Guardian Tier 3 Ability selected: Shared Burden

The Guardian can transfer their health to another with a touch. The rate of exchange is 1 to 1. The recipient’s health cannot increase beyond their current maximum. If the recipient is designated as a target, touch is no longer required. If the recipient is designated as Ward, they gain an extra 10% to the health transfer. Each level of Shared Burden reduced the cost in health to the Guardian by 1%

I appear next to Terry, swinging my bar and not connecting, but forcing the monsters to step back. They aren’t as mindless as they first seemed. I tag Terry as my target, then I—

Hesitate.

I’ve done too much reading for a word like ‘ward’ not to have gained baggage. I don’t need him to be my ward, just marking him as my target removes the need to touch him and—

His health is still dropping.

I make him my ward. It’s not like it actually means anything, other than he gains ten percent over what I give him, and send a quarter of my health to him.

He gasps as his health refills entirely, and looks up at me, wonder in his eyes.

“Up, Terry.” I swing my bar again, but they don’t step away as much. “I’m going to need help here.”

“I didn’t regain a lot of mana.” He stands and puts his back to mine.

“Then use the smallest magic you have to keep them distracted while I bash their skulls in.” I leap at the closest monster, bar over my head. It doesn’t get out of the way in time and crumbles under the impact, green-gray liquid spilling out of the broken head.

Cold flashes behind me and shards of ice shatter on approaching monsters. They stagger back a step, then notice how little effect the ice has and return.

A sweep of my bar catches one solidly in the side and goes through, splashing more green-gray goo on the others, but it doesn’t scare them. My next swing is caught by the larger of the group and when I pull, it holds on. I pull harder as a larger shard of ice hits it, getting it to let go while I shove it away.

When no more ice follows, I glance at the party window. Terry is in his own section, so I quickly see he’s out of mana.

I crush another skull and back up to him, making circles with my bar to force all the surrounding monsters away.

“Terry?”

“Sorry, it looked like you were about to get pulled into them. I couldn’t—”

“It’s okay. You probably saved my life.” The lie comes too easily, but right now I need him focused on the fight, not feeling bad. “How quickly will your mana regenerate?”

“Not quickly enough to help. Can you fight all of them?” He sounds scared.

“Yes,” I answer, the lie again coming too easily. I glance to the side for the others and see they are busy with their own hoard of monsters and people to protect.

Oh yeah, you screwed up big time.

“What did you say?”

I said—not you, asshole. Terry mumbled something, and it prickled an idea.

“Sorry.”

“No, Terry, what did you say?” I do another circle with the bar and they only step back enough so I don’t hit any of them.

“I was just bitching that if I can’t get mana potions, it’s unfair that you can’t give me your mana like you did with your health. I know you already saved my life and I’m—”

I tune him out.

Can I?

I scream as I push them back and that seems to add to the effect, enough for me to call up my sheet and look through it. I’m pretty sure the wording’s there.

Sub Class, Aetheric Guardians

The Aetheric Guardian can infuse many of their abilities with Aether, altering how the ability works. On top of other bonuses, the Aetheric Guardian increases the Aether attribute by 1 on setting it as your class and gains a point in Aether and a spell point per level

I’m an Aetheric Guardian. This doesn’t dictate what I can and can’t alter. So… can I take advantage of this loophole? I have no idea how much mana I have, and it’s probably a drop in Terry’s bucket, but it’s not doing me any good.

Okay system. Charge whatever the cost is, but transfer all my mana to my ward.

My mana bar flashes, then is gone.

“What?” Terry exclaims, and I smile as his mana bar fills to just under a quarter. “How?”

“Later. Do what you can with that, I’m going to get in the middle of—”

“Wait, stay close. With that, I can do something that’s going to help a lot.”

His mana drops to an eight as a wave of cold expands from us and hits the monsters, coating them in frost.

“It’s going to slow them for about a minute. Hopefully—”

I’m already in the middle of them, swinging, dodging, striking, and blocking. They aren’t molasses slow, but it’s significant enough that they can’t touch me, or even avoid my hits. I also have the time to notice the blur of white at their back and the response of the monsters as it gets close to. There is no more doubt; it wasn’t my imagination. It’s got to be whatever was watching me in the woods.

But what it is and why is it helping.

If helping is what it’s doing.

It’s helping right now, and I’ll take it. The end of my bar goes into the head of a monster, then I rip it out to hit another one, sending it flying.

A burning slash across my back and a drop in my definitely too-low-for-comfort health is the sign Terry’s slow spell is ending. Fortunately, it’s allowed us to remove about half of them.

Unfortunately, that still leaves too many of them for my liking.

“Terry, can you slow them again?” my swing misses, but my dodge and parry must have crossed a threshold, because I have a better sense of how to avoid getting hit. With that in mind, I put points in my staff skill until something happens and hitting around their defenses gets a little easier.

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“No, I’m using the mana faster than it regenerates. I’m going to have to switch to a less effective attack soon if I don’t want to tap out completely. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” I snap, dodging a claw swipe and slamming the end of the bar through where its heart should be. “It’s a Canadian thing, and even I don’t bother with it that much.” I can’t tell if it has one, but the size of the cone spray that erupts out its back tells me I did enough damage to liquefy whatever was in its chest. I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to turn the—

“Terry!” Elizabeth yells, and a glance in that direction shows me monsters being thrown out of her way.

Looks like the cavalry’s arrived.

My father snorts his disapproval, while I get back to gleefully hitting monsters.

* * * * *

I stand in the middle of a massacre, covered in green-gray gore and feeling far too proud of myself; far too good about the level of violence I inflicted on them. Sure, they were monsters—probably created for the sole purpose of being destroyed like this—but I shouldn’t relish having to use violence.

Terry isn’t quite as gory, but he too is smiling, while Elizabeth is fussing over him. If she was hoping to remove the gore, all she’s doing is adding her own on him.

“It’s okay, Mom. Chuck saved me.”

“He saved me back,” I reply, not liking the look she gives me. “So we’re square.”

You need to talk.

Not now.

“You could have given us some warning, Chuck,” John says.

Healing, that was what we’d agreed for tier three.

Shut up.

“That thing nearly killed Hanz before we got over the surprise.”

Do you have any idea of the kind of trouble that’s going to cause you? Share their burden? That kid’s going to drag you down, he’s going to be the death of—

“I said, shut the fuck up!”

They all back away from me. Even Elizabeth pulls Terry away.

I try to come up with something to explain, and my willpower drops. I close my eyes and breathe. “Look. I need to be on my own for a while.” I tap the side of my head. “I need to deal with something.”

“Chuck,” John says. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s not you,” I said, watching my willpower go down again. “I made a decision I need to deal with.” I turn and walk away from them.

“Don’t,” Albert said, but the tone’s too soft for it to be directed at me. He raises his voice. “Chuck, while you’re at it, you might want to find a stream to wash in.”

Sure, I’ll get right on that.

* * * * *

You are an idiot.

At least you waited until now before starting. I raise myself out of the water and parts of the monsters that weren’t washed away by the currents slosh off because of gravity.

Like you’d have listened then, so fucking wrapped up in your own problems to think of how they affect me.

Get off it. I might forget every so often, but there is no you. You’re just some fucked up part of my psyche I patterned after my father, or something.

I’m the part of you who’d like to survive the mess you keep putting yourself in.

If you say so. I take off the leather jacket and scrub it clean. Then I consider sending it to my inventory, but I don’t know how wet stuff will react, so I get myself to the shore, place it there, look around for anyone, then get back into the deeper part of the large stream and proceed to clean the rest of what I’m wearing.

How about you explain just what the fuck you were thinking when you went and saved that kid?

I… wasn’t.

No shit.

“I just reacted, okay?” I look around in case there’s someone else in the middle of the forest who might have heard.

I didn’t have the time to think. Terry was in trouble. The idea occurred to me and I acted on it.

Haven’t you learned by now not to act without thinking? Didn’t these last weeks teach you anything about that that I didn’t teach you when you were a kid?

Don’t bring up my father’s teachings like they’re anything I should follow. That man never had my best interest in mind. And you’re a prime example of that.

Your best interest is the only thing I think about. How are you not seeing that?

Naked I step out of the water and fight the self consciousness that screams at me that someone might be there to see me in the buff.

I’m pretty certain something’s out there, watching—although it might be my paranoia—but it isn’t someone.

You’re the part of me that wants nothing to do with other people.

Like anything good ever happens when they’re around.

I can’t just be alone all the time. I let the heat of the sun soak in.

There’s a difference between having people around when it can’t be avoided and that. I can imagine him pointing angrily in the other’s direction.

You’re the one who pushed me to interact with Deloy.

That’s not the same and you know it.

Right. That’s about controlling him. Shaping him into something I can use. Don’t think I don’t see through your ‘encouragements’. That isn’t going to happen.

Terry is going to get you killed, and you know it.

He won’t. He’s too nice of a kid to do something like that.

He’s going to do something stupid, like kids always do, and you’re going to jump into save him and that’s going to kill you, like it almost did now. Like it almost did when you saved him from the ogre.

His name’s Bernard. I am not going to start thinking of other people as what they are instead of who they are.

He snorts. You aren’t all that good at examining your past behavior, are you?

Fine. Then I’m going to stop doing that.

Feeling somewhat dry, I sit and lean against a trunk. You need to stop.

Make me.

I’m serious. All you do is give me bad advice.

I am too. And what are you talking about? The advice I give is about keeping you alive. It’s when you don’t listen to me that you get in the kind of mess you found yourself in just then. If not for that woman—

Elizabeth.

—you’d have been killed.

“You can come out, you know.”

Who are you talking—

The white fox slinks out from between two trees twenty meters away and sits, looking at me. Not white. Not with the way its fur shimmers in the light. Silver.

“Thank you for the help. But I don’t understand why. I mean, you’re just a fox I’ve never met, so there’s no—”

It tilts its head, like my statement doesn’t make sense. My first thought is that it’s my imagination, foxes don’t understand people. My second is that I’m an idiot for thinking that after everything I’ve seen since the world changed and my third is that it can’t be the only other fox—silver furred fox—I’ve encountered before. It died, I killed it.

System, tell me about Ghost Foxes.

System Query: Ghost Fox

Ghost Foxes are a subclass of the Fox branch of wild creatures. Ghost Foxes are solitary by nature and are identified by their ability not to be affected by physical objects if they so will it. They are also faster and nimbler than regular Foxes. Upon death, the Ghost Soul is formed and can be harvested

Tell me about Ghost Souls.

System Query: Ghost Souls

Ghost souls are an item released on death by creatures within the Ghost category. It will appear as a colored gem when awarded. It is an item sought after for its magical property. If left alone, the Ghost creature will reform around the soul again

“So, are you the one I killed? I guess that’s how you know me, but it doesn’t explain why you helped. I’d think you want me dead for what I did. Sorry about that, by the way, but you didn’t exactly give me a choice.”

Apologizing to an animal?

Shut up.

It crouches into a loaf and closes its eyes. That’s a good idea. I close mine too and let the heat lull me to sleep.

* * * * *

I wake up to a chill. The sun’s low enough that I’m mostly in the shade and the breeze is giving me goosebumps. I reach for my shirt and a blur of white disappears into the trees. It had remained where it was while I slept and moving scared it away.

“Sorry,” I call out, then check that my clothing’s dry and dress.

I head back to the others, catching glimpses of silver between the trees until their voices can be heard. It might be willing to make itself known to me, but I seem to be the extent of its desire to be seen.

The fire becomes visible before I exit the trees. The conversation resolves itself into something normal sounding, which is silenced by me stepping out of the trees.

“Welcome back,” Albert says, taking something out of the fire and biting into it. Patricia makes a face and moves away from the Bogbear.

“Are you feeling better?” John asks, handing her an open can.

“I am.” I take a breath. I have plenty of willpower right now. I can do this. “I’m sorry for snapping earlier. It wasn’t right.”

“It’s all—” Albert starts.

“I’m glad you realize that,” John cuts him off. “But I also shouldn’t have laid into you like I did. You saved Terry, and all I was thinking about was how your actions left us in a lurch. I guess we both need to take a step back after a fight and center ourselves.”

I nod, unsure how to take this. Then go with the face value of it. “Thank you.” I join them. By the fire are a variety of canned foods, vegetables, meats, some of those mini sausages.

“Tell me you have plates,” Elizabeth said. “Turns out that in our o so careful planning for the trip, no one thought of bringing bowls or plates.”

“And you’re realizing this now?” I ask, sitting down.

“First meal where we have to pull out the cans,” John answers.

“There’s pretty good meat right here,” Albert says, as he turns slabs of meat on a stick in the ground by the fire.

“That’s stuff’s from those monsters,” Patricia says. “I’m not eating that.”

“More for us,” Hanz replies, grinning.

“How’d you get it?” I ask.

“Butchering skill,” Albert answers. “I’m at twelve, so this is all that survived my work, and I got some skin of some sort out of it, too. No tanning skill though, usually I’d just hand that to aunt Nori.”

I motion for a stick of meat. Butchering only gives edible meat, so it’s safe. I eye it suspiciously once I realize it’s as off-green as the goo I cleaned off earlier, then bit into it. It’s tender and juicy. And it’s quite good.

I smile. Yeah, more for us.