Rescue

I looked at Alicia and Nero, and both of them seemed terrified. Well, yeah, that's only natural. If they weren't here, I'd have run the moment we were getting close to this thing, and that was even before seeing it. And yet... neither retreated. Neither dropped their weapons. I wished they’d be more sensible, but there wasn’t much I could do about it now.

"Heather!" Alicia called, and I wasn't about to complain that her voice was unnaturally high. "Wind Stomp!"

Right. This was no time for me to be just looking around like an idiot. Blessing!

It had a thirty-second cooldown. The Skeleton King moved. His hand slapped down at us, and Nero and Alicia jumped in opposite directions.

"!!!" Alicica made a pained sound. It'd grazed her.

Assess! I winced. Alicia's health was down to 90. That hadn't been a skill. It'd been nothing but a slap. I pawed at Nero's cheek. He needed to avoid its attacks at all costs. (And, naturally, so did the rest of us.) He smiled tightly at me. "Yeah, Luna, I know."

I jumped off his shoulder as Nero tried to stab it, but I understood it wouldn't work even before I heard the clang of his daggers bouncing off steel-like bones. Even though they'd been able to take down the Skeletons, I'd noticed that it was harder for him and Alicia to kill them than it was with the Zombies, even though the Zombies were a higher level. That was because Skeletons were strong against physical attacks. In other words, this Skeleton King would naturally be even harder for Nero and Alicia to hurt.

The Skeleton King swatted Nero away, and I flinched. The attack hadn't touched me, but I still tumbled backward from the gust of air it produced. I glanced between Nero and the Skeleton King. A single hit from it did more than three casts of Blessing could heal. They'd have to hold out without getting hit once for two minutes for even one of them to return to full Health. I shook myself and focused on the Skeleton King. Blessing! Assess!

Its health was down to 110.

"Wind Stomp!" Alicia commanded again. She was barely managing to stand. "Nero, we need to get back. Heather and Luna have a better chance against this if they aren't worrying about us. You two fight this thing, and we'll clear the path back to the party!"

"But -" Nero cut himself off and looked down at himself. One arm hung limply at his side, and he was having trouble breathing. "Fine." He glared at me. "Run if you have to, Luna. Got it? No dying!"

What run? Idiot. Like I could do that while he was in danger. I dodged a swing of the Skeleton King's hand, then bounded up close to it, where it had trouble seeing me. Down here, I had to watch its feet, but it couldn't target me easily. As expected, its attention switched to Heather. It swatted at her, and she dodged by leaping into the air and flying past its head. Blessing! I breathed a sigh of relief as finally the spell had some noticeable effect. The Skeleton King's bones crumbled where the spell had hit. It was down to eighty. Then seventy.

Then it started glowing. I jumped away, scrambling as far as I could go without losing sight of it in the fog. Heather flew up higher. I couldn't see Nero or Alicia, so I hoped they were far enough away.

"GRAAWWWWHHHHHHHH!!!"

The roar cut through the air. My body froze in place, as did Heather’s. Come on, move! Status! My page showed my status as 'paralysis: fear.' Damn it, why were things so black or white in this world? It was stupid. This whole world was stupid. The Skeleton King swatted again at Heather, and she fell from the sky and slammed into the ground. Bones snapped, and she whinnied in agony.

It turned to me as the cooldown on Blessing ended. Blessing!

Forty Health left. I watched its hand swing down at me. This world was so stupid. Like Heather and I would really get paralyzed by a stupid scream. And why could I only use Blessing every thirty seconds? I had the Magic for it, and it wasn't like it had some long incantation. It was stupid. Too stupid. What kind of idiot god had designed this world? How could you subject beings that you’d created to this kind of absurdity? It wasn't Heather's fault we were here. Maybe I could have worked harder to find a means of communication, but it wasn't Alicia or Nero's fault that I hadn't. It wasn't their fault they'd been assigned to a party with lazy mentors who sat back and did nothing.

Suddenly - -

"Wind Shield!"

Storm appeared in front of me, blocking the Skeleton King's hand, and Fay ran up from behind. She turned and bent down before me. "Poor kitty, you were scared, weren't you?" She glanced back at the monster. "You were doing well till it came out with that Roar, though. Well done, kitty."

Fire exploded beside the Skeleton King's head, blowing it off its feet. Assess! It was down to ten health. Blessing!

Bright light surrounded it, and the Skeleton King's body crumbled. I hopped past Fay and over to the disappearing body. Along with it went the miasma, and slowly, I became able to see our surroundings properly again. A large finger bone remained behind, along with several molars. I snatched up the bone and one of the molars into my Inventory before anyone else could see them.

"Heather!" I turned and saw Alicia struggling to make her way back toward Heather.

Fay sighed loudly, but she picked me up and carried me over to the Winged Horse. "Okay, kitty, start healing."

I sat there, looking around instead for Nero, heart pounding. A moment later, I sighed heavily as I heard his voice. "Thank you, Fay!" He bent down and grabbed me with his one good hand.

Blessing. I rubbed my cheek against his chest. My owner got healed first. That was nonnegotiable. I sent Fay a look and snorted, then resumed counting down until I could cast Blessing again.

"Hey, tell her to heal the horse," Fay said, lips turning down and eyes narrowing. “You can’t prioritize yourself when someone else is hurt more.”.

Nero glanced over at Heather, then down at me. I gave him a stubborn look. "Luna, Heather's worse off than me, so can you heal her first?" he asked.

I ignored him. Thirty seconds. Blessing!

"Luna, heal Heather first. Then Alicia, then me. I can still walk, you know." Nero tried ordering me this time.

I still ignored him. Something wrapped around my mind, a strangely muddy sensation that I didn't like at all. It whispered that I needed to obey. I looked defiantly up at Nero. Blessing! Then I considered him carefully. He was at 130/140. That was probably fine. If he hadn’t ordered me to go heal Heather and Alicia, I’d have decided to do it on my own… and refusing to do it now out of sheer contrariness would be wrong. I nodded, leapt down from his hold, and made my way over to Heather and Alicia to start healing them.

As I healed, shame started to sink in. I’d been bad-mouthing them, but Crimson Rain had come to save us. Without them, Nero and I would both have died. I thought about Fyth’s order and hunched in on myself. It was one thing to kill innocent, if annoying people. Not a good thing, but something I could manage, maybe. Killing people who’d rescued us, though? I set the thought aside, unable to bear the discomfort of it.

Richie and Fay had come to help, they said, when they'd gotten worried about how deep we'd gone in. Then, hearing the Roar, they'd hurried to reach us. "Seriously, nice job surviving against a Skeleton King," Richie said as we headed back. He and Justice were handling the remaining Zombies and Skeletons as we walked. Alicia and Heather's health had been restored as much as I could manage, but Blessing couldn't actually restore broken bones.

Health was related to one’s physical condition, but it wasn’t a one-to-one correlation. Having full Health didn’t mean one was healthy, though it could help injuries heal faster, so long as they were properly cared for. That in mind, they’d splinted everyone’s broken bones, and now I was casting Blessing on them to recover the Health they were continuously losing due to their injuries..

Nero was carrying me. "I couldn't do anything against it," he said bitterly.

"Well, yeah. Skeleton Kings are almost totally immune to physical attacks," Richie said. "Your best bets are fire or light attacks. When we realized you'd run into a King, we panicked. We didn't know your cat had light magic, so we thought you were screwed. Retreating there was the right choice. There wasn't anything either of you could do."

Fay nodded, eyeing me thoughtfully. "You're lucky. We all want our summons to learn light magic, but it hasn’t appeared in our Available Skills yet."

My ears perked up. Really? My Skills Store was so comprehensive that it was overwhelming. It had never occurred to me that others might not be able to see everything the way I could - another perk courtesy of Fyth. The thought made my stomach churn. Those perks were probably his way of making me comply with his demands.

Nero laughed awkwardly. "Yeah, it was a stroke of luck. Probably because she's got LUCK UP."