Amber

After taking inventory, Amber bit her lip. Their entire cart of water sausages. That's what she and Harper called 'em. Gone. More than half her quiver of chill powder loosed into those damned unnatural monsters.

Mathew was running low on reserves. And now she was certain they'd bundled themselves up with allies of a shady design.

Thankfully Mathew had found a way to message her that he wasn't in the dark. At least she could rely on him to react well. What bugged her was this claim of inevitable death. So far, they'd survived just fine. Only Ben and Grant brought up the idea of Alphas stalking around for those who grew strong enough to be worth notice.

Mighty suspicious that they presented an invisible problem and the solution. Then tell us that this Alpha can be taken down. Maybe it was true this one time but something was fishy.

What probably bugged her most was Ben. He read as an upstanding guy. With Grant up and about, it was like hooks had settled into Ben, pulling him under Grant's control. She'd already checked with Mathew that no mental shenanigans were going on. Still, she was unsettled by it.

Holding onto Mathew's arm for balance, their path became more obstructed by flora, which would instill a sense of wonder if it wasn't for this blasted heat. Some crystal centric plants had appeared. They started as patches of crystal grass. Growing in size and variety as they continued closer to the territory's core, they continued to be dwarfed by the transparent plants with floaty bits. As the original variety of flora boomed into a canopy of oddities.

The variety of colors was like walking through the living embodiment of a stained glass window. Magical and disturbing. Or maybe her mood was just sour. What she saw next didn't help.

Mountain man Grant come over the rise with another bundle of those black tubers.

"Thank you," Mathew accepted the food.

Amber said nothing. Grandma taught her that much. If you didn't have nothing nice to say, it was better to say nothing. While she lost her temper sometimes, she did try.

For once, Mathew stuffed food past the jaws of his exoskeleton. At least that was something to talk about. "What you eating for? I mean like normal eatin?"

Finishing his mouthful, Mathew answered. "Saves my magic for something important. Hey, do you remember what I told you before we left?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

Damn him. She wasn't the sort to cut off good people who were in over their heads. How dare he ask her to lower herself to being someone like that. Some things were more important than their consequences.

And damn Grant too, for the same failing.

Huffing, Amber looked to the sky, praying for strength. That's when she saw it.

A man made of glass. Tall and long, the details weren't as straightforward as she would have liked them to be. He was wearing an emerald half-poncho half-cape. As she watched, his gear began to fade away like Grant and Ben could.

Shifting the focus of her free scan to threat assessment rather than food, it lit up highlighted in a vivid red.

"Up," Amber yelled, drawing her bow.

[Test 4-2Y

Next model after 'x' - oh God, it was a man. Native Knight of the Crispalid order. Dangerous, bounty hunter.]

Loosing an arrow, Amber watched 4-2Y contemptuously slap it out of the air. The explosion of chill powder should have directed attention on target.

Waiting for 4-2Y to come out of the cloud, Amber dared to hope it had frozen quickly.

Follow up arrow knocked, Amber started looking around. If it was frozen in the tree where Mathew was looking all the better. If it'd slipped by like Grant and Ben could do... Better to be facing it.

A glass knife flung through the air at her from a crystal tree line. Amber dropped to the ground letting gravity aid her dodge.

Landing on her back, chains burst from the ground, overlapping and tying together over her. Channeling a touch of her magic Amber stood, and the chains went from pressing the air from her lungs to falling from her like silken sheets.

Mathew was not so free.

Two opposed spirals of chains bonded to each other every time they crossed, binding Mathew to the obsidian foundation.

Dropping her bow, Amber rushed to Mathew while drawing her sidearm. No sign of Ben yet, Grant had vanished and the 4-2Y was only the occasional flit at the edge of her vision.

Amber channeled another touch of magic upon reaching Mathew. Be free.

Her power took a big hit from that effort. It was the quake that loosed a fault line. Something in the world of tectonic magnitude shifted. Freedom rippled out from her effort, while Amber had no idea what else happened, the chains fell away.

Mathew pointed unerringly at the flickering form.

Following with her aim, she raised her finger to the trigger. Mechanical chunking from their side distracter her. A crystal arrow broke against Mathew as he wrapped around her.

"Sneaky fucker," He growled. "Come out and fight me!"

Swinging Ripper Mathew smashed crystals apart. Scattering them like decorative fan blades over the obsidian. The reflective shimmering of light and scuffing of shards dialed her aim onto a moving form. One moment with a target in the irons.

"How do I know it isn't our scouts?" Amber yelled, while hesitating.

She needed to calm down and focus.

To answer, Mathew pointed at their target. Another chunking sound registered, this time from behind her. Before her mind caught up pain laced through her leg as a crystal bolt ripped a path clean through her calf.

Health drained over to keep the bleeding at bay. Then again at her command, to mute the pain.

"How?" Amber asked as the monster rotated around them more. It didn't make sense. How could it shoot from someplace it wasn't?

Had it predicted where she would be and used a time delay device?

At this point, it was clear 4-2Y was targeting her. Amber settled on chalking the how up to magic and working to kill it.

Driving more power into free scan she blended it with her archery skill and let the intelectus work together to better feed Amber information on where to shoot. Her archery skill rebelled for a moment about aiding non-archers but another application of Freedom and the mind gratefully broke from her constraints.

While she put together something to help them, Mathew went and spread his lightest haze yet behind them where he hadn't spread shards out yet.

He'd narrowed her window. Now it was up to her to use it.

A flash of movement and her body twitched almost of its own accord. Following the intelectus team her willpower made, Amber kept the action going. She squeezed the trigger, and her Glock barked, spitting out a bullet.

Hitting something, Amber saw a spray of crystals fly away from the open air.

From the crystal forest, Ben launched forward in full vision, his net an origami quadruped. Lashing at 4-2Y as it recovered from the bullet impact, Ben's weapon tried tangling it up.

Did she trust her skills to hit the target and not Ben?

Grinding her teeth, she held her fire and went back for her bow.

Home plate sliding across the crystal opened more tears in her legs and drew more health. She risked taking her eyes off the nearly invisible enemy for a moment to gather the bow. Drawing and bringing to bear in one smooth motion, Amber felt her stride. Smooth is fast. Loosing the chill powder, she felt it arriving on target before it landed.

Embrittled and under threat from opposing sides, the native Knight tried to disengage. Raining more freezing arrows, Amber took advantage of its limited range of vision.

Six direct hits was enough that she'd seen an average monster break under its own weight. This one kept going without slowing down.

Mathew stomped towards it, Ripper raised in a ready position. Its frost-covered face, now visible, broke into a lecherous smile looking straight at her. Vaulting overhead of Mathew, it landed in the span between Mathew and herself. Having coaxed away her defender, there was nothing between them now.

Drawing an emerald blade from nowhere, the abomination sped towards her. One last shot from her bow near point blank range blinded them both. Her chill powder was like dropping into an icy pond on a stupid winter challenge. Even dodging to the side the frost clung to her. How she avoided the attack was beyond her.

Oh, it was him. Grant stood in the distortions of the chill aura, his shield turning away the blade and his club countering. Attacks lashed back and forth faster than she could follow. It was just playing with them. Fighting slower then faster depending on the enemy.

Lumbering back over, Mathew had an especially wild look in his deep set eyes. 4-2Y open-palmed Grant forcing him across the clearing of shattered crystals to engage Mathew one on one.

While it paused and smiled, drunk on its own power, Amber saw the gunshot wound. Broken glass from where a man's ribs would be made a foggy tunnel to a flattened bullet in the center of its chest.

Then it moved to engage Mathew.

That would be her moment. When the monster ejected Mathew, she'd unload into it. Amber was not about to take unspent bullets to the grave.

Again dropping her bow, she took aim.

4-2Y delivered pounding strikes against Mathew's arms. Ripper was missing and Amber didn't even see what happened. An inhuman roar bellowed out from Mathew and he lunged forward, taking unmitigated blows to the body. Bones broke and healed as he sacrificed just to get within the monster's guard.

Grey strips of flesh expanded from Mathew's arms and he began to entangle the creature. Throwing his jaws wide, Mathew bit into its neck. After a moment of its resilience thwarting him, muscles formed outside Mathew's jaw and powered them closed. Broken shards of glass spilled around his bite.

All the while the monster continued to pound on Mathew. Get out of there!

"Let it go!" Amber screamed.

Mathew didn't listen.

Running forward, she leveled the Glock point blank range and pulled the trigger. Exploding glass dug into her arm and side of her face, and the wellness of her health faded into the new wounds.

Red light bloomed through the glass man and it threw Mathew away so hard the ground tore free. Shrieking and pressure blew her away like a hard shove. Then its shriek became words. "WHO AM I?" Holding its head the being staggered.

Ripper held in Ben's fist like net impacted its back with force amplified by swinging on a twenty-foot tether. Glass chunked away and it screeched again.

With a mighty leap, the red light dimmed, almost fading away. Amber tracked its retreat in the direction they were already going. Turning all around, no new enemy showed.

"Please, for the love of apple pie and all other things that are holy, tell me that was the Alpha." Amber implored.

Grant shook his head. "That was the power of a Native. I haven't come across much in writing so far. What I do know is that each Knighthood is a gifted class, and I worry more that a Knight of stealth was brought to such a fate."

Concern bloomed on the bearded face. "Ben, are you hurt?"

"Mind fatigue, mild to moderate. I'll have to repair my net. Nothing broken." Ben's clipped speech made Grant nod in understanding.

The cracking of crystal shards drew her attention.

Mathew was breathing a fog of digestion magic in a low hanging circle around himself. On his knees, he punched the ground, shattering crystals caught between.

"Mathew!" Amber stutter-stepped, not willing to step into the cloud but wanting to get close.

Looking up at her, the tunnels to his eyes glowed red.

"Grant!" Mathew growled as his digestion magic dispelled.

"Yes?"

"Tell me everything you know about Hybrid sickness! Do it, do it now!" Mathew shook as he rose to his full height.

"It's a sickness of the mind. The instinct of the non-human side grows, eventually consuming the Hybrid in an animalistic state. First, lack of civility when it should be expected. Starts at getting angry at nothing much, progressing to eating indiscriminately, lack of boundaries, more specific hints of issues based on the nature of the non-human side." Grant stood perfectly still. "As self-identity breaks down, the Hybrid begins to seek territory and reproduction. Fighting off would be challengers with abandon. Friends, monsters, Alphas. Typically that last one doesn't go well. The research is sparse and second-hand. So take it for what it's worth."

"The words from people with nothing to lose." Mathew spat. "That is what they are worth. True as a deathbed confession."

"Mathew," Amber interrupted. "What happened?"

[New skill awarded: Living skeletal weapon 25. Living skeletal weapon 25 overrides living skeletal weapon 24.]

[Secret condition detected. Living skeletal weapon 25 overrides controlled evolution 3.]

[Secret condition detected Alpha ascension 3%]

"I think I'm turning into a monster," Mathew whispered.

"How?" Amber asked.

"You." Mathew stayed quiet. "You freed me from more than those chains. You freed me from guardrails that were protecting me."

"No!" Amber shook her head. "I'm sorry."

Turning on Grant, she glared. "Was it really worth coming out here! Huh, was it! Fix this, it was your plan. Fix it!" How could I do this? This is my fault. Amber's guilt spoke in her heart.

"I can't," Grant held up a stalling hand. "But any knowledge of how is there." He pointed at the place that was his goal all along.

"Past the not-even-an-Alpha that handed our asses to us, played with us?" Amber fumed.

"No, dear. Past that and then past the actual Alpha." Grant's slimy eyes gleamed.

Amber dropped on her knees and cradled Mathew's head on her shoulder. Speaking quietly next to his ear, she asked. "What do we do?" After causing him to live in his fears, she'd walk through hell to redeem herself.

Mathew locked his glimmering red eyes on the distant Alpha. "We do what we must."