Dan activated Spatial Shield in the split second before the arrow hit him. The magic bent the shaft of the arrow away from him, but Nora was a skilled archer. Instead of hitting him in the forehead, the arrow slashed open a deep cut on his left bicep. He gritted his teeth against the pain as he jumped to his feet. Already Brandon and Geoff were wading through the waist-deep river toward him while Andrea stood back, guarding Nora. He flexed his left arm to ensure that the arrow had done no serious damage, then triggered a Lightning Stroke into the river between the two men.
Diffused by the water, it didn’t do any real damage, but the electricity caused both men to collapse in the water. This time, the second Lighnting Stroke burned through their entire bodies, rather than just their legs. Dan frantically hoped it would be enough as he ducked back behind one of the unnaturally-short trees and an arrow sailed past him. Already, a mana depletion headache was setting in, and he could do the math. Even if the two men were knocked out by the lightning, he was still outnumbered two to one. At full mana, he could beat either Andrea or Nora, but fighting both would be a tall order. Plus, he was pretty sure they had ranked up since they had last sparred before their adventure in the mine. That meant they likely had new class abilities. As much as he might want to get revenge on them for stringing him along and betraying him, this wasn’t a fight that he should stick around for.
“Dan, it doesn’t have to be like this!” Nora shouted to him across the river. “The Alliance of Free Cities is as good of a patron as you’re going to find. You’re not going to survive on Twilight without a master of some sort, so you might as well join up with us! You’ll just need to swear an oath to Morgan and ensure that you’re not a spy for a hostile power, and we can just make all of this go away! Please, Dan.”
His memory immediately flashed to the dozens of other times his mother or Anabelle had said ‘please, Dan’ to him. Asking him to drop out of boy scouts and focus on the cello. Telling him to stop hanging out with his friends from the dorms in college because they drank too much and were a “bad influence” on him. Demanding that he sell his video game console so he could focus on his relationship and career. Each time, it was a minor concession phrased as an obvious decision that was in his own interest, and each time he gave in, until one day he looked back on himself and didn’t even recognize who he was anymore. Daniel Thrush was nothing more than a piece of clay molded by the stronger personalities in his life.
Hell, even Doctor Weathers bossed him around. At least with her, it was more a matter of picking on him while telling him to stand up for himself. Funnily enough, she was the only person actually trying to get him to improve himself. Admittedly, she’d gained a fair amount professionally from working with Dan, but at the same time, it felt different.
She took his colossal stroke of luck and gave him a path to turn himself into some sort of magical superman, but at least she realized that he would have to do it himself. Sure, he needed some prodding here and there, but without some self-agency and confidence, even if he was perfectly fit, he would just end up being a tool in someone else’s hands. Just like what Nora was trying to do to him.
Subconscious interference detected. Analyzing.
Mind magic detected. <USER> has broken the effects of a compulsion. No need for further action.
“Nora,” he shouted back, his back pressed against a tree for cover. “I literally do not know who you work for or who the powers in this area are. I want absolutely nothing to do with a local political struggle. I’m just here to gain experience and go home. I can’t swear an oath to serve and protect someone if my plan is to leave in a year. It just wouldn’t be fair to anyone.”
He glanced around the corner of the tree to see her reaction, and immediately whipped his head back as another arrow whirred past. It certainly wasn’t aimed to wound. That was the second arrow fired at his face, and if he had learned anything in his year or so of combat training, it was that you should keep your face arrow and blade free.
“What the fuck was that, Nora,” Geoff sputtered between hacking coughs. “I thought he wasn’t supposed to have any ranged attacks except that fire blast thing. That’s the only reason we engaged him from the water, so we would have cover from the fire. If I find out you’ve been holding out on us…”
“You’ll skin me,” Nora replied from the bank. “I got it the first four times you threatened it. If I were you, I’d get moving. You’re still standing in the middle of a river while we fight a thunder mage. It just doesn’t seem like the best thought out of plans.”
Taking Nora’s inadvertent advice, Dan peeked around his tree and unleashed another Lightning Stroke at Geoff. The man stood in the middle of the small river, his hands on his knees as he coughed out the water he had inhaled while under the surface. Dan noted that the man’s sword was nowhere to be seen, hopefully washed downstream.
Geoff’s eyes widened noticeably as the mana accumulated in Dan’s free hand for the fraction of a second before the spell triggered. A sphere of energy sprang into being around the man as he frantically tried to divert the attack.
The electricity slammed into the bubble and curved down into the water. Whatever the man had used, it functioned like an advanced spell shield. A second later, it flickered out of existence and Geoff stood in the river once again, startled but unharmed. Dan took the man’s survival and his building headache as his cue to leave and began sprinting through the forest back toward his cave. With any luck, the blacks and greys of the foliage would conceal his equally-drab armor, and he would get a bit of a head start as he tried to escape the search party.
“I am going to fucking skin that prick!” Geoff screamed from behind him. “This is the second time he’s shocked me rather than fight me like a man! Where in the blazes is his honor?”
Mentally, Dan rolled his eyes. Since when was he supposed to honorably fight someone who outnumbered him four to one and had spied on him for the entirety of his time on the planet? No, if he trusted any of his traps to evade Nora’s keen vision, he would already be leading them towards a pit trap. The goal of the day wasn’t honor; it was survival.
He made it to the cave before them and grabbed his pack. He didn’t have any idea where to go, but his only real chance was to travel further into the mountains in an attempt to lose them. He quickly ran to one of the valley walls with a slightly more shallow incline and pushed Gravitational Easing to the maximum as he began climbing. He made it almost half way up before an arrow embedded in his travel pack. Cursing slightly, he activated Spatial Shield.
Keeping both spells on at once strained his ability to focus to the limit, and even then it was only a matter of time before his mana ran out. Although impressive during the fight, using Lightning Stroke three times had eaten deeply into his reserves. Still, he was almost over the edge of the valley wall, and his spatial magic had already saved him from an arrow in the calf or thigh at least twice as Nora shot at him from below.
Finally, he heaved himself over the edge and took a couple seconds to catch his breath, adrenaline coursing through his veins. They might not be able to climb the wall as well as him, especially while defending against potential magical ambushes, but he didn’t have as much of a head start as he would like. Nora knew the wastes of Twilight too well, so long as he went anywhere she was familiar with.
That left the mountains. He seemed to recall that most of the mountains on Twilight contained higher rank monsters and potentially dungeons. No one had really explained what dungeons were to him, but Nora had been fairly fearful. At this point, his only real option was to throw himself into danger and hope that Nora and her party would refuse to follow him.
The next two hours were tense, but anticlimactic. He turned off all of his abilities but Gravitational Easing and jogged up foothills towards the nearby mountains as he recharged his mana. Before too long, Nora’s party appeared over the valley lip behind him and gave chase. Maybe it was Dan’s fitness and magic, or maybe the other party was just cautious for traps, but he was able to maintain a good half mile to mile of distance between them.
Finally, Tanloff’s light began to dim as the eclipse began. Both parties kept running as the light became dimmer as they played a game of chicken. If either stopped to set down their sanctuary runes, the other would be able to achieve its objective of either catching up or escaping. As things grew darker, the sparse vegetation of the foothills appeared more and more sinister. Dan glanced up. Only a sliver of Tanloff’s reflected light was still visible. It was only a matter of minutes before night fell, and the sanctuary runes needed to be active.
Dan spared a look back at the pursuing party. He had trouble making out fine details, but they looked equally nervous.
“Fuck it,” he muttered to himself, pursing his lips before stopping and opening up his travel pack. Hopefully, the other side would honor the truce and set up their own runes. After all, if everyone got eaten by unspeakable horrors, no one would win.
For a second, luck was with him. As soon as Nora’s group saw him stop and open his backpack, they stopped as well. The frantic chase could continue when the planet itself was no longer an existential threat. Dan began removing the rune plaques and placing them one by one in a circle around himself. Then, his luck failed him. As he pulled out the second to last rune plaque, there was some difficulty. When he finally removed it from the plaque, he saw the problem and began swearing to himself. One of Nora’s arrowheads was lodged in the rune, disrupting it and leaving it inoperable. That one arrow to his travel pack while he was climbing the valley wall had ruined everything.
He stood there, holding the wrecked rune and staring back at Nora’s camp. Already, it glowed purple as their sanctuary runes flickered with eldritch energy. He would have no such protection. With one rune damaged, the entirety of his sanctuary runes were nothing more than fancy and expensive calligraphy.
Somehow, in her camp, Nora turned and met his eyes. Despite the distance, her skills let her see the broken rune in his hand. She clapped a hand over her mouth before shouting across the distance at him.
“I’m so sorry, Dan!” her voice took on an ethereal quality as night fell. “It was never supposed to be like this. You have to believe me, I only wanted the best for you!”
His breath caught in his throat. It might all be another ruse, an attempt to play on his sympathy one last time, but he doubted it. For once, she sounded sincere.
“You could have said something, Nora,” he shouted back bitterly. “You could have let me run. I just wanted to be left alone!”
“We all want things we can’t have.” He could barely make out her wistful smile in the distance before she turned away from him.
Dan sighed. He supposed he could take some comfort in the fact that she felt bad for him as he was ripped apart by some unspeakable monstrosity that crawled up from the bowels of the planet. He quietly put the runes back into the travel pack. Maybe, if he survived the night, he could repair them at some point. A big if.
Then, Tanloff’s light disappeared from the horizon, and the howling started.
