“Fucking creepy fucking bastards, the lot of you, creeping me the fuck out with your dead-fish eyes. The very least you dipshits could do is to do your jobs properly for once in your fucking lives to make up for it, but here I am, stuck with a bunch of incompetent asshats who can’t escort two children from one city to this shithole of a village without fucking literally everything up. Too bad you’re all fucking orphans, because now it’s apparently my fucking job to wipe your asses for you instead of your inbred parents.”

To say that Marten was upset was a bit of an understatement. Unfortunately, he couldn’t drink on the job, and though he’d stashed a month’s supply of tobacco on his person before he’d been teleported out of the main base, he made the same mistake that he always did, of assuming that a month’s supply would last him a month in practice.

After finding out how badly the rest of his team had fucked up, he’d managed to smoke through two weeks worth in only a few days, and the fact that he had managed to post himself in the middle of fucking nowhere made sure that any tobacco he could buy here would be next to worthless.

Unfortunately, even if the only tobacco he could find in this backwater town tasted like he was smoking a mixture of grass, dust, and just a hint of cat shit, he had to make do with what he could. He wasn’t addicted, but tobacco staved away the worst of the piercing headaches that wracked at his brain if he went without it, and he was already dealing with too many living headaches to afford the extra pressure.

The headaches in question sat in silence as he drew a spell circle on the floor of the Mayor’s cellar in the middle of the night while the brat was fast asleep. While he could’ve waited outside and had a moment of peace for himself while Sera or Oren drew it in his stead, he wasn’t willing to give anything up to chance. With their recent history of astronomical fuckups, he wasn’t willing to run the risk of them either accidentally blowing up the building or trying to fuck it.

Marten took in a large draw from his pipe as he double-checked his formulas, blowing the smoke out in the general direction of his so-called peers in an act of petty revenge. It didn’t do much, given that the entire cellar was filled with his tobacco smoke already, but he did feel a little bit of petty satisfaction when he saw Oren blinking rapidly as the new smoke tickled his eyes.

“This ain’t a fucking Shadow’s job, dipshits. Why the fuck do I have to be the one to do this? Better get some fucking compensation for this shit," Marten grumbled, mostly to himself, as he inspected the circle for a third time. Once he was satisfied that it wouldn’t kill any of them, which was a bit of a disappointment, he jerked a thumb towards it.

“Alright, assholes. I’m done. Get into positions.”

Without acknowledging him, the Mediators moved to the edges of the circle, standing in their respective positions. Even after working on and off for more than twenty years as a Mediator, he still found their silence unsettling, but not enough to dampen his anger towards them in the slightest.

Marten let them stand there for about a minute longer while he finished his pipe. Even if it was shit tobacco, it was tobacco that he’d paid for, and he’d be damned if he let a single crumb of it go to waste. Besides, the little bastards deserved to stand there and think about how much of a pain in his ass they’ve been. Maybe feel some damn shame for once in their lives.

When the only thing that remained in his pipe was ashes, he tapped it against the wall to empty it, and stowed it away in his breast pocket.

He considered giving them a warning, but decided against it and simply stepped into his place in the circle and leaked out a drop of his mana.

The spell formula reacted as soon as he did and he made an involuntary grimace at the sensation of weakness that flooded him as it greedily sucked more out of him, but the others had it worse. Without any proper warning, they let out quiet gasps of pain as their mana was drawn from them forcibly, with the exception of Oren, who made no reaction aside from the miniscule tightening of his facial muscles.

Marten scowled, and pulled a piece of parchment from his pocket, and metaphysically reached out to touch the mana gathered in the spell circle.

The mana of the five mages was wild and untamable. Each mana signature collided and contrasted with one another, creating a whirlwind of chaos that was only barely contained by the spell formulas that helped refine them into being usable for a greater purpose.

He hated the sensation of it. Though there was no physical feeling of pain that came with it, it felt like he was touching the essence of danger and potential. He wanted it over with as soon as possible, and so he guided the mana into the piece of parchment, or more specifically, the essence of the message written on it.

The essence of the message melded with the mana, and with one final push, he focused on the one fifth of the mana that originated from himself, forced his will onto it, and finally released it from his grasp.

Marten gasped and stumbled backwards as the spell was completed, just barely unable to regain his footing before he fell on his ass. Around him, the other Mediators had similar reactions to varying degrees. Tenna and Laush collapsed on the spot, crumpling into unmoving piles of limp limbs within their spots on the circle. Sera and Oren took the aftereffects of the spell better than he did, with Sera bending over and bracing herself with her hands on her knees, and Oren standing there with his arms crossed across his chest, but still drenched in sweat and his nose flared wide as he took in deep breaths to steady himself.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Marten took a few deep breaths, but before he could completely recover, a strange sensation wormed its way into his mind. He felt the urge to stick a finger in his ear to try and dig out the non-existent bug that had made its way inside of him and was buzzing around in his brain.

Is it true?

Marten grimaced as the voice of his boss echoed in his head and started to scratch at his skin.

“I appreciate the fast reply, bossman,” Marten said out loud. Though he was entirely capable of speaking back through internal dialogue, his mind was already crowded enough by the newcomer and he didn’t care enough to keep his side of the conversation private from the fuckups. “It’s all true. I’m requesting that the entire team be replaced. Either that, or you can reassign me. Preferably somewhere across the world. If you keep this team as it is, the brat they’re in charge of is definitely gonna explode and I don’t want to be anywhere nearby when that happens.”

“Sera and I are Chosen Followers,” Oren said. “You would not be able to replace either of us, Shadow Marten, no matter how displeased you are.”

Despite his exhaustion and the buzzing in his head, Marten couldn’t help but grin. “Oh yeah, he’s right, boss. That is true. We can’t have him leaving the Otherworlder’s side.” Marten gasped as he held a finger up, like he just thought of an idea. “Wait a minute! There is a way to make sure you stick around, but without giving you the same amount of responsibility, isn’t there! We could demote you!”

He almost laughed at how quickly Oren’s stone mask of a face cracked wide open, his normally stoic expression breaking off into a vicious scowl. Off to the side, Sera grimaced, but seemed more defeated than angry.

Enough.

Marten grimaced and grabbed at his head as the concept of scorn echoed and pulsed loudly in his mind.

Do not fight. It is unbecoming of you.

“Sure thing, boss,” Marten grunted. “We’ll play nice.”

Marten gave Oren a rude gesture, and reveled in the raw anger that was reflected in the normally stoic man’s face. While he knew that the boss could probably read his thoughts, he also knew that trying to hide anything from an immortal being was probably impossible anyways, so might as well try to enjoy it. Thankfully, the boss didn’t seem to care.

The contents of your message concern me, but the details were lacking.

“There’s only so much a handful of mortals can do, bossman,” Marten said. “Don’t know how it is for you Elves, but we were pretty limited in the amount we could send. But you’ve got me now, not like I’m holding anything back.”

He flashed Oren another smile, though it seemed like the giant had finally wised up to the fact that he was being played with. He simply closed his eyes and returned his expression to his default neutral position. A flash of annoyance ran through him, but before he could mutter some obscenities at Oren like he wanted to, the buzzing ran through his head, growing louder and then stopping suddenly.

It cleared his mind and let him focus on what was truly important.

The second wasn’t important. He would be dealt with appropriately if necessary. Marten’s true concern lay in what damage had already been done to the lost lamb. Marten knit his brow in concentration as he recalled his past few days of overseeing the lost lamb, separated from his flock.

It had been a long few days, where Marten had been tailing the child, the alien brat, the untethered soul, to watch over his steps on the path to further salvation, judging. Marten thought of how the lamb interacted with the world around him, as he grew closer to salvation, and he felt love in his heart.

What?

Marten panicked and felt a warmth spread through him as he flipped through his memories like a book, stopping on every page as he fondly recalled how the lost soul wandered through this life, once aimless, given a purpose, freaking the fuck out, and now, walking the path to true salvation. Or possibly not. Marten was simply a stepping stone for the lost soul, and perhaps he wasn’t leading him to the soul’s ultimate destination, but hHe would gladly act as the guiding light for the next step in his journey.

As HhHe, Marten, the shadow, He pushed through his memories, He saw the soul through the shadow’s eyes and wept, in happiness, in sorrow, in reverence for the task He had. The soul was burdened, troubled, tainted by this mortal world, and he would need to be cleansed, helped, HELP, helped to grow before he could pass on into the arms of salvation.

But it was not yet to be. He mourned, for He could see that the soul was not ready. The soul was not ready to let go of me. The soul was not ready to reach salvation yet. But it would be. With time. Such was His love, that he was ready to guide the lost soul or administer punishment by his hand, so it could learn. He did not know yet what the soul would need. But He would. With time.

Please please please.

Ah yes. Though the disdain for the tainted mud of this mortal world grew within Him, He knew He could not dismiss them. Mortal as their broken souls were, the pieces here were still a part of the immortal tapestry that made up the world, the journey of His children, the ground that the lost lands tread and grazed upon. He would need to release the shadow.

Oh thank you thank you thank you.

He sighed, growing tired of the noise in the head of the tainted mud. Reaching within it, He grasped at the memories of the frozen moment, and plucked them away. He stirred the tainted mud one last time, before finally retreating from it-

Marten shook his head and groaned as the moment passed him. He smacked the side of his head, as if he could physically knock the buzzing out of his ear, but stopped once he realised that the feeling was gone. In fact, he felt better than he’d ever felt before. Was this the boss’s magic?

He waited for a response, but no response came. Well, though it didn’t beat cold hard coin, he supposed it was nice of the boss to give him a bit of service for his troubles. He dug at his ears once more to clear out the phantom itch he felt in them, before recalling the instructions that the boss had given him.

He smiled viciously.

“Well well well,” he said, turning to Oren specifically. “Finally someone listens to sense around here. Turns out, the bossman is a smart guy, even if he did somehow manage to hire you incompetent fucks. Oren, Sera. Congrats on the promotion. You’re Grunts now. Laush, Tenna. You’ll be sticking around as extras for now, since we’ve got a lot of unfucking to do, but the bossman told me that he’d be sending a replacement leader and second soon.”

Marten frowned as the words left his mouth. Did the boss ever tell him that? He must’ve. Why would he have said that if he hadn’t?

Marten smacked his ear again. They didn’t feel like they had anything in them, but he did it again. Just because.