Her mentor had gone mad. There was no way...

“Wait!” Mary said, “I don't-”

She didn't finish as Bromman swept his stick like an Apache helicopter and sent a cloud of sand flying at her face. Mary was grateful that she no longer breathed to speak, or she'd be choking as well as not seeing. Thankfully, she was only blinded.

She yelped and brought her hands to her face, which proved quite a good idea as the shadows wrapping around them absorbed most of the hit from Bromman's strike. And it was strong - he wasn't messing around.

Mary recovered from stumbling backwards, converting the momentum into a roll and threw a few fireballs at where she sensed Bromman's shadow. She closed her eyes and started clearing the sand with the eyelid's shadows, but it would take a few moments as she didn't want to rip apart anything important.

Meanwhile, her mentor didn't seem overly bothered by her counterattack as he threw something at her. She could barely make out its shape from the shadows' silhouette, but it was enough for her to raise a part of her shadow and intercept the package.

She cleared her eyes just in time to see the fireball splashing against her own chest, and she was getting a flying crash course, with extra emphasis on the crash part.

The good news was that apparently, her new form came with built-in universal protection. The bad news was that she couldn't enjoy her newly-formed crater bed for long, as Bromman was already diving for her with that annoying piece of wood, which for some reason, started shining.

Mary rolled away and felt a shower of sand grains battering at her back from where the stick collided with the dune. Her mentor was definitely not pulling his punches.

“I don't want to fight-”

She cut herself off as she had to focus on staying alive. Or undead. Or whatever. The sands were moving under her feet. Each step required an effort to stay upright, as Bromman kept pressing on.

She tried to mix in some fireballs between the flaily parries, but the man just swatted them away. After Bromman almost delivered a particularly nasty blow to her head, she finally snapped and tried changing tactics.

She reached for the shadows around and used them to grab at her mentor - she didn't want to hurt him, but he needed to be restrained. The darkness rose like tentacles of some eldritch calamari...

...only to get stopped by some kind of force fields which sparkled around Bromman's fancy protectors as the man jumped in and punched her in the jaw. The gloved fist sent her back to the ground. There was a ringing in her ears that had little to do with any nearby phones... or so she suspected.

Mary tried striking with her shadows again, but her mentor just casually threw a handful of small disco balls into the air, sending hundreds of tiny lights all over the place - and causing way too many shadows to appear and disappear in rapid succession. It was simply too much, and the control slipped away from her in an instant.

“So, you become just another name on my list of shame,” Bromman said, flicking the staff to the side, where it sprouted a clean, two-foot-long blade. “Goodbye, Mary Oceanrunner.”

“No-” Mary started to speak, but his hand was already in motion, and the blade became just a trail of silvery light as it flew toward her chest. And then came to a halt with a loud bang as the night turned pink.

Bromman paused for only a fraction of a second before jumping back and spinning his weapon defensively with one hand as he was reanalysing the situation. Only then did Mary notice Mossie, who was trapped in some kind of steel net, and quietly tried to shake itself free. Everything was happening so fast...

“You know, sweetie, I feel like we've only let her out of sight for a moment, and she's already back in trouble.” The voice coming from behind her was familiar, if not exactly fresh in Mary's memory. Her heart would have probably beaten louder at that, but well...

“Guess how surprised I am.” The response, in turn, was something entirely new and strangely metallic - which made sense as soon as Mary managed to throw a glance in that direction.

Two people stood on top of the dune. Both were covered in armour from the tip of their head to the nail of their toe but said armours couldn't be more different. One was definitely female, made of a lot of small silvery plates stacked against each other in such a way as to not leave any of its wearer's skin exposed, but leave no shape unaccented. Well, except for the face, which was covered by a solidly looking yet fancy helmet. The other was almost twice as large, made of bulky, solid plates of dark steel, and had a blue-ish light emanating from the inside. The helmet plate was open - and empty.

“Margaret?” Mary asked. Then the other one had to be... “Hans?”

“Of course, honey. Who else?” said the girl.

“I see you've finally learnt not to fight fair,” Bromman said as he finished drawing a set of flaming symbols in the air with his free hand. “Good.”

The letters shot into the barrier with a deafening thunder. The pink veil cracked like a smartphone dropped from three inches onto a two-inch-thick carpet. Margaret's knees hit the sand as she tried to hold the spell, while Han's self-moving armour lunged at Bromman with a large, two-handed sword ready to strike.

It wasn't enough.

Before Mary scrambled to her feet, Hans was already on the defensive, barely keeping the silvery blade from decomposing his armour into pieces. Margaret dropped the barrier around Mary and tried to throw some shields into the fight, but they vaporised immediately in contact with Bromman's protectors.

Tracking individual movements of the men was almost impossible, but one thing was clear - Hans was backing away toward Margaret. Mary started to regain control of the jumping shadows, readying herself to... what exactly? She couldn't-

Three things happened almost immediately. Bromman landed a kick on Han's stomach and sent the boy flying to the side. His stick's blade started falling toward the now unprotected Margaret.

And Mary found herself standing between the two, with her shadow-covered arm piercing her mentor's chest all the way through, holding a heart in her clenched fingers.

An ornamented heart made of burnt clay.