I could conjure barnacles, open portals, and scrub people's short-term memories, but I’d never bothered to learn a fucking healing spell. What a stupid, idiotic, dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks way to approach magic.

  Esme coughed, red leaking from the side of her mouth as her legs gave out. I caught her before she hit the ground, spinning around to put myself between her and any further attacks. Something stung my back, but I ignored it.

  “Porta Auferet!” I dove through the portal as more bolts rained down where we had just been. “KAT!”

  “What the fu– oh shit! Tribulation’s smoky balls, Bob!” Kat snatched up her telecom tube and began barking into it. I barely heard. Could I use my fire to cauterise the wound? No. Acid. Stupid Bob, fucking stupid.

  “Gledna and Simeon will be here soon. Oh shit. Esme? Esme, can you hear me?” Kat said. “Here.” The pixie laid a hand on my lady loves chest, and a glowing light spread from her fingers. The green dress was ruined, blood had stained both sides of it, but as Kat worked, the flow slowed.

  Gledna arrived first, the least useful of my available healers. I fought down my frustration. She fell to her knees and began probing around the injury with her fingers.

  “Systema Tarda!” she snapped.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Systema Tarda

  The blood flow stopped almost completely.

  “We need to remove the bolt,” Gledna muttered. I reached out with a hand and was swatted aside. “Snip the tip!”

  I shaped my fingers into claws that could cut through stone and scissored the barbed head of the bolt off. It fell to the side with a tinkle as Gledna rolled Esme over onto her side.

  “This is going to restart the bleeding. But then I can heal her properly,” Gledna muttered. "Do you have any healing magic?” She looked up at me, and I shook my head bitterly. “Hold her tight.”

  No worries on that score. She was partially draped across my lap, so I reached down and took her shoulders, gently locking her in place. Gledna took a breath, then yanked hard on the base of the shaft, pulling it out in one smooth motion.

  “Sanare Vulnera! Sanare Vulnera!” Gledna chanted.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Sanara Vulnera

  The hole in her back, just to the right of her spine and between her shoulder blades, began to knit closed. Esme began to sweat profusely, and she moaned faintly.

  “Esme?” I asked softly. Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled. Her face was pale, and her lips were drawn. Wrath began to stomp around in my mind, swelling up as Greed had done when that aspect of my personality had his moment of supremacy.

  “Get me ass!” bellowed Simeon as he shoved Gledna aside. “Books trike she’ll fake it.” A series of arms folded out of his back, tipped with scalpels and syringes.

  “What the hell are they for?” I snapped.

  “Peeling, course,” Simeon murmured, and I let him stick her in the arm. As the plunger went down, she let out a small sigh, and her eyes closed. I snatched Simeon by the throat and lifted him off the ground, a snarl painting my face.

  “Jesus Bob, he administered a mild sedative, which will also enhance her healing. Put the poor man down!” Tim’s voice. Academic and controlled. I leached a little self-control from hearing it. The lab-coated Orlic knelt next to Esme as I dropped the mod doc. “Fluid loss is the main concern here. She lost a lot of blood. She should pull through. Alternatively, we could simply let her die and then reanima– Not that then.”

  “Not that.” I didn’t recognise my own voice. “Porta Auferet!” I knelt and picked her up, carrying her like a princess. She weighed so little. She couldn’t have lost that much blood, could she? “Follow.”

  I stepped through to my new lair. The vault room was the safest place in the world, as far as I knew. A camp bed I’d had in storage for months appeared, and I laid her out on it gently. Then added covers over the top to keep her warm. I tucked her in.

  “Bob, we need to remove the dress and clean her off,” Gledna said carefully. I glared at her. I hadn’t noticed that I was fountaining golden motes, and dark purple ones were falling from my eyes. When I looked over, Gledna flinched. I fought back a growl and nodded.

  “None of you leave here until she is healed. She isn’t going to die?” I asked coldly.

  “No, she’s stable, Bob. With suitable healing, she’ll recover in a day or so. Her level is too low, and she isn’t a combat class.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “My sultry gin slinger.” I couldn’t risk losing her. If I did, I’d burn everything in a fit of rage. “Will the Immortality Injection cause a problem with the healing?”

  “Not at all, but when–er should she die, she will return in her current state and need to recuperate again,” Tim supplied.

  I produced the syringe and knelt next to her body. They say you can’t put a price on love, but I could. At least a billion gold. The needle slipped under her skin, and I pressed the plunger. My Greed-goblin cowered away from Wrath and didn’t even make a peep of protest.

  “Augendae Vitae! Abnegant Mortem!” Tim intoned.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Augendae Vitae

  Abnegant Mortem

  “What do they do?”

  “Enhance life and reject death. She’ll heal faster and safer, and there’ll be no chance of sepsis or infection. I’ll reapply them in an hour, but I really do need to get back to my– I’ll just wait here and keep an eye on her,” Tim replied, amending his idea of wandering off any time soon.

  I let the empty vial drop to the ground with a clatter. “Stay here. Don’t go anywhere.” Something like the aura I’d felt when I first met Dagrun in disguise, or something similar to it, rolled off me, and they nodded quickly.

  “Where are you going?” Kat asked.

  “Hunting.”

  I used a portal stone this time, letting my own summoned one close. The piles of shinies and the undead guardians didn’t even register in my consciousness as I stepped back to the courtyard behind the Cod. I tasted the air. Blood. Esmes’s blood. At least five more bolts had been fired, not counting the three that I reached around and yanked from my back. I let them drop as I examined the pair that had embedded themselves in a barrel, spilling beer that mixed with the claret staining the ground.

  I tracked back along the line of the shafts to a nearby rooftop, then I moved.

  Leaping and clawing my way up the nearest building, I proceeded to jump from rooftop to rooftop, clawed fingers digging into the bricks. The front of my boots had been shredded, more claws poking through to bite into stone and help me move faster.

  At the site where I assumed the shots had come from, I stood for a moment, tongue flicking in and out like a dog with itchy balls. No blood, or at least the only scent was from where it had stained my tunic. Something else, though. Something old and vaguely familiar. I scanned around, looking for tyre tracks… I meant footprints. Scuffs or marks that might indicate who had been here and where they had gone.

  There was a slight indentation in the lip of the wall that lined this flat expanse of roof. I had no idea which building I was on, probably someone's home. I looked closely at the mark that had caught my attention.

  Not claws. It wasn’t a slice, more like a pair of fingers had been pressed into the stone. I glanced across the expanse, the street was wide enough to drive a pair of carts down it side by side, then hurled myself across the gap.

  I glanced about and tasted the air. Stronger scent. Only a little, but they had come this way after the attack. I stalked around the rooftop, tongue flicking in and out as I went, while I tried to build a map in my mind as to where the scent was strongest.

  Here. No marks on the stone. Nothing physical to give it away, but I was sure.

  I jumped. Heading towards the most obvious of the three possible targets. All sloping roofs, slanted shingles to shed the rain. I clattered to a stop, knocking shingles off that slid down to the edge, then disappeared, announcing their arrival on the street below with a loud clatter.

  “Stop hiding,” I growled. I moved around cautiously. It felt like they were close, whoever they might be.

  The strange scent was thick in the air. I’d only spent a few minutes with Esme, long enough to make sure she’d live, before I’d hurried back to hunt the assassin. They couldn’t have gotten far. They clearly hadn’t used some kind of teleportation or portal; that dusty smell had only grown fresher as I’d followed them.

  They were close.

  I had no magic to pierce… yes, I did. Stupid bloody dragon.

  “Discuteret Illusio!” Nothing. I kept glancing around, casting the spell again and again, only for it to fizzle and misfire when it failed to find a target. As the last sigil faded from in front of my nose, I heard it.

  Thought wasn’t possible. Wrath was barely able to restrain himself, or rather, I was only willing to prevent him from driving me to burn my own damn town down in my rage. I could not abide a thief, and they had tried to steal something soppy mammals rated even more highly than shinies: time. Time with my woman. My love.

  The reptilian part of my mind recoiled a little at the thought. It was too mammalian. Not cold and calculating as a good lizard should be.

  The faint sound of a foot hitting the edge of the roof spun me around, and I was moving an instant later. Something blurry and indistinct shot away from me towards another building, and I followed straight after.

  “Conjurare Barnaculum!” It might sound insane, but this was rapidly becoming one of my favourite spells. Most of the barnacles appeared clinging to the wall and tiles, but a dozen or so attached themselves to the flaring cloak of the attacker, painting a nice juicy target on their back for me.

  A roar of orange-green fire shot out, tracking them as they rolled across the roof and leapt to one side. A crossbow bolt spouted from my chest, and I launched myself toward them. It hurt, but didn’t do me any real damage beyond knocking my breath attack to the side and letting them avoid the melty-goodness of a slow death by burning and melting.

  Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could pick them out against the backdrop. They weren’t invisible, just… blended. The blur stopped, back against a raised lip of bricks. A low growl slipped out, and my mind was filled with fire.

  “You won’t win.”

  “Agatha?”

  “Dalgliesh has arranged for a contract on you. Kill you, take the dungeon and the alchemist.” The ancient vampire appeared in front of me. Blood red lips curving up into a smile as she shook off her cloak, revealing what I could only describe as ninja-pyjamas.

  “So the Library has turned against me?” I snarled, taking another step closer.

  “The moment you signed up with Bulb, my sweet.” She rose slowly to her feet. “I’m afraid now the real war begins. Vespertilio sum!”

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Vespertilio sum

  Her body dissolved like mist in the morning sun, and a single, oversized bat flapped rapidly upwards into the sky. The moon was out. She would need to find somewhere to hide before morning.

  And I could fly faster than a bat. My body rippled as well. Bloodied tunic ripping away, the bolt in my chest was pushed out as scales formed beneath it. Even in my fury, I made a note to find out whose roof I’d just ruined as my wings beat down and I took to the skies. I wasn’t going to pay them, of course, but I would apologise and see if I could get it repaired for them. Minions basically worked for free as far as I was concerned. My eyes were fixed on a tiny flying rodent.