Splinter Angel Chapter 24 (Patreon)

Cursing herself for her recklessness, Ana got to her feet facing the Possessed Aurochs as Messy and Petra closed in. What had gotten into her? Charging in like an idiot wasn’t–

She had no more time to chew herself out as the demon began a furious assault on the three women arrayed before it. Unable to gain enough purchase or distance for a proper charge, it instead kicked, stomped, bit, swung its horns and attempted to gore them, never letting up for a second and keeping all three on the defensive. But that was fine. It was part of the plan. All they needed to do was to keep it distracted and in more or less one place while Kaira killed the thing.

With that in mind they also had to make sure to leave openings for the ranged attackers to get their shots in. They formed a lopsided triangle around the creature’s head with Petra in the middle, and while they yelled, swung and slashed at it arrows and bolts came zipping past them, most of them doing little except further enraging the monster. Two minutes in its head, neck and shoulders were festooned with arrows and pocked with weeping craters, but none had hit anything vital. Meanwhile, the ground under its feet shifted constantly, growing muddy and hardening in turns as Sendra worked to ruin its mobility or, ideally, trap its feet in hardened mud.

What is Karia doing? The thought popped into Ana’s head as she lunged, dodged, and cut. The firebolts that had come in were all too weak to be Kaira’s. What was she…?

“Petra, Ana, open up!” Rayni shouted frantically, and Ana risked a glance over her shoulder. She didn’t quite freeze at what she saw. Rather, it made her immediately scramble to her right, putting another metre between her and Petra as the older woman did the same, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away.

Kaira was standing with her arms raised, lips moving silently and sweat pouring off her as miniature sun the size of a basketball hung between her palms. Her voice slowly became audible, rising until, with a final, screamed syllable, the basketball collapsed into a marble, blindingly bright, and Kaira snapped her arms forward. Ana barely saw the thing move. There was a loud, tearing sound. That and a black-and-purple line in her vision accompanied an immense flash of heat that was gone as soon as it had come and then, before she could see what had happened, there was a notification.

[Congratulations! Your Party has defeated: Possessed Aurochs (Threat: Extreme). Based on your contribution, you have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Least). For fighting in the defence of your object of devotion, you have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Shard) as a bonus.]

[Congratulations! You have completed the Achievement Hunting Party II! 5 cumulative Advancement Points awarded!]

Blinking to clear her vision, Ana turned back as she heard a sizzling and a wet, heavy thump beside her.

Right. Achievements. She’d got one after they got out of the Delve, too. And they gave Advancement Points, which was great, but she didn't know what she wanted to spend them on, and this wasn't the time to worry about that, anyway.

The demon was decidedly dead. There was a hole the size of her fist going from roughly where one eye should have been, taking most of the skull with it as it passed through into the neck and then the torso. Behind the thing the mud steamed and grass and bushes burned around a line of black, bubbling glass. Somewhat stunned, Ana walked around the dead thing and verified that, yep, the little marble had gone straight through.

“Potions! Potions!” Sendra shouted, and Petra and Messy rushed towards the backliners. Ana looked up and followed suit when she saw Kaira collapsed on the ground, her breathing quick and shallow, eyes fluttering at the edge of consciousness.

“What’s wrong with her?” Ana asked, kneeling by her prone friend. It looked like she was in shock or something.

“She overdid it,” Sendra said tersely as she slowly poured small sips of a shimmering green liquid into Kaira’s mouth. “Overtaxed her mana channels. Kept pouring more and more mana into her spell until it became self-sustaining, drawing her mana uncontrollably. Fortunately she was able to finish the cast before it drained her completely. Stupid, reckless thing to do, but that’s Kaira for you. She wanted to be sure, I guess.”

“Ana, the range of your recovery ability is thirty feet, right?” Petra asked.

“Right.”

“Well, I don’t want you further than that from Kaira until she wakes up, preferably until she’s on her feet. Consider us camped.”

“Got it,” Ana said. She wasn’t going to argue about that. She liked Kaira, and if staying close was the best way for her to help, she’d stay close.

“Good. Dil, come with me. Let’s get that poor bastard out of the tree and see who we’re dealing with.”

Kaira was sleeping peacefully when the two returned with their rescuee. Her breathing was still shallow and her temperature a little higher than Ana would have liked, but she wasn’t sure what was normal for a themion. She’d never seen Kaira sleep before.

“Come on, Jay. Accept,” Petra was saying gently as they dragged the stumbling woman into what was slowly becoming a camp. “Ana has a party recovery ability, alright? Accept the invitation!”

It took some more coaxing, but after a moment there was a message, followed by a soft sigh.

[Jancia Versil, Lumimancer (18), has joined your Party.]

That jogged something in Ana’s memory, but when it came to her she couldn’t connect the face she saw to the name and class. Jancia, Lumimancer. She was too pale and gaunt, her eyes too haunted. It took a long, careful look before Ana recognised her. She’d met this woman briefly, together with her team, the first time she went to the baths. Kaira had introduced them. But there had been two more, a darker woman with incongruously ginger hair and a nearly white-skinned one with long hair so black and fine it looked like ink floating on the water. Med and… Tellak, if she remembered correctly. So what had happened for Jancia to be alone?

And what had happened to Jancia herself? She’d been in a fight, that was obvious, and it was just as clear that it had not gone well. The woman had been holding her tattered robe and cloak closed, but when she collapsed onto her butt on the ground they fell open. The armour beneath had a wide gash going down the centre of the stomach, exposing skin that had turned a pale blue. Something like small, whitish blue crystals glittered along a shallow wound, making Ana pull back instinctively.

“Is she sick?” she asked the group at large, but no one seemed to know what she was talking about until Rayni, with her Perception even higher than Ana’s, gasped.

“Shit,” she said grimly, “look at her wound! What the hell is that?”

“Don’t…” Jancia said, her voice faint as she tried feebly to pull her robe closed. “Nothing to… it’s nothing.”

“Nothing, hells,” Rayni said, pulling the injured woman’s hand away. “Look at this. Petra, you’ve got the most experience. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“No.” Petra’s voice was clipped, her face concerned. “Give her a healing potion for now. Then we need to get her to Touanne as soon as we can. Once Kaira can walk, we’re going straight to the settlement.” She knelt by Jancia and put her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Jancia, you need to drink, okay? You’ve been injured. If you can’t walk we’ll take you on a stretcher. Do you understand?”

“Nothing…” Jancia said, laying back on the ground. “It’s nothing, it’s… why can’t I feel anything? Where’s everything gone?”

“Jancia,” Petra said urgently, taking her hand. “You need to stay awake, okay? We don’t know what this is. Ah, thank you, Rayni,” she said, as the Huntress handed her a potion bottle. Then she reached out, grabbed both halves of Jancia’s robe, and pulled her back into a sitting position. “Here, drink this.”

They took turns talking to Jancia to make sure that she stayed awake. The potion together with some rest gave her back some energy, but she stayed mostly incoherent, and all they could get out of her was that she’d been in a fight and that “It got me. It must have got me.” She didn’t know where her teammates were, and kept asking after them as though she didn’t remember doing so every ten minutes.

Nearly two hours after they’d rescued Jancia, Karia woke up. The first thing she said was, “Aw, Wayfarer take my head and throw it in the void! Fucking mana hangover is going to kill me.” The second, after she’d looked around, was, “What the hell is Jancia doing here, and what’s wrong with her?” The third, once she saw Ana, was, “What the hell were you thinking, and what’s wrong with you?”

Since Ana had been singled out, the others left it to her to answer. She scowled with embarrassment. “I wasn’t. I got too excited and I didn’t think. It won’t happen again.”

“It better fucking not!” Kaira said, though her anger cooled a little. “If you weren’t faster, the damn thing would have killed you right there!”

“Yeah. Well, it didn’t. And we got Jancia out of the tree, so… we don’t know what’s wrong with her, though. She’s hurt, and confused. We need to get her to Touanne. Can you walk?”

Kaira looked and Jancia, taking in her pale, drawn skin and her erratic breathing. “Right. Oh, shit, right! Yeah, I can walk. Can she?”

“We don’t think so. Rayni and Sendra made a stretcher for her, so we’ll take her on that.”

“Good plan,” Kaira said, forcing herself to her feet with a wince.

They packed up quickly and got going. Petra and Ana, being the strongest of the group, took the stretcher, with Rayni ranging ahead as usual. Despite their best efforts, Jancia fell asleep, or passed out, more like it, after the first hour. By the shortest route it took them the rest of the day to reach the cleared stretch of land between the forest and the outpost, and there Kaira told them to set the stretcher down, sending Deni and Dilmik in to get the Healer.

“Why?” Ana asked as the two jogged off. “Why not just take her in?”

“The Waystone,” Kaira answered. “It absorbs most of the mana within a couple thousand feet of it, and this is already a low-mana splinter. Close to the Waystone it may as well be a dead zone. Touanne’s strong and skilled enough to do most regular healing even inside the settlement, but for really serious injuries you need to get outside. The edge of the clearing kind of marks where it’s worth bothering to try to cast.”

“And whatever this is…” Ana trailed off.

“Yeah. Whatever this is, I bet it’s going to take a lot of mana to fix.”

Sendra came over and sat down with them, speaking in a low voice. “You feel it, don't you, Kaira?”

“I don’t feel it, you mean? Yeah.” She glanced at Jancia where she lay unconscious on the stretcher.

That jogged something in Ana’s memory. “Sendra, wasn't Jancia saying something like that, before she passed out? How she couldn’t feel anything?”

“She was. I thought she meant that she was feeling numb or something like that, but now that I’ve been around her for a while… it’s like she’s barely there.”

Kaira nodded, her face unnaturally grave. “Like… well, like anyone else, really, but she’s a level 18 caster, and a good one. I’d usually know she was around long before I saw her. She’s got bells on, kind of. Bright, pleasant, but impossible to ignore. Now… nothing. Like her Connection’s in the single digits.”

“And that’s new?” Ana asked.

“It’s horrible! I guess you wouldn’t know, not being a caster and with your background and all, but your Connection isn’t like your other Attributes. It’s almost impossible to train, and it doesn't go down with age, or if you get hurt bad enough. I’ve never heard of any poison or disease that might reduce it, either. It’s a part of your soul more than your body, and if she’s got something that can decrease it…”

Both of the Evokers moved ever so slightly further away from the unconscious woman.

“I’m sure that Touanne can fix her,” Sendra said, though her voice held less confidence than hope. “She’s a brilliant Healer.”

Fifteen minutes later there was still no sign of Dil, Deni, or Touanne, and the women who stayed behind with Jancia were getting worried. Or concerned, in Ana’s case.

“I should go,” Ana said. “If only to help them find Touanne.”

Kaira looked at her, then at Sendra and Rayni. “Alright. But take Sendra with you, in case you need to look for her. You don’t know the outpost that well.”

Ana nodded, then turned to Sendra. “How fast can you run?”

“I, ah, I’m a caster and a civilian. So not all that fast?”

“Right.” Ana turned around, and patted her own shoulder. “Hop on.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Don’t argue!” Ana snapped. “We need to get Touanne out here!”

Ana heard Sendra croak out an aborted answer, then felt arms over her shoulders and knees around her waist as Sendra hopped on her back. Sendra was not large; to Ana, with her new Strength, it was like carrying a child. She nodded once to the remaining women, and took off.

Sendra yelped. Even with Sendra on her back, Ana was running faster and more surely than she’d ever managed back home. Long, fast strides ate up the short distance to the gate, and the man and woman on the gate took one look at them and stepped aside, letting Ana proceed without even slowing down. They came in via the southern gate, and Ana ignored the looks from the few people on the street as she continued towards Touanne’s shop.

Ana knew that there was trouble before they reached it. Since they were still in a Party she could feel where Dil and Deni were, and that direction swung sharply halfway up the street, into a narrow passage between two buildings. Roughly when they reached the mouth of that passage, she knew that her two Party members were in some kind of danger.

She made a choice.

“Hop off,” she told Sendra, who complied.

“What is it?”

“Deni and your sister are in trouble.”

“How do you figure?”

“Remember how I told you about my class? I know. I’m going. I don’t know how bad it is, so… I won’t tell you not to come, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

Sendra searched her face. “You’re serious. I’m coming.”

Nothing else needed to be said. Ana nodded, and they stepped in between the buildings.

The passage led to a small yard, hidden in the middle of several houses. There were a pair of young trees and a gardening plot there but, more importantly, there were also two men and a woman there, menacing Dil and Deni.

“Stop being so fucking difficult, Parser” said the man in the middle of the three. “We know you went out with that accidental, and we know that she came here with Rankan’s shit. We want to talk to her, right? That’s it.”

He was a Human Fighter (9) and the likely leader of the little group. He was a tall and solid young man, 20 or 22 years old, with cropped hair and the face of a naturally nasty person trying to look friendly. Ana knew the type well enough. She’d been approached by more than her fair share, before and after she started working for Mr. Stamper, and they always meant trouble. The man’s cronies were no better. Both humans, like most people there, the man was a Rogue (9) and the woman a Scout (8).

“I’ve told you, Waller,” Deni replied defiantly. “I’m not helping you! Find her yourself if it’s so important, or talk to the Captain!”

“Why do you have to be so damn–!” the man, Waller, said, his face twisting with anger, but the Scout woman cut him off as she turned to look in Ana’s direction. She jutted her chin at the two newcomers.

“Wall, we’re in luck! Won’t need to go looking any more after all.”

“What the… how’d she find us?” the Rogue asked no one in particular, looking honestly confused.

Waller sneered. “Who the fuck cares? You, Companion! You owe us!”

Yeah, Ana knew his type, alright. Putting her hand up behind her to halt Sendra, she continued forward, taking in the small yard and the people in it. Dil and Deni both looked scared but unharmed, but Ana’s Danger Sense kept telling her that they were in danger. “Is there a problem here?” she asked, her voice icy.

“Aren’t you listening?” Waller said. “You owe us. I know you hawked Rankan’s armour at the Exchange, and I bet that’s his fucking sword you got, too. We paid for that!”

Ana slowly stalked closer. “Is that so? Do you know he tried to rob me?”

“I don’t care! You’re going to pay us back, one way or another.”

The Scout met Ana’s eyes, didn’t like what she saw, and took a step back. “Uh, Wall…”

“Shut up, Trig!” Waller snapped at her.

“How about this?” Ana was ten steps away and getting closer. “I take my friends here, and I forget that this ever happened. You forget about getting a single fucking copper out of me. Deal?”

Dil and Deni looked at Ana like she was insane. “Ana!” Sendra hissed from across the yard. “What are you–?”

She shouldn’t be doing this. She should be trying to talk him down, not provoking him.

Five steps. Four. Three.

Waller rounded back on Ana, taking a long step towards her. “Who the fuck do you–!?” he spat, his arm coming around almost blindingly fast, palm flat.

Ah, there it is, Ana thought as she felt the rush.

She moved.

There was a decent chance that Waller was stronger than her, if he’d gone heavily into Strength. He was certainly much taller, and he was a Fighter. His slap came ridiculously fast, making it difficult to defend against, or even react to. Or it would have been, if Ana hadn’t been expecting it, and if she hadn’t been supercharged the moment Waller decided, consciously or not, to attack her.

If their heights had been better matched she would have stepped in and caught his arm under her own, pinning it to her side. With his shoulders at eye-level for her, that wouldn’t work. But that was fine. She didn’t need to block, she needed to end the fight before it really started. And the difference in height was too big for her to do what she needed to do, so instead of stepping in and blocking, she leapt.

Waller’s eyes had a moment to go wide, but his arm didn’t stop. He stumbled back as she collided with him, the inside of his arm hitting her waist and wrapping around her as she nearly jumped over his shoulder. Holding on, she locked her legs around his back, under the armpits. She’d been planning to just bash his face in, but since he was apparently too surprised to react properly, she changed her plan. She put one arm around his neck from the back with the other hand grasping the wrist of the first. Then she locked eyes with the two cronies, and squeezed.

Waller choked. Then he stumbled, his hands trying to get to his belt, but Ana’s legs were in the way and he couldn’t get his arms down. He began slapping and punching ineffectually and it hurt a surprising bit considering how poor of a position he was in, but Ana took it. She squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, and the stumbling became more unsteady. The slaps became weaker. The only sound in the yard came from Waller, his muscles heaving as he struggled against the chokehold, something he’d likely never even considered having to defend himself against. All the time Ana kept her eyes on the other two. Not to intimidate them, specifically, although that seemed to be working fine, but to make sure they didn’t suddenly magic up one set of functional gonads between the two of them and try to step in. If they did, well… she’d have to play it by ear.

With a lurch, Waller fell to one knee, then pitched forward, putting Ana on her back. She was honestly impressed by how long he’d held out. Anyone, anyone back home would have been unconscious fifteen seconds ago, she thought. Fucking magic.

Waller jerked, then stilled. That was Ana’s cue to let go. She released his neck, pulled in her legs, and kicked him off her. He took a deep, shuddering breath, but it was automatic. The man was out cold. Ana wasn’t even winded.

This guy, she thought, is a level 9 Fighter. He’s enough of a thug that at least some people are scared of him. And he has no idea how to fight against people.

Still with her eyes on Trig and the unnamed man, Ana kipped up. Unnecessary, but part of the show. She approached them, stepping on Waller as she did so, and they backed up. As Ana’s bonuses left her, she knew that the fight was, indeed, over before it had begun.

“That was me being gentle,” she told them casually, and produced a dagger. “I didn’t even draw this. I didn’t need it. So get this, and tell your friend on the ground: If any one of you ever fucks with me or my friends again, you will die. It’s that simple. I won’t hurt you. I’m not going to make any threats about how painful it will be or any bullshit like that. I will kill you, as quickly and efficiently as I can.” She spun the dagger in her hand for emphasis before putting it away.

A notification pinged as the Scout and the Rogue stood stock still and staring.

[Congratulations! Your Skill Intimidation has improved to level 5! You have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Minor). You have gained the Perk Predator.]

[Perk: Predator: You exude an aura of danger and violence. When using the Intimidation Skill, your Charisma multiplier is treated as though it were 1 step higher for body language and other non-verbal cues. Values increase with Intimidation Skill level.]

She snorted and turned to Deni and Dilmik. They looked just as stunned as Waller’s two companions.

“Come on. Let’s get Touanne.”