Cryo gave his tattoo an eighth single tap as his anxiety crept up on him like ice on the wall.

It'd taken the Manifested longer than expected to realise that Banshee had slipped away, but now that it had, any reservations it'd had were gone. It spawned out of shadows. It lurked in the corners of his vision. As soon as he dealt with one, another would begin approaching him. Sometimes they'd come down the streets like they were hunters stalking their prey. Other times they would wait by an open window, watching, staring.

He wouldn't always notice them at first, but he could feel its constant gaze on him. When one got too close and he was forced to eliminate it, he knew another had spawned. Even when he couldn't see them, he knew they were there. He felt hunted. Trapped. Cornered.

Abandoned, a whisper hissed through his mind. Left behind.

Cryo spun around, finding one of the Manifested's shadows directly behind him, leaning close to his ear. Cryo flung out a hand and speared ice straight through the Manifested's chest. It didn't even make an attempt to dodge, letting itself dissolve back into the grey-white smoke with cruel, keening laugh.

Alone. You are alone.

Cryo tapped his tattoo yet again.

But not with me. With me, we would be together again. Together. Always together.

Again, he felt Banshee's answering taps echo through his body and let them strengthen his resolve.

"I am not alone," he told the smoke gathering around his feet. Every time he removed one shadow, he'd realised that their smoke did not fade. Rather, it dissipated, and now it was thick enough to gather like a storm across the ground. "My partner has not abandoned me."

"Damn right I haven't, Cryo," said Banshee as she landed beside him. There was an odd note to her voice before she released a quiet breath and seemed to push it aside, at least for now. "Situation?"

"One shadow is always formed," said Cryo. "When I remove one, another spawns. Their smoke is left behind."

"I can see that," said Banshee, kicking at the smoke beneath her feet. She turned to face Cryo with her arms crossed, though her eyes constantly moved under her visor, scanning the space behind him as she dropped her voice. "Ok. It's a corrupted Manifested. Last time, was an artist. These smoke things are clones, it can spawn multiple at once and it's just screwing with us. The actual Manifested is hiding as one of these objects around here, previously a crate. Limited three-block range to clones. They found it by lighting the place up, the Manifested doesn't reflect light properly. It left at sunrise and pretended to be a Shimmer then reappeared the next night."

Cryo considered it for a moment. "Would your shadows have the opposite effect upon it?"

"That's plan A," said Banshee, turning to one side while stretching her arm up over her head. The action looked careless enough, but Cryo knew that glint in her eye. She was already searching. "Though we're not having much success on that front yet. She also mentioned that it's likely trying to exhaust us for something big."

"I had assumed as much," said Cryo. "Spread out. We search. One for clone. Two for more than one clone. Three for the Manifested itself. Five for emergencies. The current clone is to our left, just down that street. Avoid dispelling it unless necessary."

"Noted," said Banshee. "I'll see if I can get a range on the clone, though I have a feeling my shadows won't be much good for finding the actual Manifested unless I happen upon its fragment. You might wanna start working on plan B."

Cryo nodded and Banshee darted off.

The Manifested's clone followed her.

Cryo took to the skies, partially so he could keep an eye on the clone, and partially so he could allow himself room to consider his options. Three block range. Clones. Unable to reflect light correctly. Exhaustion as the goal. He shared Banshee's doubts that the shadows would have the same revealing effect as light did, which meant they needed to find a large, powerful light source or a way to locate the fragment itself.

In the corner of his eye, the light of Starsong's moon winked at him off the ice crystals of his wings.

It gave him an idea.

Cryo swooped down to the marketplace, landed atop one of the few starstone lampposts and began to experiment with various shapes of ice. The lampposts were completely automatic, recharged by the auroras each night to light the darkness whenever necessary. They adjusted their times and brightness based on a sensor on top of the light, so in theory, if he blocked it, the lamp would become a whole lot brighter.

But if I were a Manifested who avoided light, I wouldn't be hiding anywhere a lamppost could out me.

Cryo found a shape he liked and placed it in front of the lamp. When it focused the light into a weak but definite beam, he knew he had a plan.

"Banshee!" Cryo called. "I've found something!"

He spotted his partner as she bounded over a rooftop, swung herself from the top of another lamppost and landed, still-hanging off the wall a metre or two away from where Cryo was perched.

"That clone is still following me, but it's definitely getting faster," she said, glancing back the way she'd come. "What'd you find?"

"When you shadow shift, you gather the shadows around you, yes?"

Banshee raised an eyebrow. "Uh, something like that, why?"

"Are there any places in three blocks that remain unlit?"

"One street over that way, and two streets over that way," she said, indicating as she spoke.

"Which one would you say has a better chance of hosting our Manifested?"

She pointed to the closer street.

Cryo nodded. "Follow me."

He took to the air, still clutching his shaped piece of ice, and used the aerial view to select the best lamppost. With a touch of his earlier anxiety he noted that the clone wouldn't take long to intercept them at Banshee's indicated street. He boxed it in with ice, but almost immediately, he felt the gaze of another spawn and glanced up to find it far closer than the one he'd just tried to trap.

With a curse, Cryo hurried his descent. Banshee followed, and after a quick explanation of his plan, she nodded.

She took her position atop the lamppost. He took his on the rooftop above the street she suspected the Manifested was on. The street itself was littered with boxes, crates, items and a whole variety of things left over from market set-up.

"Now!" called Cryo.

Banshee stuck her foot over the top of the sensor. Her shadows flooded it, flaring the starstone lamppost into brilliance far beyond what any regular darkness could achieve. The light was near-blinding, bathing Cryo in daylight even this far away upon the rooftop but despite that, the street below Cryo remained in relative darkness.

He held up his ice.

It caught the light and focused it into a wide beam that he aimed straight at the street below. It worked, but too well. He couldn't see past the beam in his hands.

"Banshee, less shadows!"

The light faded to half, brightening a little more one second after as she adjusted it.

"Quick, Cryo!" came Banshee's voice from around the corner. "Clone is climbing up the post!"

Cryo focused the beam down, scanning it over the various objects below, trying to discern if any were failing to reflect the light. There was an unused support beam that seemed darker than the rest, a crate, a table, but which one was--there! A worn, battered briefcase covered in various splotches of old paint completely failed to change as Cryo passed the light over it. An artist, Banshee had said.

Wings flared, he glided down to the street, varying the angles of his beam to be sure. "Found it!"

"Moving off the lig-Oh, come on, shadow thing. You can't copy my moves!"

Cryo dropped his refracting ice and reached out for the briefcase. Just as his claws were about to make contact, acrid white smoke swirled in from the sides of the street and slammed into him. Cryo choked on it, reflexively pulling his hand back to his throat until logic kicked in.

He held his breath and grabbed the briefcase in his claws before launching himself into the air. The blast of air from his wings banished the smoke around him off to either side, but it didn't stay that way for long. Almost immediately, it began forming several white-grey clones that seemed far angrier than they had been before.

Two taps from Banshee and Cryo swooped down to where she now stood on a rooftop. He extended a hand, freezing walls of ice around two of the three sides she was being assaulted from. There were far too many clones to box in as he had been earlier, but Banshee was holding her own, throwing in the occasional commentary as her fatigue wore her patience into a critical state.

She cleaved a clone in half with Grief and kicked her booted foot through the torso of another. "Oooh, look at me. I'm smoke and shadow and screw you guys that was my thing first!"

Banshee kept them at bay as Cryo took his place on the rooftop behind her and searched through the briefcase. It was filled with sketchpads, old paint containers and brushes that had been used so much they were barely more than a few bristles on a stub of wood, but right down the bottom, tucked into a secret pouch, was the corrupted fragment.

The clones writhed and hissed when Cryo touched it.

They disappeared when he crushed it.

Cryo stepped away as the grey-white smoke was sucked back towards the briefcase with a screech. Banshee lowered her daggers and threw back her shoulders with a sigh, and they stood on either side as they watched the briefcase sprout arms, legs, a head, and finally turn back into a person.

"Welcome back," said Banshee, sheathing both Grief and Joy. "Are you okay?"

The man didn't reply straight away. He wiped his colour-smudged hands over his worn down smock a dozen or so times, muttering under his breath. Wispy strands of sparse grey hair floated around his head, reminding Cryo of the smoke clones.

"Hey," said Banshee, crouching in front of the man. "Are you okay, or do you need help?"

"No," muttered the man. "No, no no. No help. None." He shook his head, still wiping his hands down, over and over and over. "Tried. I knew he'd find me. They didn't listen. They said I was being crazy. They refused."

"Who refused?" said Banshee. "If you need help, we can help you now."

"No!" said the man, pointing a finger towards the temple. "I knew he'd come after me again! Those eyes. The diamonds. The nose. I tried to capture its shape but it's lost. I see it everywhere. Everywhere. I--I'm, I knew. I knew he was watching me. He's watching me. Wants me."

Banshee gave Cryo a look that he summarised as 'I don't have the patience to deal with crazy right now, please help me'.

Cryo stepped forward. Instead of crouching before the man as Banshee did, he remained steady and strong.

"I am Cryophoenix, Frost of Skypillar," he said, letting the full reverberation of Sae's power echo through his voice. "You have been cleansed from the Other's influence. Do you require further assistance, and is there somewhere safe we may take you?"

"Nowhere is safe!" said the man. "Nowhere! Not when he gets you, when he locks you down with one of these!"

The man held out his hand. The green wire bracelet wrapped from his wrist to forearm had a strange aura about it, almost as if it was alive and watching them.

The man pulled his arm back, holding his forearm centimetres from his eyes as if he was looking for something.

"It's gone," he said. "Gone again. Gone, gone gone. But it'll be back. He'll find me again. I know it. He was there. He's still here. He's watching me!"

"Are you referring to the Serpent?" asked Cryo.

"Yes," said the man. "The one of diamonds and twists. Tight, tight twists." He shook his head. "Have to draw it. Have to draw it. My bag? Where is my bag? Ah!" He moved forward, picking up the same briefcase he'd transformed himself into as a Manifested. "Good, good. Still good."

"May we escort you home?" asked Cryo.

"No," said the man. There was an eerie clarity in his eyes, no hint of the lunacy that inspired his words. "I don't have a home. It found me too easily the first time that way. I move around, but it still got me again. It's been following me. You didn't protect me. I asked your Speakers for help and they said I was imagining things."

Banshee tilted her head. "This is the second time you've Manifested, are you implying that the Serpent hunted you down specifically?"

"Yes, yes I am," said the man. "He likes me, said I was good because I was slow. Because I couldn't be solved by brute force. That I took time. He said... said that I'd never escape him."

"Okay, here's what we'll do," said Banshee, rubbing one side of her head. "We'll take you to the temple, we'll make sure those damn Speakers listen, and on the golden starstone, you should be safe from the Serpent and its minions. If not, we're all screwed, aren't we?"

The man opened his mouth as if to reply when his eyes bulged. He grabbed his throat, raking his nails down the soft skin in angry red lines. Before either Cryo or Banshee could move, the man convulsed, then straightened once more.

The voice he spoke in next was not his own.

"Ah, Shadow of Skypillar, you are always an optimistic one until Grief destroys you," hissed the voice with the mouth of the man.

Cryo stiffened. The voice was the same that had come from the Shimmers that night, the distractions that had entranced him while Banshee fought Ella and a Manifested Melissa. He knew it strangely well. He could predict the inflections on the speech, knew the minor, lilting accent and the overlaying echo.

Banshee, however, didn't seem to share his hesitations.

"Mate," she said, pointing a finger at him. "Serpent, whatever you are. We just saved him. Get your scaley behind out of him or I swear to every freakin' star up there in the sky that I will hit Vengeance right now to avenge my lack of sleep."

The man chuckled--a breathy, haunting sound of an ancient, venomous hatred. His eyes were no longer grey but slits of green and black that locked onto the wire bracelet still around the man's arm. "One day, I'll lock one of these onto your arm, and we'll see if you do any better than this failing artist here."

Banshee rolled her eyes. "Yeah, great, super. Now get out of him."

"Naughty Shadow," said the Serpent's voice "Do you know how long it took me to recover this one? He was trying so hard to stay away from me after I discovered his abilities. Going to Hydra was cheating, by the way."

"Her name is Ella," said Banshee. "And I'm completely done with this for the night."

In a flash of movement faster than Cryo could follow, Banshee's fingers locked around the man's wrist just below the wire bracelet. Joy was already in her other hand, and with a quick flicking motion, the tip of the dagger sliced straight through the wire, leaving it to fall to the rooftop where the Shadow of Skypillar promptly flattened it beneath her boot.

The Serpent's influence left the man in a flash of green light, leaving him gagging and gasping for air. Banshee steadied him as he almost staggered his way off the roof, and after a few calming words to him, they were able to get him down to the ground via 'Cryo's Taxi Service', as Banshee dubbed it.

"Thank you, thank you," muttered the man. "But he'll be looking for me again. I need to go. I need to leave."

"Look, I just told you that the temple--" Banshee drew in a long breath. "Okay, Cryo, I need to tap out. I'm getting a massive headache and everything is going a little blurry. Are you okay to take him to the temple grounds and make sure someone knows what's going on?"

"I am," said Cryo.

Banshee's shoulders sagged. "Thank you. You're the best partner I've ever had."

Cryo gave her a wry smile for that. "I don't think the Serpent has ever been dismissed quite like that before. It probably won't like you anymore."

"Oh no," said Banshee. "I won't get to join its fanclub. Damn. Woe is me. My life is over." She held out her hand. "Lay it down?"

"And down it's laid," said Cryo, slapping his partners hand. "Go get some sleep."

Banshee glanced at the horizon, where, Cryo noted, the sun was beginning to peek over the land.

"Sleep? You mean we're still allowed that as Luminaries?" she said with a groan. "I'll see you later, Cryo. A+ with the ice lazer, by the way. Turns out Princess Cryo's gemstones do have some uses."

"Wait--"

"Seeya, Featherbutt!"

With that, she turned and bounded across the rooftops, her figure quickly lost under the veil of night.

The artist turned his gaze on Cryo, staring up at him for a long minute before he finally spoke.

"Did she just call you--"

"Yes," said Cryo with a heaving sigh. "Yes, she did. I'll escort you to the temple and see about organising with the Speakers."

The artist complied, but Cryo could have sworn he heard the man mutter under his breath.

"Featherbutt... I should paint that."

*+*+*+*

A/N - THEY TOOK DOWN THE MANIFESTED. BANSHEE TOLD THE SERPENT OFF. AWH YIS. 

(I've been a little flat the last week, I think I'm doing an Olivia and not sleeping as well as I should be. Sorry about not being in comments much, but I've read every one of them at least three times <3 Was kinda surprised at how much love there is for Ella =o)