With a hiss of warning from Surrender their bodies began to move. Toni's wrist flicked outward and in a fsh of light a sphere of metal flew. The pockmarked object cttered on the ramp just before the creatures and Toni released the fme with. The explosion tore out tearing into the front two Darklings.

  With a flick of her other wrist her gun slipped up, [Hunter's Instinct] guided her aim to the weakened one and fired. It was a [Ringing Blow], a [Power] gained during the handful of hunts she'd assisted in on their way here. The creature stumbled, still standing despite the chunk of it's face the bullet tore off.

  The other two Darklings roared and charged, rge clubs and jagged stone bdes raised. Temate stepped up between his team and the others. The mycelial shield shifting down onto his arm and spreading it's webbed defenses.

  "ROSE!" Toni shouted, unable to react to the pnt creature's pot sliding off the top of Temate's pack. Before anyone could react Rose's arms extended to wrap around Temate's bag, hanging safely from his back.

  "Temate how c-"

  "I worked it out with them beforehand, **focus** Toni." Temate's [Iron Order] forced Toni's attention back to the charging creatures. Right as Surrender, hidden by her [Enshadow], slipped behind the leading attacker. With a ferocity neither Temate nor Toni had seen so far her cw tore into the back of the Darklings leg.

  It stumbled becoming lethargic and slow, the third Darkling leapt to club Surrender with a horizontal strike. She ran up the creature's back to avoid the blow but these things were quick. With a sickening thud the club impacted.

  On a web of mycelium.

  Temate, standing right near Surrender, extended the webbing out. It didn't stop the blow, but it reduced the impact significantly. If he'd been able to yer bone on top of it he could have stopped it entirely. He grimaced in annoyance.

  The group slipped back a step drawing the final Darkling further off the top of the ramp. Away from it's stunned ally at the back, and the stumbling one Surrender had just struck. As Temate prepared a swing, soft orange light began to fill the air. Threads of light seemed to drift from openings in the Darklings stance.

  Pipuck.

  Temate didn't think about that, or the sound of Surrender hissing as Pipuck applied a quick poultice to her shoulder. He waited for the creature to enter his range, and swung. It was a quick strike, throwing the creature off bance as it cleaved into their leg. The Darkling wailed in pain stumbling forward.

  It tried not to fall, Temate could feel it's desire not to as he sidestepped its forward path. Yet for just a moment it colpsed to a knee. With a [Vicious Strike] downward Temate lopped off the Darklings head.

  With a secondary motion he reached down to the already scorching body, it's power being stripped away into Temate with it's death. He uttered a single word.

  "[March]."

  The body did not hit the ground. As it's two companions gathered themselves and continued their charges, their dead friend halted it's own fall. It's severed skull rolled back up into it's socket.

  The dead bones of the darkling, gleaming pearly white in the noon sun, rose and turned to face their friends. Temate spoke again to the other body they'd killed, and it too began to rise.

  They turned towards the still living Darklings, frozen a few feet away. They turned to run deeper in.

  **BOOM. CRACK. BAM.**

  Three quick bullets flew from Toni's gun, the one who was already bleeding profusely from a previous bullet, colpsed as it's heart exploded out. The second stumbled forward as two bullets impacted the back of it's chest.

  It cttered forward, and tripped on a shadow. A shadow with cws that grasped it's neck and tore its throat out. The fourth Darkling died as Surrender appeared atop it and grinned up at Temate.

  "That was... Surprisingly brutal." Temate said, walking down the ramp fnked by two Darkling marchers. Soon it was four, but as he raised the other two Toni replied.

  "That was... Pragmatic. They're violent, they nearly killed you, and have clearly invaded in force. I don't know about you'd but I'd rather not have one running back to alerting the others so we're running from a small army."

  Temate looked back over at her quizzically for a moment.

  "What?" She said, knowing full well 'what' he was thinking. She rolled her eyes and groused. "Look, I've been thinking about it, you're right. You're all right. If it's trying to kill us I don't need to show it mercy. If showing it mercy might result in more death, or danger to the people I love, it gets no mercy." Then she pointed her finger at Temate, the one which wasn't holding the gun thankfully.

  "I'm not gonna go killing random people, or fighting to the death anytime someones a danger in general, and I still won't kill people or things surrendering it's just..." She furrowed her brow as if pained to finish the statement. "...If it's my life, Ren's, Pips or your life, or theirs... I choose theirs."

  Temate reached out and grabbed her in a big, warm hug. "I'm gd and proud of you, but also kind of sad that you feel that way." A thump as Toni hit his chest gently. Temate ughed and released her.

  "Anyway, we should leave." Toni changed the topic like lightning. They knew her resolve now, maybe she'd shift the goal posts when they got to Occiden but for now...

  "Mmm..." Temate muttered helpfully. His brow furrowed as he looked over the edge of the cliff into silent Bearbhaile.

  "I take look." Surrender said.

  "Ren d- shit." She was gone before Toni could stop her. Toni sighed and sat down hard on the outer ledge of the ramp. Where she could hang her feet off over the ramp and feel very tall compared to Temate who examined the dead bears.

  There were 6 in total here, what looked to be two adults and 4 cubs of varying ages. None so recently born as this year thank god, but still fairly young. Toni hadn't seen many cubs around Bearbhaile, they tended to remain in their parents dens or in small residential sectors.

  Area's Toni didn't go to often, not that she'd explored all that often anyway.

  "Why do you want to go Toni?" Temate asked her, patching up his new skeletal soldiers with manifested bone.

  "No point to going in. We're four people, whatever's happening is bad enough Darklings got up here to the top of the ramp. Six bears died here. We're probably not gonna change much and I don't want to risk anyone." Toni expined slowly.

  She didn't like the thought process, her immediate instinct was to charge in and start fighting. But there wasn't any fighting. Not any clear fighting at least. That meant the Darklings had either killed everyone already, or the bears were losing badly. What could they do?

  "What if we could save someone?" Temate asked her, pcing the clubs of the creatures back in their hands. "What if we could do something?"

  "Huh?" Toni wasn't surprised really, but she was a little shocked. "We're more likely to die? You want to do a suicide run into a situation on a 'what if'?"

  Temate shook his head. "No." He said. Toni was about to say 'good cause that's crazy', when he continued. "I don't want to do a suicide mission, but that what if is important. That what if is lives. That's why I need your help. Surrender's help. Pipucks help." Toni's heart lurched.

  "But we can't do anything." She muttered. Already aware he was gonna go running off to die again.

  "We don't know that. We also don't know that we can. So Surrender finds out what's going on." Temate turned to look up at her.

  Her eyes met his, those brown, muddy eyes with the small streak of creamier brown, shone. They glimmered with a passion, a desire and a need. To protect, even at the risk of himself. She sighed, knowing full well she couldn't stop him.

  But.

  "And what if she comes back and tells us there's a thousand Darklings and all the bears are dead?" Toni asks.

  "If it seems like a suicide mission, we'll leave." Temate replied, he held up one hand to stop a protest that Toni wasn't even starting, or considering making. "However if there's a *chance*."

  She smiled at him. She couldn't help it. He was so full of passion, so full of a desire to save and protect others. She wondered why that was, what his past was like. She knew some, but he kept his past close to his chest.

  "If there's a chance, I'll come up with the best pn I can." Toni agreed, only a little frustrated.

  He was so determined, so kind and caring. That's what she loved about him, how could she quash that part of him? How could it not soften her frustration?

  - - -

  Surrender slipped quietly through the dark recesses of the silent caverns. A silence broken only by the occasional, nguid dripping of water from one of many channels carved in the wall or ceiling. A silence that was not normal.

  Surrender had not spent long here, but this silence was abnormal. Usually you could hear bears talking, cws cttering, around nearly every corner. Even if just a few. Now it was complete silence.

  Surrender ducked quickly into yet another small gap and waited. Her tail trailed along the ground and she waited.

  *thud thud thud*

  The dull thud of heavy feet. She could feel it but not hear it. The myka-mysee-the mushroom tail thingy sensing their motion through the ground and conveying it to her. The bright light of the small sunny orbs in the walls sconces dimmed.

  Shadows cast by pale legs fell over her hiding spot as another group of three Darklings prowled passed. They began to speak, their nguage and voices weirdly warbling, shifting from a high to low pitch. The words seemed heavily composed of clicking, spping and other hard sounds.

  "- smell - -" one word she understood there."-?" A quizzical noise, definitely a word but she was still learning their nguage. Their *nguage*. She'd thought they were savages."- move, boss - - with our -" The third one rumbled as it smacked the first ones head.

  The three continued on while Surrender waited. [Enshadow]ed in a small divot in the wall. Near the edge of her sense, she began to follow. They were headed to a boss, perfect.

  She crept carefully along, her tail trailing along the floor. It was a weird change for her, usually she'd keep her tail up, where it wouldn't snag on anything. But this new tail part made it so useful. Plus she could sense anything that was gonna snag on her tail.

  It also allowed her to safely trail these Darklings without worry. After all, for something to see you, you have to be in line of sight. She listened when she did catch them speaking, trying to learn every bit she could.

  They moved slowly through the caverns, going ever deeper with each passing minute. Surrender did not track time as her companions, she did not even bother most of the time. She was always more focused on distance, pacing, physical space.

  The first group they came upon were gathering wood and other burnables. They tossed these into a netted sled pushed by a massive beetle of some description. Deep bck chitin seemed to swallow the light cast on it's shell. They stopped their work, abandoning the beetle there which was chewing on bones scoured from the walls.

  The second group were following another netted sled with its beetle driver. Inside this were rge, oiled bags of some gray hide. Even from nearly a hundred feet away Surrender could smell the vile scent of feces, offal and other thoroughly rotted refuse. She stepped back to 300 feet, beyond the sense of her tailshroom, but not the smell.

  When she passed a hollowed out room which reeked of the same refuse the Darklings had been hauling she nearly vomited. When she saw the beetle with it's sled off to the side chewing on more bones, she panicked. Realizing they'd left their smelly package behind she scurried further on to catch up.

  She found the gathered Darklings only another few hundred feet down the cavern around a bend. And they weren't alone. They'd picked up a third group for a total of twelve Darklings, each group consisting of three Darklings individually. It was the other things Surrender sensed which really shocked her.

  Goblins and Daog were pressed against what she sensed to be the back wall of a rge cavernous space. One goblin had not squirmed back and was standing firm by the door, shouting in a harsh voice in the common tongue.

  "We have been ensved too long! We will be free be it your tyranny or any other! Free of svery! Free to be Named! Recim our Names! Recim our Natures!" The goblin faced the others, shouting the same lines over and over again.

  Surrender shook her head, the Darklings by the door clearly amused by the shouting goblin. One threw a rock through the bars of the makeshift cell door, causing the goblin to stumble. Surrender winced as it picked up the rock, hefted it, and hurled it back with a shout.

  "Death to the monsters of the dark!" The rock flew and the Darkling batted it cleanly out of the air.

  The Darklings ughed in a strange, warbling, throaty ugh. One of them hefted the rock again and curled it's arm to fling it with force. As it did so Surrender's head exploded in sensation. Overwhelmed as the whole world around the Darklings began to shake.

  Surrender could never describe the way she understood the strange senses her new tailshroom gave her accurately. The best she could do is say it's like 'seeing' the things, then knowing about how far away they were from her. Like if you could see a sounds emanation.

  She could only really see things in contact with the ground, and the shape of the ground and natural structures on it. She 'saw' by the small, constant shaking that things did, something she hadn't known they'd done till now. So when the ground started shaking violently, it was like when one of Toni's bombs went off and she was looking at it.

  Bright. Or the feeling of being overwhelmed by sudden bright light after being in the dark too long. Her head screamed in pain and in the suddenness of the sensation, she could not stop herself from letting the screaming out.

  Sounds filled the air that Surrender couldn't process. A thundering roar and snarling shouts.

  Something grabbed onto Surrender and she reacted instantly, cws tearing into the hard hide of the thing. She pushed Power into the [Sap Strike] to [Disrupt Thought] and skittered away. Something big thumped after her and she turned to ssh again.

  "Surrender wait it's- AGH"

  What? Who? Surrender clutched at her head and forced her vision to focus. There she saw a small, scar-marked bck bear. It's muzzle torn by various implements, freshly wounded but sealed over. The bear opened it's mouth and another roar filled the space.

  Not from the bck bear, from something greater. As it roared the earth shook again and the sudden tweak of the freshly wounded sense scattered Surrenders thoughts. The st thing she heard as she stumbled backward into unconsciousness was the bck bear shouting.

  "Surrender what's-"

  When Surrender came to she was in the dark. Her head was in so much pain it felt like someone had just smashed her over the head with a boulder. Then took her, squeezed out every ounce of liquid, put her in a heater to dry her out, then refilled her body but not her brain. Then for good measure, forced her to look into the sun for an hour.

  She clutched her head as she pulled herself up from a patch of soft, fuzzy material. It appeared to be pnt matter of some kind? She looked around the room, lit by only one small, weak sphere of light on the wall by a door. The rest of the room was bare, just a single small nook barely big enough for one Temate.

  She shifted to the ground, letting her tail droop to the floor and reconnect. Instantly her mind was filled with this new sensation, one which she'd grown quite fond of over the past weeks. She honestly felt a bit blind without it now.

  Outside the chamber was a... bear, yes a bear. She couldn't make out fine enough detail to tell if it was the same bear but it was a smaller bear. Just a bit of a ways passed them were more bears, a rger one, two smaller and one tiny. Which unless there were two tiny, long cwed bears with walking sticks, would be Sgoinneil.

  That was good, a face she knew. There were also a handful of goblins around a small circur table which the bears also stood around. Surrender, with a loud screeching compint from her head, and a moan from her lips, stood. With awkward, stumbling steps she made her way out of the chamber.

  The bear outside lifted it's head as Surrender stumbled out of the chamber. It murred and moved to help her stand by proffering the fnk of it's body on all fours.

  "It's Surrender right?" The bear asked softly. Surrender nodded in reply. "Good, good. Are the rest of your group with you? We could use all the help we get, even if- Ah I mean..." The bear trailed off as it led Surrender toward the room at the end of this long hall of a chamber.

  "-rely on Timbear, he's already burning significant energy just keeping-" Sgoinneil was saying

  "Well we want rights! You want diggers, we can help you, but you're not gonna get nothin' withou-" One of the goblins cut in. The one closest to the center of the group Surrender sensed.

  "Grrrrrrrrrrrr" The rgest bear growled.

  "Don't you growl at me you overgrown puffball!"

  "You stop being a pain in the ass, you all agreed-"

  "We didn't agree to shit fuzz for brains! Half of us were born into this, or taken after poorly chosen raids! We want-"

  "Please, please rex. I'm sure we can come to an agreement Nasai, perhaps-" One of the smaller bears said that, lifting a paw diplomatically.

  "I will not negotiate on this Honey!"

  "You don't have a choice fatso!" This was one of the goblins to the lead goblins side.

  "Surrender is awake, we're coming in!" The bear who's fnk Surrender held announced as they stepped through thick oil fps into the room beyond.