The food chain is being negotiated in earnest.

  Joe is on his backside, his elbow in the neck of a beast and holding away its bites. Randall is cradling one bleeding hand, seething and kicking ineffectually at the mink which hems him out of the group. Todd is empty handed, facing off against a mink of his own.

  Candra curses, she slams her scepter against the flanks of the creature on top of Joe. Stuck where she is, Sue Ann uses her [phantom maul] from inside the building and a transparent claw appears, then gauges the back of the the same mink.

  Todd kicks like his life depends on it, straight out at waist level. The beast wavers back just far enough to evade him and then claws at his leg. A burning line is cut, just around and under Todd’s shinguard. The cord which attaches it is frayed.

  “Help!” calls Randall.

  “Just a second!” Todd and Candra shout back.

  Todd raises his other leg this time, but aborts the kick to avoid another claw. When the beast leans back on its haunches again, he wrings out the last of his cosmic energy and fires a shaft of water at its eyes. The feathered predator flicks its head down to catch the [water spear] in the crown, and its back legs shoot out underneath it as its jump is foiled by opposing force. This time, when Todd brings his foot up and down in an ax kick, his heel drives its head down into the stony ground with a clack of its jaw.

  “Goddammit!” Joe cries out as the charred animal’s teeth sink into his arm. His other hand comes up with his sword and hacks awkwardly at a leg.

  Suddenly the night lights up as Randall activates his skill again at close range. The incendiary bloom gobbles up the beast in front of him and grows wider. Hot air blows back and singes Candra’s hair. It blisters the bare back of her neck, and fuses the young woman’s ponytail.

  “Randall? What the shit?” she growls.

  “Sorry!”

  The mink writhes, twisting this way and that. Simultaneously, the largest mink releases Joe’s arm to bite him again, though he pulls his arm away just in time. It chomps on his leather armor and finds no purchase.

  Todd kicks his mink again. It rears back, softening the hit. Endurance is a bitch, he’s done little more than make it angry. It takes a swing at him again. He backpedals en pas de bourrée en arrière and it advances.

  “Here, take the sword!” Sue Ann solicits him. She thrusts it forward around his right.

  “Jesus!” Todd flinches leftwards.

  The katana cuts a notch into his gambeson as he flails. Then he kicks again to make some space, and reaches for the handle. The blade comes too close to his fingers and he pulls back. Snapping out a front kick, Todd barks in surprise as the mink champs down on the toe of his boot and sharp points stab into his toes.

  Todd reaches for the sword again, his arm wavering as the beast shakes its head and drags at his whole body. Finally, his questing hand finds the grip of the weapon.

  Swish, swish, chop!

  Todd misses his first and second strike. The bone blade digs into the muzzle of the mustela on its third pass, leaving a deep gash.

  The mink shrieks. It shakes its head and rushes his legs, low to the ground. Todd brings the katana down and slices an incision into the top ribs. Hard skeleton stops the sword, and the animal slams into his lower legs. Knocked forward, he falls over the mink. His partially broken left arm slams into a long body and sparks with agony.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Lifting his feet, Todd rides the animal in a backwards rodeo, trying to leverage the sword against it and failing. Blood seeps into his gambeson from both he and it. Unable to swing, Todd reaches out and saws at its back leg. Unwilling to sit back and take it, the beast jerks its leg back, and bends its entire body around to bite at his arm.

  “Gah!” Todd gasps.

  He rolls off his extant mount, tucks his elbow and falls. Leaping to his feet, he stumbles backwards, then lunges forward to slash. Using one hand, his technique is terrible. But still, he cuts across the nose of the mink, splitting it down the middle.

  “Stand still!” he barks.

  Waving the sword to keep the beast at bay, Todd sidesteps and then cuts. He aims for the neck but strikes shallow across the shoulder. The price for it is that he takes a rake across the thigh in response.

  “Damn it!”

  The mink and Todd exchange whiffing blows, as neither of them commit to their attacks. Todd ignores a twinge of pain as he changes to a two handed stance. A few seconds later, the beast coils to leap again. Todd throws himself down and to the side and swings upward as the mink sails towards him. Claws catch in the shoulder of his gambeson. A rent is cut across the chest of the animal. The beast’s body whips around, spinning Todd on his heel and then toppling him. They wrestle as the mink thrashes, and Todd finds himself underneath a heavy body.

  Teeth come for his throat.

  Thankfully, the tough leather of his [Mercy – constrictor gorget] refuses to yield. Todd only experiences bruises on his neck.

  He brings up the blade and drags it across the belly of the mink from underneath. Feathers separate. Skin and fat part. Blood seeps.

  The mink grips harder, its front claws pierce his shoulder and its back paws kick violently. Todd cuts the opposite direction, pushing firmly against the weight of the mink. Its stomach parts, and its guts come loose. The beast shudders, refusing to let go. Todd saws all the harder, releasing offal and digesta. He roars.

  Finally, Candra appears and bangs her scepter across the skull of the mink. It releases its grip in shock and collapses.

  Todd chops the katana into the flank of the mink, then takes his time extracting claws from his shoulder. He rolls out from underneath it. The mink stirs again. Todd extracts the sword and nods to Candra. She moves out of his way and he limps to cut the throat of the beast. Only once the kill energy enters his body does he relax.

  He takes a look around himself.

  Joe stands cradling his arm. Randall sits on the ground, staunching a bleeding thigh. Three bodies lie on the ground, hacked roughly and pooling blood.

  Candra flinches in pain. “Shit. Let me get the healing pills. Sue Ann, help me get the healing pills!”

  Todd limps after her, but she stops him.

  “Stay with Randall.”

  Todd unsticks his ixwa from a body while Candra and Sue Ann head inside and grab their bags. They pull them out of the building and produce their bottles of pills. Todd, Randall, and Joe all take clotting blood pills, and Candra swallows a skin mending one.

  Todd’s body itches as the medicine takes effect. Within minutes, his wounds will scab over and seal shut.

  “Drips, come help me drag these things away from us,” Joe requests. He grabs onto a leg one handed.

  Todd grabs the opposite leg and starts pulling in a shared direction. Candra and Sue Ann grap ahold of another corpse and follow. Bloody streaks track across the ground, then they dump the minks across the street, and return for the last body.

  Todd asks aloud, “can we stay here much longer? We’re just going to attract more of these things.”

  “We attract just as many when we’re moving,” Joe argues.

  “We’re still going to need water eventually,” Todd counterpoints.

  “Maybe we’ll think about in the morning,” Joe offers.

  They finish dragging the last mink, and as they do, more bugs have appeared. They crawl over and between buildings as they approach.

  Todd and Joe jog back and help Randall to his feet, supporting his shoulders on either side of him. They shepherd him indoors.

  “We shouldn’t have stood there,” Sue Ann says. “We just antagonized them.”

  “Yea, but running might have encouraged them just as much. There was no way to know,” Todd disagreed.

  “Well we should just stay all the way inside until morning,” Candra suggests.

  “The second floor was clear,” Joe reminds them. “If we could all make it up there and hole up, the only thing we’d have to do is hold the hole.”

  “Can we even get up in the shape that we’re in?” Sue Ann wonders.

  “With our strength, we can make it up one handed,” Todd assures her.

  In the end, Sue Ann goes up first, boosted by Candra. Todd goes up second, hauled by Sue Ann, with Joe coming afterwards. Both the boys help Sue Ann get grips on Randall as the young man pulls himself up, swinging his leg carefully out behind him. Then Candra throws the bags up, one by one to be caught by Sue Ann. Finally, Candra jumps high and catches hold of Sue Ann’s extended arms. She is pulled up presently.

  Todd looks around the space. A layer of rubble coats the floor, stone bricks fallen in a fairly even layer. High walls stretch up around the edges of the area, but the ceiling has collapsed completely. Here and there, there are mortises where wooden beams of an upper flooring once stood. Dirty remnants of huge birds nests lie in the corners. Rays of starlight rain down from overhead.

  The group collapses onto their bedrolls. They sit in a tight circle, and conversation is sparse. They set a watch, check their wounds, and cultivate.