The Songbird had seen the world apart around them before. She’d endured a lifetime of wars, famines, disease, and perils. She’d felt hope kindle through her body amidst every single one; a restless hymn to an unending stanza, a quiet, hushed refrain, a hint of the dawn through the darkest of Stygian contortions.
 
But this was different, because it spelled the end.
 
Her shield wouldn’t be able to do anything amidst the plight of rampaging soldiers and brave souls, risking their lives, becoming naught but bits of shadow and memory as they were severed and destroyed. Her healing powers were no match to the overwhelming sensation of misery and death, for she’d tried once, she’d tried so hard, and the silver warrior had still perished. She wanted to scream out to them anyway, to release those final wishes and dreams, a sanctuary, a haven, a salvation, an opus to the deliverance they’d yet to receive.
 
Even their Gods, their generous deity of thunder and lightning, time and hours, the gracious, potent, lethal being of the sun, couldn’t do anything to stop the madness. That’s when she knew, that’s when she understood, that Helovia was bound to the annals and legends, but also unending torment (she’d fled a realm before, a place she could never truly call home), and the distortion, the depressing reel of it all sent her into a calm, serene motive.
 
She stepped out into the battlefield, hummed a few sweet notes, and allowed Imogen’s collar to clip away, unfurl into its metallic, shielding bliss. The electricity, a gift from the Time God, hissed beneath her maw, and she held it aloft, gritted it through her teeth, bore it for anyone, everyone, who needed to be taken to that nearest portal, to where everyone yearned to escape, to where everyone had to flee so they survived.
 
While it sizzled, while it bristled, she sang too.
 
It was meant to serenade and wash over the panicked souls. It was meant to be a funeral lament for all the broken, lost creatures sacrificing themselves (she tried to look away from Ode’s lifeless body, all the others she’d known, she’d cherished, she’d loved). It was meant to be a beacon as she roamed closer and closer to the opening (to where – who knew – maybe that was some of her hope still remaining, chiseled within her heart out of habit). It was meant to be a siren for Roland, for any other Basin member still trailing behind (and she didn’t cry out for the beautiful world she’d do anything for, because the mountains wouldn’t want her to weep for their endless stars and their potent glory, for the last twist and turns of righteous hues glittering across the sky).
 
Then they turned, facing the Rift and its opening, where so many had plunged, and her final whisper was one of only goodbye to the lands that had altered, morphed, and changed her entire being.