I pull a sword out of my storage ring. The cold metal of the handle coalesces in my palm, slowly warming up to my touch as if comforting me with its presence. I’m not defenseless anymore.

  Their grunts have gone quiet. Four bandits try to encircle me while the young one falls back.

  What should I do?

  Their stench hits me—unwashed flesh, rotting leather, and blood not yet spilled.

  I step back, keeping the campfire behind me. Hesitation will cost me.

  They seem to be waiting for something, too. I don’t know what. I could try to break away and make a run for it. But I don’t know if there are more of this band out there or if they would bother following my trail.

  I take another step back, trying to position myself to keep them all in sight. My boots sink into the loose earth, whirling up a cloud of dust that flows toward the tree leaves and clings to them like ash. We watch each other in slowly rising tension.

  I’m up against five. For some reason, I’m not as scared as I should be. There is a trill I never felt before. I wonder what has changed.

  I blink and flinch back when I realize one of them has taken my distraction as an opportunity to creep closer. I need to focus, now is not the time for introspection. He smiles, showing me his missing teeth, eyes gleaming like a hyena. All their eyes gleam while their blades glint with rust and dried gore.

  “She is only a low-silver, no meridians,” declares the young one. My eyes open wide. What gave it away?

  “What?” asks the leader, visibly relaxing. Then he chuckles. “Careful not to poke yourself with that iron, girl. You sure you know how to use it?” His henchmen fall into laughter, relaxing their attention. “We all have at least one technique. You better give me that toy before you hurt yourself.” He smiles broadly at me. “If you behave, we may even escort you back wherever you came from. In exchange for some favors, of course.” His henchmen laugh louder.

  My hand tightens around the hilt of my sword. I let my eyes flick around the circle, measuring distance, terrain, and how they move. I may not have any techniques, but I doubt they know about my runes. I don’t think their advancement is much higher than mine. As far as I know, you can get a technique with just one meridian. They still outnumber me, though. Where is that stupid cat when I need him?

  The leader holds one of his hands toward me, demanding that I follow his instructions. I whip my sword out to cut it off at the wrist.

  He notices my movement at the last second and starts moving his hand away. Instead of severing his offhand, it still hangs on by a strip of skin and flesh. He parries my follow-up strike with a saber and steps back, clutching his arm to his chest to stem the bleeding. Two of his henchmen step between us.

  “Fuck!” He swears. “Kill that bitch.”

  To my surprise and theirs, I’m way faster than them. It’s still hard to split my attention between multiple opponents. The young one stays in the back, chanting something while tossing a sack full of bones around him. The leader sits next to the campfire, trying to bandage his wound. I can feel the last one stalking behind me, not that I can do much about it while his two companions harry me with their swords. I need to take some risks. I parry a somewhat clumsy sword thrust and step forward into the man’s guard before he can regain his balance. My sword carves a path over his leathers until it finds a weak spot between seams and comes out wet on the other side. Blood fountains out in a dark arc. His companion tries to grab me from behind, but I duck and whirl around to face him with my blade. Our weapons clash with a metallic clink that seems to echo over the grassland. The one I wounded sags to his knees, clutching his throat, gurgling something wet and intelligible. A sudden sting in my left shoulder reminds me that this is serious. Shit! I almost forgot about the one circling me. The leader is coming back, too, apparently healed.

  “Keep up the pressure. She won’t hold on much longer.”

  I frown. What is he talking about? I’m not even winded. It’s just mentally exhausting to keep track of all their movements.

  For some reason, my left arm goes slack. I feel foreign mana spreading from the wound, laced with numbness, lethargy, and the desire to fall asleep. I shake my head, banishing the drowsiness. Poison, or a technique, maybe. I’ve been approaching this the wrong way. I’m not training with Bae. There are no rules here, no one to prevent me from using every one of my tricks.

  They are encircling me again. Well, three of them are. The one whose throat I cut is seizing on the ground. He wheezes and coughs until he stops breathing. While the young one still stands back.

  I hold my sword arm up and close my eyes before flashing my light-sphere rune as bright as possible. Before they can react, I jump up, using my air-step runes to get out of the way. I land a few steps away, close to the spine-covered trees.

  The three men look at me dumbfounded. The leader turns to the still-chanting boy. “Thought you said she couldn’t have any techniques?” he pants heavily. His tone sounds offended, as if demanding an explanation.

  The youth looks up from his heap of writing bones. “What? Huh? Strange. I guess I was wrong.” I take the lull in combat as an opportunity to purge the foreign mana out of my shoulder. Slowly, I start to feel my fingers again. “It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve finished.”

  I don’t like his wicked grin.

  The bones clack together and stop writhing. A second later, a pack of skeleton dogs stands up. Shit! What is this? A necromancer? I thought those weren’t real. The bandits sit back, tending to their wounds and looking at me in amusement as if the fight is over.

  Maybe it is. I gulp, trying not to lose track of the pack. How do you fight something that can’t bleed? My sword somehow doesn’t feel like an adequate weapon. I wish I had a mace to crush them. Their bones rattle, clattering like loose dice across the stony ground as the pack skitters closer.

  There are eight of them, maybe nine. It’s hard to tell when half of them have missing jaws or more ribs and limbs wired on where the tail should be. It’s as if someone had taken every bone they could find, shaken them in a bag, and reassembled them with only a vague idea of animal anatomy and no regard for dignity.

  Their snapping teeth are very real, though. There is a certain grace and coordination to their strides almost as if they were real wolves on a hunt.

  “Shit!” I curse. I jump up again, air stepping toward the trees until I land on a branch, trying to avoid the spines. The pack follows me in silence, surrounding the tree beneath me. They jump up and snap their skulls closed, trying to chase me, sometimes colliding mid-air as they leap.

  The boy clicks his tongue in annoyance. “Stupid mutts.” He points toward them, muttering something, and they sit on their hind-bones. I watch them looking up at me in eerie silence as if waiting for me to drop. Their eye sockets glow faintly. Now that they sit still, I can make out small blue pinpricks hidden in the empty hollows. They make no sound apart from the ghostly panting that may be real or just in my imagination.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Care to explain how you missed that she had techniques?” asks the leader, biting into a leg of my roasted bunny with a crunch. “Not bad.” I can see the grease run down his chin as he tears off a hunk with his teeth, chewing on it with exaggerated slowness while looking directly at me.

  “Fuck,” he says, around a mouthful, “you knew what you were doing with the seasoning, girl.” He flashes his yellow teeth at me. “Li’l poor man's pepper, yeah? Maybe some wild onions?”

  I glare at him. That is my and Kylo’s dinner. I wonder what is taking that big cat so long to appear.

  The bandit makes a show of licking his fingers, one at a time, dragging his tongue between the knuckles with a greasy smack that makes even the silent skeleton dogs look over in his direction.

  “Shame you offed Red-fingers,” he says with a sigh before taking another bite. The crunch of brittle bones echoes across the clearing. “Could have had a place in the crew with those fighting techniques and your cooking skills.”

  What the heck is he talking about? Did he expect me to join them? I look at him, bewildered.

  “She doesn’t have techniques,” interrupts the young necromancer.

  His companions whirl around to face him. “What? I’m sure she has at least two. I haven’t forgotten about your mess up. You won’t be able to weasel your way out of it this time,” growls the leader.

  “No, no. You saw those marks on her arms?” stammers the boy. “They glowed when she used that light.” His companions look at him as if waiting for further explanations. “I think those are sigils. She must be a goblin.”

  Silence falls onto what is left of my camp before the other bandits erupt in laughter.

  “A goblin, he says!”

  “Hilarious!”

  “As if they would venture that far from their holes.”

  “Be thankful that your skills are so useful, boy.”

  I agree that controlling bone constructs is neat, but it’s creepy. I turn their banter out. They seem to have forgotten about me for the time being. Maybe they believe I won’t be able to escape from the skeleton dogs. Are they right? I don’t know. I could try to turn invisible and sneak away, but I've no idea how those skeletons sense me. If it’s smell, I’ve nothing to hide from them. I want to facepalm when I realize I could have used my invisibility runes to avoid combat before this confrontation began. I still forget some of my new tools in the heat of the moment. Well, I also need to stay in a place where Kylo can find me. If I sneak away, we may never see each other again.

  I look down at the dogs. They smell wrong. It bites into your nostrils like a blade soaked in vinegar. There is a sickly-sweet edge to it that clings to the back of your throat. It smells like an alchemist’s failed experiments spilled onto a graveyard. The scent makes your eyes water, your stomach churn, and your instincts scream in warning. Death, poorly disguised as a perfume.

  What is holding them together? And how does that boy control them? I look up at the still laughing and bantering group. There must be some link between him and them. What if I seal his mana out? I try to visualize the shape of the rune I would need.

  It shouldn’t be hard. A simple seal-mana rune projected around those bones should do the job. I free-form it like Bae taught me. It goes slow, not something I could do in the middle of combat, but they seem to have forgotten about me for the time being.

  I finish the last stroke, and the rune before me starts drawing in mana. I can almost feel the tether linking the necromancer to the constructs and hear it snap. The skeleton dogs fall apart into a heap of bones.

  The boy whirls around. “You! What did you do?” He glares at me, seeming outraged. “She killed my babies!” he shouts, pointing an accusing finger at me. “Hurry, she is gonna escape!” He starts darting in my direction, rusty sword in hand. Then he stops, realizing he is the only one, and looks back, bewildered.

  There is a commotion in the camp. One of the remaining bandits has just fallen forward and lies in the dust, unmoving. Another one remains sitting, his spine poking out of his neck. The leader is trying to defend himself from something invisible. Kylo has arrived.

  I should probably help him.

  I jump down from the tree toward the necromancer, arresting my fall with an air-step just above him to let his sword pass harmlessly beneath me before resuming my fall and kicking his weapon out of his hand. I point my blade to his throat, not giving him time to rearm himself.

  “Don’t even think about it, you bastard,” I warn him. He gulps. His face turns as white as chalk. “Walk toward the camp. You are going to give me some answers.”

  After an audible crunch, the bandit leader sags to the ground. Kylo reappears, dragging his corpse over by the neck. The boy looks at the big cat wide-eyed. “We never stood a chance, did we?” he mutters.

  “No,” I answer, laughing. “You didn’t. But maybe we can help each other.”

  He glares at me. “I would never betray my brothers!”

  “What?” I look at him bewildered. What brothers?

  Oh! There are more bandits out there, as I suspected. Another reason to get away from here. But where should we go?

  Kylo drops the dead bandit leader at my feet. “Cook?” he asks, tilting his head.

  “Hmm. What? No! I won’t cook him, Kylo. We don’t eat people!” I exclaim, flabbergasted. The boy at my side stumbles and falls onto his ass. He slowly crawls back, trying to get some distance between us. “You!” I shout toward him. He freezes on the spot and starts to shiver. “Don’t think you can get away.”

  “Bad man eat bunny. Kylo eats bunny-thief,” declares my new best friend, sounding outraged.

  “Are you sure you want to eat them? I don’t think they will taste good.”

  “Please don’t let that beast eat me!” exclaims the boy. “I’ll tell you everything!”

  I turn around and look at him. There is a wet spot sullying the leather around his crotch. I suppress a smile, trying to appear serious. Who would have thought Kylo’s antics would make a good intimidation tactic? Did he broadcast his thoughts for all to hear again? We may need to work on that. I rub my chin with my fingers, imitating Master Wen.

  “Hmm, we may be able to reach an agreement,” I say, looking into the boy’s dark eyes. “As long as you prove useful.”

  “Sure, sure! Whatever you need? I’ll tell you everything if you let me leave alive.”

  I turn toward the big cat. “Kylo, I don’t think they will taste good. Why don’t you hunt a few more bunnies instead? I’ll make sure nobody steals them this time.”

  He tilts his head and looks up at me. “Kylo hunt bunny!” He declares before disappearing in a flash.

  The clearing falls silent, save for the buzz of carrion flies and the slow drip of blood onto the bone-dry earth. I wipe my blade on the bandit leader's shirt before sheathing it, letting the moment drag on.

  The wind whispers through the trees, brushing aside dust and leaves as I walk over to the still-shivering boy. Now that Kylo is gone, a new glimmer has flickered alive in his eyes. I don’t think he will betray his remaining friends. He may even try to confront me if given a chance. But he shouldn’t feel threatened about what I want to ask him.

  “Do you know the way toward Thousand Lake City?” I ask, looking at him to judge his reaction.

  “What?” He blinks as if having expected a different question or maybe trying to find out if this is a trap to find out if he is lying. “Sure, it’s about a moon of travel time toward where the sun sets, more or less.”

  I hit my forehead with my empty palm and let out a string of half-formed curses and growls. The boy flinches back and tries to cover himself. Raw, simmering frustration is clawing its way up my throat. It’s in the direction we came from. We must have wandered past without realizing it. “Shit!” The boy looks at me as if I am crazy. “Okay, you can go.”

  “What? That is all?”

  “Yeah,” I answer. “Go before I change my mind.”

  He stands up in a blur and puts some distance between us. A few steps later, he looks over his shoulder as if checking if I lied. Then, he starts to jog toward the plain.

  I turn my invisibility on and follow him in silence, gaining speed until I’m just behind him. I draw my sword just long enough to chop his head off. Did he seriously believe I would let someone who practices something so foul live?

  I snort, walking back to wait for Kylo’s return. The clearing has grown silent once more, save for the wind and the quiet hiss of my sword sliding back into its sheath. I look at the bodies and sigh.

  I could have let some of them live. I’m strong enough now that they wouldn’t have represented a threat to me alone. But I don’t know how many more bandits are out there and if they would choose to tell their friends where we went and chase us. I’ve had enough people chasing me for a lifetime. That they recognized my runes for something different than techniques is troublesome, too. Thanks to that stupid party where Master Wen presented me to the noble society, everybody knows me as a rune user. I won’t be able to create a different persona if I don't disguise their use and cover the visible ones under my clothes.

  I sigh.

  At least I have time to let the ones on my hands fade before we reach that stupid city.

  Now, how do I explain to the cat that we can’t risk to light another fire to cook his bunnies as long as there are more bandits out there?