ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Liam sat leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, his breathing slow enough that the room seemed to have accepted him as part of its stillness.

The desk before him remained covered in the organized remains of his thoughts. The Bastion Assessment guide sat closed now, weighed down by his personal book and several pieces of parchment filled with notes about arrival zones, regrouping procedures, Veyrhold phases, shadow deployment, threat patterns, communication failures, and the kind of avoidable stupidity that had a habit of becoming everyone’s problem.

Outside the window, daylight had shifted without his permission. The sharper brightness of noon had softened, stretching into the warmer, duller tones that came before dusk, though Liam had not noticed any of it after his mind finally gave in to rest.

Within that light unconscious state, he felt a tap on his forehead.

It was light. Barely more than a touch.

His eyes snapped open.

Not with the hard urgency they might have carried on any other day, not with his hand already halfway toward a weapon or Myst surging through his channels. His instincts recognized the presence before his body fully reacted, and so his gaze opened into irritation rather than alarm.

Mabel Arkwright stood over him.

Her masked face hovered above his line of sight, the lower half hidden beneath her familiar half-mask while her hazel-brown eyes looked down at him with no practical expression at all. Her dark ash-brown hair was tied back in its usual ponytail, and she stood close enough that Liam could tell she had been watching him for at least a few seconds before deciding to disturb his sleep. Knowing Mabel, she had likely enjoyed that part more than she would admit.

"I never thought of you as someone who would simply take a nap like this," she said. "Rare sight."

Liam stared at her.

For a moment, he said nothing. His eyes still carried the dull edge of sleep, though his face had already returned to its usual blankness. Then he closed his eyes again, just for a second, as if deciding whether waking up was truly necessary.

"I was tired enough to need one."

"That sounds almost normal."

"Do not insult me."

Mabel’s eyes softened with amusement.

Liam sat upright and ran a hand through his hair. The strands fell around his face immediately, slightly messier from sleep and long enough now to make him regret every day he had ignored the problem. He brushed them back with more irritation than effort, then looked toward the window. The light outside made him pause.

Dusk was already approaching.

He had slept longer than intended.

"That is annoying," he muttered.

"Napping?"

"Time."

"A known enemy."

Liam gave her a dull look, then shifted his attention back to the desk. Mabel had already begun scanning the materials spread across it. Her eyes moved over the Bastion guide, then the parchments, then the words he had written in his clean, controlled script. She did not touch anything at first. She simply looked, taking in the headings and lines quickly enough that Liam knew she was already understanding the shape of his thinking.

"Arrival and regrouping," she read quietly. "Movement to Veyrhold. Securing Veyrhold. Command structure. Objectives and judgment." Her gaze flicked toward him. "You spent your nap preparation writing a small war manual."

"I wrote before the nap."

"That makes it much less concerning."

"It should."

"It does not."

Liam stood from his chair and stretched lightly, rolling one shoulder as stiffness complained through his back. "It is from the announcement earlier. Thion changed the shape of the assessment."

"I can tell." Mabel leaned closer to the desk now, one hand resting lightly against the edge. "You wrote the real beginning is arrival."

"That is where the first failure happens."

"Not Veyrhold?"

"Veyrhold is the second mouth," Liam said, walking toward the window. "Arrival is the first."

Mabel looked at him for a moment, then down at the notes again. "That is unpleasantly accurate."

"You can read through them if you want," Liam said, stopping near the window and looking out over the academy grounds. "You might catch something useful."

Mabel’s brows lifted slightly. "You are inviting me to review your notes?"

"I am inviting you to be useful."

"Ah. How generous of you."

Liam ignored that and looked outside. The academy grounds were settling into evening movement. Students crossed paths in small groups, some carrying score parchments, some speaking in low voices, others looking as if Thion’s briefing had followed them out of Beacon Hall and taken up residence on their shoulders. The reality of deployment in two days was sitting over everyone now, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

Behind him, Mabel finally moved closer to the desk and began reading properly.

She did not rush. She lifted one parchment, scanned it, set it down, then moved to another. Her eyes followed the phases Liam had written with increasing focus. Arrival procedures. Local leadership. Temporary groups. Marking routes. Movement based on condition rather than rigid instruction.

Securing Veyrhold before claiming it. Safe, dangerous, unknown zones. Lower-ranked students with practical skills. Ariana as consultation. Dylan as technical resource. Maxwell for repairs and labor. Asher as field combat leader. Charlotte as scouting and hunting with enough freedom that command would not waste time pretending she could be kept on a short leash.

The more Mabel read, the more amusement quietly gathered behind her eyes.

Liam Hunter, who would rather fight a pack of Horrors than involve himself in leadership drama, had essentially sat down and built the bones of a command doctrine. He had written it in the language of personal preparation, yes. He would deny any suggestion that it had anything to do with leading. He would call it threat assessment, or self-organization, or "not being stupid."

But the structure on the desk was not merely a student’s private notes. It was a commander’s guide written by someone who had no interest in admitting he understood command as well as he did.

Mabel did not put that in his face.

She knew exactly what would happen if she did. Liam would deadpan her, discard the implication, and probably insult the concept of leadership like it had personally offended him. So she kept reading, her amusement hidden behind the mask and contained mostly in her eyes.

After a while, Liam turned from the window. "What do you think?"

Mabel looked over the notes one more time before answering. "I think what you have laid out here is very solid."

"That sounds like there is a but."

"There is not always a but."

"With you, there is."

"Fair." She tapped one of the parchments lightly. "It is solid. Honestly, it reads less like personal notes and more like a commander’s guide."

Liam’s face went completely flat.

Mabel watched the implication land exactly where she intended.

"No," Liam said.

"I did not ask anything."

"You implied it."

"I merely described the material in front of me."

"No."

Mabel’s eyes curved with the smirk hidden beneath her mask. "There it is."

Liam brushed the matter aside with a small motion of his hand. "If Sheila wants a guide, she can make one."

"She might. But that does not change what this is."

"It is preparation."

"For yourself?"

"Yes."

"And somehow for the arrival phase, local leaders, Veyrhold zoning, record keeping, scouting, communication, discipline, extraction management, and role assignments across the entire year."

"Correct."

"Of course."

Liam narrowed his eyes slightly. "Make your point."

"My point is that you are very bad at not caring."

"I care about not dying."

"And other people not dying?"

"Only if their deaths become inconvenient."

"Mm." Mabel returned her gaze to the notes. "Then this is a very compassionate inconvenience map."

Liam stared at her long enough that most people would have grown uncomfortable.

Mabel was not most people.

Eventually, he looked away first. "You said there was a but."

"I said there was not always a but."

"Mabel."

She hummed faintly, satisfied that she had annoyed him enough, then turned more serious. "There is one thing you did not focus on enough."

Liam walked back toward the desk. "Which is?"

"Morale."

He paused.

Mabel tapped the page labeled Phase Four. "You covered structure, roles, discipline, communication, supply, and survival priorities. That is good. But if they are in Eldervale for fourteen days, structure alone will not hold if their minds start decaying. Fear, hunger, exhaustion, darkness, injuries, uncertainty, people screaming at night, students vanishing for hours during scouting, failed objectives, and whatever else that realm throws at them will wear them down. You wrote that command should not rely on comfort. Correct. But it also cannot ignore morale."

Liam’s expression remained neutral, but his eyes sharpened in thought.

Mabel continued, "They will need more than watches and patrols. They will need rest periods that are protected, not just allowed. They will need students who can calm panic without making people feel weak for panicking. They will need meal order, not only ration counts. They will need information shared clearly enough that rumors do not become a second enemy. If something terrible happens and command hides everything, students will invent worse truths."

Liam was quiet.

"That matters," Mabel said. "Especially if they arrive scattered. The first few groups that reach Veyrhold may not know whether friends are alive. If command does not manage that fear, it becomes anger. If it becomes anger, someone will blame the commander, the scouts, the strong students who came back alive, or whoever is easiest to hate."

Liam looked down at his notes.

He had thought about panic in the arrival phase and discipline around extraction. He had considered communication as logistics. But Mabel was right. He had not given morale its own structure. He treated emotional collapse as a threat outcome, not something command could actively manage before it broke things.

"That is annoying," he said.

"Because I am right?"

"Because people require maintenance."

"They do."

"Terrible design."

"I will inform the gods."

Liam pulled out the chair and sat again, dragging one of the parchments closer. "What else?"

Mabel folded her arms lightly, standing beside the desk. "Information rhythm. Someone, probably Sheila or Edith, needs to set times when the year receives updates. Not constant explanations, but enough. Morning and evening if possible. What is known, what is not known, what has changed, what must happen next. It prevents rumor rot."

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