With a grand total of eleven days traveled from Sand Castle, the boys and Gelo made it to the start of the second Tear. Instead of the Tear perfectly splitting a forest as if a Lord had placed it between trees, this Tear divided a mountain range. To the east, the peak of a mountain sat isolated, its connected range now a black desert away.

Unlike the first Tear they visited, this one was heavily populated.

From the journey, the boys and Gelo learned of trading routes spliced and horribly rerouted. Instead of a path across the mountains, one had to journey across a desert riddled with monsters and murderers. Most chose to go around, which added weeks to travel times in some cases.

“It’s those royals!” one particular toothless old man screeched when Leland asked about it, as they relaxed in a bar. “A new queen and everything is messed up! It was her! I just know it!”

Before Leland could respond, Jude sneered, “Shut it, ‘Molar.’ No one wants to hear the ramblings of a drunkard.”

“I ain’t no drunkard! Who even is ya? Some pathetic excuse for a bard!?”

Jude just so happened to be plucking his guitar. He paused, deciding to lean into it. “I’m going to be the Lord of Music one day, just you see.”

That got a chuckle out of the bar, most of which came from Molar’s dirty friends. “Play something sweet!” one yelled, getting a glare from the others.

And just like that, the royals were forgotten about, and a slow, romantic song played. Leland couldn’t help but wonder about Sybil.

The Tear was three days from that bar, the journey primarily on foot. A few traders were looking to cross the black sands, some even offering the boys and Gelo a ride, but at Leland’s warnings of trouble, all shied away.

“It’s almost like knowing that Witches walking around is scary,” Glenny muttered as he dumped a pile of sand from his boot. “Cowards. Just think, we could be on another wagon right now.”

Leland rolled his eyes. “I’m sure there’s a solution we could find for walking. We have a fancy mage in our party now.”

All eyes turned to Gelo, who blinked slowly. “I could make a boat of ice. Slide across the sand.”

“How would you push it?”

“With… magic?”

“It’d be taxing.”

“I can do it!” The cub hopped to her paws, magic swirling around her like an avalanche swallowed by a whirlpool. Ice formed in seconds, a thick and reinforced section morphed together until a wide “boat” sat on the sand.

“An… oval?” Jude asked.

“A boat!”

“A sled, more like,” Leland said, climbing in. He sat, patting the ice as if he was calling over a dog for pets. The others filed in as well.

And then Gelo tried to push the boat. To her credit, the ice moved, but at speeds hardly faster than Leland could run and with far less endurance. She had to call it quits after a few minutes.

“You all are too heavy!” she cried.

“Am not!?” Jude retorted. “I’m not even wearing my armor!”

And like that, they were back to walking. Eventually the first of the Palemarrow Kingdom’s defenses came into view.

Along the horizon of sand, sat a bastion of stone and mana. While Sand Castle was a fort of singular structure, this bastion was affixed with fencing and reinforced walls. Stone traveled far into the distance, slightly curving as if a shepherd wished to corral most of the wilderness.

From their vantage point, the boys and Gelo only saw walls and evenly spaced battlement towers. The Tear in the center of the structure was still too far away to see.

“That’s strange,” Leland said. “When the Lord of the First Druid showed me the Tear, this wasn’t here…”

“An illusion?” Glenny asked.

“Maybe they built it?” suggested Jude.

They continued forward, nearing the wall without incident or accident. Leland stared at his surroundings through Zeke’s eyes, finding nothing but stone walls and mana. Zeke flew further, passing over the walls—

“Oh. I think I have it figured out. What I saw was at the Tear. This wall is surrounding it.”

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“They really don’t want people coming in, huh?” Gelo said.

Zeke spotted a group of monsters, Leland relayed this information. “I think they want to keep monsters out if anything. Or at least slow them down so the defenders have time to kill them.”

They continued toward the wall, finding more evidence. As if a fox burrowed under a farmer’s fence, the sand and stone at the base of the wall was chewed through. Claw marks dug deep into the fortifications while more than a few rotting corpses littered the way. Ooze and other excrements trailed off under and past the walls, heading toward the Tear.

The boys and Gelo followed, easily slipping past the fortifications without so much as a break in their stride. It was then Zeke alerted Leland of a development.

“There’s a battle,” he said to the group, watching events unfold through the crow’s eyes. “Humans versus monsters. Humans… are winning. Tentatively.”

“Are they Witches?” asked Glenny, the rogue scanning the area for other threats.

“No. Wearing soldiers’ armor and Palemarrow red and gray.”

“Ah, so we should help them then?”

“Indeed. How fast can you make it over there, Gelo, Glenny? It’s straight that way, maybe forty-five minutes walking.”

“There’s not enough shadows to shadow step properly,” Glenny huffed. “Some wings would be really good at a time like this.”

“Not this again,” muttered Jude.

“What if I carried you?” Leland suggested, eyeing the cub. “Or I carry Gelo and Jude carries you?”

“No thanks, I’d rather sprint. Dying by crash landing is not the way I want to go. You and Jude go on ahead, Gelo and I can miss this battle.”

Gelo perked up. “I don’t mind being carried.”

Glenny rolled his eyes. “I was afraid you’d say that…”

“So I’m carrying Glenny, then?” Jude asked with an impish smile. “Oh, this is going to be fun!”

As both Jude and Leland found out, carrying someone while flying was not, in fact, fun. Glenny and Gelo shifting their weight even after being told not to, the haggard flying form and rough winds, and the sheer embarrassment from all parties besides Gelo made things awkwardly unfun.

But as they neared the battle, all of that went out the window. Leland had said “tentatively winning,” which wasn’t close to the truth. From down and out fighters to dismembered body parts laying around, those defenders still fighting fought for their lives – some already having been lost.

Glenny, pointing ahead, shouted something to Jude that only he could pick out over the rushing wind. Like a rusty marionette, Jude’s wings shifted up, causing the duo to curve away from Leland and Gelo. Then, like dropping a sack of potatoes, Jude dropped Glenny.

Freefalling, Glenny focused on aspects of his power. His cloak had long become one with him, even evolving as he did. Feeling shadows, stepping between them, and eating darkness was something he had grown accustomed to. Right now, hurtling through the open sky toward the near black sandy ground rushing up to meet him, shadows become everything.

Two daggers of crimson red primordial energy appeared from his clenched fists, growing like unholy roses. His eyes, each shifting from white rings to black, quivered with solace as his mind ran as blank as the Void. Quiet soothed his anxious mind, his only thoughts were of killing.

With his target spotted and a plan mapped out, Glenny got to work. Shadows enveloped his whole body, removing evidence of his presence from the sky and silently placing him under a monster’s blubbery belly. Camouflaged and invisible, he stabbed, dragging the searing power of his dagger through the monster’s guts.

Viscera and blood burst from the fresh laceration like a volcano. The monster howled in pain, attacks from the defenders also appearing from the side. The sudden two-pronged attack sent the creature reeling, its organs spilling. It fell, four stumpy legs unable to carry its own weight.

And while it would have crushed Glenny, the young man had already moved to his next mapped target. He appeared within its shadow, slicing deep into the monster’s webbed back leg, slicing tendons and limiting its movement. He jumped between shadows again, doing the exact same thing to the other leg.

He breathed, appearing before a third monster mid pounce. Directing fangs the size of his arm with a shield conjured from the Sightless King’s stolen power, Glenny spun around with his free hand, driving a dagger deep into the monster’s eye socket. The thing crashed to the ground with a flume of sandy spray, dead.

Glenny spared a single glance at the defender he had just protected, deciding she was fine before shadow stepping to the next one.

The defender, however, didn’t see Glenny, the rogue invisible and all. Instead the defender watched as a monster three times her size was sent off course and randomly killed.

Then the sand a few dozen steps to her right exploded. Two men fit in frozen armor sprinted from the crater, battle axes freshly flush with green blood from a now crushed and quartered monster.

Roaring to mark their entrance into the battle, the Judes screeched with all of their might. A smile was plastered across their faces as they finally figured it out. Who cared about crashing when they could land like that!? Not Jude!

Laughter filled the air as they sprinted from beast to beast, lopping muscled limbs from equally muscled torsos. Blood sprayed them head to toe, but the Judes didn’t care. The liquid quickly froze, adding to their armor in ways they could only say were by design.

Spikes. Their armor formed bloody frozen spikes.

Was it intentional? Jude didn’t know. But he sure was going to tell people it was!

Leland and Gelo took a more calculated entrance to the fight, landing among the primary forces of the defenders.

Gelo quickly joined with the other mages, peppering the monsters from a distance with shards of ice. She imbued each attack with her Legacy, extending the dainty shards into powerful lances as they flew. The barrage looked as though a miniature hail storm hated gravity, sending hail and ice parallel with the horizon rather than at the ground. But the miniature hail storm turned into a deadly flourish of razor sharp projectiles.

It was then and there Gelo realized two things. Creating small weapons of ice and forcing them to grow with space magic was far easier than creating the large weapons to begin with. Hail storms were easy, but hail storms with the ice the size of tree trunks? That was impossible for her with her current skill.

Which led her to realization two – she greedily chuckled, her mother’s new magic was awesome!

Deciding his friends could handle the monsters, Leland got to work healing the wounded, regrowing limbs, and even bringing a few back from certain death.

By the time he had gotten around to everyone, the battlefield had become a spider’s den, webs of healing mist branching from one defender to another.