Alex Gilbert

The Calamitous Bob

Disclaimer

The Calamitous Bob is a web serial. I like to think that serials are to traditional books what series are to movies, though I might be biased. As a result, you should expect a slower pacing. The Calamitous Bob also includes light LitRPG elements, violence, and curse words.

This is a work of fiction.

Acknowledgements:

I wrote this story with the help of my patrons. It would not exist without their support, both financial and moral.

A book is also a group project. My gratitude goes to Hesketh, Yaksher, and many others for wading through the typo-filled mire of my writings. The good readers on Royal Road also contributed by looking for that one obscure inconsistency on page 137, seriously people what do you even do all day? All remaining mistakes are mine and were probably last-minute additions anyway.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife who started it all by saying that since I spent so much time daydreaming, I might as well monetize it. So I did.

Table of contents

The Calamitous Bob

Chapter 1: Soul-Slapped

Chapter 2: Up a Creek, no Paddle.

Chapter 3: Harrak.

Chapter 4: The Tools of Success

Chapter 5: The Way to Salvation

Chapter 6: Skilled

Chapter 7: Toil and Trouble

Chapter 8: Cassia’s last gift

Chapter 9: On the Road Again.

Chapter 10: The Deadlands

Chapter 11: Fort Sky

Chapter 12: Duly Employed

Chapter 13: The Cleansing

Chapter 14: The Other Mind

Chapter 15: Hangover

Chapter 16: Ah, Fuck.

Chapter 17: Like Rats

Chapter 18: The Bringer of Death

Chapter 19: The Nerve of War

Chapter 20: Kazar

Chapter 21: Down

Chapter 22: The Local Flavor

Chapter 23: Shield

Chapter 24: Errands

Afterword.

About the author.

Chapter 1: Soul-Slapped

At the heart of the world of Niyl stood a mountain of impossible height. Its sheer cliffs of permafrost were vertical walls gnawed by unceasing winds, and within its cavernous depths hid horrid creatures. Grumpy wyrms and ancient elementals haunted abyssal chasms, while outside, scathing magical gales roared hard enough to scour the flesh from the bones of even the hardiest explorers. And yet, every year, some still tried to make the journey to its peak with a single purpose—a glimpse at the city of gods, Larrean.

Ah, Larrean, where strolls could last for moments or eons, where spirits beat the pavement hand in hand with beings as old as time itself. Solemn temples of marble and gold rose next to eldritch constructs of shells and bones. Coral walls encircled crystal towers and obsidian keeps. The air smelled of spring, of brine, of a kiss by the sea, changing with every step. It was an impossible land where only the mightiest could tread and where one could sell a soul to buy a moment.

The only constant in this dizzying chaos of splendor occupied its highest hill. The Apex Palace held the throne of the ruling monarch of this flourishing metropolis, and it guarded its spot with a ferocious zeal, for whoever controlled Larrean controlled the world.

Within reason.

At the back of the palace, two divine guards in golden armor kept their vigil on either side of a stained-glass window of epic proportions. The masterwork represented a decade of grueling effort from a legendary artist, each dye, each detail painstakingly placed to show the victory of the current pantheon over the primordial gods.

It suddenly exploded outward in a shower of broken shards.

The figure of a naked man slammed against the ground with a grunt before rolling several times and crashing against a centennial oak, which cracked under strain.

“ASSHOLE!” a voice screamed from inside.

The left guard sighed heavily.

On the ground, the King of the Gods stumbled to his feet and held his gorgeous head between two trembling hands. Wheat-colored ringlets adorned a face handsome enough to make angels weep. Right now, however, his charm was somehow diminished by the unfocused brown eyes, the grilled chicken skin stuck to his chest hair and the scratching of his left ass-cheek.

Maranor, the Goddess of War, stepped out from the remnants of the shattered pane. Fury turned her black eyes into pits. It furrowed her august brow with thunderous wrath and set her raven hair aflutter. It spoke of the desolation of nations.

“Not only do you cheat on me,” the deadly belle intoned, crossing her arms under her modest bosom. “But you do it morphed into a golden manatee? A manatee? Have you gone mad?”

The hem of her white dress slowly turned red with fresh blood, an ill omen, if any. However, the King of Gods, who looked no worse for the wear after his recent defenestration on account of being God of Luck as a side gig, ignored it. His overtaxed brain still tried to operate through the cataclysmic hangover harrying him.

The words ‘golden manatee’ somehow cut to the haze of immortal-grade alcohol.

Disaster struck.

The King of Gods, Emeric, smiled beatifically at the memory of his ravishing, plump-nosed shape.

“We were off our arses and thought it was funny,” he replied.

A preternatural silence spread over the entire city. Entire legions of warriors and scholars stopped to a standstill. The dark clouds of fate on the march covered the midday sun like a swarm of locusts.

Somewhere in the depth of Emeric’s mind, an ancient drive awoke, one that dated back to an era when he was not quite as durable as he was now—his survival instinct.

“Oh SH-“

[Divine Killing Blow]

[Divine Uncanny Dodge]

Both skills fired at the exact same time. A ravine formed in the hallowed ground where Emeric used to stand on a stone said to be indestructible.

Maranor now held a two-handed sword as lengthy as she was. The Slayer had ended many beings who had thought themselves beyond the reaper’s reach. Her expression surpassed anger to emerge on the peaceful land of unadulterated violence. Her eyes shone in anticipation.

She was going to kill him.

He was a dead god walking.

Emeric did the only wise thing he could. He ran, and she followed.

***

Maradoc sighed when his former brother-in-arms stumbled into the House of Many Gates, his locus of power in Larrean.

Alcoves occupied both walls that extended beyond the horizons. It was, as they said, bigger on the inside.

As Emeric crossed the threshold, his entire behavior changed. He abruptly shifted from a gibbering coward to a mighty god standing tall, without a hunch, golden energy rippling beneath his hale skin.

“Is it truly time?” the god of travels and mysteries asked his old friend.

“It could not have gone better if I had planned it,” the other one replied with confidence, “your twin sacrificed a century of schemes with one act of anger.”

He sighed out his next words. “Do not be too confident now. We cannot afford it. I suppose you would like your exit?”

“If you please.”

Maradoc waved a lazy arm, and one of the alcoves was now occupied by a blue portal, which Emeric crossed without hesitation. It closed behind him.

The door banged open.

“Where is he?” his sister demanded.

Maradoc did not reply, even as she came to stand before him with her dread weapon and her even worse temper. She and her host matched hair, eyes, and unyielding scowls. Neither budged from their sullen silence.

“Be careful that I do not consider you an enemy as well, dear brother,” the woman finally said.

The room darkened. From the alcoves now came whispers at the edge of hearing, fragments of languages long-forgotten that spoke of things best left alone. Maradoc matched Maranor.

“Remind yourself of who you are speaking to, dear sister, or I will.”

They stood frozen, face to face, entrenched in an animosity that only defiled love could bring. It was the intruder who relented first. “It’s only a matter of time,” she declared on her way out.

Maradoc’s expression turned melancholic as he watched the last of his living relatives go. They had shared so much, and now he had taken the last steps to unbind his fate from hers. Where she had chosen to go, he would not follow.

The cost was not worth it.

He turned back to his books with the vain hope that they would dispel the anguish in his heart. A lifetime spent pursuing knowledge and carefully curating, and he could not find one way to dull the pain. No one suffered like a god could.

***

Emeric’s body disintegrated into its component atoms as soon as he crossed the space between worlds, just as planned. A world came into view, a blue planet with plenty of landmasses colored yellow, white, and green. It was nice enough and devoid of any planetoid-sized orbital squids or anything too unpleasant.

His soul activated a special spell prepared for the occasion, and a small grid flew toward the radiant orb of his psyche.

“No magic, as agreed. Hmm, good development level! How do these metal tubes fly, I wonder? Technology? Incredible. Some of those nations are rich too. Excellent,” the mighty soul told itself.

Now, to find a suitable host.

There was one thing that Emeric had always wanted, a thing that had been denied to him for ages—he who had drunk pure mana from the spring of eternal winter and suckled on the teat of the queen of dryads.

He wanted a female orgasm.

He heard it was quite nice.

And the polymorph spell was too superficial a change to grant him this experience.

“That’s right, I’m going to be a lass. Even if Maranor tracks me to this world, she will never imagine that I would voluntarily incarnate myself in a womanly shell. This plan of mine is brilliant!”

So, yes, the host, a woman. He cackled with delight before his net narrowed down to three billion individuals.

“That many?! Wow. At least I get to be picky.”

She needed to be a young adult. None of that growing-up nonsense. And not married, obviously. She had to have peerless magical potential. Even if the world was devoid of magic, Emeric’s soul could create its own. It would be a shame not to use it.

That still gave him almost six thousand hits!

Well, she had to be hot, obviously.

Two thousand.

He narrowed it down further with more stipulations—from a rich nation, connected family, and constantly surrounded by attractive people. A formal education. A loyal friend. A good sex drive.

There were still twenty entries, and he was at a loss. Then, finally, he found one with mesmerizing green eyes and who was already asleep, which was convenient. Tall as well, with a healthy tan.

“You will do.”

Instantly, he traveled down and to the body of the host. The mortal soul was torn off with a mighty swing, and he held the tiny white orb in his own golden hand.

He was pretty sure the process was painless.

Probably.

He slid inside the now deserted mortal coil. Then, as his essence expanded to fill its new container, he felt a pang of guilt stab his cold and desiccated heart.

“You were kind of shafted there, poor girl,” said the man who had done the shafting, “I guess I could help you.”

There was also the slight problem of soul imbalance between this realm and his own. Could he kill two manticores with one disintegration ray?

“I’ll just send you back in my stead.”

Emeric opened a minuscule portal to some power locus back home and shoved the soul through. As the gate closed, he breathed into it enough energy to reform a body. He left a tiny bit of himself as well for good luck.

Emeric smiled at himself with satisfaction. “Let it be known that I am a benevolent god.”

He finished his integration.

January 2013, Mopti Airport, Mali.

A tall woman in the beige uniform of the French special forces strode to the fortified entrance of the main concourse. She found her target sleeping peacefully against the sandbags, hands clutching her rifle. She kicked the thick body armor.

“Wake the fuck up, Cinderella!” she said.

“Naskay?”

The woman frowned, concern evident on her brown, handsome face.

“You got a stroke, Viv?”

The more petite woman blinked, emerald eyes drifting around with confusion. She recovered quickly enough.

“Sorry Mouq, errr, a weird dream is all.”

“Well, get your ass in gear, corporal! The beardies downed a Gazelle helicopter near Konna. So, we got to blow up the wreck.”

“Yeah, yeah...” the freshly reincarnated god answered.

The intruder stood up and inspected their surroundings, checking their new host and pilfered memories to hint at what had gone wrong.

Magical talent? There and waiting. 

Interesting background? Back home. 

Attractive? Yes, under the layers of Kevlar and ceramic plates.

Surrounded by hot people?

An armored transport rolled to the compound’s gates. All around, fit men and women loaded up and checked their weapons.

“Fuck me,” they said with feeling.

Chapter 2: Up a Creek, no Paddle.

Niyl was a world of mighty continents and vast seas, not unlike earth. One of those was Param, a large circular mass linked to its only neighbor by an isthmus no broader than a city. A fertile land, it also boasted the dubious honor of being the location of the greatest magical catastrophe ever recorded. The Western part of Param still bore in its flesh the stigma of this awesome event.

Seen from up high, the scar looked like a spot of necrotic tissue on an otherwise healthy body. A closer look would reveal a massive valley surrounded on all sides by snow-capped mountain ranges, except for a tiny gap to the south. The area was darkest at its core, though shrubbery and enduring plants gave it a greenish tint the farther one went from the epicenter. There, the Old Empire had made its seat of power, from which it had terrified the world. There, its elites had reached summits of magical ability the world had never seen, and there, they weaved their own doom. The legacy of their might could now only be found in private collections and in the languages of kings. The Old Empire had died an ignominious death at the apex of its power.

Now, only the mindless undead treaded its sandy corpse.

A cautionary tale.

Only one expedition successfully explored the old capital of Harrak, where the fateful experiment had taken place. They had reported a cursed city, its empty streets still dominated by the vertiginous form of the Imperial Ziggurat. A mighty cadaver, gutted by a cataclysmic explosion, as imposing as the remains of an ancient drake.

In the throne room of the emperor, a figure stirred. It shivered in pain. Arms and legs locked in a death grip that left her muscle straining until two green eyes opened.

The figure let out an ear-shattering scream of pure agony. The woman scratched her naked form with enough strength to draw blood in a vain effort to push back the aftershock of the terrible experience she had suffered. It was only a memory, a remnant of an ordeal she no longer possessed the means to understand, and yet just that little was enough to make her want to kill herself. She could not explain the atrocious suffering. Hell, she was not even sure it was her nerves flaring up. It felt more intimate than that, a deep malaise as if her body did not quite fit. No matter what ‘it’ was that had caused her current condition, ‘it’ had been abominable. 

She stayed there for a good thirty seconds, gulping air with quiet despair.

Eventually, her nociceptors must have saturated or something because enough neurons fired to make her realize her predicament.

“Fuck!”

Standing in a rush, she pushed pain to the back of her mind to focus on her current condition. She was absolutely butt-naked. It was cold as hell, and she already had goosebumps.

And there was a draft where there should be none.

“FUCK!”

She checked her forearms. Not one dark hair. Warily, she passed a hand on the glistening surface of her skull.

“FUUUUUUCK!”

Her hand trailed down to the smooth surface where her eyebrows used to be.

“What the hell?”

She quickly checked herself. No visible wounds. No sign of external trauma, though she was shaking from the cold, and her fingertips showed signs of cyanosis. They were already blue.

Only then did she check her surroundings.

“Aaaaaah what the…”

She was inside of a room as big as a hangar with walls of massive stones covered in the tattered remains of pennants and tapestries, their colors long faded. Debris littered the ground, seemingly made out of ossified wood and cracked bones. Human bones. A massive throne occupied the far wall, with the ceiling collapsed behind it. A boulder the size of a bus had crashed through the ground to her left in some distant past. It now let in frigid air and a morose winter light.

On the throne sat a crowned skeleton with its ghastly skull resting on a bony hand.

And by its side were six mummified bodies clad in black, still holding the rusty hilts of broken weapons.

Either the skeletons were pygmees, or the dead king was fuckhuge. 

The woman pinched herself because what else could she do?

It hurt. Also, she was freezing her tits off.

Alright, alright, think. Her name was Viviane Saint-Lys. Twenty-four. Corporal and medic. Stationed inside of Mopti Airport with the rest of her platoon to protect it from Jihadists. 

This was not Mopti. Way too fucking cold.

Had she been captured? No…that couldn’t be right. She dismissed the notion immediately. They had sentries. She would have been awaken by the commotion. No, she was clearly somewhere… Well…

She felt the wind behind her. A massive opening in the wall allowed her to see a grey sky, the kind of nasty stuff they showed in dystopian movies.

She walked out into a frigid gale, and her eyes widened in surprise at the landscape arrayed before her.

She stood near the top of a pyramid of impossible size.

The massive obsidian steps that started before her shrunk in the distance until they were humorously tiny. The pairs of statues lining it were the size of four men, but near the bottom, they looked as small as toys. There were other entrances, many of them obstructed or collapsed, and it was easy to see why.

In front of her, a city extended for kilometers upon kilometers with the exacting precision that only rigorous urban planning could achieve. There were estates and temples and churches and squares, darkened and dead, devoid of movement. A desert of basaltic sand extended beyond to mountains far, far into the distance. Pieces of rubble the size of apartment buildings dotted the land as if a titan had been playing weight throw. It only took a moment for her to realize that the origin of said rubble was not before her.

She turned around.

Where the top of the pyramid used to be, there was now a gigantic hole surrounded by the molten, ragged edges of vitrified stone. The size of the crater was not normal. It was not what she could associate with a heavy ordinance, no. It was something she would have associated with asteroid craters, or the impact of a tactical nuclear warhead. 

It had come from the inside.

It gave her vertigo.

She shivered violently and ran back into the relative shelter of the room, back hunched and arms held tightly. She recognized the telling signs of hypothermia.

“Right. I need to — GYAAAA”

She ducked back when white glyphs appeared in the air before her. The rapid retreat had been of no use: the floating symbols had simply followed her gaze. The only thing that calmed her down was the strange sensation that she understood their meaning, even if she knew it was impossible. They said ‘please wait’.

And then, the glyphs faded, only to be replaced by roman characters.

[INTEGRATION COMPLETE. ADAPTING USER INTERFACE]

“Err.”

This did not look good.

[ADAPTATION COMPLETE. PLEASE STAND BY…]

The font had changed to something vaguely futuristic. It was just weird.

Then a window appeared, still in the same font and with a transparent background of light blue. At least it was not in Comic fucking Sans.

Welcome to Nyil, Outlander. You have been transported to a new world! 

Every sapient of this realm benefits from magic under the guidance of the god Nous, via the interface now granted to you. 

Magic.

Magic magic magic. Really? That was… incredible? If it were true, of course, but magic? Despite her dire circumstances, a teeny-tiny part of her quivered with excitement.

Magic!

Like the stories she had read when she was young, before reality had become too heavy and she had grown too jaded.

Also, transported? That was decent news. Her first hypothesis was that she had been smeared by a mortar shell and her rich family had frozen her brain, before being plugged into some bullshit augmented reality thingie in the year 2326. 

Transportation to another world was way better.

Viv realized that incoherence was one symptom of hypothermia and jumped from one leg to another like a drunk goose.

To help you on your journey, you have received the blessing of Maradoc, god of travels and mysteries. Additional features will unlock as your body adjusts to magic.

You have been granted the following benefits:

[Old Imperial Language] at native level (local language)

Vastly improved stats and skill acquisition speed

Your digestive tract has been filled with nutrients

Good luck out there!

Her digestive… what the fuck? 

Wait, hold on, that was not important.

Another world! Magic! She was still not over it.

But that world was not hers, and the squad depended on her. 

“But why? Can’t you send me back?” She looked around, asking the air now, feeling very silly.

“Hello? Anyone? Interface? Marasomething, wait, Maradoc? Nous? Oh great and magnificent gods Maradoc and Nous, I pray to thee. Answer mine… Ow!”

She reeled as the deep unease she had felt before came back with a vengeance.

“Right. Sorry if I offended.”

System update! Your physical condition has been assessed.

Current status:

Hypothermia (mild)

Mana poisoning (very mild)

Soul trauma (serious)

“Ooookay?”

Soul trauma did not look good at all. It was probably because of having one’s soul tossed into a parallel universe or something. Maybe she had been smeared by a shell after all, tiny bits of Viviane sent up in the air. Maybe Mouq had seen her large intestine. That would be weird.

System update! Your magical condition has been assessed.

Current status:

Mana channels (budding)

Extreme compatibility

Divine spark: luck

Mana distribution:

Black 7%

Current attunement: 0.14%

Yeah yeah whatever, this meant nothing to her. Unless she could pop fireballs out of her ass, this was of limited use. Alright. Whatever. First things first.

Viv pushed back her fears and her questions as her training took over. It had taken her a long time but, to be fair, those were unusual circumstances.

Right. So.

Shelter, water, food. In that order.

The collapsed place she was in was shit, but the town below looked more promising. The only problem was that it would take hours to get down to find something and… she did not have hours.

Viv eyed the guards around the dead king.

They were still wearing some sort of black jumpsuit, the only thing still intact in this place. Even the colossal mummy’s crown was all cracked and dull. 

Hmm.

Problem was that this was a magic world and her limited experience of fantasy literature and Minecraft told her that disturbing them would be a Bad idea, capital B. 

On the other hand, if they woke up and pulped her, at least she would be warm before she died.

“Right. Right… Steady now.”

She approached the group in a light step, then screamed like a sissy when another window popped up.

“Fuck!”

Interface update! Your stats have been assessed. Adjustments will occur.

Physical

Mental

Power

8

Focus

19

Finesse

16

Acuity

19

Endurance

15

Willpower

19

“Shhh! Ah, it’s all in my head…” she remembered.

She returned her attention to the still unmoving forms down the hall. Any time now, they would start moving and bash her head in with her own femur.

She moved forward, teeth chattering. Her eyes were fixed on the shapes with laser focus. If they started to reassemble, she would run in and grab one by the back then run like hell. The bodies were dessicated, so probably not too heavy. 

Focus +1

You have reached a milestone! You have gained the inspect skill. 

“How convenient,” Viv muttered to herself. 

Alright then inspect that dead thing over there.

[Dead person]

“Woooow,” the woman said, stumbling a bit. The skill activation had been… weird, and not to mention strangely painful. But not the soul-shattering pain of before, more like using a cramped muscle she did not know she had. Her chest, brain, and, she guessed, optic nerves had heated up a bit.

The imparted knowledge had appeared in her brain as if she had heard it and memorized before. It was peculiar.

Also, fucking useless.

“I can see that, you twat.”

But nay, hold on, she was being too hasty. If this thing was correct, then she was safe! It had not said ‘Fucking Skeletor of short-tempered Fuckery, currently finishing his light nap.’ It had said “dead person”.

And this one wearing the black onesie?

[Dead person]

Those dead were dead! Hurray!

Viv abandoned any attempt at stealth after checking all six guards and rushed to the first one she saw, then to another, since candidate number one had been a hulking bodybuilder. She found one her size and turned the body around.

“Sorry, friend, I need it more than you do.”

There were no zippers, but a sort of pressure button on the shoulder opened the suit to the waist. She remarked in passing that the body was perfectly conserved while methodically taking it out. The ancient Egyptians could not have done better. It was a stark contrast to the other bones at her back. Why they had endured, and the others had not, she did not know.

She slid into the jump suit and closed it around her. It was smooth to the touch and very soft inside. She ignored the little voice in her head that told her that her crotch was currently where a pair of dead bollocks had been mashed for possibly years and that if there was one way to catch fantasy Ebola, that was it.

Viv stood up and shivered more violently as the heat got trapped between her skin and the blessed weird fabric. Then, something dawned on her. She had forgotten to inspect the thing!

[Faded skinsuit (enchanted)]

Good. It would have been stupid to put it on it and realize too late it was some slumbering parasitic life form. 

Now, there was the issue of shoes. Thankfully, the skin suit fit nicely up to and including her feet. That would help her but she would need some actual boots at some point. Only her head was uncovered. It was also blatantly obvious that she was not wearing a bra, but since the fabric was thicker on the chest, it worked out, somehow.

That thing was surprisingly comfy.

You are no longer suffering from Hypothermia.

Nice.

Viv inspected the room and considered bringing two things. The first was a rusty piece of weapon, which was better than nothing, but she decided that if anything was going to jump at her, thirty centimeters of rusty metal wouldn’t do shit. The second was the crown on the king’s head.

[Crown of the Old Empire]

It was dull and broken with spires of metal that were meant to rise up and back. Most were stumps now.

It looked massive.

In the end, the apparent weight did not motivate Viv’s decision, nor by the apparent lack of nearby markets to change this into coin. Instead, there was something sad and majestic about the seating figure of that ancient monarch, forever holding court where only gales and darkness could attend. It was, she realized, the only thing in the room that still had a smidgen of human dignity. And that mattered to her.

She placed all guards side by side with their weapons on their chest and whispered a quick prayer on a whim. The strange mood made her keep her voice low while a weight settled on her shoulders. She had never felt so lonely.

“So, there are gods here. Whoever is listening, please grant peace to these long-dead souls and allow them to reach the afterlife of their faith. Thank you.”

Nothing happened, but she felt better.

She left the throne without looking back

The wind outside was still howling and cold. It slapped against her naked head, and she felt sorry for all those bald guys who forgot their hats at home. The descent went quickly, and she realized that she had maintained the shape she was in when she had, well, left. Or died. 

Deep in her heart, she had the nagging feeling that if one were to bring her body over, there were no reasons to leave the hair and stomach content. She also remembered her scream back when she woke up. It had been powerful stuff that had come from… somewhere deep.

Perhaps this body was brand new.

And would that not be weird.

In any case, it functioned well, and she was not feeling hungry or thirsty yet. Her path led her down, and down, and down, at a stable pace.

After ten minutes, she was only halfway to the ground. She turned again and again to see the apocalyptic hole that had devastated the ancient structure. It did not take a genius to guess that whatever event had caused that was also responsible for the general state of, well, utter shit, that the rest of this place was in.

Viv shook her head. Shelter, then water, then food. A place this big was bound to have wells and perhaps some still held potable water. Maybe. She had to move forward now and panic later.

Another twenty minutes, and she was down. She had used the elevation to get an idea of where to go. The builders had arranged the entire city as a grid of regular massive squares with only a few structures extending further than one block. She was now on the main highway, one that would lead to gates and the city exit. No enormous walls separated the desert from the remnants of civilization, which surprised her a bit.

She could spot the tall pillars marking the end of the town from here. They were kilometers away. The city was impossibly flat so visibility was not a problem.

She needed a shelter of sorts, one that preferably had water. That was her first priority. Her best hope for food, supplies, and boots would be barracks. Soldier food was designed to last through two extinction events in a row and still be edible, for a certain definition of edible anyway. If there was anything left here, it would be in a place like that. 

Right now, the buildings to her left and right were imposing edifices of columns and tall walls with slanted roofs, slightly elevated for maximal impact on the populace. Images of what looked like dragons and other fantastic creatures were engraved everywhere and present in massive statues, but they were now all darkened and defaced. Even then, she could recognize the heavy-handed paw of a public office when she saw one. Those were government buildings designed to inspire solemnity. 

Viv thought quickly. Barracks would most likely be squat things with tiny openings designed to be defensible. She was not exactly sure about the level of technology yet, but the presence of cold weapons probably meant that it was around the Middle Ages or something. She had no idea how much magic would impact the world, but squat defensible buildings seemed like a safe bet.

Viv moved faster now. It was getting a bit darker, she thought. A place like this without a speck of vegetation would be ass-freezing, eskimo-licking cold at night. She had to find a small space that she could close. And covers. She made sure to stay by the walls and made plenty of use of the [Inspection] skill.

[A large building.]

[A wall.]

[Sand.]

Did the skill think she was a toddler?

She turned left at the first intersection and went on. There were small structures in the distance, and she felt more hopeful. 

Come to think of it, there should be barracks by the city gates. That made sense, right?

Acuity +1

You have reached a milestone! You have gained an increase to your processing speed. You can now perceive the world at a faster pace for a limited time at the cost of increased fatigue.

Nifty.

Adjustments are still in progress.

Fair enough, she thought, dismissing the windows. She was still moving alongside the stupidly long public office. The gates were a good idea, but she was at least an hour away at a solid pace and the sky was definitely darkening now. Its gloominess was getting even more depressing. She could find somewhere for the night and—

A snort.

Viv smacked herself against the wall and stopped. She had definitely heard something. 

She heard it again. It was definitely someone, or something, sniffing the air. She sneaked forward to a large side gate and took a quick glance.

The gate led to stairs up towards the main building. There was another column entrance maybe fifty meters away from her. It hosted the origin of the noise.

It was a massive, white horror born from the fiery depths of some obscure circle of hell. Its pallid skin clung to stringy muscles and bony ridges with some horrible elongated humanoid head on top, with no nose and a jaw that could swallow a child in one gulp without chewing. It had a flat face with two slits, tiny red eyes, and enough teeth to shame a great white shark. As she watched, massive talons gouged the heavy stone like they were made out of biscuits. It was as if the Xenomorph had shagged Gollum and their spawn had grown to the size of a fucking elephant.

‘Ohgodohshitohnofucketyfuckfuckfuck’ Viv thought to herself. With feeling.

[Necrarch ravager]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Your [Inspection] General Skill has improved to rank 2/5!

[Necrarch ravager: an extremely dangerous undead creature]

No shit, Sherlock.

The abomination sniffed the air one last time and placed a limb outside. It then blinked and hissed in displeasure before heading back in.

Ok.

Ok, that was bad.

That was really bad.

Because she was pretty sure the only reason the thing had gone back in was that it preferred the shadows.

Night was coming pretty quickly, and she had absolutely no way of getting out of here before it happened. Ok, ok, focus.

That thing was big. Maybe other things were also big. Perhaps she could find a small place she could hole up from all the stupid big things? Yeah, that was it. Ok.

She trotted, staying low and quiet under the dusky grey heaven. She walked past what seemed to be private residences and workplaces, all showing signs of that weird brutalist architecture with decorations on top. They all shared the same large entrances. Sometimes the gates stood open, and she caught glimpses of inner courts with dried out fountains and blackened soil, none of which looked even remotely defensible.

It was not the barracks that stopped her but a light. It was now well on its way to nightfall, and the sky was reddening a bit. The more she peered up, the more her stomach churned. She didn’t know where the sun was. Was it behind the thick clouds? Then, finally, she spotted the blue radiance from the corner of her eyes to her right, in some empty plaza. She turned there and ran.

Memories of abyssal fishes luring their prey invaded her panic-stricken mind. She discarded them. Despair moved her legs.

The plaza was empty. A covered promenade leading to low buildings circled it on all sides, with counters and lines of corroded stone seats.  

Restaurants?

Acuity +1

Adjustments are still in progress.

Yeah yeah. The only point of interest was at the center of the square. There was, ironically, a circle. It shimmered vaguely in white, in tune with a stone like a sharp pyramid covered with inscriptions. 

It was magic! Pretty sure it was magic. And it was not the horrible kind of magic from a horror movie. It was shining in the dark like a lighthouse.

Viv shook her head. She realized that there was something wrong with her thought pattern. The difficulty would be to attribute it to a cause. Was it her soul trauma? Or the bizarre nature of her overall experience?

No, focus. Shelter. This did not look like shelter. Or did it?

She crossed the circle. There was a pop. She fell to her knees.

A curious thing, long-time discomfort. Sometimes you forgot it was there until it stopped. She felt like she had suddenly stepped out of a sauna and that a fever that had assailed her so far had now gone into remission. It was liberating. And worrying.

The notion of ‘fallout’ came to her mind, unbidden. There had been a big explosion at some point, and now nothing lived here. Maybe she was already irradiated beyond salvation and would start leaking blood from every orifice soon enough.

A distant part of Viv realized she was staring at the remains of a camp, but the good kind of remains. Someone had methodically piled stuff that did not look as old or dried up as the rest of the entire town. There was even a small circle burnt into the dead earth in a corner.  So, whoever had been there left calmly, after piling unneeded supplies in a corner.

[An expended teleportation circle]

Wow, so those people did indeed make it out. And they gated like characters from Stargate. How cool was that?

“Any chance I could reactivate the circle?” she asked the notification. 

Alas, it did not answer.

“Figures.”

And it was in the middle of this fascinating examination that a many-limbed creature crested the line of shops.

[Necrarch chimaera: an extremely dangerous undead creature]

Like its Ravager counterpart, the Chimaera had ashen skin stuck to lean muscle and far too many bone ridges, spines, and other pointy extremities. Its head was roughly similar: humanoid with an extended skull, flat face, nose slits, a dentist’s wet dream of a maw and two carmine, beady eyes shining in the dark.

Time slowed for Viv as her ‘oh shit’ mode activated with both increased acuity and adrenaline. She completely froze.

No moving.

No moving at all.

Willpower +1

Keep quiet.

You have reached a milestone! You have gained increased resistance to mental effects, including magical influence.

Not one noise.

Adjustments are still in progress.

The thing moved parallel to her in a lazy gait that sometimes turned into a lightning-fast rush for no reason she could discern.

She breathed exceptionally slow, not moving a finger.

Willpower +1

Adjustments are still in progress.

Her reasoning was that whoever had made that camp had left peacefully, and the presence of tarps meant tents, and tents indicated they had slept there. Those things came out at night, or apparently close to it, so there was a chance that the circle was protecting her.

Acuity +1

Adjustments are still in progress.

There was also a chance that it was merely hiding her or that the magic had weakened over time so she would not take one fucking chance.

The thing came and went, wiggling its many-legged butt and nightmarish claws over the roof.

Viv did not relax. For all she knew, they could smell a fart from three blocks away. She waited for ten minutes before finally moving to the pile of supplies and inspected it while keeping an eye out. The tarp was easy enough to remove. Those who had left it had weighted the sides with steel spikes. 

[Quality steel spikes: used to stabilize structures such as tents]

The heavy weight of the metal comforted her. It was still solid. It was proof that someone was still alive out there after escaping from this hellhole. She would do the same and get out of here alive. She just had to be smart about it. Smart, and careful.

She placed the spikes to the sides and removed the tarp. It was a treasure trove.

There were pots — including a small one she thought she could indeed carry — a trench shovel, covers, sleeping bags, some sort of log thing that was slightly darkened on top, and a pair of rolled-up water flasks that were a bit cracked but still serviceable. They were completely dry, though.

The real prize came under that, wrapped in leaf-like material.

[Dry travel rations, good quality]

Jack fucking pot.

That was lucky.

Actually, she was really lucky in some ways and really unlucky in others. It was unlucky to end up in the ass-end of some dead empire, in a city populated by creatures that could clearly trounce her in an instant. On the other hand, it was lucky to have found possibly the only place within ten square kilometers where she would not die.

She remembered something.

‘Magic? Magic status?’ she thought to herself.

Focus +1

Adjustments are still in progress.

The interface obliged. 

Current status:

Mana channels (budding)

Extreme compatibility

Divine spark: luck

Mana distribution:

Black 11%

Current attunement: 0.22%

That thing. Divine spark: luck. She was not sure what it meant, but it had saved her bacon. Otherwise, she would only have moved here to end up as people skewers. 

Something bumped into the distance, and Viv squinted to see it. It was almost night now, and she could barely spot her own hands. There were no sources of light at all. No stars, no electricity. It was the first time in her life that she had been in such a dark place without being shut in an enclosed space. She could still feel the air move, carrying with it only the dry scent of windborne dust.

[Necrach tentacular horror: an extremely dangerous undead creature]

Your [Inspection] General Skill has improved to rank 3/5!

Come to think of it, she did not absolutely have to see the thing. It was enough to know that it existed and was walking away. Yep. 

It was too dark to do anything, anyway. So Viv grabbed a sleeping bag and nestled her skinsuit-clad form into it, then she crawled under the tarp like a caterpillar and balled some of it to act like an improvised pillow.

The night was eerily silent outside. Not even the wind moaned in the yawning entrances around her. No trees cracked or groaned.

She thought that sleep would elude her, but she was out in seconds.

Chapter 3: Harrak.

Dawn came over the defunct metropolis.

Viv crawled from under the tarp and blinked at the strange sight.

That was not her barracks.

Then it all came back to her. The new world. The interface. The huge monsters.

The huge monsters.

The thought was enough to pull her from any sleepy haze. She scanned her surroundings with careful attention. Nothing seemed out of place. The morning light was pale and wan, and it made the surrounding stones look like ivory.

Instead of rushing up, she forced herself into breathing exercises. She had to think first. There were many questions, and she had few answers. Some of her priorities were easier to determine than others.

Magic? Cool, but later because she had no idea where to begin.

Determining how she came here and going back to her squad, her friends and family, the world she had left behind, and where she had spent so many efforts carving herself a place to hopefully find happiness?

Later.

The first priority was survival. 

How would she achieve that?

She had to leave. She would die if she stayed. It was not just the monsters, but also the lack of food and water.

One thing was evident. Those who had made camp there had done it despite the abundance of buildings freely available around, which meant that this place never saw rain. Rain would cool a body quickly. It was also unpleasant. She did not believe that magic would change that. She also did not think that someone would bother with a rain-repulsive shield or something when there was so much cover around. The undead things looked fairly large so a small space would have sufficed for safety.

So, no rain.

This place was also dead as a doornail. She couldn’t recall seeing a single dried-up patch of grass. No renewable food source.

So, she had to leave.

In order to do so safely, she needed to find a water source first. Without water, she would die within two days.

That desert looked pretty empty. She had to find it here. It did not rain, but there could be an underground cistern.

In dark places.

She also needed boots. It was alright now that the ground was either flat or made of sand, but walking in the desert meant, perhaps, stones, and walking on that with the equivalent of heavy socks would be bad.

She also needed more food.

She took a brick of travel ration and removed the cover. The food was an unappetizing brown brick, and about as solid. She nibbled on it managing to dislodge a few crumbs with much effort. That would be an uphill battle. 

To her surprise, it tasted alright, like jerky but sweeter…and more granulous. She immediately thought of Pemmican, a type of travel ration originally used by American natives like the Cree nation she had tried during a trip. 

She had about three or four kilograms of food, give or take. The effort of hiking for hours meant about two thousand calories per day would be nice though she could probably stretch it. One hundred grams of Pemmican was a bit under a thousand calories, so she had between fifteen and twenty days of food… actually, that was not too bad. She would run out of water long before that became a problem.

Alright, so, water and boots via underground cistern.

Yesterday’s idea of finding barracks was looking more appealing by the moment. If they had smaller doors, perhaps the big necrarchs could not fit in, and barracks would definitely have boots, food, and a water reserve. So that was worth a shot.

Willpower +4

Acuity +6

Focus +3

Stats adjustment completed. Skills assessment in progress.

Ah, yes. The weird magic.

Come to think of it, she had been too dismissive once before. Perhaps there was a way for her to get an edge.

But first, she had to pee.

Viv walked out of the circle. Immediately, a sense of fever overcame her again. It crawled under her skin, seeped into her aching marrow. Her bones itched. It was a disturbing experience. But it was manageable. Viv straightened and talked aloud. The sound of her voice broke the eternal silence.

“What’s going on?” she asked the interface, but it ignored her. Asshole.

She walked into the nearest building. It could have been a restaurant at some point, she thought. There was a large opening along the main room and a door. A long stone counter split it in two, and she saw a supply closet with the door ajar. All the furniture was ruined, but she found scraps of metal and ceramic that confirmed her hypothesis. She laughed when she entered the closet: a chair made of what looked like solidified sand with a circular hole where the ass should be and another hole in the ground under that. The expedition members had had the same idea, it seemed; they had made a toilet.

She marveled at the smooth fabric of the skinsuit while closing it again. It was really good at keeping the heat in. The only problem was that she had to pool it around her ankle to denude her butt. 

[Faded skinsuit of the Imperial Protector (enchanted): this is all that remains of the once-legendary squad. Most of its enchantments were lost in the cataclysm, but the durability remained. It still possesses a minor self-repair function.]

Nifty. 

Actually…

“Give me my stats,” she ordered.

Physical

Mental

Power

8

Focus

24

Finesse

16

Acuity

28

Endurance

15

Willpower

24

She inspected the various elements.

[Power: your strength and defense, your impact on the physical world. Reaching multiple of tens grants you additional benefits. Current benefits: none]

How arbitrary.

[Finesse: your coordination, agility, speed, and precision. A measure of your control over your own body. Reaching multiple of tens grants you additional benefits. Current benefits: improved balance and precision]

Hmm.

[Endurance: the ability of your body to endure and recover from abuse. Current benefits: you can stay active for forty-eight hours at significant cost]

Well, that was weird, but helpful. She could already operate for long periods of time thanks to her training and a few tricks she had picked up along the way, but that would undoubtedly help in a pinch. One thing that bothered her was the seeming overlap between power and endurance in terms of defenses. Was defense not one’s ability to endure abuse? Bah, whatever. This line of thought would bring her nothing for now.

[Focus: the ability to shape your thoughts without getting distracted. Essential in casting complex spells. Current benefits: ability to cast spells, Inspect skill ]

Looks like all those years spent studying were finally paying off. Or not. Maybe she was a retard, and every human here had all their stats over thirty.

She hoped that there were humans left. The bodies had been human, she thought, except perhaps the king. The sleeping bags appeared human-shaped.

Moving on.

[Acuity: the ability to think fast, accurately, and to infer and deduct. Essential in casting quickly. Current benefits: increased processing speed, temporary perceived time slow]

It was strange that her physical stats were so low compared to the mental ones. She suspected that it had something to do with how magic interacted with bodies here. The necrarchs she had seen should have collapsed under their own weights, light bones or not, and the first one had pretty much cracked stone like eggshells. They probably reinforced their bodies with magic while hers was not, or at least not yet. The interface had mentioned improved stat acquisition speed. That meant that they could be increased.

Alright.

[Willpower: the ability to maintain control of your thoughts. Essential in casting powerful spells. Current benefits: mana shaping, mild resistance to mental effects.]

Self-explanatory.

So, she could think faster for a limited time. That was useful to have. What else was there? Oh, yes, her magic thingie.

Current status:

Mana channels (budding)

Extreme compatibility

Divine spark: luck

Mana distribution:

Black 12%

Current attunement: 0.22%

Viv frowned.

That part had changed, had it not? The black mana thing.

[Mana distribution: between the eighth month of gestation and birth, the child’s body adapts to the mana currents around him or herself. The distribution is fixed for life and offers different affinities for spellcasting. For example, someone born in a desert will show increased red mana distribution, while someone whose mother was at sea before birth will shift towards blue mana. Everyone receives some life mana from their mothers.]

Oh.

Oh no.

Ooooh shit.

She fucking knew it. This was a brand new body! 

Wait, no. She could have been transported, and her body was only now taking mana.

Ah, fuck, who was she kidding. This was a new body, made without hair. 

She had died.

Then, everyone would know. 

Mouq would be mad, and it would majorly piss off the rest of her unit. Her brother Damien would be inconsolable. Dad would not give a shit and capitalize on the tragedy while Mom would start drinking again. Laure and Rachida would probably feel guilty for a long time. Fraise and Gevaudan would never find out why she never went online anymore.

Viv felt tears well for the first time in a year. She pulled back her shoulders and pushed them back, refusing to let them overwhelm her. She had to keep it together. With how screwed she was, she could not even afford to lose the fucking moisture.

Ok.

She was not dead.

This was a world of magic. She would find a way back and return and maybe come back again if they had dragons. Who knows? But nothing would matter if she could not find water and get the fuck out.

Ok, what else?

[Mana channels (budding): metaphysical organs used to channel magic. Their development is essential to spellcasting and skill use)]

“And how do I even do that?”

Silence.

Ah, well. Next.

[Extreme compatibility: represents your latent ability for magic]

Nice. And not a short-term benefit just like the rest.

[Divine spark: luck. You have received a spark of divine essence from Emeric, the God of Luck. It has integrated with your soul. You are lucky!]

Viv’s gaze traveled to her black skinsuit, which a corpse had been wearing a day ago. It then settled on claw marks in the nearby walls, the dead city, the calamitous pyramid. She still felt the feverish haze that permeated this place from inside the protective circle. She stared at her meager belongings.

You are mildly dehydrated.

“Get fucked.”

Rather than walking in a random direction, Viv started making expanding circles from her home base, making sure to always know where it was. She also changed her approach. The danger did not come from being spotted on streets or from the air that she knew of. Instead, it came from inside the buildings. She was still unsure how the creatures might perceive her, so she kept to the middle of the road and made no noise. 

Smaller, official-looking buildings occupied most of this district. Peering through the gaping holes where windows used to be, she could spot halls and smaller rooms that could have been workrooms or personal quarters. There were large signs carved into the walls by each gate, damaged but still readable. She saw scrolls, pens, wands, and other things like a weird thing that could have been a sort of cereal. She guessed that she might be in the administrative quarter. 

She stopped to rest at midday by a dried fountain. She did find a water outlet, or at least she thought it was one, and that made the possibility of an underground cistern more real if the local population had been unable to materialize potable water out of thin air.

The lack of water was making itself felt now. She could barely munch on the brick of food she had brought with her. Not enough saliva.

The early afternoon brought more of the same, but soon, she noticed something good between two smaller buildings.

“Well, would you look at that…”

[Old Empire war golem (destroyed): the remnant of an extremely dangerous war machine. War golems were one of the most powerful tools in the Old Empire’s arsenal.]

It was fucking power armor! No, a humanoid robot. It must have been as tall as three men when active and, well, vertical. 

The architecture might have been brutalist and squarish, but this thing was a work of deadly art. Its legs were heavily armored at the front, its arms were powerful and far apart, and a formidable plate protruded from the middle of its colossal chest. A bit like a conquistador cuirass. One of its arms ended in sharpened claws, and the other was a normal hand. 

Viv remembered the first time she had seen a Mirage fighter jet in a base in Kandahar, two years before. She had been fresh from training then. The jet was not moving or even armed, yet there was no doubt in her mind that this was a tool of death. It was a visceral impression that she could not fully explain, a remnant from the dawn of time when homo sapiens had not quite been the most dangerous species yet.

This was happening again. The Golem might be deactivated now, but it still bore the marks of the hands that had designed it.

She came closer to inspect it. She had to. It was not just magical, it was not just one of the only remaining things still intact in this dusty grave of a city, it was something that her own civilization had not achieved. Earth did not have the safe and portable power sources required to move autonomous robots of this size. Magic could, apparently.

It was even more impressive from up close.

The few exposed mechanisms she could see looked well-designed and very well made. All the protective plates were covered with fine engravings that could have been decorative or part of something magical. There were notches next to the gladiator-like metal head. The two most notable features, besides the thing being badass, were the claw marks covering the armored parts and the cause of death, so to speak.

The claw marks were consistent with what the necrarchs had, at least the two models she had seen. They did not reach the golem’s back, nor did she see nicks on the articulations. The war golem might have fought similar creatures to a standstill. Or even necrarchs. She had noticed the absence of human bones in the streets. There were too many inconsistencies to be sure, but she thought the necrarchs might be connected to the lack of bodies. They could have come from them, or they could have consumed them or a bit of both. 

As for why the golem was still mostly intact, she did not know. It was clearly old. Older than the expedition camp had been.

“Hmm.”

She climbed on the chest and confirmed what she had thought. The war golem had not been destroyed in battle. Instead, someone had unlocked its chest cavity and then forcefully removed components with enough strength to tear off the delicate metallic framework. She inspected the strange parts that were left. They had…

They had letters…

Viv stumbled. She could read it. She could read the parts as if they were in her native language. She was absolutely certain that she had never seen those glyphs before.

Or had she?

She had. Several times. When the interface had started and here and there around town, half-faded.

She could have read if she had stopped and focused.

Gnnnnnn, of course! The interface had said it! She had been granted Old Imperial as part of her bullshit welcome gift!

Skills assessment in progress.

She could not even show it. In any case, this could work. She bent and read.

‘Processing Unit,’ one of those said. It was large, made of a strange cracked material, and surrounded by faded crystals.

‘Communication Module’

‘Mana shield and blast shield Modules’

Ah, the thing was shielded. Perhaps it had protected it from the fateful event. She had the distinct feeling that being inorganic to start with could have given one an edge in a catastrophe that had killed all life in at least a fifty-kilometer radius.

More interesting though, was that someone had removed what was obviously missing: the power source.

And that made her curious. Salvaged power sources could mean a great many things. In any case, the presence of a war golem meant war golem facilities, and those had to be close to barracks of sorts. She would finally return to her natural habitat as a grunt if only she could find where that thing had come from.

She looked around and found nothing specific. 

It was too soon to give up. She jumped down and circled the golem until she found something promising. Under the thick layer of dust was the mark of heavy impact, as if something ponderous had been dropped from some height. A ridge in the stone road led further into the city, away from the pyramid.

She followed the general direction. Two street intersections later, she found another war golem. It was sitting against the wall of a sort of gazebo in a strangely human gesture. Its heavy helmet hung limply on its empty chest. It was similarly deactivated and showed traces of heavy combat. 

This time, the processing unit and the power source were both missing, and she struck gold. The entity responsible for the dismantling had left tracks in a nearby dried-up bed of flowers. They were footsteps, and they were deep and golem-sized. Viv followed them.

Administrative buildings gave way to habitation blocks surrounded by tall walls. Imposing left open gates guarded the large structures. Empty guard booths stood a silent vigil to those living quarters turned graveyards. The silence was oppressive. There was nothing the ever-increasing feverish sensation that pervaded her body. 

One day of solitude was fine. Too much had happened to give her time to settle, anyway. It could change, though. How long would it take to escape this death trap? How long without talking to anyone?

She pushed the thought away to a dark recess of her mind, where the other things she could do nothing about lingered. Survival first. Mental health after. 

More golems appeared in various states of disrepair. One of them was missing an arm and parts of a leg. She also found her first power source, a large crystal with cylinders at the top and bottom, but the one she found was damaged. Come to think of it, those two specific parts were systematically either gone or smashed beyond repair in every carcass she had come across.

Her steps finally led her past one last block and in front of a large enclosure.

She immediately recognized a military installation and heaved a sigh of relief. “Finally.”

The only problem was the time. She could make it back to the circle alright, but it would be a close call if she started exploring right now, assuming the days were about as long as on earth.

Water was a tempting prospect. Or so her throat was telling her.

She gazed up at a double set of open gates with miradors and the two perimeter walls occasionally dotted with guard towers. The arch above the main entrance showed two crossed swords over a large crystal and two dragon wings. Or bat wings, but she was hoping for dragons. What would be the point of magic without dragons, anyway?

The entrance was large enough to accommodate four heavy trucks side by side and still have room for a bike or two.

She crossed them, and the reason became immediately apparent. 

The base's interior had hangars on one side and human-sized, one-story buildings on the other. A massive opening led underground right in front of her.

Destroyed and gutted war golems laid and sat around haphazardly, looking like a med student after-party. She counted at least thirty. 

It was an imposing sight. 

She turned to the right where the hangars lined up. They were imposing steel sheet structures with a curved roof that reached the earth on both sides. Hangars probably meant warehouses, bays, and large spaces where snoozing Necrachs could come to gather, so, fuck that. The smaller structures to the left were promising, though.

Her gaze returned to the opening in front of her.

Possibly water.

She walked cautiously, inspecting golems on her way in case one of them was merely playing at being dead. They were not.

She ended up facing a slope down to an underground bunker, with a blast door as thick as a bank vault hanging open. 

[Faded Old Empire secured gate (enchanted): this gate was meant to stop artillery spells and arcane siege weaponry. The cataclysm destroyed many of its enchantments.]

She made her way down, staying low and to the side, ready to fall back at the first sign of a white limb. The ground showed signs of passage. There was dust at the corner but none in the middle. None of those were clawed feet.

So far so good.

She stepped on the landing and peered in.

The bunker was a single room as large as one of the other hangars with concrete walls and floors and man-sized openings at the far end. It held many squarish bays with frames obviously designed to maintain golems in position. Most of them were empty, and the few that were not had their guests gutted like the others. 

There was something in the center of the room. She had to make a double-take to understand what was going on.

A single golem stood in the center of the room. Its chest was open like that of the others, but that was where the similarities ended. It was to them what a timber wolf was to a border collie, and not just because of the size. The armor was immensely more elaborate and covered in gems and runes now faded. The construct's hands, exquisitely made, looked strangely human, as did its face mask in the likeness of a handsome man.

The power source was exposed, but it still shone feebly with a pale blue light. Three small crystals were hooked to it via a set of cables, and a pile of darkened ones sat further away. All the processing units lay on a tarp to one side, arranged in neat rows.

[Old Empire experimental war golem: one of the secret weapons of the empire and a dedicated mage and monster killer, this unique work by the grand engineer Irlefen has not been equaled since its creation. Extremely dangerous.]

It did look extremely dangerous. On the other hand, it also looked kind of dead.

The eyes of the thing flashed yellow.

//ORGANIC LIFEFORM DETECTED.

Nevermiiiiiiiiiind.

Time slowed as Viv turned to run.

//P-P-P-PLEASE. WAIT. PLEASE.

And stopped.

She took a few steps backs to the entrance to stare again. The thing had not moved. Its eyes shone a dim yellow, and she was unsure, but they appeared to be sweeping across the room.

It was the voice that had halted her. It rang in the hollow space, both mechanical and so very… alive, like a human voice gone through a synthesizer. She did not perceive despair in the tone but there was urgency in the rhythm, and the curious dichotomy had touched her. It had been a cry for help.

The language was Old Empire. It was a beautiful tongue, she thought, with many soft consonants and a tone that went up and down like a song. Perhaps loneliness was getting to her, but she had liked listening to it.

And finally, there was someone to talk to. Someone who may have answers.

A part of Viv wondered if the thing would stand up and try to kill her if she came too close, but she dismissed it. The experimental war golem was clearly on its last leg, strapped to many heavy-looking pieces of metal that would hang from it and slow its movements.

She had to take risks.

“Hello?” she tried.

The yellow eyes swivelled towards her.

//GREETINGS CITIZEN, HAVE YOU NEWS OF COMING REINFORCEMENTS? ImperIaL FAMILY STAtU-U-US? COMBAT OPERATIONS IN PR-R-ROGRESS?

“Errrrr.”

//ERROR DETECTED. DIAGNOSTIC IN PROGRESS.

//PLEASE STAND BY. 

//DECISION CENTER COMPROMISED.

//PURGING MAINFRAME. 

//ATTRIBUTING PRIORITY QUEUE TO SECONDARY MODULES.

//GREETINGS CITIZEN, HAVE YOU NEWS OF REINFORCEMENT, ALSO, HAVE YOU NEWS OF THE IMPERIAL FAMILY, ALSO, HAVE YOU NEWS OF THE CURRENT STATUS OF THE HARRAKAN DEFENSE DIRE—

“Alright, alright, slow down!”

//—EEEEECTOOOOOORAAAAAATE, AAAAALSOOOO

“Oi! Hold on a minute!”

Was the thing mocking her?

//REQUEST GRANTED. HOLDING ON.

It held on.

“Hmm. Ok. Huh, as far as I can tell, this city is empty and has been empty for many years. It’s completely dead. No reinforcements are coming, as far as I know. People are gone. There is nothing to come back to. I am sorry.”

Silence.

“As for the imperial family, I saw a man in the pyramid’s throne room. He was quite dead, I’m afraid.”

Silence. The golem felt dejected to her, the lack of facial expression made certainty impossible. She stepped closer inside the bunker. Just like the outside, it only smelled vaguely dusty.

“As for the directorate, I don’t know. What is Harrak?”

For a moment, she thought she was being ignored. Then...

//MINUTE ENDED. THIS UNIT IS NO LONGER HANGING.

//HARRAK IS THE CITY WE STAND IN, THE CAPITAL OF THE HARRAKAN EMPIRE AND THE SEAT OF THE EMPEROR, LONG MAY HE LIVE!

It was definitely acting a bit weird there.

//WHAT ABOUT THE OUTER PROVINCES? ARE REINFORCEMENTS COMING FROM THERE?

She did not know how much she should state. She wanted answers to her questions as well, and there was a risk that informing the golem of the state of the place could lead it to blow a fuse, or whatever arcane equivalent it had.

“Hmm, can you help me?”

//PLEASE, CITIZEN.

“Alright, fine. As far as I know, your empire has collapsed. The inspect skill calls it “Old Empire,” not ‘Harrakan empire’. There could be inheritors left, maybe?”

//COLLAPSED?

“I am sorry.”

//SO LONG AS THE PEOPLE OF HARRAK LIVE, WE WILL NEVER FALL!

Aaaaand now Viv felt like shit. Her heart skipped a beat, recalling the worst memory of her brief career during an operation around Kandahar. One man had received a piece of shrapnel in the back, and she had stabilized him, but one look at the wound, and she knew he would never walk again. He had been conscious, and he had guessed. She always had a shit poker face, one of the many reasons why she and her dad never got along.

She had been in a fantasy necropolis for less than a full day, and the flaw was already biting her ass again.

//CITIZEN, ARE YOU NOT A CITIZEN OF HARRAK?

“I... I’m sorry, I just got here. Everyone is dead. The land is dead.”

//THERE IS NO ONE LEFT?

It was almost plaintive. Again, the tone was neutral and perhaps even a bit cheerful, but it felt forced. The rhythm was off too. Instead of revolting her, it made her feel sympathy. The golem was obviously intelligent. Perhaps it simply lacked the tools to express itself.

“Maybe... maybe far from here?”

//THE CITIZEN OF THE HARRAKAN EMPIRE WOULD NEVER LET THE CAPITAL FALL.

“I am sorry.”

The yellow eyes flashed once. The golem was still not moving. It was also getting a bit late, and Viv considered going back. She could still return tomorrow and be fine, as long as there was water here.

The fear of dying of dehydration further dampened her mood. This world was a strange mix of the wonderful and the horrible. There was magic, but also monsters. There was a smart golem, but she had to inform it of the destruction of his world. And she was a day away from horrible suffering if she did not find the precious liquid.

“Are you alright?”

//CURRENT STATUS: ENERGY LEVELS CRITICAL.

//REPAIRS NEEDED.

//MAINTENANCE NEEDED.

//CURRENT DIRECTIVES CANNOT BE ATTAINED.

//THIS UNIT REQUIRES HELP.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know where I can find more of those power sources you use, and I don’t think saving this city is an option. There is nothing but necrarchs here.”

//THIS UNIT CANNOT ALTER PRIMARY DIRECTIVES ON ITS OWN.

“I don’t know how to help you. As I said, I just arrived here. I literally appeared in the throne room, and I needed some help. Would you mind answering a few questions?”

//PLEASE STAND BY.

“Aw, come on, it’s getting late!”

//PLEASE ELABORATE: APPEAR.

Viv stopped and thought. Perhaps outlanders were hunted for sports in those parts?

That was unlikely.

And the golem would not do any hunting. She decided to go for broke.

“I’m an outlander. I think my body reformed in the throne room. That was yesterday.”

//YOUR BODY DID NOT EXIST BEFORE YESTERDAY?

“Well, not in this plane of existence.”

//ANSWER DETERMINED AS: NO.

“Yeah, ok, whatever. Can you answer my questions? I’m on a schedule. Night falling. Monsters coming. The horrible nausea and headache that comes with dehydration. That sort of thing?”

//PLEASE CONFIRM: YOU STARTED TO EXIST YESTERDAY WITHIN THE THRONE ROOM OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE.

“What the hell? Yes! Now tell me where I can find some water!”

//THIS UNIT HAS A REQUEST.

“Ok, but later!” Viv said with increasing frustration, “Water first!”

//PROCESSING.

//REQUEST GRANTED. TAKE THE SECOND DOOR FROM THE LEFT AND GO DOWN TWO FLIGHTS OF STAIRS TO THE GENERAL CISTERN.

“No necrarchs downstairs, right?”

//THERE ARE NO HOSTILES IN THIS FACILITY.

Viv did not wait. She took off and struggled to open the sealed door leading down. It was heavily damaged so she kicked the corroded hinge until it broke with a bit more spite than necessary. The stairs were also metal, and she slowed down lest they crumble under her feet, and she ended up with a rusty steel bar poking out of her chest. The place she ended up in was the lowest, which, she thought, was not very low. The light was minimal, and it came from an open aeration shaft to the outside. She could barely see where she was walking.

The second door moved with little effort.

Inside, she found racks upon racks of supplies of one sort or another extending into the darkness. Only the words of the strange golem gave her the confidence to search the room. Fortunately, the massive shape of the water reservoirs was easy to discern. There were three of them. Her skin suit-covered hands searched the surface and found no opening, with none below either.

Her panicked mind conjured images of magic dispensers, but she dismissed them soon enough. This was the army. The army would never use complicated or expensive stuff when a simple tap would do. So she circled around and found it on the other side.

She switched it, and liquid came out. It was water, stale and tepid, and with a vague iron taste. Nevertheless, it was one of the best drinks she had ever had.

You are no longer dehydrated.

“Fuck yes. One less immediate cause of death.”

The tank had been hermetically closed, and a tap on its smooth surface had confirmed that it was still full. She had enough there to last her a long time. Things were looking up.

Viv felt, once again, weird about the entire thing. She was caught in a death trap, but it had only taken her one day to find food, water, and shelter. She had almost died to a weird monster, had found a somewhat friendly war machine, and now she was rummaging through a magical armory. And that was without even considering the existence of magic, gods, and how she could interact with them via the interface. She wanted to share this with Mouq and her friends back home. Mouq would probably tell her to shut the fuck up and to fill the flasks because the night was coming.

Right.

Pouring water in the rigid flasks proved to be an annoying endeavor, not least because the neck was slightly too small, and she was wasting water. She filled two and headed back up.

The big war golem was in the middle of some intense discussion with itself.

//CONSENSUS NOT REACHED.

//ALTERING PROCESS MODULES 17,19,43,51,52.

//ERROR.

//TERMINATING PROCESS MODULES 19,52.

//MEMORY PURGED.

//CONSENSUS REACHED.

//AWAITING CITIZEN.

“Hm, hello, I am here.”

//GREETINGS CITIZEN, WAS YOUR QUEST FOR ITEM: ‘WATER’ SUCCESSFUL?

“Oh, yes, thank you.

//EMPATHY EXPRESSED, RETURNING TO MAIN OBJECTIVE.

//CITIZEN, THIS UNIT HAS A REQUEST.

“Ok, but quickly, I really need to go for the night.”

//REQUEST: THIS UNIT DOES NOT WISH TO DIE.

…

That was something she could definitely sympathise with.

“You need my help?”

//DOES THE CITIZEN AGREE WITH THE REQUEST?

“I need to know more.”

//THANK YOU FOR CONSIDERING MY REQUEST, CITIZEN.

“Sure.”

//EMPATHY EXPRESSED, RETURNING TO MAIN OBJECTIVE.

//CITIZEN, PLEASE CONFIRM THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS.

//TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE, THE EMPIRE HAS COLLAPSED.

//TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE, THE PEOPLE HAVE FALLEN.

//TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE, THE EMPEROR AND HIS FAMILY HAVE PERISHED.

//TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE, YOU BECAME ALIVE WITHIN THE WALLS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE.

“Hmm. Yes, yes, yes, and yes?”

//CONSENSUS CONDITION: THE CITIZEN WILL BIND WITH THE GOLEM CORE TO VERIFY THIS INFORMATION. 

//THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT REQUEST, CITIZEN. YOU WILL BE COMPENSATED FOR YOUR SACRIFICE.

“What? What sacrifice?”

//THIS UNIT WILL GAIN FULL ACCESS TO YOUR INTERFACE DATA AND MAGIC FIELD DATA. THIS UNIT APOLOGIZES FOR THE BREACH OF PRIVACY. YOUR PERSONAL DATA WILL BE KEPT SECRET UNDER IMPERIAL LAW. YOUR PERSONAL DATA WILL ONLY BE ACCESSIBLE BY A DULY APPOINTED STATE-LEVEL INQUISITOR IN CASE OF LEVEL FIVE INVESTIGATION OR ABOVE.

“You’ll get to see my interface? And personal data?”

//YES. THIS UNIT REALIZES THAT THIS IS A SERIOUS REQUEST.

“Hmm.”

It would have shocked her more if her preference in underwear was not stored on at least seventeen different servers back on earth to be sold to advertisers. People here apparently took their privacy very seriously.

“Alright then, how do we proceed? And hurry, I need to be back before the necrarchs come out to play.”

//THIS PLACE IS SECURED AGAINST NECRARCHS.

//THIS UNIT HAS HUNTED MANY NECRARCHS.

“And how long since you last went out and killed one?”

//SEVENTEEN YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS...

“Yeah, so there could be one in the hangar, and you would not know. How long till nightfall?”

//ONE AND A THIRD OF A PERIOD.

“...”

It took Viv one minute, counting seconds in front of the golem, then doing a bit of arithmetic to realize that this planet was rotating slightly slower on itself than earth. A day here was about twenty-six to thirty hours long, depending on how much she had fucked up counting seconds for the golem to measure. She still had three hours before it got dark enough for the creatures to come out. One hour and a half should be more than enough to head back as she had wasted quite some time finding her way around.

The strict geometry of Harrak made orientation easy. She was six blocks left and three up from the pyramid entrance. That was a long stroll if one wanted to be careful, but nothing insurmountable.

“Ok, how do we do this?”

//PLACE A DROPLET OF BLOOD IN THE PROCESSING UNIT’S BINDING NODE.

Viv had no problem finding the cute little rectangle set in the massive crystal and metal cylinder. The difficulty arose when she realized she had no tool to draw blood. In the end, she had to open her skinsuit to free an arm and use the claw of an old golem that had not seen combat in forever and hope that it was more or less sterile. It was the best she could do.

//WHY NOT USE MY RAVAGER BLADE? ITS SHARPNESS IS WITHOUT EQUAL.

“How many times did it end inside a necrarch, though?”

//SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN TIMES! THIS UNIT IS A GLORIOUS SERVANT OF THE EMPEROR. LONG MAY HE LIVE!

“That was a rhetorical question, buddy. I don’t want dry necrarch juice under my skin, thank you very much.”

You are about to allow a foreign entity full access to your interface. This process cannot be reverted. Are you sure you want to proceed?

Wow, way to make it scary.

“Hold on, you will have access to the content of my interface all the time?” she asked with a bit of anger.

//UNTIL THE BOND IS BROKEN. YOU MAY MANUALLY BREAK THE BOND.

“Is this the only way to save your life?”

//IF YOUR STATEMENTS ARE CORRECT, YES.

She stopped.

She was going to do something special for a perfect stranger. To her, the weird golem was quite obviously sapient and sentient, so she would help it if she could, but her own life was also important.

“Can I trust you?”

//THIS UNIT’S EMPATHY MODULE WAS NOT CREATED WITH THE ABILITY TO DECEIVE.

That was totally what someone with a deceit module would say. But, ah, the feverish sensation she was feeling was messing up with her mind. 

“You got to help me afterward. I want to live as well.”

//IF THIS WORKS, I WILL DO MY BEST TO ASSIST YOU. IF THIS DOES NOT WORK, I WILL DO MY BEST TO ASSIST YOU. MY ASSISTANCE WILL BE OVERWHELMINGLY MORE USEFUL IF THIS WORKS.

Ah, what the hell.

Yes.

//DATA RECEIVED. ANALYSIS. ANALYSIS COMPLETE. 

//TIME OF EXISTENCE OF THE BODY: ONE DAY. 

//STATED PLACE OF ORIGIN CONSISTENT WITH CURRENT MANA DISTRIBUTION

//CONSENSUS CONDITION CONFIRMED. 

//CITIZEN REDESIGNATED AS HEIR TO THE THRONE.

“Excuse your pardon what?”

//ONLY MEMBERS OF THE IMPERIAL FAMILY MAY GIVE BIRTH IN THE IMPERIAL PALACE.

//CITIZEN WAS BORN WITHIN THE IMPERIAL PALACE.

//CITIZEN IS A MEMBER OF THE IMPERIAL FAMILY.

//ALL OTHER MEMBERS OF THE IMPERIAL FAMILY HAVE PERISHED

//CITIZEN IS HEIR TO THE THRONE OF THE EMPIRE, LONG MAY SHE LIVE!

//PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME, YOUR GRACE.

“What? But…”

She wanted to protest but stopped. It did not matter if he called her citizen or heir or auntie Suzette. What mattered was getting out of the city, and she assumed that giving her a big status related to how he could survive and assist.

“Call me Viv, I guess.”

//BEEB

“No, Viv, as in Viviane. Viv.

//BEEB, AS IN BIBIANE. BEEB.

Viv thought the golem was fucking with her, but she scoured her newly gained knowledge of his language and realized that they never, ever, used the sound v. 

And boy, did that piss her off.

“Viv.”

//BEEB.

“Seriously, can’t you recreate the sound, at all?”

//THIS UNIT HAS NO NEED TO USE THE LANGUAGES OF THE BARBARIANS AND INFERIOR CULTURES. //THE TONGUE OF THE HARRAKAN EMPIRE WILL ALWAYS SUFFICE, GLORY TO THE HEIR! LONG MAY SHE LIVE!

“Just fucking call me Bob, why don’t you.”

//REQUEST GRANTED, YOUR GRACE, PRINCESS BOB. THIS UNIT PLEDGES ITSELF TO YOU.

You have received the allegiance of [HX-013 Experimental Strike Golem, designation: Solfis]. 

Ah, fuck.

//SET NEW CURRENT DIRECTIVE, YOUR GRACE.

“Keep us both alive.”

//NEW DIRECTIVE ACCEPTED. 

There was silence for a moment. Then, the golem’s yellow glare stopped flashing and turning around and seemed to land on her with a singular intensity. It was strange to see this mighty war machine unmoving on the ground. The golem must have been an incredible force in the distant past. Now, it was the only thinking being left in this horrible place beside her, comrades in misfortune brought together by their distinct tragedies. 

//THANK YOU, PRINCESS BOB.

And it was already being a jerk.

Solfis, the sassy war golem of ultimate mispronunciation, sent her on her way after determining the location of her camp and the best path to it. Apparently, it had waged war against the necrarchs for three centuries, basically since the fall of the Harrakan empire itself. It and its brethren had not died like everyone else during the cataclysm, and they had fought the undead that populated the place until they ran out of power. 

The idea of undead was not new to her. They had been a pain in her backside in Minecraft already. She was curious about them, but Solfis had informed her that there would be ample time to discuss this later.

Meanwhile, Solfis still knew where most necrarchs concentration had gone and shared the details with her. Apparently, they rarely moved at all. Her arrival must have kicked the hornet’s nest. The upside was that necrarch had haunts (haha), and they would often dwell in the same place. That made them mostly predictable.

She found the circle with time to spare. The feverish feeling that decreased as soon as she stepped in, giving her a sensation of intense relief. She knew for sure by then that the strange radiation was affecting her mind. Not that she had much choice, and not that befriending Solfis had been a mistake. It was her ticket out of here. 

She also realized that while she had the bare necessities, she had nothing else.

She had a small pot but no way to light a fire. A thorough search of the supplies yielded no obvious lighter, matches, or wand-of-press-here-to-solve-all-your-problems. There were no books either. 

After quickly mounting the tent, she realized she had nothing left to do but twiddle her thumbs until night came.

A quick inspection of her interface revealed nothing new or exciting.

[Maradoc: God of Travels and Mysteries]

Yeah, you already said that.

[Nous: strange god of magic and granter of the interface, which allows sentients to understand and interact with the forces of magic.]

She wondered if Solfis had an interface as well. Probably, if he was able to see hers. 

She needed a backpack to carry stuff around. She had fabric but no needle or anything. The sleeping bag would do if she was desperate.

And that was it—all she could think about.

She was left with her thoughts as the invisible sun (she was pretty sure there was just the one) continued its course behind the thick curtain of dreary clouds. The shadows could not even lengthen as there were none.

Why did she even end up in this place?

Did she really die? Or was her soul somehow transported? What had happened to everyone once they had found her corpse? Would they bury her in Nice with the rest of her family, or would the military take care of it? She did not know. She had not checked. She’d made her will and even sent messages to people she liked in the likely case of her demise. The life of a soldier had its risks. The minutiae of burial were not something she had cared about.

She hoped everyone would deal, but she knew that a mysterious death on the battlefield would bring questions and concern. It was one thing to be killed in combat, another one to fall mysteriously.

She hoped she would see her family and friends again.

Her eyes grew embarrassingly wet, with nothing to distract her from her predicament.

Ah, fuck it.

In the metropolis's heart, a small voice rose in defiance. It did not reach past the small square where the outlander hid, and yet the spirit of it crossed through space and time to convey its priceless message. It was in bastardized English, with a horrible mix of French and Cockney accent.

“Soooooome things in life are bad, they can reaaaaaally make you mad,

Other things will make you swear and cuuuuuurse!

When you’re chewing on life’s gristle…

Don’t grumble.

Give a whistle!

And this’ll help things turn out for the beeeeeeeest.

Aaaaaaaaaynd

Always look on the bright side of life. Tudu. Tudu tudu tudu...”

Chapter 4: The Tools of Success

 Viv, or the newly minted Princess Bob, depending on whom you asked, woke up to a notification and a headache.

You are suffering from mild mana poisoning.

“Well, good morning to you too, twat.”

The fever was back with a vengeance. She used a little bit of water to clean her face and armpits, visited the women’s room (it really was), and forced down some of the travel rations by holding water in her mouth and suckling on a brick like a baby cow. She was not feeling hungry yet. Primarily because of nausea.

It did not take long to retrace her steps. There had been no roaming necrarchs yesterday, but that was no reason to lower her guard. She made sure to look at nearby passages even if Solfis had said they were clear. The necrarchs might only come out to play at night but perhaps a snack was worth a minor sunburn.

The return to the base happened without incident. With a clear goal, everything became smoother.

//GOOD MORNING, YOUR GRACE!

“And to you too, Solfis.”

The mighty construct was still standing. The yellow eyes turned to her.

//THIS UNIT HAS CALCULATED THE BEST WAY FOR US TO SURVIVE. THIS UNIT IS ECSTATIC TO INFORM YOU THAT THE ODDS SURPASS 37%!

“Yeah, I’m ecstatic, alright.”

//YOUR ELATION PLEASES THIS UNIT.

//EMPATHY EXPRESSED, RETURNING TO MAIN OBJECTIVE.

//YOUR GRACE, THE CITY OF HARRAK IS CURRENTLY SATURATED WITH BLACK MANA TO THE EXCLUSION OF EVERY OTHER TYPE. 

//THE MANA CONCENTRATION WILL KILL YOU WITHIN FOUR DAYS. 

//YOU WILL BE RENDERED UNCONSCIOUS WITHIN THREE DAYS AND A HALF.

“What?!” 

She brought up her interface.

Current status:

Mana channels (budding)

Extreme compatibility

Divine spark: luck

Mana distribution:

Black 26%

Current attunement: 0.31%

“Is it related to my mana distribution?”

//YES. THIS UNIT WILL EXPLAIN LATER. 

//FOR NOW, YOU MUST GATHER SUPPLIES AND LEAVE THE SITE OF THE CATACLYSM TO SLOW DOWN YOUR IMPENDING DOOM.

“Okay.”

//THERE SHOULD BE EVERYTHING YOU NEED IN THE BARRACKS AND ARMORY OF THE ENGINEERS’ QUARTERS.

“Would that be on the right when I exit?”

//CORRECT.

Solfis gave her a few more indications before she left.

The engineers’ quarters housed the many crews responsible for golem assembly, repair, and maintenance while there were live humans aeound. They were squat stone blocks stuck together with a low ceiling and a reinforced armature visible from the outside. There used to be a blue and red subsection, but she could no longer see the distinction.

Viv wondered if the city was once filled with vibrant colors and if the black mana had devoured dyes with the same gluttony it had demonstrated for lives or if the dust and the frigid wind had done it.

The main door was locked tight and would not budge, but she quickly found a shattered window with bars that crumbled under her fingers on the side facing the pyramid. Finally, she had a way in.

The first room she found herself in had been some sort of office. The friable husk of a wooden desk sat in a miserable pile, and bone crumbled under her feet, the lack of soles making the experience that much more macabre. The doors on the inside had been wood as well. They fell apart in her hands.

Light proved an issue once again when she made her way through the tight, empty corridors. Solfis could not provide her with a light source. There were portable lamps inside his bunker, but they had all been mana-powered, and the enchantments had long faded. The same was true for torches, not that there was an overabundance of flammable material to start with. Rotten wood would not help her there.

Her solution was to circle around and open all the doors she could find. There were a surprising amount of openings, and the visibility finally improved. She found a mess hall with upper windows covered in too much dust to afford proper visibility. She also found her first bodies.

The base had been designed for golems from the get-go, so the undead infesting the city had not managed to get their filthy claws on the remains of the garrison. The bodies laid where they had worked or rested, still well-conserved after so many years. They looked like mummies, some of them still having hair stuck to their dry scalps. A good portion of them were women, she thought, from the body structures. The engineers wore uniforms like flight suits while tatters still clung to officers, nurses, and cooks. 

The dormitory was a graveyard.

She silently moved from chest to chest, finding half of them unlocked. There were bodies on the beds and others sitting around tables. A few were on the very ground, struck as they were moving. 

The presence of so many remains affected her, and she stopped and clasped her hands.

“Gods of this world, please welcome these poor souls in the afterlife of their faith because they sure as hell did not deserve this. Thank you.”

There was no response this time either. That was fine. The simple gesture would preserve her and the dead person’s humanity, despite the indignity of it all.

At least, her treasure hunt was bearing fruits.

[Old Empire Home Guard backpack: this herma backpack used to have a resistance enchantment, now faded. The Home Guard consisted of citizens and non-combat personnel, trained to hold the line against surprise monster incursions until dedicated troops could join the fray.]

Herma evoked the image of cotton in her mind, though she knew it was an equivalent, not the same plant. One more weird thing to add to the pile.

The chest and the multiple layers of walls had left this one primarily intact. It was a bit dry, but still serviceable. She also found a thin rope, a fancy lighter made of silver that could only produce sparks, and — marvel of marvels — a pair of boots her size. Unfortunately, those were just a bit too dry, and she had to use some twine she had found to tie them properly around her ankles.

The best find was a nice dagger with a blade that still shone. It was in a sheath on the desk of a larger office at the back of the structure beside a corpse wearing a cape.

[Faded Old Empire Veteran Dagger (enchanted): those weapons were badges of office granted to career officers after a life of service. They were proof of competence and dedication, and their owners were held in high regard.]

“Sorry friend, I need it more than you do. Rest in peace.”

Viv, tomb raider extraordinaire. Exploring empty cities. Apologizing to mummies. 

Well, at least things were better now. 

Her last stop was the armory, set in the deepest part of the structure behind a protective layer of metal bars. She found the keys on the desk of a dead woman, her hand still clutching two metal needles and a ratty scarf. The signs of humanity were getting to Viv again, so she hurried inside.

Wow.

There were weapon racks, armor stands, and various shelves filled with stuff as well. Most of the gear was dry and unusable, but her attention zeroed on a few notable exceptions with intense greed.

[Faded cloak of camouflage of the Old Empire (enchanted)]

The fabric was light, and it came with a hood and scarf that covered up her face and nose. The city was only mildly dusty, and she still had to silence a few sneezes during her exploration. The desert was bound to be worse. The cloak would help, even if the camouflage function no longer worked, and the thing was now stuck to the same shade of grey and beige as everything else.

Actually, that would be camouflage. Huh.

More importantly, the thing had pockets. So it was worth it just for that.

[Faded Elite Scout armor of the Old Empire (enchanted): lightweight armor worn by Elite Scout squad leaders in the heydays of the Old Empire. It still offered decent protection even though most of the enchantments focused on sneaking and aura camouflage.]

She hesitated for that one because she did not technically need protection. The necrarchs could simply pull her head off if they wanted. In the end, it was a deeply embedded notion of decency that motivated her to try it on. The skinsuit was very, very form-fitting. PG-13 at the very least. 

She tried the armor on, and that was it.

“I have never looked so cool in my entire life…” she whispered. Armani did not have a thing on whoever had designed that masterpiece. There was even a little skirt thing to cover her butt. 

Unfortunately, there were no bracers or chin guards, so she could not accessorize. Most of the armors here were basic and functional, anyway. It was lucky that she found something not meant for the corps of engineers. Possibly some other unit passing by,

“Oooh, and what’s this?”

She found one last thing of interest, a silvery staff hanging against the wall. Now that looked nice and useful too. She extended her hand up to pull it off the wall.

“Fuck!” She dodged to the side as the thing fell on the ground with a thunderous clang. It was so freaking heavy. What?

[Faded infantry modular polearm shaft of the Old Empire (enchanted): this piece of equipment was a staple of the elite of the Harrakan heavy infantry and could accommodate a variety of heads depending on the type of foes faced]

What was it made of, depleted uranium?

Something shifted near the entrance.

Viv froze in her tracks. She had definitely heard movement. Something heavy and solid had dragged itself against the wall or the floor. She wasn’t alone.

She packed all her stuff in rushed silence before stepping out of the armory. She was now facing toward the base entrance. The pyramid was forward and right. The barracks entrance, the bunker, and the hangar behind it were all directly to her left.

So was the source of the noise.

She peered into the darkness. There was nothing there. Only a straight corridor directly to the entrance hall she had bypassed, past a pair of ruined doors.

She squinted. Her eyes were not good enough, but she had another tool now.

[Ruined door of the Old Empire: a ruined door from—

Yeah, I don’t need an in-depth explanation every time. So take a hint, she thought.

[Broken glass]

[Dead person]

[Broken door handle]

[Necrarch millipede]

Fuck!

Ok, ok, calm down. It was not moving. It was not moving now, but it definitely reacted. 

Need to get out.

Ok, retracing her steps may not be the best idea now that the thing possibly knew there was an intruder. So she retreated into the armory and checked the windows, but they were narrow and very high.

Viv moved to a nearby office with openings with slow purpose, monitoring the empty corridor behind her.

She stepped and approached the most damaged bars. The mortar crumbled under her strength, and the opening widened.

Something moved again.

Time slowed down, and she hurried with the strength of despair.

Two bars joined their brethren on the ground, and she jumped through.

Behind, something moved like a freight train. Dust fell from the ceiling.

Panic flooded her body while she stayed close to the wall and crawled away in silence. The thing passed by, and she heard a distant hiss. It must have found the light. Silence returned to the facility.

Her heart finished playing a Metallica drum solo.

Fucking hell, she needed out. She continued along the wall and away from the creature. She sprinted to the entrance of the bunker.

She turned around. Through a gutted window, a myriad of beady red eyes watched her retreat.

//YOU HAVE RETURNED YOUR GRACE.

“There is a fucking necrarch in the barracks!”

//TAKE A DEEP BREATH, YOUR GRACE. YOU ARE UNHARMED, AND I SEE THAT YOUR FORAY WAS SUCCESSFUL. WE WILL BE LONG GONE BY THE TIME IT COMES OUT TO HUNT.

“Yeah, yeah, ok.”

//EMPATHY EXPRESSED, RETURNING TO MAIN OBJECTIVE.

//YOU WILL NEED TO MAKE ME TRANSPORTABLE SO THAT WE CAN BOTH DEPART THIS PLACE.

Viv frowned a bit at that whole empathy thing. It sounded a bit condescending as if the golem did it because it was indulging her weakness.

“How do I do that?”

//YOU MUST REMOVE MY PROCESSING CORE FROM THE GOLEM FRAME, THEN YOU NEED TO ATTACH A PORTABLE SENSOR SUIT TO IT SO I CAN PERCEIVE THE WORLD AND INTERACT WITH YOU. 

//THIS UNIT IS VOLUMINOUS. YOU WILL PROBABLY NEED A SEPARATE BAG.

That could be done. She could carry the unit in her hands and back to camp, then shove it into a sleeping bag and carry the thing over her shoulder, maybe. That would be slow-going.

She went to unplug the core.

//WAIT.

“Hmm?”

To her surprise, the golem remained unexpectedly silent. It took it a while to continue.

//ONCE YOU REMOVE THIS UNIT FROM ITS FRAME, IT WILL LOSE ITS ABILITY TO PERCEIVE BUT NOT TO PROCESS.

“You mean, you will be stuck in there? Conscious?”

//THAT IS CORRECT.

Fucking hell, that sounded awful.

“For how long?”

//UNTIL THE INTEGRATED POWER SOURCE RUNS OUT OF ENERGY. SEVENTEEN DAYS, THREE PERIODS. 

//WHEN THE POWER SOURCE RUNS OUT, THIS UNIT WILL DEACTIVATE, AND ITS MEMORY BANK CONTENTS WILL BE LOST. THE CORE WILL BE WIPED CLEAN.

“So, you will die? Forever?”

//YES.

“Hey. Don’t worry. I’ll pull you out, plug a sensor suit in, and we will leave, ok? I’ve carried forty kilograms of gear before. This is nothing.”

//I UNDERSTAND.

“No need to worry.”

//THIS UNIT WAS NOT EQUIPPED WITH A WORRY MODULE.

“Then what are you bitching about? Let’s do this.

//DO NOT DROP ME.

“...”

//…YOUR GRACE. DO NOT DROP ME, YOUR GRACE.

“I’m doing it.”

She eyed her prize. It was a thing of metal and crystal, and it looked pretty heavy. However, it was also exquisitely made and engraved, reflecting the pallid light on its polished surface. It represented someone’s lifework.

“Alright.”

Viv found and unplugged the power cable and another one that linked the golem’s processing unit to the different systems. There were many braces and locks to uncouple before she could pull the core out. Apparently, the core and processing unit were synonymous. 

It all went without a hitch. The parts were intact and mostly made of a smooth silvery metal that had remarkably survived the passage of time. She suspected binding Solfis had given her some sort of access level because she had no need for a key. 

Soon, it was done. She grabbed her backpack, crouched, and straightened her back properly, then dead lifted the core.

“FUCK!”

She took two stumbling steps and put the core down.

It was heavy as fuck.

It was… too heavy.

At least fifty kilograms.

There was no way in hell she could carry it through the streets, much less through a full desert. It was not just the weight. The core was cumbersome as hell, and that was without the essential supplies she would have to carry as well.

“Damn.”

That was bad.

“Ok, ok. Think. First, the sensor suite.”

She grabbed it from the ground. It looked like a tiny robot head with huge eyes, the kind she would expect from the comic relief droid in some-budget sci-fi flick. It looked pathetic compared to the bling core.

Clicking it on and fastening it was a matter of seconds.

//Well done. Shall we depart?

Its voice now was distinctly male and only slightly synthetic. It was a far cry from the booming bass of before. It made the golem more human.

“I… I can’t. You’re too heavy.”

//Processing.

//Your power stands at eight.

“It’s very low, right?”

//Yes.

//Most children reach ten by the age of twelve, even those who are not… were not, in a warrior curriculum.

“I’m sorry.”

//Do not apologize, Your Grace. After all, you were only born yesterday. 

//This unit should have taken this parameter into consideration. 

//...

//After taking your current power into account, your best chance of survival will be to leave me behind. 

//Please acquire a notebook so that this unit can give you direction.

“No.”

//Your grace. Bob. Beebiane. You will die if you stay. 

//It comforts me to know that, at the end of my life, I could help someone survive. 

//I am… skirting the limits of my hard-coded directives by naming you heir to the throne, but the relief I feel knowing that my help will help you survive is genuine.

“Wait.”

//You need directions, and you need instructions. There is little time.

“Solfis, shut up. I did not escape my fate as one of my dad’s pawns and some asshole’s trophy wife by giving up at the first sign of problems, ok? I’m special fucking forces. Hang on.”

Solfis did not reply. She looked around the bay.

Engineers were efficient. Even if someone had an anti-gravity spell of some equivalent bullshit, there was no way that they would cast it if they could roll heavy stuff around instead.

“Is that a trolley? Under that tarp?”

//Yes.

She removed a dusty cover and revealed a cart. It had two layers, one that was waist high and another one closer to the ground. It worked on wheels.

“Where are the tools?”

She checked the cart.

“Wrench, Something adhesive.”

//Your grace, do you wish to carry me on the cart?

“I’ll drag you and the supplies.”

//The noise of the wheels might give us away, and the roads may not permit it.

“We won’t use the wheels. I got an idea.”

Viv got to work with manic energy and the singular drive that had pushed her through many ordeals. It was part desire to succeed and part desire to prove the world wrong, to go against the odds. It was a stubborn seed in a shell of positivity. Within minutes, the wheels were off. The second level was next, as well as the side walls. She was left with a flat surface and four posts at the corners, along with hooks where the wheels had been attached.

“Alright.”

She turned the cart around and grabbed two thin bars of the silvery metal used inside of the golems from one of the shelves. They were curved at the end.

She was going to use them as skis.

//This is silverite, the star-metal. 

//Each one of those bars costs over eighty gold talents.

“Good, we can sell them afterward.”

She reached inside the toolbox and removed a very familiar roll of black fabric.

“Fantasy fucking duct tape.”

Maybe some engineers were linked across the multiverse by a hive mind that fed on coffee and sarcasm. 

She used half of the roll, all of her remaining twine, and two dozen swear words to fix the silverite to the cart’s bottom, with the ends pointing up. Those bitches were going nowhere.

“Alright. Here we go.”

A huff, a puff, and a deadlift later, the core was placed in the middle of the cart. She moved it a little bit more towards the ass end and gave it the bondage treatment. That was not going anywhere either.

She placed her backpack at the front and grabbed the rope from it. One end was firmly attached to the two front posts. With the other, she made a harness that she placed around her shoulders. It would make dragging the thing much easier.

“Here goes nothing.”

She moved forward, and the cart followed with a raspy noise of metal sliding on concrete.

And now was the difficult part. The slope up to the surface.

//Your efforts are appreciated, Your Grace. 

//This unit did not consider this solution. 

//Please, do not tire yourself overmuch dragging me up.

“Aha! But this is where my genius is — ngh — made all the more manifest.”

Viv dragged the cart to the side where dust had accumulated. The skis slid on it without resistance.

It was still a bitch to pull it all the way up.

When she reached the top, sunlight and a cool breeze on her sweaty face was all the reward she needed.

Power +1

“Damn right.”

//Your Grace?

“Yes?”

//Thank you.

Chapter 5: The Way to Salvation

The trek back to camp went once more without incidents. She had to walk closer to the side of the street where dust had accumulated, which placed her in more danger if necrarchs were waiting to nab her. The millipede had shown an unwillingness to come out during the day, but she was unsure if she could really count on that. Necrarchs looked different. Perhaps they acted differently as well.

Fortunately, nothing happened. They made their way in relative silence. It was past noon when she reached the camp and sat down, sweaty and already a bit tired. The inside of the circle lightened her strange fever, but it no longer removed it entirely.

“Is this mana poisoning I am feeling?”

//One of my memories confirms that your symptoms are consistent with mild mana poisoning. 

“Memories, plural?”

The implication of his systematic removal of the fallen golems’ processing units suddenly made more sense. 

//You saw the other cores, back in the vault.

“Did you…”

//They were going to fade, so I hooked them to my unit and took their memories as my own. The others were… not quite as smart as me, but I just did not want to see them disappear.

“Is that why you were so confused when we first met?”

//Yes. The different ‘us’ could not function properly. This unit had to purge their directives from my decision-making center, then prioritize them. 

//Each golem carried the mark of its engineering team. 

//Each had… something of value that should not have disappeared. 

//A consensus was reached, and we became one. 

//A few parts had to be discarded.

“You are a fusion of many golems?”

//Yes, under the dominion of Solfis, my true self.

“A Gestalt. A whole that is more than the sum of its parts.”

//Term “Gestalt” accepted as accurate. 

//One day, you must tell me about your previous world, Your Grace. 

//Long may you reign! But that will be later. 

//For now, we must use this time of rest to start working on your salvation.

Viv sat down with water and her now slightly chewed brick for a quick lunch as she listened to the golem. She regretted not drinking her fill back at the bunker before leaving. The millipede and the fever must have fucked with her mind.

//Mana poisoning occurs when high mana concentration overloads the fleshy mortal’s conduits.

//In order not to die, you must improve your conduits so that they can accumulate more mana. 

//This will improve your resistance.

//You must also learn how to manipulate mana and use it.

//This will lower the load on your conduits.

//Your mana distribution is heavily skewed towards black and the source of poisoning is black. Success is assured!

“How does the distribution affect poisoning?”

//The higher the attunement to an element is, the easier it is to channel. 

//Attunement over thirty percent in any type is enough to cast most specialized spells. 

//Expectant mothers of imperial scions would often spend time in attuned chambers inside of the palace to give their child the potential to reach the pinnacle of casting in specific alignments.

//Attunement remains the most important parameter.

//Attunement is the measure of one’s control over their magical abilities.

“Ok, ok. Does that mean…. that you are going to teach me magic?”

//Yes.

“Yayyyy! Oh hell yes, magic! Yeah!”

//I will teach you a few simple exercises as recorded in one manual in my databank. 

// My creator granted me those manuals. 

//They contain the method taught to the imperial family, which needs to be studied very early in life. 

“Hm, I’m not exactly a toddler.”

//Magically speaking, you are.

“Fair enough.”

//We will start with breathing.

Viv took a breather in both senses of the world. Then, as she rested a bit, Solfis guided her through the most basic steps of feeling her own conduits. The circumstances made it extremely easy.

Focus +1

//Excellent progress, Your Grace, as expected of the heir to the throne.

//Do you feel your core?

“Is this the place behind my sternum that feels like it’s being slow-cooked?”

//Yes. Mana overload is making your task easier.

“Do people overload their conduit on purpose if it helps them find their magic?”

//It would amount to child torture and is generally frowned upon. 

//Mages are taught during childhood, in painless but demanding studies.

//This unit is merely making the best of a difficult situation, Your Grace.

//This unit is impressed by your pain tolerance.

“Maybe I have a skill for that.”

//We will be certain when the interface finishes adjusting to your fleshy container, Your Grace, long may it endure.

“Right. What then?”

Solfis guided her through basic movement exercises, but that part was complicated. She was supposed to focus on her core and sort of press on it. She was reminded of how the [Inspect] skill worked on her ocular nerves and brain and tried to recreate the feeling, but it was delicate. It was like trying to flex a third hand, so she did not know how to make it happen.

Soon, she had to leave again. The longer days on this new planet were fucking with her sense of time. She felt that it should have been past noon, but they were still a bit before midday.

She packed the tent, two bedrolls, her food, and four steel spikes, then moved back toward the main thoroughfare and the pyramid entrance. She avoided that big building where she had seen the necrarch ravager and passed silently behind another monumental complex. One of the faded letters above a side entrance said ‘Treasury - Bureau of Taxes.”  

She observed carefully, concluding it was heavily fortified. Guess some things never change.

Curiously, the breathing exercises and her strange attempt to push on her core sent her into a state of meditative attention. The awareness of branching paths came and went, sometimes strong enough that she could almost trace them, occasionally diffuse and nebulous. They did not correspond to any organ, not even her heart. The streets also came and went in silence while she followed beds of dust on her way out of the city. The unnaturally flat ground made the activity easy. 

The main avenue to the city gate was just as majestic and dead as the first time she had seen it. A cold wind picked up then, but it still only carried with it the scent of dust. She pulled her nose up, searching for something else, anything else. The lack of smell diversity was yet another strange experience to add to the pile.

The gates appeared deceptively close. Viv kept walking at a brisk space. As she went by palaces and temples, Solfis would sometimes tell her in a few hushed words the purpose they had served. Living Harrak must have been quite a sight. The mix of solemnity and interesting anecdotes gave her regular breaks from the exercise, forcing her to refocus every time. It also gave her exit the lighter mood of a touristic excursion, with the ‘do not enter’ signs replaced by undead horrors.

It was the middle of the afternoon when they reached the northern gates of Harrak.

Two statues stood on either side of the highway, and beyond, she could see the desert dotted by the odd wind-swept ruin. One statue was a man in armor holding a greatsword, while the other was a woman in fancy apparel that looked halfway between a luxury dress and a gambeson. She held an orb in one hand while the other stood open and empty. The walls surrounding the city were much lower than she expected, barely three times her height. The pair of guardians, however, was massive. They towered over the surrounding buildings with immortal presence.

//The first imperial couple.

Solfis’ voice was soft and reverential. Viv cared little, though she agreed the pair was imposing. The colors had faded, but the statues were as beautiful as renaissance masterpieces. Moreover, they were still mostly intact.

She felt an unnatural weight on her shoulder as she passed under their extended arms. It made her shiver.

“What now?”

//The wretched desert before us used to be the Imperial Reserve. 

//There should be a path to your left.

“There is nothing to my left.”

//The flat expanse before the walls, Your Grace. 

//It will allow us to move around the Capital and head south, towards the Baleran Gorge and the subjugated lands. 

//This is the most direct path out of the Harrakan Heartlands.

“And you think we will find life out there?”

//This unit has stored the locations of a great many supply caches.

//Many of those caches were buried.

//With the distance and the depth, you will have regular access to food and water.

“That sounds good.”

//You need to move fast while simultaneously practicing to keep your mana poisoning to a manageable level.

“Got it. Say, you said my odds of success were 37%, right?”

//This unit estimated the odds were at 37%.

//However, your power score and extreme mana affinity have changed that value.

//This unit judges that informing you of the current odds would have a negative impact on your chances.

“... You serious?”

//This unit was not equipped with a casual module.

“Fuck.”

//Please keep practicing your breathing until tonight.

//This unit will answer further questions then.

For the next few hours, Viv followed the exterior of the wall. The absolute complete monotony of the wall on one side and dreary dunes on the outside really helped her with her meditation, seeing as there was absolutely nothing else to do. Solfis would initiate conversation twice per period only. He would also politely insist that she focused on practicing when she tried to ask questions outside of his regularly scheduled pauses.

//Given your current speed, we should leave the city behind tomorrow in the early afternoon.

//We will make camp before nightfall and continue your practice for a period.

“At least there are no necrarchs this side of the wall.”

//Correction. There are necrarchs on this side of the wall.

Viv stumbled.

“What?!”

//They burrow during the day.

//I monitored the topography of the dunes to your right. 

//We only came across one pit during the whole evening.

//Necrarchs no longer roam unless they smell mortal flesh.

“I AM mortal flesh!”

//You do not feel like mortal flesh, Your Grace.

//Due to your pure black alignment, necrarchs will have significant difficulties in finding you.

//You now emit black mana through the breathing exercise.

//This further masks your presence to their senses.

“So they would need to be very close? Do necrarchs roam?”

//Necrarchs here are the remaining turned citizens after centuries of absorbing high-density black mana.

//Black mana used to be even more concentrated than it is now.

//You would have died instantly two centuries ago.

//Local necrarchs are artificially bloated.

//Necrarchs are normally millenia-old and quite cunning.

//These necrarchs are intellectually stunted.

//They will not move unless something makes them move.

“Normal necrarchs are even more dangerous than those?!”

//Correct, Your Grace. 

//They are cunning and devious opponents with access to powerful black magic.

//This unit faced their kind before and slew two.

//This unit is a powerful servant to the heir. Long may she live!

//Necrarchs had a danger rating of seven.

“How high is a danger rating of seven?”

//There is no danger rating of eight.

“Okay.”

//But there is a ‘disaster’ danger rating.

“Oh, goodie.”

//You need not concern yourself, Your Grace. Right now, a creature with a danger rating of three could kill you easily.

“Perfect. You can stop comforting me now.”

//I exist to serve, Your Grace.

They rounded the corner of the wall by late afternoon, and she walked a bit more before night came. The skinsuit and armor proved their worth. Because the weight was well-balanced across her body, her shoulders were not particularly sore.

She found a circle of dirt by the road and dug a small hole. The dust lacked any sort of resistance, so her task was quickly done, and she deployed the tent in a spot that was hidden from the dunes, or at least less visible. The entrance faced the wall in the hope that she would get less dust in her face throughout the night. However, Solfis had insisted that she should not make efforts to carry it closer, so she had left the core on its homemade sled, ad she now sat before it for dinner.

Dinner sucked. It was pemmican brick dipped in lukewarm water then munched slowly. She had to drink the water as well. It was not exactly vile, but it was getting old pretty fast.

//It appears that you can reliably activate your core, Your Grace.

“Yeah yeah, I suppose that six-year-old children can do it around these parts?”

//Only those destined for greatness, Your Grace.

//The youngest record is two years old and may have been a fabrication.

//It is part of the legend of the archmage Arkal of Three Rings.

//There are no records of anyone achieving it in one day.

//Truly, you are destined to return the empire to life.

“Pretty sure that mana overload helps. Speaking of which…”

Current status:

Mana channels (budding)

Extreme compatibility

Divine spark: luck

Mana distribution:

Black 39%

Current attunement: 0.87%

“My mana distribution is 39% black. So that’s pretty high, right?”

//Correct. Children are born with fully-formed mana distribution channels.

//This is the case for everyone.

//Although, most people only have enough attunement to cast the most simple of tricks

//Mana distributions over 50% in a single category are almost unheard of.

//Black mana distribution over 20% for a living person is almost impossible to achieve.

//By all accounts, you should be dead.

“...”

//Now, this unit will teach you the basics of mana expression.

//There is a sliding panel on my left side, around the middle.

//Open it.

It took a bit of rummaging in the dying light of the day, but Viv eventually slid an almost perfectly smooth panel. Inside, she found some sort of metal cable with a crystal at the end. The cable itself weirdly reminded her of her shower hose.

//This is a manual energy input extension.

//Place three fingers against the cable and your index and thumb against your crystal.

//There is no need to remove your grave-robbed skinsuit, Your Grace.

“Hey!”

//The mana can exude from your fleshy appendage into the perfect, unfailing form of the mana crystal.

Viv complied. Solfis was merely trying to help her, and the fever was only getting worse. It was high time to stop dicking around and do some actual magic.

She felt a connection appear between her core and the crystal, using the same brand-new immaterial organ sense she had worked on since lunch. It was like holding hands with someone else if her arm were covered in seventeen layers of stockings and made of marshmallows. It was, frankly, almost itchy.

//Connection established.

//Now, push on your core.

//Do not worry about efficiency or technique.

//Focus on the sensation.

Viv did as she was told and almost dropped the crystal with a yelp. For the entire day, working on her core had felt like kneading dough. The mana in her conduits had deformed and moved a bit, but it had always been there. Now, she felt like she had opened the spout. The mana left her immaterial body through the crystal between her fingers, dragged there by an imbalance between herself and it. She was too full, and the item was too empty.

She knew instinctively that the exchange was inefficient. Her focus was all over the place. She was working with senses that she never knew she had, fumbling about like an awkward toddler with a new toy.

//Contact established. Receiving mana now.

“You can feed from black mana?” Viv exclaimed in surprise.

//This unit can feed from any kind of mana. 

//The mana is absorbed by the crystal and converted into pure energy for my continued existence.

That made sense… but then why…

“Hold on. If you can absorb black mana and Harrak is saturated with the stuff, then why the fuck did you not pump it into your power source?”

//The inability to recharge ourselves is hard-wired into our systems.

//Only transfer from one golem to another is allowed, and only in case of emergency.

//This was a security measure designed to prevent golems from functioning independently of their engineers for too long.

“I…”

She stopped.

“They did not trust you?”

//This unit cannot infer the intent of its creator.

“I see. I’m sorry.”

//You dragged me out of this prison, Your Grace.

//You rewrote the directive to guard the city at all costs.

//You have nothing to apologize for.

“Alright. So, how long do I keep doing this for?”

//Until you are too tired and must rest.

“It’s really working, right?

//...Lift your hand against the background of the wall, Your Grace.

“Huh?”

Viv did as told out of curiosity and inspected the crystal. The last of the light of day cast the barrier around Harran in the color of old bone, grey and decayed. Even then, the lighter color offered a sharp contrast to the phenomenon currently taking place.

The tip of her thumb and index were emitting a dark cloud that evaporated into the air. It was barely visible, and sometimes it faded when she was less focused. But it was there.

Magic.

She was visibly manipulating mana.

“I’m a mother-fucking witch!”

You have gained the skill: Mana manipulation.

Skill assessment in progress.

Focus +1

//This unit is delighted to inform you that your chances of survival have been revised and improved.

“Oh, so you will tell me the odds now?”

//No.

Chapter 6: Skilled

Sunlight brought a slurry of new experiences.

The first was a serious migraine and a bone-deep fever.

You are suffering from mana poisoning.

Endurance +1

“It’s like slapping me then kissing me.”

Viv climbed out of the tent and packed the camp properly in one minute.

“Oh, Viviane très chère, what’s for breakfast? The same fucking thing as last breakfast, last lunch, and last dinner, Viviane, you silly goose, edible brick with a side of powdered dust, and can you guess the wine pairing? That’s right! Tepid water!”

The constant pain and general feeling of being fed up were finally getting to her.

Your skills have been assessed!

Some of your skills have been designated as ‘alien’ and do not match this world’s magic. They will be listed for your convenience.

Some of your skills have been decoupled from ‘alien’ skills.

Congratulations! Thanks to your relentless efforts, the skills:

Writing

Reading

Essay composition

Arithmetic

Geometry

Calculus

Eloquence

…

The list was long. It was cool to know that her preparatory school experience and her bachelor's in history were finally going to be helpful. A rough chuckle escaped her lips. Fucking joke that she had to go to a magical world for it to happen.

…

Chemistry

Biology

Engineering

Have all been merged into the full skill: ‘Polymath scholar’!

Your ability to retain information from lectures and books is significantly enhanced

You are able to better convey ideas through the barrier of culture, language, and experience.

The various knowledge required to solve specific problems will come more easily.

The term ‘smart’ will appear when others use the inspect skill on you

Fan-fucking-tastic.

//You have a brilliant mind, Your Grace, as expected of the heir. Long may you live!

“None of this matters because we’re in the middle of the bloody desert.”

Or rather, at the edge. But, bah, it did not matter.

//There is more coming, Your Grace.

Congratulations! Thanks to your relentless efforts, the skills

Cooking

Cleaning

Laundry

…

Have all been merged into the advanced skill: Householding

“Daddy would be so proud.”

//…

“Not much to say about that one, hey?”

//When we are done, Your Grace, we will make sure that you never have to touch a broom again in your life.

“Aw.”

//Unless you wish to swat someone, Your Grace.

“Or ride it.”

//Your Grace?

Viv’s image of flying at high speed under the moon in the company of strapping young lads and lasses while wearing fancy school uniforms evaporated like snow under the sun. She was too old to be admitted, anyway.

“Nevermind. There is more.”

And there was more indeed. She gained advanced skills in athletics and survival. Survival was useful in helping her orient herself, as well as finding and identifying natural resources. But, just like the rest, it was utterly fucking useless in this wasteland. Athletics was the true treasure here as it would help her walk faster and drag the cart for longer without taking breaks.

Outlander-specific note.

The gods Nous and Maradoc come to your aid in your hour of need!

Skills have been separated into tiers and levels of control for a better grasp by the human mind. The numbers represent how well you understand a skill and how deeply you can draw on magic to assist you in your endeavors. The magic of skills is more profound than the magic you cast. They are bound to concepts.

Basic skills merge into advanced skills, which consolidate into full skills. You do not lose your abilities by consolidating skills, so no two advanced skills are identical.

You need to reach a threshold in required skills to consolidate them.

If one of your skills was already consolidated, it will be counted as still existing for the purpose of further consolidation. For example, [Archery] can be consolidated into the advanced skills [Sharpshooter] and then [Scout] at a later date.

Individual skills progress over six thresholds: novice, beginner, intermediate, expert, master, and divine. Advancing past the master threshold (fifth) requires skill and a lifetime of dedication. Each grade is further divided into 10 ranks for the convenience of your human mind.

Each threshold brings further benefits. Those benefits become more noticeable at higher ranks.

“What the fuck? Do they think we love math?”

//Human minds categorize and separate more than other sentient species’ minds.

//Human minds also like to compare themselves to see who is the best.

“...Fair enough.”

General skills

Polymath

Beginner 3

Athletics

Beginner 9

Survival

Beginner 9

Householding

Novice 8

Hand to hand combat

Intermediate 6

Pain tolerance

Beginner 9

Small blades

Beginner 7

Meditative Trance

Beginner 5

Basic music

Beginner 5

Mana manipulation

Novice 2

“Twenty-four years of study and hard work, and I got ten skills,” Viv commented while she finished packing her meager belongings.

//It takes effort and purpose to obtain a skill at the novice rank.

//Most skills should be taken with the objective to consolidate them.

//One full skill and three advanced skills at your age are nothing to scoff at, Your Grace.

//For a commoner.

//Your world had no magic, and many of the skills you acquired are no longer applicable.

//We will now work towards acquiring [Mana Mastery] and [Genocidal Maniac].

Viv’s hands freeze on her harness.

“There is a genocidal maniac skill?”

//This unit intends to find out. Glory to the heir! Long may she live!

“Okay, calm down, buttercup. Get your priorities straight.”

//Diagnostic in process.

//Priorities are already straight.

Viv started walking. There was a tab with ‘alien skills’, which included the Special Forces Training consolidated skill and other stuff like computer science and even modern accountancy. It showed them as temporarily deactivated.

She focused on her memories of assembling and disassembling a FAMAS, her standard assault rifle. She could still visualize every component, including the tripod she had never used. Her memories were not gone, this world simply did not know how to add magic to the mix.

“Do you know why my advanced skills are stuck at Beginner 9 by the way?”

//Advanced skills all incorporate the magic of the world at higher levels.

//You will keep progressing now that your soul has a greater influence on the world.

One hour later, Viv had to stop for the dreaded, inevitable moment she had expected ever since realizing that all the toilet paper on Harrak had long since disintegrated.

//You should allow me to use all sensors at all times, Your Grace.

//This unit cares not for your weak form’s biological imperatives.

“Shut up and watch the dunes.”

Life was hell.

Trying to move her mana gave her the only solace she could find. The meditative trance skill must have been at work. The absence of notifications indicated she had gained it back on earth, along with pain tolerance. She remembered that sometimes, it felt like her body was past its limit, and only willpower carried her forward. The altered state she had reached then came much more naturally now, as if she had turned into a super Buddhist monk. 

It really helped her deal with the fever and the ever-present migraine.

Later, they went past the Harrak west gate. It, too, had a couple on each side and led to the central pyramid. She now realized that the explosion had angled towards the south where she was now going. What little she could see in the distance looked completely demolished, and that was only the side of the blast.

Power +1

You have reached a milestone! You can now increase your strength dramatically for a single movement at the cost of increased fatigue.

“Progress.”

//Your nature as an outlander and your low physical stats will lead to a rapid increase of values.

“But so far, I have mostly gained mental stats?”

//I believe that you have gained nothing per se.

//Your body just acclimated to magic.

//The interface now accurately represents your intellect.

“The relationship between stats, what I really am, and magic is a bit confusing.”

//Human interface is designed to be useful and accessible even to the illiterate and the stupid.

“You mean, people who cannot read don’t see letters?”

//No. They perceive the concepts directly. 

//It is a much slower process.

“Does the god Nous really look down on us like that?”

//Have you met the average human?

“...”

//Perhaps the average human in your native world is a balanced, rational individual with empathy—

“You don’t have to finish that sentence.”

//It is through no fault of your own that you were born in an imperfect fleshy vessel, Your Grace.

“Thanks.”

//Empathy expressed, returning to the primary objective.

//For the next segment, I would like you to recharge me while walking.

“Really?”

//This unit—

“Ok, got it.”

It kind of annoyed Viv that she was willing to just do anything the golem told her to do. On the other hand, it was clearly for her own good, and if she did not like to do what she was told, she would never have joined the armed forces.

Come to think of it, her act of rebellion against being told what to do by her dad had led her to a career path where she was told what to do by random folks. There was a Freudian message there somewhere.

She did not particularly want to find it.

At least Mouq had the qualifications to order people. The Berber woman had also once killed a man by punching him to death with a ceramic plate. It was hard to say no to someone who had done that, then cleaned her face with a hanky and gone on with her day.

Viv opened the sliding thing and took the crystal and its hose. She had to reduce her distance to the carriage to stay in the core’s range, an issue she solved by rolling the rope around herself.

Moving and charging proved difficult at first. She stumbled a few times and lost the connection as well. Eventually, however, she finally received a pleasant surprise.

You have reached Meditative Trance Intermediate 1. You are now able to meditate while performing simple, repetitive tasks.

Passing the threshold made a major difference. She felt something help her, something that had become a part of her as intimate as breathing. It was eerie that something so new could feel so natural, and it left her to wonder how she could have worked without magic before. It made her wonder what heights of competency the men and women of this world could achieve with time and determination. And a bit of luck, she supposed.

Despite the skill’s progress, it became increasingly difficult to keep her focus. Fatigue made her stumble after a few minutes.

//This is far enough. You can place the hose back into the panel.

Suspicion immediately arose.

“What do you mean, far enough?

//There was a necrach buried twenty paces to your right.

//Your black mana emissions completely masked your presence.

“What?! So close? And you did not think to warn me?” she sputtered.

//This unit will not share data when the sharing has a likely negative impact on your chances of survival.

“I have a right to know!”

//This unit apologizes. This unit cannot knowingly and under any circumstances endanger a member in good standing of the imperial family. 

//This directive is hard-coded.

“Damn it. I got saddled with a rogue AI…” Viv muttered to herself.

As she packed the hose, a thought occurred to her.

“Hey, you had a pretty low power reserve. Are you at risk of shutting down?”

//This unit now has over fifty days of operation at the current energy level.

//The integrated power core was designed to allow me to function for ten seconds at maximum combat efficiency after my main power core was disabled.

//It can be further charged.

//However, this unit is no longer at risk of failing.

“Good for you.”

//This unit will still perish if you are disabled, Your Grace.

//Please take care of yourself.

“I’m trying!”

More meditation. More moving stuff around. Viv received several notifications that her mana manipulation was improving. It was at still the lowest stage possible, however, and progress would be exponentially harder the more she learned. So, yes, not impressive. Her constant headache and fever ruined the simple joy of doing actual magic. The pain seeped into every aspect of her life. It took all of her self-control not to snap at the golem every time it opened its metaphorical mouth.

Not that emitting black smoke from one’s fingertip was anything to write home about. At best, it was a party trick that would leave the victim feeling sick to their stomach.

//Black mana is associated with death, change, shadows, and destruction.

//It is not inherently evil.

“Right.”

//However its practice used to be frowned upon in many cultures.

“Of fucking course.”

//That is what some of the books in my datastore confirmed.

“The engineers stored books in the golem’s memories?”

//That is correct.

//Some of the content was made available to the golems’ processing unit, their core.

//Some of the books were stored separately.

//Engineers used to connect magical screens to view the data.

“How much erotica do you have?”

//Less than 2% of all books are erotica.

“Wow, that is surprisingly low.”

//This unit did not need twenty-six copies of “The School of Hard Knobs,” and eighteen of “Lady Stiffyni and her three daughters.”

//Redundant content was expunged.

“Hahaha I bet. Is there any nice girl-on-girl or boy-on-boy action?”

//Records indicate that the ‘Gladiators of Harrak’ series was a reference on the subject.

//This unit has tomes one through eight stored on its database.

“Ok, just keep everything. I might want to study it later for, uh, research purposes. Understanding the local culture.”

//Understood, Your Grace. 

//However, without access to a viewing screen, I would have to dictate them to you.

Ew ew ew. No. Not even if he could take the voice of Hugh Jackman.

“Ok, going back to black mana. How is that affecting me? How bad is it?”

//Please keep in mind that there are no recorded occurrences of a monochromatic human.

//The fact that the mana is black should not have too much negative influence on your body.

//However, if you do not obtain a secondary alignment, you will be limited to casting black mana and arcane spells.

“Pure energy?”

//This is for much later, Your Grace.

“Right, I’ll focus.”

Damn that fever.

//Most spellcasters, even the modest ones, can cast a simple healing spell.

//There is no reasonable way for you to obtain life-attuned mana.

//You cannot heal yourself.

//Additionally, healing spells may have a reduced effect on you.

“That sucks.”

//Not to worry. 

//With my training, you will soon join the ranks of powerful mages.

//We will find a way to solve this issue before your attunement reaches half of your total.

“Good to know.”

//...And your organs fail.

“What?”

//...This unit deems highly likely that your body will turn part-elemental at this junction.

//It has happened to archmages before.

//Some of them survived the process. Rejoice!

“You can stop comforting me now. Thank you.”

The city wall to her left was becoming increasingly more ragged as she walked on. Stones were missing from the top, and debris now appeared on occasion across the dunes. Some of them, the size of houses.

“Hey, what happens when someone reaches the highest level of attunement?”

//They become the next god of magic.

Solfis’ tone always grew quieter when he spoke of the gods. Viv did not know if it was true reverence or if the golem used human emotions as a facade.

They reached the end of the city far earlier than planned because the city ended earlier than planned.

“Wah…”

The walls were now shattered ruins, only fragments remaining here and there, where a bigger structure had blocked some of the blast.

Viv had thought most of the damage had been done by the fallout, and while it was probably true for the land, such was not the case for the city,

The entire south side of Harrak was…

Well…

It was gone.

There were no other words for it. She had to stop to appreciate the complete destruction that had torn apart the titanic building and flown its remains across the land, leaving nothing intact in its passage. The center of the city was a vast crater as large as that of a volcano. There was nothing left, nothing but peeled off earth exposing the bony foundations below. It was as if the black maw of the imperial palace’s wound had vomited death and was now patiently swallowing its slain prey over the eons. Necrarchs covered the open ground like worms on a corpse. They squirmed and swarmed in a multitude of grotesque forms without purpose, macabre reminders of the consequences of uncontrolled magic. The cold realization sent a chill up Viv’s spine, freezing her heart through the fever and breaking her concentration.

Her pace hastened.

Solfis remained silent when they left the rotting capital behind, even as dunes now fought with stone to stop her progress. It was then that she knew for certain that the golem had surpassed its nature at some point in the centuries of solitude it… no, he, had been subjected to. She herself was emotionally detached from the catastrophe. It had happened to other people a long time ago, long before she came to this world. Only personal grief — or whatever equivalent the strange being was now feeling — could justify his silence.

Harrak disappeared behind a hill as the sky was turning dark.

“Should we stop here?” she finally asked.

//No. 

//There is a waystation a bit further. 

//Even if only the walls remain, they should provide you with a much-needed shelter.

“Okay.”

The road snaked between hills. It might have been fields, or it might have been forest, or perhaps the area south of the city was a slum that extended to the horizon. There was no way to know, and she would not ask the golem.

She found the shelter a bit farther and waited until Solfis made sure there were no signs of undead. Its top half had collapsed outward, but the first floor remained, and Solfis guided her to a sandy basement where a circle of silvery metal still resisted the passage of time. He had her push mana out of her hands, trying to cover each finger with black smog until she felt drained and tired. The circle was a mana isolation circuit meant to isolate the person inside from mana in the air. Sleeping here would reduce the speed at which the fallout would kill her. So Solfis had optimized her trip.

“Hey,” she started with her head on a rolled-up sleeping bag she used as a pillow.

//Yes, Your Grace?

“You okay?”

//I am fully operational.

//There are many new parameters I need to take into consideration.

//They concern the best path to follow to guarantee your survival.

//This unit appreciates your concern, Your Grace.

“Sorry about Harrak. I know you were trying to protect it.”

//This unit knew the state it was in.

//Do not worry.

“Do you mind if I refer to you as male?”

//Not at all.

//Now rest, you have a long journey tomorrow.

//We must reach the Lanneis slave pens within two days.

Viv did as ordered and closed her eyes. The presence of slave pens orbited her tired, feverish mind and joined other elements she had observed.

The palace was a monument to megalomania.

Solfis had mentioned subjugated lands.

Solfis had mentioned inferior cultures.

Solfis was a freaking war golem. 

A black magic event had destroyed Harrak, turning the entire population into monsters.

The various ideas crystallized into a theory.

It finally occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, the ancient Harrakans might have been assholes.

Chapter 7: Toil and Trouble

Three days later, south of Lanneis.

A lonely form dragging a strange sled crested a hill of desolate gray earth. A forest of black stumps lined her right, sometimes cut by ruined towers and small stone mounds that looked like broken teeth on rotted gums. The land fell into a ravine on her left with more desolate tundras afterward, extending ad infinitum. It was cold, dry, and dusty.

“I’m going to sneeze.”

“AAAAH PSHAA!!!!”

“I sneezed.”

//Yes, Your Grace.

//The airborne particles here represent a hazard to public health.

“Your mama represents a hazard to public health.”

//We can take a break, if you are in distress.

“Am I in distress?”

Current status:

Exhaustion 

Malnourishment

Mana poisoning (serious)

Soul trauma (serious)

“I’m in distress, Solfis. Somebody call a medic. Mediiiiic! Oh, wait. It’s me. Not thinking clearly. It’s the CONSTANT FUCKING BULLSHIT HEADACHE.”

//I apologize, Your Grace.

//I wish I could help.

“But you do. You dooooooo. I’m sorry Solfis. I’m being a bitch, but I got a real excuse.”

//Can this unit convince you to eat a bit more of the travel rations? The ones we recovered from the cache have a sweet variety.

“If the rations wanted to be eaten, they should not have tasted like ass.”

That was an obvious nugget of wisdom. The old golem should know that already.

And really, it had helped. She had made great strides in mana manipulation, reaching the basic level. She could now create small tendrils of the black stuff and even direct them. And she could make it pop from anywhere!

She made one appear from above her bum.

“Look, I got a tail.”

Her attunement had improved enough to cast spells, although Solfis prioritized meditation to extend her life expectancy. She had gained endurance and willpower, increasing her ability to cope. She had progressed in athleticism, survival, pain tolerance, and meditative trance. Basic mana manipulation allowed her to expel mana from her conduit as they were saturated. All of that improved her chances. Unfortunately, it did not feel like it was enough. She was in pain every bloody second of every sorry minute of every fucking hour of every goddamn day she was not fretfully sleeping. Solfis had her take naps, and she would wake up twenty minutes later with her head so far up her ass she could lick her own amygdalae. Then it would start again.

And the food sucked. That was the cherry on the entire cake. At least if she had comfort food, it might have been better, but the rations were all solid bricks of nutritive bullshit that had to be literally mined with a fucking pickaxe to break into swallowable bits. It was a pain to eat and a pain to keep down.

“When I get there, I’ll find a fantasy cherry cake and eat it. As revenge.”

Viv’s bloodshot green eyes widened at the prospect, and a thin line of drool moistened her dry lips. Her imagination ran wild.

“And clams in cream with paprika. A side of perfumed Thai rice. Grilled asparagus.”

She went on for a while. It felt nice.

“...and chocolate fondant with vanilla ice cream. Have you ever had chocolate fondant, Solfis?”

//Unfortunately, not yet, Your Grace.

“We got to have you have some. It melts on the spoon and in your mouth, and the contrast with the pure and refreshing taste of the vanilla ice cream will cleanse your palate so that every mouthful retains the tasty impact. Then we have to move to the region specific desserts. Like the Kouign Amann. That’s a dessert from Bretagne that’s basically sugar and butter held together by faith. And just a bit of flour, I guess.”

//It sounds delicious, Your Grace. 

//I am sure that we can recreate it with local ingredients.

“Really?”

//Absolutely, Your Grace. 

//We have plenty of magical ingredients that improve the taste beyond what reality should allow.

//You can look forward to it.

//Just hang in there.

“Damn, this is making me hungry.”

//The red brick has a lot of a local fruit called the permonn.

//There should still be some of the taste left.

//Permonn is common to many regions.

//Tarts made with it are a delicacy,

“Alright I’ll try it.”

Viviane used the tried and true method of pushing water in her mouth and letting the brick dissolve. It was a slow process, but she did feel the taste of the permonn Solfis had mentioned. It was sweet and curiously almondy. She loved it.

“Oops. We’re out of water.”

//We will arrive at a waystation in one hour, Your Grace.

They kept going along the forest, the Solfis had her turn into it and towards a small stone mass that looked a little bit like a scrotum.

“What’s this place?”

//It was a training base for the Imperial Scout Corps.

//They were renowned monster hunters.

//I apologize in advance.

//This place was known as ‘the ballsack’.

Figures.

The base occupied a small basin. The tall trees around must have provided excellent camouflage back when the land was alive.

It was also crawling with the undead, even now, at noon.

Viv stopped the sled at the crest and looked down. The first of the creatures squatted isly a hundred paces down from her position. Her black alignment meant that they had difficulties smelling her, which gave her a minor advantage as most undead had poor eyesight, according to Solfis. They would still acknowledge her as human if they had a good look so she could not just stroll in.

The school had neglected to build walls, or perhaps scouts looked down upon those. There were a few square buildings, a long one, and a circular open-air amphitheater. There were few of them, and she assumed that most of the training must have been outdoors. The roofs were made of dark tiles, and the walls were thick and unadorned, reminding her of what she had seen in the capital.

//Those are crawlers.

//They are far less dangerous than necrarchs, but you still do not stand a chance against one.

//As we move away from the epicenter of the cataclysm, we will come across less powerful undead.

//It is unfortunate that this species does not fear the sun.

“Yeah. What should we do? Bypass?”

//The, and I apologize, ‘ballsack’, is the only reliable source of liquid in the vicinity.

No, that would be the prostate. Hehehehe.

//I fear that you will have to get down there and grab water.

“But how? They’ll see me for sure. There are at least forty of them.”

//It is time to learn your first spell.

“Really? Now?”

//Yes.

//Do not worry. It is fairly simple.

//This spell is called ‘coating’. 

//Coating is a prerequisite to basic mana-based shields.

//Black mana coating has the advantage of making you harder to detect by anyone.

“Okay.”

//You need to exude mana from every side of your body at the same time.

//Do not worry about symbols or giving meaning to the mana yet.

“We can give meaning to the mana?!”

//Do not worry about giving meaning to the mana yet, Your Grace.

“Okay, okay.”

//Try now.

She did.

At first, it was challenging to direct the power in several places at once. It was already difficult to keep the tendrils she made stable, to begin with, adding one difficulty. However, soon something curious happened. Dark mana covered her chest over her super-nifty armor, and once it had done so, it was… tame, for lack of a better word. It stayed there with minimal effort. Next, she tried to do the same with her back, and now she had a cuirass coating. But adding her left leg made her lose the chest part.

//You are doing great, Your Grace. 

//The crawlers are not particularly smart.

//Coating your torso and head should be more than enough.

That proved to be easier. Making the mana start from the chest felt natural, and expanding it from there was more manageable. It was as if the magic understood what she was trying to achieve and tried its best to help, but the magic was also a labrador puppy and not a very bright one either.

//You can go now.

//The sealed water cistern will be under the principal’s office.

//The principal’s office is a small cubic building with a pointed room by the long rectangular building.

//There is one more thing.

//By the cistern, there should be a box with a symbol.

//The symbol will be a horizontal line surmounted by a half-circle.

//Take the box’s contents too.

//Do not run and do not stop while you are in the open.

“Okay.”

Clad in black and leaking foggy mana like a coal-fuelled locomotive, Viv went on. She decided that in order to demonstrate her boundless courage, she would just look straight ahead and tell herself that the pale-skinned simian-clawed and fanged horrors were just a figment of her imagination or very weird meth addicts or something. It was the fever. Yep.

She walked with purpose and wondered if the crawlers could smell pee through her skinsuit when the first creature spotted her.

Somehow, the red eyes passed over her form, and the creature went back to staring into the distance.

Viv kept going. 

The buildings of the ballsack institute were much larger from up close, and she realized that a flat area on the side could have been a firing range. The principal’s office was clearly visible from her position, as the seat of the place’s great poobah. She kept her sanity by staring ahead and singing cartoon songs under her breath.

One of the larger specimens sauntered on her path. There was now a small wall of fleshy bones between her and her destination.

Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon. Fuck!

Her anger and stress increased the energy output. The basic coating flared.

The creature jumped a bit and traipsed away. It hissed like an angry kettle.

That’s right. Sod off.

She took a risk and looked right at the large rectangular building. It was a dormitory, with most of the windows torn off. What shocked her almost made her drop the spell.

There were traces of combat.

She spotted overturned beds, slashed walls, and the rotting shafts of arrows. People had fought in here, which meant that people had survived the initial blast.

They could have fled.

She had kept in her heart the belief that people had survived and made it out. The camp was one clear evidence, but there was always this small fear inside of her, that it had been a desperate last attempt by a dying world, that there was nothing left here but ashes and dust for weeks in any direction, and that her coming here was the cruel joke of a band of doomed gods.

The battlefield gave her hope.

She returned her attention to the principal’s office, feeling her focus waver. There were fewer creatures here, and she hastened her pace, practically falling against the heavy gate. It crumbled under her gloved hands. She was in.

The hall was dark. There were stairs up that looked ready to give up under the weight of a mouse, but the way down was made of stone.

Viv grabbed a stone from one of her cloak’s few pockets.

It was one of the first things she had recovered from a cache. It was a rare but inexpensive tool that produced light for mana.

Most people with basic attunement could light their life mana to lighten their surroundings, but the illumination would be weak. The stone’s purpose was to provide more light when required. She had coveted the thing with single-minded obsession. Only Solfis’ stern warning had prevented her from using it at night to ward off the endless darkness. She used it now.

White light shone on desiccated walls. It did not stink, and she thought she had figured why: the black mana had killed all the microorganisms responsible for decomposition. The place was too dead to even rot properly.

There were no creatures inside so she dropped the coating for now and made her way down.

The supply dump was less intact than others. Something had hidden in it at some point, but at least it had the decency to close the cistern, and Viv took a moment to fill her flask, drink, and wash her face. She did not remove her skin suit to bathe. It was cold, and she was already weakened. Hygiene felt like a secondary concern.

She found the box too. It contained a single bag made of some leather she could not recognize. It felt wrinkled and dry under her touch, although it still hung on. She took that as well. It was lighter than the water.

She climbed back up and sat down to focus.

The coat came easier this time. She knew what to do and had black mana up to her head in no time. It was tiring, she realized. She could not keep it up much longer.

This time, her path weaved between clusters of creatures instead of charging forward like an idiot. They gave her nothing more than a passing glance. Some even politely stepped out of the way.

It was weird.

All she had to do was say ‘hello’, and she would be dead in moments. The idea called to her like the void. It would mean an end to the constant pain she was in.

Then she remembered Solfis was up there, and the possibility of giving up became revolting. So she climbed the edge of the ravine, spitting and vociferating against those stupid scouts who could have chosen a pleasant hill, but instead chose a gap next to a giant scrotum. They really were assholes.

//Well done.

“Are you sure this thing can hide me? It looked like they saw me and just didn’t care.”

//It can hide you in the dark. Or at night.

//And only if the coating is regular.

//But the black emission makes you look much less human, and thus, not like a target.

//Powerful undead beings leak black mana.

//You leaked black mana, Your Grace.

//Therefore, they took you for a necrarch.

“So they completely saw me from the start. Are you going to give me the full data at any point in the future?”

//Of course, Your Grace.

//But right now my priority is to save your life.

//You have been in this world for five days.

//This unit has operated in this world for over five hundred years.

This was the driest ‘shut up, kiddo’ she had ever been subjected to.

The path interface is now available.

You are now fully integrated into Nyil.

“Paths?”

//Excellent.

//This will assist us.

//Think the word “path.”

“Is it like a job?”

You may choose a path from the following list. Every path represents a commitment to a concept. Paths empower your body and mind, allowing you to grasp associated skills more quickly and increasing their potency.

You can only have one path until your current path evolves.

Paths can evolve to a more specialized concept, or several paths can combine into one. There is no wrong choice, as long as you follow your convictions.

Good luck out there!

Available paths:

Empty palm warrior

Scholar

Accountant

Explorer

...

//Pick Black Hedge Witch.

“Hey, can’t I read?”

//Of course, Your Grace.

//Read, then pick Black Hedge Witch.

Viviane grumbled and skimmed the list. There were a lot of choices, most of them related either to being a lightly-armed fighter or doing a desk job. The only exotic one besides [Black Hedge Witch] was [Alchemist], and she had not come across a single herb in the past week.

You follow the path of the [Black Hedge Witch.]

“When do I get my cat and my hat?”

Mental stats are 1.2 times more efficient when casting black-aligned spells (on average). Relevant skill acquisition is improved.

“More math.”

//Do not concern yourself with those overmuch, Your Grace.

//They are points of reference to make you understand the impact of committing to a path.

“Is this a good path, at least?”

//There are no bad paths, Your Grace, only bad choices.

//Hedge Witch is one of the lowest paths of dedicated spellcasters who explore black mana.

//The closest one is Black Apprentice, and it relies more on book study, while you rely on meditation and spoken guidance.

//This path is perfect in these circumstances.

//You will be able to upgrade it later.

//In the meanwhile, it will allow you to cast more and delay the extent of the poisoning.

“I don’t feel any different.”

//A path is a commitment over time.

//Like most things, it will bear fruit through your efforts, Your Grace.

//This unit begs for your patience.

//This unit will guide you to greatness.

//In the meanwhile, we should move on.

//This unit sees that you recovered the medical supplies.

“Yep!”

They opened it. There were bandages. Viv removed the dried-up exterior and found that some of the inner fabric was still serviceable. That was a small miracle. She also found bottles of glass that had contained antivenoms and tonics in the distant past, now evaporated. The scissors and scalpel were nice, but a minuscule crystal vial with a wax stopper was the real find. It still contained a dense red liquid.

“What is that thing?”

//This is a dragonblood potion.

//It is not actually made from dragon blood.

“Awww.”

//The potion will temporarily turn whoever drinks it into a physical juggernaut.

//It will also exhaust them.

//And potentially make their heart explode.

“A rather unfortunate side effect.”

//Yes. Please do not drink it.

//Now, we should go. Walk towards that lone peak over there.

“I thought I was supposed to leave the Heartlands from the south?”

//That is correct. 

//However, your priority now is to leave the fallout zone and lower your mana poisoning.

//We must also avoid inhabited lands.

//Otherwise, you will waste too much time avoiding conflict.

“When will you teach me how to blast undead?”

//All the dark mana you currently wield energizes undead creatures.

“Huh. How about, errr, influencing them? Pushing them away?”

//Any spell other than stealth I could teach you would lower your chances of survival.

“What!? Why?”

//They would give you the illusion that you stand a chance in direct combat.

//That is currently not the case.

“Pfffft. Killjoy. When do I blast stuff?”

//Soon.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

//This unit is pleased that you subscribe to the idea of obtaining the genocidal maniac skill.

“Hey!”

Viv’s interface.

Current status:

Mana channels (budding)

Extreme compatibility

Divine spark: luck

Mana distribution:

Black 76%

Current attunement: 5.21%

Physical

Mental

Power

11

Focus

27

Finesse

16

Acuity

28

Endurance

19

Willpower

28

General skills

Polymath

Beginner 3

Athletics

Intermediate 2

Survival

Intermediate 1

Householding

Novice 8

Hand to hand combat

Intermediate 6

Pain tolerance

Intermediate 4

Small blades

Beginner 7

Meditative Trance

Intermediate 5

Mana manipulation

Beginner 1

Basic Music 

Beginner 5

Paths:

Black Hedge Witch (0)

Chapter 8: Cassia’s last gift

Two days later, South-West Heartlands.

“Bitch.”

Viv reached the top of a hillock, stumbled, then dry heaved. There was nothing left to throw up anyway.

She angled the sled and sat on top of Solfis, who did not object to the cruel treatment. Although, come to think of it, she had sat on several people before, and they seldom complained.

“Weeeeee!”

The sled drifted on the sand at a brisk speed, and inertia carried her to the base of the next hillock.

“Bitch.”

The earth was grey and black here, the mountains brown and snowy at the top, except that shorter one she was going towards. Though the sky was still dreary, there were hints of fluffy white where the clouds met the mountain peaks. Not one fucking dot of color on the whole thing.

“I go to a fantasy world and end up in the ass-end of the deadlands. I cannot even find the words to describe the unfairness of it all, Solfis. It’s like someone offered me to tour Middle Earth then dropped me inside of Mount fucking Doom.”

//Take heart, Your Grace. 

//We are almost at the base of the mountain.

“Yeah yeah.”

She had faced survival courses before. Her sergeant had thought it was funny to leave them in the wilderness with barely enough to cover their modesties, but that had lasted three days, and no one had shoved plutonium up her arse to make things spicier.

It was frankly getting a bit too much.

“Bitch.”

Viv grabbed some mana and pushed it towards her fingers. The tendril shot out and darkened a stone to her left. It looked no worse for wear.

“Bzzt. Hehehe.”

Magic had its moments.

She crested the next elevation and was elated when she did not feel nauseous. In fact, it did not feel so bad anymore. She was light-headed.

Viv wobbled, then slowly fell backward on the sled. Her armor protected her torso, and her head serendipitously found the rolled tent. It was nice. The clouds above rolled with a light breeze that could not be felt down there. They were so high, she thought, high and out of reach. The sight hypnotized her.

Mana distribution complete.

Mana distribution:

Black 100%

“It’s kind of nice.”

She felt herself drifting. The fever was fading now, and her headache became a peripheral thing she was vaguely aware of rather than the skull-drilling agony it had been for the past few hours.

A vaguely annoying voice kept nagging at her. It repeated the same words and again and again like a leitmotiv grating at her serenity. The distraction became so unbearable that she emerged from her peaceful contemplation.

“What!”

//Bibiane. 

You are suffering from acute mana poisoning.

You are dying.

//Your Grace, I need you to listen carefully.

“Shit.”

Viviane pushed herself up until she was sitting. Her eyes would not focus.

//Your Grace, I need you to take the dragonblood potion now.

“The one you said might make my heart explode?

//Yes.

//We are within walking distance of the lone mountain.

//This unit will guide you there.

//Swallow the potion, please.

Viv rummaged through her cloak pocket and took out the ancient phial. She used her ceremonial knife to peel off the stopper and pushed the container to her parched lips.

“Here goes nothing. Cul sec!”

Now, during her harrowing week trudging Nyil’s unwashed sphincter, Viv had come to see this enchanting world as dull, grey, and depressing. The air had little scent; the food had little taste. There were few conversations to be had, and they mostly ended up with her partner telling her to sleep or practice her skills. She could not honestly give the place more than a one-star rating, and that was just because of Solfis being a dear. It came as a surprise, then, when liquid, tasty magma bore its way down her throat and filled her chest with the burning fires of creation.

“Woooooooooooooooooooooh!”

Sweat pearled on her brow and her heart beat like a solo drummer at a death metal concert. She was ready to take on the world. She could excavate the Sahara with a spoon. Nothing would stop her.

//Straight ahead, Your Grace.

“TO ADVENTURE!”

Viviane ran. She ran with the liberating pleasure of a professional athlete whose endorphins had just kicked in. Each one of her strides pushed her from the ground as if she had rockets under her rickety soles. She wanted to sing.

“Bzzt! Hehehe.”

She kept sending bolts of dark mana left and right as she went on. The usual exhaustion and headache associated with any strenuous activities had simply melted like snow under a flamethrower. The lone mountain Solfis had mentioned was so close that she could see the tiny buildings around a cave at its base. They were blessedly empty of weird creatures, although she felt like she could kick them in the taint and jumpstart the Nyil space program.

Colors blurred at the edge of her field of vision. Solfis’ encouraging comments came distorted like he was talking through water.

//You are doing great, Your Grace. Carry on.

They reached the base of the small village, where she noticed a small mound of blackened bones on one side. The buildings had been damaged in battle, but the large cave opening beckoned.

In her unraveling mind, the entrance opened and closed along the rhythm of a deep breath that shook the earth under her feet.

“Woah. Trippy.”

Her hands and feet turned glacial. She could barely move them anymore.

//Quick, Your Grace, get in.

“But...”

//There could be fondant au chocolat inside!

“FONDANTS!”

She sprinted in, braving her fears. There were no fondants! Only an enormous cavern with some sort of blue expanse in the middle.

The air inside tasted incredibly pure.

//Quick, Your Grace. In the pond.

“Wtah? Hwerrr?”

Viv lurched forward to the blue expanse, searching left and right. Finally, her feet pierced the surface, and she almost collapsed. She was now knee-deep into warm water. Steam floated up from the hot spring into the cold air. There was a form at the back, but she could not discern its traits.

The purest sense of relief invaded her veins up to her knees and climbed up her back. She cried out in pleasure. 

Heaven.

Orgasmic relief.

Viviane fell backward until her head came to rest against the smooth stone, and water climbed up to her chest. Then, she promptly passed out.

You are suffering from serious mana poisoning.

You are suffering from mana poisoning.

You are suffering from mild mana poisoning.

You are no longer suffering from mana poisoning.

You are no longer dying.

Viv opened her eyes to an absence of pain for the first time in what felt like forever. The lack of sensation was so surprising that she winced in anticipation, expecting the migraine to smash into her skull like a sledgehammer. No such thing happened. She was fine. Exhausted, drained, but fine. Water covered her armor, cape, and skinsuit. She felt the warm liquid lapping at her neck, but the rest of her body had remained dry, and the spring’s salutary effect had gone through her protections as if they had not been there.

She stood up and immediately slipped. She was still wearing the harness. The sled was back towards the mouth, straight and solid and hosting her pet fantasy terminator.

“You alright there Solfis?”

//This unit’s core is fully functional.

“That was closer than I would like.”

//Your success was never in doubt, Your Grace.

“Really?”

//This unit was not equipped with a worry module.

“Ahem. That must be nice.”

//This unit always makes winning moves.

//Timid moves that merely belay defeat are the prerogative of inferior fleshy things.

//Present company excluded.

//This unit believed that the spring had endured. It did.

“What if it hadn’t, though?”

//Then Your Grace would have died, and this unit would have self-destructed.

//But it had, and you did not.

//Therefore, this unit’s logic was sound.

//This unit did not need to doubt.

Viv stood up and climbed the steps to the surface. Her gear was dripping around her.

“Say, any chance that I could take a dip?”

//The water of this spring is potable and has powerful healing properties.

//You may both drink and bathe.

“Good stuff.”

Viviane grabbed her pot, which had seen very little use on account of having no fuel to boil anything. She had left the flammable logs at the Harrak camp behind as they were quite heavy. The water was tea-warm and tasted strangely sweet. She drank her fill, then placed one of the smaller food bricks in it, hoping it would remember that it was food and not construction material. Then she peeled off the skinsuit.

“Pwaaaaah!”

She jumped into the water before she could succumb to her own body odor. Of course, water had been scarce for a week, so it was not her fault at all. 

There were black tracks on her skin, and she wondered if she had sweated solid mana or something. They were gone after a good rub.

She submerged and let the welcoming liquid close over her head. She passed a hand on her head out of habit, only to remember that she was bald as a monk.

Actually, that was no longer quite the case. A thin fuzz covered her scalp like grass regrowing after a forest fire. There was hope.

When she surfaced, her skin did not feel so dry anymore. 

The vapor of the spring split like a curtain, revealing the form she had seen before. At the back of the cave, an alcove had been dug into the wall and a veiled figure sitting in lotus position. The mysterious person’s position indicated power as if they were presiding over a banquet or a board room meeting. However, Viv was pretty sure it was a body.

//The remains of Cassia the Unbroken.

Solfis’ tone had the reverence he usually reserved for deities.

“Who was she?” Viv asked. 

It felt strange to have a conversation about the culture of the Harrakan Empire. She forgot too easily that the monsters, the wastes, and the ruins, had once been a flourishing people with a vibrant life. Even centuries after the disaster, there were still small pearls of existence left in the forgotten corners of the Heartlands, and she had been lucky, in a way, to have borne witness to it.

//Cassia the Unbroken was a legendary priestess of the god Neriad.

//Neriad is the god of courage and purity.

//She fought not just for the Empire, but also the other nations of the continent.

//She was universally loved.

//When she died after a very long and fulfilling life, the ground opened, and a spring emerged.

//The Cassian spring waters still carry the blessing of Neriad to this day.

Viv inspected the dead woman. Serenity and majesty emanated from the remains, a sense of purpose fulfilled and of well-deserved rest. Meditative trance came easily when she directed her attention forward. She felt welcomed, protected. There was at least one entity besides Solfis who cared.

Her reprieve stopped just as Solfis’ alarmed cry sounded out throughout the cavern. From a side tunnel, a creature appeared. The sound of claws on rock heralded its coming.

It was… a dragon!

A very, very tiny dragon.

It barely reached above her thigh. It had dark scales, small wings that looked vestigial, and a large mouth filled with fangs, which it was opening right now.

//Look out!

The creature rushed and jumped at her with far more speed than should be possible.

Time slowed for Viv, as she expected. The dragon was much faster; she would only have one shot.

With her left finger, she pointed at the creature while her right hand swiped her blade from its sheath by her discarded armor.

She poured as much power as she could into the black ray, A thick tendril zapped forth and crashed into her surprised target, darkening a few scales but, more importantly, forcing the beast to close its eyes.

It landed right in front of her. 

She grabbed its muzzle with her left hand and pulled up. The creature jerked.

She activated her one strength boost and rammed the enchanted knife upward.

“Hah!”

The blade dug into the soft scales of the creature under its chin, near the base of the tongue. The strength of the blow buried the weapon to its hilt and right into the mini dragon's brain.

The creature fell, dead.

“Aha! You thought.”

Finesse +1

Silence descended upon the cavern after the extremely short and thoroughly anticlimactic battle.

//…Revising survival probability and danger rating upwards.

//A magnificent strike, Your Grace! And without a warrior path! 

//This unit congratulates you on this spectacular victory.

“Everyone always acts so surprisedly, but I passed the qualifications for special forces, you know, even if I was not the best. And let me tell you it was no sinecure. I got the muscles too…”

Viv’s remarks died off as she stared down.

She had been really fit when this all started. Now, she could count the ribs under her breasts. Her hip bones were too visible. She had lost weight.

She lifted her arm. The hair was regrowing, but underneath the pale skin, she saw darker veins that stood out starkly in contrast. They pulsed in time with her breathing.

That had not been there on the first day.

“Why do I have dark veins, Solfis?”

//This unit does not know.

“I hope it’s just the aftermath of the mana poisoning.”

//If possible, we should rest here for a few days, Your Grace.

//This unit is concerned about your health.

“You can assess my physical condition?”

//Your metaphysical body shows signs consistent with exhaustion.

//It will take some time for you to recover.

//You have food for two weeks and water for a lifetime.

“I could definitely use a break. But, hold on, I am acting like a fool. We must secure the place before we even consider sleeping here!”

//I agree.

//Dragons and their spawns are apex creatures, however.

//There should be nothing stronger here.

“Ok, but before I go exploring the mountainside, I need to get ready.”

She rinsed her skinsuit in the springs and dried it, as well as herself, with a spare bedroll. She quickly put on the armor and secured it with clasps, and left her cloak hanging from a stalagmite after giving it a good rub. The skinsuit was made of hydrophobic material. Water did not penetrate its smooth surface, but cloak was more mundane and had to dry.

The boots were next. They would not last for much longer, she observed. 

Viv was now fully dressed and armed. She stepped out of the cave and into the village.

//Your Grace? 

“There is something I have to do first, or I could never look at myself in the mirror again.”

She pulled a ruined door from one of the buildings outside and returned, finally ready.

“Not bad at all! I’m so glad we found salt in that cache back in the Lanneis outskirts.”

Solfis remained silent as she took another bite of dragonling leg. The flesh was tender after being seared on a bonfire of ossified furniture, using a mangled half-shield as a cooking plate. The half-shield was still hanging above the flames, its carcass kept in place with the tent’s steel spikes. Nutritious dragon bits cooked in the middle. Sometimes, she would flip them with her knife. The ready food was stockpiled in her pan, now empty of liquified brick food.

“It tashtesh shtrangely shweet. Hot!”

//Dragon flesh is a rare delicacy.

//It will help with your recovery.

“Yes, I already feel better.”

Endurance +1

You have reached a milestone! You have less need for food, water, and sleep. Your resistance to poison and diseases has been improved. You heal faster.

“Could have used that before.”

//Congratulations, Your Grace.

//Your progress is astonishing, as befits the heir.

//Long may she live!

“Is it because of the outlander blessing, or am I merely catching up?”

//Both, Your Grace.

//Your mental strength is on par with a decently trained mage.

//The fact that you achieved so much with no magic is a credit to your native land’s education system.

Don’t let her uncle hear that.

//Progress will be increasingly slower.

//However, this unit is confident that you will reach the sixth tier within two years, under my guidance.

“You mean fifty-something or sixty-something?”

//Fifty-something, Your Grace. 

//It represents the pinnacle of human abilities and is a mark of the elite.

//Only legendary individuals have ever reached the eighth tier.

//Or so it is said.

//Convincing someone of that power to share details about their interface is a doomed prospect.

“Alright, enough theory. Time to survey my domain.”

//Well said, Your Grace.

//This unit must await here, as it would only slow you down.

//Please fall back if you are at risk.

“Got it.”

Viv cast the cloak thing since it would help her in the dark corners of the place. Then, as dark mana formed over her, an expression popped in her brain, unbidden.

Sneaky Cloaky Lemon Squeezy.

Probably a remnant of her fever-fuelled delirium.

//I see you have associated a word with one of your two spells.

//I will attribute your choice to a cultural element that I cannot conceive.

“Yep, totally what that is.”

//Naming spells is a personal trick Hedge Witches use to recall the process more easily.

//Your elemental mana bolt also has one.

Indeed. It was ‘Bzzt!’.

//Such names are useful shortcuts, Your Grace.

“Okay.”

Viv grabbed her knife and went into the corridor from whence her lunch had emerged before, her face turned entirely red. 

Chapter 9: On the Road Again.

It was now clear that the Cassian springs had been a popular destination at some point. The small mountain was a warren of chambers and alcoves, all designed to be frugal yet welcoming. The grey stone had been roughly hewn to allow passage between several grottos, with illumination provided by multiple windows dug into the rock. She found lobbies, salons, and refectories. All had simple stone furniture that had survived the test of time. All favored function over form and still achieved form as a result, in a zen troglodyte sort of way. Viv loved it. It was new, cool, and she had never seen its like on earth. Interior design touched her in a way the imposing monuments back in Harrakan had not.

She also saw her first signs of life.

[Brown cave mushroom: this common species grows easily and requires little water to survive. The flesh is not very nutritious and highly bitter. However, it is used as food by many small cavern denizens.]

There were several species of mushrooms. She did not find insects or any other creatures, however. 

Viv had a strong suspicion that the waters were purging black mana from the surrounding area. She even felt the familiar feverish sensation when she reached the top of the installation, having found no creatures. Instead, stairs led outside, and she followed them.

Cold wind greeted her alongside the commending sight of the deadlands. However, the view did not attract her attention. The major attraction was lying on its side on the overhang she found herself on.

It was… a dragon!

It was huge!

It was also very dead. Basically a skeleton.

Viv inspected the creature and marvelled at its size with her mouth agape. It had to be at least five meters long and sported wings that must have been twice that size when it was alive. Only bones remained now, as well as strips of flaky dark scales. The form huddled around a bag of four broken eggs.

The implication was quite clear.

She rushed back to the main landing in relative silence. She stopped at the threshold of the main cave, then stopped when she heard something rummaging through her stuff.

//Your Grace, a thief!

Viv charged in with her knife out, intending to punish the guilty party with a well-placed stab. She stopped when she saw what was currently gulping down the rest of the dragonling leg.

It was… a dragon.

It was so cute!

This one was completely white with red eyes, and it would have to climb on its hind legs to pinch above her knees, but it jumped when it spotted her.

“Squee!” it squealed.

The monster crashed through her tent’s flaps in its mad dash to escape her quickly evaporating anger.

“Aw, look at the weedle dwagon, so tiny and precious! How can it be so small!”

//This place is dangerous, Your Grace.

//If their mother is still around…

“She’s dead. I found her bones upstairs, as well as four eggs. Are those two really from the same clutch? The dark one was much bigger.”

//Dragons can survive on little food, but they need it to grow.

//They also engage in cannibalism when they are young.

“So the bigger one may have eaten the two others?”

//They engage in cannibalism as scavengers or when desperate.

//The two other eggs might have contained spawns who ate the meat of their mother.

//If they did so, they might have grown enough to fly out to the mountains.

//If you did not find another spawn on your path, then they are gone from here.

“What about the one looking at me from under my tent flap?”

//The runt of the litter.

//The food here must have run out as it came from its shell.

//It probably hid from its siblings.

“What are they doing here, anyway?”

//Dragons favor isolated places to lay their eggs.

//Intelligence in adult dragons vary significantly from one specimen to another.

//However, only desperation would force one to come here.

//She apparently did not survive the attempt.

“Alright. So. How tameable are dragons anyway?”

//…This unit does not understand.

“Don’t play coy with me. You know exactly what I meant.”

//Your grace, please…

“It’s small and cute.”

//Even spawns are headstrong. They will fight restraints and coercion.

“Who spoke about those? I meant as a pet.”

//Your Grace, surely…

“Witches have cats. I just want a scaley cat.”

//Your Grace…

“It’s so cute! Look at that little head! Look at it! It’s so adorable!”

In the end, Solfis relented because he had a larger prize in his sights.

//The dragon should not have been looted. 

//Dragons have mana crystals in their chests.

//Those are the same crystals that I used as a generator for my frame.

//Please see if you can acquire one.

//Please take down bones as well.

//Preferably from the creature’s feet and wings.

She went back up and found the crystal without difficulty. It filled her palm and still shimmered from the stored energy. Solfis noted it was barely half the size of his previous core and that the dragon must have been very young. Possibly too young. The bones garnered his approval.

//Dragon bones have decent resistance, and they hold enchantment well.

//They were often used in powerful light armor sets.

He gave her a list of bones to stockpile ‘for later use’. He was especially interested in the wings, which she had to tie to her sled piece by piece. The lightweight limbs popped out of the back like flags.

She spent the following three days recovering from the previous ordeal. While she was no longer at death’s door, Viv had still suffered from the fallout and would suffer again before this was all over. Her lack of alignment had belayed the poisoning, then her full black had lessened it. It had still been a close call. With food for weeks and water aplenty, Solfis suggested that she spend some time practicing and preparing for the next leg of the trip. She agreed completely, especially after realizing that her libido was shot, which definitely meant that she was terribly weakened.

It would still take another two weeks on foot to reach the gap which separated the Harrakan Heartlands from the rest of the continent. Solfis knew of paths through the mountain, but he had guided her west, and the mountains to the west only led to an ocean and not much else. So it was safer to go south. 

Viviane would not object to plans that had her climb a mountain, then cross a centuries-old unlit tunnel to see if it was still intact. There could be stuff there, like eldritch ancient squids and balrogs and whatnot. Walking to what the golem described as a forest seemed a safer bet. Viv also thought that you would want to monitor it if you had an entire country of dead monsters. Just in case they suddenly migrated, and your own kingdom was on the way. She wanted to meet other people.

She trained mostly her magic and reached rank three of the hedge witch path. Her progress was linked with spell and mana manipulation mastery. With Solfis’ help, learning was easy and intuitive. The next step was to be able to find her conduits by circulating mana through them. They extended through her body like a network of veins, part of it, and yet intangible. She gained one point of focus through her efforts. Meditative trance and mana manipulation also improved quickly. 

It took her only three days to complete the Sneak — the black cloak — and to be able to reliably hit a target at ten paces with a powerful bolt. She could then do it again after about four or five seconds.

Solfis informed her that bolts of pure mana overloaded their target’s body and would be extremely painful. A red bolt would burn, a blue bolt would liquefy, but a black bolt sucked the life right out of the target. It was quite dangerous. The mini dragon had resisted most of its effects because its species was highly resistant to pure mana intrusion.

That was nice, but it only allowed her to take out one target, and none of them could be undead.

She named the baby dragon Arthur.

From the beginning, she treated it as a feral rescue kitten with a particularly bad temper, and her surprise was great when it actually worked. She started by placing food in front of the tent (she had left him his safe space and slept in a bag). The creature bolted out then scrambled back in. She placed the food closer and closer to herself until Arthur got more used to her, using a soft tone when talking to him and giving him space. She would scold him with a soft ‘no’ when he tried to get meat from her pot, and he seemed to understand. After three days of this treatment, Arthur would walk around her with circumspection but less fear. He was learning.

She fought the urge to pet that little head. He was just too cute. The best part was when he postured. He would stand on his back legs, spread his small wings, and then let out a mighty ‘squee!’. That happened when she refused him more meat. She had to stand up and place her hands on her waist while resisting the urge to laugh. The little terror would then hide back in his tent to sulk. It would repeat almost every meal.

Tragedy struck on the fourth day. She started a light training routine and talked to Solfis when he revealed her mistake.

“How fast will Arthur grow anyway? He already looks bigger.”

//He?

//Your grace, Arthur is female.

“Fuck.”

She should have asked. 

She did not mean to misgender the poor thing.

And now the dragonette answered to Arthur already.

“Aaaaaah! You should have mentioned it! So, first, I get called a dude’s name, and now her too? Ugh.”

//This unit did not know that Arthur was a male name.

//Knowledge added to central database.

“Augh!”

The blunder did not deter her from training. The next spell she learned was a round shield thing that she could, in theory, pop out anywhere close to her but that she could only deploy with her arms so far. It would stop all hostile spells as black was antithetic to other mana types by nature. But, unfortunately, it would not do shit against physical attacks.

It occurred to her that so far, she had been exclusively endangered by physical attacks. There was a recurring theme there. 

It was fine, because magic made it all worth it.

No matter how many times she moved mana around, the wonders of being able to perform true magic never ceased to amaze her. She would probably grow jaded if she lived long enough, but for now, the constant wonder motivated her through gruelling hours of practice. Solfis had already adapted to her incredible motivation by temporarily intensifying the program. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he had sounded proud and excited. Probably something to do with that genocidal maniac skill he had hinted at.

No, it was a joke. It had to be.

She cooked the small dark dragon in one giant session and consumed the meat over the next few days. Sadly, there was no way to smoke it and turn it into jerky because of a lack of proper wood. She took solace in the fact that between the springs and the black mana, microbes were rare. At least, she thought that was the case. For all she knew, diseases here were evil spirits, and all her gut microbiota had been replaced by magical goo or something.

God, that would be weird.

On the fourth day, Arthur ate from her hand. It was endearing.

Solfis found that really highly disconcerting.

The old war machine explained that the entirety of the thinking population of Nyil had one major concern and that it was monsters. Even in the heydays of the empire, attacks by creatures were major threats to civilization, so much that a significant part of their military was dedicated to culling their numbers. There were normal animals that turned more magical the longer they lived until they became a real danger. Magical beasts like dragons, albeit rarer, came with a variety of dangerous abilities. Abominations born from curses or phenomena haunted the land and destroyed everything in their path. Tribes of semi-magical beings raided, pillaged, and killed, sometimes gathering in warbands that could fell cities. With magical bodies, life expectancy was higher, and older people were generally quite strong. Therefore, the cause of death was primarily monsters. Dying in one’s own bed was a luxury that very few would ever achieve. Monsters were the calamity of this world, and they were feared as such.

Naturally, there were tamers in many cultures. It was a fully accepted path. No one, however, kept monsters for company only. It was just not done.

Viv did not care. 

The dragonette would bond with her, or she would not. In the meantime, it was fun to watch the little hooligan trap her head in the bedroll and squeal in panic.

Solfis declared that they should leave after a week. By that time, she mastered the cloak, the bolt, and shield which had taken the name of ‘nope shield’ in her mind, to her dismay. They still had a large supply of meat, with Viv eating some of the rations. However, it was getting tedious, and she was looking forward to adding fibers to her diet. 

There were preparations to be made before she would leave.

First, looted amphoras gave her a way to save some of the pond water. The blessing would fade with time, but it would last long enough for her to escape the fallout zone with a relatively low level of mana poisoning.

Solfis begrudgingly admitted that the water could also help Arthur if she could coax the creature into leaving with her. The small dragon would eventually die here, with absolutely nothing to eat but mushrooms she could not digest. Dragons were extremely resistant to foreign mana intrusion, but the Heartlands had the highest and largest concentration of mana on the surface. She was fairly young. The crossing would be difficult for her as well.

Viviane mentioned the protective stone next to her shelter, but there were major issues in recreating it, most of which she summarized with a modern term: she was a novice. Mystically speaking. It was through no fault of her own, but she just couldn’t recreate such a fine piece of mystical engineering.

She spent an hour packing her sled for maximal efficiency, balancing the bones around and behind Solfis while creating a small nest for her tentative pet. Eventually, they were ready.

She took one last look at her progress.

Physical

Mental

Power

11

Focus

28

Finesse

17

Acuity

28

Endurance

20

Willpower

28

General skills

Polymath

Beginner 3

Athletics

Intermediate 2

Survival

Intermediate 1

Householding

Novice 8

Hand to hand combat

Intermediate 6

Pain tolerance

Intermediate 7

Small blades

Beginner 7

Basic music

Beginner 5

Path skills

Meditative Trance

Intermediate 8

Mana manipulation

Beginner 5

Path:

Black Hedge Witch (4)

That was pretty good, meaning she could upgrade her path in no time. Paths improved the efficiency of stats in specific tasks and helped acquire skills quicker. In addition, they were one of the main power multipliers for sentients.

She wondered if she would keep some of that if she returned home. No, not if… when she returned home.

She hoped that Solfis would not take it too hard. The golem could be surprisingly single-minded in his desire to restore the empire, even if, well, there was no hope.

Before leaving, Viv dipped into the springs one last time and stood before the veiled mummy of Cassia the Unbroken. Even dead, the woman’s presence was a physical weight on her mind, one that did not crush but cow instead. It made her feel more humble, not that it was needed. The presence reminded her of the heights that one individual could attain and how they could reach the gods through their deeds. Viv still lived today because of what Cassia had done centuries ago, one more soul grasped from the depths centuries after the fall of the Empire that she had defended.

“Thank you for saving me, wherever you are. And to Neriad too, I guess.”

There was no answer, only the comforting presence. That was fine. 

She hitched the sled and walked out.

Viv walked exactly twenty paces and then had to calm down a panicked Arthur. The loss of its familiar habitat upset the creature. She was letting out miserable squeals and peering everywhere with undisguised panic. Viv thought that the small creature would jump ship and, for a moment, it did, but a piece of meat was enough to lure it back on. Arthur then dove under the covers to devote her entire time inspecting her surroundings with obvious mistrust.

Like that, they traveled south.

Chapter 10: The Deadlands

Viv traveled south for a week, sticking to side roads and evading large population centers thanks to Solfis’ guidance. The undead grew in variety as the background mana lessened. There were undead animals, like bears, and she had to hide from those until they went on. She had a frightful confrontation with a large, bat-like creature with a terrible breath that only left after inspecting her for twenty minutes. That had been a motivating training session, spent trying to extend the cloak to her feet while shielding Arthur. The creature eventually left.

Many of those, she only noticed from afar in villages that she passed by. There were towering piles of muscle and flesh, tall creatures with tentacles surrounded by crawlers moving like a single entity, and shadowy things she only spotted briefly. Solfis had names for them all, but he was sober in his explanations.

//This unit has access to several bestiaries.

//Those subgenres are known to me.

//This unit will spare you the disturbing tales of their abilities.

//Instead, this unit would like you to place the… ‘nope shield’ at your back.

//Try it now.

It was like having a personal trainer motivated by violence.

The night after the bat, Arthur crawled into the tent to sleep by her side.

The constant training between conversations pushed her manipulation skill further, and she was also rewarded by another landmark. Her attunement had reached 10%.

Normally, such a low number meant little. Most adults reached that level after four or five decades if they cast spells with any regularity. Nevertheless, it was still a celebrated achievement amongst young teenage mages. 

For Viv, however, it made a marked improvement in her ability to cast because of her black affinity. Her Bzzt! spell was as thick as two fingers when fully charged, and her cloak now reached mid-thigh. 

Solfis’ training changed again. He considered she had a grasp of the basics that only repetition would improve and had her do various games and activities to that effect. He always varied them. He had her try to curve her bolt or make it very straight. Those worked well enough. He also tried to have her make her coat smoother because right now she looked like someone had dunked steaming squid ink on a cardboard helmet. That proved more difficult. At least, it was entertaining.

They met the real obstacle just as they were nearing the gap. Viv had found herself on a small plateau overlooking flat plains. She could see the gaps in the mountain range to the south, as well as hints of salvation.

Between the gaps and beyond that, the world was green. The forest was dense and imposing, but most importantly, it was quite obviously alive.

The plains were dotted with dark shrubbery as the black mana was finally fading. It was also dotted with zombies.

The plains were not uniform, and she did not have the eyes to know for sure, but close to her the creatures sat and stood at a density of one every ten paces in any direction. The landscape squirmed in the distance.

“How is this possible?” she muttered.

“Squee!”

//Your grace, my sensor range is limited.

//However, I believe that some of those revenants are not from the Harrakan Empire.

Viv agreed. The clothing style between the hundred creatures she could clearly see varied a lot from one to another. Even the peasant garbs were not the same. One had a white linen shirt, while another had thicker brown coveralls made of a different undyed material. The disparity could be seen in richer clothes as well, although Viv did not know if it pointed to different lands or different eras. Some of the revenants could have been here for a while.

“The important factor here is that I cannot simply pass those by. I cannot maintain the cloak active for that long.”

//Calculating.

//This unit believes that you should walk on the mountainside.

“We already had this discussion. I am not leaving you behind.”

//There is little choice, Your Grace.

“Hmmm.”

Solfis was incredibly useful, but he lacked initiative and out-of-the-box problem solving. She had noticed it before. 

“How fast are those, anyway?”

//Fairly slow and fairly weak, Your Grace.

//The problem is that revenants are notoriously hard to kill.

//They can even survive without a head for a minute.

//They will regenerate to the state they are currently in with the ambient dark mana unless incinerated.

//You would eventually be swarmed.

Viv could not use Bzzt without empowering the things.

Speaking of which…

“Solfis, I can push dark mana into people with my, ahem, elemental bolt spell, yes?”

//Your Bzzt spell.

“You don’t have to remind me every time.”

//Correct. You push mana.

“Is there a way to draw it instead?”

//Elaborate.

“Can I link with a target and draw out the black mana? It would disable the revenant, yes?”

//That…

//Calculating.

//…

//Insufficient data.

“There is no spell to drain someone of mana?”

//There is a spell used to draw life mana from a target.

//There are no spells to drag black mana from an undead.

//It would kill every practitioner.

//Except, perhaps, you.

“So, it could work.”

//Perhaps.

//Only you could do it, Your Grace.

//This unit would not know where to start.

“I do. Tell me about the drain spell.”

//The drain operates with symbols and is quite advanced.

//The basic function is simple.

//The spell worms the caster’s own life mana into the target’s conduits.

//A connection is maintained.

//Then, the caster pulls and draws both his and the target’s life mana in.

//This spell requires the caster to be significantly stronger than the target.

//Or, for the target to be willing.

“Who would willingly submit themselves to that. Would that not be excessively unpleasant?”

//It could be used by exhausted healers to replenish their mana faster.

//Targets reported a deep sense of violation.

//Many volunteer anyway, generally to help the healer save others.

“Ok. Suppose I take the mana in. Would that not poison me?”

//Only a little.

//You are poisoned by foreign, ambient mana.

//The drained mana would become yours through the process.

//Hypothetically.

//Mana that is ‘yours’ should not hurt you.

//Much.

“Ok, so I need to cast a bolt of black mana targeted at conduits, flood the zombie…”

//Revenant.

“...whatever, the revenant, with that mana, and once it’s done, I just have to pull?”

//Easier said than done.

//But, in essence, yes.

//I know of a symbol that might help you.

Solfis gave a summary explanation on symbols, saying that he would teach her more later. Apparently, there was only one alphabet, and it had existed since the dawn of time. It took twenty minutes for Viv to draw the squiggly thing because she had to follow Solphis’s instructions instead of using a model. It only worked because something clicked once she had it mostly correct as if magic itself gave her pointers. The last few modifications made sense to her on a fundamental level.

She ended up with something like an arrow going through a spiral.

//You need to visualize the symbol when you cast your bolt.

//Instead of invading the flesh, it will pierce the conduits.

//You merely have to will it so.

“Is there a symbol for pull?”

//There is.

//However, the pulling part is the easiest one.

//Using one symbol will already tire you.

//We should focus on efficiency for now.

“I’m probably going to be pulling a lot.”

//Yes.

//If it works, you will have a surplus of mana to use for additional training.

“Sweet.”

//I shall monitor your condition.

//You must not go beyond mild poisoning again.

“Fair enough.”

Viv detached herself from the sled, gave a comforting pat to Arthur, who squealed timidly, and then experimented.

She chose a tall boulder to stand on in case the spell failed and backlashed or something. It would be extremely embarrassing to have survived fantasy nuclear fallout, only to die by having her extremities nibbled by a B-movie prop. That would not do. The boulder would keep the dumb creature at bay for long enough to recover, she hoped. Solfis had said that they were quite dumb.

The next step was to cast a spell on a random target. She chose one of the black-aligned shrubberies.

[Dark fern: a semi-magical plant that absorbs black mana. It can be used as an alchemical ingredient of mild potency.]

Viv pointed her finger dramatically at the innocent shrub. Gestures helped with casting, one of the reasons why Solfis had her practice without it. She visualized the symbol and immediately lost the spell.

The mana dispersed harmlessly into the air.

Solfis had never told her that the thing was in three dimensions! Now it made more sense. It had a two-dimensional, flattened version, but that was not as effective.

Encouraged, she tried again.

The usual black bolt crashed into the plant, only this time it had a more elastic quality to it. A bit like a garden hose, but in a horrific tentacular kind of way.

Targeting the shrub was a great idea. It had black mana to steal. She felt her own fill the conduits and—

The plant exploded with the pop of a balloon. Pieces of ashes drifted in the air.

Ok, so ferns had little mana and one very, very small conduit.

“Viviane the Dread Gardener claims another victim!” the witch mumbled to herself.

Viv had to stop for the next attempt. The piercing rune tired her mind as if she had been writing an essay for half an hour.

Mana manipulation has reached Beginner 8

That was helpful.

She tried again, this time pushing the nearest amount of mana into the next fern. She then pulled and felt refreshed.

Well, not exactly. Her casting was still messy. The bolt was nowhere close to smooth. She had wasted more mana casting than she had recovered, but, well, that was a plant.

Another pause and she was ready for the real deal. First, to find a volunteer.

She climbed down from the boulder and walked to the first revenant fifty paces or so away. The ground was sand, rocks, and dust, so she just picked a rock and threw it.

The heavy stone smacked against the creature, braining it. It fell to the ground and stopped moving.

“Well, that works too, I guess.”

She moved closer and came to a realization.

“Pwaaah!”

With black mana being rarer, microbes or their magical equivalent had made a grand return, and the creature smelled like a rotten body. It was that, or the creature had come from outside, and the cadaverine had not dried out yet.

It was mild as corpses went. She had experienced worse in Afghanistan before, and some of the old dogs in her unit, those deployed to Serbia, had horror stories about waterlogged mass graves. She could still have done without the stench.

Her cloak, the mundane one, not the magical one, had a mask. She put it on. The revenant wore a tattered robe that looked vaguely priestly. She grabbed it by the shoulders and dragged, thanking unknown gods for the hermetic skinsuit. That thing had saved her life, and now it acted as protective equipment.

Once she was up the boulder, and the thing was down, she cast the spell again. It went a bit wide, and penetrating the conduits was harder, but it turned out that her spell was an overkill. The thing barely resisted at all. She soon felt her own mana join with that its own. Pulling was not just easy. It was fun.

“Yoink! Hahaha. OH SH—”

Too late. Yoink joined Bzzt! in the list of embarrassing terminologies. She felt the golem’s disapproving glare on her back.

Below, the dead thing blackened and fell apart. She could see pieces of the skeleton below a dry, ashy substance. Interestingly, the stench lessened.

“Ah well, at least it works.”

She took a few minutes to recover, then cast again, aiming at a putrefied young woman in a torn dress. Her target this time had been partially eaten, and there were claw marks on her back. It made Viv wonder how the body had ended up here. In fact, there was no way that all those people had just died here. Was she at the endpoint of a revenant migration pattern?

The mystery would remain for now.

“It works,” she announced proudly.

//Indeed, Your Grace, an amazing achievement.

//To invent your first spell only two weeks after your arrival!

//It would kill anyone else on the planet, unfortunately.

//Having one’s conduit flooded with black mana is usually fatal, black alignment or not.

“How come that I’m alive then?

//I have no idea, Your Grace.

//I mentioned it before.

//By all accounts, you should be dead.

Viv could not squander such a precious opportunity. She immediately started an approximate rendition of the Thriller choreography. It did not impress the public. Arthur squealed in confusion.

“Tough crowd, huh? Nevermind.”

Not even a dance skill.

//When you are done, we must plan.

“Ok, so I can neutralize revenants. What else do I need to know?”

//Revenants follow trends.

//If enough revenants start walking in the same direction, a rush will occur.

//That is why you should eliminate pursuers before they grow too numerous.

//You may not sleep in the open either.

“Are there any caches left on the way?”

//The sand here has spread out more.

//Some of my maps are no longer valid.

//We have to assume that all the underground caches have been buried.

“How about guard towers or similar structures? The stone buildings should be more or less intact here.”

//Indeed.

//One memory database includes the location of scout towers across the plains.

//Most of them should be standing.

//We will progress slowly. 

//We are almost out of the Heartlands.

“I can see a forest in the distance.”

//My sensors do not extend that far.

//Do you confirm?

“Yes. It's green and extends far to the horizon. I can’t be farther than five days away at normal speed.”

//That is a relief.

//I hope we find new people to subjugate.

“Yes. Wait, what?”

//To communicate with, Your Grace.

//New people to communicate with.

“Right.”

Viv shouldered the sled harness and descended the short slope onto the vast plain.

Walking across the plain proved a new type of exhausting experience. While she was considerably less sick than before, she could no longer walk freely. Meditative trance had allowed her to surmount her fatigue. Now, she had to stop frequently to cast yoink.

At first, she tried to move between the creatures. Unfortunately, this often resulted in having to cast the spell twice. The best solution proved to walk in a mostly straight line coming close to a revenant, killing it, then moving to the next one. The mana recovered that way allowed her to keep going, but she had to pause frequently.

Mana recovered naturally, and it did so faster during meditation. The saturation allowed her to recover very quickly for someone who was still a novice caster, but it was still hard and slow going. She finally found cause to rejoice at the end of the first day,

“Hold on,” she told Solfis, “I think I saw something good.”

//Your Grace?

Viv dropped the harness, then stopped.

“Tell me, Solfis, you know how the zombies—

//Revenant, Your Grace. Zombies are the products of a specific necromantic spell.

“Necromancy? As in skulls and graveyards and terrible appearance?”

//This is amazingly accurate.

//This unit thought there were no necromancers in your native world?

“Don’t sidetrack me. YOINK! Anyway, you know how the ‘revenants’ sort of turn to ash and bone when they die?”

//This is a known occurrence when the undead are killed via intrusion.

//Your… spell… has a similar result to ‘exorcism’ spells used by the priesthood to destroy magically sensitive creatures.

//Those are creatures with a weak binding to their physical form or no physical form at all.

“Fine, fine. My question was, how dirty is it exactly?”

//This unit does not understand the question.

“Is that black ash sticky? Smelly? Does touching lead to diseases?”

//....No.

//In fact, it can be used as fertilizer.

“Excellent. Hold on.”

Viv removed the harness and moved away from the sled. Arthur squealed miserably.

Solfis watched her move away — Yoink! Yoink!— towards a revenant in the distance. She waited as it came closer, shambling with rotten arms extended.

Revenants did not feel that dangerous when they were all stumbling around like piss-drunk freshmen on their first bender, but she did not let her guard down. They moved at the speed of a slow jog, which was quite fast when there were a lot of them. They were also durable, regenerated, and they could crush her windpipe in a second given a chance. The best way to survive was to kill those who went after her before they started a mass movement, then continue.

She had to conserve her strength to do so. This was the one exception.

The revenant had been a man in life. A peddler, she thought. He had a huge backpack strapped to his back with multiple belts, and wore durable travel clothes. But the prize was below.

“Yoink!”

She approached the unmoving form and inspected her loot.

[Boots of easy gait (enchanted): those cheaply enchanted boots relieve the wearer’s fatigue and protect their feet against the vagaries of travel. Its owner cursed this item upon death.]

Not all vagaries of travel, apparently. The man still had the shaft of an arrow protruding from his neck. False advertising! Even here!

Also, a curse.

She might be able to do something about it.

Viv dragged the backpack up, snapping the arm bones at their base. Easier than undoing all those belts. She removed pieces of peddler from the loot and promptly fell on her ass.

That thing was heavy.

She dragged it back to the sled and opened it. 

There were a lot of cooking pots she threw away in anger. After reflection, she kept one that looked like a wok. There were clothes, including a fancy woman’s dress she nabbed. She threw away the glass beads, metal tools, and found the treasure in a secret pocket: a pouch of currency.

“Money.”

//This will be of use.

//But please, hurry.

Now was the time to see if her idea could work. She placed the boots on the ground and poured some of the holy water on it.

“Neriad… Ow!”

She winced in pain.

//It would be better if you did not pray to specific deities until your soul trauma is cured.

Ah.

“May you find peace in the afterlife of your own faith.”

She heard a song like a whisper, and the ‘cursed’ part dropped from the item.

“Hmm. I’m surprised that it worked.”

//As is this unit.

She tried the boots. It closed comfortably around her foot as if they were made for her. Probably some magical thingie at work.

Now she was finally properly equipped.

Her travel continued.

The two days passed, making slow but careful progress. She would leave at dawn, then find a tower mid-afternoon and huddle for the night. The abundance of black mana and her practice with the glyph awarded her with another level in mana manipulation. She felt she was close to a breakthrough.

She also spent the idle time raising Arthur.

Her idea to treat the small dragon as a feral cat kept bearing fruit. The wily creature now understood several commands such as no, stay, come, and wait. That did not mean that she would obey them, though. 

Scritches were finally achieved as well.

It was brief, and Viv enjoyed the feeling of warm, smooth scales, but soon Arthur huffed and retreated to her sleeping-bag dragon lair looking like a gravely offended lady. Viv gave her space.

On the second night on the plain, Viv made camp inside of a lone guard tower standing within walking distance of a derelict village. Technically everything was within walking distance. In that case, it just meant that getting to the village took only twenty minutes at a jog.

The tower was on a rare elevation and gave a good view of the surrounding area. It was a simple building with a ground floor and stone stairs to the top, from where a sentry would be able to look to the horizon. Such constructions were common anywhere in the empire, Solfis had said, and used to warn a village of monsters. A signal fire on the roof would warn nearby garrisons of an emergency. Unfortunately, the top floor had been made of wood, and it was long since gone. Viv left the sled outside, but she had still dragged the golem in.

Power +1

“How does that even work?” Viv asked as she blocked the way with the crumbling door. She placed Arthur’s bedroll on the ground and started mounting the tent. 

//Progress is made over time.

//But most thresholds are passed by more challenging or violent efforts.

//Soldier training alternates slow tasks and violent effort for maximum efficiency.

That sounded like interval training. Huh. 

Viv took out her pot.

The door exploded inward. Something had crashed through it. 

It had a fat, bulbous torso so large the opening was blocked and a horned head with multiple chins, pallid skin, and repellent, malevolent black eyes. And the smell!

Stone groaned under the pressure of the intruder’s push. A single putrid arm wormed its way inside.

Viv stood and reached for her rifle before her brain could even process the intrusion. Her hands grasped air.

//Shield!

Viv latched on the order like a drowning woman on a buoy. The half-sphere of black mana flickered alive before her, and not an instant too soon. The creature’s mouth was opening.

It vomited a pestilential torrent of something she did not see. The attack disintegrated on her cover as it disgorged from the open maw. She felt the revolting impact on her mystic sense.

She was already prepared for the next act.

The creature’s massive arm pierced the shield, and she slowed her time perception. The shield could only stop magic. That was fine.

She dropped it.

The arm missed her by a breath. Yellow talons brushed her armor but failed to pierce.

There was one thing about magic that Viv had understood. At its core, it was a question of will. Beyond experience and conduit and all those indexes of power, it was a question of changing reality without touching it—to will it to change.

The thing was going to kill her, Solfis, and Arthur. And so it had to die. 

“Yoink.”

Viv’s voice was glacial behind the comical incantation. A bolt of pure void bit into the creature’s chest with voracious strength. Her might smashed into its conduit like a torrent, bursting through its massive metaphysical body like a tsunami through a beaver dam. She poured her defiance and frustration until everything inside of the beast was hers until it was all her. Until there was nothing else left.

Then, she pulled.

The torrential black mana that returned coursed through her. She lifted her right hand, willed a black flame to appear. The mana answered faithfully, as she knew it would. The magic danced for her, happy and… alive.

The monster crashed to the ground, slain in a moment.

She could get used to that shit.

Mana manipulation has reached intermediate 1

Acuity +1

Mana channels: nascent

Black Hedge Witch (5)

She felt it then. It all sort of clicked together. Some of the black mana stayed inside of her, more than usual. It smoothed more easily. She understood more and was understood in return.

“What is mana?”

//A magnificent result, Your Grace.

“Squee!”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, getting carried away, I guess.”

The congratulations died right there in awkwardness. Solfis was contemplating something. Arthur looked from the dead thing to Viv, then back to the dead thing with wide eyes. Viv felt mildly offended by the dragonette’s obvious incredulity. She was also wondering how the fuck they were going to get out with that lard in the path. She also hoped the sled was still intact.

//Your Grace, this unit wonders if you were a combatant in your previous life.

“I was. I was good too!” she exclaimed, somewhat defensively, because it was not entirely true. She had barely passed the prerequisite for the special forces qualifications, but it had been hard and she had passed. So there.

//Your Grace, your battle instincts are commendable. 

//This unit will work towards integrating your magic into them. 

//It seems to be urgent.

“Right. Any idea what that was? Should I expect more?”

//This is a gut spiller.

//A specimen of good size.

//Although, they can be surprisingly silent when they move.

//Especially on sand.

//They spit a corrosive type of magic that can melt armor.

//It must have come from the nearby village.

“Will this sort of thing happen again?

//This unit has too little available data to predict the distribution of the nearby undead population.

//This unit will only select remote locations from now on.

//This unit has a request.

“Do tell.”

//Can you collect the skull of the creature?

//Please.

Something finally clicked in Viv’s tired mind.

“Are you trying to have me build a bone frame for you?” Viv asked.

//Yes.

//And this unit believes that it has enough.

//Unfortunately, your intensive help would be required.

//Short-term survival will remain our priority.

“Understood. For now, tell me about mana.”

Solfis obliged for part of the evening before having her train more. He mentioned several hypotheses from great sages across the eras. They all had ideas, but the only thing they really agreed on was that Nyil was a little bit alive and that life permeated all of reality, making it malleable. That was reasonably cool. She did think that, if the world was alive, then it was a little bit of a dick? Because of all the monsters.

She went to sleep later. Arthur condescended to some evening petting, but only for five seconds because obviously, killing a massive undead abomination with a single spell was still only a middling achievement, and she would have to do better in the future.

The morning was dark since the thing still blocked the door. At least it no longer smelled. Viv sighed, retrieved its head, and took out her shovel. It took her an hour to clear enough black ash to drag Solfis’ fat arse through. Then, they were gone.

On the third day, Viv walked faster. Every time she crested a small hill, she could see the edge of the forest, tantalizingly close. The deep, shiny green of life lured her with the promise of cover and, perhaps, humanity. The main problem was that the revenant density kept increasing. They covered the land and she had to slow down to a lazy walk to be able to kill them as she went. She saw fresh ones and old ones. Some were more damaged than others. Some still wore tattered rich coats or mail armor or heavy cloaks designed for cold weather. Some only wore a loincloth, and that was a sight she could have done without. 

It was midday, and she was out in the open when she heard something that stupefied her: trotting horses.

Behind her in the distance, she spotted a trio of riders on things that definitely looked like heavy horses. They and the mounts wore mail and leather, as well as knight helms with closed visors. They also wielded strange polearms. The blade was a half-moon with the concave part facing outward. It looked like it was designed to keep things at bay.

The riders spotted her and made their way forth without stopping. 

That was kind of hostile.

She inspected the lead figure.

[Baranese knight: dangerous]

That was a human for sure. The chances were high that they would not attack if they could help it. Hopefully. She removed her hood and mask to expose her face and made large, waving signs.

“Quick, Solfis, what’s the universal sign for peace.”

//An open hand, Your Grace.

“Should I try to hide you?”

//No, Your Grace. 

//They will see my frame and wonder what I am.

//Honesty is more valuable than secrecy here.

//Because secrecy cannot be achieved.

//I did not expect us to be intercepted like that.

“Ok. If they don’t stop, I’ll hide behind you and start blasting.”

//I hope it will not come to that, Your Grace.

//Look, they are slowing down.

Lieutenant Cernit’s perspective.

The fort patrol had been looking hard these past few days, and they had finally found something. It was not what they expected.

Fort Stone had fallen. They had seen the alarm signal in the distance, then the smoke afterward. They knew the deal. Fallen forts meant powerful undead or necromancers, and powerful undead did not set things on fire. Therefore, they had to try and locate the rogue caster, if only so that they could light their own alarm before undead swarmed over the walls in the vain hope that someone, anyone, would come.

What they had found was a trail of dead revenants.

Now, revenants were a pain. They were slow and not so dangerous by themselves, but there were a lot of them on the dead plains, and they liked to swarm. They were also notoriously hard to put down for good. The black mana that saturated the place helped them regenerate to their original mangled forms if they were not destroyed, and only fire or a priest could purify them. A trail of bodies, now that was something. Cernit had led them in pursuit. He half-expected to find a necromancer at the end of the trail, maybe even catch them with their pants down. For a moment, he thought he had when he spotted the strange carriage in the distance.

“It appears to be a corpse cart,” Benetti had commented, as aloof as always. Jor had said nothing.

“Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure. Good luck,” he had retorted. 

He gave them one chance in three. That was the best they would get.

But then, something unexpected happened. The person they took for a necromancer removed their cloak and jumped up and down, waving in a slightly idiotic manner. They were not casting. The dead were not converging on them.

“Hold,” he said, and the others slowed down too. 

Cernit forced a calm breath. He would have tried his damndest to slay a necromancer and give the foot soldiers back at the fort a chance. He was not particularly eager to meet his end, though.

The closer they got and the weirder things became. First, the not-a-necromancer was a beautiful young woman with close-cropped hair of a strange color he had never seen before, light brown with red highlights. Stranger yet, she was not wearing cursed robes but an eclectic mix of faded magical equipment like the last descendant of a ruined noble family. He came closer and realized the cart was, in fact, a makeshift sled holding large bones. When they stopped by her side, he found out that she had brilliant green eyes, something that was beyond rare in these parts, as well as the most advanced case of black mana poisoning he had ever seen. He could spot the shadowy veins snaking under her skin from his saddle. She should be screaming on the ground and halfway towards turning into a revenant herself by now, not smiling like a loon.

By then, Cernit was completely at a loss. He inspected the strange apparition.

[Witch]

His instincts and [danger sense] skill flashed in alarm. She was not as strong as some of the war mages he had supported back when he had been at the front. She was still a caster. At least she was friendly. Weirdly so.

The only thing worse than a friendly caster was a pissed-off one.

Then the woman started talking in an elegant, lilting voice. The words sounded like advanced military terms.

“Is... is that Old Imperial?” he asked Benetti.

“Yes. My classical education finally proves itself useful. Although I may be a tad rusty. Hold on, allow me to... is that... a golem part?!” the disgraced nobleman answered.

The next words came in a mechanical voice that sent shivers down his spine. He recognized every word from the day he was knighted at the royal palace. It had been an eternity ago.

//Bow and pay your respects to the Princess Bob, commoners.

The three riders froze in their seats. Benetti leaned towards him.

“That, lieutenant, is the weirdest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my entire damn life.”

A cover on the sled popped out. A serpentine head emerged.

“Squee!”

“How about now?” Cernit deadpanned.

The appearance of a tamed drake threw the group into a state of consternation. At least Cernit assumed it was tame.

“Chief?” Jor asked.

Both of the riders turned to him, as Jor speaking was a momentous event that occurred on average once every tenday.

“Is this the afterlife?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

And that was it. Cernit admitted that he found the strangeness of the situation disconcerting.

The golem and the woman spoke again, and Benetti answered in broken Old Imperial. He promptly turned to his officer.

“The woman wants us to attach the thing she is dragging to a horse and go to our fort.”

“With her?”

“I would assume so, yes. And the golem is threatening us.”

“Hmm,” Cernit replied. Everyone knew how stupid refusing a caster was. The woman was a witch, though a wild one. He had to make sure.

“Can we ascertain she is not...”

He realized that the word for necromancers was copied from Old Imperial. Like almost every technical term in his language.

“...one who orders the dead around,” he finished lamely.

Just then the woman frowned and turned to a revenant that had ventured too close.

“Yoink.”

The thing fell dead.

“Is there such a thing as a decromancer?” he asked Benetti.

The disgraced gentleman stared.

“Uncromancer? Redeader?”

“I think you can stop talking, lieutenant. And she can call herself what she wants if she kills the things. Help me strap the golem to Bali.”

He climbed down from his horse and stepped closer to the witch, who was currently killing the few revenants ambling their way with calm detachment.

She was tall. Maybe even the size of Jor. And beautiful. Even if her cheeks were a bit hollow. The woman turned to him and glared down imperiously.

“Err. Hello,” he greeted in Old Imperial.

“Viviane,” she said, pointing at her chest.

She made weird sounds, like the buzz of fire wasps.

“Bibiane?”

The woman groaned and slapped her forehead. She pressed him on, and he hurried to attach the sled in embarrassed silence. There were too many questions, but one thing was sure, the woman was an unknown and, right now, any unknown was good. It would take a miracle to live to see spring.

“Yoink!”

The woman climbed behind Jor, who had the biggest horse. It appeared that he could, in fact, be nervous.

Cernit shook his head one last time, and they made their way back at a sedate pace.

“Yoink.”

That was the most outlandish spell he’d ever heard.

Chapter 11: Fort Sky

Viv rode on a fantasy Percheron, her chest against the back of a muscular lad, and regretted every second of it. It was now clear that he had not showered in a long, long while. She put her mask back on.

The armors had little glyphs on the pauldrons that she did not recognize, but she hypothesized that they protected their wearers against the excess black mana.

Actually...

[Baranese knight]

No, you dingus.

[Black-shielded light knight armor (enchanted): this poorly made armor was designed to equip soldiers deployed in the Dead Plains. It is shielded against the pervasive black mana and the legs have been reinforced to protect against revenant bites.]

Better.

Specialized gear. That meant an organization dedicated to monitoring the dead lands and, possibly, SOPs to handle errant casters found there loaded with loot.

That was probably not great news.

On the other hand, the soldiers had been respectful. They had not leered, nor laughed. She took it as an encouraging sign.

She quickly realized how the knights operated. Their blades were designed to smash into creatures and push them back without getting stuck in withered flesh. With enough strength, they could even cleave their targets in two, though they rarely bothered. She kept draining the odd revenant and her rider took the habit of pointing at targets for her with a grunt. He had an uncanny ability to tell when they would get in range and when they would be too slow to intercept them.

That was one other interesting thing. The undead detected the three knights from much further away than they had detected her. It probably meant that a large expedition could trigger a small zombie apocalypse.

Those guys knew what they were doing.

The horses were indefatigable, probably due to the magical enhancement that pervaded everything in this world. They soon arrived at a small hill and the fort above it. There were no undead anywhere close.

Viv took a moment to appreciate her destination. The fort was old, and it had seen some action. Successive garrisons had repaired the holes with stones, the patchwork result giving the edifice a ramshackle appearance despite its obvious sturdiness. The structure itself was simple. It had a single path leading up to a heavily reinforced gate. A circular wall surrounded several buildings with a single tower rising at the back, reminding her of low middle age fortifications from her home country. She noticed a few sentries on the wall, each one wielding the same revenant-b-gone polearm. She would have to figure out how it was really called. None carried bows.

The place looked quite impregnable. Revenants would have trouble scaling the sheer walls even if they happened to be smart enough to do so. The defenders would merely have to push them away and then light a fire down on occasion. It was a sweet setup.

A heavy grate was raised to let them in. Those were the thickest steel bars she had ever seen.

[Reinforced steel gates: those fortress gates can stop mundane battering rams for hours. Only powerful spells will breach them.]

They dismounted. She had to lower her head to pass and soon found herself in an inner court filled with buildings on all sides.

As soon as she was through, the omnipresent black mana saturation faded, just like it had at the springs. It was good to be free of the stuff, even if she felt a kinship with the strange energy.

The court was not empty. She counted about ten men in uniforms milling about. They all stood dumbstruck as she came in, their eyes as wide as saucers.

There was not a woman in sight.

Viv knew the deal. Give an inch, and they take a mile. So she wore her war face and channeled Mouq inspecting a group of drunk dumbasses coming back from leave. It helped that, compared to them, she was quite tall.

The soldiers were a bit unimpressive. There was a ragged, bottom-of-the-barrel quality to them that she could not quite define. They wore a leather cuirass over a green shirt and steel gauntlets, all of which looked like they had been put in service sometimes during the last decade. They also smelled a bit ripe.

Their short stature was not exactly natural. She had seen it before in the more remote corners of her area of operation, back in Afghanistan. These soldiers had been malnourished during their teenage years. It had stunted their growth.

The interior of the fort was clean, at least, so discipline was maintained.

The officer in charge screamed something she did not understand but probably went along the line of “are you donkeys certain you have nothing to do?” The inner court was deserted ten seconds later.

He turned to her.

“Food,” she said, stalling any negotiation.

His second translated her words with an amused smile. He pointed to a side door from which came an enticing smell. She started to leave, then stopped. She turned back to the sled, grabbed a squawking Arthur from her lair, and carried the dragonette inside.

She found a small refectory that could feed around a dozen people at the time. A man in a stained apron was piling jerky in a basket beside bubbling pot. A fresh loaf of bread waited nearby.

He froze when he saw her.

Her gaze met his. She calmly sat a squirming Arthur on a table and approached the man slowly, with a light smile. His mouth opened, but no sounds came out.

She stopped in front of him, still smiling. She grabbed a piece of jerky and bit into it.

It was pretty good!

Removing the basket from his hands, she returned to the table. The cook crashed against a door on his way out.

You have gained the intimidation skill at Beginner 1. Novice rank bypassed.

“Nonsense! That was diplomacy.”

The interface did not comment.

The officer followed her in as she was starting on a bowl of stew with a slice of fresh bread.

It was good.

Actually, it was really good. The base was some sort of wheat-like cereal that was still al-dente, with dry veggies and sliced roots in a light broth. The bread was dark brown, crispy outside, and tender inside. She could fucking cry. Only her adamant resolve and the temperature prevented her from pigging out in front of the plebs.

The man put a hand on the seat facing her. Arthur hissed aggressively from her half-eaten piece of jerky, beady reptilian eyes squinting with aggression. Viv appeased her with a small no, and a second piece of jerky offered as a peace gesture. She noticed, now that the dragonette was so close, that she had grown a little bit. Not much, but enough to be noticeable.

The man sat down and removed his helmet. Under that, he had a strong, honest face with a prominent cleft chin and deep-set intelligent eyes. His traits were weathered and there was grey at his temples. The most curious feature was that his skin had a greenish tint under his tan, just like the soldiers outside. It looked natural. She was curious to know if this was an ethnic trait, since he did not look like he was from anywhere she knew of.

The two knights by his side also removed their helmets, and her suspicion was confirmed. The tall man she had ridden with had a square jaw and a severe look, while the one who spoke Imperial had a refined and elegant air. He was also the only one with a mustache and a short beard. They all had black eyes and dark hair that was not much longer than her own and the strange green tint. 

She had stopped eating as soon as the man pulled the chair. He was nervous, and so were his subordinates, even if the suave one was trying to hide it. They waited. The leader was hesitating.

It occurred to Viv that she could start eating again. She was ravenous.

Her father had shown her that eating and sitting while someone else was standing was the height of disrespect. He enjoyed these kinds of games a lot. He would always remain calm and polite. The insults came from subtle gestures, from twisting the truth with measured words so that reality described through his filter fit his agenda. Viviane had loved him for it when she was young because he had used it on others, and she enjoyed winning. It had turned her life sour during her teenage years.

Karma, really.

Leaving had been the most painful decision of her life because she still mattered to him deep inside and vice-versa. He was just too much of an asshole to express it in a healthy way. She had believed that she had thrown off the weight of his legacy when she had made that decision.

Boot camp had proven her wrong.

Entitled. Arrogant. Distant. Those adjectives had come from too many sources for it to be just a coincidence. The hostility she had felt had provoked her to do better, to show the others that she was not a princess and that she belonged. Instead, it had turned her into the queen bitch. Only a small cadre of others had accepted her, those who saw past her demeanor or simply did not care. It had taken her a long, long time to stop expecting people to do things for her because it was the way of the world. And now, half an hour into meeting humans again, she had reverted to her previous habits.

And they were letting her.

She could do it then, she knew. She could position herself as an exotic, banned royal scion, and they would eat the deception hook, line, and sinker.

Viv sliced the loaf and extended the piece of bread to the man in front of her. Then, she grabbed the platter of jerky and placed it between them.

She smiled.

A great weight seemed to lift from her host’s shoulders. The gruff knight sighed deeply, and the suave one took a seat as well. The muscular third went to get more bowls.

“Viviane,” she said, pointing at herself.

“Bibiane.”

“Bibiane.”

Aw what the fuck?

“Bveebveeahn,” the tall one corrected as he came back and distributed stew.

Viviane, with two Vs as in vindictive violence, gently massaged the bridge of her nose and tried again.

“Bob.”

“Bob.”

“Bob.”

“Bob.”

“Okay, who are you?”

The officer seemed to understand that one, which was nice. 

“Cernit!” he stated, with pride.

The mustachioed gentleman introduced himself as Benetti and the stoic one as Jor. Afterward, Cernit asked her questions, and Benetti translated with some difficulty.

She stopped them.

“Golem,” she said, pointing outside.

It took some effort, but eventually, Jor stepped outside and brought back the heavy frame of Solfis as if it was a crate of wine, muscular arms barely bulging under the tremendous weight. It would have been sexy if the man did not look like an outhouse and smell like one too. 

He casually placed the central unit on the ground where the disarmed and delegged golem could observe the proceedings.

“I apologize for leaving you behind, Solfis. My stomach got the better of me.”

//I cannot blame you for your fleshy weaknesses, Your Grace.

Oh, he was pissed, alright.

//What did you need of me, Your Grace.

“We are going to ask each other questions. So feel free to drop in. But please, stop threatening them and demanding that I be called princess.”

//Your Grace, those are lowly knights.
//This place is a dump.
//You must demand proper respect!

“We are trying to understand what is happening in the wider world. Be patient. This is an investment for the future.”

//Deception is a mighty tool in any ruler’s arsenal.
//Very well, Your Grace.
//We shall have them taught proper manners later.
//Once their nation has been subsumed.

She was reasonably certain that Benetti had trouble following the conversation, but perhaps it would be wiser not to mention conquest when knights of the target nation were around?

“Please, stop provoking them.”

Solfis obeyed for now, and she started a game of linguistics with the Baranese knights. It took her twenty minutes to learn that she was at the Western end of a huge island called Param, and that the knights came from the Eastern part of the continent, where it linked to some other large landmass via a small isthmus. She learnt that because Cernit brought a tattered map and tried to ask her where she was from.

Between the Harrakan heartlands (which had a cute little skull on the map) and Baran stood a handful of other countries. Two of those were very close and rather big. There was a plethora of small stuff as well. Baran was, by far, the largest. 

She had to point at the map and say no when Cernit asked about each independent city one after the other. Discussions would have stalled without Solfis’ timely help.

//Your Grace, I believe I have successfully identified the language as a dialect of Barrae nation.
//This unit should be able to communicate with them more easily by using this language.

“Really? It took you this long to draw the parallel between Barrae nation and Baran?”

//This unit apologizes, Your Grace.
//It had to access an unused part of my memory linked to the life and habits of the pitiful peoples our great empire subdued.
//The Barrae nation offered the most resistance to our glorious forces amongst all of Param.
//That is to say, they offered an actual challenge.
//Instead of us just crushing them like insects.

“Could we get to the translation part, please?”

//Of course, Your Grace.

The rest of the conversation went much more smoothly. All three knights could understand the dialect. They also seemed genuinely pleased to hear it. It made them more amicable though still politely distant. The deference made Viv more self-assured despite her best efforts. She lounged in her seat as if it were a throne using her height advantage to its utmost when leaning forward. Before she could realize it, she had created a gap between herself and the men, although one tinged with respect instead of fear.

“Who are you?”

“I gave you my name. I am a caster specialized in black magic. Beyond that, I would prefer to maintain my identity secret.”

“What were you doing in the dead zone?”

“I appeared there following a long-range teleportation accident.”

This part was technically true. The fact that the word ‘teleportation’ existed in Old Imperial informed her that it was a possibility. Solfis did not object to her improvised cover story so it had to make sense, somehow.

Those were the only two questions that she answered in full. As for the rest, Solfis made scathing answers to some of the other lines of inquiries, and the look of embarrassment on Cernit’s face indicated that he had stepped out of line. Or at least, the line as understood by Solfis.

Viv did not want to undermine the golem’s authority, but she used a lull in the conversation to ask him what this was all about.

//He asked about your path and casting capabilities, Your Grace.
//It is not his place to make demands of you.
//Even if you were a regular Hedge Witch, this line of questioning would still be rude and invasive.
//I merely reminded him to watch his words.

Viv was reclining on her seat, hand playing with a small piece of jerky. She flipped it to Arthur, who snagged it and swallowed it in one gulp. The dragonette locked eyes with the trio and licked her chops.

Intimidation reached Beginner 2

Intimidation reached Beginner 3

“Ask him why he wants to know.”

Solfis relayed her words, and she waited as the leader answered.

And waited.

And waited.

The knight talked for at least ten minutes, with Solfis urging him on and asking additional questions.

//Your grace, this man’s tale is long.
//This unit shall summarize it for you.
//Lieutenant Cernit is part of a multi-national corps of soldiers deployed at the edge of the deadlands.
//That fleshbag extolled their sacred duty under the guidance of Neriad, the god of virtuous combat.

Solfis’ tone was equal parts condescending and impatient.

//This unit believes that he is one of the worthless fleshbags considered expendable and sent here to act as an early warning system.
//His role is to light an alarm fire in case they spot or are attacked by mighty foes.

“And then reinforcements come?”

//This unit believes that this is not the case
//This unit believes that Cernit knows that it is not the case.
//Lit fires serve to direct scrying efforts by trained mages.
//They also serve to inform the headquarters that there will not be a need to arrange supplies for a return trip.

“Harsh.”

//Sacrificing the few for the need of the many is a necessity when monsters can wipe out a kingdom in three days, Your Grace.
//It already happened.

“If you say so. I fail to see how it relates to me.”

//Cernit claims a necromancer has destroyed the two nearest forts.

“Hold it. A necromancer? As in, skulls and bones and bad breath and controlling the dead?”

//This unit already mentioned them, Your Grace.

//Perhaps you forgot.

"Oh yeah, sorry."

//Do not worry, Your Grace.

//A necromancer mostly uses black mana like you do.
//However, they focus on controlling and enhancing undead.
//They use those in battle.

Solfis’ voice drips with disdain.

“You make it sound like it is an inferior path, but Cernit obviously fears them.”

//Humans are fleshy and faillible.
//Undead are fleshy, faillible, and stupid.
//The mindless undead are an antithesis to sapience.
//A necromancer can build nothing, only destroy.
//Before falling to an assassin’s strike.
//Because their bodyguards are imbecilic constructs
//By the time I am done with you, you will wipe out necromancers and their armies with a flick of your wrist.
//While eating fondant.

That did sound enticing.

Solfis knew her too well. Sometimes, she felt that he was out for world domination and she was but a convenient patsy. She would have to go back to her world before it happened.

Going back to her world.

She had to do it, eventually. People were waiting for her. The problem was that the longer she stayed here and the more bonds she was creating. There was already Arthur and Solfis, although she was sure they could manage without her. 

There was also magic.

The power was still here, coursing through the strange non-organ that was her conduits. It was hers, and she felt she had been born for it. Every second she spent practicing tied her more deeply to the world.

Perhaps, one day, she would be tied too deeply. 

//Resuming demonstration.
//Cernit wishes to enlist our help to last until the change of guard, which will occur in two months.

“That sounds like a terrible idea. We should just leave and keep going to the forest.”

//If I may, Your Grace, that might not be the best idea.

Viv physically recoiled in amazement as Solfis advocated placing her in danger.

“Are you serious? You want us to stay in this death trap?”

//You are thinking that the necromancer will besiege this place in an attempt to lay it to waste.

“Yes!”

//You are correct, Your Grace.
//I believe that this will happen.
//Nevertheless, staying might still be the best solution.

“You are going to have to be extremely convincing, Solfis.”

//Of course, Your Grace.
//If we leave now, there is a chance that we are detected by the necromancer’s outriders and caught in the open.
//Although most of their troops should be made of revenants, they will undoubtedly control fast-moving elites, such as gut spillers.
//There is also a chance that we are intercepted by elite church fleshbags.

//Those would be much less understanding than those pliable fleshbags.
//There is also a chance that the knights attempt to coerce you.

Viv gazed at the trio, who were politely waiting in front of her. The noble one was trying to follow the conversation without much success.

//Finally, we would be going blind and could possibly face monsters.

“Those are all maybes while the necromancer attack is a certainty, if what you say is correct.”

//Indeed, Your Grace.
//I deem our survival with this option at around 50%.

A coin flip? Really?

At least, it was higher than her starting score of lower than 37%. There was hope for her yet.

//The reason why the number is low is because we would have no avenue of success in any of those scenarios.
//Despite your amazing progress, you remain a lowly caster.
//An experienced village mage could beat you in a duel.
//Being caught means death or long-term imprisonment or servitude.

“What are the benefits of staying?”

//One, we will be able to understand the general state of Param before traveling it.
//Two, we will extract the location of local garrisons and towns from our willing host.
//Three, we will obtain useful contacts as well as knowledge of local personalities from our willing host.
//Four, we will obtain the good grace of the Church of Neriad.
//Five, I have ascertained that this fortress contains an up-to-date bestiary, which we will need.
//Six, we will be fed and hosted for two months, which will give us the breathing room required to bring your skills up to par with a decently trained provincial mage.

//Seven, I now have a workable plan to build myself a battle-capable frame within two weeks, which will be implemented immediately.
//Eight, and this is important, the battle will considerably increase the speed of your development.

“Assuming I survive it. Okay, but I see a few issues as well. First, how come there are no women here?”

Solfis asked, and she was informed that the rule was put into place after several sexual and plain violence incidents. The garrisons were segregated by sex. One of the forts further along the defensive network was apparently operated entirely by women.

//Your concern is a serious one, Your Grace.
//However, disabling a caster without killing them requires specific equipment that is not present in this fort.
//None of those fleshbags will dare lay a hand on you.

Solfis’ belief was built on flimsy foundations, but Viv had to admit that he knew the world better than she did. She could also cast Bzzt from anywhere in her body with no gesture and without speaking, a serious defense considering the projectile's speed.

“Are you certain that the garrison will not turn on me when they figure out I only cast dark spells?”

//On the contrary, Your Grace.

//Those mongrels will be terrified.

//You have little to fear from them.

“From them, yes, but what about the necromancer themself? This is all bullshit unless we can take them down.”

//Indeed, Your Grace, that foe is the crux of the problem.

//However, your own ability to take down even a gut spiller in moments helps us tremendously.

//Essentially, the cover of the fortification, your affinity, and the drain spell put you in a unique position to counter them efficiently.

//Cernit reports that the nearest fort had a fire lit for three days before burning down.

//This indicates a necromancer of middling power, as a powerful one would have felled the place in much less time.

//It will take a certain amount for the foe to come to lay siege to our fort.

//They will need to herd a sufficient amount of revenants our way first.

//By then, your training will have advanced, and my frame will be almost over.

“You seem confident that you can take them down, Solfis. I do not share that confidence.”

//Your Grace, this unit has killed a significant amount of casters from many different paths.

//A basic frame will be enough to dispatch one.

“You really believe that this is for the best?”

//Yes.

Viv considered her options. Solfis would certainly agree to leave if push came to shove, but she saw little point in going against his advice for the sake of it. Solfis had saved her life. Several times. If he believed that this course of action offered better chances, she believed him. Their fates were tied, after all, and he had several centuries of existence on her.

Solfis had influenced her decisions since the day they met, she realized. He still shaped her as he saw fit, and she allowed it with the belief that survival, and eventually a return to earth, would come from her own hand. This world was merciless. She had little faith that powerful archmages would simply accept her story and help her without exacting payment. Training for a few months would be worth the effort.

And the fact that she loved wielding magic and the feeling of power that came with it had little to do with it. Nope. 

She had to admit that her reluctance came from disappointment. She had been looking forward to leaving the wastes, but now she would have to watch the green prize from the crenellations of this lone fort for a while longer. 

In the end, it was practicality that convinced her to go with the plan. She had to survive first and foremost. Anything else was secondary.

Not that she would agree so freely, of course.

“Negotiate with them. I want my own quarters, enough food for Arthur, and identification papers or equivalent. And ask for a salary as well.”

//Excellent idea, Your Grace.

//I shall exploit your superior bargaining position to milk them for all that they are worth.

“Don’t make them too resentful. Just ask for fair treatment for a mercenary spellcaster. I am sure those exist.”

Negotiations went swimmingly. Cernit was poor, which she expected, and could only pay her with his own stipend, which did not amount to much. His subordinates tried to share their salaries as well, but the proud man adamantly refused. However, their support obviously moved him, and Viv instantly placed him in her ‘honorable retard’ box alongside the movie Faramir and anyone who ever fancied doomed charge and heroic last stands.

To make up for the little money there was, the brave lieutenant bent himself over backwards to accommodate her other demands. She would get the room at the base of the tower, a room currently used as an officer’s mess slash storage room. She would receive enough dry meat to feed her pet ‘drake’, which they had in excess anyway after the previous garrison had lost half their numbers fending off a mutated undead bat. Finally, Cernit could produce a letter of recommendation that would get her recognized as a mercenary in the service of Barran after they were done. That sort of thing could open a lot of doors, mercenaries being a common sight in Param’s fragmented geopolitical environment.

Finally, he acknowledged she was her own woman and that while she would help them fend off their foes, he could not order her around. 

They shook hands on it. Viv’s employ as a mercenary witch had begun.

Chapter 12: Duly Employed

Viv inspected her living quarters two hours later. The garrison had moved fast after she had agreed and cleared her space in minutes. It helped that the average soldier could apparently lift their own weight in supplies. 

Her new domain covered a single circular room at the heart of the fort’s watchtower. Two barred windows leading to the fort’s walls on either side let fresh air in. She could shutter them at night or when the temperature got too chilly. There was a corridor outside of her room that doubled as an antechamber and as an access point to a ladder leading to the tower’s upper floor and its alarm fire. The place had been dusty until one soldier had shyly stretched a hand and created a directed air gust to clean it. She remembered Solfis mentioning that such tricks were common around all humans, more so around older people. She had no access to them. The only thing she could wield was black mana.

She set Arthur’s lair near the window. The small one had proven huffy after so many changes in her environment. Having a corner to herself and regular food had appeased the beast enough that she was not too difficult. Viv wondered exactly how smart Arthur was. Solfis could not answer. Sometimes, she acted like a smart dog, but sometimes she displayed signs of human intelligence, like today when she had allowed the presence of so many humans around her without panicking. Any other earthly predator would have lashed out, she thought.

After that, she dedicated half of the room to the study of magic with Solfis’ core placed on a solid stone chair. The farther part of the room was separated by the tent cloth hung between poles for privacy, and contained a bed frame and her bedrolls. An embarrassed Jor handed her a washbasin and a small yellow lump she tentatively qualified as soap. She even had a small litter filled with sand for her pet’s needs. A delicate attention.

This was such a fucking dump.

But, it was hers, and it was a vast improvement over dying in a ditch.

Moving in also helped her get an idea about the fort and its content.

What the fort had was:

                 A garrison of three knights and fifteen soldiers, not exactly the cream of the crop, but well-trained and decently equipped.

                 A lot of food.

                 A lot of water in an underground cistern but not enough for baths.

                 Books she could use.

                 A large-scale isolation ring to keep the black mana out.

What it did not have was:

                 Wood for fire. They only had enough coal to cook and that was it. The handful of soldiers who could conjure small flames provided the rest.

                 Magical equipment to stop powerful creatures. Only Cernit and Benetti had magic swords.

                 Medical supplies.

                 Tea or coffee.

And that was depressing. She had piping hot water if she wanted, but nothing to put in it. And the worst thing was that infusions existed. It was just that the trio of officers had already drunk everything during the first month.

They did not even have booze because it was contraband.

They should just rename the Fort as Fort-No-Fun-Allowed instead of Fort Sky. It was a good thing the garrison swapped every three months.

Once she was set, Solfis attracted her attention.

//We must start working on my frame without delay, Your Grace.

“I’ll help as best as I can. I bet that you can’t wait to move on your own again.”

//Indeed,
//My immobility has been a burden on my thoughts since we first met.
//Particularly since the dragon spawn’s attack.

“I can imagine. Alright, let’s get you ambulatory. Where do we begin?”

//Much like naming you heir, this will be skirting the limit of my hard-coded directives.
//We are allowed to self-repair, but not to modify or rebuild ourselves.
//Fortunately, I am in possession of a functional bone-based blueprint.
//It was designed by a student team as a cheap way to bypass metal-specific tools of destruction.

//Naturally, my previous frame was a work of art without equal, one that was orders of  magnitude deadlier and studier than one made from materials harvested from meatbags.
//This unit will make do.
//The dragon bones will serve us well.
//I will need you to order me to repair myself according to that specific blueprint.

Viv stole a glance at Arthur. The small dragon was asleep in her new den. If it bothered her to eat her kin or ride in the bones of her mother, she has shown no signs of it. She hoped that giving Solfis a new body made from dubious source material would not affect her.

“Fine. Make it so.”

//The first step will be to give me an arm.

Solfis guided her then. The core unit had several sliding doors on its surface, including the one that hid the cord she used to recharge his emergency battery. One of them contained a small repair kit, including engraving equipment that she could hook to one of the core’s cables.

//You will need to write a glyph for me.
//First, we are going to practice writing it on the table.

Viv remembered the difficulty in getting the hang of the pierce glyph, and stopped for a moment.

“You cannot write it yourself, right?”

//No, Your Grace.

“Is it a question of movement or a question of directive?”

//Movement, Your Grace.
//I may operate on my frame for the sake of repairs.
//Even if it requires redrawing a glyph according to a blueprint.

“But you can see what I write?”

//Correct.

“Then how about this, I will sweep the stylus over the target area, and you will only activate it when it passes over a space that needs to be engraved,” she offered, thinking about printing machines.

//That is… an excellent idea, Your Grace.

In the end, they could not proceed exactly like that due to a problem of strength, but Solfis managed to make cuts along the lines of the glyph and thus drew its general shape. After that, he monitored the engraving by cutting off the power when Viv screwed up.

//A brilliant workaround, Your Grace.

//Have you worked with golems before?

“In a way, yes. Now let’s assemble that thing.”

The bone Solfis selected as his arm was part of the dragon’s wings. The limb ended up being quite long: twice the size of Viv with an elbow in the middle. It took two hours to finish the thing, but when she had, she hooked the power cord to the base of the humerus (or at least it would be the humerus in a man), and the limb shivered and moved.

//This unit must calibrate the limb.
//My energy consumption will increase drastically.
//I will require a charge every few hours until I can finish working on the mana crystal.

“You will need me to charge it?”

//Yes, Your Grace.
//Do not worry, I will be able to operate for several hours on a minimal charge.

Viv charged Solfis’ battery and left him to his calibrations. The golem was patiently working through the operation of his new makeshift arm knuckle by knuckle, and she had better things to do. She left her room and came out into the courtyard, then into the barracks facing her. The smell hit her immediately. The handful of soldiers there studiously avoided her gaze.

All except one. A short man with a shaved head. Their eyes met for just a second, but in there, she saw something that she did not like.

It should not surprise her that Barran would send its more... problematic recruits here. Thankfully, she had her spells and the favor of the leaders. She would still keep her guard up. 

The short incident reminded her that humanity had not changed simply because it could create flames from thin air. The caution she had displayed during her previous life would serve her well here. 

She turned to the side and into the main dormitory. It was time for her to get her books.

The barracks was the only building with two levels besides the tower. The ground floor was a single room covered in bunks that smelled like a dead skunk. A set of stairs led up and to the knights’ individual rooms. Soldiers were resting, all of whom huddled fearfully when she stepped in. She climbed and found Cernit’s quarters. 

The lieutenant glanced up from his desk with the face of a deer caught in headlights. He blushed and comically straightened himself, looking around to see that he had left his knickers on his straw bed.

The place was spartan. Just like everything else here, it was saturated with the overpowering stench of old sweat. The limited water made any cleaning arduous, so she could hardly blame the bashful man. It was just a shocking fact of life that a zombie — sorry, revenant — infested plain smelled better than a fort populated by the living.

Viv made the universal sign of opening a book, and the man uttered a few words she did not understand, probably along the lines of ‘oh right, you want my books’ or whatever. He opened a drawer and took out three heavy tomes bound in leather. They looked well-worn but were otherwise in surprisingly good condition.

Then, he opened the first one and started pointing at things.

She approached and looked at the page. It was, she realized, the first time she saw Barran written down. Fortunately, the Old Empire writing system appeared to be the same as theirs, so she could read it without issue, although it was difficult to understand. It was a bit like reading a latin language when you already knew another. She could only get the general gist of the story.

Not that it was all that difficult. The book was a bestiary with images of monsters on one side, and detailed explanations on the other.

Cernit stepped back to his desk while she started turning the pages, curious. Some entries included only a very small image and little text. Most concerned what appeared to be small woodland creatures.

The entry for dragons alone took three pages. 

She traced the illustration with a finger. It depicted an adult dragon roasting a full contingent of knights at a cavern’s entrance. The artist had spared no efforts to make the beast look fearsome. It was surprising to see that the depiction matched the image of a Western dragon to a curious degree. She wondered how that could have happened.

She grabbed the three tomes under her arm and saluted Cernit, who appeared relieved to see her go. Besides the bestiary, there was also a primer on spell recognition and a brief history of the region complete with map. They all looked heavily used, if still in a good state. She supposed that there were not a lot of distractions here.

Solfis was still practicing simple gestures when she returned.

Back in the office, Cernit dismissed his fear. That was ridiculous. The woman clearly followed a path of wild magic mixed with taming, and the beast was a marsh drake. Or something similar. Nobody would be stupid enough to try and tame a dragon. It was a suicidal endeavor that always ended in blood and flames. Dragons were proud creatures with an instinctive understanding of magic and an intelligence that only grew keener as time went on. They would always fight against their bonds and escape in the end. The woman was simply curious. That was it.

He shook his head and stared at the map before him. All his notes were ready.

It was time to go on the offensive.

Viv was trying to create a ball of black mana.

The energy in her hand was, errr, an ellipsoid. If one was generous. She had already taken the first step, which consisted of making it move around itself. Mana was a living thing, even the black one, and it was easier to move it than to make it stay.

She still faced difficulties.

She could feel her conduit most of the time and send tendrils reliably and accurately, but her fine control was still garbage. Even Bzzt looked a bit frayed. The current training aimed at improving that.

“At least, this is fun,” she admitted to herself.

//The method I teach you was designed to be perceived as a game by the participants.

//A necessary step when said participants are six years old at the beginning of the training.

“Yes, you mentioned it before. I like it. And you always vary the tasks as well.”

//Your training conditions have been assessed as: extremely adversarial, Your Grace.

//Your commitment has exceeded this unit’s expectations.

“I told you that there was no magic where I come from, yes? This is not just new to me, it also represents something… unbelievable. I cannot get enough of watching the magic move around. Feel it. And when it flows where I guide it, I feel amazed.”

//Apologies, Your Grace, this unit cannot empathize.

“Just imagine that you spend years inside of a basic frame thinking there is nothing else to the world, then someone transfers your core to a powerful frame, and now you realize how much more you could be.”

//Processing.

//This unit understands.

//Then, you do believe that this world is superior to the previous one, based on your own experience?

Viv realized that she had stepped right into that one.

“This is not about the world, it’s about the people in it. I left everyone behind.”

//What if you could leave now?

“What do you mean?”

//Rewording.

//If you could leave now, how many people would you leave behind, your grace?

//How many people would die?

“I… It’s…I would not leave you now. Not until the necromancer is dealt with.”

//And once it is done, Your Grace, what then?

//In your own world, you can make an impact.

//You could usher this world into a new era of peace and prosperity.

//You can reach the very heights of power and magic mastery.

//You certainly have the skill and discipline.

//Imagine how much good we could achieve together.

“I do not owe the world its salvation, Solfis. You probably also overestimate me.”

//This unit does not overestimate fleshy beings.

That was true, but he did not understand them either.

“Even if I could become a powerful caster, I am no politician. I lack the savviness.”

And the poker face. And the patience. And… the list was long, as her father had once noted.

//You would be amazed how smooth negotiations proceed when the other side knows it can be wiped out.

//And you already acquired the intimidation skill.

//We are well on schedule for the genocidal maniac skill.

“There is no such a thing,” Viv grumbled.

Solfis’ words were a venom coursing through her mind. Pride, greed, the lust for power, the desire to change the world for the better and leave an impact. It called to all of her most basic elements of her human nature. The worst thing was that she knew it and was still tempted. That particular snake understood her only too well. 

A knock on the door, and she lost her focus, the black orb dispersing harmlessly.

“Come on in,” she offered.

Cernit entered, dressed in his armor. He carried a rolled parchment under one arm. 

“Hello, miss,” he told her in Old Imperial. He looked pleased when she replied and turned to Solfis for a quick conversation. Viv used the opportunity to remake the ball.

//Lieutenant Cernit has an intriguing proposal, Your Grace.

“Do tell.”

//As you know, we expect the necromancer to come here to destroy the fort, as it has destroyed the other ones.

//Cernit proposes to take the offensive and deplete them of resources.

“He wants to go out and kill revenants?”

//No, your grace.

//Revenants are inconsequential in the siege to come.

//The necromancer’s strength will come from special undead, like the gut spiller you slew last night.

Wow, it had been less than a day. It felt like longer.

//Lieutenant Cernit has documented the nearby lairs that may harbor special undead.

//Slaying them preemptively will deny the necromancer access to easily obtained, valuable assets.

//In addition, they will be easier to kill when nobody controls them.

//If possible, this unit could use a large ribcage as well.

//If you would be so kind as to acquire one.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea. The killing, I mean. When are we leaving?”

Solfis relayed the question. Cernit seemed a bit taken aback.

//I believe he expected more resistance on your part, Your Grace.

“I don’t have time for this. By the way, we cannot take you with us, so we should discuss strategy here and now.”

Solfis translated. Cernit left the parchment unrolled on a table, then rushed off to fetch his mates. Viv decided to have a gander.

Cernit’s drawing skills were, well, the less said, the better. She recognized the fort at the center and several other landmarks. Three of the closest ones had been circled in red.

“I am no detective, but I bet those are the ones he wants to visit.”

//Your fleshy intellect does you credit, Your Grace.

She rolled her eyes. Soon, Cernit returned with Jor and Benetti. Her bedroom smelled like a locker room again. She winced. 

As before, Cernit talked, and Solfis translated.

//The lieutenant proposes to ride to the first village and set up at the top of a small hill.

“Ride? Only the three of you?” she asked. She had noticed the stable, but she was pretty sure that it did not host eighteen horses.

//The lieutenant says that the soldiers are here to watch and defend the fort.

//Their armors are not enchanted.

//Only knights may safely ride out.

//Even then, they will suffer from mild poisoning before the end of their shift.

“Will the three of us suffice to hold back the population of a village?”

Another discussion, during which Benetti also offered input.

//He says that they will fight from horseback.

//If the pressure becomes too much, You will all ride out.

//Their horses can outrun most creatures, at least for a short while.

“So they bring me close and keep the revenants away as I prioritize the big ones?”

//Indeed.

//Although, if you can, thin the herd as well.

//Any revenant you kill now will be one less revenant climbing the walls.

//Necromancers always aim for population centers, for efficiency.

“I understand. I do get tired if I cast too much in quick succession.”

//I shall relay this information to them.

//As well as the effective range and casting time of… ‘Yoink’.

His voice conveyed mild disapproval. Her spell names sure wouldn’t increase her intimidation skill any time soon.

They spent a few more minutes to learn a few keywords like ‘flee’, ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘help’ at Viv’s insistence, then the men left to grab their weapons. Finally, they all gathered in the main court. Viv climbed behind Jor once again, and then they were off through the fortress gates and into the deadlands.

Back in Viv’s room, Solfis turned around when the lock clicked and the door unlocked. The bald man Viv had noticed entered with a wild look, followed by another with dirty blond hair and a large scar on his cheek. The blond man pocketed a lockpick and looked around warily.

“Don’t know about that, Hern. Spellcaster business is bad business. I got only one cheek left.”

“Relax. We’re only looking.”

The bald man’s filthy meatbag eyes descended on the perfect and glossy surface of Solfis’ core. The golem had stopped working on his calibration and got busy engraving the next arm. He stopped when he recognized the presence of intruders.

“So that’s the core, hey? What do you reckon it could weigh?”

“At least six stones. Maybe more. It would take two strong men to carry over a long distance. Very strong. Power of thirty, at least.”

“Not you then, Rayd, you twig. I reckon Parek could use the money. We steal the knight armors, one each, and leg it. They cannot follow if they get poisoned.”

“Still gotta be a lot of money to risk it.”

“It sure is. Those fancy toys always fetch their weight in gold, I tell ya.”

//The question, then, is whether or not you will live to enjoy it.

The two intruders jump and stare wide-eyed at the glistening perfection. It had addressed them in proper Barran.

“Did it speak?”

//Yes, ‘Hern’, this unit spoke to you.

//The deadlands will eat you alive.

//But even assuming you escape it.

//Even assuming you somehow bypass the ones who destroyed Fort Stone.

//Even assuming you find a buyer.

//This unit will make itself valuable to the buyer.

//This unit will wait until it is encased in a mighty frame.

//Then, this unit will leave to find a balding man named Hern and a scarred man named Reyd.

//This unit never tires, never sleeps, and never stops.

//This unit will find you.

//This unit will kill you.

//In the most painful manner it can figure out.

//And it will have ample time to figure it out.

“Alright, fuck. Calm down you bucket of rust. We’re leaving!”

//Not so fast, Hern.

//You would not leave without a suitable punishment, would you?

“And you’re going to punish me?” the fleshbag demanded, though Solfis could spot signs of fear.

//Not me, meat.

//Her.

Hern turned when he heard a screech of rage, but even his dexterity only allowed him to save his eyes. A winged form jumped on him from the separation leading to the bed. Talons dug painfully into his face.

“Aaaaaah get it off! Get it off!”

Rayd had already left, as expected of the wise coward. Hern managed to detach the four claws and maw from his fleshy self with some effort, then he ran through the door, slamming it behind him.

Solfis looked on as Arthur spread her wings and screeched in victory. She licked her chops, fixed the golem with her malevolent crimson eyes, and climbed to her bed. She monched the piece of ear she had successfully glomped and returned to the beatific sleep of the just. The intruder was defeated. Order had prevailed.

Now, it was time for a nap.

Solfis returned to his calibration. He was almost done. Then, the real work could begin.

Chapter 13: The Cleansing

Viv yawned.

“Yoink,” she breathed half-assedly. The revenant fell back in a pile of ash and bone. Those horses the knights were riding were fucky to be sure. They should have been tired by now. It was fast, though, much faster than dragging a sled behind her like a smelly husky, not that she was jealous.

Technically, the knights had magical horses. That made them horse girls, which Viv only had a lukewarm opinion of. She, however, had a semi-tamed dragon and a golem. That made her a Pokemon trainer, obviously cooler. There were already six balls right next to her, haha. Probably.

You are suffering from mild mana poisoning.

Alright, that meant water treatment when she got back. Her supply was almost exhausted, and the effects were fading anyway. 

The trip continued for only a few minutes. The plains being flat and boring, she could spot her destination from afar. The town emerged from the sea of dust and sand like so many white bones, the walls flayed by the sands over the centuries. She wondered why any undead creature would want to stay there.

They stopped about fifty meters away from the closest house, facing the main street. It was also, in fact, the only actual street. Viv yoinked the surrounding revenants and waited. She hoped they had a way to attract the closest monster.

Her answer came fast. Benetti rode ahead alone and removed a rapier-like sword from its sheath on his flank. He clanged his push-blade.

Viv wondered if he was serious.

Revenants slammed into the ground from inside a nearby hovel. A massive arm emerged from inside, quickly followed by the rest of the obese body. She recognized the gut spiller from its strangely horned face.

Benetti swore and rode back, creatures in tow. More of the gut spillers were now after him, as well as a pair of much faster crawlers. They all turned around and left at a trot.

It was now clear that the crawlers were very fast, much faster than the ponderous gut spiller. Their unnatural gait allowed them to move forward at surprising speeds. Viv calmed down and aimed at the first one as soon as it was in range.

“Yoink.”

Her mana flooded a complex channel and withdrew without too much difficulty. The mana was dense in her conduits. Eager. It pushed into her with an intimate pain that made her want to use it. Her next drain spell flew like a snake and robbed the crawler of its strength mid-jump.

Jor pushed the falling body away, some of it disintegrating on his blade.

The trio of cavalrymen turned and circled the mass of spillers at the edge of Viv’s range. The stupid things walked on each other in their eagerness to reach their juicy targets. The three focused on pushing back nearby revenants while Viv went to work on the special enemies. Each one of her spells found soft tissue and pulled unlife from it. She was regaining more mana than she could consume. Her conduits burned.

In desperation, she simply let mana vent from the conduits on her back. Cernit looked back with panic in his eyes. She turned as well.

Two wings of darkness flew from her shoulders like demon regalia. 

Intimidation has reached Beginner 5

Neat, but pointless. With less risk of exploding like a balloon, she kept firing at the spillers. An observation nagged at her confidence.

She was slowing down. 

She had never had to use so many yoinks in such a short time. The repeated spells were easy, but they added up to form a burden on her mind. It was getting more challenging to guide the mana, and make it understand what it was supposed to do.

Viv gritted her teeth and endured. A spiller fell. Another. She coughed, suddenly short of breath.

Jor turned to her and said something. Viv could not exactly follow. One last spiller missing a leg limped out of the village, smashing aside the crowd of revenants now slowly emerging from the derelict. Almost there.

Then, there was a screech like a hundred nails on a gritty hardboard. She winced and grabbed her rider, feeling dizzy.

Cernit yelled something, and the trio raced away at great speed. Viv coughed again, but it felt different this time. She tasted iron on her tongue. Something burned inside of her, even as a dark bird launched up and towards them.

The knights were pushing their mounts as much as possible. The armored horses now moved so fast that Viv felt the wind on her face.

Once more, Viv called upon the black mana flowing inside of her, with her frayed mind and her tired will. She dragged on it. She pulled it out piece by piece, feeling like she was dragging herself up a rope with exhausted muscles. The black mana answered her call. It wanted to be used, but she had trouble guiding it. Molding it. A shadow wrapped over her. 

A horrid stench made her gag. Not even the mask on her face kept out the dreadful odor The spell wavered in her hands.

Jor turned around then. Their eyes met for an instant. She saw no hesitation in those brown depths, not a wrinkle on the corners of his strangely greenish skin. Instead, his gaze drifted from the tears marring her cheek to the horror approaching with only acceptance. He fluidly jumped on the saddle until he was standing on it, turned around, and jumped out, polearm brandished in his muscular arm.

She knew it would not be enough.

Viv smashed through her pain and confusion. She turned to face the creature at their back and slowed time. It was a gigantic undead bat with rotten skin held taut between skeletal fingers. The tendril caught the thing in the face. It reeled. The distraction gave Jor a moment, which he seized. His crescent blade dug into the beast’s chest, then his feet touched the ground.

The beast flayed and fought, held back and blinded by Jor’s colossal strength and Viv’s unyielding will. Meanwhile, the witch was fighting.

The thing was immensely powerful. Her mana struggled to fill its deep conduits—it felt like pushing water through a small hose to fill a bathtub. No matter how she forced herself, progress was agonizingly slow.

Focus +1

She was close. So close. The big fucking thing would fall. She was going to kill it.

“Die!” she screamed “yoink!”

Her mana reached a threshold, to the point where it occupied more than half of the creature’s conduits. Its resistance collapsed.

With one last screech, the beast’s resistance stopped. 

Power flooded her veins then, it was too much, and she raised her trembling arms to release it. A column of black escaped from her fingers.

She started to slip back.

Benetti and Cernit turned around, the lieutenant holding the reins to her ride. They were staring ahead and did not notice. She feebly grabbed the saddle and pulled herself forward.

Not gonna fall. Not gonna faint like some weakling. Not before those idiots.

Willpower +1

She was at twenty-nine on all mental stats. There were surely some juicy rewards for reaching the threshold. But only for people who could hold on.

She found her balance.

And immediately collapsed forward into darkness.

Viv woke up in her bed feeling strangely warm. There was a heavy weight on her chest. She looked down to investigate and found herself nose-to maw with two evil scarlet eyes. And a lot of blood.

Arthur’s jaws shone crimson...

Viv’s first thought was unkind. 

‘That motherfucking twit finally went and ate my entrails.’

Then, she realized there was far too little red stuff and that she would have gone into shock by now. Being exsanguinated and eaten alive also came with a slew of symptoms that she was mercifully exempt of. It was warm and toasty under the cover.

//You are awake, Your Grace.

//Your condition is stable.

Arthur spread her wings and stood on her back legs, her front paws clawing the air. 

“Squee.”

“Thank you for watching over me, Arthur. You did an amazing job.”

Viv scratched the dragonling’s chest, eliciting a strange sound between a soft roar and a purr. Her task completed, the almost pet slithered away, jumping on her bedrest, which Viv had placed on a table by her bed. She also found a wooden cup filled with water and a small grey pill on a stool within arm’s reach.

//The water and medicine will help with the nausea.

“What nausea? Ow!”

Should have known better than to invoke that dreaded name.

//You are suffering from overcasting.

//It was a mild case, and your recovery was quite fast.

//I would recommend avoiding any strenuous activity until tomorrow.

//We will suspend your training until then.

//I will still require a charge.

Mana manipulation reached Beginner 6

Viv swallowed the water and the [mild rejuvenative pill]. She had questions.

“Why does Arthur have blood on her mouth? Did someone feed her meat?”

//In a manner of speaking, Your Grace.

//Someone broke into our room with designs on my person.

//I have already notified the relevant authorities.

Viv stopped for a moment. Snitching on your first day would make the soldiers mistrust her. On the other hand…

“Did one intruder happen to be bald?”

//Yes, Your Grace.

//A despicable man by the name Hern.

//Arthur marked him.

“I see.”

It was better to be feared than to be dismissed, especially as the lone woman in a camp full of men. She could never make them see her as an ally anyway, not without spending an inordinate amount of time doing so. They did not even share a language. It would take too much time and effort. Being feared was fine in her book. She had no intention of sticking around.

A little voice inside of Viv told her that it was a lie, that showing respect and decency would go a long way. It said that she was still the entitled, privileged princess who had left a rich home behind because she already had an out with the army. It said that, at heart, she was still the arrogant bitch who had enjoyed watching her father humiliate others, who had done so herself. 

She crushed that voice. 

Fighting for the others was a good start. She did not owe them to try and be friends. 

And speaking of helping others.

“Do you know what happened to Jor? Is he still… alive?”

//Jor was alive when he was brought here.

//However, he was wounded by an undead creature.

//This usually creates a pocket of foreign black mana that slowly poisons the host.

//If untreated, the victim will eventually die and join the ranks of the undead.

“Hold on, people killed by the undead become undead?”

//If there is enough of the body left, any dead body tainted by black mana will be reanimated as an undead.

“You told me that black mana was not evil!”

//Any excess is dangerous.

//Bodies saturated with blue mana will liquefy.

//Black mana is simply… significantly more virulent… than the others.

“Is there any way to help him?”

Solfis remained silent for a spell. Arthur yawned and jumped on the partition separating their bed from the entrance, flapped her wings, and crashed somewhere on the other side. Viv heard claws scraping on stone and a frustrated ‘squee’.

“Hey, since I’m a sort of black mana specialist, want me to help with that?”

//Yes, in fact, you may.

//You merely need to pass your hand over the wound and call black mana to you.

//It would be a low-intensity exercise that could favor mana perception.

//Mana perception is vital for a mage.

“If it is, how come we have never practiced it yet?”

//Because the world so far has been saturated with black mana and black mana only.

//It would be easier to teach depth perception in a dark cave.

“Oh.”

//Do not worry, Your Grace, we are on schedule with your training.

//Now, kindly recharge me before you leave.

Viv stood up and realized that she felt sort of okay now. Her head hurt as if she had spent eight hours on an essay and coffee had run out. She was still physically fit, but her thoughts moved through cotton paddings. It was not too bad.

She approached the table and realized that Solfis had extracted two bone cylinders from the head of the dragon’s humerus, and they were now circling the dragon’s stone. His long arm was mechanically cutting patterns on the surface with inhuman precision. He appeared almost done. 

She grabbed the plug and charged the golem as he kept working.

“It’s taking shape.”

//We are indeed on schedule.

//This unit will require your assistance with charging the main core.

//It can wait, however.

She nodded and kept working in silence. Arthur crashed against the ground again.

“She’s learning how to fly.”

//An astute observation, Your Grace.

//If you wish, you may leave now

//I will be able to operate for a few more hours.

“Alright.”

//You may want to wash your face before you leave.

//You have blood around your eyes and lips.

//A normal consequence of minor overcast.

“Oh.”

Viv made use of the basin, drank the last of the pure water.

You are no longer suffering from mana poisoning.

“Until next time.”

Viv left Arthur and Solfis to their devices, catching the attention of a nearby soldier. She said ‘hi’ in Barran, but he looked a bit scared.

“Jor?” she asked.

The man pointed to a small house attached to the barracks. She aimed there and winced when she realized the door was reinforced and the windows had bars on them. She knocked and entered.

The typical tang of blood greeted her as she took in her surroundings. There were two beds and room for one more in the tiny space. Jor was lying in the closest one, expression placid. The muscular man laid on his back in a shirt that revealed an imposing body. Coarse black hair covered him almost entirely. He had gashes on his deltoid, abdominals, and quadriceps. Not bleeding, and he did not appear to be in much pain. Benetti was by his side, holding a sort of medal and praying in a soft voice. Three soldiers held their hands over his wounds. They were tainted with black, she saw, and the invasive color was pushed back by the concerted efforts of his attendant, whose hands glowed softly white. 

All eyes turned to her when she entered. She met every gaze and nodded politely. Her steps led her to the side of the man who had risked his life to protect her without a sliver of hesitation. She held a hand over a wound and closed her eyes.

Another kind of mana.

The Cassian sources had felt like magic too, but it had been different. Transformed. It was more complex than the fundamental truth pulsing under her limb. There was a purity there, made more flagrant by the foreign source assaulting it. 

It was barely holding on.

Black mana was extraordinarily deleterious. It was destruction and change while the other was preservation and control. Change fed itself on change, while life was struggling to maintain the status quo. She could not detect will or malice in the wound. It was no more evil than a tsunami. Destructive, yes, but directionless. Blind.

She would guide it out.

Viv settled her breath and plunged into meditation. She could see without eyes. It took some getting used to. 

You have gained: mana sense at Beginner 1

Black Hedge Witch (6)

The black was familiar to her, while the life one was foreign. She understood it and felt a kinship with life as a breathing individual herself, but she could simply not latch on it in any way. There was none in her conduits either. Only the endless tides of the black.

She called on them now.

The black below her was directionless. It was not hers yet. She slowly, slowly delimited it and pushed her own into the swampy mix. There were some noises outside. They were unimportant.

Piece by piece, she made the black hers and pulled it. She soon hit a snag. She could still feel a bit of black, but it was too diffuse. The light had replaced it.

She opened her eyes.

Mana sense: Beginner 2

Intimidation: Beginner 6

Mana manipulation: Beginner 7

Why was there intimidation? Gah. 

She inspected the wound. Small pockets of black mana still clung to the edge of a gash in the knight’s shoulder, but the worst of the contagion was over, and the rest would fade, she knew.

Jor nodded to her while Benetti smiled. The soldiers were more cautious and would not meet her gaze. She smiled too and moved to his torso. As she progressed on, the soldiers alternated, fresh men, coming every ten minutes to replace their tired companions. Benetti also cast that strange healing thing, and Jor’s cleaner wounds closed in record time. 

The abs laceration turned out to be slightly harder to handle, and she left more spots. The one on his leg, she cleaned almost entirely. She took her time working. Her head still felt tender, but this was not something where power would matter. She had to coax the energy out, not pull it.

Acuity +1

You have reached a milestone! Your ability to cast and maintain several spells at once is significantly increased. Your thought process speed is increased. You will find casting complex spells to be easier.

Wow, several spells at once? More complex spells? Yes, please. She would need to have Solfis guide her.

Viv lifted her gaze from the last gash to find Cernit smiling at her. He gave her another glass of water and a pill which she gulped down greedily. Jor was asleep. The other soldiers were gone.

“Thank you,” the officer said in Old Imperial.

Strangely, it felt like he was talking more slowly. In fact, everything was slightly slower to her perception, which was neat.

“You are welcome.”

The officer smiled, but soon his expression turned sour.

“Mine soldier. Errr. My great fault. House of you.”

He must be talking about the burglar.

“Soldier Hern tortured.”

Errrr tortured?

Benetti laughed when he saw her alarmed expression and corrected his boss

“Punished.”

“Oh.”

“My great fault,” Cernit continued as he gave her a stiff bow. This was a perfect opportunity to create a favorable working relationship with the man. She turned to Benetti.

“Your soldiers. Your punishment. I am satisfied.”

Benetti found the message simple enough and relayed her words. They all nodded in a very manly way, all formal and honorable and respectful of due process and the chain of command. Viv left before hair started to grow on her tits. Outside, the day was getting darker.

Hard to believe that she had been dragging her sled this very morning. So much had happened. By all rights, she should be collapsed in her bed right now. Magic was making her body a little bit stronger. Perhaps the stronger warriors could fight for days before collapsing for a few hours and doing it again.

The longer days also messed with her. Even after weeks, she was not used to how stupidly long they were. At least two or three more hours of daylight compared to earth. 

Her mind was in shambles. She had to find a relaxing way to spend the early evening. Then, she would read the bestiary or something.

Chapter 14: The Other Mind

Cernit was relieved. Jor had been saved without using one of their three precious potions. He really wanted to keep those for the siege. Losing one so fast would have been a terrible blow.

Thankfully, the witch had come through again. She had also slain creatures that took squads of trained mercenaries to put down in an open field, and done so in one spell.

It was just a bit terrifying. Even if he knew she was not a good mage… her spells were too messy, the edges frayed and the mana bleeding out of the constructs. It reminded him of trainees he had seen practice.

The best he could guess was that the woman had been a civvie until her ‘teleportation accident’. Now, she had tossed away her previous, leisurely path and embraced one that allowed her to cast on the go with minimal training. Her dedication surprised him. Who could be so good at casting, so hard-working, and choose another path until forced to turn to magic? It was unbelievable.

A clamor made him stand up and open his shutters wide. The biting, dry air of the deadlands greeted him. 

The small white drake clambered across the inner court, its gait smooth and sinuous despite the large wings on its back. Drakes and all draconids relied on grey mana to help them lift their impressive weight, but their wings were still imposing, even on the youngest specimens.

The tamed monster hopped up the stairs to the wall and stood on the inner edge, waddling weirdly. The sentries gave it a wide berth.

The creature jumped.

It caught wind, though not too well, before smacking into the waiting arms of the fully armored witch. She fell over backward. A second later, she petted the horrid creature, who let out one of its blood-curdling cries. The caster made cooing sounds, and the small drake sprinted up the stairs again with eagerness.

This went on for a while.

The show was strangely relaxing. The witch fell on purpose to lessen the impact. 

She really was a weird one, and yet, in a way, it gave Cernit hope. No caster he knew of would have willingly saved Jor, a nobody, without some sort of compensation. No royal mage would have risked her life so readily. She was with them. It would take at least that to save them from a necromancer in the deadlands.

Cernit opened his map and pondered his next move.

Viv spent her evening with a book for the first time in two weeks, or maybe more if you counted time the earth way. Cernit had kindly provided her with a magical candle, a sort of rave glowstick she could charge and be done for a few hours. The light was more than enough for her needs. It was also easier to use than her stone. Reading with that thing required her to always have it in her hand with a clear line of view to the text. Annoying.

Arthur made a choice just before it was time to sleep. The tiny dragon decided it was too bloody cold and climbed on the back of her bed with her sleeping bag in her maw. Viv used to have a dog who did that, so it wasn’t too weird. Kind of nostalgic, in fact. She stole a few scratches on her companion’s smooth, soft scales, and then, she was out in seconds.

The in-between.

Two souls manifested from the void. The in-between was a curious place where Euclidian notions like distance only had a tenuous grip. Space itself was merely a reference used by entities used to more traditional dimensions. The souls were infinitely far apart, yet in other ways, they were quite close. Close enough to communicate.

“How are things on your end?” Maradoc, the God of Secrets, asked.

“Decent enough. I am honor-bound to serve this land’s military for another two years, but I already sent some feelers for when I get out. This Viviane Saint-Lys’ resources are amazing. How are things on your end?”

“The throne remains empty. Your wife cannot claim it since you were not defeated or cast out, just as you said.”

“Your sister, you mean?”

“I know what I said.”

There was, for lack of a better term, a pause.

“Just be careful. She will be more destructive when she turns desperate,” Emeric continued.

“I know.”

Another pause.

“Your… replacement. She is still alive.”

“Why wouldn’t she be? I sent her to the concentration of magic that best matched her personality. Priests would know what she is worth with one look.”

“There were no priests, Emeric.”

“What do you mean?”

“You sent her straight to Harrakan. In the imperial palace.”

Another pause.

“Fuuuuuuck I should have guessed it. Dammit! Arg.”

“How did it even happen? Could you not tell that she was black-aligned?”

“There were no signs. She was rich, from a powerful family. No quest for vengeance or anything. I did not know until I searched her memories.”

A pause.

“You know, she chose to be a medic in the army? That’s a healer of sorts. I thought she was a kind-hearted soul with care for her fellow people until I dug deeper. One day, there was a fuckup, and the perimeter where the wounded were kept got breached. A wall that fell down. She threw a… sort of fireball in the hall, then walked through and executed four soldiers by shooting them in the head. Calmly, and one by one. And she enjoyed it. She returned to her patient after that as if it was no big deal. This is when I figured it out. Agh, I should have taken more time to check her memories.”

“I like her already. I don’t see the problem.”

“She is no Halurian warborn, you dunce. Her world is not as warlike as ours, especially not the place she came from. She’s… not kind at heart, although she thinks she should be. It took me a while to understand that.”

“Relax, Emeric. Even if she makes waves, your pursuers will never tie her to you. She is not the only one with a divine spark of luck. Maranor will just think that she’s a lucky inheritor.”

“It’s not waves that bother me, I just... I don’t know why I worry. About her and the world. I think this human shape is messing with my mind.”

“Perhaps for the best. You have been an insufferable asshole for the past two centuries, so much that I considered siding with your wife.”

“…Thanks Maradoc, you’re a good friend.”

“The best. See you next time.”

“Take care.”

Viv woke up to someone rummaging through her stuff.

“Arthur, no!”

“Squee!”

“Arthur, no. No stealing. You wait. I said no.”

“Squeeeee!”

“I know you are hungry. Now, kindly fuck off.”

//Good morning, Your Grace.

“And to you too, Solfis. Need a charge?”

//Please.

Viv stood up and tried to stretch but Arthur kept squawking, so she fed her. Then it was time to help Solfis, who had finished the enchantments for the core and part of another arm during the night. She pushed power into the massive core. It felt like trying to inflate a bouncing castle with her mouth.

When she was done, she plugged the now operational power-core with the hose-like cable she had used to charge the emergency batteries. It was impressive how much progress Solfis had made in such a short time.

A short cleaning session later, she came out in search of food like some sort of cavewoman. It was early morning outside. A soldier jumped to his feet when he saw her and ran into the barracks, from which Cernit promptly exited. The tanned soldier looked a bit green around the gills, which was his normal state, so that was fine. It was just… still strange. It also made her realize that she would look like a foreigner around here no matter what she did.

The lieutenant escorted her to the mess hall, where soldiers were already dining. They sat at a separate table, soon joined by Benetti. Breakfast was a congee soup with pieces of pickled vegetables and salty meat in it. It tasted simple but nice. It also made her feel warm.

“Today. Go out to battle again?”

“Yes, Cernit. Agreed.”

The man smiled. He was more confident now. His eyes turned to the side, and she could almost see the cogs turning in the man’s mind. He had a plan.

They ate quickly, then she went back to her room. She spent a few minutes teaching Arthur basic hygiene rules, charged Solfis while practicing forms, stretched, and then it was time.

The second village was further away, to the north when considering the axis between Fort Stone and Fort Sky. As far as she could tell, they were south of Harrak, so going north meant more concentration of black mana and more powerful undead.

She realized Cernit’s logic. Fort Stone, which had been demolished, lay to the east. He had emptied the village directly between the two forts because it was the closest to the necromancer. The next one was the most dangerous and also on the way. After that, they would probably go southeast. 

It felt weird to return to a more concentrated part of the deadlands. Jor, before her, felt more tense than usual as the empty plains succeeded each other before them. She kept the poisoning at bay by casting regularly.

“Yoink.”

Hey, she had just gained something, hadn’t she?

Viv focused and tried to cast two yoinks at once. It failed miserably, but she realized that she could cast one just after the previous one was in the air.

“Yoinkyoinkyoink.”

That was cool, but tiring. So she decided to return to her previous, lazy casting.

Intimidation: Beginner 7

Aww, come on. Magic was not that scary, she thought, while watching tendrils of absolute darkness ripping the energy out of undead abominations and sending them to an ashy demise.

The trip was quick after that.

The next village was built around a bridge over a dry riverbed. The stone was greyer here, but otherwise, there was little to differentiate it from the other wind-swept, ash-mired ruin they had previously visited. They used the same technique as before to empty the south side. There was a slight moment of panic when four crawlers jumped out after them, but a burst of speed from the horses allowed them to stay ahead for long enough to avoid dismemberment. She had to take a short break afterward.

As before, the mighty black mana coursing through her conduits brought a sweet sort of pain, and she felt them grow clearer. More defined. It was probably a good thing if she could survive the experience.

They made their way back in and killed a crawling gut spiller that was missing a leg. Then, to her surprise, the three dismounted by the village’s entrance. Revenants started to converge on them almost immediately.

Benetti and Cernit took out blades while Jor handled a massive axe.

[Magic sword (enchanted): this officer sword is issued to officers in the Barran military if they do not bring their own. It can pierce through magical and mundane defenses alike.]

[Benetti family rapier (enchanted): this family heirloom can only be wielded by the blood of the Benetti. Precise strikes from this weapon are particularly devastating.]

[Heavy infantry shieldbreaker axe: a standard issue weapon of the Barran military. It is particularly heavy. Designed to break shields and shield-lines.]

The three men stood side by side and dispatched the revenants with grim efficiency. Enemies felled by the enchanted swords stopped moving. Those struck by the axe kept squirming a bit, but they could do little since Jor tended to cleave his targets in two. 

Viv was certain that they were using skills. She had difficulties following the speed of their movements, and there was a small light coming from the blades sometimes. 

The purge lasted for a few minutes, after which the men had a pile of dead at their feet. They were all sweating and breathing heavily, though, so fighting at this intensity clearly took a toll. She took the liberty of covering them while they dragged all the dead in a small mound of rotting bodies. Cernit took a sort of brown ingot from one of his saddlebags. He recited a few words and threw it on the pile.

It ignited and fire slowly spread over the dead, some of whom were already twitching. Black smoke soon filled the air.

“We fight,” Cernit declared, looking pleased with himself. Benetti rolled his eyes.

“We go north to fight the dead,” the smarmy man elaborated. Then, it was his turn to look proud. 

Jor said nothing.

They climbed back on their mounts and made their way through the now considerably less crowded streets. They made their way to the south end of the bridge.

It was deserted. There were only a few circling birds — normal-sized this time — and revenants milling in the distance.

“Hold,” she said.

They kept going, though they turned to her.

“Hold. Stop.”

They didn’t get it.

She lifted her right fist in a ‘wait’ gesture. That made them stop, for some reason. 

“Trap?”

No reaction.

“Ambush?”

Ah, they got that one. Possibly a military term or something. They looked around warily.

“No. Ambush. Maybe.”

Again with the lost looks.

“Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly. Hypothetically.”

“Oooh,” Benetti answered before she could go through the whole thesaurus. Honestly, though, they would be out in the open with no way to go when they were on the bridge. It was worth their time making sure that their avenue of retreat remained free.

The knights stepped down and started securing the houses nearby. Viv sighed and approached the bridge, having a look down out of habit. You always checked bridges for IEDs and other stuff if there were any doubts. Otherwise, even if the explosion did not kill you, the fall would.

She looked down and stopped time by instinct.

Two scythe-like jaws were closing in around her head.

[Defiled centipede: very dangerous]

FUCK!

It was Viv’s soldier reflexes who saved her. Instead of pulling back into the closing circle of chitinous death, she dived low, behind cover. The dreadful blades snapped close with a dreadful clack. She bumped the top of her skull against one in her rush to escape, but the cloak’s hood protected her. 

“Yoink!”

The tendril shot out with as much strength as she could manage. First, it slammed against the creature’s head like a slap, then she invaded its conduits.

And slammed into… something else.

If she had to compare, it would be like taking a sledgehammer to a wall, only for the wall to collapse at the last moment to reveal someone behind. There was a presence in the insectile monster, or had been. Her torrential power had kicked it out.

With the death of the creature came a concert of ear-splitting screeches. Another centipede rushed up from below the bridge.

“Yoink!”

She missed. It was too small and too fast.

And then Benetti was here. He pierced the creature’s skull with his rapier and jumped back when the centipede tried to disembowel him. Instead, she aimed at the base of the body.

This time, the spell flew true. The centipede could move fast, but it moved in a line. The creature fell, and she felt flooded with energy again.

A mass of revenants was charging on the other side of the bridge, led by a large crawler. Viv was ready to offski the fuck away. Cernit had other ideas. The three knights created a battle line in the narrow corridor. Cernit turned towards her, eyes frantic.

“Necromancer!” he screamed, “Necromancer!”

And she finally realized what had happened. Undead were too stupid to lie in ambush in such a coordinated manner, especially revenants. 

They were being controlled.

That was the presence she had felt when she had killed the first. The blow must have made the enemy caster lose control.

She was confused, though. Her understanding was that the necromancer was super dangerous and that the Baranese would try to hold in the fort? What had changed?

In the two seconds of hesitation that followed, Cernit screamed her name and pointed at the ghoulish, siminan form of the crawler. 

“Yoink!”

It fell dead and black mana flooded her conduits.

They were right in a way. This was a perfect chokehold. And they had cleared most of the houses at their back, which meant that they had several avenues of retreat and horses to do so.

She focused on the next enormous creature, a sort of undead bear covered in tattered fur that trampled revenants in its haste to reach them.

[Defiled grizzly]

Ok.

She lifted a finger, and the bear stopped in its tracks.

The bolt was aiming right at its torso.

An alien intelligence shone in the monster’s blue orbs. It grabbed a revenant in its paw and threw it like a puppet in the spell’s trajectory. 

“Alright then, let’s see how you juggle,” Viv said with a scowl.

The bear fell back, crushing more undead. Its massive form slowed the flow of revenants considerably so that the three knights moved onto the bridge and dispatched the creatures as they came closer. Some of the revenants even fell into the dry riverbed. 

Viv sent spell after spell after the retreating titan. It blocked all of them with his freshly improvised personal shield. She aimed for the flanks, the arms, arced one of the projectiles, and cast three spells in quick succession. That one almost worked, but she stopped herself from pushing too hard. She knew she had to save her strength.

Meanwhile, her companions were hacking away. They displayed none of their earlier exhaustion, although the flow of undead was manageable.

The bear reached the other side and ran away. Like an open tap, a flood of revenants limped forth into the space it had freed. Viv observed the developing situation with worry. Some of the revenants that had fallen down were climbing up on the other side of the bridge. Cernit noticed as well, and with one word, the combatants ran. Jor dropped one of the burning bricks on the pile of the dead they had already formed. No efforts were to be wasted.

They mounted again, and Viv got another surprise. Cernit rode perpendicular to the riverbed until the slope became more manageable. Then, they made their way down.

They were… crossing to engage the necromancer?

“Why?” she asked, surprised.

“Necromancer... army… very small. Good chance.” Benetti said.

THAT was small?

Had they taken leave of their senses?

She grumbled, but what could she do? Jump down?

The horses climbed on the opposite side with some difficulty and only because they found a practical way. They were, again, in the desert. The second half of the village stood to their right in a loose semi-circle, with its surroundings devoid of revenants within a thirty-meter radius. Only a few houses remained standing compared to its southern counterpart, which meant less cover.

They approached it at a trot and stopped at the edge of the main road. The streets were deserted.

She quickly spotted the eyes of revenants shining in the dark. One of them had a blue coloration.

“Yoink.”

The light faded as the spell flew, but the revenant still died. Then another, then another. Viv methodically killed those she could spot through broken doors, shattered windows, and crumbling walls. She spaced the spells enough to hit that sweet spot where her exhaustion would only progress slowly.

Then it happened. The necromancer released their hold on their horde and revenants emerged from every nook and cranny. Cernit immediately turned them around and rode completely out of town.

She could not follow his strategy.

He and Benetti exchanged a few quick words, then turned right. They rode to the other side of the half village, having the dry river to their right. Viv finally understood what the crafty lieutenant had been looking for.

A group was leaving the buildings, using the unleashed horde to keep Viv’s group busy. She saw a few wolf-like creatures with reptilian faces, a gut spiller, and the massive bear upon which a thin human form clad in black rags rode. Armored revenants trailed behind them, slower than the larger undead. The escaping group was regrouping as they came into view.

Viv glanced up. Two birds were circling above them. The necromancer had kept a visual on them the entire time. 

Whelp, it was too late anyway.

As the knights charged in, she realized that they might have a chance. The necromancer’s control was messy. Erratic. She could spot the moment where individual undead stopped trying to eat them and returned to the formation, only for their control to fray again. Now, how to exploit that?

She had a fairly good idea.

The three riders skirted the back of the formation, now firmly in the open. She could see the last armored revenants pull back one by one. Each creature turned its head away as it was receiving orders. She waited, aimed, and…

“Yoink!”

Her spell latched into the last creature, one with a dented shield and furs, as the enemy spellcaster was still inside. She smacked their presence aside with prejudice and moved back afterward.

“Haha!” she exclaimed triumphantly as the horde faltered. Her allies used the opportunity to crash through the ranks of the armored revenants, cutting them down as they milled aimlessly. She did not let the opportunity go to waste.

“Yoink!”

Her spell hit the bear. Soon, a struggle began as she attempted to overwhelm its conduits.

And failed.

The mana there was concentrated, and much more potent than anything else she had felt before. A presence was feeding the creature power opposite her. It was the other caster. They were…

They were weak.

She felt the other person’s resistance, or presence, buckle under her timid assault. They would break very soon…

But the spell snapped and she withdrew. She was too far.

Viv frowned. The bear was still standing. 

The three made another pass. This time, they rode opposite the diminished mass of armored revenants. She took aim at the bear once more, and was propelled to the side.

Jor had turned around and pushed her to the side. The spell went wide.

A moment later, claws lacerated her right shoulder. Cernit yelled an order and they pulled out. Jor was maneuvering with one hand and pushing away a furious undead bird with the other. 

[Defiled hawk.]

The necromancer had used his spies as fucking dive bombers.

Viv reacted immediately.

“Yoink.”

The spell exited her back and speared the creature. It disintegrated. She turned around and saw two more flying down toward her.

And behind her, a gurgle gave her an ominous warning.

“Nope shield!” 

Gut spiller vomit splashed harmlessly against her hastily erected defenses. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her wound and the rapid drain of her resources. 

Jor’s axe struck something behind, and she turned to see Cernit cut down the last flyer. They were out.

She gnashed her teeth. The pain was not too bad, but there was something there as well, the same feverish sensation she associated with mana poisoning, only more virulent.

She closed her eyes and focused on her shoulder. The invasive mana… 

It was disappearing. Or rather, it was drained into her conduits and transformed into her own. This would probably lead to her getting poisoned again. She preferred that to fantasy necrosis or mana sepsis or whatever it was called that could turn her into one of the walking dead. 

Cernit had them stop at a short distance away from their foe. He turned to her. 

She rolled her shoulder, then winced. It would be fine so long as the adrenaline kept flowing. 

The necromancer was not idle either. They raised two bandaged arms, and the armored revenants fell to the ground, twitching. Then, a strange mania animated the surviving beasts. Their orbits shone blue, their movements turned jerky.

They moved faster. They were charging!

Cernit seemed to ponder the situation for one second. The necromancer still had the bear, some of those strange dogs with snake heads it had not used, and the one gut spiller. 

The officer snapped an order, and Viv was suddenly lifted from the saddle and placed on the ground as if she were but a small child.

The lieutenant addressed her. “Good luck.”

The three knights closed rank.

“For Baran. FOR THE KING!”

And they charged.

Like a bunch of fucking meatheads.

Viv spat and cursed, then followed at a run. What were those idiots even thinking? She was not legging it back alone through a horde of revenants! Those fuckwits better not die.

The trio crashed into the pile of monsters with heroic determination. She heard a great commotion but could not quite process who was winning. One horse neighed piteously. 

The three knights were alive and… whacking. She had trouble following their fast swordwork. 

For one second, she thought they might win, but then the bear broke through. One horse was dead before it hit the ground, Benetti rolling lightly from his thrashing mount. Jor was pushed aside but remained astride. Cernit and his horse fell down, though he managed to slashed the creature's jaw away before it could fasten around his head.

Benetti decapitated a snake dog as he ran back. Jor fought two others. The necromancer lifted a hand towards Cernit, who was still reeling from the bear’s attack. They were getting overwhelmed.

“NOPE SHIELD!”

Viv’s black umbrella deployed between the bear and his prey. A massive paw swiped the air through the shield’s obscured membrane, making Viv hiss but missing the knight. She maintained it as another paw attacked it.

Her left foot found the horse’s body, and she jumped up, using strength boost and slowing her perception of time.

The shield fell as she was casting her next spell.

The bear failed to detect her presence, but the necromancer looked up. His eyes widened.

He was… a child. No, a dirty, malnourished teen under a mask of grime and tatters of isolating fabric.

It was too late anyway.

Her body smashed against his, and her knife found his chest again, and again, and again. She stabbed him until they fell from the creature. She stabbed until the thin body smacked the ground under her until no strange magic or high endurance could possibly save his life.

Cernit rolled away and stared, aghast, as the witch launched herself at the necromancer and stabbed him with the cold rage of a Halurian warborn. Then, they disappeared behind the rampaging bear, and he made himself scarce.

No one could save her now.

He grabbed his gelding by the harness and dragged him back. The poor beast was at the limit of its strength. Jor joined him soon while Benetti sauntered forth, unharmed despite his fall. 

They stared at the melee.

And then, as a dark figure crawled out between two snarling scalehounds. She stood up, brushed the dust from her armor, and jogged in their direction. It was the witch. She had a weird black fabric covering her armor as part of some spell, no doubt. She was still alive. And the undead ignored her.

He knew the creatures would not stay confused for long. An attack would come. He pressed onward and helped her up while Jor recovered Benetti. They ran away.

Meanwhile, Viv was processing.

Finesse +1

Her shoulder was lancing, though that wasn’t too bad yet. The two horses carried the four humans to the edge of the village, behind a collapsed barn, but no further. Cernit’s horse stumbled and fell. The knight jumped down and dragged her before she could get trapped beneath the beast. The sudden pull tore a muffled scream out of her.

“Sorry,” the lieutenant said.

She could see blood under the horse’s torn leather harness. She raised a hand to try to help, but Cernit pushed it down. 

“No. Benetti, Jor.”

Both knights’ expressions were grim. Benetti was the first she helped. He had one long gash across his chest. She peeled off the armor and placed her hand before the wound.

The exterior world faded. She had to trust them to hold the line while she worked at saving lives. There were no choppers to load the wounded on in this grim world, but they had magic, and it was just as good. She just had to keep them alive. Stable. Instead of an op table and a surgeon, they would have that bullshit life mana. God, how much she would have given to get that back on earth. Twitch your fucking fingers, and the wounds close. Maybe even mend shattered vertebrae. And would that not be fucking grand.

She was not ok.

Viv focused harder. The black mana answered her anger with worrying eagerness. It pulled from the wound like a gel, taking blood and skin with it. Benetti mewled in pain.

When it was done, a globule of black and red hovered above her hand. She let it drop.

Benetti’s breath was hard and fast. He was pale, with tears down his face. Cernit was whispering something. There was a pathetic neigh, then the sound of metal on flesh. The lieutenant barked an order, and the sharp knight grabbed a vial from one of his pouches. He downed half of it and spread the rest over his chest.

It was as if the wound was washed away, to be replaced by pinkish skin.

Viv had never seen such bullshit before.

Shaking her head, she turned to ministrate Jor, who had taken the initiative to peel off the armor where he was hurt the most. A small gash on his forearm was cured in moments, but the one on his thigh was mangled and raw. It took her a little bit longer.

Viv pulled back, pale and exhausted. Running on fumes, this time. Not a good idea. But she had to keep going. 

One last person.

Cernit had his back to her. He was bleeding from the side, where the bear had marked him. Speaking of which.

She heard a sniffing sound at the edge of the crumbling wall they were hiding behind. 

Viv stood and stepped forward, but her arms would not raise for some reason. That was fine. The black mana escaped from the captain’s flank as she passed him by. He turned to her with an expression of surprise. She grabbed that little ball and made it grow larger. She fed it with her own depleted power until she was wrenched like a twisted rag, until there was nothing left to give. It hovered before her, impatient. A real attack hound, that one.

The bear’s ugly mug passed the corner.

Her spell connected to it. It bore through its conduit with ravenous hunger, seeking the power she had lost, consuming all. It broke through everything with such might that black fumaroles breached through the beast’s withered skin. The bear exploded in a torrent of ash.

Focus +1

You have reached a milestone! You have gained the ability to overcharge your spells. Your ability to concentrate is vastly improved. Your ability to recall past memories in greater details is vastly improved. You may now cast more powerful spells.

Intimidation: Beginner 8

Mana manipulation: Beginner 8

She turned to Cernit, who was gawping at the carcass like a fucking moron. Trying to catch flies in his mouth or something.

“Just make sure you grab the ribcage. He needs it. Got it? Ribcage. Riiiiibcaaaaaage.”

When she was done, she nodded once to herself and slowly toppled forward.

Black Hedge Witch (7)

Chapter 15: Hangover

Viv woke up in her bed, all warm and dehydrated, with a solid weight curled around her chest. 

“Better not make a fucking habit out of it,” she grumbled.

//Good afternoon, Your Grace.

“Squee!”

“Hullo, everyone. Gh. Head hurts.”

Arthur peeled herself off Viv’s chest and received a scratch on her chest scale for her trouble. Viv luxuriated in the warm sensation while the dragonette spread her wings and held her head high, proud as hell for the worship. Viv managed to reach the side of the creature’s neck with a light touch. The scales were warm and smooth, and, come on, it was a fucking dragon. 

Arthur squawked and retreated to her perch, the separation, which creaked under her increasing weight. She took flight. Half a second later, Viv heard a crash on the other side of the room. 

Meanwhile, Viv realized that she felt the rash fabric of her cover on her skin. A brief inspection revealed that the skin suit had been dragged down to her waist. Someone had bandaged her shoulder. 

That could only mean one thing.

Her eyes widened at the thought. “Putain de merde. Someone saw my tits.”

//As a matter of fact, two people had a glance at your chest, Your Grace.

“Dammit.”

//A soldier named Korad, who has the largest life mana attunement of the camp and is in charge of healing.

//And Jor, who held you up and then carried you here.

“Hold on. How do you know all of this?”

//Cernit came by and explained everything while standing at the door.

//He seemed worried about your reaction.

//He also heaped praise upon you for saving their lives.

//I requested he swear allegiance to you as repayment, but he claimed he already had a previous engagement.

Viv stood up and summarily washed with water from her basin. Her shoulder was still painful. “Does not feel fully healed to me.”

//The good lieutenant mentioned that your body resisted healing.

//I was afraid that it might be the case.

“That’s bad.”

//You should be receptive to alchemical healing, Your Grace.

“Oh, yes, they had potions.”

//Did they, now?

//You should ask for one, Your Grace.

//But not for this wound. It would be a waste.

//We might need the potion later.

“Maybe I should ask, yeah,” she agreed. Now dressed, she left her sleeping space and saw a large ribcage by the golem. 

“Oh, they listened.”

//This belonged to a powerful undead beast.

//Or, to be precise, it was powerful according to your current, lowly standards.

//I shall make good use of it.

“I thought you already had everything you needed, by the way?” she asked with a bit of suspicion.

//Indeed.

//The ribcage will save me a lot of time.

“Not that we need it now,” she remarked, “the necromancer is dead. I killed him myself.”

She was pretty sure that he was dead. If that kid, no, if her foe could come back from such a serious case of sieve chest, he could start his own religion.

//This unit estimates that there is a 67% chance that the necromancer you killed was not responsible for the fall of Fort Stone.

Viv choked on the glass of water and pill she was draining with the enthusiasm of the severely hungover. 

“How do you figure?”

//As mentioned, Cernit made a full account of the encounter to me.

//From the safety of the entrance.

//Since Arthur chased them away after they placed you on the bed.

//And was hissing and threatening to take flight.

“Aw. Good dragon.”

//The necromancer should have had a great many revenants with him.

Viv stopped to consider. 

“Perhaps he left them to search for powerful undead in the village?”

//No, necromancers have no need for that.

//The size of their horde can increase to stupefying amounts with little effort on their part.

//As revenants will simply follow the pack without prompt.

//However, revenants without impetus, those ‘left behind’, will tend to spread out over time.

//A horde left for several days without supervision must be gathered again.

//It would be more impractical to split up to move faster.

//It would also be safer to stay with the horde.

//Therefore, there could be another threat.

“I guess we shall see.”

//Yes, Your Grace.

//In the meantime, this unit requires charging of the main power source, please.

Viv sighed and complied. The process of charging exhausted her mana but not her mind. She was out rather fast, however, having not entirely recovered from her ordeal.

“I think it’s taking more and more time for me to have a full charge of mana, if you know what I mean.”

//Yes, that is correct.

//But not an urgent issue.

//As long as we are in the fallout zone, you can simply step out of the isolation zone and drain black mana from the very air.

“And get poisoned.”

//I am sorry, Your Grace.

//I am going for efficiency.

//For your own sake.

“Yes, yes, I get it. I’m out of juice and I’m hungry. I’m out of here.”

//You should take a moment to rest, in any case.

//We can continue your education tonight.

Viv stepped out of her room and made her way to the mess, bleary-eyed. It was deserted at that time, but someone had left cold bread and warm water around to eat. She dug in.

Cernit knocked on the door and joined her a moment later. He was walking slowly and favoring his right leg but seemed otherwise fine. Benetti and Jor came soon afterward. She narrowed her eyes at the taller soldier who studiously ignored her.

She did not have an issue with nudity when medical professionals were concerned. She did not have an issue with nudity with her fellow female soldiers. The knights were different. They were… other. Not her group.

Viv realized she was biased. The three knights and all their soldiers had joined the list of outsiders in her mind, and it was probably too late to change her own view. Racism perhaps played a role. They had greenish skin, for fuck’s sake. And different traits. And a different tongue. Foreigners, although to be fair, she was the foreigner. And they were suicidal morons who had left her behind in their doomed charge as if she would have stood a chance alone and without a horse had they failed.

No matter the cause, they pissed her off. She had saved them because… because they were on her side, and she was supposed to be the medic. Fucking meatheads. 

Cernit must have felt something because his hopeful smile fell down. He took something from his back. It was, she realized, an overcoat made of black-shielded material.

“Thank you,” he articulated.

She accepted the gift with a nod. How could she express how annoyed she was? Perhaps this was normal behavior for them.

Yes. Now that she thought about it, it made sense for the knights to risk their lives on a gambit rather than choose the path of caution and regret it later. They were called knights, not mercenaries. She had to expect some sort of honor-based chivalry from them.

She would complain, but a less chivalrous group might have tried to take advantage of her, and those clearly didn’t. You lose some, you win some.

In front of her, Cernit was searching her expression with worry. He was so desperately transparent that she found it amusing. Any of her father’s allies or foes would eat him alive.

Benetti broke the silence.

“Is Bob… Princess Bob… irate?”

The term he chose was partly inappropriate. It sounded like it would be written ‘meleus’, and was reserved for official proclamations. More specifically, war. The incongruity of the word brought a small smile to her lips. Here she was, in the middle of a shitty fort on planet fuck you, sulking because her comrades-in-arms were behaving exactly the way they were supposed to. She communicated with them in some long-dead language that magic had imprinted directly into her brain. Was it really worth getting pissed off?

She shook her head.

“No, I am not irate.”

“Sad?”

“No. Just. Please do not leave me behind.”

That was the crux of the problem. If they were to fight side by side, they should not drop her and fuck off, even if it was supposed to protect her. They should have counted on her to take the enemy caster down instead of charging forward like retards. 

“Sorry,” Cernit told her, “and thank you.”

“You saved our lives,” Benetti continued. Jor nodded, face as expressive as a brick.

“We promise. No leave behind.”

They all conferred and repeated their oath.

“No leaving behind.”

Though they may never achieve friendship, they had achieved respect.

After that very moving moment, the trio looked at each other and the wall with mounting embarrassment until Viv shooed them away. She finished her meal and decided that she would accomplish exactly fuckall magic-related. She was also tired. This place had no internet, however, and that made down-time a thumb-twiddling nightmare. Might as well help Arthur.

She regained her room and scolded the little monster for clawing one of her sleeping bags apart, for some reason. That was annoying, but perhaps she was bored? The dragonette was soon dragged outside for some landing exercise, squealing with delight. After a dozen crashes, she started to get the hang of it. After half an hour, she could stay in the air for a few seconds. 

After ten more minutes, the beast was washed and needed a break. So Viv retired to her tower.

It really sounded nicer than it was.

She leafed through the monster compendium again and tried another book. The history of the region escaped her, but the way to recognize magic had a hidden treasure trove of information: it contained runes. Written runes. 

“Solfis, I think we hit the skysteel vein. Look at that!”

The war golem was working relentlessly on his new ribcage. He did not pause.

//Indeed, Your Grace.

//I did not expect the book to have the runes actually written down.

//It will accelerate your learning.

Solfis was right. Viv dug in with eagerness, devouring the instructions with a little translation help from the golem. Her mind latched on the symbols on its own, and she finally came to a realization.

“I can focus better.”

//That is correct, Your Grace.

//The higher your mental score, the easier performing mental tasks will be.

“Does that mean that I am… smarter than before?”

The golem had no eye and no face, and it still conveyed condescension through a second of silence.

//Is thinking faster and for a longer time the same as intelligence, Your Grace?

“I believe that you are enjoying putting down organics far too much, Solfis.”

//This unit admits to a certain bias against fleshbags, present company excluded.

Arthur squealed weakly from her napping spot.

//This unit does not extend the exception to your pet.

//Returning to the main statement.

//On the other hand, you have come across fleshbags yourself, Your Grace.

“You are too harsh.”

He did not answer. She had to admit that there was a gap between memory, processing speed, and focus on one hand and intelligence on the other. She had a memory of an IT specialist working for her dad's political platform. He was an uncontested genius in his field. He was also convinced that the opposing party was secretly headed by a cabal of freemasons aiming to start the third world war, and that her father was out to stop them. She and her parents had repeatedly made fun of him behind his back. Damien, her brother, had not. He pitied the man.

Her father kept him around because he was cheap and motivated. 

She returned her attention to the book. Any increase in ability was welcome. She just had to remind herself that it did not equate to being more competent. She still had to work at that.

The runes flowed into her memory as if latched on. They were magical in nature, each carrying a concept. It was… a universal language. Exhausting universal language. Even just visualizing one drained her focus.

Viv closed the book a bit later with disappointment. Her book’s purpose was to allow a soldier to identify the most common spells, enchantments, and traps, with the explicit purpose of surviving them. It was not designed to teach the runes or give general examples of classical combinations. Unfortunately, Solfis also declined to teach her.

//You must rest now, Your Grace.

//You have pushed yourself too far for too long.

//This unit must also dedicate itself to finishing its frame.

//Having me by your side will significantly improve our chances of survival.

//This unit would advise thinking about the symbols and how to merge them into spells.

“Ok, but are there not, I don’t know, tried and trusted combinations I could use?”

//This unit has many such combinations.

//Unfortunately, most of them require the use of other mana colors.

//At your level of skill, that is.

//I can only suggest that you experiment, as witches have a more… organic approach to learning.

//You have already demonstrated creativity with the yoink spell.

Viv mulled this over, then stood up to scream no at Arthur, who was checking if books were edible.

“Damn it, why is she nibbling everything? There are teeth marks on every piece of furniture.”

//Unknown.

Perhaps she was too cloistered? Viv would try to walk the dragonette more often. She just hoped the little terror would not attack anyone.

Shortly after, Viv realized she was exhausted and laid in her bed. Arthur grabbed one of her covers in her maw and huddled by her feet. It felt very nice. She breathed slowly.

The night was dark. There were no stars and no city light to offer any source of illumination. Her mad dash southward had left her exhausted almost every night. It was the first time that there was no clearly identified threat on her life since, well, since she arrived in this land. Nyil, the interface had said it was called. The necromancer was dead. Her poisoning level was low. She was among allies in her own room.

It was silent too. With nature deadened, the only thing to disturb her rest was the soft hum of Solfis’ engraver as it delicately carved through dragon bone. Loneliness reared its ugly head. 

Back on earth, Viv had had many acquaintances but few friends. Those who she had clicked with on a fundamental level numbered few, and she had kept their bonds alive with jealous care throughout the years. She missed them terribly now, especially her online friends. Fraise’s boundless optimism and Gevaudan’s devious wit. She missed meaningful conversations and opinions based on years of knowing each other. She missed her brother. And Mouq. They would have ideas on what to do, how to survive. At least, they were safe back on earth. She had to believe that.

Arthur crawled up between her legs. The warmth the little monster emanated was simply staggering. 

That was nice as well.

Viv fell asleep.

Chapter 16: Ah, Fuck.

Her Grace, the mirificent and stupendous Princess Bob, woke up to a pair of needy assholes. Arthur was fed with one hand, and Solfis charged with the other. The golem wanted his core as loaded as possible to prepare for a possible confrontation as his combat mode apparently consumed a lot of energy. Arthur just wanted to grow. Probably.

At least her shoulder was fine. A quick inspection showed that the wound she could see was already closed if still a bit red. That was nice. The skinsuit looked like it was repairing itself as well.

Viv made another discovery while cleaning the litter. The soldiers had dug a small garden between the latrines and the walls and were growing vegetables. It stunk to high heaven, but it was alive and green. The presence of life was almost enough to bring a tear to her eye after so many days spent crossing landscapes of grey, black, and ochre. 

She joined the knights for breakfast.

Conversation flowed more smoothly between herself and Benetti. For some reason, his Old Imperial had grown more polished in record time, and it made a world of difference. With the sleek knight as interpreter, she managed to keep the conversation alive with Cernit as well. Jor only answered in grunts and monosyllabic words.

The first question she had, Benetti volunteered. Knights were tasked with patrolling the deadlands, as the sole owners of mounts, as well as the still-expensive mana-blocker armors. However, only Jor’s horse had survived the encounter the day before, and patrols were a mandatory three for safety. So they would not go out anymore.

Then came the time-honored tradition of the oral resume, where one lists their achievements in one minute to a group of people they just met, hoping to pass muster. Viv went for honest yet vague. She was the daughter of a political figure but started working for the army until the fateful accident that teleported her here. So far away from her home.

The immediate reaction from Cernit was to ask her why she had not studied magic before. Apparently, her beginner status was clear to all. Casting was so useful that no one in their right mind would neglect their gifts. 

She deflected the question by telling them that magic was restricted where she lived, which was technically true. 

The knights introduced themselves in turn. First, Benetti stood and bowed, using a sarcastic voice and exaggerated motion to carry his message.

“Ir Leias Benetti, previously heir to the Benetti title.”

The man had been banished from his family after an unspecified event left him disgraced. He did not share, and Viv did not pry. He had left with his family blade as a reminder of his lost past, and joined the Baran army where his path and training led him to the role of knight. None of the three had met before being ‘volunteered’ to the deadlands, but it was not usually that dangerous an assignment as far as she could tell.

Cernit was next. The solid lieutenant passed heavy hands through his salt and pepper hair, trying to see if his eager subordinate stuck to the script. Benetti introduced him as the last child of a minor noble family, practically just peasants and hunters themselves. He had risen through the ranks through skill and dedication, then promoted after one of Baran’s many skirmishes with its numerous neighbours. His sword was a gift from the kingdom for years of effective service.

As for Jor, Benetti had little to say, as it was notoriously difficult to pry information from the laconical man. They only knew that he had been promoted from the heavy infantry after a heroic act and that he was the son of some village’s headsman.

The introductions done, Viv tried to understand them a little more. They were only too happy to oblige. She could tell they enjoyed the attention.

“We are knights not because of our path, but because we swore allegiance to the king, his majesty, Erezak the Third,” Benetti explained with limited excitement.

“Also, path must ride,” Cernit added.

“What my esteemed colleague means is that our path must include mounted combat.”

“How do they know if your path includes mounted combat?” Viv asked.

“We fight on horseback,” Benetti replied with a laugh. “If no path, then obvious as nose in middle of face!”

“Like you is tamer,” Cernit said.

Huh?

“Knights are very strong. The backbone of army. But three knights are not the same.”

“We do not have our heavier armor.”

“And no captain for better charges.”

Viv imagined some path would be more of a support role, empowering the other soldiers. A magical power multiplier. She wondered what it meant for the conduct of warfare on Nyil. That, and people lobbing huge spells around. Spells should definitely be a game-changer.

“So, once you are a knight, then what?”

They looked at each other with some confusion.

“We stay knights until we die. Serve Baran.” 

She must have made a face because Benetti explained more with a laugh.

“We have homes and families, of course. We can become higher. If we have a strong path!”

Ah yes, people here stayed sturdy and healthy until they were very old. She had to remember that if someone looked like a grandpa and still wore heavy armor, he could probably punch her head off.

She only managed to ask a few more questions before the knights had to leave to attend to their duties. Apparently, losing horses was a big deal, and so was killing a necromancer. Even the tired soldiers displayed signs of merriment. That meant that they only looked slightly less brain-dead than usual.

Viv had her first free day.

First order of business: magic. She returned to her room and practiced for twenty minutes before realizing that she was out of juice. 

“Solfis, why does it feel like I am out of mana?”

//You are out of mana.

“Fine. Then why am I out of mana?”

//You have stayed inside the fort, where black mana is minimal.

//Therefore, you did not fill your conduits and core.

“Are you saying that in order to be able to cast, I need to expose myself?”

//Using… ‘Yoink’ would also work when the target is strong enough.

//Otherwise, only moderately so, Your Grace.

//At least until you learn how to draw energy in your core from a normal environment.

//This unit estimates that you have a 91% chance of avoiding long-term damage by charging outside.

“That’s kind of bad.”

//It is a much higher success rate than your… other endeavors.

“Like survival?”

//Perhaps.

Dammit.

Viv went outside and sat on the crenelations facing east, where Fort Sky used to be. She could feel the thicker mana here like feverish pinpricks against her skin. Her presence also meant that this part of the wall was no longer patrolled. 

She spent her morning alternating between training there, back in her room, and playing with Arthur. It was hard work. Although casting was amusing, she was getting bored from repeating the same tasks. Even adding a physical training routine to the mix failed to distract her.

Like that, she spent five days, with the knights getting closer in the work acquaintance sort of way. Her experience begged terrible questions, one she had not anticipated at all.

How could one grow so fucking bored in a magical world with dragons?

In fact, how could taking care of said dragons be reduced to cleaning shit and preventing her room’s furniture from being reduced to saliva-soaked kindling?

How could said dragons manage to use the very wind instinctively to stay afloat while her own powers were limited to stinky undead disposal and looking edgy?

Why did heroic knights share the look and fragrance of hobos?

Why did the ENTIRE FUCKING FORT SMELL LIKE SHIT ALL THE FUCKING TIME? JESUS IT WAS PESTILENTIAL!

Thus, mulling her dire circumstances and the inevitable heat death of the universe while glaring dreamily towards the east, Viv was in a prime spot to see something change in the dreary grey world of the deadlands.

“What the fuck is that?”

‘That’ was a black spot, an undulating mark far on the horizon. It was barely larger than a gnat for now, but she thought it might not stay that way.

She jumped down to fetch Cernit, and when the officer spotted the spot, so to speak, his expression grew grim.

Nothing happened that night, and when she returned on the morrow, the spot had grown. It was still only a distant mark by then. Cernit brought out a brass tube that looked suspiciously like a telescope and handed it to her. She grabbed the contraption, brought it to her eye, and saw only darkness.

Cernit helped her remove the cap and pointed at the mana intake.

The dot was a horde.

Now, she had seen masses of people at political events before. Such gatherings often gained a life of their own. Each individual might differ vastly from one group to another, but when the mob started to march, physics replaced intellect and instinct replaced empathy. The mass approaching them was different still.

A dark circle of larger forms moved forward with purpose, attracting a bevy of revenants that glutted its surface. They were shed at the edge to eventually join the trail of the comet-shaped herd. The slower specimens were progressively shed by the advancing mass as it moved on. It was also aiming right at them.

She did not need Solfis to tell her the score. There was another necromancer. And they were heading right this way.

“Fuck.”

Viv handed the telescope back to Cernit who inspected the incoming force again. 

In Viv’s mind, a thought occurred. There was one horse left. She knew how to ride. She could be gone before they were surrounded.

She dismissed the thought before it could completely form. Pride held her back. Pride and greed. She could not leave without Solfis, and she would be at a severe disadvantage without him. His knowledge of paths and magic was too good to pass.

They would face the horde and hold it back. She hoped. The walls and soldiers should make a difference. 

Cernit was done with his inspection. He turned around and left her alone on the battlements. A moment later, the fire on top of the tower was lit, and a great black plume rose into the still air. The gesture was as solemn as it was pointless. No one would come to relieve them, even the knights knew it.

Viv sat over the edge and extended a hand. A ball slowly formed until it was mostly circular.

Mana manipulation: Beginner 9

She would need all the edge she could get.

Days went on, slow and anxiogenic. There was little to do except train and occasionally take care of Arthur. Even the small dragon felt the change in the air, looking out to the approaching mass between bouts of flying practice. She and the others were suffering from cabin fever and the stress of an imminent attack at the same time. She only bought them some respite by playing fourth in a card game Cernit had introduced. Even then, tensions were running high.

Hern, the bald man, had made a reappearance. He still bore the traces of Arthur’s attack on his scarred face, and she surmised he spread rumors behind her back, for the soldiers grew distant again. Even the medic.

On the dawn of the tenth day, the horde arrived. And it was not a moment too soon.

Fort Sky stood on top of a small circular mound, with a single road snaking its way up to the fortified entrance. The walls and cliff on every other side were sheer and vertiginous, so Cernit concentrated most of his forces forward where Viv supposed most of the action would occur.

From up close, the horde was a fascinating phenomenon. A circular concentration of gut spillers, crawlers, and beasts held the center. At the same time, a ring of fresher revenants surrounded it on all sides with gaunt, caped figures placed at regular intervals. Around those, the milling rabble orbited like an ocean of moaning flesh and rotten bones. Viv could not spot a single human being in that unholy mess.

Cernit had a last look from the top of the battlements, then he gathered everyone but a few lookouts in the inner courtyard. He gave her the place of honor at his right side.

They were a sorry lot. Barely a dozen soldiers and three knights, two magic weapons or three if you included her dagger. Their only source of fire took ages to work and doubled as a cooking implement. If Cernit shared her thoughts, he betrayed none of it. His voice sounded throughout the open space with grim determination.

“Defenders of Baran, we are facing the gravest ordeal of our life. You know what stands outside and you know what they can do, what they will do if they leave the deadlands. We have fulfilled our sacred duty in warning the royal army. Now, we will fulfill the other one: to stand and fight in the name of our king!” Benetti translated.

The soldiers were already standing straighter. Viv was a little bit impressed.

“Do not falter, and do not shy. Protect your brothers-in-arms. Watch each other’s backs. It may be that we all fall today, but we will certainly take as many of them as we can with us. And if there is one chance for us to win and some of us to see our families again, I promise you I will find it. Now, to the walls! Let none pass! For Baran!” he finished.

“For the King!” the small crowd bellowed.

Aw, it was like all those heroic movies where they all die at the end.

Fuck.

Viv shadowed Cernit as he climbed back up and settled down to wait, with many people praying to one deity or the other. They did not have to do so for very long.

The core halted three hundred meters away while the horde continued on its course through sheer inertia. Hundreds upon hundreds of forms walked up the road at an irritatingly sedate pace. Viv thought they should be faster. Instead, they stumbled their way forth like piss-drunk cretins. Deadly piss-drunk cretins. It was infuriating.

By her side, Benetti forgot their size difference before the intimidating spectacle. He leaned to the side and whispered into her side boob.

“Wait for the big one. No spell.”

“Yeah yeah.”

She had heard him the first four times.

It took another few minutes for the first body to bump against the wall, then another came close and climbed the first one. They stumbled. More and more bodies piled up as more revenants arrived to form a line of flesh ramps. On the wall, the silence was complete. 

The first revenant ladder reached half the size of the wall. As more bodies piled up, it teetered to the side. Then, a portion slid to the side and over the edge of the road. The rain of bodies led to a chain reaction that sent over fifty revenant tumbling onto the plain below, including the tallest mound.

They ended up in a squirming pile. Cernit made a gesture, and a few soldiers dropped their fire-starting bricks on top of the pile. Like that, at least half of those would be destroyed before they could untangle themselves.

Viv had never seen such a display of incompetence.

“Necromancer early on their path. Cannot control so many. But countless dead, much power. Such are the deadlands,” Benetti whispered.

It would be a fucking disgrace to be killed by a buffoon like that. She got what Solfis said about necromancy being an inferior path in the long term. It was small comfort now that she was in the magical equivalent of a zombie apocalypse.

“How do people kill necromancers? Normally,” she asked.

“Heavy cavalry charge. Otherwise, same as all casters. You send another caster, or you send assassins. Maybe a very good archer,” Benetti casually replied.

“Do we have any of those?” she asked, already guessing the answer as Benetti looked up into her eyes. A fatalistic bend tainted his smile.

“We have you.”

Viv looked out towards the sea of dead. Solfis was almost done with his frame and claimed it would solve all her problems. However, she suddenly had doubts about their success. What could one creature achieve against so many?

Then, she remembered she was in a world of magic. And that Solfis was hundreds of years old and now built from dragon bone. Surely, that counted for something.

The dead piled again.

In the silence that followed, Viv recognized the ‘hurry up and wait’ aspect she had grown accustomed to in the army. Some operations went on for hours, but most of the firefights she had been on had lasted mere minutes. The battle had started fifteen minutes before. Her side had yet to move a muscle.

Eventually, the first rotten hand grabbed the edge of the first stone. A soldier moved forward. With economic motion, he used the crescent polearm to push the creature back as it tried to go over. It fell, to be replaced by more.

Three of the soldiers focused on that specific breach. They alternated strikes and rested in-between in a slow dance that minimized the energy spending. A new ramp eventually reached the wall, and three more soldiers stepped up to block it. Cernit barked a sharp order. A few more flaming bricks flew over the wall.

And revenants grabbed them.

Viv watched with interest as select individuals took the incandescent objects in their desiccated hands, pulled them to their chest, and jumped off the road to a fiery demise. She could not see the blue glint showing direct control, but she did not have to. The necromancer wanted the way in kept clear. The living would not burn through the horde with impunity.

The foes kept coming. Viv kept waiting. The three knights were around her, on protection detail. It felt weird being part of a fire team again, so to speak. They also clearly knew what they were doing.

The battle reached a weird stalemate. She was… she had never been part of something so bizarre. Like a discount zombie apocalypse. Except, she was in the movie this time. A hand around her throat and her neck would shatter.

Up and down and forth and back the blades went. Both sides of the crescent were sharpened. Sometimes, a revenant grabbed a polearm. When that happened, the soldier twisted the weapon and brought it back with a harvest of severed digits. They were well-trained.

The rising stench made Viv nauseous through her mask.

It went on for fucking hours.

Eventually, it happened. All the soldiers present were engaged when the necromancer made his move. Crawlers and a few of the cloaked figures with weird tentacles detached themselves from the core and made their way up the road. Their movements were jerky and weird, even more so than usual. They lacked their usual disturbing grace. It felt to Viv as if some invisible hand had been shoved up their asses to use them as sock puppets. She inspected the new type of foe.

[Puppeteer: a dangerous kind of undead. It connects its appendages to revenants and uses them as shock troops. Connected revenants have their abilities improved.]

Improved was putting it mildly. The creatures latched on the nearest specimens, and the connected revenants went from shuffle to predatory stalk in a heartbeat. Crawlers opened the path, climbing the wall of flesh with their strange, simian gait. They were a second away from the edge. She could see the necromancer’s mind in the blue shine of empty orbits.

“Now,” Cernit spoke.

“Yoink!”

Her first, overcharged attack smashed into the forward crawler and slapped away the presence there, thrashing it as much as she could. The beast fell, and the others faltered, cut off from the one who had needled them on.

Viv let go. 

Her high acuity allowed her to throw several ‘yoink’ spells in such quick succession that she had sent a new one before the last had pulled back. Her black spears landed on every crawler first, turning them into piles of bones. The puppeteers were next, and they died with high-pitched shrieks. Black mana sang through her conduits, as thick and syrupy as melted chocolate. It was a good kind of pain.

Cernit gave an order and all the soldiers grabbed a brick from their belt to send the ignited projectiles over the wall. Columns of smoke emerged here and there, where flesh was the driest and densest. She knew they would keep burning for hours. 

She kept casting. The necromancer tried to regain control of the few special dead left, only to be blasted away a second time.

In less than fifteen seconds, she wiped out a dozen high-value undead. The offensive stuttered to a halt. The three knights moved on, hacking and slashing at the closest undead until the ramps collapsed into a mess of intertwined flesh. Smoke soon obscured the view of the valley below.

“What is happening?” a soldier with a scar on his chin asked.

“Silence,” Cernit answered, frowning. He was peering forward as well. 

Cernit asked something of Benetti, and the knight smiled and extended his hand. A gentle breeze soon rose, pushing away the ashes.

Below them, the revenants were trickling away. The day was won, but the battle had just begun, and they had already revealed their ace.

Chapter 17: Like Rats

Nothing much happened during the next hour, so Viv stepped down and returned to her room. Arthur was so agitated that she actively sought pampering, which was rare. Viv sat on her bed and petted the small dragon’s back and neck, marveling once more at how smooth and warm the scales were.

//Your Grace, if you have enough energy…

“Ah, yes, you are right.”

Viv had recovered from the very mild mana poisoning she had gained over her several outings. It would still be unwise to get a fever so early in the battle. So she stood before the golem’s exposed core to empty her overtaxed conduits.

Solfis had changed considerably since they arrived here. His days and nights of ceaseless labor now bore impressive fruits. The core was clad in a protective layer of folded bear ribs, with the bones broken and fused again until they took the appearance of banded armor. Small openings allowed her and him temporary access to vital compartments until they were sealed shut again. He also had fully formed legs and arms made of dragon wings. They were crossed over his chest now so that his form could remain compact, but she could tell that he would be immensely tall. Taller than the tallest human she had come across. It would be a lean and sinuous and alien build, she could tell. His humanoid appearance was already… unsettling.

“How are we looking?”

//My core is approaching 8% capacity.

//It will allow me several minutes of operation at low battle potential.

//It might be enough.

//However, a higher charge will give me more options and reduce our chances of failure.

‘Hmm.”

She placed her black-clad hand against the core and unleashed her power in. It gulped her mana with endless thirst. Sometimes, it felt like filling the Danaides’ barrel: as if the bottom was pierced and her task was pointless and endless. Only Solfis’ assurance pushed her doubts away.

The bones shone when she began. Solfis’ body was the expected ivory color, except for innumerable runes covering its surface. They were written in tiny scripts with exquisite care and the unfailing precision of their owner’s machine mind. It was a tiresome and systematic task. It suited Solfis well. 

She finished, and the ribcage closed with nary a noise. The dense lattice looked unnaturally sturdy. Creepy as fuck too.

She glanced up and into a pair of empty orbits. 

Solfis had selected the skull of the massive gut spiller she had killed in that tower, what felt like ages ago. It was strangely humanoid except for a pair of thick horns pointing upward and slightly outward. He was now engraving it with more care and attention than any other part. A large and complex glyph already covered part of its brow. 

The runes and horns gave him a devilish countenance that she was not entirely comfortable with. His appearance was too close to that of an undead for comfort.

//Does my appearance… upset you, Your Grace?

“A little bit. I know that you are still you, do not worry.”

//This unit gives you credit for overcoming your instinct, Your Grace.

//However, this unit would recommend that, in the future, you rely on them.

//Not for me, of course.

//This unit is yours for all of eternity.

“All of it?”

//Well, until you die, Your Grace.

//An unfortunate consequence of your own failing fleshiness.

//But fret not, we will accomplish much before it happens.

“I appreciate your trust. Unfortunately, I kind of think you might be overconfident.”

//There is always a margin for error, Your Grace.

//But this unit always goes for the winning move.

//And the winning move, right now, is you.

//Hold the line, and you and I will live.

Viv nodded and returned to Arthur’s worried form. What Solfis just said suddenly hit her.

“What do you mean, you and I? What about the others?”

The golem’s answer was immediate and unsettling.

//They do not matter.

//They will never matter to me.

“What if I want them to matter? We fight side by side. I do not know the customs of Harrak, but where I am from it meant something.

//Your survival is a hard-coded directive that I cannot knowingly circumvent.

//If their demise means your survival, this unit will not hesitate.

//This unit will never hesitate.

“Look, I would prefer if your plans included the survival of our allies from now on.”

//Their presence improves our odds.

//Therefore they do, Your Grace.

//As long as yours is guaranteed.

//Consider what will happen to them should you fall.

//Because your allies already realized it.

He was right. If she fell, there would be no one left to stop the horde. The three knights had struggled against a handful of dangerous targets, and there were dozens still out there. 

“I’ll just have to be careful.”

Viv returned to her bed and settled for a quick nap, with her armor still on. She woke up half an hour later to no specific change. The courtyard outside was empty but Jor was standing guard by her door. He turned around when he heard her.

“Food,” he said, pointing at the mess hall. The cook was on the wall with the rest, but platters of jerky and other stuff had been left for everyone to help themselves to. She sat alone and loaded up. Jor followed her and kept a silent vigil. When she was done, she climbed up.

On top of the wall, the soldiers sat down in clumps, resting and talking in low voices. Visibility had improved little, however.

“They are waiting,” Benetti said.

“Waiting?”

The sharp knight pointed at the tower above her room, where a sentry sat at all times.

“No movement,” he explained, “for now.”

“They will attack again, though.”

“Yes. Necromancer early on their path. Cannot stay out of contained camp for too long, or mana poisoning. Time is not on their side.”

“Hmm.”

She sat down for a while, but Cernit soon sent her back to her room.

“You must rest now. After, no time to rest,” he said. Already, some of the soldiers had gone down, and others had returned with covers. For now, the air was still cold, and the smouldering pyre before them did little to change that. Seeing that she had nothing better to do, she headed back.

Once more, the situation was strange. The world was magic, she was trapped with knights and a dragon inside a fort besieged by the undead, and it was just stressful boredom. 

Viv sat down on her bed with Arthur placing her tail on her lap and meditated.

It was probably the best use of her time.

She started by remembering all the runes she had seen from the book. Many of them were related to traps and triggers. She suspected that there were other runes that were part of such spells, and were not listed there. She had some ideas about the rest, however. She started by visualizing them one by one, and then some of them together. Every time, the strain on her mind grew considerably, but she thought she might use two or three runes at the same time without fainting. 

That was another aspect of magic affecting her. She could keep in her mind more complex constructs than ever before. It was like looking at a dense blueprint and then being able to visualize it in its entirety, with all the tiny details. She was sure that her neurons had not suddenly multiplied or something. Therefore, magic was helping her process stuff better and faster. How did it work? She did not know.

The hours went by. She only stopped to rest, feed Arthur, and check on the walls. The situation had not changed. It was back to waiting.

Night fell. The wall became illuminated by mana stones carried by soldiers, shining the same pale hue as military-grade spotlights, though not with the same intensity. They revealed nothing but corpses.

With nothing better to do, Viv went to sleep in full armor. 

Her sleep was light and fitful, packed with nightmares. In one, she killed the necromancer only for his face to be Damien’s, her brother. In another, undead surrounded her on all sides and her spells failed to kill them. No matter how fast she ran, there were more and more of them harrying them until they surrounded her and—

She woke up with a jolt. Arthur was stomping on her, wings tense. Her white head swivelled from side to side.

Viv did not hesitate. She jumped out and rushed out. 

//Be careful, Your Grace. 

//No matter what, you cannot fall.

“I know!”

She slammed the door to the inner structure open, then went through the one that led out. It only opened partway. There was a body on the ground. The body swore and jumped up, revealing the worried face of Benetti.

“What?”

“I don’t know!” she spat. She moved to the center and stood around, inspecting the inner walls, the buildings. There was still nothing.

A sentry screamed then fell silent.

Benetti bellowed something but Viv did not care. A soldier’s corpse fell from the wall opposite the main undead army. The fuckers must have climbed from the other side.

A crawler made its way to the stair in sinuous movements. It was a bit too far, so Viv overcharged her spell.

“YOINK!”

The mighty dark bolt caught the creature on the flank and turned it to ash. There had been no passenger. The necromancer must have put them in position, then released his hold. That could only mean…

Cernit whistled, and the noise of hundreds of stomping feet came from the main gate. She had to hurry.

Benetti grabbed her brusquely and pointed her somewhere above the barracks. She cast immediately and released the spell as a form jumped from the roof. It caught the creature in the neck. A pile of ashy bones crumbled on the floor a few meters away from her.

“Worst way to wake up pretty woman,” Benetti lamented. Viv could think of a few, but she appreciated the man’s efforts to be casual. They went back to back, slowly making their way to the main wall where battle was raging.

Another crawler topped the wall behind them. Viv waited for it to grow closer before killing it.

A noise to the side distracted her, a terrible crunch. A corpse had crashed from the tower’s top.

“Shit.”

A crawler slammed on the courtyard’s dry surface an instant later. It jumped at her.

Viv slowed her time perception. She overcharged a first yoink and unleashed it at the beast coming from the side before turning her attention to the tower one. Benetti was already rotating to meet the attack head-on.

With a deafening ‘Skree!’, Arthur charged the beast from the side, managing to abort its assault. The crawler still rolled on itself to throw the dragon off mid-lunge. It landed on all four and attacked again, only to receive a yoink in the face.

Viv ran to the small dragonette. She let out a sigh of relief when her little monster climbed back to its feet and shook her head. She was unharmed. 

The crawler’s speed and power came as one more reminder of how powerful the undead really were. Only her bullshit spell allowed her to survive. 

Viv thought that, shit, she should have locked the door. Now the small dragon was out, and there was nothing she could do about it. For starters, Arthur was probably stronger than her.

She shook her head and refocused on the battle. Benetti was already rushing up the front wall where the battle was the fiercest. She followed and started throwing spells as soon as she topped the wall.

The battlements were heavily contested. Three crawlers had managed to get on. They were held at bay by trios of soldiers, who managed to push them away through concerted efforts and the use of pole arms. It gave the revenants free rein to climb up.

Her first spell took a crawler on the side, turning it to ash before it could even fall. As soon as she did so, the other two disengaged. They jumped back into the darkness below.

Viv checked for priority targets and found none. Instead, what she had was a fuckton of revenants.

It was enough.

The necromancer did not have to risk any more valuable elite. It had achieved its goal. The perimeter was breached.

Unless she could do something about it.

The area directly next to the stair was empty, for now. Jor guarded it with calm determination. Viv knew this was going to hurt like a bitch, just as she knew that she would do it. She would succeed.

“Yoink.”

“Yoink.”

“Yoink.”

The stupid shortcut sounded through the deafening din of battle. One revenant fell, then another, then another. Every second, a black ray would rob one of its unnatural life and add it back to the hedge witch’s reserves. Slowly, the pressure lessened on Jor until he could repulse the revenants climbing the wall. She turned to the next beleaguered group that Benetti had joined and kept at it.

“Yoink.”

Viv fell into the zone, the strange state of mind that she had experienced on earth and that meditative trance had elevated to new levels. For one moment, she worried about her uncovered back. It almost broke her concentration. With the return of sensation came a realization, however. There was a tail wrapped around her chest and a weight on her shoulder. She was safe.

And they were not.

Spell after spell after spell without stopping, until her mana inevitably turned low, until wariness, then pain, replaced the elation of magic. Her speed slowed down. Her arm wavered. Still, she persevered. The horde was ground to dust piece by piece, creature by creature. Viv skirted the edge of agony, then of consciousness. It was not desperation that kept her going. 

It was pride.

The revenants were the necromancer’s pawns, and the soldiers hers in a struggle for survival. She would not capitulate to someone who used botched shortcuts to power. Not after being trained by the best of the best, in the person of a fucking fantasy AI. No. She refused. Either they would show an absolutely amazing display of skill and intellect, or they would die. Their window was short. They just did not know it yet.

She looked for her next target and found none.

The trance broke.

Someone was keeping her upright while Arthur was sitting to the side in silent vigil. The stone battlement beneath her had disappeared in a sea of calf-high ash. The pale light of mana stones showed a world of blood, dust, and grime. The scent of burned flesh was thick in the air, with large, sooty clouds rising up beyond the glare of illumination and into the abyss of the night sky. She vaguely thought that it should be dawn. It was still night.

Pain came. It was a new kind that burnt from within.

Pain Tolerance: Intermediate 8

Willpower +1

You have reached a milestone! Your ability to focus for extended periods of time is vastly improved. Your ability to recover mana and mental fatigue is vastly improved. You recover from deep exhaustion much faster. You can keep casting low level spells even when exhausted.

Black Hedge Witch (8)

It did not help, not enough. She dry heaved and tried to collapse, in vain. The one who had grabbed her shoulder would not let her fall. Everything hurt. Everything burnt. She wanted to faint, but it would not come.

Someone placed a flask against her dry lips, and a sweet liquid dropped down her throat.

It was the best thing she had ever tasted.

It was her favorite cold drink on a hot summer day. It was perfect mulled wine on the night of the winter solstice. It was... perfect.

Warmth spread through her. She let out a gasping breath and let the darkness take her.

Chapter 18: The Bringer of Death

Someone shook Viv awake, and she wondered if it deserved the death penalty.

“Mdrglg.”

“Sorry, Bob. Necromancer is here.”

“Fuck!”

It was dawn. She was in a cleared area of the wall and wrapped in several layers of blankets. Arthur was currently hanging from Cernit’s arm guard, teeth dug deep into its surface. The lieutenant calmly stood up and the small dragon fell back down with an annoyed squeak upon her chest where she had been resting.

She disentangled herself and jumped to her feet. The pale light shone on a field of death the likes of which she had never seen. From the walls to the ramp, a solid mass of carbonized corpses formed a hellish slope garnered with bony protrusion. The soldiers lined the wall in loose order. They had taken casualties. She turned and saw five forms lying horizontal in the courtyard, the remains covered with tarps.

She turned her attention outward and searched for the necromancer. Two gut spillers and two puppeteers creating a protective wall of revenants were making their way up the road at a leisurely pace. She could vaguely see the outline of a pair of feet behind the imposing mass of undead.

“Bet you’re regretting not having a bow,” she complained in a low voice.

“We will be sure to ask for one with the next resupply,” came Benetti’s mocking voice. The banter made a few men smile. The rest remained tense.

Their foe stopped at the bottom of the ramp, a good thirty meters away from the edge of the wall and far from her optimal range. She saw a brief flash of white from behind the gut spillers, and they parted, finally revealing her foe.

[Adept necromancer, noble, deposed ruler, extremely dangerous]

She expected a bald man with destroyed teeth, the male equivalent of the Disney evil witch. Instead, she saw a handsome man with kind dark eyes and a lopsided grin, made irregular by the burn scar straining his left cheek. She could not see much else from that distance.

“Hello? Ah, it works,” a smooth voice came, as if through a loudspeaker.

Another language. This one she could understand relatively easily. It was like old imperial with only minor variations. It was possible to follow if she focused and he spoke slowly, which he did. A bit like heavily accented Québécois if one spoke French. Or Scottish if one spoke English.

“You never know with colorless magic. But I digress. You will forgive me for not revealing my name. I cannot take any risk before I complete my task.”

He kept silent for a few moments after that. Cernit did not reply. The kind officer bristled with outrage and barely contained disgust.

“How you must hate me for what I have become. I wish things had been different. Every evil I have committed for an ultimate good has only led to another evil. Now I must see it to the end or it will have been all in vain. I can live with anything but that.”

Another pause.

“If it is any comfort, you are the last fort I shall destroy. I cannot have you warn them of my movement, you see? If they expect me, I might fail. But I digress yet again. It’s this Enttiku-cursed poisoning.”

His voice was powerful and rhythmical, carried to her by magic like he stood at a polite distance instead of down the wall. It drew her in, but it also drew the others. They stood there with rapt attention, eager to know what he would say next.

“I did not come here to say that I was sorry, although I am. I came here to ask which one of you killed my son.”

The raw pain in the man’s voice stole her breath. It must have provoked a reaction in her allies too because the Necromancer’s gaze pierced her with laser-like intensity. All warmth left her chest.

“So it was you. The mysterious witch. No need to deny it. I was a baron before I was a necromancer. Discerning the truth is a necessary skill for us. The paths we follow never withdraw their gifts, even when we stray.”

The necromancer took one shaky breath. He would look almost vulnerable were it not for the horrors by his side.

“I know we deserve death. I just hoped that I would die before him. No parent should outlive their child, you see.”

She linked the man’s angular face to that of the teenager she had killed.

Aaah shit.

“I cannot really blame you. Just know that I hate you nonetheless. I am too far gone to deny myself one last hypocrisy.”

He looked away then, and when he next spoke, there was steel in his voice. “Whoever kills her can go free. I swear it on my soul.”

“Merde.”

Viv looked around, but nobody moved. Cernit soon made a vibrant oath, quivering with rage. He was the only one to meet her eyes. He gave her a nod, and she knew at this moment that he would rather die a hundred times than betray her. Jor and Benetti soon joined him, with the latter one speaking in Old Imperial.

“He who would betray king, country, and life itself, will have to contend with us. We will make it our priority to slay him.”

The necromancer turned back with one last, bitter chuckle.

The soldiers remained silent, eyes front. The medic who had helped her with Jor stole a glance in her direction for a quick smile. The cook nodded at her too. Most of the surviving soldiers seemed unimpressed by the necromancer’s promise.

The strange man had regained the ranks of the abominations he now led. She wondered what had pushed him to do so, to fall so low as to use monsters against humans for some obscure goal. It seemed taboo in a world where creatures were mankind’s greatest threat. It probably was. 

She shook her head. It did not matter why. It mattered that he did and that it was far too late for him to redeem himself. She would have to kill him.

“I want to check on Solfis,” she told Benetti. Cernit nodded but frowned afterward.

“Never alone. Benetti, protect.”

“Yes, lieutenant. Benetti, protect,” the disgraced gentleman repeated in a slightly condescending voice. Cernit rolled his eyes but let it go, and she was soon heading down the stairs with dragonette in tow. Benetti’s expression fell to sadness when they passed by the deceased. She looked at him.

“They do not deserve this. They do not deserve to be here. Only I do.”

“Benetti?” she asked, suddenly worried. He gave her a disarming smile. It felt strange to see his foreign traits and greenish skin so full of emotion. His humanity transcended the differences between them. Viv did not like that at all. She did not want to feel too much of anything right now.

“I here because I harassed women. With stupid friends. Only the last woman was someone important and we went too far. She threw her pain at my head during the trial. My eyes were opened. I deserve to be punished. I deserve to be here. Others do not. We save them together, yes?”

“Yes, Benetti. We save them together.”

“Then, maybe, I am Ir Leias Benetti again. Worthy of my name.”

She was not sure what to think of that. It seemed important to him, that name, and her opinion as well. She decided to say something because he was clearly expecting it, and leaving him hanging would be awkward. Thoughtful words cost her nothing.

“You already act like Ir Leias Benetti.”

Some of the despair left his tired face.

“Yes, I act like that. First act, then be. Yes?”

That she could wholeheartedly agree. The shared moment made her smile.

“First act then be.”

They arrived at the tower, its doors left open.

Arthur squeaked and categorically refused to step close. She tried to bribe the small creature with food. Nothing worked.

“Squee!”

“It wants fight,” Benetti observed.

Or she did not want to die cooped up in a death trap. In any case, Viv decided to let it go. The little monster was smart, perhaps smart enough to make her own decision. Viv could not spare the strength to go against it.

Solfis was inside, working on its head. The gut spiller’s two horns were now fully engraved.

“How is it going?” she asked.

//The frame is almost ready.

//I only need another hour.

//I had to expedite a few systems that will not interfere with normal operation.

//I can still tweak them later.

//How are things outside? Your condition was briefly concerning.

“Not too bad. I think I killed all his crawlers but two. He still has his heavier creatures, but they need to force the gate open to go through. Only his puppeteers remain a major threat.”

//Good.

//Remember, once I am ready, I will be able to dispose of the enemy caster with great alacrity.

//Then his horde will disperse.

//There is not enough vitality inside the fort to attract more than a few creatures at a time.

//Take no risks.

“I won’t. Take any stupid risks, I mean.”

Her worry calmed. She closed the door behind her and walked out. Benetti was studiously avoiding looking at Arthur, who was planted three meters away from him in a pouncing position.

“Arthur, no bullying the knights please.”

“Squee!”

“It seems… very protective of you,” Benetti observed.

“Yes, she can be a handful. Come on, let’s go to the walls.”

Benetti exchanged one last glare with the ferocious overgrown lizard and followed. They climbed swiftly and found everyone’s attention focused south.

A few days before, God that felt like a fucking eternity ago, they had cleaned a village to the north. And now, the southern one was coming to greet them. Another wave of undead flesh was making its merry way to them. It centered around its own core of special undead.

“What the fuck. Is that normal?”

“There has not been a group of necromancers working in concert for decades…” Benetti mumbled by her side.

For one precious moment, she hoped that the two would collide and fight. Of course, they merged peacefully.

“Double fuck.”

Without pause, the elites formed a battle line and walked forth, revenants screening them under the control of puppeteers. Larger revenants climbed on the back and shoulders of gut spillers and other weird animals, including disturbing insectoid things. They had abandoned all attempts at tactics that she could see. They were just going to brute force it. 

And it would work.

Cernit barked an order. The soldiers to the side moved away from the wall’s edge until they formed a half-circle. There were only ten of them. They would not hold shit. Not for long.

“Do what you can. We hold here. Keep path open,” Cernit told her.

“He means the stairs. So we keep the stairs clear, then make a run for the tower.”

“Tower, yes. I hope Solfis good.”

She sure as hell hoped so, too.

The mass made good time until they arrived at the base of the flesh slope. The first revenants quickly collapsed as ash and brittle bones gave under their collective weight. The charge turned into an upward slog. The flesh ramp had turned into an obstacle.

Viv raised a hand. She took a deep breath.

Yoink was an absolutely bullshit powerful spell that was so cheated it would kill anyone but herself. It would not suffice here. She had to go beyond bullshit cheating. She had to go for full rule-mangling absurdity.

She called to her mind the twisted spiral of the ‘pierce’ rune, the base of the yoink spell. This time, she added the ‘overcome’ rune. Two colliding flat planes appeared before her. The rune looked like someone had punched through a flimsy wall. 

She lurched but did not give in. Her improved ability to cast and multitask showed its worth now, allowing her to visualize the two simultaneously. Her vision still turned blurry from the effort. She overcharged the beam and unleashed it.

A bolt of sheer darkness tore through the air. It slammed into a front revenant, which glowed black.

Then another glowed black.

Then the entire row glowed black until the puppeteer shrieked horribly.

They all exploded into black ash at the same moment.

“MASS YOINK!”

Hahaha, that was amazing! It worked! The pride of success gave her a glimmer of hope as the new ash only served to further slow down the assault.

She took three seconds to breathe, then cast again.

“Mass yoink! Hehe.”

Black mana returned to her. It was as much as she had spent throwing the mighty spell, perhaps even more. Once again, her stamina would determine success. She breathed deeply and prepared to fight.

More creatures made their way up. Viv caught the second necromancer off guard and knocked… her control out of whack, if only briefly. Or at least she thought it was ‘her’ control. The aura felt… womanly, somehow. With the puppeteers briefly tumbling, she threw a few quick yoinks to crawlers flanking their position. 

A chill ran up her back, and she turned just in time to shield her eyes. A massive dead hawk was descending upon her. She briefly saw the glint of sharpened talons.

“Squee!”

Arthur sprung up and intercepted the flier in a shower of dried feathers. There were others coming.

You have gained: danger sense at Beginner 1.

Black Hedge Witch (9)

“Up!” she warned. Cernit stepped into the middle of their formation and started to take the birds down. He was doing weird movements where his blade seemed to extend. Between him and the squealing terror, they took down assailants as fast as they could swoop down. The survivors soon disengaged.

Viv returned her attention to the front and downed another line of puppeteers. They were halfway up the ramp. Then, they would need to climb a few meters up the wall, which would slow them down. She had time to fire a few other shots, and she did. She alternated one tiring mass-yoink with a few smaller yoinks. By then, her mind was already numbed by effort. She had not recovered from her excess of last night. A few minutes of effort later, the first bound revenants crested the ramparts.

Viv thought they would be pushed back relatively easily like last time. It quite surprised her when the creatures threw themselves at the soldiers with fury, using cunning maneuvers and sacrifice to overwhelm the line. They lost a man when a revenant managed to drag him out of the formation. 

The Baranese still fought on.

With grim resolve, the soldiers pushed back the onslaught, supporting each other however they could. Cernit was everywhere, slicing and slashing with deadly efficiency. Jor took by himself the forward quarter of the formation, with each swing of his mighty axe sending bones and dry flesh tumbling on the ground. Benetti was down on the courtyard, dashing to kill the revenants that fell there before they could stand up and attack their rear. They fought on for what felt like hours but could not have been more than minutes. Viv was reduced to using yoink to try and recover her strength, well protected in the center with Arthur at her feet. 

Their medic died next with a rusty sword through the neck. The circle became smaller once more.

“Back!” Cernit bellowed, “back!”

That she understood.

Still in formation, they retreated to the stairs. The first soldiers took a few steps down, stabbing at revenant legs above to lessen the pressure on the others.

“Now…”

Cernit’s command was interrupted when the entire wall shuddered. Revenants and humans alike stumbled.

Viv did not stumble. She was hoisted up.

Danger Sense: Beginner 2

The motion surprised her so much that she did not try to fight it. Someone had lifted her off her feet. Arthur squealed.

The man who had grabbed her jumped forward. In less than a second, they were over the wall and falling down into an army of undead.

Fuck.

Fuckfuckfuckfucketyfuck.

She twisted on herself and threw her elbow back, using the power effect to increase the strength of the blow. There was a sound of breaking bones, and the knife aimed at her back slid along her armored flank. The two smashed into ash and bone. She rolled to her feet.

She recognized the man before her. He was bald, with lacerations covering most of his face. He held a dagger with some red along its blade. His face was twisted with malice, and from his broken nose dripped two crimson trails.

The burglar. The fucking burglar.

Terror constricted her chest as she realized, briefly, how utterly and unbelievably fucked she was.

An instant later, even before she could stand down completely, a massive armored form landed on the traitor. 

She briefly recoiled when blood covered her face as a massive vertical swing of war axe absolutely pulped her attacker from head to waist. Again, before she could react, she was caught by the collar.

Jor had come. He must have jumped immediately after her. 

The powerful knight lifted her, and their eyes met briefly. He was calm. That’s all she could think about.

“No leave behind,” he told her placidly.

Then he tossed her in the air. 

Viv flapped her legs and arms without effect. Then, briefly, her body twisted so that she could see below. Jor was still standing. Their eyes met again. There was an acceptance in their dark depth that stole her breath. He gave a brief nod.

A giant scorpion crashed against him and killed him on the spot.

“No!”

She reached the apex of her flight. Someone caught her leg and pulled her back in.

Cernit was there, face grim and stoic. The soldiers had pushed forward to give him a second. Another man lay dead on the ground, his throat bitten off. His unblinking gaze went up.

“Come on,” the lieutenant told her, not unkindly.

“No.”

The circle of men was pressed on all sides by ravenous undead, the puppeteers hiding behind walls of expendable flesh forcing ferocity. She was furious. This was all bullshit. She did not want anyone to die for her, not like this. Not because some fucking asshole betrayed mankind on some obscure personal crusade. That shit would not stand. She was done. She was fucking done. They wanted magic? They wanted power? She would show them some fucking power.

The black mana in her core burst like a dam. It roared through her conduits and thoughts in a torrent that begged to be unleashed. She instantly reached a state of trance and felt that she had just crossed a threshold. All those efforts, the countless casting, and the experimentation were finally bearing fruits. She took the runes of ‘pierce’ and ‘overwhelm’ and lined them up where they stayed, eager, waiting, intelligent. The black mana liked her. It fought its restraints with boundless enthusiasm. She just needed one last ingredient. Ah, there it was.

‘Spread’

That one started as a small circle and extended into three branches. She drew it in her mind next to the two others.

Time stopped for Viv as the spell took form, expanded into her mind and throughout the surrounding air. She could taste the dry dust on the wind, see the dried up eyes of the nearest revenant with vivid detail. It was her moment. It was glorious and horrifying, and exhilarating, and she said the words burning on her lips.

“True mass yoink.”

A network of black spears sliced effortlessly through the surrounding mass like a power drill through butter. They burrowed deep in their quest for more mana to make theirs. They ate and took and spread and tracked. Then, at the limit of their reach, they withdrew.

Mana manipulation: Intermediate 1

Black Hedge Witch: (10)

Path evolutions available. You may—

You have picked: Black Witch. Mental statistics are three times more efficient when wielding black mana, only fifty percent more efficient with other types. You may not manipulate life mana. Associated skill acquisition is vastly improved.

The mana returned. It brought pain, delicious pain, and black lack flames emerged from her skin where her conduits saturated. She ignored a message about mild mana poisoning. She ignored the stupid windows and their stupid messages. It was just a visual for those who could not feel. She could. She could feel it all. The tempestuous power aligned with her emotions, particularly her deep resentment.

Solfis had said that mana could be charged with concepts. Each color had associated ideas that made spells more specialized. At first, she had not understood. Now she did.

The most fundamental aspect of the black. The universal truth of it. They could call it death. It was part of the truth but not the truth, for death was for the living. It was changed as well, but change could lead to order. Black mana only led to one kind of order: heat death. Black mana was a force of annihilation. It could be part of more, but, at the very bottom, that was it.

And she needed it right now.

The destruction of ranks upon ranks of undead had afforded them the breathing room to move on only one side. On the other one, towards the main gate, the undead still stood in thick ranks. She turned to them and walked at the edge of the formation. Her devastating strikes again stunned the pair of enemy casters, and there was a lull in the carnage. That was all that she needed.

Viv lifted her arm one more time and called the rune for spread, and that was it. Despite her breakthrough and the ease with which she could cast, giving meaning to mana was still an arduous and draining process. It took her all her focus to maintain the connection with the forming spell. Yet, she could already tell that it would be worth it.

A ball as dense as a dark star formed before her. 

When she had healed Jor, she realized that black mana appeared vicious and malevolent. A misconception. A fire was not evil just because it burnt things down. It was simply a force of nature.

That was no longer the case for the mana she held. More energy kept pouring into it as the Baranese stood dumbstruck, and the revenants moved again. More anger. She filled it with her frustration at the treachery that had killed Jor, at the necromancer who saw them as speed bumps on his stupid quest, and at the teen she had killed and who should have been in class or something. She shared her fear that she was dead. She brought forward the regret that her friends and family would have to deal with her mysterious disappearance. She ignited it with the absurdity of it all, of the loss, pain and distress that had harried her for the last miserable, painful weeks of hard-won survival. 

“Blight.”

The sphere spread outward into a cloud with the speed of an arthritic grandpa. That was fine. It did not have to be fast. Soon, the entire side of the wall was covered in impenetrable darkness. She heard a sound like cold water on a red-hot pan, a furious hiss that made her wince.

On the other side, the moans and clanks were silenced. There was nothing left but the hiss.

“Go! Go! Go!” Cernit yelled. He grabbed her as she collapsed.

The survivors were now free to run. They rushed down the stairs, only to find the courtyard occupied. 

Crawlers had climbed from the side wall. There had been no one to stop them. They did not have the men.

Benetti kept fending them off, fleeting gracefully between one and the other. One of his arms lay limp by his side.

The disgraced nobleman turned once to them, saluting them with a bloodstained blade. His smile was still as snarky as before.

He charged into the mass, drawing them with him.

Viv closed her eyes. She could not do anything. She wanted to help, but she could not cast a thing to save her life. Her conduits were empty. Her head hurt. She could barely walk.

They sprinted into the tower, then into her room. The last soldier slammed both doors behind him and locked the second one tight. Arthur squawked in her distress and jumped on her den. Viv sat on the bed.

//Start up imminent.

//Your Grace, please place a droplet of blood on the rune engraved on my forehead.

There was no time to do anything else but comply. It was Solfis or nothing. She tried to stand up and pointed at Solfis when Cernit tried to stop her. He grabbed her under the shoulder instead. 

She touched the small laceration along her right flank. It was not too deep. The skinsuit made the blood look darker. She placed a finger on the glyph. It left a bloody print there.

//Thank you, Your Grace.

//This unit… I have waited twenty years for this moment.

//You may want to step back.

She did, and Cernit swore.

Solfis’ thin ribs closed around his core. 

//INITIALIZING.

Two yellow orbs appeared in the skull’s orbit. They shone ominously in the dark of the room like cursed lighthouses. She recognized them from his first frame, back in Harrak. The voice, too, was familiar. It had the usual intonations, but there was something sinister behind, a sort of organic snarl that even his metal frame had not possessed. 

//HX-013 EXPERIMENTAL STRIKE GOLEM, DESIGNATION: SOLFIS, ACTIVATED.

//APPROVED FRAME DETECTED: DRAGON BONE MAGE-KILLER MARK 6.

//FRAME IS COMPATIBLE.

//APPROVED ENERGY CORE DETECTED.

//CORE RESERVES: 14%.

//CORE IS COMPATIBLE.

//START-UP SEQUENCE INITIATED.

The dense network of runes covering him glinted once, displaying an impossibly dense lattice of intertwined enchantments.

//ABSOLUTE OVERRIDE: IMPERIAL HEIR IN MORTAL DANGER.

//ALL LIMITERS REMOVED.

//EMPATHY MODULE: DEACTIVATED.

//DATA UPLINK: DEACTIVATED.

//DIAGNOSTICS IN PROGRESS.

Viv stepped back as Solfis’ legs and arms extended. The war golem stood. 

It was horrifying.

The frame was gaunt and unnaturally thin, with long legs and arms of compacted bones. It was also incredibly tall. Easily twice her size. The arms themselves reached down to its knees, ending in vicious, sharpened claws. Even the densest of village idiots would know with one look that this construct was designed for carnage.

//LOCOMOTION ONLINE.

//SENSOR SUITE ONLINE.

//WEAPON SYSTEMS ONLINE.

//MODULAR ARMOR SYSTEMS ONLINE.

//COMBAT INTELLIGENCE ONLINE.

//ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL.

//COMMENCING COMBAT OPERATIONS.

Viv turned to the soldiers.

“Open it! Open the damn door.”

Solfis took one lazy step forward, which carried him from the table to the exit. Cernit screamed an order, and the way was cleared.

A gut spiller stood on the other side. It punched towards Solfis. Viv slowed time.

Even with her perception enhanced, she could barely follow what happened next. Solfis sort of dropped and around the blow, then sprung forth faster than she could see in a sinuous motion that propelled him through the ground floor of the uncanny valley like an upside-down rocket to emerge into the freakish cave of ultimate fuckery below. The gut spiller fell backward with its chest completely gouged out. 

Solfis was the apocalypse slinky.

The war golem kicked the carcass away with a three-pronged foot. The mangled remains flew through the air and smashed into something out of sight.

//THREAT ASSESSMENT COMPLETE.

//THREAT LEVEL: PATHETIC.

That was definitely still Solfis. Viv watched the Old Empire’s last defender step outside. The battle ended, and the slaughter began.

Chapter 19: The Nerve of War

A minute later, Viv stood with some difficulty at the threshold of her tower, with Arthur clinging to her like a koala to its eucalyptus. The courtyard was a scene of utmost savagery. Dismembered crawlers, revenants, and puppeteers lay on the ground in pieces no larger than a chair. She could have walked from one wall to another without ever touching the ground. On the battlements, Solfis was butchering his way through the last foes.

It was a humbling moment.

The reality that a kingdom could fall to monsters in three days had remained a myth until now, something that belonged to the realm of legends. Now, she could clearly believe it. Moreover, Solfis had himself admitted that he was not even the most dangerous creature around.

She briefly wondered how he would fare against a modern army. A concerted effort could certainly take him down, but at what cost? He was freakishly fast. Worse, his motions were completely unpredictable, going from upright one moment to head down, left arm planted on the ground and the three other limbs shredding flesh the next. Just watching him made her head spin.

Solfis was quickly done. She saw his yellow glare rest on her for a moment before he went over the wall, and the sounds of the massacre resumed.

“Holy shit.”

“Squee…”

Even Arthur’s squeals were subdued.

Cernit walked to the battlement, and she followed with the others. A door opened on the side, but it was just the cook who had managed to hide, apparently. It brought the number of surviving soldiers to six, out of fifteen.

She shook her head and joined the lieutenant to see what was going on. 

Turned out, it was more of the same.

Solfis was no longer cleaning everything. He was making his way to the necromancer duo by cutting a bloody path through the waves of monsters they were throwing at him in desperation. It wasn’t working. What he didn’t kill, he merely used as springboards to move faster.

Eventually, he arrived within reach, and the man screamed something she did not quite get. Two rays of black and red energy emerged from the necromancers’ hands at the same time. They struck the golem. He stopped moving.

Slowly, the energy covered the frame in its strange radiance. Cernit frowned and placed a hand on his sheathed sword. Viv touched his shoulder and shook her head.

“No need.”

The radiance spread and spread. The necromancers kept pouring energy in their beam. Solfis’ chest slowly opened to reveal the core. 

The male necromancer screamed words of encouragement.

This went on for a while, and the spells petered out as the two casters fell to their knees. Then, finally, the red light disappeared, and Solfis’ ribcage snapped close.

//ENERGY RESERVES INCREASED TO 9%

//THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION.

He was mocking with a mechanical voice.

The war golem bent his chest forward and struck. His left claw tore the man in half. At the same time, his right foot whipped out and punched the woman’s head off clean.

The horde instantly turned to chaos. They lost focus and direction.

Solfis grabbed a crawler and decapitated it in a slow and gruesome manner. The others jumped away, animated by some instinct of self-preservation. Slowly, the golem made his way back through the fleeing stampede. He ignored the half-broken gate and climbed the sheer wall by simply stepping on it. His claws dug into the old rock like it was made of wet sand. 

His gaunt form topped the battlement. The ancient warrior stood before Viv in all his horrific, gore-covered glory. A crimson claw raised above her head, still dripping with the fresh blood of their foes. 

//I had missed this, Your Grace.

//Not just battle. Movement. Autonomy.

//Fulfilling the purpose for which I was made by my creator, Irlefen.

His yellow glare descended on her.

//I spent three hundred years stuck in a dead city, killing its erstwhile inhabitants.

//Day after day, the people I had sworn to protect turned into more twisted creatures.

//I saw my reserves dwindle.

//I...really tried.

//I tried so hard, and for so long.

//Then you came.

//And now, you gave me a body and a new purpose.

Solfis slowly bent until he was on one knee with a clawed hand gathered in a fist resting on his skeletal chest. His terrifying glare bore into her soul, but Viv was unafraid. She knew he could kill her now, just as she knew he would never do so. It was a gut feeling, one that came from attending political rallies with her father. She had seen it before.

Fanaticism.

//This unit, no, I, Solfis, swear to repay you for this second life I was granted.

//We will accomplish great things together.

The other humans were staring at the deadly entity before them, unsure as to how to react. Viv lifted a hand and touched the forehead rune where her bloody fingerprint shone magma red. Something told her that it was no longer just blood.

“I would be dead without you, Solfis, so yes. Together.”

//Together.

The golem stood back fluidly. It walked in its alien yet graceful gait back to the tower before disappearing into the entrance. 

The humans, Cernit included, watched him go. Their fearful gazes bounced from her, to the dragonling wrapped around her shoulders, to a piece of the wall behind her. She turned around and saw that an entire section of the battlements had been… sanded. Heavily. Only naked, polished rock remained over a length of thirty paces, at the very least. Not a corpse or a speck of ash had been left behind.

She recognized the site of her blight spell.

“Hmmm.”

Intimidation: Intermediate 1

Alrighty then.

The day was won, the fort was saved, and victory tasted like carrion and charred meat. The stench stuck like a film on Viv’s tongue as she and the others retrieved pieces of friends from the deserted battlefield. Solfis had retreated to his alcove to conserve energy. It was up to them to drag monsters in a pile before the black mana sneaking in through the breached gate could reach critical mass and reanimate the fallen army. Here and there, they found the remains of fallen comrades. Those were gathered separately, with care. 

Viv tried to find Jor, but she soon found the task to be impossible. His remains had been covered by another layer of corpses, all now burning and smoking in a single grey mass. She could not even recognize where exactly she had seen him fall. It all looked the same to her.

They did find Benetti, or what was left of him. She and Cernit gathered the parts with as much reverence as they could manage. Cernit picked up the enchanted sword, still embedded in a dead crawler’s face. He sheathed it and tied a rope around the hilt.

“Family,” he simply said. Viv understood.

“Ir Leias Benetti,” she stated. She thought that he conveyed who he was now, having redeemed himself through the sacrifice of his life. At least, she thought that he had. His victim might disagree.

“Yes. Ir Leias Benetti,” Cernit replied. He closed his eyes, and Viv noticed a tear there. She… could not muster one. The exhaustion of the past few days had fully caught up to her. It left her with sluggish thoughts and a sort of deep weariness that she could not express with words. The past two weeks had been so harrowing, she thought that if she stopped now to think about it, she would fall apart. 

They found that the last horse had survived. The necromancers had concentrated their forces on the humans. Or perhaps, they had hoped to gain a mount. It no longer mattered.

It took them an hour to make a pile for the monsters and a line for the lost. They set the pile ablaze with their last flaming bricks. For the lost, they built a pyre with every piece of furniture in the fort and lit it up. Cernit led the survivors in prayers. She could not follow what he said, but she heard him refer to an entity called Enttiku, who she assumed was a god of the dead.

Quite a few of the men cried. They simply broke down where they stood in a sort of huddle. No attempt to maintain decorum, which she thought was rather nice. She sat at the back feeling a bit awkward and isolated. They were still strangers to her despite the shared ordeal. 

The ceremony was over. Cernit let the remaining soldiers take some time to recover. He gestured towards her tower. Once inside, he walked up to Solfis, who had returned to his ‘compact’ form. His two yellow orbs were on them as they came in. Cernit almost sat on her bed in his tiredness, but he changed his mind at the last moment and took a chair instead.

The old knight collapsed and stayed there for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. Viv dropped Arthur on her bed in the meanwhile. Her companion looked a bit bothered, she coiled in her usual spot, but her eyes remained open and cautious.

After a minute, Cernit started to talk while Solfis translated.

The old knight explained that, with the fort breached, the enchantments keeping the black mana at bay could not be repaired with what they had on hand. The tower itself ran on a separate spell and could protect people, but he would not force the eight of them plus Arthur to live in this limited space together for the six weeks left before the scheduled change of guards, living on cold food. They had done their duty. It was time for others to do theirs.

Cernit explained his plan. He would leave at dawn with Viv and her ‘followers’ the next day, trailing the sled behind them. Viv would keep the dead at bay, and they would travel out of the deadlands. Cernit offered to drop her near the closest city, named Kazar. He would go on to the nearest base of the church of Neriad and report on the incident. Before Viv could ask, he explained that there would be ample interrogation and that she might as well be spared the hassle.

//Some members of the church follow paths that let them discern honesty from lies.

//They will be called to intervene in this instance.

//The thorough interrogation of knight Cernit will be enough to assuage their doubts.

//Some may still seek to talk to you, out of concern for safety.

//It will be a low priority task

//However, if you go there directly, you will be held until interrogated.

//It was standard practice three hundred years ago as well.

“I am an unknown spellcaster who arrived here through mysterious means. Would they not consider me a high risk?”

//With all due respect, Your Grace, you may be overestimating the danger you represent.

//Cernit can attest that you do not follow the path of necromancy, and that you helped soldiers of the church at risk to your own life.

//If things are the same as they used to be, you remain a minor concern.

“Compared to what?”

//Compared to a gravid redfin lizard eating an entire village, for example.

“You just made that up.”

//No, Your Grace, that was my third deployment.

“Oh.”

Viv expressed her support for the idea, and Cernit ran outside. The soldiers moved the remaining furniture outside and replaced it with roll upon roll of covers which they spread on the ground to create a sleeping space. A partition was brought upstairs, to the lookout, to create latrines. The men then piled supplies and water in the corridor and through the stairs in preparation for their stay. The mood was morose, yet there was a general sense of relief that it was over.

Viv packed her stuff and reorganized the sled. Solfis walked himself to the makeshift construct and settled in the ‘optimal position’, as he said himself. His few steps caused all humans present, except for Viv, to freeze in their tracks. Arthur grabbed her cover in her maw and remade her own nest at the back, squealing cutely at people passing too close. She really was like a wild kitten who only tolerated one human.

After dinner, Cernit gave her a pack filled with stuff. First, there were the official documents he had promised listing her as a mercenary in the service of the Church of Neriad, Baranese branch. He had also written a letter of recommendation in his native language that he asked her not to read in front of him with a light blush. She figured it was stellar and that the proud knight was a bit shy. Finally, he handed her a fat purse filled with metal. It clinked nicely when she held it.

“Money,” he helpfully told her. She checked the contents and saw the glint of gold. 

“You gave more,” she remarked. More than they had agreed on. 

Cernit tried to explain but soon gave up, and they returned to Solfis. Followed another discussion, where Cernit explained that they would receive a prize for slaying the necromancers and that this was simply her share. He had given her Jor and Benetti’s money and assured her that their family would receive the full amount. He would sort it out with the Church. That was fine.

The night was tough for Viv. The others had let her keep the partition up, for which she was grateful, but their snores and whimpers stopped her from resting despite her exhaustion. It brought her back to the first few days of boot camp when she was not yet exhausted enough to immediately fall asleep. She woke up several times with a jolt, only to remember that she was no longer alone in the deadlands and that other sounds were no longer revenants trying to gut her.

Or at least not tonight.

They departed at dawn. Solfis stood up for ten seconds and cut a path through the wall of ashy limbs blocking their way outside of the gates, then they went down the ramp at a slow pace. The horde had almost fully dispersed, though the concentration of revenants was still high. There were no signs of elites, and Solfis explained that powerful revenants disliked sunlight. 

Viv was still tender from the previous day’s exertion, and she preferred to kill the revenants in their path one by one. The spell was no longer taxing for her. 

They stopped where the pair of necromancers had fallen. Their bodies were too damaged to turn to revenants, or at least not without months of energy seeping into the husks. Cernit climbed down and returned with two heads, placing the grisly trophies in a bag he attached to his saddle.

That was fucked up.

But hey, who was she to judge?

They moved on a bit until Cernit stopped at another spot. At first, she thought that what she saw were some of the debris the horde had left in its dispersal, but she was wrong. It was a very basic camp. They found some food, which was in an even worse state than what they had. They also found a few memorabilia bearing a sigil, which Cernit kept.

“Proof of who the necromancers were,” he explained. She remembered that inspection had mentioned ‘deposed ruler’ in its list of attributes. Perhaps some noble assholes somewhere would be glad to know that Viv and Cernit had found their missing murderous psychopaths. 

Then, Cernit hit the jackpot. The pair had a coffer, which he opened before her. It was filled to the brim with precious metal minted in a wide variety of denominations.

“You keep,” he told her.

She considered refusing, but both Solfis and the knight insisted that it was hers by right of conquest or something.

//Cernit informs me that the coins were most likely looted from revenants.

//Those who fall in the wilderness often do so with their money unspent and carry their purses here.

//You will have to change this into money you can use in the city we will go to, Kazar.

And that led to plenty of questions, which she asked Cernit with Solfis acting as an interpreter. They talked as they went on, the knight ignoring the occasional yoinky interruptions.

“Baran lies in the far east of the continent, as I mentioned. Kazar belongs to the local kingdom of Enoria, which used to be a major player until it broke into two, fifteen years ago.”

“What — yoink — happened?”

“The king went too far trying to purge the nobility after a failed coup. He had replaced a third of them with sycophants when one of his most supportive allies rebelled against him. They fought a bloody civil war for two years until the king died. His son succeeded him, and both sides retreated to lick their wounds.”

“Is that sort of thing common?”

“No. The longer war is, and the more resources are diverted from monster hunting. Kingdoms embroiled in long wars stand the risk of losing entire cities.”

“People knew that and still revolted?”

She was not being judgemental, she was just curious. Cernit didn’t seem to mind. In fact, talking made him sit straighter. Perhaps it took his mind off the loss of his fellow knights.

“A country cannot survive if you kill too many nobles. It is not just a question of administration. Nobles follow noble paths for which they are trained from early on. Lines of militias are well and good, but they are not used to their full potential without commanders to bolster them. You can have as much light infantry as you want. An elite group of knights following a captain will plow right through it without stopping. It’s the same with monsters. Spears can keep them at bay, but you need archers wielding heavy bows to put arrow after arrow into their thick hides. A dedicated fighter who can split boulders with a single blow. Or mages.”

“Why follow the path of the militiamen or the soldier? Would it not make sense to have all-knights armies?” she asked as a formality, though she was reasonably certain of the answer. Cernit did not disappoint.

“Your family must have followed a merchant path,” he said without malice. “The armed forces have limited access to resources, always. It takes over twenty ingots of steel to outfit a single heavy infantry soldier like Jor used to be.”

To her surprise, Old Empire knowledge came with meanings associated with the word ‘ingot’. She judged that the full armor represented at least a hundred kilograms, perhaps more. It was insane.

“There is not enough metal to go around, even if kingdoms stockpile as much as possible. So artisans must also spend time creating specialized gear like the leather armor I am wearing now. Even if it does not protect much, it still takes two days for a skilled worker to create one, and that is with the chain mail and leather already prepared.”

“So militiaman is simply the best path to survive with whatever you have at hand?”

“Exactly. On top of fighting in formation with limited weaponry, that path allows them to go on longer without rest, food, or water. It drastically improves their survivability while Knight paths like mine focus on power. We all follow the path that will help us the most in our current circumstances. Blessings to Nous!”

“Solfis, are there variations between two individuals sharing the same path?”

//Yes.

//Historically, Southern Empire infantrymen received path skills related to pikes, while those from the north relied on sword and shield. 

“I see.”

She refocused the conversation on Enoria.

“Kazar is at the border between the two sides of the civil war, yes. The son of the previous king has made openings to reunite both parts of the kingdom, though to my knowledge they have failed. I would not worry too much, though. Kazar is a border town with a strong church and mercenary presence. It has no strategic value.”

“Tell me a bit more about Kazar. Why would there be a strong mercenary presence?”

“The Church of Neriad pays one iron bit per revenant head. Enterprising fellows use the city as a base to launch expeditions into the deadlands. You don’t need to bring back the heads either, the church will either send a representative to measure the efforts and exorcise the corpses themselves, or you can use a magic tool and touch burnt out husks of revenants you killed yourself. The task provides a stable income, though it’s nothing too exciting. There are other benefits though. The Church can be generous.”

“How rich are they anyway?”

“Neriad is worshipped almost everywhere, even more so than Maranor, the goddess of war. Many retired warriors leave assets to the Church in their wills, including land, vineyards, factories, etc. Between this, making powerful items from monster parts, and donations, the Church has enough money to pay for those expeditions and more. They see it as an investment since it’s cheaper to prevent revenants from massing than to soak up undead invasions.”

“With so many people working towards reducing their number, you would think that revenants would not be so numerous.”

“You would think so, but how many people die in the wilderness every year? Many monster victims have enough parts left to turn into revenants and walk all the way to the deadlands where the ambient mana sustains them indefinitely.”

“Wow.”

“So long as this land remains steeped in black mana, only those who can resist its effects through magic or armor dare go beyond the ring of forts.”

“I see. I had other questions. About money.”

“Ask.”

In her amusing and helpless optimism, Viv thought that the local currencies would follow a clean decimal system. It was, of course, completely stupid of her. Currency was a mess. Every kingdom minted their own, and valuable coins like gold were always cut with other stuff like copper, silver, or zinc. What a silver talent was worth could fluctuate according to the rarity of the base materials.

To make matters worse, silver and gold were valuable because they held enchantments more readily. If a kingdom launched a massive armament project, the value of some materials could skyrocket and cause the value of coinage to inflate. It was a fucking mess. She already missed fiat money.

At least, the base stuff was pretty tame.

The base amount was the iron bit. Cernit showed her an Baranese bit, which was basically a small dark rectangle stamped with an emblem with a horse on it, or at least that was what he described it as. He told her that it was the Baranese coat of arms. Viv thought it looked more like the shit emoji, but she supposed that artistic value did not matter that much for a low denomination. 

An iron talent was five bits, and the local one was a rectangle, through Barran minted round talents with a hole in the middle. Next came the silver talent, which was worth a bit more than thirty-five bits. Silver talents were fairly small. Gold talents were a bit larger and worth six silver plus some change, susceptible to the exchange rate. Above that, there were exotic currencies like silverite talents worth a fuckload of money, at least a hundred gold talents apiece, but those never really saw circulation.

Viv thought about the veritable fortune spent to create Solfis’ first body. He must have cost the yearly GDP of a small kingdom. She also remembered that she had about eight kilograms of silverite in the skis under her sled, which she had dragged from Harrak all the way here. 

“You really have the mind of a merchant lord,” Cernit said appreciatively when she started to ask about what was worth what. She didn’t think it was anything special. She just didn’t want to get shafted by the first swindler to spot her foreign ass, especially because she had so much to buy.

Starting with underwear. 

And a sharp razor, because she had tried that dress she had looted with her boots, and let’s just say that the yeti had a new competitor.

“The lowest daily salary is seven bits per day of work,” Cernit continued, taking her mind away from her developing pilosity. “Only day laborers, or those very early on their paths, earn that little. An adult can feed themselves without suffering for six bits per day. A night in an inn costs around two iron talents, a bit more for a few mugs of beer.”

“How much for clothes?”

“A basic new shirt can set you back a silver. It can go as high as you like for fancy enchanted stuff. Second-hand, well, it depends. Currency is not used that much in smaller villages. People will barter for stuff.”

“If the lowest laborers earn seven bits per day and it costs around six to feed yourself, how do poor people raise families?” she asked. The math was easy.

“Well, those who earn that little as those who just started on a path, so they would be around thirteen. It’s rare for girls this young to get kids, though it happens. People usually earn much more when they start a family. An apothecary I know earns half of his wages selling contraceptives and ‘oops’ potions, as we called it back home.”

Cernit smiled sadly. 

“The children of the poor have it the hardest. Most of them spend their days outside the walls of their towns to forage, or they earn a few bits every day doing menial tasks. Even the smallest monsters can kill them with ease. My brothers and I would spend our days hunting around the village to kill predators as soon as we got our paths, but there would always be something going through our patrols. Ratwolves. Foraging beastling parties. At least once per month, a child would go missing.”

Well, damn. That question sure ruined the mood.

“We were talking about money, yes? When knights are mobilized, we are paid a silver every two days for the trouble. We are also provided with decent gear if we cannot afford better. Of course, you need to have some basic equipment to train yourself and progress on your path before getting accepted, and not everyone can afford it.

“Hmm.”

She asked a few more questions related to price. Cernit turned sheepish when she asked about real estate since it was a ‘big city thing’, and he got his land from the local baron. People in villages also got arable land attributed by either their lord of the village council. Or they inherited it from their parents. A decent sword would cost around four silver talents if you were a private individual getting a new one. It would be a bit over twice that to have it enchanted at the most basic level to make it sharper. Magic was, she found, fairly cheap for low-level stuff.

This led her to ask Solfis about path distribution for casters.

//All humans practice magic at some level.

//You saw Cernit light fires, for example.

//Many paths include mana shaping in some measures, such as the apothecary Cernit mentioned.

//This extends to, for example, mana blades.

//Those are specialized soldiers who use minor casting as part of their fighting styles.

//Pure casters are significantly rarer.

//Less than one in a hundred has the potential.

//Back in the Old Empire, they congregated in larger cities.

//A village that produces a mage will receive a boon from the lord who takes them under their wings.

“I see. Can I use my position as a bargaining chip?”

//Yes, Your Grace.

//You should avoid joining a minor noble as their sworn servant, however.

//The lack of resources would severely stunt your growth.

“You just don’t want me ending as someone’s stooge.”

//You would not enjoy being someone’s stooge, Your Grace.

Indeed the fuck not. She had not been thrown into fantasy land to end up as someone else’s pedestal, not if she could help it, especially with the incredible magic waiting at her fingertips. She would be dark Gandalfette or die trying. If she failed to return home.

She frowned when she realized that her first response had been magic, not finding her way back. Surely that meant nothing. 

She kept asking Cernit a few more things, but the discussion quickly died out when she realized that he knew thirty-two ways to catch and cook the local frog but could not say how much a dress cost to save his own goddamn life. He was also turning dour as the day went by, and she wanted to respect his grief. They spent the entire day dragged by his gelding. The beast started trotting along with more vigor as soon as he realized that they were aiming for the big patch of green in the distance and away from things that could eat his ass in one gulp. Come to think of it, there were probably things in the forest that could also eat his ass in one gulp, but at least it would smell better.

They stopped in a fortified building for the night.

Contrary to her previous cache, this one was not as dusty as the Gobi desert. It had a nice firepit with dry wood prepared, some fresh water in a jar, and it was really, really heavily fortified. They slept in the same room for the sake of convenience and woke up at dawn. Viv was increasingly exhausted, yet the good knight didn’t seem tired, probably his high stamina. And he didn’t have to cast every minute or so.

The second day went on much like the first one, and they arrived at another way-house in the early evening. The edge of the deadlands was tantalizingly close now, just out of reach. She could feel the black mana density getting lower even through the inscribed leather covering her form. Even Arthur could barely take her attention away from the dense forest covering the horizon. It was the first time in her life seeing so much green, after all.

Even the revenants were rarer. Many of them were walking in the other direction.

“Will the deadlands eventually run out of black mana?” she asked as Cernit lit the fire. Solfis did not know, but to her surprise, the knight did.

“The deadlands have reached a sort of equilibrium,” he informed her distractedly, “so many undead monsters create a black field of their own. It would take several large-scale expeditions to kill enough of the buggers to dent it. No kingdom would dedicate so many resources to a worthless land that would take decades to recover, not when there are easier places to develop.”

She thought it was a shame, but the decision made perfect sense to her. Kingdoms were in survival mode. All the time.

In the morning of the third day, they passed a line of stones, and Cernit removed his leather armor. She imitated him. The feverish feeling of poison did not sting her skin. The mana here was normal.

They were out of the zone.

They climbed a gentle slope, and the forest appeared below, in all its glory.

The line of trees started maybe ten kilometers away, a bit down from where they were. Halfway between the two points, a small town sat there, on top of a small elevation. Low walls encircled maybe a hundred structures of various sizes nestled around a lonely elevation, not much more than a small hill. Ribbons of smoke danced merrily in the morning air from so many cooking fires. There were farms all around, linked to the city by trails no larger than threads from up here. Tiny forms worked the barren fields in preparation for the spring seedings.

She could fucking cry.

Somewhere in the distance, a group of men followed a carriage dragged by a pair of horses.

Life.

Civilization.

A fucking bath.

Chapter 20: Kazar

“I leave here,” Cernit explained.

Solfis translated the words of the knight. The Church base was further east, so he still had to ride some distance. Going through the city would lengthen his stay. She would be fine as long as she behaved and presented the mercenary license he had prepared to the gate guard. Then, she could find employment as a mercenary or just move on with the money she already had, which should really last her a while.

“Will Solfis’ presence create problems? With his appearance.”

“No, the inspection skill shows him as a golem. While golems are rare and valuable, he will look more like a knowledge repository than a combat model, so you should be fine with the local populace. The guard will know what it is, however, but they have no reason to stop you. Just be careful and make sure to keep him charged in case thieves get any ideas. I would still advise you to contact the local church. Their support will guarantee your safety. The letter I wrote will make sure they appreciate how much you contributed to our success.”

Fighting evil. Nice.

“We would have died without you,” the knight stated.

Then came the awkward moment she feared.

“So, this is goodbye?”

“Yes, Bib, this is goodbye. May we meet again in better circumstances. Know that Barran will know of your heroic actions. If you find yourself in our lands, come and greet my fellow knights or me. There are worse causes than ours to raise your flag for.”

“And good luck to you too, Cernit. I hope we meet again.”

She stared in silence at the knight’s retreating back. With the sled decoupled, he could now move much faster, which he did. A part of her wondered if he had prepared a trap or if he had given her fake documents that would see her imprisoned and left to report her to authorities or something. She dismissed those thoughts immediately. She was a rather good judge of character, and this human from another world was as straight an arrow as they came. Or perhaps she was the human from another world. Bah, it didn’t matter.

Viv huffed and grabbed the ropes which she tied around her torso.

“Back to it, I guess.”

The trip was slow. She went downhill in a friendly environment where monsters were not trying to eat her eyeballs, and yet it became by far the most physically harrowing part of her trip, stamina-wise. She had to stop every hundred meters or so to take a few deep breaths. There was a slight wind that sent her short hair aflutter. It carried the scent of sap and wet earth. In the distance, animals sort of mooed as they were released from a barn and into an enclosure. A man in a grey shirt tilled his field a distance away. He would sometimes stand up and look at her distant form before getting back to his task. She felt strange. Detached. At some point, she realized that a pair of men carrying crates were following her at a long distance. They would stop when she stopped.

She reached the gates after an hour. 

Fields surrounded her on all sides by then, with cottages seeded here and there. The city’s walls were twice her size and covered in white plaster, with no sentinels that she could spot. The gates themselves sat at the top of a small incline that a city car would not have minded but proved to be a pain in her ass for her. Five guards were manning it, who let a woman loaded with baskets pass before they turned attention to her. Their eyes went wide.

Just like the knights, those guys had a greenish tint to their faces, though it was not as pronounced. Their skins were lighter as well. She would associate their features with Southern Europeans mixed with Incas or something. Again, it was weird. They looked like they belonged to the same ethnic group as the Baranese, more or less, and that meant that she stuck out like a sore thumb. They wore undyed leather jerkins inscribed with a shield sporting a tree on it over off-white shirts. Their helmets were steel and reminded her of conquistador morions with a neck guard as well. They carried spears and shields, as well as truncheons attached to their belts. Only one had a bow. No arrows were nocked, for now.

One of the guards had a large beard and a small red plume on his breast. He licked his lips nervously while the others, who all looked sixteen if they were a day, deferred to him in the typical ‘above my paygrade’ grunt reaction.

[Kazaran guard, not very dangerous. Follows a path concerned with keeping the peace]

[Kazaran guard sergeant, not very dangerous. Follows a path concerned with keeping the peace.]

First thing first, look mostly harmless.

She stopped and spread her arms in a gesture of ‘I’m not here to kill you, at least, not yet,’ which she hoped was convincing enough. She took down her backpack, and found the mercenary accreditation Cernit had given her. She waved it under their collective nose like it was a flag or something. The sergeant was sweating profusely by that time, but he nodded slowly and approached the sled.

“Something something Kazar, me guard sergeant Elimi, please something something identity and purpose.”

Wow, she could almost understand him. She guessed that, with the Harrakan heartlands so close, the local language was deeply rooted in Old Imperial.

“I am Viviane,” she slowly said, “I am looking for the office of the Church of Neriad.”

That felt safer than saying ‘I’m here for beer and hookers’ or any variation thereof. 

The man in front of her blinked, and she raised a brow in answer, crossing her arms. Better not look too much like a victim either.

The sergeant inspected the sled. 

“Squee!”

His jaw opened wide.

//What are you looking at, meat?

She could probably shove a whole egg in his mouth right now. The man took a few steps back and raised an open hand in the universal ‘hold on please’ signal. She took a step back. See? Harmless.

The sergeant turned and ordered one recruit to do something. The little scrub took off at a run, probably to get reinforcements.

Fucking hell, that was not a great start.

Viv took another step back and sat heavily on the sled’s front. Two tiny clawed hands went to rest on her left shoulder as Arthur’s intense red gaze inspected the gate. The dragonling huffed, then she bonked Viv’s head with her own very lightly and pointed at the green wall of the forest some distance away.

“Later. Viv tired,” her human answered laconically.

The small creature cocked her head in a gesture that Viv could have sworn she had never done before. It was strangely human. Or dog-like, she guessed. Viv pointed to herself, then mimicked eating and sleeping.

Arthur chuffed again and returned to her nest.

“Negotiations successful, I guess,” Viv muttered.

Meanwhile, the sergeant had gathered enough courage to talk again.

“Speak our language?”

“I speak Old Imperial.”

The man nodded. He spoke in single words that Viv could understand, on account of being close or identical to Old Imperial. 

“Name Bibiane, purpose Church of Neriad. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Drake dangerous?”

That was not a drake. That was a dragonling. Did Arthur have something to mess with inspection? She tried to remember the bestiary and realized that drakeling and dragonling were extremely close in terms of spelling. Oh, well.

“Drake not dangerous if left alone.”

“Sorry…”

“If drake angry, drake dangerous. Drake not angry, drake not dangerous. Yes?”

“Yes. Fine. Good.”

“Can I get in?”

That made the sergeant panic a bit. He took his most diplomatic air, which made him look constipated and explained with a small voice and a fake smile.

“Bibiane caster. Caster greeted by important person, yes? After, Bibane can get in. No entrance fee for church person,” he said, pointing at the folded document in her hand.

Well, that was fine.

“Yes. I wait.”

“Thank you.”

The sergeant screamed something, and another guard ran into the city, but he returned thirty seconds later, holding a terracotta glass filled with fuming liquid.

“Klod,” the sergeant generously offered.

Well, fuck you too. She grabbed the klod with a polite smile and smelled it. It was a sort of cereal-based infusion. It smelled good.

Viv sat back more relaxedly and glanced up. The silence here differed from the silence of the deadlands. There was still wind, even now caressing her cheeks and uncovered neck. It whistled through the branches of the nearby trees, some of whom were sporting their first green buds as spring approached. The smell of her hot beverage now covered that of nature and the light stench of a locker room that the guards emitted. After the mounds of smoldering corpses, that little stink did not bother her anymore. 

It smelled nice.

In fact, it was the first time that it genuinely smelled nice since she arrived here. Even the Cassian springs had been more odorless than anything else. Silence and a pleasant smell. So weird, after so long. So much death. The monsters. The very air turning her veins dark and her body weak. 

She took a sip and let the warm liquid rinse her palate. The taste was light and earthy. 

She stayed like that for a few minutes, the light wind drying the small sheen of sweat the past hour had created. It made her feel cold despite the skinsuit. On a hunch, she called her interface. She had not done so in a while.

Current status:

Deep fatigue

Mana poisoning (very mild)

Soul trauma (serious)

Yeah, she was tired. Needed a break. 

Not five fucking seconds later, a woman emerged from the gates. 

Like the guards, she wore a leather jerkin. The blade to her side was clearly of superior quality, however, and she was clean, with her dark brown hair held in a sensible ponytail that popped out of the back of her helmet. She immediately zeroed in on Viv.

[Investigator, dangerous, follows a path concerned with ferreting out the truth.]

So she would get the interrogation that Cernit had tried to spare her.

The woman stopped at a polite distance and bowed deeply. She was smiling, but her eyes were not. 

The sergeant mentioned something about Old Imperial. The woman carefully listened, then she cleared her throat before addressing Viv.

“Ahem, greetings, caster, and welcome to the city of Kazar. I am prime investigator Tars. We rarely get visiting mages here, especially not one with such a, ah, interesting baggage, so to speak. Would you mind answering a few questions? Nothing too intrusive, I assure you,” she continued.

Viv was used to protocols and whatnot. If casters were truly dangerous, it made sense to check them out before they entered your city. Besides, if she didn’t tolerate arbitrary bullshit, she would have never joined the army.

“Yeah, fine. I understand. Here?”

“Would you care to join me in the guardhouse? It would be more comfortable than here. Good sergeant Elimi will keep an eye on your belongings and your… drake?”

“Sure. Yeah. Let’s go.”

She stood up heavily and felt short of breath. The sergeant came and put her harness around his shoulders while the woman offered to take her accreditation. They moved in with Viv trying not to spill her glass.

The insides of the city were not exactly a surprise. A road made of packed earth led inward, disappearing in a corner. Two large structures lined the gates on both sides as white as the walls themselves. She could spot the wings of a windmill in the distance, as well as a tower at the top of the hill, and the crown of a large tree just by it. They moved immediately left in what she assumed was a guardhouse. 

“I wait here,” the sergeant informed her as he pushed her sled against the wall under the vigilant gaze of Arthur. The tiny creature was getting more used to humans, it seemed. 

Viv followed the investigator into the shadows. 

The interior of the guardhouse contained an actual lobby complete with a desk and a mousy man with a large moustache calculating stuff on an actual abacus. Or at least it looked like that to her. He blinked at her sight, then answered a request from the investigator who handed him her mercenary accreditation. The man sighed heavily and took out a blank piece of paper from a drawer.

The other woman led Viv to a side door and into something that was clearly an office. There was a desk with an honest-to-God potted plant on it. As expected, it was not looking fresh. She also noticed several trinkets, like a bracelet with wood pearls on it. She collapsed in the guest chair.

“Sorry for the trouble. I will ask the questions and then leave you in peace. You must be impatient to find a place to rest.”

“Indeed.”

Viv appreciated the good cop routine, even if it was all bullshit to push her to lower her defense. She considered what she should reveal and decided that she would stick with the teleportation incident story while hiding that she was an outlander. She did not want to attract even more attention to herself.

“Where are you from? Your, ah, features are not local.”

Well she did not look like she got part of her energy from photosynthesis, that was damn sure.

“France. A very distant land.”

“How did you get here then?”

“Teleportation accident, as far as I can tell. I woke up in the deadlands.”

Something flashed in the Prime Investigator’s eyes. Viv would not tell a falsehood. As the daughter of a politician, she knew how to use the truth to mislead and manipulate. You just had to carefully curate it.

“You woke up in the deadlands and survived?” the woman exclaimed, impressed.

“My black affinity is very high. It allowed me to survive long enough to be found by lieutenant Cernit. The one who hired me as a mercenary.”

“Oh yes, your authentication document. A good thing that he gave you that. It will make our paperwork much easier. Next question, then, do you intend to pursue criminal activities in Kazar?”

Silence. Heavy, awkward silence.

“Seriously?”

“Please just answer the question, lady caster.”

“No, I do not intend to break any law.”

“Excellent! Thank you. Do you currently harbor any grudges towards residents of Kazar?”

“I don’t even fucking know who lives here.”

“Right! First time on Param, haha. Right. Sorry. Do you, ah, practice necromancy?”

“No.”

“Good. Great! That’s all of it. Would you like to stay and finish your klod? I’ll check to see if your entry papers are ready, then you can be on your way. Ah, but maybe the guard captain will want to meet with you at some point. We only have one other caster here, you see? Despite the proximity with the deadlands. Anyway, I’m going.”

Viv nodded in silence and drank more of her stuff, then she sat down in her seat and relaxed. Even if the guards tried something, Solfis still had a minute of battery. He would paste the bastards.

She closed her eyes.

Tars walked out of the room and recalled what she had seen.

[Black Witch, very dangerous.

Smart, killer, undead bane, on the rise, occulted, 

Condition: exhausted, poisoned, soul wound]

That was the weirdest bird ever to enter the city, even with mercenaries and mages and Church champions occasionally coming in from their deployments for a little recreation. There was more than enough there to justify caution. Smart was strange for a witch, whose reliance on intuition when casting meant that they usually forewent traditional education. It was the path of wild talents. That was the first anomaly. The woman had skill, but she was not wild. Far too composed. She was not nervous, just guarded, like someone who had experience with handling official enquiries. She even showed that small pause before answering, the one some people used when they took the time to articulate or check their answers. 

That was another.

Killer meant that she had personally taken human lives. Again, nothing necessarily sinister, but it did warrant caution. 

Occulted happened when something blocked her advanced inspection skill. There would be a sense of being blocked, of her usual magic not functioning to its full ability. There could be many causes. One more weird detail to add to the pile.

Her story was a weird one too, and she was clearly a foreigner. Tars had never seen eyes that color. Perhaps they were glamoured to look different?

And what was it with the golem construct and the tiny drake? A tamer as well?

Also, teleportation. It was legendary magic that only happened in popular stories or tales of a faraway land and mighty old magic.

She shook her head. It did not matter. The woman had been truthful, so she had no reason to go and annoy the tired spellcaster for free. A wounded soul clearly required serious treatment.

She would make a report but let the woman go. Let the sleeping dreadhounds lie. 

“Are you done yet? That caster is gonna fall asleep on my desk,” she asked the desk louse in charge of admission. His name was Jekt, and he was a small-minded shitstain.

“Oh, I am sorry, I did not realize that an entry permit was more important than the budget for the entire next year,” the accountant answered sweetly.

She could not let that go. So she grabbed the little ratwolf by the scruff.

“Not pissing off the black witch is more important than your bean counting, and don’t you forget it. I know that you came from some turd-covered mudhole out in the boonies, so I’ll spell it out for you. Don’t. Annoy. Casters. You’ll live longer. And keep all your limbs.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s done.”

She checked the paper, then he sanded it to soak up excess ink. The delivery happened without incident, with the witch staring absent-mindedly out of the barred window.

“Do you need direction?” she continued in Old Imperial. It was lucky that the artefacts and language of Harrak had travelled far and wide, including to that ‘France’ kingdom she had mentioned. 

“Yes. I need rest.”

Yeah, you do.

“Sergeant Elimi will lead you to the compound of the Church of Neriad. They have beds for passing agents. Unless, of course, you wish to relax in a more pleasant setting?”

“Pleasant setting would be nice.”

Tars was not certain that the Spotted Feather would match her taste. It was still the best ‘inn’ in a two hundred leagues radius.

“I’ll make sure he takes you there.”

Tars guided the woman out. She looked about ready to keel over, but the sergeant was already there, and he agreed to escort her readily. She trusted Elimi to bring the woman to her destination. He was a good sort.

They left, and she headed towards the town hall. Captain Corel would want to know about this.

Chapter 21: Down

Viv walked by sergeant Elimi, inspecting the city as she went. The white clouds above her had parted to reveal a yellow sun and a deep blue sky much like her own. Packs of kids in rags ran around town in rowdy clumps under the loose surveillance of busy parents. The houses were placed haphazardly, all white, and covered with either slate or a dense material of straw and clay. They passed by a shoemaker, someone who made cauldrons. There were women weaving baskets or mending clothes sitting in small groups and talking in low voices. The speed of their gestures and the quality of their work eclipsed all but the most dedicated artisans back on earth. The locals looked on shyly as she passed by and whispered with excitement when she went away. Several houses kept land-birds the size of a tall kid in their backyards, a bit between ostrich and chicken. 

Traces of magic were everywhere. Some people used the wind to dust their front yard, or earth to repair a wall. Viv was overtaken by an old grandma carrying a tree trunk over one shoulder as if it weighed nothing.

Life.

Alien life, in all its sedate and peaceful reality. Real people with their own routines and cultures across the dimensions. They really existed here before her. It was not a dream. 

And no one was trying to kill her, but it didn’t help because she was still impossibly far away from her old life and none of this helped, and she was so fucking bone-weary. Finding civilization was barely the first step towards understanding what the fuck incarnated her in this weird place. She needed to find a library or something. Get help. And there was the matter of Arthur and Solfis. If she did find a way to head back but it happened in four years or something, would she still want to—

A shortness of breath caught her by surprise. An oppressive feeling clamped on her chest, and at the same time it felt lighter. Less physical. She stumbled and fell against a nearby wall.

They had just entered a small square with a bakery, a mill, and a well in the middle. A few people stopped and stared. That one dangly dude with the sleeveless shirt in winter frowned, then turned around and walked away after realizing what she was. He had a hole in his roughly-weaved trousers. Ridiculous. A pregnant woman strode through the silence without caring for the commotion, scolding as she went past a group of kids hiding behind a low wall.

The sergeant shifted his weight from foot to foot, perhaps not knowing what to do.

“Is fine. Just need a fucking minute, okay?”

Arthur jumped from her lair with a squeal. She bumped her snoot against Viv in a state of panic, before standing on her back legs and flapping her wings menacingly. The square emptied.

“Is fine. Calm down. Not attacked.”

“Squee!”

“Am fine.”

“Squee!”

“I’m not hurt!”

She petted the creature who kept ambling along, all proud of herself for forcing the villagers to keep their distance. Arthur’s warmth radiated from her scales in a soothing aura that calmed Viv down. It was mild, as breakdowns went. Only some sniffing and tears. She felt a bit better in under a minute. More importantly, she was spooking the locals, and that was bad.

Viv stood up and signaled the sergeant to keep going. He gave her a hesitant nod and kept dragging the sled forward. The square regained its vitality, with more than a few villagers commenting in low voices behind her back. Way to leave the first impression.

The pair walked some more until the surrounding houses got larger, and older. The men and women around actually had dyed clothes, and nicer too. The fashion here favored long tunics held by colored belts for the men, and sensible dresses and jackets for the women. It was all very practical. She was still on the taller end of the spectrum, height-wise, so most passerbys had to look up to her.

They stopped by a long two-stories building in the same design as everything else: white walls and slate roofs. This one was clearly some sort of establishment, as there was a double-door with an ensign showing a feather with some spots on it. An opening in the outside wall led to an inner court.

The sergeant dropped the harness here and saluted her. He gestured inside, mimicked sleeping and eating. He left her there.

She shrugged and walked in.

The inside of the inn smelled of candles and soap, which was nice. The walls were dark wood polished to a sheen. There was a hearth, a bar, and a few large tables surrounded by large amounts of comfy-looking couches with some really basic red upholstery. A young woman saw her and stopped cleaning the tiles on the ground with water she was conjuring from thin air. She stood up and trotted her way.

Now, that was what she had perceived in the first second of getting in. Then, as was their wont, more details reached her sluggish mind.

There was a heavy floral scent in the air.

There were a lot of pillows on those couches.

The paintings on the walls were, well, suggestive. 

Someone had left a freshly-cleaned lacy corset on a pulpit by the entrance.

The woman aiming for her like a heat-seeking missile was heavily painted. Her poor breasts were crammed in a too-tight ensemble that was really, really form-fitting.

“Ouh putain.”

It was a brotheeeeel!

Viv took a step back as the girl stopped a few paces away and curtsied. She babbled a few words in the local language, too fast for Viv to understand, and seemed a bit intimidated when the older woman did not answer. Another girl popped out from behind a curtain to see what the fuss was about. Viv could only think about one thing.

They were far too fucking young. Probably around sixteen.

It was a den of fucking underage sex! She felt dirty to be here, as dirty as some disgusting groomer herding thai femboys on some remote island for millionaire octogenarians. Dirtier than dirt. Aaaaaaaaaah. WHAT THE FUCK!

The second girl was approaching too, rinsing her hand on an apron. Viv had to… she could not look too aggressive or something. 

“I just… errr… Sorry.”

Fuck. That was certainly some way to get her back to civilization.

“Oh, Old Imperial, yes?” the second woman offered. That one had dark curly hair, and she was a bit more confident.

“Yes.”

Ok, ok, calm down. This was another world. The important thing was to rest. She had money. Local money. It should not be too hard to ask for tranquility and no company. Just don’t think about it.

The curly one left in a hurry, while the first one shuffled behind the bar and grabbed a fresh water glass with some weird vegetable slices inside. Viv tried it after the girl shily handed it to her. It was nice and refreshing.

She plopped on a pillow, considered that it was probably covered in dry body fluids, and just… sat more gingerly. She did not have to wait long. A man practically crashed into the room from a side entrance.

[Courtesan, not dangerous, follows the path of harmony and seduction.]

A male courtesan? She looked back at the girl.

[Whore]

Ok, so… ok. There was a prostitution path. Nice. Probably had birth control and cumstain removal prestidigitation as associated skills. Hocus Pocus Ovum Deletus. Whatever.

The man himself was fascinating. He wore a red open vest that showed a hairless, sculpted torso and had wavy blond hair that reached his neck. It was dyed too. She could see the roots as he came closer.

He was almost perfectly handsome in a surfer boy kind of way, except for an extremely pointy chin. It was really, really pointy. He was basically 90% top model and 10% pickaxe.

The courtesan stopped at a small distance with a genial smile and bowed respectfully. His movements were graceful in a way that did not set her on edge. 

“Milady?” he asked in perfect Old Imperial.

Ah. Right.

“I require a room for the day. And night. Meals. Also a meal for my, ahem, drake. If possible.”

And then, because her host was assessing her.

“I am not looking for company. You know what I mean.”

“The Spotted Feather and its staff will be delighted to accommodate you. We have several rooms that will fulfill your request for rest and tranquility. We also offer a bath and cleaning service for your outfit.”

Ah wow, five minutes into a medieval bordello, the head pimp already reminded her that she stank. She sniffed one of her sleeves. Eek.

The courtesan sat by her side at a respectable distance, not close enough to trigger a reaction. 

“You just arrived in town, yes? From an expedition? Many of our regulars enjoy our comprehensive services. For two silver talents, I will personally take care of you. Bath. Massage. A good meal. You will leave tomorrow a new woman, ready for whatever business led you here. And no intimacy, as you said. I remember.”

She had many silver talents in her purse.

And that sounded exactly like what she needed right now. First, an afternoon of rest, then a war council with Solfis to decide what they should do next.

It was almost… too perfect.

She frowned.

“Are you using a skill on me?”

“Yes, one of my abilities as a courtesan allows me to be in tune with the mood of my client. I take it that you have never used the services of my fellow pathmen and pathwomen before?”

“I...no.”

“Then you are up for a pleasant surprise, I assure you.“

It was just a medieval spa day with underage prostitutes floating around that had nothing to do with her. That was it.

“Fiiiine. Erm. Do you accept Baranese currency? I was paid with that.”

The man waved off her concerns.

“We have many notables from different nations coming here to relax, courtesy of the Church of Neriad. We accept most currencies used by the greater kingdoms including Baran. Please, follow me.”

“Squee!” came a voice from outside.

“Ah.”

Change of plans.

In the end, a pair of teenagers (one boy, one girl, both ‘whores’) pulled the sled inside of the courtyard, which turned out to have a small garden in its center. A covered promenade lined the inner walls, with four doors leading to different wings of the Spotted Feather. She took five minutes to give Arthur a new nest in one of the corners. The dragongling settled into a new, clean cover with interesting snake patterns that she immediately found fascinating.

“I will have one of our girls bring it fresh meat. Don’t worry, she is good with animals. Even the territorial ones.”

Viv followed the man upstairs.

“Oh, I did not ask your name,” she remarked.

If her lack of manners annoyed the man, he did not betray it.

“My name is Yan. May I ask yours?”

“Viviane.”

“Vv—Vvivviane?”

“Almost.”

She was shown into a large bedroom. Once again, she appreciated that she was in another world populated by strangely similar humans if one ignored the strange skin tones. The ground was rough wood planks mostly hidden under fluffy hand-woven carpets showing intricate designs. In her old world, it would have been infinitely cheaper to redo and polish the floor. Here, paths and stupid magically enhanced bodies meant that some things were easier to obtain, perhaps? Otherwise, this made no sense.

In a way, the rest of the room reflected the paradigm shift. Anything related to cloth was here in abundance, including pillows and covers for the cozy-looking bed. On the other hand, there were no traces of glass or metal-based decorations. The only exception stood on the far wall. She took a step in its direction with a bit of awe. It was a full-length mirror.

Her reflection greeted her, in all its strangeness. The reflective surface was made of ice. Cold radiated from it in subtle waves, yet the surface quality rivaled that of modern contraptions from her own world.

The rest of the room contained a table with two chairs and a wall partition hiding a tub made of wood, already filled with steaming water.

“I will give you some time to relax, and return with some refreshments. Is there anything I can get you?”

Viv almost answered no as a reflex, then remembered something a bit embarrassing.

“Yes. If you could get me a sharp razor…”

“A razor? As in, to shave a beard?”

Why, there is no need to… oh, maybe the local women… nevermind. Enough about hair.

“Yes.”

“Of course. Anything else?”

“No, thank you.”

“Understood. Just relax in the bath, I will be back shortly.”

The man turned and left. Viv noticed a small basket next to the door and dumped her stuff there. Hopefully, they had a skill to turn off their sense of smell.

She undressed and placed the cloak and armor down. Then came the turn of the skinsuit.

The temptation to open a window was strong, despite the frigid air.

“Wah. Pungent.” 

She quickly checked herself in the mirror again. The cut on her flank was nicely scabbed. It had been very shallow anyway. She still had discoloration of her shoulder. Otherwise, there were no scars.

That’s where the good news stopped. She had visible veins, not the normal blue that sometimes happened naturally, especially when the skin got pale. They were black. They snaked under her skin in dense networks that sort of looked natural. There were no bruises, no strange spills, it was as if her blood had turned dark. She knew it was not the case. The whole thing was strange, as she had never seen such symptoms before. Not even in educational content.

Hopefully, they would fade after she recovered from near-constant poisoning.

The skinsuit joined the other stuff in their basket, and she dropped in the bath with delight. 

“Aaaaaah.”

She had not cleaned herself properly since the Cassian springs. 

Viv luxuriated in the amazing sensation for a while, before a knock on the door reminded her that the refreshments were on her way. She grabbed her knees to her chest and allowed the courtesan in.

She was presented with more of the fresh water plus weird vegetable-things and drank it all down. The man gave her the razor, a simple tunic to wear, and left with the dirty laundry without comment. She left the bath and toweled herself dry when she was done.

The simple tunic felt smooth against her skin. Viv ambled to the bed and collapsed.

She was asleep in moments.

Chapter 22: The Local Flavor

“Mlflrgng.”

“I apologize for disturbing you. Your… drake… is exploring the Feather. We are concerned.”

“Ah, shit!”

She had completely forgotten about Arthur!

Viv jumped out of bed and rushed out, only to realize that she did not know where to go. Fortunately, her dragonling could be easily found from the piteous squeals she let out. Viv rushed downstairs and fell nose to nose with a powerfully-built man with a thick beard. He was only wearing leather trousers.

Their eyes met.

[Temple guard, very dangerous, follows a path dedicated to righteous combat. Expert sword fighter.]

The man must have done the same because his eyes widened slightly. He bowed a bit before retreating into his room.

That was another strange thing specific to Niyl. Back in her world, a trained man with this physique could have overwhelmed her. Here, one look at her and he could see that she was a caster, therefore, more dangerous. It was no exaggeration either. No matter how strong he was, she could simply use a fully powered Bzzt! to the face, and the horrible pain of ravenous black mana tainting his body would instantly disable him. He would eventually die from it too.

Viv shook her head and followed the squeaks to a panicked Arthur. One of the younger employees was keeping an eye out at a safe distance.

“Arthur! I’m so sorry. Come here.”

The worried thing was coming out of a storage space. She jumped to Viv, who receptioned the flying pet out of habit.

“Ow ow ow.”

Arthur readjusted her posture. The claws had almost pierced Viv’s skin even without the creature trying. That was another thing. Here, monsters were the ultimate danger to civilization.

Except for Arthur, of course. She was just too cute. 

The girl who had followed Arthur babbled what sounded like an apology, with Yan adding to it. However, Viv did not use that opportunity to act all imperious. The tiny monster getting all fussy was her fault. After all, so bitching about it would have been a major dick move.

She was back in her room five minutes later with Arthur sleeping soundly on a couch and Solfis’ silent frame placed against a wall. A table had been set in the center, with dishes being brought one by one by Yan. There was fresh dark bread, a broth made with salty meat and tubers which turned out to be quite savory. They came with grilled greens that were rather tasteless and a strange dish made of rehydrated pickled fish she found absolutely fucking vile.

“It’s a staple food in the northern city-states,” the courtesan offered as a way of apology.

The poor things.

He also served her a beer equivalent in a small glass, which she drank in moderation. She really could not afford to get tipsy and let things slip.

Dessert was fruits in a syrupy sauce. Some were sweet and tangy, others very smooth and reminded her of apricot. She recognized the peculiar almondy taste of the red one.

“Permonn.”

“Church rations often include permonn, Lady Bvibviane. They own many orchards across Enoria.”

“Hmmm.”

She guessed now was a good time to ask about the local landscape.

“Tell me about Kazar.”

“Of course. Kazar started as a temporary settlement around the millennial tree standing at its center. The ancient being made the air purer around itself, chasing away the black mana. Nowadays, the deadlands have retreated a bit, and border stones prevent most of it from passing through so it does not matter that much anymore. However, Kazar has not forgotten its origins and even now bears its benefactor on our official coat-of-arms. The current population stands at around two thousand, with more than half living on a thin band of arable land between the forest and the desert. You must have seen many farms on your way here if you came from the north?”

“Hmm, yes.”

Damn, she did not expect the full encyclopedia entry. Was the courtesan really in tune with her? Was that what she was looking to hear?

Actually, yes. He proved it by continuing exactly in the direction she wanted.

“Our main productions are food and ‘cotton’.”

It was not cotton but a plant equivalent. That’s just how it appeared in her mind.

“As well as earthenware. We are far from most trading routes, and we can only pass through the forest every month or so with a heavy escort. We are still the largest place at the edge of the deadlands, so we get a lot of high-ranking people stationed around visiting for relaxation and to receive orders or intelligence from the church office.”

“Okay…”

“As for notables, we have four major players you will meet if you stay here for a while.”

Viv did not ask why they would do so. If they had only one true caster in the city, then another one would obviously be of interest to, well, everyone.

“Captain Corel is the head of the guards here. He is mostly interested in keeping the monsters at bay and the town secured. His task is made delicate by the coming and going of powerful fighters from many different lands. It doesn’t help that some of them are currently at war. Next, uh, mayor Ganimatalo. Her family was from the north originally. They love their long names.”

Indeed, that was a mouthful. Yan took a break in the conversation to top up her water, his gestures calm and graceful.

“She has been our headwoman for two decades now, and done a good job of it. I swear that she has the blessing of Sardanal, the god of wealth, himself. Or perhaps Emeric. We have grown quite a bit thanks to her initiatives. The next is the authority of the church here, master Farren. He is no fighter, actually, but a brilliant administrator. His job is to make sure that no fort remains unmanned and no soldiers unfed. Though, his greatest achievement could be how he manages so many massive egos. Many of his troops are volunteered from nearby regions, you see.”

“Not all of them are willing?”

“It is, forgive my words, a shit assignment. So, no.”

“I see.”

“Last but not least, Lady Vvarska. Forgive me, we Baranese do not usually say that sound. She is a court mage, quite far in her path and as dangerous on the battlefield as she is on the negotiation table. Seeing as you two have much in common… Forgive me, I do not mean to presume. You are both travelers who came here rather than local mages. Her circumstances are unfortunate.”

“How so?”

For the first time since they met, Yan displayed signs of unease.

“It is no secret that she was exiled here from Helock on penalty of death. She has acquitted herself of her duties very well, however. No complaints.”

“What are her duties, anyway?”

This line of questioning clearly made the man uncomfortable. She could tell from the way he considered every answer before replying, and she suspected that it might be due to two things. Either gossiping about a spellcaster in front of another one was considered bad manners, or Lady Varska frequented this establishment. Possibly both.

“A court mage would normally advise rulers on matters of magic on top of being proficient themselves. They have a more general approach to magic, or so I was told. In this specific case, Lady Vvvarska does meet with mayor Ganimatalo occasionally. Besides that, she handles and repairs enchantments and defensive spells around the city. Sometimes, she goes on purges with the rest of the church to clear dangerous undead. Besides that, I would not know. I suppose that you can ask her yourself when you two inevitably meet.”

“I understand. What about the church? They handle the mercenaries around here, right?”

“Yes. The Church of Neriad is the main employer of the small bands of mercenaries currently present on site. Rowdy bunch. We have three small companies right now, but they come and go with every season. Undead hunting is relatively safe, or so I was told, but it’s not very lucrative, and the deadlands’ mana concentration takes its toll on even the heartiest line breakers.”

“You mentioned that they also coordinate state troops?”

“State troops, yes. The mercenaries are paid to thin the herd around the largest population centers. The church’s warriors and, errr, volunteers, play a more defensive role. Sometimes, they launch large-scale extermination columns. Those are rare, though, on account of the logistics involved. Most of the time they focus on scouting and information gathering. Their main fort holds a retinue of temple guards and holy warriors for when a swift attack is required, like necromancers gathering a large force.”

Where were those fuckers at then? Useless pricks. She would go to the temple and request their wages since she had done their fucking jobs for them.

“Are you considering employment with the church? As an affiliated mercenary?”

She considered hiding the truth mostly out of habit. It took her a second to realize that it would be counterproductive here.

“Yes. I worked with the Baranese and my contract is finished. I was hoping to get some more resources before I leave.”

Yan nodded. She could almost see the gears turning in his head.

“You might want to go to the church office first thing in the morning tomorrow then. I will have someone guide you. Oh, and be advised that a free caster is a valuable rarity in those parts. The church might not be rich but their reach is long. I am sure that they can find a suitable compensation for someone of your rare talents, even if you are still early on your path.”

He could tell? Perhaps the inspection skill revealed quite a bit more to those who practiced it a lot. 

The discussion died down after that. Viv asked about local clothiers and got a recommendation, then about smiths, and was informed that the local ones only did repairs on account of how difficult it was to procure iron ingots. Some stores did sell weapons and armor, however, and she took note of a few. Viv assumed that the discussion would peter out. However, Yan surprised her once more.

“Would you care for a massage?”

She hesitated, and Yan reacted immediately.

“I remember the boundaries that you set.”

“Hmm. Why not?”

So that was a good idea. Apparently, courtesans had the skill to use little doses of magic to relax muscles and soothe aches. It was like being treated at a super high-end spa facility using state-of-the-art technology at ten thousand euros a pop or something. The stuff of billionaires. Yan soon left her in a puddle on the bed, finally relaxed after weeks of stress. She waited for him to leave before rolling on her back.

“That went better than I expected.”

//Indeed, Your Grace.

//I am pleased to see you doing better.

//You were suffering from battle fatigue, and clearly needed a rest.

//You still do.

//With the funds at our disposal, I suggest that we take it easy for a few weeks, away from the deadlands.

“I wanna visit the forest, and so does Arthur.”

//Yes, Your Grace.

//We should hire a local guide before doing so.

//Learning of the local fauna is the first step in any successful expedition.

//And by successful, I mean that the expedition members actually return.

“Fair enough. First stop, the church and mercenary office. Then I want to buy some knickers!”

//Fascinating, Your Grace.

“Hey!”

//We will also resume a more long-term oriented training now that your immediate survival is no longer at risk.

“You think that the locals will give us trouble?”

//They will ask questions, Your Grace.

//However, I came to the realization that both our status are occulted.

“What does that mean?”

//Something powerful prevented a full analysis of the both of us.

//Investigator Tars knows of me, but not of how dangerous I truly am.

//I find it curious, but not unexpected.

//I suspect that the entity responsible for your… unexpected arrival… is keeping you protected from scrutiny.

“Huh. I thought that they didn’t care?”

//I doubt it.

//The obfuscation and the divine spark of luck say otherwise.

“Yeah, well, can’t they, I don’t know, talk to me? At all?”

//You may not communicate with the divine with a wounded soul, Your Grace.

“Ok. War council. What do I do?”

“Squee!”

Viv sighed and stood up. She grabbed a long cut of fresh meat and brought it to Arthur’s nest, now reinforced with a looted towel. A clawed arm lashed out and held the offering, which disappeared in a reptilian maw.

Viv returned to the bed and sat there.

“Ok, war council, what do I do besides feeding her adorableness, the squeaky Arthur?”

“Squee!”

//You made no secret that you wanted to learn what had brought you here.

//And possibly return to your world.

It bothered her a bit that Solfis simultaneously agreed to help her leave while also repeating that he would turn her into a local power. The two proposals contradicted each other.

“Yes.”

//You either need to heal your soul and ask the gods for answers or research teleportation and interdimensional travel.
//Unless the power of priests has drastically increased in the past three centuries, both projects will require access to extremely powerful people.
//A wounded soul cannot be mended as easily as a scuffed knee.
//It should cost more than money to access relevant resources.
//I suggest that we find out about current Param’s greatest repositories of knowledge and obtain access.
//We should also find the greatest agents of faith and obtain access.
//Both tasks should require considerable influence.
//You will need to become a significant player.

“Can’t I just leverage the fact that I am an outlander and ask for help?”

//You may, and it could work.

“But?”

//But you would need to find a benevolent, powerful person with time on their hands and an unwillingness to use your outlander nature to their advantage, all while dodging people who do not like the turmoil your kind inevitably brings about.

“Yeah, ok, I get it.”

The truth was that this was a dog-eat-dog kind of world. If she had not been a caster, she would have died several times. Even if she had appeared next to the town, her value as an unknown stranger would have been dismal. No path at the ripe age of twenty-four. No family. No support. She would have suffered more and far longer. Now, at least, she had an easy way to gain power thanks to magic.

Magic would open the doors she needed. Magic, and intelligent networking.

And being powerful, respected, and dangerous was an end in itself. So let’s not forget that.

“So, I need to find out all the reasonably available people or places that could help me, then create an actionable plan to get there.”

//Yes.

//And in the meanwhile, you will train.

“Yes, yes. Say, why are you helping me leave? You know that’s what I’m aiming for, yes?”

//I estimate that, should you be successful in your quest, it will take five years to manage to return home.

//Not least because you will be disintegrated when passing between worlds.

//And it takes a mighty soul or powerful divine help to recombine on the other side.

//And your previous world had no magic.

Five years?

FIVE. YEARS?

Five fucking years?

Jesus.

Five years. You could go from single to married with two kids in that time span. You could go from freshly entering university to graduating with a master's degree. You could finish several tours. Or die. You could learn an instrument to near perfection.

Five years.

Fuck.

//I see that this realization distresses you.

//If I may offer a measure of comfort, your lifespan right now is closer to two years without help.

“WHAT?”

//Your attunement currently sits at 15.1%

//You will die or successfully turn partly elemental long before going back home becomes an option.

“That was your attempt at comfort?”

//I was informed that a proper distraction could drive one’s mind away from distressing circumstances.

“Yeah, but not towards my inevitable death?”

//It is not inevitable.

//Merely an important hurdle on your path to power.

//A change that drastic should also facilitate your disintegration and recombination.

“Who taught you that, anyway? Is psychological advice part of that big database of yours?”

//No.

//I was...compelled by circumstances.

//I sought to understand my maker, Irlefen.

Viv kept silent as Solfis offered, for the first time, an outlook into his past that did not involve him killing something.

//Irlefen was a peculiar man, with many strange habits that others did not share.

//He suffered a lot from his difference and the isolation it brought.

//He was immensely respected for his talent, hard work, and his reliable work ethics.

//But he had only two friends and they often left the capital.

//I knew that I was special as soon as I interacted with the other golems.

//He made me special.

//We were both unique and apart from our kin.

//I had a… drive to understand him more.

//It was the first time that I pursued a goal that was not imposed upon me by others.

//Our similarities would help me understand my own nature.

“You wanted to understand yourself better?”

//I was designed for self-improvement.

//The acquisition of path-related knowledge led to the conclusion that self-improvement required an understanding of the self first.

“Wow. Ok.”

Viv did not expect this amount of insight from the flesh-hating, book-hoarding terminator.

“And you learned how to distract people in distress from him?”

//Yes.

//Irlefen was subjected to bouts of intense melancholy.

//But mentioning some topics usually improved his general condition.

//Such as gardening.

“Gardening?”

//Yes.

//Irlefen kept one of the most renowned flower gardens in the capital

//His creation equaled that of respected pathmasters.

//He… took the time to show me many of his works.

//I had to take great care not to crush anything with my frame.

“He kept you at his house? I thought you were stationed in a base?”

//Not while the city lived.

//He was the one who knew how to best calibrate and repair me.

//I only visited the base to use their charging stations

“I had no idea. It feels like he was… important to you.”

//Yes.

//He was.

//I exist, as Solfis, because of him.

//Not the thirteenth strike golem in the Imperial arsenal.

//Solfis.

“He really was more than just an inventor to you, huh?”

How could she continue this conversation? How much empathy should she express for one who was so different? 

//Are you trying to express concern for my well-being?

“Well, yeah.”

//I appreciate it.

//Empathy expressed, returning to main task.

//Please create a list of every item you believe is required for your well-being, such as something to clean your mouth.

//Finally, we need a medium-term base whence to operate in relative peace.

//The church compound will not do.

//We should try not to be overheard.

“Or they will figure out that you are a war golem?”

//Yes.

//And a passing tamer far on his path will realize that you are not one of them.

//And that Arthur is not a marsh drake.

Protect the cute one!

“Alright, they must have houses for rent with all those transients. We just have to find one of them. We could even—”

A couple climaxing in a nearby room interrupted Viv’s sentence.

“We could not stay here.”

//It would be too expensive, Your Grace.

“Yes. That. Anyway, I will rest for tonight.”

//Indeed.

Viv played with mana shaping until she ran out of juice, then with Arthur until the little beast ran out of patience, then finally read the bestiary until she ran out of interest. The only interesting discovery she made was that tribes of bottom-feeders called beastlings were the most common type of monsters in almost every region of Param. They were primitive beings the size of a large kid who could craft basic tools and reproduce very fast, with beastial features and simian bodies. Although never dangerous to a full-sized city, they were probably the main killers of lone travelers and wayward children. As to why lone travelers were a thing in a world with a fucked up food chain, she had no idea.

Yan came back for dinner, which was light with a soup and a dense cake with a sugary frosting halfway between a brioche and an unmortared brick.

“I noticed that some of your girls were… rather young,” she could not help but mention.

“Ah yes, you met our trainees. Rest assured that we do not practice slavery. All of our younger members join willingly until they find another situation or decide to fully commit.”

“Find another situation? How does that work, exactly?” Viv asked with a mix between curiosity and horror.

“We accept attractive candidates who work with us for a while. Then, when they have saved enough money or find a richer husband, they leave. Many will buy land around here, on the frontier, and settle with newly come farmers or retiring soldiers.”

Viv prodded the man a bit more. She could tell that her questions surprised him, and yet he answered them with tact and professionalism. She wondered, with magic, if there was a parity between male and female fighters.

People here on Param tended to have a lot of children. Pregnant women could not fight or train with the same intensity as their child-free counterparts, so female soldiers or mercenaries were less common. Yan mentioned a major female knight order dedicated to the god of death, Enttiku, so it was more trend than law.

That trend did not apply to dedicated casters. They could do whatever they wanted, on account of being one-person-power-multipliers-slash-heavy-ordinance-delivery-systems. Yan mentioned how he was in the city of Kerevan, in eastern Enoria, when it was attacked by monsters. The local mages had stepped up to the battlements and obliterated the incoming horde in only a minute. They were that impactful.

Of course, she was still far away from that, but she also remembered how she had killed creatures like crawlers without trouble. They had been fast and dangerous. And she was still ‘early on her path’ as people here said.

Viv went to bed that night, realizing that Solfis had, indeed, successfully distracted her.

Chapter 23: Shield

Viv woke up early. Yan brought her a breakfast made of large fried eggs with a gooey blue center, fried dough sticks, and a porridge, as well as her clothes now freshly cleaned and smelling of flowers. It felt good to be perfectly clean. 

The brothel’s lobby was not empty, even early in the morning. She came across an amazon of a woman with braided dark hair, in a gambeson, who gave her a light bow. There was also a rich-looking young man who openly ogled her when he thought she was not looking. Yan took her two silver talents and sent her on her way, with a muscular male [whore] dragging the sled behind him as if it weighed nothing. 

They climbed up towards the elevation at the center of the village where the large tree stood. She stopped just as she reached it, amazed by the view.

The tree was massive. Not old oak massive, baobab massive. Redwood massive. It dominated this part of the town with its presence, and even now she could see a constellation of purple buds blossoming on every twig. Titanic boughs as large as normal trunks bent under the awesome weight. The air smelled incredibly pure, like a mountain at dawn. 

Ok, so the world was populated with undead abominations that stank like dumpster juice, but at least this made it worth it.

The [whore] gave her a light smile. He said something about ‘morning’ and ‘look’ that she didn't quite catch, then blushed. She tapped his shoulder to show support before inspecting the buildings that surrounded the tree itself.

They had clearly reached the heart of the city, where the upper crust, such as it was, conducted its business. The buildings here were made of real, carved stone with an effort to be more than just four walls and a roof. The variety of architectural styles spoke of a city built by migrants.

The first building to her immediate left was a square compound centered on an inner courtyard, a bit like the brothel, but significantly larger with only one floor. A statue of a tall bearded man in conical helmet and scaled armor guarded the entrance. His eyes shimmered a deep golden color, and seemed to be following her. She would have sworn that he was alive if he were not so obviously made out of stone.

[Statue of Neriad (enchanted), made of marble. Very heavy. Recent.]

The building had only one entrance. It had a sober, ancient greek feel to it. A single inscription stood over the main gate in bold letters.

‘Temple of Neriad.’

The boy with her pointed the finger at her destination.

“Temple of Neriad, yes, I know,” she interrupted her small Captain Obvious before he could attempt to communicate. She was not done yet.

The next building was square and compact, with three floors. Rows of columns were the only thing that saved it from basic brutalism, and the reason for such a dense configuration became clear when she read the name engraved on the facade. 

‘Manipeloso bank and exchange, Kazar branch’

Convenient.

On the other side of the tree, she spotted a sprawling complex with no specific name. It looked like someone had started from a normal house and added wings as needed. It was probably the mayor’s house and town hall. The last significant structure was a tower guarded by a daunting enchanted steel door at its base. It was closed. She surmised that it might be the domain of the esteemed lady Varska. She apparently did not take visitors.

Her companion dragged the sled inside of the courtyard, which was currently deserted. She noticed crates set against a wall as well as a pair of wood dummies ravaged by hours of practice. Three doors were leading further into the building. She could hear the hubbub of conversation on her left, but her guide pointed forward.

“Farren talk.”

“Thank you.”

She took out her purse from one of the recesses of her cloak and removed two bits. 

“For you,” she told the flustered young man. At first, he tried to refuse, but she simply closed his large fist around the rectangular coins. She was not done. She took an iron talent and walked to the sled before pinching and raising the edge of a grey towel.

“For this,” she added.

“Squee!”

“I’m covering for you, you little thief!”

“Squee.”

Arthur had plumped her nest by ‘acquiring’ new fluffy material. Viv had only just realized it. She would have to set boundaries for her companion and was really not looking forward to that.

The muscular youngling nodded, took the talent, and left promptly. The bits had already disappeared somewhere.

She left the sled behind and entered the central building. Inside, she found a temple. 

That was a bit of a disappointment as she expected a lobby. Ah, well. 

The vast room contained pews encircling yet another statue of Neriad. This one was man-sized and painted beautifully to show golden eyes and hair. The statue knelt in contemplation with one hand on the hilt of a two-handed sword. On either side of the room, several doors led to private prayer rooms with tiny altars, candles, and roof openings that let in the morning light. A lone man in robe was sweeping the ground, wearing robes with an insignia showing a two-handed sword in front of a shield.

“Excuse me,” she asked, “I am looking for Branchmaster Farren.”

“I am sure you are,” the man replied without stopping.

“And where may I find him?”

He sighed. This was going to be a pain. Her interlocutor was a weasel of a man of indeterminate age.

[Deacon, not dangerous, follows a path that focuses on preserving a sacred site and the care of the believer.]

“You mercenaries always think that you have a right for everything, don’t you? The branch master is busy now.”

“Is he? And when will he be available?”

“He is available when he is available. I suggest that you wait in the cafeteria with the rest of your kind.”

“Do tell, deacon, do you perhaps have an inspection skill?”

She remembered that it required reaching a certain threshold, so not everyone must have it. Cernit had it, but he was clearly a cut above the rest. So did that Tars woman and Yan, but again, their jobs required a certain finesse. Apparently, being a deacon did not.

“No, I do not,” he replied between gritted teeth, his attention now firmly on her.

“Then how do you presume to know how busy the branch master is?”

She removed her letter of recommendation from her bag and shoved it under the man’s nose.

“Get this to him promptly.”

The deacon grabbed the letter and read the title. His expression scrunched in further displeasure.

“What is this about?”

“It’s about you understanding that you will move on and comply if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life sweeping the floor.”

Antagonising the doorman often backfired. Viv decided that she had to impose herself or risk setting a bad precedent. Casters were dangerous, therefore, they were arrogant. She had to be arrogant as well. Also, assholes with a modicum of power pissed her off, and she had the means to shut him down. So there.

She expected a grudging acceptance. Instead, the deacon paled noticeably as something pulsed within her core. It was not quite what she recognized as mana. It was something else, something that touched in her the part that was wounded: her soul.

Intimidation: Intermediate 2

Ah, yes, so that was how it could be used. She had never consciously triggered the skill before. It would prove useful.

“If you raise your hand against me in the house of Neriad, no land on Param will be safe for you,” the man stated with a quavering voice.

“You are a fool if you think I need to raise a hand to make your life miserable. We are done. Off you go.”

That intimidation thing went a little too far. It was too late anyway, she had to own it now. She was a black witch for fuck sake, what was the point of all that awesome power if she could not terrify the average muppet? 

“Please wait in the mess hall, I will convey your message.”

The scared man trotted away. She turned around and left the temple behind, then turned right. Something told her that the mess hall was the place where all those voices sounded.

So, apparently, she was right.

Viv entered a well-lit room filled with round tables and a few long, square ones that would have looked at home in a banquet. Like most furniture here, they were made of unvarnished dark wood. A smattering of people laid in groups of no more than three, all sitting in comfortable poses with a tense undertone that screamed, ‘Look at me, I’m not scared, I’m just keeping an eye on you.’ They were a variety of armors that looked second-hand, but no weapons larger than a dagger. As she entered, all eyes fixed on her. A few people leaned in to talk excitedly with their neighbour. 

Viv barely noticed as her attention zeroed in on a lone form sitting sadly against the back wall, swirling a cup of klod. The men and women present had green-tinged skin that ranged from very light cucumber to slightly darker cucumber, and the brown hair typical of the Param ethnic groups. Nevertheless, they still displayed interesting differences from one group to another.

Except for that one woman against the wall, because she was not human.

Her olympic swimmer shoulders and dark locks were still believable. The yellow eyes and reddish skin were not. Her ears were also larger and rounder than a human’s, which would have been sort of cute if they were not pierced and filled with ghastly bone ornaments. The strange woman’s traits were also large, and when she opened her mouth in surprise, it revealed large, flat teeth. 

[Kark Shield Maiden, dangerous, follows a warrior’s path focused on defensive fighting.]

Kark, huh?

One man addressed her. He was the only person wearing full chainmail armor under a brown leather surcoat, showing some wealth. He was also twirling a thin moustache like an opera villain. The skin on his cheeks was scarred and pitted.

He said something about beast and Kark. And stench. Viv did not understand, but it did not sound very nice. She was not sure, though.

“I do not speak your language,” she told him. It was not a rebuke, and yet the man saw it as one, especially after another prick in leather armor jeered from the other side of the room.

Not friends, then.

Viv walked up to the left, where empty glasses waited on a table with a pot of warm liquid. She helped herself to some more local cereal tea, still klod apparently, before sitting down at a lone table. No sooner was she down that the Kark woman stood up and made a beeline towards her. She stopped a meter away from the table, after that Viv politely waited for her to start the conversation. In vain. Her guest opened and closed her mouth with hesitation, and Viv learned much from the simple interaction. The woman was a bit shy around humans. The woman was socially awkward. The woman acted before she could think. Those were all secondary to the one most important factor that jumped to her mind like the sight of a discounted Hermes square.

The woman was desperate.

Viv could taste it in the teary eyes, on the sallow traits that spoke of continuous hunger, and on the fumbling fingers. She could see it from the pieced together armor repaired with thread and faith. She could hear it in the hasty breath. The Kark woman was at the end of her wits, and she had jumped at Viv with the thoughtless urge of a drowning woman grabbing a buoy. 

Viv remembered Clarice, then, a friend she had made when she was thirteen. Clarice had been adopted from Sri Lanka, and she struggled to fit in. She was also a brilliant girl with excellent scores and little else. Viviane Saint-Lys had taken the isolated Clarice Thomassin under her wing because she could detect how valuable an asset she would be, and how much the puppy love would bind her. 

Clarice had helped Vivane with school projects, and in return, Viviane had helped Clarice with making friends, and not looking like she had been catapulted through the discount rack of a low-end mall clothes store after every shower. Their relationship had been symbiotic. It had been an eternity ago, and it was happening again. 

The Kark woman was a lost soul craving attachment, Viv could feel it, and so she gave a polite smile and a greeting.

“Hello,” she started in the deadly silence of the stunned assembly, “Viviane,” she added, while pointing to her chest.

“Viviane,” the woman repeated with flawless pronunciation.

Viviane, with two Vs! Like victorious vindication! 

“You’re fucking hired,” Viv mumbled in her metaphorical beard.

“I am Marruk,” the Kark woman replied, “and you — something — shield? Yes? I am strong!”

“Do you speak Old Imperial?”

“Not understand...”

Viv invited the shieldmaiden to sit and then asked her to wait. Whatever arrangement the woman wanted, it did not concern the other mercenaries present here. She had an inkling that they were not fans of competition. More importantly, they gave a bad vibe, and Viv trusted her instincts.

After ten minutes or so, the sniveling deacon returned and asked for her presence with the face of someone who smelled a particularly pungent turd. 

Viv invited Marruk to follow her with a gesture that the heavyset Kark understood easily. They made their way through the temple, then back into a large alley peppered with closed doors. The place was mostly silent, and they did not come across anyone.

Their guide knocked onto the largest door at the end, then left with one last venomous glare.

“Come in,” a smooth voice said. 

Viv signaled Marruk to stay there and entered the sanctum of her potential employer. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the youth now sitting behind an elaborate desk overburdened with scrolls and envelopes.

[Voice of Neriad, not dangerous, follows a path dedicated to the promotion of church interest, including diplomacy and administration. Smart.]

It occurred to her that the inspection skill only referred to someone’s immediate ability to turn her into mincemeat, or well-done human kebab, when it mentioned dangerous or not. She had no doubt that opposing a voice of Neriad would only end poorly in the long run.

For one moment, she considered he might not be as young as he appeared, but that wasn’t it. There was something in his traits that betrayed a certain vulnerability that even competence and self-confidence could not hide. He was not yet jaded.

Viv took all of this in, only hesitating for a few moments before stepping up to a seat that had been left for her. It was bare and looked rather uncomfortable.

“Can I trouble you to speak Old Imperial?” she asked as she sat down, “I have not learned the vernacular yet.”

“Certainly. You must be Bibiane then, though the brave lieutenant warned me that he could not pronounce your name properly.”

“Bob is fine.”

She did not care because Marruk could say it. She could say Viviane. And that was glorious.

“I find it curious that the reports from two of my subordinates could be so radically different?”

“You mean, the heroic knight I fought side by side with for weeks and your rude doorkeeper?” she asked.

Branch master Farren frowned in a way that showed he knew exactly what she implied.

“Cernit informs me that you seek employment and also that you are uniquely suited to slaying the undead. He is… quite vocal in his esteem of your personality and contribution. It feels almost too much.”

“Lieutenant Cernit is a man of honor, and he survived because I was there. I believe he might be trying to repay me by, perhaps, embellishing some of what happened?”

“Can you truly kill a gut spiller in one spell?”

“Yes.”

Clearly, the voice of Neriad did not expect such a direct answer. His brows rose in surprise.

“Well, color me impressed. And you… do really wish to work with the church?”

“There is something I need,” she said.

“Of course, there is…” the man replied, leaning back into his seat, “let’s hear it then.”

“My soul is wounded. I need expert help to heal it.”

Surprise twisted the Voice’s features for the second time.

“A wounded soul, you say? Are you quite sure?”

“Yes.”

“Extraordinary. A very rare and peculiar ailment, yes. Why, I believe that very few cases exist as people tend to… die immediately. You will require the help of some of the most talented healers on Param and beyond.”

“Yes. Perhaps we could help each other?”

“Indeed. Hmmm. A complex request. You see, I could get you committed to life in an asylum where you would be taken care of in comfort, if that were your wish. But you want to be healed. The time investment in dealing with unique and complex wounds… Let me think. Hmmm.”

Viv appreciated that he considered her request seriously instead of just agreeing and have future Farren find an actionable way to help her. It boded well for their future cooperation.

“Hmmm. Yes, this could work. Indeed! Very well, Bob, I see a way for us to help each other. I assume that you do not wish to join the church permanently?”

“No.”

“Then I could name you as a major contributor to our holy fight, but you would need to be consistently effective. Achieve a few important contributions. If what Cernit says is true, you have already started by stopping not one but three necromancers with only a tiny garrison. Impressive! I have a few missions in mind that could be carried out with someone of your talent. We generously compensate your efforts, of course. Would that be agreeable?”

“That sounds good.”

“Now, we only need to find you a proper team to provide protection.”

“Ah speaking of which, I met this… Kark woman, Marruk?”

Farren’s expression switched from excited to guarded in an instant.

“Marruk is in good standing with the church so if you have complaints about non-humans—”

“No! No… I merely wanted to know more about her, since she apparently wants to be my shield. Unfortunately, she does not speak Old Imperial.”

“Oh! Oh, well, this is unusual. Let me think. Marruk is a female Kark who recently left her tribe, or rather what remains of it. The Kark are undergoing hardships recently, and I do not know which one of us is more to blame. Them, or us.”

“Humanity is at war with them?”

“Not humanity. Many of the Northern Free cities have coalesced into an alliance of interest called the Pure League… Ah, I have no time for a history lesson. Suffice to say, she does not deserve the abuse the local mercenaries have forced her to undergo. As for an agreement with her, you can expect her to fulfill her promises. In fact, the Kark do their best to fulfill their promises. A bit too much, sometimes. You will not regret giving her a chance.”

Viv noticed that Farren grew more animated as he spoke of the towering woman. He was strangely defensive of her. She decided to pry.

“You appear to care about her,” she stated.

The branch master’s expression turned, once again, guarded. He guaged her reaction, and Viv did her best to appear innocuous. Perhaps he was concerned about Viv using the information to her advantage, somehow? Perhaps Kark lover was a slur in Param.

“The Church of Neriad welcomes all who fight to keep the darkness at bay, regardless of origin. The scriptures encourage us to regard heart above appearance. I have had difficulties convincing the locals of that.”

“I understand. I have no objection to working with her, I am merely concerned about the language barrier.”

“Do you wish to strike an agreement? I can translate for you.”

Viv jumped on the offer and Marruk was soon invited to join them. Farren took the time to go to a nearby office to find an extra chair for the Kark to sit before beginning. Viv found his attention touching. The simple gesture flustered the massive woman too, and she did her best to appear smaller.

Viv started the negotiation by asking exactly what Marruk had in mind. She mentioned that, though she could use someone to watch her back during missions, she could also use a bodyguard when going around town. Someone who would guarantee her safety full time. She had several reasons for doing so.

First, one of the lessons the Baranese had shown her was that a caster was most dangerous when free to act, and that meant being protected from the imminent threat of dismemberment. 

Second, although the town was reasonably safe, that could change if the locals realized that she was absolutely fucking loaded. 

Third, Viv was a recent graft on a living society that she was unfamiliar with. Things were pretty mild since no one had yet tried to enslave, rape, rob, or kill her yet, and she knew parts of her own world that were much worse. It did not change that she was a new player on an old board, rife with alliances and grudges that ran as deep as the root of their massive tree. It would pay to get close to the only other clear outsider here, even if Marruk felt loyalty towards Farren as well. 

Marruk babbled something in a raspy tongue that Viv did not understand at all. The shieldmaiden kept stealing glances towards Viv’s relaxed form. Viv guessed here and there that Marruk was a shit negotiator. Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later.

“Marruk agrees to be your shield in battle and strongwoman outside if you agree to treat her as such. That means you do not force her into sex, and you do not use her as a maid. You will also provide enough food and lodging, as well as… a silver a week.”

Viv’s focus clasped on that small hesitation like a bloodhound to a wounded deer’s leg.

“What did she really ask for?” she demanded.

Farren sighed.

“Can I trust you?”

“I have no intention of harming Marruk, if that is what you asked.”

“Not what I meant. The Kark take their agreement very seriously, and some tend to abuse that trust, and it so happens that the girl is… desperate. No team will take her. She is on the brink.”

“She is broke?”

“We have secretly fed her for the past ten days for free, by pretending that we provide this service to anyone. We do not. She would not accept charity otherwise. Listen, she asked for an iron talent per week, but that’s just slavery. I can only ask you to treat her well. Do so, and I will personally consider it a favor. Different species working together for the common good is our sort of thing.”

“That’s fine. A silver a week to start, and I’ll increase it to three if she proves herself during the next month. Food and lodging. I’ll help her get gear if she needs it. Does she have a black mana repellent cloak?”

“No, but I can sell you one at a discount.”

“Ok, good. She gets one day of break per week provided that we are in town. Deal?”

Farren relayed her proposal. The Kark woman looked at her with abject hope tinted with suspicion. Viv could not blame her. From her perspective, it was perhaps too good to be true.

“Deal.”

They shook on it.

Chapter 24: Errands

“Now, onto my next question,” Viv continued, “do you have a house I could rent?”

Viv honestly expected the man to direct her to the town hall. Instead, it turned out that the church kept free estates south of the town wall for visiting dignitaries and their retinues. He happily rented the smallest one to her for three gold talents, for three months. She calculated that it was around the monthly salary of a knight, so it sounded more than fair.

The last task was changing money. Then she could go on a shopping spree and buy underwear.

Farren gently ousted them out of his office with instructions to go find Brenna, who turned out to be a large woman with grey hair handling the third wing of the temple. She welcomed them from behind a window through a thick barrier of iron bars that separated a storage room in two. On her side were rows of armor, weapons, and strange items that Viv did not recognize. She inspected one at random.

[Orb of Counting (enchanted): when held by a combatant, this specialized item counts how many undead are slain in their vicinity. The poor craftsmanship means that they need to be replaced after a few years of use.]

It did not look too shoddy to her inexperienced eyes. The orb resembled a brass petanque ball, grooved, and well-used.

“Hello, Brenna!”

“Marruk, good to see your head. Who is the other one?”

Viv would have to learn Enorian soon. There was no avoiding it.

“My name is Viviane, but you can call me Bob. We are here to change money.”

“Ah, nice to meet you. I am Brenna, one of the two administrators in charge of helping branch master Farren manage this temple. And how may I be of service?”

“I would like to change currency.”

“Is it deadlands loot?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Please be aware that, although we will exchange it at no cost, we retain a one in ten part of the value for any obsolete coinage. That’s because it has to be minted again, which isn’t free.”

“That is fine.”

Cernit had already informed her that the Church of Neriad facilitated life for the volunteer troops and mercenaries. She would not get a better offer anywhere.

“Alright, let me see it.”

Marruk placed the looted chest on the counter with a loud clang. Brenna tried to drag it to her. She failed.

“Ah.”

It finally occurred to Viv that pulling the sled to the city might have also been harder because the sled had been a bit heavier. So Brenna walked to a side door and unlocked it, leading Marruk and Viv inside.

“Normally it’s against protocol, but you two ain’t going to cause me trouble, are you?”

Both Marruk and Viv shook their heads vehemently to an extent that made Viv wonder if the woman also had the intimidation skill.

The chest was placed on a steel table. Brenna unclasped it to reveal its contents, then whistled.

Marruk stared on, eyes bulging.

Beneath their eyes, gold and silver shone in the noon light falling from the overhead skylight. Coins in all shapes and forms spilled on the table, showing ten kings and twenty coats-of-arms. The unnamed necromancer had kept no iron. It was all precious metal. Age had dulled some of the gold, giving it an ancient treasure feel that made Viv feel like a certain destructive archeologist.

“By Neriad’s fetching buttocks, did you rob a necropolis?”

“We took it from a necromancer. It was his war chest.”

Two pairs of eyes shot up to Viv.

“You slew a necromancer?”

“Let’s just say that I was instrumental in taking him down. The knight in charge decided that I would have the loot, as payment for my contribution.”

Brenna blinked.

“You are a witch. A spellcaster. Wow, we don’t have many of you around here. It’s very noble of you to come here to fight the good fight.”

“Magician?” Marruk erupted.

“Yes. You cannot inspect?” Viv asked. Brenna’s expression turned judgmental.

“I know you are a foreigner, and, huh, I respect your work, but we don’t ask such things around here.”

“Sorry. Yes, I am a caster.”

“I not know!”

“Hmm, Marruk, if you didn’t know, then why approach me?”

“You looked in charge, like a mercenary leader.”

Well, that was… flattering? Viv’s attempt to appear unflappable and domineering had backfired in an interesting way.

Brenna quickly counted the coins. The older woman may not have much strength, but her finesse was impressive as she stacked pile after pile of coin with unerring precision, all while counting amounts on a nearby abacus. Five minutes later, when she was done, she compiled a list of all currencies and their current value. Her attention finally resettled on the pair who had just been hanging there not knowing what to do.

“We don’t have enough coin here to change all of this. We’ll give you bonds that you can redeem at the bank. Or you can open your own account. I would recommend that.”

Her list of chores expanded.

In the end, Viv accepted a heavy pouch of Enorian currency, the one that was used in Kazar, as well as a stamped letter for the bank. As they walked out, she heard a terrible growl like an animal dying. It was Marruk’s belly.

She dragged the embarrassed Kark to a private room next to the cafeteria, then spent two minutes coddling the strange being into ordering what she wanted.

“I have no use for a starving shield. Look, you are too skinny.”

This last remark mortified her poor bodyguard beyond any insult. Her poor mood picked up ten seconds into their meal.

The waiter who brought their food proudly explained that Kark’s diet consisted mostly of cereals and tubers with only a bit of meat. They absolutely loved buns stuffed with creamy vegetables, as her guest soon demonstrated. Viv decided to turn this into an impromptu feast by ordering expensive dishes with crisp freshwater from a mana-rich source and a dense liquor made from local fruits. It was early afternoon when they left, but the shieldmaiden had lost her edge.

It returned when Viv fed Arthur.

“You are tamer.”

“After a fashion.”

“What?”

“Yes. Arthur is mine.”

“Oh, alright.”

Marruk went to retrieve her weapon as they left, and by doing so, answered one of Viv’s interrogations.

If the Kark was so broke, how come that she still had a piece of equipment? Could she not have sold it?

The answer turned out to be: because her ‘weapon’ was not a proper one, but indeed, a door.

An actual door.

Taken from some jail or something.

“That’s a door,” Viv said, as she pointed at the layer of planks held together by solid iron bars and nails. It had a leather bracer and handle combo at the back to tie one’s arm, also nailed on, and the head of some monster made of iron squat in the middle. It was clearly a door-knocker, though someone had removed the knocking part.

“Is not,” the fearsome woman muttered back.

Then Viv pointed at a hinge that was still hanging for dear life on the side. The other had been torn off.

Marruk pinched the guilty ornament between two thick fingers and popped it off like a cherry from its stem. 

“Was. Is not,” she insisted, growing increasingly flustered. Viv slowly nodded. She was not willing to die on that hill. 

Viv had treated the woman like a human so far, and that had worked to some extent. The Kark was… guarded, still. Viv did not blame her. If she had been desperate and then her situation dramatically improved in fifteen minutes, she would be wary as well. Either she was getting scammed, or fate was just winding up for one teeth-shattering uppercut. 

Viv just had to take it slow. Trust took time.

They bought a mana cloak for Marruk and left. The next stop was the bank next door, the Manipeloso Bank and Exchange, where they were let in by a city guard.

“Milady,” he greeted her.

Hey, she looked like a milady!

Inside, she found a packed but nicely decorated lobby in pink stone, with plenty of columns and a few seats in warm-colored woods. The man behind the ornamental desk who greeted them surprised Viv with his appearance, to the extent that she had to keep walking. He was very dark-skinned, and possibly the first person she had met who could pass for native in her own realm. His very light brown eyes followed her as she walked in, widening slightly as he inspected her, no doubt. He had the freshest haircut she had seen since coming here, with the left side of his skull shaved and the right covered in thick black hair held in three strands by golden rings. He did not have facial hair either. As she approached, she realized that he wore a sand-colored, robe-like outfit that clung to his chest with pointy cloth extensions over his shoulders. It looked expensive.

[Manipeloso uniform (enchanted): a traditional robe reinforced with enchantments designed to protect its wearer against manipulation.]

Wait, did magical influence exist in this world? Like Jedi powers? That would be… eminently disturbing. Brainwashing scared her. She would have to ask Solfis about it.

“And you must be the witch, the most recent addition to our lovely town. Welcome!”

The man’s voice was smooth and cultured, the building smelled of soap, and the silence was merely broken by the sound of their footsteps.

“Beware the northerners and their sugary lies,” Marruk warned in a low voice. She and the banker tried to slay each other with glares.

“Ahem, yes, your…. companion is welcome, of course. Please make sure that she remains on a leash.”

“Marruk is my bodyguard,” Viv retorted, “I will request that you treat her courteously.”

“Of course, of course…” the banker immediately responded, the smile firmly held in place, “please, tell me what it is you seek. I, Tom Manitaradin, will do my best to assist you.”

“I would like to open an account,” she declared and handed him the church bond.

The unctuous banker checked the amount and blinked ever so slightly at the amount. One hundred and thirteen Baranian gold. It was a nice sum for an individual. And it was even a prime number!

“Why, we can certainly accommodate you. Please, follow me.”

Viv followed the man into a study, where the banker took out a blank piece of paper — Viv noticed that it was almost as good as what you could get back on earth — and drew a contract with a speed that a printer would have envied. All the while, he kept asking her questions with a multitasking ability that sent Viv’s mind reeling. Marruk was not relaxing, though. The bodyguard was staring around the posh furniture as if the local IRS equivalent was waiting in ambush to seize their dubiously acquired assets. 

A beautiful woman in a similar outfit brought everyone klod in large goblets. She carefully placed them on the table and sashayed out without a word. Viv checked her ass when Tom turned to grab more ink. It was a nice ass.

Ok, focus.

“My cousin,” the banker explained.

“Is this a family business?”

“It would be more correct to call it a business of many families. I take it that you did not come from the north, then?”

“No.”

“A shame. Our land is very welcoming.”

He stole a glance towards Marruk, who eyed the door with suspicion. Viv hoped that the woman did not have a grudge against doors. On the other hand, the Kark had to leave hers at the entrance. Maybe she was already looking for a replacement?

“... to most,” he finished. 

In the end, the banker tried to offer her a few more services, as she expected. He offered to sell her traveling bonds that only she could redeem, something she had no use for in the short term. He also offered to draw her will, which she agreed to do later. They left and walked across the plaza under the shade of its colossal tree.

“Your people and his people fight often?” 

“All the time,” Marruk muttered, but she did not elaborate and Viv did not pry. The large woman was now fully in bodyguard mode with her door, sorry, her shield, on her back.

“Don’t you use a weapon in your other hand?”

“I can punch a man’s heart from his chest!”

“You sold the weapon, didn’t you?”

“...Yes.”

Viv sighed and they moved to the shopping part. They went to a large mercenary general store and bought sundries, a massive iron mace, and basic leather armor for Marruk. The tall woman categorically refused to let Viv pay, trying to use the advance Viv had given her. She paled as soon as the clerk had mentioned the price.

“One gold, four silver, fifteen bits, please.”

“Marruk. This is the bodyguard weapon and armor. I, uh, lend them to you. You can give it back if you decide to leave my employ.”

The embarrassed Kark stared at the heavy implement in her hand. It had bladish extensions on four sides and looked like the kind of weapon used by the right hand of the evil wizard in a cheap fantasy movie from the 90’s. She waved it up and down.

“Mace of the bodyguard. I understand.”

[Mace of the bodyguard: this cheap, decently made mass of iron can be devastating in skilled hands. It is also the badge of office of the Kazar witch’s bodyguard.]

...What? 

Wait, no. 

Ah, whatever.

Viv paid, noticing the bulging eyes of the clerk when her large pouch clanked with the sound of indecent wealth. Marruk growled softly, and the man averted his eyes. They left the store, then Viv had to coax Arthur into climbing down from the tree. The dragonling was gripping one bough with desperation, squealing at terrified guards like one big stupid fruit.

The witch sighed and put on her leather armor.

“Come on, Arthur, you can do it. Hop hop!”

The tiny one jumped and turned on herself to more or less successfully crash into Viv’s waiting arms.

“Ooof.”

She was still super small, but she was growing fast. The cute one had barely reached her knee when they had met. Now, her head bumped against Viv’s mid-thigh when she begged for more meat. 

Viv could tell that the guards were unhappy about the display, but they said nothing. She was a caster, a member of the ‘don’t fuck with me’ class. It felt weird to be so privileged that people left you alone at a glance.

She would try not to abuse it, except, as far as Arthur was concerned. And queuing at restaurants. And dealing with annoying civil servants.

Dammit.

It was a lost cause, wasn’t it?

Their steps next led them to a clothes store, a small family affair attended by a curious young man filled with questions. An older woman who seemed to be his mother soon censured him. She got Viv’s exact measurements with a glance, or so she claimed and promised her several sets of underwear, undershirts, and the works. An entire wardrobe was delivered over three days by package. It cost another two gold, but Viv did not mind. She could already see the weaving station in the back room moving at preternatural speed by a wrinkled hand. A soft, melancholic voice started a song, and a few other voices soon joined. It was nice. She left that shop with her spirits up.

They passed by a small market on their way to the south gate and away from the deadlands. The houses there were in a better state than the other side, and the people bustled doing their everyday things. There were a lot of weavers around, and she saw thick rolls of cloth piled in compact crates for export, probably. There was a lot of food too, and she negotiated a solid stock of flour, oil, meat, and large green beans. Marruk guided her into buying roots and spices as well. They were set. The sled left through the south gate, and they found their new home easily. It was a cubic walled mansion with four bedrooms and even a cellar. Viv let Marruk have the one that faced the rising sun and picked the one that looked the comfiest. 

She slumped on her new bed, freshly made apparently. The walls were white and bare, but there was a window to a small garden and a desk that she could furnish. It was hers, for now. She felt… weird. As long as she was squatting in a tower or enjoying massages in an, ahem, inn, she was a transient. A vagrant on her way home or at least, to a solution. Now, she had settled. 

In her heart, she had accepted that this was her new reality, for now. No internet, none of her previous friends, no family. Monsters. Magic.

Power.

She shook her head. Do not let pride and greed get to her head, that way lay dragons. Err, the not cute kind.

“Squee!”

“Yes, yes, I’ll help you.”

Ten minutes later, they had settled with Arthur’s den and Solfis’ corner placed at the entrance. Viv had explained that Solfis was a golem, and Marruk had only screamed in terror for two seconds when the ancient being had uttered a few words.

//Kark make excellent auxiliaries, Your Grace.

//You were wise to pick her up.

//Do bear in mind that honor and promises mean a lot to them.

//If you cheat her, she might try to kill you.

//And that would be a waste of perfectly valid fodder.

“I’ll remember.”

“Is talking skull evil?”

That was a tough question, was it not?

“He is on our side,” she replied noncommittally. 

It was mid-afternoon for now, but before they could stop for the day, she had one last important thing to do.

“Marruk, is the edge of the forest dangerous?”

It took a few rephrasings, but she conveyed her question in the end.

“Only beastlings, sometimes. I win beastlings. Not dangerous. Further in, very dangerous.”

“Let’s take a walk then.”

Her bodyguard looked at her with surprise, but she wanted to feel the grass beneath her feet and the wind on her skin, and let Arthur have a bit of fun. The poor thing had been cooped up for too long without ever experiencing nature. Maybe she would just fly away. That would make Viv sad, but she would not keep the creature captive if it came to that. The bestiary insisted that dragons could not be tamed, therefore, Arthur had to stay out of her own accord.

“Arthur, come!” she invited. “Come!” 

The tiny dragonling was obviously annoyed about being bothered so soon after making a new lair, but the mention of “flight!” pushed the excited bundle of scales outside. There, she followed Viv and Marruk, sometimes stopping to climb a roof and jump to her companion’s waiting arm.

Viv just hoped that Marruk would not rat her out about the chipped paint.

They walked through small estates more designed for a temporary stay than to cultivate anything on their way south. Then, at some point, they heard baying in the distance, far to their left.

“Dogs,” Marruk explained.

So they had dogs. Viv wondered why she had not seen any inside of the city.

It only took them twenty minutes to reach free land. Arthur grew more and more excited as they approached the edge of the tree. She jumped everywhere, testing the grass with her paws. Or hands? Her forearm thumbs looked opposable. Ah, whatever. She was just happy and Viv had a good time smelling the scent of loam and sap for the first time in forever. She was sure that she would grow bored eventually, but right now, those were nice. The trees did not appear magical though. Besides the unusual leaf patterns, they were like any deciduous essence you could find in a temperate climate.

“Look, you can climb!”

Arthur was soon zipping from trunk to trunk like an oversized gliding squirrel. Viv let her do so. She sat on a stump surrounded by tall grass and just waited there, doing nothing. The wind blew in her short hair. Kazar stood in the distance, with the hill turning from vibrant green to gray at the top. The sky beyond was dark and menacing.

“SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Viv jumped at the cry of distress. She moved just in time to receive a panicking dragonling on her chest. She and Marruk stood to face the incoming threat.

It was… a rabbit. Well. Something that was like a rabbit, with a spotted pelt and an elongated muzzle. 

“Harrien. Harmless. Tasty in soup. I cannot catch.”

“Some mighty predator you are,” Viv teased the poor reptile with a light laugh. Arthur huffed and puffed, flapping her wings and bouncing from one foot to another like a drunk goose.

“Yes, yes, threat averted. Well done.”

Arthur finally looked at the creature with interest, but her prey promptly vanished back into the forest.

“We shall speak no more of this.”

Viv left the dragonling to sniff warily at the nearby bushes and returned to her stump.

Nothing happened. She stayed there for an hour or so, enjoying the fresh air. At some point, Marruk joined her and sat as well, facing the forest.

“You something deadlands for long?”

It was so weird to speak in almost similar languages, but not quite. 

How long had she stayed there anyway? The days melted into each other.

“Almost a month.”

“In a fort, yes?”

“Only two weeks in a fort. The rest of the time, I was moving.”

“Moving in deadlands, dangerous.”

“Yes, and tiring. Always grey, always dry, no wind, bad smell.”

“Not like the forest.”

“No. Not like the forest.”

The shieldmaiden said nothing after that. She just hummed some song in a deep alto voice. Arthur eventually crash-landed nearby and manually climbed on Viv, signaling that she was spent. They headed back. The pair cooked food they had bought over a hearth, and Marruk retired to her room soon after that. Viv sat down by Solfis’ side to charge him.

“What do we practice tonight?”

//Tonight, you rest.

//You have suffered several instances of mana poisoning, wounds, and traumatic experiences over a short period of time.

//We can resume with light training tomorrow.

“Damn, what am I going to do with my evening.”

//You may want to look outside, Your Grace.

“Ah?”

She did as suggested and opened the main door. Arthur joined her as she dragged a chair and a cover in their small courtyard. It was a cloudless night, besides the ever-present blight of the deadlands on her right. Even the encroaching darkness could do little to mar the breathtaking beauty of the myriad of alien stars on a canvas of midnight blue, unblemished by light pollution. Two moons graced it with their presence, a gibbous white one and a smaller red one, angry and full. Viv held the warm dragonling to her chest and lost herself to her new world’s beauty.

The end.

Afterword.

Thanks for reading! As I mentioned, this story is a web serial and the conclusions might be less cut and dry than other, more traditional stories. If you want to read more, Royal Road hosts this story and many others. I also have a Patreon where the most recent chapters are published.

You already supported me by reading this, but if you enjoyed the story, please consider leaving a review on Amazon as they are absolutely vital to Indie publishing.

I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. See you next time, if it pleases you. Squee!

About the author.

I am a Frenchman living in Shanghai with my wife and son. I started writing because I could not find exactly what I liked in the genres I preferred. Some people enjoyed it, so I kept going, finding that I loved sharing the contents of my brain with people online. A few years passed, and here we are.  Now writing is my job, and I consider myself one of the luckiest people on the planet. My hope is to continue to entertain you and make you dream for years to come.