The grizzly roared and charged.

  The black wolf didn't back up. He lowered his head and ran straight at it.

  They hit in the middle of the clearing with a sound like two bulls colliding, bone and muscle meeting at full speed. The bear swung a paw and the wolf ducked under it, then drove his teeth into the bear's foreleg and ripped sideways.

  Blood sprayed across the grass.

  The bear bellowed and brought its other paw down hard. The wolf was already gone, circling left, staying low. He darted in and bit the bear's flank, tore a chunk free, and pulled back before the claws could find him.

  "Holy shit," Clay breathed. "Look at him move."

  Colt couldn't look away. The wolf was half the bear's size but he fought like he'd done this a hundred times. Every time the bear swung, he wasn't there. Every time the bear lunged, he slipped to the side and came back with teeth.

  The bear reared up on its hind legs, towering over the wolf, those violet eyes blazing. It roared so loud Colt felt it in his chest.

  The wolf didn't flinch. He waited.

  The bear came down with both paws, claws spread wide, aiming to crush.

  The wolf shot forward, right between the bear's legs, and clamped his jaws around the back of its neck. His whole body twisted as he dragged the bear sideways. The bear stumbled, off balance, and the wolf used the momentum to yank it down.

  They hit the ground together. The bear thrashed, trying to roll, trying to get its claws into the wolf's belly. The wolf held on. His jaws tightened. Colt could see the muscles in his shoulders bunching as he pulled.

  The bear's movements slowed.

  "He's got him," Colt said.

  The wolf wrenched his head to the side. Something cracked. The bear went still.

  Clay let out a low whistle. "Damn."

  The wolf held on for another few seconds, then released. He stepped back from the body, sides heaving, blood matting the black fur along his neck and shoulder. Three long gashes ran down his ribs where the claws had found him.

  His body shifted. The fur pulled back. The bones cracked and reformed.

  The man knelt in the grass where the wolf had been. Same dark hair. Same weathered face. Same paint in clean lines across his skin. Blood ran from wounds on his chest and side, the same wounds the wolf had taken.

  Colt watched them heal.

  The skin pulled together at the edges, slow but steady. The bleeding stopped. The gashes shrank, closed, faded to pink lines, then faded to nothing.

  "You seein' that?" Clay whispered.

  "Yeah."

  The man stood. He walked to the dead bear and looked down at it for a moment. Then he raised both hands, palms out, and held them over the body.

  White light bloomed from his palms.

  Colt squinted against the brightness. The light pulsed once, twice, and then violet energy started rising from the bear. It came up in thin streams, twisting together as they climbed, flowing into the man's hands like smoke being pulled backward.

  The bear's body changed as the energy left it. The ridges along its spine flattened. The bones shrank back to normal size. The violet faded from its eyes, leaving them dark and empty.

  Just a bear now. A regular bear, dead in the grass.

  The light faded. The man lowered his hands.

  He was holding a crystal. Big one, size of his fist, glowing violet.

  Clay elbowed Colt. "Damn," he said from the corner of his mouth. "That shinki's gotta be worth what? Twenty? Thirty?"

  Colt was still staring. "Yeah." He forced out.

  The man closed his eyes. The crystal flared bright in his hands, so bright Colt had to look away. When he looked back, the crystal was gone. Violet light ran up the man's arms, across his shoulders, and sank into his chest.

  He absorbed it, Colt thought. Same as I did.

  The man opened his eyes. He turned and looked at Colt.

  Colt's throat went dry. He stepped forward and cleared it.

  "Uh. Hey there." His voice cracked when he spoke.

  He glanced at the girl with the white hair, then back at the elder.

  "My name is Colt." He motioned to his brother. "This here's Clay. We met yesterday, but I, uh—"

  "I am Toyahdoh." The man's voice was low and even. He spoke each word like it mattered. "Chief of the Wolf Band. We are children of Esa."

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  His eyes stayed on Colt. Dark eyes, the kind that didn't blink much.

  "You are a Lost Child of Esa."

  Colt repeated it under his breath. "Lost child of Esa."

  He didn't know what that meant. He looked at Clay. Clay shrugged.

  "Clay and me, we—well, you see, there's this fella named Kevin. He, uh, told us about Puha, and—"

  Toyahdoh turned his head quick. He was looking toward the hill, toward where the bruise hung in the sky above the ninja camp.

  "We are not safe here." He looked back at Colt. "We must return to our village. You will come."

  It wasn't a question.

  Toyahdoh turned and started walking. The warriors parted to let him through, then fell in behind him.

  Colt stood there for a second. The girl with the white hair glanced at him, just a flicker of those blue eyes, then followed her people.

  Clay grabbed Colt's arm. "You heard the man. Move."

  Colt's boots found the grass. They crossed the clearing and passed the tree line on the far side, coming out onto open ground. The plains stretched ahead of them, brown and gold in the sun, rolling toward the mountains in the distance. The Shoshone moved in a loose column, Toyahdoh at the front, the warriors spread out on either side.

  Colt and Clay walked near the back. The girl with the white hair was somewhere ahead, that snow-colored hair easy to spot among the dark heads around her.

  The bruise in the sky hung off to their left. Colt tried not to look at it, but his eyes kept drifting back. The violet at the center seemed darker now than it had before, and the lightning inside it flickered more often. Whatever the ninjas were building under that thing, they were working fast.

  They walked for a while.

  The plains stretched out ahead of them, brown grass bending in the wind, the mountains growing larger with each mile. Nobody spoke. Not the warriors. Not Toyahdoh. Not even Colt or Clay.

  The sun moved across the sky. Colt's legs ached but he kept pace. His throat was dry and his boots had rubbed a blister on his left heel, but he didn't say anything about it. The Shoshone walked like they could go all day without stopping, and he wasn't about to be the one who slowed them down.

  Toyahdoh stopped in the middle of the field.

  The warriors stopped behind him. Colt and Clay pulled up short.

  Toyahdoh turned and looked at Colt. Those dark eyes held on him for a breath. Then he turned back around, walked forward, and vanished.

  Just gone. One second he was there, the next he wasn't.

  The warriors followed. One by one they walked into the empty air and disappeared. No flash. No shimmer. Just there and then not.

  The girl with the white hair was last. She paused at the spot where the others had vanished and looked back at Colt. Those blue eyes held on him for a second. Then she stepped forward and was gone.

  Colt stared at the empty field. The grass kept bending in the wind like nothing had happened. He could still see where Toyahdoh's boots had pressed it down.

  He looked at Clay. "What do you think?"

  Clay scratched the back of his neck. "Let's just hope this don't mess with our mole-cues." Clay grinned. But it left his face quick as it came.

  Colt chuckled. They walked forward.

  One step. Two.

  The air changed.

  It was quiet on one side, wind and grass and nothing else, the plains stretching out brown and empty. Then he crossed through and the world opened up.

  The sound hit them both. Children laughing. Voices calling out. Dogs barking. The thump of tools on wood. Life everywhere, all at once, flooding in so fast it made his ears ring.

  Colt blinked.

  A village spread out in front of them. Lodges made of hide and timber, arranged in loose circles around cook fires. Smoke rose from a dozen different places, the smell of burning wood mixing with something else, meat, maybe, or some kind of stew. Women worked near the fires, stirring pots and scraping hides stretched on frames. Men carried wood and hauled water in clay jugs balanced on their shoulders. Children chased each other between the lodges, bare feet kicking up dust, their laughter ringing through the village.

  Beyond the lodges, crops grew in long rows. Corn and squash and beans, green against the brown earth. Past that, livestock grazed in a fenced area. Horses mostly, a few cattle, few pigs.

  In the center of it all stood a larger building. Bigger than the lodges, built from logs, with symbols painted on the front that Colt didn't recognize. The paint was red and black and white, and the shapes looked like animals—wolves, maybe, or something close to wolves.

  The girl with white hair walked toward it and disappeared inside.

  Colt and Clay stood there taking it in.

  The villagers stopped what they were doing. Heads turned. Eyes found Colt and Clay and stayed on them.

  They didn't look angry. They didn't look scared. They just looked. Watching. Waiting to see what these two strangers would do.

  A child broke from the group. A boy, maybe seven or eight, running toward them with something in his hands. He stopped in front of Colt and held up two pieces of fruit, some kind of wild plum, small and dark with juice already running down the boy's fingers.

  Colt took one. "Thanks, buddy."

  The boy grinned and shoved the other one at Clay, then turned and ran back to the other children before either of them could say anything else.

  The village went back to what it had been doing. The watching stopped. The noise picked back up. Colt and Clay were just part of the place now.

  Colt turned around.

  He could still see where they'd come from. The plains stretching back toward the forest, the trees a dark line in the distance. And above it, hanging in the sky like a bruise that wouldn't heal, that violet patch.

  He didn't know what to think about any of it. The camp full of ninjas. The man in gold. The army building something under that patch in the sky.

  But the girl had led them here for a reason.

  "Alright, Clay." Colt nodded toward the big building. "Let's go."

  They walked to it. The entrance was a hide flap pulled aside and tied. Colt ducked his head and stepped through.

  Inside was dim. A fire burned low in a pit at the center, smoke rising through a hole in the roof. The air was thick with the smell of sage and something else, something he didn't know. People sat in a circle around the fire, maybe fifteen of them, cross-legged on woven mats. Their eyes were closed. Their hands rested on their knees, palms up.

  Toyahdoh sat in the middle of the circle. His back was straight, his eyes shut, his breathing slow.

  The girl stood in the far corner, watching. Her white hair caught the firelight.

  Clay leaned close to Colt. "What are they—"

  Colt put a finger to his lips.

  They watched.

  Toyahdoh's body began to glow. Faint at first, barely there, a violet light that clung to his skin like mist. It pulsed with his breathing. In and out. In and out.

  The violet shifted. It lightened, bleeding toward white, the color draining out of it until it was pure and bright. The glow spread from Toyahdoh's body into the air around him, rising and swirling.

  Then it moved.

  The white light shot outward in a wave, spreading through the room like ripples in water. It passed through the people in the circle, through Colt and Clay, through the walls of the building itself.

  Colt felt it hit him. A warmth in his chest, quick and gone, like swallowing something hot.

  Colt noticed in his UI. He absorbed some of the white light.

  PROJECT LAST STAND v1.01

  5 shinki in power bank

  “You feel that.” Colt whispered to Clay.

  “Feel what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The people around Toyahdoh opened their eyes. They glowed white for just a second, bright as stars, then faded back to normal.

  One by one they stood. They filed out of the room without a word, passing Colt and Clay like they weren't there.

  Toyahdoh stayed where he was, eyes still closed.

  The girl watched from her corner.

  Colt didn't move. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to.