The tube was very ornate — painted red, with vivid blue streaks throughout it. Around the streaks, and the tube were markings, Endra didn’t know and couldn’t translate. She opened the tube, and inside appeared to be a scroll, the same paper that Aki kept hidden in his robes. His manuals. She reached her slim fingers in and pulled the scroll from the tube. The paper was old, ancient, crumpling away and wrinkled.

She looked over the scroll as she unrolled it carefully in her hands. The fog was dissipating, the frost around melting and falling away. The scroll was covered in runes or symbols that matched those on the outside of the holder. Again, Endra did not know what any of them meant. Her eyes scanned the entire document.

As she looked over the document, she felt something inside her. Her mana moved through the channels she had formed. She was doing nothing, however. Endra wasn’t skilled enough to manipulate her mana and cycle while doing other things. She couldn’t even fully cycle mana yet since she didn’t have her core.

She furrowed her brows and went through some of the training Aki had gone over with her. She looked inside herself, imagining the channels she had grown. The pure white mana flowed around and released into the world, turning back into an aura, since she didn’t have the core to store it. She didn’t notice the symbols being painted over her body. She was still looking at the scroll, trying to figure it out. Even if she wasn’t doing that, she was dressed in pants and a shirt.

The clang of swords on the other side of the dune in front of her woke her from her daze as she looked over the scroll. She blinked her green eyes and looked up at the dune. Endra needed to help Aki. She wasn’t sure what she could do, but she had to do something. She rolled the scroll back up and put it back in the tube just as the Chens ran up behind her.

“What is that?” Mei asked with curiosity. Endra heard a bit of a salesperson in the question. Mei wondered if she’d be able to sell the thing.

“I don’t know…” Endra answered with a cocked brow. She wasn’t sure she should, but she handed the container over to Mei, who looked it over just as Jin showed up.

“Um, Endra….” He asked with some concern in his voice. “What’s that on your arm?” he continued his question.

She looked at her arm after she handed the container to Mei. “Um….” was all she could say.

Mei took her arm and looked it over. The runes that were on the scroll slowly disappeared. Not that anyone saw that, since the scroll was put away back in its container. The runes that covered her skin seemed to paint themselves on with a thin black brush. Up and down her forearms. Mei even reached for the bottom of Endra’s shirt, lifting it a little, and they saw the markings on her belly.

Endra looked at Mei, her mouth open in worry. “What…. What’s happening?” she asked Mei, her voice hardly above a whisper.

Mei looked up at Endra with her own brown eyes and searched for an answer. She stumbled over her words, about to say she did not know when the sky turned black above them. Vivid blue and red streaks of lightning shot across the sky. The three forgot about the runes covering Endra’s body and looked at the sky.

“The Heavens……” but Jin trailed off. He wasn’t sure what else to say. No one was sure what to say or what was happening.

The strikes were getting brighter—getting longer and stronger. One brilliant deep blue strike of lightning shot from the sky towards Endra. There was some sort of red glow circling around the lightning strike as it came down and struck at Endra. She yelled out, balling her hands into fists, and her skin sizzled and burned in agony. Endra didn’t fall, she couldn’t. The power held her right as she was. She stood right there like a lightning rod, accepting the strike from the Heavens.

When the strike subsided, Endra was left standing there. The mana ran through her channels uncontrolled and released back into the world as small sparks of lightning radiating from various parts of her body. The runes that covered her body were glowing, with the same blue and red energy that struck her from the sky.

She heard a howl of pain on the other side of the dune now. She looked at Mei and Jin, who were unsure what to do. They stood and gaped at her, even taking a few steps backward, slightly scared of the woman. She looked at them for answers, but they obviously had none. She let out a low growl and, before anyone could say anything else, Endra took off running toward the battle.

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Her legs moved with fury. It only took her a breath, and she was on top of the dune. She looked down at the scene unfolding before her. Axel was there, that strange man from before the raid that Aki seemed so interested in and even scared of. Axel was standing over Aki, and she watched him pull a thin blade from the side of Aki’s gut.

Endra yelled out in anger, and Axel looked up at her. His face, if it was possible with his already pale complexion, went white. His eyes went wide in fear as he stared at her. It happened in the blink of an eye. Endra charged down the dune and launched an open palm to the man’s midsection.

There was an explosion of lightning and power, and Axel was blown back. He soared through the air, hurled by the simple open-palm strike. Endra was breathing heavily, struggling for breath. Not because she overexerted herself, but because of the power that was radiating through her body. She couldn’t control it.

She charged after Axel’s flying body in anger when Mei and Jin both yelled, gaining her attention. They crouched down over Aki’s body, checking his pulse and vitality. Endra turned and looked at them, the runes slowly fading from view and her mana stilled. What she had was slowly filtering out of her body and into the world.

“We need to do something. Help him. Mei, Jin, you guys have to know a way to help him,” Endra pleaded. She was looking down at Aki. The sand under him was soaked in blood, and more was adding to it as Aki lay there lifeless.

“I… I may have some herbs in the carriage. They don’t taste good, so I never cooked with them, and we have the usual healing pills and bandages. I don’t know, Endra,” Jin told her, looking up at the woman.

Mei picked up Aki’s form carefully. She was the strongest of the three of them. Or, well, was she the strongest of the trio? She gave a wary look at Endra, who had now seemed to calm from her earlier episode. Those runes were gone, and the sheer power she emanated only moments earlier was gone. Mei shook her head, shaking away the thoughts, and the three of them rushed through the sand toward where the carriage was.

Mei was trying to feed her water mana into Aki, trying to help him prolong his life. She even reached into his spirit, trying to push hers to cycle for him. Trying to push the mana to the wound to heal itself. They didn’t have the same element. It was a different mana. That was one of the good things about water, though. It was everywhere and worked with everything.

When they reached the carriage, Mei set Aki in the sand, and Endra stood over them. Jin moved toward the carriage and climbed in the back door. Mei instructed Endra to come down and help and put pressure on the stab wound, which she quickly did. While Endra held the wound, Mei once more checked the pulse on his neck.

“He’s still alive,” she said and lowered her head to the man’s chest. “He’s breathing, he’s with us, but barely,” she continued.

Endra nodded her head and smiled, a single tear rolling down her cheek slowly. She noticed the blood flow slowing, the amount of blood pouring from the wound lessening. It seemed like whatever Mei did as they ran back was helping.

Jin made it out a few moments later and crouched down next to the pair of them. He had some leafy-looking green and brown-bunched herbs. He tore the stems from the leaves and crumpled them up, putting them in Aki’s mouth. Jin went through the process of moving the man’s mouth to chew and getting him to swallow the stems. Jin looked at the pair of women and nodded. “It will help give him strength,” he told them and still nodded his head his voice full of confidence.

“Come on then, we should get headed back to that doctor, you know. He should be able to help more than we can,” Mei said and lifted Aki once more. “You ride up with Jin. I’ll take care of and watch Aki in the carriage while we go.”

While they went, Mei found some bandaging and wrapped up Aki’s midsection. The wound had all but closed itself before she had gotten it around his midsection, though. As long as the man didn’t die now, he should be fine. She looked over his body and furrowed her brow, thinking of something. Hadn’t he been wearing the wyvern scale she had given him before she and Jin left Mesai?

She looked him in the face and squinted her eyes before digging through his robes. Mei didn’t undress him all the way, preserving his modesty. She did, however, dig through the folds of the robes to get underneath them. The scale was there, that stretchy suit the scales were sewn into clung to his body.

Mei furrowed her brow and then went to the open hole in his robe, where the sword had punctured through. She ripped the cloth open so she could inspect the area a little more. The strike had gone right through. Her fingers poked around, and she felt the scales. She realized what had happened and cocked a brow.

“How thin was that blade?” she asked out loud to no one. No one was there to answer, and it’s not like Aki could.

The sword had struck through two scales. The blade was so thin it slipped right in. It was a million in one odds that he could have done that. If he had struck one scale, nothing would have happened. Aki would have been fine and been able to strike back and maybe end the battle completely differently because Axel would have been surprised.

Mei swore. The person who sold the suit to her swore something like this wasn’t possible with the way the suit was made. If she ever saw that drunkard again. She grumbled and shook her head and then sighed. There was nothing she could do about it now, and she wouldn’t ever see the man again. She couldn’t even remember what town they were in when she got the suit.