"DIE, HERETIC!"

Jory's words cut through the dying sounds of battle. In an instant, before anyone could react on the burned battlefield that the Hopla farmstead had become, he had activated a [Blink] ability he'd honed from his time with Ranok.

Fauna had just lowered her staff. She blinked, and then felt a swish of air beside her.

The boy appeared, screaming his viscous battle cry with a face bloody and swollen from fighting against the Drytchling binds, and thrust the tip of his blade right towards Fauna's exposed throat.

For a few heart-rending seconds, everything in the Hopla's world narrowed down to that boy's face. The hatred in his bleeding eyes was beyond anything she'd seen from the humans she'd met. It was like looking into a grisly, abominable mirror that reflected her own desire to see these humans pay for what they'd done here – what they'd been doing to her kind ever since she could remember.

"FAUN!"

She didn't even register the words. The pinpoint of the boy's blade scratched against her neck.

And she knew that this was it. This was the last battle for her. And, in a strange way, she felt at peace. It was right to die here, defending the place of peace she'd spent so long cultivating…

But someone else didn't agree.

Jory only managed to slice off a piece of Fauna's fur before a firebolt struck him in his side, sending him tumbling away screaming like a madman. He slammed into the burnt shed and was promptly restrained by the Drytchlings.

Fauna staggered, feeling blood pool just beneath her chin.

But she was alive.

And then she felt something small and soft cuddling into her legs. She felt wet tears stain the hem of her robe.

"Miss Fauna! Miss Fauna!"

She looked down to see Mara burrowing herself into her, her little eyes welling with sudden, fierce tears. And her hands still smoking with the residue of the spell she'd launched that saved her teacher's life.

"Mara…" Fauna whispered.

It was all she could say.

Instead of attending to her wounds she dropped to a knee and clutched the child close, squeezing her tight, knowing that the little one could feel her shaking. Knowing that she had been terrified in the moment she truly believed she would leave this world.

"Miss Fauna!" Mara kept crying. "Miss –"

"Shhh," Fauna whispered. "I'm here. Didn't I tell you? I'll always be here."

When Klax and Tara leaped up to the pair, they both breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"That – that's one badass little Mage," Tara stuttered.

"Of course she is," Klax grinned. "After all, she has one hell of a teacher."

Fauna looked up at both of them, wiping away her tears and placing one paw on her neck to seal up the surface-level wound the young Greycloak had inflicted. She'd bled for her kind, now. Just like her brother and sister before her had. Just like Ethan had. Just like…

Her eyes found Lamphrey in the dim light of the smoking farmstead, and for a pulse-pounding moment, terror returned to her heart.

The Tialax was looking right at Mara, a pained expression fixed on her scaled brow. It was enough to make Fauna wonder, once again, what was really going on in that woman's head.

What-

"-D-don't!"

The sudden outburst of the young Grey in the middle of the wrecked barn suddenly brought all the Hybrids back to attention. He was currently wriggling like a maggot against the hold of the Drytchling's vines. His face was a charred, burnt crisp of what it had once been. His words were choked more than spoke.

"Don't think…you've…won!"

They all turned towards the direction of the boy's barking, watching him with silent shame.

"You can't beat us!" he yelped. "You can't beat him! No one can! Not once he finishes you freaks off for good!"

Malak approached the child with his Drytchling entourage, his hands gathering wreaths of lightning at the tips of his fingers.

But he looked towards Fauna and the others before committing himself. His aged face asked them a question.

And Fauna answered.

"No."

The party turned to her.

"I want to hear what he has to say."

She levitated the others down towards the child and together they stood before him, watching as he spat blood at their feet and hurled every curse under the sun at them.

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Out of them all, though, it was Mara who he held eye-contact with. The little Hopla met his mad, burning eyes and clenched teeth. Fauna thought she might try to run, but that girl had faced much, much worse than this angry little boy.

"Even the youngest humans have thrown their lot in with the Greys, it seems," Malak said. "It is a sad thing to see their indoctrination work on such susceptible minds."

"You're one to talk," Klax barked at the Druid leader, who immediately backed off, bowing and deactivating his readied spells.

Tara's brow furrowed. The kid seemed familiar, somehow. But she didn't interrupt as Fauna stepped forward to interrogate the little creature.

Jory's face suddenly flew to her staff.

"Go ahead!" he screamed in her face. "I would welcome this to be the place of my grave!"

"Psst, hey Faun," Tara murmured. "Gimmie the word and I'll ice the little guy. Cover the bunny girl's face if ya want. I ain't leaving a single Grey alive down here."

Fauna's face flew to Klax's. She saw his ears droop, and he laid his hand gently on the urn that was still on his back.

At that moment, Fauna turned back to the boy and looked past the hatred that possessed him. She looked past it and saw the little boy that was still buried in there, somewhere.

"Unlike the Greycloaks," she said. "We aren't in the business of killing children. We're going to leave you here, child, and you will watch as we rebuild this world for ourselves. Maybe then, one day, you'll even be willing to join it."

"Besides," she added, turning back to the rest of the team. "We've got a job to finish."

The hybrids nodded, but Mara gripped Fauna again, torn between her duty to all the monsters who had just been wiped out and her love for her teacher.

Fauna saw the conflict in her eyes. She bent down and petted the girl gently.

"My Mara," she said. "You've grown up so much more than I could have ever expected."

The girl tensed up, clutching at the threads of her torn dress.

"Let me help you," she said. "I – I can help!"

Fauna drew the girl into a warm embrace, ignoring the looks Lamphrey was giving her.

"You've already done so much more than you even know," she whispered in the infant Hopla's drooping ears. "You've shown them that they can't ever break us, no matter what they do. No matter how much pain they throw against us."

Mara stiffened in her teacher's arms. Then, slowly, she hugged her back.

"Leave the rest to us," she said. "Besides, you have others who are counting on you, now."

She nodded towards the three minotaur children who knelt beside their slain mother. Miss Peregrine's body lay inert, her wounds covered by her children's bloodied hands. They wept bitterly, their massive noses sniveling in the dust and brimstone from the fires. It was a sobering sight for the hybrids. No one – perhaps on Argwyll – had ever seen minotaurs grieve for one of their lost.

"They need you now," Fauna told Mara. "The way back is cleared. Take them with you and follow the tunnels. You'll find Borlor and Fraxx not too far away. Tell them to make sure everyone evacuates to the surface."

Mara stifled back a sob. She was trying to stay strong, Fauna knew. And she was doing a damn better job of it than Fauna had at her age.

Eventually, the little Hopla nodded and ran off to comfort her bodyguards.

"Malak," Klax said. "Go with her. Keep a detachment of Drytchlings here to secure this…boy. But your life now has a new purpose: and that's to make sure that little Hopla comes out of this ok."

The old druid bowed stiffly, immediately ordering his Drytchlings as Klax commanded.

Jory, meanwhile, watched all this happen in angry, seething silence. His face was a picture of rage.

Fauna glanced in his direction only once before she then turned back to the others.

"C'mon," she said. "The Lightborn will have almost reached the city by now. If we hurry, we can make it to him before he destroys the throne."

The team made to move off, and would have immediately started sprinting towards the path of ruin the angel had carved were it not for the shrill laughter that suddenly spilled from the captive boy's mouth.

"You – you think Lord Artorious seeks to destroy the throne?"

Fauna stopped, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck bristle.

"C'mon Faun," Tara said. "The little guy's just trying to slow us down."

But Fauna met the mad eyes of the boy. She saw, beyond the fanaticism, that there was truth hidden beneath his words. Truth that he desperately wanted them to know. He wanted them to know just how little hope they had left.

"What the Lightborn has planned is much, much worse than that," Jory sneered, enjoying the Hopla's confusion. "Soon, none of you will have anywhere left to hide."

***

It was strange.

He recalled that 'rage' was an emotion that had often preceded 'grief' back when he was still a human.

When he broke through another tunnel wall and saw the bright lights of Central Sanctum, this was the emotion that welled up inside him.

Seeing the little civilization they had built for themselves down here, and remembering the faces of those wretched hybrids who had just dared to oppose him again, somehow filled him with undue irritation.

He hovered through the streets, glancing at the windows of their miserable little hovels, seeing no faces within. He assumed the vermin had had enough sense to evacuate their civilian populace by now.

He cared not. Their extermination was all but secured. Soon, they would have nowhere left to run.

Those who dared oppose him were liquidated by his [Azure Arc] beams. He swept them over the rotting bridge that led towards the castle keep, cutting the line of Lycae defenders in two. From the Martello towers that flanked the castle gates, squads of desperate Minxit launched their bolts and arrows at him in a final attempt to impede his advance.

They got the same treatment as the Lycae. His burning, killing gaze swept over the towers and rent the flesh from the Hybrids' meagre bodies. Then he brought the towers down with them.

This was their last line of defense. Their final stand. And that, too, seemed to cause him nothing but aggravation.

As he hovered towards the castle gate, he felt something glow under his feet. He looked down, saw the runic symbol of a flaming eye, and then felt flames consume his body in an explosion that rocked the entire underground stronghold.

"We got him!" someone cried from within the city.

"The bastard fell for the trap!"

"We've got him on the ropes! Keep firing!"

The last Magi that remained in Sanctum removed their invisibility cloaking and appeared around the ruined bridge. They each channeled all the energies they had into a series of firebolts, lightning strikes, and streams of ice spikes, aiming them all at the spot where the angel had just been consumed by flame. They threw everything they had at him, including spells of holding just in case he tried to fly away. And with each passing second, they grew more and more certain that –

"ENOUGH!"

The voice of the Angel cut through the magic assault. Artorious flapped his wings, extinguished the fire, and wrapped the threads of all their magical attacks around him.

"I cannot be bled."

He sent a wave of heat towards the first line of mages, crisping their fur and turning them to ash in an instant.

"I cannot be caged."

He sent another wave of divine energy directed at the Magi who tried to turn invisible and flee, catching them before they could even utter a single incantation.

"Know this as you die, ever pathetic, ever fools!"

He flew into the air high above the city, cupped his hands, and channeled the light of Kaedmon through his limbs.

He was done playing around with these beasts.

He was going to solve the problem of their existence once and for all.

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