Mari stared at the Yokun tied up before her.

She didn’t really know why she’d lied to Marc when she said she wanted to hit the hay. She was tired—that much was true. But a more…primitive compulsion had forced her to come here, into the tent they were using to hold their special little captive.

She fingered the stiletto she kept concealed under her shirt. But when he began to rouse, murmuring nothing of import, she hesitated.

No. I want to be the first thing he sees when he wakes up. Take your emotions out of it, Mari. He’s worth more to you alive.

When his slitted eyes opened and focused on her, he did not smile, and he did not sigh. For ten seconds that seemed to stretch on to eternity, they both just watched each other.

“Pale One,” he finally said.

She replied to him in as measured a tone as she could, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of her spite.

“Nagoya.”

“So, this is how my life shall end,” the Prince said with a crack of his neck. “I will admit that I did not expect death to come at your hands.”

“Death would be a blessing for you,” Mari replied coolly. “We both know you won’t get off that easy, Nagoya.”

“Ransom, then? How very human of you. Of course, you mean to haul me with you, alive, and take me to the Emperor of your people personally. It will mean nothing if I tell you that this notion is as suicidal as your entire little uprising is.”

“And yet we’re the ones who have a Prince tied up in chains now,” Mari smirked. “How does it feel to have the tables turned, Nagoya?”

He groaned wearily up at her, casting his eyes around the dimly lit tent, hearing the whooping sounds of the infidels probably getting drunk on his own supplies of rice wine.

“This is exactly what I expected of you,” he told her. “You, who have dragged the name of Yokun through the dirt ever since you arrived in our world, will now attain pleasure through torturing me—surrounding the son of a Patriarch with your pathetic Keji-Sai.”

“Trust me, I’d take a lot more pleasure in just ending your life now,” she said, showing him the blade that she could plunge between his eyes in little more than a second. “But you’ll be more useful as a hostage.”

“If you think bargaining with me will bring my father to the table of negotiations, you don’t know him very well.”

“Oh, I know him,” Mari replied with a sinister smile. “I know he’s already lost a brother in this war. I know the pain of losing another son might just tip him over the edge. Such a shame—losing face in the middle of a war.”

“A war we would have won if you had simply done your job. My uncle’s blood is on your hands.”

“Is that what made you come after me, dear Nagoya? The desire for vengeance?”

“I will have my vengeance, Pale One. In this life, or the next.”

Mari leveled the tip of the blade at his scaled throat, watching his eyes waver for just a second—just long enough so that she knew he was afraid.

“Go on, Prince,” she said. “Say something honorable again.”

“Mari.”

The tent flap had just been opened, and Marcus came striding in. What he saw did not surprise him, but he wasn’t going to wait around outside any longer.

“Mari,” he simply said. “It’s time to go.”

She didn’t look at him at first, so focused were her eyes on those of the trembling Prince, and the compulsion to simply drive the blade home was compounded by the smug grin of satisfaction that smeared itself across the lizardman’s face.

“Go on, woman,” he sneered. “Your man has spoken.”

Her teeth flared in the darkness of the tent. The blade inched closer, drawing blood from between the Yokun’s scales.

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“Mari!”

She withdrew as she felt Marcus’s hand grab her shoulder, shielding her face from his.

“I’ll assemble a team to keep hold of him,” she said. “Are the others ready to move?”

“…Yes,” was all Marcus said.

“Alright then. I’ll see you out there.”

She then left with little fanfare, walking more like a woman scorned than one who had just helped her people to a victory over a far more powerful foe. Marcus made to follow her but stopped as he lifted open the tent flap.

“I congratulate you on your victory, Shai-Alud,” the Prince said. “Well planned, and well executed. For a human.”

Marcus turned to see the smiling Prince, his eyes ever focused. Ever present.

“I am not naïve enough to believe that anything I say here could rid me of my incarceration,” the Prince continued. “But I am vain enough to admit that I take some solace in the fact that a man was the true architect of my defeat today. To be defeated by a human woman would add too much insult to my family name.”

“How about being defeated by your own hubris?” Marcus asked.

“A fair point. A chance to duel a fully grown Tauron specimen in its prime is one I have wished for since my youth. The irony of such a dream causing my defeat is not lost on me. But then, we are dreamers when we are young. Take the young lad your Tigran deceiver slew yesterday. He was just approaching his nineteenth year since hatching. He would have grown to be a fine warrior with time.”

“If you’re trying to make me regret what I did, you don’t know me very well,” Marcus replied, leaving the Prince to stew in his own spite.

“I would know your true name, Shai-Alud. From one commander to another, this is a basic courtesy, no?”

Marcus didn’t give it to him. He was through indulging madmen and despots. Whatever fool notions of honor compelled this Prince to know who he was, they could just die with him when the time came.

…

The jungles of the Arasaka were thick and musky once they passed by the burned-out trees and decimated grass. Mari and a few others had spent the morning gathering what supplies they could from the remains of the Piper’s Hill base camp before setting off with their refugees behind them, the sun on their backs, and hope in their hearts.

“We probably have enough rations for a few weeks at best,” Karliah informed him.

“Our first priority should be raiding the nearest plantations for supplies and extra manpower then,” Mari said, with Marcus nodding in tow. She’d been quite impressed by the plan, and Marcus could tell that the main reason for this was to satiate the need within her—the powerful need—to liberate more slaves to her cause.

The main force of little more than 300 encircled the refugees as they moved through the jungle. Yokun archers made up the rearguard, Tigran rounded the flanks, and Hialjia and the rest made up the vanguard—though the ‘Princess’ insisted Mari and Marcus remained behind her.

I have to figure out what that nickname’s all about.

The surly form of Prince Nagoya staggered along on their left flank, with a whole team devoted to keeping his shackled limbs in check.

“We’ll have to keep him under wraps,” Marvin said as they forged a river running through the fertile land beyond the Piper’s base.

“Hialjia watch him,” the Tauron huffed. “Hialjia take great pleasure in finishing off fancy dancing lizard.”

“What I wouldn’t give to see that,” Mari smirked. “When the time does come, Princess, the honor can be yours.”

Marcus’s mind was preoccupied. He barked a few commands to keep their formation tight and compact, making sure they paused whenever a new creature came into sight. He watched Mari’s eyes follow each new beast of these jungles and followed her lead. Some of them, she said, could be hunted safely—specifically the wolf-shaped creatures with reptilian heads and furrowed hides. She said these beasts were called ‘Shakesitan’—or ‘jungle-raptor.’

“Appropriate, right?” she said as a team of Yokun hunters felled an entire pack and began the process of skinning them as evening approached. “Nutritious and delicious.”

Marcus eyed the chunk of skinned, purple meat she handed him as they began setting up their camps for the night. “Eh, I’ll pass…”

His thoughts were conflicted—what else was new? On the one hand, these new species he was working with had the benefit of varied backgrounds and skills and had come together under a shared banner—the kind of unity he’d never managed to foster. Looking at them now, setting up tents and resting with their younglings, while their stalwart, seasoned cousins took turns keeping watch for nocturnal predators, he could understand why Mari had chosen to lead them.

But another part of him watched her with a growing sense of trepidation. As they lay together, snug in their own tent, he could feel her shaking, quivering body through the night, and on occasion woke beside her as she started and gave a shout, only to see nothing but shadows dancing on the walls.

“S-sorry, Marc…” she said. It was all she could say.

For his part, he just told her he understood. He shared more with her in the next few nights than he had with anyone else. He told her things he hadn’t even admitted to himself—that, on occasion, he’d felt a sense of pride to see the ratmen below triumph under his command. He said these things expecting some kind of horror from Mari, but instead, she gingerly touched his face, shone a smile on him, and told him that this was their world now. They didn’t have to be afraid of who they were anymore.

“I know you, Marc,” she said. “The man you are right now? The man you were so scared of ‘becoming’ down there? That’s the real you, babe. You just never knew it.”

He’d thought about those words on several nights they lay together in the weeks that followed. He’d thought about them when she told him elements of her own tale, especially the satisfaction she’d felt when she’d watched the old Yokun masters burn.

He didn’t know what scared him more: the fact that he was becoming numb to all this, or the fact that she seemed to have taken to it long before he ever had.

***

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