Just as the purple leaves sprouted on the jalmina trees in the Royal Garden, things had taken a sharp turn for the worst. King Escar told Sara that he wanted her to focus on her studies in preparation for fulfilling her prophecy to chase the beast in the north, which she and Edico got from the beggar in Helscope almost a year ago. However, his actions disagreed. For her “protection,” King Escar posted guards around her room and gave her a personal guard and servant. On the outside, it looked like she was more important, making Mary jealous, but in reality, she was under constant surveillance. Sara was glad that she moved quickly. King Escar’s paranoia was beginning to take root a couple of years early, and she needed to prepare.

The situation wasn’t untenable. Sara had corrupted dozens of nobles and a third of her investors. She was savage beyond belief, using blackmail to extract information and gain proof of illicit activities to blackmail more powerful people. Soon, she was a scandal factory that started riddling off illicit dealings of patrons’ close friends and allies, in addition to their own, and pointing out examples of nobles she watched hang. Slowly yet surely, the nobles started taking her seriously. Now, while she didn’t have her prized coup in a box, she had a nuclear bomb that would take King Escar with her.

—It was time to act.

Suddenly, there was a knock on Sara’s door, making her take a moment from brushing Reck’s fur. The leeta turned and hissed. “Don’t be rude,” Sara chastised, dropping him on the floor. The visitor was Emma, standing there with nervous green eyes, looking at the guards in the hallway. “Ignore them,” Sara said. “They’d be horrible spies if they did anything but protect me.”

The guards shifted uneasily as Emma walked through the room. “Okay…” Emma said. “Um… why do you want to speak to me?”

“Is it strange for a friend to want to hang out with another?” Sara asked.

Emma looked at her like a doe in the headlights.

Sara chuckled. “Just kidding. I’m sure it’s strange as hell. Here, I have something for you.” She pulled out a box and presented it to her.

The redhead looked at the bow-wrapped box with astonishment. “For me?”

Sara’s eyebrow twitched. She didn’t know when rhetorical questions (no matter how emotionally driven they were) started annoying her like loitering teenagers, but it was just a fact. Still, she smiled. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said.

Emma swallowed and opened up the package. When she saw what was inside, she gasped. Inside was a ring with a silver engraved band and a beautiful pink rikastone gemstone. The band was clunky, but the elaborate work around the gemstone was very artistic, making it look like genuine jewelry. It made her eyes sparkle.

Sara watched nervously. “It’s probably weird to get a ring from a girl, but it’s practical. And the band’s thick because thin bands get stuck on equipment and will easily—“

Suddenly, Emma flew into Sara’s chest, gripping her tight. “Thank you!”

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Whatever. Can you please….” Sara’s entire body clammed up, and she looked away, uncomfortable from Emma crying into her bosom.

“I love it!” Emma said, ignoring Sara’s plea for personal space.

“It’s not a big deal,” Sara said, trying to wiggle free. Eventually, Emma got the message and let go. After a moment of awkward silence, Sara looked at her. “Please wear that always.”

Emma blinked twice and looked at the ring. There was nothing special looking about it—on the outside or the inside. Sara had mana locked it, meaning that she created a protective layer of mana over the array and then had the jeweler cover up the array with molten metal before buffing it down. That was standard practice; otherwise, everyone could simply trace un-keyed arrays without practice or skill. Still, the ring was unlicensed, making it illegal. At the same time, a mage’s jewelry gets charged with mana, and the ring was impossible to differentiate from a normal ring. And if someone tried to break into it, the mana layer would burst into flames, burning it on contact. Arraycraft specialists had aggressively perfected copyright in Reemada.

“Even during practice?” Emma asked.

“Even during practice,” Sara said.

Emma blinked twice. “I plan to, but why? It seems important.”

“I bought this in a magic artifice shop,” Sara said. “Rikastone absorbs the wearer’s mana. The more you wear it, the more intimate you get with it because it shares your mana. Eventually, you can use it like a battery.”

That was true, but she left out something critical: since Sara mana-locked the array into the ring, the mana it absorbed would work like a battery, activating the spell under the condition the array called for. Sara wanted to explain that, but the ring was, after all, illegal. Telling her that was out of the question.

“Wow…” Emma said, her eyes sparkling and wet with tears.

“Please don’t cry,” Sara sighed. “It’ll ruin it.”

Emma giggled, wiping tears from her eyes. “I can’t help it.”

“I know you can’t.”

“Then don’t complain.”

“That’s all I do these days.” Sara chuckled bitterly. “Tea?”

“Sure,” Emma said.

Sara activated an array on the wall that acted as a servant bell, and Tamon knocked on the door. “Yes, Mistress?”

“Tea, please,” Sara said.

“It would be my pleasure,” Tamon said, waving at Tilly and then at Reck, who huffed. Even though they shared the little leetas like divorced parents, swapping off every other night, it’s hard not to love the one that’s yours first. Human nature. He then left and returned with tea.

“These little guys are soooooo cute!” Emma said, cuddling with Tilly in her lap. She hugged them. Reck reeahed, the leeta equivalent of a meow, and Emma picked him up, too. She looked like she was in heaven.

“One of these days, I’ll get you a zerco,” Sara said.

“What’s that?”

“I’ll surprise you.”

“Okay….”

After a few minutes of silence, Sara opened her mouth. “So… how have you been?”

Emma giggled. “I’m good. Oh my God, did I tell you what Emily did?”

Sara smiled with warm hollowness. It felt good to be talked to like a friend, but she felt like Emma was talking to Sara Reece—her Sara Reece—instead of her. Still, she shrugged. “What did she say?”

Suddenly, Emma went into a tirade of funny stories that made Sara chuckle. It was a strange experience, but it felt like Emma just ignored Sara’s change in personality, all the hell that had happened, and all the drama and went right back into being her friend. At the end of the night, Sara hugged her.

“Thanks for coming, Emma.”

“No, thank you,” Emma said, rolling her ring around her index. “I’ll cherish this.”

“I hope so,” Sara said. They parted ways, and then Sara lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. “That was nice….” The warm feelings soon ended, however. Once she checked her watch and saw that it was nearing ten, she got up. “It’s almost time.”

Sara pulled out a box from under her bed and retrieved her two spatial rings. “It’s time to get started.”

Anxiety ground at her bones, and she could feel her ribs from the tension, but she was grinning. It was time to move.

After checking to make sure that the door was locked, activating a mana ward that would tell her if someone used a divination pulse, and double-checking that her privacy circles were active, she silently chanted her invisibility spell. Then she looked out her window, checked the position of the guards, and then jumped fifty feet to the ground below. Right before she hit, she used a spell to lower gravity, making the fall gentle and quiet. Then she burst through the Royal Garden at a speed that would stun Edico senseless. She had a meeting to make, and she was under surveillance. The stakes were high, and the clock was ticking.If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Sara passed by open taverns in the southern commercial district, wafting the scent of booze and fire-baked bread. Citizens were rowdy over the night before Drenda, a holiday that celebrated the mortal death and ascension of Trolsa, a famous Goddess in the Escaran Kingdom. Sara chose this day because it was packed with traffic moving in and out of the kingdom, thinking that it would act as a smoke screen. Unfortunately, King Escar had placed a ban on the heroes leaving Lemora, and surveillance on her had only increased.

Once she made it to the edge of the district, she found a merchant and his companion in a merchant wagon, two montas already tied to it. One of the men was black-out drunk, groaning beside the driver’s seat of a wagon. “Why is he drunk?” Sara asked sternly, materializing.

Stalm, a merchant with sober eyes, panicked, putting his index to his lips. “Be quiet. We’re not risking our hides for a round of drinks. Now stop questioning my competence and get the fuck in the wagon.”

Sara narrowed her eyes, but he met her gaze. His eyes didn’t betray his confidence or self-righteous anger. “We’ll see about that.” Sara jumped into the back of the wagon through the driver’s section and sat on a dusty box that smelled of potatoes before reactivating her invisibility.

“That’s one fucked up skill, lady,” Stalm scoffed, jumping off the wagon and untying the montas. Then he led them back into the street and started down the cobblestone road in a slow trot. When they got up to the gates, a guard stopped them with stola crystals, lumination crystals that acted like flashlights when activated with mana. “What’s your business?”

“I’m taking my business partner home,” Stalm said.

The guard eyed the groaning man, rolling over and gagging slightly in his chair. “That man needs to be in an inn.”

Sara’s heart pounded, ready to run the merchant through for his incompetence if necessary. She gripped her sword. If things needed to get violent with the guards, she had to be ready. If she didn’t play her cards right, the guards would raise the signal, and King Escar’s guards would pound on Sara’s door, demanding she get ready for battle if necessary (his latest trick to make sure she was in her room.) She swallowed hard.

“This man needs to be with his wife,” Stalm said. “His wife’s with child, and she’s broiled stiff. I was sent to get him, and she’s still gonna flay my ass and fry it when I get there.” He scoffed. “Women.”

The guard cracked a smile. “Yeah. My Missus almost whooped my ass with a fire rod when I tied one off last night….” He looked at the drunken man and chuckled. “He’ll be lucky to get off with a dry spell.”

Stalm chuckled. “He’s already on a dry spell. Are we good to pass?”

Sara held her breath.

“Sure. Let’s just check your gear, and you’ll be good to go…. Is everything alright?” The guard’s vocal pitch bent unnaturally.

Stalm gave him a helpless smile. “A merchant’s goods are his life. You seem good enough, but some of the guards I’ve met….”

The guard relaxed. “Look, man. I get it. These people….” He leaned in until Sara could see his face and straggly three-day beard and whispered, “They’re a bunch of fucks. Corrupt as hell. So I get it. I do. But if I don’t, the king’s going to do to me what his missus is going to do to him. So just let me open it. I won’t snoop.”

Stalm took a sharp breath and put on a smile. “Sure….”

“Good stuff.”

The merchant jumped off the driver’s seat and walked around back.

Sara could hear every step as he got closer, followed closely by the clank of armor like the sound of percussions following minor trumpets. She could hear them breathing as she gripped her sword, holding her breath and wondering how to cleanly kill everyone if necessary and get back to the castle before lockdown. Then she could hear the key turning in the lock, clanging with the sound of moving chains. Three seconds…. The chains clanked down as the drop locked, and Stalm’s hands grabbed the rusted handles, making the wood groan. Two seconds.

“Make it quick,” Stalm said.

The door yanked open, and the light from the dim mana-lit streetlamps flooded in, allowing her to see the shadowed figure of Stalm and the guard.

“Alright. Who knows, I might find something to buy for the missus.”

The guard lifted his mana torch. Before it reached her corner, the man in the front seat gagged and puked off the side of the wagon.

“Oh, come on!” the guard yelled, turning his light away. “I have to clean this shit!”

“My apologies. Here, I’ll compensate—“

“Just forget it. Drop me a few gliders when you get back. I hate the smell of puke.”

“My apologies. We’ll leave right away.” Stalm slammed the door shut, making Sara take a deep breath. She was holding as still as possible to keep the illusion at maximum efficiency, and once she breathed, her body rippled, making her tense shoulders spasm.

The guard whistled, and Lemora’s hundred-foot gates opened with a groan. Then the cart started moving, and she found herself going through the gate.

Sara jumped out of the wagon a few miles from the capital’s gates, leaving Stalm and Grech (the “drunk” man who was actually sober and pretending to be intoxicated before he ate poison berries and regurgitated at the gates).

“Sorry for questioning you.” She tossed Stalm a bag of gold. He threw it back.

“I didn’t do this for you. Tyran and I are even. Now go.”

Sara nodded and reactivated her invisibility, rushing through grain fields to get out of sight. Then she continued for two hours, entering the forest and weaving through the trees from memory.

Her destination was a rock bluff. It was very inconspicuous, but it had a powerful secret.

Squeezing into a thin crack and using mana to break through rocks that had collapsed on it, she entered an enclave with a stone platform. On it was a three-foot magical array that was intricate and had many of the same markings as a spatial ring.

“It’s been too long,” Sara said, dropping to her hands and knees, closing her eyes, and started chanting. When she finished, her body radiated with golden light, and then she walked forward, entering another side of the world as if she had opened a simple door.

A cloaked figure watched Sara use Sayon’s ancient teleportation network to teleport toward Lemca. First Mary, now Sara. The pieces had fallen into place. It was time for him to make his move.

Teleporting was no different than reaching through a spatial ring. The only difference was that it required a six-layer array, an inhuman amount of mana, and a lost ancient spell located in Telia Sayon’s crypt (a location that had withstood aspiring adventurers for centuries before the Hero’s Party successfully completed its trials years ago). In short, there was a massive difference—but the end result was the same. Sara was in one place, and when she moved a few inches, she was just in another.

The portal exited in the Kent Forest, immersing her with the smell of lycom, a nutty moss that smelled vaguely of almonds and apricots. I need to move, Sara thought, looking at her pocket watch. She only had a few hours before she had to be back, and most of that time was spent traveling.

Rushing through the forest, she traveled thirty minutes before spotting a quaint city over the horizon. Closing her eyes, she smiled wryly. Time to play the villain. Then she started chanting, and a massive fireball developed in the sky like a sun, lighting up the entire city as if it were daytime.

Town folk came out of the houses and businesses, screaming and sounding the alarm. Lemca’s town bell sounded, and montas started neighing.

Sara watched the panic with grim satisfaction. Not because she enjoyed watching people suffer or reveled in the thought of the city’s property damage (she would ensure that Lemca was compensated and then some). It was just because it was working, and the Twilight Core made creating a fire into an existential threat possible. Once her Divine Eyes divination spell confirmed there were no people in her target area, she grimaced. It’s necessary….

Without further self-encouragement, she launched the massive fireball at Lemca, incinerating the outer edge of the city in a blaze of flames and fury.

King Escar awoke to a knock on his door at 3 am in the morning. Last year, if he awoke in such a way, his blood would boil in rage. But that night, he couldn’t sleep. The true gravity of his decision to kidnap people from another world—a point of deep bitterness—and then force them to fight for the kingdom was sinking into his muscles, leaving his neck stiff and his movements stilted. After all, over half of these students would be able to overpower the sycounts within the year—and they were just starting out. If they banded together to take revenge…. It kept him up. So, when the knock sounded, his heart nearly exploded in fear, but his mind was thankful for the distraction.

“What is it?” he yelled.

Tanta Escar turned over. “Just talk to them outside.”

“Shut up, woman.”

She snorted as he got up, threw on his robe, and opened the door. On the other end was the acting leader of the sycounts. “Wha~t?” King Escar smacked.

“One of the heroes wishes to speak to you.”

“Now?” King Escar snorted.

“He says that he’s had a dream. He said you’d know what that meant.”

King Escar froze. “Dream about what?”

“Lady Reece. It sounds serious.”

Sara extinguished the fire once the townsfolk fled the city. Then she turned back to Kent Forest. Please be there… she thought. This wasn’t the first time she traveled to Lemca. In previous trips (before the investigation and scrutiny), she found her target [beast] deep within the Kent Forest, but it could’ve fled. There was only one way to find out.

Sara fished an obsidian stone from her pocket with a strange expression. It’s too late to back out now, she thought. She charged the black stone with mana until it temporarily became white. That should get its attention. Then Sara pushed it back into her pocket and started running through the forest, weaving in and out of trees and smashing through branches along the way. At any point in time, the guards could start knocking on her door, and she still had at least three hours of work to go.

King Escar took an hour to get ready, as being a king required a strong image, a face of power, and absolute authority. Without that image, he would just be a man with power, not a king with absolute control. Taking a seat on his throne, he gave the nod to his guard. “Bring him in.”

The guards opened the door, exposing the visage of Lord Brandon Torres, one of the heroes.

“I expect this to be good, Lord Torres,” King Escar warned.

Lord Torres’s face paled as he walked in, mumbling to himself, looking at his hands.

King Escar narrowed his eyes. As a lifelong politician, he had learned to read people, and Lord Torres’s body posture suggested that he was trying to remember something. That could be Lord Torres trying to remember his dream—or remembering what he was told to say. The only reason that prevented King Escar from suspecting foul play was that the teen was notoriously abrasive and socially awkward. Still, he would treat the teen with caution.

“Yes, um… My King,” Lord Torres said, brushing his black hair to the side and kneeling. “I had a dream. It was… strange. Super vivid. Like… I don’t know. It felt real. Super real, and I—“

“Get on with it.”

Lord Torres turned white, looking at the guards. He looked extremely uncomfortable, betraying the confidence of someone who had the audacity to wake him at three in the morning.

“Speak.”

“Uh, yes. This dream—it showed Lady Reece… in the north… somewhere.”

King Escar froze. “In the north? Where?”

“S-Somewhere near… um… Lemca, I think?” Lord Torres said. “I-I’m not sure what she was doing there, but… I remember the name of the location. I think.”

“In the future?” King Escar said.

“No….” Lord Torres gulped. “Now.”