Days passed. Life went on, never quite returning to the old normal but slowly heading that way. A week after the return to the outpost there was a simple bathhouse again; it was really just two large rooms with hot pools and areas to wash off before and after your bath, but the water was hot and clean, and that was the most important thing. The mercs had even been bribed into helping fix what they’d destroyed with the promise of the baths being set aside for their use for a few hours, two nights a week.

  Ana got Rill’s sword reforged. The smith who’d made it was happy enough to have his apprentice replace the wood and leather of the hilt, but declined to even try with the blade itself. For that he recommended another man: Tharver, a themion Craft of Metal mage who worked with both the Barlos and most of the smiths in the outpost to strengthen and repair metal items.

  Tharver muttered to himself over the broken blade, not so much over the three pieces or the missing slivers as over the metal. This, he insisted, was not steel. He wasn’t sure what it was, but steel, it was not.

  He was quite excited to work with it. When the time came to discuss pay he waved it off with a muttered, “Interesting job. Materials, no more. A few silver.” And it took him all day, but he managed.

  When he presented Ana with the blade at the end of the day there were slivers of a brassy metal along the breaks, showing clearly how the blade had shattered. The whole effect was rather beautiful, Ana thought. It reminded her of those Japanese vases where they filled in breaks with some kind of gold clay, or something; the repair in itself was a work of art.

  “Now, Miss Cole, you’ll want to keep in mind that this is not steel,” Tharver warned her when she picked the sword up. “It won’t flex the way good steel does. Won’t tolerate as much. But I’d bet you anything that you won’t need to sharpen it too often. Damned hard, this metal. Damned hard. Put a dent in my anvil when I tried it.”

  Ana silently questioned the wisdom of testing a sword by hacking at an anvil with it, but she wasn’t a Metal-mage. Not yet, anyway. So she paid the man, thanked him for his time, and brought it home.

  She carried it in the same old blanket that Waller had given it to her in. While getting the hilt repaired she’d asked the smith about a scabbard, and his response had been a somewhat surprised, “Oh, for transport and stowing and such? I suppose… but I’m an honest man, Miss Cole. Just keep the blanket and save the silver.”

  She hadn’t clarified that she’d wanted the scabbard for when she expected to need the blade. The way the smith said it, she had to assume that was just not something people did. And when she thought about it, she couldn’t remember seeing anyone with a longsword carrying it in a scabbard, ever. They mostly just carried them on their shoulders. And then she thought about how the whole thing was only a few inches shorter than herself, and was glad that she’d spared herself from the embarrassment of forcing the smith to explain that she’d never be able to draw the thing. She’d be left fighting with a glorified club after tearing the straps loose. Kaira and Jisha would never let her live it down.

  That sword was to be her primary weapon when she and her friends went to find her stuff. She felt confident enough to go out with just that and her daggers thanks to Tellak, who’d shown her the basics of longsword fighting. Or, more like lectured her on it the first day, and supervised her flailing on the second; Touanne had given them both strict orders, in her own gentle way, that neither was to strain themselves. Letting Tellak limp to the practice yard with Ana supporting her was something Touanne only agreed to against her own better judgment, as she put it; she didn’t want Tellak to even stand on her own until the third day.

  For the rest of the week, though, Ana spent hours each day with Tellak. If they weren’t working on Ana’s form with the oversized sword, they were working on her Shaping. Ana still hadn’t cracked the weight thing, and she’d only become more determined since fighting and then watching Aaspiyah. She also hadn’t gained a Craft yet, and while she wasn’t quite as annoyed about that, she still felt like she’d earned it. She’d seen the things proper Earth mages could do; the trenches and pits; the walls of stone and spike hedges of the Stone mages; and the way Tellak could not only make her weapon melt and flow like quicksilver, taking whichever shape she needed it to be, but manipulate its mass, lending additional force to her blows.

  Ana imagined herself at five hundred pounds, waving around a fifty pound sword, hammer, or axe. She wouldn’t need to grapple her opponents if she could do that, no matter how effective she was. Her ribs would sing her praises.

  And if she should happen to somehow be disarmed or caught without a weapon, forced to fight unarmed anyway, well… that would be a nasty surprise for whatever poor bastard she was fighting.

  The morning of their eighth day after returning to the outpost found Ana with four feet of steel balanced on her shoulder. She was leaning against a young tree by the dawnward gate. Feria the Peacekeeper was on guard that morning, and Ana chatted with him aimlessly as she, Messy, and Jisha waited for everyone else to show up. She may have been posing, just a little; Messy clearly liked what she saw, and Ana liked being appreciated, at least by Messy.

  Jisha, observant brat that she was, knew exactly what was going on and hid her amusement poorly.

  “Chin down!” the girl called in cheerful English. “Get some shadow on your face! And cross your legs! Bon! Very mysterious, comme une medieval cowgirl. We should get you a hat!”

  Ana took the ribbing stoically, and Messy didn’t ask.

  Rayni was the first to arrive. Then came the trio of Denikla, Lesirell, and Perrion, followed not too much later by Kaira, Torden, and Omda. And that was all of them. A short talk, and they’d be ready to head out.

  Ana had toyed with the idea of trying to get everyone from Kaira’s Casuals group together and adding Jisha to the mix, but decided against it. They were going out to find her weapon and shield with some Delving on the side, and while she wasn’t planning on actively hunting the revenants of Part and Rill’s Party, there was a fair chance that one or more would find them. Really, it would be for the best if they did; the revenants needed to be destroyed sooner or later to make the dawnward forest safe for hunters, gatherers, and lower-Level Delvers. And with that in mind, Ana would rather have a team of professionals with her than reliable amateurs.

  Besides, the whole mess had started with this Party minus Irry’s trio. It felt right that the seven of them should be together to help end it.

  “Alright, looks like we’re all here,” Ana said, pushing off from the tree she’d been leaning against and walking up so she stood between the gathered Delvers and the gate. “Before we go, I’d like to say thanks. Part of the reason for us going out is to find my stuff, and while I could have maybe done that on my own, I appreciate the company.”

  “Would be a nice morning jog for you, wouldn’t it?” Kaira heckled, getting some soft laughter from the others.

  “Yeah, but a stroll in the forest just isn’t the same without someone cackling and sharing filthy jokes every few minutes,” Ana shot back, smiling and laughing no less than anyone before turning serious. “And we all know that’s not the only reason to go out. Our last outing got cut short for tragic reasons, and I feel I still owe Lessie and Perri a Delve or two. On top of that, there are sure to be revenants out there, and I haven’t heard of anyone hunting them down. I’m hoping they’ll come to us.”

  At that point, Ana lowered her voice and spoke directly to Rayni. “Thanks for agreeing to do this, Ray. I know it must be rough on you.”

  “Yeah,” the Huntress agreed with a heavy sigh. “But I need this. Huik, Tep, and the others, I wasn’t close close to them, but they were good people. They deserve to be laid to rest properly. Not to have some demon puppeting their corpses around.”

  “They will be. By us or someone else,” Ana promised before raising her voice to properly address everyone. “Now, I may be the highest Level in the Party, and I’ll be leading this Delve, but Irry’s the one with the most Delving experience. If the two of us disagree on something, what she says goes. Alright?”

  Thankfully, no one disagreed. Ana wasn’t just being polite when she said that she’d defer to Kaira’s experience, and she’d hoped that everyone would understand that. She expected them to be out for a week or so, as was normal for a Delve, and it would have sucked to start it all off with Kaira feeling slighted.

  “We had a good thing going last time,” Ana continued, looking at the six people she’d gone out with most recently. “I want you all to run it by our three newbies. Me, I think we’ll do great, but again, I’m far from the most experienced with team tactics here. I want their opinions before we get into a fight.”

  Ana was about to wind down and suggest they get going when Messy raised her hand. “I want to propose a rule!” the Duelist said with an impish smile on her face.

  “What?” Ana asked, squinting at her partner suspiciously.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Ana is not allowed to wrestle anything unless absolutely necessary! All in favor, say aye!”

  Faced with a chorus of sniggering Ayes from the group, Ana couldn’t help but laugh. “Fine. The Ayes have it. I’ll be good,” she promised. “I need to get Long and Short Blades to 10 anyway. Any other helpful suggestions?”

  There were. Rules were proposed about who was allowed to cook, and which people absolutely shouldn’t take a watch together. Not one of them was serious, and Ana squashed the urge to propose a rule of her own: try not to set Ana’s hair on fire. She was trying to grow out her sides to better blend in when the end of the cycle came, and she didn’t need the two weeks’ growth that she had to get burned off in their first fight. Kaira and Deni knew very well to be careful, but they could both be trigger happy at times. With any luck, Ana staying at sword’s length from anything they may be trying to blast should keep her hair safe without potentially insulting anyone.

  As the joshing and playful ribbing wound down, and with nothing being decided except the no wrestling rule, Ana spoke up again. ”Alright, sounds like we’re about done! Shall we, then? Invites are out, and it’s a beautiful morning. I’d like us to put some miles behind us before it gets hot.”

  One by one they all joined the Party, and in Ana’s no longer quite so limited experience, it made for a solid roster:

  Once they’d all joined the Party and came down from the momentary Vitality high, Deni cheered ,“Alright! Onniva!” throwing her arm over Jisha’s shoulder and dragging her toward the gate. And that was the signal. Those who didn’t have their packs on already wore them, and soon they were all passing through the gate, with Feria waving them off and wishing them a good Delve.

  The morning turned to afternoon as they hiked. They stopped frequently, but when they moved they kept to a pace that was relaxed and comfortable to them, but which would have challenged all but the most experienced Earth hikers. They hunted and foraged as they went, and Ana even picked up Skill Level 3 in Herbalism, her first Level many weeks in that Skill.

  She wasn’t sure when she’d really need it, but the Minor Crystal was welcome. People kept trying to give Ana things for free, and she sometimes accepted, but she still had expenses, and she hadn’t actually made much money lately. Between normal day to day expenses, replenishing her camping gear, paying Tharver, and picking up a new brace of five hurlbats, she was down to just a single gold coin and a handful of silver. She needed to start selling Crystals, because like hell was she going to rely on Messy or even her Party to pay for her once they left the Splinter. She had some pride, after all.

  They didn’t find a single demon on their first day. No surprise there; they kept to the main dawnward path, the same way as the force that had gone to rescue Ana and kill the possessed sapient. They’d cleared out anything that strayed too close to the path, and few demons would have had time to arise or wander in since then. Perhaps if the Party had been truly searching for demons, they might have found one; as it was, the probability of stumbling across one wasn’t worth thinking about.

  They still had two people on watch at all times as they camped. They weren’t idiots.

  The next day they reached the stream where Ana had tried her gambit with the hurlbats. Where she’d stopped fleeing for her life, and started her painful two day ordeal of leading the demon around the forest. There was a ford there; she’d been through it before, once, when they’d last been coming this way. She’d never crossed it in the other direction. Messy and she had been a ways further downstream on the return trip, around a bend, and this place hadn’t been visible. She couldn’t remember even realizing which stream it was they’d crossed until later.

  Now, as she stood by the water’s edge, her feet didn’t seem to want to move. As the others splashed through, with or without their boots on their feet, laughing and splashing at each other like the children many of them practically were, Ana stood there, looking at the water rushing past. She hadn’t realized that she was so close to the path when she was fleeing, but she recognized it now. To her left was the gentle slope that quickly became an embankment, and which not much further upstream would become the bluff that Ana had jumped from. She could see the spot where she’d leapt across, and her mouth suddenly felt too dry. The currents of air above the stream ran every which way over her skin, and the sound of it, the mix of burbling and tinkling and roaring, was oppressively loud to her Keen Hearing. It somehow all morphed into wind on her face and the sound of boots grunching through leaves and shrubs, and the cackling, taunting voice of someone eternally just a second behind her, waiting for her to slip up just once.

  She didn’t even realize that she’d fallen into a calming breathing exercise until Messy stopped two steps into the water and spoke to her.

  Ana stared at her stupidly. She couldn’t understand a word Messy was saying. Her girlfriend’s face fell with worry and she repeated herself, wading back and laying her hand on Ana’s arm.

  “Angel, please, what’s wrong?” Messy asked a third time. This time, blessedly, Ana snapped out of whatever the hell had been happening, and she understood.

  Nothing was the first reply that came to mind. To deny outright that anything had happened. To refuse to show weakness, and to pretend like she’d just gotten distracted by how the swirling air felt against her skin with her new Perk. Messy would believe that; she’d tested Ana’s new sensitivity extensively over the past week.

  That was followed by a wave of disappointment in herself. This was Messy, the one person she’d chosen to trust over all others, in this place or anywhere. Ana had sworn not to lie to her, and she’d meant it. That her first impulse should ever be to lie to or keep something like this from her was unacceptable. The fact that she’d caught herself before speaking only made things a little better.

  She’d need to work on that. But Messy was still looking at her, one hand now gently cradling her cheek as she looked into Ana’s eyes, her own amber ones filled with worry. She deserved an answer. An honest one.

  “Sorry,” Ana said, her mouth and throat dry and tight. “Didn’t mean to… There’s nothing to worry about. Some bad memories, that’s all. They affected me more than I’d’ve thought.”

  Messy’s response was achingly gentle. “Okay,” was all she said as she wrapped her arms around her angel. And God, Ana thought, it felt good. Not just the gentleness, nor the softness and warmth of the embrace, but allowing herself to be vulnerable and being met with nothing but love and concern. Like she’d known that she would be.

  “You ladies need a moment?” came Kaira’s voice from across the water, thick with innuendo.

  “Actually, we do,” Messy called back. “Wait on the other side for a bit and dry your boots, yeah? We won’t be long.”

  They found a nearby rock to sit down on. There they just sat for a while, Messy’s arms around Ana, Ana’s head on Messy’s shoulder.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Messy asked after a while.

  “No,” Ana replied honestly.

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe later, if it doesn’t get better.”

  “Okay,” Messy repeated, undemanding and unhurried, just being there for Ana even though she didn’t know for sure what was going on.

  After another long while, a few minutes perhaps, Ana straightened and took a long, steady breath.

  “Do you want to try again?” Messy asked.

  “Yeah,” Ana replied.

  She had to hold onto Messy to do it, but this time Ana made it into the water, and across.

  and read 8 chapters ahead of both Splinter Angel and Draka! You also get to read anything else I’m trying out — which is how Splinter Angel got started.

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