Her reflection was scarlet, eyes gleaming with an animal’s shine, and as she muttered the final words the face reflected in the mirror melted, becoming an anonymous amalgam of facial features.

It took some time for her words to reach the other sanguimancers, but eventually Wyn’s reflection began to warp: her face melted into another, and another, and another. Four bloodwitches reflected at once, merging into a single visage, neither male nor female, the features constantly shifting depending on the speaker.

“Magus Olwyn,” a woman’s voice said, and the face in the mirror rippled, taking on darker hair, a higher forehead, a blockier nose.

The nose thinned, the lips grew fuller: “Ancestors, don’t tell me that’s Foria I see behind you. What about the treaty?”

“We’re in rather dire straits,” Wyn sniffed, and the face in the mirror took on her features once more. “To put it very simply, the Lady of the Rift is in Forian territory, likely captured by Thurn Hakkon. He’s made quite a few wargs since last year, my friends. We need your help.”

The face shifted, becoming more masculine, and a man’s deep voice boomed out. “Is there a reason Lord Bane couldn’t just… find a new one?”

There was a long silence.

One of the more effeminate faces winced. “Not everyone despises their wives as much as Wroth despises his, Bram. But Olwyn, the treaty… did she cross the border of her own accord?”

“No,” Wyn said softly. “No, she was abducted from our territory and brought by force. We have the ways and means to track her, and find Hakkon into the bargain, but we’re not enough. The legions are several days’ march behind us. But… he has made many new wargs, brothers and sisters. I don’t know how many. But Bane is going to retrieve her or die trying, I can tell you that.”

The bloodwitches went silent in our mirror, the face becoming anonymous again; long minutes passed as they informed the Lords they served that we were using our last, most desperate hope, relaying the situation.

The face in the mirror jittered, warping strangely; Wroth’s voice came through.

“Bane?”

“I’m here.” I leaned over Wyn’s shoulder, and between the bloodwitches and two fiends, the reflection took on proportions that were almost sickening.

“I’m coming, brother,” he said. “Wait for me.”

The leonine features of the face disappeared. He was loyal, my first brother; I owed him in ways I would never be able to repay.

I closed my eyes, even as Bram’s voice echoed out onto the plains. “Well, he’ll be there soon, Wyn. He’s not going to listen to anything I say, anyway.”

Bram vanished, and the reflection became entirely feminine.

The one with the dark hair took over, sniffing with disapproval, but her words gave me unexpected hope. “Lord Voryan wishes me to express his desire for Lord Bane to wait for his arrival, and to save him some blood.”

Two of my brothers, ready and willing to break the treaty.

Pebble by pebble, the mountain of despair crushing me down began to dislodge, sliding away.

Voryan’s bloodwitch vanished, and the reflection was soon only a mix of Wyn and Andrus’s bloodwitch.

“Andrus is…” The bloodwitch paused. “He’s already calling for prisoners. I daresay he’ll be leaving soon.”

“Thank the ancestors,” Wyn said, slumping with relief. “Thank you, Cyrene.”

Indeed. I silently wished my brothers a safe journey and a thousand blessings upon their heads.

Cyrene watched her evenly. “This is very bad,” she murmured. “If Radomil chooses to retaliate… it’s been ten years, and we’ve hardly made a dent in repairing the damage of the war…”

“If Radomil retaliates, I’ll be pleased to remind him that he allowed Hakkon to go free,” Wyn snapped. “He allowed the wargs a foothold in his country. We’re merely cleaning up his mess.”

Cyrene sighed. “True, and yet politics and borders are not a question of truth, are they? Andrus will no doubt be there by daybreak. I would come, but the girl here… requires careful tending.”

“Ah. Good luck to you, then.”

Cyrene snorted, her face beginning to fade from the mirror and leaving Wyn’s reflection clear. “You need better luck than me. All I do is keep her asleep. Ancestors guide you, Lord Bane.”

She vanished entirely, and Wyn lowered the mirror, staring into the flames.

Visca draped her arm over her shoulders. “Two days, then, at the most. Our legions will be with us, and all the fiends.”

I shook my head, ready to refute the idea of waiting, but my bloodwitch did exactly what I paid her to do and scowled at me. “Kindly keep your mouth shut, Bane. I still need to repair these damn golems, and you’re better off with the other fiends at your back.”

It was difficult to hold still, but I looked at my most trusted advisors, really looked at them: despite the blood she’d drunk, her fresh youth, Wyn’s eyes were bloodshot, and Visca was lacking her usual energy.

They were tired. Nobody had slept in days; nobody had truly stopped to feed and replenish themselves. I had already burned up a severe amount of the blood I’d glutted in my headlong flight towards Foria, and there were no prisoners to feed from here.

And Wyn’s work wasn’t over, nor was mine. I would not be able to close my eyes until Cirri was safe at home, but if I wanted all my people to come home alive, I needed them to be functional.

“Very well.” I settled into the grass where Cirri’s scent was thickest, trying to shove aside the voice screaming in my mind that she was dying right now, she was bleeding, she was hurt…

She was valuable, and I needed every weapon at my disposal to find and retrieve her.

Wyn handed the mirror to Visca and stood, blade and box in hand. She returned to the golems, frowning down at their mutilated forms, and began rummaging through vials of ingredients in the box.

“Powdered bone of a virgin goat… tears of a dry river,” she muttered, selecting vials as she knelt. “A thorn plucked from the paw of a lion, and the sole of a wanderer’s shoe.”

She sprinkled dust and thorns into their bodies, and finally set aside her box, opening her wrist again with a soft hiss.

“Come here, Bane,” she gritted out. “Your blood is required for this, too.”

I offered my wrist, hardly feeling the cut of the blade, and watched as my blood dripped black into their forms.

“Lovely. Now go away,” she said, leaning over her work.

Her mutterings followed me back to the fire; I watched sleeplessly, taking the first watch as Visca curled up for a nap and Wyn whispered to the golems deep into the night.

I didn’t move a muscle until dawn rose. The fire was burned out to cinders; Wyn was curled in the grass beside the golems, sleeping soundly, her head resting on her pack as Visca circled the camp, her eyes fixed on the empty plains to the north.

When the first rays of light pierced the sky, I crept to the golems, lying in repose like corpses, the only sign of life the faint stirring of their component parts. Rose’s petals ruffled, shifted; Thorn’s body was like a nest of black snakes, the vines slowly creeping as they grew, splitting into newer, thinner vines that braided themselves back into the main body.

They were almost skeletal in appearance, their arms long and thin, their torsos withered. Rose’s petals were bruised so intensely that most of her was a purplish-black color. Only a few tattered petals retained their bright crimson edges.

In this state, they were a risk to hang all my hopes on, but they were all I had. Months might pass before I caught Cirri’s scent again in the vast, unpopulated expanse of northern Foria.

Patience, I told myself, watching as Rose’s body cannibalized itself to fill in the most necessary parts, moving so slow it was impossible to actually pick out any signs of progress.