Rusty woke to confusion, that soon fled in the greenish light of morning. That’s right, they’d planned deep into the night, with the Lion supplying details of what they could expect, and what was expected of them. It hadn’t been much… the elder beast in Rusty’s head wanted to get a look for himself before he speculated on the state of things. All they knew was that the elves were pushing the defenders back.

“How’s my chakra looking?” he thought at Roz, as the alien strolled into view.

“You’re down about twenty, give or take. No great shakes right now, but if things are as hairy as your satyrs say they are, you might wanna be careful.”

The children had decided that they needed to be able to understand and speak to the satys and the grach. Back when they were out of danger at the ruins, they had gotten by because the satyrs had translation spells, and in Rusty’s case, the Lion could translate. But in a war zone, relying on that might get somebody hurt. Rusty had listened well when his brother had told them how many times he’d nearly been killed because the Army had thought they were bad guys, and bombed or sent people to put them in the ground, and how it was only some fast explanations over the radio or just plain yelling that saved them. Friendly fire, wasn’t.

So Rusty had given everyone false memories of learning the satyr and grach languages, himself included. That had been… disconcerting. They tried out their new knowledge with some discussion afterward, and Rusty found that he’d gotten the best grasp of it, probably because of his memory enchantments.

Satyr was kind of fun to speak. You had to roll your tongue around some words in a way that made them sound exotic. Ken said it was kind of close to Italian, and he should know, he’d lived in the biggest City of any of them. Grach was harder. There weren’t as many words, but you had to almost belch some of them. Alice and Beth had started laughing hysterically as the kids tried to fake burps at each other, and that was about the time they decided to get some sleep. It turned out that fake memories could give you a real headache, or at least make you feel groggy, so the sleep had been very much needed.

And it had been good. Rusty wandered over to the screen-covered back part of the boat, peed in the pot that was tucked back there, and carefully lifted the flap before he dumped the pot into the water. He’d been told many times to do it as quickly as possible, to avoid catching elven arrows. Rusty didn’t know if there were any elves around yet, but it was better to play it safe.

“You have the proper mindset,” the Lion remarked from behind him.

“Please tell me you didn’t watch me pee,” Rusty said, turning red and doing up the last few ties on his leggings.

“I have witnessed the death of worlds. I have seen innocents die by the thousands. I have seen cities crumble under the weight of spells that gnawed away their solidity and left only wraiths behind. But no, Rusty, the horror of your act of urination was such that I had to look away.”

“No need to be making fun of me,” Rusty said. “It’s just I was raised modest is all.”

“And I was raised to be a Lion. We generally do not care if someone urinates. So long as they refrain from doing so in our marked territory, at any rate.”

“Just don’t watch me when I’m naked, okay?” Rusty asked.

“I am not actually standing where I can see you. I am in your head. I only see what you— never mind. I apologize.” The Lion disappeared, but his voice still sounded from where he’d been. “Is this better?”

“Yes, actually.” Rusty glanced back toward the cabin, where the rest of his human friends were sleeping. To either side of the cabin, satyrs worked tirelessly, poleing the boat along. A flash of motion caught his eye on the bank, and he saw Ran staring back at him from under a hooded cloak that matched the color of the nearby leaves. She nodded, then was gone as suddenly as she’d appeared.

A horn sounded ahead.

“We are close,” the Lion spoke. “But we have time. And I have put some thought into this. You have room within your chakra for possibly one or two more enchantments, and given your runes, I think a composite spell between your memory and speed runes would be particularly effective.”

“What’s a composite spell?” Rusty asked.

“What is a… did the wizards not teach you of this?”

“They didn’t even teach us about charms,” Rusty said, poking the metal and wood tabs hanging from twine around his neck. Granted, there hadn’t been much to teach, there. Charms were tokens infused with chakra and enchanted with a single spell. They slowly lost chakra over time, and if you wore too many they started interfering with each other. But you could use them to activate spells you didn’t have, or run enchantments that you didn’t have to spend chakra on. The downside was that there wasn’t much warning before they stopped working. You could assense them, but it wasn’t like the runes, where the words in your head told you how you were doing on chakra.

All that aside, it didn’t surprise Rusty that there were things about magic the wizards hadn’t taught them. It made sense any way you looked at it. Wizards in books were really careful about keeping secrets, even from their friends. And also, the wizards that Rusty had the misfortune to end up with were definitely not his friends. They’d taught him just enough to be a minor threat or distraction to the Lion and turned him loose. They didn’t care if he lived or died.

“Mmm.” The Lion rumbled. “We have time enough for one more quick lesson. And this, I think, can help you. A composite spell is one that uses multiple runes in its construction. It draws upon the power of both runes, and if both suit the task of what you are attempting to do, then it draws less chakra to cast. Which is very useful, when one comes to the realm of enchantments.”

“So it’s cheaper?”

“Cheap… yes, that is a term. No less powerful. But less costly.”

“Okay. That’s pretty simple,” Rusty thought. “So why would I need one of those?”

“You do not need it, but we do not have the luxury of time to wait for you to develop a skill naturally. Nor would giving yourself memories work, I suspect. Muscle memory is different from regular memory. At best you would gain a slight advantage and injure yourself horribly.”

“That’s a pretty long answer but you still ain’t answered what you want me to do.”

“I want you to cast a spell that increases your rate of learning physical actions. So that when you dodge, or parry, or strike, your muscles and instincts will take less time to respond. It will not be useful immediately, but the more you train or fight, the sooner you will be able to do so effectively.”

“We did get trained how to fight,” Rusty said, his memory flashing back to those brutal, painful days with their taskmaster, Jand. She had been literally the worst woman Rusty had ever met and he never wanted to see her again.

“Are you then a highly skilled fighter?” The Lion asked.

“Well, no.” Jand had been clear on that fight. The best they could hope for was to not immediately die until one of their allies took care of their foe.

“Look at it this way,” The Lion offered. “Quite a number of people will definitely be trying to kill us from this point onward. Of that I am certain. Our survival is questionable, but if we DO survive, then would you like to use the experience gained from them to stymie more powerful foes in the future?”

Rusty mulled through it. “So they’re going to try to kill us anyway.”

“Correct.”

“So we might as well get something out of it?”

“Also correct.”

“Roz?” Rusty asked. “What do you think?”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’m kind of interested to try some new kind of magic. And hey, if the enchantment doesn’t work out we can just drop it anyway.”

It was hard to argue with that. So as his friends yawned and stirred and got dressed inside the boat’s cabin, Rusty closed his eyes and went to work.

“Half of the words must be the color of one rune, and half the the words must match the color of the other rune,” the Lion warned.

“This is hard,” Rusty said, finding the words he wanted, but holding them to two different colors was a difficulty he hadn’t planned for.

But by now, he had gotten pretty good at visualization.

Granted self Fast Study for physical actions!

Committed Chakra: 33 of 198

Cost: 5 Chakra

Remaining free Chakra: 160

Rusty opened his eyes, to find Alice staring back at him. “You all right there?”

He nodded back. “I think so.” Behind her, the Satyrs were stowing the poles. He didn’t know why, there was a long stretch of empty river ahead…

…and then it wasn’t empty.

“Welcome back to the hidden redoubt, Lion,” said one of the satyrs as the air around them turned cold for a few seconds, and a fortress made of wood and thatch snapped into existence dead ahead, so close that Alice and Ken and Beth squeaked and grabbed at the sides of the boat.

“How?” Rusty asked.

The Lion answered, and Rusty passed the answer on. “The Duskwraiths did this. There’s like a solid wall of them around this area. They turned their outsides to make a picture of what the area would look like without the fortress in it.”

“Was that why it was cold all of a sudden?” Beth asked.

Rusty stared as the Lion answered, then shrugged. It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d run into on Elythia. “Yeah. They’re only partly here. They’re like made mostly of gas or something that sits in two different worlds… uh, it’s complicated.”

“Oh! It’s like Lovecraft stuff?” Beth asked.

“Excuse me?” Alice stared. “That’s hardly decent!”

“No, the writer. You know him, right, Rusty? We, uh, borrowed the books from you and Cyrus.”

“Oh, yeah, him.” Rusty’s total recall reminded him why he’d never gotten into Lovecraft. The words that guy used were really hard at the age he was reading them, and when Cyrus read it to him, Lovecraft stories got scary, fast. “He creeped me out.”

“A lot of it was pretty creepy. But there was this one story I liked, about dream lands. This is kind of like a dream land,” Beth said, looking around as the boat sailed down the flower-bedecked river, drawing close to the docks of the misshapen wooden fort. “Because there’s nightmares here too, but with luck and a friendly cat or two, we’ll get out okay.”

“Haven’t seen one of those yet,” Rusty said.

The Lion cleared his throat.

“Did I stutter?” Rusty glared at him. “You were doing fine up until you hopped into my brain. You still got a ways to go to get that friendly cat title back, Mister.”

“Lion!” From the open door of the fort, a shadowy figure beckoned, its horns broad and antlered unlike the other satyrs, its silver beard gleaming in the setting green sun. He whistled as he spoke, whistled so much he kept doing it between words. “Please, come inside quickly! They have been pushing in the north, and we… believe… that…”

His words slowed. The whistle stopped.

“MOVE!” roared the Lion, and shocked, Rusty stumbled back.

The man spoke normally again, but this time without whistling, and his words were drowned out as something THWACKED into the planks of the boat. Right where Rusty had been standing.

More whistling now, and the man was yelling, and the other satyrs were running, all save one that collapsed into the water with an arrow sticking out of his skull.

The whistling had been the first volley of arrows, Rusty realized.

“Elves! They’re inside the perimeter!” One of the satyrs screamed.

Rusty’s neck was hot, something burning against it, and Rusty ran off the boat, onto the dock as he realized what had happened. One of his defensive charms had saved his life. One of the speed ones, probably, given what had happened.

He had time to think of this, because three more times during the run, the world slowed to a crawl, the sounds around him stretching and going inaudible for a second or two until he fled out of danger.

The Lion had explained it to him. These were the backup charms, the ones that sped him up the second a projectile got within a foot of striking him. He had three charms that did this. And judging by the slow, searing pain against his chest, at least one of them was burning out fast.

The elder satyr stepped aside as Rusty got in the doorway, and turned around…

…eyes widening, as he saw Beth frozen, sitting on the ground, staring in horror at the arrow sticking out of her belly.

“They will target you!” The Lion told him. “Enhance your speed and draw their fire!”

But Rusty was frozen, unable to move. The arrows fell one after another. Some satyrs to the side were moving out, trying to get eyes on the archers to return fire, he knew distantly. The others were running, Ken through the door first, Alice afterward, hands over her head and shaking. Their own charms had seen them through.

If I don’t go out there Beth is dead, Rusty thought.

“She is safe momentarily because they are using her as bait, but yes, cast your spell and go now!” the Lion urged.

Rusty squeezed his eyes shut, and cast the simplest spell he could think of. Even then it took a few tries to get the letters right.

“Go faster!” he whispered.

Granted self speed boost!

Committed Chakra: 38 of 198

Cost: 20

Remaining free Chakra: 140

Sound slowed. The whistle of arrows faded. Beth’s scream stretched out, losing pitch as it went. The yells and calls of the satyrs outside stretched and deepened.

And Rusty ran out onto the dock. The arrows were moving still, in slow motion. He grabbed Beth and pulled, feeling himself grow warmer as he did so. She was heavy, but the couple of weeks in the new world had given him a little more muscle, and adrenaline and a lifetime of farm work did the rest. It was frustrating and he couldn’t go fast, and he had to walk carefully around the slowly moving arrows, but he got her to the doorway.

Then he glared north. From what he could tell, from how they were stuck in the docks, they were all coming from that direction.

“The water will be slippery, but you can run across it at this speed. Close your eyes so you do not burn them!”

Rusty shut his eyes and ran, and he saw why the Lion had warned him so. The very air tried to hold him back, battered against him like a thousand sparks as he ran as fast as he could. The water underfoot WAS a little slippery, was like running on a trampoline, but he hopped as he went and kept his center of gravity tilted forward, arms back to try and get a little balance.

He did stumble when he hit the far shore, and opened his eyes in time to see the ground slowly coming up. He slapped it with his hands, almost cried out at the flare of heat that burned at his skin, and slowed a little as he staggered back up into a standing position.

Already, more arrows were seeking him, whispering between the trees like angry, suicidal birds. Now that he was across the river he zig-zagged, moving closer, moving past the corpses of two grach who were down with arrows in their eyes, scooping up one of their axes as they went.

He found the elf up in a tree, standing in slow motion from his crouch, drawing a sword from a sheath as it dropped the bow and a handful of arrows. The bow fell like a feather to the ground, as Rusty threw the axe two handed with all his might.

That was a mistake. The second the axe left Rusty’s hands it slowed down to about the elf’s speed. And elves were fast and nimble.

The elf backflipped over it and off the branch…

…and Rusty plucked an arrow from the air, ran behind the elf, and drove it into the back of his neck.

“Get back!” the Lion yelled, and Rusty blinked, and stepped back just in time as the elf twisted in midair and slashed at his torso. The blade parted his robe, and came within a whisper of opening his belly.

Rusty fell to his knees, and watched the elf die.

An Adult Elf has died within your chakral radius!

Consuming chakra...

You have increased your chakra by 4.

Committed chakra: 33 of 182

Remaining free chakra: 144

The Lion shouted at him, tried to tell him to get up and check for others, but Rusty couldn’t. He watched the first living thing he’d ever killed die.

Speed boost requires chakra to sustain!

Committed Chakra: 33 of 182

Cost: 20 Chakra

Sustain boost? Y/N?

“No,” Rusty said. The Lion was telling him that if there was another elf he was dead, but he couldn’t listen. He watched the green-skinned, fair-faced creature twitch and die, and knew he would remember this forever.

It was almost a relief when he vomited.

Once his stomach was clear, he rose and looked back to the docks. It was a pretty good view from here, even if it was about a quarter of a mile off.

The Lion rumbled. “He silently slew the sentries and waited for our arrival. Cunning. And troublesome. Those kills were fresh.”

“Beth!” Rusty remembered, as he mopped his mouth with one stinging hand. “Ow. What…”

His skin was reddened and raw, like he’d been drying his hands with sand paper. Now that the nausea was fading and the adrenaline was washing down, his entire body ached and tingled.

“Friction is troublesome when you’re operating at the speeds you were. Walk back, do not run. We will see about getting us proper armor later—”

“I need to get back fast! Beth might be—”

“Your friend has the restoration rune. She will be fine.”

Rusty tried to tell himself that, as he trudged back.

But his perfect memory kept going back to how she had stared at the arrow in her guts.

No. No, she wouldn’t be fine ever again. She would remember that until the day she died.

He knew the horror of it would stay with her forever.