Fall of Autumn, Week 5, Day 7

Around me, the shadows went wild, lifting off the walls and wrapping around me. I gripped my braids roughly, pressing my face down into my knees.

"Breathe, Nora," Noir cooed, running his hands through the hair on top of my head. "One breath after the other."

But I couldn't. There was no air to be found. Just the sound of horse hooves pounding and Dame Arella shouting directions—and roars. So many roars. All the sound of branches breaking and snapping and gnashing together.

Breathe, I repeated in my head, even as my lungs constricted—even as my vision went black.

Even as [Mental Fortitude] took over.

Visions of the Dusk knights fighting, over and over again, blights and wolves and other eldritch beings cursed by the World to mutate into mana constructs and monsters. Memories replayed, first hand accounts of Dame Arella's capabilities—arrows of ice and water flowing into the hearts of beasts, wounds festering upon impact, screams of rage and pain following her wherever she moved.

I took a gulp of air, and it spiked in my chest.

I took another, and the pain helped ground me.

It brought me back.

Back to where I was meant to be.

In my home. Fellan. Surrounded by monsters I had already killed once before.

I've never been in a fight with a monster, not a real one. In Perry, I just overwhelmed it. On the road, I looked away. I froze and fell and closed my eyes.

I took a breath, and it went down smooth.

Those were the actions of a helpless girl.

I wasn't that girl. Not anymore.

So, I stood, and I went to the window and ripped it open. The suns were high in the sky, lighting up the blights in high definition. Every crack and crevice visible. Every shadow stark against the brightness.

I reached my palm out, in a way I so often did, and I felt my mana well up within me.

[Shadow Animation]

From the crevices on the nearest blight shot out three poles, crude and misshapen, but long and with sharp edges. It popped through the elbow joint, the neck, and the torso. And then I gave my command.

"Spin. Violently, and without abandon."

As the poles began shifting and turning, the blight's structure began to splinter and crack—until the speed of the blades sped up and tore the wooden limbs from the torso.

"Aim for their wooden hearts," I growled.

And they did. They hit and jabbed and spun, digging into hearts and then ripping the chest cavity apart with their torque. But once one or two or three were down, another replaced them, coming from the treeline. Again and again and again, even as we rushed down the brick road between Fellan and the estate. In the distance, I could see the hill that marked the last fifteen minutes of the ride.

Halfway between everywhere. From the town. From the estate. From the Academy. Yet too far for any of them to come to our aid immediately.

As we approached the hill, the carriage began to slow, and Dame Arella screamed, "BRACE! We're turning! Klein, KEEP UP."

Klein had paused to slice his blade across a nearby blight in the crowd.

So many.

[Quick Calculation]

Thirty-five. Outside the treeline.

Forty. Just inside the treeline.

Fifty-one. Blocking the road ahead.

Uncountable. The ones I cannot see. The unknown. The ones hiding or overshadowed by the forward attackers.

My heart constricted.

[Shadow Manipulation]

I ripped the poles from where they had stayed—fighting in a fray too far away—and forced them to continue their animations to the side of Klein in the hopes that it would keep the blights off him.

It only worked until he was forced to disengage to keep up. I watched as a blight reached its arm out, launching itself out past Klein's guard—the shield he only ever carried on horseback.

I bit my lip roughly and screamed, "No!"

[Weave of Darkness] [Shadow Manipulation]

In my palm, a thick thread—more like rope than yarn—appeared and began shooting out toward Klein and the blight.

The rope wrapped itself around the blight's arms and torso, snapping its reach back. The creature jolted and struggled but was unable to lift its arms. At its front, the two ends tied themselves together in a three-layered knot as Klein was able to charge forward and catch back up to the carriage.

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Klein's green eyes caught mine, and he nodded before whipping his reins and tugging them to the side. He leaned sideways, and I understood why. As the carriage turned abruptly, I felt the cabin lift off the ground. I was pressed violently against the wall and gripped the window frame tightly to keep myself both in the carriage and standing upright.

As my hair fell out the window, the ground grew close—too close—and I watched as strands touched the dirt of the forest floor. Leaves rustled, and the carriage fell back with the force of the turn. I pulled away from the window, flying back and landing on the cushioned bench.

I took a labored breath and held my hand out, palm up.

[Weave of Darkness]

Yet again, I summoned thread thick like rope. I used [Shadow Manipulation] to tie the rope around my waist and wrap the ends around the metal fixtures of the cabin to keep myself from having such a close call again.

Noir was hanging upside down from the shadows in the ceiling, and I watched as the shadow of the windowsill darkened to a deep green before Shade popped out of it and wrapped herself around my leg. Finally, Haze jumped in through the window as well and nuzzled up to my other calf.

"We're here, and we'll stay here with you, Nora." Shade said, a harsh tone in her voice as she whipped her gaze from the blights outside to me.

I shook my head.

"No, we need to get Dame Arella and Klein back to the estate safely. There is no one to be left behind, not any of you, not me, and definitely not them."

I pressed the corners of my mouth down into a frown.

"I refuse to be a helpless princess running from the fight. We need to help."

All three spirits glanced at each other before nodding. Suddenly, their shapes began expanding —limbs stretched, heads reformed, torsos narrowed and widened. By the end of it, there were four of me. Not in color, but in shape. All of the spirits were my size, with different hairstyles that mimicked ones I had worn recently, from single braids to double to no braids at all.

"Then we will," Noir said, his voice hard as stone.

"No one gets left behind," Haze agreed.

"Our Lady has so commanded." Shade finished.

"Perfect," I said, a warped smile on my face, "then go. Hold them back, destroy them, do whatever must be done to keep everyone in one piece."

As the spirits approached the window, they fell into the darkness of a shadow and disappeared. Without my awareness of the dark, I wouldn't have seen them slide out of the shadow of a tree some distance away. They darted away from each other, the shape of me growing dull and transparent as they took the hue of an incorporeal shadow.

I approached the window, making sure the rope holding me in place was taut and that I would not be at risk of falling as the carriage rumbled through the forest. We had sped up, and as I peered out and looked ahead I could see why—the path ahead was shining. We were rolling on smooth ice inches above the forest floor. Behind us, blights were running and crowding, to the side they were reaching out and growling, in front of us they were frozen and crunching under our wheels.

Dame Arella had to have used a Skill. She was the only one I had seen use ice like that. In a way so beautifully practical.

"Klein, stay to the side! I can't keep this up for longer than a minute. It won't be enough. When we stop, be ready to fight!" Dame Arella shouted over her shoulder, her voice tight.

I watched the worry cross Klein's face, and my gut wrenched.

A God. I told myself. You are a God. The God of Nora.

I stretched my palm out.

"But what does that mean?" I whispered, just as a passing tree burst into sprinters with the force of my shadow poles.

I watched Klein dodge the shrapnel and nodded harshly. Surrounding him were a half dozen blight encroaching on his space.

"That I will not lose what is most important to me—never again."

It was visible—the emerald green hue of my aura. It rolled off me in waves. I could taste the bitter hint of coffee on my tongue, and ice filled my veins.

"I refuse the fate that puts me down."

[Shadow Manipulation]

The shadows decorating my nails extended, out and out and out, until my claws were the length of my forearm and forming a needle. I twisted my hand, angling my pointer finger out, and tapped my foot.

A single shadow needle flung out and struck a blight in the shoulder, sending shards of bark flying with the force of it. One.

I tapped my foot again, and this time, the shadow nail on my middle finger shot out. I aimed for a different blight and the needle struck like a spear through its eye, sending the monster staggering away from where it was approaching the ice road. It no longer had the right side of its face. Two.

I tapped my foot one more time, sending out two more needles—my ring finger and pinky finger. This time, I shot them out at the same blight, aiming for its torso. One needle hit so thoroughly, the blight all but crumbled under the force of the ever-expanding shadow attacking it. I caught the second needle with my Skill and caused it to swerve and hit the neck of the blight to the crumbled monster's left. Three. Four.

Twisting my arm, I clenched my fist and angled my thumb like a rifle's scope—pointing for the center of another blight to the back of Klein. I paused, waiting, just a breath. No, even less. Then, I tapped my foot and released the fifth needle. It impaled the blight, causing bark to erupt and startle Klein's horse. Five. As it lurched forward, I only had one thought.

Good, go forward, away from the monsters that would consume us.

I turned my gaze back to the sixth blight near to where Klein had been and dropped my right hand to raise my left. I brought my fingers together and melded the shadows into an amalgamation that looked similar to the tip of a lance. Using [Shadow Manipulation], I sent it spinning and shot it off to the blight.

It was no match for the hole that burst through it, shattering its core. Whether they had mana pearls or not didn't matter. It didn't matter that the force could destroy them, could render them useless. It didn't matter that of the six I wrecked, only one had left a body behind.

Mana constructs.

First-generation monsters.

Corrupted.

By who else? My expression grew grim. Evelyn, sister, this is your last attack. I'll make it so.

And then I pulled on the rope holding me down, maneuvering the shadow construct out the window and up—it was a short rope, only long enough to reach the top of the carriage.

That was enough.

I took a breath, bracing myself, and climbed up to the windowsill.

Flinging my legs out, I jumped, twirling and twisting until the rope was under my heel and I had a well-enough grip to begin climbing.

"NORA. Get back in the carriage!" Dame Arella roared.

I shook my head, reaching for the next length of rope to climb up the cabin roof.

"I need a better view!" I shouted back.

Then, I ground out, "[Otherworldly]"

I felt the call of fate, of the breaking of time and space, and as I climbed up atop the rolling carriage, I could see.

Around me was a sea of monsters. So many, too many. But not enough.

I grinned, and it was a wicked thing. The emerald of my aura was drowning out the light of day in any direction I glanced.

Divinity is meant to rend the earth. Let's get to it.

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