Time is wrong. Sound is wrong. Someone is saying something; their words come one after the other but each sound is separated from the next by a creeping, dreadful eternity. I’m in the park near my apartment but there’s danger. The voice is trying to tell me how to survive. I can’t understand it because I can’t assemble their words into sentences. I realize that Axelos spawned a bunch of zombies right on top of me, just in time to look up and see something clawing itself out of the ground-

I jerk awake. Someone’s standing next to my bed, reaching down to shake me by the shoulder. I feel disgusting both inside and out. I’m still wearing my clothes and they stick to me like I’ve run a mile and then slept in them.

Probably because that’s about what happened.

“Hey, Whitney, you’re safe, you’re with friends,” Liv is saying gently. “Are you with me yet?” She’s changed back to her bright green bard outfit.

I curl up to hide my face in my knees and groan. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. Just give me a bit.”

I hate nightmares. Beyond even the part where they make me miserable, that is. I already have enough trouble sleeping consistently and losing half a night of sleep can cause real problems.

On the other hand, collapsing mid-day like that probably means I’m worn out enough that my sleep is already hosed, so who knows.

“Thanks,” I tell Liv. I consider saying more, but…

I look around the rest of the room, trying to see if everyone’s staring at me or anything. Which is probably silly, since I’m pretty sure at least three people here have super-senses, and probably more - Bob, Liv, one of the Caulfield hunters, and probably a backup in case their scout gets hurt. Nobody’s staring, at least, so I probably wasn’t screaming or thrashing or something.

“No problem,” Liv says. “And we were going to wake you up for the after-action debrief soon anyway.”

“Oh,” I say into my knees. “That would probably help.” It really would. I can tell that I’m having trouble with this and I should probably try to do something about it. I’ve also seen some really impressive research about the effectiveness of debriefings and reviews for preventing post-traumatic stress disorder. There’s a reason the military does it basically as frequently as possible. As long as it’s done right, at least. I really hope they’re doing it right. They should at least understand the principles, since Liv said that the training was mostly exercises and therapy.

“In the meantime,” Liv offers, “why don’t we try to get you cleaned up? There’s a bath upstairs. Won’t help much with your clothes, but you can borrow some of mine if you want.”

Oh. That’d be why I feel so gross. I’m still wearing all of the zombie chunks that Agnes and Bob covered me in. Yuck. I must’ve been really worn out if I managed to forget about that.

More importantly, will I even fit into Liv’s spare clothes? We’re about the same size, but she’s got muscles everywhere and I’m, well, slightly pudgy…

Who am I kidding. Given a choice between being covered in zombie goop and wearing clothes that didn’t fit, I’d take the clothes even if I had to keep them on with prayers and double-sided tape.

“Yes please,” I answer. “To both the bath and the clothes. Though I really hope my jeans are salvageable.” I stretch out and turn to get off the bed. “The shirt I could do without, but I haven’t seen a single pair of pockets here yet.”

Liv offers me a hand and helps me haul myself to my feet.

“It’ll be fine, we’ll just have to find a good launderer when we get to Stonehill,” Liv says, politely ignoring the way I end up leaning on her when my legs refuse to cooperate. “Come on.”

To make a long story short, the water is cold and there’s no soap.

Note to self: Develop a spell to heat a bathtub. My Gift can both level buildings and write legibly. The hardest part will be making the water heater persistent so my teammates aren’t continuously pestering me about it.

Also, Liv’s spare clothes are an electric blue color that’s so intensely saturated that I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m leaving painful afterimages in everyone’s vision.

“Axelos is now stably sedated,” Heather begins. “Because we have new people and things went wrong, I’ve decided we’ll do a full after-action debriefing.”

I see understanding nods from all over the room, people having all chosen their own ways of settling in for the meeting. Some people have taken spots on the benches at the single table, some people are sitting on beds, and Ji and Bob appear to be competing for who can adopt the most ridiculous kung-fu meditation pose. Bob’s balancing on top of his staff on one side of the room and Ji is upside-down doing a one-arm handstand opposite Bob. I’m one of the bed people, though I’ve moved away from the one I contaminated with zombie paste.

“The purpose of this debriefing is twofold,” she continues. “First, to reconstruct events as accurately and precisely as possible so that we can benefit from lessons learned. Second, to reveal internal conflicts and bottled-up emotions so they can dealt with honestly and in the open.”

She’s not quite reading off a powerpoint, but I can tell that she’s at least drawing heavily from reference material. Her sentences are normally much more short and direct.

“The purpose of this debriefing is not to find fault or assign blame,” Heather says. “Negativity is a normal and expected result of stress, but left unchecked it can itself cause more stress which in turn causes more negativity. This is one of the mechanisms by which a single traumatically stressful incident can cause long-term damage.”

That… feels like it sounds right? I’m going to be careful not to give that any real credence unless I can hunt down a reputable study confirming it.

If this place even has such a thing as a reputable psych study. Even back home the replication crisis was only being revealed to be worse and worse as time went on. Trying to get a solid psych study done in this kind of civilization would probably be nightmarishly difficult.

“Operational lessons learned or systemic problems that we identify will be shared or passed up the chain, but other than that, nothing we share here leaves this group.”

She’s definitely reading off a script for that one; I actually heard her almost lose her place mid-sentence. On the plus side, the script that she’s reading off of was clearly written by someone with at least passing familiarity with “real” mental health practice, though it feels awkward or outdated in a way that doesn’t fit with my memories of the few times I’ve talked to mental health professionals.

Everyone else seems to be pretty used to this speech.

“We’ll begin by reconstructing the events from memory, starting just before the action began with the first person that was involved. Whitney?”

Oh. I wasn’t expecting to be put on the spot like this, though I guess I should have expected it.

“Uh, we were walking down the path from Caulfield to the forest where Axelos was set up, to the north,” I say.

Liv breaks in. “Where we thought Axelos was set up,” she corrects.

“Right,” I say. “I was practicing Find Spellcraft. After… maybe an hour after we left Caulfield, I got the spell working. I promptly noticed some dots off in the forest with it.”

“What do you mean by that,” Heather asks, “Dots? And how did you notice them? What does the spell detect exactly?”

“I honestly don’t know what it detects,” I admit. “The Grimoire’s theory is aggravatingly lacking. I’ve already found a few major disagreements between its theory and my own observations and I fully expect to find more.” I realize that I’m about to erupt into a standard episode of software engineer griping about bad software and cut myself off. “My best guess is that it detects ‘active’ magic above some threshold of intensity. It does so by displaying a narrow- actually, I should just show everyone in case they didn’t see it earlier,” I say.

I start running my hands through the gestures, paying attention to make sure I get them right - I’ve just slept, so this is a major ‘space’ for spaced repetition to do its magic. Hah, I made a joke, magic.

Thirty seconds later I’m flashing my lit-up cone around. “Okay, so I have this narrow cone, and magic shows up as dots,” I demonstrate. Interestingly, when I point it at the front of the guardpost, I get a cluster of dots that look like they’d be placed in Alfwyn’s tavern. Some magic items for food preservation, maybe?

“I was pointing it around to see if anyone in the party was magical, pure curiosity,” I say, “and by pure luck swept the cone over some signatures out in the forest.”

Going through the fight in detail took about an hour. There was apparently a lot more going on than I’d thought. Liv and Ji in particular remembered the individual paths and actions of nearly every single person and zombie they saw for the entire duration of the fight, and watching them dump that out in detail was incredible.

“So,” Heather says, “Conclusions?”

“The necromancer had prepared a trap upon ground which we were to walk upon,” Agnes says immediately, “and it is only fortune which spared us his designs.”

“Fortune and Whitney,” Anna says. “He was following us so he could hit us from behind right as we walked into his trap. That thing would’ve torn our entire back line to pieces before we knew we’d even been flanked.”

“We weren’t ready for the stealth monster,” Liv says bitterly. “I wasn’t ready. I knew right where it was and I still couldn’t catch a whiff of it.”

“But you actually were the one that dealt with it,” I contest. “You and Bob, at least, him saying where things were and you hearing it, contextualizing it, and acting on it in realtime. My map would’ve been useless without a way to get its information up to the front.”

Liv nods, considering.

“This humble cultivator concurs with the lady wizard,” Ji adds, not even budging from his upside-down position. As far as I can tell his only movement in the last hour has been to switch hands. A normal person would’ve passed out a long time ago, but I’m not at all surprised that cultivators have stronger and more durable circulatory systems and tolerate things like that better. “Were it not for your directions I would have failed to protect one of our number from the risen corpse of the Caulfield Night Snatcher no fewer than four times.”

“How are you feeling, Whitney?” Heather suddenly asks me.

“Um. Uncertain? Disappointed? That’s not quite right,” I say, rambling uncertainly. “Afraid? It feels like yet more people saying that I’m smart and putting expectations on me that I won’t be able to live up to because I freeze up in the middle of a fight or something. The only new thing about it is why I’m failing.” I shrink into the bed I’m sitting on.

“‘Freeze up’ my behind,” Bob drawls out, somehow motionlessly pivoting to face me from atop his staff. Cultivators continue to be unfathomably weird, news at eleven. “Yer brain kept runnin’ and yer hands an’ feet kept movin’, y’just didn’t have ‘nuff experience so ya had ta spend yer’ brains on keepin’ up ‘nstead of gettin’ ahead.”

“I… guess?” I say helplessly. “I’m a software engineer, not a fighter.”

“We’re not necessarily saying you’re going to be incredible at it,” Liv says. “But once you’ve practiced enough to know what to do it’ll be a lot less stressful.”

“Y’ followed every single wor’ I said,” Bob says. “An’ were t’gether enough t’ track Axelos yerself. All I hadta say was ‘Follow them’, which, lemme tellya, way better ‘n some people I’ve dealt with in th’ past.”

“It’s perfectly normal and okay that you were scared,” Heather says. “That’s important. You’ll be more ready next time and won’t have to be afraid.”

“I suppose,” I say, considering the problem.

“I bet you’re already thinking of ways to set fire to the whole forest while you float behind a force field, out of reach of any retaliation,” Liv snorts.

“Hey! That’s… um. Okay,” I admit sheepishly. “I was going to say that that’s an unfair stereotype of wizards, but when I fell asleep I was just about to go looking in the back of the book for combat spells.”

“No large-scale area-of-effect offensive spells, Whitney,” Heather orders. “Not until you have the destructive effects license.”

“Right,” I says shiftily. “I totally would have remembered that before deciding to learn to throw fireballs. Hahahahaha.” I clear my throat. “Yes.”