The vile one laughed as water streamed down his face. “You believe warming the room will cause me to burn up?”

She froze the water around him so he became encased in ice, but he just cracked it off with a shrug.

“Feeble elemental magic,” he scoffed. “Is that all you can conjure? Minor entertainments?”

“Entertainments, perhaps, while I drown your empire.”

“You cannot. You are not capable.”

“Oh, but you have concentrated so much etherea here, and I had so much time to consider you.”

His eyes briefly lost focus as his awareness traveled the empire, witnessing the raging seas tossing up against coastal cities, including Gossham. He took in rivers bursting their banks and flooding fields, villages, and cities. He perceived the turbines beneath the palace, mere man-made machines of steel, disintegrating from the forces she threw at them.

“Why would you do this?” he demanded.

“If I kill your empire, I kill you. It is those you rule who give you power. I will cleanse the world, renew it.”

He burned with anger. Yolandhe knew he struggled to retain his composure, for if he scorched his current body, he no longer had Webster Silk in reserve to contain him. Should he try to use her body, he would find it inhospitable, to say the least.

He lashed at her with oily, black, slithering strands of power, but she was prepared, and it sizzled against her shield of water and air. He was ancient and mighty, but she was more ancient still, a goddess rooted in the earth, the ocean, the sky. He may be a deep dark force that fouled the world, but her power had become terrible, as well, after absorbing so much tainted etherea. Terrible, yes, but she’d use hers to purge the empire from existence. She regretted the loss of life, but with time, the forests would grow back, the rivers would run their natural courses, and etherea would be free of corruption.

She teased him with feints and parries of her own elemental magic—a sharp wind, mini-waterspouts that skittered across the floor—teasing him, distracting him, while thick, dark clouds rumbled across his lands. Lightning touched off fires in valuable tracts of forest, while ocean waves ate off the coastline. She sought to keep the vile one occupied so maybe her beloved could surface and re-exert some control. He smashed the ceiling with more strands of power, blasting plaster and stone that collapsed around her. She showered him with sharp needles of water that turned into a hissing steam when they hit him. The stream that had meandered through the throne room overflowed and trout flopped across the floor. One slapped his foot.

It was at that moment it happened: the gray returned to his eyes in some small measure, and her beloved, the warrior sea king and the nobleman thief combined, loosed his own power. Yes. Together they would cleanse the world.

In the harbor, an island awakened, a huge barnacle-clad head of a sea dragon reared up and out of the surf, shaking off kelp and rockweed, revealing the iridescent scales of its hide. Fishing boats capsized and men fell screaming into the sea. In the lake that surrounded the palace, the little island next to it shifted, shaking off small trees and moss that had grown along its spine. In the Great Mounds, where a Green Rider out of time had observed something out of place, one of the mounds uncoiled and shook the dirt of its burrow off its back. It unfolded membranous wings and roared into the evening sky.

Across the empire, the strategically hidden beasts had lain in wait for almost two centuries, slumbering the years away until the one who commanded them called them in need.

They attacked the empire. Their fiery breaths flared in the night sky. They glided over fields, scorching them. They burned down towns. Taloned feet the size of small cottages tore down mills and imperial government buildings.

The Eternal Guardian, with a complaining Arhys sitting in the saddle in front of him, whipped his horse across the bridge from the palace toward Gossham. Lorine frantically held onto the mane of her horse as she tried to keep up without falling, her veil peeled away from a face tight with fear. They galloped through spray that lashed over the bridge from the stormy lake. Droplets sparkled in a rainbow haze beneath the lamps that lit the way. Pursuit was just lengths behind, a dozen horsemen armed with guns.

Fastion had ordered Lorine and Arhys not to look back. He told Arhys to close her eyes before he slaughtered the guards at the gates and checkpoints with his sword. But as they neared the mainland, a great presence hovered over them. Fastion looked up, and what he saw brought back his memories of being engulfed in the burn of dragon breath during the fall of Sacor City. His emperor’s great weapon had been released.

The dragon of the lake was silvery like a fish as lamplight glanced off its belly, its true size hidden by night, its sinuous tail a rudder that steered it through the sky. It circled over the bridge. Arhys started screaming hysterically. She had looked. Lorine stared ahead with an expression of determination.

Gunfire rang out, but their pursuers aimed not at the fleeing trio, but at the dragon, which backwinged as if taken aback, but not for long. It roared in rage and plunged down at the men. Fastion had no need of looking back when, over Arhys’ cries, the crashing of waves, and the roar of the dragon, he heard the screams of men.

Forward. They could only go forward. He lashed his horse onto shore, not slackening speed for the panicked folk of Gossham who ran in a confusion of light and dark, into their path. Fastion’s first duty was to the little girl struggling and shrieking in the saddle before him. He never saw the palace tremble from the magical battle that racked it from within and the great turbines breaking apart from beneath. When those forces undermined the palace’s foundation, he did not witness the collapse of one of the towers. He did not look back to see what was left of the bridge or the men who had pursued them.