Arlette Faredin stared out into the forest, keeping watch in the darkness for threats of every sort. Danger could come in many forms, emerging out of the blackness without warning. There were the bounty hunters, of course. Arlette wasn't expecting to see any of them tonight — they were likely still tearing the town apart looking for the three mercenaries. The hunters would catch on quick enough, though. Arlette and company had ditched the road rather soon after escaping Poniren and headed generally south, trying to put as much distance between them and their pursuers as possible while they still could.

That left the wildlife as the premier danger for the night. Arlette knew little about the animals up here. Like everybody, she knew about the jaglioths, but they were diurnal so she wasn't worried about those brutes. No, she had to be wary of everything else, nocturnal creatures she knew nothing about. Maybe there was little to be afraid of, or maybe the stories others told of the Kutrad nights were true. The possibility was enough to turn every sound into a potential threat, slowly eroding what little calm she still had after everything else that had happened the last few days. A branch snapped behind her and she whirled about, her weapon drawn and at the ready.

“Jumpin’ a’ every noise already, Letty?”

“Skies above, Jaquet, my heart nearly stopped. Is it your watch already?”

“Aye.”

“Thanks. Sorry for overreacting.”

“Eh, don’ worry yerself. Rather ya be on yer toes. So I assume we’re ‘eadin’ fer Stragma?”

“I don’t know, isn’t Stragma the predictable play?”

“It’s tha predictable play because it’s tha only play. Unless ya wanna try ta somehow cross tha Divide, get past Redwater Castle, an’ ‘ope tha’ tha ‘unters don’ chase us into tha Empire.”

“I guess we make for Stragma then.”

“Aye. Get some sleep. Ya need it more than tha rest o’ us.”

Arlette head hung and she didn’t move.

“Wha’s wrong, Letty?”

“I see it. Every night. The rage... it’s terrifying.”

“Aye, tha’s natural. I wouldn’ wan’ ta meet tha person who could live through tha’ an’ be fine. It’ll pass.”

“What... was that thing? Where did it come from? How could anything alive be so huge?”

Jaquet didn’t answer immediately, pausing to consider his response.

“A god, I think,” Jaquet finally said.

Arlette rocked back at his reply. “A god? Are you serious? Gods exist only in children’s stories. There’s never been any proof that they were real in all of recorded history.”

“Tha’ doesn’ mean they can’ be real.”

“Well, with luck we’ll never have to know the answer to that question. Goodnight, Jaquet.”

“Aye, see ya in tha mornin’.”

With a weary sigh, Arlette stood up and worked her way back to the others. She wasn’t ready for a world where gods were more than something used to scare children into doing their chores, but her life had been a nonstop parade of life telling her it didn’t care what she was ready for. After a few more steps, the forms of Basilli and Sofie came into view. She couldn’t help but marvel at Sofie, her body sprawled out without a care in the world. She had no idea how the girl could sleep so soundly after how hard it had been for her to fall asleep in the first place. As if Arlette needed more evidence for her “locked up noble daughter” theory, Sofie seemed to think that every insect in the woods was out to kill and eat her. Squirming, shivering, twitching, and slapping at every touch, real or imagined, it was a marvel that Sofie wasn’t still awake and complaining. Lying down beside Basilli, who had taken first watch, Arlette drifted back into the light sleep of the hunted.

*     *     *

“What’s Stragma?” asked Sofie the next morning after Arlette informed the others of her decision.

“It’s a country to the southwest,” Arlette responded. “I’ve never been there before, but the story goes that they will accept and protect anybody with a bounty on their head if that person can make it to their border.”

“That’s weird. Why would they do something like that?”

“’cause they’re a bunch o’ superstitious nomads who worship tha fores’ they live in,” scoffed Jaquet. “Stragmans believe in strength, an’ ya ‘ave ta be strong ta make it all tha way ta Stragma while bein’ chased by bounty ‘unters. ‘t’s a simplistic way o’ thinkin’ tha’ makes sense ta savages.”

“Savages? That seems harsh.”

“Don’ pretend like ya know wha’ ya are talkin’ abou’,” he replied scornfully as he stood up. “Letty, we need ta be leavin’ soon. I’m gonna go finish packin’ up.”

Arlette nodded and Jaquet turned and walked off.

“So how far away are we from Stragma?” Sofie asked.

“About as far away as we could be,” replied Arlette. Normally she would have pulled out a map and just showed Sofie, but all her maps, and nearly everything else she owned, was now just ash in the rubble of a destroyed inn. So instead, she grabbed a stick and began digging into the dirt between them. Slowly she etched out an outline of the world starting with the land where they were, in the northeast. Then she began tracing the rest as it swung south and west, widening as it went, before it turned north and began to shrink again until it tapered off in a second point like the section she had started with. All in all the land somewhat resembled a fat, misshapen crescent moon, or perhaps more like a circular cookie out of which somebody had taken a single large bite from the northern end.

“This is the world,” Arlette said as she started to scratch lines around the eastern half. Soon that side was divided into six different countries. Then, she drew a small ‘x’ in the country in the northeast. “This is Kutrad.” She placed her stick on the country the farthest to the southwest. “This is Stragma. As you can see, we have a lot of distance ahead of us. It will take us over a season to make it there, if we’re lucky.”

“How long is a season?”

“You don’t even know seasons? Did they teach you anything when you were a child?”

“I told you already, I-”

“Rightrightrightright,” Arlette interjected, cutting Sofie off before she could start on another rant about her delusions. Energy enough to argue was not something Arlette possessed these days, so she had decided that it was generally best to simply pacify the girl and ignore her wild imaginings. “A season is eighty-two days, except winter, which is eighty-one. While we’re at it, there’s four seasons, for a total of three hundred and twenty-seven days in a year. Anything else?”

“What’s this country?” Sofie asked, pointing at the single section in the center of Nocend. It was plain to see that said country was important — it was the largest nation on the continent, and the only one that shared a border with every other nation. It almost looked like the others were simply spokes while it was the center of the wheel.

“That’s the Republic of Eterium, the most powerful nation in Nocend. They have the most money, the most food, the most industry, the most everything. And here’s a big reason why: see this border here between Gustil on the west and Kutrad on the east?” she asked Sofie, pointing at Kutrad and the one country other than Eterium that it shared a border with. “There’s a large mountain range here, filled with all kinds of nasty things that make it very dangerous to try to cross. Do you understand why that is important?”

“It means that if you want to get to Kutrad safely, you have to go through Eterium.”

“Correct. What’s more, Stragma and its neighbor to the east, Drayhadal, hate each other and won’t trade with each other. So if you are a merchant in Gustil, Kutrad, or Drayhadal and you want to sell wares in any of those other countries, you have to go through Eterium, and that’s not something you can do for free.”

“What about this country down here?” Sofie asked, pointing to the one nation so far unnamed. Surrounded by water on all sides except the northwest, where it jutted out from Eterium, the peninsula seemed almost like a tumor growing out of the otherwise crescent-shaped pangaea.

“That’s Otharia. Never go there. That’s all that needs to be said about that.”

“Ooookayyyyy... So, uh... What about boats?”

A puzzled Arlette stared quizzically at her conversation partner. “Boats?”

“To ship things without going through Eterium? Just go around.”

“And how would you keep the leviathans from swallowing the boat?”

Sofie offered no response, her face contorting as she processed Arlette’s question.

“Exactly,” Arlette said.

“We’re ready ta go,” Jaquet called, stepping out from the nearby brush.

“Then let’s head out,” she replied. “Oh, and Sofie, just be aware that we will tie you to a tree and leave you if you decide to be hysterical over every single insect that flies with two paces of you like you did yesterday. Okay?”

Arlette decided to take the girl’s grumble as an affirmative.

*     *     *

“Hey, I was wondering something,” Basilli said to Arlette several days of hard travel later. The group had been walking almost non-stop since the first day, stopping only to eat, sleep, and occasionally rest. The going had been tough, especially because they needed to avoid any and all roads or trails that might have other travelers on them. It made what was normally a dirty, tiring activity all the more filthy and exhausting.

“What?”

“How did the girl find us? We were perfectly hidden. Nobody else noticed. So how did she find us, of all people?”

Arlette glanced back at the weary young woman behind them. One look at her bedraggled form was all it took to see that she was not faring as well as the three seasoned mercenaries. To her credit, while she still flinched at the sight of any insect nearby, there had been very little actual noise coming from her on the matter.

“Why not just ask her yourself?”

“She only likes you, if you haven’t noticed,” he replied matter-of-factly.

“What are you, a child? Spirits above...”

Together the two slowed down, leaving Jaquet behind and letting the young woman catch up.

“You were sad,” she answered after a long pause.

Arlette nearly tripped when she heard the answer. She had found them because they were sad? What in the world did that mean?

“I was by the inn when it happened,” she said in response to Arlette’s unspoken question. “A few people from the inn were angry, because people had set their inn on fire. But everybody else was excited. Like they were waiting for something. But then I saw you guys. It didn’t look like you, but you were the only people who looked at the fire and looked upset. So I followed you.”

“That’s it?” asked Arlette in disbelief. All that work had been undone by something so simple?

“That’s pretty much all that-”

Sofie’s sentence halted as the chilling sound of a breaking branch nearby echoed across the nearby forest. Arlette spun around towards the sound just in time to see movement in the branches above.

“Take cover!” she cried, just before a arrow slammed into her left shoulder above her chest plate, ripping a scream of pain from her lips and knocking her onto her back. With a grunt she rolled behind a large nearby tree and took a shuddering breath as she wobbled to her feet and yanked the missile from her flesh. Blood began to seep out of the wound into her tunic as she inspected the damage. She could still feel her arm, but its movement was limited and weak. With her right hand alone, Arlette fumbled with her sword, trying to pull it from its scabbard while several figures emerged from the brush, their weapons shining in the leaf-scattered light.

Arlette managed to draw her sword just in time to block the blow of a mace from a charging beastwoman. She jumped back, using the nearby tree trunk as a barrier between her and her assailant. The woman charged around the trunk after the fleeing mercenary, her mace striking from above. With a spin, Arlette twirled away from the incoming weapon and lashing out with her sword, only to strike the shield in the woman’s other hand.

A sound from her side set off alarm bells in her head, and she rolled backwards just in time to dodge a second arrow headed for her thigh. This was going to be a tough fight. Arlette’s unofficial, hasty count was four melee fighters and two archers. That was enough melee fighters to keep her and her companions busy while allowing the archers free reign to fire down upon them from up in the trees. She had to figure out a way to take out those archers, or their escape would be over almost before it had even begun.

Still in a crouching position, Arlette shifted her sword to her left hand and scooped up a handful of dirt with her right. Without hesitation, she threw the dirt into the face of the charging beastwoman, who immediately halted and brought up her shield as she tried to clear her vision. It was just enough time for Arlette to pull out a throwing knife and whip it at the closer of the two archers above. Too busy focusing on taking out Basilli, the group’s only ranged attacker, the archer never noticed the blade until it embedded itself into his kidney. His balance gone, the man fell to the ground and did not get up.

A cry of anger came from the woman behind her. She charged at Arlette a second time, plowing into her with a weighty shield bash. Arlette tumbled out of control into a nearby tree, banging the back of her head against the hard wood. The woman followed, swinging her heavy mace over and over in a frenzy. It took Arlette everything she had to just keep out of the way of the oncoming weapon as she was continually forced back, until suddenly she lost her footing and fell onto her side.

The beastwoman raised her mace skyward, ready to deliver the finishing blow, when suddenly the air seemed to explode around her and her upper body was in flames. Arlette rolled away as the hunter screamed and flailed about in agony. She almost felt pity for the poor woman — Basilli’s kills were never quick or painless. She glanced over at the man who had just saved her and gave him a nod of thanks. His opponent laid on the ground before him, what remained of his face horribly melted by flames, but Basilli wasn’t too much better off. Arlette could see him holding his left hand over a large gash on his right arm and moving with a limp.

Three down, three to go. Rather predictably, the attacking hunters had chosen to focus three of their people entirely on Jaquet. Given the man’s rather formidable reputation, such a decision was not unwarranted. One of their men was already down, his leg no longer a part of his body. Just as Arlette began to think of a way to help her companion by taking out the second archer in the tree above him, Jaquet solved the problem himself, overwhelming the woman in front of him with a series of swift and brutal attacks, before finishing her off with a horizontal swing so powerful that it not only cleaved her in two but continued through the adjacent tree where the archer was perched. As the tree toppled over, Arlette found herself thanking her lucky stars for the thousandth time that the man was on her side.

The archer in the falling tree leapt from his plummeting perch, landing with a roll before ducking behind a boulder. Arlette heard a shrill cry and the man emerged holding Sofie, a dagger to her throat. Arlette cursed under her breath — she’d forgotten about the girl while busy fighting.

“Stay back!” the archer warned. “Come any closer and she dies!”

Sofie’s wide, trembling eyes begged for Arlette to save her, though Arlette had no idea how. The archer was using her body as a shield, with only his head peeking out from behind the young woman. How was she supposed to kill the hunter without him taking Sofie with him?

“Put your weapons down!” the man ordered. With a sigh, Arlette slowly lowered her sword, setting it gently down on the ground when something flashed across her peripheral vision at incredible speed. Sofie shrieked and the archer twitched, his dagger slicing into the girl’s skin, before he collapsed, a throwing knife embedded into his skull. Without a word, Sofie dropped to her hands and knees and began to vomit uncontrollably.

“What was that?!” Arlette fumed as she spun around to face Jaquet. “You could have killed her!”

“She seems pretty alive ta me,” Jaquet countered, looking at Sofie’s shuddering form as she continued to retch.

“If you had missed by even a little, she’d be dead right now!”

“I didn’ miss.”

“You stupid-!”

A gasp of shock from Basilli interrupted the beginning of her rant before it could even begin. She whirled about again, ready for more combat, to find Basilli staring at the archer’s corpse... or what had once been his corpse. The body, once a rather muscular man of average height, was deflating, its muscles and bones restructuring themselves. Soon, the archer looked like a completely different person, a hand shorter, less muscle, a thin, bony face, and most notably, long ears that tapered off into a point.

“The Masked Battalion,” Basilli.

“Tha’s just a rumor,” Jaquet said.

“A rumor?” Basilli shot back. “How can you say it’s a rumor when there’s one right in front of your face?”

“Tha’s not wha’ I was sayin’. This isn’t even tha first time I’ve seen one o’ these guys. Saw one eleven years ago in a bandit raid, ‘cept it was one o’ my mates. Took an arrow ta tha ‘ead, fell over, an’ just started shrinkin’. Tha thing is, because nobody knows there is one until they’re too dead ta answer questions, nobody knows anythin’ about ‘em. Anybody spreadin’ this ‘Masked Battalion’ crap is just sellin’ ya stories.”

“What are they talking about?” asked Sofie to Arlette as the two men began to argue. She had pulled herself up to her feet, but Arlette could still see the queasiness on her face and the unsteadiness in her legs.

“There is a legend that has been told by soldiers and mercenaries for centuries — the ‘Masked Battalion’. The story goes that Drayhadal has an elite group of spies who they send out into the rest of the world to accomplish goals that only they can know, and they’re so good at blending in that the only way you that somebody is a member of the Masked Battalion is when they die and their disguise goes away. The thing is, not everybody believes the legend. Jaquet has a point; who they are and what they want remains a mystery because we only find them once they’re dead. There’s no actual proof that they’re from Drayhadal or that they’re spies. Basilli, on the other hand, has been convinced that the Battalion exists for years. He would start ranting about it when you put too many drinks in him. Spirits above, he’s going to be insufferable for a while after this.”

“Why do people think they’re from Drayhadal?”

“Because nobody’s ever heard of one turning into anything but an elf, and Drayhadal is the country of elves.”

“But I saw elves back in that town. Not many, but...”

“Not every elf is from Drayhadal, but everybody from Drayhadal is an elf. I’m surprised you aren’t more shocked about this, honestly. You seem so clueless about everything, but you’ve seen elves before?”

“Well, not in real life, but in movies all the time. They’re so pretty...” she sighed.

Arlette looked at Sofie sideways. She couldn’t imagine ever finding an elf attractive.

“Hey, Jaquet! Basilli! Stop your bickering and start searching these hunters for anything we can take with us. We need to grab what we can and get moving as soon as possible.”

Sofie followed Arlette with a look of concern as she walked over to the two hunters that Jaquet has killed.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked. “You have blood all over your shirt.”

“I’ll be fine in a few days,” Arlette answered. “I just have to wrap it up. Search that person over there and see if you can find any bandages on him.”

“A few days? You got shot!”

Arlette didn’t appreciate Sofie looking at her like she was the crazy one. “Anybody would heal something like this in a few days.”

“If you say so...”

“I do say so. Now search. We need to leave right away.”

Sofie approached the corpse of the man who had lost his leg to Jaquet’s halberd, eying the body with a mix of revulsion, nausea, and morbid curiosity.

“Arlette, why does this person have dog ears? And a cute bushy dog tail?”

“What’s a ‘dog’?”

“...no way. You don’t know what a dog is? How can you not know what a dog is? They’re called ‘man’s best friend’ for a reason! They love you and play with you and protect you and are super friendly and cute and soft and cuddly, even the big ones.”

Arlette couldn’t believe her ears. There was no way an animal like that was real. Animals existed to be ridden and pull carts, be eaten, or eat you. That was it.

“Next you’re going to tell me you’ve never heard of a cat,” the daft girl said as she gingerly flipped the body over and began picking squeamishly through any pockets.

“...that’s a beastman. There’s a lot of them in Stragma but they’re found pretty much everywhere.”

“No, how can there be no cats in this world either?! Cats are the only thing better than dogs! I don’t want to be in a world without cats and- oh, hey, here’s some bandages.” Sofie pulled out a roll of cloth and tossed it to Arlette, gratefully caught it and began to wrap her shoulder.

“We’re done over here,” called Basilli. “They didn’t have much we can use. Just a few daggers and some food. But they did have a map.”

“Good, at least there’s that,” Arlette responded as she cut the bandage with a dagger and walked over to Sofie. The young woman’s neck had a cut, though it seemed to be entirely superficial. That being said... “Hold still, we need to wrap your throat.”

“I’m sorry that I was so useless again,” Sofie said glumly as Arlette treated her wound.

“No, It’s partly my fault. I should have gotten to this sooner. Starting tonight, I’m going to teach you how to fight with a knife.”

“I... I don’t know if I will be able to.”

“To fight?”

“I don’t want to kill anybody.”

Arlette’s hands went still mid-wrap and she looked Sofie straight in the eyes.

“Listen, Sofie. You’re in the real world now, and if there’s one thing I’ve had to learn over the years, it’s that the real world doesn’t care what you want. In fact, it resents what you want, and strives to take everything that makes you happy right out of your hands unless you actively fight it. Unless you work your hardest, day in and day out, to keep what little good there is in this world in your life. There are going to be more people coming to capture us, that’s for certain. I won’t be able to protect you all the time. You’re going to have to fight your own battles. Can you do this? For me? For yourself?”

“I... I don’t know. I’ll try.”

“I’m going to work you hard tonight. Be ready.” Arlette would take that for now. She just hoped that they’d make it until the night without another attack.