The old woman was almost upon her.

Leagh stilled, and she remembered all she had learned over the past few weeks, and she smiled, and rested a hand on her belly.

She was at one with the earth, a part of the landscape itself, and the child she carried within her ...

Leagh raised her head and looked at the approaching crowd.

"Do you not see the beauty surrounding us?" she said, and waved a slow hand around.

The once-humans and animals hesitated, eyes darting about uncertainly, and then resumed their creep towards their prey as nothing leaped out to bite them.

Wave after wave of their blackness rose over the lip of the crater.

"You may think the landscape wasted and barren," Leagh said, and now held out a hand in appeal, or perhaps invitation, "but see its true beauty!"

And she flung her hand out in a wide arc, and suddenly flowers and herbs washed over the devastated walls of the crater in a torrent of beauty and fragrance.

The Hawkchilds rose into the air, squawking in surprise.

"See!" Leagh cried again, and half stepped forward, one hand still swept out, one resting on her belly. "See!"

Summer fragrance exploded about them, and the initial ranks of the creatures screamed and capered. More than the beauty of the flowers was the hope that had infused the entire landscape.

"See ..." Leagh whispered, and the hand on her belly tightened.

Flowers reached skyward, and those that grew close to the mass of demonic creatures waved forward, as if they wanted to embrace them.

The creatures panicked.

StarGrace, circling far overhead, frowned in thought.

Far away DragonStar smiled, his eyes unfocused. "Good girl," he whispered. "Lovely Leagh. You deserve your place among the lilies of the field."

She had not created the Field of Flowers, nor taken the creatures through to the field, but had instead shown the creatures the beauty and hope that still (after all the Demons had done to the land) rested within the blasted landscape.

Even amid death, hope still survived.

"Now," he whispered, and behind him Sicarius whimpered with eagerness.

The old woman and the front ranks of creatures, perhaps some three score of humans, cows, pigs and assorted wildlife, tried to turn back and flee from the reaching, grasping flowers.

Get back! Get back!

They tried to flee, but could not, trapped between the horrid flowers and the hundreds of creatures that continued to rise up over the ridge and press down towards their prey.

The mad had their orders, and their thoughts were not ordered enough to rethink them.

Death dropped out of the sky. At first Leagh thought it was the Hawkchilds, either forgetting the fragile alliance they had with DragonStar and his witches, or actually deciding to aid her.

But these were not the black, fearsome Hawkchilds.

They were ethereal, beautiful, seemingly fragile creatures of silver and vivid colour.

Beautiful, and deadly. Arrows rained down, each one finding its mark in the throat or eye of a human or animal.

The Strike Force, or, at the least, a few hundred of them.

For a moment Leagh raised her head and watched the Icarii, then she lowered her eyes ... and could not restrain a sob of sorrow.

Before her hundreds upon hundreds of humans and animals lay dead and dying, some still clawing frantically at arrows that protruded from their eyes or the base of their throats.

They might have been in the employ of the Demons, but they had once laughed and sang and cried as Leagh could still do. They had once served their masters with good will and willing backs.

They had once been a part of Leagh's world, a loved and respected part, and she now found it hard to watch their dying before her.

She lowered her head and wept, and as she did so the flowers faded and disappeared.

It made no difference to the dying before her. As successive waves of creatures crested the ridge, so they fell.

The Icarii wraiths had, it appeared, limitless amounts of arrows.

Eventually it was done, and an Icarii birdwoman settled to the ground before Leagh.

She was exquisitely beautiful, with her ethereal form and sapphire wings and eyes. "My name is FireCloud," she said, and rested one hand comfortingly on Leagh's arm. "And I, as my fellows, are here to help protect you at DragonStar's command."

Leagh nodded, her sorrow still not enabling her to speak, and she patted FireCloud's arm.

"DragonStar? DragonStar?"

DragonStar closed his eyes momentarily in impatience, and then turned slightly to the figure which had climbed to join him.

"What are you doing here, StarLaughter?"

She sat down beside him, encased in a thick wrap, but with her head bare and her hair flying in the wind. Gods, DragonStar thought, isn't she cold?

StarLaughter truly did not appear to notice the extreme of the temperature.

"Something has happened!" she said, and grabbed at DragonStar's arm. "I can feel it!"

"Yes?"

"WolfStar has escaped Sanctuary! He is safe! "

"Careful," DragonStar said, "for this wind might carry your gladness to the Hawkchilds."

But he nodded to himself anyway. DragonStar had felt the rift in the matter of existence when Urbeth had torn a hole from Sanctuary into the northern wastes. He had no idea how they were managing to survive, or if the Demons had followed them through ... but he had felt the escape.

"WolfStar must still manage his survival," he said. "He is not so much 'safe', as currently beyond the Demons' reach."