Yna, one of Kosh’s scouts, pushed off from the deep shade of a tree no more than a hundred feet ahead of Ana. In her hand was an unstrung bow; at a closer look, its string had been cut. At her feet was another bow, similarly damaged, along with two quivers and an assortment of short swords, axes, and daggers. “Kosh and Split’s weapons,” she said as Ana approached her and the rangers who’d stopped with her. “There are tracks leading away; multiple people.”

  “Aw, shit. They were captured,” Ana said. She didn’t see what else could have happened.

  “Yeah,” Yna agreed. “They’re still alive, so… yeah. We’re guessing the Stolen revenants were a distraction. Fucking evil thing to do, but none of us had a better idea. Don’t know how the hell they took Kosh, but Split was lagging behind a little. She may have hung back to help him, and the bastards got both of them. Thing is, Split was fine before the revenants came at us, and he’s the best runner among us save Kosh. He doesn’t fall behind. We figure they may have hit him with something.”

  “We know they have Death-mages with them,” Ana said. “That damn green lightning or whatever it is knocks people down easily enough.”

  “Yeah. The others are following extremely fucking cautiously.”

  “Good.” Ana took the bow from Yna, looking at it. She didn’t know jack or shit when it came to bows, but focusing on the grain of the polished wood helped her think. God, she could see so much detail!

  Why would they take captives? Why go so far as to lay a trap, seemingly with the specific intent of doing so? ‘Because they want bait’ was the obvious reason. But for what? An ambush seemed most likely. They had to know that Ana and her hunters would suspect that.

  “They want hostages,” Tellak suggested when Ana brought the question to the group at large. “They know we’ll try to save our people if we can. Now they have two lives to trade for safe passage out of the Splinter.”

  “That is the reasonable thing to do… you know, if taking hostages is ever reasonable,” said Tarkan from the front of his Party. “But these are fanatics. I’m with Ana on this. I think they’ll try to use them to bait us into an ambush. Set them up in some way we have to try to rescue them, so we’ll rush in. Then… gods only know. I wish that guy you captured knew more about what the Earthbreaker can do.”

  “We saw some of it at the stockade,” Ana said. “We’ll stay loose and outmaneuver them. That’s our best bet whatever their plan is.”

  “What if they do want to negotiate?” Tellak asked.

  Ana shook her head. “We’re way past that. Besides, I don’t see how we could, even if we wanted to. The Waystone’s closed. From what I’ve been told, nothing comes in or out until the end of the cycle. What would we do with them? Take them in? Not fucking likely. Let them roam about the forest, where they can make people disappear? No. We all know why we’re out here. That hasn’t changed.”

  Scattered, awkward shuffling told her that at least some of her hunters still weren’t entirely comfortable with the idea, even after all the violence that their enemy had forced on them. But they were outnumbered by the grim nods of acceptance and scattered mutters and, in two cases, calls of “Damn right” and the like, and she knew from the Battle of the White Obelisk that even the more reluctant among these Hunters could be lethal when the situation called for it. Nobody who truly wasn’t up to it had volunteered to join, instead staying back to bolster the militia. It was less than ideal, in Ana’s opinion — she wanted to outnumber their enemy as much as possible — but at least she had no doubt that they’d do what they had to if trouble came to them instead of the other way around.

  Still, even if the general mood was sanguine, they’d best get moving before anyone else lost their nerve. Besides, as far as they knew the Order fanatics were either getting farther away, or more time to prepare. Either made her job harder.

  “Alright, enough standing around,” Ana announced. “We’re moving in a minute. Loose formation, and keep your eyes and ears sharp, especially those of you on the ends. Keep checking the people to your right and left, and if you feel funny or see something odd, call it out. Better one alert too many than we miss the one that matters. Now, is everybody ready? Good! If they grabbed Kosh and Split, they can’t have gotten far. Let’s get the bastards!”

  They took off at the same jog as before, making good time even through the slightly hilly forest. With Yna leading them confidently, Ana sent the Rangers to keep extra watch ahead and to the flanks. Their enemies had shown themselves clever enough to ambush them once; Ana wouldn’t put it past them to try to pick people off from the edges of her formation.

  Outwardly, Ana was calm and collected, leading from the front and determined to get her two captured scouts back. On the inside, she was furious with herself. She didn’t know that she could have prevented the two scouts from being taken other than by being with them, but she hadn’t even considered the possibility. A straight ambush, with mages opening up and then melting into the trees? Sure. She’d been prepared for that. But the idea that the Order fanatics might weaponise their weakest link? Killing the Stolen and letting them become revenants, then presumably binding them to their will and sending them in as a distraction? No, that never occurred to her. It was clever, she had to give them that. Entirely immoral — “fucking evil,” as Yna had put it — but clever.

  She was starting to think that there was something to Kaira’s talk of this Earthbreaker being a war mage. And not just as a living siege engine, either. She clearly couldn’t afford to underestimate him.

  Is either Kosh or Split one of yours? Ana thought to the Wayfarer. Anything you can tell me would be great.

  They all are, the goddess replied after a short while, presumably referring to Kosh’s Party. She sounded tired. She sounded tired a lot, lately. But I can’t see those two. You’re sure that they’re alive?

  That’s what Yna says.

  Then I can only assume that the bastard’s doing something to hide them. Not hard, with so many of his people around them, but expensive.

  Ana couldn’t keep herself from frowning as she said, Great. I love knowing just how invested a god is in fucking me over.

  The goddess didn’t sigh, exactly, but she sent the sensation of being sighed at right into Ana’s head. If it’s any consolation, she said, you have a goddess just as invested in making sure you succeed. Now pay attention. You’re getting close to the far north, and there is only so far your prey can run.

  The shadows were getting long when Ana noticed that the air had gradually been getting thicker.

  No, that was the wrong way of thinking of it. It was no harder to breathe, for one. It wasn’t muggy, and there were no heavy smells in the air that hadn’t been there before. But every time she swung a leg forward it faced just a tiny bit of resistance; when she took a step, any part of her that moved forward felt like it was being held back almost imperceptibly. And once she realized that, she noticed other things. The sounds of the forest were faintly muted, the colors of the trees and ferns and flowers, and even the sky, were just barely washed out. The mana was thinner, and a little sluggish; not like when the Ascender had imposed calm and order on it, but like it was drained of energy.

  They were approaching the edge of the Splinter. And still they hadn’t caught the fanatics. Still, Yna led them onward, following signs left for her to find by the other three scouts. That was, until she returned with one of those scouts, the third woman in the Party, in tow.

  “They’re stopped in front of a Delve at the end of a gully, about a mile ahead,” the woman said. “Morr and Darr are keeping an eye on them, but it doesn’t look like they’re planning on moving inside anytime soon. Could be they don't intend to and that they just chose that point to decide they can’t keep going north, but I doubt it. Looks like a trap if ever I saw one.”

  “Kosh and Split?” Ana asked.

  “With them, outside. Bound, gagged, and under guard. But here's the thing: there’s only about half as many as we expect. You ask me, it's all kinds of bait. They’re pretending to have started moving in. Looking weak, with what we want right there, and now they're waiting for us to show ourselves and move up the gully so they can hit us from the sides.”

  “Any positive signs of that?”

  “None we’ve seen, but they would've moved out from where they're setting up,” Yna said. “I mean, there’ve been side tracks, but they've all led back to the main group, right, Stim?”

  “Yeah,” the other scout agreed. “We found where they killed the Stolen, not too far from where we were attacked. There was a broken ritual circle, too new to be anything else. What they used to bind the revenants, maybe? Anyway, like Yna said: everything led back to the main group. Unless they can fly, they’re here somewhere.”

  “Right,” Ana said, thinking furiously. Great all-knowing goddess, you there? she thought.

  Again it took a moment, but Ana got a sense of interest back.

  Can you say if anyone’s entered that Delve up ahead?

  I can, and no one has. Can't hide that from me, the Wayfarer replied, distant and tired. Ana wondered briefly what was exhausting the goddess so, but this wasn't the time.

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  Thank you, she said, and returned her focus to the people around her. “I have it on excellent authority that no one's entered that Delve,” she told them. “Anyone not there is around here somewhere.”

  This definitely looked like a trap, but something about it bothered Ana. It was too obvious; she had a gut feeling that it was a different trap than what it looked like. “Okay,” she said after a few long moments. “Here’s what I want to do…”

  Ana was waiting with her Party about a quarter mile east of the Delve when a double trill, the sound of some bird Ana had never heard in her life, announced the arrival of Yna and Darr. Moments later the two scouts emerged from the greenery; if not for the agreed-upon signal, Ana wouldn’t have known that they were there until they showed themselves. Terribly uncomfortable, she decided.

  “Found ‘em,” Yna murmured. “Six mages, waiting in striking range of the gully. Three Binders, 17 to 23; two Evokers, 15 and 21, and a Stoneshaper, 24. Earthbreaker wasn’t there.”

  “It was a fifty-fifty shot at best,” Ana said, trying to sound unaffected. Really, she would have preferred to know for sure where the war mage was. If he wasn’t on their side, that should mean that he was to the west of the gully, where the two other Parties were, but he might just as well be hiding somewhere.

  But she couldn’t focus on that. They had a plan, and they were moving ahead.

  “No demons or revenants?” she asked.

  “None,” Yna confirmed.

  “Alright. Good. Like we said, then. Darr, go keep an eye on them. Yna, lead on.”

  “Yes, Marshal,” Darr said rather more casually than his use of Ana’s discarded title suggested, and vanished back the way he’d come.

  Yna led them north, taking them around the mages waiting in ambush. The resistance was beginning to get truly noticeable and many of her people struggled, but it let up as soon as they turned west toward the Delve again. The general fading of the world, though, that remained. It left everything a little flat; a little grey. Ana didn’t care for it.

  As they moved, the specific series of unfamiliar birdcalls sounded from the west that indicated that the other Parties were in position and waiting for the signal, ready to move ahead with their part of the plan. And soon Ana and her Party were in position themselves.

  They were looking down on a wide gully that cut down a hillside, a small stream trickling down its center. While its sides were as densely wooded as any other part of the Splinter, the gully itself was free from any but the smallest of trees, but it held plenty of ferns and bushes of and other undergrowth. The stream continued north into hills that would eventually turn into unapproachable mountains, but right at the gully’s apex, where its two sides joined, was the Delve. Two dozen people gathered around it, though Karti was conspicuously absent, and Ana wondered where they’d stashed him. The people who were there were tense and silent; some were mages or Cultists, but most of them were just civilians, armed with… anything they could get their hands on, really.

  Goddess, Ana thought, looking back at her Party. This is going to be hard on them.

  She and her Party were northeast of the gully, positioned to attack the larger group by the Delve directly and free the two captured scouts before they could be used against them. But most of the people she could see were neighbours and acquaintances of the people in her Party. Traitors twice over, sure; people who’d first taken the side of Karti and his cultists, and then joined the invaders who’d murdered their friends. But the only way Ana could describe them was as desperate and pitiful, and her confidence that the people with her could do what was needed faltered.

  She herself found the idea of killing practically defenseless people distasteful, but she wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Someone essentially good, like Lesirell, though? Tellak, Brosden, or Rill? Ana wasn’t so sure that they wouldn’t hold back as much as they possibly could. They’d try to subdue, and then try to talk her out of the necessity of disposing of their prisoners. And that was assuming that their mercy didn’t kill them, either when the traitors lashed out or when the hidden mages reacted to the attack.

  Ana sighed, almost inaudibly. She’d have to pick up the slack, because she was not risking this conflict dragging on in the name of mercy. In a few minutes, she was going to have a lot of blood on her hands.

  Everyone was in position. Ana checked her straps, adjusted her grip on her shield and hammer-axe, shook any stiffness out of her limbs, and made sure that her Ironskin Shaping was as strong as she could make it. Her ranged attackers got into position, readying their weapons or visualising their Shapings. There was no point in delaying any further.

  Ana manifested her wings, and leapt into the air. Behind her Yna let out the set of whistles that announced the beginning of the attack. Somewhere nearby, on the western side of the gully, the other two Parties would unleash on the Order fanatics they’d found waiting in ambush; there would be no hesitation there, Ana was sure. And as Ana shot toward the Delve, aiming for the two captives, her ranged firepower opened up as well. They’d be moving and shooting, the frontliners advancing quickly in front of them. Ana would have support quickly, but for several seconds she’d be alone.

  Against the opposition she could see, she wasn’t worried.

  The initial strike would be decisive for whether Kosh and Split lived or not. The two scouts were being watched by two armed Cultists, and Ana had to assume that the guards were prepared to kill one or both of their captives to try and force a stop to the attack. That’s why the entire first volley was aimed at those guards. Scant seconds before she herself reached the two kneeling scouts, one of the Cultists exploded into flame and boiling gore, her top half from the left shoulder down to just below the right side of her ribcage simply gone. The other fell almost silently with two arrows in his chest and a flaming hole through his guts. More arrows followed quickly, aimed for other nearby traitors, and then Ana was there, in her element, amidst the stench and the screaming.

  It took another several moments before her bonuses even activated, but she didn’t need them. Not against fleeing bakers, barmen and shoemakers. She worked outward from the captives in a circle, striking to kill so that there would be no discussion about what to do with any survivors. Things got a little hotter once the mages there reacted and started throwing Fire-, Earth-, and Death-magic her way. Despite her wings fouling their aim and her Attributes letting her react and dodge quickly, she wasn’t quite untouchable; she took a few glancing hits from attacks that she failed to spot in time. But her Vitality let her weather almost anything they could throw at her, and anything that actually harmed her she could ignore for as long as the fight continued.

  Then her frontliners arrived, and any doubt about how things were going to go were erased. To her annoyance, though, the majority of her targets began fleeing into the Delve. Cultist, social Classer or mage, it didn’t matter; they saw the bloody devastation spreading around her, the incoming fire and the frontliners crashing into them, and they chose the uncertainty of the likely demon-infested pocket-dimension over certain death.

  Reasonable, Ana had to admit, but damned annoying. Though she did catch sight of Eria, one of the traitors who'd ambushed her not too long ago, before she slipped through the rift. The wild terror she saw in the woman’s eyes was deeply satisfying. And it wasn't as though anyone inside the Delve could escape.

  “Leave them!” Ana roared as her people started following the fleeing fanatics. “Melee fighters, watch the rift so they don't get us in the back! The rest of you, focus on the mages! Keep their heads down!”

  Their portion of the mages who’d been waiting to ambush anyone coming up the gully had joined the fight, emerging from the trees to the south. They seemed to fancy their chances well enough; the three Binders and the Stoneshaper were moving up against the resistance of the fading Splinter, trying to get in range to use their offensive Shapings, while the two Evokers gave them cover with small but intense bolts of fire.

  Their willingness to try was understandable, in a way. Six mages was a considerable force, especially when they out-Leveled the opposing ranged combatants. They must have figured that if Ana came their way they could mass their firepower, and expected their companions on the other side of the gully to join in at any moment. Add in a dash of religious fervor and you got a half-dozen mages throwing their lives away.

  Ana’s own backliners opened fire on her command: three mages with significant range and three archers — Brosden, being a Skirmisher, also carried a bow. Ana herself had a small brace of throwing axes with her, but the one she flung went nowhere near the mages, Dexterity and a single point in the Skill not nearly enough to compensate for the range and her lack of anything resembling technique. But despite Ana embarrassing herself, that all was enough for the advancing mages to cry out and reconsider their approach, ducking behind trees and only moving in short sprints from cover to cover.

  That suited Ana just fine. It meant less of them with their eyes on the sky.

  She threw herself into the air again, low and fast and almost ballistic. Those of the enemy mages who saw her took their only chance to stop her before she reached them; she took one hit from a Binder’s green lightning, and her weapon fell away beneath her as the magic caused her left arm to spasm numbly, leaving it temporarily useless. That was fine. What was the quote from that movie with all the shirtless greek guys? “The gods saw fit to grace me with a spare?”

  Ana landed in the midst of the advancing mages, and with her one good arm and her two very good knees and feet, she brought the short battle to its inevitable end.

  To their credit, the mages reacted quickly and effectively. Ana had to dodge and weave between the trees as she worked, her shield doing as much deflecting and blocking as bashing, and it still wasn’t enough to keep her entirely unscathed. She took a rock to the shoulder. A blast of fire caught her almost dead center in the stomach as she dodged a blast of green lightning, leaving her smelling of burnt leather and barbecue for the rest of the fight. And one of the Evokers, in a moment of self-destructive spite, lit herself on fire and wrapped her arms around Ana before a headbutt caved in the base of her throat sharply enough to snap her spine and drop her. But between Ana’s armor and Ironskin, the somewhat ill defined bonus to ‘overall toughness’ from her Underdog Achievement, not to mention her sheer Vitality, all that only hurt, and even that was only a distant fact. It wasn’t nearly enough to stop her.

  As Ana stood over the body of the last Binder, with its ruined skull and bulging eyes, her bonuses vanished and the hits she’d taken made themselves known. It barely even bothered her. All she felt was a rush of satisfaction and anticipation. All they had to do now was clear out the Delve, make sure that everyone was accounted for, especially the Earthbreaker, and then she could finally return to the outpost and ride the rest of the cycle out in some kind of normalcy.

  There was only one problem. When the other two Parties arrived, having ambushed and wiped out the fanatics on their side with only one severe injury which should be treatable with a healing potion, they hadn’t seen any trace of the Earthbreaker. Nor did the number of dead mages add up, and no one had seen Karti.

  The most dangerous bastard of them all, the one they absolutely had to catch and deal with, was missing. So was the Grand Summoner. Ana would bet anything that they were together. And they had five high level mages with them.

  and read 8 chapters ahead of both Splinter Angel and Draka! You also get to read anything else I’m trying out — which is how Splinter Angel got started.

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