//------------------------------//
// Chapter 21 
// Story: Shattered Pentacle 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Harmony Point remained transformed to Lyra's eyes. Jungle canopy towered over the rocky crags, and the mud of the long thunderstorm transformed to firm, healthy soil. Strange birds filled the air with their songs, unknown yet welcoming. The sun shone bright on her face, defiant of the pouring rain she knew must be there. No lightning flashed, no thunder rolled.
“He demanded obedience without understanding. Loyalty without love. He was always wrong.” Not Capper's voice. That was someone else, a speaker she had heard only once before, while her soul was in a strange vision. The guardian of the tower.
She was there. A magnificent white mare, with cascading mane of different shades, and a little golden crown. This one wasn't sharpened to points, waiting to put out her eyes. 
Lyra held out the artifact to her, looking away. “This is yours?” she asked, in the High Speech. “I return it.”
“Not anymore,” the speaker said, voice distant and forlorn. “Not yours either, I fear. Your oath is to the wrong tower. Deliver my diadem to a friend who can wear it faithfully.”
She dissolved into mist, blown away by the storm. Rain crashed down around her, piercing the illusion in little bursts. Bonnie appeared across the clearing, struggling against her bonds in the mud.
Lyra settled the artifact around her neck by the chain, where the changeling armor insulated it from her skin. Then she ran. Her legs pierced the illusion, dissolving supernal jungles and replacing them with the familiar mountainside. By the time she reached her girlfriend, only the high trees remained overhead, and the warming touch of sunlight to replace the storm. That remained firm, in spite of the Storm King's fury.
Lyra dropped down beside her girlfriend, resting one hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Bonnie. Let me get that for you.”
“You!” Her girlfriend spat it out, face pale from the cold and twisted into vivid horror. Lyra had seen her look that way many times—whenever she returned from work covered in blood, and whispering of the dead. The way she looked around monsters. “You're one of them, Harper. Witch.” She shoved away from Lyra's hand with surprising strength. “I saw what you did. You're just like them. Get away from me!”
She lowered her knife. “I'm nothing like them. Tempest and the other monsters you were hunting—they're evil. We aren't all like that.”
“Liar!” Bonnie screamed. Her face streaked with tears, mingled freely with the rain. “All this time, you lied! How long? Every night we're together? You were using me... bleeding me for information... enchanting me.”
Lyra met her eyes, defiant. Beside her, Capper approached through the rain, taking hesitant steps. He kept his head down and said nothing—he understood enough to know not to make the situation worse. “Only to help you. To heal you, protect you. Like...”
Damn the rules. Damn human observation. She already suspected her girlfriend wouldn't disrupt the spell anymore. “The hunter stands defiant of her defeats. Bruised and bloodied by the beasts, she lays in the mud, unbroken. The heart of the world is her heart, and they beat together. She breathes deep, giving her pain to the world, and feeling it in turn. She will hunt monsters.”
The spell was almost effortless for her now—invisible, to a human observer who could not feel her nimbus. But its effects—those came instantly. Bonnie's injuries healed, and her body was rejuvenated as though she had rested all night. Any need to eat or drink was replaced with the flow of mana in her veins, at least for a little while.
Bonnie gasped. Her body shook, then she sat up in the mud, no longer slouched with pain and injury. Her words came clearly now, not slurred. Her lip wasn't broken anymore. “Your... special tea.”
She was crying too, of course. Lyra put her magical tool back down, nodding shakily. “I would've told you the truth. I wasn't lying to get information from you. I wasn't tricking you. It's just... there's this thing people have, like a... cancer, in their soul. Stops you from seeing magic. Makes it fail if you know about it, makes you forget. That's why you couldn't figure out how those monsters were fighting, and they never had the same powers. You couldn't remember them—couldn't learn. If I tried to tell you, it would've been the same way.”
Her girlfriend glanced down at the ropes binding her, then twisted her arms to either side. Fabric frayed—then split, freeing both arms. She shook them, brushing the torn fabric from her skin. “What about now? Are you saying I'll... forget? All the good men and women who died tonight, the things I saw... I couldn't forget.”
Lyra took one of Bonnie's hands with her own. That invited retaliation—a throw backwards, an arm around her throat. Her girlfriend could overpower her easily if she wanted. She could steal the knife she used as her magical tool, cut herself free, and escape. She did it anyway. “Not anymore. Your dreamless sleep is over. You see the truth with eyes unclouded. You won't forget what you saw.”
Her girlfriend shuddered, body wracked by something like a sob, quickly strangled. “Horror you couldn't imagine,” she whispered. “I thought vampires were the worst thing hunting people. I was wrong.”
“We're not like vampires,” Lyra said confidently. “They take—they're parasites, stealing life to survive. Just... try to remember. It wasn't just evil you saw up here. You saw my friends fighting against it. We risked our lives to stop Tempest. Mages aren't creatures, Sweetie. We're people, for everything that represents. Saints and sinners. From what I've seen, there are more good than bad, people trying to make the world better in whatever way they can. Not monsters.”
Bonnie nodded, slowly, expression haunted. “I saw... when you fought her. Two worlds. One that crushed, and one that was... different. Who spoke?”
“Daybreaker,” Capper said, very quietly. So quiet that his voice was barely audible over the storm. “You called for her. Shine without shadow. Burn without smoke. Two names of three. When the darkness is deepest, they bring the dawn.”
Her girlfriend turned towards him, mouth opening and closing once in her confusion and desperation. “You talk too?”
In Atlantean? Those names would never work in a fallen language, even the most gracefully expressed. But Capper somehow shared that understanding with her, so why not another? She could think of few more deserving.
“When I am so inclined. Less when I am ignored.”
“Of course he talks,” Bonnie said. But her anger was gone now, along with her betrayal. “You have been acting strange since you adopted him. He was the reason, wasn't it? Whispering lies into your ear all this time...”
“Never,” he said, lifting onto his hindlegs in indignance. “Every lie deepens the quintessence and darkens every shadow.”
“That's more or less how he talks,” Lyra said. “He’s my familiar, by the way. Let me get that rope around your—”
Something struck into Lyra with the force of an approaching automobile. It hit so hard that her whole body should've been instantly turned to jelly, and would have without her armor.
Instead of dying instantly, she tumbled backward through the air, ripped away from Bonnie with irresistible force. For a few seconds she saw only blurred stars, puddles of brown mud, and the occasional tree stump. 
She tried to get together the will to cast something—but she would have better luck stopping the tide with her hands. Electricity arced through her body, disrupting her thoughts. A spell required coherence of will, a unified purpose, at least forming an Imago in her mind. She couldn't. 
Then she landed. Shock passed through her, an impact painful enough to shatter bones. 
“B-Bon...” she rolled onto her back, struggling against the incredible force. Her girlfriend wasn't even armed, she wasn't that strong. Besides, she was convincing her! She wasn't going to attack!
She hadn’t. Someone walked up through the mud, their body illuminated by a glow of lightning. Her fine clothes were scorched and blackened now, but that didn't even slow her down. Even the rain didn't reach her, curving around her body rather than battering her.
Tempest reached down, yanking at her necklace. “That's mine, Pentacle,” she snapped, every drop of smug confidence gone. 
Lyra reached for it—but she was in too much pain to put up much of a fight. 
Then the cat leapt on her face. Capper wasn't large, or very strong—but he fought like he didn't care, yowling and screeching and scratching with all four claws. 
Lyra worked quickly, mending the worst of her injuries in the few seconds that Capper bought. If she could think clearly, she could fight. She only needed—
Tempest flung Capper away from her, into a patch of muddy ground. He landed with a grunt loud enough that she knew it must hurt—but that wasn't the worst of it. Tempest pointed one hand, and light arced from it, bright enough to sear Lyra's eyes. It struck the cat directly, without a shred of resistance.
He melted before her eyes, charring to a smoldering corpse in seconds. Fur blackened, flesh boiled, and a limp corpse dropped where a familiar had been.
Tempest pointed behind her with her other hand, fingers still shimmering with energy. “Give me that, or your lover dies next! See if I won't find another mortal! You can watch her die!”
Through the pouring rain, Lyra saw Bonnie, now lying on her side in the mud. Her clothes were lightly scorched, body twitching and spasming from the energy of a previous shock. But compared to Capper, Tempest obviously wasn't trying to kill her. She could shock a mortal heart enough to kill instantly, if she wanted.
Lyra lifted the artifact off her neck by the chain, then held it out. “Leave her out of this.”
Tempest took the artifact with a yank, then kicked Lyra directly in the chest. She tumbled backward, landing in the mud with a pained splash. She covered her face with both arms, preparing for whatever grisly death waited for her.
Without the artifact, there was nothing to stop Tempest from killing her, no motive to prevent her from eliminating one who had so openly defied her masters.
“You will have cause to realize the true gods of this world before the night is out,” she said. “You think you're so brave, so clever. When all your allies are dead and the Pentacle is ashes, you will come crawling to me, begging my forgiveness. Perhaps I will grant it to you. We shall see what kind of mood I'm in once the Storm King has received his property.”
She turned and stalked off into the rain. A few seconds later, someone screamed—her girlfriend, voice muffled by pain and distance. A truck door opened, then slammed, and one intact APC rumbled up the muddy road, fading from view.
Lyra lay on her back in the rain, now entirely alone. Capper's body still smoked, steam rising from the charred fur as it met the cold water. 
Her friends were gone, her familiar was dead, and her own body was close to failing.
This was it—the part where she died. Even seeing supernal shores with her own eyes wasn't enough. She had still failed.
“Capper,” she whispered, voice feeble into the dark. Of course, there was no response. She could sense his life as easily as she sensed its absence.
Headlights faded into the distance, weaving side to side along a switchback road, further and further from her reach.
It was over.
Lyra lay bleeding and broken in the mud. Thunder rolled over the landscape, along with the occasional flash of lightning. Her friends were lost somewhere in that storm, her girlfriend stolen along with the artifact.
It was over.
Tempest hadn’t even killed her, though she surely could have. Burns covered her skin, raw and aching despite the changeling armor. 
Maybe she could scrape together the mana to heal it and get up—but why bother? Her girlfriend was about to be sacrificed. Her friends would die, if they weren’t dead already. And Capper—he’d been the first casualty. His charred corpse still lay in the dirt, scorched black with only the occasional bit of bone peeking out from within.
Lyra clawed her way over to him through the mud, resting one hand on that charred head. If there was any trace of life left, even a straining heartbeat, it would be enough.
Her spell found nothing. No flicker of life remained, no vestige of animation clinging somewhere in his broken flesh. What lived could grow—but one step past the feeble firelight and her power could not reach. No mortal could bring life to what was dead, only the crude mockery of undeath. She would never learn that kind of magic, never inflict that condition on someone.
Lyra stumbled onto her knees, digging feverishly in the mud. She worked it slowly, opening a wide-enough gap for the corpse of her familiar.
No—familiar wasn’t the right word. Her friend had died here, so she would live. She cried, screaming her agony into the night. No one heard—not over the pounding rain and steady rumble of thunder.
How much longer until the artifact was charged? How many would die when Tempest’s master used it? Maybe she would be one of the first—she would deserve it, for her failure. At least that way she wouldn’t have to tell her friends the end of mage society was her fault.
Finally she had the opening big enough, and she lowered the cat’s body inside. Even moving reverently, the body still crumbled at the touch, barely holding together.
She managed, then started shoving in mud to cover the dead. It wasn’t easy—the earth seemed to fight her, water pouring in faster than she could replace it with soil. She worked anyway, not caring as she was smeared in the mess herself.
But that never quite happened, because the pouring rain washed it off too fast. At the rate she was going, she was far more likely to end up freezing to death in the bone-chilling cold. 
Somehow, she finished her work. She slumped backward, body limp. “I wish... wish I never discovered any of this,” she whispered. “Wish I stayed asleep. Everyone would be happier. World would be... better.”
Rain poured down around her, washing slowly down the mountainside. Thunder rolled, lightning flashed. Lyra cried.
“Don’t say things like that, Lyra. Every lie feeds the abyss. Every lie dims the light.”
She turned, eyes wide with disbelief.
There was a cat beside her, sitting in the mud. She’d never seen its like before—an animal covered with spots and splotchy black lines, with huge ears and stripes on its tail.
No pet store had ever sold a creature like this—at least not legally. He didn’t seem to mind the rain and mud either, though that might be more a product of the operative will than the animal itself.
Capper’s voice was different—higher, feminine, in a way that only Lyra’s magical grasp of animals let her understand. Despite that, the personality was unchanged. Capper’s accent, his choice of words, the way he looked up at her, somehow both wise and pathetic in the rain.
Lyra snatched the cat into her arms, pulling him against her chest in a tight embrace. “You’re alive! How? Tempest said—”
“Tempest works for a liar,” he answered. “Her master is the enemy of truth. Can’t let too much truth into the phenomenal, or people might start opening their eyes. How would his kind keep their power then? How would they stay in control?”
Lyra held on for a few seconds more, before slackening her grip on the cat. Enough that she wouldn’t strangle him, and he could poke out of her arms to look at her. “You went to the Spirit World,” she suggested. “Found your way back, got a new host.”
His head twisted to one side. “Close enough. You need to heal, Lyra. You’re badly hurt—you’re going to die of exposure.”
“No... mana left,” she whispered. Lyra slumped back into the mud, staring down at the feline in her lap. “She took everything, Capper. Even Bonnie.”
The cat turned, nuzzling up against her chest. “Take mine.”
It felt a little like someone had jammed an automobile jump starter on her heart. Power flooded her, mana saturating her pattern in seconds. Whatever capacity she had to hold it was instantly filled, until tass leaked out her pores as faintly glowing sweat, dribbling down her nose and washing away in the rain. “Why?”
She wasn’t even sure where the question came from. There were probably more important things—but that seemed to matter more. “Why come back? Why help me?”
“Truth is more precious than thaumium,” he said. “Rarer than tass. More sacred than the perfected Rotes of the high city. If the Archigenitor claims the key, he will use it to write a hundred new lies into the world. Fewer will stir, or hear the Oracles whispering to their souls. Lights will be extinguished, and no new ones will take their place.”
She shook her head weakly. It no longer mattered if she exactly understood the strange things her familiar said. A dark underlying truth remained.
“She took my girlfriend—she’s going to die! But I tried to fight her, and the only reason I’m still alive is because she wanted me to see my failure. If I could teleport right up to the peak, she would still blast me with lightning the same as last time. Unless she lets me take Bonnie’s place...”
“No!” Capper hopped down off her lap onto the mud beside her. “Listen to me, child. It does not matter if the Seers wield greater power than yours. They don’t know the sound of truth—their masters teach them half-truths and false mysteries.”
She wiped away the tears, fought back the rain. But her body was failing now. If Lyra didn’t do something soon, she would collapse, and might not wake up. Soon she wouldn’t have the strength left to form an Imago. “What does that mean, Capper?”
“The Exarchs don’t want slaves to grow strong enough to challenge their will. Their servants struggle constantly against each other, vying for position and control. No ministry is unified, even with the usurpers they worship. They’re always fracturing, devouring themselves, unraveling.
“Your Pentacle is different, Lyra. You stand in the wreckage of a greater age—and you build anyway. Your teachers give you the mysteries free from deception. Your friends aren’t trying to use you to feed their ambition—they’ll risk their lives to protect you, just like you did for them. No lie casts a shadow dark enough to swallow the truth. Creation itself recoils at the unraveled threads they leave in their wake. You can bind them.”
My friends. They weren’t dead yet—she couldn’t believe that. Akiko and Reagan and the rest all knew the mysteries much better than she did. They would’ve survived the storm, no matter how fiercely it raged. All she had to do was find them.
“You really think we can... Can I save her?”
Capper met her eyes, and Lyra no longer saw an animal. She saw an ancient face, creased with lines, hair bleached whiter than the snow on the tallest mountain peak and eyes of silver. “In every tyrant’s heart there springs this poison, that he cannot trust a friend. But you can.”
Lyra drew her hand through the air, drawing the mudras she had learned in diligent study with the Free Council. But the words she spoke—those came from Capper. “The great forest is sick. A rot infests its roots, and strangling fungus snakes across its branches. Then comes the cleansing fire—and in its wake, fresh cones sprout. Saplings reach upward for the sun, and birds make new nests in their branches. Listen to their joy.”
Thunder rolled, lightning flashed, and Heartstrings stood up. Old skin flaked away under her armor, sloughing off like the peeling remnants of a sunburn.
Her friends were on that mountain somewhere. All she had to do was reach far enough, and she would find them—there! Four humans, struggling against the elements. Without her strength, they might not make it!
Her magic couldn’t reach them from such a distance, but she could. Lyra scooped her fallen knife from the ground, broken and chipped. She wiped away the mud with one finger, feeling at the markings there.
“To live is to grow.” The blade itself was broken and useless, but that didn’t matter. The truth it carried remained.
“What could run fast enough to reach them? A deer?”
“No,” her familiar said. “You need to fly. But no true bird could fight this deluge—you need something stronger. You will retain your form, but wielding the flight of the mightiest eagle. When you see it, I will give you the words.”
She was past arguing now, past thinking of what could or couldn’t be done. She saw herself with a pair of mighty wings, the muscles required to move them, the other changes to her body to be light enough to fly, while still strong enough to weather the storm and buffeting winds. She wove them together, as seamlessly as the melody of a new song.
Then she sang the words, drawing them into the world with the slow strokes of her blade, weaving through her own pattern as deftly as she repaired it. 
“From the loftiest heaven descend the servants of what was. Outcasts, fleeing the terror that conquered their mansions. Beautiful upon the mountains are their feet. Mighty are their voices. Fierce will be their judgment on that great and dreadful day.”
Lyra shook as the spell took her. She screamed with pain as her back split, and new organs burst from beneath, covered with a blanket of sleek feathers. Her unearthly armor parted for them, opening as though it had always been tailored for a wearer like her. 
As they grew, her balance shifted, weight redistributed as bones turned hollow and her body slimmed, becoming lithe and graceful. Even her hair got longer, cascading down her back in a curtain of greens.
Finally the spell was finished. Her wings opened, filled with the strength from mighty muscles. “I... did it!” 
The cat lifted onto his hind legs, reaching towards her. “Pick me up! I’m not running up the mountain after you.”
She did, scooping his small, soggy weight into her arms. 
Lyra broke into a run, boots pounding along the mud. Her wings opened wide, spreading far to either side. They beat with new instincts, guided by new purpose.
She leapt into the air, and ascended, lifting over the trees, rocketing up the mountain.
“I can fly!”
“In secret. Try this anywhere people can see you, and you’ll tumble out of the air like a rock! But out here, in the dark—yes! Keep low to the trees, we don’t want Tempest to see you! Find your friends!” 
She could do that. Together, they would reach the peak, and stop Tempest’s dark ritual.
The Exarchs couldn’t have the key, and they couldn’t have Bonnie. Lyra wouldn’t let them.