I kneel over the corpse of a fallen civilian, a middle-aged woman who was attacked in the barley field early this morning while I was still sleeping off my overuse of mana. Even still, my mana toxicity rate isn’t amazing, hovering around fifty percent, and today certainly isn’t going to make it better.

  All while I was asleep, Troy and the other sentinels to remain awake were harried by the enemy. Small groups of volcora, often in pairs or trios, moved into town in the night to attack the civilians. And then, early in the morning, when the mayor rallied everyone to get up and keep harvesting, packs of volcora would roam the fields needing to be stopped before they killed the townsfolk.

  These little attacks all throughout my rest resulted in the majority of the sentinels resting, with me being woken up early to help, whereas I was left to rest in order to try and mitigate the damage when I woke.

  When combined, all this leaves me waking up to a scene of barely ordered chaos. Baylee, Troy, and the mayor do their best to keep people working and harvesting the barley as quickly as possible — but not many people are interested in working the fields when knowing they could hide volcora waiting to pounce.

  To help combat this, Baylee and the mayor decided to call up the men and women on the GDF's list of those willing to fight. These aren’t trained soldiers but rather scared people with guns — an awful combination the majority of the time. However, the presence of the militiamen and women standing guard around the fields makes it easier for the normal workers to feel more confident that they’ll be safe.

  I blink, trying to force my tired mind to focus on my current reality rather than rethinking our situation for the hundredth time. Standing, I look to the young man who has been hovering over this body since I arrived at the makeshift infirmary in the school’s gymnasium. “She’s gone,” I tell the woman’s son, unable to keep the exhaustion from my voice. “I’m so sorry.”

  Another death, another body to add to the already high pile of people I’ve failed to save. Maybe one day, it will stop killing me inside.

  The young man, around my own age actually, nods at my pronouncement, trying to keep the pain from his features. He swallows, “T-Thank you, sentinel. For doing what you can.”

  I return his nod, then turn my eyes to the other injured in the infirmary. In truth, I have no need to bend down or touch a body to confirm that someone is dead. A mere glance at their life force can tell me if someone is still alive or not. Still, upon my arrival, this woman was the only one who I knew to be obviously dead. Best to at least let her son know so he isn’t wondering why I’m helping others while ignoring his heavily injured mother.

  Moving away from the man to let him grieve, I glance behind me at the two militia guards that Baylee set to trailing me. Officially, they’re here to protect me while I’m at a high mana toxicity percentage from all the healing. The unofficial explanation from Troy is more coldly practical, though. If volcora do attack me while I’m treating patients or while I’m in my rest state waiting for toxicity to drop off, these men are here to act as cannon fodder while I shift and either escape or dispatch the volcora.

  Personally, I hate the idea that my life is seen as more valuable than those of the two large men following me. Still, it’s hard to argue with “That’s an order, Serena.”

  Turning to the two men, Haru and Akio, I ask softly. “Can one of you help that man move his mother’s corpse out of here? We really shouldn’t keep the dead with the living. It will be really bad for morale.”

  Haru looks sheepish, “I’m sorry, Ma’am. Our orders were to protect you. They quite specifically said that we were to protect you no matter how much you complained about it or asked us to do something else.”

  Gritting my teeth, I ask, “Then can you quickly find someone to help him? We can’t have all these people thinking they’re going to die like she did.”

  The two exchange a look before an awkward-looking Haru steps away to talk to one of the many family members hovering around the injured.

  With that, I allow myself to scan over the injured people once more, and, picking out the life force that looks the weakest, I get to work.

  Around two hours later, I sit slumped on a bench right outside the school in my rest state, my mana toxicity far too high now to risk staying in my assault state for much longer. If I do any more healing, I’ll be practically helpless if I do get attacked. I need at least enough juice left in me to help my guards fight a volcora or two if we get attacked.

  Thinking of my guards, the two continue hovering over me, standing on either side of the bench and throwing me concerned glances. I suppose I’m not doing much for the mighty image of sentinels by sitting, practically unconscious, on the old stone bench — still, I think the dozen people now free of injury might disagree with that statement.

  Eventually, Haru — apparently the designated spokesman for the pair — speaks up. “Miss Solace, are you… okay?”

  I sigh, sitting up straighter and rubbing at my temples to try and dissuade a threatening headache. “Yes, I’m alright. Healing just takes it out of me.”

  I start to say something else but cut myself off as I notice someone limping down Shinara’s main street. Troy, looking utterly exhausted, is limping his way toward the school, blood dripping down his chest and splattering on the pavement — he’s in his assault state, flame still flickering around him. He must have used his dominion art to rush into town.

  Gasping, I instantly trigger my shift and use the surge of strength to shoot to my feet and dash over to Troy’s side.

  “What happened?!” I exclaim, throwing his arm over my shoulder to help support him.

  “W-We… got caught off-guard,” Troy mutters. “Fought them off okay, but… I don’t think I’m in the best fighting shape at the moment.”

  I look him up and down, grimacing. “No kidding. Come here; you need to lie down and rest. I’ll get you healed up.”

  Troy shakes his head, although he seems so exhausted, even in his assault state, that he nearly falls over with the motion. “No… you don’t understand. This thing that’s guiding the Volcora here... it’s not like the mind flayer you guys fought. I think I understand it now. It’s an endurance hunter. It wants to wear us down, keep probing at us until we’re all exhausted and helpless. Then it will strike.”

  “So, what do we do?” I ask. “We can’t just avoid using our mana, and we can’t let the townspeople die. We keep taking injuries; I’m going to need to keep healing them.”

  “Haruto, Baylee, and Akari are relatively fresh,” Troy says, “but one night’s sleep isn’t enough to counteract mana toxicity entirely. Baylee will come up with something, though. I’m certain of it. I’ll help too, but… I’m spent.”

  As we speak, I’ve been helping Troy over to the bench where my two guards still stand watching us. Now, I slowly sit him down on the bench so I can get a proper look at his wounds. Luckily, they don’t seem too critical, although some of those cuts look deep.

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  I sigh, “Troy, to heal your wounds, the effort is going to push me over ninety percent. Even then…”

  In a swirl of clouds, my little scanning device appears in my hand, looking like a strange QR code scanner. Taking Troy’s wrist in my hand, I lift it up and scan it with the device, which beeps and displays a yellow 73%.

  I blink, looking at the number. “How on Earth are you only at 73% percent?” I ask, amazed. He’s been awake for ages; how is it that my mana toxicity goes up constantly and his is so low?

  Troy shrugs, then winces as the motion stretches his injuries. “I’ve only been shifting for combat. My powers don’t offer much benefit other than for fighting, so I’ve been staying in my rest state the vast majority of the time.”

  I give Troy a long-suffering look, “Yes… no benefit other than shielding you!” I exclaim. “No wonder you got caught off-guard! Stars, Troy! How long have you been awake anyway?”

  “So, you’re about to go over ninety again?” he asks, changing the subject, the bastard.

  “Yeah…” I say softly. “You might be on to something with this whole endurance hunter idea you have. Every townsperson injured is eating my mana and increasing my toxicity at a crazy rate. I have medicines we can use instead, but if this keeps up, then we’ll be out within the day.”

  “I see,” Troy says, then leans close to me and says softly. “I think it’s time we stop healing the townspeople with magic. They have a doctor; we’ll need to let them handle it from here.”

  My eyes go wide, “What?!” I hiss, “I’m not just going to leave people in pain to suffer, Troy!”

  “People suffer every day, and we need you in fighting shape. You can’t help us deal with this thing if you’re on the edge of passing out every time we need you,” Troy argues back, keeping his voice low so as to not let the guards overhear.

  I grit my teeth; I know he’s right, but it still hurts me to have to prioritize our lives over the lives of the average people living here.

  The longer I live as a sentinel, the easier it becomes for me to see how Kayne attained his worldview. When people constantly treat you as more valuable, and the best choice is often to treat yourself as more valuable, how could you not end up being at least a little bit elitist? That way of thinking is wrong, though. No life is worth more than another; things like wealth, skin color, or even sentinel powers should not change that.

  So, I meet Troy’s eyes and shake my head. “Let’s do a better job of protecting them then,” I tell him, my eyes intense. “I will not let anyone under my charge remain hurt while I have the power to change that. I don’t care if it kills me; I don’t care if I burn myself out.”

  Troy scowls at me, “Serena, stop healing the townsfolk. That’s an-”

  I lean in closer to Troy, meeting his eyes from mere centimeters away. “If you order me to stop, I will break that order. Understand? So don’t give it, and we won’t have a problem.”

  Troy meets my eyes for a long time, and stars I can see the fatigue in them, the frustration. He doesn’t want to leave these people to their pain any more than I do, but he’s looking out for the lives of his team members first — looking out for my life first. It’s hard to fault him, not when he so clearly cares so much about people and is trying to make the right choice. It’s the wrong one, though.

  The second we start taking life for granted, the moment we start treating human deaths as numbers on a page… well, that’s the moment we will truly lose this war. At some point, we have to start acting, not by what is correct in the moment, but by what is right.

  Troy sighs, then looks away. “Fine. I won’t give the order. You can stop glaring at me.”

  I back up, getting out of Troy’s space. Personally, I don’t think I’ve done nearly enough glaring at him yet, but I suppose we all need to make compromises.

  “Good,” I say with a smile. “Now, find a spot that’s comfortable. I need to heal you, and the toxicity is probably going to knock us both unconscious.”

  Despite Baylee’s best attempts to reorganize and make our teams more efficient, we continue to have an incredibly hard time keeping our mana toxicity levels low as the days go on. No longer do we keep members in their assault states to guard those outside of them due to the simple fact that doing so would be essentially wasting the time in their assault state. Instead, everyone now follows the same strategy Troy used to stay out for so long, shifting when only absolutely required.

  The trouble with this strategy is that, without assault state shields to protect people from the initial attack, there are a lot more injuries to deal with. Commonly, my days end when I heal myself into unconsciousness or when I barely manage to keep someone alive through the use of my medicine stash due to the fact that I simply don’t have it in me to heal them any other way.

  Due to this, I often find myself proving Troy’s point about the failing of my methodology, laid out or nearly unconscious when attacks do come. However, I honestly believe that without my attempts, the townspeople would have just given up on their fields, and we would have needed to call for a full-scale evacuation.

  As it is, despite the lack of sentinels to guard me, I’m likely the best-protected person in town. My guards, particularly Haru, took the time to gather even more townspeople to look after me, and given that they saved my life more than once while I was unconscious, I’m now a little bit less redescent about their presence.

  Finally, though, our efforts become worth the pain. Near the center of town, bundles upon bundles of barley sit out, drying in the sun. Sadly, this doesn’t mean that the process is complete as I hoped — the barley still needs to finish drying and be threshed before it can be transported. However, it does mean that we won’t need to venture out into the fields, where the majority of the attacks were taking place, any longer.

  Exhausted and trailed by no less than six townsfolk dedicated to guarding me, I move to stand beside Akari as we look out over the drying grain.

  “What do you think?” I ask, watching as men and women swarm over the crop, either carrying it off to the large threshing machine or doing the work by hand. While some of the threshing was already done by the town’s singular harvester, since so much of it was collected by hand, more of the work still needs to be done.

  “About holding?” Akari asks, also watching the men and women work. She shrugs, “Holding the town will be a lot easier than protecting everyone out in the fields. I get the feeling that means our enemy’s tactics are going to change, though.”

  “Yeah…” I murmur, looking out beyond the town and into the northern fields from which the volcora keep originating. “They won’t want to give us a respite now that we’re a bit more defensible. Either they find another way to harass us, or they move in with an all-out assault.”

  At this, both of us glance to Baylee, who sits in a heated discussion with Troy and the town mayor. The threshing will only take another few days to complete, and then we will load up the grain into every vehicle the town has and start heading south. Chances are, whatever is guiding the volcora will hit us in that time — before we can make our escape.

  Akari glances over me with a critical eye as we simply stand together. “You look like hell,” she says, a touch of concern melting into her tone.

  I sigh, “As it turns out, getting knocked out by mana toxicity over and over isn’t as restful as it sounds.”

  “It’s not just that,” Akari says, “Your eyes are bloodshot, and your hands are trembling. What is your toxicity right now?”

  “Only 70%,” I say defensively. “I’ve been doing better about overdoing it.”

  Akari shakes her head, “You’ve been too high for too long, Serena. I know you know the risks because you were the one to tell me about them.”

  “So, you’re saying I should stop healing the town people, too?” I ask, just a hint of aggravation leaking into my tone. So far, no less than four other sentinels, including Baylee and Haruto, have come to tell me to stop.

  “No,” Akari says, looking at me seriously. “What I’m telling you is that if you don’t use less mana soon, I’m going to tie you up and throw you in a barn until all that toxicity works its way out of your system.”

  My shoulders slump, the wind going out of me. I’m just so incredibly tired. “Wouldn’t work,” I mutter, “I could just teleport out of the ropes.”

  Akari glares at me, “Serena, I will get you to stop hurting yourself, even if I do really have to tie you up!” she exclaims. “I’ve seen you teleport; your clothes come with you; I’m willing to bet the ropes would, too! Do we need to test it, or are you going to be good?”

  Sighing again, I look away from Akari’s intense stare. “I’ll be good,” I promise insolently.

  “Great, don’t you forget who’s the boss around here,” Akari states proudly.

  I glance over at her, “Baylee?” I ask cheekily.

  “Well, yes… but you get my point,” she says.

  I smile, looking over my friend, who seems to be growing taller and more confident by the day. Akari has come so far from that day in the dark alley; she seems so much happier, so much more confident. Honestly, I couldn’t feel prouder if I tried.

  “You’re going to leave me behind soon, you know,” I say softly, meeting her eyes. “You don’t need me anymore.”

  Akari’s expression softens, and she wraps a gentle arm around my shoulders. “Of course, I still need you, Serena. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

  I shake my head, smiling. “No… you were always going in this direction. You just needed a push and here you are. I never did anything but tell you what you already knew was true.”

  “Maybe so,” Akari says. “But if that’s the case… maybe it’s time for you to need me.”

  My eyes fall at her words, seeing my trembling hands, my body that feels oh so frail with so much exposure to mana toxicity. Right now, I feel like I’m prone to being blown over by a stiff breeze.

  “I’ve always needed you,” I say softly. “I’m rather hopeless, you know.”

  Akari grins and gives me a squeeze, “I know.”