“You’re going to do just fine! Just stay behind Ana and focus on your channeling, like I’ve showed you, yeah?”
A few feet away from everyone else Kaira was talking softly to Deni, the youngest, and completely untested, member of the group. Deni’s excitement had turned into a severe case of performance anxiety the moment the time came for actual fighting, and all the women except Ana and Rayni were doing their best to boost her self-confidence. Ana would have been with them, for the sake of appearances and team cohesion if nothing else, but she was at the front sneaking along behind Rayni.
The scout was leading them to where she’d last seen the demon, stopping them all to look, listen, and even sniff the air sometimes before continuing, sometimes changing their direction slightly.
Ana and Deni would, in practice, be acting as a two-woman team. Ana would be “frontlining”, meaning that she would be staying between Deni and the enemy, taking the brunt of the demon’s attacks and trying to hold its attention. Deni, meanwhile, would be “backlining”, doing as much damage as possible at range. She didn’t have any of her actual Craft Skills yet, but she knew a spell or three, apparently, and trying to get her a Skill was part of the purpose of this whole exercise. Ana wasn’t sure how it all worked, but Kaira seemed confident that Deni had what it would take, and that was good enough for Ana.
The other purpose was, of course, to see how effective the newbies were. And possibly that the more experienced women thought it was funny to throw them at a demon to see what happened. Ana might have been annoyed, but the fact that no one seemed worried, and that Deni was well liked among the others, was reassuring.
“There!” Rayni stopped them with a whispered word and a hand signal. She crowded in close to Ana, nearly cheek to cheek, and pointed. “See? The gray and purple blotch there. It’s moving. Stands about two and a half feet tall. That’s your prey.”
Ana looked carefully. At first she didn’t see anything, but then it moved, just like Rayni had said, and Ana saw it. No details, just a smear of color in the distance among the trees. It must be 200 feet away, Ana thought, but when she knew where to look it was impossible to miss.
“What the hell am I looking at?” she whispered. Even without detail, it was just wrong. Offensive to her eyes in a way that nothing had ever been.
“Used to be a badger, until some spirit or other got into it and made it into… that.” Rayni waved her hand vaguely at the thing. “Badgers can be nasty, and this is gonna be worse. But it’s not too big, and not too high threat. The two of you’ll be fine.”
“Got it,” Ana whispered back and nodded, then turned her head. “Deni? Ready to go?”
Deni closed her eyes and swallowed. “Y-yeah,” she stuttered. She took one hesitant step forward, the others pushing her gently along, then another, and another, becoming steadier as she went.
“We’re all right behind you if anything goes wrong,” Kaira said softly. “But it won’t, because you’re both stone cold bitches with death in your eyes, right? You’ve got this! Deni, once Ana has its attention, stop suppressing your aura and focus on shaping. Now go! Get that little shit!”
Ana checked her straps, grabbed her buckler tightly, and drew her sword. She’d drilled with this exact same equipment most of the previous day, but now, wearing it, standing there, it felt… odd. Odd, but not bad. Exciting, mostly. It was like stepping up on the mat against an opponent she’d never faced before, not knowing if she was about to kick ass or get her ass kicked.
“Follow me,” she said to Deni, her voice calm and sure. “I’m going to go piss it off.”
With that she broke into a jog. Perhaps, she thought, she should have been more careful, more methodical. She didn’t really know what she was going up against, she didn’t know what Deni was capable of, and for all her practice she hadn’t actually fought using a sword before. But the confidence the other women in the Party had shown them, and the fact that she’d been asked to deliberately draw out the fight to let Deni get more hits in, made her feel like the outcome was a foregone conclusion. They’d trounce this thing. That knowledge didn’t stop adrenaline from rushing into her veins, though, as she got closer and got a good look at the thing.
It had been a badger, just like Rayni had said. But not one of the friendly-looking British badgers. This looked like a cross between a honey-badger and an alligator had suffered some kind of horrible, mutating accident.
Rayni’s estimate of its size had been a little off, but not by much. The demon stood just over waist high to Ana, and was moving along with a slow, twitchy kind of walk. It was nauseatingly bloated and twisted. Its fur was slick and matted with… something, its skin covered in lesions, and it looked like it had too many bones with knots and bends and ribs twisting out of its skin to point redly in every direction.
Demon was the right description for it. It started to turn when Ana was about sixty feet away, showing her a face full of too many twisted teeth, and too many eyes rolling madly and hatefully as she sensed it focusing on her. She felt a stab of fear deep in her gut, but fought it down. She needed to do this.
Thirty feet out she saw a label. [Possessed Badger (Threat: Serious)]. No Class or level, was all Ana had time to think before the thing shrieked, a warbling, cutting sound that Ana’s brain tried to reject as impossible. The thing twisted unnaturally and lurched forward, and as Ana’s senses screamed Danger! her bonuses kicked in.
The world came into sharp focus and seemed to slow down as the weight of her gear became negligible. Whatever training Ana had from Tor fled her, and she did the first thing that came naturally to her. The moment the demon got close, she kicked it.
She barely saw or felt her own leg move, but she felt the heel of her boot connect with the badger’s snout in a textbook push-kick. She could have gone for damage, but in the split second between deciding to kick it and actually beginning the movement, she’d remembered that Deni was supposed to be the one to destroy the thing. Her back foot dug in, then slid in the loamy soil of the forest floor as the creature’s momentum was canceled out, and then all hundred-plus pounds of the thing flew back with a terrible, frustrated yowl.
With no one but the demon to see, Ana grinned wildly. “Come fucking get some!” she screamed at it, then turned to look behind her. Deni was fifty feet behind, looking shocked at how easily Ana had knocked the thing back. “Come on, Deni!” Ana shouted. “Light it up!”
Deni looked at her, then answered Ana’s wild joy with a weak smile of her own and leaped forward, her lips moving silently. Ana would have loved to keep watching, to see what would happen, but a furious scrabbling alerted her that the demon wasn’t done.
The twisted thing was getting to its feet. Blood streaked with blackish-purple ran freely from its face, but it showed no sign of being affected by the kick and came lumbering in again. This time Ana forced herself to remain conscious of her weapons, and when the demon lurched forward she slammed it with her shield, stopping it and knocking it sideways. She was raising her sword to strike, intending to go for joints and tendons to slow it down, when a blindingly bright marble flashed in from behind her with a tearing, screaming noise, passing just barely to her right. Ana felt the heat of it as it went by, in almost the same instant as it hit the demon.
There was a cracking pop as the putrid flesh where the marble hit superheated and exploded outwards, leaving a fist-sized crater. Scorched flesh and burning fur joined the acrid stench that already hung around the thing, and the demon staggered, then looked past Ana with a hunger that made Ana’s stomach twist.
“Oh, shit!” Deni exclaimed from behind her. “Oh, no! Sorry! I’m so sorry!”
The demon launched itself forward again, this time trying to get past Ana to Deni, but it was frustrated when Ana got between them, buckler up and sword flashing. The steel bit into the creature’s shoulder, but while it staggered it still tried to power through.
The fight would be easy to finish, Ana realized. The demon seemed completely focused on Deni now, and barely even reacted to Ana’s own attack. But that was not what they were there for.
“Angle!” Ana called, not taking her eyes off the demon. “Move around so you get a better angle!”
She couldn’t see Deni, but she could see the demon tracking her, trying to get past Ana as she stabbed, bashed, and kicked to slow it and stop it from getting anywhere. The thing never touched her, but its drool stung when it spattered her bare skin, leaving pink welts even if wiped off immediately. A second marble came in and missed, blowing a smoking pit among the leaves, then a third and a fourth that hit. The last caught the demon in the back leg, blowing the limb apart below the knee and reducing it to dragging itself on its two remaining limbs.
The cheering and whooping from the onlookers told Ana that the fight was, indeed over. “Finish it off, Deni!” she called, kicking it down as it managed to get unsteadily to three feet.
“Out of my way!” Deni answered. “I wanna try a spell but I can’t have anything in between it and me!”
Ana looked at the downed demon, then back at Deni, who already looked like she was casting, and hastily moved back and to the side. As her lips moved Deni’s hair began to stand out from her scalp, and she threw her staff down, reached out with both hands, and screamed.
A jagged flash connected Deni’s hands to the badger, and the upper half of it simply blew apart. The tiniest moment after that there was a literal thunderclap, so loud it made Ana drop her sword and shield to reflexively cover her ears.
Good God, Ana thought as she blinked against the flashing purple streak in her vision, if that’s what a complete newbie who didn’t even have a Class could do with magic, what could Kaira do? Forget that the physics of it seemed all wrong. Who could worry about that when a girl, a level 6 Clerk, for God’s sake, had just blown a creature up with magic!?
Deni, breathing heavily, looked at what she had done. Shreds of fur and meat and bone were scattered across the forest floor, and stuck to and sometimes in the bark of trees. She turned her saucer eyes at her hands. And then she fell over.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
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Congratulations! Your Skill Inspect has improved to level 2! You have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Lesser).
Congratulations! Your Party has defeated: Possessed Badger (Threat: Serious). Based on your contribution, you have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Lesser). For fighting in the defense of your object of devotion, you have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Least) as a bonus.
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</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Ana quickly looked at the notifications as her bonuses left her and the world returned to normal, together with a stinging sensation on the right side of her head. Then she joined the others in rushing over to Deni. Being closest she reached Deni first, but there was nothing to worry about. Deni, while showing every sign of being exhausted, was laughing, half delirious as she rolled and kicked among the leaves. When Ana leaned over her, Deni locked eyes with her and started repeating, “I got it! I got it!” in a croaking giggle.
“What did you get!?” Kaira asked, almost feral with excitement as she joined Ana on her knees by the laughing girl.
“Lightning! Craft-Evocation-Lightning! Didn’t get Fire yet but I got Lightning! I could never do that spell before but the moment felt so good, so right, I don’t know! I just went for it and it worked and I got it!”
“You got it? You got it!” Kaira exclaimed, then grabbed Deni by the front of her padded jacket and hauled her off the ground and into a hug. What followed was that Ana stood back, feeling awkward as Deni was passed around like a giggling doll, being embraced and congratulated by each of the women in turn. Except for Rayni, who stood next to Ana looking uncomfortable with the outpouring of emotion.
“So… big deal?” Ana asked.
“Very,” Rayni said. “She’s got all the Skills she needs now. She can reset and become an Evoker whenever she wants.”
“She’s already pretty effective. I mean, she turned half of that thing into mince. Will the Skills and the Class make that much of a difference?”
“That thing was already worn down, and pretty badly hurt. That spell wouldn’t have been nearly as effective on something at full strength, but I’m guessing she knew that.”
“All right, good to know. One of my Skills improved, too. Inspect. Is that common, getting a Skill on your first real fight?”
“Eh,” Rayni wiggled her hand in the air. “Not uncommon, I guess. Being under a lot of stress seems to help. But Deni almost killed herself with that spell, and I’m guessing you inspected enough powerful shit with that badger to cross the line.”
Something had been a little off about Rayni, Ana thought. She was fidgety. But then Rayni turned to face Ana directly, and said, “By the way…”
“Yeah?”
“I’m on to you, Anastasia Cole.”
Something prickled at the back of Ana’s neck, but she didn’t sense any danger from the other woman. It was more like a sudden sense of the Huntress wanting something from her. Sense Motive in action, probably. “How so?”
“You’re not a fucking civvie,” Rayni said furtively. At first it looked like she was forcing the words out, but as she talked her confidence seemed to grow. “Definitely not a social Class. I’ve been watching you. You’re too strong. Your reactions are too fast. And no way should you have been able to see that demon from where I pointed it out. So you’ve got some kind of hidden Class, either combat or hybrid, that you’re not letting on.”
“Really? You think so?” Ana said, letting her face go blank.
“Yep,” Rayni said. They looked at each other for several long seconds while the others cheered in the background, and Ana could see Rayni go from confident, to merely sure of herself, to uncertain, until Rayni finally blinked and licked her lips nervously.
“And what if I do?” Ana asked coldly.
Rayni hesitated. Whatever her game plan had been, it clearly hadn’t survived contact with reality. “Nothing,” she said. “I, ah, I just don’t like my teammates lying to me.”
“If you’re right, shouldn’t you be glad to have me on the team?”
“I—”
“You saw how I handled that badger thing. I could have killed it myself. Easily, even. Probably didn’t even need my sword, if it came down to it. Isn’t that an asset to a team like this?”
“...yeah,” Rayni said, with a look in her eyes that Ana had learned to recognize. It was the look of someone who desperately regretted starting something that they now realized that they couldn’t win.
“Great,” Ana said, clapping the other woman on the back just a little more firmly than necessary. “Good chat.” Then she went over and joined the others in congratulating Deni.
That had been interesting, Ana thought as she effortlessly went back to the friendly, excited person she’d been projecting to the Party so far. She hadn’t done anything consciously, but she could feel Intimidation working when she spoke to Rayni. She’d chosen her words and mannerisms, of course, but there had been another layer to it, something beyond what she’d expressed, a general vibe of “don’t fuck with me.” And it worked perfectly! When she looked back at Rayni a little later the woman was sitting right where Ana had left her, and when their eyes met Rayni quickly looked away.
She wouldn’t be trying anything like that again.
<hr>
Ana hadn’t gotten away as unscathed as she’d thought at the end. Sendra had sidled up to her as they were getting ready to move on, and offered to clean her up. At first Ana wasn’t sure what the water mage meant, but looking down she saw that her cream leather armor was spattered with black and reddish brown. She was instantly thankful that the creature’s blood hadn’t burned the way its spittle had.
“Your face isn’t much better, I’m afraid,” Sendra said. “Hold your breath and close your eyes, if you would.”
Not sure what to expect, Ana did as she’d been asked. There came a sensation of wetness on her face. Not running down it; it was as though she’d dipped her face in a bowl of water, but one that was moving and leaving her dry as it passed. Once the sensation vanished and Sendra said that she could open her eyes again, she looked down and saw a glob of water gliding over her armor, following the movement of Sendra’s hand.
“That’s… useful,” Ana said, the word nowhere close to expressing her amazement. “Thank you.”
“I got the worst of it, I think,” Sendra said pleasantly, then flung the now-dirty glob of water away and smiled. “You’ll need some scrubbing to get the rest, though. But, yeah. Support mage, remember? That doesn’t just mean in combat. Your hair seems to have gotten out clean, at least. What’s left of it, at least. Good thing, too, because this method isn’t great with hair.”
Ana heard what Sendra told her, let it process, then touched her hair and hissed. It turned out that Ana wouldn’t need to worry about her sides growing out for a while, at least not on the right. Deni’s first spell had passed close enough to Ana’s head that it took a liberal application of Touanne’s burn cream to her side and ear before the stinging went away.
At least the cream, and a similar one for the burns from the spittle, was good enough to prevent any permanent damage. That was what Kaira said, at any rate, and she should know.
They killed another two demons that day, but as a group — Kaira hanging back and acting as a combination coach and cheerleader — which made it truly effortless. Ana hung back those times, watching the others to see how they fought.
The first one was a corrupted squirrel the size of a labrador, which was horrifying in all kinds of ways. It was quick and agile, but Sendra turned a patch of ground in front of it into thin mud then dried it into clay, trapping two of the creature’s feet, after which Deni, Dilmik and Rayni made short work of it using their ranged attacks. The archers didn’t shoot for the throat or the major organs the way Ana understood hunters usually did, but instead aimed for joints, crippling the creature while Deni did most of the damage. Ana got a couple of shots in with her crossbow, trying to imitate Dilmik and Rayni once she realized that she wouldn’t need to fight it close up. Shooting a moving creature, even one stuck in the ground, was a lot harder than a stationary target.
The other was a lizard of some kind, but it was slow and dumb enough that the melee combatants could take turns cutting and beating it into a chunky mess. Petra, with her larger shield, stayed right up in its face, doing her best to keep its attention. Mestendi, on the other hand — or “Messy,” as Deni had recently dubbed her — lived up to her latest nickname. Staying back, waiting for openings, and lunging in time after time, she stabbed and slashed, crippling and bleeding it and generally making a mess of the thing until the three of them could close in and finish it off. And she really did make a mess. The creatures bled too much. Their blood was too thin and too black, and they barely slowed down even after losing what looked like their own volume in blood. The stuff just kept coming, even though the wounds slowly healed before Ana’s eyes as a fight dragged on.
Fucking magic, she thought to herself.
Then, after each kill, came the messy business of extracting anything useful from the carcasses. Rayni the Huntress unsurprisingly shone there. She effortlessly found and dug out strange blobs of tissue and crystallized nodules that resembled things that Touanne had asked for. She even took the time to explain what she was doing, as she sliced flesh and cracked bone to get at the disgusting treasures inside. Sendra, knowing how things worked, waited until the harvesting was done before cleaning people up. Everything went into little oiled and waxed bags, which were distributed equitably. It made, Ana thought, a decent haul, but she definitely preferred harvesting the various plants, mana-infused or otherwise, that the other women pointed out as they traveled. They smelled better.
By the time they made camp Ana really understood what they’d meant by this being both fun and lucrative. As easy as the fights had been, they’d still been exciting, with the more experienced women promising that this had all been barely a warm-up compared to the average Delve. She’d also received a bunch of Crystals — a Shard, three Leasts, and three Lessers, with her bonus Crystal always being a tier lower — and it was only the end of the first day. If the rewards in the Delves were as good as the others had led her to believe, she wouldn’t be surprised if she might make not only level 5, but level 6 by the end of this expedition, with Crystals left to sell!
Setting up camp was easy. Everyone except Deni knew what to do, and with Petra supervising everything went smoothly. They had a very companionable dinner — Stew. No surprise there — and then it was time to sleep. The only slight hitch came when Petra announced the watch rotation. The pairs would be sharing tents as well.
“I’ll take the first watch with Denikla,” Petra announced. “Camp leader’s prerogative,” she said with a grin to the boos and hisses of the assembled ladies. No one liked being woken in the middle of the night. “Then Kaira — shut up my camp my rules you’re taking a watch — with Mestendi. Then Anastasia with Rayni, and last Sendra with Dilmik. Everyone satisfied with that? Tough, that’s how we’re doing it.”
And that was how it went. In the camp, Petra’s word was law. Ana and Rayni looked at each other, Rayni fidgeting as they did, but it wasn’t like they could reasonably ask for the pair-ups to be changed. Everyone was having fun, right? Getting along, getting to know each other… It would look strange if two of them suddenly didn’t want to take a watch together.
Sitting less than two feet apart inside the tent was… uncomfortable. “I, uh, I can sleep outside,” Rayni suggested, glancing hopefully towards the open flap where the light of the fire danced, as Petra and Deni talked in low voices. Well, Deni talked, with an occasional “Uh-huh” or grunt from Petra.
“Why would you do that?” Ana asked innocently. She knew Rayni’s type. If Ana wanted to keep Rayni in line, she’d need to dictate what would happen for at least the rest of this trip. “We’re getting along, aren’t we? Nothing’s happened between us. Would you normally sleep outside?”
“No,” Rayni admitted unhappily.
“Then get in your bedroll and let’s get some sleep, Rayni. We need to be alert on our watch, and you need to be sharp to help us find a Delve tomorrow. As fun as killing demons has been, I’ll be really disappointed if I don’t get to see one of these things. Good night.”
With that Ana lay down, stretched herself out properly, and got as comfortable as she could on the thin bedroll. It wasn’t bad. She’d slept on worse. She felt completely safe, too. For one, she didn’t think that Rayni would go so far as to try to hurt her. She might be a bully at heart — Ana wasn’t entirely sure — but not the violent kind. And even if she did try something, Ana trusted in her Danger Sense and her reflexes to keep her safe.
Ana closed her eyes, but Rayni still hadn’t moved. It took until Ana relaxed completely, slowed her breathing, and affected a small snore, before Rayni sighed, lay down, and settled in.