“NOELLE!!!” Olivia’s shout was loud, guttural in a way that Alec had never heard before, let alone out of the lips of a girl as generally collected as she was.

  In an instant, the hyper-focused states that both Alec and Olivia had been in shattered into a thousand pieces with all the subtly and care of a window struck by a cannonball. The pearlescent-haired girl already four, sprinted, steps in the direction of her elder sister’s nosedive by the time that Alec caught on to her plan and followed after her.

  The oversized bird that Noelle had summoned to give her an aerial view of the battle and keep her away from most of the danger screeched in despair and anger as it tried to flap its wings and level itself out mid-nosedive. Its failure to do so more than apparent to the two teenagers as they pushed themselves as hard as they could to meet up at the expect impact zone.

  And then, in a very worrying display of sparkling purple mana, the summon shattered into a million and one pieces with one final screech of despair. The elder Kio sister left to tumble and fall headfirst toward the ground with a thin stream of blood trailing her limp body.

  “Shit! If she hits the ground like that-“

  “I know!” Olivia cut Alec off, pushing herself as hard as she could.

  She wouldn’t be able to make it, she could tell. She’d get close, so agonizingly close, but she wouldn’t be able to stop her sister from hitting the ground. There had to be something she could do, something that her useless mind could come up with to save her sister.

  Olivia’s next footfall came down especially hard as her head perked up and a flash of understanding went through her eyes. The realization lancing through her entire form like a bolt of lightning in a single moment compressed into not even a full second.

  Olivia’s lead on Alec disappeared in an instant as she paused mid-step, her lone leg bent even further than before –into something more resembling a sprinters stance– and her body tilted so far forward that she either took off running right then and there or she’d be getting a nice face full of dirt.

  The mana in the air, already shaken and disturbed from the sheer amount of it that the two [Gold-rank] combatants had been throwing around, spiked around Olivia and funneled into her. Her body a sponge for as much mana as the world was willing to give her in the short amount of time that she had to act.

  As her body filled to burst with the foreign mana, rebounding the rest that tried to funnel in and found no more gaps with which to fit itself, she acted.

  Her first step propelled her ten meters in a single motion, reaching Alec’s distance ahead of her and doubling it. Her second step added another five meters to her personal best record, her hair waving in the wind and mana crackling off her skin. Her third step halved her previous distance, her arms outstretched before her in preparation. Her fourth step brought her into direct contact with her sister, the two of them hurtling sideways across the forest and rolling painfully after their collision.

  ‘A Magic Contract!’ The realization as to Olivia’s sudden burst of speed was hardly a difficult one for Alec to work out.

  He had felt that exact same phenomenon, of the sudden influx and rebound of mana, many times by this point in his journey and was intimately aware of what caused it. When he had done it, and when he had felt it, it had been caused by the activation of Power Stances; a prelude to an attack of devastating proportions. However, as Alexandar had so helpfully explained to him, a Power Stance was nothing more than a particular application of a Magic Contract.

  For the briefest of moments, he wondered, and worried, what she had traded for that particular burst of mana-enhanced speed, but the sound of a heavy impact and the ominous creaking of a tree very quickly broke that line of thinking off at its base for a more pressing concern.

  It took him a matter of twenty-two seconds to catch up to her and her sister, already seeing her fumbling through her backpack for something as Noelle lay limp on the grass. A small moan of pain left her lips as she shifted slightly and some red seeped into her dress, which was already a bit too large for Alec’s liking.

  Taking a guess that she was looking for something to help stem the bleeding, Alec knelt down on the opposite side of Noelle and grabbed a roll of bandages out of his own pack.

  “Here,” He held the roll out to her with an insistent shake of his hand, “Use mine for now.”

  It was gone from his hand almost before he was able to react, the girl going to work with a rushed, but still effective, wrapping around her sister’s stomach. Though Alec had to lift her into a sitting position for her, both to make sure that she had both hands to work with, but also because every groan and whimper of pain seemed to make Olivia flinch as if she had been struck.

  He didn’t imagine that she would do her best work if she was the primary cause of such noises.

  “Alright, alright. There. Its done.” Olivia muttered in a slight daze, checking over her work to make absolutely certain that she hadn’t messed anything up.

  “That looked like a pretty dangerous hit.” Alec pointed out as he looked at the bandages from his own side, trying to burn the memory of how she had done them up into his mind.

  You never know when knowledge like that was going to come in handy, after all.

  “I know.” Olivia snapped, getting a small jolt from the other teen.

  He tried not to take too much offense from it, her sister had just been shot through the stomach, after all but he didn’t think that snapping at him was the best course of action here either.

  “Is she going to be ok long enough for us to get her back to Zenik?” That shot had looked pretty well aimed and there was a lot of blood.

  He had never studied it but he was also fairly certain that the kidney or liver was somewhere around where that beam of water had pierced through her two. And he was fairly certain that at least one of those two was an organ that you were meant to aim for for a quick kill, too.

  “Nooooooo, she’ll be completely fine. Of course not!” Alec gritted his teeth and tried to take a calming breath as the girl snapped at him once more.

  ‘Keep calm. She’s panicking and emotional. Her sister just got fucking shot. Keep calm and be the rational mind here.’ He repeated to himself.

  Maybe if he did it enough the hot, broiling pit of oil in his stomach would calm down enough that yelling back at her wouldn’t feel like a really cathartic idea.

  “Well, we don’t have her mounts anymore and we’re going to need to rush.” He explained, coughing as Olivia’s bag made direct contact with his chest and sent him sprawling onto his ass unceremoniously.

  “I’ll carry Noelle, you carry the gear. Now let’s go!”

  Alec got up silently as the pearlescent-haired girl set her sister up on her back gingerly, his eye twitching minutely.

  He was trying to be the bigger person, he really was. But she was making it so tempting to be petty back to her.

  ‘She’s lucky this is an actual emergency.’

  With a heavy kick-off the two teens started sprinting back towards the rough direction of Zenik, both unaware and uncaring of the pink-pupiled hawk following them from the sky.

  Its majestic form gliding casually with its eyes locked on one thing and one thing only.

  XXXxxxXXX

  That Night, Xyrtah Countryside

  Alec had noticed it the entire time that they had been running towards Zenik; the way that Olivia seemed to twinge at stronger than normal impacts, the way that her stamina flagged far sooner than his own despite the fact that it had always been comparable, the way that she had occasionally zoned out and stumbled multiple times, nearly sending both her and her extremely injured sister toppling to the ground.

  That impact with the tree, after she had stopped her sister from hitting the ground, had left its mark on Olivia. He hadn’t checked, because how was he even meant to, but he’d put down some pretty good money on a bet that a good portion of her back was a marvelous shade of purple right now after an impact like that.

  Which wasn’t good, not in the slightest. Because if she pushed herself too far then she was going to collapse as well and if that happened then Noelle could kiss her chance of survival goodbye and Alec didn’t know nearly enough about survival tricks to keep himself and somebody else alive.

  So, through great effort on his part, which once again left him wanting to scream at his very much unwilling partner, he had managed to convince her to stop and make camp for the night by pointing out that there were some ingredients for low powered healing potions in the vicinity and that it might help Noelle to have some.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The fact that she was still glaring at him, though, was very much wearing thin what little patience remained after an entire day of this treatment.

  And to think that he had shared such a peaceful breakfast with her too.

  “Here. Its not much but it’ll do.” Alec sighed, holding a thin wooden bowl of heated stew out to her.

  Olivia just grumbled from her seated position. Her eyes shifted from her sister to the offered bowl of food slowly. The two sat in silence for a moment longer before she clicked her tongue, and her arm snapped out.

  There was the unmistakable sound of something hard hitting the side of the wooden bowl before the hot stew and small, diced cubes of rabbit and edible leaves landed on his shirt and in his hair. The teen unable to stop any of this as his body locked up in sheer surprise, the stew missing his eyes only by divine miracle.

  He had known that she was angry, that she didn’t like him, and that she was stressed beyond anything he could even fathom, but he had never expected that she would react that violently to some simple good will.

  His wide blue eyes stared into her own wide red eyes, a flash of something that he couldn’t bring himself to care about flashed through her expression at right about the same time as hot, bubbling anger spilled forth into his own.

  “Wait, Alec-“ She began, reaching forward for him only to jolt back as he shot to his feet in an instant.

  “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?”

  He wasn’t one to explode with anger like this, he didn’t really have much of a temper. Not like Peter and Angelica. Yet right now it was the only thing he could feel, his rational mind shot dead and his impulses raging wild.

  “Wha- You’re accusing me of doing that on purpose!?” Now it was Olivia’s turn to leap to her feet, her previous expression hardening into something that Alec, looking back, assumed that his probably looked like too.

  “Of course I am! I spend the entire day dealing with you and your temper and now you throw my food back at me!?”

  Now, let it not be said that Olivia was an especially emotionally mature individual at this point in her life. She was far from a loose cannon, but she was also very, very far from a stone-faced stoic.

  “Me and my temper!? My sister got shot through the stomach! You expect me to just sit back and accept that with a smile on my face and a buff of my nails!?”

  “Of course not but gods dammit I’m being treated like I’m the one at fault for it!”

  “Is that what this is about!? You’re just trying to play the victim here!?”

  Alec growled and for a moment all he saw was red, his arm swiping to the side and throwing the bowl into the side of a tree with so much force the impact shattered it into a thousand tiny pieces. The wanton destruction of his own property helped to calm his temper, but only just enough to keep him from doing anything else along the same lines.

  “Why do you always do this!?”

  “So, this is my fault now!?”

  “THAT!” Alec screamed, his foot stamping on the ground and a finger pointed accusingly in her face. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Always taking my words and just- just- twisting them!”

  Alec’s breathing came out heavier as he finished his sentence, his hands hovering apart from each other with tense, curled fingers as he made small erratic motions to corroborate his words. This wasn’t what he should be doing right now, she didn’t deserve to be in this fight with him and he shouldn’t be escalating it, but he just couldn’t help it.

  Every word she spoke, every action she made, every time he noticed her glaring at him, he just couldn’t stop the bellows from pumping more air into the raging fire of his anger.

  “Twisting- I don’t do anything like that! How dare you try and call me a manipulator!”

  “Then why the hell are you always getting so angry at me when I just try to give you a compliment!? I try to congratulate you on doing a good job and all I get is spiteful words and hateful godsdamn eyes!”

  “You call those compliments!? Flaunting your power in front of my face and driving the point even further home?! In what universe am I meant to look you in the face and accept such a fake, self-congratulating lie like that!?” Olivia screamed back, her face red and her body tense and coiled, as if she was about to leap at Alec any moment now.

  It did not –in any shape, form, or capacity– help the heightened tension between the two of them that could have been cut by a knife.

  “What. The. Hell. Are you talking about?” Alec seethed.

  “Oh, now who’s the manipulator!” Olivia crossed her arms and rolled her eyes dramatically, getting a twitch of Alec’s eye in return for her effort. “You really think that I’m so stupid that I can’t realize when someone is gloating right in front of my face? You think that I can’t recognize a genius when I see one?”

  “I’m not a genius.” The words tore themselves from his lips before he could even consciously register that he was saying them, but he didn’t disagree with them in the slightest, “And I’m not gloating! I’ve never gloated to you! What the hell would I have to gloat about? Getting my ass kicked again?”

  “Are you trying to piss me off on purpose or are you just a platinum-grade moron?” She hissed, leaning forward and poking a finger against the side of her own head a few times, “You stop training beyond the bare minimum for weeks and then catch up in a matter of days, you pick techniques up like nothing I’ve ever seen before, you keep up with me despite the fact that I’ve been training for my entire fucking life and no matter what I do I can’t widen that gap and you have the gall to say that you aren’t a genius? That you aren’t gloating every time you wave your blade in my face!? You’re THE most infuriating person on the face of the Twin-Continents and somehow you don’t even realize it!”

  Alec, for a moment, let her words hang in the air between the two of them. Trying and failing to come up with a response for a few moments as his brain struggled to comprehend the words that she had just spoken. However, in his anger-riddled state of mind he didn’t want to stand there and think over a proper response. He wanted to act, he wanted to scream and most importantly he wanted to make sure she left this conversation hurt.

  “Is that why you’ve been treating me like the scum of the earth? Your own insecurities?! Are you insane? You’ve won four out of every five spars we do, you’re so consistently ahead of me in zoning its crazy and your experience as an adventurer is better than me in every way! You think that I’m ahead of you? I’m so far below you its actually soul-crushing and yet I’m being screamed at because the pampered princess isn’t the absolute best at everything!?”

  Olivia spluttered and took a step back in shock, her arms out at her side as if to catch herself should she fall. The next moment, however, her fists clenched at her side and her expression darkened to a level that Alec had never, never seen on her.

  “How dare you call me-“

  But right now, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

  “Princess. Because you’re a spoilt girl who throws a hissy fit when she can’t be the best at everything and if you don’t learn to accept a fucking compliment and chill the hell out. Sooner or later, you’re going to end up like her!” He took a strong step forward and pointed at the limp, pale form of Noelle.

  His last shout seemed to echo through the darkened forest, the fire beside them crackling faintly yet sounding like nothing short of a cacophonous chorus of elephants to the two teens. Both of their breaths came out in short, heavy bursts as they realized the words that had come out of their own mouths, especially Alec’s.

  Yet, before either of them could do any more than gulp with suddenly dry and heavy mouths, clapping echoed through the trees around them.

  The nature of the echo was unnatural, its origin impossible to decipher as it bounced off the trees without losing any sound, trapping them both in a surround sound of clapping from which no source could be found.

  Though, neither of them needed to locate the origin of the clapping itself to figure out where it originated from. There were far more tells than just that clapping if one was skilled enough to notice them, and the two teens more than met that standard.

  Quickly they both turned to look up at the branches of a particularly tall and thick tree nearby. Three shadow-cloaked figures stood within the branches clad in black leathers and dyed clothes.

  Alec wanted to guess assassins, but he didn’t imagine any kind of assassin that would so blatantly show themselves like this, let alone give up such a prime opportunity as the one that their argument had gifted them.

  And then the lead figure, stood upon the closest branch to them both, gave a wide, cruel grin, and suddenly that thought of them being assassins became far, far more viable.

  “Oh wow, who would have thought that you’d be in a lover’s quarrel when we found you. How absolutely scandalous.” The vampire grinned, giggling slightly as his greased-back hair glinted slightly in the dim light of the fire.

  “Shameful.” One of the figures in the branches above muttered, shaking their head.

  “How like a human to be so emotional and daft.” The third figure scoffed, rolling its bright red eyes.

  ‘They’re clearly assassins, but who would vampires like them be after? Dius? No, why would assassins ever be after someone like him? They must be the owners of the Psy-hawk from earlier today, which means me or my sister. My sister’s already down and they’re taking the time to gloat like this, so it’s most likely her but I can’t rule out them going after me for being a Kio too. Dammit, this is the worst possible time for this.’ Olivia slowly shifted her stance and took a cautious step back towards her sister.

  “As much as I’d love to stay here and talk.” The lead figure droned, lolling his head to the side as his voice dripped with so much sarcasm it nearly melted clean through the branch he stood on, “I’d rather not waste my time nor my precious breath on a filthy miscreant like you.”

  “Funny, I could say the same.” Alec shot back, shifting back a step as well as Olivia shifted back another.

  “Hm, clever. Team, eliminate the target.”

  Olivia lurched back in a blur of motion, prepared to defend both herself and her sister with every ounce of physical and magical might that she had, her arms crossed over her torso and her gaze narrowed.

  Her actions, by far, were fast enough to keep up with all four other combatants within the forest. In fact, she out-sped the two figures from the higher branches by a not insignificant margin. If she had been in the path of attack, she would have been more than prepared and able to act appropriately despite the injury she had accrued earlier that day.

  However, she had made one singular mistake in thinking that it was her that was the target they spoke of.

  A singular drop of blood landed on one of her arms as a dagger cut a thin line across Alec’s chest despite his twist out of their direct line of attack and a shallow, but bleeding, cut opened along the side of his neck from a thin throwing knife that imbedded itself to the handle in a tree to his side.

  Neither Noelle Kio nor Olivia Kio were the targets for this attack, Alec Dius was.