"Hello, Angus," Magnus said.

"It's Cassie now," the Trickster said bitterly, and winced when the curse caught up with her for using her magic. "Ow. Ow--damnit, Magnus, I didn't want to kill her yet!"

"You already had."

"Yes, well... oh, it's not the same. Why didn't you react when that guy snuck up on you? Did you do that deliberately?"

"It's not my fault you think I'm incompetent. And they're not my cultists, are they?"

"No--wait," the Trickster said, gripping the templeman staff. "There's more of them."

"Of course there's more of them," Magnus snapped. "We didn't just happen to kill the last one, did we?"

"More of them here."

Magnus sighed, and came up to the Trickster. "Are you saying this because you heard something, or are you saying this because you're trying to distract me to try and get away? Because--oh, damn," Magnus said, and grabbed the Trickster's head, looking into her distracted eyes. "Have you gone mad again? I will feed to you a hawk before I let you run around mad again--"

The dire dog barked, and at least twenty cultists burst out from the trees. Magnus and the Trickster turned their backs on each other.

"If you die and let me get stabbed I will get really angry with you," Magnus said, gritting his teeth.

"Don't worry," the Trickster said grimly, holding up her staff. The cultists on her side of the clearing had less open ground to clear, and so reached her first, swords and daggers raised. She held her staff like a spear and threw it as hard as she could; it stopped before it flew out of reach when it connected with a cultist's face. The Trickster stepped forward, grabbed the staff near the centre before it fell, and swung it around, missing hitting Magnus by centimetres and cracking a cultists hard in the head. She twirled the other end of the staff up to hit another cultist in the chin, then stepped back with one foot and struck out behind her, hitting a cultist in the groin. She lifted the tip of the staff up inside the arms of the cultist next to her last victim, stepped closer, and swung round the staff, trapping the cultist's sword arm with one end and hitting him hard in the knee with the other. The cultist's knee cracked and he collapsed to the ground, freeing the Trickster's staff, which she used to swing up and over, her hands near the end of the staff. She hit a cultist on the top of his head, and leaped back to reorient, bumping Magnus hard in the back as she did so.

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Magnus had waited for the first cultist to reach him, sidestepped his knife thrust, and touched him lightly on the hand, whispering a word at him. As the cultist fell, dead, Magnus caught up his dagger and nicked the artery of the next cultist to reach him. He turned and slashed the arm of a cultist coming up behind him. He caught that cultist's knife as it fell from his grasp, and stabbed him hard in the side, scraping bone before it found the edge of a rib and pushed further in, rupturing organs. Magnus used his first knife to deflect a sword slash from the next cultist and moved closer, puling the other dagger out from the side of the last and drawing it across the new cultist's throat. He stepped past the next cultist to run up, and as the cultist began to turn, stabbed him hard in the back.

The dire dog had whined unhappily throughout the start of the fight, its loyalties torn. As it watched Magnus kill the latest cultist, however, its tail began to wag, and it happily bit the cultist moving up around it in half. The cultist that Magnus had killed had once taken some of the dog's food for his own dinner, and the dog had never forgiven him...

The body dropped in front of Magnus, revealing three cultists with pikes.

"Well, that's new for you lot," Magnus murmured, taking in their movements. He grinned, and held out a hand. "Grow," he said, and the wooden pike shafts came to sudden life. Branches burst forth, winding around and ensnaring their handlers.

While Magnus was distracted by the pike men, a cultist with a sword came charging up behind him. Magnus only just managed to catch the sword with his knives, but the angle was wrong and he couldn't disengage to attack. His knives slid up the blade, and he dropped one to grab the hilt of the sword and turn it away from him. He and the cultist struggled for control of the blade for a moment, before the Trickster bumped Magnus hard in the back, pushing him suddenly forward and trapping the sword between the bodies of Magnus and the cultist. Magnus let go of the sword with the hand that held the knife, and reached up and slit the cultist's throat.

The Trickster winced. "Arrows, Magnus," she warned.

"Run," Magnus advised. They both sprinted off in opposite directions, into the gaps in the lines they had made, as the first arrows started raining down on their position. The dire dog yelped, and chased after Magnus. It took a few moments for the remaining cultists to organise, but they split into two groups and began chasing the gods down.

The Trickster darted off into the forest as fast as she could, moving with precision through the trees. She ducked behind trees occasionally to dodge arrows, but managed to keep from slowing down enough to keep ahead of the cultists. That was all she was managing to do though; she was shorter than the cultists, and had started the fight still out of breath. She could still hear the cultists through the trees as she ran.

"I've seen this before," she muttered. "Where did I...? Right. Left?"

She darted left, scrambling over a mossy boulder. She stumbled as she landed on the other side, staggering uncontrolled into a clearing. From the fresh marks on the trees and the small plants growing in the sunlight, the clearing had been made recently. A blindingly bright, giant silver disc lay half buried to one side of the clearing.

"What... Is this early? When am I? What am I saying, am I going mad again?"

"Stat el e is!" a voice yelled. The Trickster looked wildly around. A man came out of a door in the silver disc. He was wearing fine-woven leggings and a strange puffy jacket. His boots were complicated-looking and clean white, and his hair was cut very short. His face was subtly wrong somehow, the brow too narrow and the chin too strong. His eyes were a clear blue, like the sky. His hands were large, and were holding a silver thing that the Trickster couldn't place.

"Uh..."

"Stat!" There was a noise like an arrow ricocheting down a well, and heat blossomed over the Trickster's body. She took a startled step backwards, then collapsed, unconscious.