Jack came at him from the left with a practice sword, and Harold barely got his arm up in time, the wooden blade cracking across his forearm hard enough to go white, and Harold's counter was sloppy — too wide, telegraphed from the shoulder — and Jack slipped it without effort and drove an elbow into his ribs that drove the breath from his lungs.
"Again!" Jack said.
Harold reset his footing. The sparring ground was a cleared patch of hardpack forty feet behind the command tent, bordered by supply wagon wheels, and the camp noise came through it — distant thuds from the ballista line, boots on dirt, someone hammering something into stone about eighty yards east. Harold's sweat was dripping in sheets, his breath gone ragged, his shirt plastered flat and his hair dripping, and the wooden sword in his hand felt like it had gained weight in the last hour.
Jack was breathing normally.
"You're holding your elbow out again," Jack said. "When you load for the draw-cut, your elbow telegraphs the angle. Any decent fighter with half a second understands what you're throwing."
"I noticed." Harold panted.
"Good, then notice it before it happens next time." He feinted low — Harold didn't bite — and then came with the shoulder-drop that Harold had seen twelve times and still couldn't stop, and the practice sword caught him across the jaw with the flat, hard enough to ring.
Harold took a step back and spat.
Jack was already circling, unhurried, wooden sword hanging loose at his side. "Your aura," he said. "Let's do it."
Harold blew out through his nose. Around them, the air already had a faint pressure to it — not intentional, just what he couldn't fully seal when he was exhausted. Ren and Corwin were posted at the wagon wheel perimeter, and Ren had his arms crossed. Corwin had taken about four steps back from where he'd started and hadn't appeared to notice.
This time, Harold reached for it deliberately, trying to let it out slowly.
The aura came out like a flash flood — rolling outward from his chest in a wave that made Jack plant his feet and flash his mana, a bright hard pulse that said not a chance without words. Corwin stumbled back a full step and swore loudly. Ren's mana flared up around his arms like a reflex, sharp and instinctive, and he looked down at his own hands as they trembled.
"Gods, not again," Ren said, to no one in particular.
"Your teeth go numb?" Corwin said.
Harold inhaled and clamped down, and the wave receded, but the edges didn't vanish so much as compress, and the twenty-foot radius around him still held the full brunt of his presence.
"That's it!" Jack said. "This will be a potent weapon when we get it under control."
"It's easy to let out and hard to contain," Harold said, in broken common.
"You're squeezing it. Full open or full shut, and nothing in between." He came forward, unhurried, and Harold could feel Jack's movement through his aura. Harold held it back, throttled it, and Jack hit him twice before he could bring the sword up — once across the shoulder, once across the hip — but he held the aura back and tried to push it toward Jack, the direction unsteady and spreading wide. Around the perimeter, he could feel Ren and Corwin both holding their mana up, reactive and ready, like men braced for something they couldn't see coming.
"Alright," Jack said, stepping back. "Low output. Just your presence, don't push. Hold it where it's there but not directing anything."
Harold breathed out and tried. The aura came down to something he could almost call controlled. He could feel his memories running through him but breathed into them and held his response back. His bloodlust hung in the air, thin and contained. Jack walked a slow circle around him, watching. Harold could feel the seam where control and release held. Keeping it at this level was like carrying one of those twenty-pound mugs.
"Guard up," Jack said, and came in fast from the right.
Harold watched the incoming sword, got his guard up, and the aura spiked on instinct when the practice steel closed on him — the spike catching Jack across the chest with a pulse of force that locked him in place — and Harold pressed the advantage while he had it, getting two solid hits in before Jack recovered. Harold dropped the aura entirely rather than let it run, and Jack walked back in, shaking his head.
"This isn't working. I need to learn a better way to manipulate it," Jack said.
"This will work eventually, but I agree this isn't ideal. It's an area I'm not familiar with — we'll need to find someone else to help you with the fine control. For now, you need daily meditation and time working through your memories. Ignoring them won't hold any longer."
He stopped in front of Harold and gave him a look that had pedagogical patience written all over it, a new expression on a face that usually wore blatant boredom. "You don't flinch when I throw a punch. You move your hands correctly and react right, but your aura is following your emotions, not your intent." He set the practice sword down and pulled a weighted short-stick from his belt — heavy wrapped cord over iron, the kind used for joint-locks and controlled pain — and Harold recognized it and tightened his grip. "Again."
The tanbō was meaner. Harold hated fighting against it, and Jack knew it. Jack used it to probe spaces and redirect fast, and Harold spent the next twenty minutes getting systematically bruised — his hip taking a solid shot, then his shoulder again, then the inside of his wrist when his grip shifted wide — and through all of it he kept trying to bring the aura up at a manageable level and kept accidentally unleashing the full effect.
Too much, and invisible pressure rolled outward in waves that made soldiers unconsciously avoid the perimeter. Too little, and it was harder to track where his aura ended and the environment began.
Harold stopped a thrust with his forearm, let Jack get close, threw an elbow, and Jack caught his arm and redirected it into a lock that bent Harold sideways, and Harold felt the aura surge and caught it, throttled it down to the tight radius, and Jack felt the change and released and stepped back.
"That's better," Jack said.
Harold straightened, rotating the shoulder. "Still too slow."
"Yes. But any progress is better than none." He picked up the long practice sword and rolled it once in his palm. "The separation's the problem — you're treating it like a second tool, something to reach for. Your aura is a reflection of you. Your soul marks everything you experienced. The good and the bad, and you have a lot of bad. Your aura is an outward expression of your soul, and as your aura is released, we can feel your experiences. What and who you are." He came in without announcing it, and Harold fell for the feint and caught the flat of the blade across his head and his world went sideways for a beat.
He got a hand on the ground and pushed back up.
"Keep going," Jack said pleasantly. "You're not concussed."
Harold found his footing, spat dirt, contained his anger, and brought the sword up. The man was a demon, but complaining would accomplish nothing, and they both knew it.
They ran two more exchanges. Harold got one good hit in — the sword cracking across Jack's ribs at a decent angle, would have ended a real duel. Jack stepped back from it, made a sound that was neither approval nor disapproval, and came back in.
When Jack finally stepped back for the last time and drove the practice sword into the ground beside him, Harold was breathing through his teeth, and his forearm had gone from white to purple-yellow.
"Aura needs daily work now," Jack said. "Not just in sparring. Stand around with it running at low power until it no longer feels like effort. Do it while you're reading maps. Do it while you're briefing the lords. Do it until it's background noise."
"I'll add it to the schedule," Harold said flatly.
Jack looked at him. "You're pissed."
"You hit me in the ear!"
A small, devilish smile. "You got hit in the head because you telegraphed your movements. Concealing your intent requires a mastery of the body you don't quite have yet — but you're getting better, Lord." He crouched and picked up the water skin beside the supply wagon. "The aura's going to save your life more times than you'll count, if you can learn to use it. You've spent months holding it down. We have to unlearn that." He tossed Harold the water skin. "Drink."
Harold drank half and poured the rest over his head, and the cold hit his scalp and ran down the back of his neck, and for a moment the camp noise and the pressure behind his eyes both receded.
Ren and Corwin had drifted close enough that Harold could see them in his peripheral — both with their mana still hovering just under the surface. Corwin was rubbing his jaw. Ren was watching Jack walk away with an almost fearful expression.
"You alright?" Harold said.
"Peachy," Ren drawled.
"Corwin?"
"My teeth feel weird," Corwin said. "But I'm fine, my lord."
Harold lowered the water skin.
Hale was standing at the edge of the cleared ground with a leather document roll under one arm, having arrived at some point during the last exchange and said nothing about it. Harold looked at him.
"How long have you been there?"
"Long enough to see you get kicked around the circle." His expression was professionally neutral. "Looked like it hurt. Glad it wasn't me."
"Glad you enjoyed it. I'd like to see you go a few rounds with him."
"I didn't say that." He unrolled the document. "Reports came in while you were getting tutored."
Jack took his practice sword out of the ground and walked away without another word.
Harold sat down on the nearest supply crate and scrubbed his face with the hem of his shirt. "Give them to me."
Hale pulled out the first paper and read. "Lord Dalen. Three ritual circles destroyed since he moved out. The pattern we plotted has held — they believe the circles are arranged in a larger pattern mirroring the smaller one, each at an apex around a circle spread across the area with the nest at the center. He thinks he can destroy one more before turning back." He turned the page. "Nineteen casualties. A lot lower than I'd feared. He's done well."
Harold took a pull from a different water skin. "Good. Tell him to keep going — he'll know he's getting close to collapsing the larger circle when the ritualist workings start showing instability."
"I'll draft it." Hale moved to the next report. "Lord Brennig." He paused slightly. "They found the knight century."
Harold looked up from his forearm.
"The century's intact and functional — that's the good news." Hale set the first page back. "The bad news is the Hold." He looked at Harold directly. "The Gemheart ancestral hold is massive. Whatever Bram Ironhold described, it undersells the actual structure — multi-level complex, initial survey puts it at nine or twelve tiers potentially, deepest sections unmapped, upper sections extensively trapped."
"Trapped by whatever moved in or trapped by the dwarves?"
"Both, apparently, in alternating layers." He read from the sheet. "The century attempted to push deeper twice and was driven back by goblins and at least eight confirmed trolls in the upper complex alone. They've established a rest area at a choke point on the second tier and are working on a defensive site further in."
Harold rubbed his temple with two fingers and left them there. "Completion estimate?"
"Brennig writes 'cautiously optimistic' — with specific air quotes he apparently told the runner to convey. No date." Hale lowered the sheet slightly. "He's requesting utility potions. Scent concealers, explosives, the paralysis ones. Specifically asks for something that gives sustained light when thrown and anything that helps with underground orientation."
"Tell him he'll get what we have in stock, and I'll teach Finn how to make the light one — we only have the ingredients because we bought out the alchemist in town. And remind him the second knight century would be very welcome back at the assault line whenever the hold allows it."
"He knows. He put that in the report himself."
"Then don't tell him. Just the potions." Harold pulled his hand off his temple. "What about our situation here?"
Hale folded the Brennig report and tucked it back. "Ditches are in — new forward positions that give the ballista crews direct line on the first fortification gate with good berm cover. The problem is the ritual circle uphill is getting more accurate as we push closer. Crews are taking longer to make sure positions are shielded, and we've caught them testing arrow range from the shelf."
Harold grunted. "They're draining their own troops to sustain the rate, or they've got some kind of blood farm up there. Blood users are always drawn to intelligent life because it gives them the most power."
Hale didn’t argue it. "Lady Maren pulled the forward push until the protection work caught up. The bombardment rate is down to about a quarter of what it was because of the ammo situation. If we can't resupply bolt stocks within a few days, we lose the suppression edge at the first gate, but she thinks she's close to creating a breach in one section. We haven't touched the utility heads — saving those for the assault — but normal bolts are almost gone."
Harold looked at the ground between his boots.
"Patrols?" he said.
"Multiple contacts since the sweep this morning. Six engagements, nothing the men couldn't break — but I think they're probing different vectors. Somebody's testing what we respond to and where we respond from." He paused. "I'd like to increase patrol size tonight. If it were me, I'd be getting ready to raid us."
"Do it. Don't rotate the same men to the same sectors two days in a row. They'll get lax." Harold pushed himself up off the crate. "What else?"
Hale looked at the entrance to the command tent instead of at Harold. "Lady Renna just came in."
She was sitting on the ground outside the tent with her back against the supply stack, both legs straight in front of her, her scouting pack dropped sideways like she'd let it fall rather than set it down. Her right knee had a bandage on it, done in a hurry, and there was a tear across the left shoulder of her jacket that hadn't been there when she'd left. She had a waterskin in both hands, draining it, and when she looked up and saw Harold coming, she held up one finger.
"One minute," she said. "I was going to come find you, but I thought I'd just sit here for a minute first."
Harold crouched in front of her. "You look like you had a day."
"Several days in one," she said. "The knee happened when one of the lizardman patrol units found me first. I also walked to the edge of a ritual circle, which I do not recommend — nobody told me those things feel like someone's pressing their thumb into your brain." She finished the water skin, dropped it on the pack, and looked up at him with her eyes bright despite the exhaustion. "I got your map, though, and Harold — you are going to want to see this."
"Need a potion first?"
"Already took one, can't take another so soon." She was already digging in her pack's inner pocket, pulling out a folded roll of parchment with the focused energy of someone who'd been waiting to show it off for two days. Hale appeared from the tent entrance and set a folded camp stool beside Harold and a fresh mug on top of it. Renna took the mug without looking, drank, grimaced at the temperature, and unrolled the map on the ground between them in one smooth motion.
It was dense work — Renna's style of notation that packed more information into a square foot of parchment than most survey teams managed in a week: elevation markers, trail indicators, two large circled areas that Harold recognized as ritual circle sites, cluster notations for monster population, and fine-line detail on the geography of the shelf approach and what lay on the other side of the mountain.
"Two more ritual circles," she said, pointing with her finger and moving fast, like she'd been rehearsing the order. "Here and here. Both active — I could see the glow on the second one from about three hundred meters before I worked out what I was looking at. They're far enough from the road that Dalen's sweep should reach them before they become a problem, if he can sustain pace." Her finger moved. "This is a waterfall. Big and beautiful — drops off the mountain's northeast face, probably forty meters into a basin below."
She paused for a beat.
"I went and looked behind it."
"And?" Harold said.
"Nothing." Her expression conveyed the philosophical injustice of this. "I spent twenty minutes back there because it seemed like there should be something." She tapped the map. "The water was clean, though, and the basin was gorgeous. Next time we do this, we're setting up camp within walking distance of something like that."
"I'll put it in the planning notes."
"I'm serious," she hummed. She was already moving her finger. "Shallow cave complex here, lower shelf face, about a kilometer west of the road. We had to use a torch — the floor is soft, silt over stone, which means water's been moving through it. It narrowed to about half a meter at the farthest point I could push it." She looked up at him. "I think it goes under the shelf."
Harold's eyes went to the position of the cave mouth on the map, then to the fortification above it, then back. He did the geometry without saying it out loud.
"I couldn't confirm it," Renna said. "Too narrow, and I didn't have the tools. But the silt pattern and the air movement through the crack both pointed the same direction." She kept her finger there and looked at him steadily. "So that's sitting there, when you're ready for it."
"Hmm," Harold said, and kept looking at the map. Hale had moved to stand behind him without a word and was also studying it.
"River here," Renna continued, moving her finger to the far notation. "Larger than yours, runs along the base of this far slope. Multiple monsters in it — half the size of the Thresher King, but there's a lot of them, and they're fighting each other for sections of the bank. Lizardman camp on the north side, but I didn't approach it. Did I mention the smell?"
Hale grunted. "Smart."
"The smell is genuinely extraordinary," she said. "And we have no showers here; we all smell. But god, they smell. Nothing could prepare me for that."
"You said monsters — more than the river things?" Harold said.
"I was getting there." She pulled her finger to a different notation — a wide cluster area on the shelf's eastern approach, marked with a small symbol he hadn't seen her use before. "Field of what looked like large sunflowers. Except when I got within about fifty meters, they tracked me. All of them, individually, at different ranges and rates, each flower turning to follow. And then one of them fired — I can't describe it better than that, there was no visible beam, no sound — and that's where I got this."
She pushed her sleeve up slightly to show a pale burn along her forearm, the skin smooth and tight the way a scald went when it healed fast.
"Invisible beam," Harold said.
"Best description I have." She pushed the sleeve back down.
Harold looked at the field notation with an interested expression.
"I want to harvest some of those," he said.
She looked at him.
"Don't give me that look," Harold said. "A plant that fires invisible energy at external stimulus is an extremely interesting ingredient, and I'd very much like to understand it."
"It fired at me."
"And you're fine." He kept looking at the map. "Put a marker on the field."
She put a marker on the field under protest. "The last thing," she said, and her voice shifted. She pulled a small folded sketch from the pack's side pocket and laid it flat on the ground.
The sketch showed a creature about the size of a large dog — except it had no legs and its body didn't sit in any conventional relationship to gravity. Cylindrical, narrow at one end and wider at the other, a membrane along both sides in loose folds, and its underside opened in a structure that looked like gills but was clearly feeding from below rather than filtering water. It was floating. Renna had sketched it from three angles.
"I spotted them above the cave complex," she said. "Maybe forty feet up the shelf face." She looked up. "It didn't react to me at all. I watched it for fifteen minutes. It drifted along the shelf face, really slowly — maybe two feet a minute — and when the wind came up, it adjusted but didn't fight it. Just drifted with it. The membrane opened up and caught more air, then sort of billowed out from the underside to reposition the body weight." She tapped the sketch. "And this structure here — the gill-type opening on the underside — it was open the whole time it was stationary. And fine particles were falling from it. Sparkled a little. I thought it was scale at first." She paused. "It might have been powder."
Harold picked up the sketch and looked at it.
"What color?" he said.
"Pale. Almost gold." She held his gaze. "I didn't get close enough to collect any. There were like a hundred of them, spread across sixty meters of shelf face."
Harold looked at the membrane structure in the sketch for a long moment — the way it would open when the creature rose, billowing to catch air, releasing powder from the underside as it drifted. He set the sketch down.
"Those are going to be difficult to harvest," he said.
"They were forty feet up a rock face."
"And apparently comfortable there." He looked at the sketch again. "I'd need powder from the underside and probably a body. Maybe a job for the archers."
"They seemed docile," she said. "Which, after the sunflowers, was an enormous relief."
Harold stood, and Hale handed him the document roll with the other reports tucked inside. Harold looked at the full map one more time.
"Good work," he said. "Seriously, Renna. This might be what breaks the stalemate."
She drank from her mug, stretched her bandaged leg out in front of her, and tilted her head back against the supply stack with a deeply satisfied expression.
"I know," she said. "Where’s the food at?"