ORIANA

I didn't run, much to Sol's consternation. Or maybe he just looked angry due to the electricity pumping through his body. It contorted his features most gruesomely.

Either way, his frustration with the entire situation was tangible as I stood mountain still, burying myself under an avalanche of guilt. Golden warriors dragged Rana round the corner and out of sight. Her sobs rang perfectly clear though, and I heard her begging the Goddess to restore her sight, the kind of useless platitudes and promises people cycled through when they found themselves in a mortal bind.

Not that Rya was listening. She didn't give a rat's ass about her mortal subjects; she was too lost in a crushing depressive episode to notice that we were all on the brink of decimation ourselves.

... which was exactly why I couldn't bring the temple down, despite all my blustering. Not only might it take down Rana and Sebastian, if I wasn't careful, but all the other oblivious innocents as well. These soldiers were just following orders; what if they had families waiting at home for them? The acolytes overhead thought they were serving a higher power, and had probably sacrificed much to be here. Was it their fault Rya refused to notice?

The band of spearmen edged closer. One cocked his weapon above his shoulder, readying to hurl it — not at me, but at Sol again, and suddenly it was a little easier to care less about them as individuals.

"Stay back!" I cried, throwing up another flare of light.

The sun warriors weren't as careless this time. Metal clanged on the floor as they threw up a shield wall. The spearmen retreated with their faces snug in the crook of an elbow, even though the light was so intense that it actually emanated heat, making the metal links that bound their scales together glow white hot.

And then everything was white hot. My speck of light gathered and condensed into a crackling ball of fire that washed the colour out of every surface, making shapes and depth slightly less distinct. It throbbed as if it had a heartbeat all its own, sending forth pulses of impossible heat.

And it dragged at things, sucking up loose shards of debris to feed itself, fattening with every whistling bite. A whipping wind struck up, circling viciously through the hall and out the broken wall, buffeting back the wyverns that started to close in from the air. Iron groaned as the bottom corner of a shield scraped forward, despite the bulging strength of the warrior fighting desperately to keep it in place.

It was a chink in the armour I could have exploited, but I turned my back on the warriors and walked calmly towards my own, feeling light as a feather and yet firmly grounded all at once.

Sol was pale as the moon when I stood over his convulsing body. His eyes were currently rolling into the back of his head, protecting him from the blazing light. Good, I thought, closing my hands over the polished wooden shaft. Loyalty should be rewarded.

My fingers slipped on the wood as I tugged the shaft towards me. Sol's back arched and he let out a cry that I suspected was involuntary.

A clammy hand clapped over mine. "No," he wheezed. "Push."

Right. Mortification sizzled through me, my otherworldly confidence fizzling out. The spear had to go all the way in, so the barbed base wouldn't snag a chunk of flesh on its way out.

It's just a big arrow, I told myself, breathing forcefully through my nose as I readjusted my grip. Not that that was any more reassuring. The only arrow I'd seen in action was the one one Sebastian sent through Rogan's chest, and that frothy lung wound was utterly horrifying to bear witness to. But I understood the premise of how to treat it: push the arrowhead through, snap the shaft just below, and then yank the rest out.

Goddess, I hoped there wouldn't be any splinters. The thought of putting my hand inside him, to pick through globs of fat and organ and muscle for debris...

My shudder ran up the length of the spear. Sol hissed through his teeth and I swore under my breath, gathering my strength and tightening my grip for a firm, decisive push.

It was like pushing a pin through tough leather. His body resisted, and then the last layer of skin seemed to pop, followed by a rush of sticky wood. Blood slopped audibly on the shattered floor, but Sol was still seizing. Electricity ran along the shaft, tickling where it fizzled out on my fingertips. My inner light was reacting, hardening against the assault, like a skin-tight armoured glove. I was surprised by how easy it was to mould; the Blessing that had once been a raging inferno felt almost pliable in my hands, putty I could pull and twist into shape.

It's this place. Sol was right; everything was more intense here, like I was subconsciously siphoning the power in the walls. And those walls had been soaking up sunlight for centuries.

Without thinking, I gripped the crystal spearhead, intending to drain that, too. That was when I realised my mistake; one side was polished, but the other was grooved like the inside of a tree, every line another year marked. It hadn't been hewn from the mountain; it had been grown, lovingly over centuries, and then brutally and abruptly wrested from the skull of a Kirin.

Eddy's golden snout flashed before my eyes, and I felt a sudden wave of revulsion. The ancestral armour I could understand — it was an honourable practice that showed respect to one's forebears, and it was wilfully given — but this was just cruel. They'd slaughtered a Kirin — an ancient, intelligent, sentient being — like it was nothing more than a simple beast and put its pieces to use. It was no better than battering somebody with a decapitated head they'd speared on the end of a pike. No different than a Weaver harvesting somebody's soul and wearing them as socks. Even worse for the fact that they didn't even have feet.

I had mixed feelings about the Earth Mother's First Children after Eddy's betrayal and the dubious hospitality they'd shown us, but I could not condone their senseless slaughter. Just as I couldn't stand back and justify the targeted attacks of wyverns passing peacefully through Kirin airspace, or lycans tossing children from rival packs into the Hidden Vale, to splice them into horrifying aberrations.

No wonder Rya distanced herself from the world. Everyone and everything on it was selfish and monstrous.

So why shouldn't I be?

Still shielding myself, I wrested the power away from the horn and redirected it through the hole in the wall, where it snapped like a whip. Thunder boomed back at almost instantly, sending the hovering wyverns scattering once more. The arrowhead cooled in my palm and turned brittle and grey.

Sol regained control of his body and helped the spear along. It was gruesome to watch him pull the weapon through his chest like it was the eye of the needle, but he seemed to know what he was doing, so I let him have at it.

Meanwhile, my little sun grew stronger and stronger. Behind my legs, Sol was able to remain in place, but the rows of shield-men were sliding inexorably towards it now, shouting in alarm. All I had to do was wait, and they would all die screaming horribly, and there wouldn't even be ash left to memorialise their presence.

They knew what I was capable of, now. But did I?

"Red!" Sol roared over the din. "You have to stop!"

"Not until they give me Sebastian," I gritted out.

"They don't know where he is," Sol said. "Only Kyara does. If you aren't careful you might crush him with these antics!"

"I'm not going anywhere without him! He's suffocating!"

"Forgive me," he cried, and then there was a blinding pain at the base of my skull, and then nothing at all.