My legs fired like pistons as I shot forward across the hard-clay bank. It happened before my mind had fully registered what I was looking at - an automatic response. By the time my mind had caught up, I was sprinting.

That bitch, I thought to myself, and the words echoed in my head. The voices were back - had been back - but they weren’t instigating me now. They didn’t remind me how worthless I was, didn’t belittle me and kick me and bring up old memories I’d tried for years to forget. They cheered me on. They whispered dark encouragements, some of the voices speaking two words at once as they continued to chant that bitch. That bitch. That bitch.

My peripherals closed. The world wasn’t a sphere but a line, a straight shot from where I’d been to the revenge that waited ahead of me. Nothing else existed. Nothing else ever had.

My time in that dimension had broken me, and it had remade me. Or else, it had stripped something from me, something that had only slowed me down, and I ran like a man who had been wearing weights around his ankles but had finally been freed, and that fire inside of me roared.

Each footfall was a revelation, every breath swallowed an undeniable sign to the world that I was alive.

After my peripherals faded, other senses began to follow. The smell of pine needles and clay and sunshine - it left me. My nose shut off, diverting energy to my legs. My mouth went numb, tasteless, and then my hearing went. I could not even hear the river beside me. That was too far outside of my world, my line.

Finally, my nerves became numb. I couldn’t feel my feet hit the ground, or the ragged hot feeling in my lungs, or the pounding headache and tightness in my jaw.

But there are other senses than those. My sense of time became fuzzy. Whether I had run for minutes or centuries it would have felt roughly the same.

And in that eternal, fleeting forever-moment, I forgot about Tom. Forgot about sparks. Forgot about not being special.

I wasn’t happy. In no sense of the word was I happy. I was angrier than I’d ever thought myself possible of being.

I had started my charge - my hunt, a voice corrected - far off from that bitch, and so it took her a long time to notice the smoke building up around her, the black clouds of wildfire rushing towards her. I could see them, because I was them, but that bitch did nothing for a long time but squat down beside the water, filling a canteen and whatever else.

But eventually - and it was too late by then, had been too late the moment I had spotted her - she turned, and her eyes went wide, and for a few lethal moments she froze.

Then, the fool, she spoke, standing up, even waving. “Miles!” she yelled with false congeniality and a plastic smile, “Like, fancy seeing you here.” She laughed nervously.

I didn’t stop.

When I didn’t answer, the fear emerged to the surface of her face again. Quickly she squatted back down, reached a hand behind her, fumbling for something, and brought up her staff which had been lying on the ground beside her. She held its intricately carved wooden mass before her like a threat.

“Do it!” I screamed at her, still running, and the sound came out like an animal’s growl. “Do it, you fucking coward! Kill me!”

Distance was hard to approximate in that crimson haze. I was only yards away, I was certain, but still far enough that she could have sliced me in half before I gotten her within range of my nails.

She should have run. She should have run away and prayed.

Her face came into focus as I gained on her position. Her eyes called out in a quiet desperation, her deeply tanned face visibly distraught, her whole person subtly shaking - but something like firm resolution there, as well.

She held the staff further out in front of her, as if highlighting her threat. I laughed.

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“I am nobody!” I yelled. “And that means you can’t hurt me, you bitch. You can’t kill nothing, and that’s what I am. So go ahead! Try it! You won’t be the first.”

I really thought she was going to. But at the last minute she dropped her staff and she turned and ran. Her short legs didn’t get her far. Too late.

I dived and I connected, driving my weight into her back in a violent tackle. She was forced to the ground.

I turned her over so that I could see the look on her face. She was small. Weak. That was the feeling I had then.

Suddenly my nerves awoke again and I felt searing pain - first on my shoulder, then my leg, then another across my chest. She was cutting me, that bitch. The thought only incensed me further.

Ignoring the pain - like paper cuts, all of them - I held a hand over her face, pinning her shoulder down with the other, my knees on her chest keeping her from rolling away. I sent mana into my hand, and somehow her eyes went even wider.

“Stay still,” I said. “And this won’t kill you.”

She only struggled more. But the nails began to fall, turning to liquid as I melted them, and the liquid, like hot wax, fell around her collarbone. She screamed.

“Stop!” I said. “Or I’ll ignite it!”

I think she knew I meant it, because she froze, clearly stifling further screams, tears of pain starting to bubble in her eyes. I let the nails keep pouring, and it created something like a grotesque ivory necklace. I seized her head, brought her slightly off the ground, and made sure the collar was completed around the back as well. Then I stood.

She sat there for a moment, writhing in a silent agony but clearly afraid to move too much. I told her not to take the nails off, or I would ignite them - she had been about to clutch at them, to claw them off. But I forced her to let them cool, forced her not to lay down, and though some of the nails ran down her like slow rivulets of water - visible in their path through the new gouges in her dress - most of them dried quickly, and formed together.

“You thought I would forget?” I asked, hardly a whisper - but I knew she could hear me. “You thought I would let you go? Let me tell you something, Naomi.

“In fourth grade two friends of mine were having a conversation. I hadn’t been paying attention, didn’t know what they were talking about, but suddenly they were saying that something was as difficult as calculus. I’d never heard the word calculus before, didn’t know what it was at all, but I wanted to fit in, wanted to look cool. I said, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve played that game before.’ I thought it was a video game. We talked a lot about video games. It was a reasonable guess.

“But of course, calculus is not a video game. And my so-called friends laughed in my face - they laughed and laughed and laughed.

“I was nine years old then. And I haven’t forgotten it. I still have nightmares about it, sometimes. I never forget, Naomi. Never.”

She didn’t respond immediately, and there was nothing but the sounds of her sniffling and the river again in my ears. “I don’t understand,” she said, finally, shaking her head. “I-” she choked back something. She looked up at me with a pitiful expression. “I thought we were friends?”

The look on her face brought something like guilt into my heart. I almost rebuked myself - would have - but I turned away from her, looked at the river flowing forever away as I spoke. “So did I.” I said. “And yet here we are.” A sudden wave of emotion crested me and the anger slightly waned, mission accomplished, and I had to keep myself from crying, too.

Just then I heard heavy footfalls approaching. I didn’t turn - I knew who it was, of course.

I had half expected Cadoc, at least, to give some sort of cheer, but as their running stopped and I could feel them standing nearby - but not too close - they didn’t say anything, only breathing heavy, catching their breath.

It was quiet for a time. Surprisingly Naomi was the one who finally spoke. “Amaia!” she yelled - and the yell was wet with snot and tears, but her yell broke through it. “What happened to your arm?”

I turned back to the scene. Amaia’s arm was worse every time I looked at it. Her entire left forearm was black like coal.

I pointed at where Naomi still sat. “You did,” I said. “Amaia got poisoned by a monster, because we traveled at night, because we had to catch up with you, because you left us, you bitch. And now you’re going to take us to Coernet. And if you try to run off again, or you try any funny business, or if Amaia dies because we don’t make it in time, then I will light that collar up like a Christmas tree.”

Naomi stared up at Amaia, and I saw as the twisted agony of her face changed to guilt. My own tears dried in my eyes before they got the chance to fall. Serves you right, I thought. I hope you feel guilty.

In a quick movement Naomi stood, and I almost ignited her, adrenaline still pumping. But she had jumped up and ran to Amaia, arms wide.

“Amaia!” she yelled, sobbing. “I’m so sorry.” She embraced Amaia in a hug, and Amaia just stood there awkwardly. But she didn’t stop her. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just - I- I was just scared. I’m so sorry.”

She cried loudly, great gasping sobs, and finally Amaia placed her own arms lightly around Naomi’s shoulders. “It’s OK,” she said.

Naomi kept crying, burying herself in Amaia’s chest. Amaia looked at me.

I didn’t know what to say - what I could say - and it seemed she didn’t either. She only nodded.

Cadoc, meanwhile sidled up beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You never cease to amaze me, friend,” he said. “Your sense of justice is stronger than the hardest steel.”

I couldn’t let myself linger on thoughts like those. “Will you take us to Coernet?” I asked Naomi. “Or will you die?”

“Of course I’ll do it!” she exclaimed, turning to me. It was amazing to see someone in her position get angry, to yell at the person who could end her life with a thought. “What do you think I am, heartless?”

I hardened myself. “Then why did you do it?” I asked. “Why did you leave?”

She cast her eyes down, sheepishly. “Oh. Well. I, uh. Because I couldn’t give you the reward.”

“Couldn’t?” I asked. “Or didn’t want to.”

“Scared of her parent’s disapproval, perhaps,” Cadoc interjected. “Remember always that this one is motivated by fear, friends.”

“No!” Naomi yelled, her green-yellow eyes staring at me suddenly like a gold-emerald fire. “I couldn’t! I can’t! I told you that I was rich in the dungeon because I had to! I needed you to take me with you, to get me out of there. You would have lied in my position, too, yeah? Of course. Anyone would have. I was going to let you get me out of the dungeon, or close enough, and then I’d slip away in the dark and you’d never see me again. But then we were working together, and I…”

She looked at the ground again, one hand gripping the opposite elbow.

“And then I didn’t want to leave.” She looked up again. “But then you kept talking about the reward! I kind of hoped, at the end, that you would forget, or something. I know, stupid, hopeful, but. Well, you didn’t forget. In fact, you made it the group’s entire goal, to go get the reward.

“And I didn’t even lie,” she said, hands raised in a sign of innocence. “Not really! I said I was rich. Well, I was rich. That’s true. But not anymore. My family isn’t rich now. And my parents will probably give you something, I guess, but I can’t guarantee it will be any more valuable than a warm meal.”

I stared. “So there’s no reward?”

“No,” she said. “Not really.”