MIRRI

  The way the air crackled as the Seraph cast shared no similarities with a lightning strike except in how blinding the results were.

  A dozen trees and half as many fighters crumpled under the sweeping beam of light that manifested whole from Sariel's palm, their midsections ashen in moments. Pine sap crackled and popped audibly even from where Mirri struggled up the hill after Mahira.

  The rain of stones stopped completely at the second distraction, making progress easier, and freeing some of Mirri's time to throw glances at the skirmish behind them.

  Swooping further into the treeline after an initial pass, the Seraph seemed to not only be focusing their efforts on the warband, but actively protecting the monster they had come to hunt. A few of Sariel's bolts flew back out of the treeline in time with a screeching that sounded like talons being dragged on slate.

  Mirri was unsure whether her scales felt fit to peel off because of the sound, or because the enemy had an Immortal capable of dueling a Seraph.

  "Let the monsters kill each other indeed." Sutai finally muttered something Mirri could agree with through the rain as they crested the ridge.

  A few of the screams did drift up the hill, leaving Mirri grateful that they were too far for the smell to reach. Her own early practice with her magics had left her mostly immunized to the smell of burning scales, but the sounds of an argument and clash inside the tower meant her resolve was about to be tested.

  Burning human was scented much differently, and she could not afford to be caught off guard and drowned in memory, not here, not with so many other threats around.

  At least there would be no Arrivals in the mix to further test her bluff.

  "Subdue them fast, don't break any legs. We don't want to have to carry anyone." Mahira ordered. "Starve the Maw until Sariel returns to invoke the Accords."

  A lump formed in Mirri's throat, so she simply nodded. Stalling the fight and minimizing damages while outnumbered by opponents who didn't understand the danger they were in was a fool's errand, but they were only outnumbered by the count.

  The Venatrix did not need to duck under the archway as they entered the courtyard only because it had been built with the Warden's size in mind.

  "Weapons down or we all die, fools!" Dovin was shouting.

  Mirri wasn't listening well enough to catch the specifics from the Bessos bannermen. The tone told the story well enough, though.

  No one was yet writhing in the mud and rubble, but Dovin's wards had been pressed to one wall, forced into a formation by the sheer press of armored humans who believed they were under attack instead of being rescued.

  "I'll handle that. At least two of them went inside. Check for the garrison with them, before they can do more damage." Mahira ordered, striding towards the lump of unawares knights with her spear at the ready.

  Mirri almost pitied them, seeing the gleaming length of Seraph Steel leveled. That was a weapon made for the mercy of monsters, not people.

  The pity shriveled, seeing a trampled banner below the doorway as she and Sutai skirted the hissing remains of a bonfire.

  Only one of the tribal houses sprung for dyes that deep in such an expensive color. The men in the courtyard were wearing Bessos colors, and fighting like it if they had not overwhelmed Dovin's people with numbers alone by now.

  The banner though, was Saah's.

  Smoke leaked from the darkness as they navigated the rubble on the steps, cracking clay roof tiles under their boots.

  Panicked exclamations and fleshy thuds emanated behind as the Venatrix joined the fray. At the reminder, Mirri let a bit of mana through her ears, in case the men inside bothered to communicate.

  Kicking over the bolt of deep blue cloth confirmed her suspicions.

  Expecting the monster to have eaten solely her enemies felt like wishing for the deaths of the garrison too, and would be foolhardy besides. They had to expect Saah's men to still be inside, and armed.

  Mirri pointed at the banner.

  "If there are more than two knights, a fist around a cracked fang is your target." Mirri hissed at Sutai. "They'll be better trained and armed."

  Instead of dismissing her warning, the 'priestess' from the wastes surprised Mirri with a curt nod, and led the way inside.

  They had no more time to burn.

  The acrid haze hung heavy, and a voice drifted from the left of Mirri, opposite the stairs to her right.

  A human voice, but Mirri already had mana threaded through the connection between her ears and brain.

  "One back here, not moving." the words meant.

  A second vocalization, belonging to an upright figure she could see in the shattered doorway to the tower stairs themselves.

  "Where the hells are the rest of— dragons!"

  Sutai was already halfway to the second speaker by the time Mirri breached the threshold behind her.

  "Hopefully outsi— ah!"

  The first speaker lurched to their feet out of the haze as Mirri nearly tripped on something soft.

  She kept her spear up even through the stumble, which saved her life.

  The bearded knight was empty-handed and still reaching for his sword, but a thin line of heat mana crept down his other arm, giving away the game.

  Faster than thought, the lattice for a bolt flashed into existence off the tip of one of Mirri's claws.

  She spared no thought for efficiency, loosing it for the man's left shoulder.

  The bolt's impact threw him off balance and sullied his aim just in time, as the sulfur munitions packed into his gauntlet cannon ignited.

  The deafening detonation came with a ringing in Mirri's ears and the sensation of tearing flesh at her shoulder, but she had more pressing concerns than the pain.

  His sword was almost drawn, sharpened iron sweeping upwards for her throat.

  The blade clacked and bit lightly into the ashen shaft of her spear as she jabbed for his other shoulder, intercepting the attack in the same motion.

  Mirri swung her tail for balance when he fell, throwing first one leg, then the other over the barricade he had been crouched behind, keeping her spearpoint pressed at the weaker joints between the torso and bicep armor to ensure the man was driven to the ground with painful speed.

  Her left boot pinned the knight's wrist against his chest even as she choked up on the haft of her spear, digging deeper into the gap.

  A single finger extended from the man's left hand, raised towards her face in parody of surrender. Two would have been—

  Mirri froze without letting off her spear.

  The human was missing his first finger, and had blood weakly trickling down the outside of his gauntlet, half-dried. The gasping man was trying to surrender, not making a mockery of the symbol, or pointing at her. He simply lacked the equipment to make a proper surrender.

  Pressing further would be murder, if she struck the wrong vein while maiming him, and she had almost dismissed the gesture.

  "Surrender. I do. Thought horde." The knight vocalized his offer forcefully in the mana, risking his throat to communicate.

  Mirri pressed her boot more firmly into his wrist, trapping it against his torso. Blood pounded in her ears until the iron sword clattered onto the ground.

  "Stay down." She hissed, withdrawing her spear from his shoulder and taking account of his prone form.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He still had a spare sulfur packet visible in a bandolier on his belt. More iron pellets, like the ones currently lodged in her shoulder, taking sapping sips at her mana regeneration.

  Most of the blast had gone wide, and some had been brought to a stop by the layered leather, bronze, and cloth above her scales, but she could feel a telltale ache as she reached for his last munition.

  Sutai seemed to have her opponent well in hand, judging by the sounds emanating from the stairwell. Perhaps too well in hand, it sounded like she was toying with him. No one sane would be taunting their opponent while they were losing the fight.

  Resolving to deal with her own wound later, Mirri dug her claws into the thin papyrus wrappings. She made sure to scatter the foul-smelling alchemicals from the weapon widely enough that the powder could not be retrieved from the floor without a fine broom.

  The iron balls skittered across the stone floor.

  "How many of you are inside? Where's the garrison? Saah's men?" She asked her newest responsibility, too busy to revel in taking her first captive.

  They weren't safe yet, so it wasn't a victory.

  The man groaned out a chuckle that cut off when he levered himself up on his elbows, coming face to tip with Mirri's spearpoint.

  "Hells if I know, but they're not here. Traxos took a swing at Dovin outside, sent us to find them for backup." He said. "We're missing squires, I went and found your mother's man for help. Thought they were up here, when we heard the shots."

  Mirri had a strong suspicion something upstairs had made the noises, but was having trouble understanding why no one had clambered down the stairs to help at the sounds of combat.

  Hopefully they weren't deploying out along the walls against the Venatrix.

  "And the garrison?" Mirri pressed, not quite pressing her spear to his throat.

  He at least had the decency to sound sheepish with his reply.

  "Through the pass with Saah's men already." He gasped, eyes locked on the way the soft flesh of his stubby triangular snout was distended. "I thought you were horde because, well—"

  The man gestured to where Sutai was driving his companion across the room. The crack of bone echoed over screams as the other knight's sword clattered to the stones.

  Mirri cursed under her breath. That was too far. The man's elbow was bent the wrong way, a wound Sutai could only have inflicted with total control of his arm and weapon.

  "Sutai! Enough!" Mirri barked across the haze.

  The tan priestess might have rolled her eyes as she stepped away from the whimpering human. It was hard to tell through the smoke.

  Her words were far more objectionable than the maybe-disrespect.

  "He can still run well enough to bait them away." Sutai casually suggested, as if they would leave the men to be eaten.

  "No one is bait today, and damaged captives require extra care." Mirri raised her voice, trying to cross the gap in understanding.

  She fell short, and received a barb in return for her efforts.

  "My apologies, I thought we were fighting, not playing a sparring game."

  "We trade captives, here." Mirri stressed the nature of their fight again. "You're not fighting mercenaries and desperate delvers who'll be gone or buried next season."

  "So?" Sutai asked, clearly unfazed. "We won. Enemy subdued. At the Venatrix's orders."

  Mirri snapped her spine straight. They were nearly snout to snout, leaned over a corpse dressed in waster furs, in a smoking, potentially monster-infested building, with prisoners to care for and a fight wrapping up outside.

  She didn't care.

  "So the people here will remember what you do, next time you fight them. Brutality and all." Mirri hissed, mindful of their audience. "You're endangering the treatment of our people by mistreating theirs."

  Convincing the waster that the communities fielding her fellow fighters would also be hesitant around that behavior would be the next step, and hopefully someone else's problem. Half of Mirri ached to let the other priestess make her own mistakes, and pay their prices, but the other half balked at the idea she might be saddled with the foreigner for a time.

  Having a unit Mirri led become known for brutality would be planting the seeds of a long death to manifest tendrils around her throat later.

  The only question would be when they chose to squeeze, not if.

  The Venatrix was clearly almost done carrying the borrowed fighter, and Mirri wanted nothing to do with trying to tame the animal in front of her. Sutai seemed intent on doing everything wrong, and soft corrections weren't working. She was a risk that needed to be brought in hand firmly, before she grew out of control.

  "I see." Sutai drawled, sounding anything but contrite. "So I should take my cues from you, then?"

  Mirri felt her tail lash as she seethed inside and out, intentionally keeping her eyes averted from the way their prisoners had flinched. Watching their eyes nervously flicker over the debate was almost worse than Sutai's jab. She had obviously stopped in the city long enough to trade gossip. Or perhaps the tales of Mirri's Proving had already spread all the way to the Wastes.

  "Until you're assigned elsewhere. Go search upstairs. Call out if you find anyone." Mirri said through grit teeth, turning away and ending the debate. "You, tend to him. The Seraph should be invoking the Accords soon."

  Scant hours ago, the idea of ordering a member of a Venatrix's team like this would have horrified Mirri. At most, she would have imagine them peers.

  Now, it felt like a duty neglected over-long.

  The priestess from the Wastes flounced her way across the smoke-filled space to mount the stairs without a response, but obedience was enough in the moment. Mirri didn't have time for more.

  Her captive nodded slowly from the floor, his face unreadable under the helmet. Sutai's opponent limped across the space hesitantly, cradling his arm and giving Mirri a wide berth. She gave him the space, after confirming he had no sulfur munitions or cannon of his own.

  She briefly considered the potions in the pouch at her back, but rejected the idea immediately. The building wasn't even cleared, and Saah's men had been here. They were something she needed to save for absolute emergencies, not cracked limbs belonging to knights bound for ransom anyways.

  Her eyes caught a flash of white fluff, while she was busy glaring at the stairs and listening for the sounds of a fight through the floorboards. She nearly dismissed it as debris, but it twitched, ears flopping, and she realized it was attached to something.

  Someone, or something, had just dragged the absurdly fuzzy carcass out of her sightline.

  Navigating the doorway with her spear would have been a disaster, so Mirri leaned it up to the wall outside after a brief glance at the prisoners.

  They were huddled across the room, with one of them doing a lot of moaning while they manufactured a sling for his arm out of a belt.

  Mahira and Dovin were both bellowing orders outside, so the initial fight must be near-done.

  Confident in her safety from anyone outside, Mirri's hand found her knife, a much more appropriate tool for the confined quarters of the storage space than the polearm. She didn't draw it yet.

  A bit of mana crept through her fingers to fill the channels in the weapon anyways, when she saw pale, smooth skin attached to the beleaguered-looking ball of fluff.

  There was an unarmored human slumped against the wall just beside the door, wearing a toy rabbit like footwear. Male, judging by the chest, though that was an inexact measure, and sporting shiny straw hair that marked him as being of foreign descent.

  Mirri nudged the door wider, hand still on her knife in case this was a trick of some kind.

  The angry red splotches starting to blacken along his exposed skin explained the heavy breathing, and his total lack of reaction when she scraped the sole of her boot on the threshold spoke of serious injury, or advanced venom progression.

  Some fool had brought an unarmored squire in a strange cloak to the north tower, while it was infested by a Wyrm Broodmother.

  She had just taken her hand from the knife, creeping upwards to the medical pouch at her back, when weight crashed into her, and an arm snaked its way around her neck from behind.

  Someone gave a loud, undignified squawk. The noise was cut off as her assailant tightened their grip.

  Even above the strangely closeby exclamation, Mirri could hear metal strike wood upstairs. Of course the tower wasn't cleared.

  Already halfway to kneeling, Mirri pitched forwards, catching herself on the prone figure with one hand. She felt muscles tense under her grip, and the injured human began to squirm.

  The forearm barring Mirri's windpipe was of greater concern to her at the moment.

  Two arms had wrapped around her above the shoulders, and someone was growling something Mirri didn't listen to in her ear.

  Panicked, she burst her wings wide, her off-hand already reaching back for the knife.

  The ambusher's grip broke under the full force of her flight muscles, allowing Mirri to finish standing as the weight sloughed off her back. Still under pressure and with her wings smarting from the sudden abuse, she chose to step over the prone figure, and pivot into a kick.

  Her attacker was another human, her ragged hair contrasting with the incredibly detailed stitching on the ill-fitting winter tunic dyed with unfamiliar runes.

  Mirri's boot connected with the woman's chest perfectly, which was when she started to suspect she was making a mistake.

  The human was too light, and Mirri heard bones crack as the girl was tossed backwards into the darkened corner behind the door. Another thud echoed when the human's skull snapped against the stone wall.

  Her knife cleared the scabbard, bladed edge already aglow.

  The human staggered, eyes fluttering for a moment as she stood, gasping, in obvious pain. Balled fists were held up despite Mirri's weapon, but she still hesitated.

  Mirri took the opportunity to form a bolt and hold it out with her dominant hand, ending the fight in all but truth with the distance between them.

  The human seemed oblivious to the danger, eyeing the fire and going back to staring at the floor below Mirri, where her dagger was pointed—

  Pain wracked Mirri's leg as the prone figure she had ignored slammed something into the back of her knee, driving her downwards and bringing her knife naturally towards his throat.

  Mirri pressed the heated edge, driving his chin up to see widened eyes, and keeping the bolt pointed at the larger combatant. The girl had tried to lunge, but stumbled against the shelves in obvious pain, clutching at her sides.

  She was still driving forwards.

  Mirri's mind itched a warning. No sane fighters would still be going, these people were desperate, they must think she was—

  They must be Arrivals.

  "I'm a person."

  Mirri forced mana through her voice, risking her throat on the bet that neither of them had a real weapon that could reach her throat before she was done speaking.

  They both froze, one ineffectually grappling at Mirri's wrist, the other gasping for air and just barely hanging on to the shelves.

  "Prove it." Came the accusation Mirri feared most.

  Spitting the challenge sent the girl into a fit of coughing that nearly collapsed her again. Gods, she must have cracked a rib.

  Luckily, Mirri didn't have time to despair, or lash out, or any of the thousand things she had imagined she might do if she were ever faced with this challenge. Not that she had ever thought a human Arrival with a shattered ribcage would be the one issuing the question.

  Tribunals had featured in her nightmares, the occasional Venatrix, perhaps a wandering Immortal with a grudge or a village councilor with a hang-up about those with the Tyrant's marks on their face. None of them before her mother found a pyre, having to face such a thing alone was always part of the horror.

  But the dreams had never been anything quite like this.

  "Em." The male choked out a nonsense syllable.

  Mirri eased the pressure on his throat to let him continue. Maybe the ending could be different.

  Something less than a nightmare.

  "Maybe words are a good idea right now. The guy outside surrendered, he sounds alive." Mirri's shoulders relaxed another scaleswidth as the straw-haired human took the invitation to speak. "You understand surrender? We surrender. We safe?"

  He directed the last seven words at her instead of his companion. The human was speaking choppily, as if broken sentences would make him easier to understand.

  The smoke was starting to give Mirri a headache already.

  gladiators were expensive to train and equip, and so they often did not fight to the death, especially during the golden age of the Empire. Surrender was undertaken by extending a finger, usually the right index, in a plea for the referee's decision. The popularity of the judgment waxed and waned with prosperity in the empire, however gladiators who fought well could generally expect to be spared.

  Today, a is a universally recognized symbol for truce, first seen in early Imperial China under the Eastern Han Dynasty, and mentioned by the Roman historian Tacitus in the year 109. Its use was formalized by the Hague Convention in 1899 and 1907 as a request for unarmed negotiations. It is also colloquially used to mean surrender, as it is generally the weaker party requesting negotiations. Attacking someone under a flag of truce, or using it as cover for attack, is considered a war crime.