The moon hung in the pallid night sky, a solitary source of illumination at winter’s end. Duffy watched it wistfully, trying to find the right words to settle the growing tension between the five siblings stood out in shawls and woollen overcoats atop Castle Brandybuck’s Library tower. Leopold, Lilith, Arden, Ruby, and Duffy. Together after war and peace and everything in between.

“I don’t know what to say.” Ruby pulled her cloak tighter across her shoulders. Her breath pealed into whirls of vapor.

“How about, ‘why are we outside?’” Leopold stomped his boots, desperate to keep the blood pumping around his body.

“I think Duffy was trying to make a point.” Lilith darted the bard a murderous glance, then walked to the edge of the battlements and leant out into the updraft. Her hair danced lie kami raging. “Hopefully before we all freeze to death.” She felt no cold, the fire of the Komodo’s rage warming her body eternal.

“Okay. Here’s the deal.” Steeling himself for the inevitable barbed tongue backlash, the bard did away with the awkward silence and put his thoughts into words. “When I was in the Tap, I saw how the Thayne became…well, Thayne. I saw that they were anthropomorphic, reliant on the belief people hold in their idols.” He plucked at invisible strings, and with a whorl of power the circular pit atop the tower came to life.

Colour, thousands of hues, formed a tapestry of memory and madness. The troupe broke their circle and stared in wonder and confusion. A vision of their first performance rolled up over the granite and knocked Lilith back. Childhood memories and darkened dreams turned into skeins of the future and the promises of tomorrow. When it finally settled into a starry sky full of a thousand planets, Duffy continued.

“But the Thayne do nothing. They watch the world and wait for trouble, too scared of what men will do if the Tap returns.” He bit his lip. “The War of the Tap stripped away most of their power because magic, the Tap itself, became more important to people than them. They let the Forgotten Ones run rampant across the world because they saw in their actions opportunity to destroy the wellsprings.”

Phantasmal images of the pantheon appeared in silver lines that criss-crossed between stars like constellations. Duffy pointed to each in turn and named them.

“What I’m proposing, when you’ve all finished getting over me dying and coming back to life and dying again…is to kill the Thayne.”

Ruby spat her wine.