Chapter 34: Be Frightened Correctly
Chapter 34: Be Frightened Correctly
The route turned every mistake into a lesson.
Heel-first steps made loose stone shift. Holding my breath made my hands tremble. I leaned my head around corners before my eyes could see anything useful. Liora corrected each failure and made me repeat the movement until I could perform it while tired.
"You are walking like a person frightened of the ground," she said.
"The ground has earned it."
"Then be frightened correctly."
By midmorning, I could place the outer edge of my boot down first and withdraw it when glass or rubble moved beneath me. My body still lagged behind my intentions, but caution gave Poor Coordination fewer chances to betray me.
Knife training began in an abandoned kitchen.
Everything about my grip was wrong. I held the blade as if I planned to fence. Liora turned me sideways, shortened my stance, and laid the knife back along my forearm.
"A knife is what you use after distance has already failed," she said. "You are not winning a duel. Hurt what came close, create space, and leave."
She practiced entries at a quarter of her speed. Even then, I lost track of the training knife constantly. Whenever I overcommitted, she tapped my ribs or wrist and explained how I would have been opened.
"Again," she said after the sixth death I had suffered in theory.
I stepped in, kept my elbow close, and aimed for the inside of her forearm. She turned the blade away and stopped her own knife against my throat.
"You watched my weapon."
"It’s the part that kills me."
"The shoulder moves first. The hip tells you where the body can go. By the time the knife looks dangerous, the decision has already happened."
On the next attempt, I watched her chest and shoulders. I still lost. Her blade stopped an inch from my ribs instead of my throat, which counted as improvement.
She also taught me how to fall. Chin tucked, forearm protecting the head, turn the impact across the side rather than taking it through one wrist. Poor Coordination made the drill miserable. The lesson mattered because the ground had already defeated me more often than most monsters.
The rifle lesson came in the rear room.
Liora understood its purpose quickly. She knew guns, yet the controls and magazine were different from those in her world. After examining the mechanism, she shouldered it more naturally than I had managed after three days.
Her world’s weapons used shorter magazines and heavier ammunition. She described police carrying pistols, soldiers carrying long guns, and rich hunters owning enchanted rounds that could trouble low-ranked beasts. Against powerful fighters, firearms needed magic, rare materials, or absurd quantities of force.
"Your rifle will kill what we hunt in these ruins today, so respect it. It is loud, heavy, and finite. It throws itself backward, so meet the force with your body. This part heats. Keep your hand away from the moving pieces."
"It’s still the strongest weapon I own."
"At your level, yes. Learn it well." She handed it back. "My world has guns too. They frightened people once. Then warriors and monsters became strong enough that ordinary firearms were toys. Ammunition ends, noise travels, and strength keeps growing. Do not build your survival around one tool."
I remembered Aria’s fire swallowing a burst in midair. The lesson needed no further argument.
We left the building after noon and moved between courtyards. Liora taught me to read the signs I had been stepping over: toes indicated direction, deeper rear prints meant a creature had accelerated, and droppings near a narrow entrance usually meant a den rather than a path.
At a covered passage, she stopped me with one hand.
The track through the dust looked easy. It also narrowed toward a doorway with no visible exit.
"Something hunts here," I whispered.
"Why?"
"The path funnels anything walking it. The hunter can wait inside."
Her ears lifted. "Good."
We circled two blocks rather than test the passage. The detour cost an hour, and Liora treated the lost time as cheaper than curiosity.
At the next rest, she made me choose a temporary camp from three buildings. The house with the intact door had fresh droppings inside. The shop offered wide windows and no hidden exit. I chose an office above a pharmacy because the stairs could be watched and a rear window opened onto a low roof.
"Acceptable," she said.
We stayed only long enough for my breathing to settle. A safe room could become a trap if comfort made us careless.
Later, a heavy shape moved behind the windows of an old pharmacy. I saw only a ridged back crossing the dark. Liora drew me away without reaching for her knives.
"Can you kill it?" I asked once we were clear.
"Probably."
"That didn’t sound certain."
"Certainty is expensive. We need food and distance. Fighting that offers risk without either."
Near sunset, she found a better target in a collapsed courtyard behind a row of shops.
We observed it from an upper window first. Liora made me count its steps, identify the injured side, and name both exits from the courtyard. Only after I answered did she lead me downstairs.
The monster was hairless, grey, and roughly the size of a large dog. One rear leg had healed crooked. It dragged itself along the wall with its head low, sniffing through debris. No tracks suggested a pack. Liora circled the courtyard, checked every entrance, and listened for a full minute.
"Weak, alone, and edible," she said. "This one."
Cold spread through my stomach. "With the rifle?"
"The rifle stays slung." She met my eyes. "You may refuse. I will not shame you. Then your first kill will happen later, perhaps without anyone beside you."
She meant it. That made the choice mine.
I drew the military knife.
"Tell me what to do."
Liora smiled without humor and turned toward the courtyard.
"Stay close. When I give you an opening, use it."