If Ember were a princess, pampered, innocent, and fond of holographic films, she might think of this thing as being made out of deaths. Everything about it suggests that a hero would miraculously get by unscathed, and that she, not being a hero, would not. She would be so distracted by seeing all the possible deaths approaching her that she would be unable to block them all, and then the sword would flick her away, or the skirt would lop her head off neatly, or she would be yanked up into the air and flung down an impossible height, and then she would burst into a cloud of startled sparrows and rats. That would be it. No one can fight a monster like this and win.

Ember does not think about death. She is Ceronian. She thinks about how to fend off the very next death. Each one, in turn, over and over, all for one purpose: to live a little longer. To see Mosaic come back for her with the Azura in her arms. Or to see her sisters bounding close, bearing weighted nets, because the only way to win is to stop it from fighting. So there's no room for thoughts that aren't about staying alive. No thoughts about what dying looks like unless it's to keep her alive. No admission that this is impossible and she will die, because then how can she live?

She continues to fight with everything to hand. Plates. Doors. Alleyways. You cannot fight something like this with your sword, you have to put your faith in the world. She smashes a barrel of wine and lets it flow down steps, forces the Armatii to clamber onto a rooftop to continue chasing her. Because, yes, it is a chase. That is the shape of the nightmare: a chase through jumbled, half-familiar streets where she used to pretend to be nothing more than an innocent milkmaid, or a day laborer with her hat pulled over her ears, or a shadow dressed in shadows. A place that she had learned so that the pack would learn with her, but also a place that she had learned because it was [i]Mosaic's[/i]. A place that she had learned, in the end, because it was beautiful. And now all the pieces are here, but rearranged, randomized, turned sinister, and everything that comes to hand is a new attempt to buy another ten seconds of being Ember. Everything, no matter who it once belonged to, or what it meant to them, or how incongruous it might be for it to be within reach. Beri itself will be hollow before Ember lets herself die and no longer be in the same world as Mosaic, as the Silver Divers, as Beri's survivors, as the [i]Plousios[/i] itself seen both as a wonder and as a ruin.

No thought. No time. No sentiment. Only life. [i]Only life.[/i]