Ranvir came to in a slow approach. A jog that turned into a loping run, finishing in a sprint.

“He just fell over,” Alexis was saying. “I’m not sure what happened.”

Someone was holding his hand. Or maybe he was holding their hand.

“And the wound?” Amalia said.

“I bound it as best I could.”

“It’s probably not blood loss,” Amalia said. “Unless you’ve been cleaning?”

“No, I’ve not been moving since…”

Someone tugged on his hand, the movement causing Ranvir to stir.

“What happened?”

“He just grabbed me.”

“And you’ve checked the injury for infection?”

Someone was messing about around him, Ranvir realized. Tugging him about and pulling on his clothes.

“I found nothing.”

“This makes no damn sense, then. If it wasn’t blood loss or an infection. It couldn’t have been an Ability, you would’ve both noticed that…”

“Could you, maybe, get him to let me go?”

Moments later, hands touched his face. “Ranvir? Hey, you gotta wake up, okay? We need to know what happened, buddy.”

Ranvir snorted as he tried to bring himself to awareness, his hand reflexively squeezing down. Alexis squealed, trying to tug her thin digits free of Ranvir’s grip. The man in question’s eyes shot open. Jerking his arm back, he let Alexis go as he pushed up to sitting.

Heart racing to beat the potragos, Ranvir’s eyes flickered over the dimly lit cave. Purple light emanated from him as he drew back.

“Whoa,” Amalia held up a hand to him, palm out. “Calm down. Are you okay, Alexis? What happened?”

“I’m sorry,” the younger girl replied. “He just squeezed me and I forgot myself.”

“You’re not hurt?” Amalia’s voice was stern.

“I’m not.”

“And you, Ranvir?” Amalia turned her attention to him. “Are you all there?”

Licking his lips, Ranvir slowly nodded. “I’m here,” he’d drawn his hand tight against his chest without realizing it. Inhaling deeply, Ranvir tried to calm the building storm of emotions, casting a miasma of disorderly colors all throughout himself.

“So…” Amalia looked at him inquisitively.

Ranvir let his head fall back against the rock wall, his eyes avoiding hers. It probably left the cavern largely in darkness too, but maybe that was a good thing.

“Ranvir,” Amalia’s voice grew a cold-edge. “What happened?”

Sighing explosively, one hand reaching down to his bandage wrapped side. He’d felt Amalia fiddling with the cloth, since he only wore pants at the moment.

“It was a tough fight,” he finally admitted. “It’s been many tough fights. Humans are good at recognizing patterns. My spirit is pushing for advancement.”

“It can do that?” Alexis asked, her voice quiet. Ranvir thought he could almost hear the others’ heartbeats in the silence. Wind whistled near-silently across the tops of the tiny channels carrying air to the cave. “Can you just advance to Urityon by being in danger enough time?”

Ranvir shook his head. “We instinctively know what needs to happen, but we do not always have the tools necessary. In my case, I have two systems within me. My spirit’s compulsive attempt to advance attacked both of them.”

Amalia let out a slow breath.

“What?” Alexis asked.

“I suffered an injury to my Fundament when I first came to Korfyi,” Ranvir explained. “Wounds to the spirit take decades to fully heal. When my spirit jumped, pushing both of my system it was too large a strain at once and I passed out.”

“Is your Fundament cracked again?”

Ranvir shook his head. “Doesn’t feel like it. But I will have to do something about it.”

“You mean, advance?”

Ranvir nodded, finally bringing his gaze down to look at them. He pursed his lips. “On my plane, the higher-ranked tethered keep the secrets of advancement tightly locked. I don’t know the exact procedure to achieve the second-stage, but…”

“Achieving Urityon isn’t exactly high-science,” Amalia finished. “Find a big enough monster and turn it into katapetra.”

“That seems reckless,” Alexis said. “Unless you’ve come up with a solution to Mercy’s Redoubt showing up and killing you while fighting.”

She was right, of course. Breaking through to Urityon would require a sufficiently powerful monster to provide an exceptional katapetra. An exceptional katapetra came either from an exceptional source or a very strong one.

Ranvir cleared his throat. “I’m going to grab some air.”

Amalia nodded, “I’ll need to gather more food, as well.”

“Um,” Alexis spoke up. Ranvir even sensed her raising her hand. “Can I come with you?”

“Not with me,” Amalia said. “But you can go with Ranvir.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll uh…”

“Come,” Ranvir said, getting to his feet. His side turned to fire as he did, but Persistence pushed it to the back of his mind. Reluctantly, Alexis followed Ranvir as he walked into the waters, which only added fuel to his injury. Together, they swam to the surface, where they could pull up onto the platform, remaining covered by the growth of fyla stone.

Alexis walked away from him. She did a few quick stretches and twists to limbs too long idle. He couldn’t imagine being locked in the cave for so long was good for her physical health. Ranvir remained seated where he’d pushed up. They both were ‘sensitives’ and had longer than average ranges with their tether-sense. Unless someone was intensely a spy, they wouldn’t have the stats to spot them first. It still risked them being distracted, but it was as safe as it got.

Ranvir ran a finger down the fyla stone. They grew into pyramid-like shapes, almost but not quite looking like man-made constructs. There was a pattern within the stone that Ranvir hadn’t ever seen within the smaller fyla that helped with Korfyi’s mana-devices.

“What are you thinking about?” Alexis asked, as Amalia shot into the distance below them.

“Katapetra,” Ranvir replied. He leverage a bit of his tether-sense and pushed into the stone. The mere presence of his second-order existence, even just that minor extension, shattered the fyla’s structural integrity. A corner broke off in his fingers with no more force than it took to tear a loaf of freshly baked bread in half.

“Why?”

“Something I read once.”

Alexis seemed happy to leave it at that for now, turning away to pace the platform. She couldn’t escape without risking an encounter with one of the fold’s monsters. This far from the knotting point, the pocket world’s core where the mana was densest and the monsters strongest. Alexis was, however, was even less of a fighter than Amalia.

She had an esoteric mana-type, probably related to her being a ‘sensitive’. She’d gotten liberal use of it over the years since attaining it, but it wouldn’t be worth the effort it took to summon against a monster. Ranvir knew little about the specifics of esoteric mana-types, but he could name a few translation mana for one.

###

Sabas stepped into the medical tent. Despite wanting to quietly sneak through and get his business done with, he walked back tall and shoulders broad. Even though it was relatively few people who had actually fought the Sentinel, there was always an influx of soldiers in the tent.

The crew assigned to assist in the care and aid of patients, the soldiers whose friends were patients, but mostly the soldiers who had gotten injured fighting against the monster of the fold.

At first, it hadn’t been an issue. All the monsters on the surface were small fry, none of them were stronger than even Sabas’ weakest man. But people, especially those that passively generated mana for their pool, let out wisps of excess energy all the time. If you only stayed within a fold for a couple hours, the difference was so minuscule that no one would ever notice.

Sixty men and women, trapped within the fold for four days? Not including the absolute mad-man of a Sentinel putting off more mana in a single fight than most of his people could produce in a day? They were making an impact and the monsters who desired higher levels of ambient mana were slowly drawing upwards.

They would still be good for many weeks before the truly frightening monsters would even consider moving, for which Sabas was eternally thankful.

He smiled and clapped one tiny woman on her shoulder. She sat next to one woman who’d been in Asimina’s group, which meant that he’d finally reached the woman he’d been seeking.

Asimina herself lay on a cot, dozing lightly. Sabas could see the slight glaze of painkillers in her eyes, but doubted she would let them completely obscure her mental faculties. She didn’t strike him as that kind of person.

Sure enough, it took her only a few seconds before her eyes focused. Sabas didn’t even have to nod before Phineus erected a barrier of privacy for them.

“How are you hanging in?” Sabas asked.

“Could we cut the shit?” Asimina asked. “I’d like to get back to floating on the meds, if you please. I’m hanging like shit. It hurts. We barely succeeded and despite being fully equipped to win, he got away.”

“You didn’t do all that bad,” Sabas said. “None of your people got killed. You even avoided severe injury.”

“You call this avoided?”

“He hit one of your men so hard he exploded, Asimina,” Sabas said, kneeling to get down on her level. “I’m here to tell you not to beat yourself up,” he put a hand on her shoulder, like Nomiki had once shown him. “How many of our people could’ve taken the hits you did?”

“I didn’t take-“

“How many?” he employed the tricks Nomiki had once taught him, forcing eye contact by turning Asimina’s head to look at him.

“Maybe two or three.”

“And would they have escaped with a broken arm and a couple of fractured ribs?”

Asimina didn’t want to answer, because she knew they wouldn’t have. Sabas had been at the camp during the clash, but even he had felt the echo of the Sentinel’s initial attack.

“We delivered a massive blow without losing a single one of our combatants, Asimina. This was a win. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

Asimina slowly nodded.

“Say it for me.”

She blinked once, her eyes nearly tearing up. “This was a win, even if I got more injured than I should have.”

“That’s not what happened, Asimina. You didn’t get more injured than you should have. Your girls got less injured than they should have because of you. Say it again.”

“This was a win.”

“Because?”

“Because… because Natassa, Katia, and Marina weren’t as injured as they would’ve been without me.”

Sabas squeezed her shoulder once, then straightened. He had other work to return to.