The Warrior referee starts the match and immediately both of us move. Unlike previous opponents, staying at range isn’t going to help us here. Grubs-in-the-dirt has proven that she has at least two ranged options available to her: the blowpipe and her clouds of choking gas. She has daggers too, as far as I know, though I haven’t seen any evidence in the fights so far.

However, we know she’s still injured from the previous fight and her physical stats are bound to be low – she’s a Pathwalker after all.

I hear the whistle of something flying past me and then a soft whoosh of air. Jinking sideways, I chance a glance over my shoulder. Ranged attack number one: noxious cloud. Why she decided to throw it when I’m moving, I don’t know: the cloud stays static.

There’s another whoosh, then another. Abruptly, I realise her strategy: to block off view of herself, perhaps to fill the whole area with gas so that our advantages are taken away.

Bringing flame mana to my fingertips, I flick sparks at the closest gas cloud. Like the previous cloud, it goes up with a whoomph. Unlike the other cloud, however, we’re not trapped in it. Yet. I grin.

Bastet, keep out of the clouds, but light them up with your fire breath.

She obeys and soon the area is clear of all the little patches of gas that the herbalist has been working on sowing everywhere. While Bastet’s doing that, I take advantage of the generally chaotic sight-lines to drop into Fade.

Moving to the edge of the ring, I step slowly towards the herbalist. She looks stressed and angry – or is that fear I see? Pulling out ranged option number two, the blowpipe, she raises it to her lips. Wariness flickers through me.

Bastet, darts incoming. Keep clear. I hope that the barding over her is enough to shield against wooden darts, but I’m not certain. It hasn’t been much use against the enhanced blows of the warriors. I don’t know whether there’s any magic helping them fly faster or be sharper than wooden darts should be in this situation too.

Unfortunately – for the herbalist – her aim isn’t good enough to effectively use her preferred weapon. Perhaps she’s even seeing double from the concussion, or her vision is blurry. I don’t know. Either way, it works out for us.

However, the herbalist isn’t stupid. Not only does she realise that she can’t hit the raptorcat, but that I’ve apparently disappeared. She clearly makes the connection that I must be in stealth and creeping up on her as she reaches for a pouch at her waist and starts throwing something around her.

It creates a kind of bluish mist which only rises to knee level, and doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on me. What it does, though, is stick to my boots and armour like blue paint. I shed and replace the outer layers of my armour and boots as quickly as I can, but she spots me and throws something else at me.

I try to avoid the powder, but it’s spread widely enough that I can’t. Even though I instinctively close my eyes, it leaves a residue around my eyes that makes them sting and burn.

Shedding the outer layer of skin around my eyes helps, but I probably need to refresh the liquid around my eyeballs – something I don’t feel able to do in the middle of a fight.

Her focus on me, the herbalist has lost track of Bastet – that’s something which she soon comes to regret. The raptorcat, using her own version of stealth, leaps at the herbalist. Grubs-in-the-dirt seems to sense something and turns, but not in time to do anything about the leaping predator.

Bastet’s weight bears her to the ground and sharp teeth around her throat deter her from doing anything about it. I’m aware that though she’s down, she’s not necessarily finished, for all her words earlier about how Grower should have conceded. In her position she could rake Bastet’s eyes or stab her with something like she did Grower.

To try to prevent that from happening, I meet her eyes.

“Dominate.”

The usual greyed-out world appears around me, the figure of the herbalist facing me on the other side. Once again, though the pressure against me is unmatched by any of the other Pathwalkers, it’s still not enough to keep me at bay. Frankly, anything feels weak compared to what I experienced with Kalanthia.

I push forwards, shoving my way against the jelly that stands before me. Unlike some of her sisters, Grubs-in-the-dirt doesn’t actively fight against me. Nor is she full of the anger that I’m used to in these sorts of battles. Instead, as I get closer to her, she feels…intrigued.

So this is where you spoke to Runs-with-the-river when he decided to turn against his village? she asks curiously.

“It is,” I answer. “Though I would argue that he merely decided to serve his village in a different way.” She seems to ignore my qualification.

And where Weaver and Grower gave up their animosity and became your creatures?

“That’s the one,” I agree.

And, I guess, where you expect me to do the same.

“That or die,” I acknowledge, still feeling a bit awkward at the necessity of presenting such a stark choice. Not because I feel it’s unjustified, but because it’s all too obvious coercion.

I see. She falls silent. I keep moving forward, having to actually use some force to push through the final steps to reach a point where I could easily touch her and trigger the Bond. Still, I pause, crossing my arms and looking at her. She needs to make a choice; I won’t choose for her.

The silence drags on. Though I’m so close to her, her emotions are muted enough that it takes me a bit of difficulty to work out what she’s feeling. The task is made harder by how her emotions are flickering so quickly that I’m sometimes unable to identify what she’s feeling until it’s already changed. All I gather is that her thoughts are racing faster than anyone else’s in a battle like this.

Tell me about the chain I feel hovering around me, she says finally, her tone more commanding than I would have expected from one in her position.

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I eye her, trying to make it clear in my silence that she doesn’t get to demand things. Not here, not now.

Please? she adds finally, her emotions full of something clearly identifiable this time: exasperation. Regret flickers through me – that was petty of me, wasn’t it? Perhaps I have more to work through than I thought.

We’ve been getting on surprisingly well – the herbalist is a surprisingly reasonable creature who has argued in our favour multiple times. I don’t pretend, even to myself, that her motivations are to help me – it’s clear that she is solely motivated by a desire to do right by her village. However, that she seems to be somewhat convinced that supporting me is the way to go about that is an achievement in itself. She’s clearly respected by almost all the other samuran – as their healer, that’s not really surprising. I shouldn’t risk that by being petty.

At the same time, I can’t help the memories of Lathani’s words last night from intruding into my mind. How she talked about this samuran’s stone-cold reaction to her fear and pleas, how the herbalist had hurt her as badly as the shaman did. How Lathani wants her to be punished in some way, if my nunda is not able to take her revenge by killing the herbalist outright. But being petty will only offer me a brief satisfaction, and I’m not the one she hurt. It won’t offer Lathani any kind of closure or healing.

I sigh, then unfold my arms and give the speech which I’ve given several times before, though in different words each time. The one about working together; working for the benefit of the group. When I’m done, the herbalist looks thoughtful.

Do you intend to offer one of these ‘Bonds’ to all of the village?

Now that’s a question which no one else has asked.

“Not the same one as I’m offering to you,” I tell her honestly. “This one is stricter, more binding. I will offer this to all of the Evolved. Have, in fact, already offered it to all of the Pathwalkers I’ve met in battle, though only one of the Warriors.”

The herbalist’s eyes widen and her emotions flicker with sudden realisation.

So that’s why Wood-shaper was being so subdued.

I shrug.

“Probably. Anyway, the rest of the village may be offered a different kind of Bond when this whole ranking challenge is complete. Or maybe none at all. I’ll have to see.”

I see, the samuran says again, thoughtfully. And what of others of our kind from other villages?

“What about them?”

Do you intend to offer them your Bonds? To conquer them as you attempt with us?

I start shaking my head immediately.

“I have no real desire to be a conqueror,” I tell her. Her aura expresses doubt, so I shove my sincerity at her. “I’ve told you why I’m here.”

Yes, the cub, I remember, Grubs-in-the-dirt answers quickly. And now we’re talking about it…I sense a certain amount of…hostility which feels like it is directed at me specifically. She eyes me warily – I’m not surprised since that very hostility is growing in my own aura at the topic of discussion. I was able to push it away temporarily while talking about more neutral things, but now it’s risen with full force.

Is it about what I did to the cub? she asks bluntly. I remember well how it pleaded with me to release it, to stop what I was doing.

“Then why didn’t you?!” I demand, my lips pulling back to bare my teeth as I shift forwards slightly into a more confrontational posture. A small voice reminds me that I need to keep calm, that the peace of this space requires me to keep my cool. But that small voice is largely washed away by the fury that rises within me. The memories of finding out about her kidnapping, that tense journey down into the valley, constantly worried that we were already too late, finding her and seeing the changes which had been wrought, her own worries about not being accepted by her mother because of how she’d been affected….

Because I believed that my village needed that. Needed the sacrifice to be prepared, trusted in Shaman to guide us, to guide me correctly.

“And she did so well with that, didn’t she?” I respond spitefully

I regret my actions now, the herbalist says abruptly. I did not know, then, how far Shaman was prepared to go. I did not realise how far I would let her go.

I eye the Pathwalker and feel my anger deflating like a balloon with a hole in it. There’s nothing in her aura to indicate falsehood. Instead, there’s just regret mingled with guilt and the touch of betrayal.

“Do you regret hurting Lathani so much?” I ask, needing to know.

The herbalist hesitates.

I…Shaman’s decision to capture her was wrong, she says firmly. We lost too many in the attempt, and then it’s clear that there would have been – have been – other consequences that Shaman either didn’t take into account or outright dismissed. Going down that pathway in the first place was a bad idea because of where it ended up, sacrificing some to protect the others.

“But you don’t regret hurting Lathani per se,” I conclude, a tired sense of anger going through me. The samuran just looks at me steadily.

My people are paramount for me. If hurting another species will keep them well and safe, then I will do so with no guilt.

I understand, even if I don’t like it. I suppose it’s not too dissimilar from people being willing to accept animal testing of new drugs – better that any bad effects are discovered on mice or rats or rabbits or whatever rather than on humans. Lathani, for all that she is dear to me, means nothing to the herbalist.

And isn’t that the approach I take too? When I hunt or send my Bound out to do the same, isn’t it a question of putting our needs above the needs of the creatures we kill? Isn’t that the law of the jungle? How can I justify taking revenge when I do exactly the same thing?

Is that likely to be a problem? the samuran in question asks hesitantly as the silence drags on. I consider the question carefully, then heave a sigh.

“I’m not going to torture you to make you feel how Lathani felt, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” I say as bluntly as she did earlier. “Not even if you choose to die rather than take the Bond. But if you do decide to accept it, then your first responsibility, alongside being the healer for the village, is going to be finding a way to heal the damage which you and the shaman did to Lathani.”

The Pathwalker mulls that over for a long moment.

As long as life-threatening situations among my people are given priority over non-life-threatening research, she bargains.

“That’s acceptable,” I agree – I would expect her to prioritise like that anyway.

Then I agree to your Bond, she says, lifting her chin slightly as the paralysis which holds her in place loosens slightly. I reach to touch her between the eyes. The irony of that same spot being her downfall in both recent battles does not escape us.

The world shatters around our frozen forms.