It was the break of dawn outside, but the sky was so black with smoke that time was indiscernible; to the two occupants of the shelled out high-rise, it may well have been midnight. Seated against the pantry wall, shoulder to shoulder, Andal Brask and Ikora Rey shared a canteen of water. The burned holes where wire rifles had fired through the walls littered the small larder; flour and sugar were sprawled on the floor, and the air was thick with the charred odors of spices. There was a loud crash as the building cattycorner to theirs collapsed under a mortar blast; neither Brask nor Ikora so much as flinched.

“I never thought I’d see the equal of six fronts,” muttered Ikora, exhaustion and defeat thick in her voice. “But this is worse.”

Brask raised a hand to his ear, eyes closed, listening to an incoming broadcast. He let his hand fall back to where it previously rested, his elbows on his knees. “We’ve lost the Twilight Gap.” Ikora shut her eyes, leaning her head back against the wall.

“We can’t press this back numerically,” she reasoned, staring at the ceiling now. “We need to strike at their command chain.” She deployed her ghost, addressing it. “What’s our orbital arsenal’s current capability?”

“At this time we have no strike capability, Ikora. Visual capacity at %20; the majority of the metropolitan districts are obscured due to detritus and smoke. Infrared suggests the majority of the enemy fleet remains in orbit; bombardment has been continuous since first contact at 0200 hours yesterday morning.”

“Thank you ghost,” Ikora said, desyncing it. She stared back at the ceiling.

“The House of Kings will likely attempt landfall when they feel the battle is within reach.” Brask had not said a word since they’d left the rooftops to take a short respite from the melee on the walls. “I know where they’ll land.”

“How?” said Ikora, barely turning her head back to look at him. “How could you possibly know?”

“They did the same at six fronts. They landed in the heights of the Massif du Nord, hours before the Saint killed the Devil’s Kell at the wall and broke them. They were strategizing for that final push; do you remember when their tactics changed, and they massed their forces above the Gap? It was the Kings’ banners they massed under.” He paused to drink from the canteen. “They’ve taken the Gap now; they aim to mass there again.” He tilted his head toward Ikora. “The Kings are the proudest house. I’ve watched them send waves of troops through pointless chokes, where the only possible motive was hubris. They want to make a point to their fellow houses. They want to prove to the lesser houses that the Kings were right about the six fronts; that the Kings’ strategy is always the correct one.”

Brask deployed his ghost. “Give Cayde our position and tell him to meet me here.” He turned to Ikora, offering his ghost to her. “We need every ghost we have reviving the titans at the walls. Take it. Cayde can provide for us both.” She took it gingerly as he rose to his feet; turning, he helped Ikora to hers. “If we can’t cut off the head, ghosts won’t be much good anyway.”

“I hope you’re right, Andal,” she replied, rising; she held his hand, stopping him as he was turning to go.

“Will it make much difference if I’m wrong?” he spoke; the question felt fatalistic. He looked a long time at her, his grey eyes staring into her deep brown ones; his cropped, black beard had new traces of silver. Ikora put her hands on his scarred face, staring into his eyes. He gazed back, mournful and human, his hands covering hers. Then Cayde was in his ear, and he was speaking to her in a haze, the last words she knew she’d ever hear him say. Then he was gone.

*****

“We’ve prepared numerous deployments for the final thrust, at this location, below the pass,” Amaviks continued, highlighting the high point of the enemy’s outer fortifications: a great tower on the fortified walls. “My sister has assured us that your efforts will not go unrewarded, our faithful Kells, should the enemy be broken.”

“You would truly seek to meet the enemy at their strongest bastion, then?” replied Draksis, nonplussed. “Need I remind you what became of your father at that place?”

“Enough with your impudent tongue, cur!” Arakvis was at his feet now, an arm on the hilt of his blade, overcome with rage. He rounded on his sister, gesticulating his free arms wildly. “Why do we tolerate the constant prattling of this worm? He offers rebukes to every plan as if he were an oracle, born with vision of the end of days!”

“We do grow tired of your constant criticisms, Draksis.” Aramiks voice was drawn and sneering; her eyes lingered on the Winter’s Kell where he sat, unmoving, his high arms a pyramid beneath his chin. “If your tongue cannot keep its place then perhaps Winter will have need of a new Kell sooner rather than later.”

“If you three are all so blind to the foolishness of your dead sire, ever striving to vindicate his stupidity, then the Houses of our great race have little use for your tedious tyranny.” With Draksis’s words, the Devil and the Wolf rose by his sides. “We have decided to choose a different path, free of your constant idiocies.” He rose as he spoke; Aramiks contempt turned quickly to fear, while her brothers drew their blades.

“Traitorous wretches!” bellowed Amaviks. Then the great hall plunged into darkness, and with a sundering crash the nose of the ketch came down through the ceiling.

*****

Brask watched as the dust and bricks of the fortress came down around him at the jungle’s edge. High above, the guards crushed beneath stone and brickwork were howling in agony and pain. A skiff crashed down in the forest behind him; everywhere, suddenly visible sentries were scrambling out of the open. The Ketch fell back now, dragging a wall of the castle with it; its thundering fall down the hillside rumbled interminably in the echoing mountains. Brask hung low, unfettered by technological camouflage, a true born hunter that moved unseen in the anarchy around the castle. He entered through the main gate, climbing the keep to a central tower, knives out.

*****

There was blind panic in the smashed high hall of the castle. The three Kells of Kings were scrambling in the rubble as Draksis emerged from under the shattered holographic table, as at home in the darkness and dust as he was in his throne room. He stepped over the crushed corpse of Sneviks; past the injured form of Riksis leaning against rubble; up over the table and down to where Amaviks lay, pinned beneath a great beam. He reached down agonizingly, purposefully, a great smile on his face; picking up the low Kell’s sword, he raised it blithely.

“A wonder, dear brother: will it ever be that just one of your pithy endeavors might end in anything but disaster?” He let the blade fall, severing the High King’s head; ether sprayed through the air as Amaviks’s arms fell dead on the ground. “I think not.” He turned his attention to his other foes; Arakvis was struggling to rise, his left leg pinned beneath a collapsed wall. Finally he wrenched free; in the settling dust and growing moonlight, the champion sized his adversary.

“How now, Arakvis? Eager to test your mettle?” Winter’s Kell laughed derisively.

“I will splay you and every cursed rat of your ilk!” roared the youngest Kell of Kings. He staggered forward, brandishing his blades; he swung in hapless strokes, fanning the dust.

Suddenly Draksis closed the gap between them; he deflected one blade, catching the arm of Arakvis as he tried to strike with his other sword. At the same time Riksis delivered a vicious head-butt that sent the young Kell sprawling, his scimitars clattering away to either side. Before Arakvis could rise, Draksis kicked him down, pinioning the toppled Kell underfoot with his mighty bulk, and ran the youngest King through the throat.

His sister was conscious now, besieged beneath the same pile of rocks that had trapped her brother. As she struggled free, the enormous hands of furious Winter found her; he throttled her thrashing form, her hands pitifully scrabbling at the grip around her throat, his voice a curious monotone. “What pathetic attempt is this, to slay your rivals?” After a time she ceased her shuddering; Draksis discarded her dead form in a heap on the floor. Riksis was struggling to his feet on the other side of the great table; Draksis turned to him. “What foible would they not consider? How could this ruinous disaster of theirs possibly dissemble us?”

“I do not think this is the Kings’ doing,” rasped Riksis, gesturing around the ruined castle. “The enemy is here; this is a tactical strike by the wicked sphere, not a coup of the Kings.”

Draksis looked about the castle roof, piled with rubble and wet with moonlight; realizing quickly that he too had underestimated the little mammals. “Well said Riksis; your wisdom is ever ready. Arm yourself my brother.” His senses were sharp, alert. “They will be coming.”

*****

In the near dark of the castle’s narrow halls, vandals were scrambling in the dark, barking out in confusion to each other. One by one, the voices stopped; rounding a corner, or turning to listen for an imagined sound, they found the steel teeth of Brask’s knives. He was a ghost haunting those dusty rooms; up each flight of stairs he found fresh victims, easy work in the punishing darkness.

Finally he’d scaled to the penultimate floor; through cracks and new fissures in the ceiling, bright moonlight cast a kaleidoscope of tiny rays that played in the dust like rain. Brask sifted through the strange half-light, creeping through the empty rooms until he reached a broad double stairway, winding up to the doors of the great hall.

As he rounded the stair the doorway lay open, the giant oak doors smashed on the ground under lashes of rubble. He stepped silently through the gate, out under the bright open sky; the great hall was collapsed, a stony courtyard under the moon. Dead giants lay strewn about; he counted four of them, the broken forms of Kells surrounding a central table. On the far side, sitting against a stone seat, the Devil’s archon was rasping, wounded perhaps; he barely acknowledged Brask as he entered.

Above Brask, crouching hidden on the keystone of the still standing doorway, the coiled form of Winter prepared to pounce.