An hour later, they found the Safe Zone.

It sat in what had once been a large park. The obelisk stood at the centre of a wide green space that had been partially consumed by Integration flora. Ashwood trees lined the perimeter in a ring.

The blue dome shimmered over it all.

And it was larger than the last one. Much larger.

Finn could see perhaps two hundred people inside, maybe more. Tents and tarps and improvised shelters clustered around the obelisk in concentric rings.

Someone had set up a cooking station near the south end. Smoke rose in a thin column through the dome’s barrier.

He stopped at the boundary.

’Bearer?’ Nyx tilted her head. ’Why have we stopped?’

He looked at Vesperine.

The horns. The claws. The ember-red eyes with their vertical pupils. The gown that looked like it had been sewn from a different era. She was beautiful and terrifying and very, very obviously not human.

"We’ve got a problem," Finn said.

Vesperine regarded the Safe Zone the way she regarded everything, with the air of someone deciding whether or not it met her standards. "I see tents. I see humans. I see a ward stone. I do not see a problem."

"The problem is the horns."

"They are hereditary."

"And the claws."

"Also hereditary."

"And the..." He gestured at all of her. "...rest of it."

The frost that had been thawing from her earlier display crept back into her voice. "You will need to be considerably more specific about what the rest of it refers to, human. The answer will determine whether this conversation continues in a civil fashion."

’Bearer,’ Nyx murmured through the bond, delighted. ’You do have a gift for words.’

’I didn’t mean it badly.’

’No? Then by all means, finish the thought. I should very much like to see where it leads.’

Finn took a breath.

"You look like someone who will cause a panic if she walks into a camp full of traumatised survivors without warning. People have been fighting monsters for days. You have horns. They’re going to assume you’re a monster."

Vesperine’s expression did not change.

"And?"

"And I’d prefer not to start a riot."

"I did not ask about your preferences. I asked why the assumptions of frightened peasants should concern me."

"Because we need to rest, restock, and find out what’s actually been happening on the surface. None of that happens if rocks are bouncing off your head."

"They would not get the chance to throw a second."

"That’s — yeah. That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid."

Nyx was watching the exchange from beneath her hood with the particular satisfaction of someone who had once been on the receiving end of a similar conversation.

’Bearer, if I may.’

’Please.’

Nyx stepped forward. In one smooth motion, she unclasped her own hoodie, the dark grey one Finn had gotten for her before they entered the last safe zone and held it out to Vesperine at arm’s length. It was battered and stained yet smelled faintly of roses.

"For the horns," she said sweetly. "Your Grace."

Vesperine looked at the hoodie the way someone might look at a dead rat that had been placed on their dining table.

"You cannot be serious."

"The hood is generously sized. The scarf will obscure the face. I have employed the method myself, and I assure you, it is effective." She paused for a moment. "One might even call it... adequate."

The silence that followed was so loaded Finn could have measured it in kilotons.

Vesperine reached out and took the hoodie between two fingers. She held it away from her body. She examined it the way a forensic scientist might examine a piece of evidence she already knew was contaminated.

"This garment," she said, "is quite hideous."

"Profoundly."

"And you expect me to wear it."

"Oh~" Nyx tilted her head, the picture of innocent concern. "Surely it cannot be that Your Grace finds herself bested by a hoodie?"

Their eyes met.

If the earlier exchanges had been chess, this was the endgame, two queens on an open board, neither willing to concede the last square.

Vesperine put on the hoodie.

She did it the way a deposed monarch might don prisoner’s rags. The hood came up. The horns pressed against the fabric, creating two soft points that could, from a distance, be mistaken for an unusual hairstyle.

She pulled the zipper halfway. Tugged the hood low.

"If a single human remarks on my appearance," she said, in a voice that could have frozen the Thames in August, "I will not be held accountable for what follows."

"Noted, Your Grace."

’It rather suits her,’ Nyx sent. ’Hoodies are a marvellous aesthetic. I have always said so.’

’You’ve literally never said so.’

’Have I not? How curious. I suppose I am saying so now.’

’You just want company in your suffering.’

’Oh, Bearer~ you wound me. Are you suggesting I am petty?’

’I’m not suggesting anything.’

’Mm. Of course not. You would never.’

Finn pressed his lips together very hard and walked toward the Safe Zone.

Behind him, Vesperine followed, four paces back, wrapped in a Nyx’s hoodie, her ember eyes burning beneath the hood like coals in a furnace.

Nyx walked beside him. She was clearly enjoying every moment.

[Time remaining on First Trial countdown: 3 Days, 20 Hours, 42 Minutes.]

☼☼☼

The Safe Zone hit different from the Tesco Car Park’s.

That was the first thing Finn noticed. It wasn’t the size, though the size was considerable, the dome stretching across half the park and into the edges of the surrounding streets.

It wasn’t the number of people either, though there were easily twice as many as the Tesco car park had held, clustered in groups that looked less like refugees and more like the beginnings of a settlement.

It was the organisation.

Marcus’s camp had been held together by bravado and trolley walls. This one had infrastructure.

Someone had dug a latrine trench along the eastern border, properly covered, properly distant from the water supply.

A triage station occupied the bandstand near the obelisk, manned by two women in scrubs. Cooking fires were arranged in a grid pattern, spaced far enough apart to prevent accidental spread, close enough to provide warmth.

There were watch rotations, with shift changes. People were coming off the perimeter and being replaced by others who had rested.

And at the centre of it all, around the obelisk itself, a ring of armed men and women stood in formation. Not the loose, try-hard posture of the Marshals. These people stood like they’d done it before. Ex-military, maybe, or close enough that the difference didn’t matter.

[ENTERING WARDED SANCTUARY]

[Hostile entities cannot follow.]

[HP/MP regeneration is increased significantly while inside.]

[Welcome, Participant.]

The moment they crossed the threshold, heads turned.

Not all of them. But enough that Finn felt the shift, that ripple of attention moving through the crowd the way a stone’s impact moves through water.

Three of them walked in from the wastes. One with a longsword covered in blood, and the easy walk of someone who’d been killing things for a while One in a battered ash-grey dress and a light grey hood that didn’t quite hide her crimson eyes. And one who stood out the most out of the three.

Vesperine.

Even in Nyx’s hoodie, even with the hood drawn low and the horns concealed beneath Nyx’s scarf which she had given her, Vesperine Mor’venth walked the way empresses walked.

If only her entire head wasn’t covered.

People stared, of course. He hadn’t expected them not to, given the circumstances.

’Bearer,’ Nyx murmured through the bond. ’We are attracting attention.’

’I noticed.’

’Perhaps if she could be persuaded to walk a little less... regally.’

’You walk exactly the same way.’

A moment of silence stretched between them.

’I retract the observation.’

They were thirty metres inside the boundary when the welcoming committee arrived.