[Shroud of Fortification]
Lyla had lower durability than Talghar or Aloise, so a little extra protection wouldn’t be amiss. She held her daggers in a reverse grip, blade resting against her forearms as she scanned the trees ahead of her. The five of them had formed into a circle around the pool of blood, Sagar’s body hovering a few inches above their heads.
“Any signs?” Talghar asked. “I’m feeling nothing.” Neither he nor Aloise had the same detection abilities as Danyll or Lyla. Where assassins and hunters had sharpened eyes and ears, warriors became more attuned to small movements of the air or subtle changes in scent around them. It made them more effective at close quarters.
“Nothing,” Danyll said, standing on Lyla’s right. He still had an arrow nocked to his bow, though he held it downwards.
“No magic either that I can feel,” Urien said on her left, a cloud of frigid air escaping his mouth.
Lyla glanced briefly at Sagar and the clean cut across his throat. The stitching on his chest. She wondered if the others had realised what she had. It had been two, maybe three minutes between Sagar’s lightning strike and discovering his body. Even the Alpha or Beta squads would struggle to do that alone.
Lyla was coming to terms with the fact that she might have misread the situation. Badly. She’d thought only the stranger was the threat in that camp, but there must have been at least two or three more that she hadn’t noticed to have taken care of Sagar so easily. She doubted one man or woman could have accomplished it so quickly.
“I think there’s more,” Lyla admitted. “I must have got it wrong. It can’t just be that one mage.”
“Most likely,” Talghar responded. “Probably at least four or five of them. We can discuss it later, though none of our intelligence suggested they had forces equal to us.”
Lyla said nothing. No doubt another scar or two would be added to the others on her back. Maybe she’d have to give something more. A mistake like this required penance. It didn’t matter that none of their intelligence suggested multiple Starforged level threats. None of that intelligence had come from one of the Shadow’s elite units, and Shadows of her level weren’t supposed to make mistakes.
“What are we doing here then?” Urien asked.
“I want you to grab Sagar’s body and portal back to Tarnov,” Talghar said, “then come straight back. We continue on. We finish the mission.”
Lyla had expected that. Shadows don’t retreat. Complete the mission or don’t come back. Failure was not an option. If they didn’t complete the mission, they’d be executed anyway, and if they failed – well, that just meant they weren’t good enough in the first place.
Urien focused on a spot a couple of metres in front of him and a moment later, a thin sliver of light appeared slightly above the ground, stretching the width of two people. As the sliver started expanding upwards, Lyla caught a flash of movement. Something small. Quick.
Suddenly, the sliver of light collapsed in on itself. Urien staggered back, right hand reaching out to grab Lyla’s arm.
Backlash. When a spell is destroyed before it’s had the chance to fully form. She’d been told it was like holding a rubber band, while someone pulled the other end as far as they could and then let go. Urien had just felt the mana he had been channelling snap back to him.
Urien enhanced his orb of light, brought it closer so it bathed the surrounding area. Their eyes snapped to where the portal should have been but instead a small pin with a bulbous black orb at its end was planted in the ground. Then they all heard the soft pitter-patter of muffled footsteps emerging from between the trees, directly ahead of Urien.
A little stitched doll stood before them, no taller than six inches. Tufts of pink hair flared out to either side of its head, gathered together with purple bands. It had a dress of autumn colours and striped stockings in teal and pink. On the end of one leg was a pink boot, with a blue boot on the end of the other. In its right hand, it held a small bulbous black bulb with the thin blade of a pin extending almost as long as it was.
With its left hand, the doll gently jabbed at its chest, then used its finger to point above their heads – at Sagar’s body. No, it wasn’t pointing at the body per se. It was pointing at the stitched message. It was identifying itself.
Elsie is here.
The doll smiled, pink stitched lips curving from ear to ear. She gave a little flourish with the pin in her right hand as she bowed to them.
“A puppetmancer?” Talghar said.
“I don’t feel any mana flows,” Urien said, “but if he’s strong enough, he could be hiding them. He would have to be nearby though.”
“The camp?” Danyll said, bow lifted to his face, an arrow drawn to his cheek.
“Call it,” Aloise said. “Whoever it is, we need to put an end to them now.”
“Urien, Danyll – you keep the doll busy. The rest of us will go to the camp and find the master.”
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“Let’s do this,” Urien said, the air around his fists growing colder and glowing with a faint blue sheen.
“I’ll take the sh–” Danyll began but didn’t finish as a small blade shot across the forest at him. He managed to turn his face at the last second, the pin slicing through his cheek instead as he accidentally loosed the arrow. It smacked into the trunk of a tree which burst with the impact – chips of wood flying everywhere.
Urien didn’t hesitate. Thick spears of ice shot out of the ground at the doll’s feet, but she was already on the move, vaulting away, then running faster than should be possible for her tiny feet. A spear of ice burst from a tree trunk that the doll easily evaded, tilting her body almost horizontally, her left hand dragging through the dirt.
Lyla tracked her movement, anticipating where she would run to next. She twirled one of the daggers in her hand, grabbing the blade between her fingers and holding it above her shoulder as she turned her body with the doll’s run. She threw the dagger at the spot where she expected the doll to be but, as if it had predicted her move, the doll jumped several inches higher than where the dagger whistled through the air.
Then two threads at either side of the doll’s hip shot forth, tiny spearheads on their ends embedding themselves into a tree trunk, pulling the doll across the forest floor with them. She landed on the bark of the tree, using it as a springboard as she leapt towards them. Lyla stood ready, another dagger in her hand but as the doll was halfway to them, she surged forwards with a speed that Lyla couldn’t follow.
“Where is she?” Aloise yelled.
“My eyes,” Danyll suddenly screamed, and Lyla turned to the right to see the doll standing on Danyll’s forehead, two black pins in either hand jammed into the hunter’s eyes. The doll glanced at Lyla and let go of one of the pins. She gave Lyla a salute with her free hand before pushing off Danyll’s forehead, again with a speed Lyla couldn’t follow, leaving the pins behind. Danyll dropped his bow, clawing at his eyes.
“Impossible,” Urien declared. “The puppet has mana.”
Mana? That would mean…
“We move. Now.” Talghar grabbed Danyll under one arm, nodding at Aloise to take the other. “Head for the camp. We’ll take her in the open. Lyla, Urien – I don’t care what it takes. Keep that little freak from our ba–”
Danyll screamed again, crumpling to the floor. Ice spears shot out from the ground near his feet as Urien tried to follow the doll running away. The air around them all grew frigid as multiple icicles appeared.
The back of Danyll’s ankles had been severed. He wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“I didn’t feel her,” Aloise said. “How are we meant to fight something we can’t detect?”
“We’ll find a way,” Talghar said.
“Go.” Urien placed himself between Danyll on the ground and where the doll was assumed to have run off to, icicles floating around his head. “I’ve got this. Just do me a favour. Kill those Rhianian bastards for us.”
Talghar looked at Urien’s back, then at Aloise and Lyla. He nodded at them and the three of them backed away, before turning and running toward the main camp.
They sprinted through the forest, trees blurring past as they jumped past exposed roots and ducked beneath low-hanging branches. Lyla’s heart pounded as the sounds of Urien’s battle got further away. She wasn’t feeling fear exactly. She wouldn’t be a member of the Shadows if she did, but there was a certain tightness in her muscles, a stiffness in her limbs as she strafed to the left to avoid a tree trunk.
That doll had been beyond anything she had ever encountered. It seemed absurd. Something so small. So innocent. And yet, the doll had taken Danyll down without any effort. What was even more troubling was its use of mana. It had been creating its pins and the threads it had used to shoot across the forest. Dolls did not use mana. Only living beings did.
A scream echoed through the forest behind them. Then another.
They didn’t slow down.
Moments later, they sprang through the trees into the clearing where the Rhianians had camped. Tents lay empty, flaps hanging open. Campfires had been dowsed, thin tendrils of smoke rising. Clothes and bedrolls lay abandoned, half-eaten meals discarded with their bowls.
“They knew we were coming,” Talghar said.
“Nothing to be done about it now,” Aloise replied. “Let’s work out a plan to kill this thing, then we’ll deal with the Rhianians after.”
Talghar didn’t get the chance to respond.
Pit-pat. Pit-pat.
All three of them turned to find the doll – Elsie - strolling into the camp. She peered left and right, hands hidden behind her back. As she got closer, she revealed her hands and the…tiny mallets she held in them with inch-long handles. Her eyes widened and she gave them a cheeky grin.
Elsie didn’t give them a chance to get set. She shot forwards, mallets in hand as she closed the distance to them in a heartbeat. Talghar swung his sword at where he expected Elsie to be, but she leapt onto the blade, using it as a springboard to jump to Aloise’s chest. She staggered back, trying to swat at Elsie, but the doll danced around her hand, jumping to Aloise’s shoulder and then swiping the side of her face with both mallets.
Aloise went flying, head planting into the ground several metres away as Elsie hung in the air for a moment. Lyla jumped in, stabbing at the doll with the dagger in her right hand, but Elsie pirouetted to avoid the blow, then vaulted backwards. Immediately, she surged forwards but Lyla had some idea of where Elsie would emerge.
Lyla looked at Aloise, hands pressed on the ground as she shook her head, trying to get up. Lyla threw her dagger right above the centre of Aloise’s back. Sure enough, the doll popped up where she had expected. Elsie turned to the dagger flying right at her and in a smooth motion, somersaulted away from Aloise, landing on the dirt nearby.
Elsie gave Lyla a curious frown and cocked her head. Then she smiled and gave Lyla a thumbs up.
Lyla almost laughed. This thing had just ripped apart one of the strongest squads in Bizayn and it still wasn’t a given that they would survive this night, but the sheer audacity of the doll to tell Lyla that she’d done well. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so patronised in her entire life. Not during her early years as a child, nor her training in the academy, nor her exercises with her peers among the Shadows. Here she was, doing her utmost to keep up with this tiny creature of destruction and it was giving her a thumbs up.
Talghar took the opportunity that had been presented by Elsie’s utter indifference to this fight. He raised his broadsword above his head as he leapt forward, his shoulders and biceps bulging as he brought the sword down on top of where the doll stood. The earth exploded with a boom that echoed through the night, dirt and debris flying through the air as clouds of dust billowed. When it had settled down, Talghar’s sword rested in a crater several metres wide. Lyla caught the backend of the doll’s flip as it settled to the ground on its colourful little boots.
“You really thought you could kill us all?” Talghar spat. “Alone?”
Elsie flopped down to the ground, legs tucked beneath her, elbows resting on her knees. The pink stitching of her lips curved up into a smile, and she twirled the index finger of her right hand in a circle, as if inviting them to turn around.
Then a male voice spoke from behind them.
“Who said she’s alone?”
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