I arrived at Hadra’s house in record time, considering my mild ankle pain and throbbing shoulder. I could hear her working away the daylight hours and knew I probably wouldn’t be able to get too much time with her.

  Ever since getting her talent, Hadra had, ironically, become a bit of a night owl. She spent her whole day working due to her talent’s conditional aspect, so she usually showed up at the bar shortly before evening.

  “Haaaadddyy! You in there!?” I called out obnoxiously.

  The sound of moving thread through her window halted, and I could almost feel the girl grin.

  “Mera!” she shouted as she popped her head out of the window, needles following her in midair like obedient puppies, trailing lines of thread back into the house.

  “Those things have leashes now?” I asked, pointing at them.

  She turned and glanced at her needles, unapologetic. She held up her hands. Most of her fingers were wrapped in bandages. “I’m trying to do all of my needlework like this now. After the attack…”

  “I don’t blame you,” I replied, seriously. “You might’ve saved my life, you know.”

  She grinned. “You’d have been fine. Still, throwing up after we got back to the bar was a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

  I hesitated before deciding it was best to let this summer child keep her innocence. The less anyone knew about Dad and his scythe and what it had done, the better. Best she assume I was just disgusted by watching the troll die.

  Which I was.

  “I’m a wimp. What can I say?” I laughed weakly.

  She chuckled. “Well, come on in wimpy. I’ve got about a million bandages left to make, and if you’re gonna be here, you might as well be useful!”

  “I’m very useful!” I joked.

  “You’re a rotten onion,” she joked right back. “Or maybe a rotten pepper, I suppose. Either way, I’m a saint for putting up with you.”

  “Did you hear Mom say that?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she lied.

  I laughed and walked around to the doorway. It was open, as usual, and it felt nice to walk inside where their fire was crackling merrily. Their house only had two rooms, like most of those in Pemolar’s Hill, and I smiled as I spotted Uraleka sitting at her own wheel, using a spinning wheel.

  “Hello, Mera,” she said as I walked in. Her eyes had bags under them, just like Hadra’s. For the moment, whatever fights the two of them were usually involved in had been put on hold. Stacks and stacks of bandages had been laid all around the room, and I suspected there were more of them in the backyard.

  “Hello, Ma’am Weaver!” I said, before glancing to the corner of the room. “Edra asked me to come get some bandages and whatever else you had ready for her.”

  Uraleka had served at the Rift almost twenty years ago, and during that time, apparently, she’d grown incredibly adept with a fucking warhammer. That was what my talent had made for her, and I was grateful for the twelve points she’d provided after I’d made it. Her newest need was also for fighting war trolls, so it seemed doubly true that the threat was not over.

  Her new need bubble was greyed out, which made sense as she hadn’t used the hammer yet. I believed that until the item was used for its intended purpose, I wouldn’t be able to craft anything else for that person.

  It… concerned me that she would need to fight at all, as she was far more valuable sewing up clothes, bandages, and in the worst cases, wounds, than she was wielding that hammer.

  Another attack would happen, and this one would reach her somehow?

  This bullshit method of guessing at the future was going to get me killed. She’d need to fight war trolls again in the future, but I had no idea what those circumstances entailed. I couldn’t start making wild assumptions based on a single person’s need. The talent worked well for predicting the future in aggregate. I couldn’t even be certain she was the one who needed the hammer anymore.

  All I knew for certain was that there would be another attack. My job was to make sure no one let their guard down just because we’d successfully repelled the first one.

  “I’m sure she did,” Uraleka replied, amused. “Ilhadira’s been taking care of most of the bandage rolls while we’ve been doing nothing but spinning thread to keep up with the need. Feel free to stay a while. I’m sure she could use the company, but it wouldn’t hurt if you wanted to use the old loom.”

  “That would be wonderful!” Hadra piped up from the bedroom.

  I smiled. “Will do, Ma’am!”

  She nodded indulgently, gesturing me toward the room.

  I turned and stepped into a madhouse.

  Hadra had one of the simplest needs that I’d crafted yet, and she had not lied about her weaving skill. I'd earned sixteen free points by making her something that added utility to her Weaver skill. It was an amulet, and it hung about her neck even now.

  Weaver’s Orb

  Effect 1: The Weaver skill can be used outside of producing cloth.

  A simple effect, but it had been what allowed Hadra to use her needles to attack the troll. Normally, that was impossible. The weaver skill only allowed the supernatural telekinesis effects when the user was actually making something with cloth. The orb changed that.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  She’d been underwhelmed at the time, but I got the impression she’d changed that tune as I walked into her pointed catastrophe of a room.

  Needles were holding up spools of thread. Needles were daisy-chained to each other to hold up a new dress in the corner, and needles were used to pin things to the wall. Needles were stitching themselves into and out of a line of bandages that was itself held up by more needles. Hadra wasn’t even focused on them. In fact, the only thing she was doing was pumping her foot on the spinning wheel I’d made her, twining thread.

  “H-holy…” I breathed.

  Her talent amplified her Weaver skill by eighty percent during the day. This turned her from a highly talented weaver to an absolute monster with needles and thread. My orb further allowed her to hold things and use needles as general tools instead of only when being applied to cloth.

  The sheer number of them made me think that multitasking had to be her second-highest talent, and it was probably at least in the eighties. Her loom leaned unused, unnecessary in the corner. Only the need for more thread kept her using the wheel.

  She was weaving with an effective weaver talent of roughly two hundred and eighty. It was one thing to hear, but another thing to actually see.

  “So cool…” I breathed.

  “Isn’t it?” she said as she turned toward me a little, her army of needles continuing without her. “If it had been daylight when that troll attacked us, I don’t think I’d have needed Istara to save us.”

  “I’d say not. Heavens, Hadra! It’s an assembly line in here!”

  She chuckled. “I know. I modeled it after one in your stories. The problem is that my mom and I together can’t make enough thread to keep up.”

  “I’m going to have to start charging you if you keep stealing my ideas. First, the Maid Marian dress, now this?” I said.

  “You could never do this,” she said with a sniff. “You have no talent for multitasking. You put too much of yourself into one thing at a time.”

  “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t make an assembly line! I’d make pepper paste by the wagonload!” I said, being careful not to use the word truck again. “You’d be my smell tester to make sure it’s nasty enough.”

  “Heavens forbid,” she breathed. “All the gold in the world wouldn’t be enough.”

  I looked over to the spinning wheel I’d made her. Once, it had made her life so much easier, but now thread production was clearly the bottleneck.

  “Here, you take the foot pedal. Unless you think you can use the hand wheel?” she asked.

  I shook my head. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to use the foot pedal if not for her needles handling everything. I hadn’t noticed on the way in, but I realized suddenly that Uraleka’s spinning wheel also had a foot pedal. She must’ve commissioned one after she saw how useful Hadra’s was.

  “Certainly not like this,” I said. “Thanks, by the way. This is one of your bandages.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Oh, gosh! I’m so sorry I didn’t even notice! We’d heard you’d gotten in another attack somehow down at the beach. Here, no, don’t take that! I wouldn’t have asked you to work if I’d–!”

  “It’s fine, Hadra,” I interrupted. “It’s hurting, but it’s alright. Edra doused it with some of Lupkep’s alcohol and bandaged it up tight. Just a little sore for a while is all. As long as your needles can pull thread through the wheel, I can at least keep it spinning.”

  I sat down at the wheel as Hadra stood and moved to a stool by the oldest one. I wasn’t… good at spining thread, but fortunately they weren’t going for quality here. It just needed to be functionally good enough to sew into a bandage.

  “Alright. I swear it seems like every time we meet lately we face a troll…?” Hadra trailed off suddenly, her joke dying as she stared out the window.

  I turned to see what had drawn her attention and blinked at the sight of two soldiers dressed in golden armor. A boy and a girl. Rather than regal, it made them look a little foolish. Neither of them had talents, for sure, but also they were very clearly members of the Denarlan City Guard.

  “I… think we found it, Esmerla,” said the boy, as he gestured through the window at us.

  “Uh… hello,” I said, waving a hand at the two soldiers. I stood and poked my head out the window.

  “Hi there!” the girl said brightly. “We’re with the Denarlan City Guard. Please, could you tell us if this is the home of Ilhadira Weaver?”

  Hadra stood up and joined me at the window as needles rushed off to tuck themselves away.

  “I’m Ilhadira,” she said softly. “What… what does the Denarlan City Guard want with me? Oh! Did… did the duchess find something wrong with the dress!?”

  “Oh! Wonderful! And, uhm… sorry. I don’t know anything about what the Duchess might want. This is awkward. We were going to knock on the door,” Esmerla said, pointing to the front door just to the right. She jumped as the door suddenly swung open.

  “Who are you?” came Uraleka’s sharp voice. The houses in Pemolar’s Hill were small, and it was easy to hear whatever we said.

  “Hello, Ma’am,” said the boy with a fair bit more confidence than his companion. “I am Desten Guard, and this is my partner, Esmerla Guard of the Denarlan City Patrol. We’ve been tasked with fetching Ilhadira Weaver and bringing her back to Captain Retham.”

  “We’re to be her escort!” said the peppy armored girl.

  “You’ll not be fetching my daughter anywhere,” she said sharply. “Heavens, are you really Denarlan City Guard?”

  “This is… ah… our first mission. The captain thought it might be easier if someone closer to Miss Ilhadira’s age initiated contact. He said these things tend to go over better if we do it like this,” the girl admitted.

  “Your captain is well versed in the art of kidnapping village girls for the Duchy, then?” Uraleka snapped.

  “Mother!” Hadra hissed. “I… w-will of course come to see your captain, but this is hardly the best time for me to be leaving Pemolar’s Hill. We were just attacked, and the village needs many more bandages and clothes to replace the spoiled ones!”

  “That does not concern us,” said Desten. He had the air of someone trying hard to act how they should, but he seemed nervous and conflicted. “Our orders are to bring you to the captain. By force if necessary.”

  “Desten!” Esmerla shouted, as if affronted. Then she turned apologetically towards Hadra. “He’s not wrong, though. Our orders are to bring you to the captain as soon as possible.”

  There was a brief moment where the two let their hands drift in the direction of their swords.

  “There will be no need for force,” Uraleka said. She looked sour, but behind that sharp exterior, I saw a kernel of fear in her eyes as she glanced between the two guards and her daughter. Not for a moment did I believe Uraleka was afraid of these two, but she was afraid for Hadra. “We will accompany you. Where is this captain of yours?”

  “We have a small camp outside the village where we plan to stay for the night. We would’ve sought lodging at the town’s inn, but it seems to be full at the moment,” said the boy, unfazed.

  “You’re… not afraid of the trolls?” I asked, worried.

  “The captain is over level thirty, and our whole platoon averages around level twenty-three. We also have several guards who have combat skills over one hundred. We’re well prepared for any rift monsters. We cleaned up at least ten of the beasts on our way here with no injuries,” Desten said. In this, at least, he seemed quite sure of himself.

  “What, exactly, is this about?” Uraleka asked, as she grabbed her new warhammer and hefted it effortlessly over her broad shoulder, to the mild shock of the two young guards.

  She needn’t have asked, though. The answer was becoming more obvious by the moment. There was only one thing Hadra would need an escort for.

  It was happening. She was being taken away. Like we'd both always dreamed.

  “Uhmm. Our mission is to c-convey Miss Ilhadira Weaver from Pemolar’s Hill safely back to Denarla as soon as possible,” Esmerla said.

  Suddenly, that dream felt so... hollow.

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