Ana didn’t spend much time thinking about how to tell Messy about her experience with the Sentinel. She decided quickly that there was no better way than just telling her, then reassuring her best she could. And it was just as well, because Messy’s response was undramatic.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Messy said, responding to Ana’s look when she didn’t have a bigger reaction. “I hate that he could do that to you. But it’s a bit of a relief, too. Think about it! If he could have hurt you, he would’ve, wouldn’t he? So I understand that it might be uncomfortable—frightening, even—but I think that in the end all he did was to show that he can’t do anything directly but annoy you.”

  “Huh.” Ana hadn’t thought about it like that, but Messy was probably right. There was still a chance that the Sentinel had held back because he wanted to make a good-faith offer, and that he could do worse if he wanted to, but she agreed with Messy’s reasoning. The Sentinel had tried to kill her enough times already; if he could go after her mind or her soul directly, she suspected he would have.

  She threw her arm around Messy’s waist mid-stride, pressing her cheek to her shoulder in a quick side-hug before letting go.

  “Not complaining, but what was that for?” Messy chuckled.

  Ana smiled up at her. “For always knowing what to say. And for being so damn steady.”

  Messy wrapped her arm around Ana’s shoulders and reeled her back in. “And here I was hoping you wanted me for my body,” she said as she squeezed, forcing them to walk in sync to avoid stumbling.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I like your body, too. It’s very warm and soft. Incredibly comfy.”

  “Not what I meant, but I’ll happily take it. I do love how much you like to cuddle.”

  It was true. Something that Ana had discovered about herself since meeting Messy was just how tactile she could be. She’d known for a long time that she enjoyed physical closeness; the majority of the sex she’d had was because she wanted that basic, primal sense of connection with another person. But with Messy, whom she’d liked and trusted and had recently accepted that she loved, Ana couldn’t get enough of just touching her. It was mostly simple things, like now, while they were walking; a quick hug, a touch on her arm, a squeeze of her hand. It could be more, too, like sitting between Messy’s legs as they rested, her back against Messy’s front and her head on her shoulder, or lying with her head in Messy’s lap as Messy sang in Saminel, her native language. Whatever form it took, that touch grounded Ana. It told her, on a fundamental level, that there existed a person who loved her for who she was, with all her flaws, and who accepted her presence and her touch while asking nothing in return. Someone for whom holding Ana in her arms was its own reward.

  Now, Messy loved sex. She made no secret of the fact that she would prefer them to make love more often. But she never made Ana feel guilty about her lack of libido, and when she said that she was happy just to be able to go to sleep with Ana in her arms, Ana believed her. Whatever words Messy used, everything about her, from her tone, to her body language, to her aura told Ana that she was being entirely honest.

  Ana suspected that the lack of pressure, the way Messy never demanded more, was part of why Ana loved her. Why she could love her at all.

  “It’s going to get hard to walk like this if the path gets any narrower,” Messy said wryly after a few hundred feet. She made no move to release Ana.

  “You’re probably right,” Ana agreed, her arm wrapped around Messy’s and her head on Messy’s shoulder.

  “And, uh… Jisha keeps looking at us. She looks a bit sad.”

  Ana sighed. “She probably misses her boyfriend.”

  “She had a boyfriend?”

  “Yeah. Maxime, or something like that.”

  “Oh,” Messy said, pulling Ana even closer. “Poor girl. She’s so cheerful most of the time. It’s easy to forget that she’s one of the Stolen. She lost everything. Like you.”

  “She had far more to lose than I did,” Ana said. “And I’ve gained so much more than I ever had. Honestly, every time I think of it I’m impressed that she’s holding up as well as she is.”

  Messy looked down at her with a knowing smile. “You really care for her, don’t you?”

  “I care about her,” Ana said, then lowered her voice. “I see a lot of potential in her. I like her company, and I think she will become a real asset with some Levels and some experience.”

  “But you don’t care for her?” Messy said, matching Ana’s volume. From her tone, she understood the distinction.

  “I’d really regret it if anything happened to her,” Ana said, almost apologetically.

  “You don’t need to explain,” Messy said. “But I do care for her, so…”

  So Ana would do everything in her power to keep the girl safe, for Messy’s sake if not for Jisha’s. “Yeah,” Ana said. Then, on a whim, she called, “Hey, Jisha, come here, would you?”

  Jisha slowed her step, allowing the two older women to catch up with her. “Hmm?” she asked once they were in conversational range.

  Almost completely in sync, Ana and Messy separated, swept forward, and put their arms around her, Messy’s over her shoulders, Ana’s across her back. “Oh!” Jisha said, laughing nervously. “Ah, what? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Messy said carelessly, reaching across with her free hand to ruffle Jisha’s hair. Jisha squealed in protest as a couple of strands came loose from her braid. “We’re just happy to have you here. Along on this Delve, in our lives at all, take your pick.”

  “You being weird,” Jisha complained in her less-than-perfect Inter-guild, but there was a smile in her voice, and a pulsing warmth in her aura.

  “We’re old enough to be your much older sisters, or young aunts. We’re supposed to be a little weird sometimes,” Messy stated with absolute authority.

  They had little luck with demons that day, but they ate well; Rayni shot one of the big, turkey-like swinefowl, and Perri had found plenty of wild greens including a patch of some kind of long, purple root that tasted like something between a beet and a parsnip when roasted by the fire.

  The next day they found and killed another swinefowl, this one possessed and grown to three times its normal size. For its low Threat Level—Insignificant to Ana, placing it around the same Level as Deni and her friends—it posed a surprising challenge to the group. The birds looked comical, with their round bodies and stubby wings; but between this one’s size, its long, wicked talons, and the speed and force with which it could strike with its serrated beak, they had a number of close calls. Still, even at three times the size the thing couldn’t have been much more than seventy-five pounds, and once Jisha got the spear-point of her halberd into it she held it in place for Perrion to hack its head off with his falchion, which he did easily enough. Ana, standing to the side, got a Shard and a few laughs out of the farce.

  Not much later than that, though, as they were again hiking, Rayni returned with the news that she’d found them their second Delve.

  “Same size as the first, maybe a little smaller,” she said, rubbing her neck as she spoke almost like she was embarrassed. “But a Delve’s a Delve, right?”

  “Damn right!” Jisha cheered. “Close?”

  “Pretty close, yeah,” Rayni said, encouraged by the positive response. Why she might have expected anything else, Ana had no idea. “Fifteen minutes from here, no more.”

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  “Then what are we waiting for?” Messy asked, no less enthusiastic than Jisha. “It’s not even noon yet. If we get in there within the hour we may be done before nightfall!”

  “Judging by the Delve yesterday I wouldn’t count on it,” Lesirell cautioned them. “We should try to keep better track of time, and take a proper night’s rest if we’re still in there after sunset.”

  “Agreed,” Ana said. “It worked out fine last night, but we may’ve just as easily run into a pine bear demon with only two of us able to see properly.”

  Nobody wanted that.

  They cleared the Delve with little drama, right up until the end. There were more passages, with more splits and more dead ends, than in the first Delve, but fewer demons; from the moment they entered until they found the Crystal Chamber they only encountered six, though they were at least of a similar Level to those in the first Delve. Ana only had to intervene once, when a particularly agile revenant of a forest cat squeezed past the frontliners and dodged Deni’s plasma bolt. Ana knocked it out of the air, shattering its spine with a blow from her hammer and earning herself a Lesser Crystal and a Least as a bonus as compared to the Leasts she got for the other fights, with no bonus since she never actually got involved.

  At the Crystal Chamber, though, things got serious.

  Everyone except Rayni had stopped by the last barrier before the Chamber, letting her go ahead with her superior Stealth and see what they were facing. When she returned to the group, her face was ashen.

  “A revenant,” she said thickly. “It’s… It’s Part. The Bulwark.”

  “Part?” Ana asked. “What’s he doing out here?”

  It was apparent by the looks some of the others gave her that this wasn't the right thing to say. Which she knew; she'd just been surprised enough at finding a sapient revenant that she hadn't thought to give the appropriate oh-no reaction. And it wasn’t like Ana didn't regret hearing that the man was dead. Part had been one of the temporary officers, a solid, dependable man who didn't talk much unless he had something important to say; then he’d never hesitated to speak up. But they were days out from the outpost, and almost no one else had gone out in the days since the truce with Talleh and his people. Some measure of surprise was perfectly reasonable!

  Fortunately everyone there knew Ana well enough that no one commented on her slip-up. “How big was his Party?” Messy asked solemnly, looking around the group. “Does anyone know?”

  “Eight, usually,” Rayni replied. She looked absolutely miserable. “Some of the people under him during the campaign along with a couple of friends of his. Shit, I— I knew some of them well enough to drink with. I’ve scouted for them.” Rayni blinked rapidly, covering her mouth and turning away. “Sorry. A moment, I just— a moment.”

  Right. That was the other thing. If Part was dead, it was likely that anyone with him was as well. There was still a chance that they’d been forced to flee and simply hadn’t made it back to the outpost before Ana and her companions left, but Ana didn’t think so. It generally took a while for a revenant to rise, and then it would have had to find this Delve. More likely, everyone who’d gone out with Part had died with him.

  Which was what everyone else except possibly Jisha had also realized, and why Rayni was immediately surrounded by friends offering their condolences, their sympathy, and their support. Hell, Jisha had been the first to move. She hadn’t looked like she was sure what was going on, but she’d seen Rayni close to tears and had been there in a moment, a supportive hand on her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” Rayni said after taking half a minute to gather herself. “Right. He, uh— it has a Threat Level of Catastrophic to me, which— Part was Level 18 last I can remember, and I’m not sure how it works, but higher Level people make higher Level revenants, right? A Level between 32 and 36 is right in line with that. We shouldn’t— I mean, Ana should go in with us, right?”

  “I’m absolutely going in with you,” Ana said, allowing no room for discussion. “I’d argue sapient revenants are even more dangerous than their Threat Level suggests. Not a chance that I’m risking any of you getting hurt because I was hanging back, especially considering Part was a Bulwark, and I’ve seen revenants use magic before. No, here’s what we’ll do…”

  Part had been a big man, and his revenant was no less so. A foot taller than Ana, and probably one wider, too, he’d been built like a strongman on a permanent dirty bulk: plenty of fat, but even more muscle. Ana had often wondered what his Base Strength might be, and if he’d built it up to be able to spend his Advancement Points on other Attributes, like Connection.

  She herself had yet to see an Attribute’s Base value increase from working on it, but she knew that Mestendi’s Strength had gone up from regularly joining her when she did her workouts, so it was certainly possible. Just very hard to do, when your Class did far more than a lifetime of rigorous exercise.

  That was beside the point. The point was that the revenant they faced, and which they’d have to destroy to be able to get out of the Delve safely, was big and strong. It would have plenty of mass, but Ana had seen Part move; he’d been as quick and agile as anyone, not at all hindered by his bulk. The revenant wouldn’t be either. In fact, as a revenant, it would be faster, stronger, and tougher than Part had ever been. It would, in other words, be extremely dangerous, which was reflected by its Threat Level being Lethal to Ana.

  She’d killed revenants at that Threat Level before, but she’d never once come out unscathed. She didn’t expect to this time either. If she had the luxury of being careful, maybe she could have avoided the worst, but with six people to worry about? No.

  Ana often told her students, and the militia she’d commanded before them, not to fight to win, but to fight not to lose. It was what one of her own instructors had taught her, and it had served her well over the years. Here, that ironically meant being as aggressive as she could without being completely reckless. She needed to lock the demon down completely. If she tried to fight conservatively it was likely to just go for the others, and they were far less likely than Ana to be able to avoid any attacks it made. Thus, the more careful she was, the more injuries she was likely to collect as the revenant beat seven shades of hell out of everyone else.

  That wasn’t to say that she’d treat the rest of her Party as liabilities. That would have been not only insulting, but stupid. Maybe their Levels weren’t high, but they had grit, and she’d seen them work well together. And so her plan to take this revenant out with as few injuries as possible, such as it was, relied on them.

  The small Party stood as far back as they could while still being able to see the revenant around the twists of the passage. It wasn’t far; forty yards at most. They opened with the standard move against any unaware or uncaring enemy: Deni began to Shape, while Rayni and Perrion bent their bows, ready to loose their broadheads as soon as Deni was ready, or if the revenant shook off its fascination with the mound of Crystals that was the focal point of the Delve. Ana had moved up ten yards and had one of her hurlbats ready to throw; she hadn’t used them much since leaving the outpost, but she saw no reason not to get at least one shot in when she’d be fighting all out anyway.

  The frontliners waited by the back line, hands tense on their weapons. Lesirell held her shield up between herself and the revenant, perhaps unconsciously seeking some protection against the threat and horror of its existence. Jisha was back to her halberd and held it with the point low, ready to rise at a moment's notice. And Messy passed her sword from hand to hand, anxious for things to begin, and even more so for them to be over.

  Then Deni whispered a strained, “Ready,” and twangs sounded as two arrows whispered down the passage, chasing the hurlbat that Ana had released the moment she heard Deni’s voice.

  The revenant, reacting and moving far faster than such a bulky—not to mention dead—thing had any right to, turned and was moving up the passage before the missiles even reached it. With shocking grace it managed to avoid all three, dodging midstride, though one of the arrows grazed its hip. That dodge, though, took it right into the path of Deni’s plasma bolt, which she’d deliberately unleashed a heartbeat after everyone else loosed.

  The revenant had just entered the passage when Deni’s incandescent orb struck it in the waist, painting the wall with steaming, smoking viscera as a chunk of its abdomen exploded sideways. Fat and textile caught fire, and the demon trailed thin flames as it continued toward them with a warbling, discordant roar that was a mockery of the man’s voice.

  Ana was already moving to meet it.

  They’d hoped to take out the revenant’s hips, one or both, but it had not been meant to be. That was unfortunate. And now the thing was on fire, but they’d expected that; it had been one of Deni’s objections to the plan, but Ana had insisted, accepting it as the one who it would affect most. It wasn’t like she was unaccustomed to burns.

  She didn’t say the last bit to Deni, though. She just said that it wouldn’t be for long, and that she’d been through worse.

  Behind Ana, she knew that Rayni and Perrion would be dropping their bows in favor of melee weapons. The three frontliners would be moving already, Lesirell leading with her shield, Jisha and Messy close behind her. But for them to be able to do the maximum damage they needed to not have to worry too much about getting hurt, or getting Ana hurt by proxy, and for that to be true Ana had to do her part.

  Ana had left her shield behind; she’d need her hands free in about a second. But she’d raised her weapon high, axe-bit forward, and as she and the revenant approached each other at break-neck speed she pushed as much mana as she could into it. With only yards between them she met the revenant’s roar with one of her own and brought her weapon down in a diagonal swing, so fast that it howled through the air.

  Unlike the ranged attacks, this one was aimed at the revenant’s neck. That wasn’t where it hit, but it did cleave very satisfyingly into the thing’s right shoulder. Into. Not through. With Ana’s Strength and Perks, it really should have gone through.

  That might be a problem, was all Ana had time to think before she and the Revenant that had once been Part the Bulwark collided.

  and read 8 chapters ahead of both Splinter Angel and Draka! You also get to read anything else I’m trying out — which is how Splinter Angel got started.

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