Rain was often an unwanted companion, as far as Rys was concerned, but tonight it was welcome. It was far better than the alternative. The rain had begun the night before. Rys wasn’t sure exactly what time it was now but it certainly was passed sunrise. The dim light breaking that made it through the clouds was evidence enough of that. It didn’t matter how dim or bright it was outside. Inside the tent, Rys had to use the last few remaining candles to provide her with enough light to write by. The lamp oil had run out days ago.

The noise of the rain pounding down on her tent was so loud that it nearly drowned out all other noises. The only other sound she could easily make out was the barking of the dogs.

As long as it kept raining, as long as the dogs kept barking, she was safe to stay in the tent and write.

Sheet after sheet of paper passed beneath her quill as she wrote. Normally, using so much paper for nothing more than letters would have been extremely wasteful. Now, however, there wasn’t much point in preserving them. There wasn’t anyone else left to use them now. Once filled with her words, she folded each page and addressed it to a different person. Perhaps someone would find them and see that they were delivered. Perhaps not. That wasn’t a problem Rys could do anything about.

For some of the letters she wanted to write more but Rys knew if she did that she would likely run out of time before she finished writing to everyone she wanted to. She had a list written down of all the people she wanted to write to before…before it stopped raining.

The rain wouldn’t last forever. Eventually it would stop, and then…

Her hand hovered over the stack of blank pages as she inspected her list of names. The next name was her brother, Aesc, and she wondered how she could have forgotten. Aesc was dead. He’d been dead for months. Slowly, Rys dipped her quill into her ink pot and then scratched out his name. As she did so, her stomach knotted up and she felt her neck stiffen. Aesc had been among the first to be taken, back before people really knew what was going on.

At first everyone thought the attacks and disappearances were unrelated. Then witnesses began to come forward, all with similar stories and descriptions. They called them the schattenbestien.

The creatures would step out of the shadows, as though there were more physical depth in those dark spaces than there really ought to have been. Once out of the shadows, they took on all sorts of different forms, from massive beasts to swarms of biting insects. Regardless of their form, few people survived the attacks. Only the most fortunate or most powerful were ever able to stand against the monsters. Rys had seen so many of them now, so many people torn and devoured, so many failed attempts to defeat the creatures. Those who could exert their will over the elements were the only ones who had ever successfully destroyed one of the schattenbestien and even then it was a rare thing. That was why she was out in the middle of the wilderness. She, along with so many others, had been sent out in the hopes of destroying these things.

They underestimated the number of schattenbestien that would be found. In the cities, they always attacked alone. Out here, they came on in the dozens. There was nothing any of them could do against such numbers. And now there was no escape.

Rys closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind as her memories threatened to overwhelm her. She allowed herself to wonder over how strange it was that closing her eyes helped clear her mind. She would have thought that having something else to look at would be a better distraction than the darkness behind her eyelids.

The noise of the rain fluctuated and wavered and Rys heart began to beat faster. She gripped the edges of the small board she had laid out on her lap as a makeshift writing surface and waited. While it rained, she could hold the shadows at bay, fill the darkness with water and drown any schattenbestien that tried to surface. Without the rain, however, she wouldn’t be able to hold them back. She’d drown one, maybe two, before she was overwhelmed.

The rain didn’t stop.

She let out a quavering sigh and turned back to her list of names. She’d already written out the letters that were to go to her closest family. Aesc was the youngest and the last of her immediate family. Her old mentor, Gautvin, was next. She didn’t know if he was still alive or not. She didn’t know for sure if any of those people on her list were still alive, but she hoped. Gautvin was old, but still very powerful in his own right. He’d been the one who first taught Rys about the elements. He’d been the one who showed her the manner in which a person could focus their will onto those elements and command them. If things had gone as planned, if the schattenbestien hadn’t appeared, Rys would have still been his student.

She began to write her letter to Gautvin, thanking him for his time, for his instruction, and for his encouragement. She’d only just mastered control over water before all of this began; the other elements were far more difficult to manipulate. She could still exert some rudimentary control over them, but nothing spectacular. Nothing that would be of any use to her once the rain stopped.

With the schattenbestien threatening to destabilize civilization, Rys and everyone else who had some modicum of power was sent off to find and fight the schattenbestien. Now only Rys remained of the original fifty who were sent to this part of the wilderness. She hoped those in the cities were having better luck, though far fewer people who could command the elements were kept back since the attacks there were less common.

Rys was only vaguely aware of what she was writing anymore. Most of the letters were just variations on the same things. Hoping they were safe, hoping for an end to this struggle, encouraging them to press on, and so forth. It all felt so empty to her, so futile. Who would ever find these? If Rys and the others weren’t able to fight back the schattenbestien, what hope did people really have? They should have kept everyone close, fortified the cities first and made sure they were safe. Perhaps there were ways to prevent the schattenbestien from being able to come through the shadows in the first place. But now, they were scattered. The cities would be easy pray with so few remaining who could effectively fight back and there wouldn’t be enough time to train up more elemental warriors.

Rys hung her head and wept. She’d held it in for so long, fought against the crushing despair, but couldn’t fight it any longer. Just as she couldn’t fight the schattenbestien any longer. She’d come to love her companions on this doomed quest. Each time one of them fell, it was like losing a piece of herself. Now she felt empty, hollow inside after being carved out, piece by piece, with every new death.

The dogs stopped barking.

Rys immediately reached out through the falling rain and could feel where the shadows were deepening and she flooded them with water. She felt the creatures twist and writhe but there was no escape once she had them. Every droplet of falling rain was an extension of herself. There was nothing more powerful than a water mage in a downpour.

She forced more and more water into the shadows, crushing the schattenbestien rather than simply drowning them. As they died, their shadows began to lessen, to fill back in with reality, but Rys didn’t let up. They had to be coming from somewhere, she thought, and if she could just push passed whatever barrier there was between her and them, she could try to at least take more of them out before the rain stopped.

The pressure from the shadows was immense, like trying to hold back a tipping boulder on a cliff edge. Slowly, inch by inch, Rys felt the collapsing shadows slow and then be pressed back. She pulled more and more water from the surrounding areas to keep forcing into the dark. Claws and teeth began to gnash and swipe at the advancing water but they had no power over it and could do it no harm. In those brief moments of contact, Rys felt the bestial fear of a cornered animal in them. This was something as of yet unheard of for them. In the shadows they were supposed to be safe.

Hope exploded within her and Rys broke through. Water surged through the dozens of deep shadows that had tried to open around her. Everywhere she turned she found more schattenbestien and as fast as a crashing wave she enveloped them. The weaker ones were crushed and the stronger ones were smothered but they were all falling to her. From time to time, she came across remnants of her fallen companions. In those moments she became a storm in the darkness, striking lightning out from the water and charring yet more schattenbestien.

They tried to open more shadows around her but doing so only gave her more places from which to attack. And yet, there never seemed to be any end to them. For each one that she killed, she found another to take its place, and her water was not limitless. She could not truly fill this void with water to flood them out, neither was she going to win this fight. Eventually the rain would stop, or they would open enough shadows that she wouldn’t be able to focus on all of them. It was only a matter of time.

How long the struggle lasted, Rys couldn’t tell. As with any battle, minutes could feel like hours and hours could pass by like minutes. She was eventually forced out of her tent as the shadows became too numerous there for her to stay. Schattenbestien began to get through and come at her from all sides. Fighting in both the normal world and in their shadowy realm was draining her quickly. She had to surrender most of the shadows she’d pushed through so she could deal with the advancing creatures around her.

The land around her was untamed and there were few game trails to make her retreat any easier. To further complicate the situation, she was in the foothills of a massive mountain range and the ground constantly sloped up and down.

At last, the rain began to let up and Rys knew her time would soon be up. How many schattenbestien she had killed was impossible for her to tell. They had never attacked during a downpour before and so she’d never had such opportunity to fight them with such power. Perhaps they had some knowledge of the elemental powers, or perhaps it was simply not in their nature to attack during such weather. Regardless, as the rain lessened her fighting slowed. She was not as aware of her surroundings anymore and the constant resupply of water grew thin.

Schattenbestien advanced as she weakened and Rys continued to retreat backwards until –

SPLASH

Rys foot sank unexpectedly into deep water. As she did so, she became instantly aware of the massive mountain lake she had just stumbled in. Countless fathoms deep, swollen by the numerous streams and rivers that drained into it, carrying the rain with them.

A schattenbestien in the form of a large catlike creature lunged at her.

Rys hardly had to think for a spear of water to strike up from the lake and into the creature’s chest. A wave as tall as the trees ended the rest of them who remained on this side of the shadows. The water crashed and frothed all around through the foothills in search of any remaining schattenbestien and even with all that water flowing out of the lake there were still mountains of water beneath her feet, waiting to be commanded.

When the shadows in the depths of the lake began to deepen, Rys was at first surprised. They should know by now that she could not be defeated. Too late, however, did she realize that it would only make sense that they would have monsters of the deep at their disposal. The schattenbestien that began pushing its way out of the shadows below was a massive, undulating creature of spines, teeth, and thick scales. Drowning and crushing this creature would be impossible. It sped upwards towards Rys and she barely had enough time to launch herself upwards and out of the way in time before a long, grasping maw snapped around the spot she had been standing previously.

Rys hovered above it on a waterspout but did not dare remain still. As if to confirm her fears, the creature slapped its tail and several spines the size of trees ripped free of it and would have impaled her had she still been standing there.

She tried finding weak points where she could attack it but even the tissues that looked soft and fleshy proved to be too strong for her. It sprayed acid from pours in its body and although the acid came nowhere near Rys, it mixed with the water and soon she could feel it beginning to burn her flesh wherever the water touched her. Given the size of the schattenbestien, she figured she could retreat to the land and be safe from it, but the land was once again crawling with the terrestrial schattenbestien and she would be killed there just as quickly as she would if she remained where she was.

Rys dodged yet another spine attack when something caught her attention. Deep down in the bottom of the lake, the shadow the schattenbestien had come out of was still open and she could sense water on the other side. It made sense. This creature needed water to survive. She had previously thought about trying to drain the lake to weaken the aquatic schattenbestien but there was nowhere close by that she could dump all of that water. However, if she could find and force back open another of the shadows on land to where the terrestrial schattenbestien were coming from, she could create a siphon, draining not only the lake but also whatever the watery source was from which the aquatic schattenbestien had come from.

It was much easier said than done since creating such a connection between the various locations would take most of her concentration and leave her open to any attacks. However, if she could succeed, it would be a tremendous victory on her part, even if she did still fall in battle.

With a smaller wave than before, Rys sent out a flood in search of an open shadow. At the same time she began to press deeper into the lake bed until she felt the solid connection with the water on the other side.

The beast lunged upward and Rys wasn’t fast enough this time to get fully out of the way. Its bite missed her but the bulky face still collided with her and sent her tumbling through the air. For a moment she could hardly tell where she was in the air. The waterspout supporting her fell away and the wave down below lost its form and collapsed, but she held onto the deep water, drawing it up and into the lake. The waters there were icy cold and black, even in the light of day.

Rys landed hard in the lake, diluted acid burning her eyes and skin while the influx of freezing water drove the air from her lungs. Still, she gathered her wits about herself and rose out of the water once again. She reformed her wave and continued to dodge as best she could as more spines rained down around her.

At last her wave on the ground down below found an open shadow. Wasting no time, Rys channeled the water in the lake upward into a massive, spiraling waterspout. It was so large that even the schattenbestien was caught in the undertow for a time. The tip of the waterspout arched and then drove, spear-like, into the shadow on land. It burst through into the darkness beyond and once again she began to crush and drown all the schattenbestien she found there.

A searing pain flashed across her back and Rys knew, without needing to look, that she’d been struck by one of the spines. So much of her consciousness was focused on the water now, however, that the pain seemed almost secondary to everything else. She lifted the creature in the lake up and out into the waterspout and heaved it onto the land. Its bulky form was never meant to support itself outside of the water and its bones cracked like the shattering of tall trees in a windstorm.

There were more such schattenbestien in the dark waters below but as they rose up to face her she cast their bodies against the sides of the mountains, again and again until no more horrors rose from below.

She could not ignore her body forever, though, and soon enough the pain and frailty of her body caught up with her. As if waking from a dream, she suddenly became aware of the spines that had been stabbed deep into her back. They had no toxins, as far as she could discern, but they were most certainly piercing several of her vital organs. She was only still alive because the spines themselves were filling the holes they had punctured in her body. Once they were removed, she would die swiftly.

For now, the water flowing into the shadows would be able to maintain itself without too much concentration on her part and so she allowed herself to consider her own well being. Her medical training was minimal, to say the least. However, she had found that commanding such a massive body of water opened her mind to an understanding and intelligence she had never before thought possible. She could understand the flow of the vital fluids within her own body and through that could discern many things about the state and function of her various parts.

With that knowledge, she carefully removed and then swiftly replaced each spine with a plug of water. She exerted just enough pressure to prevent herself from bleeding while still allowing the organs to function as best they could. Perhaps there was yet a chance of her body healing naturally on its own, perhaps not. Either way she was not in immediate danger of dying from her wounds for now.

As she looked down on the scene below, schattenbestien running frantically about and unable to reach her as she flooded their shadowy world, she finally felt the hope she had thought only others could feel. She would drown them all if she could. The dark waters she was siphoning up were an ocean, massive and as unknowable in scale as the oceans she had seen in her world. She would find other shadows to force open and draw up the waters even faster. She would draw along the waters of the lake as she went, finding schattenbestien and their open shadows and turn them against their creators.