“Nina, wake up!”

Her eyes snapped open, and she saw Kirk leaning over her bed and shaking her awake.

“Kirk?” She said sleepily. “What’s going on?”

“There are some people outside.”

Suddenly awake, Nina sat up.

“What people?”

Seeing that she was fully awake now, Kirk straightened up and stepped away from her bed.

“They’re friendly,” he said. “But they are in trouble. They’ve been chased. Come on outside. They need our help.”

“Chased by what? And who are those people?”

“We don’t have time for this right now, Nina,” Kirk said striding across the room to the exit. “We need to prepare to fight.”

By the time she got out of bed, he’d already reached the exit. Nina saw that the door to her house was open. They lived in different houses, but they had duplicate keys to each other’s homes just in case.

Nina got dressed and ran outside.

She saw two people standing near Kirk’s house across from hers. One of them was tall, young, and of Asian descent. The other was middle-aged, of a sturdy build, and with big hands that were clenched into fists. Kirk had just reached them. The two guys glanced in her direction, then they peered into the trees to the north of the houses. The moon was high in the sky, bathing the forest in silver light, but there were still plenty of pockets of darkness here and there. Kirk said something to them, and the big guy replied, but Nina didn’t quite make out the words. She trembled a little. It was a chilly night, but she wasn’t sure if her body shook from the cold or the fear she felt.

“Nina, come over here,” Kirk called.

She peered into the dark trees that surrounded their two houses but didn’t see anything scary. Still, it didn’t mean something dangerous wasn’t lurking somewhere in the darkness. Nina couldn’t believe she was so scared again. Ever since Kirk rescued her, she’d never experienced such intense fear. Until now. The maimed body of a naked man she and Kirk had stumbled across a few days ago came to her mind again. Whoever had done that was surely still somewhere out there.

Nina suddenly realized she was standing out in the open all alone, so he hastily approached Kirk and the other two persons he was with. The two of them looked at her with interest. Nina noticed that the Asian guy was very young, probably not much older than twenty. The other man was much older, probably in his fifties.

“Nina, this is Kwan,” Kirk said as he waved his hand at the Asian guy. “And this is Michael. Guys, this is Nina.”

“What the hell is happening here?” Nina asked, wanting to skip the pleasantries. It definitely wasn’t the right time for them.

“These guys woke me up a few minutes ago, pounding on my door,” Kirk explained. “As far as I understood, something was chasing them.”

“Not something,” Michael corrected. “Someone.”

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“Someone?” Nina asked as her heart skipped a beat.

“Yeah.”

Kirk once again turned his head to look in the direction the two guys had come from. Nina looked that way too, peering into the dark trees but couldn’t see any signs of danger.

“Do you know who it was?” Kirk asked, looking at the two guys again.

“Some men,” Michael replied. “Never met them before. They approached our campsite when I was fast asleep. Good thing Kwan wasn’t sleeping. He spotted them just in time and woke me up.”

“I was actually asleep too, but something awoke me,” Kwan put in. “Must’ve been the noise they were making while circling in on us.”

Kwan was speaking kind of funny, but she couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong with his voice, and she was too anxious right now to think about that.

“And then you ran?” Kirk asked.

“Yeah,” Michael replied. “There were too many of them against the two of us. We figured our best shot was to try and run away from them.”

“How many of them were there?”

“I dunno,” Michael said uncertainly as he glanced at Kwan. “A dozen maybe?”

“A dozen?” Nina asked, raising her voice in panic.

“I think even more than that,” Kwan said. “But it was hard to tell, being the middle of the night.”

“They fired after us as we ran from them,” Michael added.

“With what? Crossbows?” Kirk asked.

“Yeah,” Michael said.

“And some kinds of firearms as well,” Kwan added.

Kirk raised an eyebrow. “Firearms?”

“And magic too,” Michael said. “Them sonfabitches launched some kind of magical projectiles after us. I can’t believe we actually managed to get away from them unharmed.”

“The men fired crossbows and rifles at us,” Kwan pointed out. “But it was the woman who attacked us with magic.”

“The woman?” Nina asked in a surprised voice.

“Yeah,” Michael replied. “I noticed her too. And she seemed to be in charge of the men. She was some kind of sorceress or whatever. She was armed with a staff with some glowing sphere, which fired some magical shit at us. And when she moved, her feet didn’t even touch the ground.”

“What do you mean?” Nina asked the older man.

“She seemed to glide smoothly over the ground without actually touching it.”

“Like she was flying?”

“Yeah. Like she was flying.”

“You forgot to mention the most important detail,” Kwan put in as he smirked a little.

“What detail?” Nina asked, shifting her gaze at the younger guy.

“The woman was completely naked,” Kwan replied.

“Naked?”

“That’s what I said,” Kwan replied. “Not a thread of clothing on her.”

“That’s bizarre,” Kirk said, shaking his head.

Michael nodded. “And her body shimmered in the moonlight like it was oiled, you know?”

“So where are they now?” Nina asked as she looked around once again.

“We might’ve been able to give them the slip,” Michael said. “Though it’s hard to tell for sure. They might still be looking for us. When we burst into this clearing and saw your houses, we decided to ask for help.”

“If there’s a dozen or more of them, then we won’t stand a chance of defeating them,” Nina said as she glanced at the two newcomers to see what they were armed with. Kwan had a shortsword hanging at his hip. As for Michael, she first didn’t notice any weapons on him. Then she realized why he kept his hands clenched in fists—he wore quite heavy and nasty-looking knuckles on his hands.

“Nina’s right,” Kirk said. “We better hide in case they show up here.”

Nobody argued the point. The four of them hid in the thick bushes not far from the two houses. For the next hour, they kept hidden, carefully watching the two houses and the forest around them. All was quiet and not once did they spy any sign of the strangers that had been chasing Kwan and Michael.

At some point, they all agreed that their pursuers must have lost them, and it was safe to leave their hiding spot. By the time they emerged from the bushes, the sunlight had already begun to brighten the forest. Knowing that they wouldn’t be able to get any more sleep today, they entered Kirk’s house to get to know one another a little bit better.