Hot fury raged in her chest as she urged her stallion forward. There was screaming and shouting in every direction. Blood wetted the black grass in red rivets that matched Elena's scarlet clothing. Elena never took her glare off the tyrant even once as she galloped through the mess of fighting warriors. 

Solara sat atop her golden-horned horse and pointed up to the sky. 

Elena followed the tyrant's hand up to find that the sun looked closer than usual. It was only when the air below the so-called sun started to shimmer that she realized it was not a sun. It was an enormous saucer that radiated heat hot enough to bend the very air around it. 

She kicked her horse to move faster. As it ran, the saucer thickened and shot down to the ground, engulfing everything within its reach in burning, hot light. Behind Elena, she watched as it burnt the soldiers to ashes within seconds, before the light vanished as fast as it had formed. Through all the noise, she could hear Naoise shouting Jey's name. Elena caught a glimpse of Kestrel as he landed from the sky next to a large brown bear. 

The bear's roar contorted into human screams as Jey shifted back into his human form, his hands holding onto his leg. Or what was left of it. 

Elena's attention was diverted back to in front of her as Robin appeared beside her and shouted down the hill, "Weintraub!" 

Halting her horse and her heart, she searched behind her for her youngest savant. She searched for his white hair amongst the sea of blood and ash-covered blackened grass. The longer she was unable to find him, the more erratic her breathing became. 

Her breath almost stopped when the red sky and sun above was overcast by storm clouds. Thunder rumbled as the air grew thick and humid. The wind started to pick up, blowing her hair back out of her face. Elena lifted her face up to the clouds and blinked when she felt raindrops fall against her smiling cheeks. 

Weintraub was alive and he was calling a storm. The biggest one he had ever concocted to block out the sun. She relished in it as the wind whipped across her skin. 

"Elena!" Greystoke shouted, but his warning came too late. Before she could open her eyes, Elena felt herself get tugged from her horse's back. Her back slammed onto the ground and knocked all the air from her lungs. 

Opening her eyes, she forced herself up. As soon as she could breathe again, she saw Greystoke cutting down the sun warrior who had pulled her off her horse. In the distance, she spotted Moon Night turning her horse around to come back to her. Elena shook her head and raised her arm to the top of the hill. 

"Go!" Elena shouted. Moon Night hesitated, her lips flattening into a thin line, but she nodded and turned her horse back and started to speed up the hill again. Robin nodded at Elena and gave a long glance toward Greystoke before he turned and followed his sovereign on foot.

Greystoke returned to Elena's side and helped her stand up. 

The rain and wind were still continuing to get stronger with every minute that passed. The wind had become so strong that it blew Elena back a step. The rain felt like pellets of stone against her flesh. She attempted to reach out through the blood bond to urge Weintraub to stop but, somehow, she knew that he would not be able to calm this storm now, even if he had wanted to. This hurricane would rage until it was finished. 

Through the torrent of rain, Elena could see the glint of a silver blade. 

Greystoke stepped in front of her and diverted the spearhead blade away from his sovereign. A man in golden armor walked through the wall of rain, the sun crest on his armor encircled in a coat of red paint. 

 "A fine blade." The man coaxed. He spun the spear in his hand so that the pointed blade faced the unseen sky above. Greystoke levied his onyx blade at the savant sun warrior. 

"May I have the name of the man who killed my brother?" 

"Brother?" 

To answer, the man stamped the flat end of his spear onto the ground. The spear wrapped itself in blue lightning that was frighteningly familiar. He lowered the electrified spear to face Greystoke's onyx blade. 

"Your name?" 

"Elena," Greystoke kept his voice low, almost unheard through the rumbling thunder above. "Go." 

Shadows from the blackened earth at his feet crept up the raven-haired warrior's body and turned the atmosphere around himself pitch black. 

"What a strange name." the spearman cocked his head to the side. He twisted the spear blade horizontal, rain droplets bouncing off the silver blade and evaporated in the heat of the lightning that wrapped around the metal. "I'll carve in into her skin once you're dead."

The spearman lunged forward, thrusting his blade toward Greystoke's chest. Greystoke took a single step back and caught the spear just behind the end of the blade. Lightning bit at his hands like a horde of stinging wasps, but the shadows that were wrapped around Greystoke nullified them. 

"Go!" He repeated. Elena took in a deep breath, then turned and ran. 

On foot, the hill was more steep than it had appeared. The rain had drenched the grass and made it near impossible to climb. But, somehow, Elena persevered. 

One of Solara's soldiers appeared in front of her in the rain. His back turned to her, he was laughing as he cut down a western soldier, shouting for him to die as slow as possible. elena held her own sword at her side and made sure she was undetected as she walked up close to his back. Then, when she was close enough, she stabbed her sword upward. 

Just as Greystoke had taught her, she did it as strong as she could. She felt it as her sword pierced through his muscles and broke through bones. The sun soldier collapsed in front of her and on top of his victim. Blood seeped from the fatal wound onto the soaked ground. 

Elena breathing felt heavy. Strange, but she was not upset nor guilty at the death of the sun soldier she had just killed. The first person she had ever killed. She just felt... tired. 

All of a sudden, she felt the need to look behind her back down the hill. Down that hill she could not see a single thing, but she kept staring. Eventually, she realized she was looking for Greystoke, for his nod of approval or face of disappointment. 

This was a battlefield. There was another enemy that was more worthy of death at the top of this godforsaken hill, and she was going to reach it. 

The closer she got to the top of the hill, the more the rain started to ease up. She looked up to see that the clouds above were starting to disperse and allowing red rays of sunlight to shine through them. Once she looked back down, she was finally able to see the extent of the toll the battle had taken on the deadlands. 

A heavy mist had settled over the hundreds of bodies that now sat strewn across the battlefield. Although she still could not find Greystoke, Elena spotted Larkspur and one of the northern warriors still fighting. Demir smashed through a wall of solid rock as Larkspur sped out from behind him and slashed her fierce blade down onto the sun warrior in front. 

Larkspur's vicious cut slid off a shield forged of light and stabbed into the ground beside him. Another wall of stone encircled Larkspur and both of the sun warriors, cutting them off from view. Demir pounded his fists against the stone shield. 

Elena searched the field for the other northern warrior, she had never seen the brothers apart since the moment she had met them. 

Before she could find Toga, the walls around Larkspur and the sun warriors crumbled to the ground. Beneath the rocks stood the strongest of the warriors, breathing heavily with a face covered in blood that was not hers. 

The breath that Elena took in to call out to Larkspur was lost when she heard the whistling sound of Kestrel above her head. She only managed to catch a short flash of Kestrel's spotted wings, since they were blocked by the dangling red-headed Robin in his arms as they flew by. 

Kestrel dropped the insane troublemaking savant from the sky. Robin landed onto the ground with a double-roll before he stood, took two steps and stabbed a pair of his daggers into the chest of a soldier. One of the many that had surrounded Elena while she had been not paying attention to her surroundings. 

Fire spurted out of the back of the soldier like the wings of a phoenix. Then Robin removed his hands and the body fell to the ground lifeless. 

Pulling out two more daggers from his vest, he pointed in the direction of Elena and shouted something incoherent to her ears. 

In the matter of seconds, Elena was surrounded by a dome of shadow. Outside the dome, she saw red flames flicker all across the shadows. The inside of the shield became sweltering hot as the fire blazed outside of it. After what felt like a long while, the surrounding shadows melted to the ground, leaving a black ring around Elena. 

Swaggering toward her, Robin held up his index finger and blew out the flame on it. 

"And that," The red-headed savant said as he gestured to the burnt ground outside of Elena's black ring. There was no sign of the men that had surrounded her before she had been encased in shadow. Not even a single speck of ash. "is why I'm called the Fire Tempest."

Elena scoffed at him and brandished her sword at him, "Where's Greystoke? Where's Moon?"

Robin sighed through his nose and mumbled something under his breath before pointing upwards. Then, without another word shared between them, the two of them sprinted until they reached the crest of the hill. 

As the two of them ascended the top of the hill and saw what awaited them there, Elena found herself filled with a complicated dread she had never imagined feeling before. 

Solara stood in her glittering golden armor. On her head of pale, platinum golden hair was a spiked crown of matching gold as her armor. Her lips were twisted into an evil smile that brought screams echoing in her ears. Those eyes had haunted her dreams of her father yelling for her to save herself. Ice blue eyes that froze you solid while the world burned at her feet. 

And standing beside her, with a sword blade at her throat, was her twin sister and the love of Elena's life. 

The memory of Robine words echoed in her ears: If you had to choose between Moon and your empire, what would you do?

"Welcome, Elena." Solara's words pierced into her very soul like the blade against Moon's throat. She wondered if this was the exact blade that made that scar down the center of her throat.

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