“You’re all strong, and that’s good ‘cause I need you to kill the demons. That’s why it’d be a loss to kill you,” Daniel said. “So fuck… off.” He smiled at Darius ‘the Butcher of Lemora’ Wyattson and Sycount Trent, then at the other “heroes” who died without honor or distinction in his last life. He smiled, oh, yes, he did smile—

—but his intestines twisted into a knotted mass, wrung dry like a dirty mop.

Daniel didn’t want to attack them; he didn’t want to hurt anyone. The only reason he soul-linked the people he was interrogating was because [stable-flicking] a core causes so much mental and physical distortion that people will do anything to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. It’s clean, effective, and leaves no lasting damage—only a traumatic desire to protect the person that they’re linked to. In the case of the children, they were street rats that would now be eating well in safe homes for the rest of their lives. People would most certainly call him a monster for what he did—

—and he’d have to disagree for once.

Sara had cleaned out the nobility—but he had seen it at its worst. He had seen the way it festered and grew without restraint under Mary’s leadership, watching it kill and destroy common decency like a malignant tumor. Yeah, Daniel was heinous—a murderer—a thief. But compared to that level of human depravity—he was barely scratching the surface.

“Let’s make something clear… [Daniel],” Andy said, cocking his head slightly. “You are Daniel, right?”

“That’s the name my parents gave me,” Daniel replied.

“You could’ve said yes,” Darius said.

“But then I’d be lying.” Daniel ignored Darius’s sneer as he turned to Andy. “Continue?”

Andy’s eyes turned confident and stoic, reflective of the man who fled after Mary’s rise and returned to reclaim the throne alongside Sara. The two halves overlapped as he said, “We’re not leaving here unless we die. Now what?”

Daniel gripped the discs he was hiding behind his back. “Well. It’ll go like this: I will attempt to incapacitate you and your guards. If I fail—“ He returned Andy’s gaze. “I’ll start killing you.”

Andy stepped in front of Helen.

“You shouldn’t point out your weaknesses,” Daniel said. He looked at Helen and then Tara. “Not that I’m in the dark anyway.”

“What the….” Darius looked between Daniel and Tara, then back with a lethal glare. The others followed, getting into battle stances.

“Is this parlay over?” Daniel asked. “’Cause I’m not here to negotiate. You either fuck off til I can’t feel you—which is pretty damn far, I’ll warn you—or I’m going to attack you the instant you say yes. This isn’t play time. This isn’t a friendly spar. This is war, and I’m leaving here with Kyritus’s location—or this entire kingdom’s gonna burn. Got it?”

2

Sara looked at Raul with an even gaze that was calm—calm like an ocean’s surface as sharks ripped apart a whale 400 feet below. She couldn’t blame Raul for not being able to cast acceleration, trajectory, and wind magic spells simultaneously, but given the situation—she couldn’t help it.

“Sorry,” Raul yelled through the wind pressure. “I think… I think you should just go on. I’m not learning this this month, let alone… now.”

Sara bobbed her head, taking a deep breath, thinking about the hours she spent trying to teach him the impossible—wondering [why] she was trying to teach him something impossible—wondering where Daniel was….

“I… uh….” Sara looked up to the sky, took a deep breath, and screamed at the top of her lungs. Then she pointed to the ground. “Dismount. You’re riding with me.”

Raul’s eyes widened as he looked at the silver glider. The birds were best described as horses in terms of size. They had backs that two people could easily sit on on either side of massive eight-foot wings. There were two primary differences: instead of legs being able to straddle down and dangle, riders had to bend their knees like horse-racing jockeys. The other was that weight was a serious consideration because it was a bird. Raul was a massive individual. He was six-foot-three and had at least 240 pounds of raw muscle. His legs took up most of his own silver glider; the idea of getting on hers was out of the question.

“Sara, will that even work?” Raul asked.

“We’re about to find out,” Sara replied.

3

Darius unsheathed his sword. He was getting good at sword aura and mid-range combat, but he suddenly wished that he had focused exclusively on magic. Daniel made his flesh crawl and prickle with goosebumps. He was that toxic trash that you wouldn’t use your shoe to kick away, opting instead for a stick—something disposable you can throw aside once you finish touching it. And Darius didn’t know if he’d just have to throw away his sword if he cut Daniel with it. It felt self-evident at that time that he’d get Daniel’s blood on the blade, and the metal would start melting into slag at his feet. Or—worse—that Darius would cut through Daniel and watch both sides separate with glee, thinking, [That’s it? That’s all it really—] before his body exploded by some frag-mine of an attack that killed them all.

Darius shivered.

“It seems one of you’s got the right idea,” Daniel said, smiling at Darius. “So what do you say? Let me through? Bring Rokus out here? Fuck off and die in a corner somewhere? What’s it gonna be?”

Andy looked at him, giving Darius the signal.

“Bad idea.”

Darius’s heart chugged when Daniel’s tone cranked low, and his hands threw a white object at them.

“Barrier!” Andy yelled.

Helen was on it. She threw up a barrier just in time to stop the strange white disc Daniel threw at them. It was like a frisbee—no, it [was] a frisbee. So it glided slowly, clinking off the barrier like a pebble hitting a pane of glass. Then the disc hit the ground, allowing everyone to see that there was an array tattooed to it. Time stopped. They saw. It resumed as it flashed, and the barrier defending their group suddenly disappeared like a popped video.

“Barrier!” Helen screamed.

Tara tried to create one—

—and failed. No barriers would activate! That’s what that frisbee was—a barrier cancellation array!

The panic turned violent. Denise released a windblade at Daniel. He dodged, rushing to the side. Three heroes aimed spells at him, and right before they launched them, Daniel threw another disc. The frisbee activated, and a barrier wall 20 feet across shot up between them. It was gold and so dense that Darius could see his reflection in it instead of what was on the other side. For a moment, Darius thought the wall was solid and blocking attacks between them until Andy screamed:

“Above us!”

Darius looked up and saw a massive meteor developing in the skies.

Andy looked at the glowing barrier cancellation frisbee, probably wondering if it would cancel out the ward protecting the building. It was a split-second decision with a meteor overhead, and grabbing the damn thing and throwing it (if it was possible) took time.

“God… God!” Andy yelled. “Evacuate them!”

Darius’s eyes widened. “Evacu—“

“He’s not gonna kill his target—go!”

Darius nodded and rushed into the house with Denise. It was the type of house that existed in the Deep South, sporting a spacious ballroom in the center with two staircases leading to the top floor (where the rooms were) and ground-floor hallways leading to the kitchen and dining room area. [Such a bad idea!] Darius thought, rushing down a hall and down a flight of stairs. Each one of his steps sounded like a snare drum, giving rhythm to the screaming and confusion outside.

A sudden explosion rocked the house, making Denise yelp in surprise. She almost fell, but he pushed her up and continued down the stairs to a normal door. He grabbed the handle and turned. It clicked.

[What were they thinking….]

Darius opened the door and found Edico—

—and no one else.

“What’s going on?” Darius asked.

“Hurry up,” Edico said, turning to a trap door on the floor. “You gotta go.”

“Go where?” Denise asked.

“To protect them,” Edico said. “They’re…. Just go. You’ll see.”

Darius nodded and jumped down the hole with Denise. What he found was beyond his expectations. There was an entire miner’s shaft tunnel underneath the ground. Glow Stones studded the walls, lighting dozens of reinforcement arrays and arrays of other descriptions.

“What the hell is this place?” he muttered.

“And escape route—“ Denise said. “—move!”

Darius jolted awake as she began running down the tunnel. He followed her. Less than a minute later, they caught up to a colossal man (who made Raul look small) with his wife and twelve-year-old boy.

“Hey!” Denise yelled.

Rokus turned to them with lethal intent and then sighed. “Can we go now?”

“You weren’t runnin’?” Darius asked.

“What?” Rokus asked. “No. We were waitin’ on you. ‘Cause whoever the hell that woman sent after us is apparently too strong for me and all of ya to handle…. Who the fuck is he?”

Darius opened his mouth—

A sudden explosion rocked the ground above them. It was remarkable that they could feel it with the stabilization and fortification arrays present.

“Let’s talk about this later,” Denise said. “Let’s go.”

Darius ran with them—full speed—moving down the passageway to some far-off location half a mile away, judging by the looks of things.

Edico’s voice came from their backs. “Exit immediately!”

They stopped when they heard him in the distance. The tunnel was remarkably long for an underground tunnel, but they could run the entire thing in less than a minute. So they waited as Edico rushed up.

“Don’t stop!” Edico yelled.

“No, you stop!” Darius yelled back. “Where the fuck are we? I get this was a secret, but even they don’t know where the hell we’re going!”

“It’s a secret tunnel—moves one way!” Edico yelled. “Stop thinking and move!”

4

Daniel weaved between blasts, blending with the dust of the house he had partly demolished with a meteorite. There wasn’t a moment that a loud sound didn’t drill into his mind. The crack of a felling tree, support pillars collapsing, heroes screaming orders and launching spells. It was a nightmare scene—

—but he could see.

There was dust, smoke, blood, and debris—but he could see. Divination pulses made it possible to see without eyes, to feel without a body. Through his eyes, he could see everyone around him through their mana signatures—

—even behind doors and walls.

But it was the things that he [couldn’t see] that spoke loudest—for example, the huge structure underneath the house with a [mana veil]. It was a good one. With his eyes, he could generally distinguish between things that were invisible—even if the mana signature was dispersed in a cloud and blending with a crowd. Yet there was something there that he wouldn’t have even noticed if it weren’t for the fact that Rokus—a Goliath amongst men—was in a room—and then suddenly wasn’t.

Daniel searched for it (mid-battle) and noticed a long yet subtle distortion leading west from the noble district past the outer gate. That’s when he sent a meteor crashing into the house. Once one of the sycounts ran into the hall and disappeared, Daniel knew what he needed to do.

“Jesus Christ, you’re persistent! Just die!” Daniel threw more frisbees with arrays, creating powerful explosions to mask his presence, trying to make himself look flustered and desperate. Then he activated an invisibility spell and slipped away, following the road the tunnel was under, trying to beat Rokus to the other side, all the while listening to the heroes [blindly] screaming and searching and scouring for him in the distance.

5

Sara slowed her silver glider and took deep breaths in frustration, wishing that she could fly with Raul on her back. By the time she applied gravity spells to him and corrected the trajectory of the silver glider, she could only move about as fast as she did without the magic to begin with. It was so fucking frustrating! She wanted to rip off her silver glider’s wings and club the sky to death with them, but she couldn’t! She didn’t have time to do that even if she could!

Emma circled them in the air and then stopped before them, bouncing up and down as her glider’s wings flapped in place. “Where’s the hold-up?”

“What isn’t a hold-up?” Sara asked. “His size. His weight. This bird.”

“But did it work?” Emma paused. “Like… um… not practically but um… in theory?”

Sara nodded. “It worked. I just can’t handle that many spells.”

“Can I try?”

Sara turned back (even though she couldn’t see him clinging to her back) and asked, “You feel safe with her tryin’?”

“If you fly behind us,” Raul said. He falls—Sara catches. She got it.

“Sure.” Sara turned to Emma. “Let’s try it out.”

Sara descended and transplanted Raul from her back to Emma’s. Yet he didn’t stay planted there for long before Emma got off and said, “You fly,” to Raul. A bit of confusion later, Raul was flying with Emma clinging to his back, her full attention focused exclusively on the spells. It worked, and Sara could only watch with equal parts pride and envy. Without Emma’s dazzling smile and cordial personality, she had turned rather bland—as most people who trade personality for protection become. Yet she never lost her striking talent or the ability to trust—something that was critical to their success.

“Alright, follow us!” Emma yelled.

Sara did, and to her great relief, they rocketed through the air, moving faster every five minutes as they gained more confidence. They were on their way to Telsenlore. And no amount of flying magic would allow Daniel to catch up.

6

Edico scaled the ladder at the end of the tunnel and opened a trap door. The moment the door opened, he could hear the sound of chirping birds and buzzing bugs. The sounds were crisp and clear, free from the sounds of explosions that they had left behind. He wanted to know if the heroes were alright, but he couldn’t ask, so he looked around and then turned to Rokus, the man’s family, and the heroes. “Come on. There’s a safehouse not too far from here.”

Edico exited and stood guard, watching them filing out. He released a divination pulse while he waited and found nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until the final person left the tunnel that he realized his mistake.

“Hell~o,” Daniel said.