Chương 42

No plan survives contact with fools.

"Black tides!" an older man cursed, leaping to his feet. The other four followed suit, weapons siezed as Adhira charged into their midst.

"Rani! Go!" One of their number took off down a back tunnel, one Harker hadn't spotted, and disappeared. Adhira swung, and the older bandit closed the gap. Sword met axe—and failed. The older man fell back, weapon cleaved in two. He grunted wordlessly at the hilt in his hand before dropping it.

"Isaak, hit the dirt." A younger man dropped his own weapons before falling to his knees.

"Dustbreak!" His hands slammed into the sandy earth and a wash of blue-green Water rolled outward. It converted midway, and a thick, choking cloud of dust filled the entirety of the cavern. Harker coughed, pulling a piece of his cloak over his mouth. He couldn't see a thing—at least, not with his conventional senses.

"Sovereign Sight." His Talent spread to his three foot limit and held, Water feeding through Harker's feet as he approached the edge of the cloud. Inside he could hear Adhira fighting. The clash of obstinite on steel was too loud to ignore, and the frantic shuffle of boots through loose soil was a soft counterpoint to the heavy, panicked breathing of the bandits. The cloud didn't spread past the cavern, and Harker stood on its edge in the entrance tunnel, staring into the sepia-toned mess.

Remember Law 4B and 4D, he told himself. Seize The Field… and Show No Mercy. He leapt into the cloud. Immediately the dust clung to his skin and scratched at his eyes. He squeezed them shut, tears leaking from the edges. Harker had no need for them anyway—his Talent poured through him, feeding him more information than his eyes ever could. Harker moved slowly, blue dagger in one hand and a throwing knife in the other. Step by careful step, he circled toward the sound of the bandits.

His radius was only three feet, and while that helped him navigate his immediate surroundings, Harker could only rely on amplified sounds and billowing eddies to locate the others. He moved quietly, eager to catch the bandits unaware—and nearly missed the axe hurtling toward his shoulder. Harker scrambled back and the axe sank into a log. A hand coated in shiny pitted metal held the haft of the axe—it was attached to an armored arm and chest and above it a face, all of it clad in metal like a second skin.

"A lucky dodge," the bandit said, his beard bristling like metal wires.

"It'll not happen again." He pulled the axe free with a grunt and stepped over the log. A bubble of dust-free air followed him like a shadow. That's how they're maneuvering through the cloud. With a casual, almost disappointed strength, the bandit swung three times in quick succession. Harker darted away from the first and second, but the third cut entirely too close to his leg. Only his blue dagger saved him as Harker shoved the weapon against the blow, turning it aside. Barely.

The strike was strong and merely deflecting it was enough to send a spike of pain through his wrist. The bandit pulled his weapon back up, readying another blow.

"You're in trouble now, boy. Nemic is here to learn you some manners!" A flurry of strikes followed, forcing Harker to jerk his limbs through his Talent's constant warnings. The axe cut around him, but his Talent fed him taste and touch and sight, until its path was written before him like script. Harker's world narrowed to a pinpoint—there was only him and the bandit, and he read the man with more than instinct now.

"Stay still!" the bandit snarled. Harker was a ghost, and unfortunately that meant his strikes did little more than bounce off his foe. Sharp as it was, the blue dagger did little more than scratch the pitted metal that coated him. Harker lacked the strength to punch through it. He needed to change up the game.

"You can't hit me?" Harker forced a laugh through the dust.

"I'm not even opening my eyes!"

"Cocky little—!" The bandit charged, swinging as he went, but like every move he displayed it was all brute force. Harker sidestepped, cracking the man in the back of the skull with his dagger's pommel. The bandit grunted, stumbling as his own momentum was turned against him, and Harker ran. He sped through the dust, Talent leading the way. Details flowed through him—eddying air currents, a haze of scouring particles, and a familiar shape. The bandit followed, close behind despite everything.

The axe hurled for Harker's back, and he dove forward. The axe sank into the earth, buried to the haft.

"Black abyss!" The man abandoned his weapon, hands flexing with a metallic groan.

"I don't need that antique to take care of you." Harker stepped three precise steps backward, just outside the man's reach.

"Show me."

"Ha! Don't feel bad, boy." A grin stretched his silver skin, metal teeth pocked and gleaming.

"You were never gonna defeat me."

"I know."

"Wha—?" Adhira emerged from the dust axe-first. The dual blades caught him at the shoulder and carved down through the opposite hip, all to the tune of screeching metal. The bandit fell, staining the dirt. Adhira twisted the haft of her weapon, flinging blood from her edge.

"What're you sitting down for? Find the one making all this dust and stop him! I can barely see." Without waiting for him to answer, she vanished into the cloud again.

"Right." Harker climbed back to his feet.

"So long, Nemic." This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. With a grunt of effort, he shifted his Talent. His sphere squeezed outward into a cone once again, and it immediately tilted him. Nearly sent down to his knees, his wobbling balance shifted as easily as the soil beneath his feet, but he dug his heels in, grounding himself as the world steadied. He held on, filtering through the details. Wind. Dust. Heartbeats. He could pick them out in the haze easily enough.

They moved about, entering and exiting his cone no matter which way he shifted it. Adhira followed them, her axe slamming into the ground just behind their heels as the madwoman rampaged through the cavern. These aren't soldiers. Not good ones, anyway. Whatever strategy they had was already falling apart. Harker could pick out two of the remaining three bandits, and they weren't even trying to surround the girl. They darted in circles, headed— Harker froze. They weren't coming after her. They were coming after him.

Depths! A sword cut for his throat and Harker dodged away just in time, reeling in his Talent once again. It recoiled, bounding from his grasp for a brief, terrifying second. In that moment, Harker was blind.

"Sovereign Sight!" he choked out. His sphere of perception returned, pulsing, just in time to avoid a follow up slash from the older bandit leader.

"Interesting," the man said, voice like two rocks rubbing together. His grizzled beard was stained with food.

"Eyes closed but you're dodging easily. A perception Talent?" Harker frowned. If a bandit could tell so easily, he was doing a piss poor job at his diguise. The leader attacked again, this time a diagonal slash from below. Harker was still pulsing his Talent with every breath. The details were fuzzier, but the important parts stayed clear. He slipped aside.

"You're good." The bandit spat into the dirt.

"Chartermarked. Of course."

"You have something against students?" Harker stepped back, avoiding a blind swing from the old man. It seemed the bandits still had trouble seeing through it despite their protections.

"Nothing against you." The old man swung and caught nothing but air.

"Spirefolk put their noses where they don't belong. This is my territory, son." Harker threw another knife, but the man somehow bent out of the way. His uncanny movement wasn't a flex of joint or sinew, but something else. He flowed, his movements trailing a faint wave of Water. Some sort of mobility Talent? It was the last extraneous thought Harker could afford. The grizzled bandit was atop him, and he was no longer holding back.

His sword moving in dizzying flows that put his metal-coated ally to shame—it was like fighting the Gallant River. Harker evaded with every ounce of energy in his body, but couldn't stop the occasional slice across his arm or leg. Twice he tried to stab the man and twice his dagger was nearly knocked out of his grasp, a cut across the chest his only reward for the attempt. By the end of twenty seconds, Harker's limbs dripped with blood and his grip on his dagger was slick and uncertain.

"You're good," Harker said, backpedaling to create some space.

"Have you considered going to the Spires yourself?" The bandit laughed, following with smooth steps.

"I'm too old, son. Too set in my ways. Spires can't teach me nothin' I don't already know."

"And what's that?" Behind his back, Harker unspooled a length of vine from his pack.

"That this ain't no world for the weak." The bandit leader flushed with Water, and for a moment, he vanished. Harker spun, his Talent pulsing, only to find the flat of a blade slamming into the side of his head. It rang him like a bell. Harker stumbled sideways, fighting to keep his wits as the world swam and his vision flushed with blackened edges. But he'd gotten more than a little experience with disorientation.

The second blow came just as quick as the first—Harker rolled forward, passing through the man's reach as his sword point came down on nothing. He whipped his vine, the end of it cracking in an undulating line. The leader contorted around it with ease, but he wasn't the target. The tip snapped hard into the face of a man kneeling just behind him. Isaak cried out and hands that were planted in the dirt gripped his wounded jaw. The dust around them stalled out, and the bandit leader cursed. Harker grinned.

"I'm guessing moving for him is bad." The choking cloud around them vanished entirely, and Harker opened his eyes again.

"Isaak!" the old man shouted. Isaak spat blood, but forced his hands down again, but not before an axe cleaved his head clean from his shoulders.

"No!" The old man ran to him, sword cutting for Adhira.

"To the Abyss with you Chartermarked!" Sword and axe met in a flurry of blows. The man unleashed a fury Harker would have never survived. He had all the grace of a serpent and twice its speed, but Adhira was a knot of immovable stone. She crashed into him again and again, forcing him back with every looping swing of her axe. To the side, a shape shimmered, moving toward Adhira's back. Harker grunted, bearing a raw soreness in his throat as he released his Talent in a cone nearly seven feet long.

His vision blackened and he wobbled, but he had him: the last bandit ran for Adhira's back, asymmetrical patches of color making them almost impossible to see. Harker dropped his Talent, yanked his vine back and, near-blind, hurled the whole of it forward. The entire spool crashed into the camouflaged man's path, tangling his knees and knocking him flat on his face. He climbed back up almost instantly.

"Stay down." Harker threw two knives, falling forward as he did so. They glimmered in the firelight before sinking to the hilt in the man's back, dropping him to his knees. The bandit's Talent flickered, his body once again visible.

"Vilkos! Help!" The old man turned his sword, barely warding off Adhira's assault.

"Get up, Zana! Get to Rani!" The words barely left his mouth before Vilkos lunged. His sword caught in the folds of Adhira's cloak and he wrenched her sideways, sending the girl down in a sprawl of limbs. She hit hard, but found her feet before the blade descended for her head.

"You want to use tricks?" She grinned, spitting dirt from her mouth.

"Trick your way past this." Vilkos was already running. He took off toward the back tunnel, toward Harker, his body leaving afterimages of blue-green Water.

"Hey!" She stomped on the earth.

"Bulwark!" A wall of compacted earth rose between her and the old man, but it was too little too late. With a grunt, Harker threw his last knife. Vilkos snatched it out of the air, his fingers seeming to contort and stretch.

"I appreciate the weapon." He threw it back. Harker rolled, the knife barely missing him, but it cut through his cloak, pinning it to the earth for only a second before he tugged it free. Enough time for Vilkos to close in again.

"It's you or me, son!" His sword flashed in the firelight. The bulwark exploded. Chunks of it hurled forth, rocks propelled by the swing of a massive tri-headed axe. The first piece slammed Vilkos in the back, knocking him forward, only for the second and third to bash through his right arm, snapping it at the elbow. His sword fell from nerveless fingers and blood poured from the bandit's mouth, but he still stood. Harker kicked in his knees.

Vilkos screamed, twisting as he fell and neatly avoiding the last of the rocky projectiles. Adhira cheered. A howl cut through it all. All of them froze. Another howl, this one so loud it sent dust raining from the ceiling, and a look of horror stretched Vilkos' face.

"No… They're loose…" A massive creature careened down the tunnel, its body almost too big to fit. Gleaming scales cut through thick fur and a spiked dorsal fin carved a wicked groove through the top of the tunnel. Its eyes flashed, fanged jaws spread wide, revealing the corpse of the missing bandit.

"Run!" Vilkos cried.

"It's Depth-Twisted!" It was too late. The Aberrant was upon them.