“Magelord, there appears to be a kerfuffle going on.”

Magelord Krii looked up from behind his spectacles, lowering a rather dull treatise on theories about Frenetic Essence. The latest published by some idiot at the Academy.

“A ‘kerfuffle’, Henry?” he asked quietly, sipping at his cup of tea. It was his first cup of tea of his day, and therefore the most important.

“Indeed, Magelord. From the detection array there appears to be a significant amount of magic being tossed about outside the city, just over the hill,” his senior apprentice replied.

‘Apprentice’ was a bit of a misleading title. Henry was likely a more skilled mage than most of the so-called ‘faculty’ over at the Forbidden Academy, but all those serving under a Magelord were known as ‘apprentices’. A bit of habit that had turned into tradition over the years.

“I see,” Krii resplonded, tapping the edge of the stack of papers in his hand on his desk in front of him to tidy them up before putting them aside. “Any idea what kind of ‘kerfuffle’ it is?”

“The significant kind, Sir,” Henry replied from the opposite side of the desk. “Algidity, Impetus, Frenetic… all essences generally associated with combat. And whoever it is is most certainly dipping into stockpiles.”

Krii’s brow rose a fraction. That was certainly interesting news. Any significant consumption of stockpiles would need to be replaced, and that could have an impact on prices. Interesting and valuable information, even if he made no use of it himself. Especially if he could learn who it was.

“There was something else as well, Magelord,” Henry added, for the first time looking slightly uncomfortable.

“Yes?” Krii asked.

“We also picked up usage of… Divine Essence.”

Krii stiffened.

“One of ours?” he asked carefully.

Henry shuffled uncomfortably. “There is some interference but from the detection pattern it appears as if it might be… Mitlan.”

A grin appeared on Krii’s face. “Oh. Oh my. Then we better go take a look, wouldn’t you say?” he said in a slightly too cheerful voice, almost jumping out of his leather-backed, desk chair with a surprising amount of spry-ness for his almost sixty years of age.

Eagerly, he strode across the top floor of his tower.

Sometimes, fate dropped the most wonderful surprises in one’s lap.

Patrus was disgusted.

He gazed down at the fat mage by his feet. He was badly burned, in terrible agony, and yet he was still wheezing as he fired flimsy little darts of black magic at Patrus. They splashed harmlessly off his imbued armour, the power behind them no longer sufficient to strain the protection offered by the Blessings he had wrapped protectively around himself.

Patrus scowled. Twice in their battle those same Blessings had been strained by the insidious, evil magic cast by the fat little mage. Twice, he had been forced to rely on his Blessing of Second Chances, consuming one of his other Blessings to protect his life.

It was infuriating, but it just showed how dangerous these blasphemers were. If even he, who was among the highest and most blessed of Mitla’s holy warriors, could be weakened by even a single one of these vile, black magicians, imagine what carnage they could wreak if let loose among the defenseless populace in general?

And to make matters worse, they drew dark strength from the perversions in which they dabbled, using their vile magics to enhance and preserve their own lives! The mage’s legs were gone, burnt to ash by Mitla’s holy fire. His fat belly, a clear sign of his decadence and vice, scorched to a blackened crisp. Only one eye and one arm still functioned, the others taken by Mitla’s fire. Yet still he clung to some miserable semblance of life. It was truly unnatural.

There was a wet crunch as Patrus embedded his sword in the mage’s corpulent flesh with a final overhead slash. Finally, he went still, his arm collapsing by his side.

Pulling his sword loose again, Patrus sighed. The blue flames of his Blessing of Divine Wrath were gone, shattered as a final act of defiance by the fat mage even as he burned. He would have to return to the Church of Mitla to recover either it or his Blessing of Omens.

No matter. There was a good reason he had prayed for every Blessing that he could, back at the church. He would simply use one of the weaker blessings for his weapon.

He pressed his hand against the blade and said a whispered prayer. Ordinary-looking, orange fire raced up the steel until the entire blade appeared to have been doused in oil.

The Blessing of Heathen Smiting. It was the first Blessing taught to any trainee Inquisitor, the flames capable of hurting even those foul beasts normally not susceptible to either fire or steel. Yet in the hands of a senior Inquisitor such as himself, it could do so much more than just burn.

The flames leapt off his blade, swirling around him in a circle before returning to simmering on his sword.

Yes, this would do. Now, what was it that he was doing? Right! Justice for Davaad on the spider-abomination!

He’d lost track of her during the battle, but she could not have gotten far… ah! There she was! Atop the cliff, attempting to flee towards the city along with the heretics protecting her.

She was not going to make it, not if Patrus had anything to say about it.

He started running, golden wings emerging from his back as his Blessing of Wings took hold again. They lifted him off the ground as he pointed his burning blade towards the target of his ire, feeling the fire respond to his will.

Flame erupted from the blade in a blazing pulse, before seemingly being sucked back together at the tip of his sword. It gathered together in a single, blazing point, before surging forth in a blazing stream of fire.

Rita scrambled over the top of the cliff. Fueled by terrified adrenaline, she’d scaled it in record time. Footholds were plentiful in the rough, rocky cliffside, especially if you had toe-claws like she had. With eight legs to spread the weight, she hadn't even needed to use her arms! Not for climbing, anyway.

She dropped Zaxier and tossed her spear to the ground just as she heard Gora grunt down below and Samual’s hands grabbed onto the edge of the cliff. She must have boosted him up.

While he hoisted himself over the lip, Rita’s rear legs threaded out a last, sticky section to the silk rope that she’d been leaving behind her as she made her mad scramble up the side of the rocky slope. She quickly looped the sticky section a few times around a convenient nearby rock, hoping it would hold.

She’d barely finished fastening it before she felt a pull on the thread as Bob started scaling the wall. She and Samual quickly began pulling as well, trying to reduce the load on the glue around the rock. She hadn’t made a knot or anything, she’d just looped it around a couple of times and relied on the glue to hold it in place. It was not exactly a long term solution.

She risked a glance up at where they’d left the Inquisitor, just in time to see him pull his sword from Proxton’s corpse. His remaining students had either died or fled, running for their lives in all directions.

They were out of time, and while Bob was almost at the top, Gora and Ava were still at the bottom of the cliff.

Leaving Samual to take care of Bob, Rita peeked over the edge. She saw Ava gasping for breath as she struggled to pull her tired body up Rita’s strand of webbing, barely a metre off the ground.

She was climbing too slowly. She wasn’t going to make it, and Gora was still stuck behind her. Even with Samual hauling at the top, they were going to get caught halfway up the cliff.

Seemingly coming to the same conclusion, Gora wrapped big meaty hands around the smaller woman’s waist and upper leg and pulled a flailing Ava off the rocky face.

“Shut up!” she roared in Ava’s face when she drew breath to scream at the sudden physical contact, making her freeze in terror.

For a moment, Rita thought Gora was going to abandon Ava down below. She hadn’t forgotten that the Professor’s arrival had been Ava’s fault, but right now that seemed an almost trivial matter as Rita caught a glimpse of golden wings in the distance.

Then Gora wound back before throwing the petite young woman towards the top of the cliff.

Up, up, up, she soared, screaming all the way, until she reached the top of her arc right in front of Rita’s face. As she momentarily hung motionless in the air before starting her plummet back down the ground far below, Rita reached out, leaning out over the edge, and yanked her to safety, sending her tumbling across the dirt, safely atop the rise.

Immediately, Samual stumbled, nearly getting dragged over the edge as a sudden, heavy weight yanked on Rita’s thread and tore the glue loose from the rock.

Only Rita diving over the edge and catching Gora’s outstretch hand prevented both her and Samual from going over.

Gora had jumped. She’d nearly made it to the top, but not quite. One hand gripped Rita’s silk thread, still held by Samual, and the other was held by Rita herself, her torso leaning over the edge of the cliff while all eight legs braced themselves, climbing claws digging into dirt and rock for every scrap of traction they could get.

Gora was heavy.

In the distance, the figure with golden wings was rapidly approaching, flames starting to gather along the tip of his outstretched flaming sword.

Given a few moments, Gora could likely find her footing and, working together, she and Samual could probably slowly haul her over the edge.

But they didn’t have a few moments. They needed to pull Gora up now, or they were all going to be fried.

Next to her, she felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as Samual started to tap into whatever well of power he drew on.

It wasn’t going to be enough. If he had been in tip-top shape, he could perhaps have hauled Gora up all by himself, but he was still recovering from his last injury. Rita could feel him struggle.

He just couldn’t do it alone.

Perhaps it would have been enough if only Rita was stronger. If she’d been able to do a little bit more than barely hold on to Gora’s arm.

Anger started to burn inside her. Anger at the Inquisitor for not leaving them alone. Anger at the world for being unfair. Anger at… herself.

Ever since she’d woken up, Rita had tried to avoid fighting. Despite literally everything trying to kill her, she’d deluded herself into thinking that if she just kept her head down, just did the minimum necessary, she could let others do the heavy lifting for her. That she could somehow just… get along.

Again and again this world had tried to beat the lesson into her: she wasn’t going to get a free ride. Every time she’d gotten lucky, or had capable friends around her to bail her out. But she should have realized that eventually that luck was going to run out, or her friends were going to need to rely on her, and she was woefully unprepared to face what was out here.

Alice had been right. She’d been right all along. Rita was… weak.

She’d wasted all of her downtime at the Outpost goofing around and sleeping. Not once had she practiced with her spear, or even exercised beyond climbing the stairs down to the food hall. She’d slacked and lazed around and just reveled in the fact that she was alive, convinced that the worst was behind since she had managed to get out of the Nightmare. That somehow everything was going to be okay now.

Never once had she even considered that the safety she felt had been an illusion.

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Would four days of exercise have made a difference? Probably not. But she hadn’t even tried.

She’d been lazy.

And now everyone was going to die because she wasn’t stronger.

She needed to be stronger.

STRONGER.

Something inside her clicked. A faint fizzing sensation bubbled up from her stomach, a shiver making her skin tingle up her spine and down her arms and all of her legs. Then, as if the sluices of a dam wall deep inside her had been opened, all that anger and self-loathing surged through her limbs like liquid fire, making every muscle bulge.

With a sudden lurch, Gora flew upwards as Rita and Samual together hauled her over the edge, fast enough that her momentum bowled them both over.

She landed on top of them both just before the jet of flame arrived. Coming from slightly below, it struck the very slightly upturned cliff-edge, deflecting over their heads in a giant wash of shimmering fire that painted the sky red and orange and yellow.

This time, however, they had no magical protection. And fire still burned.

Rita tucked her abdomen and legs in as far as she could, trying to make herself as small as possible against the searing heat from roaring flames above her almost close enough to reach out and touch.

And then it was gone, the world quiet again. Cooler air flowed in and every inch where Rita’s skin had been exposed glowed painfully, like a bad sunburn. One of her legs, one of the rear-most ones that had been the most exposed, was too painful to uncurl and her abdomen felt as if it was glowing with agony.

Gora slowly rolled off of them. She moved slowly, clearly in pain, and Rita saw her leather armour appeared to have cracked and blackened in places. Her shoulders and back of her neck, areas that had not been covered by the armour, looked white and splotchy.

“Gora… are you okay?” Rita asked as she also rolled painfully over and struggled to her shaky feet.

“No… holy fire. Hurts,” Gora hissed through gritted teeth. “But I’ll live.”

The top of the cliff only had sparse vegetation. Yet, although the blast of flame could not have lasted more than a few seconds, what little there was looked scorched and wilted from the heat.

Ava lay huddled under a bluish dome of force, seemingly unhurt. Of Bob and Zaxier there were no signs. They’d likely disappeared among the rocks off to the side.

Rita’s attention was drawn back to the cliff edge as hot wind buffeted their faces and the Inquisitor slowly rose over it to hover in front of them on golden wings, sword already roaring with more flame.

For once, the sight did not fill Rita with fear. She was done with fear. It might have been the anger-juice still sloshing around her muscles talking, but all she wanted to do at that very moment was to hurt the asshole in whatever way she could.

Agony accompanied every movement, but the rage-stuff in her veins helped her press through the pain as she scrambled on seven legs to her spear. It lay off to the side, strangely untouched by the fire.

As she moved, the Inquisitor raised his flaming sword, pointing it directly at her.

“Wait!” Samual shouted up at him, stumbling over to Rita’s side as she reached her weapon and scooped it up. “We submit! We see Mita’s light! We convert to the faith!”

All eyes turned to him.

The Inquisitor hesitated, his helmet turning slightly as he stared down at Samual. “You turn from your wicked ways?” he asked, his voice echoing strangely from inside his armour.

“Yes! We repent! We have seen Mitla’s power!” Samual shouted.

“What are you doing?” Rita hissed at him under her breath.

“Saving our lives!” Samual hissed back. “Trust me!”

Above them, the Inquisitor’s sword drifted to point at Gora. “Demons are not…”

“I do not speak for the demon!” Samual interrupted him. “Only for myself and the cursed woman!”

Rita nearly jumped when he rested his hand on her shoulder. Cursed? Was he talking about her? And… wait… was he throwing Gora under the metaphorical bus?

“Cursed?” the Inquisitor echoed her thoughts, his head cocked slightly to the side in puzzlement.

“Indeed! Her mind is as human as yours or mine!” Samual lied. Wait, no, it was technically the truth, wasn’t it? Her mind was human. And she was ‘cursed’ in the sense that she was a Nightmare spawn. What was his game?

“Samual…?” Rita whispered again.

“Shhh,” he whispered back.

“How was she afflicted by this curse?” the Inquisitor asked.

Samual held up his arms in a large shrugging gesture. “I do not pretend to understand the intricacies of it. When we all left the Nightmare Tree, she was like this.”

What…? Wait, it was another technical truth. When she had left the Nightmare Tree, she had indeed looked like this. He just conveniently left out that she had been like this before as well. But why? Why go through so much effort to lie by omission, when it would have been much simpler to lie by… lying?

“You are not lying,” the Inquisitor’s voice echoed, “and yet I do not believe you.”

The cold realization washed over Rita. The Inquisitor could tell if they lied.

What was it with this world and lying?

“Do we not deserve the benefit of the doubt? Is it not written in the Book of Truths, 54:12, that ‘You must rather pluck out your own eyes than harm one of your brothers or sisters in the faith’?” Samual asked.

The Inquisitor cocked his helmet even further. “Are you quoting scripture at me?”

“I am,” Samual replied calmly. “In Ecclesians 11:3 it stands written, after all, that ‘A wise man learns these words and repeats them, in the times and places where they belong, spreading their wisdom onto others.’”

Rita stared at Samual. That was twice he’d quoted from the Mitlan scriptures by heart. Where had he learnt them? His voice also sounded slightly… different than she was used to. Not like he was a different person, but the cadence and pronunciation. Like he was speaking in a different accent. Was he speaking that Mitlan language that had made the Inquisitor so cross last time they’d met?

“And you, cursed woman,” the Inquisitor asked, turning to Rita, “do you also submit yourself to Mitla’s judgement?”

“Be honest, Rita,” Samual added meaningfully. “It is the only way we get out of this.”

Yeah, she’d figured out that the Inquisitor could tell if she lied, or something. Samual probably fully intended to convert to Mitla for five seconds or so, and he likely hoped she would do the same.

Rita glanced back over her shoulder. Ava was slowly getting to her feet, though her barrier was still floating in front of her, like a domed shield of force. Gora was standing to the side, still looking like she was in pain and eying both them and Ava suspiciously. It was likely that neither of them had been able to follow the conversation if it indeed been taking place in ‘Divine’ or whatever the language had been called.

Rita grit her teeth as she realized that it had been intentional. Neither of them had been included in Samual’s plea, either. He was throwing them to the wolves.

From up here, she could see the entire Grailmane spread out below, its stone spires thrust upwards into the sky. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something odd, however. The tip of the closest tower was glowing.

“No,” Rita said, skittering over to stand between Ava and Gora, doing her best to think of speaking in whatever language they always spoke in. “By all means, spare Samual, but if your god judges people by what they are instead of what they did, I want nothing to do with him. Respectfully, you can take your bargain-basement bigotry and holier-than-thou attitude and shove it where the light of Mitla doesn’t shine.”

There was a moment of shocked silence. Samual gave her an exasperated look as the Inquisitor spoke again.

“I respect your conviction, as misguided as it is,” he echoed. “I am also glad you have answered thus. If you had truly had a change of heart and decided to become a follower of Mitla, I would have had to drag you all the way back to the Church to stand trial for your crime. But as a heathen I can execute you where you stand for the murder of Junior Inquisitor Davaad.”

The anger went out of her.

Oh. Oh that. She’d almost forgotten.

No, she had not forgotten, she’d tried to forget. Done her best to not think about the sensation as her spear pierced his spine, as his body went limp beneath her.

She caught Samual’s shocked expression. She shuddered. She wanted to say that it had been self defence. That he’d attacked her first and that she’d done what she had to to defend herself and those close to her… but the Inquisitor would see right through that lie.

He’d not been innocent, not at all, but he’d been lying on the ground, barely able to move. Helpless, at least for the moment. She’d acted out of fear and now he was dead.

A human life, gone forever, and it was her fault.

“I… I’m sorry,” she said, hanging her head, the spear sagging in her arms. “You’re right. I killed him. I’m sorry. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.”

“Your apology changes nothing about your judgement, but it is appreciated nonetheless,” the Inquisitor’s hollow voice echoed. “I will make sure to pass your apology on to Davaad. It may grant him some closure on the unfortunate event and assist with his recovery.”

“Thank you...” Rita paused, frowning. “Hold on, he’s alive? I thought you said I killed him!”

“You did,” the Inquisitor spoke. “But by the grace of Mitla and despite your venoms coursing through his body, he was returned to life, though his connection to the Blessings was forever severed. Thanks to you, he will live the remainder of his life as an ordinary human, outside the extraordinary grace of Mitla.”

“Wait, that’s what you want to judge me for? For somehow taking away the little prick’s superpowers?” Rita exclaimed, anger seeping back into her body. “After he attacked us unprovoked? Are you kidding me?”

All this time it had been eating at her insides, that she’d killed him. Instead, now she heard he was alive and well and living a normal life? After he’d nearly killed Samual?

Meanwhile, poor Josoph, the kindly, old, ex-delver wagon driver with the five grandkids had had his throat slit while he’d been forced to just sit there, helpless to resist.

This world was deeply, deeply fucked up.

“I do not ‘kid’,” the Inquisitor answered coldly.

Rita’s fingers clenched on her spear. The dregs of the rage that had powered her when she’d pulled Gora up the cliff were still flowing through her. She had to suppress the urge to throw her spear at the man, if only because it would bounce harmlessly off his ridiculously ornate armour and fall down the cliff and then she’d lose it.

No, what she needed was a way to actually hurt the pompous, self-righteous asshole. And she had a hunch how she could do just that. It was a long shot, but it was the only chance she had.

She charged at him as best she could on seven legs, stopping at the edge of the cliff and thrusting her spear forward, adjusting her grip so that she was holding it only at the very back for maximum reach. As she did, she twisted it in the same way she had when she’d stabbed the last inquisitor, and she was rewarded with the tip twisting in on itself, just as it had before, to form a sharper, harder point.

Unfortunately, at her approach the Inquisitor merely gave a single, powerful beat of his glowing wings and soared upwards, out of her reach. Her spear-thrust fell harmlessly short.

“Enough of this,” he roared down at them, flourishing his burning sword. “I hereby render judgement…”

He never managed to finish his sentence. A sudden, blinding flash of white light seared all colour from the world, bleaching it into shades of black and white.

Up in his tower, Magelord Krii grinned as he watched the Mitlan Inquisitor soar upwards, into open sky.

“Got you,” he muttered to the image magically projected onto the inside wall of his tower and pressed a tiled rune on the angled desk in front of him.

Immediately, the image dimmed protectively as more than a million thaums of magical energy lanced outwards in a momentary, bright, white beam of light, swatting the Mitlan from the sky.

Krii smiled happily to himself when the light faded and the picture came back.

There was no sign of the Inquisitor. He was just gone. Far in the distance, an ugly black scorchmark marked the side of the next hill.

With a self-satisfied sigh, he flicked a different control rune, and the steady, low, background hum faded into silence.

“Good shot, Magelord,” Henry spoke from his position at his master’s shoulder, holding out his still-lukewarm cup of tea.

“Thank you, Henry,” Krii replied, taking his tea and warming it with a tiny spark of magic.

His defence systems had been the work of years of investment into his tower. He’d been the last of the Magelords to join Grailmane, but a savvy eye for business opportunities that many of his contemporaries lacked had allowed him to play a measure of catch-up.

Henry waved his hand over one side of the control desk and brought up an illusionary display of the state of the tower’s defences. “That shot expended almost a third of our essence reserves,” he cautioned.

Krii waved him off. “The bounty on the Inquisitor will cover most of the costs,” he replied calmly. “As for the rest, well, I see it as an investment into my own entertainment.” Not everything had to be profitable. Sometimes you just had to blast people you hate with enough raw power to melt a castle wall and the costs be damned.

“As you say, Magelord,” Henry responded calmly, his hands flying across the control panel as he finalized the shutdown procedures of the tower’s defensive systems.

Krii took a sip of his tea as his apprentice worked. It was delicious. Bold and smooth, with just a hint of citrus and spite. Just the way he liked it. One of his few vices, other than the occasional crushing of his enemies with overwhelming force.

But that was more of a hobby, really, though not his only one.

Then a thought struck him. He flicked his fingers towards the projection still showing a number of small figures wandering around. Immediately, it zoomed in on one of them, a strange spider-like woman limping around on seven legs.

“Henry, what do you make of this?” he asked, making his apprentice glance up from his work.

“Magelord?” he asked, confused.

“The spider-thing. Do you know what she is?” Magelord Krii replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a creature like this, before.”

“Perhaps it is a species from one of the distant islands?” his apprentice suggested. “Or perhaps from the Deeps?”

“Could you task someone with finding out?” the Magelord asked. “I think I’d like to add her to my collection.”

Patrus was smoking.

That was the first thing he saw as he opened his eyes; wisps of faint smoke that rose from his armour before it fading into the sky above.

He was lying on his back. Everything hurt, but he seemed to be in one piece, which was more than could be said of his armour. It was basically flaking off him in large, charred chunks of burnt metal.

Slowly, he sat up and with trembling fingers, pulled off the remains of his helmet.

He was sitting in the middle of a small patch of scorched grass at the bottom of a hill. Some distance above was a much larger scorched area, as if a giant had scrawled on the side of the hill in fire and death.

On the opposite side of the valley from where he was, he could just barely make out the tips of the spires of Grailmane sticking up above the next hill.

The last thing he remembered was a bright, white light. It had to have been some kind of attack. It hadn’t come from the spider, though. That much he was certain of.

Whatever it had been, his Blessing of Second Chances had burned through all of his other Blessings to keep him alive. He could feel it hanging from his shoulders, like the remnants of a torn cloak, inert and lifeless, its power completely spent.

Could it have been the city itself that struck at him at that distance? A chilling thought, that they had amassed power of this level. The Church had always been aware that the heathens were powerful, sufficiently so that their extermination had always been seen as a difficult exercise that would cost the lives of many of his brothers and sisters in the faith, but never before had they been seen as a serious threat.

High Inquisitor Patrus carefully struggled to his knees and offered a prayer of thanks to Mitla. He was alive. Clearly, Mitla was not done with him yet. And as long as he was part of Mitla’s great plan, he would be a willing tool in his god’s hands.

Albeit not very useful tool, at present. His wings were gone. Of his sword there was no sign. His armour was trashed and crumbling off his frame. If he wanted to restore any of those, he would have to travel back to Mitlan lands. And without his wings he would have to walk, at least until he could find a farmer or someone from whom he could requisition a horse.

It would take weeks to get back, and in that time the spider-abomination could either disappear into the bowels of the city, or move on entirely to terrorize a whole new area. With his Blessing of Retribution shattered, he would have no way to find it again.

But was that what Mitla wished? For him to spend weeks trudging slowly home while a potential threat loomed over all of the faithful? For him to undertake the long journey only to arrive empty handed and with precious little information of what the actual danger was or even how much of a danger it presented?

No, surely he was here because Mitla had a plan with his presence? With no armour, no Blessings, no weapon…

Patrus looked up at the tips of the spires of the heathen city and his face set in determination.

Of course, it was so obvious.

Mitla wanted him to brave the lion’s den.