The bolt of mana surged through the intervening space like a streak of veridian death. When Barkley sensed it coming, he huffed, shifted his haunches and then threw himself off to the side. It was easy for the parasite to avoid the burning spear. Intuitive. The process might have been complicated by the damage to his lungs, but it still remained relatively artless.

Adam was slower on the uptake. Sarah watched him stare gormlessly at the approaching javelin before taking it an inch above his hip. He winced at the phantom sensation, which ghosted across his skin. His hand shifted towards his stomach without understanding the reason for his concern. "What was -" He didn't even have the words to express his discomfort. How could he when he was largely blind to the eddies of the Light? Like the foolish cyclops who'd preyed upon Odysseus, humans possessed a number of virtues that they were forced to pay for in kind. Resilience was balanced by ignorance, strength by a lack of insight. It wasn't his fault; this was simply the way homo sapiens were built.

Animals were different. Falling between the dangerous sensitivity of warspawn, and the naive fumbling of man, beasts often divined their new environment by observing its effect upon their mana. These changes were subtle, fleeting and all too often limited to the alignments the organism was cultivating. For this reason, the phenomenon was known as 'resonance' and frequently led to the culling of those capable of the feat. Because if you could see it? You could eat it, thereby improving your core. It was why the dolphin was so riled up, and how it knew they were the cause. The only question was: which of them was the animal interested in?

Sarah tracked its progress and saw the aquatic fiend ignore her spell. Likewise, Adam proved rather unappetizing, despite the mana he was peeling from his core. Anthony... Anthony was a maybe. Sarah wouldn't be able to tell for sure unless the dolphin broke from its course. "Back up!" she screamed while driving Barkley towards the treeline. "Give us at least thirty feet!"

Anthony hesitated, reluctant to leave his friend. A piercing warble built and burst before he finally shook his head.

'Fucking...' Sarah stitched the asphalt with a dozen pungent darts. They were weak, hollow seemings without any true bite, but she trusted Barkley to dodge the projectiles, instead of taking them on the chin.

Sure enough, the infiltrator danced between the toxic spikes until Adam lashed out at the airborne hound. Barkley went tumbling into the fecund mulch. The dolphin adjusted its bearing to follow.

"Press him!" Sarah hollered. "Mind the beast's wake!"

Barkley took up the call like she was giving him advice. In less than a moment, an immense wave of 'Water' mana had gathered beside the tip of his snout. Sarah would've assumed he was evacuating his core had the spell not lain so close to his fins. As it was, the buildup wasn't too far off and didn't show signs of slowing.

A doggy snicker resounded across the relay.

Sarah missed the rest of Barkley's taunt as she dumped fifteen motes of 'Earth' mana into the sun-warmed blacktop. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to block his gaze, let alone the blast, which blew through all six inches of Sarah's emerging wall. Adam caught the tail end of the attack on his chest before the arcane bandsaw carved another crack into the curb. The only reason it didn't cleave the man in two was because Barkley didn't have enough control to quickly turn the beam.

Not that Sarah had any room to criticize his technique. The second her pillar had begun to rise from the ground, she'd been forced to contort her body in order to avoid the wayward shot. A few inches to the right and she would've had to ask Adam to pass her back her arm. A few inches lower and she might have been missing her head.

Barkley's assessment was more generous, albeit largely the same. It was why he trotted across the road like his opponents were both bleeding out.

Sarah disabused him of the notion by dumping the rest of her core into the wall. The ragged pillar released a muffled crack, then slid across the asphalt with a groan. Barkley flinched and scampered up the slab when it imperiled his prancing feet. he screeched, his advance slowed by the stone.

Her retort was thoughtless and lacked the note of exhaustion which threatened to arrest her heart. 'Implosion - inner ear - disrupt his balance for Adam. Flower - twist to acid - enhance and then spray.' The 'Air' mana came easily as it drifted towards Barkley's head; meanwhile, her second spell was a bit slower since it was limited by her rudimentary attunement. Sarah spent a couple more motes to make sure its effects would stick. When combined with the rest of her expenditures, it brought her down to about half of her reserves.

'Hopefully, Barkley's doing worse,' Sarah huffed, struggling to ignore the burn. He certainly wasn't holding much back. Between the water jets and the energizer-bunny routine, he might even be running on empty. It was all a bit suspicious. He should've known better than to blow his load right before things got hectic. He was leaving himself far too vulnerable.

'Or is he?' Sarah wondered as Anthony lashed out with an oscillating wave. Barkley sure was quick to turn up the heat once he noticed this dissolve into a three way. Was that to simplify the equation or because he knew he couldn't take it with him?

Sarah redirected her aim towards the approaching dolphin. Sure enough, Barkley broke off his assault and began sprinting for the beast like it owed him money. "Switch targets!" she yelled. "He's trying to swap bodies!"

Fur fountained from Barkley's neck as he tore through his host's matted hide. Helped along by a double row of razor-sharp teeth, it didn't take him long to cut a narrow gap beneath the verge of the hound's tapered skull. Barkley poked his crest up past the flapping viscera. His tendrils remained below, so he could retain control of the dog.

When Flipper's drug-addled cousin reached the edge of the parking lot, it reared up onto its tail and parted the sand with its bill. Barkley leapt forward an instant before they would've collided. He cleared the two-meter gap and hit the beast right behind the blowhole. The maddened creature didn't notice him begin to dig towards its spine. Sarah did and used most of her 'Air' core to form a caustic dart.

'Compress - contract - let the temperature spike with the pressure.' There was more than one way to throw a fireball. It took more mana than she could really afford to lose, but killing Barkley would be worth it.

The ray lashed out and carved a divot into the dolphin's head - one which started at its jaw, burned through its skull and then sliced across its brain for good measure. Barkley caught the blast after it blew off a thick chunk of blubber. Sarah had been hoping to bifurcate his trunk with the beam and had to settle for a couple tendrils, instead.

'That still should've poisoned the hell out of him,' she consoled herself, annoyed by the near miss. 'No way he'll be able to soak the backwash. Not with the overexposure limit sitting at half a mote per minute.'

Barkley could prove a bit sturdier, depending on what he'd earned from the Sea, but it was like the old joke about Kevlar: there was a difference between 'resistant' and 'immune.' Barkley knew it too. Mute and writhing, the warspawn scrambled towards the waterfront, heedless of the obstacles in his way.

'He's probably hoping to wash the impurities off using the tide,' Sarah deduced as she hopped over the dolphin's twitching corpse. 'That or my mana's rattled him. How about it? You yearning for something safe and familiar?'

Barkley kept his feelings to himself while he crossed the burning dunes. Mindful of the wards he'd established with the aid of his host, the fleeing parasite darted around the unraveling strands, unable to stop their collapse.

Sarah followed with a comparable degree of care; it wasn't too often you saw a spell suffer from a deviation. Normally, the phenomenon was restricted to people who'd imbibed too much fresh mana. If a wizard's control was predicated on impressing their core with their sense of self, then it was only logical for their magic to rebel when that ratio became too skewed. In this case, it was less about Barkley consuming an excess of foreign energy and more like his identity was being redefined by the sudden loss of his mount. What had once been a mixture of warspawn and host was now strictly one or the other. And the hound had the greater claim.

"Don't shoot the dog!" Sarah howled as she chased after Barkley. "We need the damn thing alive!"

Anthony was too busy trying to stem his friend's bleeding to respond to her warning. There was also an argument to be made about whether the thought had even crossed his mind. "W-what about Adam?!" he shouted in a panic. "I can't get the bleeding to stop!"

Sarah barely spared the man a glance. She didn't need to see the pool of blood on the asphalt to know Adam's wound was fatal. She could hear it in Anthony's voice - feel it in the empty void where her conscience usually sat. 'Barkley's getting away,' her training whispered through the barren hollow. 'It's eighty meters to the waterline, then twenty more until he'll be able to out dive your host. If you want to stop him, it has to be before he reaches the surf.'

'I know that,' Sarah spat back, uncertain who she was arguing with. 'Dump time - local acceleration - four seconds subjective.'

The world slowed down while Sarah sped up. Where once her boots had been sliding through the collapsing dunes, the grains now formed a squishy platform whenever she took a step. It almost felt like she was sprinting through a layer of oobleck. The only difference was her shoes didn't stick to the muck whenever she lifted her leg.

Another mine blew up as she closed in on the parasite. Born from a mixture of 'Storm' and 'Gravitic Force,' the explosion was smaller than the one that had struck Kaitlyn and merely peppered her host with grit. Sarah suspected the lack of lethality came down to the hound's poor control; while there was nothing preventing the animal from assuming command of the ward, there was a difference between 'can' and 'able.' Barkley was a trained combatant with years of simulated experience; his host liked to lick his own balls. All jokes aside, the latter wasn't a peer.

'Still dangerous, though,' Sarah acknowledged after a third randomly burst. So much so, that she had to mind the array, lest she lose a limb. It delayed her pursuit. As a result, Barkley pulled ahead for a bit until he was thrown back by a cresting wave. Then he surprised her; rather than ride the tide out into deeper water, he took a sharp turn and raced towards the students, instead.

Sarah cursed. She assumed he was giving up on retreat in exchange for a pyrrhic victory. After all, why hide at sea when he could threaten what was left of her cover? If she respected his gambit, great. If not, then he was hardly in a worse position, given his proximity to the harbor. 'I can make that dash,' she imagined him wagering. 'I was born to beat a human in a sprint.'

The worst part was he'd win his hypothetical bet. Sarah had withheld a fraction of her core in order to create a crude trump card; however, it'd only be enough for a lunge. Keeping up with Barkley was beyond its current capabilities.

It was beyond the students' capabilities too. At least, Sarah could make an honest go of it; they had barely left the starting line before he was squirming between their feet.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Fucking step on him," Sarah whispered, exhausted by the sprint and the skirmish. "Just this once. Please. I promise it won't be racist."

The words fell from her lips in a series of raspy gasps. Far too quiet to be heard over the co-eds' tears, the class withdrew along the beach, unaware they held the upper hand.

Barkley was quick to take advantage of their mistake. He began to herd the students into a loose blob using a series of aggressive leaps. Then, once they'd started to foul each other's footing, he lunged for the western edge and carefully cut one from the pack.

"Damn it, Devon!" a red-faced woman screamed. "What are you doing?! Get over here, you idiot!"

"I'm trying!" he yelped as Barkley skittered up his shin. "It must have stung me or something! I can't feel my leg!"

Devon wasn't too far off; the warspawn had pricked him with his flailing tendrils - there just wasn't any poison involved. Instead, Barkley had hijacked the teen's nervous system, starting with the muscles in his calf. The further the parasite climbed, the more signals he could intercept on his way to his victim's throat. It was part of the reason why the nobility had made them so fast. If an infiltrator could catch you, there wasn't a whole lot you could do to keep their species from securing a foothold. Not without a potent core, at any rate; those were a lot harder to usurp. So were some of the boons you could earn from the Loom and the Canvass. Unfortunately for Devon, the Networks remained the rare exception; relying upon mundane methods meant you were shit out of luck.

Barkley's latest victim was figuring that out the hard way. "Get off of me!" Devon screamed as he tried to crush Barkley with his palm. Unable to catch the parasite before he'd scamper away, the two played a perverse game of patty cake until Barkley brushed the underside of his wrist. From there, it was easy to rip the volition from Devon's arm and then leverage it into access to his shoulder.

Sarah reached the class while he still had the wherewithal to twitch. Devon couldn't manage much more, though, once Barkley began chewing on his neck.

A layer of muscle appeared beneath his skin and cellulite. Humans called it the trapezius if Sarah remembered right. Or was this one the splenius capitis? In truth, she knew it best as the warm, red ceiling, which kept her pressed to the spine. At the end of the day, names weren't necessary when so much of their life was instinctual. It was like asking a baby how to breath. They just did it: they didn't need to understand the complex interplay between organ, bone and muscle. Barkley's intrusion was cast from the same mold. The moment he'd given the order, the entire process had been almost automatic. All he could accomplish by sticking his finger on the scale was to create a deviation from the ideal.

He made the attempt, anyway. It was practically required. With three of his tendrils missing, there was no way for the usual arrangement of limbs to keep his host fully suppressed.

"I can feel it," the man stuttered, his hands convulsing in a spasmatic fit. "I-it's in my head. Controlling me. And the signal... is coming from her."

Barkley raised his arm and pointed his finger at Sarah. The infiltrator's antics made her want to scoff. As far as misdirections went, this one was a little basic. Childish even. Barkley may have been an eager student back on Deravan; however, he'd clearly passed his trials on the basis of martial excellence alone. Hell, Sarah barely had to lift a finger to pry his grip from their suspicious audience.

A flush rose to her cheeks. An indignant scowl marred her pretty face. She didn't say anything, yet her countenance inspired a seed of doubt. One which found fertile soil amongst the rest of Devon's class.

"Yeah, that's bullshit," a wiry young man hollered back. "I've seen The Thing - I know how this goes. Somebody get a flamethrower because it's the only way to be sure!"

Barkley let the act drop with a short, tetchy huff. His convulsions became a lot more random. "Well, it was worth a shot. You can't blame an honest cut-throat for trying."

The class very much could. They weren't warspawn, and this wasn't Deravan; none of the students had ever been forced to set their resentment aside for the sake of their own survival. They certainly weren't going to start now, solely to spare Barkley's ego.

Sarah shifted her body language to better mimic what Kaitlyn's had expressed. She let the woman's righteous verve echo through the syllables of her speech. "I know this isn't what you want to hear, but we'll be damning an innocent man to death if we don't stop that thing. At best. At worst, it'll mean a lifetime of imprisonment beneath the heel of a callous monster. Personally, I'm not willing to stand by and let that happen. I hope you aren't, either."

Barkley didn't have enough control to raise his eyebrows; instead, the right half of his face twitched wildly while the left stayed placid and smooth. "Oh, fuck off, Fields - like you have any room to talk. At least, I took a sub-sophont for a ride. How long have you been running around in that screaming basket case you call a host?"

Her eyes flared with anger. Only Barkley was close enough to notice the caustic gleam. "Yeah, go on," he goaded her, his jeer rife with malicious amusement. "Tell me how it feels to be my moral inferior, you soft-skinned cunt. I don't know what's worse: listening to your friends prattle on about how much better the humans have it or watching you all whine and complain as you apply another layer of blackface." He spat on the ground. "It's fucking disgusting. Have some self-respect. What would the rest of your pod say if they could meet the worm who ate them?"

'That I wish I was her.' "That your first lie was better." Sarah summoned a seven-inch-wide toxic lance. She wasn't sure she'd ever been so grateful for humanity's myopic vision.

"Typical. I knew it was the right decision to blow your ass away." Barkley attempted to eject Devon's core and nearly lost it in the sand. Five minutes was not enough time to assume more than a perfunctory level of control. The orb still made for a pretty good bomb. Especially since it was already primed to burst as the mana trembled and spat.

Sarah backed away from the half-dozen sublimating motes. Barkley responded by shifting his arm to better keep the sphere on target. Both of them knew he'd only get one shot and that it'd be a slow one for all its strength. Neither were terribly surprised when he started fishing for an opening. "So, what was your plan, Fields? To put your faith in truth, love and the American way? If so, I gotta say, you really got the proxy war part down pat. Who even were those assholes you rolled up with?"

A grimace stole over Sarah's face at Barkley's contemptuous dig. "Decent people," she told him angrily. "Better ones than you or I. They heard about the problems you've been causing and decided they were the proscribed solution. Should any of them survive, I know they won't stop until they've buried you six feet under."

Barkley scoffed. "Fat chance of that. I'm also less than thrilled about being forced to clean up your mess. What? Was Hayes too busy? You had to dump your trash in my lap?" He cocked his head as Sarah kept her eyes on the orb. "She was, wasn't she. I suppose that's what happens when you get too good at lapping up shit with your tongue. Speaking of vile interests, how is Tada doing? Did she ask you to eat her ass, yet?"

Footsteps pounded against the sand as an arcane crescendo rose along Sarah's tendrils. "I wasn't sure you'd make it," she called out while Anthony joined her by the water. "How's Adam? Is his condition stable?"

When Anthony didn't say anything, Sarah assumed the answer was, no. The silence stretched; Sarah circled around to the right, so she could get a better look at the teen's expression. His eyes were red; his nose was too. More importantly, he was visually hate-fucking Barkley like the parasite had murdered his family.

He wasn't too far off; Barkley had done Sarah a real solid when he'd cut Adam in half. If he'd managed to restrain his bloodlust for a few more minutes, things could have gotten rather awkward. Not to the point where she'd expected Anthony to betray her, but difficult all the same. Now, the only question was how many more friendly fire incidents it would take to ensure he joined Kaitlyn in the ground.

Sarah guessed two or three - he seemed a little too robust to pass gently into that sweet goodnight. Not that it mattered much, in the end: it only ever took one. One for Adam, and potentially one for her as well.

The hellacious core narrowed to a stubby point. Sarah readied her host to dodge even as she continued to finesse the crowd. "Get back! As soon as he runs out of magic, he's going to try to steal yours!"

A woman wearing a batik sarong recoiled. The few students who'd stuck around for their fight retreated closer to the road. By this point, there were about ten of them within Barkley's prospective reach; however, Sarah was too wound up to strive for an accurate count. All she knew was there were more than three, which left the two of them outgunned once Barkley made his play.

Sarah needled him, hoping her bravado would cause him to hesitate.

Barkley spat while the free-floating mana condensed around her throat.

A faint pop precipitated the shift from the conceptual to the concrete. Suddenly, all of the oxygen within a meter of Sarah's nose found itself displaced by sulfuric gas. It was like being shoved headfirst into the tail pipe of a broken tractor. Beyond the difficulty of catching her breath within the mephitic smog, the cloud was literally blinding. Even her tendrils couldn't penetrate the malaise since Barkley's core was too similar in nature.

'Here it comes,' Sarah thought as she threw herself onto her stomach. 'What's the play? Center mass, or does he lead the shot?'

'Lead,' Sarah decided before quickly scampering towards the waves. Barkley's control was too weak to believe it'd get there in time. The best he could do was surprise her and then try to roll the dice. Left or right; forward or back. Sarah didn't have a strong enough core to fly, so there were only four or five options.

Barkley bet she'd press forward. The infiltrator guessed wrong. Sarah returned fire with the lance she'd prepared earlier and caught him above the sternum. Barkley dropped. Sarah panted furiously while she nearly hacked up a lung.

Anthony couldn't quite believe their foe was dead. He skirted around the florescent orange cloud and kicked the lifeless human with his foot. "What the hell? Did you infect him with fucking FOXDIE?"

Sarah didn't reply. She was too busy watching the students peel away, alarmed by the unnatural smoke. 'Figures,' she groused around the burning ache in her throat. 'Magic is clearly bullshit, but a gas attack means it's time to fuck off.' She spat a wad of discolored phlegm onto the beach. Anthony was too appalled to notice its unsettling hue.

She decided not to hold it against him. It wasn't like he noticed the spear she shot him in the back with, either. "...And twist," Sarah muttered wearily as the mana turned into atropine.

Anthony hit the earth with a thud. It wasn't a sound you ever got used to; the bone-jarring impact was simply too heavy to ever herald happy news. In this case, it was mostly because of the emotional turmoil surrounding their bitter fight. Sarah had been hoping to keep the body count to just the three she'd planned for.

'Please,' her inner voice sneered. 'No way you'd take that risk. What if Adam said something incriminating while you were busy haring off? Are you really going to let him walk away when there's a chance he could connect the dots?' Sarah tilted her head. Anthony couldn't have been alone with his teammate for more than thirty seconds. How much could he truly-

Barkley tore himself out of Devon's frothing mouth like the world's smallest xenomorph. Caught from behind while her gaze was focused elsewhere, Sarah barely even registered the noise before the warspawn was savaging her neck. She reached up to pull him off; Barkley's tendrils wrapped around her own and overrode the message to her spine.

he snarled as his blood-encrusted muscles strained against her own.

He scrambled towards the brainstem while Sarah bit down on his tail. She could feel her skin tearing in centimeter-long strips every time she yanked him towards the ribs. Her jaw burned from the pressure. Her third dorsal tendril did too after Barkley trapped it between two of his own.

The parasite stabbed it with their needle-sharp tips. Sarah screamed into his scales as he severed it close to the base. She clenched her teeth and heard something in Barkley's trunk snap. One of his tendrils fell limp while another wrapped around her own.

Barkley gnawed upon her nearest appendage until he could access the squishy roots. Once he'd exposed them to the open air, he proceeded to hack at the tendons in a surge of venomous aplomb. Sarah could practically feel the moment her muscles gave up and a piece of her was cast into the sand.

<@#$%!!> She wasn't even speaking words at this point. Instead, her ire emerged like a burst of masticated whale song. Sarah focused all of her remaining energy on eating her way to Barkley's heart. By the time she reached his posterior serotonin sac, she could sense her host choking on her tongue.

A leg kicked out. Sarah was pretty sure it was neither parasite's fault. She also couldn't do much about it with Barkley's liver clutched in her mouth. The infiltrator bit down. Viscous ooze stained her teeth bright blue.

Barkley groaned through his relay.

Sarah wasn't sure if he was cursing her or counseling himself through the blood loss. Maybe it was all the same when you got right down to it. Sarah certainly had her own spiteful mantra in mind as she lost another tendril. 'Lungs; liver; heart; spleen. Lungs; liver; heart; spleen.' She was almost there. A few more millimeters and Sarah would be able to suck the rest of Barkley's organs out through the gaping hole in his tail. Her attention faded from the parasite's assault. All that mattered was reaching those pounding chambers.

If Barkley had any last words, Sarah didn't hear them. Like Devon before him, the warspawn merely flinched from a sensation he never should have felt and then collapsed in a limp sprawl. Offal pumped out of the fissure in his side before mixing with her host's weeping lesions. Sirens resounded in the distance. Through the trembling convulsions shivering along her spine, Sarah feared they were ringing for her.