Beast's Forest:

Gideon was running for his life, something he was quite familiar with and did a lot in the course of the last eight years. The only difference was that he was running from a man, not some beast or monster he meddled with. Another difference was that the man was gaining on him.

Sidestepping into a close shadow, he dipped into it, disappearing from there just as a huge log came falling down.

The next time he reappeared he was a hundred or so meters away, stepping out from another shadow. He threw a glance behind him as soon as he did, giving the man chasing him a look, the sight of him still gaining on him made him frown. The man was around 140 to 150 meters away and was closing the distance between them fast, the many sickly white arms dragged him along as he opened a way for himself through the packed forest.

He still wasn't that worried that the man was going to catch him, if there was one thing he was confident in, it was his speed and ability to avoid being caught. He was confused though, and a lot at that.

He wasn't sure why the man was so hell-bent on catching him nor why he reacted the way he did, but he could guess; the remains of the Hunting Weavers, and the man being able to find him out even while under his self-made cloaking technique were enough clues for him to guess why he had such a hostile reaction.

Knowing that only made his frown grow, he somehow understood that there should be a misunderstanding leading to all of this, one that might get resolved if he stopped to explain himself. Unfortunately, that would mean him putting himself at the mercy and whims of another, and he wasn't a fan of that.

Alas, he also knew deep down that he didn't have much of a say in the matter, the man and woman probably had what he wanted, they were the ones who opened those ruins, and he had to know what they found, even if by force.

Resolving his heart to what was coming, he closed his eyes and activated One with Shadows, staggering a bit as his mind got filled with information, with all the nearby shadows deepening and starting to feed them to him. Keeping One with Shadows on while concentrating on other demanding things wasn't that easy for him.

After doing all of that, Gideon turned his head back and said, projecting his voice through all the shades and shadows around with the help of One with Shadows, making sure that the man would be able to hear him:

"I'm sure that there's some misunderstanding at work here, if you would stop and let me explain myself I would be glad to do so."

His voice came out hollow, airy and echoey as if it sounded out from many places all at once, which it did.

With the help from One with Shadows, he was also able to see that the man behind him didn't have any change of expression, as if he hadn't even heard him. He frowned at that and continued:

"You should know that you won't be able to stop me from running away if I want to, the only reason that you're still able to keep up with me is that I'm still letting you," His voice was even and confident, not showing any hint of uncertainty, because for him what he had said was the truth, he couldn't see how the man might be able to stop him if he wanted to run.

The scowl the man showed as soon as he finished speaking told Gideon that that probably wasn't the right thing to say, the increased speed at which his arms dragged him only affirming that more.

"I meant it, I only want to talk," he add in a voice that had a hint of annoyance, "if you continue this then both of us won't get what we want, you're just wasting time and making this worst than it should be."

Words were never Gideon's strong suit, and he felt that that only got worst with the eight years he spent alone, but he still tried to get the other man to understand him and see the right way to deal with this.

Noting a leak of reaction from the man, Gideon clicked his tongue, the sound of it getting projected through the link that he still had with the shades around through One with Shadows.

With the annoyance building up inside of him, Gideon decided to show the man how pointless this chase he was partaking in was.

He first stopped One with Shadows as it was quite demanding and he wouldn't be able to keep it on with what he had in mind, he then activated another one of the skugg's racial spells, the Dark Clone, splitting up into two identical copies that kept on running alongside each other. Gideon knew that even though the copies were identical, if one was looking when the split happened, the observer would be able to distinguish between the two, and what he had in mind wouldn't work in that case, so he had to fix that.

He had his copy get closer to him and activated Skugg's Blink, stepping into a nearby tree's shade alongside his Dark Clone. When they reappeared again from another shade a few tens of meters ahead, it was almost impossible to detect which was the original and which was the copy.

With that done, Gideon started the last part of his plan. With his Dark Clone still close to him they both used another one of his racial spells, Scatter, at the exact same time.

Pooof!

They crumbled into a mess of black shadowy smoke; Because of their proximity, the black smoke they dissolved into appeared as if it got mixed together for a second before six black spheres scattered all around them at an astonishing speed, each of them flying into a different direction.

After they put a long enough distance between them and the man, who Gideon noticed stopped in confusion as soon as the six spheres appeared, the six spheres plunged into shades that were close-by and activated Skugg's Blink, diving straight through them.

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They only appeared a hundred or so meters away and continued on their way trying to hide behind trees and bushes. Finally, a few hundred meters later, and after almost all of them were outside the man's line of sight, four of the spheres dispersed while the remaining two reverted to Gideon and his Dark Clone, each of them running in totally opposite directions.

Gideon didn't run for long, he soon stopped and jumped into a close-by shade. The series of manoeuvres he just went through had an almost guaranteed chance of working, but it wasn't that easy for him, he was left tired and his body was under a lot of pressure.

He needed a bit of rest, some time to get some of his mana back and for his body to relax. Feeling the ever-present darkness around him, Gideon sighed as he lay there and for the nth time in the last eight years, he was glad for Skugg's Blink. He wouldn't be able to remain there for long, just a few seconds but even that would replenish some of his mana, which would also help relax and soothe his aching body.

Whenever he was there, he felt as if he was in front of something enormous, as if the darkness around him was hiding things he would never be able to comprehend no matter what. A short while later, the pull on him became too strong to resist and he knew that he had to return. Sighing, he let the pull drag him out of the darkness's embrace.

Stepping out from a different shade than the one he went into, he first had his Dark Clone disappear, stopping the mana sink that it was, then turned back towards where the man who was chasing him was. He hoped that the man would be more willing to listen right now, if not he didn't know what would get him to do so except a fight, which was something he didn't want to let things advance towards.

A few hundred meters away from where he last saw the man, Gideon stopped and reactivated One with Shadows, he saw that the man was still standing in the same place he left him at, he didn't know if that was because he didn't know what to do or if it was because he knew that he was going to return, and he didn't care to anyway.

The man became guarded, probably from noticing the shadows around him darken.

"So, I hope you're ready to speak right now," said Gideon, "I meant it when I said that this all is probably nothing but a misunderstanding, and also when I said if I wanted to run I would be able to. Hopefully, you can see that now."

Again, the man's face twitched for a bit, as he looked all around him as if searching for Gideon, after a few seconds of doing that, he finally stopped and a mixed and conflicted expression appeared on his face. The fact that he still didn't give him an answer and how he was acting, gave Gideon the impression that the man was still sure that he would be able to catch him, just not sure if it would be worth it.

Finally, through One with Shadows, Gideon saw the man sigh before turning around to where he was hiding and saying:

"Okay, I'll listen to what you have to say."

Gideon froze for a bit when the man turned towards him before he took a deep breath, stood up and headed towards him slowly and cautiously.

***

"So... Can you tell me why you have been spying on us?" Adam asked the skugg standing in front of him.

He was finding it quite hard to control himself at that moment, especially with how he would have almost lost the man if he hadn't returned to him voluntarily. The feeling as if he lost to the man in some way also had a say in that, it was the second time he almost messed everything up in less than a week, and that didn't sit well with him.

Knowing that it wasn't the time to let his emotions take a hold of him, he took deep breaths and decided to study the man in front of him instead of thinking about such useless things.

The man was obviously a skugg, as seen from the spells he used, along with his wear. He was wearing a long black robe that covered every inch of his body, with a black featureless mask on his face and a pair of black gloves on his hands. There wasn't even a speck of dirt or dust on any of his wear, probably the result of some runic glyphs inscribed on them.

Adam was quite familiar with such get-ups from the skugg, they usually wore those when in missions or the like, as some of their racial spells would work better if they were wearing black, for example, the Dark Clone the man used before. As the name indicated, the spell gives the caster an identical clone except that the clone would be as black as night with no other colour, so the skugg tended to wear black clothes to confuse their enemies even more when using their clones.

"Believe it or not, I really just wanted to talk and ask you about some things," the man said with a sigh as if expecting what Adam was going to say.

Adam sure wasn't going to disappoint him, so he said with a raised eyebrow, not hiding his skepticism at all:

"And that's why you sent your Hunting Weavers after us?" A bit of his hostility leaked through but he didn't care to hide it, depending on the man's answer they were probably going to end up fighting anyway, "and before you say you didn't, just know that I recognized the spell you were using to hide yourself before, it's the same one that those Hunting Weavers had on them."

"Sigh... It really is just a misunderstanding, I didn't mean for any of this to happen," The man sighed again, and this time Adam sensed a guilty and apologetic undertone to his words.