Kalak turned, growling at the reedy figure that appeared from the gloom. There were more looming shapes behind it, and Cleo could tell from the crease of Kalak’s brow and his darting eyes that he was wondering how they would get out of this mess alive. Seeing his fear, she clenched her fists and pushed her growing unease aside. She would survive this. She would grow and progress in order to become stronger and find a way back home. For her, there was no other option.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Kalak said. “No wonder we didn’t see any goblins. Gods-damned unholy creatures!”

  “Any ideas, Kalak?” Rosalia said. “Maybe you were right, we could run?”

  “Nah, I’m done with running,” Kalak said, facing off against the sickly undead still emerging from the gloom and amassing in front of their little group. “You know we wouldn’t get far. Best to get this over with.”

  Five of the Silent Legion had appeared out of the shadows, resembling mummified corpses. Deep-brown desiccated flesh, where it remained, clung to bones and ligaments as a veneer. Their faces held dried flesh and gaps where the skin had withered or been torn away, leaving open cavities and rictus grins of yellowed teeth. Their eyes were black pits centered with a faint glowing pinprick of ruby that seemed animated with intelligence or awareness. Patchy hair dotted scalps, like weeds on a wind-blown cliff, and tattered and stained clothes clung to their bodies, as half-rotted as the undead themselves. Each clutched only a single quartz-bladed dagger in a cracked-nail grip.

  Rosalia’s face became grim, and she tugged down her handkerchief. Her mouth was drawn into a thin line. “In that case, Kalak, it has been an honor. I guess we’ll get to see Scrubby sooner than expected, but at least we can take one or two of these creatures down with us. Cleo, I wish we could have met under more fortuitous circumstances. Keep your energy shield up, and when it looks like Kalak and I are about to go down, run.”

  Cleo swallowed around the lump that formed in her throat, though her mouth was bone dry. Rosalia thought they were going to die, and that they might only put down a couple of these undead before being overwhelmed. A surge of guilt flooded her at the way she’d thought of Rosalia and Kalak—always wondering if they were actually bad people and going to kill her for her cards. But, in her defense, they were practically strangers, and these things had to happen, here, where cards were wealth and power. Now, when the situation was dire, they were making a last stand, and it looked like they thought they could buy her time to flee.

  Something shifted inside her then, as images of her mother and father and siblings flashed in her mind—a blazing core of rage at the unfairness of it all, which was soon layered by a cold hardness of desperation and resolve. She had survived so far with crippling illness and family tragedy, been broken and stomped on and dragged herself back to a semblance of a life, and she’d be damned if she would let herself die out here on some unknown world at the hands of creatures that were dead and should have the good sense to stay that way.

  “Havara tal rad larmash’pahal?” one undead rasped, and Cleo gasped.

  “Isst’kuun logrin,” replied another, and then all five hissed in what she realized was a horrid laughter.

  “I thought they were supposed to be silent?” Cleo said.

  Kalak took half a step forward, keeping the tip of his spear aimed at the closest undead. “We don’t know what you’re saying!” he shouted. “Begone! Leave us be and go back to your unholy masters!”

  The Silent Legion ignored him and spread out in a line. One, the shortest, tilted its head and clacked its yellowed teeth. And then they sprang forward.

  Rosalia shoved Cleo behind her as Kalak twisted his spear just in time to parry a blow from the looming undead. Its desiccated arm flew by him as he sidestepped, and he stabbed desperately, opening a gash across its thigh. The creature hopped back a step, the red spark in the black pits of its eyes seeming to glare at Kalak.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rosalia raise her arms and whisper, just as Kalak threw himself backwards towards them.

  The mage’s balls of flame materialized out of nothing, and strands of fire whipped out from the spheres. But this time, where the searing tendrils had previously lashed undead flesh, they only left blackened marks instead of flaying skin and cracking bones.

  Cleo broke out of her stupor and began to cast.

  Despair… Despair…

  She layered her curse upon one undead, then switched to another as it slowed slightly and plum-colored mist rose from its body.

  Despair… Despair…

  Kalak moved with blinding speed, blocking and slashing and thrusting at the undead, his spear shining with a cold light. Flashes of radiance came from Cleo’s left where Rosalia stood, and her figure blurred with a spell as one creature slipped past Kalak and stabbed a dagger at her. The blade slammed into Rosalia, and Cleo felt a portion of her mana drain as her energy shield absorbed the blow. The mage staggered back though, and the undead hammered a fist into her head, which rocked to the side as Rosalia yelped in pain. And with each absorbed attack, more of Cleo’s mana depleted.

  Despair… Despair…

  Curiously, Cleo remained untouched as she stood there, appearing frozen to anyone watching. Chunks of her mana drained again and again, as her companions took blows to the energy shield protecting them that would otherwise have left them reeling or dead. Kalak’s spear whirled around him as he desperately tried to keep the creatures at bay.

  Despair… Despair… Despair…

  “Fire Storm,” Rosalia shouted, and once again coruscating lines of energy erupted from both of her hands. Booming concussions resounded, and sparkling fires erupted against mummified flesh. And to Cleo’s dismay, the Silent Legion didn’t pause.

  Despair… Despair…

  Four of the Silent Legion were now slowing and spuming violet mist from her curses. Kalak dashed among the undead, taking blow after blow that Cleo felt inside her as chunks of her mana evaporated. And although his spear struck home again and again, the damage he caused didn’t seem to bother the disgusting creatures. The Warrior Indurate didn’t falter though, and moved with unnatural speed and grace. The glowing steel tip of his weapon jabbed into skulls and tore gashes in flesh as dry as dust. Claw-like hands and quartz blades slammed into him, and the blue glow of energy flared as Cleo’s shield shook with strain, and she felt her mana diminish to a dangerously low level.

  Damn it… I’ll be drained dry soon… Despair… Despair… Despair…

  Cleo swallowed, focusing on the undead in front of her, and a part of her wished she had more powerful spells like Rosalia—but so far, against the Silent Legion, the mage’s cards had made little difference. And Kalak had only managed to fend them off without doing much damage.

  But the three of them were still alive, and still fighting, and miraculously uninjured except for taking blows that stung and would leave bruises. Cleo winced as more chunks of her mana drained from her energy shield as it absorbed ferocious attacks. Any moment now, and her shield would diminish to the point she couldn’t hold it any longer, her reserved mana drained and her regeneration failing to replenish the damage. Worse, her curses were also spending her unreserved mana like crazy.

  She was about to curse again, but stopped abruptly. Although her Despair was working to slow the undead, and the mist seemed to show they were taking damage, it just wasn’t enough to turn the tide of battle in their favor. Now it was kill or be killed, and if she didn’t survive, then her Legend card would die with her. And not only would she never see her family or friends again, but the world would eventually suffer a horrifying fate.

  She needed to become harder—like stone, or steel. Rosalia and Kalak had shown her their true colors, who they really were, and she couldn’t hold back and let the first two people she’d met on this god-forsaken world die. Cleo knew she would join their fate soon after.

  She braced herself against the mental strain as Kalak took a thumping strike to his side, which flung him into the dirt and her mana suffered another blow. She again measured her rapidly dwindling mana reserves, and spoke.

  “Retribution.”

  Her unreserved mana drained a portion all at once and the air quivered, droning like a swarm of bees. A wave of indigo void-energy lashed from her.

  Undead spun and twisted, as if slashed by a massive invisible sword blade. Bones cracked and limbs were severed. Deep grooves were gouged through desiccated flesh and ancient bone.

  And what remained of the Silent Legion backed away. Ruby eyes turned to Cleo and the shortest of them, now missing an arm, hissed and clicked its leathery tongue against stained teeth.

  Cleo ignored their attention and cleared her mind.

  “Do that again!” shouted Kalak, his chest heaving and limbs shaking with exhaustion, as Rosalia stumbled closer to Cleo. Both of them were spared from her spell damage by being in her party.

  There was no time to be distracted. She focused on sensing her mana and how much she had left.

  “Retribution,” she repeated.

  And nothing happened.

  Oh, I used up all the absorbed damage already. Shit…

  “Flame-ball of Arcing!” Rosalia screamed, as she realized Cleo’s spell hadn’t worked. More flaming balls materialized among the Silent Legion and flayed at them with scorching tendrils. But as before, the spell hardly did anything, and the undead ignored the damage almost with impunity.

  The short undead made an intricate gesture with its remaining hand, and then vanished. To reappear right beside Cleo, and she screamed as its fist smashed into her, rocking her head to the side. She stumbled, ears ringing, vision hazy.

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  And the last of her reserved mana drained and her energy shield winked out.

  Cleo fell to the ground, sucking in air and lifting her arms above her head, hoping to somehow ward off more blows. Her energy shield didn’t stop momentum, and that’s what had led to her downfall.

  She could hear Kalak and Rosalia screaming

  I should have used the dome like we’d practiced, she thought. Was this how it ended? Murdered by sapient undead before she’d even made it to civilization? She shook her head. She was supposed to be a Legend, wasn’t she? It was what she’d asked for, and against her expectations it was what she’d been gifted.

  Some Legend.

  A failure.

  A useless waste of a Legendary card.

  No, not like this. She still had a trickle of unreserved mana left, a smidgeon from her regeneration. Would it be enough? It had to be.

  Curse Strike, she thought, triggering her curse’s secondary ability.

  “Curse Strike,” she whispered.

  “Curse Strike,” she said.

  “Curse Strike,” she screamed so loudly the words tore at her throat.

  And the last of her mana vanished.

  Cleo cried out, she knew not what she said. An appeal. A scream of anger and defiance.

  Four points of violet light coalesced overhead. Scintillating beams sparked as the curses on the undead were consumed and transformed. The purple glares coalesced into blinding lights, limning dust and undead with their brilliance. Blinding vitriolic flashes painted every surface, dispelling shadows, and thunder cracked around her, splitting the air.

  Undead that usually remained quiet cried out, and then were silenced.

  Cleo’s hands dug into the dry dust of the ground. She laughed weakly, trying to pull herself together. She struggled to her feet, coughing dust.

  A shrieking wail split the air.

  Four. She’d cursed four of the undead, stacking her spell and then unleashing her strike.

  Four blackened circles darkened the ground. Fragments of bone and mummified flesh littered them.

  “By all that’s holy!” she heard Rosalia exclaim.

  To Cleo’s right, the short undead was still alive. It backed away, muttering in its guttural, ancient language. Its flesh was blackened and scorched from being caught by the curse strikes that had hammered its nearby companions. Its mouth was open, as if it couldn’t believe what was happening.

  “What are you?” it rasped.

  Cleo’s blood turned cold and she backed away.

  But the undead gestured again and dissolved into sand, which hissed and steamed, and collapsed into a pile and traveled away fast beneath the earth, as if something burrowed underneath it.

  “And don’t come back!” yelled Kalak, before collapsing to the ground and laughing hysterically. His leather armor sported multiple gashes which oozed blood, and one hand clutched a head wound that dripped crimson onto the dust. He gasped heavily and then began to weep.

  Cleo looked away, embarrassed, and shocked with disbelief that they were still alive.

  Rosalia appeared slightly worse, her clothes shredded and skin slashed. Cleo’s energy shield had broken for only moments before she’d acted, and her two companions were suffering the consequences of her delay.

  “I’m sorry,” Cleo said. “I’m so sorry. I should have—”

  “No, girl,” Kalak said, rubbing his face and composing himself. “We had no right to survive. That we have is because of you.”

  “No recriminations out here, Cleo,” Rosalia gasped out. “We do our best. It’s all we can do. Now hush, both of you.” The mage shrugged off her backpack and struggled to undo the buckle holding the top closed. Cleo rushed to help, and Rosalia soon removed a glass vial from inside a small wooden box padded with felt. The vial contained a blood-red liquid swirling with fluorescent orange strands.

  “Do we have to?” Kalak said. “It’s expensive.”

  Rosalia sighed and then stumbled over to him. “Half for you, and half for me.” She eyed Cleo. “Cleo here was hit, but not after her energy shield gave out. So, I think she’ll be fine without any.”

  “I’ll leave her a drop,” Kalak said.

  Rosalia nodded slowly. “All right, I will as well. Might be a waste, but you never know.” She downed almost half of the vial and handed it to Kalak, who did the same. They both shuddered, and Rosalia let out a faint whimper. Then Cleo watched in amazement as their wounds twitched and began to close as their blood stopped leaking. Soon, most of the injuries they’d sustained were fully closed, but not all of them. Not-quite half a healing potion each didn’t go the distance, but it was a great deal better than nothing. Both Kalak and Rosalia smeared on a salve and bandaged up the remaining wounds as best they could, with stock from first-aid kits each of them had in their backpack.

  “This is for you,” Rosalia said, holding out what remained of the swirling healing potion.

  “Thank you. I can’t cast my regeneration aura. I don’t have enough mana.”

  “When you can, do it, please.”

  Cleo wasn’t injured from the fight, apart from a sore head, but took the vial with a murmured thanks. Without pausing to think, she downed the liquid, which initially burned her throat like chili-sauce laced with black pepper, before becoming icy cold. She coughed and then shivered, as a strange paradoxical icy-warmth spread throughout her body. In the few moments she stood there, the ache in her head lessened, and miraculously, so did the pain in her muscles and joints, along with a deep weariness she hadn’t realized had snuck up on her. She must have been running on adrenaline for a while. She didn’t know how much these potions cost, but she wanted some just in case.

  “I thought you said you’d used up all your potions?” Cleo said.

  “We lied,” Kalak said. “This is really the last, though, and I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from the expense. Sorry. Didn’t know you from a bar of soap back then.”

  “Soap!” exclaimed Rosalia. Her cheeks were flushed, and she’d pulled out a canteen. She swished a mouthful of water before spitting out a stream of grayish water. “I need a bath! A long, hot bath. When we get back, that’s the first thing I’ll do. Wash my hair, and everywhere else. This damned dust gets into every crevice and turns to mud.”

  Eww… gross.

  Kalak rose to his feet and looked around him, gaze lingering on the blackened patches where undead used to stand. “Questions later. We need to get out of here, and night’s falling. Let’s go, Rosalia.”

  The mage groaned, and then passed the canteen to Cleo. “No rest for the wicked.”

  “You ain’t wicked so stop your complaining. Where’s that cave we used before?”

  Rosalia frowned, and then pointed to the west, somewhere close to the end of the putrid lake. “There, I think. It’ll do. We’re not sleeping away, however much we need to.”

  Cleo tentatively sipped from the canteen and found it contained water. The most delicious water she’d ever tasted. She swished some around in her mouth and spat, copying Rosalia, then gulped down a few mouthfuls. She was tempted to drain the entire canteen, but she didn’t know how much longer they’d be out here in the Blighted Lands, so she restrained herself and reluctantly handed it back to the mage.

  While Rosalia packed up her canteen and shouldered her backpack, Kalak examined the remains of the Silent Legion. None were glowing, so there were no card fragments to loot. He turned to Rosalia, and they exchanged a glance, and then bundled up four of the quartz-bladed daggers and stashed them in his own pack. He turned to Cleo with a grin.

  “There’s a bounty on the Silent Legion. This should pay well.”

  Cleo narrowed her eyes. “I assume a third share is mine?”

  “A third! What does a princess need with—”

  “Kalak!” Rosalia said.

  He threw his hands up. “All right! But that means less for Scrubby’s wife and daughter.”

  “Kalak!”

  “Fine! Cleo, a third of the bounty for you, once the Adventurers Guild pays it. I ain’t advancing you any coin. Anyhow, less yapping, we need to get out of here before the undead attracted by the scuffle arrive.”

  She had a feeling most fights were a scuffle to Kalak.

  He grabbed his spear and trudged off. Rosalia winked at Cleo, and they followed behind. The night was brighter than she expected, with the cloudy sky lit by two distinctly brighter patches. Two moons?

  Kalak threaded them down several ever-increasingly narrow valleys with steeper and steeper walls until they came to a slight overhang under which there was a shallow cave around ten feet deep.

  “It’s not much,” Kalak said.

  “But it’s home,” Rosalia said with a smile.

  “Shut up.”

  Both of them shrugged off their backpacks and made themselves comfortable, backs against the back of the cave wall. Kalak began wolfing down jerky, hardly seeming to chew, while Rosalia ate hers slowly and methodically, her eyes staring out into the night around them. Cleo was famished, but couldn’t risk eating red meat and triggering her lupus. Her muscles ached enough already, her joints twinged with pain again, and her cheeks burned, a sure sign they’d developed a rash. It seemed the few drops of healing potion she’d been left had helped, but it was nowhere near enough to heal her completely, or cure her lupus. She should have known it wouldn’t be easy.

  Turning her senses inward, Cleo checked on her mana pool and was surprised to find it replenished enough for her to reserve enough mana to trigger her regeneration aura, which she did. She immediately felt her mana deplete, and Rosalia let out a quiet gasp.

  “Ha!” Kalak said. “Who needs health potions? We’ll be right as rain after a night’s rest with this aura doing whatever it does.”

  “Health regeneration, and mana,” Rosalia said. “A trickle of each, and not much good in combat, but good enough when we’re traveling or resting. More than good enough. Thank you, Cleo. And Kalak, you’re on first watch as usual.”

  The man didn’t grumble, merely nodded and continued eating. He washed the jerky down with gulps from his own canteen, and then burped quietly.

  “I’ll take a watch, too, if that’s okay?” Cleo said.

  Kalak snorted, and Rosalia shook her head.

  “You’re only an F minus tier,” the mage said. “Which means we’re quite a few tiers above you, with all the benefits that brings. We can stay awake for now, and it doesn’t wear us down too much. You, on the other hand, will probably fall unconscious once the day’s events catch up to you. I’m certain you used up almost, if not all, your mana. That’s exhausting, and at your low tier you’ll feel it soon. You need to mana cycle. That’s why mages never take first watch. They need to cycle.”

  Huh… so cards have additional benefits not stated on them. And of course, I can’t ask about them or I’ll look suspicious. Maybe there’s a kindergarten I can attend…

  “How do I mana cycle?”

  A sound came from Kalak that was suspiciously like a suppressed laugh, but his face was in shadow and she couldn’t see his expression.

  “That’s… both easy and hard,” Rosalia said. “I can run through the basics with you, but be warned, there’s always a certain discomfort.”

  “Pain, is what I heard,” Kalak added.

  “Yes,” Rosalia said. “It’s painful, but necessary. Kalak doesn’t know because he’s a warrior. His skills are more like abilities, while mage skills are spells which use mana. And I believe I mentioned before that—”

  “‘If you can’t handle the larger quantities of mana a higher tier class and skills require, you won’t tier up,’” Cleo quoted.

  “Quick learner. That’s good.”

  “Then how does Kalak tier up?”

  “Because mages are stupid,” Kalak said. “And odd. Who would choose to be a mage, anyway? All that worry about mana and cycling. Bah!”

  “Non-mage classes use mana for their abilities, but it’s unconscious. They use their ability, it has a cooldown time, and then it can be used again. Simple abilities for simple minds.”

  “Shut up!”

  Cleo grinned in the darkness. “So, mana cycling?”

  “Sit and relax, close your eyes and breathe deeply. There’s no reason to explain much more as it’s instinctive, and every mage handles it differently. Some can’t cope with the pain and give up early. They make middling mages or fail entirely.”

  Pain? Cleo wasn’t sure she liked the idea of mana cycling, but if it had to be done, it had to be done. What was a little pain in exchange for tiering up her class and abilities? Nothing. She was used to pain; it was like an old friend. She did as Rosalia suggested and settled on the sandy ground, leaning back against the cave wall.

  “Mana is all around us,” Rosalia said, her voice taking on a formal tone as if giving a lesson. “You need to pull it in, breathe it in, circulate the mana through your lungs and heart and into, and out of, your reservoir. It’s like a mana meditation, and the more mana you cycle, and the longer, the harder it gets.”

  “The more painful, she means,” Kalak said with amusement.

  “Yes, thank you, Kalak.”

  Cleo attempted to do as Rosalia had explained, but initially she couldn’t sense the surrounding mana. It was some time later, when she tried delving into her replenishing mana pool to familiarize herself with how the mana there felt, that she could faintly discern something similar in the air and ground around her. She thought of gathering some to herself, and as soon as she did, her blood burned like liquid fire. Cleo clenched her jaw and held on, but the pain quickly became more intense until her whole body seared with agony.

  She gasped and lost concentration. As soon as she did, her mental grip on her mana slipped and her blood returned to normal.

  “That’s okay,” Rosalia said from nearby. “I didn’t even expect you to grasp the mana at all. That you did is a point in your favor. Most new mages can’t handle the pain, and they take weeks to just briefly hold on for a moment. You did well. Very well. Have a rest, and you can try again later.”

  “It’s about time, isn’t it?” Kalak said.

  “Yes,” Rosalia replied. “I think it is. So, Cleo, I hate to imitate the undead, but what are you?”