They arrived at Pali’s manor. Among all the towering buildings that attempted to take up as little space as possible in the confines of Ivossin Cavern, finding a house that looked like it would get along fine within some of the nicest neighborhoods Uptown was a little unexpected.
This is where Kayden had been spending several hours a day training in shadow magic since the events following her and Ruth’s intrusion into the deep denizen’s sanctuary.
Coming into the house, she was greeted by the sight of many boxes filled with strange mechanical parts. Sook had been moved in here after her excision so that Pali could keep an eye on her. Nikiphero, as part of their new partnership with the deep denizen, was building a lab for Sook to continue her research.
Speaking of Sook, she came waddling around a tower of boxes holding what looked like the charred remains of a drone. She was no longer floating around as the deep denizen tended to do, but walking around on her own two feet. That had been the cost of her excision, she no longer had access to mind abilities. It was a strange sight that only highlighted her childlike features. The deep denizen had an imposing presence with their mind powers, and without them, Sook looked vulnerable.
She looked up in surprise as Vic opened the door for Kayden. “Oh, Kayden. Did you forget something?”
“No, I’m here for training.”
“Didn’t you just finish?”
“That was yesterday, Sook.”
“Was it?”
Since the excision. Sook had been burying herself in her work as a way to distract from the pain of no longer being part of the Collective. It was obviously a coping mechanism, but Pali was helping her to slowly come to terms with what had happened. Still, it made Kayden sad every time she saw Sook looking so lost.
Even though Kayden thought Sook made the right decision, it didn’t make the pain Sook was going through easier to witness. Kayden, feeling partially responsible for the part she played in Sook’s excision, wanted to do something to help, but Pali specifically forbade her from doing anything other than being Sook’s friend. This was not something Kayden had any hope of understanding; anything she tried to do to help would only set Sook’s progress back.
“You haven’t seen my laser, rune inscriptor by chance?”
“No, but I can help you look for it.” Kayden was familiar with rune inscriptors from her time at the Academy—if not the lase variety. It couldn’t be that different.
“Miss,” Vic said impatiently from the bottom of the stairs.
Kayden glanced at him and then at Sook.
“Go on. You better not keep Pali waiting.”
“Are you sure? I can stay and help you look.”
Sook was already looking through boxes. She had half her body submerged in one with her legs kicking at the air. Components flew out of the box as she dug through it.
“I’ll be fine! I’m not a toddler! Everyone keeps coddling me!” Her current position didn’t help her argument.
“Okay, but if you need something just let me know.”
“Go away! I have work to do!”
Kayden headed toward the stairs but stopped when there was a loud clatter and Sook yelled, “Wait! Is there any news on the lab?”
Kayden turned back to see the box had flipped, spilling Sook and everything inside onto the ground. “Not yet, but I will let you know as soon as it is ready. A lot of your requests for the lab are hard to get ahold of even with Nikiphero’s connections. But Ruth is working hard on it.”
“Good. The sooner I get out of this place, the better.”
“Maybe you should give it a little more time before you rush out on your own.”
Sook rolled her eyes. “You sound like Pali. Just let me do my work and I’ll be fine! Ruth gets it. Science is everything! Here it is!” She triumphantly held up what looked reminiscent of a microscope. It had fallen out of the box next to her.
With that, she scurried off to get back to her work.
Kayden turned to Vic with an exasperated look, but his face was expressionless as always. It had been her mistake to look to him for understanding.
“This way, Miss,” he said impatiently. Kayden was sure impatience was the only emotion he felt.
She followed him up the grand staircase. To the second floor. They went into a large meeting chamber that had been reconfigured for the purposes of her training.
Pali was waiting, reading from a book while floating in the air. There was a large cage below him. Kayden heard a catlike growl from within, but there were no bars or spaces for her to see what was inside.
Her excitement at seeing what Pali had in store for her today dimmed somewhat but didn’t completely vanish, it was just tempered with some caution now as well. Pali was a calm and empathetic teacher, but that did not mean he didn’t push Kayden harder than she sometimes thought she could bear. He reminded her of Cassius in that way.
“Kayden, finally,” he said, floating lower and a little closer, his long, dark blue bristles bobbing slightly from the movement. Sook was lucky her bristles were so small because Kayden was almost certain that Pali and the other deep denizen with long bristles would have a great deal of trouble moving around if it weren’t for their mind magic. “I have a treat for you today. Straight from the Gelgine Wilderness, a shadow prowler.”
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As if sensing it had been addressed, the shadow prowler yawled loudly from within its confinement. It was a primal sound that set Kayden on edge.
When she was a kid, she liked to study the many creatures that called the Gelgine Wilderness home. There was a reason, no kingdom had expanded into it. There were many powerful and vicious creatures that resided there. But that didn’t stop ambitious adventurers from exploring it.
A shadow prowler was one of the lower to mid-tier creatures power-wise in the forest. But even the weaker creatures were something to be feared. The shadow prowler was noteworthy from what Kayden could remember—and which the name made obvious—for their use of shadow magic to stalk and kill their prey.
Shed did not like where this was headed.
“You will fight the shadow prowler.”
As she expected.
She could have argued, but she had long since decided to accept what Pali thought was best. She had learned from Cassius to stop trying to go her own way. It was time to put her trust in those who were more powerful and knowledgeable than herself. She was here to learn and Pali was a good teacher. There was no reason to be hesitant now.
Pali paused as if waiting for an objection, but when none came he nodded and went on to explain. “We have been working the last several weeks over how to manipulate your shadow energy in its simplest form. You have shown yourself to be most adept with its cold capabilities, but today we will be discussing concealment and movement. This is only a juvenile shadow prowler, so it’s incapable of transformation, but that lesson will come for later. It is still outside of your abilities.
“Despite what many believe, shadow magic is not capable of teleportation. At least, not in this era. What it is instead very useful for is its ability to phase matter, specifically by making it incorporeal. This has three basic benefits: making you harder to detect, making it easier to move, and making you harder to hit. Concealment, movement, transformation, respectively. Each has its obvious strengths, but they also have their weaknesses. We will be discussing and practicing the first two today.
“Concealment does not mean invisibility, that is far more powerful and involves light not shadow magic. This means you can still be detected, especially by those with the ability to see through darkness such as deep denizen. Next with movement, while shadow magic works to make you lighter so you can move quicker, it also makes every hit hit harder. That is where transformation comes in handy but we will get to that another day.
“What you will do today is evade the shadow prowler while it attacks you. Do not worry I will stop it if it hurts you, but only after it hurts you. Sustaining wounds and the threat of wounds is the fastest way to learn.”
Kayden nodded at this. That is why they sparred at the compound. It was useless to practice forms all day without actually putting them to any use.
“While you are evading the prowler use your aura sense to watch how it uses shadow magic to its advantage. Watch how it flows through and with the prowler to make it phase out of sight and make it more agile. I will contain the prowler after a short amount of time to give you a chance to practice it yourself. Then we will repeat the exercise.”
He floated over to the cage. “Ready?”
Kayden swallowed and summoned her shadow dagger, falling into a fighting stance.
“Oh, and refrain from killing the prowler. I only have one.”
With that the door slid up, allowing the prowler to leap out.
It was smaller than Kayden expected, probably only twice the size of an average house cat, no bigger than a small dog. It was jet black with yellow eyes. There were long tufts growing atop its ears.
Its tail swished irritably back and forth as its eyes darted around the room. First seeing Pali in the air above it, it growled and launched atop its cage to get at him, but he drifted away.
Kayden realized she hadn’t turned on aura sense and quickly did so. She immediately saw the dark energies swirling around the creature.
Then the prowler’s eyes fell on her. They were filled with predatory malice.
It launched itself at her, going much further than it otherwise should have been able to. Kayden could see the energy it was using to do so, but she couldn’t study it much, because the prowler was coming straight for her face with its claws extended.
She leaped to the side, dodging in the last second. She rolled across the ground infusing her body with her aura as she did so. The prowler soared over her, landing and skidding across the ground.
It paused as it observed Kayden get quickly to her feet. They eyed, each other, each waiting to see who would make the next move.
The prowler did. It vanished from sight. Or at least it tried to. The light around it became slightly dimmer and it melded with the shadow. While it would have been hard to detect in the dark, this room was well-lit. But it still made it difficult to track.
Even if it had been dark, though, Kayden would have been able to track it with her aura sense. It was trying to suppress it on an instinctual level, probably understanding that even though it was hard to see with regular sight there were creatures that could detect it through aura. But since it was a juvenile, it couldn’t do it very well. That was beneficial for Kayden because not only could she more easily track it but she could also observe how it was creating this effect.
The prowler’s aura acted as a cloak of sorts, resting on the area around it to create this artificial shadow effect. At the same time, it was infusing itself with the properties of the shadow to make it blend in more easily. It wasn’t dissimilar to what Kayden did with her own aura to make herself stronger, but instead of infusing muscle, it was infusing skin. Well, in this case, fur.
The prowler launched itself once again. With her aura infusion, Kayden was better prepared to dodge, but the cat was fast and able to change direction instantly.
It caught the subtlest of movements that Kayden telegraphed and knew instantly what she was going to do. Kayden was already in the midst of her movement when the cat shifted to intercept her, coming at her with fangs bared.
It was too late for Kayden to do anything about it. She had to hope that Pali stopped it before it ripped her throat out.
But she couldn’t count on that. Even if she was certain Pali could get to it before it did any serious damage, she had to treat this like a real scenario. It was life or death and there was only one way to survive.
Kayden channeled the shadow magic through the dagger and infused it into herself. Instead of doing the cloaking effect, she did what she only caught a glimpse of the cat doing at the beginning of the fight: she tried to make herself lighter.
She was wracked with cold. This was probably due to her having practiced so much with the cold aspect of shadow magic. She instinctively channeled it that way. Unfortunately, messing with her body temperature had the effect of sending her into hypothermic shock.
However, she was too caught up in the moment to notice. She was concentrating on making herself lighter.
She didn’t have a great idea of how the prowler did it, so she just started doing what came naturally to her and infusing her muscles. It was much easier to do than usual, and whereas she could only usually do her arms and sometimes her legs, with shadow magic it was almost like it wanted to flow throughout her entire body.
It was more malleable and…sticky? She wasn’t sure if that was the right word but it latched on to everything it touched. Maybe hungry was a better word for it. Then she felt the strangest thing yet, she felt buoyant like someone was lifting her up from beneath.
She was shocked from that sensation when the prowler slammed into her.
She went flying across the room, more than she should have, illustrating she had been successful to a small degree. But she didn’t have time to celebrate as she hit the ground and was immediately ravished with chills and shaking.