The fear started as soon as her Ladyship left. Her Ladyship— Kandis, as she insisted Issey call her— had an aura about her that Issey associated with nobles. It made everything that Kandis said seem right, and sensible. It was only after Kandis had left that everything collapsed, taking Issey with it.

Defend the dungeon! Keep other monsters out of it! Protect the kids!

It was easy to say, but Issey was just a dancer, and a barely employed one at that. One step away from being a whore, two houses down from the whorehouse. She couldn’t take care of one kid, let alone organise a bunch of orphans into a fighting force. It was impossible.

And yet… she had to try. Aside from the fact that these kids needed to be protected, she couldn’t bear the thought of Lady Kandis coming back and having to tell her that Issey had failed. Being exposed to that aura, an aura that made everything right, when Issey was wrong… would she stop existing? Would she die?

It was a foolish notion. Lady Kandis had been nothing but kind to Issey, the kids, and even those louts that had been harassing her. Issey knew that. She was just unwilling to countenance a future where Lady Kandis looked at her with disappointment.

So she did her best to follow the instructions she had been given. The first ones, at least, weren’t so hard to follow. The kids were counted. The dungeon provided weapons— real ones this time. Some of the kids were level three, the same as Issey. They looked like kids, but they fought like adults. Issey made sure she knew who they were and then split them into groups, making sure that at least one level three was in each group.

She knew her home better than anyone, of course. It did have stout walls, having been constructed by crafters better than anyone that Issey could find today. But there were weak spots. Places that had been damaged, and had been repaired by lesser crafters. Places where the damage hadn’t been fixed at all. Issey made sure to cover the gaps with people.

Her first challenge came from the sewers. The Gilded Lily had always had a rat problem, a neglected spawner in the sewers. Going down there on the occasional rat extermination had gotten Issey to level three. Pretty good, for someone whose profession didn’t give experience.

Not even Kandis had predicted that the rat Spawner would be energised by the raw mana, but when the first three rats had poked their heads up in the kitchen, Issey knew that her siege had started.

The kids dealt with those three rather easily. The fifteen that followed were more of a challenge, but for most of the fight, the hole in the floor served as a useful chokepoint, limiting the creatures' numbers. By the time they fought through, the kids had thinned them out to something that proved manageable. The kids were in high spirits from their victory, ignoring their injuries, and tried to convince her to let them follow the trail back to the Spawner.

It was then that the first monster attacked the front door. It was some kind of wolf, standing four feet high at the shoulder, with black and vivid blue fur. Issey paled when she [Identified] it. She didn’t have her numbers, but the impression she got was that this was a higher threat monster than anything she’d seen before.

It snarled and roared, and tried to break its way in. The spears that they had—or the spear wielders that they had— were not enough to harm it, but they did discourage it. It growled and spat, and then disappeared with a flash of light, only to reappear at a boarded-up window and start to tear at it. A fresh team raced to stick their spears through at it, but it flashed again, this time scratching ineffectually at an undamaged, shuttered window.

Am I going to fail so soon? Issey asked herself. She wondered how much of a gap it would take for the wolf to flash itself in there with them. If that happened…

Before it could, there was a yelp, and the wolf was engulfed in flames. It flashed, but the flames followed them. It flashed again, and this time it went somewhere Issey couldn’t see it, but it was close enough that she could hear its snarls and the sound of fighting. When it ended, Issey carefully opened the door and looked outside.

“How’s it going, kiddos?” Janie said, standing out in the middle of the street. “Guess who your reinforcements are?”

Behind her were the rest of Lady Kandis’s companions. Felicia was already cutting the beast open while Kyle stood watch over her.

Issey gave a sigh of relief. It was going to be alright.

Isidre was feeling left out. She was supposed to be the Champion of Duit, but lately, she’d been feeling more like a supporting character. Just another one of Kaito’s women… Isidre shook her head. That wasn’t fair to Kaito, she’d never treated Isidre with anything less than respect. And if Kandis got on better with Kaito than she did Isidre, well, Isidre had to admit that she was the one at fault there.

Isidre had split her small force three ways, to cover more ground. Five men were with her, and two more squads were within signalling distance. They were all mounted. They didn’t have clearance to fly over Dorsay, but the Head Constable had allowed that, under the circumstances, going mounted on griffins would make them more effective. Griffins were perfectly capable of being ridden on the ground, and there would be no complaints as long as none of their long, wing-assisted jumps took them higher than the roofline.

The griffin’s speed, and their senses, were definitely helping. Helping them save lives. It was chaos out here. Monsters were appearing completely randomly. In the streets, or in people houses, it didn’t seem to make any difference to the Spawn points. It was good that she was out here. She couldn’t think of anything else she should be doing, but…

Her contribution to clearing the Break had been minor. Half a percentage point, while Kandis had come up with some trick that snared her an entire level! Now Kaito had come up with some clever plan involving mana that was going to end this whole problem, while Isidre was left to just clean up the symptoms.

You are saving lives. Defending the weak. Do not discount the value of those actions.

Fortunately— no, Duit would never leave something like that to chance— the voice came during a lull in the fighting, at a moment when Isidre had let her thoughts run free.

“Thank, my Lady,” Isidre murmured. If any of her people heard her, they’d know who she was talking to. “But… I’ve been hearing so much about the mysterious plans of the gods… I just wanted to be the lynchpin of one, instead of a supporter.”

I understand.

A shock of joy and well-being pulsed through Isidre. More than just words, there was a feeling that the words were true.

A scream came from up ahead. Something like a giant spider, but with long squirmy tentacles in addition to its eight legs, was perched on the side of the building and had dragged a struggling woman from inside. Isidre and her troops leapt to the attack.

The battle was short but furious. Eventually, the spider-thing was dragged down by griffin claws and finished off with lances. It was too late for the woman though, she’d been torn in half in the first few seconds.

I am known as the God of Life because I seek to preserve the lives of all mortals, Duit told her as she stared down at the body. You cannot save everybody. Ultimately, you can save nobody. But every time you save a life, you preserve their uniqueness, and their ability to experience uniqueness for a little longer.

“Right,” Isidre said to the air. To her companions, she said: “Take care of the body, we can’t leave it out here. Ten minutes, and then we move on.”

As they saluted her, she felt a strange chill in the air.

It had been a while since Kaito was not the centre of attention, and he was trying to determine if he welcomed it or not.

Once, he would have absolutely preferred to be ignored, whether by the bullies at school, or his slightly less obnoxious co-workers at the string of dead-end jobs that he had gone through in his previous life. Since coming here, though, he had been the focus of attention for a crowd of beautiful, affirming, huggable young ladies. He would have been quite insane to not enjoy that.

Now there were other concerns. Ettalle and Orino were trying to explain mana rivers to a group of three Theurges. The hooded men were not what Kaito would call receptive to the idea. Kaito would have called them sulky, if that wouldn’t have been exceedingly impolite.

The rest of the group were either watching out for incoming monsters— as Kaito was— or contributing to the discussion with a supportive yell, or a disparaging jeer. Kaito winced to think that the discussion had devolved to the point where such things might be considered helpful.

“It’s not a conduit!” Orino exclaimed for the third time. “It’s a loose braid—it's supposed to leak mana.”

“That’s inefficient, and way more complicated than it needs to be,” another one objected.

“Yeah, but, but, it’s not about moving mana, is it?” Ettalle put in. “It’s about collecting it and letting it move naturally. That way you don’t need strong enchantments to keep it in place.”

“This will attract those monsters though,”

Orino rolled her eyes. “Cleaning up the mana will stop them from forming, you—”

Kaito cleared his throat. He didn’t like it when the girls got coarse or rude. Orino winced but recognised that name-calling was going to be unproductive.

“The monsters are attracted, yes,” she said. “They’re attracted to the middle of the streets, instead of people's houses.”

“But this is so much harder than the normal way,” the third one whined.

Kaito sighed and held up the King’s order once again. “Should we go back and tell your superiors that you couldn’t follow our instructions, or should we skip a step and go directly to the King?”

The scholars looked at the order warily, sighed, and then started weaving mana the way Orino had said.

Kaito smiled warmly and wondered if that was how Kandis would have handled it. The men had known all along that they were going to do it Orino’s way, they just wanted to complain. There had been no social contest, just Kaito’s [Persuasion] convincing them of what they already knew.

Kaito shivered at a sudden cold breeze. Hopefully, they would soon be able to get moving again.

It was time.

Manuela looked out over Lake Dunlead. There was nothing there, but she looked anyway. There wasn’t much where she was, either. Just the docks, mostly empty of ships. They had all taken off when the troubles had started, leaving only the smell of fish and waste behind. The ones that remained now were those with owners, or crews, that were stuck in the city for some reason. They— or others— would return soon, when the situation stabilised.

Or not.

She looked over at Kaypa. An odd man with sallow skin that looked greenish, even though he was in good health. He had come a long way to find Manuela’s master, and travelled further in his service. She nodded, and he started to weave.

It did nothing well, but it could do anything, badly. That was how [Theurgy] had been explained to her. Kaypa’s task today was a minor one. It could have been easily handled by [Water Magic] or [Air Magic], but those tools were not available to her today. She didn’t have [Sense Mana], so she waited for the weave to become visible as a slight distortion before her.

She placed her Master’s token inside it and watched as Kaypa made it drift out onto the lake. It got out to about fifty metres, far enough that Manuela couldn’t see the spell anymore, and could barely make out the token against the dark water.

It was time. The ice began to grow.