1

Izumi woke up stiff as cardboard and cold. She discovered to her surprise it was already early morning and she had slept the whole night under the kitchen table. It was not the most comfortable of beds, though there was a carpet. More surprised she was to find Iris still asleep beside her, using the woman’s arm for a pillow. As heartwarming as the scene was, by itself, Izumi’s whole arm from the shoulder down was numb and bloodless as a result.

Carefully freeing her limb, she endured the maddening tingling and stinging that followed, until the arm started to feel like an arm again. As her strength gradually returned, Izumi moved the chairs aside, picked up the girl from the floor, and carried her over to the living room bench, and laid her there with a proper pillow under her head, and a blanket to cover her shivering form. Whether she had woken up or not, Iris made no sound, but kept her eyes closed and gladly returned to sleep.

It couldn’t have been later than six o’clock in the morning, seven at most, but Izumi didn’t feel sleepy anymore. She went outside. The morning was brighter than yesterday, but a steady, airy drizzle continued. Ashen clouds drew over the sea and the land in a seamless, unhurriedly sliding coverage, promising no notable improvement to the weather.

Izumi went to the well, pulled up a bucketful of ice cold water and washed her face, as pointless as the act seemed in the rain. Refreshed, she invoked the Rune of Restoration and, feeling more alive again, returned indoors with an armful of firewood for the stove. After a change of clothes, she made herself a cup of coffee and sat in the kitchen, listening to the sound of rain, thinking about nothing in particular. It was the kind of a sombre, heavy day that allowed no introspection. She let Iris sleep until about eight o’clock, before waking the girl for breakfast, and the day resumed from thereon like any other, for a time.

A change to the usual routine arrived in the afternoon.

Just as Izumi was thinking about getting started with the lunch preparations—she had the intention to make stew today—there carried frantic banging from the front door. Izumi went to open and found their neighbor, Millie, on the porch with her two children, drenched and distraught. The children stood stiff with fear, crying, and Millie cried as well, her face pale as a sheet and bloodshot eyes rounded with apparent terror.

“Lady Izumi…!” The woman found her voice and shrieked as soon as she saw Izumi, but that was all she managed before her voice failed her, and she broke into helpless sobbing.

“Eh? What’s wrong?” Izumi asked, but Millie could only shake her head, opening and closing her mouth in shock, holding the children close. Seeing as they weren’t in the state for words right now, Izumi ended up ushering them in.

The summoned champion was quite unaccustomed to dealing with frenzied people, but she had Iris get the unexpected guests towels to dry off with, and brewed them a pot of tea to help them warm up. She asked nothing but waited for the family to calm down and muster enough of their strength and composure to speak of their own initiative.

The children kept on crying without pause, but Iris proved unexpectedly apt in this crisis. She kept calm and took the young ones to the living room with their tea cups and kept them company, allowing Izumi to get an explanation out of Millie in private. It took a good while before the fisherman’s wife could organize her scattered thoughts to the point of sharing them in sensible terms, but a sample of rum in her tea brought some color to her face.

Getting warmer, Millie eventually got her tongue back and made a most valiant effort at describing her strange circumstances.

“It’s terrible Lady Izumi!” she started. For some reason, she had adopted the idea that Izumi was some manner of a noble, and this impression persisted in her head through all assurances of equality. “A terrible thing has happened!”

“Take it easy,” Izumi told her, “just tell me everything from the beginning.”

“Earlier this very day,” Millie did as instructed, in between rash breaths, still teetering on the verge of emotional collapse. “The winds had died down and the waves were calmer, so Thur—he said he would go fish at the bay. There’s always trout to be had when it rains! Big ones, barrels of them! But something didn’t sit right with me. I told him it was a bad idea…! I had a bad feeling, I knew it in my bones! He shouldn’t have gone out! I repeatedly told him not to go! But he insisted! Said he would have enough fish to sell. Buy us—buy the little one a new cradle! Oh, that lovable fool! Why did he have to go…!”

Millie began to sob again, interrupting her tale. Izumi offered the woman a handkerchief, which the latter used to blow her nose, and soon hurriedly continued.

“I went with him to the shore, to see him off. Little Jannes was with us. He wanted to go with papa, but I told him no, we could only go as far as the shore! Since it’s dangerous at sea! Oh! Had only we stayed at home, all three of us! I said I had a bad feeling about it, had only I listened to my heart, maybe none of this would've happened! But how should I have known!? Such a thing…!”

“Hey, you’re safe now,” Izumi said to Millie. “Nothing’s going to hurt you here. Your husband and Jannes—where are they now?”

“They’re...They’re…!” Millie stammered, struggling to put it into words. “They’re gone!”

Izumi frowned at her explanation. “Could I ask you to be a little more precise?”

“There came a creature!” the woman answered, violently shuddering. “A terrible monster! I’d never seen the likes of it in my life! It was all black and hairy as a bear! But it had no head! It had terrible claws! We were close to the beach when it lunged at us, all out of nowhere! It caught poor Jannes, tore him from my hands, tossing and clawing him, making hideous growling! Oh! I can’t bear to think about it! I nearly went mad out of fright right then and there! But my husband—he was so brave! He tried to save Jannes—caught the beast, tried to hold it back! He told me, ‘run, Millie’! He shouted at me to run! Run! And I ran! Ran for dear life, straight back home! But the bear—I don’t know what it was—it was so strong, he couldn’t have held it for long! Poor Thur, he never came back! Oh, why, dear Lords…! Why did this have to happen to us…!?”

“—?”

It never occurred to Izumi to doubt Millie’s description of the events. A black, bear-like thing without a head; had she not seen the exact like caged in Loyd’s freak circus only a few weeks back? Had the monstrosity run away on its own, freed by an accident related to the storm? Or had it been set loose on purpose, to terrorize the cape where Izumi had her house? No, the timing was much too good for it to be a mere coincidence.

“I couldn’t stay at home!” Millie went on, ignorant of the woman’s thoughts. “So I took Liss and Eddie and we ran straight here! I didn’t know what else to do! Where else could we have gone! I’m so sorry to trouble you like this, Lady Izumi, I simply saw no other way...”

“No, you did the right thing, Millie,” Izumi told her, taking the woman’s hand. “Thank you for telling me. You had relatives in the town, yes? Do I remember right?”

“Why, yes, my father-in-law, Mattis, he lives there with his family, and his sister, and her family, and his cousin’s family too, and their children—”

“—Good,” Izumi interrupted her with a squeeze. “I want you to listen to me now. As soon as you’re ready, take my horse and the cart, and ride to Mattis’s place. Tell them what happened. Stay in the town and don’t come back, until I come and tell you it’s safe. Do you understand? Do you think you could do that?”

“Y-yes? I believe so.” Millie nodded. “B-but, what are you going to do...? Will you not come with us? You and the young one? That thing might follow us here! It could be here at any moment! It’s not safe to stay!”

“I…” Izumi glanced at Iris in the living room. “I’ll think up something.”

2

As soon as Millie and the children had calmed down and were ready to go, Izumi got Masamune ready with the cart. For a moment, she deliberated sending Iris with them, but Mescala was Loyd’s territory, and it seemed no different from sending a lamb to the wolves. Perhaps this was precisely the villains’ aim all along.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Iris told her. “And I’m not going with them.”

“No matter what?” Izumi asked her.

“No matter what.” The determination in Iris’s eyes and tone made it clear the topic was not up for debate.

“Well, that’s that then,” Izumi gave in and sent off the visitors by themselves.

She returned back to the house with Iris, but only to retrieve her coat.

“You have the key, right?” she asked the girl.

“Wait. What are you doing?” Iris froze and asked, following Izumi’s preparations with alarm and open disbelief.

“This is my fault,” Izumi answered, fitting her arms in the sleeves. “My responsibility. I have to take care of it.”

“Are you mad?” Iris exclaimed. “That thing’s going to kill you! We should stay inside and wait until it goes away!”

“And how many more of our neighbors will be bear food before it ‘goes away’? Right when I was starting to have a network. My own monkey sphere. My experiment on middle class living will be ruined.”

“Who cares about them?” Iris protested. “Why would you kill yourself for a bunch of people you barely know by name!?”

“It’s not just for them,” Izumi told her, briefly pausing to ruffle the girl’s hair. “See, having a man-eating monster on our Elm Street makes grocery-shopping even more a challenge than it already is. So I’m just doing myself a big favor, really.”

“That’s not funny!” the girl told her. “Who the fuck do I have left if you die?”

The sheer dismay and helplessness in the girl’s rounded, blue eyes made Izumi waver.

“C’mere,” she said, pulling Iris into a hug.

“Don’t do this to me!” the girl feebly resisted.

“I’m not going to die,” Izumi assured, caressing Iris's curls. “You’ve seen it. I’m stronger than I look, okay? It’ll be fine. I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t go!”

“I’m sorry, I really am. But I have to. I can’t just sit here and live on in peace, when Millie’s happiness was stolen from her—because of what I’ve done. Because I punched the wrong people. I can’t live with that. Not when I have the means to do something about it.”

“You can!” the girl yelled. “Just close your eyes and forget about it!”

Nevertheless, forcibly parting from Iris, Izumi turned to the entryway.

“Keep the door locked,” she advised. “Eyes on the road. If you see anyone who's not me coming, you run. Go to Baler’s next door. You’ll be safe there until I get back.”

“If you come back!” Iris interjected.

“I will, I promise,” Izumi said and gripped the door handle.

“Izumi!” Iris’s voice stopped her. “If you leave now, I will never forgive you!”

For a moment, Izumi hesitated.

For only a moment.

“...I may be able to live with that,” she said.

And then she was out.

3

Buying a second horse might have been a good idea. Izumi thought so as she made her way to Millie’s cabin along the bumpy footpath, some nine hundred yards south-west from her house. In her right hand she gripped the axe she had picked up from the wood shed. One wouldn’t kill daemons with it, perhaps, but it ought to work against a more conventional monster. The showering continued unabated and the sea in the distance wallowed restless, but the visibility was good enough. The noise of the waves and the wind hid more subtle sounds a little too well for comfort, but Izumi had confidence in her reflexes.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

In about ten minutes, she came to the cabin where Millie and her family lived. It was smaller than Izumi’s own cottage, with only one floor. It was also in a distinctly worse shape, dark and weather-beaten, even though it housed a family of five. Old nets and wire fish traps hung on the wall about the doorway, guarded by a flimsy, skewed canopy, leaving no doubt that this was a fisherman’s dwelling.

Izumi checked the windows and knocked on the door. The door was unlocked, but it became soon clear there was no one inside. Even if Millie’s husband had survived the encounter with the beast, he hadn’t come back to the house, which didn’t speak well for his chances.

Departing from the cabin, Izumi continued the narrow trail downhill to the shore about two hundred yards away. The path wormed down the grassy, uneven slope, turning more barren near the coastline. There, in a little recess between two sandy ridges lay the corpse of Thurdan, Millie’s husband. He had been quite courageous to take on the creature in defense of his son, but also regrettably foolish. Deep wounds split his neck. His flank was torn open, dark entrails spread onto the sand, and his broken head was bruised purple and bloodied by the foe’s vicious paws.

Pushing the horror and revulsion out of her mind, entering the detached “player mode” she hadn’t employed in a long time, Izumi confirmed the scene secure, and then crouched to examine Thurdan’s wounds closer.

“Alright. Five aligned claws, about three inches each,” she observed. “Hooked end, leaves a nasty wound. The physique is closer to a wolverine than a bear. No question about it; it’s the same thing I saw before. Relies exclusively on its forearms, doesn’t use the hind legs. Fights like an ape, packs a mean punch. But no obvious bite wounds. It doesn’t seem to have a head, but it has to have a mouth somewhere under the fur, or it wouldn’t live. I don't see Jannes, the monster must've taken him with it. Because he was the lighter one, easier to carry. It means to take its time feeding, I suppose. I should find it by following the tracks. Catch it by surprise while it's busy with the meal. That should do the trick.”

There were clear lines and blood smears indicating the path the creature had taken, while dragging the corpse of the boy with it. But a rushed pursuit was not without risks. Izumi climbed up to the nearby hillock and looked around, but the coast was uneven, with numerous little cracks, crags, and grassy mounds, which could hide a man-sized target easily enough. If it could detect Izumi before she could find it, her quest might find a pitiful end in an ambush. Without checkpoints or quicksaving, one mistake meant losing it all. She had to play it safe.

“No choice, is there?” Izumi grumbled aloud and sat down cross-legged on the hill. “Time to work for you upkeep, Tinkerbell. Ocili, Statha!”

There were very few things Izumi knew more unpleasant than using Statha. The sensation was quite alike having one’s soul yanked out of her body, if such a thing were possible, the consciousness becoming entirely dislodged from the material. Control over the five cardinal senses was gone and Izumi’s whole body was turned into a signal receiver, taking in information from the surroundings without any way to direct or limit the volume.

The seawaves flooded into her, deep, heavy, and loud. The wind blew through her, sharp, damp, and salty. The rain drops became like spears, innumerable needles, liquid while also hard, fine as razor blades. Every strand of grass, every rock, every grain of sand, she could perceive them all, in every direction, and all the other things among them. A rat scurrying here, a beetle running there, Izumi had no choice but to look at it, hear it, feel it. Closing her eyes or ears was not an option. For the duration of the spell, her entire existence melted away, overwhelmed, and blended to become one with the landscape. And like an astronaut cast into outer space, every time she feared she wouldn’t make it back to her shuttle again.

Fortunately, the torturous experience didn’t last for long.

Reality shortly returned within its usual boundaries and Izumi felt the constraints of her body, unbearably heavy and crass after the weightless experience. She suppressed the urge to vomit rising from the pit of her empty stomach and focused on examining the fading mental remains of what she had observed.

And she found her quarry. It was further away than she had thought. Much further. Less than an hour had passed since the attack, but the creature was already almost a mile away. It had abandoned Jannes somewhere and raced west along the shoreline, at full speed, as though driven by some terrible fright, an inexplicable innate compulsion, or madness.

She couldn’t let it get away.

Izumi gripped her axe, got up, and chased after the creature. The thing was clumsy to move in the uneven terrain with its disproportionate limbs. She was confident she could catch up with it on foot. Casting no runes to keep her mind sharp and unburdened, she ran depending only on her own muscles. She kept her pace steady, making sure she had enough air. Getting further away from the house and Iris made her uneasy, but she restrained the anxiety welling up within her and kept on going. The sooner she wrapped up this unwanted side quest, the faster she could get back home and everything would go back to normal again.

What happened was tragic, but life would go on. It always did.

In about fifteen minutes, Izumi found the remains of Jannes where the monster had discarded the boy. The stomach was torn wide open, the bowel cavity emptied, the mushed contents spread around. It was not a pleasant view. The beast hadn’t eaten much, it really appeared to be only on a berserk rampage, determined to kill anyone it could find. Which meant it likely wouldn’t stop here either. Izumi thought she would have to get someone from the town to clean up the corpses afterwards. Leaving it to Millie and her family would’ve been too terrible.

Pushing the aftermath in the background, Izumi ran on.

There were a couple of houses along the way, far removed from one another. One cabin was vacant, the other one wasn’t, with candle light visible through the misty windows. Izumi didn’t know who lived there. She briefly thought about going to warn them, but then decided against it. It would only cost her time, and they weren’t in any immediate danger, anyway. Without stopping, she kept running, heading for the end of the cape. In another ten minutes, she reached the spot where she had perceived the creature last. It was no longer anywhere in view, but looking closely at the sandy ground, she soon located its tracks. Flat palms, long toes, arranged like monkey’s paws, with claws digging deep into the sand.

To her grievance, Izumi observed that the rain was getting gradually heavier.

There were darker clouds now coming over from the sea. Visibility was getting worse. Her body was losing heat faster than she could generate it, which was going to slow her reactions. The conditions were starting to stack against her. Maybe it was better to give up on the hunt and return home? But the pursuit wasn't without an end. After reaching the far tip of the cape, the monster would have no choice but to double back and return to harass the houses. Those shaky doors and thin windows wouldn’t hold it back for a second.

Regardless of the risks, it had to be stopped now and not tomorrow.

Growing more cautious, Izumi slowed her pace and made her way towards the end of the land. Rain soon spoiled the tracks and she lost them. Statha couldn’t be used more than once per day either, due to the toll it took on the frail Divine. The hunt had boiled down to educated guesses and dumb luck.

“This is totally not good,” Izumi commented aloud, gazing ahead, seeing the distant, sharp rocks piled in the cape end drawn blurred against the waves, a shadow darker than the foamy sea.

“I can sense its presence,” Yubilea reported, appearing hovering in the air next to her.

“You can?” Izumi asked, surprised.

“Yes. It’s not a natural monster, it seems, but something cursed. Wherever it goes, there’s a trail of foul miasma oozing out of it. I can perceive this, albeit only faintly. It’s coming around along the limits of the land. If you head over to the opposing shore from here, it’ll fall straight back to you. I think.”

“You think…?” Izumi repeated, voicing her skepticism.

“I’m not a hunter or anything savage like that!” Yubilea made non-committing answer. “My senses are your senses. I can’t perceive any better than the instrument allows.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

In the absence of better ideas, Izumi followed Yubilea’s suggestion, changed direction, and crossed over the narrowing cape to block the monster’s passage. After some half a mile of running, she saw spread before her the crude north side shore. It was steeper and more treacherous than the mild southern beaches. There was no smooth sand there, but only naked, rough-edged rocks, which formed a descending, uneven stairway into the restlessly shifting sea. It was not the optimal battlefield by any means, but by keeping close to the sea, Izumi could avoid having the creature catch her by surprise, seeing as it appeared to avoid the water. Even if it knew how to swim, it couldn’t do so much faster than a sloth would, not with those paws.

“Is it still ahead of us?” Izumi asked.

“Yes. It’s coming this way,” Yubilea replied. “It might’ve smelled you.”

“Girls don't smell.”

“What are you talking about? Even without a nose, I can—”

“—Yep. Time to focus. Focus.”

There was no stable footing to be found on the wet rocks, but Izumi looked up a suitably secure spot, knelt and readied her axe, waiting. There was a little notch in the shoreline behind her, some fourteen feet wide, quick to swim across. If push came to shove, she could use it to take distance, even if going for a dive in this weather was not a very appealing idea.

“Why are you always doing such reckless things, anyway?” Yubilea asked the woman, hovering under the rain, her expression nervous. “I’ll never understand what goes through your head!”

“Somebody has to?” Izumi replied.

“Didn’t you see those corpses? This could actually be dangerous, you know?”

“I know.”

“And if you die, I’ll die along with you!”

“I know.”

“You should worry more about my well-being! A lame human like you!”

“I know.”

“Oh, of all the people I had to end up with…”

“Are you scared, Yui-chan?” Izumi asked.

“I’m not scared!” the spirit denied. “But this isn’t—this isn’t the way I wanted to go!”

“Well, I can say the same. Now a bit of silence, please.”

“Ooh…”

The spirit vanished. The rain was growing harder still, the droplets turning larger. With the declining visibility, Izumi tried to invoke the Rune of Perception to aid her vision, but it helped little. The sharply increased contrast of light and shadow and the incessant motion of the rainfall got hard on her eyes, and she had to dispel the rune. Depending less on her sight and focusing on the other senses instead, she continued to wait in silence.

Before anything else, she sensed the approaching murderous madness, the restless animosity. Emerging from the twilight, it filled the gaps between the raindrops, flowing thick and heavy like gas. Then, on the ice cold skin of her face, she thought to feel the intense, feverish heat radiating from the body of the beast, which had run for miles around the cape, driven by some unknown compulsion, unable to find a moment’s rest.

Izumi’s instincts pleaded her to flee from the danger, but she ignored that primitive urge, kept low and waited, knowing the beast wouldn’t pass her scent. True enough, in another moment, a shadow darker than the others came rushing over the glistening rocks some thirty feet ahead.

“Sifl!” Izumi exclaimed and sprung up. She went leaping from rock to rock, charging straight at the headless, furred abomination. Sensing her approach, it stopped and stood up on its hindlegs, spreading its long arms wide apart, as though to embrace a dear friend. But the black claws looked anything but benevolent, and Izumi didn’t hesitate.

Spinning the axe in her grip like a slingshot to build momentum, she hacked down at the top of the torso. Even without an obvious head, the creature had to have something like a brain, buried somewhere in the flat main body, and reaching either that, or the heart, had to be the surest way to end it. The heavy axehead sank into the beast’s body with a crunch, cleaving bone, splitting flesh. But the beastly body was sturdier than Izumi had imagined. Though the axe head sank in for nearly its full length, the handle stopped at the collar bone. It didn’t seem she had reached any critical organs.

The creature retaliated immediately, swinging its powerful arms. It was fast. The axe stuck in its body, Izumi had no chance to evade without abandoning her weapon, and if she did, it was going to be difficult to retrieve it. The clawed palm slammed into her left side with the force of an enraged gorilla, knocking her back. Her ribcage gave in, multiple bones were shattered by the impact. The shock reached part of the lung, driving up blood and fluid in her mouth. The barbed claws tore through cloth, ripping deep through skin. Holding onto the axe, Izumi was able to extract the weapon with the throwback effect, but the burning agony spreading throughout the left side prevented her from turning back and striking again. Even just drawing breath was too much asked.

The enemy, on the other hand, seemed little hindered by the grievous wound. Making muffled groans and yiffs like a weird dog, the beast fell upon her, swinging at the woman in berserk fury. Unable to move her arms to fend it back, she had only one way out. Taking advantage of her accelerated speed, Izumi nudged right for a feint, but leapt then back instead, retreating to a taller rock, practically blind from the pain, relying only on her memory of the terrain. As the monster immediately followed, she jumped again and cast herself into the sea. She plunged back-first into the chilling cradle of the sea, the pressure of it bending the broken ribs, sea water entering the wounds. She fell limp and absorbed the pain that seared her mind pure white, veering on the brink of unconsciousness. The water was deeper than she had thought, her hands and feet met no ground. But it was also warmer and felt almost like an indoor bath compared to the air above. She let the uplift carry her, unsure of which way was which, seeing nothing but black and blurred streaks of blue. Gradually, the adrenaline kicked in and her consciousness slightly cleared. Izumi began to worm her way back to the surface, fighting the pain and the waves that tried to wash her to the shore and the enemy, clinging to the axe like her life depended on it. And as soon as she got her face above the water, she grunted the name of the restorative rune.

“Ohrm!”

The spell was past its maximum potency for the day but still worked with praiseworthy effectiveness, and mana flooded her injured form. As if time itself were rewound, the broken bones slowly realigned and reconnected—an agony of its own—the cuts closed, the bruising cleared. As the pain grew lesser, Izumi improved her position in the water, and turned her attention back to her foe.

The beast wouldn’t dive after her, thankfully. As if afraid of the waves, it paced back and forth on the rocks near the water’s limit, growling and yelping in evident frustration. Being trapped between the berserk abomination and the sea was not an ideal place to be, but Izumi was not without options. She had picked the location well. The monster roamed about the west side of the little bight. Sufficiently recovered, Izumi invoked Gram and swam to the east side. The beast chased her without delay, but having to circle around the water stalled it. Climbing up on the coarse bank, with some time to spare, Izumi looked for loose rocks, picked whatever she could get her hands on, and started to bombard the incoming foe with them. Without a pause, she kept chucking grenades between a grapefruit and a melon in size, as hard as she could, and while some missed, a few found their mark too. Being hit by such a hail, not even that sinewy creature could escape unharmed. Taking a few bad hits, it fell on the rocks, and wasn’t as quick to get up anymore. Izumi seized her chance. She ran over, stepped on the creature’s arm to pin it down, and swung the axe. A storm of disgust, pity, and dread in her, she struck down again and again, chopping at the exposed chest of the helpless beast, where she assumed the heart to be hidden.

In a while, the bloodied, broken abomination ceased to move and fell limp, broken and dead. Cautiously catching her breath, Izumi stepped back, holding the axe still ready, and saw a most extraordinary scene unfold before her eyes. The black fur began to pull in. The bestial body started to change shape, grow, the curse on it worn off upon death. In a while, before the woman’s feet lay no bear-like monstrosity, but a human male of foreign looks, black locks of hair and short beard. What was left of him looked handsome enough to have been a noble in some remote land, yet he had met his end on this barren shore in the middle of nowhere, a cursed freak without a name, a terror to fellow men.

Tired, Izumi canceled her runes and knelt by the corpse, parted the head with her axe, just to make sure, and waited to see if it would begin to regenerate. There was no sign of the dead man coming back to life, or growing fur again, fortunately. Quite that hideous was not the curse at work. Suppose she could’ve incinerated the corpse too, but she felt she owed better to this man she had killed, only for the evil of another. She buried the head in the beach, and wrestled the rest of the corpse into the sea, to let it be washed away by the waves.

“Requiescat in pace, buddy.”

She rinsed the blood off her axe and began the hike back home, feeling not one bit triumphant or accomplished, despite another narrow survival.

Then again, when had she ever?