“Ugh!” the woman in white cried as she crashed onto the ground, the sand her around rising in a crater.

Anouk didn’t miss the chance. The watch captain ignored his bleeding right hand and threw the dagger into the centre of the crater with a sonic boom.

The woman blocked with her gauntlet, but the dagger cleaved straight through and pierced her chest.

No!

It was an afterimage!

The next moment, she blinked behind Anouk while slashing down a sabre of flames, only to be hit by Alleigh’s death ray in the flank.

“Cursed mutt!” She screamed, coughing blood and chunks of flesh. The tree she had used to break her fall toppled over.

The woman rolled to the side, dodging Anouk’s dagger again and then took the chance to create distance.

“I will cleave you in half, filthy assassin!” Anouk bellowed with a rasping voice.

The woman spat; her visage calm. She turned her eyes towards Elrhain even while fighting two versus one.

White hair, white eyes, white skin like the wings of a dove. But Elrhain could only see death there. An intent to kill him and Agwyn by hook or by crook.

The boy trembled, but Agwyn covered his sight with her body, “D-Don’t look.”

Alleigh’s roars, Anouk’s shouts, and the curses of the woman in white. They rang for what felt like hours, or maybe it was only five minutes.

When the dust settled and all the remaining Kiklas were dead because of the Oceanic grade battle, Agwyn plopped on her butt, releasing a breath she didn’t notice she held.

She lifted her arm, tired. Elrhain pulled her up as his slit eyes reflected the bloody figures of Anouk and Alleigh. The Pengyte limped behind with a spear stuck to his right foreleg.

“She got away. My apologies.” Anouk bowed.

Elrhain fumbled as he took out another talisman from his pocket. It was a crystal shard that looked like indigo glass.

“M-Mommy gave this. Alleigh, injured. Healing.” The words refused to come out of his mouth right.

Anouk bowed again, then took the shard. He crushed it and a fog of icy blue covered both him and Alleigh.

It took a few minutes for the healing to abate. The wounds didn’t recover completely, but it was better. The large gash running down Anouk’s side stopped bleeding while the spear wound on Alleigh had closed, the spear plopping to the sandy ground. But the burnt fur patches on the husky’s body remained.

Elrhain slapped his cheeks hard. “The Out-tribals, can you help?”

Anouk clenched and opened his fists as if gauging his remaining strength. He nodded.

Elrhain tugged Agwyn’s sleeve, not knowing how to console her. The little girl had tears streaking down her eyes as she caressed a wound on Alleigh’s droopy face.

They climbed onto the Pengyte’s back.

The barrier contoured their body even now. Agwyn, calmer, held a rune carved twig about three inches long. She crossed her eyes with Elrhain’s, then snapped the stick in half.

A luminescent bird of blue and green flew out of the crack, zooming into the horizon towards mount Earthloch. They should have done it the moment Anouk had sensed danger. Alas, it had utterly slipped their panicked minds.

“Go. We’ll wrap this up before the slug woman and big guy gets here.”

***

When the asura-faced Cyra and Bromwyn arrived blazing with manna, the battle had just about finished.

Alleigh and Anouk culled the gheistrums like leeks. The enemies were mostly Kiklas, with a few higher-order variants.

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There was one type far bulkier, with an exoskeleton filled with poisonous spikes. Another had scythe-bladed mandibles half their body length jutting out like scissors. While the most troublesome ones had magical acid breaths.

It took only ten of these monsters to reduce half of the settlement by the lakeside to ruins before Anouk and Alleigh arrived.

A few men worked to remove the broken walls and smashed roofs from a rubble pile. They dragged an aged woman from underneath.

Elrhain was sure life had already left her.

Agwyn sat beside him on a sandy rock. She had been silent for the last half an hour, staring at the dhionne with a complicated gaze.

Despite the casualties, the dhionne seemed thankful. That two Oceanic realmers had come to their aid.

Elrhain spotted the two men they met before the gheistrum outbreak. One had his arm wrapped in leafy bandages. The shorter one looked fine.

A group of around thirty dhionne, cultivators, kowtowed to Bromwyn as they reported their losses. Anouk too recounted the battle with the woman in white.

Cyra picked Elrhain up, snapping him awake from brooding, “It’s been a long day. Let’s go back.”

He could only nod, pretending not to notice the chill in her voice. Anouk and Bromwyn would remain here. For further investigations no doubt.

So would Alleigh. The husky’s injuries were severe, even though he looked fine from the outside. Cyra promised to send a healer for the loyal husky as soon as they got back.

Agwyn kissed the husky goodbye on his cheek, then ruffled his snout for good measure. Alleigh whimpered, licking her hands.

Even in the sky, Agwyn looked back at the ravaged village.

It took about ten minutes for them to return to Mount Earthloch. Perhaps it was the unforeseen events of the day or the tragedy of the Out-tribals still flashing before his eyes. Elrhain could not soothe his thumping heart.

Everything looked bizarre in his dizzy eyes. The familiar flora in front of their courtyard, the flowers he planted with Agwyn, and the tweets of the seasonal birds he had grown so used to.

His eyes would see one thing, but his mind another.

Elrhain put one foot on the stairs before the low-inclined trail that led to their home. His left hand grasped Cyra’s while Agwyn hugged his right. He looked back.

“Hmm?”

“What is it?”

Elrhain pointed at a line of servants, carrying back baskets full of foodstuff from the Lochuir township.

The day was yet young, although it felt otherwise. The dhionne, immersed in their everyday activities, did their tasks with nonchalance. But something was strange.

Elrhain spotted a few nobles, among them Onthoakt Haragol, racing up the mountain towards the grand hall at the summit.

Another group rushed downward, at their helm two Watch Captain’s Elrhain recognized. From above, teams of Watch members left on fliers. Elrhain reckoned they headed to the Out-tribal village.

But that wasn’t it. Elrhain scrutinized the faces of the servants again. In Earth years, he had been in their company for over three decades.

He knew their names and faces like the back of Agwyn’s hand.

“There are new servants?”

Cyra looked down, tilting her head. She wiped Elrhain’s sweaty forehead with the hemp of her dress and replied, “Rhain. It’s okay. No one will hurt you here.”

“No, I am serious. Who is that new guy behind Servant Korna?” Elrhain pointed at a wiry middle-aged man. He had small beady eyes and an unruly beard falling down to his chest like vines.

The servant in question stopped the moment he noticed the prince looking at him.

Something pricked Elrhain’s eyes. He rubbed them, but the pain intensified.

“What servant? Korna is the last one.”

“One, two…. Seven. The seventh one, there. You see?”

“Rhain, there are six.”

“What? B-But?”

Elrhain gasped. A strange pressure was squeezing down his chest. The air was heavy, like breathing mercury.

“Ellie?” Agwyn tapped his face, but his vision blurred like a mirage. One world overlapped with another in a psychedelic mix of faces. He leaned onto Cyra for support.

“Seven. Seven…. Rhain?” Cyra grazed his face with a concerned expression. She then turned towards the line of servants.

The vine-bearded man in question stopped while the six others continued to climb.

His frightened eyes crossed Elrhain’s, and the man took a slow step backwards. Green manna gathered at his bark-skinned feet.

“INTRUDER!” As if at last seeing the anomaly, Cyra screamed at the top of her lungs and encompassed the entire area with a rampaging torrent of vaporous manna.

And as the screen of blue from Cyra’s magic shielded Elrhain’s vision, the suffocating feeling vanished.

Elrhain lost his balance, but Agwyn supported him from behind.

“He’s escaping!”

Elrhain cried.

By then, the vine-bearded man had stomped on the ground with green sparks igniting on his legs. The soil under his feet opened up, and he dropped down out of their vision.

But Cyra was faster. Her domineering magic pierced through an invisible veil shrouding the area no one noticed existed.

Instantly, the world in front of them shattered like glass.

The man reappeared a few meters away from where the hole opened. It was a mirage!

He panicked, then deflected a water missile with his sword and hurled into the forest foliage head-first.

The sudden turn of events threw the servants and the incoming nobles off their feet. But their training kicked in, similar to how the Out-tribals reacted to the gheistrum outbreak.

The servants dropped everything in their hands and evacuated the area. At the same time, the nobles raised their manna, spreading apart to encircle the vine-bearded man.

“Careful, he is a Soul mage! Mid Oceanic!” Cyra warned.

Elrhain noticed more surges of manna descending from the summit of the mountain.

Cyra squatted down to their eye level. “You are safe my babies. Father Thundham will keep his sight on you.”

Cyra’s eyes were enflamed red in wrath. Elrhain had never seen the women so angry.

She left with a gust of wind in pursuit, but her protective barrier remained.

A few seconds later, Thundham appeared beside them like a flickering image. He picked Elrhain and Agwyn up with a sombre face and flew towards the top of the mountain. Elrhain looked over the old man’s shoulder.

He saw a dragon.