Panic was crawling over me. The similarities were too uncanny.

  She looked very similar to me; with longer hair, the purple tone, and a few different details. We could pass as twins, that's how subtle those differences were.

  Her eyes were off, like they were lifeless, while staring with intensity.

  Each swing of her sword came accompanied by a purple haze of Ether, and her blade did not harm any of the flowers around us.

  If I did not want to get hit directly, I had to dodge or answer with a direct parry, swinging at her blade, only to get pushed back. If I parried by evading her blade and counter, she pulled back and away from me to recover distance.

  She was fighting with elegance and brutality, and fighting acknowledging I was a sword.

  Every time we smashed blades I received no damage IF I got the strength right, or intentionally parried. But if I got hit in the handle, or as a counter attack, she would punish me by swinging back and throwing me to the ground.

  For a second this fight made me remember the fights with my sensei. When she was serious she was a beast impossible to defeat.

  This one, however, this me was completely different. It was a demon.

  Aspen tried to help again, but when she tried to bite, using her speed, the damn monster got out of her way and swung her sword, cracking the damn armor.

  “Agh…! Y-you damn… ugh!” She tried to stand up, but her legs gave up.

  “Aspen!” I yelled.

  The swordswoman lifted her weapon, holding it to stab Aspen.

  “No!” I yelled.

  I hit her in the back, cutting her cape and clashing into her armor, with enough force to push her to the side.

  “Don’t you dare hurt her, you damn…!!”

  I was cut off as she did a full swing. Towards me, came 4 copies of her sword. I was not sure how to block, how to stop the attack. Pulled back, but they followed me.

  And when it hit… that was the first time I felt something close to pain.

  My blade broke from the hilt, the metallic shards flying in every direction.

  [Warning! HP is in critical condition! Alice, you must run!]

  I felt my whole being heavy. I could barely float. Something was going on with that attack! I know it!

  [Soul Magic detected! Damage intended to directly affect the soul! Be careful!]

  Less than 1% of my HP was left, that harmed me directly.

  I had to run! No use dying there! I just had to go back, train more and…

  It turned away from me and walked towards Aspen. She was intending to finish her!

  Aspen was barely able to get up, she was an easy target, easy to kill in that state.

  The swordswoman lifted her sword.

  I mustered what I could in force and moved between them.

  “N-no! I won’t let you!”

  I stood my ground there, with my missing blade pointed at her, just a piece of scrap iron floating in a last attempt to stop her.

  She tilted her head, observing me with those turned off eyes.

  The multiple swords appeared again, coming in every direction, impossible to dodge, faster than I could react…

  Aspen grabbed me and, as fast as she could mnove, we managed to avoid the damage.

  “A-aspen… take us out of here, now!” I yelled my order at her, and she obeyed without question.

  The swordswoman chased us. Aspen moved from side to side, avoiding her sword. I used my spells at her, casting fireballs, wind blades, anything I could to distract her and make her do mistakes.

  “GGhhh…!” Aspen complained, she was pushing herself.

  Then again, that same attack, ready to come at us as she ran towards us. Even with Aspen’s speed, she was too fast, too strong for us!

  “[Wind, attack those that are my enemies! Burst!]” I cast, saying my will with enough conviction for myself, a last desperate attempt to do something to stop her.

  The spell, while Aspen jumped out of the field, pushed the swordswoman back, just enough to make her miss.

  Aspen tripped, we both fell to the ground.

  “Agh! Dammit!” Aspen c tried to get up again, but her body was giving up.

  The swordswoman stood there, observing. With eyes similar to mine, looking at me with a turned off expression. Sheated her sword, turned around and walked back to the center of the flower field.

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  We observed her, wondering if she was trying to do something, and mixed with curiosity and surprise.

  Then she sat again in the center, like how we found her. A statue, unmovable, there, present and threatening.

  “What the hell was that… is that a human?” Aspen's mouth twitched.

  “I-I don’t know… but…”

  “You said it looked like you, how?”

  “I don’t know! She… she has my face, my eyes… is not exactly how I looked when I had a human body, but she looks pretty similar to me…”

  The question lingered between us. Who was that and why did she look like me? I thought maybe that was my body, but the differences made me doubt that theory. The nose was more pointy, she had a much more slender neck; seemed to be a few centimeters taller. Just subtle differences but I noticed them, having seen myself in the mirror each morning.

  “And she hits like those lizards… hell, even worse… dammit!” She continued complaining of pain.

  “T-this is my fault, let me check,” I approached, although I was not an expert on injuries and first aid, maybe I could help her somehow.

  “I think I broke something… ugh, we are too far away.” Aspen looked down at herself, “Maybe we should find a place to rest…”

  “Y-yeah… but if you move, you might hurt yourself even more,” I said.

  Her armor, which I could not penetrate, was made a mess. It was new and proved effective, but that swordswoman tore it like.

  Her right front paw got sprained, and she said she felt some pain on her chest, maybe a rib.

  “I-I’m sorry! I didn’t… I just…”

  I felt guilty. I should have been more careful. Now we were in the middle of enemy territory, her injured, and no way to return safely. Even if we found a gate upwards, or better yet, a second access to the wolves territory, it would take us a while to move, and she should not be making any movement or Aspen would risk to make her injuries worse.

  “Ugh, stop saying sorry. It is not like we didn’t know this could happen. You seem to be in worse shape than I am, anyway.” she said, with a smile on her face.

  Right, I lost my whole blade and I was basically a Japanese handle floating around. I had ran out of materials to heal during the fight.

  But then…

  [You gained XP!]

  Right, combat XP from defeat.

  [You gained a level! 12/20!]

  [Your stats increased! Your health has been restored!]

  I shone for a couple of seconds and I was completely restored. I had little use for it for the last weeks that I forgot that was a thing. I was back to 100% HP.

  “Huh… you are always full of surprises…” Aspen commented.

  And now I felt more guilty.

  [Aspen is already at max level. She cannot level up until you reach the next rank. She, however, would heal if she did get a level up]

  “Dammit, okay, we need to rest, not move at all for a while.” I flaoted closer to her, “use your medicine.”

  “This is going to be boring… and I don’t think the food is going to last us more than two days.”

  The plan was to come here, check, see what we could do and then return to inform what we saw. Now it was going to be so difficult.

  I wondered what was happening back at the Clan.

  “I wish we had a way to communicate with them…”

  [I think i can come up with something, but you will need 10 Greater Ether Stones and some more levels]

  So no way to pull that out of my ass type of moment, then.

  Without much to do, I began to make tests around our friend in the field of flowers, while trying to get information.

  I moved forwards into the field, and she did not react. Then it was not going into it that made her aggro us. I moved closer, not that much, and it did not react either.

  I flew up, and tried to reach the part where the light was coming in.

  Then I reached the middle point, and that made her react and chase me. I darted back to the edge of the flower field, protecting myself with my own magic, countering her spells until I reached the ends. She returned to her spot.

  Leaving that was was not an option.

  I reached the ceiling at the safe limit, and expanded [Souls Sense].

  [Warning… Magic barrier detected. Power level unmeasurable.]

  Something did not want us out.

  “Anything?” Aspen spent the whole time sitting and observing my experiments.

  “No. I just know she doesn’t attack unless we reach a certain point. Is like there is an invisible line on the field we cannot cross before she tries to kill us.” I mentioned.

  It was like a boss programmed to act that way, only aggroing when certain conditions were met, leaving the player alone when they escaped.

  So, with nothing else to do, we stood there, speaking.

  “What kind of world did you come from? Is it anything like this?” Aspen, resting on the ground, asked.

  “Nah, we don’t live in caves, although if it wasn’t for my friends, I would have been living in one.” I said, ashamed of myself. I was so close to being a girl failure, thinking about it, “There are big buildings, some reach the sky, and we move on automated vehicles most of the time.”

  “Not running? How boring,” she snickered, “And what about wolves? Are there any?”

  “Yeah, but they live mostly in the forests, and they don’t talk.”

  “Then they are like us before Ella gave us talk and thought.” She had both ears up and paying attention. “And from what you say, there doesn’t seem to be many green areas.”

  “There are, but I didn’t live near any of them.”

  I continued explaining to her how things were in my world. One I might never see again. I told her about my dreams to be a writer, and how they were slowly crumbling before me, although I kept pushing forward.

  “When my father died, my mother snapped, to say it in some way. She became depressed, and paranoid. She was a good mother, and I have just good memories about my father, but it was like something changed on her when he died.”

  “Maybe she could not bear it… but she trying to push you from your dreams sounds awful.”

  “Yeah… she never told me how my father died, and when I asked she changed topis.” I let out a long sigh, “She changed entirely, and it seemed like she was intentionally trying to push me away.”

  “That sounds like a complete mess…”

  “What about you?”

  “Huh? Me?”

  “You never talked to me about your family… how things ended up like how I met you.”

  She looked away from me, and sighed. Then looked back at me, before removing her eyes once more. She seemed to be on the edge of wanting to tell me and not to say a thing.

  “S-sorry… is just that…” she stuttered, “every time I think about it… it hurts, you know? If I told you I didn’t care or that I could move on… I feel I would be lying to you.”

  “I know how it feels to lose a family,” I moved closer, floating near her, “if you want to talk about it…”

  “You came into my life, crashing and clearly not knowing what you were doing… but it was fun.” Her mouth twitched, then grunted, “Just, for a moment… you made me forget the pain and my wish to kill that stupid King.”

  We stood silent for a moment, she sighed. She was saving her grievance, her wishes to cry for her family.

  “I… when we return… Let's have more fun moments. I was not sure at the beginning, but I enjoy staying close to you, Alice.” Her voice was lower than usual.

  “And why did he kill your family?”

  “Because… because… he believes Ella’s words with too much conviction… and there was a prophecy. Adela told him as a warning when he began to go crazy with power. I was there… she told him that his legacy would be over by the strength of an outsider…” she growled, and her ears flattened, “And… you should have noticed. My family… we were all silver wolves, so he wanted to stop the prophecy, believing we were outsiders.”

  Wait… so her plight, the death of her family, was because of Adela’s words? Her prophecies?

  “Why was she so direct with him and with us she did not tell us anything directly?”

  “I-I don’t know… since then, she has become more… vague with her words,” she tilted her head, and she seemed to be having a harder time talking, “I asked her at one point, but she only was more… vague.”

  What the hell was going on? Maybe there was more into the prophecies than I knew about. She didn’t tell us why we had to go to the Clans, but how, and since then she had not thrown any prophecy or direct guide, only teaching me.

  I extended [Soul Sense] as far as I could, just to see if I could find something.

  And I did.