It didn’t take long for trouble to find them.

  Rua had pointed out a direction, showing both Otter and Sunny where they were going, and how to follow a straight line without the sun for guidance. Apparently the trick was to orient yourself onto one ndmark – usually a tree – get to that ndmark, and then orient yourself onto a new ndmark directly ahead of that one. It wasn’t perfect. But they didn’t need it to be. All they had to do was to keep from going in circles, and eventually they’d reach the coast.

  So it was after two hours of walking ter that they finally encountered their doom. They’d been so focused on Cuttings and the potential threat of the ‘Dark Raider’ that none of them had anticipated a rampaging Vexurian coming.

  Well, they did. It wasn’t exactly stealthy, as it charged directly at them like a rhino, smashing whatever was in its way in a cacophonous thunder. But it was still very shocking.

  “Of course,” Rua said in a deadpan tone. “That makes perfect sense.”

  Otter dropped Sunny from her shoulders and clutched the girl to her chest, awkwardly juggling the girl and her woodcutter’s axe. Sunny looked as if about to scream, her eyes wild and tear-filled, but no sound escaped from her. No sound except the ragged breaths she began to drag in, as if there wasn’t enough air in the world to fill her lungs.

  “Run!”

  Otter wasn’t sure if she or Rua said it, and it didn’t really matter. Her feet found their will, speeding as quickly as they could through the mud.

  “How far until the shore?” Otter shouted.

  “An hour!”

  They weren’t going to make it. That thing wouldn’t tire, and the only thing that would slow it was the same thing that was slowing them, the mud. But maybe it might slow it more than it would them.

  It was heavy. Very heavy. And when they’d first encountered it, it’d been buried, sunk into the swamp and gone into hibernation. It might only be chasing them because of Sunny, content to sleep and wait for reinforcements from Criobani that would never come otherwise. Why else would it wait ten years sleeping, only to wake now?

  Sunny was its power source. Without her, it would die. It might even be on its st legs, running on only one or two bars until it conked out for good.

  They just needed to outst it. They weren’t going to make it to the shore. But they could exercise it a bit. Make it expend energy it couldn’t afford.

  “How much power do you think that thing has left?” Otter shouted.

  “How would I know? I’ve never even heard of a Vexurian without a battery!”

  Well, that was helpful.

  “Here, catch!” she threw her woodcutter’s axe to Rua, who caught it. “It’s going to come after us! Don’t do anything stupid!”

  “So you can do something stupid?”

  “I’m Spider-Man!”

  Otter didn’t eborate, just triggering a Thread of the Scourge in her free hand and shing it upwards at a tree branch ahead of them. It caught, entangling as she willed, and tried to jump into the air to swing.

  It didn’t really work out like she intended. Which was probably why Spider-Man jumped off rooftops most of the time before he did any webslinging. She got maybe a foot of airtime, mostly from her increased strength propelling her upwards. It was enough to get a swing started, throwing her forward in a wide arc, but with both her arms occupied, one with the initial swing, the other with holding Sunny, she couldn’t follow through.

  She disengaged her thread from its hold on the branch and hit the ground, losing all her momentum, but with no damage incurred because of the soft mud.

  Right. Thinking ahead. She had promised to start doing that.

  “Sunny, I’m going to need you to hold tight,”

  Otter shifted Sunny around so that she was now clutching at her like a human backpack. Sunny didn’t say much, but the way she squeezed made Otter’s ribs hurt. A lot. But she didn’t have the courage to tell her to loosen up.

  And then she tried again, jumping as high as she could, shing herself to a tree branch, and then summoning a second Thread of the Scourge with her second hand, catching a branch further ahead, and swinging.

  It wasn’t as smooth or as easy as some spandex-cd individuals made it look. She wasn’t as coordinated or as agile as Spider-Man – she made sure to make a mental note to start increasing Awareness and Agility in the future – and she had a few near-misses, but she did better than George of the Jungle in simir circumstances. She didn’t crash into a single tree. She was kind of proud of that.

  At some point, Sunny stopped making choked crying sounds at the sight of the Vexurian, and started making whoops of enjoyment. Gone was the fear of reality, repced by the sheer joy of being young and doing something very stupid and dangerous.

  Everything was going well. About as well as it could anyway. Otter managed not to kill herself half-dozen times, she kept pace ahead of the berserking golem armor, swinging circles around it. She was even having fun.

  Right up until the crackling sound of Cuttings screaming sshed through the air.

  Otter did her best to try to ignore what that signified, keeping her mobility going, right up until Sunny cried, “Mama!”

  That brought Otter up short. She angled herself, deliberately swinging into the trunk of a tree that she was shed to, and kicked off it just before hitting. It wasn’t great for her knees, hitting the tree a little too fast for her liking, but it arrested her momentum and while she bounced off the trunk, she came to rest against it after hitting it a few more times with her hips and shoulders.

  Otter climbed her thread, getting on top of a thick branch, and paused a moment to rest.

  “Sunny,” she said. “I need you to stay here.”

  Those small hands clenching around her gripped even tighter.

  “I need you safe,” Otter said. “And I need to save your mama. If you won’t let go, I can’t save Rua.”

  Slowly, the pressure on Otter’s ribs eased off, and Sunny made a sound. “It’s not fair.”

  Otter shifted on the branch, turning to face Sunny. “I know it’s not. If this happened in a few days, I’m sure you’d be all grown, and have enough combat memories or whatever I’d be comfortable bringing you. But the world’s not fair. So we’ve gotta do what we can. Hold on tight to the branch, and whatever you do, don’t come down. I need you to promise me.”

  Sunny looked away, but nodded her head. It would have to be good enough.

  Otter shed another tree branch, and swung down, hitting the ground running. That Vexurian was a good distance off, and she needed it to see her and not Sunny. She let her two glowing threads trail behind her as she ran, the light marking out her location as she ran for all she was worth towards where she had left Rua.

  Everything in the swamp looked the same, but it didn’t matter. Otter dove into the link she shared with Rua, letting it guide her way. She could feel absolute concentration through it, as if Rua were ser-focused on a task. It meant she was okay, but probably fighting. But more importantly, Otter could feel a pull, a general sense of direction as to where Rua was.

  She dialed in. She might be a spastic basket case most days, but when she was gaming, she could wipe away the noise. All other concerns disappeared. There was just her and the objective.

  She came into a clearing where Rua was surrounded by seven Cuttings. Pieces had been hacked off most, limbs destroyed, trunks hacked at, but the Cuttings didn’t care.

  Rua was beautiful in motion. She didn’t have the same precise movement she had against Sami, the surety of knowing what your opponent was going to do as if the attack patterns were her own. It was a bad matchup. Cuttings had no minds. They did not feint, did not try to get around defenses and deceive. They were brutally straightforward in their attacks, always taking the shortest distance from Point A to Point B. It was probably their greatest weakness, but one Rua couldn’t take advantage of to her fullest. She was specifically designed to fight the opposite of this kind of foe. It was just a bad matchup.

  Which didn’t matter in the least to Otter. She came in from behind, shing both her threads around the midsection of the nearest Cutting, entangling it as thoroughly as she could, pulling it closer as she did. It turned to face her, its trunk opening wide into a maw as if to bite her. But her threads pulled tighter, digging into the bark of her enemy and sawing into the opening its mouth provided.

  Even as her threads wrapped harder around the Cutting, pulling tighter as she yanked it cover to her and closing the distance, she empowered it with a point of her Will, strengthening the burning and cutting effect of her weapon.

  Wood splintered, and as that mouth opened ever wider, she cut the thing clean in half.

  There was no glow of victory. She disengaged both her threads just as another Cutting charged at her, not caring that one of its own had just been felled like wheat. It hit Otter in an awkward tackle, only clipping her, but driving her to the side and off bance.

  Somewhere in the corner of her eye, she noted her Tenacity had taken a sizeable hit from that. But it didn’t matter. She knew how to fight these things. If you couldn’t outright kill them, you weaponized them against each other.

  Another dove at her, and this one she managed to sh with a thread and sidestep, then used its momentum to carry her away from the attacks of a third. That second one recovered, turning to charge at her again, and using her thread and a pivot of her hips, sent it into one of its companions, before releasing that golden cord and commanding it to entangle the two together.

  “Otter!” Rua called, and suddenly there was Rua’s spare hatchet flying in her direction. She reacted by instinct, catching it by the handle with her remaining thread, and then swinging it in an arc around herself in short, controlled swings.

  Rua dove into the offensive, hacking away with her two-handed woodcutter’s axe, driving it into what passed for a face on a nearby Cutting. She didn’t hit its heart on the first swing, but she recovered, striking a second time and ending its threat permanently.

  In seconds, two Cuttings were dead with two others technically disabled. But the remaining three were already hammering down on them both, two fnking Rua and pressing her with wild swings, while the remaining walked directly into Otter’s swinging hatchet-whip. The weapon connected solidly with its trunk, but the bde wasn’t rge or strong enough to penetrate deeply. It ignored the damage and grabbed for her thread, using it to pull her in closer.

  Otter dismissed the thread, but it was too te. She’d already been pulled forward, out-contested in strength and now off bance. And then it was on her.

  It was inelegant, just a series of ferocious swings from three different limbs. She tried to duck, weave, and bob around the attacks, but it was just too fast, and she didn’t have sure enough footing on the muddy ground. Even through her Tenacity, she felt the hit across her temple, setting stars in her vision as her head rocked to the side.

  The Cutting pounced, throwing its weight on her and hammering down blows. She did her best to block, her arms coming up in a boxer’s defense, but she’d been in enough fights to know a losing one when she was in it.

  Her Tenacity bottomed out, the bar empty. Faint echoes of pain turned into the real thing.

  She tried to muster her Will to summon up something, anything, but another blow to the head rocked her. She couldn’t distract the thing with taunts, couldn’t get it to talk, couldn’t reason with it. She was out of options.

  Which meant she was dead.

  And then the Cutting exploded.

  Where its trunk had once been, was a small hand, glowing red. Sunny stared down at Otter, her lips drawn into a grim line, and her eyes misting with tears.

  Otter felt she should’ve had a quip. Should’ve had something to say in that moment. Maybe a word of reassurance, if not necessarily a witticism. Maybe a thank you, even if she was confused as to what had just happened.

  And then there was the Vexurian. The suit of armor was not stealthy. Sunny surely knew it had been there. But one fist grabbed her up, pulling her from her feet and away.

  Otter reached out, tried to summon up her Will, but her head was spinning from one of the earlier hits. She called for her power and nothing came.

  And then Rua was there, bleeding from her scalp, a few cuts about her person, swinging that woodcutter’s axe at the arm of the Vexurian with an angry howl.

  She drove a dent into the joint. If there’d been an arm inside, blood would have flown. There would have been screams of pain. But with the Vexurian, there was nothing. It moved forward, ignoring Rua’s attack.

  “You can’t have her!” Rua growled.

  She swung again, going for a knee joint. At the same time, the remaining Cutting that hadn’t been killed or bound leaped, nding on the back of the Vexurian. That probably saved Rua from the Vexurian’s counterattack.

  It reached to its side, its arm articuting in a way that a human arm wouldn’t be able to bend and going the wrong way at the elbow, its wrist turning around so its hand was now facing its back, and grabbed the Cutting. And then it squeezed.

  The Cutting burst into pieces, shards of wood exploding out from between metal fingers, and then it discarded the broken thing like so much garbage. The Cutting twitched weakly, but was unable to move beyond that.

  Otter stumbled to her feet, fell over, and then tried to get back up. But her head was so dizzy. Nothing was moving right. She put her hands to the ground, trying to use them as leverage, and when she tried to force herself up, she violently vomited, and the whole world shook.

  Someone was yelling, and the sound hurt. Otter cast her gaze every which way, and saw Rua, pinned to the ground, the two Cuttings that had been tied together now on top of her. The Vexurian was retreating, its heavy footfalls taking it into the distance.

  One more, Otter mustered her will, and it was like a bell tolling in her head, echoing agony through her brain. But she grit her teeth and pulled herself together, fighting through what she knew was a concussion and managed to summon up a Thread of the Scourge.

  She threw it, the cast loose. Rua reached out a hand, but the wire fell short by a few feet.

  And then, the two Cuttings, gripping onto Rua, began to sink into the mud.

  Otter wasn’t sure what she was seeing at first, uncertain if it was just some information being processed incorrectly in her bruised brain. But no, they were being pulled into the mud, and not slowly either. It was as if it were giving way before them, welcoming them into its cold embrace.

  And the Cuttings, gripping onto Rua, were pulling her into the mud with them.

  Otter pulled her thread back, and cast it out again. Once more it fell short, but Otter pulled it back and tossed a third time. This time Rua managed to catch it, making a strangled noise of panic.

  “I am not…” she choked, but she was slowly being pulled into the mud, wooden arms gripping around her as she was pulled under.

  Otter yanked backwards, trying to get something resembling strength into her arms, and as she pulled, she fell backwards. She scrambled back up, even hit by another wave of dizziness, to see Rua up to her neck in mud, staring at Otter, with fear in her eyes, wooden, twig-like fingers gripping her chin.

  She didn’t say anything, just taking in a sharp inhation before she was pulled under in one jerk, disappearing into the mud.