When she’d tried to stab the Inquisitor, Rita hadn’t seriously expected to hit him. Unless she had wanted to dive head-first over the edge of the cliff, he had been at the very edge of her reach and had plenty of time to get out of the way.

And even if he had been asleep inside his armour and made no move to dodge, she’d had almost no leverage behind her strike. At worst he would have bounced off like a pinball and crashed into the ground a bit away. More likely he would have stabilized himself in the air before frying her like a chicken leg.

No, her plan had been much simpler and far more of a long shot: cause a ruckus and hope someone in the city sees them and sends help.

She’d been hoping for some form of town guard raising the alarm, or if she were lucky, that Academy place noticing something was going on and sending some more people to investigate. And if she were really lucky, maybe, maybe, one of those ‘Magelords’ that the others had been going on about coming over to see what the fuss was about.

What she hadn’t expected was for the fucking hammer of god to land on the man.

“Everyone still alive?” Rita heard Gora call out, answered by a chorus of affirmatives.

She still wasn’t quite sure what had happened. All she knew was that some kind of beam of bright light had blasted him, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it had come from the glowing tower.

Hopefully she hadn’t been permanently blinded. In the first few confusing moments after the flash, with eyes clenched shut in pain, she’d nearly stumbled off the side of the cliff. Two of her legs had waved through nothing but empty air before she’d caught herself and immediately dropped her butt down onto the ground. Now she was crawling along, blindly feeling her way forward with her spear, trying to put as much distance between herself and the cliff edge before she accidentally blundered over it again.

Despite the odds, she was still alive. That meant the Inquisitor was dead, or at least no longer here.

She didn’t think anyone could have survived being hit by that beam of light, but then she also hadn’t thought that anyone could fly, so there was that. The gods in this place cheated so much. She didn’t put anything past them.

As the pain subsided and she squinted through painful eyes, she could barely make out a large shape moving around. It had to be Gora. Nobody else was that big.

A feminine squeak of surprise rang out.

Oh shit, Ava!

Rita sprang to her feet, running towards the blobby shape that the noise came from. “Gora…”

“YOU…!” Gora roared, drowning out Ava’s shrieks. “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”

“Gora! Wait! Don’t… oof!” Unable to see properly, Rita ran straight into Gora’s back.

She didn’t shift even a little. It felt like running into a sack of rocks.

Gora had picked Ava up, and was dangling her in the air in front of her. Rita could just barely make out her legs kicking helplessly in the air.

“It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!” Ava babbled in panic.

“THEY IMPLICATED YOU!”

“They lied!” Ava protested.

“Don’t hurt her!” Rita pleaded, pulling on Gora’s arm. With her strength gone, she may as well have been hanging on a tree branch for all the good it was doing. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation…”

“BULLSHIT!” Gora roared again, making Ava flinch. “The Academy knows exactly when we’re coming and you try to tell me you had nothing to do with this? After you’re the one who came to us with the idea of selling her to them?”

Wait, what?

“I swear, I didn’t tell them!” Ava screamed, squirming like a terrified rat trying to escape.

“Just hold on,” Rita asked, taken aback. “Are you telling me she was planning on selling me? And you knew? Since when?”

“Since we first found you,” Samual confirmed. “That was how she convinced us to agree to bring you along. By telling us how much you’d be worth as a research subject.”

Rita stared in shock at Ava. With her sight steadily recovering, Rita could just barely make out the look of terror on Ava’s face.

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“Ava…?” she asked again.

“It’s a lie! I did nothing of the sort!” Ava blurted out. Then she screamed as Gora tightened her grip. Rita could swear she heard her bones creak. “Okay, fine! Yes! I told my professor about you, back at the Outpost! I was supposed to tell them when we left but I changed my mind! Please, you have to believe me! You saw they were going to kill me too, right?”

“You would have deserved it, you backstabbing, traitorous, little rat!” Gora bellowed in Ava’s face

“So you were all in on this?” Rita exclaimed incredulously, taking a step away from the group. “You were in on selling me to some academy as a lab rat?”

“Yes, initially,” Zaxier replied calmly from the side, he and Bob appearing from between some nearby rocks. He seemed none the worse for wear from either the fire or the beam of light. “After the Tree, Samual and Gora made it clear that they had changed their minds and that it was no longer an option.”

“And you? Did you still want to sell me too?” Rita asked him in an accusatory tone.

“Hmph, I’d sell all four of you if I felt like it. My whims are fleeting,” the cat replied. “But you give good scritches.”

Rita’s head spun. These people who she’d thought were her friends had planned to sell her! Like she was some kind of… some kind of animal!

“What are you going to do to me?” Ava squeaked, trembling.

To Rita’s surprise, Ava landed in a heap on the ground. She had expected Gora to enact a sudden, terminal end to Ava’s schemes, and after what she’d just discovered, she wasn’t sure she would have done more than look away.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Gora spoke, a low, threatening growl in her voice. “You’re going to run back back to the city. Then you’re going to stop at the Delver’s Guild there and report your survival so that when I get back, I get paid in full.”

Then she leaned down and put her big, meaty hand on Ava’s head. Her fingers reached over Ava’s ears on both sides.

“And then you will vanish,” she continued, softer. “Because if I ever see you again, I will find you and I will crush your skull. Am I clear?”

When Ava nodded, wide-eyed and terrified, Gora lifted her hand.

Ava bolted.

For a few moments they just watched her go, skinny limbs flailing and robe flapping as she sprinted for all she was worth down the hill in the direction of the city.

“I’m surprised you let her live,” Rita broke the silence. “You didn’t seem particularly interested in extending the same courtesy to her professor.”

Gora snorted. “It’s because of him that I let her go. If she dies, the bulk of her part of my fee gets refunded to the Academy. And fuck those guys, if they really were going to kill her, I’m sure as hell not going to effectively pay them for the privilege of doing the job for them.”

“You should have killed her. Now she may hold a grudge and she’s a capable mage,” Samual interjected.

“Really?” Rita replied waspishly. “Why am I not surprised that you’d turn on someone that helped you out? You know she basically saved your life after the battle with the first Inquisitor, right? She basically draped herself over you to try and keep you safe.”

“Look, what’s your problem?” Gora asked wearily.

“My problem!?” Rita exclaimed. “I just discovered the people I had thought were my friends had been planning to practice their slavery techniques on me and I’m the one with a problem? Is that still the plan? Lure me into the city and hand me off to the first psycho with a lab coat? Would you like me to turn around so its a little easier to stab me in the back?”

“LISTEN!” Gora roared.

Rita’s mouth snapped shut, but her scowl stayed in place.

“When we first met, you were a stranger. A potentially dangerous, potentially valuable stranger,” Gora explained. “However, you seemed more valuable than dangerous. So I made a call. So we all made a call. We decided not to kill you, but take you with us instead. That way, if we made it out of there, we would have the option of turning you in for a reward.”

“Ohhh, that makes it all better,” Rita snapped. “You just wanted the option of selling me…”

“SHUT UP FOR ONE MOMENT AND LET ME TALK!”

Rita’s mouth shut with a click of her teeth.

“Since then, and all of us have gotten to know you and, I dare say, taken a liking to you,” Gora went on. “You even saved my life when my father tried to kill me in the Tree.”

That took the wind out of Rita’s sails.

“Your father… was trying to kill you?” she whispered in horror.

“Yes, but nevermind that. Even if you hadn’t saved me, there was no way we would have followed through and actually handed you over. That idea was pretty much dead in the water the moment we got a chance to actually talk to you and get to know you. I had no idea Ava was psycho enough to even consider following through anyway.”

Rita blew out a breath. “She wasn’t psycho. She was just…” she muttered under her breath, then changed her mind on what she was going to say. “Look, it doesn’t matter. Ava’s gone. Still, an apology…”

“We are all very sorry we ever considered selling you to the highest bidder, aren’t we guys?” Gora asked, glaring at the other two.

“Sure.”

“If I must.”

Gora turned back to Rita and sighed. “Sorry, looks like that’s the best you’re going to get. If it makes you feel any better, Bob was never involved in the conversation.”

Rita crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Thank you, Bob, I knew I could rely on you.” Bob beamed back at her. “But I suppose I’ll accept the rest of your apologies as well. You have been doing a rather good job of protecting me thus far. No more plans to sell me out?”

“No,” Gora stated. “But I will help you get settled in Grailmane. And help you find someone who can help with the… person in your head.”

For a few moments, Rita was silent.

“Thank you, Gora. I really appreciate that,” she finally said.

“So we’re good?” Gora asked.

“Yeah. We’re good,” Rita said, smiling. “Until you try to sell me again.”

They shared a brief chuckle.

“I think that our wagon might have survived,” Samual said, pointing to something along the road that Rita’s eyes had not yet recovered enough to see.

“Would you look at that,” Gora remarked. “We should see if our bags are still there. Maybe this trip won’t be a complete loss after all. Except for you, Rita. No offense.”

Rita snorted. “I won’t hold it against you… if you told me what happened with your dad. Did he seriously try to kill you?”

“Well…” Gora started as they set off down the slope towards it at a steady pace. “It turned out he’d made some kind of contract with the Tree…”