She became aware of her raspy panting and bit down on her panic. She then realized something else; it was the only sound she could hear. The diabolical buzz had blissfully abated. The Which looked up, hopeful.

She screamed.

True to form, the orb had appeared out of nowhere and hovered just before her face. The Which cringed but couldn’t help but notice with a blink of optimism that the razor-sharp wings had disappeared and that the orb had reverted to its spherical silhouette, like a benign bauble. She heard a subtle click and she cringed again.

A long needle popped out of the bottom of the orb and rotated slowly toward her like the small arm on a timepiece. It stopped when it was pointing directly at her face, and The Which knew that her time had come. She only had a moment to hope that there would be no pain.

The orb lunged forward, sending the needle into the polished amber stone embedded in The Which’s forehead. It penetrated the gem easily, little more than a puff of shrapnel and a spark to mark its passing. Her skull and brain provided even less resistance.

ELEVEN

A comet creased the blackness of space, streaking past the jagged bulk of the planet Indira. King Xander the Firm, watching through a telescope, barely registered the celestial phenomenon, seeing it as little more than an irritating distraction, searching instead for less brilliant but more foreboding heavenly bodies. His straining eyes caught sight of them, the three moons of Indira just emerging from beyond the half-curve of the broken planet. Though he knew that they were inevitable, the sight of them filled him with fresh terror. He stared so intensely that he could see the slow rotation of the planet that held them tethered and turned them toward their predestined places in the Aurora Constellation.

An immense scraping sound filled his head. It was as if the very planetary plates were shifting beneath him, groaning in cataclysmic complaint. He knew it was only his imagination, but he imagined that it was the sound that had preceded the Great Schism and heralded a world torn asunder. King Xander, ashen and shaken, reluctantly tore his eye away from the massive telescope.

“I can feel the heavens moving,” he muttered to himself, turning to the audience of three gathered in the observatory.

Queen Nor, Chancellor Olaf and The Why of Mist Tier all looked up expectantly. They had stood quietly while Xander had peered pensively through the high-powered lens of the telescope. Now, they almost looked bored.