright, let alone a whole building. Taking a deep breath, she struggled to settle her rapid heartbeat and the draining fatigue making her legs buckle without the cane she had so heavily relied on. Why she thought still pretending to be able bodied was a good idea defied logic but she was still stuck in her ways of her old Regency position.

“I’m going to be blamed for it anyways. I always am. I’m a Shadow Traited and there’s no bigger threat than that.”

Rider’s voice barely carried over the noise of passers-by but she knew from Skyla’s face she meant what she said. Completely. The sounds of whooping and drunken cheering were haunted by the screams of innocent people, the flashing lights of fireworks became the flames that engulfed so many all because of her.

“Look at me.”

Rider hadn’t noticed her hands shaking. All she could hear was the crashing sound of slates falling off nearby houses as people scrambled to safety over collapsing rooftops. She had to get out. Get out of here. It was all her fault. 

“You got us out. You got us out alive, Rider. That’s more than any one of us can ask.”

Skyla’s praise warped into the sight of a parent scolding their child, the sharp slap on the wrist echoing in her mind. Rider shrank away from the sound, her head turning away in shame at the thought of what her Trait had done. Her shame of not doing more. 

“I don’t know why Aria…did what she did to me and I dragged you all into it but we got nothing and all I did was make things worse and…” Rider insisted, her words rushing away with her.

“You didn’t. We can try again…”

All Rider could hear was the scorn in Aria’s voice. Just at the sight of her. 

“But I can’t go back, she’ll know and this was my only chance to…”

The logic made sense. It always made sense.

“You know I have a way in with the Excelliars. Let me help you. Let me find out the answers for you.”

Rider blinked.

Skyla’s hands were clenched within her own. They had collapsed on the ground. In the middle of a dank, creepy alleyway surrounded by a festival of light the people of Brinehearth celebrated. Part of her couldn’t help but laugh.

“You’d do that?”

A nod was all she needed.

"I already did."

Rider looked down. 

Gently tucked away in her trembling hands was a small, black book no bigger than a notebook. It almost made her heart stop. It was a basic looking thing, easily looked over as some kind of cheap order form for any waitress to take orders and no more. 

“How did you-“

Skyla smiled.

“You said it yourself. You’re the biggest distraction I know. I just made use of it."

The book wasn’t embellished with gold or emblazoned with any fancy symbols or shiny covers but a musty, dogeared, mothballed book barely suitable for purpose. But Rider knew. It was her grimoire. Her lifeline. Half of her everything.

“So, what’s the plan now, Captain?”

Rider smiled at her companion’s awkwardness, unsure of whether to call her that after so long. Her shadows eagerly rose to the forefront at the clinging lights against her skin but she clamped it down. Aria had taken so much from her and she hadn’t even realised it. Skyla was willing to return the favour. She could work with that.

Rider didn’t just need answers. She needed allies. She needed a plan. She needed revenge.

Skyla’s legs rested against her useless one’s, Rider’s head aching at the return of such a vital piece of herself. Still she was missing something. Her hands twitched in desperation, for a smoke, for her Trait, for anything to busy her mind of all the plans and scenarios that worked. 

She looked up at the sky and found her answer. 

The mocking form of fire that had threatened to burn through her shield sat lazily within the expanse of night that reminded her of her next goal. The phoenix that belonged to her replacement. Trailblazer Ixis. The Regent of Opalis. Aria had taken her dragon. Rider would take her Regent. Until she got her Oathed back by whatever means necessary.

"I think it’s time we pay the Timekeeper a little visit.”