Finding yourself tied up and surrounded by a pack of thugs was not the most pleasant way to wake up, no. Taji stifled a groan as consciousness returned with a sick throbbing headache, and opened his eyes to peer wearily upward at the small group of humans looking down at him.

Ah. One was the Talent they’d been told to watch out for—some local thief believed to be in league with the Fallen. Judging by the fact that Taji couldn’t sense his presence at all, nor that of his three human colleagues, it seemed that the warning in his mission briefing had some solid basis in fact.

“What are you doing here?” asked one of the thugs.

…And it seemed that the ropes binding him to the pillar behind him were somehow dampening his abilities—he couldn’t summon any fire at all. Damn. Lei thinks of everything.

“I don’t suppose there’s a chance you’ll just untie me?” Taji said to the rogue Talent, hoping he wasn’t messing up the unfamiliar language too much with the headache interfering with his concentration. If I’m still stuck when the Fallen come back to check up on this little operation…

“We ask the questions,” said the Talent coldly in Kannada, shadowed face scowling down at Taji. “You answer them. What are you doing here, asura?”

The word translated to something very like demon, Andrei’s implanted translation spell told Taji. They think I’m the bad one here? …Well, I suppose they would think that, or they wouldn’t be fighting me. “I am… trying to stop a great evil,” he temporized, doing his best to look inoffensive—although with what he was sure was blood running down his face, it probably wasn’t working as well as it might have. “One which will surely come to pass if you do not set me free.”

“Trying to cause a great evil, more like,” said the Talent. “The deva warned me about you. Garbed in the red of dissent, telling lies and deceit, intending to overturn his great plans for this land.”

“What plans?” asked Taji—he hadn’t seen much of the room before being knocked out from behind, certainly not enough to form any sort of conjecture about the place’s purpose. He’d known precious little going in, except that time was running very short—Lei had always been skilled at hiding his tracks. There were multiple somethings in this room just out of sight, each giving off their own intense aura. Their combined force was so strong that it had felt like a solid blow to the mind when Taji stepped through the invisible line keeping that aura from leaking past the walls of the basement.

So absorbed had he been in trying to puzzle out the sudden barrage of spiritual auras in the underground passage, he’d forgotten the two most basic rules of all—report to your backup regularly, and pay attention to what is physically right behind your back.

The Talent opened his mouth and then closed it, smiling at Taji with a decidedly unfriendly glint in his eyes. “I believe that keeping you in ignorance would be best, for the moment,” he said at last and stepped back, motioning forward one of his colleagues. The one with a long, dual-bladed weapon whose twin prongs glinted in the light of the torches. “Mind him until the deva returns.”

Of course. If they were stupid my job would be a lot easier…

***

Kazuo watched the dark ruins, fingers laced behind his head as he leaned back against the bole of the thick ginkgo tree. There was a dense patch of shrubbery between them and the entrance that concealed them without obscuring too much of the view, and Pavithra, the young female Talent he and Taji had been assigned to personally watch, was crouched just behind it, looking out warily.

He’d thought she would get tired of the position after awhile, but she seemed to be just as agitated as Taji had been. Too bad she didn’t get along better with his twitchy partner, or it could have been Kazuo scouting the interior right now with Taji babysitting outside.

Why they’d even been drafted for this mission, Kazuo had no idea. For one thing, the south of India was so far out of his and Taji’s purview and specialty as to be well beyond the unusual and into the ludicrous. Hell, they didn’t even know the damn local language! Every so often the translation spells Andrei had given them would glitch out and swap ‘village’ for ‘sausage’ or something of the like. It was no way to communicate, especially when the Talent you were assigned to was as nervy and paranoid as the young peasant girl currently two feet away. She’d been living on the streets as a trashpicker, thinking along with everyone else in the village that she was crazy until the Guardian League’s India branch had found her.

Every so often Kazuo caught her staring at him as though she still thought he was a hallucination, too, though she always looked away the instant he tried to make eye contact. Used to such treatment, he dealt with it better than Taji, who had kept trying to catch her out at it until she refused to look at him altogether.

Well, at least she had believed what they told her and was willing to help out without a fuss… they should be so lucky the rest of the time.

“Is it supposed to be taking this long?” Pavithra fretted, dirty knuckles kneading the ground by her bare feet.

Alert, too. “This is stretching it a bit, yes,” said Kazuo. Taji’s last message on the communicator had been about ten minutes ago—not too long, but getting there, certainly. “Here, I’ll call him up.”

He pulled out his own communicator and activated the silent buzzer—Taji’s wouldn’t make a noise that might alert potential enemies if he was trying to remain undetected, but he should pick up.

Assuming he still had his communicator on him. Kazuo’s idle gaze on the readout of his own communicator narrowed as he frowned.

After several moments—several moments too many—he looked up to meet Pavithra’s dark eyes. “…You stay here,” he told her, standing up silently and pushing the communicator back into a pocket.

She jumped up too and followed him as he headed for a gap in the shrubbery that would bring him out close to the entrance of the building, and he turned back before walking through it. “I said stay,” he told her mildly. “Chances are it’s dangerous inside.”

“It is dangerous out here,” she told him, pulling her ragged shawl tighter around herself. “I do not want to be outside, alone.”

She’d told him earlier that the men wouldn’t care about her, despite her youth and relative prettiness, because she was one of the Untouchables, and said to be crazy to boot; then again, there were other threats to a young, yet-untrained Talent left alone in the middle of the night. Kazuo couldn’t say how long he’d be inside, particularly while he still had no idea what was keeping Taji.

He sighed and beckoned her to follow.

Just before they entered the door, something shifted in the atmosphere of the ruined building. The last fading rays of sunlight leaked away, leaving a drained husk of shadowy sandstone and crumbling mortar behind. And another feeling crawled into place, a familiar itch right at the back of his neck, digging at all of his spiritual senses.

Now I know that wasn’t there before. The Fallen must have arrived. And without his human fellows? “Crap,” he groaned, and ducked into the shadowed archway of the entrance.

“Follow me from a short distance, stay alert, and don’t let me out of sight unless I tell you to hide,” he told Pavithra quietly. She nodded, throat working, although she did not speak—she had to feel it too.

“Right,” he said after a moment, and headed into the second doorway.

The building had once been a temple; intricate carvings and broken statues still lined the walls, the stonework wrought with careful inscriptions. It was a couple of minutes’ walk outside the small village, in an area fraught with similar ruins. Apparently the area had once been a much more populous region, until the incursion of a different religious group had torn it apart in trying to invade. A couple of generations had gone by since then, but the area appeared to have been largely forgotten by surrounding regions, cut off as it was by a river and dense forest. The town was now largely occupied with surviving.

It had been hard to figure out what the Fallen could possibly want with such a place, but it appeared nonetheless that the Fallen man they had recruited was bringing things there under their instructions. Strange things; incense stolen from the active temple within the town, wood intended for a funereal pyre earlier that week, some peculiar but not particularly potent spices, and some charms intended to ward off local superstitions. What it all added up to was either something new, or an elaborate trick.

Either way, they had to be careful. Kazuo’s shoes scuffed slightly on the bumpy stone cobbles making up the floor of this first walkway, and Pavithra made a faint noise of disapproval; he reached down and pulled them off, stuffing them beneath the base of a broken-off statue whose former identity was now impossible to make out. He could always get them back later, after all. The girl bowed to the statue as she passed, apologetically.

“Where are you, Taji,” Kazuo whispered to himself, feeling the prickle on the back of his neck intensify—this place was full of doorways and arches and broken-down walls, and somewhere, a route into its still-darker stone bowels at the basement level. It would be nice if it turned out Lei was carrying out whatever nefarious deed he had planned at ground level, where the dim silvery moonlight glowing through the clouds could at least attempt to light up the proceedings, though, Kazuo doubted they would be so lucky.

***

Lei did not appear to be surprised by Taji’s presence in the slightest, naturally. He smiled and crouched in front of his captive, eyes glinting red in the torchlight. “You really should be more careful sometimes,” he said. “One of these days your luck is going to run out.”

It rather seemed to Taji that it already had, or else he wouldn’t be tied to a pillar in some dungeon with his powers sealed away, but instead of saying so he settled for rolling his eyes.

Lei laughed. “I’d ask what you were doing here, but I have the feeling anything you’d tell me would just confirm my guesses,” he said, standing up. “Maybe I’m just too good at this.”

“What are you doing here?” Taji asked, finding his voice at last—keeping the active translator online so that the humans could understand. Maybe if they spoke long enough, Lei would give something away, and lose their support…

“I,” said Lei loftily, walking across the room to an elevated shrine filled with flickering torchlight, “am going to return a blessing to this benighted town. Isn’t that right, Baadal?”

The Talent nodded, licking his lips.

“Oh, let me guess,” said Taji sourly, the rest coming to him in a flash of recollection. “Sevensmith’s glorious benediction—mind control?” He wants to make a town of puppets…

“Mind control?” said Lei, sounding amused. “Whatever gave you that silly idea, asura?” He motioned the Talent towards the shrine, where the man began to reverently pick up the materials which had been placed around the pedestal, placing them in a wide-bottomed bowl. “All we are doing is making some new sacred ash. The local priest appears to have lost his touch. Baadal, it seems, has the gift for fire.”

He snapped his fingers, and the Talent immediately raised both arms, sparks flaring into open fire that danced from his fingertips into the bowl on the pedestal before him. The dry tinder caught easily as Baadal stared at it in wonder. He seemed surprised.

Didn’t expect to follow his cue so quickly, did you? Taji thought, watching the man through his hair—the blood on his forehead had mostly dried by now, leaving his vision unendangered while not doing a thing to the headache. On impulse, he tried to shout to the man. “Do you see now what I meant? He will enslave you all, as easily as clapping his fist!” No translation for snapping fingers, oh well. “He is using you for—”

The twin prongs of the spearlike weapon bit deep into his arm, and he bit back a yell. The human friend of the Talent twisted the weapon slowly, face utterly blank—it was then that Taji realized there were only two people within the room free to act of their own volition.

“He has your friends!” he yelled in desperation, twisting painfully and just managing to kick the human’s legs out from under him—Lei’s control was too slow to enable him to dodge, and it would buy Taji a little time at least, maybe enough to keep talking—“can you not feel it? He is no deva, he is the demon here!”

Baadal looked from Taji to Lei, confusion growing in his expression, but Lei merely smiled enigmatically back… and then, pulling something from a hidden pocket, gestured towards the flames. The Talent shouted in surprise as the flames in the bowl surged upwards, catching in his clothing, spreading rapidly across his body.

The other human men simply stood, appearing unfazed by the sudden immolation of their companion. Lei kicked the fallen weapon so that it bounced up into his hand, and then smiled at Taji. “You know, he might have lasted a minute or two longer, if you’d simply allowed him to continue in his delusion. He still would have been sacrificed to give this stuff its potency, but I wouldn’t have had to be the one to finish the ritual… ah, well. Such is life.” He hefted the weapon thoughtfully, then suddenly drove it into the pillar behind Taji, its prongs sliding along both sides of his neck, just barely deep enough to draw blood.

“And lucky you,” Lei purred, “this is a ritual requiring two sacrifices. Just stay there for a minute longer, will you?”

Shit. Taji watched him walk away, his breath coming in quick gasps from a mixture of equal parts pain and sudden, surging adrenaline. I know this rite. Why didn’t I remember sooner? It had been too late from the time he had made his first mistake, but he should have, should have…

Lei held his hands extended above the bowl now, murmuring in a low voice, gaze downcast; and in the doorway, back pressed against the intricately-carved stone archway, Kazuo decided that he would never get a better moment than this.

He formed his naginata and in the same movement whirled and leaped through the opening, darting behind Taji’s pillar and slicing away the bulk of the ropes in one rapid motion.

Taji made a faint sound of surprise but didn’t hesitate to start working his arms free—the ropes round his wrists had not been fully cut, but it was a simple enough affair to free them unaided. Which was likely for the best, because as Kazuo darted around with the intention of pulling out the pronged weapon holding Taji’s neck against the pillar, the three human men suddenly broke from their apparent attempts to imitate statues and started running towards them.

“A new partner, Taji?” Lei murmured, without looking up—apparently the chanting portion of the ritual had come to a finish. “That was quick.”

Kazuo ducked under the first strike by one of the men, trying to lead them away from Taji—this would be a tricky fight, the attackers appeared to be merely human, so killing them was not an option. “You—know this guy, Taji?” he asked, voice strained as he knocked the wind out of the first attacker with the butt of his naginata.

“Used to,” gritted Taji, straining with both hands to pull the weapon holding him in place out of the stone it had been driven into despite the terrible leverage. “But not…. anymore…” The prongs shifted loose abruptly, the weapon suddenly wobbling out of the wall, and its blades came perilously close to decapitating him with their sudden uncontrolled movement—he stilled the vibration with an effort, trying to slide it the rest of the way out slowly.

Kazuo ducked away from the second attacker, decking him neatly with a strike to the temple, and caught the third’s weapon in one hand, twisting it away before taking the man’s legs out from under him. Something small clattered to the ground and was kicked aside by the first man with his inlaid spear, rising to his feet behind Kazuo just as the small GLO turned his back fully to deliver the knockout blow—

“Watch out!” Taji yelled, dragging a neat gouge across the front of his neck in his haste to pull the thing out and lurch to his feet—just barely too late, as the man drove his spear through Kazuo’s shoulder.

An instant later fire flared and roared around the human—with a cut-off scream he collapsed forward onto his weapon, eliciting a strangled squawk from Kazuo as he was dragged backwards and down by the rest of the spear still in him. Taji clawed the burning man away heedlessly, hesitating for a moment before reaching for Kazuo. “…Shit. Shit!”

“Don’t—don’t pull it out,” Kazuo gasped, shifting painfully until he was balanced precariously on his knees, body stiff from the strain of keeping himself from collapsing or curling in on himself. The wooden end of the spear skittered imperceptibly against the ground with every breath he took, the spearhead already having changed its angle within his body.

“We can’t bloody well leave it in,” said Taji frantically, wishing he knew the first damn thing about serious field medicine, only to be interrupted by the sound of low laughter.

“Well, that was a short partnership,” said Lei. “Hey, maybe I could take him now instead of you...”

“Fuck you!” Taji snarled, needles forming in split-seconds as he whirled and lunged for the pedestal. Instantly a wall of ice reared up between he and his target—Taji blasted at it with fire, melting it away in gouts of steam, but it was going too slowly, and the shadows in the room were already beginning to move. “Fuck!”

The shadows on the other side of the ice shield were moving, too, twining up in thick black streams and beginning to form figures like demonic animals. The fire in the bowl appeared to have gone out. The spell is nearly complete. Taji didn’t even need Kazuo’s choked warning to tell him that much. As the spiritual pressure within the room mounted, Lei began to raise his hand, and Taji braced himself—only to see, through the slight haze of the transparent ice, one of the shadows detach itself from the floor and lunge at Lei.

Surprised, Lei staggered beneath the weight of its jaws, spell breaking off—the Hellion snarled, furlike black tendrils twisting and writhing away from its vaguely lupine body, and had bitten down a second time before Lei regained the presence of mind to blast it away with an arc of icy spikes.

“What the hell—?” he broke off as a second Hellion lunged through the doorway and towards him, knocking it back easily as well.

Taji seized the opportunity to melt the rest of the wall away, in the sudden clarity seeing Pavithra in the opposite doorway, small face pinched in terrified concentration. She’s controlling them—!

But not all of them, as Kazuo yelped a warning from behind. Taji spun to see several more forming from the floor, one of them mid-leap—he blasted it away quickly, setting fire to the others, before a yelp from Pavithra drew his attention.

Lei was advancing upon her, one Hellion being dragged along the floor as it clung to his leg—a sword of ice was forming in his hand, jagged and crystalline. Pavithra was crying in terror, her control over the three Hellions beginning to unravel. Taji swore and threw four needles, two embedding themselves in the back of Lei’s upraised hand.

The Fallen turned to look at Taji wading towards him through the living shadows coating the floor. A faint smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“…You know, I’m not even sure if my presence here is needed anymore,” he said at last, transferring the sword to his other hand and turning to face Taji completely. He drew back his hand and threw, his aim appearing to go wildly off—until Taji realized that he was trying for the pedestal, and the bowl upon it.

“Crap!” Taji immolated the sword mid-arc, burning it away to steam before it could upset the contents of whatever Lei’s ritual had made.

When he looked back, Pavithra was alone against the wall, brown eyes wide in the darkness. Lei was gone.

But the shadows were still moving like the surface of a boiling liquid, more shapes swirling together and bulging upwards as if in preparation to emerge. Pavithra’s three controlled beasts were whirling and snapping at nothing, still held tenuously under her aegis but no longer directed.

The spear in Kazuo’s shoulder was beginning to slide downward under its own weight, slicing through muscle and flesh as it went. Priorities.

“Stay there,” Taji commanded Pavithra, not waiting for her to nod before he ran back to his partner, pulling his tunic off as he went.

He placed one hand on the shaft of the spear and the other on Kazuo’s back, carefully. “It’s coming out,” he said grimly—the weapon would only continue to do more damage, left as it was, and the entry wound had been pulled large enough to make removal the simpler option. “Ready?”

Kazuo took a shuddering breath without turning his face away from the ground and coughed out a “yes.”

Taji bit hard on the inside of his cheek and pulled, throwing the spear aside and grabbing Kazuo’s shoulders as the smaller man’s ensuing full-body wince threatened to send him facefirst to the ground. Taji kept one arm there and reached down for his discarded tunic, wadding it up and pressing it quickly against the gaping red wound.

The extra fabric was not quite long enough to be tied. “Pavithra!” he yelled.

Her small, hurried footsteps were accompanied by the clatter of Hellion claws on the stone—there was an echoing snarl in the background as one of the beasts under her control attacked one of the spirits from the floor that had just begun to solidify.

“I need your shawl,” Taji said, twisting to look at her without letting go of Kazuo.

She reached up to touch it with a shaking hand, the whites of her eyes showing round in the shadows, and then suddenly fumbled to unwrap it from herself. She thrust it into Taji’s hand and then skipped back a step, knotting her hands together and continuing to stare as he set about tying the wadded tunic into place against Kazuo’s back, wrapping one end over his intact shoulder.

“Feels like a damn cat hanging off my shoulders,” said Kazuo through clenched teeth. “Bulky…”

“You’re just going to have to deal with it,” said Taji, tying the shawl’s ends together and standing up to take stock of the room. “Until we get some GLO backup, anyway.” They would need some serious assistance cleaning up this room—the three unconscious humans were no threat for the moment and could be safely ignored, as the Hellions did not appear to have any interest in their inert bodies—but the Hellions themselves, still forming at a slow but constant rate, would become a very serious threat within a fairly short time once too many of the bubbles began to take concrete shape. If he had read the situation right, there wouldn’t be an end to them. Pavithra could not be expected to control that many at once. And then there was the matter of the substance in the bowl…

Taji looked down at Kazuo. “I’m going to need your communicator—Lei’s puppets took mine off me and smashed it earlier.”

“Mine is…” Kazuo reached into the wide pocket of his own tunic, only to suddenly freeze. Taji caught his breath uneasily as Kazuo’s eyes widened, staring at something a few feet away across the floor—the mangled form of the communicator, being slowly absorbed into the form of a growing Hellion.

“Damn… outfits,” Kazuo said. “Pockets’re… too big…must’ve fallen out during the fight…”

“…Shit,” said Taji.

“What will we do?” asked Pavithra in a hushed voice, after several moments of near-total silence had gone past.

“Now… we get out of here,” said Taji, mentally snapping himself out of numb horror and back into action. He looked around at the room, all of the fully-formed beasts currently quiescent, or at least not yet attacking, and then over at Pavithra. “…How many of those do you think you can hold?”

“I do not know,” she whispered, eyes flickering from him to Kazuo to the beasts she still commanded. “It is a strain already… to hold them still… if I do more with them than merely hold them back, I will have to let some go.”

Taji bent down to look at Kazuo. “…Can you stand?”

Kazuo hesitated, but nodded, meeting Taji’s eyes wearily. “Might need help to walk though,” he said after a moment. Taji reached out and pulled him carefully to his feet, then gestured Pavithra over.

“If you can keep him upright without losing control, do it,” he told her.

Face still alive with terror, she immediately reached out and grabbed hold of Kazuo’s unbound shoulder with the careful but tight grip of a child suppressing panic—he winced at her touch, swayed, and then clutched suddenly at her in turn as his knees threatened to give out. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Head for the door,” Taji told them, remaining just long enough to make sure they had started walking before turning to head for the centre of the room. The various fully-formed Hellions stood with their ethereal fur rippling as though in unseen winds, turning their heads to watch him pass with glowing eyes. A few were turning in silent, frustrated circles and baring their teeth, but none were moving to attack. Yet. “I’ll be right there.”

Pavithra’s voice rose in panic behind him. “Where are you going?”

“Don’t stop walking! I’m getting something.” Taji reached the pedestal and carefully lifted the bowl, shivering slightly at first contact. It was filled with a bright vermilion powder, and to judge by the emanations it was giving off, was definitely the epicenter of whatever rite Lei had performed. As he’d suspected, this wouldn’t be as simple as just leaving and calling the GLO in from a distance—the substance the Fallen had created, in its current state, would continue to warp the boundaries between the human plane and any number of others, allowing through who knew how many atrocities.

Kazuo was not in any state to deal with what this concoction might summon up at any moment—neither was Taji, for that matter, with the muscle of his left arm having been half-flayed from the bone by that pronged weapon earlier. But leaving the bowl here, for the beasts to flee in all directions unattended, was not an option either.

He hefted it with mild difficulty—the thing was not made to be easy to carry—and walked as quickly as he could manage over to where Pavithra and Kazuo were just starting out the door. Behind him, a silent shuffling sound, like the rustling of autumn leaves, began to sweep across the floor—the Hellions were following them.

“What did you get?” asked Pavithra, craning her neck in order to look at Taji without turning and upsetting Kazuo’s careful momentum. Her eyes widened as she saw the bowl. “That?! Why would you bring it?”

“I have a duty here,” Taji said, wrapping his hand carefully around the base of the bowl—the powder within it sifted to one side, then settled back. “It would be irresponsible to leave this behind.”

“You and your responsibilities,” said Kazuo, managing to sound amused despite the faint wheeze in his voice. “Taking everything… so seriously…”

“This is serious,” said Taji, fighting back the urge to snap. “Lei was trying to create a false holy ash which he would then slip to the local priest—once the spell was complete, the stuff in this bowl was destined to be daubed on the foreheads of all the believers in the district. I don’t think I need to spell out to you what that would mean.”

Kazuo’s face went from white to ashen—Pavithra’s grip on him tightened. “Delivering everyone in the area into Sevensmith’s control.”

“He would fake vibhuti?” said Pavithra, aghast. “For such purposes?”

“Would have,” growled Taji. They were almost at the exit, now… “Only it went wrong. Now the stuff is unstable. Without the second sacrifice to seal it, it is its own extradimensional portal… and we’re the only ones guarding it.”

“I… I do not understand,” Pavithra began, frowning—only to break off with a gasp, nearly dropping Kazuo. Her gaze had gone vacant. “Turn!”

Taji turned, clutching the bowl, only to find a Hellion leaping at him with its jaws stretched wide—unable to use his arms, he blasted it away with a rush of fire, only to find two more leaping at him in its place.

Another Hellion lunged in, knocking aside both of them—there was a sudden ripple of movement among the rest of the waiting beasts, which still a moment later. “I—I have them once more,” said Pavithra, voice shaking. “But we must hurry.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Kazuo, stumbling along with her as she began to walk again—the girl’s paces had become faster and more confident even as her nervous shaking had intensified, giving the odd impression that she was prepared to run or fly away at the slightest provocation, like a sparrow.

Taji held the bowl and followed. At last, they emerged through the doorway into the calm night outside—the sky was a deep indigo and swathed with stars, the clouds having been blown aside at some point. But the ground surrounding Taji was as deep a black as the highest vaults of the heavens, the well of shadows having followed the bowl’s exit. The trees waved in a sudden breeze as they passed, as though in quiet rustling disapproval.

“…Where are we going?” asked Pavithra in a small voice after a moment, breaking into Taji’s silent concentration.

“Ah—you remember the reed hut we came from, just before coming here? We left a communicator there.”

“That is not far at all,” said Pavithra, narrow face brightening at this news. “Only a… a few minutes’…”

Her face went blank again, and Kazuo stirred slightly at her sudden halt, startled out of the half-doze he’d slipped into in the monotony of walking.

“Turn!” she shrieked suddenly.

Taji, startled, nearly upset the bowl in his haste to whirl round—catching himself, he expanded a brief globe of flame around himself, set the bowl down on top of a rock, and then spun to face the attacker.

It was not a Hellion. It was much larger, and much denser, and when it opened its mouth its fangs grew in serrated rows like the teeth of some horrifying sea creature. Taji immediately skipped back two steps, which was lucky for him because in the time that motion took a gigantic clawed arm swept through the space he had previously occupied.

Pavithra had sunk to the ground along with Kazuo, freeing one shaking hand to clutch the side of her head. “I cannot—I have lost them!” she wailed. The previously sedate Hellions that had been following them were growling agitatedly, one by one beginning to turn and leap towards them.

Kazuo grunted with the strain of pushing himself upright, shooting ice at a beast that got too close. “Pavithra!” he said, looking over at her.

“Take control back!” Taji yelled frantically, shooting fire at the beast and attempting, in desperation, to grow his needles into something larger that actually stood a chance of penetrating the creature’s hide.

“I cannot!”

“You can, you don’t just lose your Talent because you’re scared,” Taji roared over the sound of his own flames, dodging another sweep of the monster’s giant arm and kicking aside a smaller Hellion that got too close. “Remember how you did it before, and do it again!”

“I cannot!” she sobbed again.

“You can!”

Suddenly, another Hellion leaped over the stone holding up the bowl, knocking it askew—Taji and Kazuo both spotted it at the same time, lunging towards it simultaneously.

Taji’s leap was intercepted by a massive hand, catching him in the bare midsection and throwing him backwards to roll several feet across the ground.

Skeletal, transparent ice formed suddenly around the falling bowl and its contents, and the whole mass hit the ground seconds later with a thud, rolling slightly. Kazuo gasped with the strain, lying half-across Pavithra where he’d fallen almost immediately after standing. His arms were still outstretched, palms facing the bowl as he struggled to hold the half-formed ice in place.

“Taji!” he rasped, hesitating a moment before daring to turn his head for a quick look over his shoulder. “Are you—”

“I’m fine!” Taji rolled to his feet, staggering once. “Keep that bowl steady!” Ignoring the new pain lancing across his ribs, he regained his balance and ran towards the monster, streaming fire towards it. If it reached the others…

“Trying,” Kazuo gritted out, as his arms began to shake… Damn blood loss! he thought furiously, squeezing his eyes closed with the strain. Normally it’s not this hard to make the damn stuff go solid…

Another Hellion which had been stalking closer to them began to hiss, baring long teeth in a menacing snarl—Pavithra inhaled a sob, looking down at Kazuo and the blood now streaking her ragged clothing, and then looked up at it abruptly.

The Hellion stopped, spun, and began to savage the creature beside it—a second nearby creature, and then a third, began to do the same. With the triad of beasts attacking all those which came near her, Pavithra carefully extricated herself from beside Kazuo, stepping lightly in front of him and turning the bowl, encased in its ball of ice, back upright. She paused then and looked down, meeting Kazuo’s gaze.

“Thanks,” he said, voice hoarse with exhaustion, “but some has spilled over the edge… I can’t let it go, or we’ll never have it all contained.”

She swallowed hard, nodded… and then took off at a dead run.

“Pa—Pavithra?” Kazuo’s startled cry ended in a coughing fit that drew Taji’s attention away from his own battle for a moment.

“Where is she going?!” he shouted, dodging back several paces to watch the girl’s slight fleeing form in aggravation.

“Hell if I know!” said Kazuo, struggling to sit up without losing his concentration or his consciousness—for some reason, the Hellions that Pavithra had been controlling still seemed to be on their side, attacking all the other monsters that attempted to come within a few metres of Kazuo. Not that he minded, since he really didn’t feel up to fighting.

“Damn it!” Fire flared around both of Taji’s fists, arcing towards the monster that had been menacing him—on its next lunge forwards a particularly vicious flare took it square in the center of its gaping mouth, blasting out the back of its head in a glowing vortex of fire and ichor. Taji was almost too angry to notice his victory. “I thought I was just starting to get it through to her…”

A second blast took out another Hellion, and then Taji ran over to crouch beside Kazuo, glancing nervously from his partner to his frozen, semitransparent object of focus.

“Are you…”

“Don’t… distract me.” A drop of sweat ran down Kazuo’s forehead, tracing the edge of his signio before disappearing into his eyebrow. “I… I can hold this…”

And the only thing I can do right now is hinder. Right. Taji stood, and looked off in the direction that Pavithra had run off in—it crossed his mind briefly that, as per his duty, he should probably be following her right now. She was his charge, his assigned task.

But Kazuo was his partner.

“Damn it,” he growled after a moment, standing and allowing the fire to flare into existence once again around his hands as he prepared to face off against the newly-forming Hellions—of the three that had been fighting on Kazuo’s behalf, two had already fallen behind the onslaught of their uncontrolled cousins.

Suddenly a sharp blast of wind struck the ground in a ring, blowing the Hellions backwards. Taji raised both hands in front of his face to brace himself, preparing for another attack, only to realize moments later that both he and Kazuo were unharmed—and there was light shining on them both from above. He looked up.

A bright window in the sky, perhaps two metres above his head, was folding itself shut, and three League Operatives with their wings fully extended were heading down towards them.

“Looks like we got here just in time,” said a dark-haired woman, landing lightly beside Taji and looking him and Kazuo over. “Well, no need to worry, we can get this.”

“Who are you?” said Taji, staring at her.

“Operative Mizuki, at your service,” she said with a smile, and then gestured towards her two companions, who were setting about trapping the Hellions within glowing nets of energy. “Izumi and Curtis. What’s the cause of this rift? The kid on the communicator didn’t tell us.”

Taji pointed down at the bowl and its suspended contents. “…That. It’s the focus of some Fallen spellwork, but it’s incomplete, and unstable—we don’t have any containment fields, but it needs to be held somehow. And—my partner—”

“Kazuo would like very much to have this thing taken off his hands before you start talking about medical attention,” groaned Kazuo from the ground.

“Ah. Yes.” Mizuki pulled out the focus scroll of a stasis spell and held it over the bowl, waiting until the glowing white sphere had appeared to solidify around the mass of ice before looking over at Kazuo. “You can let go now.”

With a tiny exhalation, Kazuo went limp. Taji, alarmed, dropped to one knee beside him and turned him over carefully. “Hey…?”

“Oh come on, let me sleep,” Kazuo mumbled, opening one eye slightly. “’m tired.”

“I found it!” said a thin, excited voice, drawing Taji’s attention abruptly away—Pavithra was running back into the clearing, a Hellion following at her heels. She was waving something that glinted. “I found the object!”

“The communicator!” Taji made as if to stand, paused, and lowered Kazuo the rest of the way to the ground before lurching upright. “That’s what you left for?”

“I thought I remembered seeing it, and I did, for I found it! I spoke to a very beautiful man…” Pavithra’s face was briefly distant and smiling with the recollection—Taji raised an eyebrow; Andrei?—and then the young Talent’s eyes refocused and she beamed at them all, bouncing on her heels. “And he spoke truly! We are saved!”

“Well, we’re saved, anyway,” said Taji bemusedly. “You might have been able to get away scot-free, if you’d wanted to.”

“But I did not,” said Pavithra earnestly. “I did not want to leave you both… is he all right?” She looked over at Kazuo, who appeared to have passed out in earnest now as Izumi peeled away the makeshift bandaging and replaced it with something more task-appropriate from out of her field medkit.

“He will be,” said Mizuki, opening her communicator again and beginning to tap out a sequence of codes. “We’re all going back now, though—even you, kid, since we can’t leave you alone”

“Really?” Pavithra smiled, and then suddenly looked over at the GLO man, Curtis. “…What are you doing?”

“We’ve got to get those things under control,” rumbled the large man, pointing to the Hellion he’d been trying to net—it was the only one still free, and it ran from Curtis to twine itself around Pavithra’s shins. “Can’t leave them running around.”

“Can…” Pavithra’s hand twitched towards the beast’s pseudo-fur as though aiming to pet it before recoiling again. She looked up pleadingly at Curtis. “…Can it come with us?”

“What?” Taji yelped. “You want—” He cut off as she turned wide, dark eyes on him, protesting spiel winding down in an instant. He scratched his head.

“…Can our portal even do that?” he asked Mizuki at last, as she finished entering the last code and the glowing doorway leading to Ninth Atrium, HQ unfolded before them.

“Oh, sure,” she replied, glancing from him to Pavithra. “We can take anything solid… provided it doesn’t escape her control.”

“It will not!” said Pavithra, twisting her fingers together nervously before glancing down at the beast. Her expression firmed. “I will not let it.”

“If it does, though, it’s the net,” said Curtis, holding up the channeling device. “You got that?” The Talent nodded rapidly, signaling understanding.

“No accounting for tastes,” grumbled Taji, watching Curtis escort Pavithra and her new pet into the portal. Izumi finished rechecking Kazuo’s bandages, about to move him onto a makeshift stretcher, and caught sight of him.

“You know, I expect to see you in infirmary too, as soon as you’re out of that meeting,” she said, with a pointed glance at his neck and arm. Taji reached up involuntarily, remembering himself just before he fingers could actually make contact with the still-bleeding gash, and sighed.

“…Yeah, yeah,” he said, and made his escape.

The next—day? More? Kazuo couldn’t be sure—passed in a combination of drug-hazy dampened awareness and the occasional patch of hallucinatory clarity. He couldn’t feel a thing in his back, but the pretty girl who seemed to be standing somewhere overhead most of the time assured him that he wouldn’t lose the use of his wings.

That’s good, he thought, and drifted off again. More thought than that was hard to come by, as he wasn’t quite sure whether he was even awake or not.

At last, though, he opened his eyes to the dimmed illumination of the infirmary ceiling lights. Turning his head slightly, the odd weight tugging at the blankets on his left side was revealed to be Taji, slumped half-across the bed with his head nestled in his arms.

“Hey…” Kazuo croaked, cleared his throat, and then tried again with a weak prod. “You know, this bed is supposed to be for me, lazy ass. Only room for one.”

Taji stirred slightly and groaned, then suddenly sat bolt upright. “You’re awake!”

“Stunning powers of observation, as usual,” said Kazuo, grimacing and clearing his throat again. “Is there any water in here?”

“Ah—yes, hold on.” Taji stood up quickly, turning not quite fast enough to hide the wince, and headed towards the sink across the room. Kazuo frowned briefly, before returning his attention to the task of sitting upright.

He had just about managed it when Taji came back. “You know, I’m pretty sure the beds here have those controls that let you sit up,” he offered blandly.

“Yeah, well, using that would just make me feel like more of an invalid,” said Kazuo, reaching behind himself with the arm not bound in a sling to rearrange the pillow. “Gimme that water.”

Taji did so, and then pulled up the chair, sitting down slowly.

“Have you gotten yourself looked at?” Kazuo asked, when he’d drunk enough of the water to chase away the horrible taste in his mouth.

Taji started, as if he’d honestly thought that Kazuo wouldn’t be able to tell he was in pain. “Uh, yes,” he said, and then frowned irritably at Kazuo’s plainly unconvinced stare. “I did! I’m not an idiot. I have a new shirt to hide the bandages, is all.”

“Right,” said Kazuo, drawing out the word and following it up with another sip of water. A few more moments passed in silence, Taji settling himself more comfortably in his seat as Kazuo finished the glass.

“…So, what’s happened?” Kazuo asked at last, putting the cup down on the handily-provided side table. “You’re not your usual barrel of laughs.”

Taji straightened, blinking. “Eh? No, I’m just tired, I suppose. You’ve been out for two days… I met with Andrei, earlier. He wanted to know where Lei had gone.”

Kazuo raised an eyebrow. “And he expected you to know?”

“I should hope not… his popping up in India surprised me as much as anyone else.”

“Well, there you go.” Kazuo gingerly leaned back against his pillow, and paused before speaking again. “…I’m going to ask, eventually, how you know Lei,” he said quietly. “…Or used to know.”

“I know,” said Taji, running a hand through his hair and slouching in his seat. “…And I’ll tell you. Just not right now.”

Kazuo smiled faintly. “Well then… back to business I suppose. What else did Andrei say?”

“Plenty,” said Taji. “Lei’s little concoction is being dealt with as we speak by Andrei’s gang of helpful scientists—which puts at least a somewhat more positive spin on this whole thing, since they think they might be able to find out more about how exactly the Fallen system of mind-control works.” He opened his mouth again and hesitated.

“And?” Kazuo prodded. It took another moment for Taji to continue.

“…And Andrei’s assigned Pavithra to us until they can find a Guardian from her own district,” said Taji. “We’re not going back to Japan anytime soon.”

“How is that a bad thing?” asked Kazuo, his brief startlement turning into a grin. “She’s a nice kid.”

“She’s crazy!” said Taji, only the last-minute recollection of his injuries keeping him from sweeping his arms out in some sort of dramatic gesture. “She’s been following me around inside HQ, even though the assignment doesn’t start until tomorrow! That Hellion of hers tore my suitcase to shreds! And…” he lowered his voice, leaning towards Kazuo meaningfully with a spooked glance towards the door. “…she named the thing after me!”

Kazuo, despite the spear injury, slumped back against the pillows and laughed until the nurse came in.