5. The One-Eyed Paladin

Elrach was waiting at the top of the cliff. They retreated back toward the Worlds Gate and took cover behind a rock outcropping, sifting through the carnage for another opportunity to contribute. The battle had spread from the immediate vicinity of the Worlds Gate to the surrounding rock-fields and cliffs. Not far away from their hiding spot, the snake and vulture shapes of Sentinel Khond and Sentinel Vala battled a one-eyed paladin. Attacking simultaneously, with Sentinel Khond’s ropes snagging the paladin’s legs from below and Sentinel Vala flinging darts of shadow from the air, they had cornered the one-eyed paladin against a pile of boulders. He wielded his glaive defensively, too harried by the sentinels’ coordinated blows to make an attack of his own.

Sentinel Vala dove into the paladin’s blind spot talons-first and caught the glaive, ripping it out of his grasp. The paladin grabbed after it with a strangled cry, too late to catch the hilt as it flipped off into the distance. He turned back in horror, single eye opening wide as Sentinel Khond coiled for the killing blow. Raising his hands in an odd pattern as though to ward off Mistforged venom with nothing but his mortal strength, he opened his mouth and screamed—

“Unify!”

Lightning struck the paladin’s head, knocking both sentinels back in a blinding flash. When the light faded, the one-eyed paladin’s entire body blazed with unnatural brilliance. He was possessed, a mere vessel for the light-specter now nestled within his core. The paladin’s second eye, previously sunken and scarred over, now trailed a plume of white flame. He drew a pipe-weapon from his hip. His mouth twisted into an inhuman scowl; when he spoke again, his voice held a double echo.

“Illuminate,” the light-specter possessing him said.

Light speared from the paladin’s pipe-weapon into Sentinel Khond’s open maw. The resulting explosion threw Sentinel Khond back fifty paces. He crashed against the rocks with an agonized hiss, thrashing blindly as dark smoke and burning sparks poured from his ruptured throat. The paladin advanced to finish the job, but Sentinel Vala grabbed Sentinel Khond by the middle and fled into the sky. The paladin shot another blast of light at them. He missed. Unfazed, he holstered the pipe-weapon, retrieved his glaive, and marched off in search of new targets.

The nearest target was Silane and friends, who had been so intent upon watching the fight that they neglected stealth. The paladin came their way, glaive afire in preparation for another attack.

“Time to go,” Demix said faintly.

Three streaks of mist leapt for the sky. The paladin remained on the ground behind them, waving his burning glaive in thwarted rage. He remembered his ranged skills a moment later. Light pierced the sky, missing Elrach by a hair’s breadth. Silane spotted a cave between the boulders overlooking the Worlds Gate.

“Down there, shelter,” Silane said, diving toward the cave.

It was already occupied. Ranha lurked inside with her three lackeys.

“You!” Ranha snarled, features contorting in murderous rage. “You dare come crawling back—”

Elrach and Demix landed on either side of Silane, backlit by a too-close flash of burning light. Ranha’s roar sputtered out as they shoved their way in. With seven solid Mistforged taking refuge within the small cave, it was crowded indeed.

“Move over,” Elrach said.

“There’s no space,” one of Ranha’s lackeys, a girl with a lobster carapace, argued.

Elrach slammed her up against the side of the cave, one spider-leg poised to impale. “Allow me to make space.”

“Let her go!” Ranha threw herself at Elrach.

Demix grabbed Ranha around the middle. Her lackeys converged on Demix. Silane attacked them, biting whatever she could reach. The taste of mist-blood filled her mouth, and soon the cave was chaotic with their rematch. Elrach’s opponent might have gotten tossed out the cave entrance—Silane was too busy trying not to lose her arm to the shark at the time—but there was another flash and a piercing shriek as seven became six. Ranha wailed. Demix’s crazed laugh echoed off the narrow walls.

A shadow fell across the cave, and a sentinel’s commanding aura flooded over everyone within. The shark dropped Silane to the ground. Her right arm was shredded, leaking essence everywhere. She propped herself up on her left elbow and looked up. Sentinel Vala loomed at the cave entrance, tattered wings unfurled at her sides. Dark threads of power stabbed backward from her talons to block off the entrance behind her with a crisscrossing array of bars. The scaly coils of Sentinel Khond lay at her feet, bleeding out black mist from a hole through his neck.

“What—what happened to him?” Ranha asked, pinned under Demix’s knee. “Who could defeat a sentinel?”

Sentinel Vala swept a wing to point at the blocked entrance. “The one-eyed abomination climbing up here as we speak.”

Silane crawled to the edge and peeked out between the strands of Sentinel Vala’s woven barrier. Below was that same one-eyed paladin, his other eye blazing with white fire in the telltale sign of light-specter possession. Lacking flight, he was instead trying to climb the boulders with hands and feet. It was a slow journey.

The paladin looked up, and their gazes locked. Pure hatred burned in his eyes. Silane leapt backward just as he flung a hand upward. Light carved across the cave entrance, a near miss that was still hotter than anything she had ever felt before, melting stone and vaporizing a hole in Sentinel Vala’s barrier. Silane collapsed back into the cave, steaming everywhere. After the initial flash faded, dim light from the faraway sunbeam filtered in through the ruptured barrier.

Sentinel Khond wheezed. He blurred around the edges and tried to resolidify, but the hole in his neck remained gaping as wide as it had before. Sentinel Vala shuffled him deeper into the cave and hunched over his body, curling both wings around him to shield against the light.

“Are you awake, Khond? Here are your Marked, just as you asked,” she said softly. “Feed now and heal.”

Demix pushed Silane behind himself. “What? No!”

“Not… to eat,” Sentinel Khond croaked. “Listen, young ones… you must run… run to the Worlds Gate.”

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Elrach dropped the shark and stood tall. “Run? Mistforged do not run from food. We’ve slain one light-specter already. We can help you hold off the rest until reinforcements arrive.”

Silane and Demix made sounds of agreement. Even Ranha’s group nodded. However, Sentinel Vala laughed hollowly at their conviction.

“What determines food and non-food except strength? You weak things are worse than useless in this fight. The invaders hail from the Order of Illumination, the very same militant organization that drove us Mistforged out of the human realm long ago. Even one of their paladins could defeat us two sentinels; what could you mere solids hope to accomplish? They will slay every Mistforged from here to the mountains. By the time word reaches the Stargazer Supreme, there won’t be a Shadowed Isle left to hold.” She looked up at them, despair shining in her eyes. “Don’t be foolish. Save yourselves.”

“You… fish,” Sentinel Khond whispered, shifting his tail to point at Ranha, “Come here… closer… yes.” A thread of his power lashed out, quick as a striking snake.

“Ow!” Ranha clutched her fin-hand that now bore the sentinel’s Mark upon it. “What is the meaning of this? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Her lackeys backed away as best they could in the limited space of the cave, refusing to go anywhere near Sentinel Khond.

“We don’t want a Mark,” they protested.

“Suit… self,” Sentinel Khond said weakly. “Rest of… you…”

Power surged into Silane, flooding from the Mark cuffed around her left wrist throughout her very being. Her shredded right arm healed, remade as though it had never been chewed up by the shark. Her solidform became more detailed, developing new features like internal organs and individual hairs. Most astonishing of all, the sunbeam outside suddenly didn’t hurt to look at anymore.

“Empowerment,” Elrach realized, regarding Sentinel Khond with new respect. “A precious gift. With the new strength you have granted us, we will drive the invaders from our realm—”

“No,” Sentinel Khond interrupted. He looked more translucent than before. “Young ones… our future… promise that you’ll live. No… don’t promise me… promise yourself.”

As the last word left his mouth, he went transparent and dissolved into a thin, formless mist that flowed like water to puddle at the lowest points in the cave. He had sacrificed the last of his strength to empower Silane, Elrach, Demix, and Ranha. The shark and the lobster, who had missed out after refusing the Mark, looked shocked.

“Oy, wait, can we have some of that power too?” the shark asked, much too late for Sentinel Khond to hear him. Sentinel Vala glared at the shark like he was her next meal, and he backed off with a nervous chuckle. “Never mind, forget it.”

“You trash,” Sentinel Vala said, wings spreading as anguish flooded the cave with physical pressure, “think all of your pitiful existences worthy of a sentinel’s gift?”

No one dared to answer. The Marks on their limbs seemed to pulse protectively.

“Fine. This was his choice. I won’t pretend to understand it.” Sentinel Vala stood tall. “Khond gave you temporary sun-resistance. It will fade in less than an hour. Run like the cowards you are. Escape through the portal. Hide somewhere dark. Survive.”

The barrier across the cave entrance poofed into black smoke, and Sentinel Vala dove out to confront the one-eyed paladin below. Another beam of light shot up diagonally past the cave entrance. Sentinel Vala swooped down for a dive-bombing run, drawing the paladin’s attention away from the six youths still inside.

“To the portal,” Elrach said, shifting to mistform.

Silane and the rest followed him out into the open. They flew head-on toward the invasion, aiming for the Worlds Gate and its dreadful sunbeam. Ranha’s two unmarked friends peeled away earlier; without sun-resistance, they could not withstand close proximity to the sunlight. Ranha herself stuck close to Silane, uncomfortably close, an expression of pure terror on her face as they slipped into the sunbeam. The world vanished in blinding white, leaving only the soft dark patches of Elrach and Demix before and behind Silane, and the sharper dark patch of Ranha all but clinging to her arm. Then, the Mark on her arm mashed her mist into solid matter, and gravity wrenched Silane to the ground.

She landed in an ungainly tumble in the middle of the sunbeam, twenty paces from the entrance to the Worlds Gate. Instead of the agile, flight-capable mistform she had been a moment ago, now she was shaped like a human girl—her solidform of choice for most purposes, but a great disadvantage here, when speed and flight would have served her better. Sunlight blazed all around her, miraculously painless despite its oppressive brightness. She flexed her stubby human digits with their strange new detailed fingerprints, trying to revert to mistform. Nothing happened. Power flooded from the Mark on her wrist, binding her to solid mode even as it lent her strength.

“I—I can’t shift back—”

“Nor can I. Sun-activated protection. Solids tolerate light better,” Elrach shouted, scuttling past on his spider legs. “Move!”

The clerics surrounding the Worlds Gate had spotted them once they switched from mist to solidforms. Human voices shouted out in alarm, followed closely by human magicks. Paladins ran over to reinforce the clerics, shooting bolts of energy at the four Mistforged youths. A bolt crackled past Silane, just within arm’s reach, scorching hot even through Sentinel Khond’s protection. She ducked around it and focused on sprinting toward the portal—ten paces, five—

Sentinel Vala screamed in the distance. Silane twisted to look even as she leapt through the portal. The one-eyed paladin was vacuuming a sliced and battered Sentinel Vala into one of those mist-binding jars. Her screams cut short when the paladin lidded the jar.

The portal seized Silane, and the Shadowed Isle vanished in a swirl of lightning and burning heat. Demix caught her on the other side, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder. Sunlight filled the forest beyond the portal, and it took her a while to adjust enough to see that they were surrounded. A dozen paladins encircled them, armed with swords and those light-shooting weapons. The paladins seemed almost as surprised as they were.

“They’re just children,” a paladin said, lowering his weapon.

”Demons one and all. Don’t let them deceive you, brother!” another said. He brandished a mist-binding jar at them. “Surrender or be destroyed, demon scum.”

Elrach raised four arms in surrender, and the rest followed his lead. Ranha coughed, squinting from the sunlight filtering in through the treetops. Elrach’s left hind leg tapped on the ground three times, so softly that a careless observer might have dismissed it as a nervous tic. Silane glanced left. The third paladin on that side looked older and frailer than the rest. Demix caught Silane’s eye, and she nodded.

“Go!”

They charged the frail paladin, knocked him over, and fled. Ranha followed in a daze. Most of the paladins rushed to their injured comrade’s side, but a few gave chase. Elrach led them deep into the forest, uncaring of the brambles that lashed against his solid-locked body. The protective Mark healed their injuries almost instantly, whereas their enemies in mortal flesh had no such healing factor.

The sounds of pursuit soon faded into the distance, and Elrach stumbled to a halt. Silane dropped to all fours under a tree, limbs aching with strain. Demix and Ranha collapsed on either side of her, panting hard after running so far. Sunlight shone hot and merciless around them, intensity diminished only a little by the sparse tree cover overhead. When Silane had first crossed the Worlds Gate, the protective Mark had dulled the sunlight to mere warmth. Now, the afternoon sun dappled a blistering heat across her shoulders and back. She could feel her skin melting away. The Mark on her left wrist looked faint and smudged, crisp edges now frayed like a rope strained for too long.

Silane spent the last dredges of her strength to capture a mortal host. The Mark trapped her in the enhanced solidform for an agonizing three minutes of slow-cooking before it finally snapped. Then, daylight slammed down upon her in full force. She rushed into the earthworm cupped in the darkness between her hands. The steaming shell of the old solidform toppled down behind her, abandoned in the haste of her jump. It burned to dust within moments of her evacuation.

The Mark was broken. The sentinels were gone. The Shadowed Isle was lost. Silane and her friends were unsupervised in the mortal realm, where even the dirt glowed with a wealth of life essence. In the midst of all this freedom and plenty, she felt sick.