The belief hammered me, complete and absolute. I was burning Cato alive, and I couldn’t let that happen. I lunged forward, slamming into him.

  He was far taller than me, but he was a slight, and I was built like a brick shithouse, all wide hips and power in my stout frame. He went down with a wet crunch. Snow, I was surrounded by--

  I shoveled it with my hands, flinging it on top of him, trying to bury his arms and torso, his face, because I couldn’t let him cook, couldn’t let him die in a conflagration where his own body was the fuel, where he screamed until the smoke stole all the air from his lungs--

  Cato’s head popped itself out of the snow I had buried it under, his gloved hands fisting around my forearms. He yanked me down, pulling himself up, his lips baring teeth in a parody of a snarl.

  “Have you utterly lost your wits?” he yelled, shaking me.

  I blinked. My eye focused. His hair was wet, covered in snow, and so was the rest of him, pale hooked nose turning red from the cold, his spectacles askew.

  He didn’t look burned.

  “…I could smell it.” I said, stupidly. “I know that smell.”

  Cato shoved me back and twisted, pulling himself up to his feet. He held his arms out from his sides, brushing his coat free of the melting snow and glowering at me. “What madness has possessed you? You managed the prior fires with minimal fuss, but the moment you control it, you panic, assault me, and attempt to smother me beneath the snow. Are you so decidedly useless that using your most basic heal is beyond you? How are you to function if you can not even manage this, this most piddling and pathetic of tasks?”

  “You were burning.” My mouth finally found the words. “I could smell it. I wouldn’t let you fuckin’ roast.”

  His lip curled upwards, and he laughed, an angry crack. “What scent? I perceived none. See here and witness the result of your delusion--” He flicked a hand, and spiraling purple circles appeared between us in the air. They flickered, red, orange, blue. Glitchlight. Between the concentric rings, there were rows of tiny ones and zeros.

  It was the second time I’d seen the numbers, and the word for them popped into my head. Binary. I think that was binary.

  Cato had stopped talking. He flicked a finger at a part of the ring, and it zoomed in, for lack of a better word. The ones and zeroes rushed forward, and the larger circles vanished, like the outer rings of a rippling puddle, and new rings were revealed.

  In the next moment, Cato snapped his hand to the side, cutting through the Glitchlight. It flashed, violently, and disappeared.

  “It is written into the soulcode of your skill.” He said, his voice oddly flat. “The odor of burning flesh will occur on each occasion you use Cauterize. This makes it effectively useless, as you have just proven the scent is viscerally retained in the monkey aspect of your memory, reducing you to animal flailing. Of course. Not only am I granted the most ineffective and undereducated healer possible, the System has deliberately designed your skills so that every use of them shall reduce you to deranged wailing. You are a walking dead weight, no better than a noose around my neck.”

  I swallowed. “I’m sorry…look, I thought you were burning.”

  “So you have said.” He turned away from me, and then laughed again, the sound carried by the wind. It was a noise that suited the man, somehow harsh and dignified at the same time. “It is a wonder your belief that I was burning did not set me aflame, in truth.”

  “Did I heal you at all?” I asked. Cato had turned away and was walking away at a brisk pace, and I stumbled after him. There was a lump in my throat. I hated being a burden, and here I was, doing just that. Frustration beat a tempo that the infection in my chest matched, and I resisted the urge to press against the armor that currently covered it.

  “A singular health point. I presume your own Conviction reduced the amount that it should have healed.” Cato wrapped some of his long hair around his wrist, squeezing some water out of it, and released it. His tone retained that emotionlessness, and it made me uneasy.

  “No. Base heal was one, the rest of the amount was determined by Conviction.”

  Cato’s stride hitched, and then he laughed, again. There was something wrong with this one. It was loud, more snarl than amusement, and it almost seemed to echo.

  Uh.

  No, that was more than a little wrong. It sounded inhuman.

  When he spoke, the void of feeling that had dominated his voice in the last minute, and what came out was a hissing wrath. “A ridiculous power in the hands of a woman who will never make any use of it. Healing where the upper limit is determined by Conviction is the kind of skill ordinarily reserved for distant levels and greater powers. Such spells will appear in middle Wings at the earliest, and yet in your hands, such an advantage might as well not exist. Tell me, Paladin, will there ever come a day that you will hold fire in your grasp and the stench of burning flesh in your nose, and believe, with the whole of your mind and soul, that it will help instead of harm?”

  I had stopped walking after Cato. Something itched at me, those little ants of warning crawling up my spine again. “I don’t know,” I said, because it was the truth. “I don’t want to be a burden to you.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Then what do you intend to do to avoid such a fate, for at this moment that is all you are and ever will be?” Cato spun, his robes flaring out around him. Reality was glitching out around him again, like it had earlier, that purple light alternately changing the snow to weird, crystalline structures and vanishing chunks of it. “The entirety of your existence so far has been as a creature that delays me, reduces me, pains me. I am corralled by your presence to a ill end, and at every turn you make my life a difficulty that is a struggle to bear.”

  “I didn’t ask for this,” I said. “I didn’t sign up, I didn’t make any contract, the Raids didn’t exist when I was alive, I don’t even know how I’m here, much less why. I don’t know how I got stuck with you, and if there’s some way to free you, let me fuckin’ know, because I don’t like you very much, either. I don’t want to be a burden, yeah, but it’s not as if I’m choosing to be a victim--”

  It was like Cato teleported. One moment, he was there, radiating magical--Glitchlight?--fury. The next he was in front of me, his hair a wild halo behind him, and lips curled back, gold eyes boiling. There was something feral in him, and something kicked over in that “monkey” part of my brain.

  Something was wrong with all of this, outside of the argument. That coiling sense of danger rose in me, an instinct that pealed with the clarity of a bell ringing in my mind.

  “Are you so very sure about that?” he said, and there was something wild in his eyes. I was staring down a very human-looking tiger that was considering whether or not I would make a decent meal if he put forth the effort.

  I took a slow breath, and exhaled. Careful, Teddy. I didn’t really know this man, and I didn’t know what he could really do if this temper of his snapped. When I spoke, I made sure to keep my voice even, and I tried to speak logically. Cato was emotional, but I knew his type--they liked to believe they were reasonable. “Every choice I’ve made has been one I would make again, with what I knew. I defeated that Pinewolf. I carried you to the inn. I spent a single night in mourning for the death of everyone I’ve ever known. I went and fought that Herald, because I’ll be damned if I hear people screaming and don’t go to help. You can’t change this about me, Surtr. My fear of fire isn’t great, but I’ll work at it. It’ll get better.”

  One corner of his mouth pulled up into a sneering smile. “Work at it? How do you intend to repair a fear that is written into every inch of your soul, encoded in every breath you take?”

  “If I was that fuckin’ afraid of it, I wouldn’t have tried to save you!” I burst out. “I’m not phobic. Or a coward. It just--you smelled like you were a pot fucking roast, Surtr.”

  Cato was looking more and more like shit with every second that passed, the molten gold of his eyes turning bloodshot. I eyed the snow around me that just vanished out of existence. One of the crystalline structures that popped into reality reminded me of those bismuth crystals we’d played with in high school lab.

  “Does using Glitchlight hurt you?” I asked, when Cato didn’t respond. He was still trying to burn me by glare alone. He narrowed his eyes at my question, stepped back, and then clicked his tongue in abrupt irritation.

  “My siblings never had to deal with a creature of such infuriating disposition as you. Of this, I am entirely sure.” He stepped back, but that sense of “I might just get eaten if I’m not careful” began to fade from my awareness. “You suggested running earlier. We are now to the point where that is no longer an indulgence, but a requirement.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and began to move, his stride rapidly lengthening, until he began to run. Somehow, the man made sprinting look elegant.

  I grimaced, and began to run after him.

  We ran for thirty minutes before it was Cato who began to slow. We were close to the treeline now, enough that I thought I could see things moving beneath the boroughs of the pine trees. An elk here, a rustle of rabbit movement here.

  It was getting colder.

  Cato’s stride was slowing. His eyes were fixated on the trees. “The Herald will reach us before we reach the Sledway.”

  “Sledway?” I said. “Is that where we’re going? And if the Herald is gonna reach us, then why are we slowing down?”

  The narrowed, slit-eyed glower he flicked in my direction conveyed all of his irritation. “Correct. And we slow, fool, because I must adjust my health. This encounter is inevitable, and you are clearly incapable of healing.” His words curdled with the force of his disgust, more something he thrust out like an attack than a simple response.

  “Don’t be pissy, Long-legs,” I said, grunting. “You didn’t tell me shit.”

  “No, I imagine he wouldn’t. Ain’t in his best interest, is it, Limiter?” The voice came from behind me, thickly accented and gruff. Oh, fuck. I reached for my shovel as I turned, yanking it free from the clasp that held it at my waist. The title of the quest blared in my memory--SPARE YOUR STALKER.

  Too late by half. As I turned a bolt flew by me, skimming my nose.

  It buried itself in Cato’s chest. The man staggered back a step from the force of it.

  I didn’t stop to watch.

  I finished the turn, my shovel free of its clasp. There was a man I didn’t recognize, stout, tall, heavily bearded. Looked a bit like a furious lumberjack. He was pulling the cord back on a crossbow. I’d shot a crossbow before, a long time ago. The strength that would take was beyond me, beyond most anyone I’d ever met. Insane.

  I ran towards him. He had range, but not as much as he could’ve. Why? Wind, probably.

  One stride, two strides. He was going to finish reloading. He slotted the bolt in, and I was still heading for him. He aimed it, mouth pulling back into a grim smile.

  I should weave.

  If I did, he’d hit Cato. My HUD had become active, and my health was sitting at 16/20. I didn’t know how high Cato’s was, but he looked a lot worse than I did.

  I didn’t weave. He pulled the crossbow’s trigger. The bolt flew and slammed through my armor, burying itself in my shoulder. I staggered, but didn’t drop. There was pressure and sharp pain, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. My heart pounded like a war drum, urging me onward. My HP dropped by four points. He was reloading again, but backpedaling. I tried to pull my arms back, but no, the shaft of the bolt was in the way, the bolt tip twisting further into my muscle. I released one hand’s grip on the shovel, reached up, and snapped the wood off. This time, when I grasped my handle, I could move freely.

  It fuckin’ hurt, but I could do it. On my fifth stride, I’d caught up. He was in reach. He dropped the crossbow, allowing it to swing down to his side, held by a sling. He was pulling a short sword, but not fast enough.

  I slammed my shovel home against his skull.