moon. Staring at nothing, he drew black powder from a hidden pocket, tossed it onto the floor, and slammed down his staff.
Terra watched, eyes narrowing. He caught his breath. The black powder stirred and raised smoke. The smoke swirled, flowed toward the distant ceiling of the palace, and raced around the columns of ice. Moaning like wind, the smoke dived to the floor, gathered, and formed into ten figures like men. No, not men, Terra decided. The smoke looked like mismatched bodies sewn together, their hair swarming like worms.
"The creatures we saw," Memoria whispered. She clutched her fur cloak.
The smoke dispersed, swirled in a maelstrom, then formed new figures. This time it formed thousands of small, smoky creatures that marched across the ice. More rotting demons, Terra thought. An army of them. The creatures howled, then dispersed into snakes of smoke. The smoke rose, swirled and raged, and finally collapsed into powder again.
Silence filled the hall.
"What does it mean?" Terra asked, looking up at Amberus.
"They are mimics," Amberus said. Wrinkles deepened around his eyes. "Mimics of life... and mimics of death. They flow with the stench of it. They hunt your kind, the sky warriors that you call dragons. They do not sleep. They do not tire. You cannot kill them. They will never stop hunting you and your kind."
"Do you see more of our kind, Amberus?" Memoria asked. She clutched Terra's hand. She looked at him, and Terra knew she was remembering the names the creatures had spoken.
Agnus Dei.
Kyrie Eleison.
Amberus shook his head, his necklace of icicles clinking. "That is hard to see now, as it always has been. If there are more dragons, they hide well; the Mother Turtle cannot see them. But these mimics... they hunt for dragons everywhere. Most flow to the old ruins, the place you call Requiem. If there are more dragons, they hide there."
Terra closed his eyes. His chest tightened, and cold sweat trickled down his back. He could barely breathe, and his pulse pounded in his ears. War. Destruction in Requiem again.
Terra... I found him.
For years he had struggled to forget, to banish those words from his memory. Now, once more, Terra felt the fire around him, smelled the stench of death, saw the small burned body.
"We have to go back," Memoria whispered.
Terra opened his eyes. "What?" he demanded. "Memoria, we do not return. Not now. Not ever. When we left, we left for good."
Memoria breathed heavily and her cheeks flushed. She glared at him. "Terra, when we left, we thought that we were the last. That they all had died at Lanburg Fields. But they didn't. Two at least still live. Agnus Dei... and our brother."
Terra clenched his fists and shook his head. His chest felt tight. "Kyrie is dead, sister. We buried him."
Memoria's eyes flashed. Her chest rose and fell as she panted. "We buried a body. The body of a burned child his size, with the same hair and scarf. But we don't know it was him." She clutched his shoulders, tears in her eyes. "Kyrie is alive, Terra. Kyrie and the princess Agnus Dei. I know it."
He looked away, throat burning.
Terra... I found him.
He looked back at Memoria, her face so pale, so sad. He couldn't let that happen to her. The loss of his brother still haunted him. How could he lose his sister too, see her body also burned, cry over her grave?
"Memoria," he said, and for a moment he could say no more. He tightened his jaw. For the first time since he'd buried Kyrie, he felt ready to cry. He refused to. He would shed no more tears. He had vowed to remain strong. It was a long moment before he could speak again, voice strained. "Memoria, I led us here to protect you. To hide you. To—"
"You fled here to escape death!" she said. "You came here to escape memory. To escape pain. To escape... to escape what we found at Lanburg Fields."
He shouted, voice echoing in the ice hall. "We ran to save our lives!"
She shook her head wildly, hair swaying. "That doesn't matter anymore. Our lives are threatened here too. Those creatures found us even here, a thousand leagues north of Requiem."
"Three mimics found us. Thousands march to Requiem."
"So we will return to defend it!"
Terra laughed mirthlessly. "With what? Our swords? We couldn't shift around those things, Memoria. Their claws tore through my armor as if it were wool." He looked at Amberus, who was watching them silently. "Elder of Elders,