“What are you going to do about this?" Magna asked Rollo as he stormed down the corridor. In mare moments he'd make his way to the children, but what he was planning to do about them was still a mystery.

“I don’t know,” he grumbled while picking up speed. “How the hells did a 14-year-old child discover us?”

“I didn’t have the chance to find out,” Magna said. “As soon as I realized they knew of us I acted. Rollo, you’re not going to-.”

“No, I'm not going to hurt the damned kids, that’s the problem. The older two I was planning on taking in but the younger ones, the ones that actually figured this out weren't supposed to be strikers thanks to that Jabari boy of yours.” Rollo’s pace slowed as an idea weighed him down. “We could make them take the oath. That would stop them from telling anyone.”

Magna moved in front of the striker, bringing him to a stop. “Don't you dare. The oath may stop them for a time, but they will figure a way to cause problems soon enough. Us being here is proof of that.”

Rollo had no response. Something like this had never happened leaving him with no distinct path to take. Whenever someone came close to the secret of the Dreyark household, they’d simply be killed. However, he wasn't willing to do that to children, yet. Maybe he could hold off on the decision. After all, he had yet to find out how Uhtred was able to puzzle out their existence in the first place.

A disturbance in the ambient mana surrounding the corridor brought Rollo from his thoughts. He concentrated mana into his eyes activating mage-sight to see whatever divination spell was being used on him.

Looking around, he saw mana in every color imaginable. The compound they were currently in only made things worse with its dozens of defensive enchantments. With so many spells active at once, he did not expect to see much in the way of identifying the one spying on him, but clear as day stood a silhouette of a boy made of mana darker than any human could create naturally.

When the boy realized Rollo could see him, he made his way into a darkened space. The familiar pulse of someone entering an adjacent dimension crawled over Rollo's skin a heartbeat later.

Rollo ran for the cell the children were in. He burst through the door nearly breaking it as he stopped at Uhtred's side. “What's the boy's focus?” he asked Magna after she was able to catch up.

She shrugged. “Haven't got a clue.”

“His consciousness can leave his body; Astral Projection,” Rollo said definitively. “I saw him in the corridor just now.”

“That's not possible. No one with below B ranked mana could send their spirit that far.”

Rollo crossed his legs sitting on the floor and breathed out heavily to concentrate. “You can if there’s a god that allows you to move through shadows.”

****

Uhtred woke looking down at his body while his mind floated a few feet off the ground. His usual response to his focus forcing his mind from sleep was to curse as loud as he could even though no one could hear him, although today he was thankful for his restless mind.

He looked around the room quickly realizing it was a cell. There were bars in lieu of a door but at least his body and the rest of his fellow prisoners were on comfortable-looking beds. The fact that the arrangements were more than a shit-covered floor with chains securing them to a wall was all he needed to know he wasn’t in the Nulls anymore.

Uhtred floated over to Elma wishing he could punch her on the nose. “This has to be your fault. Couldn't wait a few days so you went running to Magna.” His spirit grew smaller with shame. “Of course, I wouldn't be here if I didn't tell you the truth.”

After a few minutes of mentally kicking himself, Uhtred looked to the shadows for help. He couldn’t get very far in his current form but Amra allowed him access to her realm. Thanks to spiritual distance somehow being meaningless within it, as long as he stayed near darkness, his spirit could roam for miles. Luckily, the cell they were in had shadows created by the beds.

He flew into one becoming part of the darkness itself.

Most thought the shadow realm held no light but that wasn’t entirely true. Uhtred saw lights in the infinite void of darkness, lights that would help him escape.

Wherever light was dimmed in Midgard, that spot would shine in the shadow realm, allowing him to leave by walking through it. In an area completely devoid of light, he could walk through it to appear whenever he liked as if appearing from invisibility. If no dark spots could be found, Amra gave him the power to extinguish any light around him. These divine gifts only cost him every coin he had including what Brand had given him.

“Worth it.”

The same relative price had been paid to the goddess years before Uhtred was taken in by Magna. While pickpocketing he got lucky finding three coppers and two golds. Uhtred used the copper to buy his first meal in days but the gold he did not keep. Amra saved him that day, not Vara or Yule or the many gods of war making up the Aesir. The only god that kept Uhtred alive was the god of thieves, so he honored her with everything he had. The blessings he now wielded were the rewards she granted him for his faith.

Uhtred moved through the shadow realm stopping at various openings to Midgard. The visible areas of the shadows indicated his body was in an underground building. That made escape easy. When he woke from sleep, he could just shadow walk to safety.

Astrid was a problem though. He might need to cause distractions for her. The shadows was not a vacuum but there was no breathable air within them. He didn’t need to breathe while inside thanks to his blessings, but Astrid would suffocate if they did not take breaks. And any moment of vulnerability, no matter how brief would have them captured because not one person within the compound did not have magic.

Through brightly lit openings, Uhtred saw a handful of people that left Saint Hilda’s last year sparing at speeds he found hard to keep track of with his mundane senses. Some even fought monsters barehanded.

Uhtred would have thought what he saw as impossible if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. A woman only a few years older than himself charged what might have been a bear if not for the horn adorning its head. The beast was helpless as she wrapped her arm around its neck and twisted, casually snapping its neck.

In another room, Uhtred saw a boy, one he’d seen leave Saint Hilda the year before stared down a mound of stone in the shape of a man as it shook the room with each step. The creature stood nearly three times the boy’s height but when its fist came down, it broke apart with a single punch glowing with a faint light.

Although, in the midst of awesome displays of power, Uhtred also found himself taking long pauses to look at some of the female trainees. They were all naked, the men and women alike. That did not stop them from fighting no matter how many wounds they collected.

“But why,” Uhtred thought, trying and failing to look away for several minutes. “These people are crazy.”

As he finally forced his eyes away, Uhtred found something unexpected; a wall in the shadow realm. His spirit bounced off it without any pain only producing a moment of dizziness.

The wall had no color, but it blocked his path all the same. His mind scaled it in every direction letting him know that it was a sphere that pressed against the edge of the compound.

With no way to escape, he made his way back to his body determined to talk his way out of this somehow. Magna worked for this group so they couldn’t be that bad.

On his way back to himself, Uhtred saw Magna almost running with the man that had come asking about Brand a year ago. They stopped to talk, so Uhtred left the shadows to eavesdrop on their conversation. After listening, he was glad to hear they weren't going to hurt them but then the man’s eyes glowed blue.

Uhtred never considered moving back into his goddess’s realm until the man looked directly at him as if he was there in the flesh. Realizing he could be seen, Uhtred fled into the darkness, moving as fast as he could back to his body.

“Could he also be a disciple of Amra or did he see my focus?”

By the time Uhtred found himself, the man sat beside him with his legs crossed and eyes closed. Not caring, he rushed for his body.

“Not going to be that easy,” said the voice of the man, but not from the direction he was in.

A pair of hands in the same semi-translucent state as Uhtred’s grabbed him from behind. It spun him around revealing itself to be the spirit of the man. He crept in closer holding Uhtred’s soul in a death grip.

“You’re going to tell me everything I want to know, right now!”

The man didn’t need to voice the consequences of refusing him. The horror of his face that opened into a mass of writhing tentacles and snapping needle-like teeth was enough of a deadly promise to make Uhtred start babbling every secret he had.

****

It was hard for Rollo to see Uhtred flinch whenever their eyes met. Maybe he shouldn't have changed his face to frighten the boy or at least used a slightly less traumatizing one, but he now knew no ordinary person could piece together the existence of the strikers.

The only reason the boy knew as much as he did about Dreyark’s operation was that his blessings and focus worked in tandem. He was able to search the Null Road and a good part of Vellia every night. His abilities were something they couldn’t prepare for or that anyone else could replicate. Rollo could almost thank the boy for showing him that Dreyark needed to invest in dimensional defense runes more heavily.

“I have a solution,” Rollo pronounced. All the now awake children looked to him but Uhtred inched away the slightest bit. “You will all become strikers.”

“I don't think so,” Magna protested. “Brand will be coming for his friends in a few years. You can’t expect them to give up that opportunity for this.” Magna gestured to the room as a whole.

Rollo rubbed the bridge of his nose wishing she would just leave. “If Brand comes looking for them, they'll leave with him. We have no assets in Ram so now’s a good time to start.”

“And if you want them to work against their friend or kill him one day?” Magna challenged.

Rollo shrugged without care. “That will only happen if he attacks Vellia.”

Uhtred and Astrid broke their silence racing to their feet. “There’s no fucking way I’m killing Brand. I don’t care what you do!” Uhtred shouted.

Astrid pulled her knives that Rollo saw as no threat. He hadn't even bothered to take them from her. “Just try us. I’ll cut that ugly face off if you hurt Brandy.”

Rollo couldn’t help but laugh. The fey kin girl seemed to have no fear. Up until this point, she acted like this was a field trip to a dungeon. Now murder was in her eyes at hearing a loved one threatened.

Uhtred was more impressive. He acted like the fear brought on by Rollo’s monstrous face affected him more than it had. Rollo would need to temper their emotional responses during training, but these two would make promising strikers in time.

Magna interrupted the bickering. “Don’t you have a memory guy?”

Rollo snored. “I wish. Then I would not have to kill these two if they refuse my offer.”

Uhtred’s body shuddered when he tried and failed to enter the shadows. The runes Rollo drew on the walls put an end to the attempt leaving the boy with no way out. Astrid jumped to the roof ready to throw the knives no one bothered to take from her. In Rollo’s and Magna’s opinion, even if she stabbed someone in the eye, they’d deserve it for not being vigilant enough to dodge a knife thrown by a non-magic user.

Rollo rubbed his hands together as if finishing a deal. “I’m going to love training you two when you’re old enough. Here’s the thing, Ram is too far away to matter when it comes to being a real threat. It would need an army ten times its size to even bother us.”

“Then why send them?” Magna asked.

“To steal magic they have that we don’t and be deployable to the southeastern side of the continent.”

It was obvious Magna wanted to argue but the guarantee of death for not becoming strikers held her tongue. Even she knew someone like Uhtred could not be left to his own devices so working a normal job for the Dreyark house was not possible. And if he became a striker, Astrid would demand to become one too.

“Fine,” she relented. “Come down Astrid. This is the best deal you’re going to get.” Magna spoke in a dry deadpan tone, defeated. More of her children would be killers, and there no helping it. “Welcome to the strikers.”