Faye panted a little as she stared at the assassin. Her blade still lit with the flames she had commanded to ignite.

Part of her was saying oh my god that’s so cool I can’t believe that worked! How did I do that? It doesn’t matter I have to do it again and learn better and more magic.

And while the monkey portion of her brain chattered with excitement, the more rational part of her brain was worried. Her opponent had not seemed dismayed at Faye’s blatant use of magic.

She figured that some opponents would have been, and those were the ones that she wished she were against. Anyone calm in the face of someone igniting a sword and flinging fire at them was someone that Faye should not be annoying.

She gulped.

The assassin had faded backward with the advent of Faye’s spell and was therefore out of reach of her short blade. She shrugged and cast the spell again.

[Blades of Fire].

With the system recognising exactly what she wanted her mana to do because of the structure of the spell, it was much easier to swing the short sword in a criss-crossed pattern, firing one half and then the other of an X through the air toward the assassin in a steady tempo.

The Blades of Fire spell was more costly than Fire Dart, but nowhere near as expensive as Scorching Lance. This was good. It meant that she could cast it more like nine times rather than Scorching Lance’s two, or three at a push.

The last swing of her blade was not aligned with the others, and it caused the fire to shoot off above the assassin’s head. Faye doused her embarrassment under doesn’t matter I did magic, which helped keep her head present.

The assassin just stared at Faye from where they had dodged to get out of range.

“Are you attempting to learn a new spell against me?” they asked, incredulously.

Faye shrugged. “Why not?”

The assassin did not respond, but they vanished in a minor explosion of dark tendrils.

Faye’s heart beat once, twice.

In another blast of darkness, the assassin appeared on Faye’s left, their crescent daggers slicing in from both sides like a deranged pair of scissors.

Faye flinched and threw herself to her right, but the assassin was on her. She could not escape that easily. Using the sword that still flickered with a coating of fire, she was able to defend herself from a few swings of the daggers.

She executed a parry-into-riposte, a move she had made dozens or hundreds of times before. But when the expected resistance of the dagger did not materialise when Faye’s sword moved, she stumbled. Her brain stuttered at the incongruity.

A crescent dagger flashed from the other side, flickering as she looked at it.

The dagger caught her in the side and punched through the gambeson as if it were not there.

Only the ingrained reflex to jump aside and move with the blow saved Faye’s side from being torn apart. The dagger left a wound, but it was a shallow one that buzzed with pain rather than a numb one that cut through muscle.

She gasped.

[Swordfighter’s Sense] told her to move, so she listened. Into the gap she went, following not her trained, and honed, ability as a swordfighter but the new skill granted to her by magic. Part of Faye even now could not fully trust the ability. She recognised the danger of that, even the stupidity, but before she could completely excise it from her mind, the daggers came in again and once again they skipped through her guard and flickered toward her flesh.

She threw herself backward.

The assassin came on at her regardless.

A tongue of fatigue licked at her limbs, but Faye powered through by flaring the fear and adrenaline that coursed through her veins. Fear was as powerful as anger for fuelling her fights, she had always found. Her first instructor had been the one to teach her that fear itself did not hurt her, it was what she did to herself by succumbing to the fear that she had to be wary of.

Of course, she was not sure that applied right now.

The daggers came in once more, their wide crescent shapes curling around her raised sword with ease. So much so that Faye dropped the blade and let out as many Fire Darts from her hands as she could.

The barrage of darts flew out with no thought for accuracy, but the scattered approach meant that the assassin was forced back or risked being hit with a stray dart.

As Faye had dropped the sword, the mana sustaining it had vanished, leaving the cool, unblemished steel lying quietly on the ground. She picked it up now and faced her opponent with renewed determination.

Without a word, the assassin came in again.

This time, Faye did not react as she would normally. This knife fighter had more tricks up their sleeve than Faye could suss out easily. She had to rely on the other tools she had.

[Swordfighter’s Sense] did not directly control her in any way. At first, Faye had only felt its more pronounced and forceful indicators. But now that she tried to listen, they were there more often than not. Minute feelings in her arms, legs, body, head… all leading her to move a certain way, to dodge here, to change the angle of her wrist here.

These few exchanges between her and the assassin went much better than those before. She managed to escape direct harm and had even succeeded in parrying a dagger… but that had been more of an accident than her intention, she feared.

Her opponent realised quickly that their approach was no longer as effective and switched to a fresh style as if with a click of their fingers.

Instead of the flowing, barely-there motions of the first approach, they used lightning-fast, straight forward movements and attacks.

The attacks broke through Faye’s defence easily. But Faye relied on the strange foresight sense that her skill granted and in doing so she slipped aside from impalement by millimetres. This supernatural ability to foresee an attack was not perfect, however. The crescent blades were razor sharp and even a light graze across her limbs would be enough to score her gambeson and part it with a whisper.

The combatants parted. Faye was breathing heavily and trying to hide it. Her opponent did not struggle one jot and cocked their head in a manner that screamed amusement.

“I must admit,” the assassin said in that strange, vague voice of theirs, “that it has been a long time since a newly crested has been this… interesting in combat.”

Faye grinned, despite herself. This drew a scowl from her hooded and masked opponent. The most overt showing of emotion she had seen so far.

Instead of replying, Faye concentrated on what [Swordfighter’s Sense] was telling her. Throughout the fight, she had only been able to focus on the immediate circle around her and the assassin. Now, however, something at the edges flickered.

Faye flew forward, attacking the assassin in a way that she had not yet tried. The assassin was fast, it was true, but [Swordfighter’s Sense] had told her to attack, so she had.

With their superior speed, the assassin was already reacting to Faye’s charge, but there had been a subtle delay. Enough that Faye’s sword was cutting through the air toward their head, and their daggers came up in a crossed block — in a manner that Faye realised would actually rob her strike of all its power and then enable a fast counter — but before the daggers could catch her blade, Faye dropped the angle and sliced down toward their leading leg instead.

The assassin realised their mistake a heartbeat later, and though they were faster than Faye, the Swordfighter class had given Faye more than enough agility to strike an immobile target.

The blade struck true, but a moment later a punch of force hit Faye in the chest, and she flew back through the air to land sharply on her back.

She struggled to get her breath and climb to her feet all at once.

The assassin’s leg looked none the worse for wear, outwardly, but as they stalked toward Faye, they limped.

Grinning, Faye held up her left hand.

[Scorching Lance].

The thick bar of solid flame blast out in a straight line and hit the assassin in the chest. The forge of Faye’s mana reserves was low, now. She only had enough for one or two more spells.

Or, a few minutes of a flaming sword, she figured.

The lance of concentrated heat and flames had blown the assassin backward but even now they got back to their feet. Their armour was smouldering, and licks of fire caressed the black leather in places.

Before her opponent could say or do anything else, the presences that Faye had thought she had sensed broke into the plaza. Their boots slapping against the stone of the plaza in a mess of noise.

She grinned.

The assassin looked toward the alleyway that the booted sounds were approaching from.

“Not worth the money,” they said, dropping the crescent blades to evaporate into clouds of darkness. The next moment, the assassin had also disappeared into a blast of smoky shadows.

Faye activated [Swordfighter’s Sense].

No way was it that easy.

Unfortunately, her sense was empty of hostiles. For a moment, she still stared around her with her blade ready. She had not tested the skill with anyone who might have stealth abilities.

The sound of running footsteps resolved into the forms of three newcomers.

Two people in ill-fitting armour approached Faye. One held a rudimentary sword and shield combo, with the other wielding an identical shield but paired it with a spear instead. They gaped at her as they came, looking to the downed form of the rogue.

The third figure was Taveon, dressed in tunic and trousers stuffed into shin-high boots. His shoulders were covered with a thick mantle that came partway down his back in a protective shell. Across his chest was a thick bandoleer covered in pouches of assorted sizes and loops that held glass bottles. What surprised her the most was that held clenched in his teeth was a lit smoking pipe.

“Taveon!” she exclaimed, “I’ve been looking for you, old man. Please tell me those are potions. Maggie’s hurt.”

“I’m glad that we have found each other, child,” he said with a grin. “I have some potions. How badly is she hurt?”

Faye led the way to the slumped over form of her friend.

She took two steps.

[Swordfighter’s Sense] blared in her head.

She ducked and lashed out with an elbow, then swung her blade around in a rapid circle, injecting mana along the metal surface and igniting it as she went.

The flaming brand drew in the moisture of the air and sucked out Faye’s breath, but she did not let the magic go.

The shadowy form of the assassin blurred and flickered through the attack that Faye had unleashed.

In a panic, Faye realised the shadow was not coming for her again. It launched itself for one of the armed newcomers.

It resolved into the black-leather clad form of her opponent in a split second. The guard was unable to react in time as the assassin’s dagger appeared in their hand, centimetres away from his neck. With a savage rip, the assassin sliced the man’s throat open.

Faye launched herself at the assassin, but before she had even moved half the distance they had disappeared in another explosion of darkness.

“SHIT!” Faye cursed. “Is he alive?!”

The other guard had backed away from the bleeding guard as he had slumped to his knees, gasping for breath and clutching at his ruined neck.

Before Faye could do anything, Taveon had found her arm and clenched it, tightly.

“He’s gone, girl.”

“You don’t know that!” she said.

“Yes, I do,” he said with a deep sadness.

Faye pulled herself from his grasp and went to the downed guard. Only, as she got to her knees, she realised it could not be a guard. Her initial impression was that these were two newly minted guards that had only just passed training. But now, as she knelt in the blood of this man, she realised that they were nothing so grand as trainee guards.

“I’m sorry,” Taveon said, his hand dropping onto her shoulder. “I’m going to give this potion to Maggie. She’s still holding on.”

Faye nodded.

It had been arrogant to assume that she would be able to protect the guards, or Taveon, from the assassin. She had known that they were nearby. She had felt it, even if [Swordfighter’s Sense] had not sensed the hidden dagger.

“Shit, he died so fast.”

Faye startled; the other guard was a woman. It had been hard to tell under the helmet, but her voice trembled as she spoke — telling Faye that this was a woman with little experience of violence or death.

“What was his name?” Faye asked.

“Eirt,” the woman replied. “He was Eirt.”

Eirt, Faye silently prayed, I am sorry I wasn’t fast enough.

She laid a hand on the man’s bowed form. He had died on his knees, slumped down over his chest.

“Faye,” Taveon called. “Is that the last of the assassin?”

Faye stood, shaking herself out. “I can’t be sure,” she said, trying not to sound too bitter. “My skill does not tell me if they are here or not.”

“Then it’s safer to assume they are,” Taveon said. “Though I get the impression you scared them off with that display of fire. You’ve been working on new spellwork, I see.”

She just nodded.

“Hoza,” Taveon continued, gesturing for the woman to come over to Maggie’s still form. “I need your help. Will you please take Maggie under the arms for me, as we shift her around to be more comfortable?”

The woman, Hoza, nodded and walked over to Taveon. She laid her spear and shield aside. Too easily, Faye frowned. This was no trained fighter. A militia member, at best.

“How is she?” Faye asked, when her voice came back to her.

“She will survive,” Taveon said. “This potion will restore her, though not quickly.”

Faye looked around, a thought bursting into her mind with sudden clarity.

Where is the boy?

There, hiding beneath a partially overturned table, huddled the little boy. He looked to only be around five or so years old. Faye dropped to her knees when she got close enough.

“Hello,” she said, in a quiet voice. “I’m Faye. Are you… feeling okay?”

The boy did not say anything, but he shook his head, sniffling.

“Don’t worry, then,” she continued in a quiet voice, “we’re going to take care of you.”

He looked up at her, then. His eyes were wide, haunted.

“You killed the man that tried to take me away, didn’t you?”

Faye blinked sudden tears away rapidly, but she nodded.

“Yes, I did. He won’t hurt you again.”

“Good.”

The look on the boy’s face was heart breaking. But Faye held out her arms for him, and after a moment’s indecision, he scrambled out from under the table and came forward for a hug. His arms latched around her neck with surprising strength, but when Faye pulled up to stand, she found she could carry him as if he were as light as a feather. So much so, she did not put him down when she moved over to Taveon, Hoza, and Maggie’s slumped form.

Taveon looked up with a smile. “Ah, there we are now, that’s a good lad,” he said in a grandfatherly voice.

The boy simply buried his head in Faye’s neck.

“There is a place nearby that we must go, Faye, it is not a pleasant place. The others are there.” His eyes flicked to the boy and back to her face. She caught his meaning well enough. “There will be resistance. I imagine that we shall overcome it.”

Faye nodded. Of course they would. These kids, strong though their world might make them, were still kids. They needed protection from those who were able. And, with a fierce glow in her core, Faye knew that she was becoming one of those who were eminently able to protect those she wanted to see safe.

So help me, God, against those who stand in our way.