Level 16

  Race: Human/Hollow

  Strength: 333

  Dexterity: 329

  Vitality: 377

  Magic: 324

  “Alright,” he said.

  Mary froze like she did not believe it.

  The boy crouched so his eyes were level with hers..

  “As far as I’m concerned,” he said. “You’re family.”

  Mary nodded hard. “Yes sir.”

  Lily chuckled. “Don’t call him sir.”

  Mary blinked at Lily. “Yes ma’am.”

  “Don’t call me that either,” Lily snapped.

  Mary’s lips pressed together. She looked from Lily to the boy and then down at Ember again like the doll might have advice.

  The boy stood and turned toward the open land beyond Fort Mason’s walls.

  The gate behind them stayed open. Men watched from the walk, rifles in hand. The boy did not look back when he stepped out into the sun. Their time in Fort Mason was over. They couldn’t stay, no matter how safe it might’ve seemed. They had to keep moving. They had to stay alive.

  The prairie met them like a dry breath.

  They walked until the fort’s stone became a small, pale block behind them, and the sound of the yard faded into wind. Lily kept close on the boy’s left. Mary stayed on his right, fingers white around Ember’s cloth body, head turning every few steps to look behind them.

  “Mary,” the boy said.

  Mary snapped her gaze forward. “Yes.”

  “Map.”

  Mary blinked once, then fumbled under her dress and pulled a folded paper from inside her waistband. The edges were worn soft. The fold lines were dark with sweat. Someone had drawn it with ink and charcoal, with a few careful labels in small script.

  Lily’s eyes widened. “You had that the whole time?”

  Mary nodded, proud and scared at once. “I got it from the office. The soldier with the scar fell asleep. He left the door open.”

  “You know, we could’ve just asked for it.” The boy took it from her and unfolded it carefully. Paper crackled in the wind. A rough outline of Texas, probably, rivers marked like veins. Town names scattered like dropped seeds. A thick line along the Gulf. A longer stretch beyond that, like the mapmaker had started and then run out of patience.

  Mary pointed with a dirty fingernail. “That’s us. Fort Mason. Here.”

  The boy followed the line with his eyes.

  San Antonio sat south and east, a dot with a smudge of ink. Roads were thin lines that wandered around hills and rivers. The coast lay farther down.

  “From San Antonio, we can go down to the water,” Mary said. “And then we just keep it on our right. The water. You don’t get lost if you keep it.”

  Lily leaned in close, her hair brushing his shoulder.

  Mary continued.

  “Washington’s way up there,” she said, tracing the top edge of the paper. “It ain’t even on the map.”

  The boy folded the paper back up and handed it to Mary.

  “You keep it,” he said.

  Mary tucked it into her [Inventory]. The boy raised a brow. Mary shrugged. “I… I don’t think it’s from the devil anymore.”

  Lily smiled. “Never was.”

  They walked in silence for a while. Their boots made small puffs in the dust. Grass whispered around their ankles. Mesquite shadows broke up the heat. Sunlight poured through a cloudless sky and bathed the unshadowed world in gold. All the while, the boy’s mind kept drifting to the same thought.

  [Blue Dragon].

  He could call it.

  He reached inward.

  [Bestiary].

  Six names answered, sharp as hooks. But he looked at one in particular.

  [Blue Dragon]

  Rank X, Level 1

  Affinity: Level 1

  Status: Rested. Unsummoned.

  Flying would be faster and easier. He could put Lily on its back. He could put Mary there too. He could have them in Washington in days… if they found it. But that wasn’t really the problem. No, the problem lay in safety. Or the lack thereof.

  He saw Lily slipping on a scale. He saw Mary’s small hands losing grip. He saw gusts of wind in the sky strong enough to lift children into the air. He saw the dragon banking hard and the world dropping away under a child’s feet.

  His stomach twisted so hard he had to swallow bile.

  No.

  Not for them.

  He could accept dying. He had done it already. He could accept waking up in ash and walking toward glowing eyes. He could not accept Lily’s body going cold in his arms. He could not accept Mary’s.

  The sickness stayed a moment longer, then eased as he forced his eyes back to the land.

  Lily looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Lily’s eyes narrowed. She did not believe him. She kept walking.

  The road south bent through low hills. Limestone showed in pale ribs where the earth had been cut by water. Cedar and oak clung to shallow soil. The riverbeds were mostly dry, with only a thin thread of water at the deepest points.

  They found the first bodies before midday.

  A wagon sat crooked off the trail, one wheel snapped clean. Canvas hung in strips. The oxen were down in the grass, bloated and stiff, tongues swollen from their mouths. Flies rose in a black cloud when the boy stepped close. A man lay facedown beside the wagon tongue. His shirt had been cut open from neck to belly. His ribs showed through. The meat between them was gone.

  Lily stopped short. Her hand went to her mouth.

  Mary’s eyes went wide. She hugged Ember tighter until the doll’s head bent.

  The boy crouched and looked at the ground.

  Tracks.

  Hoof prints. Heavy. Round. Deep. Something had stood here while it ate. Something with weight.

  Beside the prints were smaller marks, like hands with claws. Drag lines in the dirt. The kind of messy scuff that came from panic.

  The boy stood again and walked past without a word.

  Lily followed, face pale.

  Mary kept glancing back until the wagon vanished behind a hill.

  They found another wreck a mile later.

  A stagecoach, black paint burned to blistered bark. One wheel was half melted. The iron rim had warped and curled like a hot horseshoe tossed into water. Two bodies lay near it, both in plain clothes. One had a rifle still in his hand. The barrel pointed at the sky. His eyes were open. His mouth was full of dirt. A third body lay farther out, face turned up. The chest looked crushed. The ribs had caved in like a boot heel had stepped on them.

  Near the crushed man lay something else.

  A horned elk.

  Its hide was smoke-gray, thick around the neck. One antler had snapped off and left a jagged stump. Its belly was ripped open. Dark blood had dried in thick sheets on the grass.

  The boy’s eyes narrowed.

  Elk did not belong on this land. Not like this.

  Mary stared at it and whispered, “What does it mean?”

  Lily’s voice came out small. “Elves.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The boy kept moving.

  He kept his eyes on the ridgelines and the long folds of the land, waiting for a rider to break the horizon. The trail stayed empty. They walked through a country that looked untouched from far away. From close up, it was scarred. A line of blackened grass where something had burned hot enough to kill the roots. A stand of mesquite split and cracked by heat. A shallow pit full of gray ash and bones. A carcass that had been dragged off the road and left for the sun.

  They saw monsters too.

  A dead boar bigger than a bull, tusks curved like sickles, hide burned in patches. A green-skinned body pinned under it, one arm still wrapped around a crude spear. Flies crawled over its teeth.

  They saw a thing with too many legs, curled on its side in the ditch, body split open and spilling pale guts. It looked like a crab and a wolf had made a mistake together. Its eyes were glassy marbles.

  Nothing moved in the brush. The sky stayed empty. Grass bent under the wind in long waves.

  Smoke drifted in and out with that wind, a faint bite that made the back of his throat itch.

  By late afternoon, Mary’s steps started to drag.

  The boy noticed it in the way her shoulders dipped. In the way her chin kept tipping down like she was trying to watch her own feet and the world at the same time.

  Lily noticed too. She turned, “Are you okay?”

  “My feet hurt.” Mary said. She stared at the dirt for a step, then lifted her chin and pushed harder. Ember’s cloth body creased under her grip. Her face went red from effort.

  The boy reached out and took Mary by the back of her dress, steady and gentle.

  “On my shoulders,” he said.

  Mary froze. “I can walk.”

  “I know,” he said. “Do it anyway.”

  Mary hesitated. Pride fought fear. Pride lost.

  She let him lift her.

  The boy bent his knees and hoisted her up with one smooth motion. Mary yelped softly as she rose. Her legs wrapped around his neck on instinct. Ember bumped his shoulder.

  Mary’s weight barely registered. It felt like picking up a sack of corn. He adjusted his grip so her ankles rested on his chest and her shins lay against his collarbone.

  Mary held Ember and her breathing steadied once she was up.

  Lily watched with a hard look, then looked away.

  “You want a turn?” the boy asked her.

  Lily’s chin lifted. “No.”

  The boy chuckled.

  Evening came slowly. The sun slid down behind the hills and turned the grass gold. Shadows stretched. The air cooled enough that the sweat on the boy’s neck dried to salt. They reached a place where the land broke open. A ravine cut through the hills, steep and narrow. Rock walls dropped away on both sides. A river ran at the bottom, dark water flashing between stones.

  The boy stopped at the edge and looked down.

  A cave mouth opened in the rock near the waterline. Small. Easy to miss from the top. The entrance sat back under a lip of stone that would hide firelight and block wind.

  Lily leaned forward and peered down. “You sure?”

  The boy nodded. “We go down. We stay low.”

  Mary clung tighter around his neck. “I don’t like heights.”

  “You’re already up there,” Lily said.

  The boy found a path, more goat track than trail. Loose stones slid under his boots. He moved slow, planting each foot before shifting weight. He kept one hand on the rock wall when he could.

  Mary’s breath came fast in his ear.

  Halfway down, Lily slipped. She caught herself on a root sticking out of the rock and hissed. The boy reached back and caught her wrist. Lily’s fingers squeezed hard.

  “I got it,” she snapped.

  “I know,” he said.

  They made it to the bottom as the last light bled out of the sky.

  The river sounded alive. It pushed around stones with steady force. The air beside it was cooler, damp enough to soften the dust in the boy’s throat. He set Mary down. Her legs wobbled when her boots hit the ground.

  The cave mouth waited a few steps away.

  The boy walked in first.

  The rock ceiling dipped low. The floor was hard dirt and old gravel, dry near the entrance and darker deeper in where water had once reached.

  He stepped to the back wall and turned.

  “Here,” he said.

  Lily and Mary followed.

  The boy pulled a blanket from his [Inventory] and spread it on the ground. Mary sat down right away. She held Ember on her lap and stared at the cave entrance, eyes tracking the slice of river light. Lily knelt and dug into the sack, then froze.

  “You got peaches,” she said.

  The boy’s mouth twitched. “Yep.”

  Lily grinned, then forced her face into seriousness again. “Beans first.”

  They ate canned beans with a knife and a bent spoon. The beans were cold. The fat on top had congealed into a pale film that stuck to Lily’s lip. Why Lily didn’t heat up the beans with her fire, the boy did not know. Maybe she forgot.

  Mary ate slower.

  The boy sat with his back against the rock and watched the entrance.

  “You ain’t eatin’,” Lily said.

  He shook his head. “Not hungry.”

  Lily stared at him with wide eyes. “Not hungry?”

  He flexed his fingers once. The scars on his knuckles pulled. “Not anymore.”

  Mary looked up at him over the rim of her can. “Are you sick?”

  The boy looked at her face and then at Ember’s stitched smile. He kept his voice calm.

  “I feel fine.”

  Lily’s eyes narrowed. “You need to eat.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “If I eat when I’m not hungry, that’s fewer supplies for the two of you when you do.”

  Lily opened her mouth to argue. Then she looked at the dark outside the cave and at the river and at the dead quiet of the hills, and the fight drained out of her shoulders.

  “Fine,” she muttered. “But if you keel over, I'm gonna smack you.”

  The boy nodded.

  They drank river water boiled in a small, cast iron pot. Lily used Jet for half a breath to light the kindling. The flame snapped bright and thin, then died when she pulled her finger back. She looked proud anyway.

  The fire stayed small, tucked deep enough in the cave that the glow did not reach the mouth.

  When the beans were gone, Lily curled under the blanket with her back to the wall and pulled Mary close.

  Mary resisted for a moment, then leaned in. Her fingers found Ember and tucked the doll between them like a third child.

  Lily’s voice came soft. “We're gonna see the ocean.”

  Mary’s eyes blinked slow. “It’s big.”

  Lily nodded like she had seen it already. “Big enough to swallow a whole fort.”

  Mary’s lips twitched. “Good.”

  Lily’s hand patted Mary’s hair once, awkward and quick.

  The boy watched their eyes close.

  He listened to their breathing settle.

  He listened to the river.

  He listened to the cave.

  Hours passed.

  The moon rose high enough that pale light touched the ravine walls. The river caught it and broke it into moving fragments. The boy sat on the cave floor with his Beastmaster’s Spear across his knees and the Colt in his lap, hammer down, cylinder full.

  He waited for the familiar pull of sleep.

  It did not come.

  His eyes stayed clear. His thoughts stayed sharp. His body stayed ready. He frowned and leaned his head back against the rock. He tried to force his eyelids shut. They closed. They opened again a moment later, like his body refused to waste time.

  He looked at the fire. Low coals. A small red glow.

  He looked at Lily. Her face slack in sleep, hair spread out on the blanket.

  He looked at Mary. Ember tucked under her chin, mouth open just enough to breathe.

  The boy waited again.

  No heaviness. No slow drift. No stumble in his thoughts. He sat there until the moon shifted and the shadows changed, and still he did not feel tired.

  A small chill ran through him. He looked down at his hand.

  Small fingers. Scarred knuckles. Dirt under nails. Calloused. The boy wondered if he was still human.

  He reached for a pebble near his boot.

  It was pale and dense, the size of a chicken egg. Smooth on one side, sharp on the other where it had broken off a larger rock.

  He rolled it in his palm. He set it between his thumb and first two fingers. He squeezed.

  Nothing happened at first.

  The boy’s jaw tightened. Tendons stood out on the back of his hand. The skin at his knuckles went white.

  He squeezed harder.

  The stone resisted. It pushed back into his fingers with cold stubborn weight. He felt it bite into his skin.

  He kept squeezing.

  A faint crack sounded inside the pebble, quiet enough that it could have been the fire popping.

  The boy’s eyes narrowed.

  He squeezed again.

  And then, the pebble fractured. A line split down the center. A shard broke off and fell to the dirt with a soft clink. The boy opened his fist and let the fragments fall.

  He had seen men split wood and lift barrels. He had watched craftsmen bend iron nails with pliers. He had never seen a man crush stone with bare fingers. The boy flexed his hand and felt the strength still sitting there, heavy and obedient.

  The boy stared at the dark outside the cave.

  The higher his stats climbed, the farther away his body moved from being just a body. The farther away he moved from being a boy who needed bread and sleep.

  The shadow man’s warning slid through his mind, quiet as ash.

  Pieces.

  The boy’s fingers tightened around the spear shaft.

  He let out a slow breath. Hunger had been a chain. Sleep had been a weakness. Cold and heat and pain and fatigue had been things the world used to slow him down. If the world wanted him less human, then he would take that gift and use it.

  He shifted his gaze to Lily’s face again.

  Her breathing stayed steady.

  Her hair moved slightly with each exhale.

  Outside, the river kept running.

  Morning came as a thin gray light in the ravine.

  Lily woke first, blinking hard like she had to drag herself up from deep water. She saw the boy sitting where he had been, and her eyes narrowed.

  “You didn’t sleep,” she said.

  “I didn’t,” he confirmed.

  Mary stirred and sat up, hair sticking out in wild angles. She rubbed her eyes with both fists, then noticed the boy’s face.

  “You look the same,” she said.

  The boy grunted.

  Lily pushed hair out of her eyes. “That ain’t normal.”

  The boy stood and rolled his shoulders. His joints moved smoothly. No stiffness. No slow ache from cold ground. He looked at the pebble fragments and then kicked dirt over them.

  “We need to move,” he said.

  They ate cold beans again. Lily complained and still ate, and still did not heat them. Mary ate in silence.

  The boy packed the blanket and the cans into his [Inventory]. Lily slung the sack over her shoulder anyway. The boy raised a brow. “Why don’t you use your [Inventory]?”

  Lily stared at him with narrowed eyes that widened a moment later. The sack disappeared and then reappeared inside their shared [Inventory]. “I forgot.”

  They climbed out of the ravine with the sun at their backs. The land opened into low hills and long stretches of grass. The wind picked up and carried a faint smell of smoke from the south. They walked until the ground rose on a long slope. At the top, the boy stopped.

  Lily came up beside him and shaded her eyes with one hand. Mary reached the crest last, breathing hard, Ember bouncing against her chest.

  The boy stared.

  San Antonio sat in the distance as a smear of dark shapes and orange light. Smoke climbed into the sky in thick columns. Flames flickered between low rooftops. The air above the town shimmered with heat.

  The boy tasted ash on the wind.

  Lily’s voice came out small. “That’s San Antonio.”

  Mary’s fingers tightened on Ember.

  The boy stood still, eyes locked on the burning horizon, and the thought came quiet and cold.

  They had left Fort Mason to outrun war.

  War had already gotten here before they could.