You have entered a Special Challenge Zone.

  Defeat the zone boss to gain a great reward.

  The wall of darkness hadn’t been obvious from the front side of the asylum. It just looked like a continuation of the mountains that edged the desert. It had been visible from the Solarium on the second floor, but her thoughts had been too focused on the Wendigo to absorb the implications of it.

  As they’d come closer, they’d seen it stretching like a curtain across a gap in the mountains; an undulating wall of shadow, cast by nothing. Stepping through the curtain had triggered the Special Challenge notification. The boundary between the blazing desert and the shadow-shrouded land had tingled against her skin with the tell-tale buzz of mana, and the temperature had dropped a good thirty degrees.

  Char crossed back to the desert side where Lulu and Declan waited. “So, it’s not completely blacked out in there. More like nighttime with a full moon. But I bet it’s dark as a cave once the sun goes down. Also, there’s a system message. Calls it a Special Challenge Zone, mentions a zone boss and a reward, but fuck all else.” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, resisting the urge to scratch at the heat prickles as the desert sun made her sweat again. “On the plus side, it’s cooler in there. I couldn’t see far, but what I could see looked like a lightly wooded valley between two hills.”

  “Do you think Royce is still lurking in there? Or did he keep running?” Declan studied the shadow, his brow creased with worry lines.

  “No way to tell right now. I’d say it depends on whether or not he found anything to eat, if I remember the legends right. I wish I’d paid more attention to the stories, but what I do remember about the Wendigo is so mixed up with TV shows and fantasy stories that I’m not sure which bits are right, or if any of them are.”

  “So we find out the hard way, I guess,” Declan shrugged. “Unless you want to let him go and head back to the others?”

  Char checked her gut. There were other paths she could take, but the thunder in her belly and her instincts were both pushing her to go after Royce. Leaving that infection to fester would only lead to worse problems down the line. Better to take him out before he could grow. Decision made, she nodded to herself and said, “We need to pull this weed.”

  She stepped forward through the black barrier, feeling Lulu next to her, and hearing the sound of Declan’s footsteps just behind.

  The cooler air on the other side made goosebumps rise along her arms, and the cool, silver light in the gloom gave everything a surreal feeling. Glancing upward, she saw that the sun was still there, but it was filtered through whatever magic or haze covered this zone. It was the right size and shape to be the sun, but the light it gave off was the dim glow of a full moon.

  The light was enough to let them walk and avoid obstacles, but it created pools of deeper shadow that could hide any danger.

  Lulu sniffed the air and the ground, ranging out around them as they walked. She paused at the spot where Char had seen the tracks, and growled softly, deep in her throat. Char felt a mix of wariness, determination, and excitement accompanying the image of the Wendigo that Lulu sent her. She had the trail.

  They followed Lulu’s nose downhill, deeper into the valley. Char caught glimpses of the faux-moonlight reflecting from the snaking ribbon of a river running between the trees below them. It looked very serene and pastoral. The altered light had even convinced the insects that it was night; the air was full of the sound of chirping crickets.

  Char was jumpy. The scene was too surreal, with the sun-turned-moon lighting a scene right out of one of those old summer camp slasher movies. Char half expected the crickets to go silent at any moment as a man in a hockey mask lumbered out of the trees. But they didn’t. They kept chirping, even as the shadows came to life and tried to eat them.

  The prickle of warning on the back of her neck was the only thing that saved her when the pool of darkness puddled at the base of a bush rose up and tried to wrap around her. She jumped to the side and spun, sword up. Lulu yelped and burst into flame as another shadow tried to wrap around her.

  Declan cried out as inky black branches became tendrils that wrapped around his legs. He slashed at them with both of the weapons he held. The short sword did nothing, but the dagger made them draw back.

  Char slashed at the shadow reaching for her, but her sword passed right through it with no effect. It wrapped around her arm, and she felt lethargy seep into her, slowing her thoughts and reactions. She tried to pull away, but the shadow only stretched and followed.

  “Magic, Char! My dagger hurts it.” Declan slashed at the shadows that were climbing up his legs. The dagger sliced away bits of the shadow-stuff, causing slivers to puff away into dark mist and vanish, but more came.

  Lulu danced through the shadows, her teeth and claws shredding and burning away the shadows that reached for her. Her flames burned bright, chasing back the reaching fingers of darkness. She ran to Char, snapping at the shadows, but she couldn’t get too close without burning her Companion.

  The shadows wrapped around her sapped her energy, and Char saw all three of her resource bars slowly ticking downward. She reached into herself and pulled out a thread of lightning mana, pushing it into her blade. With her blade imbued with lightning, there was resistance when she sliced at the shadows, and they broke apart as her sword passed through them, but they came back. An inexorable flood of inky blackness flowed from the night, surrounding them and blotting out what little light there was. For every cut that sliced away a reaching finger, three more moved in.

  Fear turned Char’s guts to ice. She made her way to Declan and put her back to his. Lulu danced around them, lunging and snarling, her flames were their greatest weapon against the tide of darkness that tried to roll over them. Declan was having the hardest time of all of them; his one dagger wasn’t enough to keep the tendrils at bay.

  Char took one hand from her sword and pulled her Manavore dagger from her Quick Access slot. She passed it over her shoulder to him, tapping him on the shoulder with it so he knew where to reach. “Here, put your sword away and use this.”

  “Thanks. You got a plan? Please tell me you’ve got a plan.” He took the dagger, and with a magic dagger in each hand, he had an easier time keeping the shadows from latching on. But they were losing. Fighting was burning through their stamina, imbuing her sword was using up her mana, and every touch of the living shadows drained them further.

  They’d been walking in the challenge zone for maybe twenty minutes before the shadows had come to life. If they could run, they might make it out of the zone in half that, but constantly fending off the shadows would slow them to a crawl. They’d never make it back to the sunlight. Char’s thoughts raced as she searched for a solution. She could flood herself with lightning mana, and that might hold them off the way Lulu’s flames did, but it would burn through her mana too fast, and it wouldn’t help Declan.

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  “I don’t…” she started to say that she didn’t know. Panic was starting to win the battle over reason, and the creeping lethargy was making it hard to fight against it and keep the shadows at bay. Her Foresight was warning her of danger from every direction… no… not every direction. It was subtle, and she couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t just the last desperate gasp of her imagination trying to feed her hope, but there was a slight tug, the barest hint of a nudge in the direction of the river. Out of ideas and other options, Char went with it, “The river. Head for the river.”

  It was a testament to the amount of faith Declan had in her that he didn’t question; he just moved with her. She prayed that she hadn’t just gotten them both killed; a poor repayment for that amount of trust.

  Lulu circled them, blazing like a torch, but for all her efforts, she couldn’t guard all sides. The shadows reached and clung, and Char and Declan fought a constant battle as they jogged, slicing away the whips of shadow. The trees got thicker the closer they got to the river, and as they moved through the trunks and the boughs cut off the thin light of the altered sun, Char feared she’d made a fatal mistake.

  Her arms and legs were slowing; the sapping of the shadows and constant effort to fight them back were taking their toll. Declan was moving slower, too. His daggers flashed, but more and more tendrils were slipping through to touch him.

  Then an image appeared in her mind, a message from Lulu. It was a glimpse of a stone pedestal among the trees, and on the pedestal rested a black orb. Shadows flowed from the orb, swirling around the pedestal like a whirlpool of ink before flowing outward among the trees. “Where, Lulu? Which way?”

  “Where what?” Declan asked, his voice tight with strain.

  “The source, maybe. Not sure yet. Follow Lu.” Char sent her Companion a feeling of trust and her willingness to follow, and the big blazing dog barked once. She lit the way, leading them off to the right, deeper into the shadows. Char and Declan had to hurry to keep up, and the reaching tendrils grew so thick that it became nearly impossible to keep them away.

  They didn’t have to go far before Char saw it, just a glimpse among the trees. It was smaller than she’d expected from Lulu’s sending, but then the dog had seen it from a lower angle. Char wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, but it was all she had. Sheer desperation had her pulling the spell together faster than she ever had before, and she fired off an Arc into the orb.

  A blinding, jagged spear of blue-white lightning shot from her hand into the basketball-sized globe of darkness on the stone pedestal. The lightning danced over the surface of the sphere for a second before sinking into it. At first, Char thought it hadn’t worked, that she’d wasted the last of her mana and gotten them killed, but then the orb burst apart. Motes of darkness flew outward like shards of glass in a nearly silent explosion.

  A blast of mana so dense it was nearly a physical force rushed outward from the orb and tore the living shadows apart as it passed.

  The woods fell still. Char couldn’t be sure if it was just the banishment of the shadows, but it seemed like the false moonlight was just a bit brighter. For nearly a minute, the only sound was their ragged breathing. Then, Declan said, “So, did you see the notification?”

  Char nodded, “Yeah. We have to do that two more times. Joy.”

  

  Special Challenge progress made:

  Destroy the sentinel orbs.

  1/3 destroyed.

  ————————————————————

  First wave defeated.

  Experience gained.

  ——————————————————————

  Congratulations! You have gained a level.

  You are level 24.

  You have gained 5 free stat points.

  You have gained +1 Strength, +2 Speed,

  +1 Dexterity, +3 Endurance, +1 Intelligence

  +2 Spirit

  “I hit level 18,” Declan said, reading his own notifications. “20 is so close I can almost taste it.”

  They sat and rested to get back their lost energy. Char wondered about the nudge she’d gotten. Her Foresight had never done that before. It warned her of danger a split second before it landed, but this had been an event far more than a second in the future. It had sent them in exactly the direction they’d needed to go to survive. It had been subtle, though. If she hadn’t been grasping at any straw available, it would have been easy to overlook the feeling in the chaos of fighting; easy to brush it off as imagination. She had to watch for those nudges in the future.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Declan got to his feet and walked over to the stone pedestal. Bending down, he looked closely at a little wooden box that Char would swear hadn’t been there before. She got up and walked over. Once she was close enough, she recognized it.

  “It’s like the box my skill crystal was in. Go ahead. You spotted it first, and if it is what I think it is, it’s meant for you, anyway.”

  Declan reached out and opened the box. Sure enough, a single long, faceted crystal rested inside. He picked it up. “Dual short blades,” he said. “How do I use it?”

  “OK, first lesson in magic. You have to send a little bit of mana into the crystal. There’s mana inside you, centered on the spot where your Core will form. Feel for that space. It isn’t a physical place you can point to; it’s at your center. Not the center of your body, but the center of your self. Does that make sense? I know it sounds hokie, but…” Char trailed off.

  “No, I get it. I think… OH!” His eyes went wide, then they seemed to stare out into space. After a second, they started to flick from side to side, like he was dreaming with them open. The rest of him was still, frozen like a statue. He stood like that for nearly a full minute, and with each second that passed, Char grew more concerned. Had she stood there like that when she’d gotten her crystal? Had something gone wrong? Why wasn’t he blinking?

  And then he was moving again. He pulled in a deep breath and let it out again in a rush. “Wow, that was…” He smiled and let out a self-deprecating chuckle, “I know dagger-fu.”

  “Fantastic! Show me.” Char raised her sword and stepped into a guard stance. Declan put away one of the daggers and pulled out his short sword. “Which did it teach you? Daggers or swords?” she asked, one eyebrow going up.

  “The techniques work for either, as long as it's short. Anything longer than this and it would be too clumsy, though, I think.” He set his feet and started to circle to the side. Char mirrored him. She gave him a few seconds to settle into the new footwork knowledge, then stepped in with a probing lunge. He deflected the blade with the dagger in his left hand and brought the short sword around into the opening he’d created.

  Char turned, avoiding the blow, and brought her blade up in a slash. Declan avoided the swing, and they traded blows several more times. Where before his fighting had been more enthusiasm than skill, now, he was matching her move for move. Her Foresight and greater stats would still give her an advantage in a real fight, but the crystal had brought his skill up to match hers.

  Stepping back, she nodded to him. “Not bad. Now we just need to get you a Core and some spells.”

  “I’m looking forward to that. Oh, hey, I also got a Mana Manipulation skill.” His eyes were distant, a sight that he was looking at screens instead of the real world.

  “Yeah, I got that one, too, when I used my skill crystal. It will help a lot when you have to learn to shape a spell pattern. I didn’t know ahead of time, and probably wouldn’t have had the time anyway if I had, but if you practice with it now, you might have an easier time casting your first spell.”

  “What’s it like? Casting a spell?”

  “Like making a 3-D sculpture out of cooked noodles and stubbornness the first few times. It’ll stretch your brain. You may need to put some points into Intelligence, Willpower, and Dexterity. Once you get the hang of it, it gets easier, and the higher your affinity, the easier it is to control the mana.” She smiled and added, “And using the magic… It’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced.”

  “That good, huh?” He grinned to show he was teasing, then asked a more serious question. “How did you get your spells? Do you just know them?”

  She shook her head, “No, the system gives you a choice of spell patterns after you absorb your first Domain Affinity Core. You get to pick one. I learned a second one by trial and error. I think there are ways to learn more, but I haven’t stumbled across them yet.”

  “So, are we going after those last two orbs, or pushing after Royce?”

  Char leaned against a tree and crossed her arms, considering. After a minute, she said, “We might have to take out the orbs in order to get through the valley, but Royce is our priority. We’ll rest a little longer and make sure all our bars are full, then see if we can find his trail again.”