They were waiting for us.

This whole time we’d been staying here in Freya’s old cave, the monsters weren’t just hiding. They had been watching during the night—at least one of them had, and it knew where we’d set up our camp. All their howling back and forth earlier hadn’t only been to relay and form up on our position.

In just an hour or two, they had already coordinated an ambush. Fifteen, maybe twenty of the damn things stared snarling at us right outside the cave’s entrance.

“We’re screwed if they swarm us,” Titania cursed, “and I can’t break through that. Is there another cave nearby? Any other choke point we can try to hold them?”

Freya shook her head, growling. “We wouldn’t make it.”

Another dourling joined the pack ahead of us while they had been chatting. There were also still a handful behind us, probably keeping a good distance because of my fire magic.

Fuck, it can’t end like this…

The moment I glanced at Viela, she had already begun stepping forward.

“My turn,” she said, her fiery red eyes burning with determination. “Let big sis take care of this.”

Within seconds of rapid casting, her globe of light vanished, quickly replaced by a trio of flaming orbs floating behind her. The fox spirit summoned four more before she was satisfied.

Viela thrust out an arm and unleashed hell.

The firestorm of Flame Orbs ravaged the dourling pack. After the first few projectiles found their mark and set their targets on fire, the horde quickly broke ranks and scattered. Even when they tried to dodge, Viela redirected the following projectiles to explode on their flanks. She kept hurling more Flame Orbs at the dourlings until the path to our cave was cleared, leaving at least ten stinking, flaming corpses left behind.

“Remind me to tell you how badass that was later,” I said with a hand on her back.

Viela was still panting for breath when we reentered our camp, clearly spent from the barrage of spells. Titania didn’t waste a moment throwing logs on the fire pit and getting a roaring fire going. Alice set down the two snow leopard cubs, gasping and stretching out her arms. Freya was too speechless to comment.

We had finally reached the ‘safety’ of our camp in this mountain range and wouldn’t get swarmed from all sides. But there was no doubt every last one of those things was going to know where to find us now.

“If we can hold out until morning we’ll make it, right?” I asked.

Titania shrugged. “The one goddamn day I didn’t load up on extra firewood,” she muttered under her breath.

“How long do we have?”

“While keeping it hot and bright enough to scare them back? An hour, tops.”

The howling reached a fever pitch outside where the surviving dourlings regrouped. Standing over the smoldering bodies of their fallen brethren only made them snarl even louder.

I was about to suggest we launch an attack to clear them out—until the horde grew to at least twenty again. Damn, how many more had been following us?

Even putting their numbers aside, our party was exhausted. We were all weary physically, or mentally, or magically… or in every possible way at the same time. Every time I wanted to suggest we go for an all-out offensive before the enemy’s numbers grew, a quick glance at my party members changed my mind.

Worse than that, every minute seemed to bring another dourling to join the enraged pack staring us down. For nearly a week this cave had been the camp we’d called ‘home,’ and it was fairly protected with only one entrance. But was this the wrong idea to come back here after all? We couldn’t have known they would be waiting for us like this…!

The heat of our crackling campfire wasn’t nearly enough to warm our spirits. The countless pissed off dourlings had the knowing eyes of beasts who could sense our fear. It almost felt like they knew we were running out of time. They could charge us at any moment and might even win, but their eyes darted from us to our blazing campfire. The bastards couldn’t overwhelm us from all sides but they had us cornered, biding their time for our fire to die out and every last one of them to join the pack.

It felt like they were trying to minimize their losses before they attacked.

Thirty pairs of angry yellow eyes, forty, fifty… Each passing minute made me wish I’d called for an attack sooner. Except, there was no way I could.

Someone is going to die tonight…

That damn thought from earlier came creeping into mind. We weren’t prepared for this! Think…

If I was remembering right, Alice should still have her wand that can cast Mana Bolt, but that basic spell wouldn’t take any of them down. Titania could slaughter a ton of them—and probably get grievously wounded or killed in the process. Her armor was still torn from earlier, too.

Viela was another force to be reckoned with, but she had already used up a lot of mana. And when it came to projectiles, those monsters had some serious agility to jump out of the way.

And Freya… her ferocity would only get her so far. One look at her told me that she would probably die fighting, just to take down as many of those things as she possibly could.

No, I don’t want to think about it like that!

Should we have tried hiding from the start, all the way back at the clearing? No, there were too many of them with eyes and ears everywhere. They would have found us for sure, and we would have been caught out in the open without this defensive position. Besides, it was no use analyzing in hindsight—

The horde of dourlings stirred all at once. Our party braced for combat.

Instead, the ones at the front of the pack glanced behind them and shuffled aside. A much bigger scaly monster came stepping toward us through the opening. Something about this one even seemed to make the other dourlings a little afraid. It had harder, sharper scales—and a single glowing yellow eye. The pitch-black hide covering its second eye bore a few long, jagged scars, like an old claw wound from something like a…

Freya bristled as if every strand of fur was standing on edge.

“That’s the one, that’s the one who took my cub—!”

“Wait, don’t!” I said.

I glanced back and forth from Freya to the one-eyed dourling, then shivered when I saw it looking directly at me. There really was something different about this one. Staring into its glowing eye, I could almost make out a series of images and emotions projecting from it.

‘A half-spirit here. Amusing.’

Huh?

“Y-You can ‘speak?’” I asked. “Hold on, are you some kind of spirit?”

No response.

“You’ve seen how many we took down before!” I shouted. “That was self-defense, all of it! This is your chance to leave. We’ll kill the rest of you if you attack!”

The only impression I got from the dourling’s ‘communication’ was a sense of annoyance.

‘You side with one who kills for her own. There is no difference.’

“You butcher the weak and helpless!” Freya screamed. “You’re a fucking coward!”

The dourling didn’t even look at her.

‘I don’t listen to food.’

Freya roared and slashed her claws into the ground.

“Hey, keep it together!” I said. “That thing is just trying to provoke you!”

We all jumped when Titania slammed the butt of her lance on the cave floor.

“You know Beryl, I’ve been thinking… it’s been a lot of fun.”

“What? What the hell are you saying, Titania?”

She looked back at me with a sad smile. “It’s nothing new, really. Entrepreneurship was always about taking risks. When I said I wanted to join your party out here, I knew I might not make it back.”

“Goddammit, just shut up! Stop raising all these death flags!”

Titania raised her lance at the monsters. “I still feel crappy about what happened earlier. In a way, it’s my bad things went this way. So just let me take some responsibility, alright?”

“You can’t be serious! No, fuck no! You might be a socially-awkward pervert, but we need you, damn it!”

Freya threw her head back to look at the rest of us. “Beryl, Alice. Fox. Take my cubs and get out of here. I’ll join you, lancer, and help them get away. But I’m going to tear out that one’s other eye.”

Titania nodded. “Yeah, that one’s yours.”

Fuck! This can’t be happening, it can’t end like this! There has to be another option here! Think, think damn it!

“Wait! Just wait a minute! Titania, how much do you know about these monsters and their weaknesses?”

Titania shrugged, her eyes still staring dead ahead.

“There’s nothing I haven’t already mentioned… Well, maybe one thing. There was this theory dourlings are cold-blooded, except they have this special kind of body oil they can heat up for thermoregulation. Based on how easily we saw them burn earlier, I’m guessing there might actually be some truth to that.”

Oil? Yeah, that would explain why they hate fire so much. And our campfire is starting to run thin… What are the options here?

Viela’s fire magic was obviously the first thing that came to mind. Oh!

“Viela, one of the things you said we could do with our soul bond… If I gave you all of my mana, how many of them do you think you could take down?”

The fox spirit scratched her chin, frowning.

“Considering I can’t unload it all at once and they’ll start dodging, maybe a little over half of them. But that might be too optimistic.”

“Well, do you have any other crazy good spells you want to show off right now?”

Viela bit her lip. “Only to help a few of us escape.”

Damn. Even if I joined in ‘guns blazing’ with Fire Bolts, there were still too many of them. Now it looked like there were sixty, seventy… No, it was impossible to count them all. The only thing I felt confident about was that it looked like every last dourling in the whole goddamn world had showed up tonight. We could probably win, but Titania and Freya would get hurt…

Or killed.

There had to be something else. We could retreat deeper into the cave; the inner room had a much smaller opening where we could hold them off. They would still probably overwhelm us, though, and launching spells at them would be damn near impossible.

What about my other spells? Recall could only take me and one other person. Considering where I could teleport to and how far we were from the capital, the spellcasting strain going that distance might kill me. I also had that Recall point I set right outside the cave before leaving with Alice last night…

That’s it! I did have a trick up my sleeve; I could teleport right in the middle of the whole pack! Except I wouldn’t last long enough with a solo surprise attack, my dagger’s range was too short, and there were too many of them.

In MMO’s, this was the exact type of situation where you needed a big ass ‘AoE nuke’ to clear the field.

Did I have one of those? I had been practicing Mana Wave, which was kind of an ‘area of effect’ spell with a focus on expanding its radius. But that wouldn’t reach all of them or set the dourling pack on fire, unless…

Wait.

Oh God, that just gave me an idea.

It was crazy, it was insane, it was freaking—

“Beryl, the fire’s going down!” Titania called out. “It’s go time.”

“Hang on, one more minute!” I took a deep breath, maybe the deepest in my life. “Viela, you trust me, right?”

The fox spirit put her hands on my shoulders. “With my life.”

“Okay. I need you to give me every last bit of mana you can.”

Viela frowned. “Beryl…”

“Hey, don’t you trust me?”

Her hands trembled on my shoulders. “Alright,” she finally relented.

Viela closed her eyes, and I felt a rush of magical energy coursing through my body. All the mana I’d spent casting spells earlier was replenished—and more. It almost felt like electricity surging through my veins, ready to be unleashed.

I could almost get used to the high of my body having more mana than its usual capacity. I knew it wouldn’t last though, and I needed all of it right now.

One last look at the gathered horde of dourlings confirmed that they were tightly packed together. They would probably expect a surprise attack at some point, but they couldn’t adapt to an attack they had never seen before.

“Alice, this might get messy. Can you cover the others with a Mana Shield?”

The young witch hadn’t said a word in a long while, and she still didn’t when she nodded at me. Alice was either too scared or had enough trust in me, and I chose to believe the latter.

Don’t worry, this will be over soon—one way or another.

With my right hand, I traced the symbol for Fire and set my hand ablaze. Then I lit up my arm, and my chest, and every bit of my body I could feel. Hotter and hotter, I ignited the mana around my body, almost to the point I could feel my anti-magic protection begin to melt.

The dourlings at the front of the pack shuffled away, sensing an imminent attack. Their cunning would work against them, putting every one of them in range.

I already knew how to prepare two spells at once. With my left hand, I cast Recall. A second later I teleported forward, and with my right—

“BERYL NOVA!”

The lucky ones got away. After half their hides got seared off, they managed to tuck whatever remained of their scaly tails and flee limping and shrieking for their lives.

They might not last long out there… but they were the lucky ones.

Every other dourling got a face full of the hottest motherfucking Mana Wave this world had ever seen. After directing it every direction around me, the magical wave of force exploded outward with my entire payload of burning mana. It was the same principle how I managed to cast Fire Bolt—just a basic Mana Bolt ignited by the Fire spell—except this took it to a whole new level.

A sudden wave of exhaustion unlike any other sent me collapsing to the ground. With fire and chaos and countless monsters around me howling their last… Yeah, I could use some rest.

Burning through all that mana in a second hurts like hell…

***

My consciousness faded in and out until I felt myself lifting off the ground. I opened my eyes and saw Viela’s face staring down at me, smiling.

She was carrying me back? Huh, I could feel her hands on my skin. It felt different… and why was this breeze so cold?

“My clothes!” I gasped. “Th-They’re all—mmph!”

Viela gave me a long, hot kiss.

“You did it,” she said, hugging me a little closer. “Rest now, my love. We’ll never forget how you saved our lives.”

Oh God, no! Not my clothes!

“Viela… I'm going to need another kiss…”

Malonymous

Thanks for reading! Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and Happy 1 year of Weird Shift everyone. (Shiftiversary?) Yes, it's been a whole year since the first chapter of Weird Shift was posted, and what a wild ride it's been. Commentary:

Spoiler

1. A while ago, there was an early idea that Viela would give Beryl's fire magic a 'cosmetic upgrade' so she could cast green flames to match her outfit, but that idea ended up getting scrapped. Beryl was going to call it 'Beryl Fire,' and that's part of why she calls her finishing move Beryl Nova instead of Fire Nova (also because it's kinda badass, at least for her ^^). Fire Bolt was also a semi-recent idea that just made sense.
2. Just in case it wasn't clear enough, Double Fire Bolt is not a ‘real’ spell in this world. It's just a fun way of saying Beryl cast the Fire + Mana Bolt combo with both hands at the same time~.
3. Originally, Alice's backstory was going to be slightly different and revealed much later in the story, but after some feedback I figured this part of the story would be a better, more dramatic fit. That said...
4. These heavier chapters are a lot harder to write, it just turns out that way sometimes (×﹏×) Well I hope you enjoyed, we'll see where things go from here~
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