Chapter Nineteen

  (Nine Years Ago)

  Miranda recoiled like a cat that had been sprayed with water. When she stepped back, though, her ankle immediately flared with pain again, and she fell over backwards.

  Hastily summoning Eagle Feather, she held it up in as threatening a gesture as she could manage. She suspected that she didn't cut a very intimidating figure, lying on her back and bleeding all over the floor. To her surprise, though, the room’s occupant retreated as far back into the corner as he could with a look of near-horror on his face.

  Then she blinked, her surprise only deepening the longer she looked at him.

  What…the…flame? she thought.

  Miranda found herself squinting at him, sure that her eyes must have been playing some kind of trick on her. No matter how long she watched him, though, the image didn't change at all.

  For a few seconds, she was so shocked that she completely forgot about the pain in her leg. In all her aimless wandering and wild misadventures, she'd actually begun to think that she had seen everything Nyr had to offer.

  She was wrong.

  He was a Hero, that much was obvious based on his reaction. An NPC might have acted surprised, but a blind man would have been able to tell the difference between that and real surprise from a mile away.

  The more she looked at him, though, the harder that became to believe. Miranda wasn’t one to put much stock in appearances—especially in a place like Nyr, where an unimpressive figure could hide levels, skills, and plenty of other things that made people more infinitely dangerous than they looked. But this was different. This guy was…

  Short.

  She felt a twinge of guilt as the thought passed unbidden through her mind, but it was true. He struck her as being close to the same age as her, but he was only as tall as a seven or eight year old. He stood barechested in front of her, and the number of ribs she could count beneath his skin made it obvious that height wasn’t the only thing he was lacking.

  His pants were several sizes too large for him, and only stayed up because of the belt that he’d wrapped all the way around his waist twice. The legs had needed to be rolled up half a dozen times before his feet were able to poke out of the bottom.

  He wore glasses—another oddity—beneath a mop of tightly curled brown hair, and judging by the look on his face, he was just as…no, even more surprised to find her in here than she was to find him.

  Guess I can’t blame him, she thought, throwing a quick glance at the shattered window.

  Turning back to him, a character box appeared over his head.

  AARON PARKER

  LEVEL 4 WARSEEKER

  (HIRED THUG)

  Before she could contemplate this further, the sound of footsteps came stomping down the hallway outside the door. Her eyes widened. In her confusion, she had forgotten what had brought her here in the first place!

  She looked around wildly, searching the small room for a hiding spot. She could roll under the bed, but that would be a tight squeeze even for someone of her size, and her view would be limited to everyone’s feet and ankles if they decided to search the room.

  She needed—yes! Her eyes landed on the wardrobe. It was nothing fancy, but it was tall enough for her to fit inside, and looked sturdy enough that it wouldn’t fall apart the moment she shut herself into it. There was only one problem.

  The tiny Hero was standing between her and it.

  Putting her dagger back into her inventory, she got to her feet as quickly as she could without irritating her wounded ankle, then pointed to the wardrobe.

  “Okay, look,” she said, speaking fast, “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But introductions are gonna have to wait, all right? Right now, I need to borrow your closet!”

  Aaron just stood there with his arms crossed bashfully in front of his bare chest, not saying a word. Outside, Miranda could hear the guards kick open the first door in the hallway.

  “Stop where you are, lawbreaking trash! Nobody gets away with…”

  “Come on! Move already!” she urged him, her voice rising in desperation.

  Nothing.

  “I’m not going to hurt you! This is only going to take a minute, so please, just step over there and let me—”

  He pointed at something, and Miranda stopped short. His face was as red as a tomato, and it grew even redder when she squinted at him.

  “Don’t look!” he yelped.

  “What are you—”

  “That!”

  He pointed again, and Miranda turned to see a shirt lying on top of his bed. Hesitantly, she grabbed it, scattering shards of glass onto the floor, and tossed it to him just as the guards kicked down the second door. When they didn’t find her inside, they promptly moved on to the next door, kicking it open as well.

  Aaron turned to face the other way and slid his bony arms through the sleeves before frantically buttoning it up.

  “Stop where you are,, lawbreaking trash!”

  A drop of sweat ran down the side of her face. How many doors down was this room? She hadn’t exactly gotten the chance to look while she was being flung across the city. It didn’t sound like the guards were very far away, but it was almost impossible to tell for sure without sticking her head out in the hallway to look—and that was a good way to get a spear shoved in her eye.

  She looked at Aaron again, fighting the urge to snap at him. The diminutive man was doing his best to button his shirt, but the way his hands were shaking made it an infuriatingly slow process.

  “Come on!” she whispered to him, her eyes anxiously flicking back and forth between him and the door. Aaron didn’t say anything, just glanced over his shoulder at her before getting back to work.

  CRASH!

  “Stop where you are, lawbreaking trash!”

  Miranda’s heart shot up into her throat, but their door remained closed—but not for long, she realized when a shadow appeared beneath the door’s crack.

  The floorboards creaked as the guard prepared to break down the door. Miranda reflexively summoned her dagger again, knowing full well she wouldn’t use it. Monsters were fair game, as were other Heroes if they tried to hurt her. But she would never, could never hurt an NPC.

  Not on purpose, anyway. The ones who had gotten caught in the tornado didn't—

  Aaron finally fastened the last button on his shirt and stepped to the side. Ignoring the pain in her leg, Miranda sprang across the room, slipped inside the wardrobe, and slammed the door shut behind her—and not a second too soon.

  She couldn’t help but flinch when she heard the door being kicked in. The bolt shattered, and the old, unoiled hinges screamed as it flew open to slam into the wooden wall behind it.

  “You’re under arrest, lawbreaking trash!” the guard yelled, only for his tone to soften into a gruff bark when he didn’t immediately see Miranda. “You, there! Citizen! Has anyone suspicious passed by here?”

  Miranda said a quick prayer of thanks that NPCs weren’t smart enough to see what was right in front of their faces. She had completely shattered the window when she’d flown through it, spraying broken glass everywhere, and it was safe to bet that everyone outside had seen her do it. And yet, despite looking right at that same window from the other side, it never occurred to the mindless guard that she might be in this room.

  Her heart pounded in her ears as she waited. Since the guard couldn’t see her in her hiding place, he would linger for a few seconds and then leave, just like he had done at all the other rooms. All she had to do was stay quiet until that happened…

  She went pale.

  Unless Aaron ratted her out!

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  Her breath caught in her throat, and she clenched her jaw so hard it nearly cracked her teeth.

  Silently begging the hinges not to squeak, she pushed the wardrobe door open an inch. She knew it was a bad idea, but she couldn’t make herself sit still now that the thought was in her head. Doing her best not to put weight on her injured leg, she leaned in and peered into the room outside.

  Aaron was standing right where he had been before, his eyes as big as cueballs behind his glasses. Sweat poured down his face, and his gaze kept flicking nervously toward the wardrobe. That would have been enough to tip off even the slowest of humans, but to an NPC, he may as well have had the world’s best poker face.

  “Hail, citizen!” the guard suddenly said, making them both jump. “A dangerous criminal is on the loose. Have you seen anything suspicious?”

  He needs to say no, Miranda thought. If he doesn’t, the guard’s just going to keep looping through the same dialogue over and over again.

  Aaron’s mouth worked, but no sound came out—though Miranda swore she could hear his thoughts loud and clear. Why the flame am I protecting the crazy lady who just broke my window?

  “Halt!” snapped the guard. “A dangerous fugitive has been sighted around these parts. Have you anything to report?”

  Miranda had to admit that turning her in would be the wisest course of action. Aaron had no reason to protect her, and he’d likely get a reward for aiding in her capture. But if he didn’t, and the guards ended up discovering her while she was in his room anyway, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that a bounty would get put on his head, too.

  The System had never been kind, but sometimes it could be downright cruel.

  Miranda was in a tight spot—both literally and figuratively—but it was nothing the greatest Thief on Nyr couldn’t wriggle her way out of. Aaron, though? The fact that someone like him had even made it to level four without something using him as a living toothpick was nothing short of a miracle.

  It didn’t matter how lucky he was, though. At the end of the day, he was a Warseeker. In any other situation, that would have had Miranda rolling on the floor laughing. Warseekers were supposed to be one of the biggest, toughest classes Nyr had to offer. A shrimp like Aaron claiming he was one was like hearing a chihuahua claim to be a wolf.

  Right now, though, none of that mattered. What mattered was that Warseekers were designed to do one thing, and one thing only: hit stuff. They were one of the few classes with no magical capabilities whatsoever. The moment they made their choice, their Spirit stat would zero out. No matter how many levels they climbed, it would never go up even a single point.

  And if there was one thing Warseekers were even worse at than magic, it was sneaking. Aaron might have been thin enough to hide behind a suitably tall blade of grass, but there was no way he would be able to get out of Tal'Rakkesh on his own if the city guard was actively hunting him.

  But that didn’t change the fact that if he told on her, she was going to use her last few seconds of life to snap him like the twig he so closely resembled.

  “You, there! Citizen! Has anyone suspicious passed by here?”

  Miranda’s heart was racing again, but not in the exhilarating way it had been when she’d made her escape from the tower. The very real possibility that her life of adventuring might be about to come to the most anticlimactic end imaginable was more terrifying than all the hostile mobs on Nyr. If she had to die, she wanted it to be while doing something so incredible that even the NPCs who saw it would be talking about it for the rest of their boring, monotonous lives!

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity of waiting, Aaron finally seemed to pull himself out of his stupor. Fixing his eyes on the guard, and pointedly not looking at the wardrobe, he took a deep breath.

  “N- N- N- No,” he forced himself to say, his voice shaking so much it was almost impossible to understand him.

  Without a word, the guard turned on his heel and walked away. A few seconds later, Miranda heard the now-familiar CRASH as he began the routine again in the next room over.

  She let out a long, heavy sigh and pushed the wardrobe door open, nearly collapsing onto the floor when her leg threatened to give out. Aaron sighed as well, and sat down on his bed.

  “Thanks for that,” Miranda said, trying to sound nonchalant as she limped over to the other side of the room. “And, uh, sorry about the window.”

  “What the flame is wrong with you?” Aaron finally demanded, his voice going oddly high pitched with outrage. He gestured toward the window. “Look what you did! Seriously, who does that?”

  Miranda dropped down to sit on the floor across from his bed, her injured leg stretched tenderly out in front of her. “I’ve got a one apology per customer policy, so you’re not getting another.”

  He glared at her. “Who said you could sit down? The guard’s gone, so get out!”

  “I will in a minute,” she said, pulling up her menu and flicking through her inventory until she found the health potion she’d been looking for before. “Just let me to where I can stand up without feeling like someone’s sawing my leg off.”

  “Why didn’t you take it while you were in the closet?”

  The potion appeared in her hand, but Miranda paused before drinking it. When no suitable answer popped into her head, she glared back at the Warseeker. “I think I liked you better when you were too shy to say anything.”

  “I’m not shy!” he shot back. The speed with which he said it made it clear that it was more of a reflexive argument than a genuine comeback. “I just…”

  Miranda raised her eyebrows teasingly. “You just…what?”

  His face reddened, and he lowered his voice so that she almost didn’t hear what she said. “I don’t like people seeing me shirtless.”

  Miranda opened her mouth, but for once in her life she decided that the words sitting on the tip of her tongue should stay there.

  He looked up at her, and his face reddened even more when he saw her studying him. “I have a thyroid problem, okay? I can kill monsters all day and eat all night, and I’ll still never gain any weight. There, satisfied?”

  Miranda hesitated, her eyes flicking away guiltily, then drank the health potion to distract her from the awkwardness that now hung in the air as thick as peanut butter. The hole in her ankle immediately closed up, and she sighed quietly in relief.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled a moment later.

  Aaron huffed in his throat and crossed his arms, refusing to look at her.

  Glancing out the window, Miranda saw that the guards outside were beginning to disperse. That didn’t mean she was safe, though. The severity of her crime meant they weren’t going to give up looking for her after a few minutes like they usually did. She had no idea how long the manhunt was going to last this time, but for now, one stray glance was all it would take to have the entire flaming army on her backside again.

  When Aaron didn’t say anything else, she began to stand up. “All right, I guess I’ll be on my—”

  “What did you do to get all those guards chasing you?” Aaron asked.

  Miranda stopped, grinning. If she’d had to wait another minute to show off her grand prize, she would have burst.

  With her menu still up, she selected the Avaricious Handmirror. It appeared in her hand with a blue flash, and she held it out for him to admire. Aaron stared at it for a few seconds, unimpressed, but Miranda could tell the moment when the description box appeared because his eyes widened and his mouth fell open.

  “You,” he said slowly, his voice hushed, “are insane.”

  “You have to be a little insane to be the greatest thief on Nyr!”

  “You have to be completely insane to want to be!”

  Miranda’s grin widened. Maybe she did like this guy. Just a little.

  “What are you going to do with it?” he asked, carefully studying the mirror without looking at his reflection.

  She paused, turning the mirror around to look at it. The frame and handle were made out of solid gold, and more gems than Miranda cared to count made a ring around the reflective glass. It sparkled in a way that—now that she really studied it—was so gaudy that she would have been embarrassed to be seen in public with it.

  In fact, it was just her and Aaron in here, and she already felt flaming embarrassed.

  “Meh, I’ll probably sell it,” she grunted.

  She tossed the stupid mirror back into her inventory, her excitement melting away like a snowball in the desert. Why did that keep happening? As much as she loved stealing, nothing she stole seemed able to keep her interest now that—

  She closed her eyes. Don’t think about it!

  Hey, Jackdaw! Want to hear a joke?

  “So, what’re you doing out in this neck of the woods?” she asked hurriedly, desperate for something to distract her. “On a quest?”

  Aaron shook his head. “I’m on my way to Faen’s Hand. I want to join the Underwings.”

  She couldn’t help but snort at that. “Seriously? Why would you want to tie yourself down to a bunch of XP hogs like that?”

  “Because they’ll help me wake my mom up, and give her all the XP she needs to stay that way.”

  Miranda froze, all feeling leaking from her body.

  “They…They’ll what?” she demanded. Now her voice was the one shaking.

  “That’s what the whole guild is based around. You have to do a hundred dungeon runs to prove you’re not just taking advantage of them, but once you do, they let you wake up one NPC and bring them to Faen’s Hand to live as a Noncom.”

  Suddenly, it felt like a rug had been pulled out from under Miranda’s feet. She stared blankly at the wall in front of her, her mind a hurricane of emotions.

  This couldn’t be happening. What were the chances that she would hear this now, of all times?

  She put a hand on the wall, her legs suddenly feeling like jelly. If what Aaron said was true, then that meant…

  A face appeared in her mind’s eye, and she had to clamp a hand over her mouth to stifle the humiliating noise that threatened to come out of it. It had been so long, but the image was as vivid in her memory as if its owner had just materialized in front of her.

  It was the face of the one she had loved. The one she had betrayed. The one whose name she couldn’t even think without being paralyzed by the pain and guilt it dredged up inside her.

  “Are you okay?” Aaron asked.

  Miranda’s mind was made up before she even knew there was a decision to be made. Frantically stuffing her feelings deep into the recesses of her psyche where they belonged, she turned to grin at her new friend.

  “You really saved my ash there, you know that?” she asked. “If you had told the guard where I was hiding, I would’ve been in serious trouble.”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t going to let them—”

  “No, I need to pay you back,” she cut him off. “The road’s been pretty dangerous lately. Lots of monsters out there.”

  She snapped her fingers like she’d just had an idea.

  “Tell you what,” she exclaimed. “I’ll go with you to Faen’s Hand. Just to make sure you don’t end up as the most disappointing snack the local ogre’s ever had. What do you think? Will that make us even?”

  Aaron stared at her suspiciously for a few seconds, but then he smirked, and Miranda knew he had seen straight through her lie. She didn’t care. Faen’s Hand was only a few days away. She could put up with him for that long, couldn’t she? Then she’d learn everything she could about the Underwings, and figure out what to do next after that. Five days, a week at most, and then…

  A shiver went down her spine.

  “Sure,” Aaron said, holding out his hand. “I guess there’s no harm in that.”

  Miranda shook his hand, having no idea that she’d just changed the course of her entire life.