Chapter 14 — Determination

Ria scavenged the mayor’s house. In the kitchen, Ria finally found her desired steel stockpot. Between that and the tools found in the shed, her infiltration of the mayor’s house had resulted in significant gains.

Against her better judgement, Ria had also taken the duke’s letter. She knew it was a terrible idea and that if captured, she would be considered a spy—the ‘girl lost in the woods’ excuse wouldn’t be able to save her.

Regardless, the letter was proof of what had happened to her family. She was already a deserter and planning to flee to Crysellia. If something really terrible was happening to her family, maybe someone in Crysellia could use the information to do something about it. In her heart, Ria knew that was wishful thinking, but the frustration of her own powerlessness rankled and festered, stoking a bitter need for vengeance any way possible, and a darker part of her wanted to extract a price for what she viewed as the King’s callousness—this country’s callousness to everything she held dear.

After dropping off the loot at her house and taking a brief lunch to consider her options, Ria’s newfound determination led her to Jarrel’s archery range.

The wolves were a test. One that she had to overcome if she was to prove to herself that she wasn’t just a powerless girl adrift on the waves of fate, dependent on others and meekly accepting whatever injustice came her way. If she couldn’t even save one dog…

KATHUNK!

Settling into a rhythm, Ria fired the crossbow, reloaded, fired again.

KATHUNK!

Each shot she alternated targets, standing at a distance close to that from Ranger’s farmhouse roof to the fence she and Ranger would need to defend.

KATHUNK!

At this range her accuracy was becoming quite good. Most shots hit close to center with only an occasional shot missing by more than a hand-length.

After a while she felt herself entering a meditative state, mechanically winding and shooting the crossbow. To take advantage of the meditative state, she started pushing and pulling her inner energy so it flowed more strongly through her arms, in hope that would ease her muscle fatigue.

Archery wasn’t the only skill she planned to practice for the coming battle. Placing the crossbow down once her quivers were emptied, Ria took out the lightning wand from the leather knitting-needle case that she had repurposed as a holster for her three wands. Aiming at a patch of ground about ten feet away, she gathered inner energy and slowly pushed it into the wand to determine the minimum amount needed to activate the spell.

When she reached about a tenth of her total energy, with a crackle, a light zig-zagged forth from the tip of the wand, going mostly straight but with dozens of thin branches escaping to spread out into the air around the main arcing light.

Ria yelped in surprise and dropped the wand.

“Wow…”

Every hair on her body had stood on end, and she rubbed her arms to help dissipate the feeling before reaching down to pick up the wand again.

The lightning produced hadn’t been that powerful. There was barely a mark where it struck the ground. Ria doubted the tiny bolt was enough to kill anyone, but the shock from such an attack was probably enough to stun a person for quite a while.

For the next test, Ria wanted to get an idea of what her maximum power was. Aiming at the archery target, she gathered almost all of the energy from around her body into her hand, then pushed all the gathered energy into the wand at once.

A much more substantial bolt of lightning, similar in shape to the first, crashed through the air and slammed into the target, causing sand and straw to explode out the back as the flash lit the surroundings and a loud crackle echoed off the nearby houses.

This time, Ria was too stunned to drop the wand.

“Oh, wow…”

She thought that size attack might be able to kill a person or at least severely injure them, and it would definitely scare the wolves. But… it would take all her energy.

Ria had one more test in mind, but for now she planned an early dinner.

“Here you go, Ranger. Eat up. You’re going to need it,” Ria said as she fed Ranger his second bowl of the day.

While Ranger was distracted, she went over to where the chickens were clucking around and pulled out the sleep wand. She had thought about testing the wand on the rabbits, but this was quicker and easier since she was already here.

With only a fourth of her energy restored from earlier’s lightning practice, she again decided to test the minimum, and again at about a tenth of her maximum energy, the magic activated.

Ria thought the barely noticeable glittery breeze that puffed out and settled over the chickens looked like fairy dust, or at least how she imagined fairy dust would look like.

The chickens didn’t seem much affected at first, but after a few seconds, their clucking and activity became more sluggish, and they each staggered around before tucking into a comfortable sleeping position and nodding off.

The result was a lot gentler than expected, and Ria wondered if the effect might be useful for more than just self-defense.

Ranger came over to see what was going on and nudged one of the sleeping chickens. When it barely stirred, he nudged it harder, only to be greeted by a squawk of groggy indignation and a half-hearted wing buffet, before the chicken turned its back on Ranger and went back to sleep.

“Oooh, impressive.”

Admittedly, the targets were chickens, but the drowsy effect seemed quite persistent. Ria waffled with herself on whether scaring the wolves off with the lightning or sleep-assassinating them was the better approach.

Either way, she had one more task to prepare.

Instead of filling in the holes the wolves had dug when trying to tunnel under the fence, she used what Jarrel had taught her and made wire noose traps which she anchored to the fence posts. She made similar leg snares in other places around the fence.

All that was left was checking the roof thatching for stability and getting some sleep to restore her inner energy.

When the wolves came, Ria was again awoken by Ranger’s barking. At first, she was confused about waking up in a strange room, but she quickly remembered the battle she had volunteered herself for. Her first real test of courage and skill with a friend’s life on the line should she fail.

Grabbing her already loaded crossbow, Ria eased herself out the second-floor window and climbed the thatching to sit straddling the ridgeline of the roof. Again, the wolves chose a dark, moonless time of night to attack. Somehow it seemed out of character. Shouldn’t wolves attack in the moonlight or something?

While taking stock of the shadowy figures darting just out of sight as they taunted Ranger, Ria prepared another one of her planned countermeasures, tossing a glowstone to one side of the house, then lighting the lightstone with her inner energy and tossing it to the other side.

The wolves growled and backed off, suspicious of the sudden light, but Ranger’s constant barking and growling seemed to annoy them into continuing their attack. One of the wolves rushed forward to bait Ranger while another went for the larger of the already dug holes.

Ranger fell for the feint of course, but the wolf digging in the hole suddenly pulled up short with a growling yelp and started trashing about, whimpering and growling, trying to get its paw unstuck from the trap. A third wolf darted forward to continue digging the hole that the trapped wolf had abandoned.

KATHUNK!

Ria let fly a crossbow bolt into the digging wolf. The bolt tinked slightly off the chicken-wire, but the slight redirection didn’t stop it from burying itself deeply into the wolf. Making a noise half-way between a yelp and a whimper, the wolf was flung on its side by the force of the impact and struggled to get back up.

While reloading her crossbow, Ria heard another wolf panic after getting caught in a trap. When she looked up, she saw more shadows dance forward into the light and rush the fence at different places.

“Gods, at least a dozen of the beasts! I wouldn’t have lasted a single day had I left the village on my own,” Ria muttered.

KATHUNK!

Ranger ran off to challenge the newcomers, and Ria took that opportunity to down the wolf that had been taunting him. It wasn’t dead, but none of these wolves would last long after a direct hit.

Ria kept shooting the ones that started to dig since they made easy stationary targets, and after they got shot even while sneaking around to the far side, the wolves wised up and stayed just back out of the light while continuing to yip and growl from several directions in an attempt to wear down the defenders' morale.

At this point, Ria decided it was time to teach these clever wolves a lesson. She climbed back into the farmhouse bedroom and exchanged her crossbow for her staff. Returning to the roof, she drew the stored energy out of her staff and gathered it together with most of the rest of her inner energy, and while aiming at a moving shadow, she shoved it all into the lightning wand.

KAZASH!

A bright bolt of light arced into a wolf, exploding out in a storm behind it before dissipating. The resulting flash of light revealed over a dozen more wolves briefly before the echoes of torn air returned from the surrounding forest.

Stunned silence followed, and even Ranger seemed cowed, hunkering down, making fearful yips while peeking out from under his paws.

The shadows slipped away into the silence, until mournful howls confirmed their retreat deeper into the forest.

“We did it, Ranger!” Ria cheered, and he gave her a disgruntled woof.

By the time, Ria had retrieved her crossbow and exited out of the farmhouse, Ranger had recovered enough confidence to come over and complain. A few scratches between the ears and a pat on the back seemed to mollify him, but his ears still twitched at the whimpering from the trapped and wounded wolves.

Ria walked around the inside of the fence and used the crossbow at close range to finish off each remaining wolf before rescuing her glowstone and lightstone from Ranger.

She also dragged two of the dead wolves inside the fence, one at a time, cutting out their guts for Ranger and the chickens to eat, then hanging them up in the barn to drain the blood out. Old Bess mooed her complaint at the grisly company and probably at the commotion that preceded it, too.

Tired from the effort, Ria returned to the second-floor bedroom and slept until the rooster started crowing first thing in the morning.