It was early in the morning. Through the sliver of our tent’s opening, the Cradle cast it’s orange glow over my surroundings. Alicia was still fast asleep, curled up with a novella held tight against her chest. She must have stayed up late reading. My wandering eyes settled at the foot of our mat, where her notebook peeked out of my bag.

  I reached over and picked it up.

  Curling up under the blanket, I skimmed through the pages. Thankfully, the faint light that shone from my eyes was enough to illuminate the sketches. She had told me to look at them, right? And at first, that was my reason to flip through. But as I continued, some strange desire drew me in, compelling me to scrutinize them more closely and burn each image into my mind’s eye. It was as if they where whispering my name into my ear, and this was the only way to make them shut up. Iris. Iris! They told me to continue. They demanded it. It was the same magnetism that had drawn me to the Cradle. The same source. The same madness.

  I flipped through the old sketches, familiar faces and places each pleasantly drawn in Alicia’s neat linework. One by one, the pages brushed past my fingers. Then, abruptly, the drawings changed.

  At first it was subtle. The normally crisp, thin lines of her penmanship began to waver, oscillating ever so slightly, blurring at first imperceptibly but quickly well beyond what my mind could dismiss as normal. Soon, they were wholly replaced by coarse scribbles, rough shading, and sketchy outlines. A face caught my eye. It was a self-portrait, Alicia’s face captured perfectly on the page, frozen in time. Silver eyes stared back at me from the page, looking through me, past me. The soft curves of her face were drawn taut, her lips pursed; words were just inside her mouth, waiting to be spoken. Her face was not consumed with terror, nor sorrow, but realization. A moment of enlightenment, perhaps? But as much as I wanted to pore over the drawing, understand what exactly made it so unsettling to me, a few words pushed me on. The words were scrawled in the margin of the bottom-left corner of the page, a handful of words in Alicia’s neat pencil handwriting. “Keep reading.”

  Heeding her words, I flipped through the following pages carefully. The next few drawings were relatively calm: fantastic landscapes of rusted iron, metallic briers carpeting the ground while thorny trees towered overhead. Entire cities consumed and overrun by the Corruption, their every surface covered with a hideous metal sheen. The Citadel of Lumis, crumbling and collapsing under the weight of every vine and tangle. Even the great Citadel of Polaris, sinking beneath the waves, the greatest city in the world reduced to nothingness by an unchecked evil. They had a dreamlike quality to them, not for lack of realism, but because the very notion of these landscapes was somehow impossible to be real. They simply could not be, and something deep within my psyche knew it.

  Then there was a drawing of us. Of myself, and Alicia, and Jake, and Emily, standing in a line in our uniforms, as we often had in our academy days. Everyone was smiling. I wanted to linger here, to rest in those memories of happier days from long ago. But I needed to continue. Alicia had asked me to, after all.

  The next page was a gross distortion of the previous. Alicia stood like a corpse, her skin marred with patches of shining scales, eyes dull and lifeless. In places, the scales flaked off, revealing bloody, pitted flesh beneath. Instead of holding my hand, her arms were crossed behind her back so that I couldn’t see them.

  I was beside her, my eyes glowing as if my head were hollowed out, and a fire lit inside. Inscribed on my neck was a collar of light. My right hand was on Alicia’s shoulder, and the other was on Jake’s. Where my fingers touched their uniforms, smoke rose up in black clouds, and fabric burned away to ash. The rest of my body was smouldering, my normally light brown skin black and cracking like charcoal in a fire.

  Jake was looking away from Emily. He held her hand—no, she held his, in an iron grip that crushed his fingers, mangled the bones and sinew and flesh all together. Of the four of us, he seemed the most normal, but still the look in his eyes was plaintive, tears rolling down his cheeks, mouth seemingly open to say something, but covered by Emily’s other hand.

  And Emily, for her part, was looking at her partner like a predator with its prey, her nails sharpened like the needles of her Complement, digging painfully into his skin. Her face, normally so stoic, was scrunched up with tears of blood tracing dark trails down to her chin. Despite her pain, she managed a smile, her perfect white teeth making me uneasy for reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

  I turned the page immediately, but the images were burned into my memory forever. Alicia, just what had Antares shown you in there?

  And the drawings went on and on and on. So many more. How many more? Page after page, I was greeted with nightmarish perversions of ourselves, of our instructors, even of her family, all staring back at me through the pages. There were harrowing creatures, too wicked to call human. There was torture, and death in a thousand ways, and fates worse than death. Each page prodded me forward, demanded that I turn to the next, gave me hope that finally there would be an end to them, only to take that hope, and crush it, and grind into dust.

  And then it ended—but not as I expected. The last dozen or so pages were torn out of the notebook. Why? Where were they? I glanced around the room, shining a thin beam of light across my surroundings, but found no trace of them. I wanted to shake Alicia awake, to ask her what had been here, why so many pages had been ripped out. But she’d had a hard time getting to sleep last night and I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her. I’d have to ask her later.

  I looked back at the notebook. Despite the pages torn out before it, the last page hadn’t been removed. Though it looked empty at first glance, the sheet was wrinkled and indented. Something was scribbled roughly on the other side.

  So I flipped the page.

  It was a face, scrawled in thick pencil lines. Its lips were cracked and sewn shut, threads criss-crossing from top to bottom to top again. The skin was shiny. Scaled. Tiny, tiny scales, covering every surface, crawling into every crevice. Sprinkled on the cheeks were dark patches of blood beneath black empty sockets where eyes ought to have been. The hair was short and uneven, falling in spiky locks around the face. The scalp was crowned with thorns, twisted brambles and barbed wire piercing the skin to hold them in place. But it wasn’t the face that stuck with me. It was the words written at the bottom of the page, scrawled in jagged letters, jumping off the paper and assaulting all my senses.

  “See you soon, Iris.”

  The sound of rustling canvas startled me. But it was only Instructor Elizabeth. “Sorry, am I interrupting?” Her violet hair was slightly unkempt from the two days afield, now tied into a rough ponytail that swayed back and forth as she moved. Her amber eyes glowed with a cold light that still shone brightly in the early morning dark. “I’m leading a morning patrol, and I would like you to accompany me, if that’s alright.”

  “Why me?” I asked. “Where’s Jake?”

  Instructor Elizabeth frowned. “My student was feeling unwell yesterday. After what happened, I don’t think that’s surprising. So I think he could use a break, just this once. If you’re willing to be his substitute.”

  “I can do that,” I said.

  She gave a curt nod. “See you outside. Thanks.” Her voice trailed off with a harsh whisper, like the winter wind. Throwing on my uniform I followed her out to the edge of camp. There, a raggedy bunch of soldiers were waiting. Their uniforms were dishevelled, even though their long, dreary overcoats should have left little room for sloppiness. Some were buttoned up, others simply draped loosely over their shirts and cargo pants. All had rifles slung over their backs, bayonets carefully detached and hanging from their belts.

  The route was straightforward enough. It was a simple loop sweeping out a wide area around our camp. “We weren’t planning on doing patrols, were we?” I asked.

  Instructor Elizabeth shook her head. “We thought that we’d neutralized everything in the vicinity, and that we’d have more time before Antares decided to take action against us. But judging by what happened last night... well, Saul doesn’t like leaving things up to chance. And I would have to agree.”

  We set out, embarking on what should have been a simple, quiet patrol of our surroundings. Occasionally, a fallen branch or bunch of leaves would rustle in the wind, turning the eyes of half the soldiers. If the gust was particularly strong, perhaps someone would fire a shot or two with their crude rifles, making a puff of caustic smoke and an unholy noise that seemed to shake the whole forest.

  So much for being quiet.

  “What’s wrong, Iris?” Instructor Elizabeth whispered to me. In stark contrast to the soldiers, she’d scarcely looked to one side or the other all morning. Naturally. Why would she need to look aside? Unlike them, she knew what to worry about, and what was no concern, without doubts, or second-guessing, or being fooled by every little scrap that swayed in the breeze.

  “They lack discipline,” I said. “Are they really helping? They said they were needed for the operation. Why put them at risk by letting them do any more than that?”

  “Perhaps their skills are a little less... polished.” She pursed her lips. “But isn’t it endearing?” she asked. “These are our brothers and sisters, and they walk blindly. Without our guidance, they don’t know their left hand from their right. Without our lights, they can only stumble in the dark and poke at the shadows that scare them so.”

  “I suppose it’s at the very least our responsibility to take care of them, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I just wish they were better-trained. That they didn’t have to be afraid of the Excaeli. That they could be confident and perfect, as we are.”

  Instructor Elizabeth chuckled. “Not everyone can be raised by our Patron’s loving hands, Iris. It is your privilege, and also your responsibility. As it has been for generations. We are their caretakers. Shepherds for the people of Novatica. And they look up to you.”

  I found myself blushing. “I know that.” Every time I walked the streets of the capital, people thanked me, or shook my hand, or saluted me for my service. And I had to admit, it felt good. Good to know that what I was doing was helpful, that these were the people I was protecting, that for all the blood and fire and death it was worth it to continue our endless struggle against the Corruption.

  My face was on the posters too, sometimes, my image on the covers of newspapers or magazines that circulated among the city’s elite. Not that I was privy to the goings-on in aristocratic circles, but my sisters would prattle on and on about it whenever I was in town.

  I supposed that made them better family than my parents, at least.

  Instructor Elizabeth’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “You like it, right?” Their admiration?”

  “Well, of course. It’s nice to feel some validation for our efforts.”

  She nodded. “And nothing more than that?”

  “Well, perhaps a little bit.”

  “It’s okay.” She put a hand on my shoulder. Cold. “There’s no shame in that. Sometimes a little encouragement is helpful. So long as you know your place. And your place, Iris, is as our very best and brightest example to these soldiers.”

  “That’s right. I—”

  I was silenced by the sensation of Instructor Elizabeth’s icy finger pressed against my lips. “Sorry,” she whispered. “You hear that?”

  I closed my eyes. I could hear the sounds of footsteps in the gravel, dead leaves and twigs being crushed underfoot as the soldiers behind us came to a stop, the wind rustling in the trees above, and, above all, the inexorable hum that permeated everything in the Corruption. And then I heard it. “It’s a bell. That would mean—”

  “Nothing good.” Instructor Elizabeth nodded. “Search the area carefully,” she shouted. “Find it.” The soldiers fanned out slowly, investigating the trees and rocks, hands always kept close to their firearms. Understandable, given that it was a bell. Granted, it could just be a lost trinket, blowing alone in the breeze. But it could also be...

  No. No time to let my thoughts wander. We needed to look. Bells were a hallmark of Antares. She used them to toy with people, driving them insane with incessant ringing that permeated her Corruption while its source lay maddeningly out of reach. Already, the sound was getting on my nerves. But where was it coming from? The sound seemed all at once to be everywhere and nowhere. We fanned out further and further from the path, into the tangled vines and brambles, walking between the great silverleaf trunks that rose like pillars from the forest floor.

  I hastened my search, dreading what would happen if these soldiers stumbled upon something on their own. Sure, they were technically armed, but would be woefully unprepared for any of the Excaeli that could emerge. The puppets came in all shapes and sizes, each tailored according to Antares’s whims, and bells were associated with some of the worst. Specifically, they were usually used to coordinate blind hunters, the ringing directing the wretched creatures as they crept through the forest, waiting for anything to pounce upon. While Instructor Elizabeth and I were able to keep quiet, as our training dictated, the soldiers wouldn’t shut their mouths even if their lives depended on it.

  “Nothing,” murmured Instructor Elizabeth, picking at the loose rocks and branches that peeked through the blanket of snow. “Odd.”

  It was odd, indeed. We were so dispersed now that any hunter should’ve been drawn out, flashing its metallic scales as it lunged at whatever poor victim it had selected. I closed my eyes again, cocking my head to try to locate the source of the noise. The ringing was coming from somewhere... “Above us,” I whispered. With a glance upward, my fears were confirmed. Between the prickly needles and thorny boughs of the forest canopy, figures slithering toward our location.

  “To me!” shouted Instructor Elizabeth. The noise agitated the creatures above, the ringing growing more intense, the leaves of the trees betraying their true colours as they took Excaeli forms.

  Though some soldiers scrambled into a makeshift position near her, when the first of the Excaeli dropped to the ground, most of the soldiers were thrown into disarray. One by one, the creatures hit the ground, scattering the snow and twigs with their impacts. Some bolted off, scattering thorns and broken branches everywhere as they raced to pick off the stragglers among us.

  One dropped in front of me, cloaked in rusted iron scales that had hidden its sheen so well. But it had already lost the element of surprise. Its metallic claws swung clumsily, meeting only air, receiving a searing palm in return, my touch melting away scaly skin and flesh alike. A second dropped behind me and met the same fate. Staggering after a swift kick, I pushed it down into the snow and crushed its skull against the rocky ground.

  Fog materialized out of the air, dense, and thick, and cold. So cold. Instructor Elizabeth’s doing, of course. On cue, she stepped out of the fog, her golden eyes cutting through it like the early morning sun. Mist pooled around her hands, the water in the air condensing as it made contact with her icy fingertips. “Good to see you’re doing fine,” she muttered. She raised an arm and pointed through the mist. “Check everyone on the west side of the trail. We had six there. I will protect everyone here.”

  I nodded and hurried through the forest as she turned to check on the others. Six. So she’d been keeping track of how many of the soldiers there were, and where each of them had gone. I probably should’ve been doing the same.

  The mist that followed me was not quite pure fog, I knew. It was laced with some of Jake’s floral essences. Black Diamantine? It was for the Excaeli, but for the soldiers. To calm them down. The enemy’s greatest asset was fear, and Instructor Elizabeth must have known that. I had to say, the scent helped me to stay calm as well.

  The snowy ground was marked with footsteps leading off in all directions. The trail vanished deeper into the forest, rocks broken up by thorny roots snaking across the ground. The earth sloped down here, forming a small bowl ringed by tall silverleaf trees. Three of the soldiers were at the bottom, surrounded by Excaeli. Their rifles and bayonets were levelled, but they seemed oddly hesitant to fire. Paralyzed by fear. Did I have to do everything myself?

  I scrambled down the slope, grasping stray roots and branches to keep my footing on the icy rocks. The puppets wouldn’t know what hit them. My eyes glowed, fire bursting from my chest and flowing through the veins to my very fingertips. My touch burned them. My strikes melted through their scaly shells with ease, casting aside those wretched exoskeletons like the garbage that they were. In my wake, I left only the charred skeletons smouldering in the snow and the awed faces of the soldiers that had stood by and watched. I flashed them my best smile. “Where are the others who were with you?” They pointed vaguely to the far side of the bowl, slightly to the southwest, still somewhat dazed from their encounter. I nodded. “Hurry back to the trail and meet up with Instructor Elizabeth. I’ll get them.”

  “But—”

  “Hurry.” I said. “What are you waiting for?”

  As they made their way back up toward the path, I pressed onward, using the tangled vines and thorns as handles to clamber up the hill.

  “Iris? Where are you?”

  Alicia. Right. I’d left her in our tent. “Finally awake, are you? I’m out on, uh, patrol, right now. Replacing Jake, okay? I’m a little busy.”

  “Is something happening?”

  “Um... yeah. I’ll fill you in later.”

  At the crest of the hill, the dense undergrowth made way for a small clearing, filled with silver razorgrass shining brightly in the early morning sun. Another pair of soldiers seemed to be resting there. Perhaps they’d fended one of them off.

  A flash across the field. Another Excaeli. Its body shone in the morning light, rusted copper tearing towards their location. They wouldn’t see it coming. Thankfully, they wouldn’t have to. I sprinted forward, flashing lights to blind it as I closed in and knocked it to the ground. My momentum carried us into the snowbank, where I pressed my palm against the creature’s face until it crumbled into ashes.

  I looked behind me. The two soldiers were staring wide-eyed in my direction. Now that I was closer, I could see that the shorter of the two was tending to some sort of wound on the other’s leg.

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  I feared the worst. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  The short one spoke first. “It’s just a fracture.” Their rifles lay in the field beside them, still hot from use. He tore a strip of fabric from her gray overcoat, setting the other soldier’s leg alongside a stick those thorns had been carefully trimmed.

  “We got them,” the other said. Her teeth were grit into a grimace as he tightened the makeshift splint around her shin. “None escaped.” Sure enough, around them lay several carcasses, stripped of their metallic scales in death. These hadn’t died of flame, and so looked gaunt and disfigured without their metal coatings. Their dark, pitted flesh festered and writhed under the sun. How horrid Antares was, to animate such pitiful creatures with her scales. To turn them into her puppets and simply discard them when their bodies could bear no more, leaving them naked with no Patron to call their own.

  I set my hands upon the carcasses to purify them. “Are either of you—”

  “Only blunt injuries,” he said. “We’ve done a scratch check. We’re fine. Nothing broke the skin, thankfully. And thank you. We couldn’t have taken another one.”

  I nodded. That was good. At least these two had been somewhat competent. They hadn’t hesitated. They hadn’t failed. Warmth poured out of my palm into the first carcass, setting the organic material inside aflame. One by one, I lit them up like bonfires, sending any residual scales skittering away through the grass beneath our feet.

  “And the last member of your group?” I asked.

  “She—”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t—” he started.

  “Where is the last member of your group?” I interrupted.

  He pointed across the far side of the clearing, near a particularly tall silverleaf that towered above the canopy. “She’s that way, but miss, I don’t think you should go.”

  “Why? Did something happen?”

  They looked at each other, then back to me. Neither of them spoke a word. Their silence told me everything I needed to know.

  “Thanks. Just go back to the rest as soon as you’re able.”

  The taller of the two headed back immediately. But the short one stayed just a moment longer. “Miss, please... don’t hurt her.”

  “I’ll do what I must.” I couldn’t look him in the eye as I said it. The path ahead was marked with blood.

  ***

  She must have sprinted off. No other way to explain how far from the trail she’d managed to have gotten in the minutes since the altercation started. Her trail was easy enough to follow, given the blood that stained the snow and paper-white silverleaf bark all the way. It wound through the forest, over the rolling hills and right to the very edge of the cliffs, a scar that ran across the center of these cracked and broken lands. The river roared down below, though from this height the sound of rushing water was dull and distant.

  And, of course, she was there, sitting on a rock by the edge, looking over the Corruption that spread still onward down through the valley as far as the eye could see. Alerted by my footsteps, she turned to face me.

  She looked like the others, drab overcoat falling almost to her feet, rough-cut tuquoise hair framing her medium-brown face, dull golden eyes glowing within their sockets. But her hands were laced with cuts, blood dripping down into the snow at her feet. Despite the obvious pain, she held her rifle tightly, palm gripping the barrel ready to fire, muzzle and bayonet pointed at me.

  “Calm down,” I said. “The Excaeli are gone.”

  “You’re here to kill me.” She coughed.

  “You’ve been tainted by the Corruption. There is no other choice.”

  “Yes there is,” she said. “You can leave me alone. You can let me be. And I’ll be fine.”

  “Where is your partner?”

  “He’s gone. As soon as they dropped, he ran. Coward.” She smiled. “But I can’t exactly blame him, can I?”

  He’d been a coward, perhaps, but he was still alive. I took a step forward. “You didn’t fare any better. Look at you. How many mistakes did you make? Your hands. Your face. So many cuts.” Indeed, up close it would be hard to say where she hadn’t been cut. Several long scratches were traced across her cheeks and down her chin, most shallow, but some deep enough to bleed. Another young one. She couldn’t have been more than four or five years older than me.

  “Stay back!” She thrust her rifle forward, the bayonet at its tip stabbing the air in front of me. She glared at me, eyes glowing slightly brighter, as if she was preparing to fire. At me?

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Keep your distance.”

  She was afraid. “I have to purify you,” I recited. “For the good of everyone.” Nobody else was here, so the responsibility fell on me. Frankly, I’d never seen the sickness progress this far. The claws had only been the beginning. Now that her body was a vessel for the sickness, the scales were doing their part, gathering at her feet, skittering into her boots, up her legs, over her arms and face. “You’re not going to survive. You made a mistake. One mistake is all it takes to be consumed. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m going to be fine.” She spat blood in the snow. Her eyes, though still glowing golden, were growing clouded by the second. Her voice was trembling. The sickness had carved away her body, letting the scales enter and devour her from the inside out. Where the light hit her skin, it sparkled with the first glimmers of metal already binding themselves irrevocably to her. For a moment, the sketch of Alicia’s face, afflicted by the corruption, came to mind, a ghostly image overlaid over hers. But just as quickly, it vanished. This woman was not Alicia.

  “Can you really say that you’ll be fine?”

  “I...” Tears welled up in her eyes, and fear. I doubted she’d ever even believed those words. “The first cut didn’t—”

  “It did.” I knew it. It couldn’t have been from just now. I’d never seen the sickness progress this far. The lacerations that snaked their way up her arms were the marks of the scales squirming beneath her skin. “How long ago was it?”

  “When we first got here. Just a little scratch behind my ear. Nobody else noticed. I was fine.”

  “You felt fine,” I corrected. “You were already dead then. It was inevitable.” I took another step forward. The skin around her knuckles was sharp. Hard. Spiny, irregular shapes jutted out between the joints, moving and squirming as they prepared to emerge.

  “You know who killed Excaeli?” she said. “Me. I did. From the moment that we got here, I’m the only one in my squad that actually did anything. I didn’t freeze up. I didn’t hesitate to shoot, to stab, to tear, to fight tooth and nail to push our group forward. I’m the reason we kept pace with Lady Elizabeth. When those creatures dropped just now, I was the one who killed them. You must’ve met them on your way to me. But because I got some scratches, I’m the one that needs to die? I—” She broke into another coughing fit, clutching her belly in pain. Her rifle clattered to the ground, forgotten. “It’s not fair.”

  It wasn’t. “It isn’t. Your frail, untrained bodies aren’t prepared for this. These are dark times. Ordinary citizens such as you should not have been conscripted, but such is the darkness that we face. We’re fighting so that things like this can’t happen anymore, miss...”

  “Evelyn.”

  “Evelyn. That’s a beautiful name. Polaris would be very proud of you. So please, try not to cry.”

  “Of course I’m going to cry. You’re going to kill me.”

  “I’d prefer if you didn’t make things harder than they need to be. You’ve served your Patron well, far more valiantly than your peers. Is that not enough?” She reached for the gun at her feet, hands clawing at the rocky ground. I kicked it aside before she could grab it. “Evelyn, please calm down. Everything will be okay. You’re not in your right mind. I’m going to make things better.” I was going to make everything better. Better. It had to be. Otherwise, how could all this pain be worth it?

  She shoved and clawed at me, but I gave her a gentle push. That was all it took for her to fall to her knees. Her strength had already left her. There was little she could do but flail pitifully before looking up at me with blank, teary eyes. “Please.”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  She turned away from me, looking out over the vast forest that spread out below the cliffs. I knelt behind her and placed a warm hand on her shoulder. She didn’t push it away. “Are you ready?”

  “Of course I’m not ready,” she snapped, “How can you ask that with a straight face? How can you be okay with this?”

  “You’re already in great pain, and there is no recovery from this. All I can offer is this little mercy. Just be calm, if you can muster the strength. I know your will is giving out.”

  Her voice dropped. “I’m not going to be calm. I’ve been a slave of Polaris all my life and I’m not going to be one in death. It doesn’t matter anymore, right? No matter what happens, you’re going to kill me. You’re going to burn me alive.”

  “A slave to Polaris?” The echoes of Alicia’s musings reverberated in my head. What if we’re just puppets? At that moment, I’d had no answer. But now I did. “Better a slave to Polaris than to Antares. Better anything than Antares, who twists our people, who corrupts our soil, who kills our spirits.” She was being lost to the Corruption. It terrified me to see one of us so broken, even the least of our soldiers.

  “I know that look in your eyes,” she said. “You think that I’m going crazy.”

  “You are.” The sickness had progressed to her mind. She would grow enraged first, then panic, then fall into sorrow. Antares always twisted, twisted, twisted minds away from what was right and good.

  “I’m still myself!” she growled, brushing away my arm and lashing out with a closed fist. But I caught her wrist, and the fire in her eyes drained away. “I’m still myself.” She didn’t sound so convinced anymore. “Or won’t you at least give me the freedom to be who I am? The freedom to hate Polaris as myself?”

  I put her hands back on her lap and placed my own hands on her shoulders. “Hush. The night is falling on your mind. Antares is corrupting you. You have little time left.”

  “I hate her. I hate Polaris,” she said. “Why is she my Patron? That’s what’s unfair. I’d rather be dead. I’d rather belong to Antares.” She coughed again, blood and scales mixing in the snow at her feet.

  “Listen to yourself. You’d belong to Antares? You’d give yourself away to the one who destroyed you, just to spite the one who protects you?” She wasn’t in her right mind. It was a lost cause to try and reason with her. Even hearing those words from her made me feel sick. Polaris guided us all in her light, towards a future of peace and prosperity. She lavished us with care. She’d saved my life, gave me everything, made me everything I am today. To even compare her to Antares was unthinkable. I looked Evelyn in the eye. What lay behind them, in her mind? Was she a prisoner now, reciting what Antares told her to? Or had the dread queen taken hold of her mind, so that she could truly think that good was evil and evil was good?

  “I understand the pain Antares inflicted. Even so, I can’t help but hate Polaris. Can’t help but wish I had any other Patron.”

  “Why hate her?” Why was I even asking? Maybe I was waiting for some moment of final clarity. Instead, I only got more venom.

  “Why? Why does she send us here to die? Why does she make us follow you? A child, leading grown adults in war? Judging us? Killing us? She hates us; there is no other conclusion. It’s true, so true, so clear. And at last, in these final moments, I can tell you that.”

  “Are you done?” They said that in those final moments of delirium, they would see things with Antares’ eyes, completely and wholly turned to belong to her. It was frightening to see.

  She trembled, but said nothing. Perhaps she’d regained control of her faculties enough to keep quiet. Or she simply was too weak to resist, as much as Antares desired to make her struggle against me. “How can you live with this? How can you follow her demands? Don’t you feel the tension building up inside, telling you that what you are doing is wrong?”

  “It’s easy.” It always had been. “Polaris is my everything. And I happily give all that I am to her.”

  A moment of lucidity. “I envy your faith in her.” Then her eyes clouded again as she struggled one final time. Her whole body was shaking now, and all I could do was steady her.

  “Hush. It’s over now.”

  I placed my hand on the back of Evelyn’s head. Her hair caught fire first, turquoise strands lighting up one by one like candles. She burst into flame, flesh burning black and crumbling in my hands, flecks of ash flying into the sky.

  Evelyn screamed.

  Her voice was soon swallowed up, for soon she had no mouth, no lips, no throat or lungs from which to cry out. The last part to be consumed by the flames were the hands. Those palms had, just like mine, been used countless times to conjure up echoes of the same heat, if much weaker, their endurance under the flame a sign of how they’d been tempered, as weak as they had been. Perhaps she’d used them to warm herself up on a cold night, perhaps to fire the rifle that now lay discarded in the snow. But now the hands simply lay amidst the burning heap that used to be their bearer, slowly, too, crumbling into dust and scattering in the wind.

  It was done. I pressed my hands into the snow to cool them down. The rifle was bloody, but there was no need to waste it. I slung it over my back and fetched the fireproof overcoat from the ashes, brushing off the bits of soot that clung to the fabric.

  “There you are.” Instructor Elizabeth’s voice cut through the cold winter air. She took the overcoat from me and draped it over her shoulders. “Evelyn,” she whispered, bowing her head slightly and closing her eyes. A few tears dripped onto the snow.

  “It had progressed too far,” I said. “it was necessary.”

  “I know,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And it she’s the only one we lost today, it seems.” Her hands were clenched, her breaths growing shallow. “If only I’d been faster. If only I’d have gotten the rest to safety more quickly, if only—”

  “Instructor, there was nothing you could do. She’d been scratched days ago.”

  “I see. Sorry, I’ve acted in an unsightly manner,” she said, regaining her composure. “Thank you for purifying her, Iris. It was not your responsibility to bear. It was your first time, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Should I? I... there’s something about the feeling of someone’s body burning up beneath your hands. I’ve seen it so many times before with Jonathan. And yet I wasn’t ready, I don’t think. Her body was so light. The ashes are like air. They scattered so quickly in my hands.”

  “They’re fragile, aren’t they?”

  “So fragile,” I said. Their bodies and minds alike.

  “It gets easier,” Instructor Elizabeth said. “But a loss is always a loss, and I always have a hard time with it. I can’t wait for Irene to get here. I can’t wait for this to all be over.” She sighed. “Evelyn... she must have been a brave soldier.”

  “You know them by name. Even though It’s only been two days since they were assigned to us.”

  “Of course, Iris. That’s our responsibility. To be an example for these children to follow. To cherish and protect them with the same love Polaris lavished unto us. To purify those who are lost with the same dignity of any hero. I know my soldiers so that they understand these truths and live by them. I’m sure Evelyn followed my example to the very end. She didn’t waver at all, did she?”

  I considered the question carefully. “Nope. Not once,” I said. Was I lying? I wasn’t even sure. Surely those were the ravings of a madwoman, twisted by the dread queen Antares. Surely those around us didn’t harbour such venom for the Patron who guided and protected us all.

  “Good.” Instructor Elizabeth smiled. “Come on. Let’s go back to camp.”