“So Silt, how do we get to this treasury?” Drak asked. “Because I’m really ready to get out of here.”

“The only way that I know of is where the Shade Catcher has broken into,” she admitted.

“So we have to go through that thing?” Drak cried, a look of shock on his face.

“If we want to get out of here in one piece, there’s not a lot of other options,” Silt replied flatly.

“We have everything that’s useful here,” Jake said, giving the lab a final glance around. “I have a few more light potions but there’s not much else here we can put into something useful.”

Silt raised one hand to bring down the ice wall. “Better get ready then.”

The ice wall vanishes and the entrance of the lab was suddenly filled with shadows. The shadows swarmed towards the three of them, so Jake pulled out a light potion and quickly made it into a light whip. Drak followed up with a short blast of ball-shaped light with water and this forced the shadows back even further.

“Go!” Silt called. Jake headed out into the hallway, followed by Drak. “Head back the way we came earlier.”

Jake turned and started to retrace their steps but stopped when a denser shadow blocked the hall. Jake pushed another whip of light at the shadow but this one wasn’t as easily dispersed and almost seemed to push the light whip back at him.

“Not good!” Jake shouted, realising that one of their biggest advantages had just been lost. This shade was much stronger than the ones they had fought on their way to the lab. “Drak, try something?”

Drak stepped forward to try something but the lesser shadows swarmed forward and forced him back.

“We need to go a different way,” Silt said, raising her hand and blocking the hallway with another sheet of ice.

“If they can handle water, is ice really going to do stop them? Drak asked.

“It will slow them down,” she replied sharply. “If you were an ice or water user, you would understand.”

Drak opened his mouth to ask more questions but Silt raised one hand sharply. “Come on, this way.”

Jake followed Drak behind Silt and glanced around but realised much of the hallway looked the same as the ones they had already been in. The shadows were a little more sluggish under the impact of his light potion as if they were less concerned with their presence than before. “Where are we going now?’ he asked.

“There’s another route, through the servant's stairs that can get us to where we want to go,” Silt replied. “Takes longer, but there’s no real choice.”

As they walked, whispering and the occasional shout could be heard but it was hard to decide where the noises were coming from. Abruptly, another shade appeared in front of them amid the shadows and pushed the shadows at them. The shade seemed to make a gesture like stamping a foot and Jake’s newly found earth essence awareness made him realise that the shade was trying to bring the walls down him.

“Look out!” he shouted as he rolled to one side to avoid chunks of masonry that were ripped from the walls and thrown at them.

He tried to shoot another blast of light liquid at the shade, aware that he had momentarily lost track of Silt and Drak. But the shade vanished from the position ahead of him. Just as abruptly, it appeared to his left.

Drak appeared and hit the shade with a light-boosted punch. The shade staggered back then quickly dispersed into the shadows. The other shadows became sluggish as if they had lost their impetus to attack.

Silt sent out a burst of electricity into the shadows, which pushed them back even further.

“We need to keep going,” she said, turning off the hallway to the servant staircase.

“How many flights of stairs?” Drak asked, pausing for a moment.

“Doesn’t matter, we need to go this way,” she retorted.

The staircase was less shadow-filled than the hallway and Drak’s glowing fist dispersed the weaker ones while Silt was able to use her electricity to push away the stronger ones that appeared.

They climbed three flights of stairs before Silt stopped. “We need to leave this stairway now.”

“Why?” Drak asked, slightly breathlessly.

“Because my father is a prick and the other part of the staircase is masked with an illusion. Come on, this way,” Silt replied.

They continued up two more flights of stairs, with the shadows steadily growing in number. The earth shade appeared as they reached the top of the fifth flight. Or at least Jake assumed it was the same one due to the stamping foot gesture it made and the hail of masonry that showered them.

Another shade was also in the hallway. Jake tried the light liquid whip at it, but it was clearly the one with water abilities and learned quickly as it held up his whip easier this time.

Drak stepped up to attack the shade again, but the shadows were too thick.

“Can’t you use the light potions?” Silt shouted at Jake.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’m not a combat caster, they aren’t working the way they did and I don’t know what else to try!” Jake shouted back.

“Jake, toss me one of those light potions,” Silt said, a strange look on her face.

He threw her one of the potions. As she grabbed it, she also appeared to turn into a bolt of lightning and then slammed it into the nearest shade. The shade seemed to almost soundlessly scream and vanished even quicker than when Drak had punched it earlier. The shadows around it stuttered for a moment and Jake hammered them with a blast of light liquid at the remaining shade. It wavered for a second then also dispersed.

Drak was holding his light shields to keep the rest of the shadows at bay and let out a huge sigh when the two shades vanished.

Silt returned to human form. She was sluggish, holding one hand that was pierced in several places by shards of glass from the potion vial. She wavered a little, almost looking drunk, and Jake reached out to steady her. She had clearly used way too much essence too quickly.

“Got to keep going forward. Second turn up there,” she said, her words slurred.

“You sound drunk!” Drak said.

“I’ll kick your arse when we get out of here,” Silt snarled at him.

Drak nodded to Jake. “She’s not too bad then.”

She reached out and leaned against the wall for a moment, then started to walk forward. Her ability to walk was clearly okay, but her reaction speed would likely be a bigger problem.

They reached the second turn that Silt had mentioned. Jake abruptly became aware that the water shade was back and it appeared to be preparing to create a spike of water to attack them with. Before he could reach it, a green gem appeared an elongated diamond shade. A squeak made him look down to see the Myphler had reappeared and seemed to be controlling the gem.

The gem moved at speed at the shade as the Myphler gave another squeal. The shade didn’t so much disperse this time as exploded, but Jake didn’t think that it was gone forever. They needed something that could kill these things permanently, but he had no idea what that might be.

Silt turned around, still somewhat unsteady and reaching out one hand to steady herself a little.

“Look, the little guy has better reactions than you do!” Drak called, with a big grin.

“If we survive this, I will scorch you black,” Silt hissed at him.

“See, even your jokes are weaker,” Drak replied.

Jake sighed. “Drak, give it a break.”

“But she can hardly walk..” he began. Until Silt spun and hit him with a solid right hook. He took a few steps back, holding his jaw. “That hurt!”

She gave him a flat stare. “Can the jokes then, or I’ll hurt you even worse.”

They continued to walk and Silt pointed to a final set of stairs. “Up here one flight then through the secret entrance to my father’s study. Then we can head to the treasury and get out of here.”

The final flight leading to the study was eerily quiet, leading Jake to wonder what they would face. They reached the door to the final flight of stairs and found themselves facing a line of shades. The door was blasted by a host of elemental spells but Jake managed to drag Drak back a few steps while Silt threw up another ice wall to block the attacks.

But the ice wall only lasted a few seconds before being obliterated.

“What the hell?” Silt cried. “This thing thinks we are that much of a threat?”

“We do have a potion that could hurt it,” Jake said, helping Drak up.

“We might even be the last people left alive in here,” Drak added grimly.

“I doubt it, I would know if my father was dead,” Silt replied. “Just because I know he would be running out of here if he really thought he was going to die.”

“So why hadn’t he left?” Drak asked, frowning.

“Bad publicity,” Silt replied.

“Okay, this is fascinating, but guys, why are we still alive?” Jake asked, looking at the entrance where the ice wall had vanished.

“What do you mean?” Drak asked.

“There’s a whole bunch of shades up there, why aren’t they charging through this open door and attacking us?” he replied.

Jake leaned forward and for a second, the hallway was empty and no shades were in sight. But as soon as he looked around the corner, a number of shades reappeared and a host of attacks were thrown at him. He threw himself backwards to avoid them as the wall behind them exploded.

The shards of wall bounced back into the room, so the momentary hope that they could escape through the hole vanished.

Jake turned to Silt. “Are Lirien’s office windows warded?”

“I don’t believe so,” Silt replied. “He’s sufficiently arrogant to assume the garden wall and his own defences would protect him. Why?”

“So I have a plan, but it might be really stupid,” Jake admitted.

----------------------------------------

Flair pushed another burst of flames in the direction of one of the shades that were attacking them.

“Don’t these things have a limit, they just keep coming!” Lirien shouted angrily, using a spinning disc of metal to decapitate one of the shades. It vanished for a moment but quickly reappeared just a few inches away.

“I told you that you need light, radiance, spirit or shade to really do much to these things, so your skills are not very effective against them,” Flair replied.

“I’m aware of that,” he snapped. “Has that light user awoken yet?”

“Not yet, sir,” Arctorian replied. He was using his air essence to push back the shadows in tendril format, ripping through the shades and shadows, but they reformed just as quickly as he could force them away.

Flair could see that many of the remaining nobles and soldiers in the room, even including the three of them, were overusing their essences and getting tired. For a moment, a bunch of the attacking shades abruptly vanished.

“What happened?” Arctorian cried, turning around a little to check the rest of the room.

Just as suddenly, the shades were back and one launched a bolt of condensed earth at her, which she managed to dodge. Lirien sent out three metal bolts that caused the shades to waver but not to vanish completely. Instead, there was a slight whistling noise, and the shades vanished again.

Flair used the momentary pause to form a large ball of flame and when the shades reappeared, the others could quickly throw everything at them. This time the shades vanished and didn’t immediately reappear.

“Do you know the meaning of this?” Lirien asked her.

“Possibly. But it makes no real sense,” she admitted.

“In what way?” Arctorian asked.

“The only reason the shades would vanish was because the Shade Catcher pulled them away to deal with something else,” she replied.

“But aren’t we the only ones left alive?” one of the nobles asked.

“Well, clearly not,” Arctorian replied sternly. “And this creature clearly seems to think they are more of a risk than we are.”

“Not enough to keep these shades away completely,” Lirien replied.

“Let’s just hope they haven’t broken the wards yet,” Flair said.

“But we can still get to the treasury?” Arctorian asked.

“Yes, just along here, there’s a place we can break through the wall and be in the right place,” Lirien replied.

Flair studied where he had pointed to and couldn’t avoid a strange sense of foreboding.