You guys hit 200 <3 

New vote goal for this week: 230  (before the regular update time <3)

*+*+*+*

Olivia knew she hadn't been asleep for long when the frozen burn of her tattoo knocked her out of sleep.

She gripped her head against the headache as she staggered out of bed, making sure that Cryo wasn't outside her balcony once more before calling out to Viri. As Olivia spoke the words and the shadows changed her into Banshee, the headache was still holding on. It was muted, but it was still there, pulsing at the back of her head.

"Starlight, I really, really need a full night of rest at some point soon," she muttered, sheathing her daggers and leaping off the balcony with two taps on her tattoo.

She felt Cryo transform ten seconds later as she was mid-jump. The warmth was enough to distract her for a brief moment, enough to split her focus as she landed. Instead of landing flat-footed and pushing forward into a run, Banshee was forced to tuck into a roll with a curse or risk missing it completely.

She stopped herself at the edge of the rooftop, palms to the sides of her visor as she closed her eyes.

Focus. She needed to focus, especially when she was tired. Tonight wasn't going to be one for risks.

With a calming breath, Banshee followed the shadows towards the Manifested. If her sense of direction was right, it was likely in inner Aeledrae, one of DragonFae and Golem's districts that neighboured Sylrael--but tonight, just like for the last week, every district was Banshee and Cryo's responsibility. It wouldn't have mattered if the Manifested was on top of Skypillar itself, they would have gone to save it.

She caught sight of Cryo overhead, well ahead of her given that he'd started closer and moved faster. Any other night, she might have tried to catch him, but tonight, it was going to be an effort just to not break her own neck in a fall. With any luck, Cryo would have the Manifested located by the time she got there and she could get back to sleep as soon as possible.

Banshee swapped her attention between her feet and Cryo when she could spare him a glance. Her partner seemed to find something and swoop out of sight, but a few moments later, he was back in the air, still searching.

Some sinking feeling told her this wasn't going to be another in-and-out saving.

Super.

The Serpent's aura smacked Banshee right across the face as she landed on a rooftop just below where Cryo was hovering. Shaking it off as best she could, she placed a hand on her tattoo to get Cryo's attention. He glanced down at her as he felt it and swooped down to join her.

"I don't like the look of this," said Cryo. "I was attempting to locate the Manifested, but it feels like there's more than one down there. I keep seeing figures move about, but they disappear into nothingness."

"Serpent aura is thick here, too," muttered Banshee. "Could be hallucinations or even Shimmers, which is the last thing we need."

She looked over the city below as she spoke. The Aeledrae marketplace was one of the biggest things in the whole district, well known enough that people would often travel just to attend its various events. It'd originally been a large starstone courtyard, but every week, different stalls and stands would pop up from other parts of the city to sell their wares, creating organised chaos from the mazed pathways between them. It made a strange contrast to the precision-planned city streets to always have this ever-changing landscape smack bang in the middle of it.

Still, right now in the dark without any people bustling between the stalls, it looked like a complete nightmare to try and find someone in.

Banshee massaged the side of her head. The headache was a little better, but she could barely feel anything with the Serpent aura around anyway. "I'm gonna be honest. I'm not on my A game tonight. I need a full night of sleep."

"You didn't get one last night?"

"There was a Manifested," muttered Banshee, realising too late that she'd screwed up her plan to keep that one secret. "I stopped by Olivia's house and you were sleeping outside. You kinda seemed like you needed the rest, so I dealt with it."

"You should have woken me."

Banshee shrugged. "It wasn't far from Olivia's house. If it was proving too much, I would have woken you up. What's done is done. It was probably dumb. Anything could have happened. I don't really have the energy to argue about it tonight."

"As you say," said Cryo. "Regardless, how do you suggest we deal with this Manifested?"

Banshee glanced over the edge of the roof, trying to find these moving figures Cryo was talking about. The whole area reeked of Serpent aura, so that wasn't going to help them find anything. Even the shadows were muddled, unable to get a lock on anything solid.

She clucked her tongue. "Best thing we can do is get down there and start looking, I guess. I'll go down, you watch from the air, tap once if you think you see anything. Freeze them if you can."

"Be careful."

Banshee touched two fingers to the side of her head. "Always."

She jumped down.

The market felt even more eerie once she was down among it. The buildings that edged the courtyard loomed around her, and in the tangle of her thoughts, they became the walls of Harpy's pit, tall and indomitable, trapping her in.

Banshee's breath caught in her throat. She blinked, only to find the walls were gone, once more nothing but elegant silhouettes against the twin moon's sky.

Hallucinations, or my own mind playing tricks on me?

She shook her head. It didn't matter. Even so, a shaky breath left her lips as she started walking, and she drew both Grief and Joy for reassurance.

Banshee made it down the first row of empty stalls and stands without seeing any of these figures Cryo had mentioned. Then the second. Then the third. The fourth, the fifth... she felt like she'd been looking for a solid twenty minutes into each shadow and corner without finding so much as a hint of this supposed Manifested.

Yet her tattoo was still cold. The shadows were still pointing to somewhere in this marketplace.

Maybe it was just her lack of patience tonight, but she had a feeling a certain scaley reptile was playing games with them.

She searched another row with no sign of anything amiss, using the time to work it out in her head. There was a Manifested here. She was sure of it. For whatever reason, it was hiding, and Banshee did not want to spend the next several hours playing hide and seek with it, which meant she had to draw it out.

When she reached the end of the row, Banshee sheathed her daggers, placed her hands on her hips and tossed her hair.

She turned around and waved Cryo down. "Cryo! Come here!"

He landed beside her in a rush of icy air. "Did you find something?"

"No," said Banshee. "That's the problem. I'm not finding anything suspicious. There is literally nothing here. I don't think there's a Manifested here at all."

"The usual signs are here."

"If the Serpent was a Lumi once, he'd know the signs and what he needed to create. I think it's all just a hallucination to keep us busy."

"The bells were ringing before I arrived," said Cryo. "Not to mention our tattoos were cold before we transformed. Unless the Serpent affected everyone in the city similarly--which I believe we would have noticed--there was truly a Manifested here at some point tonight."

Banshee rubbed her head once more. "I dunno. I just don't think there's anything here. I'm gonna go home for the night. You wanna come back to the temple with me? We can sleep there and guard the aurorastone at the same time. I'm sure Fae can do the magic thing again to make sure we sleep properly."

Cryo's eyes flashed, every thought on his face locked down as he caught on and pretended to consider it. "I suppose. I don't have much else to do tonight, and ensuring the aurorastone's safety is the number one priority. I doubt either DragonFae or Golem has unlocked it yet."

Banshee cast her senses out, searching for any curious ears. There was something stirring the shadows behind her, but it was ridiculously faint, almost like a ghost. "I'm really looking forward to getting some sleep. I swear if that stone starts whistling again, I'm going to give it to the Serpent personally. Give me your hand, I'm gonna fly back. With you."

"As you wish," said Cryo.

He crouched and flared his wings to the side as he usually did before she climbed on his back, but she knew he'd understood her plan when he froze a small but sturdy piece of ice on his behind, just big enough for, say, a booted foot.

Banshee approached him at her usual pace, making a show of stretching her arms out above her head. "Starlight save me, I'm so tired. As annoyed as I am to be out of bed, at least we don't have to actually fight anything tonight. I could use a break."

There--the shadows shifted again, just the tiniest amount.

Right as Banshee was lifting her shin to jump onto Cryo's back, she instead placed her foot on the piece of ice he'd frozen for her and in a full shadow shift, launched herself backwards into the air.

Banshee soared, her legs flipping up over her torso as she whipped both daggers out of their scabbards and threw Grief straight at the disrupted shadows. Cryo followed up a heartbeat later, freezing the rooftop and all its crevices solid

Neither Grief nor the ice found their mark.

Banshee landed, her boots silent as they touched down. She frowned, Joy still in hand as her eyes scanned the darkness. "I could have sworn I saw a--"

"Behind you!"

Banshee sprang forward into a roll, skidding across the patch of ice on her back. She dug the tip of Joy into the ice and used it as an anchor to get her feet back under herself. On the other side of the ice patch, just where she'd been standing, a semi-transparent figure of shadow and smoke began to take shape.

"Glad you decided to join us," said Banshee, dropping into a low stance with Joy at the ready. "My name is Banshee, and you're kind of stealing my thing."

The Manifested's head-thing turned downwards, to where Grief's blade was frozen into ice.

"That was not an invitation!" said Banshee. "Cryo!"

She felt a wedge of ice freeze under her lifted heels. It was all she needed to catapult herself off the ice and back into the air, Joy aimed straight for the Manifested's hand. It looked up as she descended upon it, and faster than she could have anticipated, seemed to completely reform itself a metre off to her left.

Joy missed, but with a quick tug, Grief was back in her hand. Banshee dropped low, slashing at where she guessed the Manifested's knees would have been. It backed off, once more reforming itself a metre away. Though she tried a few more times, no matter how fast she swung, the Manifested would always reform just out of her reach.

It was Cryo who solved that problem. As the Manifested reached the end of the roof, Cryo froze thin walls of ice, effectively boxing it in with only one way out. With it trapped, Banshee finally got her first good look at it.

"Corrupted Manifested!" she called as she flicked both daggers to the same hand and snatched her fingers towards where the Manifested's fragment sat in the centre of its forehead. She plucked it free with ease, and free of the corrupted fragment, the shadows and smoke of the civilian's figure began to dissipate.

Only, when they cleared, there was no civilian underneath.

Banshee started at it for a few moments, waving her hand in front of her and tapping the corrupted fragment on the edge of Grief's blade to make sure it was real.

She turned to Cryo, holding out the fragment. "Um?"

Cryo accepted the fragment. He examined it for a moment before crushing it between his fingers. It dissolved into a fine black powder that sifted out of his fingers and drifted towards the floor.

"That was weird," said Banshee.

"Corrupted Manifested are usually more aggressive than that," murmured Cryo. "Perhaps it wasn't one?"

"Who knows?" said Banshee. "My tattoo isn't cold anymore, so we fixed the problem."

Cryo didn't seem convinced. "Perhaps."

"Anyway, I'm going back to sleep," said Banshee, waving a hand at him. "Lay it down for me, Featherbutt?"

"Would you mind if we searched around a little more first?" said Cryo. "I could have sworn that earlier, I saw at least four of those figures."

Banshee rubbed her face down with her hands. She didn't want to. She wanted to go back to sleep right here on this rooftop if she had to, but she relented. "We can have a look. Wouldn't surprise me if that Manifested could make clones of itself though."

They searched for another ten or so minutes until Banshee was convinced there was nothing else here. The Serpent aura was still thick in the air, but at this point, Banshee was starting to think the Serpent was deliberately trying to delay them. Though Cryo agreed with her, there was still a frown on his face as he laid it down and bade her farewell.

Banshee was off across the rooftops, taking a detoured route back to her balcony just to be on the safe side, and within a few minutes, she was snuggled up in her blankets and asleep.

*+*+*+*

Searing cold woke her for the second time that night.

Olivia shot upright still half asleep, thinking that she was under attack. She reached for her daggers, confused when she found nothing but Viri's violet eyes. Looking at her Ascended seemed to click a few things into place--like the fact that she'd already transformed once tonight at least.

Olivia grabbed her glasses and looked at her Liaiser. It was just over an hour since she'd made it home from the last Manifested, and there was another one already?

"This can't be right," groaned Olivia. Forcing herself out of bed made her head feel light, and when she heard the voices floating on the auras, dread crept into her. "Is there a Manifested active?"

"It seems so, Olivia."

"Better do this before I black out then," muttered Olivia, fighting the urge to stay upright, to remember the words as her head clouded over. "Ascend, Shadow of Skypillar!"

The shadows wrapped around her yet again that night, covering her skin in garments and tattoos that chased away her impending blackout. Banshee stood and stretched her arms out, far grumpier than she had been the first time around tonight, and set back out towards inner Aeledrae.

She felt Cryo transform a minute or so later after their confirming taps, but Banshee wasn't about to hang around and wait for him so they could arrive together. He'd catch up and she wanted this done so she could go home and damn well sleep.

This Manifested was also at the marketplace, which meant that Cryo had likely been right. She'd never heard of multiple Manifested active at the same time except for rare instances where the Other took one on either side of an argument and fused them.

Cryo landed beside her. "I dreaded to think I might have been right."

"I'm gonna punch this Serpent in the face when we find it," said Banshee with a growl.

The shadowy Manifested stepped out from behind a stall and stood in the centre of the marketplace, its head upturned towards them. A challenge.

Banshee narrowed her eyes. "Do you think it's the same Manifested, or a new one?"

"It's unlikely to be a new one, given it appears rather similar, though we shouldn't discount the use of hallucinations."

"Same as last time, kay, Cryo?"

"As you wish."

Banshee leapt down, hitting the street and taking off at a speed that only her shadow shift could bring. Grief and Joy were in her hands, Cryo's ice wall already up and boxing in the Manifested as she lunged towards it and sliced at its legs. Instead of trying to dissolve and reappear backwards as it had last time, this Manifested re-appeared above her, its corrupted fragment floating through the air as it repositioned.

Banshee sprang off the ground after it, reaching to snatch the fragment straight from the cloud of smoke. When her hand made contact, the smoke turned white and swarmed her. It choked up her airways and stung her eyes until she was forced to release the fragment and gasp for air.

The smoke returned to its usual grey-black colour and pulled away from her, leaving her in a coughing fit. Her eyes watered, but she felt the rush of frozen air as Cryo landed in front of her, his icy talons raised and ready.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Super," said Banshee, wiping her watering eyes. "I've been using that word a lot lately. Super."

"This Manifested is familiar for some reason," said Cryo.

"Yeah, because we fought it like an hour ago," said Banshee. "It turned white as soon as I touched its fragment. Don't think it liked that much."

"It affected you even in your shadow shift?"

"I wasn't very deep in it, but yes."

"Is it corrupted?"

"Yep."

Cryo flared his wings. "I have an idea."

He flapped once, launching himself onto the ceiling beam of a nearby stall. The smoke Manifested didn't move from its place, its head merely swivelling to watch Cryo as the Luminary raised a moon-glimmered hand and froze a person-sized box with an open top around the Manifested.

As a separate piece, Cryo froze a lid in the exact shape of the open top, just small enough to allow it to slide down the insides of the box and slowly squish whatever happened to still be in there.

Banshee jumped up to join her partner on the beam, one hand on her hip. "What if there's a person in there this time?"

"The ice would stop," said Cryo. "It's not that heavy."

But the ice kept going, all the way down to the bottom until, according to Cryo, only a few centimetres of space remained.

"Go stand on it and crush the fragment," said Cryo.

"As you wish, Featherbutt," said Banshee, jumping to land inside the box in one smooth movement.

Once standing on the lid piece of ice, she dropped her shadow shift and jumped, rewarded with the crystalline tinkle of a corrupted fragment shattering underneath. The chill on her tattoo disappeared.

She leapt out of the box and perched on the top. "Done!"

"I fear we might not be," said Cryo.

Banshee threw back her head. "Why?"

"We aren't finding the body it's attached to," said Cryo. "The Manifested is still active. I don't believe we're crushing its true fragments."

"But our tattoos are fine again?"

"Is the Serpent aura still around?"

Banshee wrinkled her nose. She was doing her best to tune it out. "Yep."

"It stands to reason that the Serpent is capable of manipulating the way we think our tattoos feel after it has seen us, but not before. That is why, when we went home, the effect eventually wore off but returned soon after, and why we believe it has disappeared again now. Doesn't it seem strange that we're yet to hear the bells tonight, even before we arrived the first time?"

"So you mean the Serpent's watching us right now?" asked Banshee, her eyes flicking to the open, dark windows around them.

"Possibly," said Cryo. "Or it's simple cast a hallucination over this area with certain conditions attached. It has proven capable enough of that before."

Banshee huffed, willing her patience to hold. "Okay. So. There's a Manifested still here, somewhere. Where would it be? How is it hiding? My brain has not had enough sleep for this. You're gonna have to be the smarts here."

Cryo smirked. "Oh? With insults like 'Featherbutt', I assumed I always was."

She pointed the tip of Joy at him. "I will go home and let you play hide-and-seek with the Manifested if you're not careful, Beakboy."

Cryo's smirk melted into a smile as his gaze roamed over the marketplace. His voice went quiet, barely anything more than a simple breeze against her ear. "I believe this is not the first time this person has Manifested, and that's why it seems familiar to me."

"I would have remembered if we'd fought a Manifested like this, Cryo," said Banshee. "It's basically copying my thing."

"We didn't fight it," said Cryo. "Centaur and Hydra did, two days before they went Dark."

*+*+*+*

A/N - A NEW MANIFESTED HAS APPEARED. (this is one of my favourites so far ^_^)

Welp, you guys smashed the vote goal. And here I was thinking it was pushing it O_o I diiiid say that if you guys hit it, I'd give you the chance for a second bonus chapter this week, so~

VOTE GOAL FOR BONUS CHAPTER #2 THIS WEEK: **230**  (before the regular Wednesday update <3)

[Kiba's sketch of Ella's sketch of Jason with long hair, with added Olivia & Ella commentary ;D]