"Form up!" Kali shouted, even before the last trickle of implosions had landed. "I need eyes!"

Alarion caught the sergeant's eyes and tipped his head toward the sky. The man nodded once. It was all the permission the young specialist needed.

With the strength of a near rank II awakened, Alarion drew back his arm and threw Echo as high as he could into the early dawn sky. He waited for the weapon to reach the apex of its flight, then flickered toward it. He rolled in the air, tensed his arm, and threw again. And again.

It took three teleports before he was above the lip of the valley and three more before he was high enough to spot his targets. They'd set up inside a hollowed-out thicket, difficult to spot from the ground but trivial from the air. He counted more than a dozen, some toward the perimeter of the dense treeline, others grouped in the center.

Most important were the four who stood only a few yards back from the ridgeline, hidden from those on the ground but ready to strike the moment Alarion revealed himself.

A cavalcade of minor spells and a pair of arrows raced toward him, but the hastily fired shots were trivial to avoid. He fell as they neared him, then threw his weapon and flickered up and to the side to avoid the worst of it.

Getting up had been easy; getting down was harder. Teleportation with Echo retained momentum, though he could choose the direction of that momentum with each teleport. In a pinch, he could throw the weapon to the ground and teleport 'sideways,' but if he wanted to get down without hurting himself, the best way was to fall 'upward' a few times to bleed off the momentum. He'd yet to master the trick, and he always landed a little hard, but a stinging in his knees was a cheap price to pay compared to splattering on impact or skipping along the ground like a rock thrown at a lake.

"Report," Kali demanded.

"Difficult to make out, but at least a dozen. They are hiding in a thicket to the north-east. It does not appear they are pulling up stakes; they might intend to fire again."

"Greedy," Kali muttered. "Any of the dead?"

"No fiends, no dead. Just revenants."

"Pickets?"

"A four-man team, just back from the ridge."

"That many? I th-thought we o-only lost one patrol?" Ivor asked from nearby. He was sitting on the ground, panting for breath as one of the section's healers tended to his overexertion.

"I'd say the fact that they have artillery mages is a bigger concern right now, Specialist," Kali growled. "Orphan, do you still have enough to get over the ridgeline?"

"Easily."

"You, Higgins, and Velcor are with me. I don't want a single one of these Motherless bastards walking away from this. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sergeant!" The three said in unison.

"The rest of you, break for the valley mouth as soon as Bergman and Sienta are able to move. They likely have the whole damn valley sighted in, but we should be able to keep them busy. Once you're clear, circle east and run down anything that tries to get past you."

With another chorus of affirmations, Alarion turned to the two others in his impromptu squad. Higgins was tall and broad with an awful mustache and a receding hairline; his collar always popped high, and his attitude was impossible to ignore. Velcor, on the other hand, was a petite woman Alarion had made little note of. Older than even Higgins, her brown hair was streaked through with silver, her expression seemingly unrattled by the sustained bombardment.

"I hit things," Alarion explained. He shrunk and enlarged Echo for effect before he continued. "I have short-range magical support, weak self-healing, good mobility, and a single long-range area of effect."

Despite his palpable dislike for Alarion, Higgins didn't hesitate in his reply. "Primary healer with secondary combat capability. Decay and time affinities. I move quickly, but I need to be in contact to heal or to damage."

Velcor looked up from the breach of her rifle with a thin smile. "Long-range fire support. I can reposition, but not easily if I have someone in close."

"Once we're over the top, Orphan will screen, I'll handle the close in work, and you two will support," Kali finished the group's self-assessment. "I'm pure physicality and enhancement, so I need to get up close and personal to do my work. Orphan, can you safely draw their fire while we ascend?"

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"Mm."

"Then let's go."

Alarion drew two thin daggers from their sheaths along the back side of his [Blackstone Bracer], waited for his allies to take their positions, and then warped into the sky. He teleported once more and threw one of the daggers, followed a second later by Echo.

A burst of lightning struck the first dagger mere moments after it passed above the ridgeline, sending it spinning back to the ground below. Alarion flickered to Echo a second later and was delighted to see the archers below had similarly loosed on the wrong target. He shifted Echo to his left hand, concealing it for half a heartbeat before he threw it and another dagger in opposite directions, leaving his enemies to guess his next move as he threw his last remaining dagger directly at one of the two revenant spellcasters.

At such a distance, his attack had little chance of hitting, but it made the revenant flinch back all the same, disrupting the mage in the middle of another spell. Better yet, the revenant wasted even more time creating distance from the dagger, no doubt fearful that Alarion could teleport to it.

Sadly, the revenant's allies did not share those fears. They'd seen enough of his ability to grasp its mechanics, and with each taking a target on one of his possible locations, Alarion was hard-pressed. He twisted in the air to avoid an arrow, then flickered to Echo just before another struck him. Another bolt of lightning crackled just underneath him as Alarion appeared above his weapon rather than alongside it. Sadly, a third bolt finally struck him mid-throw a few seconds later.

You have suffered moderate electrical damage. HP -447.

The crackle of electricity made his body go rigid, ruining the throw and sending Echo tumbling down at an awkward angle. Alarion teleported to the weapon and threw it at random, teleported, and threw it again. It was a nauseating experience; his sense of up and down repeatedly redefined with desperation rather than preparation, but it made him an impossible target for a few seconds.

Which was all his allies needed.

Higgins was the first over the ridge. The man moved upward in short bursts, with such shocking speed that he almost appeared to teleport. The movements were switchback, left, then right, then left again. Each step took him half a dozen yards; his foot braced against a shimmer in the air before he pushed off and appeared at his next destination.

It was a potent movement skill; one Alarion might have envied had the weakness not been so glaringly obvious. Each step took him a fixed distance, around six yards—no more, no less. If an enemy were too close, he'd overshoot, too far, and there would be distance left to close. It relied on precise positioning, which was difficult to guarantee.

Not that it mattered. The arrival of close-in reinforcements sent the archers scrambling for their swords and the mages moving for their protection. Higgins caught the arm of one archer, and Alarion watched in horrid fascination as the sickly flesh shriveled and tightened under the soldier's grasp.

No longer the primary target, Alarion took the opportunity to right himself. Then he threw Echo toward the ridgeline, braced himself, and teleported one last time. The shift in momentum sent him tumbling sideways, Echo falling from his grasp as he went. Not his best landing, but far from his worst.

At least, until he noticed the violet glow of the ground a few feet to his left.

"Kotone, Mace!"

"Yes, Miss! Yes, Miss!" his familiar chimed happily as it dropped the oversized weapon into Alarion's waiting grip. The words of a spell were on the young man's lips when the center of the glowing patch of earth flashed white, then resolved into an image of the valley below, with Velcor waiting on the far side.

"What the-?" she asked in surprise, rifle leveled toward him before recognition set in. "Don't scare me like that."

The annoyed woman stepped close to the portal and then bent at the waist until her upper body 'emerged' from the ground at a 90-degree angle. It was an awkward position, but one that left her low to the ground, hard to see, and fully capable of taking the shot as she fired a round into one of the revenants.

"Are you waiting for permission?" Velcor asked as she cycled the rifle.

"S-sorry," Alarion stammered. He'd seen plenty of odd magic throughout his life, but every so often, something still stunned him. "Right."

He scampered a few feet to the side, plucked Echo from the ground, and threw it toward the raging battle.

Higgins had done a wonder distracting the revenants, but he'd done little to damage them after his initial surprise attack. That changed as Velcor and Alarion entered the fray in earnest. Her shots were precise and powerful; not quite enough to kill a rank II awakened outright, but more than enough to cripple one spellcaster as Alarion appeared in their midst.

He was a tornado of violence, smashing the arm of the nearest revenant before it even registered he was present. If the fight had remained four-on-one, the revenants might have stood a chance, but four against three was hopeless. They were high rank I or low rank II, but they were nowhere near his equal. These were the risen bodies of provincial Auxilia, and they fought like it: amateurish, clumsy, and out of sync. A Vitrian-trained savant in their midst was like a wolf amongst sheep.

"Impressive," Kali muttered as he joined them at the top. Without an equivalent movement power, it had taken the sergeant half a minute to scale the near-vertical surface by hand. More than enough time for his allies to dispatch the four revenants. "Any injuries?"

"The orphan took a hit." Higgins declared. He was already on his way toward Alarion as he spoke, a glowing hand outstretched. The wound wasn't bad, but they couldn't afford to confront the bulk of the enemy force at anything less than their best.

"A lucky shot," Alarion grumbled, a bit annoyed that he was the only one with a scratch. "They heard us; why are they holding back?"

A pulse of magic answered the question as several jet-black spheres erupted from the nearby thicket of trees, arcing in their direction.

"Ah."

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