Emily ran her hand along the curved wall as they ascended the underground staircase. Its smooth sandstone caused grains of sand to break free wherever she passed.

  The darkness was suffocating and a cloud hung over everyone. So much so, that not a word was uttered as they climbed. The only sound that could be heard was the hollow clank of footsteps as they resounded on the metal steps.

  Emily pulled her hand away from the wall and rubbed her fingers together, pinching the few grains of sand between them.

  Umbra and Alex were currently at the head of their small team with Emily and Ashe right behind them.

  They had been climbing for the last ten minutes but that chaged when they reached the top of the staircase.

  There was no exit.

  The stairs lead to a ceiling that was blocked with the same orange sandstone.

  Ashe stepped forward, finding the wards placed along the perimeter.

  She closed her eyes for a second and then nodded.

  “It’s all clear out there, I’m opening the way.”

  A second later the sandstone warped and sunk into the walls causing the dying light of the evening to pour into the stairwell.

  “Umbra was the first out, followed closely by Alex and Emily.”

  Emily squinted at their surroundings the sudden light causing her eyes to water as she blinked rapidly.

  A glance around immediately told Emily they were safe. From the looks of things, they were in between two large mounds of earth. They had to remain low to the ground but to anyone looking from a ground level, it would be hard to spot them.

  While everyone else poured out of the opening Emily took a look around. It didn’t take long to spot the massive army scarring the land. Their camp was a mix of black and red materials surrounded by a low wall. Everything from their clothes to their tents seemed to be dyed one of the two colors and while the black was more striking against the landscape, the red was more prominent.

  They seemed to be arranged so that the red and black for close but separate. This was interesting to Emily because that could mean that perhaps the upper hierarchy didn’t necessarily get along. Which was important information. If they didn’t work together then this might be even easier than Emily had first thought.

  As she searched the to camp for weaknesses and openings she felt a tap on her shoulder. Glancing at Alex she saw his point off to a distant line of tents. Unlike there rest of the tents they were arranged into a structured length through the camp.

  “From there, to there, is their containment line. Getting in will be easy but getting out not so much. The Redeemers amongst them will try to convert them into Oathsworn whenever they have time.”

  Emily stared dryly at the camp.

  “From the looks of things that’s over a hundred tents. How in the world are we going to locate everyone without being spotted.”

  “We’ll wait for the cover of night and hope for the best.”

  Emily squinted at the man.

  “You better have been cooking that up this whole while.”

  The corners of Alex’s mouth tugged up.

  “Relax, I do. But you're going to have to help me out here.”

  Emily nodded and twirled her hand for him to go on.

  “You remember the ward we used against those Blightstingers? It misleads anyone on the outr side, but it is not particularly effective against a little bit of common sense. Normally its not mobile but with your help, I think we can make it work”

  Emilys ears perkerd up.

  “I’ve been wanting to learn that one for a while, but I remember you said it was ready complex”

  Alex shrugged.

  “It is. But I have faith you’ll get the hang of it. We have to wait another couple of hours anyway so you have time.”

  Emily glanced up at the dying light. Juest had said the attack would be left for nightfall when they were at their lowest. The rescue mission had to be finished before them or they could get caught up in the fight, but they also didn’t want to start too early because then they would be trapped without a way out.

  Emily pursed her lips but nodded and turned to Ashe.

  “Hey I’m going to need some help with these wards do you think you can break some of them down for me?”

  Ashe nodded silently almost too worried to even answer her.

  She closed the hole to the stairwell up and moved over to help.

  Over the next two hours, the sun dipped below the horizon, bathing the world in night. Stars emerged, and vivid streaks of purple painted the sky. Around them, lights began to flicker to life. Whether from the glowing city or the nearby camp, an ominous, cold light spread across the empty plain, casting eerie shadows.

  Their group on the other hand remained in the dark, letting wash over them. Emily lost track of time as she concentrated on the runes making up the ward. Only the light of the moons helped her to decipher Alex’s chicken scratch.

  When Emily was ready she created a blood ward that was almost a perfect replica to the one Alex had shown her.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Without so much as a thought, her source poured into the ward. Instantly, a heat shimmer enveloped them, and Emily felt a surge of relief that they were far from the camp. The next moment, the ward’s cloaking effect expanded far beyond what she had intended.

  She struggled to control it, trying to reduce the size to something more manageable, but her source was behaving erratically. When she shrank the ward, it contracted to the size of a soccer ball. Expanding it again sent a sharp ache through her head. From what Emily could tell, the strange behavior had something to do with the relic still on her person.

  In the end, she decided to make do. The ward pulsed, shrinking and expanding at an unsettlingly erratic rate, but at this critical moment, they had no choice but to work with what she had.

  Ashe came over the Emily and nodded.

  “I think this is the best we are going to get. Just walk slowly and keep your concentration on the output. Don’t worry about anything else until Umbra gives us the signal”

  Emily nodded to the woman as she focused on the humming ward in her hands.

  Their window arrived all too soon and their approach began. They all gathered under the ward and keeping low to the ground they began to head in the direction of the black tents.

  Right now Emily could still see a perimeter of sandstone around the camp as a two-meter wall had been erected around the entire camp. It wouldn’t stop an offensive force for long but it was better than nothing. Unfortunately for them, the wall also served as an obstacle. Their stealthy approach would have been made almost impossible without the ward. As they near Emily spotted people kneeling on the wall in what seemed like prayer.

  They were completely unprotected from a ranged attack and yet somehow they were willing to leave themselves completely at the mercy of their enemy.

  Emily wanted to aske the question but Nox got there first.

  “Are they maintaining their own shield? Why are they just sitting there.”

  Alex’s face darkened.

  “They are not shielding. As a strategy, using resources for defense when you are sieging should only be considered when the signs of attack are imminent.”

  Nox didn’t look any better so he asked.

  “Then why are they just sitting there?”

  Alex didn’t answer so a time and Emily was tempted to look over to him but she refused to look away from the crimson ward.

  “...Because they are willing to use their lives as a way to warn the others.”

  Emily’s eyes snapped up from the ward causing it ot grow in size.

  “In their death throes, they will do everything in their power to alert the others of an attack.”

  A few of the wandering fangs gasped but the men for the Weeping remained stoic.

  “Why would they do such a thing?” Nox asked.

  “I’ve heard it’s an act of penance. If they do something their gods would not approve of, or even just for forgetting an evening prayer. They put themselves up for the gods to decide. If they die it was the gods will.”

  Emily's revulsion at the idea of giving up one's life for something as trivial as missing the chance to say grace was overwhelming. She already harbored a deep dislike for the gods and little love for their followers, but this was a level of devotion Emily could never be okay with.

  Understand, sure. But to endorse it was impossible.

  As the wall approached Alex and Umbra spoke for a second and the next thing Emily knew the man was gone and Alex was staring up at the wall.

  “If anyone is able to do this quick enough it will be that man.”

  Emily shot Alex a questioning look. Did Alex know him? How had he convinced Umbra to come rescue her in the first place.

  There were too many questions but her concetration could not afford to stray from the ward.

  About two minutes later Umbra reappeared and changed their course.

  “Climb here, I’ve made sure they won’t notice anything for a good while.”

  The most strenuous part of this was keeping her spell in check when they began to climb over. Luckily she had Cupcake with her to hop the wall, but it was still an effort to keep everything together. Once Emily was up on the wall she had to wait for everyone else to make it and it was during this time she spotted two Oathsworn kneeling calmly in prey. At first, Emily thought Umbra had cast a spell on them, but as she took a closer look she realized something was wrong. The way they were sitting was slightly off.

  That’s when Emily could make out the blood. From the looks of things it was coming from the base of their neck and then it was all too easy to make out the fine needle-like spear shoved from the base of their neck down into the stone.

  It went clean through their bodies and sunk into the stone with enough force to hold them up even though they were very much dead.

  The amount of strenght it would have taken to do something like this was incredible. To make things even more disturbing their expressions looked calm, so they probably didn’t even know how they died.

  From afar they looked completely normal.

  Emily turned away from the grisly totems and focused on her spell. Ashe gasped beside Emily but she quickly stifled the sound obviously coming to the same conclusion as Emily.

  They made it down from the wall but then navigating the camp was the next problem. They were lucky that most people were already in their tents for the night but there were still patrols they had to duck into the side area for. When they got to the area where the captives were being held everyone but Alex was surprised that there were so few guards.

  By this point,, Emily had been golf the ward up for quite a while and yet her source flowwed effortlessly. There was still somthing slowly burning through her reserves but she though that was the old leaving her body.

  The long tent stretched endlessly, its fabric partitions joined to form a single, dimly lit corridor. Emily stepped inside, her stomach twisting at the sight before her.

  Cages lined both sides of the passage, each one housing a captive bound in heavy chains. There were far more prisoners than she had expected, but it wasn’t their numbers that struck her—it was their condition.

  The captives wore robes of fine fabric, their bodies showing no signs of starvation or physical abuse. Their faces were clean, and they appeared well-fed, almost unnaturally so. But their eyes told a different story.

  Emily’s breath caught as she met their vacant stares. Hollow. Dead. The light in them snuffed out, as if each soul wrestled silently with an unrelenting torment. One man, slumped against the bars, didn’t even flinch as her ward brushed against his cage. Others barely acknowledged their presence, their gazes fixed on something distant, something invisible.

  Her unease deepened as she moved further inside. If the SourceWell drained the body, then whatever was being done here was far worse. It gnawed at the mind, leaving nothing but broken shells in its wake.

  “Fuck what are they doing to them,” she growled, the ward be damned.

  Alex shook his head.

  “Breaking their spirits. Quickly let’s find our people”

  Everyone kept a watchful eye for their missing companions, while Umbra stalked down the rows of lost souls, his face etched with disdain.

  It took longer than Emily would have liked, but they eventually found Kael. Along the way, they encountered countless others, most of whom sat motionless, staring into the void.

  Kael was no different. The moment Alex spotted him, he stepped beyond the ward, calling softly to him and waving his hands, but Kael didn’t respond. Across from him, Selia was slumped in her own cage. Ashe hurried to her sister, her voice trembling as she whispered, “Selia?”

  But Selia didn’t react. Her eyes were empty, her expression devoid of recognition.

  “Ashe,” Emily said gently, but the girl turned to her, panic rising. “Emily, she’s not responding—why isn’t she responding?”

  Emily’s gaze hardened as she observed their comatose states. Alex frowned, frustration tightening his features as he tried again to reach Kael, but the man remained unresponsive, his stare fixed on nothing.

  Letting out a sigh, Emily allowed the ward to dissipate. It was pointless now. She strode over to Kael’s cage, her resolve firm. Reaching through the bars, she drew back her hand and delivered a sharp slap across his cheek.

  The crack of her palm echoed in the silence, and Kael's vacant stare broke as though shattered. His eyes flickered, refocusing on the group, and for the first time, recognition dawned. Then, like the sun breaking through clouds, hope lit his face.

  “Emily… did you just…”

  Emily grinned, cutting him off. “Yes. Now wake up—we have places to be.”

  Blood points: 311