An hour into the Party’s hike, the heat was right on the edge of unbearable. There were hours left until noon.
“Listen up!” Rayni called from the front. The edge of breathlessness was unusual for the Huntress, but not surprising considering the pace she’d set. “We should slow down a bit and do shorter marches than normal, with more and longer stops. I know Ana’s giving us some crazy bonuses, but a body can only take so much heat before you start getting dumb. Until I know for sure that Ana’s Party Abilities can help us with that, we shouldn’t be taking any chances. Agreed?”
“Something about resting more so we don’t overheat?” Jisha asked Ana as the three other younger members of the Party all argued with Rayni. They wanted to squeeze in as many fights as they possibly could during this trip, and hopefully multiple Delves.
“Right,” Ana replied.
“Good idea. Heat like what we’ll have by noon is nothing to play with. I can kinda heal small cuts and shit like that, but that’s it. If someone goes down with heatstroke, it’s drinks and rest and probably back to town.”
“I still think it’s incredible how you can already do even that much,” Ana said, splitting her attention between her young friend and the friendly but energetic argument up ahead. Messy had now joined in, taking the middle position that she was happy with taking more rests than usual, but that they surely didn’t need to sit around for more than five minutes at a time. Not with Ana around to speed up their recovery.
“I’m not learning all that fast, I don’t think,” Jisha said, looking away and smiling at the praise. Not that her embarrassment stopped her from speaking. “But Annette—
“Excuse me — Annette? Who’s Annette? One of the Stolen?”
“Oh, sorry. Touanne. Anyway, she—”
“Why Annette?” Ana interrupted.
“Because she’s too sweet not to have a pet name?” Jisha replied, as though Ana was missing something extremely obvious and was, frankly, embarrassing herself. Then she laughed and continued in a rush. “It’s not like I can call her Toutou or Nana. So Touanne, Anne, Annette. Anyway, she says I have the right kind of mindset for the Craft of Life… or personality or whatever. I always wanted to be a doctor. But she doesn’t think I could go deep enough into the Craft to become a Healer, even with the, euh… the changes that picking up the Craft would bring. Not that I’d want to! I never thought that I’d like fighting and I still don’t think I, you know, like fighting against other people, but the Delves I’ve been on? I’ve just felt so… so alive! I’d never want to give that up!”
“I know what you mean,” Ana said, letting go of the whole Annette thing. If Touanne didn’t mind, Ana certainly wasn’t going to worry any more about it. Besides, she could not only see Jisha’s excitement but feel it, even share it to some degree through the girl’s burgeoning aura. She suspected that Jisha must have increased her Connection Multiplier sometime recently, and that no one had really taught her to mask her aura yet.
The debate among the others had wound down, and now they were waiting for Ana and Jisha’s input. “One second,” Ana told Jisha before turning to the others and switching to Inter-guild. “I say we rest until everyone feels good to go, no more, no less. Jisha?”
“?a marche.”
Messy stared at the French girl, her face blank. The other four with her, though, simply nodded.
“They understand French now?” Ana asked softly.
Jisha grinned and said, “They also respond to okay,” using the French-accented English word rather than the Inter-guild equivalent, which translated literally to that completes.
“Do you have the Skills yet?” Ana asked Jisha as they continued. “The magic ones.”
Jisha frowned. “Shaping, yes. But not Channeling. Annette says I keep using my own Life-mana instead of actually aligning ambient mana, and that I just need to practice more. And I didn’t get the Craft yet, of course. She said the fastest she’s seen was just over a month for that, and that boy went on to become a Healer.”
“Yeah, I don’t have a Craft yet, either,” Ana admitted. “I figure I’ll just keep Shaping and it’ll happen sooner or later.”
“Annette says that you have to Shape with the right intent,” Jisha mused. “Like, for me, I have to do it not only wanting the person to get better, but to… I think she meant that I have to want the person to flourish, basically. To come back better than they were. I’m not entirely sure, though; she could only dumb down the language so much.”
Shape with the right intent. Ana thought about that as they walked. Intent was important when it came to Skills, she knew that, so it made sense that the same would apply to Crafts. Focusing on using a Skill and on your desired outcome seemed to be as important for Leveling Skills as how often you used it, how difficult what you were doing was, and how important it was that you succeed — as determined in by the System in some ineffable way.
At the same time, the Wayfarer, the Lady of Hidden Paths and of the Splinters, Ana’s patron goddess by no choice of her own, had told Ana something similar about Shaping. Specifically, the goddess had said that the reason Ana found her protective Ironskin Shaping so easy was that she saw herself as indestructible.
She’d also said that the reason Ana could only make herself lighter with a weight-changing Shaping she’d learned, and not heavier, was that she was basically vain. That she, despite what she told herself, liked to imagine herself a dainty little thing that Messy could pick up and throw around. Which wasn’t true but might, possibly, be truth-adjacent. Ana herself quietly suspected that it was more about the feeling of Messy enveloping her; of feeling small, safe, and comforted.
Either way, she still hadn’t managed to reverse that damn Shaping.
Leaving that particular frustration to some other day, what would Shaping with the intent of getting deeper into the Craft of Earth look like? Trying to make herself as durable as the bedrock? As reliable as tectonic drift, as immovable as the mountains, and as deadly as an earthquake? She could get onboard with that.
They continued on their way dawnward that entire day, Rayni taking them down the same paths as on Ana’s first Delve. Every ten miles or so they stopped for proper rest, but they also made frequent, smaller stops and detours to refill their water skins, which they emptied quickly in the oppressive heat, or to harvest various plants and mushrooms that they came across. The past two weeks had been ruinous for the outpost’s supply of potions, healing and otherwise, and Touanne and the other alchemists were in dire need of reagents to produce new ones. Dedicated herbalists were scouring the forests around the outpost, but they didn’t venture too far for fear of demons and mundane predators, and every little bit helped.
They didn’t find a single demon, but nobody was particularly surprised. They couldn’t have made it more than thirty miles.
At night they took single watches, though Ana, who only needed about two hours of sleep, was awake and keeping most of them company. The exception to that was, counterintuitively, Messy. By general request, Ana went to sleep before Messy took her watch, and woke up after Messy was back asleep. Some may have called that an overabundance of caution, but even Messy agreed that it was for the best. She didn’t think that she’d let herself get distracted, she said, but it paid to be careful.
Rayni found their first demon early on the second day. It was a hulking monstrosity of a deer that stood six feet tall at the shoulder, sporting armored plates along its sides, several extra eyes down both sides of its head, and a double row of jagged, curving horns that grew all along its spine from the crown of its head to the base of its tail. Ray brought Ana forward to get a look at the thing, and together they pinned it at Level 14, based on its Threat Level to each of them — fairly high for being so close to the outpost, but nothing the Party’s lower Level members shouldn’t be able to deal with.
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When they brought the news to the rest of the Party, they were met with nothing but excitement. The previous day’s hike had been pleasant enough, despite the heat, but this was what they were out there to do.
“Alright,” Ana said as they stashed their packs in a tree and prepared for the coming fight. “Remember: I’ll be sticking close enough that if you get hurt, I’ll absorb the hit for you. And while I’m tough as hell, and it won’t hurt me as much, it still hurts, right? So, you know, please try not to get gored or anything.”
There was some good-natured laughter at that.
“I won’t get involved unless it’s absolutely necessary, or someone calls my name. If you feel that everything’s about to go to hell, that’s all you need to do. Call my name. Now, are you ready?”
“Hell yeah!” or some variation was the unanimous response.
“Hell yeah!” Ana echoed. “Now go kill this thing!”
After Ana’s short speech, Messy stepped in so close that they were almost, but not quite, touching. At that distance the three or four inches Messy had on Ana really counted, but Messy was one of a few people Ana didn’t mind looking up at.
“Kiss for luck?” Messy murmured, her warpaint eyeliner somehow still sharp and her eyes burning with excitement.
“Go get ‘em, warrior,” Ana answered, rising on her tip-toes and kissing Messy softly on the corner of the mouth.
Some titters from off to the side drew their attention. “What about me?” Lessa asked. She was rocking back and forth on her feet, clasping her hands behind her back and making over-acted moon-eyes at Perrion as Jisha, Deni and Rayni laughed. “Do I get a kiss for luck?”
In response Perrion grabbed her by the cheeks, smooshed them together into an extremely exaggerated pout, and planted a loud, smacking “Mwaa!” of a kiss right on her lips. Which would have made Ana deck the guy, but Lessa just laughed as loudly as anyone as she exclaimed, “Why, Mister Perrion!” and turned away, theatrically covering her face with her hands. The contrast between her well-muscled, almost masculine build and how much she played up her innocent, girlish act made it impossible not to get swept up in the amusement, especially with how she’d raised her voice by what must have been two full octaves by the end.
Those two shared a tent, Ana thought as she and Messy joined in the laughter. Yet Jisha had insisted—without Ana asking or expressing any kind of interest—that they were neither a couple nor any kind of friends with benefits. Ana honestly had no damn idea what kind of friendship they had, and she didn’t really care enough to ask, but they sure were comfortable with each other. “Alright!” Ana said, laughter still tinging her voice. “Your obvious envy is very flattering. I’d be jealous of us too. Now come on! Are you killing that thing or not?”
The mirth melted away as they got moving; many of them may have been young, but they were serious about what they were doing. Their formation as they approached the demon’s last known location was simple. At the front were Lessa in the center, being the highest Level, with Jisha to her right and Messy to her left. Five feet behind her was Ana, her borrowed halberd high but ready. And about fifteen feet behind Ana, far enough to be able to get some decent sight lines but close enough to still be in range of her Class’ titular Ability, Guardian Angel, were Deni, Perri, and Ray.
The plan was standard, as simple as the formation. The three frontliners would keep their prey tied down, trying to slow and ideally cripple it by cutting tendons and breaking bones. Ray and Perri would do something similar, trying to put arrows into joints or eyes. Their bows were really a minor part of the strategy. Arrows rarely scored a kill on a demon, since killing one required destroying the brain or severing the spinal cord, but they could hamper their movement. If things got truly hairy, Rayni carried a handaxe that she knew how to use to great effect, and Perri carried what he and Lessa both insisted was a falchion, but which looked to Ana more like a pointed machete. Whatever it was, Ana had seen the man take a changeling’s arm off with one strike of the thing during the campaign against Karti. Hopefully though, both he and Rayni would stay far out of melee range.
If everything went to plan it was Deni who would end the fight. As an offensive combat mage with dual aptitudes for Fire and Lightning, her job was to look for an opportunity to do massive damage, destroying the demon without anyone else having to take the risk of closing in for the kill. The Evoker may be young and the lowest Level of anyone in the Party, but she absolutely had the ability to kill anything they were likely to meet.
Hell, Deni could probably destroy anything that Ana had ever seen, given time to Shape and Channel enough mana. The young Evoker only had two offensive spells, but they were both as brutally effective as they were spectacular. The first was a bolt of plasma, usually no larger than a marble but hot enough to blow off limbs as it vaporized the target’s tissues. The second, which Ana had only seen twice—the first being in Deni’s and her first ever fight against a demon—was an honest-to-goddess bolt of lightning; except that instead of doing its damage and then discharging into the ground, this magical lightning had much the same effect as the plasma bolt, except more. When Deni had used it against the possessed badger that she and Ana had been fighting, the damn thing had popped like a microwaved egg.
Ana had needed a Water-mage to practically hose her off afterward. She silently hoped that Deni wouldn’t use that one; anything that came out of a demon reeked, and they didn’t have Sendra with them this time.
The demon wasn’t where Rayni and Ana had left it, but it hadn’t moved far. The Huntress left their formation and led them right to it, only two minutes away. When they found it, the possessed deer was going at a tree with mad abandon, alternating between pounding at it with its hooves, smashing its head against it, and gnawing at the bark. Unhinged behavior was nothing unusual for a possessed creature, which spared no effort in their desire to kill and consume the mana of anything that lived. In this case, the cause of the deer’s fury was a shaggy cat of some kind which sat on one of the tree’s lower branches, hissing and spitting with as much fury as the demon.
The possessed deer was completely focused on its prey; an ideal situation. Ana turned around, nodding to the backliners then jerking her head toward the warped creature. Ray, Deni, and Perri took her meaning quickly, silently moving up to the front to stand between the frontliners.
They’d discussed what to do in just a situation like this, which wasn’t entirely uncommon. Deni laid her staff on the ground and began Shaping, doing so silently and forgoing the mnemonic chants she favored to help her focus and get everything just right. Meanwhile, Ray and Perri nocked arrows and drew back their bows. They’d fought beside Deni often enough to know how long she needed.
The mana surged around Deni, the heat and hunger of fire and the energetic hum of lightning stoking Ana’s excitement until she had to silently remind herself that this wasn’t her fight. Then, with a piercing cry, Deni thrust her hand forward and unleashed the blindingly bright marble she’d been cultivating there.
The tiny ball of plasma flashed across the distance, carving a perfectly straight line between the trees with a howl of superheated air and striking the deer demon just in front of the left hip, blowing a steaming hole in its side large enough that Ana, if she’d absolutely lost her mind, could have stuck her head through it. Moments later Ray and Perri loosed their arrows. One bounced off its bony armor, but the other stuck deep into the shoulder on the same side. Then the frontliners moved up, stirring the wisps of smoke coming off the bark of those trees that Deni’s plasma bolt had passed close to. Ana followed a few feet behind, more alert to the surrounding forest than to the demon ahead of them. She’d had demons stumble upon an ongoing battle before; she wouldn’t be taken by surprise again.
Deni had unfortunately missed the demon’s hip joint, which would have disabled the leg, but one or both of the arrows had struck true. As the thing turned, uttering a shrill, warbling imitation of a deer’s bark, the way its left foreleg moved was stiff and jerky. And Deni’s effort had in no way been wasted. Chunky gore poured out of the smoking hole she’d blown in the side of its abdomen, followed closely by grey and red lengths of intestine that splatted wetly to the ground and fouled its footing as it attempted to charge the frontliners. As its left hind leg slipped and tangled on its own guts and went out from beneath it, its foreleg buckled. It crashed onto its side, writhing and kicking, screaming with a sound so discordant that Ana’s keen ears tried to reject as impossible as it fought to get back up.
That was when the frontliners arrived, and Ana came fully alive for the first time in over a week as her bonuses activated, boosting her Attributes to absurd levels.
Messy got the first strike by virtue of having the longest reach, lunging in with her long, finely curved sword in passing and striking at the demon’s unharmed shoulder before dancing back and positioning herself to the thing’s right. Next, Lessa took a swipe at its nose with her axe, scoring a brutal cut that laid its nose and upper lip open before she raised her shield and stepped back to avoid its tossing horns. Jisha was last, using the distraction that Lesirell’s attack provided to hammer at the demon’s right hip, striking hard enough that Ana, fifteen feet away, heard the dull crunch of bone.
The demon showed no pain. Conventional wisdom said that they felt none. But its eyes did roll with something that might have been hate if there was anything remotely intelligent about the creature. Instead, Ana could only call it a kind of insane hunger, one that the demon would sate at any cost, even if that cost was its stolen life. It had both shoulders and one hip damaged at that point, and its guts hanging out and dragging in the dirt, and still it tried to bite and gore Lessa. And as much as it wanted Lessa’s blood, it wanted Ana and Deni more. It wasn’t blood or lives that the demons wanted, after all, but mana. Ana was holding her Ironskin Shaping, a layer of Earth-mana toughening her skin; Deni, meanwhile, was turning herself into a veritable fountain of mana. She was drawing in a steady stream of ambient mana, Channeling it and aligning it to Fire and Lightning before pouring it into a second bolt of plasma, this one even larger than the first.
“Lessie!” Deni called, holding the ball away from her as some part of the Shaping kept her hands from being reduced to charred bone. “Move aside! I need a—”
It was then that the deer gave off an unearthly shriek and shoved itself impossibly forward. Its speed took Lesirell by surprise; its strength and mass were too great for her to take. It bowled her over, crushing her lower body under its bulk, and Ana felt every part of her below the waist bruise as she unconsciously absorbed the injury.
Then the demon’s jaw opened wide, exposing far too many jagged teeth, and Lessa screamed in horror as it bit down across her face.
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