She was panting, her dagger hand unsteady, and her other hand gripping my right wrist since I had dismissed New Arm.

  “Don’t fuck with me. What are you?” she said, barely able to get words out without panting immediately after.

  “I’m like you. A human. I saved you.”

  “Screw that. You didn’t,” she spat. “You’re a one-armed twig.”

  “Twig?”

  “If you’re a human… Then, no way in Talathra’s name did you manage to defeat a Mauler.”

  “You call it that, too?” I asked, trying to diffuse the situation.

  “You fired lightning… like the sparking ore.”

  “You guys had something called ‘sparking ore?’ That’s annoying–”

  I moved.

  “WHAT ARE YOU–”

  I stepped into the dagger, letting it cut me, equipped New Arm and backhanded her across the face. She let out a scream and fell onto her rump.

  “Ack–no–ghh–”

  She froze up when she opened her eyes, realizing she was staring at the barrel of my God Arm and at me–the ticked-off savior.

  “Guess you don’t regenerate, huh?” I asked.

  “I don’t have any such blessing,” she stammered.

  Her eyes widened. She must have noticed my bleeding neck suddenly close the very tiny wound and stop spilling blood.

  “But you do–what are you?” she asked, fear consuming her eyes.

  “Like I said. I’m human.”

  Her eyes darted to New Arm. “You didn’t have that earlier.”

  “I like to keep it a surprise,” I smirked and chuckled. “Never know when someone’s going to press a dagger against my neck.”

  She closed her eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  “Alright. Stay here, and don’t move until I’m out of sight.”

  With that, I turned on my heels and continued my journey, ignoring her many surprised grunts and one-word calls.

  I waved at her as I got farther away. “I’m not interested in working with people who pull daggers on me! There’s an abandoned village a few hours down the other way.”

  “A village!?”

  “You can go there. Mind the monsters.”

  I was bluffing. I did want to speak with this woman. But I just needed her to trust that I was a human as quickly as I could. Hopefully, this whole routine would make her realize I could have killed her if I wanted to.

  “Wait!” she cried.

  I kept going, just in case.

  Her huffs and frantic steps echoed. Then, I heard a thud and a cry, and stopped.

  “Wait,” she cried, her voice breaking.

  “Shit.” I sighed, turned around, and quickly went back to her. “You really shouldn’t be threatening people when you can’t even walk on your own,” I said, rolling her from her front onto her back.

  She hid her face with her left hand, and I placed her head on my thigh.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I was just scared.”

  I took a breath and a second before nodding. “Yeah. I know. Just needed you to calm down… Can I ask your name?”

  “Lyra,” she said, looking up at me with eyes so blue I could perfectly see the shade despite the ambient blue lighting.

  “Hi, Lyra. I’m Set… Might shock you to know, but I was also hauled away by a Mauler a few days ago.”

  Her eyes widened. “Is that how you found me? Because you escaped?”

  “I mean, technically… I got caught by a Mauler because of a hunting trip gone wrong. Can I ask… How did you come to have your arm in a Mauler’s jaws?”

  Lyra broke into tears. Me, being the guy with nowhere to go but on, I waited for her to recompose herself. After one hundred and forty-four seconds, she finally found the strength to speak–though she was still sniffling.

  “I just–our village–my village. We have this thing called a Shadow Flame–”

  “Yeah, us too.”

  I registered her surprise, which made her stammer for a second before she continued again. “Right, yeah. Erm–the Shadow Flame–it went out.”

  My heart thumped. Immediately, I wondered if the village I had found and her village were one and the same. Did that timeline work, however? There’s no way the Mauler would have kept her alive for so long, unless she was just recently hunted.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “I was outside, looking for snacks in the surrounding forest when it happened. The moment that flame went out, there was some kind of sound, and then howls. There were so many howls. I hid in the hollow of a tree–and, and–it was just a lot. Shadow Beasts ran in–they tore through the forest and got into the village.” Tears streamed once more as she forced the words out. “They ripped the people apart. There was so much screaming. They slaughtered everyone!”

  Her pained cries filled the passage. She continued her story as best as she could, explaining how, in a panic, she escaped from the forest, trying to get to the edge of the hunting zones and away from the center that the Shadow Beasts had claimed. On the way there, however, a Mauler had caught her by surprise and dragged her away.

  This attack on the village had only happened a few hours ago, by her estimate.

  She was going through a lot. I elected to tell her about my journey so far, leaving out the finer, out-of-ordinary details of all the stuff I had experienced as best as I could. When she had the sense to question my gear, I just told her I found them in the clutches of corpses.

  It wasn’t a terrible lie, I thought. I just pretty much applied what happened with the God Arm to the Signature Weapon.

  My story, being as long and as annoying as it was, calmed her down enough for us to keep speaking.

  “That wasn’t the village I was from,” she reaffirmed. “We didn’t have a river like that… Yeah, there was a river that cut through the hunting grounds, but nothing like what you described. We were also rich in ore, which that village and yours seem not to be.”

  “Can’t say we were rich in anything.”

  “So, you’re in the passage… because you’re trying to find your village again?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Lyra sat up and faced me. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  I raised a brow. “Very sure, Lyra.”

  “I didn’t mean offense,” she said, raising a hand. “It’s just, we’re not protected by a Shadow Flame, and there’s no telling how far this tunnel might stretch–and now we know that Shadow Beasts roam… I just–I cannot understand why you would continue traveling this path.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Well, would turning back be so bad? There’s a village there. There’s a forest. It’s safe,” she said, unable to keep her gaze steady and her fingers still.

  “The Husks though.”

  “Y-You were able to defeat them, yes? They don’t sound as scary as the Shadow Beasts. I’d rather Husks than them.”

  I disregarded that notion immediately. “You haven’t seen them. That’s why you can say that.”

  “Still–”

  She winced and grabbed her right arm.

  “Guess the adrenaline is wearing off.”

  Lyra dug through her pouches and pulled out a small prismatic gem that made me raise a brow.

  “What is that?”

  “You’ve never seen this?” she replied. She popped it into her mouth and crunched it. A gurgle immediately came from her arm. “I don’t have any sort of regeneration blessing, but this healing crystal is up to the task.”

  Slowly, her arm’s wounds began to close.

  “Whoa, your village just had all the best stuff.”

  “All the good that did us when the Shadow Flame went out.”

  She stood up with a grunt and timidly looked down the dark passages. I followed her and stood up.

  “Listen, Lyra, I’m not turning back. I’m moving forward.”

  She looked down and nodded. “I can’t survive on my own… I’ll follow you.” She showed me a feeble smile. “If you don’t mind.”

  I cracked a grin. “I don’t.” I picked up my backpack and slung it around my shoulders. “Let’s get a move on then.”

  “Yeah,” she said, following me. “Further into the den of Shadows.”

  “For what it's worth, I do sincerely believe that we’ll be safe in this passage as long as we don’t stray from the light… Hey, actually, walk ahead of me.”

  She looked at me with eyes as wide as could be. “Really? Me? In front?”

  “If you get dragged away by some tricky enemy, I might make it a full twenty steps before noticing that you were kidnapped. If I’m behind you, I’ll put up more of a fight, and this path is so straight that I’ll see anything coming from the front.”

  “I thought you said the light is safe,” she said with a frown.

  I shrugged. “Arrogance is the enemy of continued life.”

  She groaned and walked ahead of me. “Please, I really don’t want to die. I’ve made it this far.”

  “You and I are of the same mind on that one. Here, you have a dagger. Might as well have another one, just in case.”

  Lips tightly pressed together, and squinting, she replied with a, “Gosh, thanks.”

  And so, the walk began. My eyes stayed on Lyra. She seemed gentle so far, but one could never be too sure. All it takes is one person getting scared and pushing you into a Mauler for your life to get one hundred times harder.

  “I was surprised–you took the idea of there being other villages really well.”

  “Hmm? Was there reason for me to not? I was more surprised that you have so many weapons. We’ve never been able to use our ore for projectiles like that, other than just lobbing a chunk at the neighbor’s face.”

  That comment almost made me laugh. “Whoa. Violent.”

  “Don’t worry. He’s a twat. Or…” She groaned. “Sorry, I guess he was. Poor guy didn’t deserve that.”

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I didn’t know there were other villages still around. We’ve never been visited or anything like that. We thought it was just us and the Shadow Beasts.”

  “Yeah, it was actually a year ago for us. We received refugees from another village.”

  My eyes widened. “Really? No way.”

  “Yeah… Our chief welcomed them in because they saved his son.” She chuckled, lightly shaking her head as she did. “The kid fell in love with two of the refugees.”

  “Oh wow.”

  “It was a mess. Those people weren’t normal like you or me.”

  I raised a brow.

  “They had blue skin that ranged from a pale, sickly blue, to a gem-like blue.” Lyra pulled at her ears. “Their ears were long too, like knives, and they had white hair.”

  I was starting to picture a blue-skinned elf.

  “They were tall and thin people, and so weird. They were going to ruin our way of life. They had strange smells, and they used strange words when they were around the regular folk. The chief was a fool for letting them in after they seduced their son.”

  My eyes narrowed on Lyra as a dread built in my chest. I prayed this woman wasn’t a fantastical xenophobe.

  Lyra sighed. “That was what so many of the others said,” she continued, her voice taking a turn. “They were actually really nice. They came with a lot of recipes and were so smart. I learned how to use so many plants and mushrooms in new, helpful ways… You know, the people like us. A lot of them kept getting fixated on the differences… But when the Shadow Beasts attacked, the screams of the refugees were just as loud as ours.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me, our eyes locking. I nodded, and she sighed. “If one of them had managed to escape with me… You would have loved them. And you would feel so much safer traveling through this tunnel. I bet they had traveled through scarier places than this.”

  Lyra suddenly yelped and stopped. I quickly placed a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

  Her head slowly turned. She had something in her hand, something that was connected to the ceiling by a long thread.

  I recoiled, brow raised. “A note hanging from a string?”