“This is a dumb idea. And I’m saying that, so it has to be really bad.” Erik grumbled as they gathered back at the Exit Blade terminal.

“It’s not. It’s efficient.” Lily countered. “I understand why this seems bad, but it’s really fine. Considering what the five of us can do, we’re not really in any danger.”

“That’s assuming we know what all’s going on!” Erik frowned dramatically. “You’ve been saying for a while that the founder is just full of surprises. This is just us walking into the unknown without any idea what we’re dealing with.”

Caeden sighed, rolling his eyes at this rehashed argument. Of course Erik was going to balk at the last minute. This was basically his worst nightmare. “If we start to encounter unknown elements that seem untenable, we’ll abort and default to plan b.”

“What’s plan b again?” Asherta asked, chewing on a piece of jerky that had been smoked so long it was the texture of tree bark. Caeden knew, he’d tried it.

“Brute force.”

“I like plan b better.” Asherta smiled, her expression predatory.

“Of course you do, it’s simpler.” Lily laughed.

“Can we put it to a vote?” Erik asked.

“NO.” Caeden and Lily answered simultaneously.

“This is a travesty! Is this team a dictatorship? I thought we were supposed to be fighting this kind of behavior.” Erik tsked. “Look, the hypocrisy.”

“All in favor of letting Erik make decisions for the team?” Caeden deadpanned.

No one raised their hands. Not even Erik.

“Looks like me and Lily are still making the decisions around here.” Caeden huffed.

“Whatever you say, boss.” Erik saluted. “Point me wherever the dying is heaviest and I’ll lay down my life.”

“Harr harr.” Caeden mock-laughed. “We’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Alright, just putting in my formal objection. It feels…Dangerous.” Erik frowned. His tone shifted toward the end.

“Legitimately?” Caeden’s demeanor shifted to match his friend. Erik might be a rampant trouble maker, but he also had the single most refined defensive sense in the Starry Sea. If he thought their plan was truly threatening…It was probably true.

But Erik shook his head. “No, it’s not actually pinging my shrouds. But…I’ve been through a lot. Call it a hunch.”

“It’s not like we're walking in blind, Erik.” Lily shrugged. “No matter what we do here, we’re going to be facing a lot of danger. More than I think we ever have before. That’s essentially unavoidable at this point. We’re in the belly of the beast, more than a little literally.”

“Ugh, doesn’t make any of this fun.” Erik scowled.

On that note, they all prepped to leave.

{}

Damon watched the CV screen, frowning. It had been four days since Hekate and her friends had left. Considering their extensive use of Embodiment to reach the point that they did, he wasn’t surprised. In fact, he’d expect all of them to be in a weakened state for over a week, possibly longer considering the several hours they spent using their Embodiments intensely.

He had been confused about what their plans going forward were. They’d placed themselves in an awkward position, strategically. They’d established something of a vulnerability in the founder’s defenses, but they’d also done so at the cost of time. Time the founder had not spent idly.

Damon had once more been surprised at what the psychotic genius could accomplish. He’d acted decisively, abandoning the entire damaged portion of the island. Damon wasn’t sure if the process was intended or something the man had accomplished on the fly, but he’d disconnected that whole portion of the island.

Then, he’d once more teleported the whole thing. But this time, they’d moved to the depths of the Starry Sea. Underneath the dangerous waves, the only way Hekate’s team could approach the island was through the portal device they’d left behind.

The founder hadn’t left that idle either. He’d moved it into a prepared room filled to the brim with Ethermen. Damon assumed that these were also capable of using shrouds. If that was true, the founder had more of these Ethermen than Damon would have ever guessed. Hundreds, even. That was enough that Damon wondered whether he’d be able to win in a standup fight.

Of course, with the suppression field still present, he was still as close to helpless as ever. Combined with the material of his cage that prevented his formshift from passing through, he was far from a threat to the founder. But even freed and with access to his aura, a hundred shrouded Ethermen…Was a lot. He hadn’t missed just how durable they were. Fighting normal shrouded was a pain on its own because of how much they could survive.

Damon had assumed that Hekate’s team would be aware of the preparations that the founder would have made during their hiatus. But that seemed to be wrong, because the formerly inert portal was suddenly active again, much sooner than Damon would have thought.

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Worse, the team that stepped out was obviously tired. They’d returned before fully recovering from their Embodiment usage. Damon saw the slightly slumped posture, the lax stances and bleary eyes. They were dead on their feet.

He winced. This was one of the hidden dangers of Embodiment. The lethargy it induced was exactly that, true exhaustion. That meant it was a massive drain on one’s mind, making it much easier to fall prey to illogical thinking and bad planning.

Once more, Damon was reminded that, despite their outsized competence, Hekate and her friends were young. Inexperienced. They likely had come back right after awakening from their Embodiment comas. No doubt the lingering exhaustion had caused them to not even consider the time they’d spent unconscious or how their enemy would use said time.

Now, they faced enough force to challenge Damon at his best, and they were quite likely near their worst. Still, Damon wouldn’t count them out entirely. After all, they were truly strong. Strong enough that he wouldn’t want to face them in a fight. Which would place them on the same level as their opponents…If they weren’t half asleep.

The ensuing battle was chaotic and drawn out. Caeden seemed to fair better than his compatriots, likely because his second shroud allowed him to recover much quicker. A known phenomenon, but not a guarantee. Some shrouds didn’t deal with Embodiment exhaustion well, and the added recovery was minimal.

That didn’t make up for the dismal performance of Liliana, Hekate, and Asherta. All three were dead on their feet, barely fighting. Of course, they still put down their own share of Ethermen even in that state. With the mess the battlefield had become, they could target opponents that their domains could easily handle and leverage that into a victory.

The one pulling far more than their fair share was the last member, Erik. To Damon’s knowledge, the boy had never used his Embodiment, so he was still in peak condition. And it seemed that his capabilities were perfectly suited to their current situation. He was a beast.

Damon was aware of Erik’s new dual shrouds. He also knew, from Hekate, that they were Healing and Binding. Such domains were powerful, but not very offensively strong. At least, that had been his assumption upon hearing about them. He was apparently very wrong.

Erik could essentially ignore all incoming attacks, healing through the damage or creating black chains that either pulled him out of the way, deflected the attack, or stopped it dead depending on the circumstances. He moved across the battlefield with impunity. None could even slow him down, and his speed was considerable, especially in short bursts, where he seemed to disappear entirely.

And while he traversed the field, he became the absolute definition of a raging nuisance.

Tripping, attaching Ethermen to each other, tapping shoulders, grabbing arms, and generally turning the entire enemy force into a cavalcade of friendly fire and self-interference. He even seemed to blind several Ethermen before goading them into blindly attacking each other. His skillset and sense of timing allowed him to always find the perfect moment to move and when an Etherman was most vulnerable to a minutely adjusted attack from behind.

But even with Erik pulling far more weight than his shrouds would normally indicate, they were facing a losing battle. And the ultimate killer of their chances was exactly what Damon expected. The Ethermen were too durable.

Normally, durability is not the definitive aspect of a battle. Especially against foes that are slower and less adaptable, as the shrouded Ethermen had proven to be. In that case, pinning a foe down to finish them off would be laughably easy. But this was not a typical combat situation.

With so many Ethermen, they could soak up obscene amounts of damage with no visible effect on the total mass. Plus, every Etherman that would drop under the onslaught would usually have their place taken by another before Hekate and her team could finish them off entirely, which was a task unto itself.

Those compounding factors led to a situation where the Ethermen would drop and rise in waves, taken down but not out, only to heal back up through their shroud and come back for more. And this is where the other aspect of the young shrouded’s inexperience came to bite them.

Shrouded gained power as they aged, yes. But what they gained more than anything was staying power. A greater reservoir of shroud meant that a shrouded could fight for incredibly long periods of time. Some at Damon’s level could even fight indefinitely, since regeneration scaled off of total capacity.

Hekate’s team was flagging. By comparison, the shrouded Ethermen seemed to be built around much older shrouded, so their reserves were naturally higher. Combined with vastly greater numbers, there was a resource gap that no amount of skilled usage could overcome.

The fight still lasted almost an hour, and only stopped because of pure shroud depletion. Asherta stopped first, followed by Hekate, then Lily. Finally, Caeden ran dry, even with two shrouds to supply him. Erik was the last to fall, and the only one that didn’t lose because of lack of shroud. He was literally binned to the ground and mobbed, beaten down to a lump of flesh and then thrown into a box too small for his body to fully regenerate.

Damon winced at that. If the boy ran out of shroud while still in that box… But he seemed to have the most economical usage out of Hekate’s team by a wide margin. He’d likely be fine for a long time, especially if he used his shrouds intelligently.

But Damon could hardly draw any comfort from that. After all, his granddaughter and her friends were now just as captured as he was. And it was incredibly unlikely that anyone else would be able to find this island now. Under the Starry Sea, it might as well not exist.

If there was one consolation, at least Damon would get to see Hekate again. The founder had his Ethermen drag them and the portal they came through to the central command room, where the suppression field, ether engine, and other important projects were held. The founder liked to keep his most important items close at hand, unsurprisingly.

Gripping the bars tightly, Damon ground his teeth together. If only there was something he could do. But he’d tried everything, and the founder had a watchful eye, even if it didn’t seem like it half the time. But he couldn’t just let this insane man do whatever he wanted with his granddaughter and her friends. What could he do?

{}

“Do you think they bought it?” Erik asked from inside his box.

“How are you talking like that?” Caeden responded incredulously.

“Oh, I used binding to stop my lower half from forming and regenerated my upper body. I have vocal chords again”

Caeden rolled his eyes behind closed lids. He couldn’t reveal to the Ethermen that he wasn’t unconscious. They’d tried to knock him out after he’d faked running out of shroud, and he’d gone along with it, as had the rest of his team.

“I don’t think they’d be carrying us around if they hadn’t bought it.” Caeden responded to Erik’s original question.

They were talking through a two part set of ethertech, one of which was directly attached to their throat, and the other was inside their ear canal. It was the smallest working of ethertech Caeden had ever seen, and the last four days of Starry Sea time had been spent in the Forge coming up with it. Even then, it would have been impossible without reverse-engineering some ethertech from the communication equipment on the Revolution's etherships.

“Great! So that means we can beat up the founder soon, right?” Erik sounded much happier than he had before they started.

“That’s the idea.” Despite his best efforts, the smallest grin ran across Caeden’s face.