I take a deep breath of the cold morning air. Five days have passed since we started travelling with the caravan, and people are suddenly afraid of me. I have no idea at all of how this could have happened.

  Sylves has made herself rather popular, though, giving out food, and asking for thread and cloth in exchange. Bay has been doing some tinkering with the wagons, fixing wheels. Norman’s mainly been running back and forth the caravan, probably looking for some type of messenger job.

  It’s fun seeing how everyone fits in. Amelie’s puppets do a lot of work in duties no one else wants to do, like latrines and crop-tending. Jess feeds fires, Richard cooks… and I enchant.

  Well, granted, saying that my main job is enchanting would be grossly inaccurate.

  What I really do is kill.

  My build counters the fogfae. Hard counters. I kill them, and help my party kill them, too, to level. It’s come to the point where I’ve saved a half dozen lives, just by turning them ethereal when an attack was meant to land. People are thankful… but scared. Because they see the way I fight. The way I walk up to the monsters, and take them apart.

  That’s okay. They aren’t talking to me as much anymore. There is, however, a conversation going on. I yawn, gently, having tuned it out.

  “Are ya listening, brat?” captain Malcolm asks. His wiry hands are crossed in front of his body with disapproval. “Another party reported a runic item going missing from their tent last night. You’re an enchanter, right?”

  I nod. “Sure.”

  “You don’t happen to know anything about this?” he asks, annoyed.

  “Nope,” I shake my head.

  Narrowing his eyes at me, the old zoof frowns and grumbles. “Fine then. Make sure you don’t enter others’ living quarters, though. Or else there’ll be trouble.”

  “Of course,” I nod.

  Grumbling some more, the old man stomps off, back to the front of the caravan. We’ve been pushing hard the last few days, since the storm is nearby and pulling closer, so we’re trying to outrun it until it changes direction again. Which means long days and even longer nights.

  I’ve revealed my healing abilities. On the third night, one of the pulling beasts, a bison looking thing, caught a leg in a hole left by a fist-sized hailstone, and snapped something in their ankle.

  So, I healed it.

  There is another healer in the camp, but the owner of the bison didn’t offer enough of a reward, apparently. Additionally, he was very tightly guarded by his own group, hardly ever leaving their tent. Coward.

  With my experience healing ants, the flesh knit back together under my touch, and we continued moving, but people started treating me with a lot more… not warmth, really. More like hunger.

  I went from scary to a commodity.

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  That’s fine, though. Whenever I don’t want anyone to talk to me, I simply put on my headphones, sit on the outside of our tent-wagon, and [Suppress] the sounds of the world. I take out another wheel they want me to work on and start carving enchantments into it with a stylus made from mana. It’s not the first I’ve made, and it’ll be far from the last.

  [Inscription 8 > 9]

  It is enough to tick over my skill. I’ve been studying the runes in the booklet that a minor request bought me, as well as threading my mana through my upgraded maze and tracing the runes on that, too. Enchanting is progressing. Almost, for a moment, I consider smiling.

  Then, someone sits down next to me.

  It’s a girl. She’s small, timid looking. Probably towards the end of her teens. Her legs dangle in the air as the tent pulls forward, and she pushes a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. Tinkling shards of sapphire are folded neatly behind her back, wings kept aside.

  “You’re a healer, right?” she asks, piercing green eyes staring at me.

  I look at her. Slowly, I tilt my head. She smells like strawberries. I know because of how close she chose to sit. Gently, I use [Suppression] on myself, smoothing out my emotions. “No,” I say, my expression entirely neutral.

  At that, she seems confused. “Liar!” she protests. “I saw you heal the inson!”

  Shrugging, I look back at the wagon wheel. “Must’ve forgotten since.”

  She looks at me, mouth open wide at my shamelessness. “No you haven’t!” she says. “Teach me.” Then she tries to reach over and grab my shoulders.

  I look at her, and in that moment she decides to touch me, I [Select] her. [Suppression] flares, and a good quarter of my mana pours into the skill, relieving some of the pressure that’s constantly building in my chest. Her slowed movements crash into a wall of mana around me.

  [Suppression 12 > 13]

  “Please don’t touch me,” I say, calmly.

  The girl looks at me, aghast. Her mouth struggles to move against the oppressive pressure. I look at her, and wait for the mana powering it to run out. It takes another ten seconds, then she gasps for air for a second.

  “How dare you use a skill on me?!” she demands, looking angry.

  I tilt my head. “Haven’t you been trying to use one on me this whole time?”

  She flinches.

  “Now, maybe I’m wrong, but I suspect it’s stronger if you touch me,” I say.

  “No, I-”

  As she starts, I just stare at her. She talks on and on, about how she definitely wasn’t trying anything, and another, much more subtle attempt to influence me in some way reaches me. I break that, too.

  Her words stop flowing as her skill falls apart. I just keep staring at her. She looks at me. Now, she seems scared. “I’ll just…”

  “Opal,” I say.

  There’s a tiny pop, and my friend appears where she was just turning, both hands crossed behind their head. “Yeah, Snow?” they ask.

  I smile, slightly. It never gets old. The girl starts to look more scared. I should feel bad, probably. She’s, what, nineteen? Well, old enough to need to take responsibility at least. “Charge for causing me trouble is one minor request.”

  She balks. “What?!”

  “Charge for causing me trouble is one minor request.”

  “No way!” she protests. “Do you know who I am? My mother is a climber on the sixth floor! I’ll have her-”

  “Okay,” I say, leaning back. “No problem. If your mom is so important, you can scamper off.”

  She grins, victoriously. “Then you’ll have to teach me.”

  “Nope,” I say. “Leave.”

  The girl gives a few more attempts, but I tune her out. She’s some kind of beast tamer, I think. Except, well, there’s no such a thing as “beast tamers”. It’s all the same kind of affection-increasing skill. The same she tried to use on me, trying to make me into a loyal follower of hers.

  When she gives up, she eventually scampers off. I look at Norman. He looks back at me. I finish the wheel I’ve been working on, then pull out the cloak I’m preparing. He rolls his eyes with annoyance, but nods.

  The girl wanders off to her tent. Surely nothing bad will happen. Surely none of her magical belongings will disappear. Surely there will be no trouble at all in the camp. Not by me. Never.

  Surely.

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