Tybalt struck the cave wall behind him hard, knocking the wind from his lungs.

  He landed on his feet, coughed, cracked his neck, and took a step forward.

  “I didn’t see you use mana there at all,” Mariella said evenly, her gaze steady. “I told you to treat this like it was a real fight.”

  The soft exterior he had seen from her earlier seemed to have long ago disappeared, all her attention on forcibly drawing a fighting technique out of him that he did not yet fully understand. Her voice was almost cold.

  “I’m still figuring it out,” Tybalt replied. “You, um, caught me before I had quite decided what I was going to do.”

  With your fists.

  “Do you want to take a break?” she asked, still in a neutral voice.

  Even though he felt fairly certain he was going to get bruises if they kept going, he shook his head.

  “No. Getting into the flow of a fight helps me. The tension, adrenaline.”

  She nodded, and the corner of her lip twitched with the hint of a smile. But it was just that. A hint. Perhaps a faint sign of approval.

  Mariella had slammed him into the walls and floor of the cave five times now, with apparently minimal effort and no use of mana each time. She was only using basic martial arts that the necromancer knew equally well, bolstered by her impressive physical power and speed. Tybalt already knew her small stature hid incredible strength.

  He had imagined at first that she was enjoying throwing someone around who had often spoken to her sarcastically and with no regard for the authority her rank theoretically conveyed back when they were with the squad. But he was beginning to think that was just something he was projecting onto her.

  She certainly liked him, and she was definitely holding back far more physical power than she was showing him. That might be where most of her focus was going. Restraining herself. At her full strength, he knew that any given punch could break bone.

  He adjusted his stance, and Mariella stared at him, eyes slightly narrowed, waiting to see what he would do.

  Her expression, her voice, and her body language were all business. It was slightly jarring, how much of a different person she seemed than the naive, easily embarrassed girl he’d been flirting with for much of that day.

  Remember that she’s an officer, he thought. She’s just put that layer of reserve back up, from before she and I started really talking. More firmly than it was there in the first place.

  Tybalt didn’t think he had two modes like that. He had never learned to act. Certainly, he knew how to lie. But he’d never made the effort to try to suppress or change his own personality.

  An idea occurred to him as he thought about the concept of suppression, and Tybalt took another step forward.

  Mariella resumed her fighting stance and waited for him. She had been allowing Tybalt to make most of the first moves in this series of spars. That had its pros and cons.

  On the one hand, it allowed him to try different attack plans and made the pace of fighting more bearable for him. Unlike her, he had already broken a sweat despite mostly being on the receiving end of her punches, kicks, and throws, while she hardly let him lay a finger on her. If he couldn’t control the pace, he would probably run out of stamina far more quickly than either of them would prefer.

  On the other hand, it made it even more obvious how much of a non-threat he was at present. Which could have been discouraging, if Tybalt wasn’t enjoying this as an intellectual challenge.

  Let’s see if this works…

  He gathered mana around his fist and, without invoking the specific skill, he remembered how it felt to use Scrimshaw. He captured an aspect of that feeling in his hand and then lunged across the distance to Mariella.

  At almost the same moment he moved, he felt a system alert coming, but he suppressed it. There would be time for that later.

  She bent a little more at the knees, raised an arm to block his fist, and then her eyes widened. As his hand made contact with her forearm, her shoulder jerked back, followed by her whole body. Tybalt didn’t pursue. He just grinned.

  Mariella raised her right hand to lightly touch her left forearm, where his punch had landed. She winced slightly at the pressure from her own fingers. She nodded to herself. A nod of approval? She turned to face him.

  “What did you do?” she asked, smiling slightly.

  “I tried to weaken your bone at the moment of impact,” he said. “You’re all right? I didn’t break it?”

  He had already attempted this same move twice before, but it had been so ineffective that Mariella apparently hadn’t noticed him doing it. It was hard to use a skill in a combat situation that he normally used when circumstances were calm. Scrimshaw in particular seemed ill-suited for fighting, because his mana had trouble penetrating very far beyond his own hands. Normally, he’d had direct physical contact with bone when manipulating it in the past. When he had fixed his ribs, that had been while passing through a thin layer of flesh and holding very still. Softening up bone while punching through the dense muscle of Mariella’s arm, at the same time that she was moving and actively fighting him, was a different thing.

  But clearly, he had made a little progress.

  “Bruised it at most,” Mariella replied, brushing it off. “Your move needs a lot of work.” But her smile had widened. “Come at me again. You can fix it if you really break my arm, right?”

  “I think so.” To do real precision work with Scrimshaw, he thought he might have to slice her arm open and get a line of sight on the broken bones, depending on how bad the break was.

  “Well, if you’re not sure, I’ll just have to make sure you don’t actually injure me.”

  They resumed their stances.

  Tybalt tried the same thing again, this time aiming a bone-weakening roundhouse kick at her thigh bone.

  But Mariella sidestepped it and punched him in the stomach, taking the wind out of him and knocking him to the ground.

  He sucked in air and suppressed a wince. There were no broken bones, but even a glancing blow from her was just slightly less impactful than a haymaker from Tybalt himself.

  She’s still probably twice as strong as me, maybe more. It was hard to know the limits of his own strength when he was at a stage in his growth where the levels came relatively quickly.

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  “Sorry,” she said, shrugging. “I’m trying to hold back. The better you get at this, though, the less I’ll be able to.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “I’m going to kick your ass in time.”

  “I’d like to see that!”

  She sounded like she meant it.

  They went again. This time, Tybalt coated both hands in mana, and Mariella had to duck and roll to dodge him instead of deflecting him directly. When she couldn’t be sure which hand he would use to attack her bones, it was harder to block.

  He pivoted to go after her, and she swept his legs out from under him. He collapsed in a heap, tried to get up, and found her heel pressing down on his chest.

  “Stay down for a second,” she said. “I just had a thought, and I wanted to share before I forget.”

  “I guess I don’t have a choice,” Tybalt said, gesturing to Mariella’s foot. He pulled back the mana around his hands.

  I’ve never been with a woman who was stronger than me before, he thought. Not sure how I feel about it. I guess there’s something a little bit sexy about the fact that she could keep me down like this.

  “I think you should consider getting a war hammer,” Mariella said. “When we’re back in a populated area with a blacksmith.”

  “Because it’s made to break bones rather than chopping through flesh?”

  She nodded. “You can weaken bones with your power. It just makes sense. If you were swinging a war hammer at me, I think I’d have no choice but to use fire magic to keep you away. That’s if I knew what you were doing. If I didn’t, the first hit might cripple or kill. I can just see you mowing down enemies on the border with the Walian Empire.” She looked excited.

  “All right, I’ll remember that idea.”

  It was a bit of a bittersweet thought, though. Her framing reminded Tybalt that he had not yet tried to persuade Mariella to turn on the Kingdom. To betray everything she knew. That would be a difficult conversation, and neither of them was ready for it yet.

  She pulled her foot back and let Tybalt up.

  He wrapped mana around both hands, took a step forward, and stopped.

  “Something wrong?” Mariella asked.

  “Just had another idea,” he said.

  The Lieutenant licked her lips. “Show me.”

  He stepped back and pulled the mana away from the outside of his hands, to the interior. There was a hot sensation, but not nearly as bad as when he used Scrimshaw.

  Then he charged, right fist held ready to strike Mariella’s left shoulder.

  She chose to just take the punch. She didn’t move at all.

  Her facial expression didn’t noticeably change when he struck her, either.

  Damn. She’s a lot tougher than me. That was close to my full strength.

  He stepped back, in case she wanted to counter attack. But Mariella didn’t follow.

  “That hurt a little bit,” she said after a moment. “What did you do this time?”

  She’s studying what my powers do as much as I’ve been trying to figure out how strong she is, Tybalt thought. I still haven’t gotten her to use fire magic at all, unless we count me getting us attacked by beastfolk so we had to fight for our lives.

  “I hardened the bones in my fingers,” he said.

  Although all it seems to have done was make my punch sting slightly more.

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder if you could do both things at the same time…”

  So that was what he tried next. It didn’t work at first—he needed a lot of focus to make his mana produce either the bone weakening or bone hardening effects—but he had a patient partner.

  If it didn’t work once, that just meant he needed to try it twice. If it didn’t work the second time, the third was the charm.

  Master, I have news, came Baldwin’s voice in his mind.

  Tybalt was in mid-motion when he heard the revenant’s communication. His fist inches away from Mariella’s elbow, he lost control of his mana for a moment. The punch struck home, and the necromancer let out a little cry of pain.

  He collapsed to his knees, clutching at his fist, silently screaming.

  Fuck! Fuck!

  “Tybalt?” Mariella gasped out his name, darted forward, and put her arm around his back, steadying him with her body. “Are you all right?”

  “Just. Need. A minute.” Every word was an effort, and his whole hand felt like he was using Scrimshaw on the bones even as he spoke. He was trying very hard not to burst into tears in front of the woman he was beginning to think of as his human girlfriend—to contrast with his fox girlfriend.

  It wasn’t easy.

  At the key moment, when Baldwin’s voice broke his focus, Tybalt had accidentally weakened his own bones instead of strengthening them. He might also have strengthened Mariella’s bones at the same time. It was hard to be sure given the speed with which events had happened. Neither of those effects had diminished his momentum at all.

  The result was that he had struck Mariella with a full force punch—he knew she could take it—while probably making her arm as tough as steel wrapped in wool and turning his own fingers borderline arthritic.

  It’s a miracle I didn’t break every bone in my damn hand. But there were definitely some fractures there.

  Tybalt took deep, steadying breaths and raised his uninjured hand to gently wave Mariella off. When she finally, reluctantly let him go, he allowed himself to collapse onto his backside. All his attention went to his suffering hand.

  He used Scrimshaw through his uninjured left hand and began delicately massaging his bones in the right hand back into their proper shapes.

  All right, Baldwin, go ahead and give me your news, Tybalt sent with as much tranquility as he could muster.

  Is everything well with you, master? Baldwin asked. You took some time responding, and you don’t sound quite like yourse—

  Just fine, Tybalt responded, cutting him off. I was just… surprised. I was… in the middle of something. In future, before sending me a verbal message, send me a quick telepathic nudge, all right?

  Baldwin sent a quick assent.

  While they were communicating, Tybalt worked carefully to control his breathing and his facial expressions. Mariella was still watching him with concern etched across her brow, though she said nothing, probably trying not to distract him as he fixed his hand.

  Even as he tried to control his reactions to the pain, he also forced himself to confront it.

  Remember this pain, he told himself. Memorize how this feels in your bones, so this shit never happens to you again. Good mana control is your best friend…

  Baldwin began recounting what he’d witnessed.

  The miners showed up at camp, he sent. Volusia is promising rewards for any who join a militia to support the squad. From what I’ve gathered, he wants to recruit as many as he can. He sent some back to gather up able-bodied men.

  That’s pretty bad, Tybalt replied.

  I imagine they’ll be here in force in an hour or so, Baldwin sent. We missed any window of opportunity to attack, although honestly, I don’t think there was one. The squad is sick and hurt, but they’re probably still stronger than our force, until you recruit some beastfolk. Oh, and the miners think the beastfolk are the ones who attacked them.

  Shit. Theoretically, it was good for the necromancer and the revenant that no one was imagining an undead enemy. But Tybalt’s mind automatically went to Vidalia, wondering if she would be in danger at any point.

  Remind me, how many miners are there? he asked.

  Hundreds, master.

  Shit…

  On the bright side, your virus has the squad suffering a great deal, Baldwin added. I’ll keep you updated if I learn anything more…

  Next chapter on Patreon.