38th of Season of Earth, 58th year of the 32nd cycle

Lady Alabaster sat alone, away from prying eyes. She stared at the ruins of her once mighty order and wept. A day had passed since the attack, and only after the twenty-odd hours did she have time to sit and gather her thoughts.

Treason. A pair of overseers disabled defenses and alarms on the eastern side of the island, allowing the invaders to sneak in under the guise of three large merchant ships.

The demons outnumbered Explorer's Gate champions two to one, and still lost the fight, their abominable element weaker when the battlefield lacked the dead and dying to sustain their power. That the Explorer's Gate fought off a force twice their size, inflicting gruesome damage to the attackers, failed to lift her morale.

Two grandmasters had died. Despite the imperial bounty, the fact that the grandmasters had slain five ninth realm cultists meant little to the survivors.

"Newstar escaped." Flameax sat beside her, an arm short.

"They massacred our students."

"The battlefield was in their favor. They had a huge numbers advantage and surprise on their side, not to mention they attacked the weakest first, culling them for blood." Flameax hesitated, but then spoke his mind. "The weak died; the strong, the cunning, and the lucky survived. We have suffered a setback, but we can raise a new generation of students in less than a hundred years."

Alabaster's mouth twisted. Setback. Was that what you called a slaughter of several thousand youths? "More than half our overseers died, some of them very strong and skilled for their realm."

Flameax nodded.

"The old decided their opponents' deaths were worth the few remaining years they had. Lady Dreadwalker could have escaped with her life if she had been so inclined. Instead, she chose to warn us and give us an extra opening."

Alabaster disagreed. True, the disciplinary chaplain could have retreated in her fight one against three, but that meant leaving three ninth realm cultists unchecked. They would have slain another Explorer's Gate grandmaster, freeing up more of their ilk, until they slaughtered everyone. Grandmaster Dreadwalker really had a choice. Choice between her life and the order's continued survival, and she had made her choice, assuming anyone dared call it that.

No, Lady Dreadwalker had as much of a choice as a falling stone. She was doomed, and at the cost of her own life, she bought the lives and deaths of others. Her self-detonation was the turning point. The cultists crumbled and retreated a handful of minutes later, but their carnage remained.

All the order's workers and most of the outer students had perished, what remained was a shadow of the order's former glory.

Once the opponents broke, the majority of the champions gave chase, but other than sinking the Blood Cult's stolen vessels, they did little damage. Faced with the pursuit, the demons had already slaughtered their weaker initiates, and using the strength of their blood, they saved the stronger ones.

Cruel and pragmatic. Such was the world of awakened, and demons especially followed such law to the extreme. Which begged a question.

"Why did they attack us?"

Flameax shrugged.

"What I want to know is where's the gatemaster, and how did they know he was away?"

"Gatemaster is away on imperial summons." Grandmaster Monsoon appeared beside them. "I don't know how they knew. Now, let me regrow your arm, Flameax."

***

"Our only chance is to head north." Emeraldstreak stated the obvious, but did not mention the other, equally obvious truths.

The ship had crashed deep inside Summersweald; they were unarmed, stranded in the domain of a peak fifth realm manabeast, meaning they were surrounded by its third and fourth realm prey. Hopefully that was the case and not the alternative - the terrorwing was the prey of the jungle's sixth or seventh realm overlord.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Navigating their way around third and fourth realm manabeasts was dangerous, but not impossible. Doing the same with fifth realm manabeasts meant certain death on their first encounter.

Newt closed his eyes and tried to explore the world with his danger sense, but outside the Valley of the Lost the uncanny perception proved too faint to locate prey and danger. Heading north was the best they could do.

The one thing their course guaranteed was that the odds of encountering any remains of their escape vessel were close to zero.

Just as they started moving, a mighty roar shook the jungle. Newt, Greenbow, and Emeraldstreak scrambled for cover while looking up towards its source, seeing nothing but the canopy. Magmin sprang to Newt's mind. The first ghost's fascination with the aerial predators became apparent to Newt in all its terrifying glory.

Less than ten minutes ago, maybe even less than five, the terrorwing had smashed head-first into a hill of enchanted, reinforced wood and metal, yet it already flew, scanning the area for any sign of trespassers.

Hopefully, that means it's the apex predator around here.

Another shriek shook the jungle. Closer. Despite themselves and the futility of the action, the three mageknights pressed against the massive tree trunk, staring up. Their shelter's crown shook in the sudden gale, then stilled as the frustrated shriek grew distant.

Greenbow gestured for them to move, and the group moved. While they needed the weapons and provisions, it suddenly became obvious their top priority was to open distance between themselves and the crash site.

Newt and the rest didn't know whether the trees hampered the towering avian's landing or merely obstructed its line of sight, but walking out into the open, where the airship's fragments had mowed down the trees, was tantamount to suicide.

A quarter of an hour later, Newt's racing heart calmed, his heartbeat slowed, and the blood stopped drumming through his jugular. He remained tense, mana circulating through his body, and Granite Crust a split second away from materializing.

The others seemed just as tense, scanning the jungle as life and sounds gradually returned to it. First the cicadas and other noisy insects joined the ever-persistent mosquitoes, then came the frogs and the chatter of low realm sharpbeakes high above. In the depths of the Summersweald, lower realm manabeasts evolved to reduce their size, to better hide and avoid the top predators.

Newt's mindcore picked up a denser pocket of mana hanging off a tree fifteen yards away. The second realm silhouette was shaped like a palm-sized sharpbeak hugging a melon-sized mango, but Newt failed to spot the saurian with his eyes, despite knowing its exact location.

He pointed towards the mango, and his sisters followed the direction indicated by the finger. They furrowed their brows and strained their eyes, but like Newt, they failed to spot the critter latching onto its melon.

"Look with your mindcores. It's a tiny second realm sharpbeak," Newt whispered, and the two gave him slow nods and weird looks, which made him recall pointing out shiny bugs to his parents when he was a small boy.

He gulped. Death stalked them in the sky, they traveled the depths of the Summersweald, and he was fascinated by neat, harmless avians and their camouflage ability.

Newt kept his eyes peeled and his mouth closed. The jungle abounded with beauty. If not for the omnipresent weight of danger pressing a dagger against his neck, Newt would have enjoyed the trek. Majestic trees surrounded them, but what Newt noticed about them were the horizontal claw-marks, warning intruders they had entered a predator's territory. The scratches stood eight feet above ground, three deep gashes, each a foot in length, and they appeared fresh.

"Longclaws," Greenbow pointed at the marks, then at a footprint at the tree's base. The trail was easy to follow, and fortunately did not head north, but north-west.

"Any idea about its realm?" Newt asked, but his eldest sister shook her head.

"No clue. I can't guess its element either, but its prints are heavy, so I doubt its air. Like most predators, they gravitate towards fire, but that's like a sixty percent statistic; usually correct, often deceptive, lethal if you rely on it."

The way Greenbow said it, Newt knew she expected a response from him, but had no clue what to say. So he nodded sagely and left it at that.

"We need to find water," she continued as the party entered the Longclaw's domain. "Aura has lost some blood, and her body is more fragile. She will need a drink or two tomorrow."

Greenbow set a faster pace than Newt would have liked. He wanted to skulk and sneak, but they moved at a relaxed walk for their realm, which translated to faster than mortals could sprint. Even so, the return trip would take moons. The airship moved over a thousand miles per hour, and they had been airborne for the better part of two days. In truth, considering how deep they were in the Summersweald, it was a wonder a mere peak fifth realm manabeast was an apex predator.

As he calmed down enough to consider such facts, it was time to address the thundertitan in the room.

"What of Sharprock and Sharpcut?"

"We can only hope they are healthy and press on. They could be a hundred yards away, or they might be half a dozen miles away. There's no way to find them, but if they are alive, they will also head north. That's the only option, and sooner or later we will catch up to them, or they will catch up to us. Sharprock isn't any worse than me at reading tracks, and if he runs across ours, he should find us in short order."

Newt nodded, wondering whether his eldest sister would have left him behind using that same logic had he been the one who got separated.

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