By the time the wyrmlings had been completely eliminated and Asteria had driven off Behenien, only four dozen had survived, half of whom were wounded or in various states of shock.

  Since many of those had been touched by the corrosive flames of a dragon matriarch, they, too, would need more specialized healing than could be provided on the field, at least without keeping Asteria busy for days with brewing subpar ingredients. No, it was better to head to Last Thaw and use its resources, even if that hadn’t already been their plan.

  A few beasts of burden still remained in good condition for work, and four carriages were still intact without broken axles, melted wheels, or enchantments. The hotel on the Sanctum bank supplied linens and warm provisions, while the small shrine provided what few cots it had to spare.

  A dozen pilgrims, originally planning to sleep and pray at dawn, had now been pressed into taking care of the wounded, though none of them dared complain, not before a high-ranking witch like Asteria.

  Sometimes, the fact that the Sanctum is a theocracy can be useful.

  Eire repurposed broken furniture into makeshift beds and crafted a new iron wedge from a railing to lock a broken wheel back into a carriage, enchanting it with the necessary runes to ensure it wouldn’t fall apart, and granting them another vehicle for the upcoming journey.

  Pauline took charge of the organization, figuring out who needed to be placed in the hospital carriages and who could be crammed into the rest.

  Asteria announced she would handle security, and everyone else should focus on maintaining everyone's health and comfort. That helped lift the gloomy mood, although people were still too shaken to celebrate.

  On the morning of their departure, she stood on the first carriage, waved her hand, and the convoy began to plod forward.

  Fortunately, Last Thaw lay forty miles south down the Belt’s spine, so their trip shouldn’t take too long. On a clear day, a well-crafted carriage could make it in a few hours at a steady pace.

  However, this wasn’t a clear day. The storm had loosened its grip since the Matriarch’s departure, but it still prowled, low and sullen, sheeting rain and making every movement slower.

  They pushed on anyway, despite that and all the other problems they faced.

  Every time a hungry beast lunged out of an alder tree or uncurled from a slick boulder and tried to fall upon a carriage, a silver flash cut it down.

  It wasn’t anything fancy. Asteria simply used her immense power when necessary, easily cutting off a bear’s head, shooting beads of light through a treant’s massive form, and wielding a force glove that lifted a prowling feline, crushing its ribs.

  After the fifth interruption, nothing else tried them for an hour.

  Orion sat inside the same carriage they’d used to leave Valderun, only now the velvet curtains had been taken down and used as covers, and the brass fittings were wrapped with rope to keep the door from swinging.

  He rested against a chest of supplies, with his left leg extended on a folded blanket. Before leaving, his mother had tucked a shawl around his calf, and while he appreciated the gesture, he had work to do, so he removed it once he was sure no one would notice.

  The stone foot wasn’t ugly. Eire had avoided embellishments, considering the speed she’d built it with, but it had a practical beauty. A pale marble formed the heel, and the front part was finely shaped, with almost enough details to appear real.

  Runic lines wove throughout the entire piece so subtly that they were only visible when light hit at an angle. Where it connected to his leg, she transformed a cuff of bone into stone and fitted the two together with a tongue-and-groove joint that made no biological sense but worked smoothly as long as he supplied mana.

  He flexed. At first, the sensation came slowly, like a poor telepresence rig, but the more he focused, the less it lagged.

  He flexed again. Sanded stone pressed against the blanket, and, for the first time, he felt pressure where there should have been flesh.

  [Hypotheticism] slowly revealed the artifact’s inner mechanism, which Orion spent quite some time playing around with.

  He pushed more mana than he had before, causing the regulator to stumble. It was set conservatively, too conservatively for his liking, but it was understandable since Eire designed it to prevent a teenager from damaging his own knee. In most cases, she would have been right.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  He wasn’t a typical patient, however, so he fine-tuned the trickle with small, precise adjustments, reducing the intake gradually until the return stopped pulsing and the annoying feedback settled into a steady, almost imperceptible level.

  Orion slowly stood up, using a hand on the bench to push himself, and leaned on it. The carriage barely swayed as it rolled over a rough patch, and he nearly lost his balance. His right foot slid half an inch forward to catch him, and the stone foot adjusted a moment later, preventing a bad fall.

  “You should be resting,” Pauline said from the window seat, where she was keeping an eye on the road.

  “I'm not pushing myself,” he answered. He took three careful steps.

  She looked down. “You’re walking. If you’ve forgotten, you cut your own foot off. I think you should be lying down.”

  “I will, once I’m done.” He said, as he rocked back into a seat, only then feeling the sweat that had broken out along his spine. He was still very tired from the battle, especially given the spatial shenanigans he’d engaged in. “I want to try running first.”

  “You really don’t know the meaning of enough, do you?” she asked, but her tone was more fond than critical.

  Apparently, saving her life could make even Pauline more permissive. Orion smiled privately and went back to work.

  The lag was fixed, letting him focus on the next problem: the tremor that rippled up his calf and hamstring when he tried to put more weight on it.

  The rune translating intent—the one Eire had fixed to his tibia—was sending more noise than signal, which caused his nervous system to fire in response.

  It made sense, since she couldn’t fine-tune it to him in such a hurried moment. Still, it was something he could fix, so he steadily fed mana into the translator, gradually adjusting the output until the noise was almost completely gone, and his intent came through much clearer.

  It still wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to make him functional, which was what he was after.

  With the regulator stable, he could do more than just walk on his foot. Stone was a fairly neutral magical reagent, meaning it wouldn’t produce perfect results for nearly anything without a strong affinity, but it also wouldn’t reject anything he wove through it, unlike regular flesh.

  Perhaps he could annotate and add a metamagic layer to the regulator, something like [Maximize Magic], but limited to activate only when he moved in a specific way, allowing a stance to feed into a spell and a spell to feed back into a stance.

  Alternatively, he could cut the return, embed a [Slow] in the arch, and let it absorb power gradually, then release it in a sudden burst, giving him a last ace up his sleeve even when he was exhausted. The constant physical contact should allow him to prolong [Slow] for much longer than using a regular crystal would.

  With care, he could even use the bone-stone cuff as a focus by carving a tiny crystal vein into it, allowing it to act as a secondary origin for light spells, and shifting some of the casting load from his brain to his leg.

  Don’t get too excited now, Orion. One step at a time, literally.

  For now, he set aside most of the list. He planned to ask Eire before making any structural adjustments, mainly because he was a fanatic of efficiency and knew that discovering he had compromised the construct with his meddling later would be frustrating.

  The convoy entered an open lowland. The road here had once been paved, and the stones were still visible beneath a layer of dirt, but heavy rain had turned everything into a uniform brown.

  Despite those conditions, they made good progress. Asteria eliminated anything unwise enough to approach the road, Eire intervened when a wheel sank too deep in the mud, and Pauline kept the group organized and prevented arguments from escalating into fights.

  He shifted again, trying to accept his new balance. He could now feel the foot pretty well. Not as flesh, as there was no false comfort or pretense, but as a tool that was no longer separate from him.

  When the carriage bounced, its comfort charms worn down by the proximity to Behenien’s flames, even though it hadn’t been very close, he reacted instinctively, placing the stone foot first, and it held his weight.

  “I can see it!” Someone called. “Last Thaw!”

  Pauline pulled the door open and stuck her head inside. “We’re in sight,” she confirmed.

  He slid toward the door, bracing with a hand to keep his walk steady, and looked past her.

  Last Thaw stretched in a long streak across the southern horizon, following the banks of the Belt. A pair of sturdy towers rose along the wall, and even a mile away, he could see the pale shimmer of active wards protecting the city from something.

  Lightning tore across the sky in jagged streaks. In the sudden flash, something moved along the walls. For a brief moment, his stomach sank, and he worried it might have been another dragon.

  Then his vision adjusted, and he saw that the shapes were too small for real dragons, with wings that were incorrectly shaped and necks that were too thick.

  More wyrmlings, or maybe another cousin species. Four? Six? No, more, at least a dozen.

  One clung to the roofline like a hungry lizard. Another huddled on the wards atop a watchtower with its head down, spewing something onto the shining shields.

  Asteria stood on the roof of the lead carriage. Silver shimmered around her, making rain hiss and vapor rise back up.

  “Eire,” she called, “protect the column.”

  She didn’t wait for a response and vaulted, landing fifty yards ahead, then blurred through the fields, veering toward the city and leaving a streak of light in the rain.

  Without a tier four monster overhead, Orion was not afraid, and he trusted his mother to do what needed to be done. She would handle whatever dragonspawn these new attackers were without trouble, especially since the city’s wards were still active.

  That didn’t mean the road was safe, however.

  Eire took control of the situation before anyone else realized they’d just lost their greatest protector. “Anyone who can cast, come with me. I want a perimeter around the convoy as soon as possible. I will supply as many bodies as I can, but I need eyes near them.”

  The ground around her darkened as she extracted the liquid. Mud bulged and pushed upward, and she pressed her palms down, splitting the bulges into shapes that turned into torsos, limbs, and heads.

  The first golem rose to its feet and landed with a deep, steady thump. The second followed. Ten, then twelve. They stood about two heads taller than a man and looked exactly alike, with smooth planes where other crafters would have carved faces, thick wrists, and a weight distribution that made them nearly impossible to tip.

  She marked each chest with a single glyph, and silver cores in their chests brightened to a steady glow.

  That’s new. She must have been working on different variants.

  “Protect the column,” she said, and they moved, taking up positions along the flanks and front, leaving the rear to Pauline’s shadows.

  Orion felt the ground beneath him vibrate slightly as the constructs moved around. I’m not going to be able to run in this condition, and even if Mom hadn’t made me promise not to teleport again, I wouldn’t dare to, not before I understand how I managed to do what I did, and why it failed.

  That meant he would have to stand his ground until help arrived, because it didn’t take long for the streak of bad luck to show itself again.

  Something moved around them, increasing in number until it was clear they’d been surrounded.

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