Emma loved horses. Ever since she laid eyes on them, she wanted one, imagining riding in a beautiful dress. She was that girl, and she didn’t deny it. Her favorite movie was The Notebook, she adored the Princess Bride, and when she was younger, she played with dolls, dreaming of the day she’d have a baby of her own. And she was okay with that. She liked what she liked, and one of the things she liked was mighty steeds. Unfortunately, she lived in a suburban neighborhood in Palo Alto, where people rode sports bikes instead of horses and climbed stairwells instead of mountains. But one day, she was determined to get a good job and buy a summer home on a ranch where she could have one. It was her dream. So imagine her surprise when she was only one hour into a thirty-hour monta ride and felt like she had given birth to sandpaper. That was a rude awakening and ruined most of the romanticism that she wished stayed perfect in her imagination.

Emma wasn’t the only one. Everyone was miserable, especially Raul, who was green at the gills, and Sara, who was lying face-first on the neck of her horse groaning. Emma found that hilarious. Not because of Sara’s posture but because she was releasing frequent divination spells to keep tabs on her surroundings despite having her eyes closed. She was amazing. Emma wanted to be more like her. That much hadn’t changed in all the time she had known Sara.

Unfortunately, Emma couldn’t practice her divination magic because everyone would need healing at the next break. Which was… way too far away. That’s what she said at the end of the first hour. By the third, her eyes were permanently teary from the chaffing, and she was begging for the first break.

“Hey, Emma.”

Emma turned and found Sara riding next to her. Everyone else was now trying to assume Sara’s original drunken dog yoga position and finding it worse than sitting, but Sara was nearly healed, trotting along the road as effortlessly as Ms. Twilix and Mr. Sullsburg. “Ummm… yes?” Emma asked.

Sara pulled out a blue vial. “Take this. Just a little will restore your mana. Half-heal your legs. If you’re in pain, you’ll use up too much mana from lack of concentration.”

Emma’s eyes widened, and she smiled ruefully. “Am I that obvious?” Naturally, she was going to heal everyone else first. She didn’t think that was very fair, and some days she didn’t want to be “selfless,” but she enjoyed the way that people smiled around her when she helped them. It made life a little brighter and easier when times got tough, and she needed that more now than ever with her family gone. So she gladly helped. Still, she was worried about ending up in a self-sacrifice position. She was in a lot of pain.

“Well, yeah,” Sara said. “When you do something over and over like clockwork, it’s easy to know what’ll happen.”

“Oh….” Emma accepted the vial and clenched it tight to ensure it wouldn’t break. “Why half-heal. Kinda seems odd.”

“Healing magic doesn’t leave calluses,” Sara said. “If you always heal yourself, you won’t get stronger.”

As Emma would later learn, body tempering wasn’t about building someone’s body. It was about infusing mana into one’s skin, organs, and bones to create a protective coating. By contrast, healing was about rebuilding and connecting skin off a mana “blueprint,” a ghost record of the mana network a person had before the healing. If callouses weren’t part of that blueprint, the body would restore the skin to how it was the day before.

“Oh. So you have a lot of calluses?” Emma mused.

“Girl. After the amount of body-tempering substances I’ve put into my baths, I am callous,” Sara sighed.

On that note, Sara rode forward, denying Emma the ability to ask more questions. Emma smiled wryly. One day, she hoped that Sara would let her back in.

The ride to Lemca was as hard as Emma had imagined—and then some. The ground turned rocky and unforgiving when they reached the Iska Bluffs, rocky terrain with hellish slopes, and every step stabbed her thighs with stinging pain. By the time they took their first break and the requests for healing began, Emma just wanted to scream, At least let me heal myself first, you jerks! but they didn’t let her do so, and she didn’t chastise them, so she started healing as they flocked to her.

About three classmates in, something strange happened. A warm, almost imperceptible wave of mana moved through the area like a light breath, and her classmate’s shaking legs stilled, and they took deeper breaths. Emma was no exception. The burning sting between her legs immediately soothed, and a feeling of euphoria flooded her mind, making her moan slightly as she became light-headed.

The first thing that Emma did, almost by instinct, was to look at Sara, who had her fingers laced behind her head, staring at the clouds on the ground. Despite her aloof persona, Aelia, Edico, and the healers were visibly confused, so there was no one else to look at. Emma knew it was Sara from the moment it started, and the gesture made her heart soar—

—until she saw Brandon. The teen was staring straight at Sara with a look of unbridled jealousy and rage. That made her recoil in disgust.

That was rare of Emma. Ever since she was a child, she had always found the best in people. If the cooks presented a burnt hockey puck instead of a steak (she ordered her steaks “freshly slaughtered”), she’d think I make mistakes, too or They’re probably having a bad day, then grit her teeth and bear it. And in the beginning, when it came to Brandon, she thought, [He’s awkwardly coming out of his shell]. But even then, she found her body breaking out in cold sweats when she even thought of him.

Brandon always looked like he knew something when he looked at her. And when they interacted, he’d always make off-hand comments like, Don’t worry. I’ll protect you, as if he was privy to a secret—a dark secret—concerning her. That made her feel like she was in imminent danger.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Still, she didn’t feel like she could do anything about it. Brandon was a prodigy in magic and arraycraft. He dazzled the mages and scholars with his work (even though they didn’t appreciate his personality) and was regarded in good standing. It was miserable. Her only consolation, as always, was Sara.

Sara was… she felt like a mean person for saying it… was like a pet pitbull to her. Not that she was a pet. Or that she owned her. Or used her. God, that sounded so terrible! There was just no other way to put it! Sara was always around, and she felt like if anyone hit her too hard with a practice sword, Sara would break their legs. The others also sensed that, so Emma never got true training. It was just a fact of life. So, while Brandon made her feel ill at ease, Sara was like a guardian angel. Yeah, calling Sara an angel was perfect—“fallen” angel as she was.

“You going to heal me or what?”

Emma looked up and saw Mary staring at her with an annoyed gaze. She smiled wryly as she lifted her hands. “Okay…”

“That’s enough,” Aelia said, cutting her off. “If you don’t develop calluses, you will be just as miserable tomorrow and the day after. Don’t rely upon healing magic unless it’s necessary.”

Emma’s classmates groaned.

“What about them?” Brandon pointed to the few Emma had healed.

“They’ll be just as miserable tomorrow,” Aelia replied.

Mary sneered and turned back to Emma. “Hurry up.”

Emma’s eyes widened. “But Ms. Twilix—“

“It’s your magic.”

“But if I heal you, then everyone else—“

“Forget them. They aren’t the ones who are going to be risking their lives to fight Agronus.”

Emma bit her lip and lifted her hands.

“If you make her heal you, I’ll tell Ms. Twilix.”

Mary turned and saw Daniel standing in front of them. While his words were bold and warning, his body was trembling. She grinned and turned to him. “Hoh? You’ve gotten pretty bold recently.”

“I’m just….” He swallowed, but it seemed to defy his underlying confidence. “Doing what’s right.”

“Hoh?” Mary echoed patronizingly. “What’s right?”

Emma’s eyes shot open when Mary confronted Daniel, getting so close that her breasts were touching his midriff. It wasn’t domineering, but her tone and body language were inappropriately seductive and uncomfortable.

“Stop it!” Emma yelled, surprising herself. The heroes were equally surprised, staring at her and then looking at Mary, who took two steps back with a red face.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mary hissed.

“What’s wrong with me?” Emma asked. “You’re being inappropriate. Even Jason’s disturbed by your behavior.”

Mary turned and saw Jason’s face contorted with ugly jealousy and rage. She was his unofficial girlfriend, so her seductive behavior was naturally offputting. Still, after hearing Emma’s insinuation, his anger shifted to her. “What do you mean, even?”

Emma lost her balance on the boulder she was resting on, and she slid off it, scraping her arm as she propped herself up. Unlike Sara, she was weak and pathetic, bleeding like a normal human from Earth. “I-I didn’t mean—“

“Are you children?”

A cold voice cut through the confrontation like a dull razor. Jason’s entire body flexed when he heard it. “Who do you think you are—“ He froze when he whirled around and saw Sara standing right behind him.

“Mary ignored Aelia’s directive and intimidated Emma, and now you’re badgering the victim with threatening body language,” Sara said. “So, to answer your question, I’m the adult intervening.”

Jason’s nostrils flared as he took a step forward, but Sara’s eyes were too intense. They weren’t the eyes of a peer. They were like Aelia’s eyes, sharp and apathetic, unconcerned with issues like morals and boundaries if she needed to do what needed to be done. Jason didn’t last long under that gaze before he scoffed and turned away. “I won’t fall victim to your provocations.”

As he stomped away, Sara turned to Mary. “Will you fall victim to my provocations?”

Mary’s front teeth clicked together before she grinned, flexing her face to a near-painful degree. Then she turned away, lingering as if to find words. But with Jason angry with her and every hero watching, she decided to stay silent and walk away.

Nothing could’ve made Emma happier. She looked at Sara. “Thank you.”

“Just keeping the peace,” Sara said, walking away. However, before she got back to the spot where she was lying, she stopped. “Emma.”

Emma’s chest tightened. “Yes?”

“If someone pressures you to do something you feel is wrong, or you’re not ready for—they’re not your friend.” Sara turned around. “No matter how good the argument is, no matter how much they guilt-trip you, don’t do it.” Sara trembled slightly, averting her gaze. “Giving in will get you killed.”

Emma was hit by a sudden wave of sadness from Sara, communicating through synesthesia or some other inextricable thing that everyone knows is real but science can’t explain. No. It wasn’t sadness she felt from her. It was deeper—more crippling—vast, pervasive, and vacant.

It was grief.

Loneliness.

Regret.

Suddenly, Emma felt a magnetic desire to reach out to her, but at that moment, Aelia announced the break was over to a chorus of groans, and the moment was over. It was time to continue forward.

Before she got up, Emma turned to Daniel to thank him and saw something… sad. He had his hands clenched, trembling as he looked to the ground in frustration, his true thoughts unknown. I’ll have to say thank you on the road, Emma thought. She’d later regret she didn’t say it sooner.

The ride took three days over winding passes, three streams, two bridges, and an insurmountable wall of complaining. Sara loathed all of it. All the heroes were children, literally and figuratively, and Mary spent the entire time being a total fucking….

Sara took a deep breath. She wouldn’t use the “C” word. It was coming out too loose as of late, and she was starting to sound like a frat boy talking about a girl who wouldn’t put out. Still, Mary’s unbearableness ran proportional to distance traveled, and by the time they reached the final stretch before the Kent Forest, she had burned through bitch, munter, slamhog, siren, clout prepper, pre-Karen, and—most deservingly—sadist and predator.

But even that didn’t satisfy Sara. They were on the road for three days, and she had listened to Mary gossip non-stop, constantly calling female heroes sluts and pick-mes. She also raved about the “massages” that her servant Krendo gave her but stopped when she remembered Sara and Jason were there. It really pissed her off so she added “treeya” in Nohgma, the language of demons. The word translated to “sacrifice” and was used when the person was so unbearable that they were added to the meatshield list. Most demons with the title died within a year.

Fuck. She needed counseling.

To be fair, it wasn’t simple annoyance. The heroes were unknowingly going to Haligara’s Lair, the location containing Qualth—and the place Emma had died. So when Mary started pressuring Emma, just like she did when she led Emma to her death, Sara just kinda snapped and hadn’t recovered. Now, Mary was that dripping water in a prison cell, constantly haunting her mind, making it impossible to think. Even hearing her or Jason say, “What’s up?” made Sara want to bash their skulls in. They killed her best friend in their last life. Now, they were going back to the scene of the crime, acting exactly as they did the first time.

Sara believed that she should never use violence for what the threat of violence could accomplish, so she refrained from saying a word. Still, every step became more difficult, and the moral implications of what she would do in the Kent Forest lost its hold over her. By the time they reached Lemca, and the heroes saw the thick, labyrinth-like spider webs blanketing the buildings and roads like a blizzard—she felt nothing. Nothing at all.