The Last Experience Point

Chapter 54: Determined Roamer

As Aerick Ondoranth navigated his way down a slight hillock on a wide dirt path cut between a mile-long cornfield in Whispery Woods’ hot, humid farmlands, he clenched his gloved hands nervously on his horse’s reins and gathered his courage. He knew this probably wasn’t one-hundred-percent necessary, but given the incredible importance of what he was here to do, he had to be certain—he needed to make sure he was correct. Briefly muttering a prayer to the Gods, he decided to risk death yet again.

“Here we go, boys. Be ready.”

He knew he needed to hurry; the sun was about to set, and everything would become more difficult if he tried to make do in the dark. Glancing upwards at the last few rays of sunshine illuminating the farmlands from the sinking, orange ball in the sky, he lifted his Comm to his lips and instructed the news helicopters to begin pulling back and giving him some room. As soon as they were clear, he held his breath, slowly released it, and then once more warned his men to prepare themselves. It was time to do it all over again.

And so, for the second, horrifying time in just the past 15 minutes, Aerick set aside his fear and intentionally put himself a few inches beyond the outer perimeter of the dreadful wyvern’s aggro radius, which had now been firmly established as being an exact, 14.92 miles’ distance in every direction around the beast. Prior to coming within range, Ziragoth had been ambling slowly on foot towards a heading of south-southeast; but now, following an ominous pause, the dragon stopped in its tracks, turned in Aerick’s direction, and roared loudly enough to cause the ground to shake and spook the horses.

Aw, hell, Aerick thought. Here we go again.

Facing away from his eight guild-mates that had accompanied him on this scouting mission, all of whom were riding behind him, Aerick raised his hand, pointed his index finger upwards, and then twirled it around in a circle while tugging on the reins of his strawberry roan mare with his opposite hand, causing the horse to neigh in protest as it spun forcefully in the opposite direction—and almost fast enough to throw him off and leave him for dead. At the exact same moment in time, his guild-mates also brought their animals into an about-face.

“All right, let’s go!”

With a few urgent, but gentle taps of his heel, Aerick sent his steed directly into a gallop headed back across the cornfield and up the small incline. Even without looking over his shoulder, he could tell from the chorus of thumping hooves against dirt that his guildies were following along on their mounts behind him. “Don’t look back!” he shouted to them. “Trust me. Just keep your eyes ahead. These mares’ll outrun the bastard.”

If aggroed at maximum range, it had been discovered that a mere two miles was all that was subsequently required to de-aggro the fearsome wyvern provided it did not cross more than half the distance between its target and its location of origin by that point; otherwise, an additional ten miles would be required. It was only thanks to the five dead members of Scouting Team A that this vital information had been discovered. Their sacrifice, though tragic, would not only be useful for the current, upcoming raid, but it would also be logged so that, in a hundred, thousand, or however-many years it would be before this thing eventually respawned, the next group of adventurers forced to tangle with this horrific dragon wouldn’t have to go into things quite as blind as they had.

As blades of grass, stalks of corn, and rock-covered dirt rushed past his vision, Aerick attempted to vocally calm his horse, who made a fearful cry as the dragon’s wings flapped audibly in the sky as it gunned straight for them. On the last go around a few minutes earlier, they’d cut it really, really close: it looked like they’d be cutting it even closer this time. Though only an estimate, Ziragoth clearly flew at well over a hundred miles per hour, and their horses could only manage to gallop at around forty. Even still, Aerick was sure they’d make it out of aggro—even if only by the skin of their teeth.

At the sight of a series of obstacles up head, he held on more tightly as his mare hopped three short wooden fences then a fourth that was several-feet high; from there it continued onwards and blasted its way through a bunch of knee-high stalks of grass. Then he had to practically lie forward and bury his head into his horse’s back to avoid being knocked clean off his mount by one of the few decorative trees in a row of them planted at the edge of the cornfield.

“Watch for the trees!” he called behind him, the mass of galloping horses pounding down on the terrain.

As his mare ran for dear life, he tried his best to keep her encouraged and calm. “Good girl,” he said to her. “That’s right. That’s a real good girl. Just a little farther now, okay? Keep it going, girl. Keep it up. We’re almost safe.”

The dragon was getting closer—fast. He could hear the sound of its wings becoming louder and louder. “A little faster. Come on. You’ve got this. Get us out of here, Delia.”

He despised using force against his mount. Delia was his own personal mare, and he hadn’t raised her for the purpose of fleeing dragons, but because he genuinely loved the companionship of horses. Therefore, it was with a heavy heart that he delivered a somewhat less-gentle kick into her side to encourage her to move just a little bit faster.

“I’m sorry, girl. But if you want to live, you’ve got to move!”

His guild-mates were doing the same. Though, in truth, their kicks were likely not even necessary, as the dragon’s roar, now closer and far louder than they’d heard it yet, seemed to put the fear of the Gods into the horses, and it allowed them to eke out just a little bit more speed. Through some miracle, all nine of them managed to stay together and in formation.

Though Aerick was not positive to what extent, he knew he’d cut things far closer than he’d hoped. Thankfully, however, two pulse-pounding, nightmare-inducing minutes later, he and his guildies looked to be in the clear. Once he was certain he’d again reached the de-aggro vector, he slowed his strawberry roan down from a gallop and into a canter; checking over his shoulder just to be certain the dragon had turned around, he soon after settled her down into a slow, calm walk before letting her take a rest and come to a stop. With a shaky, but nevertheless relieved sigh, he dismounted, removed the cowboy hat practically sticking to the top of his head, and then he ran a hand through his medium-length brown hair, which was damp with perspiration. Gods above…that was sure something.

“Now what, Aerick?” Tones asked him, his horse pulling up beside Delia, who was breathing loudly and heavily. Girl needed a rest to be sure. Especially after that.

“What do you mean, Tones?”

“I mean…are we going in for round three?”

Tones was a much older man who, despite being in his late eighties, was still choosing to live the adventurer lifestyle. Nearly a decade older than even the Britethorns, it did make Aerick somewhat uncomfortable that he was still running around like a man in his thirties. Yet he was capable and reliable, which was why Aerick had brought him along even amid the protestations of some of the other, younger members of Lost and Found, who for some Gods-knew-what reason wanted to come along so badly they almost seemed to crave it. Aerick reckoned that anyone dumb enough to want to be here would end up being more of a liability than an asset.

“Round three?” Aerick said back to him with a laugh. “Haven’t you had enough yet, Tones?”

“Oh, I’ve had enough all right, but I’ll do whatever I’ve got to do if it needs doing. Can’t let that boy put us all to shame, can we?”

“Boy? What boy?”

Tones looked at him as though he were stupid. “What boy do you think? The one who went toe-to-toe with that Gods-cursed thing.” He pointed at Ziragoth, who landed with such force it created a minor tremor beneath their feet even from nearly seventeen miles away.

“Oh, right. You mean that Zachys kid, yeah? Zachys Calador.”

“Yup. That’s the one. Feeling okay over there, Aer?”

He laughed. “My head’s a bit foggy after all that. I tend to think a lot better and clearer when I’m not overflowing with adrenaline.” Aerick rubbed and massaged his temple in an attempt to de-stress. “Lucky as we are to be alive, I can’t believe that kid pulled through. Goes to show ya, miracles are real after all.”

Tones shrugged. “Miracle or luck, I’m hoping that was the last time we have to do that. You still haven’t said if we’re going to have to piss it off a third time, Aer.”

Having just dismounted his chestnut mare, Tones now stood beside him, and Aerick gave him a firm pat on the shoulder and shook his head. “Nah, I think we got what we came for. I’ve seen enough now to make a determination.”

“You sure?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure. Hell, I was pretty sure the first time we aggroed the damn thing, but now? Now, I’m as sure as can be.”

As the fifth-ranking member and highest-ranking non-lieutenant officer of his adventuring guild, Lost and Found, Aerick had volunteered to lead this particular phase of the scouting mission. It also helped that he was good with horses as the onboard AI in DEHVs would absolutely refuse to allow the vehicles to be driven off road even in the event of an emergency. Given that a DEHV wouldn’t start without its computer, and given that the computer was built from proprietary technology, it was not something a simple layperson would know how to overwrite.

Since there wasn’t enough time to get the manufacturers down here to rewire or reconfigure the DEHVs to their specifications, Aerick had needed to go a bit “old school” as they say—which meant either traveling via horse and saddle or otherwise running. Though Aerick might have had twenty-eight points into speed, it was a stat most adventurers did not seem to accumulate much of—not to mention how physically exhausting it would be to have to run at that kind of speed for miles on end. Ultimately, horses really had been the only viable option. Of course…even if they could have gained full control over a DEHV’s semi-autonomous steering AI, he’d still likely have opted to go the horseback route, as the dual hover engines would not perform well at all in this kind of terrain. Getting stuck in the ground, even for just a moment, could spell out death.

“If we’re not going in for a third aggro, then what’s our plan now?” Tones asked.

Grabbing a bottle of water from a pouch beside his horse, Aerick downed all of it in a few quick gulps then said, “I guess we’re calling it in. I just hope they don’t shoot the messenger.”

The goal of their team had been singular in scope yet of incredible, vast importance. He and his men had been tasked with finding the answer to just one very simple question—one that required an answer before the War Council could proceed. Now, Aerick was positive that he’d gotten it. He was also positive that it wouldn’t be long before the general public was informed as well. Right now, there was a palpable state of fear in North Bastia as everyone awaited the results of the so-called ‘People of Virtue’ expedition.

Gotta’ take credit for everything, don’t they?

Typically, the first phase of any boss-scouting operation was to determine whether or not the target was a roamer. In the case of Ziragoth, they were in sort of a “unique” situation in that the question had already been answered—and not by a scouting team, either, but by the news media of all places. In fact, before even a single scouting party had been dispatched, it had already been determined that the boss was a roamer. Not exactly a shocking revelation, either. After all, the only thing needed to make such a determination was to take a cursory glance at the live footage coming from the media’s helicopters. A single glance at that was enough to know straight away that the dragon was, in fact, roaming away from its spawn point in the Den of Ziragoth. Thankfully, despite being a flying-type, it chose to travel on foot as opposed to airborne.

So, where did that leave them? Well, they knew they were dealing with a flying roamer that preferred to walk: also known as a “slow roamer.” And with that key piece of information in hand, the question had then turned from whether or not the boss was a roamer into what kind of roamer. This was where Scouting Team A had come in, as they’d originally been dispatched to find out. They’d been assigned two critical tasks: first, to determine the boss’s aggro and de-aggro radius, and secondly, to deduce the type of roamer they were dealing with. Sadly, they’d been wiped out after merely discovering the first. Thus, Aerick and his boys had been called in to complete the scouting mission with the designation Scouting Team B.

See, although a great many bosses roamed, the real important detail that mattered above all else was whether or not a boss was headed off on a determined roam: the opposite of something that was often called a “wandering type,” a category which the vast majority of roaming bosses tended to be; basically, it meant the boss would more or less randomly stumble about aimlessly and kill anything it came across. As unfortunate as this could be for some folk who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was the much, much, much more preferable type to go against. A “wandering” roamer could be controlled, manipulated, and in some cases, contained with the careful use of aggro techniques.

Regrettably, though, any hope of Ziragoth being a wandering roamer was now dashed. Having aggroed the dragon twice in a row now, Aerick could state with absolute certainty that they were dealing with a determined roamer, as he’d ruled out coincidence. Both times he’d aggroed the wyvern, the moment he and his boys had fled horseback and reached the de-aggro vector, the dragon had stopped midair, turned around, and had flown back to where it had been when it had first attacked them. And each time this occurred, it would take itself out of flight, land back down on Galterran soil, and from there, it would continue its slow roam on foot in the exact same direction. Based on these facts, the boss was moving on a “determined roam.” In other words, it had somewhere it planned on going, and no amount of distraction would be able to trick it into moving off course or going somewhere else, as was quite frequently possible with wandering-type roamers.

Nothing to do now but call it in, Aerick thought, suddenly feeling exhausted.

Raising his Comm to his lips, he said, “Donovan, this is Scouting Team B, do you copy?”

“Yeah, I copy. How’re you guys doing out there? You find out what we’re up against yet?”

“I sure did, Don. And it ain’t good.”

Donovan’s sigh was audible over the Comm. “It’s what I feared, huh? Determined Roamer?”

“I’m afraid so, buddy. We went and aggroed the sonofabitch twice just to be sure. Both times, it went right back to where it was before we aggroed it and continued heading south-southeast.”

“Towards Shadowfall Coast.” The words came across as a statement and not a question, but Aerick decided to offer a confirmation anyway.

“Seems to be the case, Don.”

“Gods-dammit. All right. Head back to Tomb of Fire. You did good, Aerick.”

“Hey, uh, Don?”

“Yep?”

Swallowing down an acidic sensation of fear in his throat, he asked, “Does this mean we have to…”

“Yeah, we do,” he replied with a grunt. “No choice, Aerick. Looks like we gotta raise the alert to a level-4 apocalyptic event. That fucker will kill every man woman and child if we don’t either stop it before it gets there or evacuate the city. For now, get your ass back here. We have enough data to begin the War Council.”

******

Just five miles outside the city limits, a makeshift camp had been set up specifically for the purpose of dealing with what was now being dubbed by the media as an “unprecedented emergency.” Having just received word from Scouting Team B, Alex had begun making his way towards the War Council along with Donovan and Kalana. Having taken Donovan’s criticism to heart, he promised himself he would behave in a way befitting a God-Slayer. Far, far more lives than just their own depended on the success of this raid, especially now that the T7 fire wyvern was confirmed to be a determined roamer.

Donovan’s instincts were right, he thought.

Though hardly surprised, Alex was still nevertheless distraught upon receiving definitive confirmation that Donovan’s earliest, most dire predictions had turned out to be correct. Ziragoth, it seemed, was indeed stomping his way to Shadowfall Coast, where the wyvern would then attempt to exterminate every single living, biological entity and topple every building or other non-naturally arising structure in the process. To call the situation at hand dire would be a dramatic understatement. At least in the case of Whispery Woods city, Alex had more or less deduced a fairly accurate timetable of when the leviathan would spawn and what would be required to kill it. Although somewhat lacking, there was at least some documentation on the leviathan that existed from the encounters of previous adventurers.

In the case of Ziragoth, no one had been able to dig up anything, though that in and of itself was not particularly uncommon, either. Intelligence on boss spawns was limited by what had managed to survive the test of time over thousands of years. Everything from wars to natural disasters had caused a certain degree of expected information loss, which was why there were still so many bosses that came as a total surprise. Alex had no doubt that, at one point in time, there was likely either a hard-written copy or a digital file containing everything one could possibly want to know about Ziragoth. But at some point in the flow of time, it had become lost or destroyed. And now, the only real clue of the dragon’s existence was in the name of the town itself.

Going forward, we must do a better job of preserving our records!

Arriving at the camp, Alex proceeded straight for the meeting area, entering inside a gigantic, camo-green-colored tent, inside which over a hundred and thirty adventurers resided, as well as peacekeepers, representatives from the various guilds, and computer analysts working from laptops sitting atop metal tables. There was a definitive tension as members of the Royal Roses and the People of Virtue traded barbs with those hailing from the Guild of Gentlemen. It was through sheer fortune that these so-called “guild members” were able to control themselves and not erupt into violence.

“Now is the time for you to order an evacuation, Sir Peter Brayspark,” demanded a low-ranking and rather unsightly officer of the Royal Roses whom Alex did not recognize. In contrast with the undeniably majestic, regal appearance of Peter V, the Royal Roses’ officer was short, a good deal overweight, and despite appearing to be in his mid-to-late twenties, had only a patch of black, scruffy hair on his otherwise bald head. He also had a large, elongated nose, an eerily massive pair of shriveled, dagger-shaped ears, and three large buckteeth that were impossible not to notice. His skin was also a mysteriously yellow-greenish color, almost to the point of being sickly, yet he did not seem lacking in enthusiasm or vigor.

“I am the leader of one of the oldest guilds in recorded human history,” Sir Brayspark replied. “I do not take demands from the Royal Roses. Especially not from someone of your station.”

The officer laughed in a way that Alex found belligerent and unhelpful. “Fine, then. Ziragoth will just eat all of your citizens. Seriously. It’s only yourself you’re hurting. I’m only trying to appeal to your sense of decency—should you not be bereft of it.”

“My sense of decency?” Sir Peter Brayspark said with a huff. “Good sir, you must think me a fool. Were I to give the order for Sir Morrison to evacuate the city, I don’t suppose you would take it upon yourself to prevent his return, would you? Or is it your guarantee that you would thusly avoid taking any measures to prevent the re-admittance of my guild and our defenders into the city that we may resume things from the existing state of play—as it were beforehand?”

The Royal Roses officer scoffed at the question. “Of course not. Your presence in the city is illegal and a war crime.”

“Then it hardly seems a reasonable request. Perhaps you should search within yourself for this much-lauded sense of decency to which you hold so dear. To be clear: any of my people may evacuate if they so wish. Aside from that, I will force none to flee without a preliminary agreement from your guild guaranteeing a positional and tactical freeze. If we were to evacuate, then when this crisis has ended, all resumes as it was before. How is that not fair?”

“Because you’re not supposed to be in there in the first place!” the guild officer snapped. “Your very presence in the city violates the ‘Sanctity of Human Life Accords’.”

At the sight of Sir Peter Brayspark literally quivering with rage, Alex wondered if perhaps a fight between the two might break out after all. He wasn’t quite sure what, specifically, had set the man over the edge, but it soon became clear as he raised a trembling finger and wagged it at the man.

“You dare speak a word…a Gods-forsaken word about where my people are ‘supposed to be’. You dare speak to me of the value of human life, goblin? That a grotesque, subhuman creature such as yourself is allowed to breathe the air of my city is an affront to the dignity of all higher lifeforms to begin with, but now you lecture me on human affairs? Do you have any shame at all? Hm? Do you, goblin?”

“Okay, first of all, my name isn’t ‘goblin’,” he said. “It’s Torg: first and last. Secondly, I am a respected member—an officer!—of the Royal Roses. I will not tolerate this disrespect, Sir Peter Brayspark. I am a—”

“You’re a vile goblin is what you are,” Peter replied. “A goblin. In my city. Telling human beings what they should do. Truly, a sign of the decay that the Royal Roses has shoveled on our species.”

Alex had no choice but to turn away so as to avoid letting a frown be seen on his face. As a member of an adventuring guild, it was not his place to intervene in the politics of the fake, so-called “guilds” that ran North and South Bastia. The issue with Varsh aside, adventurers strived not to meddle in their internecine conflicts, and now in particular would be the worst possible time for him to wade into affairs which truly did not concern him. Even still, he found himself strongly disliking Sir Peter Brayspark.

Alex, personally, did not care for a single one of the political guilds, though if he had to choose which one he despised the most, it would be a close tie between the People of Virtue and the Royal Roses. Yet despite this, there was a part of him that tempted him to come to the goblin's defense. There was something on a pure, innate level that struck him as heinous about the way in which Sir Peter Brayspark demeaned Torg along racial lines. He also felt somewhat astonished at his own lack of awareness, as he had until just now taken the goblin to be a horribly disfigured human.

So that is what a goblin looks like, he thought.

This was the first time Alex had ever seen a goblin before in the flesh, and he’d imagined they’d be a tad bit greener and less yellowish as they were commonly depicted in illustrations. Unlike the Orcs, Gnomes, Dwarves, and members of numerous other races, there appeared to be no famous Goblin actors, TV hosts, or musicians. Nor were there very many images of them on the internet. They were a very secretive people: likely for good reason, too. Once, long ago, it was said their population numbered over four-hundred million. Today, however, it was widely believed that fewer than five-thousand goblins still walked Galterra.

If one were to crack open a history textbook—including the books at the school where Alex taught in Whispery Woods—it would be explained that this was due to a race-specific bacterial infection that targeted the reproductive glands of male goblins and still, to this day, continued to render three quarters of them unable to successfully breed.

What the textbooks would not mention—and what the goblins themselves likely did not know—was that the Guild of Gentlemen, with the eager support and endorsement of the Royal Roses, People of Virtue, and Children of Order, had concocted this disease as a bacteriological weapon eight-hundred-fifty years ago, during a time when humans controlled very little of South Bastia; then, the continent was mostly controlled by Goblins and the Lizard Folk. Amidst what had once been known as the Goblin War, humanity found itself taking up arms against goblin-kind after the goblin king, Ran’ghlar, raised the price of Iescian steel, which was to be found in abundance in goblin territories but was in short supply in North Bastia.

Though the goblins posed little threat to human territories, they were reportedly masters of their own domain. Their defensive capabilities proved far more than any human guild was capable of overcoming, as they were able to construct labyrinthine tunnels belowground in their territories that rendered it exceedingly difficult for humanity to disrupt their supply lines. It had also enabled them to use guerilla tactics to great effect. Faced with an unbreakable resistance, the human guilds had opted to use bacterial weapons of mass destruction. Almost a thousand years later, and a cure had still not been found. Incredibly, this did not count among the eight publicly known genocides. Of all the races on Galterra, humanity seemed to be the only one that continually fell back upon the idea of winning via racial annihilation.

Distracted by his thoughts, Alex nearly fell behind, and he had to hurry to catch up; this, while Sir Peter Brayspark continued to heap scorn upon the unexpectedly resilient Torg, who in fairness, did continue to antagonize Peter by laughing in his face.

As Alex began making his way farther inside the tent, hundreds of heads turned his way, though it was not upon him that they gazed; to his right walked Kalana Vayra alongside him, and to his left was Donovan Iseldar, the raid-leader and number-one in command of this operation, and it was on those two that the majority of eyes danced between.

“About time you showed up,” said a voice near a podium towards the center of the tent. Alex recognized him as Zephyr Vextran, the leader of the Explorers Brigade. He was a man of average height with intense, striking eyes, whose short, curly black hair was concealed beneath a hooded brown robe. He also wore an equally brown cloak, beneath which a white-and-blue, glistening sword was tucked away in a sheath on his back.

Zephyr was a rather fascinating individual in that, on the one hand, he was neither particularly large, imposing, or likewise blessed with any overtly intimidating features, be it a battle scar or a gravelly voice. Quite to the contrary, the man had only just entered his thirties and still possessed a youthful, unblemished visage, and though not outright high-pitched, his spirited voice came across as amused if not whimsical; if not for a somewhat uneven nose, one could almost say he bordered on handsome.

On the other hand, however, there was an almost radiant power to the sheer ambitious intensity in his dark blue eyes. In them, Alex found himself staring into a seemingly endless ocean of confidence and charisma. It was as though the mere image of Zephyr’s gaze alone could somehow appropriately stand in as a meaningful definition of the word “adventurer.” When meeting Zephyr’s eyes, the man had a way of appearing so self-assured and knowing that it came across to Alex as equal parts unnerving and emboldening.

“Glad you could make it,” Donovan said, embracing Zephyr. “I know you Explorers aren’t so big on boss fighting but…really gonna need you on this one, buddy.”

Briefly grabbing the spike-less sides of Donovan’s large, plate-covered shoulders in a return embrace, Zephyr said, “I’ve brought some of my best with me. You called, I answered.”

Alex knew that Donovan and Zephyr were very good friends and had been such for a long time. From observation alone, one might be forgiven for mistaking the two as brothers. Fundamentally, it hardly differed from the truth. Alex doubted that, if asked, either one of them would bother to dispute or deny the notion. It was for this reason it did not surprise him that Zephyr had been given the role of second in command—or co raid-leader. If anything should happen to Donovan, Gods forbid, then Zephyr would immediately take over. It was a disturbing thought. Alex could hardly imagine the GSG without Donovan in it. Thankfully, he was quickly distracted from the morbid image in his head as Donovan stepped up to the podium, tapped his pointer finger twice against the attached microphone as though to ensure it was working, and then without any further warning, commenced the War Council. As he began to speak, every other voice fell silent, and all eyes focused solely upon him.

Though Alex would not dare admit this aloud, he could not help but feel the slightest bit apprehensive about the coming raid. Though he had fought a great many bosses since joining the GSG, he had never fought a T7 before, let alone a dragon, which all on its own presented a host of problems. He also doubted he was alone in this feeling, as he could see just a bit of color drain from many of the faces of what were normally fearless, jubilant adventurers whose lives were imperiled on a weekly if not sometimes a daily basis. This wasn’t going to be like anything the majority of them had encountered before, was it? Oddly enough, though, there was one individual aside from Zephyr and Donovan who looked well and truly fearless.

Kalana.

In her eyes, there was only a dark, foreboding anger, which seemed to triple in ferocity as a projector screen behind Donovan lit up with a three-dimensional overview of their target. It was as though she could not look upon the wyvern without seeing the harm it had done to Zach. The moment its image popped into existence, Alex could not help but notice the way she bared her teeth, flared her nostrils, and narrowed her eyes in a visible display of barely contained rage. Likely more so than anyone else in here today, this was personal for her. She massaged her daggers, caressing them as though they were her personal pets. Her shoulders trembled slightly, and he was sure it was not from fear. She now had the eyes of a killer. It was a side of her Alex had never before seen.

It was troubling.