I burned the letter shortly after reading it for the seventh time in a row. I didn’t need to keep it. I had it memorized perfectly after the first two reads. Even so, doing away with it left me with a bitter taste in my mouth that no amount of rinsing would get rid of.

It occurred to me then that I might have an unhealthy obsession with gifts. I was also stubbornly hanging onto the salve Bronwynn had left with me when he tended to my arms. Sure, it was useful, but did I really need to check on it three or four times whenever I left another city, making sure it was still there? Probably not.

I didn’t wake up Mia.

She had looked about ready to collapse when she squirmed into her tent for the night, and I was willing to bet she would need all the energy she could get to deal with Mercutio.

It was also a gesture of apology. I didn’t necessarily regret my decision to keep everyone at arm’s length, but I had to acknowledge that I alienated the few people who were inclined to treat me well.

Honestly, I was also growing fond of the woman. Having someone to watch your back was always nice, but that held doubly true when you were stuck in a demonic army where most of the other mortals would like nothing better than to shank you.

I let her sleep. I sat in the darkness. I tried not to think about how much I hated Mercutio. I worried about what the day might bring.

When the sun finally came up, I was squirming in place. Turns out, you can only spend so much time agonizing over your future before you get bored.

Judging the time without a watch or similar device was tricky, but I relied on my surprisingly accurate feeling for the time of day to gauge when to take a step closer to Mia’s tent.

“Mia?” I inched closer to her tent, keeping my voice just above a whisper. “I don’t want to go in there to wake you.”

There was a confused mrrrrrow from inside, and then the tent started shaking slightly. To my amusement, the woman grumbled more than a few expletives before I heard her start moving. Untying the tent flap from the inside, she pushed it open and sent me a bleary, half-awake glare.

“Wuuh?” she asked, intelligently.

Then she squinted past me and saw the first rays of dawn breaking over the horizon. That jolted her into wakefulness.

“What time is it?” She sat up, glaring at me for real. “How long did you let me sleep?”

“If I have it right, it’s about an hour before Mercutio orders us to continue marching,” I admitted, hiding a smile at the disheveled state of my one remaining ally.

She had slept in her armor, but with how ill-fitting it was, it had all shifted around into positions that couldn’t possibly be comfortable. Her hair was a puffy disaster, and there were a few tufts of fur on her ears that stuck out adorably.

All in all, she was a mess, and looked incredibly cute that way.

She must have noticed the way I was looking at her because she flushed and retreated into the tent, pulling the flap down. I heard the sounds of cloth shuffling and a few muttered complaints.

“Why didn’t you wake me up? You stayed up the whole night, didn’t you? What are you going to do when you get exhausted later? We don’t know when he’ll let us stop. He could be like Wilhelmina.”

I scoffed, then winced. I sincerely hoped the sound came across as amused rather than dismissive.

“I don’t think there’s anyone quite like Wilhelmina. I swear, that woman was trying to kill us. Who makes fresh recruits push like that?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Mia insisted as she finally reemerged from her tent, armor and hair in perfect order this time. Frankly, while I was way ahead of her as a mage, that was some real magic right there.

Somehow, she had even managed to clean up her armor. Gear-wise, she looked fresh and ready to start. I, on the other hand, looked exactly like a soldier who had marched for hours after standing in the sun for an unreasonable amount of time.

“Don’t worry. Mage, remember? I can refresh myself using mana, and while I can’t keep doing it indefinitely, I’ll be fine for now. I’ll get some sleep the next time we stop.”

Mia didn’t look happy about it, but she nodded. And whether or not she wanted to admit it, the sleep had clearly done her good. Rather than stumbling around like she was about to pass out on her feet, she was back to moving with feline grace.

I had woken her up so we could eat. I pulled out some basic ration bars, but instead of following suit, Mia practically pried the bars out of my hand. She continued to glare at me as she extracted a pot, a water skin, and an odd circular crystal base out of her pack.

I watched, confused, as she fetched a few nearby rocks and arranged them into a small circle. Then she carefully positioned the thin base on top of the rocks, placing a finger on a protrusion at the base’s edge I hadn’t noticed before. I caught a brief flow of mana between her and the device, and then the base started heating up rapidly. Up close, I could just about catch the lines of a basic mana matrix on the device’s surface before Mia placed the pot on top.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve been eating those this whole time?” she demanded. Taking out several small pouches of powders, she began shaking their contents into the pot of water, which was already boiling somehow.

“Yes? I mean, they’re not that bad,” I tried.

She shot me a skeptical look, and I blushed. Okay, so the bars were dry and thick and tasteless. And maybe I had to use my body strengthening technique to chew them. But they did what they were supposed to! They kept me on my feet and even strangely sated for a long time. Even though they were supposed to last me only a month, I still had the majority of my initial supply.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Not that bad, he says,” the woman grit through clenched teeth as her tail lashed left and right angrily behind her back. “Do you know that I almost chipped my tooth when I tried to eat those?”

Her hands didn’t stop moving for a second as she grumbled. The powders must have been spices because the boiling water took on a pleasant aroma and just a hint of color after she tossed them in. Then she dipped into her pack again and withdrew a pouch of what, I assumed, were seeds. She grabbed a generous handful and threw them into the pot. Immediately, the ‘seeds’ started to swell. I watched in fascination as they ballooned quickly into something resembling dumplings.

Or are they ‘dough boys’ when they’re served in a soup?

I couldn’t remember. I was never partial to soups, preferring meals with at least some properly cooked meat in them. But in this moment, my growling stomach didn’t seem to care.

Funny, that. Since I found myself in this new reality, I never once turned up my nose at food, no matter how atrocious it was. Then again, compared to the slop they served us at the training camp, practically anything was edible. My taste buds had lost their ability to differentiate between good and bad food.

To round off her meal prep, Mia carefully extracted a can from her pack. Portioning out a small handful of flakes from the can, she sprinkled them into the pot with surprising reverence. I could understand why when the flakes dissolving instantly into the soup and a tantalizing scent wafted upwards from the pot.

Mia nodded once in satisfaction. Digging deeper into her pack one more time, she brought out two bowls, spoons, and a ladle.

“How do you have all of this stuff? And where did you even get that heating artifact?”

I asked the questions, but most of my attention was on the soup as she ladled it first into my bowl and then into her own. There was enough in the pot for about four servings. I knew after the first sip that we would be demolishing all of it.

My visible delight at her cooking drew a smug smile from the cat lady, and she nodded imperiously. “I have ‘all this stuff’ because not all of us are content to live like savages on the road. And that heating plate was expensive, but worth every soul. I picked it up from one of the enchanters in that city where Wilhelmina got replaced. I wasn’t going to endure another march on ration bars only.”

She shuddered, and I shrugged. Really, those things weren’t all that bad.

“Well, thanks for this. I’ll find a way to pay you back. I have no idea what all you used, but it’s delicious.”

I meant every word. The dough boys were wonderfully fluffy and filling, and they tasted a bit like meat dumplings. We did, in fact, finish off the whole pot, and I had to resist the urge to lick my bowl.

After we finished, we packed up our tents and got ready to leave. It was when Mia was gingerly wrapping her heating plate in a flame retardant cloth that our day took a turn for the worse.

My brand burned like it never had before. Mia almost doubled over with her eyes spread wide, so I knew I wasn’t alone in my suffering.

I brushed my fingers across the brand, but I only got a single word in response.

ASSEMBLE.

I wasn’t sure how he managed to make a vague sentiment come out in all caps, but Mercutio pulled it off. I hated that man a little more every day.

With everything already packed, Mia and I were able to head straight for the turtle, our hands burning relentlessly. Some of the recruits we passed on our way to the turtle weren’t as lucky. I saw many of them trying to disassemble tents and shove them into their packs with trembling fingers, faces flushed from the pain they were struggling to ignore.

I was more than ready for the torture to fade myself when I finally arrived at our destination. Mercutio’s pets were alert and standing in a loose formation, even if there was no sign of the demon himself yet.

But the pain didn’t stop.

It didn’t stop when we arrived, and it didn’t stop when we lined up with the few recruits who had reacted as quickly as we did. It didn’t stop when more people flooded in. It didn’t stop even when every last soldier was standing by the turtle, shoulder to shoulder in orderly lines, waiting for our commander to show up.

At least I wasn’t the only one suffering. If everyone else’s brands stopped burning, I would know he was singling me out.

It wasn’t until Mercutio finally emerged from his mobile home that the pain ceased. He folded his arms casually, smirking at our collective sigh of relief.

“In the future, I expect you to react more promptly,” the demon drawled, like we hadn’t been waiting for him for at least ten minutes. “Now, you may resume your march. I understand that uneducated fools like yourselves might not be able to gauge the right direction, so… south is that way.”

He gestured in the direction I already knew was south, then sauntered back into his home as his turtle monster slowly rumbled to its feet and took the first step forward. We scrambled to obey, his warning from the day before about loitering in front of his monsters still fresh in our minds.

Step by step, we marched southwards towards the mountain range. Glarind’s Spine, if I was understanding Clarinette’s memories correctly. Thanks to Clarinette, I knew vaguely that these mountains weren’t exactly in the center of the kingdom, but still in its inner depths. I also knew the mountain range was an important source of magical materials. Clarinette often wished she had something from there to help her with mana accumulation. In fact, the mountain range had become a bit of an obsession for the young mage. If a material existed on Berlis that could cure her, it would be located in these mountains.

Her feelings influenced me, and I couldn’t deny the glimmer of anticipation that took root in my mind as we marched.

About six hours into our march, though, something happened to dim that anticipation. One second, we were marching as normal. The next, I saw people ahead of me start to stagger. They found their footing again quickly enough, but I barely had time to wonder what was wrong before I experienced it myself.

It felt like walking through a wall of water. The mana, because it had to be mana, was cold and unpleasant. It clung to me, trying to seep into my skin and clothing. I tried to dispel it with my own mana, but it hung on grimly. I felt a visceral hatred from the mystical substance. Clearly, it resented me for daring to pass the boundary it was trying to maintain.

We continued marching, of course. No one dared to stop with Mercutio at their back. I did dare to peek around, watching eagerly for his reaction when his turn came.

As soon as the turtle passed the invisible line, the demon burst through his home’s front doors with a roar. The sound was accompanied by a wave of his mana that washed over us all. The foreign mana still clinging to us vanished when the red wave hit, evaporating like snow in the middle of summer.

The demon’s gaze swept angrily over the horizon, then settled on us with a scowl.

“We pass through a ward of this size and scope and you fail to warn me in advance? What good are you?”

The demon didn’t seem to expect an answer as he stalked around the side of his house, glaring back at the ward we were rapidly leaving behind.

It was a good thing he didn’t expect us to contribute because we all kept mum.

“Well, no matter,” he hissed. “It seems like it was meant to bar entry to the inner reaches of the kingdom. Someone has already weakened it severely. It has solid anchors and a minor regeneration rate, but these factors can only slow its destruction. It will fall, along with the rest of this pathetic world.”

He looked at us like he expected a round of applause for this proclamation. When he didn’t get one, he snorted and retreated into his home once more.

His explanation had more implications to work through. If the locals were truly capable of casting such a wide-reaching and powerful ward, it made sense that demonic high command was taking them a lot more seriously.

And I was suddenly a lot less confident that we would face no real resistance at our destination.