Winds howled with demented vigor as the Winter Queen traipsed across the prairie. With their cries flowed curtains of blistering snow, forming a bed of frozen ashes for miles around. She studied her feet without concern for the inclement weather; made no motions to rebuke the wind aside from keeping her hooded head bowed, and laced her spindly legs through the ocean of white as if wading through water. She was tall. Slim. Medallions, bracelets, and other arcana chimed melodies about her person, while from her head and shoulders swung a lustrous granite-blue coat. Godden, the Black God, grinned from the coat’s back like some sort of stalking specter, naming her origins for whoever might wonder.

Pristine as she was in her wear and her stride, the newly bored holes in the coat and swathes of grime on its surface described just how arduous her journey had been. Her leathery attire also wore rips throughout, many in the shape of fang bites and rending claws. The lower legs of the suit had been worn off and now exposed her shins and her feet to the sting of the snow. Each step displayed a wolf’s head inked around one of her ankles and a diamond serpent bracelet strapped around the other.

Slowly the woman drew upon Moon Hill, the lone, tide-shaped mound at the heart of the prairie which gave the area its name. The ground sloped upward, giving way to a crest, then a looming edifice swam into view like a haunted ship at sea. She stopped and lifted her head; the hood flew off, setting navy bandages wrapped around her eyes loose in the wind and the strands of her blue hair ablaze. The building seemed to sway backwards in fear. Blue hair which fanned like fire; ice-white skin so pale that it made the hair almost glow by comparison; delicate lips which somehow held vigor. Moon Hill’s daughter, Noa Rylie, had returned.

She stared through the blindfold at the building, tilting her head from side to side as if in critical examination. For all the edifice’s height, she might have been looking down at it.

Thirty-nine winters past, this place, then called the Silver Chapel, had been a house of mass and merrymaking for the Children of Enigma, a group of self-proclaimed pupils of the eponymous and late Lady Gineden’s teachings. The Children, who had been prophets, foresaw Noa's coming. They knew they would find an ailing woman wandering the plains one moonlit night, and lend her their aid before and after discovering her rounded belly. That they would hear six deafening beats of a drum in the far distance, heralding the onset of a first and then a second tide which would obliterate the then-populated Moon Hill. And they knew they would have to protect the newborn baby with their thirteen corpses; protect the Moon-Child, the very same which would begin the world’s ruining on two successive, unspoken nights, because their own prophecy demanded it.

Noa looked up the surface of the chapel’s two heavy wooden doors with what might have passed as a keen gaze had she any gaze at all. The swirling storm expressed her inner turmoil on her behalf, including the unvoiced questions of why she had returned to this place. Those nobles who had abducted her, the Clandestined, always said she would find nothing awaiting her here if she returned. Yet she wondered: even if she found only ashes, weren’t they ashes for her? Didn’t here lie the remains of a warm, motherly smile? Or the thirteen men and women who had courted her into this world?

She palmed one of the doorknobs. With a twist and a shove, the titanic door began to come ajar. On the other side was a haunted mouth of darkness with a faded red tongue. The blizzard shoved past her, blasting both doors back, opening the mouth wide and spraying rampantly into its depths. She placed one foot over the threshold, then the other, slowly beginning the long march into the chamber. With a flick of her hands behind her, both doors jumped off the walls and clasped shut, plunging her into darkness.

The chapel was a cold and barren tomb. The walls were so thick that if it weren’t for the few holes in the ceiling playing the whistle of the wind, Noa would have been deafened by the silence. Fingers of light reached down from those holes, sliding between the rafters, probing the carpet. They were unnaturally bright; the clouds generating the storm did not hang over the chapel as they did the rest of Moon Hill. However, the darkness was also deep; the wisps of light stifled and wrung thin. Noa saw none of this.

“Ava diel,” she said in a sublime, mature voice.

It was the Old Tongue, the language of the former Ende; of the motherland. No one had taught it to her, and she could not recall the first time she had ever used it. Some said she had known it since birth. Her words meant “Good day” in the Tongue, and in this case it was a spell.

Silvery candles suspended from the high-vaulted ceiling came alive. The darkness fled and the grim interior of the Chapel lit up. The years had not been kind. Golden stonework, polished benches, and large, elegant balconies--were all either dull, weathered, or had collapsed. Vines had begun to climb the walls. Baby mushrooms sat in the corners and beneath every seat. Along the faded red carpet, the beams of light from the ceiling illuminated pieces of wood, shards of stone, and other debris upon which a few feathery flakes of snow drifting down the beams’ tendrils had begun to coalesce.

It might have been strange that there were not even skulls left to recount what had last happened here, except that shortly after the lights took form, a massive pair of wings flapped vigorously beside Noa, and a looming, shadowy shape leaped from her side into the corner of the ceiling just over her head. It was a beastie. Large, winged, feathery and feral, it snarled down at Noa in feigned offense, baring yellow fangs. She might have been deaf as well as blind for all the attention she gave it. Even those less-traveled knew that acknowledging the existence of a Shyowl was the fastest way to draw its fury.

The pillars to the balconies on either side of the chapel pulled back like curtains as Noa neared the dais at the front. Four panels of stained glass surrounded this slightly raised circle of stone; most panels were shaded blue since their depictions occurred at sea, and thus cast a strobe of lights across the room similar to patterns on an ocean floor. From the left to the right, they told the story of Lord Godden of Dogma and Lady Gineden of Enigma, the founders of the Children of Dogma and Children of Enigma creeds, and their decisive confrontation in the First Days. Since it was a tale told throughout all of Purgia, even Noa knew it by heart. She turned her sealed gaze upon each of the panels in succession while narrating it in her head.

The first panel of stained glass showed Lord Godden, the Black God: a ferocious-looking man dressed in black armor with an upside down, sneering face. He held a great lance over the heads of one of the magi clans who had first inherited Ende’s sentence, a sorrowful group robed in red kneeling at his feet. The story went that Godden had fought alongside these brothers in the battle before exile, and again with them in an attempt to tear down the Cloud Wall, the latter battles forging him into the warrior now spoken of in legends. But, unable to tear down the Wall--and drunk with power besides--Godden initiated the exodus of his own kin in a fit of rage. He was the reason for virtually every ruin scattered throughout Ende, as well as the scarcity of its population.

The second sheet of glass showed Lady Gineden rising to confront Godden. She was a bombastic figure, round and genial, dressed in an all-white silk battle gown in contrast with Godden’s black metal suit. She was also of mysterious origin. In the image, her dress blended with the sea at the hem, indicating one possible place that she might have come. Others said she was a ghost of a time long past, and still others said she was the Cloud Wall made manifest. The truth was that no one knew for sure, or if they did, they were not saying. This was what gave rise to Gineden’s battlesake: the Lady of Enigma. In the panel she led a caste of her own against Godden and his followers--her army in blue, his in their red; hers valiant, his terrified--with the intention of tearing him down from his echelons.

The chime of Noa’s jewelry ceased as she came to a halt before the dais, facing the third window with hugged brows. This panel held her gaze much longer than the others, and not because of the explicitness of its depiction.

On a backdrop of what was either a wide blue sea or an open sky, Lady Gineden stood naked beside the Black God, surrendering herself into his arms. She had lost the war. She had robbed Godden of his army, had gone through a cluster of trials to earn a glorious weapon of her own--a sword of some fashion, the legends said, though the panels never showed it--but despite this, there were obstacles about the demigod even she could not overcome. Mainly, that Great Zircon lance.

It was the same massive object Godden held above his head in the first panel, and at the ready for close-quarters in the second. More catalyst for triumph than weapon, it had been passed down to Godden from generations of mighty warriors, none of whom had inherited it at the previous master’s behest. With it, Godden had inherited the same chaos and carnage that had shadowed those warriors in their days. That he was exceptionally well-versed in the weapon’s uses, even being the first to unravel its ability to belch fire, only exacerbated his comeuppance. So long as the Great Zircon was at his disposal, the battle was at a stalemate at best.

Yet, in that third image, the weapon was nowhere to be seen. Godden actually seemed to have forgotten it altogether. The woman in his arms, once his nemesis, now his betrothed, was his only concern in Ende. Even his upside-down face seemed to sneer less viciously than before, as if it were struggling to express infatuation. Gineden eyed the fourth image in foretelling.

Noa carried her gaze to the next window, already knowing what came next. Her expression remained unchanged.

In the last panel, the Lady stood behind Godden, hugging him round the throat with one arm. The other arm was hidden behind his back, skewering him through his core with the Great Zircon. Godden’s body arched upward and forward, strained in punishment; dead. The blue hues that had dominated the majority of the previous three panes were replaced with vivid scarlet here, bathing the right edge of the chapel in bloody light.

It had all been a ploy. The Lady had gotten closer to Godden physically and emotionally only so that her wit and cunning were not obstructed by the Great Zircon. Once effectively deluded, she finished him off with the very thing that had made him invincible. Whether she had truly felt anything for the man or not, no one ever knew; what mattered was that she had pulled Ende single-handedly out from under a ruinous monarchy, even if it would be onto a ruinous oligarchy instead. Some stories called the Black God a fool for falling for the trick, while others considered him an object of his own fate and described him with sympathy. He remained a deity in all his tales, never descending back down to just a man.

No panels described what happened afterward. The Lord was buried in the sea along with his weapon, which many an adventurer would attempt to scavenge to no avail. The Lady, meanwhile, disappeared as she had come. Both the Children of Enigma and Children of Dogma arose to honor their memories; the Children of Enigma in honor of their Lady, the Children of Dogma--those high-ranking nobles from Purgia, the Clandestined--to spit on their Lord. They wore his face on the back of their cloaks only to remind themselves of the consequences of failure. If his throne stood atop the Great Pyramid Vault, it was only in wait of a true Black God.

Noa’s faux gaze fell on the dais. To the back, behind the circular podium where a speaker was meant to stand, a replica stood of the two lovers embroiled in their last act. While Godden stood poised on his toes, looking to the heavens in death, Gineden lurked behind him, staring murderously at Noa. She was a thing of pure white marble, chipped from age; the opposite of the black obelisk grained with luminous metal that she clutched. Noa touched her stomach unconsciously while returning that evanescent stare. The statue was a once-reminder to all who attended mass that the Lady was the one responsible for the relative peace the islands were now experiencing, as well as the hardship she endured to achieve it, but Noa believed she understood the Lady’s pain better than any of the Children of Enigma; better than anyone, perhaps, who had heard the tale. That third panel betrayed it.

Memories surged over her like a recreant wave. She remembered the feel of a man’s arms around her nude body; his gilded, lustful stare; his gentle touch and gentle words, gifts and praises and promises. And...the feel of him. Her skin boiled at the thought, saturated with shame, but she let it be. In these thoughts, she was in the arms of the one who would not betray her. There was no fourth panel ahead of them.

Her fingers dug into her stomach. Therein lay her plight. Her war. The roles between traitor and victim had changed: she was not Gineden, holding the cards--she was very much in love, as the Black God had been. In her naivete, of course she had been betrayed by that man. Of course. So many others had done so, she should have expected as much. He had betrothed and lain with three other women, and she should have known. And this thing within her? She shook her head. That too. The man was always experimenting on humans. It had only been a matter of time before he made a subject of her as well. No matter how she thought of it, she was the fool here, not Dr. Dragon.

Now she had to ask herself two questions. Should she forgive the man, and make peace with these many new entries in their relationship? Or was she the Moon-Child again: alone, battling fate? She could deal with the women--she was not so envious--but the lies were another matter. And could she breed anything but catastrophe? Could she raise a child of her own? Her gaze shifted between Gineden and Godden, wondering which would understand her better.


The storm picked up outside. Moon Hill, already an ocean of white, was buffeted harder than ever, to the point that a lone tree growing about a league away from the chapel became a leafless bramble sticking out of the snow in moments. A spiky-haired man perched in the tree began to climb steadily upward as it sank to avoid being buried alive. He stopped at the very top, only ten minutes out of the snow’s reach.

He pulled his cloak closer around his body in a vain attempt to deflect the stabs of wind. The all-black suit and tie he wore underneath the cloak were perfunctorily the wrong choice of wear for this kind of weather. He returned to his binoculars to peer through the circular upper window of the chapel on Moon Hill. The red jewel seated just above the bridge of his nose threatened to give away his position with its glint.

Inside the chapel, the Moon-Child had settled herself on her knees before the statue of Godden and Gineden and, seemingly, fallen still in meditation. He whipped out his cellular and punched in a speed dial.

“Target's stationary,” he said in a gravely voice. “Finally,” he added to himself.

“Reporting that to the Director, Agent Ex,” a female voice replied in his ear. “You can head home any time.”

“‘Furmative, Agent Rail.”

The line went dead. Ex gathered himself, leaped down from the tree, and sprinted away in the direction of Purgia at a wolf’s pace. His footsteps, shallow as they already were, filled up almost immediately in his wake, leaving no signs that he had ever been there to spy on the Winter Queen.