Satisfied at having found Pedro's hideout, Albuquerque gave a mental command. The arrow in the sky made a tight, perfect turn, like a bird changing direction, and began to fly back, now searching for the isolated trio. He would find them easily; they were three bright auras moving slowly.

  Better activate the Assassin's gem, he pondered as the arrow neared the general area. Can't know if any of them have a Vision adept in the main group. Better not risk being detected.

  With the tip of his finger, he touched the cold, black Assassin's gem on his bow. A sensation of emptiness, of absolute silence, emanated from the stone. On the arrow, the twin gem activated. Any magical signature of the arrow, any clue of its presence that could be sensed by other detection gems, was obscured, swallowed by this magical darkness. The arrow became a ghost.

  I'd better just kill them now, decided Albuquerque, his face a mask of disdain. Can't trust these idiots to do the job right. I'll start with the darkness gem adept. She's the most troublesome.

  The arrow, now a silent, undetectable shadow against the rainy sky, located the three signatures. Albuquerque chose the aura that seemed to move with a different fluidity, an active darkness among the tones of earth and fatigue. Whisper.

  The arrow tilted. The tailwind, propelled by the green gem, accelerated it to terminal velocity. It was a meteorite of death, descending at a perfect angle, straight for the back of the unsuspecting woman.

  Albuquerque, in his chair, already anticipated the impact. The end of a nuisance.

  But then, something happened. An instant before the arrow reached fatal range, Nzambi punched her, and in the same moment, the three disappeared under a shadow below, causing the arrow to hit nothing.

  The arrow's vision showed only the forest floor, wet leaves, and no sign of life.

  "SHIT!" Albuquerque's shout exploded in the silent clearing, making the servants flinch. His eyes snapped open, returning to his own body, filled with blind fury.

  ***

  Seconds before the arrow, a silent, dark blot against the rainy sky, descended at a deadly angle straight for the center of Whisper's back. Albuquerque, in his distant chair, was already savoring the impact.

  Nzambi was the only one who saw it by pure luck, a black dot appeared in front of the sun. A dot that was growing far too fast, coming from where the sun should have been. There was no sound, no glint. Just the silent promise of death.

  No time to warn!

  He didn't think. He acted. He spun in place and, instead of a shout, delivered a sharp, hard punch to Whisper's shoulder, right at the point between her neck and shoulder muscle.

  At the very instant of the impact, the shadow of the large bush beside her seemed to stretch, gaining volume and substance. The blackness enveloped all three—Nzambi, Whisper with her throbbing shoulder, and Tainá—and swallowed them.

  The outside world vanished, replaced by the silent pressure and cold of the realm between shadows. They were moving, pulled by the current of Whisper's survival instinct, but the first leap was chaotic, uncontrolled.

  "What the fuck was that, Nzambi?!" Whisper's voice came in a furious whisper in the dark vacuum. She was holding her shoulder with her other hand. "You almost dislocated my arm! The plan was a light tap if you saw the arrow."

  "Sorry—" Nzambi tried to explain, panting, still feeling the echo of the punch in his own knuckles. "It was coming. From above. Straight for you. No time to think, I just thought to touch you as fast as I could and I used too much force."

  There was a pause. They briefly emerged in the shadow of a moss-covered stone before being pulled to the next one, a smoother movement now that Whisper was regaining control.

  Another jump, longer this time. The tension in Whisper's shoulder, transmitted by the wrist she still held, eased a little.

  "It's fine... thank you," the words came out reluctantly, but sincere. "You saved my life."

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  On the other side of Nzambi, Tainá let out a sound between a muffled laugh and a groan of exhaustion.

  "When this is over..." Whisper continued, her voice taking on a tone of forced levity in the midst of the absurd escape. "...I'll buy you a caipirinha. A good one, with cacha?a from the highlands, not that banana-tree hooch they serve in the square. But you still owe me two, and of the good ones!"

  Nzambi felt a smile trying to form on his lips in the dark. It was surreal. Fleeing from a magical assassin arrow through shadows, making plans to have drinks.

  "Deal," he said.

  They continued, jumping from shadow to shadow, the rhythm dictated by Whisper's ragged breathing and the silent tension of not knowing if death was still pursuing them, invisible and silent, from the outside.

  Inside the realm of shadows, the world was a place of suffocating pressure and muffled sound. Nzambi felt as if submerged in a sea of cold, black oil. Whisper's hand gripped his wrist with iron strength.

  They weren't stationary. They were moving, but not in the normal way. It was as if the outside world slid past them in confused flashes of grey tones and distorted shapes: a tree root, a patch of moss, the underside of a giant leaf. Whisper pulled them, leaping from one puddle of darkness to the next, each jump a monumental effort.

  Shit, thought Whisper, nausea rising in her throat. The movement was disorienting. Carrying two people is exhausting. Alone is much easier.

  Whisper said nothing, but the tension in her hand, the increasingly slow rhythm of the jumps, and an almost imperceptible groan that escaped her lips told the story. The arrow was still out there, and she couldn't feel it. Her advantage had turned into a disadvantage.

  "Whisper..." Tainá's voice came out muffled, as if from far away. "...you can't keep this up. Bring us back to the surface."

  "Can't... risk..." Whisper's reply was halting, a hoarse whisper in the vacuum. "The arrow... is..."

  "I'll make a barrier!" Tainá insisted with desperate urgency. "As soon as we emerge, I'll raise the earth. You'll be able to rest a bit. Please!"

  Nzambi felt the panic of the situation. But they had no choice. Whisper was on the verge of collapse.

  It was then that an idea, desperate and crazy, surfaced in his mind.

  "Tainá!" he spoke, trying to project clarity through the strange medium. "When you make the barrier... don't make it thick. Make it thin. As thin as you can, but strong enough so only the tip of the arrow, the vision gem part, goes through. The shaft has to stay outside!"

  "WHAT?!" Tainá's reaction was pure horror. "If I do that, it'll go in and kill us all!"

  "Trust me!" Nzambi pleaded, his voice loaded with a certainty he didn't fully feel himself. It was a hunch. A calculated risk based on how his dagger's power worked. He needed to see what he wanted to cut. The tip of a flying arrow... he wouldn't be able to focus. But something stuck, partially exposed...

  "I... I trust you both," Whisper's voice intervened, weak but decided. "Get ready... at the next shadow... we go out."

  They emerged from the damp shadow at the base of a large jatobá tree. The late afternoon light, still strong, blinded Nzambi for a second. The fine rain fell on his face. The fresh air, after the suffocation of the shadows, was a sweet, fleeting relief.

  "NOW, TAINá!" Whisper shouted, releasing their wrists and falling to her knees on the wet earth, exhausted.

  Tainá, with a final sigh of strength stolen from somewhere deep, slammed her staff into the ground.

  The earth responded. Not with the grandeur of the dome, but with precision. A vertical slab of compacted earth and roots, little more than five centimeters thick, rose before them like a shield.

  It was not a second too soon.

  Nzambi didn't even see the arrow arrive. He only heard a FWOOSH cutting through the rain, and then a violent, metallic impact.

  THUNK!

  The tip of the arrow, the vision gem, followed by about fifteen centimeters of the metal shaft that supported it, pierced the thin barrier like a needle through cloth. The force of the impact was such that the earthen slab cracked from the edge to the center, but it held. The rest of the arrow, most of the wooden shaft, remained stuck on the outside, vibrating with furious energy.

  Kilometers away, Albuquerque saw, through the Vision gem, the tip of his arrow pierce the barrier. A triumphant laugh began to rise in his throat.

  "Ha ha ha! Now it's the end!" he exclaimed to himself, his fingers preparing to channel mana into the Wind gem to propel the arrow the final centimeters and pierce them all.

  But he didn't. Because the next instant, his vision was filled with a breathtaking sight: Nzambi, eyes fixed on the shimmering metal tip less than a meter from his face, raising his dagger and slashing a deep, decisive cut across his own chest.

  And then, everything went dark.

  It wasn't a blackout. It was a void. The connection with the Vision gem on the arrow was cut cleanly, absolutely, as if the gem itself had ceased to exist.

  Albuquerque sat in his chair, his fingers still on the gems of his bow, his face frozen in an expression of pure disbelief.

  "Wh... what?" he stammered, alone in the clearing that now seemed very quiet. "I... lost the connection to the arrow?"