by Hugo Damas
Oh luck. Usually, it would make no difference, but with people in tow, she was very limited when it came to mobility. With little hesitation, The Shadow stepped over the window sill.
“What are you--” Yana complained but not in time. The Shadow jumped down.
“Ugf!” Ayane landed with effort and immediately set Yana down to turn and face Nestor, who was looking down at them. “Jump,” she whispered up.
He looked doubtful but, at last, he offered no rebuttal. Nestor simply trusted her a bit blindly and did it. She caught him well enough to prevent too much noise on the landing and then crouched again so Yana could get on her back.
“You’re pretty strong,” Nestor said, embarrassed.
Anyone would be, training as I have, Ayane thought, frustrated.
Moving swiftly, the Shadow continued to survey her surroundings, making full use of her Shadow lenses. It had been a couple of days since she had first donned them and it still surprised her how crisp and clear her visual perception was. She could not only see in the dark, but she could see the dark, and the mist, that her vision could also pierce through. Each layer was vivid and discernible to her, which meant that she could not only see areas of low visibility, but could tell that they were areas of low visibility.
The Shadow lived and breathed in those lenses, a fact that had always intimidated her. Growing up, she had thought it lucky that he had lost them. That she wouldn’t have to wear them forever, but with each passing moment of use, she grew more and more accustomed.
Her thoughts screeched into a halt when the Shadow heard a pained, muffled yell for help.
“Wait wait!” The Shadow demanded, stopping her run. She looked around extremely warily.
“What?” Nestor whispered.
“Shh, I think I heard something,” Ayane clarified.
“How promising,” Yana said, exhausted. As if she had any right.
“Hey!” Even Nestor heard it.
They gazed together to the side, and both caught sight of a girl, walking towards them. The Shadow guessed she had seen them and had left her hiding spot, a ditch in the street.
The girl was wearing a fur coat that was too big to actually belong to her. Her curly blonde hair escaped the collar that she was holding over her head with her hands. Her legs popped out below, naked down to her bare feet. She was ragged and dirty and, from the looks of it, it wasn’t necessarily because of the invasion.
“Can ya help me?” She asked, tearfully. “Are ya gettin’ out?”
“Yes,” Ayane told her, turning to continue jogging. “Nestor, grab her.”
“What?” Nestor asked, not liking the idea.
Frustrated, Ayane turned back and pointed at Nestor, holding it for a couple of seconds. Then, without saying a word, she turned forward and marched off.
Nestor got the idea. The little girl skipped her feet towards them, almost slipping on the cold, wet floor.
“I can walk, I can wa-whoah!”
“Don’t worry, I have you.” Nestor grabbed her and tried to lift her in his arms, but then thought better of it. “Actually, piggyback, like the nice lady there.”
“Uhm…okay,” she timidly agreed. He crouched, she climbed on, and they all got moving.
They jogged along the quiet of a dead city that had been beaten bloody. The Shadow breathed in and out, holding tiredness at bay, willing her muscles to stay obedient and cooperative. Nestor was having a harder time of it but the girl was very light, so he would manage.
He had to.
“What’s your name, kid?” Nestor whispered back.
“Uhm…shouldn’t we be quiet?” A question that seemed far too clever to fit her innocently naive tone.
“Don’t worry, the Shadow will tell us if we’re noisy,” Nestor said.
“The Shadow?”
Ayane glanced back and caught a glimpse of interest from the girl. It was a very momentary glimpse, it was gone as fast as she could blink.
The little girl sighed, tired and confused. “Nergui?”
“That’s a weird name,” Nestor said without hesitation.
“Uhm…sorry?” She almost cried, the poor girl.
The Shadow clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Do not listen to him. And do not fear, we are approaching the edge of the city. Once we leave, we will be safer.”
“Just safer, huh? Not safe?” Nestor asked.
The Shadow turned away from them and faced ahead. “One is never truly safe, Nestor.”
* * *
They were forced to detour around a big square that led out of the city because there were two beasts standing guard there. One of them was on top of a building, of all things. That cost them roughly twenty minutes, but the Shadow did prefer a tight street to an open square. However, doing so only led her to more trouble.
“Hey! Hey, guys!”
Ayane didn’t recognize the whisper, and instincts informed her immediately that it wasn’t coming from any of her companions.
Really? More? Ayane wondered, exasperated.
Nestor stopped as well, and they both turned to find another group of survivors. They were three strangers that were obviously not family, though judging from how close they were to each other, they were friends. They didn’t wait to be called, they were already sneaking out of the building, which was the last one in the street, if not the city, and heading straight for them.
“Are you leaving? We’ll come with you, alright?” They were all adults, those three, and all men. They were dressed in clothes that didn’t really fit them, they had probably taken them from the home they had just left. One of them had theirs too tight, so it was easy to tell he was a fighter. They had their hairs cut short.
They looked like soldiers. Deserters. I have to save deserters now?
The Shadow didn’t say anything, she just turned around and walked away. Let them follow if they want.
“Just follow us, I guess?” Nestor said, unsure of himself. “No guarantees, I dunno how the lady’s even getting around, I can’t see past two feet in front of me.”
“Same here,” one of them said, and they were already following them. “That’s why we were waiting. For the mist to clear.”
“The mist does not clear,” the Shadow told them with a hint of impatience. “Keep up or get lost forever.”
“We’ll keep up,” said a different one of them, a bit too casually.
Ayane wasn’t happy about it but leaving them wouldn’t make her happy either. Plus, she was relieved to be out of the city. She didn’t know whether Melor’s battle was still raging, but she planned on making the exact same way back unless she saw something that motivated her otherwise.
At about that time, she saw something she didn’t like. She stopped.
“Shadow?”
Ayane walked on, intimidated. Her body shivered momentarily.
“Girl?” Yana herself asked, “see somethin’ scary?”
Ayane turned to the right and resumed her jogging. Yes, she had seen something scary alright.
Hundreds of the things were marching back to Pelindrad. If she ran at top speed she was sure she could get out of their way, but with the group? The certainty was considerably less.
None of them could see it, the mass of monstrous silhouettes rampaging across the open plains in their direction. It was so aggressive how they traveled, crashing on the ground as they leaped on and on.
Soon enough, the others would hear it.
“Whoah, do you hear that?” Nestor asked.
Sooner than she thought.
“That…sounds like a lot of them,” said a soldier.
“Can we be faster?” One of the soldiers asked. “Let’s be faster.”
“Can we be silent?” Ayane spat back at the cowards, “let us be silent.”
She was The Shadow. She was supposed to be the intimidating thing they should be in awe of. Yet, there she was, carrying a small old woman on the most awkward piggyback of all piggybacks. There she was, putting her life at risk for a bunch of strang
ers.
What was wrong with her?
The Beasts came closer in their approach, but at that point, it was apparent that she and the others would successfully get out of their way. The Beasts could see very well in the dark, she knew that much, but it wouldn’t matter once they cleared the plains to hide behind a hill.
“We will stop here,” Ayane informed them, crouching so Yana could get off. “Until they pass.”
“Until they pass? What if they find us??”
The Shadow faced against the former soldier even though the mask hid her disdain. Of all the survivors to show cowardice, the deserter was first on call. Obviously.
“They will find us if we leave cover,” Ayane told him.
“She knows what she’s doing, guys,” Nestor said, grabbing hold of the little girl to set her down. She giggled in whispers, from being ticklish.
“She’s smart, alright,” the little girl concurred, pushing Nestor away. “Stop it, let go of me haha.”
“We should leave in that direction then,” another said, pointing away from the hill, “we’ll keep under cover and ga–”
“You are very welcome to go,” Ayane told them, pointing in the same direction. “All of you. I will stay.”
“What’s your problem, lady? We’re just trying to help,” the soldier complained.
The Shadow stepped towards the man that had decided to talk back to her as if he had equal standing. “A coward trying to help, now that is rich.”
“A coward?” the man was offended.
“You are deserters,” Ayane accused, keeping her voice low. “You fled the fighting and abandoned those you vowed to protect.”
“Prote…did you see those beasts? We’re supposed to fight those things?!” One of them asked, all but confirming it.
“Lessons of morality from a thief,” another said, rolling his eyes.
The Shadow flinched, insulted.
“Yes, I am a thief,” she told them, noticing she had made the mood tense, and caring very little about it. She wanted to act out a bit since her life was in danger in a way she would never be able to justify to anyone. “I can be a coward, no one expects me to protect anyone or anything, I am not a soldier,” Ayane pointed out, and all three of them looked down in shame. “My vows are not yours, I do not receive sustenance so that, in case a fight comes, I must face it before others do. That is your business.”
The Shadow pulled back from the confrontation, standing straight and crossing her arms.
“Why help us then, Shadow?” Nestor asked, again. “You are a thief, after all? Right?”
She didn’t have an answer yet. In fact, she felt like she would never find one. Disgruntled, Ayane leaned out to look at the army of Beasts that could kill them as easily as she could a cricket.
“I am a stupid thief,” Ayane answered.
It was the truth. She wasn’t the Shadow, she was just a poser, a poser who was about to get herself killed should one of the beasts think to check the flanks any further.
They waited in silence, with the deserters offering no more conversation or argument. They waited tensely and nervously for her to say that it was time to move.
So did she, anxious about making a mistake and moving them too soon. However, once the Beasts didn’t find them in the city, they would scour the surroundings. They should be assuming they were hiding, or perhaps she had already been recognized back there at the city? By the beast whose execution of Yana and Nestor she had foiled? Then they might assume her gone for good.
All Ayane could hope for was that the Head of Mist had also been spotted, thereby dividing their efforts. It was a weak hope because he, unlike her, wasn’t stupid. He would have ignored people in peril. If not due to a lack of compassion, then due to the correct sense of duty and greater good.
For whatever else, however, the Shadow had done it. Abandoning them now would be all the harder.
“Let us go.”
The Shadow was going to have to move them to a city that hadn’t been attacked when she didn’t even know how fast the Beasts themselves moved. She hoped that Melor’s battle had caused some deaths or some injuries at least, that their vehicles had suffered malfunctions forced upon them or any one thing that would slow their advance.
The Shadow wouldn’t let anything slow theirs.
Crouching, Ayane grabbed Yana off the floor, rising up to start the jog again.
“Ahh…I can hardly wait to walk on my own two feet again,” the old woman said, longingly.
“Yeah?” Nestor picked up the little girl. “I can’t wait to be fairly certain I’ll be okay in the next couple of minutes.”
“Silence and swiftness, everyone,” the Shadow told them. “Follow me.”
The cold started to get to her before the muscle pain. With all the commotion, mists and darkness, it had been easy to forget how snow sprinkled around the environment, submerging what little vegetation there was in chunks of white. That meant footprints, but in that environment, it wasn’t much of a problem to leave a few tracks.
The scary thought about the things they were trying to escape was that one could only evade them, never fight them. There was no safe zone, no portion of the world that would keep them safe, should the Beasts decide to be unrelenting in a chase.
Still, the rest of the trek was uneventful, even if still pretty tense. The Shadow could tell the others weren’t used to the silence. She didn’t like it either, she had warmed up to it over the years, but only so far as it didn’t make her anxious anymore. The same couldn’t be said of the small group she was rescuing.
Not only have I done less than expected, but this will also delay my return, Ayane considered, berating herself.
The Head of Mist would for certain arrive before her, probably having done his duty a lot better than she had done hers.
The Shadow tried to convince herself to leave them. She pictured the disappointment of her teacher, she remembered the consequences that would befall her and the clan, and imagined the scorn and disdain she would earn from the most Occult. She recalled all the lessons that had been ingrained into her mind, all in an effort to justify abandoning them.
The Shadow had gotten them out of the city. That was enough, that had to be enough, she had to hurry now.
But moment by moment, second by second, it became more impossible for her to do so. Her heart was the issue. Ayane knew in her heart that they would die were she to leave them.
An hour went by. The mist started to dissipate enough that everyone could now see around them. It wasn’t long until the gasps began, reacting to what she already knew surrounded them -- the signs of a great battle. Melor’s last stand.
A great battle that had been lost.
“So many people…” the little girl commented in a frightened kind of awe. Ayane realized then that she didn’t remember the little gir’s name. It didn’t matter, but it was embarrassing that she had forgotten it so quickly.
They were all truly shocked and horrified at the scene.
All of the weapons of humanity were broken. All of the soldiers in sight tore apart and bleeding as far as the eye could see, to her left, which confused her even more. The Shadow had taken them to cross by the flank, to avoid the big valley where the battle had been fought, and still they were walking through bodies. The battle had moved far from the valley, apparently.
“The terrible thing is,” Nestor pointed out, “there’s no sign of even one of them.”
Exactly, Ayane thought to herself, her heart full of pity and disdain. They are unstoppable.
“And we’re expected to fight those things,” one of the deserters said, “I signed up to fight people, or animals if there’s a need to, not…monsters.”
Ayane had no energy to despise them anymore. It was taking all of her concentration to maintain the last shred of dignity she had hinged on not showing one ounce of exhaustion or tiredness.
Mental stamina was a hard thing to hold steady, especially when there was no immediate per
ception of rest. It acutely enhanced pain.
The Shadow had learned to cope. She had learned that’s what it was: mental. She could deal with mental.
It took them the better part of half another hour to lose sight of bodies, at which point they had completely made it out of the mist. They could finally relax a bit as their breathing was allowed to perform normally again, but the cold became more noticeable. Thankfully, her costume wasn’t exactly thin-layered and had almost no skin showing, which meant better protection from temperature and wind.
After twenty minutes, her worst expectation was realized. Ayane’s heart skipped a bit when she noticed his presence. A near overwhelming despair flowed through her, making her stop in reaction. She looked sideways through her mask alone, maintaining her face turned forward, so that the others wouldn’t be able to tell. Still, she had stopped, so he would know she had noticed.
“Lady?” The little girl asked, noticing something was off.
Mist. Not the Beast mist, supernatural and deadly, but a member of the spy group employed by Kagekawa. An agent was standing several feet away from them. Watching.
He would report on what the Shadow was doing, which all but assured Ayane wouldn’t even have the chance to lie about having had more legitimate problems to justify her tardiness. Yet, for their sake, she considered yelling after him, asking what direction to go so she’d be sure she’d find a safe city.
“Shadow?” A voice asked almost next to her ear. Yana’s worry was pretty audible in her tone.
He was gone.
“I thought I saw something,” Ayane said, pulling Yana a bit up. Ayane breathed out and added,“but it was nothing.”
After a few minutes, two agents of Mist showed up. The Shadow didn’t react that time, she just kept moving. They left less than a minute later, only to come back afterward with two more.
What are they doing?
As she marched, the Shadow started to notice how they seemed to be popping up, as if to see what she was doing. It made her feel judged, in the bad sense of the word, in the sense that it made her feel naked and betrayed in some public space.
Yes, let us all look at how much the Shadow has strayed. Let us all gossip about her misgivings!
