Morning dawns on me as something of a surprise. Not because it’s unexpected, I knew it was coming, it’s not like the sun would give up today of all days, but the night passed too quickly even though I only had a brief glimpse of sleep. The town never fully fell silent, all through the evening people have been crying, talking, drinking, and some just snoring.

It’s not like my shelter out in the wilds was completely silent either, but there was none of this.

Anna jolts awake as I start moving, her blanket flying over my head as she scrambles for the door.

“Anna?” I ask, gripping my blanket tight.

“Who… ah… that’s right. I remember now. You’re Syr, right?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding up at her.

“Oh, it wasn’t a dream,” she says, her head bobbing up and down as she rubs clean her sleepy eyes. “You eat meat, and you sleep in soft furs, and you hunt great big bears.”

“Yep,” I nod again.

Silence falls between us as she blinks away the last of her sleep and looks me up and down.

“Why are you different from the rest of the elves?” She huffs, pulling her blanket out of my hands and folding it up to place it on the side of the room.

“Because they choose to live differently from how I live?” I ask her, not quite sure for myself why they’re all different. “Syr is an elf, but… I ate meat because I didn’t have a choice. I hunted because I didn’t want to be the one who was hunted. If you don’t want to live like the other elves, then don’t.”

“It’s all just a choice…?” She mumbles looking around the room and shaking her head.

The voices outside grow louder with passion, but it’s too far for me to understand the meaning behind their shouting.

“Something is happening outside,” I jump to my feet and go to the door.

I need to get ahead of events. If the others are going to accept me, then I need to show them that I belong with them. I need to show them that I can be a good mercenary, which means I can’t just sit around waiting for others to figure everything out without me.

If I tried harder to get along with the wolven, maybe we could have been friends as well. But I was scared. I ran away from them. I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t show them that I was strong, that I belonged with their pack. I won’t make that mistake again.

I won’t be alone again.

My sword is with my pack. It’s easy to untie it, but it’s heavy and awkward to move around in this small room, and I have to be careful not to knock anything down or leave scratches on the walls.

Anna rushes after me, keeping an arm’s length between us, her eyes go wide as she sees what I’m doing.

“Are you going to fight?”

I nod.

She stares at me, clutching her hands tight before her and biting her lip hard enough that blood starts to drip down her chin.

Is something wrong?

“Can I take the hammer?” She finally asks, reaching out for the weapon tied to the side of my bag.

She can barely lift the thing and looks absolutely silly holding it out as far as she can like it’s going to bite her.

“I want to see. I want to choose,” she whispers, glancing at her parent’s room. I can’t hear them, but they’d probably be waking up soon. “My parents won’t let me see fighting, let alone be a part of it.”

She’s following me into battle! Is this what a friend is like? Unlike my other friends, she’s not dead. At least not yet. I should probably make sure she doesn’t die.

Standing tall to show her how to be brave, I heave my sword up and march out the door.

The villagers talk quietly among themselves, busying about and gathering everyone to the centre of the town where the louder people are shouting.

“There are too many ants,” A weary scout says with his wounded arm tended to by a young healer. “If we wait any longer, they’ll be overrun.”

“If there are as many as you say, we won’t be able to fight them off anyway,” A wizened old lady replies, shaking her head miserably. “Have the fastest runners go out to get the mercenaries. The rest of you, gather your weapons and meet at the front gate, we might be able to hold off the ants while we wait for the mercenaries to return.”

“Wait for them? They’re not here? They left without me?”

There are so many people, so, so many people. They turn and look at me as I march toward the old lady, but none of them steps in, they aren’t like the bandits.

I was nervous a moment ago, but now…

“What happened? Where are they?” I ask, standing straight and barking loud. I have to act like I deserve their attention, or they’ll just ignore me.

“Who’s that?”

“Another elf girl?”

“No, she was with the mercs.”

“It’s not the time to be intruding in adult business,” a man says stepping up to shush me along, but I glare him to a pause and push right past. Adeleya wouldn’t want me using my sword.

The elderly lady lets out a dry laugh at the sight of me, her red eyes prove the laughter as a lie.

“The men are gathering already. All we can do is to wait; I see no harm in a little talk.”

She waves out at the many villagers gathering weapons and rushing to the gates. Their weapons and repurposed tools are clutched tight in white knuckle grips, but none of them seem particularly strong or powerful.

“We’ve found two of our fellow villagers,” The elderly woman says to me, walking closer with a tight grip on her walking stick, “But the situation is unfortunate for them. They are stuck atop a tree and they’re being swarmed by ants.”

Ants.

Tall as my knee, black or brown, with thick armour covering them all over. They stand on six skinny legs, they’re a pain to kill, and there’s usually a bunch of them all out hunting together. That and they taste really bad. Worse than the smaller bugs even.

“We are waiting for the mercs to come back from scouting to go save them… but…”

“They went out scouting?”

“Yes, we are very thankful, but the timing…” She sighs.

They didn’t leave me behind. They just went out for a little while. That’s all.

That’s it.

They haven’t abandoned me. Not yet.

“Where are the survivors?” I ask, gripping my sword.

“Now, now, calm down,” she says as she pets me on the head. “Silly heroics will only get you hurt. There’s no need to-”

“Syr can save them,” I keep my head up and say it loud, but all the adults just look at me sadly. Even my best glare isn’t enough to get their respect. What is with these people?

Well, at least one has some sense enough to turn and run. My glare doesn’t usually have people running for the nearest exit, but it’s better than the attention the others are directing at me.

“Evelyn?!” The old lady shouts after her.

She’s running straight for the makeshift gates of the town, where the soldiers are gathering. She doesn’t glance back.

“Hey, wait!” A couple of the men marching out, try to grab her but they’re too slow and she squeezes by them.

“Crap!” The old lady swears, “Get her back here! I will not have both of my granddaughters dying today!”

During the uproar I unsheathe my blade and chase after the woman, hoping that she’ll take me in the right direction. If I can do this right, then Adeleya won’t leave me behind next time.

Also, I’d feel bad leaving someone to die when I can save them.

“Wait up!” The men cry out behind me. I dodge their hands, but they don’t give up, chasing after us.

“Where?!” I cry out to Evelyn, and she stumbles and nearly falls as she notices me running beside her.

“This way,” She replies after catching herself, turning her eyes ahead of us.

Her pace is slower than I’d like, but it’s better if I don’t exhaust myself before the fight, so I don’t complain. I glare at the horizon looking for these ants, and the people that we have to save.

In no time at all, we’ve passed the fields that the village tends to, and we rush out over the plains that extend beyond. Stony hills break up the flatlands, hiding these ants and possibly other monsters too.

I won’t get surprised.

The grass is short but doesn’t sink underfoot, making it easy to run faster still. The occasional tree rises between the hills, tall but gangly, their leaves are beginning to grow back in but are, as yet, barely noticeable from a distance.

“How far?” I ask.

“Just *puff* a little *wheeze* further.” She says, as her pace begins to slow.

I can’t fail here.

Leaving her behind, I flood my senses with æther, trying to make them better but I still feel no difference from before. I keep running, looking for a sign that something is wrong.

Just past the next hill, something strange is obscuring the land. A shifting line of brown shapes stands out from the deep green grass and the grey stone hills, the swarm of ants are crawling up and over each other rushing together in a single path. Nothing, not even the wolven, or the crimson-streaked bears, would fight them when they’re in a big group like this.

Sitting atop a tree amid the swarm is a young man and woman. They’re on a long branch and kicking at the ants that try to crawl over to them. The branch is shaking dangerously with their weight, the jostling movement only making things worse for them, but they haven’t the time to care as they keep striking out at the horde of ants reaching out for them.

Each time one falls to their kicking, it drops onto the bodies of those at the base of the tree, gets turned back onto its feet, and climbs the tree one more time. Not a single ant is dead as far as I can tell.

They’re just like I remember them.

“Mary!” Evelyn calls out between panting breaths as she catches up with me. The rusty shortsword in her hand is shaking as she stumbles toward the surging swarm of hungry insects.

The woman on the branch looks over at us, about to shout back when she’s distracted by another ant sneaking up on her. She boots it back down to the ground, heaving for breath and struggling to hold onto the branch.

“Stay here,” I tell Evelyn, lifting my sword high as I think.

“No, I need to-”

“I’ll get them,” I tell her, raising my voice loud so she’ll believe me. I don’t think I’ll be able to save a third person. I might not even be able to save the two.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

No choice. I’ll hit them as hard as I can and distract them.

I lower my sword behind me until it’s dragging on the ground and setting my feet into the soft dirt, I charge with as much strength and speed as I can gather. My sword cuts up the grass behind me, tossing clumps of dirt and slowing me down, but I push harder ahead. I rush by the swarm of insects, sweeping out just enough to cut into the outer layer of insects.

Their hard armour crunches under my sword, lifting it up even as I try to press it down into them. As I lose my speed, I step away from them and look to see what I’ve accomplished.

A good dozen ants squirm in unspoken pain, their bodies split open where not fully cut in half. The other thousand remain uncaring, apart from a few who decide to rush towards me instead.

I slash at them, cutting down those that come for me.

This isn’t enough.

I’m stupid and weak, and this isn’t going to be enough.

I rush through their mass, killing another dozen at the edges, but that doesn’t even slow the swarm. The two villagers in the tree above me are still surrounded by the countless ants that are crawling up to them.

I need to be better if I want to save them, but I don’t know what more I can do.

The massive branch cracks and the two villagers squeal as they dip lower, closer to the swarm of brown ants crowding under them.

I need to do something…

I won’t let them die.

I won’t be alone.

“I’m not after the ants, they’re just in the way. What I want is to save these two,” I say, trying to work my mind into action. “But how can I get them out of the way?”

Using my æther blessed strength, I could carry them, but it’d be awkward, and the ants would be right after me as soon as I slow down. If I throw them, they’ll get hurt in the tumble of landing and the ants might get them before I pull them out of here. It’d also be difficult to throw them without drowning in ants myself.

It would be impossible to just clear a path for them with the sword that I have, it’s difficult enough to kill a few ants at the edges of the massing horde.

Am I just too weak?

Is this too much for me?

Is this why they left me?

No. That’s not it. Adelaya promised that she wouldn’t just leave.

And I’m strong.

Strong enough to save people.

Strong enough to be a merc.

Still. It would be a lot easier if I could fly. If I was by myself, I could reinforce my legs, swing my sword down and fling myself up into the sky, but how would that help me now?

I could fly out and catch them, but we’d just end up covered in ants.

*Crack*

There’s no time to think, I sprint at the tree and the ants, swinging my sword down into the ground and leaping up into the sky. The branch snaps as I’m mid-flight, and the pair of villagers fall from the tree.

I strengthen my body as much as I can, reaching out for the two flailing villagers. They grab at me, but their grips are weak. My grip is stronger.

They jolt me from my flight, dragging me down into the pile of ants below. It should be certain death.

Twisting around and gathering my strength, I toss Mary at Evelyn. She screams as she flies, but I can’t wait to see if she makes it, I land on a few ants, stumbling down to my knees. I throw the young man with all my strength, just before the first ants crowd onto me.

Their pincers snap closed around my arms, and legs, and neck.

I don’t want to die.

I stand, pulling the massive bugs with me, and I run. The ants around me try to hold me down but I don’t let them slow me. I’m going to live, and to live, I need to make it out of here. Their grip is tight, but when I punch their eyes and faces, they let go of me.

Kicking those at my feet, I run faster and faster, stumbling and falling, then throwing more punches and kicks as they try to grab me again. Leaping away from them, I push through the last ones and finally, I’m free of them.

I keep kicking and crawling until I leave them behind. Their pincers have left bleeding gashes in my arms and legs, and one bad cut in my neck. I flood myself with æther, shaping it to heal me.

If I’d stayed for a second longer they’d have held me down and torn me apart.

I barely made it out.

Evelyn is ahead of me, she dropped her sword in favour of dragging the two villagers away, but even so, she’s not moving very fast.

The ants are slow, but they’re still faster than her.

“Evelyn,” Mary cries pulling the other girl into a tight embrace.

“Mary. I didn’t think I’d ever-”

“Keep running!” I yell, and they listen. Mary even struggles to her own feet and starts stumbling under her own strength as Evelyn pulls the young man along.

I want hugs too, but this isn’t the time!

The ants are already swarming toward us, getting faster every second. It’s a long way back to town, and I’m bleeding and sore in a dozen different places where the ants chomped down on me. Healing everything would leave me exhausted, and it’s dangerous to get exhausted.

This is going to be a long race.

I have to do something to get them to stop following us, or at least to slow them down.

“Why is it insects?” These ones aren’t crawling in my hair and all over my skin, but they’re still just awful.

I left my sword back there, just opposite the swarm. The blade is buried in the dirt and it’s standing tall above the brown swarm. I crouch, feeding even more æther into my aching legs, before bursting out and around the swarm with all the speed I can muster.

Strengthening magic helps, but it’s not speed magic, I can only go so fast.

My run follows a slight curve around the ant army before I run straight for my sword. I grab it by the hilt without slowing, my momentum tearing it out of the ground.

The ants are already catching up to the others, and I cannot spare time to whine over my scratches and aching muscles.

I cut through the outer ranks of ants as I focus on getting back to the survivors. When I catch up to the stumbling pair of women dragging the young man behind them, I turn back around and cut through the closest line of ants.

I carve clean through half a dozen bugs and throw just as many back, before pulling back a few steps and sweeping out again.

Their carapace is hard enough to blunt my attacks when I hit them wrong, but even then I toss them back into the ants behind them, slowing the group down. I push the horde back over and over again, but they just keep coming.

They spread out to try and get around me, but I can’t let that happen.

“Run faster!” I shout at the three idiots.

I can’t hold the ants back forever, but I have to win. I have to show everyone that I’m worth having around.

My æther veins burn hot with all the magic that I’m using to reinforce my body, but I redouble my efforts again.

Running the sword against the earth, I pincer the ants between my blade and the ground, but it’s still not enough, only killing half those I hit. I’m still holding them back, but far too few of them are dying.

My sword is getting heavier in my hands, and the pommel is slick with my own blood, I nearly lose my grip on it when an ant snaps out and grabs me. I can barely chop the ant’s head off and stumble back in time, the swarm quick to leap on me the moment I stop moving.

There are no corpses for me to summon as puppets or friends, the ones I can kill are lost in the mass of biting pincers.

I can’t win.

“They’re here!” Evelyn wheezes out a shout, but I can’t look away from the ants. “Over here!”

I swipe my sword back and forth, pushing the closest ants back just far enough for me to manage the next swing of my sword. Over and over again I push them back and the enemy front line grows not just thicker but wider, and I can’t keep up.

I’m losing control of them.

The brown ants swarm past me from both left and right, circling us and I can’t stop them.

I look again for the corpses of the ants that I’ve killed, but the few that I spot are too far damaged to be any use. The ants themselves are dicing the dead bodies apart, tearing them into pieces that can be carried, and passing them back along the trail of ants behind them.

I have no magic that could slay them, I can’t breathe fire like the mythical dragons, and I can’t just crush them underfoot like the long-dead giants. What can I do with nothing more than my own small body and this dented and dull-edged long sword?

Even if I push myself beyond my limits, all I can do is strengthen my body a little better for about a minute. That won’t help.

Without anything else, I can only slash into their ranks and try to keep us from getting overrun as they surround us.

“Over here!” Evelyn shouts, increasing her pace and giving us more time. I look back for half a moment and see the guards from town rushing towards us. They raise a cry in return, lifting axes and hoes as they rush to us.

“We’ll carry you!” The three fastest guards sweep up the villagers and race them out of the closing pincers, freeing me from my burdens. I chase after them, throwing aside the ants that try to grab me. If they slow me for even a moment, I’ll be buried in seconds and dead a minute after that.

“Get behind the battle line!” One of the guards calls back to me, “They’re just ahead, keep running.”

True to his desperate cries, the scrappy village warriors stand in a line, their weapons up and ready. Between their farm tools, makeshift spears, and rusty old swords I can see the figure of the elderly woman held in the arms of a strong young man. She’s the one who’d taken charge when I left.

“Formation ready!” She roars, sounding closer to a demon than a little old lady. The warriors stand in line, they split to let us pass before closing and forming a wall between us and the army of ants that follows us.

They can’t last long.

These people aren’t fighters.

They’re weak and I doubt that they’re hiding some powerful magic.

Regardless, they bravely stand and fight.

As I turn back and watch small, weak blasts of fire, balls of frost, and shocks of weak lightning fill the gaps between the jabs of spears and crushing hoes. The villagers are all weak separately, but together they hold back the mass of insects.

The demonic old woman cries out orders, leading the front lines in their slow retreat.

“Attack!” Their weapons slam into the ants.

“Backstep!” They move together, backing away five steps, before readying their weapons one more time.

“Ready, attack! You, elf girl! Can you keep fighting?!”

She’s talking to me? She needs me to fight?

I nod quickly.

“When I call ‘Backstep’ charge in the gap and scatter the ants’ frontline, understood?”

“Understood!” I shout back, lifting my sword on my shoulder and getting into position at one end of the formation.

“Backstep!”

The warriors step back, some struggling with ants that manage to cling to their arms or legs. Pained shouts prove that they don’t handle the bites as well as I can.

I sweep in through the gap, cutting through injured ants and shoving back others. I sweep along in the small gap, giving the warriors a better chance to recover, but turning two seconds to four doesn’t suddenly turn the fight to our favour.

The ants reach the warriors.

“Attack!” The old lady shouts.

The warriors lash out with whatever they have, from weak magics to metal tools and wooden spears. Dozens of ants die, and many more are pushed back.

“Backstep!” The warriors retreat, and I widen the gap for them.

Even as fast as we kill them, more find us. They even have enough spare ants to carry their dead back away from us.

They’re wearing us down.

“Elf, back!” The older lady calls for me. “Take a moment to heal, we’ll need you again in less than a minute.”

The break is more than I could’ve asked for.

While I’m still calming my breathing, a short, pale elf squeezes into the back of the retreating mass of villagers, a massive hammer in her hands. She hesitantly looks at the swarming ants and pales even further.

A man at the back notices her standing around and quickly bargains the hammer from her before he rushes to the front lines.

“Syr,” she cries out to me, pale and shivering. “You’re hurt. Is there anything I can do?”

“Do you know any magic?” I ask, resting my burning æther channels to give me a little more time on the front lines later. I watch the line and wait for the old lady to call me up to the front again.

“I can do a little healing,” Anna says clutching at her thick cloak. “And I can make my toys move on their own, I… I don’t think that helps…”

“My legs. I think the bones are cracked a little. I got bit.” It’s the sort of hurt that I got used to healing on my own. I’ve already been directing some of my æther flow to the healing process for the last while now, but it’s still not enough.

“I… I can do that!” She shouts, putting her hands on my legs and squeezing them tight as she casts her magic. Like a warm river, her æther flows over into my own body and while I can feel it running through me, it is not under my control. I haven’t felt this since… No. Now’s not the time.

Her healing is better than she said, and my legs stop hurting by the time she’s done. She might even be better than me. She tries to heal my other cuts and bruises, but I have to push her back.

The old lady is glancing back at me. They need me.

“Elf, to the front!” She shouts when I step closer.

“Understood!”

I swipe, I stomp, I crush, and I throw the ants back. I tear off an ant that has pincered itself to my arm and look around to find Anna healing warriors as she walks at the back of our group.

The fighting hurts. It’s exhausting, and we’re slowly wearing down, but the harder it gets the more important my own role in this fight becomes. The villagers aren’t looking at me like I’m a worthless kid anymore.

“They’re coming! The mercs are coming! Hold just a little longer!” The old lady shouts. With a happy cheer and a burst of newfound energy, we hold off the ant army.

Just a little longer.

Maybe Adeleya and the others can see what I’ve done. Maybe they’ll accept me as a proper member of their group.

I swipe through the ants, using up my strength and channelling æther until I’m on the verge of collapsing.

“Syr!?” Lothar shouts at the sight of me, he’s running ahead of Adeleya and the others, which is why he’s first to see me. He shakes his head and rubs his eyes while charging up to me. The others behind him hold a close protective group around Adeleya.

“Retreat!” Lothar orders, “We have it from here!”

“I hear you! Front line, Attack!” The old lady orders us, before following a moment later, “Retreat! Full Retreat.”

I hang behind the others, slicing at whatever ants are too fast for their own good and protecting the villagers as they jog away. Even after they’ve all escaped the ants, I stay close to Lothar, hoping to join in the fight beside him and the others.

Adeleya is rotating her staff above her head while chanting some long spell, Theo and Nadia stay close by her.

“Pull back!” Theo roars to me and Lothar.

I don’t think I’m doing anything bad, but I run back behind them anyway, ready to step in and kill any stray ants that get too close. Lothar takes my position at the front of the group, a staff swirling about in his hands as he leaves his sword sheathed at his hip.

Rather than killing the ants, he breaks their legs and tosses them about.

Should I step in again?

They don’t need me, but I want to join them. I don’t want to be worthless.

With my own pack of friends, I have no issue like this; I lead, and they follow.

In the earlier battle, I was given orders by the loud older lady who seemed to know that I was strong. She trusted me to fight as part of her pack. She saw me, and she valued me.

With the mercs, I stand behind them all. I just stand here watching.

Before I can make a decision, Adelya whirls her staff up into the air. With a final phrase and a snap of her wrist, Adeleya lowers her staff and everyone rushes behind her as if the final words of her chant are a call to retreat.

It begins as a howling wind, spinning the air around us into a frenzy and tunnelling around the ant army. What seems a mere spark ignites in an instant as a tremendous torrent of æther flows through it.

The spark becomes an inferno.

A hellish howl drowns out all else and waves of heat resonate from Adeleya’s staff. The swirling conflagration consumes everything before us, twisting and writhing in a serpentine flow. A living thing in shape and temperament, but in reality, it is death that has taken the form of a fiery serpent.

The ants are without screams as they cook, and as that howling wind quiets and the burning heat fades, the few ants still living turn away from us in retreat.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“What are your thoughts on that battle?” Theo asks, kneeling before me while Adeleya wraps her arms around me from behind. The battle is over, and we’re resting as we talk. Adeleya’s given me some sort of sweet juice to drink, and I’m feeling an awful lot better now, even my æther channels aren’t hurting as much.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Theo pauses, rubbing at his stubbled chin before slowly continuing, “I just want to hear your thoughts on it.”

“Syr was able to save those two but will do better next time. Swords aren’t good on ants. Syr needs to learn more from Adeleya.” I snuggle in closer to her.

That fire was awesome.

“You risked your life out there. You could have died. Would you still do it again?”

“If they got attacked by ants again, and got stuck up that tree again, they’d have to be pretty stupid. But, Syr would still do it again.”

“Why?”

I rock my head to the side. Isn’t it obvious? “Isn’t it what you all do?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Syr wants to be a part of it. Syr…” I shake my head, “I don’t want to be left behind next time.”

Adeleya hugs me tighter.

She’s warm. And she smells nice.

“We’ll find you a nice home,” she says, rubbing my back.