The frightening thing was that it went beyond guiding. Yes, that was a benefit of course, and it was the start of our relationship, but this was different.
I couldn’t imagine not hearing her laugh, rare though it was. I refused to think of not having her snap at us, not having her around, not feeling the brush of her mind to my own.
Even the inside of her mind called to me, as twisted as it was, as though that created a sense of peace for me.
I couldn’t explain it, didn’t understand it, but as a mentalist, I knew better than to question such things.
The whys rarely mattered, didn’t change the realities, and I could easily admit the truth even if I had no understanding of how it had come to be.
Yun was vital to us now, and no matter how rocky the road ahead might get, we could no longer let her go.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Yun
My body hurt. All of it, as a whole, like each cell inside of me complained all at once. I wasn’t made for physical exertion like this, and judging from the other guides around, I doubted they were, either.
“This is insane,” a B-Rank guide said, leaning forward, his hand on his knees as he panted.
I had to agree, but I’d learned that arguing with the Guild after they made a decision did nothing. They weren’t the type to rethink anything, too busy defending their choice even if it was wrong.
“Again,” the woman at the front shouted, having come in from the military to run this little training lesson.
When I’d gotten word about a training exercise for guides, I’d assumed it would be something actually useful. Maybe we’d need to go over risks at the portal opening, or review prioritization when it came to emergency guiding.
I hadn’t expected to end up in a group with a bunch of guides doing an obstacle course like we were in basic training, like we were going to become soldiers.
I’d caught Carter and Shear around that morning, but a sharp look had gotten them going. I didn’t need them to actually witness the embarrassment that was my attempt to keep up.
I went toward the monkey bars, but my grip had tired so much that the moment I attempted to hold on, when I wrapped myhand around the metal bar, I fell. It caused me to crash down, the soft dirt beneath enough to keep me from getting hurt—at least more than my pride.
“Again,” the woman said.
“I can’t,” I bit out, curling my aching hands into the dirt. My palms were already filled with raised circles that would no doubt fill with liquid, blister, then burst later.
“You can’t?” She scoffed, walking closer as though she’d just found herself a target—me. She stood above me, wearing fatigues and a lot of attitude. She was neither an esper nor a guide, just some drill sergeant they’d picked out to handle this training.
The Guild trainers worked with espers, not guides, so the Guild must have thought someone used to handling humans was a better fit.
They’d been wrong.
“You think you can just quit when things get hard, huh? You think you’ll be able to just turn around and walk away when someone wants you dead?” Her tone came out like a mockery, but her jabs didn’t hit. She hadnoidea what she was talking about.
“This isn’t what I do. I’m a guide, so I don’t even go into dungeons. There’s no reason I need to be able to cross some damn monkey bars.” I gripped the metal frame to help pull me to my feet. It would have looked better if I could have stood all on my own, but I knew better than to try. I didn’t have much high ground, but I’d for sure lose even that much if I ended up face-first in the sand.
“You have no idea what you could face. Are you just going to wait and hope an esper saves you? What are you, some princess in a fairy tale?” She spat the words like the very idea had insulted her.
“I know better than you do. Have you ever even been to a portal?”
She sputtered in response, the noises escaping her almost words but not quite, like she couldn’t work out a real sentence. After gathering herself, she tried again. “I’ve been in actual fights, on actual battlegrounds, with enemies who want nothing more than to see me dead. I’ve been in the crosshairs of killers who want to splatter my brains on the ground. Don’t you dare think that I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“Youdon’tknow what you’re doing here,” I countered, unable to help it. “You don’t have any idea what monsters from dungeons are like, or what it feels like to face one.”
“I’d faced my fair share of enemies. Death is death, kid.”
Kid?The name chafed. I was a full-grown adult who had survived things that would make her shudder.
So I stared her right in the eyes. “Have you ever seen a monster?”
