Umbraught Assault on Angkor Leng

Umbraught Assault on Angkor Leng is the decisive incursion that converts the Endeavor’s dangerous refueling and repair stop into an immediate defensive crisis. The Umbraught are not merely another hostile presence in the eastern darkness: they are an ancient species opposed to the zint-based light on which human civilization depends. Their attack exposes the cost of carrying that civilization’s illumination into forbidden places, forces Jonathan Heights and his companions into close combat, and leaves the expedition divided over whether survival requires retreat or a wider campaign against the creatures.

The Umbraught Threat and the Approach to Angkor Leng

The assault begins before the attackers are visible. As the Endeavor approaches the hangar, a dark purple-grey radiance appears opposite the ship’s blue zint lights, painful to the eyes despite its relative dimness. Antomine identifies the source as the Umbraught, beings that consume luminiferous terrestrite and were supposedly destroyed or driven away by the Illuminated King centuries earlier. The ship’s unusually powerful spotlights have therefore done more than illuminate the ruins: they have announced the expedition’s presence to a species drawn to the very substance that powers human civilization. Antomine also suspects that his own presence may have been a more likely provocation than the Endeavor’s lights, linking the creatures’ return to the older conflict between the Inquisition and the forces it once attempted to eradicate.

The first response is not an attack but an argument over whether an attack can be avoided. Eleanor immediately urges the party to reach the ship and have its lights extinguished, fearing that the Umbraught may already be too close. Jonathan agrees that the expedition cannot afford an unnecessary battle while the Endeavor is still being treated, since damage to the ship’s mechanisms could close the most promising route into the true east. Antomine initially insists that the creatures should be exterminated on sight, but finally concedes that no battle is required if they fail to find the party. The compromise leaves the group moving back toward the hangar under pressure, aware that the Umbraught are following or scouting them even though the broken buildings and competing city lights prevent anyone from judging their distance.

The Breach of the Endeavor’s Control Room

The retreat becomes a siege when the group reaches the hangar. The Endeavor is being hauled inside on tether lines rather than fully landed, since compressing its envelope would make a rapid departure difficult, and Antomine orders a defensive perimeter formed with cold steel rather than zint weapons. Jonathan then moves toward the semicircle of airmen gathered at the enormous brass plate that seals the control room. It is the room’s only practical entrance: anyone approaching from above would have to cross the Umbraught radiance, whose effects on living bodies remain uncertain. The door itself cannot be reinforced or obstructed, because its massive movement depends on mechanisms the defenders dare not touch.

The Umbraught enter as soon as the brass panel slides aside. They are almost invisible dark figures shaped nearly like men, distinguished by reversed colors at their eyes, teeth, and clothing and by the baffling spheres they carry. These lanterns emit the creatures’ painful purple-grey light, which overwhelms the zint lanterns and seems to hide the attackers’ rapid movements. The first impact is immediate: a Lux Guard at the door is thrown backward, his baton clattering across the floor before his armored body crashes into the airmen behind him. The ease with which the guard is defeated shakes the men holding the entrance, while the assault demonstrates that the Umbraught’s light is not merely an environmental hazard but an active tactical advantage.

Jonathan answers the breach with the nearest weapon available: the heavy gold branch recovered from Angkor Leng. A dark, glass-like blade rises to meet his swing and snaps under the force of several hundred pounds of metal in motion. The Umbraught behind it folds around the impact and is hurled into its companions. Jonathan’s intervention breaks the defenders’ hesitation, and he orders the airmen forward while Eleanor attacks faster still, her daggers flashing through the suppressed light. Her maids join her, whereas Antomine and his guards are temporarily impaired by the presence of the creatures and their inverted illumination.

The fight is brief despite the attackers’ numbers. Jonathan uses the gold branch as an improvised club, smashing through Umbraught heads and limbs; Eleanor and her maids cut down those attempting to flee; and the airmen recover enough to overwhelm the remaining figures. Antomine identifies the crucial target by ordering the defenders to crush the lanterns. Jonathan stamps on one of the luminous spheres until it shatters, after which the airmen destroy others with clubs and swords. Once the spheres break, the eye-stinging radiance recedes, removing the Umbraught’s concealment and weakening the basis of their assault. The victory is therefore achieved not by matching the attackers’ strange light but by destroying the objects that make that light possible.

Casualties, Material Aftermath, and the Unresolved Threat

The immediate victory does not make the assault harmless. The remaining Umbraught spheres crunch underfoot, and Jonathan’s eye pain fades, but the human defenders have paid for the control-room breach with bleeding cuts, sprains, bruises, and at least one fractured limb. A Lux Guard lies incapacitated, and Antomine kneels beside him, visibly paler than usual, while the ship’s doctor treats the wounded airmen. The creatures themselves begin to dissolve once deprived of their peculiar illumination: their bodies, disturbingly close to human in outline yet distorted into impossible colors, fade into something increasingly ephemeral, as though their existence cannot persist in the presence of the zint-centered human world. Even Eleanor’s dark, glass-like dagger dissipates from her hand, and the blood on Jonathan’s gold club wisps away. The attack therefore leaves behind injuries, damaged confidence, and a material lesson about incompatible forms of life, but no stable enemy remains for the victors to examine or pursue.

Jonathan closes the massive brass door and turns his attention back to the expedition’s interrupted work, yet the danger has not been contained. The defenders cannot know whether every Umbraught has been killed or whether the survivors have carried news of zint back to a larger nest. Antomine consequently argues that Angkor Leng must be purged before the creatures learn to hunt the substance that powers human civilization and travel westward toward human settlements. Jonathan rejects the proposal as an unacceptable diversion: the Endeavor is not a navy, the party lacks the personnel and resources to survey and cleanse a city of Angkor Leng’s size, and the journey toward sunlight already depends on completing the repairs and reaching the eastern gateway. Their disagreement turns the assault into more than a closed skirmish. Antomine sees a strategic frontier emergency whose consequences could spread beyond the ruins; Jonathan sees another obstacle threatening the single objective that has organized his life. The Umbraught are defeated inside the ship, but their appearance proves that the expedition’s technology has altered the balance of the surrounding world, making retreat itself a form of exposure and leaving the larger question of whether human civilization can safely carry its light eastward unresolved.