"You want to travel to its shadow?" Hannah asked, with a look of amazement on her face. "Are you stupid? Sorry, that was harsh. Let me rephrase that. Are you really, really dumb?"

  OK, maybe it wasn't amazement, but astonishment, and not the good kind.

  "You don't think it'll work?" Luke asked.

  "You know how shadows work, right?"

  "Of course."

  "And where would the dragon's shadow be?"

  Luke narrowed his eyes and then sighed. "On the ground."

  "There you go."

  "There still has to be some shadows on the dragon itself, like a small bump, or from its head, or something?"

  Hannah peered over the edge of the roof, then pulled back as a pack of zombies roamed past, heading toward the wall. "It doesn't work like that. My skill doesn't work on technicalities. A person, a monster, an object, or whatever, has one shadow belonging to it. There are limitations. Don't even think I can take you with me. Pull you in, sure, but I'm not certain I'd be able to bring you back out."

  Luke let out a nervous laugh. "Let's think of something else, then. Ideas?"

  "Wish I had wings," she said, looking up.

  "Right?" Luke said. "That would solve a lot of issues. Well, this issue. Also, it would be badass."

  Hannah smiled and nodded without looking down. "Badass."

  "What if we have someone carry us? Worked with Tor."

  "Who?"

  "One of the DIA guys back where we fought Relian."

  "Oh. The fliers seem busy."

  "You're right."

  Hannah scratched her chin. "What if we bring it down here to us?"

  "That feels more dangerous for some reason, but sure, I guess. How?"

  "I don't know."

  Luke sighed and sat down with his legs crossed. "Maybe we'll have to try something else. What if we kill a bunch of Archons to make the zombies and skeletons drop dead? Maybe it'll come down then."

  "That plan sounds a lot like just going into all-out battle."

  "Maybe," he agreed.

  "Hold on," Hannah said. "Something is happening up there."

  Trying to make out what transpired up at that altitude from down on the ground was a serious challenge, because it looked a whole lot like a bunch of gnats pestering a hornet, but one of those gnats caught fire and then began dropping. No sound reached their ears, but at that point Luke had a pretty good idea.

  "Can we catch them?"

  "Remember when I told you about maybe not being able to pull someone from the shadows?"

  "I seem to recall you mentioning something about that all the way back two minutes ago."

  "That's right," she nodded. "I think I'm going to have to test that theory."

  With those words, she dropped into her own shadow and disappeared.

  "Dammit!" Luke pulled the hood of his robe up so the undead wouldn't notice him before jumping down from the building and setting off toward where he gauged the falling Integrated would land.

  The other Integrated had reached the town now and were starting to engage the undead, pushing them up against the tall wall from which arrows, spears, and buckets of some dark liquid were being loosed, thrown, and emptied. Squeezing the monsters between the wall and the Integrated was a fine tactic, but there were a whole lot of them, and the monsters fought back with ferocious anger and single-minded purpose.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  A lot of Integrated would be in need of healing soon, but Luke could only do one thing at a time. First, he'd see to the flyer, hoping that Hannah would be able to catch them. By whatever means the Integrated flew, part of that still remained active, because it was more of an uncontrolled descent than a pure fall. That didn't mean the Integrated had slowed down enough not to turn into a wet spot on the ground once they hit the cobblestones.

  Many undead stood between Luke and his destination, but with the cloak, most didn't react when he passed by, and he was even able to kill a few zombies without slowing down, obliterating their monster cores with a single Thread of Mana, using Needle of Life. Cutting the core free would've taken too much time and forced him to stop, so he had to forego that part. Luke made excellent time running through the town, even if he had to evade a few Skeletal Archons and other spellcasters by taking the long way around a couple of times.

  Despite the speed, he was too late.

  Hannah stood over an Integrated in a small square lined with benches, a well for water placed in the middle. A couple of zombies and skeletons lay dead around her. She looked up when he approached.

  "He's dead."

  "Fuck," he said, coming to a stop next to them. "I thought I'd make it in time."

  Hannah shook her head. "Nothing you could've done. I caught him in a sort of pool of shadows, and the good news is, I could pull him back out. Bad news, though, is that he was dead even before I caught him. Maybe he was dead all the way down."

  "With injuries like that, you're probably right. He didn't live long."

  Luke got down to take a closer look. The Integrated was burned beyond recognition over the entire front of his body, but not the back of it, except around the exit wound.

  "This is crazy," Luke said, starting to reach toward the corpse's chest before stopping himself. A hole went through his entire chest, like someone had pushed an object the size of a basketball straight through. The remaining tissue was burned even worse than the rest, and his insides had turned black.

  "What do you think happened?" Hannah asked as the dead Integrated dissolved into motes of light, disappearing.

  "Fire did this. Or something burning hot."

  "Dragons?"

  "I don't know." He shook his head and looked up, a weight forming in his stomach. "I don't think so."

  "You're saying another Integrated killed him?"

  Luke stood as a Skeletal Archon surrounded by zombies entered the small square. "I don't know. Hope not. Let's focus on what we can do right now."

  "Kill stuff?" Hannah asked.

  "Kill stuff," he confirmed.

  Having someone by his side made fighting more complicated, since they tried keeping out of each other's way, but it also meant being able to bring a lot more pain to the monsters. The Archon died in less than a minute, before it got a single spell off, and watching Hannah mop up the remaining undead was a thing of beauty. Frightening beauty.

  Her shadows were different in a way Luke couldn't quite explain. More solid, maybe. They lashed out and broke the undead. A few times, mouths and eyes appeared in that darkness, like with The Deep Dweller, taking bites out of the monsters while she saw through the eyes, allowing her to fight without blind spots. Once, when a skeleton reached her anyway and slashed with a scimitar, Hannah's arm turned into dark shadows, and the weapon went right through her.

  When she was done, Luke found himself gawking. She glanced at him, and he cleared his throat, nodding. "Well done."

  "Thanks. Gained a level." She didn't sound all that happy about it. "This Archon didn't have a cloak. I want one of those too. It'll make me all mysterious and threatening."

  "It's nice," Luke said in agreement, feeling the thin but still warm fabric. "I'm very mysterious."

  She took the corpses into her inventory and then stood, her lips pursed. "Now what?"

  Luke shrugged and pointed back the way they'd come, where the battle between Integrated and monsters raged. "Maybe we should just go help?"

  "Sure."

  They didn't go in a straight line, though. Instead, Luke scouted ahead, looking for more archons. At first, they bumped into a bunch of other casters busying themselves by hurling spells at the wall.

  Gravecaller. Level 15.

  Undead Evoker. Level 16.

  Dreadsinger. Level 14.

  Wither Priest. Level 17.

  While the zombies, skeletons, and their many types were low-level, the casters were not. But, since Luke and Hannah skulked about behind enemy lines, they were able to surprise the casters almost every time, killing them before they had a chance to marshal their forces or cast more than the odd spell. Each time they destroyed one of the spellcasters, several lesser undead dropped dead, sometimes entire groups of them, and each death brought experience. Hannah leveled several times, and Luke found himself on the verge of reaching level 20 when his companion found her own robe, having killed another four Archons, one at a time.

  "Yes!" she shouted, drawing far more attention than they wanted. Hers was a little paler than Luke's, but otherwise looked just the same. When she equipped it, the same stealth-type effect enveloped her. With the hood up, Hannah transformed her own face into a pool of shadows, which gave her voice a certain murkiness. "Awesome."

  "Look over there," Luke said.

  She stood, killed a zombie that'd come a little too close for comfort before she put the robe on, and looked to where Luke pointed. Cracks were forming in the stone, and a deafening explosion of what looked like black ice blasted through the wall. Undead monsters began pouring in. Most died in the attempt, but some made it through.

  "That's not good," Hannah said.

  "No," Luke agreed, setting off in a run toward the opening, "So much for joining up with the other Integrated!"

  "At least I got my own robe!" Hannah shouted, following.