Serenity cleared the reactor readings twice while Roy stood at the railing of the Fireside Ascent. Each recalculation brought another set of figures across his AllPhone, and behind them the diagram of the Nightshatter kept changing, entire sections acquiring connections the three sisters were still trying to identify. Somewhere inside that ship, Mama was making herself useful with both hands buried in things Serenity preferred people to leave alone.
"At the current conversion rate," Serenity said, "the arcane railgun could deliver a projectile to the moon within seconds."
"Assuming we wished to destroy the ship, the docks, the harbor, and a substantial portion of Otherrealm in the process," Harmony added. "The recoil would be spectacular."
Roy lowered the phone. "Please remain interested in the moon from here."
"Your biometrics have improved as well," Tranquility said. "You resemble an actual adventurer now. Previously, an emaciated stepchild would have been the more useful comparison."
"How long have you been waiting to say that?"
"Cast Light Barrier, Captain."
Beside his raised hand, a blue-white plane spread into place. Its edge followed his palm when he turned it, answering so readily that he extended the ward halfway across the railing before remembering what an ordinary casting cost him. He held it there and waited for the ache behind his forehead. Within a few seconds, the pleasure of being able to sustain it had persuaded him to widen it again. The whole forward edge of the Ascent shone through his spell.
"This would be the best thing that has ever happened to me," he said, "if I knew literally any other spells."
"Imagine the scene as you desire it, sweet boy. Through you, my magic will make it real."
Mama's voice came from inside his head, so close that he nearly answered without speaking. Through the obscured portal at the rear of the platform, he could still make out her raised arms and the white crown above her restored face. She had given him a body capable of carrying the magic, and now she was offering to supply the part he would otherwise have needed several centuries to learn.
Roy dismissed the barrier and beckoned to the nearest camera drone. While Harmony arranged the others, he moved to the front of the platform and waited for the recording light. Beyond it, the Sixth Witch held her position on the corrupted pillar, with the storm she had summoned still moving above the field.
"For thousands of years, this woman has enjoyed the collected knowledge of the great witch line," Roy began. "Ten thousand spells from its founder alone. Today, a guildmaster took her favorite history lesson apart, and a child broke the attack she chose to answer him with." He offered one hand toward her, giving the camera room to turn. "You have been generous with your time, Sixth Witch. Allow me to be generous with mine. I will personally end your miserable excuse for a life."
As the drone drew back for the wider shot, Roy stepped over the edge. Eryndra reached him before his boot had cleared the deck, but her hand stopped just above his shoulder. She pushed against the space between them, and writing flared beneath his sleeve. The field carried her arm back toward her own body while Roy continued into the air.
"Roy! Please remember you have weak bones!" Eryndra yelled.
"I know what I'm doing!"
He had a staircase in mind and Mama to work out the details. With the first movement of his right hand, lightning struck beneath his foot and held its shape, leaving a white tread inside a branching blue outline. The next two gestures laid steps below it. Roy walked down all three, his soles resting on light that supported him as firmly as the deck, while further bolts built the descent ahead of him. Being able to choose his own footing out here pleased him enough that he took the next few steps slowly, giving Harmony time to follow him down.
From above came Lynder's voice. "Is this the true power of the Thunder Rider? I knew he was hiding it!"
Roy considered turning to acknowledge him, but the Witch had begun gathering mana beneath her pillar. Her leading foot turned toward the cavern roof before her body followed, and a vertical seam opened in the space above her. He could see each part of the attempt distinctly. There was even time to notice a torn fold of robe lifting off her heel as she prepared to rise.
With a small turn of his wrist, he brought lightning up from the floor and stepped into it. The column carried him past the staircase and across the distance to her, setting a new tread beneath his boot as his fingers closed around her forearm. She had climbed less than twenty feet. Through his grip he felt her attempt to wrench free, and the runes along his arm tightened to hold her.
"Leaving already? I haven't even started pretending this is difficult."
Two fingers curled against her captured palm and lightning ran through the wrist between them, forcing the fingers open before she could complete the gesture. The recoil twisted her sideways. Roy let her go as the pillar broke under her, then followed on steps forming as quickly as he could place his feet.
Her free hand disappeared behind her back during the turn. Black needles came at his ribs from below, and the first reached him before he thought to defend himself. Six blue layers formed against his side. Their separate impacts drove a series of small knocks through the ward, each needle breaking farther from his body than the one before it, until splinters fell between the steps.
"Keep walking," Mama told him.
The Witch began an incantation whose opening syllable repeated at three points around him. Flame formed to his left. A band of dark liquid stretched across the stairs behind him, while the air ahead compressed until he could see the outline of its pressure against the cavern wall. Following Mama's direction, Roy swept one arm through the space before him and sent lightning into the copied voices.
All three formations broke, but the Witch changed the word she was speaking. Their remnants rushed inward together. Roy lost sight of her as fire and debris closed over the steps, and the stair beneath his trailing foot vanished under the detonation. His next stride found fresh lightning waiting beyond it. By the time he emerged, he had traveled through the burst with Mama's blue-white wards still turning over his shoulders.
"That was almost respectable," he said.
Below her robe, one heel finished drawing a rune. The cavern lurched sideways around him, and Roy found himself where the Witch had been, with his staircase several yards away and the Fireside Ascent directly beyond her. Another mark flared beneath her feet, aimed to launch her toward the crew.
He pictured the lower curve of that mark burning through. Lightning struck it before she could leave, spoiled the angle, and sent her plunging toward the floor. The ground opened under her impact. Roy followed inside a bolt that left him on a fresh stair above the crater, where the cameras arrived a moment later to find him waiting.
"Whenever one answer fails," he told her, "you go looking for another woman who might have done your thinking for you. How far through the book are we?"
Stone burst from the crater around the Witch. Through the debris, Roy caught the movements of both hands and heard the beginning of another incantation. A fourth working gathered inside the pillar rebuilding beneath her. Mama gave him their positions, and his closing fist sent lightning through all four before the formations could take hold. The fifth was inside the shadow of a falling stone. When it opened, every fragment hanging above the crater turned toward Roy.
"Both hands," Mama said.
He pushed his palms apart. The barrier expanded with them, meeting the converging rubble so close that he could see grains breaking from the stones in front of his face. Across its surface, blue current passed from fragment to fragment. Roy swept both arms forward and sent the charged debris back into the crater, where one piece struck the Witch's shoulder and another cut through her pillar before she raised a broad plane of shifting color. The remaining stones softened as they crossed it and fell around her as gray powder.
By then, her hands had begun shaping a hollow sphere. Pale threads curved across its interior, crossing the outer surface at angles Roy struggled to follow, and Mama interrupted him before he could choose how to break it.
"That spell is mine."
Her anger arrived through Tenebration with enough clarity that he knew which hand she wanted him to strike. The seam beneath the Witch's left palm became obvious, though he would have needed Mama to point it out again if asked to find it on his own.
"She has reached the pages I wrote as a girl. After parading my mother's work across the cavern, she expects mine to save her." The pressure along Roy's left arm directed his aim. "Break that seam. Then hit her in the mouth."
His bolt split the sphere, but the Witch drew its damaged surface inward before the rest could unravel. She pulled it between her teeth and swallowed, the pale threads winding into her throat until her next breath came out as a column of fire.
Roy raised his reinforced arm into the column and struck it aside. The flow turned over his knuckles, crossed above the crater, and cut a molten trench through the roof. Heat poured down from the opened stone. He kept his hand raised for a moment after the fire had passed, enjoying the extraordinary fact that it was still attached.
"We've been figuring you out from the start, haven't we?" He lowered his arm as the camera reached his side. "That's hardly fair. You should have another chance."
"Yes," Mama said. "Repeat after me, sweet boy. I advise against broadcasting this part."
"I will arrange some interference," Serenity replied.
While static covered the public audio, Mama guided him through the opening phrase. Several words required him to place his tongue differently from any language he remembered speaking, and he repeated one until the working held. Once she was satisfied, Roy turned his back on the Witch and spread his arms. Serenity restored the sound.
"I'll close my eyes. Use anything you like, and surprise me."
He closed them while the cameras moved into place. Having watched the entire fight at Mama's speed, he found the darkness much less comfortable than he had intended. Somewhere behind him, a centuries-old witch was deciding how to murder him, and he had just promised an audience to let her try.
"Go ahead," he called. "The Thunder Rider doesn't need to see you."
"She is leaving," Mama said.
Roy raised one finger. A bolt struck beyond the crater, loud enough to make his ears ring, followed by the sound of the Witch hitting stone considerably closer to him. He kept his eyes shut and curled the finger toward himself.
"Come back here. You were offered a free shot. Try to appreciate it."
Her scream gave him a useful idea of her position. Soon afterward, five more voices joined it at different heights around him, and he felt Mama's attention move among them. The incantation she had prepared remained poised behind his own thoughts while she studied what the Witch was assembling.
"Five reflections," she said. "Six points with the caster. This lies outside the First Tome. Give me a moment."
Roy opened one eye. He caught a shadowed figure above his shoulder drawing symbols through its own face, then another lower down, its legs divided into roots that curved beneath the crater. Across from it, a reflection had opened its ribs around a dark sphere. The remaining two reached into the Witch, drawing luminous strands from her chest and throat to connect all six bodies.
"I believe this belongs to a transmutation branch," Mama said. "Grisaille Meridian will hold against it."
"Are you sure?"
"Captain," Serenity cut in, "the arrangement resembles 'origin murals' all around the city! It must be a version of the ritual that transformed the Cult of Cuuy. It is also highly unstable. I recommend moving."
"Please dodge the monster-making spell," Tranquility added.
"You may both observe," Mama said. "When it has finished, I will accept your apologies."
Roy closed his eye before the Witch could catch him looking. A tremor had reached his outstretched hands, and he hoped Harmony could find something more interesting to film while he persuaded himself to leave them there.
"Everybody calm down, I trust her. She's got this."
At Mama's instruction, he resumed the incantation. Serenity covered the words with another burst of interference as the six figures began folding toward their shared center. Blue and yellow current passed through each reflection, bringing pieces of its anatomy into the working, until a broad wave spread across the crater. Limbs and faces moved beneath its surface as it gathered height.
Gray fire rose around Roy in successive layers. Through the nearest he could see another, then several more, their edges receding farther than the space ought to have allowed. Mama held every depth in place while he worked through the final phrase. A second skin of blue-white light passed over the outermost flame and covered the gray, giving the cameras the Thunder Rider's colors.
When the interference ended, Roy lowered his arms and turned to face the attack. Mama supplied the last words with him, their voices meeting as he named the spell.
"Forgotten Scripts: Grisaille Meridian."
The transmutation wave struck before he had finished speaking, filling his view with the shapes moving inside it. Behind its advance, the Witch held all six positions together and drove the rest of the working toward him.