The innocent woman’s screams tore at Shaya’s rational mind, demanding she surge into the room and lay into the villains that threatened to torture her. Her blood boiled at the injustice and her esper fanned the flames, Phaedra’s pact echoing in her mind with her esper’s voice of ringing steel: fight for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

No, she thought to herself, rushing in there won’t help the woman, or all the other people this cabal threatens.

‘You swore to fight for them,’ Phaedra insisted within her mind, Shaya feeling the esper's glower, ‘not those who are convenient to save.’

There’s a greater good to consider, Shaya thought, moving to the doorway and peeking around it to survey the dining hall, and we might still be able to save her.

Shaya mentally placed herself on the west side of the keep, looking east. The large hall had vaulted ceilings and was full of pillars that had seen better days, with rafters added to help keep the ceiling from collapsing. Directly across from Shaya’s entryway was another, that eastern entrance appearing to lead into a kitchen where she spotted the occasional servant moving around.

“They’re talking about a ‘grand alliance’ coming to fruition,” Sathaea translated in a whisper.

The chained woman was dragged in by two vicious-looking guards from a southern entrance, no older than Shaya and with at least a drop of divine blood manifested in her ocean-blue hair. She kicked and screamed as they forced her towards a long dining table with a dozen dark wooden chairs on either side. At the south end, four regal figures sat before an array of food, waving delicate silverware as they spoke in jovial tones. Three men and a woman wore silk robes in a style similar to Samorn’s, though less lavish, the colours less vivid.

“Something about the culmination of pacts made long ago.”

In the middle of the table was a cleared space that contained manacles and belts meant to restrain a person. The victim was thrown there and cuffed to the table, her limbs belted down tightly to prevent her from squirming too much. The four nobles eyed her with an unnatural hunger, their eyes slowly glowing as Azurite filled them.

“Honouring the sacrifices made by their people...” Sathaea continued in a heated whisper, “and those still required to fuel their power.”

Beyond that, at the opposite end from the four nobles, close to where the keep was collapsing into the lake below, rose an enormous, leafless tree with bark the colour of pale flesh and sap that oozed from it like blood. Branches from the tree reached and twined to form a throne of thorns where a fifth person sat, cowled in black robes. One pale hand swirled a crystal goblet of red wine while the other pet the head of a large monster; its shape was generally feline, but its skin was rubbery and inky black, with two tentacles that grew from its back and ended in multiple spikes. An uncanny twin Arctiger sat on the Master’s other side as well, its broad, feline head scanning the surroundings.

Shaya ducked away from the entrance as its pure white eyes moved her direction, not wanting to reveal herself just yet.

“The Master just declined the honour of beginning the ritual sacrifice to ‘The Lady of Thorns’,” Sathaea said with a shudder, “passing the honour along to one of the guards, I think. His words... they sound like a susurration of insects buzzing around.”

‘You must move to save the girl,’ Phaedra stated.

We can learn so much if we just listen in a bit longer...

‘At what cost?’

I liked you better when you were silent.

The rest of her team looked at her expectantly, their gallows humour gone and replaced with nervous energy – made worse by Shaya’s own tension.

With a deep breath to steady herself, she pinged Basillo and Apricot through the tele-pearl, and whispered her report to them and her squad, pointing through the wall to approximate where things were located: “Four sadistic apostates, at least Azurite mages, seated at one end of the table. Victim strapped down a few feet from them, with two armoured guards. The ‘Master’ sitting on an unnatural thorned throne, flanked by two Titan spawn. No other guards or Titan spawn in the vicinity.

“We need to move fast to save her,” the look in Sathaea and Lan’s eyes suggested they thought that was foolish, “and hit them hard before they can overwhelm us with spells or call for additional guards.

“What can people offer to the surprise attack?”

“This is suicide,” Sathaea hissed with a glare.

Shaya glared back, willing herself to lock eyes with the smaller woman. To her surprise, and Sathaea’s, she managed to for a few seconds.

“Not helping,” Lan whispered, “I don’t have any offensive spells, but I’m confident I can hold off the guards if they’re only coming through a single doorway. Their iron doesn’t interfere with my foresight, unless I’m stabbed.”

He didn’t have to add that being stabbed came with additional problems.

“Dining table is wood, I can explode it,” Ren offered in a hushed tone, “I’m better at fine manipulation than explosive force, but the shrapnel should still cause some damage and distract them.”

“Can you channel the explosion away from the victim?” Shaya asked.

“Not particularly well,” he replied with a shake of his head, “are there extra chairs lining the table?”

“Good idea, there are,” Shaya smiled, “maybe focus your explosion at the Master and spawn, hopefully slow them down.

“Sathaea,” Shaya turned to the woman, eyes sliding off her as if she weren’t of note, “if you can’t offer offense, then enhance us with a support spell. Lan and I will take down what minor apostates we can before focusing our attention on the Master and the spawn.”

“What about taking them alive?” Lan asked.

“Take out the first two by any means necessary, we’ll try to keep the last two and the Master alive.

“Ready?” Shaya finished.

They nodded.

‘Apricot, Basillo, prepare the assault,’ she transmitted her thoughts across the tele-pearl, ‘we’re moving in thirty seconds.’

‘Got it, good luck,’ Apricot responded.

She felt her companions draw in their aether and channel their spells, hoping that the apostates and spawn in the next room hadn’t honed their vision enough to detect them around the corner. Without the element of surprise, Shaya suspected they had little chance against them.

Shaya set those thoughts aside, focusing on the moment and what needed to happen next. Phaedra’s steely gaze remained on her, feeling like a heavy weight across her shoulders, but the connection was still forged and she was still able to draw in the Amber and Jade she needed for the battle ahead.

With another nod from her comrades, they rounded the corner and charged.

Without sound, Sathaea’s enchantment fell on them, clearing their minds and filling them with courage. Shaya felt her sore arms stop complaining and her doubts from the corruption recede, if only somewhat. Sathaea’s spell was notably weaker than Samorn’s, either a difference in raw skill or a disadvantage to inspiring courage wordlessly.

Ren’s spell went off next, the four chairs closest to the black robed Master exploding. The apostate leader snarled as a cloud of shrapnel swept over his lower body, the splinters punching through his robes and leaving his legs a bloody mess. The same cloud passed through the Arctigers as if they weren’t there and they didn’t react at all. A Jade glow emerged from within the Master’s cowl, and Shaya cursed knowing it wouldn’t take him long to recover.

The two nobles facing them looked shocked as she and Lan charged towards them, the two with their backs turned reacting slower. Shaya pumped Jade into the haft of her weapon, and it shot forward like an arrow. While her spell lacked Una’s punch, it possessed more than enough force for her spear tip to pierce into the attractive man’s chest before he could react. She pumped more Jade into the haft to reverse the extension, withdrawing it violently from her first victim and dragging the hammer head into the multi-jowled face of the apostate that peered around his chair to look at her. The metal slammed into the back of his head and toppled him out of the chair, Shaya hoping the retracting spell didn’t have enough force to crack his skull.

Lan’s mythrite blade pierced the chair next to her with ease, then slid through the chair’s occupant until the hilt rammed into the hard wood. He left the short blade protruding through the man’s chest, the apostate dropping his utensils to grasp at the weapon as his life blood pumped out of him. Lan spun around the chair and fluidly drew his main sword, slashing at the woman who had watched them come. The Azurite was gone from her eyes and Lan’s blade stopped mid-swing as his entire body froze, his muscles twitching as if fighting some restraining force.

Shaya’s ward against Azurite appeared a heartbeat later, but Amber magic could only protect against incoming spells – not dispel them.

She moved to intervene and knock out the last noble, but biting pain stabbed into her thigh and she glanced down to see a scalpel sticking out of it. The guard on the far side of the table had thrown whatever was at hand and moved to support the woman as she pushed away from the table, more Azurite filling her eyes as an ethereal mist manifested around her.

The guard nearest them rushed toward Shaya, as if he didn’t notice Sathaea within arm's reach of him. Ignorant of her presence entirely, she casually opened his throat with the tip of her estoc and leapt onto the table to intercept the next guard. Before she could complete her thrust, an inky-black tentacle slammed into her side, knocking her back to where she came.

The Arctigers, attuned to Azurite magic, clearly had no difficulty focusing their will to see her.

Shaya looked up to see where the attack came from, but the tentacle had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Then she noticed it: not a blurring of the air from something invisible, but a shadow cast onto a pillar from something camouflaged. She saw the shadow shrink as it coiled into itself, and she rushed towards Sathaea’s prone form to intercept it.

Her free hand grabbed part of her cloak and pulled it over herself like a shield, a pulse of Jade activating its barbs. The prisoner screamed and silverware rattled as the monster landed on the table a few feet from her. Another tentacle lashed at Shaya, but it didn’t expect her shield or the agony that the shield could bring. She grunted as the tentacle slapped her arm with incredible force, but she gritted her teeth against the pain and reacted quickly. Before the tentacle could be withdrawn, she rolled her arm and wrapped the cloak around the appendage, the barbs tearing into it and pinning it to her.

Then she pulled with all of her enhanced strength.

The Arctiger resisted with a deep-throated snarl, claws digging into the dining table.

But unfortunately for it, Shaya hated being late for class and had become quite capable at enhancing her strength with magic.

It mewled as she yanked it towards her, the monster forced to bring its head close enough for her to crush its skull with her hammer. As she withdrew her weapon, the creature’s camouflage faded and its rubbery skin returned to its ‘natural’ pale white with inky-black stripes.

Another pulse of Jade withdrew the barbs and she worked to free her cloak from the dead beast. Her efforts were interrupted as something heavy slammed into her, knocking her to the ground next to Sathaea. Claws scraped against her breastplate, and she saw the inside of a gaping mouth as jaws rushed towards her face. The Arctigers possessed several rows of teeth, and rather than a normal throat, Shaya’s eyes locked onto a monstrous squid beak within the maw.