Alice was awoken from her light nap with a loud bang.

Huh? Alice, still groggy, turned around, trying to figure out what was going on. Her head was still hazy, because she had just woken up.

“What’s going on?” Asked Alice, trying to make sense of the sudden noise in the world around her. She could suddenly hear multiple people yelling, and some part of her brain was urgently screaming at her. Alice tried to finish waking up, rubbing absently at her eyes, before she turned to Milo.

“I don’t know, but I think something bad is happening,” said Milo, frowning. “Come on, let’s get out of the wagon.”

Alice didn’t need to be urged more – she was already beginning to have a bad feeling about the situation. Milo quickly climbed out of the back of the wagon, before taking a few more steps forward and looking around. Alice gave her head a quick shake to dispel the last few remnants of muddle-headed sleepiness, before she also started getting ready to move out of the back of the wagon.

As she was doing so, she heard a strange whistling sound. Milo suddenly shot a mana tendril to the side as he turned in a certain direction, and a hint of panic surfaced in his expression as an arrow hovered a few meters away from him. Alice suddenly froze. Milo’s expression turned pale, but he didn’t seem wounded yet.

Oh, shi-

The sound of metal clashing against metal sounded in the distance moments later. The sound of men and women cursing and yelling started coming from the direction of one of the other wagons. By this point, Alice was starting to panic.

We’re being attacked. Alice had heard of the Sigmusi empire attacking people and the Society of Starry Eyes hurting people, but she hadn’t seen any of it firsthand. In her mind, violence between humans was still something that only dimly registered as a possibility. She had grown up in a first world country where violence was rare, after all.

Now, it seemed she would see firsthand exactly what it was like when humans tried to kill each other.

The four guards that had been sitting in the carriage with her burst into motion, grabbing their weapons and shields. They didn’t have time to grab their armor – the attack had come too suddenly. Quickly, they leapt out of the carriage and began scanning their surroundings, warily moving towards the wagon being attacked.

Alice’s heart was beating so heavily that it felt like it might burst out of her chest, Alice scrambled to get out of the carriage, nearly fumbling and falling as she tried to get down. Her mana was wildly roiling about, as she desperately tried to find any places where arrows might catch her unprepared. She had only trained for two weeks under Illa, and only with beans that she knew wouldn’t hurt her in a controlled environment. This was different.

This was real.

A group of six men and two women wielding spears and swords charged out of the trees and towards Alice and Milo. The guards stopped moving towards the other wagon and began quickly moving in front of Milo, preparing to meet the charge of the attackers.

And, more importantly, leaving Alice stranded several meters away from the rest of the group. One of the guards seemed to notice she was there, but it was too late.

Another arrow flew towards Alice. Luckily, Alice’s brain finally kicked into gear, and with a movement she had rehearsed over and over again under Illa’s instruction, Alice shot out a mana tendril. The arrow halted the moment it got within five meters of her, and Alice felt a huge amount of mana drain out of her seed.

She had stopped it too far away. Mages could only easily influence objects one meter away from them if they had no Perks to extend that range, and she had gone way above her range in her panic.

Before she had time to kick herself mentally for screwing up, three of the charging attackers broke away from the charge towards Milo’s group and suddenly sped towards Alice at speeds an Olympic athlete could never hope to match. They immediately spread out to surround her. The one in the lead, a man with a scar on his face and a long spear, stabbed towards her chest while the two [Swordsmen] hacked towards her.

Alice, realizing that one mana tendril was never going to keep her alive here, instead grabbed herself by her clothes with a mana tendril and threw herself up and backwards, soaring a few meters above ground and away from her attackers. She felt a hot flash of pain in her arm as she rocketed away, and looked down. She now had a deep cut on her forearm, but luckily she still had an arm. She pushed against her clothes again, slowing down her descent as the world crazily spun in front of her eyes.

She hit the ground and rolled, bruised, banged up, and with a now possibly broken leg, but alive. Desperate, she looked around with both her eyes and her senses, desperately trying to orient herself. She was only a few meters away from the attackers.

She searched for something to use as ammunition. If she didn’t counterattack, she would die.

She quickly seized a few pebbles from the ground and hurled them as hard as she could towards the swordsman who had cut her. He dodged her attack with contemptuous ease, giving her a wide, confident sneer as he stepped forward. His figured seemed to blur for a moment, and Alice realized he was going to speed up again.

Then he stiffened, his neck bulging unnaturally as a sword tip tore through part of his spine before getting stuck. Warm blood sprayed across the ground as the man died, his eyes wide open. The guard who had stabbed him barely had time to turn back towards Milo’s group before an arrow tore through his chest, killing him instantly.

The [Spearman] cursed, before he turned back towards Alice with murderous rage in his eyes. He grabbed a short javelin from his side and threw it at her. Alice pushed herself away from the missile, her leg trembling with pain as her body instinctively dragged itself out of the way. Her long hours grinding {Dodge} and {Projectile Awareness} were finally paying off.

Then the two sped up. In moments, they were in front of her again. The [Swordsman] chopped at her neck while the [Spearman] stabbed towards her heart. Alice stumbled away from the [Spearman] while she shoved against the blade of the swordsman, stopping it in midair.

The spear tore into her belly, nailing her against the earth. Alice gasped in pain. She had dodged, shifting the spearman’s aim away from her heart. However, it was nowhere near enough. Hot pain shredded through her brain, and for a moment, Alice was on the verge of blacking out. Desperate, Alice’s magical abilities warred with the [Swordsman’s] muscles as they struggled for control of the blade the [Swordsman] held.

An arrow zipped into Alice’s shoulder as the [Spearman] withdrew his weapon from her stomach, preparing to finish her off. Her lungs finally working, Alice began screaming, not sure what she was yelling. She only knew that it hurt.

Finally, with a surge of adrenaline-fueled mana and desperation, Alice managed to wrench the sword out of the other attacker’s hand. It flew through the air, and just like the arrows Alice had guided earlier that day, it spun in midair, orienting itself.

Then it slammed into the [Spearman]’s torso before bouncing off with a metal clang. Alice watched in disbelief as her desperate, last-ditch attack failed. The man was wearing fucking armor under his clothes.

Another arrow flew out of the woods, straight towards Alice. The [Spearman] stabbed towards her, and Alice desperately let her mana tendril collapse, trying to form a new one to stop the spear in time. In her heart, she knew she wasn’t going to make it in time to stop both – either the spear or the arrow would kill her here.

And then another mage entered the fight. A woman Alice had never met before leapt in front of Alice at a speed she could barely register, even with her incredibly high Perception stat, and both the spear and the arrow tore into her neck and torso. Warm blood splattered across Alice’s face, and she watched, her mouth gaping in shock, as the woman simply sacrificed her life to save her.

Then, totally unconcerned by the fact that she was bleeding out, the woman grabbed the disarmed [Swordsman] by the shoulder and leg, lifted him up, and then threw him towards where the arrow had come from. The man sailed like a bird for a few seconds before crashing back into the dirt, emitting a painful groan. The [Spearman] looked at the new arrival, his eyes wide open in shock, and the woman gave him a friendly grin. Her hands shot out at inhuman speed, and she grabbed him by the neck and lifted him into the air. The man’s legs began to kick uselessly in the air, panicking, as he stabbed her in the torso. However, the woman didn’t seem concerned by the wound at all, even as his spear sank deeper into her heart.

The man’s eyes flashed in panic and realization, and he tried aim at the woman’s brain instead, desperately trying to kill her as he choked and struggled to breathe. The woman’s friendly grin faded, and her confident appearance disappeared in a flash. She shifted her weight to the left as she tried to twist the man’s neck, hoping to kill him on the spot while he tried to stab her in the brain.

Alice’s vision was beginning to fade. It was cold. Desperate, she managed to reach out with her mana and pick up the sword that had fallen near her. The sword zipped towards the choking [Spearman], and then ripped through his neck, destroying a huge part of his face.

The man went limp. The woman dropped his corpse.

The woman looked at Alice, glanced at the [Swordsman] who was struggling back to his feet, and looked at Milo’s group, which had managed to kill two of their attackers but had a heavily injured [Guard] bleeding out on the ground. The woman’s gaze settled back on Alice.

“Give me {Patient’s Consent},” said the woman, and she wrapped Alice in a bear hug. One of her hands seized Alice’s wrist, forming skin contact, and the woman lifted Alice up and then sprinted towards Milo’s group. At the same time, Alice felt a flicker of energy digging into her body that felt familiar.

Organic Mage. Alice immediately focused on letting the woman’s energy into her, praying for a miracle to save her from her death. A moment later, she felt the massive hole in her stomach rapidly begin to close. The hole in her shoulder and the cut in her arm were left unaddressed, but the blackness eating away at the edge of her vision started to clear up.

Seconds later, the wound had stopped bleeding, and the woman roughly set Alice down on the ground. Then, she leapt towards the dying [Guard], while the other [Guards] moved to shield both her and Alice.

One of the [Guards], seeing an opportunity, shuffled over and grabbed the dead [Spearman]’s weapon. He hefted it for a moment, and then threw it into the woods. Alice watched as it swerved in midair, seemingly correcting its aim, trajectory, or both. Alice saw an arrow fly out of the woods at almost the same time, speeding towards the [Guard]. A mana tendril from Milo stopped the arrow in its tracks, and a moment later, Alice heard a gurgled scream from the woods. The remaining three attackers who had been on Milo’s group began to disengage, pulling back. Seeing an opportunity, one of the [Guards] quickly strode over to the swordsman, hefted the pommel of his sword, and slammed it into the man’s head. The man went out like a light, unconscious.

The other guards tried to kill the fleeing enemies, but whatever Perk they were using to speed up let them quickly evade their pursuers and disappear back into the woods.

“How are the other wagons doing?” Asked Milo, turning to the woman.

“Decent. Fuckers mounted a goddam ballista in the middle of the woods and tried to kill off Illa early on in the attack, but she plowed through the damn thing and then killed the people manning it. A few high level [Assassins] popped out afterwards to try to kill her while she was distracted, but she dealt with them. After that, she managed to stabilize most of the other wagons – this one was the last area. Any dead?”

The [Guards] looked at the corpse of the guard who had killed one of the people attacking Alice earlier. “One dead, two wounded.”

“I’m almost out of mana, so I’m not healing it if it isn’t life-threatening,” said the woman.

“Her stomach okay?” Asked Milo, gesturing towards Alice.

“Fine for now. Lethal if it isn’t properly healed in the next few hours, but I at least roughly patched it up. It’ll hold for now if she doesn’t move too much. Just need to deal with the blood loss and the bits of stomach acid mixed into her other organs, because I didn’t have time to finish dealing with it,” said the woman.

Milo and the [Guards] cautiously scanned the surroundings again, before Milo nodded in relief. “I think we’re fine for now. Go check on the other wagons again.”

“Got it. Pull back towards the center wagon – Illa wants to regroup, since even though we’re all pretty close this attack somehow slipped the [Shadow Guards] on the perimeter and got the drop on us. How did they even know we were coming here?” The woman said, with a frown.

“Beats me. We’ll need to talk with Illa more,” said Milo, frowning. Finally, the woman departed from the group. Milo turned back towards Alice, who was lying on the ground. Every breath was painful, but she was alive. Her leg, arm, and shoulder were all sources of incredible pain, though – it felt like someone had lit half of her body on fire at this point. Milo leaned over her.

“How are you holding up? Here, let’s get you cleaned up a little,” said Milo.

Alice’s mind turned back towards the Spearman she had killed, and she felt sick to her stomach. She raised a quivering hand towards her face, and when she touched her cheek, her hand came away covered in red.

There was still blood on her.

Finally, Alice turned away from Milo and vomited onto the grass. Then, as a result of the pain, the fact that she had killed someone, her emotions running wild after the encounter, or some combination of the three, she passed out.