For Leland and Jude, traveling had become much more fun. For Glenny and Gelo, not so much.

Having a friend to fly with, Leland felt reminiscent of his time traveling home with Isobel. Back then, the pair flew mainly to dodge wanted posters and anyone looking to bring in their bounty. Getting home faster was a plus, but one outweighed by safety and the nagging sense that someone was following them.

And while that would never ruin the fun of flying, now it was even more freeing than before. The chance to soar through the open air with a friend right behind you was something very few would ever have the chance to do. Moreover, the fun of seeing Jude faceplant again and again was something that would only happen in these first few practice sessions.

Which got Leland thinking, no wonder Isobel was smirking so much. She was laughing at me falling!

The revelation honestly wasn’t too surprising… which only made him more scornful.

“Can we leave yet?” Gelo asked upon Leland’s landing.

A pair of black wings disappeared with a flush of loose feathers and a burst of wind. Leland had found the key to landing safely was to fall the last few feet, opting for a final large flap to break all his momentum. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of making everyone’s day a bad hair day.

“As soon as Jude—”

Jude landed.

Or crashed.

Yeah, he crashed.

“— lands,” Leland finished, taking a deep breath. How many crashes was this? Sixteen? Seventeen? Honestly, it was more than it should have been. He was getting better at banking turns, however. Progress!

Jude spat out a clump of grass. “Flying sucks!”

“No it doesn’t.”

“Okay it doesn’t, but landing sucks!”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“You’ve said that like ten times, Leals. I’m not making any progress.”

Leland sighed. “That’s because you don’t know how spells work. And while your wings aren’t technically a spell, they act more like one than a normal ability.”

He was referring to the age-old difference between spells and abilities. Abilities often did the ability for the user. An ability to swing a sword? The ability swung the sword. Simple. But a spell to swing a sword? Now that was a can of worms befitting the title Mage. Imagination was a mage’s best friend, so was practice and preparation.

“You’ve got to imagine what you want your wings to do—”

Jude held up his hand after pushing himself to his feet. “Save it Leals, I remember the last time you explained it.”

“No you don’t,” Glenny muttered under his breath.

The berserker’s eyes snapped over to his friend. Then with a voice obviously mocking Leland, he said, “’Imagine what you want your wings to do, that way your wings will actually do it. It’s not like a normal ability. You have to actually focus on doing rather than using.’”

“Hey!” Leland yelped, his hand covering his heart sarcastically empathetic.

“Actually a good impression,” Gelo said.

“It was not!”

Glenny sighed loudly, ending the banter. “If you know what Leland was going to say, why don’t you just do it then?”

“Because it’s not that simple?” Jude asked, his hands firmly planted on his hips. “I’d like to see you try!”

“Oh me too. Flying seems really cool, too bad you suck at it.”

“What did you say Snowhead?” Jude stepped forward, puffing out his chest as his face turned a few shades redder.

“Oh please—“ Glenny’s cloak of shadows flooded outward, enveloping the immediate area in darkness. “If you are going to try to intimidate someone, you have to do it like Leland.” Shadows spun around Jude’s feet, eating his shoes and scaling his ankles. “Just like with flying, you do it and you don’t do it half-assed.”

The shadows continued to climb their way up Jude, removing the shadow naturally cast by the young man and replacing it with a sheet of pure darkness. Jude threw a punch. Glenny easily shadow stepped away, appearing amidst the ocean of darkness.

“Missed,” Glenny whispered directly into his friend’s ear, his eyes flipping from Void white to infinite black.

Jude flinched back, throwing out a wild elbow. Again, Glenny disappeared, darkness taking his place. Then, like the sun appearing from behind a storm cloud, the shadows disappeared. Glenny returned back to where he was originally standing, his gaze level and waiting.

“Uncalled for, Glenny,” Leland said plainly. “Some abilities take practice.”

Glenny shrugged. “There’s needing practice and then there’s completely ignoring the expert’s advice because you think you can do it better. We should already be on the road… and I’m annoyed that I can’t fly.”

A beat of silence passed. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Jude took a few breaths to calm himself, eventually saying, “I’m trying, okay? This is new for me. Sorry for ruining your day or whatever.”

A long, suffering sigh escaped Glenny’s lips. “No, I think it’s just jealousy. I’m the only one out of this group that can’t fly.”

“I can’t,” said Gelo, her head slightly tilted at the rogue.

“Yeah but you’re a mage who has powers based on instinct and natural-beastiness. You’ll make wings of ice or something sooner than later.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea actually.” She turned her head to her paws, creating small prototype copies of Jude’s wings out of ice. “I’ll start working on that now.”

“See what I mean?” asked Glenny.

“You’ve got shadow teleporting,” Leland offered. “That’s cool.”

“Just adapt to the wind or something,” Jude added, “be like a kite.”

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

Isobel groaned as she loosened another bolt of pure toxic stuff. What she was firing was beyond her, a conjuration from her strange parasitic weapon. Whatever it was, it was effective. She watched in silence as the monster before her died, withered away from inside out. She gritted her teeth, moving on to the next target, firing again.

What had she gotten herself into?

Who’d have thought that helping a caravan repel a bandit attack would have roped her into traveling to one of these new fancy, smancy Tears she had been hearing about? Truthfully, she was not impressed. A crack in reality that led to a world of sand and a red sky? Boring in more ways than one.

Though, she supposed the other world had its own sort of charm. To be alone, to lack responsibilities, to sit in silence and breathe. She knew eventually she’d go mad from the isolation. Humans were weird like that. For as much as she hated being around “friends” and acquaintances, she sure felt the need to rush back to them.

But how was she supposed to do that when monsters were surging and Witches were out and about?

She sighed, firing off another bolt. She’d killed the ring-leader Witch, the one controlling the monsters to attack in strategic wave allotments and groups. And while that had helped the defenders rest for a day or two, something or someone was making the monsters act strange again.

What did they even want? Isobel shook her head. Something, something, magical Tear in the world, something, something. Who cared? It was a hole to a world of dark sand and a red sky. Nothing less, nothing more—

She stopped that train of thought. Another had emerged.

From her hiding spot, Isobel blended in with the surrounding dark sand like any other gray-stone rock or decomposing tree trunk. And while she knew she was lucky the monsters chose to create nests in the blandness that was a desert from another world, she hated the smell the most. Such was life as a hunter. Always in strange spots.

Regardless, she watched an older man poke his head out of their base. Monsters dying right above him? That was cause for investigation. Humans were simple creatures after all. Killing someone’s property usually meant the owner would at least check it out.

This time was no different. The man pulled himself from the hole in the sand, covering the entrance to the base with a sheet of enchanted cloth.

Isobel watched the red strip of fabric shimmer deep blue before transforming into a perfect copy of the nearby sand – textured and everything. She hummed to herself, eyeing the man.

He was tall, muscled, wearing some kind of dark leather armor. It was enchanted, obviously, the wind around the man acting strange. Besides that, there wasn’t much of note about the man. From the distance, Isobel couldn’t make out the man’s Legacy tattoo, not that it mattered. The man had already fallen from his Lord’s grace, the great big “W” branded across his face and forehead proving as much.

Isobel took a deep breath, lining up the shot. She exhaled, perfectly timing her attack to fire between her heartbeats.

The bolt of toxic stuff passed through the man’s air-enchanted armor without so much of a slight veering. The attack took him in the back as he crouched to investigate the still-warm body of one of his monsters. And just like the monster, a hole the size of two fingers put together pierced through his heart and out the other side. He stumbled around for a few steps, his throat clenched tightly as the poison made its way through his veins.

He fell, the dark sand cradling his dead body.

And Isobel waited.

And waited.

Minutes, half an hour, an hour.

Another head poked up from the hole, this one far more careful than the man. Isobel watched as the woman clambered to her feet, glancing around. She found a few dead monsters, stepping over to the closest one before starting her own investigation – for her comrade, rather than for the dead monsters, however.

Isobel waited. She had killed the man as he rounded the hulking frame of one of the monsters, thus blocking his corpse from being seen from the hidden base’s entrance. She would do the same for the woman. And the next person. And the next.

During all of this, Isobel thought about getting home. And while she tried not to think about him, her mind did wonder about Leland. The others as well, but mainly Leland—

A pinprick sensation crawled over her spine. She shivered, finding the involuntary movement both disconcerting and very wrong. There were only a few times she had experienced a vile sensation like this, and most of them were recent. Very recent.

First was the Sightless King. Second was Harbinger Ashford. And third was Leland’s parasite, Lodestar.

And unfortunately for her, the feeling reminded her primarily of Lodestar – that was, if Lodestar decided it needed blood and flesh to survive.

A figure appeared in front of her, sniffing the air. It hopped around on one leg, sniffing more and more. Black ichor fell from the mangled stump that was formerly its leg, dyeing the dark sand an even darker black. It took the form of a young woman, but one that had been chewed up and spit out by something—

It stopped, its eyes falling on the secret hole in the sand.

It lunged, clawing its way into the base like a fox snatching a rabbit from its hole. Gore and bloodied organs exploded from the hole, limbs and chunks of flesh flying like a dirty bomb.

Then, it entered the hole, the screams of whoever was down there dying out.

Isobel sat perfectly still, though her mind wobbled and shook. She wanted to run, wanted to retreat, but something, a voice, an instinct, in the back of her mind told her to remain where she was.

As a hunter, the ability to sit in an enemy’s nest was a necessity for hunting true monsters. Remaining unseen, however, was something few could truly achieve. And while Isobel had become famous for her gambits in hunting, this time it would be survival that people would celebrate… if she survived.

The thing pulled itself from the hole, blood soaking what little clothing it had on. It licked its lips, it shivered with delight. Then, something caught its attention. It sniffed the air. Once, twice, three times, its head slowly turned toward where Isobel hid.

“You smell familiar,” the thing purred, its voice like glass shards raking against skin.

An attack came but a heartbeat later. A simple punch, one that just happened to warp the world. Isobel dove backward, firing off a single bolt of toxic stuff while unfurling her dragonfly wings and fleeing.

The creature did not follow, instead plucking the bolt from its chest and inspecting it like it was a piece of candy. As a matter of fact, it may as well have been a piece of candy, for the thing swallowed it whole a moment later.

It then groaned in delight, disappearing with another warp of space, off to hunt more delicious things.