Velmira desperately inhaled, trying to take back in the air that’d been knocked from her when she fell.

  [Skill gained: Unarmed Punch]

  [0.5 Strength added]

  Thick hands pinned Vel’s wrists to the ground, and a lean man of considerable stature glared down at her.

  “What are you?” he hissed through a trimmed beard.

  After a cough, Vel whimpered out, “V-Velmira.”

  “Velmira who?”

  “I’m just Vel! Nothing else!” Vel tried, responding more to her beating heart than the man holding her. He’d been so quick, she didn’t even know what happened to the rooster she was holding.

  He narrowed his hazel eyes, then looked down over her form.

  “Oh, gods no!” Vel exclaimed, then kneed him where the sun don’t shine, and . . . and . . . she missed. Damn, where was his crotch?

  Completely ignoring her, he asked, “[Sacrifice]?”

  Eyes wide, Vel’s breath caught in her throat. I can’t go back. They’ll kill me! She opened a palm, a tiny ember sparking in it.

  “Edard’s Vel?”

  The flame vanished.

  “Edard?” Vel asked, furrowing her brow. “You know where he is?”

  At last, the man released her, then slowly pushed himself up to his feet. Only then did she notice the arrows on his hip and the bow over his shoulder. “You . . .” she said, recalling that it was a hunter who’d been tasked to dispose of her dear Edard. “Is he dead?” she asked, pushing herself to sit up.

  “No,” the hunter said, arms crossing as he further examined her. “I let him go.”

  Velmira, getting back up to her feet, gave him large, hopeful eyes. “Where is he?”

  “I told him to go west,” the hunter said.

  “He didn’t come for me?” Vel asked, heart feeling so fragile. It practically quivered in her chest, both good and bad, and mostly overwhelming. It was enough that a tiny little tear escaped her eye.

  “The man was too weak. I said I would rescue you,” the hunter sighed, pulling his bow from his shoulder. He set it aside, then undid the leather jerkin that sat over a green shirt. Pulling it off, he offered it to her. “Here. You need this more than I.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Vel took the oversized jerkin. She wasn’t exactly a short woman, but even on her, this thing passed more for a long tunic than it did a jerkin of shirt. Clasping it up over her form, relieved to be clothed somehow, she asked, “Is he unwell?”

  “He was beat up pretty badly by the time he was handed off to me,” the hunter said, then leaned over to pick up the rooster. “Come, it’ll be dark soon.”

  He could be lying, Vel thought as he turned her back away from her, starting in the direction she had been going in prior. But if he were going to take me back to the church, he could have easily manhandled me, she argued. Ultimately, the latter argument won, mostly because she desperately needed help.

  “How come you didn’t dispose of him?” Vel asked, getting straight to the point.

  “Because of something he said,” the hunter paused, looking back at her. He stared for a long moment, then continued forward. “He asked if I had ever known love,” he said, “‘Romance beneath the deepest depths of the sea, passion higher than the highest peaks of the mountains, even so strong that the world could not dare to break that love . . .’ Love-sick bastard.”

  Tears spilled from Velmira’s eyes as she listened, her heart melting. That was him, those were his words, her Edard. The torrent of emotions that raged through her conflicted with one another, some happy and overjoyed that Edard was alive, others crushed that he must have been hurt, so much so that he couldn’t return for her.

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  She covered her mouth, her lower lip trembling. “Where is he?” her voice quivered, though she urged her feet to move beneath her, following this new stranger.

  “I left him with a healer in Lamone, but after your escape, I doubt he’ll be able to safely stay there long. If the church can, they’ll use him against you.”

  Vel nodded, though he couldn’t see it. She worked at wiping tears away, some of the emotions gradually coming down, though part of her was sure it had something to do with how exhausted she was. “Why are you helping us?”

  “Because I did know love. Once. And the pay is good,” the hunter said.

  “Pay? Edard paid you?”

  He brought her over a small hill, and at the top of it sat exactly what Vel had been looking for━a pond. “Not in money. Vengeance.”

  Vel opened her mouth to ask more only for Sigurd to go on, “We’ll light the fire in the last rays of light, but as soon as darkness comes, we’ll put it out and walk for another hour.”

  “Why?” she asked while he sat the rooster down, then began collecting wood.

  “Fires are too easy to spot in the night. Smoke is easy to see in the day as well. Fires will be a risk either way, we need to mitigate that risk.”

  “Oh,” Vel said. She considered asking about his “vengeance”, but she got the inkling from the hard expression on his face that he didn’t want to talk about it. Instead, she asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Sigurd. Wash up and rest, you look like hell,” he said, then pulled a waterskin from off his shoulder and offered it to her.

  The clean water was too much of a temptation for Vel to take it slow. She snatched the thing right out of his hand, opened it, and gulped down a good portion of its contents, relieved by the fresh water.

  “Thank you, Sigurd,” she said, offering the waterskin back.

  “Keep it, I have a spare.”

  Vel looked down at the waterskin, the item practically gold in her hands. Had she had this a long time ago, she wouldn’t have had to worry so much about finding a good source of water.

  “Would you have made it back in time to save me, if I were to have been sacrificed?” she asked, putting the waterskin over her back and moving to the pond to get started on her nails.

  “Barely. Probably would have gotten us both killed in the process. It’s a damn good thing you saved yourself, Lavender,” he said.

  “Lavender?”

  “Your hair. I’d call you Blondie if you were blond,” he said, shrugging. “It’s just a nickname.”

  “Isn’t a nickname supposed to be shorter than my real name?”

  “Semantics.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Vel asked, forcefully scrubbing her nails in the palms of her hands.

  [Tough Hide level 3]

  Seriously? From scrubbing too hard? Vel thought.

  “You don’t get out much, do you?”

  “Did being a sacrifice to the gods clue you in on that, or the fact that I don’t understand your semantics?”

  The hunter gave an amused snort. “Both,” he said, dumping wood in a pile. He looked up to the dimming sky, then pulled out a dagger and some flint.

  “Let me,” Vel offered, waving her hands dry.

  “Let the girl who grew up in a temple start a fire with a dagger the size of her arm?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Not happening.”

  Be that way, Vel huffed, and knelt before his pile of wood. She held a hand up, and shot a small fireball at the wood.

  [Fireball level 3]

  The fire didn’t take to the wood the first time, but after a second time, embers finally stretched across a branch.

  [Fireball level 4]

  Sigurd was quick to lean over, shield it with a hand, and nurture it with his breath. Soon enough, the flames came to life. After sitting back up, he asked, “How did you do that?”

  “With a skill.”

  “Duh,” Sigurd said, unamused. “I mean, how does a [sacrifice] have a skill?”

  “Because my class changed when I turned eighteen.”

  The hunter’s jaw slackened, and he stared at her like she’d said something crazy, which she totally did. It was pretty crazy to her too, but Velmira was starting to think that sacrificing the same reincarnated woman over and over again was the real crazy thing about all of this.

  “Are you a mage class then?” he asked, picking up the rooster and slicing into it.

  Vel turned green at the sight. Closing her eyes for a moment, she shook her head. Get used to it, she thought, knowing that she’d need to, especially since this was her life now. A more exciting one, she thought, the idea striking her. It was more exciting. No, freedom was exciting. She just needed to share it with Edard now.

  “Not exactly,” she opened her eyes, and looked at him. “It sounds rather sinister.”

  “What is it?”

  “Will you kill me if I tell you?”

  Sigurd blinked, then sighed. He lowered his bloodied dagger, “Velmira, I’m not going to kill you. I’d much rather rob the church of you.”

  “For your vengeance?”

  “Yeah,” he said, lifting his knife and getting back to work. She wished he hadn’t when he started to dismantle the rooster’s bowels. “They killed my wife.”

  Oh. Oh. That was a big piece of information. Why hadn’t he started there! It could still be a lie, a little voice in her head said, but she shoved that aside. A man trying to kill her wouldn’t skin her a rooster, right?

  “My class is [Dark Avenger],” Vel answered.

  “Damn straight.”

  “What?”

  “You sound like a real enemy to the church. No wonder they wanted to kill you.”

  “Huh.” Well, when he put it that way . . . Yeah, no wonder!

  “What does being a [Dark Avenger] mean?”

  “I can gain skills. Any time I’m wronged, I gain a skill that was used.”

  “So when I punched you?”

  “Yes,” Vel refrained from touching the bruise that was no doubt on her jaw now.

  “Interesting. If an ally attacked you or wronged you, even if you were okay with it, could you still gain a skill?” Sigurd asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s probably worth it to try.”

  “Let’s do that tomorrow. In the meantime, get some rest. We might have a long journey before us.”

  “Yeah. Is Lamone the settlement northwest of us?”

  “Yes. We should reach it either tomorrow night or the morning after.”

  Vel nodded, then undid the jerkin to lay on it.