I set our path through to town avoid as many people as possible. I didn’t want to cause a stir, either good or bad, with my presence. At least not so close to nightfall when people needed to be worried about things other than me. Even so, whispers still followed us as we couldn’t avoid everybody. Some shuttered their doors and windows at the sight of me, others ducked out of sight behind alleys.

Yeah, sure, hide from the monster. That same monster doing everything he could to keep your depths taken ass alive. The rumors and stories had always bothered me, even if they were technically true, sort of. It often felt like an overt attempt to undermine me because the rumors and stories would sprout up in places I’d never even heard about, let alone visited, with impeccable timing.

Kayla, Kan’on, and I made it to the barricade and our remaining forces. There weren’t very many injured in the ranks. Carver attacks tended to have that effect. Lopped off limbs and severe lacerations tended to be the kind of injuries that took you out of the fight completely.

I met with Clyde briefly to make sure we were all on the same page. I needn’t have worried; he appeared to have the defenders well in hand. The two remaining Brutes stood amongst the men, who appeared to be completely unconcerned with their presence. That was a change. Some level of acceptance seemed to have taken place. I grimaced but nodded to myself. I could accept it, but I didn’t have to like it.

The drone stood next to the human bound to the hive.

“What are your plans? You are all that are left of the Ilfids.” The man turned his head toward me. His dead eyes stared back at me and I took a step back.

“The Queen dies. When the Queen is dead, the bound will wither. The Consort wishes to enter the Labyrinth. The Collective must perish, which means their head must be severed.”

“Alone? What will that accomplish?”

“We die, regardless. Beware, for The Collective will send the shadows for you. Beware the shadows.”

“Wait what? What are the shadows. Will they not send more Carvers?”

“The shadows are the shadows,” he said unhelpfully.

The man turned to the drone to say a few words in the weird clicky language they used. The drone answered, and the Brutes stirred.

Turning back to me, the man said, “We depart for the Labyrinth. There will be Carvers, but it will take time for The Collective to gather a significant number once more. We will navigate the deep ways, and the Consort will slay them. Beware the shadows.”

Before I could try to question him further, the Brutes picked them up bodily and loped off into the forest toward the Labyrinth.

The Consort would slay them? That tiny thing? Was he looking at the same drone that I saw? Maybe they had a secret weapon that would only work in this specific scenario, and the drone was the chosen one. Isn’t that how it had always gone in heroic tales?

Clyde walked up to me and watched them go with me.

“Did he mention the shadows?” he asked.

“Yeah, any idea what they are?”

“Nope, not a clue. I couldn’t get it out of him no matter what I asked. Now they’re off on a suicide mission.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they kill them all.”

Clyde barked a short laugh, then said, “Depths, maybe I’ll be crowned King as well.” He walked away to see to his duties.

The sun dove toward the horizon, the shadows lengthening significantly and the light fading. Torches were lit up and down the sparse line of defenders.

I gathered Kan’on and Kayla and found the highest building, around 3 stories, from which to gain a vantage point. Whatever the shadows were, I wanted to be able to see them coming.

I gathered my intent and willpower into the currents and pumped myself full of strength. I leapt directly at the wall, of what was likely a warehouse, and used the currents to flow up toward the roof, occasionally using my hands and feet to continue boosting myself up. I landed softly on the edge of the roof, marveling at how little effort it took to accomplish that in comparison to just yesterday.

Kan’on flashed into the space next to me, hardly disturbing the air as he touched down on his toes silently. We both looked over the edge down to Kayla, who just stared up at us.

Shrugging, she walked around to the side of the building and leapt up, leapfrogging her way from wall to wall until she hit the easily scalable cargo scaffolding that bordered the 3rd story. She walked up to us with a self-satisfied pep to her step.

“So, what are we doing up here, stalking the darkness like a bunch of vigilante city boys?” Kayla crouched down dramatically on the edge of the roof, surveying the approaching darkness and the men below.

I grinned, girl had a good sense of humor, just like her dad. The thought wiped the grin off my face and left me with something bittersweet in its place.

“Shadows. The Ilfid said that they would send shadows. To me it sounds like some magic type fighters, maybe. Either way, we need to be able to see them. If they’re anything like their namesake, it would be hard enough to do it from the ground. Plus, I want a better view of the whole field this time. I don’t do well with limited visibility and information.”

I settled in, if less dramatically than Kayla. Kan’on maintained his silent standing position behind me with his sheathed sword propped up on his shoulder. We almost looked like a proper heroic band. To bad my scraggliness brought down the average looks of the group.

Shifting my awareness to the Flow, I went to let the currents drag my mental filaments out into the world but realized they’d been out all along. They pulsed in the rhythmic wave that I’d apparently never ceased. Looking back over the last hour, I remembered a few times where’d I looked at or reacted to things I couldn’t directly see or hear. Spooky. I needed to get a handle on all of this before it grew out of my control, well… like I’d ever been in control to begin with.

The forest was empty, as far as I could tell. The sun finally dipped below the horizon and the world descended into varying degrees of shadow, broken up only by the torchlight and the last of the glow in the sky.

Almost on cue, I sensed Carvers weaving their way between the trees, racing across the ground and leaping from tree to tree. The sounds of their sharp appendages penetrating tree trunks filtered up to us, even at this distance.

Very few Carvers swarmed, when compared to the previous night. That alleviated one worry then, that we would have too few men and women defending the barricades. As long as none of the goliaths showed up, I needn’t worry too much about it.

Clyde had apparently received reports from his scouts, as he raced up and down his line, getting people in position. Compared to the previous night, the defenders looked like hardened, cold blooded veterans. Nobody waffled or panicked, everyone stood resolutely in place, braced for action.

“Shouldn’t we be down there helping them?” Kayla asked.

“No. We have our place, and they have theirs. We must be prepared to face the threats that they cannot. If we use our power and are left without when a great threat appears, more will be lost than if we had stayed fresh,” Kan’on said.

He had directed that last part at me, I knew, and it rankled. Of course he was right, but choices had to be made with incomplete information, and I had made a choice last night. I think I had made the right choice, even if it turned out that the thralls were less of a threat than they should have been.

“Choices must always be made, and you can only make the best choice you can with the information you have available to you. Sometimes those choices come back to bite you in the ass, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be made.” It wasn’t a rebuke; we just viewed the same problem from a different perspective. From someone like him, who amounted to a precision weapon, perhaps it would be better to reserve himself only for existential threats. I held great power, but my power wasn’t so direct, so devastating, and needed to be plied to different problems.

The Carvers made contact with the spikey barrier, more or less replaying the same events as the night before, but the defenders struck them down with now-practiced efficiency. I kept my attention focused outward, toward the forest, straining to control my new senses to detect whatever these shadows were supposed to be.

Sometime later, I felt the first stirrings of something new rushing through the trees toward us. I couldn’t get a good sense of what approached, despite applying all my attention to them as they rushed through the woods. There was something weird about their movement, almost as if they occasionally skipped the space between two points.

“They’re coming, I think. A group to the right a ways and one directly in front of us. They’re coming fast. Depths, they’re fast, go now. Kan’on take the right.”

Kan’on stepped to the edge of the roof and leapt out into the open air, three stories up. He landed on the dirt below with barely a puff of dust, then disappeared in a series of almost invisible dashes.

Kayla took a more circumspect approach, dangling off the edge first before letting herself drop into a crouch. I shook my head; she’d have to learn of her own strength. She was too cautious; with the types of glyphs I knew she had, she could be hopping across the buildings no problem.

I pegged my eyes to the tree line, waiting for a glimpse of the approaching enemies. I didn’t have to wait long, as a group of pitch-black creatures leapt out into the open.

I gasped as I saw the evidence for what I’d felt of them in the Flow. They skipped through space, occasionally bouncing between points, but not existing in between. That by itself wasn’t what impressed me. Kan’on’s movement techniques often impressed me more in sheer scale and power. No, what caught my attention was how they did it.

They skipped through the void.

Every time one leapt between places, I felt the void peek in through the rent. I couldn’t miss such a familiar sensation, not after using it myself for years with the cubby. They travelled. I tried to push my awareness into the space as they used it, but I couldn’t glean anything meaningful from it, only that they did it. Finding myself distracted, I focused my attention back on the creatures themselves.

They had two legs and four arms and stood just over shoulder height on Kan’on. Pitch black from head to toe with segmented chitin armor. If the Ilfids had an elite team of specialist soldiers, this is what I thought they’d look like. Sleek, swift, and with the blacked out weapons they carried, deadly.

Kan’on, already in place, didn’t bother waiting for these shadows to come to him as he leapt completely over the tall barricade to meet them himself. His group instantly turned to meet him, game for a fight it seemed.

They converged on Kan’on, coordinating opposing attacks amongst themselves and skipping in and out of range. I shook my head, such tricks wouldn’t work on Kan’on.

He proved me right immediately as he flashed straight out of their enclosing net, his sword shining in the torchlight as he neatly bisected two of the creatures with a single swing. He hadn’t even fired up his battle aura.

Kan’on scythed through the individuals in the group one or two at a time, about as concerned as he would be taking a leisurely stroll in a nice park. As he faced the last two members of his group, two new bigger, faster enemies skipped into existence almost right on top of him with their weapons already swinging into him.

Where the depths had they come from? They skipped from out of my view completely… what was their range? My interest in this new trick spiked to a new high, but I shook it off to concentrate on the battle.

Kan’on flared his battle aura, dodging one swing and catching the other on his own sword. With a series of kicks and flash steps, he escaped, now fighting a running battle as the shadows tried to keep him encircled.

Well, he looked to be having fun. Even with his battleaura, he hadn’t been fighting full tilt. I turned my attention to Kayla, whose group had yet to breach the barrier.

I hesitated, wanting to go help her out, but an uneasy feeling held me back. A whole new tier of shadow had appeared in ambush to stop Kan’on. They had shown intelligent tactics, yet these creatures weren’t common soldiers, they were meant to be precise attackers.

So where was the trick? What was I missing? It all felt too… forward, like walking up to your crush and confessing your love without ever having spoken before. Where was the introduction, the courting?

Kayla met her group in battle. They used the same tactics as they had on Kan’on, which she dealt with, barely. She had to use hit and run tactics since she couldn’t replicate Kan’on’s movement in and out of their net, but her raw speed kept her a step ahead regardless. She’d probably be ok.

I noticed something else that struck me as odd, though. She’d taken out two shadows with precise thrusts of her overly pointy sword, but they didn’t pressure her when their bodies tied her weapon up. They continued to hit and run. They baited her, led her away from the soldiers.

Just as the thought crossed my mind, two of the bigger, badder shadows skipped into existence right into the defenders, scything a bloody path through them toward the center of the line.

“Shit, shit, shit.” I rose from my crouch, ready to leap off to enter battle, when the barest whisper of the void and smothered intent in the currents warned me. I ducked and dove, a black sword slicing a silent path through the air my neck had just occupied.

A huge shadow, easily twice as big as the ones I thought were the largest earlier, crashed down onto the roof, the pressure from its landing shooting shingles off in every direction, its eyes locked onto me.

Power rolled off its chitinous armor, no longer hidden. Not like Kan’on, nor even Jass. This was my kind of power, the power to see the currents and walk the Flow.

This wasn’t just a soldier; this was an assassin. This was the trick I couldn’t see. They’d divided us and isolated us, and now it had me alone and vulnerable.