Rhaspalaka regretted not taking his opportunity to strike when the dust had been blown into the elf’s eyes. Now his quarry had escaped.

Annoyingly, Rhas still didn’t know which of the two had the Book. However, he had figured out what their Gifts were. The tall one was a Hydrohand. The elf was some kind of Naturalist.

Knowing this, Rhaspalaka emptied his flask of water and gave chase along the canopy. He knew that this part of the forest had only one route, it was another hour before there was a crossroads. If they strayed from the forest path, then Rhas would easily catch up to them as he could jump from tree to tree while they would be forced to clear a path through the bush.

At least, that’s what Rhaspalaka thought.

It didn’t take much time to catch up to the duo, who were looking more alert than ever. But, rather than attack directly, Rhaspalaka went around to lay a trap on the road ahead. It didn’t take much, just a few key utterances to lay a magic circle faster than any trained magician’s hand. He used his Gift to place the rest of the reagents at the key points of the magic circle via a custom-made blacksteel claw. In under a minute, a magic circle with a radius of 20 meters had been constructed.

Rhaspalaka lay in wait and sure enough, Kari and Elwin appeared a hundred meters down the road. In less than a minute they’d step into the centre of the magic circle.

Fifty meters…

Thirty meters…

Ten meters…

Five meters…

Three meters…

Two…

One…

Just one more step…!

Kari froze.

“Stop. Something doesn’t feel right.” He said.

Too late. Rhaspalaka thought, finishing the magic circle with his Gift and activating his trap.

Immediately, the perimeter of the circle came to life with ten-meter tall flames. The flames were an unnatural deep red colour, and they began to fill every square inch of the magic circle, zoning in on its centre. They burned magically and with a persistent intensity that one could never find in nature. In seconds, the surrounding trees twisted and warped as the moisture they held expanded and turned to steam, escaping into the air.

“Return the Book, and I will let you go unharmed.” Rhaspalaka declared from his hidden location. A false promise. He merely wanted to confirm the Book was in their possession.

“What book is he talking about?” Elwin asked Kari, desperation dripping from his voice.

Kari grimaced. “I have no idea what you’re on about!” He shouted back in reply.

“Then you will die!” Rhaspalaka proclaimed.

“Elwin, stay close, and don’t move,” Kari said quietly. The roar of the flames grew closer.

Rhas was not concerned that the Book may be destroyed. He knew that it could survive almost anything, having been enchanted with several layers of powerful defences.

Elwin tried to douse the flames by covering them with dirt, but they simply appeared atop the newly shaped heap within the magic circle.

Kari tried to pull moisture from his surroundings, but there was only a measly amount in the face of the inferno. Whatever he could scrounge was quickly reduced to nothing, and evaporated uselessly before their eyes.

“It’s magic!” shouted Elwin in growing anxiety.

“Then can you find a way to disrupt the spell?” Kari shouted.

Seeing the flames were about to consume them, Kari activated his stasis bracelet at the last possible moment in an act of desperation.

Rhas watched the two figures disappear amidst the unquenchable flames.

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Just to be sure, Rhaspalaka threw a fistful of knives into the inferno that was beginning to lick at the hem of their robes.

Suddenly, a beam of red light flew in from the side and turned the blacksteel daggers to dust.

“What?” Rhaspalaka exclaimed in surprise.

The flames went out below him, as Elwin successfully created a fissure in the dirt, disrupting the magic circle and destroying the constitution of the spell.

Looking around, Rhaspalaka saw the forest below was suddenly swarming. Behind every tree, rock, bush and branch, stood figures clad in metallic full-body armour. Helmets covered their faces, giving them a creepy, impersonal, inscrutable quality.

A loud voice emanated from all around: “Don’t move! Stand down in the name of Empress Lucina!”

“I know not of any Empress Lucina! Who are you to interfere?!” Rhaspalaka asked angrily.

There was nowhere to hide.

Meanwhile, on the path below, Kari and Elwin had somehow disappeared.

“That is a warning shot. Surrender now!”

Rhaspalaka made an Utterance. The same one that Jinnai had used to kill his assailants in Kajesh.

A beam of light appeared next to his head, leaving an afterimage burned into half of his vision. Yet, that was not the outcome that Rhaspalaka had expected. His Utterance had no effect, the only possible explanation...

Their weapons are protected by Universal Law? Who are these people?

Rhaspalaka felt the mysterious enemies tighten their focus on him. Instinctively, he crushed a smoke bomb using his Gift, making an Utterance as he did so, barely moving his lips...

Swiftly, the smoke was pierced by an array of lasers from every conceivable angle.

Yet once it cleared, there was no trace of the mysterious assassin.

#

Kari had initially used Stasis on the air around him in the hopes that it would be enough to prevent the magical inferno from burning them alive.

Though they had been lucky that the soldiers had interfered in time, Kari was not happy about it. Without Elwin, he would’ve been solidly defeated at the hands of the mysterious magician.

Alien soldiers clad in shiny silver armour swarmed through the forest.

“Where did he go?”

“Was there anything left in the flames?”

“We haven’t managed to find anything.”

“Search the area. Neutralise any hostile resistance.”

“How long until Phase Two?”

“Five kilometres. Theta Team will take over from there. Her Highness Lucina wants to negotiate.”

The mysterious soldier’s chatter was the only thing filling the dreaded silence, as Kari and Elwin held their breath and wordlessly snuck by soldier after soldier, invisible to the naked eye. Sometimes, they came so close that Elwin could almost reach out and touch their polished, otherworldly armour.

Elwin didn’t understand how, but Kari had done something to render them invisible.

It was one of Kari’s best tricks. Kari used water vapour in the air to precisely change the refractivity of the air, bending light in an area around him.

Normally to pull off such a feat, a hydrohand would have to stand perfectly still, in a windless area. But thanks to Kari’s stasis bracelet, he could continue to move, keeping the air around him frozen. Furthermore, using the bracelet’s power freed up his mind, allowing him to focus on something other than applying his Gift.

The soldiers were large in number, and their weapons and armour were unlike anything Elwin had ever seen before, made of some flexible, form-fitting, gold-and-silver metal. Their golden weapons fired pure energy, like a thousand suns, able to turn refined blacksteel to dust in an instant.

Who were they?

Though the unspoken question weighed on their minds, Kari and Elwin had no time to consider such things as they made their way deeper into the forest. Elwin guided Kari’s movements while under the cover of Kari’s ‘cloak’ of invisibility. Their surroundings were dimmer than usual; most of the light was being redirected around them, leaving only little to navigate with.

After what felt like an eternity, but was realistically in the realm of ten minutes, Kari and Elwin finally escaped the soldier’s search perimeter.

Before them was a clearing, dominated by a shining silver pillar. A Gate, according to Elwin. But though he did not know it, the squarish pillar was not actually a circular Labyrinth Gate. To Kari, the pillar looked oddly familiar… Where had he seen one before?

Something was amiss about the scene. The rest of the clearing was dotted with the smouldering black shapes – the scorched remains of tents and piles of ash.

“There used to be a goblin camp here…” Elwin said in a voice overcome with shock.

“Those soldiers must’ve wiped them out,” Kari stated. He wrinkled his nose at the smell; bitter ash mixed with the disturbing flavour of cooked meat.

“How terrible…”

“We should take shelter there and find our bearings,” Kari suggested.

“That’s the monolith that Lumie wanted to see… she thought it might be a Labyrinth Gate. The goblins that used to worship it were so friendly… Why would those soldiers do this?” Elwin asked in despondence.

Kari didn’t know what to say. Goblins were not known for their diplomacy; it was likely that they had responded with aggression to having their territory invaded.

Kari and Elwin began walking to the Gate in the centre of the clearing, picking their way through the carnage.

Suddenly, a shout came from behind them, raising every hair on Elwin’s body.

“Identify yourselves!”

A soldier!

Immediately, Elwin was tackled by Kari, who cloaked the two of them as he did so. A brilliant beam of blue death flew square at his back, but it was redirected by the cloak that bent light. Had it not been for the stasis bracelet, the intense energy of the laser would have overpowered the cloak. The stray shot flew into the forest, igniting a tree on the other side of the clearing.

“Run!” Kari hissed, dragging Elwin with him by the armpits.

“They’re invisible! Use deductive protocols for target acquisition!” the soldier shouted.

A quick glance behind revealed twenty more soldiers arriving to reinforce the Incandestine position at the edge of the clearing.

“Get to the pillar!” Kari yelled, just as the soldiers opened fire, turning the clearing into a bizarre disco of blue death.