"Rhys?" Quinn asked, unsure whether she had just lost her mind and not noticed. "Is this real?"

The harbinger's eyes were wild and dangerous, promising a very painful death to everyone who had anything to do with the destruction of his fortress. Quinn was starting to think that Dolor had been the lucky one, dying when Jos Gharo's fate was still a threat and not a living nightmare before their eyes.

"Yes," Rhys said through gritted teeth. "I always knew there were men who were willing to pay whatever price to take the rule that didn't belong to them. This, this is a warning that I should have trusted my instincts a long time ago."

"And what would you have done?" Quinn asked, unable to turn her eyes away.

"Cut Jeroek's treacherous head from his shoulders the second I realized how weak he was," Rhys growled, his voice growing louder with every passing second. "I thought I was punishing him, but I see now that I was only giving him a chance to prove his unworthiness."

The harbinger bared his teeth in a vicious snarl.

"I won't make that mistake again.”

Quinn was staring at the flames, her mind working at a terrific speed. There was no way it was over, no matter how much it looked like that. If the main gate was down, it meant the storm was free to rage inside the fortress. If even a breach as small as the year Rhys' father died had nearly killed everyone, then what hope was there left?

"Water," she said, unthinking. "We need to put out this fire or the people inside will suffocate faster than they can freeze."

Rhys stared at the fire and then at her.

"The amount would have to be tremendous," he said seriously. "Nothing as simple as a mere explosive could have kept the fire burning for so long, in the midst of the storm. And even if we put out the fire, it would still leave the fortress helpless. Right now, as terrible as it is, the fire is keeping the fortress alive."

Quinn knew that, too. In a horrible way, the people were unable to save themselves from the fate of suffocating because that just meant succumbing themselves to another mode of dying.

She looked around, thinking fast. Then it hit her.

"The Gech," she said. "We can get it to shield the fortress. It can be the new gate!"

The harbinger looked at her like she'd lost her mind, but Quinn could see the flash of understanding there as well.

"It won't be a perfect fit," she said. "Not by a long shot, but it can keep the worst of the storm at bay. At least it would give the people inside a chance to fortify and survive."

Rhys was looking at the controls, his brows knitted.

"Can you do that? Can you make the Gech move so carefully that it won't damage the fortress even more?" he asked.

"I can," Quinn said, hoping that it was true. "It's just like Cassie. There are a thousand things that can go wrong but look out there and tell me there's another way."

Rhys' lips curled into a grin as he looked at her, nodding.

"That's true," the harbinger said. "Do it. Once the Gech is in place, we can deal with the rest of the fire. This is a harvester, after all. It has been working for a while. It must have water tanks."

Quinn got to work, checking the levels of the water in the vast containers. It wasn't as much as she'd hoped, the harvester had gathered a mere ten percent of its capacity, but it would have to do. Quinn hoped the Gech could suffocate the fire that was trying to do the same to the people inside the fortress.

She slipped into the harness again. This time, it had to be her moving the megatons-weighing machine. And no room for error.

Careful now. No pressure. Just twenty thousand lives and more.

That was of course on the insane hope they'd all survived the explosion of the gate. Quinn started to get into position, wondering what kind of a mind ached for power and recognition so badly that it was willing to kill everyone to prove he could.

The Gech's movements were painstakingly slow, but Quinn took no chances. She turned the Gech around so that it was standing with its back turned to the fortress. Then, Quinn began sitting down. She went as slow as she could, biting her tongue when she heard Rhys' warning cry and felt the Gech brushing against something, no doubt the cliff wall.

It was the most terrifying thing she'd ever done.

But it was working. Slowly and steadily, the Gech was settling down before the gate of Jos Gharo. Quinn had had to shut down the harvesting function again out of fear the Gech would damage the foundation of the fortress, which meant it was a tough fight to get the machine to comply. Even so, she was doing it.

Quinn's heart beat wildly. It was impossible to imagine failing, that simply wasn't an option.

She felt the touchdown rock through the megastructure when the Gech sat down. Carefully, Quinn brought its hands – or at least its upper limbs to rest next to it, covering as much of the broken gate as she could.

"Stop!" she heard Rhys call out.

It was hard to hear over the blaring alarms. The Gech was sensing that it was sitting in the midst of hot flames running up its sides. The internal programs had been hardcoded to protect the harvester, clearly, and were fighting Quinn again at every step.

"Behave," she told the Gech, climbing out of the harness with Rhys' help. "I'm getting to you, just stay still."

It felt odd talking to a titanic machine like that, but Quinn wasn't the praying type. Someone, somewhere had to help her, though. She had no idea how the programs of the Gech really worked. If they got out of the harvester and some back-up system still wasn't happy with the condition, she wouldn't have been surprised to have the harvester get to its feet and walk away.

"Alright," Quinn told more to herself than Rhys. "Water. Gods, I hope it's enough."

She triggered an automatic discharge of all water reserves and watched the flames die outside. The downside to that was that she and Rhys were nearly blind again to what was going on inside the fortress.

"We have to go," Rhys said. "Open the door downstairs. Can you do that from here?"

"I can," Quinn said. "Do you think the heat is that bad?"

"Only one way to find out," Rhys replied with a grin.

Quinn couldn't even put into words how comforting it was to see the flare of life burning in Rhys' eyes again. She'd been afraid that the shock of seeing Jos Gharo broken down like that would be too much for him, but clearly Nayanor harbingers were made of tougher stock than that.

A whoosh of warmth shot through the Gech when the maintenance door was opened. For a few seconds, Quinn was so hot she thought she was sweating. The smoke got in her eyes and made her cough as the fires died down outside.

Then the storm was back with the cold and the darkness. Quinn started shivering again. When she hit the door closed again to spare themselves the time it took to climb down, she had no idea if she could weather anything outside the Gech.

Rhys picked up Cassie and they rushed to the elevator. The air was almost impossible to breathe with the smoke and the cold fighting over which could get to her faster.

"Be careful when we go outside," Rhys warned her, passing by Dolor's corpse without sparing the warrior another look. "We don't know what the situation is inside. At the first sign of any danger, I want you to take your sister and seek shelter. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Quinn promised, coughing, holding her sleeve before her mouth. "Gods, I can barely see a thing."

"It will get worse," Rhys growled. "No foolishness, Quinn. I need you to be safe. I can't lose you now."

Quinn nodded, looking at her fated.

"You won't," she said. "I'll do as you say this time."

The smile on Rhys' face told her that he was grateful for small mercies, at least.

Then she touched the panel on the wall and the door slid open.

It was far beyond anything Quinn could ever have imagined. The violence of the storm knocked the very breath out of her. It was impossible to get oxygen into her lungs, especially if there barely was any in the midst of smoke and hail. Her eyes were watering and the winds were so strong when she stepped outside that they knocked her hard against the Gech.

For a second there, Quinn was certain that the winds were going to pick her up and she was going to fly away like a balloon. She wanted to laugh at the ridiculous image, but she didn't have enough breath to do that. And the fact she was feeling humorous told her that she was suffering from the exposure to the elements.

Then Rhys' hand was in hers and the harbinger pulled her along toward wherever the fortress was. Quinn couldn't see a thing, but she trusted herself in her fated's hands.

In the midst of all the madness and horror, it felt nice to trust him like that. The only lifeline she had was Rhys' hand tightly gripping hers. She didn't even see him although the warlord had to be less than a foot from her.

Quinn thought the journey through the dark lasted forever. The cold got into her lungs and it felt like she was burning from inside. The tears were running down her cheeks wildly, making Quinn half-blind, not that she could have seen a thing anyway. Her body felt like it was being rocked apart.

Then her feet touched solid ground. It was the first thing Quinn noticed that wasn't the storm trying to kill her.

The relief lasted a whole two seconds.

Then a sharp, glaring beam of light fell upon Quinn and a loud voice roared:

"Not a step further! You are trespassing in this fortress! One step more and you will be killed!"

Just for a second there, Quinn was really scared. She thought of Cassie and herself and Rhys, all of them having come so far to survive, only to be slaughtered at the door of the safe haven.

Then another voice rang out in the hall, deep and powerful and hers. The voice was laughing.