Neil was evil. In the best way, but still.

  He’d offered to give me some tips with my bladework, since both us were bored and we had some time on the caravan. It had been going rather well. However, it had quickly progressed to him trying to teach me how to use my claws better.

  That hadn’t gone so well. As it turns out he didn’t really know either, and while I was inclined to trust the word of someone who was clearly an expert with a weapon, he was clearly making it up on the spot.

  “You have two hands, right? Use them both,” he said for the fourth time as he deflected a strike from me.

  “I am,” I snarled, deciding to bite the bullet. I grabbed the blade of his sword with my left hand, it’s sharp edge not able to cut through my chitin without momentum. With my right hand I swiped at his sword arm, certain that I would score a cut on the larger man.

  Neil clearly disagreed. He simply let go of his sword and danced backwards, avoiding my blow. This wasn’t the first time I’d used this trick, and unfortunately it was far less effective without the benefit of surprise.

  “You need to focus, Julie. You’re very… wild. Any experienced opponent will be able to play you like a fiddle.” Neil didn’t try to retrieve his sword, just raised his hands and moved back in.

  “And how many experienced opponents will I be finding, Neil? I’m going to be an adventurer, not a bounty hunter.” I took another swing at him, landing a glancing blow on his forearm. It wasn’t deep, but it was something.

  Neither of us were wearing any form of protection, because while I could heal us I couldn’t heal clothes. That meant that I did have an advantage with my chitin, but Neil didn’t seem to care.

  Neil struck out with a jab, which I let bounce harmlessly off my arms. “Oh, please. The Guild gets contracted to take down all kinds of threats, many of which are intelligent. That includes people, by the way. Mages gone mad or people turned into monstrosities. Any of them could be smarter than you, probably will be.”

  I retaliated with another swipe, but Neil ducked and grabbed my arm, twisting it and putting me in a bad position. I finally dropped his sword to sink my claws into his thigh, which was just as satisfying as it had been the first time.

  He hissed and dropped his grip on my arm, grabbing his sword as I recovered. “Trust me on this, Julie. The first rule of surviving life as an adventurer is to prepare. It may apply less to you than to a human, but we’re in the business of hunting down things that are stronger than us. Faster than us. Things that have powers we can’t counter, sometimes can’t even see.”

  Neil gripped his sword tightly, widened his stance and swung. He was moving faster now. Faster than I was, despite the fact that I was a bit faster than the average person. I stepped into the swing and made to strike, but he was already there. He swung again.

  “Why do you think that every adventuring party needs a mage of some kind? It isn’t convenience, that’s for sure. You need that kind of firepower to deal with threats like you’ll be facing. Just because something looks monstrous doesn’t make it weak, and it doesn’t make it stupid. Prepare, Julie.”

  I took the swing on the arm, expecting to deflect it like before. This time his swing cracked my chitin like the shell of a crab, causing my arm to explode in pain as his sword carved halfway into the limb.

  “If you don’t prepare, if you don’t expect surprises, you die. That’s all there is to it. I’ve seen it before, I’ll see it again. You will too. Just be safe, alright?” Neil pulled out his sword and gave me time to heal, taking out a cloth and wiping my blood off his weapon. I flooded my arm with vitae, hissing and wincing as my muscles reformed and my chitin snapped back together. I healed my other cuts and bruises while I was at it.

  “I get it, Neil. Prepare,” I huffed. “You were more fun when you were all excitable.”

  Neil at least had the decency to look sheepish. “Sorry. You… remind me of someone. He made a lot of the same mistakes I can see you making. I, well I didn’t mean to get so intense.”

  I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. I wasn’t exactly silver tongued in any situation, so having a guy I’d known for two days allude to a traumatic backstory was not something I had an answer for. I just healed his wounds and endured the awkward silence.

  I was thankful when Cassie showed up to change the subject. “Guys!” She called. “Get over here! Something’s happening!”

  Neil and I shared a look as we both rushed towards her voice. Cassie was on top of our wagon again, so we both climbed up to see her.

  “What’s going on?” I asked when we reached her.

  “Shh!” She hissed, pointing towards the far side of the wagon circle. We’d stopped a bit earlier today, but the sun was still only barely hovering above the horizon. I followed her finger and saw Brian Bran the caravan leader.

  He seemed to be having words with a strange looking fellow. They were dressed entirely in black and white, with a heavy hooded robe and a thick cloak working together to obscure their features. Most everyone was watching, and a lot of people were whispering amongst themselves.

  I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Brian was clearly frustrated with the cloaked figure. He was waving his arms in a greater display of energy than I’d seen out of the man since the trip began, albeit to no avail.

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  It was hard to tell if the cloaked figure was responding at all to Brian’s outburst or simply standing there and taking it. Eventually they tilted their head, which seemed to stop Brian’s outburst despite the small movement. In fact, Brian had stopped moving entirely.

  The figure raised a gloved hand and swept their gaze across the caravan. Everyone was watching now, and I think they knew it. The figure’s hand twisted, seeming to fold around itself as it moved in the impossible way that could only mean high-level wizardry. Brian took a step backwards.

  Then he took another step. And another, and another. When his face came into view it was revealed to be eerily serene, completely unlike the man’s usual demeanour. Only when Brian had backed away past the campfire in the centre of the circle did he stop, instead staying completely still.

  The figure lowered his hand, stepping forward. They moved slowly, but there was a surety to their steps, like nothing could possibly pose a threat to them. I felt Neil tense beside me.

  The figure began to pace the caravan, strolling like they didn’t have a care in the world. They appeared to be looking for something in particular, briefly looking at each member of the caravan. Everyone was silent now, unwilling to draw more attention from the enigmatic intruder.

  When their search brought the figure near our wagon, their pacing slowed. I felt a pressure build in my head, less like pain and more like a strange sort of discomfort. It felt like my mind needed to sneeze but couldn’t, and now the pressure was helplessly building behind my eyes.

  With a sudden pop, the pressure vanished. The figure bestowed a languid gaze on each of us in turn, finally speaking. When they spoke, however, they did not make any noise. Rather, their words entered my mind directly, their voice a conglomerate of a dozen different people speaking in approximate harmony.

  “Formless One. You And Your Companions Are Suitable. You Will Aid Us. You Will Find Us In One Turning Of The Moon, At The Point Furthest From The Earth In The City By The Coast. You Will Come.”

  The figure raised a hand and pointed in the approximate direction of Meria, before turning and returning to Brian. They placed a hand to his forehead and his placid expression fell away, crumbling into one of mixed rage and horror. The man was clearly seething, but he held his tongue.

  With their message sent, the figure raised both of their hands. Each arm performed a different impossible manoeuvre, twisting into shapes that shouldn’t exist like the concept of three dimensional space was a mere suggestion. In eerie silence, the figure cast a spell that had my skin itching from the sheer mana disruption. In seconds they were gone, and the camp was suddenly in uproar.

  I fell heavily against the roof of the wagon. “Out of curiosity,” Cassie tried. “Did he talk to you guys too?” I knew her well enough to hear the hidden tremor in her voice.

  I nodded mutely, and Neil finally broke from his stupor. “We need to tell the Guild. If I’m right, we’re in big trouble.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I mean, besides the obvious. You know what they were?”

  Neil nodded. “Maybe. It’s hard to be sure, but I think that was a Revenant.”

  I glanced at Cassie, who looked just as confused as I felt. “And a Revenant is…?”

  Neil grimaced. “It’s… complicated. Basically, take the remnants off a bunch off souls. Just the shards and residue, all of the broken stuff. Then mix them all together, stuff them in a body, voila. Now you have an undead with the skills of thirty people and, depending on who they were and how they died, thirty odd reasons to do some awful stuff.”

  “That sounds…” I trailed off. “Horrifying. I guess that explains the voice, though.”

  Neil stood. “It get’s worse. Undead need a purpose, and a wild Revenant has two dozen lives to avenge. If this one’s wild, then it’s probably realised that one of its targets is out of reach and it thinks that we can help. If it’s a reanimated Revenant though, things get complicated. It could be working for anyone, for any purpose.”

  “Can we kill it or something? Rekill it, maybe,” Cassie asked. “I mean, it sounds bad, right?”

  Neil winced. “Maybe? I mean, Revenants vary wildly in strength, but even then the weaker ones tend to be pretty powerful. I could probably take a weak Revenant, but something tells me that one wasn’t weak. Casually compelling Brian, teleporting out of here? That’s powerful magic.”

  “So what, we do what it says?” I asked. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to help a potentially murderous undead on a revenge quest, although I suppose that did kind of depend what it was avenging.

  Neil shrugged. “Depends. It isn’t always revenge that drives Revenants, it just tends to be. For all we know, it needs help giving the kid of one of its old lives a message or something. It’s probably best to wait first. In any case, the Guild needs to know. Just because it might be benign doesn’t mean we should just leave it hanging around.”

  “So we are killing it.” I stated.

  “Not necessarily,” Neil disagreed. “Remember, undead need a purpose. If its tasks are simple and harmless, the safest way to deal with a Revenant is to help it move on. All of it. Once it has nothing to drive it, we can lay it rest peacefully. Although, this all depends on it being wild. If it was risen by a necromancer, we just need to find them and talk it out. Raising Revenants is highly illegal, so we’ll be dealing with them in a different way.” Neil put his hand on his sword to illustrate his point, like he thought his words were subtle or something.

  He hopped down off the roof of the caravan. “I need to talk to Brian. We should move through the night, get to Meria as quick as we can. We may have a month, but we need more information before we can act.”

  Cassie and I watched him walk toward Brian. “You know,” Cassie broke the silence. “I thought we’d get at least a bit before this kind of thing happened.”

  I chuckled. “I know, right? I mean, mysterious undead handing out quests? We aren’t even in the Guild yet. Surely we need a training arc or something.”

  Cassie turned to me. “Well, we do get a month before we have to do anything. And I doubt we’ll be sent in to do much if it turns out to be a necromancer.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, falling into quiet. “Cass?” I asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did it… name you, when it talked? Like a title or something.”

  “Yep. Child Of Storms, it called me. A bit basic, but I’ll take it. What were you?”

  “Formless One,” I replied quietly. I brought a hand in front my face, letting it start to shift slowly away from my base template. It was getting faster again, almost visibly changing in the evening light. “It may not have been wrong.”

  Cassie put an arm over my shoulder. “We’ll figure it out, Lia. I promise.”

  I sighed. “I hope so.” I watched my hand for a bit longer before shifting back to Lia Prime and clamping down on the reactions. At least I could still do that. For now.

  “We’ll be in Meria tomorrow, if we’re travelling through the night. That’s exciting, at least.” I tried to bring the mood back up.

  “True,” Cassie said. “I can’t wait to finally eat real food again.”

  “I know, right?” I laughed. It was a bit forced, but not completely. Tonight was probably going to be pretty long, but we’d be in the big city tomorrow. That was certainly something. Besides, I could definitely fall asleep in a moving cart.