Smoke filled the night sky over City D’s cracked, bombshell-ridden streets. Two more rairer armor suits rested on the nearby road, and several more towers had collapsed completely. The core of the City was close to ruin, and after the long day of constant fighting, Klayson had given the go ahead to begin movement downward.

  With his forces spread out thinly already, he chose to hold the middle ground instead of attempting to secure the Administrative entrance and capitol. His men had now spent three hours blasting or digging straight down from the center of D while others continued their patrols above.

  Locally, only small pockets of Guard resistance remained, but the rebels were aware that a new threat could be lurking over the horizon. Klayson has been receiving shortwave broadcasts for some time indicating that there might be an incoming airship armada, equipped for heavy bombing. He didn’t wait to get confirmation, and sent half of his men to construct anti-air weaponry at the tops of the sturdiest towers.

  He knew that getting Garder and Jeryn to the fibrocator below was a priority, but had decided that saving D was even more important. For the past twelve hours, he had been using the two to help fortify the rebel’s position and establish a small air defense network.

  A cold rain had come to make the night a humid one, and as Jeryn and Garder waited for progress under the tents, a new radio transmission became the only thing to break the monotony. Klayson picked up the headset, said only a few acknowledgements, and then put it down again. Garder hoped that it was news of any kind, as he still really wanted to know just what was going on elsewhere.

  “Update from out in the world?” he asked.

  “Still too early for that, it looks like,” Klayson replied. “Actually, that was just a notification about a pair of those claws being en route. Rivia and the other higher-ups have deemed my division important enough to get them. I think I’d have to agree.”

  Garder yawned. “Congratulations.”

  “Yes, not terribly exciting. Anyway, D seems secure enough now, so we’ll probably begin our attempt to secure the fibrocator within the hour. I don’t know how much you’ll find out at the glen—and trust me, the king won’t be there—but if that’s your mission, then I’ll help you get there.”

  “About time.”

  “But to tell you the truth, I’m worried about a pretorian showing up while Jeryn here is gone. He’s among the strongest with us.”

  “I’ll do what I can while I’m here, but we can’t stay much longer,” Jeryn replied. “We do have our own assignment to follow.”

  “Of course. But thank you for all the help you’ve already—”

  “Colonel! We’ve breached a facility service tunnel!” one of the rebels called out from the large, deep pit near the center of the City.

  “Good work!” Klayson bellowed back. “All right, guess we’re moving in. Two support squads on me.”

  Men sifted between their comrades until two small groups of well-armored rebels formed up near Klayson, each of them holding a tall shield covered in alchemagi sealant. One of the sergeants was an earth, the other a vector, as was obvious by the elemental alignment badges on their chests.

  “Right.” Klayson turned towards them. “We’ll do this nice and slow. First, we find the fibrocator and secure it so the enemy can’t beam in. Then we’ll get to work taking the rest of the facility. Any questions?”

  “Not from me,” Garder spoke up among the silence.

  “Good. Move out. The rest of you, watch out for pretorians.”

  “Will your men be okay without us?”

  “I’ll return shortly, and they’re perfectly capable. Don’t worry.”

  With nothing further to discuss, the group of fifteen dropped into the abandoned facility. Watching from a derelict tower above was Kamsa.

  Two animalect guards walked by on the streets below, their dogs scouring for anyone—friend, foe, or civilian—that the rebels might have missed. While the light rain masked her scent on its own, she kept a vortex of air around her just to be safe. Like all pretorians, she was trained to avoid unnecessary combat when given specific, important assignments.

  She waited until her path to the capitol was clear, and then wasted no time getting there. She had memorized the underground maps, and now had a chance at intercepting the group before they arrived at the fibrocator.

  The mission was quite clear: separate Jeryn and Garder, dispose of the weaker and take the claws, and attempt to have a civil, professional conversation with Jeryn. Or at the least, get the message through that the pretorians would accept his return.

  But which one of them would he replace if he agreed?

  “Rairer tore the hell out of this place,” Klayson noticed soon after entering the main control shaft under the palace. “Burrowing tunnels everywhere; unmistakable. Mean bastards can rip right through metal.”

  “Labor creatures…” Garder scoffed. “Guard sure had an ample supply of alchemagi armor for their little pets, didn’t they?”

  “The rairer are mostly used by the Guard, but we think they were developed by the Administration,” Jeryn explained. “They’re made with implants that develop naturally at birth, so that they can be called upon and ordered around should the need arise. Then they follow any attack orders by charging straight up from underground, or condensing into larger groups first. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Guard has them all under their control by now, regardless if the Administration approve of it.”

  “What about the one Simon’s group befriended?” Garder worried.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of a rairer growing attached to someone like that, and the two of us have yet to actually see the creature in question. I can’t make any assumptions about her.”

  Garder didn’t ask why Jeryn seemed to suddenly know so much about the beasts, but he knew he was always much smarter than he was, so he usually had little difficulty accepting his answers and explanations.

  “The civilian shelters are that way,” Klayson informed everyone as he pointed towards the west sides’ heavy doors. “And Guard facilities are this way,” he added, pointing out the opposite door. The two entrances were separated by a near bottomless, pitch-black vertical shaft.

  “This place is running on emergency power,” Garder noted. “Will the fib things work?”

  “They’re supposed to. I believe they run on sun globes. I’ve never used one of the things, so I can’t tell you what the experience is like.”

  “Colonel,” Klayson’s radio buzzed. “We’ve detected outgoing transmissions from down there—maybe a silent alarm. The facility could be full of stationed Guardsmen. Watch your back.”

  “Understood,” he replied. “Guess we’d better hurry along.”

  They picked up their pace, Garder at the back where he kept his ears attuned for any rairer sounds. He hated the things, and shuddered at the thought of one lurking in the darkness of the facility’s dimly lit halls.

  As they approached a large security door covered in alchemagi sealant, four turrets sprung down from the ceilings. Instead of instantly opening fire, they swiveled around slowly and barely got a few messy shots off before Klayson and the other vector tore them apart easily.

  “That’s low power mode for you,” he quipped. “We would’ve been hit if this place was at one-hundred percent. As you can see, they really don’t like people coming down this way.”

  Garder replied, “You can probably find a demirriage scroll down here somewhere. How are they different from fibrocators?”

  “Ah, the fib network is vast, Garder. With demirriages, you’re reliant on memory. But these things… can take you wherever there’s another station hardwired into the global network. I believe there are also higher end models that can send you anywhere with the right coordinates.”

  “He’s correct,” Jeryn added as the two squads got to work on the door. “Most fibrocators are just safety stations; secured places of arrival connected through endless wires. But some machines have another capability, letting you program them to warp you in anywhere.”

  “Anywhere, huh…” Garder mumbled.

  “Yes. And that includes under miles of bedrock or thousands of feet in the air. You can see why they’d be dangerous, and restricted.”

  “Okay, so if you really know what you’re doing and can find the right coordinates, why couldn’t the king just warp his men to Rivia’s villa?”

  “Three people at a time an hour.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the limit per station, and then the sun globe needs time to recharge. Warping in an army that slowly in a fortified area wouldn’t work very well. Still, the fibrocators will be important in this war. They just add another dimension to everything. Just one more aspect to figure out.”

  “Jeryn… there’s something different about you. I mean, you’ve always been smart, but now you really seem to have all the answers.”

  “Don’t let it concern you.”

  Garder was put off by the reply—if he could even call it that. He glared at Jeryn a moment longer before turning his attention to the door ahead. Heavy explosives now covered certain spots of the frame. They were detonated seconds later, and the door collapse inward.

  The room behind it was simple and round, with the fibrocator in the center. The device itself looked almost threatening, with an appearance similar to an electric chair. A metal dome was tethered above a simple metal stool, and a sun globe was lodged in the center of the rear supports. A bit larger than a sunlamp, Garder figured that the functional battery must have utilized the trapped spirits of two or three people as opposed to one.

  Jeryn explained, “It weakens your atomic structure, allowing you to sink into the worldly fiber, where there is no friction, time, or space. You’re sent to your destination, and you reform. It’s a demirriage without a shell.”

  “And I hope that it’s safer than it sounds,” Garder replied.

  “If the king trusts them enough to use them, I think you’ll be fine,” Klayson said and went over to the attached terminal. “Men, guard the door while I configure the destination. The enemy could be upon us soon.”

  They took up defensive positions all about the room. Garder could just make out the very distant echoes of approaching Guardsmen, but there was no way of telling yet when they would arrive.

  “Do you know what you’re looking for?” he asked Klayson from his side. “These destination names aren’t very helpful.”

  The console, filled with green glowing numbers and letters, displayed thousands of destinations. Given the fact that he had spent his last Earth life in a time without computers, Klayson was going through the menus and options at a surprisingly decent pace.

  “The first letters are abbreviations for the continents,” Garder said. “M, O, G, T… even a few Subarctica stations. But nothing is in order.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is there a sort function on this thing? I mean, it looks like you’re just going through it like a phone book. We need something more helpful.”

  “I’m good with large amounts of data, Garder, but to be honest, most of it’s all been with paper work.”

  “Let me try, then. Looks a bit like basic DOS, really.”

  Klayson stepped aside and let Garder take over. Using the small keyboard, he quickly found how to sort them by most recently used, instead of the previous order that showed the most used stations first.

  “Grandis, right?” Garder asked. “That’s where Lontonkon’s private residence is?”

  “Yes, should be. On the southern end—right off the coast of where south eastern Mexico is on Earth, I believe.”

  Garder scrolled down, scanning only over numbers that began with a G. Though the data was limited and only showed coordinates—not the last user, or the number of times a station had been accessed—one set of digits on the third page popped right out at him.

  “G.16.-104,” Garder read off. “There’s a lot of other numbers, but they’re probably for altitude and other adjustments. The location must be just north of the equator.”

  “I think that this might be the one we’re looking for. If it’s not… Well, I suppose you’ll just have to come back, wait, and try another one.”

  Garder confirmed the destination, and the fibrocator fired up without so much as a required password. Making sure that his sunlamp was attached to his belt in case they were brought into an unprotected area, he went ahead and took a seat on the stool.

  “Maybe I should go first,” Jeryn suggested.

  “Eh, what difference does it make? If it kills me, I can’t really come back here and warn you not to come, right?”

  Jeryn sighed. “Go ahead and try it, then.”

  Garder braced himself as Klayson fired up the two spools on the back of the device. After peaking in spin speed and pitch, he disintegrated into vanishing dust. Jeryn then took his seat immediately and had no parting words for Klayson. The system gave Garder ten seconds to move from the delivery station, and then it blasted Jeryn across thousands of miles.

  Garder was already surveying the large room where he had been taken to by the time Jeryn arrived. It was a nearly empty gallery with decorated red walls, lit only from the dull sunlight pouring in through the two-story tall windows. The other fibrocator itself was located in the back of the long room, almost as if it were a showpiece itself.

  “Odd place for a station, but I think we’re here,” Garder said.

  “This gallery is in the style of nobility. This must be the place.”

  “Look at these paintings…” Garder looked around at the many oil portraits of aristocrats and councilmen.

  “You might be interested in this one.”

  Garder turned to see one of the larger paintings directly behind the fibrocator. Lined up near a portrait of Lontonkon himself, separated by three others, was a colorful depiction of Queen Seriph. Near her name on the underlying plaque was a roman numeral six, indicating her place in the Seriph line. Lontonkon, being the first of his lineage, lacked a number.

  “Weird—she’s the only ruler smiling.”

  “Anyway. Let’s see where we are. Keep on the lookout, of course.”

  The two proceeded quietly through the gallery, and after opening the heavy wooden doors at the end, were greeted by an imposing sight.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy,” Garder moaned.

  “Did you really think the king would just let people wander into one of his private homes? But I didn’t expect this, I admit.”

  Across a rough Aurrian ocean was an island surrounded by rocks and cliffs. Forty-foot walls enclosed the retreat, which was protected by five small sun spheres. The villa itself was not visible from where they stood.

  Kept safe by two spheres of its own, the gallery was on a wooded and decorated islet. Dry fountains and a withering, untended lawn shared the space, and it was obvious that there were no other fibrocators on-site.

  “I guess the only way there is via demirriage,” Garder figured.

  “We also happen to have a pair of dimension-cutting claws. Our only real option is to find a proper place from Earth to enter the retreat.”

  “But it’ll probably be in the air above the Pacific, won’t it?”

  “We’ll have to work with what we get. There’s no other way in.”

  “So get to work on the tear, then.”

  Jeryn took out the two claws, touched them together, and began to separate the air in front of him.

  “Don’t let them through!” Klayson yelled above the chaos.

  An intense fight in a tight space was nearing the point of futility. Guardsmen were trying to squeeze through the narrow entrance to the chamber, and Klayson’s men were using their armored, alchemagi proof bodies to push them back. Like two groups heading for an emergency exit from different directions, everything was at a standstill. Anyone injured wouldn’t have been able to move out of the crowds to seek help.

  They had swarmed in just seconds after Jeryn vanished—leaving the fibrocator activated for one more user. By now, Klayson had forgotten about the device, and was focused solely on saving his men.

  After about a minute, Klayson picked up the feeling of powerful alchemagi; the unmistakable sign that an expert of the art was nearby—and that almost always meant that a pretorian was approaching. He wanted to shout something to his men to prepare them, but it wouldn’t be of any use. There was nowhere to go in either direction.

  An intense blast of wind came from behind the enemy, throwing them against the walls and blasting Klayson’s men outwards, scattering them across the room like leaves. The wielder had targeted their own men without hesitation, typical of a pretorian following an absolute order.

  The strength of wind was a powerful force in a world of alchemagi. It was a common elemental alignment, but was difficult to master, and had a uniqueness not found in any other alignment. While earth and iron users could manipulate rock and metal, and then throw some of it after releasing their alchemagi control to breach sealed armor, those talented in water and air were able to rely on full manipulation of nature. And as the air itself typically didn’t have much alchemagi that could be absorbed, a controlled blast of wind could become a perfect weapon against protective armor.

  Knowing this, Klayson could tell already that a watairre pretorian had just cleared a path to the fibrocator with a strong, but not piercing wind technique. The Guardsmen were knocked out, dazed, or otherwise just slumping against the walls, but were mostly unharmed—and the same could be said for Klayson’s men. The pretorian’s fight wasn’t with them.

  Still, the colonel knew that the targets were Jeryn and Garder, and he was obligated to protect them, even if he had no chance against a pretorian. He brought up a vector shield and prepared to launch it forward.

  A small girl, perhaps barely a teenager, was the unexpected wielder. Klayson watched in disbelief as she made her way out of the dark hallway. Her face was childlike. Flowing silvery hair reached her shoulders, and she wore something of a small Victorian era dress over white tights. He didn’t know why, but the first word that popped into his head was angel.

  Were they really recruiting children as pretorians, or was the girl in front of him part of something far more devious? Despite her innocent demeanor, he could still feel the brimming alchemagi leaking from her palms, and he kept his guard up as he would any other enemy.

  “Please move,” she commanded.

  “I can’t. My duty is to protect this device.”

  “You are not my concern. I am not involved in this war. I am only given assignments as my superiors see beneficial to the current situation.”

  Her voice, so mechanical. This child’s age was somehow false.

  “I’m still not backing down for you. I can’t let you pass.”

  “Very well.”

  She shot up three fingers in a heartbeat, and a pounding blast of wind lashed at Klayson and pinned him against the wall. Keeping her left hand up, she raised two fingers on her right to summon a second spell.

  Klayson felt his body go numb as the air around him turned frigid, and in seconds, his arms and legs were encased in freezing ice that acted like shackles. His shield evaporated, and the pretorian released both spells. After the wind ceased, he was able to breathe again, but remained imprisoned.

  He wasn’t in much danger—his men would free him once they got back on their feet, but now there was no stopping the pretorian from using the last of the fibrocator’s energy to pursue her targets. She emotionlessly glanced at him, and then promptly took a seat and evaporated.

  Klayson groaned. He was surprised that she let him live without even a consideration. It was true that pretorians were focused and fully determined, but to not finish off a senior officer when the chance was there? It was doubtless that Jeryn and Garder would not be shown the same gratuity, but they were on their own. If they could survive for an hour, they would find Klayson and two squad leaders backing them up.

  Or trying to find whatever remained of them.

  Jeryn could sense the presence long before Garder. He immediately aborted the opening of the tear and handed the claws off to Garder.

  “Find a good place and go through,” he ordered. “Give me ten minutes, then use the claws on your side and give me a way in.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “We’ve got a pretorian incoming. I’ll keep them busy.”

  “That’s just great…” Garder trembled and sloppily opened a tear.

  On the other side was blue sky, with the ocean a few feet below and a tiny tropical island in the near distance. It looked like a good enough place to enter, but Garder realized something and didn’t go in immediately.

  “Give me the demirriage. I’ll be back for you once I’m at the villa.”

  Jeryn responded to the idea with a nod and reached for the scroll, but it was too late—the wooden doors burst open, and the pretorian with the silvery hair headed towards the two in a full stride. With a controlled air current behind her back, she was almost as fast as a lightning adept.

  “Get in!” Jeryn yelled and prepped a plasma barrier.

  Stumbling, Garder got one leg through before he took a hit that he hadn’t even expected. Jeryn was taken off guard by the sudden burst of speed, and before he knew what was happening, the pretorian had gone straight by him in a blur and attacked Garder.

  Both she and her target were flung through the tear, which then immediately closed itself. Jeryn scooped up the first claw from the ground, but realized that the other was nowhere to be found—because Garder hadn’t let go of its mate.

  They were completely separated from one another.

  Garder hit cold water, sinking a few meters before swimming back to the surface in a near shock. He had kept his focus on his hands, making sure that he hadn’t let go of the claws. Bobbing in the waves, he opened his left palm to see that he had been grasping tightly onto nothing.

  Stricken with panic, he looked at the water around him, unsure if the claws could float. He scrambled through his thoughts, and couldn’t quite remember if he had really let go of the claw in Aurra.

  What an idiotic thing to do.

  He spun himself around in the water to locate his attacker. She wasn’t far from him, and not a droplet of water had touched her. Three fingers extended at her side, she effortlessly controlled the sea under her to form a constant jet stream that kept her perfectly aloft and balanced a few feet above the waves.

  It was by no means an unknown technique; even non-watairres could do it with practice. Of course, Garder had never learned the advanced method that required constant attention and control over nature. Like she had hundreds of miniature fountains below her, thin strands of ocean constantly propelled upward to the bottoms of her boots, all controlled with such mastery that it seemed as if she were on solid ground.

  He wasn’t going to have a chance if he couldn’t get out of the water, so he performed the only other method of walking on it—one far clumsier and slower. Using his palms, he generated small ice floats that he could use to support himself. Stationary blocks could keep him upright as long as he maintained the required freezing temperature, but in order to get anywhere, he’d have to create temporary floats under his feet, good for only one or two impacts with the ocean. One misstep or control failure, and he’d end up back in the water and completely vulnerable again.

  Kamsa watched him as he struggled to get upright, and then as he flailed his arms about in order to achieve balance on the two small blocks of ice. As peculiar as she considered her target, she would have no hesitation in dispatching him—nor would there be much of a foreseeable challenge. Fights in aquatic environments were very rare to begin with, and if one of the duelists couldn’t even control the water enough to merely keep upright, he was already at a major disadvantage.

  “You…” Garder called out, his voice shaking from his sudden dip. “You’re a pretorian. Kamsa, right? What do you want with me?”

  “I have orders to kill you.”

  “Yeah? Look, I don’t care why you think I’m so important, but if you haven’t noticed, we’re on Earth. Kill me here, and I’m not really dead.”

  “Then I will seek you out again, or more preferably, I will return you to Aurra and finish my assignment there.”

  “Problem there, sweetheart. Look—one claw!” And he held it up, which shifted his balance and almost made him fall back into the water.

  “I… do not understand.”

  “I dropped the other one when you attacked me! It takes both to open a tear! We’re stuck here!”

  “… You are lying,” Kamsa said hesitantly.

  “Uh, no… Not really.”

  “You will die now.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m not doing this Verim-style crap a second time—”

  Kamsa propelled herself through the water and slammed hard into Garder. He flew back some thirty feet and barely managed to brace himself before impact. After carefully pocketing the very vulnerable claw, he swam back up to the surface and began struggling to stand up again.

  On the water, he knew he had no chance at all. But if he could get to the small island in the distance—then he might actually be able to fight back, or even get away from the strange pretorian.

  “Look, this is all useless. You might have a demirriage, but where are you going to go? You’re gonna be stuck on Earth for a while, sweets.”

  “Refrain from insulting me.”

  “Geez, you’re cold…”

  “I am a pretorian. I am obliged to deny myself emotion.”

  “No kidding. How’d you get this job? You’re younger than I am.”

  “I’m done speaking with you.”

  Kamsa brought up a wall of water and threw it against Garder. He used his own manipulation to break open a hole in the wave and powered through the rest of it, but a second wall quickly hit him from behind and he once again found himself in the ocean.

  Combined with a sudden inability to open a tear and the separation from Jeryn, Garder had become very frustrated. Death wouldn’t matter much here, true, but it would definitely be extremely inconvenient. After getting himself up on two messy blocks of ice for a third time, he glared at Kamsa.

  “Okay, you really want to get tough, huh? Come on then, I’ve already taken on one of you guys before.”

  “Sir Palar has informed me that you acted in cowardice. I would not call that a duel of honor.”

  “So I blew the guy off an airship. It worked, didn’t it?”

  Kamsa powered up a strong spell, and a ring of ice formed around Garder’s location. Sharp icicles made a ring, and then shot out at Garder in a rain of needles. He panicked—which ended up saving him. Unsure of how to defend himself, he let his legs give out, lost his balance, and fell into the ocean just before his position was riddled with sharp ice.

  He swam back up and spat out ocean water. Before he could stand again, the nearby water began to freeze; Kamsa was altering her spells wildly to bewilder him—although he honestly knew she didn’t have to try so hard.

  To keep himself from being encased in ice, he used three fingers to summon a water control technique, hoping that his stone would activate. It did not, and the spell was only strong enough to propel him out of the water and a few feet into the air. He landed on some of the remnants of her ice ring as the spot he had just escaped froze over completely.

  “You’re putting too much into this,” Garder said and laughed rather angrily. “I’m not even that good with alchemagi.”

  “Yes, I can tell.”

  “Still…” he took his sword out, “no one has ever accused me of being a talentless swordsman.”

  “That is Sir Viveri’s sword. He would like it back.”

  “Then come take it from me.”

  “Very well.”

  Using the water below and a controlled tailwind, she shot herself forward faster than a speedboat. Garder was prepared this time, and just as she was about to launch him again, he sidestepped her gracefully. Taken by surprise from his simple but perfect movement, she skidded on the water for a few more feet and had to waste time realigning with her target.

  Garder used the moment to spin around for a broad blade strike, but Kamsa was still too quick for him. Just a few inches from his side, she suddenly turned her whole body into water and sunk into the ocean.

  “Elemental travel…” Garder grumbled. “Great.”

  Kamsa could be anywhere while transitioning through the water, so there was little Garder could do but wait for her to appear again.

  The wait was short, and two icy hands reached up from the sea and grabbed onto his ankles, pulling him into the deep blue. Kamsa let go after he hit an ear-pounding depth, swam ahead of him as fast as a shark, and began to relentlessly assault him with blasts of underwater currents.

  Eventually, both duelists ran out of breath and took a momentary truce to reengage the fight above the surface—Kamsa naturally beating him there. His muscles ached all over, and he was becoming waterlogged. He wished that she would stop playing around with him and kill him already.

  Almost as soon as he established his two blocks of ice again, she hit him with a wide, powerful gust of air that generated powerful surf in the process. She followed up with a more direct wind attack that sent him flying back nearly thirty feet. Before hitting the water, he recovered his bearings enough to go into a diving stance and reduce the water’s impact.

  “Okay. I’m sick of this…” Garder sputtered weakly to himself.

  After forming the last pair of ice blocks he could muster, he turned towards the island and used what remained of his energy to generate “ice lilies” that he could use to traverse the water. It would at least be faster than swimming, and all he wanted to do now was get out of the ocean.

  But Kamsa wouldn’t allow any advantage to be lost, so she used a powerful spell to change the natural currents of the ocean itself. Instead of the waves going towards the island, they turned and began making Garder’s attempts at escape fruitless. He would wear himself out quickly if he kept at it, so he instead gave up, choosing to let Kamsa bring him near so she could have her way with him. He was too tired to complain anymore.

  “Stop showing off,” Garder groaned as she released her grip on the ocean. “Just stick an icicle in my neck and get it over with, would you?”

  “Very well.”

  He watched, rather sardonically, as she formed an icicle spear in her left hand and came charging forward. She certainly was a vain child.

  But as she ran at him and he braced for impact, he suddenly had a thought. It was true that he finished his time at the knight academy near the bottom of his class, and had often failed even basic alchemagi because of his lack of concentration, but there was one idea that he had retained.

  He never really believed it, but one of the fears any professional should have was that of fighting an amateur, a title he had no problem wearing. Master versus master was something else; both knew how to do things by the book and rarely took chances. Amateurs, on the other hand, were random, clumsy… and had the benefit of dumb, unpredictable luck.

  “Okay,” Garder thought. “Let’s put it to the test. Can a person of my level really win through a stupid, unseen manner against someone far more powerful? I wonder…”

  Trying to refrain from laughing at his idea, he went ahead and took the “why not?” last chance to save himself. He brought up his sword and acted as if he was going to attack Kamsa once she got close enough. The way he saw it, two things could happen next. Either she’d launch the icicle forward and he’d fail at blocking it, or she’d dodge him entirely. He didn’t have much of a chance to slice the icicle what with her speed, so he would instead use the sword as a shield. He also raised two fingers on his left hand to make it seem as if he were preparing a technique.

  She paid no mind to his blade and hastened her approach speed, the sharp end of the icicle extended like a spear ready to pierce metal. She had no doubt that his swing would miss, and he’d be dead within seconds.

  Garder repositioned his sword and flipped it just in time, and Kamsa’s icicle shattered after impacting its broadside. Her immediate thought was that Garder would now use alchemagi on her, so instead of attempting to break away, she raised her hand to create a defensive spell—and that movement also left momentarily, but fully exposed.

  He muttered a few basic watairre summoning words to keep her distracted, but then reformed his summoning hand into a fist and slammed it into Kamsa’s lower chest as hard as he could.

  Winded, she stood there for a moment, stunned and unable to let anything but gasping air escape her lungs. Her water jet quickly gave out from under her, and she dropped into the ocean helplessly. She floated on her back for a moment and stared up at Garder in surprise.

  “Oops,” he scoffed and brushed pain out of his hand. “Did that hurt, sweets?”

  She blinked a few times before her body gave out and began sinking beneath the waves. She was likely in disbelief that she was beaten so easily—that, combined with a heavy blow to the always-vulnerable solar plexus. Garder watched as she started to disappear in the darkness of the water, but couldn’t bring himself to turn around and let her just drown.

  She would likely come back and their paths would cross again, true, but this might be his only chance to learn about her. The girl mystified him to no end ever since he first laid eyes on her, and there was something about her that didn’t permit her to die in such a pathetic manner. And… he felt some kind of connection that he couldn’t understand.

  He quickly stopped pondering about whether his victory move was stupid and lucky, or actually smart and well played. He had just beaten a pretorian, and any other time he might have wanted to brag to his friends about it right away, but for the time being, he could hardly care. He was going to be stuck on Earth for a while even if she did have a scroll on her, so he decided that the time spent might as well be a learning opportunity.

  Filled with a sudden urge to not let her drown, he reached down and pulled her up. She spat out water and coughed violently, and was too weak to move. Although he really had no idea why he was saving his enemy, he slung her over his back and began swimming towards the island.

  There was every chance she would just try to kill him again, but given their current location, hopefully she’d realize that fighting was pointless. As far as Garder could see, there was no reason they couldn’t be mutual acquaintances for the time being.

  Being so close to the pretorian meant that their alchemagi would meld and interact, which was part of its nature. Garder could easily tell that Kamsa had actually used up most of her energy—almost to the point of a total depletion. But why would a pretorian so clumsily waste their reserves, especially on an opponent as weak as him? It was almost as if… she didn’t know her own limits, as if she had just been given her power. This might have been the first time she had even used it to such a degree.

  As he made his exhausted strides, she shifted around weakly and freed Garder’s left arm so that he could swim properly. Her arms tiredly around his neck, the connection he had to the mysterious pretorian grew.

  “I won’t hurt you again,” he thought to himself. “I won’t let anyone else hurt you, either.”

  But why? Where were these thoughts coming from?

  He finally gave out a few dozen meters from the beach. The two soon washed ashore, and rested on the sand to take in precious air.

  Garder turned to Kamsa and asked, “Who are you?”

  “Why do you want to know?” she coughed.

  “I don’t know… I don’t even know why I saved you. I should’ve sent you to see Escellé. But I didn’t. Isn’t that worth something?”

  “But we are enemies.”

  “I don’t care. To tell you the truth, I don’t really care about this war, or fighting, or any of that stuff about virtue and honor. I’m a guy who finds it hard to hate anyone. I just… Sometimes I just want to find out more about people. I think people fascinate me.”

  “You do not think in simple terms of friend or foe…”

  “I try not to. I’d prefer learning about who you are.”

  “Curious…”

  And Kamsa passed out before saying another word.

  Garder rolled over on his back and looked up at the darkening sky. What strange people inhabited a strange universe.