The thirteenth teleport took Jinokimijin to her laboratory in the outer ring of the Sun Etherium, strategically located 0.673 miles from the center of the Etherium. The levels of aether were much lower than usual, but it was still an incalculable relief after the oppression of moon aether. She tried to stand with her son in her arms, and realized she lacked both the strength and hands that this task required. She left Fallen slumped on the laboratory floor. At a mental command, the phoenix rose teleported herself and Miro into the large, shallow bathing pool in her bedchamber. Unattended for over a week, the chamber stank of mildew. The water was room temperature and had a thin layer of scum on top. Jino scraped enough aether from the air to cleanse the water, and cooled it by several degrees more. She set the disgruntled phoenix rose on the edge of the pool and hauled herself dripping out beside it. She pulled Miro’s head into her lap. He felt like a furnace, his heart hammering like a hummingbird’s beneath her palm. “No no no, Mirohiro, my Mirohiro, don’t die, Love, Love, what have I done?”

Miro’s eyelids fluttered. “We’re home,” he whispered.

“Yes, little one. Rest. Can you try to slow your pulse?”

“No.” Miro closed his eyes again. “Is it over, Mom? Did you finish it?”

“Not yet, Mirohiro, why did you do it? Why did you let me talk you into this? Justice, I’m a worse monster than your mother ever was. Please don’t die. I love you, Mirohirokon. Please don’t die.”

“Can’t die,” Miro whispered. “Ardent’s orders. You go now, Mom. Not a monster. You need to fin’sh it. Don’t…waste…” Her son’s eyelids flickered and went still, body going limp.

Jino curled herself around his head and shoulders, wracked by helpless, useless sobs. Miro still breathed, in shallow painful gasps, heart still beating. The aether in the air grew a little thicker as a minute trickled past, and Jino forced herself upright. She tried to wipe her face with her bloody stump and realized by the pain in it what she was doing. She stifled a half-hysterical laugh and conjured just enough aether to scab over the wound. Regrowing it could wait. Everything could wait. Jino fixed an aether mask over her son’s face that would ensure he got fresh air. Fey invulnerability should protect him against drowning, but Jino did not want to take chances in Miro’s current condition. The phoenix rose had wandered halfway across the room, exploring. Jino grabbed it and ported to the laboratory.

Fallen was where she’d left her, still unconscious. Jino took the phoenix rose to one of several elaborate extractor cages, and tucked it inside over its squawking protests. “I know, I know, you just got out. I’m not keeping you forever, don’t worry,” Jino told it. She charged a wand from that extractor, then transferred the phoenix rose to a different one while it screeched at the indignity. “Sorry, sorry. We’ll be done soon.”

The screeching was loud enough to rouse Fallen from her aether-induced slumber. “What – what happened?” Horror dawned on her features as the timbre of the aether made it obvious where she was. “You treacherous cow! Take me home, Jiji!”

Jino laughed. “My name is Jinokimijin, but you can call me ‘master’. Get up.”

Against her will, she stood. “No – no, it’s not possible – the phoenix rose was mine first!”

“The deal wasn’t for ‘first’. Just ‘mine’. Mine now.” She took the phoenix’s cage off its hook, and slung it by a strap over her shoulder. Jino took the wand in her left hand, and realized she didn’t have a free hand to grab Fallen with. Sighing, Jino stuck her stump to the fox-tailed woman’s throat.

“What are you going to do to me?” Fallen whispered, frightened.    

“Well, that depends. How fast can the Queen of the Moon Host kick you out of the Moon Court?” Jino channeled moon aether out of Fallen and regrew her own hand with the abundant power. She took Fallen’s wrist and teleported to the sky above the Palace of the Sun.    

The Sun Etherium had an architectural grandeur and unity entirely unlike the Moon Etherium. It was a beautiful city of white and gold and crystal, with streets arranged in concentric circles about the center. Roads radiated like spokes on a wheel outwards with mathematical precision. The buildings themselves rose with fanciful curves and straight lines, decorated in abstract motifs or pastoral ones. The Palace of the Sun was set in a crystal globe laced with gold that surmounted an improbably slender pillar. It was a beautiful, intricate work of spiraling towers and crystal rooms, radiant with its own light.

Jino leveled her wand upon the crystal globe and blasted a hole in its wards, already weakened by the depletion of aether from the Sun Etherium. She teleported with Fallen into the Sun Court.

The Sun Court was held in a long golden hall. The Queen of the Sun Host sat in all her regal finery on a gigantic throne shaped like a rearing dragon. The High Court was arranged in rows to either side, their proximity to Her Majesty decided by the queen’s favoritism at the moment. Lesser courtiers took stations even farther away. Petitioners waited at the far end, and walked the length of the carpet at the center. How near they were allowed to draw to the queen depended on their social standing.

Jino put herself and Fallen in the air two paces in front of the queen’s throne.

Queen Eletanene had her head turned to one side and was in mid-rant, and so managed not to notice Jino anyway. “—is on you, Princess Amalatiti! If you hadn’t thwarted my efforts to have that worthless offspring of a disgraced coward removed from the High Court, we wouldn’t be vulnerable now. Chancellor Vayanivan! Have you figured out yet how long it will take the aether to regenerate to normal levels? Surely we can’t have to worry about this again – that idiot boy Miro must be dead by now, praise the light.”

Blood roared in Jino’s ears. She ripped power through Fallen’s body and launched herself like a spear at the throne. Some well-intended fool tried to put a ward over the queen: it shredded under Jino’s wand. The ceremonial dragon golem guards sprang to interpose themselves, and the wand crumbled them to dust. Moon aether pinned the queen to the throne, turned the wand to a club, and drove it against her perfumed head.

Even with the Sun Etherium depleted, the Sun Host fey retained invulnerability. The moon-aether-enhanced blow did not smash open her skull, merely made her reel to one side in the throne and split the skin. Blood trickled down Queen Eletanene’s face. She stared at Jino. “Who dares?” She tried to rise. Jino clubbed her again.

Jino was dimly aware of shouting in the room: cries of “Assassin!” and “Stop her!” She pulsed moon aether out in a wave across the hall that sent courtiers flying, or pinned them to their chairs, or forced them out to evade. Jino clubbed her ex-wife a third time, then finally recovered her senses enough to stop. She dropped the club and stepped on it to discourage herself from picking it up again.

“Who are you?” Eletanene asked, half slumped on her throne, her voice thick and dazed. “What do you want? I am Queen of the Sun Etherium, surely we can come to some…arrangement…”

“Your throne. And your absence. I am Jinokimijin, Ele, and if you ever speak of our son again I swear you will wish that I had killed you this day.” Jino unslung the phoenix rose’s cage from her shoulder and rested it on the queen’s chest.

“Jino?” Her tone reeked of disbelief. “No – no – you can’t possibly be that fool. Who are you in truth? What are you doing?”

“Taking your heart.” Jino activated the extractor. The Sun Queen screamed. “Or, more accurately, the heart of the Sun Etherium.” A brilliant golden glow pulled loose from the queen’s body, with a sickening wet sucking sound. Eletanene fell to one side, unconscious but still breathing.

Jino took the glow in her free hand and pushed it into her own ribcage, then turned to face the court. “My ladies, lords, gentlefolk: this is a coup. I hold the Heart of the Sun Etherium now. By ancient tradition of Might Makes Right And I Have All The Justice-Deprived Might You Can Imagine, I proclaim myself the Sun King Jinokimijin. Your ex-queen is not dead. I intend a bloodless coup, but if any here have objections to my rule, I am sure I can be persuaded to revisit that intent. Anyone? Come now, you all know there’ll be a reckoning in the days to come. Doesn’t anyone want to try me before my grasp is secure?” Jino pulled more moon aether out of Fallen, and she staggered.    

Nervous courtiers exchanged glances, shifted in place, and said nothing. “No? All right.” Jino rolled the queen’s body out of the throne and onto the floor, and took the empty seat. “On your knees, now, Fallen. You know your place. There’s a good girl.” To the rest of the hall, Jino continued, “I’ll accept your pledges now. Let’s start with – oh – you, Princess Amalatiti.” He beckoned to her with one finger. “Don’t be shy.”

“Yes, your majesty.” The tenth-favorite child of the former Sun Queen stood to ascend the steps towards the throne. She dropped to one knee before Jino. “I pledge my loyalty to the good of the Sun Etherium, and to the realm’s rightful ruler, the Sun King Jinokimijin.”    

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Rain twisted around. “What – how did she teleport? How did she teleport Fallen? Did she—”

Ardent did not stay to listen. She ported back to her room at the Underground. The tracer golem was on one of the giant mushrooms in the meadow setting, scribbling furiously. “Trace Shadow of Fallen Scent only,” she ordered it. “Drop everyone else. Give me her current position.”

The tracer wrote quickly: not once a minute, but every few seconds. Fallen was twenty-eight miles away. Forty-two miles. Fifty-six miles. Ardent closed her hands into fists and slammed them against the mushroom. It dented like a squishy cushion at the impact. The area’s wards asked if Whispers Rain still had permission to enter. “Yes!” she snapped. Then, “Trace Never Breaks, in this form.” She showed the tracer Miro’s homunculus.

He was in the exact same place as Fallen. They were halfway to the Sun Etherium. “What’s going on?” Rain asked, appearing beside her.

“I’m an idiot.” One-hundred seventy-seven point three-two-seven miles. The tracer stopped writing. Ardent summoned up a map, but knew what she’d find before she plotted it: they were in the Sun Etherium. “Trace Jinokimijin,” she said, and described her as best she could. The tracer whuffled and shook its head, ears flopping: it couldn’t find her.

Rain looked at the tracer’s work, perplexed. “Ardent, how could they get there so quickly? This doesn’t make any sense.”

“The phoenix rose. That bird we wrested away from Fallen’s possession. It’s a phoenix rose. Jinokimijin’s been researching it for years. Decades. She knew how to get it to teleport across the Broken Lands.” Ardent turned and slid to the meadow ground, grabbing fistfuls of hair. “How could I be so stupid? I gave it right to them.”

“Ardent, what are you talking about? Why did Fallen have a phoenix rose? Justice.” Rain clapped a small brown hand over her mouth. “She had a phoenix rose and you went to fight her?”

“Yes,” Ardent growled. Maybe Miro didn’t know. He almost died. He might still die. Surely that can’t have been part of his plan.

His voice echoed in her head, swearing three times that he didn’t want the phoenix rose for himself or for the Sun Queen. But he never swore he didn’t want it for his father. She punched an ineffectual fist against the spongy ground. The moon aether around them shifted, as if its natural currents had changed abruptly. It swirled inwards, towards the center of the Etherium with a curving motion.

“What’s happening to the aether?” Rain asked, watching it.

“Fallen.” Ardent leaped to her feet. “Jinokimijin’s channeling from her. We have to see the Queen.” She took Rain’s hand, and they teleported to the Palace of the Moon.

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They were beside a sky palace: one of the smaller ones, made of pearl with silver crenellations. Glass dragons patrolled the airspace around it. Ardent did not pause to take her bearings or take in the whole. As a glass dragon bore down upon them, she pointed her wand at the pearlescent wall and activated its power. The wall collapsed inwards, in a twisted funnel of mangled spellwork and failed space-expansion. The nearest dragon opened its jaws. Ardent ported again.

The teleport placed them in a large chamber, with pure aether pooled in a circular marble fountain some thirty yards across. In the middle of the fountain, where the centerpiece would be, hung the extractor. It was an intricate cage of not just ivory and alabaster, but gold and steel, polished granite and mirror-bright crystals, in nesting spheres of increasing sizes. The outermost sphere was several feet across. Each of the spheres revolved, at different angles and speeds. A ward of fire and ice swirled about the last sphere. Three humanoid figures of stone and crystal were assembling yet another sphere around the existing one.

In the center of the extractor’s smallest sphere – only a couple of feet across – the phoenix rose perched on a hovering horizontal bar. It looked nothing like the bird from the immersion: this creature had a long body with long, pointed tail feathers, most of it white with purple lines outlining the feathers. Its eyes were bright amber, its beak a deeper purple, like its talons. It hunched miserably, feathers fluffed out, avoiding contact with the cage walls.

Ardent stood calf-deep in the aether pool, Miro in one arm with his own arms looped around her neck, the wand in her other hand. She pointed the wand at the sphere. “The workers are golems,” Miro told her.

“Get out!” Fallen ported in and thrust her hand at Ardent, throwing a massive wave of power at her. Jinokimijin was with her, leashed to her wrist. Instead of evading, which would have thrown Ardent out of Fallen’s palace, the satyress tossed up a ward of her own fueled with sun aether. Claws of sun aether grew from her hooves to sink into the floor of the fountain. Fallen’s wave of power crashed against the ward and shoved; Ardent’s sun-aether-claws dug furrows into the marble as she slid backwards. Fallen hit her with another wave, backed by sun aether drawn from Jino. “This is my home! Get out!”

As Ardent’s ward crumbled under the onslaught, she activated the wardbreaker wand, still pointed at the extractor. The ward around it melted into mist, but the extractor cage was unaffected: it was all real materials, and all located in real space. Fallen shrieked, and shaped a tentacle to reach into the cage and grab the bird.

Ardent ported on top of the cage and threw a ward of her own to encircle the innermost ring, just in time to block Fallen’s tentacle. Fallen pulled aether from the pool and swirled it into a ward to stop Ardent from teleporting. The spell would suck any aether Ardent used for such purpose away before she could start. Ardent dropped her own now-powerless wand and launched herself at Fallen. Her right fist drove a sleep-enspelled spike for Fallen’s head. She drew on all her remaining reserves of sun aether to prevent Fallen from evading, and opened the channel with Miro to let more flood in to replenish it. Purpose anchored her against the intoxicating rush of power. Her nerves hummed, but she had never felt more focused, more aware of the world around her, and of the raw power she could wield in it.

It wasn’t enough.

Fallen drew her own wand to dispel the sun aether and dodged Ardent’s fist. She grabbed Jinokimijin’s wrist with her other hand and turned her wand into a sword to stab – not at Ardent, but at Miro, held in one arm. Ardent burned sun aether to interpose her own body, and grunted as she absorbed the blow. Fey invulnerability made it glance off her skin, the extra power behind it leaving a bruise but not piercing. Miro felt like a furnace on her arm, burning up as Ardent pulled aether recklessly through him. “Never break!” she yelled at him. “That’s an order!” Fallen and Jinokimikin disappeared in a teleport. Ardent looked around wildly as she bolted back to the extractor. She saw Fallen drop on them from above, sword down to slash at Miro, power swirling around Ardent to keep her from evading.

Whispers Rain ported on top of Fallen and tried to grab her. “No!” Instinctively, Fallen evaded the grasp, and changed the angle of her own attack. As she did so, Jinokimijin yanked herself into Fallen’s body by the leash, and drew the arm Fallen gripped in front of the blade.    

The sword fell with full force onto Jinokimjin’s arm, severing it just below the elbow.

Leaving Fallen holding her channel’s hand…but not her channel.    

Jino tumbled into the fountain of aether with a scream, clutching the stump of her arm. Ardent curled over Miro to take the remaining force of the sword against her back. Fallen ported back a few feet and made another clumsy strike before she realized she didn’t have a channel, or sun aether to pin Ardent with. Ardent evaded and took Miro with her. Whispers Rain screamed, “Stop it! Just stop it!” at Fallen and grabbed for her sword arm. Fallen evaded Rain, but after that Ardent’s sun aether held her in place. Ardent smashed her fist into the gray fey’s face, sleep-spike point first. Fallen collapsed.

“Don’t die don’t die don’t die,” Ardent chanted at Miro as she turned to the extractor. She smashed it apart, ignoring her own ward, and pulled the phoenix rose out. The bird made a querulous cooing noise at her. Ardent dropped to her knees with Miro in her lap. “How do I use this to heal him?” she yelled, and didn’t even know who she was hoping would answer.

Miro’s eyes slitted open at her shout. “Did we…?” His voice was almost inaudible, hoarse, strained.

“Yes,” Ardent told him. “Yes. See? Jino’s free.” She held up the phoenix rose in her other hand. “Rest now. Don’t die. That’s an order, Justice take it.” Miro stirred, tried to lift a hand to touch the bird, said something Ardent couldn’t hear. She put the bird in his lap and clasped his hand over it, tears running down her cheeks.

Whispers Rain helped Jino to her feet. “No, no, your arm—” She tried to stop the bleeding with aether, but could not heal the Sun fey’s injury.

“I can always get another one.” Jino clamped her fingers tighter around her elbow and staggered. “If I don’t bleed to death. But I only have one son. Miro, Mirohiro, what have you done?” Whispers Rain dissolved the chains on Jino into the aether, and made a tourniquet around the Sun fey’s elbow. Rain half-supported Jino over to Miro and Ardent. Jino sank to her knees beside her son, and shifted to take him in her good arm.

Ardent let her. “The phoenix rose – isn’t there anything it can do?” she pleaded.

Miro breathed shallowly, his skin flushed as red as sunburn. He shifted his hand on the bird. “Look, Dad,” he whispered. “We did it.”    

Jino swallowed. “So you did, Mirohiro.” She unclasped one of her earrings, a hoop of white gold and rubies. “I will do everything that I can,” Jino said, looking at Ardent, but the tears in the Sun fey’s eyes made her heart stop. “Thank you.” She clasped the hoop around the phoenix’s neck.

Miro, Jino, and Fallen disappeared.

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They hung in the overcast sky above the Moon Etherium. The clouds drizzled; this close to the edge of the aether no one bothered to conceal the true weather of the world behind enchantment and glamour. Automatically, Ardent put a shield against the rain around them along with a privacy bubble, as she hauled Miro out by the scruff. “Sunder it, Miro! What was that all about? Why, Justice lose us all, did you let her know you were still with me, after she told us she’s Fallen’s catspaw?”    

“Because I needed her to know I don’t blame her, and I may not have another chance to tell her,” Miro said, too calmly. “Did you get the coordinates? Are we near?” He tried to twist his little head around, mouse form dangling between her thumb and forefinger.

“Yes, and no, we’re on the other side of the Etherium. I needed to do a little prep first and I didn’t want her to see it.” Ardent dropped Miro on a cushion of aether, then thought better of it and put him on her shoulder instead. She took off her main locket to get out her bag, and then the wardbreaker wand from it.

“You should send the lockets away,” Miro said. “And restore me to my trueshift shape. Everything that takes aether to maintain – unless we’re going to need it to get the phoenix rose or to fight Fallen, get rid of it.”

She knew what he meant: if it came to a confrontation with Fallen, every scrap of aether might matter. Even though it replenished quickly, every second could make the difference. She sent both lockets away, back to her room at the Underground. “You’re staying a mouse,” she told Miro. “I can protect you better that way. And not give away to Fallen that you’re still here. Assuming Rain didn’t tell her the second we left.”

“Ardent.” He rose to his hindpaws on her shoulder. “Please. Whether or not she knows, the last thing she’d expect is that you would have me be recognizable. Her first thought will be to assume that it’s a ruse to make her wary. And I should prefer to face my fate as a man, and not a mouse.”

Ardent clenched her fist around the wardbreaker rod. “Fine,” she growled. She set him down in the air and handed over his homunculus. As soon as he’d turned back, Ardent pulled him hard against her side. “I’m going to teleport us as close as I can to the coordinates for the ivory and alabaster. Then I’ll use this wand to break her wards, and port to the exact coordinates. If the phoenix rose is there, I’ll grab it and we’ll get out. If not, we improvise. Fallen still has a trace on me, so she’s going to try to stop me as soon as I get there. I don’t think she’ll move the phoenix rose, though. She won’t want to start over with that extractor.”

“Agreed. Ardent – whatever power you may need from me, you have to take it. No matter what. No more being cautious, or holding back.”

She glared at him, furious. “I am not going to risk killing you.”

Miro swallowed. “Believe me, I appreciate that. But getting the phoenix rose away from her is more important than my life. It’s more important than your life. You saw how terrified Rain is of her, and that’s when she doesn’t have her own personal source of power that can potentially destroy an entire Etherium. That was used to Sunder the world and kill tens of thousands of fey, and Divine only knows how many mortals. I do not wish to die, my lady. But if my life is what it takes, then know this: I give it gladly.”

“Shut up,” Ardent said, and hauled him up in both arms to kiss him, hard. “Stop being crazy.”

“I can’t,” he whispered, and she realized she’d given him an order, two orders, and didn’t know what it must have cost him to argue with her anyway. “Not yet. Please, my lady. Ardent. Promise me you will do everything in your power.”

She kissed him again, crushing him in her embrace. Miro answered her passion with his own, cradling her head in both hands, wrapping his legs around her waist as they floated together in the sky. When she broke the kiss at last, tears pricked at the back of her eyelids. “I will.”

Then Ardent opened her eyes, and teleported them both to the battle.

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