"You've had a few unexpected encounters," Draga comments, "and you need to be ready to handle the next one."

I look up from sewing up a torn sail and frown. Between the constant rocking of the boat and the painful knots below my stomach, I'm really not in the mood for this, but I respect Draga enough to listen.

"I'd rather there not be a next one," I grumble.

"As would I, but it's better to be prepared," he sighs. "The key to surviving an ambush is to plan for the unexpected. In a sudden fight, it will be easier to work together if each of us already knows how the others will act."

"Okay."

"Hopefully you'll never need to use any of this, but I'll start with some basic signals..."

* * *

"Allie, are you armed?"

Violence is possible and imminent. Draga doesn't have time to explain or give specific orders. He needs to know whether I'm prepared to act on his mark.

"Yes."

Talla's sister is growing nervous—she can read our tension and knows something is wrong. Draga subtly places himself between her and the potential assailants. He's on defense.

The attacker draws his weapon. A matchlock pistol, already lit. Now that I'm looking for it, I can sense the flickering flame of the lit match—and four more inside the carriage. Out of my reach, but close enough that I can feel them. I don't react right away—stay calm. Follow the plan.

"Now!"

Readied for the mark by his warning, I immediately lunge to the side. At the same time, Draga pulls Tara off the street and into cover. Our sudden split forces the shooter to choose one of us to track with his gun, and he hesitates.

There's not much time for me to take advantage of that hesitation. The crowd isn't dense, but there are innocent people around us and they haven't quite figured out what's happening yet. I've been workshopping potential spells in our free time, but for now I'm still limited to familiar tools.

[Protect the Innocent]

Dramatically increased Power, Resilience, and Will when fighting in defense of anyone sick, injured, or below your own tier.

No response from that one, despite the people around us. Not that surprising, most adults are higher tier than us. I didn't want to have to do this again, but it worked once and there's no time to consider other solutions.

[Burning Innervation]

Dramatically increased Power and Ego at the cost of a commensurate increase in body temperature and exhaustion.

My skin tingles as our body flushes with heat, our body temperature rising a couple degrees to an instant fever. The shooter has already rallied, shifting to aim his gun at me before I can clear the distance between us.

Our leather shoes grip the paving stone far better than the rawhide soles of the makeshift slippers, already paying off as I dash forward. I know I won't be able to make it across the several meters between us before he makes his shot just by running, but he's not expecting my next trick.

[Thermodynamic Conversion] turns my excess body heat into kinetic energy, launching me forward at a speed much greater than I could ever manage on my own. My control is still lacking, and it feels like getting hit by a truck as I vault over the surprised horse to tackle the equally surprised driver.

The element of surprise is only going to get me so far, though. He's much bigger and stronger than I am, even—no, especially after taking skills into consideration, and there's no way I'll be able to disable or restrain him on my own.

With [Pyrothaumaturgy], I snatch the flame from his gun's match at the same time as I plunge my knife into the closest spot I can see. He screams in agony, a guttural inhuman sound that unfortunately doesn't make this any easier.

I'm close enough to manipulate the flames within the cabin now, and make the split-second decision to convert all of them into little explosions. Nothing like the bombs Maggie creates from mana candles, but enough to disable any matchlock firearms and stun the people inside. That's all the attention I can spare for anything other than the driver as I wrestle with him on the ground.

It's a mess—the two of us fumbling on the floor of the driver's seat as I stab him repeatedly. He doesn't just let it happen—punching and kicking wildly in an attempt to get me off of him, but between his disabled weapon, my first strike, and Nipper biting savagely at his extremities, I'm at an advantage. He connects a blow to my temple that sends the entire world spinning around me, but I fight through the daze. There's nothing but him and me in this confined space, and I'm a much smaller target.

My knife finds its mark more often than his panicked flailing, and after a few seconds that feel like hours his movements slow and he gurgles his last dying breath.

I stumble to my feet and adjust the grip on my knife, looking around to regain my bearings. People around me yell and flee, a few calling for guards but most just desperately trying to put as much space as possible between themselves and the violence.

The carriage rocks in response to more violence inside, but it dies down quickly. Three bodies get ejected from the cabin, tumbling lifelessly to the street before Draga emerges carrying a fourth one slumped over his shoulder, unconscious but breathing.

He meets my eyes for a moment before glancing at the dead body at my feet and nodding once.

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"Good work," he says, grabbing the driver's body with one hand and tossing him into the pile with the others. "Get in the carriage—we're leaving right now before anybody else can arrive."

I blink. "What about guards?"

"Especially them," he grunts. "We don't want to linger here while they're looking for someone to blame. Let's go."

He heaves the unconscious lump into the driver's seat, then steps away to go calm the horse.

All I can do is climb down and join Tara, who looks extremely shell-shocked as we enter the carriage together. The interior is simple—light wooden construction with a few cushions for comfort. Even here, the Fa'aun prefer low seating—what do they have against chairs?

Tara and I sit across from each other, and she stares at me with wide-eyed terror, eyes flickering across my bloodstained clothes. I can't imagine what I must look like right now, but it's almost refreshing to see someone reacting with an appropriate level of horror. I'm terrified that I'm going to get used to this. That I won't even be nauseated by the smell of blood anymore, or that my hands will stop shaking after I kill someone.

I already feel horribly numb, but I prefer that to the alternative. That it won't affect me at all.

The carriage soon starts moving, and Tara breaks the awkward silence between us.

"Y-you're bleeding," she murmurs quietly.

"Not mine," I reply.

"No," she shakes her head and pulls out a small cloth handkerchief. "It is, look—"

With trembling hands, she presses the cloth to my cheek and I wince in pain from a cut on my cheek I didn't realize I had. One of his punches must have broken the skin after all.

"You okay?" I ask as she gently dabs at the wound.

"Me?!" she yelps in surprise. "All I did was stand there and hide while you and Sir Draga did everything! You're the one that's hurt."

"It's small," I say with a shrug. "Not bad."

She frowns, doing her best to clean me up before realizing that her tiny handkerchief isn't up to the task.

"I never really looked too closely," she mutters, eyes traveling slowly down my body. "But these scars...you've gotten hurt before. A lot."

The tendency for Fa'aun clothing to reveal the midriff hadn't bothered me before, but thanks to Tara I'm now extremely self-conscious about the scars on our side where a laser gecko gouged me with its claws. Just one of many near-fatal injuries we sustained.

I draw my knees to my chest and sigh.

"Yeah," I admit. "And we will again."

It would be stupid to think otherwise. We're not safe. We might never be safe again. I don't want to get used to that. I don't want to think like that, but the alternative is death. Until now, today was good. Setting aside the encounter with Mira, yesterday was good. I'm not going to pretend that relaxing is bad—in fact, we desperately needed it. But I'm also not going to pretend that this period of fun and relaxation wasn't bookended by moments of sudden unexpected violence.

We need to be ready for when—not if—it happens again.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Tara asks. "I know you probably think I'm just trying to get on your good side because my mom told me to, but I mean it. You need friends, and—well, being a friend is what I'm good at."

She's right, I do think that she's trying to ingratiate us to her family. She's also right that we need friends. I don't know how much I trust her yet, but I don't think she's lying to us.

"[Allison, do you trust her?]" I ask quietly in our own language. "[I mean, really trust her.]"

"Well, it's not like she has to be disingenuous about being our friend to put us in her family's debt." Allie muses. "In fact, the more I think about it, there's no way Tamara is so detached from reality that she doesn't know her own daughter's nature. Rara is cheeky and rebellious, but she loves her family and she loves people. We can take anything she offers us at face value, but we should assume that Lady Goa will look for ways to take advantage of it."

I see. Honestly it's hard not to be surprised sometimes at how much thought Allie puts into these things. It's hard to reconcile the girl who gets us completely drunk in front of a noblewoman she just met, with the calculating analysis she just gave me. And yet, despite how awful it turned out in the end, she did make a good enough impression on that lady to put us on Jira's ship.

The question, then, is what can I ask of Tara? Her expertise is setting up meetings, but that doesn't help unless you know who you want to meet. Although I suppose she was able to do quite well with finding someone to make our shoes.

A thought strikes me. Something that's been bothering me. This world is so unfamiliar to us—honestly even more than I expected—and yet there are flashes of familiarity. The alien nature of the world only highlights those standouts even more—cars, guns, the puzzle cube. Even Tara's hair, with the pink highlights dyed into it, feels strangely anachronistic. Maybe that's just another layer of alienness—a different culture that developed in different areas than the ones we know.

And yet. So many of these strange things trace back to one place. One source of innovation that's been influencing Fa'aun culture for centuries. A single reclusive individual who invented all of it, right down to Tara's hair dye—even if I can't prove that they're responsible for the cube. Not to mention the strange encounter I had in my dreams.

I don't know how much of it is really connected, but enough of it points in the same direction that I need to search there for answers. And maybe Tara really can help with that.

"The Alchemist," I say after a long silence. "I want to meet The Alchemist."

She stares at me incredulously, momentarily dumbfounded by the request.

"Frick, you're not kidding are you?" she asks eventually.

"No. Is it possible?"

Tara sits back against the wall of the carriage next to me and runs a hand through her hair.

"Uuugh, I don't know," she groans. "You do realize you're not the first person to ask, right? Mom's been on my case for years about trying to make a connection there."

"I can imagine."

She taps a finger against one of her horns, chewing on her lip as she considers the request.

"It's really hard," she admits. "I have...a couple of possible inroads, but even getting a maybe out of them is going to require cashing in some huge favors. You're sure about this? He's infamously reclusive and no matter what I do, he's not going to see you unless he wants to."

"I'm sure."

I wish I could say more, but I still don't have a strong enough grasp on the language. If there's any connection to our old world to be found, he has to be the first place to look.

Tara sighs. "Okay. I'll try. But I can't make any promises, and you will owe me for this!"

"Owe what?" I ask.

"I don't know!" she huffs. "My frick mother would want me to get you to accept our patronage, but I don't care about that. Just try to return the favor if you can, okay?"

"I'll try," I agree. "And thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," she grumbles. "Blood and acid, if I pull this off I'll probably level straight up to the next tier."

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