Uhtred stepped out of the shadows followed by five strikers very happy to be on solid ground. While they gasped for air, he studied the area they entered. It was clearly a dungeon not unlike the one he’d been kept in the first day of his recruitment except for the strong stench of shit and unwashed bodies thick in the air.

One of the strikers walked up to Uhtred flicking him in the head with a finger the might as well had been a thick branch.

“What the fuck!” Uhtred yelled staring daggers.

That earned him another flick to the head from his handler, a beast kin man named Cull.

With barely contained strength coming off him in waves, fox ears, and red hair painted with age, the striker was the most imposing man Uhtred had ever seen. Whether it be fear or respect, he commanded the Dreyark secret ranks effortlessly, but Uhtred assumed the former. Apparently, being an apex magic-user, one whose strength bordered the limits of mortality, made his word law.

“Speak in Slavic,” Cull said, ready to add to Uhtred’s headache.

“Fuck you!” Uhtred replied in a Slavic dialect.

Cull nodded. “That’s better.”

Uhtred hated this part of his training almost as much as his daily exercises. Every few months he and the rest of the recruits were taught a language for a few hours each day. Once they left the class, every striker would only talk to them in the language of the month whether they understood it or not. The punishment for not listening to instructors stayed the same so learning the language was a very high priority. Speaking any other language also earned punishments. Luckily for Uhtred who’d still yet to open his first gate, not having an increased healing factor kept his punishments light.

“Why did you hit me the first time?” Uhtred asked, staring daggers at the man.

“You kept us in the shadow realms longer than you had to,” Cull replied.

Uhtred opened his mouth to lie but decided to stay quiet. Every time he lied, Cull somehow knew instantly. The only way to keep secrets now was to never mention them in any way.

“Fine,” Uhtred spat. “Let’s just kill this guy so I can go home.”

A tiger-striped beast kin man patted him on the head. "I like your spirit kid, but don't forget this is also a rescue mission."

With that said, the strikers started their standard equipment check. They made sure the bright red colors they wore signified the right gang they would be framing for the night's bloodshed. They even made sure to paint Uhtred's face even though his body would not be part of the operation. When they finished, Cull signaled they were ready for the striker in training to use his talents.

Uhtred split his mind into six pieces, one going to each striker’s shadow and one staying in his body to keep him conscious. He then entered the safety of the shadows while the team proceeded with the mission.

Cull took the tiger kin and a human to find the target while the two remaining human strikers went throughout the dungeon freeing slaves and killing guards without ever being seen. The only warning most had was the lights around them dimming before a blade cut into them. Uhtred's divine blessing even kept prisoners destined for slavery from knowing who broke their chains and open their cell doors.

Uhtred monitored from the shadow realm while also looking for the target. He was overwatch for this mission and would be tested on its happenings later. Most of the guards were still at likely entrances or in their barracks. The few insides would be dead soon without anyone finding out until shift change.

“I have eyes on the target,” Uhtred said through all of his astral projected forms. He could see the man through the shadow he cast in a candlelit room. “There are two other men there with three dancing women.”

“Who’s the others in the room?” Cull asked.

“I don’t know,” Uhtred replied. “They’re not wearing clothes. One is maybe 30 with dark hair. The other is around the same age and has red hair with more muscles than even you.”

“We'll keep one alive,” Cull decided. “It will be good to have witnessed so the right people get blamed.”

Uhtred watched as the striker team converged on the location he gave. He’d seen situations like this handled before. They’d burst into the room fast with their strongest spells ready.

The target was an A-ranked mage, nearly at the end of his road to power and the other two seem could be just as strong, but Cull had taken on worse odds and won. It seemed no matter how outmatched a striker was, their ability to kill overcame any as simple as raw power.

Cull and his team stopped outside the target’s room preparing a spell while throttling their mana to their limit. Meanwhile, Uhtred was looking forward to this noble’s bloody end. He’d been selling people off the King’s Road to Gridania as slaves to fund his expensive taste. If magic users couldn’t resist him talking them to the shadow realm, Uhtred would have left him there to suffocate by now.

The tiger kin striker finished a spell Uhtred didn’t recognize. It manifested as a blur in the air that the man let flow over himself then to the rest of the team. All at once, they all passed through the wall with weapons raised.

Cull threw several knives at the target while the human, a girl named Brunhild with hair so short she was nearly bold, was about to shoot an arrow thrumming with power at the dark-haired man. The tiger kin went for the red-haired man with a great sword charged with enough magic to cut through the entire building.

Brunhild froze before releasing her shot as she recognized she was about to kill. By the way her confusion and pain spread across her face, the oath had taken hold protecting the Bryer in her crosshairs.

Cull’s attack held no such hesitation. His knives cut through his target, effortlessly shattering a mana shield the man conjured moments before a blade’s magic froze his blood while another melting his flesh, and the last few filling him with enough death magic to end his life ten times over.

As the noble crumpled, Uhtred saw something from the shadows no one else did. The red-haired man had seen them coming turning his head as if catching something at the corner of his eye but hadn’t moved. He didn’t flinch when the target was killed and only placed a hand in front of the Bryer even though a sword was coming for him.

“We’re fucked,” Uhtred said as the great sword looking to split the stranger’s head snapped like a withered branch.

Forcing herself away from the royal, Brunhild released her arrow at the redheaded. The man caught the arrow in his mouth along with an explosion that sent the dancing girls crashing into a wall. The man didn’t bother to spit the arrow out. He played with it as if it were a toothpick, talking casually.

“I love a good fight to end the night. Hammond, you take the first round, I’d just kill everyone in an instant.”

The tiger kin and Cull kept their eyes forward while Brunhild turned to open the door now that their intangibility wore off. before she could reach the exit, the red-haired man tapped his finger sending a wave of mana throughout the room leaving a buzz in the air.

“Don’t touch the walls. They’re electrified!” Cull shouted just in time to stop Brunhild from killing herself.

“Magni, why did you seal them in here! They were trying to run!” Hammond screamed.

Magni laughed with a release of power, his voice shaking the room, the fortress, and sending Uhtred sprawling through the shadows. “If they run, we won’t have fun fighting them.”

Uhtred stood as much as one could in the shadows. His nose was bleeding and probably broken like a wall had crashed into his face.

"How the fuck?" he said and spat out a mouth full of blood.

He'd lost a front tooth as well. Something had definitely hit him. The shadows were rumbling, shifting, somehow angry. Uhtred didn't know how but he could feel it like his goddess was angry but not with him but with the stranger calling himself a god.

The idea was nonsense but then Uhtred saw a rune-covered hammer with a short handle resting at the man’s feet. It couldn't be what it looked like. There were hundreds of weapons like it but something whispered to him like an old forgotten memory.

"Mjolnir."

“Cull! We need to leave! We need to leave! We need to leave! We need to leave fucking leave now!” Uhtred shouted as he dimmed the lights as fast as he could.

Magni's eyes narrowed with the dimming lights. “One of Amra’s little urchins is here trying to ruin our fun.” The god stood, his hammer flying into his hand as he reached for it. “Sorry Hammond, I’ve got to end this before they’re gone, but you can afford to lose one fortress right.”

“Wait, what! Magni, not again!”

Magni lifted his hammer as Uhtred used the pieces of himself in the striker's shadows to pull them faster into the growing darkness. Right as they fell through the floor, a bright light closed any doors to the shadows. Then the rest of the darkness in Midgard vanished as light overtook them. Uhtred looked on in disbelief as the shadows for more than a mile closed off.

Several miles from the fortress on a hill overlooking the king’s Road Uhtred appeared below a shaded tree followed by the strikers. He'd our run Magni's power moving through dozens of miles in an instant. the fortress was still in sight, but it was more of a pillar of lightning strikes like a tree arcing across the sky.

“I can’t believe I just saw a god,” Uhtred said.

"How'd you know?" Cull asked.

"I'm not sure, but I think Amra told m-"

"Speak Slavic," Cull said after slapping Uhtred over the head.

****

“That boy is too valuable to give up,” Rollo said. A balling of Uhtred’s run-in played on the table for the third time. “If not for him, we would have lost the team and one of the few apex cultivators we have. He also makes high-risk missions so simple he could do them himself if no one needs killing.”

“I see your point,” Makarov said, tugging on his white beard. “Any chance we can get Amra’s blessing for anyone else?”

“No chance of that happening,” Rollo replied. “As far as I understand it, he gave her everything. Everything for you or me means all our money, property, even children if you think they count, which I do. It makes sense that only a child can offer that kind of sacrifice. Even now he’s looking for more to give to his goddess.”

Rollo said the last part with a bit of annoyance. Uhtred was a truer believer than most when it came to his religion. He’d been caught trying to steal several times to add to Amra’s coffers. He also knew the boy stole on every other mission he was sent on but hardly kept anything. The next day someone would find a recently made ritual circle the boy used to give his offering.

“Any chance you could put a good word in for one of us?”

“Hells no,” Rollo answered bitterly. “I haven't seen her since I was a kid, and to be honest, that face is long forgotten. Couldn't wear it again even if I wanted to. I’m sure she’s still looking for me but finding one demigod bastard amongst hundreds is beyond her. If she had a place of worship or organized priesthood then there would be a chance, but this is the first time I met one of her clerics."

"I've met a few," Makarov said. "But they were bandits."

“And no," Rollo said knowing the question was coming. "Uhtred can’t speak to her not consciously. Most clerics never speak to their gods.”

“There is still the problem of keeping him by force,” Makarov said. “With his abilities, he could cripple us and there’s no guarantee the oath won’t be removed as he gains more blessings. And that's only with what he can do now. When he learns magic, stopping him may take five teams or more if it's even possible.”

Rollo had no good answer to the problem. They could always manipulate the situation to have Brand leave without his friend, but such plots have a tendency to end in tragedy.

“How is the girl coming along?” Makarov asked, changing the subject.

“I handed her to Dags,” Rollo replied. “He’s the only one of her kind still active in the area. He says she’s a handful, not really a ‘one with nature’ type.”

Makarov looked a bit surprised. “But she’s fey kin? They’re all one with nature.”

Rollo chuckled. “If nature meant a knife to the throat, she’d be right at home.”

****

Astrid pouted as Dags entered his third hour of a healing lesson. She wanted to get back to her more stabby lessons like Uhtred, but she was stuck with some tree-obsessed dirt-covered weirdo.

“Why do I have to learn about plants when Uhtred gets to go on missions and meet gods?” Astrid complained. “He doesn't even have his first gate opened.”

Dags sighed, rubbing his short green hair in irritation. “You make it seem like your friend is out having fun.” He flew in close, stopping in front of Astrid while upside down. “If you were to join him, death would find you within the first few minutes. And if not you, the distraction of your presence may get someone else killed.”

Astrid recoiled, not liking the feeling of someone else floating into her personal space. “Maybe I should stop doing that? Or do it more.” she thought tentatively.

“That has nothing to do with why you teach me this crap,” she accused, waving her hands at the garden she was in. “At least when Uhtred isn’t on a mission he gets to learn stabby tricks.” Astrid pulled her knives slicing at the air to illustrate her point.

“That’s not what we’re best at,” Dags said, maintaining his annoyed expression.

Astrid threw her knives taking the heads off several flowers. “That’s what you're best at. I’m great at sticking people where they don’t want to be stuck, not gardening and singing all day.”

Dags rolled his eyes thoroughly sick to death of arguing with a girl that should be more like him than any other striker. “We are not gardening. We are increasing the growth rate of an organism. it's the first step to becoming a great healer. And the spell songs manipulate mana with sound. It is something only we can do without an instrument.”

Astrid returned the tossed knives to her hand and immediately threw them at Dags. “That leaves my hands free to stick people!”

Dags didn’t move a muscle, but his body did avoid the projectiles by flying out of the way. His fingers moved; coaxing vines thick as limbs to jet from the ground towards Astrid with the intent to ensnare.

Astrid leaped into the air and kicked off the walls to stay ahead of the vines. As she did, knives flew from her fingers then returned when Dags swatted them away with a few wiry plants beneath him.

The greenery in the room quickly spread, blocking all hopes of escape. With only seconds left before capture, Astrid jumped as hard as she could at Dags releasing what would be her last barrage of blades. To Dags’s surprise, the blades intercepted each other causing them to ricochet wildly. Two ended heading for his back making him split his focus as Astrid teleported blades that would miss back to her front with the same momentum flying them forward.

Vines caught them all before reaching their mark but left just enough time for Astrid to stab at her teacher with daggers held in her hands. Dags gripped Astrid’s hands just before she planted them in his shoulders.

“Not fair,” Astrid whined as she let her daggers fall.

Right before they hit the ground, they teleported in front of her. Without any time to dodge, Dags bit down on the blades but a line of blood dripped down his chin from a wound now bleeding in his mouth.

Astrid laughed maniacally. “I got you, ha! I told you I would!” Vines wrapped around the girl, but she didn’t seem to notice, still too overjoyed at finally making her teacher bleed. “Keep your promise shrimp! Blood for knives and that’s not berry juice on your teeth!”

For the first time, Dags now looked angry. Astrid had tried to cut him every day for months, but he never believed she could do it. He also never had to use his hands until now which was shameful enough, but she had almost taken an eye.

Reluctantly, he used a vine to lift a leather satchel then handed it to the bound hysterical girl. She grabbed at it hungrily, opening it as soon as her hands were freed. Inside were 100 throwing knives of many different shapes and sizes some with the watery look Damascus steel was known for.

Astrid then looked down at her clothes. “Where am I going to fit them all?”