A wave of sand shot up from the sandsea beneath. Seiren dived and rolled, jarring her shoulder. The sand whipped the exterior of the rig, tearing away the peeling rust. The man yelled, stumbling back. Madeleine's hand shot out and grabbed Seiren's wrist before yanking her to her feet. The sandsea rippled and a copper-coloured tail broke the surface and lashed, sending another wave towards them. Madeleine clapped her hands together and threw out a fist. A gust of wind tore past them and buffeted the stream of sand. Out of the corner of her eye, Seiren caught sight of another being awakening beneath the sand.

"Run!" she whispered. Madeleine didn't need to be told twice. She stumbled, catching her toe on the floor, and raced ahead blindly. The compass had long disappeared into the sandsea along with their other belongings. The sun cast shadows from above. The man dashed in their direction, his face pale with terror. Huge creatures swam beneath. One tore through the surface, arcing over the metal sky bridge. Shiny coppery skin stretched over its skeleton, its eyes sunken and half-rotten. Spiny teeth protruded from its mouth, criss-crossing in a terrible scissor bite. A long tail lashed the bridge, denting the metal surface with a rattle that shook from rig to rig.

Another one broke the surface and leapt at them. Madeleine screamed, clapping her hands together and throwing out a handful of fire. The flames licked the surface of the creature with no effect. Its mouth spread open, ready to devour.

Time slowed. Seiren sucked in a breath, her mouth dry, her skin tingling all over. Fear. This was fear. The future spun away from her. Madeleine's scream died in the roar in Seiren's ears. She turned to gaze into the endless abyss deep within the animal's throat. Her hands warmed. A surge of energy shot from her core, ricocheting in her body before finding an outlet in her palms. Glittering white light swirled in the cup of her hands and she reached back and threw it straight at the creature.

The ball shrank as it shot out, disappearing down the creature's throat.

The explosion sent a shudder throughout all the nearby rigs. Shreds of flesh and blood showered Madeleine and Seiren, spattering onto the wall of the rig behind them. They scrambled to their feet and scampered onwards, gasping. The remaining creatures came with increasing fervour, showering them with sand every time they broke the sand surface and leapt at then. A fatigue headache pulsed at the back of Seiren's mind. Her feet flew over the corrugated metal, skidding over the loose sand. Wind whistled in her ears and shadows flying overhead reminded her with every step how close she was to becoming sandsea fish dinner. Her flash magic blasted attack after attack, but even with the help of Madeleine's burst magic, there were only so many creatures they could kill. Sweat drenched and exhaustion crippled her.

The ground gave way. With a yell, Seiren landed on her front. The ground lurched, turning on its axis. Broken bits of the balcony rained into the sandsea. Panicked fingers found the rails running beside the balcony as Seiren slid backwards on her belly. Her fingers hooked around the rails and she yanked herself up, her muscles screaming in pain. At the front, Madeleine spun around and hollered her name. Seiren tugged herself up, rung by rung, towards Madeleine's outreached hand.

"Come on. You're almost there!" Madeleine shouted over the rustling beneath Seiren. Seiren squinted at her sister, at the encouragement on her face now her veil had fluttered away, at the plaits that had become loose from their escape. Seiren caught sight of movement just behind Madeleine.

"Watch out!" she yelled. Madeleine rolled away without a second glance. A dull thud followed by the screech of metal reached Seiren's ears. The hiss of fire and wind burst magic filled the air. Seiren focused on pulling herself up and not looking down her dangling feet, beneath which the ravenous sandsea creatures awaited their meal. Her palms were sweaty and slid over the peeling, rusty rails. Her muscles cried and burned with every contraction, but she forced them on.

She pushed herself up with her feet, rolling onto her back with a groan as she made it back onto the blissfully horizontal balcony. There was no time to rest. Her watering eyes caught sight of Madeleine, standing on the platform of the next rig, throwing fire and gusts of air at the insurgent, whose sleeves and headscarf had been ripped off, showing arms covered in gashes and a head of black hair, slick with sweat. He swung his dagger at Madeleine, forcing her to leap back with every jab. Fatigue was evident in Madeleine; her arms and legs trembled and her magic came less readily. The fire burnt with less energy and the wind was slow. Her reactions became sluggish, each swipe of the dagger getting closer to her front. The subsequent swipe tore a hole in the front of her robe. She gasped, head snapping up. The insurgent grinned in triumph. The next one would strike true.

Seiren leapt forward, forcing the panic to power her flash magic. Light swirled in her hand.

"Madeleine — duck!" she hollered. Energy coursed down her arms; her skin glowed as if she were a light rune. Magic tingled at her fingertips. She slammed the flash magic into the wall of the rig and forced her burning legs to run without waiting to see the result. With an ear-splitting crack, the metal exterior of the rig splintered. Black cracks snaked over its surface.

A heavy stench of cinnamon reached Seiren's nose. It was so concentrated her eyes watered.

"Madeleine!"

Viscous black liquid gushed out from the crevices, catching the insurgent straight in the side. He screamed, dropping his knife over the edge and clutching the barrier with blistering hands. Seiren watched with horrified eyes as his skin turned scarlet and peeled back, revealing fleshy pink innards, and dissolved away to show tendons and bone. The stink of burnt bacon mingled with the cinnamon, making Seiren nauseous. The cracks deepened and more liquid summoner's dust gushed out. Madeleine ducked and darted past her. The sandsea creatures leapt into the air, mouths wide open and dead eyes unseeing. Sand showered over Seiren. She shielded her eyes and threw out a hand for flash magic.

The emotions were there, but the energy had run almost down to nothing. Sucking in a breath, she spun her head around, looking for a knife, a weapon, anything to throw at the creatures descending upon her.

Nothing.

Her eyes fell on the liquid summoner's dust pooling on the surface of the platform. The arid atmosphere dried out the most distant parts of the puddle. She scooted forward and scooped up a handful with her long sleeves, trying her best not to touch the caustic stuff. Heat coated her palms, stabbing deep into her skin. She bit her lip and threw the unrefined dust in the air. The stench of cinnamon overwhelmed her senses. Tears coursing out of her eyes, she could only watch and pray, sitting on her knees, as the dust swirled before her, in the same manner as the summoners'. The dust contracted into a ball and then dispersed, revealing a vague, foggy outline of a large creature with broad shoulders and a hunched back. Sunlight straight fell through it. A mist appeared to coat its surface, making details indiscernible.

It turned to give Seiren a backward look. She couldn't make out any facial features, but its intention was clear. Go.

She ripped off her sleeve and scooped up a handful of crystallised summoner's dust into the folds, leapt onto her feet, and ran.

Whatever she'd summoned, it kept the creatures at bay. Seiren raced across the platform of the last rig and spotted Madeleine on solid ground, leaning against a sandstone cliff wall. All around, cliffs surrounded them, at least twenty storeys high. Sandsea creatures continue to leap into the air around the collapsed rigs, probably still seeking the source of the disturbance. Seiren turned to face the front and frowned. Madeleine clutched her right hand, her head hung low.

"What's wrong?" Seiren approached her. Madeleine shook her head with a shaky smile. "Show me."

Madeleine shook her head again.

"I'm fine. Just—"

Seiren tugged the sleeve back. Madeleine yelped. The sleeve peeled back — along with the skin over Madeleine's palm and wrist. Bile rose up Seiren's throat.

"Maybe watch where you throw that flash magic next time," Madeleine tried to joke. "Nothing a green rune can't... heal."

"We don't have any chalk or paper and that stuff scars. A green rune will just accelerate the scarring."

"What's a few scars? I have one here—" She pointed at her chin with her good hand. "—from when you pushed me over when we were kids—"

"Scarring over your hands is a different issue. Scar tissues tighten." Seiren was reminded vividly of Domic Butterworth's scarred face, where the taut skin pulled his eyelid half-shut and turned his mouth into a permanent grimace. No doubt the king's mages — and Kristen — would have tried their best with runes to heal his injuries. "If you want use of your hand in the future—"

"No. You're not using chaos magic."

"We have no choice. If I don't do it now, we won't get another chance. And if we're fighting Kristen and the Daemonium, I need you to be able to fight."

With a sigh, Madeleine acquiesced.

"You said Kommora said it eats up magic reserve, right?" she whispered. "I just... I don't want you to end up having nothing. It'll be permanent."

"It's not."

Madeleine stared at Seiren. "What?"

Seiren was quiet for several moments, focusing on ensuring the white energy evenly coated Madeleine's injury. When the celestial magic moved by itself in alignment with Madeleine's own life energy, Seiren withdrew and sat back.

"After I took away Kristen's magic and moved your soul into Maura's, my magic was gone. All of it. I couldn't summon a spark, couldn't activate an unprimed rune."

"I know. I saw."

"Then my magic came back. But it wasn't the same kind of magic as before." Seiren frowned, looking at her still-smoking fingertips. "It feels different. I don't know how to describe it."

Madeleine sighed with a hint of frustration and Seiren scowled at her.

"It's hard to describe, okay? I just knew something was different. So I experimented when I was in Teirrin."

"You—!" Madeleine's eyes bulged. Seiren held up both hands.

"I was ready to terminate my experiment at any point if it looked like things were going the wrong way, okay? And besides, I was doing it on myself, a consenting adult, not like what I did before in Bicknor—"

"What did you do?" Madeleine said through gritted teeth.

"I used celestial magic. I healed those who were the worst injured from working in the wasteland and those injured by animals, but people die in Teirrin on a pretty regular basis – that place is just too dangerous. And once a week, every week, I would then use up all my magic reserve in flash magic just to see how much magic reserve I had left from using celestial magic -- chaos magic, whatever you want to call it -- to heal."

"That explains why you've gotten so good at summoning flash when needed." Madeleine shook her head in disbelief. "But this could have gone so wrong."

"What? It's not like Teirrin was going to become any less of a ruin if I didn't blast flash at it."

Madeleine gave her a stony stare.

"Look, if there was the tiniest suggestion my magic reserve was falling, I'd stop. But it didn't fall. Ten bombs. That was my maximum. I could make ten bombs the size of my fist every week for the five months I was there. It still is ten! Nothing changed, even though I healed people every week." Seiren paused. "Well, actually, I could almost make eleven now. Practice meant improvement and all."

"Kommora's wrong? That's impossible. If she said—"

"Kommora only knew as much as whoever gave chaos magic to Loren in the first place. Kommora isn't a chaos magic user. Chaos magic has barely been studied. Why couldn't she be wrong?" Seiren shrugged. "My theory is, ever since my magic was used up, what's been replenished isn't the old magic, but celestial magic."

"Like... like the original magic?"

"Yeah. I have Loren's chaos magic – that's the original celestial magic, right? And... maybe since I used up almost all of my old one, the chaos magic just... repopulated my core. So I'm using almost solely chaos -- celestial -- magic now. It would explain why my healing doesn't use up my magic reserve permanently like Kommora said. As long as there's life and death to catalyse it properly, I can use it pretty much unlimited. Well. As unlimited as my own endurance can hold."

Madeleine frowned. "But when we were at the cells seeing Jarsdel. Kommora's nullifier affected you but not me. If I wasn't affected because I'm made of celestial energy, how come you were?"

"The change." Seiren flexed her fingers. "It's still changing, every day. There's still some original magic left in me."

"But that's... crazy."

"Yeah, well, you got a better idea?"

Madeleine was about to retort, but sighed instead.

"Fine. Whatever." She stood up, her hand still encased in the cocoon of chaos magic. "Let's go. We still have to walk the remainder of the way."

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