Daniel
The crystal in Daniel’s sleeve pulsed.
Once.
Then again.
That was surprising, considering how far out they were. The MageNet was spotty here—thin coverage, unstable relays, long latency. Even routine updates struggled to punch through at this distance.
The crystal buzzed a third time . Daniel’s stomach tightened. Anything that made it through this far meant effort.
Or desperation.
Daniel stilled, breath caught for the briefest fraction of a second before training reasserted itself. He turned slightly away from the others, shielding the crystal with his forearm, and fed a narrow, precise trickle of mana into the activation glyph—just enough to receive, not enough to announce his location to half the mountains.
The channel snapped open.
The message came through jagged and compressed, stripped down to its barest essentials. It wasn’t encrypted. It wasn’t polished. Whatever this was, it had been forced through an emergency lattice—power shoved down the line hard enough to burn coherence in the process.
Marissa’s voice, tight and urgent, cut straight through the static.
“Crescent Hyr is under siege. Red Orcs—demon-touched. Sword Demons. A Murai commander. They’re preventing escape.”
The signal wavered, distortion crawling across the glyph lattice.
“The Princess is here. Vivian. Anmei. The Zhou twins. We can’t hold indefinitely.”
A sharp crack sounded through the channel, like stressed crystal fracturing under strain.
“This isn’t a raid,” Marissa continued, faster now, control slipping just enough to let fear through. “They want us. They know we’re here.”
There was a brief, uneven inhale.
“If you get this—please. Come south. Bring everything.”
The transmission collapsed into static.
Daniel stared at the dimming glyphs, pulse thudding in his ears.
Crescent Hyr. Under siege. Red Orcs. Sword Demons. A Murai commander.
What the hell was a Sword Demon? And Murai working with orcs? The Murai hated orcs. That wasn’t politics—that was cultural identity.
He swallowed.
Vivian was there.; so was the Imperial Princess. And Ethan’s little sisters.
What the hell was going on?
Do you understand any of this? Daniel asked inwardly.
“No,” Ethan answered immediately. “Nothing like this happened before. Demon-touched orcs on the mainland, chasing the Imperial Princess and our wife? This is madness.”
Daniel exhaled slowly.
They were flying blind.
He turned back toward the others without hesitation.
“We have confirmation,” Daniel said aloud, voice already hardening. “Crescent Hyr is under siege by Red Orcs and Sword Demons.”
That was all he needed to say.
Nathan straightened at once, hand drifting instinctively toward the hilt of his sword. “Brother-in-law? What’s a Sword Demon? Are they strong? Can I go all out on them?”
Daniel smiled despite himself. “Yes, little brother. You can kill as many Sword Demons as you want.”
Nathan grinned, satisfied.
The flying carriage surged onward, lift arrays humming under strain as it skimmed another jagged ridgeline. Below them, the southern highlands sprawled in broken waves of stone and shadow, veins of chaos distortion flickering like bruises across the land. Daniel registered it distantly, cataloguing danger while trying to determine the correct course of action.
He paused.
“Okay,” Daniel said slowly. “Gavin can you help me? I want to try something.”
Gavin looked over immediately. “What do you need, Ethan?”
“I need a very specific piece of spellwork,” Daniel replied. “And you’re better at it than I am.”
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He shifted the crystal interface and compact auxiliary node he’d already drawn out earlier, bringing the projection fully between them. The device resembled a tablet in function—if that tablet were made of layered spellglass, void-thread lattice, and materials worth more than his apartment building back on Earth.
Really wish I could call the Apple Genius Bar right now, Daniel thought.
“Those guys weren’t that smart,” Ethan muttered in his head.
Daniel snorted. “Don’t be that guy, Ethan.”
Marissa’s transmission replayed faintly in his mind—not the words, but the tone. She hadn’t sent it from a stable node. She’d forced it through, burned a relay just long enough to scream into the MageNet before moving again.
“She used an emergency relay,” Daniel said, eyes locked on the dim projection. “A forced transmission. That’s the only way anything got out. Which means she didn’t stay there.”
Nathan leaned closer. “So we know where she was.”
“We know where she touched the network,” Daniel corrected. “Not where she is now.”
Gavin frowned. “You think she moved immediately after sending it?”
Daniel stared at the terrain projection hovering above the interface, jaw set so tight it ached.
“Yes,” he said at last. “She’s moving.”
Nathan glanced over, reading the tension in his posture. “You’re sure?”
Daniel nodded once. “We know they were moving north because their message said as much. Cresent Hyr appears to be some sort of fortress; bunkering down was always the best option. If you’re being hunted and need to get a message out, you don’t run until you collapse. You try to fight where you can stay defensive. But taking a stand without some sort of exit strategy is the Alamo waiting to happen."
Daniel paused. Ethan laughed in his head.
He kept going like he didnt' say something weird. "The group had to get to a relay. Crescent Hyr wasn’t the destination—it was the nearest place they could slow the pursuit long enough to scream for help.”
Lucas folded his arms, frowning at the map. “That doesn’t sound particularly well thought out.”
Daniel exhaled through his nose. “No. It wasn’t. None of this was. I swear if my wife survives this I am going to take her over my knee for the stupidity that was this trip.”
He paused again. damnit he didn't mean to say that last part out loud.
Nathan caught the edge of it anyway and grinned. “Brother-in-law,” he said brightly, “I would pay actual money to see you try to take my sister over your knee.”
Daniel shot him a look. “You are never going to let that die, are you?”
“Not a chance.”
Gavin cleared his throat, mercifully dragging the conversation back onto solid ground. “If she reached a relay north of Crescent Hyr, then distiailly we’re closer to that point than the fortress itself.”
“That’s my conclusion too,” Daniel said. “Which means guessing isn’t good enough. Marrisa could be out in the open on her own. She could be found and captured; she could be dead we don't know.”
Lucas tilted his head. “So what—trial and error?”
“No,” Daniel replied. “I want to know if we need to rescue her before we go and destroy this these Sword Demons and this orc army. .”
He hesitated, then added, “I have an idea for a spell array that might give us some clarity. I just don’t think I’m the right person to execute it.”
Gavin studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. Show me.”
Daniel expanded the existing interface projection, sketching the array directly into it. Glyphs unfolded in smooth arcs—gyph array, activition and parameters instructions, a secondary return vector layered beneath the primary pulse with an inlay to allow the spell to empower itself.
That last one was a something Daniel had added at Ethan's insistence.
“This needs finesse,” Daniel explained. “Too much power and it collapses. Too much intent and the signal distorts. But if you can hold the line just right, it should do what we need.”
Gavin leaned closer. “Which is?”
“Think of it as a search beacon. We are going to use it to find Marissa is she is still around and try to get understanding as to any hositle forces in the area. This mana arc will go out with specific instructions and then on contact, it will attach to her signal/device and attaches a secondary echo,” Daniel said, pointing to the lower curve of the construct. “Then it through a simple set of commands layed in the intent structure; it listens. Anything humanoid. Anything actively circulating mana it should identity it. It won’t just find her—it’ll map what’s around her.”
Lucas whisled. “That is an incredible it works. How do we get the information back”
“That is the echo. It will have to make it back here,” Daniel said. “Which is a long shot.”
Nathan snorted. “So it’s dangerous, expensive, and might explode.”
“No.” Daniel considered this. "Not that kind of spell."
Ethan snorted.
Nathan grinned. “Boring. But,. lets do it.”
Gavin centered himself and began casting.
Daniel watched as theory became practice. Gavin didn’t rush. He didn’t force the mana. Intent stayed narrow and disciplined, clean as glass.
The spell released.
A wave rippled outward, invisible but undeniable, accompanied by a low harmonic vibration that resonated through the carriage deck. The pulse brushed the ley-thread beneath them like a hand skimming water.
They waited for maybe ten minutes, then the interface chimed.
A map bloomed into existence—layered spatial data resolving terrain in clean, luminous lines of valleys, ridges and passes. The landscape of the area.
Ethan’s presence stirred, unmistakably pleased.
The terrain read is elegant, Daniel said. "You added that with me even noticing."
Ethan smiled despite himself. I have my moments.
Then the markers appeared.
First—a single bright blue point.
Closer than Daniel had expected.
“Ten… maybe fifteen minutes if we push,” he murmured.
Nathan let out a breath. “That’s doable and she is move so that is good.”
Then the rest of the data populated the map.
Red markers began to bloom across the projection.
Not one or two. Not a scattered handful.
Dozens.
They resolved in quick succession, each signature locking into place as the array finished its return pass. Their paths were not random. Each vector curved inward, tightening as if guided by an invisible hand.
All of them were moving.
All of them were converging.
Straight toward the single blue point at the center of the map.
Daniel felt the realization settle in his chest like a dropped weight, heavy and cold all at once. The room around him seemed to narrow, the hum of the carriage fading into something distant and unimportant.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
Gavin leaned closer, eyes fixed on the projection, his voice barely above a whisper. “What… what am I looking at?”
Daniel didn’t answer right away. He couldn’t. His gaze stayed locked on the blue marker, on the tightening ring of red that surrounded it from every direction that mattered.
“If I’m reading this correctly,” he said at last, his voice steady only because it had to be,
he swallowed,
“that blue marker is Marissa.”
He finally turned to look at the others.
“And every single one of those red signatures?”
He let the implication land.
“They’re orcs. And they’re all moving to cut her off.”