So, maybe running away wasn’t the most dignified response.

It was still what I did. I’d just slain a dragon. I wanted a break, not another fight.

Not that running really counted as a break, but it was less stressful than fighting, at least. Sadly the winds were picking up again, so hopping into the air to try to fly away wasn’t really an option. Instead I just had to scramble along the stone paved streets, still not really knowing the layout of the city.

It did seem vaguely gridlike, but there were enough off angles and side alleyways it was easy to get lost. Mazes were generally fairly grid adjacent too, so getting lost probably shouldn’t have been any big surprise. 

Having gotten more than a little turned around, I found my route cut off by a number of the cloaked figures. I could hear there were others behind me, their footfalls far from silent. Which meant turning back wasn’t going to help. I let out a blast of magic, throwing out a half dozen smaller mana spheres in my panic, hoping to get through.

They proved powerful enough to scatter the figures. I wasn’t sure how much damage I’d done, but I wasn’t about to stop to check. I was too busy trying to come up with a plan that actually called on my higher brain functions. Something more coherent than ‘run’. Sadly, those parts of my brain were being a bit slow to provide any ideas.

The main issue centered around not knowing if I could lose these demonic assailants or not. If I could, then slipping down into the sewers again seemed smart. If I couldn’t, though, then I’d just be leading them right to where the survivors were hiding.

I was starting to debate trying to run away from the city entirely, and hope I led these elite forces away from everyone else, when a figure seemed to appear out of nowhere in front of me. They were too close to respond to, and I slammed into them. Both I and the unknown new arrival ended up sprawled on the ground, my face pressed into something cushioned, covered by a sturdy fabric. 

“G—Goddess?”

Lifting my face from where it had ended up, I found myself blushing furiously as I realised that something had been Ne’avo’s chest. The dark elven woman was looking up at me with flushed cheeks that must have matched my own.

“Where did—no time for that,” I said, scrambling to my feet and trying to pull her along.

Only to discovered we’d been surrounded during the few seconds of confusion.

“Forces of Discord,” Ne’avo hissed, drawing her blade (which remained impressive in its scale).

“Uhh… yeah… you… I’ll try to protect you,” I said, remembering how her previous attempt at fighting had gone...

Only to realise she’d already charged, letting out a yell as she swung her sword at one of the hooded figures.

She missed, and my heart dropped. She might have been a bit… much, but she was harmless, and didn’t deserve to die. Still, she was too far from me, and too close to the figure with a blade of pure discordance, for me to intervene before they’d slashed at her.

And then the blade bounced off her skin. 

I blinked, and it seemed the various servants of darkness also needed a moment to process that. Ne’avo, however, seemed completely unphased by it, and swung her greatsword at the confused figure once again, colliding this time, due to the element of surprise being on her side. The cloaked warrior crumpled to dust

While I had no idea what had just happened, I felt it was better not to hope the impossible repeated itself, and set to work on my own offensive. I let out a number of mana blasts, trying to draw the dark warriors to me. 

Though not too close. Their blades were still dangerous. Now, at least, I was able to summon a shield that wasn’t filled with my life force, so I could actually block their attacks. Before long, we’d done better than I’d expected. At least half the dark warriors had been cast to dust, and the others were backing away in a cautious retreat.

“The Blade of Loj… so that’s where it got to,” the demonic leader of our assailants said, my eyes drifting up to realise he was standing on a nearby rooftop.

The elven lich then leapt down, as if he were on a metre high ledge, rather than the top of a seven floor building. He proceeded to also land as if he’d merely dropped a metre or two, his knees barely bending.

“I’ve heard the scabbard makes the blade’s master have unbreakable skin,” the elf said, pointing his sword towards Ne’avo.

“It does,” she replied, sounding a bit smug.

“It—where did you get a sword like that?” I asked.

“That’s a, uh… a long story,” she replied.

“Either way, it will be a delightful second prize to make this little mission worth it,” the demonic elf said, twirling his sword and seeming fully healed from his fight with Chem.

Or been fully repaired?

I was going to have to ask Uké’el if liches healed or not.

“You’ll find it hard to take as long as you can’t hurt me,” Ne’avo replied, though the way he was walking towards her seemed to make the muscular woman nervous.

“Ah, but I can still hurt you… I’m curious, does the tongue count as skin? I am certain that eyeballs do not,” he said, pointing his blade towards each in turn.

I dashed over, placing myself between her and him. “You’ll have to get through me first!”

He shrugged. “Very well. I don’t care the order I do things.”

Paling slightly, I shifted into a fighting stance, summoning a magicka blade and ready to give this my all. As I did so, more cloaked figures emerged from the streets around us, making it clear the group we’d fought had only been a fraction of the dark forces. The demonic elf wore an unpleasant smirk as I assessed the situation. 

The cloaked warriors charged, and Ne’avo seemed to decide it was better to go down fighting, and charged into the thick of the group to my left. That, or she continued to be a senseless optimist, it was hard to tell.

My focus was taken up by the elven lich attacking me, however. He remained a better swordsman than me, but it seemed I had some advantage in strength as well as the reach of my magicka blade. Maintaining the magic whenever it clashed with his discordance forged sword was draining, but within my abilities. For now.

Thankfully the cloaked warriors not busy with Ne’avo were staying back. They clearly didn’t want to get killed by a stray swing of either of our blades.

A barely blocked swing saw him pressing his blade into mine, the discordance starting to cut through the magicka, when a blast of some sort slammed into the side of his hide, sending him stumbling. 

Glancing to my right, I saw a wave of further magic attacks, as mages poured out of the nearby sewers and buildings. Uké’el was near the front, and proved to have some of the best offensive capabilities of all of them. There were others holding up a shield wall that shimmered and quivered as the dark warriors attacked it with their cursed blades, but it held. 

The elven lich hissed, but turned his attention back to me with rage in his eyes. I was left on a back footing as he struck with newfound aggression. A misplaced step backwards and I fell on my back, barely blocking a strike from him. 

The next one, though—didn’t come.

Because Sukura had slipped out of the shadows of the building behind him, and had run him through from the back with her sword.

“I wish I could see your face right now,” she hissed as he began to dissolve, “but I’ll take enough pleasure in avenging my father and protecting my love.”

She pulled the blade out as his crumbling body collapsed, his head landing just in time for it to roll and let her briefly meet his eyes. Eyes that had, in my opinion, been filled with confused surprise more than anything else. As if it had never occurred to him he might die.

Speaking of someone who might not have realised they could die, both Sukura and I turned towards the crowd Ne’avo was battling in the middle of.

“Where did she even come from?” Sukura asked.

“I have no idea, but we should really help her,” I replied, charging into the fray. 

Sukura slipped behind me, taking advantage of my magical shields and more frantic strikes to provide cover between her quick and efficient dashes into the crowd to slice through the enemy forces.

We had only needed to make a dent in them for this portion of the dark warriors to realise the day was lost and begin to scatter. I lobbed a number of mana balls after them, thinning their numbers further, but didn’t get all of them.

Taking a moment to breathe, I gave Ne’avo a tired thumbs up.

She stared down a my hand in what I could only guess was complete confusion.

“Ok… thumbs up is not a thing here,” I muttered, before turning to Sukura. “What are you and all of them doing up here, though?”

“You broke the enemy army,” Uké’el announced, as she and the other mages walked over. “We’d known most of the highest ranking forces had left, ready to let a garrisoning force starve us out, but it had still been too much for we few survivors to face in battle… you, however, cut through far more of them than we realised you could.”

“She is a goddess,” Sukura replied, pulling me into a hug, and offering a kiss on my cheek.

“Mhm,” an older Dwarven woman said. “A naive and inexperienced one, but a deity all the same… there might yet be hope in this war.”

“Where are we, anyhow?” Ne’avo asked, looking around at the city. “I’d guess somewhere in Chuu-la, from the buildings? But past that…”

I stared at her. “How do you never seem to know where we are?”

“We’re in G—”

“Don’t tell her!” a Dwarven man squeaked, cutting off Sukura as he rushed forward and waved his arms.

“Pardon?” I asked.

“She had a spell of untraceability on her,” he said, giving Ne’avo a once over.

“You can tell?” the dark elven woman asked.

“I am a master enchanter,” he replied, still studying her. “And I can also tell you didn’t exclude yourself from the spell’s effects.”

Ne’avo stared down at him. “Well, obviously. Surely a nerd like you knows it’d be pretty silly to get an enchantment done on myself that doesn’t affect me.”

The small man was silent for a moment, his mouth hanging open slightly. “I… no… you… with the enchantment affecting you it means you can’t trace your own path. Which means you’ve been doomed to get lost constantly. And, with the power of the spell, I’m going to guess that if you do figure out where you are, you suddenly find yourself not there anymore.”

Raising a finger, Ne’avo seemed about to reply. Then whatever she was going to say apparently died on her tongue. “Uhh… m—maybe.”

The Dwarven man pulled out a bit of cloth, whispering something to it that caused the material to fly up towards Nea’ve’s face. It delicately nudged her nightglasses out of the way and then wrapped around her eyes.

“Woah, hey! What’s this about?” she asked, flailing her arms.

“It’s to keep you from getting your bearings before we break the enchantment,” he replied.

“Couldn’t you have at least had one of those cute girls tie the blindfold?” Ne’avo asked, pointing towards Sukura and I.

“That seemed unnecessary,” he replied.

Ne’avo pouted, but followed when he instructed her too. Not told to do anything else, I followed along as well. Since Ne’avo kept running into me, it seemed like I should take some sort of interest in her well being. Especially since she’d mentioned something about a duty of her bloodline last time we’d talked. Sukura followed me, and a number of the mages decided to head back into the old tunnels with us. 

A couple did peel off, wanting to go check the state of the city, but Uké’el was not one of them. She was curious about what in the world was going on with Ne’avo. Apparently a beefy and foolish moon elf was an odd sight that she was curious about. 

We reached the front entrance to the tunnels a short while later, and I was distracted by how plain and unremarkable it was. Like the entrance to someone’s personal cellar.

The sound of a bonk, followed by a whiny ‘owww’, drew me out of that line of thought. Ne’avo had hit her head against the top frame of the Dwarven door, her guide having apparently forgotten quite how tall she was.

“Right. Yes. You should duck,” he said flatly.

“A bit late for that,” she grumbled. “I bet you did that on purpose, you little…”

Following her in, I saw Aara waiting by the entrance, and doing a double take about Ne’avo being here.

“Why is she here?” Aara asked, in a sharp whisper as Sukura and I walked over to her.

“Something about teleportation magic to keep her lost,” I replied.

Aara took a moment to process that. “Oh gods… if that means what I think it means… she’d more of an idiot than I realised.”

“She seemed to fight fairly valiantly up there, at least?” Sukura offered, seeming to want to give the compassionate view.

“Recklessly, I’d say… apparently she has a pretty important magic sword, though? I’d like to hear about how she got her hands on it,” I replied.

“She does?” Aara asked, sounding offended by the very concept. “She’s nobility or something, isn’t she? Only a noble could be that useless.”