I didn’t have time to think; blades flashed as half a dozen figures leapt, slithered, or ran towards us. They came from the deck, the trees, the river—even though I could see just fine… what do I do? Someone else—multiple people, maybe—pulled at my shadows, but I shoved back.

One assailant splashed into the water and another faltered, struggling with my shadows around their head. I could feel through the inky darkness, like a long, sinuous limb. Teeth and fangs and hair and scales fought against me, but it pushed back harder until something snapped.

“Left!” A high-pitch voice whispered shrilly. It sounded like a muted shout.

I looked left, blinded by a glow as my sisters clashed with the assailants. I froze.

Pain. That magic’s pain. My instincts screamed at me, even as the darkness around me merged and twisted: armor, limbs, eyes. I could see the ship’s apparent captain slash across the arm of one assailant only to have a knife from behind stuck down low under her ribs.

To my other side, a shadow-cloaked lania’el broke through the hasty, brilliantly glowing array my sisters had set up.

I won’t let you hurt them!

I pushed through the burning light of my sisters’ magic and lashed out. The first tentacle vaporized, and I shrieked, the sound coming out from too many places, distorted and wrong.

The second, however, made it through, striking the assailant and latching on to them. They were insufferably warm, and it cleared my head a little to focus on them. A third tendril, and a fourth wrapped them, dragging them out of the burning light to suffocate in darkness.

Behind me, I saw others moving. More limbs of mine lashed at them. Some dodged, some didn’t, as they ran around me.

I watched the captain fall forward, dark blood gurgling from a wide-open mouth. Instinctively, I reached for her too.

“Issa!” the voice shrieked again. “Your sisters!”

Something golden and burning fluttered near me, and I almost swatted at it before I realized what it’d said. Immediately, I lunged toward my sisters again, who were still surrounded. Without weapons, their hasty sigil arrays shattered under impact, each one forming moments closer and closer to being too late.

I smothered one assailant, threw another off a ship, and had just grabbed a third when the inevitable happened.

Ssiina’s defense was too slow.

I saw my hssen-raised sister fall, golden eyes wide with terror. Not a moment later, after bashing away the woman who’d struck Ssiina down, I heard Kyrae scream.

The one by Kyrae thrust forward. My sister blocked, off-kilter, and I caught her even as the blade sliced a shallow gash across her chest.

“No!” I hissed, shrill and echoing.

By tail and tendril, I covered over my sisters, shielding them. Only then did the assailants target me, slashing and cutting and pulling at my own shadows with their weak connections.

I’m not their target, I realized dimly.

Hunkering down against the blows, I pulled shadows closer to myself, coiled like a spring, and then burst them out like a spined urchin.

This is my power. I am in control.

For the first time, I heard the assassins make noise. Short, guttural, choking sounds from the ones too slow to dodge. Pulling my shadow spikes back into my body, I looked down at my sisters. Kyrae had struggled to her knees and was looking over Ssiina, magic sputtering and struggling against my shadows.

I pulled back a little, and I didn’t see the next swing that was aimed at me. The blade cut through shadow, then beyond and deep into my arm. Hissing, I lashed out, faster than I ever had. Blades of frigid darkness extended from my fingertips and tore into her.

A slap from a tendril sent her into the water.

Three, no four around me. Maybe more. I couldn’t control all the shadows, and they moved in darkness that wasn’t mine. I need to see.

From where it came, I didn’t know, but I staggered as new vision sprung up around me. I could see the moon above, pale and low. The jungle waving gently in the night breeze, uncaring for the carnage under its canopy. I could see the list of the ship, stuck fast in the mud below, and the blood staining its cracked deck.

And I could also see all of my assailants. The moment they saw me stumble, they charged.

Unfortunately, I was one person. Even with the shadows I had, I couldn’t block it all. For every claw or tendril that hit, I took another blade. Whether the shining blades sliced through shadows or flesh, it hurt all the same and I wondered if there was even much of a difference anymore.

“Focus, Issa!” the shrill voice from before shouted, seemingly right in my ear.

“I can’t!” I shouted back, grunting as I took another hit.

This time, the force sent me tumbling away, sprawling across the deck.

No!

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The cold around me deepened, a familiar awesome presence pushing against my mind. I reached out for it, but a sharp sting like an angry wasp pulled me back.

“Issa!” A glow near my head shouted, incensed. “Get up! You do not need to lose yourself—all you need to do is buy time—”

My scream cut the voice off as I launched myself at the group bearing down on my sisters. Ssiina wasn’t moving, but Kyrae had a new sigil array up. It was already falling apart, and her arms were shaking violently, eyes wide and bright in the darkness.

Roaring again, I threw myself over Kyrae’s shield, tendrils swinging wide to take as many down as possible. The hits were glancing, but I crashed into them, taking one in a crushing embrace and landing so hard I heard the deck cracking under us.

Arms tight, I unlocked my jaw and bit down as hard as I could—I didn’t care on what. Blood filled my mouth and I pumped every bit of venom I had into them before rolling off and spitting.

Over Kyrae and Ssiina, my elf sister’s shield broken, was a single elven assailant. Blade in hand gleaming, they moved to thrust, and I realized I’d be too late.

Before their blade moved forward, the world exploded into daylight. It burned, and I screamed, writhing in pain as the last of the shadows were burned off my scales and skin.

“You dare!” the voice of Ea’Ssyri Thelia boomed across the deck.

A bolt of magic so bright it looked like skyfire hit Kyrae’s assailant. After that, I couldn’t see. A moment later, an immense boom took out my hearing. All I felt was pain as I tried to shrink into the still-cool wood of the deck.

I didn’t get the mercy of passing out; instead, the burning magic faded slowly. Hearing and sight returned as I felt myself being dragged somewhere else on the ship’s ruined deck. The wood was warm, too warm.

I’d like to sink down into the cool river mud right about now.

The image I got instead of comfort was of dying in an alleyway, and suddenly the deck was a lot more comfortable. Moreover, I tried to focus and keep conscious, my head burning hot before fading again to the light chill of the late night.

First, I heard Ea’Ssyri Thelia shouting, her words sharply enunciated and impossible to make out. There was a reply, then I heard Kyrae say something, words almost in focus even as my eyes still hurt too much to dare opening them.

Is Ssiina…?

“I’m telling you,” Ssiina’s said, voice pained but strong, “that Issa saved us! She’s still in there!”

I mumbled and the Ea’Ssyri’s retort cut off. With pain like they’d been glued together, I pulled my eyelids open. It was night again, and the colors were muddled, shapes indistinct outside of the moonlight’s pale glow.

Without my shadows, I felt weak, helpless. How could I protect my sisters like this? At the same time, I shuddered at the memory of my body of tendrils and darkness.

What had allowed me to see all around me earlier, I’d felt but tuned out: eyes. Down my arms and my tendrils, I’d had eyes. I’d felt them open, felt them moving as they looked around. Jaezotl, what am I becoming?

I recalled the looming proximity of the presence behind my powers, and just how close I was to plunging in. I’d done it before, at the coming of age ceremony. If I did it again, would I still be myself? Would I even know?

Swift footfalls banged around my throbbing head, drawing close until they were right on top of my half-coiled mess. “Issa Ssyri’jiilits. Explain, now.”

I looked up from scales that looked scorched, my raw, red skin showing in places, and into the wide, burning eyes of Ea’Ssyri Thelia. “I… oh Jaezotl…” I gagged, then bent over and retched up a mouthful of blood. When I looked up again, into those burning eyes, all I could do was flap my jaw and recoil away, trying to bury myself into the deck.

My eyes! But… she didn’t react.

Silence reigned, until I cracked an eye open to find the Ea’Ssyri still standing there, only this time with a blinding array of sigils, crisscrossing rings spinning around her hand, poised and ready. Behind her, barely visible through the awful brightness, Kyrae and Ssiina looked on anxiously, both seemingly holding each other back from running forward.

If she decides to kill me, and they try to stop her, all they’ll do is kill themselves.

“I’m sorry.”

It was all I could think to say, even if I only half meant it, and I tears started alongside hiccups that wracked my body, each jolt sending pain through my wounds and all the way down my spine. I killed all those people didn’t I? But I don’t feel a thing, except relief that my sisters are alive.

“You’re… what?”

“I’m—hic—sssorry!” My eyes were wet, my breath coming in gasps.

“Ea’Ssyri Thelia, please!” Ssiina shouted.

“Don’t do this!” Kyrae screamed.

Magic washed over me; it burned, but not enough to make me do any more than scrunch my eyes shut—all two of them—and whimper.

Above me, I heard an exhalation of breath. “It is as you say. She is still with us, for now.”

“Then apologize!” Kyrae hissed.

“No.”

“You’re heartless. A disgrace to—”

“Do yourself a favor and stop there, Hssen Kyrae,” Ea’Ssyri Thelia cut in. “We’re all injured and furious. Such talk will only bring about regrets.”

“Then you can at least apologize!”

“For ensuring the safety of the two of you and this ship’s captain, pending the determination of her involvement? You saw as well as I the monstrosity that Hssen Issa had become.” I heard footsteps, but I kept my eyes shut. “We do not know the extent of this threat, but we do know that the strongest amongst their order can look seemingly innocuous, as Hssen Tyaniis’s testimony of Ussen Ezyna Ssyt’s appearance and capabilities suggests.

“If someone of middling strength was able to take me by surprise and incapacitate me for nearly a minute, then someone as connected to this entity as Issa who were to lose themselves is not a problem we can afford to take lightly.

“I will not ask to be understood right now, because again, we are in a state of compromised emotions. Now get some rest, keep an eye on your sister, and I will finishing tending your wounds as soon as I have secured the perimeter and determined the captain’s guilt.” Her piece finished, I opened my eyes in time to see the Ea’Ssyri offer only a stony expression before she began to construct a massive array, larger than the ship.

Sigils of greenish-white swirled and skated through the air, forming into bands and spinning wildly. Before my eyes started to burn and I shielded them, I was mesmerized. I heard my sisters walking over, but I turned and faced the water, unable to meet their gazes.

“Issa?” Kyrae asked.

I felt her sit down next to me, and I felt Ssiina coil protectively around me. For a while, we were quiet, and I kept my eyes closed, lids burning against the magic whirling above.

“Thank you for saving us,” Kyrae eventually continued.

She placed a hand on my shoulder. I shuddered, then leaned into it, and before I knew it, I had my arms wrapped around her, sobbing.

“I’m scared,” I mumbled between sobs, more hiss than words. “I think I almost lost myself.”

“But you didn’t,” Ssiina replied carefully. “I saw you—you were in control when you saved us, even if your four eyes looked creepy. I’ll admit… I don’t remember much after that, but I remember something frigid coiling protectively over us.”

“I…” I thought about having four eyes on my face and shuddered. “But I could’ve… You could’ve…”

Kyrae ran a hand through my hair. “It’s okay, sis.”

I tried to nod, but I just couldn’t. I thought about the voice that’d helped me—and how familiar it’d seemed despite the fact I’d never heard it before. Without it, I…

Would I have killed my sisters, too? Or would I have fought everything else and let them die just because of their magic?

It hurt too much to think right now, and I felt myself slipping away into the void of my dreams. This time, light rimmed the edges of my sight like a distant cage, and I felt no presence. Neither was I able to truly rest.