Myraden halted at the top of a ridge. She wiped the sweat from her brow, hoisted her pack up, then leaned forward and looked over the bordertown below.

A broad expanse of buildings filled the valley. In the dimming light of the evening, lights glimmered to life. Swathes of the city lit with Plainsparan torches, and other quadrants set golden paper lanterns alight in the Seissen tradition. It was a chaotic blend of cultures, with thatched pagodas and horse stables with paper windows and doors.

People milled about in the streets, dodging Dominion patrols and poking in and out of storefronts. Green-robed civilians traded wares with clusters of dwarves in lamellar armour, man-like creatures with flesh-covered horns poking out their foreheads mingled with horsemen, and women with pampas grass for hair clung to street corners, smoking on pipes and singing. A troop of southern sprites with horse ears instead of antlers staggered out of a tavern. They threw clay mugs on the flagstone roads, mixing rice wine and beer on the street. Men in colourful robes, with fox ears and multiple bushy tails leapt away in disgust.

“Wonderful place…” Myraden muttered, then pushed herself up and gripped her spear, Lejavüdkue. Its haft swelled with Essence, but it still remained in its silky form, wrapped from shoulder to hip like a sash.

“You would learn to enjoy it if we spent enough time here,” said the Red Hand.

“We are clearing out the shrine, then getting out,” she asserted. No sense in waiting around here any longer than necessary.

She leapt over the ridge and fell a few storeys, before landing in a crouch on the grassy slope. The Red Hand jumped down, his coat fluttering behind him as he fell. He landed on stiff, non-wizard legs, and rolled down the slope, then pushed himself up with a groan.

“Are you alright?” Myraden asked on instinct, then clamped her mouth shut. It was the Red Hand she was dealing with. It didn’t matter if he was alright.

“I am weary, and that is all.”

If he said so.

She marched down the slope until she reached a path of trodden dirt and packed grass, then followed it until the buildings made a tight valley around her, Kythen, and the Red Hand. Eaves hung overhead lopsidedly, and clotheslines ran back and forth overhead—some holding clothes, and others bearing lanterns.

The deeper into the city they travelled, the emptier the streets became. The stones turned darker than natural, and some buildings looked as though they’d lived through a fire. Veins of unnatural, blood red rolled through them.

An unnatural haze settled on the city, inky and black, making everything feel darker than it truly was. There were no more civilians, only dark shadows in the alleyways with glowing green eyes.

“What happened here?” she whispered.

“A demonling took up residence in the shrine many years ago,” said the Hand. “Its dark-aspect Essence bled through the city and infected a quadrant of it.”

“And the Dominion does not send wizards to clean it up?”

“They care not for the troubles of a small bordertown. It doesn’t offer them any resources, and those politically powerful enough to command a wizard would have no reason to pass through here on foot.” He shook his head. “There used to be roaming, lordless warriors who would manifest Reign, even as mortal men. They would purge demonlings before they could engorge themselves on the Eane for centuries.”

“Could you kill this one?”

“I could, yes.”

Myraden shuddered. With each step, a pressure settled on her core, and the Hand must have felt it too. “I will go no farther,” he said. “Bring me the demonling’s head.”

“Fine,” she said, then pulled her spear off her shoulder. She poured a pulse of Essence into it, and it straightened out into a full spear. “Kythen? Allírs-yre.”

I’m right behind you, he said.

They rounded a corner, and the dark fog grew so thick that her runebond tattoos emitted glowing gold lines out into the fog. Ahead, as only a gloomy silhouette slightly darker than the rest of its surroundings, was a multi-level pagoda with a tunnel of corrupted shrine gates leading up to its stone plinth.

Keep your eyes out, Kythen said.

“I’m watching,” she told him in Íshkaben, but truly, she was pushing out with her senses, trying to detect anything approaching.

It wasn’t until she passed the first twisted, dark shrine gate that her senses screamed out in warning. Something was only a few paces behind her.

She whirled around and launched an arc of crimson bloodhorn Essence wildly out. It sheared through a support of the shrine gate and smashed into a distant, abandoned building, but her true target pushed through. A wall of shadow approached, cleaving through her technique and reducing it to a spray of red sparks. Something slammed into her chest and flung her along the ground.

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She skidded along the cobblestone run-up to the pagoda’s plinth and came to a halt at the stairs, then sprang up to her feet. A moment later, Kythen skidded along the ground down the exact same path she’d taken. He stumbled up to his hooves.

It’s strong, he said.

She adjusted her grip on her spear, shifting her hands toward its base and holding its tip out farther. With a push of Essence, she coaxed the fabric coils to stretch apart, making the spear the length of a pike.

The demonling let out a roar that sounded halfway between a kettle boiling and a rockslide tumbling down a mountain. The pressure on her core redoubled.

It burst through the fog. For the first time, she got a good look at it. Its base body was vaguely man-shaped, though it had to be twice as tall, and it had four arms—two of which it crawled along. It held a corrupted circular shield in each of its upper arms, and black Essence swirled around its hands. Its flesh was oily black, and it only wore a loincloth and shoulder pauldrons with unlit gray wax candles melted onto them.

A cloud-white mask clung to its face, featureless save for an eye carved in the exact center. Tiny hands gripped its edge, holding it to the demonling’s face.

Sacred beasts could gather and use Essence without needing a Familiar. Demonlings, corrupted beasts, should’ve been able to do the same. She could expect techniques from a Blaze equivalent beast.

It let out another screech, then leaned forward. A beam of black shadow Essence blasted out the central eye of its forehead. She unleashed a concentrated pulse of bloodhorn Essence, dispersing the first pulse of the beam before it could sear a hole in her chest and giving herself time to evade.

It didn’t destroy the technique altogether. The demonling’s head snapped to the side, following Myraden. The beam of Essence nipped at her heels, chasing her around the edge of the pagoda’s surrounding plaza. She circled around to the promenade of shrine gates. The beam cut clean through a supporting pillar, then faded.

A moment later, Kythen slammed into its side. His crystal horns bit into his flank, and his enhanced, Blaze-stage body toppled the beast.

It’s still only a Blaze, Kythen asserted.

Myraden sprinted back toward it, closing the distance. In Íshkaben, she said, “It has no runebond.”

Sacred beasts and demonlings didn’t advance in the same way as the other man-like races. They didn’t use runebonds or Familiar bonds; their cores were more stable naturally. They developed their power over centuries, accumulating and accumulating.

But that meant without a tattoo matrix to concentrate their Flare-to-Blaze enhancement, their Essence systems were naturally more fragile while still having become more and more physical.

She darted forward and thrust her spear at the beast, aiming for its gut, to pierce its core with a single stroke, but it flinched to the side. She stabbed its shoulder instead, manifesting red bloodhorn Essence along the tip of the spearhead and strengthening the weapon.

It still sliced through a clump of Essence channels, severing them, and when she pulled her spear back, a gout of black gas plumed out.

The demonling raised a shield and struck her in the chest, flinging her back into the already weakened pillar of the shrine gate. She fortified her body, activating her Tundra Veins, and crashed through weak wood with a boom. The rest of the gate collapsed.

With its other shield, the demonling swatted Kythen away—toward the pagoda. He crashed through the stone corner of the plinth.

Panting, Myraden pushed herself up. She let her spear fall limp, then whirled its head beside her like a rope dart. She fed it more and more of the spear’s haft until its head sliced through lengths of stone below.

Myraden, Kythen groaned inside her head. You can’t just keep bashing your head against it and hope to win.

“I’m not,” she told him, pushing with intent and speaking in Íshkaben.

What’s your plan?

“Cut it until it dies.”

We need to expose its core, Kythen intoned. He pushed himself back to his hooves, then scrambled onto the plinth, overlooking the demonling. Then you can carry out your previous plan.

“Ah, so you were listening to my thoughts.”

I often do.

Kythen charged from the left side, bounding over the flagstones and lowering his horns. He hooked the beast’s leg with his horns and tried to tug it off balance. At the same time, Myraden slashed and jabbed, letting her spearhead dance through the air. It made tiny cuts across the beast’s shoulders, scraped along its shield, and scored a thin line along its mask. She redirected it the opposite direction with a pulse of Essence, and it sliced off one of the tiny hands holding the mask in place.

But nothing lethal.

The demonling bashed Kythen with its shield, flinging the bloodhorn away. But, in doing so, it pulled both arms out to the side, revealing its bare, muscular chest and gut for a split second.

“Kythen!” Myraden called. “When it swings its shields, it exposes itself!”

Kythen rolled, then skidded along his hooves, and charged back into the fray. One more strike, then? I can take it.

He hooked its leg again, and they tried the exact same strategy, except this time, Myraden held her spear close to her. Its loose haft coiled around the outside of her crooked elbow, ready to spring off and shoot forward at any moment. She flooded its haft with raw Essence, and she manifested Essence on its tip, strengthening the spearhead. She filled her Tundra Veins with renewed power, enhancing her entire body.

When the demonling exposed itself one last time, she launched her spearhead like an arrow. It flew perfectly straight and pierced through the beast’s gut. Normally, not a fatal blow, but against a demonling’s core? Lethal.

The air around the beast seemed to shrink in, then a pulse of force blasted out, washing across the plaza. It carried the black fog away, exposing the twilight sky and the rising moons. The beast’s form crumbled into black ash, then washed away in the breeze.

Myraden dropped her spear and fell to her knees, entirely unhurt—unless she counted being out of breath.

“Alright, Hand,” she muttered. “This had better be enough for you.”