Fall of Autumn, Week 5, Day 7

I knew at an instinctual level that without the boost from passing the First Threshold, there was no way I could have activated [Silent as a Shadow]. Not in the midst of an attack, when Dame Arella and Klein were actively looking at me.

[Silent as a Shadow]

But that was just it. I had defined myself. With my Divinity and [Otherworldly] combined, my presence was mine. It was unchangeable. And it was up to me what that meant. I was shadow itself. So, as the color dulled from the world around me, I took a deep breath and surveyed the horde surrounding us. We would only be able to go a few more seconds before Dame Arella's Skill ran out. Then she'd have to stop running.

What I needed, more than anything else, was time.

And I had just the Skill for that.

[Sophism]

As the mana drained from me, I felt the dulled world slow and light up in white and red. And while the shadow world blurred the lines of reality, it did not destroy them. Would we be close enough to the estate to make a run for it? What was the plan?

Dame Arella was far from stupid—did she know something I didn't? Of course, she did. I knew so little, and no one ever thought to share. She thought two minutes would make a difference. We were fifteen from the main entrance. How many were we from the side of the estate?

[Quick Calculation]

Less than ten going the usual rate. But we had been going faster, nearly twice as fast, on the ice. That meant we were only a few minutes from the edge.

Could we make it?

My eyes flitted from blight to blight. They were a dozen rows deep.

We'd need a path. I could follow the white line, the line that I knew would head back to the estate.

Or I could follow the mess of red, the light that wrapped around the wrists of blights and told me to fight.

Maybe the answer was a bit of both.

I broke [Sophism] but kept [Silent as a Shadow] up as I tightened the ropes keeping me attached to the carriage. My fingers worked deftly to knot calculated designs that would keep me safe, designs I couldn't yet finesse with [Shadow Manipulation]. But that day grew closer by the moment.

Experience was lining the air.

As I finished the knot around my waist and the two metal rims of the top of the cabin, I broke [Silent as a Shadow].

What found me was a series of screams and shouts coming from Dame Arella and Klein. Both at me and at the blights.

"Back! Down, Nora! If you won't get back in the carriage—get down!" Klein shouted frantically.

"Put your stealth Skill back up now! Stay hidden! I have to conserve mana to fight! We're STOPPING!" Dame Arella growled and pulled up on the reins viciously.

I didn't listen. I stayed standing, my Skill unused, and I flexed my palm.

At a single thought, my bangles stretched and unfurled heaps of shadows. So many shadows rolled out that they flooded the roof of the carriage, spilling over the edge and running down the side of the ornate cabin wall. Wisps of darkness floated around me, and my hair whipped in the cold afternoon wind.

The harsh neigh of the horse filled the forest as we came to a quick and violent stop. I braced my knees and ducked low, stopping myself from stumbling by reinforcing my legs with shadows. I had to catch myself with a hand on the roof still, but I didn't roll forward violently and land with a broken neck. So I considered it a success.

Righting myself, I caught sight of Dame Arella jumping down and withdrawing her sword.

"Nora, call out if one of us looks to be in trouble. Can you do that?" Dame Arella called, swiping at a fast approaching blight that looked like a haphazardly constructed body of twigs.

"I can do you one better!" I shouted, catching sight of a pair of familiar darknesses. "Haze, Shade, stick to Klein and Arella's blind spots!"

"Yes, my Lady!" They called, stepping out from behind a tree and into the two Dusk knights' shadows. They sank down, looking like mockeries of myself, until they were merely dark puddles occupying the ground below Klein and Arella's feet.

In the distance, I watched Noir's darkness ripple and shift through the chest of a blight and shatter it so wholly I wondered if I had really created the spirits—or if they were made up of a power beyond myself I had yet to understand.

"Stay put, Nora!" Dame Arella called, slashing another blight. This one was the same height as the woman and did not immediately collapse at her attack. "Whatever you do, do not come down!"

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I ran my hand through the mass of shadows at my feet, picking up a lump and mentally shaping it into a ball—a ball with a dozen spikes on the end. It didn't take much effort or even much time. Between one breath and the next, the crude weapon had manifested.

Then, I created another. Again and again, I melded the tips of a Morningstar until I had a decent-sized pile.

I kept my eyes on Klein and Arella the whole time. Waiting, watching, making sure they were not being overtaken. Once, while I was crafting the seventh Morningstar tip, Klein had found himself flanked by blights. As I was about to call out, Haze launched out of his shadow—shaped like a true [Young Lady of Darkness] and severed the monster's head from its body in a surgically precise cut across the vines of its neck.

Despite the dire circumstances, I found myself smiling at the reliability of Haze. He had always been there for me, keeping me sane. Now he could keep me safe, too.

[Weave of Darkness]

I created a hair-thin thread and attached one end to one of the Morningstar tips and the other to a second. It was a makeshift bola made for extra damage in every way.

Satisfied with my new weapon, I glanced out at the fray. Klein and Haze were fending off a handful of shorter blights while Dame Arella was trying to be everywhere all at once. She would fell a blight and send it flying backward with the force of her blow—bowling over the ones behind it—only to lunge to the side and protect from a new angle. But she couldn't be in three places at once. It just wasn't possible for her.

I turned to the back of the carriage, where Noir had migrated and was holding back the slow-moving blights. But even he was not enough. They were getting closer.

I took a breath.

"Noir, to me!" I shouted.

Holding up my open palm, I clenched my fist closed, and the makeshift bola was sent flying out across the front. As Noir slid down into a shadow and popped out of my own, he pressed his back to mine.

I felt the cold mana he gave off seep into me, and a grimace spread across my face.

The hair-thin thread met the front line of blights. And it refused to budge. I flicked my hand to the side, like the world's darkest conductor, sending the Morningstar tips into the chest of two blights.

Then, I pushed. I sent them back, digging the spikes further into their bark. But that wasn't what mattered. Even as the two end blights fell backward, what I cared about was the corralled monsters in the center. I continued forcing my power into the bola, tightening the thread around them.

Crunch.

I nodded as I watched their waists collapse inward under the force of my shadows. At my back, I felt Noir expand himself. Up and up he went until he was a wall to protect me. A cover of darkness in the midst of day.

"What do we need?" I called out to Dame Arella as the woman slid between blights like water slipping through cracks.

"A path!" Klein answered for her. "To the east! The manor is still far, but the edge of the estate is close!"

I nodded, reaching out with my shadow sense.

I took a deep breath.

Then I used every ounce of focus I had to snap the bolas off to the edges of the clearing—causing the severing thread to slide through the blight torsos like butter. Belatedly, they slid apart, falling lifeless to the ground.

"I can create some clouds—obscure the path we take!" I shouted as I dragged the shadow poles forward and had them obliterate the blights at the edge of the clearing.

I heard a violent curse come from Dame Arella and I turned my head sharply to look down at her. My vision went dark as I saw the red liquid falling from her arm. She dove down, rolling through the mud and swiping up at the towering blight that had caught her. She severed its head from its body.

"Do it!" She commanded as she stood, pressing her palm to the wound.

I didn't process that, though. Instead, I unleashed a feral scream, and my shadows bulged with mana.

Out of every crack and crevice, spikes of shadow emerged, impaling the monsters and thinning them out substantially. Unfortunately, that left room for another row of them to emerge—this time taller and better built than the others. Whereas the ones we had been fending off had barely met Klein's height, these ones towered over even Arella—looking nearly as tall as the carriage I stood atop.

I hissed as pain lanced through the back of my head, and I used [Quick Calculation] to feel within me and produce the amount of mana I had remaining.

It wasn't good.

We'd only been standing here a few minutes, and I was already depleted over halfway.

I released the shadow spikes and the bolas, instead opting to focus on [Shadow Conjuration].

Letting my mana pool and swirl out of me, swaths of shadows went in four directions, separating the horde of blights from each other. The further my shadows soared from me, the more I could perceive through them.

And as I took it all in, my stomach sank.

"Arella!" I screamed, though I knew she didn't need me to scream at all. "I can't find the end."

"What?" She shouted back, dodged the swift limb of a towering blight, and stomped her armored foot through its thigh.

"My shadows! I cannot find an end to the blights! No matter how far I go!"

"Keep going—there has to be an end to them sometime!" Arella ground out, knocking back several attacking blights from the front of the carriage.

I took a deep breath.

I won't lose them.

I let the air out of my lungs.

Stay calm.

I pushed with my will and sent my shadows further out, not as heaping masses but as thin tendrils. I wasn't trying to separate them and shroud our escape—no, I was just trying to find the end.

Ten meters. Twenty. Thirty meters. Still no end. Even if I could bring all of my shadows out, my darkness couldn't stop them. It would just be a cover of night in the dark. And I would be the only one who could—

"No," I hissed, my head whipping to look at Arella. Arella, who didn't look like she was slowing down. Arella, who looked as if she was getting ready to fend off an assault all by her lonesome. Arella, who I was sure wanted me to run away. To survive by myself—or take Klein with me.

Immediately, I lifted my shadows off the ground, separating them into small jagged balls with rough spikes. I heard Klein and Arella gasp but I didn't stop. Instead, I sent them raining across the forest with all the force and focus I could muster.

It was as if hail made of void was descending everywhere but over the three of us and the spirits.

I glared at Arella, my eyes clear.

"I'm not going anywhere."

I wouldn't be the reason for another death. Never again. Not Klein or Arella. Not my people.

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