Katherine hadn’t realized how badly she missed the smell of fresh air. The stench of the swamp lingered, but it had become much less noticeable after leaving the treeline.

  They’d moved out of the swamp a few minutes ago and into a sort of marshy wetland. The tradesman ahead guided them, weaving through the waters on an elevated path that twisted above the wet ground.

  She was happy to be out of the swamp proper. The marsh was still gross, but the swamp had been miserable. She was glad she’d hemmed up her and Simon’s robes a bit, borrowing a sewing kit Justus had in his inventory. She’d been surprised he had a sewing kit, but she was more surprised when he admitted he didn’t know a thing about sewing. Why bother buying a sewing kit if he didn’t know how to sew? She was still grateful, though; she’d avoided getting her and Simon’s robes covered in muck.

  There was more to worry about than mud, unfortunately. Errant branches kept snagging the loose part of the robes. She really didn't want her only clothes getting torn up, especially since she still didn't have a bra. At least the village had offered them leather shoes to wear. Doing this barefoot would have been a nightmare.

  Katherine was also glad they had the tradesman to guide them. The trail that led out of the swamp had been easy to miss and difficult to navigate. Calling it a trail might have been a stretch. She hadn’t seen any notable signs that it was a worn path. To her it seemed like they had just been moving through the swamp at random.

  Before leaving the village, Chief Sho had invited them to a meal in his hut. In addition to one last show of gratitude, the meal served as an introduction to the tradesman, Hishet. He was an unassuming man and the first villager she saw wearing actual clothes. The clothing was thick and wasn’t at all like Justus’s robes. They looked slightly Gaelic in style. He wore a thick overshirt that hung down to his knees, and underneath he wore trousers that were tied off at his ankles.

  His tall, pale form didn't fit the image of a well-versed traveler she had in her head. His lithe limbs were more efficient than they seemed, though. After what felt like ten hours of travel, Hishet didn’t even seem winded. Neither did Justus, but he was Jade; his Spirit was more efficient at restoring his stamina. Katherine, even with her opal Spirit, was feeling exhausted.

  She’d feel fine if they’d been hiking at a normal pace. Her Spirit could keep up with that kind of physical strain. They weren’t going at a normal pace, though. They were lightly jogging and had been ever since they’d left the river.

  Mountains loomed on the horizons. That was where they were going: to some small town on the other side of the range. From there, Justus told them they’d go to the capital city and take a flight to Talon.

  Apparently air travel was popular in the empire, but not via planes. The main form of travel was zeppelin-like airships. Katherine was excited to see what they were like, but Simon didn’t seem as interested, which struck her as out of character for him.

  It was windy outside the swamp. The wind was cool and refreshing, coming from over the mountains. It helped push back the swampy odor.

  The group reached one of the rest spots on the trip. The village tradesman had apparently constructed the rest spots for their own trips. This one was little more than a large round plot of raised earth that remained dry due to its elevation. In the center was a divot, probably for a fire pit.

  “I’ll set up my tent. Unfortunately, it only fits two,” Hishet said, in his pleasantly light voice. “I am not averse to sleeping outside, however, if the two apprentices wish to use it.”

  “I have a tent. They can use mine, and I’ll sleep in yours,” Justus said.

  Katherine glanced at Simon, feeling heat creeping up her neck at the thought of sharing a tent with him.

  “No!” She protested, a little too emphatically.

  “What?” Justus asked. Though his tone and facial expression remained neutral as usual, she had gotten to know him well enough over the past week to know that he was slightly annoyed at her objection.

  “Well, um…” She searched for an excuse, cheeks flushing as she realized she didn’t have one.

  “It doesn’t seem like the right move to me either.” Simon said, stepping up next to her. “I mean, me and Kate are still new to the whole traveling thing. It just seems better to pair us up with people who are more experienced. I can buddy up with Hishet.”

  Justus paused. “That does make some sense… Alright then, Katherine, you’re with me.”

  Katherine felt her anxiety fade. It would still be a little awkward, but sleeping in a tent next to Justus would be like sleeping in a tent with a log. The man seemed completely disinterested in anything that wasn’t Spirit Arts.

  Simon looked at her and gave her a wink, a satisfied smirk on his lips. It made her wonder why he’d stepped up to help her. She was far from the most self-confident person, but wouldn’t a guy his age want to share a tent with a girl he knew rather than a stranger? Simon left to help Hishet set up his tent. Katherine watched Justus pull his tent from his inventory, and then Simon’s reason clicked in her mind.

  Simon must think that she wants to bunk with Justus. He was trying to be her wingman.

  How in the world did Simon come to that conclusion? There hadn’t been a single day that had passed where she didn’t snap at Justus. He irritated her more than Simon, and Simon actively tried to be abrasive. Simon’s annoyance was playful and teasing, while Justus was as playful as a rock. He annoyed her because he was rude and… well, she didn’t really know, actually. He just did. Maybe it was his apparent stoicism or how he always seemed to expect something from her. He was pushy in a very passive way that few people could achieve.

  But she did talk to him. How much had she talked to Simon since they’d gotten wrapped up in all this? Had she talked to him once outside of training, other than the time he first woke up in the cabin? No, she hadn’t. She was too shy. She’d always been shy. But not around Justus. Why?

  “I’m going to train for a bit,” she said, before she could think about what she was doing. “Simon, could you lend a hand? I want to try something new.”

  Simon looked to Hishet, who waved him off. “I can set up a tent alone. I’ve been doing this since you were learning to walk. Thank you for your help, but you should train. It is a good use of your time.”

  Simon stood up, dropping the hammer he’d been holding to drive a spike in the ground. He looked towards Belle, who was watching Justus struggle with his tent.

  “Stay, Belle,” He told the dog. The dog let out a short yip in response. Katherine still thought it was a bit creepy how well the dog understood him after becoming his familiar.

  Simon’s body shimmered for a moment, then a silvery white shadow of himself stepped out of him. The two approached.

  “Hey, think you could hurt me some with whatever we’re doing? I want to evolve this healing skill as soon as possible. Can’t tell you how much it sucks having healing magic that only works on myself.”

  “Not magic!” Justus called loudly behind them, even as he struggled with setting up his tent.

  Katherine shook her head, then nodded for Simon to join her. They began walking slowly away from the campsite. His clone followed behind them. Simon lowered his voice.

  “What’s his deal with the magic thing?” he asked. “This stuff is definitely magic, right?”

  Katherine shrugged. “Seems like it to me.”

  “You’d think he’d drop it after a while, but it’s every time. It’s almost impressive.”

  “Mhm.”

  There was an awkward pause as they walked in silence.

  “So do you, you know, have a thing for him?”

  “What? No!” Katherine said. “He’s—just, no.”

  “Oh. I thought with how you talk with him maybe… I don’t know. You’re quiet around everyone else.”

  “It’s not because of that.”

  “What is it then?”

  “He reminds me of my brother,” she said. The words shocked her, but as she said them, she realized they were true.

  Justus was like her brother. Not in every way, but in some. There was that monotone way he tended to talk, his insistence regarding trivial matters, and the directness that irked her. He was terse and quiet most of the time—until you mentioned one of his few obsessions, and then he could go on and on and on. He was hard for her to understand, and so had her brother been. For that reason she used to bicker with her brother all the time. She’d slipped right back into that dynamic without even realizing it.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about the revelation.

  “You have a brother? I didn’t know that.”

  “I did,” Katherine said, hoping to leave it at that.

  “He might still be alive. Not all the shelters got destroyed. There had to be some people who survived.”

  “It was before that.”

  “Oh… I’m sorry.”

  Katherine shook her head, wiping at her eyes before her tears could fall.

  “It’s fine.”

  “If you ever wanna talk… I know I joke around a lot, and I never had any siblings, but I get it.” Simon reached into his robe and pulled out a small object. He offered it to her. She took the coin and examined it. One side was stained with dark tarnish.

  “That was my dad’s. Mom said he carried it around with him everywhere. A good luck charm. He died when I was six. That’s all I have left of him.”

  Katherine stared at the coin, then Simon. He smiled. It was warm and comforting, not like his usual grin. She didn’t understand him. How could he talk about losing his father and smile like that? Maybe he’d been too young to really remember, or maybe he just didn’t care as much as she did.

  She shook that last thought away. No, Simon cared. He just saw things differently than her. Just because he handled loss better than she could didn’t make him uncaring. She was trying to make herself feel better for being so miserable.

  She handed the coin back to him. Her hands were starting to shake slightly. Katherine needed to think of something else. This topic wasn’t good for her, especially not with someone else around.

  “Hey Simon.”

  “Huh?”

  “When you woke up, I asked you if you saw it. The city.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you… Did something talk to you? Through the system?”

  Simon frowned. He nodded slowly. “I almost forgot, but there was something like that. You too, then?”

  “Yeah. It told me things would get worse on Earth. That I could stop it. It told me to stay with ‘him.’ I think it was talking about Justus.”

  “It told me pretty much the same thing. Do you think—Kate?”

  Katherine had turned away, her eyes scanning the marsh intently. She swore she just heard something. The sound had only carried for a moment, so briefly she wasn’t sure if it had actually been there.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  Simon frowned. “Hear what?”

  “Crying. A woman crying.”

  Simon looked concerned. “Definitely didn’t hear any crying,” he said, looking out across the marsh.

  They stood in silence, both staring out across the greyish-black tallgrass and still puddles that dotted the landscape. They’d stopped in a large patch of dry ground, the campsite a good hundred feet away or so. The orange light of the sky reflected off the patches of water, giving the field an unsettling but beautiful appearance.

  “Just a warning, if you start seeing bodies in the water and decide to go for a swim with them, my ass is not coming to the rescue.”

  Katherine frowned, turning to look at him. “What?”

  “Come on, seriously? The dead marshes? Lord of the Rings? Don’t tell me you haven’t seen Lord of the Rings.”

  Katherine shook her head. “I read some of the first book. I didn’t really like it.”

  “How do you not like Lord of the Rings?”

  “Have you read the books?”

  “Well, no, but the movies are cool. If we ever get back to Earth, we’re having a marathon. I’m talking extended editions, all eleven hours.”

  “Eleven hours? I thought it was a trilogy.”

  “It is. Extended editions. That means longer.”

  Katherine smiled. “I’m not watching movies for an entire day.” Her smile faded. “Earth… Do you really think we can get back?”

  “There’s got to be a way. Justus did it, and we ended up here, somehow.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Cheer up a bit. This whole thing sucks, yeah, but it’s not all bad.”

  “How can you say that? Everyone we know is dead.”

  “We don’t know that. There had to be some who survived. But even if they are gone, there’s nothing we can do. I doubt they’d want you dragging your feet and moping.”

  Katherine huffed under her breath, shaking her head. It wasn’t as easy as he made it seem. She couldn’t move on like nothing happened. Maybe he could, but she wasn’t strong enough to. She’d never been strong enough. Magic powers didn’t change that; they just gave her a new distraction.

  “Why do you call me Kate, as if we’re friends?” she asked.

  “Jeez. That’s pretty mean. I do have feelings, you know?”

  Katherine flushed. “That’s not what I meant! I’m sorry, I—” She cut off, seeing his amused grin. He was messing with her. She looked away, feeling foolish.

  “I can call you Katherine if you want. Kate’s just shorter. Rolls off the tongue.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. In truth, she didn’t like people calling her nicknames. She liked Katherine. It was a soft-sounding name that she felt fit her. Kate was too sharp. But from him… she didn’t mind it that much.

  “Technically, Katherine’s not even my real name,” she admitted.

  “Huh? Is it a middle name or something?”

  Katherine shook her head. “My legal name is technically Katerina. That’s what’s on my birth certificate, at least. My mom wanted it to be my name, but my dad thought it sounded too exotic, so he agreed to put it on the certificate but called me Katherine. I liked it better, so I stuck with it.”

  “Huh. Katerina. I like it. Sounds dangerous and badass.”

  “Which is why I don’t like it. I’m not dangerous. Or badass.”

  “I don’t know, it was pretty badass when you stuck up for me and told Justus to fuck off. And that fire is pretty dangerous, speaking from experience.”

  Katherine blushed, remembering her outburst at Justus and the training exercise yesterday that resulted in her burning Simon over a dozen times. She wasn’t proud of her actions in either memory. She didn’t regret sticking with Simon, but she’d done so almost out of anger and spite more than anything.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I need to train my Restoration skill, and getting burned isn’t as bad as getting the shit kicked out of me. Just part of the job.”

  “Do you get used to it? The pain?”

  Simon shrugged. “Not really. Still hurts like a bitch, but I’ve gotten better at powering through it. Really wish I was a masochist. That would make my training a lot more fun, wouldn’t it? Speaking of training, are we gonna start? How do you wanna do this?”

  Katherine had almost forgotten why they were out here. She explained her goal for the training.

  In the last few days, Katherine had gotten much more of a grasp on Deflection. Using the skill hadn’t been intuitive. Though she absorbed the energy, doing so felt less like pulling the energy in and more like pushing her Spirit out to intercept it. Once she’d gotten a feel for it, though, it wasn’t very distracting. Holding the energy was the trickier part. The energy wasn’t meant to stay in one place; it wanted to escape. It had taken some effort to find a method that worked well.

  At first she’d tried to hold onto it, like it was a hyperactive puppy. That had worked, but only for a couple seconds each time. Katherine had tried different techniques, but only one seemed promising.

  She tended to think of her powers metaphorically, since using Spirit was difficult to describe with actual senses. Leaning into that way of thinking, she tried to come up with more abstract ways to hold the kinetic force, rather than practical ones.

  She remembered watching videos online about spiders. When people held them, the spiders often moved, so the handler would keep moving one hand in front of the other. You can’t really pin a spider down without making it bite you, so you just let it move without letting it go anywhere. She’d used that as inspiration to hold onto the kinetic force.

  It had taken a lot of effort and hours of practice, but the results had been leaps and bounds more effective than any other technique. By sort of trapping the energy in a whirlpool of her Spirit, she let it travel while not allowing it to escape. Using that technique, she was able to keep a hold on the energy for dozens of times longer. A few times, she’d almost managed to hold it until the skill went off cooldown.

  Today she wanted to take that concept further. If she could create a whirlpool to trap the energy, what was stopping her from making a second and splitting the energy in two? If she did, the versatility of the skill increased by leaps and bounds.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  With Simon’s help, she worked on learning to do just that. Creating a second “whirlpool” for the energy was difficult. It took all of her focus and effort to maintain the first while making a second. She failed completely the first eight attempts, losing her grip on the energy and having it rush back out where it had entered. The energy tended to rush back out where it came from if she didn’t create a path before releasing it.

  On the ninth attempt, she did it. She made a second identical, albeit smaller, whirlpool while trapping the energy. The new problem was that she had no clue how to split the energy. She spent the rest of her training trying a handful of different ideas. She tried nudging the energy into the second whirlpool. She tried splitting the energy as it came in. She even tried overlapping the whirlpools.

  None of the ideas even came close to working.

  After dozens of failures, the energy once again slipped away from her, flooding out where the impacts had struck. She kicked the soft ground, ripping out some of the tall stalks of grass and sending dirt flying.

  “Damn it!” she yelled.

  She looked back to Simon, who gave her a small smile.

  “Sorry,” she said, her frustration giving way to embarrassment at her outburst.

  “It’s fine. Trust me, I get it.”

  Simon hadn’t been getting anything out of this. She was too concentrated on trying to get her new technique to work to be able to redirect the attack at him like he’d hoped. She felt guilty for wasting his time, especially since she had no improvement to show for it.

  “What’s the issue?” he asked.

  “I can’t find any way to split the kinetic energy. If I could, I think I’d be able to hold and direct each independently.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “It’d let me have more control of how much energy I put into the release and how I can use it. The skill has a minute cooldown, but that’s only for absorbing. Releasing the energy isn’t a part of the cooldown; if I can learn to hold energy and split off only the amount I need, I could keep a store of kinetic energy and use it in bursts even when the skill is on cooldown.”

  “Ah. That does sound pretty awesome.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I can’t find a way to split the energy in the first place.”

  “Can’t you just sort of pinch off the nozzle when you use the skill?” Simon asked. “You know, like when you put your thumb over a hose to only let a bit of water shoot out?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. The energy isn’t like water. It’s more like… lightning. It floats around in my Spirit, crackling about and constantly looking for a way out. The moment it sees a path, all of it shoots out in an instant. That’s why I need to split it. If I can do that, I can channel and release one reserve of energy while keeping the other trapped.”

  “Damn. Wouldn’t that be too distracting to hold onto it during a fight?”

  “Right now, yeah. But it’s getting easier the more I do it. I plan on trying to start practicing how long I can hold onto it, then try doing it while I spar.”

  “You’re really going all out on this stuff, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am. We have to get strong enough to fight the kinds of monsters that destroyed our city. Are you not taking that seriously?”

  “Definitely not. I can make clones and fix a bloody nose, so long as it's my own. Not really the type of thing that lets me kick ass. I’ve talked with Justus about maybe learning to use a sword or something, but he’s pretty set against that until I get more experience with hand-to-hand. Maybe I could use guns. You think they have guns here?”

  “I doubt it, but apparently they have TVs and radios.”

  “No shit?”

  “Ask Justus about it sometime. Anyways, I’m sure there’s more you can do with your skills.” Katherine said, not wanting to go off on a tangent. “Have you tried making more than one clone?”

  “Yep, doesn’t work.”

  “What about summoning part of your clone? Like summoning a fist to hit someone without summoning the full thing.”

  Simon furrowed his brow. “I… don’t think it works that way.”

  “You should try. I don’t think what I’m attempting is how the skill is supposed to be used, but I think I can make it work. The skills are more flexible than they seem. I think there’s more to yours than you’re seeing, too. At the very least you can find ways to use it better.”

  “I’ll try it out sometime, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ll just keep working on close combat. Seems the best way to advance for me right now. Justus seems to think so, at least.”

  Katherine wasn’t sure that was true, but what did she know? She hadn’t known about Spirit Arts two weeks ago. She yawned. After a day of intense hiking and over an hour of focused concentration, her fatigue was catching up with her, Opal or not.

  “Let’s go eat? I think I’m done for today.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The two walked back to the campsite, where Hishet and Justus were chatting over bowls of crocodile chowder Hishet had cooked up. They poured themselves bowls. Simon joined in the conversation. Justus was describing Talon to Hishet, who appeared curious. Katherine only listened, not bothering to voice any questions herself. She’d see the city eventually, if things went how Justus hoped. What she heard didn’t make her very excited. It sounded like a pretty dangerous place.

  Eventually they said their goodnights and headed inside the tents to sleep. Once inside, her nervousness at sharing the tent diminished some. It was far less cramped than she’d been imagining. There was a good two feet of space between them. It wasn’t very comfortable, as the tent had practically no padding underneath, but she was tired enough that she fell asleep within minutes of lying down.

  Her eyes blinked open. It was dark. That was weird. After so many days of constant dim sunlight, darkness felt strange. She sat up and looked to the side. Justus was still asleep.

  Just as she was about to lie back down, she heard something that made the hairs of her arm stand on end. A light sniffle. Katherine’s head snapped to where the sound came from. She froze. The sound had come from just outside her side of the tent. It sounded as if it had been only a foot away.

  Then the voice moaned: a painful, pitiful sound that filled Katherine with fear. Katherine scurried back, shrieking and bumping against Justus. He sat up quickly.

  “What?” he hissed.

  Katherine didn’t answer—didn’t turn to look at him. Her ears rang, and her heart raced as she stared in the direction the noise had come from, half expecting a ghost or ghoul to tear through the thin shield.

  “Katherine?” Justus asked, shaking her.

  Katherine turned her head slightly. She tore her eyes away from the tent’s wall to look at him.

  “Someone’s out there,” she whispered.

  “What? It’s the middle of nowhere, and I set up alarms around us before we went to sleep. No one is there.”

  “There is. It’s a woman. She was crying.”

  Justus looked concerned. Not scared, like she felt, but worried. About Katherine.

  “I heard her.”

  Justus frowned and let out a short sigh. “I’ll check it out.”

  Katherine opened her mouth to protest, but she closed it as she felt a minute shift in Spirit pressure. She’d felt it a few times during their training. It was his absolute awareness skill. She wasn’t sure if most people could sense it, and she’d never asked him if that was normal. Justus already seemed suspicious of her Spirit senses and control, and she didn’t want to give him another reason to treat her like she was some kind of freak for something she couldn’t help.

  If he sensed anyone outside, he didn’t show it.

  Justus stood to a crouch, then unzipped the tent. The outside was dark. She watched him, heart pounding, as he left the tent. He stepped outside cautiously and looked around. He turned back to her, shaking his head.

  “Nobody is here, Katherine. It must have been a nightmare. Go back to sleep. We’ve still got a long way to travel, and it looks like a rainstorm is coming.”

  Justus ducked back into the tent and zipped it up.

  Katherine, heart still racing, went back to her side of the tent and tried to go back to sleep. She didn’t lie as close to the tent’s wall as she had before. Maybe he was right. She was under a lot of stress, and she never slept well in unfamiliar places. There was a reason she stayed up all night reading in the cabin during summer camp.

  Besides, the person she heard couldn’t have been real. Not unless they were a ghost. The crying she heard earlier and the agonized moan she heard just now: it was her mother. She sounded just as she had when Katherine had overheard her crying years ago, after her brother died. She’d never forget that sound.

  Katherine must have stayed up for another hour, never being able to leave her eyes shut for more than a few seconds before fear and anxiety made her open them. Each time she was sure she would see something. A ghostly face peering through the tent, or a gaunt hand pressed against the fabric. She never did.

  When sleep did finally take her, the anxiety didn’t go away. Her dream was muddied and confusing. She found herself in a ramshackle high-rise apartment. The layout made no sense. She was looking for something, but each door she went through only led to more carpeted rooms that served no purpose. Not living rooms, or dining rooms, or bedrooms. Just empty rooms.

  Katherine wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she heard it. She wanted to run away, but she couldn’t stop looking. She went through door after door. The rooms began to change. A foul earthy odor grew under the smell of the musty apartment. The carpet grew, like unruly hair. Some rooms were partially flooded, with wet, slimy water soaking her legs up to her shins. Other rooms had tall multi-armed lamps that were thick and stretched all the way to the ceiling. She paid the changes no mind. The sound was getting closer. Crying. Her mother.

  The changes were gradual. The smooth metal of the lamps became knotted and rough. The carpet became thicker and longer, growing into tall stalks. The walls faded, the room stretching further and further until she could no longer see it.

  Gradually, the apartment had morphed into a swamp. Even Katherine’s clothes had changed. The hoodie in her dream became lighter, the black became gray, and it stretched into odd robes. Her soaked sneakers became wet leather shoes.

  What was her mother doing in a swamp?

  Katherine pushed forward, through thick bushels and mire towards the sound. Branches snagged on her robes, scratched at her flesh through the fabric. She moved undeterred, determined to follow the sound that called to her.

  She struggled through a thick patch of small bushy trees and fell to the ground as she escaped their grasping boughs. The swamp opened up into a clearing, the muddy ground trampled bare.

  It was dark. That felt wrong for some reason. Katherine looked up. The treeline stretched above the clearing, long branches poking towards the center like skeletal arms reaching for the center. The sky was covered with dark clouds. Shouldn’t it have been orange? Or blue? Yes, the sky was supposed to be blue. Why did she expect orange?

  Something else felt wrong: a dim distant pulse inside her. It was familiar, and focusing on it made her anxious. It was so faint she wondered if it was really there.

  The crying was close, but she couldn’t pinpoint its location. Katherine looked around the clearing, stumbling toward the center.

  “Mom? Mom! Where are you?” she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth to help carry her voice. She spun around, calling out in every direction.

  The crying stopped, becoming a whine.

  The sound of cracking twigs and shifting bushes drew Katherine’s eye towards the treeline. Two pale white glows grew from the darkness as the whining became louder even as it died down to sniffles.

  “K-Kat?”

  Katherine felt her knees tremble at the sound of her mother’s voice.

  “Mom?”

  The glowing orbs faded as the figure crawled out from the treeline. Katherine saw her face. It was her mother. The same long blonde hair, pale blue eyes, small nose, and sharp chin. Katherine had inherited many of her mother’s features, everything except her height. Her mother was tall, whereas Katherine had never had much of a growth spurt.

  Her mother seemed even taller than usual, and there were other things that were wrong. But they didn’t matter. Her mother was here. She was alive.

  Katherine ran to her, embracing her in a hug. Katherine held on tight. Her mother was cold.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Kat. I’ve been looking for you,” her mother said. She reached out, returning the embrace. Katherine felt the four bony arms wrap around her.

  “How are you here?” Katherine asked.

  “Shh. That doesn’t matter. We’re together now. Just stay still.”

  That feeling, that pulse, became louder. It was still so faint, and Katherine hated it for ruining this moment. Where had she felt it before? Was it… back in Parton? When they’d been attacked by that rocky monster in the street, stuck in a panicked swarm of people. The feeling was weaker than before, yet it was still the same. Why was she feeling that again?

  Suddenly her mother’s grip felt too tight, her skin too cold. How was her mother here? Why was Katherine here? She’d been asleep. Suddenly it all felt horribly wrong.

  Katherine felt the pulse spike, shooting anxiety into her like an intravenous injection. Instincts that Justus’s training had drilled in her took over, and she activated her skill.

  [Deflection]

  Use your Spirit to absorb and temporarily store kinetic energy, then release it in a powerful strike.

  Cooldown Skill: 60 seconds

  The skill activated for only a moment before Katherine felt something sharp press against her spine, on the back of her neck. An incredible amount of kinetic energy flooded her body, and by habit she formed a Spirit cradle to hold onto it.

  She tried to push away, but the arms held her close. Katherine heard a screech as the sharp thing retreated from her skin. She looked up to see her mother’s face was twisted with rage. The thing screeched again, and Katherine saw something pointy blurring in the air as it moved.

  The screech became a shriek as Katherine put a hand to the creature and released the kinetic force. It stumbled back, pushing her away. Katherine went flying with terrifying speed, landing on the thankfully soft mud and tumbling backwards. Her training once again took hold of her, and she regained her balance, sliding to a stop on one knee. She looked up to see a monster.

  It looked like a scorpion, a praying mantis, and a human had been thrown into a blender together. It had the head and upper body of a woman, but it had four insect-like arms with clawed hands. Under the stomach were the arms of a praying mantis, thick and covered in spikes inside their folded forms. Underneath the woman’s waist it had a segmented body, much like a thin scorpion, with four legs to match. The body curled up into a thick, dextrous tail that ended with a foot-long spike, the same one that had tried to stab Katherine in the neck.

  The woman-monster looked up. Its face was different now, smooth and featureless, like a fleshy mannequin. Its jaws split, connected with a fleshy membrane and revealing a mouth far too large and toothy to be human. Then it charged.

  Panic filled Katherine. She pushed out, activating her other skill.

  [Pyromancy]

  Conjure a fireball of varying size in an area.

  Energy Skill

  Current Energy: 0/80

  Katherine held nothing back, pouring as much energy as she could into the attack. The creature, thankfully slow to get moving, was engulfed in a pillar of flames that nearly peaked over the treeline. The fire lit up the dark clearing as the monster thrashed inside its heat.

  The flames died out within seconds. The monster shook its head before it settled on her. It went completely still, a look of primal fury that looked all the more unsettling on a somewhat human face. It didn’t even seem singed by the attack.

  The monster charged again, holding out a giant bladed hand covered in serrated spikes. It swiped at her, and Katherine dove to the ground. The attack swept over her. She swore she could feel the whoosh of air from the force. That would have killed her or, at the very least left her unable to fight or even escape. Katherine pushed herself up into a sprint for the treeline.

  But the monster had been moving while she had been dodging. It reached out and grabbed Katherine by the shoulder, clawed fingers digging into her robes and the flesh beneath. Katherine screamed, pulling at the fingers with both hands to try and pry them off her. The digits were like iron, completely unyielding. The beast lifted her into the air. The pain became even worse as her weight was concentrated onto the injury. She thrashed, trying to escape. Her struggling made the pain all the more terrible, but her adrenaline pushed her through.

  The monster turned her around to face it. Katherine summoned a blast of fire in its face, but she didn’t have nearly enough energy to even distract the thing. It shook off the short-lived burst of flames. It lifted Katherine even higher, above its face. It looked up to her and opened its split-apart mouth. The jaw split wider than ever, the membrane stretching as it unhinged its jaws like a snake. She struggled harder, tears stinging her eyes.

  Katherine looked up, not wanting to see. She was going to die. What would Simon and Justus think? Would they ever know? Something appeared in the air, thirty feet above her. A person. They held something long and pointed. For a moment Katherine wondered if she was hallucinating again, but the figure fell, and she realized who it was. Justus.

  Justus cut through the air, twisting to bring down the bladed weapon he held in both hands. The blade narrowly missed Katherine and struck the creature in the arm. There was a shriek, then something slapped her back. The shriek sounded far away. She was on the ground. She heard something thump onto the muddy grass next to her. She looked to see Justus crouched on the ground.

  He’d teleported them mid-fall. They were on the other side of the clearing, the creature a hundred or so feet away. It pulled the weapon out of its arm. The weapon was some kind of spear; only the bladed tip was like a short sword. There was a name for those weapons, but she couldn’t remember or care to think much about it. To Katherine’s shock, the monster looked over at them and hurled the weapon. It went sailing towards them with frightening speed.

  Katherine threw herself to the side but noticed Justus stood in place. She watched as he sidestepped the weapon. He threw an arm out and caught the thing from the air, letting himself spin to disperse its momentum. The weapon shimmered and blinked out of existence. Back into his inventory.

  “Can you fight?” he asked. “Running isn’t an option here. That thing could cut through the trees faster than you can run, and I can’t Blink through the trees with you.”

  Katherine glanced back up at the sky. A plan was forming in her mind. She double-checked her cooldown. She kept an eye on the monster. It was approaching, but with more caution.

  “How high can you teleport us?” She asked.

  “A few miles, maybe, but the cooldown would be too long.”

  “And you don’t have a hang glider or parachute or something like that in your inventory?”

  “No.”

  The monster began charging. Plan B it was.

  “Send us up a thousand feet.”

  Justus looked at her like she was crazy.

  “Trust me, do it!”

  Justus glanced at the charging monster, then her. He shook his head, then pulled her close.

  The air became colder, and Katherine’s stomach dropped. She looked down and screamed. Conceptually she had known what she was asking for, but there was nothing that could have prepared her for suddenly freefalling a thousand feet in the air. It was way higher than she had imagined.

  She heard Justus shout over the wind, but primal panic and terror gripped her as she saw the ground fast approaching. The ground grew bigger as they quickly approached. She’d thought with a thousand feet they would have more time, but in just a few seconds—

  Something struck her in the face. It stung. The pain snapped her out of the panic. Anger flared up in its place. Did he just fucking slap her?

  “The plan!” Justus shouted in her ear.

  Her eyes widened. Right, she had a plan.

  She grabbed Justus by the waist, making sure her legs were closer to the ground than his. She looked down. The ground was much, much closer than she thought it would be. They were not two seconds away from crashing into it. She used her Deflection skill, which had come off cooldown just in time. She only hoped it would work. She’d never tested its limits this way.

  They came to a sudden stop. There was no sense of motion. One moment they were in free-fall; the next moment she was standing on the ground, holding Justus. He was too heavy for her to carry, and she dropped him. Worse, a sudden influx of pain filled her Spirit.

  A veritable hurricane of energy thrashed inside her. By instinct she began trapping it, but there was so much that she needed to use nearly a quarter of her spirit reserves just to contain it. She could almost feel the energy buzzing underneath her skin.

  She heard a screech, looking up to see the monster twist to look at where they’d landed.

  Justus stood in front of her. She felt the slight shimmer of his awareness skill.

  “I’ll distract it as best as I can.”

  He charged the creature. It struck with its tail, the barbed point coming down with a speed her eyes could barely follow. Justus seemed to see the attack before it came, ducking out of the way and tumbling to the side, already getting in position to dodge the swipe of the serrated blade-like limb.

  The creature fixed its attention on him, and he led it to face away from Katherine. But she wasn’t even sure she could move. It was taking all her focus just to keep the energy in place. If she moved, she was certain she’d lose her hold.

  The kinetic force exploded constantly inside her, her spirit only barely keeping up with its attempts to escape.

  An idea struck her. A risky one. Given where the energy had come from, if she lost her grip on it, she’d be sent flying into the air. That would probably end up killing her. But that would happen if she tried moving too.

  She focused on the energy—focused on how it felt to hold. Like a churning ball. A whirlpool with an added dimension. She tried something different. Instead of creating a new trap, she created a blade of Spirit in her and severed the whirlpool in two.

  The churning spirit faltered for a moment. She felt the kinetic energy begin to shoot out. Then it stabilized as she affixed her will onto it. Like a whirlpool that was disrupted by a rock being thrown into it, the Spirit current that trapped the energy recovered itself, carried by its own momentum. Now, two wells of energy sat inside her. It had worked.

  Katherine grinned, fixing her attention on the smaller source of energy. She created a channel that connected to the ball of her foot. Then she created a channel towards her palm for the larger well.

  She positioned herself, aiming at the monster, and released the smaller well of spirit. The blast of kinetic force sent her flying forward. The bang made the monster turn its attention from Justus. It turned just in time to see her hand reach out towards its neck.

  The second she made contact, she let go of the energy. Like an erupting volcano, it exploded through the channel she’d formed. The creature howled as its neck erupted in white and silver light.

  “Yes!” Katherine shouted.

  Then the monster slammed an arm into her side.

  Hot pain shot through her as she was knocked aside like a ragdoll. The air was ripped from her lungs as she landed hard on her side, thankfully not the side where the beast had torn into her shoulder. She struggled to sit up, hearing the screeching beast.

  It slammed the ground with its legs, a hand gripping its neck where the wound still ejected a misty spray of a metallic sheen. It lifted its stinger into the air, pointed at her. The stinger shot down towards her.

  Then Justus Blinked onto the monster’s back, bladed polearm in hand. Something glittered in the air in front of the beast’s neck, the space around it becoming sharply blurred. Justus swung the weapon through that space. The moment the weapon passed through the shimmer, it accelerated to a blinding speed, plunging it right through the beast’s fingers and into the wound. Mist exploded as its head flew into the air, separated from its neck.

  The shrieking died, and the stinger flew past Katherine, missing her by less than a foot. The beast fell to the ground, dead.

  Justus let out a heavy sigh, facing away from her. Katherine was too terrified and full of adrenaline to do anything more than stare as she panted for breath. She watched as Justus gestured toward the monster’s corpse. The mist began pooling out faster, condensing in front of his hand.

  The condensing mist pooled into multiple metallic bars that glinted in the light of the mist that continued pouring onto them. The creature began crumbling, as if hollowed out. Within half a minute the beast was gone; the only thing left was four large bars of metal on the forest floor. Justus reached for them, and they shimmered before vanishing. He stayed there, crouched and unmoving aside from the slow and steady breaths he took.

  Katherine finally managed to stand, her fear giving way to excitement. She’d actually managed to help kill the thing. After all the training, she had won. Despite all her days spent practicing, part of her hadn’t been able to believe she could be useful. She could be dangerous.

  “Justus, we—”

  Justus disappeared, Blinking only a couple feet from her. Katherine’s eyes widened, and she took a step back. His eyes locked onto hers. He’d always looked stern, even with his passive expression. Now his face was twisted with rage. It was the most emotion she’d ever seen from him, and it was directed right at her.

  He sprang forward, grabbing her robes with an iron grip.

  “Where is my guidestone?”