"The barrier line at Bloodridge," Elder Hsu said, and his voice cracked, "was designed against demonic sects. Armies. Strategies. Not against a plague that reproduces by..." he gestured helplessly at the dark recording stone, "by THAT."
Every head in the pavilion turned, slowly, to the same person.
She had sat through the entire viewing without moving.
The Heroine of Sages occupied a plain chair at the war table's corner, unadorned, and she had not flinched once, and this was somehow the most frightening thing in the room.
Her body was wrapped from throat to wrist to ankle in coiled wire, the ancient sage bindings that regulated the enormous power of her bloodline, the wire glowing faintly with contained starlight.
Her eyes were the deepest part of the night sky given a woman's gaze, pupils scattered with points of light that shifted slowly, reading things no one else could see. Her face was calm the way a drawn bow is calm.
Her pink lips parted.
