System Lost: My Own Best Friend

The severed remains of the Stalker are super weird. Despite being hard enough to pierce stone when they were attached, the pale flesh is uncomfortably soft and squishy. Instead of the smooth chitin I expected, it has soft silky skin and dense black flesh that oozes thick ichor. There are no bones or joints as far as I can tell and the "claws" at the end are just tapered off flesh.

"[Allie, why in the Goddess' names did you bring that with you?]" Talla asks, looking up briefly from her treatment of Saban.

The sniper survived being stabbed in the heart thanks to Draga and Talla's decisive actions, but he's still unconscious as Talla tries to heal him as quickly as she can without overusing her skills.

"Maggie," I reply simply.

"This is ridiculous!" the offender herself complains. "How can it possibly have no magic?! This biology makes no sense, it has to be magical!"

After Draga chased off the Stalker, Maggie asked me to bring the severed limbs with us so that she could study them. The results were unsatisfying and now they pretty much only exist for me to keep Nipper away from eating them.

"[So this is where you lived?]" Draga asks, returning from investigating my map.

I nod. The Labyrinth of Candles hasn't changed much since we left, but I have a nagging feeling that something is different. The most obvious was that the old lizard remains at the entrance were nowhere to be seen when we came in, but otherwise I'm not sure what it is that's bothering me. The candles are still here, and the twists and turns are just as I remember them. There's just this uncanny feeling that I can't quite shake.

Maybe it's just the fact that we're not safe here. I still don't understand how the Stalker got ahead of us. It wasn't that fast when it chased us the first time and if it took the route through the Worm Tunnel, that should have been longer than the one we took. Is there another one? Even with all the exits, I'm no longer certain that we can outrun it or lose it in the maze.

At least leading the rangers here was worth a level.

[Level up!]

Pathfinder is now level 9.

+2 Awareness.

+2 Will.

Just one more to go. Talla wasn't kidding about how generous the convergence point is for exploration classes. Not that I have anything to compare it to, but it sounds like mastering a tier one class in a few days isn't normal.

I sigh and cast an anxious glance at Saban. I know him least of all the rangers, and he's generally treated us with something between indifference and hostility, but I hope he survives.

"[Worried?]" Draga asks, slouching down to take a seat next to me.

I glance up at him and nod. Having him sitting next to me really drives home how huge he is. Fa'aun are already taller than humans, and I'm short even for a girl. Draga, meanwhile, is seven feet tall and while he's not as huge as the brute that we fought—whose name was Goro, I've been told—he's still extremely well built. It's a little intimidating.

"[Saban's seen worse, believe it or not,]" he reassures me. "[Talla always comes through for us. We're very lucky to have her. As for the demon...]" he trails off and sighs. "[It'll be wary of me now that I've injured it, but I have to admit that it doesn't bode well for us that it struck Saban first.]"

"Why not?" I ask.

Draga doesn't even need Talla to translate my question. "[Strength is difficult to measure,]" he explains. "[Out of all of us, who would you consider the strongest?]"

This feels like the sort of trick question you'd ask a kid. Something with no right answer, only different lessons to be learned in which wrong answer you pick.

"Talla, obviously," Maggie suggests. "Her Thaumaturgy has so many possibilities."

"But it strains her to use," Violet counters. "That power comes at a cost that she's not always able to pay. I think it's Draga. It's the obvious answer since he's the highest level, but sometimes the obvious answer just makes sense."

Given the context of the question, I think it seems likely that the answer Draga is leading me to is Saban. I'd like to give a more nuanced answer—everybody has their own role to play and we can be greater than the sum of our parts if we work together. In lieu of that, though, I decide to go with Vi's obvious answer and point at Draga.

"[By most people's metric, you'd be correct,]" he says, nodding. "[Most of society has no reason to look further than someone's tier. Mine is the highest, so I'm the strongest—it's simple and practical for most purposes.]"

Talla looks like she wants to interrupt, but thinks better of it, focusing on treating Saban's wounds and letting Draga carry on with his lesson.

"[Rangers have a different metric we use for estimating strength called the CCAT—Core Class Attribute Total.]"

It's interesting how their version of an acronym uses the entire first syllable of each word. Because their language has so many glottal stops, it doesn't actually sound any different from a regular word. I'm getting distracted.

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"[By CCAT standards, I'm still the strongest, but it does a better job at accounting for oddities like Lady Talla, who has a higher CCAT than Saban despite her lower tier,]" Draga goes on. "[But even that fails to account for important factors. Talla's skills and education are a rare and invaluable boon to a ranger team like ours, to say nothing of her magic. Unsanctioned healers are few and far between.]"

"Unsanctioned?" I muse. "By who?"

"[The church,]" Talla answers me. "[They used to have a monopoly on magic. Regulations have loosened since then, but they are still selective about who they recognize as a proper mage. It doesn't have any legal weight, but people are still wary of anyone the church refuses to sanction.]"

"[Right,]" Draga says. "[And they never sanction magical healers outside of the clergy, because life is the domain of the Goddess. Anyway, we're getting off-topic. The point I was trying to get at is that 'who is strongest' is a worthless question to ask in the first place. A much more important one—one that we used in the military—is 'who's the biggest threat?']"

That sounds like a hard question to answer, though. Unless you know what they're capable of, how would you even know?

"[I can see by your frown that you've already identified the problem,]" he says, nodding with approval. "[That saves me some time, so I'll skip to the end. Saban is the biggest threat—with the possible exception of you, depending on how easily you can repeat that trick with the candles. He has an even higher Power attribute than mine, and his skills are specialized for killing. Now, aside from the obvious—why do you suppose I'm worried about the demon attacking him first? Talla can translate your answer for me.]"

"[I'm not that familiar with her language yet,]" Talla complains. "[Just tell her.]"

"[I want to hear what she thinks,]" Draga insists.

"I mean, if he's the biggest threat, then he's our biggest asset, right?" Maggie says.

"He said aside from the obvious, Maggie," Violet retorts.

"Are you just gonna fucking contradict everything I say, or what?"

I ignore their bickering for a moment and consider the question myself. Honestly, I don't have to think very long, since it's something that's already been bothering me. The Stalker spent ages watching us before making any moves—so why did it attack the rangers so quickly? Ever since learning about the convergence break, my biggest worry has been the Stalker getting out, but we never sensed it watching us.

We didn't sense it watching us when it attacked Saban, either. Thinking that we could detect it gave us a false sense of security. If I abandon that assumption, then the answer is terrifyingly simple. Simple enough for me to give an answer that Talla has no trouble translating for Draga.

"It knew."

"[Precisely,]" Draga confirms. "[The problem isn't that it attacked Saban first—it's that it knew to attack Saban first. This is why I originally wanted to hunt it right away, although it may still be better that we didn't. I suspect it's been watching us for a while already.]"

That's what I was afraid of. Paranoia starts to creep in on me. If it can stalk us without us ever knowing, and appear anywhere, what can we even do?

"[Its next target will be either you or Talla,]" Draga comments, interrupting my panic. "[You're the next biggest threat after Saban with those candles of yours, and Talla is both hard to evaluate and our best defense against attrition. A demon like this will want to wear us down and pick us off one by one.]"

"I think it will be Talla," Violet says. "If it's as smart as it seems to be, killing the healer first would be the obvious move."

"Maybe it's smart enough to realize that the obvious move is obvious, Violet," Maggie remarks snidely.

"Please just stop arguing, you two," I mutter tiredly under my breath. "It's not helping."

Draga pats me on the shoulder gently, then stands up. "[Talla, how long until Saban's back on his feet?]"

"[Depends on whether you want me to use our last tincture,]" she answers.

"[Not yet. I need you in peak condition in case it ambushes us again.]"

"[Then it's going to be a few hours, at least. I can speed it up, but it'll mean either that one of us gets exhausted, or I get hit by magical strain.]"

"[Take your time,]" he says before turning back to me. "[Allie, I know you're still reticent about your abilities, but I need to know whether you can repeat your trick with the candles at will. Preferably with an even bigger explosion.]"

"Maggie?" I ask.

"Ugh, maybe?" she hedges. "The skill really doesn't like it, and I'm pretty sure a bigger boom also means a shorter fuse, which is not great considering that I need to be close enough to manipulate the flames. I'm not sure exactly what my range is, but the more I force it, the closer I need to be."

"But you can do it?"

"I think so. I know I've made a lot of promises about magic, but I really did learn a bunch from getting hit by the bomb lizard's gaze."

"Alright, I'll tell—wait, what?" I do a double take. I haven't been dwelling on what happened during that fight, but did she just say—

"Yeah, it damn near popped you like a zit," she comments blithely. "I was sort of in the zone, though, so I managed to redirect its power into the candle. I can't replicate that exactly, but I think I understand enough about it to intentionally destabilize a candle for a similar effect."

Okay, cool, almost exploded. No biggie. Another brush with death, nothing new. Heck, I had to face a whole ten foot cliff just today.

"[Allie?]" Draga asks, giving me a strange look. "[Are you alright? You just started muttering to yourself and then froze up.]"

I snap out of my reverie and blink up at him, clearing my throat. "Uh, yeah. I think I can do that. I mean—yes. I mean, I'm fine, and also I can do the candle thing."

Talla narrows her eyes at me, then sighs. "[She says she can do it. But whatever you're planning, Draga, remember that she's not used to this life. This many near-death encounters is bound to be traumatizing.]"

"[You don't need to tell me that,]" Draga grumbles. "[But alright. I think I have a plan. There's not much we can do to proactively hunt an ambush specialist, but we can make sure that we either force it to come to us, or engage it on our own terms.]"

I try to get my breathing under control while Draga explains his plan. Don't panic. I'll be fine. Just one last hurdle, and then we can finally leave this place behind for good.