18th December (Thursday), past three in the morning.

I jumped down and moved closer to the hole. I hadn't been to many funerals in my life. I vaguely remembered the one for my parents. I was under the care of a social worker then. There was also one for a kid from our orphanage—Billy—who'd died of cancer. Fucking awful kid until he got sick, but he didn't deserve that. No one does as a kid.

But this… this was different. A massive monument and an empty hole that swallowed a person whole and left nothing behind. Is that how we, as humans, collectively saw death? A gathering, an offering to the earth, and then—nothing. The body disappears, and life goes on. I hadn't thought much about the process before, but I didn't have time to dwell on it now either.

I had to push forward, follow the trail of blood. But suddenly, I didn't want to do it alone. Not tonight.

[I am always with you.]

Thank you, Anansi, I thought, I appreciate it. But unfortunately, keeping company means more than just projecting thoughts into my head—or my soul, or whatever it is you do.

[You'd prefer physical company?]

Yes, I'd prefer that.

[And you've already forgotten about the Lóng that is bound to you? The one you can summon from anywhere?—]

Okay, I get it. Yes, I kind of forgot. You don't have to be an asshole about it.

[—the one that requires your presence to live, anyway?]

What did I say, Anansi? Don't push it.

She shut herself up after that, and I actually followed her advice—reaching for Liora and pulling him to me with a thought. It was as easy as moving any item charged with my Authority.

[May I add that I didn't shut myself up? I merely remained silent. It's easier that way to let you push through the choices you make.]

I laughed under my nose as I watched Liora dart around me like a whirlwind of colors—his arms and legs tucked close to his body, giving him the look of a cloud serpent. But as he began to slow down, his limbs unfolded, and he started running on them through the air, as if on invisible platforms. His movements turned more like a weasel's—quick, playful, erratic—until he halted suddenly, sitting in midair with his spine bent like a cat's.

I reached up and patted him between his crystalline horns, looking him over up close. Despite being mostly reptilian, he had this mane of fur running along his spine—thick and soft—and it continued all the way to the tip of his tail, where it ended in something like a lion's brush.

He shimmered with vibrant colors—gold, emerald, sapphire, rose—a sight to behold, but utterly impractical for stealth.

"Can you become less colorful, Lio? I saw you change before, dimming it. I need to be stealthy here."

He tilted his head, then slowly began to darken. His golden mane turned yellow, then a muted pastel, fading into shades of grey. The rest of his body followed suit—scales darkening until he became almost entirely black, save for faint grey undertones that caught the moonlight. Even his horns, once swirling with brilliant shadowlight, dimmed to a dull, misty glow.

"That's it. Keep it like that as we move around. I don't really know what to expect in here, but I bet it won't be anything friendly."

We marched in tandem then—me up front, and him a little behind—moving like a cat through the air. He used trees and shadow for cover, weaving between branches, keeping himself hidden as much as possible.

We passed a few people tending to the graves that were already closed. They placed candles on the stones, clearing away the vines that seemed unusually eager to reclaim them. Each of them moved peacefully, unaware of us or simply uninterested.

Most of the Shadows living here behaved like normal people, busy with their quiet routines. But the way they drifted during their duller moments—their eyes open yet minds somewhere else—was unnerving at first. For someone from Earth, used to people blinking and focusing, it was uncanny. Once I accepted that "drifting" was simply their way of resting, it became less disturbing… at least a little.

What truly set Ideworld apart, though, was the presence of beings that wanted to hurt you—predators that couldn't be stopped by police or fences or good urban design.

One of those was before me now, just beyond the nearest tree.

It had the rough outline of a coyote but moved mostly upright—its spine bent, its fur patchy, its posture human enough to make my stomach twist. A pelt of mismatched hides hung around its shoulders like a cloak. The head was fully canine, long-jawed and bristling with teeth, and it dug frantically into the ground around one of the closed graves.

Its claws weren't claws at all—they looked like shovels, long, flat blades of bone fused to each finger.

And there was another one, not far from the first, tearing at another grave with the same awful purpose.

Once again, my instinct was to go around them—but that was the instinct I had to change if I wanted to grow stronger.

I had tools to deal with opponents like these, and it was time to use them.

I looked around for anything I could paint on to make a trap of sorts. The ground was mostly paved or scattered with stones, walked on enough that the remnants of snow wouldn't be an issue. There were the graves too, but painting on them felt like desecration. That left the trees.

The one closest to me had a branch jutting out, broken in such a way that it looked almost like the shape of a pistol. I liked it. Hollowed a little, too—and I'd never tried anything like this before. Definitely worth the experiment.

I took out my sprays and began to work, while my other eyes kept watch on the gravedigging beasts. I laid down black first, across the length of the branch. Liora hovered beside me, watching every movement with the fascination of a curious child. Then came the greys, layering the shape to make it metallic. A touch of white for the shine, and brown for the handle.

At the jagged end of the broken branch, I used the splintered wood as texture for the illusion of a muzzle flash—yellow and red bursts frozen mid-explosion.

Stolen novel; please report.

I summoned Noxy from my Domain, ejected a bullet from the magazine, and pressed it into the hollow of the branch, the pointed tip facing outward. Then I holstered Noxy and moved to the ground beneath the tree.

The canines were still busy tearing at the graves, giving me time. I sprayed quickly—browns, blacks, greys—shaping a patch of ground that looked like rows of sharpened spikes thrusting upward. Not perfect, far from it, but good enough for my sense of verisimilitude to take hold. It would accept my Authority.

One last thing. I unwound the scarf from around my neck, stretched it tight between two trees just beyond the painted trap, and tied it off.

I felt ready to take them on.

I pulled the fiery card out and rolled it across my fingers, letting it move along my skin. For a second I looked and felt like Penrose—calm, practiced—but the motion grounded me, focused my thoughts on the killing I was about to do. When the card finished its last rotation, a pulse of shadowlight walked into it and the surface turned to steel—cold and hard in my palm.

I let it fly.

It cut through the air like a thrown blade, took the other part of my Authority mid-flight, and bloomed with a cold blue light of a flame. It hit the hunched creature at the base of the skull and lodged there. I hoped that would be enough.

It wasn't.

The beast thrashed, ripping at the thing burning its fur, and I let another card go. It spun and struck the beast's exposed torso, burying into flesh and bone. More cards followed—sharp, flat sheets of metal—each one finding flesh. Blood rained onto the ground, steam hissing as fur and meat seared.

My nose wanted to register everything, but my soul spider dragged the worst of it away so I could think. The cards made the beasts angry, but they didn't topple them. Not yet.

The beast locked its eyes on me—eyes full of hatred and swirling shadowlight, leaking from the sockets in a mist of brown and red.

Then it howled. The sound was raw and wrong. It abandoned the cards jutting from its body and lunged forward on all fours. The shovel-like claws tore through pavement and stone, sending shards flying as it closed the distance fast. My eyes caught the second one breaking into a run as well.

I jumped back. The first coyote hit the ground where I'd been standing and stumbled straight toward my painting. Perfect. I poured my Authority into it from a distance—such a relief not to have to touch it this time. The colors flared once, bright enough to catch the creature's eye. It glanced down, but momentum had already sealed its fate.

It crashed into the illusion. The painted spikes didn't exit the frame—but my Authority made their sharpness real enough. Its forelegs buckled as a shriek tore through the trees. It slid over the image, flesh raking against the spectral thorns until it collapsed in a heap. My power snapped back to me then—the painting too bloodied and torn to keep its shape.

But I was already moving.

I leapt high, summoning the Depth's Flame Edge mid-flight, the blade igniting into being above my head, as I removed authority from within. I brought it down with both hands, driving it through the creature's skull as I landed. The knife sank deep, igniting the wound in a bloom of orange fire that swallowed its head whole.

I tore the blade free from the skull send it back to my Domain and slid back. My eyes snapped to the other beast—seeing what happened to its companion, it slowed and skirted around the edge of my painting. I ducked beneath my scarf as it circled the tree, fading from its line of sight for a breath.

I let another card fly.

It spat the thing out of the air with a claw like a paddle.

Then another. And another. Each one met the same fate—blocked mid-flight, deflected, useless. The creature kept coming, each step slow, patient, nothing like the animal I'd just burned to cinders. We watched each other: two predators in a stare-down, one-on-one.

It paused by the corpse I'd left, and then its silhouette bloomed with shadowlight—red and brown like spilled autumn. With a quick, ugly motion it seized the fallen coyote by the head and jerked it upright like a puppet pulled from a box. The dead thing moved again, joints creaking, eyes swallowing light as if accepting the other beast's power.

I couldn't let that happen. Resurrection wasn't on the menu today.

I leveled my pistol-finger at the head of the resurrector and poured my Authority into the painting of a nuclear reactor—then traced the power along the painted conduits straight into the military grade laser waiting in my middle finger.

The air hissed hot and sharp, ozone stinging my nose, as the imaginary line between me and the beast's skull snapped into terrible, concentrated reality. Light cut out of nothing and struck bone. My soul sang with the strain as I let the Authority dissipate and the beam wink out. I dropped to my hands and knees, breathing hard, watching the creature stagger with a steaming hole blown through its head. It stood for a beat, then fell on top of the one it had been holding.

Both of them were down. For a second I let myself believe it.

Then the burned one twitched. It pushed up on its massive hands, rose, and flared with shadowlight again. It reached a trembling arm toward the fallen companion and pressed its hand to the hole in its forehead. The dead thing spasmed, then began to move as well.

Oh hell. I had to kill both at the same time.

I moved on instinct—card thrown up, teleporting above the creatures, snatching the flying metallic rectangle out of the air and hurling it away.

As I fell, I summoned a fiery sheet from my Domain and let it rain down on the unburned one. Then I blinked again to the card I'd just thrown, pulled myself onto the bark of a tree where the thing had embedded, and vaulted clear, landing ten feet out.

Tell Liora to hover over them at a safe distance.

[Of course.] Anansi answered, and Liora folded into the night like a shadow of a bird-of-prey, circling over the twisted canine duo. The two of them had ripped off my burning sheet and were worse for it—one was a half-melted ruin, skin slack like wax. They hunted by smell and sight, and when they locked on me they charged. The first one, the one that died first led the charge.

I let Authority fly. It ran along the invisible ribbon of shadowlight in my aura and struck the scarf tied between the trees just before the beast hit it. The scarf tightened and went hard as steel in an instant.

The canine slammed into that taut line and part of it sheared away. What hit the ground was half a torso and front legs; the rest collapsed behind in a ragged heap. For a second I wondered if the other creature could still puppeteer that disembodied mess of meat, but I wasn't going to test it.

Instead I focused on the branch-pistol and told it to be a firing gun. It answered with a brief flare of borrowed identity, and the bullet lodged in its hollow screamed free. The creature froze, startled by the sound. The bullet arced, homing with a cruel little will, and punched through its eye.

Canine dropped.

Just to be certain, I blinked to where Liora hovered above the corpse and plummeted like a cannonball. I hit with my legs locked and drove his weight down along the spine. Bones cracked and the air filled with a terrible, high scream of fracture.

For a breath there was only steam and silence, and then my chest hammered as I watched both bodies go still.

I'd underestimated them—and it showed. The fight had cost me more than I wanted to admit, both in soul and in muscle. My limbs trembled faintly as the last of the adrenaline drained away, leaving behind that hollow throb of overuse. If I'd taken my time setting up the field—laid more traps, shaped the terrain properly—it would've been a clean victory. Instead, I'd been forced into another brawl, burning energy and authority I didn't need to.

I'd have to change that. This world was too unpredictable for habits born of reflex and pride. Some creatures here didn't bleed, some rose again, others could nullify teleportation—or warp sound itself, like the Red guy on the bridge. There would be more, and I'd have to be smarter, not just faster.

"What do you think, Lio? Not too bad, right?"

His horns flared faintly with green shadowlight, the rest of his body still a dim shimmer of grey. He was learning, adapting faster than I ever could—fluid where I was rigid, confident where I hesitated.

"Okay then," I said, brushing the soot off my suit. "Let's keep following the scent before it fades."

He gave a short chuff that sounded almost like agreement and darted ahead, his tail sweeping through the night air like a shadowed flame.

I pushed myself forward, legs stiff but steady, and we followed the faint trail of blood through the cold stillness of the cemetery. It led us toward the far gate—its iron bars twisted slightly, creaking as the wind touched them—and beyond it, I could see a meadow stretching out under the ghostly light. The forest waited past that, dark and full of motion.

I took a deep breath and stepped through, leaving the graves behind.

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