There was something unsettling about the way bloodmages moved.

I’d seen trained soldiers before. My mother had a certain measured discipline in all of her movements, an efficiency speaking of practice and careful thought put into every action. The wizards of the Rainbow Cabals moved with forceful confidence, probably an artifact of knowing that you had the power to rewrite the laws of the world. But at that moment, watching the patrolling clusters of black-robed wizards from the darkness at the mouth of an alleyway...it evoked the mental image of a jungle cat. They prowled.

Every step they took was silent, even in broad daylight. There was an unnatural grace to their movements, a languid fluidity that made them seem more like pools of liquid shadow than savage killers. It was incredibly fortunate that the layout of the White City was so cramped. We’d have been sitting ducks in a more open layout, like the suburbs back in Haden.

The White City was put together a lot like those shanty-towns that were usually in the background of old action movies. It felt like it had once been only a single layer of white stone buildings, but when population growth overtook physical space they’d just started...stacking. There were planks that ran in between the second, third, and sometimes fourth stories, with narrow walkways that seemed hewed from the stone to allow for lateral movement where it was desired. It all seemed very unplanned.

If I’d had any doubts as to Adela actually being one of these killers, it vanished as we took to the streets. It was uncanny, the way she pathed us through the labyrinth of alleyways and rooftops. Even with eight people, it seemed like every time we were in danger of being discovered, she knew exactly where to take us to conceal the entire group. A tunnel here, a false panel there. We’d been moving for almost an hour at near top speed, and I never got the slightest hint that we were close to being discovered.

Then, all at once, Adela had halted the run. We’d spent the better part of fifteen minutes in a cramped alleyway, watching a cluster of bloodmages that were loitering around a building across the street.

“I guess that’s where we’re headed?” I asked, voice low.

Adela nodded grimly. “This is the best crossing on this street, but there’s no way we’re making it over. Not with a group this large.”

I did a quick count. “Seven...eight of them? Jay and I could probably take eight.”

She looked at me like I’d just told her I could lay an egg.

“You...what? When did you become an idiot?”

“You said it yourself. There’s no way all of us make it over.”

“That doesn’t mean-”

“Is there a dead-end alleyway near here? A place they’ll chase us into knowing that we can’t escape out the other end?”

Adela rubbed the bridge of her nose with one hand. “Yeah, there’s something like that. Out, to the right, three alleys down.”

I clapped her on the shoulder. “We’ll catch up.”

“Once we’re across, I’ll wait two minutes. No more.”

I let out two short, low whistles, then a series of rapid hand gestures. Touching my closed fist with the back of the other hand. A tight circular motion with one index finger, then a full clenching of my fist.

Jay.

Follow. Diversion. Combat.

Marika and Tyler couldn’t contain their confusion, but Jay fell into step without a word.

“Wait, are you serious?”

“Em, where are you-”

The two of us exited the ally before the exchange wizards could begin complaining about the sudden change of plans. If we argued over every little step the way we’d piddled about in the beginning, we’d be out here all day. We didn’t have that kind of time.

We took a sharp right, hurrying on down the street, and I tried to stifle the jolt of panic I felt as the bloodmages noticed us appear. The safest way to dispatch us would be some sort of ranged attack, but from what I’d gathered of the White City at work, they seemed to relish danger. It was more worthy somehow, to get closer to a kill.

“What’s the plan?” Jay asked as he jogged up alongside me.

I glanced over my shoulder for a split second, trusting my magic to gather all the information I would need in that short moment. We’d definitely gotten their attention. Five were chasing us on the ground, with one visible jumping between rooftops. It was helpful that their robes stood out so much from the pristine stone, but the fact that two were still unaccounted for was troubling.

If they delayed entering combat to see what we were up to...the plan I had in mind might not go over as well as I’d anticipated. I guess I was used to the strength-in-numbers tactics they’d displayed against Will and Glory, but Jay and I were...significantly less threatening. The best I could hope for, odd as it sounded, was that the unseen pair were staying put, in case we were playing distraction for a larger group. Of course, that’s what we were doing, but I had faith that Adela and the others could handle two bloodmages on their own.

I shot a sidelong look at Jay’s bag.

“You still got those mag-flares?”

Jay scoffed. “Of course.”

“Let’s try the Eclipse Formation, then,” I said, a grin widening my face as a familiar rush filled my veins.

“We don’t have sunglasses.”

“No, we’ve got something better.”

Jay grinned back at me, shaking his head.

“You just had to go and get magic, huh? So unfair.”

I spotted our destination just ahead. The erosion in the stone bricks of the street was significantly lighter in the mouth of the alley we were approaching, which marked it as less trafficked. Our dead end.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I said as we cut into the alleyway. From what I could tell, the narrow, twenty-foot lane served little purpose aside from allowing access to a grate set into a raised stone dais. From the smell, it was probably where residents that lacked plumbing dumped their waste.

I wrinkled my nose. It would do, but Adela could have told us we were heading for a latrine. Jay hurried past me, kneeling to the ground as he tugged his bag around to shuffle through the contents.

I positioned near the mouth of the alleyway, far enough back that they would actually have to enter to engage me. A few back and forth slashes with my sword expelled the rest of my nervous energy.

My encounters with the bloodmages the previous night had been unsettling, but for reasons I wasn’t expecting. Ever since I’d lost my mother, ever since I’d made a vow against being helpless in the face of evil men, I’d thought about how I might feel when the time finally came. Would I be scared? Would I slide back into that same fear that had paralyzed me that night? Would I stand unflinchingly in the face of pain and death?

What I’d found was that I hadn’t had much time for thinking. I had next to no emotional snapshot of the night, short of the bitter fury I’d felt upon seeing my home explode, and the brief flash of despair when I’d followed Liara and Will to Tyler’s glade to find him missing. As close to mortal danger as I’d been, I’d barely felt more of a stir inside me than I felt during practice. Even now, setting my jaw and pulling my sword up into a ready position, I felt an odd dissociation from the danger I was in.

The group of bloodmages that had followed us on the ground came around the corner at speed, but they pulled up short when they saw me. It would be difficult to get more than two abreast in the alleyway, but they didn’t seem interested in attacking as a group. Even against an unknown opponent, they conferred briefly before sending only one of their number to face me while the remaining four loitered around the entrance.

Black energy swirled into existence inside the man’s chest, and I tracked it with my eyes as it flowed up his shoulders and down his arms to his hands. I saw something similar last night, only this energy pooled once it reached his extremities, the roiling mass in his chest and these new reservoirs acting as totally separate masses. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was going to shoot something from his hands, and I didn’t really have any way of knowing how it would behave as a projectile, or how long it would take to appear.

“You all set back there?” I called out without turning around.

A tiny metallic click was my answer.

“Maybe duck after, just in case.”

The approaching bloodmage raised a hand at me, palm first, and I stepped to the side to make sure he would track to me and not to Jay. His eyes flickered from me to Jay, and then back to me as I leveled my sword at him. I could see the confusion in the slight furrow of his brow, the compression at the corners of his mouth. He’d probably never seen a flare before.

Which meant he’d definitely never seen a flare burst into light before.

The eyes of all five bloodmages were fixated on the fight they’d expected to break out in the alleyway, so in the instant that the magnesium flare ignited, I had free reign. My blade swept through the first man’s wrist, severing it in a spray of crimson before the man had even finished flinching from the light.

He staggered away from me as his free hand clamped onto his bleeding stump, but the motion was too predictable. I kept pace with his retreat, stepping simultaneously with my opponent’s stumbling. It was almost laughable, how easy it was to run the man through. Liara had warned me that normal weapons wouldn’t do the trick, but the enchanted blade stored in the rune on my armor didn’t have any issues with the bloodmage’s fortification. It slid in the man’s chest and out the other side, and I withdrew it without any meaningful effort.

And I didn’t feel a thing.

No glimmer of uncertainty clouded my vision. The only emotion evoked was the slightest hint of disgust, as the blood spurting from the man’s chest and severed wrist spattered on me as I hurried onward.

Ahead, the remaining four were beginning to get their bearings, or at least throw up some semblance of a reaction, but the advantage was still wholly mine. While his comrades had stumbled backward, to put more space between me and them as their vision recovered, one bloodmage had chosen the opposite tact. 

One hand held in front of his face, he surged toward the last place he’d seen me, machete humming through the air in a backhand swipe. The attempt reminded me of the first time I’d allowed Tyler to join us in our Kendo practice. It was wild, desperate, undisciplined. Just as I had then, I stopped to allow the strike to pass just in front of me, my own blade tapping patiently against the shoulder of my tunic.

I could tell from the way his feet were planted that he intended another strike, so I faked a step forward to bait the attack before shuffling back to be out of the machete’s range once again. As soon as his arm had crossed his body once again, I lunged. Through the arm, through the chest, through the heart. Stab, withdraw.

Easy.

In a way, it was even easier than practicing. There was always a level of tension in practice, worrying about accidentally hurting the person opposite you. Someone who just wanted to get better, someone actively participating in helping you get better. I’d found that real battle lacked that tension. It was replaced in some ways by the fear that your opponent might actually harm you, but after swallowing that fear...

Had I actually been training to be a killer, all this time?

A wolfish grin spread over my lips as I pressed on, to where my rapidly dwindling opponents had finally set up something like a battle line.

A shimmering red barrier, similar in shape to a riot shield, had sprouted from the arm of the nearest bloodmage. I could see his eyes through a slit in the rippling red liquid. As I approached, the barrier expanded, covering his two companions with its width. A decent enough countermeasure to the flare Jay still held behind me, if a little frightened.

My eyes traced the width and height of the shield. Judging by the concentration of black energy I could see, it was strongest near the point where it emerged from the bloodmage’s arm, and weakest at the edges. Still, to think of it like an actual physical shield would be a mistake. My conversation with Liara about her Adaptive Barrier came to mind: how complex and reactive a work of magic something as simple as a shield could be.

I swiped at the barrier, twice in quick succession. Each cut was just deep enough to let me feel the depth of the shield, but not so forceful that it might get stuck or stick around long enough for something to grab me or the blade. 

Sure enough, as soon as I touched blade to blood, the magic inside the barrier rushed to the point of contact. It didn’t feel like it was trying to grab the blade, so I assumed it was just reacting to the hostility by reinforcing the impact site. 

I heard a shuffling behind me.

“Stay back, Jay,” I said, raising my voice to be heard behind me. “Their magic is unpredictable, and I might need to dodge something.”

“The farther back the flare is, the lighter the effect,” came the response. “I can’t help you if I’m too far away.”

“We’re done with the flare. Surprise is over, all it’s doing is keeping your hands full.”

A brief silence, and then the sound of retreating footsteps.

“Keep an eye on the high ground,” I called out. “There could be more waiting for an opportunity.”

“Be careful, Em. This isn’t a game.”

I frowned, though I kept my attention on the enemies in front of me. What was that supposed to mean? Jay and I didn’t often reprimand each other; there was a level of implicit trust in our relationship. Even if it seemed like one of us was erring, we knew each other too well to not trust in our promise.

Maybe it seemed like I was having too much fun? It brought to mind the error I almost made, that night running point for Will and Liara. Glory’s half-warning, half-threat had woken me up to the risk I was putting everyone in by being too avant-garde, but I didn’t feel the same exultation here.

The blood barrier rippled visibly, the magic inside it shifting away from a point a foot above and to the left of its source. Without further fanfare a hole appeared, maybe six inches in diameter, and through it I could see a bloody palm.

If I hadn’t had the opportunity to react to the initial shift of magic, there wasn’t a chance I’d have moved in time to dodge. Even as things were, the spike of blood that stretched from the revealed palm clipped me in the middle of my leap to the side, sending me spinning to the ground.

The force of the impact drove the air from my lungs, but it didn’t feel like the attack had pierced my body armor. I wouldn’t get that lucky again. The spike hadn’t fired so much as it had just appeared, growing from the bubbling wound to ten-foot lance in a heartbeat. With an attack this fast, body armor would only protect me for as long as it took the attacker to decide to target something more vulnerable.

I scrambled to my feet as two more openings appeared in the shield. As if responding to the heightened threat, my vision sharpened even further. I focused as hard as I could on the two hands, on the blood that prepared to leap into action straight out of its shallow cut.

The hands weren’t at the same height, and they weren’t at equal angles, either. Since I’d -almost- managed to dodge last time with a side step, this time I leapt, twisting in the air to present as small a target as possible.

As I turned over mid-air, I saw the lower of the two blood lances pass through the place where my left hip had been a moment earlier. The other lance passed through my hair, close enough that I felt the hot liquid on my scalp as soon as I landed.

“Emily!”

I grit my teeth. I really didn’t need the distraction and Jay’s concern, while appreciated, wasn’t going to help me deal with the situation we were in. I’d moved too slowly during the window of advantage we’d had, and it turned out our opponents had a pretty fortuitous set of magics to counteract our plan. The bloodmage launching attacks through the shield seemed to be waiting for another opening, so I chanced a glance back at Jay.

And froze.

Jay was backed about halfway down the alley, but he wasn’t alone. A hooded bloodmage had an arm around him, the razor edge of a machete pressed to his neck. The flare was discarded on the ground at his feet, still burning brightly. I hadn’t heard anyone jump, and Jay had been specifically watching for it. That meant magic again.

My free hand curled into a fist.

“Sorry, Em,” Jay said, prompting a snigger from the man holding him. “He just appeared behind me.”

Looking at my friend’s face with a combination of my enhanced vision and the odd serenity I usually felt when backed into a corner, things clicked. 

Jay was scared.

It was so normal a thing, for someone to feel afraid when so deep in danger, in a situation that just turned from tenuous to bleak, but for some reason it had never occurred to me that Jay would be that way. He and I had been together in this self-improvement endeavor since the beginning. We’d promised each other that we’d never cower in fear ever again.

Oh, Jay, I thought. How long have you felt like this?

“Drop your weapon, girl,” came a heavily accented voice from behind me.

I turned to face the speaker. “You’re going to kill us both anyway. Why would I disarm myself willingly?”

“You won’t have to watch the boy die.”

Instead, he would watch me die. The mage with the shield had let it diminish slightly, but it was still manifested. It wasn’t likely that I could strike the wielder before he restored it, and even if I could, the man with the blood lances would kill me and Jay would follow immediately. But if I did nothing…

Adela and the others had to have made it across by now. There was no way of knowing how far into our two minute limit we were. I could feel the pressure mounting, and I could feel my magic’s awareness of that pressure represented in its over-activity. Details sharpened, the overflow of excess information and predictive calculations began to eclipse my understanding of what was actually happening around me.

I raised a hand to my forehead as heat began to build in my eyes. The cluster of bloodmages in front of me reacted slightly to the movement, but seemed to write it off as innocuous after a moment. Innocuous, or amusing. To a culture that vilified weakness, that fed on it the way the White City seemed to, I’m sure there wasn’t anything more entertaining than watching an enemy crumble in the face of inexorable strength.

But I refused to crumble.

There had to be something more. It was magic. There had to be something I could draw out, some limit I could push myself past. I was just a Familiar, sure, but if there was one thing I knew I had an edge on, it was will.

So I strained. I set my jaw and I willed myself to push through to something beyond. A magic more than magic. I felt a jolt of pain in my eyes, running along my optic nerve to my brain. It felt like my head was splitting open, but I didn’t let up. I couldn’t.

I could feel something, like a resonating hum that built up to a high-pitched whine. I got the sense that it wasn’t audible, more like an extrasensory thing, but the men in front of me reacted anyway. Maybe it was the brightness in my eyes, or new tension in my stance, or maybe it was just some sort of animal instinct built into their predatory nature, but they reacted all the same.

The barrier blossomed back into full effect, the spear-launcher behind it raising both of his palms in a bloody parallel of a wrestler’s ready stance. The third man behind the shield, the one who hadn’t acted yet, still made no movement. His hands were still hidden in voluminous sleeves. Behind me, the bloodmage who held Jay captive tightened his grip and began dragging my friend closer. Probably wanting to position in such a way that he could kill Jay and then enter the fray quickly. The spear-launcher prepared an attack, placing one hand high and the other low, positioned just behind the rippling red barrier in front of him. All it would take was the opening of a hole, like before, and he could-

Wait.

I had become so used to the steady stream of information my magical sight granted me that it had taken me a moment to realize what exactly I was looking at.

Namely, everything.

It was hard to express. My field of vision wasn’t panoramic, or distorted. There was no bubbling or fish-eye effect. It was just simultaneous. I could see the fear on Jay’s face, closer to the surface now that my back was turned, just as I could see the bloodthirst boiling over in the feral grins of the bloodmages behind their barrier.

And I could see a way out.