“What do you mean?” Ranaeril slowed down to ask, but the pressure from the rest of the group forced him to continue running at his previous speed an instant later.

“I might be able to take two myself.” Mahon clarified.

“We’ll have to take them down, anyway.” Halueth intervened in the discussion. “They are too close, and there is still no cave in sight. Let’s wait until the last moment, though. We’ll give a try at your idea once we can’t ignore them anymore. Focus on running for now!”

Halueth’s diatribe redirected their attention to their surroundings and their race against the harpies. The shapes of harpies were now close enough they could clearly recognize their sharp talons pointed towards them. With their previous high altitude, the harpies were diving very fast on them, and the group of four men wouldn’t have more than ten seconds before the monsters would be on their heels.

The chase had led Mahon and the others towards the flank of the mountains, and the ground changed slightly, becoming more rocky and craggy and with less vegetation. The probability of finding a cave greatly increased, but they hadn’t caught sight of one yet, even with the Flow.

“They’re on us.” Mahon warned the other while keeping his eyes focused on the run.

His Flow helped him both to keep track of the harpies and to search for any cavity large enough to protect them from the incoming tide of volatiles.

At his signal, Halueth and Ranaeril stopped running and positioned themselves to shoot at the harpies. Their hands flashed with insane speed as they drew four arrows from their quivers. Jorik was ready even before they were, the Flow giving him an advantage of timing. Where the two Hunters had waited for Mahon to warn them, Jorik had predicted his call, and he had half a second over the others.

There were many things to consider for the four men to shoot the seven harpies at the same time. First, both Halueth and Ranaeril had to fire four arrows in such a way they would arrive at the same time and corner their targets. They were both able to shoot up to five, so it could be considered easy for them. Alas, the run had gotten them slightly short of breath, and they had to aim at two different targets, not one.

Moreover, it wasn’t like they were the only ones to have to kill their target at the same time. They had to synchronize with each other so they could all kill their harpies within the same second, or any surviving harpy would reflexively scream at their attempt and call for help.

“I’ll take the two on the left.” Halueth said first.

“I’ll take the two after that.” Ranaeril followed instantly.

“I’ll take the right one.” Jorik completed.

It leaves those two for me, I guess.

Mahon focused on the two harpies that plunged towards him with their claws all out and their eyes full of hunger. He wasn’t able to shoot four arrows to kill two harpies like Halueth and Ranaeril, but he had other assets he could use.

Let’s just hope it will work.

Mahon shot first. He had two targets, and he was the weaker archer, thus he started the hostility.

From his first arrow, fired up in the air, the three others adjusted their own shots to match it. Jorik cheated, as with his Flow he could not only guess when the arrow would arrive, but he could also clearly see its trajectory. He adjusted his own shot with ease.

Halueth and Ranaeril, on the other hand, simply relied on their immense mastery and vast experiences. They fired more than twice faster than Jorik or Mahon and even had the luxury to pause to adjust their breathing and precision. Mahon and Jorik, whose gestures were smooth and without any break almost appeared clumsy in comparison.

Twelve arrows cut through the air towards the descending harpies. Two for each harpy. Except one.

Mahon was no archer expert, even though with the Hunter’s training he could now be said to be relatively skilled back in Finem, and there was no way he could shoot four arrows simply because he wanted it.

Instead, he focused on the two arrows that were aimed at his harpy. He embedded them with his Flow with extreme care like he would with a newborn. He weaved a cocoon around the two projectiles, even though they were moving at incredible speed.

Through the Flow, it was almost like the harpies had frozen, and he had all the time he wanted. Reality was slightly different.

Mahon felt his mind twitch under the strain. He had never used this technique on two different targets before. But what was better than the adrenaline of a deadly combat to challenge one’s limits?

His small pockets of Flow wrapped around the arrows seemed to vibrate as Mahon focused deeply on what he was trying to do.

The fourteenth Step.

Trespassing what was commonly accepted as inviolable laws of nature, Mahon duplicated his two arrows with his Flow. The vibrations of the cocooned arrows increased so much that it suddenly seemed they were in two different positions at the same time.

Mahon increased the pace of the vibrations, and the gap between the two mirror arrows grew wider. Through his Flow, Mahon witnessed the look of concentration on Halueth and Ranaeril’s face. They watched with a mix of fear, faith and incomprehension the two arrows of Mahon targeted at only one harpy.

Jorik, on the other hand, was focused on Mahon’s actions through the Flow. He was the only witness of what was truly happening. Mahon’s duplicated arrows only existed within the world of rhythms, and no trace of the strange magic was yet visible to the naked eye.

And then, the action resumed brutally as the harpies and the arrows collided in a frontal shock. Half of the arrows were avoided, but that was why every archer had doubled them. The other half found their target without any issue.

Six harpies died, a single arrow piercing their small head all the way to their brain. The seventh one, although seemingly perfectly fine, staggered.

No projectile had even come close to it, and yet it seemed it had been hit as well.

But not hard enough.

Mahon had only managed to move his arrows so much. One had hit the harpy at the left wing, and the other at the torso. It was clearly deadly enough, and the harpy panicked as it realized it couldn’t stop its descent and was falling straight to the ground.

But it wasn’t deadly, fast enough.

The harpy’s scream echoed in the otherwise silent valley for a full second before the volatile crashed heavily on the ground, stopping abruptly its screeching noise.

A deep silence followed the death of the seventh harpy.

On Halueth and Ranaeril’s faces, a mix of stupor and fear. Stupor, because they couldn’t understand how Mahon had hit the last harpy. They had clearly seen only two arrows leaving Mahon’s bow, and they had seen both aimed at the other harpy. Fear, because even though they didn’t understand how it happened, they could easily guess Mahon had failed. And they knew the consequences of his failure.

Jorik’s face was full of hope and admiration. Fear wasn’t something he was used to since he had discovered Finem. Many things were below his level, and even though he would probably have a hard time, he had faith in his own ability to survive. And he had Mahon with him. The fear of failure didn’t even register in his mind. Instead, he had witnessed with his Flow something that had never been done before. He realized now more than ever how far he was behind Mahon, and how powerfully monstrous his teammate really was.

Mahon had a lingering smile. He had tasted defeat before. He had tried something that nobody before him had ever imagined, and he had almost succeeded. Eagerness and seriousness mixed together on his face. Eagerness for knowing he was close to understanding what the fourteenth Step really was. Seriousness for the fight wasn’t over, and his friends’ survival now mainly depended on him.

A second passed before a piercing squawk tore the silence of the valley. A cacophony answered an instant later, seemingly coming from all sides. It was distant, for now, but they promised death to whoever had roused the interest of the harpies.

“By the Black Pinnacle, we’re seriously in deep troub…” Ranaeril started, but Mahon was gone even before he finished his sentence.

He appeared more than twenty meters to the side, already running. He barely stepped once before he flashed again to reemerge another twenty meters further. Within a second, he teleported twice more, rushing at incredible speed along the base of the mountains.

Mahon kept his Flow as encompassing as possible while using the thirteenth Step repeatedly, in search of a cave. A sudden depression caught his attention, but it wasn’t deep enough, and he continued past it, moving at least ten times faster than the group when they were previously running.

In a matter of seconds, he had already explored the next three hundreds meters in depth. Fortunately, even though they had woken up the harpies, it seemed the volatiles needed time to take off and reach them. Yet, multiple black dots could be seen rising in the air through the whole valley. They were so numerous, Mahon couldn’t help but shiver for a very short instant at the sight of this deadly threat.

Best not to linger.

Only after half a kilometer of quick teleportations did he find a cave wide enough to accommodate the four of them and deep enough to protect them against the flock of harpies. The only occupant was a saber-toothed tiger that seemed to have moved in the depth of the cave by fear of the harpies.

It was usually a formidable opponent, quick enough to avoid most arrows and almost soundless and invisible to human senses. His teeth and claws had probably caused the death of many.

Unfortunately for him, Mahon had his spear. It wasn’t a weapon recommended while traveling through the mountains, but Mahon had insisted on having it since he would have to carry it to cross to the Gedrain kingdom, anyway. There was no way he would leave it behind.

The spear caught the tiger completely unaware and ended its life in one smooth swoop. Mahon then teleported back towards his comrades to show them the way to the cave.

In the meantime, the harpies were getting more numerous, and some were close enough to them to become a threat in the next handful of seconds. Mahon ignored them all as he continued to teleport towards Jorik and the two Hunters.

He perceived them with his Flow before they got sight of him, and he was at their sides a second later, surprising Halueth and Ranaeril.

“Mahon?! How the fuck are yo…” The latter asked while barely repressing a step backward at his sudden apparition.

“No time to explain.” Mahon cut him short. “There is a cave approximately four hundred meters in this direction.” He pointed to the cave he had discovered a moment before. “Run as fast as you can and forget about anything else. This will soon become a dead land.”

Above their heads, harpies had already got sight of them and were plunging to satiate their hunger of fresh blood. For now, there were already dozens and dozens of them, but in the horizon, a gigantic tide was slowly rising, and when it would come, everything would be wiped in its path.

Halueth threw a worried look at this sight. “The day nightmare becomes real.”

Mahon chuckled at the comment. “I’ve lived through worse ones.” He then pushed the two Hunters towards the cave. “Now, go and don’t stop. I’ll take care of the harpies.”

“What? But…”

“I said go!” Mahon let a bit of his Last Red’s voice show through his tone, and with Jorik’s help the trio started running again, hope rising in their heart.

Mahon gripped his spear firmly, the familiar sensation helping him focus on the task ahead. A light smile lingered on his face as he let his Flow get a good hold of the situation. Bringing his right hand to his mouth, he whistled as hard as he could, instantly drawing the ire of the nearby harpies to him.

How can you even compare to Amentiae and Nightmare? We’re in broad daylight and you only have two legs!

His spear spun around insanely fast, and the first harpy to reach him ended up beheaded without even seeing what had killed it. Mahon then vanished, and the bloodbath started.