Nate appeared beyond the line of tents behind the Etruan Third Army just in time to witness the monstrous shapeshifting assassin whip a three-clawed hand at the Princess or Hildi. He couldn’t tell which of the two women it was. The assassin's arm moved so fast it blew away the nearby grass before it collided with one of the Platinums, sending them flying across the grasslands. The Platinum landed hard, digging a furrow in the dirt before ragdolling end over end and coming to rest in a pile of limbs, the illusion temporarily broken. The body looked like the Princess but a moment later they had vanished again and the ongoing battle continued to rage.

  “Could you have dodged that?” Nate asked Kiri hurriedly. He knew his sister had burned one of her Soul Twins with her emotionally driven stunt of saving Morgane from what he suspected was poisoned wine. Without the safety net of multiple Soul Twins he had serious concerns about Kiri trying to melee the assassin. At the same time, they couldn’t not help. The Princess and Hildi were losing. That much was obvious.

  “No,” admitted Kiri quickly, blood still caked to her face from the poison. She turned to him, blue eyes intense and short brown hair flowing in the wind. “But I am going in anyway. Cover me?”

  Nate nodded. If his sister couldn’t fully protect herself, he would cover her. It was time to pretend he was a Barrier Mage once more. Conceptual Runic Mastery ignited and he lamented his lower Mana Absorption Stat. Even with one part of his mind focused on his Runic Gallery and absorbing mana from the mana gems within, his mana reserve was still only half-full. With his Skill active, he created a variation of his Barrier rune, adding additional sigils and two additional geometric layers. Reinforcement and Durability went into those layers and guided by his Intent he tied them to the Barrier and flooded the rune with mana. Maintaining it would be expensive but this way he could shift his Intents, creating barriers as quickly as his mind could work, and mental speed was one of the functions of his enhanced mind. He could have created a second rune but he held the third part of his mind in reserve to utilise Conceptual Spatial Manipulation, mostly to avoid the assassin if they turned their attention towards him.

  As Kiri vanished and appeared above the assassin, his sister’s ten tethered arms lashed out with her daggers, silver flashing in the night as she tried to pierce the assassin's grey leathery hide. The assassin spun blindingly fast and Nate barely got a barrier between the flashing claws and Kiri just in time. The barrier shattered but it slowed the blow enough for Kiri to Soul Shift away. A single small cut was visible on the assassin which seemed to give them pause. Nate knew that if only one of the ten daggers was able to pierce the creature's hide, it must have been the Legendary-tier Runecrafted Soulrending Dagger.

  The assassin blurred towards Nate, apparently deciding that he was the first threat that needed to be dealt with. He had thought that the distance between them would give him enough time to teleport. He was wrong. The eyeless beast was faster than Kiri even with her Soul Imbuements active. An illusory wall appeared out of nowhere between him and the assassin before he caught a whiff of a Concept at play, then the wall became real, no mere illusion. It barely slowed the grey monster and the blow struck against his barrier and sent him flying across the grasslands and back towards the camp.

  Even within his barrier, the whiplash disoriented him and he knew he would be bruised. Tapping into Conceptual Spatial Manipulation he altered his vector, sending himself into the sky to try and bleed off his speed, before teleporting back to the fight, though keeping a bit more distance this time. It meant using his farsight sphere of awareness to monitor the fight, but being within range of his personal sphere of awareness meant being within striking distance of the assassin. His mind picked apart the battle, taking in all the information he had available to him. That single strike had emptied half of the mana within his Legendary Barrier bracer. The next one would see his defence collapse. Of the wall that had appeared to protect him, there was no sign.

  He frowned when he saw Kiri’s body lying in two parts again halfway across the field. His sister had not been careful enough while he was recovering from his attack and had clearly burned her second Soul Twin. Though, she had marked the beast with a second wound. He doubted the cost had been worth it but at least the monster was bleeding freely now.

  Focusing on the fight, he finally got a sense of what was happening. Hildi and the Princess were fighting an organised retreat. While they appeared identical to his regular senses, the difference was evident because he could sense the Concept of Resonance at play. The regular Illusions being used seemed to have no effect on the assassin, blind and deaf as it appeared to be. However, the Princess seemed to be able to make her Illusions real for short moments, as though the images she created resonated with the truth of what those images represented. A hail of ballista arrows flew forth, one moment false images of light, and the next real steel and wood, crashing into the assassin. Most were knocked aside by one of the monster's gigantic leather-clad arms, but a few got through. They left scratches that very slowly leaked red blood. Surprisingly, they were the only injuries present except for the one Kiri had inflicted, but the scratches appeared to be healing. The same could not be said of the wounds Kiri inflicted.

  Kiri joined him for a moment, Soul Shift carrying her to his side.

  “It’s bleeding soul energy,” she said in a rush.

  “Soul Ravager,” he muttered, remembering the second class of the Assassin. “It was only Rare-tier but must provide some similar capabilities to your own.”

  Kiri nodded her agreement.

  Their quick discussion was interrupted as the Platinum that he was confident was Hildi was blasted across the plains again. This time, she didn’t get up, leaving the Princess to fight the assassin alone. Walls shot up, trees appeared, fireballs bloomed, all illusions made real, but none of the quickfire attacks did more than slow the grey monster, and Nate realised that Morgane lacked the Magic Power to pierce the shapeshifter’s hide in a meaningful way. If they didn’t do something, the Princess was going to die.

  Nate’s mind spun fast as he tried to think his way out of the problem. Kiri couldn’t go all out because she was physically outmatched and without a Soul Twin to save her from a desperate gambit. If the Princess couldn’t wound the beast, he doubted his own attacks could either. The Legendary-tier Spatial material in his Runic Gallery was an option. It might manage to bridge the gap and wound the powerful Platinum assassin. But, perhaps, there was another way. The form the shapeshifter had taken was both blind and deaf, clearly a prepared counter for an Illusionist and Sound Mage. Yet it still tracked them all unerringly. It couldn’t be a form of soul based tracking, because he felt no pressure against his soul barrier. A look at the beast told him the answer: the giant nostrils made for smelling. Some form of advanced chemical-mapping based on scent, he reasoned. And Nate had something for that.

  “Buy the Princess a moment,” he said in a rush. “I’ve got you covered.”

  With his barrier rune still up and his mana reserve running low, he used Conceptual Runic Mastery to build a new rune. Combining the Sigils for Smell, Enclosed and Release he created a rune to fill the area with a new scent and prevent its release. The geometric shape was simplistic and inefficient but he didn’t have the time to care. He flicked a barrier up to prevent Kiri getting skewered by one of the silver claws as his sister fought beside the Princess, keeping the assassin at bay, albeit barely. The rune completed two seconds later and he shifted the smell with his Intent to something he hoped would affect the beast. Using his advanced memory, he recalled the smell of cayenne pepper, using half his Intents to guide and empower the smell, focusing the enclosed zone around the assassin.

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  The reaction was instantaneous. The beast went wild, slapping at its own nose so hard that it bled as it rolled around in the grass, leaving half-a-metre deep slashes in the ground from its razor sharp claws. Kiri bunched her legs, waiting to pick her moment, before using Soul Shift to dive in blazing fast and bury her legendary dagger in the assassin's spine before flashing out again. With his farsight sphere of awareness he could sense the glut of soul energy leaking from the wound, enhanced by Kiri’s own draining Skill which seemed more than up to competing with the Platinum’s Soul-based Skills.

  The Princess seemed to be seizing the opportunity, standing still with her hand out as the air in front of her began to vibrate with the Concepts of Sound and Resonance. Nate could sense that the two Concepts were building on each other, creating an attack that was greater than the sum of its parts. The recognition of the twin Concepts and how they resonated, caused a flicker inside of him and for a moment he felt that same rush once more. His body felt more real, more connected, as though he and the universe were one and the same thing. The feeling slowly drained away, the sense of reality ebbing at the same rate as the Princess’s attack grew. He tried to hold onto it, that feeling, or whatever it was inside of him, but it felt like trying to catch water in his hand, the feeling fading as it slipped through his fingers.

  Nate noticed that the assassin's body had started to shift, growing smaller.

  “It’s shapeshifting!” he yelled out, trying to warn the Princess.

  Kiri vanished, appearing behind Morgane, sensing the danger that the sonic attack of the Princess represented. The shapeshifter took flight and Nate saw Morgane subtly shift her aim. Then Nate went deaf. It took him a moment to realise he was lying in the grass, staring up at the sky, his barrier bracer completely depleted. Kiri was above him, mouth moving as she shook him gently. He reached up a finger to touch his ear and felt it come away wet with blood. Reaching into his Runic Gallery, he pulled out a Feather of Renewal and dumped it on his chest, letting his runecrafted item do its thing. Sound slowly returned as his ears healed and he could finally hear his sister's words.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine,” he muttered, feeling anything but. He was out of mana, had taken the worst beating he had received in months, blown through a small fortune in materials, and the night wasn’t even over.

  Kiri hugged him then, wrapping him up tightly and squeezing.

  “Not too hard. I’m fragile,” he groaned.

  “You goof!” yelled Kiri, tears in her eyes, these ones unstained by blood. “You had me worried! Don’t do that!”

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I was behind the Princess. Her attack seemed to spread in a cone. You caught the outer edge of it when she adjusted to try and catch the assassin. We were untouched,” replied his sister, ignoring the real question. He had never really had to worry about her physically. Anything that didn’t outright kill her was just a temporary thing. With her Soul Twins, anything that did kill her, needed to do so more than once. But Kiri clearly didn’t want to discuss Coralie yet, and he could understand that. The betrayal was fresh. They would talk about it later, when this entire mess was sorted out.

  Climbing slowly to his feet, he finally got to see the wreckage caused by the attack and it was beyond anything he had expected. Moving outwards in a cone shape for over one hundred metres there was nothing but loose dirt. No sign of grass, or rocks, or anything else. Even the ground seemed to have been churned. The power of high-level Concepts combined with a high-level Spell, he decided. Because if that Spell hadn’t been Legendary, he didn’t know what was.

  Kiri helped him and together they stumbled towards the Princess. Even now he couldn’t rest and while one part of his mind focused on the here and now, another went back to absorbing mana from his gems and the third to using the barrier rune on his robe to provide some limited protection.

  Morgane was kneeling over what looked like a second Morgane. He guessed the one lying in the grass was Hildi, but he couldn’t sense any Concepts floating in the air which told him the appearance wasn’t an illusion.

  He was about to ask if the pair of Platinums were alright when he realised he hadn’t felt any processed mana after the attack.

  “Did we kill it?” he asked.

  The kneeling Morgane shook her head, “The assassin managed to launch themselves above the attack, shapeshifting into some kind of bird. It caught a bit of the edges, like you, but not enough to take it out of commission. Flew away injured.”

  “And Hildi?” he pressed.

  “She’ll live. She’s tougher than she looks,” answered the Princess.

  Nate nodded, pulling out a second Feather of Renewal and placing it on Hildi’s chest to speed the process along before turning towards Morgane. Illusion and Sound. There was someone else on this level that Nate knew of who made use of those Concepts, and given what he had seen, he had a very strong suspicion they might be one and the same person. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he thought, before locking eyes with the Princess.

  “So, what now Morgane, or should I call you Avery?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

  Kiri’s face lit up next to him in understanding while the Princess just smiled tiredly.

  “Technically, we are both Avery,” she answered, glancing at Hildi.

  “Why?” he demanded tiredly. “Why go to all that effort? You’re a Royal. Why advance so high within the Adventurer’s Guild?”

  “They’re a useful tool for hiding some of my actions and an effective scapegoat. A Royal making moves against a House has a lot more politics involved than say a secret contract through the Guild that results in unintended consequences. Few Houses would openly move against the Guild or its members.”

  Nate made to respond but Morgane cut him off.

  “Few is not none. House Desmarais must have been desperate. But now’s not the time for this. I need to know how much damage this attempted assassination and the traitors within my camp have done.”

  Morgane glanced up at the sky and the slowly fading tree of lightning hanging there to drive home her point.

  “Aisling!”

  He had forgotten about his mentor in the chaos of battle and flung his farsight sphere outwards to try and find her. It was Kiri who calmed him down.

  “She’s fine. She’s coming now,” said Kiri softly, patting his shoulder.

  Aisling descended from the skies, floating down on swirls of wind, static in the air heralding her as the tall blonde-haired and brown-eyed woman alighted in a patch of churned dirt. There was blood on her face, though no sign of a cut and he could see multiple burn marks where something had eaten through her clothes. The skin beneath looked pitted and his mentor hobbled the last few steps to them.

  “How bad?” asked Morgane as Hildi finally stirred.

  “Your ally, Lord Beaumont, is dead at the hands of Lord Landin. He then thought to turn his attention to the Guild, either to cover up his actions or because he viewed us as a similar threat to his plans. He’s dead, along with Lady Faranth,” answered Aisling tiredly.

  “You killed both?” asked Morgane, helping Hildi to her feet.

  Aisling answered with a simple nod as she started to look Nate over with a critical eye.

  “You’re okay? Both of you?” asked his mentor after giving Kiri a once-over.

  “We’re fine,” answered Kiri gruffly.

  “We’ll see,” replied Aisling, turning back to Morgane with fire in her eyes.

  “So, Avery,” she spat, clearly angry at the deception and the co-opting of the Adventurer’s Guild. “What now?”

  Morgane sighed, bearing the brunt of Aisling’s gaze before responding, “Now we see if we need to flee into the night or if this mess can be salvaged.”

  Nate scooped up his Feather of Renewal and trudged back toward the camp behind Aisling and Morgane. His money, and he had a lot of it, was on fleeing. But who knew if they would be insane enough to try and salvage something from this mess.

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