She leaps forward and, with shocking suddenness, slams the heel of her palm into my chest bone and sends me barreling backward.

“What the hell?”

“Hit me!” she commands.

“What?”

“HIT ME!”

“No,” I say, confusion crackling through my voice. “You…you’re unarmed.”

She slaps me. Hard. A blow across the face, catching me on the cheekbone. I didn’t see it coming but I feel it sting and begin to swell.

“Stop doing that. Please, just…stop.”

She hits me again.

I reel back in shock.

Slap!

I try to avoid it, but I can’t. She moves like a leaping flame.

“STOP! STOP IT! Why are you doing this?”

Whack!

Another blow. I try to duck, but it’s impossible to move out the way.

My cheek is pummeled raw. I feel a drop of blood fall from my nose.

I wipe it away and plant my feet, grip the sword in both hands.

Let her do that again.

Let her try.

Slap!

A stunning blow.

“There is a Pathfinder,” she says, advancing.

I watch her, wincing in pain.

“An elder master, once one of us, who became lost.”

My heart thumps. I stagger backward, out of reach of her flying hands.

“Kei Shinigami,” she says. “This is the name of the one you seek, the one who brought the Reapers back from the Between. The one who took your friend. First to Venetia, above Paris Nouveau, to the Seventh Gate.”

My fist closes on the sword’s handle—tightly.

She comes at me and tries to hit me again and, this time, I move. Her hand whips through the air and I’m out the way and the sword slashes right to left from low at my hip to high above my shoulder. I stop the blade, inches from her neck.

She looks at me impassively. I can’t tell if she’s pleased, or pissed off, or ambivalent. Then she snaps her head around and falls to her haunches, robes flaring. She presses a hand to the carpeted floor and listens.

“They have come,” she says now, looking up at me.

The light turns reddish. The air vibrates between us. It shimmers.

“They?”

“GO!” she commands. “Find Gabriel. Now FALL!”

Before I can respond, she throws both palms towards me and I’m struck by a tremendous force and blown backward. I lift violently into the air. The tent whips and snaps like a sail in the wind. Then I’m floating—weightless—my stomach in my throat, the air warping, bending. My hoodie billows and blows back.

I flip. Spin. Float.

Fall.

There is no up and no down. No north. No south.

The world unravels.

Ares

The third is ARES; known for its volatility. A world once famed for unparalleled beauty and abundance. Now laid bare by avarice and savagery. And with these forces come divisions and insuperable walls. And war.

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