"Oh gods Natalie are you all right?" Vancy looked shocked. Elica looked more repulsed. Larianne was.. impressed? It's hard to say with her.

  "Yeah," I groaned, lowering myself to my seat. "Camogie. Blocking drills."

  Elica frowned. "I thought they gave you guys sticks. You're supposed to use those to block with, not your own body."

  "Yeah yeah," I said, adjusting myself carefully at the bench. I started cutting my broccoli, moving gingerly.

  Vancy was shaking her head, and pushed herself up from the table. "I can see from here that finger's broken, and I don't like the way you're walking. Grab your tray if you must, but I'm insisting that you go to the healer's station with me."

  I groaned. "I don't wanna walk all the way there."

  "Well for one thing that's exactly why it's important that you do," Vancy said.

  Elica rolled her eyes. "Also, she doesn't have to. She must be really hurting if she's forgotten she can just vanish herself there. Like she does all the time without thinking twice."

  Vancy was holding my arm to support me as we stepped out of my void-portal and stopped in front of the medical station. She paused, blinking her eyes hard. "That was really weird, actually," she said, and then turned to business. She knocked on the door like a cop, with a closed fist that rattled the hinges.

  Licard opened the door, and looked startled. "Again? Didn't I mend you this morning?"

  "She didn't stay mended," Vancy said, pushing me towards the muscle-bound healer.

  "I'll say. Broken fibula, fingers, boxer's fracture, internal bleeding.. " he shook his head, and picked me up like a teddy bear. He turned around and set me on a high padded bench inside his office, then started holding his hands out to start the process. "Deep impacts. Blunt instrument. Camogie again?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  He shook his head. "Well, at least you didn't get any frostbite from camogie this time." He pushed my skirt up to my knee, and I gasped now that I could see my calf. It was swollen up hugely, the skin stretched so tight it was shiny. It was all discolored, bruise-blue at the outside but a deep fruity red over most of the surface.

  Vancy cocked her head to the side. "Frostbite from camogie?" She glanced at my leg and then turned to face the wall.

  "Long story," I managed through gritted teeth. Seeing that made the pain a lot more real for me.

  Licard scoffed and tried to look over his shoulder to Vancy. "Your friend gets hurt a lot." He had to pivot from the hips, his neck did not turn very far and his shoulder was hard to see past.

  "Only at first," I managed. "It'll get better. Just gotta push through the hard part."

  Licard raised an eyebrow. "Or, and hear me out, you don't. If you are taking hits like this, get out of the way. You're lucky, kid, lucky and tough. People die from beatings like this."

  "What?" I blurted out.

  [ HP: 3/9 ]

  Oh. Yeah, six points of damage can kill a first-level player-character. But-

  But I wasn't using my sorcery during practice. So instead of 7, I was at 4 Strength. 6 damage instead of 3. Also, and Licard was entirely correct about this, I could step back when I saw that practice was going to be extra tough. I didn't need to let Egnul keep beating me for the rest of the day, I could have bailed.

  The pain started to seep out of me, and I relaxed. It took a long time to finish, and I only became aware of how badly I had been hurting when it started to go away. "Oh, damn," I muttered. "Yeah, I got- I let myself get pretty bad there. Sorry Healer Licard. Thank you Vancy."

  Vancy stamped her foot. "Thank him, and apologize to me! I got scared, Natalie!"

  "And a little grossed out," I pointed out. The swelling was mostly down, and the red bruise was fading to brown.

  "All right yeah it was kinda gross," she admitted. "Nobody else seems to get hurt playing sports like you do!"

  "I'm sure someone-"

  "No no," Healer Licard said. "She's right. We're two days in and you've been in twice. The last time I've had a patient like that, he had a death wish and was deliberately getting injured."

  Vancy gasped. "Natalie, do you-"

  "No," I cut her off. "I do not want to die. I just... I have a lot of stuff to do."

  Licard prodded my shoulder with a finger, and nearly pushed me over. "You do not respect your own pain, is what you meant to say. Stop acting like it doesn't matter whether or not you get hurt."

  "I do- " I started.

  "No you don't," he contradicted me with a flat, hard tone. "But you'd better start. Now, you promise me that you're going to start avoiding suffering. Or I'll heal your fingers together and name you Mittens."

  I stared at him in shock, I had nothing to say to that.. But the shock was bigger than that. I saw something floating over him. Healer Licard. Love interest. Antagonist. The Healer.

  First the professor and now this?! Why is this game shoving me at older men?! This is clearly a double-standard, right? The cultural thing about older men and younger women, but encoded into the game and its love-interest mechanics. Or- oh, or it's the game recognizing that I'm almost forty years old and it's acknowledging that maybe I'm not okay with seducing teenagers and would prefer someone closer to me- man, there's just no good answer here, fuck.

  Licard grimaced. "Sorry," he smirked a sort of self-conscious apology. "Humor in the medical profession gets pretty dark."

  "I should say so," I replied, my voice kind of subdued this time.

  "Yeah, I should say so," Vancy was just as shocked. "That was gross! But, for real, Natalie, you gotta promise him that you're gonna stop tripping and falling onto doorknobs or whatever, all right?"

  "I'm not- ugh, yes, fine, all right, I'll start dodging and stop going into dangerous situations." I sulked. But now I've got a new problem: why was it so hard for me to promise that? why was I so resistant to avoiding pain and suffering? did I actually have some kind of death wish?

  The problem with martyrdom is that you can never tell if the moral imperative is leading you to danger and pain, or if the drive to danger and pain is making you act in a moral fashion.

  On top of the new problem that the healer himself is also a love interest. And on top of the problem that I'm still sorting out the ethics and the offensiveness of the age-gap issue as a whole.

  Damn it'd be nice if something around here got less complicated instead of worse.

  I met Tiviti outside the dorm hall right after the bells. I was dressed in leathers, with daggers strapped on. She was wearing a mottled set of armor, it looked patched together to fit her elongated frame. A combination of leather, chainmail, riveted fabrics, quilted padding, and a few hard plates at the contact surfaces, it all looked very haphazard. Her short pale hair was clipped tightly to her head, and she held a small acorn-cap helmet under her arm. Her other hand held a scabbard and a sword, held loose in her grip instead of being attached to a belt or harness.

  "You're ready?" I asked.

  "I am. Why do you have daggers?"

  "For dagging."

  "No, you're a sorceress. Why do you need a blade?"

  "It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it," I pointed out.

  "Very wise. I'll take a catapult."

  "What?"

  "If we're listing off things that we won't need but-"

  I cut her off. "Just stop. I'll show you what I've been doing, but this is not going to be easy. And where we're going, silence is a good friend."

  She nodded, and set the helmet on her head. She drew her sword from the scabbard with a ringing singing slice of steel, and held the sheath in one hand and the blade in the other.

  I opened a portal, and she followed me into it. I closed that side, sealing us into a light that burns through eyelids, and then out the other side. The second door opened, and we were suspended ten feet above the water in a cave of endless darkness. The air was stale and rotten, starved by too many mouths and not enough green. We were way out on the lake's surface, far from the entrance I had used last time.

  Tiviti leaned over me and peered around. "Well that's a hell of a thing," she said. "Are the monsters in the water?" From the very first word, the swimming things in there turned and started closing towards us, the tiny vibrations of her voice drawing their curiosity, and hunger, and rage. For these things, those are all the same expression.

  "And how," I said. I crafted steel to make a flat-bottomed boat for her to stand in, and then I wrapped the air around me and floated out of the portal, hovering out and away.

  The tall huntress stepped down gingerly and set one stretched-out foot after another into the boat, and tested it to take her weight. "Where is this place?" she asked.

  "Only about seven miles from the Academy," I told her, holding very still. Flying was new to me. And so far, I really liked it. But I was aware that the water was teeming with something unwholesome. Every sound was bringing them closer, curious.

  Tiviti pressed something on her cheekbones, and her eyes began to glow, throwing a pink sparkly light out into the deep darkness. She peered down into the water, and nodded. She glanced at me, then back down, and grinned. She could recognize these creatures as the same ones that she had smelled on me earlier.

  Huntress had her prey. She held the scabbard up in front of her, vertically like a bow, and switched the grip on her sword. With the pommel in between thumb and forefinger, she rested the blade against the scabbard's side, and then aimed down into the water.

  I was about to ask what the hell she was doing when mana flared, and the sword's blade shot out, suddenly longer than a lance, a narrow steel needle that shot into the water with barely a 'blrt' of disturbed surface. And then it snapped back, now dripping with a blood so red that it almost glowed in the light from my portal and her eyes.

  She moved her lips, mouthing a word. "One."

  Then she started stabbing out again and again, picking her targets. She swayed about, and the blade speared out in rapid strikes, returning each time with blood on the blade. I could feel the empty spaces in the water, the dark bodies, as they stopped swimming and started sinking. Whatever she was doing was very lethal, but my sense of the water was not clear enough for me to really feel her blade pierce it. Her attacks were too smooth and quick, they did not displace the water enough for me to register.

  "Nine. Ten. Eleven."

  Well, for damn sure she was figuring this out fast. I guess an Elygra huntress from the duende borders is a very good partner to bring to a monster mash. She frowned. "They're massing. They figured out the boat is the source. I need to retreat from this position."

  "Sure," I said. I conjured her a steel ladder back up to the portal. "You get up and climb in, I'll cover your escape."

  She nodded, and swiped the sword through the water to clean the blade before she sheathed it. She turned and went up the ladder in just a few steps- her absurdly long legs went up three rungs at a time. Meanwhile, I crafted void under the water's surface, and then a second and third. We were out in the deep water, I had calculated I could go a little harder out here.

  The third singularity was close to a monster and it was yanked close, one of its wiry limbs yanked into the supernatural grip of the void before it could swim itself free. The gravity crushed its arm off, severed messily in a spray of gore. I grinned to myself, in the dark. I smiled like nobody could see me. The riptide currents were yanking more and more of the creatures into lethal range.

  Tiviti turned around, staring back at me. She was ready to go. I dispelled the ladder and the boat, and then dispelled the singularities.

  The underwater explosions roared about, gouts of frothy pink water geysered up and out.

  [ You have earned 23 XP. You have 27 XP. ]

  "Just a little more," I said to her, looking over my shoulder. I just needed to crest this next level. Just needed to destroy these fucking monsters. I just needed one goddamned problem in my life that I could solve by being strong. Just one thing that didn't hurt me or remind me of my failings. One challenge against me that I did not need to negotiate or placate or ask permission, I could just beat and solve. I dropped more voids into the thickest masses of gathered monsters, yanking at them and dragging them to their dooms.

  Three singularities going at the same time, I felt the call of the void. Felt the way that the ravenous pressure of its need drove my thoughts, simplified them, clean and simple. What I needed. How to get it. I felt the voids close, my sorcerous senses sharpened, I could feel those gravity wells like they were my own hands, grasping, tearing, taking, forcing.

  And then I closed my fists, releasing new detonations that crushed bodies and pulverized organs.

  [ You have earned 19 XP. You are a Level 5 Sorceress. You have 6 XP. ]

  "That's better," I said, sighing contentedly and floated myself over to the portal. Tiviti stared at me in naked shock, before the light grew too fierce for us to see each other.

  The portal closed behind and opened in front, and we were returned to the school. I floated a little further, then lowered myself to the ground. Leather boots crunched at the grass. She stepped forward, as if she only tenuously trusted the ground to stay beneath her. She looked around, and blinked void-light out of her eyes until she could see the false stars high above us. "What was that place?" she asked, her voice full of wonder. She seemed much more relaxed now, for some reason.

  "Which place?" I said. "They're both pretty weird."

  "Start with the bright place," she said. "What is that?"

  "It's called the void," I said, and I sat down on the grass. "But sometimes I think it's called that to misdirect me for some reason. It's a place without spaces, where everything is in proximity. I can open a way into it from anywhere, and once I'm inside I can open a way back out to almost anywhere as well."

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  "Almost?" she said, pacing around. She was moving idly, thoughtlessly, but covering a lot of ground. She looked ungainly, skeletally thin, but her movements came with a lot of strength and control.

  I lay back and stared up at the sky. "Certain magical barriers can cut me off. And it's best if I know where I'm going, rather than just guessing."

  She took off her helmet. She could palm it easily, her fingers were unnervingly long and narrow, but her skull was no bigger than my own. "Is it possible for you to open two doors to it at the same time?"

  "Not really," I said. "I can craft and levitate several steel daggers, or many shapes of wood. But that portal is what happens when I curve the void, singular definite article. There's not another void I can open as well. Whether I'm making a big door or a small one, it's the same place.

  "Can you make a door into it and a door out at the same time?" she asked next, staring at me with glowing pink eyes, pupils slitted like a cat's. Despite the darkness they did not widen or open, their aperture seemed fixed.

  "I tried once," I admitted. "It didn't work at first, so I pushed harder. Things started to get really hot, my skin burned in a second, so I stopped. I really don't think I'm supposed to experiment with it. I think... access to that space was a gift, from someone who did not owe me a very nice gift."

  I let her think about exactly what that would mean. The stars overhead twinkled, sharing light between them. One glow would start, and flare far away, and another crystal would catch that flicker and glow in turn, passing it along. Each of them split the light and filtered it, sending those shared lights all across the cavern and shining them down upon us, the people who lived buried miles from the cave's mouth.

  "What about the other?"

  "It doesn't have a name yet," I said. "The things there don't officially have a name yet either. They're old, and evil, and hungry. They were fiercely jealous of us all, we who live in a world where things grow, where food springs from nothing. Everything they have is stolen, everything they eat is scarce and skinny and spare. They don't know how not to be desperate. They would eat the whole world before they asked if there was another. So I cull them. Those I kill will feed the others and maybe satiate them for a while. Kill many and blunt their hunger."

  "It was some sort of cave, all sealed up," she said. "I could not see a path that led to any place I have ever been."

  "Sealed up for eons, maybe forever," I said, folding my hands behind my head. "And in a better world, it would stay sealed up forever."

  She looked at me sharply. "It will not?"

  "The will of stupid men can ruin anything," I said. "Even something as dark and ever-hungry as those things can be twisted into something more dangerous, when coins clink and greedy hearts think that nobody will ever know."

  "You're getting more metaphorical."

  "I do that," I said. "I've got a maudlin streak. What about you? You're acting a lot less intense now."

  "Yes," she said. "My home is five weeks away. I am not used to going so long without killing something. When I go so long... I can become intense as you say. But now I am better."

  "What, like you need to do that sometimes? You just have to kill periodically?"

  She did not answer. "You keep staring up there, but your eyes rove around. Like you're looking for something."

  "Yeah," I admitted, and sighed. "Even after all these years... You know what I miss? The moon."

  "What's a moon?"

  "Don't worry about it," I said. "Let's get inside and wash off. The air in that place stinks something fierce and it sticks to you before you know it."