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I'm back! Had some vacations and a kerfuffle but that's all over with now. Last vacation coming up, then nothing to steal my writing weekends for the rest of the year!

The harmonies of millions of voices humming and singing filled the Stragman rainforest as an entire civilization traveled through the thick foliage to the site of their next home. Rudra Kapadia did his best to join in, though he didn’t know words or notes to the seemingly endless tune the way everybody else seemed to. The song, referred to by the Stragmans as “the beacon” or “the beacon song” seemed to be an age-old tradition from many centuries ago.

As far as Rudra could tell, there had been two purposes to singing the beacon song. The first could be found right there in the name: to act as a beacon for hunting parties and other groups that split off from the main procession, helping them relocate the city as it moved. The second was that it would help ward off threats; making some noise in the forest was a great way to summon predators, but making a hell of a lot of noise would help drive them away.

Both these reasons helped illustrate the nature of Rudra’s frustrations with Stragman society. The beacon song was likely very useful back in the day, back when their civilization was a small fraction of its current size. Now, it just seemed like a monumental waste of energy. Over ten million people moving through a forest while carrying their entire city on their backs made more than enough noise to scare away predators and guide hunting groups back, but that didn’t seem to matter. Stragman civilization prized tradition over sense, in his opinion. The issue with Shells was perhaps the largest example, but it was only one of many.

With a casual flex of his arms, Rudra lifted the massive bundle of logs and other materials up slightly to keep them from clipping on a large exposed tree root. Though it had been many months since his arrival, he still couldn’t get used to his herculean strength. Perhaps the reason for that was how little he used it, having spent the vast majority of his time sitting in a cell. Either way, it still boggled his mind that he was capable of absurd feats of strength such as this. If only he’d possessed such physical prowess on Earth, back when he’d worked construction.

In a society filled with people capable of some degree of super strength, Rudra overshadowed them all. Naturally, such a display drew stares from everyone. He could feel the eyes of the people nearby burning into the back of his head and tried to ignore them as best he could, but there was no getting around the fact that being stared at like this bothered him.

Many of the looks he received were glares of displeasure, ranging from irritation to anger to full-on hate. Such looks were to be expected. He’d become the icon of the Shell liberation movement, and everybody who had problems with the idea of Shells getting more rights would naturally see him as the target of their ire. Luckily, the average citizen would have trouble getting to him even now that he was out of his cell, as a group of fierce-looking guards walked with him at all times.

Either way, those looks, while somewhat disquieting, were to be expected. Change bothered people, especially people benefiting from the status quo. He’d known from the start that his actions would engender a great amount of grievance from a large swath of the Stragman public, and as such these looks didn’t bother him too deeply. They were simply part of the price of change.

However, there were other stares: hope-filled, worshipful looks he saw coming from many of his fellow Shells. Unlike the antagonistic gazes from the other castes, these troubled him to his core. They were a constant reminder of the burden he’d put on himself, a burden taken on without really knowing if he was up to the task. Rudra had never wanted to be a hero or an icon. It had never been in his personality. But here he was, having basically made promises of a better life to an entire group of people. Could he even succeed? What even was success at this point? Would a compromise that lessened suffering but didn’t get rid of it entirely constitute success? This wasn’t something he knew much about or had any prior experience in, and it made him feel like he was flying blind through unknown territory.

Normally, this was the sort of thing he would mention to Tepin, but that wasn’t possible these days. Back in Pholis, his cell had been designed to cut him off from everybody else as much as possible, which is why it had been hung between several giant trees so that nobody could get within tens of meters of it from any direction. However, thanks to Tepin’s friend Sneak and his strange and nauseating shadow-teleporting powers, that isolation had become an asset. They’d been able to spend time together without fear of discovery as long as she stayed out of view. That convenient situation was no more. These days, he walked surrounded by guards, he ate surrounded by guards, he slept surrounded by guards, he even did his dirty business surrounded by guards. At least until the migration was over, the two co-conspirators had to avoid each other.

The strange thing was, he unexpectedly found himself missing the acerbic, business-oriented wolfwoman. Though Tepin Silverfall projected a cold veneer and largely stuck to topics concerning their mutual endeavor, and though in the beginning she’d treated him like a dog that had just peed on the rug, Rudra had warmed to her company to the point that he looked forward to her visits now. Their conversations were some of the only ways he had to learn about this world and its goings on. Perhaps more importantly, she always seemed largely unimpressed by him. When she looked at him, she didn’t see a hero or an icon. She simply saw an ordinary, unimpressive man. It felt refreshing to be taken as just a normal person after all the hero worship and idolization. Whereas many Shells hung on every sentence he uttered, those same words would just make her roll her eyes.

Tepin would surely visit him once they’d arrived at the cave system the Stragmans called Hoxoni, but that was still days away. For now all he could do was put one foot ahead of another and hum along.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Looking at his surroundings, Rudra wanted to laugh. During the migration he had wondered what his cell was going to be like for the entire trip south. Would it be some small room embedded deep into the cave rock? Maybe a cage made of stalagmites and stalactites? The possibilities had seemed vast. So, of course, here he sat, once more confined in a cell suspended high in the air.

The city of Hoxoni sat inside a gargantuan cave system. The city was primarily located in the chambers closest to the outside world, where the airflow was the best and where most of the glowing moss and fungi grew. However, the cave system reached far beyond the bounds of the city, extending down and out past the point where few people ever bothered to go. There was nothing really worth finding down there, after all, other than rocks and underground rivers. Except, apparently, one area known as “the Chasm”.

The Chasm was precisely what it sounded like: a large crack going down into the earth at least a hundred meters wide and hundreds of meters deep. Like the rest of the deeper caves, the Chasm offered little of value for the civilization and was therefore generally avoided. However, it did make a perfect place to hang a cell to hold you number one political prisoner.

Looking down from his cell as it hung from the ceiling, Rudra couldn’t help but be amazed at the size of not only the Chasm but the cavern itself. By his estimates, the chamber had to be at least the size of a major cricket stadium. Other than the massive gorge running through the center of the cave, the rest of the floor meters below him was mostly unremarkable. There were some rocky outcroppings and other typical underground geological features, but that was about it. The only other notable thing was the tunnel that wound its way through many more meters of thick rock and led back towards the city. That tunnel entrance was so distant, situated at the edge of the chamber hundreds of meters away, that he couldn’t make it out in the dim light even from his high vantage point.

These conditions all combined to drive home his isolation. Given that there was only one way in and that his cage was so far from the city, the Stragmans didn’t even need to post guards in the cavern; they just put them at the far end of the tunnel, which was just as effective and much less of a hassle for the guards themselves. At least it meant that Rudra could make all the noise he wanted and it wouldn’t bother anybody, since there was nobody around to hear it.

Usually. A series of familiar high-pitched squeaks interrupted his thoughts. Rudra turned around to find a small woman and a lanky man standing in the cell. As the man silently melted into the shadow on the floor and disappeared, a long, bundle of fluff jumped from the woman’s arms and ran excitedly about the cell.

“Slinky!” Rudra cried, bending down and reaching out with his arms towards the pet wruelit. “Come to papa, cutie!”

The wruelit chomped down onto his large finger, drawing a small chuckle from him as he raised his hand, pulling the furry creature up into the air. She flailed about in the air before latching onto his arm with her claws and using her newly found leverage to pull herself up onto his beefy bicep.

“Her bites don’t hurt anywhere near as much as they used to,” Rudra observed proudly as the tiny creature chittered away on his shoulder before scrambling up the side of his head and down onto the other shoulder, then down his back and back onto the floor. “I think she’s finally taken a liking to me.”

“If that thing likes anybody, it’s me,” Tepin replied, tossing him a small bag of food for both him and his elongated weasel. “I’ll have you know it doesn’t bite me at all and lets me pick it up without struggle.”

“I’ll win her over, you just watch,” Rudra proclaimed. “Slinky will love me more than you soon enough.”

“I sure hope so,” came the dry reply.

“So, aren’t you a bit early today? I wasn’t expecting you just yet.”

“What are you going on about? I’m actually later than usual,” she said.

“You are? How can you tell? It’s just darkness down here.”

“The glowmoss, of course,” Tepin replied, indicating the thick layer of moss, along with several large mushrooms, growing from the ceiling of the cell. The luminescent moss let off a soft glow of blue-white light that caused the beastwoman’s silver hair, wolf ears, and tail to almost shine in the darkness. “Did you not notice that it dims during the night?”

“What? How am I supposed to notice that?” Rudra scoffed. “It’s not like I’m used to this.”

“Sadly, you’re about to become very used to it.”

“Can’t I at least have some fire or something so I could see beyond two meters in here?” he groused. “It’s so dark even when the moss is brighter.”

“Flames are normally forbidden around glowmoss because it’s a severe fire hazard. The moss is incredibly flammable. Just a tiny flame is all it takes to set it alight, and then it will burn bright and hot, spreading quickly,” Tepin explained. “It’s highly dangerous.”

“Psht! I bet that they just don’t want me to be able to burn the cell down and escape if I get tired of this.”

The small woman frowned. “I wouldn’t be so confident this time,” she cautioned. “Unlike the last cage, this one has been specially built with your strength in mind using wood from the Mother Tree herself. It won’t burn, nor do I think it will break, not even under your prodigious strength.”

“Really? Something like that exists?” he wondered.

“You’ve seen the Chos’s warclub, have you not? It’s the same material. Nearly indestructible.”

“Huh... I would have thought that they would have made a more ambitious prison if they had access to stuff like that,” Rudra mused. “Just making another hanging cage feels very... unoriginal.”

Tepin rolled her eyes, the sight bringing a slight smile to Rudra’s face after so long. “It’s been so long that I had forgotten what a dunce you are,” she remarked. “While this arrangement may seem uncreative to a dullard such as yourself, I find it highly worrisome. The point of this design is to isolate the prisoner from the rest of the world, both to keep them from escaping and to keep them from interacting with anybody the Chos doesn’t want them interacting with. Their mistake was assuming that placing you high above the city was enough. Instead, it only made things worse for them because they couldn’t hide you. You were the Shell that defied the Chos every day in front of everybody. It was a powerful sight for many.

“This time, they have not made the same mistake. This is a good quarter of an hour away from the edge of the city, and the only way into this area is a long tunnel with guards on the other end. We’re so far away from another person that you could yell and not even the guards would hear you. Even if somebody were to make it inside this cavern, they wouldn’t even be able to see you in this darkness. The Chos has cut you off from the movement which you lead. It is worrisome.”

“Well, at least you can still come see me,” Rudra offered, eliciting a contemptuous snort from the small woman.

“If things go as I fear, there will be little reason for me to visit you other than to relay bad news,” she confided. “The fight has already been taxing on the Shells, and now it will only get worse. Back in Pholis we were able to supplement our food supply by growing fruits. That will not be possible here. As things get tougher, morale will falter. I worry that our people’s determination will falter without your constant presence to inspire them.”

“We acquired better pay in exchange for assisting the migration,” Rudra reminded her. “Shouldn’t that help?”

“Indeed. It means that we can support more strikers with fewer people. However, it also makes the prospect of leaving the movement and returning to work more palatable for many. There is a limit to how much suffering anybody can take, and the better the other side looks to the Shells, the more people will be tempted to stop fighting. That’s why you are so important. It gives everybody a banner to rally around.”

“Am I really that important?”

“I don’t think you understand just how fractured the Shell caste was before you came here,” Tepin explained. “Being a Shell is different than being something like an elf or a Eterian or other kinds of social groups. It’s not determined by how you are born or where you live. The single constant between Shells is one thing only: failure. Shells are the failures of Stragman society. The people deemed not good enough. To be a Shell is to have shown yourself before the country to be deficient. It is perhaps the greatest mark of shame a Stragman can have, and as such, it pushes most Shells apart instead of bringing them together over common ground. To truly take ownership of your place as a Shell is to fully accept your dishonor, and that is incredibly hard to do. Believe me, we in the Hidden Fang have been trying for years and it’s been harder than, well... than corralling wruelits.”

She glanced at Slinky, who was currently busy trying to climb the cell walls and failing, as her claws were unable to dig into the impossibly hard wood.

“You changed so much more than you realize, Rudra,” she continued. “Not only did you choose to be a Shell, strongly and proudly as the entire country watched, you then proceeded to go toe to toe with the Chos herself and even make her bend to you at times. No Shell has ever been willing or able to do such a thing. When the others saw you do that, it was like something bloomed inside them. Suddenly they didn’t feel as horrible being a Shell, and they started working together. But now, with you removed from the scene, I fear that all our progress will soon crumble.”

“Surely you can figure out something?”

Tepin gave him an annoyed look. “You act like I can just snap my fingers and fix this. I’m not like you. I don’t have that sort of capabilities.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Tepin. You’re far more important than me in this fight.”

“Did you not listen to anything I said before? You are special. I am replaceable.”

“That’s horseshit! Without you, everything would fall apart within hours—not just for the Shells, but for the whole country!” He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You’re frighteningly competent, incredibly devoted, terrifyingly passionate in your causes... without you, none of this works. I just sit here and look pretty. You’ve always been the one making the gears turn, and even a blind person would be able to see that!”

The small woman drew back from him as if struck. “I should go,” she said said hurriedly.

“Wait, already? But you just got here!”

“I have other business to take care of. Believe it or not, I cannot devote all my waking hours towards relieving your boredom,” she said icily as she picked up Slinky and tucked the furball into her cloak. “Sneak!”

With the calling of his name, the lanky man flowed up out of Tepin’s shadow and placed a hand on her shoulder, just by where Rudra had put his hand, except this time Tepin didn’t flinch. The two of them sank into the murky darkness, leaving behind a befuddled Rudra wondering if it was something he’d said.

Rudra’s eyes opened to the chirping of birds and the puttering of motors on the streets outside his bedroom.

“Mmmmmmmm... hey, sleepyhead...” a sultry voice purred in his ear.

“Jaya...” he whispered, staring into her mesmerizing eyes.

“Have a good dream?” she asked.

“I... uh...” Rudra paused, trying to recall the dream. “I can’t remember. But I’m sure it had you in it, so it must have been wonderful.”

“What a charmer you are,” she chuckled. With a tired moan, she snuggled up against his muscular arm and buried her head against his shoulder. Rudra froze in place, determined to never move again, lest he disturb this divine moment. “And what if I wasn’t in it?”

“Then it must have been terrible and I don’t care to remember it,” Rudra replied.

Jaya let out and amused snort into his shoulder. “So all that matters is me? That’s it?”

“Of course. What do I always tell you? You are the light in my life. Without you, I would be blind and lost.”

“And what do I always say in return?” she prodded.

Rudra sighed. “That centering your entire existence around another person is unhealthy and that I need to get out more.”

The still half-asleep woman hummed her agreement into his side.

“But none of that would matter, right? Because you wouldn’t leave me. Right?” he asked with a hint of trepidation, finally putting words to the nagging fears her answer always generated in his heart.

“Mmmmmmmm... nope, never,” she replied. “And if the sex is always as good as it was last night, I might never even get out of this bed ever again.”

Rudra shifted onto his side and pulled his newly wedded wife close to him, his lips meeting hers. It was a good thing he didn’t have work today, because neither of them would be getting up for a long time.

Rudra’s eyes opened once again to semi-darkness, only the soft glow of the glowmoss lending any illumination to his surroundings. With a groan, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and leaned his back against the nearby wall. Between the omnipresent darkness and the lack of anything meaningful to see or do, he’d taken to sleeping a lot more in this new cage than in the old one. The gratuitous sleeping often messed up his perception of the flow of time, but with only the subtle change in the glowmoss’s brightness to go by, he could barely tell if it was day or night regardless.

With a weary sigh, he rubbed his tired eyes. He’d dreamt of Jaya again. That was the one problem with all the sleep: it meant more dreams.

He wondered what Jaya would have thought about his current life. The funny thing was, while she would surely hate the decor, she’d probably find his current endeavors highly appealing. She’d always had that activist spirit that he’d lacked. He’d had no real vision or ambition, instead being content with just following along behind hers. That was a large part of what had pushed her away, he believed. It was also a large reason he’d been so willing to head down his current path, stupid as that sounded. In some ways, he was still chasing her, still trying to become the man she’d wanted him to be even though he’d likely never see her again.

It hadn’t worked. Nothing worked. Years and a whole other realm later, the void she’d left in his heart remained.

Rudra stood up onto his feet and walked over to the wooden bars that served as one of the walls to the cage. He knew he couldn’t allow himself to dwell on those thoughts. If he didn’t stop himself, he’d just end up spiraling down and down and down endlessly, and nothing good would come of that. It was just so hard to stay strong these days, trapped alone in the darkness as he was. He’d done his best to stay positive and engaged, but the endless gloom and the solitude was getting to him these days.

Only Tepin’s visits provided any sort of light anymore, but sadly even those were not as they used to be. Ever since that first day in Hoxoni, it was like there was a chasm between them, one almost as wide as the literal divide that his cage hung over. Tepin treated him coldly again, like she had when they’d first met. Rudra didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. All he’d done was complimented her!

As if summoned, the most influential Shell in Stragma rose up from the shadows, a scowl on her face as per usual. Still, though her expression remained similar to how it always was these days, Rudra knew immediately that something was wrong. There was a worry in her eyes that replaced the standard annoyance he normally saw.

“A small riot happened today,” Tepin informed him as Slinking leapt from her arms. “Over three hundred Shell are dead.”

“Oh no,” Rudra replied with great dismay. “There hasn’t been a riot in a long time, right?”

“Yes, not since the first days of the strike,” Tepin agreed solemnly. “The thing is, I fear this may be just the beginning. Tensions are high on both sides. The unsanitary conditions throughout the city continue to worsen, creating more anger towards us every day. At the rate this is going, that will not be the last time their rage boils over.”

“What do we do?” Rudra fretted.

Tepin’s face darkened. “I don’t know. Morale is at an all-time low. They have corralled all the Shells into the foulest areas. Food and other supplies are running out, and incidental violence against us has become more and more commonplace. Every day more people leave. I can’t stop them and I can’t blame them. If we still had you to heal them and be a symbol of hope, things wouldn’t be as bad but...”

“Then can’t we do that?”

“How? If you magically escaped this place without breaking out, that would expose the secret fact that we have ways to come and go as we please. It would put the entire operation in danger. Only if it could be explained by your physically breaking the cell would it be a worthwhile idea.”

Rudra hung his head. “No, you were right. This wood is too sturdy; I can’t even bend the stuff. Can’t we sneak one of those broadcast people in here instead? Maybe let me send a message to everybody to show them that I’m still with them.”

“No, we wouldn’t be able to hide and event like that from the government. They would start asking questions and eventually they’d figure out our secret just the same as if we stole you from here.”

“Then at least bring people in here secretly so I can heal them. Let me help somehow! Sitting this out is driving me up the wall!”

Tepin shook her head. “Even that is too risky. In Pholis, you could perform your miracles because you were in public and we were able to build a way up to your cell. We can’t do that here. People would start to notice, especially the Chos’s undercover agents. All it would take was for them to grab one healed person and make them squeal and it’s all over.”

“Then what do we do? Give up?”

Tepin’s gaze hardened. “I have not given up once in the forty-one years of my life, and I don’t plan on starting now. Neither should you. Just think. You have nothing better to do, right? Maybe you’ll come up with something so crazy it might work.”

“Alright, I don’t know what I’ll be able to think of, but I’ll try,” Rudra agreed.

“Very well,” Tepin replied, scooping up Slinky as the wruelit scurried by her feet and cradling the squeaking creature in her arms. “It’s time I left. Farewell.”

“Hold on!” Rudra quickly cried, before she could disappear. “Why not stay a little longer? I could use a little more conversation, you know? There’s nobody else to talk to up here.”

“I think it’s best if we keep our interactions brief whenever possible,” she curtly answered. “Goodbye.”

Rudra let out a tired groan and went and sat down in the back corner of the cell. Why had she become so distant? Frustrated, he whacked his head several times with the heel of his hand. Now wasn’t the time for this. He needed to come up with something as soon as he could. Little did he know that even if he did think of something, in a few days it wouldn’t matter.

Rudra paced back and forth nervously as he waited for Tepin to arrive. Just that day, Akhustal Palebane herself had decided to pay him a visit. The Chos checked in on him every month or so, likely just to placate her fears that he would somehow suddenly vanish. This visit had been different. Much different. Stupendously different. So different that he didn’t know what to do. But somebody else would. He just had to survive the wait until she arrived... assuming she even did. For some unknown reason, there’d been no visit the night before.

Eventually, the familiar sight of Tepin Silverfall and her underling Sneak emerging from the shadows appeared before him. “Tepin! Palebane, she came and... and...” he cried, so excited that he had trouble finding the words.

“I know, you oaf. Calm down,” Tepin replied testily as Sneak once more sank away into nothingness and Slinky hopped down from her chest. “What did she offer?”

“Better pay, the removal of second-class status, all of it! All I have to do is resurrect everybody, end the strike, and give some speeches! What happened?!”

“An elf arrived, of all things,” she said with a smirk of amusement.

“An elf? You mean one of those Drayhadans she hates so much?”

“Not all elves are Drayhadans, but in this case, yes. He arrived two days ago, and my life has been utter chaos ever since.”

“Oh, is that why you didn’t come visit last night?”

“Correct. I apologize for not sending word but I was far too busy dealing with the Chos and her new friend... or perhaps I should say old friend?” She shook her head slightly as if to clear her mind. “None of that is important right now. What matters is this: the Chos wishes to join the war against the Ubrans. The elf has convinced her, perhaps rightly, that our country has far more to gain than to lose through such an action. But war is impossible as we are now.”

“I see! They need us!”

“Correct. With so much of the populace missing, we will be needed even more to fill the gaps. Not only that, but there is another migration coming soon, to Kukego. War is not possible without our cooperation.”

“Should I cooperate?” Rudra wondered. “Basically, this would make me responsible for so many future deaths, and you know my beliefs on that.”

“The war is already raging,” Tepin reminded him. “If anything, Stragman involvement would likely bring it to an end sooner and save lives overall.”

“I guess you have a point,” Rudra allowed. “But is she really willing to agree to every one of our demands just for a war that would be over quickly? These are permanent changes we’re asking for.”

“I thought the same thing,” Tepin agreed. “I think there’s several factors to consider here. First, the most important thing is that the elf presented the Chos with a way out of her troubles, at least for now. If their plan succeeds fully, the spoils would likely be enough to offset much of the damage that we have caused, if not more. I believe that she has been looking for a solution to the problem we present that isn’t just her giving in to us. This allows her to save face in front of everybody and sell it as something more than just weak capitulation.

“Second, I think she misses her husband greatly. He’s been dead for two seasons now, and it is my belief that if he were still alive, the Chos might have killed you long ago. Once again, she sees a path to getting her husband back without looking entirely like she betrayed the Stragman people and she’s jumping on it.

“Third, and perhaps most importantly, however, is the nature of the power dynamic between you and her. This is where we must be wary. As of now, we hold three major sources of leverage in our fight against her. There is the Shell strike, there is her dead husband, and there are the rest of the dead soldiers. The problem is that once we agree to terms and you resurrect everybody, those last two are gone and we can’t get them back. The Chos is not the most devious of people, but she is not a fool. It is very possible that she could agree to our terms now, only to go back on her word in a season and leave us with little left to fight with. In that way, agreeing to our terms would be fairly easy for her.

“What’s more, General Bloodflower has always been known to be a believer in the strength and sanctity of Stragman traditions. Once he returns to life, he will likely become an ideological counterweight that will pull the Chos’s positions on all of this back towards the hard-line traditionalists, greatly increasing the risk that she reneges on the agreement.”

“Yeah, you make sense. Our victories would only last as long as she says they would,” Rudra admitted. Sadly, Tepin’s last point had severely dampened his mood. “So then... what should we do?”

“We have more leverage now than any time before. The Chos is willing to make a deal. We should use that leverage to bargain for stricter terms. I can already think of several ways we can make some of our demands harder to backtrack. Then, once we get as much as we can, we agree.”

“Even if we can’t get everything we want? Even if there’s always the threat of being backstabbed?”

“Yes,” Tepin replied without hesitation. “This is what we’ve been working towards for years. To throw away our chance now would be ludicrous. In addition, I actually agree with the Chos and the elf. The Ubran Empire is an existential threat to our people, and they need to be dealt with as quickly as possible before they turn their gazes toward us. There’s no point in tearing down our own home fighting for our dignity if the cost is that the Ubrans make all our work irrelevant in the end.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” a cold voice said as a lanky figure flowed out of the shadows.

“Sneak?! Why are you-”

Tepin never finished her sentence, as a blade flashed in the soft light of the glowmoss and a long red slit appeared across her throat. She dropped to the floor, writhing about as blood gushed from her wound and puddled onto the floor.

“Tepin!” Rudra cried, rushing towards her and her treacherous subordinate standing over her dying body. The cage rocked with each powerful step as he lunged towards the man, intent on grabbing him before he could flee, but Sneak just fell into the shadows by his feet before Rudra could get a hand on him.

Cursing the shadowy bastard, Rudra looked around but couldn’t see anybody anywhere in the cell. All there was to see were the shadows encroaching at the edge of the glowmoss’s dim light. Rudra didn’t know where Sneak was hiding in those shadows, or if he was even still around. After several moments of feverishly checking all around him, he decided that he needed help. He didn’t know what this man was fully capable of. However, one other person here did.

Hurriedly shifting his focus to Tepin’s body at his feet, Rudra crouched down beside her and began to concentrate. Quickly but carefully, he began to apply his power, making sure not to push her too far. Her corpse trembled as blood seemed to materialize around her wound, flowing back into her body. Then the wound abruptly closed, the cut quickly shrinking from right to left until it was no more. Releasing his ability’s hold on her, he watched as Tepin blinked, looked up at him, and then looked at something past him.

Alarms rang in Rudra’s head at the same time that she cried “Look out!” He twisted around just in time to see a sharp object just centimeters from his face and heading his way. Instincts took over and he jerked his head back, but it was too late. The knife plunged into his right eye and a little deeper, severing the ocular nerve and suddenly turning half of his world black. Only the head jerk, the remnants of a reaction forged by hundreds of street fights back in his younger years, prevented the blade from penetrating further and likely saved his life.

That didn’t make the pain feel any better, however. Rudra screamed as agony burned in his mind and blood dripped down his face. Disoriented by the sudden lack of vision and the swinging of the cage brought on by such sudden and forceful movements, he stumbled backwards and fell.

Rudra brought his arms up to protect his body from the expected followup attacks, but instead he watched as Sneak ignored him and instead drove the knife deep into the prone Tepin’s heart.

“Stay dead this time,” Sneak snarled.

“Curse you!” Rudra spat as he stood up on unsteady feet. He didn’t know what to do. Normally, in such a situation, his plan would have been simple. Tackle the man—anything more drastic would constitute violence, and he wasn’t willing to throw away his vows, not even now—and hold him to the ground until the situation could be properly dealt with. However, even if he managed to get his hands on his wiry opponent and bring him to the floor, Sneak would likely be able to meld into the shadows and disappear, then reappear and stab him from a different angle!

Wait, the knife!

Rudra rushed towards his opponent again, once more sending the cage swaying even more violently than it already was. Like the last time, Sneak simply avoided Rudra’s oncoming charge, becoming one with the darkness as expected. Bending down, Rudra quickly reached out with his ability and undid the damage to Tepin’s body. She blinked and looked up at him again, but this time he was already twisting around. Years of experience in dangerous gang fights told Rudra exactly where Sneak would be. He’d be behind Rudra, shaded towards Rudra’s right side where he’d be hidden in prey’s brand new blind spot, and Rudra was ready for him this time.

The glint of metal caught Rudra’s remaining eye. He lifted his right arm up where the dagger would be and hissed through grinning teeth as the blade bit into the thick muscle of his bicep. He’d caught it. With a flex, immense muscles on strongest body in the country tightened around the blade, locking it in place.

“What?!” Sneak gasped as he pulled on the weapon’s handle but found himself unable to budge it even a single millimeter.

With a hiss, the assassin disengaged and melted away once more, only to reappear behind Tepin, who had just managed to get to her feet amid the unsteady swings of the cage. He drew another knife out from somewhere—a smaller, more utilitarian one this time—and grabbed the woman roughly, pulling her in front of him and holding the knife up to her neck. “Back away or she dies!” he cried.

Rudra laughed as he pulled the dagger from his arm and took a step forward, his newly acquired weapon in his hand. Rudra had no plans to attack Sneak, of course, regardless of the man’s despicable actions. His eye wound, while costly, was not the first heavy injury he’d received thanks to his beliefs, and it would likely not be the last. However, his opponent didn’t know that Rudra had no desire to harm him. Rudra could tell that, even if he knew that Rudra was a pacifist, Sneak in no way believed it right now. And so he put on his most terrifying grin and advanced on the desperate man.

“Do it,” he said mockingly. He could always bring her back, after all.

“Stay back!” Sneak shouted, the panic in his voice rising as the distance between the two of them shrank steadily. “Stay back stay back stayAAAAGGGHHHH!!!”

Suddenly and without warning, Slinky leapt up onto the lanky man’s face and sank her claws and teeth deep into his flesh, causing him to unleash an unholy shriek as he lost his grip on Tepin and stumbled back towards the far side of the cell where the wall was little more than vertical bars. His arms flailed about wildly about his face as he tried to pry the vicious wruelit off of him.

Surprised at the unexpected turn of events, Rudra froze momentarily as he tried to think of what to do now. Tepin, on the other hand, had no such issues. Immediately upon being released from Sneak’s grasp, she reached a hand up towards the ceiling and conjured a small flame, sending it up and into the glowmoss above them all.

Rudra recalled Tepin’s claims that glowmoss was a dangerous and highly flammable fire hazard, but even that warning did not prepare him for the sudden bright blue flames that burst into existence over their heads. The flame spread shockingly rapidly as well, covering the entire ceiling in flames in under five seconds.

It took Rudra a moment to realize what she’d done, but he did he couldn’t help but grin once he did. With the fire burning above them all, its light shining down from all angles, she’d effectively banished the shadows!

Just about the same time, Sneak finally pulled the incensed mammal from his face. Looking around, he realized his predicament and snarled. “Don’t ever think you’ll be safe,” he growled as he began to sink into the floor.

Rudra gasped as he realized that not every shadow was gone. Though weak, there were still shadows beneath the three of them! He rushed forward, desperate to stop their enemy from escaping, but Tepin was faster. She held up her hand and it began to glow brighter than even the fire above them. “Die!” she hissed as Sneak’s head reached the floor and her hand seemed to explode with blinding white light.

It was as if the world’s largest flashbulb went off right in front of them. Half blind in his one working eye, Rudra stumbled about as he tried to stay on his feet while the cage continued to sway, throwing off his sense of balance. Finally, after several tense moments and what felt like hundreds of anxious blinks, his vision returned.

The sight before him took him aback. Sneak still remained there in the cell. Or, at least, his head still remained, a shocked expression on his face.

“No more shadows,” Tepin muttered as she went limp and fell to the floor.

“Tepin! Are you okay?!” Rudra asked as he ran to the fallen woman.

“...head...” she barely managed to get out.

“What?”

“...stop the... head...” she wheezed.

Rudra looked back towards Sneak’s last position, only to find it missing! Instead, thanks to the rocking of the hanging cell caused by their battle, the head was rolling towards the one wall that consisted only of bars. Rudra didn’t know why Tepin cared about the head, but he knew there had to be a reason it mattered to her, so he did his best. He rushed towards it as it rolled between the bars and even dove on to the floor, reaching out after it as much as he could as it teetered on the edge before plummeting into the chasm below. Unfortunately, he was just a fraction of a second too late, his hand swiping just centimeters away from the falling skull.

Rudra frowned back towards Tepin, who seemed to visibly deflate. “It’s over... everything is ruined...” she muttered just before she lost consciousness.

Rudra sat against the cell wall opposite the bars listening to Tepin slowly breath in and out on the floor beside him. Listening to her was about all he could do, now that the glowmoss had all burned away. Out in the larger cavern several patches still shone, but their light was nowhere near bright enough for him to do anything but sit and wait.

The sound of tiny claws scraping against the wood nearby caught his ears. He reached out into the semi-darkness and gently grabbed Slinky by the torso, pulling her in to his chest and slowly stroking her soft fur. “You were a very good girl, Slinky, yes you were,” he said. The wruelit squeaked back at him.

A low groan from Tepin interrupted his thoughts. Slinky immediately jumped down from his chest and hopped onto Tepin’s, releasing a series of excited chitters as she stirred.

“I guess tonight proves it,” Rudra conceded. “Slinky does like you more than me.”

Sitting up and rubbing her face, the wolfwoman blinked several times before finally realizing her situation. She looked up at Rudra’s concerned face and her eyes went wide. “Your eye!” she gasped.

“Yeah... he got me pretty good,” Rudra admitted.

“Can you not heal yourself like you do others?” Tepin asked.

“It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. It’s hard to explain, but basically it’s as if I’m pushing the other person back somehow. I can’t push myself. There’s nothing to push off of.”

“I see,” she sighed. “Then at least we should wrap it. Is there any clean cloth here?”

“Not particularly. I think just about the cleanest thing we have is my pants, of all things. Can’t see too well, but I don’t think much blood got on them.”

“Fine. Rip me several long strips.”

Rudra did and handed them to her. She reached up and began tying them around his head so they covered his destroyed eye.

“How long was I out?” Tepin asked as she tied a knot behind his head.

“I don’t know, maybe an hour? Not too long, which is good.”

“I see,” she replied noncommittally. “Did you get hurt anywhere else?”

Rudra showed her the stab wound on his arm and she scowled.

“More strips,” she ordered.

"I was worried when you collapsed like that,” he said as the frail woman slowly wrapped the makeshift bandages around his bicep.

“It took everything I had inside me to make that flame and that light,” she said bitterly. “Most anybody else could perform Observations on that level with ease, but I’m so weak that doing just one pushed me beyond my limits. When I did the second I thought I would likely die for it.” She frowned, her eyes filled with deep sadness. “It would have been better if I had.”

“What are you talking about?!” Rudra blurted out. “We won! You won! You beat him! You should be happy! Why aren’t you happy?!”

“Because we won the battle but lost the war,” Tepin replied, her voice dead. “My life, my work, all of it ended the moment that Sneak betrayed us.”

“Is that why you wanted his head? I don’t understand.”

“How do I leave this place without Sneak’s power?” Tepin said.

“Oh. Right.”

“Exactly,” she replied as she slumped back down against the wall beside him, her work finished. “In just a handful of hours, the Chos will arrive, eager to hear your decision on her proposal, and she will find us here together. That will be the end of everything, especially for me. First I will be tortured until they are satisfied that they’ve extracted all my secrets. Then I will be executed before the country as a lesson in loyalty. All that, of course, assuming that she doesn’t just kill me on the spot in a fit of rage.”

“She wouldn’t!” Rudra objected.

“The Chos does not appreciate betrayal, and nobody has betrayed her more than me.”

“I’m sorry. If I had just managed to grab his head-”

“No, even if you had, our chances were extremely slim. We had no way to make him comply to our wishes. You would have needed to revert him back to a point before he heard our conversation, and he would have figured out something was wrong quickly. It is hard to miss when a whole chunk of your life suddenly vanishes, and he was not a fool. How would you explain how he blinked and suddenly you’d lost an eye?” She let out a defeated sigh. “It’s all my fault. I knew he was not Stragman, but he was too useful. I ended up relying on him too much.”

“You knew?” Rudra inquired, surprised at her admission.

“I did, though I believed he worked for the Eterians. Now it seems obvious that he was an agent of the Ubran Empire this entire time. I was a fool not to see it.”

“But why would you ally with outsiders against your own country?”

“Did you think I became the secret leader of an underground opposition movement without help? Just one weak Shell with a dream? What about my position beside the Chos? The previous occupant seemed quite healthy at the time. That was when Sneak made himself known to me, offering to assist me in my goals, for a price.”

“And you jumped at the chance,” Rudra observed with a hint of disappointment.

“Of course I did,” Tepin replied with annoyance. “I needed powerful friends if I wanted to ever have even a chance of success. The Hidden Fang was nothing more than a small group of idealists with more courage than sense. All that Sneak asked of me was that we work towards an eventual Shell uprising, the one that we’d planned before you came into the picture. I didn’t see much of a downside to it, since I’d had similar ideas myself.”

“But then I messed that up.”

“You did, though I don’t believe he cared, since the country was disrupted either way. In fact, your method likely worked better for his purposes than our original plan would have. It wasn’t until we decided to end it that he acted, after all...” Tepin slumped against the cell wall and curled up into a fetal position, burying her face into her knees. She let out another forlorn sigh. “...and then he ruined everything. Years and years of working myself to the bone, sacrificing my life, my reputation, everything I had, all of it wasted and worthless.”

“Don’t give up. You told me once that you would never do that,” Rudra reminded her, but his attempt to raise her spirits felt hollow. He understood the truth of what she’d said.

Tepin didn’t respond, and the two lapsed into silence.

“I’m sorry,” Tepin stated after a long while.

“Don’t apologize for getting me involved in this,” Rudra replied with a shake of his head. “Yeah, I didn’t want to spend my life locked away in a cell, but funnily enough, this has been one of the most fulfilling times of my life. I made a difference, one that actually mattered to people. If given the choice, I’d do it again.”

“No, not that. I’m sorry for...” She paused to consider her next words. “...for treating you so poorly. You reached out to me and said nice things to me and I pushed you away. I was afraid.”

“What is there to be afraid of?”

“I’ve never had friends, or anybody who cared for me at all, really,” she admitted. “When you are so weak that you make other Shells look almost mighty in comparison, you find yourself alone. Even when I became the Chos’s assistant, the only people who wanted to get close to me only did so in an attempt to curry favors through my position. Combine that with my secret life, and it meant that I could never allow myself to get close to me lest they discover something they shouldn’t. I have lived a very solitary life. It hasn’t been the most pleasant ways of living, but it is what I’m used to. It’s what I’m comfortable with now.

“When you tried to become closer to me, I didn’t know what to do. Even though I knew at the time that you only meant well, it scared me, so I ran away and rebuilt the wall between us. It made me feel safe. But you didn’t deserve that. I knew it then, but I was too much of a coward to admit it, even just to myself.”

“Oh, is that all?” Rudra laughed. “Here I thought I’d done something wrong.”

“No, you did nothing wrong. The fault lies with me.”

“I’ve already forgiven you, Tepin, so stop beating yourself up about it. It’s unimportant. What matters is that you were here for me and I was here for you.”

Tepin’s only response was to bury her head back in between her knees. The silence returned until she spoke again, mumbling something Rudra couldn’t pick up even with his incredible heightened ears.

“What was that?” he inquired.

She mumbled something again.

“Come now, Tepin, speak up. It’s just the two of us here.” With a mischievous grin, he reached over and grabbed the diminutive woman around the waist with both hands and lifted her into the air, eliciting a surprised squawk from her before plopping her down on his lap facing him. “If you have something to say, just say it. I don’t mind.”

Tepin squirmed in his grasp and looked away, for some reason deeply embarrassed. Somehow, Rudra couldn’t help but find her awkwardness cute. It made him want to tease her more.

“Well? Spit it out,” he said with a grin.

“I... have a request...” she said, her voice small.

“Yeah? What?”

“...have...” She gulped, strangely nervous. “...have sex with me.”

Rudra blinked in the darkness, unsure if he’d heard her correctly. Of all the various things he’d expected her to say, that hadn’t been one of them. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“Please don’t make me beg anymore than I already have,” she said.

“I’m not, I just... why me? Why now?”

Tepin hugged herself close. “B-because I’ve never done it,” she confessed.

“Wha- really?”

“Who would want to mate with me? Nobody has ever truly wanted me for anything. To my parents I was just a burden. To society I am a disgrace that should have been left behind to die. The Chos and the other powers only sees me as a tool. Even my fellow Shells view me as a traitor to the movement and my kind. Just once, before the end arrives, I want to know what it feels like to be desired. Would you do that for me? Please?”

Looking into Tepin’s pleading eyes, Rudra found his answer obvious. Why not? Rudra was no prude. It had obviously taken her an immense amount of courage to even ask him for such a thing. He could imagine the shame she felt admitting to him that she was essentially a forty-one year old virgin, and he didn’t have the heart nor the desire to hurt her even more in her time of grief. And so he didn’t say anything. He just pulled her closer and put his lips to hers, and let that be all the answer she needed.

What followed was the most awkward sexual experience of Rudra’s life. Given his partner’s frailty and his prodigious superhuman strength, he felt constantly terrified that he’d end up hurting her. It didn’t help that her inexperience also meant he basically ran the whole show for both of them. But somewhere in the middle of it all, as he caressed her tiny form while she clung to him with every last bit of her minuscule power, he realized he wasn’t just doing a kind act for somebody in need. He was doing it for himself.

He wanted this. He wanted to make her moan and pant and shiver in his arms. He wanted to hear her gasp as he nibbled on her cute little silver ears sticking out from the top of her head. He wanted to delight in the way she yelped as he grabbed onto her fluffy grey tail. He wanted to make her happy, and maybe, just maybe, finally learn what Tepin looked like when she fully smiled.

And so he did his best, pulling out every trick and technique he’d learned from his time spent with Jaya. The experiences were nothing alike; sleeping with Jaya had always been like braving a storm in a small sailboat atop a raging ocean, while sex with Tepin was more akin to a gentle rafting trip down a tranquil stream. Yet strangely, Rudra found both equally fulfilling.



It wasn’t long before the small wolfwoman gave one last shudder and collapsed atop him, completely and utterly spent. Hugging her against his broad chest, he took a seat against the nearest wall and gently stroked the comatose woman’s sweat-soaked hair. Rudra realized now that he cared about Tepin Silverfall.

Rudra didn’t know if these new feelings were feelings of love; they sure didn’t feel like the same sort of passionate love he’d known during his time with Jaya. Maybe they were something else, just two people desperately clinging to each other, each of them merely serving as the other’s life raft in a sea of loneliness and despair. He wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, he didn’t really care. All that mattered to him at that moment was that, for the first time since Jaya had left him, the gaping void in his heart where Jaya had once been seemed smaller than before.