The Reckoning Is Not the End

The Rending Queen survived.

Mayday never learned what she was. She had fought her at the source: a winged woman in black-and-gold armor, taller than any mortal, her wings an extension of that armor made to work by fungal growth. Unlike the rest of the horde, she carried a weapon. She felt rage. She felt pain — and the horde around her felt it with her. She spoke. And when Mayday's cutlass finally found flesh, she bled red, mortal blood.

When the shockwave tore through every creature connected to the Great Unnamed One, she should have died with them. She did not.

On a great battlefield, among corpses and rotting mass, she stirred and heaved herself upright. She did not understand what she saw. She looked out at the world like a newborn seeing light for the first time — her body aching and twitching, her arm immobile, the weight of her armor immense and constricting. The horde was gone, and with it whatever had filled her. She had no words. She sat paralyzed for long minutes, alone.

What Glorious Fortune

Then a figure approached. Shirtless and pristine, long black hair flowing as if it had a mind of its own. She looked up at him and began to cry, overwhelmed by the fear of this new and unknown world.

He stopped close and cocked his head down toward her. "Don't fret," he said. "I am a bearer of great tidings."

She did not understand him. But he spoke with such authority that she stopped weeping and began, against everything, to feel safe.

Ludia had once watched Thaeriel fall from grace and rise again, born of the Dread. She had called him a petulant, short-sighted simpleton, and had not counted him among the gods worth fearing.

Dread Thaeriel

"Today is an auspicious day," he said. "For a king needs a queen."

The Reckoning is not the end.