For some reason, Otter had thought that when you set an enemy on fire, they would just be like, ‘Oh noes, I am the fire, now I will perish.’ Apparently, when that transted to a mindless monster that couldn’t feel pain, it actually meant, ‘I’m going to fist your mouth while I’m on fire and you’re going to like it.’

  As she took a fming branch to the jaw, some part of her mind noted that she really needed to think her pns through more.

  Even with the shield, the hit hurt. She could feel some distant memory of heat, and the way her head snapped back from the impact wrenched her neck. She stumbled backwards, a hand reflexively going to her face, and swung both her threads in sweeping shes that left a line of splintered wood on the surface of the two Cuttings, surface damage that would leave both wary if they actually cared about incurring damage.

  Instead, they both charged directly at her.

  Otter flicked her wrists, and entangled both Cuttings in her threads and crossed her arms to the sides. The two Cuttings, bound, crashed into one another. She loosed the threads from her hands, and willed them to entangle her two foes to one another. The Cuttings made that same rattling shriek of theirs, trying to get at her and clumsily setting each other off bance as they stumbled and fell about the room.

  Acrid smoke filled Otter’s nose, and she let out a rough cough into her elbow. The fire was spreading, not just from one Cutting to the other, but to other parts of the dining room. They crashed into the table, the chairs, the counter, all in their unpnned and uncoordinated frenzy to get her, and as they did, fming bits of oil spread across the room.

  Otter let out another hacking cough, and covered her mouth as best she could. The door smmed open, and another Cutting came running into the room directly at her.

  Like with everything Otter did, she didn’t think. She yelled, “Yeet!” and threw herself out the broken window.

  Her stupid shield didn’t protect her from diving headfirst into the ground outside, which was good to know there was fucking fall damage. Somehow, she didn’t break her neck, but it sure as hell felt like it. Her shoulder briefly went into a position that didn’t feel quite right before bouncing right back to where it belonged, and her neck was lit up by sparkles of pain throughout. Even so, she managed to get to her feet and started running.

  Right into another Cutting.

  Luckily, some part of her brain had been thinking, pnning all along, and only just let the rest of her know what it’d come up with. She triggered her Thread of the Scourge and sent it flying to the side, well away from the incoming Cutting, and when it found its target, she pulled it towards her.

  The fire axe that she’d had to use to split wood the day she met Rua smacked into the palm of her hand in a sure catch, and as the Cutting dove at her, it made the bde in a heavy swing right at its midsection.

  Otter sucked at woodcutting, but it turned out, when the wood threw itself into the bde for you, it suddenly became a lot easier.

  She didn’t quite chop the Cutting in half, but she didn’t need to. She’d aimed right for the juicy centre mass, right at the spot the st Cutting she’d killed had its heart. She was looking for that candy inside, and she hit it square.

  The force of the hit sent the Cutting to the ground, and Otter down along with it, but she knew she couldn’t spare any time. There were others in the woods, and the three still in the cabin, and her odds weren’t good against either.

  She scrambled to the dead Cutting, the axe having neatly cleaved through its outer wooden skin and into the heart beneath, and pulled her weapon free, then dug inside for the soul crystal. She didn’t hesitate, throwing the gemstone into her mouth and swallowing it down as she rounded to look for the next enemy.

  Choose Stat to Enhance

  Strength / Tenacity / Allure

  Maybe another time, she’d give the choice more consideration. This time, she just defaulted right to Strength. The other two were likely duds, in either case. There was no chance in hell these Cuttings had any points in Allure, and the fact that they didn’t seem to have their own shields indicated a low Tenacity score.

  A sound from behind her told her that at least one of the Cuttings had finally managed to get out of the now burning cabin. Otter didn’t turn to face it.

  She visualized the walls of the cabin, where they were in retion to her, and remembered Rua pointing out which way was which. Enemies to the east. Safety, and the location they were fleeing, to the west. Death one way, presumed safety the other. Rua and Sunny would have gone west. That’s where they’d be.

  So, as Otter ran, she deliberately veered east.

  What was the worst that could happen? She’d die, and then respawn, and then be forced to fight someone she probably knew to the death for the right to live.

  Knowing Holt, he’d probably pick Sami. Dammit.

  She turned to the north.

  The change in direction saved her more than her own speed. Just as she did, a Cutting flew past her, three arms outstretched for a tackle. She felt the wind and heat of it pass, and turned to face it. It was on fire and rolling in the mud.

  She could’ve kept running. Instead, she smmed her axe into its chest. Her swing didn’t hit her target, and she had to strike three more times before she knocked out the heart from its chest. This one wasn’t so clean. She scooped up the wooden heart, soul crystal still inside, and ran again.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the two fming Cuttings, still tied to one another, thrashing away in an angry ball of limbs and fire, trying to make their way to her.

  Otter had two firm philosophies in situations like this. The first was, the only good enemy was a dead enemy. The second was that fire solved all problems.

  Part of her wanted nothing more than to go after them and finish the job. But in this case, a distraction trumped the deaths of their enemies. And a pair of burning idiots potentially setting fire to anything they touched was more important than finishing off something that was already dead without knowing it.

  So Otter led them into the forest, keeping away from water and mud where she could, trying to find areas more densely packed with trees and fallen leaves. It wasn’t ideal. Or so she thought. Otter moved ahead, staying out of reach, which wasn’t too hard considering how uncoordinated they were. The wood around them didn’t catch fire easily, just as she feared.

  What she hadn’t taken into account was the moss that she’d happily harvested for Rua so many times. Every time even so much as a flicker of a spark came near the stuff, it would curl and smoke and burn. Not ferociously, in great fmes, but in red embers that promised fury to come. And as it began to, more wooden shrieks voiced their fury throughout the swamp.

  And as she ran from her foes, she didn’t realize the bigger problem she’d inadvertently caused by leading the burning Cuttings into the drier parts of the swamp.

  Later, upon reflection, she would recall science csses and a trip to a conservation site that expined peat. How it covered the soil of swamps, lived in it, and as it reached further into the earth, gradually turned to coal. And that peat by itself was highly fmmable, but when a fire was left unattended in a swamp, it didn’t matter if the area was a wetnds or not. It could quickly become a raging inferno that would burn far longer than anyone could guess.

  But that was a future Otter thought. For now, she did what present day Otter always did. She acted, in the most blindingly stupid way possible.

  So she began to lead the burning Cuttings into areas with rge clumps of dead leaves, to moss covered rocks and logs. She began to throw potential fuel sources into the path of her enemies. And when another Cutting showed up in pursuit, she happily triggered another thread and shed it to the chaotic tumbling force chasing her.

  Smoke burned at her lungs, but she didn’t care. More Cuttings shrieked at the fmes in their swamp, distant enough to not be a problem yet, but clearly converging on her. And as long as they were chasing her, they were staying off Rua and Sunny.

  What she was doing was noble. She was a Big Damn Hero. She deserved a medal for all this work and self-sacrifice.

  So of course, it was at that moment that Rua, Sunny riding on her shoulders, showed up with an exasperated expression.

  “What in the blighted fables are you doing?” she hissed.

  Otter looked to the burning Cuttings to Rua. “I was securing your getaway. You were supposed to be going that way.”

  She gestured to where she thought west was.

  “Wrong way,” Rua said, and pointed somewhere completely different. “We were that way. How do you get around in life without being able to tell directions?”

  “GPS. I had this handled. I bet all the Cuttings in this stupid swamp are headed here now.”

  “Yes, which is a problem, because only a fraction were here before. We need to get gone, now.”

  “Okay, fine, but what I did was very manly. Bow before my womanly manliness.”

  “No bowing, only moving.” Rua’s growled pronouncement was ruined a little by Sunny trying to bow while riding her shoulders, and almost falling off because of it.

  “Truly, I am the patriarch of patriarchs. It’s why I was blessed with a giant…” Otter stumbled, looking at Sunny, and then realizing maybe she shouldn’t finish that sentence. Even if she wasn’t actually a child, it still felt weird.

  “No talking,” Rua hissed. “The Cuttings can hear.”

  “They can probably hear that,” she said, pointing at the now crawling bundle of burning Cuttings that had been tied together. One of them let out a weak yelling noise. Man, their hearts really weren’t in it now that they were mostly burned up. “Can we stop and put them out so I can harvest their soul crystals?”

  Rua hesitated, looking at them, and then Sunny began coughing from all the smoke. “No. We need to go.”

  Rua didn’t say anything, but Otter could hear it in her voice. The hint of sadness. The loss of her cabin. Her home, her sanctuary. Otter wanted to apologize, but something told her that trying would just rub the wound a little worse.

  She’d make it up to Rua in another way, in making sure she got off this damned isnd.

  DorenWinslowe