After hammering out the rest of their plans, most of the party turned in for the night. Erin, exhausted by the effort of constructing an entire building, had fallen asleep before supper was even ended, and Tsia joined him in his slumber as soon as she closed her eyes. Even the prince, whose distrust of their group had not entirely dissipated, allowed himself to nod off beside the fire, with Asata leaning against him, leaving only Jasper and herself awake.

“Are you sure about this,” he asked, his eyes filled with worry as he placed a hand on her knee.

She wasn’t - and yet she also was. In truth, Ihra was a bit worried about infiltrating an unknown and possibly hostile city with no backup save for a scout she barely knew and a healer she didn’t know at all. Ihra would have much preferred to bring Jasper, or even Tsia, with her, yet that was exactly why she had volunteered.

When she had first upgraded her class, Ihra had felt like she’d found a way to keep up with Jasper. Then Tsia had joined, a mage with rare elements and a pool of essence that dwarfed even his. And then Jasper had gotten a major upgrade to his class, complete with shadowy wings, a horde of angry specters, and a fire that straight-up ignored fire immunity. But as long as Nēs̆u and Annatta were around, she hadn’t felt out of place.

But then Naḫas̆s̆innu had happened; with Nēs̆u dead and Annatta crippled, Ihra had suddenly become the only warrior in a group of mages. Even their newest recruit, Erin, was beginning to eclipse her abilities, despite having only unlocked his magic in the last few months. Selene’s grace, he’d built the very building she was sitting in in barely an hour. The only saving grace thus far was that he lacked the killer instinct to make the most of his abilities in a fight, but Ihra doubted that would last. She was falling behind again, except this time she had no obvious path forward to advance.

And that was why she’d volunteered for the mission to Birnah. She needed to prove to herself that she was more than just a sidekick, more than just a deadweight who had been kept in the party out of loyalty and friendship.

“I can do this,” she finally replied to Jasper. “I mean, it’s just a scouting job - if I can’t handle this, then maybe I’m not cut out to be an adventurer.”

Jasper’s face softened and he squeezed her knee. “Is that what this is about? Ihra, you’ve got a place on the team as long as I’m around. Hell, if I’m forced to pick between you and the others, you know who I’d choose.”

Although she knew he meant well, Jasper's words only confirmed her own fears. Sure, it was nice that he’d choose her out of loyalty, against his own best interests, but that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted to be the right choice. “But you shouldn’t," she sighed. "Tsia is far better than me.”

“At some things maybe, but not what matters,” he retorted. “Ihra, you’re the only one on this team I fully trust to have my back. Tsia’s with us right now because it’s convenient - because she thinks that somehow, someway, we’re her ticket back to her mother. And Erin?” He shook his head. “He’s a nice guy, and has proven a little tougher than he looks, but we both know he’d be out of here in a heartbeat if he could find a way back home. The others may come and go, but we’re the team, Ihra, the dynamic duo.”

He might have a point, she thought. She had gotten over her initial dislike of Tsia and had even come to view her as something of a friend, but she still relied on Jasper more in battle, even if technically the wind mage was the more powerful one. But that didn’t mean she was entirely wrong herself. Investigating the situation in Birnah was a task well within her wheelhouse, and one she was arguably better suited for than trying to take down massive armored monsters with nothing more than her arrows.

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “Stick to the shadows and observe what I can. Don’t worry,” she added with a wry grin, “I have no plans to take on the fortress by myself. Besides - I have a few tricks up my sleeve you haven’t seen yet.”

They chatted a while longer, discussing in more detail the possible ways she might be able to sneak into the city before Jasper also succumbed to slumber’s siren call. Ihra, however, could not allow herself that luxury.

Though her eyes were heavy with sleep, she rooted around in her bag for Aphora’s grimoire and thumbed through the pages until she found the ritual she was looking for. While the group had hypothesized that the mental mage was running free somewhere out of the city, Ihra had meant when she promised not to take unnecessary risks and thought up a backup plan was in order. She wrote down the runes carefully and then began the long, painful process of inscribing them on herself.

It was simultaneously her least favorite aspect of her class and the sole reason she had picked it. She was convinced that there was some mental aspect to the class that helped soothe her enough to mutilate her flesh with the runes, but it didn’t do anything to mute the pain. Blood and long strips of flesh covered the floor by the time she finished. Her hands shook with dangerously high levels of adrenaline as she fed the scraps of herself into the fire and downed a healing potion, before admiring her handiwork. Two new spells were written into her legs - one a protection against mind-altering effects, and the second the same shield she’d used back on the isle of the dead. With any luck, she wouldn’t need them, but it was best to be prepared. Only then did she finally allow herself to fall into the dreamless void.

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Ihra departed at the first light of morn, accompanied by Erin and the durgu’s healer, Asata. Jasper was still not entirely happy on seeing her go off without him, but with a bit more time to think about it, he’d realized that he was being unreasonable. The task was well suited for her abilities, and he needed to work on not being a helicopter parent - err, friend. Thus he'd waved them off without another word of discouragement, and turned his attention to helping the durgu.

After brewing another hearty stew, the durgu had set to work fixing up what remained of the village. Some had gathered the bodies, chasing off the opportunistic jackals and vultures that had already begun to scavenge, and given them a popular burial, sweating beneath the hot western sun as they’d dug into the dry earth. Others had searched through the ruins on a final check for both survivors and surviving goods - food, clothes, anything that had escaped the fire’s unquenchable greed.

More survived than Jasper had expected, but the true surprise was uncovering two villagers who’d gotten trapped in a small crevice of a collapsed cellar. With a few casts of Circle of Forgiveness and the further aid of some potions, their condition had been stabilized.

The last task, though, that the durgu completed was borderline miraculous. Erin's two large shelters had temporarily solved their housing issue, but it had done nothing to fix the village’s palisade burn-out palisade.

But the durgu seemed to take his warehouses as a challenge. With Jasper’s help, the durgu’s two fire mages cut down a small forest of trees, which the durgu troops dragged back to the settlement. There the soldiers divvied up the tasks, with some trimming the branches with practiced efficiency to shape the uneven logs into tall poles while others dug a three-foot trench and hoisted the timber into place. By the time Shamsha dipped below the distant horizon, a new wall encircled the village.

It was an uneventful night, and the next morning they lingered for a few hours, continuing to help the villagers out when the first signs of smoke appeared on the horizon. The thin stream of smoke quickly expanded into a white column that stood out against the cloudless sky like a middle finger.

Again, Jasper was forced to admire their efficiency. From the moment they first spotted the plume of smoke to the time they left the village, with their belongings all packed, barely ten minutes passed. Unfortunately, their speed once leaving the town could not match their efficiency, as the durgu lacked mounts. The small army ran across the plains with apparently indefatigable stamina, but Jasper knew they'd get there too late.

He glanced around, searching for Tsia, but couldn't spot her in the crowd of bobbing heads. S̆ams̆ādur, on the other hand, was near the front of the pack. Spurring Dapplegrim into a gallop, he forced his way through the swarming troops until he reached the prince’s side and offered the man his hand. “Hop on up - I can get us there faster.”

“Durgū are good runners," S̆ams̆ādur replied curtly.

“Is this some sort of pride thing,” Jasper asked. “I don't care how fast your men are, they are going to reach that village in time. Now take my hand - between the two of us, we should be able to handle an Atrometos or two.” With a scowl, the man accepted his hand this time, and Jasper heaved him. The durgu proved far heavier than he looked, and he failed to pull the prince all the way onto Dapplegrim’s back, but the man latched onto his saddle, and clinging to its straps, slithered the rest of the way.

With obvious reluctance, the man wrapped his arms around Jasper’s waist and yelled into his ear. “There - I’m on your kruvas̆-cursed mount. This better be worth losing my men’s respect!”

Jasper’s hands twisted in a spell, and the prince cursed as a pair of shadowy wings exploded from the horse’s flanks. “S̆ams̆a’s light - are those things really able to hold us up-” The durgu failed to finish the thought as Dapplegrim rocketed into the air, creating a gap of nearly a hundred feet between them and the surface in a matter of seconds. In a few minutes, the charging durgu were reduced to black specks in the distance, while the column of smoke loomed above them.

As Jasper guided Dapplegrim down, his eyes searched the heavy smoke for any signs of the attacker, but he could see nothing. There were no roars from an Atrometos, no angry chants in their ancient tongue, no screams of wounded villagers. Hell, for that matter, he couldn’t even tell if there was a village here. There was nothing but smoke, a thick black smoke that he could have mistaken for a tire fire if such things existed here. Something’s wrong, he thought as the prince began to scream for him to pull up. Although he could not see what the durgu was reacting to, Jasper immediately yanked on the reins, urging Dapplegrim back toward the sky, but they were too slow.

A black figure too small to be an Atrometos emerged through the smoke, wielding an axe with an unnaturally long shaft. A stone mask covered its face, a grotesque parody of a lizard with a tongue hanging down nearly to its neck, but it only screamed to amplify its screams. “Ana Mūt-La’is.”

Thanks to his last-second movement, the axe bit into his shoulder rather than his skull, and the assassin collided with them. S̆ams̆ādur caught the maniac with a thunderous punch, snapping his head back, but the assassin managed to wrap his legs around the prince’s waist and flinging himself backward, dragged the two of them off the horse’s back and down toward the unseen ground below.

“Damn it.” With a curse, Jasper nudged Dapplegrim into a dive and, holding on as tightly as he could with his knees, struggled to shove the axe out of his shoulder. They hit the ground a moment later, the horse screeching in pain as her leg buckled, and he abandoned his efforts to hit her with a spell. Circle of Forgiveness.

“Ana Mūt-La’is!” A scream echoed behind him, and he spun around, flinging the axe free as it tore through more of his tendons. The fingers on his right hand refused to budge, so he cast with the left, raising it a half-second before the assassin reached him. Purge.

The man froze, his axe falling to the ground as he gripped his throat, eyes bulging in pain and terror, but Jasper ignored him. He had a prince to find.