I had no idea when Sabine was going to wake up. The closest thing we had to magic users were myself, who still didn’t know how my abilities worked, and Lillian, who seemed to possess some kind of divine paladin healing powers, all of which were more likely to kill Sabine than help her. I did make a mental note to ask Lillian about the whole divine thing. I didn’t remember a single thing about the confusing system of gods and demons that was present in the main game, and I’d sort of mentally skipped through the lore on those. It was probably going to be a little more relevant to my situation now.

Erza knelt down, took off one of her leather gloves, held it against Sabine’s forehead and grimaced. I’d tried the same thing. Turns out that measuring a fever on someone who doesn’t generate body heat is an exercise in futility. However, she did go a step further. She fished through her pouches and retrieved a small crystal embedded in a sort of flat brass circle, and shook it. It began emitting light faintly. Erza pulled open Sabine’s eyes, one after the other, shining the light in her eyes, the way I’d seen doctors do on television and, I assumed, probably in real life as well. She made a satisfied grunt.

“She’ll be fine,” she said, as if that was that.

I raised my hands in the universal language of “Well? What else?”

Erza put the little glowstone back as she stood back up. “Her arm is broken, but other than that, she is merely experiencing fatigue.”

“What kind?”

Erza smiled. “The kind you get when you try to lift something several times your weight and hold it there several times longer than you know you can. But on her mind instead of her body.”

“Magic does that?”

Erza nodded. “It’s an ironic side effect of the power, if I understand it correctly. The more powerful the sorceress -- or lich in this case, I suppose -- the bigger the toll on them. A lesser mage would not have been able to do what she did, not on their own. But they also wouldn’t have been able to overextend themselves the way she did.”

“The stronger you are, the easier it is to hurt yourself,” Mellie said, leaning against a tree and looking down at Sabine with a worried smile. “She used to be so timid.”

“So now what?” I asked.

“She’ll wake up in a few hours,” Erza said. “We don’t have a few hours.” She took off her backpack. It hit the ground with an unpleasantly loud Thud and she hoisted Sabine onto her back. “Someone tie her arms and knees together.”

It took only a minute for the impromptu Sabine-rucksack to be securely fastened. Erza did a few experimental hops and nodded. We looked at the pack, and I shrugged. I threw it over the one I already had on. The straps needed adjusting, but it wasn’t as heavy as it looked. The others stared. Mellie giggled softly. Tilly looked absolutely hysterical, the way her mouth hung open and big kitty eyes stared wide open.

“What?”

“That’s… You shouldn’t…” Sally began with a grin. “It’s going to look a bit suspicious when what you're carrying is twice as big as you are.”

I looked backwards. The two packs combined were comically large. “Oh.”

There was a little bit of shuffling of packs. I took Erza’s big one, Sally took my smaller-but-still heavy one -- it turned out that succubi were a decent bit stronger than humans -- Tilly took Sally’s and Erza hung Tilly’s tiny pack on her hip. We all looked around. The only one that looked out of place now was Tilly, carrying a pack as big as she was, but she didn’t seem too bothered. We could just pretend it was mostly like, clothes or something.

Erza looked ahead. “We’ve no more time to waste,” she said resolutely, and began to walk. The next leg of our journey wasn’t going to be very long. We’d make our way to a small town, some fifteen miles on, maybe a bit more. Standardized measurements weren’t a thing here yet. We wouldn’t get there before sundown, but that would be to our benefit. The fewer people who saw the direction we entered the town from, the fewer questions would be asked. I figured we’d be able to talk our way around any inquisitive people and questions regardless, but it was a situation I’d avoid if at all possible. And ideally we’d get there before the eight-hour mark, when the magic wore off.

I looked at the landscape as we walked. The forest south of the Dergow was mostly birch, one of the only trees I recognised because of their white bark. Though I seemed to remember them having leaves, and not needles. We walked on in silence, saving our breath and not wanting to lose time. The crunch of needles underfoot reminded us that summer was coming to an end. Harvest would begin soon, back home.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Home, I considered, was no longer an apartment in a different world. Home was a room with pillows and tea. Home was Sabine falling asleep against me. It was a smile from Erza. It was going over plans with Kazumi. Home was my fortress, in more ways than one. The idea of a name for it came to me, but now, already so far away, it seemed pointless. Still, I filed it away for later. I already missed the place, its overly large black stone and iron-wrought doors. I worried about Sabine, gently bouncing up and down on Erza’s back.

As we walked, I slowly made a mental map of the landscape. Not in a literal sense, not that directly, I wasn’t that good, but more vaguely, trying to contextualize my own kingdom with regards to Wydonia. The mountain range -- the Spines, I remembered -- started somewhere in the east, curved upward over and around my little kingdom, and ended just at the edge of Wydonia. At its very end was the source of the Dergow, which ran southeast for a while, forming a natural border between Wydonia and my own kingdom, and then went on, separating Wydonia from the steppes that lay between its fertile land and the Spines, until it took a sharp turn southwest, and bisected Wydonia. I was lucky that so much of my Kingdom was a flat valley. It lay in the elbow where the Spines curved, with hills and highlands to our east and the Dergow to the south.

From the way we were headed, it seemed that the foothills of the Spines extended a ways beyond the Dergow, which explained why it curved east first, instead of west, towards the ocean. It also explained why we were walking slower than we wanted to. We didn’t have a path to follow, we just trusted Erza and Mellie to find their way through the forests and hills. Erza seemed to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the area, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was used to long treks. Mellie, meanwhile, constantly ran up ahead, and warned us of small cliffs that would require us to run around. She seemed to be very comfortable here, and I couldn’t deny that I loved the smell of the forest. If I wasn’t so worried about Sabine, I would’ve had a spring in my step simply because of the change in scenery.

I’d never gone hiking much as a kid, but now, as an adult, I did see the appeal. Tilly didn’t seem to agree. I don’t know what it must’ve been like when she was still taller, but now her small legs seemed to have trouble stepping over roots and fallen branches.

“Maybe you should walk with Erza?” Lillian offered. Tilly looked at her suspiciously.

“Why? So that she can pick me up? So I’m not a burden? Thank you for the offer.”

I rolled my eyes at her defensiveness. Lillian seemed to have more patience. “No, Tilly. If you walk behind us, you’re taking the same route we are. And we step over the kind of obstacle you seem to have trouble with. If you’re walking in the front, you can choose your own path more easily.”

“Oh,” Tilly said. “Sorry.”

“Apology accepted. Go on now,” Lillian said, and smiled as the little creature bounded off to the front of the pack. I looked at her.

“You seem to have some experience with her…”

“Peculiarities?” Lillian raised an eyebrow. “She was always a bit like this, if I’m honest.” She sighed, seemingly lost in a memory.

“In what way?”

“Very defensive. Insecure. Daniel didn’t notice, I don’t think. He was always too busy saving the world.” She shifted her pack a bit. “Ty-- Tilly was always… trying to measure up to someone who, for all we know, was mandated by the gods themselves to save everyone. They grew up together, you know?” I did, but I wasn’t going to say that. “So she’s just… she assumes people don’t take her seriously. I wonder if… if her true form being so small is a reflection of that.”

I hadn’t considered that. I sort of assumed that revealing someone’s true form was something mystical, revealing absolute truths about them and our world with it. But maybe it was simpler than that, showing absolute desire rather than truth. “You think she’s small and strong because that’s how she sees herself?”

Lillian nodded. “I don’t know much about magic beyond what the church has taught me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what happened. And so I can’t help but wonder what would happen if such magic was used on myself. Would anything change? Are there things I’m hiding, even from myself? If there really is magic that shows us who and what we are, deep down, or who we truly want to be, should you use it? Or should you put in the work to become the best version of yourself?” She seemed lost in her train of thought, but it was an interesting notion, for sure. “Would it even work on me? Would my faith protect me from what seems to be ‘infernal’ magic? It’s certainly ‘protected’ me from Sabine.”

She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I have things to think on, Eliza. I’m sorry for rambling. Thank you for listening.” And with that she sped up a little. I left her to her thoughts. I had my own to consider. I wondered what would happen if that magic was used on me. Would I still be Liz? Was that who I was? Or would something else come out, something I’d never considered? There was no way to tell, not really, but it did occupy my thoughts for a while.

Evening had begun to fall. Late summer was hot, but not uncomfortably so, though I wondered if that would become more and more of a problem the further south we got. My kingdom, even around Shereton, had cool winds coming down from the mountains even on hot days, and river- and spring-water was almost always freezing. People didn’t want for ways to cool off. I wondered what Wydonia in late summer was like. Would it be sweltering? Or just… warm? The sun had almost set completely when we scaled a hill and the landscape opened up, the treeline significantly less dense here. I saw the occasional stump and realized that we’d be approaching the edge of the village. I heard the distant sounds of people going about their business, approaching the end of their day.

Erza halted. We all joined her on a little ridge and looked out over the town.

“Vigilance,” she said.

“What?”

“The name of the town,” Mellie said.

“Oh.”

Vigilance was a small border town, clearly one of those places for people who fared better at the edges of society, who didn’t want to become farmers in big cities, people who wanted to carve out a piece of wilderness for themselves. As we began to approach, the few people still out looked hardy, and while not unhappy, there was a dour atmosphere. I assumed they’d received word of the coming war, and they were worried it would find its way to their doorstep. I hoped for their sake it wouldn’t, that the armies going north would go around a hamlet like this. But there was, as our information had suggested, an inn. We got some looks as we walked through the street, but there didn’t seem to be that much interest in us. Perhaps we weren’t the first people fleeing south.

We went inside, Erza needing to duck to make her way through the door. I kept an eye on Sabine, but it seemed Erza kept an eye on her ‘cargo’. Mellie and Lillian walked up to the inkeep and were already booking rooms.

“And what’re your names, fine ladies?” I heard as I walked in. The Innkeep was a burly fellow with a big moustache and a very friendly feel about him.

“Maria Undercroft,” Mellie said, trying to sound haughtier than she was able to pull off.

“And Laura Hill,” Lillian added. They’d picked names similar enough to their own for us to remember, but different enough so that they wouldn’t throw up any red flags. “We need a place for our business. You can mark us down under the name of our organisation, if you please. Everything on the books, after all.” She played the part of the business woman well.

“And what name is that,” the innkeep asked. He was completely disinterested, which was perfect.

“UnderHill,” Lillian said.

“What?!”