Two nights later Jeshin woke to the screams of dying soldiers and instantly came alive. Her blood pulsed with awareness, fear, and vibrating excitement. She could hear better, see better, think better than she had in weeks.

Jeshin leapt out of her hammock and risked cracking a window shutter to steal a glimpse of the battle outside.

It was the pitch black of a moonless midnight with cloud cover, the only light shed was from the red flames of torches and occasional flash of a combat spell. Red and green smears glinted against the darkness: raptor feathers and something large, green, and monstrous.

"What’s going on?" Jay asked. Their voice slurred with sleep and cracked with fear. They were losing it again.

"Help me get my armor on," Jeshin said, "You too, Gzoh. Hurry. I need to join Bristle clan, they will rout soon."

Seconds dragged on agonizingly as Jeshin threw her gambeson on and her roommates did up the ties while she equipped her scale armor. Jay tried to help her attach the string ties and leather straps binding the outer armor to the under armor, but their hands were shaking too much to fit the buckles.

"I’ll fit the straps," Jeshin ordered, "You tighten them. Hard as you can, you won’t hurt me."

Jay obeyed. Good. She slapped on her gorget and helmet. Armoring had taken thirty beats, which was acceptable.

"Stay indoors and on the floor," Jeshin ordered, "The enemy won’t risk breaching a wagon if there is still fighting going on outside."

Jeshin flashed Jay a wild grin before she threw herself into the teeth of peril.

And literal teeth as it turned out. A raptor tried to gouge her throat out only twenty hands away from the door. She punched it unconscious and continued on her way.

The armory wagon was overturned and smashed open, but her halberd was still there and still tied with enchanted string bindings. Jeshin pulled out the key and wound it around the lock, which immediately released its grasp on her weapon.

Oh how sweet it is to be reunited again, Jeshin thought, Let’s...

A savage blow slammed into her back and sent her flying a dozen hands forward. The fall scraped her face on the dirt, and Jeshin rolled to her feet as another blow shook the ground where she lay the moment before.

She turned to face the threat and leveled her halberd at the monstrous tree that stood between her and the caravan.

It had kept its leaves through fall and constantly leaked a vibrant green sap. Heads of snakes, badgers, wolves, and other forest creatures burst from its trunk and branches, hissing, howling, sniffing in the air, and screaming in pain and anger. It wielded one of its branches as a giant thorned club, writhing with snakes.

Jeshin faintly noticed that a thorn had broken off and lodged deep into the right side of her gorget. The wood had pierced straight through the mail, just above her clavicle, and split open the cloth padding on that side. The sharp point tickled her chin.

A finger width further left and you would be choking on your own blood right now, Jeshin thought, gleefully.

This promised to be a fun fight.

Jeshin briefly contemplated assuming a forward simple guard, using the spear point of her halberd to ward away the tree and prevent it from getting close enough to club her, but she quickly discarded that idea. Instead, she brought her halberd into a low reverse guard, perfect for punishing and axing a slow opponent. Poking the thing with a spearhead would do negligible damage, as evidenced by how much Bristle clan were struggling to fight off the trees with only those javelins of theirs.

The monster roared and lunged forward, slowly for an animal but impossibly quickly for a tree. It swung its cumbersome club at Jeshin in a horizontal sweep, which was a mistake. She danced back out of the way, then took a step forward and brought her halberd down right on the face of a snapping wolf.

The axehead cut straight through the wolf and lodged a few hands deeper into the main trunk. Sap exploded from the wound and the creatures around the area writhed in pain. A couple of snakes lunged at her. Jeshin ducked her head to dodge the one aiming for her face and ignored the others, their fangs could not pierce her armor.

She levered the halberd to widen the cut and free it for another chop, but before she could the monster stumbled forward into her guard and flailed its teeth ineffectually against her armor. She half handed the weapon and delivered another solid series of chops into its side. Less leverage, but more speed.

She almost severed the trunk entirely, but then it decided to interrupt her plans by falling on her. Jeshin tried to push the monster aside like she would a person, but the thing must have weighed five times as much as her, and a pair of deer horns messed with her footing. Shit.

Jeshin went down hard, but she managed to twist the halberd around and fall in such a way that the butt and axehead dug into the ground on either side of her, which braced the haft between her neck and the falling trunk.

The maneuver saved her life. The monster slammed into her braced halberd, and while the haft bounced brutally against her side the weight did not pop her ribs and break her spine into powder.

It did pin her to the ground, though, and a bear head wasted no time in mauling the shit out of the unarmored portion of her left leg between the skirt and greave.

Jeshin drew her dagger and slashed through a snake head that went for her face, then stabbed the bear until it stopped biting her. She wiggled out from under her weapon and backed off a distance.

The tree laboriously stood up again and moved towards her. She led it around for a bit, menacing it with her dagger, then broke off and grabbed her weapon.

The wounded tree was too slow to threaten her approach, so Jeshin ended the fight with a simple horizontal chop. The monster fell into two pieces and the writhing bits stopped writhing. She finally had some time to catch her breath and properly survey the battlefield.

It was, in the proper military parlance, a complete shitshow.

Sprites floated everywhere, more than Jeshin had ever seen in one place before. Each glowed with a faint light, and from their number Jeshin estimated that half of Bristle clan was dead, plus a line from Flioplume and a handful of civilians.

The battlefield within the circle of wagons was surprisingly well lit against the black forest, because a complete idiot had had the brilliant idea to fight the tree monsters with fire. Bristle clan had set five of the creatures ablaze before realizing their mistake.

The tactic killed a couple, sure, but the sparks cast from their enraged, flailing deaths spread the fire to twice as many wagons, which added a healthy dose of civilian chaos to the mix. The inhabitants of those wagons had to either abandon their homes and escape to another or risk their lives to fight the fire.

The raptor pen was broken, and while some of the beasts stood dutifully, many fled into the night. Others prowled the darkness in small packs of three or four, searching for unprotected flesh to devour.

The raptors were well trained and intelligent, so those must have been ensorcelled by something. Ugh. Jeshin’s nightmares had featured that particular discipline of magic quite often recently. It would be deeply satisfying to kill the culprit.

Overall, the situation was not as catastrophic as Jeshin had first feared. Complete surprise had worn off, and the defense was holding for now. Bristle clan had reorganized, corralled a large group of monsters, and driven them out of the circle and towards a small clearing to the north. Where the clan could, presumably, burn them without threatening the wagons.

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Jeshin was deeply impressed by the discipline displayed by the Ufriq. They kept up the fight and their coordination despite losing half their number, a feat no other force Jeshin knew of could even hope to match. For most forces even losing one of ten was a recipe for rout.

And those enchanted ribbons may have been useless against her, but the fluttering distractions they provided were proving their worth against the mindless trees.

Not the ensorcelled raptors, though. Every few beats another one would buck its rider and savage anything nearby before it could be calmed or hobbled.

The Ufriq were running low on mounts, and their progress had stalled. Jeshin needed to find the person controlling the raptors, and soon. She set off towards the most promising location at a fast jog.

Her enemy was likely in a concealed location near the fighting: a place where they could hide in the shadows and keep tabs on the bright front, picking and choosing the most damaging targets to disrupt with their magic.

Blood sloshed in her left boot with every step she took, and Jeshin debated whether to stop and staunch her bleeding. She decided that the wound was not overly dangerous, and if she did not stop the magic soon she would have much bigger problems to deal with.

Jeshin faked moving to support the front line, but then veered into the woods. Immediately, three separate raptor packs stopped prowling the caravan for loose civvies and sprinted straight for her. That was a mistake, the enemy had confirmed Jeshin’s suspicions.

She braced her back against a tree and halberd against the ground, and met each pack in turn with a leveled spear point. They paid no heed to the danger and did not coordinate or stall for time. Each pack just threw themselves at her in a spitting, clawing wave that broke against the rock of her stance.

She skewered three and bludgeoned the rest with the butt and hammer of her weapon. Raptor skin was tough, but their bones were fragile.

Jeshin retrieved a light spell formula from a belt pouch and slapped it onto her chest plate, then proceeded onwards past a dense thicket and into a small, dark clearing.

The brilliant red magelight revealed one creature she knew and one giant monster she did not. The creature was the demon of fear she had seen before, fully reformed and wearing the skin of a trembling young boy. It hid behind the hideous amalgam of trees, stone, and flesh like a child behind a mother’s skirts.

"That’s the one that hurt me!" The demon cried, "Kill her! Save me! I don’t want to be scared anymore."

Is it trying to play off your concern for others? Jeshin thought, Feed on your fears of the mistreatment of waifs? The topic has been on your mind a lot recently.

Demons really were obscene. Time to kill it.

PIC [https://scythiamarrow.org/archive/SplinterGuard/Art/SectionMarkerJeshin.png]

Jeshin rushed at the demon, who screamed a terrified, childish wail and hid behind a tangle of roots and viscera. She smashed her halberd’s axe head into the monster, cutting clean through a twitching organ and deep into the wood right above the demon’s head.

She swung again, and again, and managed to clear a decently sized opening. She thrust the point of her halberd through it, and scored a grazing hit.

The demon’s blood was black, and boiled into smoke as it poured down its cheek. It cowered in fear and grabbed at the haft of her weapon. Jeshin tried to wrench it free, but the demon was stronger than her. She needed leverage.

"Please, mommy," The demon whimpered, "I’m scared. You are hurting me. What did I do wrong? I’ll do better, I promise."

Jeshin’s composure broke, and she did not notice the grinding crunch of stone that heralded the sluggish monster entering the fight. It spat chunks of masonry at her, two hit her torso and one glanced off her helm. Her head rang with pain and the demon’s piteous meowls both.

The monster swung a pair of trees at her, and Jeshin dodged in close to get within its reach. She braced an armored foot against a wolf’s mouth and levered her halberd free from the demon’s grasp.

She stomped the wolf to break its jaw, then scrambled up a small wall to dodge a low, scything blow from the monster.

The wall stones trembled under her feet. They detached from the rest of the monster and dumped her to the ground. The detached stones shuddered and jumped across the forest floor back towards the main body, then regrouped into a core and tore a full tree out of the larger monster to use for itself.

Jeshin dodged another volley of masonry. One clipped her right vambrace.

Okay, so you can’t climb it to get to a sensitive spot, Jeshin thought, And look at that, it made even more new friends to dance with.

The large monster was very slow, but struck with more force than the smaller bodies. It was also much more intelligent, as it had created two creatures with clubs to slow her and one with a sling made of intestines to kill her.

The slinger slung a boulder at her, and Jeshin leapt to the side. She closed on the leftmost club wielder, putting its trunk between her and the slinger, and assumed the reverse low guard that had done so well against the other one.

The creature did not attack. It kept its distance and circled towards her left. She had to follow the motion to keep it between herself and the slinger, and after a dozen steps she bumped into a tree. It immediately swung its club at her.

Jeshin stepped behind the tree, letting it catch the blow, then closed and brought her axehead down on its trunk. Once, twice, and she was through. The monster collapsed to the ground, dead.

The slinger slung another boulder at her. She ducked behind the tree, but the stone smashed the plant into kindling and struck her left arm. Jeshin howled in pain.

"No! Mommy!" a child shouted, "Don’t die! Don’t leave me alone!"

Jeshin’s heart sank. She had always known that her job was dangerous. That she was reckless. But the things she wanted to live for were all in the future. Her plans, her ambitions. Nothing present, that she already had and wanted to keep.

But now she had a serious mission. She had Amber’s trust. She had Jay, sort of. If she died here, she would lose all of it. That terrified her.

"Finally," the demon cackled, "Even the toughest of humans is still mortal."

The lights went out. Sounds went away. Touch disappeared. Even the sense of her own body faded into a dull buzz, as if someone else was controlling it. All that was left was fear. A bone-deep terror that reached up from her stomach and gripped her heart in an icy claw.

The claw squeezed. Jeshin was dying. She smelled dust on the air, choked on it, she could not breathe.

Fucking move, Jeshin, Jeshin thought, It’s just an illusion. You aren’t dying. But that slinger is going to paste you if you don’t move. Right. Now.

She ran, straight forward. She tripped and sprawled onto the ground. She got to her feet and stumbled forward, then a faint impact caused her to fall again. But she was not dead, so the slinger must have missed.

Jeshin continued forward, and held her arms straight out in front of her. She still held her halberd, her arms moved with its familiar inertia, and after another few steps her left jerked to the side. She had hit something, it was right... There.

She swung the halberd repeatedly, chopping savagely at the enemy she could not sense. Eventually her swings met empty air, and she stumbled forward again.

The illusion shattered in a burst of pain. She was lying on the ground in the remains of a monster, another stood above her, its club raised for another strike. Her helmet was gone. A thorn jutted straight through her right cheek, and her mouth was filled with blood.

A young boy sat on her chest, holding her dagger.

"Oh well," it said, "Thanks for the snack, I guess. Bye, bye, mommy."

The demon drove the dagger towards her eye. Jeshin spat in its face and grabbed for its wrist. She managed to catch it with her right hand, her left refused to move, but she was not strong enough to redirect the blow to her side.

The demon chuckled and wiped its eyes with its right hand, the left pressed her dagger ever closer to her eye.

She kneed it in the crotch, which of course did nothing.

The dagger moved closer. The thing was enjoying this.

A cannon shot caved in the demon’s chest, shattered the tree, and smashed two layers of masonry on the main monster behind them both.

"Good shot, Cherie," A deep voice said, "We will need another for the core, get to reloading. Yumi, help Jeshin. Swidar, Pujunin, with me."

Thank Ishtar for the cruelty of demons, Jeshin prayed, And the stupidity of monsters.

Yumi helped Jeshin to her feet. She grabbed her halberd.

"What took you so long?" Jeshin groused, "This battle is visible for leagues, and has been for at least half an hour now. Were you really that far off your quarry’s trail?"

Yumi scowled.

"The Ufriq have magical protection. We chase down loose raptors to break through them." She answered.

Ah.

Jeshin looked down at the demon’s corpse. Its chest was a roiling mass of black shadow, and its face was still that of a young boy. Gods.

The demon opened its eyes and stood up as a tall, severe woman clad in silks.

"あなたは決して許されません", It said, "自分を償うために苦しみながら死になさい"

Yumi froze, and her eyes went blank. She trembled in Jeshin’s arms.

Jeshin stabbed the demon in the face. The illusion broke. It laughed.

"I cannot be killed when cast in shadow, piteous mortal," It gloated, "Darkness is the very source of fear."

Yumi blanched, but Jeshin gave her a shake and passed her a packet of silver. She calmly produced a small bottle, took a large swig, and poured the rest on her halberd.

"You should run," Jeshin said, conversationally, "I killed you before when I was unarmed, and I have proper equipment now.

"If you run, I will not attack. The only reason you posture instead of kill is because you want to lick the dregs of fear from this battle you lost. It’s a stupid move, as is listening to my distraction."

Yumi shot the demon with a silvered arrow. It screamed and fell to the ground, and Yumi pinned it there with four more quick shots to the limbs.

I should thank Ian the next time I meet him or Hyo, Jeshin thought, His tactic works surprisingly well.

Another cannon shot boomed through the clearing, and the monster fell dead. Its grotesque limbs spasmed thrice, then lay still.

Four adventurers, a mercenary, and paladin converged on the writhing demon.

It’s like the start of a bawdy joke, Jeshin thought, Oh wow, you have lost a lot of blood, your mind is wandering. You should fix that.

"Can you banish it?" Jeshin asked Pujunin, "And mind if I do the honors?"

"Yes, and by all means go ahead," Pujunin said, "You deserve it."

Jeshin stabbed her halberd through the demon’s chest, and Pujunin banished its sprite with a spear of divine light.

The battle ended.