Showing off, as it turned out, was a hard thing to do. Selly Cackled on my shoulder as I scrambled up the rooftop. Among the people moving below, I could hear a few chuckles.

Anna, I know, had seen it and was no doubt wondering what had possessed me to jump that gap, and as I got my footing, I too wondered what idiotic thing had done that.

I knew well why I did it, obviously. I had done it because I thought it would be fun. I suppose I should have known it wasn’t a fun day.

You know. Because the city was still on fire and people were dying and it wasn't appropriate. But I had done it anyway. Scratched out a few moments of fun, running on rooftops like a character in a book, a sneaky [Rogue].

And as I started to reprimand myself, Selly said, “Gods. I wish I could have seen that from afar. Your face must have been priceless,” and then she laughed.

I got my balance under me and started moving off toward where Anna had pointed toward and seethed a little.

“You don’t have to mock. I know it was stupid but-”

“But nothing,” she said, cutting me off, “You showed off. Good on you. You even seemed to have a little fun running around and that’s all the better.”

I frowned at her words as I kept my wits, staring at the tiles, checking for cracks in the rooftops.

“It’s not the time for fun, not now,” I told her.

“Tonight is not a good night, nor one that’s fun, true. But do not conflate the two. You are not the night, as it is not you. If you can’t have a little fun, seek no exhilaration in the things you do; what you are doing isn’t what you're supposed to be doing. Good seeks good, and bad follows bad. Your accident has not made the day any worse than it is, but I bet those chuckling [Guards] didn’t mind it, and hey, a few chuckles are good for the spirit. If you let the day dictate how you go about it, you’re a plant, not a person. Don’t let it control you, or those that caused the bad have gotten one over on yeh, and doing good for yourself can be good for others, too. Bad and Bad, Good and GOood-”

She spouted it right up until I jumped. So entrenched was she in what she preached she had come to stand and not hold on and almost felt off. I could hear her buzz with her harsh whistling wing as she hurled herself into my shoulder, tiny insectile fingers griping on for dear life.

“You seem to like the sound of your own voice tonight,” I told her, landing the short jump across a short gap with a short bend of the knee.

“Aye,” she huffed, “And I see the corner of your mouth tipping up, so my words of wisdom are better for the both of us.”

I was not smiling.

Not one bit.

Ok, maybe I was a little, but that was because Selly couldn’t keep her mouth shut if she had something to say, and it nearly bit her on her fuzzy insectile ass.

“So what? Ignore the horror and keep smiling? Enjoy the nightmare around us? I don’t get it,” I sighed.

“If you do something you enjoy, even when it’s a living nightmare around you, don’t let it get you down that you feel good. Take that good, and pay it back to those who need it instead of beating yourself up over it. How’s that? Concise enough for you?” She asked.

“Yeh, I could parse it,” I told her, “Though I don’t know that I can do it.”

“Then the life you’re running towards will shatter you over its knee. Hope and pray your lady friend can stitch you up again when you're broken.”

“I’m not running towards anything,” I told her, a lie, even as it came from my mouth.

I was running towards more than trouble. I was running towards the servants of a monster, a monster who in and of itself was a servant of a greater evil. It had spoken of it’s mistress.

And I had promised Anna I would help see the valley saved.

And I would run on forward, into the black of the night, into holes and crevices forgotten by everything but the servants of monsters to keep my promises if I could.

And I would see things worse than this.

Worse and worse.

And Selly was right. That if this was simply the first step down into the dark, the rest of the stairs would eventually break me. They would shatter me as I came, tumbling down them like a blind idiot.

The only question would be if I would tear Anna down with me if I kept doing things as I did now.

And I couldn’t accept that.

My mind burbled, and I kept my mouth shut, not looking at Selly as she looked at me in disbelief. I could feel it, like a Selly-sized headbutt against my cheek.

I kept my mouth shut and continued on.

We passed the undead soon into relative silence, A horde of a hundred or so bodies, most not fresh and yet with far too many fresh, shambling in a semi-orderly fashion toward the barricade.

If I had a spell, one I could throw, I would have, but I didn’t. And so I moved on, feeling all the more a coward for it.

I moved slower, eying side streets and alleys and the dark places and thought as I did my work.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

As afraid of love as I was, I could see the idea of it. I could see the things I did, and the way that I treated Anna, and I could see where I was going, and I couldn’t stand how my failing could hurt her.

She had said she loved me, and I might just love her, and if it was anything like how I felt about her, she would trail behind me into hell. And that was without how she wanted to do good, without her agile yet focused mind trying to achieve an ages old goal.

And if I fell before her, she would tumble down after me.

If she was going to tumble after me, I would need to not tumble in the first place. And if Selly was right, and I was growing more certain that she was. Keeping myself down was going to hurt her.

Damned to hurt her, if I didn’t, and damning my morals if I didn’t I found myself peeking into an alleyway behind the lines of undead, down at two figures with hooded head.

They were guarded by one very unfortunate grunt with a long grungy knife.

I dropped on him.

Once again, it wasn’t a contest to kill them. I dropped upon the knife-wielding Gremlin and crushed it beneath the edge of my spade before lifting it up and with a few steps forward into the furthest [Cultist], rapid action repeating it back toward the second.

I scooped them up, and I felt them writhe as I did, but they couldn’t contest me.

And then I was off, back and around and by a few hard-to-finish movements, up onto the buildings. I stowed my spade and made my way back.

“Selly,” I started, “I’m not crazy that they seem easy. Too easy, even, to kill compared to before… right?”

Selly answered quickly, “Ehh… Yes? But only because you’re getting better at killing them. You’re not running at them; you're ambushing them in small numbers while they try to move their forces. You’re fighting on your terms instead of theirs. You’re also killing them faster. A little of both then, I think; they’re easier to kill, and you're better at it when you’re not fighting six of them at a time.”

I felt a little relief at that that I wasn’t missing something. Relief and a tiny bit of pride. I was doing better.

I didn’t know how much better, but an improvement was an improvement. I did my best to not strangle it, as hard as that was. I needed to try not to be crushed and excited at it.

I made my way back to Anna, carefully slipping down onto the closest barricade wall and telling the [Guards] there, “They should be here soon; they’re nice and disorderly now,” before strutting down the ramp and catching the very end of an argument.

Gurtz strutted away, annoyed, while Anna stood, red-cheeked and indignant.

“What's wrong? Did he back out of your deal?”

Anna did a tiny, almost hop as I took her by surprise, playing it off as she turned to face me.

“Oh. You’re back. That was rather quick,” she said, letting out the remainder of a long-held breath.

“Sorry I spooked you. So what was that about? Are we heading out on our own?”

She shook her head and took a breath, lifting herself up as she did until her posture was as straight as a polished slab of granite.

“No… No we’re getting our small team of people… But half of them are the bowmen… and one of them is the deadweight.”

“Like… a body?” I asked her, unsure if she meant they were a dead person or if they were useless.

“No… He’s not dead… Yet. But he can’t walk on his own,” she sighed.

The works clicked through my head, back to the man I had saved, forcing the blackout with death magic.

He was still over there, I could see one man with a truncheon holding him up as he limped toward us. The old man with the two younger [Archers] moving toward us.

We had helped them, for six people of what was now far more than one group.

I sighed, “Well… At least this place will be secure?” I told her.

“At least it will be secure,” Anna Sighed, “Though if we don’t send that man to the temple of Life he’ll be a corpse soon enough, and we’ll be the one in trouble.”

“Oh?” I wordlessly asked.

“He got bit, which means he’s full of dark magic. If you look closely, you can see the… Where did it go?”

“I pushed it out of him before I killed the first [Cultist],” I told her.

She looked at me, like how I expected most people to look at me, sans the fear. Gazing at me as if I had just admitted to being an [Archmage] in disguise.

I watched her face go through the process of actually comprehending what I said, then through the process of trying to understand what the hell I meant. She seemed to take a detour as she blankly stared for a moment. Then, she opened her mouth and lost the tension in her shoulders.

“Oh, thank the gods,” she said with a relieved sigh.

“Yeah, thank them,” I told her, not wanting to say god out loud.

She, of course, took that the wrong way, quickly speaking up with, “And thank you. Sorry, I didn’t mean to devalue... I did not expect you to be able to do something about that. What was it?”

Leave it to Anna to both try to make up for a perceived faux pas, while also being curious. I couldn’t tell if it was true curiosity or trying to segue away from the topic, but I answered her regardless.

“Death magic. It’s good against that kind of stuff. You can kind of use it to annihilate dark magic if you have enough flat out, I didn’t have a whole lot of mana to manipulate it, but I managed to kind of squish it out.” I told her.

I found myself drifting toward her, and for the sake of keeping up her appearance, I stopped myself from making contact.

And then I ignored it.

It was a strange feeling to do it, but I leaned it close and asked, “How are you holding up?”

Anna, still not getting what I was talking about and still flustered, said, “I have enough mana in me to still do some work.”

I put an arm on her shoulder, jarring her from the confusion and getting her to focus. I could feel, despite the prior sigh, her shoulder still held tension and gave her a little squeeze of reassurance.

“I don’t mean mana, Anna… I mean how are you holding up? Are you good?” I asked her, putting an emphasis on you.

“I… I’m more tired from arguing with the captain than anything else. Not great, but not bad either. I’ll be fine,” she said, laying her hand on mine for a moment.

Her hands were warm and a little clammy. Wet from either exertion or the warmth of the city. I could feel her hold my hand for a moment before she let go, and with the retreat of her hand, we pulled apart, turning as one to face the encroaching menfolk.

I could hear, with finely tuned ears, a comment about women. I could see the old man scowl at the only unencumbered, non-ranged combatant. Who refused to help the wounded man.

He was sweaty and peckish and looked like he might die on the spot, but he was indeed still alive. Barely able to get his legs to carry his weight, the man had an unfocused sight that drifted before lingering on me.

Not in a lecherous way but in a confused haze.

“How fast can you move with him like that?” Anna asked the man carrying the wounded, one shoulder beneath his wounded one, holding his unresponsive arm atop his shoulder, gripping it with his other hand.

“Not all that fast, um, lady mage,” he said respectfully.

“You,” Anna said, “You will aid him, were moving toward the wall, we can have him sent to the temple of light when we pass the edge of the district.”

She pointed at the man who made the comment about women, and I couldn’t help but smirk as he started to protest.

“I’m not touching him, he’s liable to turn and bite us,”

“No, he won’t,” I told him, “[Saints] honour on it. I’ve worked on that already,” I told him, talking with false strength behind it.

The man looked at me with distrust, wincing as he met my gaze, but Anna spoke up, keeping pressure on him.

“You will do it, or I will turn you right back around and tell your captain why his cowardly [Guardsman] is held by the scruff of his neck by a fist of brick at the earth,” Anna said coldly, her voice having no hint of argument.

He looked between the two of us, then to the others, and maybe it was the old man's glare, the bowman next to him not even looking toward him, or the look of bitterness on the man carrying the wounded, but he shut his smart mouth and got an arm under the wounded man, who moaned in pain as he was jostled.

The man was hefted up on their shoulders. Anna nodded.

“Good choice, now then… Off we go to save the city. Took long enough.”