Alex sat cross-legged on the floor, back pressed to the rotting wall, watching dust dance in through the air of their shelter. Duran sat nearby, fiddling with an empty threadbare sack they had found lying nearby.
He’d learned a lot about the other man—well, zombie/ghoul—in the past couple of hours. His likes, his dislikes, his past—well, what he rembered of it—and his dreams. His companion had been a simple man, content with his lot in life, with no close ones but his ailing father and a younger brother who he hadn’t spoken to in years.
Unlike what Alex and Elara had assud when they first saw his cause of death, Duran had not been so sort of farr, or even worked around horses at all.
No, before he died, he had been nothing more than a simple woodworker. Doors, chairs, tables, you na it; if it’s built from wood, he could make it. They’d both tried to figure out why exactly a horse would have kicked him in the head, but his mory of that ti was non-existent, leaving them in the dark.
Alex did co up with a theory for how his magic worked, and if he was right then letting Grenil keep his mories was less of a shot in the dark than they feared.
When he told Duran that mories were stored in the brain, he hadn’t been particularly surprised; after all, this wasn’t the first ti soone received a traumatic head injury in this world—though it probably was the first ti soone had survived one quite this bad.
If his theory was correct, then as long as they managed to keep the old man’s head intact, they needn’t worry about him coming out missing bits of himself.
The conversation since then had devolved into idle small talk where Alex gave the occasional grunt or nod, but his attention had drifted by now. His eyes kept sliding toward the door.
Elara had been gone too long.
He tried to tell himself it was fine. She was careful, capable, and knew her way around town much better than he did. She’d slipped in and out of dangerous situations unscathed several tis before—or at least he hoped it was more than the once he knew about.
Still, after what had happened last night—what he had done to their enemies—he was not at all confident in her safety.
“She’ll be back,” Duran said, finally catching one of his glances as he looked up from his sack. His voice was low but calm. “That girl is tougher than she looks.”
“Trust , I know that, probably better than you do.” He shook his head ruefully. “Doesn’t stop from worrying when she runs off to a dangerous location specifically because I asked her to—especially since she should have been back by now.”
Duran simply waved his concerns away. “My father always said that worrying over wood that you haven’t bought yet is a fool’s errand. In the sa vein, worrying about the young lady when we can’t even leave this room is equally pointless, and will lead to nothing good.”
“I know that! I just…” Alex swung his fist into the ground.
The sword slamd into her side.
The man’s blade hit Elara just above the hip, driving into a hastily conjured barrier that had flared into existence a fraction of a second before contact. The impact cracked through her spell like a mallet through glass, though it did its job of dulling the blow and saving her from getting bisected.
The force launched her sideways into the wall of the alley, her shoulder crunching against stone hard enough to rattle her teeth. She gasped and staggered, barely staying on her feet as tears sprung to her eyes.
Glancing down, she confird that the shock of the blow and the barrier spell had overwheld her concentration, both her invisibility and feather step spells failing.
Light bled across her now-exposed form, her bracelet glowing with lingering magic. When the soldier realised that the vague blur he had attacked on instinct was a person—no, a mage—a flash of fear passed through his eyes. He visibly steeled himself, quickly inhaling a lungful of air.
Elara imdiately acted.
Her lips moved before her thoughts caught up, whispering the chant she had morised to assist with her visualisation, fingers whipping through the air between them with practiced ease. Her mana scread in protest, already stretched to the limit of what was safe; she pushed through anyway.
The invisible do of silence dropped over them like a curtain just as the guard let out an ear-splitting roar and threw himself into a desperate charge, hoping to delay her for even a second to give his team ti to get there. Unfortunately for him, his efforts were destined to be in vain, as the mage’s quick thinking smothered his cries for help in the cradle.
Sensing the agony in her mana circuits, Elara realised she only had one more spell in her before she seriously hurt herself. Unwilling to waste it on an uncertain victory, she drew her dagger, hoping to create an opening to quickly finish the fight. Pointing the blade at the charging man, her bracelet flared threateningly.
He didn’t slow.
Elara barely sidestepped in ti, the blade grazing her ribs as he passed, leaving a long shallow gash across her coat. Despite his fear the man was fast. Strong. Well-trained.
He pivoted with brutal speed, swinging again.
She ducked, felt the rush of air above her scalp, and struck low, the lessons on self-defence her parents had allowed her to take serving as her guide.
“Even an untrained civilian with a dagger could theoretically kill a fully ard soldier, if they were lucky enough to strike the correct place at the correct ti.” Her instructor—a powerful adventurer that had been passing by the city at the ti—had said on their first lesson. “My job is simply to help you raise those odds, but do not be mistaken; a few lessons from will not make you an equal to a real fighter. I’m an adventurer, not a miracle worker.”
Her dagger slipped beneath the guard’s arm, biting deep into the exposed seam near his armpit. He grunted—not that anyone could hear it—and staggered back, but not before slamming the hilt of his sword into the side of her face.
Stars exploded across her vision as the world flashed white with pain. Letting out a surprised gasp, Elara collapsed to the floor, the dagger spinning out of her hand.
Clutching her face in agony, she looked up blearily in ti to see the man co at her again, his sword now held in only one hand; the other clutched at his ribs in a futile attempt to stem the flow of blood that seeped from between his fingers.
Unfortunately for the mage, while her attack was plenty lethal if left untreated for long enough, it still left the man with more than enough ti to end her before he succumbed to his injuries.
Rolling out of the way just in ti, she heard the sound of steel impacting dirt re inches from her head, the knowledge of how close she had co to death causing sweat to break out across her back.
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While she hesitated, the man freed his blade from the earth, his grip on the weapon tightening. He lunged again, sword sweeping out in a desperate attempt to decapitate her.
Elara fell back on instinct. The blade whistling past her nose, the wind of its passing whipping a few strands of hair through the air.
Breaking out of her fear, she kicked out at his knee in retaliation. The man grunted, stumbled, yet did not fall. Her hand found her dagger. She slashed up.
The man twisted—but not fast enough, the wound in his side protesting the movent. Her dagger scored a deep line across his chest, slicing through cloth and muscle. He reeled backward, grip faltering. She pressed, striking again.
This ti he was ready. When he swung his blade to et hers, she had to abandon the attack, knowing that she wouldn’t win a contest of strength.
Desperately pulling her arm back, the tip of his sword drew a line of fire across her forearm, adding another item to her growing list of injuries.
Not letting her recover, the man followed through on his swing with a shoulder barge, crashing into her with his full weight. Her feet left the ground as he slamd her against the wall, her back arching with pain as he knocked the dagger out of her hand once again.
‘No. Not like this.’
She snapped her head forward and cracked it into his face.
A satisfying crunch.
He staggered. Blood pouring from his nose.
She kicked him in the gut with all her strength. He folded, just enough. Drawing desperately on the last of her mana, she ignored the screaming in her circuits as she lded together the worst spell of her life and fired it point blank into the man’s face.
His eyes widened for a fraction of a second before his head was reduced to a bloody mist, splattering her with bits of his cranium.
The body convulsed once. Twice. Then it slumped, sliding down her front until its weight pooled at her feet. She shoved him off and fell with him, heaving the contents of her stomach onto the street below.
The silence spell fizzled out as the mana that had gone into it ran out, and with it ca the onset of the worst migraine the world had ever seen.
Her head throbbed in ti with her pulse—each beat a drum of agony behind her eyes. The world swam and spun, colours warping at the edges of her vision. She tried to focus, to ground herself, but the alley twisted like a nightmare, too loud, too bright, too much.
Her knees buckled. She caught herself on shaking hands, breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. Every muscle in her body felt like it had been flayed and rewired with glass. Her thoughts sloshed uselessly in her skull, unable to hold shape. Just pain. Just weight. Just—
A dry retch forced itself up her throat. Nothing ca this ti. There was nothing left.
She’d gone too far. She knew she had. That last spell had been instinct, desperation. Her body hadn’t had the strength for it. She’d drawn too deep, too fast.
Now she was paying for it.
The silence granted by her spell was broken now. The distant clamour of the city sounding to her like a thousand discordant voices screaming in her brain.
Letting out a whimper, Elara forced her trembling hands forward, searching through the blood and filth for her dagger.
Dimly aware of what she was doing, her fingers closed around it. She clutched it tight like a lifeline.
“The book…”She mumbled with difficulty, the sound of her own voice sending a lance of pain through her.
Crawling back to the mouth of the alley, she found it lying where she had dropped it. The leather cover was splattered with blood—hers, his, she didn’t know anymore—but the pages were blessedly clean, the treasure not ruined. She pulled it against her chest, staggered to her feet with a sound halfway between a sob and a curse.
She stumbled into motion, one foot in front of the other. She didn’t know how far she had to go. She didn’t know if she was even going the right way.
But she had to keep moving.
Teeth clenched, she limped out of the alley, clutching her weapon and the book like they were the only things keeping her upright.
At so point, soone would find the body, it was only a matter of ti. She planned to be as far away as possible when that happened.
With the sun slowly making its way across the sky, the shadows it cast grew long enough for Alex to gain enough space to pace, and pace he did.
Wearing a track into the rough earthen floor, he bit his nails as his eyes refused to leave the entrance.
At Duran’s insistence earlier, he had forced himself to calm down, rationalising that she could have gotten lost, or maybe she was just moving extra carefully.
That was over two hours ago.
“I swear to god, if sothing happened to her because of my request…” He forced out through gritted teeth, a sudden bout of anger overtaking him. “This goddamn weakness! Why does it exist? I fucking hate it!”
Duran—having long since given up on calming him down—rely let out a forlorn sigh. “We can’t-” He started, but a sudden scuffling noise interrupted him.
Both n spun toward the door, instantly on alert.
Alex held his breath, heart hamring.
A quiet, agonized groan ca from just beyond the thin wood panel. Alex didn't hesitate. He flung the door open and Elara staggered through, practically collapsing into his arms.
She was covered in blood—far too much for it to just be her own—her face deathly pale beneath streaks of gri and gore. In her hands she gripped a sack, which slipped out of her limp fingers when she fell through the doorway.
“Elara!” Alex hissed, panic and relief tangled in his voice.
“Ow! Not so loud…” She groaned out, her eyes glassy and unfocused. “Sorry… took a while. I was… delayed.”
Pale with worry, he eased her gently onto the ground. Duran quickly shut the door again before kneeling beside them. Elara whimpered softly as Alex pulled aside her torn, bloodied coat to examine her injuries, though what he saw was significantly less severe than he expected.
“What happened?” He asked in concern. “Are you poisoned or sothing? I can’t find anything critical, but you look a few hours from death. Where are you hurt?”
“It’s not that.” She shook her head weakly, grimacing at the motion. “Took a healing potion… on the way here. Just… too many spells. Went too far. Mana... sickness.”
“Oh, so the sa thing Alexander went through earlier.” Duran nodded, before a frown crossed his features. “But you look significantly more… affected than he did. And doesn’t it go away rather quickly? Is the attacker close by? Are they coming after us?”
Elara let out a quiet chuckle that quickly morphed into a whine of pain. “Gods, it feels like the world is made of shattered glass and nausea.” Swallowing thickly, she opened an eye to look at the ghoul. “No, he shouldn’t be coming after us, unless the Miganos have figured out a way to replicate what Alex did and revive soone without a head.”
“As for the reason I’m still like this…” The mage tried to shrug. “This is what I warned you about. Continuing to cast past the limit will worsen the symptoms significantly. It’s a… highly unpleasant experience.”
Alex winced, his expression darkening with worry. "You’re saying this is a worse version of what I got hit with last night? How bad is it? How long will this last?"
Elara slowly shook her head. "Hard to tell. Another couple of hours, probably.”
"Hours we might not have," Duran muttered, glancing toward the shuttered window. "If they find that body—"
"They probably already have." Elara said quietly, her voice edged with exhaustion. "No chance they don't."
Alex clenched his jaw, a flicker of guilt passing over his features. He gently helped Elara sit up, wishing he could offer her a drink. Instead he settled for gently rubbing her back.
Eventually, she found the strength to gesture weakly at the sack she'd dropped. "Clothes and book. Managed to… get everything."
Alex grabbed the sack and opened it carefully, pulling out the worn to. He didn’t comnt on the splotches of blood marring the cover, though he did quickly leaf through it to make sure none of the writing was ruined.
Turning his attention back to the mage, he hesitated for a second, then bowed his head. “I’m sorry. My thoughtless actions put you in danger and caused you harm. Please forgive .”
The young woman waved him away. “I knew exactly what I was getting into, I’m not a child. Plus, it’s my book, so I would have gone back to get it even if you hadn’t asked.”
“Yeah, but…” He started.
“No buts.” She said as firmly as she could, grimacing at the effort. “I made my decision and I live with it. End of discussion.”
“Fine.” Alex shook his head with a chuckle. “However, while you were gone, I’ve been thinking about our situation. I was gonna ask when you got back but with your condition…”
Elara managed a weak laugh, guessing his thoughts. "You’re thinking of going after all, aren’t you?”
Alex sighed, closing his eyes briefly. "I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s a trap. But… my conscience won’t let just stand by and watch as the man who took in and gave a place to stay is executed for my mistakes.”
Elara exhaled carefully. "Alex… even if we wanted to, I'm in no shape to fight."
Alex set the book aside and placed a hand gently on her shoulder. "We won't fight—I’ve grown a conscience, not a desire to die. We’ll go watch from a distance, scope the place out. If there’s an opportunity to save the old man, we’ll take it."
Her eyes were skeptical, yet she didn't protest. "And if sothing goes wrong?"
"Then we run. Fast and far." He looked away, voice grim. “I just want to be able to tell myself that I did everything I could before it gets to that point.”
For a mont, silence filled the small room. Duran stood off to the side, his eyes flitting between the two of them.
"Fine," Elara finally said. "But we rest first. Let at least catch my breath."
Alex nodded, handing her Duran’s sack to use as a blanket. "We leave at sundown."
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