“Come on. Use your Authority Power.” Nat doesn’t explain. He raises the bow, draws, and looses in one smooth sweep, like a falcon dipping through wind.

Lucimia’s chest tenses first, like frost gripping bark, then she moves. She scans for Lev in the trees as a Fuzzy Orb swells before her like a midnight moon, blocking the arrow.

“Go.” Lucimia grips Desty’s hand as cold as river stone and starts Teleportation Magic, like a ripple under ice.

You can’t jump under water, like nets under the surface. He must’ve rigged it in advance. They’re in deep woods now; the hills are the clean sky beyond the canopy.

Rats swarm the ring around the Magic Array like a gray tide, but she can Devouring part of them. That costs less than bleeding against Nat and Lev here like rocks against the current.

“Damn it, more energy burn…” Heat flares to panic, then itch crawls up her thighs like ants under snow.

She doesn’t dare lift her clothes. The fear sits like a cold knife under silk.

“Heh, leaving already?” Lev drops from a branch like a shadow. He raises a small black Cross, dark as a raven’s claw.

Lucimia’s pupils pinch tight like pinpricks in ice. She knows that relic. It nullifies her magic, like a gust that snuffs a candle. She can’t let Lev succeed.

“Devouring!” she shouts, voice a bell in fog.

“Purification!” Nat answers from the air, like thunder over the ridge. He pays the price for borrowing the Purification Deity’s Authority Power and spits blood, red as haw berries on snow.

The two forces crash and cancel like waves breaking head-on. The Magic Array flares under Lucimia and Desty, then shatters like glass in winter.

Magic. Dead.

“Tch.” Lucimia clicks her tongue, a pebble on slate.

Authority Power, then? The thought tastes like iron.

She yanks Desty’s hand and runs, snow spitting under their heels like startled sparrows.

“Desty, if it gets bad, we split. If that fails, I’ll try Reversion… uh—”

Pain blooms in her back like a thorn of ice.

She turns, slow as a door in wind, and sees Desty driving the White Sword into her back, the hilt trembling like a trapped bird.

“Desty, you—” Disbelief hits first, a hollow bell. She can’t fathom why Desty would stab her from behind like night falling at noon.

The blindside strikes her back like that time in the Town of Tranquility. That time the Blue Ringed Octopus’s mimic wore Desty’s face and stuck her. And now?

“Mm—” She hasn’t felt pain in a long time. Numbness floods her legs like melting wax. She’s forced to one knee, snow kissing her skin, her face blanches as blood drains like ebbing tide.

She looks up. Desty bows her head, red hair veiling her face like a curtain of flame. Lucimia sees the tremor in her shoulders like leaves in a storm.

“Wow. You resisted my Lord’s control. That should’ve been your heart.” Nat sounds amused as he sinks lower, like a hawk folding its wings.

Control. The word lands heavy as a stone in a well.

Desty once followed the Purification Deity. She’d received a Blessing, the Blessing of Purifying Pollution. That means Vosh can control her at range, even ride her body like a cold wind through a door.

She forgot the one thing that mattered most, like leaving the dagger at home. That’s a fatal oversight. Desty never showed it before, so Lucimia never pushed the thought.

“Hahaha, looks like you figured it out.” Nat laughs as he raises his magical bow again, sighting in like a hunter on a ridge.

Lev comes on slow, dragging his sword, blue light crawling the blade like frostfire. It scrapes a line in the dirt, and Purification Power hums like a hive.

“Damn…”

Lucimia thinks of Reversion, but ten seconds is a long river. She chooses to bite back with Devouring first, like a wolf showing teeth.

A Fuzzy Orb swells to guard her, black and plush as night.

Another azure arrow flies, whooshing like a cold reed-flute. Purification Power stains its shaft like winter dusk.

Just before it kisses the Fuzzy Orb, the arrow vanishes like a fish under ripples.

Nat uses Teleportation Magic as usual, slippery as eels under a pier.

Lucimia whirls and carves a ring of space-rifts around herself, like a halo of razors, to cut off their strike.

But she is wounded, her heart dull, a bruise under snow. The stab from Desty sits in her mind like grit in an eye. She decides Desty is controlled; she thinks only to attack next. She makes a bad call, like stepping on thin ice.

She doesn’t shield Desty. She shields herself.

Nat’s arrow reappears where Desty stands, the point aimed at her temple like a cold star. It punches through her skull, in one side and out the other, straight as a spear through rice paper.

At the same time, Lev raises the greatsword and brings it down like a cleaver. He splits Desty from crown to heel. Blood gushes like a fountain, sprays across the white snow, and freckles Lucimia’s face like plum blossoms in frost.

“…?!” Lucimia stares, blank as bark.

“Aww, come on. You didn’t think we’d attack you, did you?” Nat shrugs, palms up, like a street performer. “We can’t kill you. We have to wait for the Purification Magic Array. So we kill the traitor first.”

“You…” Desty’s hair hangs wild, and her eyes glare like embers. Blood masks her face, and Nat flinches like a spooked hare.

He’s faking it. His fear is paper lantern light.

“Me-ow, what a fierce kitten. Wanna avenge her? Come on, kill us. We’ll stand right here. Do you even dare? Hahaha.” Nat laughs loud, like pots banging. He drops from the air and strolls up to Lucimia.

“You… courting death…”

To Lucimia, Desty is a friend, a fire she won’t let go cold. She can’t abandon her to the wind.

She will avenge. She needs time. She will use Reversion, like winding the river backwards.

“Devouring…” Lucimia whispers, the word a coal in ash.

The next heartbeat, power erupts like a volcano under the sea. Black, wicked mist pours from her body, spreading like ink in water.

A chill wind cuts to the marrow from every side like knives from reeds. Shadows billow from her like night unfurling, and the whole forest drowns in dark.

Eyes bloom in the black like stars, then twist and writhe like worms in loam. The ground sprouts tentacles without number, ropes of night that snare Nat and Lev and drag them down like peat swallowing boots.

“This… what is this?!” Lev and Nat feel it too, sharp as ice in the lungs.

“Hmph. Purification!” Nat snaps back to himself. He shouts and spits blood again, like a red seal in snow.

It doesn’t stop the Fuzzy Orb’s Devouring. Their bodies keep sinking, pulled down like stones in a bog, until only chest and head remain in the cold air.

Nat doesn’t panic. Even at the last gasp, he wears that crooked smile, like a fox under the trap.

Why is he smiling? The question needles her like sleet. Her gut says she’s stepped into their net.

“Reckless… not like me…” She clutches her head and drops to the ground, the weight of the Devouring like a storm drain on her bones.

Her vision flickers, on and off like lanterns in wind. It fills with warped shadows, like ink crawling.

Darkness snaps away, clean as a pulled veil. The eyes, the tentacles, the cold breath vanish. The forest returns, familiar snowfield breathing like a white pelt.

Lucimia lies on the snow. Her gaze meets two lanterns in the distance, their blue glow like twin will-o’-wisps.

“Those… the Purifying Light on them?” Her voice is a drifting leaf.

“Strange… why weren’t the lanterns Devoured?”

“Didn’t I open my Authority Power at half-strength at least? Unless… the lanterns have a constant feed too?”

“Wait… constant input…”

Nat’s sneer flashes in her mind, and the way he begged her to Devour like bait on a hook. Her eyes fly wide like shutters in a gale.

!

As her heart drops like a stone, the two lanterns blaze, blue as glacier fire. Two pillars of light spear the sky, clean and merciless.

At the same time, across the forest and the hills, the Purifying Light lanterns dropped by all the fodder she’d killed with rats answer back. One by one, they shoot beams, a forest of spears.

“…No way.” Despair floods her like midnight tide.