118 – Relief

Eshara’s hammer slammed to a halt less than six inches from the monster’s skull.

For that matter, everything around her froze. In a blink of an eye, the air had congealed into solid mithril. The rhythm of combat was so ingrained in her that she didn’t make a conscious decision to fight back; her body did of its own accord. Yet even when she jerked and twisted with all her strength, she couldn’t so much as make the spell holding her wobble.

Under normal circumstances, she might have continued struggling, might have analyzed her situation and decided whether to activate emergency measures, but she didn’t here and now. Because her brain had frozen for three separate reasons.

First, the sheer lack of give in the constraining spell—she was Titled, and not freshly minted, and heaving against near enough any magic in the world should produce at least some bend or indication of strain. Yet she hadn’t got the slightest sensation that it had, even if reading the flow of mana wasn’t her strong suit.

Second, the killing blow she had sent crashing down onto Corvan had been stopped. Which meant her teammate wasn’t dead. If just for a moment longer.

And third: she recognized the voice.

“That was way too close,” the woman behind Eshara said.

A new spell scooped Eshara up and floated her away. She couldn’t even shift her gaze around to see what was happening. Once she was a dozen meters away, the magical constraints holding her in place vanished. She stumbled before steadying herself and spinning to face the intruder.

There, ten feet off the ground, floated the Sorceress. With… a redheaded cat beastkin accompanying her, of all things.

Naturally, Eshara failed to understand what she was looking at.

The demon continued acting without much concern. She pointed her staff at the mutated form of Corvan, speaking to Eshara as she wrapped layers of magic around the monstrous man. “I should be able to recover him,” the Sorceress told her, tone impassive, “though he’s far gone. I should use a potion to be safe. I can rip out the infection itself, that’s just biomancy—complex but doable. The recovery will be more complicated. Healing isn’t my specialty, as I’m sure you know.”

Turning her staff, the Sorceress ferried Corvan off to the side, then faced the enormous Seed of Genesis. Magic gathered in the length of gnarled wood.

“[Shell of Isolation].”

A transparent blue shield sprang up around the monstrosity, snapping off the many strands of flesh hooking the Seed to the pit’s walls like a guillotine passing through puppet strings. With yet another casual swipe of her staff, she sent away that opponent too, up toward the roof of the cave. Presumably to be dealt with later.

Which was when Eshara finally collapsed to her knees, her legs giving out. At the noise of plate mail meeting stone—and Eshara’s heavy hammer also slipping from her grip—Vivisari’s bored red gaze flicked to her.

“Lady Vivisari?” Eshara whispered.

A short pause. “Yes. I apologize for the… timing. I had to heal the townsfolk first, since I assumed you were hunting the Seed. But I came as quickly as I could when I found out what was happening.” Vivisari’s eyes flicked to the red-haired beastkin floating next to her, as if remembering something. The girl was wearing an expression of plain concern targeted at Eshara. She had clearly read something in Eshara’s posture that the older woman hadn’t. “And this is my apprentice, Saffra,” the Sorceress introduced.

That was a stunning announcement in its own right, but Eshara was already shocked to the point of barely being able to form coherent thoughts. The realization that the Sorceress had taken an apprentice passed straight through her mind.

More important were the two truly earth-shattering revelations:

The Sorceress had returned.

And Eshara hadn’t needed to—and wouldn’t need to—kill her own teammate.

“You… can save him?” Eshara repeated, her words barely audible.

At Eshara’s tone of voice, a hint of worry appeared on Vivisari’s face, brow furrowing in a muted imitation of her apprentice’s. “It’ll be more involved than most of the others, but yes. I’m certain. Don’t worry.” She looked at Corvan, studied him for a second, and nodded as if in confirmation to herself. “He was your teammate, I take it?”

Eshara let the reassurance wash through her. There was essentially no guarantee more absolute than a promise from the Sorceress herself.

Was she… imagining all of this?

Had she lost against the Seed and been put under a magical delusion? She might have given credence to the idea if not for how the Sorceress had brought her apprentice along. Eshara’s subconscious never would have invented that detail. The discordant addition—along with how the Flesh-Weaver and his creations didn’t use mind magic to begin with—convinced her that what she was experiencing was real.

Which meant Corvan was safe.

She had made the decision to kill him. Had even acted on that choice, not merely resolved to do what she must. She had delivered the final blow. And then once more, the Party of Heroes had appeared as if from thin air and granted a miracle, like she herself always failed to do for others.

How was she supposed to make sense of the flood of emotions that crashed through her, all at once? She could have spent all year sorting herself out.

But she knew what she felt most.

Relief.

So thick it choked her. No matter the horror of what she’d done, the Sorceress’s arrival, or anything else—one thing mattered most. Corvan wasn’t dead. She had failed him, certainly, but not in the ultimate sense.

She was too exhausted to fight it: tears welled in her eyes. She removed her helmet and, slowly sinking down, bent over to press her forehead into the ground. She bowed as deeply as she could for the woman who had already given her so much and then somehow, impossibly, extended that grace yet once more when she needed it most.

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“Thank you,” she croaked out, squeezing her eyes shut as she pressed her forehead harder into stone. “Thank you.” She gasped in a breath. “Thank you, Lady Vivisari.”

The response, when it came, was nothing short of panicked, at least by the recollections Eshara had of the aloof mage. “Eshara. Eshara, what are you doing? Please, stop that.”

Eshara heard the mage release the flight spell and hurry over. She was vaguely aware—through the corner of blurry vision—of the mage crouching down next to her, hesitating, and resting a hand on her pauldron.

“Really, you don’t need to do this, Eshara. Don’t thank me. Please.”

Eshara couldn’t fulfill the singular request. The gratitude she felt in that moment was too overwhelming; she had to express it. Even when Vivisari gently tried to pull her up, Eshara refused, keeping her forehead pressed into the ground.

It was the least dignified reunion she could have imagined between her and her prior guildmaster, and somehow she didn’t care. Again: nothing mattered besides how her hammer hadn’t crashed into the skull of a man she had spent three years training and traveling with. What other reaction would she have had?

“I should’ve gotten here faster,” the Sorceress murmured after a minute had passed. “I didn’t waste any time, but still, I…”