No cackle this time, but a deep, throaty chuckle, still animal, still hyena-like. She smiled at me like I was a cherished niece. Her remaining brown cat’s eye flashed pale ice blue. “Kaen told me to help you, my dear. It was a little vague … There was a prophecy about four fathers, you know. You might have heard it. Maybe you haven’t. But there’s another one about four mothers. A bit of trap, that. Because they don’t mean a mother for each of you cute little Hellwarriors, no. Four mothers just for you.” She patted her bosom. “I’m the fourth.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. My protest wasn’t as strong as I would have liked.

“Ah, don’t worry, little lion. I am going to help you. I’m going to give you so much help you won’t be able to stand it.”

The script on the windows rearranged itself, transformed, and suddenly I could read it.

But it wasn’t Guarem. The words hadn’t changed, only my own perception.

Also, I don’t remember what I read. I know I read … something.

Then the world went black, and this time—

This time I didn’t wake up in the Afterlife at all.

The world looked white, and the sky looked bright blue. Not the sky’s normal teal color but Kazivar pottery glaze or House D’Mon blue.

I stood at the crystal pyramid’s summit in the mountains, which glowed so brightly from reflected sunlight I couldn’t look down without blinding myself. Skulls edged the top of the truncated pyramid, their eyes glowing with ghostly blue light. The air smelled of glacial ice and pine and, faintly, fresh blood and desiccated flesh.

I turned around and saw Suless.

She was still an old woman; I knew she could’ve been young if she’d wanted. I knew too that we existed in a place of her own invention, and she could’ve taken on any appearance. Her hair was white fur and her skin made the snow seem dark. She dressed in a style unfamiliar to me, archaic and alien. Yet she still looked like an old woman, wrinkled and sagging, her eyes the same ice blue as the white hyenas who sat at her feet. The hyenas paid no attention to me, more interested in gnawing on skulls.

“This world is controlled by power and will,” she said in a voice both majestic and deep. The hyenas perked up and looked at me for the first time, then went back to gazing at their queen.

“Wyrga—” I stopped myself. “Suless. Whatever you’re doing—”