Fighting monsters in another dimension with my mate is definitely not covered in any photography manual.
The shadow realm presses against my bear form like freezing water, trying to seep into my fur, my skin, my bones. Everything here feels wrong in ways that make my newly awakened instincts scream. Colorless expanse stretches in all directions, stone formations rising at angles that hurt to perceive. Light exists but casts no shadows. Distance means nothing. Up and down are suggestions rather than facts.
Jonah's presence blazes like a star through our connection. Golden. Warm. Real. The only fixed point in this nightmare landscape.
The Guardian's rage slams into us before I fully process where we are.
"You dare bring her here?" The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, vibrating through the stone beneath my paws. "You dare contaminate my realm with your light?"
Forms coalesce from the dimensionless space around us. Not three or five like before. Dozens. Hundreds. The Guardian manifests in a swarm of shapes, each one wrong in differentways. Too many limbs. Eyes where mouths should be. Bodies that fold through dimensions my brain refuses to process.
They converge on us with terrible speed.
Jonah roars, placing his massive bear form between me and the nearest threat. His voice carries across the impossible space. "Maren, stay close. Don't let them separate us."
The first wave crashes into us, and instinct takes over. My claws rake through shadow substance that feels like cold smoke wrapped around bone. The texture is wrong—solid where it should be vapor, yielding where it should resist. My bear's claws sink deep, finding purchase on something that screams when I tear through it.
A shadow creature lunges for my throat. I catch it mid-air, jaws closing on its core. The taste floods my mouth—rot and metal and something that burns like acid on my tongue. My neck muscles strain as I shake hard, violent, the way prey should be killed. The creature shrieks directly into my mouth, the sound vibrating through my skull and down my spine. Then it dissolves into wisps that smell like corruption and leave my mouth tasting like I licked a battery.
Another takes its place immediately. This one's faster, coming at me low. It tears into my shoulder, teeth that shouldn't exist puncturing fur and flesh. Pain blazes white-hot through my nerves. Blood—my blood—runs hot down my foreleg. The creature's breath against my neck is freezing, sucking warmth from my body with every exhale.
Twisting, I use my weight to throw it off. My claws catch its flank as it passes, tearing deep furrows that leak darkness instead of blood. The shadow matter hisses where it hits the stone, evaporating like water on a hot griddle.
Jonah's roar reverberates through my chest. Something crashes to my left—his fight, close enough to feel but too chaotic to track. My own battle demands every scrap ofattention. Another creature circles, testing. This one learned from watching its companions die.
Two more creatures appear, flanking positions already chosen. One feints left while the other goes right. Classic battle strategy. My photographer's eye catches the coordination, predicts the attack pattern.
The one on the right commits first. We collide with bone-jarring force, the impact driving air from my lungs. My claws dig into its shoulders while its talons—impossibly sharp—score deep lines across my ribs. We roll across the stone in a tangle of fur and shadow, each fighting for position. My teeth find what passes for its throat and I bite down hard. Something cracks between my jaws. The creature spasms once, twice, then explodes outward in a spray of darkness that coats my muzzle.
More keep coming. The sheer number threatens to overwhelm us despite our strength.
Then the mate bond flares between us.
Golden light erupts from my chest, from his, connecting us with visible brilliance that cuts through the empty expanse like sunrise. The light spreads outward in a sphere, and where it touches shadow creatures, they scream and dissolve. Some simply cease to exist. Others flee shrieking into the colorless void.
The Guardian's forms retreat, hissing. "Impossible. The bond cannot function here. This is my realm. Light does not exist in shadow."
"We're not just light," I snarl back, and hearing my own voice in bear form still startles me. "We're bonded. That's stronger than your darkness."
Jonah moves to stand beside me rather than in front of me. Protection becomes partnership. His flank presses against mine, our bond pulsing between us with each heartbeat.
The creatures circle but don't attack. The golden barrier holds them back, burning any that venture too close.
Reaching for the bond instinctively, I try to understand what's happening. The connection thrums with power that feels familiar despite being hours old. It tastes like the ley lines back home, like the shimmer I spent eight months photographing without understanding what I saw.
Realization crashes through me. The ley lines still flow through me. Even here in another dimension, the energy pulses because I'm freshly turned. My transformation happened at a convergence point, ley magic woven into my DNA before it fully settled. One foot in reality, one foot in shadow. A bridge between worlds.
And through me, the ley lines can reach into this realm.
"Jonah." Testing the theory, I close my eyes and reach deeper into the connection. Golden light intensifies around us, pushing the shadows back another foot. "I can feel them. The ley lines. They're feeding power through our bond."
His bear's head swings toward me. "That's not possible."
"Neither is me being here in the first place." My eyes open, watching shadow creatures writhe at the edge of our protective sphere. "I'm new enough that I haven't fully settled into one reality yet. The transformation energy is still active in my cells."
"You're a conduit." Understanding floods him, warming the bond between us. "You're channeling ley energy directly into the shadow realm."
"And it burns them." The creatures shriek and claw at the barrier, desperate and furious. "The Guardian feeds on isolation and despair. But we're the opposite of that. We're connection. Unity. Light."
