Terrisa squinted up at the night sky. Something jagged and darting blotted out the stars, like a moving rend in the fabric of night. Another bright spot shot out from the rend.

“Down!” Terrisa called. The three crouched. Another part of the road exploded into flame.

“I guess we’re getting a lesson in sorcery,” Horax said, his teeth gritted. “Where are they?”

“Flying,” Terrisa said, following the movement of the disappearing stars.

“Do you think it’s one of those creatures?” Sorrel said. “I didn’t see one with wings.”

Terrisa drew back her bow. “I can make this shot.”

“In the dark?” Horax said.

“Make for the forest,” Terrisa said. “Draw its fire. Go!”

She felt Sorrel’s lips on her cheek for the briefest of moments, and two sets of hurried footsteps making for the forest. Another bolt of fire shot out from the flying figure above. Terrisa exhaled and fired. A cry rang out as her arrow struck. The figure plummeted. As it drew close to the horizon, Terrisa lost sight of it. It landed somewhere distant to the road, because she only heard a faint thud as it struck. She whistled and saw the shapes of Horax and Sorrel returning.

“I saw,” Horax said. “Let’s make sure it’s dead.”

Terrisa stepped off the road into the grass and led the way to where she'd seen the winged creature fall. She skirted around a rock and found the tangled body of the sorcerer—wings and all. Horax crouched at its side and turned it over on its back, then brushed a stray wing away from its face. He drew in a quick breath.

“It’s...he’s just a man,” he said.

Terrisa and Sorrel looked over his shoulder. A man indeed. Tall and muscled, but his face in the dim light of the moon betrayed his young age. He could not have been any older than Terrisa and Horax. A set of horns protruded from his brows and curled around his head, ending in metal-capped points on either side of his jaw. The ears, framed by the curve of his horns, were pointed not unlike an elf’s, and pierced with rings and studs—several in each ear. His eyes were closed, but Terrisa wondered if his pupils were slitted, catlike, as the creature she’d shot in the eye at the farm. Terrisa’s arrow was embedded deep in his arm. Horax reached out curious fingers towards the sorcerer’s hair; it was textured like his own, like Terrisa’s, and both their mothers, but it was shaved close to the skull.

“He’s hot,” Horax whispered, and caressed his hairline between his horns.

Terrisa slapped Horax’s hand. “This is not the time! Check for breath.”

Horax made a little offended grunt, but held his hand in front of the sorcerer’s full lips. “He’s breathing.”

“Do we have to kill him?” Sorrel asked.

“He tried to kill us with fire,” Terrisa said.

Horax waved Terrisa and Sorrel back and stood up, drawing Stormcaller. He took the hilt in both hands, the tip of the blade hovering over the man’s neck. He drew a deep breath.

Then he exhaled and pulled his sword away.

“I can’t do it,” Horax said.

Sorrel breathed a sigh of relief, and Terrisa had to admit she felt the same way--so she spoke no word of protest.

Horax knelt and swung his rucksack down. “I’m going to bandage him. If I’m not going to kill him outright, I’m not going to let him bleed out either.”

Terrisa and Sorrel crouched beside the two. Terrisa’s arrow had already pierced fully through his arm, and she snapped it near the fletching and kept the arrowhead. She could reuse it.

Sorrel poured water from a hide skin over the wound to clear the blood away, and took out a needle and thread. She sewed first one side of his arm, then Terrisa held up the man’s arm so Sorrel could work on the other side. He stirred briefly, and the three would-be healers jumped back. But he didn’t awaken, and Horax took a jar of his mothers’ burn salve from his rucksack.

“This’ll probably work,” he muttered, and smeared some on either side of the wound before binding it up with strips of cloth.

The twins and Sorrel exchanged glances. Then without speaking, they carefully arranged the sorcerer in the grass so he could rest comfortably.

“Do you think he’ll try to kill us again when he wakes up?” Horax asked.

Terrisa folded some grass down into a makeshift pillow and laid the sorcerer’s head on it. “He won’t find us. We’ll be deep in the Red Forest by then. We won’t follow the road—I know the way through without it.”

“Even if he does try again,” Sorrel said quietly. “We couldn’t just kill him while he was wounded. We aren’t like that.”

Horax looked at Sorrel, then made eye contact with Terrisa and used thought-speech.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

She’s right. We did the right thing.

Terrisa replied in kind. I hope so. She stood up. “Let’s go.”

She led the way into the Red Forest.

As they vanished among the redwoods, the sorcerer startled awake. He snarled and scrambled up on his elbows, then fell back. He touched his arm and found not an arrow, or an open wound, but a bandage. He stared at it in the moonlight for almost a full minute. Then he sat up, resting his hand gingerly on his wounded arm. His eyes followed the trail of bent grass that led to his position, then away towards the forest of huge trees. He stood up and swayed, his head pounding and his arm throbbing. After a stumbling false start, he took off into the air and flew back the way he had come.

Troops marshalled in the burning village of Mycoton. Fangs and claws flashed in the firelight, snarls and shouts echoed. A sturdy canvas canopy had been erected in the town square to keep the ash off. A wiry man in well-fitted white leather armor spread out a diagram on the makeshift table before him. His ordinary light brown skin was in contrast with his unnaturally white, close-cropped curls, icy eyes, and twisted white horns sprouting from behind his ears. His slitted pupils adjusted to the flickering light of the burning buildings.

“Let’s have the report,” he said, his voice a steady middle octave.

A horned soldier bowed before him, his tail lashing nervously. “Sir Kalren--the suspected Deyspring twins have escaped into the mushroom tunnels. Most of the other townsfolk have also taken to the tunnels. We have captured but a few.”

Sir Kalren tapped his manicured nails on the diagram before him. “I trust you have good news to tell me, my timid sheep, or I will have no choice but to turn you to mutton.”

The soldier swallowed and scratched behind his ear with one claw. “We have captured one of the twins’ mothers. The descendent of Dame Deyspring herself.”

Kalren’s lips spread apart, revealing filed fangs that glinted in the firelight. “The matriarch. Perfect.”

“She is wounded, sir. We do not think she can last the night.”

“Then get the knitter,” Kalren said. “And see that she does.”

The soldier snapped off a salute and hurried out from under the tent. Kalren rolled his neck and sighed.

“Someone find me my wizard,” he said wearily.

A soldier standing guard outside the turn turned to look inside. “Sir? Did you say something?”

Sir Kalren turned, his face mild, then his expression morphed into rage and his iced eyes flashed. He darted forward and snatched up the soldier by the throat, lifting him off his feet.

“Listen when I’m speaking to you!” he screeched. “Where is that damnable wizard?”

The soldier struggled against Kalren’s grip, wheezing and blubbering. He extended a shaking claw and pointed behind Kalren. The white knight dropped the soldier and turned to see the winged sorcerer land behind him. In the light of the fires, it was clear that the wizard’s skin was a deep red.

“Ah! Garalore!” Sir Kalren said, his voice returned to its middling octave. “There you are.”

Garalore surreptitiously covered his bandaged arm with a hand and part of one wing. “Sir Kalren,” he said, his expression guarded. His eyes flicked to the gasping soldier on the ground, then back to Kalren’s face.

“Have you found anyone escaping from the mushroom caves?”

Garalore shifted his wing to cover his bandage a little more thoroughly. “Just a few.”

Sir Kalren stared at the wizard for several moments. “And?” he demanded.

“They’re dead,” Garalore said.

Kalren rubbed the base of his horns behind his ears. “I trust none of them were the Deyspring twins, since we have very specific orders to bring them to King Dorr alive.”

Garalore shrugged. “Just some villagers.”

A smile spread across Kalren’s face. “Good,” he said. “Then the twins must still be hiding in the caves. I have need of your unique powers to block any exits. We have the Deyspring matriarch. Once she has been knitted, we can use her as a guide through the caves, but we must make sure no one escapes those tunnels tonight.”

Garalore gave a curt nod and took off into the sky with a rush of smoky air.

The sorcerer flew back to the mushroom farm and landed just outside the petrified shroom house. He could hear the clatter of soldiers inside, ripping open doors and dumping out the contents of chests and cupboards. The slitted cave entrance the Deysprings had fled into was almost completely obscured with bodies. A dozen soldiers must have fallen to the Deyspring mother before she was wounded and taken prisoner. Garalore put his arms beneath the shoulders of one body and pulled the dead man off, laying him aside in the grass. Then another, and another he shifted, moving each to lay beside the next in the grass. He turned over a fourth man, with a cloven left horn, and almost dropped him as he stirred.

“Please,” the soldier groaned. “H-help me.”

Garalore rushed to lay the soldier out on the grass. The wetness of blood--lots of it--glinted dimly in the moonlight, soaking his entire abdomen from a sword slash. Garalore hesitantly laid a hand on the area and felt not the fabric of his tabard, or the sharp edges of torn chainmail, but the man’s open gut. He shuddered under the sorcerer’s touch and gasped for air.

“Knitter,” Garalore said, then louder. “I need the knitter!” He jumped to his feet. “You!” he said, pointing to a creature who had just exited the shroomhouse, holding an armload of items. “Get the knitter!”

The horned creature rolled his eyes and walked away.

Garalore crouched and took the dying soldier’s hand. His grip was feeble.

“Don’t leave me,” the man gasped, and coughed. Blood stained his pointed fangs and dribbled down his chin.

Garalore cupped the man’s hand between both of his. He couldn’t speak. The wounded soldier took a few shuddering gasps of breath, and then lay still. Garalore scrambled away from the body, his bloodied hands leaving a trail in the grass on either side of his hips. Leaping up, he threw down a spark in the cave entrance. It burst up into a roaring fire and licked the edges of the opening. Garalore looked at his hands, still bloodied, and bent down to wipe them in the grass, with little success. He felt something fall on his cheek and touched his stained fingers to it. A tear. He wiped it away, smearing his already red skin with the dead man’s blood.

The devilish soldiers inside the family home of Ametrine and Opal recoiled as Garalore entered. His black robes swirled around him as he strode through the kitchen to survey the scene. His black brows were heavy, his yellow eyes unforgiving as he viewed the rank and file laying waste to the neatly-kept home. They ducked their heads to escape his gaze. Without a word, he swept up the stairs and left them to their pillaging.

Garalore opened the first bedroom door upstairs. It had already been ransacked, but it was clear it belonged to the mothers; a single large bed stood against the center of the back wall, with matching end tables with unlit oil lamps. Women’s clothing was strewn around the floor from an open wardrobe against a side wall. Garalore closed the door.

The second room surely belonged to the fabled Deyspring twins. Two lackeys were upending a small chest of belongings onto one of the beds. They froze when Garalore’s shadow fell on them.

“Get out,” he said.

They scrambled to get past him without touching him, but one brushed his robes, and Garalore snarled. The soldier whimpered and bolted out the door.

Garalore shut the door behind him and surveyed the room. Several paintings decorated the walls, done on slices of tree trunks, fabric hangings, birch bark, canvas, and other mediums, and all signed with the shape of some kind of herb. The paintings depicted ordinary things--a painting of the shroomhouse he was standing in; a burning fire in a stove, with a pot cooking over it; and one of the family of four. Garalore moved to stand in front of it. The mothers stood, one tall and thin, one a medium height and fat, holding hands and smiling. The twins sat just below them, their faces and heavy bodies nearly identical, but the girl wore a yellow dress and the...boy? Garalore leaned forward. He was dressed as a young man, in a plain tunic, but the shadow of breasts had been tastefully painted. They were not as obvious as his sister’s, as his clothing definitely minimized them. So the man was transgender.

Garalore’s mind wandered back to a scant hour ago, just before he was shot out of the sky by the Deyspring girl. Her brother had on armor and no shirt beneath it, like he’d donned it hastily without putting a tunic or padding beneath.

“I can’t do it.”

The voice came to Garalore from within his own memory--the voice of the Deyspring man. Garalore realized he had been partially conscious while he lay in the grass, stunned from the fall. The man had elected not to kill him where he lay. Garalore touched his bandaged arm, gazing at the painted face of the young man who had spared his life. His eyes flickered to a caption at the base of the painting. Three women’s names were listed, then the fourth name had been smudged out and replaced in scrawled writing in a different hand: Horax. Garalore touched the name.

“Horax Deyspring.”

Garalore looked around the room and selected two items to take with him. Then he opened the shutters to the bedroom window and flew into the night.