Guardian Angel Chapter 12 (Patreon)

Note: This is barely even edited for spelling as I schedule this. You're seeing the sausage as it's made, so to speak.

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Practising with the sword was a lot more painful than with the crossbow. Tor wasn’t being needlessly mean or anything, it was just that his style of teaching was to show Ana the very basics – hold like this, strike like this, and parry that strike like this –  and then go immediately into partner work. Ana had done a lot of martial arts training and had been prepared to get sweaty, sore, and possibly knocked around a bit. All those things did happen, but what she hadn’t been ready for was the burning ache in her forearms, or the shocks that shot up her arm every time the practice swords knocked together. Or the blisters! She should have expected that, she realised, but they were so bad! She asked Tor about gloves, and he just shook his head.

“You can wear gloves when you fight for real, but when you’re practising you need to build calluses. And I know you have some, but they’re not the right kind, or in the right place. So you’ll just have to suffer through it, and then when we’re done we’ll ask Touanne to help them heal. She knows how to do it without healing it perfectly."

"Because healing the blisters perfectly would prevent calluses?" Ana asked, blowing on her stinging hand.

"Right. We've tried some tricks to numb the pain, but you don't really get the right grip that way. So you just have to grin and bear it. Sorry. And that's enough rest, I think."

"Can we give the swords a break, at least? I don't think I can hold it right for a while."

"What do you have in mind instead?"

"Unarmed? Striking and grappling?"

"How about short blades? You said you're good with those."

Ana scowled minutely. "Not a fan, like I told you."

"But a dagger will do you a lot more good against a possessed animal or corpse than your feet or fists will," Tor said. "Besides, I'm curious."

"C'mon, An!" Kaira was sitting on the side, taking a break from shooting and alternately watching and reading a book she'd produced from somewhere. "You never told me you're a knife fighter! I gotta see this!"

Ana thought about it, then gave in. "Alright, fine,” she said. “You got some practice knives in there?"

Kaira bounced to her feet and fetched two blunt practice daggers made of the same reddish wood as the practice swords. With the shorter blades, the tables were not only turned. To Kaira's steadily growing amusement, which built into a cackling delight with each exchange, they were flipped, demolished, and used for kindling. It wasn't that Tor didn't get any touches on Ana. In a drawn out fight with multiple opponents Ana would have been dead five minutes in from small cuts and punctures. But every exchange ended with Ana marking a lethal injury on Tor. Throat, wrists, an eye once, the heart when she felt that he was being really sloppy. The inside thigh at one point, which made Tor flush beet red from an embarrassment that had nothing to do with losing the exchange. Mostly it was just the good, old, tried and tested 'multiple stabs to the abdomen'.

"Your main weakness," Ana said as she held her blade to Tor's throat, "isn't your skill with the blade itself. You've got the stance and the technique down pretty well, and you know where to aim. But you're only fighting with the blade. That close in you've got to use your whole body."

They'd drawn a small crowd at that point. There weren't many others using the yard that afternoon, but those that were there had stopped what they were doing to watch. Ana was kneeling on Tor's back, his knife hand in the air behind him. While he coughed in the dust, Kaira was laughing her smooth head off, having given up entirely on her own practice.

"If I'm going to guess, I'd say you don't practise much to fight people. Am I right?"

"Yeah. Can I get up now?" Tor groaned. Ana released him and gave him a hand.

"You're right. Nobody here expects to fight each other, so we practise fighting demons. It's quite different. But beside that, how are you so damn quick and strong? I'm pretty well rounded but my strength at least should still be higher than yours."

And it was true. Tor was significantly taller and had a more muscular build than Ana, testosterone and a more strength-focused life both working in his favour. He also had perhaps seventy or eighty pounds on her, and that was always going to work in his favour if he knew how to use it. But the bonus from her Guardian Angel class closed the gap a bit. And when you factored in the additional bonus from the ability of the same name, which apparently triggered even from sparring, Ana wouldn't be surprised if they were nearly evenly matched for strength, with most or all of her other stats being higher than his.

And that's at level 3, she thought, the feeling of unreality coming back. What would it be like at 12? If she got 3 points in strength from her class, she would have started from 11, and she’d always been pretty strong for her size. At level 12 she'd be twice as strong as she'd been before this magic business. If she got to the 20's, three times. Assuming stats were linear, she’d be able to do world record-breaking Olympic lifts at that point.

She didn't say any of this to Tor. The only explanation she offered was, "Skill and leverage. Strength is less important if you know what you’re doing."

“But not unimportant.”

“Raw strength is never unimportant when you’re fighting, no. Or mass, for that matter. I’d probably have some real trouble throwing Omda the way I did with you just now. And if the two of us had the same strength, you’d still do more damage with a punch if you know how to put your weight behind it.”

“Doesn’t sound fair to me,” Kaira said from the side.

"Depends on how you look at it, I guess. But fair or not, it's something to keep in mind."

"Good reason to learn to shove a lightning bolt up someone's arse, I say."

Right, because that was something people could just learn here. "Any way to make a fight unfair in your favour, really," she said. "But yeah, a lightning bolt would do it." Or a stun gun, she thought. Or a nice little semi-automatic.

Six rounds. She had six rounds left. Which was just as well, because she didn't have any way to properly maintain her gun. The next time she used it would probably be the last time. It made her gut twist a little.

"Alright, enough philosophising," Tor said, throwing Ana a practice sword again and waved off their audience. "The rest of you, show's over. You can come watch me get flipped arse over head again tomorrow." He turned back to Ana. "Kaira told me how quickly you got the Crossbows skill, and I don't want to leave here until you've got Long Blades. Then we can work on shields tomorrow."

*****

[Congratulations! You have learned the skill Long Blades! You have been awarded: Growth Crystal, Lesser]

It took the rest of the afternoon, but Ana got the skill. Tor and Kaira were only slightly outraged that it had gone so quickly, but their congratulations seemed completely sincere.

"Lets head back to Petra's for dinner and some celebratory ale," Tor said. "We can tell Omda the good news and then have a look at those swords you… acquired. If you don't mind," he added hastily."

"That's fine, I appreciate any advice you can give," Ana said. "But you're not weaselling out of letting me buy a round of drinks this time. First round is on me."

"Saw through that, did you?" Tor said with a grin.

"Bath first?" Kaira suggested. "You two reek. And your other clothes should be clean and dry by now, Ana!"

Right. It was warm and Tor had been working her mercilessly, and antiperspirant was only a beautiful memory. Ana's new clothes were sweaty and dusty, and two copper felt like a small price to pay right then.

"Sure," Ana said. "Sounds great. Tor?"

"I'll see you at Petra's," Tor said. "I could use a change of clothes as well."

"Aaand," Kaira said after they'd gone their separate ways, "Tor's folks donated a bunch of money towards building the baths, and they engraved the accumulators for free, and now the staff all fawn over him. He doesn't go often."

"Accumulators?"

"You know, for the heating and cooling and circulation and… everything. Big suckers, too, with the low ambient and the Waystone right there down the road. Probably worth more than the rest of the building combined!"

"Oh. So Engraving pays well, I guess?"

"Yep! Oh, right, I should warn you. Bath's going to be way more crowded now. You okay with that?"

“I’ll have to be. I’d rather not sleep like…” Ana pulled at the neck of her tunic with her free hand, “This.”

Frankly, she might as well get it over with. Back home she could usually hide her tattoo by showering at home or waiting until there was no one else in the changing room, but it wasn’t like anyone ever said anything the few times she hadn’t been able to. And that wasn’t even true. She’d had compliments, and nothing else. She’d done enough self-analysis to know that the only reasons she had a hangup over her tattoo was that it made her stand out, and that she’d gotten it at a point in her life that she didn’t like to think about anymore. A time that she’d left behind, gone and hopefully one day to be forgotten.

Well, here was another new chapter. And in this one private showers were a luxury she couldn’t afford, and that might be true for a long time. She already stood out as the new woman, who’d dropped out of the sky when no one was supposed to. Anyone who cared would know about her soon enough. What did it matter if they had one more thing to gossip and recognize about her?

It certainly didn’t matter enough to keep her from getting clean after hours of training.

They dropped off Kaira’s crossbow at her home, then got Ana’s clothes from the laundry. Her delicates had, miraculously, survived, which was a relief not so much because she loved the set but because she only had so much to wear and little money to buy more. She realised pretty quickly, though, that she may not be able to afford daily laundry, which… was going to suck. 3 coppers wasn’t much, but it was going to add up pretty quickly.

“So, how much could I expect to make on one of these expeditions of yours?” she asked Kaira as they walked up Main Street.

“Depends on so many things. If anyone’s been through recently, if the mana’s been fluctuating, if there’s any wandering creeps, how the dungeons are feeling that week… who knows, really? But for a normal three day outing… a gold a day, if we’re lucky? Half that if not? Less if you wanna eat most of your crystals, of course, which you’ll probably want to at your level.”

Between eighteen and thirty-six silver, Ana thought, for three days. Less if she wanted to gain levels more quickly, which yes, she did. More levels meant higher ability scores and, presumably, higher earning potential, and less vulnerability. Okay. “And how often can I go out?” she asked.

“There’s usually an organised group every week, sometimes two. I do it like once every couple of weeks, when there’s enough interest and me and the boys aren’t out on our own. And before you ask, yeah, you can tell Admin that you wanna go out as often as possible, and they’ll try. But if you go out with one of the mixed groups, don’t take any shit, alright? That goes double if it’s a group with mostly men. They don’t usually mean anything by it, but the flirting and the jargon can get pretty tiresome. Lots of guys here, not so many ladies, you know how it is. Oh, here we are!”

Kaira stopped them outside of Touanne’s shop and just walked in, clearly expecting Ana to follow. It wasn’t like Ana had forgotten her blistered hands, it was just that she’d subconsciously resigned herself to wrapping them and waiting for them to heal, and healing them with magic was not a possibility that had stuck around in her mind.

“Mistress Touanne?” Kaira called into the empty shop. “Are you available?”

“A minute!” came the reply from some back room.

The front didn’t look like a shop, and it didn’t look like a doctor’s office. There was a narrow table with three chairs and a couple of shelves with jars and bottles on them, but no counter or anything like that. Some dried herbs and flowers hung from the rafters, spreading a pleasant smell, and an open door led to the back of the shop. That was it.

Ana looked at the labels on the jars and bottles. Healing, said one. Burns - Fire, said another, and next to that, Burns - Acid. Then there was Stamina, Antivenom, Mana Exhaustion, Cure-all and many others. Notably there was only one of each, and when Ana took one and wiggled it she felt that the bottle was empty.

Touanne was kind and caring and generous, but she was clearly not trusting enough to leave her wares sitting out in an unattended shop.

“Well, how can I help you?” Touanne said before she even came through the door. When she did, she was wiping her hands on a towel. “Ah, Miss Kaira!” she said pleasantly. “Need more of the same? And Miss Anastasia! Do you need anything?”

“We’re here for her, actually,” Kaira said. “And I’m all sorted with burn ointment, thanks. Ana, show her your hand, yeah?”

Ana held out her blistered right hand, and Touanne looked at it for just a moment. “Learning swordplay? Not a bad idea, here. I’m guessing you want the calluses?”

“That’s what Tor said,” Ana confirmed.

“Then, let me just…” Touanne closed her eyes and laid one hand gently on Ana’s palm. There was a tingle and a warmth, and the stinging pain of the blisters disappeared. “There. It should heal over night. Just be careful with that hand until then. And how is your…” Touanne glanced at Kaira, “other problem?”

“My ribs feel fine. Fine enough that I forgot all about taking it easy today, actually.”

“As long as you didn’t take any blows to that area it shouldn’t be a problem,” Touanne said. “And your face looks nice and healed. Good!”

“Yeah. Thanks. How much do I owe you?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Touanne said, waving it off. “Such a small thing. But I would still like to talk to you about reagents and such, if you’re interested?”

“I had been planning to come by today, actually,” Ana said, “but then Kaira and Tor generously offered their time to train me, so…”

“That is perfectly fine. I’ve been quite busy all day as it is. Quite a few parties returned today, and there’s alway things to heal and stocks to replenish when you get back from a delve, isn’t that so, Kaira?”

“Yeah, like burn ointment,” Kaira said with a grin.

“That’s mostly you, but yes, that is a popular product,” Touanne laughed. “I believe that most Evokers prefer to use their spells at a somewhat greater range than you do.”

“Eh, don’t see why. Effect drops off with range, everyone knows that! Waste of mana!”

“But they also don’t regularly burn their eyebrows off!”

“Eyebrows are overrated!”

“Do you have time tomorrow morning?” Ana interjected before the playful argument could continue. “I have some things I’ve been hoping to ask you.”

“I’ll be doing alchemy all morning, but you’re very welcome to join me,” Touanne said. “It’s all very routine, so I can talk while I work. Just drop by any time!”

With that Ana and Kaira moved on. They dropped Ana's equipment off at Petra’s then headed for a quick bath, Kaira coming along for company more than necessity. The bath were indeed quite crowded, to the point that Ana preferred to wait for some bench-space to free up rather than crowd in like many of the other women did.

Most of the other bathers didn’t say a word about her tattoo. The least positive comment that she heard was that it was ‘interesting.’ She did, however, get one cheerful greeting of "Knife girl!" from somewhere in the mist. Ana just waved back to the pool in general. No point in appearing unfriendly.

Then it was back to Petra’s, and suddenly she was once more seated at a table with three almost-strangers eating, joking and laughing.

Dinner was, again, fresh bread and stew. Ana asked Mikkel and it turned out that dinner was always fresh bread and stew. The bread varied and so did the contents of the stew, but it was always some variation on the same theme. At least the bread and the stew were good, two for two, and it wasn’t like Ana could afford to complain.

"Fucking prodigy here!" Kaira cheered, speaking to Omda but raising her mug to Ana. "Picked up–" She lowered her voice and looked around, waving the huge man in to the centre of the table, then stage whispered, "She picked up two skills in one day! Never held a sword or a crossbow before, and she got both skills!"

Omda's eyes widened, then he gave Ana a wide, warm smile. "Well done!" he said, and raised his own mug to her.

Ana had friends back home. Or at least she had colleagues that she got along with well. But she was not at all used to this kind of warmth and effusive praise. She was surprised to not find herself uncomfortable. It was… nice. She didn't particularly feel that she'd done anything to deserve it, and she still wondered what the end goal was with all this generosity and kindness, but it was nice, and she needed that. At least that was what her therapist had taught her.

She felt like she'd lucked out with these people. With them she got what she needed without having to remember or chase it. It would be unfortunate if she had to drop them.

"Going to start her on shields tomorrow afternoon," Tor said. "You should come watch, Om. Kaira'll be there, too, won't you? We'll make it a party thing!"

Omda hesitated, looked down, then looked at his friends. He seemed uncomfortable and reluctant, and Ana wondered what the story was there. Then Kaira reached out and clapped him on the arm, saying "C'mon, Om. Please?" and he gave in.

"Okay," he said. "Afternoon?"

"Afternoon!" Kaira cheered. "Let's get another round in here! Mik–"

"Don't you dare!" Ana hissed. "Mikkel! A round of drinks!" She saw the kid's face light up, and he busied himself behind the bar.

"Didn't know I'd have to fight you all just to buy a round here," she said once they'd been served, to the appreciative cheers of the table.

Yeah. This was nice.