"Can everyone please stop calling them that," I said.
"Calling who what?"
Namey asked.
"NPCs.
To me they're people, with families, and lives they didn't ask to have taken from them."
"We're sorry, Jon," Luxy said.
"We'll stop."
"More useful note," Savage said, "we scout these things properly before we go charging in blind."
"Already done," I said, and laid out everything I'd learned the hard way in that forest: the queen's control over her red-skinned followers, the way they hunted purely by whatever fear reached them through her, their blindness, the way ordinary arrows glanced off harmlessly while magic actually opened them up.
"Strategy's simple, then," Namey said.
"Draw the followers off, hold them, and let Jon take the queen out from range while she's distracted."
"How d'you know it's a she, four-eyes?"
Savage asked.
"I think he's just assuming," Luxy said, mild, clearly enjoying it a little.
"How are your strength and sneak coming along, Jon?"
Namey asked, ignoring the jab, which I was starting to understand was simply how he weathered Savage rather than a failure to notice her.
"You'll want more of both before we move.
Preferably before Savage decides insubordination is also on the syllabus."
"How would I even check that?"
"Open your status window," Namey said.
"What's a status window?"
All three of them looked at me like I'd just asked why water was wet, which, now that I think of it, is a question I still don't have a satisfying answer to. Luxy came to my rescue before the silence turned properly awkward.
"Here," she said, sliding a ring across the table.
"Killed a fairy for one of these a while back."
"Why would you kill a fairy?"
Savage asked.
"Thought they were meant to be harmless."
"It made a comment about my armor," Luxy said, entirely pleasant.
"I didn't appreciate the tone."
Nobody at the table quite knew what to do with their face after that. I'd only ever seen Luxy as the calm, patient one, the glue holding the three of them together through every disagreement, and it was strange to sit there recalibrating what else might be sitting quietly underneath that calm.
I slid the ring on, and a floating pane of light unfolded in front of me, listing my name, a rank, and a column of numbers I had never once thought to wonder about before.
Jon Marrow
[No Class]
[Survivor of Hallowmere] [No Other Titles]
Rank: C
One-Handed: LVL 8
Two-Handed: LVL 6
Archery: LVL 20
Heavy Armour: LVL 3
Strength: LVL 11
Sneak: LVL 13
Agility: LVL 13
Vitality: LVL 12
Speed: LVL 14
Skills: Fast Learner (+1000% XP bonus), True Aim (Archery +20lvl), Jack of All Trades (no armour equip penalties), Afterimage Step LVL 3 (2 upgrades available)
I stared at the numbers longer than dignity strictly allowed. Rank C sounded impressive, said out loud in a Daenia tavern, and it also sat well below anything a proper traveler could pull off without breaking a sweat, and every one of those levels had a specific bruise, a specific sleepless night in Yomi's blank little world, attached to it somewhere in my memory. It didn't feel like a gift so much as a receipt.
"This is going to take everything we've got," Namey said, reading the sheet over my shoulder, "and it still might not be enough on its own.
We do this smart, or we don't do it."
We found the queen's territory an hour before dusk, and the plan held together clean right up until it didn't.
Namey and Luxy drew the red-skinned followers off toward a clearing wide enough for Savage to fight properly, sandstorm and blade and shield working together the way three people who trust each other fight.
My first shot from the ridge caught the queen clean, a good clean wound from a safe, sensible distance, the way the plan called for.
Then I saw, past her shoulder, a thin column of villagers still filing out through Daenia's back gate toward the false safety of open field, too far from the wall, too slow, directly in the path the queen's retreat would carry her if I let this next shot fly from up here the safe way.
My hand went to my coat before I'd even decided to let it, and found the letter there, both letters now, my grandfather's steady, forgiving hand folded against Abigail's furious, careful one, and I heard my grandfather's voice as clearly as I'd heard it the night I finally read that letter at seventeen, grieving in my own bed: it was never about how hard you hit back. It's about how hard you can take a hit, and still keep your feet moving forward.
I left the ridge. I went in close, close enough that a clean shot became a desperate one, close enough that the queen's shriek nearly took my hearing along with whatever was left of my nerve, and I put the second and third arrows into her from a distance that gave me no safety margin at all, buying those villagers the handful of seconds they needed to clear the open field before her followers scattered wild and blind and leaderless in every direction at once.
It worked. Mostly. The queen went down.
Most of her followers, robbed of her fear-song, staggered and lost their coordination fast enough for Savage to start cutting through them properly.
Not all of them, though. A handful had already broken off toward the village itself before the queen even fell, following the last order she'd screamed into their minds, and by the time we ran them down, they'd found their way into one particular house at the edge of town and torn through it before anyone could stop them.