Benny's car pulled up beside Kyra. She pulled open the passenger door and hesitated before stepping in, not wanting to smear soot all over his leather seats.

  That was when the stench of blood hit her. It was caked into Benny's hair and staining on his headrest. He must have changed into fresh clothes and didn't get a chance to wash up.

  "Looks like you had quite an adventure," he said.

  "So did you," she replied.

  "Hop in. The next dungeon is by a creek. You can get yourself cleaned up there. I've prepared a change of clothes."

  She took this invitation to mean that he didn't mind her destroying the value of his car.

  "Did you clear a dungeon all by yourself?" she asked while buckling in.

  She ran the timeline in her head. When you accounted for the driving, he couldn't have had more than an hour to work with.

  "It's easy when you've done it all before," he replied.

  Benny took a fast corner, and a crate in the back slammed into her seat. Twisting around to take a look, she couldn't believe what she saw.

  "Why is there a dead dog in your car?"

  "It isn't dead," he replied.

  Alarm bells were going off in her head, and appraisal confirmed it.

  "It's a monster!" she cried. "You brought a monster out from a dungeon!"

  "That I did." Benny replied as if merely being accused of eating the leftovers out of her fridge.

  "What if it escapes? People can get hurt."

  "In that state? A sneeze could kill it."

  He had a point. The poor thing was was struggling to suck in shallow, raspy breaths. Not that it looked particularly powerful to begin with. It was hard to believe that something so small and unassuming was a higher rank than a hobgoblin. It must be a deep coma indeed not to be roused by the bump.

  "Did you do this?" she asked.

  "As you said, I didn't want it to go around hurting anyone." He didn't seem bothered by the situation at all.

  "What's the point of keeping it like this?" she demanded. "Why not just put it out of its misery?"

  "I'm giving it to you."

  She rounded on him. "Why would I want a tortured animal?"

  "Now that you've recruited a disciple, how do you intend on handling his training? Injuries are unavoidable in a dungeon."

  "I was going to ask you for some healing potions," she replied uncertainly.

  "They're less common than you think. You will need the gift of healing."

  He was right. Healing magic was essential for her plans.

  "I suppose you don't have any more of those special pieces of paper?"

  He shook his head. "This one you'll have to do the hard way."

  She picked the fox out of the crate and placed it on her lap. It barely had a pulse, and its nostrils were caked in blood. She wiped it clean to help it breathe easier and then lay her hands on it like she remembered Benny doing to her.

  "Focus in your mind about how you'd like it to recover," Benny instructed. "Really concentrate on that desire."

  So many people had died tonight, and all she'd managed was to save one. And even that one was hanging on by a thread. Cradling the creature in her lap, she wished deep within her heart for the power to save more.

  "We're here."

  Benny's voice pulled her back to the present. An hour had passed without her notice.

  The fox looked no better for wear. Despondently she returned it to its crate and followed Benny outside.

  "Keep practicing when you get home," he instructed on the way down to the creek. There he passed her a gym bag he'd carried with him and then left her alone to wash up.

  Inside she found a fresh set of clothes, some soap, and a body brush.

  After washing the warehouse fire out of her hair and scrubbing the guilt off her skin, Kyra returned to the car and followed Benny to the portal.

  Her role once more was to clear the way to the boss, where Benny again took over alone. The loot was another mystic orb—fire this time—and a healing potion. Benny took the orb for himself and tossed her the potion.

  "Until you learn to heal, you'll need this to keep the fox alive," he instructed. "Feed it no more than a teaspoon every couple of days. You don't want something like this running loose in your home."

  The vial didn't look like it had more than a couple of teaspoons anyway.

  "And don't let it die," he added. "You don't know how hard it was to find one of those."

  Back in their world the night was still young. Her abilities had improved, and the dungeon hadn't taken as long as the first time.

  "I've got another one lined up for you tonight," Benny said. "We don't have long to get you strong."

  That second dungeon turned into a third, and the only reason they didn't go to a fourth was because the sun was almost up.

  On the drive back to to town, Benny was in good cheer.

  "You've done well tonight," he said.

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  "But no better than last time, I'm guessing," she replied.

  "You'll have plenty of time to improve on it."

  He meant to be encouraging, but it only reminded her of how little he'd shared of what she was meant to be improving on.

  "Can you drop me off at the hospital?" she said. "There's someone I want to check up on."

  Benny nodded. "Just make sure you get plenty of rest afterward. You're going to need it with what I've got lined up tonight."

  She had to trust in his training regimen. At the moment she was still too weak. One just had to look over her status to see that she had her work cut out for her.

  Even with all that, she was still F-rank. With her current skill, she could confidently defeat the Kyra from the first dungeon. That just showed how much of a step up E-rank really was.

  What she didn't understand was why her gift of fire was still ranked so low. It was her strongest ability by far. How did evasion get ahead of it?

  The fire resistance was her one stand-out quality, and that came from an item. No doubt the ring Benny gave her was her most valuable asset. That wasn't surprising though, given it was E-rank.

  The healing potion was also E-rank. Just as Benny had warned, they hadn't found a second one all through the night. It seemed such a shame to waste something like this on a monster. If she could acquire the gift of healing soon enough, maybe she could save the rest of the vial.

  There was one other item that she'd managed to pick up tonight. They'd found a second mystic orb of fire in the last dungeon, and Benny let her have it. This rounded out her collection of dungeon items to three, all of which were E-rank.

  Benny dropped her off a couple of blocks away from the hospital. She didn't mind the walk as it helped her think, and considering how badly her first plan for Tristis had gone, a little extra clarity of mind couldn't hurt.

  The hospital was a hive of activity. By the looks on the staff's faces, it wasn't usually like this. She passed by a sea of anguished families. Last night's fire had touched more lives than she imagined. This side of it hadn't crossed her mind at all when she put together her plan at the drive-in cinema.

  In the midst of all the chaos, no one asked Kyra about the bundle in her arms, which was just as well, as she wasn't prepared to explain why she had brought along a fox to a human hospital.

  Samiel had his own private room in the burn ward. If it weren't for appraisal and the chart clipped to his bed, she'd have no way to identify him, as it seemed that his every inch was bound in bandages. He was hooked up to a ventilator along with entirely too many tubes.

  Beside the bed was Tristis asleep in a chair along with his parents also dozing.

  Gently she woke her potential disciple up. "How's your brother?"

  A heavy weariness hung off the young man's shoulders. "The doctors say the smoke burned up his lungs. All they can do is keep draining the fluids and wait and see."

  It was clear from his eyes that the odds were slim. Those bandages told about more than just the lungs.

  His parents were slumped against each other in their chairs. Tristis's father held an influential position in government while his mother handled the family's considerable investment portfolio. These were the sorts of jobs with no official off time. The fire had started well into the night, yet both had come to the hospital still dressed for the office.

  "You can fix this, can't you?" Tristis said. "There must be a magic that can heal."

  "There is," she replied. "But I don't possess it yet."

  The boy's eyes darkened and he went over to wake his parents up. After a hushed conversation between the three of them, the Montgomery parents hugged their son and departed.

  Tristis said, "I asked them to go home and get some rest. I told them you're a friend and that you and I will watch over Sam together."

  She hadn't needed the explanation as her enhanced hearing had heard everything. But she was pleased, particularly as he was willing to lie to his own parents for her.

  Abruptly he dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together, pleading.

  "I will pledge myself to your cause. I will do whatever it takes to support your mission. Just please save my brother. Please save Sam."

  Tears dripped to the floor from his bowed head as he continued, "It's my fault he's like this. If only I'd listened to you. You gave me the chance to save him and I wasted it. I won't make the same mistake again."

  She grabbed him under the shoulder and lifted him to his feet. His head remained bowed like he was too ashamed to look her in the eyes.

  Gently she said, "It isn't your fault. Everything I told you last night defied common sense."

  He turned his head up to look at her. "So you'll save him?"

  She was still cradling the fox in her arms. Benny meant for her to acquire the gift of healing. Was it to save Sam? Seeing the color of the fluids draining out through those tubes, she wasn't sure he was going to survive another night. She just couldn't see herself learning to heal that soon. The instructions from Benny made it sound like it would take her days at the soonest.

  If Benny were here, he could probably save the kid. But he'd already made it quite clear that he wanted nothing to do with her disciples. That's why the job of recruiting and training them had fallen to her. He was already paranoid about being seen together with her in public. There was simply no way he'd risk coming anywhere near a hospital.

  And even if he would, she didn't think it was a good idea to reveal her incompetence to a man who cared little for individual human lives.

  Something about her expression must have tipped Tristis off because he dropped to the floor and prostrated himself.

  "Please! I'll tell you my deepest, most shameful secret. If you reveal it to me back in time, I'd definitely believe you then. We can save Sam!"

  "It isn't so easy," she said softly.

  He sobbed into the floor.

  Kyra lifted the healing potion from her handbag. She wasn't sure of its capabilities, but if a teaspoon was enough to buy the fox an extra couple of days, then the entire vial should certainly be enough to bring Tristis's brother back from the brink. Enough for the doctors to stabilize him.

  But then the fox would die. That messed up all her plans, and probably Benny's too. Without the fox, she couldn't learn the magic, couldn't train her disciples. And she didn't think it was so easily replaced—otherwise Benny could have given her any common F-rank monster.

  She was only in this predicament because she'd messed up. The other Kyra didn't have to think about wasting a potion. Because the other Kyra didn't mess up recruiting Tristis.

  Unless she actually did.

  There was no reason to think that the other Kyra would be that different from her. Just as she had no intention of letting Benny know about her stuff-up, the other Kyra wouldn't have either.

  Which meant it was possible that the other Kyra had ended up in this exact situation and still found a way to recruit Tristis.

  When she thought of it like that, a possibility instantly popped into her mind. But it seemed almost too cruel.

  Tristis lost his brother in every other timeline, and in those timelines he achieved greatness as a hunter. Sam didn't need to survive. If anything, it could be Sam's death that influenced his decision to become a hunter.

  Maybe the other Kyra just let the timeline play out its course.

  She lowered the potion back into her bag.

  . . . But she couldn't let it go.

  It just felt wrong.

  And then she saw it all too clearly.

  She was second-guessing herself according to what the other Kyra might have done.

  But everything the other Kyra did, she did without knowing if it would succeed. Every decision—every action—had been made without a specter hanging over her.

  She had to stop worrying about the other timeline and just do what she wanted to do.

  "Get up."

  The boy rose on her orders.

  She held the potion up to the light. His eyes were affixed to the tiny vial of red liquid. Having shown it to him, there was no turning back.

  "Put it to your brother's lips. Have him drink."

  He handled the vial like it was ambrosia, carefully unstoppering and feeding it to his brother without spilling a single drop.

  There weren't any physical signs of improvement. But appraisal worked beyond the physical, and it reported that Sam's near-death condition had improved to stable. This was less than she'd been hoping. Maybe potions worked differently for civilians. Or maybe his condition had been just that bad.

  "His life is no longer in danger," she said. "He may have to live with the consequences for the rest of his life. This is all I can do for now."

  Tristis grabbed her hands. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

  He'd just taken her word for it. The boy had absolute faith in her now. Something she felt she hadn't earned.

  "I didn't go to all the effort of pulling your brother from that fire just to let him die," she said. "Nor will I hold you to the promises made out of concern for his life."

  His brows furrowed in confusion. "You said that terrible things are going to happen. The world is at stake. Don't you need my help?"

  "A pledge made in desperation is thinly bound," she replied. "The work will be arduous, and I need a disciple who is fully committed. One who is there to serve the cause rather than repay a debt."

  She patted his shoulder. "I will visit again tomorrow. Take the day to make up your mind."

  She left the boy to his brother and his thoughts, confident that he would make the right choice. All the doubts about her own decision had lifted too, since she'd noticed a little change in his status from when she'd first entered the hospital room.