The two watchers waited for their backup, motionless, ready for her move - still smiling, always smiling, like carrion birds expecting the fear to drown her. A murder of toothsome crows, shrikes impaling her on long thorns. They surrounded her. She saw the others drifting like shadows, the seen and unseen, tangled up in wires sharp as knives, victims of a gallows whim. Ghosts of lives stolen, including her own, haunted her like a hall of reflections and infinite nested images.

Just one outcome in thousands. So many possibilities from one origin, and only one path ever chosen. Wavelengths painted in prism. A butterfly flapped its wings, and a veil dropped from clear skies. A field of chrysanthemum and peonies grew around her, golden and electric, filling the austerity with vivid hue. She could feel their confusion. Pale imitations. Their idea of deliverance was a steady aim.

She had walked willfully into this ambush. Visions of triumphs had been clearer than the tragedies, so much closer. She let her thoughts wander and the microcosm bled away to grey until she encountered herself, dancer lithe and poised to strike. Which was the reality? She seemed herself a raven, dark hair spun around her in the simile of wings and feathers, a grim psychopomp and harbinger of ill tidings. Wū ​yā​ zuǐ . Not her. Not the girl she had been, unrecognizable now, but the figment carved from herself, the cruel marionette.

Just a trick of the mind. Physics had no law here. River reached for the whirling tempest within her and struck first, releasing it onto the hapless landscape. The hurricane tore though the illusion, and a circle of judgment like those used by the patriotic tribunals was swept from amid the swirling fog. Three small children recoiled from where they stood around her, retreating from the exposure and onslaught. Startled. A brunette boy, all wild fringe and almond eyes; another ashen and empty; and a girl with hair like fire. All orphans wearing form-fitting Academy slate, no family to miss them. The but