After a quiet, quick discussion, Banshee and Cryo had a plan.

Or at least, they had a plan of how they were going to get a plan.

At his signal, Banshee threw her hands up in the air and did her best to look exasperated, which really wasn't hard. She was so very done with Manifested and Serpents right now. "Look, Cryo, we don't need to plan out every freakin' detail! Obviously it's somewhere in one of these buildings, let's just go!"

Cryo reached out towards her as she stalked towards the edge of the beam. "Banshee, wait--"

Banshee hesitated just long enough to turn back towards him and touch two fingers to her forehead. "Not waiting anymore, Cryo. I wanna sleep. Can't do that til we find it."

With that, she turned her back to him and leapt off the marketplace beam they were perched on. Her shadow shift ensured she made it all the way to a nearby open window on one of the surrounding buildings. Clinging to the ledge with about three and a half fingertips, she lifted herself up and inside the building.

Her boots hit the carpet inside with a puff of air. They'd picked this window specifically because out of all the ones left open, this one seemed the least likely for someone to be watching them from. Even so, after stepping out of the window's line of sight, Banshee waited for a moment, feeling through the shadows for any sign of life.

When she figured herself alone, Banshee ran down the corridor, heading towards a particular wall to her right.

Reason number two why they'd picked this building, it was the closest one to the temple.

As she was about to hit the wall, Banshee jumped and fell deep into her shadow shift. For a flash, the world around her was starstone. Cool night air took its place, and with it surrounding her, she solidified herself a little and caught the top of a starstone-lit lamp post, swinging herself up and over. She remained there only long enough to point herself towards the temple before she was off.

Banshee kept off the rooftops and off the streets, finding hand and footholds in the middle ground between them. Window ledges, wall decorations, she used everything she could to stay close to the shadows and out of sight. Unlike Kaladrel, Aeledrae didn't have a nightlife. It only made the few people she did pass, Liaisers in their hands, hoods pulled up over their heads as they wandered they streets seem that more suspicious.

Stealthing took her a little longer than it usually would, but Banshee jumped the canal into central Aeledrae and soon after, crossed the second one onto the golden starstone of the temple.

She landed half way up the outer wall of the temple's outmost ring of buildings, scaling it in a few seconds with ease. On top of the roof, she stayed low, clinging to what shadows remained with the light of the Core blazing out from the inner ring. There wasn't a whole lot of people out and about, just the usual temple guards and a few random Speakers doing whatever it was that they did.

Banshee made her way around the outer ring of temple buildings using various handholds just below the rooftops but still above the windows of the topmost floors. With the sheer number of carvings in the golden walls, it was significantly easier, and it wasn't long before she pushed herself off the wall and landed in front of the individuals guarding the entrance to Ella's holding cell.

"Good morning, guys!" she said, touching two fingers to her forehead. "I'm a little bit of a hurry but I needed to see Ella like five minutes ago."

"Of course, Banshee," said one of the guards. A Frostpillar, if the colours and ice motif was anything to go by. "Follow me."

The guard was far swifter of foot than any of those who escorted Olivia had ever been. It made sense, but it still irked her--probably more because she was tired than any actual reason. He collected the keys without the usual fuss the guards made about paperwork or security briefings.

They reached Ella's room. The guard stuck the keys into the lock, swiped the pass over the reader and placed his palm to the scanner. With a half-turn forward and a quarter turn back, the door opened.

Banshee stepped inside. The room was still exactly the same as when she'd visited, the sketches of Jason still on the bed, their edges jagged where they'd been ripped out. The covers of the bed were lumpy like there was someone underneath, and almost reluctant to wake Ella up, Banshee stepped forward, reaching out with a hand.

"I'm not under there."

Banshee whirled around behind her, where the unexpected sound of Ella's voice had come from. Ella sat against the wall beside one of her bookcases, blended in so well that Banshee never would have had a chance to see her without her shadow sight.

"Why aren't you asleep?" asked Banshee, walking over to crouch beside Ella.

"I can't sleep when it's dark," muttered Ella. "That's when he came. When I had to be guarded, or..." She cut off, her voice shaking. "Why are you here on one of his hours?"

"These hours aren't his," said Banshee, soft yet firm. "These shadows are mine."

"All hours are his when you're this close," said Ella. "I keep hearing him. He keeps whispering to me. He knows me better than I do."

"The Serpent?" guessed Banshee, glancing at the sketches scattered around Ella's feet, crumbled pieces of paper that covered the ground like snow. A snake emblem--the Serpent's sigil--on every single one of them. A pair of slitted eyes, diamond scales... "He's trying to get to you. He'll say anything to torment you."

"He doesn't lie," said Ella in a ragged whisper. "He doesn't lie, that's the problem. Do you know how hard it is to not listen to someone when you know that they're telling you the truth? When you know that they have a point, that no matter how hard you ignore them, it won't make it any less true?"

"What is he saying, Ella?"

"He's saying that... that what I think is true, that... that it's--" She cut herself off with a shake of her head and pressed her fists to her temples. "It doesn't matter. None of it matters. I made you a promise. I won't go back on that. I won't."

"I believe in you, Ella," said Banshee, placing a hand close to Ella. "You're stronger than he is. You're better."

Pain flashed through Ella's eyes as she met Banshee's gaze. "Don't say that. Not... not after what I've done." She took a deep breath. "What did you come here for?"

"Cryo and I are facing a Manifested," said Banshee after a moment. "Cryo seems to think it's the same one... well, the same one that you and Andrew faced, a few days before you went Dark."

She expected some kind of reaction from Ella after hearing Andrew's name, but Ella just dropped her gaze to the floor and combed her fingers through a pigtail. "Ah. Is it the shadow mimic?"

"Shadow mimic?"

"We named the Manifested we fought," said Ella, removing her fingers out of her hair to place her hands in her lap. Everything about the Ella from two minutes ago vanished under her sudden confidence. Her shoulders were back, her voice steady and strong. She looked alive. "I remember that one particularly well though, just because it took us so long to figure it out. It makes clones of itself that look like smoke, they attack you, and it turns like... white and acidic and tries to choke you when you get near its fragments, right?"

"It did the white-smoke thing to me but it hasn't exactly attacked us yet," said Banshee. "How do we beat it?"

"You have to find the actual person," said Ella, flipping to a new page in her sketchbook. "It's a corrupted Manifested--or it was for us, anyway. Its clones are just that--clones. The actual person was hiding as a crate with the fragment imbedded in the wood when we faced him. We only found him because Centaur used his Starlight Volley and I noticed the lighting didn't change on this nearby box."

"You mean he was hiding in the box, right?"

"No, I mean he was the box," said Ella, flipping her sketchbook around to show Banshee before she went back to drawing. "He might have to be roughly the same size as the object he turns into, he doesn't have to have line of sight of his clones but he does have a maximum radius of about... three blocks?"

"That's some amazing detail."

"Well, yeah," said Ella. "Like I said, it took us a while to figure it out. We thought we got it the first night after a few hours of running back and forth. Just before the sun came up, we crushed a fragment and it leaked out that green acidic stuff, so we thought it'd been a weird kind of Shimmer. We didn't get any sleep that night, and the next night, it was back again. We had a lot of time to figure it out. We came to the conclusion that the Serpent would have brought it back for night three if Centaur hadn't lost his patience and used his volley hoping to hit something important. We got lucky."

"It's trying to do something similar to us," said Banshee. "It's having an effect. I didn't get any sleep when we rescued Harpy, then another Manifested the next night, and now tonight." She felt a tap on her tattoo, the signal that Cryo had been forced to engage the Manifested. "Is there anything else you can tell me before I leave?"

"This Manifested is dangerous," said Ella. She sketched out the box she'd spoken of in several angles as she talked, going to great pains to highlight the lighting of it. "You have to be careful. It started off slow for us, just one clone at a time, then out of nowhere it multiplied, tried to make us panic. It didn't have a limit on how many clones it could have out, and from memory, the Manifested guy was an artist."

Banshee gave Ella a small smile. "Cryo guessed it was dangerous. It's why he asked me to come to you." Another tap--Manifested down. Banshee's stomach clenched a little tighter. "I need to get going before Cryo has the chance to get overwhelmed. I'll come back later though, I promise. Maybe not tonight, but soon."

"Wait!" said Ella as Banshee went to stand up. "Wait. Take me with you."

Banshee's heart clenched. "It's too dangerous, especially with the Serpent aura so thick around the place."

Ella blinked. "Because... you don't trust me, or because--"

"Because of the Manifested and the Serpent!" said Banshee quickly, holding out her hands. "I can't ensure your safety, which is why you have to stay here."

Ella pursed her lips, once more leaning back against the wall. "Oh. Of course. My mistake, sorry."

"Ella, I'm--"

"No, it's fine," said Ella in a flat voice. "It was dumb of me to ask. You're holding up your end of our bargain by dealing with it. Go save your partner."

Another tap from Cryo--did that mean he'd engaged another clone? "I'll come back, Ella. I promise."

Behind her, Banshee could have sworn she heard a small voice speak words that chased her down.

"I just wish I could have saved mine."

*+*+*+*

A/N - Ella T^T 

Short chapter today though~ Haven't replied to comments on last chapter yet because I've been pretty busy, but gonna post this now <3 <3