HAIL

The fragments of ice spin above my palm in a controlled whirl. I focus on them rather than the rumble of the van, my “teammates” sitting in it around me, and the forested hills looming outside the windows.

In my head, I sort through the possibilities of the forms I might create. If we were back at the school, I’d generally pick something that provided an obvious challenge, a feat of visible intricacy that would have my audience gasping in awe. But I don’t give a fuck about impressing the screw-up fox, the pipsqueak, or the prick at the wheel.

So I settle on something just for myself. Still a challenge, but one you wouldn’t realize unless you picked apart the internal structure—one that’ll keep my mind occupied and away from all the thoughts niggling at the edges of my attention.

At a nudge of my will, the particles spiral closer together. Bit by bit, they meld into a larger pieces of the structure.

The sculpture trembles with a bump of the van over a pothole, but my concentration prevents it from breaking apart. More and more frozen crystals condense into the larger whole.

When it’s finished, the final creation looks like not much more than a lump on my hand—a mountain crag dotted with ripples of forest and a snowy cap, with a waterfall tumbling to a pool at the base. Only I know that behind that waterfall lies a network of caves full of all sorts of beings bustling around, sharing meals, playing music, or simply lying sprawled in relaxation.

A short, curvy figure slides over to the seat next to me. The cream puff peers at my creation and then smiles at me. “Your sculptures always look so real. Is that a place you’ve actually been?”

Only in distant daydreams. I curl my fingers and disintegrate the sculpted ice into a sprinkling of snow. “I don’t need to have seen something to conjure it up. Some of us have an imagination.”

I’ve kept my tone archly disdainful, but Periwinkle’s smile doesn’t budge. “You must have a very good one. Can you stop them from melting, or do they always only last a little while?”

I think of the immense ice structures that fill my dorm room, turning it into an enclave of hopes still out of reach. “They last as long as I want them to. My powers aren’t so shaky.”

If she picks up on the intended jab at her own pathetic glow, she gives no sign. “You could make a whole collection of them, then. Put on a show like humans do—in a gallery! I bet all kinds of beings, shadowkind and mortal, would like to look at what you can do.”

The earnest admiration in her voice and the picture she’s drawn of me gathering all those beings together wash over me like a warm breeze. For a second, the chilly words I’d like to say melt in my chest. I have the absurd urge to keep listening to her.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

What’s wrong with her that she’s showering me with her supposed kindness when I’ve given her nothing but cold shoulders and disdain? Does none of it faze her at all?

My confusion wakes up my temper with a sharper edge. “Put on a performance for mortals? What kind of idiot would want to do that? Other than you, obviously.”

Peri doesn’t so much as flinch, but the lean figure sitting on the other side of the van snaps his head around. The fox shifter’s lips draw back from his fangs.

“It takes one to know one,” he says in a singsong voice like a mortal child’s taunt, but his bright eyes glitter with an unexpected warning.

Since when is he the pipsqueak’s bodyguard?

I narrow my eyes at Mirage. “Spoken like another idiot.”

His grin turns fiercer. “We can battle it out for the top spot. How many tails do you have?”

Before I can decide how I’m even supposed to answer that, Peri holds out her hands. “Hey. No one’s an idiot here. We’re just figuring out how to be a team.” She meets my gaze. “I’m sorry if I was too pushy.”

How is it that my irritation simmers down with just that one sentence? The softness of her apology leaves me as speechless as when she told me how amazing I was for freezing the strange shadowkind beast that tried to attack us.

I grit my teeth. It doesn’t make sense that she has any kind of effect on me.

Especially when I can’t seem to affect her at all.

Mirage lets out a little huff, but he leans back in his seat as if mollified. I consider tossing another barb at him to show I’m not so easily tamed, but right then the van sways with a turn onto the shoulder.

Up front, our sorcerer babysitter rolls down the window and leans out. “Have you found something?”

I turn toward the window closest to me. The callous carnivore who’s acting as our tracker has materialized on the side of the road.

Raze nods, his tan face tense with urgency. “I caught another trail. It smells like there are a few of those odd creatures together. They traveled alongside the road for a little while but then veered away into the deeper wilderness. You’ll only be getting farther away if you keep driving.”

Jonah grimaces, but he cuts the engine. “We’d better continue on foot, then. If we can catch up with them or find out where they were going, we’ll need all our skills.”

Will we? Does the sorcerer expect me to lock them in ice like I did the first one?

I don’t think that poor beast deserved it. It wasn’t acting remotely aggressive until its sudden turnabout.

Something else is going on with these shadowkind. Rollick told us to investigate, not to slaughter them.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Do I really think I can protect them from that lug of a basilisk shifter if he decides to tear into them like his dinner?

Jonah swivels in his seat to peer back at us. “All right, everyone out. We’re going for a hike.”

I pull my lips back in a sneer. Fragile mortal boy who can only stand alongside us because of his foul magic. Any of us, even the pipsqueak, could crush him if we moved fast enough that he couldn’t get one of those sorcerous commands out. But he thinks he should get to order us around.

“Of course, oh fearless leader,” I say with all the sarcasm I can bring to the words.

Jonah frowns at me. His reply comes out flat. “Then get going, Hail. The important thing is finding these beings, if you want to be finished with this mission sooner rather than later.”

It’s particularly annoying that he has a point. I keep my sneer in place and wait for Peri and Mirage to step out the back doors before I deign to follow, but I don’t put up any more argument.

At least the fresh, piney breeze outside revitalizes me after the comparative stuffiness of the van. We set off between the trees, Raze leading the way with his basilisk tongue periodically flicking from his hulking otherwise humanesque form. A couple of squirrels chitter from a tree branch overhead, and a sparrow flutters past us, but there’s no sign of humans nearby.

Just untamed wilderness, all that guileless life completely free. The best of the mortal realm laid out before us. Only the knowledge of the confrontation that might lie ahead of us stops me from enjoying it.

We tramp across several shallow inclines and dips, the brush tugging at our legs, before the ground slopes more steeply upward. Rough knobs of rock protrude from the soil amid the trees and shrubs.

The effort of climbing sends a prickling sensation through the muscles in my legs that I haven’t experienced often before. Physical bodies have so many unexpected quirks.

We’re about halfway up the hillside when Raze leans forward and inhales more deeply. “The smell is thickening quickly. I think they might be—”

Before he can finish the sentence, a dozen dark shapes hurtle over the crest of the hill, racing toward us.

The shadowkind creatures lunge into our midst, jagged teeth snapping here, bladed claws slashing there. They leap and thrash so wildly I can’t make out more than glimpses of fur and feathers and scales.

I stumble backward and manage to knock aside one creature’s snapping jaws with a swift thrust of my arm. Raze roars and throws himself at the densest cluster of them, shifting into his immense lizard-like form as he does.

His maw closes around one beast’s neck with a crack of its spine and a gush of smoky essence. His pitch-black eyes sear into another being so viciously it squeals and spasms.

I dodge a third creature, this one the size of a wolf but covered in coarse hide like a rhino. It throws itself at me sideways, spines jutting from its skin, and all I can do to keep myself from getting impaled is hurl a blast of ice at it.

Even through the jolt of fear, I don’t want to kill it. None of this makes sense. Why would these beings suddenly group together to attempt to slaughter us?

But in the chaos of the moment, the bolt of frigid energy hits the creature not just in the legs as I intended but in its lower torso too. It keels over, eyes glazing.

I’ve stopped its heart.

Guilt clogs my throat. I take another step back, my gaze darting over the scene of the battle.

Raze is just tearing into another of the beasts, one as large as a tiger. Jonah is shouting out words in his sorcerous language that sets my skin creeping. I can’t see that any of the shadowkind in the onslaught are responding to his commands.

What provoked this rage? We have to be missing something.

The atmosphere of the forest resonates through me. I’m a creature of the wilderness myself. I focus all my senses on the rampaging beasts, seeking any sign of what’s driving them, some threat they might be reacting to.

What I see leaves me colder than before. There’s just… nothing.

I can’t pick up any actual fury in the creatures’ furious violence. No impression of instincts kicking in, no signals of panic or protective agitation.

All of my own instincts around wild places and the balance maintained within them tell me this is a totally mindless frenzy.

To my right, Mirage springs in front of Peri to pounce on a ferret-sized beast that hurled itself at her. Raze rips open yet another being among the several smoking bodies already littering the hillside.

The remaining few creatures seem to recognize that the tables have completely turned, though I still don’t catch any signs of distress. They simply wheel in tandem and bolt up the hill the way they came.

Raze goes still over the corpse he just savaged and shifts back into humanlike form, his chest heaving. Jonah glances around at the rest of us, his face grayed. “Is everyone all right? Any injuries?”

“A few scratches,” Raze rumbles. “Nothing that won’t heal quickly.”

My bewilderment comes out in rancor. “We’re all fine. But what the fuck happened there? Aren’t you supposed to be wielding your power to harness the demented beasts, sorcerer boy?”

Jonah cuts his gaze toward me with a twist of his mouth that prods the guilt still wound in my chest. He isn’t happy with the results of this battle either, even if we “won.”

He drags in a rough breath before answering. “I tried. My sorcery wouldn’t catch hold with any of them.”

Peri’s forehead furrows. “Is it because they’re the strange kind of shadowkind? But you were able to control that one we came across before.”

“I was.” Jonah’s expression darkens. “The only cases I’ve ever come across in the past where sorcery wasn’t effective… it was because another sorcerer had already imposed their control. It takes a lot more power to break someone else’s command than to place your own.”

Ah. So we can blame more humans for at least part of this mess? What a stunning surprise.

Mirage has bounded up the slope and is peering over the crest. “They ran east. Should we follow them?”

Jonah’s revelation and everything I know about the patterns of the natural world collide into a knot of certainty at the base of my throat. “No. If we want to get to the source of the problem, we need to follow their trail backward and find out where they came from.”

And which malicious mortal pointed them in our direction.