Now More Than Ever (Part 2)

"Here now!" blustered Dalmore, but he was thoroughly ignored.

"He started this," I ground out, doing my best to sound reasonable.

The soldier was shaking his head. Behind him, the other two were dragging Fulk back to his feet. "Don't care, Flamesworth. Over three-quarters of our unit got wiped out when your dad sent us beyond the Wall. Still, we stay and grind on, no pay, little enough hope. So you of all people don't get to put your hands on one of us. Understand that?" His face had reddened as he spoke.

The guards had clearly decided to double down on Fulk's idiocy. I didn't entirely believe the senior captain's threat that I'd be chucked out of town for being arrested again, but I couldn't leave Camellia on her own.

Not with thugs like these around.

"Now," he said, his hand drifting toward the handle of his sword. "You are under arrest. If you don't come along quietly, we'll cut you down."

Half turning so I could see Camellia, who had sunk back against the closest wall to stay out of the way of my short fight, I said, "Go get your things. We're leaving."

One of the soldiers was already moving to intercept her. Hooking a chair with my toe, I kicked it at him as hard as I could, then lunged toward the red-faced guard.

My hand was on the pummel of his sword before he could unsheathe it, and he rocked backwards and tripped in the pile of broken wood as my forehead connected with the bridge of his nose.

The dazed Fulk caught him and both men tumbled to the floor hard enough to shake the mugs lining the wall behind the bar.

The fourth man has his sword out, but hesitated to attack.

I didn't.

I released a condensed burst of wind mana that threw him off his feet and into the bar. He crumpled at its base, not moving.

The guard going after Camellia had recovered from the chair and drawn a shortsword and a long dagger from his belt. The floorboards groaned and cracked as two vines burst up through them and wrapped around the man's legs.

He began to hack at them, giving me time to move in and pin his sword-arm to his side. I twisted his wrist until he howled in pain and the shortsword clattered to the ground, then drove my elbow up into his chin.

The soldier took one stumbling step back, got hung up in the vine still clinging to his leg, and went over backwards, his dagger flying. Camellia rushed around the fallen man, heading for the stairs up to our room.

Fulk and the red-faced guard were both struggling to stand.

"Enough," I said firmly. "This is over. Take your friends and go."

The two men regained their feet, and both brandished their swords. Fulk stalked toward me cautiously while the red-faced guard circled around to my left, his blade glowing red hot as he infused it with mana.

I drew my daggers. "No one needs to die here."

Fulk bellowed as he took Mankiller in both hands and swung downward toward me. At the same time, the red-faced soldier darted in from the side, thrusting at my hip.

Instead of dodging right, which would have left me pinned up against the bar, I moved left, into the thrust. One dagger parried the searing blade while the other licked out and made a shallow cut on the back of Fulk's unprotected hand.

Spinning, I put one foot between the red-faced soldier's legs, letting his own momentum trip him up, then drove the pummel of my dagger into his ear.

Although the pain of the sharp blow knocked him to his knees, he swept blindly backwards with his glowing sword, forcing me to dodge. The sudden movement sent a searing pain up my side as I twisted my torso, aggravating my still healing wound.

While the two were collecting themselves, I tried again to put an end to the fight. "Listen, idiots. I'm taking it easy on you, and you know it. Walk away."

Wordlessly, the two approached again. The red-faced guard's sword grew so hot that it burst into fire, whooshing as it moved.

I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt.

Jumping backwards, I threw both daggers, each wrapped in a disk of wind. The men's swords came up to block, and I lunged forward again, building a cyclone of wind-attribute mana around me that threw chairs across the room and overturned the tables.

Stopping suddenly just a couple feet from Fulk and his companion, almost directly between them, I pushed outward with the cyclone. It grabbed both men and hurled them bodily across the room, twisting and tumbling like ragdolls.

The red-faced soldier hit the roof, bounced off, and spun through one of the windows with a crash, disappearing into the street. Fulk's head hit the bar, then the rest of him smashed into the back wall, breaking the shelving and sending all of Dalmore's precious mugs plummeting to the ground where they burst into a thousand pieces.

The ringing noise of shattering ceramic hadn't even stopped before I heard yelling from outside the inn.

"Shit." Up the stairs I shouted, "Camellia, hurry it up!"

Dalmore, who had ducked below the bar when my cyclone attack went off, stood up and gazed slack-jawed around his barroom in horror. "Jasmine, what have you—" He went silent as his eyes locked on something behind the bar. "He's dead, Jasmine. You killed him."

Wrapped in an insulating post-battle calm, I walked slowly to the bar and looked over. Sure enough, the flat-faced guard's neck was twisted unnaturally, and blood was pouring from a gash near his temple. He was definitely dead.

Light footsteps on the stairs and a stifled gasp announced Camellia's return.

"Jasmine, you're bleeding…"

I pressed a hand to my side; sure enough, it came away red with blood. "It's nothing. Just opened my wound."

Withdrawing the ravager's beast core from my dimension ring, I set it on the bar with a heavy clunk and met Dalmore's eye. "Sorry about this, Dal. Maybe this can cover what I owe you."

An S-class beast core would have fetched enough gold to rebuild the whole bar back before the Alacryans took over. I wasn't sure of its value in our new world, but I hoped it would set him right. For all his nagging, Dalmore had been kind to me.

I gestured for Camellia to come on and gave the silent innkeeper one last nod before rushing out the door.

A small crowd had already gathered around the red-faced soldier, who was lying in a heap on the ground, only half-conscious. A few of them watched carefully as I came out of the Underwall.

After checking to make sure Camellia was following, I ducked away from the crowd, went down an alley between two buildings, then waited for a pair of rushing guards to pass by before making a beeline toward the west exit.

The carriage gates were closed, but the guards didn't seem particularly on edge. Camellia and I slowed to a walk as we approached the smaller gate that opened out into the Kingdom of Sapin.

The bored-looking gate guard hardly glanced up at us as he swung the iron gate out, allowing us to pass.

We had gone a few hundred feet from town when I heard the large carriage gates rattling open. A dozen armed and armored men, all soldiers of the Bulwark Division, were rushing out.

"Jasmine, they're—"

"Never going to catch us," I said firmly, hoisting Camellia onto my back. A burst of wind mana swirled around me, kicking up a cloud of dust that quickly obscured us, and I began to run.