Grey Realmheart 2,8

‘There,’ Regis thought, honing in on a distant patch of city wall some time later.

Following the course of his mind, I watched as a pair of guards froze, glancing at each other. Aether rushed into my eyes, enhancing my vision so I could focus on the distant point. The guards were pale, sweating, the question in their eyes obvious: why am I suddenly afraid? As one, they turned and began marching back along their patrol route, but too quickly to be natural.

I moved into the shadows of a building; the sun was setting, I realized, and the shadows were deep. With my hood drawn low and my back hunched, I shuffled toward the wall, suppressing my sight and hearing to instead focus on the mana and aether.

There it was, what I’d been looking for: a subtle distortion in the aetheric pathways, a twitch in the atmospheric mana.

Then, it was gone.

Frowning, I expanded my senses again, searching for the same phenomenon nearby. When I couldn’t feel it, I risked jumping up to the top of the wall, where I immediately crouched behind the low stone edge and searched with my eyes as well.

My sharp-eyed companion again spotted it first. ‘The marketplace.’

Peering down over the townhouse roofs, I scanned the small market square tucked up against the foot of the district wall. Beneath that wall, the shadows grew deeper, and—there!

No strong source of mana emanated from the marketplace, and the only mana signatures were a handful of wandering mages, none of whom were higher than orange core. But in the heart of those shadows, the atmospheric mana distorted ever so slightly, so subtle I might have missed it if not for the faintest distortion of the aetheric pathways that suggested a powerful source of mana was pressing against the aether all around it.

Everyone who approached the shadows turned away suddenly, wrapping their arms around themselves or shivering as if they’d had a sudden chill before hurrying away to a different part of the marketplace.

I started moving in that direction, keeping my eye on that one spot.

The distortion dissolved, mana and aether relaxing as they eased back into their normal configuration.

But it didn’t take me long to find the distortion again, now on the other side of the wall within the shadows of a tower.

‘It’s heading out of the city,’ Regis pointed out.

It knows we’ve seen it.