ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Asher Hawthorne had arrived in Eldervale west-southwest of Veyrhold, and unlike several of the second-years who had likely spent their first moments praying, screaming, or pretending they had not almost broken something during the drop, he had landed alone.

He preferred it that way.

The teleportation spell had released him through a lower section of canopy, not gently, but not high enough to make the landing difficult. He had twisted, caught a branch with one hand, burned through a cluster of leaves with a small snap of blue flame when they blocked his sight, and dropped to the ground with only a minor scrape across his forearm.

After that, he had done what needed to be done. He checked his field bag, inspected his communication insignia, unfolded the academy map, studied the sky through the breaks in the canopy, and used the slope of the terrain along with the old road markings beneath the roots to estimate his rough location.

Then he started moving.

He did not move like Liam would have. Liam moved as if every leaf, shadow, sound, and patch of disturbed soil had personally insulted him and needed to be interrogated before he passed. He did not move like Sheila either. Sheila would have organized people first, steadied their breathing, counted injuries, and made sure fear did not split the group before distance did.

Asher’s method was simpler. Direct. Confident. Aggressive enough to keep momentum, but not so reckless that he ignored what mattered. He trusted his battle instinct, his speed, his flames, and the part of his mind that sharpened best when danger stopped being theoretical.

He was not careless.

He simply hated wasting time.

The forest annoyed him almost immediately. Roots knotted through the soil in raised ridges, mist sat low between the trees, and the darkness seemed to lean deeper beneath old trunks than it had any right to. The air smelled of wet bark, stone, and something metallic that made him wrinkle his nose.

He kept his flames low, only letting blue light flicker at his fingertips when he needed to check a mark or warn off something small moving too close in the brush. He had no intention of advertising himself to everything in the realm, but if something wanted to attack, he was not going to tiptoe around pretending stealth had married him.

He had traveled for perhaps half an hour when he found the four idiots.

That was the word he settled on after seeing the situation.

The four second-years had taken shelter inside an old stone waystation beside a ruined roadside wall, apparently deciding that because it had three standing walls and half a roof, it qualified as safety. They had not cleared it properly. They had not checked the broken lower room behind the collapsed counter.

They had not inspected the roof gap or the narrow crawlspace near the back. They had simply stumbled inside, decided the stone felt better than trees, and trapped themselves in a structure already occupied by Realm-Touched scavengers small enough to hide in cracks and vicious enough to turn panic into blood.

By the time Asher arrived, the waystation was surrounded by six of the creatures and possibly more inside. They were low-bodied things with hooked claws and stretched faces, their hides mottled gray and brown like wet stone, their backs ridged with splinters of bone or bark. Not powerful individually, but quick, mean, and good at using doorways.

Two had crawled along the outer wall. One clung upside down beneath the broken roof. Another darted in and out of the doorway every time the students inside tried to move. The four students had managed to barricade themselves behind a broken slab, which meant they had enough sense to delay death but not enough to avoid inviting it.

Asher had stared at the whole thing for two seconds and felt his mood sour.

"You saw old stone in a hostile realm and thought, what, free bedroom?" he snapped from the road.

The students inside jerked toward his voice.

One of the creatures did too.

It sprang off the outer wall toward him, jaws opening wide enough to show rows of needle-like teeth. Asher stepped forward instead of back, blue flame gathering around his right hand in a tight, controlled burst. He let the creature come into range, then struck it with a short, focused flare that burned across its face and chest, knocking it sideways into the dirt with a shriek.

Another lunged from the doorway, and Asher pivoted, driving a flame-coated kick into its ribs hard enough to send it crashing against the wall.

"Out," he ordered the students inside.

"We can’t!" one of the girls shouted. "They’re in the back too!"

"Then stop talking and move when I open the front."

He advanced on the doorway with blue flames curling low around both hands. The creatures reacted to heat and movement, but not intelligently enough to coordinate against pressure. Asher noticed that quickly. They rushed openings, retreated when hurt, then tried to circle toward the weakest side.

So he gave them the weakest side on purpose. He flared his left hand brighter, drawing two of them toward the front, then snapped a smaller burst along the ground to cut them off before they committed. The heat forced them sideways, bunching them near the ruined wall.

Asher moved through the gap before they could recover.

He struck the first with a palm burst to the throat, shoved the second aside with his shoulder, and sent a thin crescent of blue flame across the doorway’s broken lintel. Not enough to collapse it, only enough heat and pressure to make the creature clinging above release its hold and fall. He caught it with a second burst before it hit the ground.

"Now," he barked.

The four students scrambled out, one helping another who had a cut across his calf. Asher moved behind them, forcing the creatures back each time they tried to rush. He did not chase kills. That would have been satisfying, but unnecessary. The point was escape, not proving something to vermin.

He placed himself between the creatures and the students, used short bursts to blind and burn, then drove a final wall of blue flame across the entrance long enough to make the remaining scavengers recoil deeper into the waystation.

"Move," he ordered.

They moved.

Once they were far enough from the ruin that the creatures did not pursue, Asher turned on them.

The four second-years stood breathing hard beneath the trees, shaken, embarrassed, and clearly relieved in a way that made them more willing to accept being yelled at. There were two boys and two girls. One boy, thin and pale with a bleeding calf, leaned against a tree while trying not to look like he needed help.

The other had a short sword and the blank expression of someone only now realizing bravery did not work well after stupidity had already chosen the battlefield. One girl had freckles, brown hair, and a bow held too tightly in one hand. The other girl, with black hair tied back and ice-blue eyes, watched Asher with more focus than the rest despite the fear still sitting in her face.

Asher pointed back toward the waystation. "That was an unknown structure in a hostile realm. You do not enter it because it has walls. You clear it. You listen. You check holes, corners, back rooms, roof gaps, lower spaces, and anything that looks like something ugly could sleep in it. Walls do not mean safety. The Headmaster said that before sending us here. Were all four of you using your ears as decorations?"

The short-sword boy flushed. "We thought it was better than standing in the open."

"You thought wrong."

The brown-haired archer swallowed. "Thank you for helping."

"I did not do it because you deserved it."

That shut them up.

After a few moments, the black-haired girl asked, "Are you going toward Veyrhold?"

"Yes."

"Can we follow?"

Asher looked at all four of them, then at the bleeding calf, then back toward the dark road ahead. The smart answer for his speed was no. The practical answer for the assessment was different. Leaving them alone after they had already proven capable of mistaking a predator nest for shelter meant they might die before reaching anyone useful. That would be more irritating later.

"You can follow," he said. "But do not act more stupid than you already have."

The short-sword boy looked offended, then wisely decided gratitude was safer.

Asher pointed at the archer girl. "You. Name."

"Kara Cale."

"Archer girl, you watch the rear and upper branches. If you see movement, you say direction first, fear later."

Her brows pulled together. "My name is Kara."

"Good for you. Rear watch."

She looked like she wanted to argue, then nodded.

He pointed to the injured boy. "You stay center. If your leg slows us too much, say it before you collapse and make it everyone’s problem."

The boy nodded tightly.

"You," Asher said to the short-sword boy, "left flank. Do not swing at shadows unless they grow teeth. And you," he said to the other girl, "mark the route. Low marks. Not obvious. If I turn around and see you carving a sign large enough for the Warden to read, I will burn the tree down and blame you."

The girl blinked. "Understood."

They followed him after that.

Asher complained about them in his head for the next stretch, then out loud whenever one of them earned it, but he did keep them alive. He slowed when the injured boy’s limp worsened, not because he was suddenly soft, but because dragging a damaged student too hard only created a worse delay later. He corrected Kara twice when she watched the ground too long and forgot the branches.

He stopped the group before crossing a mist pocket and made them circle higher. He checked two structures from a distance and forbade them from entering either. When the short-sword boy started toward a faint sound between the trees, Asher caught his collar and yanked him back hard enough to nearly drop him.

"Unknown voice," Asher said. "Unknown direction. Unknown source. Three reasons not to move and somehow your feet still tried."

The boy stared at him, pale. "I thought it might be a student."

"And I think your skull is a decorative bowl, but I am not reaching inside to check."

Kara made a quiet choking sound that might have been a laugh.

Asher ignored it and kept moving.

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