Everyone screamed as darkness engulfed them and the boat tipped towards the bow, standing upright. Purple spun around them as everything plunged to the front; boxes, ghosts, the living. Fear skittered through her as she struck the deck, tumbled over it, and skidded into Janny, who was plastered against the Darkness shield.

Glumpy stuff slid across the magic, and water cascaded past, carrying them down. The stern pitched forward—the boat was going to crush them!

They all slid down onto the top of the shield as the hull arched over; two pulsating purple poles caught the boat and held it up as they collided in the middle. Screams ended, leaving the sounds of gasping from the living.

“Vantra!” Kjaelle said, her voice sharp. “Coat the interior with a Sun shield.”

She stared, gulping. What? Janny snaked her arm around her neck and squeezed.

“You’re good with the Sun shields,” the pirate said. “And we could use them now.”

Yes. Yes. Sun shields. She chanted the words, over and over, forcing her chittering mind to slow, concentrate. She formed one within Kjaelle’s, but she had no illusions about its strength if the outer Darkness broke. The gunk would destroy it.

The boat slid to the side, as if the ankis slithered through the water. They struck the interior of the changeling and bounced back, again hitting something. Water sloshed around them, depositing more nasty stuff on the shield.

“Straps?” she asked, her voice a mere squeak. She slapped her hand over her chest and tried again. “We need something to hold onto.”

“Make handles,” Janny suggested. “If the shields break, those will be easy to release.”

“Handles are a good idea,” Kjaelle said. Her words, too calm, coated her, gave her something to latch onto, but the shard’s heat soothed her more. It made its presence known, and guilt raged, that she forgot she held it. Tears of embarrassment combined with fear blurred her perception as she molded her magic to create square handles.

She wrapped her free hand around the soft grip and squeezed, wishing her distress would settle with her body, but it did not. They were inside a changeling, and while they did not deal with digestive issues, the gunk proved as bad.

“That dark stuff is a Darkness-infused spell, but I’ve no idea what else they shoved in it. That contamination . . .” Kjaelle growled, low, angry. “We need ideas. The taint’s playing havoc with my shields, so we need to get out quick, before Kenosera and Yut-ta suffocate or drown.”

Suffocate or drown. Oh no! Vantra stared at the two grim umbrareign, her mind whirling. Out. They had to get out.

Purple flared from the shield, intense enough to burn, but the gunk swallowed it and congealed, reminding her of the void darkness in the Sun temple; thick, oozy. Symbols glowed within, the dusky green of decaying plants.

Fingers snapped in front of her face. “Vantra!” Kjaelle said, sharp enough to break her momentarily from her fear.

“Katta?”

The elfine’s eyes narrowed, then she shook her head. “There’s nothing,” she said, tapping her temple. “Whatever spell’s in that stuff targets my Darkness link to him, which means someone planned for that. He could reach me, but he doesn’t know we’re in trouble.”

Like in the temple. Even then, he knew they were in danger, and the void silenced communication.

“How is she not discorporating with this stuff inside her?” Kenosera asked, adjusting his hands on his handle and hunching over it. Kjaelle opened her mouth to answer, but yelped instead as the boat careened to the side. Kenosera flattened Vantra and she rammed into Yut-ta; at least she wasn’t alive to injure.

Another jerk sent them into the careening into the side. “She shouldn’t even be moving!” Kjaelle flared. “That Darkness should be eating her essence into oblivion!”

“Probably the symbols,” Vantra said as the two living crushed her again.

“Symbols?” Kjaelle asked.

“In the gunk.”

“Symbols?” Kjaelle squinted, then shook her head, frowning. “I can’t see them.”

They swept in the opposite direction, and Vantra squeezed her eyes shut as her body swung into Kenosera. Maybe she should have created something other than handles, like the thin poles on trains.

“Vantra, what do they look like?”

“Scratchy.” That would not help. She made a point of her index finger and drew on the Sun shield.

“Kjlat!”

Vantra looked up, and the horror on the elfine’s face batted her back into thoughtless fear.

A hot hand settled on her back; Kenosera met her eye, his golden green ones somber, but terror did not ride him. How could it not? Yut-ta slid his arm around her waist below the nomad’s, and she fought to suck in their courage.

“That bad?” Janny asked.

“That’s Grendorian. It’s an old elfine language used for symbol-casting. The only uses I’ve seen it for in the Evenacht relate to death wieldings.”

“She’s trying to eat us?” Janny asked as they all slid in response to a quick jerk.

What? No! How . . .

She slapped her hands on the Sun shield and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t let the others down. She couldn’t let them die. But how could she save them?

The outer shields cracked. Cursing, Kjaelle strengthened them as Vantra did the same. She poured more than she thought prudent into the protection, because she had no other ideas on how to keep them safe. She needed to think, but swinging around as the confinement smacked into things did not give her time to steady herself and ponder.

“That wasn’t a spell,” Janny said, her voice low, intense. “I think something struck us.”

Yut-ta jerked back as an ankis head rammed the shield right below him and disappeared.

“Oh, that’s just serendipitous, isn’t it?” Kjaelle spat in scornful disbelief.

Smaller ankis swam inside the giant? She must have swallowed others to attack. Was that brave or stupid of her underlings to chance it? Because of the water, they could not phase through her if something went wrong. Would the stronger absorb the other’s essence? She could not recall that being part of Finder study materials, and now that she needed the information, found the omission odd. They promised to teach solutions to all scenarios one might meet on a Redemption. How they failed in that!

The attacks intensified, and she wondered how many swam within the larger changeling. Giant enough to swallow a boat did not mean giant enough to keep a bunch of wriggly snaky beings inside without consequence.

Their shield pounded harder into the side than before and bounced back. Both Kenosera and Yut-ta released her so they could grip their handles with both hands. A smaller changeling slid along the bottom of the shield, dislodging the gunk before disappearing into the darkness. She thought she heard other bodies hitting the giant’s essence with soft wumps; whatever happened, the underlings had not prepared for it.

They drifted, water lapping high on the defense, before they plowed into the same side, the force ripping the handle from Vantra’s hand.

The ankis’s body rose, fast enough to plaster them down against the shield. Vantra slid around, untethered, unable to bury her fearful squeaks in a courageous front.

The giant’s essence ripped apart, wispy chunks flying away, revealing hazy air and a downpour. The boat rotated as it continued its trajectory up, and Vantra squealed as she hit the hull. Kenosera and Yut-ta gripped the handles, dangling, while Kjaelle and Janny sought to help them.

The shields shattered, and the gunk fell with the others, coating Vantra. She could feel the magic latch onto her, drain her, and panic rushed through her head. The shard heated, and Clear Rays spun from her, the beams rotating in all directions.

Something struck the boat from below, and the wooden hull cracked in half. Vantra screeched as she flew from the craft, somersaulting upwards. She slowed and floated briefly at the zenith. Rain struck her, hard enough to punch divots into her essence. Her straggly hair blocked some of her vision, but she thought she saw a lattice spanning the clouds. It faded, and a flash of lightning brightened the darker puffs.

The lull, as uncomfortable as it was, gave her time to focus on something other than her fear; her misery. That was more manageable than numbing terror.

She started back down, her hair wafting back as she fell towards the mist-shrouded river below. Grey haze surrounded her, not quite hiding the shimmery green top of the barrier in the distance, and flashes of Light and Darkness directly below. Kjaelle had made it. The others?

Crackles of lightning zipped across her sight. She flinched, squeaking; the electricity rode with the rain and snagged her essence, ripping wisps from her. She clutched her core as tightly as the shard, certain that magic, rather than a natural phenomenon, targeted her.

She formed a shield as the air sizzled, and lightning shattered her gunk-weakened protection, shooting through her, burning. She screamed at the blinding pain—the pain!--and went limp as she failed to create another shield. The attack had knocked her towards electrified water, and she knew a ghost would suffer a debilitating shock if they touched such a harmful spell. She could either suffer that, or change to Ether form and hope the driving rain did not wash her essence away.

She caught sight of a white blob as she spun. One more rotation, and a shredded fanged mouth reached her, opened wide, to re-swallow her. A green symbol formed between the cheeks and flared.

Fear of falling through the symbol triggered Clear Rays. She saw nothing but brilliance and continued to tumble, no sense of up, down. A shield! She needed a shield!

She hit the water before she managed it, leaving her essence quaking. Energy from the shard fused with her, keeping her core intact as she sank, slowed, stopped. Which way was up?

Bright Light rushed to her. An arm snagged her waist and dragged her up, up. They broke the surface, and she heard gasping.

“There they are!”

She wiped at the gunk dribbling down her face as a boat protected by a Light shield sped to them, Dough and a Light-blessed leaning over the side. She recognized the other man; Mica, the one gearing for battle in the Dark Light.

“Are you alright?”

She looked over her shoulder at Kenosera, who tread water and did not look as if their adventure injured him. A swirl of Light sat above his brow, for protection and illumination.

“You dove after me?”

“None of the ghosts could because of that nasty gunky stuff, and besides, my people were designed to swim, even if we live in a desert now.” He wiggled his webbed fingers and grinned.

Oh.

Mica grabbed her, and Dough pulled Kenosera into the boat already crowded with pirates and Light-blessed. At least the shield prevented the rain from pounding them, giving ghosts a safe place to rest in the downpour.

“Is Kjaelle, Yut-ta and Janny OK?” If Kenosera felt comfortable enough swimming to help her, she assumed so.

“Better than the changeling,” Janny gloated as she hopped up to them, dragging a hose behind her. “Close your eyes. That shit sticks to Ether Touch, too, so keep Physical and I’ll wash it off so one of the Light-blessed can burn it.”

Vantra did not have time to agree. Clean water hit her in the face, and she gargled and bent over as the spray rinsed the gunk away.

“This feels oily, and my skin’s crawling,” Kenosera said.

“I can’t believe they contaminated the water this way,” Jare growled. He sounded as pissed as a bear woken from sleep in the deepest, coldest part of winter.

“And for what purpose?” Kjaelle asked. “It can’t have been to hide their escape because they had no way of knowing you’d enter the undercity and interfere, and they targeted the connection between acolyte and syimlin. A spell like this takes days to create, cure, and implement, and you’d need to know which syimlin’s to focus on.”

“Something to do with the Sun temple?” Yut-ta asked. His voice rang clear and strong, and Vantra hoped he suffered no injury from the boat breaking in half. “Dark magic killed many of the acolytes there.”

“From me to you, I’m sorry, Yut-ta,” the elfine said, regret lacing her words.

“It was a void,” Vantra coughed as she held out her hands for the spray. “It ate magic. Katta helped protect us, and it wasn’t enough to stand against it because he couldn’t risk Qira by association.”

“Another way they targeted us, that we would never suspect,” Kjaelle said.

“Yeah, Vesh and I almost met Levassa,” Yut-ta said. “Well, I would have. Vesh would have . . .” He trailed off, and she swore he gulped loud enough to attract the enemy’s attention.

“Vesh is fine, Kjaelle,” Jare soothed.

“We left him with Rezenarza and the changelings,” Yut-ta said.

The wrong thing to say, if Kjaelle was so concerned about her fellow Darkness acolyte. She had yet to open her eyes, but she could imagine the purple swirl of magic that accompanied the aghast fury that smothered all other emotions. “The changelings are Nature acolytes, Ema and Indrisa,” she piped up, hoping to distract the elfine as Mica turned her around and helped Janny douse her hair.

“Ema and Indrisa?” Kjaelle muttered something under her breath.

“She must have sent help.” Jare’s sharp, annoyed words made Vantra shudder. “She wouldn’t have endangered them if she didn’t think it necessary.”

“I still don’t see how that changeling survived the water,” Mica said, turning the conversation to a more pressing topic. “Considering what this stuff did to us, swimming in it had to hurt.”

“Vantra saw symbols in the gunk,” Kjaelle said. “I’m betting they kept Daunifen from being eaten from the inside out. Another targeted bit to the spell, because the smaller ankis attacking us there weren’t affected, either.”

“There was another symbol,” Vantra whispered. “When Daunifen tried to eat me again.”

“Another symbol? Like the ones you noticed inside her?” Kjaelle asked.

She nodded. Despite weariness, she sharpened her finger and etched it onto her palm. Kjaelle grabbed her wrist and shook her head.

“Don’t finish that. We’ll have you write it on something else after you’re clean.”

A pirate dug through the supplies and found a well-used notebook and gnawed pen. After Mica declared her washed and they started on Kenosera, Vantra hid under the windshield, the paper set as far away as possible so she did not soak the pages, and sketched the symbol by holding the end of the implement and pushing the tip along. While awkward, it did as she intended. The elfine leaned past the driver and shook her head.

“This is . . .” She bit her lip before smoothing the page, leaving a line of water behind. “Talin Death deities have always had a Death mark of some sort. Before Katta built the Cave of Memories, they needed a way to attract spirits to them, and that’s what the mark did. Native Evenacht ones had nothing like it until Levassa. He thought the magic handy and inquired about it. Old Man Death showed him the principles and base spell, and he crafted his own. This looks like a warped version of the mark he created, using Kanderite death runes mixed with Ajacera, his native tongue.”

“That’s not good,” Jare said, rubbing at his chin with a grimace.

“As far as I know, Levassa’s never used that mark.” Kjaelle took the pen and made an extraneous mark through the symbol to destroy any potential spell it might trigger. “He’s interested in the underlying magic and how it interacts with spirits, but not the implementation. He has his own method of attracting souls and sending them into their afterlife. Someone knows about his mark, though, because I have no idea how else they would create something so similar.” She bumped against the dashboard and slid down to the hull. “Shake me if there’s a problem.”

“These games,” Jare seethed.

Yut-ta clacked his beak, as furious as the Light-blessed. “You don’t think Levassa has a hand in this? It’s his mark, after all.”

All the Light-blessed and Kenosera shook their heads at his skepticism.

“No,” Jare replied. “Levassa’s spent a fair bit of time at the Dark Light. We know him better than some of the syimlin. He’s a guider of the dead, not a dealer of death, which means he'd never endanger the environment, the living, or ghosts in this manner. He can be duplicitous when the need arises—he never would have survived the Beast’s tenure if he wasn’t—but this? It would never occur to him.”

“Selaserat has tales about Kjiven,” Dough said, hand on hip, foot tapping. “His craftiness was legendary. Very underhanded, and he enjoyed using an enemy’s words, magic, talents, against them. This is something he’d think up.”

“I remember,” Jare grumbled. “I met him as Qira’s honorguard.” His abrupt laugh startled Vantra. “I remember the cheers when he broke the barrier and Kjiven couldn’t re-cast it. Insufferable shit. Leeyal held a free drink night to celebrate.” His eyes sparkled. “I won’t tell you Qira’s state the next day.”

“He was incapacitated for days,” Mica told them. “Good thing Kjiven was too busy trying to save his money-maker, because he would have been easy to take out.”

Jare made a face. “Like we would have let him anywhere near the Aristarzian Quarter.”

Mica held up his hand and slowly curled his fingers into a tight fist. “It’s too bad, really.”

“White boats to starboard!” a pirate lying on the deck with a spyglass shoved into his eye called.

“Man the cannons, mates!” Dough yelled, shoving his fist into the air. Four pirates took their places at the cannons, two towards the front, two the back. The boat turned until the one with the spyglass told them to straighten out, and they sped up to catch the faint blots of watercraft.

Attacks from the enemy zinged to them, splattering on the Light shields surrounding the vessel. Everyone winced away from the resulting brightness, and a Darkness shield formed beneath to mitigate the glare. Vantra looked down; Kjaelle set her hand on her thigh and pushed herself up. She patted her arm and looked through the windshield.

“From Katta to us, he made us all honorary Shades of Darkness, a blanket protection in case things go wrong,” she said. “Erse gave her approval, so if we end up sending someone to the Final Death, we need not worry of punishment.”

“Things are that dire?” Dough asked, as shocked as his mates, while the Light-blessed nodded with grim determination.

“Some monstrous construct attacked Levassa as he gathered souls, and he’s not happy—and believe me when I say, an unhappy Levassa is a dangerous Levassa. He said the spells reek of faelareign touch, so he thinks Kjiven’s involved, but they have an underlying corruption that is Evenacht born. Kjiven’s working with a powerful umbrareign, and he wants to know who. He’s agreed not to follow the Death Path until we discover more. To that end, we need to capture someone who knows what’s going on. Yeralis might, I don’t know. But the priestess or the yondaii? They definitely do. They’re our targets.”

“Too bad we didn’t stop for the changeling,” Jare murmured, looking back. “She’d know who cast those protective symbols on her.”

“Daunifen’s Anmidorakj’s descendant,” Yut-ta said. “If she’s swallowing us, it’s a good bet she has more information about what’s going on.”

“Daunifen?” Mica frowned, his fingers drumming on his upper arms. “That name sounds familiar.”

“FIRE!” Dough shouted, stabbing his sword to the front.

The cannons, and no few Light-blessed, attacked. The combined effort broke shields at the rear of the two boats.

“Well-dressed elfines in those,” the spyglass pirate said. “They’re panicking. Mercs beating them down, so they won’t be too happy ‘bout that.”

“Let me see.” Mica hopped over the windshield and slid next to him. He accepted the glass and peered through the fog. “They’re extended family, not city councilors, like I thought. Same boats, but they weren’t part of the group who fled the caverns.”

“So they probably are meeting a larger ship for evacuation,” Jare said.

“Looks like. Not sure if they’re important enough to know what’s going on.”

Crackles of magic erupted at the rear, and spread across the back of the shield. Vantra could see nothing beyond the stern, but the enemy must be there. Janny hustled Kenosera and Yut-ta to her, attempting to hide her eagerness to battle and failing. They hunched down, and Kjaelle joined them, letting the pirates and the Light-blessed do what they were good at—fighting.

Conscripted rivcon boats sailed through the fog, glowing with a yellow intensity not linked to the shields surrounding them, their barrier badge fluttering as if agitated. Lightning streaked across the clouds hovering over them, bolts striking the water to their sides and sending sizzles skittering across the water. The electricity reached the Little Duckie and raced up the outer shield, forming fractures.

The vessels caught up to them, changelings on board lobbing attacks at their protection without care for conserving power.

Janny raised her sword and screamed, then sheathed it and grabbed the pull handles of a contraption set between the cannons. It looked like a curved pipe, with a rotating joint and a screen on the top. The pirate positioned it, staring at the screen rather than the enemy boat, and pressed a protruding square button above her right thumb. A hook shot from it, plowing through defenses and sinking into the hull just below the railing. The trailing metal rope flattened as thin claws curved out from it and met at the top, creating a hole in the shield magic the ghosts could use to board the enemy boat.

“Dough! It worked like Zhaun said it would!” Janny hollered. “Alright, mates, let’s go!”

Waving her sword, she ran up the plank, pirates and Light-blessed swarming after her.

“Ha ha!” Dough gloated as he targeted the other. “Worth every Death coin I paid!”

The enemy ship attempted to evade the strike, but not in time, and Light-blessed joined the pirates in scurrying up the plank. The boat pulled far enough away, the hook released, fell into the water, folded up and sucked back into the pipe—the lightning did not appear to affect it. What was it made from?

Vantra had a moment to worry about the boarders, but the changelings did not appear ready to battle the combined might of pirate and Light-blessed coming at them from a surprise hole in their protections.

Realizing she knelt, craning for a better view, she sank next to Kjaelle, who did not appear interested in the flashy fight.

“Pirates will pirate,” she said.

“So will Light-blessed. There’s a reason Dough’s crew enjoys the Dark Light,” Kjaelle replied as she ran her fingers through her hair, separated the messy strands, and braided them.

Kenosera and Yut-ta cheered them on as the changelings howled, slashed with claws, bit with fangs, all without much success. The lightning intensified as enemy after enemy discorporated, but unless one fell overboard or they dropped the shields, she doubted it would have any effect. She peered up, hunting for the lattice she witnessed earlier.

“Ankis at port!” Mica yelled. “Looks like the lightning isn’t affecting them.”

“Another targeted part of the spell,” Kjaelle muttered as the cannons on the left swiveled, releasing flaming projectiles with a satisfying boom. “Well, from me to you, they’ve never met an interruption like the Light-blessed.” She smiled, Darkness flashing in her eyes.