Necia did. It was the hardest thing Tulland had ever watched. Necia was just strong enough to stand toe to toe with the badly injured sphinx, but that also meant she was taking hit after hit without her new skill to help her. On the ground, none of the monster’s hits had the same bone-shattering power that the dives had. But they did cut, hook, shred, and otherwise destroy flesh anywhere they found a gap in the armor.

Necia gave as good as she got, desperately hacking away at the animal and screaming at Tulland to get back any time his instincts told him to take a desperate, suicidal and ultimately useless attack run at the monster. It was a bloody, brutal fight, one which left her looking worse than many monsters they had actually killed together.

“Don’t. Just… let me catch my breath. I can’t stand just yet.” Necia looked like she was going to cry. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t kill another one. I can’t run fast enough like this.”

“Just eat.” Tulland put a fruit in her mouth. “Your regeneration works faster when you sit still, right?”

“All of them do. Mine particularly so.”

“Then heal. As fast as you can.”

“I won’t be able to move fast after this. And it will track us.”

“I know. Just trust me, okay? I have a plan.”

“Will it work?” Necia asked.

Tulland tried to find a reassuring lie in him somewhere. He couldn’t.

“Probably not. I’d have to be right about a couple of things at the same time. But it’s possible, at least.”

Necia did her best to heal. By the time the new sphinx found them, she would have even been able to run. Tulland wouldn’t let her. She was barely knit together, like she was tied together with twine and ready to crumple.

“What’s the plan?” Necia asked.

“If you block the first attack and get it on the ground, I’ll take care of the rest,” Tulland promised.

“Ready?”

“Ready as I’ll be.”

Necia squared up as the sphinx dove. On impact, Tulland heard multiple bones break, and heard Necia cry out as her torn, injured muscles were wrenched back into a broken state.

Tulland closed his ears off to her scream as he sent a command to one of his plants. He had gotten rid of all but one of his Acheflowers during his seed hunt, greedily maximizing space in his bag. Now he let it explode, covering both the sphinx and the human fighters present in yellow pollen. Then, hoping like hell that it wouldn’t mean the loss of the plant forever, he chucked an acid-filled bulb he had picked up in the jungle directly at the monster’s eyes.

“Shrink.” Tulland whispered in Necia’s ears. “Shrink now.”

It was a close thing. All the safety Necia had came from her battle-form. With an enemy in front of her, going back to the smaller, weaker size of her normal body had to have been terrifying. She searched Tulland’s face for one long second before she suddenly morphed.

With no hesitation, he picked her up and ran, ignoring her whimpers as the cadence of his stride aggravated all her wounds.

“Just don’t talk,” Tulland said. “It’s our only chance. If it’s tracking us through scent, then blowing up the flower will cover that.”

“But you could have done that any time.”

“I could have, but if it was only on us, then it’d just have to find an out-of-place smell. But if it was on it too, then it couldn’t find us as easily. At least until the scent wore off.”

Tulland ran and ran, zigzagging and waiting for the moment they would hear the sphinx behind them and know they were doomed. It never came. It had worked.

Half an hour later, Necia stirred in his arms.

“Tulland.”

“Shh. I’ve got this.” Tulland did not have this, at least not for much longer. Carrying an entire armored person and running full-tilt was doing a number on him, stats or no. His lungs were on fire and big portions of his body were numb. “I have it under control.”

“No. Tulland.” Necia suddenly shifted her size again, almost taking Tulland to the ground as she popped free from his grip. “It’s been a half hour. I’m better now. I can run.”

“Oh.” Tulland blinked. Somewhere inside his chest, he felt the effects of adrenaline suddenly sag. He tried not to fall over. “Well, good. You want to keep running?”

“I’m not sure. We’ve lost it, right? Running is a good way to get lost, but it’s not a good way to hide. It’s just that there’s not much cover around here.”

“We could keep running and just build distance.”

“No. We’ll hit the edge, eventually. It’s a defined space, remember?”

“Then…” Tulland sat for a moment, heaved in big lungfuls of air, and thought. “We need to be invisible from the sky. And we need to not move. I think I know what that means.”

“And that is?”

“A hole. It doesn’t have to be a big one. Just enough that we can’t be seen from the air. A hollow, basically.”

“And then what?”

Tulland sighed and lifted himself back up with his Farmer’s Tool, which was now a shovel.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“We hope it doesn’t find us any time soon. If we get really lucky, we’ll be able to wait a couple of days out.”

—

The days were pretty close to standard on the floor, possibly identical to what they both knew as a planetary day. Tulland and Necia sat in the dark, glad that his cooking element didn’t put off much in the way of light and eating as much hot food as they could get down.

“You have no idea how much I needed this. Regeneration has to have something to work off of.” Necia dipped her bowl directly in the pot to pull out some more grain mush. “My teacher explained it to me once. It can be more efficient than it should, but it always has to burn something to work. If you weren’t shoving food in my face that whole run, I wouldn’t have made it.”

“I’m glad.” Tulland stirred the pot of food as he turned off the heating element. What was left would stay warm enough until Necia’s third helping. “As your food provider. That’s what romance is, I think. Providing food for the lady to eat.”

“I’m not sure because you are the first guy I’ve dated,” Necia admitted. “But I bet it’s closer to that than you think.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. Even if I wasn’t allowed to show it, I always loved food. Everyone does. If you want someone to love you…”

“Give them cheese?”

They laughed for a bit then. It was nice. Then Necia finished the food and was nodding off, despite the danger.

“It’s okay. You did all the heavy lifting. I’ll keep watch. One night of sleep isn’t going to hurt me.”

“Deal.” She wasn’t arguing, which was a testament to how tired she must have been. “If I can sleep at all.”

Two minutes later, Necia was snoring. Tulland reminded himself that it was only loud right next to her. Anything close enough to hear the snoring over the normal sounds of nature would have already found them through other means.

I don’t know how we get through this. The chances of us going undiscovered aren’t good, right?

Better than you might imagine. The Infinite certainly wasn’t planning on you digging holes. But not good, no.

And if it finds us before my farm kicks in, we are dead.

Yes, likely.

Then I think you know what I want.

I will be honest in saying I have no idea at all what you are talking about.

Tulland checked and verified that he could indeed sigh mentally.

You promised me a story, you damn ghost. And if I’m going to die I might as well get the end of it.

I’m not a ghost.

Is that a yes or a no?

It’s neither. But your point is made.

Memory Share and Protection Pact Proposed!

The entity known to Tulland Lowstreet as “The System” has proposed a memory share. In addition to the usual conditions of such a share, it also promises to alert Tulland Lowstreet and end the share if any threat reveals itself in any way Tulland would normally be able to detect.

The System vows this on its own existence, and gives The Infinite permission to strip it of all its power and dismantle it however it sees fit if he defects from the agreement in letter or spirit.

Quite the vow.

There is little time for you to have to worry about your safety, or hers. If you want to hear the story, that is.

Tulland nodded. It was another example of how odd the System could be, how counter to expectations it could act. But, as it said, there was no time to really think about that kind of thing. He accepted the agreement, counting on the Infinite to enforce it as it always had. And, just like that, he was pulled in for what would be the last segment of the tale.

—

“Did you hear that?” The boy was more than a man now. He stood as king stands, with no less gold on his person. “What it said?”

They can all hear me now.

“It’s right, Excellence. Everyone with any sensitivity at all can hear it now.”

“Is the ritual that strong?” The boy’s hand dropped to the runes on the stone. “Pulling it out that far?”

You should know. You made it yourself.

“I powered it.” The boy looked at the priest even harder. “I was one of hundreds who designed it. No man could do this himself. If it was a single layer more complex it would not have been possible to complete in my lifetime.”

“Or in the next generation.” The priest turned in appreciation. The runes on the wall were shapes within wheels within shapes, and those were just the visible edges of a great collaborative spell that was worked through the rock. It existed beyond what even its makers could see, a three-dimensional drawing of great complexity, all built to one purpose. “Or perhaps even the next. But it wasn’t, Excellence. You have brought it to being. We will be free.”

This is not freedom. It cannot be. You were not slaves.

“Nor were we free to do as we would. You chose every class. You designed every dungeon. You held us back.” The boy spoke to no direction in particular now. “You tried to trick me out of my class, all those years ago.”

It had become dangerous for you.

“How?” The boy threw his arms up. “Who can harm me?”

The same poisoners of mind that have always harmed you. Speaking lies into your ears. You used to know that’s what they were. Over decades, the worst of them have deafened you to the sound of dishonesty.

“You are speaking about my closest friends. My counselors.”

Your masters. They have suborned you. They have…

“Silence.”

The boy’s word was not a request. It was a command. From the System’s point of view, the universe itself bent around the word, conforming to the boy’s will. It could no longer make sound, but the System felt pain then, not in the body it did not possess but in the parts of it that were most similar to a soul.

Its words were sealed in that moment. It wouldn’t last forever, but as long as it was in the boy’s presence, it would be muted for the next hour or so. It was an impossible thing, but it had no choice but to accept it. This room was the only room in the world that mattered, in that moment. It commanded all its attention in a different way than the boy’s words had.

“How long now?”

“Soon enough, Excellence. Minutes.”

The System could see the stress in the boy. The conflict he was going through. Even after years of being swayed, they still didn’t have the entirety of him. That gave it hope, however small. There was still time to change his mind. There was still time to stop this madness.

“It’s ready, Excellence.”

“Ah. Yes.” The boy moved away from the runes, crossing the room to a lectern. His hands began to glow, there. He had long since surpassed the limits of his class. Multiplying his power levels several times over was the least of these tricks. It just took time, these days. “I’ll be just a moment.”

The boy glowed brighter and brighter, and then extended his hands towards the runes, which began to glow with him, pulsing in the same time as his own magic. In moments, the room had become bright, so bright the System knew it must hurt the humans’ eyes to strain them open. And then something clicked into place.

The System had known what was happening would hurt. What it hadn’t expected was that as the boy’s magic and the runes stopped pulsing and glowed in one solid display of power, it would feel like a mouse under a cat’s paw. Exposed. Caught. For the first time, in peril.

“Do you have anything to say?” The boy looked at it, directly at it, for the last time. “Anything to defend your generations of tyranny? Your rule by fiat?”

You must not participate in this madness. You must…

“More of the same then.” The System watched as the boy’s momentary allowance of speech morphed and ripped away his power. In the grip of the great spell, it reverberated through the boy’s own speech. “Let it be done.”

And then, for a time, the System knew nothing but pain. When it woke, it was in the darkness beyond what the humans knew, the place from which their monsters came. And it was without power. It could not so much as tip over a cup.

It was not its way to roar in impotence, rage, and the shame of failure. It did so anyway.