Azeneth crouched behind a crumbling wall and held me beside her shoulder. From there, I could see the fort’s gate and a stretch of the courtyard. I could hear voices on the other side and boots moving over stone. There was also a window from which someone could spot us as soon as we stepped out of cover.
“The service door’s around the back,” she whispered. “If we get in unseen, we can reach the storeroom.”
I would have liked her to say it was empty. Ever since the goblin, I could feel the nick in my blade whenever she moved me from one hand to the other. I had one hundred and one points of Durability and four points of mana. I could take a few more hits, but I would rather not find out how many in front of a fortress full of guards.
She circled the wall, staying close to the stones. I watched through the gaps that appeared with each step. As we crossed an exposed stretch, she pressed me against her dress so I wouldn’t catch the light. We passed an open window without anyone shouting.
Beneath the edge of her sleeve, I glimpsed a guard crossing the courtyard. Azeneth stopped, holding me still against her until he disappeared behind some stairs. I waited a little longer before I dared to speak; my voice could be heard outside, and I didn’t want to become the reason they found us.
The service door yielded to a slow push. Azeneth waited for it to stop creaking and slipped through sideways.
“The storeroom’s at the far end. First, we need to…”
She stopped, staring at a barrel beside the wall.
“That wine was ours, too.”
“Azeneth, the staff.”
“I know. I was just…”
She stepped without looking and knocked into a stack of buckets. She tried catching them with her free hand; the first struck the wall, the second rolled across the floor, and the third crashed down on top.
For a moment, we listened.
“Who’s there?”
Two green figures appeared in the corridor. I saw knives and flasks before the first bared his teeth. Another door opened behind them, and voices started calling for weapons.
“I think they heard us,” Azeneth murmured.
“In front!”
The first goblin leaped over the bucket. Azeneth brought me across in time, and his knife struck my blade. Pain jolted through me to the guard, but I kept my eye open.
[Durability: 95/125]
“Against the door! Don’t let them both through!”
Azeneth backed into the frame. The goblin followed, and she trapped his arm between the wood and wall. My edge cut his forearm; when she pulled it back, she opened another wound in his side. He shrieked and shoved her with his shoulder.
The second thrust his knife through the gap. Azeneth lowered me to deflect it from her stomach.
[Durability: 89/125]
“The one in front!” I shouted.
She aimed my point at his thigh. The first goblin’s leg buckled, and he raised his weapon again; Azeneth struck before he could drive it into her. He fell across the doorway.
[Total experience: 200]
[Level 3 pending. Combat active.]
Pending?
[Level increases and mana recovery must wait until you leave combat. Your audience still demands attention!]
The other goblin jumped over his companion. Azeneth yanked me back, tripped on the bucket, and raised me just before the knife reached her.
[Durability: 83/125]
Four points of mana. I still had four. I couldn’t wait for a window to get us out of there.
I thought about using Healing I, but then I looked at the hands holding me and decided to save what little I had left in case Azeneth was the one who ended up hurt.
The goblin pushed against the door with his whole body. Azeneth had one foot on the bucket, the other searching for support. I saw her heel slip and changed the instruction I was about to give her: she needed to regain her balance before trying to hit him.
“Push the door!”
The wood struck the goblin, knocking him against the barrel. Azeneth wounded his knife hand, then his stomach. He tried ducking beneath her arms; I warned her to lower my point. Two short thrusts left him motionless beside the wine.
[Potion Brewing I acquired.]
I didn’t even have time to celebrate. Two lupine knights burst through the far door, one carrying a short spear, the other a sword. Both were level one. Their Health bars showed twelve points.
“The demon’s back!”
“Run for the storeroom!” I told her.
Azeneth moved before they could block us. The spear struck me and slid toward the wall. I lost another point of Durability. She hugged the wall to avoid the sword, dragging me across the spearman’s arm as she passed.
He attacked again. Azeneth pushed him aside with my guard, cut his leg, and drove my point beneath his arm when he tried to grab her. The second knight had to jump over him to reach us.
“Turn toward the wall!”
She obeyed too quickly, scraping my point against the stone. The knight slashed; she blocked with me, costing another point. I wanted to complain, but his hand was still within reach of my edge.
“There! Keep going!”
She cut his wrist. He backed against the door, and she pushed again, catching his side. He still tried to raise his sword. Azeneth cried out and finished with a thrust that left him beside the frame.
Two forty-point notifications flashed before my eye. My stats remained unchanged.
The corridor opened into the courtyard. Azeneth stopped behind a post, panting. Across from us stood an open door. Inside, among weapons leaning against the wall, I spotted a staff.
The courtyard seemed enormous after the corridor. From her hand, I could only watch one side at a time. Each shout made me want her to turn me elsewhere. Azeneth checked the way ahead and adjusted her grip, keeping her fingers clear of my edge. Even now, she worried about how she held me.
Her hands tightened around me.
“It’s there!”
Three lupines emerged from the storeroom before she could move. All three were level one. One wore a key on his belt. The one on the left saw the bodies in the corridor and started shouting toward the tower.
The man with the key kicked the door shut. Through the narrowing gap, I watched the staff disappear and felt a ridiculous urge to reach it, as though wanting it harder would let me move. My body didn’t so much as tremble. Azeneth briefly lowered her arms to reposition me, and I checked her hands. They were steady, but kept tightening around the leather.
The haste with which she raised me worried me. Tired hands held me, and I still depended on them for everything. I tried to focus on the three men, looking for a way to stop them from surrounding her.
“Keep the post on your right. One at a time.”
The first attacked before I finished. His blade struck mine, costing another point. Azeneth retreated around the post; he followed, leaving his side exposed. My edge caught him there, then on the arm when he tried to grab her. The third wound dropped him between us and the other two.
The man with the key kicked him aside. Azeneth ran for the entrance, but the last knight blocked her with his spear. She stopped so close to its point that I forgot the tower windows.
“Left! Short strokes, don’t lift so high!”
My edge caught the spearman’s fingers. He let go of the shaft with one hand, letting Azeneth push it aside and wound his stomach. The man with the key approached from behind. I spotted him beside her twin tail.
“Duck!”
His sword struck the post. Azeneth ducked, pulled my blade out of the spearman, and struck him once more as she rose. He collapsed against the storeroom door.
Only the man with the key was left. Azeneth’s gaze darted toward the storeroom door, then returned to him. The knight used that moment of hesitation to try to grab my grip. She pulled back; my edge cut his palm, then his forearm before he could retreat.
He backed away, clutching his hand. Azeneth followed with a short thrust. As he fell, she tore the key off his belt and turned to the door. Her fingers trembled as she tried fitting it. I watched the courtyard, expecting another knife while she struggled with the lock. The key turned on her second attempt. She pushed the knight’s arm aside with her boot, opened the door, and entered with me raised.
We’d defeated the two goblins and five lupines. I was still level two, with four mana and eighty Durability. The system had recorded another learning opportunity, but the boots running along the wall mattered much more.
Azeneth shifted me into one hand and took the staff in the other.
The change was immediate. She straightened, no longer trying to work out where to position me to protect herself. Light ran along her recovered weapon. Someone shouted an order from the tower, and I saw a crossbow rise.
“I have it,” Azeneth said.
She left the storeroom and stopped by the courtyard entrance, holding me against her chest, facing the wall.
“Stay close to me.”
She raised me beside her shoulder, letting me see her profile.
“Vehement Lament!” Azeneth declared, her eyes narrowed and her broad, crooked smile baring her teeth.
I didn’t understand why she’d asked until the staff’s light spread around her boots. It formed an arc that advanced across the ground, then rose, growing taller and wider. The first wall dissolved before I could make out the sound of the impact.
The arc swept through the courtyard. Weapons, figures, and beams fell within its light. The tower split from top to bottom; the wall I’d been watching became a cloud of stone. I tried following the crossbowman, but the light reached his post, and there was no post left to watch.
Azeneth turned the staff. The expansion swept through the rest of the fort, flattened the storerooms, and pulverized the remaining walls. She pressed me against her dress as the ground shook beneath her feet.
When she lowered the weapon, only rubble, dust, and burning wood remained. Nobody emerged. The voices had died away with the footsteps.
A gust cleared some dust, revealing where we’d entered. The service door and corridor were gone. I remembered telling her to duck, to run, to put me between herself and a knife. I looked at her staff again. For the first time, I understood how little I knew about the woman carrying me.
I was still searching for a silhouette when Azeneth spoke.
“There’s no one left.”
It was the same voice that had thanked me for healing her. I looked at the staff, then her hand. We’d been so frightened trying to reach it, and that was what she could do once she had it back.
I couldn’t find a question that came naturally.
[Combat ended.]
[Experience gained in this battle: 300. Total accumulated: 450.]
[Applying pending level increases.]
The first wave of warmth passed through me without Azeneth moving.
[Level: 2 → 3]
[Durability: 80/150]
[Mana: 30/30]
[Attack: 7]
[Defense: 12]
[Mana regeneration: 3 per hour]
Finally…
[And there’s another! Two hundred points to reach level three, another two hundred for four. You have fifty left over.]
[Level: 3 → 4]
[Durability: 80/175]
[Mana: 40/40]
[Attack: 9]
[Defense: 14]
[Mana regeneration: 5 per hour]
[Mobility: 5]
I stared at the last number. It wasn’t zero anymore. I wanted to try it immediately, but the ache in my blade caught my attention when Azeneth loosened her grip.
“Zaelia?”
“Still here. I’m leveling up.”
Her thumb paused beside my guard. Before she could look for the nick again, I used Healing I. I was missing ninety-five points of Durability. I spent nineteen points of mana, and the ache disappeared. I was completely repaired, with twenty-one points still available.
My edge no longer hurt when she turned me. I focused on that difference, grateful I didn’t have to pretend I was fine this time. If we were going back to Khalixtla, I wanted to do it without giving her another reason to worry every time she changed her grip.
“And I’m all right now,” I added.
She turned me toward the light to check. Her shoulders relaxed a little, though I kept glancing at the fort’s remains.
First, I tried making a potion. I focused on the skill, waited, and tried again. No flask appeared. Not a drop. Azeneth watched as I went over the notification again, feeling less and less sure of what I was doing.
I’d imagined it would work like healing: choose the skill and let it act. I even waited for a glow around my guard. Nothing changed. Azeneth looked beneath my blade, then at the ground, as though we might have dropped the potion without noticing. I appreciated her not laughing at my first attempt.
It doesn’t work.
[You haven’t ingested the necessary ingredients.]
I have to ingest ingredients?!
[Of course! The skill lets you brew potions. It doesn’t provide raw materials.]
I looked at my clean blade. I’d gained the ability to make remedies, and now I had to figure out how to feed a sword. I left that part for when we had ingredients and less smoke around us.
“What are you trying to do?” Azeneth asked.
“Potions. No success so far.”
“We can find what you need later.”
She spoke while settling me carefully in her hand. That helped draw my attention from the ruins, and I moved to the other skill, gained from the five lupines.
I activated Olfactory Perception I.
Smoke came first. Until then, I’d watched the wood burn without sensing any of it; now its smell mingled with disturbed earth and crushed grass. I didn’t have to breathe. It was simply there, clear enough to distract me from the windows.
Azeneth brought me closer to inspect my eye.
Then I smelled her.
“What do you notice?”
It was a soft, slightly sweet scent that stood out from the dust. I focused on it without meaning to. Azeneth tilted her head, and I took too long to remember she’d asked me something.
No information appeared to explain what I smelled. I didn’t know where that sweetness came from or how long I’d gone without noticing it. All I could make out was Azeneth’s scent, and I found myself preferring it to the smoke. It was a small, entirely new possibility, and I struggled to let it go.
“That you smell really nice…”
I spoke before thinking how it would sound.
“I meant I can smell now. The skill…”
Her smile grew slowly. She brought me closer to her chest, and for the first time since she’d destroyed the fort, I stopped searching for something to say about the staff.
“I’m glad!” she replied.
So was I. Quite a lot. I decided to focus on that five in Mobility before I let another unnecessary explanation slip out.
“Could you put me on the ground?”
She looked at the grass, then my blade.
“Here?”
“I want to try something.”
She crouched and set me down so carefully I almost changed my mind. Cold earth lay beneath my blade again. Azeneth withdrew her hand but kept it near my grip.
I tried moving.
The grass shifted before my eye. Only slightly, enough to stop me feeling the ground against the metal. I moved forward and stopped. Azeneth hadn’t touched me.
I tried sideways. I moved again.
I stopped before a stone. I chose to retreat and watched the same tuft return before my eye. The whole journey had taught me to wait for someone else to change my position. Now I waited out of habit even after deciding, until I remembered I could do it myself. I tried once more, slowly, just to be sure.
“I’m moving!”
My point passed over a clump of grass, and I corrected course before hitting her boot. I floated so close to the ground that tall blades brushed my guard. I tried rising toward her hand but couldn’t reach it.
[Mobility 5: lets you move by floating just above the ground.]
That was enough for me. I circled her boot, backed up, and chose to approach the waiting hand. Nobody pulled me. No animal dragged me. I’d decided where to go, and my body had answered.
I wanted to tell her how much that meant. I only managed to move closer, until her thumb was beside my eye.
“I see you,” Azeneth murmured.
I looked up at her. I’d have kept trying every direction if Azeneth hadn’t glanced at the sky. The light was changing over the hills, and the fort still burned behind us.
“You can keep going when we get home,” she said.
Home. It distracted me long enough for her to pick me up before I asked.
“Are we going to walk to your castle?”
Azeneth looked at the staff and smiled.
“We don’t need to anymore.”
She held it beside her, and light surrounded her boots. This time, it didn’t advance toward the ruins: it stayed beneath her, lifting her so gently it took me a moment to notice her feet had left the grass.
She held me closer to her chest. The ground sank below my eye, and the stones grew small. I’d needed two levels to barely leave the ground; she was lifting us above the trees.
“Ready, Zaelia?”
I wanted to ask her not to drop me. Her fingers already held my grip carefully, and when I looked up, she was waiting.
“Yes. But slowly at first.”
Azeneth tilted the staff toward the gap between the hills. Wind swept along my blade as we left the ruins behind and flew toward her castle.