Jasper's Point of View

Jasper was curled up in a ball in the corner of the ship, trying to hold back his breakfast. It was just his luck to be caught in a storm in the usually calm Asriel Strait.

If he had thought properly, then he would have chosen a ship in better condition for the long journey across the strait and down the kingdom.

Or perhaps he would have ended up in the same place anyway. Perhaps he was always destined for this path. This cursed yet blessed path.

But it didn't matter now. he had not thought properly. He had dashed to the nearest ship he could find. And ended up in the middle of the ship-sinking sort of storm.

The lightning streaked outside, and Jasper watched with dread from his small cabin window. The last time he had seen the captain, his face had been grim. They were being battered about right into the heart of the Western Asrieli Isles. Even if they had managed to get a signal for help out, it would have gone right out to the valkyries and elves, who were probably intent on leaving Kallias in nothing more than ash.

There was no one for them to pray to. The Goddesses didn't care for the fate of mortals. Jasper offered up a prayer to the sun anyway. If it came out of the clouds and lit the way back to his burning kingdom, he would never complain about the heat again. He would learn to celebrate summer, if the sun just came out and ended the storm.

But the next day the news was even grimmer: they were passing around the Isthmus, growing closer and closer to Miras. At least under the Asrieli Islands, they were unlikely to be found. In Miras, on the edge of the Hawk Mountains, the valkyries would almost certainly find them. A couple of the passengers began to discuss throwing themselves overboard before any of the God-Born could get to them. Jasper had considered that himself. A sudden crack filled the air and he was struck by the urge to race upstairs and see what was wrong. He forced himself to stay inside. It was safer down here, even if every instinct pushed him to figure out what damage every blast of wind was doing to the ramshackle ship. Yes, the WindSurfer had been a bad decision. But at least it had a no-questions-asked, cheap-as-chips policy. At least he wasn't paying all too much for a ship that was now going to take him to the bottom of the ocean.

"Abandon ship!" The cries rang out and he froze.

Was this the end, then? The bottom of the ocean so foreign and cold compared to the flickering flame he loved, in a no-name ship, running from the army? He wished he had a chance to see his aunt again, to explain everything. To know the truth about why she had left. Nala would never know how he had died now.

At least she was alive. Jasper was glad that she had lived. Even if this was his end. He scrambled up to the deck, looking around. All around him, people were jumping off the ship, aiming for lifeboats that deflated to nothing. His last thought as he hit the ocean floor was that Medea would be really, really annoyed that she couldn't track him down.

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Jasper thought this afterlife sucked. It was freezing cold, and he had never been this cold before. It turned out that being cold wearing desert clothes was a whole lot worse than being boiling hot wearing desert clothes. He was also dead, and that was a major bummer.

Death really, really sucked. It gave him a raging headache. At least this was better than the burning hell realm he had expected to end up with. Maybe whatever god ruled the afterlife had taken pity on him. He was rather pitiful.

Jasper staggered to his feet and suddenly realised he was alive. Because there were very living elves looking down at him. And very real chains on his wrists.

Holy burning suns.

He was a human, trespassing on Asrieli-or was it Miras?-land. There was no other penalty for that then death. Somehow, through all the fear, Jasper had found his voice, and made one desperate gamble that would either end up with him dead very slowly or a prisoner of Asriel. But he would not cower. He refused to do this, to die helpless and weak.

"I have information." He had forced out the words, struggled with them.The words sunk in, a silence laying over the freezing cold coast.

"What do we do now?" One of the elves asked the other.

"Bring him to Myra."Replied the other. Jasper almost fell to his knees.It seemed he would cower after all.

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Jasper

He had struggled to watch where they were going but they didn't let him and left in seconds. In a flying ship shaped like a bird of all things. Now he was trapped in the engine room, his hands tied and his fear coursing through him as he beheld the frozen sea beneath him.

Myra. Myra. Myra. Myra. She was legend and nightmare, The Valkyrie General. The Valkyrie Dragon. The Chief Valkyrie Cut-People-Into-Small-Pieces person. And-he was in a flying ship with elves who had just frozen the sea over. Jasper had never felt more terrified in his life. Not even when the soldiers came to their outpost. Not even when his aunt had held a blade to his throat a few days before. Not even when he had tried to do the impossible-to desert.

He heard footsteps and he wondered who it was. An elf? Which? He was praying desperately that it was not a MindWeaver.

"I'm Talia," she said, and she smiled strangely. He was not planning on pointing that out to her. Not with those terrifying eyes, cold and calculating. Definitely a Mind-Weaver.

"Jasper," he said, because she seemed to be waiting for his name.

"I'm going to have to go into your mind now," she sighed. "Please do not be alarmed. That makes things harder." He barely had the time to scream before it began.

Once in his mind, she could see anything in it, alter his memories and even, if the Empress could be believed, use it to control them. There was nothing he could hide from her.

The first memory came so suddenly, so suprisingly, that he felt as though the world had suddenly jolted and been replaced by another one. He was standing in the sparring ring, barely ten years old, holding his very first bow. It was a small thing, a training bow, but he remembered-no, he was living through-the way it made him feel powerful, and brave. He had always lived on the run, in fear, and at last he had something he could use to fight back, to protect himself, his friends and family, who always watched over him. He felt so much bigger than he was. His mother carefully adjusted his stance until he was standing in the right position, a familiar position for him now, but unfamiliar for the boy he'd been. He drew back the bow, with its blunted arrows and its close target and released it. The memory flashed by before he could see whether the arrow had landed.

More like them flashed by in a disorienting whirl-wind. More moments in the sparring ring, time spent with his family, his first few missions, and he loved it all, savouring it even whilst he dreaded the point it would eventually come to-his betrayal. The MindWeaver seemed especially interested in this one, and the painful scenes replayed again and again, narrowing in on the same moments as though she was considering. At last, she released it and sent Jasper sprawling into new memories-fighting with the army, the endless seas of blood on his hands. Until she saw him desert. This one again was a point of interest for the MindWeaver, as she narrowed in on it all, watching the moments with care, replaying them and she pieced Jasper's life together through the flurry of scenes. The MindWeaver stopped, and started digging somewhere else, to the more practical storage of his knowledge on the army, and he felt himself plunged into...plunged into..nothing. A great black smear where his knowledge on their movements, their secrets should have been. He reached for the knowledge instinctively, and almost touched it...but it was out of reach. There was only one thing he had left of it, like a wisp of a dream: Queen Medea had secrets, and they were vital secrets, too. Something the valkyries wanted to know, something the Witches had hidden. Something...a shield. She'd told her closest warriors...she had told him, and he didn't know why...

That was when he fell into something else...something deeper and wider. Not memories this time, or knowledge. Emotion. He wanted to cry out to beg her no, but his lips seemed to be sealed shut.

Hate. He fell into a withering lake of self-hatred, drowning in it as it pulled him under, the amount of feelings racing through his head to much to cope with...

Regret. Deep and lamenting, regret that was painful as the hate. Regret that screamed at him and drowned him, regret for not ringing the bell, regret for every life he had taken afterwards...

Fear. Instinctual and boundless, it seemed as though his heart had stopped beating and was beating more rapidly than he could survive...

Grief. For his parents, for his friends, mournful and tumbling back into a hate and regret that consumed him...

Love. Still left for them, after all these years...

Hate. Different this time, a hatred for some of the soldiers in his camp, for the valkyries, for the elves, for the Mindweaver most of all, for the empress...

Hate again, for himself. Regret. Fear. Grief. Love. Hate. Hate. The torture was endless, drowning him again and again...why wouldn't the MindWeaver stop? Why wouldn't she stop? He would drown in this, he knew he would. Distantly, he was aware that his physical body was trembling and crying and vomiting in the engine room. Hate. Regret. Fear. Grief. Love. Hate. They went on and on, until he felt them all at once, until they melded into one and looked like his uncle's face...and then, nothing.

Something. Something in him, glinting in the darkness. A promise. A determination. This time, things would be different. This time, he would not be afraid. He would not greet death like a coward. It blocked them all out, a light that chased away the shadows. The presence retracted from his mind and he took a gasping breath.

"Don't do that again," he growled, the stupid anger rising in his voice. "Stay out of my head." And to his surprise, Talia smiled sadly and said:

"I did not want to have to do that." That was all she seemed to let herself say, until at last she continued. "We are now in the Hawk Mountains, Jasper Merson. You were on valkyrie land, and hence a valkyrie prisoner. Myra is busy, so General Diaz will see you now."

He fumbled through his memories for some hint of Diaz. His mind was still foggy but he found them: another valkyrie general under Myra. He remembered the stories, too: that she was more ruthless than either Myra or her queen, that she hated elves and probably humans too with a deep and unquenchable fury. Until the news of the war had come, until now, all these people had been stories: Myra and Mindweavers, Diaz and Viktoria. They were painfully real now.

When he left the engine room, he was afraid. He was not some hero from a storybook, brave until the end, standing strong and tall in the face of the deadliest of enemies. He would not pull out some silver sword and fight his way to safety.

If Jasper was some hero from a storybook, things would be so different and so much better. But ordinary people could not be like that. They could only scrape their way to a life, instead of finding happy endings.

They were like that: Myra and Diaz and all the valkyries and elves. The Crimsons, too. Characters in a storybook, reigning over the ordinary ones. It was not fair. Why did they not get a chance at stories of their own?

He should not be thinking about these things though. And all of it was shed from his mind when he beheld the Hawk Mountains in all their terrifying wonder.

The valkyrie who went to greet him smiled wryly. She could not be Diaz then, but she wore the general's badge. She was not Myra either; the stories claimed she had hair red as blood, and this valkyrie had a tight bun of black hair.

"General Ruby," she offered. "Diaz was meant to be here, but she isn't really the best for this sort of thing anyway." And what was this? Jasper marvelled at the ability the God-Born shared for being remarkably civil to their prisoners. If this were the Kallian Empire somebody would have at least held him at knifepoint. He supposed he did not warrant that kind of threat. Not amongst the valkyries.

"Apparently our Mind-Weaver could not find everything she needed to know about the Empress," Ruby commented, watching him carefully. "But she did manage to tell us a lot about you." Jasper wondered how Talia could have spoken to the General so quickly. Telepathy? That seemed likely.

"We are willing to offer you a deal, Captain Merson."

"Don't bother with the Captain." Jasper said quickly. Ruby only nodded.

"We want to know what it was that Talia Swallow could not access in your mind. And we would also like for you to help us contact the rebellion."

"They hate me now." Jasper said, confused. "I mean, they will. Soon. They know I'm in the army."

"Invent some lie about that." Ruby said dismissively. "Ask the elves for advice if you're stuck. We can use you to establish a level of trust that can help us both. The valkyries do not need to rule Kallias; we only want someone we can trust not to fight us again on the throne. With the elves' cooperation, we would put your rebellion on the Kallian throne, and we can help you return to their ranks, a hero. You could have everything back, Merson, and your people on the throne. All we ask for is your help getting you there." Ruby smiled a little. "We know that you want to return to the rebels."

In those words, Jasper's world was turned upside-down. He could have it all back-his aunt, his rebellion, his life and put a just ruler on the throne at last. It was everything he had ever dreamed of and more. With the help of Miras. That left a sour taste in his mouth, and so did how perfect it all seemed. The valkyries might eventually try to betray them, sure, but the rebellion was not made of fools. They would fight back, or if that became impossible, they would make allies of the elves and turn the two against each other. Maybe-just maybe- people like him could get happy endings after all.

"Will you do it?" Ruby asked and Jasper had become so far away that he jumped.

"Yes," he said quickly, hoping he had not sounded too desperate.

"Welcome to the War Council, Merson."

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Talia

Selene was gone now, and most of the other elves who had made the ocean freeze over had left to, but after the interrogation she stayed. To check what the Kallian ships would do. She was the perfect one to do it: she could send a message back through her mind and if necessary, could hold back the ships long enough to buy everyone time and could fly back without the Fantail.

So Talia watched, concealed, as the fleet of the Kallian Empire continued, undeterred, with their flagship about to hit the ice. Now was the moment that counted; now was the moment that decided everything. If their fleet could pierce through, it would be a desperate race to the valkyrie coast. But if it could not, the whole armada would be neutralised with no one but a few ice-wielders raising a hand. She almost wanted to close her eyes as the warship sped towards the ice, coming faster and faster in an attempt to pierce right through and then...stopped.Not because the sailors had stopped it, but because it had hit the ice at full speed.

There should have been a line cut straight through the frozen water, the hull of the ship piercing deep into the blanket of frost, but there was nothing there. Just a smooth surface, undented and unscratched by a ship that should have shattered it completely.