Isaac stared into sunken eyes filled with white smoke. They look so peaceful. He thought to himself. How can such an insane monster appear so calm? The wispy clouds swirled back and forth in lazy laps and didn’t betray their secrets. Now that he saw them up close, Crassus’s eyes looked almost kind.

Crassus let go of his arm. Isaac flinched, ready to be split in two just as the bandit had been. But the pain didn’t come, instead Crasuss rummaged around the linings of his coat with feeble, almost gentle hands. The transformation unsettled Isaac. Crassus turned from an uncaring tidal wave of destruction into a mumbling beggar, disabled and old, in a matter of seconds. His hands shook, but not from rage, they shook with confusion and uncertainty. Crassus seemed to forget what he was looking for every couple of seconds, then recall and continue his search.

“I don’t have it on me,” he told Crassus, voice trembling before he could bring it under control. “I have to go get it, okay?” He tried with all his might to pretend that Crassus was a demented senior out on an adventure to escape the drudgery of the nursinghome. “I don’t have it right here at this moment. But, tell you what, I’ll go and get it, okay? I’ll go away just a couple seconds, and then I’ll be right back, is that alright?”

Crassus just looked at him like a six year old, caught in the act of eating the last cookie. His mouth flapped open and shut like a goldfish, his opaque eyes appearing blinder than ever. Demented senior. He’s just a demented senior. “I’ll go and get it now okay? It’ll just be a minute.” No response. Is he even aware I’m talking to him? Isaac stood up. Crassus latched onto his forearm.

“Please… I need it!” Desperation tinged his voice and his grip felt like vice of iron jaws gnashing at his bones.

“Stop! Ouch, let go!” Isaac tried to wrestle back control of his arm but he couldn’t move it a hair’s breadth, he might as well have tried to grapple a statue made of lead. Crassus’s face only betrayed his determination, his grasp tightened to unbearable levels.

There was a sickening crack. The loudness stunned Isaac, but then every sensation and thought washed away under the onslaught of pain. He screamed.

Crassus let go and Isaac’s forearm tilted to one side. The image of it seared into Isaac’s mind. He’d seen mangled bodies before, but somehow his own body mangled in the same way appeared all the more grotesque and obscene.

Crassus stared at the arm in horror, like he couldn’t understand how it had happened. Isaac stopped screaming. Tears stung his eyes. He fought to regain control of his body, to ignore the pain.

“Don’t… I mean….” he managed, his voice catching multiple times. He tried again, “Be patient… Alright?” This time he waited, looking Crassus in the eyes. Can he actually see out of those? They don’t look like any eyes I’ve ever seen before. “Alright?” he repeated. Crassus nodded, like a child. Isaac hesitated. On a mad impulse, he waved one hand in front of Crassus’s face. No reaction. He waved again, this time closer, and Crassus flinched, but he looked off in the wrong direction. Isaac paused for even longer. What did this mean?

Holding his ruined arm gingerly, Isaac stumbled away from Crassus, finding to his surprise that his left leg dragged behind each step. It felt swollen. When had that happened? Isaac put the thought away, survival was paramount. Keeping one eye on Crassus he walked over to Aster. Crassus tracked him with his head the whole time, but now that Isaac paid attention to his sightline, Crassus looked at a spot above his head, not at Isaac himself.

How could he not see a hand waved inches from his face, but he could see a man walking several steps away. Maybe Crassus was partially blinded, did blindness work in that way? Isaac did not know. He’d known blind or nearly blind people throughout his life, but he had never asked. Crassus whimpered and began fidgeting, clawing at his chainmail as if something about it bothered him, no doubt something to do with the keys that had spilled out from it. Isaac hastened his pace. Best not to dwell too long, he couldn’t really believe he was still alive in the first place.

He bent down over Aster’s crumpled body. He winced at the sight of her hand. It looked as if her pinky and ring fingers had been turned into paste.

One-handed, he shook her shoulder. “Hey!” he whispered in near hysterics. “Get up!” No movement, not even a flicker of the eyelid. “Wake up!” His voice cracked as he raised it involuntarily from sheer panic. Crassus whimpered like a wounded dog and slapped the earth with a flat hand so hard Isaac felt a tremor vibrate up his feet.

Crassus would start throwing things soon, Isaac could feel it, just like he had always been able to feel it when a person he was talking to was about to become violent. Despair and powerlessness bore in on him. His arm broken, his whereabouts unknown, strange phenomenon he could not even begin to explain, a raving lunatic of a madman who somehow possessed the strength of fifty men, no place to run to and no chance in hell of making it there before being split in half had he known a place.

Abandoning all caution he clung to the only hope he could see; Aster. He screamed at the top of his lungs for her to get up, his throat hurt and he felt something starting to tear but he pushed his voice harder. Aster twitched, her eyelids rolled back, but no conscious thought showed there. She started convulsing, bucking against the ground, again and again.

Crassus threw something and it crashed down a distance away from Isaac and Aster. The rending sound of the object shattering made sweat pour down Isaac’s back. His face flushed and his hands trembled. Overpowering panic drove every sane thought out of his mind. Only a single realization remained behind; the need to survive. It coursed through him like a fever, like nothing had ever done before in his life.

Something large sailed above their head. He wanted to run but his feet felt like boulders. He wanted to scream but only the taste of blood filled his mouth. He couldn’t hope to fight back. He didn’t want to stay but he couldn’t move. He could only think of one thing, and as the thought echoed inside his mind over and over, he found himself confiding out loud to the unconscious girl before him. “I don’t wanna die.” His throat only allowed a hoarse whisper, but there it was.

Isaac had been reckless, he could see that now. He’d pushed forward in his grief over his brother, and now he would pay the price and die here, alone with strangers, killed by a complete lunatic with superhuman strength. Isaac doubted whether Crassus was even aware of what he was doing. A strange sense of calm enveloped him, and the panic faded. He couldn’t quite explain it, but something changed inside him. Had he gone insane too?

Aster’s pupils focused on his face and she stopped shaking. At the same time black clouds with a sharp blue tint materialized from nothing all around them. Aster gasped as if she’d been passed through ice cold water. “Oh no,” Isaac moaned. He remembered that smoke. The storm. He thought. That’s how he’d gotten into this mess in the first place. He was loathe to find out what it would do to him the second time around.

“Come on, we gotta get out of here,” he said to Aster and hoisted her up, hand over shoulder. He gripped tight around her waist to keep her upright.

“Don’t… We have to stay still,” she said. The dark clouds expanded and enveloped them within seconds, turning the sky from dimming twilight into a world of dark blue fog. Chains of lightning criss crossed through the billowing smoke. The eerie movement of the clouds appeared mean spirited to Isaac now after all that he had been through the last couple hours.

“No, we have to move.”

Aster attempted a response but coughed with harsh convulsions against her hand before she managed to speak. “We can’t… it’s too dangerous… to go into the mists.” She peered up at him, and Isaac was struck by how young she was. She can’t be more than twenty. He thought. Perhaps younger. How had he not noticed until now?

“Staying here is dangerous, he’ll kill us in seconds.” She seemed apprehensive. “We’re already in the mists anyways, come on, lets go!” He dragged her with him, careful so as to not put pressure on her ribs.

Aster’s head lolled from shoulder to shoulder, she appeared to have no muscle in her neck fit to keep her head upright any longer. “Where’s Crassus? What happened?” Aster said. Her face was very pale, her speech slurred. She’s lost too much blood. Isaac thought.

“He’s right there,” Isaac pointed, “he’ll throw something anytime now. Please, will you just move?” He attempted to drag her along but she screamed in pain and grasped his hand against her ribs. The dense smoke pulsed blue sparks in time with her shouts as if it visualized the sound waves like a mixing board in a recording studio.

The light made Isaac look up and he saw more than just sparks flying in random directions along the edges of the almost solid-looking smoke. They traced a definite object. They were outlining the shape of a man, walking towards them. Isaac froze, he meant to shout at Aster again, or to force her to start running, or anything at all so long as it meant anything but staying a second longer. But he couldn’t speak, much less move. The shape raised a hand.

“Hello? Anybody there?” said Crassus. He sounded scared, or even… concerned?

“Stay away!” Aster screamed.

“Look, I- I… I’m sorry, alright, I didn’t mean to harm you. Are you hurt?” They heard the sound of a furtive footstep closer.

“Don’t come any closer!”

“Alright! Alright! I won’t, I promise!” Two hands raised up before them, palms spread. “I’ll stay right here, okay? I won’t move.”

Some of the smoke billowed past them and a bubble of clear air surrounded them. Crassus stood in the middle of the clearing and they saw how the smoke shied away from him, almost as if it were afraid to touch him. His eyes were still the eerie shade of opaque white but his expression was more human than ever.

“I just need the key, alright?” he pointed at Isaac, “his key,” he held up his hands, “and then I’ll be gone!” His voice raised an octave, as if to reassure them it really was that easy. “I promise.” He smiled, no doubt to calm them further, but rather than being inviting it made him look like a predator.

“My… my key?” Isaac sounded puzzled. “I don’t have any keys.” He looked to Aster. “I left my keys in the car before I… well, you know?” Her face showed no signs of comprehension. “I don’t have a key! I swear!”

“Yes, you do,” Aster said.

“I don’t!” he said, but her resolve did not budge. Isaac turned to Crassus. Crassus stared at him, but not into his eyes, he stared at him below the neck. The sight unnerved Isaac. “Please, I’ll give you anything you want, I just don’t have any keys on me. Look, I can get you one of the keys you spilled earlier, remember? Or better yet, you could go get one of them yourself, they’re right behind you over there. Would that work?”

Crassus gave no sign he had heard anything Isaac had said. “We all have a key,” he said, and he appraised Isaac with a starved expression on his face.

“Just give him the fucking key already,” Aster said and she reached inside his jacket then  down through the collar of his shirt and searched with cold fingers across his bare skin.

“What are you doing?” Aster ignored him and he was about to protest further when he felt her hand close around something and a chain pull at the skin around his neck.

In the same instant all the smoke pulsated once bathing their faces in light. The smoke breathed and billowed, then retracted and imploded again and again in small reversed explosions into smaller and smaller points until nothing remained and the stars twinkled down at them as if the smoke had never been there in the first place.

As one both Isaac and Aster whipped their heads up. Crassus hadn’t moved but a definite change to his body language washed over him like water. His body twisted as his muscles tightened and a demented look slowly warped his face. Then he was screaming. He roared with his mouth wide open so loud he tore his vocal chords to shreds. Spittle and blood splattered down his beard. He stumbled forward, attempting a charge, but faltered and wobbled from side to side too twisted in fury to even run straight.

An icy cold sensation spread through Isaac’s body from Aster’s hand. It felt like his very soul siphoned away from him. Sickening cracking noises sounded from beside him. Aster let out a low moan and he looked only to find feathers covered every speck of visible skin. Clothes ripped and more feathers spilled out, larger and fuller than the feathers he’d seen her grow before. Jet black and gleaming, feathers grew upon feathers, morphing into grotesque chunks of an indiscernible something somewhere between flesh and feather.

Isaac couldn’t reconcile what he saw with what he knew of the world. Even Crassus seemed to hesitate, unsure of what this inhuman display meant. Aster roared—in defiance or pain Isaac could not tell—and without any further preamble exploded like a bomb with feathers in place of shrapnel.

Isaac woke from the pain. If he had thought his body pained him before, it was nothing compared to now. His entire existence was pain. A face hovered above him and he registered that he lay on his back. When had that happened? His tired brain tried to access his memories. Oh, right… explosion. He tried to focus his eyes to make the hovering face less blurry, anything to distract him from this hell that was breathing.

“What happened?” he said.

“I don’t know.” She sounded worried. A hand grasped his and he let himself be dragged upright by Aster. How could she still move after that? He stood up, almost fell again, before he righted himself and surveyed their surroundings.

A small forest of feathers that reached to his knees had sprung up around him. He stood stunned and could only look and try to appreciate what had just happened. A gust of wind blew through and the feathers swayed in the breeze, moving as one. The ground almost looked like black it was so saturated with feathers sticking out of it.

“Where is he?” he asked. Aster pointed.

He looked to a mound of feathers that raised up higher than the surrounding ground. It could’ve been anything underneath there, a rock, some garbage or a piece of concrete. But as he looked closer, and it was hard to see in the sea of black, tiny outcroppings of a black robe could be spotted here and there between the feathers.

He looked at her. “What are you?” he asked. She looked back at him with intense sadness in her eyes but didn’t answer. For some reason Isaac felt he got his answer anyways through her face. Deep troughs ran through it, tracing lines from the edges of her face to a point somewhere on her nose. They were gray and dead-looking. In a few places it seemed small chunks of flesh had been torn out. If he looked underneath some of those feathers stuck into the ground all around him, would he find traces of human tissue? His skin prickled.

Something in his periphery moved and whatever he had been about to say died on his lips. He looked to the mound. It moved again.

He ran with every last bit of strength he could muster. Aster sidled along beside him and they were a pitiful sight indeed. His legs threatened to throw him to the ground and he caught Aster’s shoulder to steady himself. They were barely making any headway. The attempt was almost comical.

“This is insane!” Isaac felt like fainting. “How is he not dead?” Aster only grunted, focusing all her attention on putting one leg in front of the other. “He’s a fucking pincushion for Christ’s sake!”

Behind them, Crassus started screaming again.

Isaac felt it and heard it at the same time, the vibrations through the ground, the sounds of feathers snapping and breaking off. The dull thud of a footstep. “Oh god.” Isaac felt ghostly hands play across his back.

More footsteps, closer. It became hard to breathe. He would suffocate even before Crassus reached them. His shoulders sagged. Why refuse the inevitable. It would be so simple to lay down and rest at last. He regretted not finding Finn though, it would have been so good to see him one last time. To tell him he was sorry.

Thunder echoed through the ruins. Isaac opened his eyes. In under one second the smoke rushed in and reduced the visibility to a couple paces. The smoke breathed and pulsated like before, but something was very different this time. A strong wind blew through the smoke and a blue mist carried on it. The wind whipped the bubbles of smoke up like frothing water but the smoke did not drift even a hair’s breadth away from where it had appeared.

Something enormous dropped a pace away and dirt and pebbles rained down on him. The ground shook and a deafening clatter started up as indistinguishable objects of every size and shape rained down. A wooden barrel dropped in front of him and broke. Horse shoes spilled out from it clinking an almost musical sounding tune.

Aster screamed something to him but the wind picked up and the roar in his ears drowned out all but the crash of the garbage and debris filling up every empty space and corner it could tumble its way into. He went to move closer to hear her better but as he turned he caught sight of something golden over her shoulder. It had only been for a brief moment, but Isaac knew beyond a sliver of a doubt what it had been. A face. The face of a man with blonde hair, a hesitant smile and kind eyes.

“FINN!”

He pawed his way past Aster and something hit his shoulder hard, pain radiating from it. He gritted his teeth and ignored it. He could see the outline of Finn through the haze running away from him. “FINN!”

A hand caught his elbow and attempted to haul him back. It was Aster, she screamed something at him, something about having to go, it was hard to make out. She pointed in a direction away from Finn. Couldn’t she leave him alone? Didn’t she realize that Finn was right over there? Did she understand what he had been through to get to this point? He wrenched his hand out of her grasp and she fell.

He looked back to Finn but the shape in the fog had disappeared. He cursed eternal suffering upon Aster and staggered after the memory he visualized in his mind. He had a general direction, and a sighting! Yes, this was enough. He would manage with this much, he had never even dared to dream of more than this.

His foot caught and he fell forward, face first in the dirt. He couldn’t lose the trail now. He had to get up. He clambered up but his feet knocked something into him. His foot hadn’t caught at all, he’d tripped on something. 

He pushed to untangle his foot and a body rolled over, face up. Isaac froze. It was a man with a short stout build and a round puffy face. His skull caved in at the forehead. He had blonde hair, and maybe he had had a hesitant smile too, or even a kind expression, Isaac couldn’t tell now, but it wasn’t Finn.

A broken mirror lay next to him, shards of glass scattered about. Isaac looked into his reflection in a shard that leaned against the side of the man’s face. Blood seeped down. The roar of the wind and the crash of the raining debris numbed his brain until he could think no more.

Aster caught up to him and crouched down beside him. She spared one glance at the broken face of the man splayed before them, then hauled at Isaac’s shoulder to get him up but he slumped further into misery.

The wind shifted. Instead of whipping at them from one direction it turned and Isaac felt his clothes tug in circles around him. The circle of wind grew and expanded past Aster a couple paces. Isaac looked into the wall of wind. It looked like a muddy grey mass of froth with blue streaks here and there. A memory prickled at the back of his mind.

The deafening roar lessened to a deep rumble.

“Don’t follow the people,” Aster said, breathing hard. “The debris falls…” She paused, “Where there’s… people.”

Isaac didn’t reply. He stared at the windwall. A memory of a car in a tornado sparked. His car. He turned around, but his throat caught as he saw the figure standing behind Aster, in the centre of the revolving wind.

He stood panting like Aster, feathers sticking out all over his body. Blood streamed down his ruined robes and the skin of his chest showed through the gaps in his chainmail. In his hand he held onto the edge of a bright white bathtub resting on the ground. Some pipes trailed behind it and a golden faucet reflected the dim blue light that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at once.

A loud horn sounded in the distance. Crassus raised the bathtub above his head as if it were made of paper. The horn grew ever louder, the source was coming toward them and fast. The sound echoed and made it difficult to pinpoint but Isaac thought he could hear it louder from above. He looked up. Yes it definitely was louder now. What kind of horn was that? A boat horn… or, no… it was a— 

Crassus looked up as well just in time to see the large red metallic wedge shape jut out of the fog as if a titan had decided to reach down from the heavens to squash them all beneath his finger. Crassus’s hand blurred and the bathtub connected with the side of the train before it reached him.

The locomotive hurtled away from Crassus and crashed into the ground well clear of Crassus. But the rest of the carriages dumped into the ground in a straight line away from the train engine and right over Crassus, burying him beneath the sleek metal. The carriages continued to rain down for several seconds. The tail end of the train disappeared into the fog and out of sight. They still heard the crash of each individual carriage as they met the ground in turn, one after the other.

Isaac could only look on dumbstruck as the train’s last few carriages fell and the train settled to a halt. Nothing moved for a time, even Aster seemed lost for words. Then a window shattered on top of a carriage and a hand reached out followed by a torso.

Aster shook Isaac. “We should go,” Aster said, “There’s too many people.” 

Isaac looked to the carriage that now had people climbing all over it. Some carriages further down the line began to show signs of activity as well. No movement came from the train engine. “Shouldn’t we help them?” He could hear some screams coming from inside the train now. How had they survived that impact? How fast had that train been falling? Isaac shuddered as he imagined how many dead people the metal tube now contained.

“The whirlwind,” Aster said. 

“What?”

“Look at the whirlwind.”

Isaac looked at the swirling mists around them carried by the eerie wind. “What about it?”

“It hasn’t stopped.”

Some realization hid away in Isaac’s mind a hands breadth away, just beyond reach. “What do you mean?”

She looked out over the newcomers. Some of them had huddled in a group on the ground, having dropped down from the upended carriage, but most were stranded on top, either too hurt or shell-shocked to climb down.

“Aster, what do you mean?” Isaac pressed.

“Crassus.”

The realization hit. It should’ve been obvious but the insanity of the last few hours had pushed Isaac’s spirit to the brink. It was hard to connect any of the dots, much less these new supernatural realites he had to contend with. Everything he knew and took for granted had been turned on its head in a matter of seconds. But now that he had it pointed out to him, it was easy to see the connection. Every time Crassus had neared, the smoke had done something strange. No, it was more than that, the smoke did something to Crassus as well, it made him more coherent somehow.

“Ah fuck me,” he said. He also realized that Aster wasn’t looking at the newcomers at all, but rather the carriage that Crassus lay under.

As if on queue the carriage lurched. The train shivered from the force but gravity fought it back down and it didn’t move again. Several people attempting the climb down despite injuries or broken limbs lost their footing and fell. Screams rose above the rumble of the wind.

Isaac again found himself moving away even before his brain had caught up. He felt so drained he found it difficult to be surprised or to even care anymore. But he still ran. He had to live, if not for himself then at the very least for Finn.

Aster in tow, Isaac reached the wall of wind. Neither of them hesitated for a second but burst through the barrier and into the whirling mists. The noise raised to a deafening cacophony again and either Isaac misremembered the loudness or the torrent of objects had intensified. Gravel, sand and larger stones pelted him from the right side where the wind forced the debris in front of it with ceaseless abandon.

Isaac couldn’t see further than a couple paces in front of him, but the booming sounds of crash after crash reverberated in every direction. He felt a tugging on his coat and turned to see Aster pointing. She spared no time to explain further and set off the way she had pointed. Her right leg dragged behind her and she supported most of her weight on her left. Isaac followed.

He didn’t know where she was taking him or where she could’ve possibly gotten a heading from in this mess. But they took just a couple steps before the turbulent winds grew a considerable amount more noticeable, so at least something was different about her route. Aster did not halter. She soldiered on, and for lack of a better plan, Isaac struggled to fall in line behind her.

Soon the wind got intermixed with sand, and it tore at Isaac’s skin like files. Stones, twigs and other larger objects pelted him and threatened to knock him to the ground. The visibility shrank to zero in three strides and Isaac had to lurch forward and grab Aster’s clothing before she disappeared from sight.

Shielding his face with one arm Isaac stumbled after the tugging in his hands, too exhausted to make another decision for himself. Every breath contained a small piece of hell. Every sound cowered before the overpowering roar of the storm. Every movement quivered in the promise that the next would be the last. But somehow, Isaac did not let go and he did not falter.

The pressure lifted. The deafening noise sounded from behind rather than around him. Light peered through the edges of his arm and painted the backs of his eyelids in a muddy yellow hue. Isaac hesitated a moment in bringing his arm away from his face, the change had been so sudden that he didn’t  believe it at first. But then Aster stopped and he was forced to look.

Brilliant sunlight awaited his eyes, the warmth of it bathed his face in a sensation of safety and home he was surprised to discover just how much he had missed. The intensity of it blinded him for a split second, it came at him from all angles, not just the sky. He closed his eyes. Sunlight? How long had they been in there? It had felt like minutes, but the night had clearly passed, had it really been that long? Isaac opened his eyes until his eyelids formed tiny slits to guard him against the sunlight and he peered out.

His heart sank as he saw what had made Aster stop. A line of men stood watching the churning mist a couple paces away from the edge. They were just as rough-looking as Ronan’s bandits had been, but these men wore pieces of resplendent armor colored in red and gold. The display of armored men was the first real sign of civilization Isaac had seen since he’d stepped out of the blue fog. Maybe there were actual authorities after all?

Aster exchanged a few words with one of the men closest to them. The man she spoke to seemed to recognize her, but he kept glancing at Isaac between sentences. Then a call went out and although Isaac didn’t hear it the first time, he got several more chances to figure it out as the callsign traveled up the line. It was just one word, repeated again and again from man to man. Isaac wrinkled his brow. The call sounded a lot like they were shouting: “Phoenix”.

A man appeared over the line of soldiers some moments after the call had traveled out of earshot. He had far more pieces of the same gleaming armor the rest of the men wore, in fact he was covered everywhere except his face. A scabbard about the same length as his height stuck out from a belt. Everything about him was colored gold, except for his skin, that it was as if he’d been dipped into a vat of liquid gold.

He stood on a platform, no, a hand? The hand rose above the line of men until Isaac could see it better and Isaac once again since he came to the Endpoint, struggled to understand what he was seeing. The hand was as golden as the man it carried, and it attached to a huge lumbering creature, clumped and hunchbacked like Quasimodo. Perhaps the height of two men and the width of five or six.

It had no real eyes or face, just the outline of one. It was as if someone had given up halfway into hewing a human out of rock and instead tried to melt the figure into the correct shape but abandoned that attempt too. The creature positively towered over everyone around it and Issac hoped it could at least slow Crassus down long enough for them to escape.

The man hopped down from the creature and his overlong scabbard dug into the ground and he had to adjust it irritably with one hand to keep it from bulging his belt out. He wore a styled beard, cut into strips and sections. He had a long hooked nose and flowing dark brown hair that clashed magnificently with his golden armor. He resembled a hawk dive bombing a jewelry box.

“Aster,” he said looking her over from head to toe, sparing only a glance for Isaac. “It ‘as been too long.” He had a horribly botched french accent.

“Crassus is chasing us,” Aster said without preamble.

The man gasped and scanned the fog wall for a second before returning his gaze to Aster. The reaction lasted only for a moment. “Zhat’s impossible, ‘ow can he smell you all zhe way out ‘ere?”

“Either let me through or fight me. Then Crassus can have what’s left of you.”

The man pretended to be taken aback by her threat. “Why aster,” he said, drawing out the ‘r’ in her name with a long scarring consonant. “You ‘ardly look fit to battle, my fiery friend,” he laughed heartily, “If I were you I would not go around making threats so idly, no?”

Aster stared at him. He chuckled and continued, “after all, there’s only one of you,” he nodded at Aster, “and more than fifty of us,” he finished with shifting his gaze to Isaac as if to draw attention to the fact that he hadn’t included Isaac.

Aster didn’t respond this time around either, she just crossed her arms.

The man laughed and threw his arms up in mock exasperation and traded glances with his men as if to lament the futility of arguing with an unruly child. “Ah, but I do not ‘ave the time to play with you, Aster,” he said, and he even sounded apologetic. “Run along now little bird and say ‘allo to Tejhal for me, no?” A mirthful smile played across his lips, “tell her I look forward to zhe day zhat roof falls down on her head.” At that he almost choked himself he laughed so hard.

Aster grabbed Isaac’s coat and he winced as pain shot through his broken arm. She elbowed her way past a man with golden armor strapped to his arms over the numerous furs he wore. He had two shoulder pads with horns sticking straight up that looked so fierce they almost seemed to grow out his actual skin. Isaac was careful to give the man ample room as he passed while Aster dragged him along. The golden man laughed behind them all the way past the soldiers, up a small incline and into the forest. None of his men joined him in laughing.