Amelia moaned and rolled over. The slender ranger sat up wincing, holding her side with one hand.

The sorceress watched us, amused and unafraid.

“My name is Paol,” I answered her. No one else was speaking, and we needed to do something to stop her from killing us. We were in no condition to defend ourselves.

She nodded at me.

“Very well, Paol. Of course, I don’t recognize you, but one cannot be expected to know every ant in the world.”

Ant?

“And how about the rest of you?”

“Bartholomew,” coughed Duke Benedict’s young liegeman. It seemed he wasn’t unconscious. He didn’t get up, but he had shifted positions so he could see what was happening.

The woman nodded at him as well and glanced disparagingly over the downed soldiers before resting her gaze upon Rose.

“Rose.”

“Amelia.”

“Clara.”

She frowned for a moment at those names with a puzzled look on her face before shrugging slightly. I thought frantically, wondering what I could do, but nothing came to mind. In our current condition, any one of these three beings was probably more powerful than all of us together.

Kali turned to me.

“You, Paol. Tell me again what you’re doing here. This time, be honest, or I may not be so merciful.”

I opened my mouth to speak.

“I haven’t got all day,” the woman said impatiently.

Clara whispered, “Be careful. We can’t fight a goddess.”

Goddess?

“I’m a liaison here to meet with Duke Benedict. The king sent me to speak with him.”

Well, there was at least some amount of truth in those statements. We were here to scout the land, and finding Duke Benedict and speaking with him would certainly help us understand what was happening in Creshey.

“I see. You have an interesting escort, sir liaison.”

She walked slowly over to one of the downed soldiers and poked him with her toe. He didn’t move.

“This man wears the duke’s colors whereas these three women wear the king’s. Why have both in your group?”

I struggled to come up with a reasonable answer when I saw movement near the rearmost troll chieftain. I blinked. Its head fell off, and the body began to fall. Hoping to distract the woman from whatever was happening behind her, I began coughing loudly.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been badly injured,” I gasped out. I wasn’t pretending at the pain either. Coughing with broken ribs hurt.

“Oh, poor boy. Do you need healing?”

She began walking towards me, which meant she was walking away from her troll guards. I couldn’t see exactly what was happening but didn’t look directly behind her because I was afraid of drawing her attention to it. I could tell that the troll chieftain’s enormous body was somehow caught and lowered quietly to the ground.

I coughed loudly. “No, my lady, that’s quite all right. Your gift is not needed.”

“Oh? Are you afraid I’ll do something...nefarious?”

She smirked at me.

Another troll chieftain’s head fell off.

Rafe. It had to be Rafe.

The fall of the second troll chieftain’s body onto the ground made a soft puff of noise, and Kali cocked her head to one side before her eyes went wide. She spun around and flipped one hand in the air. Red lightning speared the distance between her and the man hunched over the dead monster. I saw a brief flicker of metal before the lightning shattered and disappeared.

Rafe strode out of the darkness and into full view.

The woman seemed at a loss.

“Hello, Jenya,” he drawled. “You’re looking well.”

Kali...Jenya...was silent for a moment, a look of calculation on her face. Suddenly, her expression relaxed.

“Rafe. It’s been a long time. I’ve missed you.”

Rafe snorted.

“I can see you’ve been keeping yourself busy,” he said as he gestured at the bodies of the troll chieftains he had quietly slaughtered.

“Want to tell me what this is all about?” Rafe asked. “Is that army in the forest yours?”

She shrugged.

“Well, I had to do something to while away the time. Conquering this dukedom seemed like it might be fun. Though I could think of a way for the two of us to spend time together,” she said archly.

Rafe grunted.

“I guess some things don’t change. You were never interested in conquest before, Jenya. Why now?”

She sniffed. “Don’t call me that. My name is Kali.”

Rafe waved his hand around.

“Whatever,” he said. “I heard rumors about “Kali” a few centuries ago. Hadn’t made the connection to you, though. I’m surprised; I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to set yourself up as the goddess of death.”

“Makes for obedient servants.”

“Servants, eh? I don’t remember you being the type to want servants. Thought you were more independent than that.”

She said, “I got tired of doing everything for myself. I decided that as long as we’re trapped here, I might as well enjoy myself. I wish I had done it a long time ago. All the...years we’ve been here could have been so much more pleasant.”

Rafe looked at her intensely and then said gently, “Blue pill instead of red pill, eh?”

Her voice softened, “I...I haven’t thought of that in such a long time.”

“Blue pill? Red pill? What’s he talking about?”

It’s hard to explain. It’s from a story that they both know.

“A story that you know, too, I take it?”

Yes. I’ll tell you about it later.

Later. It was always later! I could scream from the frustration.

“Those monsters...you’re leading them?” Rafe asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“All on your own? Or are you working with anyone?”

She said nothing. The two of them ignored the rest of us, not as if we were in any condition to interfere. Still, it was as if they had fallen into a world with just the two of them. I was grateful since it was giving me a chance to recover. I didn’t know what I had done before, but it had drained all of my stamina in moments. In fact…

Sword Sage - Tier II class. Rare.

Abilities:

Timeshift--

Rafe’s shouting pulled my attention back to the conversation between the two incredibly dangerous people who were arguing just yards away from me.

“Cyril? You’re following Cyril? Are you crazy? I thought you had better sense than this! You know what he’s like. The things he’s willing to do. Have you lost your mind?”

I saw the dark-skinned woman’s lips tighten.

“Look,” she snapped. “I tried it every other way I could think of. Running around...doing quests...getting stronger.. And what was it good for? Nothing. Absolutely nothing!”

Rafe grimaced. “Cyril is a psychopath, Jenya. You know--”

“Don’t call me that! That’s not my name anymore!”

“He doesn’t care about anyone but himself! I don’t know what he’s promised you but--”

The brown-skinned woman laughed bitterly.

“Promised? And what promises should I believe? You’re the one who told me to stay strong. What have you been doing all this time?”

Now it was Rafe’s turn to be quiet.

She sneered, “How often are you sober these days, Rafe? What’s that I smell? Is it the alcohol on your breath?”

He answered tightly, “I haven’t had a drink in days.”

But he looked ashamed.

She spat out, “I came looking for you once, you know. It was...oh...I don’t know...four...maybe five centuries back. You know what I found?”

Rafe looked away.

“Yes, you know exactly what I found, don’t you? Pathetic and disgusting. That’s what you were. I could hardly bear to look at you. It was the last straw for me. That’s when I knew something had to change. That I couldn’t keep doing the same thing over and over.”

Rafe asked quietly, “And what do you expect to gain by backing Cyril?”

“Power.”

Rafe cocked his head. “Power? You never cared about it before.”

Her eyes were hard. “Time passes. Things change. People change. I’m not the person you knew before, Rafe.”

He took a step forward.

“You could be,” he said softly.

It was clear to me that she was one of the Two Hundred. If there were only two hundred of them in the entire world, how was it that I kept bumping into them? Kyrie, Julius, Rafe, Michael, and now Jenya...or Kali, I guess. That was five out of two hundred. I didn’t know the odds of meeting all of them in such a short period of time, but they had to be astronomical.

“No!” she shouted as she threw up her hands. Bolts of red lightning blasted into Rafe. He swept his two swords in front of him, shattering her attack. With a snarl, she followed up with an upward thrust of her fist, and a whirlwind blew up from below him. Rafe went flying up into the air, and this time when she threw her lightning he was too off balance to block her attack.

Electricity blazed and sputtered over his form, and he spasmed in pain as the whirlwind ended, dropping him to the ground. Kali cupped her hands together, much as I had seen Clara do before, and a fierce red ball of lightning began to grow between them.

Rafe shook his head in a daze as he slowly climbed to his feet. I gripped Veritas and started to stand. I didn’t know what I’d be able to do to help him, but I had to try.

The ball of lightning grew larger and larger, from the size of my fist to the size of her head to the size of one of the troll chieftain’s heads, and still it grew larger. She raised her hands up high to throw it and then stopped in confusion. Rafe was gone.

Kali began to turn when the pommel of Rafe’s sword came smashing down onto the back of her head. Her face went from intense concentration to suddenly blank, and the ball of red lightning puffed out of existence as she collapsed bonelessly backwards into Rafe’s arms.

“How--” Rose began.

“Shadow Step. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. She forgot to block the area around her. She won’t make that mistake again.”

The grim-faced man gently lowered her to the ground.

Rose demanded, “You’re not going to kill her?”

He gazed down at her with a strange look on his face and shook his head.

“No. Let’s load everyone onto a horse and get going.”

Rose said harshly, “It’s foolish to leave enemies alive behind you. If you can’t do it, I will.”

She raised her sword, and suddenly Rafe was at her side, gripping her wrist tightly. With a slight cry of pain, her hand opened. Rose’s sword fell to the ground.

Rafe said in a flinty tone, “I said no. Now do as I command and get everyone onto a horse. We need to leave right away.”