It’s cool in the mountain foothills, and Indra leans into the wind as she picks her way up the stony path, placing her hooves carefully. Down among the swamps and fields of Terrastella, autumn had still been little more than a nip of chill against the cheek, a brush of frost over the fields at sunrise—but here, beneath the long shadow of Veneror’s peak, winter’s grip is already tightening, stripping the leaves from the trees and scaling the mountain ponds with ice.

The unicorn snorts, her breath steaming white in the air before her. She’d offered to help the aged Ilati shaman by gathering blue flowers from the highlands, but his description had been vague, and the season hardly promising. A glance over the landscape reveals more of the same: brown earth, dense clusters of pines, a few lingering purple streaks of fireweed and campion as a last relic of summer. No blue, as far as she can see; even the sky lurks behind a murky screen of clouds.

But her eye is drawn by something else: a line of horses angling toward the base of Veneror itself, the crowd swelling like a tide against the rocky slopes. Curious, she adjusts her own course, the blue flowers shrinking in her mind as she quickens her pace, and it isn’t long before she intercepts the growing herd. Watching, listening, she falls in among them.

There is a nervous energy to them—eager, purposeful, and a little afraid. By their conversation she gleans they hail from all four of the courts, and she sharpens her attention, knowing there has been strife across the land. There is talk of the gods, and the regimes, and the nature of things to come.

And then they are all spilling into a clearing, and Indra can see up ahead that Florentine and the other court leaders are pushing their way through a narrow break in the wood. The last of the regime members slips through, and the trees close, as if no path had ever been. There is no clap of thunder, no bursting light, no sign from the gods (and Indra, for one, is rather skeptical of any gods)—nothing at all but for the rest of them to wait, uncertain, outside the grove.

Indra turns to her nearest neighbor, a speckled white mare with small, delicate wings spreading behind her ears. “What do you expect is going on in there?” she asks, tipping her horn toward the sealed meeting. She lets a smile creep over her mouth as she thinks of the political nightmare about to unfold, with all of the clashing regimes forced suddenly into one small space. “I can’t imagine it will be long before a fight breaks out.”

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Indra’s own expression is one of mild interest as the other mare turns toward her, but at the stranger’s words, the unicorn’s brows lift slightly. “You think Tempus himself is in that meeting?” she asks, her tone suspended somewhere between incredulity and awe. She has never been the type to put much stock in deities—she’s never seen a sign of favor, nor asked for one, and she’d be lying if she claimed to believe with her whole heart in their existence. Still, something in the other mare’s words, the sincerity of them, sends a little thrill running down Indra’s spine. The gods, here?

Her gaze follows the stranger’s, roving over the clearing, the gathered horses, the tree line, the sealed meeting place. “Do you believe the gods walk among us,” she muses, curious as to the other’s views, “to watch, and listen, and mete out punishment?” Novus, she knows, takes its religion very seriously, at least compared to other worlds that she has travelled. Many of its inhabitants were come from far-flung places—but the natives she has met so far, at least, are generally devout. “Even if it’s suicide,” she continues dryly, “I wouldn’t put it past some of them.” She’s heard enough of the tempers raging between the courts to doubt if even the gods’ displeasure would be a deterrent, should disagreements escalate.

Remembering the way that Night had closed its gates, threatening brimstone to any who might cross, she shivers again—a very different kind of shiver than the one that had passed through her a moment before. She glances back at her companion, her golden eyes glittering in the sunlight. “I’m Indra,” she offers, “of the Dusk Court. I guess that means I should watch out for Vespera.” A flicker of a smile. “And who is your deity of choice?”

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Indra had not been privy to the arrival of Terrastella’s messenger bird, and so she listens with interest as Araxes describes the god’s summons at the Denoctian court. “That must have been a moment to remember for a lifetime,” she murmurs, her mind less on the will of the god than on how it must have felt to be reminded so unexpectedly of one’s own insignificance, one’s own mortality. What had stuttered through each regime member’s heart, she wonders, at the sound of that impossible voice? She cannot help but think of Florentine, touched since birth by the magic of Time, and what the encounter might have meant to the flower queen.

Her present companion is still speaking of the gods, and Indra nods her head thoughtfully, more curious than she’d be willing to admit to hear what the stranger had to say. There was something so earnest about the other mare’s words that it was difficult to doubt her, despite her own skepticism. “Have you ever been blessed by one?” she asks. “Or know someone else who has?” She had heard rumors of strange and wondrous gifts bestowed upon those who held the deities’ favor: magic, or abilities, or mystical companions. In the riftlands, Indra’s veins had flowed with powers of their own, but there had been no gods in that place except for time and the rift itself.

The mare introduces herself as Araxes, Champion of Wisdom for the Night Court, and Indra can hear the sorrow in her words as she describes her home. “I understand these have been difficult months in Denocte,” the unicorn says carefully, her golden eyes seeking Araxes’ own. “I am sorry for everything you’ve had to go through.” For a moment she pauses, curiosity warring with a desire not to intrude, but she cannot help herself. “What is the situation now? Has anything changed?” And she wonders if this meeting with the gods might be more than just a holy experience—might be a chance for the four courts of Novus to come together and try again for peace.

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Indra tilts her head in interest as Araxes describes having known a few horses who were granted fantastical companions. She has not seen any herself, yet, roaming the lands of Novus—at least, none that she has recognized for what they are—but she has heard mention of such creatures. Perhaps, she thinks grimly, even the dragons of Denocte were among them, bound to fulfill the whims of those who governed the court. The thought does not give her much comfort, to know that there are individuals with such powerful allies at their bidding.

Araxes mentions a lover, and the unicorn allows herself a small smile, though something in the phrasing—I fell in love—gives her pause, with its sense of ending. It is not her place, of course, to ask what became of that relationship, and so she simply nods, her horn glinting in the sunlight. As Araxes continues, explaining the disappearance of the Night regime, Indra’s sense of foreboding grows. What sort of leadership would abandon their people in a time of need—and moreover, a time of great change, with the gods themselves at hand? And what could it mean, that these rulers had vanished without a trace?

“That is troubling,” Indra says carefully. “I wonder if the people of Night will try to pursue them and learn what happened. I hope a new regime will step up to take their place, and provide Denocte with the guidance that it needs.” As Araxes asserts her own commitment to her kingdom, Indra nods again, liking the ferocity in her eyes. “The Night Court is lucky,” she says, “to have Champion as loyal as yourself.”

It is only then that Indra notices the crowds around them packing in more tightly, the horses shifting with restlessness, the sun beating down fiercely overhead. She has lost track of time, she realizes guiltily, remembering the blue blooms she had promised to find for Turhan. A glance around the clearing is all that it takes to convince her that this situation won’t likely be changing any time soon; she has little doubt that she can slip away to complete her errand and return without missing a thing.

“I should be going,” she says to Araxes, “but perhaps we’ll meet again soon. I wish you and Denocte the best.” And with a parting toss of her mane, the unicorn turns and is gone.

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