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We pour out into the streets of the city, but not in the tidal wave of destruction that so many others would have wanted. Instead, this is closer to the processions that mark the start of the games. People stand cheering us, waving at us calling our names.

Many of them join our numbers, the ranks of our group swelling into something like an army. These are ordinary people with nothing for weapons but kitchen knives and clubs, but this is Aetheria, and there are sparks of magic even among these people.

We head through the city, and I gain more animals as we go. Stray dogs come to join us from side alleys. Cats leap down from walls. Rats pour from gutters. I am no longer trying to split my mind between all of the creatures. Instead, I maintain a general control, guiding the whole of them, rather than trying to control each one.

When we meet the first cluster of guards, it is not the beasts who fall on them, but the citizens, unleashing an anger that the emperor has held down for far too long. He has sought to use the games to distract them, but that moment is done. They are seeing their moment for change, and they are taking it.

A few look as though they're going to break off to start looting, and I set some of the dogs in front of them, snapping and snarling.

“No looting, no burning!”

I call out. “This is your city, your home. Would you destroy us in the name of taking it back?”

A few of the citizens in the colors of the gangs look at me as if they can't quite believe what I'm asking of them, but there are enough of the others now that they are forced to go along with it, carried along by the tide of humanity. We are making our way through the wealthier districts now, and the magic that would be given over to illusions normally has instead been drawn back into defensive magic to try to protect the grand houses.

How many nobles are there walking along with us? I have no way of telling when there are so many people, and when I must keep my attention on the creatures I am controlling. One slip and those creatures will burst free of my control and do what they wish. Most I suspect will run, but even then, it will not go well for anyone who gets in their way. Others, the great predators, the monsters, will fall upon the people of the city and kill as many as they can.

I hold them in check, even as I hurry forward with the determination to get to Alaric and free him. We flow towards the palace in the great river of flesh, moving through the noble quarter, the streets of which seem empty, as if the residents are too frightened to come out and be a part of what we are doing. I don't want them to be afraid, so I call out to the noble houses.

“Come out! Join us! The empire hurts you as much as anyone else! It demands that you give up your sons and daughters for glory and honor in the colosseum. It demands that you give them to its armies. And for what? So that the emperor can expand his power even more? Join us! Show us that you are with the people of Aetheria.”

A few of the nobles open their doors, stumbling out into the streets with fearful looks as if expecting that this is all some kind of trap and that they will be cut down even now. More stay hidden, and there is no time to try to persuade them. We must get to the palace.

“We have time,”

Rowan says. “The emperor will not kill Alaric immediately. He will seek to use him as a hostage. A bargaining chip. Have you thought about what you'll do if he does?”

I know what he's asking. Can I risk Alaric’s life for the good of everyone in the city? The answer is that I don't know. I can only go there and hope that I'm able to save him and bring the emperor down.

We keep moving through the city streets, and now I have the sense of being watched. Watched in a way I know only too well, through the eyes of animals. There are beast whisperers nearby.

Even as I think it, some run from the shadows, coming at our force.

“Hold!”

I call out to both them and my side. “Hold all of you. We are not enemies.”

“You became our enemy the moment you betrayed us to the noble faction and to the emperor.”

Lady Elara steps from the shadows after the others. Her dress is torn, her features marred by a bruise. She no longer looks as perfect as she once did. I'm more concerned with the hatred that fills her eyes.

“You were going to destroy the city,” I say.

“I was going to take the revenge that our kind are owed!”

she snarls back. “Were we meant to simply walk up and ask the emperor to step down? Were we meant to forget the things that the citizens of this place have done to us over the years?”

“There can still be a place for you in the open in Aetheria,”

I say. “We can stop the persecution of the beast whisperers, but if you want to put an end to the hatred, then setting animals on everyone in the city is not the way to do it.”

“It is the only way,”

Lady Elara snaps. “This is the only way to get justice for our kind. The only way to ensure we're feared enough that no one will harm us again. We will take power, and you have given me the means.”

I know what she means: the parade of animals moving along with us. She wants to take control of them.

“It doesn't have to be like this,”

I say. “You could still join us.”

“Do you think you're in charge here?”

Lady Elara demands. “You were never anything more than a tool to be used, too afraid of your own power to be everything you could be. I will take your creatures, I will set them loose, and then we will rebuild in the ashes of what survives when they are done.”

I feel her mind reaching out for mine, her power struggling to take over what I have claimed. I have more power than her, but she has precision and ruthlessness on her side. In an instant we are fighting over control of the beasts around me, and she has the advantage because she is fighting just to break all chains on them and fill them with fury. Containing them is a far harder task.

“You can't beat me,”

Lady Elara says. “You're too weak.”

“Let me show you how strong I am,” I say.

I take in aspects of the beasts around me, reaching out with my powers to borrow from them, taking sight and strength speed and violence. I take those things, and I push them into Lady Elara. It wouldn't work if she wasn't already trying to steal from me, if she weren't trying to take control of the very same beasts. I force her into the position I was in back in the colosseum, looking through every eye at once, trying to control every animal.

I hear her scream in a bestial roar as her body starts to twist. Her fingers become claws, her eyes become slanted like a cat's. Her skin sprouts patches of fur and scales, feathers and thick hide. I can hold all this without it destroying me, but she cannot. Her body tries to be a hundred different shapes at once as she forgets the being she was. She twists into a chimera, and snarling at me she lunges forward.

Rowan is there then, his shield raised the ground around him rising to support him then absorbs the weight of her charge. He thrusts once with his sword, straight through Lady Elara’s heart. She gasps, still trying to get to me, and then the twisted thing she has become collapses to the cobbles of the street.

Around me, the beast whisperers look uncertain what to do next. I look from one to the next of them, even as I reassert my control over the creatures under my command.

“I will not give you vengeance,”

I say. “But I will give you freedom. You could fight us, but you'll lose. Or you could fight the emperor, and maybe we all win.”

I see them hesitating, and I do not wait for them to make up their minds. I have no time. The palace still awaits us, so I head towards it with all the beasts of Aetheria by my side.