“No! Wrong! What did I just tell you?”

“Stab upward instead of downward.”

“That’s right. If you stab downward, the only force you get is from your arms. Stabbing upwards allows you to power the strike using your entire body, straight into the heart. Now try again.”

“...okay...”

Arlette Faredin rubbed her forehead as her hapless subject attempted the saddest attack on a tree trunk in history, the girl’s hands fumbling and limbs weak. Sofie Ramaut was easily the worst student that Arlette had ever seen. She lacked strength, coordination, conviction — it didn’t help that the girl seemed entirely reluctant in the entire endeavor. Sofie seemed highly disinterested in the prospect of fighting anyone or anything. This was going to be a slog.

Eventually Arlette couldn’t bear to watch anymore, so she signaled for the young woman to stop and beckoned her over.

“That’s enough for tonight,” she told her dispirited student. “We can work on it more tomorrow. Besides, before we go much farther, we need to consider how you will work in your abilities. Are you an Observer or a Feeler?”

“A what or a what?” came the reply.

Arlette slumped against the practice tree and fought back the urge to strangle something. Every time she thought she’d found the bottom of the barrel, Sofie would reveal some new layer of ignorance. It had gotten to the point where Arlette was amazed the girl knew how to chew.

“Feeling and Observing are the two ways that people can leave their mark on the world. How should I put this... People like Basilli and I are Observers. That is because we influence the world by observing something into existence. So when Basilli wants to create fire, he observes a flame and it appears.”

“So he just sees a flame in his head and it shows up?”

“No, he doesn’t ‘see’ a flame, he ‘observes’ a flame. You can’t just visualize it, you must experience it. You need to feel the heat, see the light shining from it, hear it... You must understand the flame and believe that it is there, and then it is there.”

“So can you make flames too, if you want to?”

“To a degree. It’s not that simple. As I said, you have to understand the flame in its entirety, and that’s not easy to do. People all understand things differently, so some people just grasp concepts naturally that others don’t. Basilli is somebody who just naturally understands flame. I don’t. If I wanted to become as capable as he is right now I could, but it would take years and years of study and training. That’s why nobody usually bothers. Instead, find what you naturally understand and focus on pushing that as far as it can go. It will take you much farther.”

“So can you make fire or not?”

“Anybody can make a small flame, including Feelers. Even the few poor people who have the smallest amounts of soulforce can manage a candle flame with a little practice. It’s just that it takes hard concentration and many times more energy than something you’re better at. If I need to I’ll make one to start a fire, but anything beyond that is just a waste of my soulforce.”

“So if an Observer ‘observes’ things, a Feeler... feels things?”

“Observers and Feelers are two sides of the same coin; one concerns the outside world, while the other concerns the inside.”

“So Feelers change their bodies?”

“Precisely. I’ve heard that they concentrate on some feeling inside them that they once felt, like a time when they felt especially strong or powerful. Jaquet could explain it to you better.”

Sofie expression bunched up at Arlette’s suggestion. “No thanks, I think I understand. Can you only make yourself stronger and faster like he does?”

“People can do lots of things. Some people can give themselves tons of stamina and sprint for a day without stopping. Some people can make their senses better. As we saw earlier, apparently some people can even transform their entire bodies.”

“Are those the only two types?”

“There’s Weavers, but those are just people who can do observing and feeling at the same time. Other than that, no. So now that you understand the categories, which are you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done either.”

“Never? Not once?”

“No!”

“Then that’s your task,” Arlette instructed. “Figure out which you are.”

“How? I don’t even know how to do that.”

“Most parents make their children practice creating a candle flame when they are very young to teach them how to use their soulforce for whatever their talents end up being later in life. That’s where we’re going to start. Everybody, even you, understands fire enough to manage that. Now go sit on that log over there and work on making a small flame between your hands. Kids usually can do it within a day.”

Sofie shuffled over to the aforementioned log and sat down upon it, cupping her hands together and staring intently at her palms with intense concentration. Arlette figured that would keep the young woman occupied for a few hours. That meant it was time for her to relieve Basilli from lookout duty.

The group had made camp in a small hollow in the side of a hill. It was a decent hiding spot, hard to notice from below and well-covered with foliage. It also limited the directions enemies could approach without being seen. Arlette found Basilli crouched atop the hill, his eyes alert and searching for anything moving in the bright moonlight of the three moons above.

“Jaquet should be done with his hunt fairly soon,” she began. “I can take over from here. Go get yourself something to eat.”

“You just want me back there to cook the meat,” Basilli replied. “You’re lucky that I’m here or you’d be eating nothing but raw meat every day.”

“Well we sure don’t want you for your smart-ass personality,” Arlette quipped back. As much as she wanted to smack him, he was actually half-right. One of the benefits of Observer-created flame was that it was smoke-free. She would never have dared to create a normal fire in this situation. It would have revealed their position to everybody around.

“How goes your pet project?”

“I had to explain to her what an Observer is.”

“Nobody could be that dumb.”

“I have her working on making a candle flame like a four-year-old.”

“You ever think maybe she’s not crazy? That’s she’s telling the truth?”

“I just can’t believe that. It’s too much of a leap.”

“You think it’s more likely that this girl was locked in a room somewhere for her entire life and never let out, then somehow got free, made it to Zrukhora, and became a pleasure slave? That seems nearly impossible.”

“You know what seems more impossible? The world that she talks about. Think about it. Imagine a realm where nobody can use their soulforce to feel or observe, where everybody’s weak like her. They’d all be wiped out! Beasts would eat everyone! There’s no possible way that people could survive without soulforce. Can’t be real.”

“A world full of Sofies, huh... Yeah, you’re right. That being the case, wouldn’t it be best to leave her somewhere instead of taking her with us? She’s nothing but a liability now and she’ll slow us down.”

“What, are you siding with Jaquet now?”

“I just think that his argument makes some sense. We got what we needed from her.”

“It just feels wrong abandoning the one person who has been willing to help us. Besides, we still need her for later. I plan on heading for Olenset and we’ll need her then.”

“Seems rather dumb to go towards where people are.”

“That’s why I want to do it. The hunters are going to predict that we take a route that takes us away from civilization. We can’t throw off everybody, especially not groups with good trackers, but if by heading towards Olenset we can throw off even a third of them then it’s worth the risk. Then we lie low in Olenset for a little, recover, and move on towards Eterium.”

A soft rustle off in the distance caught both mercenaries’ attentions, and they both turned to see Jaquet amble into view, his one hand holding the body of a large lizard.

“Save me a piece,” Arlette said to Basilli as he turned back towards the camp.

“No promises.”

Squatting low besides a tree, Arlette began her watch. Her thoughts began to meld with the quiet forest as she let the peace surrounding her infuse her spirit. Calm moments had been rare since their escape from Zrukhora, and she intended to get what she could out of this one. She had a feeling they would be even rarer in the near future. She needed a drink...

*     *     *

Arlette panted and gasped for air as she leaned against a rock and gazed down at her opponent’s corpse. The man, an elf this time, looked back at her with dead, glazed eyes that echoed what she felt. In the eighteen days since the first attack, nary a day had gone by without another ambush. Hunters attacked at all times of the day and night, harrying them without end, and it had taken a grave toll on all of them.

At this point, after days of fighting, the mercenary’s tunic was almost entirely dyed red with blood, and unfortunately a large amount of it was her own. She looked down at the severe gash on her right thigh that she’d suffered in the latest battle, the price of a tactical error when fighting the elf in front of her. Worse than most of her injuries, it was deep enough that it almost went down to the bone and would likely take six or more days to fully heal. She was already covered in wounds in various states of healing. How many more wounds would she accrue before this one was nothing more than a scar and a memory?

Basilli was only slightly better off. Two days ago an Observer had wrapped up his left leg completely with vines and wood, and then had the plants start to constrict. He’d been forced to burn his own foot and leg to get free, and the scars from that, while somewhat gone, were still mostly visible and Arlette could see him try to hide a limp.

Jaquet, on the other hand, was more wound than person. Being the fearsome warrior that he was, his reputation had been well known even before the Zrukhora incident. In fact, Arlette had a feeling that the Ivory Tears had received several jobs just because the client had wanted to hire the man known as “Jaquet The Quick”. Largely thanks to that renown, the man usually found himself going up against at least twice as many enemies at once as either Arlette or Basilli, and it showed. Cuts, bruises, broken bones, he had it all.

While normally somebody could heal from wounds to non-vital organs with little trouble, the more damage a body had to deal with in a short span of time, the slower the healing progressed and the weaker the person became. What’s more, bodies needed lots of rest when healing, and rest was a luxury they no longer had. Arlette was averaging four hours of sleep at most, and the constant harassment at all hours of the day and night was seriously impacting their bodies.

What it was doing to their psyches was far worse. Each member of the group seemed close to breaking from the mental stress. There was never a time that they could relax or lower their guard. Every shadow held an enemy, ever noise was an incoming attack. Nowhere was safe.

This constant mental grind meant more and more mistakes. Just a week ago, Arlette would never have fallen for a feint as poor as the one that had earned her this latest injury. Only their best would get them to Stragma. What if they couldn’t reach that point anymore?

As bad as the three mercenaries were faring, nobody was doing worse than Sofie. She only had one injury, a cut on her right arm she’d received from a hunter’s knife, but that wound, which would normally heal within two days, had barely healed at all. If this continued, weakness would take home in her wound and it would begin to fester. Not that weakness didn’t already reside in the young woman. She couldn’t understand how somebody so feeble had managed to live the nineteen years Sofie claimed was her age.

But that was not the reason Arlette had watched the young woman slowly shrink into a shell of herself. No, that was because, with each passing day, it became more and more clear that Sofie was, without a doubt, the most untalented person Arlette had ever heard of. No matter how hard she tried, or how much, the poor ex-slave could not create even a single flicker of flame. Arlette could see how desperately the girl wanted to be of use. With every fight that she had to run away from, with every animal she ate that she didn’t help hunt, cooked on a fire that she couldn’t start, Sofie’s spirit was ground into dust. She barely talked, instead withdrawing into herself and wallowing in her own misery. Only her fear of being left behind seemed to push her to action anymore.

Still, Arlette clung to hope. They had several factors going for them that had allowed them to make it this far. First, it had become obvious fairly quickly that the bounty hunters attacking were not trying to kill. It made sense, given that their bounty called for them to be alive, likely so the King could parade them through the streets and make a big show of their execution. It also helped that hunters, while generally excellent trackers and ambushers, were rarely better than mediocre in a straight-up battle. The team of hardened mercenaries were able to rely on their battle strength and teamwork to break through ambushes time and time again.

Second, none of the hunter groups were working with each other. This also made sense — the reward of nobility would go to one person, or perhaps several people at most. Everybody wanted the reward for themselves, so why would they help some other group collect the prize? Arlette assumed this was the primary reason they had not yet been surrounded by dozens of people during an ambush and simply overwhelmed with numbers.

Third, they were just a day’s travel from Olenset, and Arlette had faith that they would find help there. Olenset was a small farming village about a third of the country north of the border with Eterium, and a place they had ended up stopping at by chance as they journeyed north to Zrukhora. While there, they had ended up uncovering and ending a scheme by the area’s lord and a group of slavers to kidnap children from the local populace and send them north to Zrukhora to work the mines. The local populace had been so grateful that they had even covered for the mercenary band when the lord’s men had come around asking various questions. She knew that there was no way somebody would think the savior of their children would be complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. To top it off, it would give Sofie some way to be useful for a little while. That would surely perk up her spirits.

The plan was fairly simple — Sofie would split from the group and head south into Olenset to find Sulwyn Kemble, a farmer and the father of two of the kidnapped children. He had been the one to hide the mercenaries from the lord’s men before, and Arlette had confidence he would do it again. Once she found Sulwyn, Sofie was to find a clandestine way to talk to the man and get his help. In the meantime, the three mercenaries would take a wide swing around the town, staying several hours of travel away at all times, until they had completely bypassed the town, then they would sneak back north and hole up and wait for Sofie and Sulwyn to smuggle them into the town the next day.

A few hours later, Sofie walked south with determination and the others veered east and began their orbit of the town. Arlette just hoped Sofie didn’t get lost.

*     *     *

“Arlette, we don’ ‘ave time fer this,” Jaquet prodded as Arlette stared at the massive heap of manure piled up on the back of a wagon and considered turning herself in to the bounty hunters. Everybody had their limits, and it seemed submerging yourself in poop was hers.

“We need to overpower your scents or hunters will track you straight to my family,” Sulwyn explained. “Keep the ranset leaves in your mouth and wrapped around your nose and just breathe through your straw and you probably won’t vomit.”

Everything about their plan seemed to be getting worse by the moment. Arlette put a leaf in her mouth, wrapped a cloth with more leaves around her mouth and nose, sticking a long thin straw in through a fold and steeled herself. One step at a time she entered the giant manure mound, the other two following. A few strategically placed shovels later, the wagon began to move north once more.

Arlette couldn’t see or hear, and she certainly didn’t want to smell, so instead she thought about where they were and what remained to accomplish before they secured their freedom. Arriving at Olenset meant that they only had a third of Kutrad left to traverse. Past that was the region of Eterium known as the Deadlands, a dry, rocky region that would present its own problems. The sparse foliage found in that area would mean hiding from pursuers would be a challenge, but at least they’d finally be able to see any ambushes before the arrows were already in the air.

At the south-west corner of the Deadlands sat Begale, the gateway to the west, and that was their next planned destination. Jaquet claimed he had friends there that could be relied upon to hide them and help them on their trek. As to who those people were, Arlette had no idea, but they couldn’t afford to turn down any assistance.

Several agonizing, interminable hours later, the wagon wheeled into a large barn under the light of the moons and Arlette’s waking nightmare came to an end. She had never thought she’d ever tear up at the sight of a bucket of water and some soap, but her life seemed to be nothing but surprises these days.

“You made it!” chirped a chipper Sofie as she entered the barn, her face immediately twisting in disgust as she caught a whiff of the three mercenaries. “Oh, god! That smell! Did you guys fall into-”

“Yes, shut up,” Arlette spat testily. She couldn’t help but notice that Sofie’s clothes were somehow completely clean.

“Make sure you wash everything then, we don’t want your wounds to get infected.”

Sulwyn grabbed a pitchfork and heaved a large nearby mound of hay off the barn floor, revealing a small trap door hidden beneath. Inside Arlette could see some steps leading down into a dark chamber filled with large barrels of various fermented beverages stacked five high, the specialty of Sulwyn’s farm. This hidden cellar was where they’d hid before, when they had last had people looking for them.

“You remember this, surely,” he said. “Please wash down there. Can’t risk anybody noticing.”

“We can’ thank ya enough, Sulwyn,” said Jaquet softly.

“You gave me my family back,” the farmer replied with a warm smile. “I’d do pretty much anything for you. We all would. Now go wash and rest. Even a blind man would be able to see that you need it. I’ll be back later to discuss what to do.”

The group did as the farmer instructed, washing their bodies and clothes as best they could by the light of Basilli’s flame and changing their bandages. Once finished, Arlette laid down on the cellar floor, completely spent.

“Let’s never do that again,” she said. Nobody disagreed.

*     *     *

Much like there had been every night since their flight had begun, there was silence. But this silence was of a different sort than those that settled over the group the nights before. Those were the quiet of the hunted, an anticipatory condition, based on the never-ending possibility of danger just out of earshot. This was a restful silence. Arlette could feel herself begin to relax and unwind just a little as the night slowly began to pass. Sofie decided to break that peace, because of course she did.

“So I had some time to myself, and I got to thinking,” she began. “I don’t really know anything about any of you.”

“That’s not an accident,” Basilli remarked. “Mercenaries don’t often go blabbering away about their pasts. They’re usually not very pretty. Everybody’s running from something.”

“Boooooooooringgggggg,” Sofie complained. “I’m not asking for your life story. I just want to know where you’re all from. Why do you wear that earring on your left ear that I haven’t seen anybody else wear? Why does Jaquet talk funny? Why-”

“’ey! I don’ talk funny, all o’ you talk funny!”

“Jaquet talks funny because he’s from far away,” Arlette chuckled. “He comes from a country called the Droajan Confederation of States, which is actually in the continent of Obura, on the other side of the Divide. What was the city called? Zamery?”

“Zlamery! Don’ you be confusin’ my ‘ometown with tha’ pisshole Zamery! Tha’ place’s nothin’ bu’ a bunch o’ punters!”

“Touched a nerve, did I?” Arlette laughed.

“Zlamery an’ Zamery don’ ge’ along, haven’ fer centuries. ‘t's a lon’ story. Bunch o’ fools, all o’ ‘em. So busy squabblin’ with each other while tha Empire’s gettin’ ready ta eat ‘em righ’ up, jus’ like they did with Ofrax. ‘ad ta ge’ ou’ while I could.”

“Empire? Ofrax?”

“In Obura, there is the Empire of Ubrus and the Droajan Confederation of States, and that’s it. The Empire controls almost the entire continent. It’s far stronger than any nation in Nocend. Fifteen years ago, there was another country in Obura, the Kingdom of Ofrax. They’re gone now. The Empire conquered them in less than a month.”

“They’ll be gettin’ ‘ungry again soon, an’ Droaja’s all they ‘ave left.”

“So you came over here and became a mercenary?” Sofie asked. “That reminds me, you and Arlette have been a team for a while, right? How did that happen?”

“I noticed ‘er durin’ tha last election war. ‘ad loads o’ potential even then. After tha war, she wanted ta start a mercenary company an’ we made a deal. I lend my name an’ reputation, she does all tha work!” The man laughed, the first sign of his normal personality Arlette had seen in days.

“So Gustil had a civil war?”

“No,” Basilli answered, “an election war. It’s this boneheaded idea that only battle-crazed people like Gustilians could come up with. The ruler of Gustil can have many children but does not choose an heir. When the time come for a new ruler, all the children who want to rule travel around the country for several seasons, telling the people what they believe should be the future of the country. Then, everybody who feels strongly about it picks a side, joins that side’s army, and they fight it out.”

“But like, they don’t actually kill each other, right? That would be dumb.”

“Oh no, this is a full-on war. People dying left and right. It’s that special Gustil brand of stupid that only they seem to share.”

“Beliefs are weak and temporary,” Arlette huffed in irritation, her arms crossed against her chest. “Only true convictions should matter when making the decisions that determine a country’s future, and if you’re unwilling to put your life on the line for an idea then then it’s not a true conviction. Besides, it’s a great way for candidates to prove that they have the ability to handle a war. You have to recruit an army, and then you have to be able to lead it to victory. It works.”

“So then you two met and created the Ivory Tears, huh... That reminds me, why are you called the Ivory Tears?”

Jaquet and Basilli exchanged bright, predatory grins.

“Okay, so once there was a craftsman who was all alone,” Basilli began. “His wife had died years ago and they had never had any children. One day, the craftsman prayed to the spirits and asked them for their help. He didn’t want to live in solitude for the rest of his life. The spirits heard the man’s pain and answered his plea...”

Arlette rolled her eyes and sighed. They were doing it again: the Ivory Tears tradition they called the “Name Game”. It was an ongoing contest to see who could tell the most outrageous fake story to explain the band’s name while still getting the listener to believe it. The practice had been born years ago, soon after the band’s creation, and had grown ever since. Basilli had always been one of the best at it, able to spin whole tales out of thin air that always seemed to hold some small shred of believability. Sofie was the perfect victim, too. She’d believe whatever he told her. Still, Arlette could do nothing but blame herself. She’d been the one to give her band a name, and she’d never told anybody where the name had come from, so they’d decided to fill in the gap themselves. She wasn’t about to tell them now.

“...and as his creation stood over the man’s body, white tears fell from its ivory face and it spoke for the first time. ‘Don’t worry, father,’ it said, ‘I will watch over you always. Rest easy, and know that you will never be alone.’”

“That’s... so sweet...” Sofie sobbed as she rubbed the water from her eyes, completely missing the two men sharing another conspiratorial smirk. Arlette sighed a second time. The girl really was way too gullible.

A low bleat from a garoph above brought a quick silence to the chamber. Then a second bleat from another animal. Somebody was coming.

“The lord’s given us full permission to look wherever we please,” came a male voice at the edge of Arlette’s hearing.

“I don’t care what you were told, it doesn’t change the fact that there’s nobody but my family here.”

The voices grew closer and the animals in the barn began to shift about in agitation.

“You’re scaring the animals,” Sulwyn protested. “Leave, before they get out of hand.”

“I’m sick of hearing him. Shut him up.”

“Sure thing, Rak.”

“You smell anything?” Rak asked somebody as a short muffled struggle could be heard in the background.

“Dung,” responded a female voice. “Nothing but lots and lots of dung. Ugh. I hate farms.”

“Alright, let’s move on to the next one,” Rak said. “We’re the Trackers of Boforda. You find anything about the fugitives, you let us know and you will be handsomely rewarded. We’ll be at Finnar’s Tavern.”

“Get out,” was all that Sulwyn said in reply.

The startled animals calmed as the bounty hunters left the area, but nobody below felt like talking much anymore.

*     *     *

“Did they hurt you too much?” Sofie asked when Sulwyn came down later that night with a pot of soup for the group.

“I’m fine,” he said. “They just roughed me up a little, that’s all. Bunch of thugs, no better than the lord’s men. They get a little power and start thinking they’re better than us farmers. It’s always been like this. The people change but they always act the same.”

“This soup is great!” Sofie chirped. “Especially these mushrooms! Delicious!”

“I’ll let the missus know,” the farmer said with a smile as he climbed out into the barn. “There’s plenty more in the pot in the corner. Now you all get some rest and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Several minutes later, Arlette set down her bowl and let out a contented breath. Everything was finally looking up. The cellar was a little cramped, but they could stay inside it for a few days without problem, healing and recovering from their grueling ordeal, then head out on the next leg of their journey with renewed vigor and spirit. Things were going to be okay, she told herself. Everything was going to be just-THUMP!

Arlette’s head turned to see Basilli on the floor. He’d fallen off of the barrel he’d been using as a seat, and was now lying on his side, eyes glassy as he pawed at something Arlette couldn’t see.

“Ergorm...” he mumbled, sending a spike of alarm through Arlette’s mind. Ergorm mushrooms. She’d never seen them before, but she’d heard of them. They grew only in the cold of Kutrad, and their bodies held within a potent paralytic that interfered with muscle movement.

She’d eaten the entire bowl, Ergorm mushrooms included. She needed to throw up, to expel the poison from her body before it was too late, but her body seemed suddenly allergic to sudden movements. Feeling was already fading from her limbs. Like Basilli before her she lost her balance and fell onto the floor, her head turned towards the stairs as it slammed into the hard surface. She could still see and hear, but motion was already off the table.

Another thump, as Jaquet collapsed beside Basilli. Arlette cursed her own foolishness. In her desperation she’d allowed herself to believe, against all the evidence accrued in her twenty-two years of living, that good deeds mattered, that gratitude was more than a facade, that she could place her trust in anybody outside her closest companions. She’d been wrong. She’d doomed them all.

“Guys, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Sofie stood over them, her eyes wide with surprise and her lips bunched up in worry. How was the slightest person there completely unaffected? She’d even had seconds! Arlette’s drug-addled mind couldn’t figure it out, but it did realize that this meant they had a chance. Ergorm acted quickly, but it wore off just as quickly. If Sofie could just keep them safe for a little while, they’d be up and about again.

Sofie grabbed Jaquet’s arm, lifting it up and then watching it flop back down, powerless to resist gravity’s pull. Something seemed to click in her mind as she realized their situation. Arlette smiled on the inside. Excellent. Sofie would handle this, somehow.

That’s when the hyperventilation began. “Oh shit oh shit oh no oh shit what do I do whatdoIdo whatdoIdoooooooo...” she babbled as she looked over the three prone figures. What followed was several minutes of very unencouraging panic as she rushed about the chamber, looking for something to help, before she finally seemed to calm down.

Never mind, they were still all screwed, Arlette decided.

The bleats of the animals above froze Sofie in the tracks. Somebody was approaching, and they surely weren’t coming with good intentions. Arlette watched as she looked around, her mind running as fast as it could to pull some sort of plan out of thin air. Finally, she simply moved over to the side, slightly removed from the others, laid down on her side, and pretended to be drugged like the rest.

The door above opened, and Sulwyn descended, his arms filled with coils of thick rope. He strode right by Sofie, not even pausing to inspect her, and stopped at Jaquet, dropping the rope on the ground beside Jaquet’s prone form. Preoccupied with securing the Feeler, the farmer never noticed as Sofie picked herself back up and approached, holding the dagger she’d been given in her hands.

Arlette didn’t know how he sensed it, but just as Sofie came up behind him, Sulwyn spun around, coming face to face with the knife-wielding girl, and everything froze. Sofie and Sulwyn stared at each other, and at the knife she held with quivering hands just a finger’s-width away from the betrayer’s chest. Arlette screamed in her head at the young woman, willing her to strike.

During the days since Sofie’s training began, little, if any, improvement had come. The days of battle and nights of failure with her soulforce training had sapped what little drive she had once possessed when it came to the idea of fighting. But anybody, no matter how untrained, could manage this situation. Sofie held the knife with the point upwards and the height correct. She’d gotten close enough that a successful blow was all but guaranteed. All she had to was drive the blade up behind the ribs and into the heart.

The moment stretched into eternity as the knife trembling in Sofie’s hands stayed where it was, neither party seemingly willing to move. She wasn’t going to do it, Arlette realized with dismay. She didn’t have it in her.

Sulwyn came to the same conclusion just around the same time, his arms suddenly whipping forward and his hands grabbing hold of the knife hilt. Sofie cried out and they began to wrestle for control of the dagger. Sulwyn, having the advantage in height, weight, and reach, slammed Sofie into the shelf of barrels, causing the entire contraption to shake. Sofie responded with a kick to the crotch, which only seemed to make the man angrier. He threw her down the aisle and she let out a sharp grunt as she landed awkwardly and tumbled, the dagger flying from her grip and skidding underneath another shelf of barrels.

Wild with rage, Sulwyn grabbed Sofie and slammed her against the shelf again and again, his one hand grabbing her by the neck and starting to squeeze as he continued to pound her into the wooden shelving behind her. Blood began to stain the wood behind the girl’s head as she began to make a choking sound.

Sofie struggled, fighting with all her might to free herself, kicking the farmer in the gut and the groin and the legs and anywhere else that her legs could reach, but it just wasn’t anywhere near enough. Once she had lost her chance at the beginning, the outcome had become preordained. There was no way she could win a fight barehanded against a man twice her size who spent his days doing physical labor. It just wasn’t possible.

Arlette willed herself to get up, to do something to stop Sulwyn from killing Sofie, but the Ergorm toxin remained as strong as ever. Her spirit wailed at her own inadequacy, but not even a finger would move. She could only watch in horror at what was about to happen.

But somehow, luck was on their side. As the light in Sofie’s eyes dimmed, Sulwyn drove Sofie’s body into the shelving once more. Perhaps the shelves were old, or perhaps they had begun to rot from the damp moisture of the underground cellar. Whatever the reason, as Sofie’s back collided one last time with the wooden beams that kept the many barrels of that aisle stacked on one another, the beams broke, and the fifteen-pace high shelf of barrels collapsed upon them both. Arlette watched as a barrel fell, almost in slow motion and collided with the farmer’s head, driving his body to the floor and knocking him out cold.

Suddenly the room was silent. Arlette couldn’t see anything but a jumbled pile of wood where the two combatants had just stood. Instead all she could do was wait, and curse the man who had put them into this position.

Agonizing minutes later, Arlette was getting the feeling back in her limbs. She still couldn’t really stand, but she could at least slowly crawl her way towards the heap of barrels and broken wood. Basilli and Jaquet were also in the same state, each of them slowly working their way in that direction.

A cough came from the mound. Slowly, a large barrel shifted, and, with another large cough, Sofie dragged herself out. Blood dripped from a cut on the top of her head down onto her face and mixed with tears, another worse cut bled down the back of her head. A red hand print from Sulwyn’s large hand could be seen around her throat. She looked over at Arlette with dazed eyes, her pupils dilated, and took an unsteady step in her direction.

“I’mmmm... sorry,” she slurred. “...I’m sssssorry.”

Arlette pushed herself into a kneeling position. The Ergorm was leaving as quickly as it had arrived, leaving her almost entirely back to normal.

Sofie took a few more weak steps and collapsed onto Arlette’s shoulder. “I... coullldn’t... do it... I’m sorrrrrry...”

Arlette stood them both up and embraced her weeping companion. “It’s alright,” she lied through her teeth. “You did your best. It’s alright.”

Jaquet fished the unconscious farmer out from under the wood, and Basilli snatched the dagger from under the bottom of the shelf that remained standing and approached, a menacing gleam in his eyes.

“Nnnnnoo... don’t... kill him,” slurred Sofie as she stumbled towards him and Jaquet. She tripped

“Sofie, what are you saying?” asked a stunned Basilli. “You, of all of us, should want this the most!”

“...They need himmmm,” she ground out, laboring over every word. “His fffffamily... they’ll sufffffer...”

“She’s right,” Arlette said. “We should just go. He might have already sent word to whatever hunters paid him off. Basilli, tie him up. Jaquet, you carry Sofie.”

The others seemed unconvinced, but they followed her directions. Together, they snuck out of the barn and escaped the village under the cloudy moonlight. Then suddenly, as they entered the forest, Arlette stopped, patting her chest frantically.

“Wha’s tha matter, Letty?”

“It’s gone! My trinket!”

“Again?” asked an incredulous Basilli.

“I must have lost it when we fell on the floor in the cellar. You guys keep moving, I’ll go back and get it and catch up to you.”

“Letty, ya need ta ge’ a better necklace or somethin’. This is gettin’ ou’ o’ control.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Don’t let her sleep.”

“There’s no mercenary worth their life that hasn’t heard of the Last Sleep,” Basilli replied. “We’ll keep her awake, don’t worry.”

“Good.”

Without another word, she turned and made her way back into Olenset.

She could hear the muffled voice of Sulwyn calling out from beneath the barn as she approached. He was awake. Great. With a tug, the door lifted up and Arlette slowly stalked down the stairs.

“Thank the spirits! I was thinking you’d never come-EEK!” the man screeched, his tune changing when he recognized just who had come to find him. Basilli’s rope skills were top notch, and it looked like the farmer hadn’t been able to move even an inch since they’d left him.

“I-I-I can explain!” he stammered. “I needed the money! They raised taxes on us again and-”

“Shut up.” Arlette drove her boot into the man’s gut, leaving him to wheeze. She continued right by him to a shelf, reached between two barrels, and pulled out her trinket with a smile. Right where she’d purposely left it.

Without another word, she walked back towards the entrance and checked the now cold pot of soup. There were still several portions remaining.

“Oh goody,” she said. “We can do this the easy way.”

Carrying the pot over to the gasping man, Arlette picked up a ladle with one hand, and pulled a knife from under her tunic with the other.

“Open up,” she said with a smile.

“Please, no-”

Arlette put the knife to the side, grabbed the farmer’s nose, pinching it shut, and force fed him mouthfuls of the toxic liquid.

“She’s practically useless, you know,” she said as she waited for the effect to kick in. “She’s clumsy. She’s weak. She’s slow.”

Sulwyn’s eyes began to glass over and his body went slack.

“She’s crazy, and stupid, and has the knowledge of a toddler. She clings to me so desperately that I think sometimes that if I were to disappear, she’d just sink right into the ground.”

Arlette picked up the knife and sawed away at the ropes. The bindings fell to the floor and the farmer’s body splayed out like a rag doll.

“She can’t fight worth a damn. She’s too nice to survive. She even argued for us to not kill you, after all that you did to her.”

She flipped the man onto his belly and bent down over his feet, placing the knife above the paralyzed man’s heel.

“She’s not a mercenary. She’s definitely not an Ivory Tear. But she’s one of us, whatever we are now. And you do not do that to one of us and avoid the consequences.”

Arlette stabbed the blade into Sulwyn’s heel, slicing the man’s Achilles tendon in two. The farmer’s pupils contracted. Most of his body couldn’t move, but it could still feel pain.

“Ever have a tendon injury?” she asked as she picked up his other foot. “It’s not like a normal wound. Cuts to muscles heal in a few days. Broken bones, maybe ten. Tendons, however... I once had a tendon sliced in my hand. Took me three seasons before I could use that hand again.”

The dagger stabbed again, cutting the tendon on his other foot. All he could do was release a sharp breath. Arlette dropped the leg and stood up.

“Think about what you did to us, and most of all to her, while you watch your family try to pick up your work for the next year. And remember that it didn’t have to be like this.”

Arlette turned and headed up the stairs, her mission accomplished. She lifted the door up and paused at the crest of the stairs.

“I want you to understand,” she said, “that the only reason you are still alive is because she would hate me if I killed you, and I can’t have that. Enough of the world hates me as it is.”

The door slammed shut, and she was gone.