Watching the intense battle from the sidelines, Reynard’s fingers twitched with each blow and dodge.

He wanted to jump in, to help turn the flow against their enemy, but that was utterly impossible.

The plan had always been for the less masterful combatants to hang back in groups. Those with spells or ranged weapons would provide supporting fire. Those like Reynard, focused in melee combat, were to shield them and fend off the mimic should it attempt to attack rather than flee.

Adrick had already done an admirable job there himself, but even with the support of Brandt’s shrapnel shots and Reila’s traps the monster had almost killed him. The scout had just barely escaped with his life thanks to Jalera’s cover and Oton’s throwing knives.

The attack was led by a Diamond rank adventurer, with a dozen Gold-rank allies – many of the best from the original expedition force – and they were barely able to keep up with their quarry.

Everyone had thought that catching the mimic would be the main challenge, but their prey had atrocious strength and power, enough that the adventurer wondered why it bothered to imitate a person at all – no ordinary human could tear up tree roots or send Jalera flying – and nothing human at all could exude that thick, creeping essence.

They had felt it coming even while it was still far under the ground, giving them ample warning, and now that it was on the surface Reynard could ‘see’ his foe even with his eyes closed. The sensation of pressure told the hunters exactly where the creature was, even when they lost sight of it. Essence seemed to permeate everything with an inexorable insistence. It was like standing at the bottom of a lake, perhaps even the ocean – although Reynard had never swum in the sea to know for sure.

Thunderbolt had insisted that the mimic showed no signs of using or understanding magic, and indeed the tales of the creatures corroborated that. It had been the one mercy in facing a foe so powerful.

Reynard had felt his blood freeze despite the humid air, as the creature started an incantation.

It was obvious to everyone, with how much energy was moving within the creature.

With such a calamitous volume and density of magic oozing from every pore of the mimic, they knew at once that the whole hunting party would be dead if they let it actually cast a spell.

Adrick had saved them, risking his own life to stop it.

After that Jalera had called for everyone to increase the pressure. They couldn’t give the creature any opening to chant.

Easily said, but not easily done. The mimic was ridiculously fast and durable – most attacks missed entirely, or rebounded uselessly off a hide stronger than iron.

It had dodged and even withstood Jalera’s best shots, shrugged off the arrows of Dolm, a master archer, and caught a bolt of lightning!

Reynard wondered how the fight could even go on – with such speed it could easily have escaped them… or slaughtered their weaker members.

Even as the petrified Silver-ranker watched, the beast was leaping about with agility that made a mockery of everything Reynard knew, trading blows with their leader as though the other were unarmed and unarmored.

He gasped as it actually punched the blinding raiment of the Diamond-ranker – and Jalera somehow lost the clash.

Never mind leaping to the aid of the others, or interfering with spellcasting, the young vulpine could barely draw breath. The crushing mountain of mana weighed on his chest and made his head pound. That Jalera and Lyanna moved so fluidly and easily, even closer to the source, was astonishing.

No-one had ever told Reynard that mimics were so frightful an enemy. Had they, he would never have volunteered for the expedition. But then, he had many other reasons to regret that choice. Dying at the hands of the horrendous abomination wearing the skin of a human would just be the last in an extensive list.

~~~

Trading blows with both Jalera and Lyanna at once I had come to one conclusion; these hunters were absurd monsters.

Lyanna’s sword-arm moved with ridiculous speed, always aiming at my vitals, and while I dodged or deflected the strikes, her blade was charged with enough electricity to make even momentary contact intensely painful.

As for Jalera, her dazzling armor showed no signs of breaking or weakening, even after I’d sent her flying, and nor did she seem to tire.

She hurled another terrifying arc of plasma out towards me, and as I caught myself and pushed my body out of its path I realized why. Her essence was flowing out from one gauntlet and looping around through the shrieking strands of blinding energy, then back into her other hand. Her attacks used almost no energy unless they were disrupted or hit something solid.

But that revelation on the efficiency of her technique was of little help.

I pivoted to one side around the superheated mass.

It flew by me, hurting my eyes with its brightness and searing the scraps of clothing that remained clinging to me.

Lyanna closed her eyes when these attacks came – she had to – meaning I had a moment of advantage over her. I could grab her, take her weapon and hold her captive. She’d be forced to talk to me then, or at least to listen.

I spun to face the younger foe.

Her eyelids were still pressed shut, yet as I reached with my hand her blade flicked out with impossible speed, aiming right at my chest.

She’d read my intentions perfectly. It was as though she could see with her eyes closed – except she’d reacted even before my movement started.

I tensed my forward leg to arrest my own motion, batting away the shrapnel that flew out from a sniper to my right side as if to distract me.

That was when Dolm’s arrow bored into my thigh from the left.

The arrow might only have penetrated an inch into my flesh, but the jolt of pain and the damage robbed my leg of its usual strength for a moment.

I tried to jump instead, but unnoticed amid the storm of attacks, another root-trap had my other foot, holding me down and robbing me of any surface to kick off as the earth and stones gave way. There was nowhere near enough time to anchor myself and pull free either.

Overcommitted, off balance and unable to stop or dodge, I raised my other arm to guard myself.

Hers twisted, and the crackling sword rose with lightning-fast reaction, targeting what I realized was her true goal.

A slash became a screaming stab, the blade grazing my knuckles and plunging into my defenseless flesh.

The impact was like a hammerblow, hurling my head back.

Supernaturally sharpened metal drove into my already wounded throat with a crack.

Electricity arced like liquid agony through my burned and rent flesh as fresh blood poured from my neck.

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Panic gripped me as I tasted it inside my mouth.

She’d stabbed through my artery.

A broken shard of metal, several inches of sword-blade, spun through the air between us, but her weapon’s fate was no comfort to me.

Another chunk was lodged in me still, and as I fell back I pulled it away.

The primal terror of feeling hot, dark blood surging out of my neck and flooding my throat was beyond words.

Why were they doing this to me?

The stuff of my very life was gushing from my cut throat, pouring out around the fingers I clutched over the wound.

Lyanna was reeling too, but I was in no state to take advantage of that.

Another arrow, aimed at my eye, drove into the hand clutching the shard of metal instead. Other shots bounced off me as the archers tried to follow up on the successful hit.

Jalera already had another plasma arc flying towards me.

If I could even manage to dodge it would hit Lyanna behind me.

She herself had recovered enough to swing her truncated sword once more.

With a gurgling howl of pain and fear I hurled the chunk of steel I’d yanked from my own neck at Jalera.

Flung with all my strength, the metal fragment made a crack like a gunshot and plunged into the cloud of plasma.

Behind me Lyanna’s broken sword carved a painful track in my shoulder blade as I weaved away from the strike, but there was a scream ahead.

Vaporized by plasma as it might have been, the metal shard still carried all the momentum I’d imparted it. Jalera’s flowing attack broke and flooded back on its user as the strands shorted like a circuit.

I didn’t wait to see if Jalera was alright.

It didn’t feel like a deadly recoil, but even if it was, I had to get away, and save myself.

I couldn’t breathe.

Blood was still flowing down my chest and filling my throat.

Lyanna swung her broken weapon at me again, but I was already gone, leg yanked free of the trap, leaping away. I moved towards the cavernous maw of geysers and scalding water from which I’d so recently escaped.

Clutching my neck as tight as I dared, I jumped over huge pools and past small jets, all hot enough to burn a regular person to death in seconds.

Merciless as they were, my attackers hesitated to pursue me there.

Even if they did, they couldn’t jump over all the obstacles as I had. I just had to hope that they didn’t think to instead target Berenike, who still lay motionless where I’d dropped her.

Nearing the rocky slopes down into the bowl of the maw-like sinkhole, I dove right into one of the huge plumes of boiling water, letting the jetting liquid and gas hide me.

Emerging steaming on the far side of the plume, I ducked down behind the font of interlocking stone through which it emerged.

My solid cover was around four feet high, but the eruption was many times that. It was also painfully hot, but I welcomed the boiling rains. The pain was barely noticeable compared to the heat and throb of my neck.

However hot it might get, the water was harmless compared to Lyanna and her hunters.

Even if I ran, I could bleed out before I escaped far enough to try to heal myself.

Frightened digits probed my throat, and I found the burned, damaged area where lightning had destroyed skin and surface muscle. In the middle of it was a… hole. It was a slit, small enough that it felt no more than an inch or so in width, but terribly painful, and still welling up with blood.

Nauseated, I pressed my palm against the wound to staunch the bleeding as much as I could.

The feeling and the taste of iron made me retch, and I threw up several mouthfuls of blood.

My throat and airway seemed clearer with that, and I felt the glimmer of hope as I realized no fresh flow was entering my esophagus. There was still weight, the feeling of blockages and fluid as I breathed, but I wasn’t about to drown in my own blood at least.

Flesh must already be re-knitting somewhere in my neck, and for that I gave my thanks to my poor and abused body. The process wasn’t fast enough to seal the gash entirely, however – looking down, I realized that I was still bleeding all over my chest and legs.

I needed more cover if I was going to even try to heal myself. Chanting a spell, I pushed all the extra essence I could into my free hand. The waters of the geyser crystallized in moments, the pressure beneath the forming ice pushing it up and fragmenting it, creating a fountain of frozen chunks and billowing snow that piled up all around. The geyser died down as the freeze entirely plugged it, leaving one final glacial bloom emerging from its throat like a flower.

That ought at least to stop anyone save Jalera for a few moments.

Screaming plasma burst through the rock and ice. The universe itself must have heard me.

Molten stone and cruelly disassociated particles surged towards me, as steam exploded out from the attack.

Still clutching my injured neck, I jumped back, chanting another spell.

Jalera followed at once, diving into her own steam. It seemed she had no fear of heat or geysers in her strange armor.

Nor was she alone.

At the edge of a deep pool near the start of the geyser field, Lyanna stood with staff in hand, incantation on her lips.

More hunters were closing in too, and whiel some recoiled in pain as superheated water scalded them, others were already weaving between the eruptions to reach me.

Lyanna’s thunderbolt flashed towards me, but I ducked behind a spewing vent, and it burst into more billowing steam.

My own fireball shot back, a huge teardrop of flames thousands of degrees hotter than even the water around them, but while Lyanna and Jalera each flinched, the orb soared past one and fell short of the other.

The steam explosion sent Lyanna running, the others scrambling back in shock as my spell threw up a dense bank of deadly hot fog.

Suddenly blind, Jalera was just an instant too slow to react.

She took my fist squarely for the first time in the fight.

I had no spell or technique to thwart that radiant armor, but as dense with mana as it was, it was nothing next to the Dweomer’s barrier.

Unleashing a blast of unguided, torrential essence my knuckles shattered the supernatural barrier, pulverizing the flows of plasma to so much tattered, fraying fiber. It exploded outwards, and we were thrown apart as Jalera’s spell unraveled.

Rationally I hoped I hadn’t just killed the woman, but some unpleasant, vicious part of me was pleased by the thought of it. Tormented and terrified as I was, it would be so easy to just… give up on morals and to… be weak.

To be selfish and callous, and preserve only myself.

A lightning bolt lanced out between us, then raked towards me, as if to drive me back from the fallen woman, vanished into the fog.

I didn’t try to slip past and pursue her – she was still a living, breathing person, and even if she meant to kill me, that didn’t mean I had to reciprocate. Rather than slaughtering these strangers, ending their lives and ruining so many more, what I wanted was to heal myself and get away. It seemed like this would be my best chance. I could feel people retreating in a panic, while others further out fired blindly.

But some I could hear shouting, coordinating from a distance.

“Don’t let it escape!” one young man insisted, “come on Pice, we have to keep the pressure on! Encircle it! The steam near the edges isn’t so hot; it won’t do much to you!”

I recognized the voice, it was the third of the quartet I’d met previously. The fourth seemed to be absent, but this one, ‘Marco’ I thought, was definitely one of Lyanna’s friends. Perhaps all of these people were part of her gang, gathered up to hunt me down and take revenge for the incident with the razorflies? It seemed absurdly petty, but I couldn’t see why else they’d chase me all this way. Of course how they found me was an even greater mystery, but there was no time for me to ponder my situation.

Some, like Dolm, were firing with greater precision, as the melee group approached. They were guided by my own excessive mana, I presumed. From that distance any attack powerful enough to hurt was something I could read coming and evade instead, even without sight, but they made it hard to focus on chanting the words to conjure up restorative water.

Stressed, afraid and hurting, my focus wavered as metal splinters peppered me again, and pricked at my wounds. The incantation unraveled with a useless wash of mana.

There was no time to try again; Jalera was back. I was still bleeding, but my time was up.

I clenched the fist not occupied holding my neck. The thought that I could kill or maim someone added to the sick feeling from my horrible injuries, but resolved as I was not to take any more lives, I couldn’t keep hesitating or pulling punches. Buried embers of rage and bloodthirst were there, smoldering, and I felt the heat well up as my righteous indignation and fear fed them. This was my attackers or me. Their choice, not mine.

They weren’t going to listen to reason, or let me retreat or recover. Not unless I started putting them down. beginning with Jalera. As long as she wasn’t dead I could at least try to heal her afterwards.

I couldn’t see her figure, but the air was glowing brilliant white around her squealing plasma arcs and armor, making her impossible to miss.

A vertical band of energy whipped towards me like a screeching solar flare as she closed into her preferred middle distance.

Weaving left, I found another already coming from that side too, hemming me in between the two loops. I could just make out the smile she wore as the third, horizontal band crackled towards my chest.

My legs were straight, out of position to dodge again after arresting the over-telegraphed motion of my evasion. She’d manipulated me perfectly.

Desperately, I flattened myself against the rock below to duck her strike.

That meant that I was enclosed on all sides by the deafening, dazzling display, but I tensed my legs.

I could still leap forwards and turn the tables on my foe.

Jalera must have thought that she was pressing her advantage, but Lyanna and the others were some distance away. The lightning-mage was charging essence into her staff for a powerful attack, not quite ready to unleash it so far as I could tell, and while Dolm might have speed and power to his shots, he couldn’t land a dangerous hit on me as long as I kept moving unpredictably at top speed. The same was true of the other ranged attackers capable or harming me.

With no-one else around and no more traps or sneaky melee types to spring out, there was no-one here to cover for her.

Or so I thought.

Before I could kick off I saw another reel of her arcing energy, already closing on me. Hidden in the white-out left by the first, it was only my sensitivity to essence that gave me any warning at all of the attack heading straight for me.

The others, overhead and to the sides, still penned me in, enclosing me in a transitory corridor that made it quite impossible for Jalera to miss. She was, it seemed, quite capable of covering for herself – and of reading my every move.

I wore a mirthless smile of my own – there was no way to avoid being hit.

Crossing my arms I jumped forwards anyway, directly into the path of the attack.

She might catch me head on, but I’d make her pay dearly for that.

My leg was already raised to my chest – this time she’d feel the full force of a kick.

Jalera was absurdly fast, pulling back the trapping bands of plasma to reinforce her defenses. That cleared the barriers overhead and to the sides.

For no more than a microsecond my toes anchored in place; my trailing foot to a boulder beneath me, while the raised one made a hold of thin air. Instead of a kick to shatter her armor and slam the woman into the geyser behind her, my coiled leg pushed off to send me arcing gracefully into the air.

Jalera gaped as she was left behind in the scalding steam cloud.

The huge rock I’d glued myself to came with me, torn out of the ground and hauled into the air.

I planted both feet on the surface as it rotated with me, tensed, then leapt with all my strength at the perfect moment.

Stone shattered, and broken chunks pummeled Jalera, boring into her defenses and beating her down into the ground with their sheer weight.

She definitely felt that.

As she was buried by an improvised meteor shower I emerged into open air again, high above my scattered enemies.

My injured hand was clutching my neck, but the other plucked a glowing bow-shot from the air as I started to fall. The projectile was still charged with a dangerous amount of essence, but I could feel that it was less than the early shots.

Unlike me, my enemies had limits, to stamina and to essence. Dolm and Lyanna both seemed to be running low on mana, and while I could sense more energy accruing in their bodies to replace what they spent, the rate was too slow for them to go on much longer.

Others were still relatively fresh, however, such as her axe-wielding friend, ‘Marco’. He was leading a group around the geysers towards me, but they were also heading right towards where Berenike lay.

Lyanna also seemed to be ready with her spell. From how much energy was packed into that staff of hers it would definitely be bad news to take that hit. Especially if she kept targeting my neck.

I also couldn’t let them bring Berenike into this.

I flicked the charged arrow toward the teen boy with the axe.

Lyanna shouted out in alarm, and the younger man leapt back just in time, falling on his ass as the wooden shaft, empowered by Dolm’s mana and my own arm-strength, shattered the rock at his feet.

Marco had no time to recover. I was hurtling towards him at top speed in the wake of my projectile. There was no way anyone but Jalera or Lyanna could deal with my flat-out movement.

“No!”

Exceeding the violence of my leap was the immense detonation of magic from Lyanna.

I would normally have needed to wait and read the trajectory of the attack, but the woman’s scream was all I needed to hear.

At once I anchored my whole body.

I watched in delight as a colossal, raging tongue of lightning boomed between the fallen teenager and myself.

Lyanna wasn’t the only one who could make feints.

If I couldn’t fool them with my smaller, subtler motions, I’d fool them with my defiance of basic laws of physics.

Her greatest attack was totally wasted.

I closed in on Lyanna once more. She was drained from her spell. Time to take her down before she could rally and fire off another.