They were waiting for us at the road.

  “How did you know where to meet us?” I glanced over at the bridge as I opened the side door to the RV for the two of them.

  They were both covered in dirt and burn marks. Trent’s left eye was swollen and Miel was leaking white blood out of the bandage that wrapped her right arm from the elbow to her knuckles.

  “I can find any of you with the mark.” Trent looked at the broken driver’s window as he got into the RV. “Looks like you handled yourselves.”

  Miel’s red eyes locked onto Ether sleeping on the couch. Her gaze lingered there for a moment before she looked around the RV at the rest of us. “And you all survived in one piece.”

  “You didn’t just look at the party menu?” I grinned as I got to use the knowledge I’d just learned.

  “Just because you’re alive doesn’t mean that one of you couldn’t be missing an arm or unconscious.” My mother-in-law huffed.

  “Oh.” I nodded at her arm. “Do we need to have Justia heal—”

  “Your baby healer won’t speed this up but a few seconds. Trent has a T5 healing spell that kept me from bleeding out, but we prioritized conserving mana rather than how much he was going to have to dump to make my arm useful again.” She spat on the floor. “Stupid cows.”

  “We got lucky that they expected me to still be Tier Six.” Trent dropped into the booth across from Fray as the RV started across the bridge. “Next time, I imagine that they’re going to send stronger people after us.”

  “But aren’t you stronger now?” I looked between them. “Which one of you got the experience?”

  Miel glared at me, then gestured at Trent. “Breaking his seal won’t show an illegal class like mine…” She stroked Ether’s white hair with her left hand. “But now he’s got that PK tag.”

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  Gesai had earned herself the PK, or player killer, tag when she’d killed Sipher to keep him from announcing my secret. When someone killed another person with a Mantle, a negative mark was placed on the killer’s Mantle, which would let anyone who could scan Mantles know that they had killed someone.

  Archbishop Mavery had removed the tag from Gesai’s Mantle, so it was possible to have it removed, but you needed either an Archbishop or a High Priest that was at least the same Tier as the person they were taking the tag off of. Which meant that we either had to turn around and hope that Mavery was as high of Tier as Trent, which I didn’t think he was, or we had to wait until we reached Iver and hope that his High Priest was strong enough to remove it.

  “Which will only be a problem if we go into a city where there is a God AND if they’ve got a reader that can break through a T6 encryption spell.” Trent grinned as he scooted up against the wall to sit lengthwise on the booth. “I know for a fact that Jyscor doesn’t have that tech and we don’t have to worry about it when we get to Iver.”

  “But doesn’t that mean that you’ll need to stay longer in Iver to get the tag removed?” I walked over to the booth and sat down next to Fray.

  The green woman tensed and scooted closer to the corner to give me plenty of room. I’d hoped that now that she couldn’t be part of my harem in the physical sense, she’d get more comfortable around me, but it seemed like she was still worried about her place in our group.

  “It is going to add an extra day or two.” Trent sighed. “Which isn’t ideal, but Whisper should be there by morning, so they’ll at least have some measure of protection.”

  “Didn’t you say that Rix’s sister was with her?” I tried to remember if he’d said what level the other woman was.

  “Lyssa is seventy-two.” Trent took a deep breath. “The Fane Ward has fairly young Gods with the strongest of them being Thalda and Nyssa at Tier Eight. Most of the others are Tier Seven, so she should be strong enough to get Rix and the others to Nyssa. Once they’re there, I doubt even Kire would try to get them.”

  “Why to Nyssa and not Iver or one of the Witches?” I could tell by the curiosity on Miel’s face that she wanted to know the answer as well. “Wouldn’t they be in a better position to protect Godlings than some random God?”

  My father took a deep breath. “Nyssa isn’t just any Goddess, she used to be a Sugaru.”

  I recognized the subrace of God hunters who had increased stats compared to normal Adventurers as well as skills that were more effective against the Gods. Trent had told me that it was possible for one of the Sugaru to become a God of a city, but I thought he was talking theoretically, not that he actually knew one who had.

  “And…” He glanced over at Miel. “She’s Rix’s aunt.”

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