There was a very important difference between the dream version of me running into a situation and the real life version of me running into a situation and that boiled down to the sword at my side. Nothing else was different. The moment I spotted the split lip that Byrid was sporting and the bloody scratches on her arm, I sprinted from our bedroom in nothing more than my trousers and shirt.

“There were hidden portals in the dungeons!” Byrid panted, racing alongside me.

Our path took us to the underground area of the castle, towards the deep, dark dungeons where her brother had kept his sacrifices before he offered them to the Harvest Gods. I saw the first light of a misty dawn through two windows on our path to whatever fresh hell awaited us. Something else caught my eye though, a bleary-eyed Maeve, poking her head out of her room.

“What is it?” she asked, blinking her eyes open as we raced passed her. “What is it?!”

“Demons!” Xalap answered at the end of the hallway.

“Is anyone else in the dungeons?” I asked, coming up to the wide wooden doors that lead to the dungeons. I had my sword, one of the trusty blades that I’d conquered the kingdom with, but nothing behind that. I glanced back at one of the decorations on the wall, a line of shields, polished every morning. I yanked it off its spot on the wall and tossed it in the air, slipping my hands into the straps for the fight.

“Not a soul, Auror barked at everyone to leave.” Xalap ushered the servants passed us, clapping her hands to get them to move faster. “Oh, how I am glad you returned. There’s demons down there, demons with antlers and such, and I have such a weak disposition you know—”

We didn’t have all day for the conversation. I kicked open the door and sprinted down the stairs, gripping the straps with white knuckles. I knew how dangerous those portals could be. We’d tangled with a few of the spiders that’d crawled out of there just weeks ago.

“What kind of demons?” Maeve’s voice floated down from the top of the stairs as Byrid and I descended into darkness.

I ignored the urge to yell at her to close the door. My other girls knew that when we were in battle, niceties didn’t matter. Auror, Keeose, Byrid and I exchanged sharp remarks all the time. There wasn’t time for anything else. But Maeve wasn’t used to this and I had to remember that.

“We’ll see you at breakfast!” I threw over my shoulder and took the sharp right, down the familiar hallway. Shouting echoed against the stone but I couldn’t hear exactly what Auror and Keeose were saying. I shook my head. “Byrid, why didn’t you wake me up?”

“We tried! You were so peaceful…we thought we could handle it!”

At the final door, I stopped her and straightened my shield. “And now we know, if there’s demons…”

“Wake up Warrick.”

“That’s my girl.”

With that, the two of us broke into the dungeon and found it swarmed in creatures like nothing I’d ever seen.

They were deer with fangs about as long as my forearm and antlers that towered above their heads, winding and twisting antlers, some absolutely unnatural shit. Their fur was a dirty tan, dark brown, and runes glowed on their bodies, casting them in an eerie glow in the dark dungeon.

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“Warrick!” Keeose shouted in the corner of the room. There was my sexy sorceress, in her sleeping gown, with her dark hair all crazy from sleep, and her iron staff in hand. A trickle of blood dripped from her forehead down to her jaw. She was in the middle of getting that portal closed, swirling and golden in the stone wall, but she couldn’t exactly do that with Santa’s scary reindeer streaming in.

“You should’ve woken me up!” I informed her, meeting her in the middle of the room.

“I told them that,” Auror told me stubbornly and slid by with her sword in hand, slashing at one of the deer guys, spilling his guts to the ground.

That wasn’t enough for the deer guy and when he stumbled close to grab her, I raised my hands and unleashed the fire, letting it overwhelm my senses and burn some venison to a crisp.

Control yourself.

Cipher’s reminder came to me as I wove my hands in a wide arc, bringing a firebolt down on to another deer guy, searing and burning into his chest. It was so easy to let myself get lost in the magic like that, to enjoy the fact that we had the wide-open dungeon spaces and no civilians around to become casualities. But if I wanted a grasp on my magic, that took putting the work in.

“Goddammit,” I muttered under my breath. “Takes all the fun out of it.”

With another curse, I cut my arc, sharpening the angle. If I could focus my fire into a smaller concentration, I could turn it from something that burned flesh to something that pierced through it.

Another deer guy roared in anger and his steps were heavy on the stone, thundering up to me. All I needed to do was concentrate. I wasn’t going to burn him, I’d shoot the fucker right in the throat. It’d be less of a flamethrower and more instant death.

I raised up my hands when he was close and let the fire burst from my palms—

“Warrick!”

Jerking back to hear Maeve’s panicked voice, my fire powers grazed the deer’s shoulders and he wasn’t dead at all. In fact, he was majorly pissed off. He lunged for me, hooves out. We were too close for me to reasonably use my fire powers without potentially hurting myself and I unsheathed my sword, slashing at his stomach.

“These are the gelýrs!” Maeve told us by the door, terrified. “They’re the minions of the Harvest Gods! I—I can’t believe this! It’s real!”

I ducked away from the gelýr, slicing at him again. “Maeve, get back upstairs!”

“That’s what she wishes to tell us?!” Auror demanded, side-stepping close to me with her sword. The two of us fought together for a moment, back-to-back, and I could feel the irritation from Auror’s fox tail, thumping against me. “Of course this is real. What, did she believe we were telling lies?!”

“Maeve, back upstairs!” I shouted.

“This is what she offers?” Keeose muttered, echoing across the stone. “Oh, yes, she can recognize a magic deer. Good for her.”

This wasn’t trading commands on a battlefield, this was an instance of my women being incredibly petty where the timing couldn’t be worse for it. If they were annoyed with Maeve, I was ten times more with them.

“Focus on the portal, Keeose,” I snapped, driving my sword into a gelýr’s belly.

“Wait, Warrick! What if this is it?!” Maeve asked excitedly and her voice grew.

She couldn’t be coming towards the danger, right?

Maeve was my best friend but she’d only handled the introductory self-defenses classes I taught, she had no powers from her past life as a goddess, and there was a huge difference between throwing hand-sized axes on the weekends for fun and handling a real weapon.

“Get back, Maeve!” I barked again.

“I think I figured it out!” she said breathlessly and when I glanced back, I could see a heavy sword in her arms, the tip of the blade dragging along the ground. “This is my comic book origin story! What if my powers can be reactivated with combat?”

She was serious. Fear gripped my heart. “You’re not taking that chance! Maeve! No!”