Between a deafening boom and the almighty crash of splintering stone, the trio had little time to prepare for the attack. Or, what they thought was an attack.

Isobel appeared behind Sybil with the speed of a darting snake despite the shockwave blasting her legs. She covered the young princess, shielding her from a wave of rocky shrapnel and a wall of dust. The area went cloudy, a muted groan sounding from two sources.

The first was Leland, who, left to his own devices, failed to protect himself in time. He was spackled with holes, each bloody and stuffed with dirt and grime. He fell to his knees, the shockwave all but zapping his energy. Soon blood trickled in from his forehead, turning his vision red.

Shaky hands went to his face, his fingers automatically prying at a rock lodged between his skin and skull. He let out a small cry, the rock plopping to the ground. That was when he noticed the second person groaning.

A few steps away, in the location of the explosion, was a man. Overly tall and muscular, the man groaned like an old man standing after a poor night’s sleep. First to his knees, then to his feet, the man stood, his battle armor dented inward and partially destroyed. Completely soaked with rain water and breathing like a ran horse, the man’s eyes found his chest.

He cursed, sticking his hand under his chest piece before abruptly punching out, un-denting the piece of armor. The man then craned his neck, his back popping like twigs being snapped. Finally, with a sigh, the man crouched, and jumped.

Leland and the others watched the man go, some sort of magic taking effect, propelling the man up. They stood in silence, their heads craned up for as long as it took the man to disappear back into the clouds. There was no doubt in any of their minds, the man was fighting whatever beast controlled the storm.

“Leland,” Isobel murmured, her eyes firmly locked overhead. “Did you see—”

“I saw,” he answered.

Sybil, now unearthed from Isobel’s shielding, asked, “See what? The man that got swatted out of the sky? I think we all saw that.”

Leland shook his head, “No… Well, yes. But that wasn’t the important part. The halo above his head was.”

Perfectly circular and without a hint of leaching magical mist or fog, the halo had sat atop the man’s head with grace. Elegant, regal, the man’s icon for being a Harbinger was nothing less than radiant.

“I don’t think he saw us,” Leland said, healing magic coursing through his finger.

Isobel didn’t acknowledge the statement because she knew he saw them. How couldn’t he? They were making plenty of noise for someone of that man’s caliber to notice. No, the man didn’t care about them, not when they were peons wading through the dirt.

“So… we keep going?” Sybil asked.

Leland nodded, leading the way. Travel quickly devolved back into quiet boredom, the rest of the day as non-interesting as the day’s start. They camped, ate some food Isobel had forced Leland to stock in his inventory ring, and eventually slept. Morning exercise was cut short, Leland doing only the bare necessity to pass the Lord of Endurance’s contract. And just like that, they were back to walking.

Again, all monsters were slain quickly by Isobel, her reasoning now even more apparent. They were walking toward other humans, which realistically was more dangerous than walking into a monster’s nest. At least, if you went by her experiences.

As they moved, the group caught glimpses of the “hiding” Archon. While the one they met a few days prior was an ethereal veil from beyond the boundary of reality, the one moving along the rocks was different. It was more… animal like? Or at least Leland thought so. It scurried like a mouse, leaped like a tiger, scouted like a prairie dog. It had the eyes of an owl, the beak of a gar, the hands of a human.

It was always one animal at a time, but morphed between forms so quickly that it took on the appearance of all. Which, while strange, hardly meant it was an Archon. By the fourth sighting, Leland was going to question the Huntress over the fact, but then it changed into a similar veil as the first and phased through a cluster of rock.

The route through the rocks forced the group to eventually walk past where the Archon entered the stone. It was in an alcove, hidden behind shadow, moss, and bone. A skeleton blocked their path, one with shredded clothing and enough broken ribs to spell a certain doom.

At the sight, Leland mumbled a few words about the dead’s soul being in a better place and the group quickly moved on after deciding not to loot the clothing. They didn’t need a partially torn shirt nor a weathered belt. So when the skeleton’s head creaked to the side after they turned their backs, none of them noticed.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

At least until Isobel glanced back, finding the bones gone. She did not share this with the others.

Another two days passed like this, the group sleeping and eating as infrequently as they could. Whatever was putting the Huntress on edge slowly affected the others, making them move as quickly as safety permitted.

It was on the third day that the group experienced the storm’s rain. It fell in sheets, a rhythmic pattern in waves moving up and down the affected area. Unnaturally, the storm ended and started in an unmoving spot, a barrier into a watery hellscape.

Leland stood close enough that his shoes were wet, but hesitated to fully broach the divide. A thought occurred to him, that he should look for a soul to use to summon Lodestar. Maybe, maybe, the pathway had changed and they didn’t need to enter the storm after all…

He knew he was just stalling. Everything, literally everything, had pointed him toward the storm. So, he took a step… and the world didn’t explode – the sky didn’t part and a lightning bolt didn’t strike him down. No, he just became wet. Very wet.

A sigh escaped him as Isobel and Sybil entered as well, their clothing becoming instantly waterlogged. The Huntress groaned, pulling at her shirt and adjusting her pants.

“I hate the rain,” she muttered.

For some reason, those words made Leland laugh. Tension and stress melted away like dirt in a stream. His knees wobbled but he didn’t fall, not with the realization of how pitiful he looked. He caught a glimpse of Sybil out of the corner of his eye and rightly stopped cackling like a maniac.

Clearing his throat, he whispered, “I expected something to happen.”

Sybil nodded along. “As did I.”

Isobel sneered at them. “It’s just a storm—”

She spun, twisting through the rain like a horizontal water wheel while drawing her bow. She held off on firing, remembering what happened last time.

There, standing just outside the rain, was the Archon, still inhabiting the skeletal body. It trembled in frozen terror, watching the trio with enough interest to stave off centuries of boredom. Slowly it reached out, its boney fingers crossing into the storm. It didn’t get wet, not when it could control the space it occupied.

As the seconds stretched, so did the Archon’s husk. It transformed from skeletal to a veil to countless animals and monsters. It augmented itself, eventually stepping forward to the group.

Isobel stood before it, weapon still primed. “What do you want?” she spat.

The being did not respond, but it did look at her. For breath its face changed into that of a young girl’s. A child’s, one that looked keenly similar to the Huntress but without the weathering of age and the faded scars of battles fought long ago.

The Archon, its face that of Isobel’s child, mouthed a few words. Leland and Sybil couldn’t see around Isobel, they didn’t see what the being said. But Isobel did, and it was enough to slack her hands and drop her head. At least for a moment.

Once her mind caught up to her, Isobel drew back on her bow with the unlimited force of her rank and renown. She loosed, the arrow ripping through the rain toward the Archon. Yet, the projectile never came into contact with the target. In fact, both the arrow and the Archon simply disappeared.

A haunted second passed before Isobel fell to her knees, her parasitic bow dropped and tumbled before her. Then she let out a cry. A wail to the heavens with enough pent-up emotion to turn the sky clear. Tears fell from eyes, mixing with the rain, soaking into her drenched clothes.

She cursed, screaming that she was going to kill the Archon if it ever appeared before her… but as she yelled, and yelled, her volume slowly teetered off into nothingness. Her screams turned silent, her tears went cold. She clutched at her chest, a glow pouring from her Legacy tattoo and the parasitic weapon laying before her.

“Not now!” she bellowed, but the weapon didn’t care.

It was its own entity. A magical item created for the sole purpose of pairing together with a powerful being. An item with a mind of its own. An item that consumed its partner if it was deemed stronger.

The bow glowed with the same light as her tattoo, both resonating with the other until they swallowed Isobel.

Standing behind her, Sybil and Leland looked at one another before Leland hastily jumped forward. In his inexperience, he had yet to fully understand what parasitic items required of their hosts. Glenny had told him about his own experience with his cloak in the monotone frozen world, so when a cocoon of light formed around Isobel, Leland thought she was under attack.

Which, in a way, was true. But a symbolic attack, not an enemy attack. Still, he tried to help Isobel, but his hands failed to pierce the cocoon.

Before he could start using magic, a crack appeared. Then two, then three. Just as quickly as the cocoon formed, it molted, it shed away until the light dimmed like a decrepit husk. Isobel sat, still on her knees, but no longer with the sadness of a widowed, childless mother.

No, she sat there perpetually snarling at the evolved parasitic item. No longer did it take the form of a bow, well, at least not any normal bow. It was short, only taking up a portion of her wrist but where the draw string was supposed to sit, an armored shell of chitin coiled around like a thick serpent. Hundreds of legs peeled off at specific intervals, each trailing down in size as they got closer to the end of the armor.

It was a centipede, wrapped from her hand down her arm and around her waist. Where its head rested on her wrist, two mighty pincers chittered. Isobel flexed, and the weapon quickly formed a toxic spike between the pincers. She scoffed, flexing again and pulled back on the pincers, ultimately firing the spike like a crossbow bolt.

“Well, at least I get to keep my range,” she muttered to a stunned audience. “Can’t say I enjoy the whole… bug aspect tho—”

She cut herself off when two pairs of wings unleashed from the chitin armor covering her back. She glanced at them, already controlling their flutter masterfully. “Well maybe it’s not so bad after all.”