The crunching of bones sank into my ears as the first deaths of battle were claimed.

It was a nightmare that Bara Khalja got so close before we were alerted to him, and I could only suspect his dark magic was the cause. He slipped past all the fae and elves watching the forest, and even Spaulder didn't sense him until just before he arrived. It was terrible chaos.

Teyber and many of his scouts sank into the trees and disappeared from sight. The elven children formed a thick line of spears at the front of the trees, daring any to come close enough to fight. Thain and a few of the Autumn fae jumped in around the spears as well, any remaining arguments about the presence of elves forgotten as the thick of battle settled at the edge of our encampment.

I watched a blade sink deep into the ribs of a risen dead fae. An arrow pierced the long-empty eye socket of another. I began the battle trying to rush forward as I was so used to doing when conflict arrived, but my father and Mila reached a hand out nearly simultaneously to hold me in place.

"Not yet, child," Mila cautioned. 

"But the battle has begun!" I cried, my fingers itching to join the other fighters in the tree line.

Mila grunted. "You have fire in you that would not be good for the Mother's forest."

My heart sank as I stopped straining against their hold on me.

"Conserve your energy, daughter," Kalor said gently. "A battle such as this will require us to shift our forces in and out as we can."

'They are right, little witch,' Spaulder added. 'Even I cannot fit between the trees for battle. We wait, and we watch before we strike.'

My mouth strained in a grim line, but I nodded gently as my hand found Schula's.

"That doesn't mean we sit and do nothing," Schula said. "Is there more we can do to help the infirmary?"

My eyes darted to the makeshift roof with the simple beds and the lone patient. "Yes, there is always more medicine to stock up on. Bindings to make, fronds to pull into strips and braid for cord."

Mila lifted a hand to the sky, a rustling of wind beginning from her fingers and carrying a purple smoke across the lost city behind us. The small bones adorning her shoulders and arm like jewelry bumped against each other and sent their sounds dancing through the wind. "The sisters will help you, I must council with the others."

"Caw!" Puko rustled from her shoulder, lifting himself into the winds as he climbed high and soared to the roof and beds.

Spaulder lifted himself up to a taller height, spreading his wings wide as he stretched his neck forward. 'Go, little ones. I will watch here.'

Schula took my hand and we ran to our task. It was the beginning of the strangest battle I had ever been in. To have my abilities not in demand the moment strife breaks out was a foreign sensation, and I didn't handle it well. Of course I was able to keep my hands busy at work, preparing supplies for the inevitable injured that would come our way.

The infirmary, despite its lack of walls and the cool winter air outside, was insufferably stuffy. Some magic ran hot, some potions smoked, and with quick working hands, we were all straining ourselves to work. Puko sat in the rafters and watched us, the bodies crowded in tight below him working and trying to ignore the fact that just a short distance away our friends and allies were fighting tooth and nail to keep Bara Khalja's horrors out.

And then the first injured was brought in.

Shouting accompanied a pair of elven children who carried in one of their own with a bloody shoulder and an arm at a sickening angle. My heart tightened until I saw that it was nobody I knew personally, then guilt settled in my stomach that such a thought had even crossed my mind.

Schula, who was next to me weaving frond fibers for bindings, was startled as the bed near us was suddenly filled with a bloody patient. I set down the medicinal root I was peeling and grabbed from the pile of bindings Schula had already finished.

"Rotate him to his side," Purda instructed the other witches and healers in the room. "We need water, clean the wound so we can see what we're working with."

The infirmary erupted in movement. I was at Purda's side with the bindings, ready and waiting for when her other orders were carried out first. The two elven children that brought in the patient were sent away, and the healers got to work.

With all of us on hand and ready, it wasn't long before he was inspected, healed, bandaged, and resting. Just about enough time for the next injured warrior to arrive. Then the next, then the next.

It was a side of battle I hadn't seen before. Watching Purda was eye-opening as the master healer of the witches got to work. Barely a glance and she could see what was wrong. A narrowing of her eyes and she could pinpoint the break in a bone. The nuance of diagnosing an illness wasn't here, but I'd watched her do that in the valley. Here is where her knowledge of the body shined brilliantly while she eased the suffering of the injured in our care.

I was completely swept up in setting bones and stopping bleeding cuts under Purda's watch that by the time there was a lull in the work and I could sit down for a drink of water, I was breathing hard. I sank into the seat I had been in before the injured began coming in, and I looked over to Schula who had been diligently weaving the whole time.

"Any word about the battle?" I asked.

"I've been checking in with Spaulder about it often," she said. "It looks like we're holding them at the tree line, but neither side is making progress. We can't get a clear idea how many of them there are thanks to the thick forest, and many of our fighters are not suited to the trees."

"Like Spaulder," I sighed.

Schula nodded. "Like Spaulder."

I took a deep drink from my cup of water as my eyes drifted across the field to where the battle still raged on. "Do you think they'll need us soon?"

"It's hard to say. Fae can fight for a long time, and it looks like the elven children can just about keep up with us."

I chewed on my lower lip a moment, setting my water down. "Any word about Thain or Kalor?"

Schula shook her head. "I wouldn't worry about either of them. Thain is a warrior almost unrivaled in the Wyldes. And Kalor, despite his quiet disposition, has reached his impressive age for a reason. They'll be fine."

I sighed, sweeping a hand over my braids and feeling just how much of my hair had escaped the neat and tight order I had put it in just that morning. My eyes drifted to how many beds we had empty as another injured fae was brought in.

I stood, my short break over as I walked to the last empty bed in the row, frowning as something was out of place. What was it?

Schula gasped behind me, and my chest tightened as I realized just as she was saying it.

"Where is Nassir?" Schula asked, panic in her voice.

I swore and rushed out from under the infirmary roof where I could get a better look. He was nowhere I could see, so he hadn't just left his bed. I felt sick to my stomach as Schula came up next to me, rubbing her cool hand on the back of my neck.

"He hasn't been himself at all," she said, her voice quaking. "He could be doing anything. Something reckless."

"He sent a landslide down an entire mountainside. I can't imagine he's fully recovered yet. The scrapes and bruises yes, but the magic..." I swallowed hard, standing up straight and striding away toward the battle.

"Caw!" Puko flapped down to land on my shoulder, and I reached up to stroke his head, pressing the side of my face into his comforting feathers. He helped me clear my head enough to stop and turn back toward the infirmary.

"Purda, I have an emergency!" I began.

She held up a hand, palm out to me in a command to stop interrupting her work. "Go, child. You have done well here, but I have mended far worse than this battle will produce. Go."

I turned right back around with Schula, and we sprinted to the numbers at the front lines.

The smell was awful as we reached the ones standing in wait for their turn at the battle. Spaulder  had taken a stand near the end of the trees, not letting anything out to flank our right side. Spearmen were attacking anything that left the tree line, and any that were injured or killed were pulled away and replaced just as quickly as they had fallen. The Autumn fae were the most volatile of our fighters. Magic and fang and claw tearing into the risen dead with abandon. Even the witches were doing their part, coaxing the barrier they had erected before to life and scalding the dead that got close to the open field, the hiss of their skin as it burned paired with the smell of burning flesh in the air.

Bara Khalja had yet to make himself known, only his abominations continued to assault us.

Still, it was chaos. There was some sort of order to it all, but I couldn't keep up with the movements of it until they had already happened. My eyes searched our numbers for familiar faces, but it wasn't easy. There were too many of us, and we were all moving about.

A cool hand gripped my arm for attention.

"Nassir's not here," Schula cried over the sounds of battle.

I nodded rather than yell to answer her, and we stepped carefully away from the lightly injured and fighters that needed rest on the grass.

"Wylde Witch!" A sprite with a cut over her forehead called after me as I passed. It bled into her vision, obscuring it, but she was otherwise unhurt and hadn't been sent by her fellow warriors to the healers.

I half-turned to face her, she was sitting on the ground panting. She threw a hand to the side, pointing to another part of the field. "The Ravager went that way, some of us sensed another presence."

I clenched my jaw, cursing under my breath. This was madness, just how many things could go wrong? I couldn't be three places at once.

"I'll search for Nassir," Schula said. "If Thain was concerned enough about it to leave the main battle, it must be important."

I turned to Schula and pulled her in tight to me. I inhaled her scent, running my hand down her back where her silky braid fell to her waist. My perfect triquetram, a part of me.

"Be safe," I said. "Do not do anything without me and Spaulder."

Schula gave a weak laugh. "I could say the same to you."

I pulled away, and she gave me a curt nod. "Let's get a better idea of what is happening around us."

I nodded, and we parted ways.

The part of the city Thain had gone to was thinner than the forest where Bara Khalja now held his assault. My heart thrummed with battle and worry. Could the necromancer be making a pronged attack from here? Or could DuVarick have arrived? No, this was the opposite direction that what DuVarick would be coming from. Or could that be part of the trick of it?

The few wild theories that flew through my mind were enough to keep my panic high until I broke through the tree line. Puko left my shoulder once we got to the trees, taking to the sky above the canopy rather than sit on for the jostling ride of my run through the trees.

I heard crashing and snapping of branches, knowing instantly that this is where I would find the source of Thain's movements.

Pushing forward, I kept my palms spread and ready to call out fire should I be met with hostility. But instead of a risen dead warrior or a fae of the Winter court, I found a long string of fae winding through the trees wearing bright greens and yellows. A calamity in the clearing between me and them displayed a dazzlingly bloody scene as an unglamoured Thain had torn into one of those giant black tree creatures that we had fought before and a group of hideously decayed things that Bara Khalja had sent this way. On the other side of the mess was none other than King Diamid, and all the breath in my body left as a sigh.

My eyes fell to Thain who was struggling to contain himself enough to use words. Coated in blood, his skin still wet with patches of it, his chest heaved as he looked around wildly. I pushed forward through the trees to help. Help him, and speak so he didn't have to continue his struggle.

I placed a hand on his shoulder, cautious that he was still maddened with battle, but he responded well to my touch. I looked into those silver eyes, the ones I knew belonged to Thain and not Thainalan the Ravager.

"I'll take it from here," I said softly. "Go to your battle if you need to."

He snarled, long fangs startling me as I fought to remain still. His eyes never left mine, and for a heartbeat he stared at me before his body shuddered and he took off. In barely more than a blink, he was gone completely, tearing back to the battlefield.

I turned immediately to the Spring Court and began speaking. "The battle has begun. If you are here to stop Bara Khalja and his alliance with DuVarick, follow me. Be warned to expect a fair number of surprises among our allies."

Diamid's brow lowered, a serious look on his face. "Lead on, Wylde Witch. We are here to put an end to this madness."

I hoped so, for all our sakes.

Back through the trees and into the open encampment again, the tide of battle was still roaring heavily. I had barely lead the first of the Spring court into the open when the shattering roar ripped through the air, sending my heart into a frenzy.

'The earth opens!' Spaulder roared in my mind and I winced with the power of it.

The earth opens? Earth magic, could it be Nassir? I took off running in the direction of Spaulder's roar.

I could sense that Diamid and his army were still behind me somewhere, but my attention was sweeping the field before me. Where was the earth opened? Who was it? Nassir? Then again, Bara Khalja did that to the valley where the Autumn court fought him before...

My search for the opened earth ended when the ground began to shake. It was a terrible tremor that knocked me off my feet completely and shook so hard and so long that it was all I could do to stay on my hands and knees without throwing up from the force of it.

Ground split, rock shifted, earth moved. I was dizzy and nauseous by the time it began to subside, the world around me spinning as I reeled before a massive pit in the ground. It was the size of the village by Silver Lake, and from it I could see where the crypt in the middle of the lost elven city had been opened and disturbed.

Bones. So many of them were down there. Flowing out like a river from the split open crypt, and something was moving them. Either the bones themselves were now under a spell, or the earth was moving them along like a river of death rising up the slope of the opened earth to meet the battlefield.

I threw up in horror, emptying my stomach on the grass before managing to push myself uneasily to my feet. Horror. Horror and disgust was my instant reaction before my eyes began to dart around the open pit in search of someone. Anyone. A direction to put my efforts to.

My eyes brushed over an astonishing sight that I hadn't expected as a smaller group of red clad fae emerged from the trees to the north east, a golden fae with read hair in the front. My eyes widened on Eberon's form before they were torn away at the sound of a terrible crash.

At the top of the pit of earth and bone was now a seething dark aura. Atop his bone horse, adorned in death, and a wicked smile on his face.

Our armies were scattered, the enemy was everywhere, and a feast of death sat before one of our greatest enemies. Nassir was missing, my triquetram was split all across the battlefield, and our encampment was just torn open.

And Bara Khalja had appeared.