Surprise turned over in Nic’s stomach as he gazed down in horror. Hanging from his hand was the torn half of a divine scroll, the same scroll that wars had been fought to destroy.

Was it too much to hope that he was just holding the footnotes?

“Nic-”

His danger sense became a piercing whine. Nic jerked aside to dodge a strike, a coming attack, but there was nothing.

Nothing except the smoke-demons that had been frozen a split-second before they reached the Ash-Faced Bodhisattva and tore him to shreds. They were motionless, except…

A finger twitched. The smoke spirit’s eyes were already moving, following Nic. They gazed hatefully at the shred of fabric parchment in his hand.

Nic realized, with a sinking feeling, what was about to happen.

“Nic, I swear on the Low Tomb…” Sofia’s voice was full of exasperation, but Nic could hear the edge of frantic fear hiding inside. “Run. Don’t think. Run now.”

Nic turned and broke for the trees. He could see the shimmering edge of a portal, the space around the tree lacking the amber-toned color of the frozen world. It was a way home. And if he was lucky…

The smoke-spirit wouldn’t be able to follow.

Cursing his axolotl form's short legs, Nic pushed off the ground with explosive force and vaulted for the safety of the tree. He kept repeating, over and over in his head, that he'd make it in time.

The beast was barely able to twitch its fingers.

But as he turned back, the beast had managed to twist its head about to face him, its hand outstretched for his back. A whispering laugh escaped.

A laugh that made his skin prickle with numb fear.

With a sudden violent force the hand tore free of its wrist and shot for Nic's throat. In the brief instant it took to close the ground between them, Nic had no time to draw a weapon. His pupils narrowed to slits as he desperately lifted the scroll in front of him and tried to conjure whatever holy light had protected its last wielder.

Nothing.

His arms crossed over his chest in the moment before impact.

Unearthly force slammed against him. His feet tore trenches in the grass and dirt as he was blown away, until finally he overbalanced, and was sent tumbling side-over-side across the ground. The collision flung him the final distance to the tree-

And Nic was thrown out into the blue sky, the drifting shadows, the wind-waved grass of the meadow. He hit the ground hard, groaning, a lump of misery. The hand had shattered his left arm and punched through to the flesh below, leaving a deep gouge in his chest that scratched at his ribs where they lay bare and exposed underneath the wound.

Blood oozed out and Nic, biting back a scream, pushed his half-severed arm back against the stump and waited for tendrils of muscle and sinew to reconnect the two.

The last glimmer of sun had slipped below the horizon. The magic that froze that ancient battlefield must have been connected to twilight, because it only lasted for that thin time between the start of dusk and true night.

He had come out far away from the tree, concealed in a low ditch. Nic almost rolled back onto his feet and tried to get the lay of the land-

And in one moment, his intuition for danger went from total calm to an uproar. Nic spat out a silent curse and a wad of blood-soaked spit. It had followed him. The damn thing had escaped its prison in the past and followed him.

Moving slowly to not draw attention, Nic drew the cursed ring from his bag. While cutting off a finger every time he wanted to remove the damn thing was a miserable price to pay, Nic needed the nighttime gift of the transforming ring. As he slipped it over his finger his body became misty and indistinct. Easy to miss, and harder to track with special talents.

He thrust the tattered scrap of scroll into his bag, rolled onto his belly, and commanded the grass around him to close over his back as camouflage. An unseen wind bent the world to his command.

Nic lay there, sweating. With the Eight-Eyed Mantle he could feel the foreign aura approaching, tracking its movement. It wasn't coming straight for him at least...

But it wasn't far off either. Maybe it didn't have a way of following his trail directly, but it might have caught some shiver of motion in the grass.

So...

Did he stay still?

Or did he try to move.

Bet wrong, and he was dead. Nic chose not to gamble.

Instead, he touched the dry earth with his palm and willed Mire-Caller to do its work. The Shard was deeply limited in scope- it could only work with wet, muddy soil, the admixture of earth and water. Dry soil or pure water? It was useless.

But he could make either of those things, in small amounts.

And, trying to move slowly so his work wouldn't create ripples in the energies of the world and broadcast his location, Nic sent his aura spiralling into the earth to become water. The soil below became wet and pliable.

Nic sunk down.

Seconds later he felt a foreign, evil aura drift by. It was moving slowly, no doubt searching, but with his mudpit concealed by the grass and his entire body submerged, Nic could finally calm his racing heart.

He'd escaped.

Closing his eyes, he waited for the sense of danger to recede far into the distance. Surfacing, Nic used the layer of mud covering his skin to paste stalks of grass to himself, forming a rough, shaggy layer of camouflage.

It was only a fragment. A single hand...

And not even the cultivator's own right hand, but just one of the beasts that old man had summoned…

Nic really needed to learn how those old cultivators did things.

He spent the better part of the night on his belly, crawling. There was never a moment he didn't feel the distant presence of the smoke-spirit. The few times he caught sight of the evil thing, it had abandoned its old form and reshaped itself into a swarm of writhing serpents.

The first time Nic caught a glimpse, he was far away and able to study it.

Charnel Husk. D-Class // Undead. Created after scenes of mass slaughter, where dissipating souls mix with the settling ash and embers. Weak-willed. Frequently bound by practitioners of the slaughtering paths to serve as protectors and hunting hounds.

The second time...

The second time the swarm had split up, sending different fragments in all direction. His nerves burnt and his attention beginning to slip as slimy sweat dripped down his face, Nic made a near fatal mistake.

His Eight-Eyed Mantle was so overburdened with different pieces of the beast's aura moving in different directions, that he failed to notice one of those fragments coming straight towards him. Before Nic could react

The serpent twisted overhead.

Nic held very, very still. The beast was searching, but he was protected by the ring and his cloak of straw-tangled mud. If all else failed...

Maybe he could destroy it before the rest of the smoke-spirit knew he was here.

Thankfully, things didn't come to that. Although Nic's fingers tightened around the grip of his resonant greatsword until the knuckles turned white, the serpent simply moved on, oblivious to his presence.

The third time the beast was thankfully far away. Nic crouched down, watching the swarm of serpents moving above the field. He squinted. There were more of them now. They seemed more defined, more solid…

The hand was regrowing its lost body.

All around Nic, the small creatures of the meadow were doing their best to vanish. The gateways to that strange world were gone, and now they retreated into their dens, waiting for the next twilight. Worse than the predators above, they were terrified of these new smoke monsters.

Nic could sympathize. He wasn’t too keen on fighting them either.

But as Nic crept forward another step, his weight punched his hand down into a hidden burrow.

Instantly the rabbit within began to scream in panic, letting out high-pitched sounds of distress as it pushed out of the collapsing nest and shot off through the grass, convinced he was a predator.

Nic snarled as he saw the serpents twisting to face him. He was surrounded now, and the net was closing around him. One blow from the beast's right hand had nearly killed him...

But right now, the beast was split into fragments.

Nic set his jaw. As the smoke-spirits closed in, he shifted, coiling like a spring.

For a moment his eyes were closed, focusing.

And then he rose out of the sea of grass, the resonant greatsword extending into its windform blade as he sliced the first of the serpents into fragments of black smog. He spun, the roaring vortex of the wind-blade making the grass bow before him like subjects kowtowing to an emperor.

The other serpents shot forward. They moved with such speed that their bodies of dark smoke lost shape, becoming black streaks that burst towards him like arrows.

Nic pierced forward with his blade and knocked the first to arrive off course, but his hand went numb from the impact. The deflected fragment of smoke shot over his shoulder and unwound, losing its tight, controlled form for attacking and becoming a writhing serpent once more.

Two more pierced Nic through the hip and the calf. He dropped to one knee, his leg shattered below that point, the higher blow partially absorbed by his armor. His blade cleaved out in vengeance, but he was barely able to take three steps before falling again, robbing the strike of momentum.

The serpents twisted away from the blow and hissed. Their long, coiling bodies became chains of smoke as they whipped out and caught Nic around the arm. His sword was ripped downwards to prevent him from parrying as the third and final fragment of smoke formed into a long, thin blade aimed at his forehead.

It dove down like an executioner's axe.

Nic transformed. Four more hands shot forward, as his Warform tore its way out from beneath his skin, transforming him as his old flesh shredded like dry paper around the emerging serpentine form. His armor melded into the whole, becoming a pattern on the scales.

He caught the blade head on, hissing a long, low sound of pain as it drove into his fingers and sawed them down to nothing. His grasp was like iron, slowing the point of the blade by grinding flesh and bone against it with brutal force.

Nic drew in a breath and spewed Primordial Mist across his attackers. It whirled from his throat in a vortex, unfolding across the field, and twin trails of smog rushed from either side of his unfolding serpent’s mouth as the smoke-fragments began to break apart.

They let out high pitched screams like buzzing insects. Their ash lost its luster, fragments being pulled in all directions through the mist until they simply unraveled, becoming smears of darkness in the air, then nothing.

Lifting his hand to his mouth, Nic bit through the finger holding the ring of Night-Into-Day. Instantly the veil disguising him vanished. He spat the ring, finger and all, into his bag.

Nic grasped his twin khopeshes, the Sandrider and the Desert Lion. He drew Scarseeker and lifted it overhead.

Blood rained down from his ruined fingers as he forced them to clasp around each weapon.

In the distance, swirls of smoke were collecting, rushing towards him. More were coming, and as they slashed over the fields like a storm of black smoke, they formed into the shape of a massive serpent.