if she didn’t hurry, there would be nowhere for them to retreat back to.


    The boulder was still gaining speed, slipping from her grasp at every bounce. Toward Suimer, and everything Zeles had built with his sacrifice.


    ______________________


    Daira walked fast toward the exit, clutching the three coins and a bottle of cloud water to her chest. She looked conspicuous amid everyone running to safety, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to go faster: she was still stunned by Rabam’s scream as he fell backward into the hole.


    The magnitude of her choice weighed her down. She knew her days as a prior were over, and even on the off-chance she got reinstated, there was no point in having a government if the abbot was an ever-present, all-powerful being inside the village. If she had to serve a god, she preferred Aili. After all, she was doing everything she had accused her, Saia and Rabam of: betraying the monks, the village, and all they believed in. She expected the abbot to stop her. The enormity of what she was doing seemed too big not to be noticed.


    She stumbled outside, pressed between two groups of monks. The sentinels were too preoccupied with avoiding a stampede to even acknowledge her. The earthquake had stopped, even if there was still a distant rumbling somewhere.


    She found a weapon on the ground and grabbed it, holding the coins and bottle awkwardly with the other hand. She charged the wall of dust in the distance, pretending to join the small horde of monks that was following Suimer’s rebels. She covered her face with an arm, in case the wall was more solid than expected. She felt the debris brush her face and every bit of exposed skin, then the cold air of the night. The only light came from two sentinels who had managed to bring a torch with them. They were advancing slowly, observing each tree in case there was a rebel nearby.


    Daira stopped and looked back toward the village. They were just outside of the abbot’s range, unless he decided to leave for some unfathomable reason. Her disappearance might have been one.


    She examined the sentinels on her side of the wall of debris: seven in total, slowly growing with the few who were brave enough to cross the barrier. She flexed her hand around the spear: she wasn’t strong enough to win a fight against trained warriors. Not alone, at least: she needed to reach the rebels before the monks did.


    She reached out for the nearest tree and closed her eyes. There were no traces of viss on the trunk, so she stumbled to the next one, and the next, until she found a fresh trail full of fear. She set off alone, in the dark, with only a speck of viss here and there to guide her. Still, she was proceeding in the right direction, faster than the sentinels, at least until they managed to organize themselves.


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    They only managed to get halfway down the mountain before they heard the sentinels again. It was a bigger group, a line of torches coming down fast. They didn’t even bother to hide.


    “Ideas?” Lada asked.


    “Run,” Daira said. “If we’re lucky, they won’t catch us all.”


    They did, even if the rising sun made it easier to spot their movement among the trees. Daira didn’t have any doubts that all the binoculars of the village were trained on them. Words of her betrayal must have already reached the abbot.


    Shapes appeared in the forest in front of them. Gray tunics, like the ones that were following them. Daira swore under her breath: she had forgotten how many monks were waiting in the villages. If they’d been alerted, there was no hope of escaping the trap that was about to close on their group.


    The sentinels collapsed as one. Daira blinked a few times before the event actually registered in her tired mind.


    “Aili!” one of the rebels cried out. A couple of them started pointing up.


    A sphere of light fell into Lada’s waiting hands.


    “Please hurry, there are a lot of monks around Suimer and they might be planning something.”


    Daira received an additional message that nobody else seemed to hear.


    “What are you doing here?”


    “I’ve decided to join you,” she said out loud. Muttering wasn’t her style, especially when the conversation at hand could improve the rebel’s opinion of her.


    “What about Rabam?”


    Daira hesitated. Admitting she was the last person to see him alive didn’t seem like a good idea at that particular moment.


    “It’s better if we discuss it in a safe place.”


    They marched down the last stretch of forest before Suimer’s walls. The monks in pursuit had realized there was a goddess nearby and had halted far behind.


    Daira wondered how they were all supposed to enter the village, when Lada and Davem were lifted by an invisible force toward the top of the wall. The rebels took flight one by one, leaving her there. She waited patiently, glancing around for traces of the monks’ presence. Only after a few minutes she began suspecting that Aili had no intention of letting her join the rebels.


    She realized how foolish she’d been in taking it for granted just because Rabam had told her to go. Aili had wanted to help her once, but she had refused in no uncertain terms. She’d undoubtedly considered it a trick of the monks.


    She wondered what she could say to convince her. Maybe leading with excuses might set the tone for a productive discussion. But gods could feel lies; she felt plenty of guilt, but wasn’t particularly sorry for anything.


    The rising sun made her feel too visible. She concluded that speaking was better than saying nothing at all.


    “The monks might kill me before the cold does,” she said.


    The answer came swiftly enough to surprise her.


    “The council is deciding whether they want to let you in.”


    “You’ll need to extract viss from the coins I’ve brought you. I’ve done it multiple times, I could help.”


    “I’ve told them that. It’s not my decision, though.”


    “Is there anything I can do to convince you to trust me?”


    “No. I wouldn’t know what the truth is.”


    There was an instant of silence. The wind blew away a handful of dust from the top of the wall, and Daira stepped back to avoid it.


    “We want to know about Rabam,” Aili said. “We were waiting for him.”


    Daira focused on her viss to hide her apprehension. She decided to broach the subject from afar. She told Aili of how she discovered that the object that Rabam was carrying was useless, then looked for him everywhere and only thought of checking the crater room right when he was coming out of it. That he was badly injured, and had asked her to bring the coins to Suimer, telling her that Aili needed her help.


    “Is he alive now?” Aili cut her short.


    Daira took a deep breath. She relented control over her own viss, let her true emotions shine through.


    “He fell into the crater.”


    The answer came distorted, as if Aili was struggling to keep her voice under control.


    “Voluntarily?”


    “I… don’t know. I don’t think so.”


    She felt the wind grow under her body. It carried her upward, and she struggled to maintain her calm when it wavered, wondering whether it was a normal occurrence or Aili losing control. Then she was high enough to see Suimer itself, and the crowd of people that had decided of her fate.


    Despite the circumstances, she put on a smile, the same she’d been trained to use once she’d become an abbot. Unwavering, reassuring, and extremely fake.