Sovvan aimed for a spot where the fog was thinnest and limped toward it. Hopefully, it would get her clear of this colloidal wall of forgetfulness, so she could figure out how the hell she’d gotten here and what to do next.

Sovvan gritted her teeth as pain sank hot needles into her foot at every step, but she broke through the fog and halted in front of the giant mechanized roach rising up on its hind legs, so it could look her in the eye. Thousands of tiny clockwork roaches formed its body, transforming them into a super-Agent of Chaos. Who knew they could do that? 

Sovvan backpedaled in alarm. “What do you want?”  

The super-Agent of Chaos fixed white eyes ringed by symbols on her. Two lines swung around inside its eerie eyes, marking time. “I want what you want, change.”

Of course it did. It was an Agent of Chaos, so that was a given. “Why do you want that?” Sovvan held her ground.

The creature rubbed its upper pair of legs together, and steel grated against steel. “It’s in my nature. It’s in yours too, rule-breaker.”

She should have figured that out for herself. Sovvan touched the link to her brother, then let her hand fall back to her side. As much as she wanted to check on him, she couldn’t help him, not while her ex-guardian angel was in that Grove of Memory trees. Sovvan didn’t know what would happen if he destroyed that place, but she doubted it would be anything good. “If it wasn’t to talk, then why did you bring me here?”

The Agent of Chaos pointed to the gnarled forest at the edge of the foggy plain. “Changes come, and changes go, but free will drives them. It does not drive that.” The clockwork roach quivered in anger as it pointed, not at the woods as Sovvan had first thought, but at a dark smudge at the forest’s edge.

A man-shaped shadow scuttled toward the forest. It reminded her of that sickly angel in Eversong, but it couldn’t be the same disheveled angel she’d encountered before. That was impossible, wasn’t it? Sovvan squinted into the gloom. No, it wasn’t.

What had that dragon said? Something about how angels could come and go at will from that city of purple spires. Sovvan didn’t want to check it out, but she had to because there was a Drop of Eternity in that forest. If that dark thing found it, it could enter the living world and endanger her brother and nephew, and that was unacceptable. They were already in enough trouble. Hold on, bro.

Besides, that thing was the reason the Agents of Chaos had brought her here. They could still destroy her, even if she did their bidding. Sovvan started toward that shadow.

***

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