The prickly, cruel, bug-filled world startles me awake, pulling me from the nightmares that have been twisting within my mind all night long.

Something is wrong.

I’m not in my usual shelter, but that’s not it.

I grip at my sword, the new and shiny one that I took from that man. When I look over it carefully, I see a few chips along the blade’s edge and a few spots of rust here and there, but it’s still much better than the club I’ve been using.

I just wish it could be a little bit heavier, especially right now. Heavier things hit harder, and I’m about to need that for the coming battle.

The drizzling clouds above paint this ruined old home of mine in dull colours and soften the noises around me. Yet sounds still reach my ears, subtle disquieting tones that whisper from afar.

People.

I leave Gnome in the house, but he nuzzles his head against me worriedly. His big paws are covered in small cuts, and I can see flesh and bone through it all. I’ve pushed him far, and I’m not sure how much more he can take before the decay settles in and becomes too much of a burden.

Midnight sneaks in by my side, leaving ahead of me. I can see through her eyes, it’s a little fuzzy but I’m used to it by now.

She sneaks through shadows, just as we’ve practised before, approaching our prey while remaining unseen. She spots them just a little way away from the house where I’m hiding, a group of men and women of races all strange and familiar.

They bear weapons and are dressed just the same as the bandits that I killed here last night. The bandits whose bodies they now stand over, some crying over familiar faces, others peeling off scrap to take for themselves.

More bandits.

The leader barks and gathers them back together, standing guard over the corpses of their kin. They don’t stumble about like the bandits who now lie dead, and they have a mean look about them. Their swords, spears, and other pointy things are all held out and ready.

They’re much more dangerous.

I’ve also had enough of killing people. It’s different from hunting, there’s a queasiness in my guts when I look at the corpses of those I slain, and it makes my head spin like it’s been dunked in cold water.

My æther veins still burn from channelling as much as I did in the fighting. It’s not unbearable, but I’m not ready for another big fight. If I fight as I am now, I’ll get hurt even if I do win.

These dangerous bandits are already on guard, and I doubt that I can separate them away from the group or anything tricky like that. If I fight them, I’m fighting them while they’re ready for me, grouped up with their weapons and magic ready.

I should leave.

This isn’t even my home anymore, it’s theirs. The ashes of my memories have been trampled into the dirt, and I won’t find anything here. I have to move on.

Preparing to retreat into the forest so I can escape the bandits, I notice a small group with the bandits, but not with the bandits. A pair of young women and a young man stand amidst the group, their hands are tied up and they’re bruised and bleeding from a fight.

Though they remain quiet, I cannot but hear the cries for help in their desperate eyes. I remember being chased by bandits just like these, I remember my mother fighting to protect me. I remember the corpse that I’d stumbled across in the darkness.

I don’t like killing, but I don’t want to turn away again. I don’t want to watch people suffer again.

“Syr is sorry. Midnight. Gnome. And thank you,” I whisper, my hand is trembling as I lift my sword, but when I step out of the unstable house, my legs are steady beneath me.

I know what I have to do.

I won’t let these bandits hurt anyone else.

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They’re still in an uproar over their fallen comrades. I know that if I want to wait for weakness I’ll have to wait for days, a startled deer is the same. The only plan I have that might bring me victory is a simple forward charge, I’ll overwhelm them with numbers.

I walk slowly to Midnight’s side, my sword, giant in my hands, resting on my shoulder as I reach down to pet her head. The bandits are still checking the bodies of their fallen, but they notice me quickly and turn to address me.

“A survivor?” The leader asks, his brows knit as he looks between me and Midnight. “Where are the rest of you?”

“Dead.” I say, “You killed them, didn’t you? Stabbed them, just like you did to mom. You burned the village down and killed them all…”

“A girl your age didn’t do this alone, who else is with you?” He asks as the rest of them gather up for a fight. “How many?”

“Why did you kill them?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer, just tensing his jaw.

“Be careful, elves don’t age the same as us humans. She looks like she’s fourteen or fifteen, but she’s probably closer to thirty.” One of the bandits starts talking about my age for some reason.

“Yeah, but they’re still dumb and weak as most kids half their age,” The leader replies, “Don’t overestimate them, either.”

“He’s right,” one of the elvish bandits says with a long sigh. “She’s still young. I don’t think she did this.”

“You killed my family…” I say, but they’re already talking around me, looking around for other threats.

The truth is that I have one last thing that I can do here, I can push myself and summon more than just the one or two bandits as puppets. I realized a secret a long while ago, back in my first winter while fighting a great bear. When I burn out, and the æther channels inside me collapse, it isn’t the end of my fight. Not if I push a little harder.

At that point, I’m consumed by exhaustion and I’m quick to pass out, but if I focus hard, I can force out a lot more magic than I’m supposed to. Enough to turn all of these bandits into my companions, for maybe sixty seconds, probably less.

“Sorry Gnome. Thank you.” I whisper his name, calling upon him and lifting my sword high. He charges through the walls behind me and down the street at the gathered bandits.

They react quick, stabbing out with their spears and swords, one even throwing a ball of fire at him, but he doesn’t feel pain anymore and it doesn’t slow him. His momentum carries him on through the bandits, sending them tumbling to the ground.

In the mess of motion, the three hostages turn and run, their figures quickly lost in the messy fight and just as soon fade from mind.

The bandit with the fire magic chants words that I don’t recognise, his hand raising high as he throws a massive blanket of fire over the top of Gnome. It doesn’t hurt him, but he moves slower and slower as his muscles burn away to nothing.

Before he can die, I send him against the bandits that are regathering, and I summon the last of my æther. It floods through me in an overwhelming current that instantly sets my body aflame, the pressure of the flow keeping my channels open as I summon the dead.

The corpses all around rise at my command, their bodies, strung by my magic, take up weapons or simply claw at the bandits in their reach. I scream as my body burns, as I feel nothing but that endless fire tearing through every part of me.

More than a dozen new minions rise to my call and join the fight.

The living bandits are surprised; terrified, as I can see from two dozen different eyes, but even as quickly as they react, they cannot stop me. Flames burn my bodies, ice freezes my limbs, as swords cut, spears pierce, and hammers crush me.

I tear apart the living and raise them as my own. For every body I lose, I raise another in its place.

The tide runs in my favour, but the living are far stronger than the dead. My puppets are cut from their strings by the stronger foes we face. Flames cook the dead flesh, muscles reinforced by æther tear them apart, and others still use what they have to tear the dead back to their graves.

When I string up a corpse with my æther, I lose access to their magics. The corpses can sing and dance, they can fight as well as they did in life, and they do not hesitate under my command, not in the face of death and not when they’ve been run through or split in two, but they do not have magic.

Their strength is not as great as that of a living warrior, and I see that now as we fight. My greatest strength over the living is that I do not care about the wounds I receive, and I do not flinch from the pain, not while my veins burn with a frantic agony far worse.

My vision falters and my flesh burns as I run through fire and as æther ruins me from within. I focus my everything on those few living that remain, the strongest who tear down my puppet flesh with flames and swords. One of my bodies, the smallest and strongest, dives at a man twice my size, cutting him in two and summoning the top half to join me.

With my paws I tear out a human throat, wetting us with blood. With my fangs, I tear flesh from bone.

With swords I stab and slice, my spears thrust, and my knives sink into the living flesh of the few who remain.

I cut, I stab, I bite, I claw, I tear, I smash.

I kill, I kill, I kill, I kill.

In short pulses of light, I can see the world while my mind is pulled down toward darkness. My eyes seek prey in those moments of clarity, each flashing moment coinciding with my slowing heartbeat. I find only the dead, and my own eyes staring back.

“Thank you, Gnome. Goodbye.” I whisper, feeling the æther slip from me, and watching the titan fall into ash.

“Thank you, Midnight. Goodbye.” I whisper, as the fur that I pet, slips through my fingers. My friend. My companion.

Gone.

The fires of æther burn through us all. We all fall; all become ash, all except for the body of a small and bloody, elf girl that I see through fading vision.

All except for me.

In the darkness, I scream, and I cry, the burning of my body, mind, and soul threatening to make me, too, into ash.