“Did they forget they were supposed to meet us here, or did you forget to tell them?” the stocky red-scaled Dra’azgol asked Murdoc as they stood together by the bridge. Murdoc scratched at his head.

“I swear I told them to meet me here. I didn’t mention you, though.” He looked up at the dragon-folk. Despite towering above the dwarf, Bart the Savage was an unusually short Dra’azgol, though he made up for it with muscles that stretched belief. I have been getting involved with a lot of very strong Folk lately, Murdoc mused.

“Why not?” Bart asked. He stretched in the morning light, his greatsword dangling across his back catching Ankirat’s visage in its mirror-polished blade. Bart did not own a scabbard for his sword, for he did not need one. Magical swords didn’t need to worry about rusting or blunting.

“Well I figured it wasn’t part of the original group, and you did say you might not make it, so I wanted to let things happen as they happened.”

“It seems things happened to include them leaving us behind.”

Murdoc sniffed through a bristling mustache. “It’s not like I needed to go with them, and you don’t need to either. No real harm, I doubt they will dodge Maker.” The dwarf looked around. “Wonder what that old tin-skin is up to?”

“Do you think they are safe?” Bart pressed.

Murdoc stilled himself and reached out with his mind. He had been a Shaper for over two centuries, and his command of the Arcane Arts was second only to Mialoth herself. He sought around him with Aurgin and Aileen’s faces fixed firmly in his imagination, and pushed. There was a sensation, miles to the north and east.

“They kept moving, and they made good time,” he reported. He kept at it, and soon their expressions changed. Aileen, her eyes twin furnaces that burned through lies and deceit. Aurgin, a carefree face of exuberance that hid a lethal edge. “Seems like they are okay.”

“They might not be for long,” Bart said, not turning his head. Murdoc refocused his eyes and dissipated his spell.

“Eh? What’re you on about?”

Bart turned to him. “Is one of them Elven?”

“Aye, Aileen is half.”

Dra’azgol did not use facial expressions as openly as other Folk did, but Murdoc had learned long ago to read them. Bart’s composure was meticulous, but the dwarf could see the fire in his friend’s eyes.

“Not enough. I smell Elves, full Elves.”

“This far east?” Murdoc asked.

As a response Bart turned and began to march. Each of his strides was longer than Murdoc was tall, and the dwarf had to run to keep up. “Yes, I am certain of it. The wind reeks of them.”

“Then they are in real danger.”

The forest broke into screams as the two groups collided. Aileen, leading the charge, struck first and struck hard. The glow from her shield faded and her mace burst alight, crushing into a bandit’s shoulder. The other ambushers had dropped their bows and picked up crude spears, jabbing viciously at the cleric. Her shield was more than a match for the fire-hardened wood tips, turning them aside as well as blunting them.

Aurgin crashed into the melee shoulder first. Hundreds of pounds of Mathuni muscle hit low into a bandit’s gut. Aurgin held steady against flinching when she heard the man’s spine grind over itself, the disks unseating under the force. She surged up out of her tackle, locking them against her shoulder with the haft of her maul held in both hands, then hinged at the waist. The bandit was ragdolled head first into the roots of the forest, his head cracking sharply. He never had a chance to scream.

Aileen danced between the other three, steel shield absorbing their stabs. When one tried to dance to the side to get around it she would explode outward with her mace, shattering spears and hands and elbows. When one did not pull away quickly enough she pulverized the side of his knee and sent him down with a howl. Despite her speed and ferocity, she was out numbered, and a lucky hit snuck in just over the top of her shield. It carved a twisting gash across her forehead, just missing her temple. If it weren’t for the chin strap her steel cap would’ve been knocked off.

The shock of the nearly lethal blow sent her stumbling back, and the last bandit, a hulking Mathuni, made to charge forward. Instead Aurgin leaped between them, feinting twice with her maul then pivoting forward and lashing out suddenly with its butt. It caught the bandit in the temple, but he didn’t go down until Aurgin stepped back with a titanic swing that connected where his neck met his skull. He crumpled bonelessly to the ground, leaving the pair alone in the woods, chests heaving.

Aurgin checked her on her companion. She could see the white of the cleric’s skull in the wound. “You alright? Aileen, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” a dazed Aileen replied. With her mace hand she poked at the gash on her head. She had been in deadly fights before, and with a mental push she lurched out of her shock. Her hand started to glow, the divine power suffusing sealing the split skin. Skin and flesh reknit itself, turning to scab, then scar tissue, until it smoothed over. The only hint Aileen had been stabbed at all was the blood that caked her face.

“Wow,” was all Aurgin could say.

Aileen grinned vacantly. “What’s wrong, did Hamemrfiend never show you anything like that?”

“Hmph! My dad just doesn’t get wounded,” Aurgin said with an exaggerated pout.

“Uh huh.” Aileen’s riposte died in her mind as she came fully back to reality. “We should get to cover, maybe there are more?”

Aurgin looked around. “That was five, a hefty squad for vagabonds. You need a hand?”

“No.” The cleric pulled herself to her feet, inspecting her shield as she did. To her disappointment, the arrows had left scratches and even a dent in the metal. “Lead on.”

“Watch my ass,” Aurgin said as she checked up and down the road.

“As if you need to ask,” Aileen said as the Mathuni fighter broke cover. They crouched in a near-by hollow, watching the forest. With her free hand Aurgin kept trying to brush phantom hairs over her ear, smiling all the time. Before she could say anything Aileen started talking shop, not trusting herself to stay vigilant.

“Why didn’t they make any demands or talk to us? No doubt they had us in their sights for a few minutes.”

Aurgin shrugged. “Two women Folk, fully armed and mostly armored? Maybe you being so generous with your pennies told them all they needed to know.”

“I don’t remember seeing any of them in town, do you?”

The Mathuni stared off into the woods thoughtfully, idly cracking the knuckles on her right hand. “No, and there was only one Mathuni among them. Gah! Rat bastard, he should know better than to stoop to this.”

“Thoughts on there being more of them?”

“I’m not so sure,” Aurgin turned to face Aileen. “I would expect you to have a better grasp on that. Clerics are effectively wandering judges in Turgandy, right?”

“Paladins, not clerics,” Aileen corrected. “And I would think so, if only for their bows and arrows.”

Aurgin nodded. She gazed off into the distance behind Aileen’s head as she thought it over, giving the cleric a chance to inspect her companion. Just for wounds, she convinced herself. It was jarring to see such a fine arm pieced by an arrow, more-so because Aurgin didn’t seem phased by it. Aileen had a strange relationship with pain, but she did not want to experiment and see if she could ignore an arrow burying half its length into her bicep.

“They were wearing gambeson and tunics. I think the fellow on our side of the road had some boiled leather, but I’m not sure. The bows were indeed fine, as were the arrows, but they were also human bows. I would be willing to bet silver that they came from Turgandy.”

Aileen blinked to break her staring. “So why ally with a Mathuni? Even outcasts and brigands inherit that hate. More so, I would imagine.”

Aurgin shrugged. “You would be surprised, but I do agree that it is strange. Maybe he convinced them with his size and strength? Maybe they convinced him with promises of riches or revenge? Took advantage of a tantrum?”

“So why not rob us?”

“That I can explain.” Aurgin noticed the arrow in her arm at last. “Oh, hm. First let’s get this out of me.”

“I can help with that.”

“The pulling it out or the binding the wound?”

“Whichever gives me the better excuse to touch you.” AIleen said easily. Flirting was fun, though she knew it was a bad habit for someone of her station. Not that Tain forbade relationships, sex, or even loveless flings and prostitutes. She shouldn’t for her own reasons.

Aurgin gave her a look, tilting her head down and trying to brush phantom locks behind her ears. “Oh, I think we will have a grand time on this trip. Why not both? I never liked taking out arrows.”

Aileen paused with eager hands halfway to Aurgin’s arm. “Wait, you’ve been shot before?”

“Sure. I can show you the scars once you take this out.”

With a quick movement Aileen snapped the broadhead tip off and slowly tugged the rest of the shaft free. When Aurgin winced she did too. Hurting people did not come easily, though combat offered an easier path over her reservations. When her life was on the line, it was no problem. To see a friend in pain, or to cause that pain? That she found difficult. After an agonizing few seconds of pulling, she pulled the arrow free with a sigh from Aurgin.

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With her free hand she traced the entry- and exit-wound, going around them in a gentle swirling motion. The warmth returned, and in her minds eye she imagined the wounds closing, forming scabs, fading to scars, and finally returning to the way the skin had looked before. Aurgin watched all this with a gaping mouth and a hand clutched to her shoulder.

“That feels different,” she said after inspecting her healed arm.

“How so? And to what?”

“I have been healed by divine power before, but always the same person.” She flexed a calloused hand, causing the tendons under her skin to dance. “From him it always felt cold, like ice water was being dumped on me.”

Aileen cocked her head. “It is different for everyone, just a matter of how the holy Folk imagines it should feel like. Who healed you?”

“No no, first things first. You want to see where I got shot?” Aurgin asked with a rakish grin framed by her short tusks.

It was infectous. “How about first things first, why did those bandits wait so long but shoot anyway?”

“If they let us live then we could’ve run back to town. I mentioned the outriders before, but they are a force in these parts. They take their job very seriously, and the merest mention of bandits would see a dozen of them taking off into the woods, flat bows at the ready.” Aurgin nodded back toward the remains of their fight. “Those five would’ve never had a chance. I dated an outrider once. Hated it, the bastard would wake up before dawn every morning to get a ten mile run in. Ten miles! Just to wake up! Horsemen are overtaken by them.”

“Was this Dihamhe?”

Her face fell. “No, he was a baker. Don’t know why you had to bring him up.”

Time to change the subject, then. “Let’s see those scars.”

Aurgin obliged, pulling up her chain skirt and pulling the waist of her trousers down at the hip. Aileen, despite her flirtation, rocked back with a blush and wondered if she should turn away. The Mathuni didn’t take her pants off, only pulling them down enough to reveal a pinkish scar high on her thigh.

“That didn’t feel good,” she said with a matter of fact tone.

“I can imagine.”

“Why doesn’t divine healing leave scars?”

This caught Aileen off guard. “Hm? Oh, sometimes they do.”

“When? Could you heal these scars away?”

Aileen’s lips pursed in thought. “It really depends. I knew a man from the outer edges of Turgandy who lost his hand to an Elven raid when he was just a boy. Barely survived, had all sorts of problems. Decades later a paladin tried to heal it but couldn’t, the man had been without his hand so long that he just…” She trailed off as her mind scrambled to find a way to explain it. “I don’t know how much you know about magic theory–”

“I know a fair bit.”

“Okay, then you’ll be familiar with residual cognition?”

“Yes, it’s how Dwarven Bronze can carry commands to and from the mind. I know a Dra’azgol who had a prosthetic tail made with it, and he says he can feel with it.”

That sounds interesting and ridiculously expensive. “Then think of it like that. Sometimes our minds get so used to a scar or a wound that it becomes part of who we are, or at least who we think we are. His hand couldn’t be healed because he had gotten so used to it, he couldn’t imagine himself with it back.”

“So you can’t heal these?” Aurgin asked, turning slightly so her hip was closer to Aileen. The cleric clenched her hands, not trusting that she could keep them to herself. Tain grant me peace, those stretch marks…

“Perhaps I can. A missing hand is really hard to ignore or forget about. Would you even notice if you had a scar on your back, for example? Doesn’t matter for how long, if you don’t know about it, then smoothing it away would make no difference.” She tried to pull her eyes away from Aurgin’s thigh but couldn’t.

The sound of a twig snapping in the distance caught both of their attention. Aurgin adjusted her pants and let her chain skirt fall back into place, scooping up her maul and skulking towards the noise with a low, three-point stance. Aileen followed, her disappointment evaporated by apprehension. There was another noise, the crunch of leaves under a heavy foot.

Inch by inch the pair crept forward, adjusting their course when the source of the sounds moved. Ankirat dipped toward the horizon, and in the low light Aurgin found herself scratched by branches and tripped by roots. Aileen barely noticed, her Elven heritage helping her to see as clearly now as at noon. She winced as Aurgin started to make noises of her own, grunting when she was caught by a thistle and rattling a bush with a careless move of her maul.

Despite these setbacks, Aurgin could sneak admirably. Aileen noticed that no matter how low she stooped or how far to the side she leaned, her maul was kept perfectly erect at a barest angle. It barely quavered or dipped, staying ready for a swing at any moment. Aileen herself kept her mace in hand, but left her shield on her back. Her eyes flashed when she scanned the dim forest for any movement.

They came upon the source of the noise. Weaving between the trees was a young drake, its wings folded along its back, a dead leopard cub in its mouth. It crept along on three legs, its right foreleg savaged by deep slashes and gorey bite-marks. Every other step it would unconsciously try to use this leg, flinching at the pain. In this way it limped through the forest, uncaring of the noise it was making.

Aurgin and Aileen sized it up. Drakes were, thankfully, lesser to dragons in strength, size, life span, and intelligence. Still, its torso was the size of a bear and with a long whip-like tail and leathery wings. Long claws and pointed fangs could still eviscerate either of them, armor and weapons or not. If it was tired after its fight, which it likely was, it would vent this fatigue with a gout of flame from its mouth.

“We should’ve grabbed one of the bows,” Aurgin whispered, “no way we can fight it with a hammer and a mace.”

Aileen agreed. “Why would we want to? I don’t have a taste for drakes.”

“Because it would make for an excellent story,” Aurgin said with a rakish grin.

Aileen successfully resisted the urge to try and brush the Mathuni’s hair behind her ear. “I doubt either of us would survive to tell it.”

The drake carried on, some three hundred feet away. Aurgin was struck with an idea. “It might have a nest or a cave nearby. I doubt it has a hoard, I don’t think drakes do that–”

“They don’t,” Aileen confirmed.

“But it might have run into those bandits, if they were just a smaller chunk of a larger group.”

“True, but what would we gain? Those men had barely any armor and pointed sticks, just bows and arrows. Besides, I’m not too good with a bow.”

Aurgin cocked an eyebrow. “Really? A half-elf, not good with a bow?”

“Even elves aren’t born with bows in their hands.”

“I would hope so, that sounds very painful for the mother.”

Another grin. “Aurgin, you are a menace.”

As a response the Mathuni began to creep after the drake, following in its tracks. Aileen cursed her recklessness and followed only after confirming they were down wind from it. Hunting animals and Folk was dangerous enough on its own, but predators were especially worrisome. The intelligence of a Folk could be predicted and wielded against them. Predatory animals had a different kind of intelligence, one that Aileen had little experience with. She found it best to stay away from them.

Aurgin seemed unfazed by the danger and pressed on. Thankfully the drake cleared most of the noisy obstacles from their path, though the darkness was really starting to set it. If the Mathuni woman could see in the dark, she couldn’t do it very well. After a close call with a rotting branch, Aileen took the lead, shield at the ready.

They followed it in this way for almost a mile, until it slunk into the recesses of a pond-side cave. Aileen and Aurgin staked the cave out from a opposing hilltop. It was clear Aurgin could see in the dark, just not as well as the half-elf. It became Aileen’s job to describe the area so the two of them could plan out their next step.

“The sides of the cave looked scratched out, so it isn’t completely natural. The pond is pretty, and it looks natural. You can hear that spring bubbling up in the middle of it?”

Aurgin nodded. “Can you see if it has any outlet?”

“No, why?”

“I always wanted a house with a stream or pond beside.”

Aileen shook her head. “It’s pretty far in there–”

“It?”

“The drake, I mean. I don’t see how we can sneak in. The stars are bright tonight, it will see us. Besides, I swear some of the darker stone is charred from its breath. I don’t think we should risk it,” Aileen made to pull away. A firm, calloused hand came to rest on her shoulder. Friend or not, Aileen was not a fan of grabby companions.

“Wait, can you see anything shining in the depths of the cave?”

“Just the scales of a drake that doesn’t need all four arms to rip us apart. Endless above woman, we are not going to risk this. I refuse!”

The hand relaxed and slid away. Aileen was glad it’s pressure was gone, but she missed it’s warmth. “Fine, I suppose you’re right. Twin hells, it might be a bright night for you but I can’t see a damned thing.”

A worrying thought came to Aileen. “Do you remember what direction the road is in?”

“Sure, it’s just over that way,” said an unfamiliar voice.

Aurgin turned to Aileen. Her face was unreadable, but her white-knuckle grip on her maul said everything. Aileen had the same grip on her shield and mace, and after a moment noticed Aurgin winking at her in sequence. 3 winks, 2 winks, 1 wink… As one they turned, weapons at the ready, hearts hammering.

Standing twenty paces behind them was a Folk wearing dark, bulky clothes. The only part of their silhouette that was easily identifiable was the outline of the heavy siege crossbow they were holding in both hands, bolt already loaded. A weapon like that could sprain Aileen’s arm through her shield, and her chainmail wouldn’t be enough to fully stop the missile. Divine power flooded her in a panic, her helmet beginning to glow. It revealed the Aurgin’s stance, ready to sprint, and the stranger.

Their clothes–a thick long-sleeved shirt with a vest overtop with long trousers and sabaton-clad boots–hid most of their body, but their face was unmistakably made from metal. The glow of Tain’s power shone on a silvery forehead. In regular places their visage was broken by thin gaps in the facade, and a pair of lensed eyes peered out from under a brow lightly decorated with hammered patterns. The crossbow they were holding caught Aileen’s eye. It was plain, but ominously robust in its construction, without flair or decoration. It was not an art piece but the weapon of a soldier.

“Hello,” They said. “You may call me Maker. This is Mo.”

With a gloved hand it gestured to a strange contraption by their foot. Almost two feet tall, it was a metal replica of a praying mantis animated by gears and arcane magic. Aileen did not need to focus to detect the magic in their construction, both were driven by powerful and ancient spells. It was the first time Aileen had ever seen one of the Sentenate, the Metal Folk inspired by Sentinel’s divine designs. The cleric’s travels had taken her through Caelumnar where a Sentenate would occasionally walk out of the ocean, but those were often killed as they blindly attacked anything that came near them. They were as much of a mystery as the magic that animated them.

Aurgin relaxed. “Oh, I should’ve known from the name. Good night to you, Tin Skin.”

“You seem on edge.”

“We were tracking a drake, you spooked us. We expected to meet you earlier, did we miss you?”

Maker nodded jerkily. “Yes. I found the bodies of five Folk and worried my companions were among them. None of them fit your descriptions, so I kept looking. I tracked your footsteps away from the scene, and found you here.”

Aileen wasn’t convinced. “We never told you who we worked for. You seem too eager to let us know you were here before you knew we weren’t bandits.”

“It is not hard to deduce that a Mathnui woman with a sledgehammer is Hammerfiend’s daughter, and that the pair I was looking for would still be a pair.” With that they hefted their loaded crossbow. "Of course, I could always just shoot you."

Touchy. “No need. Sorry we forgot to look for you.”

“I’m more worried about the drake you have forgotten about.”

There was a splash from the pond. They turned to catch the dragon in a low crouch sneaking out of its cave, yellow eyes fixed on them.

“Tain’s tits,” Aurgin swore.