“I never thought anomalies would be this big!” said Elena.

Normally, such a statement would be accompanied by animated hand gestures and facial expressions. Tanya had come to expect that and more from the quirky changeling, but Elena was too tired to care. Instead, she scrunched up her face into an expression of disgust.

“UGH!” she cried in distaste. “I smell like a gutter!”

Zuken moved closer and sniffed behind her ear. “Close, but you’re not quite there yet.”

She scowled and shoved him lightly. Their group leader took it with a good-natured chuckle.

Tanya watched the proceedings with a soft smile. Finally, after two whole weeks of searching the desert high and low, their group found the anomaly a few dozen miles away from the Cyffnar-occupied base camp. After packing a handful of supplies, they made their descent.

And Elena wasn’t wrong. Day after day, the subterranean chamber around them kept going, farther than the eye could see, with more tunnels and forks than she could be bothered to count. It was surprisingly well-lit by the green moss on the walls, with thick roots burrowing through every stone wall in sight.

But that wasn’t all.

The smile faded from her lips, replaced by grim resignation. She didn’t know if the others felt it or not—maybe it was her sensitivity with changes in the wind or a manifestation of the desert’s curse—but she could feel leashed violence in the air. A strange dissonance of energies that swayed from tunnel to tunnel like a watchful warden, keeping an eye on them closely.

“Can you not be so chipper?” Maude sighed in annoyance. “I just want to go home and take a long, hot bath!”

“Talk about vanity,” Elena muttered.

Tanya silently inspected her own fingernails. They were dirty, with smudges of black around the corners. Once this was over, she was going to spend a week at Bombshells. It was the best spa in all of Haviskali, but too expensive for her.

Until now, anyway. With forty thousand mezals…

She’d be damned if she didn’t get herself a week there. That, and a wardrobe. She needed a complete set—maybe two. And boots. And some adventurer attire. And napkins. One could never have enough napkins. Throw in some cosmetic jewelry and maybe a visit or two at the Zwaray Keep for some fancy svartalfar trinkets and—

“Oh, just shut up!” Maude exclaimed, chasing away Tanya’s daydreams. “I’m a naturopath. Cleanliness comes naturally to me. Instead, I’m stuck in this subterranean cave for Eir knows how long!”

Tanya felt like banging her head against a wall. Maude and Elena’s…bitch-fest—Olfric’s words, not her own—had been going on for an hour, and as much as she wanted to pretend otherwise, this wasn’t the first time it was happening. Frankly, she’d expected an argument to break out between herself and Olfric, given their mutual antagonism. Elena and Maude even seemed like fast friends when she’d met them for the first time.

Now, though…

She glanced at Olfric, who was currently doing some push-ups, his baggage dropped beside him. A lifelong fitness freak, Olfric Bergott never gave up the chance to get some physical exercise done or show off his muscles. It was a pity she liked men who were lean and sturdy instead of overly muscular. Not that the aquamancer would ever demonstrate an interest in her.

Though, the way he’d look at her sometimes…

Tanya crushed the thought midway, and instead considered the other two women in the group. Maude, despite her strange relationship with Olfric, was too free-spirited and different to consider dating a staunch Asukan. Elena, on the other hand, was clearly involved with Zuken, though it was hard to decipher the exact nature of their relationship. There was no doubt the changeling warmed the Banksi’s bed, but the casual interaction between the two indicated something far deeper.

It was at this point Tanya realized that being inside a subterranean anomaly was likely having some side effects on her. Why else would she be mentally classifying the relationship statuses of her comrades instead of doing something productive?

“How long do you think these tunnels go?” Olfric suddenly asked her.

Tanya gave him a side-eyed glance. The aquamancer had been behaving oddly ever since…well, ever since she’d sided with him and agreed to attack the camp.

“Shouldn’t that be a question for our terramancer?” Tanya replied.

“I did ask him,” Olfric admitted, getting up and putting on his shirt. “He said that it went as far as he could sense, and possibly even farther. Something this long…maybe it’s penetrated Haviskali itself.”

Tanya snorted. “If it goes really deep, I wonder how long it will be before the air turns unbreathable.”

“In that case, we just have to collapse the anomaly from above and walk out.”

“Which would probably help as much as Elena’s attempt to charm monsters in here.”

“HEY!”

Both of them ignored the changeling’s shout.

“We don’t know how far this thing goes,” Tanya continued. “Like you said, it’s possible it’s close to Haviskali. It’s also equally possible it’s penetrated Cyffnar already. Collapsing one portion won’t help if you don’t destroy the core.”

She expected the aquamancer to respond with something. Instead, he sighed in resignation. “There goes my chance of getting away from this godforsaken place.”

“You chose this, and we’re already deep inside the anomaly.”

“Besides,” Zuken replied, smiling, “there might be a little bit more in it for us…”

Tanya perked up at that.

“Featherglass,” the terramancer said. “I’ve been sensing the presence of featherglass in this pit. If we can find its location—”

“We can take it for ourselves,” Olfric replied, all traces of disagreement now evaporated from his face.

Tanya cocked up her head. Featherglass was an incredibly rare metal used to craft artifacts and weapons of immeasurable value. The wristbands she wore contained a thin sliver of featherglass, and they cost a pretty penny.

Maude was smiling. “Well now,” she said slowly, “that’s a big enough prize to be tempting.”

“Isn’t it a good thing that we get to divide it equally?” Zuken quipped.

Olfric snorted. “Nice try, but I already know you’re going to make way more than the rest of us.”

“Huh?” Maude exclaimed. “How’s that?”

”The Ruling House of Asuka has an ironclad hold on the featherglass supply,” Olfric explained. “It only sells the metal out in fixed amounts, charging outrageous sums in return. You’d need someone with deep pockets and connections to get any of it sold.”

“Someone like him.” Tanya pointed at Zuken, who laughed.

“Don’t give me that look.” The terramancer grinned. “I promised to share the loot equally, not offer free brokerage services.”

“What happens if one of us goes rogue and blows the whistle? Selling featherglass illegally will get you capital punishment, lord or no lord,” Olfric argued.

“And who’s gonna go rogue, Olfric? You?” Zuken asked. There was a strange glint in his eyes that Tanya couldn’t place. Something that reminded her that as affable as Zuken Banksi was to her and everyone else, there was a reason he was the loudest voice in the Haviskali Underground. “We’re already in the middle of an illegal mission. If the Empire got the slightest whiff of this, we’d all hang. Make no mistake, we are in this together. And contrary to what some might think, I’m not in the habit of assassinating my fellow partners out of paranoia. It simply isn’t good for business.”

Impossible, Tanya thought. He was clearly bluffing to keep up the crew’s morale. Nobody was that trusting. After all, Zuken already hired a Maluscian smuggling crew for transportation. There was no telling if there were now mercenaries following them at this very moment, waiting on a signal to slit their collective throats.

“No arguments there,” Olfric grunted. “But I do have a question. For Tanya.” He glanced toward her. “If she can answer it without snapping back, that is.”

“Alright.” She shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“How did you destroy the anomaly back then?”

That got her undivided attention. “Why, Heir Bergott?” she drawled, a smirk on her face. “Why would an Asukan noble show interest in such heresy?”

Olfric rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to take your job. If you tell me…us, how you did it, we can think of ways to get it done faster. Five minds are better than one, right?”

“They are,” Tanya slowly agreed, eyeing the aquamancer, trying to read past his expression. Just what was he fishing for? Something to pin against her when things went south?

Ultimately, she folded her arms. “But I got chased across the kingdom by the Cobalt Army for this. I think I’m entitled to some secrecy.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed. “But tell me this. Will it affect your skills?”

“I’ll manage,” she replied coolly. “Unless you doubt my ability—”

“No one’s doubting anything,” he replied, perhaps a touch too quickly. “Especially after what I saw you do out there in the desert.”

Right. Her performance at the enemy camp. No wonder Olfric was giving her a wide berth. The man was an Asukan to the core, and if there was one thing that impressed Asukans, it was power. But there was something else, something in his tone that she couldn’t quite put a finger on.

“Then there should be no cause for concern,” Tanya said.

Olfric drew himself up, but she was not impressed. People like him liked having power over others and controlled everyone else through fear. Whether this domination was exerted by social hierarchy, political acumen, and connections, or the old-fashioned power differences, it didn’t matter.

“All I’m saying is, you were in your element in the desert. Here, on the other hand…” Olfric trailed off.

Oh.

Oh.

Compared to the desert outside, wind was practically non-existent inside the cavern. Their group had encountered a multitude of monsters, but Tanya had fought each of them with Qi-empowered skills and nothing more. However, there was more to Aeromancy than simply channeling the power of the wind into a hammer blow. It was about manipulating density, pressure, and vacuums. It was about taking the gaseous state of matter and playing god with it.

The abundance of wind out there had actually halved her arsenal.

But in here…

Tanya suppressed a smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll manage just fine.”

Olfric sniffed imperiously. “Whatever. I’m just looking out for my team.”

“How adorable. Who knew the Olfric Bergott had a—”

The rest of Tanya’s words died in her throat as every single hair on her neck rose. Gooseflesh erupted over her entire body at once, and a primal wave of utter terror flickered through her brain, utterly dislodging every rational thought in her head.

For a spiritist, that was bad. Control over one’s emotions was something every aspirant learned during their years at the Shrine. Otherwise, all kinds of horrible things could happen. It was only too easy for a spiritist’s emotions to go haywire upon using the kami’s mana beyond a certain limit—a common situation in a battlefield.

Quickly, she wrestled her emotions back under control.

That was when she saw it.

The thing that slithered into existence was the size of an average bremetan. Humanoid and bipedal, with the legs more or less right, but longer and leaner. But that was where the familiarity ended.

The head looked almost toad-like if she was willing to ignore the long, tentacle-like protrusions coming out of the hundred-fanged maw in the center. Hands branched out somewhere in the middle into two flailing tentacles, while its feet gave the appearance of an eagle’s talons. It had no face. It had no eyes. And its feet didn’t touch the floor.

The creature had a strange slipperiness to it, as if the memory of its outer structure would slip away from her mind if she didn’t spend conscious effort behind it.

And as if that wasn’t discomfiting enough, there were five of them.

“Tentacles,” Maude muttered from behind her. “Disgusting, slimy things.”

Tentacles were the least of their problems if that psychic disruption was any clue. Tanya focused on the familiar feeling of a wind blade forming within her palms. The coalescing currents shook slightly as they contorted and—

Wait. Shook?

Tanya looked down at her own palms. They were shaking. As were her arms. And her legs. And—

Dizziness hit her like a sledgehammer. She stumbled forward before a pair of steady hands caught her from behind. It took a moment to click before Tanya became acutely aware that she was pressed against Olfric.

She hurriedly took a step forward.

“They—they aren’t monsters!” Elena squeaked, quaking in her boots. “Those things are not monsters!”

Not monsters? Tanya focused on the creatures before her.

Mana

—

Lifeforce

—

It was impossible. No lifeforce and no mana? The creatures were unnatural and capable of psychic disruption. Not to mention that malevolent aura… No creature could pull that off without a minimum level of Qi or mana in their bodies. Then…how were they doing it?

Only one way to find out, Tanya thought to herself.

Holding a wind blade in a reverse grip, she hurled it toward the closest monster. The blade dove into its body and vanished. Before she could get past the initial moment of shock, the creature lunged in her direction, its tentacular arms morphing into vicious claw-endings.

Tanya flinched. It nearly cost her her life. The razor-sharp claw came closer, now barely inches away, and—

Was promptly captured in a blob of pure water, while Olfric sent a wave of raw force with his other hand at the creature’s face. It pushed it back by no more than a foot.

“My turn,” Zuken said, and before she knew it, she was witnessing a barrage of rocks, each no larger than a bremetan’s fist, their tail-ends sharpened, shooting from behind and piercing them. Head, abdomen, shoulders, tentacles, maw—there wasn’t a place that wasn’t perforated by the rock onslaught. The monster let out a mechanical, grating scream and was slammed against the wall, turning into something amorphous.

As Tanya slowly came to the realization that there was no blood from the monster’s wounds, a faint sound emanated from the other side. The rest of the creatures, all of them larger and more well-muscled than the first, drifted toward them. Tanya raised her hand without thinking and unleashed her power.

A twister of biting-cold wind exploded out of her palm and smashed into the nearest monster. The creature was instantly frozen, before the accompanying force blasted it into smithereens.

Dozens of frozen monster bits fell down on the floor.

Maude whistled.

Zuken had gotten two more with his rock bullets, while Olfric hacked one of them apart with a water whip.

“Not dead! Not DEAD!” Elena kept yelling. “They’ll come from the bottom!”

As if on cue, something shot out of the ground below Tanya’s feet, hitting her in the chin and flinging her against the wall. She used the wind to break her momentum and land on her feet, shaken but otherwise fine.

None of their attacks mattered. It didn’t matter that four of them had their bodies torn apart, and a fifth utterly disintegrated to the bone. They were there, as if time itself had been unwound for them, returning them to their base state.

The five creatures bared their fanged maws and—

A small, cylindrical canister tumbled across the floor. Tanya watched as the small sigil engraved on its surface began to emit a preternatural glow.

And then, the world was lost in white.

Eternal Light shone onto the creatures from all directions, tearing pieces of them away like bits of rotten meat peeled off a carcass by a sandblaster. The creatures screamed, and their strange slippery bodies sloughed like a snake’s scales before dissipating into motes of gray. By the time the light faded, the creatures were gone. Disintegrated to dust.

“As I suspected,” Maude said, an uncharacteristically manic grin on her face. “Those bodies weren’t physical. And Eternal Light burns all spiritual beasts, those monsters that possess living beings and transform them into ghoulish monstrosities.”

“I—I don’t understand,” Tanya exclaimed.

“Don’t you?” a tense, shivering Elena asked. “It means the Black Moon has finally ascended to the Central Sky. Maybe-- maybe the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons has begun!”

"Don't be stupid!" Olfric snapped. "The Night Parade is just a fairy tale!"

Tanya wisely kept her mouth shut. The Night Parade was a concept that had its roots deep in pre-Asukan mysticism. Superstition was that when the Black Moon would ascend to the Central Sky, and the Eternal Light would be at its weakest, a cataclysm would rise. A portent that heralded the rise of shadows and specters—wraiths flying in the sky, ghosts and vengeful spirits of the dead coming out of their graves, and a cavalcade of specters plundering across the Asukan lands as omens of the dark days prophesied to return. Legends said that they would ride all across the lands in hope of finding their lost deity—the Nine-Tailed Fox, ravaging and destroying the Empire until nothing but madness, fire, and darkness remained.

“Elena, you’re supposed to be good with monsters, right?” Tanya asked grumpily. “Can’t you just, I don’t know, make these things do our bidding? Or at least keep them away from us?”

“Those weren’t monsters!” Maude reiterated. “They were yokai!”

Olfric snorted. “Really now! Yokai? After all this time?”

The changeling, on the other hand, looked like she’d been slapped. “It’s not working! Something about this place is weird. None of the monsters are responding to my charms like they’re supposed to.”

“Maybe it’s the desert’s curse?” Maude offered.

“It’s just a stupid curse,” Tanya fired back. “It’s not the reason for every unexplainable thing.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

She didn’t. But she wasn’t going to admit that out loud.

“I think it's because of her.”

It took Tanya an entire second to recognize that Olfric had been pointing at her, and two more to realize what he meant. Whirling around, she put her hands on her waist and angrily stared him down.

“Care to repeat that?” she asked, tapping her foot.

“I said,” the aquamancer repeated, “that it’s probably because of you. Am I the only one who’s noticed that the monsters are weirdly focused on her? I’ve visited my share of anomalies in the past, and what’s happening here is downright freaky.”

Tanya stilled. It was true that they were being hounded by monsters. Like, a lot. And even she had noticed how they’d single her out and attack her with utmost prejudice, like they were out for her from the start. She had tried to rationalize that it was because she was the most dangerous fighter in the group, but when Olfric put it like that—

“That’s a singularly biased way of looking at it,” Zuken defended her. “She’s the one who’s been killing them most. It’s animal nature to seek out the dangerous threat and address it first.”

“Yeah, but these aren’t animals. They’re monsters. Born from an anomaly. And she—”

“You think because I’ve sinned in the past,” Tanya mumbled, “the monsters—”

“Are attacking us,” the aquamancer finished with a leer. “You being here with us is a danger in itself.”

“And what would you have us do, Olfric?” Zuken demanded. The undercurrent of steel in his voice did not go unheard. “Throw her out of the group? Let her wander about by herself to attract monsters so that we can relax around?”

Olfric’s face broke into an open sneer.

“I didn’t know you were that willing to give up your life for some Sinning, murderous—”

Tanya had heard enough. Mission or no mission, she wasn’t obligated to just stand there and listen to this bastard spill his vitriol. A wind blade began to form within her right palm, but before she could so much as launch it, someone else acted.

There was a smack-thud of impact as an invisible fist smacked the living daylights out of Olfric Bergott, sending him back against the wall. The aquamancer gasped, blood leaking out of his lower lip.

Maude stepped forward, her battlestaff held firmly in her right hand.

“Maude!” Olfric snapped. “What in the nine hells do you think you’re doing?!”

“Sorry,” Maude replied, in a polite tone that fooled no one. “I meant to say ‘Stop,’ but I punched you instead!”

“I didn’t see a punch!” Elena interjected.

“You didn’t, huh?” the naturopath asked with a smile. “I wonder why.”

Olfric’s face split into an ugly leer, repulsive in just how hateful it was. “This will—”

Maude slammed her battlestaff down onto the floor, shutting him off. “Now you listen to me,” she asserted. “Last I checked, Tanya created the sandstorm. Tanya got us to our camp. Tanya destroyed the Cyffnarian base. Zuken here has funded everything and arranged for everything. Elena’s ensured things don’t fall apart, and I’ve done the job I was brought in for. You, on the other hand, have been a glorified laundry boy!”

Something furious hit his eyes, and Tanya prepared herself for a direct confrontation. Olfric Bergott was a bully who cried unfair whenever the universe refused to bow down to his whims, and took out his frustrations on whoever he damn well pleased. And currently, he was unhappy with her.

“Alright, that’s enough!” Zuken chastised, stepping between them all. “That comment was way out of line, Olfric. I suggest you apologize.”

Neither of them missed the steel lining his voice.

“Make me!” Olfric sneered.

“That won’t be necessary,” Elena replied, a beaming smile on her face. “Come on guys, we have this job because only we have what it takes. We’re extraordinarily good at what we do. We can do the undoable and fool the unfoolable. We know how to take an incredibly large task and break it down to manageable pieces, then deal with each of those pieces. We know how to get what we want, and that is why we can get this job done. Together.”

The sudden shift in Olfric’s demeanor was as beautiful as it was frightening. One moment, disdain colored his features, and in the next, a thin veneer of civility was all that was present. The changeling was either good, or lucky, or both. All Tanya had felt was a soft, featherlike touch against her mental defenses, but that was only because she knew what to look for. It was that subtle.

The Bergott heir crossed his arms. “The Goddess knows, I’ve never shied away from a challenge. But”—his expression drew dark—“this Sinful task, in this evil environment… It’s getting to me. I—I just can’t help it.”

“We’re all in a difficult situation, Olfric,” Maude replied softly. “We’re in the Namzuuhuu Desert, a land with no Eternal Light, with the Black Moon overhead, committing a task that goes directly against both your and my beliefs. But that’s no reason to lash out at our team members.”

Olfric wiped his lip and waddled away in a different direction.

“Where are you going?” Zuken called out.

“Taking a walk,” the aquamancer mumbled as he lumbered off. “I need some time alone to clear my head.”

Maude sighed. “Don’t worry, I’ll go after him.”

“Is that really a good idea?” Tanya worriedly asked.

“Yes, it is,” Elena said, surprising everyone present.

Tanya reluctantly glanced at Maude and mumbled her thanks.

The naturopath rolled her eyes and winked back, before following in Olfric’s direction.