The Unseen Rain swore under her breath.

Eva launched an attack, jumping forward and punching the air. As she moved, the tendrils of shadow behind her coalesced into the shape of a spear, hovering just above her arm. When her arm was fully extended, the shadow spear launched forward at great speed, directly at Rain.

Rain dodged, but just barely. In fact, if she hadn’t reflexively… enhanced her own movements when she jumped away, she would have been hit.

Rain landed heavily on a low tree branch and had to brace herself against the trunk to stop from falling. The tree branch groaned loudly under her weight and Rain hoped it would be able to hold her weight. “Is this your idea of a conversation?” she called down to Eva.

“So you are a true magic user after all,” said Eva, looking up at Rain. More shadow tendrils were gathering behind her.

Eva can sense the use of true magic, then, thought Rain. But the cleric hadn’t been certain until Rain used magic in front of her. So Eva didn’t have the same powers of Sight that Rain had. That possibly gave Rain an advantage, although it didn’t make much difference in active combat.

“I use small amounts of true magic, when necessary,” admitted Rain. “I’m not reckless, like you are.”

“I’m not reckless,” said Eva. “I’m just willing to do what it takes.”

Eva launched another shadow spear, forcing Rain to jump to another tree further on while Eva followed below.

“Do you not know what true magic is?” asked Rain. “Do you not know what fuels it?”

“I know,” said Eva, with a shrug. “I just don’t care.”

The shadow tendrils around Eva collapsed into a dark pool around her feet. Then the pool suddenly launched upwards, quickly lifting Eva towards Rain’s perch. At the same time, a smaller amount of shadow flowed up Eva’s side and then down her arm, forming into a curved blade around her hand.

There was no time to dodge. Rain raised her dagger to block the blow from Eva’s shadow weapon, but when the two blades clashed, the shadow blade suddenly dissolved. The shadow blade flowed around the physical blade like some form of viscous fluid, and when it had gone all the way through, it solidified again.

Rain shouted as the blade cut deep into her shoulder.

Rain blindly kicked outward. The blow barely landed, but it was enough to send Eva tumbling out of the tree. Before the cleric could recover, Rain jumped away again, trying to increase the distance between them.

Rain had trained her whole life to carefully control various forms of magic. The small amount of divine magic she’d inherited, apparently from some long distant elven ancestor. The true magic she’d awakened to in her childhood. The alchemy she’d learned through careful study. By combining them in the right way, Rain could achieve remarkable effects with little risk.

But how could any level of subtle mastery hope to stand up against sheer, reckless power?

“Get back here!” Eva shouted from the ground, launching another shadow spear. It nicked Rain’s ear, drawing blood, as Rain fled further into the forest.

Rain had sensed something like this in Eva the first time they met, which is why she had quickly retreated every time Eva had arrived on the scene. It wasn’t that Rain understood right away exactly what Eva was capable of, it was more that she could tell Eva was capable of something. And whatever that was, it was bound to be both terrifying and unpredictable.

It was Eva’s aura that gave it away.

In Rain’s experience, every person had two auras. Their body aura, which manifested as a faintly glowing outline around a person’s body; and their soul aura, which manifested as a similar glow on a person’s chest, around where their heart would be.

In a normal person, the body aura and the soul aura shared the same color. This is how Rain could sense something was wrong with the Saintess.

In a normal person, the body aura and soul aura were also clearly distinct. There was a barrier between them. They didn’t touch or overlap.

However, in any person who had awakened to true magic, there would be connections between the two auras. Maybe in just one or two places, where the soul aura had reached out to intersect the body aura. Perhaps more, if a magician was particularly powerful.

Eva’s soul aura had fully expanded beyond her body aura to the point where it was hard to distinguish the two, and this combined aura… The only word Rain could think of to describe it was ragged, like an ancient overcoat. It was full of holes and tears. It constantly flickered and shifted, making it difficult for Rain to even focus her eyes on it for too long. It was wrong. More wrong even then the Saintess, with her mismatched soul. Even the thought of it made Rain feel nauseous.

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And even with all that, Rain hadn’t predicted this. She hadn’t predicted the extent to which Eva would be willing to utilize the power available to her.

After all, who would reasonably guess that someone would have such little regard for their own life?

Eva chased Rain through the forest, launching shadow spears at her over and over again. Rain was still managing to dodge, but only just. Her wounded shoulder was screaming in pain, slowing her down and making it harder to maneuver properly. This was even worse than that fight with the damn elf prince, although being tired from the first fight certainly wasn’t making this one any easier, either…

This was supposed to be an easy job, thought Rain. Kill a nice church girl, no problem, get a fat paycheck, take it easy for a few months, but no, it can’t ever be easy.

Rain was in midair when she saw a massive spike of shadow erupt from the branch she was about to land on. Reaching out to her magic, she used a gust of wind to push herself slightly out of the way so she would land just to the side of the spike instead of being impaled by it.

Somehow, the unnatural wind rustling through the trees sounded like the angry chittering of a swarm of small, violent creatures.

Rain hated this forest. It was unsettling. The trees didn’t feel like trees, the geography made no sense, her divine Sight wasn’t working properly… She couldn’t make sense of anything she was seeing!

Like the trees. Normally plants only had a single aura, but these trees had two each. What kind of tree had a heart?

All that, and she was being forced to use far more true magic than she was comfortable with all at once. If she kept going like this for too long she would have to pay a price she wasn’t willing to pay.

Rain dodged again, jumping up to a higher branch as another spike erupted directly underneath her. If she hadn’t dodged that, she might have been bisected. This was all too much.

“Wait! Wait!” Rain shouted.

“Why should I wait?” asked Eva from down on the forest floor, her voice calm, her smile steady. “As long as you’re alive, you’re a threat to Anne. I can’t allow that. You should save us both some time by just standing still for two seconds so I can kill you.”

Eva launched another shadow spear through the air and Rain dodged it again. “Look, I’m not even trying to kill your fake Saintess anymore.”

“Fake—?” Eva’s smile wavered for just a moment. “So you know I’ve been faking the miracles, then? Just another reason I can’t allow you to live.”

“You’ve been doing what?” said Rain.

Rain thought about it. She hadn’t considered the possibility because the Saintess, even with her foreign soul, radiated a strong divine power. The soul aura was ordinary, but the body aura was one of the most purely divine auras she had ever seen. The body of Anne Coris was obviously from a very powerful divine bloodline.

But divine magic generally gave people powers of vision, like Rain’s Sight, or the knowledge of hidden things, or prophetic dreams, things like that. And Rain didn’t often pay much attention to current events, but from what she’d heard, the “miracles” performed by the Saintess were things like… levitation, making statues weep, multiplying loaves of bread, etc. None of that was really possible through divine magic as it was classically understood.

So Eva’s true magic had been behind the miracles all along, then. Interesting.

Eva was staring up at Rain with confused eyes, her head tilted to one side, her smile strained. Her relentless attacks had finally stopped. In the momentary silence, Rain could hear the trees continuing to groan and chitter, even though her magical wind had dissipated.

“You didn’t know…” said Eva. “Then what did you mean by fake Saintess?”

“I mean she’s not the Saintess,” said Rain, slowly climbing higher up the tree, casually, hoping not to trigger another onslaught of attacks. “And my target is the Saintess, so I don’t have any contractual obligation to kill her, so you can just—“

“Right, and she’s not the Saintess because I’ve been faking—” said Eva.

“No!” said Rain, exasperated. “My target, the person I was paid to kill, is Anne Coris, the Saintess of the Church of Coris. That person that you’ve been traveling with is not Anne Coris.”

The damned cleric finally stopped smiling.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Eva snapped. “I’ve been with her my whole life. Since we were children. I’ve stood right by her side, watching over her as she’s grown and changed throughout the years. She couldn’t get a new freckle on her arm without me noticing.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t the body of Anne Coris,” said Rain. “But—“

Eva was no longer listening. She launched another shadow spear, which made Rain lose her grip on the higher branch she was climbing to. Rain landed heavily on a lower branch, the wood groaning loudly beneath her.

Eva continued to talk, the volume of her voice rising as she continued her attacks, “If Anne’s not real, then nothing is real. If she’s not true, then nothing is true!”

Another shadow spear buried itself into a tree trunk behind her as Rain dodged, swinging upside down so she was hanging from the branch by her knees.

That last shadow spear had landed directly on the tree’s second aura. What would be its soul aura, if trees had souls, which was ridiculous. Trees were living things, obviously, but they were unthinking, inanimate—

The groaning and chittering of the branches and leaves grew louder still, until Rain felt she had to cover her ears.

“What the—“

Suddenly, the tree closest to Eva fully bent itself over, wrapping her up in its branches, before snapping back upright with a deafening crack.

The tree Rain was sitting in didn’t have to work quite as hard to grab her. She felt the branches close around her like the bars of a prison.

Rain swore again.