The stonewater serpent trapped Ikiira at the point between life and death—right at the edge of suffocation. Then, after a short while, runes arose from within the stone surrounding the young hunter. None of them looked familiar, possibly because they ran through the rock in addition to along the surface.

The sense of pressure emanating from where Ikiira had been buried increased. Her cries drove me forward once again, but the elder serpent hadn’t let go of my arm. She held me back from interfering in what seemed to be needless cruelty.

Except that wasn’t the stonewater serpent’s way, was it? Not from what Ikfael had told me. How had she put it? “Our zasha has a finely tuned sense for balance.”

Ikfael had unequivocally considered the stonewater serpent to be a benefactor, yet I came to doubt her words as the minutes turned into hours and Ikiira’s cries turned into whimpers.

The longer it went, the madder and more upset I became. My hands ached from clenching them. My jaw too. The elder serpent had never let of go my arm, and it felt like it’d been bruised where she held me.

After almost half a day of watching this torture, the elder serpent scolded me, “Resolve yourself. You dishonor her sacrifice with your squirming and your pity.”

“You’re killing her,” I replied, my voice angry. “I get that, but how much longer will she suffer?”

“This is Ikiira who became Ikfael; she lasted the whole three days required for the ritual to complete.”

“Trapped like that?” I demanded.

The elder serpent’s eyes shone as she replied, “She could have freed herself at any time. All it would’ve taken was a single word from her.”

“But at what cost?”

“The exchange would’ve been forfeit,” the elder serpent answered succinctly.

“That’s no choice at all; her village would’ve died!”

“There is always a choice,” the elder serpent said. “One merely has to live with the consequences.”

“Three days of this,” I said, disbelieving.

“You need not worry,” the elder serpent said. “Time passes more quickly here than in the world beyond. Your allies will be able to keep your body safe long enough for you to return to the battle.”

“That’s—that’s not even close to what I’m worried about,” I spit back.

The elder serpent raised her eyebrows in response.

“A little bit,” I said. “It’s normal to be concerned about both Ikiira and Ikfael, the situation here and in the Glen.”

“It is as you say, normal.” The elder serpent sighed and shook her head. Something about the motion seemed to indicate a disappointment in the folly of youth. “Trust in your zasha’s zasha. I am far-sighted enough to have more than one purpose behind each of my actions.”

“You’re saying there’s meaning to her suffering, that there’s purpose behind it.”

“Yes,” the elder serpent said proudly.

“I can’t tell you how much I hate that.”

“Because of your losses,” the elder serpent replied.

Right. Exactly. There were so many well-meaning people and their platitudes after Helen died. The worst was, “Everything happens for a reason.” Well, of course it does! Otherwise, whatever it is wouldn’t have happened! But just because there’s a reason doesn’t make the situation better.

Listen, I understood that death teaches us what’s important. There’s as much purpose in it as in any other aspect of life, but that doesn’t mean suffering is somehow a privilege. We can and should find meaning in it. At the same time, pain sucks. Both things are true. I’d rather hold to that unvarnished reality than cover it over with platitudes.

I was witnessing the past—Ikfael had already survived this hardship, and it’d made her the person she was. Yet, I hated to see her suffering so.

So, I took the elder serpent at her word and sat on the ground. When she realized I was settling down, the elder serpent let go of my arm. She seemed to note how I intentionally and steadily brought my breath back under control. The tension refused to leave me—I felt as taut as a drawn bowstring—but that would have to be okay. The body has its own responses to pain, even when it was another’s.

There was nothing new there; I’d already sat through a loved one’s death once before.

And so I watched Ikiira die, the elder serpent taking a seat beside me, legs tucked neatly underneath her. I didn’t say anything and neither did she. Time passed in discomfort. Both Ikiira’s whimpers and her silences felt heavy against my soul. In the midst of it all, I realized the cold had disappeared entirely. Thinking back, it had dissipated right after I’d made the exchange.

Apparently, none of us needed to sleep nor eat nor take care of any kind of bodily function. Indeed, there were no breaks from the dream-like state I’d found myself in. I thought maybe I’d eventually become numb to Ikiira’s pain, but that never happened.

It was a thing I’d feel ashamed of later, but there were times when my mind wandered. I thought about Helen and my experiences since arriving in this world. I wondered about the upcoming expedition to Old Baxteiyel. There were moments when I tried to trace the runes running through the stone. Once, I caught myself staring at the elder serpent’s profile trying to understand her.

Still, on the whole, I did my best to be present and to do as I was directed—I sat witness to Ikiira’s sacrifice.

###

Three days. I was at the end of my rope after three days and wrung out from the waves of emotions that had run through me—the fury and sorrow and boredom and horror and everything else.

Ikiira had gone silent for hours now. She was still alive, though; I could tell because against my better judgement I’d cast Owl’s Ears and heard her pained, whisper-thin breathing. I’d also caught snatches of her praying to Meliune the Compassionate, Goddess of Mercy.

“Soon now,” the elder serpent said.

“I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive you for this,” I replied.

Her face had remained impassive while Ikiira slowly died, but when she turned to face me at that moment, I saw the sadness in her eyes—and the resolve too. “I understand.”

Whatever else she might’ve said was interrupted when Ikiira began to gasp loudly in short, harsh inhalations. Her heart was stopping. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did.

Suddenly, I felt my own heart halting along with hers. My breathing became labored until I stopped being able to take in any air. My lungs simply stopped functioning. I’d heard of sympathetic pain before, but a sympathetic heart attack?

I ran Nature’s Spring through me, but the qi-spell didn’t help. I struggled to get up, to splash a Healing Water from the pool. The elder serpent clasped my shoulder and held me down. I squirmed to get free, yet she was too strong. I threw a punch, a spear hand at her throat, a claw at her eyes—each time it was like hitting my hand against stone.

“Why?” I managed to croak.

The sadness never left the serpent’s eyes. “You asked how you can help Ikfael. This is part of the exchange.”

Nearby, I heard the sound of stone cracking. Then everything went dark.

###

I died. I was pretty sure I’d died in that moment, but then I opened my eyes to see the sun in the sky, a scattering of billowy clouds scudding gently past. The sound of a waterfall filled my ears. And inside… inside my head Yuki was screaming, relieved that I was back. I’d collapsed after Sklein’s talent took effect on Ikfael, and—

Yuki moved through me, and they reeled in the aftermath of three days of horrible memories. ‘What?’

That was what I wanted to know too. What had just happened and why? But this was not the occasion to lie on the ground in a daze. Beyond the sound of the waterfall, I heard the growling of wolves.

I forced myself to sit up. To my right was Snow. Through the quick merge with Yuki, I’d learned that she’d stood guard over me while I was dreaming. Her eyes were on the forest around us, but her ears tracked the sounds of the fighting down below. To my left, my bow lay on the ground. Standing over it was the Deer God gazing at me with a complicated look. He was only there for a moment before fading away. Later, later, I’ll deal with him and everything else later. Yuki, still shaken, had to be roused from their own stupor.

“Iron Heart,” I said aloud, just to feel my mouth and tongue moving.

‘Ah, right.’ Yuki stirred their qi to get it flowing, and I felt the spell settle onto me, grounding me.

A glance at my Status clock showed that approximately ten minutes had passed. My body power, qi, and mana wells were about where I’d left them. There were no unusual conditions, and… the experience had been real enough; I’d lost a point of Wisdom.

Disregard it, I thought. What’s done is done—both now and in the past. Take care of the Glen first, then check on Ikfael. With Snow guarding my back and the sketch of a plan in place, I sneaked to the cliff’s edge to peek over the side.

All the zombies appeared to be down except for Sklein. The dark creature had grown enough legs to make it hard to get a read on how many exactly—at least a dozen. His injuries from earlier seemed intact, though, so there didn’t appear to be any regeneration or anything like it.

I spied on Sklein and the silver wolf alphas taunting him, weaving between the surrounding trees to keep from getting hit by his Spitter talent. The damage to his beak hadn’t seemed to affect his ability to shoot bone splinters.

Although, Sklein’s aim was off. The damage to his beak appeared to be affecting it, as were a series of random gusts of wind. That last was likely Leilu’s wind-based talents at work.

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Still three seconds in between shots, I observed.

The illusions the wolves normally relied on were ineffective against the undead, so Moonlight and Scout weren’t able to close the distance. We needed to lock Sklein down so that we could get to his hips. If the evidence the wolves had found inside the other zombies held true, there were a couple of extra cores hidden away there.

The problem was that when creatures reached the major level milestones, they became harder to damage, like a combination of low-intensity Iron Heart and Collaut’s Hide. The effect was minimal at Level 5 but became relevant at Level 10.

Normally, spells like Spiral Pierce were enough to get through that natural damage resistance. The issue was the way Sklein’s multitude of legs bunched up—they meant that my arrows would have to penetrate through layers of dark-reinforced muscle and bone to get to the cores underneath. Those layers would act like armor.

I popped up to shoot a Spiral Pierce arrow, and while it slammed into the thick flesh and embedded itself in the bone, the arrow didn’t reach deeper inside. The affected leg kicked the empty air in response. The response might’ve looked simultaneously macabre and ridiculous, but each of those kicks likely packed a wallop.

I stepped back, and moments later a bone splinter whizzed past.

Yuki, Blink status?

‘Ready.’

It’d mean losing another spear, but I might get lucky and pierce the cores directly. If not, then at least the embedded spear would interfere with Sklein’s movements. Those kicks would still be an issue close up…

Thinking that far ahead was a useless distraction in a fight; I’d know the spell’s impact once it was cast. So, gesturing for Snow to stay and overwatch the area, I made my way down the slope on the south side of the waterfall. The limestone ridge gently descended to the ground below, and there was plenty of cover along the way.

Inside my chest, the space around my heart warmed as Yuki prepared the qi-mana matrix required for the Blink emulator. At the same time, I took deep breaths to loosen my muscles. The more stress in my system, the more damage there’d be in the spell’s aftermath. There’d always be internal damage—that was unavoidable—but the stress on my joints and ligaments would lessen.

I came level with the Glen’s pool and began the rest of my preparations: I set my bow and quiver aside, uncapped both my water skins for quick access to their contents, unslung my spear, and got ready for the stance.

Yuki spent the mana for a Whisper Talk, and I said to my allies, “Blink incoming. Count one for distractions. Count three for Blink.”

One. I stepped out into the open. There were no obstructions between Sklein and me. If I overshot, I’d materialize either over the pool or on the other side. Moonlight and Scout leapt out from behind their respective trees barking madly.

Two. I gripped my spear by the bottom of the shaft and took a side stance, extending my reach as far as possible so that the least amount of my body was in danger of overlapping Sklein’s body. The risk of me clipping was greater, but if I did, the damage would be less. The warrior II pose in yoga had inspired the stance.

Three. Yuki threw open the connectors to the Blink emulator. The qi danced wildly, and my mana spiraled through the necessary shapes. My body shook; the world split in two. Deep inside me, I trembled in remembered fear. There’d been a time I’d done this that I’d earned myself a sunburst scar.

I flashed forward—and missed. Three feet shy and to the left. A spike of pain ran through my belly, but… distance… I needed to create distance. A flutter of steps took me out of the range of Sklein’s legs. He’d just shot a splinter at Moonlight, so I had three more seconds…

Again! I thought and cast Dog’s Agility.

One. I splashed Healing Water down my chest, then tossed the skin aside.

Two. I got into stance, ready enough for Blink, so Yuki once again slammed the connectors together.

The world sundered, and I felt like I split right along with it. Stumbling back, I let go of the spear and fell backward, in pain. Enemy, enemy. Eyes on enemy. Forcing myself to look, I saw Sklein falling in the other direction, my spear lodged all the way through his torso. He was still moving though, his legs kicking helter skelter.

My hands shook as I dumped the contents of the second water skin down my chest, my mana coalescing into the healing spell. The pain had disrupted my Dog’s Agility, but Yuki held onto it for me, and I was able to scramble back up to standing.

The spear was making it difficult for Sklein to rise from the ground. After a quick breath to refocus, I grabbed my knives and swung around toward his head. The Spiral Pierced point went into the joint between arm and shoulder. A kick flew at my head, but I dodged aside and came back to work the knife back and forth, casting Cat’s Claw to sharpen the edge and cut through. I let go to dodge the next attack, but the arm was half off by then. It wouldn’t do him any good in trying to stand up.

In the space I’d left, Scout rushed in to bite onto Sklein’s head, her own jerking back and forth in a neck-breaker. The damage wouldn’t matter to the undead, but it would keep the dark creature grounded, his beak pointed upward and the bone splinters shooting into the sky.

She took a couple of blows to the head, but held on. I was able to get my other knife into the second armpit. Then, Moonlight came to grab the arm, and between my cut and his neck-breaker, he was able to tear it off.

I was breathing hard but not winded. A quick scan of the surrounding showed no other threats.

Leilu must’ve seen me looking, because the wind whispered, “No threats in my territory. Nothing’s passed through to the Glen. Where is Ikfael? Is she well?”

“Don’t know,” I said.

There’d been no sign of her since I’d awoken from the dream of gloomy memories. The thing I’d felt go missing earlier—the sense of her inside me that I hadn’t known I’d possessed—was back, though. My Status showed that her Blessing was intact too. It’d been that way both during the dream and afterward.

“I think… I think she’s okay. Just needs time to recover. Can the wolves hold until I get another spear?” I asked.

I needn’t have bothered; just as I’d finished speaking, a length of Spiral-Pierced stone jutted from the earth, spearing Sklein through the torso. His beak seemed to choke on it, the mechanism for his ability to spit bone splinters finally broken.

A pissed-off looking Ikfael pulled herself from the water. With a gesture from her, the stone spear thickened, pulling material from the ground below and expanding until it tore Sklein in two. Gods damn the undead, but the legs continued to kick up a storm. They were like a fish out of water now, however, flopping madly.

And—and!—I saw the dark glimmer of the cores in the exposed torso—two more just like Leilu had reported.

We all took a breath then, and the missing wolves reappeared at the Glen’s boundary. The lot of us watched the legs kick. It was… it was actually kind of funny now that none of our lives were in danger—in a grisly, but fascinating kind of way. Until two water pseudopods reached from the pool to pull the cores free from the torso. Only then did the legs finally still.

“Injuries?” I asked aloud.

Yuki reported that Snow was uninjured, and Ikfael signed that she was fine. I didn’t know whether to believe the otter or not, but she waved me off when I started to approach.

On the other hand, several silver wolves stepped forward to have wounds tended. Also, Moonlight nudged Scout forward, and yeah, she’d taken a couple of blows to the head. It’d be best to cast a Healing Water just in case. Between Yuki and I, we had enough mana left to treat everyone, but just barely. By the end, we’d both tapped out that well.

A quick check told me that the distance to Theloc the Philosopher was increasing. I couldn’t tell exactly how far or how fast, but it seemed a good clip. The hidden watcher he’d left behind had also apparently retreated.

Now that the danger had passed and the injuries dealt with, the majority of the silver wolf pack departed back to their den to rest and recover. Leilu, Moonlight, and Scout remained behind to help gather and get their share of the deceased’s light.

The Maltran dead all seemed to have had four small cores implanted into their bodies in addition to the one that naturally formed above the heart. The only way to “kill” the undead was to dissipate or remove their darklight, so it was mostly silverlight left behind. The only darklight was in the two cores Ikfael had secured from Sklein. Each was the size of a small child’s clenched fist, and they tingled my palm when I held them.

In the cleanup after the fight, we found a shattered box that must’ve contained the booby-trapped silverlight meant for Ikfael. The box itself was flimsy, like it’d been designed to easily break.

If Ikfael had accepted the exchange, then she would’ve poisoned herself. If not, then what? He’d throw the box like a grenade to ensure the payload’s delivery? Fall on it as he died to guarantee he’d come back as an undead?

That last scenario was horrifically plausible given the additional cores. They hadn’t appeared to do anything to power up the combatants, but they had complicated things once the people had turned into zombies, making it harder to put them down. Was that really a… a reasonable use of light? The amounts—other than Sklein—were relatively small, but still, light was light. It could be put to so much better use otherwise.

While Ikfael and the others cleaned up the blood and gore, Snow and I went to retrieve the scale used to measure light. It was a small and delicate thing, so it was kept locked up at the shrine, out of harm’s way. While I was there, I also got the kit for testing and preserving darklight.

When I came back with the tools, Ikfael appeared distant. She had been the whole time we’d been working. Then, when she sat in a circle around the scale along with the rest of us, her gaze seemed both withdrawn and antsy at the same time. I tried to put a comforting hand on her back, but she shifted out of reach, looking away from me.

Well, I’d only been a bystander for those three days of awful memories. How much harder would it have been for Ikfael? It’d be no wonder if she needed time and space to process it all. I certainly felt like I did. Not that I’d likely get it. Once my mana recovered, I’d need to head out to track Theloc—

Moonlight nudged my elbow, while Leilu said, “If you please.”

Right, one step at a time, plus I should wait for reinforcements before tracking the Maltrans.

I rubbed the preservation oil on the darklight cores and set them aside so that it could be fully absorbed. The coal-like surface became shinier even after only a few moments. There were no discolorations or any other signs that things were different than they seemed. It didn’t appear to be booby-trapped.

With a relieved sigh, I turned to balancing the collected silverlight against the specially marked weights. It turned out to be quite a haul, coming to about forty-three-hundred silverlight, enough to get me to Level 9. Except we’d be splitting the light six ways—two shares to be split between Yuki, Snow, and me; one share each for both Ikfael and Leilu; and two shares to be split among the silver wolf pack.

Once the darklight appeared ready, I broke it open to get at the silverlight inside. Weighing the small nodules, there was another two-hundred light for a total of approximately forty-five hundred silverlight.

Assuming the darklight proved safe, it’d also be split six ways. Neither Ikfael, Yuki, Snow, or I were willing to absorb any, so we usually sold our shares off. We also helped Leilu and the wolves sell theirs too, although not all of it. That group usually followed a conservative eighty-twenty plan—rising in levels through a mix of eighty percent silverlight and twenty percent darklight.

Thinking about it, I used the preservation oil on the silverlight too, but no discolorations appeared there either. It should be safe to absorb, although the test likely hadn’t been necessary. From what I’d overheard, Theloc needed to be nearby to disguise darklight as silverlight. Perhaps it was some kind of range limit on a magic spell or talent? That would be useful intel to share with Albei’s leadership—one, that the Maltrans were capable of it and two, the details for how it worked.

Gods, but Theloc was in for a world of hurt. I didn’t know if it was him or some other Maltran agent who’d tried to turn Land Knight Ithia dark, but Theloc had just made himself target number one for the full brunt of her fury. Assuming the hunter’s grandmaster didn’t get to him first. I certainly wouldn’t want Silasenei on my tail.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared, and Level 9 was so very close. I could practically feel the gathered silverlight calling to me. In Albei, at the going rate, those other shares would cost me twenty antaak, but none of the beings around me were interested in money. Well, Ikfael was to a degree but not the others.

Yuki was already funneling their shares into me—they planned to do so until I reached Level 9—and I was certain Snow would agree to an IOU. To get the rest, I’d have to make exchanges with Ikfael and Leilu, and barter with the wolves.

Normally, I didn’t buy silverlight for myself, but I’d been involved in these deaths. There was a connection between me and the people that would make the light more potent, more likely to trigger additional effects. Being a hunter meant wringing every advantage out of a situation in order to come out on top…

All right, let’s do it. I’ll buy out all the shares—

That was when the pool split. Like a leviathan breaching, the stonewater serpent rose, shedding water down her sleek gray scales. The sun was still high in the sky; we were nowhere near the summer solstice; and yet in that moment she appeared before us suddenly and without prior warning. Her aqua eyes gazed down at us.

Those of us remaining in the Glen were shocked. I mean, I’d just seen her, but the timing of this appearance was way outside normal. Ikfael was knocked out of her daze, while Leilu and the wolves appeared absolutely flabbergasted to be honored so. In all the years they’d been in alliance with Ikfael, they’d never been invited to attend to her.

Now, we all bowed down.

I felt a stirring in the air, a heat in my belly, a force demanding that I raise my head. On the back of my neck, I felt the Deer God’s hot breath. I looked up, and almost without my thinking so, I used my Status camera.

> Heleitia the Boundless (Spirit of the Land, Stonewater Serpent, Silvered)

> Talents: *Still denied.*

The stonewater serpent’s gaze shifted—no longer on me and the others—to the Deer God behind me.