My plan was simple. Maybe too simple.

Soon after dawn, the guards would realize that I’d escaped the cell. They’d guess that I’d bolt for safety, far from Ryetown, because that’s what I wanted to do. That’s what anyone with half a brain would want to do. Yet I couldn’t leave, not with Erdinand still behind bars.

Which meant that I needed to give the Sixers a reason to believe that I’d left town, even though I hadn’t. If they thought I was long gone, they wouldn’t endlessly search the city before I rescued Erd. There was probably a smarter way to pull that off that my current idea, but hey, I hadn’t lied about not having any levels in Planning. And to my dismay, Intelligence wasn’t even a stat.

I crept along the guardhouse to the far end, the one facing the cropland surrounding town. A wide dirt road followed the perimeter of the old ruined city, for wagons carrying crops or shepherds driving herds. Beyond that, the fields started, barely visible in the pre-dawn sky. More rye, endless rows of rye, mostly about shoulder height.

“Okay,” I thought. “This can work.”

Princess mumbled,

She shared a glow of amusement then drifted back to sleep.

I grumbled.

I cracked my neck then checked the width of the dirt road. I checked the neighboring buildings. I even checked the horizon, trying to pinpoint the brightest seep of light so I’d know where sun would rise and where the shadows would fall. Then I checked the stable attached to the guardhouse, which faced the fields. It had a set of high, planked doors, like a barn. I heard horses inside. I didn’t know much about horses, especially not these mutant horned horses, but Erdinand had taught me a few things. I knew the basics.

Kneeling to shove my fingers beneath the barn doors, I checked inside the stable with a smoky hand, and didn’t see a bunch of armed soldiers. I just saw a row of stalls, and walls of tools and tack. I checked the lock on the inside. Then I took my smoky hand back and waited a minute for my mana to tick up.

Then I wanted another minute for the courage to act.

And then, fuck it. I didn’t have a better plan, so I summoned a hatchet. And with a two-handed swing, I chopped at the door, aiming for the sliding wooden bolt that locked the stable from the inside. The cutting edge of my hathchet carved through the planking and then through the bolt so easily that I lost my balance and stumbled inside.

Which caused one door to swing open with a loud bang. I ignored the sound. I barely even jumped a foot in the air. Then I ran the length of the stable, opening stalls. The horses didn’t seem to give a shit at the sudden intrusion. One of them nickered at me, then a young infenti groom peered sleepily down from the hay loft that ran along one side of the barn.

“Wha?” she said.

“Go back to sleep,” I told her, pouring lamp oil on some scattered hay.

“You, you’re not supposed to ...”

“Actually, instead of sleeping you might wake up the other grooms.”

“Um, help,” she said softly. Then she shouted, “HELP! In the stables! Help!”

I pulled a sparkstick from my domain and was trying to raise a flame when another groom burst through a door behind the tack wall. A human, which surprised me, holding a pitchfork, which seemed like a cliche. I tracked him through my webtouch as he moved into position to stab me. Still, I ignored him until the hay caught fire, then I reached behind myself, grabbed a pitchfork tine, and domained the entire thing.

Which actually worked. Well, he was only level four, and he hadn’t been holding the pitchfork with any real conviction.

“Neat!” I said, before rising and turning to punch him in the head.

He dropped to his knees groaning as the groom in the loft scampered down a ladder.

I felt bad for the guy, but I needed them to think I was in a hurry, so I snarled, “Shit! I don’t have time for this!”

The guy shook his aching head as the other groom ran to the opposite wall. I grabbed a saddle, and the fire spread. The horses started to give a shit. They smelled smoke, and in a moment the barn was full of neighing and whining and stomping. Then the ones closest to the fire started to freak. I chose a horse at random and started to saddle her. Erdinand had been such a good teacher that I managed to almost buckle the first strap before the soldiers arrived.

Two infenti prowled through the same door that the human groom had. Level four. They immediately separated when then spotted me, working together wordlessly to flank me. I threw a hatchet at one and she barely swiped it from the air with her sword.

My attack stopped them from advancing so quickly. The fire crackled and the first groom, the young one from the loft, start shouting about flames, about buckets of sand, and my horse bolted outside with the saddle dangling from her side.

I threw my other hatchet at the soldiers--then I bolted, too.

I raced from the stables, following the horse across the wide dirt road toward toward the fields. The soldiers took off after me, and my hatchet reformed in my hand and I was about to throw it again when an urgent tug of webtouch told me to juke to the left.

I juked and an arrow flashed past, missing me by inches and digging into the ground. Shot by an archer on the roof of the guardhouse. Horses burst from the burning stables behind me. They whinnied in terror and galloped past me, crashing through the rye fields, eyes rolling in the rising light of dawn. Four more arrows sped at me, but those missed without me dodging, and I reached the edge of the crops before one of the pursuing infenti threw a spear.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

My hatchet flashed as I spun to face the soldiers and chopped the spear in half.

Behind them, two more soldiers burst from the guardhouse, and more archers moved into position in the rooftops above. The infenti with the sword slashed toward my side so I blocked with one hatchet then stepped closer and rammed her in the stomach with the spike of the other. She went down easier than I’d expected, half-gutted, and the guy who’d thrown his spear came at me with a short sword.

I threw both hatchets that time, the left a half-second after the first. I could sink the blade into an unmoving target with ease but I still sucked at factoring in the weapons’ rotation, so after he dodged the first, the second just whacked him in the shoulder with the haft.

The fact I’d thrown both my hatchets, and the feel of one hitting--the momentary uncertainty, not knowing if he’d been cut--broke his focus, so I hit him in the face with my palm. Which might not’ve been as hard as a baseball bat now, but wasn’t much softer.

He dropped and I threw myself sideways, twisting to avoid a barrage of arrows. Three scraped me but none penetrated, then webtouch reminded me about the next two soldiers approaching so I scrambled into the rye field.

I followed a path trampled by a panicked horse--and the new soldiers came after me. Which didn’t scare me. I’d taken care of the first two easily. The new ones were level four and six, and I was afraid of jinxing myself with overconfidence, but I didn’t think they’d pose a problem. Hell, I didn’t think they’d even slow me down.

After darting to the side between two tightly-planted rows, I crouched with my hatchets in my hands.

The soldiers paused when they entered the rye, unable to immediately spot me. One of them slowed enough that my thrown hatchet chunked into his chest blade-first. The other, the level six, spun toward me slicing his sword in a dizzying pattern--but every movement tugged on the web of my awareness, so I just blocked the flat of his blade with the side of my right forearm and chopped the guy through the neck with the hatchet in my left.

He fell dead and I didn’t care. I didn’t hesitate. Which surprised me, distantly, yet apparently my mind--maybe my shared mind, full of an arachnid’s predatory instincts--didn’t indulge in moral quandaries, at least not in the middle of a fight.

Instead, I crouched even lower beside him. I stole his beltpouch into my domain with a flick of attention, then crawled through the rye, moving parallel to the town instead of trying to get any distance away.

The archers on the roof called to each other, trying to spot me among the high crops, though the haze of smoke that issued thickly from the stables. Then another wave of soldiers rushed from the guardhouse. Nine or ten of them, including one who was level eight.

“Yah!” I yelled, as if to a horse. “Gee up!”

I didn’t know if the horses noticed, but the soldiers did. They veered toward the sound of my voice and I crawled faster through the rye, keeping an eye on the town buildings that faced the field while staying in close contact with the web of my awareness.

And as the soldiers prowled closer, I turned to smoke. I spread myself wide, to look like haze from the fire, and wafted through the rows of rye toward the wide dirt road that surrounded the buildings on the perimeter of the town.

Mana: 21/24

The soldiers fanned out as the archers called from the rooftops, scanning for shadows in the field, looking for a horse with a rider.

Mana: 17/24

Crossing the road took too long in my vaporous form. It was probably only ten paces wide, but I moved so damn slowly. I pushed for speed, I strained against the ... the air, the faint breeze and the fainter incline on the other side of the road. Without leverage, without a grip on the ground, without any weight, I couldn’t force myself to move faster.

Mana: 10/24

I finally wafted across the dirt road. At the top of incline, I drift toward a heap of stone maybe forty yards from the guardhouse. Vines with trumpet-like flowers, heavy gourds, and wide prickly leaves covered most of the stones. It was like a fantasy-land pumpkin patch. I seeped below the leaves, between the stalks and vines, pressing my smoky self into a low place where the stems thickened into roots.

With four mana left, I resolidified, lying flat on the ground beneath the cover of the wide leaves. I listened to the soldiers shouting and beating the field for me. The archers with their bird’s eye view of the road knew that I hadn’t returned to the city. They hadn’t seen anyone cross the road. So they’d search outward instead of inward, following the horse and then looking for my tracks.

I told Princess.

She sent me a drowsy interrogative.

To my surprise, she spoke:

she sleepily asked.

she said.

I started, but she’d already fallen back asleep.

So I just lay there under the leaves and listened to the soldiers while my mana slowly recovered. I didn’t think that the Sixers had even realized that I’d escaped from prison yet. Which was, I guess, the downside to boarding someone up in a cell. You couldn’t watch them. That was one reason I’d thrown my hatchets so visibly: so the soldiers here would know for certain that the guy who’d stolen a horse before vanishing into the rye fields was the same person as the imprisoned gemmed hatchetman.

Now I just needed to sneak away from the pumpkins and into the maze of city alleys and ruins. I didn’t want to rush, though. I wanted all my mana back. Well, though I’d settle for as much as returned before sunrise chased the shadows from the streets.

Except as I lay there, I started feeling a little shaky as I thought back to the fight. To killing those soldiers. Yet to my surprise, the shakiness passed in a few seconds. Because fuck them, they would’ve killed me without a second thought. My only lingering worry was that I found it easy to kill ollies and infentis because they weren’t human. Like that didn’t count as murder, because their deaths didn’t activate my taboo against killing.

Of course, a pumpkin patch probably wasn’t the best place to examine my ethical shortcomings. But also: fuck that. I had a really hard time imagining that I would’ve pulled my punches against human soldiers. Because I wouldn’t have. Life burned brighter in this new world. Life burned hotter. So hot that I felt as if I’d stumbled off the path of civilization.

I wasn’t afraid to fight, I wasn’t afraid to bleed.

I wasn’t afraid to kill.

I wasn’t even afraid to die--though I wanted to live. More than ever. Because life burned hotter in this world, and my pulse beat stronger in my veins. I felt more alive than I ever had and--

And I heard a pack of dogs barking.

Shit. Shit. Okay, enough thinking. Time to focus on surviving. Because those were hunting dogs, for sure, brought to search for me. They’d catch my scent in the barn, which hadn’t burned to the ground despite the conflagration of oiled straw. Then they’d follow my trail across the dirt road and into the field and--

Oh!

I almost laughed. They’d lose my trail in the rye. It would just disappear. The trackers would naturally figure that I’d pulled myself onto a mount. How else could my trail simply vanish? They’d focus on tracking the horses, scattered across the fields and into the woods. On the other hand, the hounds might know my scent even if they lost the track; if they passed by this pumpkin patch, would they alert? Hm. I didn’t know how sniffer-dogs worked. As far as I knew from movies, they needed to follow a trail, they couldn’t just identify a target by walking past them later.

On the other hand, magic existed. So I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Though the fact that some people did run away meant there were no infallible trackers. That was good news, at least.

Still, I switched my leather cobbler-bought shoes for my stolen militia boots just in case. They’d smell different, and leave soldier-looking footprints.

Then I checked for alarming twitches on my sensory web. I didn’t feel anything, so I turned briefly to smoke and reformed in the side-street closest to the vine-heaped pile of stones.

And after that, I walked away.