He had watched death, before. Had watched something so domineeringly inevitable that the sheer weight of it seemed to fill the sky and stain the forest canopy beneath its terrible light, as it raced towards him from nowhere only to be deflected at the last moment. Only once— in those chaotic times as the Empire of Nine Sunlights invaded Refuge and driven his people before them, and sought to conquer all that they could get their grimy little hands on—

The memory stuck with him, though. It had been some sort of technique, he was sure, but to him— adolescent him, barely old enough to not get treated like a kitten— it had been a single lancing beam of light, a terrible and awe-inspiring force utterly beyond comprehension.

So it was, again.

He barely had a chance to look up from his meditation as he saw it, a line of fire that lanced out at them from the other side of the valley with unerring accuracy. No time to dodge. No time to move. No time to even blink—

He was sure that if he’d been standing out in the open, that single strike would have reduced him to a smear of blood and viscera across the ground. Except— he wasn’t standing out in the open. The technique, or projectile, or whatever it was that shot out at them from what must have been thousands of feet away crashed against Lily’s barrier with a mighty concussive boom and the unholy sound of so much glass skittering over glass as the first layer was rendered into so many shards of rapidly dispersing qi. The second layer flared into coruscating brightness for a single second as the blast reached it— and though he could hear the pop-shatter crack as Lily’s painstakingly made qi-storage formations broke, it held.

Then the moment passed, and he reacted. Leaping out of the central qi gathering formation, he raced over to Lily’s tent, desperately— she was alive. Scrambling awake, stumbling out of the tent, but alive. Of course, she’d been inside the formation much the same as he had, the impact of the blast entirely missing her. He heaved a sigh of relief, slumping a bit. “We’re under attack.”

“Obviously.” Lily gave him a glare, barely hiding beneath the mock-annoyance a deep and presiding fear. Avyr felt it too— the subtle terror in the face of an enemy, the whitening fear, heart-thundering, trembling breadth of, brought up from the heart of oneself in the split-second sight of impending doom. He’d felt it before… except this time, his parents weren’t there to save him. It was just him, and Lily…

Them and whatever was out there, in the dark.

He breathed in, then hissed out a breath and focused. Panic wasn’t going to get them anywhere— one step at a time. Simple. “How long do we have left before the barrier fails?”

Lily glanced about, wrestling control over her reaction— “two? Three hits, if we’re lucky? It’s already using the stored qi, and quickly. I think the nodes will probably get stressed, too, if they keep hitting us with this sort of direct, powerful…” her eyes widened, and she groaned. “I think I know what’s going on.”

“What?”

Lily grimaced. “You know how they said there was a Foundation Establishment beast around our part of the mountains?” She didn’t even wait for him to respond before continuing— “except, what kind of beast? All they had to prove that it was in Foundation Establishment was that it could use techniques…”

It made a horrible sort of sense. “You’re saying…”

“That was a gunshot, Avyr. What else could it have been?” For just a second, Avyr allowed himself to be angry at the unfairness of it all. Why did humans hate his kind so? What had they ever done to them, that they might deserve such wanton disgust? He’d tried his best to be a model citizen, and yet earned only loathing and fear and now, the right to get hunted down like a dog…

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Then he let his anger slide off him like so much water from heaven, settling himself. Not now. Later, perhaps, he would complain to Lily about the inherent injustice of that nigh-instinctual discrimination, when they were both reminiscing on how they’d managed to survive getting attacked by a Foundation Establishment hunter who’d lived decades in the mountains and had fought in the army against Empire of Nine Sunlights…

Their chances weren’t really looking too great, were they?

As if to punctuate the point home, another beam of light— another bullet, he could tell now, comparing it to the videos he’d seen and old, never-forgotten memories of those final moments— crashed into the barrier, this time causing the whole thing to shudder and shake. Another few qi reservoirs cracked and split open to handle the strain— and if Lily’s pale face was anything to go by, it was a bit more than she’d expected before. “Okay, new plan, new plan! We’ve gotta, we’ve, um, we’re going to blow him up!”

Avyr whirled, glaring at her. “How?” Then, a moment later, as she flinched back, he slumped in sudden exhaustion. “I’m sorry, I just…” didn’t think they were going to make it out of this one alive. Was this what it’d felt like for them, driven forth between the coast and the endless legions, knowing, deep within themselves, that there was nothing they could do?

It was a bitter, disgusting feeling, in the way it coiled within him and so sickeningly sapped at him. Hopelessness…

A second passed between the two of them in silence, before Lily’s eyes widened and she stepped forward and— “hey!” Her boot landed squarely against his side, a firm blow— not really enough to hurt him, but certainly strong enough that he could feel

it. “What was that for?”

“Do something? Do anything! We’re not going to die here, Avyr—” and in that eyes-glinting, rising fury, depth of emotion spilling out conviction, Avyr could almost bring himself to believe. “We’re going to live or go down kicking into the hells themselves, alright? There’s got to be something we can do…”

“A talisman? Any talisman? Something that could allow us to run?”

“I think… no, he’d be able to… maybe…” she paused, then dug through her bag for a few seconds before ripping out a stack of paper slips, scattering all the other contents of her bag around the ground as she held them out to him. “Shadow talismans. If you use them right, they can hide a single person for the span of a breath.” That was laughably insufficient— “and I’ve got a plan. The hunter’s a reasonable guy, you know? If you can prove that you’re not a danger to the communities that he protects…”

Avyr stared at his friend incredulously. “You want me to run at the guy with the big gun?”

“Okay, I’m trying my best here! Plus, it’s not like we’re going to be able to escape, you know?” There was a depressing sort of sense to that… “especially if we’re together. We’d have to split the talismans. But if it’s just you…” across the short valley, almost more of an eroded gulch than anything, up to where the gunman was hiding… difficult, for a human who hadn’t cultivated. Maybe impossible.

Not for a cat halfway through Shedding, though. “You’re crazy.”

“Not crazy if it works!”

“What about you?”

“I’ll stay back and distract him! I’ve got enough shield talismans that I should be able to survive the near-miss explosions— what are you standing around for?” She shoved the talismans against one of his paws, and he grabbed onto them almost without thinking— “go, go, go! Quickly!” She dove down into the waters of the inner formation and he—”

He daren’t take even a moment to tarry. Before he could begin to doubt the plan, he threaded his qi into the first of the talismans and pounced into the forest undergrowth, letting the darkness enshroud him.

It went unsaid what would happen if the hunter managed to hit Lily with a direct shot.

It went unsaid what would happen if the hunter managed to hit him. All that was between him and certain death were a few flimsy pieces of paper and his own skill in hiding— perhaps something he’d have relied upon in the jungle of his homes, where the foliage pressed together densely enough to hide even the larger beasts from view, much less the graceful form of his kin— but here? In the snow, high above the world on a mountain-slope interspersed with scarce forest and patches of bare rock?

Well. He hoped the talismans were up to the task.