Chapter 128: YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIGHT

The fog rolled down into the valley after dark and settled around the camp.

Aiden watched it for a while, then returned to his food.

Three days I’ve been walking toward that thing, and it hasn’t moved an inch. I’m starting to think fog ghosts haunt that damn fen.

Cinder lay close to him, between the fire and the wind, with the cat asleep against her. Nyx had left for the dark an hour ago and still hadn’t returned.

Miasma sat on the edge of an old stone. She’d picked it herself after turning down two spots Aiden liked better.

"You’re still smug about that," he said.

She lifted her head, clearly smug about it.

He could even imagine what she was thinking: You preferred your spot? Fine. Sleep there.

He threw her a mushroom. She caught it and ate it without taking her eyes off the fog.

She picks camping spots better than I do. I’m not telling her.

He smiled at her.

As he did, a patch of fog shifted toward the camp.

Cinder was on her feet before Aiden had swallowed his soup. She faced the moving patch, growling low in her throat.

Miasma ran beside Aiden, smaller, a Tier lower and quieter than Cinder.

But she was glaring at the fog with such patient intensity that, judging by their eyes alone, Aiden would back away from her faster than he would ever back from Cinder.

Aiden set his bowl down and drew his knife.

Something rushed out of the fog straight at him.

Long and low, the size of a big dog but twice the weight. Its hide was dark and soaked, and it stank of rot and standing water.

Wild beasts slowed when they saw fire unless they were Solar Types like Cinder. This one clearly wasn’t, and looked even less afraid of it.

What the hell are you?

Aiden threw his Perception open.

Silver motes filled the beast. The same silver as the wall of fog.

It came from the fen. Nobody told me ghost monsters come out of the fen. I was just joking about it.

As he tightened his grip on his knife, Cinder surged at the beast.

Fire poured from her chest and shoulders, engulfing the hound in dancing flames.

The flames struck the soaked hide with a hiss. Water flashed off the hound’s back, filling the air with a blast of white steam that vanished into the fog.

The hound speared through the steam headfirst. Its back was scorched black. It was screaming. It didn’t slow.

Cinder’s eyes widened. Half the flames she had just poured had put the Frost Wolf on its knees, but this beast still came at her.

That half second was all the hound needed. It sprang over Cinder.

Miasma punched a spine dripping with acid into its leg. It ignored it. It ignored Cinder’s panicked howl.

It was already on Aiden, its teeth wrapped in spiralling spikes of water.

No, you won’t.

Aiden stepped back.

The shadows swallowed him and dropped him three feet to the left. Clean. Instant. Shadow Step.

The hound turned with him. Aiden reappeared right in front of its jaws.

What? No!

Out of reflex, a thick thread of Acid Weave came out from his palm. He whipped it at the hound’s neck.

The hound was faster than his swing. His arm came around like a drunk throwing a punch. His hand passed behind its ear. The acid caught a stand of reeds and melted them to slime.

The hound’s shoulder slammed into his hip. Claws raked his side open as it passed over him.

His leg flew out from under him, and he crashed into the wet grass before the pain reached him. He rolled, rose badly, and skidded on one knee. His lungs were already burning.

I can melt a steel door, but I can’t even hit a damn dog.

He poured Solar Plexus into his hand with all his might.

Five seconds of burning heat. I only need to touch it.

He swung, palm open. The hound ducked under his arm. His hand closed on wet air.

The five seconds ran out and the heat drained from his palm.

He clenched his jaw and breathed through tightly pressed lips. His lungs burned. So did his pride.

I could have killed you four times if I’d landed any of my hits. Shit.

The hound was already on him.

Miasma let out a noise, low and sharp, one of the very few he had ever heard from her. She rushed behind the hound, pointing with her spines toward a patch of grass on the right.

Pointing.

Aiden didn’t think. He threw himself to the right.

The hound’s jaw snapped where his head had been. It lunged after him, straight toward the patch Miasma had pointed to.

I’m dead.

Out of nowhere, shadows pooled in front of him.

Nyx slid out from the dark. It bit the hound’s shadow and dragged it away from its feet.

Its back legs slipped out from under it. The beast twisted and fell onto its side, exposing its burned flank.

Aiden saw the opening. He tried to run at the hound, knife in hand. His bleeding leg gave out beneath him.

Cinder burst in, her flames standing around her.

She landed on the hound in her human form. She drove both burning hands into the flank where the steam had dried the hide.

"Don’t touch him!"

Fire caught. The hound screamed once. Then she tore the wound open with both hands, ripping the hound apart.

Both parts burned, legs twitching for a second.

Then it stopped moving.

Steam hung white over the body. The fog went quiet again.

Aiden stayed on his knees in the wet grass with a hand pressed to his side. The cut was shallow. It would close.

He was more interested in what Cinder had just done.

She’s lean and strong like an enforcer. And she tore it apart with her bare hands.

I’ve never heard of an enforcer tearing a beast. What in...

No, no. She’s a beast to begin with. Her avatar doesn’t make her weaker.

It gives her different tools.

Cinder crouched next to him and looked at the blood between his fingers. She bit her lip.

Aiden spoke first, his voice as usual, if a little rougher. "Hey, thank you."

She grabbed his free hand, staring straight into his eyes. Her orange eyes showed worry for him, anger at the beast, and guilt at herself. "You have a hand that melts iron. You put it through a reed."

"I... noticed."

"You blinked toward the teeth."

"I noticed that too."

She didn’t laugh. That told him how bad it had been.

"I’ll burn anything that threatens you before it can reach you. This one’s wet hide ate my fire." She looked at the dead hound as if she would burn even its remains, then at him. "And you could not finish what I started. You don’t know how to fight."

Aiden didn’t answer. She was right.

He had used his abilities one at a time, carefully, with room to set them up. An acidic thread here. A blink there. He’d never used them all in succession, against something faster than him that wanted him dead.

The first time he’d had to, he ended up on his back. His beasts kept him alive.

Every tamer in the world drills their beasts. Nyx learns new things on its own without me.

And now Cinder drills the tamer.

I need to learn before the next fast thing tries to kill me.

Great. Teaching myself something nobody else has ever needed to learn, in a swamp. My pack’s getting weirder, and I’m starting to fit in.

Miasma moved to him. She examined the cut thoroughly and decided it wouldn’t kill him.

"Hey, I’m fine. Thank you for telling me where it’ll strike. You knew Nyx was coming, too. You saved me."

Cinder still held his hand. Miasma snuggled underneath it and settled on his knee.

Her old spot. Close to him, in case something else came at him.

Nyx moved between him and Cinder. It glared at the red-haired woman with its pale eyes.

It made a sound, angry. It slapped her hand.

Even though Cinder didn’t even feel its small paw, she released Aiden’s hand. She rose, huffed and walked away, turning back into a Solari Blaze Dancer.

She stopped beside the hound’s corpse and howled. Fire erupted from her mane, reducing the body to ash in a breath.

Then she caught the campfire and stretched it into an angry column.

"Don’t burn the camp!"

Nyx climbed onto Aiden’s shoulder.

"What did you tell her?" Aiden looked at Nyx, shocked by Cinder’s sudden fit. "You’re learning to use shadows more and more every day."

Nyx didn’t look at him. It looked past the ashes of the hound into the fog.

Aiden followed its gaze.

The hound had charged straight through Cinder. A predator built for the marsh had been so frightened that it ran through the only beast in the area that could have burned it alive.

It hadn’t been hunting them. It had been trying to escape. They’d just been in its way.

And it thought the weakest one looked like a good snack.

Aiden looked at the wall of fog. Two days away, and still two days away no matter how far he walked.

Nyx leaned toward it.

Whatever made that beast flee doesn’t scare you. It just makes you want to go to the fen even more.

Why? What did you feel there?