Elrick stumbled within ten steps. Dia kept pulling as she moved without him, and they nearly dropped the chest, but Elrick regained his footing and sprinted to compensate.

“Don’t get us killed,” Dia said, scowling at him over the chest.

Elrick hadn’t realized just how dark it was, not until he saw the explosive orb of light blast off from the dark shadow that the mercenary squad had become. Their armor glistened under the rising ball of light as it ascended. The violet mage’s spell rose much more slowly than Elrick would have expected. It was more like a balloon than an artillery shot.

“You think this chest will be enough protection?” He asked Dia.

“There’s only a 20% chance that will matter,” Dia said. “Keep moving.”

The orb of light hung in the air like a false sun looming over them. Their other squads of two looked like rats scurrying across the dunes, casting long shadows behind them as they fled. This far from the river, the grass had given way to sand, and the sand formed dunes the size of small hills. Their plan was to hide among these dunes and attack the mercenaries from the shadows.

The orb flared, casting ten times as much light as before. Elrick squinted, and when he could see again, the orb was gone.

He could barely see Dia across the chest from him. His nightvision had been blown out by the light, and the darkness had—

Something exploded just above them, and molten rain showered down.

“Scattershot!” Dia said. “Get under the chest!”

They dove down, trying to cover as much of their faces with the chest as they could. A corner of the chest stabbed into Elrick’s shoulder, and he winced in pain, but didn’t dare move it off and lose the protection it gave him. Dia was pressed shoulder to shoulder with him, the chest covered both of their faces, and most of their upper bodies, but their legs were sticking out with no cover.

Heat flared around him. It felt hottest near his left leg, but when he looked down, he wasn’t hit. Two or three feet from his leg was something burning in the sand. It sizzled and cracked, and as the flames died down, he saw what looked like molten glass cooling just a few paces from his leg. There was another molten patch like this five or six feet further out, and then three or four more sprinkled around the area.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Dia said.

They pushed the chest off, and when Elrick went to pick it up, she swatted his hand away with her bow. “Leave it. It’s bait.”

He followed her up a dune, and after they crested the top, they went prone and peeked over to watch the chest.

The ground around the chest was pockmarked with cooling, molten-orange patches, and far in the distance were other areas of bright orange. The violet mage had split the shot five ways, sending a scatter shot barrage at each of their two-person squads. Had anyone been hit directly? If it turned sand to glass, he doubted even a glancing hit was survivable.

“Look,” Dia said, elbowing him.

She had her spyglass out, but he could see the shadows approaching with his naked eye.

“Five of them,” she said. “They’re moving fast, trying to hit us while we’re still reeling from the attack.”

“Coat my arrows,” she said, handing him the vial and a bundle of five arrows.

He’d watched Elise do it, but he spilled some on his first try. Dia glared at him.

“Here,” he said, handing her the first arrow.

She nocked the arrow and fired. After a few quick heartbeats, one of the shadows fell.

The remaining four spread out in a blind panic, but before Dia could nock and fire the next shot, they regrouped and formed up shoulder to shoulder.

Elrick peered through the spyglass. “Their shields are up now.”

He looked back and saw Dia scurrying down the dune behind him, disappearing from their line of sight. “Come on!” she shouted up at him.

He followed her, sliding and nearly losing his balance as he raced down the sand after her.

They moved together along a curving path behind the cover of the dune, flanking the position of the mercenaries and the abandoned chest.

“They may just try to take the chest and get it back to the river,” Elrick said.

“They’re dead if they do that,” Dia said, panting.

Elrick had been in this world long enough to have developed a sense of direction that most modern people on Earth lacked. He always knew where the sun rose and set, and he was more connected to the terrain around him. Even at night in this unfamiliar territory, he had a mental map of everything. They were coming up a new dune, one that would overlook the mercenaries and give them a good angle to shoot from.

They crawled the last few paces up the dune, and Elrick was already coating an arrow for Dia without her asking. She reached for it just as he finished, and she let it loose just as Elrick spotted the mercenaries.

They were close now. Elrick saw one of them go down. This new angle she’d fired hit them in the side, making their shields useless. Without waiting to see what they’d do, Elrick and Dia fell back behind the dune, not wanting to risk being seen.

“We have to be faster this time,” Dia said. “Be ready to guard me.”

This time Dia rushed back toward where they had already been—back where they’d fired the first arrow. She must have figured they wouldn’t expect that. He hoped she was right.

He coated the arrow as they climbed the dune. He gripped his sword as he handed Dia the arrow. His sword was not nearly as nice as the one he’d made for Owen, which Owen had put a fancy grip and enchantment on. This one was dull bronze with crude leather wrappings for the grip. He squeezed the leather as they crested the hill.

A spearman was waiting for them. Dia dove as the mercenary jabbed his spear forward. Elrick had tried to squeeze practice in swords when he could, but he’d only gotten his skill up to 71.8. He’d been too tunnel-visioned on making money, telling himself he’d train to fight once he’d gotten back to Antia. Now he had to fight, even with his skill as low as it was.

The spearman had 84.7 skill in Fencing.

Elrick drew his sword and charged the spearman. Dia had pulled a dagger and was backing up outside of the spear’s range.

The spearman must have heard Elrick, or seen him out of the corner of his eye, because he suddenly spun around. Elrick slid forward on his knees to get under the spear. He felt the tip press through his hair, the cold of the bronze just barely kissed his scalp. He had slid under, but was still a few feet from the spearman. He reached up and grabbed the shaft of the spear.

The spearman tried to pull his spear back, but so much time mining and smithing had made Elrick strong. He might not have been as skilled with his sword as the mercenary was with his spear, but Elrick was stronger than him, and the mercenary couldn’t get his spear back.

Dia lunged forward, driving her dagger into the mercenary’s back. She dropped to the ground, picked her bow up, and nocked an arrow. She fired—and for a second it looked like she was shooting right at Elrick—but the arrow hissed through the air just over his shoulder and kept going. Someone grunted behind him.

He didn’t waste time looking at what the arrow had done. The mercenary in front of him was still standing. Elrick drove the sword forward, jamming it into the mercenary’s groin, just below where his bronze breastplate covered. He pulled the sword out, and the smell of blood filled the air. He thrust the sword into the mercenary’s neck this time, and he went down for good.

Dia was panting as she reached for her last arrow, but she stopped.

Elrick looked over his shoulder. Another mercenary was dead on the ground, maybe twenty paces behind him, and the final one was running away.

“Couldn’t you still hit him?” Elrick asked.

She nodded. “Then I’d be out of arrows though. That one’s not coming back to fight us anyway. Come on, we need to recover the chest.”

They circled back around, taking care to stay low and behind the dunes. They moved slowly in case of another ambush, but it never came.

They spotted the chest in the distance, reflecting the very last hint of sunlight. It was undefended.

“I’ll go get it,” Elrick said.

Dia grabbed his arm as he started to walk. He looked back at her. “Just cover me. That’s why you saved that last arrow, right?”

She hesitated, but nodded, and she loosened her grip on his arm. She didn’t let go entirely, and he still had to pull her arm away, but she did eventually let him go.

Once he was clear of the dunes, there was no cover left other than what Dia could provide. He figured if anyone were sneaking up on him, Dia would take a shot. If her shot missed, she’d at least shout for him so that he didn’t get caught completely with his pants down—not literally this time, of course.

He reached the chest without incident, and hefted it to make sure it was still full. It was, which meant it was fucking heavy and unwieldy. Elrick had to sheathe his sword to carry the chest, and it was slow going back toward the safe cover of the dune. The sand gave little purchase, and he slipped and fell a few times, despite his strength.

Just as he thought he was clear, he saw Dia nocking her last arrow. New instincts that he’d gained since being in Antium told him not to turn around and look at what was behind him. If he turned around, it could warn whoever was following him that someone was backing him up. He had to trust Dia’s aim. She’d have shouted for him if she didn’t think she could cover him with her bow.

He watched as she let loose the shot, and it took all of his willpower not to look back. He waited until he heard the arrow swoosh over his shoulder, and then he counted back from five. He was giving it enough time to hit someone pretty far behind him, but when he’d only counted down to three, Dia shouted his name.

He dropped the chest and unsheathed his sword all in one fluid motion, and he spun around with his sword at the ready.

He’d expected one or two mercenaries in armor, armed with spears. Instead he saw a woman with an arrow jutting out of her stomach. She was wearing a robe, and though there was so little sunlight that the robe simply looked dark grey or black, he knew it was violet. The violet mage limped toward him still. She fell to her knees about fifty paces behind Elrick.

He held tight to the chest. She shouldn’t be able to vaporize him with a direct hit so long as he stayed near the chest’s null field. If she tried to angle a shot at him like before, he’d grab some ingots and run, hoping they’d be enough to protect him.

Elrick ripped the chest open to grab some ingots as extra insurance—to put a null field right on his body, but just as he was readying to grab some ingots, the violet mage fired her shot.

It went high up into the air, well over Elrick.

Shit. She was going for Dia instead of him? Of course, she didn’t have a null field anymore.

Without thinking, he rushed toward the violet mage. The light from her blast lit up the ground in front of him for a few brief moments, but soon the light passed behind him.

He risked one look over his shoulder as he ran. The shot was nearing the apex of its arc. She’d likely try to detonate it just as it was over Dia. He still had time.

Elrick ran faster, and when he was just a few paces from the Violet mage, he lunged forward with his sword held out. The sword went right into her chest, ripping through the light leather armor beneath her robes. Just as his sword sunk in, he heard the explosion in the air, and saw the light flare on the dying mage’s face.

He turned around. The shot had been detonated, but the individual shells were flying wildly in all directions. Dia was a small shadow on the hill, and none of the shells were falling anywhere near her. One shot corkscrewed as it fell, and it hit the sand before any of the others. It fizzled in the sand, not even exploding or going molten.

He’d killed the mage in time.

Elrick looked back down at her. The arrow was still in her, and now his sword was too. He pulled the sword out and wiped it clean on her robe. As he tugged on the violet mage’s robe, a book fell out. He picked up the book and opened it, but it was too dark to see anything. He grabbed the book and took it back with him to the chest. He stashed the book inside the chest, lifted the chest full of ingots up, and started moving toward Dia, who was already running down the hill to find him.

When she reached him, she took hold of the other end of the chest and helped lighten the load.

“You saved me,” she said.

“You saved me first. With the arrow and all.”

“I missed,” Dia said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have needed to finish her off.”

“I’ll take it. You did good.”

“We both did.”

Elrick and Dia stalked through the night. It grew darker with each passing minute and each thumping beat of Elrick’s heart. Soon they were just walking. It wasn’t possible to keep up a faster pace.

“Do you know where we are going?” Elrick asked.

“We’re trying to find the others, but still always moving away from the shore.”

After what felt like about twenty minutes, Dia grunted and slowed. “We need to rest.”

Elrick would have been able to carry the chest further, but he wasn’t going to push Dia if she needed rest. He lowered his end in unison with her, and they let the chest down in the sand.

Dia collapsed with her back pressed up against the chest, and she reached into her tunic and pulled out her spyglass. She handed it to Elrick.

He looked around with the spyglass, but it was dark. There was some ambient light from the moon, but it only really hit certain angles of the dunes. He scanned those areas with the spyglass, looking for anything, but he saw nothing save for sand.

An explosion drew Elrick’s eye. It was coming from a previously dark patch he hadn’t bothered scanning. He didn’t need the spyglass to see this, as there was a big purple flash, and then a handful of purple bolts of light shot up out of the explosion and flew back toward the shore.

Two of the bolts ignited one after another, illuminating the armor of two mercenaries who had taken direct hits. The flash of light exposed four or five others, all of which turned and ran. Elrick used the spyglass to look around, but the light faded again by the time he could see the origin of the explosion.

“That was one of Elise’s potions,” Dia whispered. “Come on.”