She swept her hand in a wide arc, melding the glass to her will. Her magic raged in her veins, coming out as spikes meant to wound but never kill. The renegades scrambled out of the path of her shards. Some brave ones jumped from the hedge and started drawing their weapons. If there was still doubt over her charges a few minutes ago, now she had gone and confirmed it. Not that she wished harm on these little band of pixie rebels. Just that if they wanted to hurt her, she wouldn't hesitate to hurt them back.

The first line of renegades made a hazy line. She clicked her tongue. Get out of the way! They didn't. Instead, they lunged at her.

Her magic swirled to action, going along the familiar motions. A glass sword materialized in her hands, bearing the weight she never thought she'd miss. She roared, meeting the first blow. Spun, swept her leg underneath the foolish renegade who dared cross blades with her. She honed her sword to a fine point and slashed. It bit flesh. Her leg followed suit, her heel slamming into a stomach or two. The way to freedom was closer now. Just a few steps left.

A shadow whizzed in her periphery. She whirled to block a spear tip aimed at the back of her head. "Why are you doing this?" Yarli snarled as he gritted against Elred's force. "We could have petitioned for a lighter sentence."

Elred grinned. It was nowhere near a reflection of amusement. "You are as mad as your Elder if you believe that," her muscles screamed as she drove Yarli back, the butt of her hilt finding his shoulder next. His spear dropped to the ground. As she moved to take him out of commission, she said, "Take care of my family for me. I will find them again."

A harsh blow to the neck before he could utter his agreement, and he crumpled to the ground, next to the broken shards from her own crumbling magic. She withdrew her synnavaim, the glass melting back to her skin in a swirl of warmth. The renegades pressed from all sides, shouting in defiance at how she wrecked their home. She leveled her sword and splayed a hand towards them. Why would she care? She didn't even have a home.

Glass and a different kind of magic burst out from her hands, solidifying into walls upon walls of nothing but mirrors. If this city had any light, she could make it work. With nothing but her mind's eye, she raised walls of glass around her, trapping the renegades in a maze of her doing without them knowing. She backed away, her feet scraping against the rough floor in a hurry. The wounds already present there could only send stinging aches up her legs.

The fastest renegades made it out of the maze before she could seal it. A curse flew out of her lips. She swept a hand up, summoning one last glass wall. With a grunt, she sent it flying towards the renegades, brushing them back until most of them were back in the maze. She melded the walls together with a final click. The maze was complete.

A mass of crimson and green flashed towards her. By instinct, her magic formed small triangular blades and her hands sent it towards the moving targets. One sank into a shoulder, one into a leg. Both figures collapsed to the ground, nursing their wounds and gasping for breath. Elred stood over them, chest heaving. Go for the kill—her next step would have been.

But she wasn't in Synketros anymore.

So, she met the gaze of the renegade clasping his leg wound. She gave him a final acknowledging nod before turning away and disappearing into the exit. She wrapped her magic around her form, tweaking every feature in it until she wore a face that wasn't hers.

The corridors blurred as she took one random turn after another. It didn't matter where she was going. They all looked alike anyway. Sometimes, she swore she heard noises of pursuit and she would always look back to check. No spells rained on her. No blades screamed for her blood. As much as it dreaded her to say it, she was safe.

For now.

The renegades were no doubt good trackers. They wouldn't rest until Elred was brought to justice. Not just for wounding their men, destroying their home (on a technicality, she didn't do that, but...one gets the impression after one altercation they'd assume that anyway), and for daring to live with the knowledge of their existence.

Just another line to add in Elred's growing list of enemies. What else was new?

She turned a corner and came across another part of the city. The renegades' hellhole must have been the central square or their official capital. This one looked like a more rural area. The lack of stone ceilings and high-rise walls told her that. Instead, the only traces left were stone stumps sticking out of the ground in sparse locations. They must have been the only pillars in sheds. The rest, if they're made with straw, pitch, and wood, had withered away back to soil.

Never mind that. That civilization's long gone, so their problems weren't Elred's to mind. She tore forward, looking for any traces of edible algae glowing in the dark. Once she saw that, it meant she was in the tunnels she built and not this foreign civilization. Was it luck she hadn't stumbled upon this place when she was out tunneling? How come she had stayed ignorant of its existence until now?

She craned her neck up and studied the slopes of the ceiling. It's higher, which meant she wasn't anywhere near the ground of the world above her. By a stretch, this place may have been a deeper part. She could wander all she liked in this place, but she'd never get back up. To do that, she'd have to find an incline.

Or she could create it herself.

With her newfound magic, she built herself a scaffolding out of glass until she reached the cavern's ceiling. Then, she dug into her soul for any sliver of destructive power, the one she used to bring down the Glass Mountain in on itself. A trace of it remained in her veins. Good. She could blast her way out of here. If it's strong enough, she could reach the upper cities in no time.

But was it wise? She was about to find out.

Drawing a small portion of the ancient magic trapped inside Helinfirth's depths and the one present in the air, she shot a concentrated beam up. The burst of bright light almost blinded her. She stumbled under the force of her own creation. WIth her blurring vision, she could only hear the distinct groan of rocks as her magic forced them to shift, to widen to a crack. She wasn't an earth sprite, but being able to manipulate landforms like how she would a glamour or glass made her feel invincible.

It didn't last forever.

Her magic tapped out, leaving her with nothing but an empty shell in her soul. Her knees buckled. It's going to take a while to build her reserves back up. A rock hit her in the scalp. She looked up and beheld her creation. A fairy-sized hole bored all the way to the dark void above. That should do.

She dared not look down as she built atop her glass scaffolding and urged her form higher. When she had the wings to catch her, falling from such heights didn't bother her. In fact, she sought a sense of danger. But now, as she rose higher and higher, it took everything in her to stop imagining what would happen if she slipped and hurtled towards the ground.

She only relaxed when her form squeezed through the hole. Using the glass to push herself through, she braced her arms and legs against the rough soil walls and shimmied up. The journey seemed to go on forever. Her muscles started hurting. At some point, she had to stop using her magic to build her glass platform a level higher. She was reduced to clambering up the shaft like a distant cousin of the cata-cata.

She was about to give up when her head poked through a pocket of space. Her eyes sat level with the ground, giving her a quick view of the dark tunnels. The tinge of ancient magic had faded to faint trails, leaving her with a memory of what it felt like. These were the upper levels, one she was sure would be connected to the bunkers she built. Gods of Calaris, what a journey.

As soon as she climbed out of the hole, she dissolved her magic from the deeper levels, plugging the hole she made with a thin strip of glass. If someone were to fall through this, it wouldn't be a stain on her conscience. They should have watched their step.

With that, she tramped away, searching for the next bend to hopefully take her out of the underground altogether. She passed by a network of tree roots seeping through the walls of the tunnel, confirming her initial hypothesis—she's closer to the sky now than she ever was before.

Boots crunched against the soil behind her. She turned, magic already blazing beneath her skin, ready to strangle whoever jumped out at her. Instead, what she got was a distant and confused, "Elred?"

Someone had found her. And they knew who she was.