Chapter XXVI (26)

  “You’re certain Wan is staying in an inn?” Holly asked. “And you know where it’s located? You don’t need me to use a divination spell?”

  “I definitely know where he’s staying,” Mitsuko replied. “But I think Wan might be in the forest right now. Follow me.”

  Mitsuko shouldered her bag and the two of them traveled down the streets, with Sterling padding along at her feet. The other survivors of the ship wreck had looked on with envy at their possessions. No one else had more than the clothes on their backs to their name at the moment. Mitsuko felt a bit guilty about leaving them without any help. But they’d be fine.

  “How do you know this?” Holly asked.

  “Just trust me. I’ll explain later.”

  Everyone in the street was too busy staring up at the dome overhead to give them any mind. Though a couple did almost trample Sterling, their eyes plastered skyward. A hiss and clawed swat from the cat after he dodged their footfalls made the airheaded couple apologize and rush off in the opposite direction.

  Mitsuko navigated them over to Fairy’s Grotto, and then into the forest path beyond it.

  “These woods are gorgeous,” Holly commented as they walked. She kept stopping to examine different bits of purple grass or strangely shaped leaves. “Look, Mitsuko! It matches my hair!”

  “Not quite. It’s a light lavender while your hair is more deep violet.”

  Holly rolled her eyes and tossed the leaf off to the side. “Don’t be a spoil sport.”

  “Your friend has a far more chipper attitude,” Sterling said.

  “Brilliant commentary,” Mitsuko muttered. “Why don’t you go hunt some poor family of mice or something?”

  “It isn’t my fault that the shrew was dumb enough to approach,” Sterling replied defensively. “Rodents are supposed to run away from cats. My predator instincts just kicked in.”

  “And then you ate it.”

  “What? Is it now customary to waste food in this day and age? This body of mine still burns energy and hungers.”

  “You talk to the cat a lot,” Holly said. “And I’ve never known a cat to be this clingy to someone.”

  “I did save him from drowning,” Mitsuko pointed out. “Maybe, against all of the odds of his species, he feels some measure of gratitude for me not letting him die.”

  “For the record,” Sterling cut in. “You did not. My soul would have been forcefully ejected upon death. While an unpleasant process, you did not save me.”

  “I think I saw him on board before the ship sank,” Holly continued, oblivious to Sterling’s words. “What’s his name?”

  “He’s Sterling.”

  “Pilrorth Sterling Novryss III,” Sterling corrected.

  “From what I’ve seen so far, he’s a pretty brainless cat,” Mitsuko continued. “Barely a thought bouncing around in his brain. That’s probably why he’s staying so close to me. Completely reliant.”

  “That’s just a blatant lie!” Sterling yowled. “You think you’ll get away with such slander? This will bite you! You’re speaking to a master diviner. She’ll see right through you and your lies!”

  But Holly, being a normal person, didn’t have lie detection spells constantly active. So the gnome naively believed Mitsuko, much to Sterling’s chagrin. He continued badgering her with complaints until they reached the broken stone bridge where Wan had fought the troll.

  Only this time, she heard no combat. Granted, she streamlined the process of arriving here by forgoing stopping at the pub and the inn. That shaved a couple hours from her schedule. So she was here earlier than her first loop.

  Mitsuko moved over the bridge’s edge and looked down at the dried up riverbank below. Sterling padded up beside her and peered over with her. No sign of Wan.

  “Okay. We need to be careful,” she said quietly. “He should be here—”

  A yowl cut off her words as the bridge’s edge collapsed under Sterling’s weight. Rubble and cat careened down.

  “Thieves!” a booming voice said from below. “Pay the toll! It’s my bridge! Toll!”

  Mitsuko groaned. She looked over at Holly who watched on with curiosity from the foliage to the side. At least Sterling would be fine. Even if the troll cooked him in a stew, he had just told her he could eject his soul. So saving him didn’t need to be a priority. She took a step back, prepared to escape.

  But…Wan would be coming this way in a few minutes. Perhaps she could intercept him? Unless he traveled via a different path. She couldn’t just stand here and wait for him. And setting the troll off early could cause everything to fall apart. Wan could get caught off guard and retreat upon hearing the noise. Despite being an immortal, he often acted with caution. Immortality didn’t help much if the troll decided to bury him alive. And trolls loved burying their food for safekeeping.

  A beefy hand gripped the lip of the bridge. More rubble crumbled, but not before the other arm threw itself over the edge.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  “Looks like we’re doing this again.” Mitsuko flicked her wrist, creating a blade of ice. “Holly, stay out of sight.”

  Mitsuko acted quickly, slicing at the arm, hoping to sever it and send the troll back to the riverbed. Then she would have a vantage point to attack his head from.

  Her sword sliced through the meat of the monster’s forearm. And got caught on its bone.

  “Well, shit.” She released the sword and stepped back

  The troll finished clawing its way up and roared. Still on his hands and knees, the troll swept a meaty arm at her. Mitsuko raised an arm to protect herself as the swipe rammed into her. There was a crack as her arm snapped and the blow sent her flying. Right over the edge of the broken bridge and to the dried up riverbed below.

  She hit the ground with a thump and had to blink away stars. So much pain. Her vision cleared just in time for her to see the troll leap down at her, stomping a foot down towards her chest. She rolled, the broken arm flaring in pain as her weight fell on it.

  “Spells!” Sterling called from the side. “You can’t keep wasting weeks by dying. Use your spells!”

  Right. She cast Mend on herself. The fractured bone in her arm popped back in place and welded itself back together. She once again felt the pain of the initial break from moments before, but then all the pain disappeared. At the same time as that healing, it felt like someone was massaging her bruised back. The sensation caused her to gasp. But she still reacted in time to avoid the troll’s next swing. She rolled to her feet and created a new sword.

  Unlike her fight with the troll in the original loop, she lacked the element of surprise, but she did still have an advantage. The troll was unarmed this time, relying solely on its natural limbs to attack her. Its club in their last fight had tripled its range. This time, she was the one with a longer range. And she used it. She wasn’t called a bladedancer for no reason. She deftly dodged each of the troll's blows, letting it clumsily overbalance itself while she still kept her distance, and countered with her own swipes, cutting off swathes of its flesh.

  She lost two more swords as the troll caught the blades with its flesh. It kept flexing its muscles and yanking her swords from her hands. The troll seemed convinced that if it could disarm her, she’d be an easy kill. It lacked the mental capacity to understand she could create an endless supply of ice blades. But its swings and lunges for her became more wild as it grew more frustrated by its lack of progress.

  While she lacked the physical strength to deal a critical slice through the troll’s thick skin, she still made it bleed from a dozen smaller slices. It was ancient, and healed slowly. But it was a troll, so even a thousand shallow cuts would heal, if given time. As is, she was only slowing the troll down temporarily.

  To bring the troll down, she needed to cut through something vital. A piercing stab might work if aimed for the right internals, but another thought occurred to her.

  Switching to a more defensive stance, Mitsuko focused on dodging and deflecting as she stepped back. Soon, her back was against the cliff’s wall. The troll lumbered forward, an open wound across its ribs slowly knitting itself together.

  She snatched up a crumbly piece of stone. A bit that had collapsed under a cat’s weight a few minutes earlier.

  The troll balled his hand into a fist and struck at her. She cast her spell.

  The punch grazed her leg as she zipped upwards, still gripping the small piece of rubble. The troll’s strike slammed into the wall instead of connecting to her, causing rocks and dirt to rain down on its head.

  Before the piece of rubble knit itself back into the bridge, Mitsuko used her other hand to grab the cliff’s lip and heave herself up. Holly sat, hidden in a bush that blossomed purple flowers. She looked up from her scrying mirror and waved at Mitsuko.

  The troll bellowed below. It started to climb up the cliff, chasing after her. But Mitsuko had no intention of staying up here. She took a deep breath, flicked her wrist, then hurled herself back down.

  The troll looked up as she fell at it. Its eyes widened in the moment before she drove the tip of her sword into its left socket. This time its body softened the impact when she hit the ground. Then, as it billowed in rage, she followed up with another sword down its throat. After a minute of it gargling on its own blood, it finally stopped moving.

  “Gross,” Mitsuko said, looking at her clothes, now stained in troll blood and mud.

  “Indeed. Quite messy.” Sterling padded forward, his disposition completely switched back to his usual arrogant attitude as he held his snout. “An interesting use of my spell. But realize that you got very lucky with your usage of it. You innately used it correctly.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Where did you find the rubble?”

  “The ground….” Then she realized what he meant. “The rubble shot straight up to the bridge. It didn’t return to the ground first.”

  “Indeed. Your mental image and will guided the spell to its intended path. With a less clear goal in mind, it would have traveled downwards first. It’s a very important aspect of my spell to keep in mind during future casts. You have far more control of the spell than you’d first assume at a glance.”

  Mitsuko considered that. She picked up a stone from the ground. Then she tossed it. She took a step back and cast Mend on it with her aura. The stone shot up into the air, for a second it hung in the air at the same height as where she’d dropped it from, then dropped back to the ground. Interesting.

  “Mend is a bit of a misleading name for the spell,” she said. “It reverses the time of an object.”

  “It sets things back to the way they once were. Mending them.”

  “Everything okay down there, Mitsuko?” Holly called from above. “Troll sorted?”

  “Yes. It’s dead. Is Wan almost here?”

  “Uhh. Nope. Nothing so far.”

  Mitsuko scooped up Sterling under one arm and grabbed a handful of rubble with the other. Another cast of Mend then she scrambled over the edge of the bridge.

  “How are you doing that?” Holly examined her, searching for something. “Did you buy a new artifact?”

  “No. It’s a spell I recently learned. Mend.”

  “Mitsuko! You learned a spell! That’s fantastic! How did you keep it a secret from me for so long? It took ages for you to get my compass spell down. Wait, no. Not how, why did you keep it a secret? I would have helped you! What branch of magic is it? You did just use rocks. Is it elemental?”

  Mitsuko smiled and let out a puff of air. “It’s temporal. I learned a few days ago that I have a bit of a knack for time related spells.”

  “What? Seriously? How did you learn that? We need to get over to a library immediately and research more spells. And you learned it in just a couple days? With that sort of speed, you could be a prodigy! I think I remember seeing a tome on temporal theory. Oh wait, that was in Tross. I wonder if I can contact someone and have them send me images or a copy of the book.”

  “That will have to wait,” Mitsuko said. She pointed up at the dome over their heads. “No divinations are getting out right now.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Any sign of Wan?”

  “Almost forgot! Nope. There’s nothing. Mitsuko, you’re certain he’ll be coming this way?”

  “Definitely.”

  And so they settled down. Mitsuko changed into a new set of clothes while Holly quizzed her about different aspects of her Mend spell. Sterling sat off to the side, licking himself to remove all the dirt and dust from his earlier tumble.

  Time passed by. An hour. Two. Wan never showed up.

  15 more chapters on my !! I'll be uploading daily!