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“No,” I croaked, slamming to my knees in a puddle that might as well have been the ocean swallowing me whole. I could feel whoever it was rummaging through my mind, scrambling up my memories, but I couldn’t—couldn’t fight them while my other magics were holding the rest of the threats at bay.

My past mixed with my present mixed with all my hopes for the future. Not memory erasure, but memory entanglement. Confusion settled over me like a cloud, slowing down the rain. Casting my surroundings in a haze.

Have to find Coen. That was the one thought I clung to, the one I refused to relinquish to the invader. I didn’t know where I was. How I’d gotten here. Why I was on my knees. I only knew that I had to find Coen. Have to find him. Have to find…

I got up. Stumbled onward as the world spun in a vortex around me.

Have to find Coen.

The ground rumbled beneath my feet, and I just barely managed to stagger to the side before a giant hole blew through the cobblestone, steam blasting upward.

There’s the Element Wielder’s work, I thought, although I didn’t know why. Who was I? Where was I? Have to find Coen. There was a king—I couldn’t remember his name—who’d made me battle three, but I couldn’t battle five.

I’m sorry, Coen. I didn’t know why I was sorry, but I was. More billows of steam blasted from the ground, narrowly missing me on either side. Chunks of cobblestone flew toward me. Several sliced my skin, gashing me with pain.

My legs wobbled. My vision tilted. I was just about to succumb when a snarl shook me awake, and I blinked at the thing hurtling toward me through the rain.

A massive white tiger.

A tiger that skidded to a halt before me, ears flattened, canines bared. It was going to eat me just as the pumas had tried to. I was going to die.

“Get on,” it snarled at me.

“W-what?”

I’d never seen a feline look so exasperated and fearful all at once.

“Use your magic to keep fighting. I’ll worry about getting us out.”

Finally understanding what he meant, I clambered onto his back and threaded my fingers through his soaked fur. Hunching low, I hardly felt him spring into motion, powerful legs taking us further and faster than I ever could.

I only did as the tiger said, fighting the corpses, the animals, and the invasion in my head with every bit of magic I had left.

My sense of self began to return the moment Jagaros leapt over a pair of houses that hadn’t finished fusing and into the jungle.

He flew between trees, leaping over branches, slicing through the foliage at a pace that made everything blur past. I kept my body horizontal with his, focused on molding with his movements so that he could go faster, faster, faster.

Finally, we broke through several sheets of moss and into a wide expanse of giant mahoganies that cast the remaining drizzle of rain in a reddish film. The hold on my mind had evaporated. The corpses and animals had long since fallen behind.

“Have to find Coen,” I muttered. “We left Coen.” I hadn’t even realized I’d been repeating those words out loud until now. “Have to find him. We left him…”

“Coen was never there, Rayna.”

Jagaros slowed, his claws sinking into mud. The bony jut of his shoulders shifted as he walked. His ears flicked away spare raindrops.

“What?” My voice shivered. Coen was never there. “How do you know?”

Not just about Coen, but about me. How had Jagaros known to come for me tonight?

“One of Kanuk’s other soul-bound animals,” he answered, his growl tight. Restraining some deeper emotion. “The harpy eagle.”

Oh. It took me a few breaths to process it—the fact that Jagaros, while taking Kanuk’s form, had a strong connection with certain animals and had sent one of them to oversee the protest scheduled for tonight. That the eagle had left to alert him the moment it saw me land in the Wasteon street.

My throat burned. “The eagle… he never saw Coen? Or Sasha or Sylvie?”

“No. The villagers protested as planned, but Coen never showed. It seems the elites were expecting him, though. Setting up a trap for him that you fell into instead.”

A wave of prickling concern slammed into my fleeting relief. Dyonisia didn’t have Coen after all, but where the hell was he? Was he in trouble somewhere else? He never would have abandoned a village of innocent Esholians of his own volition.