Nobody asked about what happened at the stream. Ana would have been happy enough to let the rest of the Party think that she and Messy just hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other, but Messy wasn’t anywhere near as good at masking as Ana was. The others caught on pretty quickly to the fact that something was wrong. But nobody asked what had happened. Instead, every so often someone would drift close to her and ask, in various ways and with different amounts of preamble, if she was okay.

  At one point in her life, the repeated questions would have annoyed Ana. As it was she told them all the same thing: she wasn’t, not completely, but she thought that she would be. And every time she felt a little bit better. She’d learned in the past few months that honest appreciation wasn’t the only thing she’d been starved for in her life; genuine concern was another. She was also beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, part of the reason she’d been so starved was that she hadn’t allowed herself to see any appreciation or concern she’d been shown as honest, but that wasn’t something she was quite ready to work through yet.

  You should have stopped, whispered a long-absent voice. It would be so much easier to just stop. What do you need your weapons for? Turn back, Ana. Rest. Live.

  Ana ignored it. She couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t heard it, but not reacting in any way was the next best thing.

  The voice wasn’t fooled. Ignore me if you wish, it said, softly amused. You can’t hide how fast your heart is beating. Know this: it will keep happening. You will never get to rest, never know peace, so long as you fight. Remember that. And then it was gone.

  Ana let the Wayfarer know. The goddess was furious. She was also entirely unable to do anything about it. And so Ana marched on, doing her best not to think about the voice’s words.

  Ana didn’t know exactly where she’d discarded her arms, but they should be easy enough to find. She and the demon hadn’t drifted far off the path before she fled, and with her Acuity she easily recognized the general area once they reached it over an hour later.

  It should have just been a matter of shucking their packs and scouring the ground. It wasn’t.

  “Halt,” Rayni said softly, holding up her hand, and the Party halted. “Om, Perri, Ana, can any of you see or hear anything? My Danger Sense is waking up.”

  “Which direction?” Ana asked just as softly, not wanting to disturb anyone’s hearing.

  “Ahead and slightly off the path, to the left. Could be distant, or it could be on the weaker end of threatening.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Ana said. Nor was Warrior’s Intuition warning her, but that wasn’t too reassuring. It seemed only fair that Rayni’s Class Ability should have a better range on it than an Enhancement. “Om? Perri?”

  “Let’s check,” Omda suggested, nodding to the Huntress and the Archer who would be a Ranger.

  “Right,” Rayni agreed. “Packs off. The rest of you, follow at a distance.”

  And so they did. They hauled their packs into a tree, then the three scouts vanished into the forest, the rest of the Party following along the path. It wasn’t long before even Ana couldn’t hear them anymore, but thanks to Devotion she knew in which direction each of the three was.

  Thanks to her special Danger Sense she also knew the moment things went to hell. It triggered suddenly along with her bonuses, telling her that Omda was in danger moments before she heard a bellowed warning of “Revenant!”

  Ana didn’t hesitate. Omda was in danger, and with a cry of “Follow me!” she manifested her wings and took off in his direction. There wasn’t a moment to spare. The range on Ana’s Danger Sense was two hundred yards at her Level, but the threat had to be within twenty feet of whoever was being attacked. As observant as Omda usually was, that could only mean one thing: Omda had been taken by surprise. And surprise killed.

  Ana threw herself to Omda’s aid, accelerating the whole way. Tiny adjustments manoeuvred her to the left and right of the densely placed trees and kept her from crashing through their branches. In seconds she had Omda in sight, as well as the bloody mess of a corpse pinning him to a tree and trying to bring its teeth to his throat; in a few more, she reached them.

  The two were too close for her to dare bring her sword to bear, so Ana played to her strengths. As she arrived, Ana twisted in the air and kneed the revenant in the head.

  Ana didn’t have anything like an anchor to give her more power, nor did she have a whole lot of mass. What she did have was something like a hundred miles per hour’s worth of momentum, to which she added all the considerable force of a trained knee strike. The awareness of pain on her skin where the revenant’s grip had been torn from Omda’s arms, but it was worth it. She’d taken the revenant by surprise. And surprise killed.

  The revenant’s skull collapsed like a squash under a sledgehammer.

  There was no time to revel in her victory, though. Ana’s Danger Sense again alerted her that Perrion and the larger group she’d left behind were all being attacked as the cries of the Party running to their aid changed to cries of alarm. There hadn’t just been the one revenant.

  Ana’s first impulse was to return to the others. Messy was among them, after all. But reason prevailed. The larger group had four melee Classers and two of the Splinter’s most destructive mages; Perrion was a lone ranged specialist. So Ana locked eyes with Omda for a second. His lips were split, the arms of his tunic torn, but he looked fit to fight. That was all she needed to know; she pointed back the way she’d come, and barked, “That way!”

  She didn’t wait for Omda to respond. She took off immediately in Perrion’s direction, not even sure that Omda had heard or understood; he looked somewhat shocked by his sudden rescue. But Omda was, for the moment, safe.

  Perrion very much was not. The first sight Ana caught of the Archer was him flying back into a tree, his falchion tumbling beside him. He hit the young pine with a dull Thud that sent debris raining from its branches, and Ana’s awareness of him changed from in danger to injured and unconscious. After him came a second revenant, the corpse of a woman with long, matted brown hair and a deep gouge in her leather jerkin. It ran forward with its arms outstretched, reaching for Perri in anticipation of the kill, and though Ana pushed herself to the limit, she wouldn’t get there in time.

  Then a screaming Rayni erupted from the bushes, swinging her handaxe two-handed at the demon’s face. It was an act of utter desperation. Rayni knew how to use an axe, but she was a hybrid classer facing a… Ana hadn’t actually Inspected the revenant yet. [Revenant of Soralip (Threat Considerable)], the label said. So it would be Lethal to Rayni, most likely, and revenant sapients were a bit stronger than an animal demon with the same Threat Level. Quite simply, it wasn’t something the Huntress could fight with any hope of winning. But she did so anyway, because while Rayni was cautious and deliberate, she was also loyal and had a terribly self-sacrificing heroic streak.

  As it was, Rayni may or may not have saved Perri’s life. The demon swatted her aside, sending her rolling before the axe even connected, but it didn’t follow up. But neither did it continue to finish off Perri. In the same motion as when it struck Rayni it saw Ana coming, and it was like the other two didn’t matter anymore.

  Turning to snarl at Ana, the demon swung one arm in a blistering arc timed to swat her out of the air. It failed. Ana dropped, touching the ground and turning her momentum into a spin that sent her sword whistling through a wide arc. The farther half of the blade took the revenant mid-chest, carving through an arm, skin, bone and lungs before lodging somewhere halfway through.

  With a roar, Ana raised one knee to her chest and kicked out hard, knocking the revenant back and dislodging her blade. The force might have wrenched the sword out of her hands and her grip slipped ever so slightly, but she held firm. Then, as the revenant gathered itself to surge forward, Ana pulled back and hacked.

  It was entirely artless, truly a hack rather than a cut. Nothing like how Tellak had shown her. It didn’t even hit the revenant in the neck, where she’d intended. But it got the job done, cleaving through the revenant’s head at the jaw and leaving the corpse to topple, a truncated tongue lolling grotesquely as it hit the ground.

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  In the distance, back up the path, battle cries and terse phrases barely on the edge of hearing told Ana that the fight was in full swing. Then Jisha went unconscious, and a spike of arctic cold shot up Ana’s spine.

  A quick check showed Perri motionless on the ground, still unconscious but alive. Rayni was struggling to her feet, and that was all Ana needed to know. “Take care of him!” she ordered, getting a sharp nod in acknowledgement. Rayni was already fiddling onehanded with a pouch on her belt by the time Ana was on her way back to the main group.

  The screaming was louder now. It was angry and urgent, but not fearful; so long as Ana’s wings lasted, her Party knew no fear. In the rapidly shrinking distance, Kaira howled in what Ana had learned was Wanteul Common; there was a short-lived tearing sound, followed by a wet Pop. Kaira fell unconscious. Ana was close enough now to see the burning remains of one revenant, as as she approached, a blinding light flashed into existence between Deni and another of the undead demons. Then came a single thunder-clap as Deni collapsed to the ground as well.

  The situation must be dire if the mages were pushing themselves to dangerous levels of mana depletion to help even the odds. And indeed, there were still two revenants remaining. Tor and Lessie with their shields stood between the demons and Messy and their three downed friends, doing their best to keep from having those shields wrenched from their grips as Messy stabbed, and stabbed, and stabbed past them.

  Ana had killed two. The mages two more. And there were two remaining. That made six. Six damn revenants in the same place, which shouldn’t happen, laying in ambush near her stuff, which they shouldn’t have anywhere near the cunning to do. But that was something to worry about in a minute or two, because Ana was a second from making contact with the two remaining revenants.

  She couldn’t just bowl into them; that would knock them into her friends, and goddess only knew what kind of carnage they might wreak before they all put them down. Neither could she really lay into them with her sword without risking hurting her friends—or rather, herself. Her plan was instead to land behind the demons. Then she’d haul one of them back a ways from Tor and Lessie so she could deal with it on her own, leaving the final one to her three friends. When her feet touched the ground, though, again it was as though Ana’s friends didn’t exist. The two revenants glanced to see what was behind them, then immediately whirled on her, heedless of how that opened them up to attacks from the three they’d just been fighting.

  It made no sense. It was also suspicious as all hell. But then, the whole situation was, from the moment Rill got possessed up until this very second. Demons usually focused on one of three things: the first person to engage them, whoever looked weakest, or whoever used the most mana. Ana was none of those. Something else was afoot.

  Ana’s guess was that someone was interfering, and it made her furious.

  At least the two revenants’ change of focus made things easy. As they hurled themselves at her, Ana danced back, and the revenants followed. She pushkicked one back to her friends with a shout of, “Take it down!” They didn’t hesitate. With one revenant and three of them they had the room to go on the offensive, quickly wearing it down by hacking and stabbing at its joints until it was disabled enough to go for the kill, and Lessie’s axe caught it with a powerful blow to the crown of the head. Ana, meanwhile, made short work of her own revenant. It was determined to bring its jaws to bear on her, making it hard to use her sword effectively, but its all-out aggression made it predictable. She let it come, and sticking her sword in the dirt she grabbed the demon’s rigid leather chestpiece by the top and bottom. Then she threw it. And this was no practiced grappling throw; she shifted her balance under it, raised it above her head, and threw it hard into a nearby tree.

  The demon wasn’t stunned or anything. Revenants didn’t suffer things like that. But the throw made space between them, and as the demon picked itself up to attack again Ana snatched her sword up and hacked the demon almost literally to pieces.

  Her technique was, she’d freely admit, awful. Tellak would be silently disappointed in her. But you could get away with a lot with Attributes above 100, and she needed the fight to be over, not pretty.

  The four Delvers barely took a moment to reorient themselves and catch their breaths before going to their downed friends’ aid. A complete lack of fear was useful like that; everybody could just do what needed to be done, without first recovering from the terror of what had just happened.

  As Tor went to Kaira’s side and Lessie to Deni’s, Ana and Messy went to help Jisha. The girl lay groaning on the ground, her halberd nearby; the haft had snapped a foot beneath the head. Blood ran down her forehead from a nasty cut on her scalp and she wasn’t moving, but at least she was making some noise.

  “You should have seen her,” Messy said as she dabbed at the blood with a soft cloth she kept in her potions pouch. “No hesitation. One of the bastards came out of the trees, going for Deni, and our girl here just put herself between them. Just set her halberd and took the charge. Then after it snapped, I saw her throw herself at it with just the broken haft. Here, hold this to the cut.”

  Messy gave the cloth to Ana, who pressed it to Jisha’s head as Messy took out and unstoppered a small potion bottle. She inserted a pouring spout—Petra’s apprentice Mikkel’s idea had spread fast.

  “Alright, lift it,” Messy said. Ana did so, and Messy quickly poured potion along the wound then said, “Now put it back.”

  “Will you be alright here?” Ana asked, glancing in Rayni and Perri’s direction. Omda had returned a few seconds after the fight ended and was with Tor, but the Huntress and Archer were still out there, and she didn’t like them all being separated the way they were.

  Messy caught on immediately. “I’ve got her,” she said, taking the cloth and repeating the process of applying a little potion. “Go. Just don’t be long.”

  “I won’t,” Ana promised, leaving Messy with a kiss above the ear.

  When Ana reached Rayni and Perri, the Huntress sat staring forlornly at the body of the dead revenant. Perri was still out; Rayni had made him a little more comfortable, laying him straight with a pillow of moss under his head. She’d also, for reasons known only to herself, laid the revenant somewhat to rest, putting the severed part of its head back where it belonged.

  Rayni’s aura wasn’t any stronger than most peoples, and she had no more training in controlling it than any non-mage, but right now it was almost not there at all. When she looked up at Ana’s approach, her face was almost blank.

  The demotivating voice whispered in her mind, there and gone again in an instant. You could have avoided this, was all it said.

  Again, Ana ignored it, focusing on the woman in front of her. “Hey, Ray,” she said. She hadn’t expected her friend to be this affected, but she quickly recalibrated, keeping her voice gentle. “How’s Perri?”

  “Breathing pretty normally,” the Huntress replied tonelessly. “I got a potion in him. He should be fine.”

  “Great. Good to hear,” Ana said, kneeling next to her friend. “And you? You got knocked down pretty hard.”

  “I landed soft. Couple of scrapes. Probably some bad bruising. Cracked rib, maybe. I’ve taken care of it.”

  “Right. Right.” Ana gestured to the dead revenant. “How’re you handling this?”

  Rayni’s eyes drifted, following Ana’s gesture. “I don’t know,” she said. “Lip was… she was a decent person. Never really warmed to me, though. Huik had a thing for me, I think, and Lip definitely had a thing for Huik, so… She was never nasty or anything. Just never warmed to me.” Then she turned her head to look at Ana again and asked, “I could hear fighting, not just from where Om was but back with the others. Is anyone hurt?”

  “Superficially, mostly. Jisha got knocked down, but she should be okay. And Irry and Deni both went down with mana depletion, but they’re being taken care of. And between my Companionship Ability and Kaira’s Mana Confluence, they’ll be on their feet in no time.”

  “Oh. Good. Was it more…?”

  “Yeah,” Ana confirmed. “Six revenants, all told.”

  Rayni nodded. “So all of them. That shouldn’t happen. Demons don’t travel in packs.”

  “Nor should they set up ambushes. Not unless there’s a Binder involved.”

  “Or someone higher than that.”

  “Or maybe someone higher than that,” Ana agreed.

  Soon Ana’s wings disappeared. Nothing in Rayni’s demeanour changed. Ana didn't push her, and they sat there for a while, looking at the dead revenant. The corpse of a woman who hadn’t been a friend of Rayni’s but at least an acquaintance; a friend of her friends.

  “Fucking Sentinel,” Rayni finally sighed then pushed herself to her feet. “Would you… would you take Lip? I’m not sure that I can.”

  “Sure,” Ana said, patting her shoulder. “You take Perri, and I’ll take Soralip.”

  Ana walked behind her friend as they returned to the group. She’d had to put the dead woman’s head on her chest. Rayni didn’t need to see that.

  They burned the revenants with prayers to those gods that Rayni knew one or more of them followed. Finding the rocks for even a single long cairn took a while, but they decided it was worth doing, laying the bones to rest side by side in a small clearing in sight of the path.

  The unidentified voice remained blessedly silent.

  That night, as Ana lay down to get her two hours of sleep, she couldn't help overhearing Perri and Lessie as the Archer comforted his friend. Lessie was crying softly as she confessed how terrified she'd been; not as they fought, but when she saw Perri unconscious in Rayni’s arms. Perri admitted that the last thing he remembered as the demon threw itself at him was regretting that he’d never get to show Lessie the valley where he grew up. It was all very sweet, probably. Ana wasn't the best judge of such things.

  She'd overheard similar conversations before, and they’d usually be followed by the sounds of kissing. Sometimes more. Not with Lessie and Perri, though. Ana still didn't know what was going on with those two, but whatever it was sure sounded intimate enough to shame her into deliberately tuning them out.

  Then Messy grumbled something incoherent in her sleep and snuggled closer, and Ana had something far more important to focus on. If Lessie and Perri were happy as a platonic couple or whatever one might call it, that was their business. She barely understood herself anymore, anyway.

  and read 8 chapters ahead of both Splinter Angel and Draka! You also get to read anything else I’m trying out — which is how Splinter Angel got started.

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