It was time to leave.

There was a hint of crispness to the wind that hissed through the leaves of the trees outside Meil, hinting that soon it would turn to fall and the rainy season, though hopefully not while they were on their way down to Duenn. Blue might like to listen to the rain through her ears, but having to travel through it wouldn’t be very fun. Especially since she would be doing a lot of heavy lifting with her Skill.

Cheya, Annit, and Keri were her companions for this trip, tagging along under [Promise]’s expansion of [Ghost Step]. Aside from the transportation Skill, Shayma was leaning lightly on [Luck], feeding it a trickle of stamina to help smooth their path forward. Cheya had exchanged her usual demure outfit for adventurer’s garb, dark cloth and leather with a few gleams of weaponry obscured by the folds. Shayma was actually a little jealous, despite the fact that the three of them had new gear themselves. Even if it was nice and shiny, it didn’t compare to the exquisite care that had so obviously gone into the third-tier’s equipment. There was also the fact that Blue had promised something in the future, and given what he’d supplied them in the past that was bound to be amazing.

“Come back safe,” Iniri said, stepping forward to give Shayma and Cheya each a tight hug, lips pressed against a frown of worry. “All of you.” This with a nod to Keri and Annit, who weren’t sufficiently familiar or high ranked enough to warrant a hug.

“Yes, your Highness.” Cheya nodded cooly, apparently unperturbed. Annit bowed, somewhat awkwardly, and Keri curtseyed, not at all awkwardly.

“We’ll be fine,” Shayma assured her. There was nobody else but Iniri and her guards to see them off from the front of Iniri’s converted manor, but the city was slowly starting to come to life as the days went on and more people moved in or came back. Unfortunately, with that number of people Iniri couldn’t be sure that they were all trustworthy, and though Blue had many talents he couldn’t actually read minds, so their errand was being kept relatively quiet.

After a few more assurances, Shayma swept them up in [Ghost Step] and headed south, angling toward the coast. She could feel the extra strain on the Skill as she used [Promise] to extend it, the other three women matching her jog through the monochrome world the Skill pulled them into. Keri and Annit had tinctures prepared by the alchemist, Taelah, something with tayantan juice and kinetic and illusion chrystheniums, to offset their lack of stamina skills and ease the burden of the Skill.

Blue was at her metaphorical shoulder for the trip, the liquid sound of his attention washing through her mind even when he wasn’t saying anything. According to the scrying they’d done, not only were Tor Kot’s monsters ranging out beyond the cities, but there were a number of bandits and other unsavory elements out in the countryside where order had broken down in the wake of the invasion. Considering those dangers, and that her most powerful weapon was actually something Blue controlled, he was paying closer attention to her than usual. Admittedly, it wasn’t likely regular bandits would be a problem, since they’d be mostly first-tiers and maybe the occasional low-powered second-tier, but ambushes could hurt anyone.

“Honestly, I still think this looks a little creepy,” he observed. “Like I worry you’ll pop out on the wrong side of this ghost world when you end the Skill.”

“Well that’s a pleasant thought.” Within [Ghost Step] sounds vanished almost instantly, making verbal communication impossible unless it was with Blue. For that purpose Shayma had learned some of the hand-sign used by more experienced adventurers, though given that she was out in front it was more likely someone would just grab her if they needed to stop.

“I’d feel better if we were sending The Hurricane along too,” Blue grumbled. “She could make one hell of a distraction.”

“We’ll be fine,” Shayma assured him. It was actually a little amusing he was worrying so much. It was a risky endeavor, true, but not at the moment and not for some time, not until they got nearer to Duenn. Blue was hovering and it was kind of adorable. She was pretty sure that Powers weren’t supposed to wring their metaphysical hands when they sent their minions off to do their jobs. “I just hope nothing happens that means you have to call me back early.”

“I can always just have you send notes if it’s really important. Though I guess that doesn’t really take advantage of my brand new audience chamber. Not that it seems to have made much of a difference. Taelah wasn’t impressed at all!”

“I think she’s just that way,” Shayma said, amused. “She’s decided not to be impressed and that was that.”

“So what do you think she’ll decide? I mean, I could use the farmers, but it’s pretty clear I can’t futz around with making deals anymore.”

“I really don’t know. My parents always said the only people more stubborn than adventurers were farmers.”

“Could work for me or against me I guess. Long as they actually take it seriously that I’m in charge.”

“Taelah was taking it seriously, at least.”

“So what do you think of Taelah being a Companion? Though from what I can see she isn’t too enamored of the idea.” Shayma laughed. She wasn’t sure why Blue seemed intent on running everyone past her, but then, it wasn’t like he had anyone else to talk to about it.

“She’s well on her way to a Druid sort of Class path. Considering all your plants I think that’d be really useful, whether Skill transcription or just being around to have insight on what you’re doing.”

“Maybe I ought to buy that Companion trait thing. I haven’t gotten anyone’s Skills but yours so I don’t even know what to expect. Or how long it’d take. The level doesn’t advance very quickly, though this new breeding station sort of implies it should help with that.”

Shayma listened to Blue fret as they made their way toward the coast. He’d been a lot more uncertain of late, especially since he’d learned, somehow, that The Hurricane was inciting Haerlish against them. As if there wasn’t enough on their plate. That, at least, was a merely human threat, and Iniri had already dispatched a missive that would hopefully stall any movement on that front.

She did wonder where he came across these little bits of knowledge. He seemed to have some way to keep track of people he’d run into, or even that she’d run into, and it wasn’t just the Companion thing. Maybe Blue could somehow track her parents through her, which wasn’t an unusual divining trick. She was pretty sure he had some divination he could do.

By now, her parents would be nearing Blue’s territory, though maybe they’d be delayed. The roads weren’t safe and everyone knew it, so she would bet they had stayed close to the mountains and moved through wilderness. That wouldn’t be any great ordeal for them, but it was slower, even with her dad’s abilities. He had an evolved version of [Longstrider] but since her mom didn’t, it didn’t speed them up too much.

Hopefully she’d be around when they finally appeared, if for no other reason than to keep them from hearing about her relationship with Blue second- or third-hand. It was strange enough to her, let alone to other people who couldn’t hear Blue and just thought of him as some giant brute of a thing.

Which he was, if only in private.

Eventually her Stamina ran low from maintaining the Skill, and she had to leave [Ghost Step] for a break, the four of them emerging into coarse grass growing up between cracks in the earth-magic shaped road. Someone had used Skills here, though not recently, breaking up the stone enough for time and weather to do the rest. It was rather a forlorn spot, an abandoned and decrepit part of a once-traveled road that was a forcible reminder of the state of Tarnil. There would be so much work to do once Tor Kot had been dealt with.

“Oof. I’m not used to jogging for so long.” Keri leaned on her staff, stretching her legs while Annit walked a perimeter, eyes half-closed as she used her perception Skills. Though Shayma’s senses were plenty sharp, she didn’t have the breadth of detection ability that Annit did, while Cheya’s Skills were more active in nature.

“It’s a useful Skill, but yes.” Shayma found a useful tree to lean against while she let her Stamina recover.

“Do you want your stuff?”

They were taking advantage of Blue’s inventory and her connection to it, and all traveling light. Blue could provide them with fresh food and drink and even walls and a ceiling if necessary, so they could make better time than might otherwise be the case. Combined with [Ghost Step] and the alchemical boosts, they were outright speedy.

Not that they’d be in any shape to make an assault on it right away. Even with Stamina recovery help, there was a certain strain associated with jogging for hours on end that took time to recover from. Which was why they were all lounging about despite Blue quietly informing her than the others were at about half-Stamina. She pulled a canteen from her [Phantom Pocket], taking a careful sip and wishing the Skill kept things cool rather than letting them warm to something approaching room temperature. Blue said that usually such things froze time for whatever was stored inside them, which seemed ridiculous to her. It was Spatial magic, not Temporal.

“There are some bodies that way,” Annit announced suddenly, pointing down the road, and everyone went on alert, low Stamina or not.

“Let me,” Cheya said, and her shadow stretched and snapped, fleeing down the broken road. It was surprisingly hard to spot in full light, and Shayma was pretty sure that it was only [Promise] that let her see it at all. A few moments later Cheya tilted her head. “Several days old. Nobody around. Shall we?”

“I suppose,” Keri said, without enthusiasm, and Shayma stowed the canteen again before following Annit and Cheya down the road. The sight was as gruesome as she’d expected, after weather and decay and wild animals had done their work. It looked to have once been a family, and the broken farmer’s cart told as much of a story as needed telling. This far from Tor Kot and this recently, it had to have been bandits. A grim reminder that not all of their problems were born of the mage-kings.

“Those poor people,” Keri said at last. “We can take the time to bury them, can’t we?”

“I guess I could -”

“Yes.” Shayma interrupted him. “Blue, could you send us some shovels?” She was sure he could find some lying around somewhere, and if not he could make them fairly quickly. Shayma didn’t usually directly ask him for things, but in this case she didn’t want to argue about why it was better they did the burying themselves.

“...of course.” The flicker of Blue’s control gathered in her palm, and she handed out the shovels as they appeared. Judging from their condition they were a mixed lot, probably scrounged from wherever without regard to location. Blue did make complaints about his disorganized inventory from time to time. Hopefully he’d put them back where they came from, but there were more things to worry about in Meil than misplaced shovels.

All of them had enough levels that the mundane effort of digging a hole was not particularly strenuous, though of the four of them Annit was the most practiced. Her movements were quick and efficient, and she had her hole dug faster even than Cheya, who came second by sheer dint of level benefits. Unfortunately, they had no idea who the corpses were, so in the end they could only mark the graves with blank posts set along the roadside. While it was hardly the first piece of death Shayma had seen, or the worst, it was an oddly personal one.

Cheya surprised her by noticing her moping and came over to talk to her.

“I know how it is,” she told Shayma. “Seeing something like this makes the ultimate fate of all those people back in the cities we left behind really hit home.”

“Yeah,” Shayma agreed. “I knew it was bad, and I’ve seen people die before, but for some reason this just got to me.”

“We’ve all been there,” Cheya agreed. “Or we will be. You weren’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last.” Blue, oddly, had nothing to add to that, and she spent some time talking about it to Cheya while Annit and Keri sat together.

They continued on their way soon after, though Shayma kept an eye out for any mana that might intrude on [Ghost Step]. While the physical world and its attendant natural mana faded while she was using the Skill, things like wards or actual attacks were clear and bright and quite capable of affecting her. Even third-tier people were effectively solid and could simply punch her out of the Skill if they had good enough reactions and she got too close.

It was a little discouraging finding out that [Ghost Step] had so many vulnerabilities, but considering that she’d gotten it at level one, as base to her Class, it would have been maybe a little silly if it were perfect. At least her offensive power was starting to catch up with her mobility and illusion, thanks to Ansae’s input. It would be some time before she could really hurt someone without Blue’s help, but barring some ANATHEMA catastrophe that was help she could count on.

They took several more breaks throughout the day, thankfully without any more somber reminders, though the empty roads were bleak in their own right. The weeds and grass were overgrown, with tree limbs dangling overhead. Though the point where the maintenance resumed again was stark enough to be disconcerting; an abrupt, perfect line separating weeds and neglect from crisp attention.

She was curious why Tor Kot bothered, though. Did the mage-kings even need commerce? The reports she heard were that the dungeons in the cities took care of everything, but then, Vok Nal had allowed merchant traffic, even if it was controlled. Either way, he’d clearly kept the infrastructure in good repair, even better than it had been under Iniri if she were to be brutally honest. Not that the cost was worth it.

Spellwork glimmered on the road itself, nothing that Shayma recognized and Blue reassured her that it wasn’t actually part of the dungeon, but it was a little worrying. For all she knew, it was designed to alert dungeon monsters when anyone crossed into their territory, and so she stopped following the road. [Ghost Step] didn’t need it anyway, but she didn’t want to stray too far in case they could learn something useful as they headed in.

Unfortunate, Tor Kot had planned for people who didn’t use roads.

The moment they got near a crossroads a buried spell circle flashed, suddenly visible beneath the dirt, and hurled them all out of [Ghost Step]. Mana pressure settled into being around them, stifling Skill use, as a larger array activated and threw up a barrier hundreds of feet around the crossroads. They’d stumbled over a trap.

“What the hell?” Blue muttered in her ear, bewildered.

“Beware ambush,” Cheya said. “Break the barrier.”

Shayma didn’t need to be told twice. The four of them doubled back, toward the closest part of the barrier, but before they even reached it another part of the trap triggered. A large circle described itself on the road and fifteen of Vok Nal’s minions teleported in.

They were exactly as she remembered them, bone-white and man-sized, like mantises with hands instead of scythes. Four legs steadied a low-slung body, sleek and insectile, and a jointed neck supported a big-eyed head somewhere between human and bug. The eerie thing was that they were entirely silent, even her enhanced senses picking up only a whisper as they moved. They didn’t seem to need to share any words to organize themselves, fixing on the four of them as the platoon spread out.

Three of the monsters in the back seemed to be casters, with a dark, faceted gem between their eyes and a black rod in either hand, and four others bore a bundle of javelins on their backs, each weapon made of a shaft of white wood with black tips. The remainder were split half between wielding sword and shields, and those holding longspears. All the weapons were pure white and black which, added to the unrelieved starkness of the monsters themselves, lent the whole group a sense of unreality. They didn’t look like they belonged in the same world as grass and trees.

“Stand down or be destroyed.” One of the casters spoke, a voice that sounded clear, distinct, and entirely artificial.

“Blue,” Shayma whispered, “I’m going to hide and snipe while you wreck those spell circles.” She used her hand signals to convey the idea to the others, and Cheya’s voice sounded in her ear.

“On it,” Blue said.

“Ready.” Cheya’s murmur sounded right on top of Blue’s voice. “Go.”

Shayma pushed against the stifling mana, forcing out an [Illusion] to screen the four of them as she used [Ghost Step] to move a few feet to the left, dropping prone and shifting her forearm to accommodate the LAE. One small circle and one large one, which she aimed at the monsters. They were starting to move, despite the fact that Shayma’s illusion showed the four of them still in place. Probably they’d sensed her Skill use, even if they couldn’t tell what she was doing.

She felt the whisper of Blue’s control as his mana wound through her arm, and a small blue dot appeared on the chest of one of the casters. Her other palm pressed against the ground, and she felt it lock in place as he wound down into the earth, burrowing to find and destroy the spellwork buried there. Then Blue’s weapon turned on.

For a moment nothing happened. Suddenly a circle on the white carapace turned brown, like sugar burning, and with a flash a hole sizzled straight through the caster. It still didn’t make any noise, simply crumpling to the ground, but the others reacted instantly, black spheres going up around the remaining casters while the melee insects charged forward. Javelins hissed through the illusion she had been holding, shattering it, and Annit returned fire from somewhere behind Shayma. The dart punched into one of the spear-monsters and staggered it, forcing its shieldbearer sibling to slow down to cover it.

Shayma’s dungeon weapon popped the black bubbles easily enough, but the casters had somehow blurred themselves, moving quickly to avoid being focused by the weapon. Behind them, branches tumbled to the ground and wood ignited as the beam slipped past and cut into foliage. “White is the worst color for lasers,” Blue grumbled. “It’s practically a mirror. Hang on.”

A javelin hissed over her head, and she shifted her skin to steel, feeling her Stamina and Mana melting away under the pressure of the suppression. Cheya’s shadow flashed out, doing something to the feet of the charging sword-wielders and slowing them to a crawl. The casters couldn’t reply so long as Shayma kept Blue’s weapon trained on them, even if she couldn’t take them out of the fight. Fortunately the ground was already beginning to shake from Blue’s efforts, and once the suppression was gone, they could really fight.

The pressure snapped all at once, causing frayed mana to condense streams of mist from the air, and the ground under the casters and javelineers to crumble into a pit. Keri’s magic wash outward in a palpable wave, linking with them and with the monsters both while the ranged group leapt from the pit, pale wings extending from under carapaces to guide them down. That was a mistake on their part, because Blue’s weapon burned through the wings almost instantly, sending the monsters crashing to the ground with one wave of her arm.

Annit’s darts smashed into shields, monster Skills pulling the projectiles away from their intended targets, but granting Cheya an opening to step out of her shadows and use her shade-limned daggers. Shayma didn’t dare use the LAE on any of the nearer targets with Cheya flitting around, but the stunned casters were perfect, even with the haze that surrounded them. She kept it aimed on the nearest one, the shielding flickering under the invisible barrage from Blue’s weapon while she flung out another set of illusions to hide Annit and Keri’s real positions.

Of all of them, Keri was the one least able to defend herself in a general scrum, lacking either movement or close range options other than her mana shield, so she was their defensive locus. Between the two of them, Annit and Cheya were keeping the sword- and spear-wielders from closing, Cheya’s third-tier Skills proving extremely effective at taking down the monsters. In the few seconds it took for the LAE to bore a hole through the caster’s defenses and silence it, she’d dismembered three of them.

“Going to let me up?” She muttered at Blue, still locked to the earth and now being peppered with javelins, despite the camouflage illusion she was using to erase her presence. None of them could find her exactly but they hurled enough of the weapons to saturate the area, making it inevitable when one glanced off her side with the screech of tearing steel. The tip had only made a thin groove on her reinforced skin, but the sound was worse than the sting, because while Keri could heal the damage in short order, the sound gave away her position and she wasn’t mobile.

“One second...there.” The earth shuddered again, the pit he’d already made deepening and the grass under her tilting precariously as the entire battlefield turned into a slope, giving the four of them high ground and staggering the monsters that were still alive. Blue’s presence vanished from her hand, and she used [Ghost Step] to teleport far to the side of where she’d been just as javelins punched into her old hiding place. The LAE swung wildly, cutting more trees before she focused it on the last caster, catching the black gem by luck and detonating it with predictable consequences for the mantis-monster’s head.

From there she could see the javelineers targeting Keri with their weapons and Annit grimly swatting them out of the air with the invisible blade of her blowgun. The healer flinched as one tore through her mana shield, deflected but not completely repelled. Cheya was still busy sparring with the melee monsters, as they’d closed ranks to try and keep her from getting behind them, so Shayma [Ghost Stepped] behind the closest ranged group. She shifted her other hand into a hook, snagging its arm in mid-throw as she focused the LAE at it from point blank range.

The surrounding grass started to smoke, as did her clothes, in the instants before the carapace gave way and a hole opened in the monster’s body, steam rushing out along with pale green blood.

“Careful of the reflections there,” Blue warned her. “Might be good to put it away for now anyhow.”

Given how much collateral damage it caused, she had to agree. It was powerful, but not something she wanted to aim even vaguely near her friends. She abandoned that shift, drew her sword, and jumped to the next monster. It was waiting for her, able to parry her first thrust with its javelin, but couldn’t do anything about the illusionary needles that drove their very solid forms into its oversized eyes.

The wounds didn’t seem to bother it, but without being able to see it was completely unable to defend itself. The hook at the tip of her left arm became a point, muscles shifting to snap forward in a blurring thrust and puncturing the carapace with a tapered needle of steel that squelched deep into its body. That was enough to drop it, Keri’s power going to work and suppressing whatever regeneration or protective benefits it might have.

Their healer was also starting to slow the others down. It wasn’t much in all, but it was enough to give Annit a little breathing room. Before Shayma could jump to the next monster, its head exploded like an overripe melon, one of Annit’s darts finding its mark. The final javelineer began to retreat downslope as it hurled the last of its ammunition, but since Blue had wrecked the spell circle it wasn’t like it had anywhere to go.

With only three monsters left the insects couldn’t last much longer, and a few moments later they were all down. The only sound was the crackle of still-burning brush on the other side of the road. Shayma let her skin revert to normal flesh with a sigh, the pulse of Keri’s magic and her own [Regeneration] repairing the cuts that had managed to make it past her armor and shifted form.

“How did they know we were coming?” Keri asked, at length.

“They didn’t,” Cheya said shortly. “If this trap was for us, those would have been Tor Kot’s elites, not common monsters.”

“Huh, good point.” Blue’s voice sounded in her ear. “Those were all level thirtyish, [Pale Mantis] monsters. Could have been a lot worse.”

She relayed Blue’s information to the others, and Annit nodded. “Explains why they were so tough. They would have rolled right over us with that suppression up, or if we didn’t have Cheya along.”

“Or if I didn’t have Blue’s weapon,” Shayma agreed. Though given that Cheya’s level was well into the fifties, maybe even sixties, the [Spymistress] probably could have carried the day. Probably. Ultimately she didn’t know exactly what Skills Cheya had, and [Spymistress] wasn’t fully a combat Class. “So who was this trap for?”

“Rebels,” suggested Cheya. “Bandits. Rabble. Even a mage-king couldn’t possibly rule the whole kingdom by force alone.”

“Even if we weren’t the targets, someone is going to notice they aren’t coming back.” Annit said. “They’re going to be looking for us eventually.”

“You know, I can’t fix the spellwork but I can repair everything else. Make it look like nothing happened and nobody was here.” Blue suggested. “Okay, well, maybe I’ll have to take down some of the damaged trees, but I can do so and make it look like they were never there.”

“An excellent idea,” Cheya said, once she’d conveyed Blue’s offer. “With such a mystery they will hopefully look outward rather than inward.”

“Hurry, though.” Annit said. “If I can feel all this disturbance spreading on the wind, so can other people.”

Shayma doubted that. Annit’s [Wind Whisperer] was a very unusual Ability, more like divination than pure wind Affinity, and seemed to ignore things like [Warding] even if it wasn’t nearly as powerful as a proper scrying spell. She didn’t think it was likely that any of Tor Kot’s monsters would have such a niche Ability, but maybe it was best to not underestimate the mage-kings. It’d certainly done them no favors before.

She sat down on the grass at the top of the slope Blue had made, putting her palms on the ground so he could work through her. This time when the ground trembled, it was because it was being lifted up, the hole he’d made filling in and flattening out. Grass grew where there was bare earth, and several trees vanished in flashes of black as Blue pulled them into himself. The monster corpses vanished as well, and several of Annit’s darts appeared in a pile in front of her. Blue had gotten better at using her as a conduit, but it still tickled whenever he did it.

No more than five minutes after the battle, the landscape looked completely pristine. There wasn’t even a scent of blood so far as Shayma could tell, and even Cheya looked impressed. Annit finished repacking her darts, those that were still good at least. One of them had been squished into a flat plate by some defensive Skill, and Shayma was glad that hadn’t happened to her arm. It was another reason Ansae had cautioned her to be very careful with directly making weapons with shapeshifting. Until her mana density was far higher, she’d be terribly fragile.

“Let’s continue on. This time we’ll cut away from the roads, and hopefully avoid another one of these ambushes.”

“We’ll have to a cross a road at some point,” Annit sighed. “I guess we could all go over it. Or under.” She regarded the place where there had once been a deep pit.

“We’ll figure it out when we get there.” Shayma decided. It’d slow them down, but she didn’t want to tempt fate by giving Tor Kot’s monsters another chance at them. The next time, it might not be something they could handle.