An arrow flew past his remaining good ear and he gritted his teeth hard enough to make them grind. 'Just a damn inch.' he thought bitterly, ' This is getting too close.' With no thought at all, the moon elf leapt across a particularly deep portion of the marsh and continued his run. This was not the first time that he had found himself in a tough situation, but even he had to admit his chances of surviving this were bleak. The men that tailed him were highly trained; he knew this from personal experience. A former member of the Shadow Thieves himself, he had probably met many of these men in person and had even been an associate that they had looked up to as new recruits. Shade�s ties with the Shadow Thieves had grown sour over the decades though, and now he was their prey� their victim. And Shade knew that only quick thinking would get him out of this mess. His working elven ear twitched, alerting him to all the noise around him. He heard the wilds of the marsh, the splatter of his boots sinking into the murky waters, the grass squelching under foot. He heard his heart beating, his breath racing to fill his aching muscles. But there was no sound from his pursuers. Quickly he slowed to a halt and turned around.

There was no sign of the ten score of assassins that had just moments ago been pursuing him through the marshes. 'No fucking way...' he muttered under his breath in the profanity filled speech that he had learnt from the humans. He knew he had not lost his attackers; the Shadow Thieves would not be shrugged off so easily. Dropping to his knees, Shade quickly found cover behind a partially submerged boulder. This brief moment would provide him opportunity to catch his breath and refocus on the task at hand: his survival. Rubbing one hand across his aching torn ear, he used the other to adjust the grey travelling cloak around his body. He then checked his inventory of daggers. All present and correct. The next procedure was tightening the straps on his worn leather boots, worsening the aching but aiding in his future run. His routine moved immediately to testing the broken longbow that had rested across his back, but as he predicted the weapon had been rendered completely useless.

'Never could trust human crafting,� he scoffed quietly.

Cracking his neck from side to side to relieve the ache, he removed the cumbersome pack from around his shoulders. Eyes scanning the area for any sign of movement, Shade reached into his pack and pulled from it a pair of short-swords, each one different from the other. With no hesitance, he slipped the swords into the belt under his cloak, and took one last regret-filled look at his travel pack before ditching it into the marsh water. He readied himself for the remainder of the run, tugging down on one of the sweat-soaked fingerless gloves that covered his hands.

The sword clashed noisily with the boulder beside Shade's head and only his tuned reflexes prevented the rebound from cutting his throat. The broken longbow was the first thing to hand, and Shade found himself neatly wrapping it around the skull of the attacker that had nearly taken his life. The assassin hit the swamp waters face first, and lay there unmoving as his comrade took his position. Shade had only needed a moment to become ready though, and the new foe was met by a pair of short swords, zigzagging his throat and messily removed his head from his spinal cord. Blood covered the travelling cloak of the moon elf now, but this did not distract him for one moment. Pushing aside the decapitated corpse, Shade eyed his next two pursuers. Arrows fired, and one managed to graze the side of its target�s neck. Shade hissed in pain as a second round was hastily notched to the assassins� bowstrings, readied for the kill, but they were cut off before they could release the projectiles by two daggers fresh from their prey's belt. Shade rubbed the blood from his neck onto a glove.

�You gotta be faster than that, assholes.�

Almost being stung by irony, Shade noticed the pair of throwing-daggers just seconds from his head. This was all the time he needed, as his psionic mind concentrated hard on nothing else. As though by a supernatural will of their own, the two daggers paused in mid-air, reversed their direction and found rest in both eye sockets of their original owner. Shade simply tutted.

�Nice try.�

His cocky demeanour was just a front, though. Shade knew that these were just the forerunners. Already he could see a half-dozen Shadow Thieves weaving their way towards him from every dark corner of his position. He turned and leapt the boulder he had used for cover, his boots making a sickening splash in the marshes on the opposite side. Now lacking the weight of his pack and longbow, the elf was able to move quicker than before. However, his escape was blocked by a pair of assassins, both clad in the uniform black of their clan, and Shade found himself immediately thrust into melee combat with both his short swords. Metal clashed with metal as blades met, the moon elf requiring both his weapons to fend off the twin attacks from the two attackers. The first blood belonged to Shade, his arm sliced down the middle where his armour was sewn. Grit teeth prevented an agonised scream, and Shade thrust out with his mind alone, telekinetically pushing his attackers back. This did not stop them, as the smaller of the two leapt forwards. Shade sidestepped lithely, cutting the man down in the air, but he was immediately assaulted by the second. A third and forth joined the fray just as Shade used his psionic ability to end his foe with three daggers at once. The short-swords met this new challenge, as a fifth added his presence. A clubbing blow across the back of the neck brought its victim to his knees, and Shade was instantly cut across the thigh by a stabbing dagger.

Yet another psionic thrust gave Shade the opening he desperately needed, and he dashed through it. Pushing back the pain that shot down his spine and side, he half-ran half-limped past the enemies that quickly took chase. A recognisable throbbing in his torso brought him to the nauseating realisation that he had been poisoned.

�Shit.�

The short-swords regained their position on his belt, allowing the weakened elf to better dart between foliage and obstacles. His working ear could hear the shouts behind him, bellows that sounded like a hundred different voices shouting for his death. The Shadow Thieves could smell a wounded prey like vultures to a corpse, and he knew that they would be upon him if he let his strength give out. Just as he felt like hope had evaded him, a sudden recognition came upon him and Shade realised where he was. He had been to this portion of the marshes once before, on a day when he had travelled with the intent of causing great pain to a fellow moon elf that had once rivalled him. On that day, Shade had broken into the home of his long-time nemesis Di�thang, and attempted to destroy the family that the moon elf had built for himself since their days in Battledale. Di�thang had robbed Shade of his chances at such a destiny, and Shade had sought revenge. Only the unexpected loyalty to his father of Di�thang�s son had cost him his attempts.

A wry smile crossed Shade�s lips. How fitting. A pained murmur escaped the dying moon elf�s lips. �Well well Di�thang, if I�m going down� you�re going down with me.�

Adjusting his direction, Shade pushed past his pain and fading energy with a renewed hope. Within moments the swamps gave way to the moonlight above, and before the elf there appeared a large house. A solitary house amongst the nature, its gardens well kept and its huge door opened. This sudden appearance gave Shade a rush of adrenalin, and he sped towards the building with rehabilitated vigour. An arrow embedded itself into his right leg causing him to stumble, but Shade did not let this stop him. Leaving the fletching to wave like a flag from his thigh, the elf practically fell up the garden path to the home of a man that Shade had always called �enemy.� Rolling across the doorstep, he pushed the door shut with his final ounce of strength and passed out on the carpeted hallway.