Sean’s POV

“SEAN FLY!” Elendria screamed, and I was a fraction of a second behind her in taking to the skies. My feet had just left the ground when it turned into a meat grinder of fangs and claws. Before I could even appreciate the close escape, I felt a weight clamp down on my leg. A bit of gravity magic let me power through it, and Elendria helped out as soon as I cleared the mess below.

“Freezing bolt!” Once the head froze, I shot it in the jaw, shattering it and letting the corpse fall into the group below where it was immediately shredded. Smiling, I started to turn to Elendria to thank her when I saw a blur flying toward me and I immediately started pouring more mana into my shield.

“You’ll pay for underestimating us, mage!” The blur cried just before smashing my shield with a bone armor covered fist. I had thought that my shield was going to be more than enough. I thought wrong. The punch rocked my world, shockwaves easily moving through the shield and slamming into me as I was sent rocketing backwards. I lost concentration on my wings as soon as I impacted the first dune, and even my newly reinforced body felt the strain as I was sent ragdolling through three more dunes before rolling to a stop at the base of a fourth. I had just gotten to my feet when the assault continued.

“The secret.” Uppercut to the stomach. “To beating mages.” Straight right to the face sent me reeling. “Is to keep.” Two left jabs to the face and a right hook to the side. “Them off balance!” An elbow to the face followed by a straight right to the chest empowered by some skill knocked me back several feet. While the mana armor did stop the majority of the damage, it wasn’t able to block it all and the shockwaves were incredibly painful. However, the knockback gave me a chance, as it both bought me distance and let me know where my enemy was.

“Lightning bolt.” I snarled, sending a thick bolt of electricity in the bastard’s direction.

“Electric overload! Thundering counter!” He cried, and his next set of moves absolutely shocked me. He took the lightning bolt on the left forearm, charging forward the entire time. I could see the muscles straining and the skin burning from the intensity just before he struck me one more time with a straight right, only this time it was empowered by my own lightning! The blast sent me flying backwards and sent me sprawling on the sands. As I got to my feet, I saw him mere feet away ready to attack yet again. Instinct had my head jerking to the side as his fist went flying by my ear. I thought it was a good dodge, but whoever this was had some more surprises in store for me. He grabbed my hair in his fist, shoving my head down and into his rising knee.

“Did you think.” Knee smashes forehead, jerking me backward. “That pugilists.” Left kicks to my thigh and ribs, bruising my right side. “Were only limited.” Slightly weaker kick to my chest, making me stumble back a step. “To punching?” Moving so fast he was a blur, he did a half spin and mule kicked me in the chest, an explosion of red energy sending me flying once again as my mana plummeted.

The force of the kick was so great that I was sent three feet into the sand dune behind me, which instantly started collapsing. Panic was welling inside me, as I was already down to a third of my mana reserves and I had barely done any fighting! Not only that, but being buried alive was apparently a phobia of mine that I didn’t know I had. A burst of air magic allowed me to take a deep breath, and my rage grew when I saw the smirking gaze of my opponent.

“I’m going to enjoy draining you.”

“Drain this.” I snarled, using my rage to drain a third of my remaining mana to create a powerful one-way gravity field. The dune behind me became the reservoir tank for an impromptu sand blaster, and I sent a stream of high powered particles in his direction.

“Necromantic shield!” He called, laughing as his power was swiftly eroded. That’s when I saw that I was blasting sand against a shield of bone he had created, and I let the spell drop. It wasn’t providing near the damage I would need with my remaining mana. I took a few stumbling steps forward, letting my armor flicker in a few places. Direct assaults against this guy weren’t going to work.

“Phantom hook.” I looked up to see him throw a left hook from about twenty feet away, my brows furrowing in confusion. That is, until it felt like I got slammed by a truck on my right side. Once more I was knocked down, though I kept up the flickering mana armor. A gentle foot flipped me onto my back, causing me to cough up a bit of bubbly blood.

“Oh, that’s not good. You’ve punctured a lung for sure.” My opponent taunted. “Though I must admit, you have lasted much longer than any other mage I have fought. Perhaps after I drain you a bit, I’ll use you to practice some of my skills? It’s been so long since I’ve had this much fun! And when all is said and done, I’ll have you join one of my units.”

“Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched. Heh, ow.” My chuckle at the end turned into an immediate groan as pain shot through me. My entire body felt bruised, and in addition to the one that had punctured a lung, I was fairly certain that I had several more cracked ribs.

“Oh don’t be like that, you know I’ve beaten you fair and square. Now, let me have some of that lovely experience.” He said, holding out a hand that I just noticed had a small needle extending from his palm. Just before he touched me, I sent a void shot at his extended elbow. I hit nothing as he leaped backwards, easily evading the blow.

“HO! You sandbagging bastard, you almost got me! You’ll have to be better than that if you want to catch me off guard.”

“Really.” I drawled as I slowly rolled to my feet. “And just who are you exactly?”

“Hmm? Oh what the hell, you’re almost dead anyway. Garrdor. Captain of the City Guard. A wight known as the Phantom Pugilist.” He said, giving me a slight bow.

“Name’s.” Was all I got out, as Garrdor shot forward and once again renewed his assault, and I finally recognized what he was trying to do. He would first go for a slight blow to the head to disorient, then he would strike either at the major muscle groups like my biceps and thighs to limit my movement, or he would attack my ribs so that I would have trouble breathing. He constantly changed not only the angles of attacks, but the range he would throw them from. Elbows and knees from incredibly close, jabs from medium range. If I stumbled backward, I would receive either a spinning kick or a straight punch.

Recognizing it didn’t exactly help me counter anything, and I was desperately hoarding my mana, letting more and more of his blows get through. Then he grabbed me by the shirt, and threw me into the air. “Phantom fist barrage!” He cried, and sent a series of massive green and black fists in my direction. I curled into a ball, placing my forearms and shins in the way and letting them take the brunt of the damage. Each fist smashed into me and carried me higher until I was at least two hundred feet in the air.

“I do hope you survive this!” A voice to my right said, and my eyes widened to see Garrdor there. I started to move, to attack, to do anything, but just after I relaxed my guard his knee slammed into my stomach. I rotated from the impact, and as soon as I had my back to the ground he did a flip and dropped an axe kick onto my stomach, enhanced with some form of energy that sent me rocketing toward the ground.

“Congratulations mage! Here comes my most powerful attack! Dual Phantom Fists.” I watched as twin fists appeared, only they were behind him? That made sense once he rotated a bit and planted his feet against the fists, his leg muscles grotesquely bulging under the pressure as he used the fists to propel his leap. By the time I slammed into the ground, he was already a third of the way toward me.

“METEOR IMPACT!” He cried out as he flipped so that his feet were facing me. They were immediately enshrouded in a mix of green, black, and red energies, and my eyes widened in terror at the power his attack was likely to impart. There was no way that I was going to survive if this thing hit. Void attacks were out, they wouldn’t slow his speed at all and even a falling corpse at that speed could probably kill me. I needed a counterattack and a deflection in the same move.

So I did what I had warned the kids at the university never to do. I created a miniature black hole just to the left of Garrdor’s trajectory.

“AAAAAAH!” He screamed as parts of his body were eaten by the black hole, immediately losing the dangerous looking flames on his feet. Even more importantly, he was deflected off to the side, though it did give him a bit of a boost. So instead of him going fast and directly at me, he was now going insanely fast and going to barely miss me. I destroyed the black hole, turning my head from where his body was going to impact and using the last bits of my mana to form a thick shield between my body and his impact site. I didn’t bother trying to move from laying on my back, as it was actually providing the lowest profile I had to defend.

The ground shook with the force of his impact, and the explosion of sand shattered my shield and peppered my exposed skin. The force rolled me a bit, ensuring that my right side and back both received the same amount of sandblasting. Unable to muster the energy, I simply rolled back onto my back and tried to recover.

“To think you had that much left. Sandbagging bastard.” I heard muttered from the Garrdor’s direction. “You still alive over there mister mage?”

“Barely.” I croaked, coughing.

“Good. Good.” He said. “Mutual defeats suck. Life’s only fun if there is a winner and a loser. Gives you something to strive for.” I slowly rose to my feet, well, knees, and crawled towards him.

“I hear that. Losing gives you something to aspire to. Ties just feel like unfinished business.”

He pointed a finger at me, smiling. “That’s it! Ah, at least I lost to a guy who gets it. Pity we can’t just go and enjoy a beer after this. Not even draining people of experience is as refreshing as a nice, cold beer. I can’t even remember my last beer.”

“That’s a pity.” I said, finally managing to haul myself to my feet. I looked down on my opponent, seeing his body was wrecked. His left leg was simply gone, along with is ribcage and a portion of his arm. “Maybe in your next life you can be an innkeeper, and have all the cold beers you could ever want.”

“Then I hope you can do what none before you could and break the curse. Of course, my people won’t make it easy.”

“I wouldn’t expect them to.” I said. “Any last words?”

“Good luck, and know that there are still several strong people hiding within the city.” I nodded, and sent a miniature solar flare into his exposed heart, incinerating it and causing his body to turn into dust. Just as I stumbled from exhaustion, a familiar presence landed next to me and caught me.

“Sean? SEAN!” Elendria frantically spoke, slapping my cheeks.

“Ow.” I groaned, getting a sigh of relief from her.

“Oh thank the gods you’re alive!” She sobbed, carefully clutching me to her chest. “If you can feel pain, you’re still alive.”

“I was afraid of that. I’m feeling a lot of pain. How did your fight go?” I groaned more than asked.

“Just fine. Now, where do you hurt and how badly are you injured?”

“I hurt everywhere. I’ve got broken and cracked ribs and bruised muscles. My mana is pretty well gone, or at least it was. I don’t know about you, but I’m done fighting for today. Maybe tomorrow too.”

“That bad? Here. Let me carry you then, and I’ll take us back to our little hideout.” She said, scooping me up in a princess carry and taking to the skies before I could even mutter a word of protest. While she flew, I took a look at the notifications from the battle.

Battle report

You and your group have slain the following:

Skeleton guardsman x 82

Desiccated dead guardsman x 47

Ghoul lord x 7

Ghoul x 48

Ghostly guardsman x 132

Guard phantasm x46

Guard shade x 13

Guard Lieutenant Corten (wight)

Guard Captain Garrdor (wight) the Phantom Pugilist

Level up!

I looked it over, and couldn’t help but curse how slowly you gained experience once you evolved. I was guessing the majority of our experience came from the two wights, but it was hard to believe that we barely made a level up after all of that. As we flew, I found myself both dreading and hoping there were a lot more powerful undead hiding within the city.

“I managed a single level up, how about yourself?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh, I got one and almost enough for a second.” She said, concentrating on flying as smoothly as possible.

“I see. What do you think of attacking the city at night?”

“Madness.” She said immediately. “Even if you weren’t injured. The undead will be stronger, and the mages would be free to cast at us instead of taking out the sun so the incorporeals would be able to attack. And they wouldn’t give us a chance to fight back, either. They would phase through the sands at our feet and not even let us see their bodies. So get that idiotic idea out of your head now.”

“Oh, could it really be that bad? They’ll be overconfident.”

“No! You are already overconfident! You just about got killed, and you want to attack when they are stronger? Think about what you are saying Sean!” She said, slowing down to glare at me. Luckily we were near enough to the hideout that we could land and walk the rest of the way. “Did that body upgrade come with a mind downgrade?”

“Alright, alright!” I sighed, wincing in pain. “I won’t try and attack at night. I just thought we might get a bit more experience if the undead were stronger.”

“That’s just it Sean. It really is just a bit. It’s not like the experience is going to double, and I know the difficulty is going to nearly triple. They will be stronger, faster, and less restrained by the environment. Now, we have almost 18 hours for you to recover. Do you think you could abuse that body upgrade and increase your healing by using mana to hold your bones in place?”

“Mystic body? I suppose I could try. It’s supposed to increase my attributes only, but there have been plenty of surprises hidden in these upgrades so far.” I said, using gravity magic to slowly lower myself into the hideout. We quickly left the original cave and headed to our secondary one. While I was grateful enough for those chimps who had given their lives to save us, it still felt odd to stay in the same room, even if we had thoroughly cleaned it. They had at least deserved the funeral pyres I had built for them. I figured even an ambush like they had perished in counted as a battle of some form.

“Alright, here’s the plan then. I already know you didn’t get much sleep, so you take a rest and try your best to speed up healing. I’ll watch most of the day.” Elendria ordered, placing her bedroll on top of mine to make it slightly softer.

“How do you?” I asked, wondering how she knew I didn’t sleep, but just shook my head. It didn’t matter if it was a logical deduction from clues or a woman’s intuition, the fact was she knew just how tired I was and I would be a fool to argue against it. “Nevermind. Thanks Elendria.” As I laid down, I tried to bring up a possible way to swiftly heal my body, but the system notifications looked blurry. I tried to blink them back to focus, but only ended up drifting off to sleep.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Elendria’s POV

Sean started snoring almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, something that I was grateful for. I couldn’t stop the tremors that immediately started, but the tears at least flowed silently. Gods, but this was a shitty quest! Not only had we come close to dying several times today, but there was that laughter and the memories it brought. IT ISN’T FAIR! I raged in my mind. I thought I beat those during my evolution! How do they still bother me! As my thoughts raced, I struggled to keep my breathing calm and even so Sean wouldn’t notice. As dumb as he was about certain things, he sometimes had these amazing leaps of empathy that left me speechless.

As I watched a blurry mote of light through tear filled eyes, I sucked in a breath as it froze midair. Suddenly I was no longer next to Sean, but in the white space of the tower.

“Hello again Dearie.” I heard a familiar voice say, and noticed the tower’s Avatar sitting at a table. “Care for another cup?” Arrayed in front of her were two tea sets again. I guardedly took a seat, getting ready to unleash a deluge of questions when she held up a finger and took a slow sip of tea, savoring it for a moment.

“Easy there. Drink, and I’ll answer what questions I can.” She said, and I took a sip of what I now recognized as her tranquilitea. “You just drink and relax. We are moving at the speed of thought, which honestly is much faster than the speed of light. But try explaining that to those whatchamacallits, and they label you as a batty old lady. Your Sean is safe, and by the time we are done you won’t have even blinked an eyelid.” Her words and the warmth of the tea reassured me, though even here the cup trembled as I placed it back on the saucer.

“Now, for the important part. I am simply a remnant of a remnant. An echo of the tower placed in your mind for the first time the flashbacks happened. Once you got to a safe space, I was allowed to come forward and aid you. Once we finish our conversation, my power will be spent and you will never see me again.”

She sighed, and looked off into space for a moment before continuing, “Your mortal minds are amazing things. So complex, so elastic, so amazing. A memory can lie dormant and seemingly forgotten for years until the tiniest of triggers makes it leap forward. The way a flower moves in a breeze, the smell of a pie in a window, or the laughter of a tormentor. It really doesn’t take much. The problem lies with the reactions that can come with those memories, and how we can heal or hinder them. It is true, in your evolution trial you confronted those memories. But they are a large part of you, dearie, and to destroy them would be to destroy who you are. While that is technically within a god’s power, it is forbidden for a multitude of reasons. The least of which being that the results are completely unpredictable. So what can we do with those memories if we don’t destroy them?”

Here she paused to take another sip of tea, reminding me to do so as well. Even if it wasn’t real, it still helped to warm me up and calm me down. “That’s better. Now, back to the memories. Instead of destroying them, we can temporarily mute them. They are still there, but they don’t have quite the hold on you that they used to. That is, until a trigger causes them to come roaring back. Even then, we can do some small manipulations. Instead of reinforcing you as the powerless girl in the memories, I was able to link it to your powerful rejection of those memories from your evolution. This gave your mind the choice: to become once again that powerless girl, shuddering in terror, or to channel your rage and become something more. To rise above, and become stronger. And did you ever rise above! Oh, my heart went wild when you immediately reached for the powers at your call! I shivered in delight as you reinforced that you were no longer shackled, that the very idea was anathema to you! Oh dearie, you have come so very far with so very little help.”

She paused to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye before continuing, “But this is where what little I have been able to do must come to an end. Never fear the triggers, for they will always bring the same feelings to the fore that your fight with the poor wight did. But the mute has been destroyed, and the memories will slowly become more vivid. You will have to work through them on your own, though I do strongly council working with your Sean on these things. He will listen without judging as he has done in the past, and we both know how helpful it is to finally be able to release those terrible feelings in a safe space.”

“I guess what I am saying, is that you need to move at your own pace, but you do have to move. You will have to work through the memories, and figure out how you will allow them to affect you in the future. And though it was your faith in Sean’s feelings for you that finally allowed you to access it, it was your own inner strength that overcame the power of the memories. You are far stronger than even your Sean realizes, you just need to have faith in yourself. Wrestling with your inner demons is something we must do our entire lives dearie. Sometimes we just need help to find the right weapon. Oh drat, my time here is up. Very well. Always move forward, even if just a step at a time. And remember that though you do indeed have the tools to overcome your demons, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a helping hand now and again.”

Suddenly I was back in the room with Sean again, and the blurry mote of light started moving once again. I kept a portion of my awareness on our surroundings, always searching for any hint of undead souls. The rest, I went through memories. My tears flowed freely, but that was fine. Each tear took away a bit of the bitterness, but through it all Sean was there. When my heart felt heavy enough that it would simply flounder under the weight, I would look at him and realize that despite all he had gone through, he was still willing to help me save my family. And I vowed that I would overcome my past, and help reunite him with his.