The forest felt alive, almost as if it was breathing. It was the only way Aurora could describe it. Interestingly enough, she still couldn’t hear the insects or the birds or the animals. All there seemed to be was the slow, organic heave of the old trees pressing against each other in the windless night, the creak of wood settling. It was the kind of calm that existed in the warm embrace of anticipation. The night sat and waited, a gentle witness to Aurora and the four other Delvers crouched among the roots of the large trees.
Aurora sat with her back against a tree wide enough to hide a car behind it. Her knees were drawn up, her hands resting loose on her thighs. She did not fidget. Fidgeting she had learned growing up in the childhood she’d had was the habit of people who had not yet made peace with stillness. And if you lived a childhood running away from thugs owed by every family member alive that you knew, you learned to sit still and embrace it. After all, stillness was your only ally when you hid in the dumpster from men more than ready to have you pay off your family’s debt with your body. Besides, fidgeting usually came with nervousness, and a missing scout and a loose monster that could be hunting her as easily as she was hunting it was not enough to make her nervous. None of it was cause for fidgeting.
Beside her, Edd crouched against a nearby root, his long frame folded awkwardly as he tried to take up as little space as possible. Despite not being very large, he was clearly built for open spaces. He had been rolling the same coin across his knuckles for the past twenty minutes. Aurroa had since learned that it was the man’s version of fidgeting. For now it was no cause for concern, the coin still rolled along his knuckles very smoothly. Concern came when it became jerky, threatening to fall off at the slightest mistake. Aurora watched him without comment.
Everyone fidgeted in their own way, at least Edd’s was quiet. Bran’s was not. He ran a seemingly shaky finger along the strings of his crossbow.
“She said an hour,” Bran murmured.
“She said approximately an hour,” Edd replied, not looking up from his coin. “I has been forty minutes.”
“Forty-three,” Amara corrected from were she sat across the clearing. Aurora could feel the woman’s nervousness doing its best to get the best of her.
Edd’s eyes moved over to Aurora. “Then we have seventeen minutes before we begin to consider alternatives.”
Aurora ignored his look while Bran looked at Edd sideways. In the moonlight that filtered through the canopy of lives in thin silver strips, Bran’s expression was almost illegible. But Aurora knew the shape of his skepticism well enough by now. She had been on this task with this specific team for more than a week now. She knew the set of Bran’s jaw when he thought she was being too calm about something.
For all the teams professionalism, they still fell victim to their subconscious biases. They still had habits and ticks.
Across the small clearing they, Amara sat cross0legged on a flat stone. Her eyes were half-closed. She was the smallest of them, barely coming up to Aurora’s shoulder. Still, she had a type of stillness that Aurora had always envied when she was a child. It was the type of stillness an old classmate of hers had had in high school. It was not the stillness of discipline like that of Aurora’s but the stillness of someone whose mind was always somewhere else entirely. Amara was thinking about something that had nothing to do with what they were doing in the forest. Aurora could bet on it. and yet, she was always, somehow, ready for whatever she had to do.
Bran, in his annoyance, was standing with his shoulder pressed to a tree a few feet away from Aurora and Edd. Off to her left, he was watching the direction Lysa, their scout had gone. Apart from playing with his bowstring, he had not moved from that position in almost half an hour. For all his fidgeting, Bran had his own discipline. Like a trained sniper, he picked a post and kept it. His file said that he had actually been a child soldier once. One thing that stood out in the file was about one of his feats in military school, of how his friend had been punished for something else and he’d stood in the rain for two hours waiting for his friend’s release.
Tonight he took his place, drawing a finger across the string of his crossbow as he waited for Lysa to return.
Lysa had gone northeast, perhaps twenty meters and then seemingly dissolved into the tree line almost an hour ago, forty-four minutes ago by Aurora’s internal clock. Even though she made a few mistakes here and there, she had done enough for Aurora to trust her scouting skills. She had requested for permission to track the humanoid monster that very well might be hunting them, assuring Aurora that she would return with results.
Aurora had granted her leave. But she was expected to not engage the monster if she found it, Aurora had commanded it of her. A part of her worried that should the monster find the [Scout] first, there would be no obeying of her command. It worried her, but she did not fear for it. If Lysa died, then it was one of the downsides of war.
And this was war, Aurora thought with a soft grin. The monster had oppressed them for a while, striking at them whenever they thought they were out of its sight for a while. It wasn’t until midday before they’d finally lost the creature. Perhaps it had gotten bored of them or it had in fact lost them, they did not know. Still, it wasn’t long before Lysa had picked up its trail.
And now she was gone, chasing a beast that Aurora believed could split her head in one blow.
“It’ll have split by now,” Bran said, his voice barely above the level of the forest’s own sound. “If it knew she was coming, it’s have thrown her off its trail and split.”
“It’s known we’ve been coming for it, it hasn’t gone anywhere,” Edd pointed out.
“Doesn’t mean it won’t split now.” Bran’s eyes moved over to Aurora. “If it can knock an SS-rank on her ass, I fear what it will do to the rest of us if it chooses not to split.”
Fear, Aurora surmised. Despite her understanding of self-preservation, it remained appalling to see someone of S-rank speak from a place of fear that she, by herself, had not instilled in them. The powerful were only allowed to fear when they were fearing her.
This very argument was one that Bran and Edd had been making at each other all evening, and Aurora had done nothing to insert herself into it because it had not been an argument that had a solution and inserting herself into it would not have been a solution. But now Bran was looking to insert her. The question was why? Did he wish to make fun of her or provoke her or was he merely making a statement of fact. Whichever one he was doing, it mattered very little to her. She was more interested in something else.
The creature was using tactics, making moves. For the past few days, they’d been hunting it, it had given them the impression that there was more than one of it, which was worrying in its own way. But when they’d eventually met it, it had come alone. It was playing games with them, toying with them. As much as Aurora did not like it, she did not hate it.
The very idea of fighting an opponent that could be stronger than her appealed to a part of her that had not been appealed to in a very long time. She could feel stirring within her even in her stillness, demanding sustenance. Something within her wanted to rage, to cry out, to go into battle.
She smiled with anticipation without wishing to.
Something slipped into Aurora’s range of perception and she sighed. It was time. She pressed her hand against the bark of the tree behind her. She could feel the grain of it under her hand, the roughness.
Bran straightened immediately. It was clear that he thought he had annoyed the SS-rank more than he had intended. His hands were already coming up in apology when Amara spoke.
“She’s coming back,” the woman said.
In less than thirty seconds, Lysa materialized from the darkness between two trees as though she had simply stepped through a wall. Aurora found the skill interesting, then again, she had seen the skill before, it was not a rare skill, simply one of many variations of a skill that helped a person move through darkness or patches or even blindspots.
Her face said everything before her mouth opened. She had bad news to give.
“I found it,” she said. “And I think we have a problem.”
Aurora sighed. Somehow this looked like something that was going to be interesting.
“So, I guess it didn’t split,” Bran muttered under his breath, his disappointment clear.
Edd chuckled a little. “Guess so.” Then he turned his attention to Lysa. “What’s the problem.”
“You know how we thought there’s more than one, but we couldn’t find one and all the tracks were always identical?” she asked.
Amara nodded. “You found them.” It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“How many?” Aurora asked, stretching even though she did not need to.
Lysa pressed her lips in a thin line. “That’s the problem. They don’t have a number.”
“We’re hunting an army?” Edd asked, worried.
“We’re hunting one creature,” Lysa corrected. “The problem is that it has a cloning ability.”
“A monster with a skill is hardly new,” Amara said.
“No,” Lysa agreed. “But a monster that creates its clones and draws battle plans in the dirt is.”
Everyone froze.
Aurora smiled. Strong and intelligent.
She was glad she had agreed to help in this hunt. And she was not the only one.
Something stirred within her once more. It was excited. It wanted what was coming. Aurora knew it and knew it well. She had come here hoping to stir it.
War was coming.
…
Lysa’s briefing was short.
She’d found the monster, humanoid in all its form with mane like a lion and face like a goat—Aurora did not remember it having the face of a goat. She’d found it in a dry creek bed a little over half a kilometer northeast. It was sheltered under an overhang of rock and root where the land had collapsed into a shallow gully. Around it she had counted four figures that moved just like it. They sat like it, scratched their jaws like it and sniffed the air like it.
“Then how do you know which one was the real deal?” Bran asked, crossbow hefted over his shoulder.
“Only one was giving directions,” Lysa answered. “They answered to it, listening, nodding.” She shivered visibly. “It was not a pretty sight.”
Aurora remained intrigued.
In less than two minutes, they agreed on a plan. It was simple and clean, Aurora agreeing that there was no need for complications. First, Lysa had seen four clones and one leader, which was eerily just enough to match them one for one. It was to be a battle, four on four. As for the leader, Aurora would handle it alone. She still owed it for the punch it had given her.
There was also the possibility that the one that had knocked her down was nothing but a clone. Since no one said it, she decided that there would be no point ruining morale by bringing it up. As for the abilities of the copies, Lysa did not know.
“Killable?” Amara asked.
Lysa shook her head. “No idea.”
“That’s what we are here to find out,” Edd said with quiet confidence. “Go big or go home, huh?”
Bran nodded. “At least we know one of them can shoot spikes. Safe to assume all of them can shoot spikes.”
“Then we leave the real one to the boss,” Edd chuckled. “I assume she has a debt to repay.”
Aurora said nothing. The real one was always going to be left to her. From what she knew about cloning abilities, clones were always weaker than the original and, in some cases, clones reduced the overall strength of the original until they ceased to exist.
When the plan was finalized, the group looked at Aurora.
“Got anything for us, boss?” Lysa asked.
Aurora could only think of winning this fight and going home. As excited as she was for the fight, she still missed home, her children, her husband, the annoying Dorthna that helped guarantee her family’s safety—Dorthna was more of needing to keep an eye on him than missing him. Then there was Pain and her agreement with the Oath.
“Try not to die,” she said in the end, then gestured forward. “Lead the way, Lysa.”
Lysa obeyed.
They did not walk, neither did they jog. The part to the creature was taken in full sprint. Lysa stayed ahead, here eyes only darting around to prevent a possible ambush. Her eyes were not the only ones that kept a look out. She ran through the trees and so did Edd. Bran and Amara moved through on ground, weaving through the forest. Aurora joined them stomping through the distance like a battering ram. She was not a domineering form to look upon, but she knew what she was capable of.
In less than three minutes they were at their destination, Lysa pulling them to a stop with a raised hand before joining them on the ground.
Gathered, she raised a hand and pointed forward. “There,” she said.
True to her scouting report, the creature had the mane of a lion and the face of a goat. They watched the creatures as one taught the others, showing them lines and patterns carved into a tree. It was crude but well enough to convey whatever message it was giving.
Aurora could not ignore the absence of sound. The teacher never spoke and the followers replied to nothing. All they had to work with was the vague gestures the leader made. Something about it didn’t sit right with her.
“I don’t recognize the map,” Amara said, keeping her voice low.
Aurora agreed. Perhaps it was a crude caricature, a representation of a map that would recognize if it was clean. Aurora’s problem, however, was in what kind of plan the creatures were mapping out that they were still mapping it out. What exactly were they trying to figure out?
One of the creatures seated turned its head one way, then another turned its head the other. Realization dawned on Aurora when she caught a grin on a third.
“For fuck sake,” she swore under her breath then stepped out into the open.
She felt the others panic but couldn’t bring herself to be bothered by it. She already had the answer to why the creatures—creature—was still making plans. Lysa’s information was right except for one thing. Aurora’s eyes zeroed in on one of the creatures seated, the one that had grinned.
“You guys take the others,” she said, then pointed at the one no longer grinning. “I’ve got that one.”
The one she pointed out dropped its head in resignation. It was a very human-like action. Aurora tried not to dwell on it as it rose to its feet and finally turned. As for what the creatures were planning and why it didn’t look familiar, it was because it was not. It had all been a ruse. They’d known when Lysa had found them, and continued to plan to lure them in, to give the team a false sense of security—to deceive them into believing they had the upper hand.
“How do we—”
Aurora raised her hand, silencing Lysa. “I’ll take the original. You guys deal with the rest.”
“Yes, boss,” Edd answered, taking aim with his crossbow before anyone else could say something.
Aurora nodded. “Good.”
Aurora would’ve preferred to face the monster without a skill, but she was not so arrogant to risk doing such a thing. If she fell here, there would be no one to stand by Melmarc in his path to rule the world, there would be no one to hold Madness’ hand on quiet nights when the world felt a little lonely and no one spoke Madness enough to know that he was lonely. There would be no one to make sure Ark conquered only the seven hells Dorthna said he needed to conquer and not try to conquer the rest of Existence. And no one to watch Ninra grow to become to beautiful woman she was destined to be.
She would set her pride aside. Why? Because her life was not hers alone.
[You have used skill Let Me See You For A Moment]
The world warped around her, blurring for a fraction of a second. She felt the air and the wind, she felt herself go through a fallen leaf. Then she grabbed the single creature she wanted. Within the same fraction of time it had taken her to cross the distance and grab it, it had reacted, hands coming up to intercept her, preventing any critical impact. Aurora slammed into it and, in the blink of an eye they were out of the gully.
When they landed, it was with her throwing the beast straight into a tree. The creature shattered the tree trunk and kept on going. It bounced once, then twice, then went through another tree completely ruining it. When it finally came to a stop, five trees had gone down in its wake.
It lay there in the dirt, motionless.
“Get up,” she said simply, adjusting her shoulders and taking a combat stance. “I know you can understand me.”
It was a moment before it obeyed, rising to its feet. When it stood to its full height, perhaps an inch or two taller than she was, Aurora cracked her knuckles.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said in a calm voice, while excitement stirred within her, knowing that this was a battle within which she could die.
Its goat-mouth opened and, instead of a bleating sound, it spoke. “You are not the ruler.”
Aurora froze.
“To rule,” it continued in English stained by a strong Nigerian brogue, “I must find the ruler.”
Aurora frowned. Now she definitely could not die. “And what happens when you find the ruler?”
The monster cocked its head in a curious fashion, then spoke in a clean Hispanic accent. “To be the king you’ve got to kill the king. That shit’s medieval, darling.”
Good girl, Aurora noted, knowing exactly where the line was from.
She had answers to two questions now. First, it was emulating people to make sounds, which meant that it had spent a good amount of time with people before entering the first. The second answer was what the creature was. Clones, looking like an amalgamation of people and animals, copying voices and people.
It was almost poetic.
Aurora found herself face to face with a [Faker]. That said it all. She was going to take the first strike.
[You have used skill Let Me See Your Head]