Interlude: Laera

Twenty meters ahead of Laera a Greenskin spellcaster’s hands crackled with lightning, aimed at a guild member who was fighting two more of the invaders armed with spears.

Laera channelled mana into her body, and strength surged through her muscles as she crossed the distance in the space of a heartbeat. The Greenskin wizard, a man with grey hair, saw her coming and aborted his lightning spell, conjuring a shield to try and block her burning claymore’s slash.

It shattered, and she cut him down. She turned her head to the gate, which had been overwhelmed and broken, and through which dozens of Greenskins were pouring.

“Tabz! We need a ward on the gate!” she shouted as she leapt forward to meet the throng of enemies, slashing her sword in wide arcs that trailed pink fire behind them, stymieing the advance.

A young Greenskin tried his luck, barrelling towards her, metal shield raised, but he clearly was mana-core-less, and she cut through both it and him.

“Tabz!” she shouted again. “Tabz! Stop faffing about and make a damn ward!”

“I think she was injured,” said a guild member, a dhampir woman clad in plate and wielding a hammer that burned with silver light, coming to join Laera by the gate: Velevir. She had a few rents in her armour, and was trailing a bit of blood, but didn’t seem to even notice.

For a moment’s Laera’s heart skipped a beat. Tabz? Injured? There was no way, she was an incredibly powerful and skilled sorcerer, and Jalver would have had her back…

An arrow whizzed past her helmeted head, and she forced herself to focus, gathering up some of her power before releasing a pulse of pink flame that washed over the advancing Greenskins. Many of their shields held, but several didn’t and her hellfire burned them from within.

More guild-members joined her, and spells and arrows began to arc overhead as they formed a battle line. They were outnumbered, terribly so, but they had a bottleneck and they were stronger, faster, and better equipped than the Greenskins, and gradually they began to force them back through the breach.

She was stronger than just about anyone else on the battlefield, and she had infinitely more expertise than the poorly equipped and for the most part inexperienced Greenskins. Still, without her armour she would have taken wounds. Her thoughts kept on slipping back to Tabbeeza.

She’d known the Grimalkin for decades. Had delved with her for over fifteen years. She was as close a friend as Laera had, and when she had taken the daunting assignment of Guildmisstress for the Guild’s most important new venture she had done it comfortable in the knowledge that she would have the strange, sometimes irritating, but fundamentally wonderful furball with her.

If Tabz was hurt… she didn’t know what she’d do.

A Greenskin woman’s spear glanced off her pauldron, and she shook herself again. She could worry later, right now, she had a town to save.

An sudden burst of sound and light to her right made her stagger. She held up a hand to shield her eyes as a cloud of smoke and dust billowed outward and small pieces of stone and masonry began to rain down, glancing off her armour.

The wall, she realised. The wall had been breached.

***

Arrows of Desire 4.9

Dawn broke on a changed town.

A large section of the wall had been shattered by magic. The dead, adventurer and Caith, were strewn across a battlefield that had stretched up and into the first quarter of the town, almost as far as the dungeon.

Fire and ice and lightning and other esoteric energies had churned up the ground and levelled several newly constructed buildings. The pier was still on fire, and Meria’s restaurant looked to have been reduced to ashes. At least I knew she was safe, I’d seen her dive under the waters myself.

Far more Caith had fallen than Guild members, which wasn’t that surprising since they had fortifications and were all, even the Coppers and Bronzes, super-human or whatever the Alarian—the name of this world—equivalent was.

Still, there were several unmoving forms who were being wrapped in blankets and carried back up towards the Guildhall. The mood of the survivors was sombre: warriors who had taken part in the battle sitting in small groups, talking or crying or drinking or, in a few places, trying to force laughter amidst the destruction.

Not all the Caith, however, were dead.

Which was why I was there.

A light drizzle began to fall, making my ears flick and twitch as drops landed amidst the fluff. As we walked past Hannar, the Kobold enchantress, who was morosely picking through the shattered remains of her shop.

“Spread out, find anyone still alive,” I said to my nurses. “Don’t go near them without me though, understand? Nathan, you’re with me.”

I didn’t think anyone would attack him now, not while he was wearing his Guild tags prominently, and without the chaos of a battle, but I’d still prefer to keep him close until I could be sure. Also, any Caith I did find might be more inclined to believe I wanted to help them with someone who looked like them along with me.

Ritah, Nesvir and Tiffy nodded and fanned out across the battlefield as I closed my eyes and tried to focus. Pain, I was looking for pain…

“There,” I said, pointing towards the smouldering carcass of a building. “There is someone there.”

Nathan and I rushed toward the smoking ruins. There was no one initially visible, but with my empathomancy I could feel someone pinned beneath a blackened log.

Nathan grunted as he heaved it upward, and a young Caith woman, perhaps no older than seventeen or eighteen looked up at me with resignation. There were horrific burns on most of her body.

“It’s OK, I am a doctor,” I said, rushing to her side and kneeling, placing my hand on her arm.

Third degree burns to a good eighty percent of her body; multiple breaks and fractures, massive internal bleeding.

I was surprised she wasn’t already dead.

My hands shook as I began to work, feeling each and every one of her injuries as I set about correcting the most immediate problems: repairing her lungs and damaged heart to ensure oxygen reached her brain, pulling together and mending her internal organs, resetting bone and finally healing the some of the burns—enough to stabilise her.

I opened my eyes and grabbed my waterskin, taking a deep gulp before offering it to her.

She stared at me with a look of incomprehension.

“Why?” she managed in heavily accented Valorian, her now working eyes moving up towards Nathan.

“I am a healer,” I replied, holding the waterskin up to her mouth. “Here, you need water. Drink this—not too fast. That’s right, slowly-”

“What the fuck are you doing!?”

I looked up to see Jalver stomping towards me, hand on the hilt of his sword. His aura was swirling with just as much crimson fury and charcoal grief as the last time I’d seen him, but now his armour was absolutely coated in blood.

“I am a healer,” I said, holding up at hand towards him. “And she is my patient. This battle is over-”

“They fucking killed Tabz, dozens of others, and you’re- you’re healing them!?” he spat, drawing his sword. “Get out of the fucking way.”

“If you think I am going to step aside, you don’t know the first thing about me,” I said, even as my voice trembled.

Jalver was a silver-ranked adventurer. He could move faster than I could blink, and even with my powers I was unsure I would be actually able to subdue him. His rage was so potent that even if I could induce terror, as tired as I was, I doubted it would stick. Besides, he knew I was an empathomancer, I was sure that would undercut the potency of my magic.

“Move,” he spat, levelling the sword at me.

“No,” I replied. “The battle is over, Jalver. No one else needs to die.”

“They- they fucking killed-”

“I know, but murdering this Caith isn’t going to bring her back,” I replied, stepping forward until the sword was resting against my collarbone. It was cold, and sharp, and as I shivered I felt it cut through my skin.

“I could kill you,” he said flatly. He jerked his head at Nathan, who had drawn his own sword and was carefully manoeuvring towards us, step by step, his eyes laser focused on Jalver who, despite being massive, wasn't as big as Nathan. “Him too.”

“You could,” I said, my voice wavering even as I held up my hand to stop Nathan. “And they’d probably believe you that the Caith did it.”

“They tried to wipe us out,” he said. “And you’re prepared to die for them?”

“I’m trying to stop you murdering someone who is in no position to hurt anyone else the only way I think I can,” I said.

“They murdered Tabz!” he screamed

“I am a doctor!” I shouted back at him. “And you fucking think this came out of nowhere? We’re in their home. Do you actually understand what that means? We don’t think we’re invaders. We see jungle and think its empty, that this place isn’t anyone’s home, that it’s ‘free,’ but it isn’t! We got a piece of paper from fucking Mercians saying we could live here—no one asked them!”

“You’re taking their side!?”

“Understanding is not taking sides!” I replied. “You want to stop others dying? Like Tabbeeza? Understand why they attacked us, that’s the first step!”

I winced as the sword moved a millimetre towards me, cutting into the skin. I felt Jalver’s emotions surge, and my eyes widened as I realised he was about to kill me. It was as plain as day, a twisting, deadly, perfect storm of grief and rage and white-hot hatred that emerged out of nowhere like a hurricane, directed straight at me.

I felt the metal bite, and desperately summoned my power even though I knew it was too late-

“What the fuck are you doing!?” spat someone else, for the second time in as many minutes.

The blade ceased inching into my neck, and I flicked my eyes sideways to see a blood, covered but uninjured, Laera emerge from the smoke.

“This Outlander is healing our enemies,” said Jalver, keeping his sword in place. “She-”

There was a rapid burst of movement, and Laera just appeared next to me, knocked Jalver's sword flying away with the back of her gauntlet, and then sent Jalver flying, literally, several feet back with a vicious shove.

“Go back to the hall, Jal,” said Laera, pointing at the downed dhampir man with a bloody, gauntleted hand, while the other grasped where her claymore was slung over her back. “We will discuss this there.”

“But-"

“NOW!” bellowed Laera, some terrible, infernal cadence overlayed on top of her voice as her pink hair ignited and her features seemed to grow sharper and more angular.

Jalver scowled at her, but I could feel both his green respect and yellow fear towards Laera.

Apparently, one did not fuck with the Guildmistress.

“What in the Nine Hells are you doing Charlie?” said Laera, turning to me, her hair falling back and her face resuming its usual, normal appearance. She exhaled. “And are you OK?”

“I am healing the injured,” I replied, focusing and closing the cut that had pierced about half a centimetre into my neck above my collarbone. I coughed, wiping some blood from around my mouth. “And fine, thanks.”

“Why?” said Laera.

“Because I am a healer,” I said.

Laera narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

Were prisoners of war not a thing here? Was it standard practice to kill your opponents down to the last? I knew that had been pretty damn common in Earth history, but I didn’t think it had been a universal law. Surrenders happened, people were spared. At least, some of them…

I couldn’t read her emotions, they were all weird and iridescent, but I could tell that, for whatever reason, that wasn’t going to be enough.

“And because if we want this to never happen again, we will need to negotiate with the Caith,” I said. “And we can’t do that if they’re all dead.”

“Negotiate?” laughed Laera, gesturing around them. “After this!?”

“We’re in their home, we killed one of theirs,” I said. “And Port Imperial regularly attacks their towns and camps, doesn’t it?”

“We’re not fucking Mercia!” said Laera. “And ‘we’ did not kill a Caith—that was one of the slaves you liberated! Not fucking us!”

“And you really think they make that distinction?” I said, gesturing to the Caith woman, who was watching the exchange silently. “We are outsiders, invaders, from their perspective. Any good will we might have been building up with the intermittent trade vanished when one of their people died here.”

Laera was still sceptical, but I could tell that I was having at least some success. Laera was smart, and pragmatic, if I could just make her see…

“This,” I said, gesturing around. “This, colonialism, it happened on my world. On Erde.”

“This isn’t Erde-”

“No, but people are still people; there are parallels, I see them every day,” I said. “On Erde, colonised peoples lost. They lost hard. Genocides, slavery, atrocities beyond count—across hundreds of years. I don’t know if that will happen here, the Caith have magic too, that might even the scales. But it might not. I know your angry, and grieving-”

“You don’t know anything about me!” said Laera, jabbing me in the chest. “Tabbeeza was- she was family!”

“I’m sorry-”

“She gave her life defending this town, these people, fucking you,” said Laera. “You self-righteous, holier-than-thou, arrogant little twit!”

Her hair flickered with a hint of pink flame, and for a moment I thought she would hit me. Then she exhaled, and reigned her anger back in.

“You’re right,” I said carefully. “I don’t know you well. But I knew Tabbeeza a bit better. She was strange, but kind and… actually, she was a terrible teacher… but do you want her sacrifice to mean nothing when the Caith attack again, and perhaps overrun us? More people to die?”

Laera scoffed. “You know what your problem is, Charlie?” she said. “Arrogance. You think you’re so much smarter than everyone else around you-”

“-I don’t-”

“-maybe you were always like this, or maybe the fact you can read people like books turned you into it,” continued Laera, speaking over me. “I don’t know. But however clever you might actually be, the rest of us are not idiots.”

“I never said you were!” I protested. “I’m trying to help!”

“Fine then, oh great and wise Charlie, help us — what should us lowly non-telepaths do?”

“We need to make peace,” I said, ignoring her insults that, well, maybe hit a bit too close to home for comfort. Was I arrogant? I hoped not… “A treaty, a framework for working out disputes, and some kind of rent for using their land. Because the only other options are more tragedies like this one, or packing up and leaving. And I don’t think the Guild, even if you wanted to, would accept the latter, and I don’t think you, even at your angriest, want the former.”

Laera looked past me to where the Caith was lying. For several long moments, she was silent and still.

Then she nodded. Only fractionally, but enough for me to know that she was at least considering what I had to say.

“I’ll tell people to stay out of your way, and send some people to guard the Infirmary,” she said.

“Not inside,” I said firmly.

“Fine,” said Laera.

“Thank-you-” I said placing my hand on her arm, unintentionally, if just for a split second getting a better look at the swirling rage and pain and hate and grief within her.

“I’m not doing this for you,” she said, jerking her arm away and cutting off the connection. “I’m doing this for Tabbeeza. So no one else has to die. You are- you are still insufferable.”

The Guildmistress strode away, leaving me feeling more than a little numb.

I exhaled, leaning back against a still standing post and sliding down it as my heart slowly began to stop hammering in my chest. I rubbed my neck, which was still a little bit tingly. I’d come within seconds of having my head cut off. I wouldn’t have been able to mind-whammy Jalver in time, nor conjure an illusion to defend myself. I needed to investigate shields, maybe getting some heavier armour, and… and find out if I was actually insufferably arrogant.

“You OK, Chezza?” asked Nathan, squatting next to me. “Thought he was gonna gut ya.”

“Fuck,” I said, my voice trembling. “Fuck.”

“Come on, we can have a sook later, there’s people who need healing,” said Nathan, effortlessly hauling me back to my feet.

Right. Healing. People. Yes, I could do that.

---

A.N. Like all my original work this is released four chapters ahead on my Patreon, and updates Thursdays.

I also have a finished fantasy novel that can be read on Scribblehub, Shattered Moon, and an episodic space-fantasy/horror/doctor-who-esque series, Mishka the Great and Powerful, that updates every Saturday.

I also have a new story, Marci of the Dreadfort, that I am writing as part of Sufficient Velocity's 'Global Novel Writing Month' challenge to get 50k words written and out there in the month of November. It will go up on Scribblehub at some point, but at the moment it is just on SV and my Patreon (where it is available to read as a free member, and isn't time-gated for any of the stuff I wrote in November).