It was strange to be on the road again. In some ways, it was the same as it had been with Borkul - no sound but wind and animals and their own footsteps, fresh air tinged with the brine of the sea. The hours of travel had been the only peaceful part of those times; she had cherished every step, dreading the next stop. Or, at least, the tiny part of her that had watched from a distance had.

 

The other similarity was less encouraging - she found she was, exactly as before, completely dependent on the man she travelled with.

 

She had no money, nor means to easily make any, so she had no way of purchasing the food, warm clothing, or supplies necessary for a lengthy trip in the icy north. Merks had paid for all of it.

 

She hadn’t had to consider the foundational necessities of living in years; no, not just years, even. She thought back and realized, with some amount of horrified fascination, she had never in her life, even for a moment, had to consider any of those things.

 

She had lived with her parents until she joined the military, who had provided her room and board and clothing in the form of uniforms until Borkul and her subsequent masters, who had provided her with at least the bare minimum amount of the necessities of living. Then the college, where she had never thought to question the supply of robes (eventually) and daily meals.

 

The closest she had come to anything resembling self-sufficiency had been her bargain with Savos for the suite at the college, a place she had stayed in for all of nine days, which hardly seemed worth the cost of the bribery she had paid for it.

 

Although, come to think of it, she realized she had no reason to give up on it just yet. She stopped and frowned.

 

“Merks.”

 

“My Lady?”

 

“I want to try something. Give me your arm.”

 

“Of course, My Lady.”

 

As Merks stepped closer, Aithne looked around until she spotted an outcropping of rock on a nearby hill. Good enough for a landmark. She took Merk’s arm, pictured her suite, and, making very sure it was actually her suite this time, made the motions and whispered the words she had learned from Ghint all that time ago.

 

A moment later, they stood in her suite and she laughed, delighted, while Merks let out a startled squawk.

 

“It worked! We can just stay here at night. And eat here as well. That will be much better than sleeping on the ground again.”

 

“How…My Lady, we have been traveling for over four days!”

 

“Yes, so we weren’t very far away yet.”

 

“Weren’t very…we were at least a hundred fifty miles away.” Merks shook his head, still looking around like he was in a dream. “How did you pass the wards?”

 

Again with the wards. Aithne shook her head – apparently these people wouldn’t know a good ward if they bounced a spell off it. “The important thing is, we can walk throughout the day then pop back here and have a nice bath, good food, and sleep in a bed, then resume our trip in the morning. I wish I had thought of this earlier – my back is beginning to hurt from sleeping on rocks.”

 

“Resume? Won’t we need to start over?”

 

“Divines, no! Why would we do that? I’ll just teleport us back where we were.” She frowned at his incredulous look. “You…do know how to teleport, don’t you?”

 

“I…I mean, yes, of course. But…”

 

Aithne waved a hand. “Never mind, it’s not important. We still have a few hours of travel to go, but this is a good time for a break. Meet me back here in an hour.”

 

“Meet…”

 

“Yes, I’m going to take a hot bath. Why didn’t I think of this before?” She turned toward the bath, only noticing with oblique attention as Merks stashed their travel gear against the wall and left the suite.

 

An hour later, feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, Aithne held Merks’ arm again and whisked them back to the road, where they found themselves in the remains of a battlefield.

 

Aithne fought through the disorientation of the moment as her senses clambered over each other for the right to present their status updates on the situation first. Slumped bodies, flashes of fur and green skin; a sound like the howling of wolves; the visceral smells of blood and sweat and shit; all of it swept aside by a single visual cue that garnered her immediate attention:

 

A creature made of dark fur and muscle pinned an orc woman down with one massive clawed hand while his red swollen dick slammed into her. The woman cried out and struggled but even her orcish strength was no match for the creature, who threw his head back and howled as his hips pounded his length into her.

 

 Aithne's body moved before her brain had time to consider. Her senses were drowned out by a sudden rage that burned through her body before erupting out as twin lashes of flame that struck forward and ripped through the body of the creature. Its howls turned to a guttural roar as it froze in place; then the flame burst through its chest and it slumped forward on top of the screaming woman.

 

Aithne had little time to consider what she had done; her brain finally caught up to her body as the rest of the world rushed back into place. She heard shouted curses and roars behind her and turned to find Merks holding off four more of the wolf-like creatures with a firewall. The cumbersome pack limited his movements, though, and even as Aithne watched, one of the creatures bunched its legs and sprang, leaping over the wall of fire toward Merks’ exposed head.

 

Fortunately, the most obvious spell to use in this situation was also one of the shortest.

 

“Te: iig!”

 

Without modifiers to control it, the Push sent out a large wave of force in the creature’s general direction. Fortunately, that direction also caught the other three creatures and the wall of fire; unfortunately, it also also caught Merks.

 

The leaping wolf’s trajectory changed in an instant – it flew, yowling, away to its right before crashing into the rocky face of a small cliff then slumping motionless to the ground. The other three, having been farther from the center of the spell, were merely pushed back a few feet. That is where their luck ended, however, because that matched the trajectory of the flame from Merks’ wall. All three yelped as fire engulfed them, then turned and ran, trailing sparks and smoke as they bounded away.

 

This was all fine and, in fact, far more than Aithne had intended, but it had also hit Merks. She found him alive but unconscious about twenty yards away; a spot of blood on a small boulder and a lump on his head the size of her fist told the tale well enough. She hastened to cast a healing spell, but those had always been her weakest school; she managed to stop the bleeding and get the bump to diminish to something closer to egg sized, but that was as far as her abilities could go.

 

She berated herself for not studying restoration more; it had always been on her list but it had a dauntingly large number of non-magical disciplines to learn (anatomy, physiology, other things she didn’t even know how to pronounce) so she had kept putting it off for things that felt more important. She shook her head as she laid a hand on his forehead; she couldn’t tell if he felt warmer than he was supposed to or not.

 

“So you are a healer as well as a punyyå.”

 

Aithne jumped and spun, lifting her hands while far too many spells jumped to her mind, rendering her capable of casting none of them in the time she had to face…

 

…the orc woman, now dressed in thick leather armor, peered down at them. Aithne cleared her throat as the adrenaline wave receded. “Yes. I suppose – I don’t know what a punyah (she tried to get her tongue to mimic the orcish word while her brain pondered the irony of having spent approximately a quarter of her previous life in intimate contact with orcs yet having knowledge of only four words of their language to show for it) is. How do you feel?” The orc looked hale and hearty, not like she had been getting raped by a wolfman only five minutes ago.

 

The orc snorted. “Foolish. You have saved me and have my thanks. Heal my meyge-ṭːa-its and you will have the thanks of my meyge as well.”

 

Aithne blinked and looked around, taking in the full field for the first time. She had caught glimpses of green but hadn’t paid much attention. Now she saw them – three male orcs laying in pools of blood. Aithne cursed and sprang to her feet.

 

“Of course! I’m sorry, I should have…”

 

She trailed off as she ran toward the orcs – her brain seemed to think that was enough because it failed to supply more words; it instead tried to decide what to do, but even in that, it came to no strong conclusions. She shook her head as set herself at a point that seemed equidistant to all three slumped bodies and cast the basic healing spell, she same she had used on Merks, but with the “many” modifier.

 

“Blas: ratva.” After a pause, she added the same boost modifier she had used for her Push. “:iig.” She winced as she felt the mana flow. Perhaps the last modifier had been the wrong thing to do. She couldn’t remember ever hearing anyone use it when healing before, so maybe it shouldn’t be used in that way?

 

Well, whether it had been a good idea or not, it was too late; the bodies shimmered briefly, then all seemed as before. Aithne dropped to her knees beside the closest orc and reached out a tentative hand, hoping she hadn’t been too late. Or hadn’t inadvertently killed them with her haphazard healing.

 

“Did it work?”

 

The female orc again, and Aithne glanced at her and shrugged. “I’m…not sure. The spell I cast should have closed their wounds but I don’t know enough to heal internal injuries, so I’m hoping they’ll be okay as along as nothing major was…”

 

She stopped as the orc she knelt beside groaned and fluttered open his eyes; then lost her breath as an ocean opened beneath her when those eyes latched onto hers and she found herself drowning in Borkul’s stare.

 

 

 

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