Liv and the elders had just made it to the knot of fighters at the center of the battlefield when the doors into the mountain began to swing open. Just ahead of them, she could see that Wren and Ghveris were holding Nighthawk Wind Dancer down, while Liv’s father was pushing Aariv up the slope, ice and fire meeting in great clouds of steam. Seija, Ractia’s Iravatan commander, was gasping in a pool of her own blood, the wyrm she’d been riding long since dead, and most of her armor rusted away.

“Did you do that?” Liv risked a glance to her side, where Elder Aira wore a crown of thorny, polished wood that had, long ago, served as a symbol of her mother’s trust and favor.

The old woman shook her head, sending her gray braids tumbling about her shoulders. “No. Hurry - your father is too far ahead of us.”

Liv took the elder’s arm in her hand, to help her across the trampled earth. As they came up on Wren and Ghveris, she called out to them. “I want you with us. Is he still alive?”

“Alive. Wounded, but alive,” Wren shouted back. “But I don’t have a way to keep him from dissolving into blood any moment.”

“I do,” Liv’s grandmother said. She cut to her left, leaned over Nighthawk, and stretched out a hand. His red eyes widened, and a puff of frosted air emerged from his mouth. Liv recognized what was happening as soon as frost began to spider web across the man’s body. Ghveris and Wren released him and scrambled backward, leaving their prisoner trapped inside of a growing block of ice.

“There,” Eila tär Väinis declared, nodding her head and stepping back. “That should keep him for a bit.”

Not far away, Aatu knelt beside Seija, one hand pressed to the Elden woman’s neck. When Liv met his eyes, he simply shook his head and then got back to his feet. With obvious difficulty, the elder hefted the dead woman’s enchanted lance.

Liv glanced up toward the doors, and the small, makeshift town that had grown up in front of them. Aariv had flung himself high up into the air, on blooming jets of flame, making for the entrance to the Vædic ruins as quickly as he could get there.

To Liv’s relief, her father had paused in his pursuit of the old priest, waiting for the rest of them to catch up. When they all gathered at the very foot of the dirt street that led down out of the town, the group numbered eight: Liv and her father, her grandmother and great uncle Eilis, Wren and Ghveris, and Elders Aira and Aatu.

It seemed a small number to face a goddess.

Liv supposed that they could have sent for Arjun, or perhaps Miina, to join them. But Arjun was of better use saving lives, treating their wounded soldiers, than following them into battle - and Liv was certain that Miina wasn’t ready for a fight like this. If Keri had been healthy, it would have been comforting to have him here, but that simply wasn’t possible.

“Follow me,” Aira tär Keria commanded gruffly, and with one arm linked with Liv’s, and a cane in her other hand, she led them up the road toward the center of the small town, passed where the bloodletters had first made their sacrifices, and then died. The stink of blood and spilled bowels permeated the area around the altar, and Liv did her best to breathe through her mouth, rather than her nose. She was grateful when they continued past, following the same street to where it left the buildings behind.

With the town at their backs, they faced the sheer rise of rock that was the mountain’s true peak, and the two doors that hung open into darkness. Aariv had landed there, on top of a patch of scorched ground, the only one of Ractia’s commanders still able to fight.

“I know the way,” Wren offered. “There’s a shaft going down, and one of those mana discs to descend. A control room, and a waystone. That’s usually where she spent her time.”

But before any of them could step forward, a figure slipped out from between the doors and walked down the mountain slope, into the sunlight. Aariv fell to his knees, pressed his forehead into the dirt, and only looked up once the ancient goddess he served placed a delicate hand on the top of his head. To Liv, the gesture looked just like a man resting his palm on a favorite hound.

Ractia looked, for all the span of years that had passed since Liv had first seen her, utterly unchanged. Perhaps that should not have been a surprise, when it came to a goddess, but even the Eld aged, albeit more slowly than humans. The Lady of Blood had, if her servants could be believed, given birth to a son in that time. While Liv had no first hand experience of pregnancy herself, she’d marked how her old friend Emma’s body had changed, after two children. But Emma was mortal.

The Great Mother, the Vædic Lady of Blood, still wore the visage of a beautiful, mature woman. Her hair was dark and long, and the tresses were caught by the wind that whipped around the peak, tossed in the air. In her place, without a helm or a braid, Liv would have been eating her own hair, or constantly trying to brush it out of her face - but on some fundamental level, the wind seemed there only to create an artful, beautiful image. Like anything else in this world, it would not dare trouble a goddess with something so low as unruly tresses.

She wore a dress of deep red Dakruiman silk, embroidered with black sigils. The neckline was cut low enough to show generous, swelling cleavage, and clung to the goddess’s hips so closely that Liv couldn’t have imagined wearing such a fashion in public without blushing. There were clearly no underpinnings - no stays or bustle. The thin silk simply draped close about a beautiful body that brought to mind images of an overripe fruit, ready to burst at the slightest touch.

One part of Liv’s mind kept a mental tally of the words embroidered into the dress, and speculated on precisely what sort of enchantment they might represent. She counted four: Ract, Aluth, Ais, and Cer. A dozen possibilities flitted through Liv’s mind in the moment of stillness before the goddess spoke: might there be buttons or other traces of iron hidden in the dress, ready to grow out into plates of armor at the first hint of an incoming spell? She certainly couldn’t see any. Why growth, and not healing?

“Little Aira. How old you’ve gotten - I remember when you only came up to your mother’s knee,” Ractia murmured, her eyes fixed on the elder at Liv’s side. The words themselves were at once spoken in ancient Vaedic, but somehow echoing in every other tongue as well: not only Vakansa, Lucanian, and Dakruiman, but even the Varunan dialect of the Red Shield Tribe. It was the difference between the voice of a single woman singing, and an entire choir, with both melody and harmony merging into a single song.

“And you look exactly the same as you did the first time you came to visit my mother,” Aira called back. “With Lord Asuris at your side, as I recall. You both wanted Keria to fight with you. I recall she told me later that Asuris was your second choice for a husband - though I can’t say I entirely understood at the time. I was a bit young, as you recall. Something about Arvatis wanting nothing to do with you, I believe?”

The only sign of anger on the perfect face of the goddess was the slightest twitch of one elegant eyebrow, and the weight of an entire mountain range slammed down onto the group. Ractia’s overwhelming authority crushed Wren and Ghveris immediately. Both of Liv’s friends dropped to the ground, unable to even catch themselves on hands and knees, but instead left with their faces pressed down into the dirt.

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Valtteri ka Auris dropped to one knee, struggled not to fall further, and caught himself with both palms on the dirt - but he would not lower his head, though Liv could see her father’s face turning red with effort. But he kept his eyes up and fixed on Ractia with pure hate.

Three of the elders staggered. Aatu planted Seija’s lance in the ground, wrapped both arms around the shaft, and clung to it as a drowning man might cling to a chance-found scrap of wood at sea. Without it, Liv doubted that he would have been able to remain upright. Her grandmother and great-uncle clung to each other, swayed for a moment, but did not fall.

Liv, who had thrown herself against the remnant of Celris’s ancient Authority, in the tomb deep beneath the icy north, set her boots in a wide stand, squared her shoulders, and let Cel roar to life in the back of her mind like a long-delayed blizzard finally unleashed. Cold air snapped about her, snowflakes filled the area, and ice cracked out across the ground.

At her side, Aira simply exhaled, and did not waver.

Ractia’s eyes flicked between each of them. “Two of Celris’s descendents,” she observed, in that chorus of a voice. “Two from Däivi, and one Iravata. I’m disappointed that two of my own children are ungrateful - and arrogant - enough to come before me. Yes, Wren Wind Dancer, I recognize you there. Keep your eyes down where they belong. Little Aira of the River, I expected this of you. But this girl...”

There was a long pause, and Liv met Ractia’s eyes without flinching.

“You’re the one whose spirit flew to me, after I’d just awoken,” Ractia said, eventually. “The one who killed Karis at Coral Bay, and Calevis at Antris’s Foundry. They told me your name -”

“Livara tär Valtteri kæn Syvä,” Liv said.

“I’m surprised a girl so young can stand before me,” Ractia admitted. “Aira is one of our children, after all - even if she is getting on in years. You’re just the - what, granddaughter? Great-granddaughter? Of one of Celris’s women. He had quite a few, you know.”

“I saw them,” Liv said. “Frozen like statues.”

Ractia smiled. “Yes. He was quite a brute - horrible man, really. He liked to preserve them, in the flush of their beauty, he called it. A poetic turn of phrase for murder. I don’t mind that he’s dead.”

“He wasn’t, entirely,” Liv shot back. “There was a piece of him left haunting the tomb. The enchantments fed him mana.”

“Oh?” Ractia raised her eyebrows. “Spoke with your ancestor, did you? Did he have anything interesting to tell you?”

“No,” Liv said. “But he’s gone now. I killed what was left of him.”

“And what a wonderful little killer you are,” the goddess said. “Here to kill me now, as well? I suppose you have a reason?”

“Because you killed my father,” Valtteri grunted. Liv was surprised her father could draw enough breath to speak - he seemed to be getting the worst of Ractia’s Authority, compared to the elders.

“I don’t recall doing that,” the Lady of Blood admitted. “Was it a long time ago? Who was he?”

“His name was Auris ka Syvä, and he was a son of Celris and my grandfather,” Liv snarled. “You sent Calevis to attack the Hall of Ancestors.”

“Sent’ is a strong word,” Ractia said, with a sigh. “Permitted’ might be more accurate. The poor little dear seemed to think that he could turn some of the Cotheeria, and break the ones who wouldn’t join us. It didn’t turn out quite the way he expected.”

“Vakansa,” Eila said, still clinging to her brother’s arm. “We are Vakansa now, not your slaves. And he was my husband.”

Ractia blinked, slowly and deliberately. “Just how much of one family has come to kill themselves at my feet?” she asked, and then laughed. “Three of you? Four? Am I going to have to cut the entire line out, root and stem, so that I won’t be troubled any further?”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Aira muttered. “Even my mother thought you were a nasty piece of work, you know. She might not have said it to your face, but I think it's clear enough why Arvatis wouldn’t want you. You should have been dead with all the rest of them, when the sky fell. You aren’t wanted anymore. A forgotten goddess from a forgotten world - and once we’ve put an end to you, this little cult you’ve built will fall apart.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Ractia said. “And if you think an old woman like you can face me, little Aira, your memory is worse than mine. Or perhaps your mother never taught you this lesson. Let me, just this once, act in her place.”

Ractia raised both of her hands, spreading her arms wide, and made a motion as if she was lifting something that none of the rest of them could see.

The corpses in the town below them ripped, with great, sickening tearing sounds. Liv turned her head to look, and saw streamers of blood lifting up out of the bodies, both those who had been sacrificed, and those who had wielded the knives. Even the gore that had spattered the altar or soaked into the ground rose, swirling about in an enormous cloud that moved upslope to encompass Ractia, Aariv, and the eight people who faced her.

The cloud spun, twisting into a column of scarlet, with the confrontation, cut off from the rest of the world, occupying the calm spot at the center. Specks of black coalesced from within the rushing gore, forming into long whips and chains of black iron, decorated with wicked spikes. Slowly, the spinning gyre began to constrict, closing in on them, and the moment it touched Liv’s Authority, she could tell that it was an archmage spell, cast without a word being spoken, or even any apparent effort.

Ractia rolled her shoulders and neck languorously, as though she’d just risen from bed. “Your companions are crushed into the ground,” she pointed out. “Or rooted where they stand. Even if a few of you can move, the rest will be flayed, then shredded. Your blood will be mine, and only a few cracked bones will be left behind.”

“With me, Liv,” Aira hissed. “Now!” The old woman reached into the pouch she wore, grabbed a fistful of seeds, and flung them forward. They scattered in the ground before Ractia and Aariv, and the elder’s magic took hold of them in that same instant.

Sprouts tore their way up out of the ground, growing into an instant grove around the ancient goddess. Thorns there were, dripping poison, of the same kind that girded the border of the garden in which Aira had been raised as a small girl. There were trees, as well, with familiar nodules, from each of which grew a wicked spike. Plants with enormous leaves in semi-circular pairs, again with great thrones standing up from the rim of each leaf. Liv recognized each and every one of them: she’d seen them at the Garden of Thorns.

The trees quivered, launching their spikes at Aariv and Ractia. The circular leaves snapped up, closing like the jaws of some enormous beast. The hedge of thorns pressed in, dripping poison.

With a shout, Aariv flung fire at the onrushing greenery. He burnt his way out of one leafy mouth, only to be pierced through the shoulder by a spike, launched from one of the trees. Then, the hedge of thorns was upon him and around him, still growing, so that the old man with his wild white hair and mechanical arm was hoisted up upon them, lifted entirely off the ground and impaled. The poison ran into his body and his blood ran down the thorns, and he gasped out his final breath with eyes wide before becoming still.

Liv, in the meanwhile, sent her six blades shooting forward in a volley, directly at Ractia’s heart. Whipping strands of black iron erupted from the circling column of gore and viscera that surrounded them, lashing out in front of Ractia to protect the goddess, and knocked the swords aside with a succession of clangs. She hadn’t really expected such a basic attack to work, but she had wanted to watch how Ractia responded, what manner of defense she used.

Grandmother Eila and her brother raised their joined hands together, and the crimson swirl slowed, then stopped, to hang motionless in the air about them. Valtteri raised one hand just high enough off the ground to slam it down again, and a wave of ice crystals erupted from him, tearing up the ground as they shot toward Ractia, expanding, growing, and sprouting more and more geometric forms as they built momentum into an unstoppable wave. Aatu flung his captured lance forward before collapsing to his knees, while even Ghveris unleashed a storm of projectiles from the rotating barrels mounted on his shoulder.

Ractia laughed.

“This is what you brought to kill me?” Again, she flourished her hands, more like a woman dancing to some unseen song than a mage, and the strands of black iron which had surrounded her moved like whips, shattering Valtteri’s crystals, knocking aside Ghveris’s bullets and Aatu’s lance.

“And you.” The goddess turned her gaze to Liv’s grandmother and great uncle, and those elegant dark brows narrowed into a scowl. “A broken word? To a fight like this?”

Ractia clenched her fist, and both Eila and her brother dropped to the ground with a scream. The cyclone of blood, stilled momentarily, erupted once again into furious motion, then rose up into the air. The goddess’s other hand extended downslope, clawed fingers outstretched, and screams echoed out from the mountainside.

Liv spun around to look. From the piles of corpses, left where they’d fallen, blood rose, all across the battlefield. From the wounded, dragged back to be cared for by Arjun and their comrades, blood rose. Everywhere she looked, orbs of blood coalesced, then extruded lashes, just as they had on the Day of Blood, so long ago - but this time, instead of one or two, there were hundreds, descending the slope in a great mass, tearing into the allied troops that remained.