Danyr quickly disappeared among a set of rocks parallel to Daniel, his bow in hand, releasing arrows roughly as he ran. He was slower to fire and with less accuracy, but in truth, it was going to be hard to miss. The field, perhaps 200 yards to the tower, was full of rocks, much shorter than before and carved roughly, but still capable of blocking sight. And yet, there seemed to be three shades for every one rock...

In front of Daniel, the vast horde of shades would seem to end their futile rooting, drawn to him and Danyr by the noise of their running. The small creatures, in their dash to get at prey, almost tripped over each other, practically in a wave, their claws outstretched to reach Daniel. Overhead, the wind would pick up, rain crashing down into Daniel's face and seeming to try to push him back...

The first shades would collapse into Daniel in a matter of seconds. Perhaps ten of them attacked, forming a veritable wall in front of him. They were only three feet tall, perhaps, but in their haste, they practically piled over each other, their claws perhaps aided by the speed of Daniel's approach. Daniel's speed and the rocks were going to work against him...

Rain. Wind. The storm was an element working against Daniel and Danyr both--only the former was willing to forgo all necessitating caution the matter created. He ran for it, threw caution to the wind and rushed head-on towards the very shades that sought to kill him.

And the shades approached in turn. It was a familiar experience, being hounded by shades; it'd happened time and time again in this world, and . . . well . . . Often times, when you're faced with a problem so often, you earn your callouses. You become good at dealing with that problem . . .

Daniel flashed a grin. How many were there? One? Two? Three? A few dozen? Hm. Daniel had a harder and harder time whenever he tried to count much higher than that, but no matter. There were over two dozen of them and they were all hungry, and that's all that really mattered here. Daniel felt the chakram behind him reaching full speed--or at least the most volatile speed he could handle. It seemed like they could gather as much momentum as they were permitted, but Daniel could only deal with so much.

Still, that ensured this first issue was not a matter of chance . . .

As the first wave descended upon him, Daniel jammed his feet into the earth, skidded his approach to a stop, and swung his arm out from behind him in the very some motion. He released his grip upon the spinning chakram and unleashed an uncontrolled force upon the shades just seconds before impact. Most of them would become a dark haze immediately upon contact, the shades set before the veritable cannon of Daniel's technique, whilst those further away would merely be thrown away like ragdolls, likely stunned by the shock for some time.

The high-pressure force of the chakram would follow it until the end of its journey, winding through the field like a cannonball, either eliminating or throwing away entire hordes that stood in its path, until meeting its inevitable destination: the tower itself.

Daniel's flying chakram would indeed demolish the stack of shades in front of him, flying through the maze of boulders as if guided by its own will, bowling over or destroying more shades along the way until reaching the tower, sinking several inches into the thick wood of a tremendous door. The force of the chakram hitting the tower would knock perhaps a dozen shades away from their agitated state near the door, but it wouldn't succeed in much shaking the door or the tower itself.

Several rows away, Danyr yelled out, his voice muffled as if piled beneath a mountain of flesh and claws. Through the howling wind, it would be difficult to tell where exactly his voice was coming from, though it actually sounded ahead of Daniel, relative to the tower. However, as Daniel had learned in the past, Danyr never seemed to actually be seriously hurt or killed, despite how things looked...

Besides, Daniel had larger problems. While a momentary stop was necessary for him to make his attack, it would allow more shades to get closer, on all sides of him. In particular, an enterprising shade would reach the top of a rock above and just behind Daniel, leaping at him silently through the howling storm. If Daniel was unlucky, the beast was going to land right on his shoulders, slashing at his face and ears with its claws...

During his momentary pause, Daniel was not idle. Immediately upon releasing the chakram from his hand, he recoiled his wrist and shoved it down into his pocket to collect a different coin. He practically released the sword the second his hand left his pocket . . .

What he procured was a bit of a blast from the past, to say the least. It was the only unmarked coin in his collection, and the first chakram-sword he'd ever obtained. It was a bland longsword upon a mechanical chakram, a well balanced weapon with neither strengths nor weaknesses. As Daniel's first sword, he knew this one all too well. There was no other blade in the world he was more comfortable with.

Though Danyr's muffled shouts were distracting, Daniel had to press on. He had to make for the tower while he still had an open-- oh God why?

A little bastard managed to make it onto Daniel's back, claw drawn and down into the skin of his shoulder. Daniel grimaced, but didn't let the little guy stay on his shoulder for too long. Daniel shifted his weight, through his shoulder down towards the ground, and tried to throw the shade off of him. All he'd need to do was give it a good stab at that point, then break off into the sprint he was planning prior to that unnecessarily rude interruption.

Daniel could buck forward, but the lightweight nature of shades would make it very difficult to buck one off. Particularly when it had a set of claws stuck in Daniel's shoulder. The shade would continue to swipe with its other hand at Daniel's head while Daniel tried a better way to deal with the creature, ideally without chopping his own head off with unwieldy weaponry.

Around Daniel, the other shades would close in to a matter of seconds away, threatening to pile him under with claws and shadow-form. The storm overhead, at least, had broken a bit, and the wind was temporarily died down. While it would impede movement less, it would also likely allow the shades to move as well...

From a distance ahead, Danyr could be heard running again. He wasn't near the spot where it sounded as though he had fallen...

Ergh.

Well, if the bloody thing wasn't going to come off with a buck of his shoulders, Daniel just had to do the slightly more effective, yet slightly more painful, thing: whip his longsword back up against the shade and his backside. Yeah, sure, this was going to leave a mark, but it didn't take much to kill these little guys, and a long cut and some welts was a lot less painful than, say, having his face ripped off.

Low and behold, slapping himself in the back with a sword was an effective way of ridding him of that shade problem. It exploded into a dark mist, prompting Daniel to dart off into a dead sprint. It was the only thing he could do, now. The moment he paused at this point was the moment he took a survey of his injuries and maybe even freaked out a little. He had to keep this adrenaline going, 'else he wasn't going to make it through this alive.

Fortunately (as a whole collective of shades smeared into the ground behind him), Daniel was extremely reliable with two swords. The second a little shadow was in front of him, it would stop being in front of him; he'd cut it down in an instant, without even breaking stride, and with a sword in each hand, he could unleash a flurry of quick strikes to deal with any number of shadows that got in his way . . .

Daniel's move was successful, both in dissipating the shade on his shoulders and cutting down his back. It was true, though... Having a face was preferable to not having one. With that shade freed, Daniel would be able to move quickly, his longer stride keeping him ahead of the smaller creatures, despite their smaller weight and agile forms.

Daniel's two swords were enough to keep the way clear, for the most part. The narrow maze-like paths prevented too many shades from building up in front of him, and his speed kept him generally out of reach of the shades behind him and the occasional shade that now leaped from atop the rocks.

Daniel's speed, in fact, would carry him in good stead, especially as the wind picked up once again, this time originating from behind. The wind would help move Daniel faster, if his legs could keep up, and it seemed to make the shades tend to bunch up, perhaps to avoid flying away with their low mass...

Sadly, this terrain wasn't too great for skating, otherwise he'd have already reached the tower by now. It didn't matter, though. Daniel was outpacing and outfighting the shades, running faster than they and striking them down with a right or a left side slice the very second they managed to get in his way. They weren't slowing him down. They couldn't. He was a man on a mission, and nothing was getting between him and the goal: rescuing Zera. He was bound and determined to eliminate all obstacles if need be . . .

Not even boulders would stand in his way, actually. There came a point where the path he took crossed with a hefty rock formation, one about thrice his own size, and one he leaped atop of, kicked off of, landed, and continued to race with an unbroken stride.

There were more shades, though. They might well have been endless, but by this point, Daniel's adrenaline and will guaranteed him equally boundless stamina. He'd crack his blades down upon each one, converting them to a dark mist, and with no pause, continue running.

Hopefully Danyr was doing just as well . . .

Daniel would soon face several problems. His run was successful. There was no doubt about that. In fact, through feats of speed and agility, he would reach the tower door without incident. The problem, then, lay in the door itself. The wooden doors to the tower were perhaps fifteen feet tall, and as much as a foot thick; the door wasn't going anywhere any more than the stone of the tower itself would be going anywhere. Worse, there was no visible means of unlocking the door. The door opened outward, but two large pull-rings on the door would give no response if pulled, indicating perhaps the door was barred shut from the other side.

Second to Daniel's problems could well be the fact that Danyr was nowhere to be seen or heard. The shades from the field began to gather around in large clumps, perhaps 20 feet away, surrounding what seemed like the entire tower, and swarming about in the field of boulders for as far as Daniel could see. Something about the tower seemed to keep them driven off, at least temporarily. And yet, there was still a hunger about them... They closed in a step at a time, perhaps pushed from behind by further shades approaching. They threatened to dash Daniel upon the stones of the tower like some terrible wave...

Daniel made it. Excellent. He dug his feet into the moist earth and skidded several feet until he finally came to a stop. His goal was within reach, but . . .

Well, it was a lot larger than he expected.

Frowning, Daniel stood up straight and assessed the situation. The door was much too tall and much too wide. He probably didn't have the manpower to just straight up pull a pair of doors this large open. He checked behind him, if only briefly, to find that he had a growing collection of fans, too. Fans of eating him, that is. They were making a slow and steady progression. Daniel mulled the situation over for a second.

Shades be damned, he concluded.

Obstacles be damned.



And with that, he swung wildly, struck the door with a one-two hit from each blade, hit the vibrating sword off it again and again (each hit letting it cut deeper and deeper), cut through with his standard chakram blade, and finally, after the eighth rapid slash, drew his right knee up to his chest, and stiff-leg kicked the straight-through wounds he inflicted.

"Daniel!"

On chopping his way through a chunk of the door with his magical weaponry, Daniel would be greeted by Danyr's face on the other side of the door, inches from the blade that had just pierced the door, and now covered in wood dust and small splinters that stuck to the water that drenched him. Danyr was crouched down somewhat, still trying to push a gigantic bar holding the doors shut.

The chunk of wood itself fell to the ground with a tremendous thud, the hole being just large enough to Daniel to squeeze through. The shades outside began to advance more rapidly, perhaps sensing their prey close to getting away. Danyr would help to pull Daniel through the door, assuming Daniel didn't feel the need for some sort of heroics....

With a straight-leg kick, Daniel collapsed a mid-sized section of door, leaving enough room for him to stroll on in like he owned the place. Daniel set one blade over his shoulder, ducked his head, and walked through the hole in the door with a gait befitting a man who not only traveled to a completely different world and out-fought a potentially limited number of shades, but of a man who literally cut open a foot thick door.

Suffice it to say, these enemies of theirs had unbridled willpower going against them . . .

Daniel passed Danyr by, nodding in acknowledgment. So Danyr was fine. That was good. How'd he get in? That was a weird question, but Daniel wasn't exactly concerned. So long as his friend was safe, Daniel was fine. Bleeding a good bit from the back and shoulder, but fine.

With the charge complete, Daniel checked his surroundings. "So wot next?"

Danyr, judging by the grappling hook in a window high up on the wall, facing the sea, had come in via an entirely different method, intending to let Daniel in before Daniel had made his entrance in an implausible and ridiculous way. No one else was inside, whether shade, shade-hybrid, or any of the few human inhabitants of the city. Behind Daniel, the shades seemed afraid to enter the tower through the large hole he had left, despite the insecurity it provided...

"We go up. Zera must be above, there's no way down. Then we get out of this damn city."

The room inside the tower would be somewhat familiar to Daniel: the doors of the tower now opened to the room with the glass ceiling that Daniel had once traversed. A tall set of stairs, perhaps 15 feet, now, circled up the tower, then continued on to a more traditional stone floor above. The second floor was composed of some sort of one-way glass, that appeared stone from the outside but allowed a nearly transparent view of the city and ocean on all sides. On the second floor, where once a device existed that had transported him back to Utopia, an utterly different machine now rested. This machine was much less crystalline in nature, though it possessed strange opaque black crystals that seemed almost to be transmitting on all sides. Indeed, the machine could be felt emanating something, though certainly not wind. More of an... Energy. And the machine was also drawing something different in from outside, to make things more puzzling. It was only barely perceptible to Daniel, and Danyr didn't say if he noticed anything.

The center of the machine, however, was less elegant. It composed of several large blocks, full of levers and buttons that were unmarked and in some cases simply holes where buttons were apparently intended to go, looking into the workings of a strange and labyrinthine mix of technology and magic. In the center of it all, however, was a glass case, with a door on the front of it. Inside, in some sort of motionless sleep, was a boy. The boy was perhaps 10 years old, bald and hairless, and wearing some sort of strange overalls from the look of things, studded with the same sort of black crystals that were on the machine. However, though the glass of the machine was somewhat tinted, the boy's skin had a dark gray cast to it, a cast much more reminiscent of shades than that of a lack of oxygen...

The tower was a lot larger than Daniel remembered it. He recalled climbing these stairs and he recalled all the glass, but what he remembered of the second floor was not exactly what he recalled. This wasn't at all the device that sent him back to the world he knew and grew up in. It was some sort of holding chamber . . . thing. Why, he had no clue, but there was a glass floor, a kid in a tank, and levers and buttons all over the place. It wasn't long before Daniel practically pressed his face up against the glass containing the boy.

He turned to look back to Danyr, then motioned back towards the glass. Of course Danyr saw what Daniel saw, but Daniel just had to be sure.

"Oi, is this one of them, uh," Daniel thought for a second, "Ersatzthingies?"

Whatever Presmodia was, Daniel should have said. The gray skin reminded him of them. All of them had gray tints to their skin. Some even had perfectly onyx skin.

"I guess. I don't really know the anatomy of these things."

The boy inside the tank remained still despite Daniel's rude peering. Danyr looked over the machine, trying to guess its function, but he was really just as stumped as Daniel. At least, he had no idea how it might work. What purpose it had, he had a better guess...

"Maybe this is how all those hybrids came to be? Though, this kid is different..."

From here, the boy really was essentially indistinguishable from an Ersatzshad. Of course, the process must have been different from what was happening in the City of Shadows. After all, none of the hybrids existed there...