With effort, Marian turned to the side, thinking vaguely of escape, feeling in her movement another rush of her blood over the slab under her.

And she watched as the creature freed from the stone pressed up to its hands and knees in the snow.

“Come, brother!” the Beast exclaimed and there was another shaft of light.

She reached to the edge of the slab, curled her fingers around it, tried to pull her weight toward it, and felt another gush of blood come from her.

She stilled and her eyelids drooped.

“Come, sister!” the Beast called on another flash of light.

She had failed.

She had failed dearly.

For there was not one of them.

There were five.

Her eyes were almost closed when the light in the circle changed.

She saw colored streaks and heard an almighty squawk of pain that was so grotesque, it scored at her ears, and with the last of her strength, she could do naught but lift her hands and cover them.

The circle filled with a flash of green.

“Four!” she heard a woman shout.

“No!” A flash of red and another woman’s shout. “Five!”

There was then a flare of blue.

And a roar of fury.

“Nandra! Lena! That one! Concentrate on the one still down in the snow!”

Another gods-awful screech and a flash of coral.

A flare of it scored over her.

“Melisse! Return! Give warning!”

Another pained, hideous screech.

Marian curled into herself.

“Sister!” the Beast thundered.

The circle filled with an explosion that was a mix of blue, coral, green and red light.

The green blinked out.

“Rebecca!”

“No!”

“Return! Return! Return!”

“Nandra, go!”

Her body was jolted as another went careening over her and Marian saw over the edge of the slab the dark hair of a Firenz woman fanned out on the snow.

It did not move.

“Give…it…all!”

Bright coral and intense blue suffused the circle and then a boom exploded so mighty, her frame jerked with it.

“We can do no more! Go!”

A flash of blue.

One of coral.

And…

Silence.

Marian noted vaguely it was snowing again.

Not snow.

No.

A heavy downfall of black ash.

As her vision faded, she watched the Beast in the form of a beast drop to his knees into the snow, murmuring, “Sister.”

Her eyes closed.

They opened on hearing him snarl and the hair of the Firenz woman was dragged from sight. She heard a terrible ripping noise, saw a spurt of crimson desecrate the white.

And her eyes did not close again.

But they could see no longer.

King Cassius

Upper Hall, Sky Citadel, Sky Bay

AIREN

He stood, ignoring the boom of fireworks above, the sounds of celebrations that rose up from the bottom gate, and stared at Reginald standing before him.