The door banged open, and Rua, holding Sunny aloft by her ankle, decred, “Throwing her in the ke now.”

  Sunny squealed in ughter, her hair dragging along the floor as she was dangled. Otter was torn between trying to intervene, and letting it py out. It was hard to tell how serious Rua was with Sunny enjoying the attention so much.

  Instead, she just sat in pce, finishing off the st of her hash browns. They didn’t taste quite right. A little too salty, the texture a little grainy, but overall, okay. She’d had worse drive-thru hash browns.

  “Mama!” Sunny cried, but her tone was happy, so Otter paid it no mind.

  Rua hadn’t finished her hash browns. Was she coming back for them? Maybe she hated them, and that was why she was going to go dunk Sunny. She hadn’t actually communicated what her displeasure was with. And Otter was still kind of hungry.

  “You gonna kill her over hash browns?” Otter called.

  “I’m going to use her as bait for better food!” was the response.

  Well, that settled that. Those hash browns were now the property of Otter’s stomach. She reached over, dragged Rua’s pte across the table, and dug in. Overall, not bad. Not bad at all. It would probably be a shame to let Sunny get turned into fish food. Maybe she could cook fish. Otter was Polynesian. It was hard-coded into her DNA to enjoy fish.

  There was some yelling from outside. Probably more roughhousing. Still, it was getting a little overboard.

  Otter took another bite from the stolen hash brown, and then got up. She didn’t actually need to intervene, but Rua might not be willing to give up the bit without interference. Assuming it was a bit. It really was hard to tell if Rua actually had a sense of humour.

  She was just getting up to join them outside when Rua, Sunny thrown over her shoulder, ran back into the house and smmed the door shut behind her. Her eyes were a little wild, casting about the room.

  “Get everything we need,” she said.

  “Need for what?”

  “To get off this tale-telling isnd, do it now.”

  Otter blinked, wanting to ask more questions, but she knew that tone. Had been trained to listen to that tone, from years of drills and raids with Sami. She just got to work, grabbing the two backpacks they’d acquired, and shoving supplies into them.

  Rua darted into the bedroom, only pausing long enough to gently put Sunny down on the ground. She emerged a second ter with the bed sheet tucked under her arm. She turned it into an improvised bag, and began throwing things into it from the pantry, followed by a single pot, a pan, and a wooden spatu.

  “What’s going on?” Otter asked.

  “Ashborne Cuttings. They think they’re being sneaky, but stealth isn’t their strong suit. They’re trying to hide in the treeline, watching the house.”

  “How many?”

  “More than three, which is about as many as I dare fight, even with you.”

  “They’re not that tough.”

  “Yes, they are. We’ve been lucky so far. If you mess up your bindings even once, they’ll be on us. It takes too much damage to kill one, and you can’t disable one.”

  “So, what’s the pn?”

  “They’re hiding to the east. So, we head west.”

  “That’s not helpful, I can’t tell what direction is what with the tree cover.”

  Rua pointed to one of the walls. “That way is west. The other is the direction of death. We don’t go that way.”

  Otter got her boots on, and when she realized Sunny didn’t have any of her own, debated between making her some with her skill, and just carrying her. She hesitated for a second before sacrificing the five points of Will necessary, and handed the boots, which were of a rubbery material and would nearly reach Sunny’s knees, to the girl.

  “Boots on, kiddo,” she said.

  Sunny nodded, trying to look brave, but clearly scared.

  “Can you be quick?” Otter asked. “Run if you need to?”

  Again, that fearful nod.

  “If fighting starts, you run. We’ll catch up. Don’t come back, no matter what.”

  How Sunny would survive in the death swamp without the two of them, Otter had no idea, but she’d probably have a better chance than sticking around during a fight and getting jumped by Cuttings.

  Sunny’s lips thinned into a grim line, and her fists clenched. Otter bent down, taking the girl’s chin in her hand.

  “I don’t know how much of our memories you have. How many of our skills. Or what kind of soul power you have packing under the hood. It doesn’t matter. You’re tiny. I mean, you’re even shorter than Rua, and that’s ridiculously tiny–”

  “Hey.”

  “--like, so small I’m worried I’ll lose her under an errant pile of undry some day.”

  “Hey!”

  “She’s lucky she’s so pretty, really, otherwise I wouldn’t take such pains not to step on her all the time.”

  “If you’re done making fun of me,” Rua growled, “we really should be getting gone.”

  “Right. So, Sunny, I’m gonna carry you, but if those things get close, well, run, and no arguments. Honestly, I should probably be carrying you both, your mama’s legs are so small it’s a wonder she hasn’t drowned in all this mud yet.”

  “I’m going to throw you both in a ke at this point.”

  Otter gave Rua her best smile, which did nothing to diminish her annoyance. If anything, it got a little worse. Kind of reminded her of Sami, immediately after one of her brilliant ideas during a raid or PVP match. Especially during that time with CornStar, damn Sami had been mad that time.

  “Wait, I have an idea,” Otter said. “Grab the kid, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  She didn’t take time to expin, just ran to the pantry and grabbed the jar of fish oil in there, followed by a container of salt. The door banged again, and Otter assumed Rua had followed instructions. She upended the salt into the oil, and mixed it as best she could with a spoon until it was a slurry, then took a dry dish cloth and putting it inside.

  Alcohol made for a good Molotov. Cooking oil plus salt, though, was homemade napalm. Really kind of scary what you could turn into a weapon just from the contents of your pantry. The st time she’d done this, she’d had the protection of being in an actual video game. If she’d screwed it up then, she and her guild would’ve died, their gear looted. And Sami had been pissed then.

  If Otter fucked up here, she’d die. Probably Rua and Sunny, too.

  Right. So, she’d have to make sure she was the only one risking her life.

  She looked at the walls of the little cottage. The home she’d found. She hadn’t been here long, but she’d really gotten to like this pce a lot. And made some pretty good memories in such a short amount of time. She ran a hand along on the table. She was going to miss this table. And hadn’t even gotten to bend Rua over it like she’d pnned.

  No. No time to get distracted. She had arson to do.

  She looked at the rag, at the bottle, and let out a sigh. This kind of thing was so much easier when you didn’t feel the pain of being burned, or didn’t actually have your life on the line. How was she even going to safely ignite this stupid thing?

  As if to answer her question, the window burst open in a torrent of broken gss, a wooden monster throwing itself into the cabin. The Cutting hit the ground in a clumsy thump, which quickly became a ferocious scrambling of limbs as it pulled itself along the floor towards her. Otter didn’t even think. She just threw the jar at its face.

  It smashed, improvised accelerant spshing everywhere without any fire to finish the job. Another Cutting climbed through the broken window.

  Otter triggered a point of Will into her Thread of the Scourge, and a golden sh appeared. She reared backwards, away from the Cuttings and towards the firepce. She never did figure out how the glyph stone worked, why the logs in the hearth were never consumed, or even why Rua had insisted she chop firewood for the stupid thing, but they definitely were on fire.

  With a flick of her wrist, the thread entangled itself around a burning log, and she swung her arm forward. It wasn’t her most accurate attempt, but it was good enough, clipping the soaked Cutting across the area where it’d gotten hit with oil.

  Too bad the stupid thing didn’t instantly ignite.

  “Shit.”

  Otter hit another Thread of the Scourge, making it form in her other hand, and she grabbed a second burning log with it. She swung the two brands in short arcs, clubbing both Cuttings, embers and smoke filling the air, but doing little actual damage. The first Cutting found its footing, while the other began to move on her. She swung and managed to hit a ‘knee’ with enough force to knock it down, but it didn’t pay any mind to the damage, crawling towards her with a mindless determination.

  She willed one of her threads to loose the burning brand just as she swung, and then shed the soaked Cutting. It was heaving towards her, and as it did, she pulled. Its own momentum carried it forward more than what she added to it, but it helped, sending it forward off bance and tumbling. She tried to get out of its way, and was mostly successful, but two of its many arms managed to cw at her as it passed, sshing away at her shield.

  It was worth the trade. She gave it a kick as it staggered by, sending it directly into the firepce. Finally, it came abze, and that weird creaking scream it made sounded.

  And then it pulled itself out of the fire and turned to face her, stumbling back at her, only now on fire on top of everything else.

  “Oh come on.”

  DorenWinslowe