Faye carefully inched forward. They had reached the Guard’s barracks, a low slung building that took up a good fifty metres of street with its plain stone structure. A low wall spanned the entire length of the building, which in itself was not too strange, but the fact that it was a basic garden wall was surprising.

The militiaman who held the mallet was crouched next to her. They were inside one of the houses that overlooked the street that led to, and then in front of, the barracks.

“Looks deserted.”

She nodded. She agreed.

“That’s odd, isn’t it?” she asked. “I expected them patrolling, or something.”

One of the other militiamen murmured something.

“What?”

“I said I’m not fancying our chances, if the whole Guard are gone.”

“They’re not all gone,” one of the women whispered, disparagingly. “Gods, you’re dumber than a monster, sometimes.”

“Hold it together,” Faye interrupted. “We’re almost there.”

The lapses in discipline had become increasingly common as the afternoon wore on. It did not usually take hours to cross the northern section of the town, by far. The militia were nervous at seeing the town like this. Faye understood, it was odd seeing something in a new light like that.

Fortunately, the two idiots who had been insubordinate when she had first taken charge had not uttered another mutinous word since the real fighting had begun.

Still don’t trust them, though, she added, silently.

“Wait!” one of the militia hissed, “I see one!”

They crowded close to the shutters over the window again. Each person taking a small section between the slats to themselves.

Through hers, Faye saw the main doors of the barracks — huge metal slabs that were riveted and looked to be inches thick — swung ponderously open. She could not see who was opening the gates, but she saw who was emerging from inside.

A squad of Guards. Their armour was uniform, clean, and well-used. They each bore a shield and a spear and they marched in lockstep. At least until they reached the street. There, they adopted a much more natural grouping. Each individual guard would slowly rotate and check all their angles regularly.

Faye wondered what they were waiting for.

The doors to the barracks had been closed again whilst the squad got into position. But now, they were standing in the middle of the street.

“What are they doing?” someone whispered, Faye could not tell who.

“Waiting for something.”

“Yeah, but what?”

“If I knew that, do you think I’d let you witter on?”

“Shhh,” Faye reminded them, gently. “It might be time to show ourselves. Get downstairs, with the others, I want everyone ready to sprint down the street and into the waiting arms of those guards, okay?”

“Right,” one of them said, turning and descending the stairs in a noisy trot that Faye tried not to wince too hard at. They were at least paying some attention to orders.

Faye opened the shutter, slowly. She did not want to make a big song and dance, letting everyone in this part of town know they were there, but she did need to get the attention of the Guard squad. Preferably in a way that did not include simply running toward them — which she admitted had run through her mind when she saw them emerge from the barracks.

Sidling up to the now open window, Faye quickly looked around to check for obvious signs of the Primalists.

Just because they had not seen a single thorn nor bone of them since they had cleared the last barrier did not mean they were not here, waiting. [Mana Sense], when active, also told her little. There were signs of mana everywhere, as there always was, but even worse was the mana layered across the barracks. It was like a giant neon sign, as bright as the sun, shining in her mind when she activated the skill.

Pushing herself to her feet in front of the open window was harder than she assumed. Her ingrained sense of self-preservation told her that it was a bad idea and her heartbeat shot through the roof as she stood.

Raising a hand and arm out of the window, she waved it in big loops, two, three times before halting.

One of the guards had appeared to be looking her way but had turned their head.

She waited.

Then, again, quickly threw her arm side to side, this time in a wider arc.

The guard paused in their constant movement, and she waved again.

This time, the guard lifted their spear and rocked it left to right. Then, with a glance over their shoulder, lifted the spear toward Faye and made what she could only assume was a beckoning motion with the spearhead.

She lifted her hand again in acknowledgement, then turned from the window, pulling the shutter closed as quietly as she could. There was no need to leave it open.

Downstairs, the Guild assistants and the militia were all standing or leaning against walls. The tension was palpable. The moment Faye stepped into the kitchen, they all stood to attention, focused entirely on her.

She tried not to grin. “They saw me and indicated we should move closer. Let’s get going, before something changes.”

The group broke into movement all at once. Murmurs and the rattle of shields, rustle of cloth as they slung bags back over their shoulders. A few seconds later, they were ready.

She was impressed.

“Let’s go. Follow closely.”

Opening the door, Faye looked left, then right. The immediate street was empty, as before. There was only a single corner to take to lead them to the intersection the guards were holding, a distance of around a hundred metres, give or take a few.

Faye led the group at a trot.

The town was quiet, despite the very occasional distant sound of something breaking or occasional a wail or cry of some kind. The silence that fell now made Faye much more nervous than she felt there was any need to be, but she used it to keep herself on guard.

Drawing her sword, Faye edged to the corner of the street and looked before stepping out. It was clear, but she could see the guards. The one who had seen her had moved into this street a little, stretching the guard’s perimeter a little, but not unduly.

He had obviously spotted her because he immediately gestured with his spear again. The movement was urgent.

“Quickly, now,” she said, then moved out into the centre of the street and started jogging toward the guards.

The troop of footsteps behind her told her the others were moving fast, too.

That was when all bloody hell broke loose.

When Faye and her group were halfway down the street, with only fifty metres left to go, the guards suddenly whirled to the left.

A loud roar and the stomping of many feet rose from the quiet air like an explosion. Faye could not help but jump at the sudden burst of sound. She had instinctively jumped to the right, but she put her head down and started running in true earnest.

“Run!” she shouted.

The guard had turned to Faye’s left, presenting their shield and spear like one of the ancient spearmen of Sparta.

He turned his head toward them and shouted, “Move faster!”

Faye looked over her shoulder. The others were coming, but she had pulled ahead of them already. The assistants were not fast, their classes suited best to what was essentially white-collar office work, the militia were ahead of them, but some not by much.

She turned back to the front and ran faster.

If whatever was coming was bad enough, she had to buy the group time to get inside the barracks’ heavy steel doors.

The guards had formed up in a loose wall. It seemed to Faye that the moment monsters arrived, they would slip between the huge, two metre spaces between each guard and surround them. But, as the rest of the guards came fully into view, Faye realised that she was still thinking too much like a woman from Earth.

As the monsters rushed the guards — what looked to be at least a dozen corrupted forest hounds, and a horde of lesser briars — the leading line of shields lit with yellow light. The magic spread from shield to shield, and a shining barrier spread across the street, a metre or so in front of the guards’ line.

What Faye had not seen the first glance she had taken were the people running for their lives from the monsters.

Two men were supporting one another as they ran for the guards’ line. They looked half-dead already, their armour broken and hanging from them in pieces. Neither one was wearing a helmet, and one looked to have a missing ear, if the blood covering the side of his face was any indication.

As Faye came to a halt roughly in the centre of the former circle the guards had made, she watched with bated breath as the men reached the shining yellow light seconds before the monsters reached them.

She held her breath.

The men slipped through the barrier.

The monsters slammed into it with the sound of a car smashing against a brick wall. Snarling ripples of sound ripped from their throats and the monstrous hounds slammed into the barrier bodily, scratching and biting at the light as if they could get through to the humans standing behind it so easily.

“Inside, both of you!” one of the guards snapped. The two who had been running had slowed, exhausted, but at the words looked up and nodded, trying to move faster.

Faye looked to the left, some of the assistants were still dozens of metres away.

“Adventurer, right?”

Faye looked around again. She nodded. “Aye.”

“Get your lot inside, then. We can handle this.”

The words were not said with any particular heat, but Faye sensed the professional rivalry behind the comment.

She shrugged. “Seems like you can. I was worried for a second.”

“Go on, the men inside will let you in.”

Faye waited for the assistants to catch up and pointed them on when they seemed to want to stop and gather around her.

“Keep it up, let’s get inside now, come on!”

She saw one of the guards shaking his head, but she chose to rise above it and settled with tutting as she walked past.

As they followed the two walking-wounded inside, garnering more than a few interested looks from the people inside the massive doors, Faye was struck at how utilitarian the building was inside as well as out.

There were very few pieces of décor. Benches ran along some of the walls, however, as the corridor broke off into different areas.

The space they had entered looked familiar almost, but she could not place a finger on it.

The wall immediately to the left of the entrance was taken up by a long wooden bar, behind which stood a few guards, in full armour except for their helmets, some of whom were writing on pieces of paper, others were moving boxes around.

One was waiting for the newcomers. She stepped out from behind the bar and approached them all.

The two men who had been run ragged tried to stand straighter when the woman approached. They succeeded but grimaced with each movement.

“Stand at ease,” the woman said with a wave of her hand as she approached. “It’s just the two of you?”

“Yes, sarge. Sorry, sarge.”

The woman’s face did not move, but she did nod slowly, once. “There’s no need for that. Get to medical.”

The men saluted, a hand placed smartly on their left shoulders, before they shuffled down the corridor.

Faye looked at the sergeant as she watched her men walk off. There was tension in her stance, the set of her shoulders, the straightness of her back. It spoke of hidden emotions. But when the sergeant turned to Faye, the emotion came to the fore a little more.

The slight turn up of the mouth, the flicker of her eyes over Faye and her companions.

“And you are?” she asked.

And the barely hidden contempt in the voice, Faye thought. She isn’t hiding it nearly as well as she thinks.

“Faye Weaver,” she replied. She kept the annoyance from her tone. However, from the way the sergeant stiffened, she suspected she might not have been successful, either.

“You’re Faye Weaver? The associate Adventurer?”

The sergeant had looked down at her clipboard, as if Faye’s name had been written there already.

“Yes, Faye Weaver,” she replied, somewhat mollified. The woman had not detected anger in Faye’s tone. She had just heard of Faye already. She could deal with that; it had happened plenty of times in her life. “But, no, I’m a full Adventurer. Nice to meet you…?”

The sergeant scowled as she looked up again at Faye.

“Sergeant Thura,” she said, “how are you a full Adventurer?”

She swallowed her annoyance. “Because I am. Does that really matter right now? Only, we’re on a schedule.”

Sergeant Thura was taken aback, she could tell, because the stiff posture that she had shown from the moment they had slid into the barracks was gone now. She looked over her shoulder, further down the corridor, as if hoping someone would be there.

Faye glanced at the assistants and waved one over with a finger.

“This here is Lower Administrator Gria,” Faye said, introducing the leader of the assistants to the sergeant, who looked less than pleased to be greeting the Lower Administrator. “She and her team are here to coordinate with you, or your boss, probably — no offence — about the defence of the town. I suggest that you take her and her people to where they need to be. They’re on a very tight schedule, you understand.”

Faye had turned on her customer service voice by the end of her introduction. It was something that had gotten her into trouble once or twice at the cafes and restaurants she worked in. Customers had inevitably realised that she was mocking them with the obsequious tone.

“What? Coordinate? That’s not necessary,” the Sergeant spluttered.

Faye blinked. She looked to Gria. “Not necessary?” Faye repeated.

“I understand that it is out of the ordinary, Sergeant Thura,” Gria said with an inclination of her head. “But these are unprecedented times. Our town’s planned defence has been broken quiet thoroughly, as I am sure you are aware. It is in everyone’s best interested if the Guild and the Guard can effectively work in a coordinated manner.”

“Well, yes… obviously, but—”

The Lower Administrator interrupted. “We understand that the Guard are independent, Sergeant. We are not suggesting that policy has changed. However, without concentrated effort, the activities of the Guild and the Guard will come to naught.”

“This is highly irregular.”

Faye rolled her eyes. “And it’s every day that the town’s overrun by sparking mad forest cultists, is it?”

The Sergeant’s lips thinned.

“What the Adventurer means,” Gria said, with a look, “is that as communications between our two organisations have been cut off by our attackers, the only solution was for us to send a team here to inform your leaders of the Guild’s upcoming tactics and to mould the Guard’s response in kind.”

Faye lifted an eyebrow.

That’s what I meant? Huh.

As the Sergeant and Lower Administrator continued their conversation, Faye noticed that some of the guards were watching and she nodded in their direction. They wandered closer.

“You’re that girl that wandered outside the town on her own, aren’t you?” one of them asked as they drew near.

Hesitating a moment, but turning with a casual grace and resting her wrist on the pommel of her blade, Faye nodded. “I guess I am.”

The guards shook their heads, grinning suddenly. “Absolute madness, but we see that it worked out well for you.” The one who had spoken thrust out his hand for her to shake.

She considered for a moment, then slapped her hand into his and gave it a friendly pump.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Worked out well is an understatement, I reckon,” said the second one. He held out his hand as well, and Faye returned the gesture. “Congratulations on cresting. Happen in all this mess, did it?”

She nodded, surprised. The guards noticed her look and gave each other a grin. “What’s the matter?”

“Others can’t tell, I’m surprised you can. One of the attackers even thought I had crested before I hit level ten.”

The guards’ eyebrows rose, and they chuckled. “That can happen sometimes, but it’s not common. You must have been giving them a headache then if you were fighting them.”

“Of course she’s been fighting them, look at her!”

“True enough,” the other said, nodding. Then, he grew serious. “Listen, we all know about what happened with Macloud. He’s an arse but what happened to him…”

The man shook his head.

“Isn’t right,” the other muttered. He shrugged when Faye looked at him.

Macloud?

“The, uh… incident, at the gate?” one of them prompted her, when she said nothing. Which made it click into place.

Oh, God, that guard! Arran challenged him to a duel.

“Oh, right.” She grimaced. “What happened to him?”

“From what the others said, Macloud tried to ignore the Duellist’s challenge.”

Faye nodded. He had, and it had resulted in what honestly looked like a seizure of some kind.

“Aye, that put him out for a few weeks. Unresponsive, but breathing. Bedridden since, practically. Up and about now, but still not fully back to normal.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and she was. It sounded awful. But then, the guy had hit her — hard.

“Thank you for saying so,” they said. “Of course, it ain’t your fault, really. Just tell the Duellist that… well, tell him what happened to Macloud and that he should really think about rescinding the challenge.”

Faye nodded, slowly. “When I see him next, I will tell him.”

By this point, the Lower Administrator had convinced the Sergeant to at least get a superior to come and speak with them as she had flatly refused the Guilders access to the bowels of the barracks.

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Faye cleared her throat, and all eyes turned to her.

“Listen, as great as this is, my part in this is done. But I still have something else I have to do, so my militia and I will leave the Guilders here. I expect them to be allowed to do their work.”

The Sergeant frowned. “You should not leave.”

Faye made a face and bobbed her head back and forth. “Well, unfortunately, that decision is not up to you. My boss asked me to scout out the east gate, so I’ll be going to do that.”

“We haven’t had anyone come back from more than a few streets away with a whole team,” the Sergeant continued. “I cannot recommend that you leave.”

When some people got angry, or ready for a fight, they tended to straighten up. It was a natural instinct to make oneself taller, more intimidating to humanity’s monkey hind brain. Get up in someone’s face and stare down at them to make them intimidated.

Faye had found herself on the receiving end of that stare down more times in her life than she could accurately describe. Every opponent in the ring, every opponent in the parks of her hometown, too.

She had learned the secret to preparing for a fight.

You let yourself relax.

Bunched muscles must unwind before they would move in another direction. Instead of pushing herself upright, Faye dropped her stance a little. Bent her knees. Dropped her shoulders. Slightly unfocused her eyes so that she was not focusing on just the Sergeant.

It was as natural to her as breathing.

Unfortunately, it was also natural for the Guard to recognise someone who was preparing for a fight.

The tension in the barrack’s entry lobby ratcheted up a dozen notches when guards responded to Faye’s casual fighting stance. They made space around her, some of them reaching to put hands on weapons, just as hers was resting ever so casually on her handle.

The Sergeant stared at Faye, but instead of posturing for a fight, she held up a hand to the other guards.

Faye smiled.

“I don’t think you have the authority to tell me I cannot leave,” she said. “Therefore, I highly recommend you let me go, lady.”

One of the guards that had congratulated Faye on her cresting spoke up.

“You don’t have to buy into their bullshit, you know.”

Faye cocked her head. She had no clue where that had come from. Instead of replying, she simply spoke to the militia.

“You can stay, if you like. Won’t begrudge you that. Keep the Lower Administrator company, eh? Make sure she doesn’t get bored.”

They did not reply, but she had not expected it. If she were being honest with them, she would have told them that she would prefer for them to stay. Particularly the troublemakers. That was a liability she did not want to have near her much longer.

“I’m going to turn around and walk to that door. If it doesn’t open when I get there… well, I guess we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”

As Faye turned, she saw that the militiaman with the mallet was carefully watching the guards. His mallet was in his hands, but to be fair she had never seen him without it in his hands, so she did not think it was supposed to be threatening. Either way, he nodded at her as she walked past.

Most of the militia made similar nodding gestures, except for the two troublemakers. They had been standing at the back of the group, closest to the doors. Faye looked to them.

“I would prefer if someone stayed to look after those Guild attendants. Can I trust you two to do that?”

The men looked at each other, then quickly nodded.

“Good.”

The doors opened when she reached them.