Dongmei had been running for 15 minutes when she felt the shift in weight.
Miss Zhifeng's body redistributed itself across her shoulder with subtle tension.
Dongmei said nothing.
Thirty seconds passed.
"..."
"You can put me down."
Dongmei stopped and carefully lowered but instead Miss Zhifeng floated upwards, then she let herself drop.
Her heels met the pavement with a single precise sound, weight distributed perfectly, posture unchanged. A small crack spiderwebbed through the concrete beneath her left foot.
Miss Zhifeng straightened herself and brushed nonexistent dust from her kimono.
The look Miss Zhifeng gave her lasted approximately three seconds.
Dongmei had been on the receiving end of that look before. It was the one that meant I have questions and I already don't like the answers.
"Where is Andreas."
Dongmei considered the question. Considered several framings of the answer. Considered the expression currently on her master's face.
"...He is with Naxys."
Miss Zhifeng was gone before the sentence finished.
Dongmei stood alone in the street and looked at the crack in the pavement.
"...I see."
The bakery smelled like butter and warm sugar and Andreas had been standing at the counter for slightly longer than was comfortable for either party.
"That's..." The cashier looked at the coin on the counter. Looked at Andreas. "Fifty cents."
"Yeah." Andreas smiled with the particular quality of someone who had fully committed to a situation they could not reverse. "I'm really sorry, I don't have change."
The young and patient cashier picked up the coin. Set it down. Picked it up again.
Then she smiled, opened the register, and counted out eight five cent coins which she placed in a neat row on the counter.
Andreas looked at the coins. Looked at her. Picked them up with both hands with the careful attention of someone handling something that had earned respect.
"Thank you."
"Enjoy."
He rejoined Naxys near the door and handed her one of the meat pies without ceremony. She accepted it with both hands and a smile that Andreas was not looking at because he was already turning toward the exit.
The wall came to him instead.
The impact was total, through the display case, through the interior wall, through the structural divide between the bakery and whatever had been behind it, into open air and then concrete. Dust.
Andreas lay broken in the rubble of the building behind the bakery and looked up at the sky through the hole that was now connecting three separate spaces that had previously been unconnected.
Dang stepped through the bakery. Through the wall. Through the dust. Her expression had the anger and focused quality of someone completing a task they had thought carefully about.
She crossed the distance and brought her heel down below his ear.
That sound was not good.
She raised her foot. Brought it down again.
Andreas's head reformed between the second and third strike.
She raised her foot for the third time.
"That's enough."
Naxys had crossed through the wreckage without hurrying and placed her hand on Dang's shoulder and pulled her back with the calm firmness of someone who had decided something.
Dang turned.
The look she gave Naxys was a an odd mix of anger and confusion, at her feelings betrayal.
"What," Naxys said evenly, "is wrong with you."
Dang opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
The light came first at her fingertips. Then her forearms. Her robes. She looked down at her hands with an expression that passed through confusion and arrived somewhere much colder as her body began to separate into floating particles, luminous and slow, drifting upward like ash from a fire that had already burned out.
Naxys took a step back.
Then she felt it in herself. Starting at the edges.
They looked at each other.
Then both of them leapt backward simultaneously with everything they had.
They landed one meter apart from where they'd started. The force of the leap had been a fraction of what either of them had intended — the power behind it simply absent, like reaching for something on a shelf and finding the shelf gone.
They hit the ground on their backs.
Naxys lay still for a moment staring at the sky.
Dang did the same.
From across the rubble, Andreas's body was doing the same thing. Particles. Light. The slow patient dissolution of something being called back from wherever it had briefly been.
Naxys stood up.
Not all at once. First her hands found the rubble beneath her, then her knees, then she was upright and the golden flames were starting at her left shoulder, moving across her collarbone, down her arm, up the side of her neck, healing her from whateverinjuryshe was receiving on half her body.
She walked across the rubble toward where Andreas had been dissolving and found him instead completely whole, lying on his back with his hands at his sides and his face turned slightly toward the sky.
The hole in the buildings framed the horizon behind him. The sun was almost there the light that comes before the sun, grey turning faintly gold at the edges.
Naxys crouched beside him.
She pressed two fingers to his neck.
Nothing.
Moved them. Pressed again. Waited.
Nothing.
She took his wrist. Held it. There was silence where a pulse should be was very loud.
She was still holding his wrist when she noticed his eyes.
Beneath the lids a tremor. Faint and irregular, like something trying to surface from a very long way down.
Naxys looked at his face for a moment.
"..."
She exhaled slowly and stood, lifting him across her shoulder in one motion with the practiced ease of someone who had carried things heavier than a person. His arm hung loose. His head tilted with the movement and settled.
The golden flames spread slightly across her back as she turned.
Dang was still on the ground. Sitting up now, one hand braced against the rubble, the other holding her sheathed sword, her hair displaced, her expression the particular kind of blank that comes after too many things have happened in too short a time. She was looking at Andreas the way someone looks at a problem they haven't finished solving.
Naxys looked at her.
Then she raised her free hand and threw the fireball without ceremony, golden, dense, trailing light like a comet, directly at Dang.
The rubble between them lit up gold for a moment.
Then Naxys turned back toward the rising sun and kept walking, Andreas across her shoulder and her flames still burning on half of her body.