Once.

Twice.

Three times the gun fired, the world around it lit up by the blasts of energy unleashed from its barrel.

And every time the starstone gun fired in Melissa's hand, a jolt of agony ran through Banshee's body as she threw herself in front of Ella.

The first one hit her side. The second hit her lower back, and when the third struck just below the bridge between her neck and her right shoulder, Banshee's grip on Ella was all that kept her upright.

Screams echoed through her head. The world was spinning. Her shadow shift hadn't protected her from the energy bolts that the gun fired but... but she'd protected Ella. That... that was all that mattered.

Banshee pushed through the foggy pain and tried to stand straighter but her legs were shaking, letting her down, just like at the competition when her body had shut down and collapsed but no--she wasn't falling. Ella was holding her up. Her hands were under Banshee's elbows, her faces inches from Banshee's, and she was speaking.

"Banshee?" she was saying.

Banshee blinked, trying to remember how her legs were supposed to work. She'd once been zapped by energy that was supposed to be equivalent to the stunning shots that starstone weaponry fired, but this was far, far worse.

"Banshee!" Ella's face snapped away, her gaze angry and directed over Banshee's shoulder. "What did you have that gun set to, you idiot? Do you have any idea what those energy blasts do to a Luminary? Especially while she was shadow shifted!"

Melissa's sneer infected her words. "She wasn't supposed to jump in front of the shots. She wasn't supposed to try and protect a traitor! Get her out of the way and accept your fate for all the damage you've done to this city, Ella!"

Banshee's world spun as Ella pulled her back, sat her down and leaned her up against a branch four times thicker than their waists combined. Ella's hands steadied Banshee's shoulders before her fierce gaze flicked to the side--no, to her hand, where the fragment still dangled from its chain.

Banshee tried to lift a hand to reach out for Ella's wrist, but her muscles spasmed and all she managed was a weak, "No, Ella, don't--"

Her tattoo went cold.

The shock of the frozen core now resting on her chest with the after effects of the gun's blasts still causing havoc through her body left Banshee gasping for breath.

But Ella was still before her and still very much Ella. She wasn't Manifested. There was no Serpent aura, so who--

Below them, Melissa's voice sang out.

"You will come down from the tree you attempt to make your haven and face justice, Ella Spiritcaller, once Spirit of Skypillar, and Banshee, now Shadow of Skypillar. One for her crimes against this city, and the second for protecting the one who would seek the destruction of others. Come, and let your crimes be avenged."

No longer were her words tilted by fury and fear. They were melodic and smooth, confident and sure, and they sent a chill through Banshee like no Manifested had before.

Ella closed her eyes, standing with her fragment clutched firmly between her fingers.

Banshee reached out for her with a little more success this time. "Ella--"

Melissa's voice rose, drowning Banshee out.

"If you will not come to face justice, then justice will come for you."

A golden flash of light banished the night, flaring bright as daylight for the quickest moment as the world shook in the wake of Melissa's blast.

Leaves rained down from the branches above them.

Andrew's voice. The kid now unbound and ungagged held over his shoulder, whimpering and clinging. "She's attacking the trunk! She'll bring it down!"

Yet another splash of daylight in what should have been the night time's territory.

Ella thrust her hand into the air above her, dark mist pouring from the fragment like the well-worn words that came from her mouth.

"Ascend, Spirit of Skypillar!"

Light flashed. Daylight spilled through the space around them. Leaves fell like the soft early snows as Hydra jumped out of the tree and Andrew was crouching, reaching for Banshee, asking if she could move, if she could get up. If she could move--not if she could fight. Because--because--

Banshee dragged herself over to the edge of the tree with no little amount of effort.

Ella stood proud, the white-blue glow of the three spirit heads sprouting from her back ready to fight.

The corrupted fragment hanging from her throat.

Across from her, a figure garbed in regal, golden armour faced her. Her long, black hair was pushed back off her face with a headband and left to sweep down her back. Deep, crimson material cascaded down from her back, rippling like she stood firm in a strong wind. She literally radiated light, both her skin and the twin starstone guns in her hands gleaming brighter than any temple light Banshee had ever seen.

The Manifested in golden armour pointed a gun towards Ella, who folded her arms when faced with the threat.

"Will you accept your fate, Ella Spiritcaller?" asked the Manifested, her second gun pointed towards the sky with a bent arm.

"I will accept my fate," said Ella, the heads behind her stirring to life. Melissa's light didn't touch her, eaten by the black void that hung from her throat. "My fate to erase your stain from this city, thief!"

--Because Ella and the Manifested that Melissa had become were now fighting to the death.

As Andrew grabbed Banshee's arm, pulling her to her feet, away from the tree, back to the bridges, he asked the same question that was running through her own mind.

Where was Cryo?

*+*+*+*

Cryo made it to the child's house quickly.

It wasn't hard to locate. The group of concerned neighbours that had gathered out the front, drawn in by either the sight of the child fleeing previously or the news that was spreading like wildfire through the streets. An apartment on the third floor that wasn't answering their doorbell in the lobby when it was rung.

"Stand back," said Cryo, well aware of the impact his appearance had as he dropped from the sky to stand among them. "Please remain as far from the building as you can until I deem it safe. Your continued safety is vital to my concentration."

With murmurs of yes, Cryophoenix, the crowd moved away, those that lingered with their Liaisers pointed directly at him soon ushered by some of the more enthusiastic civilians nearby.

He entered the lobby.

It was quiet but well lit. Cryo made his way forward, his eyes flicking in every direction for the slightest hint of movement. The elevator sign flashed, indicating it was out of order, stuck somewhere in the higher floors.

He took the stairs.

Wings back, he advanced, careful to keep them from scraping against the walls on either side of him, but he couldn't help the thud of each footfall as his claws came down on the carpeted stairs. Placing them was awkward enough, given that his flattened talons took up far more space than his regular feet, and it was likely that sound that alerted the family that lived on the first floor.

When the door swung open, Cryo whirled around, the temperature of the air around him plummeting, but there was no need. A man stood behind the door, now shivering, his hands going to brace his arms against the sudden cold.

"Cryophoenix?" he asked.

"I would ask you and those with you evacuate the building until further notice," said Cryo, indicating down the stairs. "Immediately."

The man's mouth opened, but he snapped it shut and dashed back inside the house, calling to the others inside.

Cryo didn't wait for the man and his family to leave, instead continuing up, one awkward claw at a time as he envied Banshee's relative lack of talons and wings.

He evacuated the second-floor family with a quick knock and explanation in the doorway.

The woman's face drained of Colour. "The Other? Here? In--in our building?" Her hand flew to her face, fingers trembling. "Oh--oh Skypillar, I'm sorry, I haven't attended the Offerings in so long but--but it's been busy and money's been short and--Oh, oh this is all my fault!"

"Ma'am, Skypillar has not taken offense to you," said Cryo, attempting to imitate Banshee's calming tone, but that only seemed to panic the woman more.

She dashed back into the house, barely hearing his words, screaming for two girls he assumed were her children. Their mother's obvious terror only sparked theirs, and soon enough, Cryo had a screaming, terrified child that couldn't have been older than five that refused to leave her house.

Cryo stood in the corridor, his back against the wall opposite the doorway, trying to figure out how Banshee would have handled it--but he knew that. She would have run over to the child, scooped her up in her arms and touched her nose with the tip of her finger, telling her that the Other couldn't get her if a Luminary was hugging her. She would have had the child out in a heartbeat and been up the stairs already.

As Cryo managed to gather his courage and step inside the apartment, the man who'd answered the door at the first floor appeared. He gave Cryo a nod and ducked inside without a word, half running over to where the child now hid behind the couch.

"Hey, silly," said the man. "We gotta go. Cryophoenix is here to protect us, and Banshee will probably be right outside! You wanna see Banshee, don't you? Remember what Amy told you the other day, about the Crayons? Come on, you won't be able to see her if you're hiding in here!"

And the girl went.

Before the man disappeared downstairs after the mother and her second child, he turned back to Cryo.

"Don't worry about evacuating the upper three. Five is on holiday for another week, four is already outside and I think three is out of town too. Haven't seen them in a few days, but it might be worth it just to check. Not uncommon for them to just disappear though."

Cryo inclined his head. "Thank you for the assistance."

"Skypillar with you, Cryophoenix."

Once more, Cryo was left alone in the stairwell that now felt far too eerie, knowing that Banshee wasn't a few metres away ready to cover him, and that he was truly on his own.

He took the stairs two at a time, picking up his speed.

They seemed to go on forever. He could have sworn there was only thirty or so stairs between the floors, even with the way it boxed around itself, always ending up on the same side when he reached an apartment door. Thirty stairs per floor--and it felt like he'd just gone up about a hundred since the second floor.

Confused, Cryo grabbed the solid railing with his taloned hands and looked down the centre.

He couldn't see the ground.

Cryo leaned further forward, trying to determine whether perhaps it'd just gone dark, but the stairs below him were endless, spiralling down and down and down into a void until he could no longer make them out. Up was the same, only he was looking at the undersides of the stairs instead.

He fired off a piece of ice towards the ground, listening for the sound of it shattering... but nothing came.

Cryo stepped away, placing his back against the wall. He needed to think. He knew he hadn't gone up that many stairs. There was no way it was possible. His head was aching, like he'd run into a wall without any regard for stopping. He frosted the area over, dulling the ache.

His eyes narrowed. Why was there a railing there? On the previous levels, he'd had to be careful not to scrape his wings against the walls--on both sides. So why now did only one side have a wall, and if there'd been a wall on the lower levels... then why, just now, had he been able to see the stairs below while looking down the centre? He was sure that back at the lobby, the stairs had appeared to wind around the elevator shaft.

Cryo reached out, towards the empty space above the railing that guarded one edge of the stairs.

When they should have met air, they met a solid, starstone wall.

The world rippled, like the fabric of reality was torn apart by some higher being, the chuckle of which echoed through his head.

Cryo shook his head. Hallucinations, Harpy had said. The Serpent could use hallucinations. He cursed the Other and ran up the steps, constantly glancing at the wall. How long had he been running up those stairs, desperate to get to the third floor? Had he been moving at all? Had he--

He stopped dead as he came to an apartment door marked with a giant '3'.

He didn't know why it stopped him dead. He didn't know why it threw him so off balance. Banshee would have been able to ignore it. To push through it, but him? A number on the door stopped him dead, and he had no idea why.

The Serpent can use hallucinations.

On his emotions? On his thoughts, his head, or just his eyes? Was his mind safe? Cryo couldn't bring himself to trust anything. Couldn't make a decision. Couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't--

Two taps echoed across his tattoo--Banshee had found Ella.

Gestures that the Serpent doesn't know about.

Cryo drew a deep breath, faced the door, and twisted the handle to find the door unlocked.

It was dark inside. No lights were on. The thick curtains were pulled over the windows, letting in only a thin beam of light that spilled across the floor like a lost sunbeam. The apartment itself seemed fairly neat. There were no signs of a struggle. Not a piece of furniture or ornament out of place, not even--wait.

He drew level with the place where the hallway split left and right, and though the right was just as dark as the rest of the house, the left--a sliver of light peeked out from under the door.

Cryo approached carefully, making extra sure to contain his noise where possible. He leaned an ear against the door, holding his breath, closing his eyes, listening for the faintest sound of life. Ella wouldn't be here, but had she left the family?

Nothing--but he had another idea.

Cryo lifted a hand, calling the air around him to frost the walls.

A few seconds passed and he thought he was out of luck when someone on the other side of the door spoke.

"Temperature's down," whispered a male voice he didn't recognise. His words were followed by what sounded like a shiver, then hands running over skin, like he'd rubbed her arms. "Honey, I--"

"Shh," whispered a female voice. Then, a little louder, the syllables stressed like she knew Cryo was listening. "You know what she said. No noise, or her... friend here drops the eleva--"

Something hissed, and the woman fell silent.

After a few more moments of silence, Cryo stepped back, allowing himself to gently release the breath he'd been holding.

It wasn't a Manifested in the room--his tattoo wasn't cold, but it could be a Shimmer.

The elevator being dropped was obviously a threat. It had seemed out of order when he'd arrived, and maybe that wasn't intentional. The child at the temple that'd delivered the note had mentioned siblings, and he wouldn't put it past a Manifested like Ella to set up such a trap.

Cryo left the apartment for the elevator door on floor three. It indicated that it was still above him, still stuck and out of order as the sign indicated, so up he went.

At the fifth floor door, he pushed the button to manually open the doors.

The doors slid open, but the elevator was empty.

Cryo stepped inside, wings ready, checking every inch of the starstone-crafted box with both hands in case it was another hallucination. He called out, asked anyone who could hear him to tap on something three times, to push a piece of ice across the floor that he laid down, but in the end, Cryo was as certain as he could be that there was no one else in here.

Still, as he left, he froze the elevator to the shaft with a thick layer of ice, just to be sure.

As he walked back to the apartment, wings pulled in, claws carefully placed, he felt five taps across his tattoo.

Banshee needed him, but he couldn't leave two hostages to their own devices.

With a curse to the Other's name, Cryo ran back inside the apartment, careless of noise as he announced his presence to any who might have been listening.

A hiss. A scream. He flung open the door with the voices on the other side. Two people, a man and a woman, sat in the corner, clinging to each other, screaming, pressing themselves against the walls as the giant, black mass of mist on the other side of the room, right by the streetside window with the slightest gap in the corners, began to take shape.

A Shimmer.

Cryo didn't give it a chance to react. He froze a wall of ice down the centre of the room, sealing the Shimmer down one end as he turned to face its captives.

"Is there anyone else in the house?"

The man seemed to be in shock, but the woman practically crawled towards Cryo, struggling to pull her husband to his feet. "In the elevator! Hydra--said that if--she'll drop the elevator! Our daughter, she's in there, Hydra could get back any minute--"

"Hydra lied," said Cryo. "She isn't here, and there was no one in the elevator."

The woman nodded, but Cryo could see her own shock setting in. "O--Our son, Aaron, she took him out earlier tonight too--"

"He delivered a message to the temple," said Cryo, his attention largely focused on his wall of ice, expecting the Shimmer to break it down at any moment. "He is the reason I am here at all. Get to street level. I'll deal with this."

He stood guard for the few moments it took them to escape the room.

Then, with a multi-headed spear of ice in his hand, Cryo punctured his own frozen blockade.

He raised the spear, ready to pierce the Shimmer's hidden fragment, but the Shimmer's side of the room was empty and the window was open. With yet another curse, Cryo ran a few steps to the window, half expecting the Shimmer to ambush him, half wishing it would purely so it he could deal with it and get to Banshee.

Come to me, Cryophoenix.

The voice echoed among his thoughts, clear, crystalline and foreign.

On the roof, Cryophoenix. Come to me.

With a strange compulsion, Cryo dropped his spear and strode back out into the stairwell. He took the stairs two at a time, his gaze locked nowhere but above him, his steps careless of his claws and his wings, scraping along the walls to leave a fine shaving of frost on anything they touched.

Come to me.

Fourth floor. Fifth. He reached the door that led out to the roof and swept through it in a storm of frozen breaths, kept in until that moment because he didn't dare breathe. He didn't dare do anything but move, beckoned towards that voice and its irresistible call.

Come to me.

The Shimmer stood there, barely five metres away. The sight of it was enough to snap Cryo out of it, freezing another spear to his hands to defend himself, but the Shimmer didn't seem interested in attacking him.

Instead, it held out a hand, beckoning him over with a finger.

Come to me, Cryophoenix.

Some deep part of him knew he shouldn't, but he stepped forward. Five metres became four. Four became three, until in the blink of an eye, Cryo stood an arm's length from the Shimmer's form with the tip of his spear resting square on the Shimmer's chest.

The Shimmer didn't have a solid form, exactly. Rather, its black mist merely had a vaguely humanoid shape, and without knowing its face, Cryo knew exactly what it looked like. He couldn't have reproduced it had he been the most talented artist the world had known, but he knew what it looked like.

A different face, whispered the voice, directly inside Cryo's head. But I know your spirit, just as you know mine.

And he did. Cryo knew this voice. This face. This presence.

Come to me, Cryophoenix, the voice said yet again. I know you remember.

The Shimmer raised a hand, oblivious to the spear,

And Cryo... Cryo wanted to take it.

Together, we will remember. You were never meant to be apart. You were stolen. You are mine, just as Skypillar intended it to be.

The spear slipped through Cryo's fingers, suddenly too heavy to hold. He didn't need it. Raising a weapon against--against--it felt like raising a weapon against his partner. It was wrong. Partners were never meant to fight each other. Not like this.

Come back to me.

Cryo lifted a hand, the icy claws encasing his hands brushing against the top of the Shimmer's mist-formed palm.

Come back to--

A tap, almost so weak that he missed it, echoed across his tattoo.

The voice was still speaking to him, still calling his name, but Cryo could no longer hear it. His head was roaring, his mind a storm stirred by the lightning crack of the next tap.

He'd forgotten. He'd abandoned her. He'd left her to deal with Ella by herself. Dark emotions swept over him, tightening his fingers into fists. Once more, he was a failure, a liability, an--

A third tap, so slow. So much softer than usual.

Cryo could barely breathe.

Banshee hadn't beaten Ella.

She still needed him.

Without a spear, Cryo plunged his hand into the Shimmer's chest. His talons pierced the black mist of the Shimmer's form easily and it screamed as he reached around inside of it, blindly seeking the fragment in its chest.

The Shimmer's hand reached out, latching onto Cryo's arm, trying to pull him out. Cryo readied himself to fend it off, to push it back, but the Shimmer just watched him with a helpless, hatred-tinted expression. Malevolence radiated from its form but it simply stood there, watching, waiting, right up until Cryo's fist closed around the Shimmer's fragment and crushed it.

Agony shot up every nerve in his arm.

With a strangled cry, Cryo pulled his hand back, clutching his wrist. Green liquid oozed through his fingers from the broken shards of the fragment's shell, eating away at the ice encasing his hand like acid. In seconds it was through to the skin underneath, scorching the flesh like he'd thrust his hand into an open flame.

A fourth tap.

In a frenzy he shook off the liquid, but the damage was done. Where the liquid had touched, angry, red blisters covered his arm, but his rash course of action had yielded success. The Shimmer staggered, losing shape with every breath Cryo dragged from his lungs as its black mist drifted back off into the night air, invisible against the dark curtain of sky blanketing the city.

Cryo stepped back, still holding his wrist. He tried to refreeze the gauntlet of ice around his arm, hoping it would soothe the pain, but the ice he froze refused to meld with that still on his arm.

It didn't matter. The damage was on the underside of his arm. His wings froze to the outsides--and that still worked well enough. He had to get to Banshee--now.

With his acid-burning arm still bathed in agony, Cryo took off.

Almost like she could hear his thoughts, her fifth and final tap echoed across his tattoo, but this one wasn't like the previous four. He felt her finger come down on the centre of the tattoo. He felt it linger there, its pressure lifting only slightly before it slid straight down the centre of his chest.

Like she simply didn't have the strength to lift it off anymore.

*+*+*+*

A/N - Cryo's had his first encounter with... something. 

Question is, what did this delay cost him--and Banshee? 

~ Happy New Year ~

My resolution this year: Rewrite and edit Mythic, then query it to publishers. I'm telling all of you this so I can't back out. I'm terrified. Yay! 

Anyone else have resolutions, especially writing ones? <3