My training took over as the demigod charged up the forest path at me.

Knife fights are bad. Never get in a knife fight. Even if you win—and I don’t care how good you are, it’s gonna be pyrrhic—the participation trophy is scarring and permanent muscle damage. That’s if you don’t bleed to death. Trust me: I’m a professional.

I squared up my stance, pulling my arms in so the knives would hit my bones instead of my veins. The kinetic mesh I was wearing would protect me from both of those outcomes, but not from the commander’s disapproval. I left my etheric knife sheathed, instead sticking to the throwing knife I’d borrowed. I had to give him a sporting chance somehow.

Trap Guy was disheveled and dirty. Underneath the knife bandoliers, the lack of a shirt made it obvious he was in great shape. He moved gracefully, too—that blessing of his had to be boosting his agility—but I didn’t know how good he was. Well, I’d find out in a moment.

He came low, swiping to put me on the defensive. The strike came fast, enough to challenge even my augmented reflexes. I hopped back a step.

“Quick fucker, aintcha.” My grin widened. “Gonna give me your name?”

“No.”

Trap Guy stabbed viciously at me with his right knife, keeping the left up on guard. His form was decent. I retreated, keeping my footwork light, then feinted a strike to buy some space. On his next attack I counterstruck, but rather than interrupting his momentum he just knocked my knife aside with his guard.

I barely ducked in time, the strike slicing through my shirt over the shoulder and skittering uselessly over the kinetic mesh underneath.

“Nice one!” I said, then sweep-kicked his legs out from under him.

He took the fall on his forearm—not even an ‘oof’—and swiped at me with the other hand. I’d been hoping to jump in and snag another knife off his bandolier, but he didn’t give me an opening. I resorted to a different strategy.

“Come on, man,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to have some kind of monologue?”

He pulled himself to his feet, staring at me without an expression. Then he stepped closer.

We circled slowly around each other, making the occasional jerky movement as if we were about to attack.

“Sure you don’t want to monologue?” I asked. “You guys all have a story about how special you are.”

Trap Guy didn’t respond. I stepped a little closer.

“You know,” I said, switching to my best caveman voice. “Grr. I am Trap Guy. The lord of tantrums empowered me with trap skills even—”

I lunged, interrupting myself. The sudden change-up didn’t catch Trap Guy off guard, though—he dodged to the side, trying to cut me with the arm left in range. I slapped his arm away with my free hand and swiped at his face. It was a cross-body strike; my aim was off. He dodged anyways, pivoting into a stab that I purposefully took in the abs. The moment the knife hit the kinetic mesh, it sucked the force straight out of his arm.

In the disorienting moment of contact, my knee snapped up and smashed him right in the wrist. He grunted in pain. The knife went flying; I snagged it out of the air while he backed up.

“Even though,” I continued in the caveman voice, “traps have nothing to do with oceans. Horcutio is a dumb god. Like me.”

Trap Guy flicked his wrist a couple times as if shaking the pain out, then yanked another knife from the bandolier. His eyes flicked to the hole in my shirt where he’d tried to gut me, then traced over my hands before returning to my face.

“We’ve both got two knives now,” I said tauntingly. “You’ve lost your edge.”

He briefly grimaced as comm feedback swamped the language centers of his brain—it was possible to get a reaction out of him. Then he raised both arms and threw.

I contemptuously slapped the first one aside, but wasn’t able to get my hand out of the way of the second one in time. I took a glancing cut across the side of my palm.

Trap Guy’s expression took on a look of satisfaction. He’d already replaced his knives. He charged at me again, slashing and stabbing, but this time going exclusively for my head.

“You clever little shit,” I said admiringly, knocking a blow aside. “Come on, this fight would be so much more fun if you monologued a bit.”

“No.”

“You’re no fun,” I grunted, ducking under his attacks and kicking him in the gut. He flew back into the bushes, twisting in midair and losing a knife when one arm impacted a tree. No sound of broken bones; demigods were just durable like that. “You’ve got this whole trap thing! What the hell is your deal? Am I just gonna be fighting silent weirdoes with annoying tricks this whole campaign?”

Trap Guy pulled himself upright, leaning against a tree and wheezing. He didn’t respond, just kept watching me with that blank expression. I scowled and chucked one of my knives at him. He grabbed it out of the air. Fair enough, I guess.

“You want me to monologue,” he said quietly. “So that you can have fun.”

Suddenly embarrassed, I avoided eye contact. “I mean, when you put it like that.”

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“This is our home,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s… I’m sorry, this is super awkward. I got carried away there. My name’s Danou.”

“Rodi,” said Trap Guy, with an ironic smile. “Will you kill me now?”

I sighed, tossing my other stolen knife from palm to palm. “Sorry, man. That’s the job. I can make a death to be proud of, if that helps.”

“How generous.” He bent down stiffly and retrieved the knife he hadn’t lost in the bushes.

“Best I can do,” I said, drawing my etheric knife and pointing it at him. “I am a warrior of the Old Ways—”

Rodi interrupted me. “Will you grant me a grave-boon?”

I stopped. “Like, a last request kinda thing?”

He nodded.

I watched him carefully.

“Sure,” I said eventually. “Within reason.”

“Do the hunting dogs in my jungle answer Varas’s call?” Rodi asked, his tone calm despite the language he was using.

“Yep,” I said, leaning against a tree.

“Then before you kill me, let me show you what they come to burn.”

I jabbed a knife over my shoulder. “The temple? We already hit that.”

“The port,” he said softly. “In Lord Horcutio’s name, I give my vow that I will lead you there unharmed, then answer your challenge alone.”

The oath caused a faint etheric ripple as his blessing responded to his invocation of the deity who granted it. The offer was genuine.

I considered him for a few moments, then sheathed my etheric knife. I tossed him the throwing knife in my other hand—not hard enough that he’d mistake it for an attack, though he’d managed to catch the last one anyway.

“Deal,” I said, turning around. “I’m gonna grab my sword, in case you thought you were tricking me into leaving it behind.”

Rodi didn’t respond. I had my comm highlight the weapon’s position in the underbrush, then trudged toward it.

I sighed. The collision with the tree branch had damaged it. The impact with Rodi’s divinely-reinforced tree branch had bent the blade a good forty degrees, rendering it useless as a sword and probably throwing off the force emitter too. One of the most advanced gadgets on the entire planet, and it lost a fight to a tree sprinkled with godstuff.

“Val, can you fix this?” I asked.

He snorted disdainfully. “I am one of the most accomplished paraphysics engineers ever to exist.”

I smirked. “That’s not a yes.”

“You realize I can’t just reward this insolence. Block with your arm next time.”

“You should have done that in the first place,” the commander noted. “The kinetic mesh would have protected you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, walking back to Rodi. “Those traps all had an unknown blessing. I was waiting for the greatest paraphysicist ever to tell me it was safe to do that.”

“You were asking for that, Val,” Markus laughed.

“Alright, I’m gonna focus,” I said. “Have fun with the perimeter. Shoot a giant squid for me.”

“We will not,” Aulof said affectionately. “Good luck.”

Rodi had waded out of the bushes and back onto the path. I showed him the sword.

“Nice hit,” I said. “Can’t even sheathe it.”

“Follow,” he replied.

He led me through the branching forest paths, occasionally indicating where traps waited if I stepped carelessly. The air was dense, humid, and full of organic smells that ranged from pleasant fragrance to rotting flesh. After my abortive attempts to get a conversation going all stalled out, we made the journey in silence. Despite the awkwardness, it was an altogether pleasant hike. The full moon shone through gaps in the trees. The trees were way more saturated than I was used to plant life being—it was still kind of weird how my eyes let me see in color at night.

Dawn was breaking as we completed the final stretch of the journey. Rosy pink light filtered through the morning mist, combining with the various colors of the jungle to create an environment whose beauty outstripped my ability to describe it. A smile came unbidden to my face.

That smile faded as we exited the trees and the voices of people became clear. Men and women shouting urgently to each other, the sounds of commotion as good were moved around. And yet all that undifferentiated noise wasn’t enough to mask the voices of children at play. Maybe a bit nervous—they wouldn’t have been unaffected by the mood of the community—but those were definitely children’s voices.

I came to a dead stop. Rodi stopped to, turning back to me.

“It’s just around this bend.” he said.

“This is—” I said. “I thought… this was supposed to be like, Tortuga.”

“Follow,” Rodi said.

Numbly, I followed.

We turned a corner. From up here, we could see it all—in excruciating detail, if you had cybernetic augments.

The bay, or lagoon or whatever you wanted to call it, sparkled in the brightest shades of blue and white. A dazzling white sandbar swept out into the ocean, mirroring the curve of a multicolored reef that stretched out toward the weatherbeaten wreck of some ship whose make I didn’t know.

At the end of those dual curves, several ships sat docked at a collection of wooden docks—looking way less institutional than the decks at, say, Lisaeli, but lovingly maintained. Those docks had heavy traffic both ways as the inhabitants of the port loaded up the ships with supplies and valuables.

Uphill from the docks, huts and lodges of all description were being emptied of people and resources. I could hear voices raised in anger, fear, and sadness from all over the port. For the first time since I’d had them, I tuned down the sensitivity on my ears.

Behind the port, they’d carved terraces into the slope. It was the growing season, but whatever crops had been there were hastily being hacked down and packed into sacks for shipping.

And there was a playground.

It was just an open area near the center of the village, just around the corner from a market square. But the children I could no longer hear were playing there, kicking a knotted rope ball around, trying to get it to hit a pole in the middle. More ropes hung from a pair of trees on one end of the playground, and another group children were climbing around on them.

“That’s rigging,” I breathed. “You guys made Baby’s First Ship Rigging.”

“For those too young to follow their mothers and fathers on the sea,” Rodi said. “You have been generous indeed, warrior of the Old Ways. By my vow, I will accept your challenge now.”

“You were all supposed to be pirates,” I whispered, not looking at him. “What will happen to them? The kids.”

“If the Lord of the Sea is kind, the tide will come before the hounds of Varas, and they will sail away.”

“You know what I mean.”

Rodi grunted. “If they survive—slavery. If they are lucky, nothing worse will befall them along the way.”

I closed my eyes. Just for a moment. The team was watching; a Velean did not show weakness.

“Then we make sure the tide comes,” I said, turning to Rodi. “No challenge. You live today.”

“Lilith,” Aulof said warningly.

Anger erupted in my chest, crystallizing instantly into spikes of deadly possibility.

“Every breath of what follows will make perfect tactical sense,” I snarled. “Rodi, which of those ships is the fastest?”

“The Horizon, most certainly,” said Rodi.

“Get the kids on it now,” I said. “Someone has to spread the word of what happened here.”

Rodi thought for a moment, and left without another word. Typical.

“Clever,” Val said. “For a moment, I was concern you would do something destructively empathetic.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “We’re doing tactical empathy today.”

“When the tide comes, the Thresher will come with it and block their escape,” said the commander. “How are you planning to get the Horizon out of the port?”

“Well,” I said. “That depends. Can I borrow the Ragnar?”

There was a long pause. I could almost hear the commander working all the angles.

Finally, he replied.

“ETA, five minutes.”