The whispers of the dying merged with the hateful, malevolent cries of hundreds of Shadows to fill the air. Dahlia stood at the center of it all—in glorious, giant size. Well, giant for a fairy. The diminutive Gloamcaller had employed Embiggen to dominate the scene, and dominate it she did. The shadows churned the bright pastel fairy glitter that sparkled around her like a tide, sending motes of glitter cascading hundreds of feet in all directions.

  Who had time to brush off fairy glitter when roots and vines had killed most of the Inquisition, and those few left were being ripped to pieces by the Shadows of their previous victims?

  “What do you think, Tarik? Wights? Wisps? Mummies?” the fairy had asked casually as if she were to pick out a bottle of wine rather than decide the fate of her newly dead enemies. Tarik had to shift his eyes away from her when her violet lips curled up with quiet amusement at the piles of cooling corpses that littered the square.

  Sure, Tarik had killed many, but the undead were a dark part of the cycle of life and death, the natural order—and she casually put him on the spot to decide the fate of the souls of others. Dahlia’s eyes held a deep malice for the Inquisition, almost making Tarik feel sorry for them. Almost, but not really. Tarik didn’t have that much nobility left in him, and the Inquisitors deserved what they got.

  Tarik’s yellow feline eyes regarded the bleeding out Malzareth; the High Justicar’s veins were already blackening. His breath came out in labored, painful gasps, his faith crushed by the cruel reveal of a High God’s blessing upon the dangerous fairy.

  “Wights,” Tarik answered, the words only slightly mangled by the fangy mouth of a tiger.

  Dahlia clenched her fist as her eyes locked with the High Inquisitor's. His vision darkened.

  “Ahket Nesut!” Malzareth spat out the words with a tongue blacked by the Ashroot. A lesser man would have failed to form the words. High Justicar Malzareth vanished in a pillar of light, swept away by potent contingency magics.

  Dahlia cursed under her breath in anger. Coda of Unraveling failed to dissipate the spell before it took effect. Vexed at losing her theatrical debut, Dahlia’s eyes shifted to the target of her spell.

  The Shadows whispered the name of the man who had killed so many of them. Veyron Khalid. The Faithful Talon, Malzareth’s Executioner.

  Unseen to Tarik and the Ebon Chorus, pink and gold chains of pastel energy grasped the soul of Khalid and dragged it, screaming, back into the dead body it was so keen to vacate. Dahlia coughed once, then sang—without accompaniment. At least, until Drynthor’s fists provided a drumbeat.

  ? “O falcon’s blade, your flight is done,

  Your wings are clipped, your god looks on,

  The sky still turns, the sun still reigns,

  Yet Horus’ hand cannot reclaim.”

  A cacophony of power wreathed the Justicar’s body. Dark, necrotic negative energies writhed and burned at the dead flesh, and the sigils of Horus that covered his armor shattered into dust and drifted away onto still fairy glitter infused wind that gusted around the courtyard.

  “Rise not as knight, nor blade, nor pawn,

  Rise not for sun—for its light is gone.

  Your past is severed, your fate is mine,

  Your breath is hunger, your will—my design.”

  Dahlia’s voice toyed with a teasing, playful lilt, but the power and malice behind the voice were absolute. The wind hummed with her, and faint echoes of her words were repeated for emphasis. The lips of Khalid’s corpse parted in a desperate attempt to protest—but the dead only had a voice when Dahlia allowed it.

  “No longer Khalid, no Justicar’s son,

  The Inquisition’s blade is broken, undone.

  I name you Mor’khel, of shadow, of night,

  A Wight of my making—a herald of Twilight.”

  The Justicar’s fingers, wreathed in black, necrotic flames, curled into the dirt. There was no light of life in his empty orbs, but something else inhibited the body when the pale orbs turned black. Something hollow and cold, hateful and feral. The body shuddered as unlife filled it. Khalid was dead, and Dahlia had ensured he would stay that way—forever.

  “Bound in the gloam, your leash is tight,

  Your hunger is mine, your wrath my right.

  No prayer shall move you, no light undo,

  Mor’khel, Wight-born, walk where I choose.”?

  Dalia’s gleaming eyes narrowed critically as she witnessed the birth of a worthy servant. The being that stood up was no human, and nothing of Khalid remained in his appearance save the general height. Even his Justicar’s armor has been reborn a vile and profane thing, steeped in hate of the light and Horus in particular.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A black fingernail lifted to tap at the fairy’s violet lips.

  Mor’khel stumbled to the fairy and then knelt before her. He no longer had a god to rise for, but he had gained an Empress to kneel before, and when one kneels for an Empress, you remain in place until told otherwise.

  “Rise,” Dahlia said like it was a benediction. She had weighed her new minion and found him passable.

  Mor’khel rose on Dahlia’s command. Her wicked smile forced Tarik to question his alliance with her. Yes, the Inquisition was undoubtedly horribly evil, but was the only way to fight them with another evil?

  Tarik’s body flowed back into that of a man, and he stared not at the profane creation of the Wight, but at the spot from which Malzareth vanished. Questions of evil were immaterial when vengeance remained unsated.

  “Can you track him?” The druid asked.

  “Not easily,” Dahlia answered.

  “Weren’t you just a tiny fairy?” Tarik asked.

  “I got bigger?” Dahlia answered with a wide smile. “Embiggened, one might say.”

  The fairy’s smile slowly faded. Her violet eyes took in the row of the dead that Malzareth had used for the Scarlet Benediction that turned the waters of the Silvervein red. She recognized some of those corpses.

  “Lord Graystone,” Tarik muttered. “He deserved better.”

  “Did he? He was harvesting the tormented dryads for the Inquisition,” Dahlia said purposefully straight forward, so that Tarik understood—she wasn’t playing word games, the truth festered in the open between the two.

  “At knife point, most likely,” Tarik muttered.

  “Poor Amy and Addie,” Dahlia said. Her fingers brushed the twin’s eyes closed.

  Tarik let out a slow breath. Something dark flickered through his gaze, before he leaned down to grasp a handful of the blood-soaked earth. Echoes lingered—the agony, defilement, and crushing of voices that should have never been stolen.

  A softness lingered in Dahlia’s eyes as she gazed at the girls. When her index finger brushed over the forehead of each girl, faint pulses of necrotic magic thrummed beneath their skin, but Dahlia didn’t grasp it. Not yet. Dahlia had never expected to be reluctant to raise a mortal, but here she was—the deaths too fresh, even for her.

  Instead, Dahlia whispered a soft murmur to the wind.

  “I won’t leave you here to rot under their judgment,” Dahlia promised the girls.

  Tarik watched warily. “What now?”

  Dahlia didn’t answer immediately, but the vast swarm of Shadows flowed towards the river.

  “Xeras, Elyssandra, Ruth, Mor’khel. Accompany the Shadows across the river on the ferry. They’re too insubstantial to operate it. Kill every Inquisitor over there, then return to me.”

  The Ebon Chorus, lucky enough to be named, all bowed their heads to Dahlia and then departed for the ferry.

  “Why?” Tarik asked. His yellow eyes flicked between the army of Shadows and the still-burning, bleeding town of Riverwatch.

  “I raised them with War Magic. When the sun breaks the horizon, they will dissipate and find rest, their vengeance spent and wrath sated.” Dahlia answered honestly. Despite the almost gentle tone, her words carried a weight that pressed down and weighed against the soul.

  Her honesty was almost disarming. It was almost enough to forget that she was Fey.

  Tarik’s mind filled with the memories of hundreds of shadows swarming the tiny town. If she brought an army like that to even a capital city, could they stand against her?

  Tarik’s eyes flickered over the devastation that surrounded them. Blood pooled in thick rivulets, the river's silver glow was now an ugly, twisted crimson, and the air hummed with the remnants of Dahlia’s anger and judgment of Khalid.

  The wind carried the thick and inescapable scent of death, and the only relief was the fairy glitter on the wind—hints of Night-blooming Jasmine, Moonlit Orchids, Dew-Kissed Violets, and a splash of Star Anise. The fairy had a complex scent, and her glittering magic spread everywhere.

  Tarik shook his head and ran a hand through his dirty, dark, and curly hair.

  “So… I ask again,” Tarik said slowly. “What now?”

  Dahlia smiled, and something in the simple twist of her lips sent a shiver through him. Now that she stood taller than him, the change in stature was impossible to ignore. She wasn’t just grander in height—she was grander in presence.

  Majestic. Ethereal. Dangerous. Her pale skin was kissed with the softest traces of twilight and glowed faintly beneath the moonlight. Her violet lips curled in amusement. Even standing amidst carnage and desecration, amidst the corpses of the dead and the ghosts of the slaughtered, Tarik found himself struggling to look away from her face.

  It wasn’t a spell.

  This was who she was. The overwhelming beauty of an immortal fey, a creature of dream and nightmare intertwined.

  Tarik swallowed, grateful that she typically remained small enough to keep such things hidden from the poor mortals in her proximity.

  Dahlia’s smirk deepened, and sparks of pastel glitter reflected in her violet eyes when she looked at him—and Tarik nearly crumpled under the weight of a predator studying prey.

  “We rewrite the Benediction, of course,” Dahlia said. She reached her black-tipped fingers out to touch the ritual threads still in the air, and her lips twisted as if she were experiencing various tastes through her fingertips.

  Tarik blinked. He blinked again, as a frown consumed his face and his brows furrowed.

  “You want to… what, reverse it?” Tarik guessed. It was the logical assumption. To undo what Malzareth had done, to cleanse the waters of the Silvervein, to return what had been taken.

  Dahlia only giggled. It sounded like silver bells ringing on the wind—delicate, musical, almost joyous—but the echo it left behind carried something darker—a ripple of wrongness—a whisper of mischief turned malicious.

  Tarik’s stomach tightened painfully. He did not like where this was going.

  Dahlia’s grin turned wicked, and when she spoke next, it was the gleeful certainty of someone about to set fire to a locked room.

  “Oh, Tarik, no,” Dahlia said, patting her free hand against his cheek as if he were the most precious thing ever.

  Her hand swiftly rejoined the other, fingernails gleaming black in the moonlight as she spread her hands like a conductor before an orchestra.

  “I want to make it worse,” Dahlia said with deep sincerity.

  Tarik nearly bit his tongue in half.