Siege State

“ROSA!” Tom screamed.

Every fibre of his being hitched. His focus narrowed down to her, turning, slowly, too slowly to see the tendrils of snaking from the shadows in the grass, tipped with black, knife-like ends. His heart skipped a beat. They pulled in on themselves, not retreating, but coiling to strike.

She turned to Tom, brow drawn in confusion, mouth open to ask what he was yelling for. She caught a glimpse of his face. The tendrils fired forwards.

Rosa disappeared. The tendrils struck through a person-sized column of smoke. They pushed gouts of it out the other side, dragged it back out with them as they recoiled. They spasmed briefly when they missed, a furious, frustrated motion. The motion drew the smoke into a writhing cloud, then it collapsed into nothing.

Rosa reappeared next to Tom. The same smoke puffed out as she appeared, but she gathered it up with her control skill and threaded it into the sky.

Tom was searching everywhere with Sere and the owls. He drew his attention evenly between them, looking for the assassin. If it had some kind of shadowy Ideal, then Sus and Sol probably had the best chance of detecting it, with their eyes made for cutting through darkness. The owls took to the hunt with a passion.

Tom and Rosa stood back to back, working their way towards their injured party members. Sesame moved with them, drawing in huge breaths through his questing nose.

Darius was on his feet, sword held loosely across his body, an unfocused expression on his face. Granny, sitting nearby, turned slowly this way and that, her stubby legs tentatively wiggling through the earth. Her shell vibrated subtly as she searched, a tiny dust cloud rising from the miniature mountainous slopes.

Suddenly, a small vortex of whirling black spun into existence above and behind Tanya and Meri. It expanded into an humanoid figure, the orc, though it was covered in shifting shadows like a secondary skin.

It hung in the air for a single moment. Then the deathly tendrils burst from its body once more.

Some of the wriggling mass speared into the ground, holding the assassin in the air like a spider. The rest shot unerringly toward Tanya and their injured scout.

Tom was prepped and waiting. He immediately cast Hush on the Idealist orc, expecting to leave it stranded and without access to its skills, completely at their mercy.

The tendrils quivered like a plucked string. The shadows coating the orc itself, plating it like armour, vibrated crazily, but held. The tendrils sped forth, unaffected.

Darius intervened at the last moment. His shield bloomed before them. The tendrils struck it in a staccato tattoo, drumming upon it until it broke.

It gave them a second’s respite. Just long enough for Tanya to fall backwards and away from the surprise attack in shock. The healing light from the destroyed shield showered Meri, and she roused, gasping, only for the last few shadowy coils of the chaotic barrage to impale her. One speared through her leg, another through her side, a third through her shoulder.

Tanya scrabbled away from the attack along the ground. Rosa screamed a denial, even as Darius roared in frustration.

Tom went cold. He didn’t know whether Meri was alive or dead, but they desperately needed to kill this Idealist assassin before it finished the rest of them off.

“Get them!” Tom yelled to Rosa. Then he and Sesame ran to reinforce Darius and help protect Eli and Markus.

He could see exactly what would happen next. What actions he would take if he were the orc. Where he would strike.

Rosa disappeared once more, reappearing next to Tanya. The last thing Tom saw was Rosa helping her to her feet, before she cast her Smoke Shroud, casting a pall of heavy smog over them.

The vortex appeared again behind Darius, swirling ominously as it winked into existence. The assassin’s form followed a moment later. Once again, the shadowy limbs burst from its body in a chaotic, grasping mass. They stabbed towards the injured guards, and Darius’ unprotected back.

But Darius was a step ahead. He pirouetted, his sword trailing after him. It severed several of the tendrils cleanly, and they thrashed, recoiling in jerks and spasms. Several more missed, passing within inches of him as he twirled. His training at the monastery was not for show.

He had obviously passed his suspicions of the assassin’s next move to Granny, too. The enormous tortoise hunched, the front side of her shell tipping towards the melee. It began vibrating again, harder this time, and a bass hum filled the air.

Thumb-sized rocks began to fire from her shell. The tempo was slow at first, but quickly picked up speed until the air was drowned in a noise like thousands of mallets striking wooden chopping blocks with barely an instant’s pause between each strike.

The shadow Idealist was inundated with rocky pellets. They lashed against its tendrils and against its armour. The dark plates protecting its body shuddered with each impact, throwing off feedback. It was like watching a puddle of ink in a hailstorm.

The orc was undeterred. As many of the tendrils as Darius severed, as many as Granny tore apart, it had many more. They darted towards the guardsmen, unconscious and unprotected.

Several slammed into Markus, disappearing into his body. But where they had impaled Meri, now, something changed. Where each tendril met his skin, a tiny flash of white erupted, incandescent. Whatever substance the tendrils were made of sizzled against it. The tendrils reached their full extension, and with no more to give, they waved about, purposeless, the majority of their length somehow absorbed by Markus’ body.

Markus jerked awake. Colour returned to his skin in waves. He turned about, frantically, unable to process the scene in front of him. Tom felt for the man. It must have seemed like a nightmare. Tom was not sure it wasn’t.

Eli, however, was not so lucky. Where the tendrils that sought Markus had been stymied by Darius’ skill, and converted into healing, he could only use it once. Eli was pinned to the ground more thoroughly than a tent.

The orc began to pull itself forward on its shadowy legs. The motion was grotesque. Even through Granny’s fusilade of stone, it skittered closer like a spider. It was only upon it noticing Tom and Sesame drawing closer that its form collapsed, and it disappeared once more.

Darius immediately ran to Eli, white light gathering around his hands. He slapped them onto the man’s chest, and the light pooled. Darius’ handsome face, streaked with dirt and blood, drew into a desperate mask of concentration.

Tom ran to Markus, slipping an arm under him, trying to help him focus, to adjust to this frantic situation. He murmured encouraging platitudes to him.

Sesame ran to the side of the group, nearest the spreading cloud of smoke. A rumble sounded deep in his chest.

After a few moments, Markus’ eyes cleared, and he focused on Tom.

“There you go, man! You’re alright.” He clapped him gently on the shoulder. “You’re alright. We’re still under attack. The shadow orc from the Deep. It can teleport. We need you, Markus.”

Markus nodded, shallowly at first, then more firmly. He patted around himself, searching for his sword. Tom withdrew his axe from his storage and pressed it into his hand.

“Know how to use one?” Markus gave him a smile that was half a snarl. “Good,” he said, hauling the man to his feet.

He looked to Darius. The healer was slowly standing, shaking his head.

Eli lay on the ground, limp. Fist sized holes pocked his body. Blood pooled in them, making a tiny red lake of each wound. The light around Darius’ hands winked out. He glanced at them, but said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.

Suddenly, Sesame burst into action. Fear poured down the bond.

Rosa and Tanya appeared, dragging Meri from the smoke. It parted for them gracefully, closing behind them like a curtain. Rosa’s control skill, no doubt. An instant later, the monstrous form of the Idealist assassin broke free of the smoke.

Its tendrils flailed madly, trying to clear the cloying vapour away from itself. They stilled simultaneously as the body of the orc itself cleared the smoke wall. Then they shot like arrows towards the women.

Darius’ shield appeared again, but this time, the orc was prepared. The central tendrils immediately began to shrink, and the outermost ones diverted around it, gathering size and speed from the middle ones. They snaked towards their desperate retreat from either side.

Rosa threw up a wall of fire to her right, bisecting the approaching tendrils, trying to protect Tanya. She had left herself completely exposed. Tom watched as half the tendrils drove eagerly towards her.

Time seemed to slow. Tom saw Rosa’s soot-stained face, framed by her crazed, messy mass of raven hair. Her expression was imperious. She had chosen this. As she met his gaze, he knew she would choose the same way a thousand times more. His heart swelled with love even as his gut drew it down into a pit of clamping, seizing, desperate fear.

Then Sesame, glorious Sesame, charged in.

The bear, black fur resplendent, enchanted barding gleaming in the light of Darius’ shield shattering, barrelled between Rosa and the shadowy barrage.

Tendrils glanced off his armour. The enchantments threw off sparks as they struck. Some found a way past, and burrowed into his fur. Tom could feel the pain of a dozen hitting home, even if the majority were deflected.

But that was not enough to stop Sesame. The massive black bear lost not even a single step of momentum.

He carried through the failing shards of Darius’ shield, already dispersing, like a broken stained glass window in dream. Tom felt energy gather within him. Not just mana, but emotion: affront that these creatures had dared attack his people, protectiveness for him and Rosa, and all those who had shown him kindness, and pure, white hot hate.

He inhaled.

Then he roared.

It was filled with all the rage a loyal bear could muster. More than Tom would have thought possible. The shadow of it, the implication of just how strongly Sesame felt for him and Rosa, left him breathless.

The largest storm of obsidian glass Tom had seen exploded from him. It was a black tempest. The assassin cowered before it, drawing its tendrils in to try and protect itself. It failed.

The plates of skill-wrought shadow armour absorbed the shards, struggled, overloaded, and blew out. The shadows deserted the orc.

Half the cloud of smoke Rosa had conjured split like a wave before a bow from the titanic roar, completely dispersed. The rest began to drift away.

The orc fell to its feet, still nimble, despite the glassy black shrapnel protruding from its bleeding wounds in a dozen places. Tom felt mana gather inside it.

Fuck no you don’t, Tom thought, and cast Hush.

This time, it appeared to take. The mana gathering inside the orc snuffed like a candle flame.

It grasped at its side, reaching for some weapon or other, perhaps another dagger like it had thrown in the Deep. Sesame wasn’t about to let it. He smashed a giant paw into the orc’s shoulder. The bones in its legs snapped. It collapsed.

Sesame reared up, high as he could, and then dropped on the orc like a boulder. There was a wet crunch, and it was dead.

Sesame turned, casually scuffing his paws on the road. Red stripes, like an obscene parody of a child’s chalk drawing, were left where he stepped. He chuffed dismissively.

Got the fucker, he sent to Tom proudly as he sniffed at Rosa, making sure she was okay.

Fuck yeah you got him, Tom sent, returning just as much pride back to the bear. Sesame graciously accepted grateful scratches from Rosa. He didn’t preen. He was merely happy to have helped.

Tom blew out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Darius and Markus both looked relieved, though they both looked slightly ill too.

They had made it. But as he swept his gaze over the group, he knew it had cost them dearly.