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    “Man, this place is kind of a dump,” said Bethy as we stared off into the distance at Shadowcrack. “It had such a cool name, but now I’m just disappointed.” She clicked her tongue at the jagged rocks barely peeking out over the surface of the terrain distastefully.


    I turned to Dezcarta. “So…not to be that guy, but that place is made of black rocks and mostly underground, your city is made of metal and it’s really tall. Who named these towns? Because whoever it was didn’t exactly strain anything coming up with something creative. Not the point, I know, but I am curious.”


    Holly snorted. “I mean, this place is secretly run by cultists, right? They’re not exactly known for creativity.”


    “We don’t KNOW that,” disagreed Chelsea. “I mean, clearly they have some involvement in the local power structure, what with the money thing, but we can’t say for sure it’s RUN by cultists. Maybe they’ve just deeply infiltrated the government.”


    “That’s probably not better,” Callie said with a sigh. “Anyway, so what’s the plan here? Will they see us coming? Do you have a tunnel into this place like the Citizen had one out of Highhaven?”


    The C-ranker shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I’m going to blow my way in and engage Algenclave directly. Caladwen and Derrick will lead her people in behind me, and their defensive formation will cover me for D-rank attacks. GIven how strong most of these people are supposed to be, I’m a bit worried they might have one or two burst attacks that are too much for me. That’s why I arranged the secondary defensive wishes that I did, not to mention the escape.”


    Abel grinned. “Don’t worry about the D-rankers. Bethy and I will be going in with you. No one is getting past us.”


    My sister cleared her throat. “ALL of us. Gabe will be leading the charge against the D-rankers, and given his path he should break ranks easily enough. Serah and Holly will harry from above, Sable will provide cover with her root puppets, Dom will be with Bethy and Able in the core group, and Dyasia, Bella, and I will be in the back providing long range support.”


    Bella frowned dismally. “I can’t even do that. I know you’re just coddling me because Master doesn’t think I can handle this.”


    “Oh, good,” I said kindly. “I thought we were being too subtle. Be good and stay out of the way.”


    “I want the Dryad with me though,” Sable interrupted. “Her tree powers will help boost my witchcraft by a substantial amount. Imagine how much she can enhance my root puppets.”


    I nodded to her. “Agreed, Daysia should be able to help a lot. Bella…jokes aside, I need you to stay safe. You’ll benefit from this battle immensely, just by being around, but I don’t want to risk you while you’re still learning. There will be time later for you to join battle directly. For now you’re not on the same level as the rest of us.”


    “I like how you pretend it’s just one level,” Chelsea said dryly. “Because I think we all know Abel and Bethy are on a whole other plane. I mean, admittedly, you’re probably close because you’re so stupidly versatile, and Callie has been working on that new-”


    My wife cleared her throat, cutting her off. “I haven’t even come close to finishing making that work. Honestly, I’ve been too worried about starting. I think I’m going to wait for my new racial trait before I attempt it. Celia says she can shield me from the negative effects of the scythe with her energy, but I’d like a second layer of protection, just in case.” With Dezcarta around, she kept it vague, but we all knew what she wasn’t saying. The power of a god was nothing to mess around with.


    Which was fair. She hadn’t spoken much about the scythe or what they were doing with it, but I was glad she was being cautious. I wasn’t at a level to mess with anything involving that scythe, be it technique, skill, or even a physical object. My grandmother would have a much better idea what to do with something like that.


    I shook my head. “It’s fine. We’ve got more than enough firepower. Bella, Chelsea, Daysia, you each have one of the emergency scrolls, right? Keep some chits handy in case you need to pay something off.”


    They all nodded, and I relaxed a bit. That would mitigate a lot of the danger. Callie squeezed my hand tightly, showing me she was there, and then stared at the city. “With so many shadows around, I’ll go with Shane. My current Solid Path should make me uniquely suited to pushing away the abyssal darkness that permeates the shadow in this place. As long as we don’t actually enter it’ll be fine.”


    “Murmur will cover us otherwise,” I agreed. “We’ll be infiltrating directly while the lot of you play decoy. Anyone bothered by that?”


    No one was. Dezcarta watched us in amusement, then pulled out a small glass orb and broke it. In the distance I heard revving sounds. As we watched, a wave of those weird candle cars broke through the mist at the edge of the island, coming off the walkway two at a time. They fanned out, and Dezcarta nodded to us all and then turned. Bending her knees, she crouched down and JUMPED.


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    The C-ranker’s form shot up into the air at an angle, plummeting toward the city as the wave of cars approached the edges of the crack. Dezcarta flung out her hands and a massive cloud of metal dust erupted into the air around her. She jerked both hands down and the cloud condensed into a RAIN of swords, all of them rocketing down towards the city.


    “DEZCARTA!” boomed an enraged voice. “HOW DARE YOU!?” There was a rumble and the ground split, an eruption of magma exploding from the earth and condensing into a single spread hand, intercepting the majority of the swords.


    “Alright, go!” I told the others. I grabbed Callie’s hand and triggered Murmur, the two of us bolting towards the city. After a few steps, I triggered my Waltz, the two of us vanishing in a blaze of black flame. The scenery flickered as we blinked across it. Flash, empty dirt, flash, magma, flash, the edge of a cliff, then finally one last flash and we appeared in a dark street overlooked by the clifftop.


    We stopped as soon as we landed, and Callie flicked out a hand. She drove all the darkness from the space around us, cleansing it from my domain as Murmur got to work on the world around us, analyzing.


    There was a decent chance that we wouldn’t have been noticed because of the darkness anyway, but it obviously possessed a trait that I couldn’t really identify. Having Callie push it away ensured the Abyssal Lords couldn’t use it to track us, or worse, the Void Child itself. I hoped.


    After about a minute, I’d eliminated all traces of us well enough not to worry about any D-rankers we might meet. Once that was done, I started walking slowly forward, Callie and I working together to keep the Domain clear. “Alright, Dez is going to be watching out for us in case she needs to step in. Unless she sees someone attacking an empty space though, she won’t be able to spot us once Murmur has had time to sink in.”


    This was still within the bounds of our agreement, since it was my idea, and Callie nodded along as we walked. We didn’t exactly run, but we were hurrying, and we made it to the city lord’s manor quickly enough. Rather than a castle, this one was carved right into the cliff face, sort of a cave mansion. That meant there was only one entrance and sneaking in would have been much more difficult…if we weren’t undetectable.


    Just to be safe, we cased out the entrance for a few minutes, giving Murmur time to really excavate as much detail as possible before we slipped past the admittedly already distracted guards.


    The descent down into the dungeon was surprisingly uneventful, and I was riding high when we finally reached the lowest levels. When we did though, I was brought up short by the terrible conditions my friends were being kept in. All of them were alive, thankfully, but they’d been beaten badly and they looked hungry and dirty, trapped inside steel cages with thick metal bars.


    I scanned the area with Murmur, then dropped the domain, letting them see me as I rushed to check on them. Elena noticed me first, her head jerking up. “Fist!” she said anxiously. “You can’t be here! This is a trap!”


    Nodding, I knelt down, examining the floor. Sure enough, the bars were only set into the rock. I focused hard, triggered Wrath in a small area directly under the metal. I infused the ground with black fire, pouring in the destructive energy, then triggered Agares, shifting the dust away to reveal an empty space. It wasn’t enough, so I did it a few more times, widening the hole until she could slip out under the bars.


    Once that was done, I freed Desria, Cavallo, Vesper, Chester and Ray. Making sure everyone was ok. Once that was done, I sighed in relief. “Alright, now that you’re out, we need to go. Elena’s right, this is definitely a trap. We avoided being noticed coming in, but there’s no way they aren’t going to check on you. We aren’t being watched right now, or I’d have picked up on it with Murmur, but that could change at any ti-” I cut off my sentence, vanishing in a burst of flame as an bullet streaked through the space where I’d been standing, smashing into an through the stone of the wall.


    I stared at the incredibly deep hole, warily glancing back at the shooter. It had taken a powerful domain and a LOT of effort for me to dissolve that stone, and that domain was MADE to dissolve stone. That bullet had punched through it like paper.


    “You missed,” said a dainty voice as a pair of people appeared in the open doorway. The voice came from a small girl with two braided plaits of hair, dressed in a complicated old fashioned dress. Her eyes appeared to be SEWN open, and her lips were stitched in an incredibly wide grin that somehow didn’t affect her ability to talk.


    The guy with her was dressed in a beige coat and pants, thick leather boots and a wide brimmed beige hat with one edge bent up. He had a thick mustache and a monocle, and was holding an incredibly large and threatening C-rank rifle as he stared at us thoughtfully. “This one has excellent instincts,” he said approvingly. “T’will be a princely hunt. A hunter must be patient above all, Rulka.”


    “Yes, I’ve listened to your speeches Thaddeus,” said the girl in a bored tone that belied her forced cheerful expression. “I don’t care how you kill them, as long as I can keep the bodies. Their skins look exquisite. Imagine the dresses I can make.”


    I very carefully did NOT examine what her current dress was made of after she said that. I didn’t want to now. I triggered Mornax, stepping forward in front of my friends as I silently instructed Callie to prepare to flee. I was going to have to make an opening here, but I was confident I could manage.


    Opening my hand, I called up my staff, whirling it around my fingers defensively, building up momentum to prepare. “I don’t know kind of idioms where you’re from, but where I grew up, we have a saying about counting chickens before them hatch.”


    Rulka brightened. “Oh! Where we’re from, the saying is ‘don’t cook your piglets before you slaughter them’. It toughens the meat.”


    Thaddeus rolled his eyes, shouldering his rifle and taking aim. “Enough chitchat Rulka. The hunt is on.” He pulled the trigger, and this time I wasn’t too distracted to hear the low boom that followed the bullet as it sped toward me. I couldn’t teleport away because my friends were behind me, so I triggered Belial, my staff flicking up to deflect the bullet slightly while it was still a few feet out, allowing it to slice harmlessly through the air over my shoulder. Rulka, none too pleased, snarled, and then she rushed me and the fight was on.