Approaching the kitchen, the air was thick with the scent of grilled meat and vegetables, and fresh bread. Ana’s stomach rumbled loudly and was answered by an amused snort from Messy.

  Ana laughed back weakly. “I’m starving, all right?”

  “I’m not judging! But I’m pretty sure Touanne heard that all the way to the kitchen.”

  “We did.”

  The voice that answered wasn’t Touanne’s, but Tellak’s. Which was no surprise, since she practically lived with Touanne at that point. “How are you?” the pale woman asked as Ana shuffled into the kitchen, sitting down at the small table there together with Messy and Tellak. Touanne was busy sliding food off skewers onto large plates. It was a lot of vegetables and a little meat, next to hunks of bread and little dishes of drippings.

  There was a familiar scent in the air, below everything else, but Ana couldn’t quite place it.

  “Uh… tired. A little weak. Hot, most of the time. A little foggy — you know, in the head — sometimes.” She paused, assuming that Tellak already knew, but decided to just say it outright. “And the bite aches. I’m infected.”

  Tellak nodded solemnly. “I saw the crystals as Touanne was treating you. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We’ll fix it. With Touanne’s ritual, and our… volunteers. We’ll figure it out. How’s Jancia doing?”

  “Worse,” Tellak said, and Touanne just nodded. “She’s healthy, as far as anyone can tell, but she mostly goes from rage to fear and confusion. Very rarely lucid. We made one of the cells more comfortable and put her there, for now.”

  “Shit. Sorry.”

  Tellak gave her a sad smile. “Thanks. We’ll fix it.”

  Ana nodded. There was a lull in the conversation, which she broke by asking, “How many of the dead crazies have been possessed?”

  “None, if you’ll believe it,” Tellak answered. “They just lie there. Birds have been getting at them. It’s quite horrible.”

  Ana blinked. “None?”

  “Not a one. Touanne had a theory.” Tellak looked to the Healer.

  Touanne shrugged slightly. “The demons ignore them, from what I’ve heard. With the crystals, how they affect Jay… I think they may be completely devoid of mana. No way to possess them, then.”

  “Huh. That’s a relief, at least.”

  Touanne gave her best effort at a smile. She mostly just looked sick. The air was thick with her misery, and Ana decided to drop the topic and focus on something else. That familiar scent was tickling her nose again. She sniffed the air, trying to identify it. It wasn’t the food. The skewers were clearly from one of the eateries by the square, the one that used far too much cumin on everything, but that wasn’t it. Nor was it the perfumed detergent that Touanne’s laundry used. No, it was something about Tellak. She smelled like… there was sweat, cut grass, a hint of earth and ozone, and…

  Blood. Not much, but fresh. It was like she’d wiped rather than washed it off, leaving traces that Ana could smell.

  “Tellak,” Ana said, “did something happen while I was out?”

  Touanne put a plate before each of them. She shared a look with Tellak, and her aura flared with anxiety. Then she shrugged, and said, “If not now, then tomorrow. You may as well tell her.”

  Tellak turned her head and looked Ana in the eye. “We rescued the Rivir farm today. Saved four people. Took one enemy captive. A few injuries. One man is infected. Suren. Remember him?”

  “Bronze skin, short hair. Axe and shield?”

  “Right.”

  “How is he?”

  “Worse than you, but he’s holding on. He’s not the only one, either. There were three others the same day as you. Crystals cutting into flesh, that seems to be the way it spreads. Easy to avoid as long as everything’s orderly, but…” Tellak trailed off.

  “Oh,” Ana said after a few seconds, more to fill the silence than anything else. Four people infected other than herself and Jancia. That made six total, now. All the more reason to press on with the ritual as soon as they could. Ana looked at Touanne — there was a slight paleness to her skin, and bags under her eyes. “You’ve been healing a lot?”

  “It’s been busy,” Touanne confirmed.

  “Who— I mean, who was in charge? Who decided to go out?”

  “It was a majority decision,” Tellak said. “Almost everyone agreed that it’s what you would have done.”

  Ana nodded. They were right. “And who took charge?”

  “We split it. Petra dealt with the preparations, and I commanded in the field. We got Captain Pirta to support the action, too. I think she’s coming around, even if she doesn’t like it.”

  “Oh. Well done.”

  “You’re not upset?” Tellak sounded genuinely surprised.

  “Why would I be? I never wanted to be in charge in the first place.”

  “But you are. I mean, you have been. And I stepped on your authority without permission.”

  “Yeah. Authority I don’t want, and that was just handed to me. Tellak, I’m glad you and Petra stepped up. The sooner we have everyone safe, the sooner we can start our… counter-attack, or whatever. And we need to do that soon, because the Wayfarer told me that the number of prayers are falling. It’s been, what? Two weeks? Best case, people are just losing hope, and giving up on praying. Worst case… yeah. We need to get going.”

  Messy skewered a piece of meat on a two-tined fork, holding it up to Ana’s mouth. “Which means that you need to recover, which you won’t if you don’t eat. There’s time enough to talk after. Food’s getting cold.”

  Ana absentmindedly plucked the morsel off the fork with her teeth. It didn’t even occur to her to protest that she could feed herself until a suppressed, “Aaw!” from Touanne made her aware of the situation. She chewed slowly — too much cumin, but still good — looking from Tellak to Touanne. Despite the whole situation they were both smiling, looking at her and Messy with the energy of women holding tight to a good thing in a world of trouble.

  Swallowing, she looked back to Messy, who was looking at Ana expectantly, holding up a piece of roasted tuber.

  Ana ate it. Pride be damned; it had never gotten her anything but loneliness.

  After dinner, Tellak guided Ana in drawing increasing amounts of mana. She still didn’t bother trying to teach Ana to channel ambient mana. Apparently it didn’t matter what kind of mana they used for the ritual; they needed mana, any mana, and lots of it. The ritual would do the rest.

  They started small. Before Jancia’s Connection was extinguished Touanne had managed to get her to channel a tiny bit, and it hadn’t seemed to hurt her. They needed to be sure that the same was true for Ana.

  She didn’t need to shape it, which was fortunate. In the beginning, with very small amounts, she drew Earth-aligned mana and shaped it into her protection spell. Before she got anywhere near her previous best, though, Ana found herself unable to focus on both keeping the shape and the flow stable, even with Split Focus. She had to abandon the attempt, dumping the mana back into the earth like Tellak had taught her. After that she simply drew more and more, connecting to the vast reservoir beneath her feet and letting the mana flow through her. Meanwhile, Touanne drew up a simple ritual circle on the floor, and Tellak and Touanne together guided Ana in how to direct the mana she channeled into the runes of the circle instead of into a shaping or back into the earth.

  All the ritual did was heat the air above it, but with the two experienced mages directing her and handling the control of the ritual, Ana managed well enough.

  The whole time, Touanne was monitoring her. The crystals never reacted, and Ana never felt a thing. Touanne only called a stop to the session when Ana got wobbly on her feet, and Ana wasn’t going to complain about that. She was the doctor, after all.

  She did grumble a little about Touanne insisting she stay in the house, rather than going to Messy’s. Occupying someone else’s bed the way she was made her uncomfortable. And not for the reasons the Healer seemed to assume, mentioning offhandedly that Messy was welcome to stay as well, and that she “was going to have to wash those sheets anyway.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Nothing happened. Of course it didn’t. Ana felt disgusting, and Messy treated her like she was made of silk paper. Ana finished her second read-through of the grimoire before falling asleep in Messy’s arms — that was all, and it was all she wanted.

  The next afternoon found them in the guardhouse. A large section of the main room had been cleared of tables and benches, and Touanne had set out the two-layered circle needed for the ritual, seven feet wide and drawn in colored wax painted with salt water on the floorboards. Ana had helped her, and they went through the meaning and purpose of each rune as they drew them. It had taken hours, and Ana had needed frequent breaks, but now it was as perfect as it was likely to get.

  “It’s a far more advanced circle than anyone should start with,” Touanne had said when they finished. She’d channeled some mana into it to make sure it didn’t burst into flames, which was apparently a concern if Ana hadn’t done her part right. “But needs must. And your understanding of the runes is excellent.”

  “Thanks.” Ana’s hands felt clammy. Clammier, rather. “And there’s no way this can blow up in our faces?”

  “There’s nothing in the ritual that could have severe consequences for you, or for anyone outside of the circle. But the— the person inside—” Touanne’s voice failed her for a second. “I’m sorry. No, just focus best you can and don’t overdo it. Tellak can tell you anything else you need to know.”

  Ana watched her leave. She couldn’t blame her for going; there were wounded to take care of, after all. But they both knew that wasn’t the main reason Touanne couldn’t be there.

  “Are you ready? Do you need more time to prepare yourself?”

  Tellak stood by the door to the stairs, ready to go down into the cells to bring up their first… God, Ana didn’t want to call them “victims,” but that’s what it felt like. “Subjects” felt nearly as bad. Too clinical and disrespectful. “Patients,” perhaps? With any luck, that was what they’d be. “I’m ready,” Ana said. “Let’s get started.”

  The man Tellak brought up was dressed in the remains of a track suit. He might have been Malay or Indonesian, middle aged, his hair short but looking like it would have been neat before it became matted with sweat and dried blood. Some poor office worker snagged on a morning run, maybe? He was tied up wrist to shoulder, ankle to hip, and knee to elbow, and not only gagged but with a rope around his jaw keeping his mouth firmly shut. Despite that he was jerking and snarling, and the only reason Ana couldn’t say that his eyes were filled with hate was that hate demanded some kind of sapience.

  On his hands, face, chest, and his arm where the jacket had torn, his skin was riddled with pale blue crystal growths. Ana had no doubt that the same was true of every part of his body. The sight made her want to retch.

  Considering his state, and how they had to treat him, it was good that Touanne wasn’t there to see. The only people in the room with them were Messy, who didn’t want to let Ana out of her sight, and Wandak, who’d appointed himself head of security while Ana and Tellak were focused on the ritual.

  “Sorry, buddy,” Ana whispered, then nodded to Tellak, who set him down in the center of the circle.

  “Okay, Ana,” Tellak said, taking her place across the circle. “You can start pushing mana into the circle. Focus on the runes in sequence, on their meaning and purpose. For some people it helps to look at the runes, others find it easier to keep their eyes closed. Take it easy to start with, then push more mana as you feel comfortable. There’s no urgency here. You can’t go too slow, but if you lose control of the flow the ritual might collapse, and we’ll have to start over. Steady and even is better than fast and sloppy”

  Ana nodded. “Fast is slow and slow is fast. Got it.”

  “That— yes, that’s a very good way to put it.”

  “Thanks, I made it up myself,” Ana lied. Then she began.

  Connecting to the wellspring of mana in the earth was easy. So was bending it so that it flowed from her into the ritual circle. She could feel the mana sort of twitch in the direction of the crystals on her neck; it was unsettling, but nothing she couldn’t handle. Remembering all the runes and what they did was the hard part, and Ana felt damned lucky that she had Split Focus, her Acuity Enhancement, letting part of her mind focus on keeping the flow stable while the other dealt with the runes. Runes to take mana, runes to align it, runes to allow it to flow into the construct Tellak was guiding into being; runes to help target the crystals, to separate them from the man’s mana channels — which Ana still didn’t quite understand what they were — and runes to slowly break them apart and dispose of the debris; and runes to heal the wounds left behind, and to treat the residual infection once the crystals could no longer act as a reservoir. And those were only the main ones. Among and connected to them were a host of others, modifying and modulating them.

  Ana didn’t need to keep all of them in her mind at once, which was a blessing, but she did need to focus on them in order without missing any of the most important ones. From start to finish, again, and again, and again, until Tellak told her that they were done.

  The first dozen rounds or so, the first half hour, Ana kept her eyes open. By then the sequence became so ingrained that she instead needed to make sure that the runes didn’t lose their meaning, and she closed her eyes to remove the distractions of Tellak working, and the man writhing on the floor.

  Somewhere after the first hour she lost track of time. It was absolutely and incomparably exhausting, but she couldn’t stop. If she stopped the ritual would fail, and then they wouldn’t know if it was designed correctly, and then they’d have to wait until they could try again, which would probably delay them by a day before Touanne would let her strain herself again. And that would delay everything, meaning that their rescue expedition wouldn’t leave for another day, meaning that more people in Falk’s expedition may die.

  So, Ana needed to do this right, and she couldn’t give up or even take a break. Slow and steady, she told herself. It’s like a long run. Slow down if you have to.

  She drew mana from the earth. She let it flow into the circle. Her knees were stiff, and her hips hurt. She focused on each rune in order, as familiar to her now as the alphabet, around and around and around as Tellak shaped the construct that would actually take all of the instructions and turn them into an effect.

  Time became meaningless. There was the mana, and the runes, and nothing else. And then something changed. The ritual stopped accepting mana. She tried, but the mana simply circulated through her and back into the earth.

  Ana opened her eyes. The man had stopped snarling and lay still, staring at the air above. The runes shone, bright enough that it was like the room was lit by the morning sun. Motes of solid light streamed from them into a ring that hung midair, and from that ring it gathered into a pearlescent orb suspended just below it.

  The runes winked out. The motes stopped streaming. The ring dissolved, absorbed into the orb. And then the orb dropped.

  It shot directly into the man. He went rigid, gasping and straining against the ropes binding him, and Ana watched in fascination as every crystal came alight, so bright they shone even through his clothes. After a few seconds, the lights winked out, starting with the smallest and proceeding to the largest, leaving behind only smooth skin.

  And then it was over. The lights were all gone. The man lay still on his back, staring at the ceiling. His jaw muscles and throat worked, and Ana quickly stumbled over and removed the rope binding his jaw shut and the gag.

  The man didn’t acknowledge her. He whispered, his voice rough and raspy, “Ibu. Ibu. Ibu.” And with a long, rattling exhalation, he became still, and silent.

  “Shit.” Sweat poured off Ana as she closed the dead man’s eyes and turned to Tellak. She hadn’t had any of Touanne’s medicine for hours. “Now what?”

  Tellak joined Ana, kneeling next to the body and putting her hand on Ana’s shoulder. “Now we tell Touanne what went wrong, so that she can adjust the ritual. Don’t worry, I knew what to look out for, and I think I know what the problem is.”

  “Poor bastard.”

  “Yeah. But he looked peaceful, at the end. That’s something.”

  “That’s something,” Ana agreed. But she wished that they could have done more. “Peaceful” wasn’t enough. “Peaceful” wasn’t “alive,” and “peaceful” wouldn’t save her or the others.

  And she couldn’t stop looking at the dead man and thinking how many, just like him, she’d killed in the field. This was different. Out there she felt a vague regret, but she knew that it was necessary. Kill or be killed. Kill or see the people she was responsible for die. This…

  She felt dirty. But she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again, once Touanne had tweaked the ritual.

  The next morning they tried again. Ana’s base Connection had dropped another point, but she had more than enough. Touanne’s changes to the ritual were small and easy to memorize, reducing the rate at which the crystals were isolated and broken down. Their patient still died. The woman screamed through the gag until her breath failed her, then filled her lungs and screamed again. Mid-scream she choked, jerked wildly, and went still.

  Touanne, of course, blamed herself. Between sobs she told them that she couldn’t find anything else to change in the ritual. She believed that the healing component simply couldn’t be made strong enough without disrupting the rest, or raising the complexity so much that she’d need to redesign the circles from the ground up. But with a Healer present, they might have been able to save the woman.

  Tellak had to carry her back to her shop.

  By afternoon Ana’s Connection had dropped again, to 19 base and 28 effective. Her fever was worse. Touanne had barely wanted to let her leave the house, but had finally relented, and had knelt nervously next to Ana on the floor all through the ritual. Their third patient was a teenage girl, ethnically Indian by Ana’s guess. When the ritual finished, she didn’t scream, or speak. She just cried.

  Touanne was on her in seconds after the ritual completed, her hands on the girl’s neck, focusing furiously. Slowly, the girl’s crying stopped, her breathing became more even, and she closed her eyes.

  “She’s asleep,” Touanne said, her eyes shining with tears as she looked up from her patient with a relieved smile. “She’s alive, and stable, and asleep!”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Ana panted. She could barely stay upright. “Let’s… let’s get her back to your shop, Tou, so you can… you know. And if you don’t see anything else wrong with her tonight, then, tomorrow…”

  “Are you sure?” Touanne asked. “We haven’t tested it on… you know.”

  On someone with a Class and Levels. They hadn’t made it widely known exactly who the Summoners were targeting, and even if everyone in the room was an ally, Ana still appreciated the discretion. But the objection was meaningless.

  “Someone has to go first. I’m not going to ask you to use Jancia or any of the others. It has to be me.”

  “I know. I just wish it wasn’t necessary. I wish this all hadn’t happened.”

  “Yeah. But we’re running out of time. At this rate, by tomorrow evening I’ll be down another 2 or 3 points in Connection. Another 2 or 3 the day after that. No way to say when my mind will start going. And it’s not just me. We need to get out there, and we need the ritual working before we move. Wishing… Sorry, Touanne, but wishing doesn’t help.”

  “I know.” Touanne shook her head. “Gods, you’re soaked through!” she said suddenly. “We need to get you both back! You need rest, and treatment!”

  “I’m fine,” Ana said, raising her hand. She put one foot flat on the floor and went to rise, but her balance betrayed her and she fell on her side. “I’m—”

  Messy ran to her side. The world swam. She was almost painfully hot, when she wasn’t freezing cold. She was vaguely aware of Wandak carrying her back to Touanne’s shop, of being put to bed and made to drink two full cups of Touanne’s fever cure. That helped enough for her to relax.

  Once she did, she didn’t so much go to sleep as pass out, falling into a dreamless darkness.

  and read every finished chapter of Splinter Angel! You also get to read anything else I’m trying out — which is how Splinter Angel got started.

  Join us if you want to chat with other readers, or just hang out!