Cryo did not trust Ella for even the fraction of a second it took him to blink.

But underground and within the narrow confines of the timber walls with a mission to complete, neither he nor Banshee had a choice. He just wished she'd exercise a little more caution than this headlong charge down the corridor following in the ex-Luminary's footsteps. Part of him also hated that once again, he was relying on Banshee's ability to make split-second decisions when he hadn't had the chance to influence them first. Hated that his wings were cramped. That he was a liability.

He wanted time to step back, to analyse the scene, to figure out exactly what it was that didn't sit right in Ella's story. He didn't have it, and he suspected it was all too intentional on Ella's behalf. Perhaps it was just that she needed their help regardless of danger. Perhaps it was something more.

Either way, he ran down that corridor, right on Banshee's heels.

The tunnels split off in several different directions along the way yet Ella never hesitated. There were no signs. No distinguishing markings. If they had to find their way out again, Cryo wasn't sure that they could. Using their primary abilities down here could very well be the reason that they went Dark.

Banshee stopped at a corner, her eyes still on Ella as she waited for Cryo to catch up.

"It's getting stronger!" Banshee called back over her shoulder.

He didn't need to ask what she meant, even if he still couldn't feel it himself. "Something isn't right!"

"I wholeheartedly agree!" she replied, taking off after Ella once more.

Cryo could only swear and try to move a little faster without scraping what remained of his wings off against the walls. He hated to waste Sae's power, but he was going to have to re-freeze them once they got out if he wanted to fly again.

He rounded the corner. There was no sight of Banshee or Ella.

Cryo called out for them and was answered by nothing but his own echo. He broke into a run, heedless of his wings. His heartbeat thudded in his ears each time his foot hit the ground. Banshee was fine, he told himself as he called her name again. She was fine. She could handle herself--better than he could most of the time.

Yet in the back of his mind, he couldn't stop expecting to hear her scream.

He grabbed the corner post and swung himself around, his icy claws leaving deep gouges in the wood. There was no sign of Banshee in this corridor either, but there was a door. An open door, the lock of which was discarded on the ground.

Cryo didn't slow until he was three metres from the door frame, and that was only because he didn't want to overshoot the door. Ice gouged wood once more, and with frozen shards between his fingers, arm raised and ready to throw, he launched himself inside the room--

--To find Banshee crouched over and breaking yet another lock, but otherwise completely at ease.

Cryo lowered his arm, taking in the long room. It was more or less a wider corridor lined with prison cells, and its resemblance to the city's jail was uncanny. The only difference was the number of people--there was no way the jail had held this many people. The cells stretched right back into the shadows at the end of the room, and every single one of them had no less than three individuals inside.

"Got it!" said Banshee, stepping back as the lock clattered to the ground.

Just in time too. Ella flung the door open with complete disregard for where Banshee was standing and rushed inside the cell, wrapping one of its shocked occupants in a hug.

"Andrew!" said Ella. "Skypillar save me, I was so worried. I thought that maybe he'd taken you and I was--"

As Ella gushed, Banshee glanced up at Cryo and gave him an odd look. "Why are you so worked up?"

Truth be told, he had no idea. There was a slight itch on his skin like he was being watched, but he dealt with that daily. He never lost his composure. Never came so close to letting panic smear his actions.

"What'd I say about staying together?" said Cryo in a low voice.

Banshee raised an eyebrow. "You were the one that told me to go ahead, Cryo."

"I was calling to see where you were," said Cryo. "You were waiting for me at the corners, and then you weren't. I'll admit I was worried."

"What?" said Banshee. "Andrew answered Ella's calls and said we had to hurry. I was waiting at the next corner, you came around, waved me on and told me to go help them..." She hesitated, some of his own trepidation leaking into her expression. "...didn't you?"

"Ella, wait, stop!" said Andrew, snapping both Cryo's and Banshee's attention to him as he pushed her away and held her by the shoulders. Andrew met Cryo's gaze with wild eyes. "There's a Shimmer in the room!"

Banshee's daggers were drawn in an instant, her back to Cryo and her stance ready. "What's a Shimmer? How do we fight it?"

"The Serpent creates them!" said a new voice, a boy with silvery hair in the same cell as Andrew. The boy--well, he wasn't a boy, he looked like he could have been the same age as Cryo--ran to the bars and shoved his arm through, pointing towards the back of the room. "It infuses fragments with its poison to create a hallucination! You should have been able to sense its presence on your way in!"

Now he was looking, Cryo could indeed see something at the back of the room. In the top right corner, there was a shimmer-like quality to the air, a place where the darkness seemed the deepest. The people in the cells closest to it were either backed up against the wall as far away from it as possible, or they were lying still on the ground.

"I think I did," said Banshee through gritted teeth. "If it's a hallucination, can't we just ignore it?"

"It won't feel like one if it hits you!" said Andrew. "Wear it down, smash its fragment! Keep it away from people, it'll try to leech off them to strengthen itself! Ella, help me get the other cells open!"

Cryo stepped forward to Banshee's side. The Shimmer was larger now, closer to the floor. The darkness around its edges were becoming sharper, more defined. "Plan?"

"He said wear it down," she said, reversing her grip on Joy as her daggers glinted, catching the light as she shifted them out of shadow. Their edges, usually blunted by her shadow-shift, were now razor sharp. "So I guess we wear it down."

"I suggest we try to avoid using our ultimates unless necessary," said Cryo. "I have my doubts that we could find our way out of here in the few minutes before we'd go dim."

"Agreed," said Banshee. "Kinda wishing Fae had mentioned Shimmers, not gonna lie."

Cryo had his theories on why that was, but distractions were the last thing either of them needed right now. "Treat it like we did the Manifested in the early days. I'll cover you and try to slow it down. You locate and remove the fragment."

"Can do," said Banshee.

Banshee advanced, edging towards the left as she usually did. Cryo mirrored her movements albeit a few steps behind and to the right. He gathered the chills from the edges of the room, coalescing them around his fingers, keeping them free and ready.

The Shimmer's form was humanoid now, the dark mist of its figure edged by a haze of pale green. As they grew closer, it took on features--the long, dark hair of the girl on the floor beside it, the tanned skin of the man beside her. The jacket of the woman in the opposite cell and the face of someone Cryo presumed to be another of the people currently unconscious.

Cryo was more than certain the Shimmer's attention was completely on him.

"What are you waiting for!" called Andrew from somewhere behind them. "Attack it before it gets stronger! It's the only way you'll find its fragment!"

Banshee charged. Grief in her right hand, she slashed at the Shimmer's arm. The resulting gash bled a pale green, and the Shimmer's attention snapped to her face with a hiss. Faster than Cryo would have expected it to, the Shimmer swiped back. Banshee leapt back, clearing its fingers by a comfortable distance before she twisted herself back around and was on it once more.

Cryo looked for an opening as his partner ducked under their opponent's next strike. Banshee's daggers found their mark on the Shimmer's leg. Once more, pale green blood seeped from its wound, the edges of which were widening, like they were flaking away--the Shimmer was dissolving. She was doing it.

But as Banshee went for her third attack, the Shimmer met her blade with one of its own, and not just any blade.

It was Joy.

Or rather, it was a perfect replica of it, since the original was still firmly clutched in Banshee's left hand. The Shimmer's hiss filled the room, and with that exhale, shed the disguise of the woman's hair and the man's skin to reveal its new persona. One with amber, white-tipped hair garbed in grey, black and crimson clothes.

Banshee stood there, dagger locked with a perfectly mirrored copy of herself.

The real Banshee swore and brought Joy swinging down on the Shimmer's wrist. The Shimmer broke the contact and ducked to the side. Banshee followed its movement but she wasn't quick enough. The Shimmer pushed off the wall and launched itself at her, driving its shoulder into her stomach and sending them both sprawling across the ground.

Cryo flung the chilled air at the Shimmer's leg, catching it around the ankle and freezing it. Weighed down, the Shimmer hissed again. It swiped at Banshee with a dagger, once, twice, but she avoided both strikes and scrambled away.

"It's leeching off me," said Banshee. "The Serpent's aura weighing me down too much. It feels like I'm moving through sludge instead of shadow."

The Shimmer reached back for its trapped ankle and struck the ice, trying to break it.

Cryo re-froze the damage. "Then let's see if I can get it to leech off me instead."

He approached it without hesitation, swirling the chilled air over and around its wrists before hardening it to ice. The Shimmer pulled back, managing to get one hand out before the freeze but one trapped hand was more than enough to earn Cryo its undivided attention.

Banshee's copied form flickered, the amber-white hair returning to the cloud of dark mist, the imitated daggers folding back into the limbs as small shards of ice began to pierce the mist. Strands of snow-white hair appeared through the curtain of darkness, as if someone could reach out and simply dust the mist away and find a person underneath. The mist bucked and writhed at its back, trying to make room for wings. Already its wounds were closing, the pale green drops of iridescent blood misting back into the air to rejoin its body.

But the shards of ice kept disappearing, the strands of snow-white hair slipping back below the Shimmer's mist. It couldn't hold his shape, or it was making an excellent show of baiting him into thinking it couldn't.

A million possibilities were running through his mind as Banshee, back on her feet, stalked around behind it.

"Don't let it heal!" called the boy with the silvery hair again as he worked to open one of the cells nearby. "Keep going!"

Banshee had dashed forward, even before the boy had finished speaking. In a blink, her gleaming daggers slashed through the Shimmer's form, spewing bright green blood across the ground once more. The Shimmer growled-- a deep, rumbling sound that Cryo felt in his chest--and with the sound, turned entirely incorporeal and slipped straight through Cryo's icy restraints.

It didn't stay that way long. It rushed through the room, faster than Cryo's eye could track and behind Banshee, it retook her form. Banshee was quick enough to block the first overhead strike from the Shimmer, but she wasn't quick enough to stop the second underhanded swing.

The Shimmer sheathed its dagger inside Banshee's stomach with a wicked, twisted smile.

Banshee didn't make a noise. She fell, daggers clattering, the imitated Joy still buried up to the hilt in her body. Her knees hit the ground under the weight of her hunched shoulders, and Cryo did the one thing he could: he used his ultimate ability and took control of the ice.

The ice that had previously trapped the Shimmer lit up in his mind like puppets on the end of his strings. With a thought, he split them, with a gesture, he signalled them, and a thousand tiny razor-sharp piece of frost proceeded to flay the Shimmer to ribbons.

Green splattered the room. Light, scattered off his ice, executed every wisp of the Shimmer's dark mist. As the ice began to return to its inanimate state, only one piece of the Shimmer remained--its fragment.

Before Cryo could deal with that, Banshee reached out and smashed it.

The fragment dissolved into a puddle of emerald liquid that quickly sank into the floorboards and out of sight.

"Gotta say," said Banshee in a strained voice. "Part of me always wondered what that'd feel like, but I really don't want to repeat this experience."

Cryo ran to her side and kneeled down, his hands hovering above where her hand clutched her side. She held out her free hand, her head still down, and almost automatically Cryo slapped it.

"Down it's laid," he muttered, trying not to let panic overtake him at her blood now on his palm. "How bad is it?"

Banshee swallowed and released a loud, shaky exhale. "My shadow shift stopped a lot of the damage, I think." She grit her teeth. "But by the light of the stars above does it burn."

"Let me see," said Cryo.

Banshee pulled her blood-stained hand away, placing both fists on the ground to steady herself as Cryo inspected the damage. She was right, it was nowhere near as bad as it should have been, resembling more of a deep cut than anything else he'd have expected. Even so, he iced the wound. Most of her injury would heal when she dimmed, but for now, his cold would help numb the pain.

She gave him a small, grateful smile that quickly faded into concern. "Cryo, you ulti'd. You need to get out of here before you dim."

"But you're--"

"I'll live," she said quickly, pushing him away. "But you won't be able to save my shadow again if you aren't a Lumi anymore. Go!"

"I'll find you again when I've recharged," said Cryo, standing up. "Get them to the nearest skyshrine if you can."

"Can do," said Banshee. "Now get out of here before Skypillar has to find me a new partner!"

Cryo found something he hated more than being forced to trust Ella earlier in that moment: leaving Banshee alone with a stab wound.

He didn't have a choice. If he stayed, he was useful for about three more minutes before he revealed himself and Sae left him for good. If he left, he'd get those three minutes back and more--that was, assuming he could make it out of the den in time at all.

Cryo was running for the door when the silver-haired boy stopped him.

The boy didn't waste words. "I know a back way out. Follow me."

Cryo really didn't like not having a choice in things.

He followed after the boy at a dead sprint, both of them crashing into a corner or two rather than slowing down. The boy stopped in front of a piece of wall and pushed in one of the timbers. The wall swung inwards, revealing a tunnel walled in dirt instead of wood that smelled of fresh air.

"I'll close the door behind you," said the boy, stepping aside.

Cryo moved past him and was swept up in something like relief as his talons dug into the dirt. He glanced back at the boy. "Thank you. What's your name?"

"Stefan," said the boy with a smile that then turned grim. "And one last thing--don't trust Ella. She's one of the Serpent's lieutenants at this den."

Surprise of a lifetime right there. "Warn Banshee. Tell her I'm bringing the other Lumi's to the skyshrine."

Stefan nodded. "I will do this for you. I wish you speed, Cryophoenix."

Cryo ran the rest of the way up the tunnel as Stefan closed the door behind him. He met the surface from under a well-concealed pile of moss and rocks and spent precious seconds pushing them aside to get his wings through. They were already far too scraped and battered. He was just praying to Skypillar that they were still whole enough to fly with, because after using his ultimate, he didn't have the power left to fix them.

He wouldn't even be able to harness the chilled winds for speed like he usually did either, and all of a sudden, he started wondering what'd happen to Jason if Cryo went dim mid-air.

A few moments later, Cryo managed to get airborne and, after a few laboured flaps to keep him there, headed straight for the nearest skyshrine.

*+*+*+*  

A/N - COOKIES WITH EVERY VOTE <3 

side note: OPL WAS AMAZING but I am back now with the writing and the replying to comments =>