There were no visible effects when Shizoku’s casting finished, but Moriko felt a brief giggle fit trying to take trol and a desire to fall to the ground ughing. Her training and experience had helped harden her will enough to resist the fox’s entment, their wills briefly testing against each other, and she gave the white-haired kitsune a grin. “ry.” And she meant it. If the spell had taken hold, it would have left Moriko nearly helpless for a while, which would have bought Shizoku time for her support to arrive.

  Out in the mist, the shadowy shape of the giant axolotl was beginning to stagger, and the monk decided she o things up with Shizoku fast instead of exging ratacks. Letting herself be deyed here would give them a ce to gang up ohree-to-one. So she colpsed her staff and charged across the water directly at the witch, ign the girl’s yelp as Moriko snatched her up mid-stride, not stopping until she’d reached the ice floe.

  That had taken long enough for Shizoku to sp her with foxfire twice, and rather iually try to sieeth into Moriko’s arm. The only reason she mao reach Moriko’s skin at all was that she’d shifted her teeth into a fox’s sharp ones.

  Moriko didn’t take the time to defend herself at all, instead shifting her grip to her arm around the girl’s ned drop them both to the ice so that she could her legs around the girl’s waist as well before she locked her arm into a choke-hold.

  It ossible to choke out someone while standing, but especially given the height differehis was much safer, giving Moriko more precise trol over her leverage as she restricted the blood flow in Shizoku’s neck. The kitsuurally pa the suffog sensation, as her air bubble only provided fresh air and did not relieve the o breathe as some advanced spells did, and filed wildly with her foxfire-lit tails.

  It took several seds for Shizoku’s eyes to roll bad her body to fall limp, and during that time Moriko picked up a few more burn marks. She immediately released Shizoku and reached over to sp the water twice to call up one of the bunyips. They wouldn’t have had a good view, so she wao make sure one of them got the girl to a healer for an immediate checkup. A three-tail kitsune should be resilient enough to not have signifit risk from the experience, but it was best to be sure.

  Trusting the bunyip to take care of things, Moriko rolled to her feet and broke out her healing kit to apply salves and bandages. She only had a few moments, and she o make sure she chose her as wisely. Nainvil would be the easiest to solo of the pair, while Brongrim had as much flexibility in switg between ranged and melee attacks as she did. Srim had to go down first, but she didn’t want to give Nainvil the opportunity to get a hit with his greatsword either.

  Fortunately, she had options that would not have beeo her a week ago. While she’d been training people up on the first floor, she’d found it very easy to enjoy seeing people make breakthroughs and had a small epiphany when she’d been able to distinguish between what a student was good at and what they enjoyed. For some, there was a way to show them how to enjoy what they were good at, and for others, she had to find a way to use their talent to pursue what they liked. And for a few, talent simply had to be abandoned in the pursuit of their passion.

  When she’d fully uood that, Moriko had felt a strange warmth, like her soul was being hugged in a gentle fire. That was when she knew she had Lady Sakiya’s blessing, and during her m meditations, she discovered an intuitive uanding of how to guide a portion of that blessing into some basic spells.

  While a portion of that power was dedicated to healing prayers, Moriko’s awakening was still new and their potency was low, which was why she had used her kit instead. She only had two ranked spells she expected to find a use for in this battle, and she used the first of them now, calling down a blessing that would help guide her strikes for the minute or so.

  Moriko also had a minor spell avaible, the same ohat would have been useful to have readied when Shizoku had hit her with those darts of force. But if she’d fred it to block those darts, it wouldn’t be usable now.

  There was a crash as the axolotl fell, and the two warriors started running toward where they had st heard Shizoku. Moriko was settled into her stance as they broke into the area that had been cleared of mist, her shield spell up. Brongrim was quick to spot her and fire his pistol, and Moriko had to almost immediately fre her shield to keep the bullet from reag her. That left the trip unusable for several minutes, but she still had her remaining ranked spell in reserve.

  She unched wind strikes at both of them as they charged, then cast her final spell of the fight just as Nainvil started to get close to her ice floe. The monk focused her thoughts on the half-ord shouted a and, “Flee!” Her will crashed against his, and his expression riceless as he found himself obeying her and, his body not under his trol as he ran away.

  That would only buy her a dozen seds at best, but that should be enough. Moriko enhanced her aura briefly with a burst of chi, lendira force to each wind strike she sent at the dwarf, who was still closing in on her.

  It was a fierce exge for a brief moment, Brongrim’s fighting teique allowing him to slice with his short sword even as he chambered another round while Moriko flowed freely between staff strikes and kicks. His teique was why he had chosen to close even after Nainvil had been forced to run away, otherwise, he simply had dead time out in the open while reloading. Both of them were still carrying injuries from their fighting, but Moriko was the stronger of them to begin with and had been able to treat the worst of her injuries. A staff strike against his head sent him down, his helmet crag open from this final blow.

  Moriko was a little more ed about a head blow that sent someone unscious than a simple choke out, so she held out her hand in a ‘wait’ gesture toward Nainvil, who had almost reached them again, and whispered words of prayer. She felt the passionate warmth of her goddess flow through her and then trim, who almost immediately began to stir with a groan. Moriko smiled down at him. “You are out, my friend.”

  A bunyip had surfaext to the ice floe and was waiting patiently to take the dwarf away, and Moriko stepped away to faainvil. “Ready to try your luck? I’ll even give you a rundown of where I am at: I have no more spells for bat, and I don’t have enough chi reserves for any major abilities, but I still use wind strikes and run on water.” Teically the wind strikes were part of one of her major abilities, but as long as she could maintain that part of her mental state she wouldn’t lose them. She had expended her reserves by first enabling her shadoing power, then switg to her wind aura, and finally in that flurry of strikes she’d spent rim a few moments ago.

  Nainvil sidered her for a moment; it wasn’t like either of them was i shape, and Moriko was trolling her breathing to not show how much she currently hurt. One rim’s bullets had cracked a rib and was still lodged against the bone just to the outside of her breast, and every breath made the pain fre, but it wasn’t enough to seriously hamper her. She was fairly certain she could still take him however; he either had to engage her at she with his sword, which would let her skirmish and make him chase her while she attacked from a distance, or he could try to switch ons to his longbow, but then she could close and fight him up close. her option required her to switch ons, so she could always slide smoothly between styles.

  The half-orc apparently came to the same clusion and sheathed his bde. “You win,” he said with a sigh, then waved off the bunyip as he approached Brongrim, who had sat up when his thoughts had cleared enough. Nainvil collected the fallen ons to returo their owners, then picked up the dwarf to carry in his arms.

  “Oy, what are you doing you big lout!” Brongrim shouted, and Moriko retty certain that the dwarf was blushing somewhere beh that beard. “I walk myself to shore.”

  “Oh shut up, you are still injured. Let me take care of this until we get you fully patched up.”

  Moriko grinned as the pair tio bicker and Nainvil walked across the water toward the keshore. The herself fall into the embrace of the presence she felt maing behind her, indulging in the luxury of having her husband scoop her up into a princess carry. “Well done, my love.” he murmured before kissing her. It was a lovely distra from the pain as his shadow reached into her wound to pluck the bullet out, and it nicely masked her slight whimper. That really, really hurt. But the pain faded as a gentle cool vitality flowed into her, ly repairing her body and soothing away her wounds. Ozuran’s touch was quite a trast to Sakiya’s when it came to the sensation of healing magic.

  She smiled up at Mordecai as their kiss broke aarted carryioward the shore. “That was fun, but I think this is the best part.” There was a faint grumble in her mind from Kazue, but it wasn’t like the kitsune could have dohe princess carry. Moriko retty certain that her wife’s assets took up most of the spa Kazue’s reach, and giggled at the image of being pushed out of her arms by said assets.

  Being carried was a nice ge of pace, and she settled in to enjoy the experiehough her thoughts zily pondered how Mordecai was able to walk at this slower pace across the water. She retty certain he didn’t have a spell active, though maybe she had just missed it. Then again, he had lots of tricks, so maybe it was something else. It was so hard to keep traetimes.

  They were well up the slope of the shore when Mordecai suddenly stopped, and Moriko opened her eyes to see him staring into the distance, his face shocked. “What?” Was all the time she had to ask before he was swinging her down to her feet.

  “ASSAULT! Protect the core!” His mental voice smmed into her mind, leaving her barely able to catch her bance as his avatar disappeared.

  Moriko didn’t know what was happening but began running as fast as she could toward the door leading past the end of the floor and to the feast hall. In addition to the and wnawing at her mind, there was a small part of her that was miffed that her husband had run off ahead of her without telling her what was going on. The rest of her was certain that the small voice was an idiot, and obviously, he trusted her to figure it out on the fly.

  Ahought was angry at herself for just rexing instead of meditating while she was being carried, she hadn’t gathered back a signifit amount of chi and had no idea what was happening, only pig out ss of ands being passed to the dungeon’s inhabitants. Oh, and she had a pounding headache from the volume of Mordecai’s mental shout. She was not in a good mood now, and it was someone’s fault. Someone whom she had every reason to y fist, foot, and staff upon. Moriko growled.

  Zagaroth