Alyx stood behind her tent, just outside the collective glow of the refugee camp. Night had long since fallen and, by every right, she should be resting. She needed to be in the best possible condition when they got home. There would be no time to recover before she descended into the Catacombs as part of the Festival.

But here she was, sword in hand, moving through forms and flaring skills. Restless to her core.

Everything about today bothered her. They were too close to Velillia for this kind of attack to have happened. One might suggest that with the Festival, that manpower was down. But part of the Festival was the Duchess recommitting her dedication to protect her people. For this to have happened now was unthinkable.

Bartiang raids didn’t just come from nowhere. This implied there was a nest of the things that had gone unnoticed long enough to produce at least one silverback male.

Possible reasons swirled around her, none she liked. The easiest was that the First General or whichever one of her subordinates handled this swatch of land had messed up.

Incompetence was a simple enough answer. Did she need to ascribe malice? Mistakes could be made at any level, by anyone. The forests here were dense and dangerous. Perhaps there had been patrols, but the nest had just been missed.

Her sword swung down, the air parting with a gust from the force. She turned it at the bottom, redirecting it to the right and turning her body with the strike.

She did not have enough information to speculate further. So she should not.

Was it possible this was a conspiracy? Sure. At the highest level, it could be another country dumping monsters in Duchy lands. Below that, maybe Aunt Ashrel was hiding monster nests to destabilize the authority of the First General. Or it was lower still and this was the conflict of two lesser generals, or even captains.

It was worth asking Telis to look into it when they got to the city.

Not that it was her business to find out. Alyx’s hands clenched tighter around her sword. She had her own problems. The machinations of others were more than she could handle.

Yet fire burned in her veins. Incompetency or the games of the powerful, either way, it was the weak that lost.

That wasn’t her concern, either. She wasn’t powerful. Not to the point that she could do anything about it. Stopping this attack was about all she could do.

And what if it cost her the Festival?

Her sword swung through the air, sloppy and violent, but her mind refused to still.

It must have started already. The Festival.

How deep had Fioreya gotten? Did she have the Major Blessing already? And Kohen? Had it been open long enough for him to have returned too?

There hadn’t been time for this diversion.

She forced her hands to slow. Forced her body to settle back into the sword forms. Deep breath. Recenter the self.

If she missed the Festival, it would not be because of this town. It would be because she chose to go to Uvana. It would be the time loitering in Hervet after they got back.

But she could not have possibly won without having gone to Uvana.

Could she win now?

Level 26. Granted Blessings from defeating both the Lord of the Pass and Lord of the Deep. Armed with a treasure sword and chest plate. Allied to Cass.

No. She could not rely on Cass for this. She owed Cass too much. Far too much. This had to be something she did herself.

Could she win without Cass?

She had to. Uvana had to have been worth the late start.

She inhaled as she pulled her sword up for another strike. She exhaled as she drove it down again.

She wished she had gotten one more level. Level 27 was the Gate, and with it came a huge spike in stats.

She was almost there. She could feel it in her soul. She had hoped to kill enough bartiangs to break the threshold. It hadn’t.

She wished she’d found the Lord of the Forest in Uvana. A full conquer of Uvana would almost make up for missing the Festival.

No. She hadn’t missed it yet. And, there was no guarantee meeting the Lord of the Forest would have gone as well as the other Lord fights had. Abyss, they hadn’t even managed to kill the Herald of the Forest.

She shouldn’t wish for calamity. Even if she might have gotten her last Concept out of it.

Guilt rippled through her. She knew she should have offered Cass the Concept Gem for defeating the Lord of the Pass. It had been Cass’s kill and without Cass, she would have died horribly.

But Alyx hadn’t been able to resist. She could still see the gem in her mind’s eye. Blue and sparking within with untold power. Concept Gem (Lightning).

There should have been no question. It should have given her the Lightning Concept. She was a Veldor. It should be easy for her.

It was the linchpin of the family’s sword techniques. Electricity should spark from her blade as it arched through the air. Her aura should send jolts through her enemies.

Fioreya could call down bolts of lightning from clear skies. Kohen wielded lightning in his spells as easily as breathing. All her cousins were integrating the family’s signature Concept into some part of their technique. Even Ahryn had the Concept, though he still struggled to apply it to his skills.

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Only she had failed to claim the Concept for herself.

Had still failed. Even after stealing that Concept Gem from Cass.

She had been offered Surge, Sword, and Clarity instead.

Sword had spoken to her, so she had picked it, allowing it to join her existing Concepts Light and Grasping.

A full set of Concepts were required to be picked by a dragon. They weren’t the three she wanted, but…

But it was her punishment for not asking Cass for it. Simple as that.

Cass had yet to mention it. Was it possible that she simply didn’t realize there had been a gem to claim? No. Surely her cat knew and would have told her.

Was this just more of Cass’s grace?

“Girl, you didn’t sleep?” Marco’s voice behind her jolted her from her thoughts.

She turned to see the old guard, his arms crossed, his body silhouetted by the low glow of camp.

“Is it my turn for watch?” Alyx asked instead of answering his question.

The chance of the bartiangs attacking again was low, but not zero. The chance of another monster attacking bartiang raided lands was similarly low. It was only good sense to have a scheduled watch over the camp in case something happened.

He scowled but nodded. “If you haven’t slept, I can take your shift.”

Alyx shook her head. “I can handle this much.”

He made a grunting noise, which was neither agreement nor argument.

“I’m not a little girl anymore, you know,” she said.

He grunted again.

He and Telis had watched over her for as long as she could remember. They’d followed her mother from lands far off, their loyalty outliving her.

“Thank you,” Alyx said softly. “But, I’ll head off now. You should rest too.”

He grunted. “Aye. I know to get rest when I can. You be careful out there. The night’s dark.”

Alyx left him, ducking into the tent she and Cass were staying in. Cass was sprawled across her mat, her blanket splayed out over the ground beside her. She was very asleep.

No wonder, either. Cass had a terrifying amount of Focus for her level—for anyone before the Gate really—and it looked like she’d spent it all several times over to Alyx’s eyes. She did not know how she’d managed that, but she didn’t put it past Cass to have found some method to multiply her available Focus. That kind of impossibility was just the kind of nonsense she’d come to expect.

A pair of gold eyes flickered open behind Cass. Deep shadows swirled around him. A shiver ran down Alyx’s spine, even though she knew it was only Salos.

“She’s been sleeping the whole time?” Alyx asked as she knelt by her bags, retrieving the rest of her armor and reequipping it.

Salos stalked around Cass, his eyes unblinking. An entirely cat-like behavior that felt entirely too human to Alyx. “Once I convinced her to lie down, yes.”

“Good.” Alyx straightened, adjusting the last strap. “What do you think the chances she sleeps through the night is?”

The cat snorted. “You ever see her wake up before the dawn on her own?”

Alyx suppressed a chuckle. “Her world seems like it’s much more peaceful than this one.”

“An understatement in the extreme.”

“Will you stay here or do you want to join me for patrol?” Alyx asked.

The cat looked between his mistress and Alyx, his tail swishing with displeasure. “Your guard will be about?”

Alyx nodded.

Salos made a deep, purring hmmm in thought. “The danger is out there.”

He leapt to her shoulder without asking permission.

Alyx let him. He wasn’t heavy and he’d refuse to talk to her if she didn’t. They stepped outside and out toward the edges of camp.

“Besides, your servant’s eyes are all over camp, are they not?” A moth erupted in purple flames, its glass-like wings shimmering. The flames were gone again in a fraction of a second. With them, Alyx lost sight of the bug, though she was sure it hadn’t moved.

“You noticed Telis?” Most people assumed Telis had skills like that given her position and Alyx’s continued survival, but few ever actually discovered the mechanisms behind that skill.

“You admit the source too easily,” he chided. “Though I expected as much. The warrior is too upright to have a spy skill.”

“Do you consider us allies or not, cat?” Alyx said it in jest, but there was a stiffness in both their bodies that belied the truth.

He didn’t need to answer. They both knew.

Cass considered them allies, so they were. If Alyx ever made the mistake of betraying the slyphid, this cat would not bat an eyelash to exact vicious revenge.

Abyss, this cat would probably preempt the attempt so long as he figured it out before Cass could stop him.

If Cass was too soft for this world, it was just as well this cat was far too harsh for it.

Not for the first time, Alyx wondered who he really was and where he came from.

If Cass was the merchant princess that she appeared to be, having such a well-trained Companion would have been entirely reasonable. But Cass wasn’t. And so it didn’t.

She had to have gotten him in the Trial, but that wasn’t something that happened.

Identify called him a Shadow Tabby. And, at a glance, there was nothing odd about that. Shadow tabby were smart animals. She’d heard they were common animal companions of aether sailors. Well-trained cats could sense the ebb and flow of aether and abyss out in the spaces between Islands and the Content.

They were smart animals. But that was all they were. Animals.

Animals didn’t have connections to lost Spires and forgotten secret societies. Animals weren’t ancient beyond ancient.

But she was smart enough to keep such speculation to herself. And observant enough to see that he’d do what Cass wanted, no matter his opinions on the matter.

“She’s having a hard time,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Cass.” Salos’s claws scratched over the metal plate of her pauldron. “I think she might have been putting a lot of stock into our world being like her own.”

The shadows from the distant fire danced uncomfortably over the dark landscape.

“Obviously, it is not,” Salos said eventually.

“Should you be telling me this?” Alyx asked.

“No.” The word was clipped. Filled with distaste. “But what is good sense before a child’s desperate longing?”

Alyx raised an eyebrow. The cat refused to meet her gaze, his gold eyes glaring out into the dark. They seemed to focus on the distance well outside the range Alyx could see herself.

Was that how he saw Cass? Was that how a Companion should look at their master?

“More things I should not tell you, but you should know if you intend to take Cass with you,” he continued. “She encountered a god.”

Alyx froze. “What?”

“Yeah, that is the correct reaction.”

“When? Which god?”

“In the temple, the other day. She says it was Perception.”

Was that why she was sitting outside the Temple? She had said little between the temple and the city gates. But she had said little since the ambush that morning. Alyx had just assumed it was the same shock all the way through.

“Why would one of the gods have met with Cass?” Alyx asked. Then again, Cass’s entire existence was strange. Perhaps catching a god’s attention was the least noteworthy thing about it.

“Cass listed reasons, but…”

If it was Perception, and they were Perception’s reasons, they were probably true but likely entirely incomplete.

“Why tell me this?” Alyx asked.

“Because Cass needs more than me.” The words dragged from his lips, as if against his better judgment. “But someone who runs at the first sign of trouble is not worth letting get close. If the prospect of the Gods’ attention scares you, leave Cass before she has decided you are more than an ally.”