Eugene moved up to walk beside me.

"Dude...why did you choose tracking?"

I looked from him to the mitoki leader twenty feet in front of us, then back. "Seems like it was pretty useful."

"Yes, but we're going to be fighting. You need fighting Skills if you want to make it through this whole journey. And didn't you have that Rare Skill to unlock?"

"Oh, yeah. Two of them, actually. Let me—"

"Hold up! Don't do that!" He raised both hands in alarm.

"What's wrong?!" Marcus demanded, hurrying his steps to pull even with us. His knuckles were white on his spear. The mitoki around us stiffened and a variety of weapons shifted.

"It's fine!" Eugene said, gesturing placatingly at everyone. "We're just talking about what to do with his Attunement."

"Athos, your Attunement is yours," Marcus said, looking at me with a worried expression. "You don't need to do what anyone else tells you."

"For fuck's sake, man! I'm not trying to fuck him over, I'm trying to help. He was about to go dump all his points unlocking a node."

"Um...no? I wasn't going to spend my points unlocking that node."

Eugene raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yup. Mr. FloatyBox wouldn't let me. He wanted 104,000 Attunement to unlock it and I've only got 100,000."

The mitoki leader tapped one clawed foot. "My understanding was that mortals were limited in their possession of time...?"

I cocked my head at him. "You mean you aren't?"

"Dey is spirits," Murray said. "Dey're wearin' bodies but dat's really more about how dey express dere domain, not about what dey are. Dey is refon noddies."

Everyone in the area stared at him in confusion.

"Uh...right, sorry. 'Refon' is short fah 'reference-frame one-directional'—dey experience da passage of time in a stream like mortals does, so dey don't remembah da future. 'Noddy' is short fah 'temporally non-deconvolving', which..." He trailed off, frowning and waving one hand vaguely. "Uh...well, dey don't age. Dat's de important part fah now, I guess."

"Our forest has not seen your kind before," the leader said. "What are you and how do you know so much of the mitoki?"

"I'm a translaytah imp. Name's Murray. Pleased ta meetcha." He made a florid twirling gesture with one stick-like arm, suggesting a dramatic bow. "Dis is all standahd stuff fah a translaytah imp. We gotta know somethin' about what limitations our clients is operatin' undah, which means knowin' somethin' about mortals, spirits, various kinds ah demons, whatevah." He breathed on his clawed fingers and buffed them on his chest. "Not sayin' dat I was da smahtest in my class or nuttin', but I ain't not sayin' it neither."

The mitoki leader frowned. "Your words twist like rope snakes with the colic. Come." He turned his back on us and marched onwards.

"Excuse me," I said, getting up and trotting along with him. "What's your name?"

He whirled on me and all the other mitoki hissed angrily.

"Woah, woah, woah!" Murray said, eyes wide and hands raised in placation. "Hang on, he didn't know what he was askin'! Be cool, be cool!" He turned to me. "Boss, ya don't ask a spirit dere name. Dere name allows ya to exoit control ovah dem. Asking is beyond rude. If ya want ta piss 'em off, just take a leak on 'em. It's nicer."

I hung my head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude."

The mitoki leader slowly relaxed, hands uncurling from their claws-out position. "It shall not be spoken of again. My cognomen is 'He Who Wards The Upraised Green'." He smiled very slightly. "You are a short-lived mortal, so you may call me Warden."

"Oh." I thought about that for a moment. "That's a nice name."

My human friends tensed up.

"Thank you, Athos," Warden said, nodding politely. He turned and started walking again without another word.

I got up and trotted alongside him, enjoying the feeling of walkies with a People again. It wasn't the same as going with Mom and Dad but, foreoffpaw, I didn't have to wear a leash either.

"So, you were saying where we were going...?" I prompted.

"I was not. We go to a communion tree."

"Oh." I waited for more explanation but it was not forthcoming. "What's a communion tree?"

He gave me a sidelong glance. "Are all mortals so curious?"

I considered that. "Nope. Just me."

He snorted. "We do not bring you to our home. We do not show you our center of power. The chief comes to you."

"That's nice of her."

"And if she doesn't like what you say then we kill you."

Marcus tensed up. Eugene didn't react visibly but I smelled the anger spiking off of him.

"I don't like that idea," I said.

Warden nodded without looking at me. "I'm sure you don't."

I thought about that for a minute. "You should know—" Murray cut off halfway through the translation and flapped around to be in front of me so that he could speak Dog. {is good speak? is big thing. is big big thing. is maybe fight now thing.}

{Say it.}

He took a deep breath and moved so that my head was between him and Warden. "You should know that my teeth are spiritual weapons and I'm quite capable of biting you in half if you try to hurt my friends. I've done it before."

Warden glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "You're welcome to try."

I walked another dozen steps, thinking about it.

"Athos," Marcus said quietly. "Let it go."

I shook my head. "Warden, do you know what a hazdahem is?"

"I do not." He stepped around the opposite side of a huge tree, forcing me to pause for a moment to meet back up. The interruption threw me off my metaphoric stride, although not as much as the fact that he didn't know the big scary monster I was trying to use to show off how tough I was.

"Well...they're powerful. And I killed one, so you shouldn't try to hurt my friends. Or else." I had a feeling I wasn't doing a very good job of this threat. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Murray was struggling not to laugh, although it didn't come through in his voice as he translated.

Warden kept his expression sober but the other mitoki were not subtle about their laughter. Eugene was choking a little bit. Marcus patted me comfortingly on the withers.

Harumph.

Fortunately, Warden stopped walking before things got any worse. "We are here," he said, gesturing to a tree that looked not much different to me than any other. At three feet thick it was larger than some and not as large as others. The trunk was covered in moss and, unlike several of the nearby trees, there were no creeper vines wound around it. There was an ant colony halfway up, built into a fork between the trunk and two huge branches.

Warden placed his hand on the trunk of the tree and bowed his head for a moment. Seconds later, another mitoki stepped out of the trunk. She was a few inches shorter than him and broader built, with purple paint on her claws and a necklace of flowers around her neck. Unlike the bare chainmail that he wore, hers had steel plates fastened vertically along the chest, sides, and back.

She looked around at us slowly.

"He Who Wards The Upraised Green, who are these people?"

Warden went to one knee, left palm on the ground and right palm atop his head. "Healer of Troubles, these are Athos, Eugene, Marcus, and Estelle. We found them in the woods near Third Star High Topped Flowering Aloeswood Dustbarked. They sought us out and seemed non-hostile. The angry one—Eugene—mentioned a gift exchange, although he did not bring gifts."

"Oi," Murray said, from his position atop my head. "I'm Murray and I'm a translaytah imp. When I tawk all fancy it's cuz I'm translaytin' fah dah boss heah. Ahem." His voice shifted into the friendly Midwestern accent that he used for me. "Hello! My name is Athos." I sat down so that I could wave my foreonpaw in human-style greeting. "These are my friends. It's very nice to meet you, Chief Healer of Troubles ma'am."

The mitoki chieftain studied me carefully and then looked at the others. "He Who Wards The Upraised Green, why are the bodies of these slavers not feeding the roots?"

"Hold on now!" I said, standing up as my three humans tensed up and gripped their weapons. "We aren't slavers!"

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The mitoki that surrounded us leaned forward, their spears pointed. Estelle and Marcus and Eugene shifted so they had their backs together, swords and spear raised.

I growled, head down and teeth showing. "Cut it out. Anyone takes a step towards my friends, I bite your chief in half."

Healer of Troubles cocked her head at me. "I am a spirit, Athos. Your teeth mean nothing to me, even were you capable of harming me here in my domain."

"Lady, I've killed demons with these teeth and I'm willing to bet you're more crunchable than they were. Now could we all please stop growling and fluffing at each other and talk like civilized people? We aren't slavers and I don't know why you would think we were."

"The slavers look precisely like those," Warden said, gesturing towards my friends. "Humans, I believe you are called?"

Marcus frowned. "Precisely like us?"

"Pro'lly not," Murray said. "You humans mostly look alike ta us. Yer aetheric signatures are fa crap, ya don't emote proper-like, and ya ain't got no horns or ridges or nuttin'. Always da same numbah o' arms and legs, never any tentacles, and yer pretty much all da same two or t'ree colors. No blues or poiples, no pink or nuttin' interestin'. I've never been sure why ya all in disguise all da time but it's yah own fault."

I snorted in amusement. "They aren't in disguise, Murray. This is what humans look like."

"Hah, good one, Boss...hang on, what? Yah serious? I been told dat but I assumed dey was jus' messin' wit me."

"No," Estelle said, not looking at Murray because she had both eyes on the mitoki. "This is what humans look like. Not a disguise."

"Huh. Waddya know. Ya poor t'ings."

"Ahem," I said, looking mostly at Healer of Troubles while trying to simultaneously watch the twenty or thirty mitoki who had somehow gathered in a ring around us. "Could we go back to the part where you don't threaten my friends, I don't kill your chief, and we all talk like reasonable people and figure out what to do about these slavers of yours? I'm not completely clear on this 'slavery' thing but I'm pretty sure I don't like it and if it means what I think it means then I would like to get your people out of it."

Healer of Troubles looked and me and her jaw tightened in what might have been a mitoki frown. "Why should I believe you?"

"I mean...would it hurt to talk about it? We could do that for a minute and then fight, if you really want. Talking sounds much nicer, don't you think?"

"You are very strange, Athos."

"Personally, I think you guys are the ones who are weird. I'd much rather be friends, maybe play Tug-of-War or Chase, but everyone else keeps wanting to fight. It's exhausting." I shrugged. "Now, how about you tell us about these slavers and why they're giving you trouble? Maybe we can rescue your friends."

Healer of Troubles didn't say anything or move as far as I could tell but suddenly all the other mitoki stepped back and lowered their weapons.

There was silence for several seconds as we all eyed each other and then Marcus, Estelle, and Eugene also relaxed.

"Just testing a theory here," Marcus said, a note of resignation in his voice. "Your slavers wouldn't happen to be..." He glanced down at the waystone glowing in his hand then pointed. "That way?"

"Indeed," Healer of Troubles replied. "How did you know?"

Marcus sighed. "Just a hunch. Why is it never simple?" A few of the mitoki shifted and he hastened to add, "Although we are definitely going that way and happy to deal with slavers." The energy of our audience changed and he hurried to add, "That's an idiom! It means get rid of them. Dispose of them."

"'Dispose of them'?" Healer of Troubles asked archly.

"Kill them."

She considered that. "And our companions?"

"If they're alive, we'll free them. If they're not...I don't know. What would you like us to do?"

"If they are not, there is nothing to be done. It would be good to know, one way or the other."

"We'd be glad to," Eugene said. "We'll go kill those bastards and then come back, either with your friends or with news." He nodded firmly. "In fact, we could even try to capture some of the slavers alive if you'd like to kill them yourselves?"

"That might not be feasible," Estelle said quickly. "We definitely can't promise that. Live capture is much harder and controlling prisoners while transporting them is more dangerous than that."

"But we could try," Eugene said, glaring at her.

"I have no need to murder the slavers," Healer of Troubles said. "Merely to know that they are gone and not able to prey upon my people. Bring me their heads."

"Happy to," Eugene said, bowing. "And I'd like to apologize for the existence of these people. Almost all humans agree that slavers are scum, but there's always a few bad apples."

"Bad apples?"

"People who do things they shouldn't," Estelle replied. "The expression is 'a few bad apples spoil the bunch,' meaning that humans as a whole are good but the few bad ones, like these slavers, give us a bad reputation."

Healer of Troubles clapped her jaws twice, softly. "Would it not be more sensible for it to mean that the existence of these slavers corrupts the spirit of humanity and turns all of you to evil?"

"Humans are not evil," I said firmly. "There are a few bad ones, sure. Most of them are good people who just want to play frisbee and give scritches and enjoy their lives. We don't even know for sure that these slavers are actually human. They might just look human."

Healer of Troubles seemed unconvinced.

"One way to find out," Marcus said. "Let's go find them." He hesitated. "Ma'am, it would be helpful if we could get a guide. Our stone"—he gestured towards it—"shows us the way to our destination, not to the slavers. I have a feeling they might be the same, just because the world seems to be like that, but there's no evidence for it."

"Of course. He Who Wards the Upraised Green shall accompany you." She gestured Warden towards us; he obediently stepped closer.

"Thank you," Marcus said, nodding respectfully.

"About how far is it?" Eugene asked.

She looked at Warden.

"A long day's walk at the speed you were traveling," he said. "Given how late it is now we will arrive near the heart of the night."

"We can't travel at night," Marcus said. "We'll need to camp once it gets fully dark. Eat, and sleep. If we don't then we won't be any good for fighting."

Disgruntled murmurs went through the crowd of mitoki.

"They are mortal," Healer of Troubles reminded them. "Weak in some ways, strong in others."

"Thank you, Your Grace," Eugene said. "I apologize if this is forward of me, but the mitoki are renowned in our culture as the greatest mage smiths in all of creation. Several of our greatest heroes built their legends on the backs of equipment made by your people. We are about to go fight for our lives and the freedom of your people, so if there's any assistance you could offer it would be gratefully appreciated."

She pursed her thin lips.

I could feel Marcus and Estelle's tension but Eugene remained calm, meeting Healer of Troubles's gaze calmly and with a polite smile.

"Give me your weapon," she said, holding out one hand. Eugene wordlessly drew his sword and passed it to her hilt-first.

She studied it carefully, running her claws delicately down its surface. After a few seconds she snorted. "How do you survive with such trash?"

She reversed the weapon and stabbed it into the ground up to the hilt. I didn't want to think about how strong she must have been to do that, but I definitely ramped up her threat assessment.

She dropped to one knee and curled her hand around the hilt, bowing her head in concentration. No one spoke and Marcus and Estelle were nearly holding their breath as we waited for a very stressful half a minute.

Finally, Healer of Troubles stood, drawing the blade out of the ground with no more resistance than water. The dirt fell away, leaving the blade pristine. She balanced it on her palms and held it out to Eugene, who took it reverently.

The shape of the blade was different, the taper slightly sharper and the grooves down the center a bit deeper and wider, more oval than they had been. The edges were much finer; I couldn't see them now, where before there had been a few glints here and there. More importantly, the steel was different. Brightly polished but with a whorled iridescent pattern throughout its surface that looked like oil on water.

Eugene studied the sword, then experimentally moved it through the air a few times. "It's lighter," he said.

"Yes. And sharper, and the steel is not that garbage you had before." She shook her head. "I fixed the carbon content, added some molybdenum and vanadium, and realigned the internal structure to eliminate flaws. Honestly, if that's the quality of your people's smithing then I have no idea how you have survived." She sniffed derisively. "It's obviously just a quick cleanup. Bring my people back and I would be willing to discuss actually making you something better." She gestured at Estelle and Marcus. "You two. Give me those almost certainly equally garbage weapons of yours."

o-o-o-o

"Why is it never easy?" Marcus muttered under his breath as we forced our way through emerald-lit bushes. Above us a bird shook out its feathers and coo-coo-ka-kow!ed for a mate.

"Clean living," Estelle replied, drawing a snort from Marcus.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"A guy we ran with when we were kids used to say that all the time," she explained. "It was his explanation for basically anything."

"Oh. Where is he now?"

She pushed a branch up enough that she didn't have to duck under it. "Probably dead."

"Oh! I'm so sorry."

"I'm not. He was a bastard."

Marcus rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment without breaking stride and then let go so he could pull some bushes aside for me to pass through.

"It doesn't even make sense," Eugene complained. "It's never easy because clean living? What sort of things was he using it for?"

"Why we were weaker than him, mostly," Marcus said.

"Huh." He stopped and raised one hand, fist clenched. We all froze and listened.

I raised my snoot and sniffed, wondering what Eugene was reacting to. Possibly those critters I'd been getting occasional sniffs of for the last ten minutes?

A flicker of movement from ahead and to the left caught my eye. Careful examination let me localize a small group of animals, eight or nine of them, each about the size of a Great Dane but heavier. Their legs were too long and too hairy for pigs but their bodies were similar—basically a box made out of muscle with inset eyes and brow ridges that curled out from the face. They were rooting in the ground with tusks long enough to make me nervous, tearing up big roots and scarfing them down. We were downwind from them and their scent was carrying. It wasn't the musk I'd been scenting. That had been rich and earthy while this was bitter, chomping at my snoot and aching my gums.

These were not herbivores. Nor prey animals.

"Is there an issue?" Warden asked.

"What are those?" I asked him.

He looked over. "Those? Pasba. Why?"

"They smell dangerous."

"Let's keep moving," Marcus said quietly. "If they're dangerous we don't need to mess with them."

"Makes sense to—"

I stopped midsentence as a snippet of ozone distracted me. I looked to my right and saw the foxfire glimmer on Eugene's skin that meant Fist of the Gods was charging up.

Marcus noticed at the same moment I did. "Eugene, what are you doing?" His voice was wound tight with nerves.

"What's it look like?"

Warden looked curiously from Eugene back to Marcus, reptilian head cocked in polite interest.

"It looks like you're being stupid is what it looks like. We're guests in these woods and the owners won't—"

THOOM!

Amid the sound of breaking heavens, a column of light smashed down from the sky directly over the not-pigs. It was a bright spike into my magically-enhanced eyeballs; I yelped in pain and squeezed them shut. Even with my eyes closed there was a wiggly purple bar running top to bottom in my vision. It was still there when I opened them again.

"For fuck's sake, Eugene!" Marcus shouted.

"What? I got almost 600 Attunement for that. Damn, we need to find some more of those guys." I had instinctively tried to look directly at him, which meant that Eugene was occluded by the slowly-fading wiggly purple colum, but his voice made it clear how delighted he was.

"Eugene, you stupid motherf—"

"They must be a lot tougher than wolves," I said, shaking my head and blinking repeatedly in hopes of fixing my eyes sooner. "I only got 240 for the wolves I killed on the trail when I first met you guys and there were twelve of them. If Eugene got 600 for eight of those guys that means they were each worth...um...eight into six, no, into sixty, that's seven and then bring down the six and it repeats...seventy-seven each! Right? Well, a little more."

"Yes," Estelle said. Her voice sounded like Dad's did when Cassie threw the frisbee so that it flew straight and level and right into his hands. "And yes, there's some left over. We'll get into remainders and fractions when we have a minute."

"Are fractions another math thing?" I asked, my stomach sinking. Math made my brain hurt sometimes, and I was still trying to get my head around why it was important. Well, it was important because Estelle and Marcus liked it when I did it right, but why was it important when they weren't around?

I guess it was useful to let me figure out how much Attunement the not-pigs were each worth, but was that really important and hey why did I smell smoke?

I moved my head around until I managed to get the unobstructed part of my vision onto where Eugene had barbecued the not-pigs. The attack had converted them directly into blackened husks and the forest was on fire.

"Um...is that good? It doesn't seem good."

Marcus cursed. "No, it's not good. Just like it's not good that Warden is suddenly gone. C'mon, let's get out of here before the mitoki show up to kill our asses."