“Daana, hold up!” Ashwyn’s ragged voice reverberated along the maze of dark, stone alleyways as she took chase, struggling to catch up with the light-footed elf before she disappeared from sight entirely. Ashwyn huffed and puffed as her aching lungs threatened to catch fire. Good goddess, when had the girl gotten so damn fast? Ashwyn had never seen Daana move quite so quickly before. Naturally, the one time the girl showed some hustle it was in the wrong direction. They should have been running from imminent death, not towards it!

  “Why are you following that thing?” Ashwyn paused, trying to recall what Daana and Rali had called the strange spiny beast. A wind lifter? Shifter? Shitter? Goddess, who the fuck cared? All that mattered was that it was deadly and not something to be chased. “You understand that you’re willfully charging into the open arms of death and danger, right?”

  And I’m the idiot blindly following you!

  Following, alas, could not be helped. Ashwyn had promised both Snag and the girl’s mother that she would keep Daana safe. Admittedly, she hadn’t done a stellar job of that so far, but there was no time like the present to put some actual effort in.

  “Daana, please! At least slow down so I don’t lose you.”

  Puddles sloshed underfoot as Ashwyn’s boots slammed against the slick streetway, struggling to keep up as the elf’s cloaked form disappeared around another bend. Ashwyn shot around the corner after her. Daana ran with her stare fixed upwards, tracking the beast’s incorporeal form as it swept across the gray sky. Behind her, Ashwyn heard the wet thud of heavy footsteps close in, signaling that Rali had also joined the chase. The orc glanced over her shoulder to confirm her suspicions and was rewarded with a look from Rali that would have qualified as aggravated assault.

  Great. Just great! It was bad enough that Ashwyn’s last moments had to be spent chasing Daana, but now she had to do it in the company of the grumpy dwarf as well!

  Daana’s voice called to her from up ahead. “Remember when I kept mentioning that something wasn’t right? How I found it suspicious that Cray and his top witches aren’t fighting back?”

  “Vividly,” Ashwyn assured her between labored breaths.

  “I suspect Cray ordered his most powerful people to lie in wait and not move until he gave the signal.”

  No shit, Peaches! Ashwyn kept her exasperation to herself on account of not wanting to waste precious breath arguing what everyone already knew. Of course Cray had held back his best people. The trap wouldn’t have worked, otherwise. The orc channeled her mounting irritation into a single word, urging Daana to finish detailing her theory without unnecessary amounts of prompting. “And?”

  Daana pointed skyward at the wind shifter. “I think that’s the signal.”

  Rali’s stocky form jogged into view. She fell into step alongside Ashwyn, content to keep pace with the slowest member of their party. Unlike Ashwyn, Rali had the necessary lung capacity to run and yell simultaneously. She put it to good use too, hollering, “So your brilliant plan is to follow the signal straight into Cray’s trap?”

  “I don’t think the trap’s meant for us. We’re not important.”

  Daana outlined her reasoning between desperate inhales and exhales of breath. As far as Cray was concerned, none of them meant anything. Not Daana, not Ashwyn, not Rali, not even the New Adderwood army. They were simply annoying obstacles Cray had to deal with to access the one person he considered worth his time — his employer’s arch nemesis, Oralia Dawnsight.

  Oralia had surprised everyone, the enemy included, by removing herself from the fight. Having handed control of the situation over to Captain Bernstein, Oralia had assigned herself to the secondary evacuation team, the unit least likely to run into conflict. Daana suspected the move had thrown off Cray’s plan. He wasn’t going to call in his top players to decimate the New Adderwood army if Oralia wasn’t there to be a part of it. There was no dramatic flair to that.

  Oralia’s strategy had bought them time. Said time, however, had finally run out. At long last, Cray must have found his quarry. Which is why they had to reach him and, by extension, Oralia, before Cray’s legion of division witches did.

  Silence was never good when it came to Rali — not that Ashwyn necessarily preferred the alternative. But the fact that the dwarf wasn’t profusely picking apart Daana’s theory piece by piece meant there was some validity to it. A whole lot, given the deathly quiet. Ashwyn felt conflicted by the sudden lack of bickering as the trio neared the edge of the village. They were running to their deaths. Each and every one of them knew it, and yet, they didn’t turn back. They didn’t alter course. They kept going knowing the grim fate that awaited them. And while death had always been on the table, it felt wrong to willfully throw oneself into its open arms without at least a little bit of complaining.

  “For the record,” Ashwyn wheezed, her hot breath billowing into the frosty air in front of her, “I wanted it stated that this was not my idea.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Rali retorted with a scoff. “Of course it’s not your idea.”

  “Good. ‘Cause when Snag resurrects our ghosts lookin’ to kick someone’s ass, I’m gonna be pointing fingers at you two.”

  There. She felt better now. Well, not by much really, but at least Ashwyn could claim she didn’t go quietly.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  It was good timing, too, considering they’d reached their destination. Ashwyn squinted at the gray sky, watching as their quarry’s shapeless form dipped down, lost to sight behind the looming row of stone cottages up ahead. The others picked up speed, forcing Ashwyn to do the same. She pushed her leaden legs harder, heartbeat pounding like a hammer against her chest, and rounded the final corner hot on Daana’s heels.

  In hindsight, they should have slowed down and assessed the situation instead of bursting out into the open without knowing the stakes, but such was the nature of hindsight. You didn’t realize your blunder until after it’d bitten you square in the ass. The trio burst into the open street at the same time Cray’s beast touched back down in a turbulent whirlwind of biting air. The violent gust sent them scattering like dried leaves caught in the typhoon.

  Ashwyn flipped head over heels before rolling to a stop with a slam in the middle of someone’s front yard. Daana was strewn across the wet grass beside her, groaning, but alive. Quick as a flash, Ashwyn seized the elf by the cloak and rolled behind a raised garden bed, dragging Daana with her. It wouldn’t protect in the event of a magical ambush, but at least it afforded cover while Ashwyn assessed the situation at hand.

  Aside from them and the spiny-wind bastard, there were three others. Oralia, a hulking mass that could not have been anyone else but Ashwyn’s childhood chum, Sascha, and a third, whom she did not recognize. By process of elimination, the third had to be Cray. Alas, the sheer force of being hurtled through the splintered remains of someone’s picketed fence by his own pet failed to kill him. The elf staggered to his feet, his face bloodied and pink with outrage.

  Cray’s trembling finger shot forward, pointing at Oralia’s collapsed form. His shrill voice cut through the howling wind at a screech. “What are you waiting for? Kill—”

  The command turned to ash on his tongue the moment a generous-sized stone glanced off the side of his unprotected head. Cray went down with a mangled scream, clutching his face as his hands turned red with blood.

  “No one cares!” Rali, the source of the rock-throwing, sprang up from hiding and cut across the street in Cray’s direction. “Daana, you handle the wind shifter. I’ll take care of screechy.”

  Ashwyn leapt to her feet to assist.

  “Not you!” Rali barked over her shoulder without looking. “Get Oralia to safety. And don’t even think about running her off like you did the rest of my family. If I find she’s gone, there will be reparations to pay!”

  Ashwyn snapped her tusks with a sigh. Rali really wasn’t ever going to let that go, was she? Stifling the urge to call the damn dwarf every colorful name in the book, Ashwyn altered course. Oralia was already up and moving. Bent over with a hand clasped to her side, she staggered to where Sascha’s unmoving bulk lay slumped on the ground.

  Ashwyn’s heart lurched at the pitiful sight. She thundered across the street and slid to a stop just shy of Sascha’s still form. “Fuck. Tell me he’s not dead.”

  Sascha batted Ashwyn away with a labored wave of his hand. “Not yet,” he assured her, delivering a leveling glare that said something along the lines of ‘Hello, old friend. Remember all of those times I took the fall for your childhood misadventures? It’s time to pay the piper.’

  It was remarkable, really. It’d been nearly a century since Ashwyn had last set eyes on him and still, she could read Sascha’s expression as clear as day. He tilted his bruised and battered head in Oralia’s direction without breaking eye contact. “Get her out of here.”

  Oralia hooked her hand under Sascha’s arm and locked it tight. “Not without you.”

  “Ashwyn,” Sascha rumbled, still avoiding Oralia’s stubborn stare. “I don’t care if you have to drag her out kicking and screaming. Do it.”

  Fuck. He meant it. He was serious. Tentatively, Ashwyn glanced at her sister and regretted it immediately. Oralia’s expression was equally easy to read. It said: ‘Touch me and I will end you’.

  Gods dammit! Four hundred years old and her sister was still the same stubborn bossy-britches she remembered. Experience had taught Ashwyn that there wasn’t any use arguing. Once Oralia sent her mind to something, there would be no changing it. “Sorry, mate. She will forever be scarier than you are,” Ashwyn said to Sascha as she took up her position on the other side of him. “Alright, Ra-Ra. On the count of three, we lift. Ready?”

  Whether it was the use of her favorite nickname or her innate inability to follow someone else’s lead, Oralia, naturally, overrode Ashwyn’s directions and substituted her own. She lurched upright with a strained grunt. “Three!”

  Ashwyn clamped her eyes shut and heaved for all she was worth, straining to match her sister’s intensity. “Still can’t let anyone else be in charge, I see!”

  Between their combined efforts, Sasha was assisted to his feet. Both orc sisters ducked under each gargantuan arm, supporting his weight from underneath. Their success was met with outrage.

  “Be careful!” Sacha said.

  The absolute nerve! Here she was risking a broken spine hauling Sascha’s ungrateful ass off the battlefield, and he dared to complain! Ashwyn staggered a step forward, snapping, “I am being careful, you overgrown mountain!”

  “Not you, her.” Sascha’s scowl was directed at Oralia. The recipient pretended not to notice, which only served to aggravate the big guy further. “She needs to be careful.”

  “What the fuck for?” Ashwyn bent forward for a better view of her sister’s face. Oralia kept her mouth clamped shut and her steely gaze forward, channeling all of her dwindling energy at the task at hand. Despite her commendable efforts to keep a blank expression, Oralia’s face revealed everything her confounded tongue didn’t.

  “Sweet goddess!” Ashwyn gasped, nearly missing her next step. “Seriously?”

  Sascha snapped his tusks in confirmation. “Seriously.”

  Overcome with the sudden urge to shake her sister by the shoulders, Ashwyn had to make do with a stomp of her foot. “For fuck’s sake, Ra-Ra! Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  In addition to sniffing out secrets, little sisters also possessed the inexplicable gift of breaking their older sibling’s commitment to the silent treatment. Oralia’s short tone reflected her feelings on the matter. “We had all of five seconds to catch up before it was off to war. There was no time.”

  “It would have taken half of that to mention, ‘hey, by the way, lil sis, I’m knocked up. Oh, your former best mate, Sascha, you remember him, don’t you? He’s the dear old dad. Mind lending me a hand breaking him free?’”

  “I would not utter those if they were my last,” Oralia replied.

  “Well, the good news is, they’re not going to be your last words, are they? Now get moving. We’re getting both of you out here pronto!” They were nearing the final row of houses. Ashwyn could see the dark line of trees just beyond. She twisted her head back over her shoulder, watching as Daana and Rali took on Cray and his deranged pet together. Dread clogged her throat as the pair grew small in the distance.

  Ashwyn had taught Daana the best she could. She only hoped it would be enough.