Talia sat on the roof of wagon two, crosslegged, cycling her core in a gentle rhythm. It was more soothing than anything, though if Zaric was to be believed, it would improve her mana flow speed and thus her casting time. To be frank, she only really used it because it was easy to multitask with and seemed to help her regenerate mana faster.

Most of her focus wasn’t on the exercise, but rather on the psionic web she had strung out around her, which covered the whole length of the caravan. At first, it had been difficult to manage in a multitude of ways.

To start, extending her range so far was mana intensive. When she’d just started, she could barely maintain it for an hour, if that. The expenditure had diminished as she honed her imagery of the sense, and as she continued to hone her will. The cycling exercise also helped quite a bit.

There’d also been the difficulty of separating empathy from telepathy, which was harder than it sounded. It had taken some serious imagery shenanigans before she was able to create a distinction that didn’t rely on just putting less mana into it.

Telepathy and empathy seemed intrinsically linked, an alloy of sorts, like two metals that mixed to form a whole. Dividing the two had taken an effort of Will, bolstered by her unwillingness to pluck thoughts from her fellow crew members. Eventually, after an entire day of frustration, the solution had been oddly simple.

Talia had two channels that ran up her neck and threaded themselves through her brain. On a whim, she’d slowed the mana flow through only one, leaving the other senselock open. Then she’d poured all her Will into maintaining only her empathy, as her sense sputtered erratically, starved of mana. Just when she’d thought it wouldn’t work, the sense had stabilized.

It had immediately bombarded Talia with every sensation those around her were feeling, minor, major and everything in between.

The deluge was such that in the few seconds she had to turn the ability off, she’d already blacked out.

Since then, she’d been exceedingly careful of how she managed the capricious sense, monitoring its breadth religiously.

Anything powerful enough to knock me senseless can’t be good for my head. Then again, sucking up the miasma of tension and fear from everyone around me probably isn’t either.

Which came to the root of Talia’s issue with Calisto’s request: the sheer mental strain of experiencing what forty or so individuals were feeling for hours on end.

The expedition was quickly being run ragged. It wasn’t so much that they were being pushed to go all out, in fact, compared to their speed before reaching first haven, they were only going moderately faster; even the drakes’ seemingly endless stamina had its limits, after all. It was a combination of small factors.

But mostly, it was fear.

The number of delvers who had experienced a Migration could be counted on one hand. The others had only heard stories from their elders, or history books. They didn’t know what exactly to expect, but they knew that the prospect of braving an expedition through the start of one meant bad things for the expedition’s casualty rate.

The fear was only compounded by the never-ending anticipation. The threat of the unknown coupled with the lack of a tangible enemy. Talia was becoming more certain that the mere idea of danger was more damaging than the danger itself. The crew were jumping at odd rock formations, constantly looking over their shoulders. Everyone was on a hair trigger.

All of it was piped directly into Talia.

It was exhausting in more than a magical sense. It wore down at the foundations of her mind slowly, like a disease. In the two days since she’d spoken to Calisto, she couldn’t once remember feeling a positive emotion. Almost as if the burden of others’ dread had soaked so deeply into her mind that it was incapable of feeling anything.

How do other psions manage it?

Talia thought back to what Calisto had mentioned about legion psions, and how they bolstered morale.

I can do that, but should I?

In the end, well-being trumped ambiguous morality. It could be argued after all, that she was doing everyone a service. Hope would breed tenacity, which would alleviate some of the strain.

On both her and the crew.

Already she’d had to discreetly point out a few delvers whose emotions had begun to sink into…dark places.

Lazarus had approached each individually, offering support and reminding them that he was there and that there was no shame in talking to someone.

Mind made up, Talia tiredly put together the imagery for the working in her mind. It wouldn’t do for her to remind them all of their homes and families, only to spark melancholia and homesickness, on top of the stress.

Once she’d thought of a few that would work, she mentally reached out to the psionic web she’d strewn around herself. The psyches of her fellow crew were like bobbing sparks of thought, bumping up against it as they moved.

Talia frowned, eyes still closed, as she noticed new sparks floating about her domain.

They were dim, flickering things, almost nonexistent next to the bonfire of sapient thought.

But they were there, about a dozen of them, not so much thinking as experiencing—there was no other way to describe it. Snippets of feeling slipped from the dim minds like stray wood shavings from a carpenter’s lathe.

Hunger—Fear. Patience—fear. Patience—Hunger—Protectiveness. Hunger—Hunger. Aggression—Patience.

The pattern was unlike anything Talia had experienced, closer to images than feelings, but more intense almost—

Bestial. Shit.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The next moments melded together into a span of seconds that felt like hours.

Frantically, Talia released the senselock on her telepathy, focusing all of her will on connecting to whatever the beasts were. Her mindsense pinpointed finally pinpointed them, clustered above the caravan, clinging to the ceiling.

The young woman’s psionic probe connected tenuously, linking her into the alien mind of what could be nothing less than a hunter— an ambush predator. From the beast’s perspective, she caught glimpses of the wagons and their escort as they bustled along silently, unaware of the danger.

One of the animals even stared at her, sitting still on the roof, with something akin to curiosity roving about its consciousness, though it was quickly vanquished by a ravenous hunger.

Then, Talia made a mistake.

She opened her eyes. Conflicting fields of view overlapped in her vision.

She looked up. For a brief moment, she felt only confusion. Behind her a ways, where the cluster of deep dwellers should have been, there was only smooth cave ceiling, mottled with budding stalagmites. The only reason she knew her mind wasn’t tricking her was that she could still clearly see the dim glow of consciousness high above her.

Then she locked eyes with the nearly invisible foe.

It happened all at once.

The beasts dropped from the ceiling onto the delvers below in streaks of iridescent blur.

Talia’s clicker call of ‘Danger; close’ came a split second too late. Two crew members were already on the ground, being mauled by the vaguely feline deep dwellers. Panic sprung up as silence was shattered.

Clicker calls vibrated irritatingly in her ears as Talia’s body flipped into fight or flight mode, pumping her full of adrenaline.

Her mindsense placed the number of enemies at around eleven or so, but though she knew where they were, her eyes had a hard time tracking them.

Thinking quickly, she slid down the side of the wagon, landing and fumbling for her sword. Her shield bracer had been left in the wagon—an oversight, hopefully, one she wouldn’t regret.

Already, behind her, two sapient minds had been snuffed out, their light extinguished.

Two crew members. Dead in the space of an instant.

Clicker calls for delvers to assemble in the middle of the wagon train filtered through the mess of overlapping clicks.

Talia dashed forward, intent on preventing more casualties.

At the last second, she noticed the bestial mind, its physical form nothing but a splotch in her vision. The young woman dropped under the leaping beast, activating her sword and stabbing it two-handed above her, hoping to impale the beast with the help of its own momentum.

Half-remembered lessons reminded her to keep her crouch wide, center of gravity low, to avoid getting bowled over.

The deep dweller let out a low, feline yowl.

Talia caught a splash of blood to her face as it flew over her head, avoiding disembowelment by millimetres.

At least, when it landed behind her, she could see it.

Blood spewed freely from a long gash down its belly, tarnishing its fur.

Talia’s opponent was distinctly cat-like. If said cat had grown to the size of a small drake. From the flicking ears, the vertically slit eyes and the whiskered muzzle, everything about it screamed big cat. Powerful, pawed legs tipped with wicked, curved claws the size of Talia’s hand completed the image.

Where it diverged from a typical cat, such as you might find in the back alleys of Karzgorad was in the rest of its appearance. Thick black spikes about the width of two fingers ran down its spine and stuck out from its sides, quivering lightly, folded tight against its body. A pair of short, curled horns adorned its head, sprouting from just below its ears and curving up above its head. Its fur was both colourless and blindingly iridescent. It shimmered, flickering between dozens of colours Talia could recognize and another hundred she had no name for.

Some sort of camouflage. Must only be able to see it because I hurt it. That or it’s too close for it to work.

The blinker, as she decided to call it, paced sinuously in front of her. Though it favoured its uninjured side, it was still a threat. The beast out massed her by a factor of five, at least. Talia backed up warily, rising out of her crouch with her sword held before her in both hands, staring down the blinker.

In her rush to join the fight further down the line, she had placed herself in a sort of no man’s land in the gap between wagons three and four. To both sides, she heard the low grunts and bestial yowls of combat. If she focused just right, she thought she could even hear the clacking of tunnel drake claws.

But no help. The forward scouts were still ahead, either too far to help, unaware of the danger, or occupied with their own battle. A glance with her mindsense showed that the gathered delvers in the direction she’d been heading were dealing with the bulk of the ambushers, seven in all, and the fight seemed nowhere close to ending.

Shit. All on your own, Tals. No help and no shield to boot. Don’t fuck it up.

A missed arrow clattered by her, making her flinch and turn fractionally—

The blinker pounced, putting all of its weight into a wicked slash. Talia dodged too late, and the claws—

Skittered across her silverite scale mail without finding purchase. The impact still bruised her ribs, but she’d already been moving away, so the damage was minimal. Besides, after being battered by garbog like she was a rag doll, it just didn’t compare.

Talia swung her mother’s sword overhand at the beast’s exposed back in retaliation, only for the enchanted blade to catch on a spike and bounce off with a metallic ping.

What the hell are those things made of!?

But there was no time to gape.

The blinker whipped around with a grace only felines possessed and body-slammed her.

Talia almost choked on her clicker as one of the now erect spikes on the creature’s side pierced through the lighter scale on her abdomen, ramming itself into the tender flesh of her midsection, missing her guts by a hair.

The shock of pain caused the young woman to freeze, which only made the blinker’s job easier.

It pushed her to the ground, a deep growl rumbling in its chest. The arcanist raised her hands protectively and the beast went to maul her. Its claws were rebuffed by silverite, but an errant blow sent Talia’s sword flying out of her hands. Panic filtered into Talia’s mind as she lost hold of her only weapon. Her only physical weapon.

Finally, Talia realized she was in essence, crippling herself. No one was around to help her, yes, but that also meant that no one was around to see her cast magic. If she’d just considered that instead of looking for others to save her, she wouldn’t be in her current predicament.

Tuning out the pain, the young woman scrambled together a simple image. Much simpler than the complex lattice she’d been practicing with Zaric. A spike of force, little more than a sharp wedge, which a large burst of mana sent rippling from her hands directly into the blinker’s skull.

A burst of pulped brain and blood splattered into her face and down onto her chest. The blinker collapsed immediately, like a sack of furry, iridescent flesh.

A distant part of Talia’s mind noted that the fur was still shimmering hypnotically.

The rest of it was screaming that she was suffocating and that she needed to get it off of her!

Pushing with all her strength did nothing. The beast weighed half a ton, probably more.

Idiot. Magic! Use the damn magic!

Talia forced herself to calm down, conserving her dwindling breath. She conjured the image of her lattice, wrapping itself around the blinker’s limp corpse, shifting the balance of forces until it rose off her.

It took a colossal amount of mana, but she managed it. The blinker stuttered haltingly into the air, splattering even more brain matter and gore onto her. Talia scrabbled out from under it, heart pumping wildly. She spat out her clicker to take in huge gulps of air, bordering on the edge of a panic attack.

A scan of her surroundings with her mindsense showed that the fighting was dying down. Up the column, only one beast mind remained, with another two left in the direction of the delver’s gathering point.

Then she did a double take.

Does this thing have…two brains?

Nestled in the corpse, midway down its belly, another speck of consciousness sparked near imperceptibly. It was tiny, almost unnoticeable.

Just as she was about to crawl over to grab her sword, it moved.

A little yip emanated from the previously unnoticed pouch on the blinker’s stomach.

Talia paused, confusion turning to bewilderment.

Wait a second…