The tip of the sword was pointed directly at Arthur's throat.
He looked at it. Then at Xavier behind it.
'Him again.' Vexis dropped down, arms wide. 'What is he even doing here!'
"Brat." Roz's voice came low against Arthur's left ear. "I can feel that kid's aetheric output from here. It's tickling my fur."
"I know," Arthur said quietly. "Completely unfair."
"What are you rambling about." Xavier's voice was sharp. "Are you following me."
Arthur looked at him.
"Following you." He let the pause sit for a second. "What exactly would I gain from following you."
"Then explain what you're doing here."
"I stumbled across this place a few days ago." Arthur glanced around the clearing like he was mildly bored. "Mallard nest nearby. Figured I'd kill a few for aetheric essence. Efficient use of an afternoon." He tilted his head. "You're doing the same thing. You can't actually disagree with me."
Xavier's eyes narrowed.
"Leave."
"No."
"Leave. Now."
"I don't see Xavier Almonth carved into any of these rocks." Arthur looked at the waterfall, the tree line, the pool. Then back. "You have no authority over me. And if you raise that sword again I'll have your father's name brought to the Lestilaut estate personally. Watch your words, whitey."
Xavier looked at him for one long second.
Then he sheathed the sword.
A rustle came from the bush to his right. Fast. A mallard launched out of it, two heads forward, three legs already in the air.
Xavier raised one palm without turning his head.
The mallard stopped mid-air.
A clean hole opened through its abdomen. No sound. No flash. It dropped to the ground and didn't move and the purple glow lifted off it and flowed directly into Xavier's chest like it already knew the address.
Arthur didn't move.
Vexis next to him had gone completely still.
That was not a spell. That was not a technique with a name. That was just Xavier deciding something should have a hole in it and the air agreeing.
Holy shit.
Xavier picked up his bag from the ground. Slung it over one shoulder. Walked to the tree line without another word and the forest swallowed him.
Arthur stood in the quiet clearing and looked at the mallard on the ground.
I absolutely despise overpowered characters.
He gave it ten minutes before he moved.
Roz sat on a rock near the pool and said nothing. Vexis drifted between the trees, still quiet from whatever he'd felt watching Xavier's output do what it did.
Arthur crouched near the bush line and turned over the plan.
Simple enough. Lure the mallards out one at a time. Kill them clean. Collect the essence. Go home before dark.
"Roz."
"No."
"I haven't asked yet."
"You're going to ask me to do something. The answer is no."
Arthur looked at him. "A small tremor. Just enough to rattle the bushes. Drive one or two out at a time."
"No."
"I'll buy pork legs."
Roz kept his eyes closed.
"Lots of them."
Nothing.
"With beer."
One red eye opened.
A pause.
"How much beer."
Arthur grinned.
The ground shook.
Not a small tremor. The whole clearing shuddered. Leaves came down in a sheet. The waterfall broke its pattern. A rock near the pool shifted and dropped.
Arthur spun around.
"I said small—"
The shriek cut him off.
He looked left.
Ten mallards came out of the bush line. Then the bush behind that one moved. Then the one behind that.
He stopped counting at twenty.
Oh.
Oh no.
They launched simultaneously. A wall of wrong-shaped bodies and too many heads all moving at once.
Arthur pulled the dagger from his bag and swung into the first one before it finished its jump. Clean. The purple glow hit his chest and the warmth spread through his ribs and he had exactly half a second to feel good about it before two more were already in the air.
He caught one. Missed the other.
It got past his guard completely and hit his shoulder and he went sideways and ate dirt, palms down, the dagger almost out of his grip. He scrambled up and the next one was already coming and he caught it low, more falling on it than stabbing it, and the glow came again.
He got his footing back.
Okay. Okay that's normal.
'WATCH WHERE YOU'RE STEPPING. THOSE ARE MY LEGS—'
They're my legs right now so shut up.
Three more came in a cluster. He swept through them with one movement and caught two. The third bit into his thigh and held.
"Ah you little—"
He grabbed it by both heads and pulled and the bite got worse before it let go and when it finally did he drove the dagger down and the glow came up warm through his chest again.
His thigh throbbed. He didn't look at it.
'HEY. BE CAREFUL WITH MY BODY, IMPOSTOR.'
MY NAME IS ARTHUR.
'WHATEVER.'
He was down to the last four when he moved into the shade.
Not on purpose. He'd been backing up and the tree line was behind him and the shadow of the largest tree fell across the ground in a long flat strip.
He felt it the moment his feet crossed into it.
The density behind his sternum. Still there. Running lower than usual from the fighting but present.
He dropped it fast. A blob of shadow lifted off the ground, dark and dense, the purple bleeding in at the center as he compressed more aetheric blood into it.
He shot it at the nearest mallard.
It punched through clean. The glow came off the creature and hit his chest and he felt it do something specific.
He went still for half a second.
The density behind his sternum.
It hadn't dropped when the glow hit. It had held. Maybe even pushed back slightly against the depletion.
He filed that. Immediately and completely. Later.
Two more mallards left. He shot one and stabbed the other and the clearing went quiet.
He stood in the settling dust and breathed.
His thigh was bleeding through the uniform. His palms were scraped from the fall. His shoulder ached where the first one had hit him and his grip hand was cramping around the dagger.
He looked at Roz on the rock.
Roz looked back.
"You said small," Arthur said.
"I said let's see," Roz said. "You assumed small."
Vexis drifted down beside him. He looked at the mallards on the ground. Then at Arthur. His mouth opened and then closed.
He didn't say anything.
Arthur was wrapping his thigh with a strip torn from the inside of his bag when he heard it.
A thump.
Heavy. Deliberate. Coming from somewhere past the far tree line.
He looked up.
The sun was most of the way down. The clearing had gone orange and long-shadowed and the waterfall caught the last of the light at the top.
The tree line moved.
Not wind. Something pushing through from the other side.
A face appeared first. Green. Wrong proportions, too wide at the jaw, too flat at the forehead. Then the body followed. Small, the height of a child that had just learned to walk, but four of them, each holding a wooden club that was too large for its arms.
They looked at Arthur.
Arthur looked at them.
The shadows in the clearing were long and everywhere. Every tree, every rock, every inch of ground the setting sun couldn't reach.
He had a dagger and a cramping hand and a thigh that was going to be a problem tomorrow morning.
He also had the best lighting conditions he'd had since he arrived in this world.
He exhaled.
Took one slow breath in.
Wrapped his hand around the dagger grip until the cramping settled.
The Duwends shrieked.
Arthur grinned.
"Come on then, you little ugly bastards."