. I took to the air in a dour mood. I was suffering from fatigue due to three unpetrifications with only brief rests between, but that wasn’t the root cause of my funk. The trio had been bereft of equipment except for the weapons that had been locked in Ryuu and Graham’s hands. Brigitte was able to use a couple …

. Worried about what was going to happen with the axe once he became unfrozen, I stood behind Graham. I wasn’t sure how far I could send [Heal] with the fan, so I stayed within arm’s reach. I opened the fan and tested a ‘light’ dose (as light as I could make it, anyway,) then saw in my fairy sight …

I just gaped at her. It’s true, Unpetrification is just healing, but she already said it herself. It normally takes a large team of healers, and hours of spell-casting, to unpetrify one person. The teams usually have to work in shifts. It was like Bruna was reading my mind, because she responded to that exact issue. “I know what I …

Bruna pulled in her legs and then arched her back, rising up on her feet and shoulders as she let out a long, ragged breath, as if she couldn’t even scream. Collapsing once more, she lay there huffing and sweating as I frantically studied her with fairy sight. “Bruna?” Ceria cried, grabbing her hand. As I had feared, in that …

We spent a half hour going through several first level spells, with Bruna watching her sister like a hawk for any of the negative symptoms from the feeding that I described to her. I couldn’t do it, because every time Ceria fired off a spell, I had to pay attention to the sensations within me, and then imitate them. I …

A sigh rippled out of Ceria, then the tension poured away from her like an almost visible wave. We were both still in our armor, hardly the right clothing for what came next. I told her to remove her jack. She slipped out of it while I removed my own armor. Without my asking, she then untied her tunic at …

Nobody spoke much, beyond assuring each other that nobody had been seriously wounded. As the chimeras burned, I healed some scratches on the two while they sat on their rumps trying to catch their breath. Both of them shuddered when I cast the magic, but they were too worn out to protest much. When I was done, I made Bruna …

Jurmat licked his lips, staring at her, then me, then her again. “My Lady, I cannot…” he began answering in a pleading voice. I didn’t bother to wait for his words. When Trisiagga turned her angry scowl to scold him, I raised the crossbow and fired at her. She staggered backwards, shocked at the supersonic strike that hit her square …

“This cannot be happening,” I heard Ceria moan behind me. I didn’t have to warn my companions.  They recognized what sort of opponent we were facing. The first one to appear was the same opponent we had last seen disappearing over the outcropping behind us. I never sensed him come past us to return, so he had found some other …

I nodded my confirmation to her. I had no delusions about how badly I had misled them by omission. “I’m sorry for not being fully honest about myself,” I told her. “Even if I had my reasons, you had a right to know such an important thing about someone you were going to be risking your life with.” “But the …