The sun rose gradually as the day went on. It inched across the sky, golden beams tiptoeing toward the ravine floor where dew still clutched the rocks.

"Is this thing ever going to end?" Andrin swung his long arms loosely.

I shook my head. He bounced back from the attack quicker than even an Animaré normally could.

Koren kept on at a brisk pace, his boots crunching on the rocks. "It'll end."

"At least it's pretty today," Andrin said, as if Koren hadn't answered. "Look up there, the sun comes through those trees just right!"

Lylisia and I followed his gaze to the clifftop that towered above us. Andrin's approach was a little too positive for me—the walls, rippling with dappled light, were nice to look at, but they also boxed us in. Lylisia echoed my thought, but gentler.

"It's a great effect Andrin, but I'll feel better about all this when we're out of this gorge and can get away from Lisparr. Who knows how close we are after last night."

Nodding along, I let the others' conversation fade out with the whistling breeze and chirping birds. For the tenth time I studied the ravine walls, sizing them up, marking steps in my head. Like the whole rest of the ravine, they were too risky to climb. We would have to wait until it was shallower. It had been a couple hours of walking already though—who knew when that would be.

The ravine was a fissure that snaked through the Corvelen foothills, a wandering trench carved deep into the earth. Once the sun was overhead, it was hard to tell which direction it led after so many twists and turns, but we had to pray it wasn't straight south. Like Lylisia had said, we couldn't know how close we were to Lisparr, or how far away we needed to stay to not be noticed. A chill went down my spine as my eyes traced a path up the rock wall.

Don't think about them. Whatever those Lisparii things were. The bleary memory fought to unearth itself, writhing underneath layers that buried it. It was a long time ago.

The currents suddenly jumped, a shift that startled me from my thoughts. Something moved.

A strange feeling washed over me like cool water and I reached out quickly, trying to find the shift before it was gone, sifting through the dull little souls of woodland creatures and birds fluttering overhead. The cliff went on without an end, the animals scurried like nothing was wrong, and then—there.

It was an odd soul, like I'd never seen before, bright like a human but... misty, like age had fogged a windowpane with no one to wipe it clean. It moved again, down the cliff, away from us, and my eyes raked the rocky lip. It felt like it... galloped. My heart beat wildly in my chest. How long has it been up there?

All at once the misty soul melted into the currents like a ghost, swallowed by a fog I couldn't dig through. Did I just imagine all that? Where'd it go? I could see in the currents right where it disappeared, a healthy distance away but still close enough I shouldn't have lost it.

"Guys?" I had a wild moment of looking around for the others, with only the rocks staring back at me.

Then Lylisia poked back around a corner, head cocked to the side. "You coming?"

A rush of adrenaline sent fire through my legs and I practically bounded across the rocks to reach her. I couldn't help throwing glances over my shoulder. She tensed up, hand halfway to her concealed blade. Our Bond hummed with tension and I struggled to explain.

"Something was watching me, it was up there and then it was gone just like that, I don't know it—"

"What was it Sed, who? A Ska'al?"

I shook my head and took a deep breath, trying to stop my hands from shaking. "Nothing like that, I mean I don't think so, I just..." I was rambling.

Koren and Andrin were back, eyebrows raised at my panicked tone.

"I don't know what it was, but there was something in the currents I've never seen before, something... watching us. On the cliff."

Everyone instinctively glanced upward, not knowing how to react.

We all just looked at each other.

"Well," Andrin finally said. "That's pretty creepy. I probably won't sleep tonight. Sed," he clapped a hand to my shoulder, "it was nice knowing you man."

"Andrin!"

Koren was already moving on, eyes glued to the clifftops. "We'll all be on alert for anything else around, but for now let's keep moving and get out of this gorge. Nothing is after us yet—let's not give them any more time to change their minds." He nudged me when I caught up. "We can handle the Lisparii Sed, if it comes to it. We'll be ready this time."

We'll be ready. If ready is really enough.

* * *

Koren pressed on. He never faltered, and never called for a break. Even as I drew on magic for strength, my feet started to drag. We hadn't eaten much—what little food we had was waterlogged from the pond—and had barely slept.

My tired eyes constantly scanned the cliff, the dark stone standing out against the perfect blue sky. Lylisia hadn't said more than a few words yet. Birdsong floated along on a cool breeze that rustled through the leaves of trees overhead. We all held onto the currents, cautiously weighing every soul we saw, scanning the horizon for any sign of motion. Nothing caught our attention.

I eyed the rocks warily as we passed and they stared right back, like eyes boring through the back of my head wherever I turned.

Lylisia eventually joined Koren at the front, probably just to keep him from leaving us all behind. Andrin fell back beside me, his own feet dragging a bit.

After a while Koren produced the amulet from an inner pocket and absently turned it over in his hands. He twirled the shiny metal a few times and then nodded to himself, eyes fixed off in the distance. "Huh."

Lylisia paused, giving me a quizzical look over her shoulder. "What?"

Koren gave a slight start. "Huh?" He slid the amulet back in his pocket.

"What were thinking? About the amulet."

"Oh. Just thinking. About the job."

Uh oh. "Hey Lyl?" This was not the time.

"What about the job?"

Koren plowed ahead, oblivious. "I've been worried about this amulet because it isn't 'priceless' like the seller said. But maybe it is."

Lylisia shrugged, taking a glance at the necklace. "It doesn't really matter does it? Someone is paying for it."

"They are, which is why I'm not even sure we should be going to Aelridia at all."

Lylisia stopped dead and caught his elbow. "Excuse me?"

"Well it's old, that must be why it's valuable. It isn't priceless like a rare gem," Koren said. He pulled out the amulet again. "Why bother telling us it's priceless when that isn't true exactly, why not just tell us that it's an artifact? He lied to us."

I glanced warily between the two Animaré. Lylisia was glaring daggers.

"And you realize all this now? After convincing us to take the job, after we staked everything we have on it? You go back on it just like that?"

Koren rolled his eyes. "Don't make me sound so dramatic Lylisia, I'm not proposing we quit and find some other work. But I don't like being lied to, and I'm not sure what's waiting for us in Aelridia. Because of this amulet, they know we're coming."

Lylisia's eyes were popping out of her head. "Oh I—I—am being dramatic? Of course 'they' know we're coming, 'they' hired us! What do you think we're going to do in Aelridia without this job? Show up with nothing but a useless old necklace and eat dirt off the street?"

I didn't disagree with her. We could barely scrounge up food now, what would we do in an unfamiliar city with nothing to our names? Living on the streets hoping for the right work wasn't a good option.

"But if this is a setup..."

"Then I say we deal with it then. We're in too deep. You made the call in the first place Koren, no backing out now."

Koren fell silent and I thought that would be the end of it. Then he looked over his shoulder.

"Sed, you see I've been saying, right? The other night you thought—"

I hastily deflected before Lylisia could turn on me instead. "I thought you had a good point, but it's not so easy to just ditch the amulet."

"I wouldn't say we leave it behind and give up. Just that I don't trust this job anymore."

I opened my mouth to respond but Lylisia cut me off. "But what else do we do? I get it, your 'instinct' says this is shady, but where was that when you convinced us to take the job? Huh?"

He sighed. "Lylisia please see sense. Can you deny that this all seems strange?"

"It's all strange, none of it makes sense, of course it doesn't! But we're being chased by those bloodthirsty monsters, we barely have any food or money, without this amulet we have nothing." She snatched the necklace out of Koren's loose grasp and he let it slide through his fingers. "Sed and I will just take this to Aelridia, if you want to tag along we won't say no."

I rolled my eyes and caught her arm.

Koren just sighed. "Lill don't be ridiculous, you can't just decide for u—"

"And what, you can?" she said, shaking me off. "I can't make decisions like this, but you get to?"

"You know I didn't say that."

"Are you sure? Because you think like that sometimes don't you?"

"I'm saying what I think is best, surely you see the logi—"

"I see the logic that leaves us with no options, throwing away our one chance to get out of this mess, at best rotting on the streets of Aelridia or who knows where!"

"I don't think we have no options, I think you just won't see them," Koren said with a bit of an edge.

"Oh come on, Koren why won't you see sen—"

"No Lill, why won't you see sense! You're smart, why would you ignore my point entirely? Because you're angry that I bring it up only now? Why?"

"Because it isn't—"

"—logical? Realistic? Something to at least consider, to keep us safe? You'll just abandon common sense ? Do you truly not see what I'm saying, does it truly mean nothing to you? How can you insist to me that all this isn't just a lit—"

"I know!" Lylisia exploded; she slammed her fist into the nearest rock with as much force as she could muster. A huge crack appeared in the center, smeared with blood. She raised her shaking hand to wipe the hair from her eyes, blood trickling down her arm.

Koren took a step back, eyebrows raised.

I stood stoically. I had anticipated the outburst long before it broke through her facade. The clouds had congregated darkly above us, and now a light rain started to fall. Lylisia's voice was almost lost in the patter of rain on the solemn rocks around us.

"I know," she repeated in almost a whisper, eyes cast to the ground. "I'm not an idiot, I'm scared of an ambush too."

"Well then why—!"

"Koren please, just... not now."

This time he waited.

"I'm scared, okay? I'm scared too."

I tried to think of something comforting to say. "We'll be okay Lill, we..."

"It's okay, really, no, it's okay." I couldn't tell if it was the rain or tears that wet her cheeks.

She wouldn't look me in the eye but we clasped arms briefly. Her hand lingered in mine for a moment longer before she turned away, smearing a trail of blood across my palm. It stood out stark red against my pale hand.

The girl glanced down at her bloodied knuckles. "I'm sorry for the lost time."

The rest of us looked at each other, then silently fell in line after her.

Behind me, the cracked boulder finally crumbled to dust.

* * *

Unfortunately, the wrath of the storm only grew. Dark, angry clouds above poured down their fury, and before long we were soaked through. Even hugging the cliff walls couldn't keep the wind from tossing sheets of rain into our faces. No one complained though, there wasn't any point. To say it dampened our moods was a laughable understatement.

Even leaving the ravine behind didn't cheer us up. Now we were trying to stick close to the cliffs, anything to get us out of the rain. At this way we could follow the zigzagging rock walls north, as far away from Lisparr as we could. Soon the dark sky became darker and the shadows clung tighter to our heels.

"Koren?" I had to shout over the roaring wind. "When will we be far enough?"

He looked up and out into the storm, squinting through the rain. "It's hard to say. Anyone noticed something watching us since Sed did?"

"Nothing," Andrin yelled back. "Let's find a place to stop for a while and wait out this rain, this is insanity right now!"

Koren nodded and signaled us on and I scanned the cliff rising on my left. "Nothing since earlier, but that doesn't mean nothing is out there," I said in a low voice in Lylisia's ear. "Are you sure we should stop?"

She shrugged and mumbled something about the storm breaking soon.

With a furrowed brow and shaky nerves I followed the others under an overhand up ahead.

We had a wet dinner huddled together, shivering.

"Someone still needs to take watch, especially since we're stopping. Those things might still know we're out here, and the moment we close our eyes they'll be on top of us."

"Agreed, Sedris," Koren said. "I'll take first watch, everyone else can get some rest."

"No." Lylisia's soft voice broke in for the first time in hours. "I'll go first I—I'll just go first."

I laid out my bedroll and tried to drift into an uneasy slumber, but there was no point. The ache of Lylisia's anxiety drummed in the back of my head, it had all day. There was no blocking out her pain. It was as much a part of me as she was. After a while tossing and turning I finally sat up in the darkness and spied my Animaré huddled around the dying fire. Blue eyes stared unblinkingly into the embers through her silver hair. She had no more iron will, no steely gaze and brash confidence—this was Lylisia with her walls torn down.

I sat down and silently and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Knees clutched to her chest, Lylisia sighed and leaned into me. Cool, steady energy moved between our souls. It was our only calm within the storm.

"We'll be okay Lill."

She just nodded.

"We will. If it's a trap, we fight our way out. You fight our way out, you always do."

"It's not that, Sed."

The fire crackled softly.

She went on, "Koren... bothers me, sure. He has such a big head sometimes. He's right though. I don't like where we are, but we're here and that's not going to change. I can deal with it."

"But?"

"What happens when all this ends?"

I let the patter of the rain answer for me.

"What happens when we can't do this anymore? When we don't want to?" Her eyes never strayed from the fire, but mine were caught up in the rain.

"We find something else."

"And what if there is nothing else? What if Animaré don't get anything else, Sedris?" She paused. "I guess someday we'll quit doing all this, and then what?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I and I just, I-I want to know. But I'm also afraid to find out, I don't know. We could just give up on Aelridia, settle down somewhere, I'd like that, but then again, everyone I've ever met sees us as weapons, I wonder—I wonder if somebody somewhere could see us as people too." She sighed. "I guess if I'm just that, just a weapon, I don't really feel like a person too.

"You're a person to me," I said quietly.

Silence.

"We are to Andrin, to Koren."

Silence.

"At the end of the day, wherever we are, you won't be alone."

Lylisia didn't have any answer, but sighed and moved closer into my embrace. It was a long time before I realized she had fallen asleep.

* * *

A clap of thunder shook the ravine and I jerked awake.

The rain was coming down in sheets, driving into the rocks as if to split them open. Did I just fall asleep? It was still dark. A pit formed in my stomach and I frantically searched the currents, finding Andrin and Koren just a few yards away. Lylisia, asleep like the others, had slid down into my lap, so I carefully moved her head onto her pack before reaching out with magic into the downpour.

The ledge above, trees beyond, something was wrong.

The usual nighttime critters were there in the currents, sheltering from the wind and the rain, scurrying along crevices and through the brush, but I caught a glimpse here, and over there, and there it was again—an odd, loping gait, long arms scrunched together in the rocks, and that cold mist creeping up to swallow them just as their limbs unfolded.

It had to be them, it had to. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. The faster I sifted through the currents the more misty shapes I found, all spindly arms and bony legs crouched out in the rain.

I shook Lylisia hard. "Lill," I hissed. "Lylisia get up now, this is bad."

Koren sat up immediately, staring out into the night. We only had to exchange a glance before he was on his feet and shaking Andrin.

We were indeed surrounded by souls, which wasn't surprising. But none of them were animals. They were Lisparii.

"Are those...?" Lylisia's eyes were wide. "These are nothing like last time, are these really what you saw before, Sedris?"

"Lisparii," Koren said. "They caught up and we didn't get out of their territory fast enough."

"What do we even do?" Andrin was awake now, clutching his bag of medicine like a lifeline.

"We'll have to fight our way out before they close in on us," Koren said firmly. I could see his mind already working out the best plan of escape.

Lylisia gave a curt nod and drew her knife, not wasting a second.

"How do we know we have to fight them?" I knew it wasn't what anyone wanted to hear, not from me, not again, but I couldn't help it. They could've attacked while I was sleeping, but didn't.

"Because I'd rather kill them before they kill us."

I glanced worriedly out into the night, then at each of my friends in turn. Koren's gaze bore into me, daring me to challenge his plan. Lylisia looked sympathetic, but I knew there was no way she was backing down from a fight. I last looked to Andrin, who gave me a sad nod. I was about to hold my tongue, but something inside me reeled in the face of Koren's plan.

"We can't just attack them."

Lylisia was ready for it and opened her mouth to talk me out of it, but Koren beat her to it.

"And why can't we? We've dealt with these creatures before, they'll stop at nothing to see us dead."

"We can't fight our way out because we don't know what they're going to do." I locked eyes with Koren. "We can't slaughter them just because we feel threatened. That's why they're out there right now, because they feel threatened too."

I braced myself for Koren's scathing rebuttal. It was a moment before he opened his mouth.

"I'm sorry Sedris, but this is what we have to do."

It wasn't the harsh retort I expected. I don't want to do this. I can't do this. But maybe he was right this time. Another moment of hesitation, then I steeled myself for the carnage to come. I nodded.

Koren didn't waste another moment. "Andrin, let's get a fire going. We need to see them as best we can in this rain, relying on the currents could get us killed. Lill, we need to stay glued in the currents, let the others know if those things move an inch."