Lyanna’s heart stopped as her blast cleaved mere atmosphere between Marcus and the mimic.

The monster had discerned the connection between her and her brother, and perfectly baited out her best attack, forcing her hand into wasting the blow or else sacrificing him.

So much mana, so much time gathering and refining it into a spell, all expended to leave nothing but a burnt scent on the air and a crackling afterglow on her staff.

She was sure that the creature would target Marcus in earnest after seeing how effective the tactic proved, yet to her relief and horror, the beast was hurtling towards her once more instead.

Others joined the fray too, but meeting it with swords and axes alone was folly.

Better than watching it tear apart her little brother at least.

Yet as she pushed her body to its limits to evade and parry the lethal strikes of her foe she felt a lingering doubt.

Would the creature really kill anyone?

It was undeniable after so many clashes; their quarry wasn’t aiming for their lives.

What sort of human-eating monster only wanted its prey alive, she wondered. The possibility that it preferred to eat meals still warm and screaming was chilling, yet seemed a poor justification. Its mere presence was horrendous, a suffocating aura making Lyanna’s skin burn with pure mana alone, yet her enemy showed no actual bloodlust at all.

She ducked another overly-presaged but appallingly-powerful kick, and thrust the jagged tip of her sword at the thing’s vulnerable nethers.

With the casual absurdity the beast had showed so often, it caught itself against thin air to push away from the strike. At the same time its arm and elbow knocked aside spear and sword blows from the adventurers to either side.

It was five on one, the creature was still clutching its punctured throat as it bled, and yet they were still losing.

She couldn’t understand where Jalera was.

The woman should have emerged right behind the mimic, after flushing it from the slowly dissipating the steam cloud. There had been a boom, and shaking of earth just before the mimic jumped out, and now there was no sign of her.

Less urgent questions were on her mind too. Such as where the mimic got the tatters of leather and fabric that might once have been clothes, and how and why it had emerged from a geyser, carrying a fallen harpy.

Lyanna should have been focusing on the fight, but too much didn’t add up.

Mimics would tell any lie that might help them deceive and ambush their victims, and this creature was certainly a perfect example of a monster in human guise. And yet, mimics shouldn’t have any reason to protect members of other species, where as their target was clearly more interested in fending them away from the dead or unconscious harpy than it was in actually doing them harm.

With its speed and power, so far beyond what they’d imagined, it could have killed any or all of them several times over by that point. Far from slaughtering its persecutors, the monster had tried everything short of surrendering to de-escalate the situation instead, even after being injured.

Naturally, with such abilities, it should have found it even easier to simply run away.

A cold knot of sick worry was tightening in Lyanna’s guts.

Their target was staying to protect the harpy, it was using magic and reason, and it didn’t want anyone to die.

Whatever they’d been hunting all that time, it wasn’t a mimic.

But that didn’t mean they could let it go. If they returned to Bellwood like this they really would face execution. Even if the thing they’d sacrificed so much to chase down wasn’t the legendary monster, it was still something, a creature with power and abilities beyond anything a human could have imagined. If they could subdue and recover it that wouldn’t be so very different from bagging the real thing. Even a mere corpse would be a treasure without price.

Perhaps it would be enough to wash out the stains of blood on Lyanna’s hands.

In the eyes of the King, that was.

~~~

The edge of my hand turned aside the remaining two-thirds of a broken sword, the metal searing my skin, but failing to penetrate.

Staff and sword both crackling with electricity, Lyanna thrust and parried with practiced precision, reading my every move with ease, but even if she could see what I was doing, Lyanna’s lightning-quick reactions were gone.

The others with her, Adrick, a fox-person and a few others humans, were little more than distractions. Most of them couldn’t cut me even if they hit, while those who could were still slow enough to read and evade; their feints were clumsy compared to those of Lyanna and their dodges too exaggerated.

Things could well have changed had the rest of the hunters joined the fray, but most were keeping their distance, likely waiting for Jalera.

After my improvised meteor kick she was still struggling to extract herself from a pile of rock. Until she returned only Lyanna could stand up to me. She seemed to have charged her whole body with electricity, as well as her weapons, and she was focusing simply on survival, but painful as each contact between us was, this was my best chance.

I slipped through sword and dagger blows and ignored outright the spraying darts and arrows, even as one of Dolm’s shots pierced my leg. I just had to tense the muscles against the pain to keep my footing. I would heal it, like I would my neck, back and so many other wounds, after I’d won.

Ducking under her staff my free hand thrust out, palm open, and caved in the metal at my foe’s abdomen.

Bloody flecks sprayed from her mouth as she bent double, but I assured myself that it was a survivable injury.

Oddly, many of her allies seemed unwilling to aid her, even now, but a few, like Adrick, the knife-user from before, were determined to stop me taking her down.

He jumped in, his hand already rising to his lips.

I grabbed Lyanna by the mail and threw her at him.

She flew sideways through the air like a doll.

The man’s nose broke horribly as a metal shoulder slammed into it. His handful of powder was scattered all over him, and the two of them were sent sprawling together, careening into the fox-boy behind them.

The fox stayed down and Adrick collapsed, moaning and clawing at the dust and blood adhering to his face, but Lyanna rolled up to one knee, already chanting a spell.

The others hung back.

I could see the fear in their eyes.

“Just stop this!” I demanded, advancing. “No-one has to die here, Lyanna!”

As I closed in on the incanting adventurer a bow-shot curved around her shoulder, flashing out like a striking snake. Another trick of Dolm’s.

It was effective – I caught it just inches from piercing my chest. Another throwing knife came from the other side, spinning in like a boomerang. I slapped it down and the blade smashed against the rocks underfoot.

That delay was all Lyanna needed; her spell complete, mana surged into her sword-arm and blade once more.

But there was no Jalera to help double-team me this time.

“You can’t win,” I insisted, “please… don’t make me hurt anyone. Anyone more.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“If you don’t want to fight then surrender!” she retorted. “If you aren’t a monster you should have no problem coming with us back to Bellwood!”

I glared at her, infuriated. She was more stubborn than even Aellope.

“What for? I’ve never even met anyone but you three before! Why are you even here? What did I ever do to any of you?!”

There were tears in my eyes as I screamed the last words. Essence came with them, and many of the hunters stepped or staggered back from me.

“Yer a monster, so that means there’s a reward for huntin’ you!” one of them declared, his voice tremulous, his thick fingers shaking around his warpick.

I stared at him, aghast.

“You’ve got to be joking! You came all this way, attacked, me, tried to murder me, all just… just for money?!”

He grimaced, a guilty look on his weathered face as he and his allies watched me crying and bleeding as I clutched my neck. Covered in wounds and arrows, my clothes in ruins and drenched in blood, I wasn’t a pretty sight.

“L-look it’s a ton of money! An’ prolly knighthoods, even lands and titles! They’ll sing songs ‘bout us!” he insisted, sweating as I glared up at him through my tears.

Unbelievable. These people were totally unbelievable.

They’d put me through so much, such terror and anguish, so much pain, and the sick sorry dread at the thought that I might kill someone in defending myself. And they hadn’t come to enact justice or take revenge, not even to slay a fearful enemy… no… they were doing it all for riches and fame.

I felt suddenly exhausted.

“I could just tear your damned head off, you know I could! So just… let us go. I mean, let me go. I’m not a monster, and I’m certainly not going to get captured and dissected as some sort of rare specimen! So… just turn around and… go back to wherever you all come from, so no-one has to die.”

“It’s not that simple,” Lyanna replied, her voice quavering.

Her arm, the one which held her sword, was unsteady, but essence was still flowing within her.

“Whatever you are, there’s no way you’re human, and I- we’ve come too far to stop now. You say no-one need die, but there are lives depending on this expedition… and hundreds more who died trying to get this far.”

I could hear the other hunters closing in around us, moving to fully encircle us both, but I didn’t much care. Only a few of them were really threats, and I could leave them behind easily if I had to.

I shook my head at the woman before me as I watched her tearing up as well, in the middle of trying to kill me.

“I didn’t make anyone chase after me,” I said.

That was a lie.

Once more I saw all those bodies. Heard those screams.

I had brought so much suffering and sorrow upon so many.

My vision wavered as fresh tears leaked out.

“I mean… whatever I’ve done…. Whoever I’ve hurt… I never did anything to you. Any of you. I… can’t just give up and die because you need a trophy to take back to whatever town you came from. Even I have… people waiting for me. People who need me. People who… care about me… even if they shouldn’t….”

I thought of Echo’s words to me in the depths. Of saving and being saved by Berenike, Nefret and Gastores. Of my uneasy friendship with Ivaldi. Of Chione’s hard-won respect and Agytha’s growing trust. Of studying and practicing with Shukra, Karlya and Arawn.

Of laying in Aellope’s hands and waking up to see the first sunrise to ever bring me true joy.

Lyanna was crying freely now too. I couldn’t quite understand why.

“We can’t go back without you,” she said, as if pleading.

“Then just go somewhere else,” I spat, as anger boiled up within me once more, “you think you’re the only one whose lost your home?! You think you’re the only one who’ll miss people?! I’m not some animal you can hunt down and drag back as a prize!”

“And what about everyone depending on us?!” one of the others demanded.

He was a young man, not one of those I’d met before, but he glared at me as if he’d like nothing better than to bury his spear in my chest.

“You can find a way to help people without… killing anyone….”

The bleeding at my throat had reduced to a trickle, yet I felt sicker than ever as I spoke the words. A small sob wracked me, then another. I choked down the third.

What right had I to make such an assertion?

I could see that they were no more convinced than I. It fell to me to prove those words.

“I could… help you.”

“What’s a monster good for, save dyin’?” asked a sneering woman who stood near the back.

‘Monsters’ didn’t use money after all. In that they were, if anything, more advanced than humans in this world. So much so that the Eyrie had a great chamber filled with useless piles of… coins….

“If you need money, to pay debts or support your families or something, I could help you get it. I know where there’s a huge trove of gold. More than you could ever carry!”

For the first time I saw the faces of the other hunters wavering. Some looked wholly unimpressed, but others were clearly interested. Why fight a ‘monster’ that could tear them limb from limb, when ‘it’ was offering them easy money instead?

It helped that all gathered around me were bedraggled, dirtied and tired. They had clearly had a long trip before reaching me, and the fight had drained them of stamina and essence.

Muttered discussions were starting up all about us, but Lyanna shook her head and took a half-step closer, raising her broken sword.

“Even if that was true, it’s too late for that.”

She was speaking as much to the crowd as to me.

“We’re… deserters. We fled the camp when the expedition was attacked.”

Dolm spoke up too at that. “She’s right. We go back with packs stuffed with gold and no mimic, they’d probably execute half of us, and take the gold too.”

“So don’t go back at all!” I insisted. “There’s more than one human country!”

Lyanna shook her head.

“Our friends and families are in Bellwood, our lives are there. People are counting on us to return… people who’ll die without us.”

Agonized and exasperated, I gave a choked groan.

“Can’t you just… send them a letter or something?! Tell them to come meet you in the next country over!”

“You got no idea what nobility’s like,” Dolm said, a grim, tired look on his face.

Lyanna looked between him and I, then spoke up again. “Even if we could believe you, that you have that kind of gold, and that you’ll just hand it over to us – which I don’t – a pouch of coins alone won’t heal the sick. If… if we don’t capture you then… our mother’s going to die.”

She trailed off, until the final words were no more than a whisper.

“Then… let me… let me heal her. Or the harpies. Or the naiads even. Even if my magic can’t help her, there are healers all over the Harpy Empire.”

“You’re a healer?!” Dolm asked, eyes bulging with incredulity.

“To an extent, but my friends are way better at it than I am.”

For the first time I could see light in Lyanna’s eyes. That indescribable quality of hope, rekindled. It was faint for now, but her look was a world away from the cold and grim stare she had worn until now.

“How can a monster heal anyone?” she asked.

“If you let me cast a spell quickly I can show you-”

“I don’t think so.”

My head jerked around at the cold, cruel voice, an awful premonition in my chest.

“Marcus!” Lyanna called out.

The young man had a dagger in one hand.

The other clutched a bundle of tattered feathers.

Berenike’s upper wing.

His dagger was pressed to her throat.

“No,” I whispered.

“Freeze!” he snapped, voice a few notes higher as he saw me starting to move towards him. “I dunno what you want with this harpy, but it’s dead if you move a single muscle!”

Fast as I might be, I wasn’t that fast.

Once more I felt my own helplessness, my impotence to actually protect anything or anyone who actually mattered. Yet again I could do nothing but obey.

“I can’t believe you, all of you!” he snarled, hands shaking.

The blade was perilously close to piercing the Berenike’s neck much as Lyanna’s had my own.

“You know you’re here to hunt a mimic, yet you’re actually listening to its lies and letting it talk you into letting it go! Idiots! It’s just saying whatever it can to save its own skin!”

“Marcus, stop,” Lyanna said, “it… she’s right. Whatever we’ve been hunting isn’t a mimic, but maybe she can-”

“Traitor!” the boy screamed.

“You’ve lost your mind, Lyanna! First you betray us all for that wretched fox, then you kill Bomond, and now this?! We have the mimic right here right now, we don’t need you anymore! We don’t need traitors! Mom doesn’t need you!”

He looked back to me, a cruel gleam in his eyes, fuelled by hate and anger.

“I don’t know what you want with it, but you try to escape, or try to fight back, and this bird of yours is dead.”

“Marcus, don’t do this,” Lyanna pled, “this won’t save mom. Even if we bring her back, we... we’re just going to be treated like criminals when they realize that she’s not a mimic.”

“No.”

The collected, emotionless voice behind me brought with it a second source of panic. Jalera was back, on her feet and ready to fight. I’d been so distracted I hadn’t noticed her approach at all.

“This is the only way. This creature is entirely unheard of and monstrous in power. It is not a mimic, but it will still be of great interest to the Guild and the King. When we bring in our quarry I shall use that achievement to clear each of us of any wrongdoing.”

“She’s right!” called the man with the pick, “can’t trust Lyanna anyway! I heard it all last night from ‘er own brother! She’s conspiring with Reynard!”

“Capture the monster and make it take us to the gold too!” a woman shouted.

Jalera gave no further input. She was chanting again as she strode forwards.

Lyanna advanced too, a tortured, miserable expression on her face as she readied her blade and staff, and spoke her own incantation. The others followed the lead of the two women.

There was a ghastly wail as Jalera’s gauntlets burst with tearing arcs of plasma.

My tears were still flowing, as thick and fast as the trickling blood from my neck, my mind racing, trying to conceive of some way out. Some gambit or deception to save Berenike and myself. I certainly wasn’t stupid enough to think that she’d be spared if I gave myself up – to these people she was nothing but a monster, a beast to slaughter. Judging from the languid movements of her chest as she breathed she might not live even without the knife at her throat. There would be no hope if didn’t treat her soon.

I’d been so close, so near to winning them over, but in a single moment everything had fallen apart.

Dolm’s opening shot came with a thrum of essence and bowstring. I swayed back to let it pass me by, but Lyanna and Jalera struck as my balance shifted.

They were both slower now, both drawing on dwindling pools of mana and reserves of strength – while I had ample experience fighting both, learning how they moved, feinted and struck.

I rocked backwards as the sword before me swept towards my neck. I kept the motion going, pushing with my legs too, deliberately starting to fall.

Bending my head over to look, upside-down, into her eyes, I saw the confusion on Jalera’s face as her plasma arc passed harmlessly through the air above me. She was forced to reel it back as it nearly struck Lyanna instead.

He shock was reasonable – throwing myself to the floor would make me near defenseless – but I caught myself before I landed, anchoring my hands in the air.

Experienced and skillful as they were, neither woman could have made or intuited a move like that.

With my legs freed of the need to support my weight my foot flicked up and knocked away the returning sword-stroke from Lyanna.

Flipping over in the air I aimed another kick at Jalera.

I’d seen their tricks, and I was getting used to their feints and tactics. Even two on one I could take them now, I knew it.

But the glint of metal by Berenike’s defenseless throat staid my blow.

Instead I used the extended leg as a foothold to leap away, soaring over both of my attackers to land a few paces back.

“Stop moving!” Marcus screamed, spittle flying. “I swear I’ll cut the bird’s jugular wide open if you don’t surrender!”

My glare was packed with all the hurt and hate he and his compatriots had inflicted upon me, and the boy flinched to meet my eye.

Particles of water spray and flecks of dirt and stone were blowing past as my essence overflowed along with my emotions.

“I’m not stupid!” I screamed, “If I give up and let them tear me apart and capture what’s left you’ll just cut her throat anyway! But if you kill Berenike I’ll have no reason left not to rip you to pieces with my bare hands!”

He took a step back at that, the dagger’s tip pushing harder, breaking the skin of the taller woman lying against his legs.

“Just try it!” he barked, shaking.

Jalera and Lyanna were coming again. So were others this time.

Projectiles struck from all around me to disrupt any attempt to escape upwards, and there were people blocking me in on all sides.

This was it.

I could either kill, and let Berenike be killed… or be carved up myself, and lose her anyway.

Sword radiant with an electric blue aura, Lyanna was the one who stepped forwards to strike me down.

It felt surreal to see her own grief as she thrust the jagged tip of her sword towards my chest.

I tensed, ready to dodge within the limited space, even if I didn’t dare fight back.

A scream cut through the air.

The young fox-boy was wrestling with Marcus, grabbing the dagger at Berenike’s throat with his hand!

Everyone stopped for moment, equally shocked.

I slipped to one side, but even my evasion had been slowed by this inexplicable turn of events. Lyanna’s attack glanced off my shoulder.

“Reynard!”

The voice was Lyanna. She was as stunned as anyone at the sight of the scuffle.

“Get off me, you animal scum!” Marcus screamed, punching the helm-less young man square in the face with his gauntleted hand.

There was a horrible crunch as Reynard’s nose broke under the impact and his lip burst, but he held on to Marcus’s other arm and his weapon.

“I canh leh you! I wonh! Noh again!” the fox shouted as he bled.

More blood darkened the blade as it split the leather of the boy’s own gauntlet, but still he held on, until at last Marcus swept his leg from under him, and sent him sprawling on his back.

“Stay down or you’re next!” he shrieked, eyes bloodshot.

“That will do.”

Berenike spoke the words as her stinger pushed between his helm and gorget, to sink into Marcus’s throat.

“All of you drop your weapons and dispel your magics, or this human brat gets a taste of harpy venom – and the rest of you get kicked to pieces by my friend there.”

She was still leaning against the boy, and I doubted she could have held herself up without his presence, but her eyes were focused and her voice was clear and sharp as her tail. It seemed unlikely any of the hunters actually spoke Cycloan, but a spear to the throat was a universal language.

The extra rush of essence I released on cue aided in translation.

Lyanna’s sword and staff clanged as they hit the rocks underfoot.

Dolm’s bow followed, and a moment later the others weapons were being thrown down too.

Finally the ear-splitting cracks and tweets of plasma faded, as did the glow.

Berenike smiled over at me.

“Looks like I put you in a tough spot again, Saf, I’m sorry.”

My sobs rendered me entirely incoherent as I tried to tell my friend that I was the sorry one.