Faye was leading Maggie through the streets of Lóthaven, taking the back routes and winding alleys behind houses and through gardens as much as they could. So far, they had avoided most of the monsters that Faye had sensed with her active skill.

“This is the last part, we have to cross the road,” Maggie said, confirming what Faye had already thought but had not wanted to say aloud.

“I was afraid you would say that,” she replied.

The road ahead was thronging with monsters. They were milling around, and none of them seemed big enough to be an Awakened which she was eminently grateful for, but there were a dozen at least.

Enough to worry her.

“How many are there?” Maggie asked.

Faye grimaced. Maggie wasn’t stupid, she had easily sussed out why Faye was hesitating.

“Around twelve,” she said. “Nothing the size of the Awakened.”

“That one of the big ones?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah, the small ones you were taking out are lesser briars, big ones are Awakened. I saw some mid-sized, faster ones called whipping briars. They seem to be separated into tiers. Much more common at the lesser levels. Haven’t seen one of those above… fifth level, I think.”

Maggie did not reply for a moment. Faye waited.

A dozen foes, even at level five, could easily overwhelm them both.

“We draw them into the alley,” Maggie said. “Use the confined space against them.”

Faye nodded. “That makes sense. One problem. I’m low on mana. It does not regenerate quickly, and I’m still unsure about the sword.”

She heard Maggie shift a bit, and she looked over her shoulder to see her friend looking at her oddly.

“Faye, you are a Swordfighter, and you’re worried about going into a sword fight?”

“Hey, listen, almost every one of these things has been practically immune to sword damage. Only fire has done anything to them.”

Maggie frowned. “Every briar has been resistant to slashing damage?”

Faye thought back.

“To be fair, I think it was mostly the Awakened that I had a chance to fight with a metal blade…”

“Then you’re worrying for nothing. Rush forward, get one’s attention and retreat into the alley again. If you find yourself needing a breather, yell ‘switch’, fold to your left and back, I’ll come in from the right with the shield to give you some time. Yell ‘switch’ again, and I’ll fold to my left. Make sense?”

Faye nodded. “Yes, battle master.”

Maggie grinned. “I like that title.” She dropped the grin and smoothed out to a serious expression. “You can do this, Faye. Trust me.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, nodding the entire time. “I can do this. Okay. Thanks. Let’s get it done.”

Drawing the sword, which Faye had been calling an arming sword in her head, she looked down its length. Shorter than the longsword and much broader, the blade sported a wide and shallow fuller that ran almost the entire length of the blade and made it much lighter than Faye expected with its width. The biggest change from the longsword was its grip, which was only a few inches long. Big enough for a single hand. Underneath the grip was a wide pommel, almost semi-circular. It sat comfortably as she held it.

No, the biggest difference with Maggie’s sword was that this was not a true thrusting blade. Its tip, whilst pointed, was not the sharp point of Faye’s longsword, nor of the duelling sabres Arran favoured. This blade was a cutting sword that could thrust on occasion. It suited the chopping cut, being shorter, and Faye was certain that she would be more comfortable with it after using it.

Going into a fight with a sword she was not wholly confident with would be completely unacceptable, except that Taveon and the kids he was looking after were in danger.

She had no other choice.

Emerging from the alleyway, Faye darted a look around. The dozen hostile presences she had seen with her Sense were gathered in small groups across the street.

The first thing she noticed was that not all of them were purely lesser briars.

The next was that some of them were not briars at all.

Without wanting to give the monsters time to acclimatise to her presence, Faye held out her left hand and launched a Fire Dart at the nearest lesser briar.

Pushing the dart to move in a straighter trajectory was almost second nature by this point, and the dart flew true. The briar was engulfed in flames from the direct hit to its core.

Congratulations! You have defeated a level 4 [Lesser Briar].

Experience awarded.

Congratulations! Your spellcasting has improved. [Fire Dart] is now level 3.

Grinning, Faye walked backward a step or two as every monster on the street turned to her. She pointed at another briar and let off her newly upgraded Fire Dart, which she did without modifying the mana at all.

This one was much more errant than the ones she forced, but it was not nearly as wild as when she had first used the spell.

She turned and dashed back into the alley.

Maggie was waiting, her shield up and the wooden sword held so that its point protruded from the shield. She nodded as Faye returned, pulling back into a more neutral guard.

Spinning on her heel, Faye dropped into a guard. A one-handed sword used different guards, because without a two-handed grip, there was no need to have the sword so close to your centre. She stood mostly side on, her right shoulder leading. The sword was in a fairly ordinary middle guard, ready for whatever would come first.

Without a shield, which Faye was not comfortable using anyway, she would need to focus on offensive actions to defend herself. The thrill of a challenge thrummed through her. She grinned.

The first monster into the alley was one of the not-briars. Its small form was made of flesh, but its eyes held the same crimson glow as the briars, and instead of fur the monster appeared to sprout twigs and leafy vines.

As it charged down the alley, Faye raised the sword and timed her chop for the moment the thing jumped at her.

She wasn’t sure what it was about the monsters, but the majority of them tried to launch for her face or body, rather than nip at her ankles. What it meant was that the blow from the sword, coming from directly above, split the monster’s skull in two.

Congratulations!—

Faye ignored the rest of the notification; more monsters were already entering the alley. The one she had just killed landed on the ground.

She stepped around its body, bringing the sword up for another cut as a second monster dashed forward. This time, she caught it on the side of the head, and it did not die immediately, but its momentum carried it past her.

“Maggie, take it!” she called out.

Trusting that her friend would deal with that one, she surged forward. A moment later, she felt the notification for that monster ping, too.

Getting into a rhythm with her sword, she felt like a lumberjack felling trees. The steel of the blade was well forged, it did not chip or bend as she slammed it repeatedly into the hard, woody exteriors of the briars.

After four others, she realised she had advanced to the edge of the alley.

“Fall back a few steps,” she said, before she carefully retreated. She did not want to show her back to the monsters, but a moment later, Maggie’s hand dropped onto her shoulder, guiding her.

They avoided the corpses of the monsters, some of which Maggie had already shoved aside.

“Thanks,” Faye said.

There were another six presences in the street. Fortunately, none of them seemed particularly intelligent. They just kept funnelling into the alleyway of death.

Two even tried to enter at the same time, and the awkward edging-shuffling nonsense ended with a quick slash of one and a blast of Fire Dart into the other.

Faye was not winded, wounded, nor particularly worried. The sword was working well, she wondered if it was enchanted in a way the duelling sabre had not been, and she was able to use the Fire Darts when she felt it would make it quicker, rather than needing to in order to damage the monsters at all.

Soon enough, it was done.

Congratulations! You have defeated numerous enemies!

Bonus experience awarded.

She frowned at the notification. She was not sure she had seen one condense like that before. But, with a mental nudge, she was able to read an individual one.

Congratulations! You have defeated a level 7 [Forest Hound].

She supposed that in a weird, twisted way the flesh enemies did look like hairless dogs, with twigs and leaves sprouting around the ruff of the neck rather than fur. Their elongated skulls, and their canine teeth much larger and deadlier than any dogs’ teeth Faye had ever seen.

“Forest hounds,” she remarked, “don’t look much like hounds from back home.”

Maggie shook her head. “Don’t look much like the hounds I’m used to, either.”

“You have dogs?!” Faye asked.

“Not many people in town have pets. The Steaders that tend flocks of animals will have herding dogs, though.”

Faye smiled. “That’s some of the best news. I miss dogs. And cats. Cats that aren’t huge and trying to eat me, anyway,” she said. “Come on, the road’s clear. We’re back to where you said you saw Taveon heading. Any ideas of where to go from here?”

Maggie shook her head, her expression falling. “No, not a clue. We should be careful, though. Whatever he was dealing with will also be in the area. It can’t have been something as simple as these briars. Even some of the kids would be able to deal with these.”

Faye winced. “I would not want children near any of these monsters without spell or sword to their names.”

Maggie nodded. “Hence the protocol for them to gather at Taveon’s house if they lived in this portion of the town.”

“Right.” Faye nodded. “Let’s go. Quietly.”

Though nothing had really changed, walking over that road felt like crossing the Rubicon. An almost imperceptible sense of danger crept up Faye’s neck the moment they stepped off the main road.

“Do you feel that?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Maggie replied.

[Swordfighter’s Sense] was not showing her that there were hostiles nearby, but there was something in the area causing that sensation.

They walked forward carefully. Faye placed each step with precision, rolling forward from heel to toe. She held the sword up by her ear, ready to strike; her left hand was primed for a Fire Dart.

“I don’t like this,” Maggie whispered. “We’re blind.”

“We could get up high?” Faye replied. “Not sure how much that helps in this part of town.”

The buildings either side of the streets were getting taller. Still only a couple of stories tall, they were nonetheless given some higher, tiled roofs than some parts of the town. The result was streets that wound through the buildings that were cool and shadowed.

“Probably would take longer to find a good vantage point than it would be worth,” Maggie said. “Most of these places are vacant, I think.”

Faye nodded. Plenty of the doors they passed were padlocked with thick metal locks. The vacant properties not intended to be used for anything until they were needed.

A sound ahead made them come to a quick stop.

It was as if something was being dragged across the ground.

Letting out a hiss, Faye gestured for Maggie to follow. She bolted for a doorway that was inset slightly to the building, giving as protection, meagre though it was, to the two women.

Ahead, at the end of this street, a second street cross perpendicular to the one they were on. Walking down that street was a… monster.

A true horror.

Faye felt her heart stop, her throat close up, and she shrunk down at the very sight of it.

It had too many legs. Each one adorned with spikes and extra protrusions that no living thing should have. Each slow step the monster took caused the packed dirt of the road to erupt into waving fronds of dark green, they rose like feelers that caressed the monster’s limbs as it walked past.

Its upper body was raised up, its torso human in shape, but its shoulders erupted into a mantle of sharp shapes, lit from below with an ethereal crimson glow. That same glow wound its way up the monster’s neck, into its eyes that shone fiercely.

Its head was framed on either side by what Faye could only think of as a crown of thorns, the monster’s exoskeleton growing outwards in four or five cruelly spiked protrusions that occasionally twitched as it walked.

It took only thirty seconds to pass the street the two women hid on, but it felt like a lifetime.

“What was that?!” Maggie whispered in Faye’s ear.

“I have no idea, but I have a horrible feeling we will find out,” she replied. Because, with a sinking feeling in her stomach, Faye was certain that she had seen something hidden in the claws of the monster. Something that looked suspiciously child-like.