We returned to the dorm at a decent hour with our loot. Shockingly, neither X2 nor Bianca had any use for the lich’s arm. While the flesh was useless, the bones were more arcane aligned than necromantic, meaning a variety of effects could be enchanted into them. They had also let me claim a collection of reagents and elixirs from Xiandra’s stash.

  Once inside, Coatlie uncoiled from my neck and stretched her wings. “Finally! I’m starving.” She swooped to the fresh cookie tray Derek had pulled out of the oven. His eyes went wide as bits of chocolate infused dough splattered onto his ‘Iron Chef’ apron.

  Derek sent worried glances to the living room where a strange woman had stopped chatting with Casimir to lean over the couch and stared at Coatlie. “Who’s this cutie?” She inquired with a bright clear voice free of concern. The woman had long wavy auburn hair and a scar-free symmetrical face. Her orange eyes were bright and inquisitive, but didn’t distract from her stylish riding leathers.

  Coatlie wrapped one cookie with her body and carried another in her mouth to sit on top of the couch’s backrest next to the woman. After carefully stacking her loot, she unfurled her wings and proclaimed, “I am Quetzalcoatl, god and master of my domains—but my friends call me Coatlie.”

  The woman pressed her hands together and bowed while the snake munched. “Forgive my insolence, your scaliness.”

  Around a mouthful of cookie, Coatlie said, “At least one of you humans knows respect.”

  Our guest giggled, “Der-bear, why didn’t you tell me about Exemplar’s friend?”

  The man sighed as he plated the rest of his creations. “Don’t call me that. You are surprisingly uncaring about the sapient monster in our dorm.”

  “You’re, like, the third Derek in my family. I can’t call you that.” She scratched under Coatlie’s chin, much to the snake’s amusement if the tail wagging and wing flapping were anything to go by. “I think a third of my parents are monsters. It’d be weird if I was too hostile.”

  That explained the unnerving quality about the woman. I blurted out, “You don’t smell of blood.”

  “I would hope not! I do wash regularly.”

  “Sorry, I phrased that poorly. There is an edge or sharpness missing to your aura…” I grasped at the intangible. “You haven’t killed before, have you?”

  “Never had the pleasure.” She waved. “Hi, I’m Stacy. I came to visit my new secret brother, but he’s been a butt about it.”

  While Derek ranted about how they weren’t siblings, my mind reeled at meeting an unblooded hero. How is that even possible? What did she do to grow her shade so much? What was her legend?

  I smothered my curiosity, went back to my room, gave Fyrnell a hug, and then returned to the living room with my Crafting supplies and a bucket.

  Stacy’s cheery banter with her brother died when I started cleaning the arm in a chair across from her. “Uhhh, that’s a human arm.”

  “More accurately, it’s from an elf.” I continued whittling. Removing the bones from the arm would lower their MP capacity, so I had to remove the flesh from the bone. Each slice of my paring knife cut away another satisfying piece that fell into the bucket.

  She looked a little green. “That’s not better…”

  “Why? Oh! It’s not a proper elf arm. I wouldn’t waste the leather if that was the case. This one is a lich.”

  Most of the tension left her face, but she still looked nauseated. “Okay… Lich bones are a good material, but I think I prefer store bought.”

  Even Riena raised her eyebrow at that. “Have you not prepared your own materials?”

  “I’ve never needed to.” She shrugged. “Is that rare?”

  My Commander rubbed her face in bewilderment. “And here I thought I was spoiled.” All of us projected varying levels of incredulousness over the bond. Nyla decided to ignore the woman and focused on her book.

  While Casimir and Riena interrogated her on conditions within the Savior’s compound, I finished cleaning the bones and began cold smelting them with my titanium-derived mithral. Lich bones had great MP capacity, but their actual durability was terrible. I could sacrifice a bit of magical suitability to make a functional seax.

  The long-knife came together quickly. With a few tricks of aura, the sound and heat didn’t spread around the room, a concession Riena proposed so that I would hang out with them while Crafting. The company wasn’t unwanted; I thought I would bother them.

  When the conversation switched back to whether or not Derek and Stacy were siblings, I interjected, “Just because you deny the familiar relation between you and the Savior doesn’t mean you have to reject other relatives by blood. New brothers and sisters don’t displace who your father is. I know…” I sighed. “...I wouldn’t mind having more living family.”

  Derek recoiled at the force of my longing and collected himself. “A fair point, but I already have a full family, and I don’t mean that as a flex. Making time for them in my busy schedule is hard enough without adding relations that want to whisk me away to a castle in the clouds.”

  Stacy scoffed, “It can’t hurt to visit! Look, I’m heading there tonight. Come with me, and I’ll have you back by morning. I think ma-pa is hosting a witches’ sabbath tonight. We’ll do a bunch of drugs and ‘sacrifice’ a goat. It’ll be fun!”

  He held up his hands. “We have three dungeon runs tomorrow. I want to be rested.”

  “One day without sleep isn’t too high a price to pay to spend time with family,” I offered.

  “Yeah well, you can talk after you’ve read your mail.” Derek and Stacy then went back to sniping at each other while Casimir, Riena, and Nyla picked a show to watch.

  Since my seax needed to quench, I went up to the counter and discovered that I did have three letters. The first was a cursed missive from Izy. That went directly into the recycler. The second was a request from Power to meet at a café. I didn’t know what the 9th ranked hero wanted to speak with me about, but I burned the letter to signal that I accepted his invitation through the magically linked glyph on his end. The final letter was from my mom.

  She wanted to know if I would visit for my brother’s birthday.

  I sat the letter in my room and went back to my knife. Untangling which combination of abilities and runes would be the most fitting for it was a far more pleasing puzzle than if I wanted to see them again.

  On one hand, my brother had done nothing. I didn’t want to abandon him, but if I went back, he’d either be on my side—and possibly draw Mom’s ire—or he’d be against me, an option I didn’t want to face. He had to live in my mother’s house for years. His life was hard enough without the added stress.

  I’ve faced down Titans with less trepidation than the thought of going home. Something in me was unprepared to treat a parent like a regular person that needed things explained to them and time to process. I expected—needed—unconditional support and love. There was no one else I held to the same standard, but I’d sooner forgive Gabriel for all she did, than a single ignorant statement from my mother.

  Was that fair? Was that heroic? Was that what the best version of myself would do? No. I knew that, but to the rest of the world, I was Exemplar, named hero, invincible, indomitable. To my mom, I had cried when I stubbed my toe on a giant vole demon. I would always be that kid trying to make sense of the world and wondering why I didn’t enjoy half the things my peers did, why clothes were torture, why I couldn’t stand my reflection without every inch covered in steel. She knew me at my most vulnerable, and when I completely opened myself to her, she rebuked me.

  The immature kid couldn’t let it go, couldn’t dream that Mom would ever get better.

  Riena noticed me staring intently at my rune book and asked, “What are you trying to enchant?”

  My mind snapped back to important matters. “At first, I was going to make this a really good knife, but that seemed like a waste with this material, so I was looking for more esoteric concepts to sever.”

  “Classic blunder. Trying to find specific new runes to learn rarely works because you don’t fully understand them. The easiest workaround is to ask a more experienced Crafter for suggestions.” She took my book and pointed out four relevant runes and the associated conjunctions. “Those should work.”

  I nodded, impressed. “Your grasp of what’s needed for the battlefield has improved dramatically.”

  “Yeah…” She rubbed the back of her head. “I had a lot of theory memorized, but the hands-on experience and Maze’s lectures have helped a lot.”

  “It shows.” I memorized the surface layer of each rune and then turned back to the knife. The room had grown quieter since Stacy left and most of the others went to their rooms, leaving only my seax’s naked pommel as an irritant. I needed to wrap the hilt.

  Originally, I was going to use the Oni’s satchel leather, but a lich-bone knife with an imp leather handle spoke to me. It fit as a concept, but imp materials were too low tier, so I combined a few pelts and then forged them with neutral MP from other sources. The resulting strip was serviceable and shouldn’t reduce the weapon too much while making the overall concept more coherent.

  After that, I spent hours memorizing the runes and enchanting the dagger. Riena stayed up the entire time with me and worked on her own homework. Her presence and the bond with the others soothed many of my background worries and dulled the drive to act at all times, an ideal influence for Crafting.

  The looted reagents were little more than filtered MP sources of non-standard alignments. Explains how she called Hunter to this world. Most entities can be lured with enough reality-bending aligned MP. Charging the enchantments took all my focus. Funneling unstable MP through my low quality tools required enormous strain on my aura.

  Riena frowned at my set up. “You should really consider a Crafting companion like a drone or golem. If that’s too much, then a dedicated table could alleviate these struggles. It’s a miracle you enchanted spatial runes at all with a simple gold imbuer.”

  “I’ll put that on the requirements for tier 5 Crafting,” I said.

  When I finished, I held my Fatecutter to the light. The sleek seax was long for a dagger, but slightly too short to be a shortsword. The edged side was straight and longer than the blunt side, which started flat at the handle and then angled to meet the edge at a sharp tip. Bone and mithral blended to make Damascus steel ripples throughout the weapon. Intricate runes were all around the blade and blood-red imp leather handle. They glowed with rainbow patterns as different sets flared with my intent. Reality warped around the seax in a very thin layer. This will do.

  Later the next morning, Gabriel and I were laying across from each other, panting. Blood soaked the arena and was further darkened by our seeping wounds. She pulled Fatecutter from her eye and tossed it to me. “Fuck this thing.”

  I caught it by the handle, the motion stressing my injuries and drawing forth more ichor. The fight was over—neither of us had won—but the longer I put off applying a healing potion, the longer I lingered in this liminal period between our battle and the rest of the day. It had been a good duel, at least for me. Can anyone blame a girl for wanting to stretch it out?

  Nyla broke the magical moment by standing to our side and saying, “Have you two considered—I don’t know—just talking to each other instead of whatever the hell this thing is?”

  We both turned our heads and said, “This is talking.” For what could be a more true expression of the soul than mortal contest? Blood, claws, and steel replaced questions, platitudes, and small talk. When warriors met throughout history, most did not share a language, yet only their enemies knew them best. Each hero has a merciless side that only a hated foe can draw out.

  Gabriel had not forgiven me for wrecking her life. I had not forgiven her for trying to wreck mine. The blood debt betwixt us must be drowned in pain and struggle, both sides seeing the scale favored in the opposite direction. Our only harmony laid in the swirling life essence on the scarred sandstone.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  A laughter bubbled out of us as we realized our simultaneous answer. Here, we diverged. My laugh reverberated with the grand cadence of a warrior queen sharing a moment of levity with her troops. Gabriel chortled like a creature from the pit, all dark and serpentine. The hero and the monster: one could not exist without the other.

  Nyla shook her head and left us to our mad mirth. Solemnity found me quickly as the blood loss had become noticeable. I let out a long breath and used a healing potion before also making my way to the next class. For one glorious moment, my uniform shared the red trim of a Vanguard, but then I twisted on my cleaning ring and went back to the realities of adulthood.

  When I entered my enchanting class, several students glanced away quickly while others gave me strained smiles. My performance in the dungeon break had softened what happened in the seminar, but my lessons were memorable, which was the point.

  As I sat down, Vanya said, “Hey, Mari.”

  “Hey?” I inquired back.

  “Yeah, ‘hey’. I’ve thought it over, and really, nothing has changed since you first told me you were an inquisitor. I changed. As I got to know you, my worst assumptions faded away only to come back as I really got to know you. I’m not going to say your worldview is perfect, or that I’m okay with your thoughts and feelings, but I do trust you… to a point.”

  “I… don’t expect people to share my values. It would break them. I would like people to understand that my intentions are noble and good, but that’s not necessary. Only my enemies need to know my true intent.”

  She rested a hand on mine and squeezed. “This rage in you… You think it’s only directed toward monsters, but acts of cruelty make a cruel person. There is more bleedover to your treatment of humans than you realize, and of course there would be. Your standards of what is and isn’t human are completely arbitrary. I’m far more worried about you than I am scared of you.”

  I squeezed back, a little tingle going up my arm by unknown magics. “Few have ever been concerned for me. Among my named colleagues, many were concerned about a child in their number, but not about me. No one worries about Exemplar.”

  “I’m worried about Mari.”

  “That persona is no less handcrafted. She cleaves closer to what the human in me wants to be, not what the world needs me to be. Going to school, making friends, and finding love are all performative acts to make my spirit stronger and help me fight longer without shattering. Is that really so different from your concerns about your own mental health?”

  “I’m not planning to lose my battle.”

  I stared into her eyes and saw her infinity. “Neither am I, but my victory conditions differ.”

  “Do they? The world is getting safer every day. Death is less inevitable. You have an advanced shade with a minor regeneration ability. It’s entirely possible you’ll live for centuries.”

  I snorted. “When humanity gets through a high tier raid without significant casualties, I’ll consider the possibility.”

  Conversations ceased as class started. The course had shifted from a focus on spatial mechanics and other enchanting generalities to nitty-gritty specifics explored through novel case studies. It demanded most of my attention while I prepared Chase’s old cursed gear for a new purpose. Jeremiah’s scrawling was evident throughout the piece and would have to be removed to make the most of the deathknight’s legacy.

  Throughout the class, I had only made some headway in that task and then rejoined my team in the catacombs for another dungeon run. As Riena pulled me into the bond, their weary postures straightened and excited energy pulsed through them. Nyla in particular bounced on the balls of her feet. “Woo! Glad Exemplar is back. These aren’t the same without her.”

  We were gathered in a circular room with two rows of brown stone columns leading to a 3-story tall interlocking metal door. Sconces high above flickered with blue light that reflected on the smooth onyx below. Scarlet and her team were resting on pillars away from us. At my approach, she ceased her repose and walked to me. “Before we begin this arduous 3-layer crawl…” Scarlet placed three more of Axel’s journals in my hands. “...I want to know what our journal bearer has learned about the collaborator.”

  I stored them in my ring. “My reports went out to everyone, but you want to personally make sure I’m not lying. I would be offended if you hadn’t already earned my ire for far worse slights.” Part of me wanted to drive a fist through her face and then repair the damage with my own dentistry skills. A lack of anesthetic shouldn’t bother such a hardened inquisitor after all. Instead, I decided to twist the knife. “Or is this really about how I found an elf trying to destroy the school before you did?”

  Scarlet rolled her eyes. “One: she’s a lich. That’s a different kind of monster. Two: I’ve already found one elf trying to destroy school. She just has you wrapped around her finger.”

  Riena rested a hand on my clenching fist and sent calm down the bond. “Answer her question. She won’t assist until you do, and we have a lot of ground to cover.”

  I let out a long breath. “Axel had a gift for languages. One of the initial journals is part of a series where he integrates with a foe of humanity to better destroy them from within only to make friends and get cold feet. The political tangents indicate a youth slowly radicalizing himself to xenophilia and misanthropy. More interesting are the cultural secrets and methods he uncovered from his time among certain monsters, many of which were later destroyed in proper purges.” I had performed several of them myself. “Some of the secrets are available nowhere else.”

  Scarlet flicked a dismissive hand. “Pottery and basket weaving of dead cultures are of no use to me. What was in the other journal?”

  “A species’ art is the best way to submerge yourself in their mindset. Once you think like the enemy and can believe what they believe, picking them apart becomes trivial. But no matter, the other journal is only a trap and would get you killed. I hope no one is reading the rest of these.”

  “Exemplar said it would kill them. This school didn’t let in anyone foolish enough to ignore such a warning.” She scrutinized me. “The picture this paints of Axel is too clean, too standard traitorous dribble. There must be something personal or a unique deficiency about him to cause this behavior. We can’t rule out that he might be a puppet.” The woman pondered for a moment and then relaxed. “Let's continue with this errand.”

  I rolled my eyes before summoning my Oni armor and walking to the door. We were searching for the Orslin city Jeremiah showed me on our date since Axel could be staying with them. Another first year had found a Sphinx in a portal and had solved the required riddles to discover the accepted path into the hidden city, which was a very risky thing to do since Sphinx were demons and only engaged in their riddle games for cultural reasons. By going through this path, the Orslins wouldn’t be immediately hostile to us. If we invaded directly, the resulting fight might destroy any clues related to Axel.

  As I explored the lock with various ice-lock-picks, Riena asked, “Does your group want into our empathetic link?”

  Scarlet sneered. “No, you’ve meshed minds with Vanya, Xiandra, and other monsters. Any number of memetic traps could be lurking within your psyche. Better that an ambush kills us today than becoming the next Axel later.”

  Riena let out a relieved sigh. “Good. I don’t want to understand you at any level. Your prejudice disgusts me.”

  The other Commander laughed. “At least you are honest. Honest fools are no threat to humanity.”

  “I can’t say the same about fearmongering reactionaries. Why did you insist on accompanying us?”

  “The only other team that volunteered was Gabriel’s, and I’m not trusting a mission this important to a team effectively run by its monster Vanguard. If Tony can’t learn to bring her dog to heel—” Scarlet stopped talking as the rest of my team stiffened and eyed me. I couldn’t fathom why. I was only planning how to break all of the woman’s bones without killing her. The skull was the hardest. Of the 22 bones comprising it, the cranial 8 were difficult to shatter without exposing the victim to death via accidental brain mushing. Perhaps replacing it with an enchanted skull would work? That or a fixation system. Yes, with enough resources, I could put together an iron maiden that would sustain the woman’s life for several months until she mended. If it had a few additional mechanisms, I could make sure the bones mended in elven features. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

  Riena coughed. “Please stick to mission relevant topics.” Scarlet didn’t respond as her eyes darted between my companions and me.

  After probing the insides, I worked out the shape of the required key and conjured an ice version in the hole. Gears spun and winches whined before the door split into two and creaked open. I held up a hand to the teams and climbed up the doors with my Anytool. Yup, there they are. Both doors were lined with runic traps that triggered if a fake key was used. After disabling those, I crept into the entrance.

  This twenty by twenty meter room had 30 equally spaced exits on the other three sides. Riena scanned the doorless corridors and said, “Okay, we’ll split up like we planned. For my team, if you feel the SOS pulse over the bond, come back here and aid that group. We’re looking for two secret dungeon entrances. After that, our teams will go their separate ways.” In the next dungeon, we had to find another secret entrance, and then the final dungeon should lead to the Orslin’s city.

  Much to my dismay, Scarlet followed me down a path. The woman had put hair into a tight braid that ended in a knife enchanted to not cut the wearer. Her dark elven leather was etched with runes of pain amplification and redirection. It had actual studs that didn’t do anything because her Crafter was as ignorant of proper armor smithing as her Commander generally was. In her left hand, she carried manacles and chains. In the other was a glowing fire poker. Thumbscrews lined her belt and a loaded heavy crossbow rested on her back.

  While I checked for traps down the apparently smooth gray stone corridor barely taller than I was and narrow enough that we had to proceed single file, I asked, “What is your second ability?” I needed to know for tactical reasons.

  “What’s yours?”

  I bristled. “You know damn well I don’t have one.”

  “There is a hint of a lie in that.”

  “The cumulative results of my Crafting certainly feel like a second ability, but it isn’t the same. Everything I’m using could have been made by another with materials I harvested. Crafters are versatile and ultimately interchangeable. Similar results could have been achieved by joining a team with a dedicated Crafter, but persuading them to support my unique needs could have been difficult.”

  “I did notice that your team had far shoddier gear than yourself. Why do you require so much of it?”

  A tap of an ice-pole detected a pressure plate. Further examination found razors ready to shoot from every crack and blend all the occupants. I covered the surface in ice and had us continue forward. “Bootstrapping. I am not flushed with funds and needed tools to gather the materials needed to make their equipment. If I’m more equipped, it lets me make all the equipment faster. That isn’t obvious due to my initial lack of skill in the role.” Everyone really should have tier 4 gear.

  “There it is again, a hollow truth missing all that is unsaid.”

  “Yes, but your first ability doesn’t detect truth, it detects lies. You’re inferring a lie of omission because it is difficult to determine if I’m intentionally omitting facts or merely being brief. I’ve talked around unintelligible Fey, little inquisitor. Did you presume to successfully interrogate one of the named? Enough stalling. Out with your second ability. A battle could be upon us at any moment.”

  Scarlet huffed. “Inspire. I can make the morale of any squad unshakable. Whenever my team is buckling under the weight of responsibility, a few words from me bolster their spirits. Heroes are drawn to my words and want reasons to be in my presence because I can banish the doubt in their hearts.”

  “A very useful ability that’s useless on me. Why are we paired up?”

  “I wanted to see you in action. Besides, the ability works on me, so it’s not completely useless. Nothing can rattle me.”

  “We’ll see.” And we would, because around the corner a squad of deep dwarves lay in ambush. The xenophobic variant of their higher elevation cousins had a policy of kill first, talk never. Considering the amount of parasitic psychic monsters their kind dealt with, it was a reasonable reaction.

  As soon as my head peeked around the corner, the pale-skinned men in mushroom leather armor fired the rune covered cannon they were clustered around. I summoned Fatecutter into my left hand and chopped the space in front of me. As space rushed in to fill the gap, the cannonball caught that current and followed the cut around us at an accelerated speed.

  The resulting explosion created a wave of dust that I used to rush them. Before they could fire the cannon again, I threw an ice-knife into the eye of the gunner. They shouted something in deep dwarvish and flipped down the visors on their helms. Blue runes flickered to life on their armor and a thin forcefield covered each of them.

  My next ice-knife deflected back to me. I caught it and tossed it aside before summoning Hunter in my right hand. “More for the harvest!” he cheered.

  Three of them fired crossbow bolts at the same time. None of them were aimed to hit me, but they glowed purple and formed a net between them. I lashed out with my seax and cut the reality of the spell. One cord in the net severed, which was enough for me to turn intangible and fly through the gap. Cut Reality was an extremely versatile ability, but at only tier 4, it would struggle to affect anything but magic.

  When I turned solid, I was among them. While Hunter’s inner blade could sever a lich’s arm, the duller outer blade was still sharp enough to spill entrails. Three of the dozen fell to clutch their stomachs as my Fatecutter severed the weak ties between such hateful creatures.

  Two of them turned on each other with their axes. The rest maintained military discipline and boxed me in with pikes. When their fallen companions rose under Hunter’s control, a dwarf with slightly more embellished armor blew his whistle and enchantments on my corpse minions exploded in lightning.

  I sheathed myself in a block of ice. My frozen visage watched the electricity fail to conduct through magically pure water. The surviving dwarves were equally unfazed by the blast. Perhaps their boots insulate them?

  Once the corona discharge faded, I slipped from my self-imposed prison as a cloud of mist and flowed through the troops to their leader. The dwarves drew silver knives and lunged while shouting the same alarm. I wove between their too slow attacks until Hunter was looped around the neck of the sergeant. An instant to turn solid and a flick of the wrist was enough to end the man’s life. His head and body joined the fray on my side as I turned to the cannon.

  The device was primed and charged. All it needed was a target. I kicked the pitons holding it in place and dropped Hunter to turn the three ton cannon and fire at the five dwarves running to me while one of them held off the undead.

  In my hasty preparations, I had not activated the sound dampening. The siege engine roared like a dragon with the sniffles. Only my aura preserved my ears. The dwarves had other concerns than maintaining their hearing.

  A magically infused ball of metal tore through two of them, turning them into kinetic shrapnel as their bodies exploded with enough force that their blood power washed the stone and dug grooves. Their bones shot at crossbow velocities, moving through their compatriots as I turned intangible.

  My undead minion didn’t survive the blast nor did any of the dwarves. Scarlet chose that moment to peek back around the corner. “Well, that was quick.”

  I returned to the solid world and sighed before piercing the blank wall these men died defending with Fatecutter. The illusion hiding the secret entrance to the next dungeon collapsed into sparkling dust before vanishing.

  “Excellent, that’s one. All we need is—”

  Our team had worked out a few basic signals we could manage through the link. Each of us carried bitters and candy to send a kind of Morse code through rapid consumption. I didn’t need such a crutch to fake feelings, but the rest were unpracticed. Riena sent an ‘objective found’ signal down the bond that I returned.

  “—to find the other one.”

  I held up my hand to forestall the woman. “Riena did. I’m afraid this is where we’ll split ways. You can secure this entrance while I rally with my team. I would say it has been a pleasure, but then we would both know I’m lying.”

  “You’ll come around to my way of thinking eventual—”

  I punched her in the chest and broke a rib before setting down one of my shittier healing potions and walking away.

  “What was that for?” She hissed through pain-clenched teeth.

  “Figure it out, inquisitor.”