The ax was well and truly stuck, and no amount of wrenching was going to get the tree to surrender it back to me.

  “Hey Aeshma!” I called across the campsite. We were less than a day’s journey out of town, and I was already realizing that neither of us had anything in the way of basic survival skills. I was honestly curious how her seductive camp-making skills held up to my own sub-standard ones. “You said you were trained in ‘seductive tree chopping’, right?”

  She practically leapt up from the tangled mass of tent she was supposed to be setting up and bounded over to me. “Yeah, you know it dude! Why are you asking? You hankering for another demonstration?”

  “I just want you to prove that you’ve really got the skills. Of course I saw you doing your whole routine down in the cellar but, you know, I’m not convinced you’ve got the chops for it when it counts, is all,” I said with a shrug, hoping she’d take the bait.

  She pointed at the stuck ax and raised an eyebrow. “You sure it’s not because you’ve made a mess of things?”

  “I was just getting the tree warmed up for you, while you were busy with the tent.” I gazed pointedly at the twisted lump of fabric that was meant to be our shelter for the night. Aeshma glanced back at it too and sighed.

  “Fine, I’ll handle the chopping. I think the tent might be broken, so why don’t you see if you can find all the– all the post loops, or whatever,” she said. She freed the ax from the tree with a single mighty pull.

  I sat myself down on the ground in front of our ruined tent. How Aeshma had managed to tangle, twist, and otherwise mangle the thing so badly, I had no idea.

  But the tent could wait; Aeshma was gearing up for her first real swing. I leaned back and watched the show.

  Aeshma first touched the blade gently to the tree, marking her intended chop. She shimmied to the left, then the right, before gracefully swinging the ax. As soon as ax-head touched wood, the haft twisted in her hands and the side of the blade slapped lamely against the trunk.

  “That was my warm-up slice,” she said, more to herself than to me. She took a deep breath as she recentered herself in front of her target. Then she pirouetted forward, ax outstretched, sensually waggling her eyebrows as she spun.

  While impressive, the maneuver brought her too close to her target, more in a position to embrace the tree than to chop it. The wooden handle slammed into the tree and shattered, sending the ax head spinning off into the undergrowth. “Damnit!” she screamed, stamping her foot. Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! echoed back at us from the dense forest.

  I gave her a sarcastic little round of applause. “I bet that tree is all ready for a date now!”

  “Yeah, yuk it up, dude,” she muttered, kicking away the splintered handle. “I’m not much of an ax-person, okay? That’s really the problem here. The best way to take down a tree… is like this!”

  With frightening speed, Aeshma spun on her heel and punched the tree with her bare fist. Roaring, she threw another punch, then another, sending woodchips flying until finally the tree let out a deathly groan and began to topple.

  Aeshma wrapped her thick arms around it and suplexed it into the ground with a splintering thwump. With a triumphant whoop, she straddled the trunk and started tearing log-sized chunks of wood with her bare hands, with all the gusto of a starving predator diving into a fresh kill.

  I looked back down at the knotted mess of our tent and sighed. I don’t know why I’d thought it would be a good idea for her to be the one to set it up.

  –

  Yet another twig snapped beneath my foot. I froze, but the damage was already done; the deer we’d been stalking for the past half-hour immediately turned in my direction, startled, and bolted deeper into the woods.

  “Ah man! I thought we had that one!” Aeshma shouted. She kicked at the bush we’d been crouched in, nearly tearing it out by the roots.

  Aeshma had tucked away a few ration packs in her questing duffel, along with the tent and a rough map of the way through the Queen’s Threshold. Sadly those rations, while still perfectly edible, had been smashed, squashed, and mangled by Aeshma’s questionable packing job. So when she suggested that we supplement them with some ‘easy hunting’, I thought it sounded like a good idea. Now we’d been at it for hours with nothing to show for our efforts. The smushed rations were sounding tastier and tastier with every passing minute.

  “Aeshma, I don’t think either of us are suited to skulking around… can’t you, I dunno, throw a rock at it or something?”

  She paused thoughtfully then scooped a fist-sized stone off the ground. “Did you see where it went?”

  I gesturing vaguely towards the copse of sun-dappled trees in front of us.

  “Okay, perfect. You run in there and make some noise. When it runs out, I’ll nail it.” She stared intently into the woods, her arm primed and ready to throw.

  I looked nervously at the rock she was holding, then back at her. “Just… are you positive you can hit it from this far off? I’m a little scared you’re gonna knock my block off by accident.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Your block? What are you even talking about? Get in there!”

  “It means head, Aeshma. I’m worried you’re gonna decapitate me.”

  “Oh,” she said, lowering her arm a hair. She frowned. “You know, now that you mention it I actually think we do use that phrase here.” With a sigh, she waved her hand towards a clearing, not too far from where the deer had disappeared. “If you’re gonna be such a weenie about it, run over there instead. It literally doesn’t matter, you just have to make some noise and scare it out of hiding.”

  With some trepidation, I crept into the clearing, hopefully well outside stoning range. Once I was far enough in I started hooting and stomping my feet.

  FWOOOF

  The deer launched out of its hiding place. It only took a few bounding steps before there was a sharp crack, and one of its legs flew off in a gory spray.

  An odd voice erupted from the woods. “BAH! Sylvandroon curse you louts!”

  I hadn’t noticed anyone else around, but the rock must’ve ricocheted and hit another hunter. Had all that blood been from the deer? Or… oh, man. This was bad. “Aeshma, get over here, I think you hit someone by accident! A-are we gonna go to jail?”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “What? Dude, did you see? I nailed it really good!” she said as she started jogging towards the downed animal.

  That same odd voice called out from the foliage. “Stay back, you beasts! Oh I’ve got fight in me yet, just you wait!”

  Aeshma had to hear it too, so why wasn’t she…?

  “Yeah yeah,” Aeshma said, kneeling down beside the twitching deer. “And the Queen plays hopscotch at sundo- ow!” As I approached, the deer jabbed out at Aeshma with its antlers. It was an impressive attempt for an already-injured animal, but the gap in their strength meant Aeshma got away without so much as a scratch.

  “Have at you, scum! You’ll never dine upon my succulent flesh!” the deer shrieked.

  “A- Aeshma are- are you sure we should be… uh… I mean it’s, like, t-talking?” I stammered out.

  “Of course it’s talking, it’s an animal.”

  I remembered the food cart back in the town square, advertising meat from ‘bastard’ ducks, and was feeling kind of queasy.

  “Come on, Roland, I’m gonna finish it off. If I carry it back to camp, will you get the fire going?” she asked nonchalantly.

  “B- but, the Cellar Gremlins talked too! You wouldn’t have eaten them, would you?”

  Aeshma opened her mouth to respond, but the deer answered first. “Cellar Gremlins? You would compare my mouthwatering meat to… to that of a pest?” It thrashed about again, weakly attempting to angle an antler my way. “You dare… to mock me in my final moments, hm? Or perhaps you think… think yourself too good to partake!”

  Aeshma grasped it by the antlers. I couldn’t bear to watch, but it was impossible not to hear the sharp snap as she twisted the animal’s head around and put it – or him, I guess?– out of his misery.

  “Cellar Gremlins taste gnarly, dude. Keep making that comparison and you’re gonna upset a lot of livestock. Have some respect, you know?” Aeshma said, throwing the carcass over her shoulder. “Oh! And grab the leg, would you?” She pointed to the detached limb and started walking.

  I reluctantly picked up the leg and followed her. The sun had already started to set, so we both hustled to get back to camp before it was fully dark.

  “So… you do know how to make a fire, right?” Aeshma asked, as she dropped the deer, now cleaned and dressed, beside the neat little bed of wood I’d carefully assembled.

  “Kinda. I helped make a couple campfires during summer camp, but that was years and years ago.” I stepped back and scratched my chin, trying to remember how we would do it. We’d gather dry stuff in the middle, needles and tiny sticks for kindling, and then we’d build a pyramid of sticks and logs over top. Next we’d… uh, light it on fire.

  “Uh… do you have a lighter?” I asked Aeshma. “Or I dunno, a fire potion?”

  She shot me a quizzical look. “A lighter what, exactly? And fire’s not a liquid, dude, how would you make a potion out of it? Hm… maybe the Flare Disk still has some life in it? Even if it’s busted, maybe it can still spit out a few sparks.”

  I thumbed the medallion in my pocket, but I didn’t feel even an inkling of heat. Damaged as it was, the Flare Disk was nothing more than a fancy-looking paperweight. I shook my head. It was already twilight, so unless things turned around we were gonna have a supper of raw, cold, rations instead of juicy venison.

  “One more idea,” I said. “Could we find something to make a spark? I can look around if you keep peeling wood for tinder.”

  Aeshma cast an incredulous look my way. “You want me to peel the wood? That’s stupid. How about I just do… this!” She tossed a log onto its side and grasped it between her oversized mitts. With a grunt she crushed the log to splinters, then the splinters into pulverized flecks, before looking back up at me with a goofy grin on her face.

  “Y- yeah, that’s perfect, actually,” I said, a touch of anxiety in my voice. I knew she was strong, but the repeat demonstrations were just… unsettling.

  On the other hand, she had made us basically the perfect kindling – if she piled up enough sawdust, it’d practically be a fire hazard. I grabbed a large rock and one of our metal tent stakes. It took a hot minute, but as the last light was fading over the horizon, I finally produced a spark. The dust pile instantly burst into flame, engulfing the piled logs.

  “It’s cookin’ time!” Aeshma whooped as she dropped the whole deer into the fire, plus the extra detached leg. For a few minutes we watched the fire in peaceful contemplation, the world around us shrinking to the radius of our campsite. The forest around us was pitch black and eery. I’d almost forgotten how dark it gets in nature. I hadn’t been camping since I was a kid, and we always had battery-powered flashlights or a lantern with us.

  The deer’s meat was starting to brown, sizzling and popping as Aeshma prodded at it with a long wooden stick. “It needs another couple minutes for sure,” she said, burying her makeshift poker in the dirt beside her.

  How she could tell the deer’s doneness just from poking it, I had no idea. I’d take her word for it. The air was filling with the smell of cooked meat and stray burnt deer hairs, and Aeshma’s shiny horns glimmered nicely in the firelight. Altogether, this wasn’t a bad way to spend an evening. “You know, in my world, it’s traditional to tell scary stories around the campfire,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah? Hit me with one.”

  I racked my brain for something really scary. “Have you ever heard of… Bloody Mary?” Wait, was this a good one for the campfire? Bloody Mary was more of a game than a story. But Aeshma was giving me her full attention, so I had no choice but to continue. “Okay, so she’s a lady who, uh. She was a lady. Then one day she died from… something bad. Like… a murder? Or an accident? And now… if you say her name in the mirror three times, she comes to kill you!”

  Aeshma’s face fell from anticipation to confusion. “Wait, that’s it? That’s the whole story? You’re just describing how Mirror-Lurkers work! That’s not scary at all.”

  “I-I wasn’t finished yet! She also can… uh… fine, that was it. It’s scarier to people from my world,” I said, deflating.

  “What’s stopping you from just, like, walloping this ‘Mary’ when she comes outta the mirror? Like, if you’re the one conjuring her, you’d know when she’s gonna pop out! You’d be totally prepared for the fight.”

  “That’s not… you’re not supposed to fight her, you know? You can’t punch a ghost. The point is that you try to summon her, to show that you’re brave, and if she really exists, then she kills you.”

  “You can absolutely punch a ghost. What are you even talking about?”

  I sighed. “Okay then, how about you tell me a ghost story? Did you ever tell those at Succubus camp? You were there for over a century, right?”

  Aeshma scrunched her brows for some extra mnemonic power. “Ghost stories, let’s see… ooh, I’ve got one! Once, me and my regiment all hiked through a ghost-storm together. This was back when we were all interning in the Queen’s Threshold – so it was right here in this forest, actually!” She smiled nostalgically. “Honestly, the ghosts were kinda lame. They weren’t targeting us or anything, just passing through. The rest of the trip was cool though.”

  There were too many bizarre threads to untangle: her regiment, an internship, ghost-storms. I decided to start with the obvious. “What’s a ghost-storm?”

  “Oh, it’s like… when all the ghosts in an area get peeved off and start flying around and making problems. Like, all of them at once.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you punch ‘em till they go away!” She slapped the front of her thighs and stood up, eyeing the well-cooked deer. “Enough about the weather, dude, it’s dinner time! I’m gonna start off with that leg.”

  –

  With both of us stuffed full of venison, we crawled inside the tent. It was a bit cramped, obviously designed as a roomy single, and one corner fluttered slightly every time a breeze rolled through because I had lost one of the stakes when I used it as a flint. Nonetheless it was perfectly cozy, and with each of us bundled up in our respective bedrolls, we hardly noticed its flaws.

  “Goodnight, Aeshma.”

  “‘Night, Roland”

  And in a wink, I was asleep.

  –

  SNAP

  A branch snapped outside our tent. Then a woman’s gravelly voice called out, “Well gang, looks like we found tonight's chumps.”

  NOTABLE CREATURES

  --------------------------------

  Kromzalore the Leaf-Eater LV2

  Ancestry: Animal

  Class: Deer

  Notable Perks:

  Big Rack - Your antler attack is especially deadly. It can be used to shove or entangle foes.