“It’s a waste of time. How long has it been since a Graven—”

  Kael Thorne cleared his throat pointedly. “Arwen, we don’t use that word. We’re Vanguard.”

  The young frontline mage’s eyebrows crashed together as her jaw clenched. “Ashkaari,” she snarled. “Happy?”

  Kael nodded.

  “Anyway, it’s been ages since one has appeared. It’s a false spike,” Arwen grumbled, flipping her long, braided ponytail off her shoulder. “Probably a Leyfre, or another stray beast farting in the wrong direction.”

  Sira Velenn, the squad’s recon mage, chimed in from her right. “Doubtful. The Arcanist reported a spike substantially greater than any on record.”

  Arwen glowered. “Isn’t that what they said st time? We were sent on yet another endless hike to find some mysterious spike of Essentia that wound up being…what was it again?”

  Mage-Captain Relian Vos sighed. “Arwen, let’s have just one assignment where you’re not angry the entire time. If you don’t like being sent out like this, I can help you with the transfer request out of Firespine Vanguard into one of the regur army units.”

  “Absolutely not! Have you seen their living conditions?” She scoffed. “Why would I give up living in luxury to trade it for a damn tent in the mud?”

  “I would also point out that we’re on horseback, not hiking,” Sira said, smirking.

  Narrowing her eyes, Arwen created a small, spinning fireball in her hand. “You want some of this, gorgeous? I don’t need your sass.”

  Sira rolled her eyes and chuckled before two more of her appeared, each exactly the same along with the white horse she rode on. “Are you sure you can hit the right one this time?”

  The fireball was extinguished with a closed fist. “Fucking illusion magic. I’ll get you one of these days.” She scanned the three versions of Sira and turned back to the original, but it was gone. Arwen whipped her head back and found each of them gone.

  “Back here, kiddo,” Sira called from behind the feisty fire mage. “Been here the whole time.”

  Arwen pouted. “Whatever.”

  The four rode on, another hour from their destination of The Arcane Wastes. It was marked as a restricted area being a magically unstable zone outside Tavelyn’s capital, Azarien. Raw Essentia pools were prevalent in the area, distorting time and space. Anything remaining in the area would be irrevocably changed and not for the better.

  The Mirrowolves had evolved to have shiny, gss-like fur, mirrored eyes, and a slight phasing movement making them difficult to pin down. The fact that they continued to hunt in packs of two or more made them incredibly dangerous. The Shadestrike Panther, however, was even worse. While they were solitary apex predators, if more than one appeared in the same territory, it was seen as a bad omen or lured by a distortion ripple in the Wastes. They were known to walk between moments with many believing they exist half outside of time.

  Other beasts in the area were formidable as well. Spinebelcher Toads had sacs of swirling bck-green gas beneath their skin that could erupt, spewing corrosive bile that could melt armor and flesh alike. That and the sharp bone-like ridges on its back could unch off like darts when threatened.

  Then there was the Voidtongue Graal—ten feet long, armored like a nightmare, and faster than it had any right to be. Its tongue was a writhing whip of Essentia-reactive tendrils, capable of tching onto prey and draining their magical energy, or raw lifeforce. With no eyes, it hears vibrations through the ground and senses Essentia pulses instead of relying on sight or smell.

  Needless to say, anyone caught alone in The Arcane Wastes wasn’t long for the world, and Velkarin wasn’t very user friendly even in the confines of the tamed nds.

  Relian considered Arwen’s rant as they rode in silence. As the commanding officer of this group, he would never admit it out loud. Compints went up the chain—not down. He knew that better than most. But she wasn’t wrong. This was likely just another useless trip into danger only to return empty handed. Again.

  “Captain Vos.”

  Relian turned to Kael, the only non-mage in the group, and saw the rge man’s eyes focused on the sky ahead of them. Following his gaze, his eyes fred briefly before he squinted, trying to see better.

  “How many?” Relian asked as he watched the circling Aetherhawks.

  “Damn,” Arwen whispered.

  “I see ten,” Sira replied, ignoring Arwen’s excmation. “Maybe twelve.”

  Arwen turned back to the beautiful recon mage. “Uh…isn’t that a lot?”

  “It is,” Relian answered from the head of the line recalling just how inexperienced the young fire mage was. He’d seen five once, during a skirmish on the bordernds. They circled over the battlefield for hours. This was double that—maybe more. “Keep an eye on it. Whatever we’re looking for is probably where they’re circling.”

  No one said a word as they continued, their silence almost a requirement at the sight of so many of the massive flying beasts. Magic scavengers, they fed on Essentia-rich corpses, expining why they circled battlefields like vultures. Small flocks meant magic residue was about and prime for the taking after something had died. Large flocks meant many somethings had just died or were about to.

  Thirty minutes ter, Arwen broke the silence. “Okay, what…the fuck?”

  Captain Vos didn’t acknowledge her. He just stared at the horizon, jaw clenched, watching as more and more Aetherhawks wheeled overhead—twenty-three by his st count.

  “Something’s wrong,” Kael said, his normally unfppable deep baritone edged with tension. “They’re not hunting. They’re watching.”

  “Watching? Watching what?” Arwen asked, her eyes not leaving what now looked like a swirling vortex of wings.

  “I think we’ll find out soon enough,” Vos said, pointing. “Dismount.”

  Fifty meters ahead of them, the four focused on two corpses. They moved slowly, no one taking the Wastes for granted with hands on the hilts of swords and daggers, eyes darting each direction.

  None of them said a word until Sira called out from twenty meters away. She had deployed a mirage field rendering herself invisible, allowing her to travel nearly undetected. When the others joined her, she locked eyes with Relian.

  “That’s not a bde ssh,” Sira said, crouching beside the Shadow Panther. “That’s surgical.”

  “By the Echoes,” Kael said, his voice barely a whisper, as he knelt beside the felled beast. “This is impressive work. One solid cut all the way down.” He stood, shaking his head in wonder. “And it’s the only damage. Normally, taking these down is a fight of attrition, each one trying to make the other bleed out first.” He turned, scanning the terrain for more beasts.

  “Why are these just lying there? Everyone knows the wolves and this panther are worth good coin in town.”

  Sira turned to Arwen. “Maybe whoever it was that killed them is too busy trying to stay alive to care at the moment?”

  Vos was studying the ground between the Essentia pools, squatting for a better view of the footprints he found. “The Mirrowolves attacked first,” he said, pointing to one with a neck wound, “that one, then that one,” he added, pointing to another with a broken neck. “The survivor walked this way and was immediately set upon by the Shadow Panther, apparently taking it down with one strike.”

  The captain stood, his eyes still on the ground and brows furrowed in confusion. Arwen, Kael, and Sira watched as he walked back to the downed wolves, grunted, then followed the prints back to the group.

  “What?” Arwen asked. “What is it?”

  Kael nodded slowly, brow furrowing. “No blood.”

  “Correct. Only theirs,” Vos said with a wave to the corpses. “Are there more?”

  “Give me a few moments. I’ll take a look,” Sira said, quickly disappearing from sight.

  Arwen looked nervously at the mangled cat then at the shattered wolf-corpse. A rge, warm hand settled on her shoulder.

  “Arwen,” Kael said gently, “extinguish your fme.”

  “What?” she asked, pulling away from his touch, but looking down at her open palm. Another spinning ball of fme had manifested in her anxiety. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “You are powerful, Arwen,” Kael continued in the same tone. “The beasts in this nd would do well to be wary of you.”

  She nodded but tried to hide the embarrassment on her face. She hadn’t summoned her fmes like that in a long time. It had been done out of fear, and she felt a prickle on the back of her neck that brought about that same feeling.

  “Ah, Relian?” Sira said as her invisibility dissipated, revealing her return. “There are more.”

  “How many more?” the captain asked.

  “A lot more.”

  Her tone was certain. Sira Velenn never overstated when a simple answer would do. She was sharp, focused, and incredibly observant. As a Recon Mage, she treated everything like gathered intelligence first and foremost, with emotion coming in a distant second. The two wolves and the leopard had meant the stray beast fart theory had gone out the window. Sira’s answer, however, meant that this may be the real deal.

  “Eyes sharp, weapons at the ready,” Relian said. “If this truly is an Ashkaari, we’ll need to be prepared for anything.”

  “How are we pying it?” Arwen asked, all business now.

  “Sira,” Relian continued, “use your skills and scout ahead. Try to find our target. If you do and they are not an immediate threat, stick close to pick up anything useful. The rest of us will move in slowly. Weapons sheathed, but at the ready. Magics,” he said, turning to Arwen, “not disclosed.”

  “But what if—” she began but was cut off.

  “We will not be the aggressors,” Relian insisted. “If they do not come quietly, we expin how it would be in their best interest to do so. If they become the aggressor, unload on them.

  “Sira, head out,” Relian continued. “We’ll wait five, then continue on this trail.”

  With a nod, Sira vanished.

  When the trio followed, Relian took point. Not only did he believe in leading from the front, his magical abilities were based on tactical glyphwork and sigil-command magic. This meant that he commanded battlefield control, could deploy explosive runes, and provided buffs to his squad to get them through the tougher fights.

  Arwen Kallis followed next, her inexperience pcing her between two more experienced Vanguard members, and her fme and barrier magic working better from a slight distance. Beyond throwing balls of fme, she could create a fming wall that crumbled around her attacker, burying them in white-hot rubble. She also wielded a defensive dome to deflect various types of attacks, but she wasn’t weak in the hand-to-hand department with her hardlight fists and their high damage output.

  Kael Thorne brought up the rear. As the only non-mage in the group, making him an oddity, he had nonetheless earned his spot in the Vanguard through his mastery of the sword. He used enchanted bdes supplemented with runes for speed etched into his armor. This combination made him a lethal opponent for any foe, magical or not.

  The trio continued down the path Sira had forged in her earlier reconnaissance, their eyes growing wide with each bloodied or mangled beast corpse they passed. Tension built as they followed the trail out of the Wastes proper and into the nearby woodnd. Low bushes and moss indicated their change of venue before they began to encounter scores of willow and oak trees, providing cover for their mark.

  “Mirrowolves, Shadestrikes, Rimehowlers,” Arwen said softly, recalling the various corpses they’d passed. “And that Aetherhawk?”

  At some point before entering the wooded area, even one of the Aetherhawks must have gotten too curious. They’d found the rge bird with both of its leather-like wings ripped off and the bottom half of its beak broken and shoved into its eye socket.

  “Focus,” Relian said calmly. “We have to be getting—”

  His words were cut off when he spotted someone leaning with his back against one of the oaks just ahead of them. Tall, dark-haired, wearing strange garments on his legs and feet, and having no shirt on, his lean, powerful muscles were on dispy as were multiple angry scratches and bruises that were beginning to form. He appeared out of breath, drenched with sweat, glittering bck blood and viscera, but one thing was certain…he was ready to keep fighting no matter what. That much was obvious from the blood-soaked knife gripped in his hand.

  Not far from the tree, three Wyrmroots, burrowing pnt beasts with root-like tentacles, y decimated and in pieces. Relian looked at the man warily as the trio walked into view.

  Closer to him, Relian realized that this was barely a man, a kid, really. Yet he was clearly the source of the trail of carnage leading from the Wastes to this very spot.

  Relian continued to study him but paused when the young man’s eyes drifted across the three of them, finally locking eyes with him. They weren’t pleading or desperate for help.

  Those eyes were measuring them up. Those were the eyes of a hunter.

  “Hold,” Relian said softly. “That’s no boy.”

  “Of course, it is,” Arwen hissed. “Look at him. Can’t be no more than—”

  “Arwen, listen to me,” Relian said, his tone icy. Silence fell. Even the wind stilled for a breath. “That is not a boy. That is an Ashkaari.”

  Arwen’s blood ran cold. She knew what they’d been sent to find, but she hadn’t believed it possible. A Graven? Here? After all this time? She wasn’t even a true believer that they had existed, no matter how much historical evidence there was to the contrary.

  Ashkaari were not from Velkarin, instead pulled or cast from another world. They were a soul dispced from its origin pne and dropped into Velkarin’s fabric like a tear in the weave of the world. They were dangerous, always appearing just before periods of major upheaval or destruction. From a young age, Arwen’s family held to that belief—Ashkaari, or Graven as they called them, were harbingers of doom.

  As she stood between Kael and Relian, the words of her father came back to her. “If you ever find a Graven, you either leash them, or bury them.”

  “We need to act fast,” she whispered, her hand unconsciously raising, palm up.

  “Steady, Arwen,” Kael muttered. “Talk first, fireballs second.”

  “Aw, come on,” the Ashkaari said with a resigned sigh shocking everyone. “Fireballs? Really? Is everything here just trying to kill me?”

  Arwen blinked in surprise, Kael pursed his lips for being heard, and Relian cleared his throat.

  “I am Mage-Captain Relian Vos, commander of the Firespine Vanguard,” Relian said as he took one step forward. He stood straight but inclined his head briefly. “We were dispatched to this area to find the cause of an…anomaly.”

  “It’s me. I’m the anomaly, right?”

  Relian’s head tilted in confusion at the man’s seemingly flippant reply but eventually nodded. “I believe that to be the case, yes.”

  “It’s Dane, by the way, not Aksorry, or whatever,” Dane said, butchering the word as he put a hand to his blood-spttered chest. “Dane Walsh.”

  “Dane Walsh,” Relian repeated, “an Ashkaari is someone not of this world.”

  “Yep. That would be me, then,” Dane said, blowing out his cheeks. “What world is this?”

  “Velkarin, and you are within the Kingdom of Tavelyn.”

  Relian watched as Dane’s face looked at him with curiosity. “And that shithole back there? You Kingdom of Tavelyn folks just let a pce like that happen?” Before anyone could answer, Dane smacked his lips together, desperately trying to find any moisture at all, and waved a dismissive hand. “Actually, shelve that one. Does anyone have any water? I’m as thirsty as one of those gss-eyed beasts bleeding glitter ink.”

  The squad exchanged confused gnces.

  “Dane Walsh,” Relian pressed on, “we mean you no harm. We have been sent to request that you return with us to—”

  In a fsh, the Dane’s muscled arm fshed out to the side, his hand circling around something that let out a strained gasp.

  “People who mean no harm don’t send spies with weapons drawn to fnk them,” Dane said, his voice full of malice. Beside him, a blonde woman appeared, her face red from the force he was exerting on her windpipe.

  “Sira!” Arwen called, fireballs appearing in both hands. “Let her go!”

  Dane ignored her, and Relian noticed the Ashkaari’s eyes never left his. Not even when he seemed to pluck Sira out of thin air.

  “She is a scout, Dane Walsh, nothing more,” Relian said quickly, one hand reaching out to Arwen, pushing one of her arms down. “You are an unknown and we needed to know if you were dangerous.”

  Dane asked in a challenging tone, “Yeah? And what’s the verdict, Captain?”

  Relian’s eyes shot to Sira. He was relieved to see that the Ashkaari had at least loosened his grip so that she could breathe, but he had no doubt that the man could snap her neck in an instant if things went awry. Despite outward appearances, that gave him hope. The man could have killed Sira outright, but he showed restraint. He could work with that.

  “Are you a military man, Dane Walsh?” Relian asked, changing tactics.

  “Look, it’s just Dane, okay? I’m not going to say ‘Mage-Captain Relian Vos’ every time I talk to you, so let’s keep it simple.”

  Relian had no choice but to nod. “Okay, Dane, but you didn’t ans—”

  “If you can believe it, twenty-seven years in the service,” Dane replied, cutting him off. “Medals on my chest, serving with distinction in Force Recon and Raider units, and all the trimmings. I had retired. I was teaching students about our world’s history and enjoying not having to wade into battle to kill other human beings.

  “I turned forty-eight today,” Dane continued, his voice dropping. “And now, here I am, not even old enough to drink on my world, killing murderous beasts on a completely different pnet, and breathing in some magic vapor that I honestly think is giving me brain cancer, or something.”

  He sighed, turning to the woman he was holding. “I’m sorry, Miss,” he said, rexing his grip. “I’m not wired to hurt women, but I didn’t really know you were you, you know?” With a weak smile, he asked, “Is your neck okay?”

  Sira was silent, her eyes still wide, but she nodded jerkily.

  Dane inclined his head toward the other three. “Go on, then. Join your crew.”

  She moved smoothly, but quickly across the space between, and Arwen pulled her protectively behind her small frame. It wasn’t lost on Dane that the short, young woman had it out for him, but so had the wolves, the cats, those fucking root monsters, and whatever the hell that flying bat-bird-thing was.

  “Look, I’m sorry about that,” Dane said, gesturing toward Sira. “I’m not looking for a fight, as long as you aren’t either. And, seriously, does anyone have any water?”