We’d been traveling for around three or four hours since our stop at the Hitch. The bitter chill of the night’s air had long since cut deep into my bones. Quite graciously, the sparrow had been ignoring the noisy chatter of my teeth as they clacked against each other beyond my control. He’d only offered me his hand once, to take over the reigns, around two hours back. But my hands were the only part of my body that still held any warmth so I had told him it was fine.

  Unfortunately, the tatters of clothes that I was wearing had been the best options that I had for this kind of weather. Inside my pack the only spare garments I owned were some extra underwear and socks. The blood flecked and battered tunic I was wearing had already been my spare. And my old cloak was so thrashed after Brigandstan that I’d simply opted to throw away what remained of it as we fled through that city’s main gate.

  As far as bottoms went, my overalls were it. And now they were about halfway toward being a strange looking pair of shorts. I’d been a fool to think I could hold out with such a spares selection of clothing. But the low prices on fabrics in the textile town of Bramblehelm were just so enticing, and it was usually one of our more frequent places to stop east of the capitol.

  I’d been staring up, into the abyss, beyond the dark canopy of trees and so brought my bored eyes back down again. The sleeping moon had barely breached the threshold of midnight and it would still be quite some time until we gave our beasts and the recent joiners some rest.

  It was now only the right side of Princess that was lit up under the red light of the flaming serpent skull. Ever since our caravan had left the Hitch, that light had been needed to be shared with our small handful of joiners. Three curselings, and one very nervous looking young man, were walking in a tight formation beneath the red glow. They kept just close enough to the prairie strider to feel safe while still giving her enough distance to not be in her way.

  The reptilian curseling, dressed in burlap, walked at the rear and on occasion would cast brief glances back at me from under the shadows of their hood. Clearly there was something going on there, but I genuinely had no idea what it could possibly be. They’d already acted more than once as an agent of fate so I needed to be weary about this assumed coincidence in picking them up at the Hitch. At least until I could figure out just what it was they wanted from me.

  One generally had to be fairly devious in order to mess with the Laws that Bind. And creating a one sided pact spell always came with consequences. No matter how benevolent a curseling might seem in a moment it was always important to remember that after a certain point something like curse retribution was of little concern to most of them. Generally it was the safest option to simply steer clear of them. But the safe option was seldom the course of action our company took.

  Ahead of the grey scaled one, who had begun to make me nervous, walked the only non-curse afflicted among the joiners. His hair was long and dirty blonde and looked fairly greasy. He wore a small pack, slung over one shoulder, that had a bedroll tied in place against it with some cord. He seemed twitchy and fidgety and particularly wary of the pair of curselings walking ahead of him.

  That pair had been hard to make out because of their cloaks. Much like those of a puppet apprentice, they wore cloaks that offered them full protection from any unwanted bodily exposure. Though the taller and more slim of the pair did wear his hood down.

  That person had a strange and bald, cylindrical scalp that nearly resembled fabric in texture. It bunched up over their brow in a ring of loose looking skin that ran all the way around their head. Their ears were nothing more than folds of skin melding into the brim of their scalp.

  I hadn’t gotten a good look at their face but all one needed was a quick glance to take in their pair of unsettling yellow eyes. Large, bulging and round, they looked like the sort one sees on a rot fly. I had been afflicted with more than one curse over my existence. And in all that time I just couldn’t understand what could lead anyone to want to dabble in placing them. Not when the outcome was always so horrible for the caster.

  Yet still, untold numbers of people felt hatred enough to go down that path. And then there were those who cared so little for themselves that they turned to placing curses for profit. The whole business made my head hurt.

  In an effort to ignore the grey scaled curseling I went back to trying to solve a problem I’d recently realized I was going to have. If I was going to race Charlie and win I needed to do something about bracing my broken body for the landings.

  I hadn’t thought about it in the heat of the moment because Everrnak’s threads were doing their job. But as soon as I put too much pressure on my injuries it would all be for nothing. Riding on the back of a land dragon as she leaped twenty-odd spits through the air would definitely mean heavy repercussions for me once we came back down. Only just doing that once would probably shatter my bones all over again.

  With the puppet master sleeping that would probably be it for me. A spectacularly stupid death that would be my great shame for lifetimes to come. Instead I’d been slowly working on adapting that brute adventurer’s mana acceleration into something I could handle using. Granted that was truly no small or simple thing for me to achieve.

  Even if I had become adept enough with manipulating my mana, enough to force it from the natural flow of my body and redirect it as I wished, it was no easy task to take a foreign sensation and make it feel as though it had always been. It hadn’t even been fifty years since the first time I had been able to partially copy another person’s unique magic successfully. And in all that time I’d only managed to achieve vague impressions of a few other so called ‘natural spells.’

  But physical fortification did at least feel somewhat obtainable.

  First I had tried flowing just a little of my mana around where the worst pains were in my side. I had the sensation of the mana strings to guide me which helped quite a bit. When I tried tilting my torso to the side it had still hurt immensely, but the tiniest sliver of pain had indeed been shaved away. Still, I could tell pretty quickly that fortifying my bones really wasn’t going to be enough.

  With how badly bruised I was I could only imagine that my organs had some heavy bruising on the inside of my body as well. I’d need to account for that and at least the majority of my damaged blood vessels and tissue. It was a whole lot to think about. But I still had close to half the night to figure all of that out.

  I walked more of my mana up and down the corridors of pain in my body, letting it branch off and explore each fork in the hallways and the countless little rooms lining the walls. Taking the time to build a mental map of my insides and occasionally letting my mana wander of to explore the uninjured passages of my body.

  Those areas were harder to map without pain and foreign mana to guide the exploration.

  Another few minutes down the road and suddenly I could feel it.

  I threw my hand into a small pocket on the side of my pack and quickly pulled out a slim metal whistle. Something hungry had been stalking us through the trees. Multiple somethings, I realized, as more of them breached my zone of awareness. Six. Seven. Nine. Twelve. Shit.

  I blew into the whistle. One short note, a pause, three short, pause, one long.

  Northern approach. Multiple hostiles. Threat level: high.

  The wagons all jolted to a stop right as a malicious cackling filled the air. The deranged laughter turned into the howling shrieks of delight that those horrible creatures were named for. We had become the targets of a heard of shrieking deer. And it was very likely that they were still ferociously hungry after another long winter.

  A lot of things happened then, all at once.

  The sparrow flew into action to uncover the rear of our wagon. His serpent skull flew across Princess to light up our northern flank. Garris and his boys spread out, forming a line from horse to horse. They had all kept their weapons at the ready in Charlie’s cart.

  Garris held a massive hammer, mottled with rust and covered in dings, dents and scratches. Reginald had thin yet incredibly deadly rapiers in each hand. Trilles was a spear man, making him something of a kindred to me in that regard. Zen wore a pair of heavy ironwood gauntlets with spikes on the knuckles. The left one was etched with an inscription for power and the right was inscribed with words of ruin. Charlie was also technically a spear fighter of a sort. At least if one was willing to consider his enchanted pitchfork as an honourary spear.

  Considering that I’d nearly killed a man with a mop handle the previous day I didn’t see any reason not to count it as one.

  The other two skulls, a blue flaming shrieking deer and a purple flaming giant’s head, took their positions at the head and rear of our defensive line. The sound of multiple hooves trampling through dirt grew loud enough to hear under the screams of the mad deer.

  Icarus, Fastrada and the crow came one after the other from the covered wagon. The owl joined them from around the front as they all came running toward the centre.

  In my condition I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do much. All the same, I hopped down from the bench in time to meet the sparrow as he handed me a crossbow and a quiver of bolts. The silent ones did always seem a step ahead when it came to these things.

  I took the crossbow and swung the quiver over my back. The first of the night terrors had breached the treeline. Right in front of Garris where he stood to protect our cart.

  This one was a doe and as she came at him her jaws unhinged like a serpent’s, revealing far more teeth than any deer should have. Most were flat and meant for grinding but several, near the front, were pointed and deadly sharp. Perfect for ripping and tearing through the flesh they so gleefully consumed. Apparently, in the rest of the world, deer were strictly herbivorous. These monstrosities were a direct result of Marinclay’s curse on the Wooded Realm’s natural ecosystems.

  The deer closed the distance between the treeline and Garris before I could blink. And in that same fraction of a moment he had swung his hammer in time to smash it right in the face. The beast staggered over and Garris swung around with the momentum, bringing the head of his hammer down on the thing's skull. A spray of blood washed across the scene unfolding under the red light.

  I was halfway up Princess’ tail before Garris started lifting his hammer back up out of the sticky mess. The deer twitched and started to rise again once the hammer was off its partially smashed skull. As three more deer, two bucks and another doe, came galloping out from the darkness I took a knee atop the land dragon’s back.

  Trilles was channeling mana into his spear. It spun around in his hands wildly while vibrating and putting off an earsplitting whine. He crouched low and readied the whirling spear in position. One of the bucks came lunging for him, its head low in an attempt to gore the man on impact. The sharp points on the antlers glinted in the blue fire light.

  The spear made contact with the top of the beast’s skull and swirled and sliced its way in. All the way through the creature’s brain, turning it into a liquefied goop, and down into the neck. The spear stopped twirling and Trilles righted himself, putting his foot down on the dead deer’s skull and pulling the point of his spear back out.

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  More deer were falling in on us from the trees. I cocked back the crossbow and pulled a bolt out from the quiver. Another doe had her sights on Garris and he readied his hammer to take her on. The nearly slain deer to his side made to bite his shin. I loaded my first bolt and fired.

  The bolt launched clean, into one of the doe’s weeping black eyes. It let out a last scream and then finally died. Garris brought his hammer down on the deer in front of him and two bolts went flying into its side. One catching it in the neck while the other sunk itself in between some of the deer’s ribs.

  My second bolt was loaded. It looked like Fastrada and Icarus had Garris and the centre covered so I used my perch to assist the rear. The sparrow and crow had already taken off for the front while the owl stood at the back of the covered wagon. Ready to fire on anything that drew near.

  I shot a bolt into the knee of a buck charging toward Charlie. He was busy protecting his horse and had his pitchfork plunged into the torso of a fallen deer. His eyes were wet with tears. The poor man truly hated killing any and all animals, even if they were fixing to do the same to him and everything that he held dear. He was a complicated man for being someone so simple.

  I reloaded my bow and fired again. Aiming to trip up another deer approaching from the rear. Zen had noticed my assistance and so went hard on the offensive. He usually tried his best to act calm and composed but when it came down to a fight he truly was the most unhinged member of our troupe.

  The little bald man cackled with delight as he ran up to one of the downed deer and then drove his right fist down into its skull, smashing it into the road. It exploded into gore and viscera, leaving a steaming crater in the dirt road that quickly filled with blood and splattered chunks of the deer’s head and neck.

  I shot another bolt, catching another deer in the joint of its knee. From behind me came a scream. One that wasn’t from a deer. It was deep and masculine and filled with pain. I turned in time to see a doe tearing a chunk out of Trilles’ right shoulder. His arm sagged, unnaturally limp, at his side and the man let out another howl of pain. His spear was only just slowing its violent spinning as it sat fixed into another deer’s skull, and out of the man’s hands.

  My bolt sank into the skull of the doe that attacked him at the same time as two others found their mark on the beast's head. They'd come from around the front of the lead wagon. Trilles dropped forward the same instant that the beast collapsed.

  Reginald was screaming and I watched in amazement as he used his twin needles to stab clean through the throats of two of the deer that were standing in his way. He made it to Trilles before I’d loaded another bolt into my crossbow.

  There were still three deer coming down on them so I shot the lead one in the knee and turned while reloaded to check the rear flank. Charlie used one hand to slam his pitchfork into the ribs of a deer that Zen had downed while raking a broken piece of antler across a buck’s face. The scratch took out one of the beast’s eyes and it staggered clumsily into the horse, who then trampled it to death under her six powerful legs.

  I heard the squelch of Garris slamming his hammer through the skull of another deer. There were seven left from what I could tell but we had a man who was either already dead or fast on his way to dying. We needed to end this right now.

  I fired another bolt, dropping a final deer for Zen to demolish. Then I fortified my broken pieces with just enough mana to make it through what I planned on doing. I jumped off the dragon’s back and tossed the crossbow and quiver aside. Landing with a roll, I took off sprinting for the stilled spear resting in a slain deer’s skull.

  Reginald was in a defensive stance over Trilles and doing his best to fend off a massive buck as it violently swung its antlers at him. He’d taken quite a few hits and a small stream of his blood had joined with the pool of Trilles’ lost crimson. The brawny elder deer had several crossbow bolts sticking out of its face and peppered all along its body. Its eyes were filled with an insidious glee.

  With that, I’d met the eyes of every deer still left standing. I yanked Trilles’ spear free from the skull and made a challenge to the now five remaining beasts. And then I went running into the darkness. The crashing of hooves and malicious gleeful shrieking that was gaining on me told me that the first phase of my plan had worked.

  With the last of the shrieking deer all targeting me that would give the apprentices a change to try and wake their master. Otherwise Trilles would definitely die this moon.

  I’d already made my way inside the treeline, forcing the remaining deer to have to weave around trees in order to tail me.

  All I had to do was keep on telling them to catch me until the moment was just right. And that moment would be coming up fast. As far as I’d gotten from the road, the ground had started gradually tilting upward. Now I was sprinting up the side of a hill with the lead deer maybe one and a half spits behind me.

  It screamed with joy and gnashed it jaws at my heels. I veered off to the right a split second before colliding with the trunk of a broad tree. The deer had been temporarily robbed of its foresight and so kept running straight a beat too long to save itself.

  I turned in time to see the doe smash, head on, into the tree with her jaws fully unhinged. The force of the impact made a sickening noise as the doe’s unhinged jaws bent entirely out of shape. The skin of the deer’s cheeks tore and split, leaving a grisly wet grin painted across the trunk of the tree.

  It let out a confused and pained squeal and I plunged my spear into the monster’s throat.

  Three more deer were closing in on me.

  I launched myself high up to intercept the next one. A younger buck with small antlers. My spear caught it in the base of the skull and I twisted my body around the shaft of my weapon as I came back down. I landed on the creature’s back as it slumped to the ground. The next deer came in much too fast to keep from tripping over the one I’d just killed.

  As the buck’s front legs fell out from under it and one snapped, I pulled my spear free. The creature’s head landed just behind my feet. Even with a leg broken it was still more focused on the hunt than protecting itself. The deer snapped its jaws at me and I jumped down from the dead creature I’d been standing on. The spear came loose as I went.

  The two fallen deer had blocked the path of the doe following them. I saw a hateful glimmer in her eyes as the monster stalked around a tree to face me. From behind, the injured buck was working his way back up to standing. The massive elder buck was stood waiting, just at the base of the hill. Surprisingly stubborn to have shaken off my spell.

  The doe charged at me and the buck, with his broken leg, lunged its head forward to bite my left thigh from behind. I ran two steps forward and then dropped myself onto the damp forest floor, spear brought into position above me. The tip sat over my face as I held the shaft straight and low.

  The doe trampled over top of me, narrowly missing the tight file of my limbs. Once the beast was just far enough passed me, I plunged the tip of my spear forward at an angle, under the creature’s ribs and into her soft tissue, on a journey toward her heart.

  Blood ran down the shaft of the spear as I pulled it free and sprang forward. The doe collapsed where it stood. Before the buck could finish limping toward me I stabbed it through the head from a safe distance.

  Pulling the spear out, I shook it hard in front of me, flinging off some of the excess blood.

  The last deer waited for me at the bottom of the hill. Herd elders were always like that. They survived through an age of bloodshed and cultivated a sense of value toward raw strength and brutal power. Unlike the younger deer, which had only wanted to kill and to eat, this old timer’s craving was to experience a true fight.

  He snorted out a low grunt through the shredded ribbons of flesh hanging from his face. Reginald had done some serious damage with his twin needles but the monster barely seemed to notice or care. The splintered shafts of several crossbow bolts stuck out from the deer’s ruined face. There were at least six bolts jammed deep into his neck and over a dozen sticking out from his right side. I noticed several steady streams of blood pulsing out from a collection of holes that Reginald had pierced through the monster’s neck during their duel. Yeah, elder shrieking deer tended to make lethal injuries look like mere flesh wounds when struck by them.

  Now that I wasn’t bewitching deer to chase me I was free to channel even more mana into my fortification efforts. Not that that had been going entirely smoothly. As was to be expected with a skill I’d only spent the last couple of hours trying to invent and learn, I’d made plenty of minor miscalculations.

  Something inside of me was definitely bleeding. And it was doing it enough that I had the taste of blood washing up on my breath with each ragged exhale.

  The buck scraped his front left hoof through the muck on the ground. I readied my spear and spat a mouthful of iron flavoured saliva into the dirt. My mouth tasted decidedly more bloody afterward. That was probably fine.

  The deer didn’t shriek. Instead it let out a low, guttural cackle that made me shiver to my bones. And then the massive buck was charging me, full out. The shredded flesh on his face flapped in the wind, revealing the gleaming bones beneath. The thing looked both crazed and extremely satisfied.

  I dodged to the left and the buck dug his hooves into the dirt to shudder to a stop. He swung his head around, trying to catch me in his antlers. I brought up the spear and caught it up between them. And then I twisted downward with all my might while applying an excessive amount of mana into my arms and hands. Every last single individual part of them was overflowing with my essence.

  I heaved and the deer fought. The shaft of the spear began to buckle and splinter under the stress. I pushed my mana further, driving it into my weapon as far as it would go.

  Spots were popping up in my vision and I realized that both the deer and I were shouting. Primal roars drenched in a kind of pure blood lust reserved for moments like the one we were both caught in. There was no malice. There was no hate. We were simply two unwavering wills, both duking it out until the bitter end in a contest to see which was the stronger of the pair.

  The spear was starting to glow a faint shade of violet and steam hissed out through the fissures that had formed before I reinforced it. I’d rarely attempted what I was doing for that exact reason. I wasn’t able to control it right and now the mana making up the matter of the spear was overloading and on the verge of going critical.

  If I stopped now then it would probably be fine, but that really wasn’t an option. My feet were gradually sliding back, through the damp soil, under the overwhelming strength of the buck.

  He’d repositioned his body to better help fight the pull of my spear. My mana was reaching its limits and tiny strands of wood were starting to peel off the shaft of the spear. They came loose and then curled up before turning into glowing matter that rapidly diffused into the air.

  Well, I reasoned with myself, if Trilles did survive then he probably wouldn’t mind losing a spear for something as explosive and flashy like I was preparing myself to do.

  I broke away from my clash with the buck, all the while channeling as much mana as I could into the now vibrating weapon. While the massive beast’s head was caught swinging downward, I turned and I ran. Just as far as I could get before I heard the buck taking off after me.

  It huffed indignantly at me for running. I turned on my heels and brought up the spear like a javelin. All but the bare minimum of mana that I needed to live, without risking a mana burn, had been loaded into the violently bright spear in my left hand.

  The core of my weapon was too blindingly bright to look into. The harsh glow around its edges had turned a deep violet that rippled like water. The whole thing crackled with bolts of my mana combined with that of the spear’s raw material as it violently came undone.

  The buck was less than eight spits away. I waited a beat, for the beast to close in within six spits. And then, with the tail end of my strength, I threw the overloaded spear for everything that my flesh was worth. The spear and buck both flew shrieking toward each other while I dropped down to my knees, panting.

  There had been no perceptible moment of impact. There had only been light, followed by an extreme force and deafening noise. I’d thrown myself down, prone in the dirt, and covered my ears with my hands. Not that it did much to protect me in such short range.

  The blast had kicked me up off the ground and left me sprawled out on my back several spits away from the crater. Thankfully away from any trees. My ears rang and my entire body shook. All around me, the trees and brush were alight with rapidly dissipating violet flames. There were a few scattered spots of charred viscera but other than that not a trace of the massive buck remained.

  Thank fuck.

  I painstakingly peeled myself up from the ground as the last of the mana flames died out around me. It was a short, yet eternally long, shuffle before I was back to the caravan.

  I saw that Everrnak’s trunk was on the ground, next to the middle cart, with its lid open. An emergency triage tent had already been set up to treat our injured. It was set up just off to the side of the road. That was good because the intense aches in my bones and blood bubbling out from my mouth told me that I was going to need some additional mending from the ancient man. Once he was done working on Trilles, Reginald and anyone else that took hits during the attack I’d be making my own way inside of his sterile little workshop.

  I staggered forward, into the light, and then I was falling into darkness once again. Regardless of how hard I fought it. I’d put my body through too much trauma. As it turned out, that came with some consequences.

  I felt myself connect with the road, but it didn’t really hurt.

“Sorrel!”

Someone was shouting my name…

“Quick! He’s over there!”

“Oh fuck. Get him into the tent, quick!”

“H-hey is he gonna be okay?”

And then a darkness that thankfully didn’t feel slimy overcame me.

  And I was gone. Far, far away and into a familiar world of dark memories.