The next two days were uneventful. We trained, rested, traversed the mountain pass. My Unarmed Combat skill rose to 15/50, Stringed Instrument Mastery rose to 18/100, and Encore’s Harmonic Concordance rose to 39/50.

  I learned that my Resonant Reconstruction skill leveled up with performing, and not by changing my instrument’s form, thankfully. It rose to 2/10 over the next two days. My bond with the Biwa of Azure Skies increased to 5%. Both levelled very slowly, but I was pleased with the progress.

  Radiant Foxfire, while not nearly as complicated to perform as Cahl’s insane Tatsu, came with its own challenges, mainly stemming from the imagination required to form the illusions. I discovered how difficult it is to project your thoughts into reality.

  My first illusion was admittedly ambitious. I tried forming a duplicate of Katarina. The resulting, roughly Katarina-colored, lump of illusory flesh earned me a thwack from her willow branch.

  I was less ambitious with my next illusion, creating a small floating circle of illusory light. It didn’t actually produce illumination, which I tested by sending it into the cart, but it appeared to be a floating ball of light. That is, until Encore joined in with Harmonic Concordance. To our amazement, his addition to the performance actually enhanced the realism of the illusion. The light actually produced a soft, white glow.

  Much of my time performing over the two days of travel were focused on Radiant Foxfire. By the end of the second day I was able to create small illusions. My proudest moment was when I successfully made an illusory duplicate of Encore, mimicking his motions as the kitsiho leapt and flew in tight circles just overhead.

  “It gets old, hearing you play the same song over and over,” Katarina said as she watched the two foxes circle just above, “but moments like this make it worth it. You’ve gotten really good at this in a short amount of time.”

  “Should I try to copy you again?”

  “Sure,” the willow branch materialized in her hand and she gave me a dangerous smile. “I’d love to see it.”

  I laughed, adjusting my focus and shifting the illusion of Encore to become a flying snake, then a falcon. The bachi bounced and danced among the strings of the bawi as I played. It was a playful motif.

  Encore — the real encore — abruptly dropped from the sky, landing on the bench between us.

  “Travelers approach, around the next bend. A group of eight. They look wounded.” He spoke in a quick, quiet rush. I slid the bachi beneath the strings and shifted the instrument back to a lute. I was still much more comfortable performing with it.

  Abernathy shifted in the back, peeking through the cover. “Travelers?”

  “Just around the bend. We will see them in moments.” Encore replied.

  “Tatsu?” Abernathy squeaked.

  “They appeared wounded, I think they pose us no threat.” Encore sniffed the air. “They smell of blood. And pain.”

  The first of the group rounded the corner, an older man and woman in burned, torn clothing, covered in dried blood from scabbed over wounds on their heads. They leaned heavily on gnarled walking sticks, carefully shifting their weight in a step-step-shuffle gait.

  They stopped when they saw us approaching, eyes widening with fear. Several others huddled behind them, children. Six children of varying ages. Three of the oldest, none older than ten, held babies. Their clothes were equally filthy, if less blood stained. They had distant, dazed expressions on their faces.

  “P—please,” the old man’s voice was barely above a whisper. His expression was caught between terror and hope. “Please.”

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  He tried saying more but collapsed against me as I hurried over. The pungent aroma of body odor and blood filled my nose as I held the man up. He was surprisingly light in my arms.

  I helped him into a sitting position against the side of the mountain. The woman shuffled over and tried speaking, but her voice cracked and she coughed. I pulled a water skin out of my inventory and handed it to the woman, who looked between it and me for a second before taking it and taking a short gulp.

  One of the babies started crying.

  “Shh shh, quiet now Ethan,” a girl of maybe eight said, rocking the child. “I think he soiled himself, gramma.”

  The old woman nodded, passing the waterskin to the girl as she took the baby. “Thank you for the water,” she said to me, carefully lowering herself to the ground. She had a satchel tied across her back. She pulled a triangular bit of cloth from within and set about changing the baby’s swaddling. The children passed the waterskin around, drinking deeply. “Here, off the side.”

  She handed the soiled linen to a boy, the oldest. He shifted the baby he was holding and took the diaper, tossing it off the side of the cliff. He turned and froze as he began walking back, looking further up the mountain pass from where they had come. It was currently out of my line of sight due to the mountain’s position.

  “They’re coming! Gods they’re coming!” The boy said it in an emotionless monotone, devoid of hope. His eyes were haunted, blank.

  “No!” One of the smaller girls screamed. “Daddy’s gonna stop them! He promised!”

  The old woman looked back the way they had come, then to us. Katarina and Abernathy had both walked up.

  “Please, help us. The vicious little monsters have been after us all day. We can’t keep—” she was cut off by a series of wet coughs.

  “What is it?” I asked, stepping towards the boy and looking further up the path.

  The mountain pass had levelled off the day before, just below the line of snow and ice along the mountains. It was still very cold this high up, but the people that had built the pass had kept it from reaching too high. The path had been mostly level since then, though it still wound around the mountains along the mountainside.

  I saw a group of small figures hurrying down the path. They saw me as well and let loose a barrage of high pitched screams and jeers. They were familiar, but different than the last iteration I had seen back during the Adventure Guild class exam.

  Kobolds. At least twenty of them, armed with thick white fur. Their features were shorter, with black gums and sharp teeth. Most of them wielded crude iron hatchets. Four had bows, and two had crooked staves topped with ram skulls. The curling horns on the ram’s skulls were coated in a thin sheen of ice.

  Katarina ran past me, heading off the group. I cursed, pulling my lute out. I started playing Kinetic Overload as I followed. Katarina was fast, quickly eating up the distance.

  “It’s okay,” I heard Abernathy say, “Let’s get you all into the cart. You can rest and eat.”

  Katarina: Let us know if there’s any trouble back there, Abe.

  Abernathy: Aye, but what are a bunch of babies and old people gonna do?

  Katarina: You never know.

  The rest was lost to me as I followed Katarina, but I trusted Abernathy to take care of them. Encore flitted on my shoulder and provided a deep undertone to my performance that I felt in my chest. I finished the performance at 98% two seconds before Katarina got to the group.

  The kobolds had been momentarily startled at Katarina’s frontal assault, but the four archers had recovered enough to nock arrows in her direction. A flurry of rocks were thrown by the other kobolds. Katarina activated an instance of Kinetic Overload, launching herself high in the air as the rocks and arrows rained down on the spot she had been standing in. I kept jogging towards them, performing Kinetic Overload again as I released the stored instance of Radiant Winds from within my lute.

  A dozen fist-sized orbs of radiant light erupted from my lute. I sent them towards the fray as Katarina launched herself from a platform of air high above in an explosive rush. She aimed for one of the kobolds with a staff, in the back. I was close enough to make out their names.

  Arctic Mountain Kobold Shaman

  They had begun chanting, forming a swirling icy portal just behind them. Spears of ice shot from the portal. Katarina deflected the first two, punching one of the Kobold shamans in the side of the head and detonating a third instance of Kinetic Overload. Half of the kobold’s head turned to a red mist under the force of the impact. Its body flipped end over and, slamming into one of the archers. Both of their bodies flew off the side of the cliff as another three spears of ice shot from the portal.

  Katarina deflected one, but the other two hit their mark. One sank into her shoulder, protruding out the other side, dripping blood. The other hit her in the gut, protruding from her back. She stumbled for a moment before I sent six of the dozen orbs flying into her. She screamed, pulling the icy spears from her flesh as the magic healed the wounds.

  The kobolds had all turned to face her. They swarmed Katarina, who spun in a tight circle on her artificial leg, kicking out with a wide kick. She infused the blast of wind that accompanied the kick with a charge of Kinetic Overload. The result was a powerful blast of wind and force, toppling over the group of kobolds like a strong wind.

  I sent the remaining orbs of healing magic into Katarina, topping off her health as I finished performing Kinetic Overload a second time. I directed the buff to Katarina once more, who shifted on her footing and faced down the remaining 18 kobolds.

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