The shadow at the doorway took a reluctant step backward in my direction. “Fine.”

  Lord, forgive me for what I am about to do.

  I pushed with my thumb and the deafening roar of silence erupted as the blade slid free. Her eyes narrowed as she turned and then suddenly shot open as the tip of the blade went in under her sternum. She convulsed as the rest of the cold steel followed the tip on its way up behind the ribcage, but by then I’d wrapped my other hand around her back, hugging her to me while I applied enough upward force with the sword to nearly lift her off her feet.

  Doing my best to not think about every twitch she made as we went, I dragged her inside and off to the left before lowering her to the floor. I averted my eyes as I slipped the blade out, trying to ignore the echoes of the grating feeling that shivered up the blade toward the end of the strike when the tip slid along bone. I glanced at her face long enough to see glassy eyes before closing them for the last time with an unexpectedly heavy heart.

  She’s just a fucking kid. And then a spark appeared in my heart, one that surged into the flame of slow, cold anger and spite. Fuck this world. Outside, a sharp crack split the air followed immediately by the sound of branches falling to the ground.

  “Ebb? Ebb?!”

  Footsteps rapidly approached, and I realized before the shadow appeared in the doorway that the changing weight in the silence told me exactly where the approaching enemy stood.

  A single, hollow word tumbled through the silence as I rounded the corner. “Oh.”

  The woman bore a strong resemblance to the once I’d just killed, green hair that looked more like strands of moss than hair, a thin dress that looked like it was woven from dandelion puffs and spider silk. When her eyes met mine, they filled with sorrowful acceptance. She was maybe two or three inches shorter than I was before the blade in my hand made that figure closer to nine. The head bounced precisely once and stopped rolling before the corpse slumped to the ground.

  A second crack slapped the air and the massive oak tree across the way split, spilling several branches that shook the ground when they hit. Shocked voices echoed out from multiple directions.

  The resignation on the woman’s face didn’t register until I’d fallen back to my gear and retrieved my pistol, but by that point I was so focused on the task at hand I mentally shuffled that fact somewhere else to deal with later.

  As I emerged from the hut another feminine figure blinked into existence across the way. Anger and panic blazing on her face, she lifted a hand in my direction. Vines and roots shot up from the ground but fell limp before accomplishing much when I executed a simple pattern I’d practiced enough times I could do it in my sleep, eyes closed, at this distance: two the chest, one to the head.

  Something in the silence shifted around me and I wheeled about just as a third woman appeared just outside arm’s reach. She had precisely long enough for her eyes to shoot open before my sword caught her in the side near the bottom ribs and I planted my foot in her stomach. Two more gunshots signaled the end of the threat.

  When I turned, the fourth was kneeling over the second, but unlike the rest, her hair was streaked with white and her features bore the weight of age. She made no attempt to stand as I raised my pistol. Tired eyes met mine. A tear slipped from her eyes as she slowly nodded. I pulled the trigger.

  Stoking that ball of spite by shoveling every sympathetic thought, every regret, literally anything that didn’t serve the pursuit of survival into it, I glanced about the clearing just as the largest tree on the opposite side of the clearing splintered and came apart. Even through the silence, the resulting litany of crashes nearly tumbled me off my feet as I turned to go back to my gear.

  Steadying myself against the wall, the way the air shifted reminded me I had something on my head. I reached up and when my hand came back down it held the cheap Burger King-style crown Alex had given me. It immediately began disintegrating into black, burnt flakes as the man’s voice echoed through my head. The crown disrupts influences on the mind.

  Knowing full well the sound would attract the attention of literally everything in the vicinity, I didn’t dwell on that any further. Once inside, cleaned myself up as quickly as I could manage using scraps of cloth and water from a handful of wooden bowls that had been left near my pack. From there, I literally stuffed everything back into my pack as fast as humanly possible, dressed myself, and got the fuck out of there with a quickness, the only thought guiding my choice of direction being that Longreach had been next to the river, so if I went anywhere it needed to be down.

  The human body is an amazing thing. As fragile as we are, we’re also remarkably hard to kill. The adrenal response is part of the reason for that. Heartrate climbs. Available strength and energy goes through the roof. Reaction times plummet. Focus becomes laser-like. All your senses get boosted while the brain’s ability to filter and sort through that information skyrockets to the point where intense moments feel like time itself slows down.

  As awesome as that sounds, it’s not all sunshine, rainbows, and unicorn farts. Without training and experience, every one of your newfound superpowers becomes a drawback. Your laser focus lands on the wrong things and you completely miss things that would have kept you alive. You get so twitchy you can’t do simple tasks, much less land important shots. You quickly burn through all that available energy without understanding there’s only so much of it and come out the other side utterly exhausted.

  With training, you learn to forcibly steer yourself away from those drawbacks. You learn to control your panic response, to pull yourself back so you don’t miss things, to pace yourself so you aren’t absolutely wiped at the end, just mostly.

  Training and experience I had in spades, first as an infantryman, then as a Ranger, and finally as a Delta candidate. As a result, I managed to ride the hairline border between condition orange and red for far longer than any sane person would possibly think healthy. It couldn’t be helped. I was ostensibly lost and certainly pursued in an unfamiliar forest inhabited by creatures that could just wink into existence with no warning whatsoever.

  Training or not, the adrenal response is unfortunately finite. No matter how good one’s self control is or how unusual their biology, eventually your neurology’s NOS kit runs out of boost and once that tank goes dry, you crash.

  Thankfully, training helps familiarize you with what it feels like when that tank gets low, with understanding what exactly is about to happen, so when the buzz sputtered despite me being firmly behind enemy lines, I prioritized looking for somewhere safe to ride out what was coming.

  Somewhere safe turned out to be a cluster of pine-like trees with low branches and scattered ground clutter around them. Entering quietly wasn’t easy, as I had to crawl under the branches to reach a slightly more open spot in the middle of the cluster left relatively open due to the fact the trees here had died and partially collapsed.

  With the energy I had left, I barely managed scrape a few inches of dirt and clutter aside and drape my camo tarp across the leaning trunk to hide my temporary shelter. As the lights started dimming, I wolfed down a cold MRE as quickly and quietly as could be managed, drank a good amount from Wyk’s flask, and silently cursed the fact that Illinois prohibited its citizens from owning suppressors. Admittedly, I wasn’t shooting subsonics, but any sound signature reduction was better than none at this point.

  The last thing I consciously recognized before falling asleep with my rifle tucked against my chest was the fact the only reason I knew I’d policed my brass from the enemy camp was because I emptied my dump pouch into my pack before I allowed myself to settle. I honestly didn’t remember doing it at all.

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  It took me a few long, groggy seconds to realize why I was awake, just long enough for whatever it was outside my hide to push aside the ground cover as it moved. Unable to rub my eyes, I pressed my lids shut and quietly breathed in. Looking for the source of the sound, I silently thanked whatever gods might be looking over me for the dreamless sleep I’d been gifted.

  Motion drew my eyes and I relaxed. Four legs, looks like deer. Blinking away sleep, I cast my attention to the forest floor beyond the creature. Still somewhat light. Will be dark in a few hours. It occurred to me that the wood nymphs, dryads, or whatever the hell they were might’ve sent word they’d captured a human. If they had, whoever showed up to find the massacre would probably assume I’d be travelling during the day. Considering I still had a few spare batteries for my NVGs, waiting until dark seemed to be a decent idea.

  Regardless of my opinions, thanks to the deer lingering in the area, it was much closer to dark before I could pack everything back up and exit the hide. Annoying as that might have been, the fact that so many woodland herd animals had felt comfortable enough to loiter dramatically reduced the odds anything hostile was in the vicinity. It also gave me time to eat a few crackers and cycle my water supply to Wyk’s flask to maximize the daily reset on the jug.

  At any rate, I set off from the hide at a conservative pace for someone familiar with nighttime land navigation with NODs, mostly because I still wasn’t sure how well the Syr or other creatures could see my IR illuminator. If Tomas was still— I winced, but the thought was correct. If Tomas was here I could’ve asked.

  Hours passed in relative quiet, which surprised the hell out of me. A forest this size should have nocturnal predators, yet by when I finally took a knee, I had yet to hear a single coyote yowl or random bobcat scream. As curious as that might’ve been, I had bigger problems to dwell on.

  For the last half hour, the forest had thinned in fits and spurts and only minutes earlier the night breeze carried a scent closer to dried, lifeless loam than earthy forest smell, and I’d just found the source. Ahead of me stood what were almost certainly the ruins of Longreach.

  To say the city had seen better days was a criminal understatement, but just how much better probably wouldn’t dawn on me until first light considering how much detail night vision simply eats away. Oddly enough, stone made for the base of a surprising number of the buildings I could see, but interspersed between what might’ve been dozens of finely cut stone buildings were taller tree-bound structures reminiscent of the Glade’s construction, except their styling seemed more robust, more mature.

  Now, for anyone who has manned an OP on the side of a godforsaken mountain in the middle of goddamn nowhere, that description might sound a bit much for an observer relying solely on cloudy moonlight to relay. It might because it is. So how I could scope out all that detail in a remarkably short amount of time through a monocular in these lighting conditions?

  Easy, I wasn’t relying on just the moon. A hundred yards in from the outermost buildings, someone had built a stockade that, based on the flickering torchlight I saw reflected on multiple buildings, closed off at four separate streets and fenced in one of the tree-habitats, which just so happened to be festooned with small torches along the walkways. Sentries were posted on the walls, and more than a few traversed the walkways far above.

  Well then. Sentries on the walls are spaced about every fifty feet to seventy-five feet, it looks. Still no idea where the gate is. All windows and access to the buildings butting up against the stockade look bricked in. Scratch that idea for ingress, I guess. Have to check the far side.

  My knees complained as I rose, as did the rest of my body because my post adrenal hangover still hadn’t quite passed yet. Still, I made my way as quickly and silently as I could to the nearest building and proceeded to a familiar urban warfare pattern: check corner, listen, proceed quick and low to next available cover. Rince, wash, repeat until arrival at destination.

  It took me almost fifteen minutes to circle the fortress, darting from building to building when I figured sentries weren’t looking. Considering the distance covered a city block or three, that was fairly decent time. Things are going to plan for once. The moment the thought crossed my mind I knew everything was going to go to hell in a handbasket.

  Unwilling to push the luck I’d just cursed, I slowed at the next corner with the intent of conducting one last bit of recon on the fortress and then finding some random building to hold up, preferably one with windows on the higher floors. As I twisted around the corner, the sound of labored breathing just up ahead let me know I’d waited too long and the fuckening had arrived.

  With a quiet sigh and a silent prayer, I drew my sword. Before I drew the next breath, I knew the breathing came from the very edge of the silence, just ahead and around another corner, and I knew the thin rasping breaths combined with bubbling coughs meant whoever it was didn’t have long. Coming around the corner, the amount of blood surrounding the elf on the ground agreed with that assessment.

  The elf groaned as I knelt next to him, leaned my sword against the wall, and started looking for the wound.

  “What? Couldn’t wait for me to get cold, you blighted thiev—” The man’s words cut off the moment he looked up at me. The scorn and contempt nestled between the pain in his expression evaporated in a flash, leaving him wide-eyed. His jaw worked silently for a moment until I started to roll him over, which elicited a hiss of pain. “Have you no shame?”

  “Where you injured?” I whispered back.

  “Like you care, human.”

  I flicked my eyes over to the guy’s face before going back to feeling the side he’d been laying on. This corner was dark enough on its own and his entire side was soaked in blood. “Look, I can only see so well in the dark. If you want to die, keep insulting me. Otherwise, tell me what happened and I might be able to help.”

  “Wait, you’re serious?”

  “About as serious as the pneumothorax you clearly have, yes. Also, how many humans do you know that speak the Syr tongue fluently?”

  “The what?” The elf hacked and coughed up a bit more blood. His demeanor shifted with another long, wheezing breath. “In the side, stiletto. They left me for dead, as a message.”

  I almost asked who, but that didn’t matter right now. I started shrugging out of my pack as I asked, “Can you take off your shirt?”

  “I can try.”

  “Do it if you can, I have to get my medical kit out.”

  Now that I had something to deal with wasn’t necessarily an immediate threat, my thoughts were laser focused and for once I was thankful for some of the cross-training I’d gotten at Fort Dawson. I wasn’t a combat medic, but I knew Delta never fielded huge teams so everyone cross-trained into everyone else’s specialty. That way no matter who got hit there was at least one other person who could carry that job forward. That’s why I’d gone out of my way to bug the medics on-hand for extra training. I found out at the end of OTC that was one of the reasons they kept me. I didn’t have to be told what they wanted out of a trooper; I identified where I was going to measure up short and went about correcting that weakness, either on my own or by getting training from the specialists.

  Thankfully, this guy’s problem was one of the few things we’d covered. That said, I paused and looked down at the guy for a heartbeat with the case holding the needles in my hand. I wasn’t a medic. I’d never done this before on another person, much less an elf. Shoving that doubt aside, I opened the case, tugged on a pair of purple nitriles, and slid out the fourteen gauge needle.

  First time or not, if I did nothing he was going to die.

  I stripped the packaging off the needle and spared a glance at the man’s face while I felt his side for where the ribs were with my free hand. “Look, not going lie, this is going to hurt. Probably not as bad as getting stabbed the first time, though, so there is that.”

  The elf’s eyebrows came down with no small amount of sudden consternation. “The first—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, I pressed the needle between his ribs. A moment later resistance against the needle suddenly lessened and the open end hissed and sputtered. A moment later, the elf drew a ragged breath.

  “Praise be!” he muttered.

  I laid a gloved hand on his chest. “We’re not out of the park yet. You were coughing up blood, so unless you got stabbed somewhere else, all I did was help fix the air leak. This might not be enough.”

  Without further thought, I dug at my chest pouch. The priests had given Tomas something to relay to me before we left the Tanner’s, and the simple chain necklace hadn’t moved from my pouch since then. Fuck it, it worked once, might work again.

  Taking a deep breath, I grasped the necklace in one hand and shifted my grip to let the two symbols attached to it hang free while planting my free hand on the elf’s chest. The little silver bell, Cailleach’s addition to the gift, tinkled as it swung about and bounced off the weathered bronze scythe.

  “Aoibheann, one of your sons lies injured, in need of succor. Grant this fallen son of yours some small portion of your Grace and answer this prayer with love. Lady Badb, one you have sworn to protect has been felled and needs your aid. Please, both of you, help this man see another day so your people may yet rise again.”

  Before I’d finished the first sentence, the hand I had on his chest suddenly felt hot. Even through my closed eyes, I felt the air stir and felt warmth on my skin like I’d sat in a warm summer sunbeam.

  When I opened my eyes, the elf was staring up at me like he’d seen the impossible. His mouth moved but sound only followed a few seconds later. “H-H-Harvester? A human Harvester!? How? The gods are dead!”