“Stop talking,” Faol warned. Her claws sprung out from her glove, gleaming bright.

Orfeus threw the smoke bomb at Faol, as the biggest threat. She didn’t know how to activate the bomb, so it just rolled harmlessly, but the moment where everyone’s eyes followed it gave her time to dart aside and draw out her net.

This was a fight she was destined to lose. Was the test in how she lost it? No way to know.

Orfeus ran the net over her fingers, thinking furiously, and backed away as they advanced on her. Backing into a corner, but that was what this whole fight was. She twisted her fingers in the sign for Heat, white-hot glowing, and the net started to wisp smoke and then caught fire.

The Starfish flicked their whip at her, maybe intending her to grapple with the net and lose her grip. She took it full across the front of her body instead, unmoving. The glowing lines bit through her burned clothes and seared lines into her skin, and Orfeus let out half a cry, strangled. But she gripped painfully tight on the net, and the flames caught at last.

Orfeus threw it at the Hyena, who was closest, and jerked back as Hyena squalled and clawed at it. The net wouldn’t do much damage, but as a distraction it was superb.

Orfeus vaulted back until her back hit against the blue wall. Solid light, not burning light, good. She had just the breath of a moment.

She held up her cauterknife, extended sidelong, to examine the blue-lit flicker, the shape of sharplight. Not quite the same as the barrier, but the same blueglow core. Could she do this? She could try.

Rivasoa had cast illusions by holding her hands out fingers up, so Orfeus borrowed that movement, cueing her Blood. She told her Blood: Make light like that. Now, here, in front of me, square, pictured it and held the picture in her mind fine and fierce as a song.

Light shimmered out, a little paler than she wanted, weakly translucent. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a wall of blue in front of her, and through it she could see the eight hunters as dim shadows in a vortex of blue. She must be similarly obscured.

Orfeus grinned fierce, holding her hands up. The arch of her foot twinged in complaint. Her barrier held steady.

She had a moment, a precious moment, as the shadows beyond her wall prowled around but did not yet come close. Orfeus breathed, tiny breaths, in, out, measured and safe so they wouldn’t be heard. She stifled a giggle in the collar of her shirt.

A figure moved close enough to make out the striped yellow mask. “There,” the Wasp said, pointing. “Symmetry,” she added smugly.