CALEN

  The words were fine. Innocuous, really, given the situation.

  It was what wasn't being said, along with the everything else that had Calen on edge. The nervous pats at belts, resettling of helmets, and the tightening of armor straps.

  The complete lack of any commitment to actually helping the Venatrix, just a vague promise to 'reunite' Calen with Emma. He had been expecting some sort of pushback about not having a way to communicate with whoever the Warden was, even if Mirri gave them permission.

  Instead, he got instant agreement, and a demand to know where Mirri was while the knights obviously prepared for a fight.

  And Calen was still standing there like an idiot, hurting his palm and unsure whether to laugh, cry, or scream about it. Cycling mana through his head again did nothing, bought him no time to think.

  Hopefully he hadn't broken anything permanently.

  Calen slapped a dopey grin across his face, as if he believed the man in front of him had agreed to help.

  "I'm not sure exactly, we got split up after the archer shot at us," He started. "But I can—"

  That mollified the crowd, but not their leader, who caught Calen by the arm approximately half a step into his nonchalant exit.

  "So she's nearby, but you don't know where."

  Calen's hopes that things were about to go well plummeted a little more as Shiny pointed at a small cluster of the other knights who seemed uncertain about what to be doing, pointed at his visor with two fingers, and turned the hand around to gesture at the tops of the pillars around them.

  They were still keeping an eye out for an ambush. Not exactly diplomatic behavior.

  "I know generally where she is," Calen tried again, scratching at the back of his head and turning aside. "I uh, might have snuck away while she was looking for me. She's a little scary, but I can bring her back here if we really need her."

  Faking embarrassment let him hide part of his face, and sneak another look at the rolling terrain where the ongoing duel seemed almost entirely unchanged. It also forced Shiny to shift his grip to something a little less hostile, or be rough about it.

  The nervousness was all real, though.

  Emma only needed to get unlucky once, and these useless goons were busy plotting to ambush the only person he knew who actually wanted to help.

  Shiny chose to let Calen turn, and seemed to glance around at the space a second time, giving a slow nod.

  "Yes. This will be a good spot," The man agreed, still not fully releasing Calen's shoulder. "Unless you think you'll need help searching?"

  The big man beside Shiny tried to mutter something, but Calen heard it loud and clear without a helmet covering his head.

  "Splittin' up a good idea? What if she's waiting?"

  Pretending he hadn't heard was a nonstarter, and Shiny seemed like the brains of the crew in addition to being in charge, so Calen got out in front of the question before he could be saddled with a chaperone.

  "She seemed kind of jumpy when we landed, it's better if I go alone," Calen didn't even need to bluff for the first part of the sentence. "I can tell her the way ahead is clear, if you guys want to wait and get ready here."

  The ambiguous phrasing tweaked Shiny's helmet towards Calen, but the big man took the bait before anything could come of it. The other knights seemed to relax just a hair at the suggestion too, settling into their positions with a bit more confidence.

  They were going to be waiting a long time, because Calen didn't trust any of them further than he could throw them, and he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to lift a single man here, much less toss them.

  "Just make sure you get clear when the ambush starts. Mages are dangerous," The truth spilled out from under a beard, sounding almost jovially paternal. "She's liable to be a little vindictive 'till we can get her properly disabled, wouldn't want a promising young man like you damaged when she starts thrashing about."

  The confirmation was a solid blow to Calen's faith in humanity, but he fed the twisted satisfaction of being right to the grin he had painted over his face instead of flinching. Dead things couldn't hurt, no matter how many times you hit them.

  The pain in his palm masked the rest, and if he ended up with a permanent mark where the edge of the brass disk in his pocket was currently imprinting itself on his skin, so be it. Better than showing off a white-knuckled fist, or worse, arousing suspicion before he could get back to Mirri.

  Every second these bozos delayed him was another second Emma was in danger.

  The archer took another shot at the Venatrix, off to the side.

  "Got it," He strained, trusting them to attribute the nervousness in his voice to other circumstances. "I'll get clear as soon as she realizes what's up."

  Shiny had to let go of his arm completely when Calen threw his hood back up. Slowing to pick his way down the roughly weathered shale in between two pillars was agony, but a foot injury in front of these people might make them send someone to help.

  Revealing that the cuts would fix themselves would have them asking more questions than he was willing to stop and answer.

  "Calen."

  His escape was almost complete when he heard his name, the syllables rough and fumbling.

  Crushing the genuine debate over pretending he hadn't heard was the work of a stretching moment, but he had some semblance of a mask over his emotions by the time he turned back to Shiny.

  Running was tempting. He had almost a dozen feet worth of a head start, but that wasn't enough to warn Mirri and come up with a plan to get across the field. The words seemed to crawl out from under the helmet, mocking his hesitation with every syllable while he was forced to stand there and wait.

  "You're a fast learner, and raising up Arrivals is a long and proud tradition on Avarea," The knight tapped the stones beneath his feet with a boot for emphasis when he mentioned the name of the planet. "We can talk specifics when you're back, but you and your sister will both benefit from the prosperity this brings my house, when all is done. Whether that's gold, training, or deeper cooperation in the future."

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  A bribe. He was being delayed so that the man with the cracked fang on his heraldry could offer him a vague promise of wealth and power.

  Violet flashed again.

  "Well when you put it like that, I'd be a fool to miss out on the opportunity," Calen was absolutely certain the mask was starting to slip when another scream buzzed through his bones from the field. "Sounds like I should get started."

  Shiny's chin dipped after an endless moment, and Calen's legs churned in slow motion until he dropped the mana out of his head.

  At least that wasn't broken.

  He kept a moderate pace as he weaved right, right again, and then left to ensure he didn't get too lost in the stones while he worked his way back, then threw caution to the wind once he had broken line of sight to the ambush being set behind him.

  Sprinting straight to Mirri would have given the men a clear direction to follow when they realized he wasn't coming back, and the extra time might be the difference between having a plan and not.

  Calen almost missed the spot, when he finally worked his way back. The weather hadn't yet washed away the loose scales on the ground where Mirri had crashed, and one stuck to his foot when it landed, jabbing into a still-open cut from his sprint painfully enough that he stopped to deal with it, and noticed.

  "Mirri?" he asked, looking around.

  Raindrops thudded against the cloth over his head in the silence. He threw his hood back again to look up, hoping she was just taking precautions.

  The priestess was not perched atop any of the rocks, because of course she wasn't, the knights hadn't know about her injury. Looking up was stupid.

  Looking down was what gave him a clue.

  A hint of orange was reflected in the rippling rainwater starting to flow over the exposed bedrock. Calen circled the pillar where the effect was brightest, and came eye to eye with Mirri.

  They were eye to eye because her knees were bent, with her tail lashing as she shivered in the rain. The scales on her face looked paler and more washed out, and the orange glow was leaking from behind her, where the dragonborn had a clawed hand resting on the hilt of her knife.

  "Find anything interesting?" Mirri hissed out in a whisper.

  The hostility in her voice caused Calen's pulse to jump. Or maybe he was imagining it.

  "Nothing good." he started. "But there's—"

  "Really?" She cut in. "That's hard to—"

  "—a dozen dudes in armor who want me to walk you into an ambush," Calen finished, raising his voice and pointing past her towards the field before she could finish the accusation. "So we need another way to get past them if we want to help my sister."

  Mirri blinked far more rapidly than the situation called for, and began craning her neck to look past Calen. He stepped forwards to let her check behind him, and immediately shuffled to the side as the orange glow reflected off the rain-slick rocks around them intensified. Mirri prowled backwards to keep him in her line of sight, clearly wary.

  "Preferably without the archer seeing us." He added past the knot in his throat.

  At least she hadn't actually finished drawing the dagger. Or even pointed it him. He was being jumpy, and she was just being cautious. Checking if he had been followed.

  Which Calen really should have done, now that he thought about—

  Mirri shushed him.

  Unless that was like, a hiss or something. Did dragons hiss? Did dragonborn hiss?

  "Lower your voice." She snapped afterwards. "Are you sure they didn't just follow you?"

  Calen leaned awkwardly while he peered back the way he came. Nothing moved, and he couldn't hear anything except the sounds of fighting over the rain and wind.

  "They seemed a little terrified at the idea of splitting up once they heard you were here," He answered, turning back to find Mirri's eyes focused a little lower than his, until she flicked them back away from his neck. "We would hear all of them, right?"

  The orange glow fell out of the rainwater around them, and seemed to suffuse the spots at the corners of Mirri's jaw instead.

  "Stop doing that." She hissed. "It makes your head more vulnerable, the mana is too busy to absorb force."

  "I'm thinking," He snapped back, careful with his volume as he continued. "The extra time helps. And Shiny seemed more concerned with recruiting me than shooting me anyways."

  "Shiny?" Mirri's nostrils sprayed a fine mist of water off the end of her snout.

  That was progress. Not being stabbed for a little longer was also progress, but warning him about a danger and being amused were decidedly non-stabby behaviors Calen wanted to encourage if they were stuck with each other right now.

  "The... medium-sized asshole with no beard, in steel almost as polished as the Venatrix's boots. He seemed to be in charge," Calen stumbled through a rough description. "Tried to bribe me with money and undisclosed favors. Basically anything except actually helping right now."

  He was surprised the archer didn't see the man every time the sky flashed and roiled with heat lightning. Maybe if it were darker out, or—

  "Hey, would they fight?" Calen interrupted whatever Mirri was about to ask. "The knights seemed more scared of the Warden than the Horde, but they said they would want to deal with the north if they had you in hand."

  Presumably the cliff they had come from was the north side of the pass.

  "If you could make them, sure. They would be a real threat to the Warlord, with a dozen of them and the Venatrix nearby. But they didn't mean the Horde when they talked about taking the north. They meant the territory, with me as a political prisoner." Mirri added darkly. "Oaths only echo where they're heard, so it would be our word against theirs. The archer needs to be distracted before we move, and so do they."

  "Great, so they're just being assholes about it, and we still need a way to get to the fight," Calen sighed. "Do you have a plan you wanna share? Can we signal someone with like, your fire magic, or something?"

  "You didn't have a plan when—"

  Mirri abandoned her question and shook her head, giving Calen a strange look.

  "My priority is that way, and she's not moving away anymore." He pointed at the field while the Venatrix blasted another hail of stones out of the air with a fireball, and traced the terrain between them with his eyes.

  There were gullies, patches where the dirt had worn away to leave gravel to collect, and boulders scattered even further into the pass, but the area between the rock formation they were currently stuck and the duel Emma was currently stuck underfoot in was suspiciously bare and level.

  Mirri was right, they needed a distraction.

  She was weighing the stone tied to her chest in a palm when she spoke next, pulling Calen's eyes away from the field.

  "I could use this, but it'll throw light in all directions and drain my mana pool dry to get it to a useful level. Mahira knows we're over here somewhere, but your sister dies too if she gets herself killed rushing over, and Mercy knows the Seraph has full palms." She sounded genuinely miserable, recounting how they were trapped. "We're on our own. If you have a trick from your homeworld in your pockets, now would be the time to tell me."

  Calen thumbed at the only piece of plastic he still owned, and eyed the rune-painted rock tied to Mirri's chest.

  "What makes that work?" he asked, pointing. "Why does the rock glow in all directions, and not just the symbol?"

  Buzzing was building in Calen's head again, and he didn't want to risk hearing it go snap again, so he eased off the flow of mana through his brain stem for a moment. He fed it a trickle instead as Mirri's words seemed to pour out in an avalanche, rushing through the explanation almost robotically.

  "The pattern in the rune forms a filter to imbue the mana. Like channels, but without the efficiency gain. The platinum in the paint stores whatever power you imbue it with, and leaks into the rock over time to keep it lit."

  Mirri snapped a spark off the end of one of her claws. Calen saw it long before it leapt, working through the glowing veins in her fingers until fire sprang into the air and was snuffed with a hiss by the rain.

  "And that's the problem. I can only make fire-aligned mana." The priestess sighed. "I'd give myself mana exhaustion before this lit well enough to call help, and we would still just be caught between them."

  Heat lightning flashed in the sky again while Calen eyed the terrain in front of them.

  The grin crept across his face on its own as he finished putting the last of the pieces together. Mirri eyed him nervously.

  "So the paint can hold as much power as we put into it, matching channel alignment to the rune you're feeding makes it more efficient, and the rock will get brighter with more paint and power?" Calen asked, continuing when Mirri gave him a hesitant nod. "How much of that paint do you have?"

  "Why?" She asked suspiciously.

  Mirri's hand rested behind her back, but Calen could see the pommel of her weapon. She was reaching past it, into a pouch at her back.

  She had more.

  Calen started peeling his sweatshirt over his head, and explained. Fast.

  Mirri had untied the rock from her armor, and was prying the cork out of the bottle to hand it over before Calen's undershirt was even soaked by the downpour.

  They were running out of time.

  ambush tactics are anthropological, specifically preserved tools and animal bones dated to at least 300,000 years ago. Early hominids in what is now Lower Saxony, Germany, who were already communal hunters by this time, exploited predictable animal behavior to trap a herd of at least 54 wild horses in lakeside mud.