A line of carriages sped past trees on a road that in the capital would be called a trail. Wide trunks and overgrown branches covered the stone road from the sky. The dense forest hid the migrating feral creatures, but not their sounds. We heard everything from howls to hisses. Our horses snorted and carried on to the cradle.

  Situated between two cliffs on either side and a mountain in the back, the cradle was created to be one of the most protected places in the range. The numerous waterfalls kept it supplied with fresh mana-bearing water and fed with fish. That, alongside the fortress overlooking it from the cliff, made it one of the hardest places to siege in the empire. If not for the damned who had infiltrated the city.

  That is why I was using the limited time I had to carve out circles in the glittering blue pear-shaped mana stones in my hand. I had to be careful. After all, I only had twenty-six of them. I had wanted to give one of these stones to Saha, but she was safe for now in the fortress. My sister and the punishers, on the other hand, could use them more.

  Done with the concentric circles, I closed my eyes and quickly dipped into the dark waters. I let them take my worries and wandering thoughts. The waters rushed in to engulf me. They soothed my frayed nerves, and for a moment I lost myself in the familiar numbness of the dark waters.

  Emotions made everything seem so complicated. Love, anger, jealousy, lust, pride, and more were washed away. I couldn’t understand how people lived like this. And now that I was surrounded by the familiar cold, everything in my mind fell into its place. Nothing had truly changed. I was the Silent Hunter. There were damned all around me. All I needed to do was protect souls and hunt the predators.

  By the time I opened my eyes, the stone in my hand had taken on the water’s numb cold nature. The glittering blue crystal had darkened to blue-black as it came out of the waters. I opened my fist and looked at the darkened stones. They looked like the night sky now. The glittering dots looked like stars twinkling in the deep void.

  Ilya looked at me and the stone in my hand with raised eyebrows. “Okay, that is impressive.”

  I held out the stone and offered it to her. “Take one.”

  Ilya reached out for a stone and gasped. “Blight and curses! That is cold.” She looked at the stone in her hand and asked, “But what is it?”

  I pointed at the stone. “The damned are going to use your emotions against you. When you feel fear, anger, hate, and frustration, the mana stone is going to fight against it. It will nullify the effect and keep you calm.”

  Ilya watched me move on to the other stones and create more. The blue-gray stones turned to starry black ones as the etching drew in the dark waters and held them. Now, with these around, I could be reassured that the damned couldn’t turn our people against us. Now all I had to do was make more of them. An imperial battalion had fifteen hundred soldiers, and they all needed to be protected. Not to mention the ones that would crack under pressure and the others who would get lost in battle. Still, these needed to be created, and I was the only one who could create them.

  Ilya picked up one of the stones and asked, “You know these are pretty. What do you call them?”

  I looked at Ilya blankly. Pretty? I had created them to fight the damned, and my sister thought they were pretty?

  Ilya continued, “Do you plan to sell them? I wouldn’t mind having earrings made with them.”

  I pocketed the etching tool I was using and knocked on the top of the carriage under me. There was no way Ilya and I could fit in the carriage in our true form, so we had allowed Grek and his punishers to ride in the princely carriage reserved for the nobles.

  Grek poked his head out from the window and looked at us. I handed him the stones and ordered, “Keep one and pass the others off to the rest.”

  Grek looked at the stones in his hand and looked back at me with questions.

  Ilya sighed. “Just do it.”

  Grek nodded, and after a minute jumped out of the carriage, running to the others. As I watched him go, the emotions I had just washed away came trickling back in. They always did. With them came annoyance and thoughts like: couldn’t these carriages go any faster, did the ride have to be so jerky, and many more inconsequential mental mutterings. Once again I wondered, how did the living function like this?

  I pushed my thoughts away with a heavy sigh and looked at my sister and asked, “This will help us, but what about the soldiers in the fortress?”

  Ilya ruffled my hair. “Oh, little brother, you need to stop worrying so much. I know Sage comes off as a bit shallow, but he is a Truechild.”

  I took in a deep breath of the cold air and nodded.

  “Wait, what is that?” Ilya asked.

  I didn’t see anything on the road.

  “In the trees, Voss,” Ilya stated urgently.

  The road was full of overgrown trees and flora. That is why I hadn’t been able to track the people rushing out of the trees and onto the road. They were followed by three-foot-tall yellow and green centipedes.

  The imperial stallions pulling the carriages were bred for war. They didn’t panic. They dug in their feet and skidded to a stop. The people rushing out of the trees screamed in fright at the sight of imperial stallions snorting in anger. That attracted even more creatures. And soon the twelve-foot-long centipedes were joined by hooting noises from the trees.

  Noticing movement nearby, I created a spike of ice in my hand and threw it toward something that was moving toward us. The hooting stopped, and tens of little heads turned toward us.

  Monkeys. There were a lot of monkeys. And they were all looking at us with their wide, reddening eyes. One started jumping up and down, hooting and barking. Its call was taken up by the others. And within minutes, more hooting monkeys came rushing in. They jumped from branch to branch and stopped near our carriage, hissing and hooting.

  Ilya, who was sitting next to me atop the large carriage in the middle, looked around. Her hand drifted to her sheathed sword.

  “Is this normal?” I asked.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “It is a forest, Voss,” Ilya stated in a distracted voice.

  Ilya didn’t understand. She couldn’t sense what I was sensing, but I didn’t have time to explain and elaborate. I just got up to my feet, following her.

  My sister didn’t wait. She created a crescent-shaped blade of wind and shot it out while unsheathing her sword. The wind blade made a screeching sound as it felled an overgrown branch and ripped into a fat monkey’s chest. If she was hoping to drive away the animals with the show of force, it didn’t work. It drove the monkeys mad. They began to hoot louder and approached in jittery, angry movements.

  Ilya began to order our people: “Soldiers, stop those bugs. Punishers, watch our backs while we deal with the—”

  Ilya ducked as a flaming projectile missed her.

  Ilya looked at me. “Did that monkey just throw its excrement at us?”

  The monkeys decided to take that moment to attack. I looked on in disgust as the monkeys defecated into their palms. They chattered at the brown sludge in their hands. With a spark of ember, the dung in their hands caught fire. Altogether, they threw burning blobs of stink at us. It was a disgusting volley of filth. And it approached us from all sides.

  Ilya and I didn’t plan our next moves. We just reacted.

  A wave of cold erupted out of my body, followed by a wave of wind from Ilya. It carried the cold outward, extinguishing the fires and deflecting the disgusting blobs away.

  “Connect with me,” Ilya ordered.

  I let my mana move toward my sister. Her mana met mine. And in that brief moment, I understood Ilya. I saw Ilya for who she was. She was Ilya, the oldest living Truechild. The only living child who had fought beside Father. That battle between Father and a demon god had shaken her. It had almost broken her. She had watched our siblings fall one by one. It had hurt her and cost her, both emotionally and magically.

  Now that she had her magic back, she wasn’t going to let anything hurt her little brothers. She had learned, trained, and healed. And she was going to make anyone who looked at her family with hostility pay.

  She was Ilya Truechild, a duchess who had battled on ships, hunted sharks, and stopped island-sized whales. She had won. She had stomped the budding rebellion in the Ilyan Isles to pieces. She had brought peace in Father’s name and saved thousands of lives. She was proud. And she was absolutely disgusted by these monkeys.

  “Left?” Ilya asked.

  “I will take the right,” I nodded.

  Crescent blades of wind shot out of Ilya’s hands in a blur. They cut through tree branches and found flesh. Ilya’s sword arm moved, and a bigger crescent-shaped mana blade went through three monkeys at once. One lost an arm. One lost a head. And the last one was bisected head to toe. And still more came.

  I didn’t hold back either. I created large spikes of ice and threw them at the beasts on the right. It took me a couple of seconds to create a spike and throw it. Ilya, on the other hand, was a machine. Every second, six or more blades shot out of her raised hands, cutting down the beasts.

  Noting me as the weak link, the monkeys charged. I let them approach. They lunged through the air. At the last moment, I blew out a long breath from my lungs. A wave of freezing cold made the monkeys recoil. Some slipped. Others fell. And the few who reached the carriage, I hacked, slashed, and stabbed. The monkeys began to retreat. I didn’t let them. I threw spikes with one hand while hacking into the others. I hit one in the foot, nailing it to the ground. A punisher stabbed it with a sword. I kicked another. A soldier decapitated it. I slashed another’s arm off, and Grek blew its head off.

  I did not stop. My arms moved one after another, creating ragged spikes of ice and throwing them. I hit one in the throat. One in the stomach. One in the eye. The next in the lungs. And I continued. I let the punishers do the rest. I just kept skewering them before they could launch their next volley of burning shit at us.

  The monkeys, no matter how dumb they were, realized that they were no match for us. Still, they did not retreat. They kept chattering and hooting.

  “It looks like a beast wave!” Grek yelled from behind our carriage.

  It wasn’t. But I could not explain. I needed to kill these creatures before I tackled the real danger.

  A blood-curdling scream from one of the men fighting the centipedes distracted me. I looked at the centipedes and saw arrows and crossbow bolts bounce off their shells. Like unstoppable machines, they moved forward. Two of them ripped into the man and tore him apart. Their long, needle-like teeth dug into the man and chomped down. With a jerk of their heads, the bugs swallowed the man.

  The soldiers keeping the centipedes back with their tower shields retreated step by step. The civilians behind them shot more arrows at the multi-legged enemies. Nothing worked. Even magic bounced off the tough carapaces. The centipedes reared back. Their antennae straightened. One by one, they spat out globs of green slime. The projectiles hit the raised shields, followed by an acidic hiss.

  Something inside me tightened. Thoughts, feelings, and emotions bubbled up in my stomach. I needed to stop these centipedes. The humans and elves on the road weren’t capable of fighting these animals. And if I didn’t… An image of Saha being torn to shreds and consumed like the man came unbidden and stuck in my mind. I couldn’t stop picturing her screaming face.

  “Voss. Focus!” Ilya scolded.

  My hands shook. My breath shortened. I wanted to run. To hide. Then my fight-or-flight responses took over. I didn’t fight it. I gritted my teeth and let the budding anger replace the fear. My hands curled into fists and my jaw clenched. I snarled and took a step.

  “You kill the monkeys. I will get those bugs,” I growled.

  “What? No. Stop. Voss,” Ilya tried to stop me, but I was already running at the centipedes.

  I wrapped my hand around my sword with a white-knuckled grip and ran toward the centipedes. It took me only a step to jump from the top of one carriage to another. With thudding footsteps, I sprinted at full pace. As the last carriage came into view, I pumped my legs harder and jumped. The hunters fighting the bugs looked up with widening eyes as a Truechild in his giant form flew through the air and toward a bug’s head.

  Behind me, Ilya yelled, “You idiot! There are more crawling out of the forest.”

  She was right, but this was part of my plan. And right now, I didn’t have time for any doubts. These creepy creatures needed to die for my people to survive. Moreover, there was one thing I was good at above anything: killing predators.

  I landed on top of a centipede, and a wave of bone-chilling cold erupted out of my pores in a whoosh. I didn’t stop. I stabbed down. My sword channeled my mana downward. The frozen, brittle carapace below me cracked. My sword entered the centipede’s brain. A shot of ice-cold mana rushed into the centipede’s brain and froze it from the inside. With a jerk, the bug below me collapsed.

  I didn’t wait to see what the other bugs were going to do. In a swift motion, I pulled out my sword and ran toward the next centipede. One of the bugs rammed the bug under me. It almost made me lose my balance. I took a moment to gather my feet, and then I was off.

  I jumped onto the next bug. I missed my mark and didn’t land on its head. That was okay. The weight of a fourteen-foot-tall Mana-born landing on it made the creature under me buckle. With a stomp, I broke the centipede’s carapace. I dug my sword into its body and, with a grunt of effort, moved ahead, slicing open the centipede’s body and freezing it at the same time.

  The bug under me rolled. I jumped off and onto the third one preparing to ram its friend. This one reacted immediately. It started to curl its long body inward. I ignored its movements and sliced into it. Before I could deal with it, something hit me and pushed me off the centipede’s back.

  Next, pain hit me. Burning, sizzling pain erupted on my left shoulder. I skidded to a stop on the ground. A new centipede rushed me. I dodged and rolled. Another one of the large bugs charged at me. I gritted my teeth and rolled on the stone-cobbled ground. Pain from my burning wound almost made me lose my grip on my sword.

  I came up to my feet. Stabbed my sword in front of me. It made impact but didn’t penetrate the fresh creature. I looked past it and saw three more centipedes emerging out of the forest. I couldn’t wait. I moved, dodging a green acidic blob. The creatures scattered their acid. They shot it one by one.

  I ducked a blob. Dodged another one. And then the last one got me, hitting my already damaged left side. It burned into my ribs, sizzling through my skin and muscles. I screamed in pain. My eyes looked down and saw ribs through blood and muscle.

  The visceral pain almost made me black out. I needed to keep it together. This was just the first part of the fight. There was more danger looming ahead. And no one but me knew what was coming.