The chill of the late afternoon was sharp in Sam’s lungs as her breath fogged the air and she stared at the bandits across the frosted landscape. She’d been herb gathering with Auntie Dukas when the auntie had revealed another purpose to the whimsical outing; Bandit hunting.

  Sam stood still, watching the figures move about the camp. The light from their fires threw flickering shadows across the nearby trees and the dozen-or-so tents were scattered between them.

  She had to wait for the darkness to truly set in for her plan to work. The bandits were undisciplined and hadn’t set a watch nor sent out patrols which meant they’d be easy to ambush as a group, but there were still about fifty of them which was more than Sam could handle casually. She was actually hoping for bandit patrols. Patrols she could pick off and use their bodies to increase the number of her undead ranks as the bandit numbers diminished. Instead, their lack of discipline had worked against her in that way. Still, it might work for her in others.

  The last of the weak, winter sunlight slipped away and Sam edged forward, ever so slowly like she was hunting deer. It was movement and sound that’d give her away. She was wearing a ghillie suit, a non-magical, camouflaged clothing innovation from Dave’s land, and she’d been truly shocked at its effectiveness. People’s eyes just slid right off you. She lay down just beyond the firelight and waited. She waited until she felt everyone was settled in and feeling cosy before she mentally called to her skeletons.

  Sam watched the camp as she felt her first skeleton approach her from behind. She mentally guided its steps over the clearest path she could see. It stopped, hovering just before it reached the edge of the firelight, some distance behind her and another of her skeletons shot an arrow with a note wrapped around the shaft into the camp.

  The thunk of the arrow smacking into a barrel was noticed by more than one of the bandits who leapt up with a cry. As the commotion started, Sam gave mental ascent for the first skeleton to continue walking into camp. In all the excitement, nobody noticed the cloaked figure slip in and sit down next to the fire. Sam watched as they read and passed around the note.

  For the sake of her own conscience, Sam waited until she thought that all the bandits had either read the note or had it read to them. She watched as the bandits passed the note with wide-eyed glances, some muttering in confusion, others shaking their heads as they roused comrades with murmurs of unease.

  She was glad to see that some woke up their comrades to let them in on what was happening. She didn’t want any of them to go into what came next unawares of the note’s message. She had laboured over what the note should say and so, could recite it by heart:

  Adventure Society notice: No surrender will be accepted after the attack begins. Lie down and cover your eyes before the attack to be taken prisoner. Keep them covered until instructed otherwise.

  Sam was disappointed to see very few bandits finding an excuse to lie down. Well, she’d tried. Sam gave the first skeleton a mental ascent. It rose under Sam’s mental direction, walked behind the largest of the four bandits who were doing the most serious talking and, with the lack of hesitation characteristic of mindless minions, stabbed them in the neck. Any shock from their companions that might have resulted from this assassination was blown away by the skeleton turning and throwing itself into the nearby fire, its bone fingers twisting an unseen mechanism under its cloak to detonate the alchemical explosive in the centre of its chest cavity that was surrounded by five large bladders of naphtha. The air split with the blast, a fireball roaring outward in a wave of searing heat and blinding light, turning those closest into writhing humanoid torches. Sprays of liquid fire splattered across the camp, flames licking over clothes, skin, and hair, clinging to everything they touched and drawing screams from those afflicted.

  Even Sam felt some of the heat from the fireball. Amidst the screams and dismay of the bandits, Sam saw an opportunity. She took a scarf out of her bag, wet it, wrapped it about her face and head, shrugged off the ghillie suit and ran into the camp acting concerned. Nobody paid her any attention. She ran straight into the midst of the destruction.

  “Help!” shouted Sam and started tending to a partially burned bandit. She half-carried the woman to the other fire in the camp and sat her down, gesturing others towards the area of the explosion.

  “Help! Help!” urged Sam, gesturing that they should help move the injured.

  The bandits stared at her in shock for a moment before snapping into motion and rushing to help drag more victims out of the burning area. Sam pulled a half-used tin of topical healing cream from her inventory and started lathering it on the bandit’s wounds. She also activated her death aura including only this bandit as an enemy.

  Other bandits began bringing over the wounded, following Sam’s example, and began applying topical healing cream to them as well. Sam included them one-by-one as enemies in her aura.

  “Something’s wrong,” moaned the bandit Sam was working on. “I’m dying. I’m dying.”

  “You’ll get better. More cream,” said Sam as neutrally as she could, feigning great concentration to cover her best, but poor, attempt at disguising her Funan accent.

  While she worked, Sam noticed that the dead were being kept a little bit off to the side, further away from the fire. There were five. That’d be enough. She bagged her tin of cream and grabbed the arm of a nearby onlooker.

  “The cream is making it worse,” she whispered in the elf’s ear. “I think fire was cursed. I will do a ritual. Tell everyone just cover burns with wet cloth.”

  Sam shoved the elf lightly towards one of the bandits who was applying topical creams and quickly moved to an open space next to the dead. She took out her salt container and started carefully drawing her summoning circle. She watched as the elf she’d nominated went quietly between the improvised health workers and got them to switch treatments to wet towels. Sam was strangely proud of the lie. The topical creams were working just fine, just that the death aura was slowing the closing of the wounds and a rot was creeping into them from the inside out. A ‘curse’ would be a good explanation and covering the wounds would prevent anybody from seeing the necrosis in the wounds of the dying.

  Sam toiled at the ritual circle much longer than necessary as she cast Reanimate Spirits on the dead. Once raised, she commanded the spirits to stay resting as she waited for the spell refractory to finish and cast it on the next one, slowly building a force of minions in the midst of the bandits.

  Of the twelve who were wounded, Sam released three from the enmity of her Death Aura while she worked on her ritual. They were too healthy to die on time for her summoning ritual and letting them recover would help avoid suspicion. The burns that many of the injured bandits had were painful but not life threatening. Besides, she only needed nine dead for her purposes. She allowed those three to recover in succession after each death of the badly burned bandits that her death aura claimed but once the fourth of them was dead, Sam had enough fresh bodies. Just in time too, a celestine had just started peering suspiciously into the burns, presumably noticing the necrosis deep within.

  Sam used Mana Beacon to stabalise the ambient mana and then cast Create Flesh Golem in range of the nine corpses, five from the explosion and four from the departed wounded, which was the most that could be absorbed into a flesh golem at iron rank.

  “TRAITOR!” screamed the celestine, pointing at Sam, too late.

  Those nine corpses writhed as the spell drained them dry, flesh and organs leaving behind their skeletons, roiling across the ground and rearranging themselves until a towering abomination loomed in the ritual circle, breathing with borrowed lungs and gazing with dead eyes. The flesh golem, her towering, monstrous companion, Snowball, as she’d nicknamed the summon, took its first ponderous step forward, then another, like the wrath of death itself.

  “What the FUCK!?” screamed a bandit at Sam’s back.

  Snowball panted wetly and regarded its surroundings with the dead eyes of the recently departed before Sam willed it, and all of her other minions and familiars that’d been waiting all this time, into combat. Lithe as a snake, the giant collection of flesh beside Sam punted the bandit behind her into the worst of the wounded, killing the one he landed on instantly. Sam immediately cast Corpse Explosion, killing another two. Seeing opportunity, she cast it again, killing nobody but injuring five.

  Sam’s treants trudged in from beyond the circle of firelight. Three metres of angry, animated tree, they threw handfuls of stones as big as coconuts into the bandits as they came, striking down a few. Between the treants, the remaining four skeletons in hauberk and plate from toe to crown and wielding heavy polearms followed the treants into combat with the bandits who were now moving like a nest of disturbed ants.

  Still, the distraction wasn’t enough to make the bandits right next to Sam forget about her. Three of them attacked her, one tackling her to the ground. They piled on, holding Sam down, drawing their knives and wasted precious seconds stabbing her armour frantically before they ripped her cloak aside and made to aim for the gaps at the shoulders, neck and face. But, those seconds were all Sam needed.

  Sam called the reanimated ghosts of the dead to her and released her beetle swarm familiar from her skin. Before the bandits could jam their knives into her vital organs, the three attacking Sam were screaming in terror. The one who’d tackled her breathed in a mouthful of beetles in surprise and rolled away from Sam, coughing and swatting at his face, completely distracted from the undead shadows embracing him, draining away his mana. The other two were ravaged by the reanimated spirits.

  Sam couldn’t control what kind of spirit returned. She’d just cast Reanimate Spirits and get what she got. Some of the reanimated were insubstantial, crying, shadow-waifs - the same kind that had assailed that closest of Sam’s attackers with the beetles - and others were more corporeal; sometimes the classic zombie but often, something even more mystic. This latter kind was what assailed Sam’s other two attackers. One was a krasue, a deadly spirit manifesting in the form of a woman’s head, ripped free from its body but trailing much of the entrails like a grotesque banner. She flew through the air with a terrible wail of anguish, ripping into the bandit with sharp, gnashing teeth. Another spirit took the ghostly form of the body it was raised from and stood with head bowed, hair over her face. She flit next to the other bandit in the blink of an eye where, in a blur of motion, her face split along the line of the mouth revealing a bottomless maw lined with needle teeth with which she fell upon her victim.

  Sam stood, letting her ripped cloak fall away. It was replaced with a mantle of writhing beatles that swarmed across her body. Absent her usual smile, Sam’s eyes held only an impartial wrath. She retrieved her helm and billhook from her bag with steady hands as Snowball panted beside her, a towering, monstrous sentinel of flesh and sinew. Around her, her undead spirits twisted and writhed, waiting patiently for her command. Bandits hesitated in fear of the sight, their bravery wavering in the face of a necromancer in their midst. Then, the rest of Sam’s battle servants made a push for her side and the bandits before her broke.

  Sam placed her helm upon her head, the stylised skull motif enhanced by the flickering light. She raised the hook of lethargy and gave her battle cry.

  “Kill the bad ones!”

  Before, when it was fifty against Sam, her five skeletons, two treants and one slime, her chances had been bad but now, with the addition of Snowball and a dozen spirit minions against thirty? The battle was as good as over. The bandits just didn’t have the numbers to overwhelm her forces and a nine-body Snowball had the strength to casually carry a spare corpse which could first be utilised as a heavy projectile and then by Corpse Explosion as a deterrent. Snowball used this pattern repeatedly against anything mustered before Sam’s ranks which offered true resistance.

  “Fuck this!” yelled a man who dropped his spear, turned and ran.

  He’d been facing off against Sam, holding her at bay with a spear. He’d just seen a companion on his left, who was weidling a summoned hammer, smash his weapon into the head of a skeleton with such force that the helm flew off and the thick face covering beneath was pushed back revealing crumbling, pulverised bones and half of the remaining, compulsory grin of the skeletal undead. Partially at the surprise of coming face-to-face with an undead creature, partially because it survived what would be a killing blow to a human, the hammer-wielder paused momentarily. A fatal mistake. The damaged skeleton hadn’t skipped a beat and chopped the blade of its poleaxe into the man's thigh, sending him to the ground where the skeleton emotionlessly began stabbing repeatedly with the pointed head of its weapon.

  Some of the bandits had begun running, some had identified Sam as the adventurer at the root of this slaughter and rallied into a group for a last-ditch effort to kill her, and many more were frozen, undecided, unsure which path to commit to for a chance to see the next dawn.

  Identifying the leader of this last rally coming towards her, Sam cast Cruel Puppeteer. She twisted her fingers, feeling that she’d successfully achieved control of the two limbs she’d wanted; an arm and leg. The leader of the charge; a great leonid with glowing eyes and fur resplendent with power, Sam made him draw a dagger, point it at his own chest and puppet-stringed his leg to trip himself over. In the confusion that resulted from this unexpected suicide attempt, Snowball crashed into their group, scattering them and ending the last chance the bandits had at cohesion.

  The last of the bandits routed, scattering into the night. Belatedly, or not, she didn’t know yet, she remembered the magic item that she’d been given by the Death clergy in Oullins. Sam reached into her bag for it and withdrew a small, beautifully carved figure. She took a mana potion, held the wooden figurine high, invested almost all of her remaining mana and sacrificed all of her undead except Snowball. And, summoned.

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  Shapes shifted indistinct in the sky above and then, from amongst the stars, descending in a blaze of colour, a hatsadiling arrived. Unlike the carved likeness nestled in Sam’s palm, it loomed the size of an elephant, yet was otherwise unchanged. It had the regal head and powerful body of a lion, its golden fur moving to a tapestry of emerald and ruby hues on the body where fur gave way to feathers and massive wings unfurled bedecked with rooster’s plumes, each feather radiant, catching firelight and moonlight alike. Its trunk, flanked by ivory tusks, swept through the air as it reared, a great rooster’s crest rippling atop its head. It dove from the sky, a heavenly riot of colour and landed atop a group of three bandits, trapping one beneath its giant claw. For a moment, it paused, looking down, as if judging whether the soul beneath its leg belonged amongst the living or the dead. Then it pushed down.

  In that moment the bandits, already routed and fleeing, gave in to despair. There was a sense about the hatsadiling that it’d marked each of them for death. Each bandit felt it. A feeling deep within, like a silent judgement had been made. An internal pull to somewhere else that whispered that their souls already belonged to the deep astral, and this terrible creature had been summoned to formalise that transition. The hatsadiling’s eyes, luminous and pitiless, glowed with an otherworldly brilliance as it fixed its gaze upon those damned.

  With a grace that belied its massive form, the hatsadiling attacked, golden talons splaying out to claim its quarry. A great trumpeting bellow, part roar and part shriek, erupted from its tusked mouth - a blast that eclipsed all other noise, a final punctuation to the bandits’ lives, shaking the very air. The creature moved on like a divine executioner, wings beating in slow, rhythmic strokes as it swept over a gully to deliver another of Sam’s enemies to their inevitable fate. And so it moved, sweeping back and forth, each pass sealing the transition of another fleeing bandit, delivering them to Death’s embrace without pause or mercy. And, so they died.

  Sam stood next to the remaining fire of the now desolate camp, mentally conducting her summons to collect the bodies, loot the battlefield and, for Slimy only, create and distribute fertiliser. She relaxed into the karma of using Slimy to bring new life. She’d earned it.

  “Necromancer,” one of the dying had gurgled accusingly from blood-filled lungs before her grove guardian caved their head in.

  Sam sat with that thought for a moment. Necromancer, yes. Not two months ago the truth of that accusation would have shamed her but since then, she’d grown and learned that necromancy was just a method and that necromancer she was. But, she could still be nice.

  “Well, that was an unexpected solution, Sam,” said Auntie Dukas, descending from on high in her armchair looking as collected as ever. “Although I must apologise for preemptively executing those who fled earliest. I didn’t think you had an ability fast and powerful enough to catch them. I can only plead that I couldn't have expected you to possess a hatsadiling figurine. I must say, it’s a rare, holy item you have there. Even rarer outside of Death clergy. It’s a good sign that you’ve been gifted one.”

  “Is fine, Auntie!” Sam smiled self consciously at Auntie Dukas. “I forgot I had it, ka!”

  Auntie Dukas blinked once as she thought this through.

  “No chance to practise with it, is that right?”

  Sam smiled in affirmation and nodded. Anybody who recognised the figurine might also know that it used undead under the caster’s control as sacrifices to summon the hatsadiling and then ask why Sam, not a member of Death clergy, was in control of the dead.

  “Since I took from you the opportunity to display what speed or hunting skills you have about yourself, I shall offer some questions instead.”

  Sam nodded again up at the Auntie. This time, with hopefulness.

  “How confident are you that you could have caught the running bandits and why?”

  “A lot!” answered Sam brightly and quickly gestured to Slimy, who was trying to get her attention, to just find somewhere else to fertilise. “Umm, because tracking people over winter ground is easy! Frost and mud, ka?” Sam smiled more to help Auntie feel good about her answer. “But mostly I will use Snowball and hatsadiling if I’m on my own.”

  “If you’re on your own?” inquired Auntie Dukas with a tone that invited an answer.

  Sam refreshed her smile. It was good to be polite.

  “I want to go adventuring with my friends. In a team!” said Sam, almost hopping with happiness. “My friends are good at catching fast people.”

  “And, on your own,” continued Auntie Dukas, “can you describe a practical problem with using your flesh golem and hatsadiling like that?”

  “What you mean?” asked Sam.

  “Any… difficulties making them work?” said Auntie Dukas, leading Sam on.

  “Oh! Oh, yes!” said Sam, figuring it out. “Both take time to have! Maybe I won’t always have time so they are unreliable for catching people who run without fighting.”

  Auntie looked down her nose at the beaming Sam like a strict school teacher and finished taking notes on her clipboard and then her eyes crinkled as she smiled fondly down at the necromancer.

  “You are impossible to be unbiased with, Lek!” said Auntie Dukas.

  Sam twisted her body as she smiled more.

  “But I think my goddess will forgive me.”

  “Did I do well?” asked Sam, puppy-dog eyes shining.

  “You did well, Lek,” said Mother Dukas with matronly affection. “You’ll be a fine adventurer.”

  Hugh held onto the bough of a willow tree in the morning wind while the rest of the team crouched in a gully. His semi-translucent wind form made him practically invisible at the distance the ratlings he was scouting were at.

  The team had been assigned the ratlings by the instructors. About thirty, too many for the team to engage in a straightforward manner so they needed an edge. Dave had used Epistemology as well as Tome, gone over everything about ratlings in a few moments and come back with the conclusion that since the ratlings were carrying potato sacks and other food containers, it looked like they’d raided a larder, therefore, they were likely heading back to their burrows deeper in the monster lands. He reasoned that since the team now knew their direction of travel, Executive Services could set an ambush.

  It was a fine plan but somewhat delayed by the fact that the ratlings had chosen this day as a good one to sleep in a little bit. Behind him, the team was getting sick of squatting in a gully full of snowmelt but they persevered well enough just as Hugh did in his windy perch.

  Hugh thought about the battle to come, mentally anticipating what might happen based on his experiences in battles past but when he thought about those battles he could only remember that he had done things, that he could do things - certain things - but not what it was like to do those things. It was confusing.

  For instance, he knew that the ratlings were small, so he could rely on overpowering and throwing them with little effort but couldn't recall anything about why he had that confidence. But, there it was and he knew it to be so. He also knew that heavy, committed punches would crush through their blocking limbs but had no memories of how it felt to do those punches. He just knew that he could make the motion and it'd happen. He knew it in the same way that one knew how to navigate their own bedroom in the dark.

  Ever since the Goddess had blessed him he’d had feelings like this. It was odd, though. The memories. Like he wasn’t doing it right. Remembering things. If not for his faith, he'd also be worried that he couldn't remember the details of the blessing She had given - for some reason that was blocked too - but it wouldn’t be called faith if it didn’t have to overcome the shadows of doubt. That was the point of faith, you had to keep it.

  Hugh’s musings on the simplicity of the comfort in prayer were interrupted by movement. One of the ratlings had finally realised that the weak, winter sun, obscured by clouds, was well past risen and started hurriedly shaking the others awake. The biggest ratling cuffed one about the head who shied away, staring at the ground - probably the one that was supposed to be on watch - and quickly wrangled the rest of the pack into moving. Hugh wind-walked to the rest of the party in the gully who reacted promptly, putting away their small comforts and readying themselves for battle.

  As the pack made their way past the gully, Johan threw a small boulder far to the other side. And, then it began. Again. Hugh could now remember the last battle they’d done that trick as he’d not been able to remember just a moment ago. It’d been a snow elemental. It’d almost crushed one of Dave’s arms. As the boulder landed, Hugh, heart pounding faster, dropped from the sky in earth form, crushing the first ratling, and remembering the face of his friend Daniel, whose face he hadn’t been able to recall mere seconds ago. Daniel had loved sneaking grapes into his mouth from the grove by the monastery. In the next battle-charge heartbeat, Hugh remembered how he’d died.

  One more heartbeat and it all came rushing back. All of it. And, Hugh growled in unfettered rage. Moving at a run, his heavy, earthen arms slammed into the surprised ratling bodies, not slowed by the attempts of their small arms that were flung up hastily in defence. Just like last time. He could now remember the feel of their bones breaking the last time he’d killed ratlings.

  “My cousin! You killed my cousin!” roared Hugh, insensate. His little cousin, Jaques, had been killed by ratlings in the last monster surge. How had he forgotten that? “Dave! They killed my cousin! Stay with me, and remember!”

  Dave shot him a curious look for the barest fraction of a moment but moved in closer to Hugh from his position at the back. They were swarming, trying to overwhelm Hugh but Johan charged in with Shield Ally and started laying about with his sword. Hugh abandoned the ground, taking to flame form and using Mix Elements to rocket upwards before turning back to the ground and spraying the swarming ratlings with projected fire.

  “Dave! William Slater died in the last surge!” shouted Hugh as the ratlings scattered before the fiery onslaught on the team. “And, Rodney! Rodney Settler! We… We killed the wolves that chased his son last month! Mary Poulin, she gave us biscuits after we removed the belch bug. I’m going to forget again.”

  Mid battle, blazing in the sky, Hugh looked at Dave with utmost sincere desperation. Dave took off his helmet, locked eyes with his friend and nodded at Hugh, encouraging him.

  Hugh returned to battle, shouting to Dave as he swung his fists. He shouted of friends lost and battles past. Memories he knew would soon slip away again behind the blessing of oblivion his Lady had given him. The blessing without which, he couldn’t possibly save anybody from the violent deaths which only now he could remember. The blessing that blocked out the violence when it was all over and then let him live a normal life.

  Johan’s next charge after the fire had broken the ratlings' counter-attack and the team rode that momentum to victory. The monsters routed but that only prolonged the time before their demise. Between Teleport Ally, blazing through the sky with Mix Elements and Dave’s arachnoraptor, the ratlings were overtaken and ended. A couple tried to hide, squeezing into cracks in the landscape that the humans couldn’t fit into. Sam’s all eating ooze familiar followed them inside and dissolved them. Heartbeats slowing, Hugh could feel the blessing coming once more upon him, to be a blanket that covered his fears.

  “You alright, mate?” asked Dave, unsealing his helmet from his head again and looking at Hugh critically.

  Hugh came to Dave, frantically flapping his hands, silencing any further inquiry on the part of his friend.

  “I asked for a blessing from my Lady,” said Hugh quickly. “Back in Oullins. I asked her to protect me from my memories that were making me scared all the time and She blessed me so. Now, I can’t remember anything that frightens me.”

  “But it goes away when you’re fighting?” asked Dave. Insightful as always.

  “When I’m not frightened, yes,” said Hugh.

  “Huh, adrenaline,” mused Dave, thoughtful. “Is that why you can fight now? You’ve been a bit odd since we met Dimont.”

  “Dave, in a minute I won’t be able to remember the day we met,” said Hugh, cutting him off. “Almost all of my memories of you, they just go. Soon, I’ll just know that you’re my friend, we fight together, have fought together but little else. No detail. No substance.”

  “Uhhh, that sounds like a curse, mate,” said Dave, his face shifting to wariness.

  “Wha… No, that’s not - ” complained Hugh. “Oh, that doesn’t matter right now. I mean, in a minute the heat of battle will die down and I’ll forget everything that could make me afraid again. But I’ll also forget the blessing that does it! I don’t know why, Dave! But I’m going to forget the blessing I have too and I need you to remember for me because I want to fight! We can’t let the Builder win, Dave! He can’t! And I want to fight against him with my Lady to honour the dead but I can’t remember them. I need you to remember!”

  “I will, mate, I will,” said Dave, all serious, tapping his head. “It’s a steel trap up here. Just say what you need to.”

  “I wanted to honour the dead but I can’t remember them anymore,” said Hugh, quickly. “I need you to stay with me in battle and remember for me. So that someone knows what I’m fighting for. Why I’m doing it. I need someone to tell me.”

  “I will, Mate. What else?”

  “I need you to help me get through it!” Hugh’s mind worked frantically, trying to think of the most useful information to pass on while he could. “The blessing. It will stay until my mind and body are ready for their weight. That’s what I asked for. That’s how She blessed me!”

  “Definitely a curse!”

  “Blaspheme later!” shouted Hugh. “I need you to know it because soon, I won’t remember that and my Lady said that it’s not strength that I need. I promised Her I would become enough but if I can’t remember, how can I -”

  “Yeah, I’ll help,” said Dave, waving Hugh down. “But you’re in contact with her now, right? Can’t you ask her what I need to know?”

  Hugh paused for a moment.

  “She says -”

  “That’s for us to find out,” completed Dave. It was a common refrain from Knowledge clergy. “Well, by the sounds of it, you need a whole bunch of therapy that ends in acceptance.”

  Again, Hugh paused.

  “She says that’d help.”

  Dave growled at the sky in frustration.

  “Okay, well, I suggest that while you still have your memories, you spend a few quiet moments in prayer and ask her Ladyship for what she can tell me?”

  Hugh fell to his knees. With eyes closed, he connected with his goddess, thanking her for blessing him so that he could fight and preserve the world he loves. He thanked her for good friends who love him and care for his soul. He asked her to forgive Dave’s casual blasphemy. Hugh settled into the familiar ritual of prayer, listening and connecting to that divine font of knowledge and taking in that which she could give.

  “Anything good?” asked Dave when Hugh stood up.

  “I’m… terribly sorry,” said Hugh, a faint, puzzled smile about his lips. “What’s good? Oh! Yes, we recently fought a battle. Is that what’s good? It looks like we won.”

  Dave took a long breath in, looked at the sky and let a long sigh out. He shook his head for a while as though the clouds had personally let him down.

  “Never mind,” said Dave, clapping Hugh on the shoulder. “I’ll ask again next time.”

  Johan plunged the sword of the people into the dire bear’s chest and felt the monster die. Dave had been right. It was f–ing awesome. He’d just defeated a bronze rank monster. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it. The dire bear had loomed over him, a towering mass of dark, bristling fur with a growl that went through the bones and a terrifying mass that seemed to shake the very ground upon which it stood.

  A bronze rank monster. He’d defeated a bronze rank monster and it’d almost been easy. Johan turned, smiling broadly, and raised his sword in triumph to the other Adventure Society applicants behind him. It’d been Dave’s idea, naturally. He’d pleaded to the instructor that everyone else had done their lone adventurer phase of the trial and Johan hadn’t really meant to when he’d fought to pixelax and, besides, he’d asked around and everyone, commoner and noble alike, was curious to see how powerful Johan could get if they used every buff and aura power they had on him at once.

  “Because it’ll be f–king awesome,” was actually the phrase Dave had used to sway everyone in the trials to this detour when they’d asked why they should do it. Even the noble scions and Instructor Drakos who usually looked askance upon anything originating from Dave with distaste were in speedy agreement. They’d all wanted to see what Johan would become if everyone’s powers were added atop each other. Johan found it very flattering.

  He looked at his friends, each reacting differently. Hugh was broadcasting his whiskery smile from behind his beard. Sam was shining like a beacon of happiness, cheering with her arms in the air. And Dave, with a wry smirk, was tapping two fingers of each hand together in smug pseudo-applause, like he’d known all along what would happen. Each of them was so different, yet here they were, all supporting him.

  Beyond them, the nobles and the peasants were also cheering, united for the first time in the trials. Johan’s heart swelled. Magical boons and the power of their auras had coursed through his veins against the dire bear, but he felt that the true achievement of this fight was right there in front of him: unity. They were all on the same side, after all. Even Dave could feel happiness for the same reason as a young noble.

  His parents had been right. There were all sorts of good people in the world.