The sound of his foot dragging on the ground told me he was following, but that I still had a chance.

I didn't have time to get up, so I just kept on crawling towards Ivian who was lying on the ground, hands and feet still bound.

When I reached her, I opened my mouth, dropping the knife behind her back. Ivian's eyes widened in understanding as she started to fumble around to grab the blood dripping tool.

I stopped, and turned. I had to keep Nistan's attention on me until Ivian could free her bonds and run for safety.

Fortunately, between my blow to his knee and Drim's through his shoulder, Nistan wasn't in much better condition than me.

I crawled for my life, trying to ignore the sharp stones that were tearing new scrapes and cuts across my hands and legs.

"You, little, miscreant." He enunciated each word with a promise of pain.

Please, Ivian, you have to get away.

"Aarh!" the man shouted again as he lunged forward, bearing the pain in his knee.

Luckily he shouted, giving me warning to push off my hands and roll to the side.

Clang

His sword rebounded off a stone where I had left half the outline of a red hand print a moment before.

Swish

But even if his sword missed the first time, he just had to keep on swinging.

I used the moment of my roll to get to jump backwards as his sword swung again. I spat at his face, causing him to flinch before he swung again and used the opening to throw myself between his legs, hoping that with his injured knee, he wouldn't be able to react quickly enough.

I felt a flame of pain in my left leg as I landed awkwardly on my left knee. But I pushed my hand out and grabbed Nistan's ankle.

Before I knew what I was doing, I squeezed my few drops of mana to the surface of my hand, and it jumped to my bidding. The mana felt like a living creature, a snake or fish as it's slippery sensation wiggled through my arm and the across my fingers, as receptive as in the memories of the duels in the faculty fields.

I had almost no mana in this tiny body of mine and I knew no spells, but somehow, I knew that I was reflecting pain I felt on Nistan through the place my hand touched him.

Realising what the magic was, I concentrated on my own leg that felt like it had snapped and pushed that image into Nistan, getting a yelp out of him.

"What are you?" I heard my enemy waste his breath. "Shit, if only that idiot explained better earlier. Hah..."

The results were even better than I had hoped. Instead of shrugging off the phantom pain, Nistan miraculously stopped and was leaning on his sword, catching his breath and trash talking. I wasn't in a good spot either, as was apparent from the flare of pain in my leg, but there a glimmer of hope within me that I hadn't felt a moment before.

I just had to crawl a bit further-

"Ah!"

I shouted as I tried to crawl. Pain shot up my leg and into my spine.

I tried to move again, and then again, but I moved only a couple meters before I knew I couldn't go on anymore. The pain washed over my mind and my vision grew dim.

Please, at least let Ivian get away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"... ood... eishus... ...pened hie...?"

I heard a noise buzz at the edges of consciousness.

I tried to block it out, I had an important task to do.

There was a hastily drawn report left by the Captain. The research I had done years ago in stasis runes had, according to the note, struck up an unexpected discussion in the faculty.

My paper from draft recruit days had proposed a possible time dilation effect on the medium and tethers of a stasis rune that could prevent the rune itself from expiring.

Usually, that would be impossible, not even worth exploring. If the rune itself was in stasis, then it should lose its effect, but the paper I wrote was based on a real example that I had been studying for a few years.

I had to focus, the captain had only given me a week.

A week to do the impossible, find out how to alter the preserved rune to have another effect without losing its long lasting nature.

Could I do it with parallel runes?

No, that probably wouldn't work. If my theory was correct, then the stasis rune had to affect itself. Putting a rune inside the stasis rune would just freeze it.

"... ilvrei... til... n you he..."

"Not now," I waved off the annoying person who was trying to disturb me.

What about compound runes?

They were now proven to be possible, I knew as much from the demonstration of the compound rune research circle when I was in the faculty.

But even they could only make it work for milliseconds, proving a theory but to no practical avail. Then again, if the stasis runes could influence its tethers then... no, it was possible, it might even be the key to making compound runes.

If my guess was correct, that is. But I don't think that's how the stasis rune I had studied worked. The problem went deeper. Why couldn't we replicate the long term stasis rune? What was it the captain had called it? A pristine rune?

"...ly, please," I felt a strong urge to listen to what this voice was saying. Who was it again? I don't remember the captain or lieutenant introducing me to any of the second lieutenants, let alone any women among the research team. "... lease liss.. me..."

I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. It was just the stress. I have to keep on moving forward, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how much pain.

I needed to start at the source, figure out what made a pristine rune.

Fortunately, the captain had managed to bring the old preservation vat from my studies years ago to the lab. It was the only example of the long term stasis rune I knew of.

I quickly set up a simple experiment I remembered trying before. The vat with the pristine rune was on one countertop, a big hulking metal thing, while I had a much lighter box, made to the same dimensions as the vat prepared with a standard stasis rune.

I would just start the timer on my virsphere, set the mana stones like this and-

"Tilly!" A shout threatened to crack the laboratory's walls.

"No!" I shouted back, trying to dispel the supernatural disturbance, but the fissures in the walls kept on growing larger and larger.

"Is...right?" "... ably...ieker..." "wait fo..."

Not now, please, not when I was just getting started. But the walls disappeared and an old man with stripes on his shoulders grinned.

Around us, the lab had restored itself, vials and experimental apparatus, all set upon the smooth white countertops. A hard light filled the air, unlike the sunlight from the windows of day to day.

As the man grinned at me, I felt a pit of fear settled into my stomach, as if I knew what he was about to say.

"I am impressed that you have progressed so far in a theory to reconfigure the pristine runes. Perhaps your theory might even make it possible."

Each word he spoke seemed familiar and filled with meaning.

Pausing, the figure shrugged its shoulders. His gesture seemed to say 'it can't be helped'.

No, not yet. I'm not ready yet. Just a bit more time, if I just find out how to make-

"The problem is, those results are not the ones I need."

My eyes started swimming, looking around, but I couldn't see. Why wasn't the lieutenant beside the captain anymore?

"Then what do you..." a voice, to my surprise, came out of me.

"To make pristine runes, the results already stand before me," the figure's eyes looked me up and down, "Let me share a secret with you. There is no such thing as time magic."

No, the stasis rune, that didn't make any sense...

"Do it!" the man barked, just before a wave of pain flooded my head.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Waaaaiittt!" I screamed sitting up in pain.

The phantom pain from the back of my head suddenly burst over my whole body.

"Aaaaaaaah!" I cried out, my throat so hoarse and my voice shrill.

"Hold," the curt shout had a warning tone in it.

"Tilly," Ivian's sobbing voice brought me back to the present, her body and embracing arms blotting out the light of the fire from behind her.

"Miss Ivian, get back, he is probably infected!" I recognised Saul's voice.

"Tilly, please, if you can hear me, come back," she was shaking and trying to gulp air before continuing her plea, "Tilly, I-"

"Ivian," I spoke as I grabbed her clothes.

"Tilly!"

"Hold!" Saul's orders came again, "relax your weapons, the boy's alright."

I felt warmth begin to calm my racing mind. Two hands, each the breadth of my whole shoulder encased my head and back.

It was almost suffocating, but I didn't care, there was nowhere else I'd rather be.

"Thank the fortunes," Ivian mumbled into my head. I had never seen her like this, sobs shaking her whole body as they shook mine too.

"Iviaaan, waaah" I couldn't stop myself from crying.

As all the stress flushed out of me, I just felt wave after wave of relief. A void grew within my chest, and tears poured out of it with a natural overflow, like water in a bubbling mountain spring.

"We can give them a moment while we take care of the corpse," Saul's voice spoke again, but I didn't put my mind to it.

There was Ivian all around me. We were safe. I had succeeded. We were both alive and father's squire, Saul was here to save us.

I didn't want to think of anything else, my hunger and pain just a problem for later.

"I was so scared," Ivian began to say, "when that man started screaming and stabbed at Nistan who was holding you, and then you were jumping and shrieking too and the blood, it was spurting all over your gruesome smile, I thought... I thought that you... but then you were crawling to me, knife in your mouth. I hoped, but didn't think it could be true. And then he was there again, swinging his sword at you..."

Ivian was babbling as she still clutched to me.

I wanted to tell her to take a deep breath, but all that came out was sobbing and tears.

"I was so afraid... so, so afraid..."

I was too. I didn't even want to think of that sword ringing as it hit a rock and then slashing down again. Two close encounters with death that I only avoided thanks to my stinging, shredded hands and Nistan's dizzied blood loss.

"I didn't know what to do. I just kept on hacking until the ropes were off, then went to the horse. I thought that maybe I could... I don't even know, the horse was bigger and I could maybe distract Nistan... but I thought I was too late. You were just lying there, a little bundle on the ground."

So that's what happened after I fell. Ivian had come back for me.

"I thought I had failed... Nistan got up and slashed the horse's neck in two. I went flying and everything was spinning. I thought I'd soon be killed and then you."

Hahaha, my sobs mixed with a quiet self-mocking laugh. It wasn't me who saved Ivian, but Ivian who saved me.

Even if Nistan slashed the horse in two, he couldn't escape the ton of horse flesh and momentum that would have pinned him to the ground.

I wasn't the hero today.

But it wasn't so bad, I reflected, held in that warm embrace. I couldn't think of anything better than being held in the warm embrace of my hero.