Marie and I bust down the doors to Heilin's office and find that the windows no longer reflect the outside, but rather, a whole conference of different Sentients. Furious Canii, a Felis with the Evelscan crystal embedded in her ear, and even a council full of diverse minor species all shout from every angle, a torrent of noise and panic.

"Right outside the castle?!" cries one of the Canii. "This could be it. This is the attack."

"At the edge of our inner barrier, no less." continues a Fauna in the council, pondering it. The deer-like being tilts her horns, adding, "I must say, though, the chances of a world-altering event occurring today are low as any other day. We might be the only timeline who are receiving this warning-"

The Felis, who by her air of authority and massive crystal must be Athena herself (the prime elected official of Evelsca), continues: "The Obsidians always attack timelines one at a time. This means nothing, nothing at all."

The Fauna continues, "Even on this one, at this very moment, I must report that the risk of danger remains the same. This might not be an attack. A cosmic malfunction of the highest degree, perhaps, or even an escape-"

"There are no escapes." a Canis says bitterly. "If one of our own comes through that gate, it's going to be a corpse."

A Lapine twitches her long, straight ears. No more than twice the size of a wild rabbit or the kaanin prey species, she has to get up onto a platform to reach the portalscreen through which the others are communicating. "I usually don't bet against Fauna, but this is just too dangerous of a situation to rely on their intuition. We're clearly not in a situation where the most-likely event is occurring. All bets are off. Heilin, have you evacuated all the citizens?"

Heilin nods. "Everyone in the castle is being moved as we speak, and we've declared a warning for Lira and Sukoma City both. Natrina'll have her forest covered just as well if not better than we have the castle protected, so the only real at-risk groups are wandering packs. All of my Defenders are scouring the area, so if they find anyone, they'll be able to get them to safer ground."

"Wouldn't it be convenient if there was some way for all of you to communicate instantaneously?" asks Athena, an almost cruelly humorous tilt to her voice.

"Opphemria has our own reasons to resist your accursed hivemind." growls one of the Canis.

"Ceilvyr as well." adds the Fauna.

"This is not the time for petty infighting!" Heilin snaps. "The reckoning of our world might be at paw."

"It has been for years. It was you who sat by and made minimal preparations while keeping the public largely in the dark about it." Athena retaliates.

Heilin's eyes narrow. I see her reflected in every portalscreen, and her sheer fury terrifies me. Even the others, trained politicians and leaders all, quiver in the face of a demigod. Athena holds her gaze, defiant, and Heilin finishes, "I'll have one of my betas manning communications from downstairs. I'm going to give the Obsidians their first taste of Dreamland."

All the portalscreens flicker off, the purple magic of the windows fading like a sheen of oil diluting to nothing as they return to glass. The sky behind them is laced with clouds, the low-hanging kind that spell storms on the horizon. There's not a sign of a rift, but I know the place by heart where the inner shield ends and the trees start, primarily because they form an abrupt line on the horizon. No one knows why the forest refuses to creep inwards, since the shield has never had any antibiological clauses contained in the spell (evidence: us and several dozen gardens), but it provides a good frame of reference.

Today, I look at the line and try to convince myself that it's enough space for the Defender armies to hold off an Obsidian horde.

I can't believe it. I can't believe I'm not crazy, that this is happening... I lay my claws on one paw into the other paw, but despite the pricking pain, I'm not waking up.

The rolling clouds grow darker still, hemmed with purple. This is not a good sign.

"Marie." Heilin says, her voice more dangerous than the storm. "I fully intended you to remain with the other Defenders, giving out orders... so why is it that I ended up speaking with Plumeria and the strategists, few of whom had the slightest idea what the situation was?"

"I was told to come up here, nothing more. Niel insisted, and seeing as she's a royal courier, I trusted her to do her job effectively."

We really could use that hivemind, I think, even though I already know it's a terrible idea for so, so many reasons. At the very least, we should have had someone with telepathy send out messages to those important enough to warrant it, but it occurs to me now that the 'important enough' figures may have just appeared on the mirrors and we didn't cut it. Maybe we're just all panicking because our deadlines have disappeared from beneath us and we're hurtling into unknown territory.

Heilin sums it up best: "By Her celestial tails, we're damned."

Out the window, two dark lines appear on the horizon, right, as predicted, where the tree line ends. The unnatural streaks of shadow cleave the very universe as we know it in two, and it finally settles in that this is the end. Even Marie has a desolate look in her eyes, the look of someone staring down their own death. We are all crossed out by fate the second we look upon that sky. Even if by some miracle we live, or this is all some elaborate false alarm, there will be no denying to the public that this- this is the start of our war.

Her High Auspicia breathes in a long, solemn inwards breath. Two wings appear on her back, luminous as twin lightning bolts, quickly followed by another pair. Her exhale comes as a sharp hah! as she fires out beams of holy light from between her horns, shattering all the windows. Air blows in through the remains, which now lie on the floor like hundreds of eyes detached from their owners, grasping for something living to reflect. They shine like open water with her light, and then Her High Auspicia jumps out the window.

She alights and is gone. We know the place. I can see her ascending towards it.

I'm about to fly after, when Marie calls, "Wait. I need... I need to get there. If something does happen, and my incompetence means the end of everything, you better believe I'll kill myself before the Obsidian bastards get close enough to slit my neck."

"That's unproductive," I mutter, since the apocalypse has removed my filter. I'm about to explain to her that I couldn't carry a Canira of her size with my flimsy musculature if the fate of Dreamland depended on it, but that's when the doors burst open and our savior comes in with all four wings extended.

"Get on. I used to carry civilians out of wreckages, I can hold you." Sweep tells Marie, not wincing as she steps through the broken glass to get to us. Her fur rustles in the wind now howling through the room, gripping the small plants on the shelves and shaking them down. The silver light of the sunless sky gives her eyes new light. The crook of her ear where her crystal used to be is filled up with it.

"I'm no civilian," warns Marie, with a pointed look of discomfort.

"Get on my damn back, Marie."

We soar out the window, my primaries just missing either side of the window.

Sweep, though bogged down, is not messing around. I'm hardly able to keep her pace as she flaps one set of wings, then another, with Marie clinging on for dear life the whole way. The dark rift flares open into a four-pointed star, then, as if claws are tearing at the edges, it begins widening further. The Auspicia's veil is made visible as the weakened barrier struggles against the gate, purple lightning flickering. The sky itself is purple around the area, like a bruise. In fact, the white-and-gold Auspicia herself may be the only bright thing in the darkening sky, flocked by dozens of dark-winged aerial Defenders.

We fall to the ground beneath the hole, with Marie tumbling off and Sweep readjusting her wings as if nothing ever happened. Sweep shoots straight upwards as the hole widens into a full circle, omnipresent in its emptiness.

The rift begins to scream.

There's a high electric whirr that sends half the Defenders down, plucking them from the sky. A magical shockwave rips through the air, and Heilin falls back to the earth with two wings manifest. Defenders land around her, tensed and ready.

Her High Auspicia, Sweep, Marie, and I... all of us stand frozen, petrified with snouts angled skywards. All of us are made equal in shared dread as we stand below the opening sky.

From the rift fall two twin shapes, twin comets streaking through the air, and when they're about halfway to the ground the whole portal catches on fire. It's a brilliant blue flame, so hot that we can feel it from where we stand, and it licks at the paws of the two figures still plummeting to the earth. By now, a cluster of earthbound Defenders and civilians are encroaching on all sides, and Heilin soars up and catches them both in the air with telepathy, descending back to the earth with furious wingbeats.

It's two Canira.

The limp bodies look unnatural dangling in the air, but the stillness is more unnerving when they're placed on the ground. Everyone has moved back, with Defenders skirting the rim, and against all logic I step forwards.

The world doesn't breathe for a few seconds. We might not have, either. I don't know. My head is still spinning.

The two Canira lie side by side on the ground. One of them is of stouter build, with glittering ginger fur like a brand of fire. His paws and ears are wide, with the former taking on an almost rounded shape, and there's a thick ruff of fur of pale fur around his neck, like the halo of light around the sun. His tail has an odd shape to it, much like a thick rope, and the fur is coarse. Lain against him is a Canira thin as he is thick, with fur dark as the void. Her ears are long and slim as twin moonbeams, teeming with gold fur that lines the inside in tufts, and her draconic wings flare out behind her. Her chest is pure as snow, with flecked markings of iridescent color across them, unmarred by whatever they must've endured together, as ash and scars slice them both up.

I catch a quick twitch of ginger fur and a flick of the darker Canira's wings. They're waking up, taking long breaths in unison as they struggle to awake.

"Someone get Nat." Heilin snaps, turning to face the crowd with panicked fury in her eyes.

"Do you mean Natrina, H-Heilin..." Marie asks.

"Get her." she stresses each syllable so hard I think the air's going to burst.

Embers fill the sky like fireworks. The last of the flames seem to lick away at the gash in the air, which does not fold neatly back on itself to close but collapses like a wooden house beneath intense heat. I stand beneath them, above the two Canira, and the message seems clear to me-

We've found our miracle.