It took about an hour to organize her notes from the book. For the hour after that, she spent it meticulously crafting an explanation that toed the line between fact and fiction regarding her experience. Then, she went back and reworked it again and again until it felt sufficiently confused and childlike in understanding that Lysander would believe her when she said she was having trouble.

All in all, the essay took almost three hours to create. When she got to the library the next day, however, she found that she needn’t have bothered.

There was a flurry of activity around the double doors, with maids and porters bustling in and out. Soldiers in the royal colors stood tense and ready beside one of the tables. Lysander himself was hastily packing up his tools and books from the table. A page waited at his side, patiently holding his sword while he barked orders to the guards, who would nod and leave or step aside so someone else could receive their duties. A porter was furiously trying to clothe him in his armored suit coat without much success.

Bette slipped within and into the shadows between the free-standing bookshelves to watch the commotion from a safe distance.

“It’s three hours to Closkill by horse,” Lysander snapped at a woman Bette recognized as his second-in-command. “We don’t have time to waste!”

“I understand that, your Highness,” Lt. Marjoram demurred, unswayed. “But rushing out at the drop of the messenger’s hat is unlikely to change the outcome. There is no amount of magic or manpower in Jor that can help Closkill now. The messenger got fair warning to the town—that’s more than most get.”

“A pack of hellhounds cannot be dealt with by mere fair warning,” Lysander hissed.

Bette’s blood ran cold. Hellhounds— a whole pack of them?

Closkill… Where was Closkill? If it was a three hour hard ride, it couldn’t be too far. If they were lucky, it was a supply or depot town attached to a basecamp.

Bette snagged an atlas from the shelf and quietly made a circuit of the room before slipping out through the doors on the other end. She ran, heart pounding, until she found the courtyard and collapsed at a table, flipping open the book of maps and searching for her country.

Drakuhl had an excess of rocky coastline nearly the whole way around the peninsula. There were a couple of miles of gentle beach, but their proximity to the Horizon meant that humans couldn’t stand being near them for too long. Horizon-exposure left people feeling dizzy and disoriented. Soldiers who patrolled the Horizon-line needed to be refreshed often.

In order to supply those soldiers, relay towns from the isthmus up to the line had to be constructed, and supply towns dotted the line every few miles. These sometimes operated more like military encampments, but occasionally people would make their homes in these areas. Zenith was one of these line settlements, but it was so heavily fortified that it rarely suffered from any but the most dangerous monsters, though the surrounding towns were not so lucky. Of course, the army furnished each border town with skirmishers and magicians, but there weren’t enough skilled soldiers for every town.

The issue with living near the Horizon, though, was that it did not prevent all dangerous creatures from crossing. The mythic beasts were trapped above the ward by their own ability to cultivate magic. Creatures with less mana and without the ability to use magic weren’t as affected by the barrier. This included mundane beasts. Trappers and hunters especially favored towns closer to the Horizon because, while the magic barrier made humans sick, it seemed to have no effect on animals. Game was plenty in the remote North if one could stand being ill for a few hours while checking or laying traps.

It also included monsters.

She shuddered.

The official term was mana-enriched beasts, but the word ‘monster’ had been applied to these creatures long before any modern study of mana was created. They were the usual enemies in the original Blades of Jor.

She remembered hellhounds. Horrible, unholy masses of muscles, teeth, and tentacles in a vaguely quadrupedal shape. Despite being blind, they could sniff out prey with unerring precision. They were lightning quick with unnatural stamina, and they were mana-eaters. They sought out creatures with high levels of mana and devoured them, using the mana gained to fuel their bodies and their strange abilities.

They were normally solitary creatures, stalking prey for miles, waiting for the right moment to strike, but they could band together to take down larger prey. She had to be level 15 to even take down a single hellhound, let alone a whole pack. There was no way a border town would have the manpower or resources to do it.

Once hellhounds entered hunting mode, they didn’t stop pursuing their target until it was dead—that had been a nasty surprise in the game when trying to run away from the battle.

If the messenger was their target, and he was here now, then it was not just Closkill that was in serious danger, but also Zenith and any other town he passed through on the way.

She flipped through the maps until she found a close-up of the Horizon and the surrounding area. She found the little dot labelled ‘Closkill’ and walked her fingers up to the capital city of Zenith.

In her old life, it would have taken an hour by car, maybe. A better way to travel would have been a helicopter or a small plane, with how rocky and rugged the terrain was. Jor had accomplished some incredible feats of technology, relative to their level of industry, with their understanding of magic. The combustion engine and flight were not among them.

The lightning rail in the imperial capital was the most modern of the public transit systems in Mansland, and it had only begun construction fifteen years ago. There hadn’t been time to build the system out to the other territories. Drakuhl was cautious to even try it, with their climate and terrain. An avalanche could already bury dozens of travelers on any given road. What would it do to a packed commercial train, went the argument.

How fast could hellhounds travel? For how long? She tried to remember anything, anything from the game or the lore or the extras that could help her. She couldn’t think of anything. She didn’t know.

All she knew was that her territory, her people, were in serious trouble.

What can I do? She asked herself. She was a child, a few months past her last birthday. How could she possibly help?

How can I do nothing? This is a natural disaster. Hundreds of people could die! Thousands, maybe, if they breach the walls!

She knew so many different ways to travel, and she’d used all of them in her past life, but none of them could help here. This world didn’t have cars or buses or helicopters or…

Or planes.

She swallowed thickly, tasting burning engine fumes in the back of her throat. She could see the ground falling away beneath her as she angled into the open sky.

It was the fastest way she knew how to travel.

“But I can’t fly, can I?” She hissed irritably.

She paused, considering.

“Can I?”

Can’t she? Flying wasn’t a miracle—hundreds of thousands of creatures did it every day. She didn’t have wings, but she did have magic, and magic supposedly could manipulate mana which in turn could affect the air. Lift was generated by manipulating the flow of air around an object, usually by changing the shape and speed of that object.

She knew how to do it with rotors and engines. Why couldn’t she do it with magic?

The air was too thin to push something into the sky on its own, but if it moved quickly enough, the difference in pressure created could rip roofs from buildings or even pull them into the air. If she could shape the air properly, she didn’t even need airfoils to create pressure differentials.

She focused on her awareness of the mana around her. It was difficult to separate the kinds of mana, with each blending into each other as they radiated out and through her senses. With each breath she pulled mana into her lungs, and with each exhale, some of it exited. The rest, she assumed, was being absorbed by her body to become part of her own mana pool, as the physician had explained.

She frowned. She didn’t want to absorb the mana; she needed to use it.

But she was struck by the realization that she didn’t exactly know how to wield magic. It had all seemed intuitive when she was discussing it with Lysander but, now that she was trying, she didn’t know what to do at all. Supposedly she should have a natural control over her aligned element—but she didn’t have one, as far as she could tell.

She breathed in, deeper, and drew out the exhalation like yarn from wool. She felt the way it moved in the atmosphere, felt the slide of mana against her own. Like burrs, some stuck to her own as it left her body, and it was pulled into her mana system and down to wherever mana pooled in the soul.

No, she needed to focus!

Once more, she breathed, but this time, she tried to center her attention on the mana leaving her. It floated through the air before her, dispersing lazily back into the surrounding field. She imagined herself reaching out and catching that returned mana in her hands.

There was a strange sense of vertigo as something shifted. A roaring filled her ears. The mana around her was no longer a calm lake but a growing whirlpool, swirling faster and faster around her as she dragged it back.

She let go, slamming down the lid to whatever bottomless chasm lay within her. The mana, disturbed, seemed to slosh and ripple with agitation.

She wondered how much mana it would take for her to overflow. She didn’t feel any more powerful, any more full than she had before.

She tried to pull on the mana surrounding her without letting the lid come off. It moved, sluggishly, along the shaky line she drew in her mind’s eye. It was impossible to keep her soul completely closed while pulling, so she settled for holding it as tight as she could while also drawing mana down the line of movement. Mana whirled along the string, encouraged to spin as it hit the gravity of her own mana-well. As more mana began to move, it began to tug on other mana, mana weighted with alignment to an element.

She felt a breeze begin to stir, and it was so startling she nearly took her metaphorical hands from the drawing wheel, but she clamped down with renewed effort.

It was working.

It was like drawing a line in the sand for water to flow through—a channel where less mana existed, so more mana rushed in to fill its place. The further she dug the channel, the heavier the mana she could pull.

The breeze was soon a gale, whirling round her as she twirled the line through the air.

Though it didn’t really do anything, she turned herself round and round, just to maintain the dynamic feeling of the spiral. She felt a little silly, twirling around like a child, but stubbornly continued. Soon, it wasn’t her legs that were spinning her, but the force of the wind she was generating. Lisbette couldn’t hear anything above the roar, and she was fighting to keep down her breakfast, but she was in the air.

She was flying.

Sort of. It was more like getting thrown about by her own personal cyclone.

Well, whatever. It was working. That was good enough.

It was hard to get her bearings while she twirled in the air.

Lift achieved, she began to angle her line in order to turn herself in the direction desired. This would be the tricky part—achieving thrust. Airplanes used burning jet fuel to move through the air, but helicopters used the angle of their airfoils to move between pockets of air. She found she could achieve the same thing by varying the speed and rotation of her own magic pull. Since she was copying the motion of a helicopter, she wouldn’t be as fast as a plane, but surely she’d arrive in less than three hours.

She just had to pray she made it in time to do any good.

Bette was trying not to think about what, precisely, she could do when she got there.

There was no formal study of monsters or mythic beasts—what they had were tales from the times before the Horizon, the dark age. Fantastic illustrations and flowery praises for the Lady who became the Empress of Light, the mother of their nation, were not exactly useful in terms of tactical strategy. Surely her knowledge of their anatomy and weak points would do some good.

There had to be something she could do. She couldn’t just let her people die.

——————

The last blood of sunset drained from the face of the sky. The pale clouds dipped into their nighttime colors, and the ground and sky smeared together into one gray slurry in the hazy light of dusk. The temperature was dropping quickly now, and it was all Bette could do to just keep her evening cloak on her shoulders. The whipping wind threatened to steal it from her like it tore away her body heat. She curled up around the atlas, tracing the line of the Horizon even as it faded from her sight.

What was she doing?

Whatever courage or desperation had driven her to try this, it was nowhere to be found in her breast now. She wanted desperately to turn right back around and go home. The thought of her warm bed and well-lit chambers was a physical ache in her chest. Just because she could possibly do something, it didn’t mean she was required to try. She was a kid. No one would fault her for doing nothing. No one would expect her to do anything.

But that thought couldn’t calm her. It couldn’t dissuade the horrid guilt that bubbled in her throat. Whether or not anyone would call her out on it, she would know. She would know that she had useful information, that she had a possible means to help, and chose to not. That, more than anything else, drove her forward.

After half an hour, she had managed to make the ride a bit more comfortable. The best way to sit within the cyclone of air carrying her aloft was by drawing another line, spinning counter to the original. This double helix gave her a cushion of air that kept her rotation minimal and allowed her to breathe more easily. It was, however, thrice as hard to keep her focus on two alternating lines. She could feel herself growing tired from the effort.

She stayed as close as she could to the treetops, using the moon to judge her direction whenever it peered out from between the clouds. As rugged and difficult as the terrain of Drakuhl was, the glimpses of its natural beauty she caught in the wash of moonlight were nothing short of spectacular. She felt pride and love swell within her as she soared over the land she would, in time, come to own and protect. It was her legacy and her destiny.

It was disappointing that the light had faded so quickly—Bette missed the way the land looked when she was far above it. The tree-covered hills and hidden valleys were only darker blotches against a dark canvas. By the atlas and the moon, she navigated between the peaks of small, broken mountains, following the rapid Asírna River until it took a sharp turn south.

When she broke through the small spurs and the forest spread into a carpet of soft dark below, she caught a glimpse of the fabled Horizon. It shone in an ever-changing hue of color, gently waving against the dark sea of the night. It was like the aurora, but more vivid, more solid in a way. As the curtain of light bent and rippled and layered upon itself, the land behind it faded into fog. There was nothing but the shell of the Horizon, as far as the eye could see in either direction.

It looked unreal. It felt unreal. Her mind stuttered as comprehension flickered and died. The mana she was pulling upon flew from her grasp as her lines collapsed. The winds lost cohesion; she began to plummet.

That snapped her out of whatever daze had taken hold, and she desperately rebuilt the walls of her cyclone. Try as she might, she couldn’t gain altitude. She used the thick atlas as a shield, throwing it up in front of her head as she crashed into the treetops. The line of wind cushioned her landing, throwing and snapping branches as she tumbled. Every colliding object tore open her shield. By the time she hit the lower branches, her mana-well tornado had been ripped to shreds and she was suffering the brunt of the whipping branches herself.

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They were thick enough to stop her from hitting the forest floor, at least. Bette landed ungracefully, arms and legs desperately wrapping around the circumference of a prickly, knotted pine branch to keep herself from rolling right off it. The pine needles poked her unmercifully, and she had a pinecone or two jammed into her stomach, but she had succeeded.

“I’m alive,” she gasped. “I’m okay. I’m alive. I’m alright. Oh my gods and graces.”

I must have a death wish, she thought. Or am I cursed to fall from the sky every time I die?

She shook herself. No, she wasn’t dead. She was fine. Cuts and scrapes were nothing. She let herself hang there, supported by the tree and surrounded by the sharp tang of broken pine branches, breathing and feeling and assuring herself of her continued existence.

Fall down, get back up again, she told herself. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, legs still clamped tight around the branch despite the rough bark, and looked around.

The trees in the north were almost universally coniferous, and this forest was no exception. There were different kinds of pine, she knew, that grew in different places, but she didn’t know enough about them to tell which was which. She recalled the way the land had opened up, the gentle bowl of the landscape.

“Where’s the atlas…?” She murmured, looking around.

It had fallen from her grasp at some point in the midst of the canopy. She squinted in the darkness, willing herself to make out the book.

There. A glint of gold lettering caught her eye. It had landed, spine up, on another branch above her head. It was almost a full body-length from her own perch, but it looked remarkably undamaged. The protection her winds had given her must have afforded the book the same.

Bette took in her situation and the tools at her disposal.

She wore a child’s dress, short enough not to touch the floor but long enough to be modest. The shape of the skirt was provided only by the cut and by the underskirt material rather than a hoop or a cage like her other, more formal dresses. Her shoes were the usual flats with long ribbons that attached to a garter on each leg. Her tights were the woolen kind used in the cold months. She had her evening cloak, which she wore in the drafty palace halls whenever she had to leave her bedroom close to sundown.

It wouldn’t be warm enough to spend the night out in the cold, but it was spring. It wouldn’t be warm, but she wouldn’t freeze to death. She needed to keep the mantle with her, though, which left her with the fabric of the dress, the ribbons on her shoes, and perhaps the tights. For the same reason as the cloak, she didn’t want to be rid of the tights. The ribbons were mostly decorative—the garters were leather with solid buckles, however.

She took stock of her other available tools. The channels within her body for mana flow felt, for like of a better word, abraded. Even if her soul could handle as much mana as she could feed it, her body wasn’t up to the task. She wondered if this counted as some kind of reverse mana surge, and if that was even possible.

Leave it to her to invent new ways to get hurt by failing at magic.

Bette sighed. She decided to use the garters, unbuckling them from her thighs and lacing them together on one end to form a kind of rope. She scooted backwards along the branch until she hit the tree trunk.

The trunk was too big. She huffed.

With all the strength a desperate, angry six-year old could muster, she tore the material of the inner-skirt into strips. Once she’d ripped the seams on the hem, it was easier than she expected. She braided the strips together and then knotted them around both ends of her garter-rope.

The result wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t have to be. It was just so Bette didn’t fall to her actual death after surviving it the first time. With care, she picked sturdy holds in the bark and began to climb, using the strength of her legs and the rope wrapped around the trunk.

She shimmied up the side of the tree, circling so she could put her foot on the steady branches rather than the peeling bark as much as she was able. She slipped only twice, and the rope snagged on the bark long enough for her to regain her footing. Finally, she reached the branch she was aiming for and crawled out to the book. Higher up, the branches were thinner, and this one shook as she moved across it. She prayed to the gods, whether they be dead or alive, that the wood would hold her weight.

It held. She snatched the book in one hand and stuffed it down her collar before beating a hasty retreat back to the relative security of the trunk. The pages of the book were sticky with sap, and she could feel places where pages had been torn or even pulled right out of the binding. Miraculously, the map of the Horizon-land was still intact. She thanked the dead gods running through the veins of the world for their blessings, feeling far more religious than she ever had before.

“I’m not far off,” she noted. The Horizon was close enough to be seen, which meant she was within a mile of it. The line she’d followed when she left the river put her… “About here?”

She tapped the woods depicted, and looked up to gauge the position of the moon. No such luck; the clouds had swallowed it once again.

She looked at the map again. She would have to judge direction by the Horizon, then, following in parallel. Which meant a chance of moving toward Closkill or back toward Zenith. She would have to take a chance. She estimated that she’d been airborne for about an hour. On foot, she’d be maybe half an hour out, if she guessed right.

If not, she’d be wandering the woods for considerably longer.

Bette bit her lip. If it looked like she had guessed wrong, she would find a clearing and try to take off again. If that didn’t work, she’d walk towards the Horizon. Patrols went up and down the line all the time. Eventually she’d find a patrol, and after that…

“After that I face the music,” she sighed.

Her parents were going to be furious with her. Her uncle, too. She frowned, remembering how she’d left without saying anything. Looking back now, she should have left a note or something. At least enough to let Tibby know what she was doing. The girl wouldn’t be angry. No, Tibby would be disappointed and sad, and that was so much worse.

She’s going to insist on going to magic lessons with me now, isn’t she?

The only reason Tibby didn’t attend, despite going to every other class with her mistress, was because the girl didn’t have any magic ability at all. Bette wasn’t sure if she was actually barred from attending or if she herself had asked to be able to learn something else at that time. Tibby loved magic, but watching Bette learn to do something she never could…

Well, Bette knew how she would feel about that if the situation was reversed.

Mind made up, Bette climbed down from the tree, dropping onto the springy moss below. Bits of branches and pine needles had rained down from above, likely souvenirs of her rough landing. She picked a direction and set off, using the faint glow of the Horizon as her guide.

The forest was dark and deep. It seemed to hush every sound she made: the carpet of moss and fallen leaves muffled her footfalls; the trees ate her breath with every gasp for air. The trees were tall as mountains, old and knowing, and their roots emerged from the detritus in places that almost caught her foot and turned her ankle. She felt very small in the shadow of these giants.

This place, she thought, could swallow her whole.

In the quiet of the forest, with nothing to focus on but her next step, Bette wracked her brain for some semblance of a coherent plan. It had been such a stupid idea to leave on her own— what could a little girl who couldn’t even do proper magic accomplish?— but the deed had been done.

She had already made the choice, and she had to follow through. To give up now was an insult to her country, her duty, and (not least of all) her pride. It would make a mockery of her and her family, for the heiress to kick up chaos and then return without even trying to accomplish what she set out to do. A Drakuhl was always as good as their word, and though she hadn’t spoken or promised anything to anyone, a covenant made with oneself was as sacred as any other.

It was comforting, in a way, that this impulsive, childish, willful nature of hers had not been erased by the deluge of Liz’s memories. This was undoubtedly her own doing, and it was her own pride that kept her trudging forward despite the strangeness of the world so close to the Horizon.

And it was strange. It was said that people who wandered too close or too long beside the sacred barrier lost their minds. Bette was starting to understand why.

Her very senses were confused.

Motes of light condensed out of the air, drifting along like lazy firebugs, only to vanish moments later. The shadows of the forest distorted in the ambient light of the wall, moving unnaturally while the things that cast them stayed in place. She almost walked into a tree once or twice, thinking it was farther than it was. Her ears were ringing with some faint noise, like a lullaby just far enough away to be beyond comprehension, and there was a pressure in the atmosphere that seemed determined to crush the air from her lungs.

If she caught a glimpse of the shell of light through the thick trees, it hit like a gunshot, splattering her concentration all over the floor. It took precious seconds to recollect her thoughts. She could only imagine how difficult it was for the soldiers in the line to patrol up and down this stretch of land at an even closer range. How could one fight or even do magic when simply concentration was a feat?

The worst part, though, was the mana—it was like the mana itself was confused. Rather than the gentle flow that moved through the world, the ambient mana was almost buzzing, ricocheting too and fro, getting stuck and then shooting off in a random direction. The way it alternately pooled and pulsed or lunged and leaped made her stomach flip and turn with it. She was pulled along by the choppy currents, batted back and forth.

Even if her senses were more acute than others, it was no wonder mages got sick so often when they went on Horizon patrols.

Her breathing was shallow. Her heart fluttered against the bars of her ribcage. It wasn’t the exertion; it was primordial fear. Some vestigial knowledge from her forebears deep within wanted her to flee. ‘This place is dangerous,’ it whispered in the pit of her stomach and at the base of her brain stem. Magic-capable creatures instinctively avoided areas of stagnant or unnatural mana flow.

She was on high alert, and yet felt like she was walking in a daze.

A rustle in the brush ahead of her was the only warning she got before a cat—a wildcat, the small and vicious kind that stalked the forests of the North—shot out from the shadows. It soared through the air, seemingly right towards her face. She threw her arms up over her head, wheeling around blindly.

She tripped and stumbled, collapsing into the mud and moss. The beast landed gracefully among the undergrowth and then kept running, not even sparing her a backwards glance. More small, furry bodies swarmed over the ground. She scrambled to get her back up against a tree to make room.

Little dappled cats and bigger, darker tabby-coated felines streamed past her, too fast to make out any details, but enough that Bette was certain this had to be a whole colony—probably the ruling colony in the area. She watched warily in the direction they disappeared but none of the cats doubled back to take a bite of the human girl wandering through their territory.

Northern wildcats were small, only a little bigger than a common house cat, but they were ferocious and extremely territorial. They knew to avoid human adults, but wildcats in a colony were effective hunters and wouldn’t turn their noses at making a meal of a human child.

They didn’t abandon their territories unless they had no choice.

It could be that she’d arrived at the tail end of a wildcat war, but that seemed unlikely.

She rose from the ground, picking twigs and moss from her hair. She had a pretty good idea what spooked the cats.

“I’m definitely heading in the right direction,” she murmured, turning to face the place where the cats had emerged. Now that she was listening for it, the night was quieter than it should be. Insects still sang their songs, but the nightbirds were nowhere among the chorus. Their brethren must have passed the message along already, to be silent or to flee.

She had to be close now—to the village or else the path the hellhounds were taking.

Bette had hoped to reach the village before the hellhounds did. She’d arrived within the three hour window, but that didn’t mean the hellhounds weren’t already here. She had no idea how much of a lead the messenger had, and she didn’t know if their true prey was the messenger or something else.

Bette unwrapped the rope she’d made from about her waist and began to scale a nearby, sturdy-looking pine. This time, she climbed until the branches began to thin, and the wind picked up. She gripped each end of her lifeline with white knuckles as the footholds on branches got smaller and smaller.

Finally, she decided she could go no farther up, and braved a look down at the rest of the world.

She squeezed her arms around the trunk. She was higher up than she expected.

The tree was thicker and taller than most of those in its immediate area, and it provided her with a decent sweep of the area. Though it was dark without the moon, she could just make out the jagged teeth of a wooden wall, the kind that surrounded small depot towns to ward off scavengers and small monsters. From her vantage point, she could see the tips of rickety roofs, but could make out nothing more than that. If there were people patrolling the wall or cowering behind the gate from a pack of bloodthirsty monsters at the other side, she couldn’t see them.

She’d have to get closer to assess the situation. Her plan, to the extent that she had one, was to share her knowledge of the monsters with the locals and whatever military enforcement might be onsite.

The first order of business was to find out what had started the hunt. It would be useful if some of the patrol had already made it here, but she doubted it. Hopefully, the messenger had shared more information with the town. If it was the messenger, whose path they already knew, it would be a lot simpler to organize a response.

Though clever, hellhounds were single-minded in pursuit of their target. They wouldn’t bother going far afield to chase down others who fled from them while they were still on the trail. It was ironically safer for the villagers to leave and scatter than it was to stay grouped up in the same place, even behind sturdy walls.

If it was the case, they would be able to set up defenses and ambush attacks along the route the messenger had traveled.

If it was the case. If the target was somewhere closer, even in Closkill itself…

She hoped it wasn’t.

“They’re weak to magical fire,” she muttered to herself as she clambered back down the tree. “Large area spells confuse their senses for a time. They can be led into traps…”

Movement below caught her eye.

Bette froze. Clinging to the trunk of the tree, she searched the darkness for whatever it was. The shadows were deep and black between the branches, needles throwing shadows everywhere. Maybe it had been her imagination finding figures in the dark where none were? The hair on the back of her neck was standing up. She couldn’t make herself go down any further. Every nerve was screaming at her to reverse course and, without really thinking, she followed her instincts. A bare sliver of the moon cast light down from between the clouds.

Bette saw it.

Glistening iridescent like oil on water, a sleek, black hide shimmered into existence below. Snakes undulated through the grass and up the sides of trees, seeking prey, then they fell back into a tangled mass of others. The mass undulated back and forth, a smooth crawl through the forest as it deftly wove between trees. Despite its size, it seemed to make no noise at all.

Her breath caught in her throat and stayed there, too scared to emerge.

Those were not snakes, she realized. They were probing tentacles, each with a nostril and teeth, smelling and tasting everything they moved across, mapping out the terrain for the blind beast from which they emerged. As she watched, the wedge-like head of the monster wove back and forth through its sensory web, using its powerful sense of smell to lead it forward.

Hellhound. There was a hellhound right below her.

Don’t smell me, don’t smell me, don’t smell me.

It was all she could do to keep her breathing and voice quiet. One sound and they’d know where she was. She wasn’t so far away that they wouldn’t try to reach for the snack-sized sack of mana that was a little girl.

She hugged the tree tight, transfixed, as the shape of the otherworldly creature came fully into the light. Monsters, they were called. Having seen them in the game, she’d thought she knew what they were like. She hadn’t been prepared for the reality.

A two-ton monster on four legs, creeping silently through the forest as it followed its prey, relentless and daunting. She could see the way the muscle rippled through the body, from tentacle tip to back.

Tears blurred her vision. She bit her lip.

What a fool she was. How could she possibly help anyone against these monsters? The beast below was the size of a minivan! Not that she had thought she’d fight them herself, but how could any human being go up against these things and live? This wasn’t a video game; there weren’t recommended levels or play strategies.

The worst part was how quiet they were. She was up high, but even so, in the quiet of the night, any sound would be obvious. And yet, the only reason she’d even noticed it was the lucky glance of the moon.

She saw another shape, drifting to the side of the one directly below. Another. Two more.

They were fanned out in a line below, vaguely V-shaped like a flock of geese. Each was within tentacle-touching distance of the others, and the brush of their limbs seemed to indicate a message. They made minute course corrections, avoiding bramble bushes or fallen logs. They were synchronized and fluid.

She’d been picturing them like a pack of wolves. She thought they’d as much hinder each other as help, being naturally solitary. The truth was more horrifying. They were a well-oiled machine, combing through the forest for the tail of their hunting rabbit. She cast her eyes in the direction they were treading.

A coldness seeped into her veins.

They were going straight for the wall.

It must have passed through there, she thought. Or it could even still be there!

The hellhounds were quick. They ate up meters with every measured step.

How would they fare against the wall? Would they circle around and try to force open the gate?

She had to move. She had to do something… warn the village somehow that the hounds were at their door. She wished she could send messages on the wind like the mages in her storybooks.

She wished she could do any magic, anything other than hiding in the trees like a frightened bird.

With shaking fingers, she unwrapped herself from the trunk and knelt on the branch. She crept forward on hands and knees. The trees weren’t so far apart that they didn’t cross boughs—if she was careful, she could climb from one tree to the next. The clearcut forest wouldn’t let her use them to go over the wall, but if she was closer, she could do something.

Throw a pinecone? Shout? Something that would get the attention of the villagers and hopefully give them time to scatter.

The branch tilted dangerously as she moved. She kept glancing back, trying to gauge how the wood was holding up under her weight, but if it was splintering it was too hard to tell in the dark. By the time she reached the point where another branch on a different tree was close enough to grab, the branch was bending dangerously. Living wood was supple, but she was at least sixty pounds, maybe seventy.

It creaked.

She stopped, holding her breath. Up ahead, one of the hellhounds had paused, head arching back. She waited. After a moment, it resumed its forward motion, and Bette let out a shaky exhale.

She snagged a hold of the other branch. Though it bent when she pulled, it seemed steady enough.

With a prayer, she swung from her branch to the other. The world tilted. She fought to get her leg up on the branch and walked herself, hand over hand and sliding calves, up to the trunk.

Just like the monkey bars, she thought, thinking of the metal and plastic play sets Liz had terrorized in her childhood. She didn’t know if those existed in Jor. If they did, it was probably a commoner thing. No noble child would be allowed to hang upside-down from anything. Especially not in their fancy clothes.

Her dress must look a mess, she realized. A strange urge to giggle bubbled within, but she beat it back down.

Laugh and it’ll be the last thing you do, she told herself. That killed the urge with gusto.

She checked the position of the hellhounds. The gap between them and her was widening, for which she was thankful, but that also meant they were getting closer to the wall. They had paused at the end of the mass of trees, hesitating to move forward. Their tendrils explored the ground, then raced back to their sides like frightened children.

Were they worried about trying to navigate without the trees to guide them? Or were they considering their next move in a changed terrain?

She looked for other crossed branches, considering her own.

When they moved next, they moved in a line. The lead hellhound broke into a lope, which became a run. The next jumped into motion on its tail, literally following its lead. Then the next, and then the next. At full tilt, they ate up ground, and it wouldn’t be long before they reached the fence.

They’d get there before she even cleared another tree! Damn, she needed to move faster.

Could she risk getting to the ground?

She would have to, she decided. Bette swung down to the next branch below, the rope wrapped around her hand. Fear and determination kept her moving down despite the shaky branches and the protesting groans of the wood. She glanced nervously toward the hellhounds, but they were apparently too far for the sound to reach them.

Far enough down, she let go of the wood and let herself tumble safely to the cushion of moss and mud below.

When I get to the end of the trees, she planned, I’ll use the cyclone to propel myself over the wall.

She didn’t know if it would work, but she had to try.

She began to run.

Bette didn’t make it to the end of the trees.