The great, interminable abyss of space hurled Saffra out into the open air, and she recovered her footing with only a slight teetering back and forth.

  Still not a fan of that, she thought, making a face.

  But she was getting used to it. It was incredible what a person could adapt to given enough time and repetition, and Lady Vivi had dragged her through so many spatial warps that the unpleasant sensations that came afterward now passed in less than a second. The first time, she’d felt a background queasiness for minutes afterward.

  Eyes shooting around to orient herself, Saffra saw that she had arrived in front of Crestwood’s old, once-abandoned town hall. Lady Vivi, Eshara, Hollis, and the nine cured humans had also materialized around her.

  “Nobody needs anything?” Lady Vivi asked. “I’ll be leaving if not.”

  Both Eshara and Hollis returned negatives. Neither of the Titled seemed affected by the spatial travel, which Saffra eyed them enviously for. It had taken her dozens of trips to start brushing the experience off.

  But then again, they’re probably not new to it at all.

  She reminded herself—as was a recurring source of disorientation—that Eshara and Hollis were Titled. They weren’t normal people, however much they seemed like it. While Hollis probably didn’t have access to spatial warping abilities, another mage in his team likely did. The Roving Justicar’s band of heroes wasn’t only three strong, after all; Hollis and Corvan were just who Eshara had brought along on this quest.

  The rest of the woman’s party was somewhere else—Saffra didn’t know the details. She assumed that Eshara had reasonably underestimated the danger involved with the sickness and missing persons reports and not mustered up the largest response she could have. After all, even Crestwood itself had only been hoping for an orichalcum as its savior. As it stood, three Titled should’ve been enough for anything.

  Upon seeing Eshara and Hollis confirm that she wasn’t needed, Lady Vivi nodded, waved her staff lazily, and disappeared with a burst of mana, leaving everyone to stand in silence.

  Hollis glanced first at Eshara, then at the nine levitating, unconscious humans, back to Eshara, and finally to Saffra. His brow creased as he visibly debated some decision she wasn’t privy to.

  “Saffra, dear,” he eventually said. “Do you mind getting started on catching the bailiff up? We’ll be with you shortly, but I need to speak with my team leader.”

  The request caught her off guard, but she shrugged after a second. “Yeah, sure. I can do that. Take your time.”

  She wasn’t enthused by the idea of giving a report to the town leaders—in fact, she would rather not—but Hollis’s request pleased her for a different reason. She appreciated a sign of trust from the senior adventurer, even if it was just dealing with a minor matter like debriefing the bailiff. She’d felt rather useless throughout the expedition.

  She turned and walked away. She knew Hollis hadn’t made the request frivolously either. Eshara seemed like the kind of woman who would take charge in nearly any situation, yet she’d been oddly quiet since their teleportation. Since Corvan had been healed.

  Hardly difficult to imagine why, Saffra thought with a grimace.

  She headed in through the front doors of the old town hall, sorting out her hectic thoughts as she went—a lot had happened in the past few hours. Exposure to the whirlwind that was Lady Vivi hadn’t somehow immunized Saffra. She was getting better at dealing with ‘Lady Vivi events,’ but to a certain extent, they were situations a person couldn’t get used to.

  I wonder if even she is.

  The first time Saffra had been inside the town hall, Lady Vivi had blinked them straight into the middle of a random hallway. Thus, she didn’t remember the layout. She wandered around, glancing through window gaps or open doors, until eventually she heard voices and pivoted on a heel. Peeking through a doorway, she found what she was looking for: the town’s bailiff sagging against a wooden chair. A nervous-looking healer—Leslie, Saffra thought she remembered—was wringing her hands next to him.

  The bailiff’s gaze drifted to the doorway, probably seeing the smudge of bright red hair intrude on his periphery. He froze, then bolted to his feet, chair scraping against the floor.

  “Um, hi.” Saffra finished walking around the corner and waved awkwardly in greeting. She had spent nine months adventuring, which meant dealing with town officials was nothing new, but usually the team’s captain handled any real talking. And she had hardly ever been the agreed-upon captain. Not only because she was often the youngest by a decade or more, but because people weren’t her strong suit in general. Like master, like apprentice, I suppose.

  “Lady Saffra. You’ve returned.”

  Saffra winced. Lady? She still hadn’t gotten used to that—the way people addressed her so respectfully. Even when she’d been working as a silver-rank adventurer, the courtesy offered had been of a professional sort. Nobody had ever treated her, or her allies, like nobility.

  But comparing a noble title against ‘the Sorceress’s apprentice,’ there isn’t even a competition. As far as social status went, Saffra was higher up the pecking order than a duke’s daughter.

  “We have everyone outside,” Saffra told the bailiff, brushing off the weird feelings the thought produced. “The townsfolk and adventurers who went missing, I mean. I hope nine was everyone. Lady Nysari is looking around to make sure, but I doubt she missed any. Oh, and they’re cured, but still unconscious.” She perked up. “Has anyone here woken up?”

  The timid-looking healer answered, rather than the bailiff. “Y-yes, actually. They started stirring not more than ten or twenty minutes after you and Lady Nysari left.”

  “Is there anything wrong with them?”

  “They’re disoriented, but healthy.” The woman who always seemed like she was one wrong word from bursting into tears visibly cheered up. Then her brow furrowed. “Though they… seem to have foggy memories of being infected. Most are disturbed by the experience.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Oh.” Saffra frowned, not because that was catastrophic news, but because of what it implied. Corvan might remember his and Eshara’s fight. Not that she thought Eshara would hide the details of this expedition from him anyway, but still. “That’s good,” she said after a delay.

  “You have news?” the bailiff asked. “The problem has been dealt with?”

  “Yes. Lady Nysari—”

  A distant explosion of mana set all the hairs covering Saffra’s arms standing on end. Even from so far, a cold sensation gripped her body, and she jerked her head in the direction. The bailiff and the town healer did the same, paling reflexively and stepping backward despite their gazes landing on an empty wall.

  “Lady Nysari is… cleaning up,” Saffra finished lamely.

  The bailiff looked at her, digested the statement, and whitened further. He had handled Lady Vivi’s reveal well, but the primal part of a person’s brain would never not respond to displays like that. It was difficult for anyone to come to terms with the fact they were dealing with a woman who could erase provinces with a spell.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” the bailiff struggled out. Despite his change in complexion, there was genuine relief mixed into his nervous tone. “We can’t thank you enough, Lady Saffra.”

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Miss’ was about the most respectful title she could take—she really didn’t like ‘Lady.’ Secondly, she’d hardly done anything, so why was she being thanked?

  “I’ll pass that along to Lady Nysari,” she said neutrally.

  “What was it? A monster?”

  Saffra hesitated. He saw the reaction and turned a meaningful look to Leslie. The healer sighed, slumped her shoulders forward, and mumbled, “I should go check on the patients. Let me know if you need me.”

  Saffra felt bad about dismissing the woman—even if she hadn’t been the one to do so—but she didn’t know whether Lady Vivi wanted news of the Flesh-Weaver’s work spreading. The bailiff already knew that Eshara and her team had found the matter serious enough to look into, though, and he was also aware the Sorceress herself had responded. Hard to not infer the gravity of the situation with hints like those.

  So, she gave a concise report of what had happened, what the threat was, and how Lady Vivi was dealing with the ‘cleanup.’ The bailiff was understandably stunned by half of the sentences that came out of Saffra’s mouth, though he handled himself well, all things considered. To regular people, the Cataclysms were as mythical as the gods themselves. Those walking natural disasters had cults that survived to this day.

  And when even the withered-up, long-forgotten remnants had almost grievously wounded one of the strongest Titled-rank teams in the human kingdoms—had almost left them one man down—the terrified reverence was justified.

  Near the end of her explanation, Hollis and Eshara joined her. They took over informing the bailiff and organizing how to move forward, and Saffra was happy to let them. Miniature mana-suns bloomed on the horizon every so often, intermittently bringing silence to the conversation.

  When those stopped appearing, only five more minutes passed before Lady Vivi herself returned. She explained that she’d succeeded in her goals and then helped escort the cured townsfolk and adventurers—until that moment floating in the air, unable to be moved—into beds inside the makeshift hospital.

  Saffra didn’t do much, just watched. Like she had for most of the day.

  When everything had been sorted out and the situation seemed to have come to a close, at least so far as they were involved, Lady Vivi pulled Saffra to the side.

  “The rest of Eshara’s team is in the city to the north,” she started, “so I’ll be helping her return and reunite for the next few hours. After that, I’ll be taking them to Vanguard, speaking with Rafael, and handling her recruitment—and other matters. You can join us, but I assume you’d rather go home and practice. There won’t be much for you to do from here on out.”

  Saffra bit her tongue on her initial, sarcastic response: There wasn’t much for me to do until now, either. She knew it was an apprentice’s job to learn, but she still didn’t like not having an active role.

  “And good job with Eshara,” Lady Vivi added, seemingly out of nowhere. “I didn’t know what to say or do, when she was… like that. I didn’t expect to come back to her so much better.”

  Saffra blinked several times, taken aback. “Um. I—didn’t say much of anything.” Only the obvious, and she had felt stupid doing so. Who was she, to be giving a Titled advice about anything?

  A barely perceptible smile touched Lady Vivi’s lips, though Saffra had no clue why. “If you say so. Coming with, or going back?”

  She shrugged. “Up to you.”

  The truth was that, yes, she didn’t particularly want to fly around and shadow an expedition where she wouldn’t have anything to learn, but the apprentice wasn’t the one who decided that. She felt weird about Lady Vivi even giving her the option.

  “I’ll take you back,” the woman decided after a moment. “More time for you to practice is always better, and you should check on Isabella. See how she’s getting along at the Institute.”

  “All right.” Saffra tried not to let her relief show. That was what she’d been hoping for.

  Rather than scooping the two of them up in a [Warp] spell, Lady Vivi studied her quietly for a moment. Saffra felt a sudden wariness come on.

  “How… are you feeling?” Lady Vivi eventually asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Flesh-Weaver’s work isn’t pleasant. I’m assuming this was your first time dealing with something like that.”

  Saffra almost groaned. Exactly what I was hoping she wasn’t hinting at, she thought. Saffra pushed away her gut reaction of a scowl. She owed Lady Vivi more than she could repay, so the least she could do was not have an attitude.

  But Lady Vivi treated her like a child more than anyone else did. Saffra didn’t need coddling. She’d been twelve when she started an adventuring career, and had done fine for herself too. Better than most adults. Even other high-rank adventurers had noticed, like Jasper during the Convoy’s events, and now Hollis and Eshara.

  That independence—the fact she wasn’t a child—had been one of the only selling points for her demanding an apprenticeship from Lady Vivi in the first place. What an embarrassing irony.

  “Seemed like most other monsters to me,” Saffra said in as neutral a tone as she could manage. “Don’t think there’s much to talk about.”

  Lady Vivi appraised her calmly, and Saffra fought another spike of irritation. I don’t need to be ‘checked on’ because we were fighting big, scary monsters, she thought with an imaginary glare.

  To her enormous relief, Lady Vivi didn’t press. She nodded and held a hand out. Saffra took it, feeling her tension drain away. Biting her tongue was far from a strength of hers, and she really hadn’t wanted to get snippy with Lady Vivi.

  Several spatial teleportation spells later—first landing in the Vexaria manor and then bouncing across the city—Saffra arrived in front of Isabella’s Institute dorm room. A vague queasiness passed through her and faded.

  Across the human kingdoms in a matter of seconds. She was still getting used to how the concept of travel was an inconvenience of the past. She hadn’t realized the sheer amount of time she spent moving between places until Lady Vivi removed the need. They’d literally jumped down to the Southern Kingdom for a half-day jaunt.

  “I’ll probably have time to continue lessons tonight,” her mentor said, “but I can’t make any promises. Do you need anything before I go?”

  “No. Thank you, Lady Vivi. And good luck.”

  The mage nodded, then disappeared.

  Saffra took a breath in, held it for a long moment, and released.

  She knocked on Isabella’s door. When the wooden slab swung open, a White Glove with two silver bars on her lapel greeted her. The Institute didn’t normally allow their students to have bodyguards or attendants—since there were too many nobles and other sorts that would want them—but reasonably, an exception had been made for Isabella. From what Saffra understood, the White Glove Academy had essentially hosted a tournament for the privilege.

  “Young miss,” the woman said, curtsying. “Please come in.”

  Saffra said a thank-you and trailed inside. She found Isabella in her bedroom. The blonde, having had her nose stuffed in a book, blinked and straightened out when she saw Saffra. Saffra ignored the girl, staggered for the bed, and collapsed face-first into it, bouncing several times before settling.

  She let out a loud groan muffled by the sheets.

  “…long day, I take it?” Isabella asked.

  “Don’t even get me started.” She rolled over and rubbed her face, then flopped her arms back down. “But you go first.”