Shiv froze with his sword stuck in the giant's face, and wished momentarily that he and the giant could switch places. The voice had been faint, almost in the back of his mind,, but there was no doubting who it belonged to.
"Well, now that the biggest, baddest threat has been dealt with, I'm going to get a group of my most powerful men and help them level up on the remaining monsters in here."
"Are you sure there aren't any more of these… things?" Briggs replied. Both of them were perfectly calm, as if they hadn't been scared for their lives only moments before.
"That was the only one. They kept it heavily sedated, and- I think- were planning to have the royal princess herself kill it to level up, but she kept coming up with excuses and never got around to it." Duncan shrugged as he walked toward the gate.
Shiv shook himself and stood up. He hadn't been sure that he was still even capable of feeling such strong emotions. He shuddered at the memory of Blaze getting hurt. He had changed that day. Permanently.
"I think that happened again." He muttered and rubbed his face tiredly. He couldn't place what it was exactly, but he felt that something important within him had changed due to the traumatic shock he'd just been put through.
"What happened again?" Briggs looked at him with sharp eyes.
Shiv waved dismissively. "Don't worry about it." Then, he looked around and spoke louder: "Hey, ya dog-sized lout. Where are ya?"
"I… well, come to think of it, I am in possibly the most dangerous place in the world. I am in the hands of a primed firework."
"What's a firework?" Blaze's voice echoed down to Shiv, who shielded his eyes from the sun to look up at her and… Uriel?
"You know how I called you a firecracker, Blaze? A firework is a grownup firecracker."
She nodded knowingly and Shiv laughed, unable to stop the intense feeling of relief that flooded through him. "You just won't die, will ya?" The question was directed at the miniature Uriel held in Blaze's hands.
Shiv manipulated the earth underneath his feet and brought himself all the way to the top of the wall, stepped off, and looked at the first two friends he'd made after reincarnating.
"I want to go kill monsters with them." Blaze pointed at where Duncan and Briggs were gathering two separate groups of men.
"And I want to talk to your ugly brother about how in the world he's still alive." Shiv retorted and turned to the small wooden wolf-shaped doll that was speaking with Uriel's voice. But Blaze had other plans.
"You can talk to him whenever you want! It's almost night, and you won't let me hunt at night, so we have to go hunting NOW. Quick, before they get all the good ones!"
Shiv sighed. "It was so much easier to tell you 'no' when you just said what you wanted louder and louder. Since when have you learned to be a reasonable human being?"
Blaze giggled and glanced at Uriel, then said something she had clearly spent some time practicing: "I'm self-taught."
***
Shiv and Blaze quietly stalked the last of a group of large birds that he swore were oversized turkeys. Everything about them was the same, from the way they walked to the noises they made, to the way their bodies squirmed around for way too long after their heads were chopped off.
This one had been providing them with no end of trouble, and most people would have long given up, but not these two. This adoptive father-daughter pair were likely the most stubborn pair of humans on the planet. And it showed.
Despite failing to capture the creature six different times, the two continued stalking it, both sure that this time would be different.
They were right.
Blaze had come up with an idea: She wanted Shiv to throw something that would shatter in front of the bird, potentially spooking it into turning around and running right into the little girl's waiting ambush. She even found a pot for him to shatter.
The only problem was Shiv's aim.
He got into a football quarterback position, and threw the pot into the air. It flew upward, arched gorgeously… and smashed into the bird's head, killing it instantly.
"Hey! You told me that I was supposed to kill it." Blaze said with a petulant scowl.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry. I never was good at QBing. Don't worry. There are other monsters out there."
"QBing? Is that like your BBQ food?"
Shiv opened his mouth only to shut it and shake his head. "C'mon, it's just about dark. We should head back."
"But I want to keep hunting!"
"Relax. We've already destroyed plenty of monsters. You've even leveled up several times. You told me yourself, didn't you?"
Blaze reluctantly affirmed that she had.
"See? I bet no matter where we go, you'll be the most powerful kid on the block." Shiv carefully kept a bit of distance from her when he went around her to start leading the way back. She hated when he tried to help her, and didn't want to upset her.
She let out one last sigh to show her displeasure, then began hobbling after him on her single working foot and two blackened wooden crutches.
They moved through the ruins at a decent pace, with Blaze jumping into remnant fires as if they were puddles of water left after a hard rain. One such fire splashed up onto her crutches and Shiv found out why they were blackened. Except this fire turned out to be the death of the poor crutch. The wood absorbed the heat and caught on fire, quickly burning to a crisp and leaving Blaze sitting in the puddle of fire with a sad expression.
Shiv's heart just about broke again, and he slowly made his way to her to offer a hand. She stared dejectedly at her other crutch, which was quickly burning away as well, then turned her big eyes to Shiv. Tears began to well up, though she immediately scrubbed at her eyes to stop them.
Shiv sighed and took a seat beside her in the fire, silently thanking Briggs for introducing him to fire-resistant clothing.
Shiv didn't think she was upset just about the crutches. He figured she was mainly sad that she had lost her leg, and watching Uriel die right before her eyes could not have been a pleasant experience, either. All of this combined to make one very sad Blaze, and a disappointed Shiv.
'I should have protected her better.' The thought repeated itself over and over in Shiv's head, making his mood darker and darker.
They sat there, saying nothing as the fire tickled their skin as they watched the sun set over the distant wall.
That's when it found them.
Suddenly sensing something was terribly wrong, Shiv straightened up and looked around with narrow eyes. Blaze did the same almost simultaneously, evidently getting the same foreboding feeling.
Aside from the crackling of the fire and the distant sounds of intermittent combat, they heard nothing. "Here, let's stand up. Just in case." Shiv helped his adopted daughter to her feet, then stood back to back with her, searching the rapidly falling darkness for the originator of the evil feeling.
Blaze saw it first. It was a spider. A spider the size of a house. She caught a glimpse of it scurrying in between collapsed buildings and gulped audibly. "It's a very, very big spider."
Shiv turned around quickly and searched the darkness with her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. Like most sane people, she was deathly afraid of the creatures.
Surprisingly, she looked up at him and patted his hand in a comforting manner. "Don't worry. I can destroy it." Her eyes were no longer sad, but were instead flickering with a fire Shiv knew all too well: determination.
Sensing that he shouldn't interfere, Shiv nodded and took a step back, leaving her balanced on her one leg as the fire around her came to life. It grew and grew until it had completely enveloped her, then started becoming brighter. It got to be so bright that Shiv had to avert his eyes.
The light illuminated the area around them, including the massive spider that had somehow appeared right in front of the little girl. She looked up at it with a calm expression and simply pointed at the beady-eyed monster.
The fire enveloping her leaped forward in the shape of a… wolf? and leapt at the spider.
Shiv watched in awe as the two opposing forces, one made of inky black darkness, and the other of destructive yellow fire clashed, creating a shockwave that pushed Shiv back several steps. The two monsters struggled against each other, one massive and imposing, the other small and determined, until the spider began to give ground. It backed up a single step at first, then screeched a horrible noise and threw itself forward… only to be pushed back another step. And another.
The wolf pounced.
It threw itself at the hideous abomination with such force and power, that it left deep grooves in the ground. When it came into contact with the spider, they exploded in a flash of blinding light.
When Shiv was able to see again, the spider was gone, leaving only a triumphant wolf standing, howling at the sky… and a little girl giggling as she hugged its neck.