They pressed forward. Gradually, the battlemages' magic steadied, though their speed didn't match what they'd shown before. The Fragmented Flame slowed to match, but Ember sensed her sisters' frustration growing like fire left too long against dry tinder.

Windcrown Ridge rose before them—bare stone jutting from snow accumulations that had built for centuries. No vegetation survived above the tree line. Not even the hardy mountain grasses that should have clung to life in the brief summers. Just stone and ice and wind that carried no scent of life.

The air thinned as they climbed, each breath burning cold in their lungs. Well, in the battlemages' lungs. The Fragmented Flame breathed easy while Theron's team struggled with the altitude and bitter wind that cut through even their enhanced gear.

"There," Theron pointed to an outcrop halfway up the ridge's eastern face, his words coming in short puffs. "Natural observation post."

Lysa stumbled on loose scree, her fire magic sputtering as she fought for balance. "How much farther? My flames keep wanting to die in this wind."

"Wind's not natural," Daven grunted, hauling his pack higher on shoulders that had begun to ache from the weight of his ward-breaking devices. "Feel how it moves? No pattern to it. Like something's stirring the air just to make us miserable."

Ash paused mid-step, snow crunching under her boots. "The existential implications of supernatural meteorological manipulation are—"

"Not now, Ash," Ember said, but without heat. Her sister's tendency to philosophize at inappropriate moments had become oddly comforting over the months.

"Right. Sorry." Ash resumed climbing, but Ember caught her muttering under her breath about artificial weather systems and their relationship to consciousness suppression.

The climb took another hour. Corwin had replaced his spectral horse with a large mountain goat that clambered nimbly up the heights, though even the conjured creature moved with less grace than before. Its edges flickered—translucent in places where the summoning fought against whatever force pressed down on them.

Daven had abandoned stone manipulation entirely, laboring with heavy pack over switchbacks that became an endless series of rocky steps. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold, and his breath came in harsh gasps that spoke of a man unused to purely physical exertion.

Senna moved in fits and starts, teleporting short distances when her magic allowed, then walking when it didn't. Each successful translocation seemed to surprise her more than the last.

"It's like trying to push through thick honey," she explained during one of their brief rests. "The space between spaces feels... crowded. Occupied by something that doesn't want me there."

When they reached the promontory, Erebos stretched out below. A vast, white expanse dotted with motionless black trees that looked like charcoal marks on parchment. Mountains rose like broken blades to the north and east, wreathed in storm clouds that swirled but never released their burden of snow.

The wind died completely at the ridge top, leaving an unnatural stillness that made every sound sharp as breaking glass. Even their breathing seemed too loud.

"Gods' blood," Theron whispered, his enhancement runes flickering weakly. "Look at it all."

Ember accepted the spyglass Theron pulled from his pack—simple brass and glass, no enchantments to fail. The metal felt cold enough to burn, but she pressed it to her eye and looked north anyway.

The village appeared in the lens, and she felt her sister-selves pressing close to observe through her senses. The village's walls had been made from sturdy timbers—a hunter's settlement, she guessed. Smoke should have risen from a dozen chimneys. None did.

"There. Settlement. Maybe two hundred buildings."

Theron crawled up beside her, producing his own spyglass. "Millbrook. Trading post. Should have eight hundred residents, plus seasonal workers." His voice carried the weight of someone who'd visited the place, knew its people by name.

"Should," Cinder repeated, settling on Ember's other side. Frost formed where her knees touched stone, melting almost instantly from the heat that leaked through her clothes.

Through the lens, Ember watched figures move between buildings. Too distant for faces, but something about their movements seemed wrong. Stiff. Like marionettes operated by an inexperienced hand. She adjusted the focus, trying to resolve details that refused to be seen clearly.

"They're walking," Kindle observed, squinting through her own borrowed spyglass. "But not like people walk. More like... like they're sleepwalking."

"Frost zombies?" Pyra asked, trying to peer over Ember's shoulder.

"No, doofus. Not like that."

Beside her, Theron grunted. "Something's off. No smoke. A place that size should have smoke from hearths, smithies, cookfires." He lowered his spyglass, expression grim. "It's midday. People should be about their business."

The silence stretched. No smoke. No fires. Yet hundreds of figures went through the motions of daily life in a village frozen still as death.

Pyra pressed close, and Ember relented, letting her excited sister-self take the spyglass. "Maybe they found a way to keep warm without fire? Some kind of Erebosian trick?"

"Look closer," Ash murmured. She'd borrowed Daven's spyglass and focused on a group near the village center. "Watch how they interact with each other."

Pyra followed Ash's gaze. A cluster of figures stood near what might have been a market square. They faced each other, bodies positioned for conversation, but none of them moved. No gestures. No turning of heads. Just standing, static as carved stones.

"Maybe they're just... going through the motions?" Kindle's voice came hesitant. "Trying to maintain life as they know it?"

Ember snagged the spyglass back from Pyra, ignoring her grumbling. She adjusted the focus again, searching for evidence of normalcy.

"I don't think so," Ember replied, though she felt her own wish for this to be true. "That looks like... I don't know. Something's wrong with how they're moving. Can't figure it out."

"Imagine you've been ordered to live life as you always have," Ash said quietly. "But it's just an order. Not from your heart. You're doing things because something made you and not because you want to. You're going through the motions but the emotion—the part that gives the motion meaning—isn't there anymore."

Ember nodded. "That's it. That's what I was thinking about. Man, our new shared thoughts thing is growing on me! That's useful." The thought was accompanied by Cinder rolling her eyes.

Lysa huddled closer to the group, her small flames providing a pocket of warmth that the other battlemages gravitated toward. "In my studies, I read about villages that fell to necromantic influence. The dead would continue their daily routines, driven by whatever commanded them. But these people..." She paused, studying the distant figures. "They're not shambling corpses."

"Indeed, necromancy reanimation usually has more jitters." Corwin joined the circle of figures hunched low around Lysa's warmth.

Daven consulted his ward-crystals, frowning at readings that shifted too quickly to follow. "The magical interference is strongest directly over the settlement. Like something's actively maintaining control there."

"Daven," Theron said, voice tight. "Think you can punch a hole through this interference? Just enough for some long-range scrying?"

The big man nodded grimly. He extracted a ward-cracking device from his pack—a shard of obsidian and mithril the size of Ember's thumb. The crystal felt wrong to look at directly, edges that seemed to cut the light itself into unnatural angles.

Daven began inscribing it with commands, his scarred fingers tracing symbols that made the air around them taste of copper and ozone. Each mark he carved glowed briefly before fading to dull gray.

"This is going to hurt," he warned. "Ward-cracking always does. But if we can weaken their defenses for just a few minutes..."

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Minutes passed. The spell-inscriptions on the device flared and dimmed, flared and dimmed. Flickering from reality to the ether, searching for vulnerabilities. The crystal grew hot in Daven's hands, then cold enough to frost over, then hot again.

Cracks appeared in the obsidian. Spread like spider webs. Webbed outward until the whole thing hummed with contained magic, vibrating so hard it chewed holes in the cloth beneath where Daven had placed it.

"Now," he gasped, blood trickling from his nose. "Won't hold long."

He gestured for Senna.

She nodded and knelt by the device, her silver-threaded hair beginning to glow with inner light. Faint radiance flickered around her hands as she began casting her divination. Then it caught, expanding into a sphere of light that hung above her palms like a miniature sun.

The light gradually coalesced into blurry shapes that resolved into buildings—seen from above at a sharp angle, as if they perched on a bird's shoulder.

"There," she whispered, sweat beading her forehead despite the cold. "Millbrook. Hold on."

The scrying field dropped, swooping down like a diving falcon to ground level. It passed through the open door of the largest building—an inn, judging by the tables and common room arrangement.

Figures went through the motions of a midday meal. Clumsy spoons carried food to slack mouths. Some chewed mechanically, jaws working with the rhythm of millstones grinding grain. Most just pushed food around their plates, uninterested in sustenance the flesh still craved.

A woman lifted a wooden cup to her lips, held it there for long seconds, then lowered it without drinking. Her eyes stared at nothing, pupils fixed and dilated.

"Sweet suffering gods," Lysa breathed.

"What are they?" Daven asked, frowning at the image. His ward-cracking device had begun smoking, the obsidian spider-webbed with hairline fractures.

"Thralls." Corwin knelt, placing one hand on the device despite the heat radiating from it. His mental shields flared, projecting forward into the scrying view like ghostly fingers reaching through the image. "Will-dominated. She's taken their thoughts and bent them to her own."

The projection showed a man sitting alone at a corner table. He held a piece of bread halfway to his mouth, had been holding it that way for who knew how long. His eyes tracked the scrying sensor when it passed close, but his expression never changed.

"Can we reverse it?" Kindle spoke with quiet intensity, her usual cheerful optimism strained thin. "Can they be saved?"

Corwin closed his eyes, his mental projection flashing through the scrying spell like a searching hand. He probed the figures one after another, looking for vulnerabilities, cracks in their mental prison. Each time, his mouth twisted in frustration.

"The control is too thorough," he muttered. "Like trying to untangle a knot when every strand has been fused together." His probe withdrew. "No. Too much resistance. I'd have to be right there in front of them, and even then—" He shook his head. "The dragon's blanketed everything. No room for counter-manipulation. It's like trying to turn back the tide with a waterskin."

"So how do we get around it?" Cinder leaned forward, studying each slack-faced villager. "Can we get them to ignore us? Maybe trick them into thinking we're just more servitors?"

"Possibly." Corwin's projection returned, manifesting as a smoky apparition that stood beside the figures. His mental probe, manifesting as a shadowy hand, reached out again—touched a villager's mind with considerably more caution this time. It searched carefully, like a thief checking for traps.

"Fishing," Corwin murmured, eyes still closed. "Don't want to alert the dragon, but... ah."

His probe retracted. "She gave them simple commands. Obey and maintain. They're supposed to keep the settlement intact but nothing more. No sense of self, no deeper commands beyond that, and definitely no orders to attack us if we walk in."

The scrying image showed children playing in the snow—or rather, going through the motions of play. They threw snowballs that fell short, ran in circles that led nowhere, built snowmen that kept collapsing. Their faces remained as slack and dull as the adults'.

Ember's throat tightened. "Those children..."

"Best not to think about it," Theron said quietly. "We help them by completing the mission. Nothing else we can do right now."

"I know." But knowing didn't make it easier to watch.

Daven's device finally cracked completely, the scrying image dissolving into sparks and smoke. He wrapped the ruined crystal in cloth, his hands shaking slightly from magical backlash.

"That's all we get," he said. "Device is finished."

Theron nodded. "We got what we needed. Senna, can you contact command?"

The diviner folded herself onto bare stone, silver threads now completely dark. Her eyes rolled back until only whites showed, and when she spoke, the words echoed from somewhere deeper than her throat—like voices speaking from the bottom of a well.

"Ingress point located. Area clear. Infiltration commencing on arrival. Further contact... indeterminate." Her head lolled back. "Message delivered. No guarantee of reception."

"Good enough." Theron stood, brushing frost from his armor. The metal rang like bells in the stillness. "Let's move. Stick to natural cover. Avoid patrols with your lives, because those are exactly what's at stake."

Suddenly, the wind picked up—not the natural mountain wind from before, but something that carried sounds in it. Voices, maybe, or the groaning of ice under impossible weight. Movement in the distance caught every eye at once.

A huge silhouette flew past an opening in the clouds.

As one, the group froze.

"Dragon," Lysa breathed, her small flames guttering to nothing.

Blue-white scales that caught the light like polished steel. Eyes that glowed with cold fire, visible even at this distance. Wings that spanned wider than a ship's length, sending up flurries of ice crystals where they passed. It circled in lazy arcs, utterly confident in its domain.

The group quickly hunkered down among the rocks, making themselves as small as possible. The stone felt like touching winter itself.

Pyra peered around a rocky outcropping, her flames dimmed to barely visible flickers. "Is that Nethysara?"

"No," Theron replied, watching through his spyglass with the intensity of a man studying his own death. "Too small. Most likely one of her thirteen scions. Which is still bad news."

Pyra blinked, staring at him as if he'd lost his mind. "Small? That? It looked as big as a barn."

"From the reports, Nethysara's about the size of a large castle. Big enough to crush most buildings under her weight. She's far larger than any other known dragon—either here in Erebos or the lands beyond."

The dragon scion circled the village slowly, making a single pass over each boundary before ascending into the clouds above. Its roar echoed off the mountains, a sound like ice breaking under enormous weight.

Pyra's eyes had gone wide as saucers. "Sheesh! There are supposed to be thirteen of those, plus the big boss herself?"

Cinder clamped a hand on Pyra's mouth before her voice could carry. "Inside voice, Pyra! There are a lot of really large, dangerous things around that we don't want to be aware of our presence. Yet."

Pyra mumbled something under Cinder's palm, then gave a nod.

Cinder released Pyra's mouth. "Better?"

"Much." Pyra rubbed her lips, then grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. It's just... we're really doing this, aren't we? Walking into dragon territory with broken magic and a prayer."

"We've had worse odds," Kindle said, though her voice lacked its usual confidence.

"Have we?" Ash mused. "I mean, statistically speaking, this might actually be our most dangerous—"

"Ash," all four sisters said in unison.

"Right. Morale. Got it."

Daven had been studying his ward-crystals throughout the dragon's patrol, comparing readings with marks he'd scratched in the snow. As the creature wheeled away toward the northern mountains, he frowned at the measurements.

"That's odd." He tapped one crystal, then held it up to catch the fading light. Its color had shifted from deep red to amber, no longer pulsing with malevolent energy. "Readings are climbing."

"Climbing how?" Theron moved closer, peering at the crystal. The change was visible even to the untrained eye.

"Arcane resonance. My crystals were barely functional when that thing passed overhead. Now they're showing... well, not normal levels, but stronger than they've been since we reached the valley floor."

Theron's frown deepened to match. "Lysa? Have you noticed anything?"

Lysa flexed her fingers experimentally. Fire answered—not much, a candle's worth rather than a bonfire, but definitely there. "Yes. I didn't want to say anything at first, because it was so subtle. But... it's easier to kindle flame now than before. I don't have an explanation."

"The oppression lifted," Senna confirmed, attempting a minor divination. Her silver threads flickered weakly but responded. "Still blocked, but my inner sight feels... less crushed."

Corwin's mental shields solidified slightly, faint geometric patterns growing more defined at the edges like frost forming on glass. "External force has decreased. Whatever was pushing against my defenses retreated when the dragon moved away."

"Correlation?" Theron's question cut sharp through the mountain air.

Daven consulted his crystals again, comparing fading readings to the marks he'd made. "Dragon appeared overhead... magical suppression peaked to nearly total negation. Dragon moves away... suppression decreases to merely severe interference." He looked up, meeting each of their gazes. "Could be coincidence."

"Could be," Theron said, but his tone suggested he didn't believe it. "File it for further observation. We'll need every advantage we can identify."

"If the dragons themselves are causing the suppression..." Ember began.

"Then we know where to strike to get our magic back," Lysa finished, small flames dancing around her fingers with renewed vigor.

They began the careful descent from their observation point, boots scraping against stone that had been worn smooth by centuries of wind and ice. The path down proved more treacherous than the climb up—loose scree shifted underfoot, and more than once someone had to grab for a handhold to avoid a tumbling fall.

Corwin's spectral goat dissolved halfway down, forcing him to navigate the rest on foot. His face had gone pale from the magical strain of maintaining even simple conjurations in this place.

"Save your strength," Theron advised. "We'll need every scrap of magic we can muster once we get down there."

At the ridge's base, wind-carved stone provided shelter from the worst of the cold. Theron gathered them close, his breath coming in visible puffs against the stinging air.

"From here, we're in her territory proper," he said, voice low despite the howling wind that would carry their words away. "Stay tight. Move quiet. And whatever you do—" His gaze found each of them in turn, lingering on the Fragmented Flame with something between hope and desperate prayer. "—don't get separated. We have no idea what happens to lone targets in her domain."

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