There's a funny thing about breathing in the dark.

It's the only thing you have to focus on. There might be sounds and smells and the cold wood pressed against your cheek, but your breathing is louder all the same, slamming against your ears like a panicked drum.

When you breathe in the dark, you're little more than a wild animal, running for its life from the thing three times its size that somehow manages to be just as quiet.

In the dark, you have no eyes. Only your breath.

In the dark, nothing can move. Until something does.

My breath lapped against the wood, washing back at me like the crests of a wave dancing against the shore. Had I been one to require spectacles, they would have fogged up instantly. It wouldn't have made any difference. Little did. I could hear my breath, and my heart pounding, but the more I focused and enhanced my hearing, the less effective it was. I knew Eskir and Jenny were there with me. My leg lay on Jenny's hair, and Eskir's thumb was pressed into my spine, for what I could only assume was his own reassurance that I hadn't vanished for good.

It hurt.

But that's the other thing the dark tends to do. Everything hurts so much more. You stub your toe, you're going to feel it. Even this, Eskir's thumb, wasn't something that caught me off guard. It was persistent. But still, it hurt more than it would have in the daylight.

But it wasn't the pain of his thumb that let me hear my own heart pounding in my chest, even without any augmented senses. That was steady beat of charging feet, a prelude to the all-out clash of swords that would follow it. A full brawl that would definitely, absolutely kill Eskir and Jenny if they stuck their heads out, and would most likely leave me a broken, battered body. If I was lucky.

This spell, this darkness, granted the ones marked by it their vision. Otherwise, everyone else was drowned in it, left to carry torches and hope that a few steps of light would be enough to save them.

It wouldn't be.

I didn't know which side cast the spell. Durn or Merity Point. Either way, it was almost certainly Hunak. It meant occlude in Astivian, one of the languages, one of the original peoples, of Durn. But the Durnians frowned on it, old taboos and ridiculous superstitions. Hunak was a primal spell with many variations, but it excelled at the dark.

When their blades met, it was not metal on metal, but metal on bone and flesh. Spears carved through the cracks in armour, nearly unimpeded by the need to aim for the gaps. Their opponents could barely even see them, let alone defend themselves.

Still though, to come in with such speed, carving their way through the army... That was when the realisation came to me. They were Kindred. Nearly all of them, far more than Durn would muster for a single attack. These were from Merity Point, a fairly young province carved from the hills that once belonged to Durn, and so rich with gold, it could likely have hired out all of Eaden Helm.

Hunak was not to give them any manner of tactical advantage. It was to blind them. Rob them of their safety. Make them feel fear, to leave an impression in the memories of any survivors.

The battle didn't land directly on top of us, or we would have died with no way out. That part was nothing short of a miracle, as we'd stopped directly on the path. Instead, they crashed into each other in the forest, by my best guess a fair distance away, but the pressing force of Hunak drained my hearing too much to tell.

I felt Jenny's hand reach up to my leg, then feel its way upwards, trying to find the shape of my body and crawl her way up.

"Jenny?" I whispered, still wanting to verify it was her, even though her movement required my leg to lift up and free her trapped hair.

She crawled up my body, staying as quiet as possible and as low as possible to the wood base of the wagon. "Xera," she whispered, but even as her mouth approached my face, her voice was distant. "We're going to die if we stay here."

Her breath touched the surface of my nose. She was probably only just in front of me, but still invisible in the black. From the placement of her breath, her lips were probably just in front of mine. Her hands were now clasped around my waist, as if to affirm my presence.

I nodded, then remembered she couldn't see me. "Fine," I said in what must have sounded like a whisper to her in this dark. Anything was better than staying here, waiting to die.

I moved my hand back and tapped on Eskir's head. He pushed himself up to level with us.

"Let's go," I said, louder to him than Jenny, to make sure they both heard. It was less worrying, speaking loudly in the dark like this. Merity's forces could have heard us with their immunity to the spell, if they weren't preoccupied with slaughtering Durnians, but they were the only real threat besides the threat of tripping over a root we couldn't see. Everything else would have been muffled by the dark.

Eskir didn't move, so I picked him up like a kitten and set him down on his feet.

"Grab what you can," I said quite loudly. He knelt over immediately to rummage around for anything his hands could recognise, and I leapt over the side of the wagon to ensure nothing was waiting for us.

To my relief, Stoneguard assembled itself properly. It was obscured in Hunak, but it was, at the very least, there. I swung it, hoping its length would slam into anything or anyone that wasn't supposed to be there, but my weapon felt only empty air.

"We're clear," I said, sheathing Stoneguard before remembering that they wouldn't hear me. The wagon shook, and one of them vaulted off from the rear. The other disembarked from the other side.

"Where are you," came a faint shout from Jenny across from me.

"Jenny?" called Eskir at the back. "Where'd Xera go?"

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"I'm here," I yelled, pressing one hand against the wagon in the same way as I had done before with the horses, and walked around it, feeling my way through the dark. One hand extended out, trying to feel for him, but missed, and I smacked right into the man. He let out a groan of pain, but straightened himself and lashed out without warning to set his understanding of his position, poking me in the eye. Both of us cried out in pain.

"Are you okay?" shouted Jenny, her voice still barely carrying over to us.

"We're fine," I said. "Walk towards us, keep a hand on the wagon."

"What about the horses?" said Eskir.

I grimaced. "We'll have to leave them," I said. "We can't get them out of here like this, and they wouldn't be particularly cooperative like this anyway."

Jenny's hand fumbled on the wood. "Are you two still there?"

"We're here!" I shouted, and realised that I'd spoken the instructions to her earlier, so I repeated them at volume.

Eskir's hand groped my nose. "Ah, there you are."

"I've been here the whole time, ass-wit."

"How are we supposed to move away from the battle in this dark?"

That was a problem for all of us. If the dark were not so insipid in sound, ears might have been somewhat useful, and we could have felt out way down the road like bats. But the road was not the place to go. The wagon was untouched and alone for now, but it would soon draw the attention of the victors, and the path would become a marching ground for a displaced raiding party.

The only option was through the trees that I could not see.

Another hand, not Eskir's, rammed itself into my back. "Ow," said Jenny.

I thought for a moment, then reached down to pick each of them up, and tossed them over my shoulder like newborns.

"Waa! Hey! What the fuck!" screamed Jenny.

Eskir contained his swearing, and his reaction, to a mere "SHIT!"

"Be quiet," I urged. "I've got the best chance at navigating, so you'll have to deal with it."

I took two steps forward. Nothing. Another four steps. Still nothing. By now, we should have been off the main path and into the forest, but the ground beneath my feet was still harsh, slippery dirt. My direction was off. I adjusted, putting the sounds of war directly behind me, and walked in the direction I assumed was west.

A tree met my face with the confident speed of someone who knew where the were going. In an instant, I was down on the ground, my head spinning in delirious dizziness.

Similar groans of urgent pain came from my companions. Jenny hoisted herself to her feet first, I knew, because her voice came from above. "Let me guide, please. Don't just fucking pick me up like that."

"You?" groaned Eskir. "Guide? We're trying to live, sugarshit."

"You're trying to get us killed. Let me guide."

I didn't stand up right away. Instead, I rolled on to my knees and pressed my forehead to the ground. My headache was slowly, very slowly, subsiding, being replaced with nausea and a spinning blackness.

"I found it," said Jenny.

"Bullshit," said Eskir.

"I found it," she said again, more firmly. "I know magic, you fuck."

"You splashed me with some water. You need to do more than that to 'know magic,' you fuck."

"Want to get splashed again? I'm happy to do it."

"You can't even see me, how are you going to—"

"Ashran."

A swift sound like a waterfall slapped against a hard surface, and a few drips of water fell onto the back of my neck.

"Fuck you," cursed Eskir.

"Not my type."

I pushed myself to my feet, reaching out a hand on either side in hopes of grabbing on to one of them. I didn't feel clothes or skin, nor the bark of a tree, but something squishy and soft.

"Jenny? Eskir?"

"Yes?" they answered in unison, with very distinct tones.

"Who am I holding?"

Silence. That was my concern. I withdrew my hand, and a soft hiss came from whatever I had just been holding.

Hunak meant occlude. It carried more danger in it than mere darkness.

"Don't move, either of you."

"What the fuck is going on?" said Eskir. "Who are you holding?"

"I'm proud of you, you little shit-turd," mocked Jenny. "That's, what, half a dozen now in less than a minute? You're learning how to swear!"

In a flicker of movement that neither of them were likely to have caught even if they'd been able to see it, I unleashed Stoneguard and buried it in whatever was standing beside me. A squelching noise was the only answer. No scream, no release of air, just a squelch, like stomping on a bug. I didn't want to discover what it was that I'd just hit. I didn't want to discover how many more of them were lurking around.

"Okay," I said. "Now run."

"Seriously, what's going on?" Eskir repeated. "What was that sound?"

Through the dark, a faint light burst into life, barely illuminating a set of hands.

"Ashran," whispered Jenny. The light blossomed from her fingertips. It was barely anything, and Hunak suppressed it further still, but it was there. Fingernails that I hadn't previously noticed were covered in dirt and grime, but most definitely belonged to Jenny, poked out from the small light. She had them wrapped around it delicately, like a handle. Her chest became somewhat visible on the other side of the light from me, but only just.

My eyes locked in on her for a moment, before I remembered. I turned around, looking in the direction where I'd swung Stoneguard. Nothing was there. I looked at my weapon, expecting to see blood or any other bodily substance, but it was voice. Shivers ran up my spine.

"We need to go," I said.

"One more minute," Jenny urged, still whispering as if to give herself more focus. It came out like a whisper, at least, but it was louder now than her first one. The noise of the world grew every so slightly louder in the presence of the light. "I can make it bright enough to see. I'm not good at most things, but I can do this at least."

Eskir's face came into view. He was leaning down, eyes right in front of her light, ogling the magic.

"It's really quite pretty when I'm not getting drenched," he said.

"Keep it up, and you will be."

"Only you kept saying you'd 'found it'," he said. "Found what?"

"The weak point in the spell. Hunak is one of the spells that can act as a dampener to suppress magic. I'm not strong enough to do this with the dampener, but there's a thousand, thousand weak links running through every piece of space. I needed to find one."

"Both of you, shut up," I said. "Something's out there."

"It's ready!" The light grew brighter, until Jenny's face and feet came into view. I sighed with relief. She hadn't been hurt, obviously, but seeing her uninjured was reassuring. It was a relief, but the shiver of dread still lay into my spine as a warning of what was right behind me.

She stooped down to pick up the rucksack she'd plucked off the wagon. It was filled with potatoes and carrots, and quite heavy for her. I sheathed Stoneguard back into its ring and took it from her, shouldering the weight of it over my back. It was a good pick, and we were lucky she'd happened to grab that one of all of them. Eskir had grabbed three bags, being his own rucksack, Jenny's backpack, and a sack of salt.

Jenny gave me a thankful look, transferred the light of Ashran entirely to one hand, clasped my arm with the other, and the three of us stepped off the path and into the forest.