“I’m sorry?”

“You heard him, Ruby. Don’t be-“

She cut her husband off. “Kill. The Thayne? No.” She stomped her heel and with a flourish of her own power, the orrerry that surrounded them fell away lie a broken pane of glass.
“Hear him out.” Arden folded his arms across his chest. His auburn furlongs fluttered in the wind. “He deserves that much.” He nodded gruffly at his brother.

“Hear him out? Fuck no. You all hid Duffy from me for nearly a year. Each treacherous one of you lied to my face. And now, after springing him on me on a false pretence I’m supposed to move on and start another war?” Never one to be outdone, Ruby’s auburn hair began to dance of its own accord, embers forming in the roots and red feathers appearing from her rage either side of her parting.

Arden rolled his eyes, but approached Ruby and without remorse delivered a stoic backhand across her cheek. The top of the tower erupted into unburning fire, coruscating over the ramparts and igniting signals malefic across the illusionary night sky of the troupe’s sanctuary. Silence returned with deafening weight.

“You good?”

Ruby lifted her head, cheek reddened and eyes burning, but nodded with grit teeth.

“I’ve had about enough of this.” The swordsman returned to his post, and the troupe stood once more at the points of an invisible star. “There are reports coming in all over Scara Brae of strange occurrences. Floating islands. Water boiling. People with no magical talent losing their minds. Something is happening.”

“Precisely! Oblivion’s death brought Tantalus back into the minds of the people of Scara Brae. The belief in Tantalus changed the dynamic of the Pantheon…it’s caused a shift in balance and that shift has put pressure on all the sealed wellsprings that once gave Scara Brae it’s power.” He didn’t need to recite the story about the Molyneux Uprising, of the fall of the Innari. They had all lived through it and tried to forget what the Tap did to good men.

“You can’t be serious…” Ruby’s expression sent a shiver down Duffy’s spine. “You’re Tantalus.”

“No. We all are. Even ‘becoming’ his avatar only gave us a place in the heavens. Only together can we truly make an impact, can we truly give power back to the people.”

“That power, I hasten to remind you, killed the Ayar and devastated the landscape in a thousand-year war…” Leopold rested his hands on his hips. His churlish grin turned into a flat, deadened expression of sincerity. “My people were slaughtered and Berevar’s civilisation destroyed. Or did we just forget what the Tap does to people?”

Duffy drew on the Aria once more, the connection stronger in the castle than in Althanas proper. The orrerry reborn, images appeared of five figures at the centre of maelstroms and melees, proud smiles and terrifying visages marking them as the Forgotten Ones. One at each point of the star in which the troupe stood, the images stood a thousand-foot-tall in sandstone and midnight hues.