Why?! Tybalt thought for a moment, as he watched the young man’s body spasm in its death throes.

  The sight of a father killing his own son was shocking in any circumstances.

  Here, it was even more stunning. Tybalt had just witnessed the two of them show how desperately they cared for each other and their lost family. They were each probably the only one the other had left.

  It was hard to understand at first, but that only lasted for a moment.

  Then he found himself nodding. It made sense. Stomach wounds, like the one Tybalt had inflicted because the old man pulled his son away from the spear, were usually fatal without health elixirs or healers. But they took much longer to kill, and were far more painful, than a simple stab to the heart. It was a mercy killing, simple as that.

  It was just difficult for Tybalt to grasp at first, because he had almost no one he cared deeply about. Over the last few years, he had lost the rhythm of familial love—even the dysfunctional sort of familial love he was familiar with.

  He was pulled back into survival mode as the father rose from his knees, an expression of pure wrath coming over his face.

  The older man now held the young man’s war club in his hands. Those hands were old but steady, and Tybalt suddenly had a terrible sense of foreboding.

  The look in the father’s eyes had changed as he turned. He did not seem weary or hurt—except perhaps in the sense of the cornered, wounded animal. Those coldly wrathful eyes said that one of the two men still standing would lie dead in the sand in the next few minutes.

  “Graaah!”

  Tybalt had a fraction of a second to put his guard up. He raised his spear and shield, and at almost the same time, the war club struck him hard on the shield. He allowed himself to roll with the strength of the blow, which was more than he could simply block. As he slipped backward, moving with the force of the club, he felt the shield get lighter. Then he saw that a large chunk of the wood near the top had been smashed away.

  He swallowed.

  If that had been my head…

  The older man lunged at him. Tybalt stabbed him in the side with the spear, but the other man ignored it. The old-timer rained down wild, unpolished blows with the war club. Hits that lacked skill or any sort of practice—this man had probably never held a weapon before in his life—but carried with them the strength of madness. A strength that seemed to count more than stats in this man’s dying moments.

  The father, fighting with the blood of his dead son still wet on his hands and clothing, moved like a man possessed.

  It was all Tybalt could do to take some of the blows on what remained of his shield, dodge others, and keep his distance from the old, mad beastman for as long as he could. It felt like the fight went on for half an hour, though it was probably five or ten minutes.

  The father’s fury reminded Tybalt of every racial comment he’d ever heard about how beastfolk were more beast than human or could not be expected to live peaceably among human beings.

  But beastmen were more human than those remarks suggested.

  The old man’s fury could not last. There came a moment when he exhausted himself and fell to his knees. Tybalt’s battle instincts moved him again. His left hand dropped his shield, drew the dagger he had loosened in the sheath earlier, and lunged in. His blade took the old man just below the heart.

  That ought to do it, he thought, panting and shaking as he pulled the blade back with him.

  A strong hand clamped down on Tybalt’s forearm and kept him from withdrawing completely.

  “Leaving so soon, human?” the old man growled, his livid eyes boring into Tybalt’s until the younger man was forced to look away.

  “It’s over,” Tybalt whispered fiercely. “I’m sorry, but you lost. Death comes for us all in the end.”

  It was meant to get the old man to see the natural order to this. Tybalt had taken an interest in beastfolk cultures for some time now—there was often primitive artwork in the settlements he and the squad destroyed, and no one else ever wanted it but him—and a reverence for the cycles of nature was almost a universal element.

  The old beastman bared his teeth in a vicious smile.

  “You’re right, human,” he said in his thickly accented Nietian. “You’re more right than you know.”

  The old man lowered his head slightly, horns almost pointing directly at Tybalt now, and the young soldier started to pull harder on his arm. He had begun to think the father intended to gore him. But the older man’s grip remained firm, despite Tybalt’s violent efforts to break it, and despite the extent of the beastman’s injuries.

  Fortunately for Tybalt, the old man had been looking down for something, not tilting his head to try to use his natural weapons. The old man raised his staff from where it had laid in the sand beside them. In addition to feathers, the staff had three skulls fixed to it—what appeared to be two human skulls and one ibex beastman skull.

  What the fuck is that?

  “Lord Mudo, hear me,” the old man said in a voice that rang clear and strong through the air. “This man and his people have slaughtered our tribe like fatted calves.” Though the two men were still alone in this section of the burning village, Tybalt imagined that others could hear. It felt strangely public, as if he was being condemned before the entire population of the village—the population that no longer existed. “As we are your humble servants, I beseech you to punish them for their misdeeds. Let none of them escape this desert untouched by your judgment. Weigh their crimes, and if it is consistent with your great plan, grant them the mercy which I now embrace.”

  Lord Mudo? What mercy does he—

  The old man broke Tybalt’s train of thought as he jerked on Tybalt’s arm, jamming the dagger that had still not fully pulled out of the father’s chest up and into the heart.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The hand that gripped Tybalt shook and then lost all strength as the old man died, smiling and kneeling and muttering a prayer to this “Lord Mudo.”

  Tybalt did not have time to contemplate what had just happened very much—to question the identity of the strange god the old man had prayed to, or to bemoan Tybalt’s bad luck that he had been forced to fight probably the two most dangerous enemies in the village on his own. He opened his mouth to breathe—he was short of air, after the last few minutes’ violent exercise—and instead, he got a mouthful of hot gas.

  He let out a surprised cough, blinked, and twisted his head from side to side to look around. The fire had taken hold of all the huts surrounding him now. The smoke filled the air all around. If he didn’t get out of it, that noxious gas could be the end of him.

  Forgetting about what had just happened for the moment and abandoning any notion of looting, Tybalt dropped to his stomach and breathed in short gasps of the sparse, fresh air that remained beneath the smoke and flames. Keeping his body low, he crawled until he felt confident that he was far enough away from the smoke.

  He found himself at the village outskirts, near one of the two carts the squad had used to bring their rations and equipment.

  He pushed himself off the ground, up onto the supply cart, and he laid down in the back to rest.

  It hit him almost all at once.

  After a long afternoon of swinging and stabbing the spear and dagger—he had killed at least eight people, four of whom had resisted—he was dead tired. Those last two in particular…

  They ought to give me a twice-damned medal, Tybalt thought. All the shit I deal with for this fucking army. Fuck.

  He closed his eyes.

  For a moment, the whole world was black and empty. Formless void. He thought he might fall asleep right there.

  Then the faces of the dead father and son flashed in front of him, bright and vivid.

  Fuck!

  His eyes opened again, his body jerked to a sitting position, and he felt his pulse jump.

  Damn it! He could still see those twice-damned faces, even though his eyes were open. He saw them laying in the sand, the old beastman cradling the younger one in his arms.

  He clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms and banished the images from his field of view with an act of will.

  Then he laid down, closed his eyes, and began breathing very deliberately, slowing his body down and relaxing every muscle. Through breath, he could control his other vitals. This was also part of the standard process for manipulating mana, so it was a practice he could perform with little effort, albeit slower than he might have liked. After a few minutes of this, he succumbed to exhaustion and fell into a dead sleep.

  He dreamt of the foxgirl again—she seemed to always appear when he slept anywhere near the Salt Waste. Usually, the dreams were sexual in nature.

  Thankfully, this time, events did not seem set to go that way.

  It would have felt a little strange after the day he had just had. He had participated in the slaughter of a beastfolk village, turned a blind eye to a sex crime in progress, and directly caused the death of a father and son who had fought to the last to protect each other and avenge their fallen family members.

  This time, Tybalt and the foxgirl just lay in bed—a soft straw mattress—cuddling. She embraced him from behind as if she sensed that he needed comfort. He, in his turn, just lay there and let her hold him.

  “Long day?” the foxgirl asked, whispering in his ear.

  Tybalt nodded and reached an arm back to wrap around her waist. He pulled her a little bit closer. He didn’t want to wake up right now, in the same reality he had gone to sleep to escape. Let him enjoy this woman’s soothing embrace for an hour or two, and he would be ready to fight an army.

  They lay there for a long time, entwined, Tybalt occasionally reaching back and stroking her big fox ears, her fluffy tail, her gently curved side, or her back. They murmured things, sweet nothings, back and forth, but none of the words stuck to his consciousness; they were pure comfort and nothing more. The stresses of the day began to melt away. It became hard to remember why he had been so agitated at the start of the dream.

  Then she whispered his name. “Tybalt.”

  Those two syllables did stick to his brain, seemed to awaken something within him, because they sounded beautiful from her lips. She pronounced them tenderly, as if she was in love.

  Why shouldn’t she be? he thought. It is my dream.

  “Tybalt,” she said again.

  “Mm,” he muttered back, turning his body to face hers and nuzzling at her blonde hair and her neck. He didn’t know her name, could never remember it after he woke up. These little gestures of physical affection would have to do.

  Say it again, he thought.

  “Tybalt,” she whispered again, a sensitive tremor running through her voice.

  “I wish you were real,” he whispered back.

  There had been a woman in his life who had genuinely loved him and wanted to spend her life with him, and this embrace felt similar to that. Like there was something real underlying it. Something that would be worth fighting for.

  “I’m as real as anything, even if you don’t believe it yet,” she muttered, slightly annoyed.

  “Sorry,” he said. He was ruining his own dream by reminding the girl that she wasn’t real. That wasn’t especially fair to either of them.

  “It’s all right,” she said. She spoke Nietian almost perfectly, he noticed, with very little accent, which made her feel even less likely to be a real person. The beastfolk had their own tongue. “But Tybalt, you have to stay close to me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he replied, gently nipping at her neck. Despite his earlier feeling of relief that nothing sexual was happening in the dream, he felt a stirring in his pants.

  The fox girl seemed to instinctively sense his tension, and the simple, sweet, and loving character of the interaction switched in an instant. She pressed her body close to his and kissed him, long and deep. As it intensified—tongue kissing, the elven style—his hands wandered over her body, caressing every subtle curve of her long, willowy figure. She slowly began to grind her hips against him, pressing down into his hardness in slow, circular movements.

  Both of them took heavier, more ragged breaths.

  The kisses turned sloppier as his lips trailed from her lips down her jawline, up to her ear, down her neck, and back again. She reciprocated when his mouth was on hers, fervently accepting his tongue and sucking and biting his lips. When he moved to her neck or her ear, the fox girl’s hands clenched and squeezed helplessly, her head thrown back, her tail thumping at his leg, lost in the throes of desire.

  For Tybalt, the entire day before the dream seemed to vanish into the distance. He forgot everything he had felt before he fell asleep, his mind focused completely on the young woman beside him.

  His instincts and experience directed him. His hand went to the hem of the thin dress she wore and squeezed the inside of her thigh. An idea had formed in his mind that he might work his fingers up under the fox girl’s clothing and tease her a little.

  Tybalt already knew how this was going to end.

  But his fingers on her thigh seemed to break the fox girl’s immersion in the makeout session.

  She shook her head and broke off their kiss, as if forcefully reclaiming her focus. A thin string of saliva connected their lips as she began to speak.

  “No, no, I—I mean it,” she said, sounding almost drunk with pleasure. She was apparently resuming whatever train of thought she had been unfolding before they began kissing and rubbing against each other. As she continued, she seemed to sober up. “I love these dreams, but I want our lives to begin. We have to talk about the waking world. The physical plane. If you leave the Salt Waste now—”

  There was a sudden jolt, and Tybalt was abruptly pulled from the dream.