I rushed over to the tub to see Kene shifting and looking around. Siobhan shot to her feet and let out a yip, nosing at Kene’s hand.

“Where’m’I?” they asked.

“We’re on the boat home,” I said. “You’re currently in Dusk, your grandmother set up some sort of powerful healing bath.”

“Oh,” they said, then blinked and looked at me. “Oh, it worked. I was…”

They shook their head, while scratching behind Siobhan’s ears with one hand.

“I was pretty sure that the hag would swallow my soul.”

Their eyes traced down their body to the sliced-to-bits clothes that they wore.

“I need to take a real shower and change,” they said. “Then we have… A lot to talk about.”

“Do you need me to help you get to the cottage?” I asked.

“No!” the witch cried. I turned to see her doing a headstand, staring at us. “The grandchild will be melted by water. Witches and water! Terrible combination.”

I blinked, then shook my head. I thought I’d seen a hint of her true mind in that, but it was always hard to tell. Kene let out a dry laugh, then shook his head.

“Physically, I’m… Mostly fine.”

“Mostly?” I asked.

“Mostly,” agreed Kene, then held up their left hand.

The bath had repaired it, but I could see scarring around it where it had been mangled. As they curled and uncurled their fingers, I saw the muscles bulging and jumping unnaturally.

“I think this may be a problem,” they said mildly.

I felt guilt boil up in my gut. If I’d been there with them, I might have been able to do… something.

“Mentalize the physical and make them invert into the academia,” the witch advised, still upside down.

I frowned. That had almost – almost – been real advice, talking about physical therapy to help the muscles recover to their normal strength.

Either that, or I was reading too much into it.

“Can you keep an eye on her while I clean up?” Kene asked.

“Of course,” I said.

They nodded and headed to the cottage, Siobhan trotting along behind them, while Dusk turned to the pool of sticky blood-water. It had a bit of power left in it, but not enough that I thought it was worth saving, and apparently she agreed, because she started moving her hands, shifting and altering the composition of the bath, spreading the water and a lot of the life energy out over the dry desert area, allowing it to soak into the water for the Healer’s Heart.

The blood and mana that the witch had used, she compressed into a tiny ball, then paused, clearly unsure what to do with it.

“You’ve gotten better at that,” I complimented, and Dusk whistled her thanks, saying that with three powers working in harmony, it was much easier to manipulate. Even if one of those three wasn’t fully manifested yet.

I wasn’t sure what she meant, but the intricacies of her magic weren’t for me to delve into. She understood them just fine, and was her own person, she could be trusted to guide her own growth and skills.

She let out a raven’s caw, asking if I knew what to do with the blood.

“Sausage,” the witch whispered into my ear conspiratorially, causing me to jerk. She’d moved right up behind me without me noticing.

Creepy.

“I… I’m not sure.”

Dusk shrugged and waved her hand. The blood burst into flames, and the peacepyre floated out of the trees, slipping the fire into itself. It grew larger before turning and floating away.

When Kene finally returned, we’d scrubbed everything back to how it had been before, with the exception of the tub – just in case.

“Hey,” they said, slipping their right hand into mine as they watched Dusk quack at the witch, who was running around on all fours and barking at her.

“Hey,” I said, then voiced a creeping fear that had crept in while I was practicing. “Do you know what happened with the hag?”

“I do,” they said, then let out a long sigh. “I was thrown… I don’t even know. It was like the ruins of a city, crawling with monsters. There were rats that could bite through my armor, despite only being second gate. There were these hulking brutes made of muscle and acid that moved with impossible speed, and who’s acid could burn horribly all over, who were third gate. But worst of all were the weapon-people. They looked like a human made of bronze, silver, or gold, but their hands were fused to weapons of all sorts.”

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Kene paused to swallow thickly.

“They were all lethal fighters. I’ve never seen anything like it. They fought with no mercy or hesitation. If they could scratch your leg, but would die in the attempt, they’d take it. It was… The bronze ones were third gate, but the silver were fourth, and the gold were fifth gate. Real ones too. And there were a few dozen of them.”

“The cuts?” I asked, though it wasn’t really a question, and Kene nodded.

“Yes,” Kene nodded. “I ran every time I encountered one, but they… They were so strong.”

Kene shuddered.

“When I ran into a gold, I couldn’t do anything. It crushed my hand with its hammer, broke my ribs, and would have killed me if someone hadn’t interveined. I used the red pyramid, but I couldn’t call grandmother, because I was still in the realm.”

“Who drove it off?” I asked.

“One of the sky people, I think?” Kene said. “The ones supporting the artifact? Either that, or someone else who used their strategy.”

I groaned internally. Of course, they had to go and make things complicated. Why couldn’t they just be a group of malicious cultists I had to go beat up until they agreed to stop being evil?

Instead, they had to be working to free a group of people from a prison and save the life of my partner, while also trying to kill me and throwing things into chaos. How was that fair?

“I know,” Kene said, reading what I hadn’t said aloud. “It’s… Complicated.”

“I’m so sorry you went through that,” I said, gently running my thumb along their knuckles.

“Anyways, after the gold was occupied, I ran… Right into a silver. They had twin swords, and were cutting me up. They left me for dead, and probably would have succeeded. At that point, the regeneration pyramid was doing its best to keep my heart beating, and the only reason I could even keep it working was forcing it to with my nascent truth.”

“You were in rough shape,” I said with a nod. In the back of my head, though, I was impressed. They’d kept an artifact like that operating longer than it should have with nothing but their nascent truth?

“Exactly. As I was laying there, dying, I felt the hag fighting through the seal. I was out of mana, and was too mentally exhausted, so instead of fighting, I reached out too.”

They shivered.

“I could never do that before. I think… I think it might have been a side effect of me bonding to the tattoos? But when I reached out to her, we spoke. She wants to consume me, yes, but she can’t do that if I’m dead, and she knew that nobody would help a hag on the other side. Her spells could keep us from death, but not infinitely. If she could have… Well, I wouldn’t be here.”

“So she agreed to save you?” I asked, “Just like that?”

“Not just like that,” they said. “But she did agree to save me.”

“What was the cost?” I asked, my throat going dry.

“An open backdoor,” they said, compressing their lips. “Or a hole in the enchantments, if you prefer. Not a large one, but enough that she can speak to me directly when she wishes.”

“Oh,” I said. “So then she’s whispering in your head right now?”

“Not now,” Kene said. “Right now, the hag is resting, but… She was speaking to me a lot when I was in the tub.”

Kene shook his head and shivered.

“Hags are… Strange. She has impulses, and she pushed them to me. Instincts to hunt on humanity, prey on the weak.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. We stood there for a while, looking out over the forest, and not even the witch or the hag stepped in to stop it.

“I did get something good out of it,” Kene said finally, shifting their hand and pulling out a small, clouded quartz crystal. I glanced a little deeper, and realized that no, it wasn’t clouded. There were actual mists shifting inside of the crystal, like those that rose off the rivers early in the morning.

“What is it?” I asked.

“No clue,” Kene said. “I’ve never seen or heard of a treasure like it, but it feels strong.”

It did. Death and tempest and knowledge and abnegation and life and other things too.

“As nice as baubles are,” I said, shaking my head, “I’m just glad to have you back. And alive.”

“I’m glad to be alive too,” Kene said, then their stomach rumbled. “Also, I’m hungry. I had a nutrition potion before I was attacked, but that was two days ago. The baths are designed to loop water into your body, but I am still very hungry.”

I laughed at that. It was absurd to think he’d been running through some sort of post-apocalyptic city, fighting for their life, nearly died, activated a pair of super-powered enchanted items, called his ancestral witch from her hut, who’d then cast a grand healing spell on a scale I’d never seen… and for the first serious complaint they had to be that they were hungry.

A moment later, Kene started laughing too. We stood there laughing for a while, until Dusk and the witch both came over to stare at us, which only made us laugh harder.

“I have some food in the fridge for you,” I said finally, “but we should probably head to the cafeteria for something fresher.”

As we headed out of Dusk’s realm and onto the boat, I noted the chill in the air.

“We must be getting close to Dragontooth,” I commented.

“Get used to it,” Kene said. “You’ll have, what, a month to complete the beastgate trial trail?”

“Something like that,” I said. “I don’t know all the rules, honestly.”

Kene nodded and we moved to get some stuff to eat. For whatever reason, the cafeteria was serving omelets, despite it being close to ten at night. Kene loaded his up with peppers, onions, spinach, tomatoes, chives, chicken, turkey, sausage, mozzarella, cheddar, ricotta, and swiss. I settled for a far more meager shrimp, pepper, and pimento cheese omelet myself.

By the time Kene had torn through their first omelet, and was going back for second – slightly less overloaded – serving, I had finished and put mine aside.

“What happened to you?” Kene asked between bites, “I feel bad, I didn’t ask.”

I caught Kene up on everything that had happened, from waking up, to contacting dusk, to the trail and growth item, to the assassin.

“Oh, that runelight lens should be great for building your mental reserves,” Kene noted. “Combined with the beastmark, you should be able to build up a considerable amount of power of different types.”

“Definitely,” I agreed, then tilted my head when I saw a curious look spread over Kene’s face.

“Do you wanna get off in Dragontooth? It’s not like Delitone, it’s part of the alliance, so we shouldn’t need our passports, just our IDs. Could save you the trip of flying there.”

“I’d be almost two weeks early,” I said, but considered it.

After all, I didn’t know the rules that I’d be operating under. If I made it to the base of the trail and met with the turtle beforehand, I’d be able to get a grip on those, and if there was anything extra I needed, then I’d be able to try and get it.

On the other hand, it would be another week and three quarters where the assassin could come after me without a report to the watches. I could, in theory, report her to whatever the enforcement in Dragontooth was, but I wouldn’t have the support of Octavian and Cettilyn, like I would in Delitone, or Liz and Ed like I would at home. There were high odds it wouldn’t go anywhere, and that I may be detained for my own safety.

But on the other, other hand, if I could bait her out into an actual attack, that would simplify things for the local enforcement a lot more. Things would still be complicated, but the evidence would be a lot easier to sift through. Assuming I lived through her attack, of course.

It was a risk either way, I just had to figure out which risks I was willing to accept.