10: the past

 Underneath the canopies of concrete and vines of hanging copper cables are the beady eyes of a lesser dragon. It's definitely a C rank, likely a type 5 judging from its proximity to the Equaliser. Avett's not taking chances. It might turn out that it's still in the grips of early infancy—it could be knee-deep into its teen years for all he knows—but it's still a fucking menace and a bitch to exterminate. In the time that he's had to collect his thoughts, it's already slinked off elsewhere.

Out of sight, but certainly not out of mind.

He curses and moves on, keeping his body lowered and pressed against the handrails of the escalators.

Both of his hands are firmly on his blaster. All Avett hears are the ambient noises of the nearby forest, the occasional whistle of the early morning breeze, and the obnoxiously loud crunch of pebbles against the concrete at his feet. Shit. He's never been light on his feet. His mom used to tease him about it for days back in his single-digit years. His dad had bought him these hard-soled house slippers, and they'd slapped against the wooden floorboards all the time, keeping the entire household up in the process.

He peers over the handrails, aims his gun at the sulking mass of inky tendrils, and fires at the growth of white gauze. The dragon is dead before it hits the concrete. He'll have to work on his footsteps later, but it hasn't screwed him over yet. It's not fair that his mom's still right, even after all of these years.

In a wild series of circumstances and events, Avett finds himself at the epicentre of what appears to be an incredibly high-class department store. As he steps out from behind the escalator, he's greeted with an open ceiling and the unrelenting glare of the Earth's sun. The glass dome that rests above him is surprisingly intact. A lot of things are, in fact. The fast-food counters are made out of marble, and they're not cracked or scratched in the slightest. Just dusty. It's more abandoned than evacuated.

This seems like the perfect place to reestablish society. It's nostalgic, familiar, and it's got tons of resources—he's seen what some of the stores have had to offer in the brief glimpses that he's taken on his way in. All of this sounds way better than a clearing in the middle of a forest.

He turns a corner and slings his backpack onto the counter. This is some kind of supermarket, he's aware. There are condoms on sale at the checkout; he leans over and pockets like four of them. It's not shoplifting if no one's around to see it.

Something rustles behind him. He flinches, flicks his blaster into his hands, and points at… nothing. It's not just the wind because the ceiling's sealed up here, and the breeze hadn't even been strong enough to rattle the chunks of asphalt against the concrete. It's not a dragon either—or at the very least, it's not Equaliser spawn.

"Come on," he says. "I saw you. Get out."

The bluff works. She's doing the thing that makes Avett's insides feel funny where she laughs from the deepest parts of her belly. He wonders if he should lower his blaster or point it at himself.

"There's no way you need all of those," Mari says as she comes into the light.

He slips his blaster back into its holster. "I collect them. I like how the boxes look."

"Really?"

Avett swings his backpack over his shoulders again. There's a smile playing on his lips, and for a brief second, he feels like a fucking king. Like he's the first kid in a class full of geniuses to put down his pencil, flip over his test, and lean back in his chair. Stars, how he's missed little interactions like these. Lilith would've seen and ignored him. Auren likely would have done the same. Ysh'vanna would have lost it and pulled the condoms over his head. He's not allowed to have fun aboard the Winnow because they're all stuck-ups with silver utensils shoved deep inside their anal cavities.

"What do you mean, 'really?'" He shrugs and walks into a random aisle. He hopes he's in the preservatives. "That's all they're good for, right?"

A snort. "Best to keep them as family heirlooms. I'd check the expiry date if I were you."

Onset, palpable fear. Avett shoves a hand into his pockets and brings out a box. The black numbering on the side shows that it's at least a year past its best-by date.

He whirls around. "Condoms on Earth have expiry da—?"

There's no one behind him. She's just gone.

He takes a few cautionary steps forward. The supermarket's tiling is so brittle that he cracks one clean in half with his heel. He calls out her name. He calls out her name again, this time slightly louder. When she doesn't answer both times, he starts walking faster. His heart is pounding, ready to leap up and out of his throat at any damn second.

Again he calls her name. Again, she doesn't respond. Avett can only assume the worst.

Then—a flash of brown leather. The tinkle of her zips hitting the supermarket railing. Mari comes out of the aisle next to the one he's in. She's in front of him now, and she's got the biggest shit-eating grin on her face, one that puts the one that'd been on his face not five minutes earlier to shame.

"Cans are this way," she says. There are black spots in his vision when he looks at her, but they're slowly starting to recede back into whatever hell they'd come from. "I just walked into the aisle next to yours, and you just started screaming my name like I'd gone off and died."

Then she sees his expression. He probably looks like shit. He feels like shit. It's like he's just been unwillingly ripped apart and exposed, like soft citruses in the hands of a starving child.

"I'm fine," Avett says. "I didn't hear you move, that's all."

He slides a hand over his stomach and clenches his hands into the familiar warmth of his navy-blue jacket; Mari catches him doing it, so he rounds the corner and enters the aisle of preservatives without giving her a second glance.

"It's magic," she says, a bit after. She's still on the other side of the aisle; Avett can see her painfully still face from over the tops of the cereal boxes. "I'm using a glamour to hide the sound of my footsteps. Obviously, I'm not too good at it. I can't hide anything else."

He tries his best to ignore the piles upon piles of rotting fruit displays and decaying herb pots that haven't seen the blessing of light and water in a while. It seems counter-intuitive for one side to need daily maintenance while the other might as well go half a decade without needing to be replenished.

It's almost retroactively funny, actually. Just like how he'd freaked out over absolutely nothing at all.

The rest of the outing is pretty awkward after that. But when he comes back with a backpack full of jars of pickles and soft chickpeas and corn, the villagers seem elated to know that the Kattish man isn't out to kill them all in their sleep anymore. So he's fine with feeling like someone's just twisted a knife into his stomach, he guesses.

—

Lili doesn't like this place.

She'd woken up in the middle of the night, her back and bed drenched in sweat, and when she'd reaffirmed that the moisture at her back hadn't been piss but sweat instead, she'd gone right back to sleep. Come early morning, and she'd never felt better. 

Until she walked out of her room in her weird white sheet-robe thing and nothing else, and found herself eye to eye with William Dresfort, Ava's boyfriend before the fall… and point guard for his all-boys school's basketball team.

There's no way they're on equal footing. Lili had clung to the excuse of being from an all-girls school as to why she never socialised with the opposite gender, but now she's thinking about it, she never really was one for socialisation in the first place. People who interacted and knew people from other schools—at the time—were scary to Lili. The reverse rang true: as a result, she never really got to talk to Will often.

Lili doesn't like to think about him. She didn't have any friends outside of Ava's friend group, and Ava knew it; she'd ended up with the highly-valued role of the third wheel at every outing. And Lili had eaten all up by taking them up on every invitation, either out of fear of disappointing Ava or losing her only—Lili hovers on the word 'friend.' She doesn't know.

Will is making breakfast for himself. The smell of fried eggs and sauteed potatoes wafts through the air. He doesn't see Lili yet. Or maybe he doesn't want to have to acknowledge her existence before he's had his first cup of coffee.   

She wonders if it's in poor taste to immediately change back into her caster's uniform.

Then he says, "I left a change of clothes for you in your room. Did you miss them?"

Lili knows they hadn't been there. She plays along anyway by walking back down the corridor. Sure enough, there's a pile of old clothing on the stool in Avett's room, which has been left wide open. They're meant for Avett, obviously, but she puts it on anyway. She finds that they're nothing out of the ordinary—just a pair of washed-out jeans and a hoodie.

When she comes back, he's already sitting down at the hickory dining table and neatly cutting into his gooey-yolked eggs with his knife and fork. There's a plate opposite his. Lili sits down there.

There's a knife and fork on her plate as well.

Ignoring the knife, she takes the fork in her right hand and spears right through the yolk. Will is using the slices of sauteed potato as a scoop to wipe up its molten centre. Some of it smears—and stays smeared like he's just tried to wipe away a bloodstain—on the plate.   

"You day drink?" he asks after he's done with his meal. Lili is still trying to figure out how she's going to slice off parts of this egg with the edge of her fork only. She's made a mess of the yolk, and she's caught it dribbling off the sides of the plate at least five times now.

She doesn't answer. He coughs and corrects himself. "Do you drink at all?"

"I don't mind drinking in the day," she says.

"Then," he says, as he pushes away from the chair and leaves the table, "I'll see you at the bar. Building opposite this one. Take your time."

It feels like there's been a weight lifted off her shoulders when he leaves the house. Lili takes pleasure in the absence of him and takes this opportunity to dig through the pantry for chopsticks, or a spoon, or anything she can actually use. All she gets is a spoon. Which is still pretty useless.

She grips the handle tightly. Tight enough, she thinks, to break her bones and cut through her skin if she clenches any harder. Then she puts it back with all the other spoons and closes the drawers.

Lili finishes her meal five minutes later. She's painfully white, considering the fact that she can't speak a lick of Mandarin nor Tagalog, but she'd sell a disproportionate amount of her vital organs just to be able to eat with a knife and fork. It seems like these days, she's always lost in a liminal nowhere, where not even the most fringest of fringe groups can relate to her experience. Stuck in a profound sense of estrangement is how she's going to refer to it. Who's ever heard of a Human caster? A Human caster who's scared of her own ether and can't cast for shit? A Chinese-Filipino who's so whitewashed she can't speak what should've been her own mother tongue, and yet can't even eat with a knife and fork to save her dignity in front of the people who care?

Suddenly, the prospect of day drinking seems a whole lot better. She wishes that it didn't take just a knife and fork and Will's demeaning nature to make her spiral like this. When she leaves the pseudo-mansion, she notices that there is no building in front of the mansion. The bar, in fact, is closer to the left side of the village than anything else.  

It's actually a nice place. Lili's not sure why, but she'd expected a garage or some derelict warehouse. The counter is a deep, red shade, so deep that Lili is sure she'll blend right into the surface if she leans her forehead onto it and lets her hair dribble onto the table. The stools are made of the same material. Both are varnished.

"You're here," Will says. He pats the seat next to him. "Fuck, it's been ages. Come. Sit."

It's a command, and Lili knows it.

She makes her way over, her face perfectly still. She's still a mess underneath. She sits one stool away from him; she doesn't like how close each of the stools are to each other.

He leaps over the counter and runs his hands over the necks of the bottles. There are so many. She doesn't really give a fuck what's on the shelf as long as it'll give her the energy to talk to this man. "For the lady, some cha—"

"Whiskey," she says.

Will stops on a glassy, piss-yellow bottle that has a faded sticker on it. "You want water with that?"

"No."

"No?"

Lili doesn't say anything. Will sighs loudly, rattles around in the cupboard that's underneath the counter, and slams down a shot glass. The whiskey sloshes over the side and onto the table. It smells really terrible.

She downs it in one swallow. Taps it against the counter. He pours, and she downs another.

"You're supposed to be sipping, slowly, by the way, on a carefully crafted drink while we catch up on the last six years." He leaves the bottle uncapped and on the counter. Lili just pours herself another shot. It takes a volumetric fuckton for her to get anywhere anyway, so she's doing him a favour by getting buzzed early.

He sits on his stool. Shakes his head. "Back then, when you, I, and Ava used to drink, half a shot was all you needed.

"I've changed," she says quickly.

"Damn straight, you have." He brings the glass of whatever the fuck to his lips and laps at it. She's very sure that it's not his first drink, nor will it be his last. As if he'd read her mind, he adds, "Already went down a glass before you got here—comes with the stress of keeping elders like Johannes alive."

Lili doesn't know who Johannes is, but what she does know is that if they'd set up their village a little closer to the Hive, he'd probably be a whole lot healthier.  

Will leans forward in his seat, his eyes darkening over with a varnish of powdered bones and dirt. "Tell me, young lady. What are you doing so far away from home?"

She's already in the middle of her fourth shot, and it's taking all of her energy not to spit it right back into the glass. 'Home' doesn't exist anymore. She thinks that he might say something like, 'home is where the heart is,' or 'home is where you left Ava,' but he keeps his mouth shut instead. The shot glass clacks down onto the counter. She's missing both of those things; how is she supposed to know where her home is?

With her teeth gritted together, she says, "Ava is dead."

Will stills. "Oh."

He moves with a sleazy fluidity towards the bottle of whiskey. Lili grips the neck tightly. No, she hasn't had enough. Yes, she's going to keep drinking. Her eyes don't leave Will's for a second as he slinks back into his seat, defeated.

"Jesus," he says instead. "Must've been quite the shock. And quite the threat. God rest her soul."

She tenses her jaw. For a moment, her eyes squint as if she's preparing herself to cry. Then she tips down her fifth shot. At least that's something she can still rely on.

"Still, it's more of a surprise than anything. I would've expected Ava to survive." It's his turn to grit his teeth. "She's a walking nightmare. You're… nothing much. How'd you get out of it alive?"

"I killed Ava."

Her tone surprises both her and Will. It's cold, sharp, and freakishly tight. She could've cut cold butter with it in a single swing if she tried. She sees Will's fingers close, then open, then close around the glass he's poured for himself.

"...Out of mercy," she finishes. "We didn't… both make it."

Will sucks in a breath through his teeth and eyes the whiskey bottle again. "Oh. Well." He takes a healthy swig of his drink. "How was it?"

Lili is looking at her own reflection in her shot glass when he says this. For the second time that afternoon, she's been caught off guard. And she doesn't want to be off guard because that means being open to Will. She wants to be an impenetrable wall, a house of iron, if she so chooses, instead of bricks and weatherboards. She doesn't want to be a family house, a sanctuary constructed for living—she wants to be an execution chamber. Where inmates enter to die. Where everything enters, and nothing comes out.

"Not very good," she answers.

"How about I tell you about the first time I ever killed something, hm? One of those aliens. An 'off-lander,' if you will. It thought it could get away with maiming two of our elders and—" He chokes. "—Mari. Let me tell you, when you finally get your hands on the thing you despise the most, and you know there's nothing stopping you, it's like popping a zit."

Lili shivers. Disgust snakes through her veins. It's down the hatch for her sixth shot glass. Then another. Then another, until she's sure she's shaking from the alcohol content in her blood and not from the shit he's just thrown at her.

He continues like he doesn't give a damn, "I know what you are, Lili. You're angry. You're violently in love with the idea of being angry, and you're done with only being angry in here." He slaps his chest—holds his hand there, splayed and open. "You yelled at me earlier, spouted all this garbage about how you were going to raid this village and kill us all, because you want your anger to mean something. You want to be bad on your own terms, because you've spent your whole life being good on someone else's. You want to be unexpected."

Lili closes her fingers around the shot glass and throws her ninth shot down.

"You want someone to take notice," he continues, taking a sip of his drink. "And you think, that being tough, being feared and fighting back is going to give you that. It's not. It's all dry satisfaction, Lili. They're bandaids over open wounds that'll scar. It means nothing when you get right down to it. Look at me, Lili. Where'd I end up?"

He's pointing a lazy finger at her now. He's just rambling. He's just rambling. Tenth shot it is, then.

"And you wanna know the reason why you never had the balls to fight back in high school? Why you let us, all of us—shove you into that corner over and over? Because you weren't powerful. You were scared of the consequences of confrontation, and in our circle, that happened to be physical pain and exclusion. But you've got some of that power now. It makes you brave. You have the muscle to back your words, you've got even less to lose, and you're just discovering how great it feels to be unapologetically you."

Lili stops at the eleventh. Will leans in, his breath heavy with the stench of alcohol. She's not sure if that's actually just her own breath. "Something's changed inside of you, Lili. You can take more alcohol, you're a capable magic user, if not far more capable than the rest of us. It's not about whether or not you'll survive the confrontation anymore, it's just a matter of whether or not you're bothered enough to deal with the consequences of being a big, bad, angry bitch."

Lili just swirls the shot glass between her fingers. The word 'bitch’ is an insult, it's meant to be demeaning, but from the way he'd said it, it might as well be the nicest thing he's ever thrown at her. It probably is—Will deals his insults in double entendres and context-reliant statements. Insults, to him, are tacky and unrefined. The amateur's first lamb shank roast to the sous chef's specialty foie gras.

Then she looks down at her glass. Why do people drink alcohol anyway? It kind of tastes like garbage. Whatever. It makes her feel good, unknots the tangles of her worries from her head like a fine-fingered hairstylist. Even if it's only for a brief moment. Even if she has to keep chugging for the rest of the night.

"The gods drifted down and bestowed upon the cornered animal fangs." He snaps his fingers in front of her face before he grasps the neck of her whiskey bottle and puts it under the counter. She tries not to show her disappointment. "Just know that you're not brave. You're just lucky."

Lili stares at Will. He's leaning against the counter with an absolutely despicable grin on his face. "Are you done?" she asks.

He motions to the door. "By all means, if there's anything I've said tonight that offends you, then feel free to leave."

She looks at the shot glass in her hand. Blinks. Realises she's hardly even buzzed, let alone drunk. That was twelve shots. What the fuck is wrong with her?

"Hey. Hey. Look at me when I talk to you." He's snapping his fingers again. She could not give less of a fuck. "You either leave, or you stay, Lili. Very simple. You heard me, right?"

Her hand shakes a little. She hears Will loud and clear—that's the problem. Normally she'd be giddy right now, and his words would be flying over her head like a targeted joke she's not meant to get, but she's… sober.

Something hot and electric snaps at her forehead. It spreads quickly from the site of impact as waves of feverish heat. She flinches back, steadies herself against the counter, and wobbles on her seat.

Will has his finger extended in front of him. Ether wafts off the tip like a recently used cigarette. It's an extraordinary power—she's never seen anything like it, but then again, she's not all that well acquainted with the methods of other casters. Maybe he's just different.

Lili pushes herself from the counter. "I'm leaving," she says. "Thanks."

He lowers his finger and clicks his tongue. "Remember. Just lucky."

Lili is inclined to agree.

—

Avett is just about to start helping council Elder Johannes with his garden when he sees Lilith stroll out of the village tavern. Actually, he smells Lilith first before he sees her. She reeks of cheap whiskey. He's on his way to give her a verbal smacking—who drinks at 11 AM anyway, especially right after waking from a one-day coma?—until he sees just how sober she is.

He must be scrunching up his nose subconsciously because she apologises and confesses immediately. "Sorry, Will made me drink."

"You're ok, right?" Without thinking, he strides up to her and presses a hand to her forehead. Her temperature is average. It takes her a moment to realise what he's doing, and when she does, she wraps her hand around his wrist loosely. He could easily shake her off. She hasn't recovered. Not yet. Avett lets his hand fall to his side.

"How many?" he asks. Now that she's closer, it smells like she's been dunked in a barrel of it.

A pause. "I don't know." Then recognition. Then she schools her features into neutrality, looks at him right in the eyes, and says, "I had around five."

He folds his arms. He'll let it slide. "Elder Johannes wants his garden watered and weeded."

"You know them by name?" Lilith looks at Avett like he's just told her something outrageous.

He shrugs. "You say it like it's outrageous. I'd ask you to help, but you reek of liquor, and I'm not sure if he's fond of…" A slow, methodical rotation of his wrist lets her fill in the blanks.

Lilith nods and looks elsewhere. Her cheeks are flushing, and it's not just from the alcohol.  

Avett goes on, "I was out collecting supplies earlier too." Fishing around in his backpack, he pulls out two glassy jars of marinated pickles. "Johannes will want these. Susan's in the next house over, she's not an elder, but you'll probably want to leave these on her porch as well."

"You want me to deliver them?" she asks.

This time, it's his turn to look at her like she's said something stupid. He bobs the jars in his hand up and down in front of her. "Yeah. It's called a nice gesture. Mari suggested it. Come on."

Lilith looks down at the jars. Appraises them with squinted eyes. "Did you call the Winnow yet?"

"Uh." He blinks.

"Have you thought about it, at least?" Even though she's confronting him, she's staring off to the side. Like he'll burn right through her if she dares to look at him directly.

He splutters. Embarrassment bubbles over in his stomach like a kettle that's been left to boil for too long. "I—ok. I'll get on that, just—get these to Elder Johannes and Susan."

She has her hands behind her back. He's just shoving them into her stomach over and over.

"You've thought about what I said last night as well, right?" she asks.

Truthfully, no. But he's not here to be truthful with Lilith of all people. He dodges the topic at hand. "I thought you were delirious."

She glares at him, like she's got way more on her mind than she's willing to let up. She actually does open her mouth, maybe to reprimand him, maybe to give him exactly what she's thinking about, but then she stops.

There's a bell in the distance. It's coming from the building next to their cabin—a long warehouse, likely meant for communal feasts. Or, judging from the way everyone's heading inside, regular lunches and dinners.

Lilith catches on immediately. "Come on. We're not eating with them."

Avett is about to complain when she latches onto him and drags him by the hand between two nameless buildings. They reach the edge, and he's surprised to find that there's no fence separating the perils of the forest from the safety of the village back here.

He's so shocked by this that he's still processing it even when they're pushing past overgrown ferns and unruly tree branches. When they arrive in the thick of the forest, he feels like he's just forced past and through an oppressive membrane.

Alone and together. He inhales—feels the sharp intake of forest musk and the smell of blanketed soil underneath rotting pine needles. And all of a sudden, as if someone's dunked him into a vat of ice shavings, his mind is stark-white clear.

Avett stumbles into a tree and slumps down against it. For the first time in a while, his tongue is failing him, as no words are coming to mind.

"Sorry." Lilith crosses her arms over her chest. "I kind of hated that place."

He nods, both to himself and to Lilith, as if he's still shaking away the mental cobwebs from his brain. He's holding his head not a second later. Everything is so painfully lucid, now that he's away from all of the people and white noise.  

"Holy shit," he breathes.

Lilith leans over, her hair hanging in strands. "Are you ok?"

"I think I was trying to get into someone's pants earlier." He fishes into his pockets. The neon coloured boxes patter to the grass a second later. Disdain flashes over his partner's face before Avett waves it off. "Trying. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I don't think you'd get it."

Another breath rattles through his chest. He'd never expected himself to be the sort of person to easily tire from social interaction, but here he is—thankful for the cool respite of the forest's shade.

"Something just isn't right with that village; it's not just you. It's draining to be in there." Her voice is distant again—the normalcy of it both comforts and bothers Avett to no end. They're frontliners on the clock again, which, speaking of…

"How's your ether?" he asks. She'd managed to keep the Equaliser at bay before passing out a day ago, but he can tell she's not ready for the field yet at all.

She shrugs. Then she says, "I'm making lunch."

He calls out after her, "What, are we married now?" but she's already separated a cluster of plain mushrooms from their families and collected strands of fuzzy-stemmed grass to stick into her pockets by the time he's thought of something witty to say. Then she's off again.

Of course he's going to follow her.

"This plan isn't going to work," he says. "They said the herbs are good for us, Lilith, it'll keep the dragon's influence at bay—"

"Bullshit." She kneels and palms at the dirt.

"Did you just interrupt me?"

Her fingers are knuckle-deep in the ground when she stops. Then she starts digging again, as if she's regained her motivations. "The cilantro thing. Don't listen to it. It's wrong."

For her, a trained caster, maybe. She's not aware of the extent of her power in comparison to the masses. Even though she's dormant right now, Avett is sure that he can feel the raw insanity of a woman pushed to the edge one too many times; it pulsates against the very air that he breathes.

She says it again. "Please, just have lunch with me."

He just rolls his eyes behind her back. He'll just have his dose at dinner, no problem. "We don't have anything to cook out of either. No plates, no cutlery, certainly no water to boil—" He stops as he sees a bundle of bulbous plants in her hand, their bodies still dripping with soil. "Where and how'd you even manage to get those?"

"They've got pots and pans in the house," she answers simply. A sidestep to his A sidestep to his retort. She's gotten better at this.

"They've got food back in the house too."

She stops wading around the grass to look at him.

Avett stops as well, content with keeping his distance. "You've been so opposed to the idea of eating their lunches—they taste terrible and like soap, I know—I just want to know why."  

Her features are weighed with dregs of malnourishment. He realises that she hasn't eaten—either that or that she's been physically rejecting the food afterwards, considering that no one's informed him of her curious eating habits yet.

"We're not eating their food." Lilith turns back around.

Avett puts up his hands. What else can he do?

9: the Human village

In the sweet embrace of the morning light, Avett's already had plenty of time to come to the terms that he's been forcibly detained in one of their makeshift cabins. Not as their guest, but as their prisoner. The room only has two windows—one above his bed, and the other on the door—and if he lies on the wooden floorboards and presses his head against the wall, his toes can just about touch the other side.

The flap in the door rattles. A tray rattles against the ground as it slides over. Surprisingly, the food actually looks good—though anything's better than the glorified slop Auren serves, especially when it's got meat in it.

He lets his eyes drift off onto the tray of food. It's a bit far from his bed. They've tied not only his wrists together, but his legs too, because they're scared that he'll kick down the door or something. Lord knows he could do it regardless. Not like he's planning to—not yet, anyway. The fact that they haven't attempted to smother him in his sleep is proof that they're willing to listen to him. He's sticking with Lilith until her full recovery. Worst comes to worst, he's not above assaulting his would-be assailant and making off with Lilith.

It's mashed root vegetables and generous slices of roast beef. Steam is wafting off the tray.

"I'm so glad you guys do room service," he says. Loud enough for his waiter or waitress to hear, but not loud to the point of aggression.

At first, there's no response. Then a feather-light voice responds with, "You're welcome, sir."

A kid. A boy, judging from his intonations. But he's not really sure because he's also got the same accent as Lilith; the boy sounds like he's trying to talk around a mouthful of bread.

If he's young, it means that he's impressionable, which means he can bargain with him. He looks to the tray on the ground. "No utensils?" he asks.

"Will said you're going to have to eat out of it like the animal you are, but personally I don't agree."

The words juxtaposed with his childish tone throws Avett for a loop. Gotta start them young, he guesses. In truth, he'd much rather be spoon-fed than to wriggle over and plunge head-first into a pile of mashed potatoes. He's already decided that he's not eating a lick of that food, but it's getting harder with each passing second; his Kattish nose is betraying him big time, and it smells absolutely salivating. He hasn't eaten since yesterday's noon.

He flexes his hands against his restraints. "Mutual exchange. If you untie me and get me a spoon, I'll tell you where babies come from."

"Sorry, mister cat-man." The boy is walking away. "I already know."

Avett curses under his breath. Kids grow up so quickly these days. A certain frontliner could learn a thing or two from him.

His stomach growls, so he rolls over and faces the wall. The things he'll do for Lilith, he swears.

—

Chaos, the slam of wood against wood, and a guttural slurry of swears and commands. Something rattles across the floor and hits the wall. Avett jerks awake just in time for someone to throw him off the bed and hoist him up into a chair.

He squints. Rage boils through his body. "What the fuck do you want?" he spits. "I'm sitting here, I'm being a good boy—I could've fucking kicked down this flimsy piece of shit in seconds but I fucking didn—"

Warm and soft. There's something warm and soft in his mouth, kind of like mashed potatoes but with the additional tang of soap and grass. It is disgusting. Every muscle in his mouth revolts with the urge to spit it out, but the person in front of him—the woman from last night—holds him down by the shoulder and says, "Swallow it. We don't starve our prisoners."

Avett finds himself saying something, but his words are obscured by a mess of uncontrolled fury, bleariness, and drool. So he obliges, for this spoonful, and then the next.

On the third spoonful, he dodges her hand. "Could just untie me."

She stops, puts his spoon back into the tray, and sits down on the ground with her legs crossed. Her eyes remind Avett of the colour of steel, and her skin is an uneven, deep bronze—tanned from living in the forest. "Sweetie, you could've done a lot of things. You said so yourself."

"Don't fucking sweetie me. Just tell me if Lilith is fine."

He watches her jab the spoon into the pile of mashed potatoes and soap. "Is that her name?" she asks. "The name of the Human you so generously exposed to gumboots?"

Avett coughs. "To what? And—you think I used her as bait?"

"Doesn't matter." The woman shoves a spoonful into her mouth. "The other schmucks in the village council forbade me from interacting with you, said they'd send someone else 'cause they can't trust me to use my magic. But fuck it, eh?"

Before Avett can respond, the woman stands and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. White residue sticks to her sleeve. "Let me get your name."

Her words sting with the stench of ether. He finds himself complying with her demands, as the water flows, as the clouds go—it's not just in his nature to spill everything he knows about himself to this stranger, but necessary. "Avett Ironsturm. What are you doing to me?"

"Guess those elders were on to something." She taps her foot against the ground and darts her eyes around the cabin. Then she breathes, steels herself, and says, "That's not your actual family name, but it'll have to do."

Avett presses his lips together. He'll spill if he opens up, but thankfully the woman relents and shrugs. "Guess space pirates get their share of family drama too." The ether subsides, just a smidge, allowing Avett to breathe.

Something isn't sitting right with Avett, but right now, rage is all he can feel. "You think I'm a space pir—"

Another wave of ether washes over him. "We were attacked last month too. Were you aware of this?"

"I did not commit myself to this field for five years, only for some backwater bitch who's never even heard of the IRC Numerical System to tell me I've been collaborating with pirates," he responds through gritted teeth. "No. I wasn't."

Surprise graces her features. She hesitates—then raises an iron-toed boot. "You're a space alien or something, I know that much, but I'm willing to bet that you've got the same set of jewels every man on this damn wasteland of a world's got."

Her steel-cold eyes darken into the shade of water-logged storm clouds.

Avett feels like he's going to throw up from the pressure of her ether alone. So he does. Verbally.

"Actually, we're not space aliens, it's more like we're from an alternate universe where we just evolved in a slightly different way, which makes us pretty much the same genetically. So, yeah, I would have an impressive pair of balls. And my cock's pretty substantial too. My measurements are modest, kind of average, but I've got—"

He throws his head back with enough force to knock his skull against the cabin wall; this instantaneously shuts him up. The chair tips over, and he lands on his side with his face pressed right against the tray of food. He groans, his side and rib cage stinging. At least he's not spewing out inappropriate numbers in front of strangers anymore.

The woman looks worse for wear. She's clutching her head and stumbling backwards, probably because she's just accidentally used up the vast majority of her personal ether by letting it spiral out of control.

A groan tumbles out of his lips. "C-can I see Lilith now?"

Finally, the woman flops back onto the ground. She shoves a healthy spoonful of mashed potatoes into her mouth like she's starving. Then she waves a spoon at Avett. "Cilantro and thyme. It's what keeps us all from fucking going off the edge from gumboots here. You're lucky the council decided to add it into your portions. Coincidentally, it also powers us. Our magic. So eat up."

"So ether," he breathes.

"Is that what you guys call it?" She laughs.

"We've got a whole dictionary of situational jargon for things you aren't even aware of." He raises his arms. "I'm not here to do harm. I swear."

The woman slides a knife out of her pocket and unsheathes it. He's freed within seconds, and it surprises him—though that's probably because he's grown accustomed to Lilith's incompetency. Then he looks at her muscular build, then at her towering physique, and then he's wondering why he'd ever doubted her competence at all. She could easily suplex a lesser dragon and have it for dinner with her family on the same night.

She offers her hand. He refuses it and pushes himself to his feet instead. His wrists feel so nice to rub; Fuck, he's forgotten how it good it feels to be free.

The woman looks off at the door and rubs the back of her head. "I'm Marina. They call me Mari here. Sorry about all of this—I was too quick to judge the situation, and as it turned out, I was wrong about you."

"A lot of people tend to be." He shrugs. "Comes with the profession. And the ears."

Mari doesn't answer, but she does offer him an apologetic smirk as she holds open the door. "After you then, sweetie."

As he walks through the village, he tries his damndest to ignore the armour-piercing stares that the villagers offer him the moment he steps out of the cabin without his restraints on. Despite having Mari's 'protection' at his side, he's still unwelcome—though none of the Humans try to engage him verbally, instead choosing to hastily resume whatever they were doing prior to his appearance.

"I apologise on behalf of their behaviour," Mari says once they're out of earshot. "Most off-landers who visit come with the intention of causing us harm. You're the first we've let out of that cabin unshackled."

Or alive, for that matter. Something uncomfortable settles in his stomach at that intrusive thought before he remembers that he's not here to do harm to them. He shrugs and continues to walk. "I'm used to stares. Another perk that comes with the ears."

Mari arrives at a cabin that's bigger and more intricately built than the others. It has an overhang above the entrance that's supported by two stripped logs. It's clear that someone of authority lives here, maybe multiple, even. As requested by his tour guide, he removes his shoes before entering. She leads him through a spacious kitchen and down a corridor before stopping in front of a door.

Lilith's face is still. And red. The nurse at her side has placed a damp cloth on her forehead, and there are multiple syringes on the table, their chambers filled with a dark, greeny substance. Mari nods to the nurse, and he leaves the room.

"Your partner's a fighter," Mari says. She's next to him, her powerful arms folded. "No one's ever been this exposed to gumboots—and left with just a fever."

"More of a wet rag than a fighter." Avett takes the nearest stool and drags it over to the bed. "But she's got it where it counts."

Silence. Then, testingly and teasingly, she asks, "I see how it is, then."

"Oh?" He turns and props his elbow against the counter. Playful mirth dances across his features. "You think we're in a relationship?"

A low, gut-quaking laugh. "Excuse me. She was all you wanted in the cabin."

Avett glances back at Lilith. In spite of her current condition, this is the most peaceful he's ever seen her. "Relationship is… stretching it. I hardly know her. She's just a colleague."

He looks down at his hands. The word 'colleague' doesn't seem to fit; it's too narrow, too stoic for someone like Lilith. It's a tenuous term that falls apart under scrutiny. She's not 'just a colleague' because that would imply that he puts on airs in her presence. She's the only person he trusts, and he's only just realising that now. It's just a shame she won't return the sentiment. He's only got himself to blame for that.

The soft slap of leather against wooden flooring snaps him back from his stupor. Mari's chucked off her jacket and thrown it against the floor. A stool rattles up to his side, and she sits right next to him, her eyes searching Lilith's face with unhinged curiosity.

Then she says, "Not really seeing a wet rag here, Avett."

"She's more wet behind her ears than anything." Avett doesn't have to force himself to remember all the times she'd thrown herself into the midst of danger at the expense of her wellbeing. If he dares to take his eyes off of Lilith for even a second, she'll probably find some obscure, out-of-the-way method to kill herself under the guise of 'the better good.'

"Wet behind the ears?" She grins. Then she tilts her head. "You look a little light on the years yourself. You sure you're allowed to say that?"

"I've been in the mercenary workforce for three years now, and she's been in for two weeks. I can say whatever the hell I want."

"Three years." Mari briefly counts on her fingers. Her hands are big—they're stubby and coarse from years of woodworking, he presumes, but there's a feather of softness to them. "Jeez—how old are you?"

"Twenty."   

Another laugh. "When I was seventeen, I was a fucking handful for my parents. Not out being… an intergalactic bounty hunter, or whatever it is you do."

Avett catches himself before he makes a quip about his outburst from earlier. Mari's eyes have lost their ferric shine.  

He presses his lips together. "Lilith also lost her parents."

"I know." She turns to look at a dent in the floorboards. "A miracle if she still had them."

The silence that follows after is deafening.

She stands and straightens her back. Her smile returns as quickly as it had disappeared. "I'm surprised that, as a mercenary, you haven't thought about getting back your weapons yet. Am I that distracting?"

He blinks. Then—fuck. He pats down the pockets on his pants; the cloth flattens against his thighs. He turns to face Mari again, but she's already heading towards the door. "Come on," she says. "I'll take you to Will's and show you around the council."

She dips around the corner. Avett flashes one final glance at Lilith as the nurse ushers himself back in with a bucket full of clean water and a freshly folded cloth.

—

When he enters the armoury, his mouth nearly drops at the sheer amount of—shit that's in there. Blasters, auto-crossbows, energy cannons and swords of every make and mark line the warehouse walls. And as he admires the rack of state-of-the-art blasters, he realises, with a fearful lurch of his stomach, just where they're all from. Off-landers used to own these, dead off-landers—and judging from the model, they've been obtained pretty recently.

Mari waves to a figure in the distance. A blond man is hunched over, quite possibly polishing away at weaponry he doesn't even own. "Hey, Will! You got this guy's stuff?"

"This guy?" He turns briefly to look at Avett, looks back, then does a double-take. "You fucking brought him in?"

"Yeah, he's not one of 'em, I checked him myself. He's with the girl."

Will's seat clatters to the floor as he stumbles toward a particularly heavy-laden rack of blasters. It takes a moment for Avett to realise that they'd fully intended to—stars, he doesn't even want to say it. "Christ, Mari, don't fucking bring him in here. Get him out. Out."

"Will, he's not—"

"Fuck, man! Just go! Wait outside, dammit!"

The warehouse door slams shut behind them. Mari shrugs. "He's a bit rough around the edges, but he's a real softie underneath it all." She pauses, bends over slightly so that she's face to face with Avett, and raises a curious eyebrow. "You alright? You're looking kind of white."

He releases a breath. Inhales. Does it again as he's nodding. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine." What the fuck is he doing? Dragons try to eat him on a good day, and on a bad day… what happened yesterday probably counted as a bad day, but he's definitely had worse. The day he'd met Lilith was significantly more unbearable than any other day, and that's including the time he had to wade through an endless underground network of broken sewers for a relic. Auren had refused to talk to him, and though Ysh'vanna had been more mature about it, she later suggested for him to relocate to the armoury with a temporary mattress "for the foreseeable future." The smell didn't wash out for weeks.

In desperate need of a distraction, he brings himself to meet Mari's eyes once more. "You're all capable of manipulating ether then?"

She shakes her head. "It's not ether. It's magic. What we can do is different from what you're capable of."

He freezes. Stars save him if he's actually managed to piss off this woman.

"…is what I think the other members of the council would try to say." Mari sheepishly rubs the back of her head and grins downwards. "They think we're different from the pir—uh, off-landers because we can't use those wings or something. That whatever we have is less harmful and more productive, but that's stupid. We're just as capable of destruction."

She rubs her fingers together, and a misty swirl of pure black emanates from her fingertips. Avett doesn't know what it is, but her point is proven regardless. She snaps her fingers, and then the flame is gone.

"Have you ever had someone lose their magic?" Avett asks.

"Eh, not really." She shrugs. "That's not a thing that happens. I'm not as well versed in magic as the other members of the council, but I'd like to think that I speak for all of us when I say that it's a part of me—it's not something you can just lose and still—" She bites her lip. "—still be mentally sound. Why?"

He's about to tell Mari about Lilith when the blond man from early slams the doors open. His arms are full of weaponry. Avett's weaponry. He should not be handling his incendiaries like that.

Avett takes them back the moment Will offers them to him with a swift lunge, narrowly avoiding what could've turned his day from bad to fucking disastrous. Pretty soon, he's got all of his gear strapped in again. Will stands by, his face impassive as he watches him slide his blasters through the holsters.

"This guy is definitely not safe," he whispers. He must think he's out of earshot, but Avett's ears perk straight up anyway. He's about to bristle and cave in when Mari answers for him.

"I tested him myself, I told you. He wasn't lying."

"And we all know how reliable your magic is."

"Yeah, well, it went fine this time." Mari folds her arms, her eyebrows knitted in defiance. "Lilith—the girl, is his partner. They're mercenaries passing through."

Avett's ears lower as Will strides up to him with his shoulders squared and chin tilted upwards. This guy definitely didn't get benched during high school tournaments; on the contrary, he's probably intimidated far more coaches than he's been threatened with the bench. Avett wonders if he could take him, should the need to defend himself ever arise.

"Mercenaries, hm?" Will prods.

"My ID's right here." Avett narrows his eyes. Not like it'll prove anything.

Will waves a hand in dismissal. "We saw when we went through your belongings. Put it right back, though."

He circles Avett like a hawk.

"They're real," Avett grits out. "Lilith has one too."

"Oh, does she?" He stops circling and flashes a glance to someone that's behind Avett.

Then he leans over. He's like a skyscraper, and Avett's just the dwarfing tourist underneath him. Straight back, he tells himself. Fuck him and his Kattish genes for making him like this.

Then he starts talking again. "They're made out of a grainy, eco-friendly plastic—means there's enough grip on the surface for a pencil to draw over it. The back lists your biological details, and the front lists your specialisation and ship. If you hold the card up to the light, a signature appears on the back—three, vertical strips, with a line running horizontally through all of them. Am I wrong?"

Avett stares at the man, his mouth parted and still. Mari steps in between them. "Will, what's gotten into you? I told you—he wasn't lying when he said he didn't know about last month. He's not dangerous."

Will grabs Mari's shoulder and pushes her aside. "Am I wrong?" he simply asks again.

"How the fuck did you know about the signature?" Avett asks. It's not a thing someone who's never seen nor heard of an ID card thinks to test for, especially not a Human. Unless he's seen them before.

Slowly and carefully, Will reaches into his pocket and closes his hand around something. It takes every ounce of control for Avett to not leap back with a hand on his blaster and the other on his incendiaries. Whatever he's holding is an off-colour white and doesn't catch the sunlight at all. He takes it out and lets them all scatter against the dirt.

ID cards. At least fifty of them. That's, at the very least, ten ships.

This time, he actually does stagger backwards, right into the firm grip of another Human. He thinks about fighting back briefly before he remembers that it's Lilith's life on the line. Though maybe if he makes a run for it, they'll think that she's just a hostage he plucked from the Hive and that she's not associated with him at all. Except it's hard to move when he's been pinned to the ground with a blaster pointed into his skull.

"Will, what the fuck?" Mari starts, her hands clenched into fists.

"Perhaps we can try redoing the interrogation, now that we know what they are." Ether is rolling off his body in waves. "I've always hated the term 'space pirates.'"

A grunt leaves Avett's clenched teeth. The kiss of cold steel against his skull is not a feeling he's well acquainted with. "Waste your time," he spits. "Go on."

"Gladly, mercenary." Will's eyes briefly meet with Mari before he turns back to Avett. "Mari deserves a proper demonstration. But first—a fresh subject."

A second body thumps to the ground next to him. The pathetic, light moan informs him that it's Lilith that's just been tossed to the dogs. Her hair pools around her head. She doesn't bother with picking herself up, instead choosing to lie there with her face against the dirt.

Then—ether. It's powerful, overcoming yet controlled, and it's whipping right past Avett's ear like a narrowly avoided bullet.

"Does it feel good to betray your own people?"

She quivers but stays silent.  

He leans down until his mouth is right above her head. It's then that Avett realises that there's not a single person out. The square is completely empty—and they're the centrepiece. Will is making a point out of them. "Do you find the idea of slaughtering an entire Human settlement entertaining?"

Lilith just coughs. Not to send a message; she's genuinely sick, as if she might pass out at any moment. It's buying her time, but Avett just wishes she would hurry up and answer instead of stubbornly fighting back. Will grits his teeth. Mari is adjusting her stance and raising an eyebrow.

"Do the cat ears make it better?" His tone is cold, smooth, and—surprisingly—even. Like he's a fucking snake. Avett thinks about launching himself at him, but the barrel at his head serves as a reminder for exactly what type of predicament he's stuck in. The Human won't miss shooting both him and Lilith at this range. All he can hope for is sit back and wait for their interrogation to go well. And from the looks of it, he's probably about to move on to Avett himself.

"Will—" Mari starts again.

Still no response. Instead of cutting his losses and moving onto Avett, Will leans back and barks, "Lift her head up. By the hair, please."

Avett sees Mari hesitate for a second. She shakes her head. "No. I'm done with all of this pointless violence—you just want to prove a point. Go fuck yourself. Do it yourself."

"Fine." A loose exhale. This is more of an annoyance than anything.

With conviction, he tangles his hands in her hair. The muscles in his arm tighten into cords as he lifts her head up and off the ground. Avett flinches—then he yells, rage boiling in his veins like he actually gives a fuck about what'll happen to her.

But then Will's shoulders go still. And then he drops her right back onto the floor. He backs off, each of his steps taking a century and a half.

"Lili," he breathes. He says her name like she's a fucking unicorn—a manmade cognition of pure fantasy. He could pass his hands through her body if he tries hard enough. A laugh rattles out of him, and he covers his eyes as he looks to the sky.

"Sir?" The Human that has Avett pinned to the ground loosens his grip for a second.

"Release them. They're not dangerous."

The Human rolls away from Avett before he gets the satisfaction of throwing him off. As he crawls up to his knees, he manages to catch precisely how Will regards Lilith. She's a cloudy reflection in his eyes. He's not focusing on the fact that she's there, but on the fact that she's Lilith. Like he's looking at an ant that's managed to escape the hoard.

"Will?" Mari asks. "You know her?"

He stops laughing. "Man. Oh, man." Draws in an over-exaggerated breath. Exhales loosely. "The girl's incapable of evil. Incapable of making her own decisions too—but she'll draw the line at evil."

Lilith digs her nails into the dirt. She clenches her hand and leaves five deep gashes in the ground.  

"Lili, I'm defending your cause." His voice turns soft, as if he's talking to a child and not to someone in her early twenties. "The least you could do is be grateful. Say thank you. I didn't get to relieve my stress today, and I'd like a little compensation."

Even Mari is taken aback by his tone. Avett's just glad he's not getting fed a mouthful of blaster pellets. He slides Lilith's arm over his shoulder. Her body remains hot against his, and her head slumps against his arm.

At first, she lets him pick her up. But then Will tilts his chin upwards with a sly grin plastered onto his face.

"You're like a cancer cell that's dropped off from the main body. You won't last long without your host." He's still using that mockingly soft voice. "Say thank you, Lili Wang-Rosales."

Something snaps in Lilith. Avett feels it in the way her cheeks have tightened into knots. It reminds him of the ship, when she'd blinked and—for the first time in the short days he'd known her—exposed her foundations and steel beams and metal pipes and just screamed at him. She'd told him that everyone she knew was gone. He meets Will's eyes for a split second. Not everyone.

"We've come to fucking kill and plunder and pillage your village," she spits. Quite literally too; she's somehow managed to pool her saliva in her mouth in her delirium. "We've got tens of thousands of mercenaries and space pirates just waiting behind our backs, and they're going to kill all of you—"

Avett slaps a hand over her mouth, turning her empty threats into wordless muffles. He's about to tell her that the amount of brain cells she's lost is clearly in the quintuple digits when he meets Will's eyes again.

They're glittering with a satisfaction Avett can't quite place his finger on.

Then Will turns to Mari and says, with a demeaning smirk, "That last part was a lie. That's how you interrogate."

He leaves and slams the door of the warehouse on his way in.

Mari almost follows him, but she stops mid-step and bends down to sling Lilith's other arm over her shoulder. They stand up at the same time. Lilith's body is awkwardly tilted upwards.

Avett blows his hair out of his eyes. "I can take her. It's fine."

"No, it isn't." Her voice is tight and quick. She corrects her tone not a moment after. "I need you in tip-top shape for tomorrow. So go get some rest. Some real rest."

He doesn't say anything as she effortlessly lifts Lilith from him. The idle bumble of the village is back, and he's thankful it's providing him with an ambient noise that isn't the occasional rustle of the trees in the mid-afternoon breeze. He does, however, start talking when Mari starts heading off without explaining herself.

"What for?" he asks as he paces next to her.

A thoughtful pause. She glances over to the village gates—two wooden stakes that have been stuck into the mud and sharpened at the ends. "There's an abandoned department store off to the east from the village gates. It's huge, there's always another shop to pillage—but it's not exactly safe there, and our powers seem to weaken when we're outside of the village. We send out retrieval teams often when we're short." Her attention turns back to Avett. "And we're kind of short on food right now."

He looks towards the small patches of tilled farmland that every cabin has in their backyard. There isn't a single garden that doesn't have rows upon rows of leafy vegetables, and he's willing to bet that there are plenty more growing underneath the dirt.

"You think Will's gonna like me more if I'm directly helping the village," he finishes.

She only shrugs. "See you in the morning, Avett. Sleep in the room opposite Lilith's tonight."

—

Avett's eyes snap open. An urgent sense of wrongness shoots through his body, and when he stops to catch his breath, he hears the soft, front-heavy footsteps of a certain frontliner and the click of the front door. He swears and reaches for his jacket, but by the time he's dressed and ready, Lilith is already gone. The giant double-doors of the cabin have been left wide open.

He shivers as he steps outside and closes the doors behind him. He doesn't worry about locking it—none of the houses in the village have locks installed anyway.

Lilith is nowhere to be seen. But then he catches it on the wind; the slightest hint of their ship's cheap and shitty three-in-one shampoo. He heads towards the forest. He can't believe that he's the modern descendant of a proud, 200,000-year-old race and that he's using their evolved traits for something as menial as this instead of—fuck he doesn't know. Hunting, he guesses. He could've been hunting rabbits right now.

The forest is incredibly dense. Branches stand from their trees to prod him in the sides, and sometimes the grass gets so tall that he has to whip out his utility knife and scythe it down. How the fuck had Lilith managed past all of this with her painfully average Human eyesight, he has no idea. He just knows he has to find her before she does anything stupid in that fever-induced psychosis of hers.

He pushes past another clump of foliage, fear gripping his stomach as he accesses his surroundings for an idiot in a white dressing gown. Her scent is strong now, unbearably so, but he still can't find her.

"Lilith," he hisses. Then he realises she probably can't hear her, so he raises his voice just a smidge. "Lilith, you've got a fucking pair on you, I swear."

Lilith doesn't respond, even though he knows for a fact that she's within earshot. Avett holds back on pounding the nearest tree trunk with his fist and continues his search instead. Then he thinks about turning back briefly because his jacket's proven to be absolutely useless against the midnight chill.

He winds up a kick, faces the tree—then whirls and sends his foot into a bush instead. It rustles softly. He's going to kill Lilith if she doesn't do it herself.

But then he sees her. She's sitting down with her back leaning against the tree and her face streaked with tears. Her cheeks are still very red.

He freezes, then takes off his jacket. "You've still got a high temperature, Lilith, stars."

Avett moves to drape his jacket over her shoulders, but she jerks away at the last second. "You need that," she says, with difficulty, "more than me."

"I'm not the one here whose organs are getting cooked from the inside." He lunges to drape it over her again, but she dodges—and promptly falls onto her side. Avett does what he's come here for and props her back up onto the tree.

"You'll be cold," she says.

He flicks at an invisible fleck of dirt on his shoulder. Today's interrogation is still a pain in his ass, and he's willing to bet it's been one for Lilith as well. The way she'd snapped sticks with him more than the actual garbage she'd spat at Will in the heat of the moment. He's still not quite sure what she was thinking at the time. No one gets accused of crimes they didn't commit and then doubles down on them without a motive.

Avett settles in next to her. "The reason why I haven't just picked you up and taken you back to the village is because you're crying." He slides a packet of tissues from his pocket. "So tell me what's wrong."

"I don't feel so good." She sniffles.

"Duh. You're sick, and you're cold."

"The cabin smells, like, really strong wood. I wanted to get out, that's all."

He ignores the fact that it doesn't actually smell that bad. "So you came out here?" He motions to the forest. "With the Equaliser at large?"

She coughs. She's so pathetically out of it right now that she doesn't even bother refuting what he's insinuated. "Sometimes, when I get a fever, I start crying."

"...Really." He feels his stomach lurch in what he thinks is disappointment.

Lilith shrugs. Then she lets out an angry moan. "The stuff they inject me with every morning, I don't know what it is… but it's making everything worse. Could you tell them to stop?"

"It's cilantro and thyme. It's meant to stave off the dragon's aura and amplify your magic or something."

"It's garbage. I doooon't want it."

"It's good for you."

"No, it isn't."

Enough is enough. She's clearly too sick to carry out a conversation, let alone to be outside in the chill of a midnight breeze. He scoops her up in a carry and stands up. "We're going back to the cabin, and I'm fucking making sure you stay in bed this time. There's a dragon in the woods, Lilith. Be scared or something."

She breathes. It leaves a hot brand on his neck that quickly fades in the cold. Then, with a quiet stillness, she says, "That's not even remotely close."

He shoves past a particularly annoying branch. "What isn't?"

"The dragon."

Another delirious ramble. He finds himself smiling and exhaling. "How so, princess?"

"Could you look at me when I say this, Avett?"

"Is this another one of your young adult novel things—"

Lilith coughs again. "So you know I'm not lying."

He stops in his tracks. "Fine. I'm looking."

Her eyes—usually an iridescent hazel—are now pure obsidian in the darkness.

Then with her words carrying the pin-prick precisity of a woodpecker, she says, "It's the other way around. The dragon protects them."

Lilith's words ring like toll bells in his head. He blinks—he's about to ask why, but she's out cold in his arms.

Leaving him alone with her warning.

8.5:

 “Ava, what should I do?” Lili asks one day. They’re folding paper stars out of paper strips that are as long as Lili’s forearm in the comfort of her bedroom. Ava taught her how. First, you tie a knot. Then, you flatten it. Then you fold the rest of the strip around the knot and press two adjacent sides until they pop up. Lili is no good at it. It’s the last step that continues to elude her.

“What should you do?” Ava’s fingers are slender. They’re working with the knot, not against it. “Did something happen?”

Lili holds the star in her thumb and forefinger and presses down. Hope blossoms in her chest when she sees it bump up—and then she flips it over to find that it’s been bent upwards. “Miss Harvey says she wants me in extension English next year.”

“She needs to get married,” Ava says. She squeezes down, and her star bumps up perfectly. “So?”

Lili stares at the new knot in her hand. She doesn’t want to ruin it. “S-so?”

“Are you going to take it?”

She shakes her head. Ava flicks her star into the growing pile. It lands on the tip of the mountain then tumbles down, each jagged point dislocating another star with it. It’s very pretty. Like a papery, pastel-coloured, polka-dotted galaxy. Everything she makes is very pretty.

“Why is that?” she asks as she begins to fold another strip into a knot. It’s a test. Everytime she asks Lili a question, it’s always been to test the strength of their friendship.

“I wanted to be in the same class as you.”

Her nails prise open the knot. She stabs the end of the strip into the hole she’s made. “We’re both dumb, average students compared to everyone else in this damn school full of overachievers. Whether you earned it not, you wouldn’t last a second in that class. Our minds are different. We’re not built for school.”

Lili freezes. She looks back at her star and starts folding it up again.

“But you’ve got me,” Ava continues. She brushes a blonde strand of hair over her ear. “And I’ve got you. Have you made a star yet?”

With a triumphant smile, Lili pinches the two adjacent corners instead of the sides. The star bumps up, its points smooth and cute. The star's actual shape is a bit wonky, and they’re a far cry from the beauty of Ava’s pile of barbed creations, but she’s done it. Her first star.

Ava smiles, takes Lili’s hands in hers, and guides her towards the knot she’s made. “Here—you’re not doing it right. You have to press down the sides, not the corners….”

8: the problem with Lili

 "So here's the plan. An Equaliser is a land-locked dragon—can't fly, can't chase us if we choose to fly, and so on. Most of the time, this would mean getting our backline caster—Auren—to engage it from the safety of the Winnow, but an Equaliser is an exception."

Lili and Avett are standing at the edge of what seems to be an endlessly north-spanning forest. Lili's passed these types of areas on multiple occasions—she's always seen them on her lengthy car trips down south, and it's always eluded her as to what could possibly be beyond those tightly knit, tall pines. When she squints into the overgrowth, she sees the occasional patch of greenery against the floor of dead leaves and scattered pinecones. Darkness swallows up the treescape if she tries to look any further ahead.

A shiver actually runs down her spine. She turns to meet Avett. "How so?"

"Auren might be the best Eldrak his school's seen in twenty decades—" He stops and rolls his eyes as if he's just quoted something from the big man himself. "—but the Equaliser's smarter. It thrives in forests, and Auren just isn't capable of making the clean, pinprick-precise shots that he needs to shoot through all of this." He motions to the cliquish pines. They're clustered close enough so that the average person can just fit between two trunks without it being too tight of a squeeze.

"But you can?" Lili finishes for him.

"Fuck no." He pats the huge crossbow at his side. "I'm an average shot, Lilith. Using blasters any further than ten metres is a nightmare, it's why I favour my baby over anything else. Wouldn’t know what to do without him. And, I guess, I wouldn't want to hit you on accident either."

She presses her lips into a thin line. "Don't use me as an excuse."

"I'm not dumb. I just love jumping at any opportunity to make you uncomfortable."

Ugh. He's giving her another one of his insufferable, smarmy smiles, and she doesn't even have the means, let alone the resolve, to punch it right off his dumb face anymore.

"Though we're definitely on even footing." He pivots on his heel and peers into the forest with those slitted eyes of his. He sees way more than Lili ever could. "Wouldn't be too smart if you used your projectiles here."

Lili actually freezes, like the dumbass she is. It takes her a moment for her to realise that he doesn't mean that she's physically incapable of doing so, but that it would be unsuitable in regards to their surroundings. "I don't intend to," she answers. She has to force her voice into being steady.

It's not like she came unprepared. The heavy press of cold steel against her back serves to remind her of this fact—she'd taken it at the very last second from the armoury, and it'd been coated in a fine dressing of dust and cobwebs when she found it. It's far too heavy for her to swing without throwing the rest of her weight off balance, and she's never really used a real sword before, but entering the forest unarmed, especially in the presence of a powerful mark, doesn't exactly seem like the smartest decision.

Avett flashes a glance towards the blade. She hopes he'll dismiss it. She can't help but release a silent exhale when he turns back towards the forest and beckons her forward with an overhead throw of his arm.

"Come on. Don't wuss out on me now."

"I'm not scared of ghosts."

Immediately upon entering the forest, Lili feels the air drop a few degrees. The overhead canopy of pine needles provides a shade that's lasted this place for centuries, leaving her with a chill that brushes her cheeks every time she turns her head to survey her surroundings. The ground is soft, like she's stepping on a trampoline, not to mention uneven—she's going to trip for sure if they find themselves needing to make a hasty getaway.

She paces forward a bit until she's right next to her partner. He's checking the display on his GlassLink every so often while keeping an eye on his surroundings. The huge crossbow that's strapped onto his back glints every time he walks underneath a sprinkle of sunlight.

Lili chews the inside of her cheek. She remembers how difficult it'd been for her to lug it into the armoury from the entrance. If Lili had even a fraction of Avett's competency, she'd be unstoppable. Now she can't even lift a glorified cut of iron without tripping over her feet.

Selfishness blooms inside of her like a rose without petals. Addled with guilt and shame, she opens her mouth to admit her shortcomings, just as he had in that ship—

Avett's hand is in front of her face, and he's waving it up and down. "Gonna need you back on Earth, Lilith—we're close."

You don't need me, she briefly considers saying.

She inhales sharply instead because now isn't the time for self-deprecative tirades and other floaty, useless time wasters. "Where?" she says instead.

"Couple of metres ahead and just beyond this clearing." His eyes are fixed to something in the distance. When Lili traces his line of sight, she catches a wisp of gossamer cloth, though it quickly slips between the tree branches and out of sight.

She draws her sword from its sheath; they're treated to the most horrendous, ear-grating rattle when she does. Avett whips around with a scowl, and he's probably ready to lecture her when a whirl of blacks and whites slam down into the tree next to them. When she dares a glance sideways, she sees a tendril of pure darkness—so dark that it hardly looks real. It's withdrawing back, leaving a trail of smouldering, ink-black smoke.

Splinters fly and rain down like wooden raindrops. And in front of them, in broad daylight, is a hulking mass of unearthly terror.

Terror has her heart in a vice-like grip, but years of living in the wilds force her legs to move as she retreats backwards. Another vine lashes out at them, and this time it knows where to hit—Lili drops to the floor and rolls, but when she's upright again, she finds that her breaths are shallow, and her sides are singing in washed-out pain.

She's become too reliant on her affinity, she realises. It feels like she's piloting her body remotely, making her reflexes and reactions dulled. Her ether isn't just a crutch—it's her entire psyche. And she's letting it all catch up to her.

Avett leaps onto an appendage, his eyes flashing with determination as he rides it all the way into the clearing and towards the Equaliser. Then he kicks off, his crossbow held above his head with both hands, and slams his entire magazine into its veiled head. The metallic ring of each and every arrow firing into its head comes next.

Lili watches the Equaliser wobble, hundreds of iron-tipped arrows embedded into what she presumes is its skull—except there's no blood. No organic discharge.

Her breath catches in her throat. She calls out his name.

Avett snarls, his hand already on his blaster. He fires a few warning rounds, using the recoil to send him retreating through the air faster—and the dragon actually flinches from it.

Realisation sweeps over her features. His crossbow hadn't hurt it at all, but the blaster—a weapon powered by what seems to be artificial ether—had. Avett quickly comes to the same conclusion as her. He's already catching her eyes and yelling at her to do what she has to do.  

She bites her tongue and wills herself into a state of tranquillity. It doesn't work—especially when the Equaliser turns to her, its beady eyes piercing through her like she's paper-thin. It doesn't blink, she realises.

She raises an arm. It's in a clearing, so she has a clean shot. She half-heartedly reaches into the void, her mental fingers splayed and ready to explore the world beneath the surface. When she dares to open her eyes, all she sees is the allure of the deep. Of a world she'll never return from.

Nothing happens.

Avett comes careening into her not a moment sooner. Another tendril smacks down only millimetres away from her feet. Before she can catch her breath again, he yanks her up by the arm and breaks into a sprint she knows she won't be keeping up with.

Not for a single second does he let go of her hand. He even slows down, just a smidge, for her. And then it occurs to her, with a traitorous drop of her stomach, that he knows a lot more about her current predicament than he lets on.

—

Lili, as she expects, actually does trip, but she's only introduced to the delightful flavour of forest musk and rotting wood for a brief second before Avett hauls her right back up by the arm. When she looks around, she sees no sign of the Equaliser. But there's another scowl on his face. And he's not letting go.

She finds herself returning that scowl. "Let go."

"Fight back," he fires back.

Her body stiffens. She opens her mouth, but the words stay lodged in her throat.

"I'm not letting go," he says, his breathing uneven despite his constitution, "until you pry my dead, cold hands off your wrist."

She gives him a pathetic little shake of her hand. It doesn't work.

"I should have known—I smelled it on you, from the moment I walked in on you in that bathroom, you didn't have a lick of ether on you." His grip tightens. "And you usually reek of it. Am I wrong?"

"So?" She shakes her hand again. "It's not your prob—"

"It's my problem when we're meant to be a team, Lilith." His voice is sharp. He throws down her hand. "Why'd you come here? Why didn't you tell Auren, get him to work his Gallian magic on you—"

"It's not magic." She doesn't say that it's because she's scared of being dumped and left in the Hive to die, or worse, back at the house she's lived in for the past six years.

He chokes. "You think I give a fuck about semantics when we're knee-deep in shit? Your ether is feather-fine delicate—just like you, by the way, princess—and about as reliable as parlour magic. Tell me I'm wrong. Because I'm not."

She clenches her fists. “It was going to be fine. And it is reliable. Just not… today.” Her voice trails off.

Avett turns towards the sky. He takes a steadying breath. It doesn't work. So he whirls back instead, his hands splayed in anger. "You couldn't even unsheathe right—scraped the blade all up against the scabbard, and you expected what? Expected your ether to somehow miraculously come back so you could go in all swinging again? I bet that thing's too heavy for you to even handle."

She doesn't say anything. Her eyes drift downwards and towards the piece of dead bark that's lying flat amongst a spread of moss.

Recognition smoothes over his features. "Stars, you thought I'd take it down myself."

"You're used to it," she offers. "You prefer it."

His body goes still.

Suddenly, she feels a whole lot more awkward than before. "I—I just thought you could handle it fine, I didn't expect… that to happen."

Then he turns and faces the forest again. "We're going back to the ship. I'm swapping out my crossbow for something with a battery, and Auren'll fix you up, maybe lecture you as well, deduct your pay for this job, I don't know. I'm gonna fucking give you an earful too—after I get this dragon."

She hangs back as he starts to walk forward.

"And don't stand so far from me." Avett doesn't bother looking at her. "I'm not hitting someone who can't defend themself."   

She shakes her head, though she knows that he can't see it. "Do you know where you're going?"

He raises his GlassLink into the air. There are two signals—one for the dragon, and the other for the ship.

And then he stops. Looks back at his screen while he slowly turns around.

Dread settles in her stomach. There is an—insurmountable deposit of ether right above her.

Avett grits his teeth. "How the hell did it manage to…?"

Tendril after tendril hits the earth, causing a mess of rotting pine needles to splash up like water. She stumbles backward, her eyes tearing up from the smoke. If she lets even one of them touch her—she's done. She's not sure what it'll do to her, but she'll be done.

Two white-hot blasts of energy whip past her cheek. The Equaliser makes no sound, no verbal indication that it's been hit—but it does throw its body backward and shudder after. When Lili turns to escape, she finds two limp, blackened snakes, looped around their position like a cobra encircling its meal.

That's when she realises, as the dragon quite literally seems to whirr back to life, its once lame tendrils now floating in the air and poised to bat any escapees mid-leap, that they've just missed their chance of escape. The shots he'd fired had only served to anger it further.

"Lilith," Avett shouts. His voice pitches, just slightly. "You better start fucking firing."

She doesn't. She's got nothing because she's useless, a waste of space, and a fucking leech who can't even do her job when it really matters. But she yells out to the abyss anyway, her lungs screaming and straining against her ribcage. She calls out to the chill swirl of power within the globe, and then to the bitter lode of coal that's found a home in her soul.

And then she snaps open her eyes. She's on the ground, her hands bracing her body and balled around clumps of dirt and bark. Her body is retching in refusal to cooperate. It's like it's against her very nature to use ether. Like she's not worthy of the power it'll bestow upon her.

Avett curses again and leaps in front of her. He slices outward with an arrow. A tendril drops to the ground in front of them and dissipates into smoke soon after. The dragon doesn't flinch—instead, a new growth sprouts from its damaged limb.  

"Auto-recovery if we're not using ether," Avett grits out. "Get up and behind me. I can't trust you to not kill yourself in the state you're in right now."

She draws herself to her feet. Her sword feels heavy at her side, so she unsheathes it and holds it out in front of her. "If we cut the stuff behind us, we can get out of he—"

Avett lashes out with his arrow, and another tendril flops to the floor. "Easier said than done, princess. One of us is going to have to distract it, and at the risk of sounding like a demeaning prick—I can't exactly leave you alone right now."

"Yes, you can." She grips her sword tighter. "I'm not usel—I can hold my own. You'll distract it, and I'll work on our escape route."

He stops. Then he turns back to face the Equaliser. "Fine."

She makes her way south, leaving the proximity of Avett. She might be powerless, but she's used to the thrill of combat. She'll cut them both free, ether or no ether.

One step. Two steps. Lili raises her sword above her head. Her balance wavers, but she brings it down on the first tentacle. Avett's already backing up from his bastion, his legs bent in preparation to spring backwards at any moment. Hope blooms in her chest as she whirls and leaps into the air, her blade trained onto the second tentacle.

But then something grazes her shoulder. It's hot at first, but it immediately subsides into a chill that reminds her of when she rubbed peppermint oil onto her skin during her younger years. Then it flares up, and then she realises—she's been hit. It's gone right through her caster's uniform, and right onto her exposed skin.

Her back hits the floor next, and she goes skidding. Avett turns, yells her name, but Lili hardly registers it. All she sees is the whirling mass of inky appendages, crawling, twisting towards him. He let himself get distracted. He let one through.

Step by step, she throws herself forward, her head inches above the ground. Save Avett, is the only thought on her mind. With an outstretched arm, she remembers the way Auren's ward had felt against her fingertips, how its faceted surface had not just protected them, but crushed his barrier in turn.

She needs that power. More than ever.

Please, she begs silently. Please let this work.

She chases that string of power all the way to its source; a deep reservoir of ether, going further than she can see. It steals her breath away. It tastes like coal and wood.

A laugh makes its way out of her throat like a cough. She's been scared of her own personal ether this whole time. And she still is.

The tendrils envelop her, a cocoon of oil and dirt, and she's shoved inside a world of darkness—one she's never known before.

—  

Avett has no idea what's just happened. One minute he's being overwhelmed by the Equaliser, the next it's slinking away, its tendrils blasted clean off with no chance for recovery. And Lilith, stars bless her soul, is a crumpled heap of teal uniforms and dishevelled hairs.

He stumbles back. Then he staggers forward because he remembers that she's just lying there in front of him, sustaining multiple injuries from physically making contact with the Equaliser alone. He shakes her shoulder. He fears for the worst.

"Lilith, if you're alive, give me a scream."

No response. The fear is so intense that it's starting to cloud his head. He rolls her over.

It's then that she decides to let out a weak moan. Her uniform has quite literally melted in patches, leaving her underclothes—her black tank—and skin exposed. He heaves a sigh of relief.

He starts, "Stop taking hits for me—"

Her hand reaches out weakly. She takes the hem of his shirt then tugs down.

He's about to crack a bawdy joke when he sees the state she's really in. She can't move, can't speak, and she's fighting for consciousness like her life's on the line. Then her eyes drift up and right—when Avett follows her gaze, he sees the white wisps of the Equaliser, its beady black eyes staring straight into his own.

It's scared. But it won't be for long.  

With a grunt, he picks her up and slides her onto his back. His knees buckle, and he realises that he can't lift both his auto-crossbow and Lilith at the same time.

He grits his teeth. His attention flits dangerously from the crossbow at his side, then towards the dragon in the trees.

"Fuck! Man, I swear." He drops the crossbow, adjusts his grip on Lilith's calves, and starts off in a slow jog across the forest. The Equaliser might be substantially injured, but he's sure that it'll start attacking them again if he tries to get too close. It's a garbage situation that he's found himself in—because the Winnow's on the other side of the dragon, and he'll have to detour around it. He just hopes that Lilith can hang on for long enough. Auren'll know what to do with her.

He snorts. Like bark on paper, Lilith is rubbing off on him, and he's taking all of her shitty habits—like spiralling and assuming the worst—along with him. He'd throw up if she wasn't on his back right now.

After a while of futile rerouting, he's starting to find that the absence of Lilith, annoying as she is, is beginning to have a toll on him. So even though he knows he's talking to a brick wall, he releases a breath and asks, "What were you thinking when you decided to not tell anyone?"

She doesn't answer. But she's still breathing. Avett can feel her chest contracting rhythmically against his back. As for him… he's still stumped.

"Scared of something, Lilith?" He dodges two low-hanging branches with ease. "You know Auren'll fix you right up, right?"

No response.

"You're just always tiptoeing around us. We're going to drink ourselves to death after this mission, and I'm going to get you to spill everything about yourself."

Her body is still. Deathly still.

He swears. Drops her to the forest floor and places his thumb and forefinger around her wrist. He has to wait for a pulse—he can actually count, in full seconds, the time between each beat—and despite the marginally slower heart rates of Humans in comparison to the Kattish, he knows that that's not fucking good.

The sky is starting to dim into a painterly orange, the sun's reds staining the sky like smeared blood. There's no way they're staying out here like this. First, he needs shelter, and then he needs to find out what the fuck's happening to his frontline partner because he's not about to let another teammate—another friend—die in his hands.  

He picks her up, her head slumping over the crook of his shoulder. "We're close, Lilith," he lies. "We're really close. We're so close." He checks their position from his GlassLink. The dragon's blip still stands between them and their ship, and from the looks of it, it might actually be following them from a distance. It's persistent. The ship's blip is still at around three kilometres away from his current position, but the dragon is closer.

He kicks the tree in front of him. Curses—but not too loudly. He's stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's lurking around, waiting for him to pass out from exhaustion, and then it'll strike again.

Her body feels hot against his. He's not going to pass out from exhaustion. The Kattish did not evolve for 200,000 years just for him to pass out, his ass up and his face down against the ground, in front of a predator no less. He's made of flesh and bone, and the dragon's made out of ether and chitin, but that doesn't make him weak. It makes him aware of just how valuable his life is. It prepares him for death.

He's used to this. He can do this. He knocks his GlassLink from his pocket and onto the floor before he breathes into the microphone, "We're coming back, Captain O'Raal."

"Avett?" Ysh'vanna's voice crackles down the connection. "The dragon's signal's still on the map—"

He cuts her off. "Lilith is out cold. And I've got the wrong tools, I can't kill it without ether."

"Oh, stars. You know we can't land like this."

"I can't make it back without bringing along a… friend." He whirls around, his eyes trailing the wisps in the distance as they fade in between the pines. "I'll find somewhere for you."

"Avett, I've been scanning the area ever since you two left the ship. They're all way too tight—every clearing. I can wait at the outskirts for you—"

"I can't." He squeezes his eyes shut. "Ysh'vanna, it's cutting me off. I don't know how it's moving that quickly, but it's always, always one damn step behind me. I need to go."

"I'm sending Auren. Try to stay put if you can."

"Don't fucking send that man." He shakes his head to himself. Lilith feels incredibly heavy. "You need him, and I'm strapped for time here."

The line goes dead anyway. He searches the trees for the Equaliser as he shoves his GlassLink back into his pocket with difficulty, but it's eluded him somehow. It must think he's resting. It's going in for a kill. And Lilith's body is burning like a furnace at her back.

A rustle, six metres behind him. He slowly rises to his feet.

"Get lost, hot shit." Avett starts walking again; it slinks back out of fear. "I'm still kicking."

By the time he's gotten a fair distance from his position, the sun's below the horizon line, and the sky has faded into a sombre purple. It's getting dark, but that's not an issue for him. Not at all.

He trudges on. His back screams in protest, his legs are begging him to rest—but he continues, his eyes facing forward, each foot in front of the other. He's not even sure if he cares about Lilith. He's going through all this trouble because he's selfishly stuck in the past. He has to be.  

Then he sees it. In a sea of deep blues and towering redwoods, there is a glow.

He runs up to it, his exhaustion be damned. It's an oil-powered lantern, one that's made out of glass and iron and topped with a single strand of steel wire for him to hold. He looks forward and sees another, and then another, until he realises that someone's lit a path for him.

His stomach sinks as he then realises what'll be waiting for him at the end of the path. A double-edged blade. A village.

Avett lets out a scream of frustration. It doesn't matter how loud he is because the Equaliser knows precisely where he is at any given moment anyway. Then he makes his way forward, wobbling between the trees, every ounce of his thinning focus on the next lantern in front of him, the next lantern in front of him…

Sure enough, he actually does arrive at a village. Cabins—constructed out of the very trees that have surrounded him for the past four hours—stand tall, their windows leaking a warm glow that swathes the area in yellow. He stumbles forward. Anticipation growls in his stomach. The adrenaline that's pounding through his legs hurts him more than it helps.

A figure steps forward. They're also holding a lantern.

Avett exhales hard enough to blow his hair out of his face. He's not sure how intimidating he looks to her, but with his body doubled forward and his ears pressed to his head, he's hoping that he'll look more meek than malicious; like a stray cat, if he will. The figure's got round ears, a staunch back, and features schooled into a blend of apprehensive worry. For a moment, he lets himself relax.

"She's hurt—help me." He takes a step forward. "Please."

"Put her on the ground."

It's an order, one that rings with earned authority. He slides her off his back and into his arms, but stops there.

"On the ground," the voice—noticeably feminine and guttural—repeats.

His gut twists. He lowers her to the dirt, his eyes never leaving the figure for a second. Lilith's body is easily thrown over the figure's shoulder. Now that she's gotten a little closer, he finds that she's at least half a head taller than him and that her physique far, far dwarfs his own.

Not that it means anything. He's Kattish; she's Human. But she’s also got an entire village of Humans behind her, and now that he’s got a literal load off his back, he sees that there are faint outlines standing in the shadows of each cabin. Watching and waiting.

A few tense seconds pass. He doesn't hold his breath.

The figure turns, and for a moment, she actually smiles. "You must be tired. Come. Follow me."

The air feels like it's been knocked right out of his lungs. "Thank you," he starts. "Thank you so much."

Avett is so damn ready to pass out that he doesn't bother sizing her up again. He doesn't notice the way the smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, nor the way she's looking at him—no, she's looking directly past him. Behind him.

His body doesn't swerve fast enough. A powerful arm wraps around his neck, trapping his throat in the bend of an elbow. Panic rams itself through his veins as he realises—they're going to choke him into a blissful sleep. The edges of his vision blacken, and he's treated to a dizzy spell that reminds him of the effects of inebriation. Every cell in his body screams for him to fight back, but he clenches his jaw and refuses, instead allowing his attacker to pull him to the ground. His eyes are on Lilith until the very end. Until all he sees is a blanket of black.

"They get lazier every year, I swear," is the last thing he hears before he slumps over.