were ugly things, but Animating Stones pulsed within them. They lived. They would fight.
"Time for dinner," Kyrie announced, climbing out from the cellars. He held two steaming bowls. "I cooked. Gloriae helped a bit. Tonight we have a delicious, lovingly simmered stew of turnips, oats, and sausages."
Gloriae emerged from the cellars behind him, holding two more bowls. "Kyrie, have we eaten anything but turnips, oats, and sausage stew for the past month?"
He nodded, handing out bowls. "Yesterday was more of a soup, what with all the water you added."
"Soup with some Gloriae hairs added for flavor," Agnus Dei muttered. "I nearly choked on one. Sister, you might be the deadliest warrior among us, and you are also the deadliest cook."
Soon the four sat in the courtyard, wrapped in their cloaks, eating as the sunset painted the world red. Lacrimosa was glad to see them eating hungrily, even Agnus Dei. They'll need what strength they can get, she thought. More than ever.
As they ate, the statues moved across the mountainsides, arranging firewood in a ring around the ruins. Fire and stone, Lacrimosa thought, watching the statues work. This is how we fight in the ruin of the world. This is all we have left. Fire and stone.
She looked at her children, one by one. Agnus Dei, of fiery eyes, of skinned knees, of grumbles and tears and kisses and flames. She looks so much like Ben. And Gloriae... her lost daughter, finally returned. Gloriae, of icy green eyes, of pain, of fear, of hidden love and light. Finally, Lacrimosa looked at Kyrie, who was like a son to her now. Kyrie, the boy who'd survived Lanburg Fields; no, not a boy but a man now, full grown, a man who would father her grandchildren.
I will protect them, Ben, she thought and looked up to the sky. I won't let them die.
They were still eating when howls sounded in the distance.
They froze. Lacrimosa lowered her spoon, rose to her feet, and stared east.
"We can't even enjoy one good meal," Agnus Dei said. She grabbed a torch from the ground. "My stars."
The howls rose, some deep and guttural like dying boars, others high like the screeches of ghosts.
"Weredragons!" they cried. "We will eat you alive. We will have your heads."
Lacrimosa drew an arrow from her quiver, tightened the kindling around its tip, and lit it. She walked toward the eastern ruins of the fort, to war, to blood.
"Fire and stone," she whispered. "They fight for us today."
She stepped onto the remaining few bricks of the fort's wall and saw the mimic army.
She felt the blood drain from her face.
"Bloody stars," Kyrie said, coming to stand beside her, bow in hand.
Even Gloriae, always stony like a statue, seemed shaken. She gritted her teeth.
"So many," she whispered.
Agnus Dei snorted, blowing back a curl of her hair. "Come on, we can take em," she said, but Lacrimosa noticed that the girl's fingers trembled around her bow.
She returned her eyes to the mimics. A hundred had attacked Draco Murus last time, and nearly killed them. A thousand now howled ahead, charging through the snow. Their stench carried on the wind, the stench of rot and worms and old blood. They bore swords and shields. A towering mimic ran at their lead, his legs like stilts, his arms ape-like and swinging.
"Weredragons!" this leader of mimics howled. "Your heads are mine."
Lacrimosa smiled a crooked, mirthless smile.
"Let them taste fire first," she said. "Then stone."
She loosed her arrow.
The three young Vir Requis gave wordless cries and shot three more arrows.
The flaming missiles flew through the sky, and each hit a rotting torso. Those mimics screamed, pulled the arrows out, and kept running.
"Damn," Agnus Dei said. "These ones are tougher than the last."
Lacrimosa nodded. "We'll see how much fire they can take."
She ran toward the ring of firewood, which surrounded the fort, and lit it. It crackled into life at once, flowing around the fort like a flaming serpent. The mimics screamed and kept charging.
Lacrimosa climbed onto a pile of fallen bricks. She saw the horde closer now, three hundred yards away. She shot an arrow and hit a mimic's shield. It kept running.
"Statues of Requiem!" Lacrimosa shouted. The statues stood outside the ring, unmoving. Kyrie and the twins were still firing arrows, but their missiles did not faze the mimics.
"Statues, hear me!" Lacrimosa shouted. "I am Lacrimosa, wife of King Benedictus, Queen of Requiem. Fight for Requiem. Fight the enemy, tear them apart, destroy them! Fight them now."
The statues began