Rayni and Omda consulted their map frequently as the Party travelled, and halfway through the second day they turned south. At first the new path looked like a game trail. It turned out to have been strategically kept clear by the cutting of small trees and clearing of the worst thorny bushes and brambles — a half-secret, according to the others, known only by a few on the principle of "don't ruin a good thing."
It was around that point that Ana knew for sure that the others were getting worried about her. The concern in their auras was strong enough by then to occasionally register — except for Kaira's of course, either because she didn't notice, didn't care, or was simply that good at masking.
Ana couldn't blame them — she hadn't been a very good companion for the past thirty or so hours. But she couldn't help it. There was a leaden lump in her gut, and every step she took away from the outpost — from Messy — made that lump heavier, dragging her down in a way that no level of Strength could help with.
She hated it, and she had no tools to deal with it. She wanted the feeling gone, but the only way she knew to make that happen was to turn back.
Sometimes she'd just stop. Without ever really deciding to, she'd turn around, looking back in Messy's direction. She'd focus on the knowledge that her girlfriend — her object of devotion — was safe, and the lump would be a little lighter for a while. But the weight always returned, and knowing that she wouldn't feel Messy's warmth and affection for days more made it worse.
Without warning Kaira declared, "Alright, that's it," dragging Ana out of her reverie. "Ana, with me. The rest of you, give us some space." She added something in Wanteul to Jisha. She then let go of her crossbow with one hand and threw her arm around Ana's shoulders, urging her forward as the others slowly lagged behind.
"What do you want, Irry?" Ana asked despondently.
"For you to stop being such a damn joy-sucking vortex would be a great start," Kaira replied casually. "I know you've never been in love before, but a week apart ain't the end of the world! AND—" she added quickly before Ana could snap back, "— even if it feels like it, you don't have to go around pushing your woe into every soul around you. I know we asked you to come along, so I somewhat brought this on myself. But I also know that Telly and Touanne have been teaching you to mask your aura. Please, Ana. Do it!"
For a moment, Ana just stared. She smothered an impulse to pick Kaira up and throw her into the nearby stream. A number of replies suggested themselves, telling Kaira to do any number of intensely uncomfortable and anatomically implausible things, but none of them seemed worth the brief satisfaction. She just felt too down to bother, and ended up with a muttered, "Sorry. I'm not… this is still pretty new to me. The whole aura thing."
"What about the whole 'being madly in love' thing?"
"I'm not in love."
"Sure," Kaira said dismissively. "That explains the general feeling of the world being a dark and cruel place that you're giving off."
"I'm really not. I stand by that. But… Messy's important to me, alright? I don't like being away from her."
Kaira nodded sagely. "Yep. That's a completely normal way to feel about someone you don't love. But, fine. You're clearly not having a great time. So, leaving your denial out of it, let me tell you that it's going to get better. You're used to her making you feel good. You're used to always having her around, telling you how much she loves you, holding you, giving you those sickeningly sweet glances — all that good stuff. And now you won't get that for a few days. It sucks. I get it. I've been through the same thing more times than I care to admit. But it's going to get better. You'll still miss her, but in a few days you won't feel like the world is a gray, pointless waste of time anymore. Okay?"
"Okay," Ana said. She wasn't sure what else to say, because beyond Kaira's insistence that Ana was in love, she wasn't exactly wrong. Ana was used to having Messy around, making her feel good about herself. Just knowing that Messy was near was enough to make pretty much anything bearable.
"Good. Love to hear it," Kaira said. "But until then, please let me help you practice masking. You may literally be killing me."
Ana let Kaira help her practice.. If she was going to be feeling this strongly about something, she figured she may as well use it to get better at a useful skill. That help mostly took the form of a good-natured "Fuck's sake, Ana!" when she slipped up, but it still helped her feel productive. And it was a good distraction, too; focusing on suppressing her aura kept Ana busy until they found their next demon.
This one, they all agreed, was not something they could send Jisha against alone. Omda reported that the possessed bear had a Threat Level of Lethal to him, making it a pretty damn tough fight for anyone in their Level range. To Jisha… hell, the thing might hurt her enough to cause real problems for Ana, and that was if it didn't just smack the girl hard enough with one of its paws to send her outside of Ana's range. No, this was going to be a group effort.
Ana was pretty sure either she or Kaira could have killed the thing themselves if they had to, but not without serious risk of injury. Besides, they wanted Jisha to contribute as much as possible; if they could get her another Major Growth Crystal, she'd be able to reach Level 5. This would both make her more effective, and thus more useful to the Party, and very happy, which everybody else had quietly agreed was a goal in itself.
Their strategy for taking the bear down was simple, really. Ana and Tor would grab and then keep its attention. Kaira, being a huge, bright beacon to demons once she started Shaping, would hang back as an emergency option in case the thing needed to die fast. Rayni and Omda would treat the creature as moving target practice, aiming for its joints or, if they felt cocky, eyes. And Jisha, holding a poleaxe for which she had no Skill but plenty of enthusiasm, would do as much damage as she could without getting hurt.
A simple strategy, yes. And one that somehow ended up with Ana hanging on for dear life, her arms wrapped tight around the thing's neck and screaming, "Its legs! Cripple its legs!" in French as she used her feet to keep the thing from mauling her with its claws.
Meanwhile, Kaira was screaming, "Let go! Just let go and let me cook it!" Which Ana was sorely tempted to do, but she was confident that she could control the creature well enough for Jisha to get some licks in.
Jisha, God bless her, did what she could. She was nothing if not determined, stabbing and hacking with her polearm as hard and fast as she could. The bloated thing already had deep cuts all over and was moving jerkily, and finally, after Tor darted in and hacked at its back legs, it lost its ability to support itself and crashed to the ground. On top of Ana.
That was fine. It was nothing she hadn't experienced before. Sure, the last time it happened she'd been trapped under a pile of corpses. She's been convinced that she was going to die, suffocating as she was slowly pressed into the mud and gore. She may have had some flashbacks to that moment and started screaming incoherently, throwing the bear off her in a surge of desperate strength. And she may then have stradled that bear, locking her legs under it and raining down punches that made what she'd done to Karti look like loving caresses. But it was fine. She was fine. That was what she told herself as flesh split and bone shattered under her fists.
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She didn't come back fully to herself until her bonuses faded, and the pain and fatigue kicked in. She'd broken her way through the thing's thick, spiky skull, and then she'd kept going until her fist went all the way into its brainpan. Her hands were cut and bleeding, but nothing felt broken. Beside her, spattered with blood and gore, knelt Jisha; she had her axe out again, and seemed to have taken one of the bear's forelegs off at the elbow. Though the stump was steaming a bit, so she must have had help. Omda had pinned the other, and it looked like Tor had amputated that one.
Right, Ana thought. I stopped defending myself at some point. At first she'd been swatting the demon's paws away between her blows, but she'd stopped at some point. Because she hadn't needed to, once the others piled in.
There was undisguised awe on Jisha's face as she asked, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Ana said, looking at her hands, thinking, Not even a split knuckle. Jesus!
"No, Ana. Are you okay?" Jisha asked again. "You don't look hurt, just… you were screaming a lot."
Ana really didn't feel like being questioned about her mental health just then. But she smothered the scowl she felt coming, and instead of snapping at the girl she said, in a tone that brooked no argument, "I'm fine. Thank you. Now drop it. How did you do? Was your reward good?"
When Ana dismissed her concern, Jisha frowned. Then, at Ana's question, she grinned, unable to contain herself as she asked, "What do you think?"
Unsurprisingly, Jisha was now labelled as a Level 5 Fighter.
"I got a bonus Crystal for killing something stronger than the highest Level person in the Party, too! And two Achievements! Or one, at tier two I mean. Party Hunter. It gave me five Advancement Points! That's as much as a whole Level!"
Ana forced a smile. Not because she begrudged Jisha her Levels — she was quite satisfied that the Party's efforts had paid off — but because she just didn't feel like smiling. Her malaise was only gone as long as she was fully distracted; now half her mind was back on just how far away Messy was.
But she didn't want Jisha to see that. God forbid the girl pity her. She hated pity. So she put on her best practiced smile, one where her eyes glittered just a little, and said, "Congratulations! You're going to Level faster than me at this rate."
"Oh, I doubt that," the girl said demurely. Any praise at all from Ana had her looking away and smiling, and she did the same now. "You're— I've talked to some of the others, those who speak this 'Wanteul' I know now, and you're a— a phenomenon! I'm only doing so well because you all are carrying me."
"Sure, that helps," Ana agreed. "But you've got the chutzpah—"
"Pardon? Chutzpah?"
"Couilles? You've got the couilles to make it happen. Both in my martial arts classes and now, here, you've shown drive and determination. You know what I've seen in most of the Stolen? Surrender. So many of them won't even try to make it here. They think they're in hell, or that they don't stand a chance, or they've simply lost so much that they can't imagine things getting better. All they have left is anger. That's not you. You're a survivor. I respect that, and it's going to take you far."
Jisha tried to speak, but all that came out was a delighted giggle, her light brown skin taking a warm, red tone as she blushed furiously. If she'd had trouble looking at Ana before, now she covered her mouth and turned all the way to the side, so Ana wasn't even in her peripheral vision.
It was, Ana thought, adorable. More than that, though, the sheer delight and simple happiness that radiated through Jisha's aura were strong enough that Ana not only felt it, but responded with a genuine smile of her own.
It wasn't anything like being with Messy. Jisha's happiness at Ana's praise couldn't compete with the love and contentment that Ana felt when she was with her partner. But it was enough to add some color back into the world, and that fact in itself made her feel… she wasn't sure, really. Good, certainly, and having a reason to feel good right now was. Besides, feeling happy because of someone else's happiness was probably the closest she'd ever get to true empathy. If this was what other people felt when they did something nice for someone, she could see the appeal.
A voice from the side brought her out of her thoughts. "If you're done breaking the poor girl," Kaira said with a barely restrained grin, "would you mind getting off the carcass? We've got some harvesting to do, and daylight's wasting."
Looking around, Ana realized that everyone had been watching her and Jisha, listening to them speak a language that possibly not a single other person in this entire world understood. None of them seemed impatient or anything, but the general atmosphere of amusement almost, almost made Ana blush herself.
"There's a stream about two hundred feet that way," Rayni said with a gesture. "You should probably take Jisha and get cleaned up. You're a mess. Again."
"You know," Ana said, getting to her feet, "a girl might think she'd get a little more respect after saving this whole damn place. Especially from someone she specifically risked her life for."
"And you might, if you hadn't complained so much about how people were treating you. Can't have it both ways, Ana. Go get cleaned up before that gore starts to really stink."
"Fine," Ana said. It wasn't like Rayni was wrong; Ana's arms were covered in crimson, black and purple to the elbows, and she could feel the splatter drying on her face. Jisha was nowhere near as bad, but she hadn't gotten away clean either. None of the frontliners had; getting bloody was an occupational hazard.
As she led Jisha away, she checked her single notification.
Congratulations! Your Party has defeated: Possessed Pine Bear (Threat: Considerable). Based on your contribution, you have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Medium). For fighting in the defense of your object of devotion, you have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Minor) as a bonus.No Skill Levels. Well, that wasn't a surprise. The fight hadn't even been hard; she'd just had a flashback and an embarrassing freak-out. But one of her own goals was to improve her Weapons Skills, with the eventual goal of merging them; she'd even traded weapons with Tor, who was happy to let her use his sword in exchange for her versatile hammer-axe. She had a brace of short throwing darts, too, similar to kunai. She was supposed to be using those to try and get and improve the Throwing Skill. Grappling a bear had not been part of the plan, but then the rush of all her bonuses activating hit her, and she'd just ended up that way.
It had, she insisted to herself, made sense at the time. Unbreakable Grip, Twist and Lock, and Close Quarters; she had two Enhancements and one Perk specifically improving her ability in a grapple. And she'd needed to stop the bear from going after Jisha; what better way than to get almost literally in its face and control its forelimbs?
In hindsight it was insane. It was also fairly unhelpful, since Jisha had barely dared to swing her poleaxe at the thing. Ana silently vowed to do better.
"Does Kaira always curse so much when she uses magic?" Jisha asked as they walked. "She was quite… expressive."
"Is that what it is?" Ana asked. Come to think of it, Ana had recognized Kaira's constant, low mumbling as she Shaped as Wanteul. "I thought she was saying some kind of mantra. Something to help her focus, you know?"
"Maybe it is?" Jisha suggested? "But she was saying some very crude things about the bear and its parents."
"Yeah, sounds about right for the Kaira I know," Ana said.
The stream was shallow, quick, clear and, above all, cold. Jisha was quite expressive herself as she washed her arms and face, and Ana couldn't blame her. It was as bad as the plunge pool at the baths, but here they had only the broken-up sunlight to warm them instead of a gloriously hot soaking pool. Really they should have taken the opportunity for a proper wash, but that, they quickly agreed, was not happening until they had a fire to warm themselves around afterward. That, and a sheet or tent cloth to screen them from Tor and Om. It didn't matter how much she trusted the two men in the Party; she still didn't want them to see her in just a towel.
They continued for another three hours that day. With two scouts they found another demon, which they killed with much less drama; as long as Ana stuck to doing her job and refrained from climbing on the enemy, Jisha could do some real damage with her poleaxe. Then, after a good night's sleep, they walked for most of the morning with no interruptions, until Omda came back with uncharacteristic excitement in his eyes.
"Delve," he said. "Less than a mile. Decent size; not too big. Time for some fun!"
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