* * *

  ‘Are you really sure you wish for that one to be mended? He has the same strange scent as the others I dispatched earlier.’

  “Yes,” said Aurelia. “Please, that one. Quick.”

  ‘Very well, little one…’

  The beast waved his paw over Roskvir’s prone form. At first Roskvir seemed unchanged, but then his brow furrowed, and his eyes fluttered open.

  “...Aurelia?” he murmured.

  Aurelia fell over him, hugging his neck and shoulders.

  “Is it… really you?” she asked, between her tears of relief. “All of you?”

  “I… I think so…” he said.

  ‘I sensed his soul had been damaged, as well as his body,’ said the beast. ‘I tried as best I could to mend that as well, but he was maimed that way with the power of my own kind. There was only so much I could do.’

  Aurelia drew back. Roskvir blinked into the forest’s vibrant sunshine, exhausted and disoriented, but nevertheless present, at last.

  “No… you healed him. Enough, anyway. I can feel it,” she said.

  “Uh… Aurelia? Behind you— Gods… I must still be delirious…” Roskvir rubbed his eyes. “What the hell—”

  “Don’t worry,” said Aurelia, petting the massive forelimb rising as if an orange-furred tree trunk beside her. “I brought him to help. He’s friendly.”

  “Uh…”

  The beast perked up, and looked to the other end of the clearing, as if he’d heard something Aurelia could not.

  ‘There will be time for introductions later. A great danger approaches my realm. Go now. Take him northwest. I will find you again before the next sunrise. But if I do not return…’

  The beast started off to the south.

  ‘...Know that Maxadin’s debt’s has been repaid.’

  * * *

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  As He-Who-Tends-Gardens padded to the edge of his realm, he was not surprised to see who awaited him.

  Beyond the treeline stood a figure of human aspect. That particular mortal form was unfamiliar, but the burning ring of violet flame above his head, proud and garish, was not. And the presence he felt on the plane of sense was unmistakable, even after all those years.

  “Old age does not suit you,” said the shogun of Albion. “You have grown fat and indolent, in this retirement.”

  ‘You’re one to talk,’ replied He-Who-Tends-Gardens. ‘You look ridiculous. You’re tiny.’

  “I did not choose this form, unlike you,” said the shogun. “And being the size of mortals has its advantages, when one is forced to work with them.”

  ‘That does not change the fact,’ said He-Who-Tends-Gardens, ‘that you look ridiculous.’

  “Enough. You have something of mine. Return it to me.”

  ‘I have taken time to appraise at that one. She is the conqueror’s heir. Thus, she is under my protection.’

  “You know,” said the shogun, as royal violet flame coated his fists. “This is why I always hated the mortal consorts you had after mother. Allowing yourself to become so sentimental is pathetic. Two thousand years ago, you rolled around in the hay with what might well have been a mayfly, and now it's everyone else's problem.”

  ‘Every time we meet, boy,' said He-Who-Tends-Gardens with a guttural snarl, 'I discover another way in which I failed you. Mortals have a saying: ‘don’t speak ill of the dead.’

  “To what respect do I owe a pile of maggot-chewed bones and moldy dirt?”

  He-Who-Tends-Gardens didn’t even growl, at that. He only stared.

  Then he was behind the shogun’s mortal form, pouncing from above, knife-claws swiping at his exposed neck.

  Just as fast, the shogun tried to pivot to face the attack. But firm earth swallowed his feet, soil reinforced by a weave of flowers sprouting across the surface.

  He-Who-Tends-Gardens’s claws thus made it within an inch of his target, before the shogun’s twin uppercuts hit his underbelly.

  He tumbled back toward his forest with a whine, thrown through the air alongside the triple syncopated shockwave — first, of the shogun breaking free of the earthen shackles, then of the double violet-fire strikes, as all three movements split the air faster than sound. Quick to recover, He-Who-Tends-Gardens limped the rest of the way to the trees, as he bled from the two gashes in his stomach, both his own blood as well as the lingering purple embers of the impacts.

  But the shogun pressed his advantage without caution. To follow up on his riposte, he leapt forward, crossing the threshold of the treeline. Before he’d flattened a single leaf underfoot, vines sprung from the canopy to bind his arms and ankles, and He-Who-Tends-Gardens was upon him again, then with time enough to cut great claws across the shogun's face before he could break free of the restraints.

  The shogun stumbled back out of the forest, and the two regarded each other once more, as they felt the piercing agony of their respective wounds.

  “It would be a simple matter to best you, old man,” said the shogun, as he held his bleeding face. “But I care not to waste the time required to do so. Say your last goodbyes to this reservoir of power, here, for it is now so frail that even mortal artifice can bring it to ruin. I need simply fly back to my warship, and within the hour, tools of gunpowder will have razed this final refuge of yours to the ground.”

  ‘Your mistake is to assume that I am like you,’ said He-Who-Tends-Gardens. ‘I care not for my power if it means my debt will be repaid. Within the hour of which you speak, I will be far elsewhere with the child, content whether to lose my power or to keep it. So come, boy. Venture again into my domain, and let us finish this. Or would you rather just run back to your boat?’

  The shogun stared in silence at He-Who-Tends-Gardens for a long moment. Then, with a final thin scowl, he turned away.