XXXVI

  Guardian

  The serpents stuck to Erri’s shoulder swivelled in place as they studied the dark.

  Their warm, orange light joined that of Saber’s cloak and struck the shadows. But the darkness was thick like honey. Reaching out made it stick to my fingers. Licking it made the taste of old, primal fear crawl up my tongue. So true was the dark that the light didn’t penetrate into it but shrunk back, leaving the walls of the tunnel no longer visible.

  Suddenly, my ragged breathing was too loud. Saber’s fur was snapping too much. The grinding noise of Erri’s serpents against the ground was too grating.

  So I held my breath. Saber released his art. Erri held up her hand and her serpents came to a rest.

  Slowly, a wave of silence rippled out with us at the centre. Where it touched the dark, the shadows rippled in quiet, and the concepts merged to form a tranquil pool. How could they not? Theirs was a marriage that had been since the dawn of time—

  A red hot feeling slid down my cheek and fell. The splatter of blood was like a rock falling in a pond.

  Predators moved unseen. Had to if they wanted to catch prey. Yet their motions would disturb nature ever so slightly—a careening rock, a trampled stalk of grass, the blocking of a lofty breeze with one’s body.

  The darkness parted without moving. It simply…shifted. From one place to another as if it had always been in that location.

  In that way, the silhouette looming over Erri’s snakes was just there from one moment to the next.

  It was big enough to reach more than halfway to the ceiling. The clump of strands near its neck may have been a mane. It could’ve just as well been a mass of worms. The only feature I was certain of were its four legs.

  Identification turned up nothing.

  Long moments passed. The…Thing, as I thought of it…didn’t attack. Only remained seated on its hind legs.

  A dimming light drew my gaze. Erri’s wall of serpents. The shadows were pressing in on them.

  ‘It’s draining her essence.’

  With how Erri’s face was straining, the rate was alarming. Already, she had dismissed the two serpents attached to her shoulders.

  I peered down the exit that Raven should’ve escaped into. At the end of that road, some two hundred meters away, the lights were still on.

  Reaching for my storage bracelet as slow as I could, I removed a green pill. The crunch echoed painfully through the square, but the sound broke the ice.

  “We need to run for the light,” I whispered and discretely motioned with a finger. “Saber and your snakes will light the way.”

  She followed my finger, then snarled: “I don’t need your help, vermin.”

  “The only reason it’s not attacking is because it thinks us sitting ducks.”

  Just then, one of her remaining snakes dissolved.

  A bead of sweat slid down Erri’s neck. She peeked at the exit again. “I’m taking you with me if it looks like I won’t make it.”

  “How valiant. Are you ready?”

  “Count to three in your head,” she said.

  One.

  Her fire constructs coiled slightly.

  Two.

  I cycled the restorative energy of the pill, focusing it on my legs and stomach.

  Erri’s snakes shot forward faster than they’d gone after my neck. Saber and I were right behind them. The instant we took off, the shadows behind us shifted. The creature’s steps carried no sound but were a physical weight in the spiritual realm like a great anchor dropping to the ocean floor. They were lazy. Singular. Yet the monster stuck to us like glue.

  Whatever fury counted as ‘battling,’ running wasn’t on it’s checklist. So I carved out a portal, summoned a harpy, and called on agility.

  We were halfway through the tunnel—

  One of Erri’s snakes disappeared. It wasn’t dragged, didn’t dissolve. The darkness just swallowed it and made it like it never existed.

  Essence coursed through my veins so quick it nearly cut my vessels.

  Saber’s great strides could see him at the head of the group but he was running beside me.

  Erri threw her head back. “Run faster, will you!”

  Her last remaining serpent slithered for its life. An essence construct had no mind or emotions. Yet I thought I could see fear in its eyes.

  When a quarter of the way remained, it vanished like its brethren. Then Saber’s shroud was the only thing staving off the dark. He was like a torch in a giant underground cavern. Only his light barely reached past my feet.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Erri was forced to slow down and match my speed. She glanced back but quickly whipped her head back around.

  Four figures rounded the bend at the end of the tunnel.

  “Ashe,” Raven yelled, “you’re—”

  His sentence died in his throat, and before his mind could’ve fully processed the scene, he was already running.

  Kayle, Rin, and Kiran, too, vanished whence they came from.

  Saber’s cloak died just as we dashed into the light. Around the corner was a straight passage without intersections, fully lit up. But my instincts were still screaming so I didn’t stop running.

  Shadows devoured the light at the back of my heel.

  With the new source of light, Erri no longer saw the need to hold me company and charged ahead, bounding past the entire group.

  Raven wasn’t far behind her, probably because of the glowing Phobos. Rin was gliding over the floor like the stone was water and her feet a surfing board. Kiran was…I had no idea where he was. And it didn’t matter to me. What I cared about was that I was at the rear of the group, with but one back I was catching up to—Kayle, in her wide robes and heels—and heavens forgive me, but I was all the more glad for it.

  “Ditch the heels!” Raven yelled.

  “Are you insane?! These are my favourites!”

  “Well then good luck!” Rin shouted, half laughing.

  I cast Kayle from my mind as I rushed past her.

  She screamed. I didn’t see her shoes fly nor hear the thud of them dropping, but her screams didn’t abruptly end.

  “The shrine is up ahead!” Raven called.

  Steps at the end of the tunnel led to a square building cornered by pillars that reached towards the ceiling.

  Erri was the first one to burst inside, followed by Raven, then Rin.

  I held my breath and pumped the building pressure in my chest into my legs. A scream ruptured out of my throat when I couldn’t hold it any longer. My heels slammed into the steps, and I leapt over four at the same time until I barrelled through the entrance with so much force that I tripped.

  Though I tried to land on my feet, my body refused to move—every rotation of essence was like pure lava pouring through my meridians—so I crashed to the floor and rolled to a stop instead.

  “It’s…okay…” Raven heaved. “It cannot get inside the shrine.”

  Chest heaving, eyes watery, I looked out the exit. All light beyond the entrance had vanished. There was no sign of the monster.

  But it was there. Watching us.

  Kayle sagged to her knees. “What the hell was that?!”

  The tone of voice she used made me think she was more concerned with her lost heels than barely escaping with her life.

  “One of the guardians,” Kiran said. “They patrol the pathways, remember?”

  He was leaning on the wall beside the exit. No sweat dripped from his forehead, neither did his chest rise and fall with effort.

  “Were you here this entire time?” I asked.

  “I was running same as you.”

  “Right…”

  Saber helped me back to my feet. I conjured a portal. The harpy went back inside, but I chose to keep Saber near me just in case.

  “I’m overjoyed everyone’s alright,” Rin huffed. “But aren’t we forgetting something?”

  All eyes turned to the drake, who was admiring a painting on the wall.

  The entire room was painted and part of a scene: sparrows, lions, wolves, and other kinds of animals circling and rushing through a lush grassland. Glass globes fastened to the walls, filled with glowing essence stones, added a brush of gold hue to the entire ensemble.

  Erri deigned us with a glance. “I’m not in the mood for further battles. You can consider yourselves lucky.”

  Her voice trailed off into the shadows outside.

  Rin snorted. “You hear this wacko?” She turned towards me. “You were fighting her, weren’t you? How about we finish what you started?”

  At the mention of my battle, my face darkened. I whirled on Raven.

  He threw his hands up, nearly slapping his familiar in the face. “Look, we weren’t beating her two-on-one. Me getting help was your best chance.”

  “And I’m glad everyone got their feet moving,” I snarled.

  “They were in the middle of clearing the shrine,” he said. “We had to wait.”

  From the nods travelling through the party, his story was true.

  My lips pressed together. It still didn’t sit well with me.

  “Thank the heavens you’re alive, Ashbringer,” Rin deadpanned. “Can we focus on the elephant now?”

  The drake princess rubbed her hand over a figure in the painting resembling a salamander of some kind. Her neck rotated but her eyes didn’t leave the figure. “You’re a Tidewalker, aren’t you? You should know how fighting me will go.”

  Rin’s tone deepened. “Is that so?” She brandished her trident.

  Finally, Erri saw fit to draw her attention away from the mural. She smiled at us. “I hope the rest of you are ready.”

  I wanted nothing more than to smack that grin off her face. I still had my flametalon left to make it happen. But there was no summoning Saber at the same time since he’d evolved. That, and my essence was dried up. Erri should’ve been in the same boat…but her spirit was solid.

  ‘She took an essence pill while we weren’t looking.’

  A glance around the room told me the others realised it too. Raven scratched the side of his head. Kayle hid under her umbrella as if the sun was overhead. Kiran was still leaning on the wall, his lips curved at an easy angle.

  Thoughts of the fight raced through my head. Erri was in the Adept stage. Her flowing flames could be her soul skill, the shaping of it a core ability. That left two more techniques. None of which I’d forced her to use.

  My lips pulled to the side. Fighting her here would cost at least one of us our life. Probably two. While we were a team, we weren’t bonded through blood. Saving me from Erri was one thing. For them to offer their lives to slay her another entirely.

  And they shouldn’t have to.

  ‘That said, one of them seems glad to do so.’

  Rin’s fists clenched around the golden shaft of her weapon.

  Erri revealed her sharp teeth.

  My voice cut through the tension. “Erri and I will continue our…discussion at a later date. In private.”

  The princess chuckled and returned to studying the paintings.

  “Then I suggest we continue.” Kiran pushed himself off the wall. “There’s no telling how long this shrine will remain active.”

  No one needed a reminder what would make its way inside the moment it deactivated.

  A glower latched onto my back as we left Erri behind us and approached a doorway at the end of the chamber. A translucent layer covered the entrance but we passed through without pause as the others had already completed the shrine.

  Another room like the first greeted us, though this one had statues arranged all around. More animals of multiple species. Three of them near the gate stood out from the rest for they were bigger than the others. Two were a cross between a wolf and a bear, with their furry hides, canine faces and hunched back. The last, a scaled lizard, its statue standing in between the wolves, stared straight through me.

  ‘How lifelike.’

  Their colours were not monotone but mimicked the appearance of their real life inspirations. The textures were so detailed I imagined touching them would see my hand brush over soft fur.

  Raven threw a glance over his shoulder. “She won’t be able to pass through the door until the test is done regenerating.”

  ‘Regenerating?’

  I ran my senses over some of the statues. The energy signature differed from sculpture to sculpture. Of around half, however, the signature was growing. Rebuilding, was a better tern, maybe.

  “It’s a guardian challenge,” Kayle offered as she strode past me towards the exit on the other end of the room.

  Her clanging steps were unmistakable. A glance down confirmed she was already wearing a different pair of heels.

  I pushed down on the urge to question her priorities. Her steps drew my attention to a group of five tiles in the centre of the room that were a distinct colour.

  “Could you choose who entered?” I asked.

  “Starts at five guardians,” Kiran said. “Increases exponentially for each party member. We had to beat sixty.”

  I pointed to the three biggest statues. “You didn’t face those?”

  Kiran shook his head. “We believe they either spawn for a single challenger or if five members participate.”

  ‘A single challenger…’

  The visage of Erri stroking the painting came back to mind.

  I approached one of the tiles. The moment my foot touched one, words lit up in my face.

  [Shrine of Valour | Tier: 1]

  Party: 1/5

  Guardian Count: 5

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