I made it almost the whole way across the courtyard before my pursuers latched onto my trail again.

“There he is!” Kasser’s furious voice bellowed from behind me. I didn’t waste time looking back, being almost to the tower door, but it sounded like he’d made it to the big stable entrance. Crossing the last few meters in two bounds, I seized the door handle and flung myself inside even as his footsteps pounded across the courtyard after me.

Inside it was darker than I remembered, with only a faint illumination from an arrow loop high above, but I could see the dim shape of a chair about where I’d left it after kicking it at Kasser. Prepared for the weight this time, I grabbed and hauled it to the door, tipping it up and jamming the back under the latch, seconds before the door rattled with an impact. I could hear him grunting and swearing on the other side, the door shaking as he apparently rammed his shoulder into it repeatedly, but he didn’t have the leverage to overcome the char braced against it at that angle.

Eat physics, asshole.

I turned and went for the table, only to discover that it was broken and its pieces dumped in a corner with the feeble light from the arrow loop beaming onto it. Also, there was no corpse, none of the sconces even had torches in them, and the stairs were on the wrong side of the room. All this led me to one inescapable conclusion.

“Uh, boss?” Biribo said oh so helpfully. “This isn’t the same tower.”

“Thank you,” I snarled. “Okay, then we just have to get back to it. The towers will be connected by the battlements, right?”

“Well, yeah, but the section between here and that one is collapsed, there’s no walking surface.”

“Fuck.”

“It’s okay!” He did another zoom around my head, as if he thought that was encouraging or something. “I can bring you more scrolls!”

“One at a time, while I run for my fucking life through this broken-down maze of a dump?”

“Hey, I didn’t say it was a perfect solution. You don’t usually get those in life.”

“Ugh. Fine, what’s my best route out of here?”

“Up the stairs, back along the only stretch of wall you can walk on, it’ll take you back into the main keep. Then you can try to lose ‘em in the corridors, there’s lots of little rooms up there. Don’t worry, as your familiar I can find you anywhere. Okay, be right back!”

“Wait!” I managed to grab him by the tail as he started to zoom away again. “Weren’t there any combat spells in that pile?”

“Well, sort of. I mean, not a lot in the way of direct damage, but…”

“Seriously? No fire, no lightning?”

“Well, there was a fire spell…”

“Good! Bring me that!”

His forked tongue flicked out. “Uh, okay boss, but that’s more for, like, starting campfires than throwing fireballs at people.”

“I’ll take it!” Maybe if I at least set something on fire I could trap them in it, perhaps make burning barricades.

“You’re the boss,” Biribo said doubtfully, and shot upward to vanish through the arrow loop the second I released him.

I wasted no more time making my way up the stairs; Kasser had already stopped hammering on the door, which meant the two of them were backtracking to cut off my only other exit from this tower. Actually, thinking on that, I slowed as I topped the last steps. There was another door up there on the landing, this one in worse repair than the others I’d seen so far, which coupled with the darkness and dust suggested this tower didn’t see much use anymore. It wasn’t made from planks, I saw, but roughly triangular segments of some pale brown material which had a faint pattern resembling wood grain; the iron braces holding it all together were long and spiraling like fanciful tree branches and covered a lot of the door’s surface, which aside from the decorative value was clearly necessary to hold all those oddly-shaped chunks in place. A few of the smaller wedges were missing and a big one was broken. I pressed my face to this and peered out.

No sign of anyone on the walls. Opening the door, I poked my head out and looked down below. Yep, they were already gone from the floor entrance of the tower, and I couldn’t hear anyone moving. Which meant they were halfway through the fortress, heading for the battlements to cut off my escape.

Putting on a burst of speed, I slammed the door shut and raced back down. The door at the top opened the wrong way for me to wedge it with the chair, which spared me the effort of hauling that heavy thing up there. Pushing it aside, I yanked the tower door open and retraced my steps, darting back across the empty courtyard into the stable.

It was as dark, smelly, and full of skittering horrors as I remembered, but luckily my pursuers had been less conscientious than I about closing doors behind themselves, and even in the darkness I could see the open aperture back to the mess hall. I made it through in seconds and paused there, considering.

There was a heavy front door leading to I didn’t know what, a second balcony with a second door into more upstairs corridors, or the way I’d initially come through. I went for that, both because it was (very slightly) more familiar and because it stood to reason that if Kasser and Harold were going for the other tower they wouldn’t be in that particular stretch of halls. So, zipping up the stairs much faster than I’d come down them minutes ago due to the effects of Heal, I found myself bitterly reflecting that in addition to an immediate threat to my life this whole situation had turned into some kind of slapstick sketch. Just to add insult to injury.

It didn’t help that I immediately got lost. Turns out one guided passage through a mess of doors and corridors isn’t enough to figure out where everything is.

Fortunately Biribo found me before I’d had a chance to get myself too turned around, zooming around the corridor with another scroll dangling from his little claws. “Hey, good thinking, boss! Looks like you got the drop on ‘em for the moment!”

“Any idea where they are?” I snatched the scroll from him. Its ribbon—this one orange—broke apart the second it was in my hands, reinforcing my curiosity about exactly how that worked. At the moment I had much more pressing matters, though, yanking the scroll open and staring down at the words as they began lifting off the page and dissolving into light.

The sensation was the same, the pressure in my head and momentary feeling of being somewhere else, while all around me inscrutable likes of text shimmered and then faded, though this time the whole thing was faster and looked less complicated than my previous one. I guess Biribo was right; Heal must’ve been a more powerful spell. Regardless, I now found I’d absorbed the knowledge and power of Spark, which my newfound innate sense of it told me would ignite a small flame in any combustible material.

Okay, not the fireballs I was hoping for, but something I could use.

Biribo had waited for me to no longer be distracted by learning the spell to answer my question. “Still goin’ across the battlements toward the other tower as of a minute ago, boss. They’re probably realized you’re not in it by now. Both of ‘em are sticking together instead of splitting up to flank you, so we’re not dealin’ with tactical minds, here.”

“All right, perfect. Is there an intersection or something where I can block off access from their side of the fortress?”

“Not that they can’t go around, but there’s a spot up here where you can slow ‘em down! Follow me!”

He led me on a short dash down a corridor and around a corner to a landing where another doorway (with the remains of a broken door hanging by its hinges) led onto the battlements and a flight of stairs descended into gloom below. I skidded to a stop, looking around quickly, and backtracked to the nearest side door behind me. Luck was still with me, for now; I found a small table, big enough to block a doorway but not too unwieldy for me to drag. Okay, a little more unwieldy than I’d been expecting, as I immediately discovered, as it was as heavy as everything else here, but I managed, hauling it back onto the landing and propping it up against the doorway with a groan of effort.

Healed or not, the last few years spent playing music, browsing the internet and working my sedentary store job had not exactly left me in peak physical condition.

Dusting off my hands, I stepped back, focused on the table, and pointed. “Spark!”

Absolutely nothing happened. Not even the sense of indefinable something I’d felt in my head when casting Heal. Frowning, I tried again, more insistently. “Spark!”

“Hey, what was that? Was that him?” a voice sounded from the near distance beyond my improvised barricade, immediately followed by approaching footsteps. Shit.

“SPARK, dammit!”

“Uh, boss?”

I rounded on him. “You brought me a broken spell!”

Biribo’s little gecko face wasn’t super expressive but I had the distinct sense he was looking at me like I was a slow-witted child. “Boss, uh… Akorshil is…not flammable.”

“What the fuck is akorshil? Can you people not just make furniture out of wood like any normal country?!”

He manged to look absolutely aghast. “Furniture? Out of wood? Are you completely off your rocker?”

“What the fuck is this!” Kasser’s familiar voice exclaimed from right outside the upright table. Half of his face appeared in the gap left by the angle at which I’d left it. “There you are!”

I pointed at him. “Spark!”

Well, the magic worked, anyway. I felt it in my mind this time and a tiny flame like a birthday candle appeared on his shirt, prompting him to jerk back out of view to the accompaniment of slapping sounds as he put himself out. “Ow! You asshole, I’m gonna—”

I could get the gist without hearing the details, so I pelted down the stairs rather than waiting for him to finish his threat. Behind me came the sound of my table crashing back down. I was already proceeding at an unsafe pace for stairs in the dark and it thus wasn’t any real surprise when I lost my footing and went tumbling down the last few meters, acquiring a nice set of bruises, bonking my head and hearing a distinct cracking sound from the general direction of my rib cage. And wasn’t that just typical.

The good news was that this no longer presented the game over it should have. Not vocalizing it this time, I sought the sense of Heal that I could still feel lingering in my brain, and pink light burst around me, illuminating the two men proceeding after me at a much more careful pace; obviously they were more familiar with the treacherousness of this staircase. More importantly, I was instantly back in perfect condition. Well, perfect for an admittedly out-of-shape guitarist.

I rolled through the nearest door, only getting to my feet once I was through, and slammed it shut; this one had been propped open with a bucket, fortunately empty. Also, blessedly, it had a bar to block it closed. Only seconds after I’d slapped that into place, the door banged with the impact of a shoulder, followed by Kasser’s furious voice.

“You can keep this up all night, corebait, I’m still gonna gut you at the end of it!”

“You seem like you’re having an episode, buddy,” I called back. “How about I talk to your friend instead? You still with us, Harry?

The door thudded again, and eyeing the rattling latch, I decided a little fortification was in order. There was another heavy table nearby, which I upended, sending a lot of dishes clattering to the floor, and shoved it across the flagstones to brace against the base of the bar.

Only then did I take stock of my new surroundings. I was in a medieval kitchen, with a large fireplace still smoldering with embers; rather than any stack of wood there was a big bin haphazardly stuffed with feathery branches and a hefty barrel on the other side of that mostly filled with some kind of oil, to judge by the look of it. Other than that, could’ve been right out of any historical illustration. Also there were unwashed dishes strewn everywhere among a mess of other implements, all with half-eaten food on them. There were a few torches burning in here, giving me my first clear look at the horrifying multi-limbed arthropods, varying in size from that of roaches to rats, which went scurrying away from my appearance into the corners, or in some cases brazenly continued scavenging the leftovers. The smell was…well, it was better than the stable.

“Mother of god. These people are eating stuff they cook in here? No wonder they’re so grumpy. Hey, what’s that? Can I get out that way?”

Aside from the door I’d just blocked off, there were two others, and also a gaping hole in the wall where stones had been knocked down and haphazardly piled alongside it. This arrangement emphasized the odd shape and coloration of the stones used; actually I wasn’t certain it was stone at all, now that I looked more closely, but I didn’t stop to examine that in any detail, being more interested in the dark, dirt-walled tunnel beyond.

“For a given value of ‘out,’” said Biribo. “That leads to the goblin tunnels, boss. Whole different set o’ problems down there.”

“Motherfucking isekai,” I hissed, and picked one of the other doors at random.

It led me right back into the mess hall from before.

“Okay, let’s try this again,” I said, dashing down the central aisle between tables toward the bigger doorway at the other end. “This leads in the general direction of the courtyard, right?”

“Straight shot, dead ahead! And it’s a short run from there to the tower with the rest of the scrolls!”

“Finally, some progress.” Past the mess hall doors was a kind of broad antechamber piled with barrels and other junk I didn’t particularly notice; there was a flight of stairs leading up to the next floor and a few smaller doors off to the sides. I bolted right past them, heading for the big double doors directly opposite the dining hall.

Then I had to slide to an awkward halt again, as one of them was pulled open from the outside and I found myself uncomfortably close to sword range of Harold, who was apparently more shrewd than his companion.

“H-hold it!” he stammered, brandishing his weapon at me and looking very uncomfortable with this whole situation.

Was he nervous? Under other circumstances I might’ve sympathized with the guy. I have a low opinion of humanity in general, but the fact is most people will not try to kill another human being unless they’re trained to or are in a desperate situation where they feel they have no choice. Without knowing Harold’s story, I could tell from one look at his expression he was enjoying this almost as little as I was, but whatever had brought him here, he was aiming a sword at me, so without thinking I hit back with literally the only thing I had to hand.

Snatching Biribo out of the air by his tail, I hurled him straight into Harold’s face. Based on the screaming which ensued, it was hard to say which of them was more horrified. I’m thinking probably Harold, since I know the trauma of having a cockroach suddenly fly right into your eyes and I figure that’s gotta be magnified exponentially if the cockroach in question is a quasi-lizard bigger than a squirrel which curses at you.

“Harold!”

And that was Kasser, having found a route around my roadblock in the kitchen, now pounding across the mess hall toward me and looking somehow even madder than during our last conversation.

With both open exits blocked by enemies I went for the closest escape route, which was the stairs. I bounded up three at a time, my last sight of my pursuers before rounding a bend showing Harold scrubbing furiously at his face, having dropped his sword, and Kasser heading right for him rather than immediately after me. Good; this wasn’t the first time those two being so close had bought me precious seconds.

Biribo returned to his customary place, buzzing along at my shoulder, and also clearly unhappy.

“A familiar is not a bludgeoning instrument, boss!” he snapped. “We gotta get you some proper weapons—”

“And whose job is that?” I shot back, pointing at a passing arrow loop as we ascended through the second floor. “Spells! Now!”

He buzzed off without another word. It occurred to me that maybe I should’ve been more specific, but our time was growing steadily shorter and it wasn’t as if I knew what the options were. For the moment, I concentrated on escaping.

At the third landing, I changed tactics. From here the path diverged: I could go up more stairs, through a heavy wooden door, or down a side corridor. Instead, I skittered around behind the stairwell itself and crouched down, folding my body into the darkness and forcing myself to breathe slowly and deeply. Which was physically painful, given how badly my lungs wanted to pant and gasp, but I did it anyway. This was a risk, of course; if they looked back here, I was effectively cornered, but so far I’d not tried hiding and I was gambling that they wouldn’t expect it.

Right on cue, stomping feet ascended the stairs seconds later and paused; I didn’t peek out to see, holding myself as still as possible.

“Fuck,” Kasser exclaimed, his favorite word. “Where’d that bastard…”

“The ramparts door hasn’t been opened, he either went up the watchtower or backtracked down the hall toward the barracks.”

“He wouldn’t’ve gone up, he’d just get cornered up there. Fucker’s probably doubling back again.”

“Okay, you follow that way to cut him off and I can flank him like before.”

“Be careful. He may be unarmed but this guy is clearly insane, and I’m pretty sure he’s Blessed.”

“You be careful, too.”

Two sets of footsteps departed; from my hidden position I could see Kasser running down the hallway I had elected not to take, while Harold descended the stairs back toward the mess hall. So this corridor must lead back into the main complex? Good to know.

Almost the second they were gone, a rapid buzzing heralded the arrival of Biribo, who dropped another scroll into my hands, this one with a black ribbon.

“Finally,” I muttered, unrolling it as soon as the ribbon broke. Text blazed, for a moment my world vanished into darkness and luminous lines of writing accompanied by pressure in my head, and I was left with a new spell, plus intuitive knowledge of its name and use.

Enamor, a spell which made the caster’s sexual advances irresistible to the victim, the effect broken upon…consummation.

“Are you. Fucking. Kidding me,” I very calmly inquired of my familiar.

He tasted the air. “We’re runnin’ low on options, boss, and I think I mentioned the available scrolls don’t offer much in the way of offensive firepower. I figured, at least—”

“Hey!”

Oh, great; Kasser was returning down the hall. Apparently activating a spell scroll made enough noise to be detectable, at least to someone who was looking for it.

“You motherf— Are you using up those scrolls?!”

He raised his sword, charging at me, and I found myself in agreement with Biribo about desperate times and measures.

“Sorry about this, man,” I muttered, pointing at him and cringing. Sure, he was trying to kill me, but there’s some shit you just don’t do to a person. Unless it’s that or death. “Enamor!”

Kasser stumbled to a stop, raising his sword defensively and frowning in concern. “What was that? What did you just do?”

Absolutely nothing, which I could tell even without his failure to be suddenly panting after my body. Magic caused a distinctive sensation in the mind when activated, and I had not felt it. This was just like trying to use Spark on that non-combustible table made of whatever it was; something about the target prevented the spell from activating.

“Why, it’s quite simple, my good man,” I said, putting on my most evil grin. “I have just cast an insidious spell to cause you oh my god what is that?!”

I pointed past his shoulder, and he turned to look, because as much of a cliché as that is, most people will unless they’re expecting the trick. I was off up the stairs, painfully aware that I was now cornering myself just as they’d said a minute ago, but I could hear Harold coming up from below, no doubt drawn by our voices.

“Explain,” I snarled at Biribo while climbing.

“Huh,” he mused. “I guess you’re not gay after all.”

“Fucking what?!”

“Enamor’s an influence spell, boss; it derives its effect from the caster’s mental state. That one in particular will only work on somebody you’re sexually attracted to.”

You know, I could almost learn to live with my life being insanely dangerous and surrounded by medieval squalor, but did it really need to be a black comedy on top of it all? That just seemed excessive.

“Yeah? Well maybe I am gay and that guy just isn’t my type, you ever think of that?”

“Boss, if you were gay you’d have noticed that dude is everyone’s type. Did you see those smoky eyes? Mmm.”

“I hate you so much.”

“Hey, gimme a break! If it had worked it at least woulda taken him out of the fight. It was a fifty-fifty chance.”

“Statistically, more like one in ten.”

“That’s not how statistics work, boss, for a single instance with a binary outcome—”

“Just go get me more spells!”

He did a quick loop around my head as I reached the next landing up. “Remember the goddess gave you a special ability! Try using spell combination!”

“How?”

“Focus on more than one spell at a time, see if you can mash any of ‘em together. Should be pretty intuitive once you get the trick. Be right back!”

He zoomed away, prompting cursing from my pursuers as he buzzed them on the way down the stairs. Fortunately I was in a furnished landing; there was a table and two chairs set nearby, which I immediately put to good use by grabbing one of the handy seats and hurling it down the staircase.

The heavy stuff—what had he called it? Akorshil?—bounced pretty well in addition to being weightier than wood. Harold and Kasser yelled and tried to avoid it, and I got the pleasure of seeing only one of them succeed; Harold pressed himself against the wall but my improvised missile nailed Kasser right in the midsection and they both went tumbling down. Even better, as previously, Harold turned back to rescue his friend rather than push the pursuit.

That was the extent of the good news, as I had now, indeed, cornered myself. There was only one door up here, which I immediately went through, and that was the end of the chase. I now stood on a round platform looming above the fortress, with behind me the door into the stairwell. This spot had a glorious view of the surrounding alien forest which I had to appreciate even despite the situation and how weird it all looked.

I kicked the door shut, hoping to buy a precious half-second.

Spell combination. Okay, what did I have to work with? Heal, Spark, and Enamor.

“I’m fine, just go! Get the son of a bitch!” Feet pounded up the stairs; I tried to brace myself against the door.

Enamor was apparently as useless against these guys as it was horrifying, for which I was almost grateful. That was a disgusting spell and I felt slimy for even knowing it. But Heal and Spark? What could I even do with that?

The door shook and I was almost dislodged as Harold impacted it from the other side; I rallied and pushed back against it.

Heal. Responding to the pressure in my mind, pink light exploded and little else happened; I’d taken no injury since the last time, but the soreness in my calves from running up stairs disappeared. Spark did nothing at all, as there was nothing flammable up here except my clothes, which I wasn’t about to burn.

Tiring of our little push-of-war, Harold backed up, got a running start, and slammed his body into the door again, nearly flinging me back. I barely rallied, and he was already gaining ground. The guy was a medieval bandit; obviously he was physically stronger than a sedentary musician from comfortable modern Japan.

In a way, the uselessness of Spark helped; by focusing on the heavy sense of Spark in my mind without actually triggering it, I could experience the sensation more closely. As I focused on it, I felt my awareness expand. It was like the moment in which I learned a spell from a scroll. Flickering around me, I could see lines of unreadable text imprinted on reality. Like some kind of computer code instructing the universe how to make the spell work.

And now…Heal. The two existing simultaneously was almost too much pressure; I winced and was pushed back another inch. But then the text, the code started to move. The process wasn’t automatic or perfect. Reaching out with my mind, I tried to force them together and they resisted. But approached more gently, lines slipped, adjusting, interlacing…

Harold’s sword crashed through the gap he’d made in the door and I leaped backward instinctively to avoid being stabbed. The door banged fully open and the man himself lunged out, glaring furiously at me in an expression completely unlike his previously hesitant attitude. Seemed he was not pleased about me dropping a chair on his buddy.

I retreated, my back quickly coming up against the ramparts, still desperately trying to jam the two spells together in my mind, not that I was even sure what good that would be if I succeeded. I just had no other ideas.

Harold raised his sword, baring his teeth, and at that moment it clicked. I felt them combine, the magical code all around me flashed, invisible to my attacker, and a new spell was suddenly a fresh weight in my consciousness.

I pointed at him and shouted the brand new incantation the instant it was clear enough in my head.

“Immolate!”

Harold went up like a bonfire.