“I am,” Monshara said. She sighed. “We won’t fail, Zezili. Our armies are vast. Saiduan was the largest enemy we had to face, and they’re nearly spent. When the mirror is finished, we can easily send through as many of our soldiers as we like. No need to slaughter more here or there to fuel it, or wait for random tears in the sky. The mirror will keep the rift open until we destroy it.”

Zezili remembered the mirror hanging over her own hearth, and the day she watched her mother sculpting the soft, warm metal. She wished she wasn’t blind to the power of the stars then. She wished she could do something to stop whatever mad thing was about to happen.

“The metal is most vulnerable now,” her mother had told her, “before it’s infused with the power of Tira that gives it this glow. After that, it will never shatter. It will outlive us, just like those everpine weapons the legionnaires wield.” The mirror in the distance did not glow. If it wasn’t yet infused with the power of a satellite, it could be broken.

“Come,” Monshara said, squeezing Zezili’s arm gently. “We need to go back before the gate closes.”

“How many omajistas will it take to infuse this?” Zezili asked. “I assume that’s who has to give it power.”

“I don’t know,” Monshara said, “and I don’t ask. We have a different task in all of this. Best concentrate on that.”

As they walked back across the scorched landscape to their mounts, Zezili understood the scope of her mission far more than she had before she passed through the gate. It wasn’t about offing a few dajians. It was about extinguishing the Dhai race in her world entirely. They would not stop with the dajians. They would come for the free mixed-race Dorinahs too, the ones like Zezili, and for the free Dhai people in their toxic slice of a country. They would replace the passive little Dhai Zezili knew with a conquering horde of overlords, Dhai who had never been defeated.

Zezili gazed out at the blazing, beleaguered world. Focus on the mission, Kirana had said. Keep your head down and don’t ask questions, the Empress would have said. One mission. One goal. They never wanted her to see past the next body, but from here, all Zezili could see were bodies – the bodies of the Dhai on her world, all laid out across these bone-chilling fields of char, opening the way for the conquering hordes of Tai Mora; she saw them crunching across the broken forms of their other selves and destroying Dorinah in a single day.

She had seen Dhai in armor now, and she could not unsee it.

As they crossed back into Zezili’s world, into the comforting blue sky and brilliant light of Para, Zezili said, “You know, there’s one thing I’ve always been good at.”