They had appeared back in the room where they had hidden the bodies from their massacre the day before, the odor making Ellis’s eyes water. The rot shoved itself up his nose no matter how hard he pinched it. Ameena seemed to be suffering the same fate as he gagged, both of them hurrying out of that room. But the smell followed them, permeating itself throughout the house like the air itself had rotten.

  Michael was unaffected. Almost bored, as he trudged after them to the main entry way they had cleaned up that very morning.

  “We need to salt the bodies” Ellis managed to say through his gagging. He rushed over to a flower pot and threw his face into the petals, hoping it would ease the nausea somewhat.

  “Why?” Michael asked as he sat down at the table sitting in the middle of the room.

  He picked up a bucket of water Ellis had fetched the day before and started washing off the dried blood caking almost every inch of his body. The holes littering his skin didn’t even make him flinch as he rubbed his hand over a particularly bloody area on his chest.

  “The smell for one. And that amount of meat would definitely attract ants,” Ameena answered, placing herself behind Michael to start pulling out the new bolts in his back, throwing a new shirt for him to use onto the table.

  The sound of skin tearing as she did so was too much for Ellis. The bile rose to his throat as he ran to the broken window, and he could not stop himself from vomiting into the alley beyond it.

  “Why would attracting ants be a bad thing?” Michael asked like Ellis wasn’t half suffocating.

  But Michael’s question was stupid enough to distract Ellis from his hurling. He wiped away the contents of stomach that had made its way onto his lips, and turned around to look at the man. Ameena had frozen, her eyebrows scrunched like she wasn’t sure of what she had heard.

  “Because they would kill us? And then the city?” She answered, announcing every syllable like she could drill them into his head.

  Michael nodded. “Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem.”

  “Why… don’t you know that?” Ellis asked, a monstrous idea appearing in the back of his mind as he left the window.

  Michael shrugged as a small smile tugged at his lips. “I lived under a rock, I guess.”

  Ellis would have laughed if he weren’t so horrified. That idea at the back of his mind took the form of a horrifying assumption, and the longer it stayed the more the pieces started to fit together.

  Michael wasn’t human. He was a monster from beneath the ground, an ant made in human form to come and kill them all. Ellis left the table and sat down across from the monster, a glance at his almost perfect appearance cementing the idea into Ellis’s mind. It explained why Michael appeared to be dead in his sleep, yet woke the moment Ellis stood over him in the night. It explained why he didn’t feel pain, and also his monstrous strength…

  But despite the evidence to the contrary, the idea didn’t feel complete. Ants are animals, they would view people as nothing but food… yet Michael seemed to take a singularly human delight at the idea of killing. And it did not explain why the gods seemed to favour him to such a degree. Today alone they had saved him both from Ellis’s wrath and from the people chasing them. Lucky for Ellis, that favour seemed to extend to him as well during the more chaotic moments.

  What angered him the most about that assumption was that he wanted to ask Ameena about it. His necklace had never tried to poke his eye out when she spoke. Not even once. That meant he could trust her word, at least. He shook his head at the very idea of relying on her for anything… But maybe, just maybe, if he told her about this he could convince her to come to the same conclusion? If he was really lucky, the idea might be enough motivation for her to help Ellis kill him.

  He was supposed to be pitting them against each other, after all. And one look at Michael’s lovestruck face as she ripped the last of the bolts out his back showed Ellis that he was failing. Badly.

  “Alright. Ameena, heal me up so we can take another crack at those bastards. They won’t expect us to attack them again so soon, and fully healed to boot,” Michael said, slapping his knees like that wasn’t a stupid plan as he leaned back in the chair, dripping blood all over the floor once again.

  Ameena held up her hand, and a blue ball formed almost instantly in her palm. She shoved it into his back before sighing, like a mother listening to a disappointing child. “Michael. Sometimes you say things I think are actually quite intelligent.”

  “Why thank you.”

  “This is not one of those times. The idea that they wouldn’t consolidate their defenses and be out hunting for us is a tactical oversight that will get us killed.”

  She sat down in a chair across from Michael, all three of them now seated at the same table. After scolding Michael, who put on his new shirt, she turned to Ellis. “We need a new plan.”

  “We have a new plan,” Michael grunted while casting a hateful glance at Ellis.

  “Why… turn to me?” Ellis asked, shifting in his seat at the sudden scrutiny he was under.

  “You are almost useless in combat.” Ameena gestured at him like it was obvious. “But you got us into the city. And you bought us enough time to take stock of our enemies earlier before the plan went to shit. If nothing else, you have a mind for tactics.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Nice to know I’m on your good side.

  He was silent as he accepted her words, before he leaned forward and quoted his father, “‘Hunting an animal you know nothing about is a fool's errand.’ What I know is that they seem to have a community in your tunnels,” he said, returning Ameena’s gaze while trying to hide from Michael’s. “And they guard its entrance well. Got dogs too, so hiding and running from them will be difficult.”

  Michael’s frown kept getting worse, so Ellis tried to be nice. “However, I do think they would take pause at fighting us again if they see you coming.” He nodded toward the big man. “What, you cut down six men?”

  “I got four more in the tunnels,” he said, his pouting somewhat relieved at Ellis’s compliment.

  Ameena rolled her eyes at Ellis’s idea of placating. “I don’t think you did, if I remember how they fought correctly. I hate to say this but I believe them to be… mana users. Not all of them, of course, but enough that they might be even more dangerous than the guards. So the nine men you cut down might only be four or five at best. The rest would have been saved by healing, after all.”

  The darnedest thing happened as Ellis listened to her explanation and came to the same conclusion. His shoulders lightened, that memory of slitting a man’s throat in that gods’ forsaken mist grew almost non-existent. All the guilt he felt, that he should have felt, evaporated right then and there.

  They are just mana users. What harm is there in killing one of their number?

  Michael sat forward and cut right through Ellis’s response. “So why not make them fight? The guards and the mana users, I mean? We can slip in through the chaos.”

  Michael’s suggestion caused Ellis to sit back in his chair and just marvel at the idea. Ameena was right, sometimes he really could say something smart. His idea would lead to a lot of bloodshed, of course. Some of the guards would fall in the ensuing chaos, but they would die noble deaths. Isn’t that why those brave men wear the uniform? So that they could get rid of those cursed mana users?

  The only problem was the fact he hadn’t accounted for Ameena’s hesitation at mentioning her own kind.

  “No. They would gather every guard in the city if they even had a hint there was a congregation of mana users beneath their feet. We would get chaos, yes. But not the kind we could ‘slip’ through. Besides, fighting our way in has already proven to be ineffective, we need a plan that doesn’t involve the tunnels. They’re too dug in. Too defended.”

  We always had to fight our way in and out of the palace. But that didn’t bother you before, you fucking hypocrite.

  Ellis tried to ignore the insults flying through his head, and remembered Michael’s earlier question. “Okay, since the tunnels are a no go… why don’t we create an ant scare? If it’s anything like home, the entire city would evacuate at the mere mention of those monsters. That would definitely be the kind of chaos we could slip through, since they would be preoccupied?”

  Ameena had started nodding before he had even finished. But despite sense and logic, Michael slammed his fist on the table that echoed with a loud bang.

  “No. No evacuations.”

  Ellis and Ameena both flinched, before casting a glance at one another. Ameena reached forward, placing a gentle hand on the bracer around his wrist.

  “Michael… it’s a good ide—”

  He turned that dead gaze to her. “I said no. Make another plan if you want, but I won’t let that one happen.”

  She moved her hand from his bracer to his palm, making playful circles in it. “Just… hear me out. If we were to go with that idea, the only way for the guards and the city to believe us would be to ring the ant bell. And that sits atop the barracks, where, if I remember correctly, the Ant Killer is always stationed, keeping a watchful eye over the city's guards. So… we would get Ellis’s revenge, and maybe we can finally see who is really the strongest man in the city?”

  Michael’s gaze did not waver, but Ellis could see the gears turning in his head. Both him and Ameena had made a mistake by ignoring the man’s idea just because it was stupid. Ellis tried to swallow down his anxiety, and it stuck half way through his throat when Michael lifted his hand, and placed it over Ameena’s.

  “That does sound nice. And getting rid of Ellis would be fantastic. But I said no evacuations, so there will be no evacuations. Do not press me on this, please.”

  Keeping his hand clamped around Ameena’s, Ellis could see he wasn’t letting her hand go until he got his point across.

  Ameena broke the stare first. “Okay… alright. But I shall heal all of us now, my ankle still hurts and Ellis’s bleeding is getting all over the table. We can attack them again tomorrow?”

  Michael didn’t release her hand for close to ten seconds of utter silence. He continued to stare at her with his unbroken gaze for that entire time, and it made the seconds feel like hours for Ellis. But then he sat back in his chair with that usual grin, and she snatched her hand back like she had touched a snake. Her eyes turned downwards at the table like a beaten dog, the frown curling at her lips dangerous as she gave way to Michael’s request.

  Not wanting to talk any longer, they set about their chores. Well, Ellis set about the chores while Michael lounged and Ameena seethed in anger, healing the bastard and herself. She seemed to be taking her sweet time with it, but Michael must have grown bored with acting like he felt pain because he didn’t even flinch at her hand over the back of his neck, which seemed to anger her even further.

  He asked them for some money, then set out to buy some salt from a nearby market, not daring to go near the silk road. The amount needed to get rid of the smell and make sure the ants didn’t arrive was more than he could carry, so he took multiple trips back and forth to finish his chore. Michael would wait for him at the door with every trip Ellis made.

  Once he stepped past the threshold into Leno Warde’s abode, Michael would take the salt off Ellis’s shoulder with a smile and disappear in that secret room full of treasure and bodies.

  Every smile Michael greeted him with, made Ellis hate himself more and more. Every trip would have children running past him, or couples holding hands and giggling as they went on an evening stroll. Hadn’t he wanted that, a mere week ago? Or was it two weeks? He couldn’t tell, all he knew was that he was in the wrong. Speaking to the salt owner once more, he was reminded of what waited for him back at Leno ward's home.

  Michael’s cheerful smile and the bodies he was trying to hard.

  Ellis hauled the salt onto his shoulder and thanked the salt merchant for the first time that evening, right before he closed shop. Because with gritted teeth, he admitted defeat.

  He couldn’t kill those monsters alone. Days and superstitious advantage had not given him the opportunity to do so. Tilting his head back towards the sky, Ellis looked at the stars and breathed out a deep sigh.

  It was about time he got help.