"So dark..." I grumble, limping through the black landscape. Since it's the night of the dark moon, the only source of light out here is the distant glow from my ally rail units, one of them using their divine gear so they can see where they're going on their return trip to town. From what little I can tell at this distance, they're grouping up right now, and will be starting back soon. I have to find my basket before then, so I won't have to worry about Avara crossing their path. Hilde is still keeping an eye on the handlers as they make their way down out of the mountains, their lanterns giving away their position in the dark.

My problem comes from the shadows. I've converted most of my mana to air so I can see in the low light, but anywhere the rocks block the light, the darkness in their shadows is absolute. No amount of air mana will let me see where there is no light. Normally I'd just use a bit of tin, but I don't have any. I only brought the metals I needed for the regular elements with me, not for light or absolute.

So I limp and stumble my way through the dark, the surge of my battle-rush beginning to wear off, to leave me exhausted. "If I can't see it..." I murmur. Sight, taste, touch, smell- "Hmm." Maybe I could sniff it out? I washed the bandages, but maybe...? With no other thoughts in my tired head, I grunt, pushing through another mana conversion despite the pain from my injured barrier, making most of it lightning. I let out a panting breath, then sniff at the air. The scents around me are so much stronger now-

I stop dead when my intuition screams.

Someone is watching me.

Habit is the only reason I don't immediately turn in place to search for whoever is watching me. Like in town, I can't let them know that I know. I keep walking, some of my attention still on my search for my basket. I actually can smell it, this faintly musty scent that sticks out in the field, where everything else smells of green and nature.

The rest of my attention is on my surroundings. Without air mana, I'm basically blind in this light. I don't hear anything either, and can't even smell anything. Patience, I tell myself. Once I get my basket, I can convert to water mana and try listening for them. I'd just leave it, if not for the black star metal inside. I can't risk leaving that out here, where I have no idea who may end up finding it. Maybe an enemy.

That thought makes me swallow hard. The only things out here are rail units. My allies are gathering in the distance, so this must be an enemy. But why? The battle is already over, shouldn't they be retreating?

No, I've already seen that they don't do things like we do. They attacked the town. Why wouldn't they also spy on me? I do stick out, so maybe...? But still, I'm so weak, they must know I can't fight. There's no reason they'd come after me, right? For my mana then? I still have way more than a normal rail unit, which they could steal by killing me. Is it really an assassin?

By the time I've come to that panicked conclusion, I've limped my way over to where I smell my basket, kneeling and groping in the dark until my hands find it. I pick it up, and begin to turn south, before stopping.

If it's an enemy assassin, maybe I should go back to my allies. It wouldn't be able to kill me if I'm surrounded by other rail units. No, if I try going back, that would probably push it to act, to kill me before I can make it to safety.

But now that I think about it, why hasn't it attacked me yet? Maybe my intuition is wrong this time? I have no proof yet. Once more making myself walk to avoid being suspicious, I shudder and push my mana through another conversion, to water this time. The sound of my feet crunching across the rocky ground rings in my ears, until I push my senses to focus behind me, toward the north and where any hidden enemies would be.

It takes some time, but then... there! The tiniest swish of breath in and out. I continue walking for now, waiting until... crrck. The faint crunch of tiny stones underfoot makes me wince. They're far more quiet than me. The stone crunching is the only give-away, even to my extremely empowered hearing. On a flat stone or wooden floor, I doubt I'd be able to hear them at all.

The steps behind me follow slowly. One, two, three, four... about four limping strides of mine, to one of theirs. So they're adult size. Which, well, is obvious now that I think about it. Then I reach the end of the stony ground, the swish of my feet and robe through the tall grass nearly covering the sound of the footsteps. At least there are no more rocks to trip over in the dark.

Avara crouches low in the grass, a long way out to avoid being spotted. Even being a powerful magical creature, she wouldn't stand a chance against a rail unit. And I don't want people knowing about the connection between us - our enemies finding out would definitely be bad. I don't even know how, what they might be able to do with the information, and I don't want to find out. But maybe if I can distract it and we run away, I'll survive...

My mind turns over plans until the steps behind me hit the grass, and I note how they're different from mine. There's no swish of robes, which... oh, right. The enemy rail units wear that weird tight fitting clothing instead of robes. I swallow, and keep walking. I'm getting further from my allies, bit by bit. Is it waiting until I'm far away before attacking, so they won't be able to get to me in time? Maybe I should go back after all?

No no no, it'll kill me if I turn back now. So what do I do? Attack it first? No, impossible, I can't beat a rail unit in a fight.

"Ambush it," Myra advises, her full focus on my thoughts while I'm spinning in my head. Ambush it? How? "Catch it off guard so it isn't a fight," she goes on. "One attack with everything you have. Remember, rail units have human bodies. Without any armaments to boost its defenses, it'll go down just like a human would."

"Right..." I think back to her. It must have its divine gear inactive right now, that would completely give it away in the dark. So, it doesn't have any armaments active and won't be able to summon them without a delay to summon its divine gear first. I still have the other half of my special fire mana. I saw how powerful it was in battle earlier, I was even able to hurt a rail unit with Aura active.

But I have to be absolutely sure. If I don't manage to kill it in one move, I need to at least injure it enough that it can't chase me, so I can run away. So despite the awful, clawing pain, I repeatedly pull mana from my well and continue dumping it into the special fire. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred... With a hand clutching at my chest and breath panting in pain, I stop there. That should be far more than strong enough, and the pain is starting to become unbearable. I'm still limping and rasping for air, trying to push past the feeling and listen for the enemy behind me. But I need water mana for that, and fire mana to protect myself when I attack...

Gritting my teeth, I make the water mana, and find the swish of feet through grass still following behind me. Maybe ten or twenty meters behind me, it's hard to tell by sound alone. I keep replaying my plan in my head, and Avara goes up on her haunches, ready to come to my rescue. I also settle the chunk of black metal in my hand, gripping it tight. I haven't figured out how to use it in combat, but it's one more thing that might help.

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The battle rush comes over me slowly, blood pounding in my head. I focus through the pain, steady my breath, and count down.

Three... two... one... now!

I whirl in place, staring straight back, hand coming up. My eyes lock in place, right where I heard the enemy-

Nothing. Even in the dark, I should see something. But I don't. There's no one there. Nothing there. It's empty space.

Then I hear the gasp, the sharp inhale, from exactly where I'm looking. My raised hand shoots out on reflex, finger pointing as I will my mana to convert, all to fire, all at once. In an instant, the grinding agony from my barrier multiples when I draw from my well again, to protect myself from the blast.

At the same time, my enemy appears when I point at it. An enemy rail unit, its divine gear suddenly glaring bright in the darkness, the full glow of Aura around it. It was invisible. Like back during the first battle, it was using Shizuka, the invisibility armament.

I didn't think of that. But it's too late, I'm already committed, my the full might of my will already pushing out, condensing the mana as much as possible.

I fire.

The red light streaks from my finger. Its flight of a dozen meters is shorter than a blink, but I barely even see it. My entire being is too focused on the impossible effort it takes to maintain my control over the dot, to keep it from breaking free and erupting over me and everything else. I'm not even sure if it makes it all the way there, before I my whole head is going to split open, and my control shatters.

Then the world turns red. I don't so much see the explosion as I feel it over every part of my body. I reactively blow out all the remaining special air mana to help shield myself, but that ignites too, exploding and flinging me away, crashing through the grass in a bone-rattling tumble. I tuck into a ball the best I can to avoid snapping anything, but before I even come to a stop, Avara tears across the briefly lit landscape. As soon as she manages to catch me by the back of my robe, she whips me up and around, and I messily grab for her fur, to stay on her back as she keeps running south, as fast as her legs will carry her.

Since I really don't want to use any more mana right now, she reaches out with hers, through my body to do the conversions with my disks. But when her mana gets there, some of them are missing. The air, water, and fire ones. That impact must have shredded the bandages I used to tie them on. I lost my basket too.

Whatever, I don't care. I'm still alive. I can deal with everything else later. For now, Avara grabs my excess fire, makes lightning and earth, to put as much distance as possible between us and the enemy rail unit.

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Avara's mad dash ends at least a few kilometers south, when we think we're probably out of range. The entire area of the battlefield is far, far over the horizon, and we haven't seen any sign of danger. Hilde tried checking as he followed from the air, but couldn't see much of anything down here in the dark. At the very least, that means the enemy didn't come after me without turning invisible again.

I can't believe I didn't think of that. They've already surprised us with that trick before, I definitely need to keep an eye out for it in the future. Even if I can't see something, that doesn't mean it's not there...

With the mana she made, Avara was able to get us here unbelievably fast, but even with the fire mana she took from me, she eventually ran out of stamina, and couldn't keep up the same impossible pace anymore. Legs dragging, she wavers on her feet briefly. She shrugs me off to one side, before rolling the other way, flopping to the ground with a thud. I land on my side with a grunt, silently complaining about the rough landing when I'm so injured.

"Did you want me to land on you?" she replies in pure exhaustion, with a reminder that she weighs as much as a small building.

"Right..." I mumble. I forgot about that. "Ugh..." I groan again and roll onto my back. With the immediate danger past us, my frantic energy is giving out again. And with it wearing off, the pain of my injuries is starting to catch up with me. Just twisting a bit as I lie on the ground, the pain down my entire front speaks to how bad that last explosion was. Every bit of me feels battered, and I'm pretty sure at least a few of my ribs are broken. And my hand hurts from the death grip I've had on the black metal. Definitely sprained my wrists too...

Besides my injuries, I also find one of my disks. It's one of the alba ones. I guess I got lucky with it - after the bandages holding it on broke, it got stuck in the folds of my robes and didn't fall out. It's just the alba disk, I don't know which metal it was paired with because that one's gone. The sap holding them together must have given under the force and let the other one go flying.

I really do need to find a better way of doing this. Just, when I'm not so exhausted...

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I stare up at the black sky for a while, before some thought finally registers. Replaying that brief moment over and over in my head, I finally realize - that rail unit that came after me, I recognized it. It was one from our last battle. It had a bow. It nearly shot and killed Effy. That was the first time I used my special fire mana in battle, to protect her. In the brief glimpse I got of it again this time, it's exactly like I remember. The same big muscles and blond hair, and most importantly, its age. It looked older than fifteen. More like twenty years old.

Tired as I am, it takes me far longer than it should, and I need the help of the others, like Mavin and the other hobins to help me realize what that means. If it's older than the other rail units, it must have survived through the last rail unit battles, from five years ago. When Bromunst killed all our rail units, they must have still had a few left. Those same rail units, now older, have been through years of war already, and have way more experience than any of us.

I think back on what I saw during the battle, and now that I'm actually thinking about it, it's almost too obvious. Those rail units at the center, that tried to break through our formation, they were older too. No wonder why they pushed Effy so hard, they're elites.

I squint. I know we learned something relevant in our lessons on strategy, but I'm too tired to drag it out of my memory, and thinking this hard is starting to get painful. Worse, because it's from my barrier. I really abused it this time. If I don't want it getting worse, I'm going to have to avoid using mana for a little while. At least it's not as bad as that one time. I never want to experience that again...

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After Avara rests for a while and recovers, she picks me back up and we continue toward town. We go at a much more reasonable pace, which should get us back a bit before sunrise, if she's remembering the distance right. She also makes me more earth mana, to help my injuries start healing.

Hilde caught up while we were resting, and now keeps watch over the entire area from the sky. He can barely pick out a dot of light a massive distance north of us, which would be our ally rail units starting to come back from the battlefield.

Besides that, the whole area around us appears to be clear. While I don't want to entirely trust my eyes anymore, there are no other indicators of danger either. I get to spend much of our slow trip south hugging into Avara's wonderful coat of fur. It's so comfortable, when my whole body is throbbing with wounds, inside and out. I got really torn up this time, I'm going to be nothing but bruises and burns later...

But I'm still alive... I'm still alive... That's the thought that comforts me through the night, until Hilde points out the city coming into sight from above, still far over the horizon for us down on the ground.

That's when Myra speaks, Gram suddenly on alert beside her.

"Aria, I think we have a problem."