Awakened with two or more affinities exist. Do not delude yourself, thinking it a boon. With two elements, a mage or a mageknight will need to waste not twice as much time perfecting their abilities, but four times. Those rare few with three mana affinities need to spend nine times as much time mastering their abilities.

  That’s why most awakened with multiple affinities often use only a single element to push themselves faster, never bothering with the rest until their growth stops and their busy schedule clears.

  — Excerpt from the Basics of Spellcasting

  Day 91, 11:30 PM

  Based on the books I had read and the way people acted, awakened feared nothing outside Summersweald. Which was incredibly foolish. Death lurks behind every corner if you’re not careful, regardless of your realm’s size.

  While impossible in one-on-one fights, a large enough number of those weaker than you will exhaust and kill you if they are determined enough. Even regular humans. As will well placed ambushes, knives to the kidneys, and arrows from your blind spots. Which can again be unleashed by those without a hint of mana.

  So, why did a thirty-seven year old woman, who looked like a twenty-year-old girl, walk alone in the dead of night, taking the unpatrolled dark alleys instead of the well lit, well patrolled streets? The answer was confidence and the desire to save a handful of seconds by taking a shortcut. Flake came from an organization and family so powerful she couldn’t comprehend danger existed in a human setting.

  I naturally knew all sufficiently powerful factions across the world. The untouchable imperials, the ten royal families constantly solidifying their hold over their realms, the ten ducal families under them, each struggling to eclipse their monarch and become the new royal, and finally the eighty-eight knightly orders.

  Flake’s important pedigree didn’t interest the men in the alley, or so I believed as she ducked into it.

  Without a sound, in perfect coordination, the five struck. The light was dim, but good enough for me to see five whips whistle towards Flake. The woman’s combat training kicked in. She waved a hand and summoned a barrier of ice before her.

  The shield blocked three frontal assaults, but the two whips coming from the rear struck her back. She screamed, her shield buckled and dispersed as she fell to the ground. There was another whistle followed by a pair of dull thuds as the two sneak-attackers collapsed, my throwing daggers stabbed deep in the backs of their skulls.

  I expected the three survivors to flee, but they charged towards Flake instead.

  “Finish her!”

  Shocked, I realized the incident in the alley wasn’t a random murder, but an assassination. The three lashed out with their whips, but Flake conjured a dome-shaped shield, which stopped the strikes and held despite the cracks spreading from it.

  She bought herself a chance, and I ran towards her. The attackers didn’t flinch at my intervention, but seeing another combatant join in on the action, they changed their approach. One kept attacking Flake’s dome, the other two stabbed their whips into their dead comrades. The alley was dark, but bright enough for me to see that the whips were squirming, or possibly throbbing. It was certainly some form of magic, one I was unfamiliar with, despite reading everything up to the fifth realm the imperial library had to offer.

  The bodies on the ground writhed too, their limbs spasming. The two thugs glowed crimson, creating enough light for me to see the two dessicated corpses beneath their feet. In a matter of moments, the two mages turned their former comrades into mummies and lunged for me.

  Redo was red, and the simple rescue mission in which I would drive away a handful of robbers was anything but simple.

  I didn’t have a staff, or a sword, or a spear, weapons with which I was an expert, so I drew another pair of throwing knives, wielding them as daggers. My heart started drumming. I could die. I was a knight, an inferior class, facing two mages of my realm, two mages wielding blood skills I had never read about.

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  A glowing red whip lashed out towards my face. I blocked with a dagger, slashing at blood shaped into a weapon. Instead of coiling itself around my blade, the whip passed through my weapon and my face flared with phantom pain. I did a backflip, the red whistling above me as I spun through the air, and throwing a dagger at the enemy who had forsaken their defense in favor of killing me immediately.

  The knife speared his throat, and the blood whip turned to regular blood, dropping to the ground along with its master with a splash. My left flank flared with familiar phantom pain, and I dropped to the ground. Danger sense was incredibly useful, but the information was nonexistent. The danger could graze or spear me, and they would feel the same.

  The blood whip, which against all logic struck like a viper, aimed to pierce my innards stabbed above me. I threw the other dagger at the mage, but the blade struck a red disk. Instead of deflecting it, the blood shield let the dagger pierce it, grabbing it.

  That was my last throwing dagger.

  Twenty. I resolved myself to load myself with concealed weapons from now on, and there was no reason not to walk around with a sturdy staff. People carried swords, why couldn’t I carry a weapon?

  If I redo this fight, I’m coming armed with a man-sized sack of weapons.

  Fighting unarmed against a mage of your realm was tantamount to suicide. I hoped my stats would make the difference and charged the man. His eyes widened in surprise, the red glow around him already dimming. Whatever he had used, the ability came at a cost or with a time limit.

  I was two steps away when my back flared with pain. I rolled to the side as the blood viper returned and stabbed its master. For lucky people, that would’ve been the end of the fight. Not for me.

  The whip froze after barely pricking its accidental target, mage’s control exceptional. Still it bought me half a second to jump the man and break his neck. My heart was pounding like a battering ram against my chest as I looked into the alley.

  I feared Flake was dead, killed by the final attacker, but she was hobbling towards me, her headless opponent pinned to the wall with a dozen icicles, their head somewhere in the dark alley.

  “Thank you for your help.” Her stern face showed not a hint of gratitude. “We need to report this incident to the heresy hunters.”

  I stared at her. Heresy hunters were elite awakened assigned to hunting demons, respect them and obey. That was the only thing I read about them in the Overview of Imperial Guilds. Which in and off itself was very suspicious. I originally thought they were tasked with hunting otherworldly threats, but demon might have a different meaning from the one I assumed.

  Flake spun on her heel and led the way towards the city center, where all the guilds were, and brought me to an unassuming, unmarked building without a sign. The young woman didn’t say a word in the five minutes we took to reach our destination and merely knocked on the door.

  A tall brown-haired woman opened it, wearing a golden armor with green clothes under it, uniform very similar, but not identical, to those who intercepted Flake’s grandmother.

  “Honored Heresy Hunter,” Flake bowed slightly, “I was attacked by the Blood Cult inside the city and I have come to make a report. This unaffiliated knight came to my aid, and the two of us somehow defeated them, mostly thanks to their complacency and the suddenness of the knight’s attack.”

  The woman nodded without a word, but her already serious face turned as hard as stone, and she motioned us in.

  “Go down the corridor for questioning.” She closed the door and pointed down the long, well lit hallway.

  I followed Flake, deep in thought. What did I get myself into? That question passed through my mind half a dozen times before a uniformed pair met us and split us up, a woman taking Flake into one room while a man showed me into an interrogation chamber, its only furniture a large table with three chairs on one side and three on the other.

  “Sit.”

  I did.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Dandelion.”

  “That’s not your full name.” The man speared me with his gaze.

  “It’s not,” I confessed, but had no intention of stating my real name. I didn’t even know what my real name was anymore, so I decided to go with Dandelion. “I’m considering abandoning my surname and being just Dandelion for the rest of this life.”

  “Describe what happened.” Apparently my explanation was good enough to fool whatever way of divining falsehood the man had.

  “I was walking down the street, heading for the Prancing Boney to have myself a beer…” I told him the truth I had prepared for Iceflow Frostgrave’s potential interrogation. The man wrote down everything as fast as I could speak, and I had the distinct feeling he could have gone much faster.

  “Are you always carrying throwing knives?”

  “Not always, but after what happened tonight, I’m not leaving my home without ten of them and a sword or a staff. No, make that twenty.”

  “Continue.” He kept writing, asking whether I knew the victim or had any idea why they attacked her before we concluded the hearing.

  “You are free to go, but don’t leave for Summersweald without our permission. If you plan to travel outside the kingdom, let us know. We will tell you when this precaution is no longer necessary.”

  I nodded. “May I ask something?”

  “No. Enjoy your evening.”