Eshara’s hammer slammed to a halt less than six inches from the monster’s skull.

  For that matter, everything around her froze. In a blink of an eye, the air had congealed into solid mithril. The rhythm of combat was so ingrained in her that she didn’t make a conscious decision to fight back; her body did of its own accord. Yet even when she jerked and twisted with all her strength, she couldn’t so much as make the spell holding her wobble.

  Under normal circumstances, she might have continued struggling, might have analyzed her situation and decided whether to activate emergency measures, but she didn’t here and now. Because her brain had frozen for three separate reasons.

  First, the sheer lack of give in the constraining spell—she was Titled, and not freshly minted, and heaving against near enough any magic in the world should produce at least some bend or indication of strain. Yet she hadn’t got the slightest sensation that it had, even if reading the flow of mana wasn’t her strong suit.

  Second, the killing blow she had sent crashing down onto Corvan had been stopped. Which meant her teammate wasn’t dead. If just for a moment longer.

  And third: she recognized the voice.

  “That was way too close,” the woman behind Eshara said.

  A new spell scooped Eshara up and floated her away. She couldn’t even shift her gaze around to see what was happening. Once she was a dozen meters away, the magical constraints holding her in place vanished. She stumbled before steadying herself and spinning to face the intruder.

  There, ten feet off the ground, floated the Sorceress. With… a redheaded cat beastkin accompanying her, of all things.

  Naturally, Eshara failed to understand what she was looking at.

  The demon continued acting without much concern. She pointed her staff at the mutated form of Corvan, speaking to Eshara as she wrapped layers of magic around the monstrous man. “I should be able to recover him,” the Sorceress told her, tone impassive, “though he’s far gone. I should use a potion to be safe. I can rip out the infection itself, that’s just biomancy—complex but doable. The recovery will be more complicated. Healing isn’t my specialty, as I’m sure you know.”

  Turning her staff, the Sorceress ferried Corvan off to the side, then faced the enormous Seed of Genesis. Magic gathered in the length of gnarled wood.

  “[Shell of Isolation].”

  A transparent blue shield sprang up around the monstrosity, snapping off the many strands of flesh hooking the Seed to the pit’s walls like a guillotine passing through puppet strings. With yet another casual swipe of her staff, she sent away that opponent too, up toward the roof of the cave. Presumably to be dealt with later.

  Which was when Eshara finally collapsed to her knees, her legs giving out. At the noise of plate mail meeting stone—and Eshara’s heavy hammer also slipping from her grip—Vivisari’s bored red gaze flicked to her.

  “Lady Vivisari?” Eshara whispered.

  A short pause. “Yes. I apologize for the… timing. I had to heal the townsfolk first, since I assumed you were hunting the Seed. But I came as quickly as I could when I found out what was happening.” Vivisari’s eyes flicked to the red-haired beastkin floating next to her, as if remembering something. The girl was wearing an expression of plain concern targeted at Eshara. She had clearly read something in Eshara’s posture that the older woman hadn’t. “And this is my apprentice, Saffra,” the Sorceress introduced.

  That was a stunning announcement in its own right, but Eshara was already shocked to the point of barely being able to form coherent thoughts. The realization that the Sorceress had taken an apprentice passed straight through her mind.

  More important were the two truly earth-shattering revelations:

  The Sorceress had returned.

  And Eshara hadn’t needed to—and wouldn’t need to—kill her own teammate.

  “You… can save him?” Eshara repeated, her words barely audible.

  At Eshara’s tone of voice, a hint of worry appeared on Vivisari’s face, brow furrowing in a muted imitation of her apprentice’s. “It’ll be more involved than most of the others, but yes. I’m certain. Don’t worry.” She looked at Corvan, studied him for a second, and nodded as if in confirmation to herself. “He was your teammate, I take it?”

  Eshara let the reassurance wash through her. There was essentially no guarantee more absolute than a promise from the Sorceress herself.

  Was she… imagining all of this?

  Had she lost against the Seed and been put under a magical delusion? She might have given credence to the idea if not for how the Sorceress had brought her apprentice along. Eshara’s subconscious never would have invented that detail. The discordant addition—along with how the Flesh-Weaver and his creations didn’t use mind magic to begin with—convinced her that what she was experiencing was real.

  Which meant Corvan was safe.

  She had made the decision to kill him. Had even acted on that choice, not merely resolved to do what she must. She had delivered the final blow. And then once more, the Party of Heroes had appeared as if from thin air and granted a miracle, like she herself always failed to do for others.

  How was she supposed to make sense of the flood of emotions that crashed through her, all at once? She could have spent all year sorting herself out.

  But she knew what she felt most.

  Relief.

  So thick it choked her. No matter the horror of what she’d done, the Sorceress’s arrival, or anything else—one thing mattered most. Corvan wasn’t dead. She had failed him, certainly, but not in the ultimate sense.

  She was too exhausted to fight it: tears welled in her eyes. She removed her helmet and, slowly sinking down, bent over to press her forehead into the ground. She bowed as deeply as she could for the woman who had already given her so much and then somehow, impossibly, extended that grace yet once more when she needed it most.

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  “Thank you,” she croaked out, squeezing her eyes shut as she pressed her forehead harder into stone. “Thank you.” She gasped in a breath. “Thank you, Lady Vivisari.”

  The response, when it came, was nothing short of panicked, at least by the recollections Eshara had of the aloof mage. “Eshara. Eshara, what are you doing? Please, stop that.”

  Eshara heard the mage release the flight spell and hurry over. She was vaguely aware—through the corner of blurry vision—of the mage crouching down next to her, hesitating, and resting a hand on her pauldron.

  “Really, you don’t need to do this, Eshara. Don’t thank me. Please.”

  Eshara couldn’t fulfill the singular request. The gratitude she felt in that moment was too overwhelming; she had to express it. Even when Vivisari gently tried to pull her up, Eshara refused, keeping her forehead pressed into the ground.

  It was the least dignified reunion she could have imagined between her and her prior guildmaster, and somehow she didn’t care. Again: nothing mattered besides how her hammer hadn’t crashed into the skull of a man she had spent three years training and traveling with. What other reaction would she have had?

  “I should’ve gotten here faster,” the Sorceress murmured after a minute had passed. “I didn’t waste any time, but still, I…”

  She trailed off, not that Eshara could pay much attention to what the woman was saying. Her thoughts were in too much disarray.

  Eventually, she dragged back a semblance of control. When she peeled her forehead up and sat back heavily, stunned, she somehow still didn’t feel embarrassed. Bit by bit, the overwhelming emotions seeped out, leaving nothing except a numb exhaustion.

  The concerned look on Vivisari’s face almost broke that hastily built composure, since Eshara knew this wasn’t a woman who showed such expressions easily. I must really look a mess. Hollis was always calling her too self-serious, but even she dredged up some amusement at the display she’d put on. Yes, definitely not how I imagined meeting her again…

  “Sorry,” Eshara finally mumbled. “I’m fine now.”

  Vivisari studied her, and the worry that didn’t seem to be going anywhere refreshed Eshara’s disorientation. The Sorceress was not an emotional person. Not outwardly. For that matter, Vivisari had always intimidated Eshara most out of the Heroes. As any mage so powerful, cold, and elusive would. It had only been due to Orion’s consistent ribbing of his teammate—since the Knight had been the man she, the blacksmith, had worked with most often at Vanguard—that Eshara’s view had slowly shifted.

  She would never share Orion’s perspective that Vivisari was ‘an obsessed bookworm and a bit crazy, but a giant sweetheart once you get to know her,’ yet hearing those words had broken the illusion, and Eshara had been able to see past the veil over the following years. What she had seen as cold was really just an outward affectation of aloofness—and not an intentional one from what Eshara understood. She might never have gotten to know Vivisari like the Heroes had, but she had glimpsed some aspects of her personality that no doubt few in the world had.

  “I should… collect everyone you left behind,” Vivisari told her when they’d been sitting in silence for another minute. “Heal everyone, deal with the Seed. I saw the ones in the tunnels earlier, by the way. I’ll be able to cure them too. Good job with that.”

  The news should’ve been uplifting, but the relief couldn’t quite pierce the numbness that had come over her. Too many impossible, shocking events back-to-back. All she did was nod mutely in response.

  “I also sensed another mage?” Vivisari said. “Hiding behind a wall. Is that an ally of yours too?”

  “Yes,” she grunted. “Hollis.”

  Vivisari waited for more of an explanation, but Eshara was too wrung-out. She shrugged.

  “Okay,” Vivisari said. “Good, I’ll bring him here. We can get all of this sorted out.” The Sorceress stood, and though her posture didn’t radiate hesitation, Eshara sensed it anyway. “Do you… need anything from me?”

  Eshara was being doted on by the most powerful mortal being in the world. How absurd. The embarrassment finally started seeping in. Though she still only managed a one-word response.

  “No.”

  “Then I won’t be long.” The Sorceress glanced at her apprentice and communicated something silently to her. Mostly, the beastkin made insistent hand movements that almost seemed like a shooing gesture, but Eshara obviously must have misinterpreted that, because no one would shoo the Sorceress. Vivisari disappeared with a teleportation spell a moment later.

  As strange as it was, Eshara was relieved that Vivisari had left. She needed a moment to recover without her prior guildmaster watching her.

  Silence reigned—Eshara wasn’t sure how long. The beastkin eventually broke it.

  “You did the right thing, by the way.”

  The words caught Eshara’s attention as much for the tone as the content. Careful, but challenging—like she was daring Eshara to contradict her. The follow-up came a second later, though as a mumble, without any of the prior heat.

  “But, um, you do already know that, I’m sure. Doesn’t help. You’ll always wish you could’ve done more, and blame yourself.” Her volume rose again, her chin lifted, and she crossed her arms. “But that isn’t how you should think, and I’m the only one here to tell you that. So. There you go.”

  Eshara finally broke her gaze from the ground and looked at the girl. Saffra, Vivisari had introduced her as. The girl fidgeted at Eshara’s attention and didn’t meet her eyes, plainly uncomfortable. Eshara intuited that the girl hadn’t wanted to say anything at all but had felt compelled to.

  Eshara laughed. Well, more of a quiet huff, thanks to her current state. She wasn’t a child; she didn’t need cheering up. And yet, the words did help, in some small way.

  She looked forward again and mulled over the statements, not replying right away. The declaration affected Eshara not just because of how cleanly it struck at what she was feeling, but because of what that insight meant.

  Why had a girl seemingly just into her teenage years so instantly understood the event she had randomly teleported into, and why was she empathizing with that turmoil Eshara was experiencing?

  It made some of Eshara’s resolve return. Indeed, that was why she fought. Why she’d made the terrible decision to end Corvan’s life in the first place. She wanted to bear those burdens, so others didn’t have to. So children didn’t so easily look at horrors beyond their youth and understand them—from experience. There was too much darkness in the world, and it was her duty to push it back.

  Taking a deep breath, Eshara ran a hand through her hair and forced herself to stand. Even if she’d rather stay sitting there for another hour. Or ten.

  “Thank you,” she told Saffra, who seemed surprised at the sudden recovery. “You’re right, of course.”

  “I—” The bewildered tone almost suggested that she would disagree with Eshara by reflex, but then she paused. “I… am, yeah. Glad you agree.”

  A small twitch made it onto Eshara’s lips, though she was too numb to produce anything nearing a real smile. “Not the most dignified state my lady could have seen me in after a hundred years,” she mused.

  Though it’d been a joke, the girl frowned at her. “You were fighting a Cataclysm’s remnant, winning, and then were happy when you didn’t have to do something bad to someone you care about. I haven’t known Lady Vivi that long, but I don’t think there’s any better way you could have introduced yourself.”

  Eshara opened her mouth, then closed it.

  That… did skirt the breakdown, the rather useless way she’d slumped over and lost control of herself, but she supposed the girl had a point in principle.

  Definitely too insightful for her years. That only comes about in one way. The obvious explanations dampened Eshara’s mood. Where had the Sorceress found this girl?

  Eshara focused on a less serious part of what Saffra had said, since it had stuck out to her. “Lady Vivi?” she said, echoing the nickname.

  The girl blinked. “Oh, that’s, uh, how I first met her. It was her cover at the time and I—” She paused. “Dunno, I kept using it, and she doesn’t seem to mind? Haven’t thought about it really.”

  “Her cover?”

  Saffra snorted. “Yeah. ‘Cover.’ I know.”

  “I… see.” Eshara would probably find that more amusing later, when she’d had time to rest. She looked down at herself. “I’m covered in gore.” Fighting the Flesh-Weaver’s creations was especially messy business, even by the standards of adventuring work. “Let me get cleaned up.”

  “Okay.”

  Eshara wouldn’t normally care about some blood, but she wanted time to organize her thoughts. It’d been an excuse to end the conversation, brief as it was. With her head slowly clearing, there was so much to think about—the practical implications of Vivisari’s arrival, and how, as the mage herself had pointed out, things were far from resolved. Eshara looked at the floating Seed of Genesis, then at Corvan, and finally shook herself before pulling out a cleaning artifact.

  Vivisari went to Hollis, she couldn’t help but think. I wonder how he’s taking the Sorceress’s sudden appearance.