We reached the treeline. Two capes knelt by Rain.

“It all went to shit,” a cape I recognized as Fluke reported.

“I noticed,” I said.

I heard a grunt from Bay, a cape younger than me with a tower shield, and saw him struggling. A shadow duplicate of the horse-head Fallen was perched on his shield, reaching down to grab him by the helmet. Bay’s mask was meant to open, but the jet black form of the heavyset Fallen’s shadow was gripping it, holding it closed, and making his weight fully apparent.

Another cape blasted him, and he dissolved into wisps of shadow.

I moved to a tree I could use for cover, and assessed the situation. I could see a shadow become not-shadow, at the same time the real Fallen became shadow. He could swap places with any of his active shadows, and he was able to make them quickly, with those zig-zagging cords of darkness.

“Sveta,” I said. “We might need you to do the flag trick.”

“Against a human?” she asked. “I’d hurt or kill him.”

“You don’t have to, but—”

Two more duplicates appeared. The cords of energy were dense enough near the frontline that it seemed like he could create duplicates near us at will.

“It’s Seir!” Narwhal called out. “He had a kill order. If you’re willing to kill, this is a time it’s okay!”

Seir. I’d heard something about him some time ago, but not in the context of his powers or position in the Fallen. The Mathers family kidnapped people, and Seir had taken a kidnapping victim for a ‘wife’, to use a loose definition of the term. She was one of the ones who had escaped, and her story had been one of a few things that had marked the turn in the wider public perception regarding the Fallen. After that, and some similar stories, the public and started to see them less as detestable pranksters and more as the horrific cult they were.

And from what little I could remember of her story—

“He deserves to die,” Rain said.

“Okay,” Sveta said. Quieter, she said, “I don’t think I can bring myself to kill again. I’m sorry.”

Bay was being harassed again. Narwhal was flanked by two copies, and a cape used a tinker gun to obliterate one while narrowly missing Narwhal, while a forcefield appeared in a position that bisected the other.

Bullets hit trees and pinged off of the forcefields Narwhal had created to give the heroes cover. Each time a forcefield was hit, it briefly became brighter, the edges and lines standing out in bright purples and blues.

“I think the cords are counting as living tissue!” Vista called out, from a point in the group of heroes I couldn’t immediately see.