Otter had learned how to fight this from the Dreamer. She knew how to break something’s will once it was influencing her own. But something in her brain just couldn’t quite remember, couldn’t quite pce it. Her whole brain seemed to fog over.

  There was something important going on. Something she had to do. But she couldn’t remember. Some part of her mind shuddered, like bars rattling at the zoo, an animal desperate to get out.

  But that couldn’t be her, could it? It was so peaceful here. Just lying on the ground, doing nothing. It wasn’t even happiness. It was just contentment, the ease of letting go of a difficult burden.

  She just wanted to close her eyes. For just a moment. Maybe more.

  The ground shook. Something thudded. And again. Ever closer.

  The sound didn’t matter. Nothing did. She just had to sleep. Just for a moment.

  “Get your stupid skank ass up!”

  A brief flicker. Otter’s eyes snapped open, looking to the source of the sound. Sami, her face pained, was looking down at her through a screen.

  “If you don’t get up, that stupid tree is going to kill you,” Sami said. “And if that happens I swear I will find your corpse and piss on your remains. I will never forgive you.”

  Sami? Never forgive her? Wasn’t Otter already in that position? But the words, the thought, got her mind churning, got it resisting.

  There was something she was supposed to do. The Dreamer had said…. Had said, all she had to do to overcome another’s Will, was to get angry. Yeah. That was it.

  But she just couldn’t bring herself to care. Couldn’t summon the energy to get angry.

  She gave Sami a weak smile. “I… I need you… to piss me off.”

  Ashborne was getting closer. Not too far now. His shadow loomed over her. She knew, the second he raised his fists, the three remaining ones, she was done for.

  “Cheesecake,” Sami said.

  “Not this again,” Otter grunted. But no, this was good. Sami really did know how to push her buttons.

  “No, we’re settling this, once and for all. Cheesecake. Is it cake, or is it pie?”

  “Cake. It’s… in the name.”

  “No. It’s a pie. It has a crust and filling. Just like a pie. That makes it a pie.” She said it with such an air of condescension, not even bothering to look at Otter. Just… so dismissive. Arrogant.

  Otter felt the irritation in her rise. “Your mom has a crust and filling, but that doesn’t make her pie.”

  “Ah, there we go, the cssic Mayumi crass remark. No logical argument, just, ‘Oh, some baker misnamed their creation, obviously it must be cake,’ followed by a mom joke. Cssic Mayumi.”

  “Suck a dick.”

  “Followed by crude remark. No arguments, no thoughts, only this.”

  “Well, maybe that’s what I like being!”

  “You could be so much more. You’re smart, you’re talented, you’re just zy.”

  “Oh fuck off, maybe I just want to sleep in sometimes, okay?”

  She was beginning to breathe heavily, and lying on the ground was beginning to make her side ache. She sat up. And then realized she’d sat up. That she was now able to.

  She looked up to see Ashborne standing over her. He lifted one foot, apparently not even bothering to sully what he called fists with the task of smiting her.

  Otter scrambled to move, but it was too te, she knew. She couldn’t make it out from the shadow of that foot, not from a sitting position. If she had her feet under her, maybe. Still, she tried. She rolled, trying to time it with the strike, but the shadow kept with her, and she knew she was done for.

  She flinched, but managed to keep from screaming or pissing herself. She felt kind of proud of that. But nothing came. No smite. No smash. Nothing.

  She looked up. Ashborne’s leg was frozen, the foot stopped in midair. Ashborne’s whole body quivered with barely constrained rage. He jerked his hips this way and that, but found no more ability to move.

  And in the distance, Otter heard a solitary sound. In and out, strained, maybe now more than ever, of breathing. The same sound effect she’d made to Sunny, whenever she told the story.

  Haw-purr. Haw-purr.

  And then, as if by magic, she heard music. But not just any music. A full band orchestra. Brass, paving the way. Percussion, to give the sound of a csh. It was glorious and dark, majestic, and proud.

  And the Dark Raider, one arm smashed to oblivion, his mask broken and fractured, sparks flying from the fshing light panel on his chest, strode forward, one hand held up, holding Ashborne in pce with the power of telekinesis. His saber was gone, but it didn’t matter in the slightest. Otter could feel the anger radiating off him as it rolled from him in a wave.

  She didn’t waste time. Otter got off her ass and moved.

  The Raider clenched his fist, and the sound of cracking wood rang out once more. Ashborne’s leg splintered, sending chunks of wood falling, hindered by the rot pervading him.

  Otter threw a thread at him, tangling his leg, and empowered it with her Will. She couldn’t bind him, his strength was too immense for that, but she could help damage him.

  So, Ashborne did the only thing it could do, pinned in pce as he was.

  He reached down and finished the job, smashing a fist into his leg and removing it clear from his body. He toppled, falling over, but caught his severed leg as he fell, and as he collided with the ground, he threw it like a javelin directly at Raider.

  The Dark Lord moved to catch it with his telekinetic ability, and if he’d been in prime condition, he might’ve stopped it cold. Instead, wounded, still recovered from the attack on his Will, he only managed to slow it before it speared through him, the rge wooden shaft taking half his torso clean away before continuing on. He staggered, as if unsure of whether or not he should fall. There wasn’t enough left of him to do anything, and only his own fury seemed to keep him upright.

  “Lightning,” Sami said, breathless.

  “He can’t use lightning,” Otter said. “It’s one of his weaknesses. Because of his tech. If he uses it, it’ll…”

  It would kill him. But he was already dying.

  Otter could feel her pulse racing. All she had to do was speak the words. Tell the story.

  “But the Dark Raider is a spiteful son of a bitch. If he knew he was going to die, he’d do his best to take his enemy with him. More, if he felt… if he felt like he could redeem himself, from a lifetime of poor decisions, from one regret in his life, to defend a loved one, he would do it.”

  *-*-*

  “You’re my father,” Otter said.

  The Dark Raider’s face was unknowable with that mask. You could not see his expression, his thoughts, anything. By choice. He was a mystery, a force that could not be predicted or controlled. But Otter would try.

  The Raider’s breathing kept sounding, but for some reason, it sounded more tangible. More real.

  “Years ago, you loved a woman. A leader. You were her knight, before you fell to darkness. You had a forbidden romance, one your Order would never agree with. She was pregnant with your child. And in a moment of anger, you hurt her, and forever thought you killed both her and her child. But you didn’t. That child was me. I lived, taken by your enemies. Raised by them, in secret.”

  Raider lifted up his bzing sword, and Otter stood her ground. She made no move to attack him, no move to defend herself. She stood in defiance of what was probably one of the greatest vilins in all of fiction with nothing but a raised chin.

  “I am a hero,” Otter said. “The woman I love is in danger. And like a hero, I’m going to go save her. Like my father before me would have done.”

  It was all bullshit. All faith, thrown on one toss of the dice. On one story. But it was a good story.

  She forced herself to feel it, to live it. To imagine what it would feel like to be the protagonist of the story, the stalwart warrior confronting their father, and pleading with him to choose better, for the vindication of knowing you didn’t have to solve every battle with violence. That sometimes, love was enough.

  And Raider sheathed his bzing sword.

  *-*-*

  Lightning began to crackle.

  Otter could feel it buzzing all along her skin, at the ends of her fingertips, and Raider erupted with blue lightning. He let out a scream, of pain and frustration and anger, the kind that only James Earl Jones could truly let loose.

  The music that Otter imagined, or perhaps not imagined at all, doubled in volume. It grew angrier, more intense, more impcable.

  And all along Raider’s gauntlet the lightning focused, ncing out in a blinding strike. It took Ashborne full in the face, and all along his form blue lightning climbed and stretched, charring and bckening wood, blowing away lesser branches.

  And if Ashborne were like a god to them, then that day, Otter heard a god scream in pain. A scream to accompany that of a Dark Lord, but while his was of triumph, this one was of agony.

  Bits and pieces of wood rained down from the sky, and Otter did the best she could to cover her face from debris.

  And the music changed. Still the same march, but now sad. The strings taking over from the brass, slowly drifting off and growing silent.

  Otter dared look up. Raider was on one knee, his breathing even more boured, a wheeze that hadn’t been there before entering it in a perverse harmony. Smoke curled along his body, his armour and skin charred and melted, his cape half-burnt.

  He tilted his head at Otter, a small bow, and then colpsed, his body puffing away to bck smoke before he struck the ground.

  And Ashborne still moved.

  He had only a single arm left, a single leg. Most of the surface bark had been bsted away, and a fire raged along the canopied leaves along his top.

  “Go, go, go!” Sami said, but Otter didn’t need the instruction, she was already moving.

  The hatchet found its way into her hand, the small one that Rua had normally kept at her belt. She ran, and then she was jumping, and then she was on top of Ashborne, her hatchet swinging into any wood it could find, running along his trunk as he stayed prone.

  And then Rua was beside her, woodcutter’s axe in her hands, and Sunny, older now, nearly an adult, whole and unwounded, no sign of injury, though her body was still covered in blood. There was a smile on her face, a perverse delight, and in that moment, Otter knew nothing could stop them.

  Ashborne tried to rise, and their highway threatened to go vertical. Otter’s feet went out from under her, and she was suddenly falling, but Rua smmed her axe into the side of Ashborne, holding its haft, and grabbed Otter’s hand. Otter, in turn, summoned a thread and shed it out to Sunny, who caught it.

  “Any pn?” Otter asked, half joking.

  “We get Sunny to his heart. Then we win.”

  “We get… wait.” She could see it now. The chairs. The tapped syrup from the trees. She fshed Rua her teeth in a wicked smile. “Right. Consider it done.”

  Otter jerked her arm up, the one holding the thread, and raised Sunny up, until she was clinging to Otter’s arm.

  Above, Ashborne was screaming. “I just wanted to heal! To be cured! To be able to bear fruit once more!”

  Otter wished she had a good quip in response, but she was exhausted. She didn’t know how a strength score of 17 applied itself in the real world. Was 10 the base stat? Or was it zero, and they were all given a significant boost ahead of regur people at character creation? It seemed like it. She didn’t know if she was strong enough to do what she had pnned. She really should have experimented more with her physical abilities.

  It didn’t matter now. She just had to commit.

  “Get ready,” she said.

  Sunny gave her one of those smiles, the one that covered her whole face and lit everything up. Some part of Otter melted, knowing that even though this Sunny was now adult-sized with adult parts, it was still the same person. She hadn’t known she was afraid of that until now.

  Otter summoned her remaining strength and threw Sunny up as high as she could, unching her arm upwards.

  Sunny leapt as she was thrown. She didn’t go as far as Otter would have liked, but Sunny’s hands grabbed onto Ashborne’s trunk and sank inwards. And then she began to climb. And as she did, Otter looked up and saw that where Sunny’s hands touched, handholds had been formed from Ashborne’s trunk. She was creating her own dder as she went, using the little crevices to secure her feet as she climbed.

  Ashborne seemed to know what was happening. He raised his st remaining arm-like branch to strike at Sunny. Otter threw out another thread, her st thread – where had all her Willpower gone? Had she really spent it all already? – at the arm.

  She couldn’t stop him. Couldn’t bind him. Couldn’t significantly injure him in any way.

  But Rua grabbed onto the thread and began a one-handed climb, entangling the wire with her feet for support, her axe held aloft. She moved faster than she had any right to be doing, all but throwing herself upwards in an ever-increasing momentum.

  Ashborne noticed Rua coming. And between an unarmed girl climbing his trunk, and a woman racing at him along a golden wire with an axe, he made the smart choice. Too bad for him, it was the wrong choice.

  Ashborne swung his arm away, and Otter was sent swinging away from the safety of the trunk, flying through the air as she desperately clung to her thread. Above, Rua only briefly paused before beginning her ascent once more.

  Ashborne howled, “I will not be–”

  They never found out what Ashborne would not be. Sunny had made it up the halfway point on Ashborne’s trunk. She bzed with a red energy, and suddenly a hole ripped itself open in Ashborne’s chest, exposing his heart.

  Ashborne jerked, and sent Sunny falling from her position. But the thread holding up Otter and Rua swung, now towards the open cavity as he shifted his weight.

  Hatchet in hand, Otter threw herself from the thread at the apex of the swing, and called the battle cry of her people, “LEEROY JENKINS!”

  Someone had to redeem that poor idiot, and Otter had always been determined to be the one.

  She flew through the air, directly into the hole Sunny had formed, and even though her hatchet was small, she threw everything she had behind her swing. She aimed not at the wooden heart itself, but at the vine-like arteries that held it in pce and allowed it to funnel whatever passed for blood in Ashborne’s body.

  The first severed cleanly as she nded, colliding into the upper chamber of the heart, She grabbed on, holding herself in pce by virtue of digging her fingers so hard into rough bark they bled, and then smmed her hatchet down again, separating out another vein.

  Again and again she struck, and each time she did, Ashborne bled green and bck sludge.

  There was a spasm, and then a jerk, and then Otter was sent tumbling.

  From Ashborne’s sitting position, the fall was not long. She hit the ground hard, but luckily she took it full on the ass, the most padded part she had, before tumbling and rolling. She’d be bruised, but fine. Still, it took her a moment to get back up, just revelling being in the mud and not doing anything strenuous for a minute. She’d been running and fighting way too much. It was just like going to the gym.

  She staggered to her feet, and gave a whoop of joy. Standing over the corpse of Ashborne, Rua and Sunny waved at her.

  “Disgraceful nding,” Sami said.

  “If you were here right now, I’d hate fuck the shit out of you.”

  “If I were there, I might let you.” Sami seemed to realize what she’d said, blushed crimson, and then disconnected the call.

  Otter smirked. Two victories in one day. Not a bad haul.

  DorenWinslowe