ORIANA

I scrambled after Rana, the smooth soles of my sandals slipping on the scree. Stupid, I thought viciously, cursing myself for not taking a moment to think. I would have given anything to have my boots and gloves back as I pitched forward, the sawed spine of rock biting through the tender flesh of my palms. Bleeding, everywhere, again. Sebastian would kill me for being so reckless.

No, he'd follow me into the fire, I corrected, suddenly glad he wasn't by my side. His care for me was almost masochistic; it was like he was determined to be my buffer against every danger in the world, when perhaps the world needed protecting from me.

Rana also had a tendency to throw herself headfirst into danger, though usually for the fun of it. This felt more like desperation, though. "You don't have to do this," I cried out, breaking off with a yelp as a particularly strong gust of wind caught my robes, pulling them tight. I didn't have my cloak, which meant there were no backup wings. If I slipped, it would be a quick drop to certain death.

"Oh shut up," she snarled over her shoulder. "You're not the only one that gets to risk their life for others. Are you coming or not?"

My cheeks felt unusually warm as I struck a balance on all fours. It's just the residual heat, I told myself as I crawled towards the fall of flame. Time skipped with every beat of my flustered heart, until all of a sudden I'd caught up with a smooth, brown ankle.

Rana extended a hand behind her, fingers wiggling. I clasped them carefully, wobbling slightly as I rose to my feet, fighting the urge to pull on her steadiness to anchor myself.

Instead of letting go, she squeezed my hand. Her back was shadowed, but the sliver of her profile as she turned her head was pure gold. "I'm glad to have you with me at the end."

I swallowed past the sudden lump in my throat, but she was pushing through the fire before I could even think of what to say. Me too? I miss you? None of it was enough to describe the wealth of emotion I felt for this brave, vulnerable woman, who faced her own mortality with her head held high.

All I had was action. I followed Rana face-first into a wall of flame that everything in my mortal body screamed to avoid. I thought I heard her scream — perhaps her flesh even sizzled — but it was lost to the low, monstrous roar of burning aether.

There was no silver cloak or moon-borne power to protect me now. Muscle and tendon was stripped lovingly away by the heat. I felt the moment my bones gave way, crumbling to ash, and the resulting buoy of my spirit. It was strangely elating, to flex like this. This form was lighter. Stronger. Righter.

Rana wasn't as liberated by the purge as I was. There was a kernel of brightness at her core, but too long buried; it called to its like in the falling flame, and forces both within and without threatened to erode my friend from existence altogether.

Claim your power, I sent through the temporary bond we'd fashioned at the joining of our hands — or where our hands used to be. Now it was little more than an eyelash of soul-stuff that bound us. Become it.

Rana's memories flittered through the periphery of my consciousness. Kyara. Bannor. A deep, dark pit. It was there that she found her anchor; a self-loathing that ran even deeper and darker than the Hidden Veil. What use were eyes when one had inner light? Why had that girl allowed fear to prevent her from reaching her true potential? Why hadn't she sacrificed herself to save the ones she loved?

She could have saved them all. Every last one.

I wanted to cry out that it wasn't fair — that Rana was no less strong for wilfully inhibiting the impossible power she'd inherited. If anything it was a mighty act of self-preservation, to set oneself apart from destiny and tell a Goddess no. But whatever she was doing was working. It was a wildly different approach to mine, but the darkness coated Rana's soul in a cool, protective layer. Trauma mingled with the flames and became something new, a liquid rock that flowed with the path of her thoughts. Shame spurred her just as much as pride to claim her power, to work it to her advantage. She forged herself in it.

I see true now. Her words rung with finality. I am not a true warrior. Not like Bannor. Not like you. I am too selfish for that.

Would that I could have replied. Instead I fought viciously to repel the thought of our evisceration, clinging to my sense of self with a vicious avarice that made me wonder if I was in fact a dragon. The current carried us elsewhere and elsewhen, but the destination was all too familiar when I finally opened my eyes, surprised to find that I had some again. For a moment my soul flared, teetering on the verge of two shapes that it remembered, but it settled for the one with two legs I was most accustomed to. I felt a flutter of disappointment without really understanding why, like I'd heard an elusive snatch of a nostalgic song, gone before I could place the name at the tip of my tongue.

Rana's eyes were open, too — restored by the certainty of her memories, that she was a creature with sight. She'd reverted to her wyvern form and tucked her wings tightly against her body, her mouth hanging strangely open as she scented the air with rapid little huffs. Her tongue forked out in surprise when one of the floating orbs passed over our heads, a living world in miniature. One of hundreds. Perhaps even thousands.

Where...? The midnight wyvern paused before a particularly small orb mouldering in the shadows. It smells wrong.

My lips pressed together. The light had diminished significantly in the atrium since my last visit, and the toll on the outer worlds was clear. An oily darkness was seeping through the atrium, whispering in dulcet tones. "Can you tell what it's saying?"

Rana cocked her triangular her, the cloudy inner eyelid shuttering. It is no language I recognise, but its intent...

"I know what you mean," I muttered, letting my soul flare brighter. The dark tendrils cringed back, but their whispering grew even more feverish, shadows massing in the recesses of the room. "It's malevolent." But it was also oddly alluring. Those strange words had a dragging quality that reminded me of the precipice of sleep, before one was pulled inexorably down.

Who do you think it belongs to? Rana asked.

"Trouble," I muttered, picking a path towards the centre. I'd experienced enough solipsistic cosmic forces to recognise the workings of another. "Come on. This way."

I thought it was obvious that we shouldn't touch anything, but an ear-splitting crack alerted me to the fact that Rana had nosed one of the floating orbs. The sound repeated over and the glass fissured, frostier with every crack, until it eventually caved and burst into blue flame. A black viscous material splatted on the floor, wailing in a tiny, high-pitched voice as it fled for the safety of the shadows.

Oops. Rana shot me the lizard equivalent of a grimace.

My mouth fell open. Rana. That was a whole world!

What! You didn't tell me that!

"I didn't realise I had to! Aren't you a Priestess?"

I never studied! she exclaimed.

"I can tell."

Was it ours? she asked hesitantly.

"I really hope not."

The light grew bolder as we progressed, but also more unwieldy, flickering like a candle wick on the verge of going out. Shadows spasmed on the floors, cast by the strange, circling worlds, some large as a house and others narrow as the nail on my littlest finger. The heat intensified as well; Rana's scales started to smoke, even coated in that strange, molten darkness she'd learned to shield herself with. My skin was starting to itch and prickle, too.

Rya's tits, Rana gasped in my mind.

Technically yes — what was left of them. The Goddess was sprawled on Her back this time, staring listlessly at the monstrous perch swinging from the seemingly endless roof, the chain disappearing into forever. There were others there, too — smaller, hanging at different heights, each one as forlorn as the centrepiece. I hadn't noticed them last time, but the implications made my mouth dry out.

"Rya," I said gently, as if the impossibly large deity was a child. She'd been picking at the gaping wound in her chest, if the gold crusted under her pearlescent fingernails was any indication. "What happened to all your visitors?"

There was a long, pregnant pause. The Goddess lifted Her head a fraction, the skin around her eyes feathering with her determination to clench them shut. "Little one. You came back."

"I did." A pause, as I tucked away my resentment over why; She'd denied me aid the last time to ensure I'd visit again. "Tell me what ails you so."

The muscles in Rya's throat spasmed and her neck buckled under the weight of her golden diadem and its illustrious, branching rays. The impact sent up a cloud of sand, with such force that it lacerated my skin as it passed and polished Rana's scales.

No cloak this time, I remembered with a prickle of fear. I was here on my own terms. Protected by my magic alone.

Not that it was really mine.

"A hundred worlds." Rya's bitterness was so potent the air turned sour. "A hundred worlds I watch over, but ne'er too closely lest I destroy them."

I felt a pang that cut too deep to be mere sympathy. "I too have lived on the outskirts," I admitted, stepping forward in spite of my better judgement. In this moment, Rya was as any other creature — hurting. "It can be difficult to be alone when you are surrounded by others."

"Yes." The gargantuan woman sighed. "It was not always thus. There was a time when my heartsworn visited often, the power in their feathers shining bright. And the memories they bore from their worlds — O, what sweet tales they sung! It has been quiet for far too long."

Then why did you stop granting us your Blessing? Rana asked, unable to mask her indignant tone while communicating with her thoughts. My people have been desperate to speak with you. We thought you abandoned us!

The air popped and crackled in my ears. The great Goddess curled her lip, exposing unnervingly pointed teeth. "I abandoned you?"

Yes! Haven't you noticed the darkness rotting through your solar system? Rana exclaimed, trumpeting her frustration. It's coming for us, now. You've left us to die!

"You. Abandoned. ME!" the Goddess roared, pushing herself up onto her elbows. The better to glare at us, though she was still careful to squint, lest the laser-brightness of her eyes destroy us in an instant. I gave you wretched creatures all of my heart and you fled with every last piece!

A cold realisation formed in the bottom of my gut, heavy as a riverstone. Rya spoke of Her Heart like it was a tangible thing. "When was this?

"An eternity ago," Rya sniffed. "A hundred worlds, a thousand heartsworn, and not one has returned in over a thousand years!"

Heartsworn, Rana muttered to herself, and we pieced the clues together in our minds.

"It has to be the phoenix, right?" I whispered, bending my head towards her indigo flank. "Doesn't the Thornwood show up every thousand years when the phoenix is reborn?"

Curiosity alighted in Rana's mind. A different phoenix for every world, she thought, sparks flying as she struck a hunch. Born from the pieces of Her Heart.

"Then what of Rya's Blessing?" I asked, frowning. "Smaller pieces, perhaps?"

The stars in Rana's eyes whirled. Mayhap they were fused with my ancestors. There are tales of a time before times, when we were flameless creatures who walked alone in the dark.

"So everyone had it at one point and it was passed down biologically," I mused. "It explains why it seems to be getting rarer and weaker with every generation. Maybe that's where your people's tradition of wearing ancestral armour came from? Maybe they were trying to cling to the power fused with their predecessor's flesh?"

It would definitely explain reincarnation. Rana's excitement was palpable. We're literally recycling the Goddess's original Blessings. And Old Flames...

"... are the pieces of Her heart trying to reunite," I finished for her. "Holy shit."

Which means Auden can go screw himself, she gloated. We're not fated; that pull doesn't mean anything! Everything we've ever been taught is a lie!

She was strangely excited for the subversion of her entire religion and the collapse of her mate bond, but we were running out of time — both of our spirits were buckling under Rya's oppressive residual heat. We needed to strike a deal for Her aid, but how?

"The Night Goddess is trying to usurp your power," I started, angling for her sense of superiority. Goddesses were as cats, surely; prideful, arrogant things.

She frowned. "I know of no such being."

"You haven't heard of Nya?" I asked, taken aback.

"Show me whom you speak of. Mayhap a memory will jog my own."

A coyness had encroached on her tone; it was too measured all of a sudden, not to mention pleasantly mild. "How?"

"A feather, little one. Or a scale. That is where you store your spirit."

Not for the first time, I glanced down at my pitifully human body in dismay. Meanwhile, Rana levered her teeth around a scale on her foreleg and pried it free, leaving a tiny red welt behind.

She was clever to toss the sapphire to the Goddess from a healthy distance. The scale — which could have passed for an exquisitely cut and perfectly polished sapphire — landed on Rya's back and disintegrated immediately. Her snort of derision came but a second later.

"Bah. That is no Night Goddess — she is but one of my lesser sisters. A chunk of rock in the sky. All of them are prone to jealousy," she added wryly.

Irritation flared in my chest. "Either way, She is immensely powerful to us, and is intent on disrupting the order of our world. I've received a report that Nya is going to cut off our world from you altogether, forever. Are you truly content to stand by and let that happen?"

Rya sighed — such a long, miserable gust of air that the inner circle of orbs rattled in orbit. One wobbled off course and shot towards the centre like a arrow, bursting on the back of the Goddess's head. "Content? No. Resigned..."

Rya was already wallowing again, head drooping in Her hands. Whatever surge of strength She'd experienced had run its course along with Her temper.

Horror dawned on me. "You've given up."

"Only on you."

That was alarming. Even more so was the blue tinge that rippled through Her halo of flames, then over her glossy skin, tinting it blue.

When it reached Her fingertips, power pulsed out on a sparkling wave of dust. The worlds that circled Her most closely and devoutly — the ones that had so precariously clung to their balance and their place — fell to ash.

She was burning. Burning faster and hotter than I'd ever dared to imagine. And so was I; my body couldn't withstand the searing heat, even all the way back here. My skin bubbled like fat on a roast boar. Flesh drooped off my bones, sagging like warm tallow.

"You want power, mortal? Have it. It will be the last of it."

I shielded my eyes from the glare, edging back a step. "What are you talking about?"

I grant you the boon of my demise. Defeat your silly Moon and enjoy the peace of what time remains. That is my final Blessing — and more than you deserve.