Chapter 48:

Betrayal

Fighting For My Freedom In Another World


Instead of attacking the woman I had been fighting and ending the struggle, I launched a beam of fire at the man next to Alena.

I tried to hold back enough that it wouldn’t kill him. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I felt like I probably succeeded. He was knocked backwards and hit a nearby tree before then falling down onto the ground, and it looked like the whole thing hurt for sure, but he was at least still breathing… Hopefully.

Alena was safe. That was what mattered.

Had I hurt her? I couldn’t tell. If I did, at least it couldn’t have been too badly. She seemed mostly fine.

Alena stood up. I didn’t have time to pay more attention to what she was doing.

My opponent had time to recover. This time she had two targets to choose from, but that only made things harder for me. I also had two targets to protect now. The cost of messing up had suddenly become twice as high

A voice came from somewhere beside me.

“Don’t I recognise you from somewhere? Hey, Maria, have we met this woman somewhere before?”

I couldn’t spare the mental effort to muster up a response. There would be plenty of time for talking later.

I just… Needed… To win… First.

Defending was about all I could manage. I no longer found any openings to counterattack, too busy with keeping track of where magical lightning would be launched at either me or Alena.

I needed an opening.

Alena created one.

A pillar of fire appeared next to the woman I was fighting. Not one I had made, or in other words nothing more than an illusion. It made her stop her assault on us for a moment in order to protect herself.

Plenty of time for me to do something.

I launched my fire at her.

She narrowly evaded it.

The woman realised the fire next to her was nothing more than a fraud and counterattacked.

Her lightning flew far wide of me.

It wasn’t aimed at me.

I turned around to see where it went.

Alena was hit. She fell to the ground, and didn’t move.

For a moment I feared she was dead.

Only for a moment.

She was still breathing.

She wasn’t dead yet. There was still hope.

But she also didn’t move. Was she unconscious? Or just hurt? It didn’t matter. I didn’t have time to consider.

And I still needed to protect her.

I took a deep breath, and waited to see what my opponent would do. Perhaps letting rage control me, lashing out, and throwing all the firepower I had at her would have been a more normal reaction... But I had never been one to feel much in the way of anger.

She didn’t attack. Instead, she spoke.


“I have a suggestion.”
“I’m all ears.”

It’s not like there was any particular reason I shouldn’t listen, and in case what she wanted to say ended up not being important? Then I’d be able to finish the fight while she was talking and distracted.

“It appears as if both of us have suffered some damage, as has our… Friends. It’s clear to me that I won’t be able to get what I came for at this point. And if we continued this fight… I’ll just say that I sincerely doubt there would be any merit to either of us in doing that. So why don’t we both just step down here, and go our own separate ways?”

“Sure”, I shrugged.

Did I agree too easily? To some it could probably have seemed that way. To me it felt like the reasonable choice to make.

As she walked away from me and went to pick up her fallen ally, she turned her back towards me and was left defenseless.

You see, trusting someone to honour a deal just because they were one of the “good guys” wasn’t a particularly smart decision.

Letting her go her own way would surely have been the more noble choice.

But was the noble decision also the right one?

This woman didn’t have the same hesitance I did when it came to killing and causing harm. It would be better for everyone if our fight didn’t just end in an uneasy truce and a chance to recover from any damages we suffered, but instead had a more conclusive ending.

So I summoned up one last bout of fire. Used my magic to take her out. Knock her unconscious, or at least weaken her enough that she wouldn’t be able to strike back.

She fell to the ground, and I had won, the one woman still standing.

Depending on how you saw it, it was either a selfish act of betrayal… Or exactly what was needed for the greater good.

I chose to believe it was the latter.