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Lillia was, unsurprisingly, hard at work when the door opened. She held a pan full of sautéing vegetables in one hand and a metal spoon in the other. The chopping sounds made no signs of stopping, even though both of her hands were full.

It took Arwin a moment to realize that her Cursed knife, the Chef’s Kiss, was cutting things for her. That was a rather embarrassing revelation considering he had been the one to give her the blade in the first place.

“Is everything okay?” Lillia asked, setting the pan down on the stove and stirring the vegetables in it. She made no move to look in his direction — she was too concentrated on her work. The shadows stretched and warped unnaturally around her as she worked, flowing down her arms and into the food. Prickles of energy pressed into Arwin’s skin like the entire area had a faint electric charge.

“All fine,” Arwin confirmed. “Don’t let me bother you. I was just wondering if you’d seen Olive anywhere. I made something for her.”

Lillia glanced over at him. Her eyes nearly doubled in size and she drew in a sharp breath as she spotted the wooden arm cradled in his hands. She didn’t move for a moment as her eyes, enhanced by the powers she had while within the Inn, delved into the abilities of the Cursed item.

“You didn’t,” Lillia said.

“I definitely did.”

“Olive is going to lose her shit,” Lillia muttered. She glanced back at the food on the stove, then grimaced. She grabbed her spoon and stirred it around before snatching a black bottle from the countertop and upending it over the pan to send a splash of amber liquid into it. Fire erupted in the pan and roared up, nearly reaching her face. Lillia gave the pan a quick toss and the flames died out as quickly as they had come.

“So do you happen to know where she is? I’ll stop bothering you if not. I don’t want to interfere.”

“It’s fine. I can multitask. She’s in the alley behind the Devil’s Den, last I saw her. Training with Reya.” Lillia set the pan to the side and blew a strand of hair away from her face. “I’d love to watch, but I need to make sure to finish this properly. Memorize what happens so you can tell me tonight.”

“I’ll do my best. Thanks, and good luck.”

Lillia nodded in response, her eyes back on the food once again as concentration crawled across her features. “To you as well.”

With a final wave farewell, Arwin hoisted the wooden arm back over his shoulder and headed out in the direction that Lillia had indicated. He made his way out of the Devil’s Den and wrapped around the side of the building toward the alley in the back.

The scuff of feet marked Olive and Reya’s positions before Arwin saw them. Curiously enough, if they were sparring, there was almost no noise or ring of metal on metal.

Arwin into the alleyway. It was wide enough for two people to easily stand shoulder to shoulder and surprisingly clean for an alley. Aside from a few pieces of rubble and scuffmarks on the old cobblestone, it was devoid of any trash or scattered garbage.

It only took Arwin a moment to realize why Reya and Olive weren’t making as much noise as he’d expected.

Neither of them were armed.

They circled each other in the relatively tight confines of the alley, darting in and out, trading open handed blows as they attempted to gain the upper hand. The vast majority of the strikes were dodged rather than blocked, making the fight largely silent.

It was a drill Arwin had seen before, one usually used to focus on technique and accuracy while minimizing the chances of causing an actual injury.

It also went a long ways to improve coordination. Not hurting an evenly matched opponent you were actively fighting was, surprisingly, more difficult than injuring them.

Arwin couldn’t help but stand and watch them fight for a moment. Theoretically, Reya had an enormous advantage over Olive in something like this. Olive was a warrior who relied on powerful slow swings with a blade, not hand to hand combat. Reya, on the other hand, had grown up on the streets and was far nimbler than Olive.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

There was no doubt that Reya did have the advantage, but Olive was more than holding her own. She played on the defensive, keeping her missing arm to the wall to reduce Reya’s access to the locations that were harder to protect.

After watching for a few more moments, Arwin figured out why Olive was able to match Reya. The former thief was holding herself back.

Olive ducked out of the way of a strike and lunged forward, driving her shoulder for Reya’s stomach.

Reya shifted her stance just far enough to avoid Olive. She shoved Olive back a step and darted forward, trying to sweep the other woman’s feet out from under her. Olive hopped over Reya’s leg and grabbed for her collar.

Flowing to the side, Reya let Olive’s hand pass by her head. The move put her on Olive’s unprotected right side. Instead of holding back or letting Olive recover, Reya thrust her open palm for Olive’s stomach.

Olive hesitated for a flicker of an instant. Her right hand instinctively shifted to block the attack with a sword she didn’t have. By the time she’d corrected the mistake, it was too late. Reya’s hand slapped against her side and Olive stumbled back with a grunt, her back to Arwin.

The space Reya had just made broke her out of the fight for just long enough to notice him standing at the end of the alleyway. Her eyes widened and she skipped back as Olive jumped back at her.

“What are you doing?” Olive asked. “You’re supposed to be pressuring me! Don’t stop after you land a blow!”

“Arwin is here,” Reya replied, nodding over Olive’s shoulder, her eyes flicking to the wooden arm in his hands. “And I think he’s here for you.”

“What? Arwin? What does he…” Olive trailed off mid-sentence as she turned around, her brow furrowed in confusion, as she also spotted what Arwin was carrying. She took a small step back.

“I’ve been working on something,” Arwin replied. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything too important.”

“It’s fine. We’ve been going at it for a while,” Reya replied, wiping the sweat from her forehead with a sleeve and flapping the bottom of her shirt to try and get some airflow. “And I think this might be important.”

Olive swallowed heavily, the rest of her body practically frozen in ice as her gaze bored into the wooden limb. “I — what is that?”

“An arm,” Arwin replied. He held it out. “Your arm, if you want it.”

“You… can make something like that?” Olive asked, a faint tremor of hope entering her voice even as she tried to suppress it. She swallowed again. “You’re serious?”

“Of course I am,” Arwin said. He shifted his grip on the arm. It was surprisingly heavy to lug around. He glanced around to make sure nobody else was eavesdropping, then lowered his voice anyway. “I should be up front that this isn’t a replacement, nor is it a normal magical item. It’s Cursed. The Ashleaf Tree will try to take control when you use this thing’s full strength. It’ll give you your right arm back, maybe even stronger than it was before, but that power comes at a cost.”

Olive stared at the arm with such intensity that Arwin feared her gaze would burn a hole through it. The fingers on her hand twitched and she started to reach out, then caught herself halfway through the motion.

She didn’t move for several long seconds. A battle played itself out on her features. Olive wasn’t just taking the hand without thinking it through, even though it was clear just how much she wanted to.

The Olive that would have done anything to make her swordsmanship even just a little bit better, the Olive that had failed to tell her team about a challenge because she’d been so focused on her own abilities that she’d ignored theirs, wasn’t the one that stood before Arwin. Her hand curled into a fist and she pulled her eyes up to meet Arwin’s.

“What do you mean by try to take control?”

“I think it’ll try to steal your body from you. I highly doubt it’ll last a long time if it pulls it off, but it’s possible. It’ll be a battle of willpower whenever you draw on its strength,” Arwin said. “Don’t feel pressured into taking this. There’s always another way.”

Olive bit her lower lip. “I… don’t think I should take this. I could slip up again. I could end up hurting all of us if I lose control mid fight. That would be even worse than getting stuck in place.”

Reya walked up beside her and gave her a small nudge with her shoulder. “Arwin just said it was a battle of willpower. You won’t lose that.”

“What if I do?”

“You won’t,” Reya said firmly. “And if you warn me when you use the arm, I can keep an [Imprison] ready to use on you so the arm can’t hurt anyone. If we’re ready for it, we can deal with it.”

“But—”

“It’s your choice,” Reya said, cutting Olive off. “I won’t tell you what to do. But you didn’t lose your arm as a punishment, Olive. You lost it because you made a mistake. The point of mistakes is to learn from them, not to linger on them.”

Olive looked from Reya to Arwin, then down to the arm in his hands. Her features sharpened and she swallowed before giving him a curt nod. “I — give me the arm. I want it.”

Arwin handed it to her. Olive held it by the shoulder, staring at the wooden limb in silence for several long seconds. She blinked heavily, then wiped her face on the shoulder of her shirt.

“Thank you, Arwin, Reya.”

“You haven’t tried it on yet,” Arwin pointed out. “It could suck.”

“I’m not thanking you for making the arm. I’ll do that later,” Olive said. The corners of her eyes were wet. She blinked heavily again, then wiped her face against her sleeve for the second time. “I’m thanking you for putting enough faith in me to believe that I won’t fuck up a second time.”

“We all fuck up,” Arwin said. “Just make sure to include some variety in it. But you’re not going to make the same mistake twice when you learned the lesson the first time around.”

Olive gave him a small smile. She brought the arm closer to her shoulder. Tiny, razor-sharp tendrils of wood pressed free from its smooth end, reaching for her flesh. Olive hesitated for a moment.

Then she clenched her teeth.

Olive drove her new arm into its rightful place on her shoulder.