The four of us had backed into a loose band at the center of the clearing, leaving maybe five meters between each of us. The sound of distorted growling was surrounding us, permeating the area with grating noise. I counted eight Altered, arranged in a rough circle at the edge of the clearing. Each of them were near identical to the one we’d taken down already.

“How many of these do we need to capture alive?” I asked.

“She left with one Altered, and we’re going to return with that one Altered,” Alex said. “Keep the one in the center alive, slay the rest.”

“Lovely.” I said. “Do we have a strategy?”

I started building unstructured magic, passing it into the tip of an bolt as we spoke.

“I can take them,” Lukas said, putting up a simple shield. “But do you want to fight them for now? I’ll intervene when necessary.”

“Sure,” Alex said. “Some practice never hurts.”

I nocked the bolt, stepping around Lukas’ shield as I did.

The magic had come quick and it had come deep, the bolt’s tip turning a deep, flat black as I pulled the loading mechanism of the crossbow back.

The nearest bear noticed me and began to roar, the distorted cry a familiar sound that I knew would soon be accompanied by a magic circle activating its oath to Caël.

I fired the bolt, wincing as the crossbow shuddered with its flight. This was always a problem with any complex weapon— I couldn’t shoot them more than a handful of times or they risked falling apart under the force of my magic.

The bolt soared through the air, straight and true, and it hit this bear head on. This time, rather than only penetrating the outermost layer of its skin, the bolt buried itself to the shaft, my ruinous magic assisting it. Even as its cry continued, the bear began falling apart from the wound out, gallons of blood spraying out and drying into ash. When I ducked behind cover again a heartbeat later, a dark hole the size of my head had already formed in its side and it had already fallen to the ground. For all intents and purposes, it was dead.

“That wasn’t a spell,” Alex said. “What the hell did you just do to that thing?”

Ah, shit. I’d meant to start using spells more but I’d forgotten. I should probably swap over anyway, given that my crossbow probably wouldn’t be usable if I kept on shooting enchanted bolts like this.

“Unstructured magic on my bolt,” I said. “I’m more used to this, but it’s less sustainable.”

“Gods above,” Lukas said. “You’re sure you’re a lower class oathholder than me? I can’t do anything close to that with my magic.”

“Quirk of my oath,” I said. “Doesn’t matter right now.”

The eight had become seven, and they were approaching us a little more cautiously after I’d turned one of them to nothing but decaying bones and blood, but they were still approaching. The blue glow on their backs was still there, but it was less intense than it had been before. It looked like their limitation was something to do with their roars charging their Caël oaths. Did their charge reduce over time?

“Take two apiece,” Jasmine said. “I can take three if Lukas isn’t going to be fighting.”

Whatever Lukas was going to say next was cut off, the bears apparently having come to some kind of consensus and beginning their power cry again.

“Shields up!” Jasmine warned.

I braced myself on a log that had been ripped apart lengthwise, and I threw out a hand, drawing a circle in the air and visualizing the pattern in which my magic would flow. It was no less awkward than before, but I pushed past the feeling of wrongness, a circle of true darkness forming in front of me.

As one, the Altered’s oaths burned bright and blue, and they charged forward, blurring with speed.

I felt the pressure of my oath as a bear slammed into it headlong, the impact far stronger than Alex’s missile. Since his missile wasn’t something I tangibly knew the force of, I didn’t have a great reference point for the force of the hit, but whatever it was it hit far harder than any bear had the right to do. I was fairly sure that I would have to drop my shield if an Altered hit again with that speed.

It did hold, though, and the bear recoiled on impact as if it had been burned. There were wisps of my magic clinging to it as it backed off from my shield, and while it certainly wasn’t enough to kill it the shield might have hurt it enough to make it think twice about hitting again.

I filed that away in my mind. My shield was nonlethal and could come in handy in the future if we had another capture quest.

There were more important events occurring, though, so I made the mental note quickly and returned my attention to the people and Altered around me.

Alex’s shield had not only held, it had propagated, the hexagons that comprised it extending the form of the spell until it was a dome of force surrounding him, hexes sliding and sticking to cover any gaps in his coverage. Two Altered had spent their charge on his full-body shield and were now prowling around him, waiting for an opening in his defense. His shield was all-encompassing, but it had no offensive effects and it looked like he was using all his available focus to hold it up. Someone would need to help him before the minute was up— there was no guarantee it would hold against the concentrated efforts of more Altered.

Jasmine, on the other hand, seemed perfectly in her element. Two Altered had charged her as well, and she’d formed more than one shield. There were two flaming rings in front of her, but neither of them were upright and there was nothing beyond armor covering Jasmine’s body. Both were horizontal, and apparently they had been formed and moved with incredible speed and precision because the Altered that had attacked her were bleeding and burning where they’d hit the side of the shield too hard. She was an unconventional mage, that was for sure, and she’d been fast enough on the uptake to create and manipulate moving shields that had stopped two Altered with enhanced movement capabilities. Even I had to admit that was impressive.

For his part, Lukas had simply formed multiple shield spells around himself, and he seemed completely and totally unconcerned with the Altered bears in front of them, their legs sunk in the dirt up to the knees.

Alright. The first priority was getting the Altered off of Alex. He seemed like he was having the most trouble.

“Keep your shield up, Alex!” I shouted.

Dropping my shield, I sprinted towards Alex. As I ran, weaving my way around my other teammates, I thrust out my left arm, making two simple and sharp gestures.

I once again ignored the way that every magical fibre of my body was shouting that this was wrong, that the spells were restricting my freedom to manipulate magic, and I fired the magic missile with the same amount of force I’d used to destroy a dummy during target practice, visualizing the bear closer to me as a target.

The black spell flew and made contact, but I could tell immediately that I hadn’t used enough power, the Altered barely fazed by the impact and turning towards me with an angry snarl.

I was almost within melee range, I realized with a start. I’d gotten too acclimated to fighting up close and personal, which was utterly unnecessary when I had a spell with extended range.

The bear lunged at me, no magic spurring its steps. I cursed, bracing my weight on the next step I took and reversing my momentum, jumping backwards. While it wasn’t currently an enhanced bear with incredible speed, it was still a murderous bear. I hadn’t jumped a moment too early, sharp claws whistling through the air where my throat had been just moments before.

I’d dropped my shield just moments before, and I knew that if I tried to cast another one now I would find the spell unresponsive.

The bear coiled, ready to pounce again at a moment’s notice. I didn’t have time to both retreat and cast, and—

And now I did. The telltale cracking sound of gunfire came from Jasmine’s direction and the bear was struck aside, a flaming trail behind it.

“Thanks!” I called out.

I caught my breath as it fell, my hands on my knees. The shot hadn’t been enough to kill it or even stop it from moving, but it was more than enough to give me a second to recollect myself.

Before it could begin to pull itself to its feet, I rose from my crouched position and cast another spell, forcing more magic into it. I had had a still-unevaluated increase in magic capacity after executing five cultists, and I made use of every bit of it, pouring more magic into this single missile than I usually did for an entire fight’s worth of weapon enchantments.

The missile I fired this time was wide as my outstretched hand, and it tore the air apart as it flew. Somehow, I knew that I had at least two more of these in me, the expansion of my magic capacity having a greater magnitude than I had initially thought.

The Altered didn’t stand a chance, beginning to wither into the void upon contact as if it had never been there.

At the fall of the first bear, Alex dropped a portion of his shield, hexagons sliding back to reveal an aperture large enough to fit a person through. Through that hole, he fired a dazzingly bright green magic missile, and it arced around his shield in a lazy loop once, twice, thrice, expanding in size and intensity as it did. When it finally smashed into the remaining Altered in front of him, it was accompanied by a smaller magic missile from my end.

My projectile was little more than force and a small enough amount of magic that wouldn’t do much more than kill the first layer of skin on this Altered, but Alex’s was a true force to be reckoned with, and it slammed the bear into the ground.

The Altered rolled over with the impact, baring its underbelly to the sky, and I saw that where the missile had impacted the bear, flesh was boiling, a nauseating green coloring the bleeding crater and doing something to worsen its condition into an ailment it would never get the opportunity to recover from.

“You were planning on hitting me with that?” I asked Alex.

“Well, yes,” he admitted sheepishly. “But not at this intensity.”

By Jasmine, the two remaining mobile bears were backing off, apparently respecting the fact that those who had caused the demise and capture of the rest of their party were not to be fucked with.

“You’re not getting away that easily,” Jasmine said.

I left it to her and Alex to deal with the remaining two, choosing instead to reflect on the fight I’d just taken. I’d been sloppy, followed old habits when I had new tools that didn’t play well with them. I had been lucky that only one bear had attacked me, their communication apparently not good enough to lunge at me in a pair that certainly would have killed me. Even then, if it hadn’t been for Jasmine’s intervention, there were even odds that I would have been knocked out of the fight.

I would have to do better. Much as I hated to even think about them, House Byron had excelled at training military oathholders that used spells in combination with mundane weaponry and unstructured magic. If I wanted to live up to a standard that was better than the place I’d come from, I would need to adapt.

I sighed. Training was in order, then. There would be time to do that later, and perhaps I could enlist Jasmine to help me.

Almost as if answering my thoughts, the girl in question was engaging both of the remaining Altered. She was kiting around them, gracefully rolling and dodging their strikes, blocking them with horizontal shields when she wasn’t able to completely avoid one.

The shields were putting in work both defensively and offensively, their strikes combined with regular shots from her revolver. Jasmine’s shields had lasted far longer than mine had against the onslaught of the Altered, still up even after taking the initial oath-powered charge and many other attacks besides. On top of her competence, she was definitely demonstrating that the difference between me and one who had had noble education for years more than me was still a significant one.

“Incoming!” Alex shouted.

I glanced at him. He’d stood a little further back, letting Jasmine buy time and draw attention. That time had been spent building up a massive magic missile, the projectile already cast and growing as it looped around him. It looked like he, too, had had some training in advanced manipulation of his magic despite his claim that he’d only gotten his oath shortly before arriving in Yaguan.

Jasmine backed off, hitting each Altered once more with her shields before retreating, still maintaining the shields, and Alex loosed his spell.

The magic missile was massive, more of a magical cannonball than anything else, and when the sickly bright green struck its target I could see a veritable fountain of blood, the wood on the ground around it flying into the air like so much dust with the impact.

When the flurry of splinters settled, the front half of the Altered's body had been separated from its back, and the blood that poured out from either side was darker and thicker than it should have been.

“Thanks for softening up its defenses,” Alex said, the effort he’d expended clear in the strain of his voice. “I don’t think that would have killed otherwise.”

“Of course,” Jasmine said, and she sounded for all the world like she was answering a question in class. “Mind if I take the other?”

“All yours. I think I’m tapped out for now.”

“Thanks.”

After all of that, she still had magic left. Was she really class four? I shouldn’t have been terribly far behind her, and yet compared to her I ran out of magic in a pitifully short time. Though then again, maybe that had changed with my recent gains.

Jasmine jogged forward, forming spheres of flame in each hand. Once she got a few steps away from the rest of us, she loosed them, each projectile brighter than the rays of sun filtering into the clearing. I covered my eyes almost at the moment she fired, and even then they left blinding spots in my vision.

I heard the telltale oil-on-fire sound that came with Jasmine’s magic, and I uncovered my eyes.

The last bear had been set aflame, fully enveloped by the enhanced magic missiles. From what I saw, the fire might not even have had a purpose beyond charring its corpse beyond recognition, the force of the impacts strong enough to blast awfully fatal-looking holes in its body.

“Wow,” Alex said. “I shouldn’t have expected anything less. They called you the Rayes prodigy for a reason.”

“I told you to not bring that up for a reason,” Jasmine said. “Please don’t make me ask again.”

“You should own it,” Alex said. “You’re powerful and have much potential. Everyone knows this.”

“I have my reasons,” Jasmine said. “I mislike them not being respected.”

“Alright then, sorry,” Alex said. “I won’t continue.”

I thought back to my first meeting with Jasmine. Then, she’d said she wanted to make a name for herself, said that she was so far back in the line of succession that there was no chance she would ever become the Rayes scion. Not a complete lie, but it had been a half-truth at best.

This noble girl had a little more depth to her than I’d thought, and with every day I came a quarter-step closer to diving into those depths.

Secrets upon secrets hidden by lies of omission and partial truths. That was us, I supposed. She’d earned some trust from me, a fact that had surprised me when I first realized it and hadn’t gotten any less startling since. I could wait to find out more about her in time.

“Are we going to do anything about those two, or do you want me to take them?” Lukas asked, pointing at the bears he’d ensnared in the ground.

“They’re stuck, right?” I asked. “I can finish them.”

“Sure. You don’t want to fight them?”

“I mean, I could, but I’d rather not waste time.”

“That’s understandable. Any objections?”

There were none, so I walked forward, unsheathing the shortsword I’d purchased. I hadn’t had an opportunity to use it while we were fighting, and I wanted to get a sense of its capabilities.

Beyond that, killing Altered and oathholders alike was the path to elevating my oathholder class, so who was I to pass up a golden opportunity?

I strolled up to the first bear, acclimating myself to the balance of the shortsword. It was a little weightier than a standard blade of its size, the enchantments etched into it condensing magic inside the blade. It made it a little unwieldy, but it would do.

I pushed a little power into it, and the runes on its side began to glow. A little more, and they glowed brighter.

Alright. I could work with this.

The first Altered growled and snapped at me, reaching out with its snout in an attempt to take off my arm, but I was far enough back and its legs were entrenched enough that it didn’t even come close.

“None of that,” I chided, stepping forward.

It opened its mouth again and I stabbed it in the eye. Clear fluid leaked from the point of impact, but there was no spray of blood, no viscera flying out and onto me. Yes, the blade had penetrated, and yes, it had struck into the Altered’s brain, breaking past its beleaguered and weakened defenses, but rather than create a shower of gore it had expended the magic power that I’d fed to it.

Frost was spreading over the bear’s snout now, its open jaw stiff and unmoving. I brought a hand near it, and the air around it felt like winter.

“Lovely weapon,” I said.

I was almost certain it wouldn’t be this effective if the Altered still had magic left in the tank. The lower end of enchanted weapons tended to be fairly weak, and one could resist them by simply flooding their body with unstructured magic.

For the other bear, I tried slashing its side open with the shortsword, having fuelled it with the same amount of magic as before, and while I opened a long cut the bear only slowed a little instead of freezing to death. The location of the strike seemed to matter as well.

Having found a limitation or two of the shortsword, I put more magic into it and stabbed this bear in the eye as well. It perished in much the same way as the first.

“That’s all the Altered down,” I announced. “We have one more target, right?”

“The researcher,” Jasmine confirmed. “Making Altered takes time. If she made eight of them, she can’t be far from here. Does anyone remember the initial location of the Altered? She’s most likely there.”

“Couldn’t she have run from her initial location?” Alex asked.

Jasmine shook her head. “We didn’t encounter any because we have a fair amount of magic between us, but as I said before, the Shuti is populated full of lost Altered that reproduced and normal animals besides. Our target only has an oath to Aedi. She couldn’t have made it out without Altered companions, and we just removed that from the equation.”

“Alright, works with me,” Alex said. “So do we have someone that knows where to go?”

“I can take us there,” Lukas said. “I have it down.”

“It’s almost due north of us,” I said. “At a moderate angle off of our original path, maybe two hundred meters as the crow flies.”

Alex looked at me, surprised. “You’ve got a good memory, especially for a peasant.”

“You’ve got a bad one, especially for a noble,” I replied. “Do we want to get going?”

“You got me there,” Alex said. “You’re alright with taking the lead?”

“Don’t fall behind,” I said. “Lukas, you can handle the Altered?”

“Of course,” he said.

I started walking away at a brisk clip, then turned at the edge of the clearing when I heard the sound of hard earth grinding against itself behind me.

Lukas had formed chains of hardened dirt around the original Altered when we’d immobilized it earlier, and now he had used those chains to lift it into the air behind him. It was almost a comical sight, a military-made Altered bear half again the size of any man simply floating limp-bodied next to a smiling university student. He waved at me, his fingers distorting a light brown spell pattern that still hung in the air.

Onwards we went, the woods dense and irritating to traverse as they had been before. To make matters worse, our trackers no longer served a purpose. We had no image of where we were going, only the recollections of our destination kept by Lukas and myself. I was fairly confident in my spatial memory, but I had to check a compass every now and then to ensure we were still on the right path.

At length, we made it to another clearing, this one natural. There was a small hill at one end of it, a familiar shallow cavern carved into its side.

“We know you’re in there!” Alex shouted, brazen as was apparently his tendency. “Come out with your hands empty and we’ll get you back safely!”

“Fuck you!” Our target’s voice came from within the cave, the sound colored by vocal fry. “You don’t know what they make us do there!”

“I know plenty well,” Jasmine said. “And I know you could have just quit, if it got too much for you.”

“What do you know?” Kay shouted.

“My name is Jasmine of House Rayes,” the fair-haired noble said. “You should recognize the latter.”

“You’re one of the fuckers causing the problems! ” The researcher said, her shout redoubling in intensity. Hers was not a voice accustomed to being raised, and it cracked as she swore. “You godsdamned nobles, never stopping to think about ethics, never stopping to think about us!”

“Look, we’re not going to hurt you,” Alex cut in. “Just come out peacefully and we can get this job over with.”

“I understand,” Jasmine said, ignoring Alex. “But there exist ways to address your concerns without stealing highly classified government research and threatening the lives of whoever comes after you.”

“Like what?”

“Leaving your post. Publicizing the moral issues— and believe me, I know we have many— that you saw, raising official complaints with the Crown, the list goes on.”

“You say that like I could leave so easily,” the researcher scoffed. “When you’ve never had to wonder where your next meal would come from in your life.”

“Let’s just finish this,” Alex grumbled, pitching his voice lower so as not to be heard by the researcher. “She’s not going to surrender.”

“You won’t be punished on your return, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Lukas said, putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “None of us were hurt, and you’re valuable. All that will change is increased security around your projects. You will not be harmed.”

“So you’re just throwing me back into the pit where I came from, one that I now won’t be able to leave,” the woman said. There was less venom in her words now, despite her words. Lukas mentioning the lack of consequences she would face had softened her up, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

Researcher Lauren Kay stepped out of the shadows. She was shorter than I’d expected, probably a little shorter than me if I had to judge. Lukas stepped forward to meet her, and he was near half a head taller. The researcher nearly jumped out of her own skin when she saw her barely-living Altered floating behind us.

Kay had a mousy face and thick glasses, and she seemed to shrink in on herself when Lukas approached her. Lukas wasn’t even that imposing. Sure, he was a decent bit taller than her, but his features lent themselves to kindness well and he wore that look now.

“Also, your Altered are dead,” I said. “You might need us to get you out of here in one piece.”

The woman started a little at my voice, and when she spoke again it was with far less confidence than she had had earlier. “O-oh.”

Lukas started talking to her, telling her about the procedure she would go through. A simple restraint to ensure she wouldn’t do anything stupid, an escort back to the Tayan Adventurers Guild, and then a representative of the kingdom would bring her back to her research post.

She wasn’t going to be able to leave for a while, but nobody needed to mention that. If anything, she’d gotten off lightly, so I held little sympathy for her.

Lukas had finished casting his spell, and now both of the researcher’s wrists encased in a thin layer of hardened earth.

“We’re all good here,” Lukas announced. “Let’s head back.”

And now all that remained was the trudge back.