The warning from the Loremaster had come in the dead of night, delivered to the brothers in their small apartment by one of Tandarae’s trusted servants. It recounted a heated debate that had erupted in the Regent’s Meet, and the few voices that had spoken on the brothers’ behalf had quickly fallen silent. They were being sent to the Hub World, ostensibly to aid in the evacuation of the remaining defenders facing the Demon Legion, but it was a thinly disguised death sentence. The brothers’ role in finding Home, aiding the Taredhel in contacting the Elf Queen and her consort, and any other service done to the People, was outweighed in their minds by the simple fact that these two magic users were legacies of the Circle of Light and not to be trusted. When the portals on Hub World were deactivated, anyone still there would be stranded, with no means to return to Home.

Now they fought for their survival moment by moment.

They were holed up in a relatively defensible position in the city, a cul-de-sac of apartments for laborers, long abandoned, but with only one approach. They had created a series of trip-wire alarms and alerts so they could rest. Their orders had been to remain until recalled, and both knew that the recall was unlikely to ever come, so they had hunkered down and only fought when demons somehow managed to catch sight or wind of them.

The three who battled the conjuration were minor demons, any one of whom the brothers could probably have bested in hand-to-hand fighting should the need arise, but three of them was more than enough to give pause to engaging them directly.

This was the third time they had used this ploy, the other two having taught them how to refine the illusion and ready themselves for the moment they would truly engage the demons in combat.

Gulamendis took his eyes from the struggle for a moment; his brother had to concentrate on the illusion, so it was up to the Demon Master to keep alert for unexpected intruders while they stood exposed in the open, atop the rise that led to the highest apartment on this small street.

Behind the struggle, Gulamendis saw something flickering in the distance, near the entrance to the portals. He hoped it was other elves answering a recall he and his brother somehow hadn’t heard yet.

Hub World; here the portals—what the humans called “rifts” between the worlds—were clustered. For reasons that in retrospect looked like the height of prudence now, an ancient Lord Regent had decreed that only one rift from each world would be allowed to come to this one place, this otherwise nondescript world that had been home to barely a thousand elves, just enough to ensure the portals were operating as they should.