A golem army marched a hundred abreast along a forest path only wide enough for five. This led to a large amount of damage to the forest, but that was no concern; golems didn't need forests. The company leader spotted something further along the road and held up a fist. A hundred thousand golems marching behind him stopped as one, in a seriously impressive feat of coordination.

In front of the army a tree blocked off the road, but that was not what the designated captain had been looking at. After all, the army had been marching straight through quite a large portion of the forest already. One more tree would hardly bother them. No, what it was looking at was the blood spatter and mashed up remains that decorated the area. All captains had been required to inspect the site of the Creature's defeat of the Rudellian army, to memorise the signs of the Creature's presence, and this golem was in no doubt about what it was looking at.

Erasing the rest of existence was a laudable goal, but it relied on the rest of existence not having the ability to fight back. The Creature did have that ability, and the mayor had given strict instructions not to engage it under any circumstances. The captain gave its orders, and the army spread out, forming a perimeter around this path. Scouts were dispatched to follow the Creature's trail, and messengers sent back to Glimmerhome to report the find. They were determined not to make the mistake of antagonising the one being that could end their quest to ensure the safety of Glimmerhome.

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As Keri watched Jill arguing with the town guard, she reflected on her terrible mistake. It had taken a couple of days to reach Slightly-Newer-Than-Evennewerport-Port, given how unused most of the party were to walking. That had meant plenty of time for her mind to recover and recall a few more details about how she had ended up in the aforementioned party. She hadn't been sold, she'd been rescued, and even given a bag of gold greater than the worth of her caravan! And yet there she had been, prancing around in some sort of obscene cat-maid outfit, and enjoying it. She'd changed back to her usual dress after the first night, but the whole experience had left an unscratchable itch at the back of her mind.

What was she supposed to do now? She had the cash on hand to resume her old living as a travelling merchant, but her few hours of insanity had left her rather ambivalent about the whole idea. The life of a travelling merchant was stressful; worries about bandits, changes in market prices, theft. She'd liked forgetting all of her cares and worries for a while. Why couldn't she stay like that? She was tempted to sell herself to Jill for real, but how would she even start that conversation? 'Hi. I want to be your slave. Will you have me?' There's no way that would end well. She sighed again, for the millionth time that hour, and wondered why the guards were taking so long. For that matter, there were a lot of people hanging around outside the city. Was it some sort of festival? There were also rather more soldiers than normal lining the walls. She'd never seen the city like this before...

"Hey Keri. What's wrong? You look sad, and friends shouldn't be sad."

Keri jumped. She'd been so busy inspecting the crowds that she hadn't even noticed Anya walking up. The other bandit victims were doing their best to keep their distance from Anya, knowing full well what she was capable of, which made Keri feel sorry for the girl. She'd spent enough time around her by now to know that even though she could kill the whole lot of them with a thought, that didn't mean that she would. Maybe by accident, but certainly not on purpose. "Don't worry, nothing's wrong."

"Then why all the sighing? That's something you humans do when sad, or worried about something, isn't it?"

'You humans'? What was that supposed to mean? "I'm just feeling a bit melancholic. Nothing I can put into words, sorry."

"Well, yes. Your mouth words are ridiculously limited. It's so much easier to just read stuff from your brain directly. Why don't we try?"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Keri noticed the others edging even further away from the pair of them. Darn it, she thought, Anya is going to do a Thing again, isn't she? And idiot that I am, I'm going to let her. This is going to be like that time they needed to camp in the forest and there wasn't enough space between the trees to fit the house, so Anya had taken out a plot of land to put the house on first, and put it down between the trees as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Keri had needed to close all the curtains for that rest stop, because looking out of the windows had hurt. Keri took a deep breath, and hoped she wasn't about to make another terrible mistake. "Okay, fine. If you want to talk to me telepathically or something, go for it."

It was indeed another terrible mistake.

Anya considered another way in which humans were weird. They enjoyed having things stuffed into most of their holes, but not into all of them. Why the difference? What was special about the nose? She had to hold Keri still as she sent in her tendrils, because with all of the wiggling she was worried Keri might damage something. Fortunately, she quietened down after a while, and Anya was able to find what she was looking for. "Ah, I see. Well, that's easy enough to solve."

Anya withdrew her brain probes, and dragged the mildly stunned and majorly traumatised Keri over to Jill, who was trying to explain to the guard for the hundredth time that no, they weren't refugees from the war, and were just sightseers who happened to take out a pack of bandits and rescue a bunch of women on their way over. And besides, what war? Every town they'd been through on the way had been just fine, thank you very much.

"Hey Jill, Keri's getting all depressed because she thought you'd bought her, and then it turned out you hadn't, and now she doesn't have an excuse to dress up as a cat-maid and she was hoping you'd enslave her."

Yes, it had indeed been a terrible mistake. Keri and the guard each froze up, human instincts not having evolved to deal with something like Anya, and needing time to work out an appropriate response.

"You did your brain reading thing again, didn't you?" Jill asked, flicking Anya on the forehead. "We've already been over this. People think lots of things, not always deliberately, and they don't want every thought spoken out loud."

The guard managed to reboot ahead of Keri, latching onto a point of familiarity that he'd grasped as it flowed by. "Slavery is illegal, you know."

"Just ignore her," Jill muttered in resignation. "She's nice enough, but was at the back of the queue when common sense was being handed out. Or possibly in a different queue. Or a different universe."

Keri, beet red and well aware of the number of spectators who had overheard that little exchange, decided it was time to get out of there. She pulled her merchant's guild badge from a pocket. "Here's my ID. I swear that she is telling the truth. These two really did rescue us from bandits, and I personally watched as they slaughtered half a dozen of them. Well, watched Anya, actually. Jill just ignored them all, like they weren't even worth her time."

That wasn't quite how Jill remembered it; perhaps there were still some lingering misunderstandings there that needed clearing up. But if it worked to get them into the city, then she wouldn't go out of the way to offer corrections right now.

"Look, even if I believed your story, which I don't, you still wouldn't be allowed in. The city is closed! If you were bringing food or supplies, things might be different, but a merchant's guild badge with no wares means nothing. We can't eat your gold."

Jill considered the amount of food Anya was carrying. Or had access to; 'carrying' was probably the wrong word for whatever it was she did. In any case, she had more than would fit in any cart. And in any case, even if she didn't, if Anya wanted to enter the city then Anya would damn well enter the city. But at this point she'd given up caring. "Right, that's enough. All I wanted was to visit the seaside, and we don't need to go through the city for that. Let's just follow the coast for a bit and find some fishing village that has an inn."

Jill stormed off, Anya following mellowly behind her. Keri, after a brief period of fluster, hurried after them. The other girls, who were residents of Slightly-Newer-Than-Evennewerport-Port, remained behind, pleading their cases and waving their gold. This was a deadly mistake. Keri may have made a couple of terrible mistakes, but at least they hadn't been fatal.

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The golem scout watched the Creature and her Friend leave without entering the city, along with one further human on which it had no information, and was deemed unimportant. It waited for them to safely crest the horizon, then signalled the army to advance.

A hundred thousand golems surrounded the city. It never stood a chance. And if only one guard had happened to believe the tale of a rag-tag group of women, the outcome may have been very different.