Cryo searched the City with complete disregard for how dangerously close the sun was dipping to the horizons.

Skinwalker could not simply have disappeared.

He'd been directly on her trail, regardless of Adande's attempts to ward him off with a few paltry Lightblaster shots. Cryo had lost sight of them for seconds--seconds--and somehow, that had been enough for them to vanish. With Adande's previous use of secret passages, Cryo had checked the buildings that shared walls with the alley, but none of the walls were thick enough to contain one, and every room had contained people that swore Banshee had not passed through.

It had taken a lot for him to simply believe them and walk away without ensuring they were not lying, but Banshee--the real Banshee--would never have forgiven if he'd resorted to the first truth-ensuring tactics that had come to his mind.

So, he'd walked away and continued searching every corner in every building, alley, and street for clues. He looked for another broken window, more footsteps in the snow, or another scream about a Manifested but kept coming up with nothing.

But Skinwalker could not have just disappeared.

At the sound of wingbeats below him, Cryo glanced down to find Pegasus steadily rising to Cryo's height.

Cryo stopped in the air and waited for Pegasus to level with him.

"Hey, Cryo!" said Pegasus, voice loud over the sound of frantic wings, desperately flapping to keep him steady in the air. His ponytail was a windswept mess, and the open slit of his shirt fluttered in the wind. "Look, I know you wanna keep searching, but the auroras will be out within the hour and we've got stuff to do back at the Starlight Hall."

"Proceed without me," said Cryo, looking away. "I have several areas yet left to search."

"Okay but like, we need your help getting Wyvern back to the Hall," said Pegasus quickly. "He's our only lead, so we gotta make sure that uh, he doesn't... get away or anything! Plus Nere and I are having a hard time cracking that ice cage you put him in."

Cryo hesitated. It did make sense, securing the lead they had. When he felt for his snow, he could still sense Wyvern standing on the snow in the icy cage Cryo had left him in. Once the other Luminaries had arrived, he'd tasked Nereid and Pegasus to watch him. "Have the temple grounds been secured?"

"Yup," said Pegasus. "Fae sent us a message--well, a little while ago now--and said she and Golem had finished restraining the attackers. Temple grounds are totally secure. We gotta get him back to the temple before auroras come and we can't fly and stuff and--"

"I understand," said Cryo, taking one, last look at the buildings beneath him and praying to the peak that he hadn't simply missed Skinwalker in some corner. "Let us go."

Cryo swooped down, closely followed by Pegasus, who rode the tail end of Cryo's icy breeze. A puff of snow clouded the air as Cryo landed, claws digging deep into the starstone to steady himself, before he headed inside the narrow tunnel and into the building where Wyvern was held.

"You have to let me out!" demanded Wyvern. "Banshee is out there somewhere, and she's half dead! The Serpent's lot will be hunting her down by now, and if you don't help her he's gonna torture her all over again!"

Nereid was inside the side room with Wyvern, standing in a corner she'd cleared of snow. She gave Wyvern a collected look before she switched her attention to Cryo. Her fins with their spines pulled close to each other, were the only outward sign that she was uncomfortable.

"I'm glad you came down, Cryo," she said. "I was--"

Cryo ignored her, walking straight up to the cage, where Wyvern was sitting on the upturned starstone box, wrapped in a blanket and glaring at Cryo. "Hold your hands together so I can restrain them before we move you."

"Or what?" said Wyvern with a sneer. "You'll bury me in snow and suffocate me like you did to your partner?"

"That was not my partner," said Cryo. "It was a Manifested Skinwalker, posing as my partner in an attempt to manipulate me. I'll only ask once more. Give me your hands."

Wyvern pulled his blanket closer, hunching his shoulders. "I don't think I feel like it."

"Then you leave me no choice," said Cryo.

Wyvern's posture became defensive as Cryo stepped forward without pause, the movements already planned in his head that would pin Wyvern down and restrain him with minimal fuss, when Nereid jumped in front of him.

"What are you doing?" she said, her voice pitched higher than usual. "Cryo, you look like you're about to kill him, not restrain him."

"I would do no such thing." Nereid relaxed a little until Cryo followed it with: "He has information that I require, and is of no use to me if he cannot speak."

Nereid's fins flared, her eyes firmly locking on Cryo's. "You can't hurt him, Cryo."

"I won't have a reason to hurt him if he cooperates."

"Not good enough," said Nereid. "We're Luminaries, we're stronger than him, we don't need to--"

Cryo narrowed his eyes at the defiance in her voice. The air swirled cold. "I have no problem with removing any obstacles I find in my way through whatever means necessary, Nereid."

Nereid's fins went flat against her head.

"Okay, nope," said Pegasus, his hooves stomping against the floor as he took three steps over and placed himself in front of Nereid. He folded his arms over his chest and held Cryo's gaze. "DragonFae said you'd probably be weird, but you don't threaten my partner."

"I didn't threaten her. I simply--"

"Nope, that was a threat," said Pegasus, cutting Cryo off. It wasn't often that Pegasus felt tall, but right now, literally under Pegasus's glare, Cryo felt the difference in height. "You're going through some stuff, fine, but if you take it out on Nereid, me and you are gonna have a problem." He pointed a finger at the door. "You back off and get outside. We'll restrain Wyvern and bring him out."

Cryo held his gaze. "And what if I say no?"

Pegasus's wings unfurled with his arms and a warm, phantom breeze stirred his hair, but it was Nereid who spoke.

"Then Banshee is going to be disappointed when she gets back," said Nereid quietly. "This isn't you, Cryo. It's the frost. Skinwalker wasn't only trying to ruin Banshee today."

Banshee. Cryo closed his eyes, forcing the ice that was coming too easily to his fingers back down into the abyss it rose from. He felt for the warmth, the spark he'd left at his core and let it grow, let it begin to thaw the protective cold around his heart.

Before he could give himself a chance to relapse, Cryo tucked his wings in tight and walked outside.

He flew to the nearest skyshrine and summoned a Gleamerbike carriage to escort Wyvern back, forcing himself to focus on that and not the fact that he honestly wasn't sure if he'd have acted on his impulse in that room.

I promised myself that I would not freeze. I thought I had it under control.

Ten minutes later, Nereid and Pegasus emerged with Wyvern bound in a thick rope of Pegasus's cloud from wrist to shoulder. It wasn't his ultimate, and as such, the rope still appeared fluffy, something that Wyvern did not look happy about.

Cryo swallowed his guilt as they approached. "How did you remove him from the cage?"

"Pegasus sliced it open," murmured Nereid, helping Wyvern into the carriage. From the other side, Pegasus was still giving Cryo the evil-eye. "We never had a problem getting through it. We just needed a logical reason to get you to come down."

"Ah. I see," said Cryo. The frost was still there, still lurking, still numbing him to everything, but it was no longer enough to ignore the droop of Nereid's fins. "I apologise for my earlier actions. I was entirely out of line."

"At the mercy of your powers and all that," said Nereid with a shrug, but she didn't look at him. She glanced at Pegasus, who was talking to the driver. "Just don't do it again. If you hurt Pegasus while he's defending me, I swear on the peak of Skypillar that you will regret it."

With that, Nereid climbed into the carriage beside Wyvern and signalled for them to go.

Cryo flew behind.

*+*+*+*

They reached the Starlight Hall without so much as a snide comment from Wyvern's mouth.

Once there, they led Wyvern into the Starlight Hall, where a High Stonespeaker met them and explained that Golem and DragonFae were just dealing with a disruption from the captives would be with them shortly.

Pegasus huffed and then reluctantly looked to Cryo. "Do we take Wyvern upstairs?"

Cryo nodded, then followed them up the stairs to the common room. Once up there, the four of them sat down and remained in silence, waiting as the minutes passed by for DragonFae and Golem to arrive.

Eventually, Wyvern cleared his throat. "Seriously, what kind of attack happened here that takes DragonFae and Golem more than two minutes to deal with the prisoners?"

"Some of the attackers had powers," muttered Pegasus. "Powers like us, just really toned down. They were all human."

Wyvern snorted, but it was the first Cryo had heard of it. He'd assumed it'd been Shimmers that'd launched the attack, not actual people. "Can you elaborate?"

Pegasus shuffled his wings and looked away, which left Nereid to explain it with her hands pressed tight into her lap. "After you flew off after Skinwalker, one of the crowds at the Taori gate rushed the Pillarguards. We thought they just had Lightblasters, that it'd be a simple matter to clean them up and follow you, but then one of them shot flames out of her hands. No other starstone technology, just straight up fire from nowhere like she was a Phoenix."

"What other powers did they display?" asked Cryo.

Nereid ran a hand over her arm fins, scraping the water off with the side of her palm and dripping it on the floor. "Lightning, like the kind Raiju uses. One was firing off glowing arrows with a Centaur's accuracy. A few used water, though that could've been like three different Luminaries. There were others, but they were more subtle. It was harder to tell what they were doing."

"How many?"

"Ten, maybe?" said Nereid. "They were mixed in with others who didn't seem to be using any Luminary-like abilities, but as I said, they could have simply been more subtle. It took us a while to figure out how to deal with them, even if their abilities weren't as strong as Pegasus, Fae, or Golem's."

"Seemed like they ran out of energy faster than us, too," said Pegasus. "At least two of them passed out all by themselves from the exertion."

"It could be tied to how the Serpent seems to Manifest ex-Luminaries into their previous forms," said Cryo. "Ella became Hydra again and her powers were far greater than any she'd possessed as a Luminary. Now we have Skinwalker, who appears to have been given the same treatment. It's likely that their previous bonds, created before they went Dark as Luminaries, gave them access to near-unlimited powers, unlike those who attacked today."

Wyvern gave a loud sigh. "Except there hasn't been a Skinwalker Luminary in a while, Cryo, so that theory is a little far-fetched." Pegasus and Nereid looked at each other, which sent a flicker of doubt across Wyvern's face. "What?"

"A Skinwalker Ascended before Pegasus and Nereid," said Cryo flatly. Exhaustion--not physical, but mental--was creeping over him. "The Serpent got to her and her partner and had them Dark before we knew they'd Ascended at all."

Wyvern stilled. "No. That's not possible. How?"

"You'll forgive me for saying that I can't trust you to be who you claim to be yet," said Cryo bluntly. "I see no reason to divulge further details, given that you were either working with Skinwalker earlier, or had been deceived by her into believing she was the real Banshee."

Wyvern ignored Cryo and pressed forward with a question. "Did you see Skinwalker's base form?"

Unable to see the harm in it, Cryo answered. "Yes."

"Did it have blood on its antlers?"

"I believe so. Why?"

Wyvern cursed. "Then it's killed someone. An innocent, or someone it cared about."

"It implied from a short conversation I had with it that the Serpent had forced it to kill its partner," said Cryo, almost wishing there'd been a little more frost than currently remaining in his chest. "It--she--doesn't seem to be willing to--"

"A Skinwalker killing someone is important because it means that Skinwalker is far more powerful than it'd be otherwise," said Wyvern, cutting Cryo off. "I don't know how that'd affect whatever the Serpent is doing to give them their powers back, but it's like you freezing over, or Banshee hitting Vengeance. Catch my drift?"

Pegasus and Nereid shared another confused look before glancing at Cryo for an answer, though it wasn't one he could give them. Neither of them were ready to learn about Luminary patterns and how it would potentially affect them later down the line, if they chose to maintain the responsibility. For now, they were already in far deeper than they should have been, thrown into a situation they had not created, but were now a part of regardless.

For the first time, he understood the position the other Luminaries had been in every time they'd kept Cryo and Banshee in the dark.

"I believe so," said Cryo. "Given that I cannot know when the other Luminaries will arrive, I'll ask now. What were you doing with Skinwalker, anyway?"

"It wasn't Skinwalker, though knowing one of them is running around makes sense of your idiocy today."

When Cryo continued to stare at him, Wyvern gave a resigned sigh and continued.

"That Banshee you found me with is the same one that's been driving me nuts for the last year with her ridiculous optimism. The Serpent found me a while back and offered me a place at his side, to help 'fix the world' or something equally stupid. I accepted, if only to see what he was up to, but then like, a week ago, the Serpent brings in Banshee, and..." Wyvern closed his eyes, his brows drawing close together with deep, pained wrinkles. "Skypillar. I've heard, seen, and done a lot of things in my time. I don't know what he showed her, but some of the things I heard her scream sent shivers down even my spine."

There was a roaring in Cryo's ears as the words came out of Wyvern's mouth. A roaring so loud that he could barely hear Wyvern as he kept speaking, as he told them about the Serpent bringing Banshee in front of an audience, about Wyvern coming-to with a knife in his hand and Banshee between it.

"Then Banshee... she did something she shouldn't have been able to do with her powers blocked. She shadow stepped both herself and me out of the Serpent's den and into that building in outer Cevinari, then passed out." Wyvern paused for a brief moment, almost like he was trying to calm himself. "I'd only managed to wake her up this morning, then I went to check our surroundings, heard something about Cryo hunting Banshee and heading for Cevinari and I assumed you were coming for us. I tried to move her, but you got there first."

Cryo could barely breathe, let alone speak.

You got there first.

No. No, he hadn't attacked Banshee. He hadn't been relieved as he'd smothered her in snow in his blind rage. He would have known, he would have been able to tell. He'd never considered that Banshee had escaped. Not even once.

Cryo was snapped out of his spiralling thoughts by a soft hand on his wrist.

He looked up at Pegasus, who held pity in his eyes.

"Hey," said Pegasus. "We still don't know if this guy is actually Wyvern or just another Serpent trick. There's no Serpent aura around, so he's Shimmer-free, but this guy could be Skinwalker dressed as Wyvern for all we know."

"Cryo saw me in the same room as his supposed 'Skinwalker' Banshee, so he knows I can't be. At worst, I'm lying."

But Cryo's doubts were eating him alive as every one of Skinwalker's words with Banshee's voice slammed into him again. She'd used the same words he'd have expected from his Banshee, the same expressions, the same confusion and hurt, then driven him further into a rage with a momentary slip from the persona, a cruel laugh or a taunt. She'd desensitised him until he no longer hesitated. She'd even stopped him from calling out with her final words: You just keep giving your position away every time you open your mouth, idiot.

Cryo didn't notice when exactly it was that DragonFae and Golem entered the room. He just knew that at one point, he looked up, and they were standing there, listening to Nereid summarise the conversation so far.

One of Wyvern's sentences kept echoing through his head.

Some of the things I heard her scream sent shivers down even my spine.

Cryo's back hit the wall behind him.

"What were you doing in the Serpent's domain anyway, Wyvern?" said Golem. "Strange place for you to be. We've been looking for you for weeks."

"Serpent approached me with a bunch of save the world with me crap," said Wyvern with a careless shrug. "I figured since I wasn't doing anything else useful and was rather expendable, I'd see what I could figure out about its plans from the inside. Never did get much though, most of the time he just talked about the mind being funny, shoved me in a few hallucinations, and otherwise let me roam around their main base. Not that I have any idea where that is, since I never left or entered it conscious."

"If Cryo's theory about the Serpent exploiting previous Luminary bonds to access Skypillar's power, you would have been a prime candidate," said DragonFae in a tone that gave no room for Wyvern's usual sass. "Is there anything you remember that would suggest that?"

"I just said, I have no idea what he was trying to do with me!" said Wyvern, slamming a hand down on the couch. Some still-alert part of Cryo realised they'd released him from Pegasus's Cloud restraints. "Apparently I was just there to torture Banshee, which brings me back to the important point--you don't have time to worry about theories, anyway! You need to get out there and find Banshee before the Serpent's lot do! She's half dead with no powers, and without you, that won't be changing any time soon! If he gets to her first, she's not going to survive a second round!"

Cryo's mind was on complete lockdown. He heard the words Wyvern was saying, knew he should be doing something about them, but the thoughts just didn't come. His heart sped up inside his chest, his body refused to move, he could barely catch his breath and this uncontrollable feeling of panic was swelling up his throat. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't suck in enough air.

Right when everything was about to drown him, another hand touched Cryo's arm, this time firm and rough.

"Cryo," said Golem gently as DragonFae spoke in the background, continuing the conversation like Cryo wasn't completely falling apart in the corner. "Let me help you sit down. I won't pull you out of this conversation, not unless you want me to. If you aren't feeling up to it, that's okay too."

Cryo didn't respond. He just let Golem sit him down and kept his grip on the older Luminary's hand, barely aware that he was squeezing so tight that the stones of Golem's hand were shifting and frosting over.

"Just breathe," Golem kept saying in a low, calm voice. Cryo latched onto it, dragging in solid gasps of air. "Breathe in. Breathe out. Nice and slow. You're okay."

"Why wouldn't Banshee have her powers?" asked DragonFae as Golem continued his efforts.

"Serpent put a corrupted fragment on her when he took her from the basement," muttered Wyvern. "It's on her wrist. I tried getting it off when she was unconscious, but it wouldn't budge. In close contact with the fragment, her Ascended is in lockdown mode, so no powers. I thought you'd have that figured out at least, given Nereid's ineptitude. Didn't he get her with the same thing?"

Pegasus's wings flared behind him, erupting over the back of the couch as he jerked forward to glare at Wyvern. "Nere isn't inept, and she doesn't have a fragment on her. Her Ascended is--"

He stopped abruptly, wings pulling in, and DragonFae gave a small, resigned sigh.

"I suppose it won't matter if we tell Wyvern," said DragonFae's voice. "If he's working with the Serpent, he already knows. When the Serpent attacked Skinwalker and her partner, he also broke Nereid's Ascended. It's completely inactive."

Cryo blinked a few times slowly as the world surfaced once more past the panic. He managed a small nod to Golem in appreciation, who simply returned it with a small smile and a small squeeze of Cryo's hand.

On the other couch, Wyvern had gone dead still, his hands gripping the fabric so hard that his knuckles were white. "Rio or Kael?"

"Pegasus has Rio," said DragonFae. "We can only assume Nereid received Kael."

"What do you mean assume?" Wyvern's volume exploded past any previous levels. "Kael would have told her if it was him, unless maybe, she wasn't worthy of him!"

Nereid's hands were pressed tight into her lap, her gaze firmly planted on the ground and her cheeks a burning red.

"Don't be a child," said DragonFae, glaring at Wyvern. "If she was chosen, she is worthy. It's no fault of her own that the Serpent broke her Ascended. I checked it myself. It's reverted back to its crystal state. Kael isn't active."

"Then how do we fix him?" demanded Wyvern. "That Ascended is the best damn one of the lot, and you've just let him stay like that? You're a DragonFae, there has to be a spell or something that would--"

"I've tried, Wyvern," said DragonFae with an uncharacteristically frustrated hiss. "There's things that are greater than our own power, and Ascended are one of those things. I can't do anything."

"We have to return the Ascended to the heart to fix it," murmured Cryo, drawing the attention of the room. As an explanation, he added: "My Ascended has a habit of giving me vague hints and then pretending he didn't afterwards."

"At least someone has answers," said Wyvern, shooting a look at DragonFae before fixating back on Cryo. "What's the heart? How do we get Kael there?"

When Cryo didn't have an answer, Golem spoke up. "The only 'heart' I know about is that whole legend about Skypillar's heart. Apparently, back before the first civilisation, a giant meteorite of pure starstone crashed into the place that is now the Core Chamber. Anyone worthy who touched it became a Luminary. Anyone unworthy basically just died."

"If that were true, we'd have to get inside the Core Chamber," said DragonFae. "A nearly impossible task."

"That Shadowheart girl has been in there before, hasn't she?" said Wyvern. "Send her in again!"

"It almost killed her," said Cryo. "And the doors were already open for the festival. I didn't see any 'heart' in there, either."

"Then let's go ask Shadowheart!" said Wyvern, standing up. When no one followed him, he increased his volume. "I said, let's go!"

Pegasus folded his arms and looked away. "Serpent took her, too."

Wyvern shut up after that.

Cryo drew in a deep, steadying breath and took his hand from Golem's. "If Wyvern is telling the truth, then the real Banshee escaped today with who I believe was Adande. Do we have any idea where he might have taken her?"

"If Adande's got to Banshee," said Wyvern slowly. "We might already be too late."

"Then we'd better stop wasting words and get to the point," muttered Nereid.

Wyvern shot her yet another glare, but released it when he looked back to Cryo.

"Adande is one of the Serpent's top hunters," said Wyvern. "When force isn't ideal, the Serpent sends Adande. He builds trust in his target and lures them in with that. Our only hope is that he usually works alone, and his methods take time. If we find her soon, we might have half a chance."

Cryo's claws dug into his palms as memories of festival night surfaced. Giving Adande the Lightblaster, trusting him to shoot Ella, only to be betrayed in the end. Adande had approached Olivia more than once, though he'd never shown the inclination to hurt her. Had he simply been luring her in also?

"The auroras are coming out shortly," said Golem. "There's no point going out now. We take the time during the auroras to plan, and then afterwards, we act."

"Agreed," said DragonFae. "Are you all available to remain tonight?"

Pegasus and Nereid chimed in with the affirmative, but Cryo stood up from his chair.

"I have civilian duties to attend to during the auroras, but I will return after to assist you in any way I can," he said as firmly as he could manage. "I apologise I cannot be of more help in the planning., but I feel my help would only hinder in my current mindset"

Maybe it was weak, but his head still felt as if it were about to crack. He needed at least ten minutes alone, ten minutes where he could fall apart before he could pull himself back together and get back to it.

"We've got it covered, Cryo," said Golem, inclining his head towards him. It was some small mercy that Wyvern remained silent. "Take your time, and return when you can. I'll leave a way to contact us with the High Speaker if we're gone before you return."

With a final nod and a farewell, Cryo left the Starlight Hall.

He found a quiet corner to dim in, and Sae fluttered into his palms.

"Hey, Jase," said Sae, taking one look at Jason's face and ruffling with concern. "You don't seem so great right now."

"Sae," said Jason quietly. "Do you know if that was actually Banshee?"

The little Ascended lifted one wing in a half-hearted shrug. "I don't know, Jase. Banshee could be directly in front of me right now and I wouldn't know. I can't sense her Ascended at all."

"I think it might have been," whispered Jason, pressing Sae to his forehead. "I think I failed her."

"You didn't fail anyone," said Sae, wrapping his wings around Jason's nose. "Jason, if I can't sense my literal other half when she's right in front of my nose, then there's no way you'd be able to. Skinwalkers are expert manipulators. She knew what you'd do, she knew what Banshee would do, and she abused that."

"I still failed her. I still should have known."

But with the auroras now winding their way across the skies, Sae didn't reply.

Jason stared as the little Ascended for a few moments longer before he tucked Sae away, safe inside a pocket close to his chest. With that done, Jason tilted his head back, resting it against the wall behind him and closing his eyes. He counted each breath, focusing on nothing but the air in through his nose and out through his mouth.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was because his Liaiser buzzed in his other pocket. He pulled it out and flicked the screen on.

[ELLA SPIRITCALLER - 1 new message]

Suddenly saddled with an overbearing sense of dread that had nothing to do with his earlier panic attack, Jason opened the message.

Ella said:
[I have a lead on Olivia's whereabouts but I need your help now. Adande claims he has her outside the City limits, so Lumi's and Lightblasters aren't gonna help us. He says if I bring anyone but you, he won't meet us. Meet me at the inner Nari skyshrine as soon as you can.]

*+*+*+*

A/N - Guilt. Explanations. Some pretty worrying news, and a potential lead. 

Uh oh.