Shoulders emerged, and when they did, Kaylin saw that the creature had been almost prone; it rose, twisting shoulders to either side to shake off the last of its captivity. It lifted its head last, and it had fire for eyes, fire for hair—but that hair waved in the air as if the fire were serpents. Or some progenitor of the Tha’alani, writ large.

When it spoke, Kaylin understood why it had sounded like a crowd: multiple voices came from that single mouth. She really hoped that being stabbed hadn’t angered it.

It continued to unfold, to grow in height, in width; she could see golden filaments streaming out from its shoulder blades, as if they wanted to be wings. A gauze of light clung to those filaments. As she watched, that light spread, and spread again, until wings had formed.

Hope was utterly silent; had he not been forced to hover, Kaylin was certain he wouldn’t have been aware of her at all.

“Spike?”

Silence.

The only person who seemed willing to break the silence was Terrano. “I think the small lights might be the remnants of your people.”

“My people?”

“Mortals. There’s something about the quality of it that’s different, if you look at it the right way.”

“There are no words, though?”

“There must be,” Terrano replied. “Azoria didn’t build whatever that is. She might have found it, but she didn’t build it. Given what she was attempting to do with Mrs. Erickson—assuming she could somehow see or sense Mrs. Erickson’s gift at all—it may be that whatever we’re looking at isn’t actually alive. But Spike was certain that this was where the strand of Azoria’s life led.”

Kaylin nodded, frowning. “It felt alive to me. You can’t heal the dead.” As she spoke, she could see movement in the fog of the outlands, as if they had become clouds. Storm clouds. She could not see the creature’s feet, but the storm was gathering around where legs implied they would be.

“We need the word,” she said, voice even softer. “We need to separate it, somehow.”

“You think it gives her some kind of power over a god?”

God. The word rippled. Hope and Spike didn’t take issue with it.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if what the word was is what it is now.”

“What were ours, when you found them?”

She frowned.