If there was anything that could be said for Sev's team, it was that they didn't hesitate to act when it counted.

All they needed to hear was the Shadesplitter trying to speak.

Sev directed the light towards the Shadowskitter. Misa appeared in front of the Shadesplitter, putting her back at its mercy in order to defend it from the Shadowskitter. The air shifted around Derivan as he called Shift into play, creating a layer of separation between the Shadesplitter and the rest of physical reality, in part to protect Misa and in part to protect it.

Then everything happened all at once, very, very quickly.

The Shadowskitter screamed, a powerful, resonant sound that cracked through the air and rippled into Misa, whose mace became something like a giant bowl as she blocked it. The Shadesplitter pulsed strangely, body warping as the remnants of the soundwave came into contact with it.

The light crashed into the Shadowskitter and shone so bright Sev could see it through his eyelids.

[ Your party has killed a level 86 Shadowskitter! ]

All that remained was an echoing, remnant scream. Sev took a breath, staring at the scorched section of the floor that marked where the Shadowskitter had once been. There was nothing there but blackened stone, now.

The Shadesplitter was still there. It wasn't trying to fight them anymore; instead, it was making agitated, sharpening motions with its arms, sliding them against one another and creating small sparks of magic.

Spatial magic. But no Void, Sev realized. It almost looked like it was anxious; the motion was jerky and repetitive, and after a few repetitions, it looked like it was starting to calm down.

"Do you want to explain what's happening?" Misa's voice wasn't harsh, but it wasn't exactly gentle, either. The Shadesplitter shrank back from her words and began to slide its arms against one another again, agitated just by the question.

Derivan stepped forward, crouching in front of it. "You are scared," he said. "You are confused. You are new to this?"

It nodded. It seemed to relax a bit. Derivan was large enough that he blocked the Shadesplitter from being able to see Sev or any of the other two, and that apparently helped a bit.

"Did you do all this?" Derivan asked. He nodded back towards the empty town. The missing townspeople, he meant.

Slowly, shyly, the Shadesplitter nodded again. "S... Save. Save them. Save them."

Sev's brows furrowed. It had tried to save the townspeople? But its skills were rooted in splitting things apart with spatial magic...

...Oh.

"Did you cut them apart so they wouldn't be hurt by anyone else?" Sev asked, too shocked to regulate the tone of his voice. The Shadesplitter shrank back again, and Derivan gave him a reproachful look.

"You tried to protect them?" Derivan rephrased. It took a moment for the Shadesplitter to calm down enough to respond.

"Save them," it repeated, with a little more confidence this time. "System... System says. Strike. I... strike. But I do not kill."

Sev ran through what it was saying in his head.

The Shadesplitter had experienced the same System compulsion that Derivan had. Unlike Derivan, it had no way to fight against it, and no friends to help, so it had done the only thing it knew how to — it cut. It used the only skill available to it to make sure that the people it cut stayed alive, connected to all their disparate parts, and then it made sure the pieces were too small for anyone else to harm them.

"Why?" Derivan asked. The Shadesplitter seemed to frown at the question.

"...Savior," it finally said. "Salvation. Friends."

Sev had no idea what it meant by that one. He glanced at Derivan, whose eyes glowed softly as he knelt in front of it. "You were a town hero?" he asked, and it nodded.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Stranded," it hissed. This time, Sev thought he heard a note of bitterness in its voice. "Forsaken. Forgotten."

"That was the Void, not them," Sev said. This time he thought he understood, and this time he managed to keep his words calm. The Shadesplitter didn't flinch away from him this time. "It erased you from their memory."

It had been trying to save a village it thought had forgotten about it; to know that they hadn't done so deliberately was probably a huge relief. The Shadesplitter didn't respond, but Sev thought he could see the emotion in its face; its arms trembled slightly, and it dipped its head.

"Sorrow," it said.

"You cannot bring them back," Derivan surmised. "This was the extent of what you could do."

The Shadesplitter nodded mournfully.

"We have a solution for that problem." Derivan glanced back towards the home they'd appropriated for Vex's ritual, and Sev followed his gaze. The dungeon had apparently exhausted whatever resources it spent on generating the three enemies they had to fight; Vex, thankfully, hadn't had to deal with high-level monsters mid-ritual. As far as Sev could tell, anyway. "And then perhaps a solution for yours, too."

"Solution?" the Shadesplitter asked hopefully.

Misa grunted. Sev glanced at her, then quickly sent a heal her way, realizing what she was doing; as soon as she understood the situation she'd started blocking the bond the system used to control the Shadesplitter. She hadn't said a word about it, either. Her face was strained in concentration.

They needed to get the townspeople and the Shadesplitter out of this first. It was a miracle that they were all still alive — a miracle that wouldn't last once the dungeon recharged and sent even more monsters after them.

"Solution," Sev echoed. "Come on, let's get going. We gotta make what you did count."

It took about a minute for Sev to explain everything that had happened to Vex, and their new understanding of the situation in the dungeon.

"Oh, good," Vex said, sounding relieved. "The last piece of magic this needs is some of the original spatial magic that took them apart. I wasn't sure how I was going to get my hands on that. Um... You should probably hide, though. When I bring them back."

Sev winced. He hadn't thought about that. The Shadesplitter drooped a little, and Sev sighed.

"Whatever your intentions were, all they know is they were attacked and torn apart. They don't know that you were trying to save them, and some of them might resent you for it anyway." The experience was probably close to torture for more than a few of them, but Sev didn't want to say it quite like that.

The Shadesplitter seemed to understand, though. It withdrew into itself a bit, curling up and sinking slightly into the shadow. Then it shook it off and stepped forward anyway, looking to Vex for instructions.

Vex nodded towards the center of his circle. "Cut here," he said softly.

The Shadesplitter cut, and magic blasted outwards.

Sev would find it difficult to describe what happened in the aftermath of the spell. There was a coalescence, for lack of a better word — a moment where the air vibrated and sang with power, and particulate matter in the air began to draw together and Shift back into reality. Visually, it looked a lot like people 'blurring' back into reality, except it happened all at once, together with bright bursts of light that made it difficult to see.

The Shadesplitter had hidden within a shadow as soon as the spell began in earnest. Sev knew it was only a matter of time before the dungeon commanded it to attack again — Misa couldn't protect it from the call of the system forever.

"We need to evacuate everyone as quickly as possible," he said. "Misa. Can you use your duplicates? I'll keep you topped up on health."

Misa gritted her teeth and nodded. "Just gotta be quick about it. Not sure how long I can keep this up, but it ain't gonna be long."

"Vex, Derivan, if you have anything that can speed this up and keep them safe, now's the time to use it," Sev said. He had a few divine spells up his sleeve he could use — the major one was one that would freeze Misa's health in place for a while, which would hopefully reduce how taxing all this was on her.

The other spells would create shields around each of the townsfolk and slow down time in the dungeon so they could be grabbed and evacuated as quickly as possible. There would be time for fear and panic later, after they were out of range of the dungeon.

Vex had his own magic he was casting. Sev saw streams of mana pouring out of their wizard, wrapping around each civilian as they appeared in a bubble of protective magic. Derivan pulled out a Remembrance, something that looked like a rope that pulsed with spatial magic. Anyone he touched with it disappeared; in his divine sense, Sev could feel them reappear back outside the dungeon. Misa's duplicates grabbed them and physically carried them out.

Around them, the dungeon roared to life, and new monsters started to spawn.

Their attacks bounced off the shields that both Sev and Vex had wrought, and Derivan and Misa reached many of the targets before the monsters could even get there. But Halis was a large town — it was a wonder that the Shadesplitter had managed to get to so many of them to begin with.

Darkness wrenched around one person, and Vex's shield sputtered out. The golden light from Sev's own skill faded a moment after, and it was only Derivan desperately lunging towards them and tagging them with the rope that saved them from getting torn apart.

They weren't moving fast enough.

And just as Sev had that thought, the Shadesplitter reappeared. It roared. It attacked, and Sev's heart froze for a moment —

But it was attacking the other monsters.