Sara entered the courtyard with bold strides, willing to accept any reaction from the heroes. Thank you for coming here today, she practiced in her head. I know you’re nervous to kill people, but trust me, you’ll be a pro at it. Your past selves were borderline criminal. Well, the ones that survived. Funny story. Anyway, who wants to start up where they left off? She chuckled nervously, not prepared to spread her dark and barren life to the rest of the heroes. But this was the life she chose, so she walked to the meeting area, feeling her footsteps sinking into the soft springtime grass. It was still night, and the air was chilly, but the outdoors smelled fresh and alive.

All of the heroes were there—an hour early—standing next to silver gliders they had tied to trees in the forest. When they saw her, their nervous whispers halted. Her organs shifted subtly, leaving her feeling uncomfortable and awkward as she moved to the front. Raul was giving a pep talk to heroes as Emma ran around giving people hugs, but they both stopped when they saw her.

“All good?” Raul asked.

“Yeah.” Sara panned her gaze to the heroes. “Are they ready?”

“Would’ve went without you,” he said.

“Good.” She took a deep breath and walked over to Emily, who’s body almost bristled like a cat when she approached. “Hey,” Sara said.

Emily smiled nervously and turned to her slowly. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

Sara ignored her and pulled out a ring with a green gemstone. “This is magic. Wear it.” She put the ring into Emily’s hand and turned around, striding away hurriedly.

Emily laughed in the distance and ran forward. “Wait.”

Sara froze and turned to her. “It’s passive magic. You don’t need to….”

Emily giggled and wiped her eyes when she saw Sara’s expression. Then she paused—and burst into giggles again. “I’m sorry. It’s just….”

Sara frowned. “Is that all?” She turned around.

“No! Wait!” Emily grabbed Sara’s shoulder. “Wait!”

For a split second, Sara considered grabbing the woman’s arm and snapping it in half just to teach her the value of not grabbing powerful people’s bodies, but she knew that she was just embarrassed. So she let the emotions die and sighed. “Yeah?” she asked.

“I love it.” Emily thrust her arms around Sara in a hug. “Thank you.”

Sara felt warm emotions well within her, but the intensity of the heroes’ stares ruined the moment. “You’re welcome…” Sara said. “I made them for everyone… though.”

“I don’t care,” Emily said. “Thank you.”

“Yeah….” Sara released her and then turned to Rena. “You too.”

The reaction from Rena was far less dramatic, but it was still warmer than expected. Same with the other heroes on Raul’s team, but the warm atmosphere froze when Sara approached Tara.

“You’re with us now.” Sara presented a ring.

Tara’s lips quivered as she accepted it, and she clutched it against her chest. “I… why?”

“This world sucks,” Sara said. “So don’t die.” She turned around, trying not to cringe at what could possibly have been the worst advice she had ever given (if it could even be considered “advice.”) Fortunately—she didn’t have to think about it long because—unfortunately—she was met with the uncomfortable stares of all the other heroes.

“These are only for the tactical team,” Sara announced. “The rest of you are with me.”

Raul chuckled with a wide, mocking grin. “Where’s mine?” he mused.

Sara turned to him with an apologetic expression. “I didn’t have enough time.”

“At least you care,” Raul chuckled, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Thanks. For caring.”

Sara took a sharp breath, feeling the ice block around her heart chipping. But before there were any meaningful cracks, she turned around. “Don’t die.” She walked away as he laughed with other people and met up with Emma. “You ready?” Sara asked.

Emma nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Sara smiled slightly. “Keep ‘em safe, okay?”

Emma’s eyes glittered, and she smiled brightly. “Okay.”

Sara nodded and turned to the heroes. “Let’s get going. You can be nervous when you get there.”

2

Sara watched the sunrise to the west, casting red and purple hues over vast swathes of farmland and wildness. From a birds-eye view, Reemada looked so peaceful—pure and untainted, nothing like the sprawling concrete jungles that she was born into. Yet she now knew that they were equally violent, a reality she was sheltered from before magic ripped her from Earth and sent her spiraling into the underbelly of hell. She glanced at the other heroes, enjoying the flight, reveling in the cool breeze and warm scenery. Enjoy it while you can, Sara thought.

They flew for sixteen hours that day between four breaks. By the end of it, the heroes had forgotten about all of their anxiety, and they just enjoyed watching keena bugs flying through the campsite, reflecting the fire off their silver bodies like floating embers. Darius told ghost stories while Helen and the other women threw sticks at him. But he brushed them off, calling to Sara and saying, “Hey, General. Tell us a story.” He was pretty brazen after a few glasses of wine.

Sara stopped whittling a stick and then sat next to a fire with the heroes.

“Seriously?” Andy asked. “Are you really?”

She looked into the fire, watching it crackling and popping. It was so contained, but when she looked deep inside it, where the fire consumed her vision, the pops rang out like explosions, and the smoke told a story of its own. “You don’t want any of my stories,” she said.

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“Ah, come on,” Darius said, offering her a bottle of wine. Sara reached for it but stopped before her hand could cup it.

You’re an alcoholic, Sara, she thought. That’s the last thing she wanted to accept because she wanted to marry a tavern owner. Yet she still pulled her hand away and shook it off.

“Not tonight,” Sara said. “Not yet.” Before she could give in to the temptation, she got up and returned to her tent. It was a long journey—but she’d be better for it.

3

Sara and the heroes mounted their silver gliders for another full day at writing and—once again—refused their requests for stories the next night. They’d have plenty on the third night—

—and they did. On the third day, they spotted Plem, a middle-sized city that was under siege. The heroes noticed it miles away from the smoke billowing in the skies, painting a vicious black plume like an erupted volcano. The closer they got, the more the whistle of wind in the air was replaced with piercing screams from the ground.

“What the fuck are they doing?!” Darius yelled when he saw the Lemings soldiers had set the city on fire from the inside, and the citizens were trying to flee but finding themselves surrounded by walls and enemy troops. “There’s not going to be anything left!” he yelled.

“They don’t care!” Sara turned to the others. “Andy! Patch up the walls with the engineers. Emily! Heal the wounded. Everyone else, put out the fires. If you see combatants—kill them.”

The heroes turned to each other in horror, but their reluctance didn’t last long. By the time they could feel the heat from the fire, fireballs started streaking toward them from the ground like reverse meteorites.

“Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!” Wiles yelled, dodging one of the strikes. “These things are really going to kill us!”

That’s when the panic began. Sara watched them carefully, only intervening when the heroes were in serious danger. Slowly, yet surely, she watched them create barriers to block the fireballs and the arrows. They got a hang of it, but she could see by their jerking motions and elongated yelling that they were in shock from people suddenly trying to kill them. By the time they landed in the city and could feel the flames from burning buildings and smell the stench of dead bodies—boiling in the heat—they realized the depths of the situation they were in.

“Stay safe,” Sara whispered as she watched the teams break apart, running around aimlessly, trying to mine sense from the chaos. Suddenly, the hairs on the back of Sara’s neck stood up when she felt intense heat approaching from behind. She turned and chanted simultaneously: “Eroí kai mythikoí!” An intense gust of wind shot from Sara’s hands, blowing across the battlefield as a massive fireball the size of a sports truck flew across the air. Wind and flame collided in a spectacular inferno of wind and heat, painting their introduction to the battlefield.

4

Trikal Helsa had seen the horrors of war. As a minor general of the Lemings army—and one of its strongest mages—he had stalked battlefields for almost two decades, bringing glory to the strongest kingdom in the central lands. Perhaps from experience alone, he took all enemies seriously, and when he saw Escaran troops riding silver gliders haphazardly into a warzone, barely keeping hold of the reins, he didn’t laugh like the other troops. He released a divination pulse and saw something terrible:

The ones having difficulty riding their sliver gliders had the strongest mana output, while the one who was guiding them skillfully, watching over their flight, had almost none. That disparity showcased the difference in mana circulation, and the fact that the weakest looked like a radiant silverbloom under a divination spell gave him a bad premonition. So he stopped what he was doing, changed a multi-tiered fire spell, aimed it at the leader (a hooded woman in a green cloak), and released a massive attack to test her. And within a second of launching his spell, the woman had turned and cast a counterspell that overwhelmed his as if his multi-tiered spell was no different than a simple fireball. After it was over, he was so stunned that he barely noticed the soldiers asking for his orders or the sounds of explosions. He just stared at the young woman who was watching him from the silver glider.

“Sir!”

The world suddenly clicked into focus, and Trikal could hear soldiers screaming and feel the reverberations from soldiers’ boots stomping the ground below him.

“What?” Trikal yelled.

“The wall!” a soldier yelled.

He looked forward, and to his disbelief, a colossal wall of solid rock shot up toward the heavens from within Plem’s walls, closing the breach his soldiers had broken into the wall. By the time it stopped growing, it was a natural landmark.

“What…?” Trikal turned back to the woman flying the silver glider. He had only looked away for a moment, but she had disappeared like a ghost, leaving cold chills crawling down his arms like icy spiders. He called out to his mages: “Raze the city! Now!”

His orders spread quickly, weaving through the battlefield until the mage division that was responsible for breaking the barrier and lighting the city ablaze was chanting in rhythm. Trikal swallowed back acid in his throat, taking sharp breaths as he looked around the sky. No one was there. She was—

A sudden bright light blinded his left eye, followed by an eruption of fire that spread through his periphery. He turned and found that the mage division he ordered to attack had erupted in a sea of flames, screaming in anguish as normal soldiers flocked to the scene, putting up shields in formation to protect their brethren in vain.

“Where….?” Trikal whipped his head back and forth, scanning the skies for signs of the woman. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He then studied the situation and found that the mages had been hit with the exact amount of fire necessary to kill them and no one else. It was pinpoint accuracy. He looked back to the city walls and found it far away—too far to aim. Even from the highest point of that ridiculous stone wall—it wasn’t possible. “How?” he whispered. He got no answer, so he turned to his personal mage division. “Build a barrier around me!” he ordered.

Mages ran across the battlefield, gravitating around him like a magnet. Then they began chanting, and a thick blue barrier developed around his body.

“Oi psychés, perdikoménous se éna χoró tanthasmáton,” Trikal chanted, “psallízan ómorfes, lygariá melodies epignósis. E órthros pou érkhetai proágei éna kýma néas émellias, anakalýptontas éna paradóxo rýthmo. Trona, mes' sto thaúma, aporía: 'Eínai aftó to tángisma tis salíggaros….”

5

Sara watched the meteor strike developing in the heavens and looked down. Helen and the engineering group panicked, moving up onto the wall. They won’t be able to stop it, she thought calmly. The fire was growing in the sky, casting a hellish red glow against the black smoke from the fire. Those working on the fires wouldn’t even notice. Should I test their ingenuity? she considered. Or….

6

Andy rushed up to the general who was leading the fight against the Lemings Kingdom. He was standing on an embattlement on the outer wall, overlooking the swarms of Lemings’ soldiers attacking with siege equipment. “Where’s the barrier?”

The general looked at him. “Who the hell are you?”

“The person that put up that big fucking wall! Now tell me! Fuck!” Andy looked into the sky, saw the red glow increasing in size, and suddenly understood the profound frustration that Sara must’ve felt daily when speaking to normal soldiers. To make matters worse, the spell happening in the sky wasn’t normal by any means, and he knew it was trouble. It was possible that it was a normal Reemadan, but for a moment he questioned whether it was Matt making that spell, and just the thought made his blood boil. “Where’s an amplification circle?” Andy demanded.

“Look, kid!” the general snapped. “I don’t know who you are, but I don’t have time to—“

“Then watch!” Andy pulled out ink and a brush and drew an amplification array on the ground. With every stroke, he realized it would be too late. Even for a five-tiered spell, it would only take two minutes at most, and over a minute had passed. Worse, even if he activated it in time, his orders to throw up barriers around the city would come too late if someone hadn’t already prepared. He should’ve done this from the start. “Please, Sara…..”

7

Trikal felt cold sweat pouring down him as he poured mana into his spell. For whatever reason, the larger the attack got, the more he felt it wouldn’t be enough. So he kept pouring and pouring and pouring—until the barrier protecting him abruptly shattered, leaving him exposed to attack. There were two words left in the spell.