About thirty feet from where I sat in the dirt with a glowing spear conjured from spirit stabbed through my thigh, Saelia screamed as the somatonic healed her wounds. Dodging a glowing arrow streaking towards her from mark, she darted towards Lexia. The construct scuttled away on her legs and four arms towards mark, but she wasn’t fast enough to outrun the warden. Howling like a banshee, the shadow primal dove forward, her breacher raised in a reverse grip. With a thud, she tackled the fleeing construct before repeatedly driving her dagger into the construct’s back. “No!” Mark roared, conjuring a dozen more spirit arrows and firing them one after another as soon as they materialized. Pulling her knife free from the dead construct woman, Saelia rolled to the side into a crouch before springing up into a sprint to keep ahead of the volley of deadly conjurations. When the final arrow whizzed past her, a rock the size of her fist diagonally burst from the earth in a puff of dirt t

In front of the towering, abandoned building, Saelia lay dying in the warm, red dirt. Only a couple of feet away, I was flat on my stomach with a spectral blue arrow staking my forearm into the earth to prevent me from giving her the somatonic clutched in my fist. With a hole in my left thigh and a broken right arm, I stared up in horror and pain at Mark. Framed by a full moon, he was poised to knock me out with a punch to the head. I’d screamed and begged, knowing that if I lost consciousness Saelia was done for. Mark had responded with promises of somehow making it up to me later, but he hadn’t wavered in her resolve to kill the warden. Hearing this had pushed me into a chasm of mind-numbing frustration and panic. At a loss for words, I’d let my rage speak for me. I’d been about to threaten to kill her if she murdered Saelia, but before I could get the sentence out, he blurred into motion trailing black smoke, as leapt half a dozen feet away from me and stood. His face jerked

The three of us left Lysandra’s glade thirty minutes after we’d started packing. Due to there being nothing of value in it, I left my bag behind and only took Saelia’s. Lysandra had only wanted to bring a few sundresses and some sex toys, so it’d been relatively easy for her to dump her luggage in with the warden’s. Luckily for me, this resulted in me only having one stuffed pack on my back instead of three strapped to me like a pack mule. I cradled Saelia’s unconscious body in my arms as we trudged through the Forest of Embers. Lysandra led the way. With the sheath for her massive greatsword tied to her back between her wings, she held the blade at the ready in a two-handed grip. I’d agreed to only speak during the journey if I needed a break or if I saw an incoming attack. This had resulted in the uneventful hike to the forest’s main trail being a tense affair heavy with silence. Which in turn led to a peaceful walk along the dirt road in which my tired brain and body quivered

I opened the door to Stone Lock’s shower room and stepped inside. Lysandra followed with Saelia cradled in her arms. Her eyes flicked curiously at the lockers in the changing area and the large communal showers beyond it. She giggled with approval as I told her about the ridiculously long and wasteful shower Saelia and I took on Myria’s dime. We stripped before undressing Saelia. When I cradled her in my arms, her blood-stained, snowy body felt so small cradled in my arms as I followed Lysandra. At my suggestion, the angelic woman retrieved a jar of rosy soap from one of the lockers before we headed into the tiled section of the room. Her lightly tanned fingers tapped a few dials embedded in one of the walls and the shower heads above them rained down warm water. Lysandra sidled up next to me as I stepped into one of the hot streams of water and lathered her hands with soap before setting the container down with a clink. With delicate touches, she went to work washing the grime a

Despite not having any idea what they were saying due to having taken of my Myrian comprehension band, it made me feel like a weirdo watching Lysandra and Saelia talk from a nearby armchair. So, I pulled out my phone to try soaking up my attention. My thumb flicked across the display in a rhythmic cycle as I aimlessly flipped through my bestiary, failing to tune out what was going on around me. They spoke to one another in hushed voices. Lysandra’s words were firm, but her frustration could still be heard bubbling just beneath the surface of her tempered voice. In contrast to the angelic woman’s controlled anger, Saelia mostly listened. The few times she spoke, however, her tone was deflated and tired. After about ten minutes, movement caught my eye. I looked up to find Lysandra leaning towards Saelia. Arms slipping between the couch and the shadow primal’s back, she hugged the other woman fiercely and whispered something in her ear. A moment later, she let go and straightened be