When Ana woke in Messy’s bed again it was as cramped and comfortable as the first time. She snuggled closer for a few long, beautiful minutes, before a grinding pain reminded her that she had a week of bullshit biology to look forward to. She got up and drank a measured portion of the potion she’d bought from Touanne; it tasted vaguely like pine resin. The effects were almost immediate, and Ana inwardly cursed the years she’d lived in a world without magic.

  They ate breakfast at a different inn — scrambled eggs with lots of herbs and a dark sourdough bread — taking their time and talking about nothing, just enjoying each other’s company. It was something Ana felt that she could get used to. One part of her wondered how long it would take before she either fucked it all up or Messy got tired of a sexless relationship — if a relationship was even what they had — but she silenced it ruthlessly. She was going to enjoy this as long as it lasted.

  After dropping Messy off at the shop, Ana spent her morning getting her laundry done, sparring at the guardhouse’s yard where a recently returned Delver named Tarkan gave her some pointers on how to use the hammer end of her new weapon more effectively, and then taking a quick bath before lunch at the square with Messy — some kind of cut grains cooked with lots of mushrooms and vegetables. This time they weren't interrupted, and afterwards Messy took her to a barber called Bessir who shaved the sides and back of Ana’s head for her. A side cut had been as far as she’d intended to go, but it was better than the patchy mess it had been.

  When she arrived at Touanne’s there were some small changes in Jancia. She was awake a little more than she’d been since getting injured, and she kept trying to convince Tellak or Touanne to let her out, so that she could go to the Waystone, or the temple.

  “She seems confused about why she wants to do that. I’d guess that she wants to feel connected to something,” Touanne said as they walked into the forest.

  “She was asking the Waystone, or maybe the Wayfarer, not to ‘keep it from her’ yesterday,” Ana said. “The Waystone draws in ambient mana, right? Maybe that’s what she meant?”

  “Hmm. Could be. But— I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it’s important. The crystals keep growing. That includes the ones in her brain, and I can only assume that they’re affecting her.”

  “Seems like a safe bet, yeah. To make her spread the infection, maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  They went straight to the campsite this time, since Touanne felt that she’d had much more success with the crystals there. Things were going great. Ana found it much easier to connect to the flow of mana beneath her, and it felt like she could draw and circulate more every time she tried. They went for a few hours, then took a break at Touanne’s insistence. The Healer had brought fruit and water. It was nice, and Ana felt very cared for.

  They had barely finished their break and gotten started again when Ana’s bonuses and her danger sense suddenly triggered.

  To say that having your Perception increase to three times what you were used to over the span of two weeks was amazing would be an understatement. It not only made Ana’s senses far sharper than she’d ever dreamed of, but it also let her interpret what she felt faster and more clearly. Combined with how her heightened Acuity, Strength and Agility let her think and move faster and with more clarity and precision, Ana had plenty of time to open her eyes, determine that there was nothing in front of her, then spin on her heel to look behind her. As she turned she registered Touanne’s wide, frightened eyes, her open mouth and the beginning of a scream. Touanne was looking behind Ana, and as she finished her turn and dropped into a low fighting stance she saw a demonic wolf the size of a pony already in mid-pounce.

  It had been aiming for her head and shoulders. Now its snarling maw, with far too many teeth sticking out at all angles, and the mass of its body would pass above her, but the horribly clawed paws and the sharp bones emerging from its chest were still low enough to clip her. At the same time it was reacting to her movements quickly, lowering its head to try to catch her despite her low crouch.

  Ana did three things in rapid succession. The first was to grab the monster’s front legs by the ankles, throw herself backwards, and plant both feet in its stomach, letting it continue over her and adding to its momentum with a shove of her legs. As it passed above her she inspected it, getting back that it was a [Possessed Timber Wolf (Threat: Extreme)].

  It was the most powerful demon she’d ever faced, and she was facing it alone except for a woman who might very well be psychologically incapable of fighting. Touanne’s piercing scream supported that idea, as did the nearly suffocating terror rolling off her, horribly clear to Ana’s boosted Connection; whatever it was that made it hard for Touanne to mask her emotions, she really had to get it under control.

  They might both die here. Ana was confident in her fighting skills, but she was also realistic. So the third thing Ana did was to eat all of her Crystals. She didn’t have time to waste on getting it just right; she just knew that she had more than enough for her next level. She immediately opened her Summary, feeling time slow to a crawl, then a stop, and only glancing at the by now familiar notifications.

  Not getting any new Abilities sucked, but she was sure that she’d get one at 10. She’d just have to look forward to that instead.

  For now, she’d deal with what she did have. She was close to 25 Perception and Acuity, the Attributes that had probably just saved her life. If they’d been much lower she might not have had time to react before the creature bore her down, and it was tempting to increase them. A single Step in each Multiplier would be enough to get their respective Enhancements, which might save her life in the future. But for that to be relevant she needed to survive right now. To do that she needed to either kill the thing and survive whatever damage it inflicted on her, or escape. She tried to plan, to consider the optimal way to handle the situation, but whatever stopped time as she spent her points also made it nearly impossible to think about anything else. Her theory was that only thoughts relevant to advancement were sped up, and no others — however that was determined.

  Fine. She needed to survive, and she had 17 points to help her do that. She was already pretty sure that she could outrun this thing, so if that wasn’t an option for some reason she needed to be able to outfight it. She grabbed a Step in Dexterity, because it would make her blows more accurate and got her above 25, and thus an Enhancement, for only 2 points. She sunk 9 points into two Steps in Vitality, not because it felt fucking amazing but because it would help her survive any injuries she took. She grabbed one Step in Strength for 5 points, to do more damage, and the last point went into her first Step in Willpower. She had to spend all her points; it was that or Connection, and she didn’t intend to increase her Connection intentionally until someone had taught her how to suppress her aura and stop broadcasting her emotions to anyone strong enough to hear.

  With that done, she grabbed a look at the notification for her new Dexterity Enhancement before time resumed, and she’d be fighting for her life.

  Ana released the wolf’s paws and finished her rolling kick, twisting and using her momentum to end up on her feet facing the thing. “Touanne!” she shouted, willing her command skill to kick in. “A party invite and my bag!” Touanne just kept screaming, wide eyes and covering her mouth, until Ana snapped at her. “Now!”

  The scream choked off, and a party invite came almost at the same time as Touanne lunged for Ana’s bag and tossed it to her. Meanwhile the wolf had landed, rolled, and gotten to its feet. It sprang at Ana again just as she dug out her new hammer-axe. She didn’t even have time to get a proper grip on it; she just grabbed the weapon with one hand under the head and the other on the handle and bashed the monster in the side of the head as she twisted to the side. It raked her over the hip with its claws in return, but at least she knocked it to the side and stunned it somewhat, buying herself a few valuable seconds. 45 effective Strength was no joke.

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  She quickly accepted Touanne’s party invite. They should have done this the moment they left town, but Ana had let herself slip, going against years of training and experience. She’d let herself get relaxed and comfortable, and she’d let herself believe that just because she’d been told that no strong demons could get close to the Waystone, they’d somehow be safe. She hadn’t taken any precautions. She hadn’t worn her armor into the forest, and she’d put her weapon in her bag because she didn’t want it hanging on her hip and throwing her balance off. All she had was her gun in the belt pouch, and she’d seen how resistant demons were against bleeding.

  Worst of all, she hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings. She’d let herself get caught up in the wonder and pleasure of the earth. And now Touanne was in danger.

  At least now that they were in a party Ana could protect her properly. The wolf came at her again and Ana swung her hammer-axe like a bat, striking flesh rather than bone. She gritted her teeth with frustration. It wasn’t a problem of speed or precision. She had those. But she still lacked the reflexes, the instant, unconscious decision making needed to aim at weak spots, and the knowledge of where exactly those weak spots were. And so instead of smashing the thing’s jaw, she hit it in the tough-yet-yielding flesh of its neck, which would have probably killed a regular wolf but only sent this one off course. It was back on her in moments, and then she was on the defensive, dodging, striking, at one point leaping over it as the demon bit, clawed, and tried to tackle her to the ground. And the damn thing just didn’t seem to be taking any damage. Even when she switched to striking with the axe-head instead, which she’d been avoiding in case her weapon got stuck, it only left shallow cuts in the monster’s unnaturally thick hide.

  “Ana! To the left!”

  Touanne’s shout gave Ana enough warning to turn and see a woman lunge at her. A few details immediately popped out. The woman’s eyes were frenzied, her nails long and broken, and her dark skin had an unhealthy pallor. Her clothes were filthy and torn, like she’d been living rough for a while. She was maybe in her thirties, though it was hard to tell with the grime. But what really stood out were the small, blue crystals speckling the skin of her neck, the remains of a bindi between her eyebrows, and the fact that she was wearing a Marks & Spencer pantsuit.

  The woman tried to claw Ana’s eyes out. Ana leaned back and smashed her in the chest with the top of her weapon. She didn’t hold back, and the force was enough that Ana heard bones break, throwing the woman back several feet. Ana herself wasn’t anchored properly and was pushed back by the force of her own blow, rolling and coming to her feet in time to dodge the wolf as another person emerged from the bushes, this one a scruffy white guy in track pants and an old Iron Maiden T-shirt. Close behind was a black woman in a lacy, emerald green lingerie set, and a teenage boy in what she was pretty sure was a school uniform. The writing on the name tag looked Korean. They all had that same mad look in their eyes, and there were more, many, many more, in the distance behind them. When Ana tried to inspect them, she got nothing back. No race, no Class, no level. Nothing.

  Tellak’s words came back to her. “Something I couldn’t identify. They got around me. I couldn’t block them all off.”

  They had hurt Jancia, and now she was sick with some kind of infection that had reduced her Connection to zero, little blue crystals growing in her flesh, spreading to her brain. And they had torn Tellak’s friend literally to pieces.

  Ana made a split second decision. “Touanne!” she roared, leaning on her Command Skill as hard as she could. “Run!”

  Ana didn’t turn to look, but her sense of where her party member was told her that Touanne started moving, and fast. Then the crazies were on her again. She push-kicked the guy in the Maiden shirt back into the woman behind him, sending him flying. They both went down in a heap, buying her a precious moment. It let her jam the head of her weapon into the monstrous wolf’s mouth as it threw itself at her, and kept it from clamping down on her face as it snapped at her head. It still hit like a truck. Pain blossomed in her chest, ribs cracking as the wolf’s body smashed into hers, its speed and weight driving her back and to the ground. The kid in the school uniform lunged down at her, but she caught him with a heel kick to the mouth and felt teeth and bone give under her strength as his head snapped back much, much too far.

  She had the wolf above her, its claws shredding her clothes and cutting long gashes in her flesh. The band-shirt guy and the woman were almost on their feet again, and there were more, so damn many more, almost on her. They were, individually, only human, but that wouldn’t matter if they caught her pinned to the ground.

  She remembered Tellak telling her how she’d had to gather what was left of Medecilia to give her a pyre. It had taken some time.

  If Ana wanted to survive, she had to run. And to do that, she had to get up.

  The grappling she knew hadn’t been designed for giant wolves, so she’d have to improvise. With one hand occupied keeping her weapon in the thing’s mouth so it couldn’t tear her face off, she pushed the other between its front legs, then tucked her head and rolled her shoulders forward. Her upper back screamed at the unfamiliar way she bent it forward. She gritted her teeth and pushed harder, the bare back of her head sliding across matted fur and slimy skin until her upper body was free, her back to the monster’s side. A back foot came up and raked her from breast to hip, and she screamed, but she could take it. God only knew what would happen once combat was over and Fight Through stopped helping, but for now she was still fighting. She wasn’t done. She couldn’t run yet. She thought she could outrun the demon, but she was sure that Touanne couldn’t.

  With her free hand she grabbed the wolf’s front leg by the ankle, as its back leg raked her side again. She released her weapon, freeing the wolf’s mouth, then twisted entirely around, got her legs under her, and heaved. The wolf’s leg followed her, moving up and out, and the thing face-planted into the loamy soil.

  The demons were ridiculously resistant to bleeding. Fine. Forget bleeding; massive trauma to the brain killed them just like anything else.

  In a motion Ana had practiced hundreds of times in her room, she smoothly opened her belt pouch, drew her gun, racked the slide, disengaged the safety, and shot the cursed thing three times in the head at point blank range, automatically counting off Five, four, three as she did. Its skin, flesh and skull were tough, but they weren't tough enough to stop a 9mm hollow point. It collapsed entirely, jerking violently as she pulled her legs loose, grabbed her hammer-axe, and got to her feet.

  Three rounds. She had three rounds left.

  From the other side of the wolf’s twitching body the band-shirt guy and the half naked woman threw themselves at her, stepping over the body of the school-boy with the broken neck.

  Two, one.

  Ana didn’t bother to see what effect her shots had. She turned and ran at full tilt in the direction that Devotion told her Touanne was. A little bit of focus told her that Touanne was afraid and flagging, but unharmed. She was also running in a different direction than Ana had expected, neither toward the road or directly toward the outpost. She could hear the mad howling of the crazies behind her, but she left them behind easily as she closed in on the Healer.

  She heard Touanne’s terrified screaming from the start, but as she got closer there was snarling, howling, and mad cackling. She picked up her pace, forcing herself into a dash that would have made any olympic sprinter jealous, and soon she saw them between the trees: Touanne, with two crazies chasing her.

  The lead crazy caught the Healer by the hair, but she pulled loose with a cry and found some hidden reserve, speeding up just enough to put a few feet between them. It didn’t last. Ana tackled the lagging crazy to the ground in passing and caught up just as Touanne flagged, the crazy grabbing her by the collar and yanking her down, both of them falling rolling to the ground.

  The emaciated bearded man, dressed only in a striped pajama shirt, started scrabbling toward Touanne, then looked up stupidly just before Ana’s knee caught him in the throat with a muted crunch. Ana didn’t bother making sure. She stowed her gun and lifted a dazed Touanne off the ground one-handed by the back of her tunic, threw her into a fire-man’s carry, and ran.

  By the time they reached the clearing, Ana’s bonuses wore off. She stumbled and almost fell as her Strength dropped, but that was nothing compared to the double whammy of the loss of Vitality and Willpower together with Fight Through wearing off. The pain of her injuries suddenly nearly blinded her, but she had to keep moving. She couldn’t hear anything chasing them, and the all-mighty System didn’t consider her to be in combat anymore, but that might be because she’d just run a one-minute mile. And she’d done that with much higher Attributes than she had at the moment, with Indefatigable keeping her from feeling the strain. If she stopped now, she didn’t know if she’d be able to get going again.

  There was only one guard at the gate, Sira the Peacekeeper. She was the same woman who’d been guarding the door to the guardhouse the day that Ana first arrived, and was one of two full-time guards left. She looked at them with confusion and worry as they approached and started jogging out the last hundred feet to meet them.

  Halfway her steps faltered, and she stopped to stare toward the trees. Her face told Ana everything she needed to know.

  “Inside!” Ana commanded the gate guard. “Get inside and close the gate! Close all the gates!”

  The guardswoman just stood, staring, and didn’t turn until Ana sprinted past her. Ana took about five steps inside before she slowed, then stopped, and put Touanne down. The Healer looked at her with wide eyes and whispered, “Oh, gods. Ana!” before her fear and shock were wiped away, replaced by a professional calm.

  Ana looked down. Her clothes hung off her in tatters. The tatters were soaked dark red with blood which slowly dripped and pooled on the packed dirt under her feet. She started feeling a little light-headed, and then realized that her bloody feet were bare.

  Ana managed to say, “Aw, shit. My boots!” Then her knees buckled, and she keeled over.

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