Jax abandoned his conjured blade in Qua'helu's chest. He didn't want to risk allowing the man to heal, and that seemed entirely possible if he pulled the sword. He had some level of power over spirit energy, and that was what his body was made of.

A glance to the side revealed movement where there shouldn't have been movement. Jax had a barrier up before he thought about it at all, just in time to catch one of Kizru's daggers.

Kizru was an assassin, though that was probably not in his Sphere's name. It would be something more like "blade in the darkness," though there was something fragile about it as well. That wasn't the important part, though; the important thing was that Kizru didn't actually disappear, even if he seemed to. He melted into and moved through darkness.

His blade could strike from the dark, even if he was not there. The only real weakness that Ability had was that it was terribly slow; it worked best from surprise, because Kizru couldn't redirect it once it was started. He had to entirely start over. Kizru had other Abilities and other attacks, but he preferred to strike from the darkness and then have that strike carry him into sight. He did that every time he started to fight. Jax had seen that but he hadn't realized what it meant until now, when he knew.

There was a lot of darkness in this room. The light Thera once carried lay on the floor, and it was the only source of illumination other than the dim stone box in the center of the room. Right now, Kizru could strike from anywhere if he had the chance to set things up.

There were two ways to deal with it. Jax could strike the blade as it formed or he could deprive Kizru of the darkness he needed to strike from. The choice was obvious. If there was light, he'd be more able to see Kizru's strike and target it even if there was still enough darkness for the strike to form.

Light was easy to manage. It would force him to drop his Mask, but that was a price Jax was happy to pay.

Jax reached towards his face and pulled off the symbolic Mask that covered his Abilities. It wasn't really there, but the gesture was the easiest and fastest way to reveal his unMasked Abilities. They were limited in their own way, but that was the price he paid for being able to Mask.

Pain shot through Jax. It was a familiar pain, almost more like muscle cramps than anything else. His Abilities were constrained by the Mask and a quick unMasking was like trying to exercise a muscle that hadn't moved in a while. All he had to do was push through the discomfort for now and he'd be fine. He had an Ability to recover from whatever damage he took in the Masking and unMasking process; all it took was time.

At the same time, the reason Jax was almost always Masked began to show as his body began to glow. He didn't need a light source because he was a light source. The light started out weak but quickly increased.

Without his Mask, his Abilities revolved around channeling the light he naturally emitted, the light that made up his Anchor. His Signature Mask would hide it, but the Anchor was always there, Mask or no. He was his Mask; without it, he had only the Abilities tied to the light his Mask hid. It was a high cost but one he found completely worthwhile.

Most of the time, at least.

Jax made the light spread to fill the room. It didn't eliminate shadows; it simply made them dimmer spots in a bright room. That was enough to force Kizru out of hiding.

It didn't affect the outcome of the two-on-one battle between Thera, Sorleh, and Tia. Sorleh's knife slashed Tia's throat before Jax could do anything. There was not much he could do in any case; he was much too far away. It was now three on one, and despite removing Kizru's strongest Ability, Jax was not confident in his chances.

Thera was the dangerous one of the two repairmen.

Sorleh was a third-upgrade Professional with skills related to repairing enchantments. He happened to also be barely first upgrade in a combat Sphere that centered on daggers. It was weird, because it felt like it should have centered on the use of a single sword, but it was hollowed out, perhaps broken, with the sword replaced with a pair of daggers. It felt wrong to Jax in a way he couldn't describe, yet it also seemed familiar.

Kizreh had the same feeling of wrongness, even though his Sphere wasn't broken in the same way. Jax wasn't certain if Qua'helu had it or not; he thought the man might have, but if so, he hadn't noticed it at the time.

Thera was riddled with that feeling of wrongness, more than either of the others. Like Kizreh, she had a third upgrade combat Sphere, but hers was not the Sphere of an assassin. Instead, it was the Sphere of a knight, someone who championed another, but where that other should have been was only emptiness. Like Sorleh, she'd given up her Calling to pursue a Profession, but unlike him her Profession also held that sense of a missing central figure. Jax knew she was second upgrade and that her Profession centered not on repairing enchantments but on using them, perhaps even on fooling them.

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With Kizreh's strongest Ability made useless by Jax's light, Thera was the dangerous opponent.

Jax did not have time to make use of the knowledge that flooded into his mind as he considered each of his opponents. All three of them were already on their way towards him.

Kizru was the first threat. He flickered into the shadow created by Jax's armor. He was behind Jax, of course, but Jax knew that trick; he spun and punched Kizru's arm. The blow forced Kizru's dagger up, away from Jax's neck, and Kizru flickered away into another shadow.

A knife clanged off Jax's armor. He couldn't see who threw it, but his bet was on Sorleh. Thera was better than that. He might not know how he knew that, but it was still true.

A scraping noise of stone on stone filled the room. It was just like the sound when the doors protecting the conduit opened. Jax glanced up, hoping for deliverance.

Three people stood in the doorway. The man in front held a sword that radiated the same fizzy magic as the shield-destroying winged lizard. Behind him were two women, one with a bow and the other with a staff.

They all had feathers tied to their weapons, even the staff. Jax assumed they had to be magical, but he couldn't imagine what the point was. Feathers didn't hold enchantments well; they were simply too fragile. They were also surrounded by a number of floating feathers; Jax guessed that was probably an Ability of some sort, but he didn't even want to try to guess what it was.

Jax twisted out of the way of another blow from Kizru and pulled his sword. It might be a mostly symbolic sword, but it was still made of good metal and properly cared for. He wouldn't willingly carry anything else.

He wasn't certain where Thera had gone until he heard a surprised exhalation and followed it to his left. Thera had just stabbed the empty air instead of the back of his leg, only the air wasn't empty. It shimmered with light that wasn't Jax's.

It wasn't a light barrier, though it looked a lot like one. It was easy to miss and did not glow the way a light barrier would. Jax didn't know which of the newcomers saved his mobility, but one of them definitely had. He didn't have enough Shield left to block the blow of someone who knew what they were doing, and he was certain Thera was not only knowledgeable but good. He called out "Thanks!"

A moment later, the tall man with the sword was in Thera's face. She moved to block him, but he simply accepted the knife strike. It was almost completely deflected by his Shield; the knife didn't even manage to scratch his armor. In return, his sword punched straight through the woman's remaining Shield and beheaded her in a single blow.

Jax knew her Shield had to be low, but he'd had no idea it was that low. She'd been in the back; when did she take that much Shield damage?

As he turned, Jax saw that Sorleh was suffering from multiple arrows in the soft parts of his body. None of them had hit anything vital yet, as he tried to protect his head and neck with his armored arms, but even if she didn't kill him, the archer had removed Sorleh as an effective combatant.

Fire from the other woman's staff and several strange translucent shimmering beams that seemed to come from floating feathers scorched down the corridor after Kizreh. He tried to stay ahead of them by running. It was almost funny how much less capable he seemed when he couldn't vanish into the darkness, but even so it almost looked like he was going to get away until he suddenly tripped over nothing.

Jax started to gather his light together. He needed it spread earlier to limit Kizru's Ability to move through darkness, but now that Kizru was running away instead of attacking, he could focus more. As long as he kept light on the corridor, Kizru would have to run.

As Jax released his light bolt, it was joined by more fire and several more of the smaller attacks that seemed to come from feathers. Jax would never be certain whose attack killed Kizru, but the smoking corpse left no doubt that he was dead.

Jax took a deep breath. The fight seemed long, but that was because of the intense focus; it had probably been no more than a minute or two since he dropped his Mask and it might have been far less than that.

That thought reminded Jax that he probably ought to thank his rescuers, and thanking them while blinding them because his light was growing without a good outlet was probably not the best choice. He reached down and pulled a Mask out of the same nowhere that he'd dropped it and placed it across his eyes. It was visible only while he was donning or removing it, but for that moment it was real.

Jaxucet Willowbloom was a comfortable Mask. He'd been using it for several years. With the rest of the team that came down into the ruin dead, he wasn't certain if he could keep using it or not.

"Thank y…" Jax trailed off as the feathers that floated near the group seemed to swirl, then form the indistinct shape of a person. A moment later, he was looking at a third woman. Unlike the others, she didn't obviously carry a weapon; instead, it was clear that she was the weapon. She had very pointed ears and a pair of short silver horns; while he couldn't identify what type of elf she was, it was obvious she was an elf. He glanced towards the others, then back at her. "You're the reason they have feathers tied to their weapons, aren't you?"

She had a musical laugh. "Yes, though they didn't really need them. We did a better job at getting rid of the Shield before the fight than I was afraid we had. We couldn't really check."

Jax stared at her for a long moment. He probably should have expected that. "You were responsible for the monsters and the traps?"

"Of course," the elf agreed. "We knew someone would come and Tiwaz said the logs indicated multiple hollow imprints from people at the third upgrade. Most of us are only at the first upgrade; we needed to wear them down before it came to a fight. This didn't exactly go as we expected, but it seemed to work." She paused, then inclined her head towards the opening they'd entered through. "Come on. We can trade stories; you seem to have one too."

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