Ranthia sighed with relief as she entered the city proper. The ship had been slower than she had expected—she was going to get spoiled by Ocean’s speed if she rode with him too often—and had proven more problematic than she could have dreamed, but it was done. She was back in Ariminum.

  And she even got through the screening without incident!

  “Ranger, you said you know a good [Healer] that can finish checking you over?” Ranthia asked the man that was two steps behind her.

  “Yes ma’am, pair of siblings, they have both Light and Dark. Their clinic is near where I used to live.” The man confirmed.

  “Excellent, see to it then report in to Headquarters. I’ve got a couple of stops to make before I head there myself.” Ranthia and the Ranger traded salutes before he made his way deeper into the city.

  That just left…

  “So, what are your plans?” She asked the youth that was still shadowing her.

  “Whatever you need, Sentinel!” The boy answered with a beaming smile.

  Godsdamnit. She knew she was going to come to regret calling him her assistant to get out of questions about why she was dragging some fresh-faced youth around. The ordeals required for a woman to avoid gross rumors.

  “Look, …my friend, you’re free now. No one in Ariminum cares about the reputation you had in your hometown. No one cares. You can find a job doing whatever you like.” Ranthia offered with a smile that she hoped wasn’t as strained as it felt.

  “But I want to be your assistant. I know Sentinels can have a support team.” The kid replied with the reckless determination of youth.

  She was going to kill the Ranger. She saved the man’s life, and he rewarded her with a headache.

  “I have no intention of taking on a support team in Remus. In a few seasons I’ll be back to the war. You need to find something else.” Ranthia explained with the draining wisps of her patience.

  “Then I’ll go to war!” The kid answered stiffly.

  Xaoc, please don’t judge me too harshly for what I’m about to do. Ranthia sent a silent prayer, before she took a deep breath. Then she removed her mistweave blindfold and looked the kid in the eye as she stepped closer.

  He tried to meet her gaze, but he was already struggling.

  “I’ll be blunt: you’re not suited to it. If you joined the Legions or tried to follow me, you’d end up dead. Same with the Adventurers. If you tried to join the Rangers, you’d wash out—assuming you found anyone willing to recommend you in the first place. But you know what? That’s okay. Remus needs people like you that are still willing to live your life, still willing to find jobs that need to be done. Not everyone is meant for combat, for risking their own life.” Ranthia hated herself for it, but she spoke in a cold tone at first, though she added some warmth at the end.

  She needed him to understand.

  “I… I can change!” The boy promised, with tears in his eyes. He couldn’t even look her in the eye anymore.

  The kid hadn’t even been able to watch her and the crew of the ship while they broke down a sea monster. When the call for pirates went up, he hid before she even could tell him to. He was a gentle sort and that was fine. But he was rebelling against his own nature.

  “You could. But it would cost you dearly. And, seriously, take a damned moment to think about it. Do you want to watch people die? I’ve seen people get torn in half by monsters far worse than anything we saw on the Nostrum.” Ranthia countered.

  …The fact that she herself comprised the vast majority of the people that she had seen get torn in half wasn’t relevant at the moment. She didn’t want the kid to think just anyone could walk away from that.

  “I…” The kid was grasping for words as his tears flowed.

  Okay, gentle touch time. She could do this.

  “Look, war isn’t for everyone. The Legions, the Sentinels, and everyone else? We can only do this because of bo—men and women like you, who stay here in Remus. You pay the taxes that keep us functioning, you make the supplies we use, and you give us something to come back to.” Ranthia offered with a smile.

  Even if she wasn’t quite sure if she ever would return to Remus. She had an immortal’s time to change her mind though.

  “Naturally, the decision is yours. But you see that twisting spire, poking up past the buildings over there?” Ranthia continued once it was clear the kid wasn’t going to speak.

  “…The stupid looking one?” The kid asked after a long moment.

  “…I’ll allow that, it is kind of silly. But that’s a temple to Xaoc, the god I worship. There’s [Priests] and [Priestesses] there that can help you find your feet in the city. Maybe I’ll see you there sometime, yeah?” Ranthia offered.

  And thank Xaoc, the kid nodded his agreement.

  The kid finally went his own way, but Ranthia carried a bit of a dark mood as she slowly made her way towards the Adventurer’s Guild, in no particular hurry. She knew what she was getting into, but she felt guilty for crushing the kid’s spirit so mercilessly. His determination had been bright, but it was misplaced.

  She had developed a good eye for those that had the potential to follow a similar path to her own—and the kid definitely lacked it. He had faced hardship, true, but he had largely just given up and ran away from it. He was an extreme contrast to Vert. Vert had definitely possessed the potential. She had faced hardship head on and still sacrificed to help others. But even with that potential, it wasn’t enough to keep her alive.

  Ranthia had come to realize that she had, in some ways, still underestimated how dangerous being a Ranger or Adventurer was back then. No matter how many close calls she had and in spite of the loss of her fathers and Ranger Team 13 and countless familiar faces across her Adventurer career… She had continually overcome things just by clinging tenaciously to her own will to survive.

  Some piece of her had begun to think that a similar spark of will somehow made people safe. But Vert had sacrificed herself to save others. And much like Green had taught Ranthia, the ‘good’ that Vert’s death brought was a cold comfort at best to those that would have rather had the woman survive.

  The boy wasn’t suited to the life of a soldier, Ranger, or Adventurer. Which, as she told him, was absolutely fine. The world needed actual civilization; life would be awful if everyone prioritized violence over society. He needed a helping hand, and she was happy to give him a fresh start. It hadn’t cost her much, and it meant everything to him. But she really should have expected just how desperately he would cling to the lifeline that she offered.

  Saviors could be intoxicating, for those who hoped to be spared from hardship forever more. She knew that better than most. If she forced herself to consider her own situation neutrally, she had been unspeakably lucky when Tatius and Pupius had reached out to her. She hadn’t exactly had many better options, but it bothered her that she had never even stopped to consider the dangers of an 8-year-old girl choosing to follow two men that had already turned to crime once.

  Thank Xaoc, her fathers were genuinely good people. They had just needed a new chance to reinvent themselves, and they endured the hardship necessary to do their best for her. She loved paying that kindness forward, but she needed to think things through more.

  It was a genuine mistake, but she regretted having to hurt him to overcome it.

  She needed to think a lot of things through more. …Gods, the introspection also made her realize that she had let Lysia leave without even trying to reconcile with the woman. She had just… assumed Lysia would survive. That she would have another chance.

  Ranthia cherished Green and appreciated the woman’s mentorship more than she could put into words, but she sincerely wished the woman would stop being completely correct so godsdamned often!

  “Oh my, I seem to have kept you quite late.” Her former guildmaster apologized as they opened the doors to reveal Ariminum’s nightlife.

  Or, rather, the man presumably saw how dark it was. For all the murals that had infected the Guildhall in recent years, there was still a dearth of windows.

  Their meeting had gone well enough, at least. The guildmaster had tried to finagle a promise from her that she owed him an undefined favor, but she knew better. The man was far too ambitious, and he was willing to drop it. Besides, the ex-pirates were a boon to the Adventurer’s Guild. He was especially eager to meet the man that had formed a companion bond with a plesiosaurus (which baffled Ranthia, companion bonds already seemed to be bad trade-offs, but to tether yourself to the Nostrum Sea forever because your creature can’t survive out of the water seemed a special flavor of awful).

  The guildmaster had even promised that he could handle new identities for the men and women, and deal with the existing bounties. Something about having a team of Adventurers ‘sink’ the pirate ship and reliable witnesses.

  Still, she was happy enough to have everything settled, even if she had intended to accomplish far more during her day than she had managed.

  “It’s fine.” Ranthia waved off the aging man with a smile.

  “Perhaps I could buy you a drink to make up for it?” The guildmaster offered.

  But she was distracted by an argument she could hear further in the distance.

  “The message I’m carrying is urgent, let me through!”

  “The gates are closed, and you don’t have—”

  “For fuck’s sake, I bet they’ll send a Sentinel or eight over this! Let! Me! Through!”

  It was going to be one of those nights, wasn’t it?

  “Sorry, duty calls, it seems.” Ranthia offered her former guildmaster, before she sprinted toward the city gates. She kept her speed limited to something closer to acceptable in Ariminum, which gave her ample time to ensure her badge was still pinned to the chest of her armor and to slip into her Sentinel Grace persona.

  Ranthia was pretty sure that she and Ocean were the only Sentinels that hadn’t been forced to drag themselves out of bed. The energy of a crisis could only help so much, especially since three of the men were immediately reasonably confident that it wouldn’t become their problem.

  “Are we sure this is real?” Swarm asked as he passed out another big mug of tea.

  The man looked exhausted, but he seemed to also be thrilled to have an excuse to show off his tea-making inscribed box for everyone. He just needed to stick a mug inside, pour water inside a special slot, and dump tea leaves in a different spot and… yeah, Ranthia wasn’t entirely sure how it was easier than just making tea normally in an inscribed teapot. Especially since Swarm wouldn’t let anyone touch it because “if you mixed up the holes the entire thing might be ruined!”

  “The [Courier] was real enough, even if he was from a small outfit with no Ariminum branch. If someone ran the man to the brink of exhaustion on a lark…” Ranthia trailed off before she vocalized the threat.

  “Even if someone is lying, it’s worth looking into. And if it’s true, we need to act fast.” Ocean agreed.

  The [Courier] had carried an initial report and along the way he had added in the testimony of other witnesses that claimed sightings. Some of it beggared belief, but the path seemed to slowly be moving inward, deeper into Remus from its far reaches. Remus’ borders had expanded a little further into the west than they used to be, which meant…

  “Eyeballing it, based on the reports we do have, I think… Port Salona’s our best bet?” Ranthia looked to Ocean as she spoke. They didn’t have a clear picture of how fast the intruders were moving, but it seemed a valid option for a place to start their hunt based on what reports they had.

  The fact that it was the only city she was confident in the name of in the area was only a minor factor in her guess. She would never forget where Hylla died. Where she first encountered the shimagu.

  And where she was going to encounter them again, it seemed.

  The reports were of “obviously not human” beings with vibrant red levels moving through Remus. Most reports agreed that it was a small group of people and monsters, but the most chilling thing was that they were using Skills. Ranthia wished she could convince herself to discount the witness that reported seeing one of them use “liquid tentacles” to grab someone.

  Twins. In Remus. It was the most likely explanation by a large margin, assuming the whole thing wasn’t some sort of sick game.

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  The only bizarre thing was that there hadn’t been any clear indications of casualties, but they were undeniably moving inward.

  “Maybe they just don’t want to get bogged down?” Ranthia muttered aloud as she puzzled over the question.

  Ocean was still busy staring at a map and the outline they had already put together.

  “Why would they bother with the little towns when they could just come here and kill us and the emperor?” Scorch asked before he yawned.

  The man sure didn’t sound bothered by the possibility.

  “Right. Grace, you’re with me. Your guess is a good enough starting point. Scorch, if we don’t return within eight days, get a message to Night. Swarm, sorry, but you’re going to need to handle the meetings over the next few days after all.” Ocean ordered as he stood.

  “I knew you were going to engineer an emergency.” Swarm retorted dryly, but his humor was plainly forced.

  If there truly was a force of shimagu twins pushing into Remus…

  Well, there was a reason that Ranthia was so distracted that she wasn’t even mentally regarding Scorch as a mere vessel for his nose.

  Ranthia sat at the front of Ocean’s ship as they sailed across the Nostrum at speeds that would have likely shattered her last ride. There was tension in the air. Ranthia had two bandoliers added to her armor filled with throwing knives. Ocean had four large arcanite crystals added to his ship. But there was no overstuffed backpack or anything. Just a bow and quiver for each of them.

  They were geared for mobility and power.

  They had already come up with their plan. At Port Salona they would get fresher information. Ocean would follow the coastline and, if they reached that far, the river. Ranthia would take the land route. If either of them found anything, they were to fire a signal arrow and wait for the other. Any Rangers in the area could be warned, but they both agreed that Rangers weren’t to be dragged into the situation.

  They were probably the only two in Remus that stood a chance against a twin.

  But the real danger was that there seemed to be three to six hostiles, depending on the report. If they were outmatched… Well.

  “We’ll bait them to the nearest decent body of water, then I want you to run straight for Coalition City while I try to hold them. Come back with Night and Deflection at a minimum.” Ocean’s orders for that situation were as simple as they were terrible.

  “Oh, yeah, them. They tried to poison Matius! And yeah, even the woman with you hasn’t got a shade so deep to [Identify].”

  Port Salona was intact, much like the other cities reportedly were. But they seemed to have just missed the group they were chasing, if the guard they were speaking to was actually as reliable as he seemed to be. But seriously, they poisoned… a single person, and just left? Things were getting weird.

  “What do you mean poisoned?” Ocean asked.

  “One of them gave Matius something, encouraged him to drink it. Poor man collapsed after a single sip. I swear the stuff was bubbling on the ground when the rest spilled. Thank Aion there was a [Healer] nearby, Matius should live last I heard. The group of whatever they were left town in a hurry after that.” The man explained.

  “Right, can you tell me more about what they looked—”

  “Forget that, which way did they go? The eastern road, I assume?” Ranthia interjected.

  They were so close.

  “Yeah, they even jumped the gates. Not sure if they stuck to the road or not.” The guardsman answered.

  Good enough.

  “Ocean, I’m going ahead. The plan’s still on.” Ranthia wanted to immediately run off, but technically Ocean was in charge.

  He gave her a nod, and she was off.

  The threat was real, and she didn’t need a detailed description to recognize beings that were, purportedly, higher level than she was! She had her own [Divine-Touched Identify], after all.

  The sun was bright overhead and the weather was in that pleasant phase where summer’s intense heat faded as autumn seized control. There were only a few clouds scattered across the sky, there was a wonderful breeze, and Remus’ bug life added a subtle melody to the world. It was the kind of day that Ranthia had always loved.

  Which made it all the worse that her heart was thundering with nerves in her chest as she danced across the landscape at her top speed. She couldn’t appreciate any of it. She was focused on finding any trace of their quarry.

  In theory things should be simple. She would confirm the location, back off a bit, put up the signal arrow, and Ocean shouldn’t take too long to catch up. She was also keeping an ear out for signs of his own arrow, just in case he found their quarry along the seafront. In many ways that would be ideal, but she wasn’t so optimistic. The seafront was a solid way to travel to avoid getting lost, but it was also the slowest possible route. There was a reason that roads seldom followed the many curves and sudden turns required to follow the coast.

  Naturally, Ranthia had zero faith in their plans surviving contact with the enemy.

  At high levels classers became downright obnoxious to track. Even when they weren’t trying to hide their trail, their footfalls disturbed the ground less than a low-level civilian of the same size and physical build would. Dexterity reduced their footprint in the most literal sense, while speed and vitality made the distance that they could have covered far wider and harder to predict. Even the scent of distant honey on the breeze could have sparked a detour into a thick woodland in the wrong direction.

  Gods and goddesses, for all she knew they heard her coming and hid. She had learned to never underestimate the senses or physical capabilities of those that out-leveled her.

  But she wasn’t a mere level 200-something Adventurer or Ranger either. Her own senses were sharp, and she had learned a lot about trusting her ears and her nose.

  And she was pretty sure she could smell some sort of berry-like scent that she had never detected in Remus before.

  Xaoc willing, it was her quarry, and not just her becoming aware of some subtle fragrance that she had never noticed before the war.

  Voices were strange. It was so easy to tell when she was hearing a voice (though sometimes the wind could play tricks on her), but it took far greater proximity to realize that she couldn’t actually make out the words. She still didn’t have a good assessment of the targets, but the largest wolf she had ever seen had registered at a color that was well over level 700.

  That was plenty for the moment.

  They were inside of a clearing a ways off the road—inland, unfortunately—in the local woodlands and, given the tones, were involved in some sort of argument or dispute.

  Ranthia carefully crept away, relying heavily on her dexterity and [Rhythmic Grace] to keep her quiet as she sought sufficient distance. Finally, she arrived at a decent break between the trees and quickly unslung her bow, nocked a shrieking arrow, and unleashed it into the sky.

  The arrow began to loose its cache of metallic dust as it soared through the air and the trademark shriek began as it progressed toward the sky.

  Where it immediately shattered into fragments.

  Ranthia could barely even see the other arrow, it flew so fast, but as impossible as it seemed a second arrow had intercepted her signal and sundered it! Ranthia seldom used the word ‘impossible’ any longer—the more she saw of Pallos the more ridiculous it seemed as a concept. But none of the archers she had ever known—not even her own people from the war—could have done that. Especially since the shot had come from deeper through the trees. Someone had to notice her shrieking arrow before it had even gotten up to full volume, readied their own shot, predicted the flight path, and somehow found an almost impossibly narrow window through the branches and trees and leaves to shoot her arrow down!

  There was no time to freak out or try to run. She could hear at least two hostiles crashing through the undergrowth fast as they closed in on her position. There was no time to form her true knives; she barely even enough time to a chance to grab a pair of throwing knives off her bandoliers.

  Her ears reported the arrival of two opponents, but her eyes saw nothing.

  Sound or Mirage? [Vision of the Void] wasn’t giving her anything, but—wait, no, there was a brief hazy—

  When [Combat Awareness] screamed in her head she didn’t question it, she just pirouetted and kicked off the ground to hop back as she swung one of the iron blades out. A strange sound rang out, wholly unlike the familiar sound of metal clashing against metal, as her knife was shorn in half.

  Mirage classer it was. A good one that she couldn’t just see through. But that was fine, she could hear her opponent’s movements still. There was probably some degree of dampening from her opponent’s Skills, but she wasn’t wholly outmatched—she could fight! She was something of an expert at fighting blind after all. In theory.

  Ranthia flung her intact knife at her opponent as she danced backwards for distance. So long as she kept her distance, she would hear her opponent coming and could—

  A horrific cacophony assaulted Ranthia with such intensity it felt like her bones were rattling. It was as if dozens of wolves started barking all at once and some Sound [Mage] was amplifying them until each and every bark had physical substance. She suspected her ears would have blown out had her vitality been any lower.

  But the larger problem was that she couldn’t hear her opponent coming any longer! Holding back wasn’t an option; she needed to play every card she had.

  Her images joined her as swiftly as she could manage, but she lost the first before the third was even created. Still, its destruction gave her a target and she immediately threw three knives—fully empowered by all that [Sustained Chaos] could offer—in rapid succession at the space where her opponent should have been.

  Two blades vanished from her senses, but the third sailed into the distance. She had no idea if the first two hit their mark or if they had been erased somehow, but she had to keep moving as she tried to put more images up.

  The barking seemed to come from everywhere, but she could also track its intensity as she moved. And by the time she was forced to dodge another strike only [Combat Awareness] seemed fully cognizant of—she was getting brief, indistinct glimpses of her opponent at best through [Vision of the Void]—she was reasonably certain she had the source’s position. Ranthia tossed the throwing knives in her hands to other images and drew another pair, even as she activated [Reflections of Reality].

  Her perception warped as she arrived within an image that she assumed to be the furthest from her unseen adversary. The image she had just abandoned was already getting cut down, which was a problem because it still had her bandoliers—she hadn’t added them to [Image Recall]. Fortunately, her other images still held true blades and tossed the pair to her.

  Ranthia caught them, and immediately activated [Void Edge] on one and hurled it at the location that she was reasonably certain was the source of the barking onslaught.

  A pained yelp rewarded her, as the effects of the Sound attack came to a merciful end.

  Not that she was able to rest easily. A furiously incoherent sound reached her ears. Ranthia spun around, even as the illusion that had filled the entire clearing faded away, revealing a woman.

  She had never seen hair of that shade before, but she was more focused on the fact that the woman was an elf.

  Gods and goddesses, no wonder the words had made no sense! They weren’t speaking some shimagu language—it was the elven tongue that Avyna had sometimes briefly used! She hadn’t recognized it in the moment, but with the added context—

  Sudden realizations on the field of battle were never wise. Ranthia may have been rendered flatfooted by the revelation, but her opponent sure as chaos hadn’t.

  The elven woman’s crystalline sword carved straight through Ranthia’s armor and dragged her painfully back into the battle.

  “Wai—” Ranthia tried to cry out as she stumbled back, but the woman was already following up on her first strike.

  A series of narrow dodges bought her the time she needed to shift again, but her opponent was already turning towards her. Fuck! The elf seemed to have figured out the flaw to her images already—she knew which one to focus on.

  Her opponent was fast. Faster than she was. There was no time to try to reason with the elf while she was pushing her attack. Ranthia needed to somehow earn some proper distance or drive her back for a moment or three if she wanted to try to talk the elf down.

  Assuming they even had a language in common.

  She had so many questions, but no headspace to worry about them as the battle was joined again. Ranthia deflected the woman’s improbable blade (seriously, crystal?!) with one of her bracers while she worked to break the other down to form a true knife. Even with her dance, she couldn’t properly keep up with the elf. The next cut reached the back of her hand instead.

  It wasn’t deep, she was fine. For the moment.

  Ranthia managed to hop to the side and avoid the next cut, but the elf maneuvered away before she could counter-attack. And then, at last, her first knife was ready. Ranthia adjusted her stance to bring the knife into play while her other bracer began the too-slow process of breaking down into sand to form the blade’s counterpart.

  Heat.

  A sudden sensation of warmth was the only warning Ranthia got. Instinctively, she lashed out with her knife at what seemed to be empty air. A blob of glowing red lava appeared as [Void Edge] carved through the illusion. And then the lava splattered everywhere as her knife tore through it.

  The adamantium was fine.

  Ranthia’s flesh was not.

  Vitality helped, but her skin blistered and burned in mere proximity to the lava. The globule that landed on her fingers seared right through her. The pain was intense and lingering—she seldom experienced severe burns and new types of pain were always harder to ignore. But she didn’t—couldn’t let herself—drop her knife.

  It was still wrenched from her grasp when she tried to parry the woman’s next strike. Her ruined fingers snapped and gave way, which fouled her grip too much to counter the sheer force behind the woman’s strike.

  Her opponent had been holding back.

  The thought repeated itself as metal chains sprang out of nowhere and began to bind and tie her down. Her other knife finished forming and [Void Edge] sheared through eight chains in a single sweep of her blade. Yet more were coming.

  Ranthia shifted again just before her damaged image was shackled by even more chains. Someone—presumably whomever was responsible for the Lava (her current opponent lacked the element)—was taking out her images, but two were still up. Which left her with only a single spare.

  [Adamant Commander] called her lost knife back to her hand, but her adversary was damnably quick. The woman caught her knife out of the air, even as she forced Ranthia to dance away from the tip of her sword.

  Straight into a surge of Ooze and chains. Ranthia couldn’t even snarl as the Ooze engulfed her body and fouled her sight. She was getting bogged down by the weight of the chains, which restricted her ability to tear at the Ooze.

  No, not like this! I’m not done yet, damn you!

  [Void Edge] tore through chains and sludge alike. Ranthia lashed about like a mad woman as she fought her way through the Ooze that was engulfing her.

  And then, for a precious moment, she could see through the thinned goop. It was just enough to get a new image out near the trees, and she hurriedly shifted to it before it could get noticed.

  Her opponent shouted something in her unfamiliar tongue. Definitely a similar language to what she had heard from Avyna, but that didn’t help her understand the meaning.

  [Adamant Commander] caught the elf by surprise though and the blade tore free of her relaxed grasp. Ranthia caught the blade, even as the elf shouted something else.

  Something tore through the air past her chest—[Combat Awareness] didn’t even notice it until it was past—but the elf was closing in fast and no harm was done. Unfortunately, she had delayed too long; she might have had a chance to try to use her words, but the woman was too close.

  Instead, Ranthia, at last, activated [Void Edge] in both knives and resumed her dance as the elf closed in.

  Only to blink as a white winged snake dropped out of the sky and spread its wings in front of her, hissing at the elf.

  What? Also, what in Xaoc’s glory was a [Couatl]?

  “Thought you should see this before you act further.” A masculine, smooth voice called out in familiarly accented Creation before something sailed through the air.

  The redhead caught it and froze.

  It was the moment she had waited for, but Ranthia hesitated to speak.

  “Recognize it?” The same masculine voice asked haughtily.

  “Blaghleglgle! So, she’s not one of the bandits that Elaine mentioned?! Cracking crystals, what a terrible first impression!” The woman finally shouted.

  “We could always run away and never return. But then who would check to make sure you did no lasting harm to such a lovely woman?” A different masculine voice—far more sonorous than the first—chimed in teasingly.

  “Graaaghblebaugh! So, um, sorry about that. You’re a Sentinel right? My name is Awarthril and this is… Oh, Kiyaya! Come here, let me see that leg. Aww, there, there, it’s not that bad.” The woman approached Ranthia peacefully, tossed Ranthia something, and then immediately pivoted off to check on the suddenly visible gargantuan wolf that was clearly favoring one of its legs. All faster than Ranthia could quite process.

  As-is, she barely managed to deactivate [Void Edge] and catch whatever the woman threw awkwardly between her arms. What was… When the heck had they managed to grab her Sentinel badge?!

  Ranthia had to double-take at what she was holding—and what was missing from her chest.

  “Aegion. I suppose I might have just saved your life! Want a drink to celebrate?” A plainly-dressed male elf stepped into view where there plainly hadn’t been an elf a few moments ago, and the winged serpent flittered over to perch on his shoulder.

  “No!” The other two elves shouted at him with sudden intensity.

  A third elf shoved the suspect beverage aside smoothly as he stepped entirely too far into Ranthia’s personal space.

  “And I, of course, am Serondes. I apologize for my Lava, I hope I didn’t do too much damage to your lovely fingers.” The man reached for her hand.

  Ranthia smoothly stepped aside and shot him a glare.

  Seriously?!

  What in Xaoc’s name was even going on?!

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  Nozomi Matsuoka.

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