The next plan was all smoke and mirrors. Quite literally.

Kylara already had the light wards ready. At Tal’s signal, she activated them.

The air glittered with light as a kaleidoscope of fractured reflections appeared. Kylara had only a second to admire them before a jagged appendage came out of nowhere. She dove onto the ground and scrambled backwards as quickly as she could, avoiding another near hit.

Never stay in one place, she thought. At least, not in the open.

Once she had made it a dozen or so metres back, she turned back around to admire her (and Tal’s) work, taking in what they had created.

There were mirrors everywhere, floating in the air like shattered glass. With the orb by their centre, the shapes seemed to come alive. Light reflected on a thousand prisms, bouncing into infinity. Tubes and shards and toruses hung in the glass in their own little suspended reality.

Kylara had been a warder for most of her life and still, mirror wards took her breath away. Unlike other wards, they were unashamedly visible. It tricked the mind into thinking they were there–real things that could be touched and moved and felt. They couldn’t, of course. Mirror wards worked the same as everything else. They were nothing more than empty reflections, preventing light from going through and interacting with nothing else.

But still. They looked like more. The light blurred and bounced and blended and distorted into beautiful colours and shapes. Kylara could almost picture looking through one of them and seeing the world below.

One of her most treasured childhood memories involved mirror wards. Her mother had been the town warder at the time and Kylara had constantly begged her to show off her powers. Unlike Kylara, she never had. Except once. She had made a mirror ward. It had been a circle, the simplest ward a warder could create. But Kylara had loved it. It had hung in the air like a bubble, except it never popped. It never moved. Her mother had insisted she run her hands through it and tell her what she felt. Kylara had felt nothing, of course–it was impossible to touch a ward directly–but her nine-year-old self had insisted she had.

Kylara smiled. That was… well, that was probably the only lie she remembered telling. At least it was a happy one.

She watched the mirrors for signs of the creature or Tal’s movement, then fled towards the nearest wall. Yalmay and Joontah were already there, pressing themselves up against the stone and making themselves as flat as possible. Kylara was glad most of the moths that had been on the walls had already gone, having fled in the direction they came.

And… something she hadn’t noticed before: the light was reflecting off of the fleeing moths as well. It was dim, but there were tiny pinpricks of emerald and sapphire and ruby all along the walls, the light from the sphere reflecting off tiny chitinous bodies. They looked like stars.

Kylara smiled at it for the last time, then glanced at her friends. She grabbed Yalmay’s hand, who, in turn, grabbed Joontah’s. Kylara took one last glance at the mirror wards. She could see neither Tal nor the Mother Moth at the moment, but their reflections were moving.

“Everyone ready?” she asked them.

“I am,” Joontah said.

“Ready,” Yalmay agreed.

And then Kylara put up another mirror ward, sealing them off into darkness. Into black.

“We all good?” she whispered after a second.

“Yeah.”

“All good.”

The idea had been Tal’s. A mirror ward blocked their view to the outside just as much as it blocked the outside’s view in. The Mother Moth would not be able to see them.

Except… Kylara could cheat a bit. She had warder’s sight. If she adjusted her vision just right (she had done a test with Tal just a few minutes ago), she could see through the wards.

She switched to it and gradually, amidst the (almost) endless grid of lights, she could make out shapes. Tal was there and clearly visible, despite not really being there at all. So was the Mother Moth.

The Mother Moth was much more grotesque than she had thought. Talking to the thing, it had been curled up into a ball with most of its body and back hidden from them. But now, its full extent was visible. It was massive. It was thin but it extended at least twenty–well, exactly twenty-three and a half metres backward. Its wings were still curled up, but they must have been four or five times the length. It had the same mat of legs, but now Kylara noticed other legs–more legs–above the others. They were thinner, black and oily and they ended in hooked, razor-sharp claws. It also had several proboscises hanging from the top of it like hair. They twitched and writhed on their own, and seemed to go in opposite directions as the head. Kylara wondered very briefly if they also had minds of their own. She dismissed the thought quickly. The implications were too horrible to think of for long.

What’s it doing here? Kylara thought. Why sleep in this narrow cave?

It couldn’t have been comfortable for a creature that size.

“What’s going on?” Yalmay whispered, and Kylara remembered to put up a few sound wards as well, on top of the light wards. That way, they wouldn’t be heard.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Nothing yet,” Kylara whispered back. “I think it’s confused.”

“I mean, I would be too,” Joontah said. “If it lives down here, has it even seen light before?”

“Good question,” Kylara said. “I don’t know.” There were plenty of tales of warren monsters that were intelligent, but far fewer tales actually telling their perspective. What was it like to live up here? Did it have friends? Family? It had said it had children, but where were they? And how old was it? Was it young? Old? Wise? And it had a language, but where did that come from? How had it evolved? How many of them were there? It was fascinating to think about.

“It is… safe to talk, right?” Yalmay asked.

“It should be,” Kylara said. “I put up sound wards. And there’s so many mirrors, it wouldn’t be able to tell we’re behind this one.”

“Tal said that if it could talk, its senses were probably close to human,” Joontah said seriously. “What do you think that meant?”

Kylara glanced back at the Mother Moth. “I think that means it wouldn’t find us,” she said. “A human wouldn’t.”

It wouldn’t find them while distracted, at least. The plan was for Tal to distract it long enough for the three of them to sneak past. Tal was still intangible. The monster couldn’t hurt him and he couldn’t hurt it, but the Mother Moth didn’t know that. If Tal could pretend to pose a threat, if he could aggravate it enough to lure it backward by provoking it to attack him, then it would move and they could all sneak past. Tal would then keep it occupied for a while and meet them later.

It was a decent plan, although a bit overly complicated in Kylara’s opinion. But Tal had shot down the rest. If it could talk, he said, he would not kill it unless absolutely necessary.

It was noble enough, Kylara supposed. She just hoped he wouldn’t regret it. The Mother Moth was huge and the magsman said he had already been poisoned in this very warren. So Kylara had agreed. Yalmay had been similarly hesitant, although Joontah had been on board from the beginning. At least Tal seemed excited about it. Other than the killing bit, he seemed rather delighted by the prospect of a fake fight. Something about liking to put on a show.

“What’s going on?” Yalmay whispered, despite not needing to.

“Sorry,” Kylara said, looking back at the creature. It took another minute for her eyes to adjust to warder’s sight. “I’ll try to narrate for you… woah.”

“What is it?” Yalmay asked, gripping her hand tighter.

“It’s Tal,” Kylara breathed. “He is… I don’t know. He knows how to fight.”

Fight didn’t seem like the right word for it. It was more like dancing. Kylara had never seen anyone move with such utter confidence and certainty. Tal flowed between the strikes. A molted, rotting appendage would lash out at him, and Tal would simply sidestep out of the way with a strange, boneless grace. A membranous wing would hurtle towards him and he manoeuvring without a care in the world, never losing his rhythm. Bundles of legs slammed together above him by mere margins and he never lost his focus. Most of the time, Tal wasn’t even looking directly at the attack. He would see it out of the corner of his eye and dodge without looking. It was like he could see in all directions at once (which, Kylara supposed, was probably what he was doing with the mirrors, but her current vision was having trouble seeing them as anything other than invisible wards).

In fact, most of his effort seemed to be controlling the orb, which he was moving around in strange patterns that Kylara couldn’t figure out.

Kylara wondered why exactly he had insisted on the wards at all. He certainly didn’t seem like he needed backup. True, without them, one solid–or rather, one not-so-solid hit, and it was over. If he slipped up, an attack would go right through him. Tal was intangible.

Then it would be obvious to the Mother Moth what they were doing. But with the mirrors, the creature might simply think it had mistaken an illusion or a reflection for the real thing. It gave Tal more leeway and more time to keep its attention on him.

But again, Kylara doubted he needed it. Not with his level of skill and reflexes. Was it just to cover their escape? Why have the mirrors at all? Was this really all about showing off? And was this really him, or was the entad he was using giving him some absurd advantage?

“What’s going on?” Yalmay asked again. “I can’t see.”

“He’s pushing it back,” Kylara said. “It’s following him and he’s drawing it back.”

Kylara narrated the next few minutes in full, with occasional comments from Yalmay or Joontah.

Either the Mother Moth wasn’t quite human-level intelligence, or Tal was just that good, but the monster struck out again and again at false targets.

As she watched, its razor-like mandible snapped shut around empty air and it reeled back in frustration, flailing its underlegs in anger. It then swung its spiny forearms at Tal, lunging at him. He jumped out of the way. It then tried coiling its proboscises out and attempting to entangle him like a snake. He wasn’t even there. It was a mirror. Not once did it get a solid hit.

Tal was always one step ahead, safely out of reach. He was incredibly fast. He just kept moving, always looking like he was leaving himself open but never actually doing so. And every time, he timed it perfectly: just close enough that the monster thought it would be possible to get him next time but far enough it was believable. It looked subtle but it wasn’t. It was like clockwork. Every time the Mother Moth attacked, and every time, like clockwork, it missed and moved just a bit further forward. Tal was slowly luring it down the cave.

Kylara narrated all of it to Yalmay and Joontah, who had an almost childlike level of amazement on their faces. Kylara wondered if they remembered that she could see their expressions, even if they couldn’t see hers back.

“I can’t hear anything,” Yalmay complained. “Or I’d translate.”

“We really need to have a long discussion about this whole understanding every language thing,” Joontah said.

“Yeah,” Yalmay said quietly. She looked at Kylara. “How long do we need to wait here for?”

Kylara glanced outside. Warder’s sight didn’t give you great textures or colours, but it was great for distance and general shape. “Not long,” she said. “He’s already lured its head pretty far that way. Its body is just really long. One more minute and it should be clear. What was it saying before I put the sound ward up?” Kylara asked.

“The monster?” Yalmay asked.

“Yeah. What was it talking about.”

“It was mostly just screaming,” Yalmay said. “I don’t think it knows how to talk very much. But what it was saying... I guess it was talking about its children.”

“What is that about?” Kylara frowned. “Tal did say he was to blame, didn’t he?”

Yalmay shrugged. “That thing seemed pretty confident it wasn’t his fault,” Yalmay said.

“Yeah, but he told us,” Joontah added. “He said he came up here yesterday and killed most of the things in this warren.”

“He did,” Kylara agreed. “The way’s clear now. Is everyone ready?” She took down the top bit of the ward, letting a bit of light in by the ceiling. She wanted to give Yalmay and Joontah’s eyes a second to adjust.

“I’m ready,” Joontah said.

“I’m excited,” Yalmay said.

“Honestly?” Joontah said, smiling at his girlfriend. “I am too. Just tell us when Kya.”

“When I take down this ward, we’re going to run. Don’t stop, even when it gets dark. Ready?" She glanced at them one more time. "Now.”